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Hopes and expectations for a partial normalization between Moscow, Washington and Kiev stepping off the warpath were brief and flickered only for a moment before being entirely extinguished.

On April 13, U.S. President Joe Biden held a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The White House statement on the matter was positive, optimistic even, saying that the two discussed a number of regional and global issues.

They agreed to pursue a strategic stability dialogue on a range of arms control and emerging security issues.

They spoke about Ukraine, and how Russia needs to put forward effort to de-escalate the situation.

In response, Putin outlined approaches to a political settlement based on the Minsk Package of Measures.

The counterparts agreed to meet for talks a month after the diplomatic crisis sparked by Biden’s claims that Putin was a “killer.”

The situation seemed to be largely defused, proven by the fact that the United States decided not to deploy two of its warships to the Black Sea and, in fact, recalled them.

Immediately after that, the Biden Administration turned around, with the US President signing an executive order sanctioning Russia, and recalling 10 ambassadors.

He declared a national emergency over Russia’s alleged threat and all aspirations of normalization quickly evaporated.

The US Secretary of State immediately said that he was “pleasantly surprised” by the position of all 30 NATO states against Russia’s presumed aggression against Ukraine.

In addition, Russian ambassadors were summoned to the Foreign Ministers of the UK and Poland.

It was a united front, two complete shifts in rhetoric within a single day.

The same day, Biden had a short speech, expressing hope of establishing a rapport with Russia.

It was a very cliché text, and he quickly bolted afterwards.

He answered two questions, including one regarding Nord Stream 2.

He simply ran out of text and left, solidifying any “conspiracies” regarding whether he’s actually in control of his own ship.

As a result of the instability in US politics, Russia said that it was considering to ditch the US dollar.

No other Biden Putin meetings are likely to take place, mostly due to the incredible hypocrisy shown within a single day.

Meanwhile, the situation in Ukraine appears to be heading towards deterioration.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the “Army is ready” and that the situation was under control, albeit there were “certain issues.”

While Moscow’s attention was focused on Washington, Turkey reportedly sent its troops to Ukraine.

According to Turkish media, Ankara’s specialists arrived to train Ukrainian soldiers in operating the Bayraktar TB2 drones.

April 15th may come down in modern history as the day a new war began, be it hot or cold.

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The recently intensified “sanctions war” between the US and Russia has made many observers wonder whether this escalation is symbolic, substantive, or strategic.

The US’ imposition last week of its most intense sanctions against Russia in several years prompted Moscow to respond in kind. Reuters published a handy factbox about the US’ initial moves while Sputnik released one about Russia’s, both of which should be reviewed by readers who aren’t fully familiar with what just happened.

The US reacted real negatively to Russia’s response by viewing it as a so-called “escalation” despite it mostly being tit-for-tat. Moscow also hinted that it has a few more sanctions tricks up its sleeve if Washington decides to take matters further. It therefore remains to be seen what might come next, but now’s the perfect moment to reflect on last week’s events in order to determine whether they’re symbolic, substantive, or strategic.

In a nutshell, the US sanctioned Russian currency and debt, tech companies, information outlets, and officials alongside expelling ten Russian diplomats. Russia responded by expelling an equal number of American diplomats, publishing a list of several American officials who are banned from the country, imposing restrictions on the hiring practices of US diplomatic missions and the movement of its diplomats, and promising to thwart all US-backed meddling efforts inside of Russia. The American moves were made on the unsubstantiated pretext of Russian hacking and meddling accusations while Russia’s were promulgated purely in self-defense. The US aims to create a stigma around Russian companies, its economy, and friendly media outlets while Russia intends to expose actual American meddling within the country.

It can be argued that both sets of moves are symbolic, substantive, and strategic. The American ones were in reaction to a weaponized information warfare narrative (symbolic), target elements of the Russian economy (substantive), and increase the campaign of so-called “maximum pressure” against Moscow (strategic). Russia’s, meanwhile, responded in kind by expelling US diplomats and publishing the list of officials who’ve been banned (symbolic), restricting US diplomatic activities (substantive), and thereby making it more difficult for America to meddle in Russia’s internal affairs (strategic). Basically, the US’ actions are offensive while Russia’s are defensive, and both endeavor to gain strategic advantages over the other in terms of the respective dynamics of their competition (the US pushing against Russia to destabilize it while Russia pushes back to protect itself).

Unlike the US-Chinese trade war, neither side can really inflict all that much damage on the other since their countries never “coupled” in the first place to “decouple” in the present in a way that might be mutually detrimental. This observation has pros and cons for each side. The “positive” side of things is that each party’s moves carry very little chance of provoking the other to significantly damage their interests, while the “negative” one is that this means that each party can at least in theory continue with their moves unabated depending on their political will to do so since it’s unlikely that their counterpart’s response will adversely affect them all that much. Obviously, the “positive” and “negative” determinations are relative and in the eyes of the bolder, dependent also on their intentions, ideologies, and other such factors that differ between them.

With that in mind, it’s appropriate to assess the chances of each respective strategy succeeding. The US’ will only be consequential if Washington has the political will to impose so-called “secondary sanctions” against those who purchase Russian currency and debt, which remains to be seen. Even in that scenario, however, the Russian response might predictably be to move much closer to China on those fronts, thus accelerating their grand strategic convergence and strengthening the newly formed “Justice League” between those two multipolar Great Powers. As for the odds of Russia’s defensive strategy succeeding, it has much brighter prospects since Moscow’s moves will greatly restrict Washington’s ability to meddle in its domestic affairs. For this reason, it’s predicted that US will lose its “sanctions war” with Russia even if it spins its failure as a success.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

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

Featured image is from OneWorld

Denying the Demonic

April 18th, 2021 by Edward Curtin

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

***

In March of last year as the coronavirus panic was starting, I wrote a somewhat flippant article saying that the obsession with buying and hoarding toilet paper was the people’s vaccine. 

My point was simple: excrement and death have long been associated in cultural history and in the Western imagination with the evil devil, Satan, the Lord of the underworld, the Trickster, the Grand Master who rules the pit of smelly death, the place below where bodies go.

The psychoanalytic literature is full of examples of death anxiety revealed in dreams of “shit-filled overflowing toilets” and “people pissing in their pants”.  Ernest Becker put it simply in The Denial of Death:

No mistake – the turd is mankind’s real threat because it reminds people of death.

The theological literature is also full of warnings about the devil’s wiles.  So too the Western classics from Aeschylus to Melville. The demonic has an ancient pedigree and has various names. Rational people tend to dismiss all this as superstitious nonsense.  This is hubris.  The Furies always exact their revenge when their existence is denied.  For they are part of ourselves, not alien beings, as the tragedy of human history has shown us time and again.

Since “excremental visions” and the fear of death haunt humans – the skull at the banquet as William James put it – the perfect symbol of protection is toilet paper that will keep you safe and clean and free of any reminder of the fear of death running through a panicked world.  It’s a magic trick of course, an unconscious way of thinking you are protecting yourself; a form of self-hypnosis.

One year later, magical thinking has taken a different form and my earlier flippancy has turned darker. You can’t hoard today’s toilet paper but you can get them: RNA inoculations, misnamed vaccines.

People are lined up for them now as they are being told incessantly to “get your shot.”  They are worse than toilet paper. At least toilet paper serves a practical function.  Real vaccines, as the word’s etymology – Latin, vaccinus, from cows, the cowpox virus vaccine first used by British physician Edward Jenner in 1800 to prevent smallpox – involve the use of a small amount of a virus.  The RNA inoculations are not vaccines.  To say they are is bullshit and has nothing to do with cows. To call them vaccines is linguistic mind control.

These experimental inoculations do not prevent the vaccinated from getting infected with the “virus” nor do they prevent transmission of the alleged virus. When they were approved recently by the FDA that was made clear.  The FDA issued Emergency Use Authorizations (EUAs) for these inoculations only under the proviso that they may make an infection less severe.  Yet millions have obediently taken a shot that doesn’t do what they think it does.  What does that tell us?

Hundreds of millions of people have taken an injection that allows a bio-reactive “gene-therapy” molecule to be injected into their bodies because of fear, ignorance, and a refusal to consider that the people who are promoting this are “evil” and have ulterior motives.  Not that they mean well, but that they are evil and have evil intentions.  Does this sound too extreme?  Radically evil?  Come on!

So what drives the refusal to consider that demonic forces are at work with the corona crisis?

Why do the same people who get vaccinated believe that a PCR test that can’t, according to its inventor Kary Mullis, test for this so-called virus, believe in the fake numbers of positive “cases”?  Do these people even know if the virus has ever been isolated?

Such credulity is an act of faith, not science or confirmed fact.

Is it just the fear of death that drives such thinking?

Or is it something deeper than ignorance and propaganda that drives this incredulous belief?

If you want facts, I will not provide them here. Despite the good intentions of people who still think facts matter, I don’t think most people are persuaded by facts anymore. But such facts are readily available from excellent alternative media publications.

Global Research’s Michel Chossudovsky has released, free of charge, his comprehensive E-Book:

The 2020-21 Worldwide Corona Crisis: Destroying Civil Society, Engineered Economic Depression, Global Coup D’Etat, and the “Great Reset.”   It’s a good place to start if facts and analysis are what you are after. 

Or go to Robert Kennedy, Jr.’s Childrens Health Defense, Off-Guardian, Dissident Voice, Global Research, among numerous others.

Perhaps you think these sites are right-wing propaganda because many articles they publish can also be read or heard at some conservative media. If so, you need to start thinking rather than reacting. The entire mainstream political/media spectrum is right-wing, if you wish to use useless terms such as Left/Right.

I have spent my entire life being accused of being a left-wing nut, but now I am being told I am a right-wing nut even though my writing appears in many leftist publications. Perhaps my accusers don’t know which way the screw turns or the nut loosens.  Being uptight and frightened doesn’t help.

I am interested in asking why so many people can’t accept that radical evil is real.  Is that a right-wing question?  Of course not.  It’s a human question that has been asked down through the ages.

I do think we are today in the grip of “radical evil”, “demonic forces”. The refusal to see and accept this is not new.

As the eminent theologian, David Ray Griffin, has argued, the American Empire, with its quest for world domination and its long and ongoing slaughters at home and abroad, is clearly demonic; it is driven by the forces of death symbolized by Satan.

I have spent many years trying to understand why so many good people have refused to see and accept this and have needed to ply a middle course over many decades. The safe path. Believing in the benevolence of their rulers.  When I say radical evil, I mean it in the deepest spiritual sense.  A religious sense, if you prefer.  But by religious I don’t mean institutional religions since so many of the institutional religions are complicit in the evil.

It has long been easy for Americans to accept the demonic nature of foreign leaders such as Hitler, Stalin, or Mao.  Easy, also, to accept the government’s attribution of such names as the “new Hitler” to any foreign leader it wishes to kill and overthrow.  But to consider their own political leaders as demonic is near impossible.

So let me begin with a few reminders.

The U.S. destruction of Iraq and the mass killings of Iraqis under George W. Bush beginning in 2003.  Many will say it was illegal, unjust, carried out under false pretenses, etc.  But who will say it was pure evil?

Who will say that Barack Obama’s annihilation of Libya was radical evil?

Who will say the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the firebombing of Tokyo and so many Japanese cities that killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians was radical evil?

Who will say the U.S. war against Syria is demonic evil?

Who will say the killing of millions of Vietnamese was radical evil?

Who will say the insider attacks of September 11, 2001 were demonic evil?

Who will say slavery, the genocide of native people, the secret medical experiments on the vulnerable, the CIA mind control experiments, the coups engineered throughout the world resulting in the mass murder of millions – who will say these are evil in the deepest sense?

Who will say the U.S. security state’s assassinations of JFK, Malcolm X, MLK, Jr., Robert Kennedy, Fred Hampton, et al. were radical evil?

Who will say the trillions spent on nuclear weapons and the willingness to use them to annihilate the human race is not the ultimate in radical evil?

This list could extend down the page endlessly.  Only someone devoid of all historical sense could conclude that the U.S. has not been in the grip of demonic forces for a long time.

If you can do addition, you will find the totals staggering.  They are overwhelming in their implications.

But to accept this history as radically evil in intent and not just in its consequences are two different things.  I think so many find it so hard to admit that their leaders have intentionally done and do demonic deeds for two reasons.  First, to do so implicates those who have supported these people or have not opposed them. It means they have accepted such radical evil and bear responsibility.  It elicits feelings of guilt.

Secondly, to believe that one’s own leaders are evil is next to impossible for many to accept because it suggests that the rational façade of society is a cover for sinister forces and that they live in a society of lies so vast they the best option is to make believe it just isn’t so.  Even when one can accept that evil deeds were committed in the past, even some perhaps intentionally, the tendency is to say “that was then, but things are different now.” Grasping the present when you are in it is not only difficult but often disturbing for it involves us.

So if I am correct and most Americans cannot accept that their leaders have intentionally done radically evil things, then it follows that to even consider questioning the intentions of the authorities regarding the current corona crisis needs to be self-censored.  Additionally, as we all know, the authorities have undertaken a vast censorship operation so people cannot hear dissenting voices of those who have now been officially branded as domestic terrorists. The self-censorship and the official work in tandem.

There is so much information available that shows that the authorities at the World Health Organization, the CDC, The World Economic Forum, Big Pharma, governments throughout the world, etc. have gamed this crisis beforehand, have manipulated the numbers, lied, have conducted a massive fear propaganda campaign via their media mouthpieces, have imposed cruel lockdowns that have further enriched the wealthiest and economically and psychologically devastated vast numbers, etc.

Little research is needed to see this, to understand that Big Pharma is, as Dr. Peter Gøtzsche documented eight years ago in Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime: How Big Pharma Has Corrupted Healthcare, a world-wide criminal enterprise.  It takes but a few minutes to see that the pharmaceutical companies who have been given emergency authorization for these untested experimental non-vaccine “vaccines” have paid out billions of dollars to settle criminal and civil allegations.

It is an open secret that the WHO, the Gates Foundation, the WEF led by Klaus Schwab, and an interlocking international group of “conspirators” have plans for what they call The Great Reset, a strategy to use  the COVID-19 crisis to push their agenda to create a world of cyborgs living in cyberspace where artificial intelligence replaces people and human biology is wedded to technology under the control of the elites.  They have made it very clear that there are too many people on this planet and billions must die.  Details are readily available of this open conspiracy to create a transhuman world.

Is this not radical evil?  Demonic?

Let me end with an analogy.  There is another organized crime outfit that can only be called demonic – The Central Intelligence Agency.  One of its legendary officers was James Jesus Angleton, chief of Counterintelligence from 1954 until 1975.  He was a close associate of Allen Dulles, the longest serving director of the CIA.


Both men were deeply involved in many evil deeds, including bringing Nazi doctors and scientists into the U.S. to do the CIA’s dirty work, including mind control, bioweapons research, etc.  The stuff they did for Hitler.

As reported by David Talbot in The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government, when the staunch Catholic Angleton was on his deathbed, he gave an interviews to visiting journalists, including Joseph Trento.  He confessed:

He had not been serving God, after all, when he followed Allen Dulles.  He had been on a satanic quest….’Fundamentally, the founding fathers of U.S. intelligence were liars,’ he told Trento in an emotionless voice.  ‘The better you lied and the more you betrayed, the more likely you would be promoted…. Outside this duplicity, the only thing they had in common was a desire for absolute power.  I did things that, looking back on my life, I regret.  But I was part of it and loved being in it.’  He invoked the names of the high eminences who had run the CIA in his day – Dulles, Helms, Wisner.  These men were ‘the grand masters,’ he said.  ‘If you were in a room with them, you were in a room full of people that you had to believe would deservedly end up in hell.’  Angleton took another slow sip from his steaming cup.  ‘I guess I will see them there soon.’

Until we recognize the demonic nature of the hell we are now in, we too will be lost.  We are fighting for our lives and the spiritual salvation of the world.  Do not succumb to the siren songs of these fathers of lies.

Resist.

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


Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies

Author: Edward Curtin

ISBN: 9781949762266

Published: 2020

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We are currently seeing an acceleration of the corporate consolidation of the entire global agrifood chain. The high-tech/data conglomerates, including Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Google, have joined traditional agribusiness giants, such as Corteva, Bayer, Cargill and Syngenta, in a quest to impose a certain type of agriculture and food production on the world.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is also involved (documented in the recent report ‘Gates to a Global Empire‘ by Navdanya International), whether through buying up huge tracts of farmland, promoting a much-heralded (but failed) ‘green revolution’ for Africa, pushing biosynthetic food and new genetic engineering technologies or more generally facilitating the aims of the mega agrifood corporations.

Of course, those involved in this portray what they are doing as some kind of humanitarian endeavour – saving the planet with ‘climate-friendly solutions’, helping farmers or feeding the world. This is how many of them probably do genuinely regard their role inside their corporate echo chamber. But what they are really doing is repackaging the dispossessive strategies of imperialism as ‘feeding the world’.

Failed Green Revolution

Since the Green Revolution, US agribusiness and financial institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have sought to hook farmers and nation states on corporate seeds and proprietary inputs as well as loans to construct the type of agri infrastructure that chemical-intensive farming requires.

Monsanto-Bayer and other agribusiness concerns have since the 1990s been attempting to further consolidate their grip on global agriculture and farmers’ corporate dependency with the rollout of genetically engineered seeds, commonly known as GMOs (genetically modified organisms).

In her latest report, ‘Reclaim the Seed’, Vandana Shiva says:

“In the 1980s, the chemical corporations started to look at genetic engineering and patenting of seed as new sources of super profits. They took farmers varieties from the public gene banks, tinkered with the seed through conventional breeding or genetic engineering, and took patents.”

Shiva talks about the Green Revolution and seed colonialism and the pirating of farmers seeds and knowledge. She says that 768,576 accessions of seeds were taken from farmers in Mexico alone:

“… taking the farmers seeds that embodies their creativity and knowledge of breeding. The ‘civilising mission’ of Seed Colonisation is the declaration that farmers are ‘primitive’ and the varieties they have bred are ‘primitive’, ‘inferior’, ‘low yielding’ and have to be ‘substituted’ and ‘replaced’ with superior seeds from a superior race of breeders, so called ‘modern varieties’ and ‘improved varieties’ bred for chemicals.”

It is now clear that the Green Revolution has been a failure in terms of its devastating environmental impacts, the undermining of highly productive traditional low-input agriculture and its sound ecological footing, the displacement of rural populations and the adverse impacts on village communities, nutrition, health and regional food security.

Aside from various studies that have reported on the health impacts of chemical-dependent crops (Dr Rosemary Mason’s many reports on this can be accessed on the academia.edu website), ‘New Histories of the Green Revolution’ (2019) debunks the claim that the Green Revolution boosted productivity; ‘The Violence of the Green Revolution’ (1991) details (among other things) the impact on rural communities; Bhaskar Save’s open letter to Indian officials in 2006 discusses the ecological devastation of the Green Revolution and in a 2019 paper in the Journal of Experimental Biology and Agricultural Sciences, Parvez et al note that native wheat varieties in India have higher nutrition content than the Green Revolution varieties (many such crop varieties were side-lined in favour of corporate seeds that were of lower nutritional value).

These are just a brief selection of peer reviewed and ‘grey’ literature which detail the adverse impacts of the Green Revolution.

GMO value capture

As for GM crops, often described as Green Revolution 2.0, these too have failed to deliver on the promises made and, like the 1.0 version, have often had devastating consequences.

The arguments for and against GMOs are well documented, but one paper worth noting appeared in the journal Current Science in 2018. Along with PC Kesavan, MS Swaminathan – regarded as the father of the Green Revolution in India – argued against introducing GM crops to India and cited various studies about the failings of the GMO project.

Regardless, the industry and its well-funded lobbyists and bought career scientists continue to spin the line that GM crops are a marvellous success and that the world needs even more of them to avoid a global food shortage. GM crops are required to feed the world is a well-worn industry slogan trotted out at every available opportunity. Just like the claim of GM crops being a tremendous success, this too is based on a myth.

There is no global shortage of food. Even under any plausible future population scenario, there will be no shortage as evidenced by scientist Dr Jonathan Latham in his recent paper ‘The Myth of a Food Crisis’.

However, new gene drive and gene editing techniques have now been developed and the industry is seeking the unregulated commercial release of products that are based on these methods.

It does not want plants, animals and micro-organisms created with gene-editing to be subject to safety checks, monitoring or consumer labelling. This is concerning given the real dangers that these techniques pose.

Many peer-reviewed research papers now call into question industry claims about the ‘precision’, safety and benefits of gene-edited organisms and can be accessed on the GMWatch.org website.

It really is a case of old wine in new bottles.

And this is not lost on a coalition of 162 civil society, farmers and business organisations which has called on Vice-President of the European Commission Frans Timmermans to ensure that new genetic engineering techniques continue to be regulated in accordance with existing EU GMO standards.

The coalition argues that these new techniques can cause a range of unwanted genetic modifications that can result in the production of novel toxins or allergens or in the transfer of antibiotic resistance genes. The open letter adds that even intended modifications can result in traits which could raise food safety, environmental or animal welfare concerns.

The European Court of Justice ruled in 2018 that organisms obtained with new genetic modification techniques must be regulated under the EU’s existing GMO laws. However, there has been intense lobbying from the agriculture biotech industry to weaken the legislation, aided by the Gates Foundation.

The coalition states that various scientific publications show that new techniques of genetic modification allow developers to make significant genetic changes, which can be very different from those that happen in nature.

In addition to these concerns, a new paper from Chinese scientists, ‘Herbicide Resistance: Another Hot Agronomic Trait for Plant Genome Editing’, says that, in spite of claims from GMO promoters that gene editing will be climate-friendly and reduce pesticide use, what we can expect is just more of the same – GM herbicide-tolerant crops and increased herbicide use.

The industry wants its new techniques to be unregulated, thereby making gene-edited GMOs faster to develop, more profitable and hidden from consumers when purchasing items in stores. At the same time, the costly herbicide treadmill will be reinforced for farmers.

None of this is meant to imply that new technology is bad in itself. The issue is who owns and controls the technology and what are the underlying intentions. By dodging regulation as well as avoiding economic, social, environmental and health impact assessments, it is clear that the industry is first and foremost motivated by value capture and profit and contempt for democratic accountability.

This is patently clear if we look at the rollout of Bt cotton in India which served the bottom line of Monsanto but brought dependency, distress and no durable agronomic benefits for many of India’s small and marginal farmers. Prof A P Gutierrez argues that Bt cotton has effectively placed these farmers in a corporate noose.

Monsanto sucked hundreds of millions of dollars in profit from these cotton farmers, while industry-funded scientists are always keen to push the mantra that rolling out Bt cotton in India uplifted their conditions.

Those who promote this narrative remain wilfully ignorant of the challenges (documented in the 2019 book by Andrew Flachs – ‘Cultivating Knowledge: Biotechnology, Sustainability and the Human Cost of Cotton Capitalism in India‘) these farmers face in terms of financial distress, increasing pest resistance, dependency on unregulated seed markets, the eradication of environmental learning,  the loss of control over their productive means and the biotech-chemical treadmill they are trapped on (this last point is precisely what the industry intended).

When assessing the possible impacts of GMO agriculture, it was with good reason that, in their 2018 paper, Swaminathan and Kesavan called for:

“able economists who are familiar with and will prioritise rural livelihoods and the interests of resource-poor small and marginal farmers rather than serve corporate interests and their profits”.

What can be done?

Whether through all aspects of data control (soil quality, consumer preferences, weather, etc), e-commerce monopolies, corporate land ownership, seed biopiracy and patenting, synthetic food or the eradication of the public sector’s role in ensuring food security and national food sovereignty (as we could see in India with new farm legislation), Bill Gates and his corporate cronies seek to gain full control over the global food system.

Smallholder peasant farming is to be eradicated as the big-tech giants and agribusiness impose lab-grown food, GM seeds, genetically engineered soil microbes, data harvesting tools and drones and other ‘disruptive’ technologies.

We could see farmerless industrial-scale farms being manned by driverless machines, monitored by drones and doused with chemicals to produce commodity crops from patented GM seeds for industrial ‘biomatter’ to be processed and constituted into something resembling food.

The displacement of a food-producing peasantry (and the subsequent destruction of rural communities and local food security) was something the Gates Foundation once called for and cynically termed “land mobility”.

Technocratic meddling has already destroyed or undermined agrarian ecosystems that draw on centuries of traditional knowledge and are increasingly recognised as valid approaches to secure food security, as outlined in Food Security and Traditional Knowledge in India in the Journal of South Asian Studies, for instance.

But is all of this inevitable?

Not according to the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems, which has just released a report in collaboration with the ETC Group: ‘A Long Food Movement: Transforming Food Systems by 2045‘.

The report outlines two different futures. If Gates and the global mega-corporations have their way, we will see the entire food system being controlled by data platforms, private equity firms and e-commerce giants, putting the food security (and livelihoods) of billions at the mercy of AI-controlled farming systems.

The other scenario involves civil society and social movements – grassroots organisations, international NGOs, farmers’ and fishers’ groups, cooperatives and unions – collaborating more closely to transform financial flows, governance structures and food systems from the ground up.

The report’s lead author, Pat Mooney, says that agribusiness has a very simple message: the cascading environmental crisis can be resolved by powerful new genomic and information technologies that can only be developed if governments unleash the entrepreneurial genius, deep pockets and risk-taking spirit of the most powerful corporations.

Mooney notes that we have had similar messages based on emerging technology for decades but the technologies either did not show up or fell flat and the only thing that grew were the corporations.

He says:

“In return for trillions of dollars in direct and indirect subsidies, the agribusiness model would centralise food production around a handful of untested technologies that would lead to the forced exodus of at least a billion people from hundreds of millions of farms. Agribusiness is gambling on other people’s food security.”

Although Mooney argues that new genuinely successful alternatives like agroecology are frequently suppressed by the industries they imperil, he states that civil society has a remarkable track record in fighting back, not least in developing healthy and equitable agroecological production systems, building short (community-based) supply chains and restructuring and democratising governance systems.

As stated in the report, the thrust of any ’Long Food Movement’ strategy is that short-termism is not an option: civil society groups need to place multiple objectives and actions on a 25-year roadmap and not make trade-offs along the way – especially when faced with the neoliberal-totalitarianism of Gates et al who will seek to derail anything or anyone regarded as a threat to their aims.

The report ‘A Long Food Movement: Transforming Food Systems by 2045’ can be accessed here.

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Colin Todhunter is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research.

Featured image is from American Institute for Economic Research

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

***

The US will soon review its nuclear weapons programme.

Should it spend $1.2 Trillion extending & updating it?

“The world’s largest nuclear weapon would vaporize everything within 5km and kill nearly everyone within 9km. At 20km, most buildings would collapse and many would catch fire. Everyone would be injured and many would die.”

Watch the video below by Double Down News.

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Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War” 

by Michel Chossudovsky

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ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
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Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

WWIII Scenario

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***

Early on the morning of November 16, 2010 in front of the U.S. Federal District Courthouse in Tacoma, Washington, a large throng had gathered to vigil before the motions hearing for five Plowshares activists known as the Disarm Now Plowshares. Up the sidewalk I saw one of the defendants, Sr. Anne Montgomery walking toward us with Former US Attorney General William Ramsey Clark.

Clark had come to testify on behalf of the defendants who had been charged with a variety of offenses, while their only intention was to prevent the most ghastly crime possible – a full scale nuclear war.

The former attorney general appeared on behalf of Bill “Bix” Bichsel, SJ, Susan Crane, Lynne Greenwald, Steve Kelly, SJ, and Anne Montgomery, RSCJ, who all faced charges of Conspiracy, Trespass, Destruction of Property on a Naval Installation and Depredation of Government Property for their November 2, 2009 Plowshares action. They had entered the U.S. Navy’s nuclear weapons storage depot at Bangor, Washington to symbolically disarm the nuclear weapons stored there, and expose the illegality of the government’s continuing preparations for nuclear war.

Later, in the courtroom, Judge Benjamin Settle allowed testimony from Clark, who responded to questions from Disarm Now Plowshares co-defendants. When asked by Anne Montgomery if the plowshares activists were justified to enter the restricted area of the U.S. Naval Base, Clark said that they “had a duty to prevent harm, they were justified, and even required to prevent harm.” Clark was speaking in the context of the Plowshares activists entering the base, in which nuclear weapons are stored, to expose the illegality of the government’s actions in preparing for nuclear war.

When asked by Susan Crane if Trident nuclear warheads are legal, Clark said “No,” and explained that the Supreme Court has ruled that international law is binding under the U.S. Constitution. Nuclear weapons are unlawful under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) because of the agreement of the nuclear powers to eliminate them. Clark was in the Justice Department when the NPT was drafted. “Had we abided by the NPT, we would be a nuclear free world. It’s hard to believe we’ve come to this stage,” Clark said. The U.S. has ignored its obligations under the NPT, and now has enough warheads to destroy the planet.

Clark quoted Hugo Grotius, who wrote in his book “Of The Law of War And Peace” in the 17th century that, “The care to preserve society that is the source of all law.” Essentially, the law is designed to preserve society, and this theme continued to grow over centuries through international treaties (such as the NPT).

“Possession of the bomb is a crime. Just like it’s illegal to have a switchblade or concealed weapon, the nuclear weapons are illegal,” Clark said. He explained that 99 percent of the deaths in the Hiroshima bombing were non-military, and therefore extraordinarily disproportional. Possessing thousands of nuclear weapons, each one many times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb, and which do not discriminate between combatants and civilians, is definitely a crime.

Clark concluded that Plowshares activists are opposed to all violence, and particularly nuclear weapons, which are “the ultimate human degradation.”

Among the documents considered by the Judge in the Disarm Now Plowshares case was a motion for dismissal in which the co-defendants concluded that, “Because this case involves unjust and illegal weapons of mass destruction, the use of which is a war crime under US and international law, and defendants actions were taken to protect a greater good and much higher law than the laws they are accused of violating, this case should be dismissed immediately.” Clark spoke to the heart of this issue and elucidated the duty of citizens to act when their government fails to follow the rule of law. The five Disarm Now co-defendants firmly believed that there was sufficient legal doctrine substantiating their invocation of the necessity defense, and that the “Defendants’ actions are just and not at all illegal,” and therefore the case should be immediately dismissed.

As with most other Federal Plowshares trials, the judge dismissed both motions by the defendants to dismiss charges, and the trial went forward. Ultimately, the jury found the defendants “guilty” of trespass, felony damage to federal property, felony injury to property, and felony conspiracy to damage property after a trial in which the defendants were not allowed to mount anything resembling a reasonable defense.

Clark testified on behalf of the Transform Now Plowshares in 2013, and led the defense team for Fr. Philip Berrigan and the Harrisburg Seven in 1971.

As for Clark’s participation in the Disarm Now Plowshares trial, it was a fine example of speaking one’s truth to power, and representing those with little or no voice or power. Clark’s life is an example of an individual who evolved over a full lifetime; an imperfect human being who strived to follow the rule and intent of the law, and to criticize his country when necessary, saying that a citizen’s “highest obligation” was to speak up when his government had violated its own principles and “not point the finger at someone else.”

The New York Times has published a detailed obituary that chronicles Clark’s many legal exploits on behalf of the victims of abuse of power by the US government. Wikipedia also lists a large number of people Clark defended in the years after he left government service.

Thank you, Ramsey, for representing those our nation has abused, neglected and usurped in its quest for power and hegemony.

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Featured image: Ramsey Clark and Sr. Anne Montgomery in front of the Tacoma Federal Courthouse on November 16, 2010 (by Leonard Eiger)

The Hawks Who Want War with Iran Are Working Overtime

April 17th, 2021 by Medea Benjamin

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***

Last week’s cyberattack on an Iranian nuclear facility, reportedly by Israeli intelligence, is the latest gambit from the coalition of Israeli leaders, Christian fundamentalists, and hawkish Washington neocons who want to block a US return to the Iran nuclear agreement. If they’re successful, millions of ordinary Iranians suffering under draconian sanctions will pay the price.

Just as talks between the United States and Iran were taking place last week in Vienna, a cyberattack was carried out on Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility. Reports are that the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, was behind the attack that blacked out the facility just one day after Tehran launched new advanced uranium enrichment centrifuges, and as US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was in Israel speaking about the United States’ “enduring and ironclad” commitment to the Jewish state.

This is the latest in a series of Israeli attacks on Iran designed to scuttle negotiations. Last summer, a number of explosions attributed to Israel broke out across Iran, including a fire at the Natanz site. These took place while US elections were in full swing and Biden was promising that if elected, he would return the United States to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal (formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA) that Trump withdrew from in 2018. In November 2020, Israeli operatives assassinated Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iran’s top nuclear scientist in the city of Absard outside Tehran. Had Iran responded, the United States might have been dragged into an all-out war.

Israeli officials have also directly lobbied the US Congress to quash the deal. In 2015, Netanyahu traveled to Washington, DC in 2015 to address a joint session of Congress in an attempt to uncut Obama’s original negotiations. This time, Mossad chief Yossi Cohen will be traveling to Washington to meet with top White House and US intelligence officials, and he hopes with Biden directly, to convince the administration that Iran has been concealing details about its nuclear program and therefore can’t be trusted. This is indeed ironic coming from a country that, unlike Iran, actually has nuclear weapons and refuses to disclose any information about its program.

Like Israel, the powerful US lobby American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is trying to convince Biden not to go back into the JCPOA. Last month, they organized bipartisan letters in the House and Senate, urging the Biden administration to insist on an expanded deal that included missiles, human rights, and Iran’s activities in the region. Since Tehran has been clear that an expanded or amended deal is a nonstarter, such “advice” was an attempt to quash talks.

The neoconservative think tank Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), which worked inside the Trump administration during and after Trump pulled out of the JCPOA, has been relentlessly pushing for war with Iran. After the United States recklessly assassinated Iran’s top general, Qassem Soleimani, FDD CEO Mark Dubowitz gloated, tweeting that the death of Soleimani was “more consequential than the killing of [Osama] #BinLaden”; and on April 11, the same day as the Natanz blackout, former CIA officer and FDD fellow Reuel Marc Gerecht, speaking on CNN, voiced disappointment that Trump hadn’t taken the United States and Iran into an all-out war.

Another group against a deal with Iran is Christians United for Israel (CUFI), one of the most powerful pro-Israel voices in the United States. In March 2021, CUFI urged the Senate not to confirm Colin Kahl for a top policy position at the Pentagon, claiming, “Kahl is a serial Iran appeaser” who “helped advance the disastrous Iran nuclear accord.” In response to the blackout at Natanz, they cheered Netanyahu, tweeting “‘Battling Iran is a colossal mission,’ Netanyahu says following blackout at Iranian nuclear plant.”

The People’s Mujahedin of Iran, or MEK, which the United States had previously designated as a terrorist organization and is known for assassinations and bombings it has carried out, is virulently opposed to US-Iran diplomacy. In March 2021, a number of US Senators attended a virtual event organized by the MEK-aligned Organization of Iranian American Communities (OIAC) calling for continued US sanctions and “bringing down the regime.” Senator Bob Menendez, the powerful chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was among several Democrats in attendance.

The opponents of the Iran deal are trying to keep in place the draconian wall of sanctions that the Trump administration imposed precisely to make it more difficult for a future US administration to rejoin the JCPOA. But these sanctions are causing immense suffering for ordinary Iranians, including runaway inflation and skyrocketing food and medicine prices. According to the UN, they contributed to the government’s “inadequate and opaque” response to the COVID-19 pandemic that has hit Iran particularly hard.

While “successful” in inflicting harm on the Iranian people, the sanctions have failed to broaden the terms of the talks, led the nation to increase its uranium enrichment, negatively impacted the human rights situation, and put the United States and Iran on the brink of an all-out war on multiple occasions.

That’s why so many people in Iran, and those who care about them, have been encouraged by this new round of diplomatic engagement. But Israel, AIPAC, CUFI, FDD, MEK, Menendez, and the like are probably instead hoping that Iran carries out the revenge that Iranian officials have called for in response to the Natanz blackout. But as the saboteurs of diplomacy hope for a violent escalation, let’s keep in mind — and hope Iran agrees — that the best revenge would be a revived JCPOA.

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This article was originally published on Jacobin.

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

Ariel Gold is the national co-director and Senior Middle East Policy Analyst with CODEPINK for Peace.


150115 Long War Cover hi-res finalv2 copy3.jpg

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

Michel Chossudovsky

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

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-6-0
Year: 2015
Pages: 240 Pages

List Price: $22.95

Special Price: $15.00

Click here to order.

Media Allegations of Genocide in Xinjiang

April 17th, 2021 by Kim Petersen

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***

In February, I asked, “Does the West Repeating Claims of China Committing Genocide in Xinjiang Reify It?” China is continually being raked over the coals by western governments and state/corporate media on whatever charge or pretext can be thrown in the hopes that something sticks to incriminate China. China’s economic ascendancy, socialism with Chinese characteristics, has thrown the capitalists of the world into a tizzy. However, to allege something so heinous as a genocide is beyond the bounds of bizarre.

If an identifiable group were being destroyed, especially a group that in 2018 constituted 12.7184 million people, that would surely be impossible to hide — even in a region as large as the autonomous province of Xinjiang. Furthermore, if one is going to allege such a horrific crime, one should not do so without irrefutable evidence.

One French journalist based in China, writing under the byline of Laurene Beaumond, criticized western media for alleging genocide1 against Uyghurs in Xinjiang province.2

She asks,

So what is this parody of a process against China from a distance, without any concrete proof, without any valid testimony, by individuals who have never set foot in this region of the world?3

Concrete evidence should be demanded of all accusers.

This genocide is alleged to have occurred although the population of Uyghurs is vastly increasing in Xinjiang. Global Times, an English-language Chinese newspaper under the People’s Daily, cites statistical data from 2010 to 2018 that show:

the Uygur population increased from 10.1715 million to 12.7184 million, an increase of 2.5469 million, or 25.04%; the population of Han ethnic group increased from 8.8299 million to 9.0068 million, an increase of 176,900 people, or 2.0%.

If factually accurate (and I have seen no refutation of the statistics), then this is an utter refutation of a genocide taking place! The only other conclusion is that the modern Chinese are absolutely incompetent genocidaires.

Western media accusations are relying, for the greatest part, on a thoroughly discredited German “academic”: Adrian Zenz.

Le Monde does not seek to buttress the allegations of genocide in Xinjiang. Instead it questions the bona fides of Laurene Beaumond. Le Monde says this person does not exist.

Global Times says she exists, but the name is a pseudonym.

This is problematic. It can be taken for granted that if one wants to work in western media then previous writings highly critical of the western Establishment and its media would shut the door quite tightly for any writing gigs in the West. But writing under a pseudonym poses ethical considerations. The monopoly media is often criticized by independent media and free thinking readers for trotting out anonymous sources. When a source is anonymous, when substantiation is lacking for what is said or written, then that source and its claims deserve to be met with skepticism.

In my mind, CGTN or any scrupulous media, should only allow persons to write under a pseudonym under stringent conditions, for example, if the writer’s life would be endangered. Also, the media would have to vouch, up front, for the bona fides of the writer or story source. This is especially so given the seriousness of a genocide allegation.

There is a solution, and it will require a bold step by “Laurene Beaumond.” She must come forward, declare her genuine identity, and present her credentials to clear all this up. CGTN needs to develop a transparent policy on the use of pseudonyms, and I’d suggest an apology might be in order for publishing this under a pseudonym.4

The heinous allegation of genocide demands a forthrightness to dispel it as disinformation. The insidiousness of disinformation is such that it has been held to be a crime against humanity and a crime against peace. Professor Anthony J. Hall made this clear:

Disinformation originates in the deliberate and systemic effort to break down social cohesion and to deprive humanity of perceptive consciousness of our conditions. Disinformation seeks to isolate and divide human beings; to alienate us from our ability to use our senses, our intellect, and our communicative powers in order to identity truth and act on this knowledge. Disinformation is deeply implicated in the history of imperialism, Eurocentric racism, American Manifest Destiny, Nazi propaganda, the psychological warfare of the Cold War, and capitalist globalization. Disinformation seeks to erode and destroy the basis of individual and collective memory, the basis of those inheritances from history which give humanity our richness of diverse languages, cultures, nationalities, peoplehoods, and means of self-determination. The reach and intensity of disinformation tends to increase with the concentration of ownership and control of the media of mass communications.

Practice open-minded skepticism; demand evidence; demand to know who the people involved are; scrutinize the history and backgrounds of the people, media, and places. In other words don’t allow yourself to easily be lied to.

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Kim Petersen is a former co-editor of the Dissident Voice newsletter. He can be emailed at: kimohp@gmail. Twitter: @kimpetersen.

Notes

  1. Several media speak of “allegations” or “accusations” of genocide in Xinjiang. E.g., CNN, BBC, Frankfurter Allegemeine, Al Jazeera, Berlinske, CTV, CBC, Forbes, etc. Japan is more cautious. It is highly recommended for those seeking insight to read the report compiled by the Qiao Collective, an all-volunteer group comprised of ethnic Chinese people living abroad, on Xinjiang that warned of “politically motivated” western disinformation.
  2. The linked article carries an editor’s note: “Freelance journalist based in France, with a double degree in art history and archeology at the University of Sorbonne-IV and holder of a master’s degree in journalism, Laurène Beaumond has worked in various editorial offices Parisians before settling down in Beijing where she lived for almost 7 years.
    The article reflects the views of the author, and not necessarily those of CGTN Français.”
  3. “Qu’est-ce donc cette parodie de procès que l’on fait à la Chine à distance, sans aucune preuve concrète, sans aucun témoignage valable, par des individus qui n’ont jamais mis le pied dans cette région du monde…?”
  4. After all, Global Times demanded an apology from Le Monde for doubting the existence of “Laurene Beaumond.” No writer genuinely exists under this birth name, so, in fact, Le Monde was accurate on this account.

Exiting Afghanistan: Biden Sets the Date

April 17th, 2021 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

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***

It had to be symbolic, and was represented as such.  Forces of the United States will be leaving Afghanistan on September 11 after two decades of violent occupation, though for a good deal of this stretch, US forces were, at best, failed democracy builders, at worst, violent tenants.

In his April 14 speech, President Joe Biden made the point that should have long been evident: that Washington could not “continue the cycle of extending or expanding our military presence in Afghanistan hoping to create the ideal conditions for our withdrawal, expecting a different result.”  As if to concede to the broader failure of the exercise, “the terror threat” had flourished, being now present “in many places”.  To keep “thousands of troops grounded and concentrated in just one country at a cost of billions each year makes little sense to me and to our leaders.”

For such a long stay, the objectives have been far from convincing.  The US presence in Afghanistan should focus “on the reason we went there in the first place: to ensure Afghanistan would not be used as a base from which to attack our homeland again.  We did that.  We accomplished that objective.” A debacle is dressed up in the robes of necessity, the original purpose being to “root out al Qaeda” in 2001 and “to prevent future terrorist attacks against the United States planned from Afghanistan.” 

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is marshalling European leaders to aid in the withdrawal effort.  “I am here,” he stated at NATO’s Belgium headquarters, “to work closely with our allies, with the secretary general, on the principle that we have established from the start, ‘In together, adapt together and out together’.”  There have been few times in history, perhaps with the exception of the Vietnam War, where defeat has been given such an unremarkable cover.

Little improvement on this impression was made at a meeting between Blinken and Abdullah Abdullah, chair of the Afghanistan High Commission for National Reconciliation.  According to State Department spokesperson Ned Price, the secretary “reiterated the US commitment to the peace process and that we will use our full diplomatic, economic, and humanitarian toolkit to support the future the Afghan people want, including the gains made by Afghan women.” 

At the US embassy in Kabul, Blinken made an assortment of weak assurances about “America’s commitment to an enduring partnership with Afghanistan and the Afghan people.”  Despite the troops leaving the country, the “security partnership will endure.”  There was “strong bipartisan support for that commitment to the Afghan Security Forces.”  There would be oodles of diplomacy, economic investment and development assistance.  And, as for the Taliban, joyfully lurking in the wings to assume power, Blinken had this assessment: “It’s very important that the Taliban recognize that it will never be legitimate and it will never be durable if it rejects a political process and tries to take the country by force.” 

A better, and more accurate sense of attitudes to Kabul could be gathered in the remarks of a senior Biden official, as reported in the Washington Post.  “The reality is that the United States has big strategic interests in the world…. Afghanistan just does not rise to the level of those other threats at this point.”  Afghanistan, in time, will be discarded like strategic refuse.

Critics invariably assume various aspects of the imperial pose: to leave the country is to surrender a policing function, to encourage enemies, to reverse any gains (shallow as they are), to lay the grounds for the need for potential re-engagement.  An erroneous link is thereby encouraged linking US national security interests with the desperate ruination that has afflicted a State that has not seen peace in decades. For its part, the US contribution to that ruination has been, along with its coalition allies, far from negligible. 

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell preached that the withdrawal was “a grave mistake,” a reminder that such foolish decisions had been made before.  “Ten years ago, when President Obama let politics dictate the terms of our involvement in Iraq, those failed decisions invited the rise of ISIS.”  For McConnell, battling terrorism remained a central purpose for keeping boots on the much trodden ground of Afghanistan.  “A reckless pullback like this would abandon our Afghan, regional, and NATO partners in a shared fight against terrorists we have not yet won.”

In March, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, told a National Security Council Principal Committee meeting that withdrawing would see women’s rights return “to the Stone Age”.  Leaving was also not advisable, given “all the blood and treasure spent”.  (Others at the meeting felt that Milley’s arguments had the soft stuffing of emotion rather than firm logic.)

The Washington Post, in a vein similar to that of McConnell and Milley, resorted to the conventional betrayal thesis: leaving was “an abandonment of those Afghans who believed in building a democracy that guaranteed basic human rights”.  It would also mean nullifying “the sacrifices of the American servicemen who were killed or wounded in that mission.”  Little thought is given to the shallow, corruption saturated regime in Kabul that can barely claim any semblance of legitimacy beyond the sponsorship of external powers.

The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, William Burns, takes a more prosaic, utilitarian line.  Leaving Afghanistan will, he explained at a hearing of a Senate Intelligence Committee on global threats, drain the intelligence pool.  “When the time comes for the US military to withdraw, the US government’s ability to collect and act on threats will diminish.  That’s simply a fact.”

The pessimists from the National Review are also full of warning.  Jim Geraghty is almost shrill in worrying what the media headline, “Taliban Rule Afghanistan Again” will do in spurring on “global Islamist jihadism,” claiming that, “[a] bad withdrawal only sets up the need for more combat in the future.”  Kevin Williamson is at least accurate on one point: Afghanistan, for the US, is a clear picture of “what failure looks like.  What success is going to look like, we still don’t know.”  Nor, it would seem, ever will.

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

Featured image is from New Eastern Outlook

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).

***

That the United States likes to use expressions like “shock and awe” or “maximum pressure” would rather suggest that there is a psychopath working in the White House basement whose full-time job is to come up with pithy one-liners to somehow euphemize government bad behavior. The expressions hardly mean anything in and of themselves apart from “tough talk” but they do serve as an alternative to having to admit in plain language to the killing of millions of people since the Global War on Terror began in 2001. “Millions?” one might skeptically ask. Yes, millions if one includes all those killed directly or indirectly as a result of the wars. Direct victims of the violence number at least 157,000 in Afghanistan, 182,000 in Iraq, 400,000 in Syria and 25,000 in Libya. And if you want to go back a few years three million Vietnamese died in 1964-1975 while 2.5 million civilians were killed in Korea. And even in the “Good War” World War 2 there were unnecessary incidents to include the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that killed 105,000, the firebombing of Tokyo adding another 97,000, and the firebombing of Hamburg and Dresden that together killed 45,000.

An estimated ten million more civilians have been displaced from their homes since 2001, creating refugee crises in both Europe and the Americas, while trillions of dollars have also been wasted or “misplaced” by the geniuses at the Pentagon and in Congress. And some might reasonably argue that the violence taking place all around the world has also been internalized in the U.S., with mass murders surfacing in the news media every few days. Some argue that the United States has nearly always been at war since its founding, which would be true, but it is also correct to note that the nature of America’s lethal engagement with the rest of the world has changed in the past twenty years. Old wars were fought to expand territory and trade or to acquire colonies for the same purpose, meaning they were intended to increase one’s power and wealth. Since 9/11, however, the wars are being fought seemingly without any real identifiable objective while also inflicting significant losses in relative wealth and power on the United States.

The fundamental problem is that the United States is being led by a political and financial elite that has completely bought into a radical view that Americans have a “manifest destiny” to create an international order that is both plausibly democratic and rules-based that would as the theory goes benefit everyone. This is, of course, nonsense as the United States itself is becoming increasingly totalitarian while it also nurtures in its bosom anti-democratic states like Saudi Arabia and Israel.

The elite that might be blamed for many of the missteps of the past twenty years includes both liberals and conservatives, all of whom for one reason or another embrace America’s mission. There is, for example, little to differentiate the world views of Donald Trump appointees Mike Pompeo and John Bolton from those of the current foreign policy incumbent Tony Blinken, as all three men believe that the use of force is the completely acceptable ultimate response to recalcitrant nations and leaders.

Blinken shares the very same trait visible in Pompeo and Bolton, that they actually radiate a sense of moral superiority while implementing policies that result in the pointless deaths of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands and even millions of innocents. They occupy the bully pulpit as they sanctimoniously call for action regarding their “noble cause” of making the rest of the world both look like America while also deferring to Washington for direction and guidance.

Tony Blinken is not surprisingly a protégé of Bill Clinton’s former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who famously cackled that “it was worth it” when asked about the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children due to U.S. enforced sanctions on food and medicine. Somehow it seems that whenever one turns over a rock in the Democratic Party up pops someone connected with the Clintons. Blinken recently produced and tweeted out a bizarre video that attempts to explain the real “humanity” behind the current Syrian policy, which he helped to define and initiate working closely with Joe Biden while serving under President Barack Obama. It is a sanctions-plus military intervention construct that has, inevitably, resulted in the deaths and the displacements into Europe and the Middle East. The policy was from the beginning clearly intended to bring about “regime change” in Damascus even though the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad in no way threatened the United States.

Blinken tweeted: “When I think of the suffering of the Syrian people, including Syrian children, I think of my own two children. How could we not take action to help them? Our common humanity demands it. Shame on us if we don’t. We have to find a way to do something to take action to help people.” Blinken fails to mention that the blood of the Syrian children is largely on his hands, particularly as the U.S. and Israel effectively turned loose and otherwise supported the terrorist and separatist groups that killed so many Syrian civilians while also destroying entire towns, religious centers and many irreplaceable relics of the country’s history.

So Blinken is really a good guy, thinking about his own kids while mourning the deaths of so many Syrian boys and girls? No. If he really wanted to help those children, he would have announced that U.S. troops will be withdrawn from Syria immediately. He would have lifted sanctions on the country so that it can begin serious reconstruction, together with restoring access to food and needed medicines. He did nothing of the sort and clearly is fully on board with the agenda set over the past ten years by the neocons and their Israeli masters plus the “democracy promotion” at all costs wing in his own party.

And the real problem is that Syria is not alone. Blinken and his cohorts are also encouraging Ukraine’s irredentism which is close to bringing on a war with Russia while also poking China over Taiwan. And then there is also Venezuela which appears to need a regime change and the perennial problem with Iran. And Afghanistan? Blinken should realize that all the deaths of the children that so concern him could be avoided if he and those pulling his strings would adopt a more modest agenda and stay at home. We have enough problems in the United States, but then again, the hubris which has created a pointless foreign policy would likely be channeled to drive still more of the destructive impulses that are turning the country into a collective of hostile enclaves.

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

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Ireland: Study of COVID-19 Deaths

April 17th, 2021 by Kieran Morrissey

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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Objectives

The goal of this study is not to impress academics with complex statistics or seek favourable peer reviews, but to demonstrate to the ordinary decent citizen of Ireland, in the simplest possible terms, how the 2020 COVID-19 deaths claimed by NPHET every night on RTE1 and published on the data.gov.ie website cannot possibly be true. To that end I will present basic arithmetic and graphs as it is my belief that every Irish citizen should be fully informed of the fraud which has been carried out by the Irish Government, its agents and the media for the benefit of vested interests to terrorise the population into submitting to their draconian COVID measures by grossly overstating the deaths due to COVID-19 in 2020.

This study will conclude that Ireland had the lowest death rate in 2020 since 2012

Introduction

It is a legal requirement in Ireland that every death that takes place in the State must be recorded and registered. Records of deaths in Ireland are held in the General Register Office (GRO), which is the central civil repository for records relating to Births, Marriages and Deaths in Ireland. Deaths must be registered as soon as possible after the death and no later than 3 months.

The GRO estimate that approximately 80% of deaths are registered in this timeframe, however many deaths take longer than 3 months especially if a death is referred to the Coroner’s Service, such deaths include suicides, violent deaths and more recently all COVID-19 deaths, these deaths may not be registered for months or years after the occurrence. The GRO provide regular updates on the total deaths registered by the month they occurred in, but because of the lag in registrations they do not come close to being accurate until approximately six months after the month of occurrence. Generally, this lag would not cause a major problem as the death data is mainly used for medical research, however in natural disasters and health emergency situations such as the ongoing alleged COVID-19 pandemic, accurate and up-to-date death data is critical for planning and implementing measured responses to emerging situations. Without this current data on deaths, vested interests can use misinformation to understate or exaggerate deaths to pacify or terrorise the general population into certain actions or inactions, i.e., mass manipulation or hysteria.

Methodology

During the early stages of the alleged COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 a number of publicly funded Irish academics began fearmongering through the media, including state sponsored media, that they estimated thousands of additional deaths would occur due to COVID-19. These deaths are called “excess” as they are above the normally expected deaths based on the previous 5-year average. These academics were estimating deaths compared to deaths notices published on the RIP.ie website.

Antidotally the evidence I was receiving from family, friends, work colleagues and my own observations in the major Dublin hospital where I work made me sceptical that the large numbers of COVID-19 deaths being reported were not actually excess deaths and were not above normal for previous flu seasons. In fact, January 2020 had a very low occurrence of flu cases. I began to look at the RIP.ie death notices and could not see how the academics could predict such high numbers of deaths. I contacted the academics and debated with them by email but they claimed the RIP.ie database they were using was privileged and would not share it with me, I was led to believe that they had obtained a proprietary database of the death notices from RIP.ie.

Later in November 2020 I became aware of an experiment being carried out by John Flanagan of the Central Statistics Office (CSO) also using RIP.ie death notices to estimate the total number of deaths occurring in recent months. The last CSO press statement on 2nd November 2020 regarding John’s experiment which ended in the September encouraged me to look closer at the possibility of obtaining more up-to-date figures on deaths using the RIP.ie death notices. I developed an automated system to obtain the data required from the death notices published on the RIP.ie website, plus, a method to remove or “clean” notices for deaths which occurred outside of Ireland and duplicate notices. I benchmarked my estimates against previous monthly GRO/CSO death data back to 2014 and found that it was as accurate as John Flanagan found during his experiment.

Results

The comparison in tabular format between the death notes that I obtained from the RIP.ie website and cleaned to remove deaths which had occurred outside Ireland and duplicate notices, and the published GRO/CSO data from 2014 to 2021 is shown in Table 1 & 2 below.

Table 1

Table 2

While it can be seen that there are variations between the monthly and yearly data, the totals for the years 2014 to 2019 is 185,741 for RIP.ie and 185,500 for GRO/CSO, a difference of only 0.13%.

I then calculated the previous 5-year average for each month 2018-2012 from the data in Table 1 & Table 2, the excess deaths were calculated as the difference between the previous 5-year average for each month and the total for that month as shown in Table 3 below. The COVID-19 deaths claimed by NPHET and sourced from data.gove.ie is also included in Table 2 for each month from March 2020 to March 2020, there are no COVID-19 deaths provided for Jan and Feb 2020 and are assumed to be zero.

Table 3

Discussion

As can be seen from the Table 3, the excess deaths based on RIP.ie data for a full year from Jan to Dec 2020 (in red) total up to -103 whereas the total deaths claimed by NPHET / data.gov.ie from Mar to Dec 2020 (in blue) total up to 2,167, an alarming difference of 2,270 deaths. It must be noted that NPHET / data.gov.ie do not provide data on COVID-19 deaths in Jan and Feb 2020 and therefore assumed to be zero. If COVID-19 deaths claimed by NPHET/data.gov.ie were caused by a novel virus, and there were no other factors causing excess deaths (such as another novel disease, war, famine, natural disaster, etc.), then the NPHET/data.gov.ie claimed COVID-19 deaths (solid red line) should closely match the RIP.ie excess deaths (dashed green line) in Graph 1.

In order to analyse the results further I prepared Graph 1 from the 5-year average and excess deaths calculated in Table 3.

The expected influenza season can be easily identified from the 5-year average shown in the data in Table 3 and the peak in Graph 1 in Jan 2020 –

  • 3,223 deaths GRO/CSO (solid blue line)
  • 3,224 deaths RIP.ie (dashed purple line)

The drop in excess deaths for Jan 2020 in the data in Table 3 and the dip in Graph 1 –

  • 266 deaths GRO/CSO (solid black line) and
  • 339 deaths RIP.ie (dashed green line)

indicate that the deaths which would historically occur in Jan, often referred to “flu season”, will occur later in the as they have occurred occasionally in previous years. These deaths which always occur at some time during the year are delayed due to some undetermined factors in 2020.

As can be seen by the total deaths in the data in Table 3 and the spike in Graph 1 –

  • 3,216 deaths GRO/CSO (solid orange line)
  • 3,235 deaths RIP.ie (dashed yellow line)

The “flu season” moved from Jan to Apr in 2020.

The number of excess deaths in April 2020 is highlighted in yellow in the data in Table 3 and as shown as the spike in Graph 3 indicates where the influenza or COVID-19 season moved –

  • 992 deaths GRO/CSO (solid black line)
  • 923 deaths RIP.ie (dashed green line)
  • 981 deaths NPHET/data.gov.ie claimed COVID-19 deaths (solid red line).

Oddly, this is the only point at which the claimed COVID-19 deaths match the GRO/CSO and RIP.ie excess deaths.

Graph 1

The next expected influenza season is again indicated in the 5-year average data in Table 3 and the peak in Graph 1 Jan 2021 –

  • 3,216 deaths GRO/CSO (solid blue line)
  • 3,224 deaths RIP.ie (dashed purple line)

However, the total deaths in the data in Table 3 and the spike in Graph 1 in Jan 2021 is –

3,722 deaths RIP.ie (dashed yellow line), also higher than the April 2020 spike indicating that a serious unexplained event took place and increased the excess deaths by –

487 deaths RIP.ie (dashed green line) in Jan 2021, which is the same month that the COVID-19 vaccination was rolled out in the Irish nursing homes. Death data from RIP.ie also indicates the deaths which occurred in nursing homes directly after the rollout of vaccinations are approximately 500 higher than normal for this time.

The number of claimed COVID-19 deaths shown in the data in Table 3 and as the two high points in Graph 3 in Jan and Feb 2021 indicates a very large exaggeration of COVID deaths –

  • 1, 082 and 1,045 deaths NPHET/data.gov.ie (solid red line)

In comparison to the to –

  • 487 and 301 RIP.ie excess deaths (dashed green line) in Jan and Feb 2021

I obtained 50 records for deaths which occurred in the nursing homes after the scheduled date of COVID-19 vaccinations and when I examined them, I found that the majority of the deaths were recorded as COVID-19 even though they occurred very shortly after the scheduled vaccination dates. If those patients who died were ill with COVID-19 then they should not have been vaccinated, otherwise if they did not have a positive COVID-19 PCR test then it is very likely that they died from an adverse reaction to the experimental COVID-19 vaccination and not COVID-19 disease.

The total GRO/CSO deaths (solid orange line) and excess deaths (solid black line) are ignored from Oct to Mar because they are falling away indicating the lag / delay in the registration of deaths is greatest closer to the present time causing a deficit in the GRO/CSO death data.

The claimed COVID-19 deaths NPHET/data.gov.ie (solid red line) also look suspiciously higher compared to the excess deaths indicated in Graph 1 by RIP.ie (dashed green line) and GRO/CSO (solid black line) between June and Dec 2020. For this reason, I produced a more detailed Graph 2 for Dec 2020 to Mar 2021 using the same RIP.ie data, but plotted the figures weekly to analysis this more closely.

If the large number of COVID-19 deaths claimed by NPHET/data.gov.ie were caused by a novel virus, and there were no other factors causing excess deaths (such as another novel disease, war, famine, natural disaster, etc.), then the COVID-19 deaths claimed by NPHET/data.gov.ie deaths (solid red line) should closely match the RIP.ie excess deaths (solid green line) in Graph 2, however as can be seen the COVID-19 deaths are consistently higher than the RIP.ie excess deaths. It can also be seen at this level of detail that the peak of the claimed COVID-19 deaths in mid Apr 2020 were approximately 200 deaths higher and 2 weeks later that the actual peak excess deaths indicated by the RIP.ie death notices.

The NPHET/data.gov.ie claimed COVID-19 deaths (solid red line) in Graph 2 is also a very smooth line compares to the fluctuating RIP.ie excess deaths (dashed green line) which would be expected for weekly data, this makes the red line appear to be unnatural and false or fabricated.

Graph 2

An argument which has been raised by various vested interests is the possibility that healthcare deprivation during the alleged pandemic may have increased other causes of deaths in in 2020. While there is a possibility of this occurring later in 2020, I feel that it would be very doubtful that it had any effect in the early part of 2020, and if that were the case, then it would further prove that the COVID-19 death figures were exaggerated as they would have been concealing healthcare deprivation deaths in order for the excess deaths to remain low.

Other vested interests claim that the lockdowns have reduced influenzas deaths and accidental deaths which compensate for the extra COVID-19 deaths and that this explains why the total or excess deaths are not higher in 2020. I find this a difficult proposition to accept as the CSO 2019 Vital Statistics Yearly Summary states that accidents accounted for only 909 deaths and even if there were no accidental deaths in 2020, it would not make up the 2,270 difference between claimed COVID-19 deaths and excess deaths. Influenza deaths were not identified in previous CSO reports, as tests such as PCR, were not used to confirm diagnosis of influenza and those deaths were recorded as respiratory deaths. Suicides accounted for 421 deaths in 2019 and it is expected that there may be a substantial increase in those deaths due to the socioeconomic impact of the lockdowns plus healthcare deprivation will also most likely increase deaths in related causes. To give an overview of the relative numbers of deaths in the main IDC-10 causes, and to demonstrate how little they vary from year to year, thus having little effect on the 5-year average and on excess deaths, I have complied Graph 3 below from the CSO’s 2014-2019 Vital Statistics Annual Reports.

Graph 3

Conclusion

By now the, mis-match that I have outlined between the NEPHET/data.gov.ie claimed COVID-19 deaths and the official GRO registered deaths up to Jun 2020 together with the RIP.ie cleaned death notices from then up to Mar 2021 can only bring you to the same conclusion that I have arrived at. That is, that the NEPHET/data.gov.ie claimed COVID-19 deaths are deaths of older people and people with underlying conditions who died as per normal but were fraudulently classified as COVID-19 by vested interests using PCR tests which have found to produce a high percentage of false positive results.

Furthermore, I conclude that the approximately 500 excess deaths in Jan-Feb 2021 must be related to the rollout of the vaccinations in those nursing homes during that period, and that the excessively high COVID-19 deaths claimed by NPHET/data.gov.ie in Jan-Feb 2021 are contrived for the sole purpose of allowing those deaths to be explained as COVID-19 as per the death records rather than adverse reactions to the vaccines.

And finally, the health of a nation can be quickly assessed by looking at its trend death rates as quoted in deaths per 1,000 of population. I have prepared Table 4 below from CSO annual reports, recent GRO updated data and RIP.ie death notices for 2020.The table shows that the 2020 death rate will be the lowest since 2012, a clear indication that there was no need for the mass hysteria created by vested interests which could not be challenged due to the lack of up-to-date date and transparent death data from the Central Statistics Office.

Table 4

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Kieran Morrissey is a US born Engineer who has worked in healthcare for most of his career and has been educated and spent most of his life in Ireland. He is married with 4 adult children.

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***

President and Co-Founder of Your Ontario Doctors and frontline physician Dr. Kulvinder Kaur recently sat down with Dr. Richard Schabas, MD, Former Chief Medical Officer of Health for Ontario, Canada, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD Professor of Medicine at Stanford University, Epidemiologist, Dr. Sunetra Gupta, PhD Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology at the University of Oxford and Dr. Martin Kulldorff, PhD, Professor of Medicine at Harvard, Infectious Disease Epidemiologist. Bhattacharya, Gupta and Kulldorff were the initiators behind The Great Barrington Declaration.

In the video below they discuss the harms of lockdown and the dangerous of censorship, as well as a path forward. Throughout this pandemic, numerous studies have found that lockdowns have been quite ineffective at stopping the spread of covid. You can access some of those studies and read more about it here for more examples and an in depth discussion. I also recently published an article about two renowned Swedish scientists/epidemiologists who have gone through the data from UNICEF and UNAIDS, and came to the conclusion that least as many people have died as a result of the restrictions to fight covid as have died of covid. You can read more about that here.

Obviously, as you probably already know, there is information on both sides of the coin when it comes to all things covid. What doesn’t bode well, however, is the fact that one side is being completely unacknowledged, ignored, and censored within the mainstream.

Some experts have not been given a voice, and discussion has been completely shut down. When certain information, data/evidence or opinion goes “against the grain” and gains some sort of “virality” it then seems to be heavily ridiculed within the mainstream and labelled a “conspiracy theory.” It seems mainstream media along with government health authorities don’t even want to entertain the idea of having a discussion with experts who oppose their narrative. They simply continue to push forth their viewpoints and perspective as the ultimate truth.

This type of censorship, and the entire pandemic has truly served as a catalyst for ‘ordinary’ citizens, doctors and scientists to really question what type of world we are currently living in as well as the intentions of government and ‘big health.’ This is a very encouraging thing to see, but what’s more important is that everyday people who disagree with each other really need to start empathizing with each other.

I decided to share the video below because, whether you agree or disagree is not important.

What’s important is that everybody in the field gets to share their perspective, openly and freely without being subjected to censorship. What’s happening during this pandemic is quite unfair, immoral, unethical and harmful, which is why it’s so important to share discussions like this.

The Takeaway

Society must have controversial conversations in a meaningful way. We are not getting anywhere by taking authoritarian actions that harm the well being of general society and our ability to stay connected as communities. Mainstream culture is expecting everyone to side with the idea that fringe ‘conspiracy theories’ are undermining truth in society, yet mainstream culture does not want to take responsibility for its role in this phenomenon via censorship and corporate favoritism.

At the end of the day, it’s quite clear that things with regards to the pandemic are not as clear as mainstream media is making them out to be. Lockdowns and other “authoritarian” measures taken by governments, although supported by many people are also heavily opposed by many people. When this is the case and things aren’t as black and white has they are being made out to be, should the government simply not make recommendations and let the people decide for themselves? Should we really give them the authority to put into place such mandates that they have when there are such enormous consequences as a result and when it’s not even clear if they (the mandates) are effective?

People want to thrive, they are tired of being constantly handed the short end of the stick as the rich get richer. It does not take long to look with open eyes and see that government is not working to serve people as much as we’d like to think.

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First published by Global Research on November 22, 2020

Author’s Note and Update

On 13 April 2021, the government of the Federal Republic of Germany amended or tightened the Infection Protection Act (§ 28b IfSG). It is the draft of a Fourth Law for the Protection of the Population in the Event of an Epidemic Situation of National Significance.

In reality, this so-called “Federal Emergency Brake” slows down the legally guaranteed basic rights of citizens.

The Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI) confirms: “Emergency Brakes” Act abrogates fundamental right of inviolability of home and body (1).

The renowned legal scholar Volker Boehme-Neßler adds: The planned coercive measures such as de curfews are “unconstitutional, dictatorial and against human nature” (2).

The German Bundestag will decide next week on this legislative path to open dictatorship.

Rudolf Hänsel,  April 17, 2021

*** 

Auf Deutsch:  

Das Lied der Deutschen gilt für das gemeine Volk nicht mehr

The German national anthem, as a state symbol, was protected from denigration in a special way. But for months it has been dragged deeper and deeper into the mud by a corrupt clique of politicians on behalf of a billionaire and power “elite” and is now only valid for them, no longer for the common people.

A minority of people, who exploit, enslave, sow discord, injustice and lack of freedom, has taken over the scepter worldwide. And whoever believes that he can speak and negotiate with this other side, these ruling beneficiaries, who have the whole thing in their hands, is mistaken.

No! They are so sick that no negotiation is possible with them. It was still like that in the story: When the working people went on strike for their right to freedom, justice, security, peace and a life worthy of a human being and took to the streets for their children, the governments first used the police and then the military – and finally let them shoot.

The text of the German national anthem is the third verse of the poem “Das Lied der Deutschen” and was written by August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben in 1841 on Helgoland and set to music by Joseph Haydn:

“Unity and Justice and Freedom / for the German Fatherland!

Let us all strive for this / Brotherly with Heart and Hand!

Unity and Justice and Freedom / are the Promise of Happiness:

Flourish in this Blessing’s Glory, / Florish, German Fatherland!”

What has remained of all this in Germany?

The passing of the new so-called infection protection law last week is only one example of many for the omnipotence fantasies of politicians and the increasing compulsion, the permanent rule changes and threats, the sickening isolation detention of adults and their children, the restricted freedom of movement, the psychological programming and finally the systematic destruction of the human psyche (David Icke). The formerly “silent” dictatorship of democracy was secretly transformed into an open dictatorship.

Mahatma Gandhi, the Indian lawyer, moral teacher and pacifist, showed the world in the last century what strength a person with an unbending will can develop and what he can achieve through it. His motto was:

“Strength does not come from physical abilities. It comes from an unbending will.”

The Indian independence movement, of which he was the intellectual and political leader, took up his idea of non-violent action and “Civil Disobedience” and in August 1947 reached the end of British colonial rule over India. Why should we not develop this unbending will?

“When I think of Germany at night, / Then I am deprived of sleep,

I can no longer close my eyes, / And my hot tears flow.”

(Heinrich Heine, Night Thoughts)

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Auf Deutsch

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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel is a certified psychologist and educationalist.

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons

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Biden Declares National Emergency: U.S. and NATO Brand Russia an International Pariah

By Rick Rozoff, April 16 2021

The thirty-member North Atlantic Council, the political decision-making body of NATO consisting of the ambassadors of all member states, posted a statement supporting the Joe Biden administration’s declaration of a national emergency attributed to Russian actions, real or fancied.

Beware of Covid PCR Testing and the Relentless “Vaccinate Vaccinate Vaccinate” Campaign

By Peter Koenig, April 16 2021

The validity of the PCR test has been questioned for months, if not from the very beginning of the declared covid-19 plandemic, including lately also by WHO. However, this test is still and ever more so being forced upon us.

CDC Admits 5,800 Fully Vaccinated People Became Infected with COVID-19 and 74 Died

By Brian Shilhavy, April 16 2021

The CDC today apparently sent out emails to the major corporate media outlets allegedly explaining that about 5,800 fully vaccinated people have still come down with COVID-19 after being fully vaccinated, and 74 people fully vaccinated against COVID-19 have allegedly died from COVID-19.

US to Withdraw from Afghanistan after Two Decades of War Leaving Behind a Tortured Wasteland and Having Accomplished… Nothing.

By Scott Ritter, April 16 2021

The US decision to leave Afghanistan without any conditions represents a political victory for those in the US government who sought an end to the nearly two-decade conflict in that nation.

White House Won’t Say If Special Forces Will Leave Afghanistan Under Biden’s Withdrawal Plan

By Dave DeCamp, April 16 2021

After President Biden formally announced his plan to withdraw from Afghanistan by September 11th, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked if special operations soldiers would remain in the country under the plan, which she declined to answer.

Labour Disclosure ‘Shows Antisemitism Was Weaponised Against Corbyn’, Activists Say

By Jonathan Cook, April 16 2021

A group of Labour activists fighting through the courts to discover why they and others were investigated or expelled from the UK’s Labour Party for antisemitism say they have flushed out proof of bad faith from their accusers.

India’s Impending War on Crypto

By Peter C. Earl, April 16 2021

A senior official in the Indian government recently revealed to Reuters that the government would soon propose a law banning the trade and possession of cryptocurrencies.
.

Genocide Drowned out by Media Silence: The Yemen War Six Years Later

By Michael WelchSteven SahiounieYousra Abdulmalik, and Azza Rojbi, April 16 2021

The country of Yemen, once renowned for its architectural gems and theatre shaping the minds and memory of its population, is now scraping itself out from under the wreckage of homes, schools, mosques and hospitals downed by Saudi-led coalition airstrikes.

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U.S. Joins Past Empires in Afghan Graveyard

April 16th, 2021 by Medea Benjamin

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***

An Afghan taxi-driver in Vancouver told one of us a decade ago that this day would come. “We defeated the Persian Empire in the eighteenth century, the British in the nineteenth, the Soviets in the twentieth. Now, with NATO, we’re fighting twenty-eight countries, but we’ll defeat them, too,” said the taxi-driver, surely not a member of the Taliban, but quietly proud of his country’s empire-killing credentials. 

Now, after nearly twenty years of a war that has been as bloody and futile as all those previous invasions and occupations, the last 3,500 U.S. troops and their NATO brothers-in-arms will be coming home from Afghanistan.

President Joe Biden tried to spin this as the United States leaving because it has achieved its objectives, bringing the terrorists responsible for 9/11 to justice and ensuring that Afghanistan would not be used as a base for a future attack on the United States. “We achieved those objectives,” Biden said. “Bin Laden is dead and Al Qaeda is degraded. It’s time to end the forever war.”

What Biden did not admit is that the United States and its allies, with all their money and firepower, were unable to vanquish the Taliban, who currently control about half of Afghanistan and are positioned to control even more in the coming months without a ceasefire. Nor did Biden admit that, in two decades, the United States and its allies have been unable to build up a stable, democratic, popular government or a competent military in the country.

Like the U.S.S.R., the U.S. is leaving in defeat, having squandered the lives of countless Afghans, 2,488 U.S. troops and personnel, and trillions of dollars.

A U.S. withdrawal—especially one not based on conditions on the ground—is, nevertheless, a bold move for Biden. He is going against the advice of the U.S. intelligence community and top Pentagon officials, including the head of the U.S.-Afghan Forces and the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Biden is also coming under attack from Republicans and Democrats in Congress. Senator Mitch McConnell artfully slammed Biden’s decision, accusing him of helping U.S. enemies “ring in the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks by gift-wrapping the country and handing it right back to them.” Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said the withdrawal “undermines our commitment to the Afghan people, particularly Afghan women.”

But while Biden is being pilloried by some for pulling out too soon, the truth is that he is violating a May 1 deadline for U.S. troop withdrawal that was painstakingly negotiated under the Trump Administration.

Ironically, Biden acknowledged in his speech on Wednesday that the withdrawal agreement the United States signed with the Taliban in February 2020 was a solemn commitment, but then he said U.S. forces would begin their withdrawal on May 1 and complete it by September 11, which is not what was agreed to.

After it was clear that the United States was going to break the May 1 withdrawal agreement, Mohammad Naeem, the Taliban spokesperson in Qatar, issued a statement that the Taliban would now not take part in the ten days of U.N.-led peace talks scheduled to begin in Istanbul on April 24, nor would it take part in any further peace negotiations until the last foreign soldiers leave Afghanistan.

This is a reversion to the Taliban’s long-standing position that it would not negotiate with a government backed by foreign occupation forces.

U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad spent years of his life negotiating with the Taliban to arrive at the 2020 withdrawal agreement. Secretary Blinken took a potentially historic step back from U.S. unilateralism when he invited the United Nations to lead a new Afghan peace process. And Russian Foreign Secretary Sergei Lavrov set the stage for a ceasefire and a peaceful transition of power by bringing the two Afghan warring parties together in Moscow in March, where they agreed to keep talking.

By reneging on the May 1 deadline, President Biden has squandered much of the hard-won goodwill and trust that was painstakingly built up through these diplomatic efforts. It was not impossible to meet the May 1 deadline. The Trump Administration was steadily withdrawing troops, Biden’s transition began in November, and he’s been President since late January.

It is also unclear whether the United States will continue the war by providing airpower for the Afghan military and carrying out covert operations. Throughout these two decades, the United States has dropped more than 80,000 bombs on Afghanistan and waged a secret war with special forces, CIA operatives, mercenaries, and paramilitary units. Ending U.S. airstrikes and covert operations is as vital to peace as withdrawing U.S. troops.

It’s true that a U.S. withdrawal may lead to setbacks in the gains made by Afghan women and girls. But those gains have been mainly in the capital city of Kabul. Two thirds of girls in Afghanistan still receive no primary education, and Afghan women will never achieve significant advances while their country remains at war.

The United States and NATO military presence has made an end to violence impossible for twenty years, as the Taliban have long made clear that they will keep fighting as long as their country is under foreign occupation. And as long as the U.S. continues to prop up a weak, corrupt government in Kabul, instability and political fragmentation is inevitable.

Ending the fighting and investing a small fraction of U.S. war spending in education and health care would do far more to improve the lives of Afghan women and girls.

The United Nations, even with the full support and cooperation of the United States, will have its work cut out to convince the Taliban to rejoin talks. If the U.N. fails to negotiate a lasting ceasefire before the occupation forces withdraw, the U.S. and its NATO allies will be leaving a country still at war with the Taliban, the Afghan government, and various warlords vying for power.

We must hope that, in the coming months, the U.N. will find a way to bring the warring parties in Afghanistan together and craft a ceasefire and a workable peace process based on power sharing. After so many decades of war and intense suffering, much of it perpetrated by the United States and its allies, the Afghan people desperately need—and deserve—an end to this war.

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This article was originally published on The Progressive.

Medea Benjamin is co-director of the peace group CODEPINK. Her latest book is Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic.

Nicolas J S Davies is the author of “Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.” He is a researcher for CODEPINK: Women for Peace, and a freelance writer.

India’s Impending War on Crypto

April 16th, 2021 by Peter C. Earl

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***

In a clear example showing how the CDC and Big Pharma control the corporate media, the CDC today apparently sent out emails to the major corporate media outlets allegedly explaining that about 5,800 fully vaccinated people have still come down with COVID-19 after being fully vaccinated, and 74 people fully vaccinated against COVID-19 have allegedly died from COVID-19.

In typical fashion of how the CDC operates, they attempted to spin these numbers as something positive, by stating how many people have now been “vaccinated” against COVID, and that one’s chance of getting COVID is significantly reduced if you receive the injection.

As I saw this statement start appearing everywhere in social media, I tried to find the source for this alleged CDC information, but all I could find were various corporate media outlets stating that the CDC had told them this directly. Apparently this is not on the CDC website anywhere.

Some examples:

CNN:
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that about 5,800 people who have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 have become infected anyway.

Out of those people, 74 died and 396 [7%] required hospitalization. Many were seriously ill, the CDC reported.

It’s the first indication from CDC of how effective the vaccine is in real life — and the first indication the vaccines do not protect completely against severe disease and death.

“So far, about 5,800 breakthrough cases have been reported to CDC. To date, no unexpected patterns have been identified in case demographics or vaccine characteristics,” the CDC told CNN via email.

The HILL:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the agency has documented about 5,800 “breakthrough” COVID-19 cases among the millions of Americans who are fully vaccinated, totaling far less than 1 percent of fully vaccinated people.

“Vaccine breakthrough infections make up a small percentage of people who are fully vaccinated,” the CDC told The Hill in a statement. “CDC recommends that all eligible people get a COVID-19 vaccine as soon as one is available to them.”

Yahoo:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found about 5,800 cases of COVID-19 infections among people who have been fully vaccinated in the U.S., according to a new report.

CDC officials tell Yahoo Life that as of April 13, about 5,800 breakthrough COVID-19 infections — meaning someone who was fully vaccinated against the virus still contracts COVID-19 — have been reported to the CDC among the more than 66 million Americans who have been fully vaccinated. Of those, 396 (or 7 percent) required hospitalization and 74 people (0.0001 percent) died.

And as is usual with the Pharma-funded corporate media, there was no investigative reporting done to challenge or even question the data that the CDC was providing.

So let me do that. (The CDC did not send me a copy of the letter for some reason.)

For example, how do we know that there are only “5,800 breakthrough COVID-19 infections” among 66 million fully vaccinated Americans? How did the CDC arrive at that figure, and where are they getting their data?

These experimental COVID injections have only been out in the public for about 4 months now, and the vast majority of the injections have occurred within the past few weeks.

These are experimental pharmaceutical products with very little testing done, and the CDC has changed the amount of time they claim it takes for full immunity to start after “vaccination” several times already. They originally said two weeks after the first injection, and full immunity after the second one. Then it was changed to 4 weeks. Now, they are saying it can take up to 6 weeks.

So there really is no way the CDC can make any definitive statements at this point as to just what the percentage of fully vaccinated people will be who still get COVID and still die from it.

Earlier this week, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky actually stated that the COVID “vaccines” are “too slow” to stop an alleged surge of COVID cases in Michigan, because it takes “weeks” for them to start working.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Rochelle Walensky said Michigan should put coronavirus restrictions back in place to stop the spread of COVID-19.

“Really what we need to do in those situations is shut things down,” Walensky said during a press briefing on Monday. “I think if we tried to vaccinate our way out of what is happening in Michigan, we will be disappointed that it took so long for the vaccine to work – to actually have the impact.” (Source.)

“We know that if vaccines go in arms today, we will not see an effect of those vaccines, depending on the vaccine, for somewhere between two to six weeks,” Walensky said. (Source.)

Anybody with any kind of critical thinking skills can clearly see that this is pure PR the CDC is spinning to their corporate media lap dogs.

They want to try and convince the U.S. public that even though people are still getting sick and dying from COVID after being fully vaccinated, that they still should get vaccinated anyway, and then agree to new lockdowns as cases start going up again because the vaccines “work too slowly.”

Of course they want you to ignore the fact that in states that have opened back up and stopped mandating face masks, that cases and deaths, even by their own corrupted statistics, are now going down.

How long is the American public going to put up with this insanity?

People are DYING from these COVID “vaccines” and the CDC is now forced to admit that these vaccines don’t even work in many people.

And whatever small businesses that are still left and have survived the first round of lockdowns last year will surely die if lockdowns are required again, unless enough people wake up finally and say “enough is enough – we will NOT comply!”

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***

U.S. President Joe Biden officially announced the withdrawal of American troops and NATO allies from Afghanistan in a televised speech on Wednesday. Accordingly, the withdrawal of these forces will begin on May 1 and symbolically end on September 11.

American troops and their allies invaded Taliban-held Afghanistan after the September 11 terrorist attacks. The guise used to invade Afghanistan was to prevent the country from ever becoming a launch pad to attack the U.S. again. In his speech, Biden stressed that this goal has already been achieved and that the U.S. “cannot continue the cycle of extending or expanding our military presence in Afghanistan, hoping to create ideal conditions for withdrawal and expecting a different result.”

“I’m now the fourth United States president to preside over American troop presence in Afghanistan,” he said, adding “Two Republicans, two Democrats. I will not pass this responsibility on to a fifth.”

The withdrawal of U.S. and allied forces has alarmed Afghanis who are terrified of what is about to happen. Although the Afghan government said the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country would not affect the security situation, officials and experts have repeatedly expressed concern about the withdrawal.

This is an unsurprising expectation considering that the Taliban are already boasting about their victory over the U.S. following Biden’s announcement. In speaking with the BBC, Haji Hekmat, the Taliban’s shadow mayor in Balkh district, said “we have won the war and America has lost.” He also confirms that “the Taliban before and the Taliban now are the same” and they do not “fight for power but for Allah and His Law” and “whoever stands against us, we will fight against them.”

There is clear concern in Kabul as the Afghan Army has very little control over the rural areas of the country and are mostly reduced to controlling the main cities and towns.

Rahman Rahmani, Speaker of the House of Representatives of Afghanistan, said:

“The withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan is a long-standing demand of the Afghan people, but given the security situation in the country, the conditions for the withdrawal of these forces have not yet been provided. The withdrawal of foreign troops in the current situation could lead to a worsening of the situation and a civil war.”

Contrary to the belief of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Fawad Aman, Deputy Spokesman of the Ministry of National Defense of Afghanistan, said:

“Our security and defense forces, which come from different ethnic groups in the country, are a legitimate force that works to defend the lands and protect the lives and property of the people, and after the withdrawal of NATO forces, they will not allow any terrorist group to disrupt the country’s security. Since our defense forces are made up of all the compassionate tribes of this land, we believe we are not heading for a civil war.”

Although Aman expresses confidence that the Afghan Army will be able to establish a peace and defeat the Taliban and other terrorist organizations, regional player India does not share this sentiment. Indian Chief of Defense Staff, General Bipin Rawat, said on Thursday that a “space for other disruptors” who are “looking at the opportunity to exploit the vacuum […] is being created. Afghanistan is a nation which is rich in resources.”

Despite the confidence that many in the Afghan government are portraying, the reality is that the U.S.-NATO withdrawal will lead to a rapid escalation in Taliban insurgency that the national army will struggle against. This will inevitably lead to a proxy struggle as China, India, Pakistan, Russia and Iran will all vie for influence in a post-U.S. Afghanistan in the hope of being able to exploit the $3 trillion worth of mineral wealth in the country.

It is likely that India and Iran will vehemently back the Afghan government’s preservation to prevent a radical Sunni Islamic Emirate from being established as it can pose a major security threat. In turn, to weaken Indian influence in Afghanistan, Pakistan will likely continue its ardent support for the Taliban.

As U.S. Chairman of Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Jack Reed, said on the Senate floor on Thursday, the “crucial factor contributing to the Taliban’s success” has been the U.S.’ inability to “eliminate the sanctuary the Taliban was granted in Pakistan.”

By using the Taliban, Pakistan hopes to eliminate any Indian economic and diplomatic influence in Afghanistan. In this way, Afghanistan will undoubtedly become a field for competing rivalries.

Russia and China will also try and assert their influence over Afghanistan, but will likely deal with any government that emerges in a post-U.S. Afghanistan. But they will certainly not want the country to become a proxy battleground between India (and perhaps Iran too) and Pakistan. Sun Qi, an international relations specialist at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, believes that Beijing will not station troops in Afghanistan, but might instead work with other countries in the region to promote political stability and reduce the security risk to China that a post-U.S. Afghanistan will pose.

It took the U.S. 20 years to finally withdraw from Afghanistan, having achieved nothing but the utter destruction of the country and leaving behind it a vacuum that will undoubtedly not only lead to a civil war between the Taliban, other terrorist organizations and the national army, but a proxy battle between key regional states.

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***

A group of Labour activists fighting through the courts to discover why they and others were investigated or expelled from the UK’s Labour Party for antisemitism say they have flushed out proof of bad faith from their accusers.

The group, who call themselves Labour Activists for Justice (LA4J), say the new disclosure confirms their claim that leading Jewish organisations intentionally politicised the meaning of antisemitism to entrap left-wing critics of Israel and undermine Labour’s former leader, Jeremy Corbyn.

As a result, the number of cases of antisemitism in Labour was inflated, falsely feeding the public impression that the political party under Corbyn had attracted Jew haters, say the Labour activists.

The suggestion that groups like the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Labour Movement “weaponised” antisemitism against Corbyn is currently seen as grounds by Labour to suspend or expel members.

But according to LA4J, evidence revealed in their legal case has now vindicated that claim.

The activists note that Jewish groups that waged a campaign of attacks on Corbyn over an antisemitism code of conduct drafted by the party in 2018 are now “deafeningly silent” on discovering that Keir Starmer, Labour’s new leader, has been secretly using exactly the same code.

When it was first published, the Board of Deputies and other Jewish organisations erupted in outrage, alleging that the 16-point code was proof of “institutional antisemitism” in the Labour party – and even that Corbyn posed a threat to Jewish life in Britain.

But the admission by Starmer’s officials that they are using the same code of conduct to investigate members has gone entirely unremarked three years later.

That is despite a submission to the courts from Labour’s own lawyers that the code had been kept secret because its publication might prove “politically incendiary”.

LA4J point out that back in 2018 the Board of Deputies, the Jewish Labour Movement and other groups insisted that Corbyn replace the code with an alternative, controversial definition of antisemitism produced by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).

According to the activists, the current silence of these Jewish groups, after Starmer’s officials have conceded that they are using Corbyn’s code rather than the IHRA definition, further indicates bad faith.

Despite public statements to the contrary, the organisations knew that the IHRA definition was unworkable for Labour’s disciplinary procedures back in 2018, LA4J say.

“If Labour believes that the code issued by Corbyn was ‘incendiary’, the question is where is the bushfire now, when Starmer’s team admit they are using the very same code,” Chris Wallis, a spokesman for LA4J, told Middle East Eye.

“One of the things this case suggests is that groups like the Board of Deputies hoped to weaponise antisemitism as a way to attack Corbyn.”

Disciplinary process ‘back to front’

The group’s legal action is due to reach the High Court in June. It will be the first wide-ranging legal examination of Labour’s disciplinary procedures relating to antisemitism. In October 2019, the High Court ruled that the suspension of then-Labour MP Chris Williamson for “bringing the party into disrepute” over antisemitism allegations was illegal, though the judge did not overturn a second suspension that ousted him from the party.

Eight party members, including three Jews, are pursuing the case after they were investigated for alleged antisemitism. LA4J estimates that at least 30 Jewish members of the party have been accused of antisemitism, some repeatedly.

Late last year the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), the UK’s equalities watchdog, issued a report critical of Labour’s handling of antisemitism cases, especially over what it termed “political interference” by Corbyn’s office, which it said had resulted in “a lack of transparency and consistency in the complaints process”.

However, the EHRC found that in practice such interference chiefly harmed the interests of those accused of antisemitism rather than their accusers. Corbyn’s officials often tried to speed up investigations in the hope of ending the barrage of criticism from Jewish organisations.

LA4J argue that hundreds of members have been drummed out of the party in a process that has lacked the transparency and fairness demanded by the EHRC. The procedure, they say, has failed to provide those under investigation with an opportunity to challenge the allegations.

Most members receive a “notice of investigation” that typically cites social media posts as evidence of antisemitism. In some cases, members have been accused of sharing articles from prominent websites, such as Electronic Intifada and Mondoweiss, known to be harshly critical of Israel for its repeated violations of Palestinian rights.

No explanation is made in the notice of why party officials believe the posts to be antisemitic. Instead, it is required of those under investigation to demonstrate why their posts should not be considered antisemitic.

The notices also demand that members under investigation not publicise their case or the information that is being used against them. It is unclear whether they are even allowed to seek legal advice. Instead, they are encouraged to get help from a GP or the Samaritans to aid their “wellbeing”.

Wallis, a former BBC radio drama producer who has been under investigation since last year, is one of the eight members taking the party to court.

“The disciplinary process has been entirely back to front,” he said. “We were never told about the secret code being used to judge our cases and it was never explained how what we did was antisemitic. The assumption was that we were guilty unless we could prove otherwise, and we were expected to incriminate ourselves.”

‘Sickness’ in Labour

At a preliminary hearing in February, the Labour Party argued that the courts had no place adjudicating on its handling of antisemitism cases. However, the judge approved the High Court hearing for June and awarded costs against Labour.

In what appears to be an attempt to avoid a second adverse ruling, Labour officials made the disciplinary process more transparent last month by divulging how it assessed antisemitism cases.

Starmer’s officials published on the party’s website the same antisemitism code of conduct that had been drafted during Corbyn’s time as leader. They did so despite a submission from one of Labour’s senior lawyers during February’s court hearing that such an admission could prove “politically incendiary”.

That was because a wide range of Jewish leadership groups rounded on Corbyn and Labour over the code when it was first published in July 2018.

Dave Rich, head of policy at the Community Security Trust, set up to protect Jewish communities from antisemitic attacks, lambasted Corbyn in an article in the Guardian headlined “Labour’s antisemitism code exposes a sickness in Jeremy Corbyn’s party”.

A blog on the Trust’s website added that the code “brazenly contravenes basic anti-racist principles”.

The Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council, both claiming to represent Britain’s Jewish community, stated that the adoption by Corbyn’s officials of the code would “further erode the existing lack of confidence that British Jews have in their sincerity to tackle antisemitism within the Labour movement”.

The Jewish Labour Movement, a Labour party affiliate connected to the Israeli Labor party, argued that the code was “a get out of jail free card” for antisemites, and claimed it breached equalities legislation.

Ephraim Mirvis, the UK’s chief rabbi, called the code “a watershed moment” for Labour and warned that it sent “an unprecedented message of contempt to the Jewish community”.

Dozens of rabbis backed him, accusing the Labour leadership of having “chosen to ignore the Jewish community”.

And the Campaign Against Antisemitism, a pro-Israel lobby group, argued that “the code seems to be designed to give free rein to certain forms of antisemitic discourse”.

‘It was about who was in charge’

But despite the outpouring of concern back in 2018, note LA4J, Jewish organisations have remained silent since Labour revealed that the same antisemitism code of conduct introduced under Corbyn is being used by Starmer’s officials in disciplinary cases.

“This was never about what was going on inside Labour, as was claimed,” said Wallis. “It was about who was in charge. The aim was to remove Corbyn at all costs.”

Labour’s stated goal in drafting the code in 2018 was to assist with ironing out problems in the IHRA definition, which was being aggressively lobbied for by leading Jewish groups.

In particular, Corbyn’s code provided additional context to help judge aspects of the IHRA’s 11 potential examples of antisemitism, seven of which relate to Israel.

The code warns that the IHRA text “is not a legal definition, and on its own does not provide clear guidance about the circumstances in which particular conduct should or should not be regarded as antisemitic”.

The Labour antisemitism code also emphasises a need for “respectful debate” between party members when talking about contentious political matters around Israel and warns that the party “will not tolerate name-calling and abuse”.

The concern among Corbyn’s team was that the definition would shift the focus of antisemitism away from hatred of Jews to criticism of Israel, and expose activists supportive of Palestinian rights to investigation.

The imprecision of the IHRA definition, and its politicisation of antisemitism, had already been widely criticised, including by a former Court of Appeal judge and the British parliament’s home affairs select committee.

Kenneth Stern, the chief architect of the IHRA definition, had also weighed in to note that it was unsuitable for use in disciplinary procedures and was being “weaponised” by elements of the Jewish community to stifle criticism of Israel.

Jewish organisations, on the other hand, argued that Corbyn was using the Labour code to avoid adopting the IHRA definition in full with all its examples, and implied that his motivation was to make Labour hostile to British Jews.

Facing the backlash, and concerted criticism in the media, Corbyn’s officials appeared to discard the code and instead adopted the IHRA definition in full a few weeks later, in September 2018.

Definition ‘not fit for purpose’

It is unclear whether Corbyn’s officials ever used the 2018 code to adjudicate in disciplinary cases. But LA4J say its adoption by Starmer’s officials – and their efforts to hide the fact that they were using the code – confirm that the IHRA’s definition was indeed unworkable.

Jenny Manson, a co-chair of Jewish Voice for Labour, which was set up in 2017 to show support for Corbyn among Jewish party members and is now supporting LA4J, said that the weaknesses of the IHRA definition must have been clear to organisations like the Jewish Labour Movement and Board of Deputies.

“Their current silence shows that they must have known the IHRA definition wasn’t fit for purpose as it was,” she said. “The additional code of conduct was needed. They opposed it in 2018, it seems clear, only because they were looking to damage Jeremy [Corbyn].”

Although LA4J argue that the code is fairer than the IHRA definition, they also say it has been widely misused against members as officials have sought to placate Jewish groups accusing Labour of being institutionally antisemitic.

Diana Neslen, an 82-year-old Orthodox Jew who has been investigated for antisemitism and sanctioned by the party, said:

“Even a quick look at [the code] suggests that all of us have been wrongfully accused. Indeed, we should never have been investigated in the first place.”

LA4J hopes that, with the code no longer secret, Labour members will have a better chance to challenge current and future investigations conducted against them by party officials.

Neslen warned, however, that existing injustices needed to be addressed too: “What are they going to do about the hundreds of people already judged under the secret code, including me?”

She and LA4J have called for those suspended or expelled to have their cases reopened and the evidence reassessed in a transparent manner.

The Board of Deputies, the Jewish Labour Movement, the Community Security Trust and the Jewish Leadership Council were all approached by Middle East Eye for comment. None had responded by the time of publication.

According to LA4J, their court case highlights how little evidence there was for the claim that antisemitism within the Labour party had been an especial problem under Corbyn’s leadership.

Levels of antisemitism in Labour appear to be lower than in the wider British public, within which about five percent of people could “justifiably be described as antisemites”, according to research published by the Community Security Trust in 2017.

Corbyn’s general secretary, Jennie Formby, issued figures in April 2019 that showed disciplinary action had been taken against just 0.08 percent of Labour’s 540,000 members, even after the strict application of the antisemitism code and “political interference” by Corbyn’s officials in speeding up disciplinary proceedings.

During the latest legal proceedings, Labour has revealed equivalent figures for Starmer, relating to the period between May last year and last month. Although details about the investigations are not precise, in the worst-case scenario an even smaller percentage of Labour members were found to be antisemitic.

These figures, the LA4J argue, suggest that Labour has not had an “antisemitism problem” under either Corbyn or Starmer.

That impression is shared by most Labour members. According to a YouGov poll commissioned last month by the Jewish Chronicle newspaper, a significant majority – 70 percent – believe that Labour does not have a serious problem with antisemitism.

Most appear to agree with Corbyn’s reaction to the Equalities Commission report that the claims against Labour were “dramatically overstated for political reasons”. That statement led to Starmer expelling Corbyn from the Labour parliamentary party.

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

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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***

The US decision to leave Afghanistan without any conditions represents a political victory for those in the US government who sought an end to the nearly two-decade conflict in that nation.

President Joe Biden, in a departure from a policy embraced by four successive US presidential administrations which placed stringent conditions on determining the conditions under which the US might leave Afghanistan, has announced that he is ordering all US military forces out of Afghanistan by September 11, 2021 – the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks which propelled the US Afghan intervention to begin with. This decision, which is not linked to any preconditions or other policy contingencies, means the US will finally extricate itself from the two-decade long nightmare in Afghanistan that had become known as “the forever war.”

By rejecting the established model of a “conditions-based approach” when it came to withdrawing US forces from Afghanistan, President Biden liberated himself from the reality that the situation in Afghanistan would never stabilize to the point that the risk-averse generals who populate the US military (and for whom the war in Afghanistan has been an integral part of their respective careers) would feel comfortable leaving. In making this decision, Biden mirrored the conclusion reached by his predecessor, Donald Trump, that left to their own devices, the US military would never depart from Afghanistan.

Biden had made the rejection of the so-called “forever war” in Afghanistan an integral part of his national security strategy, but had been held hostage by conditions that had been put in place regarding the capabilities of the Afghan military and security forces to operate independently, assurances about women’s rights, assurances on the part of the Taliban regarding their relationship with Al-Qaeda, and a desire on the part of many officials – Biden included – that a residual force of US special operations forces based in Afghanistan was required for any lasting peace to be had.

In carrying out a “whole of government” analysis of US objectives in Afghanistan, it became apparent to Biden and his inner circle that by placing conditions on the withdrawal of US troops, the US would never leave Afghanistan. This decision flew in the face of the advice Biden was receiving from the military, which argued that any condition-free withdrawal would doom the Afghan government and military to a Vietnam-like collapse.

Biden had also to overcome similar objections on the part of NATO and non-NATO allies of the US who had collectively deployed a 7,000-strong contingent to Afghanistan dedicated to the very training and advisory capacity the US military claimed was essential to the continued survival of the Afghan government.

Unlike Trump, who ignored NATO when making his decision to withdraw, Biden dispatched his Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, to the alliance’s headquarters, where he announced that the US would work with its allies to ensure a “safe, deliberate and coordinated withdrawal of our forces from Afghanistan.”

Biden’s decision was likewise aided by the recent appointment of William Burns, a veteran diplomat, to run the CIA. The CIA has built a virtual empire in Afghanistan, underpinned by a private army of contracted Afghan special forces who operate independently of the Afghan military, reporting instead to the CIA-controlled Afghan intelligence service. This private army represented the logical extension of the intimate and visceral involvement of the CIA in Afghanistan dating back to the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Like the US military, the current CIA leadership was forged in the fires of the Afghan conflict.

Trump’s last CIA director, Gina Haspel, was the personification of this reality, having played a key role in the implementation of both the CIA torture program and the ongoing use of armed drones to kill so-called “high value targets” in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Haspel strongly opposed Trump’s withdrawal plan and worked with the Pentagon to prevent its full implementation. With Haspel gone, and Burns in as director, the CIA’s objections, like those of the US military, have been pushed aside in favor of the domestic political imperative recognized by Biden that whatever national security gains that might be accrued by remaining in Afghanistan could not offset the reality that the American public was tired of a war that never ended, and apparently could not be brought to a successful conclusion.

A wild card in this decision is the reality that by extending the deadline from May 1 to September 11 for the total withdrawal from Afghanistan of US and allied forces, Biden is violating the peace agreement signed by the US with the Taliban back in February 2020. The Taliban have rejected a US plan which would formally extend the deadline for withdrawal, instead insisting that the US comply with the original agreement. Likewise, the Taliban have refused to engage in any negotiations with the US if the May 1 deadline is missed.

There are concerns that the Taliban might engage in attacks against any American and NATO forces which remain in Afghanistan once the deadline passes, leading to an escalation in violence which could lead to US retaliation, and even the dispatch of additional troops to the region. However, by endorsing a “conditions-free” withdrawal, Biden is sending a clear signal that US and NATO troops will be out of Afghanistan by September 11, regardless of what happens inside that nation in the interim.

The political nature of Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan is underscored by his linking of it to the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. There is a certain irony in this decision. While Biden and his advisors clearly mean to convey the message of “mission accomplished” (even if they avoid that specific phrase), the fact is that the US is leaving Afghanistan roughly as it found it two decades ago, with the Taliban intact and largely in charge, and Al-Qaeda and other Islamic extremist groups such as the Islamic State intact and continuing to operate from Afghan soil.

In short, the 20-year conflict in Afghanistan accomplished nothing other than killing more than 2,000 Americans, wasting trillions of dollars of American treasure, and slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Afghans while leaving their country little more than a tortured wasteland.

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Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of ‘SCORPION KING: America’s Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.’ He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter

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***

The thirty-member North Atlantic Council, the political decision-making body of NATO consisting of the ambassadors of all member states, posted a statement supporting the Joe Biden administration’s declaration of a national emergency attributed to Russian actions, real or fancied.

Biden began a letter accompanying an executive order sent to the U.S. Congress today with this announcement:

“Pursuant to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.) (IEEPA), I hereby report that I have issued an Executive Order declaring a national emergency with respect to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States posed by specified harmful foreign activities of the Government of the Russian Federation.”

In a writ of indictment that includes no fewer than seven grave – in some instances the gravest of – accusations, the letter continued:

“I have determined that specified harmful foreign activities of the Government of the Russian Federation – in particular, efforts to undermine the conduct of free and fair democratic elections and democratic institutions in the United States and its allies and partners; to engage in and facilitate malicious cyber-enabled activities against the United States and its allies and partners; to foster and use transnational corruption to influence foreign governments; to pursue extraterritorial activities targeting dissidents or journalists; to undermine security in countries and regions important to United States national security; and to violate well-established principles of international law, including respect for the territorial integrity of states – constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.”

The last time such near-apocalyptic language was used in relation to Russia was after Soviet troops entered Afghanistan in December of 1979. In his State of the Union address in January 1980 President Jimmy Carter spoke these words (giving rise to the eponymous Carter Doctrine), written by his National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and modeled after the Truman Doctrine of 1947, which signaled the beginning of the Cold War:

“Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”

Truman’s concerns were over communist activities in Greece and Turkey. Carter’s were over potential Russia influence in the Persian Gulf. Biden’s are global in their nature: everything from meddling in other nations’ elections (something his nation, of course, has never been known to do) to using bribes to influence government officials (this article was written in Chicago); to targeting dissidents and journalists with “extraterritorial activities” (Julian Assange’s opinion on this matter would be valuable) to showing lack of respect for the territorial integrity of states (it was the U.S. and not Russia that supported the secession of Kosovo, South Sudan and Eritrea in the post-Cold War era).

Even the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor didn’t present such a life-and-death threat to the U.S. and its “allies and partners” in every part of the world as Biden would have us believe Russia does in “constituting an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.” Washington hastily declared war against Japan eighty years ago. What Biden has done today may well be the equivalent of that action.

Today NATO released a statement on, in fact a line-item condemnation of, Russia’s threat to most every aspect of life, repeating, amplifying and fleshing out Biden’s sweeping accusations:

“Russia continues to demonstrate a sustained pattern of destabilising behaviour, including its violations of Ukraine’s and Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and continued violation, non-implementation, and circumvention of numerous international obligations and commitments, including the Budapest Memorandum. Examples include attempted interference in Allied elections, including the U.S. presidential election; widespread disinformation campaigns; and malicious cyber activities. The United States and other Allies assess that all available evidence points to the responsibility of the Russian Federation for the SolarWinds hack. We stand in solidarity with the United States. We condemn the attack on Alexei Navalny, a Russian opposition figure, with the use of a nerve agent from the banned Novichok group. Any use of chemical weapons, under any circumstances, is a clear breach of international law and contrary to the Chemical Weapons Convention. Reports that Russia encouraged attacks against U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan are also of concern.”

The NATO statement followed its litany of charges with the resolve for member states to consult regularly to “address Russia’s actions, which constitute a threat to Euro-Atlantic security.” It demands Russia cease what NATO characterizes as its destabilizing behavior. It also calls on Russia – and only Russia – to discontinue alleged provocations near and to deescalate tensions on the border of the Donbass and “in illegally-annexed Crimea.”

The observation that war is the continuation of politics by other means has been ascribed to Carl von Clausewitz. It is equally true that the type of political denunciation and diktat detailed above can constitute conducting war by other means. Perhaps only until the real thing arrives.

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***

After President Biden formally announced his plan to withdraw from Afghanistan by September 11th, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked if special operations soldiers would remain in the country under the plan, which she declined to answer.

“I’m obviously not going to get into operational specifics from the podium,” Psaki said when asked if the removal of combat troops by September 11th will include withdrawing Special Forces.

“I will say that we may — we will have what is needed to secure a diplomatic presence,” Psaki added. “And those assessments will be made over the coming months and obviously led by the Defense Department and State Department in coordination.”

The US officially has 2,500 troops in Afghanistan currently, although reports have said the number is closer to 3,500. Besides soldiers, the US also has thousands of contractors working for the US military in the country. According to numbers released in January, there are over 18,000 Pentagon contractors in Afghanistan.

When Biden’s plan was first reported on Tuesday, current and former US officials told The New York Times that some sort of US presence will continue in Afghanistan.

The Times report reads:

“Instead of declared troops in Afghanistan, the United States will most likely rely on a shadowy combination of clandestine Special Operations forces, Pentagon contractors and covert intelligence operatives to find and attack the most dangerous Qaeda or Islamic State threats, current and former American officials said.”

When announcing his withdrawal plan, President Biden said the US needed to reshuffle its resources to better confront China, which is now a priority of the Pentagon. Considering Afghanistan’s Central Asian location and the fact that it shares a small border with China’s Xinjiang province, the US will undoubtedly at least maintain a CIA presence in the country.

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Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.

This Week’s Most Popular Articles

April 16th, 2021 by Global Research News

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A Damned Murder Inc: Kennedy’s Battle Against the Leviathan

By Cynthia Chung, April 15 2021

The Eisenhower presidency would see Washington taken over by business executives, Wall Street lawyers, and investment bankers—and by a closely aligned warrior caste that had emerged into public prominence during World War II.

False Perception Fabrication Inc.

By Mark Taliano, April 15 2021

Mainstream Everything can create a pandemic out of anything, even out of a Low Infection Fatality Rate virus that arguably has not been properly isolated, purified, or replicated. And that is exactly what they did.

The WHO’s Vaccine Experts Inadvertently Communicate to the World that “Vaccine Hesitancy” Makes Scientific Sense

By Dr. Gary G. Kohls, April 15 2021This was first published in March 2020.

The FDA receives 45% of its annual budget from the pharmaceutical industry. The World Health Organization (WHO) gets roughly half its budget from private sources, including Pharma and its allied foundations. And the CDC, frankly, is a vaccine company.

European Union Plans to Buy 4 mRNA Shots for Every Human in the EU in 2022. Why?

By Dr. Meryl Nass, April 15 2021

There are 448 million humans in the EU. Why in heaven’s name would each one of them, regardless of age, need 4 shots in 2022 after they are fully vaccinated this year?

Florida, Texas, Idaho, Montana and Tennessee Have Banned So-called Vaccine Passports

By Dr. Meryl Nass, April 15 2021

The Indiana legislature debated the issue, but Democrats blocked a vote on it. South Carolina’s Senate unanimously voted to ban employers from mandating Covid vaccinations for employees.

Denis Halliday: A Voice of Reason in an Insane World

By Denis Halliday and Nicolas J. S. Davies, April 15 2021

Denis Halliday is an exceptional figure in the world of diplomacy. In 1998, after a 34-year career with the United Nations—including as an Assistant Secretary-General and the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq—he resigned when the UN Security Council refused to lift sanctions against Iraq.

Woke Virus: COVID Is Sustainable, Equitable, Inclusive, Racially Unbiased and Climate Aware

By Makia Freeman, April 15 2021

Did you know that SARS-CoV-2 is a woke virus? Did you ever notice how smoothly the COVID rhetoric has morphed with climate change rhetoric, Agenda 2030 rhetoric, Great Reset rhetoric and New World (NWO) rhetoric in general?

Does Biden Want to Provoke Russia into A Rash Military Action, “Leading” the World to the Brink of Nuclear War?

By Mark H. Gaffney, April 15 2021

Scarcely three months into his presidency, Joe Biden is “leading” the world to the brink of nuclear war over Ukraine. In February, Biden insisted that the US would never accept the Russian annexation of Crimea.

British Columbia: One Dead, Three Neurologically Disabled, ‘Numerous’ Reactions from Vaccine in Tiny Indigenous Village

By Celeste McGovern, April 15 2021

One patient died, two suffered anaphylactic reactions, three have ongoing disabling dizziness, muscle weakness, and chronic pain, and “numerous” patients developed allergic reactions after they received a first dose of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine given to 900 mostly Indigenous people, according to a local doctor.

Seven Reasons Why a Vaccine Passport (Pass, Certificate or Whatever They Want to Call It) Should Give Us Pause for Thought

By Nick Corbishley, April 15 2021

Vaccine passports (or passes or certificates) are being rushed through around the world, including in places where most people have not even been able to get a vaccine yet. They are being touted as a way of jump-starting the global economy by providing a means for people to prove their vaccinated status.

The “Secret Agenda” of the So-called Elite and the Covid mRNA Vaccine

By Dr. Rudolf Hänsel, April 15 2021

The pathogenic or even deadly composition of this vaccine, which will also contain Nano-chips to control humanity, has certainly already been mixed in the world’s secret laboratories.

Personal Tribute to Ramsey Clark: Iraq and Rwanda

By John Philpot, April 15 2021

Our friend in struggle, Attorney Ramsey Clark, passed away on April 9, 2021. Ramsey affected many of our lives. We followed closely his opposition to the American invasion of Grenada in October 1983. We got to know him best from his Commission of Inquiry into the US war on Iraq in beginning 17 January 1991.

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Hassan Diab’s French Lawyers Appeal to the Court of Cassation

April 15th, 2021 by Hassan Diab Support Committee

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***

Thank you for your support following the shockingly unjust decision on 27 January 2021 by a French Court of Appeal to refer Dr. Hassan Diab to trial. This comes three years after French investigating judges found consistent evidence of Hassan’s innocence and dismissed the case in 2018.

According to the French newspaper Le Monde, the Court of Appeal’s decision is exceptional, because never before, in terrorism cases, had a Court of Appeal opposed the investigating judges. The decision flies in the face of overwhelming evidence of Hassan’s innocence and offers Hassan as an innocent scapegoat. Hassan’s French lawyers point to the immense political pressure being applied to keep the case alive.

Hassan’s French lawyers have appealed to the Court of Cassation, France’s highest court, which will hear the case next month.

Statements by Organisations Supporting Hassan Diab

The list of civil society and human rights organisations standing in solidarity with Hassan Diab continues to grow. Organisations are urging the Canadian government to intervene, end Hassan’s Kafkaesque nightmare of injustice, and refuse a potential second extradition request from France.

Statements from organisations can be found here.

Please Write to PM Trudeau and Major Newspapers

We urge you to add your voice by writing to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, urging the Canadian government to refuse a potential second extradition request from France, and to put an immediate end to this continuing miscarriage of justice.

Your letter can be brief and from the heart. Please address your letter to:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, [email protected]

and copy the following politicians:

Please share your correspondence with us at [email protected]

Also please consider submitting op-eds or letters to the editors of major newspapers voicing your concerns.

Many thanks to those who have already written. We greatly appreciate your support and invite you to keep urging the Canadian government to protect Hassan Diab. 

Donate to Hassan Diab’s Legal Defence in France

Please consider making a donation to help cover the cost of Hassan’s ongoing legal defence in France. Your support is vital to protect Hassan’s rights and prevent his wrongful conviction. A donation of any amount is much appreciated and can make a difference.

So far, we have raised CAD $28,251 out of CAD $37,000 (or 25,000 Euros) to cover legal fees. 100% of all donations go towards paying for Hassan’s legal defence in France.

To donate, please visit: https://www.justiceforhassandiab.org/donate

Many thanks if you have already contributed. We greatly appreciate your generous support!

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Did you know that SARS-CoV-2 is a woke virus?

Did you ever notice how smoothly the COVID rhetoric has morphed with climate change rhetoric, Agenda 2030 rhetoric, Great Reset rhetoric and New World (NWO) rhetoric in general? Every technocrat and his dog are going around pushing their favorite elite agenda, mixing it with Agenda 2030 and politically correct woke buzzwords and projecting it all onto COVID. If I didn’t know any better, it’s almost like COVID has become the pretext to hide and promote just about every single NWO (New World Order) agenda under the sun. COVID has now become the most sustainable, equitable, inclusive, racially tolerant and climate aware disease and pandemic in the history of humanity. This is a good thing, since if the imaginary SARS-CoV-2 can’t be a particular deadly virus (COVID survival rates are 99.5+% for most age groups up to 69 years old) then at least it can be a woke virus.

Sustainable COVID

Our philanthropic masters over at the Rockefeller Foundation, who only have humanity’s best interest at heart, have released a new report entitled Financing Global Vaccination and Sustainable Growth” which is an interesting mixture of COVID fear, mandatory vaccination and sustainability. After all, what’s the point in injuring and killing millions of people with dangerous and experimental RNA technology, or just plain old blood-clotting technology, if it’s not done sustainably? Everything must be sustainable and the depopulation agenda is no exception. The report states:

“Just as the entire world shared in the spread and pain of the pandemic, we must now share in orchestrating its end, and a transition to a just, equitable, and sustainable recovery … For this reason, we must act swiftly to achieve a global vaccination rate of up to 70 percent by the end of 2022. This Action Plan, the first in a series, highlights three mutually reinforcing goals leveraging the power of existing multilateral financial architecture:

Goal 1: The issuance, reallocation, and leveraging of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) by the International Monetary Fund to ensure equitable global access to vaccines

Goal 2: Unleashing the full lending power of the World Bank and other multilateral development banks (MDBs) for a climate-friendly and equitable recovery

Goal 3: Leveraging private capital at scale through new, innovative investment vehicles.”

Note how they are pitching equitable and sustainable as part of their vision of the end of the pandemic. Also note how they want to continue the same decades-old predatory lending practices that made them rich and powerful (as detailed by whistleblowers like economic hitman John Perkins). Translation: we want more nations to go into debt to buy our toxic vaccines and drugs using their own resources as collateral. That way, it’s a four-for-one: we infect people, we injure and kill people, we introduce microchips or nanotech or into their bodies and we gain control of their infrastructure and minerals when they default.

Equitable COVID

The WEF (World Economic Forum) seems like one of those B-grade or C-grade Hollywood actors that, since the advent of Operation Coronavirus, is trying to pretend it’s in the top tier of NWO think tanks. The WEF is pushing the 4th Industrial Revolution and the Internet of Bodies, or in other words, an inescapable Smart Grid to lay the foundation for transhumanism. It recently held a Global Technology Governance Summit which features – you guessed it – more buzzwords galore. This one focused on equity, equality and resilience. They say the summit was to foster the “equitable use of technology” but it seems like another stepping stone to Global Governance by creating a framework of rules (to fill in “governance gaps”) that they hope will eventually be brought into a One World Government. Here’s the article from their site:

“New and emerging technologies can help humanity become more resilient and adaptable in a post-pandemic world … as we harness powerful new technologies brought about by the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to “build back better”, we have to make sure that we adopt them in such a way that they do not exacerbate inequality … Our aim will be to develop a common set of guidelines on how to implement both existing and future technologies – guidelines that address a series of current “governance gaps” of which we are aware.”

Inclusive and Racially Unbiased COVID

Going back to our friends at the Rockefeller Foundation, did you know that COVID is paving the way for a more inclusive future? Their article Forget the New Normal: Let’s Head to an Inclusive Future contains the full gamut of soppy buzzwords designed to please:

“Covid laid bare, once again, deep systemic inequities that create barriers to healthy diets and dignified work, education and even internet access. In a post-Covid world, a sustainable recovery must have justice and parity at its heart, both in the U.S. and globally. In this Matter of Impact, our team and grantees share how we are reimagining a more inclusive future. From ground breaking worker-owned companies, to using food as medicine, to creating inclusive technology incubators, to developing racially unbiased A.I. algorithms, this issue introduces the pioneering people who are partnering with The Rockefeller Foundation to change lives, empower communities, and work toward an innovative and inclusive recovery. Read on and join us.”

Climate Aware COVID

SARS-CoV-2 must be a woke virus indeed, because apparently it’s also saving the Earth by sparing us from dreaded manmade climate change. We were repeatedly told at the start of this scamdemic that the one good thing about the lockdowns was the reduction in pollution. Thousands of mainstream articles along these lines were written, such as this one as an example (Can Covid-19 Help Ease the Climate Crisis? The Global Pandemic Offers Chance to Embrace Clean Energy). I pointed out back in April 2020 that there were already many eerie similarities between the coronavirus and climate change hoaxes. Since then, the pandemic has become further drenched in wokeology. It’s not surprising, because the NWO is one giant conspiracy with many facets, and the propaganda used to push it is evenly applied to these many facets – propaganda which is boring and predictable once you have decoded it.

Woke Virus: Beware the Explosion of Feelgood Buzzwords to Push the Same Old Tired Agenda

The idea of a woke virus is a deliberate piece of satire to draw attention to the way the NWO manipulators are dramatically ramping up the use of this languaging to obfuscate the real agenda. I highlighted this in a recent article that pointed out this very same phenomenon at work in the WHO letter calling for a new international pandemic treaty. There are buzzwords galore – sustainable, equitable, inclusive, racially unbiased, climate aware, diverse, fair, resilient – but it’s just fluff. None of it means anything substantial. It’s just window-dressing to make the agenda of control more appealing and palatable. Glenn Greenwald summed it up with his article title: Big Corporations Now Deploying Woke Ideology the Way Intelligence Agencies Do: As a Disguise. It’s all empty virtue-signaling. It’s the military deployment of wokeology. It’s sickening and it’s shallow. Yet, how many people are falling for this new woke virus-style of propaganda?

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This article was originally published on The Freedom Articles.

Makia Freeman is the editor of alternative media / independent news site The Freedom Articles, author of the book Cancer: The Lies, the Truth and the Solutions and senior researcher at ToolsForFreedom.com. Makia is on Steemit and LBRY.

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***

The American and Russian Presidents have a slew of issues to discuss in the event that they meet in person sometime in the coming future like Biden proposed doing during their last phone conversation, but the most important topics on the itinerary would arguably be strategic security and peacefully resolving the conflicts in Ukraine, Afghanistan, and Syria.

Biden-Putin Summit Plans

Russian-American tensions are at an historic high for the post-1991 period so it’s sensible that President Biden proposed to hold an in-person meeting with his Russian counterpart during their last phone conversation in order “to discuss the full range of issues” facing their countries. The most important topics on the itinerary would arguably be strategic security and peacefully resolving the long-running conflicts in Afghanistan, Syria, and Ukraine, but other issues would of course also be brought up. What follows is a list of the most pressing problems between these two Great Powers in the order of their significance. Each point includes a summary of their respective positions and what a compromise might look like if one’s realistically possible:

Strategic Security

The White House’s readout of their call noted “the intent of the United States and Russia to pursue a strategic stability dialogue on a range of arms control and emerging security issues, building on the extension of the New START Treaty”, which was reflected by the Kremlin also referencing “strategic stability and arms control”. Both countries therefore share the common desire to build upon the New START Treaty’s last-minute extension in February, though it’s unclear in what direction this might go. The prior US administration demanded that China join all such forthcoming talks while Russia respects Beijing’s right not to do so. The ideal scenario would be if all relevant powers made proportionate cuts to their pertinent arsenals, but that might not be realistic.

Ukraine

This hot button issue concerns more than just politically resolving the Eastern European country’s civil war in line with the Minsk Accords that US-backed Kiev has thus far refused to implement despite previously agreeing to them. It also involves NATO’s aggressive forward posturing in the region and its support for Ukraine’s anti-Russian activities, including against Crimea. The situation is so tense at the moment that a war might even break out before the Russian and American leaders meet, with the subsequently feared brinksmanship potentially serving as the reason to expedite their summit plans. The best-case scenario would be if the US assesses the seriousness of the situation and finally pressures Kiev to implement the Minsk Accords.

Afghanistan

The Kremlin’s readout reported “the situation in Afghanistan”, which was missing from the White House’s, but this issue will likely be at the fore of their discussions considering that the US plans to fully withdraw from that country by 9/11 this year. Both Great Powers have recently seen their positions converge insofar as supporting an inclusive transitional government in which the officially terrorist-designated Taliban participates as the only pragmatic political outcome of the conflict. The challenge is that the Taliban reacted negatively to the US’ announcement that it’ll miss its originally scheduled deadline for withdrawing by 1 May, so it remains to be seen whether the fragile ceasefire between those two holds long enough for the meeting to occur.

Syria

Syria didn’t warrant a mention on either government’s readout so it’s unclear whether it was brought up during their last discussion, but it’s nevertheless a major issue between them that can’t be ignored. The US retains occupation forces in the northeast beyond the de facto “internal partition” line of the Euphrates River, and its widely reported support of terrorist forces in the country is a major impediment to the conflict’s resolution. Moreover, the US’ political proxies have hitherto obstructed the parallel peace processes, so something must be done in order to make progress on these tracks. The only realistic compromise would be “decentralization” and Damascus requesting Iran’s dignified but phased withdrawal from the country, but the latter still seems unlikely.

China

The US is slowly realizing that it made a major mistake by triggering Russia’s historical siege mentality, pushing it closer to China in response, and provoking Moscow to actively seek Washington’s containment all across the world. Even a simple thought exercise embracing the US’ infamous zero-sum outlook on International Relations suggests that this works out to America’s grand strategic disadvantage while being one of the best-ever scenarios for China. Accordingly, Biden’s team might attempt to court Russia into reversing its recent American-provoked foreign policy pivot so as to restore Moscow’s traditional “balancing” act between East and West, but this outcome is only possible in the event credible progress is made on a “New Detente”.

Iran

The Islamic Republic’s nuclear program is another major issue of disagreement between the US and Russia, but one which also attracts their interest more than ever after Iran recently clinched a 25-year strategic partnership deal with China. That agreement stands the chance to revolutionize the greater region’s geostrategic situation through the expansion of Beijing’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) to West Asia via W-CPEC+, which was an unexpected game-changing development that seemingly caught both the US and Russia off guard. Not only will they seek to address the immediate nuclear-related issue, but they might also discuss ways to manage this new regional geostrategic reality, perhaps in an indirectly joint way if they make progress on a “New Detente”.

Palestine

The so-called “Mideast Peace Process” (MEPP) is also an area of mutual concern for Russia and the US. Both Great Powers are also allied with “Israel” to different extents, with Russia’s largely under-discussed relationship being the result of skillful policymaking at the presidential level through Putin’s personal diplomacy with his close friend Prime Minister Netanyahu (background context here, here, here, here, and here). Since Biden is attempting to balance the US’ regional relationships a bit more than Trump did, it’s possible that he’ll walk back his predecessor’s so-called “Deal of the Century” and thus help pave the way for his country and Russia to jointly herald at least the symbolic creation of a Palestinian state, though it’ll still take a while for this to occur.

Russiagate/Navalny/Climate

Biden will almost certainly bring up the discredited Russiagate conspiracy theory due to domestic pressure from his base. This speculative aspect of their discussion would be entirely symbolic since it’s what many have rightly called a “nothingburger”. It’ll only be talked about for appearance’s sake, the same as Navalny‘s imprisonment might too if that’s even brought up that is. As for climate change, this is a “neutral” means through which the two could at least superficially cooperate more closely and result in a semi-tangibly positive outcome to their planned summit. Both of their leaders agree on the need to thwart this threat, but there really isn’t much that they can do together. Still, it could make for some good headlines if they release a joint statement about it.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

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

Featured image: Russian President Vladimir Putin (ID1974/Shutterstock) and President Joe Biden (Stratos Brilakis/shutterstock)

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Scarcely three months into his presidency, Joe Biden is “leading” the world to the brink of nuclear war over Ukraine. In February, Biden insisted that the US would never accept the Russian annexation of Crimea. Even though 95% of Crimeans voted in 2014 to return to Russia, Biden continues to describe the annexation as “aggression” and an “invasion.” Democratic referendums apparently are irrelevant if Washington disapproves of the outcome. 

Nor did the Russians invade. At the time, Russian troops were already present in Crimea by an earlier agreement with the previous elected Ukrainian government. This kind of distorted history has become standard in what passes for journalism in the West on any issue involving Russia. 

Recently, president Biden had the impertinence to describe Vladimir Putin as a “killer.” I say impertinence because in 2002 Senator Biden himself was the most vocal promoter in the US Senate of the 2003 Iraq War that killed at least a million Iraqis. As Putin put it, “it takes one to know one.”

And when Putin responded to Biden’s “killer” comment by wishing the US president good health and offering to meet with him to discuss world events, Biden brusquely dismissed the offer, saying he was “quite busy.” Well informed people probably gagged at the remark, given Biden’s scaled back work schedule and his visibly worsening mental impairment.

Ukrainian president Zelensky withdrew from the Minsk peace process. And then days later, Zelensky essentially declared war on Russia by issuing a decree stating that, if necessary, Crimea will be liberated from Russian control through military action.

Zelensky also called on the West to expedite Ukraine’s entry into NATO. Should this occur, it would obligate a NATO military response in the event of war. Following his plea, there were a series of emergency meetings at NATO headquarters in Brussels.

Since 2014, at least 14,000 Russians, most of them civilians, have been killed in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine. Over seven years, the Ukrainian army has been shelling and terrorizing the Russian towns and communities that lie east of the line of control. The western press has hardly covered any of this violence. When it does, Russia is typically blamed.

As I write, a military buildup is underway in the region. Russian and Ukrainian forces are massing on both sides of the border. The other day, Kremlin officials described the situation along the front line as “unstable” and “terrifying.” Yet, Biden and his advisers appear determined to throw gas on the fire. Days ago, Biden ordered two US destroyers into the Black Sea where a Russian naval buildup is also underway. The US ships were to pass through the Bosporus on April 14-15. 

It is certainly true that the Black Sea is an international waterway. The US Navy has the right to sail there. But given all that has transpired, is it really wise to risk a nuclear showdown with Russia over a regional dispute that surely cannot be vital to US national interests. US officials have never explained why liberating Crimea and eastern Ukraine should be important to Americans.

So, why is Biden engaging in brinksmanship? 

The reason is simple, though it is never mentioned in the western press. Biden and his advisers hope to provoke Russia into a rash military action. They intend to score a propaganda coup by branding Putin as the aggressor. This will enable them to ratchet up enormous political pressure on Germany to cancel the Nordstream II gas pipeline, which is 95% complete. The pipeline starts in northern Russia near St. Petersburg and runs beneath the Baltic Sea to Germany. When finished, the capacious pipeline will provide Germany (and Europe) with abundant cheap natural gas. But Biden’s team views the pipeline as an existential threat to US hegemony in Europe. And it seems they are prepared to take the world to the nuclear brink to prevail on the issue.

Over the years, the US has already expended enormous political capital to force a halt to the Nordstream project. Western intelligence agencies have gone to elaborate lengths, cooking up one scam after another, to increase pressure on the German government.

Some examples are the alleged 2018 poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, England, allegedly by Russia, and the more recent case of dissident Alexei Navalny who was also allegedly targeted with the same Russian-made nerve agent used on the Skripals, known as Novichok.

Despite the sensational charges, media storm, and hyped expulsion of Russian diplomats, both stories have since unraveled. Western intelligence agencies failed to explain how the Skripals and Navalny managed to survive Novichok’s extreme toxicity. The substance is so lethal that even the first responders and doctors who came in contact with the alleged victims should also have died. Does anyone believe that the Russians are so incompetent they failed repeatedly to assassinate their alleged victims using their own nerve agent? 

The smear campaigns may have worked on Americans, but they failed where it matters most, in Germany. 

The US wants to supply Germany with liquified natural gas from North America delivered by tankers at a much higher price. This would make Germany permanently dependent on more expensive US natural gas, while Nordstream II would liberate Germany from US political controls and influence. 

The problem for Washington is that the German government has not budged. A recent poll shows why. Despite all of the attempts to discredit Putin, 67% of Germans still support completion of the Nordstream II project. Typically well informed, the German people understand that the pipeline is vital to their country and to Europe. It’s a safe bet they also see through the CIA’s transparent propaganda.

It is noteworthy that the US-backed 2014 coup that toppled the previous government in Kiev occurred immediately after then-Ukrainian president Yanukovitch had rejected an economic package offered by the European Union (also backed by the US), and instead signed onto a deal with Russia that was much more favorable to Ukraine.

The timing was significant. It was at this point that Washington gave the green light for the coup. After which, the US moved into Ukraine with its own economic “reforms.” Monsanto, for example, ever eager to increase its market share, began buying up large tracts of fertile Ukrainian farmland for the purpose of exporting its GMO poisons into the region.

After failing to block the pipeline using every covert scheme in the CIA and State Department playbook, the Biden team has now upped the stakes. Evidently they are prepared to risk World War III to maintain Germany’s current status as a US vassal. Controlling Germany is one of the keys to controlling Europe.

With regard to Ukraine becoming a member of NATO, entry into the NATO alliance is a lengthy process. A number of conditions must first be met and, given that Ukraine is an economic basket case, it is unlikely any of this has occurred. For this reason, Zelensky’s plea for expedited membership may not be feasible. Furthermore, Ukraine’s gloomy economic situation is about to worsen because one of its main sources of revenue is about to disappear.

Because the Nordstream II pipeline passes far to the north and bypasses Ukraine, the country stands to lose $billions in royalty fees it presently collects for Russian gas delivered to Europe across its territory. This is surely why Ukrainian officials have joined with Americans in calling for cancellation of the project.

At the time of his election in 2019, Ukraine president Zelensky promised to end the civil war and make peace with Russia. But the issues have turned out to be so intractable that positions on both sides have since hardened. Russia has no intention of ever surrendering its only warm water port in Crimea, nor will the eastern provinces ever submit to control by Kiev. Putin has begun passing out Russian passports to residents in Luhansk and Donets, and this suggests Moscow could be contemplating the next step, namely, political absorption of both provinces back into Russia.

Given that Biden’s team is doing everything in their power to make a bad situation worse, Putin faces the biggest challenge of his political career. For many years, Putin has been such a model of restraint vis a vis the West, that many Russians feel he has been too accommodating, especially in the face of continued US hostility and warmongering. Not that Russians are spoiling for a fight. My research indicates otherwise. The Russian people have no appetite for war. They understand the horrors of war far more acutely than do Americans. After all, thirty million of their countrymen perished in the debacle with Nazi Germany. Although I believe Putin long since ceased caring what Americans think of him, he knows if he oversteps he risks antagonizing the Germans who could still decide to cancel Nordstream II. So, Putin must tread carefully. But if Ukraine forces the issue, the Russian military is prepared to act.

Assuming the pipeline is completed, I predict it will permanently change Germany’s relationship with the US and with Russia. In that case, the European balance of power will shift eastward. Russia and Germany are natural trading partners. Increased commerce between the two countries will insure the peace in Europe well into the future. Continuing US attempts to block the emergence of this important trade relationship is a testament to failed US leadership dating back many years.

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Mark’s latest book is Deep History and the Ages of Man (2020) which is available at Amazon.com. Mark can be reached for comment at markhgaffney@earthlink.net

Featured image is from Asia Times

The Economic and Social Development of the African Continent. A Russian Perspective

April 15th, 2021 by Prof. Ksenia Tabarintseva-Romanova

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After the Soviet collapse, Russia has maintained strong and time-tested relations with African countries, and of course, the Soviet Union had played an important role during the decolonization of Africa. The African continent comprises a diverse collection of countries, each with its own set of development setbacks and challenges. The political culture and investment climate are, in fact, diverse but are also important forces in the economy.

According to several development reports, Africa is one of the fastest growing regions in the world: the average annual GDP growth rate estimated at 3.5% to 5% on the continent. The reports have strongly encouraged African leaders to initiate development-oriented policies, prioritize sustainable development as a practical step towards raising the living standards of millions of impoverished population and further guide against the revival of neo-colonialism, the destructive attitude towards the resources in Africa.

In this interview, Associate Professor Ksenia Tabarintseva-Romanova, Ural Federal University, Department of International Relations and Assistant Professor Alexei Antoshin share their views and opinions about Africa today, the current economic cooperation between Africa and Russia. As widely known, Russia plans to hold the Second Russia-Africa summit in 2022.

Here are the interview excerpts:

Kester Kenn Klomegah: How do researchers (during academic discussions) of the Department of International Relations at Urals State University generally look at Africa today? What are the popular perceptions and so forth about Africa?

Ksenia Tabarintseva-Romanova: Unfortunately, this region is not actively studied directly by teachers and students of the Department of International Relations at the Urals State University. It is most often explored when examining issues such as human rights and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Alexei Antoshin: For many years, I have been a member of the RAS Scientific Council on African problems, interacting with the RAS Institute for African Studies and the Center for African Studies of the RAS Institute of General History, publishing in scientific journals and collective monographs on this topic. For 20 years now, at the Faculty (Department) of International Relations, I have been teaching the course “Russia and Africa”, dedicated to various spheres of interaction between our country and African states. In addition, for the last five years I have been teaching the course “Culture of Modern Africa” which is also of great interest to the students of the Department of Oriental Studies.

The problem of the influence of African culture on contemporary global art (music, street art, etc.) is of particular interest to students. In addition, annually under my leadership, term papers and graduate qualifications are written on various aspects of China’s policy in Africa, the expansion of Chinese capital, and the activities of Confucius Institutes on the Black Continent.

KKK: What comes to mind when we talk about sustainable development, and its interpretation, in Africa?

Ksenia Tabarintseva-Romanova: When writing an article on the Red Cross and the SDGs, I came to the conclusion that the main problems are related to the environment (lack of drinking water), the complexity of health care, the problems of realizing the rights of vulnerable groups of the population.

Alexei Antoshin: Unfortunately, Africa firmly holds the first place among continents in terms of poverty, the number of hungry and refugees, and the spread of AIDS. A colossal problem is the conflict potential of the region, political instability, and the failure of democratic transition. True, in comparison with the 1990s, which were extremely unfortunate for the continent, the situation has improved somehow, but many experts attribute this to fluctuations in world oil prices.

KKK: What, in your opinion, are the main challenges hindering the realization of expected development there?

Ksenia Tabarintseva-Romanova: In my opinion, this is due to historical and geographical factors: the colonial past – there was no desire to develop “economic independence” of the region; consumer attitude to territories and resources; isolation of the region from world production chains. During the Cold War, the USSR and the USA, competing for influence on the continent, were forced to develop industry and infrastructure. After the end of the Cold War, this was no longer necessary. Many states have lost their statehood, centralized power and territorial integrity (Somalia, Libya).

Alexei Antoshin: Yes, unfortunately, paradoxically, Africa is “lost” from the end of the Cold War. Now both the United States and Russia are losing the “battle for Africa” ​​to China: its investments in Africa are several times greater than those of Russia and the United States. The problem is that the Chinese expansion is already causing an ambiguous reaction from the local population: the PRC’s consumer attitude towards the richest resources of the region, underestimation of environmental problems lead to public discontent. An additional factor is activation.

Islamist extremist groups in many countries of the region. The fall of apartheid in South Africa also led to a surge in extremism, the problem of “black racism”, a drop in the level of education in South African universities, which traditionally occupy high places in world rankings.

KKK: Do you think much depends on African leaders and its people (African solutions to African problems) to work toward long-term sustainable development?

Alexei Antoshin: Most experts were skeptical and still refer to the economic programs developed by African leaders and Africans themselves. This applies to integration within the framework of the African Union (copying the European Union is unproductive), and to its economic program NEPAD – New Partnership for Africa’s Development. In the world rankings of bureaucratic corruption, African countries are in the first place.

KKK: How do you interpret current engagement of foreign players (countries) in Africa? Do you also think there is geopolitical competition and rivalry among them there?

Alexei Antoshin: As I have already noted, this competition is underway, since Africa’s resources are colossal. The potential winner is likely to be China.

KKK: Is it appropriate when we use the term “neo-colonialism” referring to activities of foreign players in Africa? What countries are the neo-colonizers in your view?

Alexei Antoshin: Difficult question. Colonialism was a controversial phenomenon: it was the colonialists who created the infrastructure that modern Africa uses. A number of experts call the current policy of the PRC “neo-colonial”, but it is also ambiguous.

KKK: Do you think, with the adoption of African Continental Free Trade (AfCFTA), it offers a window of hope for attaining economic independence for Africa? What role Russia can play in this or of what significance is it for potential Russian investors?

Ksenia Tabarintseva-Romanova: The free trade zone is the most important modern tool for the economic development of regions, but it is not a panacea. Successful implementation requires a sufficiently high level of economic development of the participating countries, logistical accessibility, developed industry with the prospect of introducing new technologies. This means that in order for AfCFTA to effectively fulfill its tasks, it is necessary to enlist the provision of sustainable investment flows from outside. These investments should be directed towards the construction of industrial plants and transport corridors.

President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, has stated for several years that Africa is a strategic region for Russia, which has a large number of long-standing economic partners. For example, the construction of a new naval base in Sudan (the creation of service industries, the supply of new equipment, the renewal of the army is envisaged); cancellation of debts to Angola, preparation for the Russia-Africa summit 2022. Russia already has vast experience with the African continent, which now makes it possible to make investments as efficiently as possible, both for the Russian Federation and for African countries.

If we talk about the interaction of the Sverdlovsk Region and Africa, then according to the Ministry of International and Foreign Economic Relations, at the end of 2018, among the trading partner countries of the Sverdlovsk Region, Algeria ranked 22nd among the 159 trading partners of the region. The trade turnover amounted to almost US$ 138 million.

On February 6, 2020, during the visit of the delegation of the Sverdlovsk region to the province of Mpumalanga of South Africa, an Action Plan was signed to implement the Agreement between the Government of the Sverdlovsk Region and the Government of the Mpumalanga Province on the implementation of international and foreign economic relations in trade, economic, scientific, technical, cultural and humanitarian spheres for 2020 – 2022. The following enterprises of the Sverdlovsk Region cooperate with South Africa – OJSC Uralasbest, LLC Viz Steel, PJSC Uralmashzavod.

Alexei Antoshin: Russian state corporations are participating in the “Battle for Africa” and the main significant problem is the high risks associated with investing in Africa. In addition, unfortunately, in Russia there is a shortage of qualified personnel who know African markets, the specifics of the business culture of Africans and so forth. Although there is also an underestimation of the continent’s potential associated with the image of Africa as a “black hole” which is also due to the fact that the bulk of the Soviet debts of African countries had to be written off. These are the realities of the situation with Africa.

*

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The Fukushima-Daiichi Disaster, Ten Years ago, March 11, 2011. 

While commemorating the tenth anniversary of the Fukushima tragedy, the evidence amply confirms that this disaster has by no means been resolved. 

“Unimaginable” levels of radiation still prevail. In the words of Dr. Helen Caldicott, “one millionth of a gram of plutonium, if inhaled can cause cancer”.  

The Fukushima disaster in March 2011 resulted in 16,000 deaths, causing some 165,000 people to flee their homes in the Fukushima area.

Both the Japanese and Western media tend to downplay the impacts of nuclear radiation which has spread to vast areas in Northern Japan, not to mention the contamination of the food chain.

The continued dumping of highly radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean constitutes a potential trigger to a process of global radioactive contamination.

Amply documented the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) was involved in a coverup. And so was the Japanese government. 

The Abe government casually pointed to “harmful rumors”. The present government’s stance remains ambiguous. 

TEPCO has acknowledged that the decommissioning of the Fukushima facility could last until 2051.

In recent developments, the Japan government of Prime Minster Yoshihide has confirmed that

“it will release treated radioactive water [tritium] from Fukushima nuclear plant into sea”. The PM met with is Cabinet to formalise this decision on April 13, 2021.” (SCMP).

The Worldwide public health impacts which includes the contamination of the Pacific Ocean extending to the Western Hemisphere are incalculable.

***

Originally published in  January 2012, this study by Michel Chossudovsky confirms what is now unfolding: a Worldwide process of nuclear radiation.

Note to Readers: Remember to bookmark this page for future reference.

Please Forward the GR I-Book far and wide. Post it on Facebook.

[scroll down for I-BOOK Table of Contents]

Originally published in January 2012. The introduction of the I-Book is contained as a chapter in Michel Chossudovsky’s 2015 bestseller:  The Globalization of War, America’s Long War against Humanity, Global Research, Montreal 2015

*       *       *

GLOBAL RESEARCH ONLINE INTERACTIVE READER SERIES

Fukushima: A Nuclear War without a War

The Unspoken Crisis of Worldwide Nuclear Radiation

Michel Chossudovsky (Editor)

I-Book No. 3, January 25  2012

Global Research’s Online Interactive I-Book Reader brings together, in the form of chapters, a collection of Global Research feature articles and videos, including debate and analysis, on a broad theme or subject matter. 

In this Interactive Online I-Book we bring to the attention of our readers an important collection of articles, reports and video material on the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe and its impacts (scroll down for the Table of Contents).

To consult our Online Interactive I-Book Reader Series, click here.

INTRODUCTION

The World is at a critical crossroads. The Fukushima disaster in Japan has brought to the forefront the dangers of Worldwide nuclear radiation.

The crisis in Japan has been described as “a nuclear war without a war”. In the words of renowned novelist Haruki Murakami:

“This time no one dropped a bomb on us … We set the stage, we committed the crime with our own hands, we are destroying our own lands, and we are destroying our own lives.”

Nuclear radiation –which threatens life on planet earth– is not front page news in comparison to the most insignificant issues of public concern, including the local level crime scene or the tabloid gossip reports on Hollywood celebrities.

While the long-term repercussions of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster are yet to be fully assessed, they are far more serious than those pertaining to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine, which resulted in almost one million deaths (New Book Concludes – Chernobyl death toll: 985,000, mostly from cancer Global Research, September 10, 2010, See also Matthew Penney and Mark Selden  The Severity of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster: Comparing Chernobyl and Fukushima, Global Research, May 25, 2011)

Moreover, while all eyes were riveted on the Fukushima Daiichi plant, news coverage both in Japan and internationally failed to fully acknowledge the impacts of a second catastrophe at TEPCO’s (Tokyo Electric Power Co  Inc) Fukushima Daini nuclear power plant.

The shaky political consensus both in Japan, the U.S. and Western Europe is that the crisis at Fukushima has been contained.

The realties, however, are otherwise. Fukushima 3 was leaking unconfirmed amounts of plutonium. According to Dr. Helen Caldicott, “one millionth of a gram of plutonium, if inhaled can cause cancer”.  

An opinion poll in May 2011 confirmed that more than 80 per cent of the Japanese population do not believe the government’s information regarding the nuclear crisis. (quoted in Sherwood Ross, Fukushima: Japan’s Second Nuclear Disaster, Global Research, November 10, 2011)

The Impacts in Japan

The Japanese government has been obliged to acknowledge that “the severity rating of its nuclear crisis … matches that of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster”. In a bitter irony, however, this tacit admission by the Japanese authorities has proven to been part of  the cover-up of a significantly larger catastrophe, resulting in a process of global nuclear radiation and contamination:

“While Chernobyl was an enormous unprecedented disaster, it only occurred at one reactor and rapidly melted down. Once cooled, it was able to be covered with a concrete sarcophagus that was constructed with 100,000 workers. There are a staggering 4400 tons of nuclear fuel rods at Fukushima, which greatly dwarfs the total size of radiation sources at Chernobyl.” ( Extremely High Radiation Levels in Japan: University Researchers Challenge Official Data, Global Research, April 11, 2011)

Fukushima in the wake of the Tsunami, March 2011

Worldwide Contamination

The dumping of highly radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean constitutes a potential trigger to a process of global radioactive contamination. Radioactive elements have not only been detected in the food chain in Japan, radioactive rain water has been recorded in California:

“Hazardous radioactive elements being released in the sea and air around Fukushima accumulate at each step of various food chains (for example, into algae, crustaceans, small fish, bigger fish, then humans; or soil, grass, cow’s meat and milk, then humans). Entering the body, these elements – called internal emitters – migrate to specific organs such as the thyroid, liver, bone, and brain, continuously irradiating small volumes of cells with high doses of alpha, beta and/or gamma radiation, and over many years often induce cancer”. (Helen Caldicott, Fukushima: Nuclear Apologists Play Shoot the Messenger on Radiation, The Age,  April 26, 2011)

While the spread of radiation to the West Coast of North America was casually acknowledged, the early press reports (AP and Reuters) “quoting diplomatic sources” stated that only “tiny amounts of radioactive particles have arrived in California but do not pose a threat to human health.”

“According to the news agencies, the unnamed sources have access to data from a network of measuring stations run by the United Nations’ Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization. …

… Greg Jaczko, chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told White House reporters on Thursday (March 17) that his experts “don’t see any concern from radiation levels that could be harmful here in the United States or any of the U.S. territories”.

 

 

The spread of radiation. March 2011

Public Health Disaster. Economic Impacts

What prevails is a well organized camouflage. The public health disaster in Japan, the contamination of water, agricultural land and the food chain, not to mention the broader economic and social implications, have neither been fully acknowledged nor addressed in a comprehensive and meaningful fashion by the Japanese authorities.

Japan as a nation state has been destroyed. Its landmass and territorial waters are contaminated. Part of the country is uninhabitable. High levels of radiation have been recorded in the Tokyo metropolitan area, which has a population of  39 million (2010) (more than the population of Canada, circa 34 million (2010)) There are indications that the food chain is contaminated throughout Japan:

Radioactive cesium exceeding the legal limit was detected in tea made in a factory in Shizuoka City, more than 300 kilometers away from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Shizuoka Prefecture is one of the most famous tea producing areas in Japan.

A tea distributor in Tokyo reported to the prefecture that it detected high levels of radioactivity in the tea shipped from the city. The prefecture ordered the factory to refrain from shipping out the product. After the accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, radioactive contamination of tea leaves and processed tea has been found over a wide area around Tokyo. (See 5 More Companies Detect Radiation In Their Tea Above Legal Limits Over 300 KM From Fukushima, June 15, 2011)

Japan’s industrial and manufacturing base is prostrate. Japan is no longer a leading industrial power. The country’s exports have plummeted. The Tokyo government has announced its first trade deficit since 1980.

While the business media has narrowly centered on the impacts of power outages and energy shortages on the pace of productive activity, the broader issue pertaining to the outright radioactive contamination of the country’s infrastructure and industrial base is a “scientific taboo” (i.e the radiation of industrial plants, machinery and equipment, buildings, roads, etc). A report released in January 2012 points to the nuclear contamination of building materials used in the construction industry, in cluding roads and residential buildings throughout Japan.(See  FUKUSHIMA: Radioactive Houses and Roads in Japan. Radioactive Building Materials Sold to over 200 Construction Companies, January 2012)

A “coverup report” by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (May 2011), entitled Economic Impact of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Current Status of Recovery  presents “Economic Recovery” as a fait accompli. It also brushes aside the issue of radiation. The impacts of nuclear radiation on the work force and the country’s industrial base are not mentioned. The report states that the distance between Tokyo -Fukushima Dai-ichi  is of the order of 230 km (about 144 miles) and that the levels of radiation in Tokyo are lower than in Hong Kong and New York City.(Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Impact of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Current Status of Recovery, p.15). This statement is made without corroborating evidence and in overt contradiction with independent radiation readings in Tokyo (se map below). In recent developments, Sohgo Security Services Co. is launching a lucrative “radiation measurement service targeting households in Tokyo and four surrounding prefectures”.

A map of citizens’ measured radiation levels shows radioactivity is distributed in a complex pattern reflecting the mountainous terrain and the shifting winds across a broad area of Japan north of Tokyo which is in the center of the of bottom of the map.”

SOURCE: Science Magazine

“Radiation limits begin to be exceeded at just above 0.1 microsieverts/ hour blue. Red is about fifty times the civilian radiation limit at 5.0 microsieverts/hour. Because children are much more sensitive than adults, these results are a great concern for parents of young children in potentially affected areas.”

The fundamental question is whether the vast array of industrial goods and components “Made in Japan” — including hi tech components, machinery, electronics, motor vehicles, etc — and exported Worldwide are contaminated? Were this to be the case, the entire East and Southeast Asian industrial base –which depends heavily on Japanese components and industrial technology– would be affected. The potential impacts on international trade would be farreaching. In this regard, in January, Russian officials confiscated irradiated Japanese automobiles and autoparts in the port of Vladivostok for sale in the Russian Federation. Needless to say, incidents of this nature in a global competitive environment, could lead to the demise of the Japanese automobile industry which is already in crisis.

While most of the automotive industry is in central Japan, Nissan’s engine factory in Iwaki city is 42 km from the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Is the Nissan work force affected? Is the engine plant contaminated? The plant is within about 10 to 20 km of the government’s “evacuation zone” from which some 200,000 people were evacuated (see map below).

Nuclear Energy and Nuclear War

The crisis in Japan has also brought into the open the unspoken relationship between nuclear energy and nuclear war.

Nuclear energy is not a civilian economic activity. It is an appendage of the nuclear weapons industry which is controlled by the so-called defense contractors. The powerful corporate interests behind nuclear energy and nuclear weapons overlap.

In Japan at the height of the disaster, “the nuclear industry and government agencies [were] scrambling to prevent the discovery of atomic-bomb research facilities hidden inside Japan’s civilian nuclear power plants”.1  (See Yoichi Shimatsu, Secret Weapons Program Inside Fukushima Nuclear Plant? Global Research,  April 12, 2011)

It should be noted that the complacency of both the media and the governments to the hazards of nuclear radiation pertains to the nuclear energy industry as well as to to use of nuclear weapons. In both cases, the devastating health impacts of nuclear radiation are casually denied. Tactical nuclear weapons with an explosive capacity of up to six times a Hiroshima bomb are labelled by the Pentagon as “safe for the surrounding civilian population”.

No concern has been expressed at the political level as to the likely consequences of a US-NATO-Israel attack on Iran, using “safe for civilians” tactical nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state.

Such an action would result in “the unthinkable”: a nuclear holocaust over a large part of the Middle East and Central Asia. A nuclear nightmare, however, would occur even if nuclear weapons were not used. The bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities using conventional weapons would contribute to unleashing another Fukushima type disaster with extensive radioactive fallout. (For further details See Michel Chossudovsky, Towards a World War III Scenario, The Dangers of Nuclear War, Global Research, Montreal, 2011)

The Online Interactive I-Book Reader on Fukushima: A Nuclear War without a War

In view of the official cover-up and media disinformation campaign, the contents of the articles and video reports in this Online Interactive Reader have not trickled down to to the broader public. (See Table of contents below)

This Online Interactive Reader on Fukushima contains a combination of analytical and scientific articles, video reports as well as shorter news reports and corroborating data.

Part I focusses on The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster: How it Happened? Part II  pertains to The Devastating Health and Social Impacts in Japan. Part III  centers on the “Hidden Nuclear Catastrophe”, namely the cover-up by the Japanese government and the corporate media. Part IV focusses on the issue of  Worlwide Nuclear Radiation and Part V reviews the Implications of the Fukushima disaster for the Global Nuclear Energy Industry.

In the face of ceaseless media disinformation, this Global Research Online I-Book on the dangers of global nuclear radiation is intended to break the media vacuum and raise public awareness, while also pointing to the complicity of  the governments, the media and the nuclear industry.

We call upon our readers to spread the word.

We invite university, college and high school teachers to make this Interactive Reader on Fukushima available to their students.

Michel Chossudovsky, January 25, 2012


Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War

Michel Chossudovsky

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.” –Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Following the highly acclaimed 2012 release of the latest book by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, “Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War“.  

Click here to order directly from Global Research.

List Price: $15.95

Special Price: $10.25

Click here to order.

This title is also available for purchase through the Amazon Kindle program


TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART I

The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster: How it Happened

The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster: What Happened on “Day One”?
– by Yoichi Shimatsu – 2011-04-16
Fukushima is the greatest nuclear and environmental disaster in human history
– by Steven C. Jones – 2011-06-20

Nuclear Apocalypse in Japan
Lifting the Veil of Nuclear Catastrophe and cover-up
– by Keith Harmon Snow – 2011-03-18

Humanity now faces a deadly serious challenge coming out of Japan — the epicenter of radiation.

VIDEO: Full Meltdown? Japan Maximum Nuclear Alert
Watch now on GRTV
-by Christopher Busby- 2011-03-30

Fukushima: Japan’s Second Nuclear Disaster

– by Sherwood Ross – 2011-11-10

Secret Weapons Program Inside Fukushima Nuclear Plant?
U.S.-Japan security treaty fatally delayed nuclear workers’ fight against meltdown
– by Yoichi Shimatsu – 2011-04-12

The specter of self-destruction can be ended only with the abrogation of the U.S.-Japan security treaty, the root cause of the secrecy that fatally delayed the nuclear workers’ fight against meltdown.

Fukushima: “China Syndrome Is Inevitable” … “Huge Steam Explosions”
“Massive Hydrovolcanic Explosion” or a “Nuclear Bomb-Type Explosion” May Occur
– by Washington’s Blog – 2011-11-22

Accident at Second Japanese Nuclear Complex: The Nuclear Accident You Never Heard About

– by Washington’s Blog – 2012-01-12

VIDEO: New TEPCO Photographs Substantiate Significant Damage to Fukushima Unit 3
Latest report now on GRTV
– by Arnie Gundersen – 2011-10-20

PART II

The Devastating Health and Social Impacts in Japan

VIDEO: Surviving Japan: A Critical Look at the Nuclear Crisis
Learn more about this important new documentary on GRTV
– by Chris Noland – 2012-01-23

Fukushima and the Battle for Truth
Large sectors of the Japanese population are accumulating significant levels of internal contamination
– by Paul Zimmerman – 2011-09-27

FUKUSHIMA: Public health Fallout from Japanese Quake
“Culture of cover-up” and inadequate cleanup. Japanese people exposed to “unconscionable” health risks
– by Canadian Medical Association Journal – 2011-12-30

FUKUSHIMA: Radioactive Houses and Roads in Japan. Radioactive Building Materials Sold to over 200 Construction Companies

– 2012-01-16

VIDEO: Cancer Risk To Young Children Near Fukushima Daiichi Underestimated
Watch this important new report on GRTV
– by Arnie Gundersen – 2012-01-19

VIDEO: The Results Are In: Japan Received Enormous Exposures of Radiation from Fukushima
Important new video now on GRTV
– by Arnie Gundersen, Marco Kaltofen – 2011-11-07

The Tears of Sanriku (三陸の涙). The Death Toll for the Great East Japan Earthquake Nuclear Disaster

– by Jim Bartel – 2011-10-31

The Severity of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster: Comparing Chernobyl and Fukushima

– by Prof. Matthew Penney, Prof. Mark Selden – 2011-05-24

Uncertainty about the long-term health effects of radiation

Radioactivity in Food: “There is no safe level of radionuclide exposure, whether from food, water or other sources. Period,” – by Physicians For Social Responsibility – 2011-03-23

71,000 people in the city next to the Fukushima nuclear plant “We’ve Been Left to Die” – 2011-03-19

Tokyo Water Unsafe For Babies, Food Bans Imposed – by Karyn Poupee – 2011-03-23

 

PART III

Hidden Nuclear Catastrophe: Cover-up by the Japanese Government and the Corporate Media

VIDEO: Japanese Government Insiders Reveal Fukushima Secrets
GRTV Behind the Headlines now online
– by James Corbett – 2011-10-06

Fukushima and the Mass Media Meltdown
The Repercussions of a Pro-Nuclear Corporate Press
– by Keith Harmon Snow – 2011-06-20

Scandal: Japan Forces Top Official To Retract Prime Minister’s Revelation Fukushima Permanently Uninhabitable

– by Alexander Higgins – 2011-04-18

Emergency Special Report: Japan’s Earthquake, Hidden Nuclear Catastrophe
– by Yoichi Shimatsu – 2011-03-13

The tendency to deny systemic errors – “in order to avoid public panic” – is rooted in the determination of an entrenched Japanese bureaucracy to protect itself…

VIDEO: Fukushima: TEPCO Believes Mission Accomplished & Regulators Allow Radioactive Dumping in Tokyo Bay
Learn more on GRTV
– by Arnie Gundersen – 2012-01-11

The Dangers of Radiation: Deconstructing Nuclear Experts
– by Chris Busby – 2011-03-31

“The nuclear industry is waging a war against humanity.” This war has now entered an endgame which will decide the survival of the human race.

Engineers Knew Fukushima Might Be Unsafe, But Covered It Up …
And Now the Extreme Vulnerabilty of NEW U.S. Plants Is Being Covered Up
– by Washington’s Blog – 2011-11-12

COVERUP: Are Fukushima Reactors 5 and 6 In Trouble Also?
– by Washington’s Blog – 2011-11-14

Fukushima’s Owner Adds Insult to Injury – Claims Radioactive Fallout Isn’t Theirs

– by John LaForge – 2012-01-17

PART IV

The Process of Worldwide Nuclear Radiation

VIDEO: Japan’s Nuclear Crisis: The Dangers of Worldwide Radiation

– by Dr. Helen Caldicott – 2012-01-25

An Unexpected Mortality Increase in the US Follows Arrival of Radioactive Plume from Fukushima, Is there a Correlation?
– by Dr. Joseph J. Mangano, Dr. Janette Sherman – 2011-12-20

In the US, Following the Fukushima fallout, samples of radioactivity in precipitation, air, water, and milk, taken by the U.S. government, showed levels hundreds of times above normal…

Radioactive Dust From Japan Hit North America 3 Days After Meltdown
But Governments “Lied” About Meltdowns and Radiation
– by Washington’s Blog – 2011-06-24

VIDEO: Fukushima Will Be Radiating Everyone for Centuries
New report now on GRTV
– by Michio Kaku, Liz Hayes – 2011-08-23

Fukushima: Diseased Seals in Alaska tested for Radiation

– 2011-12-29

Radiation Spreads to France

– by Washington’s Blog – 2011-11-15

Radioactive rain causes 130 schools in Korea to close — Yet rain in California had 10 TIMES more radioactivity

PART V

Implications for the Global Nuclear Energy Industry

 

Science with a Skew: The Nuclear Power Industry After Chernobyl and Fukushima
– by Gayle Greene – 2012-01-26

After Fukushima: Enough Is Enough

– by Helen Caldicott – 2011-12-05

VIDEO: Radiation Coverups Confirmed: Los Alamos, Fort Calhoun, Fukushima, TSA
New Sunday Report now on GRTV
– by James Corbett – 2011-07-04

VIDEO: Why Fukushima Can Happen Here: What the NRC and Nuclear Industry Don’t Want You to Know
Watch now on GRTV
– by Arnie Gundersen, David Lochbaum – 2011-07-12

VIDEO: Safety Problems in all Reactors Designed Like Fukushima
Learn more on GRTV
– by Arnie Gundersen – 2011-09-26

VIDEO: Proper Regulation of Nuclear Power has been Coopted Worldwide
Explore the issues on GRTV
– by Arnie Gundersen – 2011-10-05

VIDEO: New Nuclear Reactors Do Not Consider Fukushima Design Flaws
Find out more on GRTV
– by Arnie Gundersen – 2011-11-24

Nuclear Energy: Profit Driven Industry
“Nuclear Can Be Safe Or It Can Be Cheap … But It Can’t Be Both”
– by Washington’s Blog – 2011-12-23

VIDEO: Fukushima and the Fall of the Nuclear Priesthood
Watch the new GRTV Feature Interview
– by Arnie Gundersen – 2011-10-22

Why is there a Media Blackout on Nuclear Incident at Fort Calhoun in Nebraska?

– by Patrick Henningsen – 2011-06-23

Startling Revelations about Three Mile Island Disaster Raise Doubts Over Nuke Safety

– by Sue Sturgis – 2011-07-24

Radioactive Leak at Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Station

– by Rady Ananda – 2011-07-01

VIDEO: US vs Japan: The Threat of Radiation Speculation
Dangerous double standards examined on GRTV
– by Arnie Gundersen – 2011-06-25

Additional articles and videos on Fukushima and Nuclear Radiation are available at Global Research’s Dossier on The Environment


TEXT BOX

 Nuclear Radiation: Categorization

At Fukushima, reports confirm that alpha, beta, gamma particles and neutrons have been released:

“While non-ionizing radiation and x-rays are a result of electron transitions in atoms or molecules, there are three forms of ionizing radiation that are a result of activity within the nucleus of an atom.  These forms of nuclear radiation are alpha particles (α-particles), beta particles (β-particles) and gamma rays (γ-rays).

Alpha particles are heavy positively charged particles made up of two protons and two neutrons.  They are essentially a helium nucleus and are thus represented in a nuclear equation by either α or .  See the Alpha Decay page for more information on alpha particles.

Beta particles come in two forms:  and  particles are just electrons that have been ejected from the nucleus.  This is a result of sub-nuclear reactions that result in a neutron decaying to a proton.  The electron is needed to conserve charge and comes from the nucleus.  It is not an orbital electron.  particles are positrons ejected from the nucleus when a proton decays to a neutron.  A positron is an anti-particle that is similar in nearly all respects to an electron, but has a positive charge.  See the Beta Decay page for more information on beta particles.

Gamma rays are photons of high energy electromagnetic radiation (light).  Gamma rays generally have the highest frequency and shortest wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum.  There is some overlap in the frequencies of gamma rays and x-rays; however, x-rays are formed from electron transitions while gamma rays are formed from nuclear transitions. See the Gamma Rays  for more” (SOURCE: Canadian Nuclear Association)

A neutron is a particle that is found in the nucleus, or center, of atoms. It has a mass very close to protons, which also reside in the nucleus of atoms. Together, they make up almost all of the mass of individual atoms. Each has a mass of about 1 amu, which is roughly 1.6×10-27kg. Protons have a positive charge and neutrons have no charge, which is why they were more difficult to discover.” (SOURCE: Neutron Radiation)


“Many different radioactive isotopes are used in or are produced by nuclear reactors. The most important of these are described below:

1. Uranium 235 (U-235) is the active component of most nuclear reactor fuel.

2. Plutonium (Pu-239) is a key nuclear material used in modern nuclear weapons and is also present as a by-product in certain reprocessed fuels used in some nuclear reactors. Pu-239 is also produced in uranium reactors as a byproduct of fission of U-235.

3. Cesium (Cs-137 ) is a fission product of U-235. It emits beta and gamma radiation and can cause radiation sickness and death if exposures are high enough. …

4. Iodine 131 (I-131), also a fission product of U-235, emits beta and gamma radiation. After inhalation or ingestion, it is absorbed by and concentrated in the thyroid gland, where its beta radiation damages nearby thyroid tissue  (SOURCE: Amesh A. Adalja, MD, Eric S. Toner, MD, Anita Cicero, JD, Joseph Fitzgerald, MS, MPH, and Thomas V. Inglesby MD, Radiation at Fukushima: Basic Issues and Concepts, March 31, 2011)


Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (Emeritus) at the University of Ottawa. He is the Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal and Editor of the globalresearch.ca website. He is the author of The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order (2003) and America’s “War on Terrorism”(2005). His most recent book is entitled Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War (2011). He has taught as Visiting Professor at universities in Western Europe, South East Asia, Latin America and The Pacific, acted as adviser to governments of developing countries and as a consultant to several international organizations.

Prof. Chossudovsky is a signatory of the Kuala Lumpur declaration to criminalize war and recipient of the Human Rights Prize of the Society for the Protection of Civil Rights and Human Dignity (GBM), Berlin, Germany. He is also a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His writings have been published in more than twenty languages.

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The Indiana legislature debated the issue, but Democrats blocked a vote on it.

South Carolina’s Senate unanimously voted to ban employers from mandating Covid vaccinations for employees.

And from the airlines organization, IATA, comes a hopeful sign:  “These are measures that may be necessary as temporary arrangements while we go through this crisis, but once we’re through it, we want to see these restrictions permanently removed so people can get back to traveling as they experienced back in 2019,” Willie Walsh, former CEO of British Airways’ parent International Consolidated Airlines Group, said in his first press briefing as IATA’s director general.

The WHO came out against the passports in February, issuing a note of caution–since most humans have no current access to vaccines, many lack smartphones, and the privacy issues are huge.  Many say the systems now being used can be easily hacked.

WHO position

At the present time, it is WHO’s position that national authorities and conveyance operators should not introduce requirements of proof of COVID-19 vaccination for international travel as a condition for departure or entry, given that there are still critical unknowns regarding the efficacy of vaccination in reducing transmission. In addition, considering that there is limited availability of vaccines, preferential vaccination of travellers could result in inadequate supplies of vaccines for priority populations considered at high risk of severe COVID-19 disease. WHO also recommends that people who are vaccinated should not be exempt from complying with other travel risk-reduction measures.

This is a great issue to work on with your own governors and legislatures–it is a great opportunity to throw a “spanner in the works” of the Great Reset.

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Australia’s Self-Inflicted Economic Woes Continue

April 15th, 2021 by Joseph Thomas

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***

This was first published in March 2020.

In this expose, the WHO vaccine experts admit that:

  • Vaccines can be fatal.
  • The design of safety studies makes it difficult to spot problems.
  • Safety monitoring is inadequate.
  • Vaccine adjuvants increase risk.

“The FDA receives 45% of its annual budget from the pharmaceutical industry.

The World Health Organization (WHO) gets roughly half its budget from private sources, including Pharma and its allied foundations.

And the CDC, frankly, is a vaccine company; it owns 56 vaccine patents and buys and distributes $4.6 billion in vaccines annually through the Vaccines for Children program, which is over 40% of its total budget.” — Robert F. Kennedy, Jr 

1) An admission that adjuvants can multiply the toxicity of vaccines:

“Adjuvants multiply the immunogenicity of the antigens that they are added to, and that is their intention.  It seems to me they multiply the reactogenicity in many instances, and therefore it seems to me that it is not unexpected if they multiply the incidence of adverse reactions that are associated with the antigen, but may not have been detected through lack of statistical power in the original studies.”Stephen Evans, BA, MSc, Professor of Pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) 

2) Warnings about long-term systemic toxicity from vaccine adjuvants:

“You are correct. As we add adjuvants, especially some of the more recent adjuvants, such as the ASO1, saponin-derived adjuvants, we do see increased local reactogenicity. The primary concern, though, usually is systemic adverse events rather than local adverse events. And we tend to get in the Phase II and the Phase III studies quite good data on the local reactogenicity. Those of us in this room that are beyond the age of 50 who have had the pleasure of having the recent shingles vaccine, will know that this does have quite significant local reactogenicity. If you got the vaccine, you know that you got the vaccine. But this is not the major health concern. The major health concern which we are seeing are accusations of long term, long term effects. So, to come back to this, I’m going to once again point to the regulators. It comes down to ensuring that we conduct Phase II and the Phase III studies with adequate size and with the appropriate measurement.”Martin Howell Friede, PhD (Biochemistry) – WHO coordinator for the Initiative for Vaccine Research

3) An admission that the WHO and Big Pharma are panicking because some doctors and cover-up of vaccine injuries:

“There’s a lot of safety science that’s needed, and without the good science, we can’t have good communication. Although I’m talking about all these other contextual issues and communication issues it absolutely needs the science as the backbone. You can’t repurpose the same old science to make it sound better if you don’t have the science that’s relevant to the new problem. So, we need much more investment in safety science…The other thing that’s a trend and an issue is not just confidence in patients but confidence of health care providers. We have a very wobbly health professional front line that is starting to question vaccines and the safety of vaccines. When the front-line professionals are starting to question (the safety of vaccines) or they don’t feel like they have enough confidence about the safety to stand up to it to the person asking them the questions.  I mean, most medical school curriculums, even nursing curriculums, I mean in medical school you’re lucky if you have a half-day on vaccines. Never mind keeping up to date with all this.”Heidi Larson, PhD (in Anthropology – and therefore likely to be vaccinology-illiterate!) and Director of the Big Pharma-funded Vaccine Confidence Project

4) An admission that vaccine clinical safety trials are flawed and that vaccines damage children far more than they damage adults:

“One of the additional issues that complicates safety evaluation is that if you look at, and you struggle with the length of follow-up that should be adequate in a, let’s say a pre-licensure or even post-marketing study if that’s even possible. And again, as you mentioned pre-licensure clinical trials may not be powered enough. It’s also the subject population that you administer the adjuvant to because we’ve seen data presented to us where an adjuvant, a particular adjuvant added to a vaccine antigen did really nothing when administered to a certain population and usually the elderly, you know, compared to administering the same formulation to younger age strata.  So, these are things which need to be considered as well and further complicate safety and effectiveness evaluation of adjuvants combined with vaccine antigens.”  Marion Gruber, PhD – Director, FDA Office of Vaccines Research and Review (OVRR) and the FDA Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER)

5) A warning about the lack of vaccine safety monitoring systems:

“I think we cannot over-emphasize the fact that we really don’t have very good safety monitoring systems in many countries, and this adds to the miscommunication and the misapprehensions because we’re not able to give clear-cut answers when people ask questions about the deaths that have occurred due to a particular vaccine, and this always gets blown up in the media. One should be able to give a very factual account of what exactly has happened and what the causes of the deaths are, but in most cases there is some obfuscation at that level and therefore, there’s less and less trust then in the system.” Soumya Swaminathan, MD, WHO Chief Scientist and non-practicing Pediatrician (involved in academics and research ever since her medical training)

6) An admission that viral fragments don’t work and that adjuvants are responsible for the toxic inflammatory responses to vaccines.

“Every time that there is an association, be it temporal or not temporal, the first accusation is it is the adjuvant. And yet, without adjuvants, we are not going to have the next generation of vaccines.  And many of the vaccines that we do have, ranging from tetanus through to HPV require adjuvants in order for them to work.  So, the challenge that we have in front of us is:  How do we build confidence in this? And the confidence first of all comes from the regulatory agencies (I look to Marion). When we add an adjuvant it’s because it is essential.  We do not add adjuvants to vaccines because we want to do so.  But when we add them, it adds to the complexity. I give courses every year on “How do you develop vaccines?”, “How do you make vaccines?” And the first lesson is, while you’re making your vaccine, if you can avoid using an adjuvant, please do so.  Lesson two is, if you’re going to use an adjuvant, use one that has a history of safety. And lesson three is, if you’re not going to do that, think very carefully.” Martin Howell Friede, WHO Coordinator for the Initiative for Vaccine Research and member of the Strategic Advisory Committee for Hilleman Labs – a vaccine research company co-owned by US drug maker Merck  and Britain’s Wellcome Trust.

7) An admission that vaccine safety tracking systems don’t exist.

“Now the only way to tease that out is if you have a large population database like the vaccine safety datalink as well as some of the other national databases that are coming to being worthy. Actual vaccine exposure is trapped down to that level of specificity of who is the manufacturer? What is the lot number? Etc, etc. And there’s an initiative to try to make the vaccine label information bar-coded so that it includes that level of information. So that in the future when we do these type of studies, we are able to tease that out. And in order to be – each time you subdivide them, the sample size gets becoming more and more challenging and that’s what I said earlier today about that we’re really only in the beginning of the era of large data sets where hopefully you could start to kind of harmonize the databases for multiple studies. And there’s actually an initiative underway… Marion (Gruber) may want to comment on it to try to get more national vaccine safety database linked together so we could start to answer these types of questions that you just raised.”Robert Chen, MD – Scientific Director, Brighton Collaboration The motto of the Brighton  Collaboration was “We build trust in the safety of vaccines through rigorous science”

8) An admission that the WHO doesn’t understand the mechanisms of vaccine toxicity.

“So in our clinical trials, we are actually using relatively small sample sizes, and when we do that we’re at risk of tyranny of small numbers, which is, you just need a single case of Wegener’s Granulomatosis, and your vaccine has to, solve Walt’s, How do you prove a Null Hypothesis? …And it takes years and years to try to figure that out. It’s a real conundrum, right? Getting the right size, dealing with the tyranny of small numbers, making sure that you can really do it. And so I think one of the things that we really need to invest in are kind of better biomarkers, better mechanistic understanding of how these things work so we can better understand adverse events as they come up.” David Kaslow, MD, VP of Essential Medicines, Drug Development program PATH Center for Vaccine Innovation and Access (CVIA) Dr Kaslow has been a non-clinical researcher for decades with past relationships with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Merck.

9) A naïve question directed to WHO experts (and not answered by them) that points out the reality that Big Vaccine corporations have NEVER done studies on the synergistic damage vaccine toxicities that happen when more than two vaccines are injected at the same office visit.

“I cast back my mind to our situation in Nigeria where at six weeks, ten weeks, fourteen weeks, a child is being given different antigens from different companies, and these vaccines have different adjuvants and different preservatives and so on. Something crosses my mind… is there possibility of these adjuvants, preservatives, cross-reacting amongst themselves? Have there ever been a study on the possibility of cross-reactions on from the past that you can share the experience with us?”Bassey Okposen – Program Manager, National Emergency Routine Immunization Coordination Centre (NERICC). Abuja, Nigeria

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Dr Kohls practiced holistic mental health care in Duluth for the last decade of his family practice career prior to his retirement in 2008, primarily helping patients who had become addicted to cocktails of psychiatric drugs to safely go through the complex withdrawal process. His column often deals with various unappreciated health issues, including those caused by Big Pharma’s over-drugging, Big Vaccine’s over-vaccinating, Big Medicine’s over-screening, over-diagnosing and over-treating agendas and Big Food’s malnourishing food industry. Those four sociopathic entities can combine to even more adversely affect the physical, mental, spiritual and economic health of the recipients of the vaccines, drugs, medical treatments and the eaters of the tasty and ubiquitous “Franken Foods” – particularly when they are consumed in combinations, doses and potencies that have never been tested for safety or long-term effectiveness.

Dr Kohls’ Duty to Warn columns are archived at: http://duluthreader.com/search?search_term=Duty+to+Warn&p=2;

http://www.globalresearch.ca/author/gary-g-kohls;

http://freepress.org/geographic-scope/national; https://www.lewrockwell.com/author/gary-g-kohls/; and 

https://www.transcend.org/tms/search/?q=gary+kohls+articles

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***

According to the Business Standard:

Later on Wednesday the President of the European Commission said the EU was in talks with Pfizer and BionTech for a new contract for 1.8 billion doses, confirming a Reuters report from last week. “We need to focus on technologies that have proven their worth. mRNA vaccines are a clear case in point,” she added.

There are 448 million humans in the EU.  Why in heaven’s name would each one of them, regardless of age, need 4 shots in 2022 after they are fully vaccinated this year?

Here in the US, as we approach herd immunity, it looks like approximately half the population does not want these experimental shots, at least not at this time.  If the same holds true in Europe, are they planning for 8 shots per person?  Or forced vaccinations?

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One patient died, two suffered anaphylactic reactions, three have ongoing disabling dizziness, muscle weakness, and chronic pain, and “numerous” patients developed allergic reactions after they received a first dose of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine given to 900 mostly Indigenous people, according to a local doctor who works in the tiny Fraser Valley village of Lytton, British Columbia.

“I have been quite alarmed at the high rate of serious side effects from this novel treatment,” family doctor Charles Hoffe wrote in an April 5 letter to British Columbia Provincial Health Officer Bonnie Henry.

A 72-year-old patient with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) but no underlying cardiovascular disease complained of being continually more short of breath after receiving a first dose of Moderna’s experimental COVID vaccine, and 24 days after the injection, died “very suddenly and unexpectedly,” the letter said.

Three of Hoffe’s patients have “ongoing and disabling neurological deficits,” including continuing “disabling dizziness,” “neuromuscular weakness, with or without sensory loss” and “chronic pain,” with or without headaches. These ailments persisted for 10 weeks after their shots of the  Moderna’s vaccine.

“It must be emphasized, that these people were not sick people, being treated for some devastating disease,” Hoffe wrote. “These were previously healthy people, who were offered an experimental therapy, with unknown long-term side effects, to protect them against an illness that has the same mortality rate as the flu. Sadly, their lives have now been ruined.”

Hoffe said two patients had anaphylactic reactions – life-threatening allergic reactions that can cause swelling of the throat, hives internally and externally, and dangerously low blood pressure – to the Moderna vaccine and “numerous” others have had milder allergic reactions.

Lytton is a village municipality with a population of 249 at last count in 2016, with another 1,700 living in the vicinity and on reserves of the neighboring six Nlaka’pamux communities. Hoffe is one of three doctors who works at the Lytton Medical Clinic and at St. Bartholomew’s Emergency Department.

“Are these considered normal and acceptable long-term side effects for gene modification therapy?” Hoffe asked the provincial health officer.

“Do you have any idea what disease processes may have been initiated, to be producing these ongoing neurological symptoms,” the doctor asked in his letter to the government health officer.

To date, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports 2,342 deaths, including 1,170 linked to Moderna’s vaccine. There are 304 reported anaphylactic shock events with Moderna’s vaccine.

A total of 941 permanent disabilities after COVID vaccination have been reported to VAERS, including 450 after Moderna shots.
Reports from VAERS include a 35-year-old Oklahoma man who developed nerve pain in both legs four hours after an injection of the first dose of Moderna vaccine and became progressively paralyzed and was diagnosed with Guillain Barre Syndrome five days after the shot.

A 33-year-old woman from Nevada’s report said her breathing became difficult within three hours of receiving a shot of Moderna’s vaccine in January and she experienced paralysis, was hospitalized for five days, and is still unable to use her left arm three months later.

While public health officials have stated that only “one or two in a million” people are expected to have anaphylactic reactions to vaccines, a study published in March in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported an overall allergic reaction rate of 2 percent in the vaccinated health care workers it sampled. Anaphylactic allergic reactions to mRNA-based COVID vaccines occurred at a rate of 2.47 per 10,000, which is 247 in a million. The JAMA study found that the allergic reactions were more frequent among those who received Moderna’s COVID vaccine compared with Pfizer’s.

Hoffe’s letter to the provincial health officer said that he had noticed that “vaccine-induced side effects are going almost entirely unreported” and that the provincial vaccine injury reporting form “does not even have any place to report vaccine injuries of the nature and severity that we are seeing from this new mRNA therapy.”

“I am aware that this is often a problem, with vaccines in general, and that delayed side effects after vaccines are sometimes labeled as being ‘coincidences,’ as causality is often hard to prove. However, in view of the fact that this is an experimental treatment, with no long-term safety data, I think that perhaps this issue should be addressed too,” Hoffe wrote.

During the public health pandemic, the Lytton doctors have not treated any patients with COVID-19, Hoffe said. “So in our limited experience, this vaccine is quite clearly more dangerous than COVID-19.”

Given that the recovery rate from COVID-19 is similar to that of seasonal flu for every age category, and given that this was only the first dose and Moderna’s second-dose of the vaccine is known to have worse side effects, Hoffe asked the provincial health officer: “Is it medically ethical to continue this vaccine rollout, in view of the severity of these life altering side effects, after just the first shot?”

LifeSiteNews contacted B.C Provincial Health Officer Henry’s office to ask what her responses had been to Dr. Hoffe’s questions in his public letter. Her media relations officer asked for the request to be sent by e-mail but did not reply to it on Wednesday.

Dr. Hoffe’s office said he was out of the clinic until next week.

Moderna’s vaccine has been granted Emergency Use Authorization only. Clinical trials are not expected to be completed until at least October 2022.

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Denmark has become the first country to permanently halt the use of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine following its possible link to very rare cases of blood clots.

The Danish health authority said on Wednesday that, following its own review, the country’s vaccine rollout would continue without the AstraZeneca shot, as it warned of a “real risk of severe side effects.”

“Based on the scientific findings, our overall assessment is there is a real risk of severe side effects associated with using the COVID-19 vaccine from AstraZeneca,” said DHA director general Søren Brostrøm. “We have, therefore, decided to remove the vaccine from our vaccination program,” he added.

The health agency said it agreed with the European Union drug regulator’s assessment that the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks, but noted that the watchdog urged individual countries to consider their own situations and vaccine availability when making a judgment.

Brostrøm said the epidemic was currently under control in Denmark, with a large proportion of the older population vaccinated and those yet to be inoculated at less of a risk.

“We must weigh this against the fact that we now have a known risk of severe adverse effects from vaccination with AstraZeneca, even if the risk in absolute terms is slight,” he added.

Those who have already received the first dose of AstraZeneca AZN, 2.73% AZN, 1.95% will be invited to have a different vaccine second time around, the health authority said.

It added that Denmark could reintroduce use of the U.K.-Swedish drug company’s vaccine at a later date if the country’s situation changes.

Last week, the U.K. government’s vaccination advisory committee said people under the age of 30 would be offered an alternative vaccine. It came after the U.K.’s drug regulator — the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) — said the benefits outweighed the risks for most people, but MHRA Chief Executive Dr. June Raine said for young people it was more “finely balanced.”

Denmark’s move is another set back to the EU’s already sluggish vaccination campaign, which was exacerbated on Tuesday after U.S. pharmaceutical Johnson & Johnson JNJ, 0.77% said it would delay the planned rollout of its COVID-19 shot across the 27-member bloc due to reports of blood clotting.

J&J made the decision after U.S. health agencies called for an immediate pause of the vaccine’s use while they examine six severe cases of rare blood clots that have been reported in people who have received the shot. J&J was due to supply 55 million doses of its single-shot vaccine to the EU in the second quarter.

The J&J vaccine has currently only been delayed, but analytics company Airfinity warned the EU’s vaccination rollout would take two months longer than expected if the bloc was unable to use the shot at all.

However, there was some good news for Europe as the EU reached an agreement to speed up delivery of 50 million more doses of the vaccine developed jointly by German biotech BioNTech BNTX, 1.63% and U.S. drug company Pfizer PFE, 0.78% to boost the rollout program.

Denmark’s decision could delay the country’s vaccine rollout by up to four weeks, based on previous statements by health bodies, a report by Reuters noted.

The country was the first to initially suspend use of the AstraZeneca vaccine in March, over safety concerns. Last week, the EU drug regulator said that “unusual blood clots” should be listed as a “very rare” side effect of the AstraZeneca vaccine, but insisted the benefits of the shot still outweighed the risks.

The majority of EU countries have since restarted using the AstraZeneca vaccine, but some countries, including Spain and Italy, have limited the use of the shot to people aged over 60. Last month, French and German health officials restricted the use of the AstraZeneca shot for the over-55s and over-60s, respectively, following concerns over unusual blood clotting in some recipients.

Shares in AstraZeneca were trading 1.31% higher in London on Wednesday.

AstraZeneca has acknowledged the findings from the EMA, as well as a separate review from the U.K.’s MHRA, noting that they “reaffirmed the vaccine offers a high-level of protection against all severities of COVID-19 and that these benefits continue to far outweigh the risks.”

The drug company said it was working with global regulators to better understand the individual cases, epidemiology and possible mechanisms that could explain these extremely rare events.

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Lina Saigol is the London-based head of corporate news in the Europe, Middle East and Africa regions for MarketWatch and Barron’s Group.

Callum Keown is a Barron’s Group reporter for the Europe, Middle East and Africa region. He writes for MarketWatch, Barron’s, Penta and Financial News. Follow him on Twitter: @CallumKeown1.

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***

The Eisenhower presidency would see Washington taken over by business executives, Wall Street lawyers, and investment bankers—and by a closely aligned warrior caste that had emerged into public prominence during World War II.

As discussed in part two of this series, the war in Vietnam did not start on its official date, November 1st, 1955, but rather 1945 when American clandestine operations were launched in Vietnam to “prepare the ground”.

Fletcher Prouty, who served as Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Kennedy and was a former Col. in the U.S. Air Force, goes over in his book The CIA, Vietnam and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy, how the CIA was used to instigate psy-ops and paramilitary (terrorist) activities in Vietnam to create the pretext required for an open declaration of war and for the entry of the U.S. military into a twenty-year-long meat grinder.

This was a strategy reserved not just for Vietnam, but had become the general U.S. foreign policy in all regions that were considered threats to the Cold War Grand Strategy, as seen under the directorship of the Dulles brothers (See Part 1 and Part 2 of this series).

Any country that was observed to hold views that were not aligned with U.S. foreign policy could not simply be invaded in most scenarios, but rather, the ground would need to be prepared to create the justification for a direct military invasion.

This is one of the roles of the CIA which abides by the motto “fake it till you make it.

Don’t have an actual ‘enemy’ to fight and justify your meddling into another country’s affairs? Not a problem. Just split your paramilitary team into “good guys” and “bad guys” and have them pretend fight. Go village to village repeating this action-drama and you will see how quickly the word will spread that there are “dangerous extremists” in the area that exist in “great numbers.”

Prouty described this paramilitary activity, which is called “Fun and Games,” and how this tactic was also used in the Philippines, resulting in the election of Ramon Magsaysay who was declared a hero against a non-existing enemy. In fact, the Filipino elite units that were trained by the CIA during this period were then brought into Vietnam to enact the very same tactic.

Prouty writes:

I have been to such training programs at U.S. military bases where identical tactics are taught to Americans as well as foreigners. It is all the same…these are the same tactics that were exploited by CIA superagent Edward G. Lansdale [the man in charge of the CIA Saigon Military Mission] and his men in the Philippines and Indochina.

This is an example of the intelligence service’s ‘Fun and Games.’ Actually, it is as old as history; but lately it has been refined, out of necessity, into a major tool of clandestine warfare.

Lest anyone think that this is an isolated case, be assured that it was not. Such ‘mock battles’ and ‘mock attacks on native villages’ were staged countless times in Indochina for the benefit of, or the operation of, visiting dignitaries, such as John McCone when he first visited Vietnam as the Kennedy appointed director of central intelligence [after Kennedy fired Allen Dulles].

What Prouty is stating here, is that the mock battles that occurred for these dignitaries were CIA trained agents “play-acting” as the Vietcong… to make it appear that the Vietcong were not only numerous but extremely hostile.

If even dignitaries can be fooled by such things unfolding before their own eyes, is it really a wonder that a western audience watching or reading about these affairs going on in the world through its mainstream media interpreter could possibly differentiate between “reality” vs a “staged reality”?

Not only were the lines between military and paramilitary operations becoming blurred, but as Prouty states in his book, the highest ranking officers who were operating and overseeing the Vietnam situation were all CIA operatives, not only within the U.S. military but including the U.S. Ambassador to South Vietnam, Henry Cabot Lodge.

Prouty writes:

US Ambassador Lodge – had since 1945 been one of the most important agents of the OSS and later the CIA in the Far East. His orders came from that agency.”

Prouty goes further to state in his book that Lodge was brought into the role as Ambassador on August 26th, 1963 specifically to remove Ngo Dinh Diem President of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), who was seeking a peaceful resolution to the conflict at that point.

Ngo Dinh Diem was killed two months after Lodge’s arrival in Vietnam, on November 1st, 1963. Twenty-one days later John F. Kennedy who was in the process of pulling out American troops from Vietnam, was assassinated. The Vietnam War continued for 12 years more, with the Americans having nothing to show for it. And in 1976, the city of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, was renamed Ho Chi Minh city.

A “legacy of ashes”

The militarization of government began to return power to the corporate elite, as captains of industry and finance moved into key government posts. The Eisenhower presidency would see Washington taken over by business executives, Wall Street lawyers, and investment bankers—and by a closely aligned warrior caste that had emerged into public prominence during World War II.

Eisenhower wished to establish U.S. supremacy while avoiding another large-scale shooting war as well as the imperial burdens that had bankrupted Great Britain (to which the U.S. now did its bidding under NSC-75). By leveraging the U.S. military’s near monopoly on nuclear firepower, the president hoped to make war an unthinkable proposition for all American adversaries.

The problem with Eisenhower’s strategy was that by keeping Washington in a constant state of high alert, he empowered the most militant voices in his administration. Eisenhower had made the grave error of choosing Foster Dulles as one of his close if not closest advisers, and thus whether he liked it or not, Allen Dulles – I doubt Eisenhower ever had a free moment from the poisoned honey that was constantly being dripped into his ear.

The line between CIA and military became increasingly blurred, as military officers were assigned to intelligence agency missions, and then sent back to their military posts as “ardent disciples of Allen Dulles,” in the words of Prouty, who served as a liaison officer between the Pentagon and the CIA between 1955 and 1963.

Approaching the end of his presidency, in May 1960, President Eisenhower had planned to culminate a “Crusade for Peace” with the ultimate summit conference with USSR Premier Nikita Khrushchev in Paris. It was Eisenhower’s clear attempt to finally push forward an initiative that was his own and which did not receive its “blessing” by Foster. If Eisenhower were to succeed in this, it would move to dissolve the Cold War Grand Strategy and remove the justification for a military-industrial complex.

In preparation for the summit, the White House had directed all overflight activity over communist territory to cease until further notice. Yet on May 1st, 1960, a high flying U-2 spy plane flown by Francis Gary Powers left Pakistan on a straight-line overflight of the Soviet Union en route to Bodo, Norway, contrary to the Eisenhower orders.

The U-2 crash-landed in Sverdlovsk, Russia. Amongst the possessions found in the plane, were of all things, identification of Powers being a CIA agent, something highly suspect for an intelligence officer to be carrying during a supposed covert mission.

The incident was enough to cancel the peace summit, and the “Crusade for Peace” was bludgeoned in its cradle.

Rumours abounded quickly thereafter that it was the Soviets who shot down the plane, however, it was Allen Dulles himself, who gave testimony before a closed-door session of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the U-2 spy plane had not been shot down but had descended because of “engine trouble.”[1] This important statement by Dulles was largely ignored by the press.

Later, Eisenhower confirmed in his memoirs that the spy plane had not been shot down by the Soviets and had indeed lost engine power and crash-landed in Russia.

Prouty suspected that the “engine failure” may have been induced by a pre-planned shortage of auxiliary hydrogen fuel and that Powers’ identification items were likely planted in his parachute pack. With only a certain amount of fuel and a straight line trajectory, it would have been easy to calculate exactly where Powers would be forced to make a landing.

Prouty suspected that the CIA had intentionally provoked the incident in order to ruin the peace conference and ensure the continued reign of Dulles dogmatism.

Interestingly, the man who was in charge of the Cuban exile program, Richard Bissell (deputy director of plans for the CIA), was the same man who ran the U-2 program and who, according to Prouty ostensibly sent the Powers flight over the Soviet Union on May 1st, 1960.

Richard Bissell, who was most certainly acting upon the orders of Dulles, was among the three (Allen Dulles, Director of the CIA and Charles Cabell, Deputy Director of the CIA) who were fired by Kennedy as a result of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, or more aptly put for their act of treason.

On Jan. 5th, 1961, during a meeting of the National Security Council, a frustrated and worn down President Eisenhower, put on public record just weeks before Kennedy was to assume office, that the CIA under Dulles, had robbed him of his place in history as a peacemaker and left nothing but “a legacy of ashes for his successor.”

All Eisenhower had left of his own was his farewell address, which he made on Jan. 17th, 1961, where he famously warned the American people of what had been festering during his eight-year presidential term:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex… The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.“

A phoenix rising

Eisenhower may have left a legacy of ashes for his predecessor, but out of those ashes would emerge a force that would come to directly challenge the rule of the “power elite”.[2]

In April 1954, Kennedy stood up on the Senate floor to challenge the Eisenhower administration’s support for the doomed French imperial war in Vietnam, foreseeing that this would not be a short-lived war.[3]

In July 1957, Kennedy once more took a strong stand against French colonialism, this time France’s bloody war against Algeria’s independence movement, which again found the Eisenhower administration on the wrong side of history. Rising on the Senate floor, two days before America’s own Independence Day, Kennedy declared:

The most powerful single force in the world today is neither communism nor capitalism, neither the H-bomb nor the guided missile – it is man’s eternal desire to be free and independent.

The great enemy of that tremendous force of freedom is called, for want of a more precise term, imperialism – and today that means Soviet imperialism and, whether we like it or not, and though they are not to be equated, Western imperialism.

Thus, the single most important test of American foreign policy today is how we meet the challenge of imperialism, what we do to further man’s desire to be free.

On this test more than any other, this nation shall be critically judged by the uncommitted millions in Asia and Africa, and anxiously watched by the still hopeful lovers of freedom behind the Iron Curtain.

If we fail to meet the challenge of either Soviet or Western imperialism, then no amount of foreign aid, no aggrandizement of armaments, no new pacts or doctrines or high-level conferences can prevent further setbacks to our course and to our security.” [4]

In September 1960, the annual United Nations General Assembly was being held in New York. Castro and a fifty member delegation were among the attendees and had made a splash in the headlines when he decided to stay at the Hotel Theresa in Harlem after the midtown Shelburne Hotel demanded a $20,000 security deposit. He made an even bigger splash in the headlines when he made a speech at this hotel, discussing the issue of equality in the United States while in Harlem, one of the poorest boroughs in the country.

Kennedy would visit this very same hotel a short while later, and also made a speech:

Behind the fact of Castro coming to this hotel, [and] Khrushchev…there is another great traveler in the world, and that is the travel of a world revolution, a world in turmoil…We should be glad [that Castro and Khrushchev] came to the United States. We should not fear the twentieth century, for the worldwide revolution which we see all around us is part of the original American Revolution.”[5]

What did Kennedy mean by this? The American Revolution was fought for freedom, freedom from the rule of monarchy and imperialism in favour of national sovereignty. What Kennedy was stating, was that this was the very oppression that the rest of the world wished to shake the yoke off, and that the United States had an opportunity to be a leader in the cause for the independence of all nations.

On June 30th, 1960, marking the independence of the Republic of Congo from the colonial rule of Belgium, Patrice Lumumba, the first Congolese Prime Minister gave a speech that has become famous for its outspoken criticism of colonialism.

Lumumba spoke of his people’s struggle against “the humiliating bondage that was forced upon us… [years that were] filled with tears, fire and blood,” and concluded vowing “We shall show the world what the black man can do when working in liberty, and we shall make the Congo the pride of Africa.”

Shortly after, Lumumba also made clear:

We want no part of the Cold War[…]We want Africa to remain African with a policy of neutralism.”[6]

As a result, Lumumba was labeled a communist for his refusal to be a Cold War satellite for the western sphere. Rather, Lumumba was part of the Pan-African movement that was led by Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah (who later Kennedy would also work with), which sought national sovereignty and an end to colonialism in Africa.

Lumumba “would remain a grave danger,” Dulles said at an NSC meeting on September 21, 1960, “as long as he was not yet disposed of.” [7] Three days later, Dulles made it clear that he wanted Lumumba permanently removed, cabling the CIA’s Leopoldville station:

We wish give [sic] every possible support in eliminating Lumumba from any possibility resuming governmental position.”[8]

Lumumba was assassinated on Jan. 17th, 1961, just three days before Kennedy’s inauguration, during the fog of the transition period between presidents, when the CIA is most free to tie its loose ends, confident that they will not be reprimanded by a new administration that wants to avoid scandal on its first days in office.

Kennedy, who clearly meant to put a stop to the Murder Inc. that Dulles had created and was running, would declare to the world in his inaugural address on Jan. 20th, 1961, “The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans.”

And so Kennedy’s battle with the Leviathan had begun.

La resistance

Along with inheriting the responsibility of the welfare of the country and its people, Kennedy was to also inherit a secret war with communist Cuba run by the CIA.

The Bay of Pigs set-up would occur three months later. Prouty compares the Bay of Pigs incident to that of the Crusade for Peace, both events were orchestrated by the CIA to ruin the U.S. president’s ability to form a peaceful dialogue with Khrushchev and decrease Cold War tensions. Both presidents’ took onus for the events respectively, despite the responsibility resting with the CIA. However, Eisenhower and Kennedy understood, if they did not take onus, it would be a public declaration that they did not have any control over their government agencies and military.

Further, the Bay of Pigs operation was in fact meant to fail. It was meant to stir up a public outcry for a direct military invasion of Cuba. On public record is a meeting (or more aptly described as an intervention) with CIA Deputy Director for Plans Richard Bissell, Joint Chiefs Chairman Lyman Lemnitzer, and Navy Chief Admiral Burke basically trying to strong-arm President Kennedy into approving a direct military attack on Cuba.

Admiral Burke had already taken the liberty of positioning two battalions of Marines on Navy destroyers off the coast of Cuba “anticipating that U.S. forces might be ordered into Cuba to salvage a botched invasion.”[9] (This incident is what inspired the Frankenheimer movie “Seven Days in May.”)

Kennedy stood his ground.

“They were sure I’d give in to them,” Kennedy later told Special Assistant to the President Dave Powers. “They couldn’t believe that a new president like me wouldn’t panic and try to save his own face. Well they had me figured all wrong.”[10]

Incredibly, not only did the young president stand his ground against the Washington war hawks just three months into his presidential term, but he also launched the Cuba Study Group which found the CIA to be responsible for the fiasco, leading to the humiliating forced resignation of Allen Dulles, Richard Bissell and Charles Cabell. (For more on this refer to my report.)

Unfortunately, it would not be that easy to dethrone Dulles, who continued to act as head of the CIA, and key members of the intelligence community such as Helms and Angleton regularly bypassed McCone and briefed Dulles directly.[11] But Kennedy was also serious about seeing it all the way through, and vowed to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.”

There is another rather significant incident that had occurred just days after the Bay of Pigs, and which has largely been overshadowed by the Cuban fiasco.

From April 21-26th, 1961, the Algiers putsch or Generals’ putsch, was a failed coup d’état intended to force President de Gaulle (1959-1969) not to abandon the colonial French Algeria. The organisers of the putsch were opposed to the secret negotiations that French Prime Minister Michel Debré had started with the anti-colonial National Liberation Front (FLN).

On January 26th, 1961, just three months before the attempted coup d’état, Dulles sent a report to Kennedy on the French situation that seemed to be hinting that de Gaulle would no longer be around:

A pre-revolutionary atmosphere reigns in France…The Army and the Air Force are staunchly opposed to de Gaulle…At least 80 percent of the officers are violently against him. They haven’t forgotten that in 1958, he had given his word of honor that he would never abandon Algeria. He is now reneging on his promise, and they hate him for that. de Gaulle surely won’t last if he tries to let go of Algeria. Everything will probably be over for him by the end of the year — he will be either deposed or assassinated.”[12]

The attempted coup was led by Maurice Challe, whom de Gaulle had reason to conclude was working with the support of US intelligence, and Élysée officials began spreading this word to the press, which reported the CIA as a “reactionary state-within-a-state” that operated outside of Kennedy’s control.[13]

Shortly before Challe’s resignation from the French military, he had served as NATO commander in chief and had developed close relations with a number of high-ranking US officers stationed in the military alliance’s Fontainebleau headquarters.[14]

In August 1962 the OAS (Secret Army Organization) made an assassination attempt against de Gaulle, believing he had betrayed France by giving up Algeria to Algerian nationalists. This would be the most notorious assassination attempt on de Gaulle (who would remarkably survive over thirty assassination attempts while President of France) when a dozen OAS snipers opened fire on the president’s car, which managed to escape the ambush despite all four tires being shot out.

After the failed coup d’état, de Gaulle launched a purge of his security forces and ousted General Paul Grossin, the chief of SDECE (the French secret service). Grossin was closely aligned with the CIA, and had told Frank Wisner over lunch that the return of de Gaulle to power was equivalent to the Communists taking over in Paris.[15]

In 1967, after a five-year enquête by the French Intelligence Bureau, it released its findings concerning the 1962 assassination attempt on de Gaulle. The report found that the 1962 assassination plot could be traced back to the NATO Brussels headquarters, and the remnants of the old Nazi intelligence apparatus. The report also found that Permindex had transferred $200,000 into an OAS bank account to finance the project.

As a result of the de Gaulle exposé, Permindex was forced to shut down its public operations in Western Europe and relocated its headquarters from Bern, Switzerland to Johannesburg, South Africa, it also had/has a base in Montreal, Canada where its founder Maj. Gen. Louis M. Bloomfield (former OSS) proudly had his name amongst its board members until the damning de Gaulle report. The relevance of this to Kennedy will be discussed shortly.

As a result of the SDECE’s ongoing investigation, de Gaulle made a vehement denunciation of the Anglo-American violation of the Atlantic Charter, followed by France’s withdrawal from the NATO military command in 1966. France would not return to NATO until April 2009 at the Strasbourg-Kehl Summit.

In addition to all of this, on Jan. 14th, 1963, de Gaulle declared at a press conference that he had vetoed British entry into the Common Market. This would be the first move towards France and West Germany’s formation of the European Monetary System, which excluded Great Britain, likely due to its imperialist tendencies and its infamous sin City of London.

Former Secretary of State Dean Acheson telegrammed West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer directly, appealing to him to try to persuade de Gaulle to backtrack on the veto, stating “if anyone can affect Gen. de Gaulle’s decision, you are surely that person.”

Little did Acheson know that Adenauer was just days away from singing the Franco-German Treaty of Jan 22nd, 1963 (also known as the ÉlyséeTreaty), which had enormous implications. Franco-German relations, which had long been dominated by centuries of rivalry, had now agreed that their fates were aligned.

(This close relationship was continued to a climactic point in the late 1970s, with the formation of the EMS, and France and West Germany’s willingness in 1977 to work with OPEC countries trading oil for nuclear technology, which was sabotaged by the US-Britain alliance. For more on this refer to my paper.)

The Élysée Treaty was a clear denunciation of the Anglo-American forceful overseeing that had overtaken Western Europe since the end of WWII.

On June 28th, 1961, Kennedy wrote NSAM #55. This document changed the responsibility of defense during the Cold War from the CIA to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and would have (if seen through) drastically changed the course of the war in Vietnam. It would also have effectively removed the CIA from Cold War operations and limited the CIA to its sole lawful responsibility, the coordination of intelligence.

By Oct 11th, 1963, NSAM #263, closely overseen by Kennedy[16], was released and outlined a policy decision “to withdraw 1,000 military personnel [from Vietnam] by the end of 1963” and further stated that “It should be possible to withdraw the bulk of U.S. personnel [including the CIA and military] by 1965.” The Armed Forces newspaper Stars and Stripes had the headline U.S. TROOPS SEEN OUT OF VIET BY ’65.

With the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem, likely ordained by the CIA, on Nov. 2nd, 1963 and Kennedy just a few weeks later on Nov. 22nd, 1963, de facto President Johnson signed NSAM #273 on Nov. 26th, 1963 to begin the reversal of Kennedy’s policy under #263. And on March 17th, 1964, Johnson signed NSAM #288 that marked the full escalation of the Vietnam War and involved 2,709,918 Americans directly serving in Vietnam, with 9,087,000 serving with the U.S. Armed Forces during this period.

The Vietnam War would continue for another 12 years after Kennedy’s death, lasting a total of 20 years for Americans, and 30 years if you count American covert action in Vietnam.

The last days of Kennedy

By Germany supporting de Gaulle’s exposure of the international assassination ring, his adamant opposition to western imperialism and the role of NATO, and with a young Kennedy building his own resistance against the Federal Reserve and the imperialist war of Vietnam, it was clear that the power elite were in big trouble.

There is a lot of spurious effort to try to ridicule anyone who challenges the Warren Commission’s official report as nothing but fringe conspiracy theory. And that we should not find it highly suspect that Allen Dulles, of all people, was a member of this commission. The reader should keep in mind that much of this frothing opposition stems from the very agency that perpetrated crime after crime on the American people, as well as abroad. When has the CIA ever admitted guilt, unless caught red-handed? Even after the Church committee hearings, when the CIA was found guilty of planning out foreign assassinations, they claimed that they had failed in every single plot or that someone had beaten them to the punch.

The American people need to realise that the CIA is not a respectable agency; we are not dealing with honorable men. It is a rogue force that believes that the ends justify the means, that they are the hands of the king so to speak, above government and above law. Those at the top such as Allen Dulles were just as adamant as Churchill about protecting the interests of the power elite, or as Churchill termed it, the “High Cabal.”

Interestingly, on Dec. 22nd, 1963, just one month after Kennedy’s assassination, Harry Truman published a scathing critique of the CIA in The Washington Post, even going so far as to state “There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position [as a] free and open society, and I feel that we need to correct it.”[17]

The timing of this is everything.

As Prouty has stated, anyone with a little bit of free time during an afternoon could discover for themselves that the Warren Commission was an embarrassingly incompetent hodge-podge, that conducted itself as if it were a done deal that Oswald killed Kennedy and was disinterested in hearing anything contrary to that narrative.

Not only did the record of Oswald’s interrogation at the Dallas Police Department go up in smoke, likely because he was making the inconvenient claim that he was a “patsy,” but his nitrate test which proved that he never shot a rifle the day of Nov. 22nd, 1963, was kept secret for 10 months and was only revealed in the final report,[18] which inexplicably did not change the report’s conclusion that Oswald shot Kennedy.

During Garrison’s trial on the Kennedy assassination (1967-1969) he subpoenaed the Zapruder film that had been locked up in some vault owned by Life magazine (whose founder Henry Luce was known to work closely with the CIA[19]). This was the first time in more than five years that the Zapruder film was made public. It turns out the FBI’s copy that was sent to the Warren Commission had two critical frames reversed to create a false impression that the rifle shot was from behind.

When Garrison got a hold of the original film it was discovered that the head shot had actually come from the front. In fact, what the whole film showed was that the President had been shot from multiple angles meaning there was more than one gunman.

This was not the only piece of evidence to be tampered with, and includes Kennedy’s autopsy reports.

There is also the matter of the original autopsy papers being destroyed by the chief autopsy physician, James Humes, to which he even testified to during the Warren Commission, apparently nobody bothered to ask why…

In addition, Jim Garrison, New Orleans District Attorney at the time who was charging Clay Shaw as a member of the conspiracy to kill Kennedy, besides uncovering his ties to David Ferrie who was found dead in his apartment days before he was scheduled to testify, also made a case that the New Orleans International Trade Mart (to which Clay Shaw was director), the U.S. subsidiary of Permindex, was linked to Kennedy’s murder.

Garrison did a remarkable job with the odds he was up against, and for the number of witnesses that turned up dead before the trial…

This Permindex link would not look so damning if we did not have the French intelligence SDECE report, but we do. And recall, in that report Permindex was caught transferring $200,000 directly to the bankroll of the OAS which attempted the 1962 assassination on de Gaulle.

Thus, Permindex’s implication in an international assassination ring is not up for debate. In addition, the CIA was found heavily involved in these assassination attempts against de Gaulle, thus we should not simply dismiss the possibility that Permindex was indeed a CIA front for an international hit crew.

In fact, among the strange and murderous characters who converged on Dallas in Nov. 1963 was a notorious French OAS commando named Jean Souetre, who was connected to the plots against President de Gaulle. Souetre was arrested in Dallas after the Kennedy assassination and expelled to Mexico.[20]

Col. Clay Shaw was an OSS officer during WWII, which provides a direct link to his knowing Allen Dulles, and thus we come around full circle.

After returning from Kennedy’s Nov. 24th funeral in Washington, de Gaulle and his information minister Alain Peyrefitte had a candid discussion that was recorded in Peyrefitte’s memoire “C’était de Gaulle,” the great General was quoted saying:

What happened to Kennedy is what nearly happened to me… His story is the same as mine. … It looks like a cowboy story, but it’s only an OAS [Secret Army Organization] story. The security forces were in cahoots with the extremists.

…Security forces are all the same when they do this kind of dirty work. As soon as they succeed in wiping out the false assassin, they declare the justice system no longer need be concerned, that no further public action was needed now that the guilty perpetrator was dead. Better to assassinate an innocent man than to let a civil war break out. Better an injustice than disorder.

America is in danger of upheavals. But you’ll see. All of them together will observe the law of silence. They will close ranks. They’ll do everything to stifle any scandal. They will throw Noah’s cloak over these shameful deeds. In order to not lose face in front of the whole world. In order to not risk unleashing riots in the United States. In order to preserve the union and to avoid a new civil war. In order to not ask themselves questions. They don’t want to know. They don’t want to find out. They won’t allow themselves to find out.

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Cynthia Chung is a lecturer, writer and co-founder and editor of the Rising Tide Foundation (Montreal, Canada). The author can be reached at [email protected]

Notes

(1) L. Fletcher Prouty, “The Cia, Vietnam and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy, ” pg 147

(2) C. Wright Mills, “The Power Elite”

(3) David Talbot, “The Devil’s Chessboard,” pg 304

(4) Ibid, pg 305

(5) Ibid, pg 295

(6) Ibid, pg 319

(7) Ibid, pg 319

(8) Ibid, pg 319

(9) Ibid, pg 337

(10) Ibid, pg 337

(11) Ibid, pg 359

(12) Ibid, pg 350

(13) Ibid, pg 353

(14) Ibid, pg 347

(15) Ibid, pg 354

(16) L. Fletcher Prouty, “The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy,” pg xxxiv

(17) David Talbot, “The Devil’s Chessboard,” pg 201

(18) Jim Garrison, “On the Trail of the Assassins,” pg 116-117

(19) David Talbot, “The Devil’s Chessboard,” pg 72, 128

(20) Ibid, pg 422

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With tensions simmering in eastern Ukraine, US media outlets are happy to push the narrative that Russia is the aggressor and is preparing to invade its neighbor. These reports ignore the fact that the Donetsk and Lugansk republics in the eastern Donbas region declared independence from Ukraine back in 2014 in response to a US-backed coup.

Since 2014, the US has provided Ukraine with about $2 billion in military equipment and supported its fight against the Donetsk and Lugansk separatists. Supporting a war on Russia’s border is an incredible provocation, but these facts are lost on the Western press, and some outlets seem eager to see the situation escalate. On Monday, Politico published a report that asked if it was time for Ukraine to deploy weapons provided by the US to face Moscow.

The Politico report reads:

“As Russia amasses the highest number of troops on Ukraine’s border since 2014, the question for Kyiv now becomes: Is it time to start putting US-made weapons in the field?”

The report explains how President Trump took a step his predecessor was unwilling to take and sold hundreds of Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine. President Obama chose not to give Kyiv offensive weapons for fear of provoking Moscow. This fact contradicts the conspiracy theory that Trump was beholden to Russian President Vladimir Putin, which was pushed hard by Politico. One of the co-authors of the Ukraine report, Natasha Bertrand, built her career on pushing the Steele Dossier, a now-discredited document that made unverified claims about the Russian government and the Trump campaign in 2016.

The Javelin missiles were sold under the condition that they would be stored in western Ukraine, far from the front lines of the Donbas war. But the weapons can be deployed anywhere in the country and can be used as long as Kyiv can frame their use as “defensive” in nature.

Two unnamed former US military officials told Politico that the current situation with Russia is “exactly the kind of scenario the Javelin sale was designed to counter.”

The Biden administration has already approved a $125 million military aid package for Ukraine that includes armed patrol boats, and another $150 million is expected to be provided sometime this year. Over the past few weeks, the US has delivered multiple military shipments to Ukraine as it hypes the movement of Russian troops inside Russia.

On top of the military support from the US, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky is pushing for a NATO membership. Even though Ukraine being a NATO member could lead to the US and Russia going to war, which should be an unthinkable scenario, Zelensky’s request is receiving favorable coverage in the Western media.

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Personal Tribute to Ramsey Clark: Iraq and Rwanda

April 15th, 2021 by John Philpot

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Our friend in struggle, Attorney Ramsey Clark, passed away on April 9, 2021. Ramsey affected many of our lives. We followed closely his opposition to the American invasion of Grenada in October 1983. We got to know him best from his Commission of Inquiry into the US war on Iraq in beginning 17 January 1991.

The Crime of aggression highlighted in the Nuremberg judgment was the underlying theme in the War Crimes Tribunal which held hearings on 28, 29 January 1992 in New York. This Tribunal which I sat on condemned the USA for the crimes against Peace, War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity. He published a book, The Fire This Time, U.S War Crimes in the Gulf. This book available on Amazon.com is an anti-war textbook in international law comprehensible to all and can inspire us to join in the peace movement which is more important than ever.

Ramsey’s wisdom helped inspire many of us to join the fight against the Rwandan Patriotic Front/USA war on Rwanda.

Ramsey understood that the war of aggression on Rwanda by the RPF proxy was the cause of the so-called “genocide”. He joined the defence at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and defended Pastor Elizaphan Ntakirutimana who was living in Laredo, Texas. He succeeded in blocking his extradition to Arusha in local courts on the first attempt by his hard work and legal genius.

Ramsey Clark combined principle, justice, and legal genius in his defence of the Pastor after he was unfairly sent to Arusha for trial.

The wrongly accused ICTR accused and our defence bar were honoured to have his contribution to the ICTR defence. He inspired all of us. We had some success in avoiding convictions and ICTR lies about the war on Rwanda. The truth is coming out about the illegitimacy of the biased ICTR prosecutions, and we will not rest until the world understands.

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Featured image: Ramsey Clark was renowned for being a strong advocate in defense of people at disadvantage against the U.S. establishment at home and abroad. | Photo: Twitter/@NehandaRadio

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False Perception Fabrication Inc.

April 15th, 2021 by Mark Taliano

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Mainstream Everything can create a pandemic out of anything, even out of a Low Infection Fatality Rate (1) virus that arguably has not been properly isolated, purified, or replicated.

And that is exactly what they did.

The process of turning the truth on its head did not happen overnight. It involved changing words and nomenclature to align with pre-planned existing agendas.

Prior to the H1N1 Swine Flu “pandemic” of 2009, for example, the WHO deleted “severity of illness” from the definition of a high level, “level 6” contagion. How convenient. (2) Whereas the word “pandemic” usually conjures up images of devastating, high mortality-rate plagues, in reality, thanks to the changed nomenclature, the term is now used to define COVID-19 which has Low Infection Fatality Rates.

Coding changes to Death Certificates, for COVID-19 only, also continue to distort reality. Had coding changes not been altered in March 2020, the COVID death rates would be substantially lower. (3) When people see high numbers of deaths falsely attributed to COVID, they become fearful — which is part of the plan– but the fear is not reasonable. It is not based on real mortality rates.

It doesn’t end there. Some argue that mRNA experimental injections are not vaccines because they basically alter a person’s DNA using synthetic RNA. Typical vaccines do not do that. Problem solved. Merriam -Webster recently changed its definition of “vaccine” to cover the mRNA experimental jabs as well.

The WHO also changed its definition of “herd immunity” by negating natural herd immunity from the definition and by attributing it exclusively to vaccines.

The astute observer will see the very transparent beneficiaries of these changes in nomenclature.

Financial interests, Big Pharma, and globalists imposing lockdowns would be some of the front-line beneficiaries.

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

Notes

(1) “Facts about Covid-19.” Swiss Policy Research, June, 2020,
(https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/), Accessed 27 June, 2020.

(2) Joel Day, “WHO exposed: How health body changed pandemic criteria to push agenda” EXPRESS, 12 May, 2020. (WHO exposed: How health body changed pandemic criteria to push agenda | World | News | Express.co.uk) Accessed 24 March, 2021.

(3) GreenMedInfoResearchGroup, “COVID-19 Fatalities 16.7 Times Too High Due to ‘Illegal’ Inflation” 1 February, 2021. (COVID-19 Fatalities 16.7 Times Too High Due to ‘Illegal’ Inflation (greenmedinfo.com) ) Accessed 24 March, 2021.


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On April 11, the Natanz uranium enrichment site was attacked. An explosion destroyed the internal power system for thousands of underground centrifuges, which form the main Iranian nuclear enrichment program. Israeli media attributed the attack to Israel’s spy agency, Mossad, which is capable of cyber-sabotage. 

The blast had created a crater so large that Behrouz Kamalvandi, spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, had injured his head, back, leg and arm after falling into it.

Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said the attack “could have led to a catastrophe that is a crime against humanity.” Tehran called the incident a terrorist attack.

The Biden administration is worried the Israeli act of sabotage may escalate tensions in the region and could be responsible for sabotaging the Iran nuclear talks in Vienna between the US and Iran.

Natanz is the latest in a long history of Israeli attacks on nuclear facilities through cyber means.  The Stuxnet attack was conducted by Israel with the US and Dutch intelligence agencies and was the first cyberattack known to use a digital weapon.

Iran’s Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, threatened revenge for the attack and referenced the progress in talks toward lifting the US sanctions against Iran as the reason behind the Israeli attack.

Iran has always stressed the need for domestic energy development as the reason behind its peaceful nuclear program.  Tehran denounces the use of nuclear weapons.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is aware that US President Biden’s primary foreign policy objective is to bring Iran back into compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), commonly referred to as the Iran nuclear deal of 2015.

The Natanz attack is a reminder of the diametrically opposing differences between Netanyahu and Biden and risks increasing the tension between Israel and the US, while Israel exaggerates the threat from Iran.

 “We both agree that Iran must never possess nuclear weapons,” Mr. Netanyahu said Monday. “My policy as prime minister of Israel is clear. I will never allow Iran to obtain the nuclear capability to carry out its genocidal goal of eliminating Israel, and Israel will continue to defend itself against Iran’s aggression, and terrorism.”

In November, Israel assassinated a leading Iranian nuclear scientist in an ambush using a gun smuggled into the country and has assassinated others previously.

Over the past two years, Israel began attacking ships carrying Iranian fuel, and Iran retaliated by targeting several Israeli-owned cargo ships.

Israeli officials expressed concern that the ship Hyperion Ray could be targeted by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps following last week’s apparent mine attack by Israel on an Iranian military vessel in the Red Sea.

Israel has in recent weeks sabotaged Iranian ships at sea. Syria has accused Israel of airstrikes on its territory which are ongoing to the point of becoming routine.

In 2018, Mossad carried out a raid to steal nuclear secrets from a nuclear facility in Tehran in ongoing operations designed to oppose Iran’s progress.

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said he traveled to Israel to advance US interests and further Biden’s goals for the region. At the same time, Israel attacked Iran, disregarding US goals in the region.

Austin was in Israel for meetings with Netanyahu and Defense Minister Benny Gantz.  Monday’s joint press conference projected an image of friendship, even though behind the scenes the countries were following opposing agendas.

An Israeli official said that Austin and Gantz discussed Israel’s opposition to returning to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

“Our bilateral relationship with Israel, in particular, is central to regional stability and security in the Middle East,” said Austin, while adding the US is committed to “Israeli military edge” and advancing “strategic partnership” efforts with Tel Aviv.

Maamoun Abu Nawwar, retired Jordanian air force general, said that the goal of the visit is to ensure that Israel does not escalate the situation in the Gulf.

“The fact that the first senior official from the Biden administration to visit Israel is a military man is a clear sign that they are hoping he will address the potential of a dangerous escalation … between Israel and Iran,” he said.

“Israel views the United States as a full partner across all operational theatres, not the least Iran,” Benny Gantz said after meeting with Austin, but the partnership seemed fragile in light of the Natanz attack.

Israeli commentators have questioned whether the attack served a domestic purpose for Netanyahu, rather than just a foreign policy objective.

Netanyahu is facing a corruption trial and is struggling to form a new coalition government after a general election last month that gave no party a majority. Analysts say they believe that a very public confrontation with Iran might help Netanyahu persuade critics that now is the time for an experienced prime minister.

Talks in Vienna are aimed at persuading Iran to impose limits on its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of US sanctions. The Natanz attack could damage efforts by the Biden administration to encourage Iran to return to the 2015 agreement negotiated by the Obama administration, where Tehran promised to limit its enrichment program.

In 2018, President Trump broke the deal and re-imposed US sanctions on Iran, while Iran later broke its commitments to limit its nuclear program.

Israel opposes returning to the 2015 deal, which it sees as not strong enough, or long enough in scope. Netanyahu has said Israel will not be bound by a new deal, which he describes as a temporary cap on Iranian nuclear capabilities.

Heiko Maas, the German Foreign Minister, feared the Natanz attack would affect the Vienna negotiations for a new nuclear deal with Iran.

“What we are hearing currently out of Tehran is not a positive contribution, particularly the development in Natanz,” said Maas.

Lamis Andoni, an analyst based in Amman, said that the Austin visit is aimed at helping the US return to the JCPOA.

“President Joe Biden is worried that Netanyahu would like to escalate the situation in the Gulf, with the aim of torpedoing the eventual return to the Iran nuclear deal,” she said.

Recent talks in Vienna between the US, Iran, and the other signatories got off to a slow start, with an apparent diplomatic stalemate.  Outside influences such as the Natanz attack and retaliation may negatively affect later negotiations.

Since the 1960s, US foreign policy on the Middle East has been rumored to be written in Tel Aviv. However, the Biden administration is flying in the face of tradition, and putting US interests ahead of Israeli interests by attempting to renew the Iran nuclear deal.  Biden has the support of western US allies, but Israel will try to thwart Biden’s success at every turn and may call on Israel’s new allies in the Arab Gulf monarchies to disrupt the US process.

Former President Trump is still seen as the leader of the Republican party, which is determined to stand in the way of Democratic President Biden achieving breakthroughs in the Iran nuclear deal renewal.  Trump reneged on the deal to appease Israel and AIPAC, the US Zionist lobby.  US party politics are influencing the Middle East region and may thwart the Biden goal of a new Iran nuclear deal.

Israeli officials have long threatened military action against Iran, and the Republican party has its war-hawks who would support an attack on Iran.

Martin Indyk, an American diplomat who has served as Ambassador to Israel, tweeted the day after the Natanz attack,

“BUT…the attack will also drive Iran’s nuclear program further underground which will then require anywhere/anytime inspections to detect and prevent it. And for that, there will need to be a nuclear agreement.”

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Steven Sahiounie is an award-winning journalist. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a speech on Iran’s nuclear programme at the defence ministry in Tel Aviv on 30 April 2018 (Source: MEE)

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The Doctrine of Discovery, created in a series of Papal Bulls in the Fifteenth Century, has served as the basis of most of European colonialism’s destructive rampage across most regions of the world.  It was most successfully applied in the Western Hemisphere where Spanish, Portuguese, and British colonies decimated much of the indigenous population and proceeded to ‘own’ the land by way of the Crown.  In the truly British colonies of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, the indigenous populations have suffered from ongoing ethnic cleansing and genocide.

What is most surprising is that these Papal Bulls, written by Roman Catholic popes over 500 years ago, still serve as legal documents used to argue against indigenous possession of land and any rights to it.  Canada’s legal system does not use the Bulls directly, but refers to their use in the U.S. The Sparrow case in British Columbia in 1990 used the 1823 Johnson v M’Intosh decision of the U.S. Supreme Court:

“The  M’Intosh verdict held that a discovering sovereign has the exclusive right to extinguish Indians’ interest in their lands, either by purchase or by just war.”

The result in the Sparrow case “confirms that these rights [Aboriginal rights] are not absolute, and can be infringed upon providing the government can legally justify it.” [1]

Christian Justification for slavery, racism, and white supremacy (pardon the tautology)

Think about it.  Some racist white Christian man five hundred years ago made a supremely racist pronouncement accepting genocide, ethnic cleansing, and slavery that is still used by both the Canadian and U.S. governments in legal decisions against indigenous people.

Beyond that, it promoted slavery, and combined with the ethnic cleansing and genocide of indigenous people, set Canada and the U.S. on their current course of attempting to uphold western hegemony over – essentially – the rest of the world.  It is a broad brush to sweep with based on a piece of paper that should have been denied legality, if not generations ago, at least now that common international humanitarian law and war law would not accept such a doctrine.

In Unsettling Truths – The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery, the authors, Mark Charles, and Soon-Chan Rah, both Christian pastors, explore the history and ramifications of the pronouncement of these Papal Bulls.  Interestingly enough the book does not provide the texts of the Bulls even though they are quite short and easy to understand.  They do however provide a precis:

“The Doctrine of Discovery is a set of legal principles that governed the European colonizing powers, particularly regarding the administration of indigenous land.  It is the “primary legal precedent that still controls native affairs and rights…an international law formulated in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries..””

Other than the fact that it is accepted as international law, it is entirely bogus, a sham, a pretence – it is a racist religious doctrine which should not have any legal authority.

That it does have ongoing legal authority only serves to define Canadian and U.S. societies as legally racist, supportive of wars of genocide and ethnic cleansing in order to obtain the wealth of the world.  This idea will return in a moment, but first, the book.

“Unsettling Truths”  is a series of short essays set out in historical order describing how it has been abused for centuries and served as a major component of the establishment of the British Colonies in North America and their subsequent changes into independent states.  The authors excoriate the Puritan settlers as the prime promoters of this racist ideology, and apply the same severe criticism to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, following on with a deconstruction of Abraham Lincoln’s.

Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln receives two chapters in judgement.  The second covers his application of sovereign rights as determined by the Doctrine of Discovery towards removing the indigenous populations, permanently, one way or another.  The first discusses his arguments during his tenure in office and shows that he was not against slavery per se, but was concerned about holding the union together under the control of the economic power of the northern states.

Well beyond that, and having a considerable impact on U.S. society today, is the Thirteenth Amendment, of 1865, used

“to keep white supremacy alive beond the grotesque institution of slavery, by creating a second-tier level of citizenship, specifically for people of color:  “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime wherof the party shall have been duly convicted….”

Fast forward to today’s incarceration rate, both in absolute numbers  – the largest in the world – and in percentages – still the largest in the world but also dominated by people of colour.  Discriminatory laws and institutionalized racism have kept slavery alive.

The U.S. is not a Christian nation.

As well as deconstructing the secular, the authors also present arguments about the lack of Christianity in the U.S.    Under the descriptions and definitions of the authors, they present the U.S. as an attempt at “Christendom” arguing that it “cannot exist with the teachings of Jesus.”  They see Christendom – the American nation, the physical entity encompassing Christianity in the U.S. – has “prostituted itself to empire….the need to address corporate sins like stolen lands, broken treaties, genocide, slavery, sexism, systematic injustice, white supremacy, and Christendom itself is ignored or outright rejected” by U.S. churches.  Confronted with the Doctrine of Discovery, “the church has no meaningful theological response….the dysfunctional narrative of American exceptionalism has no basis in Scripture.”

The author’s final argument summarizes succinctly that “the Church in America has nothing to offer.”

Ramifications

Whether the theological arguments of the authors are accepted by the reader or not, the legal arguments and the current state of global affairs needs to be examined using the ideas promulgated under the Doctrine of Discovery.  To reiterate:  That the Doctrine fo Discovery does have ongoing legal authority only serves to define Canadian and U.S. societies as legally racist, supportive of wars of genocide and ethnic cleansing in order to obtain the wealth of the world.

That an ancient church document has legal power today – in particular in light of modern international humanitarian and war law, and the western theoretical separation of church and state – should not be at all acceptable.  It survives in law only because of racism and white supremacy, a convenient circular support system.

The United States attempts at global hegemony are derivatives of this doctrine, with the major emphasis – as demonstrated by the Indian Wars, and all their imperial wars since then – on using force.  Many arguments have been made for “just wars” under the guise of Christianity (and other religions) but no war can be “just” in the true sense of justice being served – all people lose in wars except for the corporate war profiteers of the winning side, and if Germany is the example, the same group on the losing side.

Examples of U.S. white supremacy are spread throughout modern current events and locations, and while the ideals of white supremacy are downplayed, they still provide the undercurrents supporting wars based on “the right to protect”, “freedom and democracy,” and currently with the media hype against Russia and China, it is “democracy versus autocracy.”  The authors include Israel/Palestine within this mix:

“…when Netanyahu publicly ordained both the United States of America and the modern nation state of Israel as having “promised lands” he revealed the very dysfunctional and codependent relationship that exists between the two countries.  The U.S. needs Israel’s Old Testament legacy of promised lands to justify [its] history….The modern state of Israel needs the continuing flourishing of the United States as a shining light upon  hill to justify their current unjust actions against the Palestinains and Bedouin people.”

The idea of a “flourishing” U.S. may be a noble idea, but the reality, especially as exposed by the four years under Trump and the continuing open and obvious racism within the U.S. denies any flourishing.  The only segments of the U.S. that are flourishing are the corporate military industries, the financialized one percenters, and many of the politicians involved with both.  Unfortunately, until the U.S. can accept and identify its underlying racist, sexist, supremacist, white patriarchal structures, it will continue to decline in the pursuit of hegemony in the face of a global community slowly attempting to extricate itself from U.S. dominance financially and militarily.

Finally

But to return to the author’s main argument, the church in the U.S. continues to support the politicians, the aggressive foreign policy, the abnormal ties to Israel, and appears incapable of doing anything about it.   Unsettling Truths – TheOngoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery, by   Mark Charles, and Soon-Chan Rah is an interesting and instructive read on how the church and its beliefs within the overall parameters of ‘western’ or European racism created a country that will have great difficulty accepting the idea and then dealing with the practicality of its historical trauma.

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Denis Halliday: A Voice of Reason in an Insane World

April 15th, 2021 by Denis Halliday

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Denis Halliday is an exceptional figure in the world of diplomacy. In 1998, after a 34-year career with the United Nations—including as an Assistant Secretary-General and the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq—he resigned when the UN Security Council refused to lift sanctions against Iraq. 

Halliday saw at first hand the devastating impact of this policy that had led to the deaths of over 500,000 children under the age of five and hundreds of thousands more older children and adults, and he called the sanctions a genocide against the people of Iraq.

Since 1998, Denis has been a powerful voice for peace and for human rights around the world. He sailed in the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza in 2010, when 10 of his companions on a Turkish ship were shot and killed in an attack by the Israeli armed forces.

I interviewed Denis Halliday from his home in Ireland.

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Nicolas Davies:   So, Denis, twenty years after you resigned from the UN over the sanctions on Iraq, the United States is now imposing similar “maximum pressure” sanctions against Iran, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, denying their people access to food and medicines in the midst of a pandemic. What would you like to say to Americans about the real-world impact of these policies?

Denis Halliday:   I’d like to begin with explaining that the sanctions imposed by the Security Council against Iraq, led very much by the United States and Britain, were unique in the sense that they were comprehensive. They were open-ended, meaning that they required a Security Council decision to end them, which of course never actually happened – and they followed immediately upon the Gulf War.

The Gulf War, led primarily by the United States but supported by Britain and some others, undertook the bombing of Iraq and targeted civilian infrastructure, which is a violation of the Geneva Conventions, and they took out all electric power networks in the country.

This completely undermined the water treatment and distribution system of Iraq, which depended upon electricity to drive it, and drove people to use contaminated water from the Tigris and the Euphrates. That was the beginning of the death-knell for young children, because mothers were not breast-feeding, they were feeding their children with child formula, but mixing it with foul water from the Tigris and the Euphrates.

That bombing of infrastructure, including communications systems and electric power, wiped out the production of food, horticulture, and all of the other basic necessities of life. They also closed down exports and imports, and they made sure that Iraq was unable to export its oil, which was the main source of its revenue at the time.

In addition to that, they introduced a new weapon called depleted uranium, which was used by the U.S. forces driving the Iraqi Army out of Kuwait. That was used again in southern Iraq in the Basra area, and led to a massive accumulation of nuclear debris which led to leukemia in children, and that took three, four or five years to become evident.

So when I got to Iraq in 1998, the hospitals in Baghdad, and also of course in Basra and other cities, were full of children suffering from leukemia. Meantime adults had gotten their own cancer, mainly not a blood cancer diagnosis. Those children, we reckon perhaps 200,000 children, died of leukemia. At the same time, Washington and London withheld some of the treatment components that leukemia requires, again, it seemed, in a genocidal manner, denying Iraqi children the right to remain alive.

And as you quoted 500,000, that was a statement made by Madeleine Albright, the then American Ambassador to the United Nations who, live on CBS, was asked the question about the loss of 500,000 children, and she said that the loss of 500,000 children was “worth it,” in terms of bringing down Saddam Hussein, which did not happen until the military invasion of 2003.

So the point is that the Iraqi sanctions were uniquely punitive and cruel and prolonged and comprehensive. They remained in place no matter how people like myself or others, and not just me alone, but UNICEF and the agencies of the UN system – many states including France, China and Russia – complained bitterly about the consequences on human life and the lives of Iraqi children and adults.

My desire in resigning was to go public, which I did. Within one month, I was in Washington doing my first Congressional briefing on the consequences of these sanctions, driven by Washington and London.

So I think the United States and its populus, who vote these governments in, need to understand that the children and the people of Iraq are just like the children of the United States and England and their people. They have the same dreams, same ambitions of education and employment and housing and vacations and all the things that good people care about. We’re all the same people and we cannot sit back and think somehow, “We don’t know who they are, they’re Afghans, they’re Iranians, they’re Iraqis. So what? They’re dying. Well, we don’t know, it’s not our problem, this happens in war.” I mean, all that sort of rationale as to why this is unimportant.

And I think that aspect of life in the sanctions world continues, whether it’s Venezuela, whether it’s Cuba, which has been ongoing now for 60 years. People are not aware or don’t think in terms of the lives of other human beings identical to ourselves here in Europe or in the United States.

It’s a frightening problem, and I don’t know how it can be resolved. We now have sanctions on Iran and North Korea. So the difficulty is to bring alive that we kill people with sanctions. They’re not a substitute for war – they are a form of warfare.

Nicolas Davies:   Thank you, Denis. I think that brings us to another question, because whereas the sanctions on Iraq were approved by the UN Security Council, what we’re looking at today in the world is, for the most part, the U.S. using the power of its financial system to impose unilateral sieges on these countries, even as the U.S. is also still waging war in at least half a dozen countries, mostly in the Greater Middle East. Medea Benjamin and I recently documented that the U.S. and its allies have dropped 326,000 bombs and missiles on other countries in all these wars, just since 2001 – that’s not counting the First Gulf War.

You worked for the UN and UNDP for 34 years, and the UN was conceived of as a forum and an institution for peace and to confront violations of peace by any countries around the world. But how can the UN address the problem of a powerful, aggressive country like the United States that systematically violates international law and then abuses its veto and diplomatic power to avoid accountability?

Denis Halliday:   Yes, when I talk to students, I try to explain that there are two United Nations: there’s a United Nations of the Secretariat, led by the Secretary-General and staffed by people like myself and 20,000 or 30,000 more worldwide, through UNDP and the agencies. We operate in every country, and most of it is developmental or humanitarian. It’s good work, it has real impact, whether it’s feeding Palestinians or it’s UNICEF work in Ethiopia. This continues.

Where the UN collapses is in the Security Council, in my view, and that is because, in Yalta in 1945, Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill, having noted the failure of the League of Nations, decided to set up a United Nations that would have a controlling entity, which they then called the Security Council. And to make sure that worked, in their interests I would say, they established this five-power veto group, and they added France and they added China. And that five is still in place.

That’s 1945 and this is 2021, and they’re still in power and they’re still manipulating the United Nations. And as long as they stay there and they manipulate, I think the UN is doomed. The tragedy is that the five veto powers are the very member states that violate the Charter, violate human rights conventions, and will not allow the application of the ICC to their war crimes and other abuses.

On top of that, they are the countries that manufacture and sell weapons, and we know that weapons of war are possibly the most profitable product you can produce. So their vested interest is control, is the military capacity, is interference. It’s a neocolonial endeavor, an empire in reality, to control the world as the way they want to see it. Until that is changed and those five member states agree to dilute their power and play an honest role, I think we’re doomed. The UN has no capacity to stop the difficulties we’re faced with around the world.

Nicolas Davies:   That’s a pretty damning prognosis. In this century, we’re facing such incredible problems, between climate change and the threat of nuclear war still hanging over all of us, possibly more dangerous than ever before, because of the lack of treaties and the lack of cooperation between the nuclear powers, notably the U.S. and Russia. This is really an existential crisis for humanity.

Now there is also, of course, the UN General Assembly, and they did step up on nuclear weapons with the new Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which has now officially entered into force. And every year when it meets, the General Assembly regularly and almost unanimously condemns the U.S. sanctions regime against Cuba.

When I wrote my book about the war in Iraq, my final recommendations were that the senior American and British war criminals responsible for the war should be held criminally accountable, and that the U.S. and the U.K. should pay reparations to Iraq for the war. Could the General Assembly possibly be a venue to build support for Iraq to claim reparations from the U.S. and the U.K., or is there another venue where that would be more appropriate?

Denis Halliday:   I think you’re right on target. The tragedy is that the decisions of the Security Council are binding decisions. Every member state has got to apply and respect those decisions. So, if you violate a sanctions regime imposed by the Council as a member state, you’re in trouble. The General Assembly resolutions are not binding.

You’ve just referred to a very important decision, which is the decision about nuclear weapons. We’ve had a lot of decisions on banning various types of weapons over the years. Here in Ireland we were involved in anti-personnel mines and other things of that sort, and it was by a large number of member states, but not the guilty parties, not the Americans, not the Russians, not the Chinese, not the British. The ones who control the veto power game are the ones who do not comply. Just like Clinton was one of the proposers, I think, of the ICC [International Criminal Court], but when it came to the end of the day, the United States doesn’t accept it has a role vis-a-vis themselves and their war crimes The same is true of other large states that are the guilty parties in those cases.

So I would go back to your suggestion about the General Assembly. It could be enhanced, there’s no reason why it couldn’t be changed, but it requires tremendous courage on the part of member states. It also requires acceptance by the five veto powers that their day has come to an end, because, in reality, the UN carries very little cachet nowadays to send a UN mission into a country like Myanmar or Afghanistan.

I think we have no power left, we have no influence left, because they know who runs the organization, they know who makes the decisions. It’s not the Secretary-General. It’s not people like me. We are dictated to by the Security Council. I resigned, effectively, from the Security Council. They were my bosses during that particular period of my career.

I have a lecture I do on reforming the Security Council, making it a North-South representative body, which would find Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa in situ, and you’d get very different decisions, you’d get the sort of decisions we get in the General Assembly: much more balanced, much more aware of the world and its North and South and all those other variations. But of course, again, we can’t reform the Council until the five veto powers agree to that. That is the huge problem.

Nicolas Davies:   Yes, in fact, when that structure was announced in 1945 with the Security Council, the five Permanent Members and the veto, Albert Camus, who was the editor of the French Resistance newspaper Combat, wrote a front-page editorial saying this was the end of any idea of international democracy.

So, as with so many other issues, we live in these nominally democratic countries, but the people of a country like the United States are only really told what our leaders want us to know about how the world works. So reform of the Security Council is clearly needed, but it’s a massive process of education and democratic reform in countries around the world to actually build enough of a popular movement to demand that kind of change. In the meantime, the problems we’re facing are enormous.

Another thing that is very under-reported in the U.S. is that, out of desperation after twenty years of war in Afghanistan, Secretary Blinken has finally asked the UN to lead a peace process for a ceasefire between the U.S.-backed government and the Taliban and a political transition. That could move the conflict into the political realm and end the civil war that resulted from the U.S. invasion and occupation and endless bombing campaign.

So what do you think of that initiative? There is supposed to be a meeting in a couple of weeks in Istanbul, led by an experienced UN negotiator, Jean Arnault, who helped to bring peace to Guatemala at the end of its civil war, and then between Colombia and the FARC. The U.S. specifically asked China, Russia and Iran to be part of this process as well. Both sides in Afghanistan have agreed to come to Istanbul and at least see what they can agree on. So is that a constructive role that the UN can play? Does that offer a chance of peace for the people of Afghanistan?

Denis Halliday:   If I were a member of the Taliban and I was asked to negotiate with a government that is only in power because it’s supported by the United States, I would question whether it’s an even keel. Are we equally powerful, can we talk to each other one-to-one? The answer, I think, is no.

The UN chap, whoever he is, poor man, is going to have the same difficulty. He is representing the United Nations, a Security Council dominated by the United States and others, as the Afghans are perfectly well aware. The Taliban have been fighting for a helluva long time, and making no progress because of the interference of the U.S. troops, which are still on the ground. I just don’t think it’s an even playing-field.

So I’d be very surprised if that works. I absolutely hope it might. I would think, in my view, if you want a lasting relationship within a country, it’s got to be negotiated within the country, without military or other interference or fear of further bombing or attacks or all the rest of it. I don’t think we have any credibility, as a UN, under those circumstances. It’ll be a very tough slog.

Nicolas Davies:   Right. The irony is that the United States set aside the UN Charter when it attacked Yugoslavia in 1999 to carve out what is now the semi-recognized country of Kosovo, and then to attack Afghanistan and Iraq. The UN Charter, right at the beginning, at its heart, prohibits the threat or use of force by one country against another. But that is what the U.S. set aside. 

Denis Halliday:   And then, you have to remember, the U.S. is attacking a fellow member state of the United Nations, without hesitation, with no respect for the Charter. Perhaps people forget that Eleanor Roosevelt drove, and succeeded in establishing, the Declaration of Human Rights, an extraordinary achievement, which is still valid. It’s a biblical instrument for many of us who work in the UN.

So the neglect of the Charter and the spirit of the Charter and the wording of the Charter, by the five veto members, perhaps in Afghanistan it was Russia, now it’s the United States, the Afghanis have had foreign intervention up to their necks and beyond, and the British have been involved there since the 18th century almost. So they have my deepest sympathy, but I hope this thing can work, let’s hope it can.

Nicolas Davies:   I brought that up because the U.S., with its dominant military power after the end of the Cold War, made a very conscious choice that instead of living according to the UN Charter, it would live by the sword, by the law of the jungle: “might makes right.”

It took those actions because it could, because no other military force was there to stand up against it. At the time of the First Gulf War, a Pentagon consultant told the New York Times that, with the end of the Cold War, the U.S. could finally conduct military operations in the Middle East without worrying about starting World War III. So they took the demise of the Soviet Union as a green light for these systematic, widespread actions that violate the UN Charter.

But now, what is happening in Afghanistan is that the Taliban once again control half the country. We’re approaching the spring and the summer when the fighting traditionally gets worse, and so the U.S. is calling in the UN out of desperation because, frankly, without a ceasefire, their government in Kabul is just going to lose more territory. So the U.S. has chosen to live by the sword, and in this situation it’s now confronting dying by the sword.

Denis Halliday:   What’s tragic, Nicolas, is that, in our lifetime, the Afghanis ran their own country. They had a monarchy, they had a parliament – I met and interviewed women ministers from Afghanistan in New York – and they managed it. It was when the Russians interfered, and then the Americans interfered, and then Bin Laden set up his camp there, and that was justification for destroying what was left of Afghanistan.

And then Bush, Cheney and a few of the boys decided, although there was no justification whatsoever, to bomb and destroy Iraq, because they wanted to think that Saddam Hussein was involved with Al Qaeda, which of course was nonsense. They wanted to think he had weapons of mass destruction, which also was nonsense. The UN inspectors said that again and again, but nobody would believe them.

It’s deliberate neglect of the one last hope. The League of Nations failed, and the UN was the next best hope and we have deliberately turned our backs upon it, neglected it and distrusted it. When we get a good Secretary General like Hammarskjold, we murder him. He was definitely killed, because he was interfering in the dreams of the British in particular, and perhaps the Belgians, in Katanga. It’s a very sad story, and I don’t know where we go from here.

Nicolas Davies:   Right, well, where we seem to be going from here is to a loss of American power around the world, because the U.S. has so badly abused its power. In the U.S., we keep hearing that this is a Cold War between the U.S. and China, or maybe the U.S., China and Russia, but I think we all hopefully can work for a more multipolar world.

As you say, the UN Security Council needs reform, and hopefully the American people are understanding that we cannot unilaterally rule the world, that the ambition for a U.S. global empire is an incredibly dangerous pipe-dream that has really led us to an impasse.

Denis Halliday:   Perhaps the only good thing coming out of Covid-19 is the slow realization that, if everybody doesn’t get a vaccine, we fail, because we, the rich and the powerful with the money and the vaccines, will not be safe until we make sure the rest of the world is safe, from Covid and the next one that’s coming along the track undoubtedly.

And this implies that if we don’t do trade with China or other countries we have reservations about, because we don’t like their government, we don’t like communism, we don’t like socialism, whatever it is, we just have to live with that, because without each other we can’t survive. With the climate crisis and all the other issues related to that, we need each other more than ever perhaps, and we need collaboration. It’s just basic common sense that we work and live together.

The U.S. has something like 800 military bases around the world, of various sizes. China is certainly surrounded and this is a very dangerous situation, totally unnecessary. And now the rearming with fancy new nuclear weapons when we already have nuclear weapons that are twenty times bigger than the one that destroyed Hiroshima. Why on Earth? It’s just irrational nonsense to continue these programs, and it just doesn’t work for humanity.

I would hope the U.S. would start perhaps retreating and sorting out its own domestic problems, which are quite substantial. I’m reminded every day when I look at CNN here in my home about the difficulties of race and all the other things that you’re well aware of that need to be addressed. Being policeman to the world was a bad decision.

Nicolas Davies:   Absolutely. So the political, economic and military system we live under is not only genocidal at this point, but also suicidal. Thank you, Denis, for being a voice of reason in this insane world.

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Nicolas J. S. Davies is a researcher for CODEPINK, a freelance writer and the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.

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The Holy month of Ramadan has begun in Afghanistan, and it will also be a month of waiting.

It began on April 13th and this year it is filled with a sense of urgency and anticipation as to whether the United States will withdraw from Afghanistan and fulfill its commitments.

According to MSM reports Biden has realized that there is neither a military nor a political solution to Afghanistan’s issues, or rather that they can’t be solved through outside intervention.

To MSM’s shock, this withdrawal will not happen by the pre-agreed date of May 1st, 2021, but rather prior to the 20th anniversary of September 11th. Other NATO troops in the country will follow suit with the same timeline. Britain will withdraw nearly all its troops from Afghanistan along with Washington’s forces.

It is unknown how the Taliban will accept this, as there have been warnings that attacks on US and NATO personnel and positions would be renewed if the May 1st deadline isn’t honored.

In reality, the fighting in Afghanistan is nowhere near finished, and has not subsided. Afghan Security forces frequently clash with the Taliban, and attack their positions and vice versa.

Overall, after the signing of the Doha agreement, the number of Taliban attacks in Afghanistan increased by 24%. This, of course, was announced by the Afghan authorities.

On April 12th, Taliban reports said that in clashes throughout the country, at least 54 Afghan security forces were killed and 13 injured.

At least 23 Afghan security forces were killed in Taliban attacks on the first day of Ramadan.

Afghan Security forces reportedly killed 91 Taliban and injured 43 more, in “reciprocation” operations on the same day.

Clashes continue despite President Ashraf Ghani and the head of the Supreme Council for National Reconciliation, Abdullah Abdullah calling for peace during the celebration of the holy month.

There is a complete standstill, both in terms of fighting and in negotiations. The Taliban said that they would not attend any conference or political forum aimed at normalization until all foreign troops leave the country.

This mostly relates to the recent announcement of an Afghanistan peace conference to be held in Turkey, between April 24th and May 4th. The Taliban completely rejected attending it if the United States doesn’t fulfill its commitments.

In a statement the group said that any peace would only be possible as an internal solution between Afghanistan’s own parties and that ambiguous and unclear statements benefited nobody and contributed to peace least of all.

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Pfizer Vaccine May Put People at Higher Risk for COVID Variants, Israeli Study Shows

By Megan Redshaw, April 14 2021

Israeli researchers found people who received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine were eight times more likely to be infected with the South African variant, and people who received one dose of the vaccine were more likely to get the UK variant.

There is Hope. Coming to Grips with This Covid Chaos

By Peter Koenig, April 14 2021

There is hope that we may come to grips with this covid-chaos – worldwide deliberate systematic destruction of social systems and economies, country by country.

Fearmongering Goes Nuclear — ‘We’re in Brand-New Pandemic’

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, April 14 2021

In some areas of the world, including Florida, where I live, life has been fairly normal for almost a full year. Restaurants opened last April, and people have flocked here from out of state and even from other countries to enjoy the fresh air and open businesses. This clearly does not benefit the globalists’ agenda, so, right on cue, fearmongering is ramping up another notch.

Russia Deploys Two Armies, Three Airborne Units to Counter Threat from 40,000 NATO Troops on Its Border

By Rick Rozoff, April 14 2021

Major Russian officials today have warned of military threats posed by the U.S.-led thirty-nation North Atlantic Treaty Organization to its western border: its entire western border. And its northern one as well.

Militarize the Southern Border: Joe Biden Strikes Deal with Mexico and Central American States to Curb Migration

By Abayomi Azikiwe, April 14 2021

A crisis of migration into the United States from Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras has resulted in negotiations by the White House with the governments of these countries aimed at preventing people from crossing the southern border.

Cuba’s COVID-19 Vaccine Candidates: Soberana 2 and Abdala

By Dr. Birsen Filip, April 14 2021

Cuba is the first nation in Latin America and the Caribbean to bring a COVID-19 vaccine to clinical trials, in spite of the immense challenges it faces from the genocidal U.S. commercial and financial blockade.

Whither India-Russia Ties?

By M. K. Bhadrakumar, April 14 2021

On Monday, the prominent Moscow daily Kommersant commented that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s visit to New Delhi on April 5-6 “is not going to be easy because relations between the two countries are facing an increasing number of risks, which particularly include the Chinese factor test.”

Ramsey Clark – One of the Greatest

By Dr. Chandra Muzaffar, April 14 2021

The former US Attorney-General had spent decades in the struggle for human rights both when he was in government and after he ceased to be Attorney-General. He had been in the forefront of so many human rights causes that it will not be possible to offer some reflections on them in a single obituary.

CDC: 3,005 Recorded Deaths in VAERS Following COVID-19 Experimental “Vaccines” – More than Total Vaccine Deaths for Past 13+ Years

By Brian Shilhavy, April 14 2021

The CDC announced today 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 surpassed 3000 deaths since December of 2020.

Monsanto Fined $289 Million for Failing to Warn Users of Glyphosate-Cancer Link

By GM Free Me, April 14 2021

A San Francisco jury has found that the widely used herbicide, glyphosate (also known as Roundup) can cause cancer. The jury returned its verdict in the case of a former groundskeeper, Dewayne ‘Lee’ Johnson, who developed terminal cancer after regular exposure to the herbicide.

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Against all expectations, right-wing Guillermo Lasso won the Ecuadorean presidential election on April 11. It was anticipated that Andrés Arauz, a protégé of former leftist President Rafael Correa who famously protected Julian Assange, would win the election. To everyone’s surprise, Lasso won with 52.50% of the vote, while Arauz obtained 47.50% of the vote. This was despite Arauz winning the first round of the presidential election in February with 32.72% of the vote. Although Arauz had favorable polls in the second round, Lasso won the election and Washington could not be happier with this outcome.

The U.S. is obviously happy with the result as Ecuador can now be considered another friendly country in South America, alongside Brazil and Colombia. Ecuador, as a small and politically divided country wedged between Peru and Colombia, is experiencing an economic crisis aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic and is in the middle of an intense war of influence between the U.S. and China. During the Corréiste era (2007-2017), Beijing became a strategic partner, a fact that former U.S. President Donald Trump attempted to overcome by granting loans to Ecuador.

Essentially the election was a choice for Ecuador – alongside the U.S., or a diversified policy that includes friendly relations with China. Lasso, a rich ex-banker, presented himself as someone who supports not only the U.S., but also the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Effectively, Lasso’s accession to the presidency is a continuity of the unpopular and outgoing President Lenin Moreno.

It is remembered that Moreno initially presented himself with leftist tendencies and supposedly aligned to Correa. Elected in 2017 with the promise to continue the “Citizen Revolution,” he instead approached Washington and the IMF by concluding in 2019 and 2020, respectively, loans of $4.2 and $6.5 billion. This was achieved by sacrificing Julian Assange in 2019, an asylum seeker at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Moreno described Assange as a “miserable hacker” and a “spoiled brat.”

These agreements with international financial institutions forced Ecuador, heavily indebted by the fall in oil prices, to remove fuel subsidies and thus cause prices to rise. As a result, riots rocked the country in 2019, forcing Moreno to leave the capital of Quito. Under Moreno, Correa stressed, “Ecuador has become the U.S.’s regional bridgehead, and the U.S. is not willing to lose its new ally.” Correa in the same communique even referred to the possibility of the U.S. establishing a military base in the Galapagos Islands.

For a decade, Correa had been the herald of “21st century socialism” by stabilizing the country and relying on oil to reduce chronic inequalities, just like Hugo Chavez did in Venezuela. He also broke with the IMF and closed the American base in Manta in 2009.

By exchanging Ecuadorean oil with Beijing for cash, Correa wanted to reduce his country’s dependency on Washington. Correa planed to diversify Ecuador’s alliances, and in this context, there was rapprochements with China. There were breaks with the U.S and the IMF, but American companies remained in the Andean country. So it was not a policy of one or the other, but a policy of being friendly to all states and not subservient to any.

However, the Monroe Doctrine still has a bright future ahead of it with the new Ecuadorian President. The victory of Lasso is linked to a period of multiple crises in the region, which results in political oscillations, passing from one extreme to another. Although the left is still the leading political force in the country with 47% of the population, the new Ecuadorian President brought together all the anti-Leftists, well beyond what he represents.

This is seen by the fact that Lasso’s political party, Creating Opportunities, has only 12 seats out of 137 in the National Assembly. Comparatively, Arauz’s Union for Hope has the most seats in the National Assembly, 31 in total, while second placed Pachakutik Plurinational Unity Movement – New Country, another leftist party, has 27 seats in the National Assembly. Therefore, although Lasso may have won the presidential election, he will have difficulty in the National Assembly as he has little control and influence over it.

The core of the Monroe Doctrine is “America for Americans” – which although sounds like an effort for self-determination, is in actual fact a front for Washington’s expansion into Latin America. Lasso serves Washington’s Monroe Doctrine as he will not only continue to indebt Ecuador to the IMF, but will work towards reducing Chinese economic penetration into the country. It is little wonder that there was a “soar” in Ecuador’s bonds as “Millionaire Banker Wins Presidency,” as a Bloomberg headline read.

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The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is working on a COVID vaccine that will work on all variants and has developed an implantable microchip that it says will continuously monitor the human body for signs of the virus.

Retired Colonel Matt Hepburn, an army infectious disease physician heading up DARPA’s response to the pandemic, appeared on 60 Minutes to demonstrate the technology.

Holding up a vial of green tissue-like gel, which contains the chip, Hepburn proclaimed

“You put it underneath your skin and what that tells you is that there are chemical reactions going on inside the body, and that signal means you are going to have symptoms tomorrow.”

“It’s like a ‘check engine’ light,” Hepburn added, noting that those with the chip “would get the signal, then self-administer a blood draw and test themselves on site.”

“We can have that information in three to five minutes,” Hepburn continued, adding “As you truncate that time, as you diagnose and treat, what you do is you stop the infection in its tracks.”

Watch:

Hepburn also declared that DARPA has developed a filter to remove the virus from the blood via a dialysis machine, and that the FDA has approved it, and it has already been used on 300 patients.

The 60 Minutes report also highlights how the Pentagon has hundreds of tissue samples from soldiers and sailors infected with pathogens all over the world, including the 1918 Spanish Flu which killed millions globally.

Pentagon scientist Dr Kayvon Modjarrad also highlighted that the military is developing a one size fits all vaccine for COVID, commenting

“This is not science fiction, this is science fact.”

“We have the tools, we have the technology, to do this all right now,” he said explaining that the goal is to inoculate people against potentially deadly viruses that have not even appeared yet.

“Killer viruses that we haven’t seen or even imagined, we’ll be protected against,” Modjarrad declared.

It was recently revealed that a third of active duty service members opted out of taking the COVID vaccine, with sources claiming the actual figure is probably closer to half.

The finding prompted the likes of TIME to declare that ‘vaccine hesitancy’ is threatening national security, and that while “These troops may not be co-opted by domestic terrorists, but they are clearly influenced by conspiracy theorists online and they just don’t trust basic science.”

The DARPA announcement of implantable microchip technology tied to the virus and a vaccine will likely only serve to enforce concerns the media continually describes as ‘conspiracy theories.’

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Israeli researchers found people who received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine were eight times more likely to be infected with the South African variant, and people who received one dose of the vaccine were more likely to get the UK variant.

A new study by Israeli researchers found that a South African variant of COVID may put people who have been vaccinated with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine at higher risk of breakthrough infection compared to unvaccinated people.

The study also showed an increased incidence of the UK variant in those who received one dose of the Pfizer shot.

The study, released April 10, reviewed the positive COVID-19 test results of 800 people — 400 people who tested positive for COVID 14 days or more after they received one or two doses of the Pfizer vaccine against 400 unvaccinated people to see if those vaccinated were more likely to be infected with the UK or South African variant compared with unvaccinated individuals.

The South African variant, B.1.351, was found to make up about 1% of all COVID cases across all the people studied, according to the study by Tel Aviv University and Israel’s largest healthcare provider, Clalit.

But among patients who had received two doses of the vaccine, the variant’s prevalence rate was eight times higher than in those unvaccinated — 5.4% versus 0.7%, Reuters reported.

The research suggests the vaccine is less effective against the South African variant, compared with the original COVID variant and a variant first identified in Britain that had comprised nearly all COVID cases in Israel, researchers said.

“We found a disproportionately higher rate of the South African variant among people vaccinated with a second dose, compared to the unvaccinated group,” said Tel Aviv University’s Adi Stern, who headed the research. “This means that the South African variant is able, to some extent, to break through the vaccine’s protection.”

“Based on patterns in the general population, we would have expected just one case of the South African variant, but we saw eight,” Stern told The Times of Israel. “Obviously, this result didn’t make me happy.”

However, Stern said that the sample size was too small to put a figure on its increased ability. “We can say it’s less effective, but more research is needed to establish exactly how much,” she said.

The study also examined the UK B.1.1.7 variant’s ability to break through the Pfizer vaccine’s defenses compared to the original strain. No difference was found in the UK variant’s ability to infect fully vaccinated individuals — those who received two doses. However, the study showed an increased incidence of the UK variant in those who had received only one dose of Pfizer’s vaccine.

According to researchers, the results of the study align with those from in vitro neutralization assays that showed a large reduction in neutralization against the South African variant, and little-to-no reduction against the UK variant in fully vaccinated individuals.

Researchers cautioned the study only had a small sample size of people infected with the South African variant because of its rarity in Israel, and the study was not intended to deduce overall vaccine effectiveness against any variant as it did not look at overall infection rates.

The study still requires peer review to verify the results, Reuters reported. Professor Ran Balicer, director of research at Clalit, said the study was “very important.”

“It is the first in the world to be based on real-world data, showing that the vaccine is less effective against the South Africa variant, compared to both the original virus and the British variant,” Balicer said.

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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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In some areas of the world, including Florida, where I live, life has been fairly normal for almost a full year.  Restaurants opened last April, and people have flocked here from out of state and even from other countries to enjoy the fresh air and open businesses.  This clearly does not benefit the globalists’ agenda, so, right on cue, fearmongering is ramping up another notch. The latest fear du jour is a “double-mutation” of SARS-CoV-2, said to target younger people.

April 5, 2021, the New York Post1 reported the “double mutant” COVID-19 strain has been detected in California — a state that has experienced some of the longest and most restrictive pandemic measures in the U.S. At the time of that report, one case of the variant had been confirmed by a Stanford laboratory. Seven suspected cases were still being screened.

Fear Du Jour: Vaccine-Evading Variants

The double-mutation virus allegedly has two mutations previously found in two separate variants, which “help it latch onto cells,” the New York Post writes.2 What they want you to fear now is that this new variant may be more resistant to vaccine antibodies. Younger people might also be more susceptible to it.3

According to the Observer,4 “COVID-19 variants could beat vaccines within a year if pharma policy doesn’t change.” In other words, they claim that unless sufficiently high numbers of the global population are vaccinated within nine to 12 months, the virus might mutate to evade first-generation vaccines, rendering them useless.

Oklahoma has also confirmed the presence of variants — one that initially emerged in the U.K., and another that emerged in Brazil. According to The Oklahoman,5 “The faster people can get vaccinated, the slower the virus will spread and fewer people will be exposed to variant strains of the virus, said Dr. Dale Bratzler, the University of Oklahoma’s chief COVID officer.”

In other words, they’re putting everyone’s feet to the fire. Hurry, hurry. Get the vaccine now. If you wait, it’s going to be your fault that the vaccine fails and everyone dies. CNN6 also warns that, unless Americans “double down on safety measures until more people are vaccinated,” more contagious variants will spread like wildfire.

According to CNN, the variant known as B.1.1.7 “is changing the pandemic’s playbook and could spell trouble for younger groups that haven’t yet been vaccinated.”

‘We’re in a Brand-New Pandemic’

Dr. Peter Hotez went so far as to state that B.1.1.7 should be thought of as a “brand-new virus” that is “acting differently from anything we’ve seen before.”7 This “we’re in a brand-new pandemic” narrative is also being parroted by Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.8 Osterholm, however, claims that current vaccines are, in fact, effective against the B.1.1.7 variant.

According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, clusters of positive cases among young people have been “connected to participation in youth sports and extracurricular activities.” As a result, the CDC is now suggesting that such activities should be limited, CNN reports.9

If you’ve got the creeping suspicion that we’re about to face another round of lockdowns around the U.S., your spidey senses are probably working just fine. In a recent interview, Osterholm said:10

“There isn’t a country in the world right now that has seen a big increase of this B117 that is not locking down. We’re the exception. And so the bottom line message from all of these countries is, ‘we could not control this virus until we did lock down.’

We have to do a better job of helping the public understand that this is short term. All we’re trying to do is get through this surge of cases that are going to occur over the next six to eight to 10 weeks because of this B117 variant.”

Where, oh where, have we heard that before? “It’s going to be a short-term lockdown, just a couple of weeks to flatten the curve and ensure a functioning hospital system.” Right. Those short-term measures ended up lasting many months in many places, even though hospitals were at no risk of being overrun.

We now have a year’s-worth of data showing that lockdowns simply do not work. They cause far more harm than good. Yet they’re trying to sell us the same non-solution using the same justification once more. As the old saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

Dissenting Is Now Domestic Terrorism

The problem we now face is that logical thinking is being vilified. According to pediatrician and California state senator Dr. Richard Pan, people who criticize the COVID-19 vaccine ought to be labeled as domestic terrorists. In an opinion piece in The Washington Post, he writes:11

“Vaccines don’t stop viruses. Vaccinations do. This common public health saying means a vaccine does no good if we can’t get it into people’s arms … but the overall goal of vaccinating a large majority of the U.S. population may ultimately be hampered by the anti-vaccine movement unless steps are taken to limit its impact …

[T]o poison public opinion against vaccinations, could result in countless American deaths. That is akin to domestic terrorism … Some anti-vaccine leaders’ financial well-being depends on endangering everyone else’s health and safety. Social media companies should not be complicit in this dangerous movement … Getting vaccinated is a patriotic act. So is speaking up to support public health efforts.”

With that manipulative and hostile diatribe against law-abiding citizens, Pan secures a lead role in the medical fascism directorate that is spreading faster than the virus.

He even stresses that local and public health officials, not politicians, should be relied upon to lead us to safety. In other words, he’s promoting iatrarchy — meaning government by physicians — which as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. points out has been catastrophic in every instance that it’s been tried. In his foreword to my new book, “The Truth About COVID-19,” Kennedy notes:

“The medical profession has not proven itself an energetic defender of democratic institutions or civil rights. Virtually every doctor in Germany took lead roles in the Third Reich’s project to eliminate mental defectives, homosexuals, handicapped citizens and Jews.

So many hundreds of German physicians participated in Hitler’s worst atrocities — including managing mass murder and unspeakable experiments at the death camps — that the allies had to stage separate “Medical Trials” at Nuremberg. Not a single prominent German doctor or medical association raised their voice in opposition to these projects.

So it’s unsurprising that, instead of demanding blue-ribbon safety science and encouraging honest, open and responsible debate on the science, the badly compromised and newly empowered government health officials charged with managing the COVID-19 pandemic response collaborated with mainstream and social media to shut down discussion on key public health and civil rights questions.”

War on ‘Disinformation’ Is Really War on Dissent

Having a frank and open discussion about pros and cons, risks and benefits of vaccination or any other pandemic measure is more likely to result in optimal public health than shoving just one side of the argument down everyone’s throat. But optimal public health is not what the technocratic, globalist elite are after. Their end goal is to manipulate the masses into obedience so that they can acquire even more of their assets.

As noted by Ash Staub in his article12 “The War on Disinformation Is a War on Dissent,” the terms “disinformation” and “misinformation” are simply used “to excuse incompetence and punish opposition.” He provides a number of examples proving that “theories or facts that don’t fit the official narrative, despite being true, are treated as misinformation or disinformation.”

I would add that this is particularly true when it comes to health information, seeing how it’s virtually impossible to find a single remedy or strategy that works 100% for every single person. There are no absolute truths in medicine. It all depends. Many individual factors come into play. Staub continues:

“Whereas misinformation merely refers to inaccurate or misleading information, the label of disinformation implies an intent to deceive. Both have served as the source of much consternation and hand-wringing from media figures and politicians alike …

While our inability as a society to agree on basic facts is certainly a problem, what should be self-evident is that misinformation and disinformation naturally abound when there is very little trust in sense-making institutions.

If the information sources that are deemed ‘authoritative’ are so often wrong or misleading, and inspire little public confidence, is it any wonder that people turn to alternatives? Misinformation and disinformation are natural consequences of our public institutions’ inconsistency and incompetence.”

Most Americans Think Government Officials Are Lying

According to Staub, 69% of Americans “believe their government intentionally lies to them,” and 61% “believe the news media deliberately ignores certain stories or information.” These are record-low rates of confidence, and government and media would do well to take notice of the fact that censorship only erodes trust, it does not build it.

The fact that they turn to censorship rather than trying to be more forthright suggests they are in fact lying and have no intention of stopping. Since they refuse to tell the truth, the only option they have is to silence counter-narratives in the hope that, over time, objections will die out for lack of support.

The problem is, truth has an appeal of its own, and so, in what appears to be a desperate effort to maintain control, “disinformation” is now being called out as “dangerous,” indeed a form of “domestic terrorism,” because if people listen to “bad” information, they might make decisions that will harm them.

Basically, they’re saying that you’re too stupid to think for yourself. You’ll buy whatever you’re sold, no questions asked, and so they have to make sure you’re exposed only to information that will benefit you. Everyone on the planet ought to be insulted by censoring, because, ultimately, it’s a sign that government and media have zero trust in your ability to make decisions for yourself.

“Just last month, former NSA general counsel Glenn Gerstell called for an ‘integrated disinformation center within the federal government’ that would employ ‘counterterrorism’ tactics to combat disinformation.

It’s not exactly clear what these counterterrorism tactics would entail, but the idea that institutions that so often lie to the public should be able to decide what is and what is not ‘disinformation,’ with the help of a surveillance apparatus designed to combat terrorism, is truly unnerving,” Staub writes.

“When the only acceptable information is that approved by the ruling administration, there can be no meaningful check on state power. Consent for the establishment agenda can easily be manufactured, and opposition can simply be deemed ‘disinformation’ and treated as ‘dangerous,’ deserving of censorship and removal. With a silenced opposition, power can therefore be exercised with impunity.”

Understanding the Plan Robs Their Power

In a nutshell, authoritarians are taking extreme steps to control the public discourse because they know we don’t trust them. What’s more, they also realize that if people understand the grand plan, their power over the people will be stripped away. The public can only be controlled as long as we don’t understand what they’re trying to accomplish.

So, what are they trying to accomplish? As detailed in many previous articles, it boils down to the global implementation of a new economic system based on technocratic ideology, that will so radically transform and dehumanize society that they simply cannot “sell” it with honesty. The vast majority would be horrified and refuse to go along with it.

Their only option is to sneak it in under the guise of something else. Right now, that something else is the so-called COVID-19 pandemic. Under the pretext of public health safety, we’re told we need censorship, lockdowns, social distancing, mask wearing, new domestic terrorism laws and vaccine passports.

We need none of those things in order to optimize public health. Those things, however, are necessary for the swift and easeful implementation of the Great Reset.

technocracy and the great reset

Supreme Court Justice Speaks Out Against Censorship

Needless to say, without Big Tech monopolies aiding and abetting, the current level of censorship simply could not occur. The good news is, we may slowly be inching toward a solution. As noted by The Federalist,13 “Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas offered a roadmap to eliminating rampant social media censorship from online monopolies on Monday.”

They’re referring to an April 5, 2021, ruling14 for writ of certiorari on the case of President Joe Biden v. Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, in which Thomas weighed in on the ability of social media giants to control free speech. The Federalist explains:15

“Thomas concurred in an opinion to send the case back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit with instructions to dismiss as moot, now that Biden is in the White House.

The case, launched in August, questions whether the First Amendment strips government officials of their ability to block third-party accounts on Twitter if the personal account is used to conduct official business. The lower court ruled Trump violated the First Amendment when blocking users on the platform, which served as a public forum.”

However, while then-President Trump was found to have violated free speech rights by blocking certain Twitter followers, Twitter faced no repercussions when it deleted Trump’s account in its entirety, thereby violating the First Amendment rights of 89 million people, which is the number of followers he had when the account was taken down. As noted by Thomas:16

“It seems rather odd to say that something is a government forum when a private company has unrestricted authority to do away with it. The disparity between Twitter’s control and Mr. Trump’s control is stark, to say the least.”

Immunity Without Corresponding Responsibility 

Thomas highlights the monopoly power of Big Tech, stressing that when a company has unilateral control over a public forum, it ceases to be a public forum. The solution, then, might be to turn them into public utilities, which aren’t allowed to discriminate against any customer.

“Today’s digital platforms provide avenues for historically unprecedented amounts of speech, including speech by government actors. Also unprecedented, however, is the concentrated control of so much speech in the hands of a few private parties,” Thomas writes.

“We will soon have no choice but to address how our legal doctrines apply to highly concentrated, privately owned information infrastructure such as digital platforms … It changes nothing that these platforms are not the sole means for distributing speech or information.

A person always could choose to avoid the toll bridge or train and instead swim the Charles River or hike the Oregon Trail. But in assessing whether a company exercises substantial market power, what matters is whether the alternatives are comparable. For many of today’s digital platforms, nothing is.

If the analogy between common carriers and digital platforms is correct, then an answer may arise for dissatisfied platform users who would appreciate not being blocked: laws that restrict the platform’s right to exclude.

When a platform’s unilateral control is reduced, a government official’s account begins to better resemble a ‘government-controlled spac[e]’ … This analysis may help explain the Second Circuit’s intuition that part of Mr. Trump’s Twitter account was a public forum.

But that intuition has problems. First, if market power is a predicate for common carriers (as some scholars suggest), nothing in the record evaluates Twitter’s market power. Second, and more problematic, neither the Second Circuit nor respondents have identified any regulation that restricts Twitter from removing an account that would otherwise be a ‘government-controlled space.’

Even if digital platforms are not close enough to common carriers, legislatures might still be able to treat digital platforms like places of public accommodation … ‘[I]t stands to reason that if Congress may demand that telephone companies operate as common carriers, it can ask the same of’ digital platforms. Turner, 512 U. S., at 684 (opinion of O’Connor, J.).

That is especially true because the space constraints on digital platforms are practically nonexistent (unlike on cable companies), so a regulation restricting a digital platform’s right to exclude might not appreciably impede the platform from speaking …

Yet Congress does not appear to have passed these kinds of regulations. To the contrary, it has given digital platforms ‘immunity from certain types of suits’ … with respect to content they distribute, 47 U. S. C. §230, but it has not imposed corresponding responsibilities, like nondiscrimination, that would matter here.

None of this analysis means, however, that the First Amendment is irrelevant until a legislature imposes common carrier or public accommodation restrictions — only that the principal means for regulating digital platforms is through those methods.”

Thomas Confirms Illegality of Government-Sponsored Censorship

Thomas makes another very important point in his statement. He points out that while private entities are “not ordinarily constrained by the First Amendment,” they are indeed so constrained “if the government coerces or induces it to take action the government itself would not be permitted to do, such as censor expression of a lawful viewpoint.”

In other words, a private company has the right to decide what the kinds of speech it will allow and which it will not, BUT, if government officials demand that they censor an otherwise lawful viewpoint on their behalf, then that company is liable for having violated the First Amendment.

This is pertinent right now, as elected officials are getting ever more belligerent in their demands that social media platforms censor certain kinds of speech, such as “anti-vaccine” material. As detailed in “Free Speech Threatened by Censorship Extremists,” what they’re doing is illegal, yet they’re doing it anyway. As noted by Thomas:

“The government cannot accomplish through threats of adverse government action what the Constitution prohibits it from doing directly … Under this doctrine, plaintiffs might have colorable claims against a digital platform if it took adverse action against them in response to government threats.”

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Notes

1, 2 New York Post April 5, 2021

3, 8, 10 Yahoo News April 4, 2021

4 Observer March 30, 2021

5 The Oklahoman February 22, 2021

6, 7, 9 CNN April 6, 2021

11 Washington Post February 28, 2021

12 Human Events February 4, 2021

13, 15 The Federalist April 5, 2021

14, 16 Ruling for writ of certiorari, President Joe Biden v. Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, April 5, 2021 (PDF)

The Plot Against Jordan’s King Abdullah

April 14th, 2021 by David Hearst

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***

For once, just for once, US President Joe Biden got something right in the Middle East, and I say this conscious of his abysmal record in the region.

In accepting the intelligence he was passed by the Jordanians that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was up to his ears in a plot to destabilise the rule of King Abdullah, Biden brought the scheme to a premature halt. Biden did well to do so.

His statement that the US was behind Abdullah had immediate consequences for the other partner in this scheme, Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel.

While bin Salman was starving Jordan of funds (according to former Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher, the Saudis have not provided any direct bilateral assistance since 2014), Netanyahu was starving the kingdom of water.

This is water that Israel siphons off the River Jordan. Under past agreements, Israel has supplied Jordan with water, and when Jordan asks for an additional amount, Israel normally agrees without delay. Not this year: Netanyahu refused, allegedly in retaliation for an incident in which his helicopter was refused Jordanian airspace. He quickly changed his mind after a call from US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to his counterpart, Gabi Ashkenazi.

Had former US President Donald Trump still been in power, it is doubtful whether any of this would have happened.

Without Washington’s overt support, King Abdullah would now be in serious trouble: the victim of a two-pronged offensive from Saudi Arabia and Israel, his population seething with discontent, and his younger half-brother counting the days until he could take over.

The problem with Abdullah

But why were bin Salman and Netanyahu keen to put the skids under an ally like Abdullah?

Abdullah, a career soldier, is not exactly an opposition figure in the region. He of all people is not a Bashar al-Assad, Recep Tayyip Erdogan or Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Abdullah was fully signed up to the counter-revolution against the Arab Spring. Jordan joined the Saudi-led anti-Islamic State coalition, deployed aircraft to target the Houthis in Yemen, and withdrew its ambassador from Iran after the Saudi embassy in Tehran and consul in Mashhad were sacked and Saudi Arabia consequently cut diplomatic relations.

He attended the informal summit on a yacht in the Red Sea, convened to organise the fight against the influence of Turkey and Iran in the Middle East. That was in late 2015.

In January 2016, Abdullah told US congressmen in a private briefing that Turkey was exporting terrorists to Syria, a statement he denied making afterwards. But the remarks were documented in a Jordanian foreign ministry readout passed to MEE.

Jordan’s special forces trained men that Libyan general Khalifa Haftar used in his failed attempt to take Tripoli. This was the pet project of the UAE.

Abdullah also agreed with the Saudis and Emiratis on a plan to replace Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas with Mohammed Dahlan, the Emirati- and Israeli-preferred choice of successor.

Why then, should this stalwart of the cause now be considered by his Arab allies, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, an inconvenience that needs to be dealt with?

Insufficiently loyal

The answer partly lies in the psychology of bin Salman. It is not good enough to be partially signed up to his agenda. As far as he is concerned, you are either in or out.

Under Abdullah, Jordan never quite managed to be fully in. As one former Jordanian government minister told me:

“Politically, Mohammed bin Salman and his father were never very close to the Hashemites. King Salman does not have any affinity to the Hashemites that his other brothers might have had. So on the political front, there is no affinity, no empathy.

“But there is also a feeling [in Riyadh] that Jordan and others should be with us or against us. So we were not completely with them on Iran. We were not completely with them on Qatar. We were not completely with them on Syria. We did what we could and I don’t think we should have gone further, but to them, that was not enough.”

Abdullah’s equivocation certainly was not enough for the intended centrepiece of the new era, Saudi Arabia’s normalisation of relations with Israel.

Here, Jordan would have been directly involved and King Abdullah was having none of it. Had he gone along with the Trump plan, his kingdom – a careful balance between Jordanians and Palestinians – would have been in a state of insurrection.

In addition, Abdullah could not escape the fact that he was a Hashemite, whose legitimacy stems in part from Jordan’s role as custodian of Al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy sites in Jerusalem. This, too, was being threatened by the Al Sauds.

The importance of Aqaba

But the plan itself was regarded by both bin Salman and Netanyahu as too big to stop. I personalise this, because in both Saudi Arabia and Israel, there are experienced foreign policy and intelligence hands who appreciate how quickly this plan would have destabilised Jordan and Israel’s vulnerable eastern border.

The plan has been years in the preparation and the subject of clandestine meetings between the Saudi prince and the Israeli leader. At the centre of it lies Jordan’s sole access to the Red Sea, the strategic port of Aqaba.

The two cities of Aqaba and Ma’an were part of the kingdom of Hejaz from 1916 to 1925. In May 1925, Ibn Saud surrendered Aqaba and Ma’an and they became part of the British Emirate of Transjordan.

It would be another 40 years before the two independent countries would agree on a Jordan-Saudi border. Jordan got 19 kilometres of coastline on the Gulf of Aqaba and 6,000 square kilometres inland, while Saudi Arabia got 7,000 square kilometres of land.

For the new kid on the block, bin Salman, a prince who was always sensitive about his legitimacy, reclaiming Saudi influence over Aqaba in a big trade deal with Israel would be a big part of his claim to restoring Saudi dominance over its hinterland.

And the trade with Israel would be big. Bin Salman is spending $500bn constructing the city of Neom, which is eventually supposed to straddle Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt. Sitting at the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba, the Jordanian port would be firmly in Saudi sights.

H.E. Bassem Awadallah, CEO, Tomoh Advisory at #FII2019 - YouTube

This is where Bassem Awadallah, the former chief of Jordan’s royal court, comes in. Two years before he definitively broke with King Abdullah, and while he was still Jordan’s envoy to Riyadh, Awadallah negotiated the launch of something called the Saudi-Jordanian Coordination Council, a vehicle that Jordanian officials at the time said would “unblock billions of dollars” for the cash-starved Hashemite kingdom.

Awadallah promised that the council would invest billions of Saudi dollars in Jordan’s leading economic sectors, focusing on the Aqaba Special Economic Zone.

Awadallah was also close to the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed bin Zayed, who had his own agenda in Jordan. He wanted to ensure that the Muslim Brotherhood and the forces of political Islam were permanently eradicated from the country, something Abdullah has refused to do, although he is no supporter.

The money, of course, never materialised. Saudi support for the kingdom diminished to a trickle, and according to an informed source, Muasher, Saudi funds stopped almost completely after 2014.

The price for turning on the tap of Saudi finance was too high for Abdullah to pay. It was total subservience to Riyadh. Under this plan, Jordan would have become a satellite of Riyadh, much as Bahrain has become.

Netanyahu had his own sub-agenda in the huge trade that would flow from Neom once Saudi Arabia had formally recognised Israel.

A confirmed enemy of the Oslo plan to set up a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, Netanyahu and the Israeli right have always eyed annexation of Area C and the Jordan Valley, which comprises 60 percent of the West Bank. Under this new Nakba, the Palestinians living there, denied Israeli citizenship, would be slowly forced to move to Jordan. This could only happen under a Saudi-oriented plan, in which Jordanian workers could travel freely and work in Saudi Arabia. As it is, remittances from the Jordanian workforce in Saudi Arabia are an economic lifeblood to the bankrupt kingdom.

The money pouring into Jordan, accompanied by a  mobile workforce of Jordanians and  stateless Palestinians, would finally put to bed grandiose visions of a Palestinian state, and with it the two-state solution. On this, Netanyahu and bin Salman are as one: treat them as a mobile workforce, not citizens of a future state.

Hussein’s favoured son

That Prince Hamzah should be seen as the means by which Jordan is enlisted to this plan represents the final irony of this bizarre tale.

If the Hashemite blood runs deep in any veins, it is surely in his. He was King Hussein’s favoured son. In a letter sent to his brother Prince Hassan in 1999, King Hussein wrote:

“Hamzeh, may God give him long life, has been envied since childhood because he was close to me, and because he wanted to know all matters large and small, and all details of the history of his family. He wanted to know about the struggle of his brothers and of his countrymen. I have been touched by his devotion to his country and by his integrity and magnanimity as he stayed beside me, not moving unless I forced him from time to time to carry out some duty on occasions that did not exceed the fingers on one hand.”

Abdullah broke the agreement he made with his father on his death bed when he replaced his half-brother with his son, Hussein, as crown prince in 2004.

But if Hashemite pride in and knowledge of Jordan’s history runs deep in Hamzah, he of all princes would have soon realised the cost to Jordan of accepting bin Salman’s billions and Netanyahu’s tacit encouragement, just as his father did.

Hamzah’s friends ardently dispute they are part of this plot and downplay connections with Awadallah. Hamzah only owns up to one thing: that he is immensely concerned at how low Jordan has fallen under years of misrule. In this, Hamzah is 100 percent right.

It is clear what has to happen now. King Abdullah should finally see that he must completely overhaul the Jordanian political system, by calling for free and fair elections and abiding by their result. Only that will unite the country around him.

This is what King Hussein did when he faced challenge and revolt by Jordanian tribes in the south of the kingdom; in 1989, Hussein overhauled the political system and held the freest elections in the history of the kingdom.

The government that emerged from this process led the country safely out of one of the most difficult moments for Jordan: Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent Gulf War.

The real villains

Biden, meanwhile, should realise that letting bin Salman get away with the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi has a cost.

Bin Salman did not learn anything from the episode and carried on in exactly the same way, reckless and swift, against an Arab neighbour and ally, with potentially disastrous consequences.

The new foreign policy establishment in Washington should wean itself off the notion that US allies are its friends. It should learn once and for all that the active destabilisers of the Middle East are not the cartoon villains of Iran and Turkey.

Rather, they are the closest US allies, where US forces and military technology are either based, or as in the case of Israel, inextricably intertwined: Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Israel.

Jordan, the classic buffer state, is a case in point.

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

Featured image: Portraits of late King Hussein (M), Prince Hamzah (L) and King Abdullah of Jordan (R) (Illustration by Hossam Sarhan via MEE)

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***

Major Russian officials today have warned of military threats posed by the U.S.-led thirty-nation North Atlantic Treaty Organization to its western border: its entire western border. And its northern one as well.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced that Russia has redeployed two armies and three Airborne Forces units to its western border as part of what he termed an ongoing readiness inspection.

In one of the sternest warnings issued by a Russian official in the post-Cold War era, Shoigu added,

“We’ve taken proper measures in response to the alliance’s military activities which threaten Russia.” Regarding the ground and airborne forces, the defense minister said: “The troops have manifested complete preparedness and the ability to perform their duties to guarantee the country’s military security. At the present time, these units are involved in exercises.”

He also warned that NATO is now concentrating over 40,000 troops and 15,000 items of armaments and military hardware as well as strategic aircraft near the Russian border, stating: “The troops in Europe are moving towards Russian borders. The basic forces are being amassed in the Black Sea area and in the Baltic region.” He also mentioned the preponderance of U.S. military personnel in those deployments, as the Pentagon is reinforcing troops in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.

In addition he highlighted the fact that: “The alliance annually holds up to 40 large operational training measures of a clearly anti-Russian bias in Europe. In the spring of this year, the NATO allied forces launched Defender Europe 2021 drills, the largest exercise over the past 30 years.” (Estimates range as high as 37,000 U.S. and NATO troops involved in the several-weeks-long war games from the Baltic to the Black Seas and the Balkans.)

The Russian defense minister pointed out that Russia’s western border wasn’t the only location where the U.S. and NATO were threatening his nation. He alsoexpressed alarm over the U.S. and NATO military build-up on Russia’s northern flank, the Arctic. He said:

“The competition between the world’s leading powers for access to the Arctic Ocean’s resource and transport routes is increasing. The US and its NATO allies increase their naval and ground groups in the Arctic, increase the combat training intensity, extend and upgrade the military infrastructure.”

In general Shoigu stated that over the past three years NATO has increased its activity along Russia’s borders.

Also today Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov warned that American warships deployed in the Black Sea off Russia’s coast were a provocation. He was speaking as two U.S. guided-missile destroyers, USS Donald Cook and USS Roosevelt, both equipped to carry 56 Tomahawk cruise missiles and an undisclosed number of Standard Missile-3 anti-ballistic missiles, are to enter the Black Sea tomorrow and the following day. Earlier this year the guided-missile destroyers USS Donald Cook, USS Thomas Hudner and USS Porter and the guided-missile cruiser USS Monterey were in the Black Sea for exercises, often two at a time. (The most, in terms of tonnage, allowed by the 1936 Montreux Convention, though Turkey’s proposed Istanbul Canal may eliminate that limit.)

Ryabkov said that American warships sailing thousands of miles from U.S. naval bases “always involves a geopolitics element.”

His comments are worth citing extensively:

“I wouldn’t like to go too much into particulars of various interpretations of what freedom of navigation and freedom of the seas is, especially in this context. I know one thing: American ships have absolutely nothing to do near our coasts, and this is a purely provocative undertaking. It’s provocative in the literal sense of this word: they’re testing our patience and getting on our nerves. This won’t work.”

And he issued this stark admonition in the context of the Western threats to Russia over Ukraine:

“Apparently seeing itself as the queen of the seas […] the U.S. should understand after all that the risks of various incidents are very high. We warn the U.S. that it should steer clear of Crimea and our Black Sea coast. This would be to their own benefit.”

His warning is a timely one as Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba is at NATO headquarters today, where U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin arrives tomorrow and Secretary of State Antony Blinken shortly after him.

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On 11 April 2021, Guillermo Lasso (52,4%), the right-wing candidate, defeated Andres Arauz, the candidate supported by Rafael Correa and part of the Left, by 52.4% vs 47.6% in the second round of ballots for the presidential election. Lasso was elected thanks to the division of the Left, since a significant part of it, which has become deeply diffident of Rafael Correa, called for a null vote. Votes on the popular side, that represented a clear majority in the first round of February 2021, were divided, which made it possible for a former banker to be elected president.

The situation is serious for an opportunity to break away from Lenin Moreno’s brutal neoliberal policies has been lost.

Former banker Lasso, though critical of Lenin Moreno’s positions out of sheer electoral calculation, will continue in the same harmful direction: a deepening of neoliberal policies, submission to the private interests of Big Capital, particularly of Ecuador’s powerful banking sector and of the import-export industry, and submission to the United States. How can we explain that a significant part of popular votes did not go to Andres Arauz to prevent Guillermo Lasso from getting elected? It can be accounted for by the rejection prompted by Rafael Correa’s policies, particularly after 2011, among part of the Left, notably with the CONAIE, the Confederation of Indigenous Nations of Ecuador.

Lasso’s victory was anything but predictable for, in the general elections, the two leading political forces were on one hand the political movement supported by Rafael Correa with 42 representatives and on the other Pachakutik, the political extension of the CONAIE with 27 elected members, which was the best parliamentary result ever for the indigenous movement. In the presidential election, the outcome of the first round was clearly in favour of the popular side; indeed, if you added votes for Andres Arauz (a little more than 32%) and those for Yaku Perez (just under 19%) you had a majority, to which could be added part of the votes for a candidate that came fourth under the social-democrat label and had gathered close to 14%.

Former banker Lasso came second with 19% but only a very short edge on Yaku Perez, the Pachakutik candidate in February 2021, and 13% less than Andres Arauz. Yaku Perez and the CONAIE first complained about what they called a massive electoral fraud. Then a couple of days after the first round Yaku Perez passed an agreement for mutual support with Guillermo Lasso, an agreement that was soon cancelled by Lasso. Next the CONAIE and other left-wng forces called for a null vote in the second round and refused to vote for Andres Arauz to beat Guillermo Lasso. The CONAIE and Pachakutik were divided on this issue for a right-wing section of Pachakutik called for a vote for Lasso while the president of the CONAIE, Jaime Vargas, had called to vote for Andres Arauz with the support of a majority of indigenous organizations in the Amazonian part of Ecuador. In spite of discordant voices announcing that they would vote for Lasso or for Arauz, the CONAIE confirmed its call for a null vote, which eventually amounted to 16.3% on election day.

The election of Lasso as president opens a new stage in the implementation of policies that will be even more favourable to Ecuadorian Big Capital, to foreign multinational corporations, to an alliance among right-wing presidents in Latin America and to the pursuit or indeed reinforcement of US domination on the continent. The election outcome on 11 April 2021 is a dark signal for the popular side. In order to understand why a significant part of of the popular side refused to vote for Arauz to defeat Lasso, we have to examine the policies implemented by Rafael Correa after he was reelected president in 2010.

Reminder of policies implemented by Correa from 2007 to 2010

As detailed in several former articles, from 2007 to 2010, Ecuador’s government led the way in making the sovereign decision of auditing its public debt to identify illegitimate debts and suspend repayment. The suspension of payment of a large part of its commercial debt, followed by its undervalue repurchase, shows that the government was not content with merely expressing outrage. In 2009 it unilaterally restructured part of its external debt and won a victory against private creditors, mainly US banks and investment funds. In 2007, at the outset of Correa’s presidency, Ecuador’s government came into conflict with the World Bank and expelled its permanent representative. Moreover, from 2007 to 2010, under Correa’s presidency, a number of important positive policies were initiated: a new constitution was democratically adopted, announcing significant changes which, however, never really materialized; Ecuador put an end to the US military base of Manta on the Pacific coast; Ecuador attempted to set up a Bank of the South with Argentina, Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, Uruguay and Paraguay; Ecuador left the WB tribunal.

Rafael Correa’s U-turn from 2011

2011 marks a U-turn in the policies of the Ecuadorian government on several fronts, whether social, environmental, commercial or concerning debt. The conflicts between the government and a number of significant social movements such as the CONAIE on the one hand, teachers’ unions and the student movement on the other, deteriorated. Rafael Correa and his government went ahead with trade negotiations with the EU, making more and more concessions. As for debt, from 2014, Ecuador gradually began to have recourse to international finance markets, not to mention the debts contracted with China. On the environmental front, in 2013 Correa’s government abandoned the commitment not to extract oil in a very sensitive part of the Amazon. Correa also condoned patriarchal and reactionary positions on the issue of depenalizing abortion and on the LGBTQI+.

The Yasuní-ITT Initiative abandoned in 2013

The Yasuní-ITT Initiative was presented in June 2007 by Rafael Correa. It consisted of leaving underground 20 % of the country’s oil reserves (about 850 million barrels of oil), situated in a region of outstanding biodiversity, Yasuní National Park, in the North-West of the Ecuadorian Amazon. [1] As Matthieu Le Quang explains, “To compensate for the financial losses of non-exploitation, the State of Ecuador asked the countries of the North to make an international financial contribution equivalent to half of what the country would have earned from exploitation (3.6 billion dollars, based on the price of oil in 2007). This was an extremely ambitious policy, particularly the goal of changing the energy matrix of a country which, although exploiting and exporting crude oil, nevertheless remained an importer of its derivatives and dependant on them to generate its electricity.” [2] Matthieu Le Quang goes on, “A very strong decision made by the Ecuadorian government was to have registered the Yasuní-ITT Initiative in United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), that is, to have placed the emphasis on the non-emission of greenhouse gases that would result from non-exploitation of oil.” In August 2013, Rafael Correa, who had been re-elected for a third presidential mandate in February with over 57 % of votes in the first ballot, announced the end of this project. He justified his decision by the very real lack of commitment from the various countries supposed to finance the non-exploitation of oil in Yasuni-ITT.

Rafael Correa’s failure even to begin abandoning the extractivist-export model was a fundamental flaw of his presidency. This model consists of a set of policies aiming to extract from below ground or from the land’s surface a maximum of primary goods (such as fossil fuels, minerals or timber…) or to produce a maximum of agricultural produce intended for foreign market consumption, in order to export them on the global market. In the case of Ecuador this means bananas, sugar, African palm, flowers, broccoli. [3] To these should be added the export of farmed prawns and tuna fished on an industrial scale.

This model has numerous harmful effects: environmental destruction (open-air mines, deforestation, contamination of running water, salinization/ depletion/ poisoning/ erosion of soils, reduction of biodiversity, greenhouse gas emissions, etc.); destruction of the natural habitat and way of life of entire populations (first peoples and others); depletion of unsustainable natural resources; dependency on global markets (stock-markets for raw materials and agricultural commodities) where the prices of export products are determined; salaries kept low to remain competitive; dependency on technologies owned by the highly industrialized countries; dependency for inputs (pesticides, herbicides, seeds whether transgenic or not, chemical fertilizers…) produced by major transnational companies (mostly from highly industrialized countries); dependency on international financial and economic conditions.

François Houtart (1925-2017), who had studied the process unfurling in Ecuador closely and supported Rafael Correa’s policies, did not hesitate to express criticism and make it known to the government. Shortly before he died, he wrote the following about the agricultural policies:

“These are also short-term policies. They do not take account of natural changes and their long-term effects, of food sovereignty, workers’ rights, or the origins of rural poverty. They emphasize an agro-export model presented as an objective without mentioning the consequences.” He further stated: “As authors, we asked ourselves in our report whether it was possible to build 21stcentury socialism from19th century capitalism. (…) Once again as throughout history, it is the rural world and its labourers that pay the price of modernization. It was the case for European capitalism in the 19th century, for the Soviet Union in the 1920s, and for China after the Communist revolution.” [4]

Rafael Correa and the social movements: A conflictual relationship

Rafael Correa’s government had great difficulty in taking on board the contributions of a certain number of front line social organizations. Rafael Correa’s tendency and the orientation of his political movement Alianza PAIS (“for a proud and sovereign country”, in Spanish), most often consisted of side-stepping or ignoring the biggest of the indigenous organizations, the CONAIE, the biggest teachers’ union (the National Union of Educators, or UNE), the union of Petroecuador (the national oil company) and a good many other social organizations. All these organizations underwent regular attacks from the executive authority that accused them of mobilizing for corporatist reasons with the aim of defending privileges.

Moreover, Rafael Correa did not act upon the historical claim, mainly carried by the CONAIE, for integration of the indigenous component of society in the decision-making process on all the major issues relating to the government’s orientations. For its part CONAIE, fighting for the general principles of the Constitution to be transcribed in law, [5] did not hesitate to confront Rafael Correa. On several occasions, the government tried to push measures through without entering into any dialogue with the organizations of the social sectors concerned. This approach is not unlike that adopted by the Lula government in Brazil, when the latter undertook a neoliberal-style reform of the pension system in 2003 (just when, in France, the right-wing government led by Jean-Pierre Raffarin was putting a similar reform in place). Lula conducted his campaign for pension reform by attacking the rights of civil service workers, labelling them as privileges.

Among the most serious disputes opposing the executive power to Ecuador’s social organizations were, on the one hand, the draft bill on water, and on the other, Rafael Correa’s policy of opening the economy to private foreign investment in the mining and oil industries. [6] At a special meeting held on 8 and 9 September 2009 in Quito, the CONAIE did not spare the Correa government’s policies that it stigmatized as neoliberal and capitalist. [7]

The CONAIE “demand[ed] of the State and the government that they nationalize the country’s natural resources and instigate an audit of concessions in the domains of oil, mining, aquifers, hydraulics, telephone, radiophone, television and environmental services, external debt, tax collection and the resources of the social security” and also “the suspension of all concessions (extractive, oil, forestry, aquifer, hydro-electric and those linked to biodiversity)”. [8]

After 30 September 2009, the CONAIE took action, organizing rallies, blocking roads and bridges against a draft bill on water. President Correa reacted against these anti-government mobilizations first by refusing any kind of negotiation, then by casting suspicion on the indigenous movement by claiming that Right-wing forces were at the heart of it, especially former president Lucio Gutiérrez. But finally the CONAIE obtained public negotiations at the highest level. Thus 130 indigenous delegates were received at the seat of the government by President Correa and several ministers, and they finally managed to get the government to back down on several points, notably the instigation of a permanent dialogue between the CONAIE and the Executive, with amendments on the draft bills on water and the extractive industries.

Another social conflict also broke out against the government with the mobilization of teachers, under the aegis of the main union of the profession, the UNE, in which the MPD [9] party is extremely influential. There too, the conflict finally led to dialogue. In November and December 2009 a third social front emerged with the protest movement in universities against a draft reform which aimed in particular to reduce the autonomy of universities, something that is considered in Latin America to be an irreversible element of social progress and a guarantee of independence regarding political authorities.

All in all, Rafael Correa’s government soon showed serious limitations when it came to defining policies involving the point of view of the social movements without the latter having to make their point through a power struggle. In 2010 and 2014, there was major social mobilization against the Correa government’s policies. The list of demands upheld by organizations which, led by CONAIE, called for people to join the struggle in June 2014 speaks volumes about the government’s orientation: resistance against mining and oil extraction, against the criminalization of social protest, against the new Labour legislation; demands for a different policy for energy and water; for the rights of indigenous communities and especially the refusal of ethnic community school closures; [10] rejection of the Constitutional reform which would enable unlimited electoral mandates; rejection of the free-trade agreement to be signed with the European Union.

In December 2014 Rafael Correa wanted to expel the CONAIE from its premises which incited the CADTM, like numerous other organizations, both Ecuadorian and foreign, to insist that the government renounce this decision. [11] The government backed down. At the end of 2017, Rafael Correa’s government wanted to withdraw legal personality from a left-wing ecological organization called Acción Ecológica. Again, it took a wave of national and international protest to get the authorities to finally give up this infringement of liberties. [12]

Conclusion on Rafael Correa’s presidency

From the beginning of his first mandate, Rafael Correa took care to include both ministers from the left and ministers with more or less direct links to different sectors of the traditional Ecuadorian capitalist class in composing his government, which led to constant arbitration. As time passed, Correa made more and more concessions to big capital, both on the national and the international level.

Despite a discourse in favour of changing the productive model and of 21st century socialism, Correa, in ten years of 21stcentury presidency, did not initiate profound modification of the country’s economic structure, of property relations or of relations between social classes. Alberto Acosta, formerly minister of energy in 2007, president of the Constituent Assembly in 2008 and an opponent of Rafael Correa’s since 2010, wrote with his colleague John Cajas Guijarro: “the absence of structural transformation means that Ecuador remains a capitalist economy tied to exporting raw materials and therefore tied to long-term cyclical behaviour dependent on the demands of the transnational accumulation of capital. This long-term cyclic behaviour is due to the contradictions inherent in capitalism, but is also strongly influenced by dependency on massive exportation of barely transformed raw materials (extractivism). In other words, capitalist exploitation – of both labour and nature— following international demands, keeps Ecuador ’chained’ to a succession of ups and downs which originate as much within the country as abroad.” [13]

Lenin Moreno or the return to neoliberal policies and to submission to US interests

In 2017, at the end of Rafael Correa’s presidential mandate and just when he was succeeded by President Lenin Moreno (the candidate Correa had supported), the country’s debt surpassed the level attained 10 years earlier. Rapidly Lenin Moreno turned once more to the IMF. That led to massive popular protests in September-October 2019 which obliged the government to capitulate to the people’s organizations and abandon the decree which had triggered the revolt.

We should remember that Correa’s government offered asylum to Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London from June 2012 onward. Correa resisted pressure from the UK and the US, demanding that Assange be delivered to them. Lenin Moreno, who succeeded Rafael Correa in 2017, disgraced himself by handing Assange over to the British justice system in April 2019 and by withdrawing the Ecuadorian citizenship that Correa’s government had granted him in 2017. [14]

In 2019, Lenin Moreno acknowledged Juan Guaido as president of Venezuela whereas the latter was calling for a US armed intervention to overturn the government of the elected president Nicola Maduro.

En 2020, Lenin Moreno signed another humiliating agreement with the IMF and in 2021 he tried to have a bill voted that would make the Central Bank completely independent of the government and thus even more closely subjected to the interests of private banks.

His popularity faded to nothing: in the last polls, Lenin Moreno had a mere 4.8% approval rating. Candidates supported by Moreno at the general elections and in the first round of the presidential election in February 2021 did not get more than 3% of the votes.

The programme of Guillermo Lasso, elected president in Ecuador on 11 April 2021 and the new stage

When Rafael Correa became president of Ecuador in 2007, it was thanks to the social mobilizations that punctuated the years from 1990 until 2005. Without them, his proposals would never have received the attention they got and he would not have been elected. Unfortunately, after a very good start, he clashed with a significant part of the social movements and opted for modernization of extractivist-export capitalism. Then his successor, Lenin Moreno, broke away from Rafael Correa’s policies and went back to brutal neoliberalism.

This hard-line neoliberal policy will be further developed by Guillermo Lasso. He has clearly announced that he wants to lower taxes on companies, to attract foreign investment, to give even more freedom to bankers, to consolidate the policy of free trade by joining the Pacific Alliance. It is likely that Guillermo Lasso will try to somehow integrate leaders linked to Pachakutik and the CONAIE into his government or administration. If this succeeds, the CONAIE and Pachakutik will emerge even more divided than they were on the eve of the run-off elections. It is fundamental for the future of the popular camp to radically and actively oppose the government that Lasso will form.

Ecuador’s future with Guillermo Lasso as president

Once again, only social mobilization will end these policies and bring back the measures of anti-capitalist structural change indispensable for emancipation. In 2019 the CONAIE and a whole range of trade union organizations, feminist associations and ecologist collectives drew up an excellent alternative proposal to capitalist, patriarchal and neoliberal policies: this should constitute the basis of a vast government programme. [15]

The issue of rejecting the policies of the IMF, the World Bank and illegitimate debt will be back at the heart of the social and political battles. [16] In a document made public in July 2020 by more than 180 Ecuadorian people’s organizations can be found the following demand: “suspension of payment of external debt and an audit to be carried out on external debt accumulated between 2014 and the present, as well as citizen controls of how the debts contracted were utilized.” [17]

Final considerations on the election on 11 April 2021

With 98.84% of votes counted,

  • Arauz got 47.59%, which corresponds to 4,100,283 votes.
  • Lasso got 52.4%, which corresponds to 4,533,275 votes.
  • Null votes: 16.33%, which corresponds to 1,715,279 votes.
  • Total of voters: 10,501,517 voters.
  • Absenteeism: 2,193,896 people.

Null votes reached 9.5% in the first round; the null vote increased by 6.83% between the first and second rounds; in terms of votes this yields:

  • Null votes February 2021: 1,013,395 votes.
  • Null votes April 2021: 1,715,279 votes.
  • Difference: +701,884 votes.

All in all, a large part of this difference can be traced to the campaign led by Pachakutik, the Conaie, social movements and left-wing organizations that did not support Correa’s candidate. This means that less than half of their voters chose a null vote; remember that Yaku Pérez had got 19.39% in the first round, i.e. 1,798,057 votes. Assuming that a majority among those voters follow Pachakutik, this means that 39% of its voters opted for a null vote. As it is likely that other sectors opted for an null vote, it is a fair assumption that the null votes related to Pachakutik be around 30% of its voters. In other words, one Pachakutik voter out of three opted for a null vote, probably the most reliable and determined Pachakutik voters.

Unfortunately the remaining 70% mostly went to Lasso, probably in rejection of Correa’s heritage in terms of a history of aggression against the popular movement; but this still means a right-wing vote, thus reneging their votes in the first round.

This also shows how fragile a vote for an alternative away from polarization between Correism and traditional Right is.

It further shows that if the CONAIE, Pachakutik and other left-wing organizations had called to vote against Lasso or for Arauz, it was perfectly possible to defeat Lasso and put pressure on Arauz for him to take into account the demands formulated both in the CONAIE text of October 2019 and in the proposal by the parliament of the peoples of July 2020. Those are excellent statements that are further left than the content of Yaku Perez’ electoral campaign for the first round or Andres Arauz’ programme.

 

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Translated from the French by Snake Arbusto, Vicki Briault and Christine Pagnoulle (CADTM). First published on CADTM.

Eric Toussaint is a historian and political scientist who completed his Ph.D. at the universities of Paris VIII and Liège, is the spokesperson of the CADTM International, and sits on the Scientific Council of ATTAC France. 

He is the author of Debt System (Haymarket books, Chicago, 2019), Bankocracy (2015); The Life and Crimes of an Exemplary Man (2014); Glance in the Rear View Mirror. Neoliberal Ideology From its Origins to the Present, Haymarket books, Chicago, 2012 (see here), etc. He co-authored World debt figures 2015 with Pierre Gottiniaux, Daniel Munevar and Antonio Sanabria (2015); and with Damien Millet Debt, the IMF, and the World Bank: Sixty Questions, Sixty Answers, Monthly Review Books, New York, 2010. He was the scientific coordinator of the Greek Truth Commission on Public Debt from April 2015 to November 2015.

Notes

[1] For a presentation of the project in 2009, see Alberto Acosta interviewed by Matthieu Le Quang “Le projet ITT: laisser le pétrole en terre ou le chemin vers un autre modèle de développement” (The ITT Project: leave the oil in the ground or the path towards another model of development) published 18 September 2009, http://www.cadtm.org/spip.php?page=imprimer&id_article=4757 (in Spanish and French).

[2] Matthieu Le Quang interviewed by Violaine Delteil, “Entre buen vivir et néo-extractivisme : les quadratures de la politique économique équatorienne” (Between good living and neo-extractivism: how Ecuador’s economic policy squares up) in Revue de la Régulation, Semester 1, 2019, https://journals.openedition.org/regulation/15076 [accessed 30 December 2020] (French only).

[3] Regarding broccoli production in Ecuador, François Houtart wrote: “Mention should be made of the 2013 study on broccoli production in the Pujilí region, in the province of Cotopaxi. 97 % of broccoli production is exported mainly towards countries capable of producing their own broccoli (the United States, EU, Japan), for reasons of comparative advantages (low salaries, less demanding environmental laws, etc.). The production company monopolizes water resources, leaving insufficient water for the needs of the neighbouring communities. They also ‘bombard’ rainclouds to deflect showers from the broccoli fields to the surrounding area. Chemical products are used within the legal limit of 200m of human habitations. Polluted water runs into the rivers. Workers’ health is affected (skin, lungs, cancer). Contracts are drawn up partly on a weekly basis, with a foreman who gets 10% of the workers’ salaries. Overtime is often not paid. The company that transforms the broccoli for export works 24 hours round the clock, in three shifts. Workers are often obliged to work on two successive shifts. Trade unions are prohibited. Moreover, of the two firms, which have now merged, one had its capital in Panama and the other in the Dutch Antilles.” https://www.cadtm.org/Ecuador-Un-factor-de-control-de-la(in Spanish only)

[4] The original text in Spanish: “Estas políticas son también a corto plazo. No tienen en cuenta los cambios naturales y sus efectos a largo plazo, la soberanía alimentaria, los derechos de los trabajadores, el origen de la pobreza rural. Se acentúa un modelo agro-exportador presentado como una meta, sin indicar las consecuencias.” “Como autores, nos hemos preguntado en nuestro informe, si era posible construir el socialismo del siglo XXI con el capitalismo del siglo XIX ¿(…) Una vez más en la historia, es el campo y sus trabajadores los que pagan el precio de la modernización. Fue el caso del capitalismo europeo en el siglo XIX, de la Unión Soviética en los años 20 del siglo XX, de China, después de la Revolución comunista.” https://www.cadtm.org/Ecuador-Un-factor-de-control-de-la

[5] See Floresmillo Simbana “Movimiento indígena y la revolución ciudadana”:
https://www.cadtm.org/Movimiento-indigena-y-la

[6] Ecuador’s economy is based mainly on oil revenues. It is important to bear in mind that in 2008, oil represented 22.2% of GDP, 63.1% of exports and 46.6% of the State’s general budget.

[7] Asamblea Extraordinaria de la CONAIE: Resoluciones de Nacionalidades y Pueblos, “Declarar al gobierno de Rafael Correa como gobierno neoliberal y capitalista por sus acciones y actitudes”, accessible at: https://kaosenlared.net/resoluciones-de-los-pueblos-y-nacionalidades-del-ecuador/ (in Spanish).

[8] Ibid.

[9] MPD: Popular Democratic Movement, the electoral arm of the Marxist-Leninist (Maoist) Communist Party of Ecuador.

[10] Concerning the Correa government’s intention to close the community schools, François Houtart wrote in 2017: “the plan to close 18 000 community schools (known as ’poverty schools’) in favour of ’millennium schools’ (early 2017: 71 were built, 52 under construction and by the end of 2017, 200 were functioning) highlights the problems. No doubt these millennium schools are well-equipped, with competent teachers, but they belong to a philosophy which breaks away from traditional life, opening up to a modernity which is now called into question because of its social and environmental consequences. Nor do they easily fulfil the constitutional right to a bilingual education. Furthermore, in several cases, the transport system has not been adequate to needs and obliges students to walk for hours on badly maintained paths, which also results in high rates of absenteeism.” https://www.cadtm.org/Ecuador-Un-factor-de-control-de-la

[11] See Letter from the CADTM Ayna to Rafael Correa, President of Ecuador, published 27 December 2014 https://www.cadtm.org/Lettre-du-CADTM-Ayna-a-Rafael

[12] See in Spanish “Acción Ecológica, ¡ GRACIAS !”, published 17 January 2017, https://www.cadtm.org/GRACIAS

[13] Alberto Acosta, John Cajas Guijarro, Una década desperdiciada Las sombras del correísmo,Centro Andino de Acción Popular Quito, 2018.

The original quote in Spanish: “la falta de una transformación estructural provoca que el Ecuador se mantenga como una economía capitalista atada a la exportación de materias primas y, por lo tanto, amarrada a un comportamiento cíclico de larga duración vinculado a las demandas de acumulación del capital transnacional. Tal comportamiento cíclico de larga historia es originado por las contradicciones propias del capitalismo pero; a su vez, es altamente influenciado por la dependencia en la exportación masiva de productos primarios casi sin procesar (extractivismo). Es decir, la explotación capitalista –tanto de la fuerza de trabajo como de la Naturaleza– en función de las demandas internacionales, mantiene al Ecuador ’encadena do’ a un vaivén de animaciones y crisis económicas que se originan tanto interna como externamente.”

[14] CADTM AYNA, “Ensemble avec le peuple équatorien”, published 15 October 2019,
https://www.cadtm.org/Ensemble-avec-le-peuple-equatorien (in French and Spanish). See also the collective work: Franklin Ramírez Gallegos (Ed.), Octubre y el derecho a la resistencia. Revuelta popular y neoliberalismo autoritario en Ecuador, Buenos Aires, CLACSO. It can be downloaded free of charge at: http://www.clacso.org.ar/libreria-latinoamericana/buscar_libro_detalle.php?campo=titulo&texto=derecho&id_libro=2056

[15] CONAIE, Entrega de propuesta alternativa al modelo económico y social, 31 October 2019, https://conaie.org/2019/10/31/propuesta-para-un-nuevo-modelo-economico-y-social/

[16] Collective statement signed by Éric Toussaint, Maria Lucia Fattorelli, Alejandro Olmos Gaona, Hugo Arias Palacios, Piedad Mancero, Ricardo Patiño, Ricardo Ulcuango “We denounce the renegotiation of the debt by Lenín Moreno’s government”, published 1st August 2020, https://www.cadtm.org/We-denounce-the-renegotiation-of-the-debt-by-Lenin-Moreno-s-government

[17] See PROPUESTA-PARLAMENTO-DE-LOS-PUEBLOS.pdf published in July 2020 https://rebelion.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/PROPUESTA-PARLAMENTO-DE-LOS-PUEBLOS.pdf

Featured image is from CADTM

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Yemen’s Ansar Allah give the impression that it has an endless supply of drones.

The Houthis (as Ansar Allah is also known) appear to be adept at using them, if their own claims are to be entirely trusted.

On April 11th, two Qasef-2K drones were used to separately target the Jizan Airport and the King Khalid Airbase.

The Jizan Airport is a new target that has recently come up in reports of Houthi attacks.

The location includes hangars containing Saudi warplanes.

The King Khalid Airbase in ‘Asir suffers from the Houthi drone attacks more frequently, and has been subject of attacks at least 4 times in separate incidents since April 1st.

On April 9th, the Jizan Airport was targeted for the first time, and so was the Abha International Airport.

The Houthis are using their drones to disturb the aerial operations of the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen.

Riyadh generally either denies these reports of attacks or says they were ineffective, while Ansar Allah claims they successfully fulfilled their mission.

Clashes on the ground continue in Yemen, with the Saudi-led coalition and the Houthis fighting in the Madghal district, and in the southern Kadhah district.

Saudi Arabia attempts to dig out every reason why its war in Yemen is failing, and on April 10th announced the execution of three of its soldiers for “high treason”.

They were allegedly collabarating with an enemy against Riyadh’s military interests.

They could have been in contact with the Houthis or with Iran.

This is practically the same, as Tehran supports Ansar Allah.

This means that Riyadh can’t fully trust its own armed forces, and it could require some help, in the form of mercenaries.

The militants in Syria that Turkey deploys and uses in small-scale conflicts such as Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh could be potential candidates for this.

Turkey, under Egyptian pressure, is expected to withdraw the mercenaries from Libya.

According to reports, it will do so within the next 5 months.

Separately, a video showing Turkish-backed Syrian mercenaries complaining for not getting paid after fighting for Azerbaijan went viral.

Immediately after it gained popularity, these same militants released a video saying that the news was fabricated, and that they never fought in Nagorno-Karabakh to begin with.

According to unnamed Yemeni intelligence sources, terrorists from Syria were expected to join the Saudi-led coalition in early April.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was reportedly waiting for new militants to arrive in Yemen’s southern province of Abyan to latter send them to Marib.

Today, many Turkish-backed mercenaries are sitting idly, unemployed.

This could mean either bad news for Syria, which will have to deal with them, or Ankara might decide to send them to Riyadh, if it “asks” for assistance.

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On April 9th, Ramsey Clark passed away at his home surrounded by his family.

Clark was Attorney General of the United States from 1967-1969 under Lyndon Johnson, during which time he led the way on voting rights for African-Americans, and school desegregation and drafted the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1968, better known as the Fair Housing Act, which addressed housing discrimination.

As the most progressive Attorney General in U.S. history, Clark also ordered a moratorium on federal executions and prison construction; banned wiretaps in criminal cases; and refused to enforce a law that was intended to countermand the Supreme Court’s restrictions on the questioning of criminal suspects under the so-called Miranda.

Clark was critical of the Vietnam War, though in 1967, he told President Johnson that antiwar demonstrators had been infiltrated by communists, and the same year in Boston, he prosecuted famed pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock, Yale Chaplain William Sloane Coffinand three other antiwar activists for conspiring to undermine selective service laws.

Draft Resistance Indicted

Left to right: Dr. Benjamin Spock, Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Mitchell Goodman, Michael Ferber. Clark felt guilty about prosecuting them for conspiring to undermine selective service laws and later defended antiwar activists. [Source: woodstockwhisperer.info]

Clark’s guilt for these actions inspired his later antiwar activism.

In 1970, he defended the Harrisburg Seven, antiwar activists led by the Rev. Philip Berrigan, the radical Roman Catholic priest, who were charged with 23 counts of conspiracy, including plotting to kidnap Henry A. Kissinger, and in 1972, traveled to Hanoi to meet with North Vietnamese officials and publicly criticized U.S. war conduct.

In subsequent years, Clark publicly denounced U.S. support for the Shah of Iran, the bombing of Libya (in 1986 and 2011), Grenada, Bosnia, Kosovo, Panama, Afghanistan and Iraq, among other countries, and criticized U.S. support for the Tutsis in Rwanda whom he believed started the war there and killed more than the Hutu.[1] (see CAM exclusive on this)

In 1991, Clark filed a complaint with the International War Crimes Tribunal accusing President George H.W. Bush of war crimes after spending two weeks visiting Iraq and documenting the effects of the war on its people.

Clark found that U.S. “smart” bombs hit more than military targets, decimating homes, destroying vital infrastructure, and killing thousands of innocent civilians, and that U.S. sanctions compounded the human misery.

In his 1992 book The Fire This Time: U.S. War Crimes in Iraq, Clark wrote that “a whole nation [Iraq] lay helpless beneath an alien military that could attack and destroy with impunity…U.S. planes [in the assault on Iraq] had flown more than 109,000 sorties, raining 88,000 tons of bombs, the equivalent of seven Hiroshimas, and killing indiscriminately across the country.”[2]

Clark helped found the New York-based International Action Center in the 1990s which, among other activities, organized street protests in 1999 condemning the U.S.-led NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.

In 2018, Clark said that he considered U.S. foreign policy to be “the greatest crime since WWII. American aggression had already created incalculable levels of misery for the world. The poor of the planet are made poorer, dominated and exploited by the foreign policies of the U.S. and its rich allies. The U.S. invasion of Iraq was a war of aggression, an offense called ‘the supreme international crime’ in the Nuremberg Judgment.”

Clark continued:

Our overriding purpose, from the beginning right through to the present day, has been world domination—that is, to build and maintain the capacity to coerce everybody else on the planet: nonviolently, if possible; and violently, if necessary. But the purpose of our foreign policy of domination is not just to make the rest of the world jump through hoops; the purpose is to facilitate our exploitation of resources. And insofar as any people or states get in the way of our domination, they must be eliminated or, at the very least, shown the error of their ways.”

See this remarkable speech by Ramsey Clark criticizing U.S. foreign policy as a representation of plutocratic interests and its unjust war against the Third World. This dedicated video segment featuring Clark had its own YouTube post but was inexplicably taken down just after Clark’s death. CAM has reposted it in our Covert TV YouTube channel thanks to Frank Dorrel’s excellent film entitled “What I’ve Learned About U.S. Foreign Policy: The War Against The Third World,” which features the clip. [Source: youtube.com]

In 2008, the United Nations General Assembly awarded Clark its prize, which it gives every five years to human rights defenders.

Clark told The Washington Post that his work had always been motivated by the attempt to “prevent war and strengthen international institutions and protect human rights and create social and economic justice.”

He confessed in another interview that he was often overwhelmed by “the enormity of human misery on the planet; the enormity of poverty and suffering; the contrast between raw power and the vaster poverty of the impotent,’” and hoped to at least make a small difference.

Watch Citizen Clark: A Life of Principle | Prime Video

2018 documentary about Clark’s life extolling his human rights work. [Source: amazon.com]

After news broke of Clark’s passing, tributes poured in including from Cuba’s President Miguel Díaz-Canel, who wrote on twitter that “Clark was an honest and supportive man that stood by our side during crucial battles and denounced the great injustices committed by his country worldwide. #Cuba pays him grateful tribute.”

Mary Anne Grady Flores of the Ithaca Catholic Workers in another tribute wrote that Clark was “a friend of the Catholic Workers [peace group], a great defender of Plowshares anti-nuclear activists, a defender of Palestine, Cuba and Nicaragua, (to name a few) and defender of all issues concerning justice throughout the world.”

Sara Flounders, who worked with Clark at the International Action Center, further noted that Clark “took big personal risks in challenging criminal U.S. policies, [and was] brilliant in sifting through material to pull out the relevant facts in writing wrenching reports. He always tried to work with and listen to activists on the local level and encourage people to work together. His view, as he’d say at almost every rally, speaking engagement, press, conference, or forum was: ‘the power is in the people.’”

Controversial Clients

Clark garnered controversy by defending U.S. adversaries such as Slobodan Milosovic—whom Clark praised for “standing tall [in the face of U.S. aggression] and for his “heroic individual resistance—Saddam Hussein, and Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who was convicted in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.[3]

Clark said: “if you believe in the rule of law, you’re never afraid to represent anyone.”

His particular interest in representing Saddam Hussein began when media reports started coming in of Mr. Hussein’s arrest in a spider-hole hideout in the desert. Clark said he was “shocked” by the images he saw and “the savage presentation of [Mr. Hussein], disheveled, with his mouth open, people probing in his mouth, the dehumanization.”

Operation Red Dawn - Wikipedia

Clark was appalled by the image of Saddam Hussein pried out of a spider-hole by U.S. soldiers and chose afterwards to defend him. [Source: wikipedia.org]

“I represented Indian peoples for many years, and I can’t tell you how many Indians I’ve worked with called after they saw the picture and said, ‘That’s exactly the way they treated us.’ And this is hardly the road to peace if you want respect for human dignity.”

Clark added that he hoped to help ensure a fair trial of Hussein, which “would be difficult to ensure—and was critically important to the future of democracy in Iraq” and “in terms of reconciliation of peoples, and in terms of belief in truth and justice as a priority over force and violence. It’s about addressing the concept of victor’s justice, which is only the exercise of power. If you really want peace, you have to satisfy people about the honor of your purpose.”

Influence of His Father

Born in Dallas in 1927, Clark grew up in a family steeped in Texas culture and politics. His father, Tom Clark—who was appointed by Harry S. Truman as Attorney General in 1945, and became a Supreme Court Justice in 1949—taught him the ways of the outdoorsman and the values of the rugged individualist. On weekends they camped, fished, and hunted. Tom’s involvement in local politics had Ramsey attending rallies and speeches, hanging posters, and handing out flyers. Tom Clark’s work as one of the few local attorneys willing to represent African-Americans had a profound impact on his son.

Ramsey witnessed his father’s guilt and despair when one client, a black teenager accused of raping a white woman, was found guilty and sentenced to death.

Neither Tom’s legal arguments nor his certainty of the young man’s innocence had been enough to save his life. Another client, Charlie Ellis, hired Tom to save his family’s home, slated by the city for demolition to build a parking lot. They won the case, and the Ellises paid in kind by doing the Clarks’ laundry.

Every week Ramsey and his mother drove 30 minutes to pick up and drop off their clothes. From his seat in the car, he watched the Ellis children in their dirt yard, laughing and playing, just like he and his cousins did. He sensed something was wrong, though he was too young to understand what it was.

Father, Son, and Constitution: How Justice Tom Clark and Attorney General Ramsey Clark Shaped American Democracy: Wohl, Alexander: 9780700619160: Amazon.com: Books

Ramsey’s early career followed expectations. He joined the Marines in 1944 and served as a courier in post-War Europe, where he saw terrible scenes of destruction that shaped his life-long aversion to war. Afterwards, Clark earned three degrees—a bachelor’s, a master’s, and a law degree—in four years. He married his college sweetheart Georgia Welch, fathered two children, and returned to Dallas to become a partner at his uncle’s law firm. On behalf of Safeway Stores, he argued his first case before the U.S. Supreme Court. Tom Clark, appointed to the Court in 1949, recused himself to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest.

A political outsider in a state that leaned more and more conservative, Ramsey stayed away from Texas politics. At the same time, he became bored with corporate law. “I got tired of fighting over other people’s money,” he explained.

Then came an opportunity, in the form of John F. Kennedy—the chance to make a difference. In 1961, Clark became the Department of Justice’s Assistant Attorney General for Lands. Moving his way up the government ladder, he was appointed Lyndon Johnson’s Attorney General in 1966. His years in public service would change the course of his life.

Early in his tenure, Clark focused on managing government lands and spent much of his time procuring property, either through purchase or by force, for the construction of missile sites, space stations, reservoirs, and other public facilities.

His attempts to bring fairness to the process—and in particular his efforts to equitably settle lawsuits brought by Native Americans seeking restitution for property seized from their ancestors—caught Attorney General Bobby Kennedy’s attention. As the administration’s focus shifted toward Civil Rights, Bobby Kennedy called on Clark to assist.

Hoping that his Southern accent and Texas roots would open doors closed to a New Englander, Kennedy sent Clark to Georgia, South Carolina, and Louisiana to enforce federal integration orders. Ramsey served with a cadre of federal agents who walked the campus of Ole Miss with James Meredith to protect him from violence.

In early March of 1965, Clark drove along U.S. Route 80 between Montgomery and Selma, setting up camps for marchers and trying to ensure that armed racists didn’t break the thin blue line protecting civil rights activists. “Imagine,” he later reflected, “in this country, in 1965, having to march five days for the right to vote.”

Clark witnessed how these activists pushed government policy by forcing representatives to take stronger action. He noted their patience and commitment and admired their methods of civil disobedience. After leaving office in 1969, he was determined to join their ranks, and in 1969, at the age of 41, after his tenure as Attorney General ended, began the second stage of his career.

He first wrote Crime in America, a book excoriating the correctional system he’d just overseen. In the work he referred to American prisons as “manufacturers of crime,” and proposed a systemic overhaul that favored rehabilitation over punishment.

Clark subsequently took a job with a progressive New York law firm where he focused his energy on pro bono cases. Over the years, he represented the American Indian activist Leonard Peltier, the Plowshares 8 (antiwar activists who tried to sabotage nuclear weapons facilities), the Attica prison rioters, the families of air force officers “disappeared” by the U.S.-backed Pinochet government in Chile, a woman convicted of aiding Marxist guerrillas in Peru, Libyans killed in U.S. bombing in 1986, and death row inmates. He joined the board of Amnesty International. He worked with Coretta Scott King to establish a national holiday in honor of her slain husband. He ran for U.S. Senate on a platform of cutting the defense budget by 50 percent and lost.

Clark’s activism took him overseas to the world’s hot spots, including Grenada, Iran, Libya, Panama, North Korea, Sudan and Iraq, where he became a “one-man opposition to the State Department” and hoped to hold the U.S. accountable to the laws and spirit of the Geneva Accords and the U.S. Constitution.

Peace activist John Parker (with microphone) and unidentified man with Clark during a mission to Sudan in September 1998 to uncover the truth about the U.S. bombing of the Al-shifa pharmaceutical plan, which supplied vital medicine for Sudan and all of Africa. The Clinton administration had claimed that this plant manufactured nerve gas which proved to be false. [Source: Photo courtesy of John Parker]

Frequently, Clark would host mock war crimes tribunals. In 2011, he served as an expert witness in defense of the Creech 14 who attempted to impede illegal drone killings carried out from a military base in Las Vegas. He was also a leading spokesman against the imposition of economic sanctions, which have borne terrible human costs.

Ramsey Clark outside courthouse where he testified on behalf of the Creech 14. [Photo courtesy of Colonel Ann Wright]

Throughout his career, Clark’s willingness to provide legal advice and representation to those on the outskirts of society and dubbed enemies of the United States brought him both admiration and disdain. To some, he was a voice of truth in a system defined by hypocrisy. Others saw him as anti-American, or a “piece of lint from the 1960s,” to quote conservative columnist George F. Will.

A man of strong ideals and few words, Clark would provide a simple response. “Democracy is not a spectator sport,” he was fond of saying. He believed that for a country to truly be democratic, the people must participate. They must hold their government accountable for its actions. And he spent his life trying to do that.

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Frank Dorrel is a member of the Los Angeles chapter of Veterans for Peace and publisher of the popular antiwar book, Addicted to War. He also put together a two-hour film titled What I’ve Learned About U.S. Foreign Policy: The War Against The Third World, which has been seen by as many as 2 million people since 2000. It includes a segment on Ramsey Clark. He can be reached at: [email protected].

Notes

1. Clark had defended Hutu clergyman Elizaphan Ntakirutimana who was charged with genocide. Clark believed him to be innocent. 

2. Ramsey Clark, The Fire This Time: U.S. War Crimes in the Gulf (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1992), xvi. Clark continued: “What was visible was a nation with thousands of civilian dead, without water, hospitals, or health care, with no electricity, communications or public transportation; without gasoline, road and bridge repair capacity…and a growing food crisis. The bombing, as could be seen from the ground, was hardly surgical, but was clearly designed to break a whole country and its population for a long time to come.”

3. Clark had other controversial clients, including ex-Nazis accused of war crimes and Lyndon LaRouche, head of a political cult-like group who was convicted in 1988 of conspiracy to commit mail fraud.

Featured image: Ramsey Clark speaking at Riverside Church in New York in 2013. [Source: iacenter.org]

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***

A crisis of migration into the United States from Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras has resulted in negotiations by the White House with the governments of these countries aimed at preventing people from crossing the southern border.

During the month of March, a record number of migrant workers and children attempted to enter the U.S. while many are being housed in overcrowded and unsafe detention facilities in Texas.

The administration of incumbent President Joe Biden announced on April 12 that after discussions with the governments of the above-mentioned states, the military and police forces in Mexico and Central America would strengthen their prevention efforts to halt migrants from these respective countries. After the exposure of the horrid conditions under which children and adults were living in after being captured and detained by U.S. Custom and Border Protection (CBP), the president appointed Vice President Kamala Harris as the point person for resolving the immediate situation.

Nonetheless, it is not clear whether these new measures will halt the flow of people trying to cross the border. The ongoing problems of social underdevelopment, climate change and the domination of Latin American economies by U.S. imperialism will still prompt millions to leave their countries to seek what they believe to be prospects for employment and security. The problem of migration and the dangers inherent in the transport of human beings by traffickers, is a worldwide phenomenon stretching from Central Asia to the Middle East, North Africa and Europe.

Moreover, many seeking to cross into the U.S. are not from Mexico and Central America. There are growing numbers of people from Africa and other geo-political regions which have made their ways to Brazil, Colombia and Panama as a transit route into the U.S.

Recent reports on the foreign policy orientation of the Biden administration in relationship to this burgeoning political problem places the onus of responsibility on the neighboring states without addressing the fundamental orientation of Washington towards Latin America which has been centuries in the making. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki revealed the new deal in a briefing on April 12.

An article summarizing the Biden administration approach says that:

“The agreements, which Psaki said were reached over the last several weeks, aim ‘to make it more difficult to make the journey’ for migrants hoping to reach the United States, and to make crossing borders more difficult. Mexico agreed to keep 10,000 troops along its southern border, which officials believe will result in twice as many migrant interdictions per day. Guatemala agreed to send an additional 1,500 police and military officers to its southern border and will also establish 12 checkpoints along identified migratory routes across the country. Honduras will send 7,000 police and military to ‘disperse a large contingent of migrants,’ Psaki said. The news of the border agreements between the four countries was first revealed by Tyler Moran, special assistant to the President for immigration for the Domestic Policy Council, on MSNBC Monday morning.”

Consequently, the thrust of the Biden administration is to further militarize the southern border along with the security apparatuses of these targeted states. The responsibility for curbing migration is being shifted to the governments of Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras where U.S. economic and political policies have been detrimental to the workers and farmers of these countries. The blatant interference in the internal affairs of these states coupled with a series of trade deals including the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) during the 1990s and the revised version altered under the former administration of President Donald Trump, have devastated their national economies.

A Militarized Approach to a Crisis of Underdevelopment

Psaki said clearly during the April 12 briefing at the White House that the purpose of the new policy is to make the journey and border crossing more difficult for migrants seeking to flee from human rights abuses, food deficits and lack of the ability to earn a living. Providing incentives for the police and military forces of these three countries heightens the potential for migrants to be subjected to brutality and extortion. There have been complaints over the years related to the excesses of the security forces in Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras.

Even if the migrants are able to cross the border and elude the CBP agents, they continue to be hunted down by the authorities. Thousands now are being held in facilities which violate even the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) regulations on curbing the spread of COVID-19. The U.S. is experiencing a surge in coronavirus infections causing even more distress for healthcare systems where intensive care units of hospitals are rapidly filling up with patients suffering from the disease.

The Guardian newspaper noted in regard to the current situation involving U.S. policy which emphasizes a punitive approach saying:

“Previously militarized attempts to prevent movement in the region have not reduced the number of people traveling north through Mexico, but instead forced migrants to take riskier routes through remote regions, and exposed them to a heightened risk of robbery, rape, abduction and death. Mexicans represented the largest proportion of people encountered by the U.S. border patrol, and nearly all were single adults. Arrivals of people from Honduras and Guatemala were second and third, respectively, and more than half of the people from those countries were families or children traveling alone.”

Figures supplied by the U.S. government reveals that 4,200 children are being held in custody by the CBP. Another 16,000 are being housed in federal shelters administered by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Federal laws prohibit unaccompanied children from being detained by CBP authorities for more than 72 hours.

Since February 22, the Biden White House has announced the opening of 8 emergency influx sites for children in the state of Texas. These facilities have a capacity to hold up to 14,000 children.

Prospects for Legislative Reforms

Even though the numbers of migrant adults and children seeking to enter the U.S. has grown exponentially over the last three months, it remains unclear as to whether the Senate will adopt the two immigration reform bills passed recently by the House of Representatives. The Dream and Promise Act of 2021 and The Farm Workforce Modernization Act provides a complicated model for the “legalization” of those brought to the U.S. as children and those who work in the agricultural sector of the U.S. economy. The stalemate surrounding these issues extend back for more than a decade. (See this and this)

During the administration of former President George W. Bush, Jr. (2001-2009), the introduction of punitive legislation against immigrants served to spark a nationwide movement led by people from Latin America and other geo-political regions. There were “Days Without Immigrants” beginning in 2006, when millions struck demanding an end to draconian laws and the brutality of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, a key division of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The resurrection of May Day during 2006-2007, mobilized millions across the country under the banner of justice for migrants, the undocumented and workers in general.

With the passing of the Bush administration, President Barack Obama in his first term (2009-2013) earned a reputation as a fierce enforcer of the existing racist immigration laws directed towards the undocumented. Entire communities were terrorized by ICE agents when raids were carried out on workplaces and homes often living children unattended. The Obama administration deported more people from the U.S. than any previous presidential regime in U.S. history. Although there were discussions during 2012 about passing an immigration bill, the details of the plan represented a retreat from the gains made as a result of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.

Biden was repeatedly questioned during the 2019-2020 campaign for the presidency about the nature of the immigration policy enacted while he was Vice President. At present there does not appear to be any fundamental differences in the Biden policy other than a pledge not to deport unaccompanied children. Nevertheless, the actual harm done to minors living in detention facilities and temporary shelters could damage them for life. However, children accompanied by adult migrants are being prevented from entering the U.S. and being returned to Mexico in the thousands.

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

Featured image is from the author

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***

‘Our doctors are not health care merchants.

Our mission is loftier than just earning a few dollars. Our mission is to create a doctrine about human health, to set an example of what can be done in this field, which is obviously the most crucial for everyone in the world. People’s lives and health are in doctors’ hands.

There is an enormous difference between the way people are educated in such selfish and individualistic societies and the way they are educated in a system like ours. And you can see the fruits of this. I ask if anyone can refute this, in the same way that I can ask if any other country, no matter how wealthy, has the same number of doctors per capita that we do. Our doctors are in every corner of this country; no other country has that.’

Fidel Castro, Havana 1999

Cuba is the first nation in Latin America and the Caribbean to bring a COVID-19 vaccine to clinical trials, in spite of the immense challenges it faces from the genocidal U.S. commercial and financial blockade, which has been in place for more than six decades. As such, the island is poised to become a major vaccine supplier for many of its neighbours that are grappling with COVID-19 outbreaks.

However, Cuba’s success in developing COVID-19 vaccines is not an overnight achievement; rather, the advancement of science became a key priority for the country in the aftermath of the 1959 Socialist Revolution. In the early years of Socialist Cuba, Fidel Castro (1960) stated that the country’s future would be one of ‘men of science.’ He specifically advocated for the importance of safeguarding the health of the Cuban people by pursuing research projects in biotechnology, with an emphasis on the development of new vaccines for infectious diseases.

Accordingly, Castro and a number of the other revolutionaries prioritized the creation of new public institutions aimed at educating and training large numbers of scientists, advancing scientific research and development, and safeguarding the health of all Cubans. This included the founding or establishment of: the Ministry of Health in 1961; the National Centre for Scientific Research (CENIC) in 1964; the Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB) in 1986; the Finlay Vaccine Institute in 1991; the National Biopreparations Centre in 1992; the Center of Molecular Immunology in 1994; and, the Group of Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Industries (BioCubaFarma) in 2012. From the 1980s up until the end of the 1990s, the socialist government of Cuba invested over US$2 billion in the development of its biotechnology sector.

The massive public investments committed to establishing state science institutions and organizations in the past played a major role in facilitating the development of five COVID-19 vaccines candidates on the part of Cuban scientists: Soberana 1, Soberana 2, Soberana Plus, Abdala, and Mambisa (which is applied as a nasal spray and does not require an injection). The Soberana 1, Soberana 2, and Soberana Plus vaccines were developed by the Finlay Vaccine Institute,[i] which produces vaccines to combat infectious diseases, and was originally founded to advance ‘the achievement of a group of Cuban scientists who investigated, produced and presented a vaccine against Neisseria meningitidis.’[ii] Meanwhile, the Abdala and Mambisa vaccines were developed by the CIGB, which conducts research in a variety of health-related areas, including genetic engineering, vaccines, therapeutics, plant molecular biology, and bioinformatics. It is important to note that the Finlay Vaccine Institute and the CIGB do not work in isolation. Instead, they are part of network of more than 30 Cuban institutions and companies that collaborate with each other in order to advance research and development in the field of biotechnology.

Among Cuba’s five potential COVID-19 vaccine candidates, Soberana 2 and Abdala are the closest to being approved, as both are in the final stages of clinical trials. Around 48,000 volunteers were given their first dose of Abdala in March, and applications of the second dose began on April 5th. Meanwhile, Soberana 2 has been given to 44,010 volunteers. Subsequently, health officials will start to vaccinate more than 1.5 million people in Havana with Soberana 2 and Abdala at the end of April as part of an intervention study.[iii] They will then wait until the fall before vaccinating the general population, provided that no side effects are observed.

According to Dr. Dagmar García-Rivera, Director of Research at the Finlay Vaccine Institute, some of the widely recognized vaccines that are currently available for widespread use in many countries, including Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Oxford-AstraZeneca, employednewer technologies still in development to proceed to clinical phases. Adenoviral vector vaccine candidates and those using messenger RNA (mRNA) technology…are among those not yet proven effective in humans.’[iv]

To the contrary, scientists at the Finlay Vaccine Institute and the CIGB relied on more traditional and well-tested technologies that have been proven safe and effective in the past. More specifically, Dr. García-Rivera explained that the Finlay Vaccine Institute elected to combat COVID-19 by developing ‘a protein-subunit vaccine,’ which is based on many years of experience, ‘knowledge and success with other vaccines’ that were previously developed in Cuba.[v] As an example, she pointed out that the Cuban Meningococcal Vaccine is ‘a subunits vaccine developed over 30 years ago.’[vi] Other subunit vaccines developed by Cubans in the past included ‘a recombinant hepatitis B vaccine and the Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) vaccine using a synthetic antigen, the first of its kind in the world.’ Additionally, all Cuban children under one year of age are given a pentavalent vaccine (i.e., the 5-in-1 vaccine), which has subunit components.

This Cuban-manufactured vaccine, which was introduced in 2006, ‘immunizes children against diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, hepatitis B and Haemophilus influenzae type b.’[vii] Dr. Luis Saturnino Herrera Martínez, Director of the CIGB and scientific advisor at BioCubaFarma, reiterated that Cuba’s strategy in combatting COVID-19 was to develop safe and effective vaccines based on technology that has been mastered by Cuban scientists.[viii] He insisted that choosing to develop subunit vaccines was the right course of action. Moreover, he argued that a pandemic is not the time for pharmaceutical companies to develop vaccines based on a new and unproven technologies.[ix]

Another key difference that emerges when comparing the vaccines being developed by socialist Cuba with some of those being produced in capitalist countries is the temperature required for storage and transportation. For example, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine needs to be kept at minus 70 degrees Celsius, while that of Moderna must to be stored at minus 20 degrees Celsius.

Meanwhile, Soberana 2 can be stored at between 2-8 degrees Celsius, which means it can be used anywhere in the world, including poor countries that often lack the resources needed to store and transport large quantities of vaccines under extreme refrigeration. Furthermore, the experimental vaccines developed using mRNA technology do not actually claim to prevent the transmission of the COVID-19 virus, whereas Soberana 2 promises a high level of protection against its spread.

Since the Soberana 2 vaccine appears to have been very successful in preventing the transmission of the COVID-19 virus in the final stages of its clinical trials, Cuba’s government recently announced its intention to produce 100 million doses of the vaccine in 2021, part of which will be used to immunize its own population before the end of the year. Although final approval is still pending, a number of countries have already expressed interest in importing Soberana 2 in order to vaccinate their own people, including Iran, Nicaragua, Vietnam, and Venezuela. In fact, Iran and Cuba are planning to co-produce the vaccine after it has been fully approved. Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, recently stated that his country will not import any vaccines from the U.S. or any European countries, because he does not trust them. More recently, the administration of President Alberto Fernandez in Argentina has begun negotiations with the Cuban government to obtain access to Soberana 2. Additionally, Cuba’s socialist government is also planning to make its vaccine available to tourists visiting the island after it has been approved.

Even though the U.S. blockade hinders Cuba’s vaccination efforts by making it difficult for the island to obtain all of the raw materials and supplies it needs to produce medicines in sufficient quantities, the Cuban government still intends to distribute its vaccines to parts of the world where people are least likely to have access to them. Unfortunately, poor countries that have implemented neo-liberal economic reforms over the last four decades have experienced a gradual erosion in their capacities to safeguard the health of their citizens. Such countries do not have the means to develop and manufacture vaccines and other medical products on their own, meaning that they have no choice but to rely on external assistance to protect their populations against the emergence of new life threatening viruses and diseases.

Cuba’s success in developing multiple COVID-19 vaccine candidates, even while having its imports of medical supplies and other essential products severely restricted by a genocidal American trade embargo, demonstrates what can be accomplished when public investments and political power are dedicated to achieving the collective good. Moreover, Cuba’s proficiency in vaccine development is the culmination of the socialist system’s long-term commitment to the provision of universal public health care services, which has spanned more than six decades.

Fidel Castro and the Cuban revolutionaries regarded universal access to healthcare and medicine as basic human rights. As such, they believed that it was the duty of Cuba’s socialist government to establish an excellent health care system that would be available to everyone. Since the success of the Socialist Revolution, the Cuban government has invested heavily to increase its supply of doctors and establish scientific research institutes in order to develop its own medicines and meet the needs of its health care system.

Fidel Castro was highly critical of the practice of treating health care services as though they were business transactions in a free-market system. He reiterated the point that the commercialization of health care was ‘repugnant,’ and that everybody should have free access to adequate health care services. Accordingly, the privatisation of health care would not be permitted on the socialist island of Cuba.

In addition to denouncing all forms of private health care, Fidel Castro also strongly condemned profit-oriented pharmaceutical companies. He specifically expressed his frustrations with large and powerful pharmaceutical companies that dedicated themselves to maximizing their profits instead of demonstrating a genuine commitment to human life when he addressed ‘the special session commemorating the 50th anniversary of the World health Organization,’ in Geneva, Switzerland, on May 14, 1998, and stated that:

medicines, that should be made to save lives, are sold at increasingly higher prices. In 1995, the market of pharmaceuticals involved 280 billion dollars. The developed countries with 824 million people, 14.6 percent of the world population, consume 82 percent of the medicines while consumption in the rest of the world with a 4,815 million population is only 18 percent. The prices are actually prohibitive for the Third World where consumption is limited to the privileged sectors. The control of patents and markets by the big transnational companies allows them to raise prices over ten times above production costs. The market price of some advanced antibiotics is 50 times higher than their cost.

In these times when purely profit-oriented pharmaceutical companies are able to exert unprecedented tyrannical and oppressive power over the health and well-being of so many people, the world should be reminded of Fidel Castro’s (Havana 1998) warning that, ‘Man can’t be a piece of merchandise nor can human health be a piece of merchandise, because selling, trading, profiting from health is like selling, trading and profiting from slaves, trading and profiting from human life…’

‘Long live the Homeland!

Long live the Revolution!

Long live socialism!’ (Fidel Castro)

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Birsen Filip holds a Ph.D. in philosophy and master’s degrees in economics and philosophy. She has published numerous articles and chapters on a range of topics, including political philosophy, geo-politics, and the history of economic thought, with a focus on the Austrian School of Economics and the German Historical School of Economics. She is also the author of The Rise of Neo-liberalism and the Decline of Freedom (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020).  

Notes

[i] https://www.finlay.edu.cu/en/about/#history

[ii] https://www.finlay.edu.cu/en/about/#history

[iii] ‘Intervention (or Experimental) studies differ from observational studies in that the investigator assigns the exposure. They are used to determine the effectiveness of an intervention or the effectiveness of a health service delivery. They can also be used to establish the safety, cost-effectiveness and acceptability of an intervention.’ (https://www.drcath.net/toolkit/intervention-studies)

[iv] https://mediccreview.org/soberana-cuba-covid-19-vaccine-candidates/

[v] https://mediccreview.org/soberana-cuba-covid-19-vaccine-candidates/

[vi] https://mediccreview.org/soberana-cuba-covid-19-vaccine-candidates/

[vii] https://mediccreview.org/soberana-cuba-covid-19-vaccine-candidates/

[viii] http://www.cubadebate.cu/especiales/2021/04/12/dr-luis-herrera-sobre-las-vacunas-cuba-busco-una-apuesta-segura-con-base-en-las-posibilidades-y-en-tecnologia-dominada/?fbclid=IwAR1f8DVzqI2BuWqjPr4GB_-OFBJlngTXnj2CmQG1aDOH06W2UFSMw6G1MJE

[ix] http://www.cubadebate.cu/especiales/2021/04/12/dr-luis-herrera-sobre-las-vacunas-cuba-busco-una-apuesta-segura-con-base-en-las-posibilidades-y-en-tecnologia-dominada/?fbclid=IwAR1f8DVzqI2BuWqjPr4GB_-OFBJlngTXnj2CmQG1aDOH06W2UFSMw6G1MJE

Whither India-Russia Ties?

April 14th, 2021 by M. K. Bhadrakumar

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***

Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility is an incredibly important piece of infrastructure for Tehran’s interests.

One of its most important roles is that of providing leverage when the Islamic Republic is on the Nuclear Deal negotiating table.

Natanz was largely built underground to withstand enemy airstrikes.

Back in 2002, when it was established it became a focal point of Western fears regarding the potential of Tehran acquiring nuclear weapons.

Despite many accusations, mostly from Israel, Iran maintains that it develops its enriched uranium for peaceful purposes.

The fact that it also applies pressure on the other signatories on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (known as the Iranian Nuclear Deal) is an added, and needed bonus.

The Natanz facility was subject to an alleged cyber-attack on April 11th.

This led to a large blackout, and was considered a significant strike against Tehran.

Iran’s nuclear program spokesman, Ali Akbar Salehi, confirmed that the electrical disruption at Natanz was a deliberate act of sabotage, calling it “nuclear terrorism.”

Israel’s officials refused to provide any comment, and disregarded the incident.

Israeli media, however, continue citing anonymous sources, claiming that it had been a Mossad operation, and that it had achieved great success.

The timing of the attack was also said to not be incidental, coming the day after Iran celebrated its National Nuclear Technology Day.

Iran itself didn’t blame Israel, but in statements, officials said that the attack came from those who oppose Tehran’s negotiations with the West.

The United States and the Islamic Republic have been involved in indirect negotiations in rescuing the Nuclear Deal.

Anything conclusive is still far off.

For any real progress to occur, Iran requires from the Biden Administration to lift all sanctions against it, related to the Nuclear Deal or otherwise.

The result is a standstill, in which Iran refuses to accept the US back into the deal with significant concessions, and Washington not in a hurry to fulfill any demands.

Tehran then continues incrementing various reductions of its commitments to the Iran Nuclear Deal, in loosely permitted margins.

In this way, it not only attempts to gain leverage over the US, but also tries to push the EU signatories into entering into discussions with Washington to salvage the deal.

The United States has admitted, without specifying clearly, that some sanctions that are inconsistent with the Nuclear Deal and could be lifted.

Iran likely did not appreciate such a concession.

Tehran, still, shouldn’t hold its breath, since the enemies of any such progress are many, and it is not put out of the question that if Israel was actually behind the incident in Natanz, that some from Washington’s fold were also present in the plot.

Still, Israel and also many in the US oppose any form of normalization between Tehran and Washington, and the continuous MSM reports that attempt to stir the pot stand testament to that.

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***

The Trudeau government’s refusal to sign the UN Nuclear Ban Treaty is both unpopular and hypocritical.

According to a poll released last week by Nanos Research, 55% of Canadians “support” and 19% “somewhat support” signing the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The same percentage agreed, or somewhat agreed with Canada signing a treaty that became international law in January even if Washington pressures Ottawa not to.

The poll commissioned by the Hiroshima Nagasaki Day Coalition, Simons Foundation Canada and Collectif Échec à la guerre also found that Canadians are concerned about the threat posed by nuclear weapons. Eighty percent of the 1007 people asked said the world should work to eliminate nuclear weapons while only 9% considered it acceptable for countries to have nuclear weapons for protection.

The poll highlights the unpopularity of the government’s position towards a treaty designed to stigmatize and criminalize nukes in a similar fashion to the UN landmine treaty and Chemical Weapons Convention. Canada was one of 38 states to vote against — 123 voted in favour — holding the 2017 UN Conference to Negotiate a Legally Binding Instrument to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons, Leading Towards their Total Elimination. Justin Trudeau then refused to send a representative to the TPNW negotiating meeting, which two-thirds of all countries attended. The PM went so far as to call the anti-nuclear initiative “useless” and since then his government has refused to join the 86 countries that have already signed the treaty. At the UN General Assembly in November Canada voted against 118 countries that reaffirmed their support for the TPNW.

The Liberals have taken these positions as they’ve publicly expressed a desire to abolish these ghastly weapons. Just before the TPNW entered into force at the start of the year Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs Rob Oliphant said “we are committed to achieving a world free of nuclear weapons.” In October, Global Affairs declared, “Canada unequivocally supports global nuclear disarmament.”

In isolation the gap between the Liberals’ nuclear weapons pronouncements and actions is striking. But if one broadens the lens, the hypocrisy is substantially more astounding. The Trudeau government says its international affairs are driven by a belief in an “international rules-based order” and “feminist foreign policy” yet they refuse to sign a nuclear treaty that directly advances these stated principles.

The TPNW has been dubbed the “first feminist law on nuclear weapons” since it specifically recognizes the different ways in which nuclear weapons production and use disproportionately impacts women. Additionally, the TPNW strengthens the international rules-based order by making weapons that are immoral also illegal under international law.

Fortunately, the NDP, Greens and Bloc Québécois all actively support the TPNW. The recent Nanos poll suggests five times more Canadians would vote for a party that supports the Treaty than would vote against one for doing so.

By signing the UN Nuclear Ban Treaty the Trudeau government can fulfill both Canadians wishes and their stated foreign-policy rhetoric.

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