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Heute bekam ich aus dem Kreis meiner Familie, die in einem wohlhabenden Land lebt, einen schockierenden Anruf. Ein 19jähriger junger und noch nicht stabiler Erwachsener, den ich sehr ins Herz geschlossen habe, hat sich bei den Freunden seiner Wohngemeinschaft, in der er seit längerem lebt, schriftlich verabschiedet, ließ Handy und Computer als deren zukünftigen Besitz zurück und wird seit Tagen von der Familie und Polizei ergebnislos gesucht. Es war, als wäre ein Stück von mir gegangen.

Dieser junge Mann hat sich inzwischen aus einer nahegelegenen Stadt telefonisch bei der Mutter gemeldet. Er lebt also. Nähere Umstände sind mir noch nicht bekannt. Doch was auch immer geschehen ist, das eine weiß ich seit langem und wiederhole es als Vater, Großvater, ehemaliger Lehrer, Schulberater und Schulpsychologe, als Erziehungswissenschaftler und Diplom-Psychologe das xte Mal: Ihr Väter und Mütter, Ihr Lehrpersonen, Erzieherinnen und Erzieher, Ihr Betriebsmeister, Freunde, Verwandte und Bekannte, sprecht mit Euren Kindern, mit den Euch anvertrauten oder mit Euch lebenden Jugendlichen, seid ihnen erstrebenswerte Vorbilder, hört ihnen zu und versucht zu erfahren, wie es ihnen wirklich geht, wie sie sich fühlen, was ihnen am Herzen liegt!

Seit Monaten nehmen Depressionen, Lebensängste, Suizidgedanken und vollendete Suizide unter der jungen Generation sprunghaft zu. Kinder sagen ihren Müttern, dass sie nicht mehr leben wollen. Psychologen und Jugendpsychiater in psychiatrischen Anstalten schlagen Alarm. Doch viele Erwachsene schlagen alle Warnungen in den Wind, wissen es besser, haben zuhause oder in der Schule, im Verein, im Betrieb oder in der Wohngemeinschaft gar keine Probleme; die haben nur die anderen.

Wie soll sich die Jugend in einer Welt zurechtfinden, in der wir Erwachsene uns schon lange nicht mehr zurechtfinden, weil sie aus den Fugen geraten ist? Jeden Tag kommen neue Anweisungen „von oben“ – um vorgeblich unsere Gesundheit zu schützen: man raubt uns die Freiheit, der Jugend werden keine privaten und beruflichen Perspektiven mehr eröffnet, viele Familien wurden und werden weiterhin in den finanziellen Ruin getrieben, das Gesicht wird durch sogenannte Schutzmasken entstellt und ist für den Gesprächspartner nicht mehr erkennbar, von den Familienmitgliedern, Klassenkameraden, Arbeitskollegen, Freunden und anderen Mitmenschen sollte man sich tunlichst distanzieren, die körperliche Unverletzlichkeit und Freiwilligkeit ist trotz Nürnberg-Kodex von 1947 durch den allgemeinen Impfzwang nicht mehr gewährleistet und so weiter und so fort.

Und diejenigen freien Geister – inzwischen auch Schauspieler –, die aus gutem Grund versuchen, ihre Mitbürger aufzuklären und ein sofortiges Ende der krankmachenden und tödlichen politischen Maßnahmen und des Schürens irrationaler Ängste in den alten Medien fordern, werden als Verschwörungstheoretiker oder kranke Irre diskriminiert und medial „hingerichtet“.

Erwachsene Mitbürger, sprecht am gemeinsamen Mittagstisch oder am Abend beim Tee mit euren Kindern und mit der Jugend über das, was in unserer Gesellschaft Merkwürdiges und noch nie Dagewesenes abgeht – und fragt sie, wie es ihnen dabei geht! Wenn Ihr unsicher seid, dann holt Euch Rat bei aufgeklärten Mitmenschen oder bei den neuen Medien. Es gibt noch viele ehrenwerte Wissenschaftler, die die wahren Gründe für den gewaltigen und fatalen Umbruch in unserer Gesellschaft genau und verständlich darlegen, aber in den alten Medien nicht zu Wort kommen. Die Menschen sollen die Wahrheit nicht erfahren.

Mit denen, die das gegenwärtige Unheil weltweit anrichten, kann man nicht sprechen; sie sind zu krank. Ihr Mitbürger müsst selbst den Mut aufbringen und Euch Eures Verstandes bedienen und aufwachen und NEIN sagen – bevor es zu spät ist!

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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel ist Diplom-Psychologe und Erziehungswissenschaftler.

Featured image: Neckerchief designed by Pablo Picasso for the Third World Youth Festival in Berlin (GDR), 1951

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

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General Scott Miller, US and allied forces commander in Afghanistan, announced on April 25 the beginning of foreign troops withdrawal that should be completed by September 11, according to President Biden’s decision. Is the US ending the war waged for almost twenty years? In order to understand this communication, it is first of all necessary to consider the results of the war.

The toll in human lives is largely unquantifiable: the “direct deaths” among the US military would amount to about 2,500, and the seriously injured soldiers are over 20,000. The contractors (US mercenaries) killed would be about 4,000, plus an unknown number of wounded men. Losses among the Afghan military would amount to around 60,000. Civilian deaths are in fact incalculable: according to the United Nations, they would have been around 100,000 in just ten years. It is impossible to determine the “indirect deaths” from poverty and disease, caused by the social and economic consequences of the war.

The economic balance is relatively quantifiable. For the war – the New York Times documented on the basis of data compiled by Brown University – the US  spent over 2,000 billion dollars, plus over 500 billion for medical assistance to veterans. The war operations cost $ 1,500 billion, but the exact amount remains “opaque“. Training and arming the Afghan government forces (over 300,000 men) cost 87 billion. 54 billion dollars were spent on “economic aid and reconstruction”, largely wasted because of corruption and inefficiency, to “build hospitals that never treated patients and schools that did not educate any student, and sometimes they didn’t even exist”. 10 billion dollars have been spent on drug fight with the following result: the opium cultivated acreage has quadrupled, so much so that it has become the main economic activity in Afghanistan, and today supplies 80% of opium illegally produced in the world.

The United States has become heavily in debt to finance the war in Afghanistan: so far, it had to pay 500 billion dollars, again with public money and it will rise to over 600 billion dollars in 2023. Furthermore, 350 billion have been spent so far for the US military who have suffered serious injuries and disabilities in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and it will rise to 1,000 billion in the next decades, more than half of this expense due to the consequences of the war in Afghanistan. 

The political-military balance of the war, that shed rivers of blood and burned enormous resources, is catastrophic for the United States, except for the military-industrial complex which made enormous profits with it. “The Taliban, who have grown stronger, control or contend much of the country,” wrote the New York Times. At this point, Secretary of State Blinken and others propose that the United States officially recognize and finance the Taliban, since thus “they might govern less harshly than feared after taking partial or full power — in order to win recognition and financial support from world powers”. 

At the same time, the New York Times reported, “the Pentagon, American spy agencies and Western allies are refining plans to deploy a less visible but still potent force in the region, including drones, long-range bombers, and spy networks.” According to Biden’s order the US is withdrawing its 2,500 soldiers, the New York Times reported,  “but the Pentagon actually has about 1,000 more troops on the ground there than it has publicly acknowledged, belonging to special forces under both Pentagon and  CIA ”, in addition to over 16,000 US contractors that could be used to train Afghan government forces.

The official purpose of the new strategic plan is “to prevent Afghanistan from re-emerging as a terrorist base to threaten the United States”. The real purpose remains the same as twenty years ago: to have a strong military presence in this area at the crossroads among the Middle East, Central, Southern and Eastern Asia. It is an area of primary strategic importance especially towards Russia and China.

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This article was originally published in Italian on Il Manifesto.

Manlio Dinucci is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Featured image is from New Eastern Outlook

by Michel Chossudovsky

ISBN Number: 9780973714715

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In this new and expanded edition of Michel Chossudovsky’s 2002 best seller, the author blows away the smokescreen put up by the mainstream media, that 9/11 was an attack on America by “Islamic terrorists”.  Through meticulous research, the author uncovers a military-intelligence ploy behind the September 11 attacks, and the cover-up and complicity of key members of the Bush Administration.

The expanded edition, which includes twelve new chapters focuses on the use of 9/11 as a pretext for the invasion and illegal occupation of Iraq, the militarisation of justice and law enforcement and the repeal of democracy.

According to Chossudovsky, the  “war on terrorism” is a complete fabrication based on the illusion that one man, Osama bin Laden, outwitted the $40 billion-a-year American intelligence apparatus. The “war on terrorism” is a war of conquest. Globalisation is the final march to the “New World Order”, dominated by Wall Street and the U.S. military-industrial complex.

September 11, 2001 provides a justification for waging a war without borders. Washington’s agenda consists in extending the frontiers of the American Empire to facilitate complete U.S. corporate control, while installing within America the institutions of the Homeland Security State.

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

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Today I received a shocking phone call from my family, who live in a wealthy country. A 19-year-old young and not yet stable adult, whom I have taken very much to my heart, has said goodbye in writing to the friends of his shared flat where he has been living for some time, left behind his mobile phone and computer as their future possessions and has been searched for by the family and police for days without result. It was as if a piece of me had gone.

This young man has since contacted the mother by phone from a nearby town. So he is alive. I am not yet aware of further circumstances. But whatever happened, I have known one thing for a long time, and as a father, grandfather, former teacher, school counsellor and school psychologist, as an educational scientist and graduate psychologist, I am repeating it for the umpteenth time: You fathers and mothers, you teachers, educators, company foremen, friends, relatives and acquaintances, talk to your children, to the young people entrusted to you or living with you, be worthwhile role models for them, listen to them and try to find out how they are really doing, how they feel, what is close to their hearts!

For months, depression, fear of life, suicidal thoughts and completed suicides have been increasing by leaps and bounds among the young generation. Children tell their mothers that they no longer want to live. Psychologists and youth psychiatrists in psychiatric institutions are sounding the alarm. But many adults ignore all the warnings, know better, have no problems at home or at school, in a club, at work or in a shared flat; only the others have them.

How are young people supposed to find their way in a world in which we adults have not been able to find our way for a long time because it has gone off the rails? Every day, new instructions come “from above” – ostensibly to protect our health: We are robbed of our freedom, young people are no longer offered private and professional prospects, many families have been and continue to be driven into financial ruin, the face is disfigured by so-called protective masks and is no longer recognisable to the person we are talking to, one should distance oneself from family members, classmates, work colleagues, friends and other fellow human beings as far as possible, bodily inviolability and voluntariness are no longer guaranteed by the general compulsory vaccination despite the Nuremberg Code of 1947, and so on and so forth.

And those free spirits – now also actors – who for good reason try to enlighten their fellow citizens and demand an immediate end to the sickening and deadly political measures and the stoking of irrational fears in the old media are discriminated against as conspiracy theorists or sick lunatics and “executed” by the media.

Adults, talk to your children and youth about what is going on in our society – strange  and unprecedented – at lunch or over tea in the evening and ask them how they feel about it! If you are unsure, then seek advice from enlightened fellow human beings or from the new media. There are still many honourable scientists who explain the true reasons for the enormous and fatal upheaval in our society in a precise and comprehensible way, but who do not have their say in the old media. People are not supposed to know the truth.

You cannot talk to those who are causing the present disaster worldwide; they are too sick. You fellow citizens must muster up the courage yourselves and use your brains and wake up and say NO – before it is too late!

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Dr Rudolf Hänsel is a qualified psychologist and educationalist. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Neckerchief designed by Pablo Picasso for the Third World Youth Festival in Berlin (GDR), 1951

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

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US policymakers aim to marginalize, weaken, contain, and isolate China and Russia, an agenda doomed to fail.  Why? 

1. Russian super-weapons are superior to the best in the West, developed at a small fraction of Washington’s bloated military budget.

2. China is an economic, industrial, and growing technological powerhouse.

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In February, Biden signed an executive order on America’s supply chains for chips, other hi-tech products, batteries, pharmaceutical ingredients, and rare-earth minerals.

It aims to further its own interests and undermine China’s — notably by wanting it excluded from global supply chains, especially for semiconductors and other hi-tech products.

Since Trump took office, scores of tech-related Chinese enterprises were blacklisted — on the phony pretext of protecting national security.

They’re barred from purchasing US technology without Washington’s permission, tech giant Huawei and its 70 affiliate companies most prominent on its so-called “entity list.”

What continues under Biden aims to give corporate America a competitive advantage against China and other nations.

When G7 leaders meet in June, Biden’s team reportedly will pressure Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Canada to contain China by excluding it from the global supply chain for semiconductors, communications, and other hi-tech products.

Phony accusations of forced labor, genocide and other alleged human rights abuses against Xinjiang Muslims is part of the US strategy.

Biden regime deputy national security advisor Daleep Singh reportedly said Washington intends further get tough on China policies related to Xinjiang.

Introduced in mid-April, the so-called (US) Strategic Competition Act of 2021 will impose more illegal sanctions on China and build closer relations with Taiwan.

It also aims to more greatly challenge China politically, economically, technologically, and militarily.

It falsely accuses Beijing of committing human rights abuses and other abusive practices against Uyghur Muslims in Jinjiang.

No evidence supports these claims.

What’s going on that aims to exclude China from the global supply chain flies in the face of economic cooperation with the country prioritized by European and other nations.

Relying heavily on access to its market, they oppose decoupling.

White papers prepared by Beijing explain ongoing economic and social development in Jinjiang.

Its regional government invited hundreds of foreign diplomats, journalists, and others from over 100 countries to visit Jinjiang — to see positive developments firsthand.

According to European studies director at China’s Renmin University Wang Yiwei:

“(S)o-called Western democratic values that the US plays as a lighthouse are merely an illusion,” adding:

“Human rights have become a complete double-standard show of the US.”

“Instead, the country is good at using this gimmick to divert public attention from its own poor human rights record onto affairs of other countries.”

Bipartisan-supported US tech war on China began after Trump took office — in response to its 10-year Made in China 2025 blueprint for transforming the country from a “manufacturing giant into a world manufacturing power.”

Seeking self-sufficiency to counter hostile US actions, Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2018 stressed the importance of Beijing “stick(ing) to the path of self-reliance amid rising unilateralism and protectionism in the present world.”

After tech giants Huawei and  Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) were barred or restricted from access to US technology, Chinese self-sufficiency gained added importance.

China’s 2021-25 Five-Year Plan and Vision 2035 development strategy prioritize spending billions of dollars to develop self-sufficiency in semiconductors, artificial intelligence, quantum information, and other scientific areas.

The Biden regime considers China Washington’s “most serious competitor.”

It’s “confront(ing) (invented Chinese) economic abuses (sic), counter(ing) its (nonexistent) aggressive, coercive actions (sic), (and) push(ing) back on China’s attack on human rights, intellectual property, and global governance (sic).”

All of the above and more apply to how Washington and its imperial partners operate worldwide — in stark contrast to China’s pursuit of peace, stability and cooperative relations with other nations.

US war on China by other means risks turning hot.

The same applies to Russia if US hardliners push things beyond red lines of no return against both countries.

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Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

VISIT MY WEBSITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].

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“How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion, and Class War”

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“Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity”

https://www.claritypress.com/product/banker-occupation-waging-financial-war-on-humanity/

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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

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In the coming week, the commander of the US Central Command Gen Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr. is expected to provide Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin with options for potential future counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan. During a hearing at the US House Armed Services Committee Tuesday, McKenzie indicated that many issues are still being figured out by the administration. 

Given the high sensitivity involved, McKenzie offered to dilate on them in closed-door briefings with lawmakers, but he and other witnesses made the following open remarks: 

• Biden Administration is “further planning now for continued counterterrorism operations from within the region.” 
• Pentagon is considering “how to continue to apply pressure with respect to potential [counterterrorism] threats emanating from Afghanistan. So, [we are] looking throughout the region in terms of over-the-horizon opportunities.”  
• US diplomats will be talking to countries in the region where the US could potentially base resources that it could use to conduct operations in Afghanistan. These basing agreements would allow the US to legally station their soldiers in another country, and, depending on the terms of the agreement, conduct either surveillance or kinetic operations.
• US is seeking more opportunities for “expeditionary basing” in the region. US might not seek permanent bases due to Iran’s proximity.
• Although the US military was leaving, “we will keep providing assistance to the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces.” (Emphasis added.) 

All of the above issues will be worth watching in the coming months. From the Indian perspective, what matters most is Delhi’s involvement, if any, in the US’ basing arrangements in the region. The US has a logistics agreement with India, which could facilitate mission-based deployments in Indian bases. 

On April 16, the Afghan National Security Advisor Hamdullah Mohib had briefed his Indian counterpart Ajit Doval about “what should happen as we prepare for this dialogue (on the transition in Afghanistan with the US and NATO).” This was immediately after the daylong visit to Kabul by the Secretary of State Antony Blinken. India’s role presumably figured in Blinken’s talks in Kabul. 

On April 19, Blinken himself had a call with EAM S. Jaishankar when they reaffirmed “the importance of the US-India relationship and cooperation on regional security issues” and “agreed to close and frequent coordination in support of a lasting peace and development for the people of Afghanistan.” 

Washington has a long diplomatic history of transactional relationships. Currently, the US-Indian relationship is under duress due to one particular ‘non-transaction’ — the Biden Administration’s apparent unwillingness to lift the ban on raw materials for the manufacture of Covid-19 vaccines in India. The Biden Administration has been sitting tight. 

That is, until April 24, when, in a mood softening, Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan suddenly took recourse to megaphone diplomacy. Blinken tweeted,“Our hearts go out to the Indian people… We are working closely with our partners in the Indian government, and we will rapidly deploy additional support.” Sullivan was candid: “We are working around the clock to deploy more supplies and support to our friends and partners in India as they bravely battle this pandemic. More very soon.”  

This is an overnight turnaround. Just the day before, the state department spokesmen had stonewalled, maintaining with a straight face that America’s needs took priority. What prompted this turnaround is unclear. One reason could be the Chinese offer to help India, which Delhi promptly began considering. 

However, the bottomline is that Washington almost always expects a quid pro quo in its transactional relationships. Conceivably, Afghanistan could be the quid pro quo, since vital US interests are at stake, including the prestige of the Biden presidency. 

Now, McKenzie had disclosed that US diplomats were pulling all stops to firm up the basing arrangements for Afghan operations and based on their inputs, he’d develop options by next weekend. Aside India, Blinken has consulted the Central Asian countries. He spoke to his Kazakh and Uzbek counterparts and took a meeting of the so-called ‘C5+1’ (exclusive format of the US and the five ‘Stans’) where Afghanistan was the leitmotif (here, here and here.) 

However, unlike in 2001 when Moscow helped to secure the access to Central Asian bases for the US military to launch its operations in Afghanistan in the downstream of the 9/11 attacks, this time around, the US-Russia tensions are escalating toward open hostility. In an extraordinary piece on Friday, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev voiced the Kremlin’s stark warning to Biden that “relations between Russia and the US have shifted from competitiveness to confrontation, effectively going back to the Cold War era” and this is “plunging the world into a state of permanent instability.” 

A report in the US-funded RFERL seemed despondent that the Central Asian states may not get associated with the Pentagon and CIA’s future operations in Afghanistan. Wherever the CIA goes in the post-Soviet space, the virus of ‘colour revolution’ spreads and the Central Asian regimes must be wary of it. Belarus’ current experience is a stark reminder. 

Besides, the major regional states — Russia, China, Iran and Pakistan — would disfavour any spillover of the Afghan conflict into Central Asia. A massive Russian-Tajik military exercise on April 19-24 involving 50000 troops underscored that Moscow views the US intentions in Afghanistan with disquiet. 

Thus, India would probably be the only remaining regional state in Washington’s consideration zone today as a potential collaborator. No doubt, the US is in desperate hurry as the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan has commenced. The big question is whether the US is relenting on the vaccine front with a view to cut a deal with India on Afghanistan. 

The very thought of it, of course, is very frightening. But if past experience is any guide, Washington has shown savviness to exploit India’s travails. A big step recently toward institutionalising the QUAD was possible only due to India’s border tensions with China. 

However, Afghanistan is a ‘graveyard of empires.’ The calculus of fratricidal wars keeps changing and India is best advised to steer clear of the Afghan civil war. Predicating any policy on the US’ consistency is risky too. 

Therefore, India should never contemplate a Faustian deal allowing Pentagon’s basing arrangements on its soil for the upcoming Afghan operations as quid pro quo for raw materials for the Covid-19 vaccine. This should be delimited as a purely commercial transaction between the Indian vaccine manufacturing company and the US supplier of raw materials. 

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***

The Arctic remains the world’s last frontier of human exploration. It is also a domain of great potential cooperation among great civilizations, or inversely a domain of militarism and confrontation.

In recent years, Russia and China have increasingly harmonized their foreign policies around the Framework unveiled by President Xi Jinping in 2013 dubbed the Belt and Road Initiative. Since its unveiling, this megaproject has grown in leaps and bounds winning over 136 nations, accruing $3.7 trillion of investment capital and evolving new components such as the “Digital Silk Road”, “Health Silk Road”, “Space Silk Road”, and of course the “Polar Silk Road”. In March 2021, the Polar Silk Road, first announced in 2018, was given a prominent role in the 2021-2025 Five Year Plan with a focus on Arctic shipping, resource development, scientific Arctic research and conservation.

With the enthusiastic support of Russia, China has increasingly become a leading force in icebreaker technology, northern resource development, arctic infrastructure construction, with an aim to be a world leader in shipping across the rapidly melting Northwest Passage cutting between 10-15 days off of goods moving between Asia and Europe. The recent clogging of the Suez Canal and over congested Straits of Malacca have been stark reminders that Arctic shipping is a domain of global strategic significance during the 21^st century.

Russia’s role as Chair of the Arctic Council between 2021-2023 will also put a major spotlight on the evolving Russia-China paradigm for win-win cooperation of the north as a territory of dialogue and development which is the theme of the upcoming St. Petersburg Arctic Summit later this year.

The Threat of Confrontation Heats Up

Despite these positive strides, many geopoliticans in the west have repeatedly attacked such developments as “efforts to conquer the world and replace the USA as global hegemons”. Those promoting this Hobbesian outlook not only choose to ignore the countless olive branches offered to the west by the Eurasian powers for mutual development, but have also accelerated a policy which some have dubbed a ‘Full Spectrum Dominance’ ballistic missile encirclement of both Russia and China. This latter policy was recently called out by Foreign Minister Lavrov on April 1, 2021 who said:

“We now have a missile defence area in Europe. Nobody is saying that this is against Iran now. This is clearly being positioned as a global project designed to contain Russia and China. The same processes are underway in the Asia-Pacific region. No one is trying to pretend that this is being done against North Korea… This is a global system designed to back U.S. claims to absolute dominance, including in the military-strategic and nuclear spheres.”

Instead of acknowledging the fact that Russian and Chinese military strategies are defensive in nature, advocates of full spectrum dominance have chosen to push an opposing narrative painting both Eurasian nations as competitors and rivals with ghoulish secret intentions to annex the world. Under this confrontational paradigm, both NORAD and NORTHCOM continental defense systems are undergoing a reform under General Glan van Herck who stated in his Declassified Executive Summary of NORAD’s New Strategic Vision:

“Both Russia and China are increasing their activity in the Arctic. Russia’s fielding of advanced, long-range cruise missiles capable of being launched from Russian territory and flying through the northern approaches and seeking to strike targets in the United States and Canada has emerged as the dominant military threat in the Arctic.”

Why the general believes this to be the dominant cause of military threats rather than the USA’s unilateral withdrawal from all confidence building measures such as the 1972 ABM Treaty, the 1987 INF Treaty and Open Skies Treaty is beyond the capacity of this writer’s imagination.

An important part of this continental reform involves an upgrading and expansion of the U.S.-directed Ground Based Midcourse Defense system of 44 silo-based interceptors located in Alaska and California with an additional 20 in response to both China and Russia’s development of hypersonic, maneuverable warheads as well as a new generation of submarine and land-based ICBMs. Former Assistant Secretary of Defense Philip Coyle recently attacked this upgraded GMD program by stating not only is the system woefully inept (only half of its 18 tests since 1999 hit their targets), but is also unnecessarily provocative, forcing Russia and China to upgrade their own systems in response to a threat that never should have existed in the first place. In a 2019 interview Coyle stated:

“All of this is causing Russia and increasingly China to build more and more offensive systems, so that they can overwhelm U.S. missile defence- assuming that they would work… We have no way of dealing with more and more missiles from Russia or China and so building up more and more missile defense is backfiring”.

General van Herck has also championed Artificial Intelligence and machine learning technology across all domains of data collection and even supplementing human decision making as part of the goal of achieving “global integration, all domain awareness, information dominance to reach decision superiority”. Dubbed Pathfinder, van Herck has stated “I absolutely believe it can be a model for the Department of Defense. It lays the foundation for improved data-driven decision making and enhanced capability”. Whether it is wise to strive to cut decision making on matters such as thermonuclear war down to 12 minutes as is currently celebrated by Pathfinder supporters while leaving strategic decision-making protocols in the hands of soulless algorithms, or whether it is a living prophecy of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove can be left up to debate. The fact remains that this is the game plan.

Since both unipolar and multipolar paradigms gripping the Arctic are creating an objective tension which threatens humanity and since appreciation for the origins and evolution of the Russia-China alliance is misunderstood and mischaracterized in the west, a few words of context are in order.

A Brief History of Russian Chinese Arctic Synergy

In 2015, Russia’s Eurasian Economic Union first signed an MOU to integrate with the Belt and Road, and as of 2019, China and Russia signed a series of major programs to extend the Belt and Road Initiative into the Arctic. The synergy between what Prime Minister Medvedev called the “Silk Road on Ice” and Putin’s Great Eastern Vision were obvious and in April 2019, both nations released a joint statement “Joint efforts will be made in Arctic marine science research, which will promote the construction of the ‘Silk Road on Ice.” The statement asserted that both nations “look forward to more fruitful and efficient partnerships worldwide to contribute to the sustainable development of the world oceans and a shared future for mankind.”

During an April 2019 BRI forum, President Putin laid out his concept of Russian and Chinese foreign policy doctrines saying:

“The Great Eurasian Partnership and Belt and Road concepts are both rooted in the principles and values that everyone understands: the natural aspiration of nations to live in peace and harmony, benefit from free access to the latest scientific achievements and innovative development, while preserving their culture and unique spiritual identity. In other words, we are united by our strategic, long-term interests.”

In recent months, the Russian-Chinese Joint Statement on Global Governance of March 23, 2021, represented the clearest response to the collapse of diplomatic bridges uniting west and east whose already weak edifices have been set ablaze in recent months. This diplomatic arson took the form of increased anti-Russian and anti Chinese sanctions, accelerated NATO war games on Russia’s perimeter, increased efforts to consolidate an anti-Chinese Pacific NATO, not to mention Biden’s infamous remarks that Putin was a “soulless killer”. These diplomatic disasters culminated in the infamous ambush of Chinese officials in Alaska on March 19, 2021.

Economic Cooperation and Shared Interests

Russia and China’s collaboration on Arctic resource development has seen both nations focus on transportation corridors, energy and research with a consistently open offer for all nations among their western counterparts to join at any time. Among the most important of the Arctic Projects now underway as part of Russia’s Arctic 2035 Vision announced in 2019, the 6000 km Power of Siberia natural gas pipeline is at the top of the list which will make Russia the primary supplier of China’s energy needs by 2030. This project will be joined by a Power of Siberia II doubling the natural gas output to China via Mongolia and both projects are part of the historic $400 billion energy deal signed between China and Russia in 2014 with the aim of sending 38 billion cubic meters of gas to China for 30 years.

A similar strategic project is the LNG-2 involving Chinese, Japanese, Indian and Russian companies on a joint project showcasing the importance of Polar Silk Road thinking in alleviating tensions among Pacific neighbors. Global energy analyst Professor Francesco Sassi of Pisa University stated that this project “will see an unprecedented level of cooperation between Japanese and Chinese energy companies in one of the most important Russian energy projects of the next decade”.

Additionally China’s 30% stake in the Yamal LNG pipeline which involves the Silk Road Fund ties China’s energy interests ever more deeply into the heart of Russia’s north east.

Russia’s program of expanding Trans Siberian Rail traffic 100 fold from the current 3000 twenty foot units/year to 300 000 twenty foot units/year by upgrading and doubling rail is vital as well as the program for the completion of the Northern Latitudinal Railway connecting west Siberian ports to the Arctic. On the strategic point of shipping, Russia is not only expanding its fleet of icebreakers to include new models of Project 22220 nuclear powered icebreakers, but also will increase freight traffic to 80 million tons/year by 2025 (up from the current 20 million). Several of Russia’s 40 icebreakers are nuclear powered, making it the only nation in the world enjoying this claim… a title it will enjoy until later this year as China rolls out its first 33,000 ton nuclear icebreaker which will join its growing inventory (already far advanced of both Canada’s and the USA’s dismal capacity).

Part and parcel of Russia’s new 15-year plan for the Arctic are plans to commit state support for broad transport and energy infrastructure via direct investments as well as the creation of “economic preference zones” giving private sector actors tax incentives. State support will also be directed towards efforts to mitigate climate change, scientific research, monitoring of environmental damage and pollution clean up.

The Rise of China as an Arctic Powerhouse

China deployed their first Arctic research expedition in 1999, followed by the establishment of their first Arctic research station in Svalbard, Norway in 2004. After years of effort, China achieved a permanent observer seat at the Arctic Council in 2011, and by 2016 created the Russia-China Polar Engineering and Research Center to develop better techniques to access Arctic resources. In 2012, China rolled out its first icebreaker (Snow Dragon I) and has quickly surpassed both Canada and the USA whose two out-dated ice breakers have passed their shelf life by many years.

As the Arctic ice caps continue to recede, the Northern Sea Route has become a major focus for China. The fact that shipping time from China’s Port of Dalian to Rotterdam would be cut by 10 days makes this alternative very attractive. Ships sailing from China to Europe must currently follow a transit through the congested Strait of Malacca and the Suez Canal which is 5000 nautical miles longer than the northern route. The opening up of Arctic resources vital for China’s long term outlook is also a major driver in this initiative.

In preparation for resource development, China and Russia created a Russian Chinese Polar Engineering and Research Center in 2016 to develop capabilities for northern development such as building on permafrost, creating ice resistant platforms, and more durable icebreakers. New technologies needed for enhanced ports, and transportation in the frigid cold was also a focus.

The Questionable Role of Canada in the Arctic Great Game

Amidst this dramatic rate of Arctic development both towards militarization and towards economic cooperation, the Canadian government has managed to remain remarkably aloof and non-committal.

Despite the fact that a 2016 Foreign Policy Review called for Canada’s integration into the northern missile defense shield last championed by Dick Cheney in 2004, Canada’s policy establishment has not committed to any course and while the field remains open for a potential Arctic policy based on diplomacy and cooperation as a bridge between East and West, time is running out.

On the one side, high ranking war hawks among Washington and Ottawa’s policy elite make every effort to court Canada as a participant of the NORAD/NORTHCOM Strategic Vision as the war drums continue to pound. On the other side, Russia has made its desires for Russian-Canadian Arctic cooperation known as Russian chargé d’affaires Vladimir Proskuryakov stated on April 6:

“Despite political difference between our two countries, prospects for Russia-Canadian Arctic cooperation look wide and generally positive. We should only use our possibilities properly.”

Proskuryakov continued:

“Being neighbours across the Arctic Ocean, we want to make maximum use of the Arctic potential as a territory of peaceful dialogue and sustainable development, which naturally combines realities and technological solutions of the 21^st century with cultural and historic traditions of the indigenous populations.”

If Russia’s hopes for collaboration are to make any headway, then it is certain that Canada’s September 2019 Arctic and Northern Policy Framework will play a role. This framework was an honest attempt by the Federal government to create a “long term strategic vision for activities and investments for Arctic 2030 and beyond”. Having committed to an $800 million fund for Arctic development and amplifying the National Trade Corridors Fund of $2.3 billion/year for 11 years devoted to transportation infrastructure, Canada’s Transportation Minister Marc Garneau called for northern infrastructure proposals in October 2020 with a March 2021 deadline saying:

“Efficient and reliable transportation networks are key to Canada’s economic prosperity. Enhancing Arctic and northern transportation will support trade diversification and social development and ensure greater connectivity for Northerners. I encourage eligible transportation infrastructure owners, operators and users to apply for funding under the National Trade Corridors Fund.”

Sadly, months later, the deadline came and went with no concrete projects placed on the table and no mechanisms established to carry out any potential construction. No funding mechanisms were set in place and without a vision the potential use of the Canadian Infrastructure Bank or Bank of Canada continues to go untapped.

The only concretized policies for the Arctic put in place by the Trudeau government during this time are a stark inversion of actual development with three omnibus bills C-48, C-69 and C-88 passing in short order under the fog of a climate emergency declared by the Parliament. Under these bills, a moratorium was placed on all oil tankers in Northern BC stretching from Vancouver to Alaska (C-48), total bans on offshore drilling were passed declaring Arctic waters off limits to development (C-88) and environmental review processes-already among the most elaborate and bureaucratic among developed nations, was expanded (C-69), making new energy projects in the Arctic nearly impossible.

The Private Sector Steps In

When opportunities to connect Canada’s interests with China were advanced, as seen in the case of China’s efforts to purchase Canadian construction giant Aecon Inc in 2018 or the Hope Bay TMAC Resources in Nunavut in 2020, the Federal Government swept in at the last minute to kill the deals ensuring that no Chinese capital would have any influence in Canada’s development prospects.

Stephen van Dine (VP of Public Governance at Canada’s Institute of Governance) wrote that pension funds, the Canadian Infrastructure Bank and Bank of Canada should be used to play a positive role in arctic development. Van Dine wrote in January 2021: “The Canadian arctic is almost investment-ready for the next 50-100 years with a reliable, predictable infrastructure program for schools, public housing, health centers and power generation. What’s missing is a long-term plan.”

Frustrated with this commitment to inaction, Canadian business leaders at various times formed consortiums outside of the influence of Ottawa as seen in the Alaska-to-Canada Railway Development Corporation which won the support of both the Albertan government as well as former President Donald Trump in September 2020. The A2A Program called for building 2500 miles of rail and finally closing the gap separating Canada from Alaska, which to this day remains one of the most underdeveloped frontiers on earth. Despite the billions of dollars of annual federal transfers to the native bands of each of the northern territories, drug abuse, suicide rates, depression and school drop out rates are magnitudes higher among the static, disconnected northern communities of Canada relative to the national average.

Many were curious if Biden would continue Trump’s support of this program but considering the new president’s swift killing of the Keystone XL pipeline and his passage of Executive Orders ensuring a total halt to all economic development of Arctic resources, the answer has become less ambiguous. These orders made Biden’s ideological stance on Arctic economic development and the A2A Project transparent, and also defined what should be expected of the Biden-Trudeau “Roadmap for a Renewed U.S.-Canada Partnership”.

Another group of thought leaders representing interests in the public, private and academic centers, frustrated at the plague of stasis recently formed a group called Arctic360 with the mandate to drum up support for a positive vision for Canada’s High North. Comparing Canada with other members of the Arctic Council, Jessica Shadian (President and CEO of Arctic360) wrote:

“When it comes to Canada’s truly competitive advantage for becoming a global leader in innovation it is time to break out of the usual mould and go where few Canadians go: the North. One just needs to glance at Canada’s Nordic Arctic neighbours to see that there is precedence. The often-made arguments as to why the North is an inopportune place for everything from living to working to starting a business or building a road is its real advantage. That the North is vast, cold, remote, dark six months of the year, has harsh weather and a critical infrastructure gap is one of Canada’s biggest innovation assets. Add to this, that the North is home to many of the critical minerals that China and others want for building technologically advanced infrastructure. The North could be Canada’s unrealized key to leap-frog existing infrastructure and industries and play a global leadership role in 21st Century innovation. The question is whether we have the ambition or the conviction to lead.”

A True Vision for Inter-Civilizational Cooperation: The Bering Strait Corridor

It was in March 2015, foreseeing the Arctic extension of the Belt and Road Initiative by a number of years, that former Russian Railways president Vladimir Yakunin, brilliantly called for a Trans-Eurasian Development Belt with rail stretching all the way up to the Bering Strait crossing and integrating into Asia. Yakunin, who for years has been a proponent of the connection of the Americas and Eurasia by rail, said the project should be an “inter-state, inter-civilization, project. It should be an alternative to the current (neoliberal) model, which has caused a systemic crisis. The project should be turned into a world ‘future zone,’ and it must be based on leading, not catching, technologies.”

Having been originally conceived in the 19^th century as outlined by Governor William Gilpin in his 1890 Cosmopolitan Railway, and supported by Czar Nicholas II who sponsored feasibility studies on the project in 1906, the Bering Strait tunnel connecting Eurasian and American continents fell from general awareness for decades. It was briefly revived during discussions held between FDR’s Vice President Henry Wallace and Russian Foreign Minister Molotov in 1942 but was again lost under the fog of Cold War insanity. This century-old idea again resurfaced when Russia signaled its willingness to construct the project in 2011 offering over $65 billion towards its funding, which only required the cooperation of the United States and Canada. China put its support behind the Bering Strait Tunnel in May 2014.

While such a grand design would provide the most direct pathway for the west to synchronise our development paradigm with the Polar Silk Road, and Greater Eurasian Partnership, it is admittedly a far cry from the realities plaguing current geopolitical thinking.

The best that can be hoped for in the short term would be a successful war avoidance strategy adopted by Ottawa in alignment with Moscow’s desires for cooperation on the field of anti-coronavirus programs, education and arctic medical needs and environmental management. If these simple trust building mechanisms can begin to take hold, and if war hawks are kept at bay, then perhaps Canada can eventually play the role of intermediary and diplomatic bridge both for the benefit of its own citizens and the wellbeing of the world as a whole.

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Matthew J.L. Ehret is a journalist, lecturer and founder of the Canadian Patriot Review.

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“A lie told once remains a lie, but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth.”- Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Propaganda Minister, 1933-1945

President Ortega is a dictator!  President Ortega is a dictator!  President Ortega is a dictator!  Etc., Etc., Etc!!  Say it over and over, and it becomes accepted truth with absolutely no evidence whatsoever. Welcome to the post-truth world – A Goebbels’ world.

In 1979, the The Sandinista National Liberation Front (Spanish: Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, FSLN) triumphed over the more than four decades of US-supported Somoza dictatorship.  Thus ended the “stable” playground for the wealthy, right-wing Nicaraguan families and their affluent US investor friends, preserved at the expense of the vast majority of the Nicaraguan people. To this day the US has never forgiven the social-minded Sandinistas (“Sandinismo”) for having forced the end of the Somoza era. Many of the wealthy opposition now live in Miami, Florida.

Ten years of Reagan’s brutal terrorist war against the Sandinista government came to an end in 1990 after more than 50,000 casualties.  The FSLN lost the 1990 elections in which the US financed with nearly $50 million dollars a “Liberal” Party candidate, Violeta Chamorro, as an alternative to the FSLN[1].

During run-up to the 1990 Nicaragua elections, the Bush administration stated its intention of “keeping the Sandinistas guessing” through secret intelligence operations (New York Times, June 11, 1989) aimed at influencing the election. New monies for the opposition parties were justified in order to “level the playing field” to boost the U.S.-created opposition forces’ chance of ousting Sandinista President Daniel Ortega (Miami Herald, Oct. 18, 1989).

President Bush had promised in November 1989 that the devastating trade embargo and terrorist war against Nicaragua would be immediately lifted if the U.S.-backed presidential candidate, Violeta Chamorro, was elected by a majority of the Nicaraguan people (Washington Post, Nov. 9, 1989). Understandably, the exhausted Nicaraguans and the FSLN lost the election, but did regain power through democratic elections again in 2007 after 16 years of repressive Liberal rule.

In diplomatic cables, the US described the Violeta Chamorro government (1990-1995) as one in “economic shambles”, and the subsequent Aleman and Bolanos administrations (1996-2006) as totally corrupt. Women’s rights experienced serious setbacks during this period. Nonetheless, every US administration since 2007 has continued its determination to oust the Sandinista government headed by President Daniel Ortega who remains demonstrably popular with the vast majority of Nicaraguans. The US uses the same old ad nauseum evidence-free accusations –corrupt dictatorship.

The incoming Sandinista-led coalition created a National Unity and Reconciliation (NUR) government where the “recuperation of rights” has played a major role, guiding diverse policies, including the renewed literacy campaigns, and the reconstruction of public education and public health care, among other key areas.[2]

Social infrastructure, including roads, parks, farmers’ markets, child care centers, and maternity homes in each municipality of the country, has been the hallmark of the NUR government.  These policies have contributed to Nicaragua having among the highest rates of economic growth in Latin America between 2007 and 2020. Nicaragua has the highest human development index score in Latin America, and has been considered the country with the greatest level of gender equality in the region.

Examining Wikileaks cables, Department of State memos, National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and US Agency for International Development (AID) budgets, and documents seized in arrests of the US-orchestrated 2018 Nicaraguan coup suspects, it is clear the US has expended perhaps as much as $200-300 million to oust the Ortega-led Sandinista government. Depressed over the November 2006 Sandinista electoral victory, the US explicit goal has been “the achievement in an immediate future of a government akin to the interest of the US government,” and “creation of conditions for regime change.”

In a memorandum, an NED affiliate, identified ways to destabilize and change Nicaragua’s “regime” that includes strengthening civil society to facilitate a “coup d’état against Daniel Ortega.” The US Embassy and USAID have been preparing conditions for a coup since at least 2013. Their efforts culminated in the violent but unsuccessful US orchestrated and financed April – July 2018 coup attempt that took several hundred Nicaraguan lives, including 23 uniformed police.  Between 2017-2020, USAID has funded numerous “humanitarian” efforts with over $100 million dollars, all designed to weaken the Sandinista government.

AID claims its purpose is to “further America’s interest while improving lives in the developing world”. In that same period, 2017-2020, NED has funded 68 projects in Nicaragua with over $5 million, ostensibly to teach Nicaraguans about Democracy, even though the US has never experienced one, nor ever intended to have one.[3]

[Note, that USAID claims its purpose is to further “America’s interest”, meaning of course, the United States of America. The US is but one of 35 “American” countries which have a combined population of just over 1 billion, residing on 16.4 million square miles. The USA with 331 million people comprises 31 percent of the “Americas” population, residing on 3.5 million square miles, or 21 percent of the “Americas” land area. Thus, USAID typically expropriates the entire Western Hemisphere as its domain.]

Propaganda on Steroids: Weaponizing Social Media[4]

Image on the right is from The Grayzone

The US incorporates the latest in DOD’s DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) tools in using social media – the Social Media in Strategic Communication project (SMISC).[5] Using voluminous paid social media sites and platforms, including YouTube, Facebook, Whatsapp, and Twitter, complemented by the pathetic, reliable lapdog corporate media, the US and its proxies spin propaganda narratives that spread like wildfire at the speed of light with a click of the mouse. This has proven effective in creating an instant group mind, a collective hallucination convincing much of the US American public, and the international community, of “repressive dictators” in social democracies. Thus, the cast is set for Congressional and public opinion support of US “corrective” intervention, i.e., “humanitarian regime changes”, even as the scripted narrative is totally fabricated – absolutely untrue.  The US was able to use these communications techniques in 2018 to claim that Nicaraguans were violently oppressing its own citizens to provoke a coup.

Overwhelming Power of Propaganda – Molding Our Thoughts – Spin and Hype

Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Propaganda Minister, 1933-1945, formulated a principle that if a lie is told often enough, it becomes accepted as the truth.[6] And he wanted the masses to believe so fervently that the people became “addicted” to the German cause.[7] Thus, through the contrived use of propaganda to manage and manipulate public opinion, one can effectuate the death of the integrity of language – distort the genuine meanings of words in efforts to convey a fact or idea to suit an agenda – or what I call linguicide[8].

The United States obsession with ousting the democratically elected Sandinista President Daniel Ortega approaches a kind of insanity.  With socialist policies benefitting the impoverished, Ortega is perceived as impeding “US interests.” But the history of US meddling and intervention reveals a vast arsenal of techniques, tricks, lies, bribery, methods for “manufacturing consent”, and infliction of domestic economic and political pressures to achieve its goals of neoliberal regime change. As many readers know, for the US privatization of capital is like a neoliberal religion, which inevitably creates de facto class warfare.

The Progressive Sandinistas

Since the Sandinistas regained political power in 2007, they have overseen emergence of the most progressive state in Central America (CA):

• 2^nd highest economic growth rates and most stable economy in Central America (CA)
• only country in the region producing 90 percent of the food it consumes
• poverty, and extreme poverty rates halved – country with greatest reduction of extreme poverty
• reached the UN Millennium Development Goal of cutting malnutrition in half
• free basic healthcare, including medicine
• free education for all primary and secondary students
• illiteracy virtually eliminated, down from 36 percent in 2006
• average economic growth of over 5 percent for past 5 years (per IMF and WB)
• safest country in CA with one of lowest crime rates in Latin America
• highest gender equality in the Americas (World Economic Forum Gender Gap Rept, 2017)
• kept out drug cartels, while pioneering community policing
• has not contributed to the migrant exodus to the US (unlike Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala)
• has the best roads in CA
• leader in renewable energy
• the leading tourist destination in CA (before the 2018 US coup attempt and orchestrated media demonization campaign)
• virtually uninterrupted electricity to 97 percent of the country

US-Orchestrated unsuccessful Coup in 2018

On May 1, 2018, Benjamin Waddell wrote an article in a National Endowment for Democracy (NED) funded news website, Global Americas, “Laying the groundwork for Insurrection: A closer look at the U.S. role in Nicaragua’s Social Unrest”. He reported that NED had funded 54 projects in Nicaragua between 2014 and 2017, promoting “a new generation of democratic youth leaders…defending democracy”.  Waddell concluded by saying that “regardless of whether Mr. Ortega is removed from power, the NED’s involvement in Nicaragua reveals the power of transnational funding to influence political outcomes in the 21^st century”.  The problem is that Nicaragua possesses a stable democratically elected government, but the fact is simply ignored by the US because Nicaragua possesses socialist programs, rejecting strict neoliberal privatization.

NED’s education programs at universities within Nicaragua, especially UCA and UPOLI, have prepared a network of over 2,000 young people (some estimates are as high as 5,000) in courses such as social media skills for “democracy defense”. Gifting the students with computers, phones, etc., they are trained to troll Facebook and Twitter with disinformation.  Use of social media campaigns where origins of information are unknown and uncorroborated, is able to create thousands of fake profiles, sponsor Facebook ads, produce thousands of WhatsApp messages to distort facts, and issue fake reports.

The DARPA SMISC program is able to identify persuasive campaign structures that influence messaging across social media sites and communities, and detects counter-messaging of adversaries. Employing fake news and false reporting on the internet traveling at the speed of light launched into the infectious cyberspace instantaneously creates rumors, lies, and misinformation. It is very difficult to subsequently correct with the lies with corroborated truth. The systematic destabilization strategy often successfully manipulates public opinion.

From April 18-22, 2018, this group of social media warriors immediately shaped and controlled public opinion by “reporting” that Nicaraguan police “massacred” protesting students, which in turn contributed to violent protests throughout Nicaragua. There were students peacefully protesting changes in the nation’s social security laws, but they had immediately been infiltrated by thugs who provocatively fired at the police, and the police defended themselves.

The entire nation was awash with news of massacres (which in fact did not happen) which inflamed the populace and enraged people in the US and Europe about the “repressive” Nicaraguan police.

It was a planned set-up by the US, complicit with Nicaraguan paid opposition leaders and delinquent thugs.  With the “uprising” lasting until late July, the participants were very confident of victory over the Sandinista government as they followed their disruption “instructions” collecting huge amounts of US funds. They openly daily posted on various social media sites their murders and burnings of Sandinistas in the streets; the burning of a number of Sandinista homes, schools and offices; kidnappings and tortures; all designed to terrorize the entire population.  Hundreds of roadblocks manned by heavily armed and hooded thugs were located throughout Nicaragua, making transportation both difficult, and dangerous. By July 23, the police finally forcefully removed all the roadblocks, and since many of the blockers refused to surrender upon police commands, 9 policemen were killed in the process.

Edgar Chamorro, member of the prestigious Chamorro family, a former Jesuit priest and full professor at UCA (University of Central America), was an early member of the Directorate of the main Contra fighting force in the early 1980s, serving as their major public relations spokesperson.  In 1987, Chamorro authored, Packaging the Contras: A Case of CIA Disinformation:

“In the excesses of inventing an artificial force, and in the need to stage events and to create impressions without consideration for substantial realities, there was no longer a distinction between reality and fiction. The image and impression were more important than substance….[L]ies were used to manipulate people and events to such an extent that behind the lies there was nothing but self-illusion and self-deception….[T]here was a negation of the moral distinction between good and evil…let to a legitimization of concepts such as a good war, a good crime, a good rape, a good lie. This is how murder and torture were justified, how the destruction of property and the sabotage of an economy and the social fabric of a nation were excused, all in the name of patriotism and anticommunism”.

This is exactly what happened in the coup of 2018, as the coup participants completely concealed reality with fiction using social media, negating the moral distinction between good and evil.

A leaked USAID memo in the summer of 2020, revealed up-to-date brazen US plans called “Responsive Assistance in Nicaragua” (RAIN) to overthrow the Nicaraguan government by “destroying public order and other violent actions”, that will include “network monitoring to create fake news”.  Over 220 years ago, the Iroquois Indians described George Washington as the “Town Destroyer” (Iroquois: “Conotocarious”) after all their New York villages had been destroyed under his orders.  The US has been destroying nations and villages ever since in the cause of the White Man’s Burden” (civilizing the world), justified by “exceptionalism”.

The same disinformation principles are being applied today with intentions of overthrowing the social revolutionary Sandinista government.  That is why I choose to live in progressive Nicaragua, to document all the lies and disinformation that intends to negate the incredible achievements of the Sandinista government.

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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.

S Brian Willson is a Viet Nam veteran and trained lawyer. He has visited a number of countries examining the effects of US policy. He wrote a psychohistorical memoir, Blood on the Tracks: The Life and Times of S. Brian Willson (PM Press, 2011), and in 2018 wrote Don’t Thank Me for my Service: My Viet Nam Awakening to the Long History of US Lies (Clarity Press). He is featured in a 2016 documentary, Paying the Price for Peace: The Story of S. Brian Willson, and others in the Peace Movement, (Bo Boudart Productions). His web essays: brianwillson.com. He can be reached: [email protected]. 

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

Notes

[1] “How the U.S. Purchased the 1990 Nicaragua Elections”: http://www.brianwillson.com/how-the-u-s-purchased-the-1990-nicaragua-elections/

[2] National Human Development Plan of Nicaragua (PNDH), (2012), Plan Nacional de Desarrollo humano Actualizado 2012–2016. Available at http://www.pndh.gob.ni/  

[3] “Exposing the Founding Fathers and the US Constitution”: http://www.brianwillson.com/exposing-the-founding-fathers-and-the-us-constitution/

[4] P.W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking, Like War: The Weaponization of Social Media (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018). 

[5] “DARPA’s SMISC Program To Identify Misinformation or Deception Campaigns on Social Media and Conduct Its Own Propaganda Campaigns”, https://idstch.com/home5/international-defence-security-and-technology/technology/ict/darpa-using-mind-control-techniques-manipulate-social-media/; “DARPA wants to simulate how social media spreads info like wildfire – DARPA SocialSim program develop high-fidelity computational simulation of online social behavior,” https://www.networkworld.com/article/3158707/darpa-wants-to-simulate-how-social-media-spreads-info-like-wildfire.html.

[6] Leonard Doob, “Goebbels’ Principles of Propaganda,” Public Opinion Quarterly 14 (1950), 419-442, cited in Dan D. Nimmo and Chevelle Newsome, Political Commentators in the United States in the 20th Century: A Bio-Critical Sourcebook (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1997); Anthony Pratkanis and Eliot Aronson, Age of Propaganda: The Everyday Use and Abuse of Persuasion (New York: W.H. Freeman and Co., 1992), 8.

[7] Michael Zezima, Saving Private Power: The Hidden History of the ‘Good War’ (New York: Soft Skull Press, 2000), 4.

[8] Tragically, this long pattern of committing harm to others and the Planet Earth to materially benefit ourselves has occurred with little or no critical thought from the prevailing political, religious, economic or academic structures. Thus we tend not to think about it. When confronted by reality we have a way of denying it, and have developed such a rhetorical double-speak that we may have committed linguicide of our own English language. Our obsession with limitless materialism (and the huge profits derived therefrom) requires a constant need to steal more and more resources. Thus, we need to be assured of control over vast regions of the world where the resources, markets, and labor are located. In effect, the Cold War was a cover for this deeper battle of the Haves against the Have-Nots. Any kind of genuine local or regional people’s movement for economic and political autonomy, local reliance, and justice (the essentials of real democracy) becomes a threat to USA need for global hegemony. These perceived threats must be eliminated to assure the continuance of the American Way Of Life (AWOL). Thus, for example, Cuba’s existence as a revolutionary society has been a “threat” since its 1959 people’s revolution, as it is an experiment of a people’s society not subject to the whims and exploitation of an outside force such as the United States or Spain. Of course, many other people’s movements over the past century, especially since World War II, have been ruthlessly thwarted because they have posed similar “threats.”

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons

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

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Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) has come a long way since its liberal Zionist days, finally declaring its anti-Zionist position, and has since been a staunch supporter of the Palestinian cause. But apparently there are still limits.

These limits surfaced in a recent meeting between JVP’s Executive Director Stefanie Fox and Professor Rabab Abdelhadi of AMED Studies, SFSU on the issue of Zoom’s censorship of a scheduled event by Abdelhadi.

“Is JVP National willing to help us liberate Palestine but only if we conduct our liberation struggle peacefully”?

In September, I wrote about the abrupt cancellation by Zoom, Facebook and YouTube of Professors Abdulhadi’s and Tomomi Kinukawa’s (Women and Gender Studies, SFSU) virtual historic round-table conversation with Palestinian feminist, militant, and leader Leila Khaled.

The cancellation was a result of the Lawfare Project (among other Zionist groups), which threatened Zoom with criminal liability (under 18 U.S.C. § 2339) if Zoom “knowingly permitted Leila Khaled to use its platform to communicate directly to U.S. college students.”

The cancellation resulted in widespread protests against Zoom’s action (most notably in an amazing campaign by USACBI titled, ‘We will not be silenced: Day of action against the criminalization and censorship of campus political speech’) with the result that Zoom has recently changed its policy announcing it will leave content moderation issues to universities for virtually all matters “related to the institution’s academics or operations” and engage in content-based censorship only under rare, clearly delineated conditions.

These “rare, clearly delineated conditions” mean that Zoom still reserves the right to act if Zionist organizations persuade the company that it is in legal jeopardy, which is what Zoom has claimed (falsely) re: Leila Khaled.

Zoom’s policy in this regard was borne out on April 21 when a twitter account calling itself @ BDSreport circulated a petition to put a stop to a second upcoming talk Professor Abdelhadi had announced involving Leila Khaled and reported gleefully that Zoom has cancelled it. The tweet calls @AmedStudies of San Francisco State University (SFSU) “a radical group” and Khaled a “Jew hater”. Facebook has also cancelled AMED’s Page.

The tweet’s language and mindset are typical of venomous Zionist language heard loudly all over the internet. But why in the world would JVP go along with it? Following is a glimpse of what transpired between Stephanie Fox and Rabab Abdulhadi based on an e-mail being widely shared:

JVP National informed us yesterday that JVP will not support our petition. In her response, Stefanie said, “Our board has been very clear with me that we cannot promote anything that has to do with armed resistance, and an event with Leila Khaled would fall under that.” However, she offered to meet with Rabab and we hurriedly put together a meeting this afternoon.

In the meeting, we argued that the scheduled event involved issues of freedom of speech for liberation movements and had nothing “to do with armed resistance”. We argued that our petition was asking for the restoration of the AMED FB page, ending FB’s interference with academic freedom, and allowing Palestinian voices to be heard on FB’s platform. Rabab argued that JVP’s silence on this issue was tantamount to tacit approval of FB’s actions. It also contradicts … [JVP’s] petition “Facebook, We Need To Talk” which highlights FB’s continuing censorship of Palestinian voices. Furthermore, JVP’s rejection of a leadership role on this issue signals an intention on the part of JVP to choose which Palestinian voices they are willing to uplift.

Stefanie responded that the by-laws of JVP are clear that the group can only support non-violent action (a petition is hardly a violent action). She stated that she understands that AMED and Rabab have been the target of repressive actions by the Zionist lobby. Furthermore, she supports, in principle, the intention of AMED to take on a leadership role in the academic discussion of all issues of justice and liberation, not only with regard to Palestine. However, she is concerned that in supporting the restoration of the AMED FB page, it will immediately be linked to the event that featured Leila Khaled. According to Stefanie, the inevitable coupling of the event with the AMED page would put JVP in a position that they are not willing to defend. For JVP, it seems to come back to Leila Khaled.

Rabab pointedly asked Stefanie that if JVP compromises its stated progressive positions on censorship and supporting Palestinian voices, what is the next compromise that JVP will have to make to protect its position in the movement?

Stefanie said she would continue to consider the matter and discuss it with the JVP Board of Directors. We asked her to reach out to JVP’s partners in their myriad campaigns and consider joining together to support our petition. She agreed to speak with Palestinian groups within their umbrella of allies. She promised to get back to us and report on her discussions.

I hope the Jewish Voice for Peace Board of Directors will reconsider and support Professor Rabab Ibrahim Abdulhadi’s petition to Facebook to restore the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies (AMED) Page they cancelled over a scheduled talk with Leila Khaled.

Professor Abdulhadi, whose advocacy for Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas studies, and Palestinian liberation are both longstanding and well-known, responded with: “We will not be silenced! We will continue teaching, researching and advocating for justice in/for Palestine as part and parcel of the indivisibility of justice.”

What’s most shocking to me related to what Fox said is this statement: “we cannot promote anything that has to do with armed resistance, and an event with Leila Khaled would fall under that.”

Is JVP National willing to help us liberate Palestine but only if we conduct our liberation struggle peacefully?

It’s one thing to condemn terrorism, but this goes way beyond such a position, one that does not even acknowledge Israel’s state terrorism.

Isreali soldiers and Israeli politicians who have led, or been involved in, terrorist actions resulting in mass murders of Palestinians have long been invited to speak on US campuses. Not a peep about that from JVP, ever!

On the question of armed struggle against colonization, the best position to take is one that Dan Segal, Vice-President, Claremont Colleges AAUP, communicated to me:

“My own view on the violence question is that personally, given my own positionality, I do not think I can or would participate in violent resistance, but I also am not willing to make a categorical judgment against the use of violence in resistance to oppression. I am not an oppressed person, and I cannot say to those who are that it is wrong for them to deploy violence in pursuit of freedom. Or perhaps I can turn this around and say, I love non-violent resistance, but I also am not willing to take a categorical stance against violent resistance.”

(Read also: It’s time for Israel to accept that as an occupied people, Palestinians have a right to resist — in every way possible.)

People may have different views, but they certainly cannot dictate to Palestinians and still call themselves in solidarity.

To invoke Frantz Fanon, Israel has a choice whether or not to act violently against Palestinians, whereas Palestinians do not have that choice. That’s the equation between the colonizer and the colonized, the oppressed and the oppressor. (See: “THE LIBERATION PSYCHOLOGY OF FRANTZ FANON: STRUGGLE AS NORMATIVE AND NECESSARY”)

In “What’s Stopping the 3rd Intifada?” Jamil Hilal writes,

“Palestinians must understand resistance to mean a holistic strategy that goes beyond military resistance and covers all forms of engagement, including legal, diplomatic, political, cultural, and economic avenues, as well as measures to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel as advocated by the BDS movement. As for the private sector, it needs to be oriented so that it promotes an economy capable of functioning under and resisting the Israeli occupation while meeting the needs of the WBG Palestinians in their struggle for survival.”

A holistic strategy includes armed struggle.

*

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Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem and whose mother’s side of the family is from Ijzim, south of Haifa. She is an activist, researcher and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank.

Featured image: Left inset, JVP’s Executive Director Stefanie Fox/ Right: Professor Rabab Abdelhadi of AMED Studies, SFSU

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***

Let’s make no mistake, we are already in WWIII. A more noble term is “The Great Reset” – the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) eloquent description of a devastated worldwide economy, countless bankruptcies and unemployment, abject misery, famine, death by starvation, disease and suicide. Hundreds of millions of people have already been affected by this “collateral” damage of the “covid-19” fear-propaganda bio-war, with a death-toll maybe already in the tens of millions, but which in reality cannot even be assessed at this time.

And this only one year into this criminal madness, a diabolical elite of multi-multi billionaires has pushed upon us, We the People. We are only in the first year of the war which by the Reset’s plan is to last the entire decade 2020-2030. The agenda is supposed to be completed by 2030 – it’s also called UN Agenda 2030.

See this.

The WEF is, in fact, nothing more than an NGO, registered in a lush suburb of Geneva, Switzerland. Its members are, however, a collection of dirty-rich people: High-ranking politicians, heads of corporations, banking gnomes, artists and Hollywood personalities – none of them are people’s elected officials with a mandate to rule the world.

Yet, they are effectively ruling the world, by coopting, coercing, or threatening the entire UN system and its 193 member countries into their obedience. Because they think they have all the money in the world, and they can. Mind you, money acquired in a fraudulent system designed by them. – But more importantly, because We, the People, let them.

The Great Reset has three major goals, all of equal importance

(i) massive depopulation,

(ii) shifting all assets from the bottom and the middle to the top; following the motto for the masses, at the end “You will own nothing and be happy”. That is Klaus Schwab’s conclusion for the completion of The Great Reset; and

(iii) a complete digitized control over everything – money, mind, personal records and behaviors – a combination of Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”, and George Orwell’s “1984”. See this.

As we can see, the WEF is involved at every level in the Plandemic and its consequences, especially the consequences that favor the Great Reset. As Klaus Schwab in the Great Reset so revealingly says, the pandemic opens a “small window of opportunity” during which these consequences (meaning the reshaping of the world) have to be realized. Everything has to work like clockwork.

So far, it seems to be on track. Though, as more people are waking up and scientists consciousness make them leaving their straight-jacketed matrix-jobs, resistance is growing exponentially.

The NGO, trillion-dollar members-powerhouse, WEF, is outranking the world’s peoples designed and implemented UN system by far. Recently the WEF, now in association with Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, was warning of a cyber-attack on the western monetary system. To emphasize their point, they said, it is “Not a Question of If but When.“

According to the Last American Vagabond (LAV), a “report published last year by the WEF-Carnegie Cyber Policy Initiative, calls for the merging of Wall Street banks, their regulators and intelligence agencies as necessary to confront an allegedly imminent cyber-attack that will collapse the existing financial system.”

The LAV article goes on saying

“In 2019, the same year as Event 201 took place (Event 201 – 18 October 2019, in NYC, simulating the current SARS-CoV-2 plandemic and destruction of the world economy), the Endowment launched its Cyber Policy Initiative with the goal of producing an “International Strategy for Cybersecurity and the Global Financial System 2021-2024.” That strategy was released just months ago, in November 2020 and, according to the Endowment, was authored by “leading experts in governments, central banks, industry and the technical community” in order to provide a “longer-term international cybersecurity strategy”, specifically for the financial system.”

The Cyber Policy Initiative emanating from the joint venture’s WEF- Carnegie Endowment report of  November 2020, is contained in a paper titled

“International Strategy to Better Protect the Financial System.”

It begins by noting that the global financial system, like many other systems, are “going through unprecedented digital transformation, which is being accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic.” It concludes with the warning that:

“Malicious actors are taking advantage of this digital transformation and pose a growing threat to the global financial system, financial stability, and confidence in the integrity of the financial system. Malign actors are using cyber capabilities to steal from, disrupt, or otherwise threaten financial institutions, investors and the public. These actors include not only increasingly daring criminals, but also states and state-sponsored attackers.”

A fully digitized monetary system has been on the WEF’s and IMF’s agenda for years. They cannot wait to implement it. So, if indeed, a cyber-attack on the western monetary system actually will take place, there is no question, who has planned and implemented it.

The drive for total digitization of everything, but foremost the (western) world’s monetary system, is an integral part of The Great Reset. It is supported, of course, by the banking and finance sector, including western central banks. Its implementation is to be accelerated by the covid-fraud, but encounters fierce resistance in many countries, especially in the Global South but also in the western industrialized countries, where intellectual groups realize what this means for the resources and assets worked for and owned by the people – it will be easily ‘expropriated’ so to speak, for example, for disobedience, as the control will be fully with the banks.

And this leads to the conclusion of the nefarious Great Reset – “You will own nothing and be happy”.

Luckily, the East, led by China and Russia, has gradually withdrawn from the western monetary system and are largely independent, monetary-sovereign countries. Therefore the western digitization drive does not apply to the East which is further enhanced by the China-Russia led Shanghai Cooperation Organization – SCO – accounting for about half the world’s population and a third of the world’s economic output – GDP.

See here for the full LAV article.

If Klaus Schwab and the WEF’s “Illuminati” would have their way, by 2030 the grand flock of humans will be transformed into “transhumans” – a kind of semi-robots that responds to AI signals controlled by The Great Reset’s masterminds (sic), which by then will have become the leaders of a tyranny, called the New or One World Order – OWO.

We, the People, would then have become the new AI-directed serfs. Or, as per Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, the “epsilon people”.

Let that not happen.

Let’s unite and resist with all our powers.

We are still 7.8 billion people against a few pathological soulless multi-billionaires.

*

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

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

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***

Let me start by explaining that an antigen test, performed by (minimally trained) personnel in a nursing home, homeless shelter, or other congregate living setting, rather than in a lab, is often the basis for a diagnosis of Covid.

The test does not need to be ordered by a doctor.  It is possible that the patient’s doctor does not even know their patient was tested, nor will they receive the results.  In most cases, there will be no billing of an insurance company.  The results are determined within the facility, and the only required reporting is to a local health authority, which forwards results to the CDC.

Like the Covid vaccinations, these Covid tests are being handled completely outside the regular healthcare system.  No MD is responsible, nor can anyone be sued if the results are wrong and lead to a bad outcome.  Only government employees have access to the results.

States may provide test kits under federal grants to the facilities and require a certain frequency of testing.

In terms of diagnosing cases of Covid, a sole positive antigen test is defined by CDC and the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists as a probable Covid case, even without a single symptom. Some jurisdictions, and the CDC itself, recode probable cases as confirmed cases of Covid.

One positive PCR result is defined as a confirmed case of Covid, even without a single symptom.

Beginning in December, a similar rapid antigen test, called a lateral flow test, was approved for home use.  It must be combined with an app, which reports your results to the government.

Both in Europe and the US, these products can be sold solely on the basis of manufacturer data, without independent evaluation by FDA or another regulatory agency. They are authorized under the minimal EUA standard. There are no standard protocols for measuring performance.  CDC pretends there are, and suggests that users keep in mind the test sensitivity when interpreting the results.  But you cannot find an accurate measure of sensitivity for Covid tests anywhere. All the numbers available are simply claims made by their manufacturers, when tests were performed under perfect conditions.

Nature magazine noted that Porton Down science park and the University of Oxford had performed some testing of rapid antigen tests; “The full results, which have not yet been peer reviewed, were posted online on 15 January. These stated that many fast antigen (or ‘lateral flow’) tests “do not perform at a level required for mass population deployment…”’

Nature also pointed out that laboratory scientists achieved nearly 79% sensitivity on all samples (including those with very low viral loads) using the Innova rapid test, but self-trained members of the public got only 58%. (Sensitivity means the chance of getting a positive result when someone has the disease.)

Harvard School of Public Health professor Michael Mina, PhD, perhaps the most vocal proponent of these tests, admitted, “Throwing tools at people who don’t know how to use them appropriately is a terrible idea.”

Now let’s look at CDC’s January clarifications regarding these rapid antigen tests.

“As of January 7, 2021

Revised guidance on when to perform confirmatory tests. 

• In general, asymptomatic people who test antigen positive should have a confirmatory test performed. Symptomatic people who test antigen negative should have a confirmatory test performed.
• Confirmatory test should be performed with nucleic acid amplifications tests (NAAT) such as reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR).
• Expanded the intended audience to include all long-term care facilities, including nursing homes.”

What does this mean?  If you think the person is negative and they test negative, stop. Consider them negative.  If you think they are negative, but they test positive, get a PCR to supplant the first test, because it is not trustworthy.

If you think they are positive and the test result is positive, stop and treat accordingly.  If you think they are positive, but they test negative, get a PCR test to supplant the first result.

Wait, what?  Why don’t we just get PCR tests on everyone (or else just get them on everyone the doctor or nurse isn’t sure about) and forget the antigen tests, which seem to have lots of false positives and negatives?  But the US government has spent billions on these rapid tests, so we can’t stop using them.  They were supposed to save time, but if you really have to do PCR tests whenever the result disagrees with your hunch, they seem to actually waste time.

But how many facilities are actually following up unexpected test results with PCR tests?

In December and January, WHO advised the world to turn down the cycle thresholds on the PCR machines. 

WHO issued instructions similar to the CDC instructions above, which said, if you are getting a result you were not expecting from the PCR test, then do a second PCR test.  Hmmm. Are the PCR tests accurate enough to rely on?  It does not seem so, but since their performance varies with cycle threshold (CT), if the CT has been adjusted, we need to reevaluate the test sensitivity and specificity.

But, since their cycle thresholds have not been provided, and the actual test performances of the 300 different authorized PCR tests in the US are a secret, we may never learn how accurate these tests really are.

Can I boil this down?

1. With the government approving rapid tests, buying the tests, distributing the tests and collecting all the data from them, the government has a lot of room to influence the reported numbers of probable new Covid cases.  [These tests are rolling out very rapidly now.]

2. The government seems to have created a parallel medical system to deal with these Covid tests, and the CDC has issued guidance for how to manage positive cases in long term care facilities. Is part of the goal to cut out the middleman (the doctor) and allow government edicts to make diagnoses and establish the rules for medical care?

3. I found it interesting that vaccinations are not being given in doctors’ offices, similarly cutting out the doctor.  At first, the reason given was the very low refrigerator temperatures needed for the vaccines.  But now those temperatures are allegedly not needed after all.

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***

Organizations and activists around the world demanded freedom for Palestinian political prisoners as part of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Week of Action between 17 and 23 April. Every year, since 1974, Palestinians, Arabs and internationalists commemorate a day of action on 17 April, Palestinian Prisoners’ Day. This week of action involves protests, boycott actions, mobilization and education to demand freedom for all Palestinian prisoners jailed by Israel, expose the complicity of imperialist and reactionary regimes and stand with the Palestinian people and the Palestinian resistance.

The Week of Action also comes to a close as Palestinians in Jerusalem and throughout Palestine are resisting escalating attacks by the Israeli occupation, including racist Zionist mobs roaming the streets of occupied Jerusalem and the threatened expulsion of Palestinian families from the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, both manifestations of the ongoing Nakba carried out by the Israeli regime against the Palestinian people.

We urge all friends and supporters of Palestine to continue to take action and stand with the Palestinian people and their heroic resistance, confronting colonial incarceration, land theft, home demolition, siege on Gaza, denial of the right to return, military occupation, extrajudicial executions, apartheid and colonialism. Join in the Week of Action for Palestinian Struggle, 15-22 May 2021 – read the call from the Masar Badil (Alternative Palestinian Path) and take action in your community. Protests are already being organized in Berlin, New York, Athens and more: Organize for Palestine’s liberation, from the river to the sea!

Events and Actions for the Palestinian Prisoners’ Week of Action

During the Week of Action, Samidoun launched the Communicating despite the jailer – Letters to our prisoners in occupation’s jails campaign, soliciting online messages and letters to Palestinian prisoners from people around the world. Hundreds of letters have already been submitted. These letters will be translated to Arabic and read over radio programs by Samidoun Palestine, reaching the prisoners directly inside occupation prisons. Many will also be posted on the Samidoun website in the coming days and weeks. Add your letter (form available in English, Arabic, German, Spanish and French: https://samidoun.net/letters)

Palestine

Samidoun Network in occupied Palestine organized two events on 17 April and 18 April in support of Palestinian prisoners. On Saturday, 17 April — Palestinian Prisoners’ Day — Samidoun joined together with the youth committee in Beit Ummar, al-Khalil, occupied Palestine, to visit with prisoners’ families and extend support and collective commitment to see all 4,500 Palestinian prisoners liberated from Israeli occupation prisons.

That evening, following Taraweeh prayers, night prayers performed during Ramadan, Samidoun activists, family members of prisoners and youth in Al-Arroub refugee camp near al-Khalil gathered to recognize Palestinian Prisoners’ Day and call for the liberation of imprisoned Palestinian strugglers.

The following day, Sunday, 18 April, Samidoun Network in occupied Palestine gathered in the village of Kobar, outside Ramallah.

They gathered to salute the Palestinian prisoners, including the longest-held prisoner, Nael Barghouthi, himself from Kobar. They met with the families of prisoners and martyrs, especially Dr. Widad Barghouthi, Bir Zeit University professor, mother of the prisoners Qassam and Karmel Barghouthi, whose home was demolished by the Israeli occupation.

On 21 April, Samidoun Palestine in Yabad, Jenin, Palestine, postered on the walls of the village with images and slogans in support of Palestinian political prisoners, including Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, jailed in France for nearly 37 years.

They followed up on this by meeting with the families of child prisoners throughout Yabad, expressing support and pledging not to leave imprisoned Palestinian children alone.

These events came amid a number of demonstrations and actions throughout occupied Palestine organized by many groups and organizations to mark Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, including protests and marches in Ramallah, Gaza City, Nablus and elsewhere. In Rafah, Gaza, Palestinians protested for the release of all Palestinian prisoners, highlighting the case of Georges Abdallah, imprisoned in France for the past 37 years. They also carried signs for the Collectif Palestine Vaincra, based in Toulouse, France, a member organization of the Samidoun Network.

France

The Collectif Palestine Vaincra (a member organization of the Samidoun Network) kicked off the Week of Action for Palestinian Prisoners in Toulouse, France with a Palestine Stand on Saturday, 17 April.

For over two hours, the Collectif organized an information booth, distributed hundreds of leaflets on Palestinian prisoners, discussed with passers-by, played Palestinian music and presented several speeches over the loudspeaker explaining how mass incarceration is a colonial weapon in the hands of the Israeli occupation.

Collectif Palestine Vaincra continued their actions throughout the week. On Saturday, 24 April, the collective organized a new Palestine Stand in Toulouse to promote the boycott of Teva, the Israeli pharmaceutical firm: Later that day, the Collectif joined a large demonstration against Islamophobia, systemic racism and the “separatism law” in Toulouse:

Also on 17 April, the Unitary Campaign for the Liberation of Georges Abdallah marked Palestinian Prisoners Day and international political prisoners’ day in Paris, France, with a rally and action, and will be releasing videos throughout the week in support of Palestinian prisoners and the Palestinian struggle for freedom, as well as the liberation of Georges Abdallah from French prisons after 36 years.

Also in Paris, on 23 April, the Unitary Campaign joined a popular demonstration for social and economic justice, highlighting the case of Georges Abdallah.

On 24 April in Paris, CAPJPO-EuroPalestine organized a demonstration to demand freedom for Palestinian child prisoners. There are approximately 150 Palestinian children currently jailed by the Israeli occupation.

Activists urged the expansion of the campaign to boycott Israel and called for freedom for Georges Abdallah.

In Tarbes, France, the Collectif 65 pour la libération de Georges Abdallah gathered to mark Palestinian Prisoners’ Day on 17 April, displaying signs and banners highlighting the imprisonment of Palestinian leader Ahmad Sa’adat and Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, imprisoned for over 36 years in French prisons.

In Roubaix, France, activists created a mural on the wall on 17 April demanding the release of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah for Palestinian Prisoners’ Day.

In Lyon, France, activists marked Palestinian Prisoners’ Day on 17 April. The Collectif 69 de Soutien au Peuple Palestinien distributed over 500 leaflets calling for the release of Georges Abdallah, and collecting dozens of cards to send to French president Emmanuel Macron demanding his liberation.

In Grenay, France, the Muncipality organized a commemoration of Palestinian Prisoners’ Day on 17 April, highlighting in particular the campaigns for the liberation of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah from French jails and the liberation of Marwan Barghouthi and his fellow political prisoners in Palestine.

On 17 April in Pays de Morlaix, France, the AFPS (Association France-Palestine Solidarite) organized a large display and street theater performance highlighting Palestinian Prisoners’ Day. They displayed a banner demanding freedom for Palestinian prisoners above the town market and read out testimonies from imprisoned Palestinians.

On 19 April, AFPS 63 in Clermont-Ferrand made a presentation to dozens of people at the Comédie hall, part of a protest occupation since 15 March 2021. They highlighted the centrality of the prisoners’ struggle to justice and liberation in Palestine, urged a broad boycott of Israel to free Palestinian prisoners and gathered letters of solidarity in support of Georges Abdallah and imprisoned Palestinian children.

In Saint Girons, France, Couserans-Palestine organized a table at the Market on Saturday, 24 April, highlighting Palestinian prisoners’ struggle for freedom. They distributed information about Palestinian political prisoners, administrative detention without charge or trial and the Israeli apartheid regime in Palestine.

Further organizations in France designed posters and issued solidarity statements for Palestinian political prisoners, as well as organizing actions in cities, towns and communities such as Auch. The Union des Etudiants Communistes created a poster highlighting the hundreds of Palestinian students jailed by the Israeli occupation and demanding their freedom. Communist Youth in Saint-Etienne also produced a report on the situation of Palestinian political prisoners, highlighting the campaign for the Week of Action.

German

On 17 April, an enthusiastic march for Palestinian Prisoners’ Day wound through Neukölln, Berlin, Germany, organized by Samidoun Deutschland in partnership with several organizations, including Palästina Spricht Palestine Speaks, FOR-Palestine, Young Struggle Europe, Volksrat der Eelam Tamilen – Deutschland e.V., und Netzwerk Freiheit für alle politischen Gefangenen.

Marking Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, the march progressed from Rathaus Neukölln to Hermannplatz, marching through Sonnenallee, home to many Palestinian and Arab restaurants and businesses in Berlin. They concluded by calling on attendees’ to join and mobilize for the 15 May March for Return and Liberation in Berlin.

In Stuttgart, the Palästinakomitee Stuttgart, together with several organizations, joined in an anti-racist and anti-fascist demonstration on 17 April in the city with signs, banners and Palestinian flags to mark Palestinian Prisoners’ Day. The committee drew attention to the campaign to free Palestinian students and highlighted the conditions and unjust detention of Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails.

In Frankfurt, members of Samidoun Deutschland organized a public display on 17 April highlighting the imprisonment of Palestinian students, with large posters and collages of the photos of jailed students in Israeli prisons. They set up a wooden chair to illustrate the stress positions and forms of torture used by Israeli interrogators against Palestinian students and other political prisoners.

Palestinian and Arab community organizations in Germany also organized sit-ins and actions in Köln, Koblenz and elsewhere on 17 April.

On Friday, 23 April, Samidoun Deutschland took to the streets in Frankfurt, displaying slogans in solidarity with Palestinians fighting land confiscation in Sheikh Jarrah, struggling for freedom in occupation prisons, remembering Basil al-Araj and calling for a complete boycott of Israel.

Sweden

In Gothenburg, Sweden, Samidoun Göteborg joined with anti-imperialist organizations for a banner display and public action on Saturday, 17 April, marking Palestinian Prisoners’ Day. They distributed information and displayed banners and posters calling for the liberation of Georges Abdallah, all Palestinian prisoners, and liberation for Palestine.

Also on 17 April, in Stockholm, Sweden, Samidoun Stockholm, together with Aktion Proletär Järva and Rojavakommittéerna Stockholm, organized a public action for Palestinian Prisoners’ Day. They distributed leaflets and information and delivered a speech: “Freedom for Ahmad Sa ‘adat! Freedom for Khitam Safin! Freedom for Khalida Jarrar! And freedom for all political prisoners from Palestine to Ireland and from the US to Morocco!”

Samidoun Malmö and the Sweden Local Preparatory Committee for the Alternative Palestinian Path (Masar Badil) organized an online event over Zoom on Sunday, 18 April. Moderated by former Palestinian political prisoner and poet Dareen Tatour, the event featured a number of released prisoners, including Shatha Hassan, Susan Oweiwi, Hamza Younis and Abu Aseel Asaleh. The Masar Badil also released a short animated video highlighting Palestinian Prisoners’ Day.

Spain

In Madrid, Spain, Samidoun España, Alkarama, and international associations for political prisoners gathered for a protest outside the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Relations on Saturday, 17 April to demand freedom for Palestinian political prisoners and international revolutionary prisoners.

They carried signs and banners demanding freedom for Palestinians in Zionist, Arab and imperialist jails, including Khitam Saafin, Ahmad Sa’adat, Ramy Shaath, Issam Hijjawi Bassalat, Georges Abdallah and Ghassan Najjar.

For the Week of Action for Palestinian Prisoners, Palestina Libre Murcia and Samidoun in Murcia organized a video reading out the call to action in Spanish and highlighting the posters and images of many Palestinian political prisoners.

Galiza

On 21 April, the Palestine.gal Platform, of which Confederación Intersindical Galega is a part, delivered a letter to the three parliamentary groups of the Galiza Parliament, in Santiago de Compostela, requesting a position condemning the situation of Palestinian prisoners.

Belgium

In Brussels, Belgium, the Palestinian Community In Belgium and Luxembourg, Intal, and many other organizations protested outside the Gare Centrale, the central train station, marking Palestinian Prisoners’ Day and calling for the liberation of detained Palestinians.

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***

A corporate-funded COVID Commission Planning Group is being set up to create and support an investigative commission like that for 9/11. This is a classic illustration of the fox guarding the henhouse

The planning group is led by Philip Zelikow, former executive director of the 9/11 Commission and a member of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Development Program Advisory Panel

Zelikow is also a strategy group member of the Aspen Institute, a technocratic hub that has groomed and mentored executives from around the world about the subtleties of globalization

The COVID Commission Planning Group includes more than two dozen virologists, public health personas and former government officials, and is backed by four charitable foundations — all of whom have histories revealing them to be part of the technocratic alliance that for years have been plotting and planning for the wealth redistribution and global power grab we’re now experiencing

These foundations include Schmidt Futures, the Skoll Foundation, Stand Together Foundation (Koch Network) and the Rockefeller Foundation. The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, which co-hosted Event 201, a pandemic preparedness simulation for a “novel coronavirus,” is also involved

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Having gone as far as he can with the World Health Organization’s cover-up, Bill Gates takes another bite at the apple with his corporate-funded investigation into the origins of COVID-19 to cleverly cover up this massive conspiracy with an “official” investigation.

While the so-called COVID Commission Planning Group — set up to create and support an investigative commission like that for 9/11 — is advertised as a nonpartisan effort, you really couldn’t come up with a more dangerously biased set of participants.

In short, individuals and organizations with some of the most egregious conflicts of interest, and everything to gain by being in charge of analyzing and writing the history of this pandemic, are leading and supporting this effort. This is a classic fox guarding the henhouse scenario.

According to the Miller Center, the planning group will lay out the plans for nine separate task forces, each focused on one of the following topics, to lay “the foundation for a future commission to investigate”:¹

• The origins of SARS-CoV-2 and its prevention
• Threat assessment, including the creation of an international network for detection and warning, “biological intelligence” and other data collection
• National readiness and a review of the initial response
• At-risk communities and how to address gaps in public health capacities, worker safety and the responsibilities of private businesses
• State and local readiness, containment and mitigation, including when and how to use lockdowns, mandates and school closings
• Health care challenges surrounding patient care, including those with long-hauler syndrome
• Diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines, including the regulatory environment that might benefit or stifle innovation and/or global supply chains
• Telling the stories of COVID-19 victims, frontline workers and public health officials (i.e., propaganda generation)
• Solving data issues

Philip Zelikow — Chief Investigator for the Cabal

The chosen leader of this new planning group is Philip Zelikow (image on the right), former executive director of the 9/11 Commission² and a member of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Development Program Advisory Panel.^3,4 While Gates may not be a physical member of this planning group, he’s certainly involved indirectly. Of that we can be virtually assured.

Zelikow, a former director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, is also a current strategy group member of the Aspen Institute,⁵ a technocratic hub that has groomed and mentored executives from around the world about the subtleties of globalization.

He also directed the Markle Foundation’s Task Force on National Security in the Information Age,⁶the focus of which has been to make information relating to potential security threats discoverable and accessible to officials without breaking civil liberty laws.⁷ As reported by the University of Virginia:⁸

“The planning group hopes to prepare the way for a potential National COVID Commission set up to help America and the world learn from this pandemic and safeguard against future threats. ‘This is perhaps the greatest crisis suffered by America, if not the world, since 1945,’ said Zelikow … ‘It is vital to take stock, in a massive way, of what happened and why.

These sorts of civilizational challenges may become more common in the 21st century, and we need to learn from this crisis to strengthen our society … Scholars and journalists will do their jobs, but there is also a role for the kind of massive investigation and research effort that only a large-scale commission can provide.’”

Foundations Backing the COVID Commission

As reported by the Miller Center,⁹ the COVID Commission Planning Group includes more than two dozen virologists, public health personas and former government officials, and is backed by four charitable foundations — all of whom have histories revealing them to be part of the technocratic alliance that for years, in some cases decades, have been plotting and planning for the wealth redistribution and global power grab we’re now experiencing. These foundations include:

Operation Lockstep

The Rockefellers, like Gates, built an empire around health and medicine despite having no medical expertise whatsoever. Their influence is rooted in money, which is spent in self-serving ways. While Rockefeller and Gates are both known as philanthropists, their donations grow their wealth, as the money they spend on “charity” ultimately ends up benefiting their own investments and/or business interests.

In addition to the COVID-19 Action Plan document cited above — which doesn’t even try to hide its draconian overreach and intent to permanently alter life and society as we know it — the Rockefeller Foundation also published a 2010 report¹⁷ titled “Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development,” in which they laid out their “Lockstep” scenario — a coordinated global response to a lethal pandemic.

While the name and origin of the virus differs, the scenario laid out in this document matches many of the details of our present. A deadly viral pandemic. A deadly effect on economies. International mobility coming to a screeching halt, debilitating industries, tourism and global supply chains. “Even locally, normally bustling shops and office buildings sat empty for months, devoid of both employees and customers,” the document reads.

“In the absence of official containment protocols,” the virus spread like wildfire. In this narrative, the U.S. administration’s failure to place strict travel restrictions on its citizens proved to be a fatal flaw, as it allowed the virus to spread past its borders. China, on the other hand, fared particularly well due to its rapid imposition of universal quarantines of all citizens, which proved effective for curbing the spread of the virus.

Many other nations where leaders “flexed their authority” and imposed severe restrictions on their citizens — “from the mandatory wearing of face masks to body-temperature checks at the entries of communal spaces like train stations and supermarkets” — also fared well.

These and other reports spell out what the ultimate plan actually is. It’s to use bioterrorism to take control of the world’s resources, wealth and people. It’s to use coordinated pandemic response as a justification for wealth redistribution and the resetting of the global financial system.

What most fail to realize is that the wealth distribution they’re talking about is not distribution from the wealthy to the poor, even though that’s what they want you to believe. It’s to centralize wealth at the top and eliminate private property rights and private business ownership from the lower and middle classes. The “equitable” living standards they’re talking about is poverty for all but themselves. It’s really crucial to begin to grasp this reality now, before it’s too late.

Pieces of a Global Puzzle

The Rockefeller Foundation is also a founding sponsor of The Mojaloop Foundation, set up to “promote digital payments for people outside the financial system, with support from Google and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.”¹⁸

Right there we have Google, the Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, all in one little nonprofit with a heart set on giving poor people access to digital banking using their cellphones. This is probably the three most dangerous nonprofits on the planet, as they are likely the most powerful and committed to global tyranny.

All-digital banking using a centralized digital currency is a key component of the Great Reset, so this project has little to do with honest philanthropy and everything to do with making sure everyone can be swept into the digital net, which will include round-the-clock surveillance and tracking of physical location and biological data, a digital ID, along with your health data (including but not limited to vaccination status), banking and, ultimately, a social credit system.

All of the pieces needed for the Great Reset are already in place; it’s just a matter of seeing how all the separate pieces fit together. For example, Gavi, the vaccine alliance, set up with funds from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, partnered with the ID2020 Alliance to launch a digital identity program called ID2020.¹⁹

Gates also funded the creation of EarthNow, a project involving 500 satellites equipped with machine learning technology to surveil the entire planet with real-time video.²⁰ As one would expect, AI — a Google specialty — is also a key component of this global surveillance plot.

COVID-19 — A Launch Pad for the Great Reset

Another key player in the COVID Commission Planning Group is the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. As you may recall, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security co-hosted the pandemic preparedness simulation for a “novel coronavirus,” known as Event 201, in October 2019 along with the Gates Foundation and the World Economic Forum.

The event eerily predicted what would happen just 10 weeks later, when COVID-19 appeared. Gates and the World Economic Forum, in turn, are both partnered²¹ with the United Nations which, while keeping a relatively low profile, appears to be at the heart of the globalist takeover agenda.

The World Economic Forum, while a private organization, works as the social and economic branch of the U.N. and is a key driving force behind modern technocracy and the Great Reset agenda. Its founder and chairman, Klaus Schwab, publicly declared the need for a global “reset” to restore order in June 2020.²²

Technocratic rule, which is what the Great Reset will bring about, hinges on the use of technology — in particular artificial intelligence, digital surveillance and Big Data collection (which is what 5G is for) — and the digitization of industry, banking and government, which in turn allows for the automation of social engineering and social rule (although that part is never expressly stated).

Beyond pandemic preparedness and response, the justification for the implementation of the Great Reset agenda in its totality will be climate change. The Great Reset, sometimes referred to as the “build back better” plan, specifically calls for all nations to implement “green” regulations and “sustainable development goals”^23,24 as part of the post-COVID recovery effort.

But the end goal is far from what the typical person envisions when they hear these plans. The end goal is to turn us into serfs without rights to privacy, private ownership or anything else. In short, the pandemic is being used to destroy the local economies around the world, which will then allow the World Economic Forum to come in and “rescue” debt-ridden countries. The price for this salvation is your liberty.

The Great Reset

While the New World Order was long derided as a “conspiracy theory” that you’d have to be crazy to believe, the Great Reset, which is simply a rebranding of the same old NWO plan that has been in circulation for well over a decade, is now public fact.

Many world leaders have spoken about it in an official capacity, and in June 2020, Zia Khan, senior vice president of innovation at the Rockefeller Foundation penned the article²⁵ “Rebuilding Toward the Great Reset: Crisis, COVID-19, and the Sustainable Development Goals,” reviewing the “social crisis” necessitating the world’s acceptance of a new world order.

The article was co-written with John McArthur, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, which is one of several technocratic think-tanks. Keeping in mind what I’ve just said about what the Great Reset is really all about, and the justifications used to implement the theft of wealth and freedom, read how they posit these changes as being in your best interest:

“Upheaval can yield new understanding and opportunity. Outdated or unjust norms can succumb to society’s pressing need for better approaches. For example, the need for massive and urgent government intervention has drawn fresh attention to social safety nets and the possibility of dramatic policy enhancements.

Tragic consequences of racial discrimination have catapulted awareness of systemic problems and triggered prospects for much-needed social reforms. Rapid environmental improvements linked to economic shutdown have rekindled consciousness of the profound interconnections between ecosystems, economies, and societies …

Rather than passively allowing norms to evolve through inertia or randomness, we can all pursue actions for Response and, soon enough, Recovery in a manner that improve the odds of a Reset toward better long-term outcomes.

Fortunately, we already have a strong starting point for what the world’s economic, social, and environmental outcomes should be. Five years ago, in 2015, all 193 UN member states agreed on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a common set of priorities to be achieved in all countries by 2030.”

Another article titled “The Great Reset,” written by Jimmy Chang, CFA, for the Rockefeller Capital Management blog, reads, in part:²⁶

“Regarding the post-pandemic reconstruction effort, progressives, led by the so-called Davos elites (of the World Economic Forum fame), are advocating an urgent ‘Great Reset’ of capitalism to ensure equality and sustainability. They also call for harnessing the Fourth Industrial Revolution (i.e., Big Tech) to address health and social challenges.

Their vision for the future could be gleaned from a 2016 article penned by a young Danish politician with the title ‘Welcome to 2030. I Own Nothing, Have No Privacy, and Life Has Never Been Better.’ This title was so controversial that its posting on the World Economic Forum website was changed to a bland ‘Here’s how life could change in my city by the year 2030.’

The pace of the Great Reset will in part depend on the final outcome of the U.S. election as it will determine whether Trump’s ‘America First’ doctrine will be relegated to the dustbin of history. Still, some resets will be unavoidable since COVID-19 has exacerbated some longstanding issues such as the world’s debt dependency and the widening gap between the haves and the have-nots.

There will be elevated levels of bankruptcy and debt restructuring. Governments may further increase their leverage to bail out the economy and placate electorates that demand more generous social contracts.

Riccardo Fraccaro, Italy’s Secretary of the Council of Ministers and a close aide of Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, even floated a trial balloon on sovereign debt restructuring by suggesting that the European Central Bank consider ‘canceling sovereign bonds bought during the pandemic or perpetually extending their maturity.’

Businesses will also need to respond to lasting behavioral changes caused by the pandemic. In sum, there is no going back to the pre-COVID-19 world, and markets will need to adjust.”

Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing

The Great Reset is not some wild conspiracy theory but a publicly released agenda that is moving forward, whether we like it or not. I believe the only way to stop it is through our collective responses to the various pieces and parts of the plan that are being rolled out. They want you to believe that none of the things being introduced have anything to do with each other but, in fact, they are all pieces of the same puzzle.

The final image is the inside of a prison cell. It may not be a physical prison. It may be largely digital in nature. It may look like the four walls of your own home. But it’s a prison nonetheless.

I believe it would be a tragic mistake to trust Gates, Rockefeller, Google or any of the other players — including Zelikow — that are being brought before us as the saviors of the day. They’re all wolves in sheep’s clothing.

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

Be Part of the Answer

The good news is, Americans now have a brand-new weapon in our fight for freedom. I recently interviewed Naomi Wolf about her new digital platform, Daily Clout, that will allow citizens to lobby bills to their legislators.

Many state legislators are not lawyers, and they don’t have lawyers at their beck and call. Daily Clout has hired an attorney who is busy drafting turnkey bills that protect us against the continued erosion of freedom and reestablish rights and liberties. Citizens can now send these model bills to their legislators, knowing that they’ve undergone legal review and are ready to be passed. You can also go even further than that. As explained by Wolf:

“You can tell us the bill you want. We can upload a campaign for that bill. We can hire our lawyer to draft a model bill and then you can pass it. What we’ve been doing is gathering names and zip codes, so that we can add real voters to this piece of model legislation in real states and send it to real state legislators and say, ‘Look, the supporters are all there. All you have to do is pass this.’

It’s a fantastic intervention in the political process, restoring real democracy. It’s why we founded Daily Clout, but it’s beautiful to see hundreds and hundreds of people from all walks of life rushing to give us support and resources, to become members and give us donations, which we appreciate, so that we can keep our lawyer busy creating these draft bills. It’s not just for this issue.

Once we get our rights and freedoms back, whatever [citizens] want, we can draft a bill for you, and you can [call on your legislators to] pass it.”

To get involved, go to dailyclout.io and sign up to become a paying member or free subscriber. You will then receive an email explaining how to use the Five Freedoms Campaign. Presently, there is a model “no vaccination passports” bill that you can send to your state legislator.

There’s a feature called BillCam, where you can see who your state legislator is by entering your zip code. Once you’re a subscriber or member, you’ll get regular updates about happenings around the U.S. and community events.

The Great Reset is at our doorstep, and your freedom, and that of future generations, hinges on you getting involved and fighting for it. The Daily Clout platform can be a major help in this regard, as using legislation to preserve and protect our rights and freedoms is far preferable to more violent alternatives or resigning ourselves to the fate prescribed by our globalist would-be “overlords.”

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Notes

^1, 9 Miller Center, COVID Commission Planning Group

² The Last American Vagabond September 7, 2016

³ Source Watch Philip Zelikow

^4, 6 Miller Center, Philip Zelikow

⁵ Aspen Institute, Philip Zelikow

⁷ Markle.org

⁸ University of Virginia April 14, 2021

¹⁰ Schmidt Futures

¹¹ TechCrunch January 26, 2014

¹² Skoll Foundation

¹³ Forbes How the Billionaire Behind “Contagion” is working to stop this pandemic

¹⁴ Influence Watch, Stand Together Foundation

¹⁵ The Rockefeller Foundation, National COVID-19 Testing Action Plan — Strategic Steps to Reopen Our Workplaces and Our Communities, April 21, 2020 (PDF)

¹⁶ Berggruen Institute March 6, 2020

¹⁷ Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development

¹⁸ Techxplore.com May 6, 2020

¹⁹ Biometric Update September 20, 2019

²⁰ Technology Review April 18, 2018

²¹ Canadian Truths, COVID-19 Bill Gates, United Nations and World Economic Forum

²² Technocracy.news June 29, 2020

²³ Canadian Post, World Economic Forum Wheel of Evil

²⁴ Intelligence.weforum.org COVID-19

²⁵ Rockefeller Foundation June 19, 2020

²⁶ Rockefeller Capital Management December 1, 2020

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

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A well-meaning New Orleans judge, Michael Desiato, finds himself in a frightening situation when he discovers that his son, Adam, was in a hit and run accident with a son of the local mafia boss, Jimmy Baxter. Adam had been visiting the site of his mother’s death when approached by local guys. He drives off at speed only to drop his inhaler on the car floor during an asthma attack. As he struggles to drive the car and pick up the inhaler at the same time his car is in a collision with Jimmy Baxter’s son’s first spin on his motorbike. Rocco Baxter, the son, chokes to death on his own blood at the side of the road as Adam panics and drives off. When Michael realises who the dead boy was he tries to protect his son by arranging with Adam to cover up what happened.

He asks a friend to organise the destruction of Adam’s car but it ends up in the hands of a teen, Kofi Jones, who is caught with the car after running a red light. The police discover that this was the car involved in the hit and run when a piece of the motorbike is dislodged from underneath the car. Jimmy Baxter now believes it was Kofi who killed his son in a crime gang hit. Kofi is sentenced without parole for the hit and run. Things escalate when Jimmy’s other son kills Kofi in prison and Jimmy has Kofi’s family house blown up, basically getting his retaliation in first. For Judge Michael Desiato, things go from bad to worse as the more he uses his middle-class power and influence to protect his son, the greater the negative effect this has on the working-class family and friends of Kofi, extending out like ripples in a pond. Or worse still, more like the Butterfly Effect, as the initial freak accident sparks off intergang rivalry and then further knock-on wider repercussions on a political level.

Your Honor, starring Bryan Cranston, combines elements from Breaking Bad (well-meaning professional gone bad) and The Sopranos (ruthless mafia boss) in a show which goes beyond middle-class fascination with organised crime and its ill-gotten wealth and demonstrates the disastrous effects that chess-like power-plays have on the ordinary people caught up in the resulting tsunami of deadly consequences. While the powerfully corrupt seek revenge outside the system, and powerful professionals try to avoid justice within the system, the working class can only hope for ‘saviours’ (e.g. empathetic lawyers) or fair-minded judges conscious of the social context of much crime (like Judge Michael Desiato). Like a Greek tragedy, the more Judge Michael Desiato tries to avoid Fate, the more he brings about the show’s ironic deadly ending. Had he just trusted the institutional justice system in the first place, the final outcome would most likely not have been so tragic.

The fact is that the struggle against the ideology of revenge (i.e. ‘an eye for an eye’) is one that has been going on since the Enlightenment, the intellectual and philosophical movement of the 17th and 18th centuries. The insidious effect of revenge on the judicial system, unpredictable and outside of the law, was a motivating force for philosophers like Cesare Beccaria (1738–1794) to try and establish a fairer system not based on fear or favour. Thus:

“Enlightened reformers moved away from corporal punishment, seeking to design a penal system that would make punishment more useful, edifying the prisoner while simultaneously repairing the damage the prisoner had inflicted upon society. Central to these plans were work and imprisonment. Work was a common corrective technique, and many reformers believed the regularity and discipline of labor would lead to the moral rejuvenation of the wrongdoer while serving social needs at the same time.”

Thus, the two main modern theories of retributive justice (or punishment for wrongdoing) are Utilitarian theories that “look forward to the future consequences of punishment, while retributive theories look back to particular acts of wrongdoing, and attempt to balance them with deserved punishment.”

Image on the right: Justitia by Maarten van Heemskerk, 1556. Justitia carries symbolic items such as: a sword, scales and a blindfold

At the very least Enlightened views on justice try to reform the criminal, stop him from repeating the crime, while at the same time, deterring others. The main purpose of punishment, then, is to create a better society and avoid revenge.

Leon F Seltzer summarises the important differences between justice and revenge:

“1. Revenge is predominantly emotional; justice primarily rational.
2. Revenge is, by nature, personal; justice is impersonal, impartial, and both a social and legal phenomenon.
3. Revenge is an act of vindictiveness; justice, of vindication.
4. Revenge is about cycles; justice is about closure.
5. Revenge is about retaliation; justice is about restoring balance.”

The cycles that Seltzer discusses can be seen, for example, in the Gjakmarrja (English: “blood-taking”, i.e. “blood feud”) or hakmarrja(“revenge”) of Albanian culture referring to the social obligation to commit murder in order to salvage honour. Gjakmarrja can be initiated when a guest is killed, failure to pay a debt, or rape. The profound consequences of the gjakmarrja on society is shown when the feud extends over many generations or leads to family members living in shame and seclusion for the rest of their lives, imprisoned in their own homes because they refuse to pay with the lives of their family members.

The overwhelming psychological power of revenge in Your Honor is demonstrated by the fact that the narrative centres around a judge, an important representative of the modern justice system. It shows why it is so important to gain general acceptance of a system of punishment that deters others from committing crimes while at the same time preventing criminals from repeating their crimes. In this way justice acts like a controlling carbon rod in the potential fission of escalating cycles of revenge.

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Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin is an Irish artist, lecturer and writer. His artwork consists of paintings based on contemporary geopolitical themes as well as Irish history and cityscapes of Dublin. His blog of critical writing based on cinema, art and politics along with research on a database of Realist and Social Realist art from around the world can be viewed country by country here.

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

Featured image: Cranston at the 68th Berlin International Film Festival in 2018

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

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

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In mid-January 2021, Bloomberg published an article titled Norway Warns of Vaccination Risks for Sick Patients Over 80. According to the article, Norway warned that Covid vaccines may be too risky for the very old and terminally ill. Norwegian officials said 23 people had died in their country a short time after receiving the first dose of the Covid vaccine. Of those deaths, 13 have been autopsied, with the results suggesting that common side effects may have contributed to severe reactions in frail, elderly people, said the Norwegian Medicines Agency.

“For those with the most severe frailty, even relatively mild vaccine side effects can have serious consequences… For those who have a very short remaining life span anyway, the benefit of the vaccine may be marginal or irrelevant.” – Norwegian Institute of Public Health

In clinical studies of Pfizer’s Covid vaccine, adverse reactions in participants included: pain at the injection site (84%); fatigue (63%); headache (55%); muscle pain (38%); chills (32%); joint pain (24%); fever (14%); and injection site swelling (11%).^[1]

Clinical studies of Moderna’s Covid vaccine revealed an even higher frequency of adverse reactions in participants including: pain at the injection site (92%); fatigue (70%); headache (65%); muscle pain (62%); joint pain (46%); chills (45%); nausea/vomiting (23%); fever (16%); and swelling at the injection site (15%).^[2]

Given the high frequency of adverse reactions from Covid vaccines, why are we vaccinating people on hospice who are near the end of their life? Hospice and comfort care are for people who are in the final stages of an incurable illness. The aim is to ensure they are comfortable. When someone enters hospice care they generally have fewer than six months to live and have decided to stop treatments to prolong their life.

“We have now repeated our existing advice not to give the vaccine to terminally ill patients” – Norwegian Medicines Agency^[3]

For some reason, this advice does not seem to be standard of care in the United States of America. According to reports submitted to the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) many people on hospice have been given a Covid vaccine, only to die very soon thereafter. What follows is a compilation of VAERS reports in which terminally ill patients received a Covid vaccine, and then died within seven days of vaccination.

Deaths Same Day as Vaccination

VAERS ID: 1077079

VAERS ID: 956225

VAERS ID: 960552

VAERS ID: 1003106

VAERS ID: 921880

VAERS ID: 940855

VAERS ID: 959729

VAERS ID: 971736

VAERS ID: 993998

VAERS ID: 915920

VAERS ID: 956966

VAERS ID: 914961

Deaths One Day After Vaccination

VAERS ID: 943442

VAERS ID: 977426

VAERS ID: 941607

VAERS ID: 996105

VAERS ID: 1052738

VAERS ID: 1074599

VAERS ID: 1104430

VAERS ID: 1112123

VAERS ID: 1139186

Deaths Two Days After Vaccination

VAERS ID: 1038442

VAERS ID: 929359

VAERS ID: 1057363

VAERS ID: 1004206

Read the full article here.

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Luke is a health educator and wellness consultant dedicated to creating greater well-being in our world through education and empowerment. He is a functional nutritionist and the founder of GutResolution.com

Featured image is from The Dark Side of Vaccines

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Taylor Hudak reminds us that the EU parliament will be voting on a bill that would allow for a digital green certificate which is essentially a vaccination passport. This is a violation of freedom of movement and bodily autonomy.

Watch the video below for her full statement.

Freedom is not determined by the results of a PCR test, and it’s not determined by one’s vaccination status #NoVaccinePassports pic.twitter.com/4HgwKsoRLd

— Taylor Hudak (@_taylorhudak) April 26, 2021

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The road led up the hill between houses until it came to the lake where it ran between the lake and the woods and the thought of people disappeared if he was lucky.  He was sick of people, especially those he saw in masks because of their obsessive fear of death. They ran in packs. They seemed insane to him, as if germs might fly through the country air and infect them with a virus in a reversal of the way the insects were starting to fly low over the water and the fish would jump to devour them. He preferred the fish and the bugs and was glad no masked bandits were on the road to rob him of the morning’s beauty.

There was a young boy fishing, casting and reeling back in a rhythmic way. The boy yelled out as he reeled in his first catch of the season, a glittering rainbow trout that sparkled in the sun.

Once he was twelve years-old and started out very early between the edge of night and the dawn of day.  Alone, beautifully alone, with the dew thick upon the grass and the fog still clinging to the water in the creek.  His family was at the farm.  He awoke in the dark while his sisters and his mother slept and his father snored loudly. He tiptoed through the cabin and quietly shut the door behind him, almost catching his hair in the flypaper on the way out.  He got his fishing gear from the porch.  In an old Maxwell House coffee can were the night crawlers and the other worms he had dug the previous evening under the apple tree by the bull’s pen.

Now it was April and the ice on the lake was gone and the two geese he had seen last year had returned to their old nest.  Last spring he had watched them very closely for more than a month as the goose sat patiently on her eggs and the gander sailed the waters on alert for predators.  Some days he would see them swimming together near the nest.  This worried him.  He wondered if leaving the eggs unprotected for even a short time would give a predator an opening to attack.  When the goslings never appeared, he assumed a predator had seized them.

The worms in the can were big and juicy.  When he moved the dirt, they gyrated to the surface and tickled his fingers.  He felt sorry for them. They seemed so alive and would soon be dead.  Maybe he should set them free. The dirt where he dug them behind the old shed between its back wall and the thick wooden slats of the sad bull’s pen was dark and wet and redolent of fallen apples.  The huge ring-nosed bull had heard the grating of his spade and had come over to the fence.  It was dark there in the enclosed space and he got the chills as the bull snorted at him through the empty spaces.  A strange vibration passed between them.

The boy showed him the trout as he unhooked it.  He grasped it with two hands and gently bent and released it into the shallow water where it hesitated, as if shocked, and then swam away.  The boy turned to the man and they gave each other high fives. Something passed between them. They laughed and the man walked on wondering why people liked to kill and capture free creatures.

He thought: Is it possible not to remember to forget but just to live forward in a forgetfulness that is a constantly emerging present?

The road turned sharply there and a man in a mask approached him.  On an impulse, he asked the man why he was wearing a mask when he was outside on a gorgeous morning.  The man said, “To protect myself from the virus.  Why aren’t you wearing one?”

“Because I don’t think pigs can fly,” he said.

The other man gasped and his eyes flared in fear and he rushed away.

He walked on and saw the gander standing on the beach, looking around like a proud sentry.  The goose was on her nest.  Maybe, he thought, they, at least, had learned something.

Then it was raining lightly.  The only sounds were the birds and the rain and he opened his mouth for the rain and his ears for the birds and his heart for the day.  He walked down the gravel path up past the barn to the road and crossed the bridge across the creek to get to the side where the fishing was really good because the river twisted and turned over there to create little peninsulas that protected deep pools where the fish lay in wait.  It was also where the Hermit of the Esopus was said to live. His name was Billy Bush and he wondered if he was a fictional character. He had never seen him.

Maybe he was asking the wrong question.  He felt in a flash that he knew the answer but couldn’t say what the true question was.  But it didn’t seem to matter now.  He felt as he walked ahead he was heading back to find his future in the present.

Back in time and the city, his parents had appeared on a television show called, “Do You Trust Your Wife?”  The host of the show was Johnny Carson.  This was his first gig before he would become famous as the long-running host of “The Tonight Show” and an iconic figure in TV lore.  This is true, but he wasn’t sure back then whether the hermit was as real as Carson because he saw Carson and they talked but the hermit seemed like a legendary figure.  Carson asked him to stand up in the audience and he asked him if he felt weird being the only boy as the middle child with seven sisters.  He said, “No.”  Carson persisted, “I guess you feel like the baloney between the bread.” The boy hated baloney and he was silent. A man held up big cue cards that said applause. Carson looked like a giant cardboard cutout. The audience clapped and the show went on as it always does.

A year later they changed the name of the show to “Who Do You Trust?”.  Not a bad title for the first Cold War era, but that guy in the mask probably thinks I was conspiring to infect him, that I was a Russian agent.  Maybe pigs do fly now.  Everything seems to have changed between people.  How can you trust someone whose face you can’t see?  To face the faces that you faced was once upon a time the way things were.  You had a chance to tell if the words that passed between you were true or not, but now the masquerade is complete. Deep darkness has descended.   Do we have to wait for death to see face to face?

He passed the goose on her nest near the swampy end of the lake.  Although he couldn’t see her face clearly, he imagined she looked expectant, feeling urgent for the future.  He wondered what it might be for both of them. What was he looking for in the days ahead, what did he desire, where was he going?  He thought of the guy in the mask and all the people everywhere enchained by fear.  Why was it so hard for them to see that the prison gates were closing around them and the living-dead elites were devouring their futures?

The path down to the river twisted through dense woods.  He could tell people had traveled it but not heavily.  The sun had risen behind him and the mist on the water had given way to glitter on the fast-running water and the wet rocks throughout it.  When he reached the water’s edge, he felt relived.  Now he could fish but had this strange sensation that he didn’t want to, now that he had reached his destination. It’s funny how when you think you want something and you are about to get it you have second thoughts.  Maybe not thoughts.  He sat down on an old log and stared at the water.  The sound of the water moving fast over the rocks and the sun hitting the water spray put him into a cataleptic state in which he lost himself. He was jolted by a voice.  He jumped.  A man with a grayish-white beard and bright blue eyes under a worn fisherman’ cap stood to his left.

The man said, “I’m surprised to see you here.  No one comes here.”

The boy was frightened.  He stammered, “Oh, I was about to fish.”

“It’s a great spot,” the man said.  “I come here to read and meditate.”

An awkward silence came between them.  The boy had an impulse to jump up and run.  Then the thought: Could this be the Hermit of the Esopus?  He’s real?

Then: Am I dreaming?

The man said, “My name is William Bush.  What’s yours?”

Without thinking, the boy also gave his formal name, “Edward Curtin.”

“People call me Billy,” the man said. “I’ve heard they even think I’m a hermit and I live in these woods by the river.”  He laughed.

Past the swamp, the road curved up a steep hill that led to the local college that had previously been a Jesuit seminary.  In the woods to his left were the crumbling remains of wooden stations of the cross that the young men once followed. He thought of his father and where he was now.  He said, “Good morning, Dad.  I miss you.”  The bond between them had always been powerful and when his father died it became even stronger in a sad way.  It was such a beautiful morning that he started to cry.  Three deer were grazing in the clearing halfway up the hill.  A doe and two fawns.  They looked up, then looked down, ignoring him as they resumed eating. His father made the best pancakes.  Then there were the father and son Communion Breakfasts with the buns.  He was hungry now.  There was no end to it.

“What do people call you?” he asked.

“Eddy,” the boy said.

“How do you spell it?”

“E-d-d-y,” the boy answered.

Billy Bush chuckled and pointed to a spot in the river where the fast water hit a big rock and turned back to create a whirlpool.  “There you are,” he said, “that’s an eddy. Eddys always run contrary to the main current, so you’re in good company.”  The man laughed, which made the boy laugh.  Then the man told him that he was not really a hermit but lived in the old farmhouse up the hill near Brown’s sheep farm but that he found it amusing that people created this legend about him and so he played along.  He said he had once been a philosophy professor who came from the city to his sister’s country house to be alone and think and write while his family stayed in the city.  Since he was only here off and on and loved to wander through the woods down along the river people had for some reason come to create a legend about him.  “I have found,” he said, “that people are so afraid of being alone that they create weird stories like the one about me being the Hermit of the Esopus to scare themselves to death.”

He didn’t like going onto the college campus because it reminded him of being trapped in school and so at the top of the hill he turned and started down. He remembered when he was a boy how down he would feel when his mother would send him to the front door to greet his father on the threshold when he came home from work to see if his father had stopped for a drink. He hated being put between them.  He felt guilty for having done her bidding. The deer were gone and he wondered what they did all day.  He wondered what people did all day and why.  He wondered how they spent their lives and where they thought they were going in their masks.  He wondered what they thought was at the end of the road.  He wondered why they drank and why they didn’t.  He wondered so many things he wondered why he was always wondering them.

The goose was still on her nest.  The gander was nowhere in sight.  He stopped at the beach that extended out into the lake and took a gander.  Nothing.  He wondered where he was, what did he do all day except stand watch for death to come flying trough the air. The boy who was fishing was gone.  Four masked people dressed in black approached him. He said, “Good morning.”  They looked away in silence as if he didn’t exist.

Billy Bush said he had to go.  He asked the boy if he liked to read.  The boy said, “Yes.”  He took a book out of his back pocket and handed it to the boy and said, “It’s a good one and some of it may be difficult for you now but it will grow on you.  I’ve learned a lot from the author.  He once said to wonder is to begin to understand, and that’s why I come to the river.  It always surprises me.  But please do me a favor, don’t tell anyone you met me and I told you I wasn’t this legendary hermit people want to believe in. They love their illusions.  Let’s keep it between us. Okay?”

The boy said, “Yes.”  He took the book.  Billy Bush left.  The boy sat  where he was, looking and listening to the river flow.  Sometime later he got up and left without fishing.  He told no one about the hermit.

When he arrived home from his walk, the man went to his bookcase and pulled out the old, battered paperback book Billy Bush had given him years ago.  He had never read it for some reason.  He had never even opened it as if to do so was to spoil his encounter with the hermit. To break the spell.  Now seemed like the right time.  He opened the book whose title was What Is Philosophy? by José Ortega y Gassett, the Spanish philosopher.  In the front was a signature: William J. Bush, S.J.  He flipped through it.  It was unmarked except for a few lines near the end.  He read them:

The future is always the leader….We live forward into our future, supported by the present, with the past, always faithful, off to the edge, a little sad, a little frail, as the moon, lighting a path through the night, goes with us step by step, shedding its pale friendship on our shoulders….the vast majority of human beings….are preoccupied with becoming un-preoccupied.  Under their apparent indifference throbs a secret fear of having to solve for themselves the problems posed by their acts and emotions – a humble desire to be like everybody else, to renounce the responsibility of their own destiny, and dissolve it among the multitude.

He said to Billy Bush, “Thank you, it took me a while, but between us, that sure explains the masked desperadoes running in packs. But I won’t tell them, for as you told me long ago, they prefer their illusions.”

*

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Behind the Curtain.

Distinguished author and sociologist Edward Curtin is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. 

Featured image: Esopus Creek/CC BY 2.0

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).

***

No one can say that the BBC takes its role as state broadcaster lightly. On Monday, its flagship radio news show The Today Programme was partly presented from on board HMS Queen Elizabeth, Britain’s new hi-tech aircraft carrier.

The ‘story’ behind this move was that in around a month’s time the HMS Queen Elizabeth is leading an armed flotilla on a 28-week cruise more than halfway around the world. The mission’s purpose, which will involve stopovers at more than 100 ports, is to show that Britain is still a global power to be reckoned with. In the words of Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, the aim is ‘projecting our influence, signalling our power.’

The carrier strike group’s mission will be Britain’s biggest deployment of UK naval and aerial military firepower since the Falklands war in 1982. It will include a squadron of 10 US Marine Corps F35 jets, an attack submarine armed with Tomahawk missiles, 2 destroyers, a number of other battleships and the greatest quantity of helicopters assigned to a single UK Task Group in a decade.

What the Ministry of Defence is describing as the “largest concentration of maritime and air power to leave the UK in a generation” will visit more than 40 countries for more than 70 engagements, including an exercise marking the 50th anniversary of the Five Power Defence Arrangements with Malaysia, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand.

The last leg of the voyage will take the strike group into the South China Seas, close to Taiwan and end with military exercises with Japan. As the MOD admits the deployment has been organised as part of the “UK’s tilt to the Indo-Pacific region” to “bolster deep defence partnerships” in the region. In other words, a central part of the operation is to back the US’s increasingly hostile posture towards China.

The aircraft carrier and its sister ship HMS Prince of Wales cost more than £6bn but with all the connected operating costs and support the total price will be in the tens of billions. This is an extraordinary allocation of resources at a time when public services are in such a desperate state and the NHS is at breaking point.

It will of course do nothing to enhance our ‘security’, the military buzzword of the moment. Re-forging links with former colonial outposts across Asia, aspiring to global military pretensions ‘East of Suez’ is a policy based on a Tory post-colonial fantasy. Even some of the commentators on the Today Programme had to admit that it would be very difficult for Britain to get involved in any serious foreign fighting after the ‘controversial’ wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. All that sending a flotilla bristling with weapons into the disputed waters of the South China Seas can do is escalate tensions and even risk an accidental confrontation with another nuclear armed state.

As we get nearer the 23 May launch date expect more flag waving and banging drums from the government, the BBC and the rest of the media.  Stop the War is working with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament to protest against this futile and dangerous exercise. Please get on board with our campaign.

*

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Featured image: Lockheed Martin F-35B Lightning II fighter jet takes off from HMS Queen Elizabeth (Source: Stop the War Coalition)

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 Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the American Civil Liberties Union, and the ACLU of Massachusetts today filed a petition for a writ of certiorari, asking the Supreme Court to hear a challenge to the Department of Homeland Security’s policy and practice of warrantless and suspicionless searches of travelers’ electronic devices at U.S. airports and other ports of entry.

The lawsuit, Merchant v. Mayorkas, was filed in September 2017 on behalf of several travelers whose cell phones, laptops, and other electronic devices were searched without warrants at the U.S. border. In November 2019, a federal district court in Boston ruled that border agencies’ policies on electronic device searches violate the Fourth Amendment, and required border officers to have reasonable suspicion of digital contraband before they can search a traveler’s device. A three-judge panel at the First Circuit reversed this decision in February 2021.

“Border officers every day make an end-run around the Constitution by searching travelers’ electronic devices without a warrant or any suspicion of wrongdoing,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Sophia Cope. “The U.S. government has granted itself unfettered authority to rummage through our digital lives just because we travel internationally. This egregious violation of privacy happens with no justification under constitutional law and no demonstrable benefit. The Supreme Court must put a stop to it.”

“This case raises pressing questions about the Fourth Amendment’s protections in the digital age,” said Esha Bhandari, deputy director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “When border officers search our phones and laptops, they can access massive amounts of sensitive personal information, such as private photographs, health information, and communications with partners, family, and friends—including discussions between lawyers and their clients, and between journalists and their sources. We are asking the Supreme Court to ensure that we don’t lose our privacy rights when we travel.”

Every year, a growing number of international travelers are subject to warrantless and suspicionless searches of their personal electronic devices at the U.S. border. These searches are often conducted for reasons that have nothing to do with stopping the importation of contraband or determining a traveler’s admissibility. Border officers claim the authority to search devices for a host of reasons, including enforcement of tax, financial, consumer protection, and environmental laws—all without suspicion of wrongdoing. Border officers also search travelers’ devices if they are interested in information about someone other than the traveler—like a business partner, family member, or a journalist’s source.

The petitioners in this case—all U.S. citizens—include a military veteran, journalists, an artist, a NASA engineer, and a business owner. Several are Muslims and people of color, and none were accused of any wrongdoing in connection with their device searches.

“It’s been frustrating to be subjected to this power-grab by the government,” said Diane Zorri, a college professor, former U.S. Air Force captain, and a plaintiff in the case. “My devices are mine, and the government should need a good reason before rifling through my phone and my computer. I’m proud to be part of this case to help protect travelers’ rights.”

The certiorari petition asks the Supreme Court to overturn the First Circuit’s decision and hold that the Fourth Amendment requires border officers to obtain a warrant based on probable before searching electronic devices, or at the least have reasonable suspicion that the device contains digital contraband.

*

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Featured image is from Flickr

‘Every Time the US “Saves” a Country, It Converts It Either into a Madhouse or a Cemetery’.

By Prof. Vijay Prashad, April 26 2021

After great loss of life and the further destruction of Afghan society, the US departs – as it did from Vietnam in 1975 – in defeat: al-Qaeda [covertly supported by the US] has regrouped in different parts of the world, and the Taliban is set to return to the capital, Kabul.

Urgent! 5 Doctors Agree that COVID-19 mRNA Experimental Shots Are Bioweapons and Discuss What to Do About It

By Brian Shilhavy, April 26 2021

Every single one of these doctors believe that these shots are NOT vaccines, but bioweapons designed to kill human beings.

Public Masking Does Not Stop the Spread of the Virus. The Ultimate Goal is “Mandated Vaccination”

By Prof. Bill Willers, April 26 2021

The mask is intended as the first of a one-two punch combination, the second — and the ultimate goal — is mandated vaccination. Requiring masks is a means of getting the public to warm to the idea of minding governmental orders.

World War III: Depopulation, Nuclear War vs. “Bio War”

By Peter Koenig, April 25 2021

With a technologically advanced nuclear war, atomic weapons, the kind available today certainly in the US, Russia, Israel and several European countries, a nuclear war could devastate, if not extinct humanity.

April 2009, The H1N1 Pandemic: Political Lies and Media Disinformation regarding the Swine Flu Outbreak

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, April 25 2021

The media reports are twisted. Realities are turned up side down. Policy statements are not backed by medical and scientific evidence.

Members of European Parliament Served with Notices of Liability for COVID-19

By Doctors for COVID Ethics and Catherine Austin Fitts, April 25 2021

The Doctors for Covid Ethics has served the members of the European Parliament with Notices of Liability advising them that they may be held personally liable for harm and death caused by implementation of a Digital Green Certificate (Vaccine Passport).

Mass Murder: 3,486 Deaths in the U.S. Following COVID Injections in 4 Months: More Vaccine Deaths Recorded Than in the Past 15 Years Combined

By Brian Shilhavy, April 26 2021

To get a perspective on the magnitude of deaths following COVID shots that are being reported to the CDC, there were only 3,445 deaths reported to the CDC following all vaccines from 1/1/2005 through 11/30/2020.

French Drug Assessment Center Demands Removal of All Four Widely Used COVID Vaccines

By Jeanne Smits, April 26 2021

“These new excipients should be considered as new active substances,” the Cholet hospital team stated, in a study that according to them raises issues that have not been commented to date.

Philantrocapitalism: Gates, the World’s Largest and Most Powerful Foundation

By Jacob Levich, April 26 2021

“You’re trying to find the places where the money will have the most leverage, how you can save the most lives for the dollar, so to speak,” Pelley remarked. “Right. And transform the societies,” Gates replied.

Growing Opposition to the Bayer Monsanto Roundup Settlement

By Gerson Smoger and Corporate Crime Reporter, April 26 2021

Bayer wants to resolve the thousands of remaining cancer claims with an $8 billion to $9 billion compensation fund. Those cases are being negotiated by Monsanto lawyers and the lawyers representing the cancer victims.

The Politics of Heroin and the Afghan US Pullout. Private Mercenary Occupation

By F. William Engdahl, April 25 2021

What is clear is that the US Administration is not being straightforward with its plans for Afghanistan and the so-called pull-out. The previously agreed May 1 date versus September 11 is clearly not about making a more graceful exit after a two decade war that has cost US taxpayers more than $2 trillion.

How the Rich Distort Politics. “Government by the 1% for the 1%”

By Rod Driver, April 26 2021

They lobby for policies that benefit themselves, even if they hurt society. They actively work to shrink the role of government in helping the poor, to decrease social security, to cut taxes for the rich, to cut regulation of big business, to allow the environment to be destroyed, and to privatise more and more.

We are currently facing an unprecedented threat to the independent media and freedom on the Internet.  An increasing number of search engines & social media implement algorithms which are negatively biased against independent news and analysis websites such as Global Research. The ultimate goal is the silencing of any voice of opposition to the mainstream narrative.

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Of relevance to the debate on vaccines, this incisive and carefully researched article was first published by Global Research on May 28. 2020

***

I am not a scientist. I am not a doctor. I am not a biotech engineer. I am not an attorney. However, I read, listen, appreciate and try to understand those who are.

I was an investment banker until politics made it impossible to continue to practice my art. I was trained as a portfolio strategist—so I map my world by watching the financial flows and allocation of resources. I was also trained as a conspiracy generator and foot soldier—conspiracies being the fundamental organizing principle of how things get done in our world. It was not until I left the establishment that I learned that those not in the club had been trained to disparage and avoid conspiracies—a clever trick that sabotages their efforts to gather power.

My response to living at war with agencies of the U.S. government for a time was to answer the questions of people who were sufficiently courageous and curious to solicit my opinion. Over many years, that response transformed into two businesses. One was The Solari Report, which continues to grow as a global intelligence network – we seek to help each other understand what is happening, to navigate and contribute to positive outcomes. The other was serving as an investment advisor to individuals and families through Solari Investment Advisory Services. After ten years, I converted that business to doing an ESG screen. What those who use it want—that is not otherwise readily available in the retail market—is a screen that reflects knowledge of financial and political corruption. Tracking the metastasizing corruption, it’s an art, not a science.

When you help a family with their finances, it is imperative to understand all their risk issues. Their financial success depends on successful mitigation of all risk – whether financial or non-financial – they encounter in their daily lives. All non-financial risks impact the allocation of family resources – attention, time, assets and money.

Many of my clients and their children had been devastated and drained by health care failures and corruption–and the most common catalyst for this devastation was vaccine death and injury. After their lengthy and horrendous experiences with the health care establishment, they would invariably ask, “If the corruption is this bad in medicine, food and health, what is going on in the financial world?” Chilled by the thought, they would search out a financial professional who was schooled in U.S. government and financial corruption. And they would find me.

The result of this flow of bright, educated people blessed with the resources to pay for my time was that, for ten years, I got quite an education about the disabilities and death inflicted on our children by what I now call “the great poisoning.” As a result, I had the opportunity to repeatedly price out the human damage to all concerned–not just the affected children but their parents, siblings and future generations—mapping the financial costs of vaccine injury again and again and again.

These cases were not as unusual as you might expect. Currently 54% of American children have one or more chronic diseases. Doctors that I trust assure me the number is much higher as many children and their families can not afford the care and testing necessary to properly diagnose what ails them.

One of the mothers featured in VAXXED—a must-watch documentary for any awake citizen, as is its sequel VAXXED II:

The People’s Truth—estimated that a heavily autistic child would cost present value $5MM to raise and care for over a lifetime. When my clients who were grandparents insisted that they would not interfere with their children’s vaccine choices because it was “none of their business,” I would say, “Really? Who has the $5MM? You or your kids?

When your kids need the $5MM to raise their vaccine-injured child, are you going to refuse them? You are the banker, and it is your money that is at risk here, so it is your business. Do you want to spend that $5MM on growing a strong family through the generations or on managing a disabled child who did not have to be disabled?” Often, that $5MM in expenditures also translates into divorce, depression and lost opportunities for siblings.

My clients helped me find the best resources—books, documentaries, articles—on vaccines. You will find many of them linked or reviewed at The Solari Report, including in our Library.

Of all the questions that I had, the one that I spent the most time researching and thinking about was why. Why was the medical establishment intentionally poisoning generations of children? Many of the writers who researched and wrote about vaccine injury and death assumed it was a mistake—resulting from the orthodoxy of a medical establishment that could not face or deal with its mistakes and liabilities. That never made sense to me. Writings by Forrest Maready, Jon Rappoport, Dr. Suzanne Humphries and Arthur Firstenberg have helped me understand the role of vaccines in the con man trick of saving money for insurance companies and the legally liable.

Here is one example of how the trick may play out. A toxin creates a disease. The toxin might be pesticides or industrial pollution or wireless technology radiation. The toxin damages millions of people and their communities. Companies or their insurance provider may be liable for civil or criminal violations. A virus is blamed. A “cure” is found in a “vaccine.” The pesticide or other toxic exposure is halted just as the vaccine is introduced, and presto, the sickness goes away. The vaccine is declared a success, and the inventor is declared a hero. A potential financial catastrophe has been converted to a profit, including for investors and pension funds. As a portfolio strategist, I admit it has been a brilliant trick and likely has protected the insurance industry from the bankrupting losses it would experience if it had to fairly compensate the people and families destroyed.

Thanks to the work of Robert Kennedy and Mary Holland of Childrens Health Defense, I now understand the enormous profits generated by so-called “vaccines” subsequent to the passage of The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 and the creation of the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program – a federal no-fault mechanism for compensating vaccine-related injuries or death by establishing a claim procedure involving the United States Court of Federal Claims and special masters.

Call a drug or biotech cocktail a “vaccine” and pharmecutical and biotech companies are free from any liabilities – the taxpayer pays. Unfortunately, this system has become an open invitation to make billions from “injectibles” particularly where government regulations and laws can be used to create a market through mandates. Unfortunately, various schemes have developed for government agencies and legislators as well as corporate media to participate in the billions of profits – resulting in significant conflicts of interest.

The Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act became law in 2005, adding to corporate freedoms from liability. The Act

“is a controversial tort liability shield intended to protect vaccine manufacturers from financial risk in the event of a declared public health emergency. The act specifically affords to drug makers immunity from potential financial liability for clinical trials of avian influenza vaccine at the discretion of the Executive branch of government. PREPA strengthens and consolidates the oversight of litigation against pharmaceutical companies under the purview of the secretary of Health and Human Services (~ Wikipedia.)”

Over time, this has evolved to the engineering of epidemics—the medical version of false flags. In theory, these can be “psyops” or events engineered with chemical warfare, biowarfare, or wireless technology. If this sounds bizarre, dive into all the writings of the “Targeted Individuals.”

I learned about this first-hand when I was litigating with the Department of Justice and was experiencing significant physical harassment. I tried to hire several security firms; they would check my references and then decline the work, saying it was too dangerous. The last one took pity and warned me not to worry about electronic weaponry, letting me know that my main problem would be low-grade biowarfare. This biowarfare expert predicted that the opposing team would drill holes in the wall of my house and inject the “invisible enemy.” Sure enough, that is exactly what happened. I sold my house and left town. That journey began a long process of learning how poisoning and nonlethal weapons are used—whether to move people out of rent-controlled apartments, sicken the elderly to move them to more expensive government subsidized housing, gangstalk political or business targets, or weaken or kill litigants—and the list goes on. Poisoning turned out to be a much more common tactic in the game of political and economic warfare in America than I had previously understood.

After I finished my litigation, I spent several years detoxing from heavy metal toxicity – including of lead, arsenic, and aluminum. As I drove around America, I realized it was not just me. Americans increasingly looked like a people struggling with high loads of heavy metals toxicity. In the process of significantly decreasing my unusually high levels of heavy metals, I learned what a difference the toxic load had made to my outlook, my energy, and my ability to handle complex information.

This brings me to the question of what exactly a vaccine is and what exactly is in the concoctions being injected into people today as well as the witches brews currently under development.

In 2017, Italian researchers reviewed the ingredients of 44 types of so-called “vaccines.” They discovered heavy metal debris and biological contamination in every human vaccine they tested. The researchers stated,

“The quantity of foreign bodies detected and, in some cases, their unusual chemical compositions baffled us.” They then drew the obvious conclusion, namely, that because the micro- and nanocontaminants were “neither biocompatible nor biodegradable,” they were “biopersistent” and could cause inflammatory effects right away—or later (see this)

Aborted fetal tissue, animal tissue, aluminum, mercury, genetically altered materials—and what else?

Whatever the ingredients of vaccines have been to date, nothing is more bizarre than the proposals of what might be included in them in the future.

Strategies—already well-funded and well on the way—include brain-machine interface nanotechnology, digital identity tracking devices, and technology with an expiration date that can be managed and turned off remotely. One report indicated that the Danish government and US Navy had been paying one tech company in Denmark to make an injectible chip that would be compatible with one of the leading cryptocurrencies.

I was recently reading Mary Holland’s excellent 2012 review of U.S. vaccine court decisions (”Compulsory vaccination, the Constitution, and the hepatitis B mandate for infants and young children,” Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, and Ethics) and I froze and thought, “Why are we calling the injectibles that Bill Gates and his colleagues are promoting ‘vaccines’? Are they really vaccines?”

Most people are familiar with how Bill Gates made and kept his fortune. He acquired an operating system that was loaded into your computer. It was widely rumored that the U.S. intelligence agencies had a back door. The simultaneous and sudden explosion of computer viruses then made it necessary to regularly update your operating system, allowing Gates and his associates to regularly add whatever they wanted into your software. One of my more knowledgeable software developers once said to me in the 1990s—when Microsoft really took off—”Microsoft makes really sh***y software.” But of course, the software was not really their business. Their business was accessing and aggregating all of your data. Surveillance capitalism was underway.

The Department of Justice launched an antitrust case against Microsoft in 1998, just as the $21 trillion started to disappear from the U.S. government—no doubt with the help of specially designed software and IT systems. During the settlement negotiations that permitted Gates to keep his fortune, he started the Gates Foundation and his new philanthropy career. I laughed the other day when my tweet of one of Robert Kennedy Jr.’s articles from Children’s Health Defense—describing the gruesome technology Gates is hoping to roll out through “injectibles” –inspired a response: “Well, I guess he is finally fulfilling his side of his antitrust settlement.”

If you look at what is being created and proposed in the way of injectibles, it looks to me like these technological developments are organized around several potential goals.

The first and most important goal is the replacement of the existing U.S. dollar currency system used by the general population with a digital transaction system that can be combined with digital identification and tracking. The goal is to end currencies as we know them and replace them with an embedded credit card system that can be integrated with various forms of control, potentially including mind control.

“De-dollarization” is threating the dollar global reserve system. The M1 and M2 money supply have increased in the double digits over the last year as a result of a new round of quantitative easing by the Fed.

The reason we have not entered into hyper-inflation is because of the dramatic drop in money velocity occasioned by converting Covid-19 into an engineered shut down of significant economic activity and the banruptcy of millions of small and medium sized businesses. The managers of the dollar system are under urgent pressure to use new technology to centralize economic flows and preserve their control of the financial system.

Just as Gates installed an operating system in our computers, now the vision is to install an operating system in our bodies and use “viruses” to mandate an initial installation followed by regular updates.

Now I appreciate why Gates and his colleagues want to call these technologies “vaccines.” If they can persuade the body politic that injectible credit cards or injectible surveillance trackers or injectable brain-macine interface nanotechnologies are “vaccines,” then they can enjoy the protection of a century or more of legal decisions and laws that support their efforts to mandate what they want to do.

As well, they can insist that U.S. taxpayers fund—through the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program–the damages for which they would otherwise be liable as a result of their experiments – and violations of the Nuremberg Code and numerous civil and criminal laws – on the general population. The scheme is quite clever. Get the general population to go along with defining their new injectible high-tech concoctions as “vaccines” and they can slip them right into the vaccine pipeline. No need to worry about the disease and death that results from something this unnatural delivered quickly. The notion of an emergency along with contact tracing and freedom from liability can protect you from the millions of likely deaths from such human experimentation. Ideally, you can blame the deaths on a virus.

A colleague once told me how Websters Dictionary came about. Webster said that the way the evildoers would change the Constitution was not by amending it but by changing the definitions—a legal sneak attack.

I believe that Gates and the pharma and biotech industries are literally reaching to create a global control grid by installing digital interface components and hooking us up to Microsoft’s new $10 billion JEDI cloud at the Department of Defense as well as Amazon’s multi-billion cloud contract for the CIA that is shared with all US intelligence agencies.

Why do you think President Trump has the military organizing to stockpile syringes for vaccines? It is likely because the military is installing the roaming operating system for integration into their cloud. Remember—the winner in the AI superpower race is the AI system with access to the most data. Accessing your body and my body on a 24/7 basis generates a lot of data. If the Chinese do it, the Americans will want to do it too. The role out of human “operating systems” may be one of the reasons why the competition of Huawei and 5G telecommunications has become so fractious. As Frank Clegg, former President of Microsoft Canada has warned us, 5G was developed by the Israelis for crowd control.

In the face of global “de-dollarization,” this is how the dollar syndicate can assert the central control it needs to maintain and extend its global reserve currency financial power. This includes protecting its leadership from the civil and criminal liabiility related to explosive levels of financial and health care fraud in recent decades.

Which brings me back to you and me. Why are we calling these formulations “vaccines”?

If I understand the history of case law, vaccines, in legal terms, are medicine. Intentional heavy metal poisoning is not medicine. Injectible surveillance components are not medicine. Injectible credit cards are not medicine. Injectible brain-machine interface is not a medicine. Immunity for insurance companies is not the creation of human immunity.

We need to stop allowing these concoctions to be referred to by a word that the courts and the general population define and treat as medicine and protect from legal and financial liability.

The perpetrators of this fraud are trying a very neat trick–one that will help them go much faster and cancel out a lot of risk at our death, disease and expense. I understand why they are doing it.

What I don’t understand is why we are helping them. Why are we acquiescing in calling these bizarre and deeply dangerous concoctions “vaccines”? Whatever they are, they are not medicine.

So, what shall our naming convention be? What name shall we give to the relevant poisons, neurological damaging metals and digital shackles?

Whatever we call them, I know one thing. THEY ARE NOT MEDICINE, WHICH MEANS THEY SURE ARE NOT VACCINES.

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First published on April 21, 2020.

***

Three-quarters of a century ago, on 21 April 1945 the Soviet Army had encircled Berlin and was unleashing its final attack upon Nazi Germany.

With the Germans having killed more than 10 million Soviet troops since their June 1941 invasion, the last remnants of the Wehrmacht and SS were still vastly outnumbered in their defence of Berlin. Soviet ruler Joseph Stalin, on the cusp of celebrating his most important triumph, amassed around 2.5 million Red Army soldiers for this assault on the German capital, supported by over 6,000 tanks and 7,500 aircraft. (1)

For the Battle of Berlin, Stalin’s old nemesis Adolf Hitler managed to gather almost a million troops, but a proportion of them had seen too many winters, or too few. The cream of German armies had either been wiped out by the Soviets over preceding month and years, or were in captivity. By 16 April 1945, the Red Army began their assault towards Berlin, with a massive artillery bombardment on the German defences along the Oder-Neisse river line.

Raising a Flag over the Reichstag, a photograph taken during the Battle of Berlin on 2 May 1945 (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

The previous day – 15 April 1945 – Hitler, dressed in full military attire, emerged in the morning from the cramped, overcharged atmosphere of the Führerbunker. Stepping outside into the fresh spring air, he looked about at his surroundings. Everything was still and quiet, the sky clear. Hitler walked the short distance from the Führerbunker to the Reich Chancellory, and he was joined by Hans Baur, his personal pilot since early 1932. During the 1920s, Baur was one of Germany’s most renowned commercial pilots, earning a variety of awards and recognition from the Weimar government.

Writing in his memoirs originally published in 1956, Baur recalled how,

“Hitler had personally taken charge of the defence of the Reich Chancellory, and on 15 April [1945] – it was a beautiful sunny day – he appeared in the garden to give various instructions… A thousand men of his Leibstandarte under the command of General Mohnke were there to defend Hitler’s last stronghold to the end”. (2)

With the Soviets closing in, Hitler rejected the pleas of underlings urging him to flee southwards towards Bavaria. Captain and crew would go down with the ship together. Apart from the Leibstandarte, very few remained in this area during the final days. Even SS commando Otto Skorzeny, the saviour of Benito Mussolini 18 months before and one of Hitler’s favourite soldiers, had since left.

Hitler saw Skorzeny for the last time in the Reich Chancellory in late March 1945, when the Nazi leader awarded him the prestigious Oak Leaves to the Knight’s Cross. Skorzeny got out of Berlin while he could. On 12 April 1945 he was present in Linz, the Austrian town where Hitler spent most of his youth and had planned to remodel. By 15 April Skorzeny moved on and “was drawing up plans for a full-scale guerrilla war should conventional methods fail to halt the Allies”, according to Skorzeny’s recent biographer, English historian Stuart Smith. (3)

That same day, standing outside the Führerbunker on 15 April 1945, Hitler inspected the defences of the Reich Chancellory perimeter. He then made his way into the Reich Chancellory itself, one of the very few large buildings standing in Berlin.

Suddenly appearing in the Reich Chancellory was Magda Goebbels, wife of propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. Shocked to see her at this late date Hitler said,

“For heaven’s sake Frau Goebbels, what are you doing here in Berlin? You should have gone away long ago. Baur here will fly you to the Berghof whilst there’s still time. You will be safe there with your children”. (4)

Magda Goebbels protested and Hitler’s orders were refused, for once. Instead she saw fit to remain in Berlin to die – before killing herself, she would allow her six children to be poisoned with cyanide as they slept in their beds, drugged with morphine.

Hitler had not foreseen the catastrophe that was engulfing his empire. Only two and a half years before, he was convinced that the Russians were finished. It appeared that way to many at the time. During the summer and early autumn of 1942, this was the period of the great German advance into far-eastern Ukraine, southern Russia and the Caucasus: principally towards the Russian cities of Stalingrad and Astrakhan, along with another drive further south to capture Baku, the capital of energy rich Azerbaijan, or so it was hoped. As Hitler knew, Baku was dripping in oil. This city provided 80% of the oil consumed by the Soviet war machine (5). Taking Baku would constitute a hammer blow to the Soviets.

Reminiscing on developments, the Nazi war minister Albert Speer acknowledged that by August 1942 “there actually no longer seemed to be any resistance to Hitler left in Europe” (6). It should be recognised that, from the summer of 1942, this German advance hundreds of miles into the western and southern Soviet Union was one of the most incredible feats in military history. During Napoleon’s invasion of Russia 130 years before, he was simply unable to progress as far as this, failing to survive the winter even.

Nevertheless the Wehrmacht could not replenish the casualties they suffered from June 1941. In the first six months of their invasion of the USSR, the Germans lost more than 900,000 men, along with being shorn of 6,000 aircraft and over 3,200 panzers and other armoured vehicles. Most German troops partaking in the 1942 offensive, had been involved from the start of Operation Barbarossa the year before.

Jacques R. Pauwels, the veteran Belgian-born historian, wrote that German forces “available for a push toward the oil fields of the Caucasus were therefore extremely limited. Under those circumstances, it is quite remarkable that in 1942 the Germans managed to make it as far as they did”. (7)

The Soviet Union, with almost twice the population of Nazi-occupied Europe, was able to replace much of their losses relating to manpower. The Soviets could also count on their greater industrial strength, and the bigger quantities of raw materials at their disposal.

It can be recalled that large-scale German victories were achieved in the early summer of 1942 – before Hitler’s offensive eastwards, Case Blue, had gained a head of steam in the high summer. Beginning on 12 May 1942, a huge clash unfolded in eastern Ukraine, known as the Second Battle of Kharkov. This city, Kharkov, was the Soviet Union’s third largest metropolis.

At the commencement of fighting in Kharkov, which the Soviets initiated, the Germans and their Axis partners were outnumbered on the ground by more than two to one. However, during the next fortnight, the Wehrmacht inflicted over 200,000 fatalities on the Soviets, along with the capturing of up to 240,000 Red Army soldiers. By comparison, the Axis powers lost less than 30,000 men in the Second Battle of Kharkov, and the city was taken by German-led forces on 28 May 1942.

Five weeks later, on 4 July 1942, the Crimea was in German hands, after they finally eliminated (with Romanian help) Soviet resistance at Sevastopol – the Crimea’s biggest city. Hitler was increasingly impatient for Sevastopol to be taken, and he had said as early as 21 August 1941 that, “the Crimean peninsula has colossal importance for protection of oil supplies from Romania” (8). Soviet bloodletting was again terrible. Since late October 1941 they had suffered over 300,000 casualties during the Battle of Sevastopol. Also on 4 July 1942, Soviet forces retreated from the cities of Kursk and Belgorod further north.

Meanwhile, the fine weather seemed as if it would last forever. On 5 July 1942, German soldiers from the 4th Panzer Army marching under a blazing sun saw water shimmering on the horizon. It was what they hoped to see. They had reached the Don River, just 200 miles west of Stalingrad (9). Ten days after, on 15 July, Soviet forces fled the towns of Boguchar and Millerovo, less than 200 miles from Stalingrad. The way appeared open to advance upon the city.

The following day, 16 July 1942, Hitler relocated hundreds of miles eastwards, settling into new surroundings near the town of Vinnitsa, in central Ukraine. His complex at Rastenburg, East Prussia, was positioned too westward and no longer deemed suitable. Hitler’s headquarters beside Vinnitsa again had the word “wolf” inserted into it, and was called Führerhauptquartier (FHQ) Werwolf. The title was apt here.

Hitler’s chief pilot, Baur, remembered how,

“It sticks in my mind in particular as the place where I first saw wolves outside a zoo. We were taxiing towards the start with Hitler on board, when I spotted a couple of wolves at the edge of the airfield. They didn’t seem much disturbed at our approach, and we got quite close to them before they finally looked at us, and then loped off into the forest. My mechanic had drawn Hitler’s attention to them, and we all saw them very clearly”. (10)

As July 1942 moved on the successes continued, one after another. The German 1st Panzer Army took the city of Voroshilovgrad, in far eastern Ukraine, on 18 July 1942 – followed by the capture of Krasnodon, two days later, another city in the Ukraine’s extreme eastern reaches. Virtually all of the Ukraine was now under Nazi rule.

On July 22nd, the German 6th Army reached the great bend in the Don River, as they approached ever closer to Stalingrad. Rostov-on-Don, a sizable Russian city 250 miles from Stalingrad, fell just hours afterwards to the 1st Panzer Army on July 23rd. The taking of Rostov was a significant victory, as the Wehrmacht was previously driven from this city by the Soviets in early December 1941. Older Rostov inhabitants were familiar with the sight of German troops. Rostov had also fallen to the German Army a quarter of a century before, under the leadership of Erich Ludendorff and Paul von Hindenburg.

Image below: A Soviet KV-1 heavy tank destroyed near Voronezh (1942) (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

The day after Rostov’s capitulation, 24 July 1942, another major German success was secured with the conclusion of the Battle of Voronezh, near the Don River. The Soviets lost over 550,000 men during the Battle of Voronezh, while the Wehrmacht and their Hungarian allies had less than 100,000 casualties (11). This battle, lasting for almost four weeks, is little known. Yet Soviet losses during it were comfortably higher than German casualties during all of the fighting at Stalingrad. The Red Army could just about afford to sustain such disasters, while the Germans clearly could not. That same date, July 24th, the city of Novocherkassk was taken by the Wehrmacht in Rostov oblast.

There is little doubt that, overall, German troops were of much superior quality to Red Army soldiers, time and again inflicting a far higher casualty rate on the Soviets. The problem was that, in the end, there were simply not enough German soldiers in existence while, as mentioned, the Soviets could call on a vast reserve of fresh troops to fill in their horrendous casualty list.

Yet the German advance continued relentlessly. German Army Group A marched towards the Caucasus on 25 July 1942, and further victories were clocked up. On July 27th, Bataysk, a city in Rostov oblast was taken. The following day Stalin issued Order No. 227 demanding of his soldiers “Not a step back!” Unfortunately for Stalin, this unrealistic order would be disregarded and had a largely detrimental effect upon morale. There were to be lots of steps back in the days ahead.

From July 30th, the Battle of Rzhev was beginning around 150 miles west of Moscow. Over coming weeks the Soviets would suffer in excess of 300,000 casualties there, about five times as much as the Germans.

On 2 August 1942, a long column of German motorised infantry from the 4th Panzer Army stormed the town of Kotelnikovo, 110 miles south-west of Stalingrad (12). Two days later, the 4th Panzer Army crossed the Askay River in its drive on Stalingrad. A few hours after, the city of Voroshilovsk fell on August 5th. Its airport would be used by the Luftwaffe to execute bombing raids on Soviet oil routes. On August 6th, the southern Russian towns of Tikhoretsk and Armavir, 80 miles apart, were taken within hours of each other in the separate advance towards the Caucasus.

On 9 August 1942, special forces led by Waffen-SS officer Adrian von Fölkersam captured the city of Maikop without a fight, at the base of the Caucasus Mountains. In fear of a major German assault, Soviet forces were fleeing in disarray from Maikop, ignoring Stalin’s order. Quickly following von Fölkersam’s units in the rear, the 1st Panzer Army then occupied Maikop, but found the surrounding area had endured scorched earth tactics. It would prove difficult to exploit Maikop’s famous oil reserves. On reaching Maikop the 1st Panzer Army, commanded by Field Marshal Ewald von Kleist, had advanced more than 300 miles in less than two weeks.

On 10 August 1942, the German 6th Army crossed the lower Don River. German officers, pausing for breath under the sun and looking into their binoculars, could clearly see the outer suburbs of Stalingrad before them. Having been shorn of much of their armour the month before, Hitler now expected the 6th Army to take the whole of Stalingrad by October 1942. This industrial city stretched for 25 miles along the western bank of the Volga River. (13)

Southwards, the march to the Caucasus was indeed advancing as planned. On August 15th, the German 23rd Panzer Division captured the town of Georgiyevsk, deep into south-western Russia (14). They were positioned 1,500 miles from Berlin, and within striking range of the frontiers of Georgia.

At this time, in the middle of August 1942, Speer travelled to see an elated Hitler at the FHQ Vinnitsa Werwolf, and he noticed that “The entire headquarters was in splendid humour”. Speer joined the dictator outside the latter’s modest bungalow, and they sat down on a bench under trees to discuss the next steps.

Hitler explained how they would now “advance south of the Caucasus and then help the rebels in Iran and Iraq against the English. Another thrust will be directed along the Caspian Sea towards Afghanistan and India”. Addressing Speer and several industrialists the next day, Hitler expected that “by the end of 1943 we will pitch our tents in Tehran, in Baghdad, and on the Persian Gulf. Then the oil wells will at last be dry as far as the English are concerned”. (15)

Within a few months, these dreams of conquest would be shattered. Spread out across endless expanses of the western and south-western Soviet Union by the autumn of 1942, the Germans and their Axis allies were under growing strain.

Pauwels, the experienced world war historian, wrote of the Germans that “when their offensive inevitably petered out, in September of that year [1942], their weakly held lines were stretched along many hundreds of kilometres, presenting a perfect target for a Soviet counterattack. This is the context in which an entire German army was bottled up, and ultimately destroyed, in Stalingrad”. (16)

As further noted by Pauwels, the real turning point of the war in Europe did not occur at Stalingrad, but in fact took place a year before in late 1941, when the Germans failed to capture Moscow. By 1942, the Wehrmacht was irreversibly weakened, their aura of invincibility gone, in spite of all of the above victories.

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Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree. He is interested in writing primarily on foreign affairs, having been inspired by authors like Noam Chomsky. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Notes

1 Warfare History Network, “Doomed: How the Battle of Berlin Ended Nazi Germany for Good”, The National Interest, 7 April 2020, https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/doomed-how-battle-berlin-ended-nazi-germany-good-141872

2 Hans Baur, I Was Hitler’s Pilot (Frontline Books, 30 Sep. 2019), p. 174

3 Stuart Smith, Otto Skorzeny: The Devil’s Disciple (Osprey Publishing, 20 Sep. 2018), p. 227

4 Baur, I Was Hitler’s Pilot, p. 175

5 Georg Woodman, 2033-The Century After: How the World Would Look/Be If Nazi Germany & Empire Japan Had Won World War II (Strategic Book Publishing & Rights Agency, LLC (October 18, 2017), p. 128

6 Albert Speer, Spandau: The Secret Diaries, (Fontana, London, 1977) p. 58

7 Jacques R. Pauwels, “75 Years Ago, the Battle of Stalingrad”, Global Research, 5 February 2018, https://www.globalresearch.ca/75-years-ago-the-battle-of-stalingrad/5628316

8 C. Peter Chen, “Battle of Sevastopol”, World War II Database, January 2008, https://ww2db.com/battle_spec.php?battle_id=214

9 Donald A. Bertke, Gordon Smith, Don Kindell, World War II Sea War, Vol 6: The Allies Halt the Axis Advance (Bertke Publications; null edition May 31, 2014), p. 337

10 Baur, I Was Hitler’s Pilot, pp. 134-135

11 David Glantz, Armageddon in Stalingrad, Brad DeLong’s Grasping Reality, 18 November 2012, https://www.bradford-delong.com/2012/11/liveblogging-world-war-ii-november-18-1942.html

12 Jochen Hellbeck, Stalingrad: The City that Defeated the Third Reich (Public Affairs, 11 Oct. 2010)

13 Hellbeck, Stalingrad

14 Robert Forczyk, The Caucasus 1942-43: Kleist’s Race for Oil (Osprey Publishing, 19 May 2015)

15 Speer, Spandau: The Secret Diaries, pp. 58-60

16 Pauwels, “75 Years Ago, The Battle of Stalingrad”, Global Research, https://www.globalresearch.ca/75-years-ago-the-battle-of-stalingrad/5628316

Featured image: The Brandenburg Gate amid the ruins of Berlin, June 1945 (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

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 twenty years, the United States government – and the forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) – will depart from Afghanistan. They said that they came to do two things: to destroy al-Qaeda, which had launched an attack on the United States on 11 September 2001, and to destroy the Taliban, which had given al-Qaeda a base. After great loss of life and the further destruction of Afghan society, the US departs – as it did from Vietnam in 1975 – in defeat: al-Qaeda [covertly supported by the US] has regrouped in different parts of the world, and the Taliban is set to return to the capital, Kabul.

The speaker of Afghanistan’s parliament, Mir Rahman Rahmani, warns that the country is poised to enter a new period of civil war, a repeat of the terrible civil war that ran from 1992 to 2001. The United Nations calculates that in the first quarter of 2021, civilian casualties rose by 29% compared to last year, while the number of women casualties increased by 37%. It is unclear if there will be further talks between the Taliban, the Afghan government of President Ashraf Ghani, the Turks, the Qataris, the United States, and the United Nations. Afghanistan sits on the brink of further violence, whose impact can so aptly be described by the words of the poet Zarlasht Hafeez:

The sorrow and grief, these black evenings,
Eyes full of tears and times full of sadness,
These burnt hearts, the killing of youths,
These unfulfilled expectations and unmet hopes of brides

‘Saving’ Afghan women, advancing the cause of human rights: these words have lost meaning after two decades. As Eduardo Galeano put it, ‘Every time the US “saves” a country, it converts it either into a madhouse or a cemetery’.

Alicia Leal (Cuba), Un soldado de América, 1997.

The US government calculates that this war, which would enter its twentieth year, is the longest US war in the modern period (the US engagement in Vietnam lasted for fourteen years, from 1961 to 1975).

But this war in Afghanistan is not the longest war prosecuted by the United States government. There are two US wars that continue: a war against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea or DPRK (since August 1950) and against Cuba (since September 1959).

Neither of these conflicts have ended, with the US continuing to execute hybrid wars against both the DPRK and Cuba. A hybrid war does not necessarily require the full arsenal of a military to come into force; it is a war fought through the control of information and financial flows as well as the use of economic sanctions and illicit means such as sabotage. There is no question that the longest and unfinished US wars have been against Korea and Cuba.

Sixty years ago, on 17 April 1961, the CIA’s Brigade 2506 landed at Cuba’s Playa Girón (‘Bay of Pigs’). The Cuban people resisted this invasion as they would six decades of hybrid war against their sovereign revolutionary processes. Cuba has never threatened the United States; it never has violated the UN Charter of 1945. The United States, on the other hand, has routinely threatened the Cuban people. In October 1962, when the Soviets sent a missile cover to protect Cuba, General Maxwell Taylor, the head of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, planned for a full-scale invasion. In this now-declassified memorandum, Taylor pointed out that such a military venture might result in 18,500 casualties on the US side because of the determination of the Cubans to protect their land and their political project. The plot was to reinstate the old Cuban oligarchy that had sought refuge in Miami and turn Cuba back into a gangster’s paradise.

After the Cuban government sent troops to assist the national liberation project in Angola in November 1975, US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told his team on 24 March 1976, ‘if we decide to use military power, it must succeed. There should be no halfway measures – we would get no award for using military power in moderation. If we decide on a blockade, it must be ruthless, rapid, and efficient’. The US planned to mine Havana’s harbour and bomb Cuba’s cities. ‘I think we are going to have to smash Castro’, Kissinger told US President Gerald Ford. Ford replied, ‘I agree’. Such is the attitude of the US government, from 1961 to the present.

Carlos Garaicoa (Cuba), Puzzle la Malenka, 2009.

Before he left office in January 2021, US President Donald Trump placed Cuba on the US government’s ‘state sponsors of terrorism’ list. Seventy-five US lawmakers asked his successor, President Joe Biden, to reverse this decision. On 16 April, Biden’s press secretary Jen Psaki told the briefing room that ‘A Cuba policy shift or additional steps is currently not among the President’s top foreign policy priorities’. Biden, in other words, has decided to passively continue Trump’s policy, dictated to him by the likes of Republican Senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott from Florida and Senator Ted Cruz from Texas (as well as Democratic Senator Robert Menendez from New Jersey). Biden has opted to persist in this cruel six-decade long policy to suffocate the Cuban people.

Just after the 1959 Cuban Revolution, the US government made it clear that it would not tolerate a sovereign Cuba only 145 kilometres from Florida’s coast. Cuba’s commitment to people over profit is a standing rebuke of the hypocrisies of the United States rulers. This has been clarified once more during this pandemic, during which the infection and death rates per million are strikingly higher in the US than in Cuba (recent figures indicate the US has recorded 1,724 deaths per million, whereas Cuba stands at 47 deaths per million). While the US locked itself into vaccine nationalism, Cuba’s Henry Reeve Brigade of doctors continued with their work amongst the world’s poorest people (for this, of course, they deserve the Nobel Prize for Peace).

Unable to successfully invade Cuba, the US has persisted with a tight blockade of the island. After the fall of the USSR, which had provided Cuba with ways to circumvent the blockade, the US attempted to tighten its grip on the island. US lawmakers then attacked Cuba’s economy through the Cuban Democracy Act (1992) and the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act (1996) – both laws with names that demean the words in them. From 1992 onwards, the UN General Assembly has voted overwhelmingly for the United States to end this blockade. A group of UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteurs wrote a statement calling on the US to withdraw these measures, which have only made Cuba’s attempt to fight the pandemic harder.

The Cuban government reported that between April 2019 and March 2020, Cuba lost $5 billion in potential trade due to the blockade; over the past almost six decades, it has lost the equivalent of $144 billion. Now the US government has deepened the sanctions against shipping companies that bring oil to the island. The head of US Southern Command, Admiral Craig Faller, described Cuba’s medical internationalism as a ‘regional corrosive influence’. There is cruelty in Washington.

Far from the bitterness of the US government, the Cuban communists held their eighth Party Congress, where the discussion was on how to improve the state enterprises and how to innovate to meet the aspirations of the Cuban people. Deputy Prime Minister Inés María Chapman said that the party members must be active in their communities to build and defend socialism. Rafael Santiesteban Pozo, president of the National Association of Small Farmers, said that working people must produce more with what resources are available. Minister of Economy and Planning Alejandro Gil pointed to the need for greater efficiency in the state enterprise system, the expansion of self-employment, and the expansion of cooperatives.

These are serious people who recognise the problems but are not overwhelmed by them; they are part of a project that has fought to defend its sovereignty against enormous odds since 1959. Defeat is not in their vocabulary. Their agenda is hopeful, unlike the bilious agenda that comes from the US government and the Miami-based Cuban oligarchy.

At this Congress, Raúl Castro stepped down from his post. Castro, one of the original Cuban revolutionaries, had been imprisoned for his role in the Moncada uprising of 1953. Upon his release, he went to Mexico with his brother Fidel and then returned on the Granma to lead the rebellion against the US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista. After the victory of the Revolution, Castro served in the government and as a leader in the Communist Party, guiding it alongside Fidel and others through the difficult Special Period (1991-2000) and then continuing to lead it after Fidel’s death in 2016. His quiet role in defending and elaborating the Cuban Revolution has been immense.

José Rodríguez Fuster (Cuba), Granma, 2013.

After the Playa Girón attack by the CIA, the Spanish poet Jaime Gil de Biedma wrote a poem about Cuba called ‘During the Invasion’ (collected in Moralidades, 1966). The Venezuelan poet Diego Sequera translated this poem for us as we celebrate the 60^th anniversary of the defeat of the US on those beaches:

The morning newspaper is open on
the tablecloth. The sun glows in the glasses.
Lunch at the small restaurant,
a working day.

Most of us remain silent. Someone speaks with an elusive voice;
these are conversations with special sorrow
about the things that always happen and
that never end, or that end in disgrace.

I think that at this time of day, the sun rises in Ciénaga;
nothing is yet decided, combat doesn’t stop,
and I look in the news for some hope
that doesn’t come from Miami.

Oh, Cuba in the distant dawn of the tropics,
when the sun is simmering, and the air is clear:
may your land sow tanks and your broken sky
be grey from the wings of airplanes.

With you are the people of sugar cane,
the man of the streetcar, those from the restaurants,
the thousands of us that today search in the world
for a bit of hope that doesn’t come from Miami.

Hope comes from the warm sun of Cuba.

Warmly,

Vijay Prashad

This article was first published by the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

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Featured image: Mohsen Taasha Wahidi (Afghanistan), Rebirth of the Red, 2017.

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***

Tens of thousands of people have sued Monsanto owner Bayer AG alleging their non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and other cancers were caused by glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide.

Three cases brought by Lee Johnson, Edwin Hardeman, and Alva and Alberta Pilliod went to trial.

And in each case, the courts found the Roundup caused the cancers, that Monsanto hid the risks, and that compensatory and punitive damages were justified.

Bayer wants to resolve the thousands of remaining cancer claims with an $8 billion to $9 billion compensation fund. Those cases are being negotiated by Monsanto lawyers and the lawyers representing the cancer victims.

But last year, in a surprise to the Monsanto plaintiffs lawyers, a separate settlement was put forward to handle everyone else who might bring a case against Monsanto in the future – including people who have yet to get sick or contact a lawyer.

A handful of class action lawyers, led by Elizabeth Cabraser and Sam Issacharoff, proposed a settlement that would put a four year hold on any Roundup litigation against Bayer, prohibit punitive damage claims against Bayer, and set up a secret science panel.

That proposal was rejected by a federal judge sitting in San Francisco – U.S. District Court Judge Vince Chhabria.

Now, the settlement lawyers have come back with a revised $2 billion proposal.

A May 12 public hearing is scheduled before Judge Chhabria.

More than 300 lawyers have challenged the settlement.

One of those lawyers is Gerson Smoger (image on the right) of Dallas, Texas. (Smoger filed a 57 page brief in opposition to the settlement on March 31, 2021.)

“I’m challenging this because it’s an abomination to the tort system,” Smoger told Corporate Crime Reporter in an interview last week. “Monsanto continues making this material without any restrictions. Roundup will stay on the market. People’s future lifetime exposure to Roundup is included in the settlement, even though they haven’t been exposed yet for a product that is going to continue to go on the market.”

“There is a four year stay on all litigation. And the stay is not just against people with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. That stay includes all contract claims against Monsanto. Nothing can be brought for four years. At the end of four years, every single person in the United States who has been exposed to Roundup can never sue Monsanto for punitive damages or medical monitoring.”

What does the settlement offer deliver to people who are exposed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma?

“If you have non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma during the period of the active settlement, then there are provisions for amounts of money you can apply for within a settlement grid. Theoretically you can go up to $200,000. But I don’t believe you can go above $65,000. The best you can probably do is between $25,000 and $65,000 for your injury of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which probably costs you between $100,000 and $200,000 to treat, none of which you are entitled to get reimbursed for.”

Compare that to the tens of millions awarded to the three cases that went to trial.

“They were each in the tens of millions or more in punitive damages. And for those people, if they were covered under this proposed settlement, they would get somewhere between $10,000 and $25,000.”

I thought the top number was $200,000.

“It is. But if under the proposed settlement, you go through rungs on a ladder. And if you miss any of those rungs on a ladder, you are stuck at a lower level. Three of the cases that went to trial – Hardeman and the Pilliods – would have been stuck at the second level because of how old they were. Mr. Johnson didn’t have a long enough exposure to get up to the third level, so he would be stuck at the second level. The second level is between $10,000 and $25,000.”

This wasn’t the first such proposed settlement.

A previous settlement was rejected by Judge Chhabria. How is that settlement different from this?

“That settlement had a private secret science panel that would make a determination binding on the class. The panel would be put together by the proponents of the settlement and Monsanto and they had people operating in secret. And they would conclude what the literature said.”

The previous settlement had the science panel. Does this settlement have it also?

“It has it well dressed. The dressing is better, the result is a little different. They have a science panel whose conclusions will be determined the same way. At the end of the day, if the science panel decides no causation, as it likely would, the juries will be told that is a stipulated fact for any opt-out. And the judge is not allowed to tell the jury that they could look elsewhere. The judge has to be silent on it. And that judge is told that an independent science panel as a stipulated fact has made a determination.”

Why did the judge reject the first agreement?

“One was that the science panel took away from the province of the jury to decide. The other was the difficulty of giving notice to such a large amorphous group of exposed people, the vast majority of them being future claimants.”

“I argued this issue of not binding future claimants in the Agent Orange case before the U.S. Supreme Court. You should not be able to have a large class that is not identified and take away their rights in the future when they will not have the information necessary to make an informed choice as to whether they want to be part of the settlement or not.”

“And that’s what this settlement does. If you don’t have non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, you are not going to pay attention to this case. You are not going to think about the fact that ten years ago you spent five years working every summer with Roundup. You are going to think about it when you are diagnosed and find out that there are things you can’t do, that you can’t have punitive damages in your case. But you are not going to find that out when you are not injured and can’t imagine that you are going to get non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.”

What is the purported reason put forward by the proponents of the settlement for the four year stay on litigation?

“The best they say is that it is essential to Monsanto. They don’t give a reason that it would help the class. One of the difficulties is that a number of people who get non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma during the course of the four years will die before the four years are over.”

And that’s because non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma kills something like 20 percent in the first year?

“Exactly. Lee Johnson got a priority under California law to have his case tried faster, while he was still alive. People are going to get sick and die and not be able to get near a courtroom.”

What’s the purported reason for a ban on punitive damages?

“That is given up to get the settlement. They say they have sufficiently paid in compensatory damages. But compensatory damages are for compensation. They are for the injury. They are not designed for punishment in any fashion. In fact, any compensatory settlement says that they are not settling for punitive damages. But that is what they are saying – we have paid enough in compensatory damages and therefore we shouldn’t be punished.”

How were these lawyers chosen to do this?

“This settlement is patched on to the MDL by law firms that have no part whatsoever in the organization of this case. Did these lawyers say – there is a hole in the negotiations of this case, we’ll negotiate it, we will wrap this up? Or did Monsanto come to them and say – we need somebody to wrap this up? It’s rather significant that the actual lawyers that have been bringing this MDL litigation are not bringing this class action. It is not them. It is people that are well known for settling class actions.”

“Elizabeth Cabraser has a great deal of experience in large scale settlements. What she does not have any experience in is Roundup or this particular litigation. She is foreign to this litigation.”

Who is representing Monsanto in this case?

“Monsanto hasn’t filed any papers. They have a number of law firms. But they have not filed any papers yet in support of the class.”

Does there need to be some kind of settlement for people who have not yet spoken with a lawyer?

“No. There does not need to be a settlement. These injuries are substantial.”

You would ban glyphosate?

“The elimination of the product is the way to go. Under our laws, it would be difficult to ban. But you would structure it out of business. Because the way our laws work, you have to phase it out. Yes, it needs to be banned.”

Did the plaintiffs lawyers know that this settlement was being negotiated? Or was it a surprise?

“The first one last summer was a surprise. Clearly there was a belief that there was going to be a plan B. But the settlement negotiations have not involved the people most intimately a part of the litigation. They didn’t bring this to the table. There is that $8 billion to $9 billion attempt at a settlement. And then Monsanto is on this separate track with other lawyers to get this global resolution that they didn’t try to get with the people involved in the litigation.”

Why would these class action attorneys tie the hands of victims? No punitives. No lawsuits for four years. Limited amounts of recoveries even if they entered the settlement agreement?

“It’s hard for me to say. And this has occurred over the years for both Elizabeth and Sam. I believe the importance of the tort system is in vindicating individual rights. Individuals have a right to decide their own fate and bring their own lawsuits. We should always weigh in favor of individual decisions to be represented in that fashion. Elizabeth and Sam believe efficiencies of resolutions are more important than individual needs. That’s the best I can say.”

Have you spoken with any of the settlement lawyers about this case?

“The answer is no. But I know the settlement lawyers. There are others that would give less beneficent reasons as to why this settlement is taking place. But I have considered the three people who are proposing this to be friends for a very long time. And I’d rather think that we just view the world differently.”

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Ever since reports have surfaced in recent days that people who have chosen NOT to receive the experimental COVID-19 shots but have been exposed to those who have received them, and have suffered what appear to be infections coming from these fully “vaccinated” people, affecting mainly women who have reported menstruation difficulties, heavy bleeding, miscarriages, and reduction of breast milk, I have been watching my newsfeed to see if any of the dissenting doctors and scientists we feature regularly here at Health Impact News would address these issues.

Fortunately, a team of 5 doctors in the U.S., all of whom we have featured in the past here at Health Impact News and are highly qualified to address this topic, just held a round-table discussion a couple of days ago to address these issues.

The issues they discuss affect ALL of us in the U.S. (and around the world) right now, and it is imperative that you take 79 minutes of your time to watch this video.

Not only do these highly qualified doctors discuss why they think this is happening, they also give practical advice at the end about what we can be doing right now to protect ourselves and stop this attack on the human race by the Globalists seeking to reduce the world’s population.

Every single one of these doctors believe that these shots are NOT vaccines, but bioweapons designed to kill human beings.

Whatever else you are doing when you come across this video, it is highly unlikely that anything else you do the rest of your day will be more important than watching this video so you can be informed of the evil effects of these injections that are being censored in the corporate media and Big Tech social media.

Then share this video with as many people as you can.

This is from our Bitchute channel, and it will also be available on our Rumble channel.

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A new study conducted by MIT scientists and released this week reveals that the six foot social distancing and limited occupancy guidelines made law in most of the civilized world have done little to slow the spread of COVID-19, and suggests the only way to reduce the spread of COVID-19 is to limit exposure to highly populated areas and areas where people are physically exerting themselves, such as gyms, or areas where people are singing or speaking, such as churches.

The study reveals that the social distancing guidelines employed throughout much of the world for over a year have done nothing to limit the spread of COVID-19, suggesting that the adaption of the guidelines did not stop the spread of the of the China-originated virus, and it can only be slowed with the employment of severe lockdowns. Paradoxically, states and cities that have engaged in severe lockdowns have seen the largest spikes of COVID-19.

“We argue there really isn’t much of a benefit to the 6-foot rule, especially when people are wearing masks,” MIT professor Martin Z. Bazant said, as reported by NBC. “It really has no physical basis because the air a person is breathing while wearing a mask tends to rise and comes down elsewhere in the room so you’re more exposed to the average background than you are to a person at a distance.”

In other words, widespread mask wearing may simply change the physical vectors of transmission within a given room rather than stop it, effectively making six foot distancing rules pointless.

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 exposé of the corruption of medicine by the pharmaceutical industry at every level, from exploiting the vulnerable destitute for drug testing, through manipulation of research data, to disease mongering and promoting drugs that do more harm than good.

Authors, Professor Jon Jureidini and Dr Leemon McHenry, made critical contributions to exposing the scientific misconduct in two infamous trials of antidepressants. Ghostwritten publications of these trials were highly influential in prescriptions of paroxetine (Paxil) and citalopram (Celexa) in paediatric and adolescent depression, yet both trials (Glaxo Smith Kline’s paroxetine study 329 and Forest Laboratories’ citalopram study CIT-MD-18) seriously misrepresented the efficacy and safety data.

The Illusion of Evidence-Based Medicine: Exposing the Crisis of Credibility in Clinical Research (Wakefield Press, 2020) provides a detailed account of these studies and argues that medicine desperately needs to re-evaluate its relationship with the pharmaceutical industry. Without a basis for independent evaluation of the results of randomised, placebo-controlled clinical trials, there can be no confidence in evidence-based medicine.

Science demands rigorous, critical examination and especially severe testing of hypotheses to function properly, but this is exactly what is lacking in academic medicine.

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It is established that public masking does not stop the spread of viruses, and that prolonged use is detrimental to health. The sudden mandating of masks in 2020 has been a program of mass behavior modification based on constant repetition of a lie. The mask is intended as the first of a one-two punch combination, the second — and the ultimate goal — is mandated vaccination. Requiring masks is a means of getting the public to warm to the idea of minding governmental orders.

Laughing at “face diapers” as trivial is a serious mistake. They are a psychological assault beyond adverse physical effects and are part of the isolating strategy that includes “social distancing” and home quarantine. The crucial importance of the mask in the larger scheme to vaccinate the whole of society is seen In the unyielding coercion by official public health authorities to keep people masked.

To acknowledge public masking as the fraud that it is would spell doom for the Gates Foundation/Gavi Vaccine Alliance/WHO project to vaccinate the world. That is why the pharmaceutical industry is doubling down on masking with all of its considerable power, which it exerts through the World Health Organization (WHO), state organizations such as the CDC, and the university-affiliated schools of public health that send forth the “public health experts” seen in mass media and in communities across the nation.

Public health is primarily about policy, policy is about politics, and politics is a specialty of Big Pharma. What has come to be known as “public health” has been captured absolutely by the pharmaceutical industry to become a mechanism for framing policies according to its interests. The uppermost interest now of the pharmaceutical-governmental complex is to vaccinate the world and to make regular vaccination a mandatory aspect of the ’new normality’ of a globalized society.

As billionaires have joined the pharmaceutical industry’s global vaccine initiative, it has formed an unrivaled financial power, magnified as it links to the World Economic Forum (WEF) with its goal of The Great Reset of the world economy.

This interview of bioethicist Leemon McHenry, author of “The Illusion of Evidence-Based Medicine”, is a revelation of the degree to which this collective power is so pervasive that it has been able to get its ghost-written articles into the most distinguished medical journals, thereby dragging down the reputations of the journals and trust in mainstream medicine itself.

Trace the backgrounds of public health experts displayed by mainstream media and placed in advisory positions in state governments, and you find virtually all derive from, or connect to, university-linked schools of public health that are awash in pharmaceutical money, e.g. Bloomberg School at Johns Hopkins, T. H. Chan School at Harvard, Rollins School at Emory, and the Milken Institute School at George Washington University. These high-profile “experts” hew to an official blueprint opposed by many medical voices from around the world that are being scrubbed from public awareness because of media ‘lying by omission’ or through active ‘deplatforming’.

Society has been coached to rely on the pronouncements of media-showcased experts for its views of world events.

If any one expert could be understood to personify medical opinion in the service of mass vaccination, it would, these days, be Dr. Leana Wen, a professor at the Milken Institute School. Young, articulate, smooth and telegenic, and with a power-packed bio — (“Young Global Leader” for the World Economic Forum, “Global Health Fellow” at the World Health Organization, one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People, member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), consultant for the China Medical Board, and much more) — she hammers mask and vaccine advocacy into the public mind.

You see her on CNN, then on PBS, then on MSNBC, and you see her columns in the Washington Post, that CIA molder of public opinion:

“As more states lift restrictions … there will be no carrot left to offer.” –Leana Wen, Washington Post

“[T]he vaccine is the ticket back to pre-pandemic life … we have a very narrow window to tie reopening policy to vaccination status [and] if everything is reopened, then what’s the carrot going to be? How are we going to incentivize people to actually get the vaccine? [O]therwise, people are going to go out and enjoy these freedoms anyway. –Leana Wen on CNN

“[A]fter vaccination … still keep on wearing a mask … We are now in this race of vaccines versus variants … We need to understand masks and vaccines as the ticket back to pre-pandemic normal … Then, [after vaccination] you can travel [and] see your family.” –Leana Wen on PBS News Hour

Wen reveals that lockdowns are related not to well being of the public but to manipulation of the public.

Take the jab, she says, and then you can have your freedoms back.

Her’s is a classic example of one of Singer’s listed techniques for controlling humans: “Manipulate a system of rewards, punishments, and experiences in order to promote … group-approved behaviors.” Lifting lockdowns is the “carrot” she refers to, dangled in front of a herd longing to be free, and she frets that the herd is wanting to “enjoy these freedoms anyway” without waiting for permission from the army of ‘public health experts’ she so perfectly exemplifies. Oh dear, she’s declaring, opening up society too soon negates the carrot that could be used to force public compliance.

And she talks of a “ticket back to pre-pandemic life”. Really? Take a look!

There is no ‘going back’ in The WEF’s Reset plan, and there is no way that Wen could be ignorant of that fact. Any figure claiming a path to pre-2020 normality at this late date should not be trusted further.

Reading the signs it’s obvious that what is planned (as she perhaps unwittingly reveals with “this race of vaccines versus variants”) is a future of new “variants” and “mutant strains” coming in wave after wave, to be attacked with ever more vaccines ’til the end of time — strategy for an unending river of riches for the industry now in firm control of ‘western medicine’. Anyone who hasn’t had at least a glimmer of suspicion about this global show by now is either hopelessly gullible or living in willful ignorance.

It’s disheartening to watch Wen, with her wealth of polished credentials and honors, articulating bilge. But then, she is representative of the uniform message coming from schools of public health. How has such a situation arisen?

During a discussion of journalistic self-censorship, Noam Chomsky said to his interviewer, “I’m sure you believe everything you’re saying, but what I’m saying is that if you believed something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting”.

Chomsky is referring to a winnowing process existing within establishment systems that identify early in careers those with certain desired traits and inclinations for advancement. So it is, apparently, in the industry-driven world of official public health policy, as its army of experts proclaim mask and vaccine orthodoxy.

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Bill Willers is Emeritus Professor of Biology at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh.

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons

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***

In February the U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, made it a priority to phone Rui Figueiredo, the Foreign Affairs and Defense Minister of Cape Verde. They spoke about commerce and “security.” ^[1]

Why is the tiny African nation of Cape Verde (population 550,000) a U.S. priority? It is because the U.S. is behind China in the latest “scramble for Africa.”

Source: operationworld.org

To rectify its position, vis-à-vis China, in Africa, U.S. President Joe Biden pledged to put values at the heart of his administration’s China policy. Since entering office, he has called on the world’s democracies to “gird for a new era of strategic competition with China.”^[2]

To cut through U.S. rhetoric and reveal the covert value system of the U.S. in Africa, the word “security” is instructive.

Antony Blinken’s concern for the “security” of Cape Verde automatically activates a destructive infrastructure that’s summed up in the Americanisms: “war on drugs,” “war on terror” and the “United States African Command” (AFRICOM). War and its latest accoutrements actually define U.S. values in Africa.

A Pentagon map, for example, shows a network of 29 bases stretching from one side of Africa to the other.

Map of U.S. bases in Africa. [Source: bing.com]

The U.S. at the same time has provided billions of dollars in security assistance to local partners, conducted persistent counterterrorism operations that include commando raids, combat by U.S. Special Operations forces in at least 13 African countries between 2013 and 2017, and a record number of U.S. airstrikes in Somalia (just over one attack per week in 2019).

The Chinese by contrast have focused on the development of large infrastructural projects across the continent, which have been financed in part as a form of payback for Chinese exploitation of Africa’s mineral wealth.

Cape Verde has few mineral resources, and China’s investments there are mainly designed to spread goodwill and convey a positive image on the African continent.^[3]

The centerpiece of China’s efforts in Cape Verde is the opening of a university in Praia—the capital city of the archipelago.

China’s government has just funded the building of a campus that includes 34 laboratories, five auditoriums, a convention center with capacity for 654 people, and dormitories with 382 beds, in addition to classrooms, computers and reading rooms, a library, cafeterias and sport facilities. It was built by China’s LongXin Construction Group.^[4]

In Cape Verde, China has also funded the expansion of the presidential and government palaces and a national stadium, which has been hailed by then-ambassador Su Jian as “the greatest construction after independence.”

The juxtaposition between China’s spectacular contributions to Cape Verdean society and U.S. militarism captures two contemporary approaches to Africa. In simple terms, one involves the barrel of a gun and the other involves a wheelbarrow.

One is marked by violence and racism and the other by a solidarity with roots in the Third World movement. One is imperialist and the other, to a certain degree, liberationist.

Kickstarting the Slave Trade

The tragic humiliation of Africa began in Cape Verde. In 1462, Portugal began the European colonization of tropical Africa on the island of Santiago—in a settlement then called Ribeira Grande.^[5]

In the process, the Portuguese kick-started the Atlantic slave trade that eventually spawned the USA. Or, as Walter Rodney put it in his seminal volume entitled How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Africa developed Europe at the same rate as Europe underdeveloped Africa.

Painting of the Portuguese slave trade in Cape Verde. [Source: cratediggs.blogspot.com]

Although not entirely analogous, China’s century of humiliation echoed what happened in Africa. The British colonization of a tropical island (Hong Kong) triggered fragmentation and the obnoxious opium trade—the trade which gave rise to powerful U.S. dynasties and U.S. institutions (Forbes, the Astors, the Delanos, U.S. Steel, Ford, General Motors, and the universities of Harvard, Yale and Princeton).^[6]

The humiliation of Africa and China at the hands of Europe and the U.S. cannot be brushed aside. When considering China’s current investment in Africa and Africa’s openness to this investment, it is imperative to include the long African and Chinese struggles against Western imperialism.

The founders of modern China and modern Cape Verde—Mao Zedong and Amilcar Cabral—were two of the greatest anti-imperialists of the 20^th century. And both nations still tap into the Third-World perspective to develop their people.

For example, China’s Belt and Road Initiative—of which Cape Verde is a strategic part—is boldly uniting the economies of Asia, Africa and Latin America. It is the materialization of the South-South alternative which first emerged in the 1955 Bandung Conference in Indonesia.

Map of China’s one-belt-one-road initiative. [Source: allafrica.com]

The 20^th century struggle against Western imperialism was even more global than imperialism itself. To bring down the Portuguese empire, for instance, required not just pan-Africanism but universalism (the equality of all races and all nations). Amilcar Cabral identified this in his speeches and writing:

“One should not forget that the African revolution is in the service of the peace and progress of humanity as a whole. If the African peoples succeed in taking into their hands, exploit and develop rationally all the material and human resources of their countries, it will be a decisive contribution to world peace, to the total disappearance of imperialism …”

“One should not forget that whatever the particularities of the African case and the possible originality of African societies, the laws of their development are the same as those of all the other human societies.”^[7]

These were not abstract thoughts. Cabral, in the 1960s, explicitly connected the struggle for freedom in Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau with universalistic societies throughout the world.

Cabral and other leaders of PAIGC [African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde] became regular guests at the Chinese embassy in Conakry [Guinea]. In 1960, the PAIGC received an invitation from the Chinese Committee for Afro-Asian Solidarity to visit China. A delegation from the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) was invited as well. During this visit, China agreed to use their military academies to train combatants from both the PAIGC and the MPLA.

As a result of Cabral’s leadership and diplomacy, China would emerge as one of Guinea-Bissau’s [and Cape Verde’s] first supporters in the early stage of its struggle for independence. China provided the PAIGC with a great diversity of support, from weaponry to assistance broadcasting radio messages denouncing the regular, horrific crimes of the Portuguese military in Guinea-Bissau. With support from China on one hand, and Portuguese brutality on the other, the anti-colonial struggle intensified between 1963 and 1974.^[8]

After the collapse of Portuguese imperialism in 1974, and the independence of Cape Verde in 1975, the relationships Cape Verde made during its struggle against Western racism continued. None was more important or more lasting than that with China.

Since its own birth in 1949, the People’s Republic of China has been supporting the construction of an Africa free from imperialism. This revolutionary narrative—in one way or the other—forms the backbone of China’s modern engagement with the continent.

Zhou Enlai, the first Premier of the People’s Republic of China, was a key signatory to the ten Bandung principles in 1955—which outlined Afro-Asian solidarity. These guiding points were based on the Charter of the United Nations and its idea of peaceful cooperation. But explicit, in the principles, was the belief “in the equality of all races and … the equality of all nations large and small.”^[9]

Zhou Enlai signs autograph for an admirer at the 1955 Bandung Conference. [Source: chinadaily.com]

The U.S. response to this egalitarian initiative within the Third World was an act of covert war: The CIA planted a bomb on the airplane it believed was transporting Zhou Enlai to Bandung. On April 11, 1955, 16 people died in the mid-air explosion between Hong Kong and Indonesia. The Chinese Premier, however, was on a different aircraft.^[10]

In the decades following the Bandung Conference, China outlined its position regarding Africa more clearly. Speaking in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1964, Zhou Enlai said:

“Although the Chinese people and the African peoples speak different languages and are thousands of miles apart, we have similarly experienced aggression and oppression by imperialism and colonialism, and we face the common fighting tasks of opposing imperialism and building up our respective countries. We understand each other best and we share each other’s feelings.” ^[11]

And, significantly, this message of solidarity and common struggle against Western racism continued after the death of Mao in 1976.

In 1996 the Chinese leader, Jiang Zemin, speaking to the Organization of African Unity (OAU), stated that the Chinese and African people “never have … had any conflicts between them.” Instead, “both [have] suffered enormously under colonialists and foreign aggression.” And as a result, they are “joining hands in building the solid foundation of Sino-African friendship and cooperation …” The developmental goal was to eliminate “the unjust and inequitable economic order left over from the past.” ^[12]

This decades-long anti-imperialist approach to Africa was then institutionalized in 2000 in the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC). And it was clarified in the words of China’s leaders when they addressed the first Forum in Beijing. Premier Zhu Rongji spoke of the

“road towards friendship and cooperation [that] is covered with the footprints of Chinese and African leaders of several generations….”

Image on the right: Zhu Rongji [Source: britannica.com]

He spoke of this “joint struggle waged by the Chinese and African peoples shoulder by shoulder … [to create] a fair and rational new international political and economic order.” ^[13]

And President Jiang Zemin could not have been more explicit:

“[H]aving smashed the shackles of the colonial rule that lasted for several centuries, the African people won their national liberation and independence … and the Chinese people did away with imperialism, feudalism and bureaucratic capitalism …

“We have come to the conclusion after a review of the history of the past one hundred years that the Chinese people and the African people both treasure independence … and … are both important forces for world peace and common development.”^[14]

This anti-colonial value system underlies China’s investment in Africa today. And it helps to explain not only the new Chinese-built university in Cape Verde but also the Chinese-built Poilão dam in Cape Verde—as well as the Chinese-built national stadium in Cape Verde. It explains why China is building a special economic zone in Cape Verde—on the island of São Vicente. And it explains why the U.S. government is today so anxious about Africa.^[15]

However, the fact is that China’s deep anti-imperialist narrative regarding Africa is only credible if there is an opposing deep imperialist narrative. It is only believable if Chinese construction in Africa is countered by imperialist destruction. It only holds water if the imperialist leopard—in Africa—has not changed its spots.

The evidence suggests that it has not. Portugal may have pulled back from Cape Verde and its other colonies, but the U.S. has rushed in to fill its imperialist boots.

In 1949, the U.S. aligned itself with Europe’s empires—U.S. President Joe Biden now calls these “the world’s democracies”—the British, French, Dutch, Belgian and Portuguese. At the time, Africa was still in the grip of these European racists. And one of the objectives of this new alignment—NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization)—was to tighten that grip on Africa.

Cape Verde’s hero—Amilcar Cabral—was completely aware of the post-World War II restructuring of imperialism. In 1968, he noted:

“[T]he Portuguese government is able to count more than ever on the effective aid of the NATO allies …

“It is our duty to stress the international character of the Portuguese colonial war against Africa and the important and even decisive role played by the USA … If the Portuguese government is still holding out on the three fronts of the war which it is fighting in Africa, it is because it can count on the overt or covert support of the USA, freely use NATO weapons [and] buy B26 aircraft for the genocide of our people …” ^[16]

Since the assassination of Cabral in 1973, the U.S. and its NATO proxies may have lost their formal grip on Africa; but they continue to strangle Africa militarily. The most blatant example of this is NATO’s destruction of Libya in 2011.

Before the U.S. and its “democratic” partners bombed Libya, that country “had the highest Human Development Index, the lowest infant mortality and the highest life expectancy in all of Africa.”^[17] There was also—at the time of the bombardment—75 Chinese companies (36,000 employees) working inside Libya—constructing housing, railways, telecommunications and hydroelectric facilities. ^[18]

The end result of NATO’s unprovoked act of war against Libya (and Africa) was a catastrophic socio-economic reversal in the region, summarized in headlines such as “Slavery in Libya: Life inside a container”^[19] and “Slavery and Human Trafficking in Libya.”^[20]

When asked about the murder of the man (Muammar Gaddafi) who led Libya to the top of the African human development index, the then U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, succinctly expressed the barbaric values underpinning the U.S. approach to Africa: “We came, we saw, he died.” And then she laughed. ^[21]

War is the language of imperialism and, in Africa today, the U.S. speaks it fluently. Under the cover of “counterterrorism” and “counterinsurgency,” the U.S. and its NATO allies are inserting their forces throughout the continent.

On the one hand, there is the ongoing French Operation Barkhane (2014) that has spread thousands of NATO soldiers across West Africa.

And on the other hand, there is the United States African Command (AFRICOM—founded in 2007). The mission statement of AFRICOM is clear: It exists to “to advance U.S. national interests … and … support U.S. Government foreign policy … through military-to-military activities.” ^[22]

In 2019, just 12 years after its creation, AFRICOM had a “network” of 29 military bases spread across 15 African countries. ^[23]

Indeed, for U.S. leaders Africa is now “a petri dish and a proving ground for the development of a limited power-projection paradigm of drones, Special Operations forces, military advisers, local proxies, and clandestine intelligence missions.” ^[24]

This is alarming for Africa because it recalls the covert role of the U.S. military in post-World War Two Latin America. U.S. “military-to-military activities” in that part of the Third World resulted in neo-fascist dictatorships and “lost decades of development.”

Only a few decades after losing Africa, Western imperialism is back in Africa with a bang. And “Great Power Competition” is its excuse.

NATO’s purpose is to defend the economic order into which it was born. In 1949 the global economy revolved around the North Atlantic and its Bretton Woods system. To guarantee the flow of global wealth toward Western Europe and North America, NATO teamed up with institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF).

However, it is this precise order—an order which props up the West at the expense of the Third World—which was challenged by the 1949 Chinese revolution and the decolonization of Africa in the 1960s and 1970s.

The exponential growth of the People’s Republic of China and the current export of that growth to Africa amount now to being a supercharged extension of that challenge.

The struggles for political freedom in Africa, therefore, have transformed into struggles for economic freedom—indeed for economic survival.

After NATO’s wars against African liberation there followed “NATO’s neoliberal attack” on Africa. NATO’s neocolonial debt traps and structural adjustment policies have plagued Africa since the 1980s. In fact, U.S. free-market fundamentalism sabotaged the freedom which Africa fought for.

The values underpinning this U.S. faith in the market—a propos Africa—were revealed in the infamous Summers memo of 1991. At the time Lawrence Summers was Chief Economist and Vice President at the World Bank. In his opinion,

the “under-populated countries in Africa are vastly under-polluted; their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low [sic] compared to Los Angeles.” ^[25]

In other words, this top U.S. economic strategist was advocating “the dumping of toxic waste in Africa.”^[26]

For many observers, though, it is even worse than that: The dictates of the U.S.-based World Bank and IMF created an “apocalyptic situation” in post-colonial Africa.

“The most basic index of well-being is life itself—how many years a human can expect to live. Yet while other regions’ life expectancy is steadily improving … Africa’s is now going backwards:

“Life expectancy declined in no fewer than 31 African countries between 1995 and 1998.”

The imperialist logic of neoliberalism in Africa is clear: “[It] is actually planned and reminiscent of the paleo-liberal strategy of the British state in the famines in Ireland and India and the Clearances of the Scottish Highlands in the 19th century.”

The objective conclusion can only be that U.S.-trained economists—the disciples of Milton Friedman inside the IMF and World Bank—since the liberation of Africa, “[have] knowingly … incorporated the death of millions as an element in their strategy … Theirs is clearly a strategy of ‘terror from above.’”’^[27]

As the 21^st century began, China entered into this “apocalyptic” U.S.-made situation. And as it did in the 1960s, it changed the orientation of Africa for the better. In contrast to Western “terror from above” (dictates and drones), China has been building up from below.

Since 2011, China has been the biggest player in Africa’s infrastructure boom, claiming a 40% share that continues to rise. Meanwhile, the shares of other players are falling precipitously: Europe declined from 44% to 34%, while the presence of U.S. contractors fell from 24% to just 6.7%. ^[28]

Today’s partnership between Cape Verde and China is the cutting edge of this “construction boom.” In the 1960s these two nations combined to defeat the politics of imperialism. Now they are combining to battle the economics of imperialism: “the unjust and inequitable economic order left over from the past.”

If there is “great power competition” in Africa today, the U.S. has already lost the moral high ground since it remains committed to the infrastructure of imperialism—a system which creates nothing but destabilization. For the U.S., therefore, Africa is first and foremost a “security issue”—a “heart of darkness.”

Africa, however, is not an ahistorical enigma or a prize to be won in a competition. It is a proud continent which broke free from imperialism around the same time as China broke free from imperialism. And at the 1955 Bandung Conference both Africa and China invested in freedom from empire and peaceful cooperation. No evidence to date suggests that China has disavowed the spirit of Bandung.

In stark contrast, the U.S.—around 1950—chose to partner with Western Europe (NATO) rather than with the world. It chose empire. It chose to violently oppose “Bandung.” It chose war, racism and the neoliberal apocalypse. If Africa must now choose between China and the U.S., the choice is obvious.

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Notes

1. Ken Moriyasu, Ryo Nakamura and Kaori Yoshida, “Great power competition: US boosts Africa diplomacy on land and sea,” February 25, 2021, www.asia.nikkei.com
2. Hal Brands and Zack Cooper, “U.S.-Chinese Rivalry Is a Battle Over Values,” March 16, 2021, www.foreignaffairs.com
3. Pedro Ramos, “Cape Verde: A Blueprint for China’s Positive Role in Africa,” The Diplomat, October 28, 2016.
4. Andreia Nogueira, “New multi-million dollar island campus a ‘significant’ expansion,” October 15, 2020, www.universityworldnews.com
5. Ribeira Grande is now called Cidade Velha.
6. Jarele E. Soyinka, “Opulence and Opium: The Legacy of Harvard’s Drug Syndicate,” March 30, 2017, www.thecrimson.com; Martha Bebinger, “How Profits From Opium Shaped 19th-Century Boston,” July 31, 2017, www.wbur.org
7. Amilcar Cabral, speech before the Third Conference of the African Peoples in Cairo, March 1961, Yves Benot, and Nzongola-Ntalaja. “Amilcar Cabral and the International Working Class Movement.” Latin American Perspectives, vol. 11, no. 2, 1984, pp. 81-96. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2633523. Accessed March 15, 2021.
8. Curry Malott, Amilcar Cabral: Liberator, theorist and educator, January 20, 2021, www.liberationschool.org
9. The Ten Principles of Bandung, www.china daily.com.cn, updated April 23, 2005.
10. N.D. Jayaprakash, “Why the CIA Tried to Kill Chou En Lai,” July 9, 2005, www.counterpunch.org
11. Zhou Enlai, formal address to a mass rally in Mogadishu, February 3, 1964, Strauss, Julia C. “The Past in the Present: Historical and Rhetorical Lineages in China’s Relations with Africa.” The China Quarterly, no. 199, 2009, pp. 777–795. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/27756501. Accessed March 15, 2021.
12. Jiang Zemin, Towards a new historical milestone in Sino-African friendship, 1996, Strauss, Julia C. “The Past in the Present: Historical and Rhetorical Lineages in China’s Relations with Africa.” The China Quarterly, no. 199, 2009, pp. 777–795. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/27756501. Accessed Mar 15, 2021.
13. Zhu Rongji, “Strengthen Solidarity, Enhance Cooperation and Pursue Common Development,” October 12, 2000, FOCAC Beijing Summit, www.china.org.cn
14. Jiang Zemin, “China and Africa-Usher in the New Century Together,” FOCAC Beijing Summit 2000, www.china.org.cn
15. Pedro Ramos, “Cape Verde: A Blueprint For China’s Positive Role in Africa,” October 28, 2016, www.thediplomat.com; Christopher Marc “Lilyblad, Cape Verde is Emerging as a Global Pivot Point,” October 20, 2020, www.foreignpolicy.com; Roncevert Ganan Almond, “Cabo Verde’s Gamble: Chinese Island-Building in the Atlantic,” April 25, 2017, www.thediplomat.com
16. Amilcar Cabral, The Development of the Struggle, Declaration made to the OSPAAAL General Secretariat December 1968, www.marxists.org
17. Garikai Chengu, “Libya: From Africa’s Wealthiest Democracy Under Gaddafi to Terrorist Haven After US Intervention,” October 20, 2015, www.counterpunch.org
18. ANSAmed, China in Libya – investments and neutrality, www.ansamed.info; Tania Branigan, “China looks to protect its assets in a post-Gaddafi Libya,” August 23, 2011, www.theguardian.com
19. Fatma Naib, “Slavery in Libya: Life Inside a Container,” January 26, 2018, www.aljazeera.com
20. Andrea Duleux, “Slavery and Human Trafficking in Libya,” February 14, 2020, www.borgenmagazine.com
21. Corbett Daly, “Clinton on Qaddafi: ‘We came, we saw, he died,’” October 20, 2011, www.cbsnews.com
22. What We Do, AFRICOM Mission Statement, www.africom.mil
23. Nick Turse, “Pentagon’s Own Map of U.S. Bases in Africa Contradicts Its Claim of ‘Light’ Footprint,” February 27, 2020, www.theintercept.com
24. Danny Sjursen, “The future of war, American-style,” February 3, 2021, www.salon.com
25. Basil Enwegbara, “Toxic Colonialism, Lawrence Summers And Let Africans Eat Pollution,” April 6, 2001, www.the tech.com 
26. Ibid.
27. George Caffentzis, “Neoliberalism in Africa, Apocalyptic Failures and Business as Usual Practices,” Fall 2002, ALTERNATIVES Turkish Journal of International Relations, www.dergipark.org.tr

28. Wade Shepard, “What China Is Really Up To In Africa,” October 3, 2019, www.forbes.com

Featured image: Chinese President Xi Jinping (right) meets with Cape Verde’s Prime Minister Ulisses Correia e Silva at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Sept. 6, 2018. [Source: xinhuanet.com]

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Israeli lawyers and human rights activists Arie Suchovolsky and Ruth Machnes have filed a petition against Israel claiming that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Minister of Health Yuli Edelstein have violated Nuremberg codes against experimenting on humans by making deals with with Pfizer/Biontech to deliver Israel’s citizens as subjects for experimental genetic treatment by using draconian measures to force them to take Pfizer’s vaccine.

Click here to listen to the interview. This was removed by YouTube.

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“At some level of extreme wealth, money inevitably corrupts… it buys political power, it silences dissent, it serves primarily to perpetuate ever-greater wealth, often unrelated to any reciprocal social good.”(Farhad Manjoo(1))

Distorting Politics – Dark Money and Oligarchy 

In earlier posts I have discussed how powerful companies are able to manipulate politics. This also applies to excessively wealthy individuals. They lobby for policies that benefit themselves, even if they hurt society. They actively work to shrink the role of government in helping the poor, to decrease social security, to cut taxes for the rich, to cut regulation of big business, to allow the environment to be destroyed, and to privatise more and more. They do this by funding politicians who share these views.

They promote ideas that will make the rich richer and the poor poorer, even though they are unpopular with many people. This has decreased the willingness of our political leaders to deal with real problems.(2) Most wealthy people do not care about unemployment, food banks or homelessness. They are more interested in legalising ever more complex forms of tax manipulation.

They spend a great deal of what is known as ‘dark money’ under the radar to influence these politicians.(3) They do it very quietly, with no media discussion, no transparency and no accountability. The billionaire Koch brothers are notorious for operating businesses engaged in corporate wrongdoing. They increase their wealth by doing things that harm society, but they are also notorious for spending huge amounts to manipulate politics. One writer described the events of the last few decades as an:

“audacious project, decades in the making, to fundamentally change the relationship between the people and the government and to do so permanently in a manner that is designed to pin the proverbial pendulum to the right [in favour of the rich] so that it cannot swing back again.”(4)

Many commentators have pointed out that what we have now in Britain and the US is ‘government by the 1% for the 1%’,(5) or ‘by millionaires for billionaires’. This is known as oligarchy. The wealthy try to ensure that political power is aligned with their economic power. The whole system becomes self-reinforcing. We have a society geared ever more towards the needs of excessively wealthy people, and inequality keeps increasing. We no longer have a functioning democracy. 

The propaganda around immense wealth has been very effective:

“They have justified their wealth by describing themselves as wealth creators, brilliant innovators, or world-changers. They also claim that they are necessary to fill the gaps left by incompetent government. What is missing from this is a discussion about their role in destroying the ability of governments to do things.”(6) 

The evidence indicates that high taxes and high government expenditure are beneficial to societies, yet the rich continually lobby for lower taxes.(7) Tax rates have generally decreased for the richest people over the last few decades. At the same time there has been an increase in other taxes that affect the poor, such as Value Added Tax (VAT). Tax systems would almost certainly be much fairer if the wealthy weren’t so influential in influencing politicians.(8)

The same applies to choices about where governments spend their money. We have seen in earlier posts that governments pay large subsidies to big companies, but there are many other ways for governments to spend money that would be much more useful, such as a properly funded healthcare system, or better social services. Because the rich determine policy, the poor are squeezed in every direction: Lower pay, higher prices, and less support in times of need.

Occasionally we hear discussions about wealth taxes, land taxes or financial transactions taxes. The reason these are not part of policymaking discussions is that the rich successfully keep them out of serious consideration.

Excessive Wealth Undermines Democracy in Poor Countries  

The writer, Oscar Wilde, wrote of philanthropists (rich people who use their money for good causes) many years ago:

“They seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see in poverty, but their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it…the proper aim [should be] to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible.”

The same is true today. People with excessive wealth create foundations which allow them to use their power and wealth to influence events overseas. Billionaires such as George Soros fund political groups, but their opinion of what an ideal society might look like might not be the same as that of the local population. They are therefore undermining democracy.(9) The influence of some excessively-wealthy individuals can be so great that it affects global political issues. A report in 2020 showed that 3 billionaires lobbied US President Trump to undermine an important negotiation with Iran.(10)

Other rich people use foundations to try to influence the policies of charitable and international organisations.(11) The most notorious example of this is Bill Gates, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Gates has been manipulating policy on health, farming and education, among other things. Strategies include placing people in international organisations, and gaining privileged access to policymakers.

Gates is influential at the World Health Organisation, and there is a revolving door between his foundation and the big pharmaceutical companies.(12) He provides medicines in poor countries by buying them from those companies, but he doesn’t challenge the patent system, which stops poor countries making their own medicines in the first place. His policy recommendations involve ideas like technology in schools, which increases Microsoft profits and enriches himself.

Foundations have been widely criticised for isolated and poorly coordinated solutions; for spreading corporate farming, and opening up African markets to US agriculture and biotechnology companies; for financial arrangements (known as public-private partnerships) that have already been disastrous in rich countries; and for possibly weakening public health systems in developing countries.(13) Many of these policies create downsides for local populations. The focus becomes whatever rich, white donors are interested in, instead of what might be the top priorities for people in recipient countries.

The people who set up these foundations made their wealth by exploiting the economic system to extract wealth from everyone else, and being among the greediest profiteers in history.(14) They are unlikely to be the right people to set up long-term policies for poor countries. Modern researchers have echoed Wilde’s sentiment:

“Appealing to the megarich to be more charitable is not a solution to global health problems. We need a system that does not create so many billionaires and, until we do that, this kind of philanthropy is either a distraction or potentially harmful to the need for systemic change.”(15) 

Controlling the News – Distorting How We Think About The World

In earlier posts we also saw that the mainstream media in Britain and the US have become a propaganda system controlled by excessively wealthy individuals, or governments. We also saw how the positive presentation of historical wealth by the media plays a propaganda role. Media output is distorted to serve the interests of their owners, which usually means the interests of rich people in general. Even mainstream commentators, such as Paul Krugman,(16) have commented on the extent to which the richest people get to define the agenda. The former US Secretary of Labour, Robert Reich, has said:

“They have employed one of the oldest methods used by the wealthy to maintain wealth and power – a belief system that portrays wealth and power in the hands of a few as natural and inevitable”(17)

All problems, and their possible solutions, are presented within a narrow framework, which fails to question the status quo, to challenge excess wealth, or to question how the economic and financial systems really work. The really important criticisms of the system are rarely discussed. It therefore becomes difficult to understand why many people are poor, or for members of the public to engage meaningfully in policy discussions. 

The media reinforces the idea that we should define success by how much money we have. Discussions about redefining success in other terms, such as happiness, culture, selflessness and helping others, rarely receive mainstream attention.

People Used To Talk About This 

The serious downsides of excessive wealth have been known for many years, and measures were put in place to decrease its effects at various times in the past. In the US from 1936-1980 the top tax rate never dropped below 70%.(18) In the UK, the top rate of tax peaked at 98%.(19) It is only in the last 40 years that these downsides have been ignored by most politicians and by most of the mainstream media. They unquestioningly assume that it’s ok to have extremely rich people and extreme inequality. 

What Can Be Done? Plutocracy Prevention Program 

Britain and the US could easily provide a high standard of living, and good quality of life, to all their citizens. Their failure to do so is a conscious choice by the rich and powerful, whose primary goal is manipulating the system to benefit themselves. Some people in the US are beginning to talk about this, with suggestions for income tax rates of up to 70%, and the introduction of taxes on existing wealth of 2-3%.(20) These would produce significant revenues for the government, but they are only a small fraction of what is required to eliminate vast concentrations of wealth.Taxing income at 70% still leaves some people with incomes of $250 billion / year. Wealth taxes of 2-3% would also leave the richest people becoming richer by billions of dollars / year.

These mainstream conversations are a sign of how the range of possibilities that are considered reasonable is limited to fit within the existing framework. The proposals don’t get to the source of the problem, which is that the entire economic system is rigged to make the rich richer. If we accept that excessive wealth is harmful to society then we need to transform the system so that the highest incomes drop to a small fraction of what they are now, and remove existing concentrations of wealth.

We would have to change many parts of the existing system. We would have to end all mechanisms that allow powerful people and companies to extract excess wealth from everyone else. The first step is to overcome decades of corporate propaganda, which brainwashes us into thinking that the existing system is reasonable. We have to begin a conversation where all options are discussed, with nothing ruled out because it is difficult. This would include challenging the right of people or organisations to own or control unlimited wealth.

For example, some people recommend an estate tax (inheritance tax in the UK) to reduce inheritances, but this still allows billions to be inherited. Instead, if we had a limit of say £100,000 (or dollars) as the maximum that anyone can inherit in their lifetime, it would transform the situation. Some people have even suggested ending inheritance altogether.(21) These ideas would require changes to many parts of the legal system, such as trusts, offshore accounts, and control of big companies, but should be discussed seriously.

A complementary approach is to reduce the role of wealth in leading a comfortable life. If the poorest people have excellent, free healthcare, an affordable home, and enough income to do what they consider important, then wealth becomes unnecessary. However, when billionaires manipulate politics, this approach is undermined. We therefore also need policies to reduce the power and political influence of those with excessive wealth, in order to allow for a much broader, wide-ranging discussion of possible options.

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Rod Driver is a part-time academic who is particularly interested in de-bunking modern-day US and British propaganda, and explaining war, terrorism, economics and poverty, without the nonsense in the mainstream media. This article was first posted at medium.com/elephantsintheroom

Notes 

1) Farhad Manjoo, ‘Abolish Billionaires’, New York Times, at https://medium.com/new-york-times-opinion/abolish-billionaires-c87593db0c22

2) Nancy Maclean, Democracy in Chains: The deep history of the radical right’s stealth plan for America, 2017

3) George Monbiot, ‘How US Billionaires are fuelling the hard-right cause in Britain’, The Guardian, 7 Dec 2018, at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/07/us-billionaires-hard-right-britain-spiked-magazine-charles-david-koch-foundation 

4) Nancy Maclean, ‘Capturing Democracy’, in EPI, ‘Taxing the (Very) Rich: Finding the Cure for Excessive Wealth Disorder’, Economic Policy Institute, 25 Jun 2019, at https://www.epi.org/event/taxing-the-very-rich-finding-the-cure-for-excessive-wealth-disorder/

5) Joseph Stiglitz, ‘Of the 1%, By the 1%, For the 1%’, Vanity Fair, 31 March 2011, at https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2011/05/top-one-percent-201105 

6) Unknown speaker, taken from EPI, ‘Taxing the (Very) Rich: Finding the Cure for Excessive Wealth Disorder’, Economic Policy Institute, 25 Jun 2019, at https://www.epi.org/event/taxing-the-very-rich-finding-the-cure-for-excessive-wealth-disorder/

7) ‘The super-rich and Us, part 1’, at https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2eiirb

‘The super-rich and us Part 2’, at https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x67qpdu

8) EPI, ‘Taxing the (Very) Rich: Finding the Cure for Excessive Wealth Disorder’, Economic Policy Institute, 25 Jun 2019, at https://www.epi.org/event/taxing-the-very-rich-finding-the-cure-for-excessive-wealth-disorder/ 

9) Daniel Bessner, The George Soros Philosophy – and its fatal flaw, The Guardian, 6 July 2018, at https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jul/06/the-george-soros-philosophy-and-its-fatal-flaw 

10) Philip Weiss and James North, ‘Adelsons got a lot from Trump for $75 million – But media won’t tell you what’, 16 Oct 2020, at https://www.globalresearch.ca/adelsons-got-lot-trump-75-million-media-wont-tell-you-what/5727752

11 Chuck Collins ‘A cure for Excessive Wealth Disorder’, Commondreams, 3 April 2019 https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/04/03/cure-excessive-wealth-disorder 

12) Andrew Bowman, ‘The flip side to Bill Gates’ charity billions’, New Internationalist, 1 April 2012, at  https://newint.org/features/2012/04/01/bill-gates-charitable-giving-ethics

13) John Vidal, ‘Are Gates and Rockefeller Using Their Influence to Set Agenda in Poor States?’, The Guardian, 15 Jan 2016, at https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/jan/15/bill-gates-rockefeller-influence-agenda-poor-nations-big-pharma-gm-hunger 

14) Aditya Chakrabortty, ‘Winners Take All by Anand Giridharadas review – superb hate-reading’, The Guardian, 14 Feb 2019, at https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/feb/14/winners-take-all-by-anand-giridharadas-review 

15) David McCoy, cited in Andrew Bowman, ‘The flip side to Bill Gates’ charity billions’, New Internationalist, 1 April 2012, at  https://newint.org/features/2012/04/01/bill-gates-charitable-giving-ethics

16) Paul Krugman, ‘Taxing the very rich: finding the cure for excessive wealth disorder’, 25 Jun 2019, at https://www.epi.org/event/taxing-the-very-rich-finding-the-cure-for-excessive-wealth-disorder/ 

Paul Krugman, ‘Notes on Excessive Wealth Disorder’, New York Times, 22 June 2019, at https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/22/opinion/notes-on-excessive-wealth-disorder.html 

17) Robert Reich, ‘To reverse inequality, we need to expose the myth of the ‘free market’, The Guardian, 9 Dec 2020, at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/09/inequality-free-market-myth-billionaires 

18) Henry Blodget, ‘The truth about taxes: Here’s how high today’s rates really are’, Busines Insider, 12 July 2011, at https://www.businessinsider.com/history-of-tax-rates?r=US&IR=T 

19) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_the_United_Kingdom

20) EPI, ‘Taxing the (Very) Rich: Finding the Cure for Excessive Wealth Disorder’, Economic Policy Institute, 25 Jun 2019, at https://www.epi.org/event/taxing-the-very-rich-finding-the-cure-for-excessive-wealth-disorder/ 

21) James Butler, ‘Inherited wealth is an injustice’, The Guardian, 26 Mar 2014, at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/26/inherited-wealth-injustice-lets-end-it

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Twenty years ago, a group of neoconservative think tanks used their power to push for disastrous wars in the Middle East. Now, a new set of think tanks staffed with many of the same experts and funded by Taiwanese money is working hard to convince Americans that there is a new existential threat: China.

At MintPress, we have been at the forefront of exposing how Middle Eastern dictatorships and weapons contractors have been funneling money into think tanks and political action committees, keeping up a steady drumbeat for more war and conflict around the world. Yet one little-discussed nation that punches well above its weight in spending cash in Washington is Taiwan.

By studying Taiwan’s financial reports, MintPress has ascertained that the semi-autonomous island of 23 million people has, in recent years, given out millions of dollars to many of the largest and most influential think tanks in the United States. This has coincided with a strong upsurge in anti-China rhetoric in Washington, with report after report warning of China’s economic rise and demanding that the U.S. intervene more in China-Taiwan disputes.

These think tanks are filled with prominent figures from both parties and have the ears of the most powerful politicians in Washington. It is in their offices that specialists draw up papers and incubate ideas that become tomorrow’s policies. They also churn out experts who appear in agenda-setting media, helping to shape and control the public debate on political and economic issues.

Twenty years ago, a group of neoconservative think tanks like the Project for a New American Century, funded by foreign governments and weapons manufacturers, used their power to push for disastrous wars in the Middle East. Now, a new set of think tanks, staffed with many of those same experts who provided the intellectual basis for those invasions, is working hard to convince Americans that there is a new existential threat: China.

A fistful of dollars

In 2019, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States (TECRO) — for all intents and purposes, the Taiwanese embassy — donated between $250,000 and $499,999 to the Brookings Institute, commonly identified as the world’s most influential think tank. Taiwanese tech companies have also given large sums to the organization. In turn, Brookings Institute staff like Richard C. Bush (a former member of the National Intelligence Council and a U.S. national intelligence officer for East Asia) vociferously champion the cause of Taiwanese nationalists and routinely condemn Beijing’s attempts to bring the island more closely under control.

TECRO featured prominently among myriad defense interests on the donor rolls for both the Atlantic Council, left, and Brookings Institute

Last week, Brookings held an event called “Taiwan’s quest for security and the good life,” which began with the statement that “Taiwan is rightly praised for its democracy. Elections are free, fair, and competitive; civil and political rights are protected.” It went on to warn that the “most consequential” challenge to the island’s liberty and prosperity is “China’s ambition to end Taiwan’s separate existence.”

According to another organization’s latest financial disclosure, TECRO also gave a six-figure sum to the Atlantic Council, a think tank closely associated with NATO. It is unclear what the Atlantic Council did with that money, but what is certain is that they gave a senior fellowship to Chang-Ching Tu, an academic employed by the Taiwanese military to teach at the country’s National Defense University. In turn, Tu authored Atlantic Council reports describing his country as a “champion [of] global democracy,” and stating that “democracy, freedom and human rights are Taiwan’s core values.” A menacing China, however, is increasing its military threats, so Taiwan must “accelerate its deterrence forces and strengthen its self-defense capabilities.” Thus he advises that the U.S. must work far more closely with Taiwan’s military, conducting joint exercises and moving towards a more formal military alliance. In 2020, the U.S. sold $5.9 billion worth of arms to the island, making it the fifth-largest recipient of American weaponry last year.

Other Taiwan-employed academics have chided the West on the pages of the Council’s website for its insufficient zeal in “deter[ring] Chinese aggression” against the island. “A decision by the United States to back down” — wrote Philip Anstrén, a Swedish recipient of a fellowship from the Taiwanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs — “could damage the credibility of U.S. defense guarantees and signal that Washington’s will to defend its allies is weak.” Anstrén also insisted that “Europe’s future is on the line in the Taiwan Strait.” “Western democratic nations have moral obligations vis-à-vis Taiwan,” he added on his blog, “and Western democracies have a duty to ensure that [Taiwan] not only survives but also thrives.”

The reason this is important is that the Atlantic Council is an enormously influential think tank. Its board of directors is a who’s-who in foreign policy statecraft, featuring no fewer than seven former CIA directors. Also on the board are many of the architects of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and James Baker. When organizations like this begin beating the war drums, everybody should take note.

Perhaps the most strongly anti-Beijing think tank in Washington is the conservative Hudson Institute, an organization frequented by many of the Republican Party’s most influential figures, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former Vice-President Mike Pence and Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton. The words “China” or “Chinese” appear 137 times in Hudson’s latest annual report, so focused on the Asian nation are they. Indeed, reading their output, it often appears they care about little else but ramping up tensions with Beijing, condemning it for its treatment of Hong Kong, Taiwan and Uyghur Muslims, and warning of the economic and military threat of a rising China.

An excerpt from a 2020 Hudson Institue report on existential threats to the United States

Over the years, Hudson’s efforts have been sustained by huge donations from TECRO. The Hudson Institute does not disclose the exact donations any sources give, but their annual reports show that TECRO has been on the highest tier of donors ($100,000+) every year since they began divulging their sponsors in 2015. In February, Hudson Senior Fellow Thomas J. Duesterberg wrote an op-ed for Forbes entitled “The Economic Case for Prioritizing a U.S.-Taiwan Free Trade Agreement,” in which he extolled Taiwan’s economy as modern and dynamic and portrayed securing closer economic ties with it as a no-brainer. Hudson employees have also traveled to Taiwan to meet and hold events with leading foreign ministry officials there.

The Hudson Institute also recently partnered with the more liberal Center for American Progress (CAP) to host an event with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, who took the opportunity to make a great number of inflammatory statements about the “ever more challenging threats to free and democratic societies” China poses; applaud the U.S.’ actions on Hong Kong; and talk about how Taiwan honors and celebrates those who died at the Tiananmen Square massacre. TECRO gave the CAP between $50,000 and $100,000 last year.

It is the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), however, that appears to receive the most Taiwanese money. According to its donor list, Taiwan gives as much money to it as the United States does — at least $500,000 last year alone. Yet all of the Taiwanese government money is put into CSIS’s regional studies (i.e., Asia) program. Like Hudson employees, the CSIS calls for a free trade agreement with Taiwan and has lavished praise on the nation for its approach to tackling disinformation, describing it as a “thriving democracy and a cultural powerhouse.” Although acknowledging that the reports were paid for by TECRO, CSIS insists that “all opinions expressed herein should be understood to be solely those of the authors and are not influenced in any way by any donation.” In December, the CSIS also held a debatesuggesting that “[w]ithin the next five years, China will use significant military force against a country on its periphery,” exploring what the U.S. response to such an action should be.

Like the Atlantic Council, the CSIS organization is stacked with senior officials from the national security state. Its president and CEO is former Deputy Secretary of Defense John Hamre, while Henry Kissinger — former secretary of state and the architect of the Vietnam War — also serves on its council.

The CSIS accepts money from the Global Taiwan Institute and the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy (TFD) as well. The former is a rather shadowy pro-Taiwanese group that appears not to disclose its funding sources. The latter is a government-funded organization headed by former Taiwanese President You Si-kun. Every year, the TFD publishes a human rights report on China, the latest of which claims that “the Chinese Communist Party knows no bounds when it comes to committing serious human rights violations” — accusing it of “taking the initiative” in “promoting a new Cold War over the issue of human rights” and trying to “replace the universal standing of human rights values around the world.” Ultimately, the report concludes, China “constitutes a major challenge to democracy and freedom in the world.”

Joseph Hwang of The War College in Taiwan speaks at a CSIS about how Taiwan acts a buffer to protect US data infrustructure from China

The TFD has also been a major funder of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, a far-right pressure group that insists that Communism has killed over 100 million people worldwide. Last year, the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation added all global COVID-19 fatalities to the list of Communist-caused deaths on the basis that the virus started in China. The Foundation also employs Adrian Zenz, a German evangelical theologian who is the unlikely source of many of the most controversial and contested claims about Chinese repression in Xinjiang province.

In the past 12 months, TECRO has also donated six-figure sums to many other prominent think tanks, including the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the Center for a New American Security, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. MintPress reached out to a number of these think tanks for comment but has not received any response.

“It would be naive to believe that Taiwan’s funding of think tanks is not pushing them to take pro-Taiwan or anti-China positions,” Ben Freeman, the director of the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at the Center for International Policy, told MintPress, adding:

After all, why would Taiwan keep funding think tanks that are critical of Taiwan? There’s a Darwinian element to foreign funding of think tanks that pushes foreign government funding to think tanks that write what that foreign government wants them to write. Taiwan is no exception to this rule.”

TECRO is not just sponsoring American think tanks, however. It has also given funds to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), a hawkish and controversial group described as “the think tank behind Australia’s changing view of China.” The country’s former ambassador in Beijing described ASPI as “the architect of the China threat theory in Australia” while Senator Kim Carr of Victoria denounced them as working hand-in-hand with Washington to push “a new Cold War with China.” ASPI was behind Twitter’s decision last year to purge more than 170,000 accounts sympathetic to Beijing from its platform.

“We must be ready to fight our corner as Taiwan tensions rise,” ASPI wrote in January, having previously castigated the West for being “no longer willing to defend Taiwan.”

ASPI — like Brookings, the Atlantic Council and others — are directly funded by weapons manufacturers, all of whom also have a direct interest in promoting more wars around the world. Thus, if the public is not careful, certain special interests might be helping move the United States towards yet another international conflict.

While the situation outlined above is concerning enough, the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative’s research has shown that around one-third of think tanks still do not provide any information whatsoever about their funding, and very few are completely open about their finances. Freeman maintains that, while there is nothing inherently wrong with foreign governments funding Western think tanks, the lack of transparency is seriously problematic, explaining:

This raises a lot of questions about the work they’re doing. Are their secret funders saying what the think tank can do in a pay-for-play scheme? Are the funders buying the think tanks silence on sensitive issues? Without knowing the think tank’s funders, policymakers and the public have no idea if the think tank’s work is objective research or simply the talking points of a foreign government.”

Freeman’s study of the Taiwanese lobby found that seven organizations registered as Taiwan’s foreign agents in the U.S. Those organizations, in turn, contacted 476 Members of Congress (including almost 90% of the House), as well as five congressional committees. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was their most frequent contact, the Californian being contacted 34 times by Taiwanese agents. Pelosi has been a great supporter of Taiwanese nationalists, successfully promoting pro-Taiwan legislation and proudly announcing that the U.S. “stands with Taiwan.”

Foreign agents working on behalf of Taiwan also made 143 political contributions to U.S. politicians, with former Alabama Senator Doug Jones the lead recipient (Pelosi was third).

Losing China, regaining Taiwan?

The reports listed above understand the dispute as purely a matter of Chinese belligerence against Taiwan and certainly do not consider U.S. military actions in the South China Sea as aggressive in themselves. That is because the world of think tanks and war planners sees the United States as owning the planet and having a remit to act anywhere on the globe at any time.

To this day, U.S. planners bemoan the “loss of China” in 1949 (a phrase that presupposes the United States owned the country). After a long and bloody Second World War, Communist resistance forces under Mao Tse-tung managed to both expel the Japanese occupation and overcome the U.S.-backed Kuomintang (nationalist) force led by Chang Kai-shek. The United States actually invaded China in 1945, with 50,000 troops working with the Kuomintang and even Japanese forces in an attempt to suppress the Communists. However, by 1949, Mao’s army was victorious; the United States evacuated and Chang Kai-shek retreated to Taiwan.

The Kuomintang ruled the island for 40 years as a one-party state and remains one of the two major political groups to this day. The war between the Communists and the Kuomintang never formally ended, and Taiwan has now lived through 70 years of estrangement from the mainland. Polls show a majority of Taiwanese now favor full independence, although a large majority still personally identify as Chinese.

While many Taiwanese welcome an increased U.S. presence in the region, Beijing certainly does not. In 2012, President Barack Obama announced the U.S.’ new “Pivot to Asia” strategy, moving forces from the Middle East towards China. Today, over 400 American military bases encircle it.

In recent months, the United States has also taken a number of provocative military actions on China’s doorstep. In July, it conducted naval exercises in the South China Sea, with warships and naval aircraft spotted just 41 nautical miles from the coastal megacity of Shanghai, intent on probing China’s coastal defenses. And in December, it flew nuclear bombers over Chinese vessels close to Hainan Island. Earlier this year, the head of Strategic Command made his intentions clear, stating that there was a “very real possibility” of war against China over a regional conflict like Taiwan. China, for its part, has also increased its forces in the region, carrying out military exercises and staking claims to a number of disputed islands.

A new Director of National Intelligence (DNI) report notes that China is the U.S.’ “unparalleled priority,” claiming that Beijing is making a “push for global power.” “We expect that friction will grow as Beijing steps up attempts to portray Taipei as internationally isolated and dependent on the mainland for economic prosperity, and as China continues to increase military activity around the island,” it concludes.

In an effort to stop this, Washington has recruited allies into the conflict. Australian media are reporting that their military is currently readying for war in an effort to force China to back down, while last week President Joe Biden met with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga to shore up a united front against Beijing vis-a-vis Taiwan.

In February, the Atlantic Council penned an anonymous 26,000-word report advising Biden to draw a number of red lines around China, beyond which a response — presumably military — is necessary. These included any military action or even a cyber attack against Taiwan. Any backing down from this stance, the council states, would result in national “humiliation” for the United States.

Perhaps most notably, however, the report also envisages what a successful American China policy would look like by 2050:

[T]he United States and its major allies continue to dominate the regional and global balance of power across all the major indices of power;… [and head of state Xi Jinping] has been replaced by a more moderate party leadership; and … the Chinese people themselves have come to question and challenge the Communist Party’s century-long proposition that China’s ancient civilization is forever destined to an authoritarian future.”

In other words, that China has been broken and that some sort of regime change has occurred.

Throughout all this, the United States has been careful to stress that it still does not recognize Taiwan and that their relationship is entirely “unofficial,” despite claiming that its commitment to the island remains “rock solid.” Indeed, only 14 countries formally recognize Taiwan, the largest and most powerful of which is Paraguay.

Along with a military conflict brewing, Washington has also been prosecuting an information and trade war against China on the world stage. Attempts to block the rise of major Chinese companies like Huawei, TikTok and Xiaomi are examples of this. Others in Washington have advised the Pentagon to carry out an under-the-table culture war against Beijing. This would include commissioning “Taiwanese Tom Clancy” novels that would “weaponize” China’s one-child policy against it, bombarding citizens with stories about how their only children will die in a war over Taiwan.

Republicans and Democrats constantly accuse each other of being in President Xi’s pocket, attempting to outdo each other in their jingoistic fervor. Last year, Florida Senator Rick Scottwent so far as to announce that every Chinese national in the U.S. was a Communist spy and should be treated with extreme suspicion. As a result, the American public’s view of China has crashed to an all-time low. Only three years ago, the majority of Americans held a positive opinion of China. But today, that number is only 20%. Asian-Americans of all backgrounds have reported a rise in hate crimes against them.

Cash rules everything around me

How much of the United States’ aggressive stance towards China can be attributed to Taiwanese money influencing politics? It is difficult to say. Certainly, the United States has its own policy goals in East Asia outside of Taiwan. But Freeman believes that the answer is not zero. The Taiwan lobby “absolutely has an impact on U.S. foreign policy,” he said, adding:

At one level, it creates an echo-chamber in D.C. that makes it taboo to question U.S. military ties with Taiwan. While I, personally, think there are good strategic reasons for the U.S. to support this democratic ally — and it’s clearly in Taiwan’s interest to keep the U.S. fully entangled in their security — it’s troubling that the D.C. policy community can’t have an honest conversation about what U.S. interests are. But, Taiwan’s lobby in D.C. and their funding of think tanks both work to stifle this conversation and, frankly, they’ve been highly effective.”

Other national lobbies affect U.S. policy. The Cuban lobby helps ensure that the American stance towards its southern neighbor remains as antagonistic as possible. Meanwhile, the Israel lobby helps ensure continuing U.S. support for Israeli actions in the Middle East. Yet more ominously with Taiwan, its representatives are helping push the U.S. closer towards a confrontation with a nuclear power.

While Taiwanese money appears to have convinced many in Washington, it is doubtful that ordinary Americans will be willing to risk a war over an island barely larger than Hawaii, only 80 miles off the coast of mainland China.

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

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Summary

It’s easy to look at the individual things that are happening in our country as just that: individual things. However, that would also be quite naïve. In a recent push in our public schools to “achieve equity” and “dismantle racism” you see a lot of the same narratives, even in separate school districts across the country that seemingly have nothing to do with each other other than the fact that they’re schools.

This deep dive will explore changes being made to Virginia’s school curriculum that aims to rid its educational system of any advanced math courses for primary school students before grade 11. The reasoning behind this is to make education more equitable for all students, going on to say that students must “give up their privilege” to make it happen.

This language has been bought and paid for primarily by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (who else could be behind it at this point, really?). If you didn’t know already, Bill Gates was also the nearly-singular force behind the funding and political push to get our nation’s K-12 educational system onto Common Core. And now he’s behind the new ‘racial equity’ push set out to “challenge the ways that math is used to uphold capitalist, imperialist, and racist views.”

Why does this matter?

Bill Gates is the second largest funder of the United Nations. Second only to the United States (yes, the entire country) alone.

His vision for this earth aligns greatly with the “Sustainable Development” model and Agenda 2030 touted by the UN, which derives directly from Agenda 21. And no, Agenda 21 is not a “conspiracy theory.” It’s real, and anyone who tries to convince you otherwise is a liar and a snake.

By radically changing the way our children are educated, we also change the way they think.

The way they see themselves within this world, and the way they interact with those who see it differently. It would be genius if it weren’t evil.

At a glance, it seems that the people involved in the shift in our educational system have nothing to do with Gates. However, if you dive deep into the organizations and people pushing it, you’ll find ties and thought processes shared by the same small cluster of globalist organizations and their ultra-wealthy lackeys.

Namely: The United Nations, The World Economic Forum, and Bill Gates, along with a slew of nonprofits that surround and support them filled with globalist sycophants.

A few days ago I decided to plot out a rudimentary map of the web of connections to make sure I wasn’t just crazy.

I’m not. See below:

Click here to see larger image.

So, without further ado, this is the story of how the Globalist cabal took complete control of America’s educational system without anyone noticing it happened. You can click the sections below to skip around this deep dive, or read it all as a whole. Enjoy!

To Read complete article, click here

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During 2016  CIA director John Brennan and FBI director James Comey, together with the corrupt Democrat party, began orchestrating Russiagate in order to prevent Trump from reducing the risk of nuclear war and by normalizing relations with Russia.  President Trump tried to nip a New Cold War in the bud, but that was not in the interest of the power and profit of the military/security complex which desperately needs the “Russian threat” as its raison d’etre. 

Stephen Cohen, myself and a few others expressed concern that the tensions between the two  nuclear powers were being driven to more dangerous highs than ever existed during the 20th century Cold War.  Many websites joined in debunking the orchestrated Russiagate fabrication.

To discredit these voices, a new website, PropOrNot, suddenly appeared with a list of 200 “Russian agents/dupes.”  Those of us who had raised red flags about Russiagate and the worsening of tensions were on the list. The Washington Post gave the accusation credibility by reporting the PropOrNot accusation that those who dissented from a hostile policy toward Russia were “Putin agents.”

A number of the falsely accused websites were intimidated and abandoned the truth.  CounterPunch went even further. It dropped its best and most incisive writers—people such as Mike Whitney and Diana Johnstone.  CounterPunch, which  had once collected, published, and marketed a collection of my essays as a book, suddenly discovered that it preferred fiction over fact.  Other websites that had religiously reproduced all of my columns now became selective about which parts of the official narrative they would permit to be examined on their sites.  This was, perhaps, the beginning of the movement to de-platform all who challenge the narrative.

The threat to truth-tellers has now been elevated by election thief Joe Biden’s latest Executive Order declaring a “national emergency” to “deal with the Russian threat.” Pepe Escobar reports that Biden’s order opens every American to being accused of being a Russian agent engaged in undermining US security. “A sub-paragraph (C), detailing ‘actions or policies that undermine democratic processes or institutions in the United States or abroad,’ is vague enough to be used to eliminate any journalism that supports Russia’s positions in international affairs.”

“Supports Russia’s position” includes an objective description and non-partisan analysis of Russian policy. The crucial point is that, in effect, Biden’s executive order places everyone reporting objectively on Russia’s political positions as a potential threat to the United States. See this.  

If we are honest, we will acknowledge that we have undergone the complete collapse of the United States.  Truth is prohibited in the media, school systems, and universities if it conflicts with the elite agendas served by the official narratives. The First Amendment is dead and buried. Free speech is reserved for the official narratives, such as “systemic racism”  and “Russian threat.” Those who exercise their Constitutional right find themselves de-platformed or fired.  

To understand how the victory of propaganda over truth elevates the likelihood of nuclear Armageddon, consider the difference between the 20th century and 21st century cold wars.

In the original Cold War both Soviet and American leaders worked to defuse tensions.  Agreements were made on arms control and the anti-ballistic missile treaty. There were regular meetings or summits between American and Soviet leaders.  Diplomatic decorum was maintained.  There were agreements that permitted each side to inspect the other’s compliance.  

This process began with President John F. Kennedy and  Soviet First Secretary Nicolai S. Khrushchev.  It continued through President Reagan and, more or less, President George H. W. Bush.  It ended with the Clinton regime and has been downhill ever since. 

President Trump intended to reduce the dangerous tensions, but was not permitted.  Indeed, his intent was sufficient cause for the Establishment to drive him from office.  2020 was a coup, not an election.

In the 20th century Cold War Russian experts differed in their assessments of the threat, and their differences were publicly aired. Differing assessments were debated. Dissenters were not demonized as Russian agents.  Today American Russian experts find that being Russophobic is a career boost. In the 20th century the New York Times and Washington Post were aligned with peace efforts. Today they are part of the neoconservative warmongers’ propaganda ministry.

The alarming conclusion is that since the Clinton regime, the US government has worked consistently to worsen relations with Russia even to the extent of publicly demonizing the Russian president and strangling objective debate in the US.  This is the perfect foundation for war.

All the while insouciant Americans elected governments that successively raised the likelihood of nuclear annihiliation while shutting down dissident concerns.  As I reported on March 17, “In the United States Russian Studies has degenerated into propaganda.  Recently, two members of the Atlantic Council think tank, Emma Ashford and Matthew Burrows, suggested that American foreign policy could benefit from a less hostile approach to Russia. Instantly, 22 members of the think tank denounced the article by Ashford and Burrows.”

Today even in Republican and conservative circles to question Putin’s demonization raises disapproving eyebrows (the same for China and Iran).  The US Establishment has succeeded in labeling objective analysis as “pro-Russian” (or pro-Chinese or pro-Iranian). This means that an objective view of US/Russian relations is off-limits to US policymakers.  

The “Russian threat” is another hoax, one that will destroy the world.

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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.

Featured image is from The Intercept

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Now that Cuban president Raul Castro has resigned the presidency of Cuba, will the U.S. government lift its six-decades-long economic embargo against Cuba?

Don’t count it. Squeezing the life out of the Cuban people as a way to get regime change has become such a normalized way of life for the United States that it is unlikely that this cruel and brutal policy will be ended anytime soon.

Back in the day, the embargo was justified as part of the Cold War against “godless communism” and, specifically, the international communist conspiracy that was supposedly based in Moscow, Russia and that supposedly threatened to envelope the United States and the rest of the world. (Yes, that Russia, the one we are being called upon, once again, to treat as our official enemy.) The Pentagon and the CIA steadfastly maintained that the “national security” of the United States was gravely threatened by a communist outpost only 90 miles away from American shores.

But when the Cold War suddenly and unexpectedly came to an end in 1989, the embargo just kept going and going. And even though Fidel Castro has now passed, and his brother Raul is now out of the presidency, there is no push within the federal government to finally bring an end to this cruel and brutal program.

What’s up with that? The U.S. government doesn’t have an embargo against communist Vietnam, whose northern half killed some 58,000 American men. Why have an embargo against a country that has never attacked the United States or even threatened to do so?

I suspect that part of the reason is that the CIA has never been able to get over the humiliation of having been defeated when its ragtag army of Cuban exiles invaded Cuba in 1961 in a futile attempt to secure regime change on the island. In fact, my hunch is that the CIA and the Pentagon have never been able to get over the fact that their entire regime-change operations against Cuba, including sabotage, terrorism, and assassination, as well as the embargo, failed to oust the communist regime and replace it with a U.S.-installed regime, one that would, once again, do the bidding of the U.S. government.

In the ultimate analysis, it’s all about empire and control. During the Spanish-American War in 1898, the U.S. came to the defense of Cuba in its war for independence from the Spanish Empire. Once Spain was defeated, however, the U.S. government double-crossed the Cubans and refused to permit them their independence. Instead, the fledgling U.S. Empire simply replaced the Spanish Empire.

The U.S. Empire then proceeded to control Cuba for the next 60 years through a succession of pro-U.S. dictators who agreed to do the bidding of the U.S. government. They were what are sometimes referred to as “puppets”—dancing to the strings of U.S. control. That’s in fact how the U.S. government got its imperial outpost in Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay. The U.S. government’s puppet regime in Havana gave that portion of Cuba to the United States.

One of the U.S. puppets was Fulgencio Batista, a corrupt pro-U.S. tyrant who was ousted by the Cuban revolution in 1959. One of his programs was to have his government goons go out into the Cuban countryside and kidnap young girls — minors. They would then bring them back to Havana, where they would be handed over to the Mafia-controlled casinos, which were giving Batista a cut of the action. The girls would be handed over to the high-rollers in the casinos as sexual favors.

U.S. officials loved Batista and were hoping that he would remain in power. It was not to be. The person who instigated the revolution was a woman named Celia Sanchez, who had a young girlfriend who was kidnapped by Batista’s goons and then raped as a sexual favor in the Mafia’s casinos.

What the Pentagon and the CIA want today is to resume control over Cuba with another pro-U.S. dictator who will do their bidding, just like before the Cuban revolution. That’s what the embargo is all about. That’s why they continue to target the Cuban people with death and economic privation. They want to resume control over Cuba, and they want it bad.

There is something else to keep in mind about the U.S. government’s relationship with Cuba for the last 60 years: It has always been the U.S. government that has been the aggressor. It is the U.S. government that has targeted the Cuban people with death and economic privation with its embargo. It has been the U.S. government that has engaged in sabotage and terrorism against the Cuban people. It is the U.S. government that has repeatedly tried to murder Cuban officials, even in partnership with the Mafia, one of the biggest criminal organizations in the world.

Finally, I would be remiss if I failed to point out that the U.S. government’s embargo against Cuba has always been a direct attack on the natural, God-given rights of freedom of travel and economic liberty of the American people. After all, let’s not forget that Americans are the ones who are arrested, prosecuted, and incarcerated for traveling to Cuba and spending money there without the official consent of their Washington overlords.

If the American people wished to begin restoring a sense of morality to the U.S. government and a small bit of economic freedom to their lives, a good place to begin would be by bringing about an end to the six-decades-old embargo against Cuba. It’s an evil and destructive Cold War dinosaur that deserves extinction.

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Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. He has advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the country as well as on Fox News’ Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows and he appeared as a regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s show Freedom Watch. View these interviews at LewRockwell.com and from Full Context. Send him email.

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Of relevance to the current debate on Eugenics and Depopulation, this article was first published in December 2010 in the New Statesman.

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In the decades following the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species, a craze for eugenics spread not only through Britain but through America as well. Overbreeding by the poor and disabled threatened the quality of the human race, American campaigners warned. Drastic measures must be taken to avert a future catastrophe for humanity.

Amid popular fears about the decline of the national stock, one of the main drives behind the formation of American immigration policy at the end of the 19th century was the desire to exclude disabled people. The first major federal immigration law, the Act of 1882, prohibited entry to any ‘lunatic, idiot, or any person unable to take care of himself or herself without becoming a public charge.’

As the eugenics movement gathered strength, the exclusion criteria were gradually tightened to make it easier for immigration officials to keep disabled people out of America. The 1907 law denied entry to anyone judged ‘mentally or physically defective, such mental or physical defects being of a nature which may affect the ability of such alien to earn a living.’ It added ‘imbeciles’ and ‘feeble-minded persons’ to the list of automatically excluded people and inspectors were directed to exclude people with ‘any mental abnormality whatever’. Regulations in 1917 included a long list of disabilities that could be cause for exclusion including arthritis, asthma, deafness, deformities, heart disease, poor eyesight, poor physical development and spinal curvature.

Detecting physical disabilities was a major aspect of the American immigration inspector’s work. The Commissioner General of Immigration reported in 1907: “The exclusion from this country of the morally, mentally and physically deficient is the principal object to be accomplished by the immigration laws.” Inspection regulations stated that each individual ‘should be seen first at rest and then in motion’ in order to detect ‘abnormalities of any description’. It was recommended that inspectors should watch immigrants as they carried their luggage upstairs to see if ‘the exertion would reveal deformities and defective posture’. As one inspector wrote: “It is no more difficult to detect poorly built, defective or broken down human beings than to recognise a cheap or defective automobile.” An abnormal appearance meant a chalked letter on the back – L for lameness, G for goitre, X for mental illness. Once chalked, a closer inspection was required, which meant that other problems were likely to be established.

Preventing disabled people immigrating to America was motivated by both economic and eugenic concerns. Officials wanted to keep out people considered likely to be unemployed and who might transmit their ‘undesirable qualities’ to their offspring. There was widespread support for this approach to immigration. In 1896, Francis Walker noted in the Atlantic Monthly that the necessity of ‘straining out’ immigrants who were ‘deaf, dumb, blind, idiotic, insane, pauper or criminal’ was ‘now conceded by men of all shades of opinion’ and indeed there was a widespread ‘resentment at the attempts of such persons to impose themselves upon us.’ William Green, president of the American Federation of Labor, argued that immigration restrictions were “necessary to the preservation of our national characteristics and to our physical and mental health”. A New York Supreme Court judge feared that the new immigrants were “adding to that appalling number of our inhabitants who handicap us by reason of their mental and physical disabilities.”

Disabled people born in the USA were as despised as disabled immigrants. A leading American-based scientist, Alexis Carrel, who worked at the prestigious Rockefeller Institute in the early years of the 20th century, advocated correcting what he called “an error” in the US Constitution that granted equality to all people. In his best-selling book Man, the Unknown, he wrote: “The feeble-minded and the man of genius should not be equal before the law. The stupid, the unintelligent, those who are dispersed, incapable of attention, of effort, have no right to a higher education.” Arguing that the human race was being undermined by disabled people, he wanted to use medical advances to extend the lives of those he deemed worthy and condemn the rest to death or forced sterilisation. He later praised Hitler for the “energetic measures” he took to prevent the contamination of the human race.

Carrel was not a lone maverick in America. His views were shared by large sections of the American population. While some scientists distanced themselves from him, much of America idolised him and welcomed his ideas. His book sold more than two million copies and thousands of people in America would turn up to hear Carrel’s talks, sometimes filling venues to capacity. He was even awarded the Nobel Prize.

Soon the White House itself was intent on restricting the right of disabled people to reproduce. President Theodore Roosevelt could not have been more blunt: “I wish very much that the wrong people could be prevented entirely from breeding; and when the evil nature of these people is sufficiently flagrant, this should be done. Criminals should be sterilised and feeble-minded persons forbidden to leave offspring behind them”. Theodore Roosevelt created an Heredity Commission to investigate America’s genetic heritage and to encourage “the increase of families of good blood and (discourage) the vicious elements in the cross-bred American civilisation”. Funding for the eugenics cause came from such distinguished sources as the Carnegie Institution and the WK Kellogg Foundation, and support also came from the influential leaders of the oil, steel and railroad industries.

In an effort to prevent unfit offspring from being born, sterilisation laws were introduced in many American states to stop certain categories of disabled people from having children. The first such law was passed in Indiana as early as 1907. This was 26 years before a similar law was introduced by the Nazis in Germany in 1933, The Law for the Prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Disease. In their sterilisation propaganda, the Nazis were able to point to the precedent set by the United States.

From 1907 onwards, many American men, women and children who were “insane, idiotic, imbecile, feebleminded or epileptic” were forcibly sterilised, often without being informed of what was being done to them. The German geneticist Fritz Lenz commented in 1923 that “Germany had nothing to match the eugenics research institutions in England and the United States”. He went on to castigate the Germans for “their backwardness in the domain of sterilisation as compared to the United States, for Germany had no equivalent to the American laws prohibiting marriage… for people suffering from such conditions as epilepsy or mental retardation”.

A landmark Supreme Court case in 1927 upheld America’s sterilisation legislation on the grounds it was necessary “to prevent our being swamped with incompetence”. Judge Holmes, reflecting in his judgement that our “best” citizens may be called on to give up their lives in war, said of sterilising the feeble-minded or insane: “It would be strange if we could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the state for these lesser sacrifices …It is better for all the world if, instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind”.

By 1938, 33 American states permitted the forced sterilisation of women with learning disabilities and 29 American states had passed compulsory sterilisation laws covering people who were thought to have genetic conditions. Laws in America also restricted the right of certain disabled people to marry. More than 36,000 Americans underwent compulsory sterilisation before this legislation was eventually repealed in the 1940s.

America was not the only country in the Western world to introduce compulsory sterilisation of disabled people. Sweden sterilised 60,000 disabled women from 1935 until as late as 1976. Thousands of children labelled as having learning difficulties were sent off to live in “Institutes for Misled and Morally Neglected Children” where they were required to undergo “treatment”. When the extent of Sweden’s sterilisation programme came to light in the 1990s, some heartbreaking stories emerged. One woman was told that she would remain shut away in an institution for the rest of her life if she didn’t agree to be sterilised. She recalled crying as she was forced to sign away her rights to have a baby. Another man described how he and his teenage friends, terrified by the prospect of an operation, hatched a plan to run away. Other countries which passed similar sterilisation laws in the 1920s and 30s included Denmark, Norway and Finland. However, America led the way in promoting such a practice.

With such a prevailing culture, it is not surprising that some disabled Americans felt compelled to remain single voluntarily. According to a recent biography by Lyndall Gordon, the acclaimed American poet Emily Dickinson was epileptic. For this reason, Dickinson chose to spend the second half of her life as a recluse, refusing to leave her father’s house. In middle age, Dickinson had a passionate romance with a widower who wanted to marry her but she turned him down, regarding herself as unfit for marriage. People with epilepsy in America were warned against marrying for fear that sexual arousal might provoke seizures.

Following the first International Eugenics Conference in London in 1912, two more were held, in 1921 and 1932. Both were hosted by New York and both were dominated by America. At the 1921 conference, 41 out of the 53 scientific papers presented were written by Americans and the invitations were even sent out by the American State Department. At one stage, 375 courses covering eugenics were on offer at American universities including Harvard, Colombia and Cornell.

Not only did the American authorities take measures to stop disabled people immigrating, marrying or having children, but there are examples of American disabled people dying needlessly because society believed their lives were not worth living. In 1915 a leading Chicago surgeon Dr Harry Haiselden decided to allow a disabled new-born baby to die. This wasn’t the first time he had permitted a baby with an impairment to die, but no disciplinary action was taken against him. He was investigated three times by different legal authorities and each time they found in his favour. He was expelled from the Chicago Medical Society but only because he wrote newspaper articles about his work, not for his treatment of these children. Indeed, Haiselden received support from many prominent Americans and also won endorsements from some of America’s most well-regarded publications including the New York Timesand the New Republic.

In 1937, a Gallup poll in the USA found that 45 per cent of supported euthanasia for “defective infants”. A year later, in a speech at Harvard, WG Lennox argued that preserving disabled lives placed a strain on society and urged doctors to recognize “the privilege of death for the congenitally mindless and for the incurable sick”. An article published in the journal of the American Psychiatric Association in 1942 called for the killing of all “retarded” children over five years old.

After World War II, the Nuremburg court established by the Allies did not order reparations to be paid to the families of disabled people killed by the Nazis nor that those responsible be punished. German doctors accused of murdering disabled people defended themselves by claiming (with some justification) that they were only implementing ideas which had found support in other countries, including America.

What’s more, the Allied authorities were unable to classify the sterilisations of disabled people in Nazi Germany as war crimes because similar laws either did exist or had recently existed in America and other European countries. The new West German administration only provided compensation for people who had been sterilised against their will if they could prove they had been sterilised outside the provisions of the 1933 sterilisation law – in other words, if they could prove they were not genetically disabled. Following the defeat of the Nazis, compulsory sterilisation ended in Germany but it continued elsewhere in America and Europe. Only in the 1950s was the eugenic philosophy finally discredited in most countries.

There was no wholesale slaughter of disabled people in the UK and USA as there was in Nazi Germany. However, there are disturbing similarities in the history of these countries.

The widespread support given to eugenics in America and Britain shows that many people in these countries shared the values and ideology of the Nazis towards disability. Eugenicists in Britain and America like those in Nazi Germany believed it was socially desirable to prevent the creation of new human beings who might be physically or mentally disabled. Just as the Nazis set out to eliminate disabled people during the Holocaust, so the long-term aim of America’s sterilisation programme was to rid the country of people deemed to be “inadequate”. Although no formal mass sterilisation programme was implemented in the UK, an unknown number of forced or coerced sterilisations occurred in this country.

Forced sterilisation and mass killing are ethically different. But underlying both these measures was the presumption that there are people who are unworthy of life. The Nazis believed that disabled people’s lives had little value and wanted to relieve society of the burden of having to care for people they regarded as useless. We need to recognize that there was a time when such attitudes also received considerable support throughout America and Britain as well.

Social reformers in America and Britain wanted to create a perfect society, but the kind of society they envisaged contained an intolerant, illiberal, authoritarian dimension which allowed no place for disabled people. As Isaiah Berlin once put it, “Disregard for the preferences and interests of individuals alive today in order to pursue some distant social goal that their rulers have claimed is their duty to promote has been a common cause of misery for people throughout the ages.”

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Victoria Brignell works as a radio producer with the BBC. After reading classics at Downing College, Cambridge, she undertook journalism training at Cardiff University. She lives in West London and is 30 years old and is a tetraplegic wheelchair-user.

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We are witnessing the fourth Cross-Strait Crises. Chinese and American armed forces are undertaking dangerous, spectacular and threatening show of military might. 

What makes the present crisis different from the previous ones is the fact that it happened during and after the mutual cold-war declaration by Washington and Beijing in Anchorage, Alaska on March 18-19, 2021

The world is wondering how far this military show will go. Many are afraid of a shooting war involving China, Taiwan and the U.S.

 Indeed, many are even afraid of the possibility of the third world war which will kill us all.

However, I do not share such pessimistic views. My view is that the inter-China cold war is likely to remain cold, not hot, because none of the three actors involved in the conflict – two Chinas and the U.S.- will gain from the shooting war.

The Sino-American shooting war – if there will be one – will be ignited somewhere else.

My argument may be summarized as follows.

First, the U.S. does not want the inter-China hot war, because through its ambiguous Taiwan policy, it can continue to sell weapons to Taiwan and, at the same time, keep Taiwan as the primary outpost of its China containment policy.

Second, China is not eager to declare a hot war with Taiwan, because Taiwan has not provided the reasons for China’s Taiwan invasion.

There are five reasons for China’s Taiwan invasion including the declaration of Taiwan independence, internal turmoil, military alliance with another country, acquisition of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and negotiations under the violation of the 1992 Consensus for “one-China”. None of these conditions are present. Therefore, China has no reason to invade Taiwan.

Third, Taiwan does not want the hot war with China for the reason that it will be most likely defeated and the cost of such defeat will be too high in terms of economic development and the loss of its identity. In fact, if and when China wins, it is likely that the two Chinas will be united under the banner of PRC.

The U.S. does not want inter-China hot War

To understand Washington’s role in the inter-China conflict, it is important to understand its Taiwan policy.

Washington’s Taiwan policy is based on the three joint communiqués, the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 (TRA) and the Six Assurances imposed by Ronald Reagan in 1982. The followings are the contents of the three Communiqués, TRA and the Six Assurances.

The First China-U.S. Communiqué (28 February 1972)

• The U.S. Government acknowledges (not accept or recognize) that all Chinese in either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but One China
• Taiwan is a part of China
• The U.S. Government does not challenge this position
• . It reaffirms its interest in peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question by Chinese themselves
• With this prospect in mind, it affirms its ultimate objective of the withdrawal of all the U.S. forces and military installations from Taiwan. 

The Second China-U.S. Communiqué (January 1, 1979)

• Neither should seek hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region or any other region of the world.
• Each is opposed to efforts by any other country or group of countries to establish such hegemony
• The government of the USA acknowledges the Chinese position that there is but one China and that Taiwan is part of China
• PRC is the sole legal government of China

Third China-U.S. Communiqué (August 17, 1982)

• The U.S. Government attaches great importance to its relation with China.
• It has no intention of infringing on Chinese sovereignty and territorial integrity or interfering in China’s internal affairs or pursuing a policy of ‘two Chinas’ or ‘one China, one Taiwan.’
• The U.S. Government states that it does not seek to carry out a long-term policy of arms sales to Taiwan
• Its arms sale to Taiwan will not exceed, either in qualitative or in quantitative terms the level of those supplied in recent years
• It intends to reduce gradually its sales of arms to Taiwan, leading over a period of time to a final solution.
• The U.S. Taiwan policy cannot be changed by the president and requires the consent of the Congress.

The Taiwan Relations Act (enacted by the U.S. Congress on April 10, 1979)

The principal contents of the Act is in Section 2 of the Act

• Taiwan is treated as a country, a nation or a state as sub sovereign nation
• Informal diplomatic relations are carried out by the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT)
• The U.S. Government normalizes its diplomatic relations with PRC (Beijing) under the condition that the future of Taiwan will be determined by peaceful means.
• Any efforts to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means including by boycotts, or embargoes, a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific are grave concern to the U.S.
• The Sino (Taiwan)-U.S. Mutual Defence Treaty is terminated.
• The U.S. Government does not intervene in case of invasion by People’s Republic of China (PRC)
• The U.S. Government provides arms of defensive character and maintains the capacity to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or the social or economic system, of the people on Taiwan
• The decision related to the quantity and the quality of defence articles and services is determined by the Congress and the president.

The Six Assurances 

The administration of Ronald Reagan unilaterally added in 1982 “Six Assurances” to the TRA and this has become the mains part of the U.S. Taiwan policy

• The U.S. Government has not agreed to set a date of the termination of its arms sale to Taiwan.
• The U.S. Government has not agreed to consult with PRC (China) or ROC (Taiwan) for arms sales to Taiwan.
• The U.S. Government does not perform the mediation role between ROC and PRC
• The U.S. Government has not agreed to revise the TRA
• The U.S. Government has not revised its position regarding the sovereignty of Taiwan
• The U.S. Government will not exercise pressure on Taiwan to enter into negotiation with PRC.

The positive aspect of Washington’s Taiwan policy is the termination of the bloody civil war between ROC and PRC which caused the two cross-strait crises (1954 and 1958); the civil war lasted until 1979.

But, the end of the inter-China civil war was also desirable for Washington as well, because Washington badly needed China to counter the aggressive assertiveness of the Soviet Union in Asia.

So, Washington and Beijing were strange bed fellows with different dreams. Another possible reason for the U.S. initiative to end the inter-China civil war was the fear of Beijing’s victory over Taipei, which means the loss of a lucrative American arms market and reliable outpost of China containment strategy.

On the other hand, Washington’s Taiwan policy is characterized by the amazing ambiguity of Washington’s perception of the cross-strait problems and tactics which was most likely designed to maximize the American interests at the expense of China’s interests.

What comes out of the three communiqués, the TRA and the six assurances may be summarized in terms of the issue of regional hegemony, the legal status of Taiwan and the American arms sales.

Regional hegemony

In the second communiqué of 1979, there are items preventing China from becoming a hegemonic power in the region. Neither the U.S. nor China should seek for hegemonic power in Asia. But the U.S was already the hegemonic power there.

Legal Status of Taiwan 

The second feature of Washington’s Taiwan policy is its contradictory and ambiguous position regarding the legal status of Taiwan.

In the joint communiqués, the U.S. acknowledges that China is one and Taiwan is a part of China and that Beijing is the sole legal government of China. But this should mean that since Taiwan is a part of China, Beijing should also govern Taiwan.

But, in the Taiwan Relations Act, Taiwan is given the status of a de facto sovereign country.

China can argue that Washington did no respect the contents of the joint communiqués. But Washington can say this: “We have never accepted one-China regime, we said we acknowledged the regime”. Here, we see the strategic political ambiguity of Washington.

In fact, in the TRA, it says that Taiwan is treated as a nation of sub sovereignty. The U.S. has established de facto diplomatic relations with Taiwan conducted through the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT).

Here, Washington’s position regarding the sovereignty of Taiwan is not clear. The hidden purpose of the U.S. could be to make the sovereignty issue ambiguous so that it can change its position in function of needs.

Washington’s Arms Sales to Taiwan 

Now, as for the issues of arms sales to Taiwan, the U. S. is even more ambiguous.

In the third communiqué, the U.S. says that it has no long-run plan of arms sales to Taiwan. But in the same communiqué, the U.S. says that it will reduce arms sales, which contradicts each other.

In the TRA, the Sino (ROC)-U.S. defence Treaty is terminated. Therefore, Washington should not intervene militarily if and when Taiwan is in armed conflict with Beijing. But, already, in media, the US intervention in case of PRC’s Taiwan invasion is openly discussed. One wonders what the reliability of the joint communiqués, the TRA and the Six Assurances is.

Now, in the Six Assurances, it is written that the U.S. has no date for the ending of its arms sales to Taiwan. The U.S. is not obliged to consult PRC or ROC for its arms sales to Taiwan. So, Washington has absolute freehand in handling the arms sales to Taiwan.

In short, the U.S. Taiwan policy is so confusing and so ambiguous that it has useful flexibility for the sales of arms to Taiwan. The following table shows the pattern of American arms sales to Taiwan.

Table: Washington’s arms sales to Taiwan by U.S. Presidents

The table above allows these observations.

• Washington’s arms sales to Taiwan has increased over the years, which is contrary to what the U.S. Government had promised.
• The Trump administration spent as much as US$ 4.45 billion per year which represents as much as 30% of Taiwan’s annual defence budget of $15 billion
• By and large, the Republican Party sells more than the Democrats.
• Washington sells more when the anti-Beijing liberal party of Taiwan, the Democratic and Progressive Parry (DPP) is in power, that is, under the DPP government of Chen Shui-bian (2000-2008) and under the DPP government of Tsai Ying-wen (2016-2021)

This has an important meaning. Remember that the DPP is the party which seeks independence of Taiwan. Hence, the data can be interpreted as Washington’s strategy of encouraging the independence movement leading to ROC-PRC tension and more U.S. arms sales to Taiwan.

Now, coming back to the question of whether the U.S. wishes hot war over the Taiwan Strait, the answer is that it will not want the hot war, because, the hot war means the unification of China and Taiwan will no longer be able to play the role of Washington’s primary China-containment outpost and its function of being the lucrative market of American military equipments. 

Neither PRC (People’s Republic of China) nor ROC (Republic of China-Taiwan) wants the hot War.

When we discuss Taiwan and China, it is important to remember that they were enemies. The army of the ROC was defeated in 1949 and Chiang Kai-sek fled to Taiwan and continued the Republic of China which was created in 1912 by Sun Yat-sen. The civil war between ROC and PRC continued until 1979.

Even though the civil war was terminated, the ROC and PRC relations have not been smooth partly because of the past history and partly because of different political and economic regimes. In other words, there are always the possibilities of hostility in the cross-strait relations.

However, they have established viable relations which have been beneficial to both through political and economic cooperation.

Political Cooperation 

The evolution of the Taiwanese political orientation may be measured in terms of the way in which its presidents consider the legal status of Taiwan vis-à-vis PRC.

The evolution of Taiwanese political leaders’ perceptions of Taipei-Beijing political relations is shown below. By and large, such relations have evolved by the following periods.

• The civil war period (1949-1979)
• The period of good relations (1979-1998)
• The period of hostility (1998-2008)
• The resumption of high level dialogue period (2008-2016)
• The frozen relation period (2016-2021)

The period of civil war (1949-1979) was characterized by two cross-strait crises and never ending armed conflict between two Chinas.

During the friendly relation period (1979-1998), Deng Xiaoping met frequently the head of the Nationalist Party, Kuomintang (KMT) in order to develop cooperative relations.

President Chiang Ching-kuo (1980-1988) of KMT, son of Chiang Kai-shek, declared the three NOs:

• No declaration of independence,
• No unification of Chinas and
• No use of force between the two Chinas.

On July 9, 1999, President Lee Teng-hui (1988-2000) of KMT defined the ROC-PRC relation as “country to country relations.” So, there is no need for the independence declaration.

However, Lee’s visit to the Cornel University Alumni in 1995 alarmed Beijing and it led to the 1996 show of military might of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of  PRC. This was, in fact, the third Taiwan Strait crisis.

During the period of hostility (1998-2008), President Chen Shui-bian (2000-2008) of the anti-PRC party, DPP, changed the name of “Chunghwa Post Co.” to “Taiwan Post Co.” He changed also the name of “China Petroleum Corporation” to “Taiwan Petroleum Corporation.”

But, under KMT president Ma Yong-Jeou (2008-2016), the old names came back. This episode shows how Taiwanese people are sensitive about the identity of Taiwan vis-à-vis China of main land.

In 2008, Ma Ying-Jeou of KMT (2008-2016) took over the power and the friendly relations across the Strait were resumed.

The year 2008 was marked by the efforts of PRCs president Hu Jintao to improve the bilateral relations across the Taiwan Strait. On March 26, 2008, he talked to President G.W. Bush, who endorsed the 1992 consensus on “One China”..

President Hu Jintao also met the Chairman of the KMT, Wu Po-hsing, who also accepted the 1992 Consensus.

As for President Ma, he defined the bilateral relations as “One Country on each side” or “two states in the same nation.”

In 2016, the power went back to DPP and Tsai Ying-wen became President. Tsai’s perception of Taiwan’s legal status was not more certain than those of other Taiwan presidents.

Her victory has put Beijing in even uncomfortable position. In 2016, Beijing cut all communications with ROC.

But, in the same year, some leaders in Taiwan being aware of the deteriorating cross-strait relations formed a Taiwanese delegation composed of eight magistrates and city mayors went to Beijing to improve the relations.

However, the cross-strait relations were not peaceful. In 2018, PLA conducted military exercises which surely alarmed Taiwan.

In 2019, Xi Jinping reaffirmed his position in favour of “one China, two systems.”

President Tsai Ying-wen refused Xi Jinping’s idea.

To the surprise of the world, in 2020 Tsai Ying-wen won the election again; the world was expecting that she would take more radical position regarding Taiwan’s independence.

True, her victory has encouraged the independence movement in Taiwan and pro-independence political parties and civic organizations asked for a referendum on independence.

However, Tsai maintained her position that since Taiwan is already independent country, there is no need for the declaration of independence.”

To sum up, none of the presidents of the major parties, the KMT and the DPP, opted for the declaration of Taiwan’s independence.

True, there are some pro-independence parties such as The Taiwan Independence Party, the Taiwan Solidarity and the Formosa Alliance, but they have no electoral support.

Thus, the danger of Taiwan’s declaration of independence seems nonexistent and therefore, Beijing has no reason to invade for now.

What has intrigued me is the Taiwanese people’s perceptions regarding Taiwan’s legal or political status. There are three public opinion polls which are meaningful.

In the poll of 2008 by the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) no less than76% of the respondents rejected the idea of “one China, two systems.”

In the 2017 poll by MAC, 85% of the respondents said that the future of Taiwan should be determined by the Taiwanese themselves.

In the 2019 poll by MAC, 75% of the respondents rejected the 1992 Consensus (There is only one China which should be governed by PRC).

In the 2020 poll by the Academia Sinica, one finds very interesting phenomena.

• 73% of the respondents identified themselves as Taiwanese.
• 27.5% of them identified themselves as Chinese-Taiwanese
• 2.4% of tem identified themselves as Chinese
• 52.3% of them would prefer the postponement of the question of Taiwan independence and keep the status quo
• 35.1% of them prefer immediate independence
• 5.5% of them would prefer immediate or eventual unification of China.

In the Poll of MAC, 90% of the respondents refused PLA’s military threats.

To sum up, the Taiwanese are eager to greater autonomy, even independence, but they seem to avoid military confrontation by postponing the solution of the independence issue. In short, Taiwan does not want a shooting war with China.

Economic Cooperation 

There is another reason why the ROC-PRC hot war will not take place. It is the cross-strait economic cooperation.

Taiwan has achieved a remarkable success in economic development. In the 19960s, the per capita GDP was as low as $60. Now, in 2020, its GDP (nominal) was $730 billion USD and the per capita GDP was $32,000. This is, in fact, the miraculous achievements of the Taiwanese people.

The information industries account for 35 % of the country’s industrial production. The semi-conductor producers such as Taiwan Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) and the United Microelectronic Corporation (UMC) are world leaders. Taiwan is the 13th largest producer of steel; its steel products are exported to 130 countries. The most spectacular entrepreneurial performance has been shown by the SMEs accounting for 85% of industrial outputs.

Such achievement has been possible because of the courage, the innovative entrepreneurial spirit, the productivity and, especially the hard work of the Taiwanese. However, Washington’s economic aid, its imports of Taiwanese products and technology transfer have all contributed. In addition, we should not forget the cooperation between Mainland China and Taiwan which were enemies.

Under President Chiang Ching-kuo (1978-1988), two important semi-official organizations were was established: the Strait Exchange Foundation (SEF) under ROC’s Mainland Affairs Council and the Association of Relations across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) under PRCs Taiwanese Affairs Office.

These two organizations have been the center of bilateral political and economic cooperation. They have initiated the three links: postal services, transportation and trade.

The Taiwan’s Investment Guidelines and similar measures taken by ROC have led to mutual business investments. In fact, 40 % of Taiwan’s outbound FDI stock went to Mainland China. Chinese tourists contribute to more than 40% of ROCs tourist industry. The Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement of 2010 is another mechanism of the bilateral economic relations.

Above all, Taiwan depends heavily on China for trade. In 2020, the value of Taiwan’s total exports was $ 345 billion of which 29.7% went to China. In the same year, the value of Taiwan’s total imports was $ 286 billion of which 22% came from China.

It is true that the RCO-PRC relations are not peaceful. But these economic relations are beneficial enough to keep the status quo as long as possible.

The conclusion of my analysis is that none of the three actors involved in the cross-strait drama wants shooting war.

The U.S. does not want the hot war because it will mean the unification of China, the loss of Taiwan as the primary China-containment outpost and the loss of the lucrative arms market.

Taiwan does not want the shooting war, because it will mean the ruin of its economy, loss of its autonomy becoming one of the Chinese provinces.

China does not risk the hot war because Taiwan prefers the status quo; it has no intention of getting weapons of mass destruction; there is no internal turmoil; it does not seek military alliances.

However, even without the shooting war, as long as the Sino-U.S. cold war continues, the cross-strait tension will continue.

Washington will sell more military equipments and services and Taiwan will have to play the dangerous role of Washington’s the primary outpost of China containment strategy and that of main buyer of American military weapons.

I wish to add this. The bilateral conflict between two Chinas like all other major bilateral conflicts is an integral part of Washington’s strategy of global hegemony. One of the most productive components of the American global hegemony is the proxy war, that is, some member country of Washington’s alliances will fight for the U.S.

Japan might be asked to play this role, because Japan is the best qualified for such task; it is a world class military power and it has the ambition of dominating Asia again; to do so, Japan has to destroy China. I hope I am wrong in thinking such an awful thing.

Finally, I would like add this too. Taiwan is a country which has achieved an amazing economic miracle of which all Chinese should be proud. Taiwan has established viable democracy under very challenging conditions; this is a regime which will surely contribute to the further advancement of China’s socio-political system.

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Professor Joseph H. Chung is professor of economics and co-director of the East Asia Observatory (OAE)-the Study Center for Integration and Globalization (CEIM), Quebec University in Montreal (UQAM).

Professor Chung is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

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Pfizer is the corporation that has profited most from Covid-19 vaccines to date. Pfizer uses its power to aggressively defend and extend its patents.

The total sales for the Pfizer vaccine will likely exceed $30 billion in 2021 alone. Pfizer shares its profits with its partner company – which means they are expecting at least $15 billion this year, bumping their total revenue next year to around $60 billion – one quarter of which will be accounted for by the vaccine.

According to one financial journalist “That would make it the second-highest revenue-generating drug anytime, anywhere”

Profiting from the pandemic

These sales will bring in a substantial profit for the company – particularly because the vaccine received nearly $6 billion from the American government’s contract for production and roll out costs. The German government supported the research, while official reports suggest Pfizer and its partner spent only around $1 billion in additional research costs last year.

Unlike other corporations Pfizer has explicitly said it will profit throughout the pandemic. It has sold very small quantities to the global distribution body Covax and African Union “at cost”, which it claims to be about $6.75 per dose. In fact, experts have suggested these types of vaccines could cost as little as 60 cents to $2 per dose to make. However, Pfizer is selling to most countries at $19.50 per dose, supposedly a special pandemic price, but clearly one which allows the corporation to make a large profit.

But a large profit isn’t enough for Pfizer, and it seems clear prices will rise steeply once they decide the pandemic is ‘over’. A senior executive has suggested $150-175 per dose would be more ‘normal’ pricing for a vaccine of this sort.

Pfizer claims these astronomical prices are needed to recoup R&D costs. But a glance at their accounts last year shows that the corporation returned a whopping $8.4 billion to shareholdersin dividends and reported a profit of $8.7bn.

Pfizer has sold its vaccines largely to rich countries. They’ve sold more than three times the amount to high income countries (1.6 billion) as they have to the rest of the world (560 million), while tiny quantities have been sold to low income countries. The international distribution network Covax has managed to secure a mere 40 million.

A vast lobbying effort

Pfizer’s former CEO was instrumental in developing the global patent agreement – known as TRIPS – and intellectual property is a bedrock of Pfizer’s profits. Pfizer’s CEO led the charge to bypass the WHO’s technology sharing programme CTAP, labelling it “nonsense”. This has helped render this important tool ineffective to date.

In its most recent annual report the corporation seems proud of its role in pushing for even stronger patent law stating “Our industry advocacy [lobbying] efforts focus on seeking a fair and transparent business environment for foreign manufacturers, underscoring the importance of strong intellectual property systems.” They say that “While the global intellectual property environment has generally improved following WTO-TRIPS and bilateral/multilateral trade agreements, our growth and ability to bring new product innovation to patients depends on further progress in intellectual property protection [emphasis added]”

This lobbing clout is important. Pfizer and its lobbying body PhRMA were the top spending lobbyists in the US healthcare sector in the last 2 decades. They use the power lobbying gives them to promote and extend their rights of secrecy (‘data exclusivity’) over medical development and their monopoly protection which allows them to charge astronomical prices. They support the US government including higher levels of monopoly protection in new trade deals.

It’s not just Covid-19

Last year, we looked at Pfizer’s troubling history of profiteering. In one example, Pfizer and its British distributor hugely hiked the prices of anti-epilepsy drug phenytoin which 48,000 NHS patients relied upon. NHS expenditure on the drug rose from £2 million a year to £50 million in a single year, with the cost of 100mg packs rising from £2.83 to £67.50. Overall, UK wholesalers and pharmacies faced price hikes of between 2,300% and 2,600%.

In 2009, Pfizer was forced to pay $2.3 billion in a set of complex suits which included the company’s illegal marketing of arthritis drug Bextra, as well as giving kickbacks to doctors. A whistleblower claimed that sales staff were incentivised to sell Bextra to doctors for medical conditions for which the drug wasn’t approved and at doses up to eight times those recommended. “At Pfizer I was expected to increase profits at all costs, even when sales meant endangering lives. I couldn’t do that,” he stated.

MSF ran a campaign against the price of Pfizer’s pneumonia vaccines, which it claimed were 68 times more expensive in 2015 than in 2001. While Pfizer did reduce prices for the lowest income countries, MSF said the cost to vaccinate remained “roughly US$9 for each child to be vaccinated in the poorest countries, and as much as $80 per child for middle-income countries”. It claimed Pfizer and GSK have earned over $50 billion for the drug, but “Today, 55 million children around the world still do not have access to the pneumonia vaccine, largely due to high prices.”

What we can do

Pfizer’s obsession with maximising its profits during the pandemic is in keeping with its troubling record. But there is no reason big pharma companies should remain in the driving seat.

Governments have the power to put global public health first.

We are campaigning for the suspension of patents on all Covid-19 vaccines to help scale up the global vaccine effort and give the world the best chance of getting this disease under control.

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Data released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on the number of injuries and deaths reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) following COVID vaccines showed a notable increase in reports of injuries and deaths compared with last week’s numbers.

VAERS is the primary government-funded system for reporting adverse vaccine reactions in the U.S. Reports submitted to VAERS require further investigation before a causal relationship can be confirmed.

Every Friday, VAERS makes public all vaccine injury reports received as of a specified date, usually about a week prior to the release date. Today’s data show that between Dec. 14, 2020 and April 16, a total of 86,080 total adverse events were reported to VAERS, including 3,186 deaths — an increase of 584 over the previous week — and 10,152 serious injuries, up 1,867 since last week.

Of the 3,186 deaths reported as of April 16, 26% occurred within 48 hours of vaccination, 17% occurred within 24 hours and 41% occurred in people who became ill within 48 hours of being vaccinated.

In the U.S., 202.3 million COVID vaccine doses had been administered as of April 16. This includes89 million doses of Moderna’s vaccine, 105 million doses of Pfizer and 8 million doses of the Johnson &Johnson (J&J) COVID vaccine.

This week’s VAERS data show:

• 20% of deaths were related to cardiac disorders.
• 54% of those who died were male, 44% were female and the remaining death reports did not include gender of the deceased.
• The average age of death was 75.9 and the youngest death reported was an 18-year-old. There are a few reported deaths in children under 18, including a 5-month old who died of a rare blood clot two days after the mother received her second dose of Pfizer vaccine and a 2-year-old, but these reports have not been confirmed.
• As of April 16, 462 pregnant women reported adverse events related to COVID vaccines, including 132 reports of miscarriage or premature birth.
• Of the 820 cases of Bell’s Palsy reported, 55% of cases were reported after Pfizer-BioNTechvaccinations, 41% following vaccination with the Moderna vaccine and 24 cases (6%) of Bell’s Palsy were reported in conjunction with J&J.
• There were 92 reports of Guillain-Barré Syndrome with 50% of cases attributed to Pfizer, 40% to Moderna and 13% to J&J.
• There were 24,841 reports of anaphylaxis with 43% of cases attributed to Pfizer’s vaccine, 47% to Moderna and 10% to J&J.

New reports of blood clots as CDC panel votes to resume J&J vaccine

Blood clotting disorders have been reported following vaccination with Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and J&J COVID vaccines. In the U.S., the J&J vaccine, marketed under the company’s Janssen subsidiary, was paused April 13 while U.S. health officials investigated reports of rare blood clots.

The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) Friday voted 10 – 4 to lift the pause and recommended continued use for persons 18 years of age and older. The panel did not recommend adding any extra warning about the risk of rare blood clotting disorders.

The ACIP said the link between blood clots and J&J’s COVID vaccine was “plausible,” but concluded the vaccine’s benefits still outweigh the risks. The recommendation by the ACIP has to be approved by the CDC and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) before becoming official government policy, USA TODAY reported.

The Daily News reported today the CDC is investigating the deaths of two more women from a rare blood clotting disorder possibly linked to the J&J vaccine. The CDC’s advisory panel found 15 women who were diagnosed with rare blood clots, including three deaths, seven who remain hospitalized and five recovering at home, according to a slide presentation shared at today’s committee meeting.

Only two of the women were older than 50, with the risk highest in women ages 30-39, according to the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. The findings appear to confirm the suspicion that younger women are more vulnerable to developing blood clots.

The Hill reported today the CDC is reviewing the death of an Oregon woman who died after receiving J&J’s vaccine. The woman, in her late 50s, was vaccinated before the state issued a pause. Two weeks after receiving the vaccine, she developed a rare but serious blood clot associated with very low platelets. The Oregon Health Authority said it was notified about the death on April 20, two days after the CDC was notified on April 18.

U.S. health authorities also are investigating the report of a Texas woman who was hospitalized after receiving J&J’s vaccine. The Department of State Health Services told The Hill in a statementthat the CDC notified state officials on Wednesday afternoon of a “possible case in Texas reported through VAERS. Symptoms reported “appear to be consistent with the six cases reported elsewhere last week,” the department said.

On April 21, The Defender reported that a Nevada teen underwent three brain surgeries to repair blood clots she developed about a week after receiving J&J’s COVID vaccine. Emma Burkey, 18, suffered seizures, was placed in an induced coma and on a respirator before undergoing surgeries for a massive brain injury.

Burkey was one of the initial six cases under review by the CDC. A CDC panel said Burkey and other women experienced headaches and back pain prior to the discovery of blood clots, and also disclosed she was given heparin, a blood thinner which typically is standard treatment for blood clots, but in cases like Burkey’s, can make the condition worse.

Children’s Health Defense queried the VAERS data for a series of adverse events associated with the formation of clotting disorders and other related conditions. VAERS yielded a total of 1,123 reports for all three vaccines from Dec. 14, 2020, through April 16.

Of the 1,123 cases reported, there were 512 reports attributed to Pfizer, 448 reports to Moderna and 160 reports to J&J — far more than the six J&J cases U.S. health officials were originally investigating.

As The Defender reported April 20, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) said Tuesday it found a “possible link” between the J&J COVID vaccine and blood clots, but concluded the vaccine’s benefits outweigh the risks.

EMA’s safety committee (PRAC) said a warning should be added to the product label, but the blood clot-related disorders should be listed as “very rare” side effects of the vaccine. J&J had delayed the vaccine’s rollout in the EU after U.S. health officials paused the vaccine.

Woman paralyzed after Pfizer vaccine

The Defender reported this week that a healthy 33-year-old woman in Pennsylvania experienced paralysis 12 hours after getting her first dose of the Pfizer COVID vaccine. Doctors at the Cleveland Clinic performed a series of tests, but said they didn’t know what caused the woman to develop paralysis.

Although the woman, who asked to remain anonymous, regained feeling and strength in her arms, as of April 21, she had no function from her lower chest down besides very slight movement in a few toes. The woman’s family confirmed with Channel 11 that her case was reported to Pfizer.

CDC ignores The Defender, no response after 46 days

According to the CDC website, “the CDC follows up on any report of death to request additional information and learn more about what occurred and to determine whether the death was a result of the vaccine or unrelated.”

The Defender reached out to the CDC on March 8 with a written list of questions about reported deaths and injuries related to COVID vaccines, the status of ongoing investigations reported in the media, if autopsies are being done, the standard for determining whether an injury is causally connected to a vaccine and education initiatives to encourage and facilitate proper and accurate reporting.

After repeated attempts to obtain a response, a representative from the CDC’s Vaccine Task Force contacted us March 29 and said she had never received our list of questions — even though employees we talked to several times said their press officers were working through the questions and confirmed the representative had received them. We provided multiple deadlines, none of which were met. The Defender also provided the list again and attempted to follow-up multiple times with no response.

After repeated calls to the CDC’s media department this week, we were told the COVID response unit would be informed we had still not received answers. The person we spoke with did not know why our inquiries were being ignored. We also asked why the CDC appeared to have the ability to respond to other news media outlets in a timely manner and questioned why the agency, funded by taxpayer dollars, appeared to be selectively responding to inquiries. No answer was provided.

We were told someone would get back to us. It has been 46 days since our original email was sent inquiring into VAERS data and reports.

New study shows Pfizer’s COVID vaccine may trigger herpes virus that causes shingles

The Defender also reported this week that Pfizer’s COVID vaccine may trigger a herpes virus that causes shingles. A recent study published in the journal Rheumatology found six women out of 491 patients developed a skin rash known as herpes zoster (HZ) infection — or shingles — within three to 14 days of receiving either the first or second dose of the Pfizer’s COVID vaccine. Five of them developed shingles infection after the first dose and one after the second.

Lead researcher Dr. Victoria Furer said five of the six patients were young, had mild cases of autoimmune disease and were taking little if any medications for it — which means they should not have been at increased risk for developing the infection, as HZ tends to develop more in people over the age of 50.

“We cannot say the vaccine is the cause at this point,” Furer said. “We can say it might be a trigger in some patients.” She said further research, including a larger epidemiological study, would be needed to prove cause and effect.

Third dose of COVID vaccines and annual boosters are on the way

The Defender reported this week, vaccine makers told investors and the media that COVID booster shots are in the works. But some independent scientists warn trying to outsmart the virus with booster shots designed to address the next variant could backfire, creating an endless wave of new variants, each more virulent and transmissible than the one before.

Dr. Ozlem Tureci, co-founder and CMO of BioNTech, which developed the vaccine with Pfizer, said she also expects people will need to get vaccinated against COVID annually, like the seasonal flu. That’s because, she said, scientists expect vaccine-induced immunity against the virus will decrease over time, CNBC reported.

Tureci’s comments came after Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said in an interview that aired April 15 that people would likely need a booster shot, or third dose, of the COVID vaccine within 12 months of getting fully vaccinated with possible additional shots each year.

J&J vaccine manufacturer Emergent BioSolutions shuts down

The Defender reported this week a J&J COVID vaccine manufacturing plant, where an ingredient mix-up last month resulted in 15 million doses of J&J vaccine being discarded, may have contaminated additional doses. A report released Wednesday by the FDA also identified a series of other problems at the Baltimore facility owned by Emergent BioSolutions.

Emergent, which in June received $628 million in taxpayer funding through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to establish the primary U.S. manufacturing facility for J&J’s and AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccines, agreed this week to temporarily shut down operations.

A congressional investigation was launched Tuesday into the company’s federal vaccine contract and shareholders filed a class action lawsuit Monday for false and misleading statements that drove up stock prices and misleading statements regarding the company’s readiness to mass-produce COVID vaccines.

According to CNBC, an FDA inspection of the Baltimore plant in April 2020 revealed Emergent lacked necessary personnel to produce a COVID vaccine. Another inspection, in June 2020, determined Emergent’s plan for producing vaccines was inadequate due to poorly trained staff and quality control problems, raising questions as to why the company did not fix problems earlier and why federal officials who oversaw its contracts did not demand better performance.

Children’s Health Defense asks anyone who has experienced an adverse reaction, to any vaccine, to file a report following these three steps.

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

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The Montana state legislature overwhelmingly passed a bipartisan and unprecedented resolution Tuesday calling on the federal government to end endless wars. The resolution passed 95-3 in the House and 47-2 in the Senate.

House Joint Resolution 9, sponsored by Rep. Ron Marshall (R-Hamilton), is the first of its kind to be introduced by any state and is currently being used as a model for other states across the country.

The resolution specifically urges President Joe Biden and the United States Congress to “end the endless war in Afghanistan,” repeal the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, resist sending U.S. troops into combat without a declaration of war from Congress or specific authorization to do so, and to “execute a prudent foreign policy.”

Concerned Veterans for America, a veteran-run organization, endorsed the resolution and plans on utilizing it at the national level. The organization’s Deputy Director Russ Duerstine said in a statement that “the passing of the Endless War resolution is a firm statement—a strong message on behalf of Montanans that there is a better way than continuing to fight endless wars.”

According to USA Today, Montana has the third-highest percentage of veterans of all states in the United States. A recent YouGov and Concerned Veterans for America poll also determined that two-thirds of all US veterans support the complete withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and Iraq.

“Our troops have served valiantly in Afghanistan and elsewhere, but perpetual war and fruitless nation building is not in America’s best interests,” Duerstine added. “Worse, endless conflicts marginalize the service of those who have sacrificed for our freedom. We owe our military community better, and we thank Rep. Marshall and Sen. Bogner for leading on this measure and commend all those who showed their support for it.”

Some lawmakers have asked what the resolution will accomplish, referring to it as a “letter to Santa” since it isn’t legislation, but Concerned Veterans for America’s Montana Grassroots Engagement Director Chris Enget, a Purple Heart recipient who served in Afghanistan in 2012, said the resolution would put pressure on Montana’s congressional delegation to take action to end overseas conflicts.

Enget, who helped write the resolution, added that the organization is using it as a model in other states and will also pressure their congressional delegations by passing similar resolutions.

Concerned Veterans for America will also send the resolution to Washington D.C. and use their lobbyists to put pressure on Congress, according to Enget.

“We are going to use this to show America is fed up,” Enget said. “We’re not just going to let it sit there. We’re going to continue to bring it up and we’re going to continue to show that the state of Montana has made this very large statement that we can not keep participating in endless wars.”

The resolution passed a week after President Biden announced that the timeline for U.S. removal from Afghanistan would be delayed from May 1 to Sept. 11, 2021. Biden said, “I’m now the fourth United States President to preside over American troop presence in Afghanistan: two Republicans, two Democrats. I will not pass this responsibility on to a fifth.”

Concerned Veteran’s senior adviser Dan Caldwell said in a statement, “while we still believe a full withdrawal by the May 1st deadline in the Doha agreement best serves America’s interests, we are pleased to hear Biden is firmly committed to bringing our troops home within the next few months.”

The organization’s Montana chapter feels the same way.

“We’re going to support President Biden’s timeline, but we’re not going to let the pressure up,” Enget said. “We now have a concrete date from him that this is what he wants to do and we’re going to be supportive of the fact that he wants to fully withdraw troops, but he needs to keep that timeline then. We’re going to pressure his administration to keep that timeline.”

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Liam McCollum is an independent journalist and the host of The Liam McCollum Show, a libertarian-oriented podcast. He’s a Philosophy, Journalism, and Pre-Law student at the University of Montana.

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Amid renewed fear mongering about an “invasion” at the U.S.-Mexico border, this week’s 175^th anniversary of the 1846–1848 war the U.S. government instigated with Mexico is a reminder that throughout U.S. history, invasions have gone almost exclusively from north to south, not vice versa. A near-continuous series of invasions—military, political, and economic—moving from north to south has helped produce the poverty, violence, and insecurity driving people to migrate from south to north. The current humanitarian crisis at the border, with record numbers of unaccompanied minors desperately fleeing violence, insecurity and poverty, reveals the consequences of an interventionist policy that’s even older than the U.S.-Mexico war.

To be honest, interventionist is an all-too-common euphemism for imperialist invasions. The first invasion came in 1806 when U.S. military forces entered Mexican territory (then still controlled by Spain) and established a military base in today’s Colorado. In total, including the 1846–1848 war that resulted in the U.S. government seizing nearly half of Mexico, the U.S. military has invaded Mexico at least ten times.^[1] Across Latin America, U.S. forces have invaded southern neighbors more than 70 times, leaving occupying armies for months, years, and in some cases decades.^[2]

Today the U.S. State Department acknowledges that U.S. troops instigated the war with Mexico.^[3] In early 1846 President James Polk deployed forces into disputed territory along the Rio Grande River. “We have not one particle of right to be here,” U.S. Colonel Ethan Allen Hitchcock wrote from near the river. “It looks as if the government sent a small force on purpose to bring on a war, so as to have a pretext for taking California and as much of this country as it chooses.”^[4] After fighting ensued, Polk used what he knew to be false claims that Mexico had “invaded our territory and shed American blood on American soil” to win a Congressional declaration of war.^[5]

Once the war started, many U.S. soldiers questioned the invasion of a neighbor posing no threat to the United States. Angry volunteer troops from Virginia, Mississippi, and North Carolina mutinied. Thousands of soldiers deserted. Several hundred Irish-American soldiers switched sides to fight for Catholic Mexico in the San Patricio Battalion. Casualty rates were unusually high for U.S. forces. They were higher still for Mexicans, including civilians subjected to U.S. bombardment and wartime atrocities. Commanding generals inflicted “extravagant violence” against Mexicans, following the pattern of scorched earth-style warfare employed against Native American civilians.^[6] “Murder, robbery, & rape on mothers and daughters, in the presence of the tied-up males of the families, have been common all along the Rio Grande,” reported U.S. General Winifred Scott in 1847.^[7] A young soldier at the time, future general and president Ulysses Grant said, “I do not think there was ever a more wicked war than that waged by the United States on Mexico.”^[8]

When U.S. and Mexican officials signed a treaty to end the war in 1848, the U.S. government took almost half of Mexico’s pre-war territory. This included around 525,000 square miles that today are the U.S. states of Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and California, and parts of New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming. President James Polk had wanted even more territory: he had plans to invade the Yucatán Peninsula (and also hoped to buy Cuba from Spain).^[9] Some expansionist Democrats in Polk’s party pushed for annexing all of Mexico. They were among a group of southerners who dreamed of expanding the United States’ growing North American empire into the Caribbean, Central America, and Mexico based around enslaved labor and new slave-holding territories. Some led “filibustering” campaigns— private military invasions—in the 1850s into Mexico and Central America, although all failed.^[10]

From Mexico to Nicaragua to Panama and Beyond

The most infamous of the filibusters was William Walker. Walker led a private army, mostly composed of southerners, in an 1853 invasion of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula. He declared himself president of what he called the Republic of Sonora. After Mexicans forced him to retreat to California, Walker led at least six separate campaigns into Nicaragua between 1855 and 1860. For a brief period, he declared himself president of Nicaragua, earned recognition from U.S. President Franklin Pierce, declared English the national language, legalized slavery, invaded Costa Rica, and announced his intention to take over all of Central America. Twice, the U.S. Navy captured him and returned him to the United States; in 1859, the administration of President James Buchanan ordered him released. Walker soon landed in Honduras during another attempt to take over Nicaragua. This time, Hondurans captured Walker, tried and executed him with a firing squad.^[11]

While U.S. government officials generally opposed private invasions like Walker’s, the U.S. military invaded parts of Latin America and the Caribbean throughout the second half of the nineteenth century. U.S. forces invaded Nicaragua in 1853, 1854, 1867, 1894, 1896, 1898, and 1899; Panama in 1856, 1860, 1865, 1873, 1885, and 1895; and Haiti in 1891 (with another invasion threatened in 1888).^[12] In 1903, U.S. officials and Navy warships helped Panamanian secessionists declare independence from Colombia to help advance plans to build a canal across the new country. Panama soon became a U.S. “colony in all but name.”^[13] The Panama Canal Zone was a U.S. colony, full stop, until its return in 1999. Between 1856 and the 1989 U.S. war in Panama, the U.S. military would invade Panama a total of 24 times.^[14] U.S. military bases in the Panama Canal Zone served as launch pads for yet more invasions elsewhere in Latin America.

New U.S. Colonies in Cuba and Puerto Rico

During the U.S. war with Spain of 1898, U.S. troops conquered Cuba and Puerto Rico, as well as the Philippines. U.S. officials turned Puerto Rico into a colony while officially granting Cuba its independence. In practice Cuba became a quasi-colony. To a greater extent than even the Panama Canal Zone, Guantánamo Bay became a U.S. colony, camouflaged by a U.S.-imposed “lease” that has no end date and that can only be terminated with the agreement of both governments. This arrangement amounts to an eviction-proof lease.

In 1901 U.S. officials also inserted an amendment into the new Cuban constitution allowing U.S. troops to invade at will. They soon did. An “Army of Cuban Pacification” occupied the island for almost three years in 1906-1909. U.S. forces occupied the country again in 1912 and for five years in 1917-1922.

Elsewhere in Latin America, the U.S. military occupied the Dominican Republic in 1903-1904 and 1914, and for nine years in 1915-1924. Neighboring Haiti suffered new occupations in 1914 and for nearly 20 years in 1915-1934. In Central America, Honduras experienced eight invasions and occupations in 1903, 1907, 1911, 1912, 1919, 1920, 1924, and 1925. The U.S. military occupied Nicaragua for two years in 1909-1910 and for around three decades in 1912-1933. U.S. troops invaded Guatemala in 1920. Naval vessels threatened the use of force in the waters of Costa Rica and Panama in 1921 and El Salvador in 1932.^[15] U.S. warships entered Latin American ports some 6,000 times between the mid-nineteenth century and 1930, in classic “gunboat diplomacy” style—in other words, political-economic bullying through displays of military force.^[16]

Covert Invasions

President Franklin Roosevelt’s “Good Neighbor” policy of the 1930s brought a brief pause in the invasions and occupations. After World War II, however, new, increasingly covert U.S. invasions largely replaced the overt wars and occupations. These invasions included CIA-backed coups in Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, and Chile; weapons, training, and logistics support for right-wing forces in Central America’s horrific civil wars of the 1980s; Plan Colombia-style military deployments amid the “war on drugs”; and a growing number of U.S. military bases in the region. U.S. support for recent coups and coup attempts in Honduras, Bolivia, and Venezuela illustrates the persistence of such strategies.

U.S. military and CIA invasions into Latin America always have been matched by U.S. economic and corporate invasions, as Mexico demonstrates. Following the end of the war that began in April 1846, Mexico became as much of an economic dependency of the United States as it had been to its Spanish colonizer: mines were controlled by U.S. firms; railroads were designed to ship the wealth of the mines from south to north; the oil industry was dominated by Rockefeller, Mellon, and other oil giants; the peso was pegged to the dollar; Mexico was deeply indebted to U.S. banks.^[17] While Mexico has more power now relative to its northern neighbor than it did in the early twentieth century, the pattern of northern dominance largely has persisted.

Much of Central America and some other parts of Latin America have remained far more dominated by the United States than Mexico. There’s a reason that Honduras was the model for writer O. Henry when he coined the term “banana republic”: Honduras was under the near-complete control of U.S. banana companies and their political and military muscle, the U.S. government. Perhaps distracted by the clothing brand, many forget the original meaning of the term “banana republic”: a weak, impoverished, marginally independent country facing overwhelming foreign economic and political domination. In other words, a de facto colony—which is what Honduras and some other Latin American countries became in the twentieth century; in some cases they remain so today.

The U.S. government and U.S. corporations are not solely responsible for the violence, poverty, and insecurity that are at the root of today’s migration from Latin America to the United States. Other government and corporate actors within and beyond the region also bear responsibility. They include corrupt national leaders, European governments, and European, Canadian, and Asian corporations that have shaped Latin America through history.

One hundred and seventy five years after a U.S. president instigated a war with Mexico that resulted in the seizure of California and other lands that have been major sources of U.S. wealth, the current U.S. president and others in the United States should acknowledge the disproportionate role that U.S. leaders have played in invading and plundering to the south as well as the role these invasions and plunder have played in spurring mass migration northward.

Beyond recognizing U.S. culpability, President Biden has a historic opportunity to repair some of the damage our country has caused and stop causing more harm. This means abandoning the immoral and largely ineffective strategy of President Trump and his two presidential predecessors to outsource immigration control to the military and police forces of southern neighbors.^[18] It means admitting tens of thousands of Latin American asylum seekers per year as a start of paying off a long-owed “imperial debt.”^[19] If Biden is serious about addressing the “root causes” of migration, he and Vice President Kamala Harris must go beyond  pitifully small increases in humanitarian aid to Central America^[20] to end more than 200 years of military, political, and economic invasions that are at the root of those root causes.

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David Vine is Professor of political anthropology at American University in Washington, DC. This article is adapted from Professor Vine’s new book The United States of War: A Global History of America’s Endless Conflicts, from Columbus to the Islamic State (University of California Press). David Vine is also the author of Island of Shame: The Secret History of the U.S. Military Base on Diego Garcia (Princeton University Press, 2009) and Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World (Metropolitan/Henry Holt, 2015). See davidvine.net and basenation.us for more information.

Notes

[1] “Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2020,” https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R42738.pdf.

[2]  “Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2020,” https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R42738.pdf; The United States of War: A Global History of America’s Endless Conflicts, from Columbus to the Islamic State,

https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520300873/the-united-states-of-war.

[3] “Milestones: 1830-1860,” http://history.state.gov/milestones/1830-1860/TexasAnnexation.

[4] Fifty Years in Camp and Field: Diary of Major-General Ethan Allen Hitchcock, U.S.A., https://www.google.com/books/edition/Fifty_Years_in_Camp_and_Field/VhJ-4yKyrhoC?hl=en.

[5] A Nation Without Borders: The United States and Its World in an Age of Civil Wars, 1830-1910, https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/529359/a-nation-without-borders-by-steven-hahn/.

[6] “The Occupation of Mexico: May 1846-July 1848,” https://history.army.mil/html/books/073/73-3/index.html.

[7] “The April Invasion of Veracruz,” https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/21/opinion/krauze-the-april-invasion-of-veracruz.html.

[8] A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1946 U.S. Invasion of Mexico, https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/200246/a-wicked-war-by-amy-s-greenberg/.

[9] What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848, https://www.google.com/books/edition/What_Hath_God_Wrought/TTzRCwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0.

[10] E.g., Building the Continental Empire: American Expansion from the Revolution to the Civil War, https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781566631365/Building-the-Continental-Empire-American-Expansion-from-the-Revolution-to-the-Civil-War; “From Old Empire to New,” https://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/4453.htm.

[11] William Walker’s Wars: How One Man’s Private American Army Tried to Conquer Mexico, Nicaragua, and Honduras, https://www.chicagoreviewpress.com/william-walker-s-wars-products-9781613737293.php; Empire in Retreat: The Past, Present, and Future of the United States, https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300210002/empire-retreat; “William Walker: King of the 19th Century Filibusters,” https://www.historynet.com/william-walker-king-of-the-19th-century-filibusters.htm.

[12] Building the Continental Empire: American Expansion from the Revolution to the Civil War, https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781566631365/Building-the-Continental-Empire-American-Expansion-from-the-Revolution-to-the-Civil-War; Historical Atlas of Central America, https://www.oupress.com/books/9780699/historical-atlas-of-central-america.

[13] America’s Overseas Garrisons: The Leasehold Empire, https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198296874.001.0001/acprof-9780198296874.

[14] Historical Atlas of Central America, https://www.oupress.com/books/9780699/historical-atlas-of-central-america; Emperors in the Jungle: The Hidden History of the U.S. in Panama, https://www.dukeupress.edu/emperors-in-the-jungle.

[15] Emperors in the Jungle: The Hidden History of the U.S. in Panama, https://www.dukeupress.edu/emperors-in-the-jungle; Historical Atlas of Central America, https://www.oupress.com/books/9780699/historical-atlas-of-central-america; The Martinez Era: Salvadoran-American Relations, 1931-1944, https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/3002/.

[16] Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism, https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780805083231.

[17] “From Old Empire to New,” https://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/4453.htm.

[18] “Biden’s Plan for Central America Is a Smokescreen,” https://www.thenation.com/article/world/biden-central-america-immigration/.

[19] “Migrations as Reparations,” https://nacla.org/blog/2016/05/24/migration-reparations.

[20] “The Biden Plan to Build Security and Prosperity in Partnership with the People of Central America,” https://joebiden.com/centralamerica/.

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The campaign to oppose illegal Israeli military recruitment in Canada has received a significant boost. A parliamentary petition calling for an investigation into IDF recruitment has quickly surpassed the number of signatures required to be presented in the House of Commons.

Submitted by Rabbi David Mivasair and sponsored by NDP MP Matthew Green, the petition “calls upon the Minister of Justice to undertake a thorough investigation of those who have recruited or facilitated recruiting for the Israel Defense Forces, and if warranted lay charges against those involved in recruiting and encouraging recruiting for the IDF.” In 48 hours over 1,000 individuals have signed the petition, which is twice what’s required for it to be read in Parliament. The government then has to respond.

The petition is part of a multi-faceted campaign that began in the fall with a formal complaint and open letter signed by Noam Chomsky, Roger Waters, filmmaker Ken Loach, author Yann Martel, former MP Jim Manly, poet El Jones and more than 150 others. The letter called on the federal government to apply charges under the Foreign Enlistment Act against those recruiting Canadians for the Israeli military.

It is a crime to recruit anyone for a foreign military or to encourage any person to serve in a foreign military. The Foreign Enlistment Act states,

“Any person who, within Canada, recruits or otherwise induces any person or body of persons to enlist or to accept any commission or engagement in the armed forces of any foreign state or other armed forces operating in that state is guilty of an offence.”

On several occasions the Israeli consulate in Toronto has advertised that they have an IDF representative available for personal appointments for those wishing to join the IDF. In 2019 the consulate announced, “an IDF representative will conduct personal interviews at the Consulate on November 11-14. Young people who wish to enlist in the IDF or anyone who has not fulfilled their obligations according to the Israeli Defense Service Law are invited to meet with him.” Subsequently, United Jewish Appeal of Greater Toronto and Federation Combined Jewish Appeal Montréal publicized a webinar last June by Nefesh-B’Nefesh titled “Joining the IDF”, which claimed to offer participants “everything you need and want to know about joining the IDF.”

As part of drawing attention to the recruitment, Justice Minister David Lametti received a formal complaint and letters from nearly 1,500 individuals. Additionally, the chief of staff for the office of the RCMP Commissioner, Rob O’Reilly, received a packet of evidence and 900 emails regarding illegal Israeli military recruitment in Canada.

The campaign has been widely covered in left Canadian and pro-Palestinian media. “Why is the Israeli military still recruiting in Canada?” (Canadian Dimension), “Canadians should not be recruited to fight for the Israeli army” (Rabble), “Canadians recruited for Israeli war crimes” (Spring), “Toronto schools push students to join Israeli military” (Canada Files), “What Constitutes Recruiting” (Jewish Independent), “Civil society groups demand action on illegal Israeli military recruiting in Canada” (Rabble), “National Campaign Against IDF Recruiting Begins in Canada” (Washington Report on Middle East Affairs), “Justice minister asked to investigate alleged illegal recruiting in Canada by Israeli Military” (Canada Talks Israel Palestine), “Canadians call on justice department to investigate IDF recruitment in Toronto schools” (Mondoweiss), “Israel illegally recruits Canadian citizens to its army” (Electronic Intifada), “Open letter declares opposition to the Illegal Recruitment of Canadians by the IDF” (Canada Files), “Campaign to stop Israeli military recruitment in Canada gathers pace” (Middle Eastern Monitor) are some of the articles published on the campaign.

In Québec Le Devoir discussed the campaign on its front page and in a follow-up article while Journal de Montréal also ran a story on the challenge to Israeli military recruitment in Canada. But, in English Canada the dominant media has ignored the evidence presented to the justice minister and RCMP. A number of reporters expressed interest in the campaign but got cold feet or were stopped by their editors from covering the public letter and evidence compiled. In February Davide Mastracci wrote a powerful article about how “Media Is Ignoring Alleged Illegal Israeli Army Recruitment In Canada”.

The lack of corporate media attention partly reflects the silence of the anti-Palestinian lobby. Generally quick to denounce pro-Palestinian activists “toxic obsession with Israel”, the Israel lobby have failed to find fault with a campaign suggesting they are engaged in criminal activity. They understand that publicly denouncing the anti-recruitment campaign would draw attention to an issue difficult to defend. The potential illegality of the recruitment is embarrassing and promoting a foreign army rests uneasily with even right-wing nationalist thinking, which is generally sympathetic to an anti-Palestinian outlook. Prominent military historian Jack Granatstein, for instance, told an interviewer, “in my view no one who is a Canadian should be able to enlist in some other country’s military and keep his Canadian citizenship.”

At the same time, the Israel lobby doesn’t want to stop convincing young people to join the IDF. According to 2017 statistics from the IDF, 230 Canadians served in the Israeli military. In 2020, 9 per cent of “lone soldiers” in the Israeli military were from Canada according to the IDF. Canadians staff West Bank checkpoints and ships enforcing the blockade of Gaza.

About 3,500 “lone soldiers” serve in the IDF. This is significant but a relatively small proportion of the 150,000 enlisted in the Israeli military.

But “lone soldiers” are of value beyond their military capacities. Foreigners volunteering to fight for Israel are a powerful symbol to pressure/reassure Israelis weary of their country’s violent behavior.

“Lone soldiers” also intensify the Zionist ethos within much of Canada’s Jewish community. If a friend or family member is willing to give up two years of their life to ‘protect the Jewish people’, goes a certain Zionist logic, I should at least donate to an Israel focused group, lobby a politician, undermine a pro-Palestinian professor, etc.

The campaign to oppose Israeli military recruitment in Canada challenges this ideological climate. Bringing the issue into the House of Commons is an important step in disrupting a dynamic where a young Torontonian can be in charge of overseeing Palestinian misery. Please sign the parliamentary petition.

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The CDC announced this week that deaths reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a U.S. Government funded database that tracks injuries and deaths caused by vaccines, following experimental COVID injections, have now reached 3,486 deaths since December of 2020, when the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA COVID shots were given emergency use authorization (EUA) by the FDA.

To get a perspective on the magnitude of deaths following COVID shots that are being reported to the CDC, there were only 3,445 deaths reported to the CDC following all vaccines from 1/1/2005 through 11/30/2020, the 15-year period prior to the FDA issuing emergency use authorizations for experimental COVID injections in December of 2020.

Source.

3,186 of the reported 3,486 deaths following COVID injections were included in today’s data dump into VAERS, which also included 86,080 injuries with 1,217 permanent disabilities, 12,374 emergency room/doctor visits, 6,282 hospitalized, and 1,906 life threatening injuries.

Source.

Side by side comparison of 15 years of recorded vaccine injuries and deaths vs. 4 months of recorded COVID vaccine injuries and deaths. (Note: the CDC is reporting 3,486 deaths after COVID vaccines while only 3,186 are entered into VAERS so far.)

The breakdown of deaths per EUA injection is as follows.

• Pfizer/Biontech – 1,476 deaths (Source.)
• Moderna – 1,540 deaths (Source.)
• Janssen – 155 deaths (Source.)

According to the CDC’s COVID Vaccine Tracker, the latest statistics on how many doses of each COVID shot have been injected into the population is as follows.

• Pfizer/Biontech – 116,754,631 doses
• Moderna – 97,353,734 doses
• Janssen – 8,040,727 doses

The J&J Janssen shot has the highest percentage of recorded deaths, with Moderna second.

The Janssen shot is currently paused by the FDA due to reports of “rare” blood clots. According to the CDC, these reports only exist with 8 people, all women.

However, the specific cases of blood clots is very narrowly defined by the FDA and CDC, looking only for “cerebral venous sinus thrombosis combined with thrombocytopenia.” (Blood clots in the brain combined with low blood platelets.)

But many other kinds of blood clots following injections have also been reported, many of them fatal, besides just “cerebral venous sinus thrombosis.”

If we search for deaths due to any kind of “thrombosis,” the numbers go up. Here are the search results for “death” and all cases of “thrombosis” (blood clots.)

Source.

Source.

Source.

Clearly deaths associated with blood clots are being reported with all three EUA shots, but the percentage of shots administered along with deaths and blood clots is considerably higher with the J&J shot.

One other thing to note is the age range these deaths and blood clots are happening with each shot.

With the 27 deaths with blood clots among the Pfizer patients, only 1 occurred below the age of 65.

With the 19 deaths with blood clots among the Moderna patients, 5 occurred below the age of 65.

With the 13 deaths with blood clots among the J&J patients, 8 (62%) of them were among those aged below 65, including one between the ages of 17 and 44.

So the J&J shot is affecting young people, who have little to no risk of dying from COVID-19, far more than the other two shots.

And yet news reports today are stating that the CDC and FDA are getting ready to resume the J&J shots. (Source.)

COVID Shots: Mass Murder and Biological Weapons

The decision of whether or not to continue allowing emergency use authorization for the J&J shot, or either of the other two shots, is largely made by just a select few doctors and scientists, all employed by the U.S. Government and with strong ties to the pharmaceutical industry.

Other doctors and scientists who are not employed by a government or a pharmaceutical company that produces and sells vaccines, strongly disagree with the government health bureaucrats, and we have featured many of them here at Health Impact News.

One of the doctors who actually did get an interview in the corporate media is Dr. Hooman Noorchashm, a Harvard trained physician and scientist who was interviewed by Tucker Carlson on Fox News recently.

He stated that he does not know why the FDA and CDC focused on just this specific cluster of blood clots in the J&J experimental COVID shot, because the issue of dangerous blood clots concerns all three EUA COVID shots right now. He was glad the FDA took at least the one shot off the market (although it looks like it is coming back soon.)

The interview is still on YouTube for now. (Let us know if it disappears.)

Not only is there disagreement over whether or not these experimental injections are safe or effective, many are now claiming that these shots are purposely designed to infect and kill people as part of a global plan to reduce the world’s population.

The fact that very well-known scientists and doctors are saying this, such as Dr. Michael Yeadon, the former Vice President and Chief Scientist for Allergy and Respiratory at Pfizer, should be headline news, even if their views are not widely accepted by others.

But instead, they are attacked and censored from the corporate media which is mainly funded by Big Pharma and does not do investigative journalism at all when it comes to vaccines, but simply act as marketing agencies for Big Pharma.

J. Bart Classen, MD, an immunologist, just had a paper published in the journal Microbiology & Infectious Diseases, titled:

COVID-19 RNA Based Vaccines and the Risk of Prion Disease

Excerpt:

There is an old saying in medicine that “the cure may be worse than the disease.” The phrase can be applied to vaccines. In  the current paper the concern is raised that the RNA based COVID vaccines have the potential to cause more disease than the epidemic of COVID-19.

This paper focuses on a novel potential adverse event mechanism causing prion disease which could be even more common and debilitating than the viral infection the vaccine is designed to prevent. While this paper focuses on one potential adverse event there are multiple other potential fatal adverse events as discussed below.

Over the last two decades there has been a concern among certain scientists that prions could be used as bioweapons. More  recently there has been a concern that ubiquitous intracellular molecules could be activated to cause prion disease including Alzheimer’s disease, ALS and other neurodegenerative diseases.

This concern originates due to potential for misuse of research data on the mechanisms by which certain RNA binding proteins like TDP-43, FUS and others can be activated to form disease causing prions.

The fact that this research, which could be used for bioweapons development, is funded by private organizations including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and Ellison Medical Foundation [2] without national/international oversight is also a concern. (Full study.)

Reducing the world’s population can no longer be considered a conspiracy “theory,” as the Globalists themselves, such as Bill Gates, have publicly stated that we need to reduce the world’s population, usually in the name of climate change and “saving the earth.”

As mentioned at the beginning of this article, there are now more recorded deaths following the experimental COVID shots during the first four months in the market, then deaths recorded following all vaccines for the past 15 years!

And yet, the CDC’s official position is still:

A review of available clinical information including death certificates, autopsy, and medical records revealed no evidence that vaccination contributed to patient deaths. (Emphasis theirs. Source.)

For someone who objectively observes the data, which now includes statements submitted to the corporate media by the CDC explaining that thousands of people who are fully vaccinated are still coming down with COVID infections and dying, it obviously takes a LOT more faith to believe that these injections are for our benefit, than it does to believe these shots only benefit Big Pharma and can cause serious harm and injury, and should be avoided completely.

When more people among the public begin to realize that there are evil motives behind these experimental injections, will the politicians and drug company directors be held accountable for mass murder, as the German doctors were at the Nuremburg trials?

Most of those doctors were executed after being convicted at the trials, and if the same moral and legal principles still apply today, then shouldn’t the same thing happen?

For that to happen, however, Americans need to regain control of the judicial system, a topic of a future article that I hope to publish soon.

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A regional independent drug assessment center, the CTIAP (Centre territorial d’Information indépendante et d’Avis pharmaceutiques), which is linked to the Cholet public hospital in the west of France, recently published a report showing that the vaccines used against COVID were not only submitted to insufficient clinical testing, but that the quality of the active substances, their “excipients, some of which are new,” and the manufacturing processes are problematic. “These new excipients should be considered as new active substances,” the Cholet hospital team stated, in a study that according to them raises issues that have not been commented to date.

The team led by Dr. Catherine Frade, a pharmacist, worked on public data released by the EMA with relation to the Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Janssen (Johnson & Johnson) shots, and its first caveat was that all these products only have temporary marketing authorizations. They are all subject to further studies that reach as far as 2024 and even beyond, and these will be almost impossible to be completed because of the way the vaccines are now being distributed, said the CTIAP report.

These studies even include the stability and comparability of the vaccine batches put on the market and the quality and safety of excipients — substances formulated alongside the active ingredient of a medication to facilitate or enhance their absorption.

According to the CTIAP, all of the vaccines were put on the market and actively used on human beings before “proof of quality for the active substance and the finished product” was produced: all the manufacturing labs obtained future deadlines to submit their studies in this regard.

The authors of the report consider that the “variabilities, which impact the very core of the product, could even invalidate any clinical trials conducted” in the coming months and years.

They go so far as to state:

“Prudence would even dictate that, in all countries where these vaccines against COVID-19 have been marketed, all the batches thus ‘released’ should be withdrawn immediately; and that these MAs that have been granted should be suspended, or even canceled, as a matter of urgency until further notice.”

Here below is LifeSite’s full working translation of the CTIAP’s April 2 report:

Can we imagine launching a car manufacturing line and putting vehicles on the road, despite the uncertainties noted in the official documents published? These uncertainties are related to the quality of the parts making up the engine and the various other parts, including those related to safety, the manufacturing process, the reproducibility of the batches that are being marketed, etc.

In the field of medicines (including vaccines), the pharmaceutical act of “release” of the finished product (an authorized product intended for sale) constitutes the final stage of control that precedes the release of these products to the population. This key step of “release” is under the pharmaceutical responsibility of the manufacturers.

Following its previous analyses, the CTIAP of the Cholet Hospital Center has once again revealed to the public, and probably in an unprecedented and exclusive way, new vital information concerning the following four vaccines against COVID-19: the one from the BioNTech/Pfizer laboratory; the one from the Moderna laboratory; the one from the Astra Zeneca laboratory; the one from the Janssen laboratory.

This work was made possible thanks to the valuable contribution of Dr. Catherine Frade, pharmacist and former director of international regulatory affairs in the pharmaceutical industry. She graciously provided us with a documented, written alert.

In this document, she sheds light on data extracted, on March 22, 2021, from the MA (marketing authorization) itself; an MA qualified as “conditional.” She has extracted “source data that is difficult to identify by someone who does not work in the field.” This data is therefore public and verifiable. First of all, it should be noted that the author of this document no longer works in the pharmaceutical industry; she states: “First of all, I would like to make it clear that I have no conflict of interest with the pharmaceutical industry.” It is therefore with her agreement that CTIAP intends to make available to the public, health professionals, decision-makers … an analysis of some of these data that all should read carefully.

This reflection first presents what a “conditional” MA is (I). Then, it recalls that the studies for these vaccines are not complete, as they run from “2021 to at least 2024” (II). Then, it reveals, in an unprecedented and exclusive way, that the official documents, published by the European Medicines Agency (EMA), underline the insufficiency of the evidence concerning also the “quality” of the “active substance” and of the “excipients,” of the “manufacturing process,” of the “reproducibility of the batches” that are being commercialized, etc. (III). Finally, this analysis proposes a conclusion.

I — First of all, it is important to understand what a “conditional” MA is

An MA is to a drug what a car registration document is to a car. MA is granted when a drug has proven its quality, efficacy, and safety; with a positive benefit/risk ratio: that is, it presents more benefits than risks. Obtaining this MA is the essential condition for a pharmaceutical laboratory to sell any drug, including vaccines.

Here, in the case of these vaccines against COVID-19, the four MAs issued are so-called “conditional” MAs. They are temporary. They are valid for no more than one year, because they were obtained on the basis of “incomplete data.” To obtain a standard 5-year MA, the laboratories concerned must provide dossiers completed with “studies in progress and studies planned for the coming years.” Throughout “this development,” close and coordinated monitoring between the manufacturing laboratories and the health authorities is organized through regular discussions. The “conditional” MA is “re-evaluated each year” according to the contribution and critical analysis of additional data provided and collected during a full year.

This “conditional” MA is a European MA. It was obtained through the centralized accelerated procedure. It allows simultaneous marketing in the following 30 countries (European Union and European Free Trade Association): Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden.

The studies concerning these four vaccines are therefore still in progress.

II — Secondly, the planned studies are still in progress and are spread over a period ranging from “2021 to at least 2024”

All of the studies submitted during the MA application are summarized in the EPAR (European Public Assessment Report). This report is published on the European Medicines Agency (EMA) website. The planned studies, not yet completed, are also included.

This schedule, which “extends from 2021 to at least 2024,” depending on which COVID-19 vaccine is involved, is defined in the “annexes” of the conditional marketing authorization and in the published EPARs.

As an example, the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine received this European conditional MA on December 21, 2020. And the deadline for filing “confirmation” of efficacy, safety, and tolerability of this vaccine is “December 2023.”

The Moderna vaccine was granted marketing authorization on January 6, 2021. The deadline for filing “confirmation” of efficacy, safety, and tolerability of the vaccine is “December 2022” at the earliest.

AstraZeneca’s vaccine was granted marketing authorization on January 29, 2021. The deadline for filing “confirmation” of efficacy, safety, and tolerability of the vaccine is “March 2024.”

The Janssen vaccine was granted conditional European marketing authorization on March 11, 2021. The deadline for submitting “confirmation” of the vaccine’s efficacy, safety and tolerance is “December 2023.”

However, to date — and this is undoubtedly where the unprecedented and exclusive revelation of this study lies — another deadline has been set for these four vaccines. This deadline no longer concerns only the ongoing clinical trials, but also the “proof of quality for the active substance and the finished product” itself: that is, the intrinsic quality (the heart) of the product sold and administered to millions of people.

III — Thirdly, and this seems to be unprecedented, the published official documents also underline the incompleteness of the evidence concerning the “quality” of the “active substance” and “excipients,” the “manufacturing process,” the ”reproducibility of the batches” marketed, etc.

The deadline for submitting additional evidence on the “quality” of the “active substance” and the “finished product” (i.e., the vaccine that is authorized and sold) is set for:

• “July 2021” for BioNTech/Pfizer;
• “June 2021” for Moderna;
• “June 2022” for Astra Zeneca;
• “August 2021” for Janssen.

Indeed, for these 4 vaccines, paragraph E, “Specific obligation regarding post-authorization measures for the conditional marketing authorization,” taken from Annex II of the MA, clearly states the following:

For the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine (pages 18-19)

By “March 2021,” the laboratory must provide “additional validation data” to “confirm the reproducibility of the finished product manufacturing process.”

By “July 2021,” the laboratory must provide missing information to:

• “complete the characterization of the active substance and the finished product;”
• “strengthen the control strategy, including the specifications of the active substance and the finished product” in order to “ensure the constant quality of the product;”
• “provide additional information regarding its synthesis process and control strategy” in order to “confirm the purity profile of the excipient ALC-0315” and “to ensure quality control and batch-to-batch reproducibility throughout the life cycle of the finished product;”
• and by “December 2023,” and “in order to confirm the efficacy and safety” of this vaccine, the company “shall submit the final clinical study report for the randomized, placebo-controlled, blind observer study (Study C4591001).

For the Moderna vaccine (page 15)

The laboratory should provide the missing information to:

• “complete the characterization of the manufacturing processes of the active substance and the finished product” (deadline “January 2021”);
• confirm the reproducibility of the manufacturing process of the active substance and the finished product (initial and final batch sizes) (deadline “April 2021”);
• “provide additional information on the stability of the active substance and the finished product and review the specifications of the active substance and the finished product after longer industrial practice” with the aim of “ensuring consistent product quality” (deadline “June 2021”);
• “submit the final study report for the randomized, placebo-controlled, blinded clinical trial for the mRNA-1273-P301 observer” to “confirm the efficacy and safety of COVID-19 vaccine Moderna” (by December 2022).

For the Astra Zeneca vaccine (pages 14-15)

The laboratory must submit the missing information in order to:

• “provide additional validation and comparability data, and initiate further testing” with the aim of “confirming the reproducibility of the manufacturing processes of the active substance and the finished product” (by “December 2021”);
• “Provide the main analysis (based on the December 7 data cut-off (post database lock) and the final analysis of the combined pivotal studies” to “confirm the efficacy and safety of COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca” (deadline “March 5, 2021” (for the main analysis) and “May 31, 2022” (for the combined analysis);
• “submit final reports of the randomized controlled clinical studies COV001, COV002, COV003 and COV005” to “confirm the efficacy and safety of COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca” (due “May 31, 2022”);
• “provide additional data regarding the stability of the active substance and the finished product and revise the specifications of the finished product after extensive industrial practice” in order to “ensure consistent product quality” (deadline “June 2022”);
• “submit the synthesis and summaries of the primary analysis and the final clinical study report for study D8110C00001” to “confirm the efficacy and safety of COVID-19 vaccine AstraZeneca in the elderly and in subjects with underlying disease” — due “April 30, 2021” (for the primary analysis) and “March 31, 2024” (for the final study report).

For the Janssen vaccine (page 18)

The laboratory should submit the missing information to:

• “provide additional comparability and validation data” to “confirm the reproducibility of the manufacturing process of the finished product” (deadline “August 15, 2021”);
• submit the final report of the VAC31518COV3001 randomized, placebo-controlled, single-blind clinical study to “confirm the efficacy and safety of the COVID-19 Ad26.COV2.S vaccine” by December 31, 2023.

These facts allow us to offer a conclusion.

Conclusion

For these reasons, which are not exhaustive, it has proved useful to look for and read the content of the paragraph E: “Specific obligation relating to post-authorization measures concerning the conditional marketing authorization,” extracted from Annex II of the MA, corresponding to each of these 4 vaccines against COVID-19.

The inadequacy of the evaluation does not only concern the clinical trials (studies conducted in humans (women and men)), but also the quality of the active substance, the excipients, some of which are new, the manufacturing process, and the batches released and administered to humans in several countries around the world.

Moreover, these new excipients must be considered as new active ingredients, and thus be the subject of a complete evaluation file similar to that required for a new active ingredient.

Changing the commercial name of one of these vaccines, as was recently announced for the AstraZeneca vaccine in particular, can only be considered as a cosmetic arrangement of the product’s image for marketing purposes (winning new public confidence, boosting sales). It would not answer the questions raised concerning the quality, efficacy and safety of the product. This is one of the usual techniques used to put make-up on (dissimulate) certain undesirable characteristics of the product concerned. It is a technique that has been used to present other drugs in the best possible light.

As already mentioned, in the field of medicines (including vaccines), the “release” of the finished product (intended for sale) is the final stage of control (of quality and therefore of safety) before making these products available to the population.

This key stage of “release” of batches is the pharmaceutical responsibility of the manufacturers. However, the responsibility of the users (institutions and health professionals in particular) may also be involved.

In our opinion, these clinical studies should never have begun before the intrinsic quality of the finished product and its manufacturing process had been fully mastered; before the formulas of these vaccines had been stabilized.

How can the results of these clinical trials, conducted on a global scale, be compared if the vaccine administered can vary from one manufacture to another, from one batch to another, from one region to another?

These variabilities, which impact the very core of the product, could even invalidate any clinical trials conducted.

Even in the case of a health emergency, it is therefore difficult for us to understand the basis for the MA (marketing authorization) that has been granted to these COVID-19 vaccines.

In addition to the uncertainties related to COVID-19, there are also the approximations related to the use, and the intrinsic quality, of these vaccines. Now two problems will have to be managed instead of one.

The maneuver seems subtle. The useful information is available in the official documents published in the framework of the MA; but this data is not made visible by the official discourse. It seems the latter has only tried to present these products as being effective and safe, without reservations; even though the formulas and manufacturing processes of these vaccines do not even seem to have been fully stabilized yet.

These new revelations, which are undoubtedly unprecedented and exclusive, further cast doubt on the validity of consent (a fundamental freedom) that is supposed to be free and informed, and which is said to have been given by the people who are now already vaccinated.

Every person has the right to clear, fair and appropriate information. This information is also perennial: if new data is revealed, those already vaccinated must be informed a posteriori (after the administration of this or that vaccine).

The “obligation” to vaccinate cannot therefore be sustained, even in a disguised form, notably through a “vaccine passport.”

This new analysis further confirms our previous reflections such as the one entitled “Could the Covid-19 vaccine (Tozinameran; COMIRNATY°) be qualified as ‘defective’ by a judge?” or those expressed in the two open letters that have already been sent to the Minister of Solidarity and Health and to the seven Orders of health professionals.

Vulnerability does not only arise from the age and state of health of individuals. Not being able to access independent information on medicines (including vaccines) is the first form of poverty and inequality.

Moreover, concerning the uncertainties on the effectiveness of these vaccines, the Council of State noted, on March 3, 2021, in particular the admission of the Ministry of Solidarity and Health itself, and the contradictions of the French “administration.” In this decision, and against the opinion of this Ministry, the Council of State had produced a decision that seemed to tend towards the recognition of this effectiveness. But, a few days later, in a new decision (n° 450413) issued on March 11, 2021, the Council of State changed its position and admitted “the uncertainty that remains regarding the real effectiveness of the vaccine in terms of the spread of the virus.” It should also be recalled that, on February 18, 2021, the Minister of Solidarity and Health also recognized, and that publicly, that no European country has been able to provide proof that these vaccines can prevent “severe” forms of COVID-19 (see press conference, starting at 34min 44s).

In its latest “Update on the surveillance of COVID-19 vaccines — Period from 12/03/2021 to 18/03/2021” published on March 26, 2021, and updated on March 29, 2021, the French National Agency for the Safety of Medicines (ANSM) reports, in particular, the number of deaths that have occurred in France after the administration of these vaccines. Deaths that are notified (reported) in pharmacovigilance (regardless of the certainty of the “causal link” between these vaccines and these deaths): “311 deaths” after administration of the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine; “4 deaths” after administration of the Moderna vaccine; “20 deaths” after administration of the Astra Zeneca vaccine; (no data is available at this time regarding the latest vaccine (Janssen) to be licensed). In general, for all drugs, there is a high level of under-reporting in pharmacovigilance despite the mandatory nature of these reports.

Consequently, prudence would even dictate that, in all countries where these vaccines against COVID-19 have been marketed, all the batches thus “released” should be withdrawn immediately; and that these MAs that have been granted should be suspended, or even cancelled, as a matter of urgency until further notice. In any case, this is the sense of the recommendations that we could suggest to the ad hoc authorities, and in particular to the French authorities. And, at the very least, this information must be made known to everyone in a clear, fair, and appropriate manner.

All the more so since, in the case of serious adverse effects, including deaths, and in order to establish the said “causal link” with certainty, the victims and their families are often powerless when faced with the requirement of “probatio diabolica” [a legal requirement to achieve an impossible proof].

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America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLDS) today announced the creation of its Legal Task Force, a combination of legal professionals committed to the cause of freedom. The best and brightest advocates for civil liberties have joined forces to develop a strategic response related to the legal and constitutional issues of lockdowns, mask mandates, vaccine passports, medical discrimination, and more. We welcome Joey Gilbert, Esq, Leigh Dundas, Esq (CA), Thomas Renz, Esq, Ali Shultz, JD to the team. The nonprofit’s Legal Resources page provides everyday citizens with the tools they need to challenge unlawful masking edicts and equal-access discrimination through digital health credentials like New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Excelsior Pass.

“The US Constitution isn’t optional, and our laws don’t fall by the wayside with every outbreak. America’s Frontline Doctors’ Legal Task Force is dedicated to taking power back from the unaccountable state public health bureaucrats and returning it to taxpaying citizens and business owners,” said AFLDS founder Simone Gold, JD. “Over the next several months, we will be launching a series of legal challenges to COVID-related restrictions in various states. This is the civil-rights issue of our time. AFLDS is proud to lead the fight once again for truth, freedom, and the American way of life.”

AFLDS supports business owners and concerned citizens pooling their legal resources together to resist major intrusions on their rights. To learn more about the organization’s policy recommendations, including legal remedies, visit their Issue Briefs page.

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On April 23rd, the US and NATO’s biggest concern in regard to Ukraine is dissolving.

The troops from the Russian Southern and Western military districts began returning to their permanent positions of deployment.

A day earlier, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu arrived in Crimea, where a large-scale exercise was taking place.

It involved more than 10 thousand servicemen; 1,200 units of weapons and military equipment of the Southern Military District, the Black Sea Fleet, the Caspian Flotilla and Airborne Forces.

Shoigu said that every aspect of the defense of the region had been tested, including coastal and air defense systems.

He claimed that the purposes of his sudden inspections were satisfactory, and the concentration of forces needed no longer remain.

In the EU, the deployment of Russian troops near the border with Ukraine was called “the most ambitious in history.”

According to the European Union’s foreign policy service, Russia has deployed 100,000 troops there.

The Russian Ministry of Defense explained the concentration of troops in the Southern Military District with exercises.

According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, the Ukrainian and Western media are blowing the issue of Russian military activity near the border with Ukraine out of proportion.

The United States also showed its unwillingness to start a large-scale war when it stopped the deployment of its warships to the Black Sea.

Former Russian President and Deputy Chairman of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev said that the United States has chosen a dual approach to relations with Russia.

The new tactic of the Biden Administration is to signal the need for dialogue with one hand and increase pressure with the other.

Both Washington and Moscow showed that an open war is not in the interest of either party.

Kiev is, thus, left on its own, attempting to push its own aggressive course of action.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Ukraine didn’t want war, but it was ready for it.

He continuously uses militaristic rhetoric, saying that Kiev would stand until the last man in a war with Russia, and meanwhile, Zelensky is failing at his attempt at diplomacy.

He tried to play tough and invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to negotiations in Eastern Ukraine.

In response, Putin said that the Ukrainian leader should speak to the self-proclaimed republics in the region.

He was, however, always welcome to visit Moscow and talk with the Russian leader for whatever he wishes.

Ukrainian President Zelensky is now between a rock and a hard place.

Kiev has already had to pay for a new redeployment of its troops on the Eastern frontlines, while the country’s economy is battered.

Zelensky also may seek an escalation to get political mileage from the situation and to distract the population from numerous internal problems, including the disastrous spread of COVID-19.

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First published on May 22, 2014

“You’re trying to find the places where the money will have the most leverage, how you can save the most lives for the dollar, so to speak,” Pelley remarked. “Right. And transform the societies,” Gates replied.¹

In 2009 the self-designated “Good Club” – a gathering of the world’s wealthiest people whose collective net worth then totaled some $125 billion – met behind closed doors in New York City to discuss a coordinated response to threats posed by the global financial crisis. Led by Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and David Rockefeller, the group resolved to find new ways of addressing sources of discontent in the developing world, in particular “overpopulation” and infectious diseases.² The billionaires in attendance committed to massive spending in areas of interest to themselves, heedless of the priorities of national governments and existing aid organizations.³

Details of the secret summit were leaked to the press and hailed as a turning point for Big Philanthropy. Traditional bureaucratic foundations like Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie were said to be giving way to “philanthrocapitalism,” a muscular new approach to charity in which the presumed entrepreneurial skills of billionaires would be applied directly to the world’s most pressing challenges:

Today’s philanthrocapitalists see a world full of big problems that they, and perhaps only they, can and must put right.  … Their philanthropy is “strategic,” “market conscious,” “impact oriented,” “knowledge based,” often “high engagement,” and always driven by the goal of maximizing the “leverage” of the donor’s money. … [P]hilanthrocapitalists are increasingly trying to find ways of harnessing the profit motive to achieve social good.⁴

Wielding “huge power that could reshape nations according to their will,”⁵ billionaire donors would now openly embrace not only the market-based theory, but also the practices and organizational norms, of corporate capitalism. Yet the overall thrust of their charitable interventions would remain consistent with longstanding traditions of Big Philanthropy, as discussed below:

The World’s Largest Private Foundation

“A new form of multilateral organization”

The most prominent of the philanthrocapitalists is Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft Corp. and as of this writing the richest man in the world. (Despite the carefully cultivated impression that Gates is “giving away” his fortune to charity, his estimated net worth has increased every year since 2009 and now amounts to $72 billion. ⁶) Gates owes his fortune not to making technological contributions but to acquiring and enforcing a fabulously lucrative monopoly in computer operating systems:

Microsoft’s greatest strength has always been its monopoly position in the PC chain. Its exclusionary licensing agreement with PC manufacturers mandated a payment for an MS-DOS license whether or not a Microsoft operating system was used. … By the time the company settled with the Justice Department in 1994 over this illegal arrangement, Microsoft had garnered a dominant market share of all operating systems sold.⁷

Microsoft employs the standard repertoire of business strategies in defense of its monopoly power – preferential pricing, lawsuits, acquisitions of competitors, lobbying for patent protection – but relies ultimately, like other US-based monopolies, on the dominant position of the US worldwide. As former US Secretary of Defense William Cohen observed in 1999, “the prosperity that companies like Microsoft now enjoy could not occur without having the strong military that we have.”⁸

Gates remains chairman of Microsoft but now devotes the bulk of his time to running The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), the largest private foundation in the world and easily the most powerful.  With an endowment of $38 billion, BMGF dwarfs once-dominant players such as Ford ($10 billion), Rockefeller ($3 billion), and Carnegie ($2.7 billion).⁹ These elite charitable funds are attractive to the super-rich not only as alternative channels of influencing policy, but also as a legal means of tax avoidance. Under US law, investments in charitable foundations are tax-free; moreover, investors are not required to sell their stock positions and may continue to vote their shares without restriction.¹⁰ By sheltering foundations, the US Treasury effectively co-finances the activities of BMGF and its investors, supplying a substantial part of the “leverage” lauded above.

Even in a field dominated by the world’s richest, the Gates Foundation has acquired a reputation for exceptional high-handedness. It is “driven by the interests and passions of the Gates family,” evasive about its financials, and accountable to no one except its founder, who “shapes and approves foundation strategies, advocates for the foundation’s issues, and sets the organization’s overall direction.”¹¹

Gates’ approach to charity is presumably rooted in his attitude toward democracy:

The closer you get to [Government] and see how the sausage is made, the more you go, oh my God! These guys don’t even actually know the budget. … The idea that all these people are going to vote and have an opinion about subjects that are increasingly complex – where what seems, you might think … the easy answer [is] not the real answer. It’s a very interesting problem. Do democracies faced with these current problems do these things well?¹²

The Gates charitable empire is vast and growing. Within the US, BMGF focuses primarily on “education reform,” providing support for efforts to privatize public schools and subordinate teachers’ unions. Its much larger international divisions target the developing world and are geared toward infectious diseases, agricultural policy, reproductive health, and population control. In 2009 alone, BMGF spent more than $1.8 billion on global health projects.¹³

The Gates Foundation exercises power not only via its own spending, but more broadly through an elaborate network of “partner organizations” including non-profits, government agencies, and private corporations. As the third largest donor to the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO), it is a dominant player in the formation of global health policy.¹⁴ It orchestrates vast elaborate public-private partnerships – charitable salmagundis that tend to blur distinctions between states, which are at least theoretically accountable to citizens, and profit-seeking businesses that are accountable only to their shareholders. For example, a 2012 initiative aimed at combatting neglected tropical diseases listed among its affiliates USAID, the World Bank, the governments of Brazil, Bangladesh, UAE et al., and a consortium of 13 drug firms comprising the most notorious powers in Big Pharma, including Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, and Pfizer.¹⁵

BMGF is the prime mover behind prominent “multi-stakeholder initiatives” such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and the GAVI Alliance (a “public-private partnership” between the World Health Organization and the vaccine industry).  Such arrangements allow BMGF to leverage its stake in allied enterprises, much as private businesses enhance power and profits through strategic investment schemes. The Foundation also intervenes directly in the agendas and activities of national governments, ranging from its financing of the development of municipal infrastructure in Uganda,¹⁶ to its recently announced collaboration with the Indian Ministry of Science to “Reinvent the Toilet.”¹⁷ At the same time the Foundation supports NGOs that lobby governments to increase spending on the initiatives it sponsors.¹⁸

The Gates operation resembles nothing so much as a massive, vertically integrated multinational corporation (MNC), controlling every step in a supply chain that reaches from its Seattle-based boardroom, through various stages of procurement, production, and distribution, to millions of nameless, impoverished “end-users” in the villages of Africa and South Asia.

Emulating his own strategies for cornering the software market, Gates has created a virtual monopoly in the field of public health. In the words of one NGO official, “[y]ou can’t cough, scratch your head or sneeze in health without coming to the Gates Foundation.”¹⁹ The Foundation’s global influence is now so great that former CEO Jeff Raikes was obliged to declare: “We are not replacing the UN. But some people would say we’re a new form of multilateral organization.”²⁰

Notes:

1. “The Gates Foundation: Giving Away a Fortune,” CBS 60 Minutes, Sept. 30, 2010, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-gates-foundation-giving-away-a-fortune/3/. (back)

2. Paul Harris, “They’re Called The Good Club – And They Want to Save the World,” Guardian, May 30, 2009, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/may/31/new-york-billionaire-philanthropists. (back)

3. Andrew Clark, “US Billionaires Club Together,” Guardian, Aug. 4, 2010, http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/aug/04/us-billionaires-half-fortune-gates. (back)

4. Matthew Bishop and Michael Green, Philanthrocapitalism: How Giving Can Save the World (2008), pp. 3, 6. (back)

5. Harris, op cit. (back)

6. “Bill Gates,” Forbes.com, Sept. 2013, http://www.forbes.com/profile/bill-gates/. (back)

7. Barry Ritholtz, “What’s Behind Microsoft’s Fall from Dominance,” Washington Post, Sept. 26, 2013, http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/whats-behind-microsofts-fall-from-dominance/2013/09/05/b0e5e91e-157b-11e3-804b-d3a1a3a18f2c_story_1.html. (back)

8. Quoted in Michael Perelman, “The Political Economy of Intellectual Property,” Monthly Review, vol. 54, no. 8, January, 2003, http://monthlyreview.org/2003/01/01/the-political-economy-of-intellectual-property. (back)

9. The Foundation Center, Top Funders, http://foundationcenter.org/findfunders/topfunders/top100assets.html. (back)

10. Sheldon Drobny, “The Gates and Buffett Foundation Shell Game,” CommonDreams.org, April 26, 2006, http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0823-26.htm. (back)

11. BMGF website, http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Who-We-Are/General-Information/Leadership/Management-Committee. (back)

12. Richard Waters, “An exclusive interview with Bill Gates,” Financial Times, Nov. 1, 2013,  http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/dacd1f84-41bf-11e3-b064-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2q0sgejl. (back)

13. Noel Salazar, “Top 10 philanthropic foundations: A primer,” Devex, Aug. 1, 2011, https://www.devex.com/en/news/top-10-philanthropic-foundations-what-you-need-to/75508. (back)

14. Global Health Watch, Global Health Watch 2: An Alternative World Health Report, 2008, p. 250, http://www.ghwatch.org/sites/www.ghwatch.org/files/ghw2.pdf. In a 2008 memo leaked to the press, Arata Kochi, chief of the malaria program at the World Health Organization, charged that “the growing dominance of malaria research by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation risks stifling a diversity of views among scientists and wiping out the health agency’s policy-making function.” Donald G. McNeil Jr., “WHO official complains about Gates Foundation’s dominance in malaria fight,” NY Times, Nov. 7, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/17/world/americas/17iht-gates.4.10120087.html. (back)

15. “Private and Public Partners Unite to Combat 10 Neglected Tropical Diseases by 2020,” BMGF press release, Jan. 2012, http://www.gatesfoundation.org/media-center/press-releases/2012/01/private-and-public-partners-unite-to-combat-10-neglected-tropical-diseases-by-2020. (back)

16. Grant to Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development; Government of Uganda, July, 2012, http://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/Quick-Links/Grants-Database/Grants/2012/07/OPP1053920 . (back)

17. “The Next Grand Challenge in India: Reinvent the Toilet,” BMGF press release, Oct. 2013,  http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Media-Center/Press-Releases/2013/10/The-Next-Grand-Challenge-in-India. The Foundation also feels free to “sit down with the Pakistan government” to demand security measures in support of its operations. See Neil Tweedie, “Bill Gates Interview: I Have No Use for Money. This is God’s Work,” The Telegraph, Jan. 18, 2013, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/bill-gates/9812672/Bill-Gates-interview-I-have-no-use-for-money.-This-is-Gods-work.html. (back)

18. Global Health Watch, op. cit., p. 251. (back)

19. Ibid. (back)

20. Gabrielle Pickard, “Will Gates Foundation Replace the UN?” UN Post, 2010, http://www.unpost.org/will-gates-foundation-replace-the-un/#ixzz2pjv08DJr. (back)

Jacob Levich, [email protected], has written on imperialist military strategy for Aspects No. 42. He lives in New York City and tweets as @cordeliers. (back)

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On April 13, 2021, President Joe Biden announced that the United States would pull all remaining 2,500 troops out of Afghanistan by 9/11/21.  The announcement comes after 20 years of combat operations.  

Afghanistan is the longest war in U.S. history.  It cost over $1 trillion that included $978 billion for Overseas Contingency Operations spent directly on the war.  In addition, the base budget for the Department of Defense increased from $343 billion in 2001 to $633 billion in 2020.  To this cost must be added an increase of $175 billion over a twenty-year period for the Department of Veterans Affairs.

It does not end there.  It is estimated that the costs of U.S. wars in the Middle East added $453 billion in interest payments to the national debt, outlays that are expected to mushroom to an astonishing $7.9 trillion over the next forty years.

The Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University estimates that 157,000 people died in Afghanistan because of the war between 2001 and 2019. A gross underestimate.

These included 2,298 U.S. military personnel, 6 U.S. Department of Defense employees, 3,814 U.S. contractors, 64,124 Afghan government military and national police forces, 43,074 Afghan civilians, 42,100 opposition fighters, 67 journalists and media workers, and 424 humanitarian workers.

The history and significance of this war bears scrutiny at a time of unprecedented tensions in the American empire.

The bombing, invasion and occupation of Afghanistan saw the first shots fired in George W. Bush’s ‘war on terror’, a deceitful strategy that provided a pretext for U.S. global interventionism after the fall of the Soviet Union.

The invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was soon followed by the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the greatest strategic military blunder in U.S. history.  Both wars were based on lies.

In Afghanistan, the pretext was the capture of Osama bin Laden and destruction of Al Qaeda, accused of perpetrating 9/11.  In Iraq, the pretense was Saddam Hussein’s possession of “weapons of mass destruction” and ties to Al Qaeda.

The allegations were false.  No forensic evidence linked Bin Laden to 9/11.  Saddam’s biological and chemical weapons, supplied to him during the Iraq/Iran war by the United States, were degraded by 10 years of UN sanctions and inspections.

Further, Saddam had no ties to Al Qaeda. He was a secular Arab leader who detested Islamic fundamentalists such as Bin Laden.  Al Qaeda had no presence in Iraq until the U.S. invasion gave birth to ‘Al Qaeda in Iraq’ which later evolved into the ‘Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’, better known as ISIS.

Seven Muslim countries were bombed during a ‘war of terror’ that saw the United States conduct counter-terrorism operations in 80 countries.

The ‘war on terror’ witnessed countless U.S. violations of international law including crimes against peace, war crimes, crimes against humanity,  warrantless surveillance, extraordinary renditions, preventive detention, torture, and drone assassination.

The U.S. war in Afghanistan began 42 years ago with covert intervention under the Carter administration.  Secret involvement began when Jimmy Carter followed the advice of his National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski by allowing the CIA to arm Islamists to fight the secular government of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan to induce a Soviet intervention in the country.

Brzezinski, it should be noted, was a member of the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations, illustrating his globalist orientation.  He authored a book in 1997 titled, The Grand Chessboard, that documents the geostrategic necessity of U.S. domination of the Eurasian landmass.

The Soviet intervention occurred on December 24, 1979.   Soviet troops immediately stabilized the Afghan government against the Islamic insurgency.  The United States promptly labeled the intervention as an “invasion.”

Public pronouncements by U.S. government officials portrayed the Islamic resistance as being organized as a response to the entry of Soviet troops into Afghanistan.  In a subsequent interview granted to a French journalist in 1998, Brzezinski admitted to springing a “bear trap” by deploying the Islamic mercenary army six months prior to the intervention hoping to precipitate an “invasion” that would give the Soviet Union its own “Vietnam.”

The “Soviet invasion” of Afghanistan was used by Jimmy Carter to announce the ‘Carter Doctrine’ during his State of the Union Address on January 23, 1980.  This doctrine stated that any attempt by an “outside force” to “gain control of the Persian Gulf region” would be interpreted as an assault on “vital interests of the United States” and would provoke a military response.

The doctrine served as a blueprint for massive U.S. military and naval intervention in the Middle East that witnessed the installation of permanent military and naval bases, positioning of rapid strike forces, deployment of naval fleets to patrol the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea, plans to use tactical nuclear weapons launched from U.S. warships in the Indian Ocean, and massive weapons sales to reactionary governments in the region.

Ronald Reagan and CIA director William Casey dramatically increased aid to the Islamic mujahideen in Afghanistan as part of a global counter-revolutionary offensive against the “Evil Empire” of the Soviet Union and “international terrorism” sponsored by the “Red Menace.”  CIA and Pentagon “black budgets” mushroomed under Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush from $9 billion to $36 billion per year to finance covert war.

Reagan’s imperious Secretary of State George Shultz continually bludgeoned the Soviet Union for alleged violations of human rights, support for socialist governments in Cuba and Nicaragua, provision of aid to insurgency in El Salvador and support for the African National Congress in South Africa and the Palestine Liberation Organization and Fatah in Palestine.

The blatant hypocrisy of Shultz’s claims was glaringly clear given U.S support for dictatorships in the Philippines and Indonesia, apartheid states in South Africa and Israel, contra war in Nicaragua, death squads in El Salvador and Guatemala, military dictatorships in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, and terror campaigns in Afghanistan, Angola and Mozambique to counter Soviet support for liberation struggles across the globe.

The ideological heart of Reagan’s anti-communist offensive was use of the ‘terrorism’ label to invert reality by criminalizing liberation struggle and sanctioning ‘counter-terrorist’ repression.

Afghanistan was one part of a global ‘war of terror’ unleashed by the United States against the USSR.

The Afghan intervention was extremely costly to the Soviet Union.   The Islamic insurgency was armed and financed by the United States and Saudi Arabia.  Insurgents were trained in Pakistan.   They were provided with advanced weapons, including stinger missiles capable of destroying Soviet jets and helicopters.  Opium addiction demoralized Soviet troops, many of whom were skinned alive when captured by Reagan’s “freedom fighters.”  Rampant drug addiction and criminal gangs eventually spread to the USSR.

It is estimated that approximately 1 million Afghan civilians were killed in the nine-year conflict along with 90,000 Islamic insurgents, 18,000 Afghan troops, and 14,500 Soviet soldiers.  In fact, the U.S. proxy war in Afghanistan contributed to the overthrow of the USSR in 1991, American triumphalism, and creation of a unipolar world.

The defeat of the Soviet Union provoked publication of the neoconservative policy document titled “Defense Planning Guidance,” written by Under Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz in 1992.

Known as the ‘Wolfowitz Doctrine’, the policy paper stated that the goal of the United States was to prevent the rise of another super-power that could challenge U.S. global hegemony.  It articulated the doctrine of unilateral and preemptive war that would eventually become known as the “Bush Doctrine” when neoconservatives seized power in 2000 after spending a decade developing their hegemonic agenda in the Project for a New American Century and other right-wing think tanks during the 1990s.

The Wolfowitz doctrine officially became the Bush doctrine with the publication of the National Security Strategy of the United States in 2002.

George W. Bush executed the Wolfowitz doctrine of preemptive war in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003.  The catalyst was 9/11, America’s “New Pearl Harbor,” an event predicted in 2000 by neoconservatives in a PNAC document titled, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses.”  Thoughtful individuals should study the evidence surrounding the terrorist attacks of 9/11 to determine whether the neocons led by Bush, Richard Cheney, and their minions were simply clairvoyant or criminally complicit.

The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 led to the demise of secular-nationalist movements, particularly in the Middle East, which paved the way for the emergence of the Islamic resistance to imperialism and the settler state of Israel.

For example, isolation of the Palestine Liberation Organization in the wake of Iraq’s defeat in the 1991 Gulf War led to Yasser Arafat’s capitulation to Israel at Oslo.  In exchange for policing several cantons in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the Palestinian Authority collaborated with the Israelis provoking intensification of the armed resistance to occupation being waged by Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The irony is that British and U. S. imperialists along with their Zionist counterparts, had a long history of supporting Islamic fundamentalism as a counter-weight to secular nationalism as evidenced by their support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt against Nasser, Syria against Assad.

Without the defeat of the Soviet Union, the Gulf War of 1991, Afghan war of 2001, Iraq war of 2003, Libyan war of 2011, and Syrian covert war beginning in 2011 would never have occurred.

In each of these cases, the United States used a combination of overt military intervention and covert war to destabilized targeted governments illustrating the fact that the ‘war on terror’ was a fraud from the very beginning. The United States supported Islamic fundamentalist mercenaries, including Al Qaeda and Bin Laden in Afghanistan and used Al Qaeda and its stepchild, ISIS in Iraq, Libya, and Syria.

In Afghanistan, the defeat of the secular government in 1992 led to internecine warfare between competing war lords of the National Alliance and led to the rise of the Taliban.

Bill Clinton bombed Afghanistan in 1998 as a diversion from the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal.

What Gore Vidal often referred to as the Cheney/Bush Oil Junta negotiated with the Taliban to construct a Caspian Sea oil pipeline through Afghanistan and proceeding to offer the leadership either a “carpet of gold” if they supported the project or a “carpet of bombs” if they refused.  The orientalist mind-set illustrated by that offer was brilliantly deconstructed by the Palestinian intellectual Edward Said fully two decades before the obscenity was uttered.

The Taliban refused.  The bombs dropped.

George W. Bush bombed and invaded the country in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 implementing plans drawn up prior to the terrorist attack.

Barack Obama continued the war by drawing down troops in Iraq and surging U.S. forces in Afghanistan.  Donald Trump escalated bombing attacks in Afghanistan and promised to remove troops by establishing May 1, 2021, as the withdrawal date.  He made the pledge at the end of his presidency.  Biden extended that date to September 11, 2021.

When the United States withdraws from Afghanistan, the corrupt puppet government installed by U.S. coalition forces will fall and the Taliban will regain control of the country.  The ugly Americans will have lost Afghanistan in the same way they lost Vietnam.

It is brutally ironic that although Brzezinski promised Carter to give the Soviet Union its own Vietnam by supporting the mujahideen in Afghanistan, his policy ended up providing another Vietnam to the United States.

Predictably, humanitarian interventionists who supported the war in Afghanistan by claiming the United States was defending women’s rights against the Taliban are voicing opposition to Biden’s pull out.

In fact, Brzezinski’s covert war destabilized the country and led to the eventual fall of a secular government that defended women’s rights, ended the bride price, and promoted women’s literacy, advanced education, and employment.

The liberation of women was used by the CIA to recruit reactionary Islamic fundamentalists to fight Afghanistan’s socialist government and the godless, atheistic army of the Soviet Union.

The war in Afghanistan was a killing field much like Vietnam.  Thousands of women, children and peasants were among the victims.  So much for humanitarian intervention.

Afghanistan is known as the “graveyard of empires.”  Alexander the Great and the ancient Greek Macedonian empire, the British empire and the American empire were all compelled to leave this forsaken land proving once again the timeless axiom of philosopher George Santayana: “Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.”

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Donald Monaco is a political analyst who lives in Brooklyn, New York.  He received his Master’s Degree in Education from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1979 and was radicalized by the Vietnam War.  He writes from an anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist perspective.  His recent book is titled, The Politics ofTerrorism, and is available at amazon.com  

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The Biden Administration has announced an Afghanistan US troop withdrawal date of September, 11, 2021, symbolically exactly two decades after the game-changing 911 attacks in New York and Washington. However the Pentagon and White House are saying nothing about one of the main reasons the powers that be who control Washington have remained in Afghanistan since the fake chase after a former CIA contract employee named Osama bin Laden.

What is clear is that the US Administration is not being straightforward with its plans for Afghanistan and the so-called pull-out. The previously agreed May 1 date versus September 11 is clearly not about making a more graceful exit after a two decade war that has cost US taxpayers more than $2 trillion. The argument by some US Democrats that a full pullout with endanger the rights of Afghan women with the brutal Taliban culture of misogyny is clearly not what US and NATO soldiers have been protecting with their presence. What then is at stake?

Private Mercenary Occupation

While the Pentagon has been sly about giving any direct answer, it seems that what the Team Biden neo-cons are planning is a “privatized” US military presence. According to a report by Jeremy Kuzmarov, “over 18,000 Pentagon contractors remain in Afghanistan, while official troops number 2,500. Joe Biden will withdraw this smaller group of soldiers while leaving behind US Special Forces, mercenaries, and intelligence operatives — privatizing and down-scaling the war, but not ending it.” Already there are seven private military contractors in Afghanistan for every single US soldier.

Use of private military contractors allows the Pentagon and US intelligence agencies to avoid serious Congressional oversight. Typically they are special forces veterans who earn vastly more as private security contractors or mercenaries. Their work is simply classified so there is almost no accountability. The New York Times reports, citing current and former US officials, that Washington “will most likely rely on a shadowy combination of clandestine Special Operations forces, Pentagon contractors and covert intelligence operatives” to conduct operations inside Afghanistan.

The current Afghan government led by Ashraf Ghani, like that of Hamid Karzai is a creation of the United States. Ghani will remain Washington’s proxy in Kabul. His military is funded by the United States at a cost of around $4 billion per year. For what?

What is missing from the public discussion of Afghan troop presence is the 800 pound gorilla in the room: drugs, specifically heroin.

The 800 Pound Gorilla

Some of these private soldiers of fortune are not doing nice things. DynCorp is one of the largest contractors there. As of 2019 DynCorp had gotten over $7 billion in government contracts to train the Afghan army and manage military bases in Afghanistan. One of the publicized tasks of DynCorp and other US mercenary personnel in Afghanistan has been to “oversee” destruction of Afghan poppy fields that supply an estimated 93% of world heroin. Yet the clear evidence is that that opium and its global distribution has been a major province of the CIA along with the US military who guarantee secure air transport via airbases in Kyrgyzstan as well as Afghanistan into the western heroin markets. DynCorp has little to show for that drug eradication, or were they doing something else?

CIA, Mujahideen and Afghan Opium

When the US first occupied Afghanistan, claiming retribution for the Taliban role in aiding Osama bin Laden in the 911 US attacks, a severe anti-opium policy of Taliban had reduced harvests to almost zero. By October, 2001, just before the US invasion, the UN acknowledged that the Taliban reduced opium production in Afghanistan from 3300 tons in 2000 to 185 tons in 2001. According to Canadian economist and historian Michel Chossudovsky, “immediately following the October 2001 invasion, opium markets were restored. Opium prices spiraled. By early 2002, the domestic price of opium in Afghanistan (in dollars/kg) was almost 10 times higher than in 2000.” The Anglo-American invasion of Afghanistan successfully restored the drug trade. The Guardian reported that, “In 2007 Afghanistan had more land growing drugs than Colombia, Bolivia and Peru combined.” That was six years into the US military occupation.

Source: UN

Within several years of US occupation under Karzai, opium crops were at all-time record levels. One of the largest Afghan opium warlords then was the brother of Karzai. In 2009 the New York Times, citing unnamed US officials, wrote that,

“Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years…”

In 2011 Ahmed Karzai was gunned down, mob-style, at his home in Helmland by one of his bodyguards. Helmland is the largest opium province in Afghanistan. If Helmland were a country it would be the largest opium producer worldwide. Was it accident that the CIA paid money to Karzai for at least eight years or did The Company have a stake in the business of Karzai?

While Washington and the CIA have denied supporting the huge Afghan opium trade, the CIA history since the Vietnam War with drug warlords suggests otherwise. As Alfred W. McCoy documented during the Vietnam War era in his ground-breaking book, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, the CIA was deeply involved with Hmong tribesmen in Laos who were involved in opium trade. They claimed it was necessary to twin their support. Later it was found the CIA Air America was involved in secretly shipping opium from the Golden Triangle.

During the 1980’s US-financed Mujahideen war against the Soviet Red Army in Afghanistan, the CIA allegedly turned a blind eye as Osama bin Laden and thousands of “Afghan Arabs” he recruited. Afghan warlords such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar were enriching themselves along with the Pakistani ISI intelligence with vast drug trade profits. To imagine that the CIA, and private mercenary armies such as DynCorp closely tied to the agency, are today involved in the world’s largest opium and heroin source requires no great leap of faith.

In 2018 Alfred McCoy made a damning indictment of the US war in Afghanistan. He asked,

“How could the world’s sole superpower have battled continuously for more than 16 years – deploying more than 100,000 troops at the conflict’s peak, sacrificing the lives of nearly 2,300 soldiers, spending more than $1trillion on its military operations, lavishing a record $100bn more on ‘nation-building’, helping fund and train an army of 350,000 Afghan allies – and still not be able to pacify one of the world’s most impoverished nations?”

His reply was that the US presence was not about nation-building or democracy. It was about heroin: 

“Throughout its three decades in Afghanistan, Washington’s military operations have succeeded only when they fit reasonably comfortably into central Asia’s illicit traffic in opium,” he charged. “Its opium production surged from around 180 tons in 2001 to more than 3,000 tons a year after the invasion, and to more than 8,000 by 2007.

By 2017 the opium production reached a record 9,000 tons. After more than 16 years of US military occupation. Somewhere here is a very dirty and criminal story and the CIA as well as related private military contractors such as DynCorp appear to be in the middle of it.

This is maybe the real reason Washington refuses to honestly leave Afghanistan. As Pepe Escobar points out, contrary to the narrative in Western media that the Taliban control the Afghan opium trade,

“this is not an Afghan Taliban operation. The key questions — never asked by Atlanticist circles — are who buys the opium harvests; refines them into heroin; controls the export routes; and then sell them for humongous profit…”

He points to NATO, noting that Russian citizens are “collateral damage” of the Afghan heroin ratline as much as Americans. “The Russian Foreign Ministry is tracking how tons of chemicals are being illegally imported into Afghanistan from, among others, ‘Italy, France and the Netherlands’, and how the US and NATO are doing absolutely nothing to contain the heroin ratline.”

The US operations in Afghanistan, the world’s largest opium producer, is far from ending. It is merely changing form.

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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.

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Imagine a nuclear blast, as depicted by Stephen Fry, in his recent video, describing Washington’s US$ 1.2 trillion plan of annihilation. With a technologically advanced nuclear war, atomic weapons, the kind available today certainly in the US, Russia, Israel and several European countries, a nuclear war could devastate, if not extinct humanity. Ninety percent of the world population could be wiped out and with it, all basic infrastructure, all major cities; and sunlight would be blocked out for maybe decades. (See video below)

Even in a nuclear war between India and Pakistan, the two smallest nuclear powers, within weeks the nuclear smoke would spread around the earth. In an altitude of 30 km it never rains, so the nuclear dust cloud might linger for years, blocking the sun, destroying crops and bringing about deadly famine.

Those surviving the nuclear blasts might die, if not from famine, from all sorts of cancers and other nuclear radiation-related diseases. It might bring about the end of humanity as we know it. Watch the video below for devastating details.

Possibly the sole survivors and the likely carrier of the human genome into a new nascent human history – maybe to eventually become another civilization – would be the untouched indigenous people, those that have been able to preserve their livelihood in the deepest jungles of the Amazon and what’s not yet destroyed in the Indonesian and African rain forests, and some other most remote corners of the world.

That is a possible scenario. And that has probably happened several times before in Mother Earth’s history. Of course, unlikley with nuclear bombs. Other human atrocities and intercultural feuds, even natural phenomena or a combination of both, could have been the cause for extinction.

Today, some researchers, scientists and investigators may warn about the dangers of extinction, but the grand comfortable public doesn’t want to know about such risks. So, where we are at this critical and high-risk point in history, is perfectly alright.

The human species is where it deserves to be, namely asleep, in a very dangerous, evil dreamworld. Seduced by daily comfort and by daily lies from our authorities (sic-sic), we prefer not to wake up and continue living in a phantasy world. In short, western society has become so complacent that it prefers lies to the truth.

William Casey, CIA Director under President Ronald Reagan, once said, “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.” – He was so right.

It’s about time, that Mother Earth goes into a self-cleansing process. She deserves it.

Is a global war what we want? A nuclear devastation? I don’t believe so.

Is that what the global elite wants – those who pretend calling the shots on the world’s present and future? – I don’t think so.

They, the “Global Cabal”, know that they would be wiped out too. There is no selection process with a gigantic all around the globe nuclear blast – or blasts. And there is nowhere to escape. They could hide for a while in their high luxury bunkers – those they have already prepared for “just in case scenarios” – but not for long. And what a pleasure would it be living underground, in darkness, far from the real sun… well, for them, who thrive on darkness, it might be a pleasing experience, who knows.

Few nuclear blasts a thousand times stronger than the ones that wiped out Hiroshima and Nagasaki, could end it all. That’s also where racial, color or regional discrimination would end. A couple of thousands of years of White Supremacy would come to a full stop.

That’s not what this global elite wants, those, who live only material and compassionless lives.

The nuclear arsenal has by now become highly sophisticated, with targeted nuclear destruction – “nuclear light”, being an ever-growing option. If applied, the Dark Cabal doesn’t know whether retaliation would also come in the form of nuclear “light”, or rather turn into a nuclear holocaust.

An atomic devastation would be one WWIII scenario. Some “experts” say we are 100 seconds from Armageddon. But, how do they know? How does anyone know? What are their criteria – fearmongering or an attempt at awakening? How does a self-styled “expert” know? It’s certainly not science – assessing the onset of Armageddon, the demise of our existence as we know it? Its either arrogance or taking people for more stupid than they are – deviating from the real issues, for example, of tyranny, enslavement, AI-control, possibly forced euthanasia — and much worse. Which leads to another WWIII scenario…

Another WWIII scenario may be the one we are living in right now, but hardly anybody seems to notice. The one waged by an multi-billion dollar powerhouse.

The kind of WW-scenario foreseen decades ago, and well described to the public at large in the so-called 2010 Rockefeller Report, and on 18 October 2019 by Event 201, a computer simulation of an invisible enemy – viruses and fear. In fact, what was simulated was SARS-CoV-2, precisely what we are living today. But we chose not to look when it was presented to us.

The simulation was causing collateral damage of an almost total annihilation of the globe’s economy – bankrupt enterprises, job losses, abject poverty, famine and death. This is precisely what reality is demonstrating today: a colossal socio-economic catastrophe of proportions never known before. It has already brought millions of deaths and we have hardly seen the tip of the iceberg yet.

Such artificially imposed Plandemics will help kill humanity. Yes, plural, because if we, The People, don’t bring this diabolical plan to a shrieking halt, there will be more pandemics, until the other goal of the Globalist Cabal has been reached — “Depopulation”, grabbing of Mother Earth’s remaining resources, as well as full control over a singular global monetary system.

Control as concluded by the WEF’s “Global Reset”, in – “You own nothing and will be happy” – and let me add – “happy – as long as you behave, as we want you to behave.” If not, it may be possible, at this point this is pure speculation, to turn on AI and euthanize the disobedient citizen, or what will have become by then, the “transhuman”.

For these high-tech operations they need 5G and soon 6G. The former is already functioning in many countries, and many urban areas, in Europe and the US. Soon they will get even more powerful electromagnetic (EM) waves and fields to manipulate high-speed vaccine-implanted nano-chips.
There are currently close to a thousand so-called Starlink satellites in orbit. The long-term goal is 30,000-plus. They are transmitting high-power AI-generated data to millions of antennas around the globe, and from there the information links up with magnetic fields, including MFs that are planned to be created in humans. With 5G and EM field humans would be transformed into “transhumans” (Klaus Schwab in “The Global Reset” and “The 4^th Industrial Revolution).

This human catastrophe, crimes against humanity, we are facing today have  been planned for many decades – right in front of our eyes.

We were told openly what THEY are planning to execute, for example, the Rockefeller Report, Event 201, the Great Reset, numerous small and targeted pandemics – SARS (2002-2004), MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) in 2012; H1N1, also called Swine Flu (2009-2010), and more.

They were like trial runs for something much bigger to come, namely a well-planned pandemic, which is really no pandemic, that was to embrace the entire humanity, in all 193 UN member countries – all at once.

From one day to the next the entire world went into lockdown, when WHO on 11 March 2020 declared a worldwide pandemic, when worldwide there were only 9,344 registered covid deaths, more than 90% of them people above the age of 80 with co-morbidities. People who could have died from the common flue, renamed “covid”. Clearly, no case for declaring a pandemic. Every annual seasonal flu in the past decades has killed far more people than SARS-CoV-2, alias, Covid-19.

Imagine, the entire world has been coopted, coerced, blackmailed or threatened into this plan. Not only all UN member countries, but the political body of the UN system, as well as many sub-organizations, including WHO, UNICEF (yes, THE very UN children’s protection agency), the World Trade Organization, UNCTAD, UNDP – not to forget the Bretton Woods Organizations, World Bank and IMF – and, of course, the key players of the World Economic Forum (WEF), are part of this concerted effort to destroy civilization, as we know it.

Other than the destruction of the global economy, there is a eugenist agenda behind this “covid oppression”.

Is  depopulation being planned?

So as to keep the people under control, this is carried out with tremendous and constant fear campaigns, repeated lockdowns, mask wearing, social distancing, severely limiting human gatherings – and so on.

These are well-known measures to denigrate human dignity and self-esteem. Fear is also reducing the immune system as well as the power and will to resist.

Almost every one of the 193 UN member countries had immediately declared a health emergency, akin to an Emergency Law, sort of a Health Martial Law, eliminating most civil and human rights. All these “health protection measures” are well-planned, under the moto, “divide to conquer”. Because humanity in solidarity is the biggest force there is in our close vicinity, other than that of Mother Earth’s.

We might ask ourselves: Is this plandemic a means of targeting so-called unnecessary people, the uneducated, old, infirm and weak for starters as formulated by the protagonists of Eugenics going back to the early 20th Century?

As the eugenics movement gathered strength, the exclusion criteria were gradually tightened to make it easier for U.S. immigration officials to keep disabled people out of America. The 1907 law denied entry to anyone judged ‘mentally or physically defective, such mental or physical defects …  It added ‘imbeciles’ and ‘feeble-minded persons’ to the list of automatically excluded people and inspectors were directed to exclude people with ‘any mental abnormality whatever’

They absorb unnecessarily too many resources and produce nothing, at least nothing from which the Global Cabal could benefit.

A plandemic costs less than a nuclear holocaust. There is no destruction of infrastructure and cities. It increases available land. The newly liberated land and properties go to the elite and possibly to the elite’s new “environmentally safe” agriculture, as propagated by philanthropic farmer Bill Gates, currently the single largest agricultural land owner in the United States.

He promotes vegetable-based meat to save the world from CO2 – and, of course, from global warming.

This goes even a step further than the New Green Deal, supported by the new left; a lie that catapults neoliberal capitalism into yet a new dimension. A lie they trust can easily sell as the truth in a world that has been indoctrinated for decades with the fake coming of man-made “climate change” – alias, “global warming”.

It is a seductive approach to a ‘new’ world order for all those who repeat in unison and in lockstep all the slogans of the fake environmentalists.

The New or One World Order requires a vastly reduced world population.

The bio-war based WWIII we are currently living, will not kill us all at once.

It will mentally prepare us for a better world.

That’s what diabolical plans always do. And as we submit to wearing masks and double masks, plus plastic shields (the latest ludicrous orders under punishment in some countries), to social distancing, to repeated lockdowns as new waves and new variants are invented, we are gradually taking speed running into our own graves.

We are giving more, and ever more of our freedom and human rights away, and move ever more into the grip of “Dirty Rich Elite”, whose objective is to get us all vaccinated, come hell or high water. We seem to be still unable to see the real agenda – nothing to do with protecting our health – to the contrary, it’s a eugenist plan.

Be aware – we are almost there. Dr. Mike Yeadon, former VP of Pfizer and Chief of Science at Pfizer warns of mRNA-type inoculations – which by the CDC’s own declaration are not vaccines but gene-therapies, very dangerous gene-therapies that might alter the human DNA.

These non-vaccines, of which two shots are usually required, are reported of having caused blood clotting, strokes, anaphylaxis, miscarriages, Bell’s Palsy, and a host of other neurologic and auto-immune disorders. And these are just the short-term risks. The long-term dangers – 3 to 5 years down the road – could potentially, according to Dr. Yeadon, result in more deaths and injuries. See here and here.

It is hard to believe that your own government betrays you, and that to a greater or lesser extent all 193 UN member governments participate in bringing about worldwide destruction, a massive bio-WWIII scenario.

Ten years from now, when the non-vaxx jab has transformed most of the remaining humanity into transhumans, when some of the resistant survivors ask you, why didn’t you do something about it, you knew something was not right, and your answer is, “I didn’t know”. Then, it will be too late.

This gigantic monstrous plan has been under preparation for at least 50 years, probably much longer.

Henry Kissinger, who became National Security Advisor in 1969 under President Nixon, played a key role in determining US foreign policy. In 1973 he became Secretary of State and in 1974, Kissinger directed the

National Security Study Memorandum 200: Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests (NSSM200).

The classified study was adopted as official US policy by US President Gerald Ford in November 1975. It was declassified in the early 1990s. The study falsely claimed that population growth in the so-called Lesser Developed Countries (LDCs) was a grave threat to U.S. national security. It talked about food control genocide. “The Food Issue’ is not conjecture. Our food supply has been turned into a weapon against us all.”

The NSSM 200 outlined a covert plan to reduce population growth in those countries through birth control, and also, implicitly, war and famine. Brent Scowcroft, who had by then replaced Kissinger as national security adviser was put in charge of implementing the plan.

CIA Director George H. W. Bush was ordered to assist Scowcroft, as were the secretaries of state, treasury, defense, and agriculture. – This shows the importance of depopulation to several US Administrations, already from the 1970s onward. The NSSM 200 is operational as of this day.

Famine is only one weapon to decimate world population, especially of the Global South, which today still harbors at least two thirds of the world’s natural resources the Global North covets for its exuberant and wasteful life style.

Other means are constant wars, for example the “eternal war on terror”, that deliberately began with the insider 9/11 attacks. Over the past 20 years it has justified any atrocious killing by war or conflict by the US military or by NATO and murdered combined an estimated between 15 and 20 million people.

The US and her allies are guilty of massive war crimes. What can you expect from a nation that drugs its soldiers before combat so they may carry out the most heinous killings without any remorse? The atrocious slaughters come back later to haunt the soldiers once they are home, in the form of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

They are often unable to reintegrate into society. According to the Washington Post, close to 20% of returning veterans report PTSD. The real figure must be much higher, many are committing suicide.

Covid has engendered a fear campaign, facilitating dictatorial and unconstitutional freedom-robbing measures, having destroyed the world economy, created uncountable bankruptcies, unemployment, famine – and finally death (incidence on mortality and morbidity).

Hundreds of thousands are expected to die, not from covid, but from the “collateral disaster” caused by the unjustified tyrannical covid-measures. See here.

Political leaders who do not obey the global elite’s imposed narrative, are heavily reprimanded and / or killed. There is a long history going back to the assassination of Patrice Lumumba in 1961.

While at this stage we have no proof, the recent deaths of the presidents of Tanzania and Burundi, raise important question marks. President of Tanzania, John Magufuli, refused to vaccinate his compatriots, saying there are natural remedies to cure the disease. He suddenly died on 17, March 2021, from a supposed heart attack. The President of Burundi, Mr. Nkurunziza, also died unexpectedly on 8 June 2020, also allegedly from heart failure. He was a so-called covid-denier and threw the WHO out of Burundi.

The importance of the relentless vaxx-vaxx-vaxx campaign couldn’t be a more glaring example of an agenda other than health protection behind the fraudulent covid-face. The European Union has just ordered 1.8 billion doses of mRNA-type vaccines. That’s about 4 doses for every one of the 450 million EU citizens. Why? How many more “waves” and “new “strands”, or covid “variants” are planned over the next 3 to 4 years?

And why are none of these vaccines from Russia or China? The two countries that produce vaccines which are based on the traditional vaccination-method, injecting a weak or dead virus that will produce antibodies when it comes in contact with the real virus. This method has for-decades been applied as a proven preventive medication.

We should ask ourselves: Does the western selection of experimental gene-therapy inoculations point to a health protection agenda? Or is it something else?

All in all – there is no time to lose.

We must resist.

We must say NO – in solidarity – worldwide.

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

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

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Israel had a near-miss of potentially catastrophic proportions on Thursday. As it has done hundreds of times in the past decade, the Israeli air force attacked Iranian bases inside Syria. In response, Syrian forces fired anti-aircraft missiles of a rather primitive Soviet model, one of which overflew its target and landed some 30 kilometres from Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor. Israel said recently that it was bolstering its defences around Dimona for just such an eventuality.

Although an Iranian general taunted Israel, implying that Iran had some responsibility for the attack, that doesn’t appear to be the case. But the missile landing inside Israel does show that if Iran wanted to attack Dimona, it has the capacity. And despite Israel’s best efforts, an Iranian missile could hit its target.

With that, one of the worst nuclear disasters in the region’s history could unfold, including a Chernobyl-type radioactive leak that could endanger not only all of Israel, but also many of its neighbours.

A US general has assured a Senate committee that the Syrians weren’t intending to attack Israel. Rather, a misguided missile meant to target an Israeli warplane overshot its target. He blamed it on “incompetence”, as if that was supposed to be somehow reassuring; rather, it only reinforces how easy it is even for a mistake to cause a nuclear disaster.

Campaign of terror

Certainly, if either Israel or Iran wanted to bomb each other’s nuclear facilities, they could do so successfully. An Israeli attack would probably cause less catastrophic damage, but only because Iran’s nuclear programme is not nearly as developed as Israel’s. An Iranian direct hit on Dimona would cause incalculable damage due to the plutonium reactor at the facility.

Nor does this happen in a vacuum: Israel has maintained a decade-long campaign of terror attacks on Iranian military bases and nuclear scientists. Most recently, it bombed the Natanz nuclear facility, destroying the power generation source and damaging older-generation centrifuges. It also attacked an Iranian Revolutionary Guard spy ship off the Yemeni coast this month.

Iran has responded in its own limited way, restrained by its need to maintain good relations with nuclear-deal signatories.

For Israel, the attacks are a low-risk proposition. It defies US opposition (if there is any) with a wink and a nod, and the attacks look good on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s résumé. To weather his corruption trial and retain public support, he needs external enemies (and internal enemies, but that’s a different story). Iran provides these in spades.

Eliminating Israeli leverage

The US could exert control over this scenario by eliminating Israeli leverage. If it agreed to lift sanctions in exchange for Iran’s return to low levels of uranium enrichment, as designated in the nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration, Israel’s rejectionist approach would become moot. The problem is that US President Joe Biden is running scared from Republican opposition to any nuclear deal with Iran. Besides, he has designated the Middle East a low priority for his administration.

There is some faint hope in the US announcement that it is ready to lift a partial set of sanctions. However, the list on offer is quite limited, and will certainly not satisfy the Iranians. Such half-measures present an example of the limitations of the Biden approach. He should instead make a full-throated commitment to end this dithering once and for all.

Israel is mounting a full-court press this coming week as it sends its Mossad and military intelligence chiefs, along with its army chief of staff, to Washington in an attempt to influence nuclear negotiations as they enter what may be a final stage. According to Haaretz, army chief of staff Aviv Kochavi “will also raise other issues, including Iran’s military expansion in Syria and the instability of Lebanon. Israel is concerned about the possibility that Hezbollah will try to … [foment] conflict with Israel.”

The hypocrisy of Israel’s refusal to acknowledge its own massive military interventions in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and even Iraq, while decrying Iran’s involvement in Syria, is almost breathtaking.

There is next to no chance that any of this will enter into the considerations of negotiators in Vienna. Unlike Israel, they are interested in doing a nuclear deal, not engaging in wishful thinking.

Combustible Middle East mix

Returning to the Biden administration’s global goals, the Middle East doesn’t care about presidential priorities. It contains a combustible mix of corrupt elites and overbearing dictators who do not shirk from causing mayhem in their domains. And one of them, perhaps a desperate Israeli prime minister or an ageing ayatollah eager to preserve his honour and legacy, could inadvertently (or intentionally) set the entire region aflame.

If Biden doesn’t act quickly and decisively, there is a sizeable risk that another missile from one country or the other will hit a target and cause devastation. That would mark a point of no return, like the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, which led to World War One. The difference is that in 1914, armies fought with guns, bayonets and artillery. Today, they will fight with F-35s, ballistic missiles and possibly nuclear weapons.

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Richard Silverstein writes the Tikun Olam blog, devoted to exposing the excesses of the Israeli national security state. His work has appeared in Haaretz, the Forward, the Seattle Times and the Los Angeles Times. He contributed to the essay collection devoted to the 2006 Lebanon war, A Time to Speak Out (Verso) and has another essay in the collection, Israel and Palestine: Alternate Perspectives on Statehood (Rowman & Littlefield).

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People in Europe have been protesting against stringent government measures pertaining to COVID-19.

On the 24th of April, people flocked to Hyde Park, London, in an anti-lockdown and pro-freedom protest.

Watch the video below.

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Featured image is a screenshot from the video

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Introductory Note by Catherine Austin Fitts

The Doctors for Covid Ethics has served the members of the European Parliament with Notices of Liability advising them that they may be held personally liable for harm and death caused by implementation of a Digital Green Certificate (Vaccine Passport), to be voted upon in the European Parliament on April 28, 2021.

If you are a citizen of the European Union, please take time between now and April 28, 2021 to make your voice heard with them!

If you are a citizen of a country outside the European Union, please be inspired by the courage and hard work of the Doctors for Covid Ethics. Please take time now to work with your governments and the banks and companies in which you and your pensions own shares or which you frequent as a depositor or a customer to prevent the adoption of this effort to end health and personal human freedom.

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NOTICE OF LIABILITY (“NOL”)

[NAME]

April 20, 2021

This Notice of Liability has been SERVED to you personally.

You may be held personally liable for harm and death caused by implementation of the proposal identified as REGULATION OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL on a framework for the issuance, verification and acceptance of interoperable certificates on vaccination, testing and recovery to facilitate free movement during the COVID-19 pandemic (Digital Green Certificate), Brussels, 17.3.2021 COM(2021) 130 final 2021/0068 (COD), which is designed to coerce widespread acceptance of experimental vaccination. If you take further action supporting such implementation, and if you take no steps to mitigate your past actions supporting such implementation, you may be held personally liable for resulting harm and death.

Attached as appendices and as integral parts of this Notice of Liability are the documents:

Urgent Open Letter from Doctors and Scientists to the European Medicines Agency Regarding COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Concerns;

Reply from the European Medicines Agency to Doctors for Covid Ethics;

Doctors and Scientists Accuse Medical Regulator of Downplaying COVID-19 Vaccine Dangers;

Rebuttal Letter to European Medicines Agency from Doctors for Covid Ethics;

Doctors for Covid Ethics Signatories.

Furthermore, you may be held personally responsible for supporting CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY, defined as acts that are purposely committed as part of a widespread or systematic policy, directed against civilians, committed in furtherance of state policy.

Please respond to this NOTICE OF LIABILITY within 14 days from the DATE OF SERVICE to:

DOCTORS FOR COVID ETHICS

[email protected]

EU Parliment Members served (xlsx file)

1. Letter from Doctors for Covid Ethics to EMA – February 28, 2021
2. Reply from EMA to Doctors for Covid Ethics- March 23, 2021
3. Rebuttal letter from Doctors for Covid Ethics- April 1, 2021
4. Press Release EMA Rebuttal Letter- April 1, 2021
5. Doctors for Covid Ethics Signatories

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The United States is back. Back in the Paris Agreement, and back to faithfully promoting the interests of destructive industries and their allies at the global level under the guise of environmentalism. On Earth Day—a day that has been increasingly co-opted by corporations—President Biden is hosting a “Leaders’ Summit on the Climate.” But who are these “leaders?” 

The Biden Administration’s dubious definition is clear from the fact that a key initiative to be announced at the summit is a bilateral agreement between Biden and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. The deal would include significant financial support for Brazil’s “efforts” to reduce illegal deforestation.

If there were ever a prize for the most environmentally destructive president in history, Bolsonaro would stand a good chance to win. In just two years, he has succeeded in increasing deforestation rates in Brazil by 47 percent, triggering the destruction of 11,088 square kilometers of forests in his country in 2020 alone, primarily by allowing and even incentivizing his friends and allies in the industrial livestock sector and other industries to clear as much forest as they want.

Of course, it is basically up to Bolsonaro and his administration to decide what deforestation is legal or illegal—no matter the fact that Heads of State agreed in 2015 in the Sustainable Development Goals that all deforestation should be halted, and thus declared illegal, by 2020.

It is no wonder Brazilian Indigenous peoples, civil society organizations, feminist groups, and social movements are cynical about the proposed deal between the United States and Brazil. In a widely supported letter published on April 6, they denounced the proposed agreement, claiming it is unacceptable to give financial support to a “leader” who is not only destroying his own country, but has also been recommended by Indigenous peoples in Brazil to be prosecuted before the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.

Bolsonaro is not the only industry ally the United States is touting as an “environmental leader.” The Biden Administration has shown its commitment to protecting business as usual in climate policy by actively promoting carbon offset mechanisms that would allow some of the dirtiest industries in the country to buy cheap carbon offsets for their emissions under the euphemistic term “nature-based solutions.”

Such “solutions” often boil down to monoculture tree plantations, which have been embraced by companies like Shell and Texaco as a way to profit from pulp or bioenergy sales while pretending to “plant trees” for clients who want to greenwash their petroleum emissions.

These carbon offset mechanisms would allow some of the dirtiest industries to make money selling offset credits based on the use of genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, and weed killers that avoid tilling (euphemistically called soil carbon sequestration or even “regenerative agriculture”) or, for example, the use of biogas produced by intensive livestock farming.

The emissions caused by the production of soy feedstock for the intensive livestock industry, a key cause of deforestation in countries like Brazil, are conveniently forgotten in these scenarios. Also forgotten are the devastating impacts on women, Indigenous peoples, and others who’ve borne the brunt of industrial farming, which is associated with massive health impacts due to agrochemicals, land grabbing, and rural depopulation.

Another “leader” who will undoubtedly show up at the U.S. Leaders’ Summit is Bill Gates, a passionate promoter of GMOs and other techno-fixes to address the impacts of  agro-industry on the climate. Through a series of strategic investments in different U.N. institutions, the former Microsoft CEO and his foundation have positioned themselves as the main benefactor and influencer of a wide variety of interlinked global processes.

The U.N. Food Systems Summit is probably the most controversial of these processes. The idea for the summit came from the business-dominated World Economic Forum. And its pro-business agenda was given a human face with the appointment of Agnes Kalibata, the president of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, as special envoy of the conference.

The alliance is an initiative backed by the Gates Foundation to promote GMOs and other techno-fixes for agricultural challenges in Africa. Gates himself has invested heavily in companies like Monsanto/Bayer that stand to profit from such “nature-based solutions.”

With the U.N. Food Systems Summit planned for September 2021, the conditions are right for a corporate-driven agenda to push business-friendly “nature-based solutions” onto the “leaders” gathered at these summits. The winners in this scheme would be destroyers like Bolsonaro and Gates, who seek profit at the expense of some of the most precious forests on the planet.

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Ahead of European Green Certificate (vaccine passport) vote in the European Parliament on April 28, the experts warn that cardinal symptoms of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) dominate the list of adverse reactions to COVID-19 vaccines

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Emer Cooke, Executive Director, European Medicines Agency, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 20 April 2021

BY EMAIL ONLY

Dear Sirs/Mesdames,

FOR THE URGENT PERSONAL ATTENTION OF EMER COOKE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE EUROPEAN MEDICINES AGENCY

The European Medicines Agency and those persons who work for that regulatory body, of which body you are Executive Director, were put on notice by Doctors for Covid Ethics on 1 April 2021.

We note your iterations to the press since that date.

Our concerns re the gene-based vaccines are not confined to that of Astra-Zeneca, rather to all the COVID-19 gene-based vaccines, namely those of Astra-Zeneca, Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson.

1a. Our most serious concern re ALL the gene-based vaccines is that you convey the impression that cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) is a very rare adverse event. In fact the opposite is probably true. The cardinal symptoms of CVST dominate the list of adverse reactions:

• piercing headache
• nausea and vomiting
• impaired consciousness
• impaired speech
• impaired vision
• impaired hearing
• paralysis of varying degrees in various locations
• loss of motor control (including such severe loss that victims mimic the symptoms of Huntington’s Chorea).

It is imperative that proper medical attention is given to every individual who presents with any of the above symptoms.

It is the indirigible duty of the European Medicines Agency to disseminate the above information to medical doctors and responsible authorities.

1b. A further serious concern is that peripheral “clot” formation is not alluded to by you at all.

It is evident that “clot” formation in the deep veins of the legs and arms can lead to life-threatening pulmonary embolism.

1c. Further, thrombus formation in the small vessels of the lungs can lead to a clinical picture resembling atypical pneumonia.

1d. In addition, it is vitally important to understand that any one of 1a. 1b. 1c. or any combination of these can lead via consumption of coagulation factors to the clinical picture of disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) which is actually characterised by massive bleeding events into the skin and into other organs of the body.

It is imperative that all the above diagnoses are actively searched for and that all cases displaying symptoms consistent with any of these diagnoses are recorded properly as adverse vaccine-related events.

1e. Furthermore, long term adverse effects, in particular the danger of immune dependant enhancement of disease and adverse effects of subsequent vaccinations are impossible to predict.

The European Medicines Agency, as the regulator re vaccines for almost 450 million people across 27 European Union member states, must inform the public and the relevant authorities of this profoundly important issue.

2. We believe that the number of deaths due to the gene-based vaccines to which you have publicly admitted is but a small percentage of the actual number of deaths due to the gene-based vaccines.

3. With regard to 2. we suspect that death certificates are being falsified, whether wittingly or unwittingly, particularly when

4. post-mortems are not being performed and

5. when the “laws” surrounding cremation (which constitutes destruction of evidence in the present context of the commission of great crimes) have been dangerously relaxed (3. 4. and 5. as per the Coronavirus Act 2020 and equivalent legislation worldwide) and

6. particularly in view of the deafening silence re 3. 4. and 5. from coroners and pathologists worldwide.

You will understand that this potentially lethal cocktail is of the highest importance, particularly in view of the numerous serious coercive measures being employed on psychologically traumatised populations worldwide to take gene-based vaccines which are not safe, which are not effective and which are not needed.

We have previously made you aware of multiple gross violations of the Nuremberg Code re human medical experimentation.

With this background, we ask that you disclose all data which you hold and/or could obtain on:

1) the effects of the gene-based vaccines on fertility in women of child bearing age, and in men

2) the number of cremations performed since and including 8 December 2020 and the number of burials since and including 8 December 2020 of those recorded as having died from COVID-19 on their death certificates, not necessarily in the European Union

3) the medical justification for the interval between the two Pfizer injections being increased at short notice from 3 weeks to 12 weeks, despite protests from Pfizer that they only possessed data for a three week interval

4) the medical justification for “mixing and matching” of different gene-based vaccines and

5) the medical justification for depriving recipients of the gene-based vaccines, in at least one European Union member state, of knowledge of which gene-based vaccine they have received.

We look forward to hearing from you.

We reserve the right to publish this email communication at any time.

This email is copied to the lawyer Reiner Fuellmich and other lawyers, to Charles Michel, President of the Council of Europe, to Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, and to five members of your staff.

Yours faithfully,

Doctors for Covid Ethics

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The very word is chilling, but has become normalised political currency in Denmark.  Since 2010, the Danish government has resorted to generating “ghetto lists” marking out areas as socially problematic for the state.  In 2018, the country’s parliament passed “ghetto” laws to further regulate the lives of individuals inhabiting various city areas focusing on their racial and ethnic origins.  The legislation constitutes the spear tip of the “One Denmark without Parallel Societies – No Ghettos in 2030” initiative; its target: “non-Western” residents who overbalance the social ledger by concentrating in various city environs. 

The “ghetto package”, comprising over 20 different statutes, grants the government power to designate various neighbourhoods as “ghettos” or “tough ghettos”.  That nasty formulation is intended to have consequences for urban planning, taking into account the percentage of immigrants and descendants present in that area of “non-Western background”.  One Danish media outlet, assiduously avoiding the creepier elements of the policy, saw it as the “greatest social experiment of the century.”

Bureaucrats consider the following: the number of residents (greater than 1,000); a cap of 50% of “non-Westerners”; and whether the neighbourhood meets any two of four criteria, namely employment, education, income and criminality.  Doing so enables the authorities to evict residents, demolish buildings and alter the character of the neighbourhood, a form of cleansing that has shuddering historical resonances.  Central to this is an effort to reduce the stock of “common family housing” – 40% in tough ghettos by 2030 – supposedly available to all based on principles of affordability, democracy and egalitarianism.

The problematic designation of people of “non-Western background” is also a bit of brutal public policy.  It is a discriminatory measure that has concerned the UN Committee on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights (CESCR) and the Council of Europe’s Advisory Committee on the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (ACFC).  In its concluding observations on the sixth periodic report of Denmark from 2019, the CESCR urged the country’s adoption of “a rights-based approach to its efforts to address residential segregation and enhance social cohesion.”  This would involve the scrapping of such terms as “ghetto” and “non-Western” and the repeal of provisions with direct or indirect discriminatory effects “on refugees, migrants and residents of the ‘ghettos’.”

The use of “descendants” also suggests the importance of bloodline that would have seemed entirely logical to the Nazi drafters of the Nuremberg Laws.  The German laws, announced in 1935, made no reference to the criteria of religion in defining a “Jew”, merely the importance of having three or four Jewish grandparents.  Doing so roped those whose grandparents had converted to Christianity and the secular. First came the sentiments; then came the laws.

This irredeemable state of affairs has solid, disturbing implications, though both the CESCR and ACFC tend to be almost mild mannered in pointing it out: You did not belong and you cannot belong.  It is less an integrating measure than an excluding one.  Denmark’s “Ghetto Package”, as the ACFC puts it, “sends a message that may have a counter-effect on their feeling of belonging and forming an integral part of Danish society.”  It also urged that Denmark “reconsider the concepts of ‘immigrants and descendants of immigrants of Western origin’ and ‘immigrants and descendants of immigrants of non-Western origin’.”

For its part, the Ministry of Interior and Housing finds the package all above board, a mere matter of statistical bookkeeping.  Using “non-Western” as a marker adopted to distinguish the EU states, the UK, Andorra, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Norway, San Marino, Switzerland, the Vatican State, Canada, United States, Australia and New Zealand.  “All other countries,” the Ministry curtly observed in a statement, “are non-Western countries.”

Last year, Mjølnerparken, a housing project in Copenhagen’s Nørrebro area, became the subject of intense interest in the application of the Ghetto laws.  With 98 percent of the 2,500 residents being immigrants or the children of immigrants, a good number hailing from the Middle East and Africa, the “tough ghetto” designation was a formality.  Apartment sales were promised, effectively threatening the eviction of the tenants. 

These actions were proposed despite ongoing legal proceedings against the Ministry of Interior and Housing by affected residents.  Declaratory relief is being sought, with the applicants arguing that the measures breach the rights to equality, respect for home, property and the freedom to choose their own residence.

Three rapporteurs from the United Nations also warned that the sale should not go ahead as litigation was taking place.  “It does not matter whether they own or rent all residents should have a degree of security of tenure, which guarantees legal protection against forced eviction, harassment and other threats.”

Such policies tend to consume the reason for their implementation.  Disadvantage and stigmatisation are enforced, not lessened.  Former lawmaker Özlem Cekic suggests as much.  “It is not only created to hit the Muslim groups and immigrant groups but the working class as well.  A lot of people in the ‘ghettoes’, they don’t have economic stability.”

The Ministry has reacted to the protests with proposals that ostensibly reform the legal package.  The word “ghetto”, for instance, will be removed and the share of people of non-Western background in social housing will be reduced to 30% within 10 years.  Those moved out of the areas will be relocated to other parts of the country.  According to Nanna Margrethe Kusaa of the Danish Institute for Human Rights, “the ethnicity criteria has a more sharpened focus on it than before.”  Officials have merely refined the prejudice in one of Europe’s most troubling instances of ethnic engineering.  To this, Cekic has an ominous warning: “How can you expect [immigrants] to be loyal to a country that doesn’t accept them as they are?”

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

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

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U.S. contractors are staring down a tight deadline—with very little direction—to move out of Afghanistan by President Joe Biden’s planned troop withdrawal of Sept. 11.

“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.”

The Defense Department has 16,832 workers employed by contractors in Afghanistan, of whom 6,147 are U.S. citizens. That’s more than double the remaining 2,500 U.S. troops. Contractors support the military with everything from lodging, laundry, and food to transportation, equipment maintenance, and fuel. Since 2002, the Pentagon has spent $107.9 billion on contracted services in Afghanistan, a Bloomberg Government analysis shows.

“We need a much clearer idea of what the endgame looks like,” Berteau said. “None of that has been revealed to us or our member companies and that is what we’re calling for.”

The contractors’ alarm signals how complicated and fraught with risk the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan will be after almost two decades of combat against an entrenched network of armed forces, and with thousands of contractors supporting U.S. military operations.

Biden set the pullout deadline for the 20-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

Largest Vendors

The largest vendors with Pentagon contracts in Afghanistan are Fluor Corp. with $3.1 billion spent between 2016 and January 2021, and Amentum Parent Holdings LLC, with $1.7 billion during the same period.

Contract data is available only through the first half of January 2021. Both Fluor and Amentum’s largest contract is known as a logistics civil augmentation program. In short, it’s an indefinite delivery and quantity contract given in multiple awards.

Amentum, for example, works on air traffic control, airfield upkeep, unmanned aircraft operations, and maintenance. It also helped with training the Afghans’ national police and army, contract data show.

Amentum doesn’t have a comment for this article, a company spokeswoman said. Fluor officials didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The Pentagon also has spent $1.2 billion for helicopter transport during the same 2016 to January 2021 period, primarily with two companies: Columbia Helicopters, at $966 million, and Construction Helicopters Inc. at $229 million. The Pentagon spent $935 million over four years on contracts with PAE Inc. to include training and mentoring, and for the Afghanistan technical equipment maintenance program.

Meanwhile, one vendor—Secure Movement Logistics Services—received $680 million for petroleum, oil, and lubricant product support. The complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan makes it likely that fuel services will no longer be needed in the country.

‘Devastating’ Removal

“Most of the contractors are going to leave, and certainly the U.S. contractors are going to leave,” Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, the head of Central Command, told the House Armed Services Committee on April 20. He offered no details and later in the week, at a Pentagon press briefing, he said, “the U.S. contractors will come out as we come out. That is part of the planned withdrawal we have in place right now.”

The preliminary plan is for at least some contractors to leave during the military withdrawal from Afghanistan, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said this month after Biden’s announcement. The Pentagon has yet to provide details on how many contractors will be extracted. Kirby indicated plans are in flux and could change.

U.S. contractors leaving Afghanistan could be more “devastating” to the Afghan security forces than the U.S. troop pullout, John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, said last month.

The departure of contractors was largely ignored as the focus shifted to when Biden would withdraw the military, Sopko told a forum organized by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The Afghan government relies on contractors to train in using, and maintain, U.S.-supplied equipment such as Lockheed Martin Corp.’s UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters and C-130 transport aircraft, he said.

The Pentagon is looking at alternatives to help the Afghans in the maintenance effort from a distance, McKenzie said.

“We may be able to work some remote, televised way to do that,” he said at the Pentagon on Thursday. “We’re going to try all kinds of innovative ways. The one thing I can tell you is we are not going to be there on the ground with them.”

Future ‘Boondoggle’

The U.S. decision to send Blackhawks to Afghanistan that the local security forces can’t operate or maintain is ripe for fraud and abuse, said Jason Dempsey, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

“I see it as a total boondoggle,” Dempsey said in an interview. To support the Afghan air force, the U.S. would have to keep sending in contractors, he said, and “contracts are going to be ridiculous” going forward.

“We are going to put in a bunch of contractors, they are going to get hundreds of millions of dollars to maintain this fleet, and the fleet is not going to be used,” he said.

Without contractors, none of these aircraft can remain effective for combat for more than a few months, Sopko warned. Dyncorp International, now a part of Amentum, in December won a task order valued at up to $554 million for support of aircraft. The company said in a statement it would hire 250 people to start work in Afghanistan and Huntsville, Ala., where the program is managed.

‘Easy Part’

U.S. forces coming out of Afghanistan “is kind of the easy part,” said Elaine McCusker, a former acting Pentagon comptroller during President Donald Trump’s administration.

“The key thing is always, what does that detailed planning order look like, and what is the end state?” McCusker, now a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said in an interview.

“Moving the forces out is not as big of a deal; it’s the equipment and then the reset that has to take place. Are you bringing that equipment out of the Middle East, are you just bringing it out of Afghanistan? Where is it going? How much is coming back to the U.S.?” McCusker said. “Those are some of the considerations that are going to play into what the final plan looks like.”

Meanwhile, the Pentagon’s acquisition officials are working on a strategy for any modifications for contracts that support U.S. forces. “But let’s face it, they also support coalition forces,” McCusker said. “It’s not just us that we want to look at what is provided through those contracts.”

The situation “cries out” both for individual review of the specific contracts, and a national review of contracts that would make sense to continue in order to support the Afghan government, and those that the Afghanis can maintain, Berteau, from the Professional Services Council, said.

“This is the kind of effort that if you started today, you’d be at a hard run to be finished by Sept. 11,” he said. “And you don’t even see a sign that it is underway today.”