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“More and more open areas in East Jerusalem are being designated as preservation or national parks, and this is clearly in order to prevent Palestinian urban development.” — Sari Kronish, Israeli planning rights organization Bimkom

For decades, a Palestinian village on the southern tip of Jerusalem has lived on and cultivated the land. But a series of recent efforts by Israel is not only threatening their way of life but potentially displacing them from their homes.

On January 25, the Jerusalem District Planning Committee rejected the residents of Palestinian village al-Walaja’s plan to legalize their homes and further develop the community. Instead, the committee declared their land an ancient agricultural area in need of environmental conservation that should be transformed into a national park.

The notion of environmental integrity struck Amy Cohen, director of international relations and advocacy at Israeli non-profit Ir Amim, as contradictory.

“The planning committee and the [Israel] Civil Administration within the West Bank [have] been promoting and advancing plans within the same area for Jewish settlers,” Cohen said. “It shows massive discrimination in how [Israel] treats Palestinian areas in order to suppress the residential development.”

The committee’s decision paves the way for the lifting of the demolition freeze on 38 al-Walaja homes. On April 26, Israel’s Supreme Court will convene for a hearing on al-Walaja’s 2018 petition over its resident-initiated outline plan.

The portion of al-Walaja (spelled Al Walajeh on this map) facing mass demolitions is shaded in brown within the purple circle between the apartheid wall (red line) and the Jerusalem municipal border/annexation line (blue line). Credit | Ir Amim

Ibrahim A’raj, 37, grew up in al-Walaja. The home he built for his family in 2016 is now under threat of demolition. A’raj expects the court will not rule in al-Walaja’s favor in April and his house will be demolished.

“It’s not logical or legal,” A’raj said, referring to the Planning Committee’s rejection of the development plan for environmental reasons. “The village is surrounded by settlements and the wall, which destroyed the nature and environmental landscape.”

The Planning Committee did not respond to requests for comment.

Zones and no permits

When Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1967, it took the northern section of al-Walaja as well. Today, al-Walaja is split between Jerusalem and Areas B and C of the West Bank, so one-third of the land is controlled by the Jerusalem Municipality and the rest by the Bethlehem Governorate.

The Jerusalem area of al-Walaja has been at risk of forced displacement for a decade as a result of the Planning Committee’s refusal to discuss an outline plan. This refusal has made it impossible for the community to obtain building permits, so A’raj had to construct his house without one.

Amid the absence of building permits, demolition orders have increased. More than 20 homes have been razed in al-Walaja since 2016.

An isolated village cut off from its surroundings

Israeli authorities have prevented al-Walaja from developing while expanding Jewish settlements around the village and the apartheid wall (the barrier separating the West Bank and Israel).

Construction of the wall on three sides of al-Walaja cut off the village from nearly 300 acres of its agricultural land and turned that land into Nahal Refaim National Park. Har Gilo settlement lies to the south of al-Walaja. The Israel Civil Administration’s proposed expansion of the Har Gilo settlement to the west of the village will extend the wall, thereby enclosing al-Walaja and fully isolating it from its surroundings. The Civil Administration did not respond to requests for comment.

“The wall and the settlements deprived us from accessing our own land that we worked so hard to cultivate,” A’raj said, mentioning how the villagers are now blocked from the olive trees they harvested before the wall was built.

Ancient agricultural terraces in al-Walaja (left) and Israel’s destruction of ancient terraces to build the wall (right). Photos | B’Tselem

Al-Walaja residents experience harassment daily from Israeli settlers and authorities. A’raj explained:

The Civil Administration confiscates our equipment when we start building a new house. The settlers around us use drones to take pictures when we start building and send them to the Civil Administration. The police put checkpoints at the entrance of the village and sometimes inside the village and the Walaja Bypass Road [connecting Har Gilo settlement to Jerusalem] gets a lot of traffic, so it limits our movement.”

A’raj lamented that if his home is demolished, he will likely leave al-Walaja, the place he’s called home his whole life. “It’s a huge tyranny that I have to leave my own house and my own land,” he said.

Israel doesn’t provide alternative or temporary housing for Palestinians whose homes they demolish. Sari Kronish — East Jerusalem planner for Bimkom, an Israeli planning rights organization — described the government’s lack of consideration in helping displaced families find housing as one of the “dark sides of the Israeli regime at the moment.”

“The very sad reality is that the authorities don’t offer [the uprooted Palestinians] anything. They just treat them as lawbreakers who are receiving their penalty,” Kronish said. “People just become homeless and become displaced.”

Ir Amim’s Cohen emphasizes that what Israel is enacting isn’t just the wide-scale displacement of Palestinians but also an attempt at annexation. She elaborated:

It’s an acute humanitarian toll that’s exacted upon the families, but it is also in service to the Israeli objective of consolidating control, which completely undermines any sort of conditions for a two-state solution based on two capitals. Because if you can completely segment Palestinian contiguity and advance steps toward de facto annexation of these areas, then you’re foiling a prospect of an agreed resolution.”

Not just al-Walaja

In what many Palestinians have described as a continuation of the Nakba (Israel’s 1948 ethnic cleansing campaign in Palestine), Israel is currently in the process of expelling thousands of Palestinians from East Jerusalem under the pretext of preservation.

“More and more open areas in East Jerusalem are being designated as preservation or national parks, and this is clearly in order to prevent Palestinian urban development,” Kronish said.

In the Al-Bustan neighborhood of the East Jerusalem district of Silwan, mass dispossession looms over the residents in order to make room for the touristic venture, Garden of the King. The community of Sheikh Jarrah is experiencing displacement at the hands of settler groups for the Shimon HaTzadik National Park.

Israel has long employed the practice of stealing Palestinian land and claiming it for recreational purposes. Many of Israel’s prized national parks were built on top of Palestinian villages destroyed during the Nakba. In Jerusalem, for instance, the remains of the village of Lifta are now a national park and hotel. Garbage and graffiti adorn what’s left of Lifta’s stone houses. Most of the village’s inhabitants, who were expelled in 1948, and their descendants live in refugee camps around Jerusalem — unable to return to home.

“It’s a form of institutional confiscation and settlement in the guise of green protection,” Kronish said.

Displacing indigenous peoples under the claim of conservation is an inherently settler-colonialist tactic spanning regions and centuries. Most well-known national parks in the United States like Yellowstone and Yosemite were once Native American tribal territories. In order to create an “uninhabited wilderness,” the federal government first had to remove the native peoples living on that land.

Modern environmentalism ignorantly dictates Some environmentalist assumptions suggest humans cannot coexist with wildlife. But that racist assumption idea ignores the history of indigenous communities living with and preserving nature.

Native Americans understood how to sustainably tend to the land. And just as in al-Walaja, maintaining the land is part of their livelihood.

Kronish explained:

This type of agricultural lifestyle is very dependent on people living [on] and working the land harmoniously. Once people are displaced, attempts at preservation become artificial. The residents would argue that by continuing to live there, they are more able to continue to preserve. For them, it’s not a question of preservation. It’s a question of a way of life and connection to the land.”

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Jessica Buxbaum is a Jerusalem-based journalist for MintPress News covering Palestine, Israel, and Syria. Her work has been featured in Middle East Eye, The New Arab and Gulf News.

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I’m sitting at a bar in Texas, surrounded by maskless people, looking at folks on the streets walking around like life is normal, talking with nice and friendly faces, feeling like things in the world are more-or-less normal. Cases and deaths attributed to Covid are, like everywhere else, falling dramatically. 

If you pay attention only to the media fear campaigns, you would find this confusing. More than two weeks ago, the governor of Texas completely reversed his devastating lockdown policies and repealed all his emergency powers, along with the egregious attacks on rights and liberties.

There was something very un-Texan about those lockdowns. My hotel room is festooned with pictures of cowboys on horses waving guns in the air, along with other depictions of rugged individualism facing down the elements. It’s a caricature but Texans embrace it. Then a new virus came along – as if that had never happened before in Texas – and the new Zoom class took the opposite path, not freedom but imposition and control.

After nearly a year of nonsense, on March 2, 2021, the governor finally said enough is enough and repealed it all. Towns and cities can still engage in Covid-related mischief but at least they are no longer getting cover from the governor’s office.

At that moment, a friend remarked to me that this would be the test we have been waiting for. A complete repeal of restrictions would lead to mass death, they said. Would it? Did the lockdowns really control the virus? We would soon find out, he theorized.

I knew better. The “test” of whether and to what extent lockdowns control the virus or “suppress outbreaks” (in Anthony Fauci’s words) has been tried all over the world. Every serious empirical examination has shown that the answer is no.

The US has many examples of open states that have generally had better performance in managing the disease than those states that are closed. Georgia already opened on April 24, 2020. South Dakota never shut down. South Carolina opened in May. Florida ended all restrictions in September. In every case, the press howled about the coming slaughter that did not happen. Yes, each open state experienced a seasonality wave in winter but so did the lockdown states.

So it was in Texas. Thanks to this Twitter thread, and some of my own googling, we have a nice archive of predictions about what would happen if Texas opened.

• California Governor Gavin Newsom said that opening Texas was “absolutely reckless.”
• Gregg Popovich, head coach of the NBA San Antonio Spurs, said opening was “ridiculous” and “ignorant.”
• CNN quoted an ICU nurse saying “I’m scared of what this is going to look like.”
• Vanity Fair went over the top with this headline: “Republican Governors Celebrate COVID Anniversary With Bold Plan to Kill Another 500,000 Americans.”
• There was the inevitable Dr. Fauci: “It just is inexplicable why you would want to pull back now.”
• Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke of Texas revealed himself to be a full-blown lockdowner: It’s a “big mistake,” he said. “It’s hard to escape the conclusion that it’s also a cult of death.” He accused the governor of “sacrificing the lives of our fellow Texans … for political gain.”
• James Hamblin, a doctor and writer for the Atlantic, said in a Tweet liked by 20K people: “Ending precautions now is like entering the last miles of a marathon and taking off your shoes and eating several hot dogs.”
• Bestselling author Kurt Eichenwald flipped out: “Goddamn. Texas already has FIVE variants that have turned up: Britain, South Africa, Brazil, New York & CA. The NY and CA variants could weaken vaccine effectiveness. And now idiot @GregAbbott_TX throws open the state.” He further called the government “murderous.”
• Epidemiologist Whitney Robinson wrote: “I feel genuinely sad. There are people who are going to get sick and die bc of avoidable infections they get in the next few weeks. It’s demoralizing.”
• Pundit Bill Kristol (I had no idea that he was a lockdowner) wrote: “Gov. Abbott is going to be responsible for more avoidable COVID hospitalizations and deaths than all the undocumented immigrants coming across the Texas border put together.”
• Health pundit Bob Wachter said the decision to open was “unforgivable.”
• Virus guru Michael Osterholm told CNN: “We’re walking into the mouth of the monster. We simply are.”
• Joe Biden famously said that the Texas decision to open reflected “Neanderthal thinking.”
• Nutritionist Eric Feigl-Ding said that the decision makes him want to “vomit so bad.”
• The chairman of the state’s Democratic Party said: “What Abbott is doing is extraordinarily dangerous. This will kill Texans. Our country’s infectious-disease specialists have warned that we should not put our guard down, even as we make progress towards vaccinations. Abbott doesn’t care.”
• Other state Democrats said in a letter that the decision was “premature and harmful.”
• The CDC’s Rochelle Walensky didn’t mince words: “Please hear me clearly: At this level of cases with variants spreading, we stand to completely lose the hard-earned ground we have gained. I am really worried about reports that more states are rolling back the exact public health measures we have recommended to protect people from COVID-19.”

There are probably hundreds more such warnings, predictions, and demands, all stated with absolute certainty that basic social and market functioning is a terrible idea. The lockdown lobby was out in full force. And yet what do we see now more than two weeks out (and arguably the lockdowns died on March 2, when the government announced the decision)?

Here are the data.

The CDC has a very helpful tool that allows anyone to compare open vs closed states. The results are devastating for those who believe that lockdowns are the way to control a virus. In this chart we compare closed states Massachusetts and California with open states Georgia, Florida, Texas, and South Carolina.

What can we conclude from such a visualization? It suggests that the lockdowns have had no statistically observable effect on the virus trajectory and resulting severe outcomes. The open states have generally performed better, perhaps not because they are open but simply for reasons of demographics and seasonality. The closed states seem not to have achieved anything in terms of mitigation.

On the other hand, the lockdowns destroyed industries, schools, churches, liberties and lives, demoralizing the population and robbing people of essential rights. All in the name of safety from a virus that did its work in any case.

As for Texas, the results so far are in.

I’m making no predictions about the future path of the virus in Texas. Indeed for a full year, AIER has been careful about not trying to outguess this virus, which has its own ways, some predictable and some mysterious. The experience has, or should have, humbled everyone. Political arrangements seem to have no power to control it, much less finally suppress it. The belief that it was possible to control people in order to control a virus produced a calamity unprecedented in modern times.

What’s striking about all the above predictions of infections and deaths is not just that they were all wrong. It’s the arrogance and confidence behind each of them. After a full year and directly observing the inability of “nonpharmaceutical interventions” to manage the pathogen, the experts are still wedded to their beloved lockdowns, unable or unwilling to look at the data and learn anything from them.

The concept of lockdowns stemmed from a faulty premise: that you can separate humans, like rats in cages, and therefore control and even eradicate the virus. After a year, we unequivocally know this not to be true, something that the best and wisest epidemiologists knew all along. Essential workers still must work; they must go home to their families, many in crowded living conditions. Lockdowns do not eliminate the virus, they merely shift the burden onto the working class.

Now we can see the failure in black, white, and full color, daily appearing on our screens courtesy of the CDC. Has that shaken the pro-lockdown pundit class? Not that much. What an amazing testament to the stubbornness of elite opinion and its bias against basic freedoms. They might all echo the words of Groucho Marx: “Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?”

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Jeffrey A. Tucker is Editorial Director for the American Institute for Economic Research. He is the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press and nine books in 5 languages, most recently Liberty or Lockdown. He is also the editor of The Best of Mises. He speaks widely on topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture.

Jeffrey is available for speaking and interviews via his email.  Tw | FB | LinkedIn

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As of March 16, 2021, 19 European countries plus Thailand¹ had suspended the use of AstraZeneca’s vaccine, either in full or in part, following reports of deadly blood clots.^2,3 March 2, 2021, The Defender reported⁴ U.K. data showing the AstraZeneca vaccine was responsible for 77% more adverse events and 25% more deaths than the Pfizer vaccine, which in the U.S. has been connected with a majority of death reports in the Vaccine Adverse Reporting System (VAERS).

AstraZeneca’s vaccine has received emergency use authorization in Europe but not in the U.S., where the Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines are available. Contrary to the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines use a viral vector to deliver double-stranded DNA for the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein into your cells.⁵

Business Insider has created a comparison chart⁶ of the four vaccines — Moderna, Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson — currently available in the U.S. and Europe.

Norway Links Lethal Blood Clots to AstraZeneca Vaccine

While virtually all post-vaccination deaths so far have been shrugged off as coincidence, even when occurring in healthy individuals in their 20s and 30s, doctors at Oslo University Hospital have now announced the blood clotting disorders experienced by some recipients of the AstraZeneca vaccine are in fact caused by the vaccine.⁷

A March 18, 2021, article in Science Norway reads, in part:⁸

“’Our theory that this is a powerful immune response most likely triggered by the vaccine, has been confirmed,’ says professor and chief physician Pål Andre Holme. Three Norwegian health workers under the age of 50 have been hospitalized. One is dead …

‘In collaboration with experts in the field from the University Hospital of North Norway HF, we have found specific antibodies against blood platelets that can cause these reactions, and which we know from other fields of medicine, but then with medical drugs as the cause of the reaction,’ the chief physician explains …

When asked to clarify why he says ‘most likely’ in the quote, Holme confidently responds that the reason for these rare cases of blood clots has been found.

‘We have the reason. Nothing but the vaccine can explain why these individuals had this immune response,’ he states. [Norwegian national newspaper] VG also asks how Holme can know that the immune response is not caused by something other than the vaccine.

‘There is nothing in the patient history of these individuals that can give such a powerful immune response. I am confident that the antibodies that we have found are the cause, and I see no other explanation than it being the vaccine which triggers it,’ he responds.”

The three health workers reported acute pain, bleeding, low platelet counts and were found to have blood clots in “unusual places,” such as their stomachs and brains. Later that same day, March 18, 2021, the European Medicines Agency ruled the AstraZeneca vaccine is “safe and effective, despite some concerns over possible side effects,” CNBC reported,⁹ and that benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks.

Meanwhile, March 22, 2021, Norway Today reported the Norwegian Medicines Agency had received two new reports of blood clots with deadly consequences following vaccination with the AstraZeneca vaccine. In a press release, the agency stated that “The Norwegian Medicines Agency cannot rule out that these cases may have a connection with the AstraZeneca vaccine.”¹⁰ One of the two victims was a health care worker.

German Experts Weigh In

A March 19, 2021, German Spektrum article¹¹ reviews preliminary findings by German investigators, which add further weight to Holme’s findings in Norway. It reads, in part (translation from German using translate.com):

“The effects of the suspended vaccinations with the AstraZeneca vaccine are believed to have been due to a particular immune response that activates platelets and thus triggers thrombosis. This preliminary conclusion is being made by a working group made up of Andreas Greinacher from the University Hospital Greifswald.

The effect corresponds in many details to a heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT) type 2,¹² in which antibodies against a protein complex are formed in connection with heparin, which in turn respond to a receptor on the platelets …

The team demonstrated the similarity of thrombosis with HIT in the blood of four patients with sinus vein thrombosis. Antibodies appear to form against a complex of heparin and the signaling molecule PF4, which in turn interact with the receptor CD32 of the platelets and thus activate them.

This triggers the clotting cascade, which leads to the thrombosis. The antibodies produced in the vaccinated individuals were very similar to those found in HIT, Greinacher said at a news conference. So far, however, it is still unclear where these antibodies come from, whether they form against the vaccine virus or the spike antigen or perhaps against a factor only involved in the immune response.”

According to Greinacher, people with a history of thrombosis probably do not have a higher risk of complications from the vaccine due to the mechanism of harm. He also points out that there is treatment against HIT, which the team believes “should also work in the case of the suspected vaccination side effect.”

Spektrum reports that, based on these findings, the Society for Thrombosis and Hemostasis Research suggests vaccinated individuals who experience thrombosis or neurological symptoms such as dizziness, headache or visual impairment on the fifth day post-vaccination and onward should be tested for HIT type 2.

The HIT type 2 test will detect antibodies against the heparin complex and, if positive, the Society recommends administering intravenous immunoglobulin G to prevent the activation of CD32 and interrupt the mechanism that results in thrombosis.

AstraZeneca Efficacy Data Being Questioned

March 22, 2021, AstraZeneca¹³ announced its Phase 3 U.S.-based trial showed the vaccine was 79% effective at preventing symptomatic cases of COVID-19 and 100% effective against severe or critical disease and hospitalization, with no increased risk for adverse effects compared to placebo.

According to The Associated Press,¹⁴ partial results from trials in the U.K, Brazil and South Africa — where a “manufacturing mistake” had led to some participants receiving only half of their first dose — suggested the vaccine was 70% effective.

The AP goes on to cite a number of individuals saying the U.S. results should allay concerns about the AstraZeneca vaccine.

That narrative broke apart the very next day, March 23, 2021, when the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) issued a statement^15,16,17 first thing in the morning, saying the Data and Safety Monitoring board (DSMB) had notified them that AstraZeneca’s data may include “outdated information” that cast doubt on its effectiveness. As reported by The Defender:¹⁸

“Notably, in its most recent data, AstraZeneca neglected to include key information, such as the number of trial participants who developed ‘severe COVID.’ AstraZeneca President Ruud Dobber, during an interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box, said the number was ‘5,’ shortly after the data were released.”

“We urge the company to work with the DSMB to review the efficacy data and ensure the most accurate, up-to-date efficacy data be made public as quickly as possible,” the NIAID said in its statement.¹⁹

Dr. Anthony Fauci, who heads the NIAID and was one of the people quoted by the AP as saying the U.S. trial ought to put concerns to rest, went on the defensive, saying “This is really what you call an unforced error because the fact is, this is very likely a very good vaccine. If you look at it the data, they really are quite good, but when they put it into the press release, it wasn’t completely accurate.”²⁰

AstraZeneca responded²¹ saying the data were based on a “pre-specified interim analysis with a data cut-off” of February 17, 2021, and promised to share more data with the independent review board.

In a Tweet,²² Francois Balloux, professor and director of the UCL Genetics Institute, called the NIAID’s statement “highly unusual,” noting it “comes close to accusing Oxford/AZ of having willfully misrepresented” some of its trial results.

Stephen Evans, professor of pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, called the NIAID’s statement “unprecedented,” as while the DSMB will “sometimes disagree with investigators over vaccine trial results,” they typically do so “in private,” not publicly.²³

This isn’t the first time AstraZeneca has been challenged over its data handling, though. As reported by The Defender:²⁴

“‘The way they handled their data early on, AstraZeneca basically shot themselves in the foot,’ Julian Tang, a virologist at the University of Leicester, said even before the latest issue arose.

AstraZeneca has received criticism over its studies since the first data released in the UK, which purported to show the vaccine was 70% effective, yet failed to account for a manufacturing mistake and didn’t include enough participants over 65 to determine efficacy among older patients …”

Full Throttle Forward Despite Risks

Despite concerns about data mishandling and two independent investigations finding a mechanism of harm, the World Health Organization and the European Medicines Agency are saying the AstraZeneca vaccine is good to go and urge countries to keep using it.

March 18, 2021, the EMA issued a press release²⁵ giving the AstraZeneca the green-light, despite admitting it is associated with “very rare cases of blood clots associated with thrombocytopenia, i.e., low levels of blood platelets.” The justification, as usual, is that the benefits outweigh the risks.^26,27,28

But do they? What exactly are the benefits? You can still contract the virus. You can still spread the virus. All it promises to do is lessen your symptoms when you get infected. Sure, the idea is that by lessening symptoms, you’ll reduce your risk of hospitalization and death, but lessening symptoms is not what a vaccine is supposed to do. A vaccine is supposed to make you immune to the disease in question, and none of the COVID-19 vaccines does that.

I’ve discussed this in previous articles, including “COVID-19 mRNA Shots Are Legally Not Vaccines,” “COVID-19 ‘Vaccines’ Are Gene Therapy” and “How COVID-19 ‘Vaccines’ May Destroy the Lives of Millions.”

What’s more, COVID-19 is really only a serious risk to the very old and people with two or more comorbidities. For the rest, its lethality is on par with the common flu.^{29,30,31,32,33} It may be different in terms of symptoms and complications, but the actual lethality is about the same.

Data³⁴ have shown the overall noninstitutionalized infection fatality ratio for all age groups is 0.26%. If you’re under the age of 40, your risk of dying from COVID-19 if you get infected is just 0.01%.

Meanwhile, as reviewed in “COVID-19 Vaccine Tested on Babies Even as Death Toll Mounts,” the lethality rate of COVID-19 vaccines is somewhere between 0.0024% and 0.0028%, and that’s assuming all deaths are being reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), which is doubtful.

The key difference between being harmed or killed by COVID-19 and being harmed or killed by the vaccine is that the illness kills those who are old, sick and frail, while reports show the vaccine is killing young and healthy people. From my perspective, the argument that the vaccine benefits outweigh the risks simply does not hold water.

Side Effects 3X More Common in Those Previously Infected

In related news, according to researchers at King’s College, people who have already had COVID are three times more likely to experience vaccine side effects than those who have not been exposed to the virus, and this appears true for both mRNA and DNA versions of the vaccine.³⁵

They gleaned this information from the college’s ZOE app, which has logged more than 700,000 vaccinations. According to that data, 35.7% of those given the Pfizer vaccine who had previously been infected reported side effects, compared to just 12.2% of those not previously infected.

Looking at the AstraZeneca vaccine specifically, 52.7% of previously infected had side effects, compared to 31.9% of those who had not been previously infected.

While The Telegraph reports this as being a beneficial thing, saying “More severe side effects are often a sign of better immunity, and emerging research suggests just one dose of vaccine gives a similar protective effect to two doses in people who have had a previous infection,” some experts vehemently disagree.

Proper Timing May Eliminate Some Vaccine Risks

In January 2021, Dr. Hooman Noorchashm, a cardiac surgeon and patient advocate, sent a public letter³⁶ to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration commissioner detailing the risks of vaccinating individuals who have previously been infected with SARS-CoV-2, or who have an active SARS-CoV-2 infection.

He urged the FDA to require prescreening for SARS-CoV-2 viral proteins to reduce the risk of injuries and deaths following vaccination, as the vaccine may trigger an adverse immune response in those who have already been infected with the virus.

Fox TV host Tucker Carlson recently interviewed him about these risks as well. In that interview, Noorchashm said:³⁷

“I think it’s a dramatic error on part of public health officials to try to put this vaccine into a one-size-fits-all paradigm … We’re going to take this problem we have with the COVID-19 pandemic, where a half-percent of the population is susceptible to dying, and compound it by causing totally avoidable harm by vaccinating people who are already infected …

The signal is deafening, the people who are having complications or adverse events are the people who have recently or are currently or previously infected [with COVID]. I don’t think we can ignore this.”

In an emailed response to The Defender, Noorchashm fleshed out his concerns, saying:³⁸

“Viral antigens persist in the tissues of the naturally infected for months. When the vaccine is used too early after a natural infection, or worse during an active infection, the vaccine force activates a powerful immune response that attacks the tissues where the natural viral antigens are persisting. This, I suggest, is the cause of the high level of adverse events and, likely deaths, we are seeing in the recently infected following vaccination.”

Noorchashm is now pushing for the implementation of a prevaccine screening campaign (#ScreenB4Vaccine), using PCR or rapid antigen testing to determine whether the individual has an active infection, and an IgG antibody test to determine past infection.

If either test is positive, he recommends delaying vaccination for a minimum of three to six months to allow your IgG levels to wane. At that point, he recommends testing your blood IgG level and use that as a guide to decide the timing of your vaccination. As reported by The Defender:³⁹

“Noorchashm told Carlson that he’s been wrongly accused of stoking vaccine hesitancy, when just the opposite is true — if public health officials want people to trust the vaccines, they need to do everything possible to avoid creating situations where the vaccines can actually cause harm.

‘People aren’t stupid,’ Noorchashm said. ‘If you explain how the vaccine works, and give them the information on how to keep themselves safe,’ that is how you build trust.”

What to Do if You Regret Getting the COVID-19 Vaccine

If you already got the vaccine and now regret it, you may be able to address your symptoms using the same strategies you’d use to treat actual SARS-CoV-2 infection. I review these strategies at the end of “Why COVID Vaccine Testing Is a Farce.”

Additionally, if you’re experiencing side effects, please help raise public awareness by reporting it. The Children’s Health Defense is calling on all who have suffered a side effect from a COVID-19 vaccine to do these three things:⁴⁰

1. If you live in the U.S., file a report on VAERS
2. Report the injury on VaxxTracker.com, which is a nongovernmental adverse event tracker (you can file anonymously if you like)
3. Report the injury on the CHD website

The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) recently posted more than 50 video presentations from the pay-for-view Fifth International Public Conference on Vaccination held online October 16 to 18, 2020, and made them available to everyone for free.

The conference’s theme was “Protecting Health and Autonomy in the 21st Century” and it featured physicians, scientists and other health professionals, human rights activists, faith community leaders, constitutional and civil rights attorneys, authors and parents of vaccine injured children talking about vaccine science, policy, law and ethics and infectious diseases, including coronavirus and COVID-19 vaccines.

In December 2020, a U.K. company published false and misleading information about NVIC and its conference, which prompted NVIC to open up the whole conference for free viewing. The conference has everything you need to educate yourself and protect your personal freedoms and liberties with respect to your health.

Don’t miss out on this incredible opportunity. I was a speaker at this empowering conference and urge you to watch these video presentations before they’re censored and taken away by the technocratic elite.

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Notes

¹ The Sun March 15, 2021, Updated March 16, 2021

² The Defender March 16, 2021 Countries Suspend AstraZeneca Vaccine

³ The Defender March 11, 2021

⁴ The Defender March 2, 2021

⁵ New York Times February 3, 2021 (Archived)

⁶ Business Insider March 1, 2021

^7, 8 Science Norway March 18, 2021

⁹ CNBC March 18, 2021

¹⁰ Norway Today March 22, 2021

¹¹ Spektrum March 19, 2021

¹² Cleveland Clinic Type 2 Heparin-Induced Thrombocytopenia

¹³ AstraZeneca Press Release March 22, 2021

¹⁴ AP March 22, 2021

^15, 19 NIH NIAID Statement of AstraZeneca Vaccine March 23, 2021

^16, 20 The Verge March 23, 2021

^{17, 18, 23, 24, 37, 38, 39} The Defender March 23, 2021

²¹ AstraZeneca Press Release March 23, 2021

²² Twitter Prof Francois Balloux March 23, 2021

²⁵ EMA March 18, 2021

²⁶ New York Times March 22, 2021

²⁷ NBC News March 15, 2021

²⁸ World Pharma News March 17, 2021

²⁹ The Mercury News May 20, 2020 (Archived)

^30, 34 Annals of Internal Medicine September 2, 2020 DOI: 10.7326/M20-5352

³¹ Breitbart May 7, 2020

³² Scott Atlas US Senate Testimony May 6, 2020 (PDF)

³³ John Ioannidis US Senate Testimony May 6, 2020 (PDF)

³⁵ The Telegraph March 5, 2021 (Archived)

³⁶ Medium February 15, 2021

⁴⁰ The Defender January 25, 2021

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***

As mass vaccination campaigns with experimental COVID injections now move on to the next demographic populations after beginning with senior citizens in assisted care facilities, and the healthcare workers in those facilities, the next targeted groups are educators.

We have seen multiple reports, for example, in the U.S. of entire school districts having to close down following a mass COVID injection campaign, as so many people get sick after the injections that there have not been enough employees in some school districts to hold classes right away following these massive injections.

Last week, I was informed of 3 deaths among faculty following COVID injections in one school district in Portland. But with nothing printed in the media and social media accounts silenced, I could not get collaborating evidence to publish those stories.

The Italian press, however, has now reported another death following the AstraZeneca COVID injection, a young professor from Gela, Italy. This follows our report from last week about 31-year-old Ilaria Pappa, a professor from Ischia, Italy, that The COVID Blog reported.

The professor from Gela is 37-year-old Zelia Guzzo. The Italian news publication quotidianodigela.it reports:

Zelia didn’t make it. After 12 days the professor died.

Only a miracle could have saved her, changing a clinical picture that already last week had appeared irreversible. Shortly before eight o’clock last night it was ascertained that for Zelia Guzzo, 37 years old, there was nothing more to do.

The 37-year-old teacher leaves her husband, also a teacher, and a young son. A tragedy that has shocked the family and all the colleagues where Zelia worked and was appreciated.

Twelve days ago the young woman had felt ill and had been forced to hospitalization first in the hospital, then urgently to Sant’Elia of Caltanissetta. Conditions made very serious because her condition was affected by a cerebral hemorrhage.

Three weeks ago she had received the Astrazeneca vaccine as well as all teachers in the province.

She had been breathing artificially for a week.

The prosecutor’s office of Gela has already started the first investigations to determine the possible causality with the vaccine she had received on March 1. A huge tragedy, which left in shock not only those who knew Zelia but the whole city. (Source.)

This is now the second time we have seen a criminal investigation started against the AstraZeneca COVID vaccines in Italy, following a death after injection.

Prosecutors in the northern Italian region of Piedmont also started a criminal investigation after a 57-year-old clarinet teacher passed away less than 24 hours after having the first dose of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. (Story here.)

Newsicilia.it is reporting that the shot that killed Zelia Guzzo in Gela is NOT from the same questionable batch of AstraZeneca COVID doses responsible for the death of Stefano Paternò, a 43-year-old Italian serviceman in Sicily. (Source.)

Meanwhile, the Prosecutor of Gela has ordered the seizure of medical records and documentation relating to the vaccine of the young teacher.

To report that the drug administered was not part of the famous lot ABV2856 seized by Aifa.

In short, the investigation goes on, but the pain remains. The pain of those who have seen break the dream of a 37 year old ready to protect others and herself, ready to fulfill her duty, ready to vaccinate to return to a normalcy still far away. (Source.)

As we reported last week, the adverse reactions from the COVID injections in Europe and recorded in EudraVigilance, show that for the AstraZeneca COVID vaccines, Italy has more deaths and injuries than any other European country reported in EudraVigilance.

All of this information is being censored by the Pharma-controlled corporate media, as well as Big Tech, which is the only reasonable explanation as to why people are continuing to rush out and take one of these experimental injections.

What is it going to take for people to wake up and understand that the intention behind these shots is NOT to provide immunity against a SARS virus, but to control people and serve the goals of the eugenicist Globalists who have publicly stated that they want to reduce the world’s population?

*Italian text translated with help from DeepL. (Just say “no” to Google!)

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***

The announcement last week by Rutgers University that it would require all students to get the COVID vaccine prompted CHD Chairman Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to remind university officials that federal law prohibits mandating Emergency Use Authorization vaccines.

Rutgers University last week announced it will require all students enrolled for the 2021 fall semester to be vaccinated for COVID-19.

The announcement prompted Children’s Health Defense (CHD) Chairman Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to remind university officials that federal law prohibits mandating products approved under the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Emergency Use Authorization (EUA).

In a letter to Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway, Kennedy, who also serves as chief legal counsel for CHD, wrote:

“Federal law 21 U.S.C. § 360bbb-3(e)(1)(A)(ii)(III) requires that the person to whom an EUA vaccine is administered be advised, ‘of the option to accept or refuse administration of the product, of the consequences, if any, of refusing administration of the product, and of the alternatives to the product that are available and of their benefits and risks.’”

The reason for the right of refusal stems from the fact that EUA products are by definition experimental, Kennedy wrote.

“Under the Nuremberg Code, no one may be coerced to participate in a medical experiment. Consent of the individual is ‘absolutely essential,’” Kennedy wrote.

Kennedy said forced participation in a medical experiment could result in injury.

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***

This Monday, March 29, the third shipment of Russian Sputnik V vaccine arrived in Venezuela on a Conviasa airline flight from Moscow, containing 50,000 vaccines. With this shipment, 250,000 doses have arrived in the country since February 15.

In addition, it is estimated that the flight itinerary will continue to advance Venezuela’s COVID-19 vaccination plan. This batch was received by the Russian Ambassador to Venezuela, Sergey Mélik-Bagdasárov; Venezuelan Minister for Health, Carlos Alvarado; and Foreign Affairs Minister Jorge Arreaza.

New agreements were signed with the Russian Federation to complete an order for ten million doses of its vaccines.

“50,000 Sputnik V vaccines arrived, and 98,000 immunized health workers are going to immunize more health workers and people over 60 years of age or with a comorbidity, for comprehensive protection,” said Alvarado.

Similarly, Alvarado explained that “with these 50,000 vaccines we advanced towards the goal of vaccinating 70% of the population and then anticipating herd immunization.”

#EnVideo 📹 | Así fue el embarque de las 50 mil dosis de la vacuna #SputnikV que arribará a nuestro país en las próximas horas gracias al despliegue de @LAConviasa y la alianza estratégica integral con la Federación Rusa. 🇻🇪🤝🇷🇺#CuídateDeLaCovid19 pic.twitter.com/NGRg1lqrpQ

— Cancillería Venezuela 🇻🇪 (@CancilleriaVE) March 29, 2021

Priority for the elderly

In addition, the head of the Health Ministry announced that older adults will be prioritized.

“The goal is high, and we are starting with the most susceptible population. We started with life-saving health personnel and teaching personnel; vaccination of adults over 60 years of age will soon begin.”

The goal is to vaccinate 22 million people.

“We are already making agreements for more vaccines with Russia, China, Cuba and India. Venezuela is not stopping, and we are going to advance towards mass vaccination,” Alvarado announced.

#EnFotos 📸 | 50 mil dosis de la vacuna #SputnikV han sido embarcadas en vuelo de @LAConviasa para dar continuidad al plan de inmunización del pueblo venezolano, gracias a la cooperación del pueblo y gobierno de la Federación Rusa. 🇻🇪🤝🇷🇺#CuídateDeLaCovid19 pic.twitter.com/bmmdktkKE8

— Cancillería Venezuela 🇻🇪 (@CancilleriaVE) March 29, 2021

Peace diplomacy

Foreign Affairs Minister Arreaza, for his part, highlighted the twinned alliances between both nations that allowed the acquisition of this drug.

“Thanks to the Russian Federation, today we received more vaccines,” said Arreaza. “In the next few hours further good news will be announced.”

He announced that in April a direct commercial flight route from Moscow to Caracas will be opened to expand binational agreements, trade, and tourism.

“We have the sale of oil under siege and they have blocked more than $100 billion from us, but President Nicolás Maduro does not stop,” added Arreaza.

The head of diplomacy also outlined the titanic efforts of the Government to guarantee the health of the Venezuelan people.

#EnVideo📹| Canciller @jaarreaza: En este avión de @LAConviasa está llegando vida, hemos conseguido los canales para obtener las vacunas del pueblo venezolano. Gracias Rusia, gracias presidente Vladimir Putin#CuídateDeLaCovid19 pic.twitter.com/m8iQWXPxDZ

— VTV CANAL 8 (@VTVcanal8) March 29, 2021

“The vice president met with the director of the WHO for the COVAX initiative for truthful agreements, not falsehoods,” he said, perhaps referring to the social media campaign launched by anti-Chavismo claiming that the Venezuelan government is not allowing some vaccines to enter the country. In reality the Venezuelan government has been blocked by the United States, the European Union and extreme-right Venezuelan anti-Chavismo from buying vaccines, due to the seizure of its assets in international banks.

Arreaza recalled that “we must be very rigorous, and that is why we are approving safe vaccines for people,” a reference to the responsible announcements made by the Venezuelan government in relation to its concern about acquiring AstraZeneca vaccines, singled out by many countries for causing serious side effects.

“We are going step by step, but these are firm steps. The people must recognize that their Government is making every effort and soon we will all be vaccinated,” said Arreaza.

Finally, a humanistic approach to the vaccination process in Venezuela was ensured, and the arrival of more drugs is expected.

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Featured image: Second shipment of Sputnik V vaccines arriving in Venezuela on Monday, March 29, to continue the mass vaccination plan. Photo courtesy of MPPRE.

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***

Gun control was already a Biden Administration priority before the recent shootings in Georgia, Colorado, and Virginia. In fact, the House of Representatives passed two gun-control bills weeks before the shootings.

One of the House-passed bills expands background checks to include private sales, including those made at gun shows. Under this bill, someone who is not a licensed federal firearms dealer cannot sell a firearm without first relinquishing it to a federally-licensed dealer. The dealer must then conduct a background check on the prospective purchaser.

The second bill allows the federal government to indefinitely delay a background check, thus indefinitely delaying a gun purchase. Other legislation introduced in Congress would create a national firearms registry, which would only facilitate gun confiscation.

This same legislation would forbid anyone under 21 from owning a gun. The ban does not apply to the military, so it will not stop the majority of gun violence committed by 18-21 year-olds.

The bill requires Americans to obtain a federal license before getting a firearm, but individuals cannot receive a license unless they undergo a psychological evaluation. The psychological evaluation mandate could lead to individuals losing their Second Amendment rights because they once suffered from depression. It could also cause people to lose their Second Amendment rights because someone told the police they may become violent.

Police officers in 20 states and the District of Columbia already have the authority to take away an individual’s Second Amendment rights based on allegations and without giving the individual due process. These “Red Flag” laws are supported by politicians of both parties, including some who claim to be pro-gun rights.

For example, former President Trump supported Red Flag laws. President Trump and Congressional Democrats were on the verge of reaching a “bipartisan” deal to expand Red Flag laws in the fall of 2019. Fortunately, the Democrat attempt to impeach the President ended all efforts at “bipartisan” deals to take away our rights.

A psychological evaluation could also be used to deny an individual Second Amendment rights because they may engage in “domestic terrorism.” Among those likely to be considered as potential “domestic terrorists” are opponents of US foreign policy, mass surveillance, the income tax, the Federal Reserve, and – ironically – gun control.

There is also legislation to reinstate the assault-weapons ban. Like the original ban, which was in effect from 1994-2004, the new legislation bans an arbitrary list of firearms and will do little to reduce gun violence.

Criminals and psychotics are not going to be deterred by background checks and licensing requirements from obtaining a firearm. There will be a black market to service those who cannot obtain firearms by legal means.

By discouraging law-abiding Americans from owning firearms, these laws leave millions of Americans defenseless against gun violence. There is a reason why most mass shootings occur in gun-free zones.

If Congress is serious about protecting Americans from violence, it would repeal all federal gun control laws. A good place to start would be with the Brady background check law and the misnamed “Safe and Gun-Free Schools” law, which leaves children defenseless against mass shooters. Congress ending the unconstitutional and anti-liberty war on drugs would also greatly reduce gun violence. Gun control, like all attempts by government to control our lives, makes us less safe, and less free.

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The World Health Organization (WHO) has postponed the delivery of the “AstraZeneca” vaccine against the novel coronavirus to Syria, after it was supposed to arrive during this March.

The WHO representative in Syria, Akjamal Majtimova, stated that the distribution of the vaccine “depends on its availability in the global market, as well as the ability to manufacture, purchase, and invest in delivery.”

Majtimova added:

“It is possible that the distribution of the vaccine will need to be modified in light of the difficulty to anticipate circumstances and the constantly evolving variables. It is expected that Syria will receive the first batch of vaccines when the manufacturer confirms their availability.”

Regarding concerns about receiving the “AstraZeneca” vaccine after / 15 / European countries suspended the vaccination process due to the emergence of serious blood problems such as blood clotting in some of those who received it, the WHO representative stated that the organization “suggests that the AstraZeneca vaccine will continue to receive benefits- positive risks file, that is, its benefits are greater than its risks, with enormous potential for preventing infection and reducing deaths all over the world.”

Regarding the national plan to spread the vaccine, Majtimova said that it will be first by vaccinating 3% of the population, being “health workers who are in daily contact with pandemic patients,” and then 17% of the elderly and those with chronic diseases.

Despite announcing the late arrival of the “AstraZenica” vaccine in Syria, the country is close to the arrival of the Russian “Sputnik V” vaccine against Coronavirus, as batches are scheduled to arrive during the next month, noting that batches of Chinese vaccine have already arrived Syria and they were allocated at the time to vaccinate medical personnel who are in contact with virus patients.

The number of people infected with Coronavirus in Syria is 18201 cases, including 1216 deaths and 12142 recoveries, bearing in mind that the total number of Coronavirus infections worldwide approached 127 million.

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***

America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLDS) spoke to former Pfizer Vice President and Chief Science Officer Dr. Mike Yeadon about his views on the COVID-19 vaccine, hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, the regulatory authorities, and more.

At the outset, Dr. Yeadon said “I’m well aware of the global crimes against humanity being perpetrated against a large proportion of the worlds population.

“I feel great fear, but I’m not deterred from giving expert testimony to multiple groups of able lawyers like Rocco Galati in Canada and Reiner Fuellmich in Germany.

“I have absolutely no doubt that we are in the presence of evil (not a determination I’ve ever made before in a 40-year research career) and dangerous products.

“In the U.K., it’s abundantly clear that the authorities are bent on a course which will result in administering ‘vaccines’ to as many of the population as they can. This is madness, because even if these agents were legitimate, protection is needed only by those at notably elevated risk of death from the virus. In those people, there might even be an argument that the risks are worth bearing. And there definitely are risks which are what I call ‘mechanistic’: inbuilt in the way they work.

“But all the other people, those in good health and younger than 60 years, perhaps a little older, they don’t perish from the virus. In this large group, it’s wholly unethical to administer something novel and for which the potential for unwanted effects after a few months is completely uncharacterized.

“In no other era would it be wise to do what is stated as the intention.

“Since I know this with certainty, and I know those driving it know this too, we have to enquire: What is their motive?

“While I don’t know, I have strong theoretical answers, only one of which relates to money and that motive doesn’t work, because the same quantum can be arrived at by doubling the unit cost and giving the agent to half as many people. Dilemma solved. So it’s something else.

Appreciating that, by entire population, it is also intended that minor children and eventually babies are to be included in the net, and that’s what I interpret to be an evil act.

“There is no medical rationale for it. Knowing as I do that the design of these ‘vaccines’ results, in the expression in the bodies of recipients, expression of the spike protein, which has adverse biological effects of its own which, in some people, are harmful (initiating blood coagulation and activating the immune ‘complement system’), I’m determined to point out that those not at risk from this virus should not be exposed to the risk of unwanted effects from these agents.”

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Capping an extraordinary two weeks that turned 21^st century geopolitics upside down, Iran and China finally signed their 25-year strategic deal this past Saturday in Tehran.

The timing could not have been more spectacular, following what we examined in three previous columns: the virtual Quad and the 2+2 US-China summit in Alaska; the Lavrov-Wang Yi strategic partnership meeting in Guilin; and the NATO summit of Foreign Ministers in Brussels – key steps unveiling the birth of a new paradigm in international relations.

The officially named Sino-Iranian Comprehensive Strategic Partnership was first announced over five years ago, when President Xi Jinping visited Tehran. The result of plenty of closed-door discussions since 2016, Tehran now describes the agreement as “a complete roadmap with strategic political and economic clauses covering trade, economic and transportation cooperation.”

Once again, this is “win-win” in action: Iran, in close partnership with China, shatters the glass of US sanctions and turbo-charges domestic investment in infrastructure, while China secures long-term, key energy imports that it treats as a matter of national security.

If a loser would have to be identified in the process, it’s certainly the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” drive against all things Iran.

As Prof. Mohammad Marandi of the University of Tehran described it to me,

“It’s basically a road map. It’s especially important coming at a time when US hostility towards China altogether is increasing. The fact that this trip to Iran [by Foreign Minister Wang Yi] and the signing of the agreement took place literally days after the events in Alaska makes it even more significant, symbolically speaking.”

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh confirmed the deal was indeed a “roadmap” for trade, economic and transportation cooperation, with a “special focus on the private sectors of the two sides.”

Marandi also notes how this is a “comprehensive understanding of what can happen between Iran and China – Iran being rich in oil and gas and the only energy-producing country that can say ‘No’ to the Americans and can take an independent stance on its partnerships with others, especially China.”

China is Iran’s largest oil importer. And crucially, bill settlements bypass the US dollar.

Marandi hits the heart of the matter when he confirms how the strategic deal actually secures, for good, Iran’s very important role in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI):

The Chinese are getting more wary about sea trade. Even the incident in the Suez Canal reinforces that, it increases Iran’s importance to China. Iran would like to use the same Belt and Road network the Chinese want to develop. For Iran, China’s economic progress is quite important, especially in high-tech fields and AI, which is something the Iranians are pursuing as well and leading the region, by far. When it comes to data technology, Iran is third in the world. This is a very appropriate time for West Asia and East Asia to move closer to one another – and since the Iranians have great influence among its allies in the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Hindu Kush, Central Asia and the Persian Gulf, Iran is the ideal partner for China.

In a nutshell, from Beijing’s point of view, the astonishing Evergreen saga in the Suez Canal now more than ever reiterates the crucial importance of the overland, trade/connectivity BRI corridors across Eurasia.

JCPOA? What JCPOA?

It’s fascinating to watch how Wang Yi, as he met Ali Larijani, special adviser to Ayatollah Khamenei, framed it all in a  single sentence:

“Iran decides independently on its relations with other countries and is not like some countries that change their position with one phone call.”

It’s never enough to stress the sealing of the partnership was the culmination of a five-year-long process, including frequent diplomatic and presidential trips, which started even before the Trump “maximum pressure” interregnum.

Wang Yi, who has a very close relationship with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, once again stressed, “relations between the two countries have now reached the level of strategic partnership” and “will not be affected by the current situation, but will be permanent”.

Zarif for his part stressed that Washington should get serious about its return to the Iran nuclear deal; lift all unilateral sanctions; and be back to the JCPOA as it was clinched in Vienna in 2015. In realpolitik terms, Zarif knows that’s not going to happen – considering the prevailing mood in the Beltway. So he was left to praise China as a “reliable partner” on the dossier – as much as Russia.

Beijing is articulating a quite subtle charm offensive in Southwest Asia. Before going to Tehran, Wang Yi went to Saudi Arabia and met with Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. The official spin is that China, as a “pragmatic partner”, supports Riyadh’s steps to diversify its economy and “find a path of development that fits its own conditions”.

What Wang Yi meant is that something called the China-Saudi Arabia High-Level Joint Committee should be working overtime. Yet there have been no leaks on the absolutely crucial issue: the role of oil in the Beijing-Riyadh relationship, and the fateful day when China will decide to buy Saudi oil priced exclusively in yuan. 

On the (Silk) road again

It’s absolutely essential to place the importance of the Iran-China deal in a historical context.

The deal goes a long way to renew the spirit of Eurasia as a geo-historic entity, or as crack French geopolitician Christian Grataloup frames it, “a system of inter-relations from one Eurasian end to another” taking place across the hard node of world history.

Via the BRI concept, China is reconnecting with the vast intermediary region between Asia and Europe through which relations between continents were woven by more or less durable empires with diverse Eurasian dimensions: the Persians, the Greco-Romans, and the Arabs.

Persians, crucially, were the first to develop a creative role in Eurasia.

Northern Iranians, during the first millennium B.C., experts on horseback nomadism, were the prime power in the steppe core of Central Eurasia.

Historically, it’s well established that the Scythians constituted the first pastoral nomadic nation. They took over the Western steppe – as a major power – while other steppe Iranians moved East as far away as China. Scythians were not only fabulous warriors – as the myth goes, but most of all very savvy traders connecting Greece, Persia and the east of Asia: something described, among others, by Herodotus.

So an ultra-dynamic, overland international trade network across Central Eurasia developed as a direct consequence of the drive, among others, by Scythians, Sogdians and the Hsiung-Nu (who were always harassing the Chinese in their northern frontier). Different powers across Central Eurasia, in different epochs, always traded with everyone on their borders – wherever they were, from Europe to East Asia.

Essentially Iranian domination of Central Eurasia may have started as early as 1,600 B.C. – when Indo-Europeans showed up in upper Mesopotamia and the Aegean Sea in Greece while others journeyed as far as India and China.

It’s fully established, among others by an unimpeachable scholarly source, Nicola di Cosmo, in his Ancient China and Its Enemies: The Rise of Nomadic Power in East Asian History(Cambridge University Press):  pastoral nomadic lifestyle on horseback was developed by Iranians of the steppe early in the first millennium B.C.

Jump cut to the end of the first century B.C., when Rome was starting to collect its precious silk from East Asia via multiple intermediaries, in what is described by historians as the first Silk Road.

A fascinating story features a Macedonian, Maes Titianos, who lived in Antioch in Roman Syria, and organized a caravan for his agents to reach beyond Central Asia, all the way to Seres (China) and its imperial capital Chang’an. The trip lasted over a year and was the precursor to Marco Polo’s travels in the 13^th century. Marco Polo actually followed roads and tracks that were very well known for centuries, plied by numerous caravans of Eurasian merchants.

Up to the caravan organized by Titianos, Bactria – in today’s Afghanistan– was the limes of the known world for imperial Rome, and the revolving door, in connectivity terms, between China, India and Persia under the Parthians.

And to illustrate the “people to people contacts” very dear to the concept of 21^st century BRI, after the 3^rd century Manicheism – persecuted by the Roman empire – fully developed in Persia along the Silk Road thanks to Sogdian merchants. From the 8^th to the 9^th   century it even became the official religion among the Uighurs and even reached China. Marco Polo met Manicheans in the Yuan court in the 13^th century.

Ruling the Heartland

The Silk Roads were a fabulous vortex of peoples, religions and cultures – something attested by the exceptional collection of Manichean, Zoroastrian, Buddhist and Christian manuscripts, written in Chinese, Tibetan, Sanskrit, Syriac, Sogdian, Persian and Uighur, discovered in the beginning of the 20^th century in the Buddhist grottoes of Dunhuang by European orientalists Aurel Stein and Paul Pelliot, following the steps of Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang. In the Chinese unconscious, this is still very much alive.

By now it’s firmly established that the Silk Roads may have started to slowly disappear from history with the Western maritime push to the East since the late 15^th century.  But the death blow came in the late 17^th century, when the Russians and the Manchu in China divided Central Asia. The Qing dynasty destroyed the last nomadic pastoral empire, the Junghars, while the Russians colonized most of Central Eurasia. The Silk Road economy – actually the trade-based economy of the Eurasian heartland – collapsed.

Now, the vastly ambitious Chinese BRI project is inverting the expansion and construction of a Eurasian space to East to West.  Since the 15^th century – with the end of the Mongol Empire of the Steppes – the process was always from West to East, and maritime, driven by Western colonialism.

The China-Iran partnership may have the capacity to become the emblem of a global phenomenon as far-reaching as the Western colonial enterprises from the 15^th to the 20^th centuries.  Geoeconomically, China is consolidating a first step to solidify its role as builder and renovator of infrastructure. The next step is to build its role in management.

Mackinder, Mahan, Spykman – the whole conceptual “rule the waves” apparatus is being surpassed. China may have been a – exhausted – Rimland power up to the mid-20^th century. Now it’s clearly positioned as a Heartland power. Side by side with “strategic partner” Russia. And side by side with another “strategic partner” that happened to be the first historical Eurasian power: Iran.

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This article was originally published on Asia Times.

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

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons

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By Jim Miles, March 29 2021

While there are no truly easy answers and no easy solutions (while they may be obvious, they will be highly contested – violently so) the quick answer reveals more truth: no, not homicidal, but very much genocidal.

The U.S. Pivot to Asia: Cold War Lessons from Vietnam for Today

By Cynthia Chung, March 29 2021

There were Cold War preparations underway as early as August 1945 and the two regions selected, Korea and Vietnam, were pre-planned years in advance before the actual wars were to take place.

Stop COVID Testing Immediately: PCR and Quick Test Swabs May be Cancer-Causing

By Peter Koenig, March 29 2021

Not only has covid testing become a US$ 100 billion business, it is also potentially a “deadly business”. PCR and Quick Test swabs are sterilized with the carcinogen Ethylene Oxide.

Norwegian Health Authorities Will Keep Investigating Possible Side Effects from the AstraZeneca Vaccine

By Eivind Nicolai Lauritsen, March 29 2021

Norwegian health authorities still haven’t reached a conclusion on the AstraZeneca vaccine. The pause in vaccinations will be kept in place for three more weeks. A decision will be made before April 15.

Lockdown One Year On – It Doesn’t Work, It Never Worked & It Wasn’t Supposed to Work

By Kit Knightly, March 29 2021

And so we come to March 23rd, and lockdown’s first birthday. Or, as we call it here, the longest two weeks in history. 1 year. 12 calendar months. 365 increasingly gruelling days.

The Criminalization of Big Pharma, mRNA Vaccine Deaths and Injuries. EU Adopts “Digital Vaccine Passport”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, March 29 2021

On March 25, 2021, the European Parliament voted 468 to 203 in favour of the Digital Vaccine Passport or “Green Pass” which requires EU citizens to get vaccinated if they want to travel, or even have access to various social and cultural activities within their respective communities.

Will a China Real Estate Collapse Trigger the Global Financial Meltdown?

By F. William Engdahl, March 28 2021

Prevailing financial sector “wisdom” holds that while the bond and stock markets of the US and EU are dangerously inflated following huge COVID borrowings and unprecedented central bank measures, that China is the one example of a market suitable for investment as it has managed to get beyond COVID and restart its economy.

The Ides of March: False Pretexts Galore in the Wars on Yugoslavia and Iraq

By Michael Welch, Prof Michel Chossudovsky, Scott Ritter, Živadin Jovanović, James Bissett, and Scott Taylor, March 27 2021

Joe Biden recognized that weapons inspections, if allowed to proceed would undermine his effort. This is why he had to discredit the inspections.

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 continual improvement of Chinese-EU relations is irreversible since it embodies the driving force of history, particularly as it relates to the inevitable integration of the Eurasian supercontinent as an outcome of the emerging Multipolar World Order.

China and the EU are economically complementary partners and equally rich civilizations that are unprecedentedly expanding their cooperation through last December’s Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI). This deal enables them to more closely connect their economies and pursue mutually beneficial outcomes through their shared win-win philosophy. Nevertheless, America has attempted to aggressively break their bilateral bonds out of hegemonic jealousy, furious at the scenario of its transatlantic partners evolving from patron states to independent players in International Relations.

This is evidenced by US Secretary of State Blinken’s trip to the bloc last week where he sought to turn its 27 member states against the People’s Republic. The relaunching of their previously frozen dialogue under the former Trump Administration isn’t intended to advance anything other than America’s efforts to divide the EU from China. It was preceded by the Brussels imposing its first sanctions against Beijing in over 30 years as a result of Washington’s pressure upon it to tow the propaganda line on debunked allegations of human rights abuses in Xinjiang.

The People’s Republic swiftly responded in a symmetrical manner that’s fully in line with its rights under international law, thereby dealing a principled tit-for-tat intended to show that no provocations will ever remain unanswered but that Beijing also harbors no intention to escalate matters with Brussels. Both moves are mostly symbolic for the most part but they still worryingly show that Washington is trying to regain its hegemonic influence over the EU. The bloc’s 27 members must therefore be extremely wary of their historic transatlantic partner since it doesn’t have their best interests in mind.

The continual improvement of Chinese-EU relations is irreversible since it embodies the driving force of history, particularly as it relates to the inevitable integration of the Eurasian supercontinent as an outcome of the emerging Multipolar World Order. International Relations are changing from their hitherto zero-sum outlook to the new perspective of win-win engagement, which is led by China’s active efforts to popularize this philosophy across the world. A lot of progress has already been achieved, and although external meddling might lead to a few road bumps along the way, the path ahead is still clear and desired by both parties.

The next step to strengthen Chinese-EU ties in the face of US resistance is to expand their existing cooperation into other strategic spheres such as jointly containing the COVID-19 pandemic, combating climate change, and collaborating on 5G technological solutions for facilitating the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Some EU member states are under heavy American pressure to choose between their their traditional transatlantic partner and their newfound East Asian one in these fields, but such a zero-sum choice is a false one that’s only being forced upon them for hegemonic reasons. In reality, they can and should cooperate with both countries.

Unlike the US, China doesn’t pressure its partners, whether it comes to any aspect of their bilateral ties or especially not in terms of their relations with any third party. All that Beijing asks is that their pragmatic cooperation remain free from any external influences and focused solely on pursuing win-win outcomes. This speaks to how sincerely China treasures the principles of multipolarity as articulated in the UN Charter, which contrasts with the American approach of exploiting strategic elements of its relations with certain states for the purpose of advancing zero-sum outcomes vis-a-vis its perceived rivals such as China.

The world is in the midst of full-spectrum paradigm-changing processes which will unleash an exciting future for all. Everyone stands to benefit as International Relations continue becoming more multipolar, which will open up new opportunities for development that will in turn improve people’s living standards. The EU must resist American pressure to revert back to the discredited model of zero-sum thinking and instead proudly embrace the win-win philosophy that defines the new model of International Relations. That is the only means through which the EU can enhance its strategic independence and truly remain a meaningful player in global affairs.

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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.

Dear Readers,

We are pleased to announce that the first Global Research Webinar will be held this Wednesday, March 31st, at 4:00 pm (EDT), 1:00 pm (PT), 3:00 pm (CT)

The 2020-21 Worldwide Corona Crisis

It will be presented by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky on the topic of the 2021 Corona Crisis as discussed in his E-book (Ten Chapters) entitled:

The 2020 Worldwide Corona Crisis: Destroying Civil Society, Engineered Economic Depression, Global Coup d’État and the “Great Reset”

Another important reference is:

The WHO Confirms that the Covid-19 PCR Test is Flawed: Estimates of “Positive Cases” are Meaningless. The Lockdown Has No Scientific Basis

Image right: Prof. Michel Chossudovsky

Wednesday, March 31st, 4:00 pm (EDT) Time Zones 

4:00 pm EDT 

1:00 pm PT,

2:00 pm CT

9:00 pm BST (GMT + 1) 

10:00 pm ECT 

We extend this invitation to all Global Research Members and Readers.

The webinar will be able to accommodate up to 120 people on a first come, first served basis.

To become a Member of GlobalResearch.ca, click here 

A message will be sent out to our Newsletter subscribers tomorrow Tuesday March 30th, 2021 providing the Zoom login and password details.

A followup Newsletter reminder with Zoom details will be sent out on Wednesday morning March 31st, 2021.

First published by Global Research on July 21, 2020

Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children (aka SickKids) has released a detailed report on “the harms of school closure on [children’s] physical and mental health.” Harms included: “Increased rates of depression, trauma, drug abuse and addiction and even suicide can be anticipated.”

The SickKids report reassures parents that there is “strong evidence that the majority of children who become infected with SARS-CoV-2 are either asymptomatic or have only mild symptoms…. There have been no paediatric deaths reported in Canada to date.”

Even more heartening is that SickKids Hospital recommends:

“Non-medical and medical face masks are not required or recommended for children returning to school.”

They point out that

“if worn incorrectly, it could lead to increased risk of infection and it is not practical for a child to wear a mask properly for the duration of a school day.”

They also state the oft-ignored fact that:

“There is a lack of evidence that wearing a face mask prevents SARS-CoV-2 transmission in children.”

More like no (direct) evidence. Same goes for adults. Which may be why the report advises teachers to teach without a mask as “facial expression is an important part of communication which children should not be deprived of.”

But what about physical distancing? Should kids all be cubicled like in China and have recess in a six-foot bubble? Here’s what The Hospital for Sick Children says:

“…strict physical distancing should not be emphasized to children in the school setting as it is not practical and could cause significant psychological harm. Close interaction, such as playing and socializing, is central to child development and should not be discouraged.”

Instead, to help prevent the spread of COVID they give some reasonable suggestions that have many other health benefits:

“If weather permits, consideration could be given to having classes outside…. Attention should be paid to improving classroom ventilation (e.g. optimizing ventilation system maintenance and increasing the proportion of outside air brought in through these systems).”

Even high-risk children are not advised to be quarantined:

“…there is no convincing evidence to suggest the level of medical risk to [high-risk] children from SARS-CoV-2 is different from that posed by other respiratory viruses, such as influenza. As a result, given the unintended consequences associated with not attending school, attending school is recommended for the majority of these children.”

You can read SickKids Hospital’s refreshingly sensible advice in COVID-19: Recommendations for School Reopening.

Maybe we can avoid turning the schools into corona concentration camps as Italian parliamentarian Sara Cunial has been warning against.

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John C. A. Manley has spent over a decade ghostwriting for medical doctors, as well as naturopaths, chiropractors and Ayurvedic physicians. He publishes the COVID-19(84) Red Pill Daily Briefs – an email-based newsletter dedicated to preventing the governments of the world from using an exaggerated pandemic as an excuse to violate our freedom, health, privacy, livelihood and humanity. He is also writing a novella, COVID-27: A Dystopian Love Story. Visit his website at: MuchAdoAboutCorona.ca

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons

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***

Dear Department for Education,

This request is in relation to the use of the Innova lateral flow test (the “LFT”) being used across schools in the UK.

We are in receipt of correspondence from Innova confirming that the swab used in the LFTs is sterilised by ethylene oxide. Given the known toxicity and potential carcinogenicity of ethylene oxide, we are concerned by this.

Under the ‘Freedom of Information Act 2000’, we request disclosure of the following:

• information as to what, if any, independent tests have been carried out to check for any residues of ethylene oxide on a random sample of swabs;
• information as to what, if any, assessments have been conducted to ensure that the invasive use of these swabs for children is safe?

I understand that, under the Act, I am entitled to a response within 20 working days of your receipt of this request.

Some parts of the request may be easier to answer than others. Should this be the case, I request that you release information as soon as possible as it becomes available. If my request is denied in whole, or in part, I ask that you justify all decisions to deny disclosure by reference to specific exemptions of the Act.

I will expect you to disclose all non-exempt material that is within the scope of this request. I reserve the right to appeal your decision to withhold any information or to charge excessive fees.

I would prefer to receive the information electronically at the email address submitted to you as part of this request.

Yours faithfully

Molly Kingsley,
UsforThem

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***

Not only has covid testing become a US$ 100 billion business, it is also potentially a “deadly business”. PCR and Quick Test swabs are sterilized with the carcinogen Ethylene Oxide.

According to the Government of Canada, as well as the “What do They Know” the PCR test swabs are sterilized by ethylene oxide which is described by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a carcinogen. In other words, a potentially cancer-causing chemical toxin.

In essence, EPA says the following about the carcinogen Ethylene Oxide:

“EPA classified ethylene oxide as a human carcinogen in December 2016. Studies of workers show that their exposures to ethylene oxide are associated with an increased risk of cancers of the white blood cells (the infection-fighting cells of the immune system). Studies also showed an increased risk of breast cancer in females.”

“Evidence in humans indicates that long-term exposure to ethylene oxide increases the risk of cancers of the white blood cells, including non-Hodgkin lymphoma, myeloma, and lymphocytic leukemia. Studies also show that long-term exposure to ethylene oxide increases the risk of breast cancer in females.”

“EPA, as well as the International Agency for Research on Cancer and the National Toxicology Program, classifies ethylene oxide as carcinogenic to humans. Evidence in humans indicates that exposure to ethylene oxide by inhalation increases the risk of lymphohematopoietic cancers (including non-Hodgkin lymphoma, myeloma, and lymphocytic leukemia) and, for females, breast cancer.

EtO is mutagenic (i.e., it can change the DNA in a cell). Children may be more susceptible to the harmful effects of mutagenic substances.”

For the full EPA text, see this.

RT-PCR Testing, Testing

Governments, especially in Western countries are calling frantically for more and more testing? – Testing-testing-testing. They put people into lockdowns – the so-called Third Wave lockdowns, aka, illegal and totally unjustified house-arrests – a complete lie, so they submit easier to the constant testing, and eventually vaccination, hoping the lockdowns will end sooner.

Is it a coincidence or negligence that school children, the most vulnerable for cancerous toxin Ethylene Oxide (see EPA, above) – are now tested regularly and repeatedly? – In Switzerland for example, the Government has given the Cantons (semi-autonomous Departments) the authority (or a tacit order?) to have school children tested at least once a month, even though they show no symptoms whatsoever? It is not only negligence – it is an outright crime.

See this horrifying video of children testing – how they hurt the children – and why does the swab stick have to go all the way up in the nose to a thin wall separating the sinuses from the brain cavity?

Honest medical doctors tell you – even in Switzerland – this is not necessary. A swab could be taken simply from the saliva in the mouth.

Knowing the Big Picture behind Covid – the Great Reset, or Building Back Better – in brief the UN Agenda 2030, see this. This testing-testing-testing with a carcinogen-tainted swab is beyond just negligence. Is it possible (yet to be verified) that many of the health staff in the testing front-line do not know about the danger for their testing subjects.

Are those in senior decision-making government positions throughout the West aware of what they are doing? The Canadian Government Advisory states the following:

If the swab is sterilized using an ethylene oxide (EtO) method, you should demonstrate that EtO and ethylene chlorohydrin (ECH) residuals meet the tolerable contact limits (TCL) specified in ISO 10993-7. Commonly used swab materials, compatible sterilization methods and appropriate biological indicators are described below.

Anything goes. Quietly injecting with multiple-multiple tests with swab sticks contaminated, alias “sterilized”, with carcinogenic agents, deep into your nose, at the entrance of the brain cavity, is just one means of creating potential cancer cases, not to mention brain damage.

Such “secondary effects” may appear much later, years down the road, when nobody can trace them back to the covid-tests, the covid vaccines and whatever else nefarious and diabolical tools are used in the name of combating covid.

Should the matter pertaining to the use of carcinogenic Ethylene Oxide be the object of an investigation. investigation? 

The PCR Tests Are Useless

By now, every government knows – there is no way of ignoring it – that the PCR tests are useless. They do not allow detecting the existence of the SARS-Cov-2 virus. The WHO has admitted that the test as applied since January 2020 in invalid.

However, most of the 193 UN member governments – with a few exceptions – run over this evidence like a steamroller, hoping the masses will not notice.

They may do so probably as long as it takes to get the world population vaccinated — as Bill Gates wants it. Remember, when he said, the world won’t be getting back to somewhat close to normal until the 7 billion world population is vaccinated.

Again, one wonders what ulterior agenda might be behind this ferocious, coercive and human rights abusing effort of most world governments – involving the UN system as a whole.

The entire vaccination hype – everybody is strongarmed or otherwise manipulated into being vaccinated against a virus that does not need a vaccine to cure it. As we know by now, there are plenty of inexpensive but effective viral medicines that work efficiently against covid. China had no vaccines to combat the covid outbreak. Yet, they did it in a record time.

Recently, the EU Commission ratified a Vaccination Passport, or Certificate, without which your “free” movements may be tremendously hampered.

It becomes increasingly clear that there is another agenda in action; a “different agenda” from that of protecting people’s health.

What are injected, especially with these non-vaccines, called mRNA jabs – never tested before – are, among other bio-chemicals, women- and men-sterilizing and fertilization inhibiting agents, as well as special electromagnetic proteins converting your body into an EM field for eventual digitization, to make humans into “trans-humans”.

These modern Frankensteins could then be remotely controlled and become a walking “Agenda ID2020” – so they will eventually carry all their health and other personal data in their bodies. Agenda ID2020 is a Bill Gates creation and has already been approved in several countries, including Germany.

We are not there yet. But that is the plan. Bear in mind, life is not linear, but dynamic.

The Great Reset, UN Agenda 2030, “Building Back Better”, and other slogans to ring in the Big Change, are all based on linear approaches. They may work for a while. But in the long-run, dynamics – the life-inherent defense system, will prevail. See also “The Big Picture” article

The danger of vaccination is multifaceted and, if carried out in the midst of what is called a pandemic, it can cause a global catastrophe a few years on, according to an interview with Dr. G. Vanden Bossche, a renowned virologist, who worked for many years for the pharma industry, notably vaccine manufacturers, including Pfizer, Moderna, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and GAVI – the Vaccine Alliance, in Geneva – physically located – by sheer coincidence – next door to WHO.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=ZJZxiNxYLpc

Premature death is written all over the place from all sorts of artificially imposed causes, as part of the huge criminal fraud of covid, the mass manipulation by the media driven by government lies – lies indoctrinated by false media propaganda – by the 193 UN member governments. What a coincidence!

Think about it.

And especially ask your governments without hesitating with a loud voice that TESTING BE IMMEDIATELY STOPPED.

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

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

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 security situation on the African continent is close to chaos. Once again, terrorist groups advance in Mozambique and leave innocent victims, drawing the attention of international society to the structural failure in the current mechanisms to combat terrorism in Africa.

Last Wednesday, terrorists invaded the Mozambican city of Palma in a brutal attack on shops, banks, hotels, and a military base. Dozens of people died during the attack. There are hundreds of wounded, many in serious condition. According to reports by survivors, while escaping the shootings, civilians hid on a beach in the region, where a large number of decapitated bodies were spread. Official figures are still being counted.

Palma is a city located in the province of Cabo Delgado, a region with a Muslim majority. The dispute for political control of the region has been operated by several terrorist militias. These militias belong to the terrorist group Al Shabab, which is an African regional branch of ISIS. Al Shabab’s activities are all carried out under strict control, being fully coordinated according to the interests of ISIS, which is in fact the organization that controls terrorism in Mozambique and in most of Africa. With the recent attacks, Mozambique has reached the mark of more than 2,500 dead since the start of the attacks and clashes in 2017. In addition, the number of migrants is already over 70,000, due to collective fear.

However, the reasons why militias representing ISIS want to control the region are quite strategic. Palma is a city close to a large gas exploration field under the control of the French company Total. Right after the attack, Total suspended its activities indefinitely. As a result, the company’s facilities are vulnerable to occupation by terrorists, considering that government forces have been unable to contain the attacks.

Indeed, the most plausible explanation for the focus of the attacks and tensions being Palma and the entire region close to the border with Tanzania, where there are rich reserves of natural gas, is that there is an interest on the part of ISIS to control this natural resource and enjoy its technological and economic benefits. Al Shabab has been conducting attacks with the objective of making it impossible to carry out the exploration and commercialization of the gas.

Total, which has now suspended its activities, can, at any time, give up on its projects in Mozambique if it does not receive support in security policies – something that the Mozambican government does not seem capable of doing and that the French government does not seem interested in. This will lead to the abandonment of the facilities, which could be occupied by Al Shabab in a few days, making official the control of Mozambican gas by terrorists affiliated with ISIS. This situation would be catastrophic, as it would put a large amount of material resources under the control of criminal organizations, making possible several projects that until then would have been unimaginable. After all, having an equipped army, controlling a territory and its population, and exploring and trading natural resources, terrorists will have almost all the necessary requirements to form a true country in Africa, which will serve as the basis for international terrorism.

The formation of an Islamic caliphate in Africa is not a recent project. This has always been part of the dreams of the largest terrorist groups, and many see that such a project would in fact have greater viability in the African continent than in the Middle East, mainly because it is a region with much weaker states, much more deteriorated political structures, poorly equipped armies, with little military action by world powers and with a gigantic list of natural resources far beyond oil. It is no coincidence that ISIS’ activities in Africa have been growing as this group has failed in Syria. The less space it loses in the Middle East, the more ISIS focuses on regions with less international attention.

Historically, France is the nation that is most concerned with the security of the African continent. There are several French military cooperation projects with African nations and the presence of the European country on this continent is immense. However, we can clearly see that the mechanisms used so far have not been sufficient and that Paris is no longer able to deal with the African issue. Still, amid problems with migration and concerns about the forthcoming elections, Macron does not seem willing to change his policy towards Africa. Meanwhile, Mozambique suffers from the advance of the terrorist militias, which already almost completely control Palma. Total is about to leave the country and soon its structures may be commanded by Al Shabab, which will be able to use natural gas to invest in the infrastructure of a new caliphate or to sell resources on the world illegal market. In the end, who will prevent the catastrophe of the formation of a terrorist state in Eastern Africa?

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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***

I have just watched Michael Moore’s latest Rumble podcast [1] in which he asks the question “What is it about us?” while referencing the Columbine massacre and relating it to the current set of U.S. mass murders.  The subtext to the title “What is so different about Americans?” asks “Are we homicidal by nature?”  

While there are no truly easy answers and no easy solutions (while they may be obvious, they will be highly contested – violently so) the quick answer reveals more truth:  no, not homicidal, but very much genocidal.

Genocidal nation

I use the term genocidal in its application by the U.S. and its empire against both the people of the world and the world itself, comprising all other living things and the environment required to support that life.  It can be narrowed down to two facets for the establishment of the country:  first it was born out of violence; and secondly it was born out of racism.  These two go very well together and have shaped the U.S. into what it is today.

Much of it is the U.S.’ European heritage, a region of the world very familiar with genocide (well before the holocaust) and military violence.  Another aspect of that heritage is the racist Doctrine of Discovery as promulgated by the Papal Bull of 1452 and others following.   The Christian Doctrine of Discovery essentially relegated all non-Europeans to being savages, primitives, who are to be treated as outside of European/Christian culture and at the very base, treated as slaves, with their environments to be used to enrich the homeland.

Britain was very much a part of this, as its empire had all the aspects already mentioned and used them for its own power and enrichment around the world.  Nor is the U.S. unique in being born of a British heritage, but its revolutionary birth, its continuing fight over slavery and its still present racism, combined with its ethnocentric view as being a superior people destined to lead and control the world has morphed into what it is today – a militarized culture of violence.

It’s personal….

The personal level is created by the rhetoric of the media, the politicians, and the banksters,  financiers, and corporate bosses who have ruled throughout the history of the U.S.    The list of personality traits is significant: rugged individualism; exceptionalism; entitlement; revenge.  Another social attribute is the overwhelming rhetoric for freedom, without an associated call for responsibility, only responsible for the self and not the general good of society.  What develops from all this social and psychological rhetoric is a greedy, ignorant, self-centered society.  Those attributes are generalized throughout society.

…and it’s societal….

From the start the U.S. has operated in a militarily violent and racist manner, continuing with and bettering its British heritage.  Today the government of the U.S. is composed of those who embody the violent and racist heritage of its founding and development.  It is an imperial government, endlessly creating fear of the ‘other’ – be it socialists, communists, jihadists, immigrants, Russian, Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Japanese, Nicarauguans and essentially anyone ‘other’ than the old white guys who wish to retain control of the system.  What is created is a militarized society operating for the benefit of corporate, political, and military elites.  There are many aspects of its control – militarized police, financial dominance of the elite, corporate malfeasance towards people and the environment, lack of social structures, a prison-military complex, and the control of the vast majority of media of all kinds.

The lack of social structures has a serious impact on the financial and emotional health of the individual.  Access to health care is expensive, limited, or for many non-existent.  Education is not highly regarded in the sense that many want the public system abolished and replaced with private schools or equally racist/elitist voucher schools.   In general, U.S. citizens tend to be rather ignorant about not only the world, but about their own country and how it operates, and through the education process and its allied media process produces a greedy self-centered society that puts the blame on the individual rather than on the collective for any problems that may occur.

…and it’s the empire.

The U.S. has been since its inception an expanding empire using violent and genocidal techniques in attempts to control the world.  There is a long history of U.S. endeavours towards empire from the Doctrine of Discovery through Manifest Destiny on to today’s hubristic “exceptionalism” and “indispensability”.   All of it is underlain by racism and the use of violence as an initial ‘diplomatic threat’ to be followed by violent war (covert or overt) as the next diplomatic step.  As an empire it is not alone in all this as its companions in violence and racism are either of the same heritage – Canada, Australia, Europe, Israel – or have been co opted into being significant partners through a combination of threats and financial benefits, the latter accruing to the local domestic powers rather than citizens.  But the U.S. stands alone as the greatest purveyor of violence and militarism, and its domestic culture and foreign policy are both born out of the roots of imperial violence and racism.

Solutions

As always, the solutions are really  quite simple as far as ideas are concerned – it is the application of those ideas that will create immense resistance.

From the problems listed above, the solutions should be obvious.

First, create an education system that develops a well informed and critical thinking public.

Secondly, as exposed by the current pandemic, a large change needs to be made to the health system so that greed – profit – is not the dynamic supporting the system, but that care for all should be equally accessible and free.

For the working people and the environment, corporations need to be either banned or severely limited with large responsibilities for ‘externalities – pollution, worker’s health and safety – put into place.

The financial system is near a breaking point, built on debt (largely through the military industrial complex combined with outsourcing and offshoring of employment) and supported now mostly by money created by the stroke of a computer keyboard without any product being produced, the financialization of markets that enriches the elites and impoverishes the rest.  Reform of corporate law and tax law will help create a significantly more equal society and should help finance necessary health, safety, educational, and environmental laws.

“So what is it about us?”

This is not really an easy question to answer.  The attributes of U.S. society discussed above can be found in other countries, but not to the same degree, nor in the same over-riding conglomeration.    A nation founded on exceptionalism, racism, and violence over the land and the people will be hard to reconstruct let alone make amendments for.

Ultimately change will occur.  It may come conclusively and finally from the barrel of a gun and related military hardware.  Or it may occur as the citizens of the U.S., the “Columbine generation”, finally outlive ‘we’ the boomers and create a new kind of society.

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Jim Miles is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Notes

[1] https://rumble.media/episode/what-is-so-different-about-americans-are-we-homicidal-by-nature-with-tom-mauser-columbine-parent/

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New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is establishing a Covid passport that will show vaccination or a recent negative test. It will serve as permission to enter events or venues. See this. 

Will this passport be efficacious, or is its purpose to get us accustomed to a “your papers please” way of life?

Allegedly, the combination of people with vaccinations and those recovered from infection have, or are, bringing about “herd immunity.”  If so, what is the point of a passport?

There are credible reports that some who have been vaccinated have nevertheless come down with Covid, which raises doubt about the efficacy of the vaccine.  There are other reports that antibodies produced by the vaccines are not long lasting.

How recent must the Covid test be to make the passport valid.  A person could have a negative test and catch Covid on the way home.  If the passport relies on a negative test, the passport will have to expire after some designated period unless the passport is renewed with a new test.

There is also the problem that the widely used PCR test produces false negatives and false positives.  In other words, is the information on which the passport is issued valid information?

We can laugh at the passport as a silly over-reaction to a virus that in most cases is hardly more dangerous than flu, or we can understand it as a control measure over our freedom of movement and association.  We are the safer if we view it as the latter.  

Police already have too much power to invade homes without warrants and to stop and search people on the streets without warrants.  “Probable cause” has been used to curtail civil liberty. 

I am convinced that no health purpose will be served by Covid passports, and that the public should protest the introduction of a Soviet-style internal passport.

Once established, the Covid passport will be a boon for Big Pharma.  A yearly booster shot will be decreed, and without it your passport will expire. 

Keep in mind that Florida avoided lockdowns and mask mandates and has no worse infection and death rate than lockdown states.  

Notice also that many highly qualified experts have criticized the lockdowns, mask mandates, use of untested vaccines, and the prohibition on using safe effective treatments such as HCQ and Ivermectin.  Why were their voices censored and the information kept from the public?  The only explanation I can think of is that Covid is being used for an unstated agenda.  We should not be deceived into cooperating with this unstated agenda.  

A democracy that censors expert testimony and prohibits public debate is well on its way to a police state.  

A public that can be stampeded by orchestrated fear into being jabbed with vaccines that could be more dangerous than Covid is not a public that can expect to remain in freedom.

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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts writes on his blog site, PCR Institute for Political Economy, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue is a group that includes the US, Japan, India, and Australia. Formed 14 years ago as a forum to coordinate Indo-Pacific policy, many are dubbing it the Asian NATO, and a possible counterweight to China’s growing influence. But can they contain an increasingly powerful China?

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A Chapel Hill woman who says her mother died of a stroke 48 hours after receiving the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine spoke to WRAL News about her concerns and the questions she has about her mother’s death. The state and a UNC doctor, though, warn about drawing any conclusions yet.

Becca Ingle is understandably devastated after her mother’s sudden death two weeks ago. She says her mother was in good health, but started feeling very ill shortly after getting the vaccine. She wants to know if her mother’s death could be connected to the vaccine. The state is investigating this case and so is WRAL.

As a college professor who worked in person with her students at Appalachian State University and spent lots of time caring for her two grandchildren, 63-year-old Virginia Ellington was counting the days until she could be vaccinated against COVID-19.

“I have texts from her saying how excited she was to get it,” her daughter, Ingle, said.

Ingle said her mother and father got the Johnson & Johnson vaccine on the morning of Monday, March 8, at the Watauga Health Center in Boone.

Ellington started feeling very tired and even asked her husband about possible vaccine side effects, Ingle told WRAL News.

Ellington went to work the next day but was still feeling unwell, according to her family. On Wednesday, March 10, she stayed in bed. A little while later, her husband returned to the bedroom to find her unresponsive.

“He tried giving her CPR, and he called 911, and they said she was gone when they got there,” Ingle said.

Ingle said the local doctor, who did a preliminary examination, told the family that her mother died of a stroke. The local medical examiner, a paramedic and a teacher who signed the death certificate, wrote that the vaccine was one of the “significant conditions contributing to her death.”

“We were all shocked when we saw that was even on there,” Ingle said.

Ingle shared her questions about the vaccine and her mother’s death on TikTok. The post has had more than 4 million views, but it received mixed reviews. TikTok even placed a warning on it.

“It just breaks my heart that this is what happened and this is what it takes to share her story,” Ingle said.

Ingle says her mother was in good health prior to her death.

“It (the vaccine) definitely escalated things,” she said. “Whether she was going to have a stroke in 30 years or whether she was going to have it now, it definitely triggered it.”

Ingle says high blood pressure and strokes run in her family.

Dr. Stephan Moll, a medical professor, researcher and hematologist at UNC Health, believes connecting the vaccine to a stroke is a rush to judgment.

“The vaccine is appropriate for everybody independent of the family history or their personal history,” he said.

He thinks mention of the vaccine should not have been included on the death certificate.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 795,000 people in the United States have strokes every year. North Carolina has one of the highest rates, at 26,000 per year, or 70 per day.

“Some people will develop a stroke and have had the vaccine,” Moll said, “but that’s a coincidental occurrence. Even an association, that’s a rare one. It should not sway away anybody from getting the vaccine.”

The CDC has found no evidence of a connection between the vaccines and strokes. Moll says the only way to know for sure is to do an autopsy.

The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services has referred Ellington’s case to the Office of the State Medical Examiner for an autopsy. Agency officials told WRAL News:

“The death investigation for this case is in the preliminary stage, which is why the death certificate says ‘pending.’ After an autopsy examination by one of our regional autopsy centers, the preliminary results do not show that this death was related to a vaccine or vaccination.”

Susan Hawkins, the local medical examiner who signed the death certificate and made the reference to the vaccine as a factor, declined comment to WRAL News and referred all questions to the state.

The final state medical examiner’s report could take several months to complete, and more answers should be clear at that time.

That portends a painful wait for a daughter seeking answers.

“I’m not here to say you shouldn’t take it,” Ingle said. “I’m just saying raise awareness. You should check on your loved ones if you are getting it.”

Johnson & Johnson provided this statement to WRAL News:

“There is no greater priority than the safety and well-being of the people we serve. We carefully review reports of this nature that involve individuals receiving our medicines, or in this instance, a vaccine.”

Company officials go on to say that these reports are evaluated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and other health authorities that are monitoring the overall safety of the vaccine rollout.

Recognizing this story may generate a lot of interest, the family issued a statement saying, “As the family mourns their loss, please respect their need for privacy.”

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British former Supreme Court judge Lord Sumption has warned that “social controls” brought about by the coronavirus pandemic may be kept in place by governments for up to a decade.

“It’s politically unrealistic to expect the Government to backtrack now,” commented Sumption, who has been highly critical of the government’s ‘totalitarian’ lockdown policies.

The judge compared the reaction to rationing after the Second World War, which went on for nine years, adding that this time “I think it may be even longer.”

“An interesting parallel is the continuation of wartime food rationing after the last war. People were in favour of that because they were in favour of social control,” he said during a ‘Sketch notes on’ podcast.

“In the 1951 general election, the Labour party lost its majority entirely because people with five years more experience of social control got fed up with it. Sooner or later that will happen in this country,” he added.

Sumption’s warning comes in the wake of Public Health England officials stating that restrictions will remain in place for as long as other countries have not vaccinated everyone, a process likely to take years.

England’s chief medical officer also recently asserted that the pandemic restrictions, which have been in place on and off for a year, have “improved life” for some people.

Despite promising an end to restrictions in June, the UK government yesterday extended emergency COVID laws until October, with Health minister Matt Hancock refusing to say how long they will remain in place after that.

Lord Sumption also noted during the podcast that scientists skeptical of lockdown policies have been “subjected to an extraordinarily unpleasant campaign of personal abuse”.

“I know a lot of people that would prefer not to put their head above the parapet,” He continued, adding “From the very moment I started to make these points I began to get emails from politicians who agreed with what I had to say but that they themselves didn’t dare to speak out. That I think is a very serious state of affairs.”

The judge also argued that governments are using the virus politically, noting

“They have consistently tried to maintain that the virus is indiscriminate when it is perfectly well-established that it primarily affects people with identifiable vulnerabilities, particularly in the elderly.”

Speaking about the draconian crack down on anti-lockdown protesters, Sumption said

“People ought to be entitled to voice their differences (of opinion),” adding “If the only way you can enforce distancing is by beating people over the head with truncheons then it’s not worth it.”

Now that Brits have allowed society to be permanently deformed, with polls routinely showing vehement support for lockdown and other pandemic rules, things are never going to be the same again.

Having allowed the precedent that the government can put the entire population under de facto house arrest on a whim, look for the policy to be repeated over and over again with different justifications that have nothing to do with COVID-19.

As we previously highlighted, one of those justifications will be man-made global warming, with climate lockdowns set to become a regular reality.

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In this interview, Vandana Shiva, Ph.D., discusses the importance and benefits of regenerative agriculture and a future Regeneration International project that we’ll be collaborating on.

Click here to watch the video. 

Full transcript below.

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Initial data from Israel and Scotland appeared to indicate a very high real-world effectiveness of covid vaccines, even in senior citizens. However, much of this data was heavily adjusted for various factors and was therefore not easy to interpret. Numerous reports of covid outbreaks in care homes even after the second vaccination have raised additional questions about vaccine effectiveness.

To clarify this situation, a German study with 176 participants, published last week as a preprint, measured the age-dependent immune response to the Pfizer vaccine. Somewhat shockingly, the study found that one third of people over the age of 80 developed no neutralizing antibodies at all, and thus were potentially without seroprotection even after the second vaccination (see above).

Some of these elderly people developed non-neutralizing antibodies, but their role in Sars-Cov-2 infection remains unknown: they might help reduce symptoms, but they could also increasesymptoms (so-called antibody-dependent disease enhancement, ADE). The official vaccine trials included hardly any people of the 80+ age group and so didn’t answer this question.

In vaccine science, a reduced immune response in the elderly is known as immunosenescence.

If the reduced protection in the high-risk group gets confirmed, it may explain the somewhat disappointing performance of many covid vaccination pioneers (such as Israel): in most of these countries, covid hospitalizations and deaths have decreased slower than expected, or have even increased, since the beginning of the mass vaccination campaign (see updated figure below).

Meanwhile, documented post-vaccination deaths continue to rise and are now close to 3000 in the US and the EU. Some of these deaths may be unrelated to vaccinations, but in the US, 47% of post-vaccination deaths occurred in people who became ill within 48 hours of being vaccinated, and 31% of deaths occurred within 48 hours of vaccination. The average age was 78, the youngest case was 23.

(Update: The immunological results of the German study have been confirmed by a large-scale Danish study with 30,000 care home residents and 330,000 health care workers. In care home residents, vaccine effectiveness was 0% after the first dose and reached 64% one week after the second dose. In health care workers, vaccine effectiveness was 17% two weeks after the first dose, 46% during the first week after the second dose, and reached 90% one week after the second dose.)

As New York attorney Aaron Siri pointed out in a recent article on StatNews, neither governments nor employers are currently permitted to require covid vaccinations, as covid vaccines have not yet been officially licensed: they only received an “emergency use authorization” in the US and a “conditional marketing authorisation” in the EU. Indeed, the US FDA specifically notes that covid vaccines are “investigational vaccines not licensed for any indication.”

Cumulative covid deaths in global covid vaccination pioneers, excl. the US and UK (OWD)

Neutralizing antibody titers after vaccination, by age group (Source: Mueller et al)

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As Mark Zuckerberg tries to sell Congress on Facebook’s preferred method of amending the federal law that serves as a key pillar of the internet, lawmakers must see it for what it really is: a self-serving and cynical effort to cement the company’s dominance.

In prepared testimony submitted to the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee before a Thursday hearing, Zuckerberg proposes amending 47 U.S.C. § 230 (“Section 230”), the federal law that generally protects online services and users from liability for hosting user-generated content that others believe is unlawful.

The vague and ill-defined proposal calls for lawmakers to condition Section 230’s legal protections on whether services can show “that they have systems in place for identifying unlawful content and removing it.” According to Zuckerberg, this revised law would not create liability if a particular piece of unlawful content fell through the cracks. Instead, the law would impose a duty of care on platforms to have adequate “systems in place” with respect to how they review, moderate, and remove user-generated content.

Zuckerberg’s proposal calls for the creation of a “third party,” whatever that means, which would establish the best practices for identifying and removing user-generated content. He suggests that this entity could create different standards for smaller platforms. The proposal also asks Congress to require that online services be more transparent about their content moderation policies and more accountable to their users.

An Anti-Competitive Wedge

The proposal is an explicit plea to create a legal regime that only Facebook, and perhaps a few other dominant online services, could meet. Zuckerberg is asking Congress to change the law to ensure that Facebook never faces significant competition, and that its billions of users remain locked into its service for the foreseeable future.

It’s galling that at the same time Zuckerberg praises Section 230 for creating “the conditions for the Internet to thrive, for platforms to empower billions of people to express themselves online,” he simultaneously calls on Congress to change the law to prevent any innovation or competition that could disrupt Facebook’s market position. Zuckerberg is admitting that after Facebook has benefited from Section 230, he doesn’t want any other competitor to do the same. Rather than take up Facebook’s proposal, Congress should instead advance meaningful competition and antitrust reforms to curtail the platform’s dominance.

Moreover, Zuckerberg’s proposal comes just before a congressional hearing that is ostensibly about the problems Facebook has created. These problems exist precisely because of Facebook’s dominance, anti-competitive behavior, and terrible privacy and content moderation practices. So in response to Facebook’s significant failures, Zuckerberg is telling Congress that Facebook is the solution. Congress should respond: Absolutely not.

A Flawed Proposal

On the merits, Zuckerberg’s proposal — though light on specifics — is problematic for several reasons.

First, the proposal overlooks that the vast majority of online services that host user-generated content do not have the technical, legal, or human resources to create systems that could identify and remove unlawful content. As Mike Masnick at TechDirt recently wrote, the internet is made up of far more diverse and less-resourced services than Facebook. Congress must recognize that the legal rules it sets for online services will apply to all of them. Zuckerberg proposes that the required “adequate systems” be “proportionate to platform size;” but size is only one factor that might correlate to an intermediary’s ability to implement such systems. By punishing growth, a size-scaled system would also discourage the development of nonprofit intermediary models that might compete with and replace those that profit greatly off of their users’ data. What would actually be necessary is an assessment of whether each individual intermediary, based on its numerous characteristics, has provided adequate systems. This is essentially a legal negligence standard – asking the question “Has the intermediary acted reasonably?” – and such standards have historically and legally been found to be insufficiently protective of freedom of speech.

Second, Zuckerberg’s proposal seems to require affirmative pre-screening and filtering of content as an “adequate system.” As we have written, filtering requirements are inherently privacy invasive and almost always rely on faulty and nontransparent and unaccountable automation. And of course, they are extremely burdensome, even at a small scale.

Third, the standards under Zuckerberg’s proposal would be unworkable in practice and result in even greater online censorship. Content moderation at scale is impossible to do perfectly and  nearly impossible to do well. Automated tools and human reviewers make scores of mistakes that result in improper removal of users’ content. If services are required by law to have systems that remove users’ content, the result will be a world in which much greater volumes of user speech will be removed, as services would rather censor their users than risk losing their legal protections.

Fourth, the proposal would not even address the problems Facebook is now being called out for. Zuckerberg calls for Section 230 protections to be conditioned on having systems in place to remove “unlawful content”; but most of the examples he addresses elsewhere in his testimony are not illegal. Hate and violence, misinformation, and community standards for groups are largely protected speech. Platforms like Facebook may and should want to actively moderate such content. But the speech is not usually “illegal,” a narrow subset of speech unprotected by the First Amendment.

Fifth, Zuckerberg calls for a “third party” to define the “adequate systems” an intermediary must adopt. We saw a similar proposal recently with the original version of the EARN IT Act. We opposed a standards-setting body there because it was going to be dominated by law enforcement officials who desire to break end-to-end encryption. Although Zuckerberg does not identify the membership or composition of his proposed third party, we worry that any entity created to address online content moderation could similarly be captured by special interests who do not represent internet users.

Transparency, Yes Please

We appreciate that Zuckerberg is calling on online services to be more transparent and responsive to user concerns about content moderation. EFF has been actively involved in an effort to push these services to adopt a human rights framing for content moderation that includes adequate notice to its users and transparency about the platform’s practices. Yet we do not believe that any requirement to adopt these practices should be linked to Section 230’s protections. That’s why we’ve previously opposed legislation like the PACT Act, an initial version of which compelled transparency reporting. It’s also worth noting that Facebook lags behind its peers on issues of transparency and accountability for censoring its users’ speech, a 2019 EFF review found.

Zuckerberg’s proposal to rewrite Section 230 joins a long list of efforts to overhaul the law. As we have said, we analyze every fully formed proposal on its merits. Some of the proposed changes start from a place of good faith in trying to address legitimate harms that occur online. But Zuckerberg’s proposal isn’t made in good faith. Congress should reject it and move on to doing the real, detailed work that it has to do before it can change Section 230.

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We live in a war-like society; one that supports, and is in league with, the world’s number one terrorist threat: the United States of America. Corporate media propaganda plays a key role in keeping things that way.

Ten years ago this month, the US, UK and France attacked oil-rich Libya under the fictitious cover of ‘humanitarian intervention’. The bombing was ‘justified’ by Barack Obama, David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy by the supposed imminent massacre of civilians in Benghazi by forces under Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. As we have documented previously, the propaganda claims were fraudulent.

Libya, previously a wealthy state with free health care and education, was essentially destroyed. An estimated 600,000 Libyans were killed. Many more were displaced from their homes. In the barbarous conditions of the failed state, black people have been ethnically ‘cleansed’, lynched and auctioned off as slaves, illicit arms transfers and terrorism have become rife, and many Libyans have attempted to flee to better lives across the Mediterranean, thousands of them drowning en route.

As Jeremy Kuzmarov, managing editor of CovertAction Magazine and author of four books on US foreign policy, pointed out recently, the powerful Western perpetrators of this human calamity have never been brought to justice. He added:

‘In hindsight, it is clear that the U.S. was completing a 40-year regime change operation targeting Colonel Qaddafi for which media disinformation was pivotal.

‘It is important today as such to revisit the 2011 war so that U.S. citizens can learn from the history and not be duped again into supporting an intervention of this kind.’

The Stunning Silences Over Syria And Venezuela

But, when it came to Syria several years later, media disinformation was once again pivotal in unleashing Western firepower. As we have described in numerous media alerts, the corporate media declared with instant unanimity and certainty that Syria’s President Bashar Assad was responsible for a chemical weapons attack on the Damascus suburb of Douma on 7 April, 2018. One week later, the US, UK and France attacked Syria in response to the unproven allegations. Since then, there has been a mounting deluge of evidence that the UN’s Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has perpetrated a massive cover-up to preserve the Western narrative that Assad gassed civilians in Douma.

Earlier this month, five former OPCW officials joined a group of prominent signatories to urge the UN chemical weapons watchdog to address the controversy. Aaron Maté, an independent journalist with The Grayzone website, has been following developments closely since the beginning (see his in-depth article, ‘Did Trump Bomb Syria on False Grounds?’).

He noted that:

‘Leaks from inside the OPCW show that key scientific findings that cast doubt on claims of Syrian government guilt were censored, and that the original investigators were removed from the probe. Since the cover-up became public, the OPCW has shunned accountability and publicly attacked the two whistleblowers who challenged it from inside.’

In an interview, Maté pointed out the remarkable silence from the corporate media:

‘the western media, across the spectrum, has buried this story – which is pretty incredible. You have extraordinary allegations of a cover-up, you have whistleblowers; and not only…do you have allegations, you have documents – a trove of documents released by WikiLeaks.’

We have observed a similar shameful silence in the UK, including BBC News; even after initial interest in the ‘important story’ had been expressed by Lyse Doucet, the BBC’s chief international correspondent.

But Western violence against other nations, and the ‘justifications’ trotted out to defend ‘our’ crimes, or simply ignoring them, has become normalised in ‘mainstream’ journalism.

Consider the case of Venezuela, harbouring one of the largest oil reserves on the planet, and which, as a left-leaning democracy, has long been targeted by the US for regime change. This was seen very clearly when the late Hugo Chávez was the Venezuelan president – temporarily deposed in a failed US-supported coup in 2002, and who was often wrongly described by corporate media as a ‘dictator’ – and continues today under Chávez’s successor, Nicolás Maduro.

As John McEvoy observed in a piece for Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting, a recent UN rebuke of crippling US and European sanctions on Venezuela has been met with ‘stunning silence’.

McEvoy wrote:

‘The report laid bare how a years-long campaign of economic warfare has asphyxiated Venezuela’s economy, crushing the government’s ability to provide basic services both before and during the Covid-19 pandemic.’

According to Alena Douhan, the UN special rapporteur on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights, the Venezuelan government’s revenue was reported to have shrunk enormously, ‘with the country currently living on 1% of its pre-sanctions income,’ impeding ‘the ability of Venezuela to respond to the Covid-19 emergency.’

Douhan urged US and European governments:

‘to unfreeze assets of the Venezuela Central Bank to purchase medicine, vaccines, food, medical and other equipment.’

The US-led campaign to overthrow the Venezuelan government, Douhan added, ‘violates the principle of sovereign equality of states and constitutes an intervention in domestic affairs of Venezuela that also affects its regional relations’.

Almost exactly two years ago, we noted in a media alert that the US-based Center for Economic and Policy Research, a respected thinktank, had published a study showing that US sanctions imposed on Venezuela in August 2017 had since caused around 40,000 deaths. With the exception of a single piece in the Independent, there was zero coverage in the national UK press, and no BBC News coverage at all, as far as we could ascertain.

McEvoy wrote:

‘By omitting the devastating impact of sanctions, corporate media attribute sole responsibility for economic and humanitarian conditions to the Venezuelan government, thereby using the misery provoked by sanctions to validate the infliction of even more misery.’

He continued:

‘Loath to abandon belief in the fundamentally benign nature of Western foreign policy, corporate scribes have typically presented the devastating effects of sanctions as a mere accusation of Nicolás Maduro’.

This is a pattern of deception seen over and over again. For example, in 2002-2003, the ‘mainstream’ media repeatedly attributed claims that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction to Saddam Hussein. Doing so buried the evidence-backed testimony of senior UN weapons inspectors concluding that Iraq had been ‘fundamentally disarmed’ of 90-95 per cent of its weapons of mass destruction by December 1998. (Scott Ritter and William Rivers Pitt, ‘War On Iraq’, Profile Books, 2002, p.23)

McEvoy noted that the Guardian’s reporting of Venezuela sticks to the Washington script:

‘Often, they fail to mention sanctions at all. In June 2019, for instance, the Guardian’s Tom Phillips reported that “more than 4 million Venezuelans have now fled economic and humanitarian chaos,” citing would-be coup leader Juan Guaidó’s claim that the country’s economic collapse “was caused by the corruption of this regime,” without making any reference to Washington’s campaign of economic warfare.

‘Keeping with tradition, Douhan’s damning report has been met with stunning silence by establishment media outlets. Neither the Guardian, New York Times, Washington Post nor BBC reported on Douhan’s findings’.

Imagine if Russia had been responsible for imposing sanctions on another country, violating that country’s sovereignty, with tens of thousands dead and many more lives at risk in the months to come. Imagine, moreover, that Russia had been condemned in a hard-hitting UN report for engaging in economic warfare, described as ‘a violation of international law’ that was causing a serious ‘growth of malnourishment in the past 6 years with more than 2.5 million people being severely food insecure.’ Imagine that such a report pointed to the ‘devastating effect of unilateral sanctions on the broad scope of human rights, especially the right to food, right to health, right to life, right to education and right to development.’ The headlines and in-depth coverage in the West would be incessant. The Russian ambassador in London would be given a stern dressing-down by the UK Foreign Secretary. MPs would address Parliament, condemning Putin in the strongest possible terms. There would be global demands for the UN to intervene.

The ideological discipline required to ignore such crimes under Western policy is remarkable, but it is standard in the corporate media system. Propaganda by omission, routinely carried out by BBC News and the rest of the ‘mainstream’ news media, is a crucial tool enabling Washington and London to pursue their aims; whether that be ‘regime change’, exploitation of oil and other natural resources, and geopolitical domination.

‘Grand Wizards’ And Client Journalism

Occasionally, the strict enforcement of ideological purity imposed on corporate journalists is laid bare when they step out of line by the merest millimeter. Thus, for example, BBC television presenter Naga Munchetty had to issue an apology on Twitter for ‘liking’ tweets that mocked Tory government minister Robert Jenrick for appearing on a BBC Breakfastinterview with a Union Jack prominently displayed behind him.

She tweeted:

‘I “liked” tweets today that were offensive in nature about the use of the British flag as a backdrop in a government interview this morning. I have since removed these “likes”. This do [sic] not represent the views of me or the BBC. I apologise for any offence taken. Naga’

This read like a statement that had been dictated from lofty levels within the BBC hierarchy. When you are a high-profile BBC figure, you are obliged to tweet out an apology for daring to question the trappings of ‘patriotism’. But when have BBC journalists ever apologised for catastrophically platforming government propaganda on Iraq, Libya, Syria, the NHS, ‘austerity’, militarism, the royal family? The list is endless.

On Twitter, tweets from the broadcaster RT are flagged with the warning, ‘Russia state-affiliated media.’ Rather than apologise for broadcasting Western propaganda, it is far more likely that a senior client journalist working for the UK state-affiliated media known as ‘BBC News’ will send out whitewashing tweets to minimise or deflect any challenges to the government. Take BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg, a prime example of this key propaganda function. On the National Day of Reflection on 23 March, the anniversary of the start of the first UK Covid-19 lockdown, Boris Johnson had boasted during a private meeting of Tory MPs:

‘The reason we have the vaccine success is because of capitalism, because of greed, my friends.’

There was a huge outcry on social media. Rachel Clarke, a palliative care doctor who has been outspoken in her criticism of the government during the pandemic, tweeted in response to Johnson’s crassly insensitive and smug comment:

‘But he’s wrong.

‘Human nature is bigger & better & bursting with more grace & decency than he’ll ever know.’

Wise and compassionate words.

By contrast, Kuenssberg went into full damage-limitation mode, tweeting:

‘More on PM’s “greed” comments – one of those present says Johnson was having a crack at Chief Whip, Mark Spencer, who was gobbling a cheese + pickle sandwich while he was talking about the vaccine, “it was hardly Gordon Gekko”, “it was banter” directed at the Chief, it’s said’

It is a fair point: probably not even Gordon Gekko would have joked about the virtue of capitalism and greed on a day when his very clear responsibility for the deaths of 149,000 people was at the forefront of many people’s minds.

Newspaper cartoonist Dave Brown depicted brilliantly what the day of reflection should have meant: Johnson reflected in the mirror as the Grim Reaper carrying a scythe with the number 149,000 engraved on it.

Kam Sandhu, head of advocacy at the independent thinktank Autonomy, reminded her Twitter followers that, in 2019, Kuenssberg had brushed off the revelation that Brexiteer MPs visiting Chequers, the prime minister’s 16th century manor house, had called themselves ‘the Grand Wizards’. The BBC political editor had tweeted:

‘just catching up on timeline, for avoidance of doubt, couple of insiders told me using the nickname informally, no intended connection to anything else’

Presumably the use of an infamous Ku Klux Klan term of white supremacy was to be considered mere ‘banter’. There are countless other examples of Kuenssberg deflecting criticism of Tories, while echoing and amplifying their propaganda. You may recall that she acted to defend the government when it belatedly went into the first lockdown one year ago. She misled the public, as Richard Horton, editor of the prestigious medical journal The Lancet noted last March:

‘Laura Kuenssberg says (BBC) that, “The science has changed.” This is not true. The science has been the same since January. What has changed is that govt advisors have at last understood what really took place in China and what is now taking place in Italy. It was there to see.’

Her insidious role in endlessly propping up the government narrative on any given topic is a ‘courtesy’ conspicuous by its absence when it came to the ‘impartial’ BBC political editor’s reporting of Jeremy Corbyn and, in particular, the manufactured crisis of supposedly institutional antisemitism in the Labour party.

On 26 November 2019, just prior to the general election on 12 December, Kuenssberg tweeted about Tory-supporting chief rabbi Ephraim Mirvis’ suggestion that Corbyn should be ‘considered unfit for office’, 23 times in 24 hours. This at a time when journalistic impartiality was obviously never more essential.

Kuenssberg is not an exception within BBC News, although given her very high-profile position, it is not always as blatant with other BBC journalists. Take BBC diplomatic correspondent James Landale, for instance: another serial offender. An item that he presented on BBC News at Ten on 16 March added to the ever-rising steaming pile of ‘impartial’ journalism scaremongering about Official Enemies that must be countered by the peace-loving West.

In line with a new UK government report on ‘defence’, Landale depicted China and Russia as threats that required this country to ‘show Britain can project force overseas’. As part of the strategy, the new £6.1 billion aircraft carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth, will hold joint operations with allies in the Indo-Pacific later this year. ‘But will it be enough?’, intoned Landale, ‘impartially’ cheerleading the UK’s ‘projection of force’ across the globe.

Continuing his virtually government spokesperson role, Landale added:

‘And the cap on Britain’s stockpile of nuclear warheads will be lifted because of what the report says is “the evolving security environment”.’

The likely increase in the UK’s nuclear weapons was just slipped out, almost as an after-thought. There was no mention that nuclear weapons are now prohibited under international law after the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was ratified earlier this year. The Treaty includes:

‘a comprehensive set of prohibitions on participating in any nuclear weapon activities. These include undertakings not to develop, test, produce, acquire, possess, stockpile, use or threaten to use nuclear weapons.’

In July 2017, over 120 countries voted to adopt the Treaty. In October 2020, the 50th country ratified the Treaty which meant it became international law on 22 January, 2021. Where were the BBC News headlines?

As Double Down News observed:

‘Boris Johnson set to expand Nuclear Warheads by 40%

‘No money for Nurses but money for Armageddon’

But all this must have slipped Landale’s mind. Or perhaps there was no time to include information deemed unimportant by him or his editors. There was, however, ample room for a major item on that evening’s BBC News at Ten titled, ‘Duke leaves hospital’. This covered Prince Philip’s return to Buckingham Palace after one month in hospital for heart treatment. And why was this a major ‘news’ headline on the BBC? Because BBC News is staunchly royalist, fervently establishment and an upholder of the unjust UK class system.

All of this just goes to show that BBC News really is the world’s most refined state propaganda service. As BBC founder John Reith confided in his diary during the 1926 General Strike:

‘They [the government] know they can trust us not to be really impartial.’

(‘The Reith Diaries’, edited by Charles Stewart, Collins, 1975; entry for 11 May, 1926)

The same holds true today.

In this era of Permanent War, potential nuclear Armageddon and climate breakdown, the enormous cost to victims of UK and Western state-corporate policy around the world is incalculable.

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Israel has accused Iran of doing many nefarious things. But the historical record shows that whatever Israel accuses Iran of, it is likely that Israel is already doing it.

For example, Israel has repeatedly accused Iran of destabilizing the region by malignantly spreading across the region and forming alliances and exercising influence in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon.

But Israel is spreading across the region by forming alliances and exercising influence across the region. With varying degrees of formality and publicity, Israel has expanded its network and formed alliances with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco. And this Israeli spread has been destabilizing both in terms of increasing weapons in the region and legitimizing and solidifying occupations.

The agreement between Israel and the UAE meant F-35 fighter jets, Reaper drones and EA-18G Growler jets that are capable of jamming enemy air defenses for the UAE and a large weapons package for Israel in compensation, potentially including combat helicopters, advanced communications satellites, bunker buster bombs, F-35s, KC-46A tanker aircrafts that are capable of refueling many aircrafts simultaneously and V-22 aircrafts that can transform from helicopter to airplane.

The agreements have also led to the solidifying of occupations in the region. And it is not only the solidifying of the Palestinian occupation. In order to extract an agreement from Morocco, the price was US recognition of Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara: an occupation that is illegal under international law. Both the UN and the International Court of Justice have ruled in favor of Western Sahara’s right to self governance.

Israel is also reportedly planning to lobby the US not to pressure Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE over human rights issues because of the value Israel places on these alliances in confronting Iran. Israeli officials reportedly want to remind Washington that the agreements they have signed in the region should be prioritized over concerns about human rights.

Spreading its influence across the region sounds a lot like what Israel is accusing Iran of. And Israel’s spread has been destabilizing in terms of the proliferation of arms, the legitimizing of occupations and the acceptance of human rights abuses.

Using Proxies

Israel has long accused Iran of using proxy forces in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon.

But Israel has a distasteful history of using proxy forces going back at least as early as the proxy use of the Phalange militia in Lebanon. Not wanting to be seen sending Israeli soldiers into the Palestinian refugee camps, Israel used its proxy Christian militia. According to Patrick Tyler, in A World of Trouble, the Phalange militia developed “with covert assistance from Israel.” In September 1982, the Israeli proxy Phalange militia slaughtered hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of Palestinian refugees in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Israel admits to 700 people massacred; the Palestinians claim 2,750. In Balfour’s Shadow, David Cronin places the number at between 800 and 3,500.

More recently, Israel has employed the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK) as a proxy in the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists. Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reports that a former senior intelligence official told him that the assassinations are “primarily being done by MEK through liaison with the Israelis.” Most recently, Iran has suggested a proxy role for the MEK in the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.

Israel accuses Iran of using proxy forces. But Israeli history demonstrates the well documented use of proxy forces to carry out some of its most illegal work.

Terrorism

Israel has forcefully tried to characterize Iran as a leading state sponsor of terrorism.

But Israel has recently aligned itself with the most barbarous terrorists. Israel has allied itself with the Islamic State and al-Nusra. In September 2013, Michael Oren, the Israeli Ambassador to the US said, “We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren’t backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran.” Oren told the Jerusalem Post that “This was the case . . . even if the other ‘bad guys’ were affiliated with al-Qaeda.” Nearly a year later, in June 2014, Oren would repeat Israel’s position of preferring the Islamic State and al-Nusra over Assad: “From Israel’s perspective, if there’s got to be an evil that’s got to prevail, let the Sunni evil prevail.” A year and a half later, Defense Minister Moshe Yalon would essentially reiterate this firm Israeli preference.

And Israel didn’t just root for the Islamic State, it aided it. Israel has repeatedly bombed Syrian targets, and UN observers in the Golan Heights have reported witnessing cooperation between Israel and Syrian rebels. Netanyahu has also revealed that Israel has hit Hezbollah forces fighting against the Islamic State and al-Qaeda in Syria dozens of times. And it has been exposed that Israel also provided funding, food and fuel to Syrian rebels fighting Assad.

In The Management of Savagery, Max Blumenthal says that “ISIS found a defender in Israel.” He reports that the director of “the Likud Party-linked Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies” advocated for pursuing the “weakening of Islamic State, but not its destruction.” They called ISIS a “useful tool.” There are reports of coordination and communication between Israel and al-Nusra, including Israel providing maps.

So, Israel is doing exactly what it accuses Iran of doing.

Nuclear Weapons

Most vociferously, Israel has accused Iran of possessing a nuclear weapons program and of secretly constructing nuclear weapons facilities.

It is well known that Israel has a nuclear weapons program. A leaked email written by Colin Powell suggests that the US estimates Israel’s arsenal at 200 nuclear weapons.

What has received less attention amid the cries that Iran has secretly built nuclear facilities is that Israel is secretly building on to the nuclear facility it secretly built. Satellite images published in February, 2021, show that Israel has been “carrying out a major expansion of its Dimona nuclear facility” for at least the past two years.

So, while Israel accuses Iran of secretly pursuing a nuclear weapons program and secretly constructing nuclear facilities, Israel is secretly pursuing a nuclear weapons program and secretly constructing nuclear facilities.

Attacking Ships

Back in 2019, Iran was blamed for two limpet mine attacks on ships. Israel has also blamed Iran for a recent explosion on the Israeli cargo ship MV Helios Ray. Iran has denied responsibility for the attack.

But it looks like Israel has been very busy blowing up Iranian ships. The Wall Street Journal has shockingly reported that, since late 2019, Israel has attacked at least a dozen ships headed for Syria and carrying Iranian oil. Israel has attacked Iranian vessels or vessels carrying Iranian oil with weapons that included mines. At least some of the Israeli attacks have been carried out with limpet mines: exactly like the attacks Iran is accused of. The Wall Street Journal reports that three of the Israeli strikes took place in 2019 and six more took place in 2020.

As in the case of regional influence, use of proxies, terrorism, and constructing secret nuclear facilities, Israel seems to be guilty of the very thing it is accusing Iran of: blowing up ships. This boomeranging accusation is consistent with a historical pattern of Israel accusing Iran of the very things Israel is doing.

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House Democrats are leading a charge to repeal the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force that President Bush used to invade Iraq in 2003, that Obama used for a host of anti-ISIS air campaigns over eight years, and President Trump cited to justify a 2020 drone strike on Iranian General Qassem Soleimani. 

Dismantling the AUMFs that are used to wage wars that are increasingly attenuated from the original intent of those authorizations is important. But if wars like Afghanistan are not also brought to an end, then they will inevitably be made to fit new and more narrow authorizations making it even harder to end them in the future.

Press secretary Jen Psaki recently indicated that President Biden welcomes an effort by Congress to replace the 2001 and 2002 AUMFs with a “narrow and specific framework that will ensure we can protect Americans from terrorist threats while ending the forever wars.” But he is not the first president to cast doubt on the utility of AUMFs that are now nearly two decades old. In a 2013 speech at the National Defense University, President Obama remarked, “[s]o I look forward to engaging Congress and the American people in efforts to refine, and ultimately repeal, the AUMF’s mandate.” But this inclination did not stop the Obama administration from using the 2001 AUMF to justify attacks on ISIS in Syria by arguing that the group was essentially cut from the same cloth as al-Qaeda. Similarly, President Biden’s appeal for oversight did not stop him from ordering an airstrike in Syria and citing his Article II powers as Commander-in-Chief, nor has it led him to end the war in Afghanistan.

That President Biden continues to deploy U.S. military force abroad while also calling for more restrictive AUMFs is not surprising. He may feel political pressure to continue to use the broad powers authorized to him until Congress hopefully relieves him of this burden and takes more responsibility over America’s wars. This is precisely why narrower AUMFs will not end America’s forever wars without additional steps. Truly ending forever wars will require leaders and the “NatSec”community to prioritize the proven costs of engaging in forever war over the future risks of not taking military action.

Afghanistan is a good place to start. If President Biden refuses to leave Afghanistan, then a war with no achievable end state will likely be grandfathered into any future and purportedly more narrow AUMF. This may not occur explicitly in the authorization’s text but through its application. Much needed repeals of the current AUMFs will be reduced to little more than Congressional virtue signaling. If the U.S. cannot walk away from the war in Afghanistan, then it is difficult to imagine how Washington will prioritize other threats without getting dragged into perpetual conflicts of choice.

Others have also argued that merely replacing or passing a new AUMF does not amount to Congressional oversight. In 2018, Richard Fontaine and Vance Serchuk warned, “[l]awmakers who portray passage of an AUMF as the ultimate fulfillment of their war-powers responsibilities therefore risk elevating constitutional form over national security substance.” Rather than pass an AUMF and let it sit untouched for years, they assert that Congressional oversight should be “continuous” and occur “independent from any AUMF mechanism.” Jack Goldsmith and Samuel Moyn arguethat, “Congress must do more than withdraw old permission slips” and instead “cut off funding for discretionary presidential wars after a short period, absent congressional permission or a defined emergency.”

Thus, genuine oversight must function as a threshold rather than a loophole. This will inherently require America’s leaders to accept manageable degrees of risk to avoid neverending wars. Afghanistan represents the clearest test of this approach. Leaving Afghanistan militarily will force the United States to find new ways to respond to potential terrorism threats on U.S. targets in the region. But these threats no longer present the same risk they once did and the capacity to disrupt attacks within the United States is far greater than on the morning of 9/11. The cost of continuing to wage endless wars long ago surpassed any security benefits.

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Featured image: A U.S. Army Soldier from the A Company, 1-503rd Battalion, 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team, conducts a patrol with a platoon of Afghan national army soldiers to check on conditions in the village of Yawez, Wardak province, Afghanistan, Feb. 17, 2010. Partnership between the U.S. Army and the Afghan national army is proving to be a valuable tool in bringing security to the area. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Russell GilchrestReleased)

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The head of US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday that the command launched a new task force to focus on information operations to counter China in the Pacific.

According to a report from C4ISRNET, the task force, known as the Joint Task Force Indo-Pacific team, will  focus “on information and influence operations in the Pacific theater.” Gen. Richard D. Clarke, the commander of SOCOM, said the task force will work with “like-minded partners” in the region.

“We actually are able to tamp down some of the disinformation that they [China] continuously sow,” Clarke said. It’s not clear exactly what this new task force will be doing, but the C4ISRNET report suggested that offensive cyber operations could be part of the influence campaign.

Gen. Paul Nakasone, the head of US Cyber Command, also spoke with senators on Thursday and pointed to offensive cyber operations the command took prior to the 2020 election that he claims thwarted election interference.

“The idea of operating outside of the United States, being able to both enable our partners with information and act when authorized. This is an active approach to our adversaries,” Nakasone said. “It’s been most effective as we’ve seen with the 2018 and 2020 elections with adversaries attempting to influence us, attempting to interfere but not being able to do that.”

Gen. Clarke also spoke of information operations conducted under SOCOM’s Special Operations Forces, specifically a group known as Military Information Support Operations professionals that are deployed at embassies around the world.

“By working closely with those partners to ensure that our adversaries, our competitors are not getting that free pass and to recognize what is truth from fiction and continue to highlight that to using our intel communities is critical,” he said.

The Biden administration has made it clear that countering Beijing is its top foreign policy priority. The task force shows that Washington’s campaign against Chinese influence will be played out in many theaters.

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

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Data released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on the number of injuries and deaths reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) following COVID vaccines showed that between Dec. 14, 2020 and March 19, 2021, there were 44,606 reports of adverse events, including 2,050 deaths and 7,095 serious injuries.

In the U.S., 118.3 million COVID vaccine doses had been administered as of March 19.

VAERS is the primary mechanism for reporting adverse vaccine reactions in the U.S. Reports submitted to VAERS require further investigation before a causal relationship can be confirmed. Every Friday, the CDC makes public all VAERS vaccine injury reports received as of the previous week.

This week’s VAERS data included 2,306 reports of anaphylaxis. Fifty-five percent of anaphylaxis reports were attributed to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, 45% to Moderna and 1% to the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) vaccine, which was rolled out in the U.S. on March 2.

As The Defender reported earlier this month, the J&J vaccine contains polysorbate 80, known to trigger allergic reactions. The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines contain polyethylene glycol (PEG), also known to trigger anaphylactic reactions.

The latest news report of an anaphylactic reaction to a COVID vaccine was of a 68-year-old Kansas woman who died a day after receiving the vaccine. According to EMS dispatch records, the woman had an allergic reaction at a vaccine clinic site around 4 p.m. on Tuesday, KMBC reported. She had difficulty breathing and speaking and was injected with an EpiPen.

Kansas Department of Health and Environment spokesperson Kristi Zears told The Wichita Eagle that Evans had an anaphylactic reaction during a waiting period after receiving the shot. She was transported to the hospital and pronounced dead a day later. It is not clear whether Evans had underlying health conditions and the Kansas health agency did not indicate which COVID vaccine was administered.

According to the CDC’s website,

“the CDC follows up on any report of death to request additional information and learn more about what occurred and to determine whether the death was a result of the vaccine or unrelated.”

To date, the only information the CDC has published related to the investigation of COVID vaccine-related deaths and how those investigations were conducted is a COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Update via the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), published on Jan. 27.

On March 8, The Defender contacted the CDC with questions about reported deaths and injuries related to COVID vaccines. We provided a written list of questions about how the CDC conducts investigations into reported deaths, the status of investigations on deaths reported in the media, if autopsies are being done and the standard for determining whether an injury is causally connected to a vaccine.

We also inquired about whether healthcare providers are reporting all injuries and deaths that might be connected to the COVID vaccine, and what education initiatives are in place to encourage and facilitate proper and accurate reporting.

As of today, 18 days later, the CDC has not responded or followed up with our calls or emails. We have contacted them numerous times and are either told “they received the email,” “they will escalate it and it is in the system” or their press officers are still reviewing it. After our most recent follow up call this Wednesday and giving them an updated deadline of 48 hours, we still have not heard back.

A look at the numbers

Overall, the data released today reflects trends that have been emerging since The Defender first began tracking VAERS reports related to COVID vaccines.

This week’s VAERS data show:

• As of March 19, 321 pregnant women had reported adverse events related to COVID vaccines, including 97 reports of miscarriage or premature birth. None of the COVID vaccines approved for Emergency Use Authorization has been confirmed safe or effective for pregnant women, although J&J said earlier this month it would begin testing on pregnant women, infants and the immunocompromised.
• 535 cases of Bell’s Palsy. Of those, 64% of cases were reported after Pfizer-BioNTech vaccinations — almost twice as many as reported (36%) following vaccination with the Moderna vaccine. Three cases of Bell’s Palsy were reported with J&J’s vaccine (about 1%).

Physicians sound alarm about need for pre-screening

Meanwhile, concerns about mass vaccination continued to make national and international headlines this week.

As The Defender reported Tuesday, Dr. Hooman Noorchashm, cardiothoracic surgeon and patient safety advocate, said we’re taking the COVID pandemic problem — where a half-percent of the population is susceptible to dying — and compounding it by vaccinating people who are already infected. In an interview with Fox News host and political commentator, Tucker Carlson, Noorchasm said public health officials are making a “dramatic error” by promoting a “one-size-fits-all” COVID vaccination program:

“… the signal is deafening, the people who are having complications or adverse events are the people who have recently or are currently or previously infected [with COVID]. I don’t think we can ignore this.”

Noorchashm believes that a #ScreenB4Vaccine campaign could save millions from vaccine injuries. He is promoting a screening campaign that consists of “PCR or Rapid Antigen test to determine if there is an active infection and an IgG antibody test that would allow determination of a past infection. If either of these tests are positive, vaccination ought to be delayed for a minimum of 3 – 6 months,” Noorchasm told The Defender. “If at that time IgG levels are waning, it is reasonable to consider getting a vaccine shot. But even then, blood IgG levels should guide whether or not a person gets vaccinated.”

Noorchasm sent a third communication to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration this week, warning that deaths like that of 32-year-old Benjamin G. Goodman, who died after receiving the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, could have been prevented, and that there will be more deaths unless people are screened before being vaccinated.

An article in The Hill this week, by several physicians, also suggested that people be prescreened for COVID before being vaccinated.

The physicians wrote:

“A closer look at the level of protection obtained by a single shot vaccine regimen for those who are ‘COVID-primed’ is needed. Rigorous, effective and efficient antibody prescreening tools to identify these individuals would be required as well.”

AstraZeneca under fire in U.S. and Europe

As far as individual vaccines, AstraZeneca garnered the most headlines this week, in Europe and the U.S.

On March 22, The Defender reported that two independent research teams in Norway and Germany identified antibodies that provoke immune reactions leading to the type of blood clots experienced by some people who received AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine.

Although many countries resumed their vaccination program with AstraZeneca’s vaccine after the EMA’s preliminary findings, some countries, including France, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland, did not lift their restrictions on its use.

According to Reuters, Finland announced Wednesday it was still looking into two cases of blood clots but would resume using the AstraZeneca vaccine against COVID for people aged 65 and over. Finland plans to complete its investigation by April 6 at the earliest.

On March 23, U.S. health officials accused AstraZeneca of misrepresenting efficacy data when it included “outdated information” in its clinical trial results, which may have led to the vaccine maker providing the public with an incomplete view of its efficacy data, The Defender reported.

The statement by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases came less than a day after the pharmaceutical company said its vaccine was 79% effective against COVID and 100% effective against severe or critical disease and hospitalization.

AstraZeneca released updated information on its COVID-19 clinical trial Wednesday which showed an efficacy rate of 76% against symptomatic COVID infection instead of the 79% figure released Monday. The estimated efficacy in people over 65 rose slightly, from 80% to 85%. The vaccine maker identified no safety concerns related to the vaccine.

On March 24, the Ukrainian government urged the public not to jump to conclusions after a servicewoman died two days after getting the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine, reported Fox News. Although the woman reportedly had chronic cardiovascular disease and other comorbidities, she experienced no side effects from the vaccine before she suddenly lost consciousness.

According to Reuters, nine other people were given the vaccine from the same batch on the same day and had no ill effects.

Children’s Health Defense asks anyone who has experienced an adverse reaction, to any vaccine, to file a report following these three steps.

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

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Norwegian health authorities still haven’t reached a conclusion on the AstraZeneca vaccine. The pause in vaccinations will be kept in place for three more weeks. A decision will be made before April 15.

“We need to know if there have been more cases of side effects in other countries, than those we already know about. We will be working very closely with other Nordic countries, especially Denmark,” said Camilla Stoltenberg, the head of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, to NRK.

They will also investigate if there are less serious cases of side effects that have gone unreported in other countries.

Four dead in Norway

Norway halted vaccinations with the AstraZeneca vaccine on March 11, after reports of possible serious side effects surfaced in several countries.

Four people have died from a rare combination of blood clots, low platelets and bleeding in Norway after receiving the AstraZeneca-vaccine.

A group of Norwegian doctors and researchers concluded that at least two of the deaths were caused by a powerful immune response to the vaccine on March 18.

“There is nothing in the patient history of these individuals that could give such a powerful immune response. I am confident that the antibodies we have found are the cause, and I see no other explanation than that the vaccine has triggered it,” said professor and chief physician at Oslo University Hospital, Pål Andre Holme.

Norway and Denmark still haven’t concluded

Around 120.000 people have received a dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine in Norway, with the first dose being administered on February 7. So far there have been six reported cases of a rare condition of blood clots in patients who have received the vaccine. Four of them are dead.

Several other countries, like Germany, Italy, France and Spain, also paused the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine after the early reports of side effects.

After the European Medicines Agency (EMA) concluded that the vaccine is safe and effective, almost all of these countries have resumed vaccinations using AstraZeneca.

The EMA did not consider the blood clot-report from the Norwegian team of experts, as it arrived a day after the agency finished their investigations.

Currently, Norway and Denmark are the only countries that are still not putting their doses of AstraZeneca to use.

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The Cape Verde Supreme Court has approved a request to extradite Venezuelan government envoy Alex Saab to the US.

“The Supreme Court confirms the legal authorization for Saab’s extradition to the United States,” the ruling issued on Wednesday read.

The Colombian-born businessman was detained on an Interpol warrant in June 2020 during a stopover in the African archipelago. He was reportedly on his way to Iran to negotiate trade agreements on behalf of the Nicolás Maduro government.

Caracas protested his arrest, arguing that Saab was protected by diplomatic immunity as “an agent of a sovereign government,” and launched a campaign for his release. The subsequent months saw Washington’s request approved by lower courts, in spite of the absence of a mutual extradition treaty between the two countries, and appealed to higher instances by Saab’s lawyers.

His defense team, which includes high-profile Spanish jurist Baltasar Garzón, secured his transfer to house arrest in January and vowed to appeal the latest ruling before the Cape Verde Constitutional Court.

“We reaffirm our confidence that Saab will be released,” stated lawyer Femi Falana, adding that the defense was “studying the decision.” The businessman’s attorneys and the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry have blasted the arrest and extradition approvals as “politically motivated.”

The Cape Verde Supreme Court decision came on the heels of an Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Court of Justice ruling that Saab’s arrest had been “illegal” and calling for his immediate release.

“We found his arrest was arbitrary and subsequent detention throughout the period until today was illegal,” Justice Edward Amoako Asante of the Abuja-based tribunal stated on Monday.

The ECOWAS court found that Cape Verdean authorities arrested Saab before the Interpol arrest warrant was issued.

However, the archipelago’s judicial body argued that the ECOWAS Court of Justice had no jurisdiction on the matter, despite Cape Verde belonging to the West African economic union.

For their part, Saab’s attorneys blasted this decision as “an extraordinary act of disobedience,” arguing that the ECOWAS tribunal’s ruling is binding and calling for other community member countries to secure its enforcement.

Washington has accused the Colombo-Venezuelan businessman of running a “vast corruption network” and profiting from overpriced import contracts for Venezuela’s CLAP program, which delivers subsidized food bags to a reported seven million families.

In July 2019, the US Treasury Department sanctioned Saab, business associate Alvaro Pulido and thirteen foreign-based firms allegedly owned or controlled by them and used to circumvent US sanctions. Shortly after, Saab and Pulido were indicted by a Florida court on charges of laundering US $350 million, but no evidence was publicly disclosed.

The CLAP program has been targeted by US authorities as part of a wide-reaching sanctions program aimed at ousting the Maduro government. Measures have included an oil embargo, secondary sanctions, a clampdown on swap deals and the seizure of a number of Venezuelan state assets held abroad.

The unilateral coercive measures have been denounced by multilateral bodies for their “devastating” effects and classified as “collective punishment” of the Venezuelan population, while Caracas has filed a lawsuit at the International Criminal Court (ICC) arguing that they constitute a crime against humanity.

The Trump administration identified Saab as an important player for the Maduro administration to secure key imports, with Washington’s blockade forcing Caracas to increasingly rely on middlemen. Saab’s companies have reportedly secured a number of government contracts over the years in the housing, mining and food sectors.

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Featured image: Businessman Alex Saab has been a Venezuelan gov’t ally in circumventing US sanctions. (Archive)

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***

And so we come to March 23rd, and lockdown’s first birthday. Or, as we call it here, the longest two weeks in history.

1 year. 12 calendar months. 365 increasingly gruelling days.

It’s a long time since “2 weeks to flatten the curve”, became an obvious lie. Sometime in July it turned into a sick joke. The curve was flattened, the NHS protected and the clapping was hearty and meaningful.

…and none of it made any difference.

This was not a sacrifice for the “greater good”. It was not a hard decision with arguments on both sides. It was not a risk-benefit scenario. The “risks” were in fact certainties, and the “benefits” entirely fictional.

Because Lockdowns don’t work. It’s really important to remember that.

Even if you subscribe to the belief that “Sars-Cov-2” is a unique discrete entity (which is far from proven), or that it is incredibly dangerous (which is demonstrably untrue), the lockdown has not worked to, in any way, limit this supposed threat.

Lockdowns. Don’t. Work.

They don’t make any difference, the curves don’t flatten and the R0 number doesn’t drop and the lives aren’t saved (quite the opposite, as we’ve all seen).

Just look at the graphs.

This one, comparing “Covid deaths” in the UK (lockdown) and Sweden (no lockdown):

Or this one, comparing “Covid deaths” in California (lockdown) and Florida (no lockdown):

From Belarus to Sweden to Florida to Nicaragua to Tanzania, the evidence is clear. “Covid”, whatever that means in real terms, is not impacted by lockdowns.

Putting the entire population under house arrest doesn’t benefit public health. In fact, it’s (rather predictably) incredibly counter-productive.

The damage done by shuttering businesses, limiting access to healthcare, postponing treatments and diagnoses, postponed surgeries, increasing depression, soaring unemployment and mass poverty has been discussed to death. The scale of the impact cannot be overstated.

Dr David Nabarro, World Health Organization special envoy for Covid-19, said this of lockdowns back in October:

We in the World Health Organization do not advocate lockdowns as the primary means of control of the virus[…]just look at what’s happened to the tourism industry…look what’s happening to small-holding farmers[…]it seems we may have a doubling of world poverty by next year. We may well have at least a doubling of child malnutrition […] This is a terrible, ghastly global catastrophe.”

A terrible, global catastrophe. A doubling of childhood malnutrition.

The “pandemic” didn’t do that, lockdowns did that. They were never going to achieve their stated aims. And what’s more, they were never intended to achieve those aims.

Too often soft language in the media talks about “misjudgments” or “mistakes” or “incompetence”. Supposed critics claim the government “panicked” or “over-reacted”. That is nonsense. The easiest, cheesiest excuse that has ever existed.

“Whoops”, they say, with an emphatic shrug and shit-eating grin “I guess we done messed up!”. Unflattering, but better than the truth.

Because the truth is that the government isn’t mistaken or scared or stupid…they are malign. And dishonest. And cruel.

All the suffering of lockdown was entirely predictable and deliberately imposed. For reasons that have nothing to do with helping people and everything to do controlling them.

It’s been more than apparent for most of the last fifty-two weeks that the agenda of lockdown was not public health, but laying the groundwork for the “new normal” and “the great reset”.

A series of programmes designed to completely undercut civil liberties all across the world, reversing decades (if not centuries) of social progress. A re-feudalisation of society, with the 99% cheerfully taking up their peasant smocks “to protect the vulnerable”, whilst the elite proselytise about the worth of rules they happily admit do not apply to them.

And we’ve all had lives ruined and a year of precious time wasted. For nothing. You’ve been locked up for two weeks that lasted 365 days. For nothing.

…or rather, for everything. Because that’s what they are trying to take from us. Everything. And the only way to stop them is not to let them. To simply refuse consent.

Let’s not let lockdown get a second birthday.

*

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17 years of a US-UN military occupation paved the way for 10 years of a US imposed dictatorship in our country, Haiti.

This regime has turned the police force into government death squads.

State corruption and land grabs are rampant..

Youth in popular neighborhoods are armed to the teeth by the government and the oligarchs to fight and kill one another, to create chaos in the streets, and to keep the people in these neighborhoods from joining anti-government protests.

For the first time in the history of our country wanton murders, kidnappings and rapes are a daily occurrence.

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 a recent episode of the High Wire, host Del Bigtree says:

We are putting immense pressure on [the coronavirus] with an underperforming vaccine that is going to turn it into a hulk. And [Dr. Bossche’s] concern is that it will become so viral and so deadly that there is nothing we can do to stop it.

I can’t help but feel Bigtree and Bossche may be big fans of I Am Legend. Both the novel and the movie are set in a post-apocalyptic America, where a mutant measles virus has wiped out most of mankind. Outside of such dystopian thrillers, however, it’s hard to find examples of such genocidal pandemics (natural or manmade).

Del Bigtree was, as many know, commenting on Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche’s open letter and interview where the vaccine scientist denounces the COVID-19 vaccine.

Well, he sort of denounces it.

Actually, not really.

Instead, he praises the COVID-19 vaccine — merely claiming that it is the “wrong weapon” at the “wrong time.” Ignoring any of its innate dangers and risks, he says that its belated use in the midst of this (invisible) pandemic will trigger more lethal variants.

Super deadly variants: Where have we heard that line before?

His solution to stop these mutant ninja viruses (resulting from an experimental mRNA vaccine)? More vaccines! Yes, he advises mass vaccinating with an even more experimental vaccine.

The idea is this new type of vaccine will stimulate our innate immune system to produce more natural killer (NK) white blood cells.

The natural killer vaccine. Boy, that should sell well.

How many red flags can we plant around this doctor (whose resumé includes helping out the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, GAVI and GSK)?

First off, let me be clear, I think the vaccine is innately dangerous. In animal studies, after being re-exposed to the virus, vaccine trials left a pet cemetery of dead ferrets (according to the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy).

But the idea that an “under-performing” vaccine is going to make the virus even more deadly makes no sense to me. If anything, would not an under-performing vaccine make the virus even weaker?

Also, the proposition that inoculating people (while the virus is already in circulation) would finally lead to this monstrous killer coronavirus (that the WHO has been praying for) makes even less sense. As science writer Rosemary Frei’s explains in her excellent article, The Curious Case of Geert Vanden Bossche:

[Viral resistance] it’s not the major threat Vanden Bossche attempts to scare us about by saying the virus is likely to mutate so much and so quickly because of the current mass vaccination campaigns that soon it could escape all current attempts to stop its spread. Remember, for example, that yearly flu mass vaccination hasn’t caused influenza to spiral out of control and decimate the global population.

In truth, science still has not even proven that viruses are contagious, no less that they can become super-contagious. As Thomas Cowan writes in his book, The Contagion Myth:

It was Louis Pasteur who convinced a skeptical medical community that contagious germs caused disease. However, he eventually admitted that the whole effort to prove contagion was a failure, leading to his famous deathbed confession that “the germ is nothing, the terrain is everything.”

Viruses may be at the scene of the “crime.” But so are police and paramedics. That doesn’t necessarily mean they are to blame. Indeed, a virus may be part of some type of healing or detoxification process. Maybe they even help devour cancer cells? ScienceDaily says that in addition to rejecting virally infected cells, NK cells also reject tumours. Could there be a connection?

As epidemiologist Dr. Ron Brown said in a recent interview:

What is a virus, where does it come from, what is its purpose, and what happens to it in the body? How pathogenic is it, and how infectious is it? Virology does not have the full answers to these basic questions, and yet, public health policy is predicated on assumptions about the nature of viruses that may prove to be the complete opposite of reality.

Therefore, out of everything Dr. Boosche said about the virus (his “enemy”) and vaccines (his “weapon”), these words made the most sense to me:

We don’t understand our weapon… We don’t understand exactly what a virus is, do we? So we go to a war and we don’t know our enemy. We don’t understand the strategy of our enemy. And we don’t know how our weapon works. I mean, how is that going to go? That’s a fundamental problem to begin with.

Bossche’s interview and letter are full of so many contradictions, it’s hard to know where he is coming from. Is he struggling to see through decades of cognitive bias, slowly realizing that pharmaceutical vaccines are not the answer to disease? Is he trying to tell the truth without ending up in the trunk of some car at the bottom of a lake? Is he just confused?

Or is he trying cover up the fact that the COVID-19 vaccine is going to kill people in and of itself? As a means to deflect liability, he may have been hired to deflect blame from the vaccine and, instead, on super-variants that adapted to the belated vaccine.

Seems like a great backup plan for Big-Pharma: Oh, sorry, that vaccine didn’t work. Whoops! Oh, and look, more people are dying! Double whoops! But don’t worry, we have this new vaccine instead to solve the problem we created with the first vaccine.

This reminds me of when a country unjustly attacks another country. The politicians argue not over whether they should attack or not, but whether they should be using air force or ground troops.

I know it sounds crazy, but that’s basically what he seems to be saying. All the while he says almost nothing about the fact we could just strengthen (or stop abusing) our immune systems. To me, it looks like we have far more to fear from lockdowns, vaccines, masking and (anti-)social distancing. In short, it’s the weapons being used against “the enemy” that may be the real threat to our own safety.

I suspect that this idea of “the vaccine mutating the virus” is just a way to get the rest of us to believe in a pandemic of killer variants. Given how long humans have been on the earth, I think common sense tells us that nature is not very likely to concoct some killer virus to wipe us out. The “Wuhan laboratory theory” (whether true or not) provided the conspiratorial community a stronger reason to believe — at the beginning of the scamdemic, at least — that a genetically-modified SARS-CoV-2 may actually have been a threat to humanity.

Well, they’re doing it again, by suggesting that vaccine-induced mutations may actually produce a real pandemic. After all, even the mainstream crowd isn’t (on the whole) too worried about these theoretical variants. As Jordan Schachtel (the brilliant and witty writer behind the The Dossierblog) recently wrote, in his article “The Chicken Little act isn’t working – COVID Mania is wearing off”:

The “public health experts” are scrambling to remain in the spotlight, and even their most reliable scare tactics are failing to keep the masses compliant, paranoid, and afraid. For the “public health” cartel, 2020 was the best year of their lives, and it seems that after one year of “two weeks to slow the spread,” they just can’t muster up the momentum needed to replicate that power high….

For the last few months, the ruling class has settled on promoting “new variants” of the coronavirus in order to keep the power grab going…

But now, the new mutation panic is simply not imprinting in the collective mindset in the same way that the old tactics were deployed. The ruling class feels their control slipping away. For the first time in a full year, they’re losing the argument. The momentum for their causes are collapsing. “New variants” just don’t hit hard enough for people to care.

If man-made mutant pathogens were truly so deadly, you’d think by now that, after all the sanitization of 2020, the entire human race would have died out from Incredible Hulk MRSA mutations. Instead, such microbial doomsday predictions have yet to even cause a significant rise in all-cause mortality.

In conclusion, this paragraph from Rosemary Frei’s article, sums up my feelings on the matter:

COVID has an extremely high survival rate. So why develop yet another expensive, invasive and experimental solution to a problem that barely exists, if it does at all?

We have far more serious problems to contend with: Mass vaccination. Lockdowns. Social distancing. Forced masking. And a generation of children being raised in shame of their own respiratory system.

Natural or otherwise, I suggest we forget about the variant fear-mongering, and focus on the real monsters in our midst.

*

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John C. A. Manley has spent over a decade ghostwriting for medical doctors, naturopaths and chiropractors. Since March 2020, he has been writing articles that question and expose the contradictions in the COVID-19 narrative and control measures. He is also completing a novel, Much Ado About Corona: A Dystopian Love Story. You can visit his website at MuchAdoAboutCorona.ca.

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Image license to the Incredible Hulk purchased by the author through Shutterstock, coronavirus image in the public domain from Wikicommons

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).

***

Rola Al-Khatib, a journalist for Al-Hadath, and Al-Arabiya, media outlets from Saudi Arabia, were attacked by children at the Al-Hol camp in north-eastern Syria which houses ISIS families.  

The children had been indoctrinated by their mothers to regard any female not wearing a black headscarf and full-length cloak as an ‘infidel’.  The children threatened to kill the journalist.  She explained to them she wanted to help them by interviewing them, but the children reacted violently.

The video shown by Al-Hadath on Saturday showed the children hurling insults at the reporter, calling her an infidel and showering her and her camera crew with stones.

Al-Khatib was reporting on conditions in the dangerous camp housing 62,000 people, who are the families of ISIS, mainly women, and children.

“I’m not carrying a gun or anything, I just want to talk to you, why do you say I’m infidel?” Al-Khatib asked.

“You should wear a hijab before we talk to you,” one of them said.

“What you are wearing is not hijab, not this color, it’s not black.”

She asked the children how would they react to the situation later, as adults, and they replied immediately:

“We will kill you, we have prepared killings for infidels.”

The female ISIS ideology enforcers

The camps suffer from a female band of ISIS loyalists who are extremely radicalized and exert enormous pressure on the women and girls who do not conform to their dictates. There have been many murders in the camp which have been blamed on these fanatics.  They slip into a tent at night and slit the throat of any woman or girl who fails to comply with their demands and dogma.

Shamina Begum claims she “had no choice but to say certain things” to journalists “because I lived in fear of these women coming to my tent one day and killing me and killing my baby.”

Al-Hol camp

Al-Hol camp is a hell-hole housing 62,000 people living in dire conditions with children from 60 different countries.  The camp houses mainly foreign families of ISIS and the children are being raised indoctrinated with extremist ideology.

Radical Islam is neither a religion nor a sect; it is a political ideology. ISIS is only one of many groups following Radical Islam; others include Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Dozens of murders have occurred at the camp and are thought to have been carried out by female extremists who target other females of all ages for failing to follow the strict orders and ideology.

These women and children were among the last remaining ISIS families to be captured after years of living rough in the Syrian desert.  Their fight is over, but their rejection of peace continues. They are waging a psychological war against the world and in defiance of all laws.  They do not represent Islam, or Muslims, but only represent themselves and their death cult.

The camp is administered by the Kurdish separatist militia SDF, who were partners with the US military in the past fight to defeat ISIS.

Roj camp 

Camp manager Nora Abdo of the SDF said Roj camp houses 2,618 persons and is more secure and better provisioned than Al-Hol camp.  Abdo said her biggest concern was the children growing up in the camp abandoned by their governments.

“When they grow up they will hate their homeland, and this will have consequences,” she said. “This should not be their life. What about their future?”

Spanish director Alba Sotorra went to Roj camp in March 2019 and shot a film, “The Return: Life After ISIS,” a documentary shown at the online Texas-based South By Southwest festival. The film features the British ISIS bride Shamina Begum as well as other women from Canada, the US, France, and Germany.

Begum said in the film, “I would say to the people in the UK, give me a second chance because I was still young when I left.”

Begum was a teenager in 2015 when she left Britain with two other girls to travel to Syria to become an ISIS bride.  She married an ISIS fighter from the Netherlands, and is now a widow, and has lost all three children she bore.

Britain’s Supreme Court rejected Begum’s bid to return to challenge a decision stripping her citizenship on national security grounds. Five Supreme Court justices unanimously turned down her request to be able to return to the UK to fight for her citizenship to be restored. Their judgment came six years after the then 15-year-old left east London with friends to join ISIS.

UK Home Secretary Priti Patel welcomed the news, saying it “reaffirmed the home secretary’s authority to make vital national security decisions”.

Begum was discovered by British journalists in 2019 in a camp, but her defiant lack of remorse drew outrage from the British public and leaders alike.

The Kurds as prison guards

Both camps, Roj and Al-Hol, are administered by the US-backed Kurdish separatist militia SDF.

President Trump gave President Erdogan of Turkey the green-light to invade Syria to fight the SDF, which Turkey regards as terrorists, aligned with the PKK.  In October 2019, an estimated 750 ISIS fighters and their women and children escaped from Ain Issa camp where they had been housed.  During the chaos of the invasion, the Kurds were unable to properly secure the inmates of the camp.  Those ISIS men and their families may have made their way through Turkey, who is in support of ISIS, and possibly have found their way on the smuggling boats from Turkey to Europe.

The US-Kurdish alliance

The US illegally invaded Syria during their fight to defeat ISIS.  The Syrian Arab Army and their Russian allies were already fighting ISIS in Syria, but the US refused to coordinate with the two large and powerful military groups already on the ground.  Instead, the US partnered with a small militia, SDF, which are Syrian Kurdish separatists, which Turkey views as terrorists.  It was the Russians who bombed the caravans of stolen oil which kept ISIS financed by selling to President Erdogan.

Western IS brides await going home

Begum and fellow Westerners including the American Hoda Muthana portray an apologetic tone in Sotorra’s film.

 “It was known that Syria was a warzone and I still traveled into it with my children — now how I did this I really don’t know looking back,” says one Western woman.

“I will never be able to understand how a woman from the West can take this decision of leaving everything behind to join a group that is committing the atrocities that Daesh is committing,” Sotorra told AFP.

On March 14 Begum was photographed in Roj camp wearing western clothes.  Gone were the headscarf and cloak, as she wore a t-shirt and sunglasses.  It was obvious she is trying to change her image from an ISIS loyalist to a typical British young woman who seeks to return home. She shook hands with The Telegraph journalist but refused to be interviewed due to legal advice.

Radical Islamic ideology

While ISIS may have been defeated on the battlefields of Iraq and Syria, their ideology remains and continues to attract followers, as well as retaining the ISIS loyalists in the camps who are mainly sisters, wives, widows, and mothers.

Experts have warned that the Al-Hol camp and others have become an incubator for extremism.  The female ISIS ideological warrior is teaching their children to grow up to take revenge on everyone who is not exactly like them.  ISIS has been termed a death-cult and a fascist ideology.  There is still no comprehensive plan on how to deal with the women and children in the various camps in Syria.  Similarly, the US-run Guantanamo Bay facility has inmates who have been all but forgotten.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is an award-winning journalist. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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***

Prevailing financial sector “wisdom” holds that while the bond and stock markets of the US and EU are dangerously inflated following huge COVID borrowings and unprecedented central bank measures, that China is the one example of a market suitable for investment as it has managed to get beyond COVID and restart its economy.

A closer look at recent official measures by Chinese financial regulators and the Bank of China suggest it is anything but safe, and that its domestic real estate sector could be a bubble whose collapse can trigger a global financial catastrophe beyond any seen in modern history.

In 1931 the world financial architecture of Versailles was bankrupt, but not yet in financial collapse. The key trigger to pull the world into the Great Depression was not the 1929 Wall Street stock crash, but rather the collapse of a relatively small Austrian bank.

In ways remarkably analogous to the unfolding global financial crisis of today, world credit had been built after 1919 on a pyramid of increasingly dubious debts, with the House of Morgan and Wall Street financial firms sitting at the peak of the pyramid.

Most of Europe and a large number of developing countries from Bolivia to Poland were linked into the Wall Street credit pyramid. In 1929-1931, the domino-style failure of those Morgan-initiated credit links to Europe and beyond turned a manageable American stock market crash into the worst deflation crisis in American history, precipitating a global depression.

The amount of foreign bonds issued by Wall Street in the decade until the 1929 market crash was about $7,000,000,000, a huge amount equal to nearly 10% of total US Gross Domestic Product. The war-damaged European economies used more than 90% of these American loans to buy American goods, a boon to major US corporations listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

When the buying collapsed after 1929, however, Wall Street’s foreign lending boom became a vehicle that severely worsened the US industrial depression. The whole edifice of dollar credits that supported Europe’s debt pyramid during the 1920’s rested on the loans of New York banks, above all from J.P. Morgan & Co., to Europe to refinance short-term credits. The US Government had insisted at Versailles in 1919 that Britain, France and Italy repay its US war loans in dollars.

Much of the credit from New York banks had flowed into Germany after the 1924 Dawes Plan currency stabilization. Within six years, various German municipalities, private companies, port authorities and other entities, had issued bonds underwritten by New York banks and sold to American investors. Germany borrowed nearly $4 billion from abroad during this period.

In the period from 1924 to 1931, almost $6 billion in American credit poured into Europe, equivalent in 2021 to some $92 billion. If US war loans by the Treasury, and the costs of the War itself were added, a total of $40 billion in US funds had gone into Europe in less than 15 years, fully one-fifth of total American GDP in 1914.

America’s conspicuous consumption during the ‘Roaring Twenties’ was based on an illusion of rising household wealth for the majority of its citizens. This debt-driven consumption created the nation’s illusory wealth — the Achilles Heel of the economy. In America, by 1929 fully 60% of all cars and 80% of home radios were bought on installment credit. Behind the façade of American prosperity of the 1920s was an edifice built on debt and illusions of permanent prosperity and rising stock prices, in many ways similar to China since 2000. Once the consumer credit carousel stopped in 1929-1931, the consumption boom collapsed, as the majority of Americans simply could not afford to buy on credit any longer.

In March 1931, Austria, a tiny shard of the prewar Austro-Hungarian Empire with 6 million people, announced it had entered talks with Germany to create a common customs union to boost trade, as depression threatened. Such a union would not even be a technical violation of the Versailles Treaty. It was certainly no threat to world security.

The Government of France reacted swiftly and demanded immediate repayment of some $300 million in short-term credits owed by Germany and Austria to French banks, to pressure both countries to halt their customs union. The demands triggered a panic flight from the shaky Austrian currency. The weakest link in the Austrian financial system was the Vienna Credit Anstalt Bank. It was also the largest bank in Austria. The collapse of the Credit Anstalt led to a depositor panic run on the Darmstaedter-und Nationalbank or Danat-Bank in Germany, and created a currency crisis for the Brüning government, as well. At that point, the Bank of England, the US Federal Reserve, the German Reichsbank, and the Bank of France met to discuss an emergency credit infusion to try to stop the spread of currency panic. It was too late.

China As the new Credit Anstalt?

The analogy today with the unsound Austro-German credit bubble of the 1920s lies ironically, not with the United States, but rather with the Peoples’ Republic of China, and the staggering growth of personal household debt there since the 2008 global financial crisis. The Beijing central authorities in a panic reaction, released an unprecedented volume of $504 billion in credit to local authorities with a mandate to invest to spur the economy. Nowhere was the investment more than in housing, where a new middle-income population was willing to borrow to get their own home.

By 2016-17 Beijing authorities realized that a dangerous speculative bubble in rising house prices threatened the economy. Restrictive measures only drove local authorities and banks into covert “off-balance sheet” lending via so-called local government financing vehicles (LGFV), where the local governments create an investment company that sells bonds to finance real estate or other local projects. With real estate prices inflating at double digits annually to the present, the size of real estate debts has grown to the point today the Peoples’ Bank of China and other regulators openly warn of a bubble as many families rush to borrow for a second home for speculative gain.

Total household debt including mortgage and consumer loans for cars and household appliances in 2020 was a whopping 62% of GDP. The Institute of International Finance (IIF) estimated that China’s total domestic debt rose to 335 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2020. Some have drawn comparisons to the insane real estate inflation in Japan in 1990-91 before the collapse.

In 1998 the Beijing Government allowed citizens to own their own home. The emerging middle class eagerly bought new apartments that were rising everywhere in the major cities. Real estate was viewed as the only safe investment as stocks and bonds were volatile, and capital export was controlled. For the past two decades home price valuations have risen significantly, leading many Chinese to believe it could never stop. This February, despite official measures, China home prices rose year-year by 16.8 %. According to data from China’s National Bureau of Statistics the total market value of China’s real estate is currently around 65 trillion US Dollars– that’s trillion. In 2019, China’s GDP was $14 trillion US, making China real estate far more inflated than USA or EU values by a big margin. A 2018 study found Chinese home prices averaged 9.3 times annual incomes, outstripping inflated San Francisco’s 8.4 times.

Beijing is clearly alarmed and since January has issued strict measures to force local governments away from continuing to feed the real estate bubble. In 2020 to counter the corona lockdowns and economic recession, Beijing issued major stimulus measures. Now with the economy slowly restarting, Beijing is determined to deleverage the bubbles in stocks as well as real estate in hopes of creating what Xi Jinping calls “dual circulation” which in effect, means while trying to maintain growth of exports, that China increasingly gets its 1.4 billion citizens to consume more domestically to lessen dependence on risky exports. This will be no easy job, even for the formidable Chinese.

What Beijing authorities are attempting to do is to cap the real estate bubble, to block speculative borrowing for second homes, in hopes the funds will go to other consumption.

China Debt Pyramid

Xi Jinping and the central government face a high risk dilemma. With the world economy descending by the day deeper into decline, Xi recently issued orders for local governments to insure spending on infrastructure to maintain “dual circulation” economic growth. Yet at the same time, to deflate what it sees as a potentially systemic real estate bubble, Beijing demands local authorities stop new lending off-balance sheet to finance home buying via LGFVs. Something has to give, and it could be default of millions of Chinese on their mortgage loans as unemployment, largely hidden in government data, reportedly grows significantly.

Last September, China’s Evergrande Group, as of 2018 the world’s most valuable real estate company with some $121 billion in real estate and related debt, underwent a cash crisis owing to its excessive debt burden and the slowing economy. In a desperate effort to develop new revenue sources, the real estate group has diversified into solar panels, pig farming, agribusiness, and baby formula. Not a reassuring sign.

The Evergrande crisis is for the time being under control, as it sells billions of assets to reduce debt. However the scare led Beijing authorities to double down on local hidden real estate debts.

According to the state’s National Institution for Finance and Development estimate, total local hidden debt reached an impressive 14.8 trillion yuan or $ 2.3 trillion in 2020. That’s likely very conservative. Standard & Poors estimates the total at between 30 trillion yuan (US$4.2 trillion) to 40 trillion yuan (US $6.1 trillion). Even that may be conservative, as it is deliberately hidden. Since January strict new rules from the central authorities seek to kill or cap such hidden real estate loans in a drive to shift investment into local infrastructure and industry—dual circulation.

On March 16 Liu Guiping, a deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China wrote about financial risk, “We need to… actively and effectively curb the spread of financial risk contagion, and resolutely maintain the bottom line of avoiding systemic financial risks.” That however is easier said than done.

China’s domestic debt has been growing at an average annual rate of around 20 per cent since 2008, far faster than its gross domestic product, a recipe for serious trouble. Official data showed that outstanding household debt, including mostly real estate debt, at the end of 2020 stood at 63.19 trillion yuan (US$9.7 trillion). That’s equivalent of 62 per cent of Chinese gross domestic product.

In 2021 a record 7.1 trillion yuan ($1.1 trillion) of such special local bonds come due and must be rolled over to avoid collapse of local governments. That will mean that the big state banks must somehow finance the local debt, much of it of dubious or “junk bond” value. This, just as Beijing demands the banks finance new infrastructure and growth initiatives outside real estate while also reducing own debt. Despite official loans from Beijing to local authorities to finance small and mid-size business, South China Morning Post reports that in some cases the financing was being obtained by dummy shell corporations and then used illegally for real estate investments.

If troubles in this local bond market spill over into the national sovereign bond market, a huge market worth a staggering $18 trillion, that would drive bond rates far higher, triggering a wave of local defaults in less viable projects including real estate. It is certain that the PBOC, the state central bank, would then pump liquidity to save its giant state banks. But given the scale of the debt, that could well force liquidation of China dollar assets abroad, including its estimated $1.04 trillion of US Treasury debt, as well as Euro bonds.

Ironically, major Wall Street firms such as Ray Dalio’s Bridgewater or BlackRock, and major Wall Street banks, have been investing in the promise of a China economic recovery. With the US bond markets on a razor’s edge in recent weeks with a new $1.9 trillion Biden stimulus and national debt soaring skywards, it would take little from a China bond crisis to trigger a repeat of the 1931 Austria crisis. Only this time, the entire world economy is bound in a debt system that is out of control. As of January, global debt has climbed to a record $281 trillion, adding an unprecedented $24 trillion in 2020 for corona measures. It looks like this is all part of the Great Reset plan: Blame China for what the BIS central bankers, the real gods of money have engineered since 2008.

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F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. 

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

Featured image is from New Eastern Outlook

Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

Author Name: F. William Engdahl

ISBN Number: 978-0-937147-2-2

Year: 2007

Pages: 341 pages with complete index

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This skilfully researched book focuses on how a small socio-political American elite seeks to establish control over the very basis of human survival: the provision of our daily bread. “Control the food and you control the people.”

This is no ordinary book about the perils of GMO. Engdahl takes the reader inside the corridors of power, into the backrooms of the science labs, behind closed doors in the corporate boardrooms.

The author cogently reveals a diabolical world of profit-driven political intrigue, government corruption and coercion, where genetic manipulation and the patenting of life forms are used to gain worldwide control over food production. If the book often reads as a crime story, that should come as no surprise. For that is what it is.

All Global Research articles can be read in 27 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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The efficacy of the RT-PCR test used to identify infection by the SARS-CoV-2 virus and ”cases” of the Covid-19 disease is widely disputed. In these discussions it is often maintained that the test produces 97% false positives. Reference for that claim is made to a study by a Marseille-based group who communicated their results in a letter to the editor on September 28th, 2020.[1]

The first author is R. Jaafar, so it is hereafter referred to as the Jaafar-paper. It represents an expanded data set compared to an earlier study[2] spearheaded by B. La Scola. This publication is referred to as the La Scola-paper.

In sum, the results presented in the Jaafar-paper do not provide a stand-alone proof for the test producing 97% false positives. The present comment is an attempt to distil the essential conclusions from their data.

In the semi-public domain, it has been another matter of confusion that the abbreviation “RT-PCR” is sometimes referred to as “Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction”, while in other cases one may see it explained as “Real Time PCR”.

It is both. It is Real Time RT-PCR.

The enzyme reverse transcriptase addresses single-stranded RNA fragments in the swab and converts them into double-stranded DNA in a series of steps. Thereafter, the polymerase enzyme begins to make copies of selected DNA. The selection is determined by a pair of so-called primers which are necessary for initiating the process.

The replication occurs in cycles. Each cycle begins by heating the sample in order to separate the DNA double-helix into two free DNA strands. These serve as templates for the polymerase to produce complementary strands of each out of the building blocks present in the soup. Upon cooling the strands recombine. The cycle has ended. The result is a doubling of the number of DNA molecules present prior to the cycle.

During production the DNA is tagged by a probing molecule which fluoresces only when it is incorporated into the DNA. Thus, the sample emits visible light when irradiated with a little laser. The fluorescence intensity is recorded for each cycle of the PCR as a measure of the amount of DNA being produced. That is where the real-time comes in. When a pre-determined level is reached, the multiplication process is stopped and the test termed “positive”.

The number of cycles needed to produce the critical level of fluorescence is called the cycle threshold, Ct, which is a characteristic of each sample. Obviously, if the process starts with a huge number of RNA-fragments, the threshold fluorescence intensity is reached early and the Ct is low. If the initial loading is only a few RNA molecules, or maybe even a single piece, it may take many cycles to get the critical fluorescence signal.

This means that the Ct–value has the potential to provide a quantitative measure for the viral load of any person. It can be convenient if you want a quantitative measure for your temporary condition.

A future conversation may go like this:

“How do you do?”

“I went to the test center. They told me, that I feel fine. I have a Ct of 42 today.”

As will be understood from the following, this exchange may imply that person #2 had a cold last fall but no clinical symptoms today.

All samples are positive if 60 cycles are applied because “PCR makes something out of nothing”, as Kary Mullis – the Nobel Prize-winning inventor of the PCR technology – once said.

When it is only a matter of cycles before the test is positive, we must all have DNA and/or RNA fragments – foreign or domestic – in our body, which are targeted by the primers in current use. At high Ct values you end up amplifying “the background molecular noise” of benign genetic fragments.

We all have a CT all the time!

The Jaafar-paper is a contribution to the important discussion of the therapeutic utility of the PCR methodology. More specifically: “What is the tipping point for Ct below which a PCR provides a meaningful test for Covid-19 and above which it is meaningless”?

From the beginning of the Covid-19 outbreak until the research being wrapped up in said publication the Marseille institute performed 250,566 SARS-CoV-2 tests for 179,151 patients.

Of these, 13,161 tested positive within 35 cycles of the RT-PCR. That is 7.3%.

Out of these positive samples, 3790 were inoculated and managed for culture. The process of inoculation is more-or-less described in the La Scola-paper.2

They write, that “0.5 mL swab fluid was centrifuged and inoculated onto VERA cells (monkey kidney cell line) and observed for cytopathogenic effect” – in an undisclosed number of days.

That is, did the cells die and disintegrate? This observation must have been done under an optical microscope. If they observed cell death a liquid sample was taken from the vial and processed accordingly for observation in a scanning electron microscope.

The authors call this “Presumptive detection of virus in supernatant showing cytopathogenic effect.”

In translation, this means: “If we see the monkey cells die and disintegrate in the optical microscope we take the sample to the electron microscope and believe that whatever we see there, must be the virus.”

However, no electron microscope pictures were provided.

The presence of virus is further “confirmed” with RT-PCR on said liquid. Very importantly, the Ct values for these RT-PCRs run on the samples subjected to electron microscopy are not provided. If the DNA/RNA selected by the primers before and after inoculation targeted the same virus, the latter Ct’s should be substantially lower than the Ct’s obtained from the raw swabs.

If they were not, we really do not know why the cells died.

But let us assume for now that cell death is a criterion for a successful inoculation and that the deaths are caused by the same virus being quantified in the RT-PCR test.

Thus, Jaafar et al. report that the inoculation was successful in 1941 cases out of the 3790 PCR-positives being managed for culture.
This leads us to the immediate assessment that 49% of the positive PCR-tests may have been false in the sense, that the viral load of the patient must have been insignificant.

Whether the 51% successfully inoculated samples do represent a positive diagnosis for the disease called Covid-19 depends on whether SARS-CoV-2 really is a singular entity and whether it has been isolated and shown to be the pathogen of the disease.

In this evaluation we therefore reserve the term “positive” to a sample reaching the critical fluorescence threshold. The “positives” comprise the inoculable and the non-inoculable samples (which are false positives).

The data from the Jaafar-paper are reproduced in Figure 1. It shows the distribution between inoculable and non-inoculable samples for each group of Ct’s, ranging from 11 (Ct11) to 37 (Ct37) cycles.

True, the inoculables comprise only 3% of the Ct35-group. But since there were only 74 samples needed to be taken that far, it does not mean, that the RT-PCR test produces 97% false positives overall. The picture is more diverse.

Figure 1. From Jaafar et al. Shows inoculable samples (brown) together with non-inoculable (grey) for each Ct.

The same data are displayed in a more traditional manner in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Same data as Figure 1, displayed traditionally. The black line represents how many samples are subjected to cell culture at each Ct-group.

We seek an answer to the question: How many cycles should be standard if we want 80% of the positives to represent an inoculable sample?

Figure 3. Top: Integration of #inculables and #non-inculables curves in Figure 2. That is, sum of inoculable and non-inoculable, respectively, registered up until a given Ct. Bottom: Same, as percentage of sum of cultured samples at Ct.

In figure 3 (top), the number of inoculables and non-inoculables, respectively, are summed up to the Ct value. That is, the curves in figure 2 are integrated.

In Figure 3 (bottom) the same data are displayed as percentage of the total number of cultured samples up until that Ct.

It is seen that at Ct25, 80% of the samples termed “positive” by the RT-PCR test will be inoculable. However, 20% of the “positives” will be false, if inoculation is a bench-mark for efficacy of the RT-PCR. Some may find that to be a fair trade off.

So, if 1) there exists such a thing as a singular SARS-CoV-2 virus, if 2) this virus causes serious respiratory symptoms, if 3) the virus is inoculable in VERA cells, if 4) VERA cells are a valid representation of human ditto, and if 5) the Corman-Drosten test really detects SARS-CoV-2 specifically, it MAY have some benefit for a doctor in a clinical setting with a patient having serious respiratory symptoms to run an RT-PCR until Ct = 25 as a supplementary test.[3]

A bit far out, isn’t it?

It really boils down to the primers, their specificity and applicability at low concentrations. How can they target a fatal SARS-CoV-2 virus when its very existence remains to be demonstrated? Furthermore, the sequences of the various primers being used are found not only in ca. 100 bacteria but are also abundant in the human genome.[4][5]

Pairing of two DNA strands – hybridization – doesn’t have to be perfect to occur. If the two strands are, say, only 80% complementary, the binding constant will be reduced. But hybridization happens nevertheless. When a vastly exaggerated concentration of primers are used in the standard Corman-Drosten test[6] it is deliberately bound to pick up other DNA floating around, whether these have been produced by the reverse transcriptase or not.[7]

An RT-PCR test run at CT25

What outcome can be expected IF the Corman-Drosten test did detect a thing called SARS-CoV-2 and was operated at maximum of 25 cycles?

Figure 4. Top: Sum of RT-PCR positives managed for culture up until the Ct-group (integration of black line in figure 2). Bottom: Same data displayed as % of total sum positives managed for culture (3790).

Consider in Figure 4 (top) how the total number of cultured samples increases partly linearly with the number of cycles. This is in agreement with the notion, that the number of cultured per Ct-group reaches a plateau beyond Ct ~ 20 (figure 2) but only noteworthy if the selection of samples subjected to culture was random.

Of this sub-group (3790) subjected to culture – selected among those termed positive by the RT-PCR test within 35 cycles – only 1813 would have been registered as positives had only 25 cycles been applied (Figure 4, top), corresponding to 48% of the sub-group (Figure 4, bottom).

Since 7.3% were tested positive by RT-PCR within 35 cycles, it can be expected that 7.3 x 0.48 = 3.5% will be returned as positives if the number of cycles is confined to 25.

Of these, 2.8% may be trustworthy (80% according to inoculation) while 0.7% may be false positives – IF inoculation is a valid means of confirmation and all other conditions are met!

Closing remark

To be sick is to have symptoms. If you are not sick, you are not contagious. It used to be common sense that you are healthy unless you are not.

Sense is not common anymore during the alleged Covid-19 pandemic. Now you are sick until proven healthy – and contagious by default. The vehicle for this scam is the RT-PCR test run at >35 cycles and beyond. Stop testing and survive.

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Niels Harrit is Associate Professor of Chemistry (retired) at the University of Copenhagen. He was first author of the groundbreaking paper Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe

Notes

[1] Correlation Between 3790 Quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction–Positives Samples and Positive Cell Cultures, Including 1941 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 Isolates.

[2] Viral RNA load as determined by cell culture as a management tool for discharge of SARS-CoV-2 patients from infectious disease wards.

[3] WHO Information notice for IVD users.

[4] The scam has been confirmed: PCR does not detect SARS-CoV-2, philosophers-stone.info.

[5] Conversations with Tom Cowan, at 18.13.

[6] Detection of 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) by real-time RT-PCR

[7] Review report Corman-Drosten et al. Eurosurveillance 2020.

Featured image is from OffGuardian

All Global Research articles can be read in 27 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

***

Christopher J. Portier, Ph.D., former director of the National Center for Environmental Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), and a scientific advisor for the World Health Organization (WHO), recently completed an expert report on brain tumor risk from exposure to radio frequency (RF) radiation used in cellphone technology.

After completing a comprehensive review of the scientific literature, Dr. Portier concluded:

“In my opinion, RF exposure probably causes gliomas and neuromas and, given the human, animal and experimental evidence, I assert that, to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty, the probability that RF exposure causes gliomas and neuromas is high.”

In 2011, Dr. Portier was selected to represent the CDC on an expert working group convened by the WHO International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) to review the carcinogenicity of RF radiation. Based upon recommendations of the expert panel, the IARC declared RF radiation “possibly carcinogenic to humans” (Group 2B) and the following year issued a monograph summarizing the evidence. Because the preponderance of the peer-reviewed research published since 2011 supports the need to upgrade this classification, the IARC has prioritized a new review to be conducted by 2024.

Dr. Portier’s 176-page expert report including 443 references was prepared for the plaintiffs in a major product liability lawsuit, Murray et al. v Motorola, Inc. et al., filed in the Superior Court for the District of Columbia against the telecommunications industry. The report appears as Exhibit 3 in a recent filing with the Court.

Christopher J. Portier. Expert Report. Exhibit C. Murray et al. v. Motorola, Inc. et al. Superior Court for the District of Columbia. March 1, 2021. pp. 1-176.

The report can be downloaded here.

Summary Statements from the Expert Report

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4.1.5 Conclusions for Gliomas (p. 51)

“The evidence on an association between cellular phone use and the risk of glioma in adults is quite strong. While there is considerable difference from study to study on ever versus never usage of cellular phones, 5 of the 6 meta-analyses in Figure 1. are positive and two are significantly positive. Once you consider latency, the meta-analyses in Figure 2 clearly demonstrate an increasing risk with increasing latency. The exposure response meta-regressions in Table 10 and Table 11 clearly indicate that risk is increasing with cumulative hours of exposure, especially in the highest exposure groups. There is a strong tendency toward gliomas appearing on the same side of the head as the phone is generally used and the temporal lobe is strongly suggested as a target. These findings do not appear to be due to chance. The cohort studies appear to show less of a risk than the case-­control studies, but one study is likely to be severely impacted by differential exposure misclassification (Frei et al., 2007) and the other (Benson et al., 2012) is likely to have a milder differential exposure misclassification. The case-control studies are possibly impacted by recall bias although that issue has been examined in a number of different evaluations. Selection bias could have been an issue for the lnterphone study, but their alternative analysis using different referent groups reduces that concern. Confounding is not an issue here. In conclusion, an association has been established between the use of cellular telephones and the risk of gliomas and chance, bias and confounding are unlikely to have driven this finding. The ecological studies are of insufficient strength and quality to fully negate the findings from the observational studies.

The data in children is insufficient to draw any conclusions.”

4.2.5 Conclusions for Acoustic Neuromas (p. 72)

“The evidence on an association between cellular phone use and the risk of acoustic neuromas [ANs] in adults is strong. While there is considerable difference from study to study on ever versus never usage of cellular phones, 3 of the 4 meta-analyses in Figure 3 are above 1 although none-significantly. The meta-analyses in Figure 4 demonstrate an increased risk in the highest 2 latency groups for the case-control studies that gets slightly higher when the cohort studies are added. For latency >=5 years, the mRRs are significantly elevated for the case-control studies and the combined case-control and cohort studies. The exposure response meta-regressions in Table 19 indicates that risk is increasing with cumulative hours of exposure, especially in the highest exposure groups. This finding, however, is sensitive to the inclusion of the Hardell et al. (2013) [160] study. There is a strong tendency toward ANs appearing on the same side of the head as the phone is generally used, especially as the exposure increases. These findings do not appear to be due to chance. The cohort studies appear to show less of a risk than the case-control studies, but one study is likely to be severely impacted by differential exposure misclassification (Schuz et al. (2011) [99]) and the other (Benson et al. (2013) [102]) is likely to have a milder differential exposure misclassification. Both studies have very few cases. The case-control studies are possibly impacted by recall bias and this cannot be ruled out for the ANs. Selection bias could have been an issue for lnterphone (2010) [67], and, unlike their analysis of the glioma data, they have not looked at an alternate referent population for their analyses of AN. Confounding is not an issue here. In conclusion, an association has been established between the use of cellular telephones and the risk of ANs and chance and confounding are unlikely to have driven this finding. Potential recall bias and selection bias may still be an issue with some of these findings.”

5.5. Summary and Conclusions for Laboratory Cancer Studies (p. 86-88)

“The central question to ask of animal cancer studies is “Can RF increase the incidence of tumors in laboratory animals?” The answer, with high confidence, is yes. Table 20 summarizes the findings from the chronic exposure carcinogenicity studies for RF.

For rats, the NTP (2018) [177] chronic exposure bioassay in male Sprague-Dawley rats, including in-utero exposure, is clearly positive for acoustic neuromas of the heart, malignant gliomas of the brain and pheochromocytomas of the adrenal gland. These findings are further supported by the presence of preneoplastic lesions and tissue toxicity in the heart, brain glial cells and adrenal glands. The less convincing findings in the study by Falcioni et al. (2018) [178] of heart acoustic neuromas in male Sprague-Dawley rats and a marginal increase in malignant gliomas in females provides additional support for this finding….

In conclusion, there is sufficient evidence from these laboratory studies to conclude that RF can cause tumors in experimental animals with strong findings for gliomas, heart Schwannomas and adrenal pheochromocytomas in male rats and harderian gland tumors in male mice and uterine polyps in female mice. There is also some evidence supporting liver tumors and lung tumors in male and possibly female mice.”

6. Mechanisms Related to Carcinogenicity (p. 91)

“There is sufficient evidence to suggest that both oxidative stress and genotoxicity are caused by exposure to RF and that these mechanisms could be the reason why RF can induce cancer in humans.”

7. Summary of Bradford Hill Evaluations (p. 109)

“RF exposure probably causes gliomas and acoustic neuromas, and given the human, animal and experimental evidence, I assert that, to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty, the probability that RF exposure causes these cancers is high.” 

Table 22: Summary conclusion for Hill’s nine aspects of epidemiological data and related science (p. 110-111)

Final Conclusion (p. 111)

“In my opinion, RF exposure probably causes gliomas and neuromas and, given the human, animal and experimental evidence, I assert that, to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty, the probability that RF exposure causes gliomas and neuromas is high.”

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The Belgrade Forum for a World of Equals, the Club of Generals and Admirals of Serbia and a number of other independent, non-partisan, non-profit organizations have been continuously marking March 24th 1999, the date of the beginning of NATO military aggression since the year 2000 to date, organizing commemorative ceremonies, domestic and international conferences, laying wreaths at the memorials dedicated to the victims of aggression, publishing books, releasing statements, and reminding friends and partners in the country and abroad to also take part in these activities. This makes a distinct part of the overall commemorative activities of the Serbian society and, as of lately, of the state institutions of Serbia as well. This year’s activities had to be in line with the measures effected due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The first and the foremost reason is the sense of moral duty towards human victims, military, police and civilian ones alike, because all of them are innocent victims fallen on the soil of their own country from the foreign aggressor’s weapons. The aggression itself took between 3,500 – 4,000 human lives, of whom more than 1,100 were military and police personnel, whereas the rest comprised civilians, women and children, workers, the public TV-broadcaster’s employees, passengers in trains and busses, displaced people on the move. The numbers of those who died after the armed aggression, firstly from among some 10,000 wounded, then of those who perished from the scattered cluster bombs, and of those who succumbed to consequences of the use of missiles filled with depleted uranium and of the poisoning by noxious gasses generated upon the bombing of refineries and chemical plants, are yet to be determined. We remember them all today and pay our deepest homage. We are confident that today’s youth and all future generations will also remember those victims, aware of this remembrance being the moral duty of entire nation, a precondition for preserving dignity and peaceful future.

The second reason is to defend the truth, to leave no room for forgeries, lies and trickeries aimed, then and now, to diminish the aggressor’s responsibility by inculpating the victim. This is why we have to clarify that the NATO war was neither an intervention, nor an aerial campaign, nor a “small Kosovo war”, not even a mere bombing, but instead an illegal aggression committed without a United Nations Security Council’s approval, blatant violation of the UN Charter, the OSCE Final Act, the fundamental principles of international law and, most notably, violation of the NATO Founding Act of 1949 and respective national constitutions of the latter’s member states. This was the first war on European soil since World War II, waged against an independent and sovereign state which neither attacked nor otherwise threatened either NATO or any of its individual member states.

Thus, NATO inflicted a heavy blow to the legacies of World War II and of the agreements reached in Tehran, Yalta, Potsdam and Helsinki. Its aggression on Serbia (the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) in 1999 undermined the basic principles of international relations and the security system, for which tens of millions of people were killed. March 24rth, 1999 has entered history as a turning point in the world relation symbolizing the peak of uni-polar domination, the beginning of its downfall and emerging multi-polar world order. Not once, we heard that by launching attack on Yugoslavia NATO and its leading power wanted to preserve its international credibility. What came as the result was just the opposite.

The aggressor wanted the war by all means, not any peaceful and sustainable solution for Kosovo and Metohija, the least to protect human rights or avoidance of “humanitarian catastrophe”. It wanted a war to justify NATO’s existence in the post-Cold War era and enormous budget appropriations for armaments, that is, the huge profits for military-industrial complex. NATO wanted a war to demonstrate in practice implementation of the doctrine of expansion to the East, to Russian boarders and also to create a precedent for the globalization of armed interventionism devoid of observance of international law and the role of the UN Security Council.

It was cover-up for deployment of American troops in the Balkan Peninsula an mushrooming of a chain of the new USA military basis from Bond Steel in the province of Kosovo and Metohija to a dozen of other bases from Black to Baltic Seas. Europe sank deep conceding to participate in a war on itself. The fact that Europe still fails to put focus on itself, its own interests and identity, while pressuring Serbia to accept forcible theft of a part of her state territory (Kosovo and Metohija) and agree to the Dayton Agreement’s revision and the creation of a unitary Bosnia and Herzegovina, only testifies to a worrying syndrome of the past now threatening its independence, unity, and development.

Thirdly, because we do not assent to defeatism and propensity of some media from the so-called non-governmental sector and some public figures who interpret NATO aggression in a way that reduces the aggressor’s responsibility, while suggesting that Serbia, in the name of a purported realism and for the sake of a “better future”, should shelve the topic of aggression and ‘relieve herself’ of Kosovo and Metohija as of a burden choking her progress. However, NATO’s responsibility for aggression and alliance with the terrorist and separatist KLA cannot be reduced in any way, the least of all could it be transferred onto Serbia. This would be shameful for Serbia and the Serbian people, and very detrimental for Europe and the future of global relations. The future of Europe’s identity, autonomy, security and cooperation is highly dependent on reexamining 1999 aggression on Yugoslavia, accepting it was historic mistake. Otherwise it will continue to seriously hinder its own interests.

Although devoted to Europe, Serbia cannot pay the price of re-establishing perturbed unity of the EU and NATO and/or of pursuing geopolitical goals of their key members, by means of renouncing Kosovo and Metohija, her state, cultural, and spiritual foundation. I am confident that Serbia will remain committed to a peaceful, just, and sustainable solution in line with the basic principles of peace, security and cooperation, while observing her Constitution and UN Security Council Resolution 1244. By far largest share of humanity has come to understanding that there are no humanitarian wars or wars to protect population. “Colored revolutions” and cruising missiles do not help ‘export’ democracy and human rights but rather serve interests of domination of liberal multinational corporate capital. In contrast to whatever the policy of force and the self-proclaimed ‘exceptionality’ may presume, history cannot be halted, nor uni-polarity reincarnated.

Fourthly, we are deeply concerned over the unending escalation of global relations, the arms race, the absence of dialogue among the leading powers and the deepening of mistrust among the key stakeholders in European and global relations. Public denominating of nuclear powers and permanent UN Security Council members as adversaries, plans to create ‘democratic coalitions’ aimed at confrontation with ‘authoritarian systems’, mass-scale military exercises deployed from the Atlantic and Baltic to the Indo-Pacific to ‘contain’ the ‘malign influences’ – signal a serious deterioration of global relations and risk unpredictable consequences. All this does not concern the great powers only, although is mostly dependent on them, but also reflects adversely on the position and development of all countries in the world, including also the position of Serbia and other small and medium size countries. As peace is indivisible, so are the dangers to peace and security. Hence we call on the dialogue on the highest level of permanent members of UN Security Council, urgent relaxation tensions, halt of deepening mistrust, respect for equality and partnership in resolving main urgent international challenges and problems, such as Covid 19 pandemic, deepening global economic and social gaps, climate warming, arms race and many of actual or potential conflicts.

Fifthly, because we do not want to witness a repeat of the anguish, victims, and devastation suffered by our nation during and after NATO’s 1999 aggression ever, anywhere in the world. The tragic destiny of children in Belgrade, Varvarin, Korisha, Kosovska Mitrovica, Murino, must not be repeated.

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Živadin Jovanović is President of the Belgrade Forum for a World of Equals. he is a frequent contributor to global Research. 

All Global Research articles can be read in 27 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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Let’s start with comic relief: the “leader of the free world” has pledged to prevent China from becoming the “leading” nation on the planet. And to fulfill such an exceptional mission, his “expectation” is to run again for president in 2024. Not as a hologram. And fielding the same running mate.

Now that the “free world” has breathed a sigh of relief, let’s return to serious matters – as in the contours of the Shocked and Awed 21st Century Geopolitics.

What happened in the past few days between Anchorage and Guilin continues to reverberate. As Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stressed that Brussels “destroyed” the relationship between Russia and the EU, he focused on how the Russia-China comprehensive strategic partnership is getting stronger and stronger.

Not so casual synchronicity revealed that as Lavrov was being properly hosted by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Guilin – scenic lunch in the Li river included -, US Secretary of State Tony Blinken was visiting NATO’s James-Bondish HQ outside Brussels.

Lavrov made it quite clear that the core of Russia-China revolves around establishing an economic and financial axis to counterpunch the Bretton Woods arrangement. That implies doing everything to protect Moscow and Beijing from “threats of sanctions by other states”; progressive de-dollarization; and advances in crypto-currency.

This “triple threat” is what is unleashing the Hegemon’s unbounded fury.

On a broader spectrum, the Russia-China strategy also implies that the progressive interaction between the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) will keep apace across Central Asia, Southeast Asia, parts of South Asia, and Southwest Asia – necessary steps towards an ultimately unified Eurasian market under a sort of strategic Sino-Russo management.

In Alaska, the Blinken-Sullivan team learned, at their expense, that you don’t mess with a Yoda such as Yang Jiechi with impunity. Now they’re about to learn what it means to mess with Nikolai Patrushev, head of the Russian Security Council.

Patrushev, as much a Yoda as Yang Jiechi, and a master of understatement, delivered a not so cryptic message: if the US created “though days” for Russia, as they “are planning that, they can implement that”, Washington “would be responsible for the steps that they would take”.

What NATO is really up to

Meanwhile, in Brussels, Blinken was enacting a Perfect Couple routine with spectacularly inefficient head of the European Commission (EC) Ursula von der Leyen. The script went something like this. “Nord Stream 2 is really bad for you. A trade/investment deal with China is really bad for you. Now sit. Good girl.”

Then came NATO, which put on quite a show, complete with an all-Foreign Minister tough guy pose in front of the HQ. That was part of a summit – which predictably did not “celebrate” the 10th anniversary of NATO’s destruction of Libya or the major ass-kicking NATO “endured” in Afghanistan.

In June 2020, NATO’s cardboard secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg – actually his US military handlers – laid out what is now known as the NATO 2030  strategy, which boils down to a Global Robocop politico-military mandate. The Global South has (not) been warned.

In Afghanistan, according to a Stoltenberg impervious to irony, NATO supports infusing “fresh energy into the peace process”. At the summit, NATO ministers also discussed Middle East and Northern Africa and – with a straight face – looked into “what more NATO could do to build stability in the region”. Syrians, Iraqis, Lebanese, Libyans, Malians would love to learn something about that.

Post-summit, Stoltenberg delivered a proverbially somnolent press conference where the main focus was – what else – Russia, and its “pattern for repressive behavior at home, aggressive behavior abroad”.

All the rhetoric about NATO “building stability” vanishes when one examines what’s really behind NATO 2030, via a meaty “recommendation” report written by a bunch of “experts”

Here we learn the three essentials:

1. “The Alliance must respond to Russian threats and hostile actions (…) without a return to ‘business as usual’ barring alterations in Russia’s aggressive behavior and its return to full compliance with international law.”
2. China is depicted as a tsunami of “security challenges”: “The Alliance should infuse the China challenge throughout existing structures and consider establishing a consultative body to discuss all aspects of Allies’ security interests vis-à-vis China”. The emphasis is to “defend against any Chinese activities that could impact collective defense, military readiness or resilience in the Supreme Allied Commander Europe’s (SACEUR) Area of Responsibility.”
3. “NATO should outline a global blueprint (italics mine) for better utilizing its partnerships to advance NATO strategic interests. It should shift from the current demand-driven approach to an interest-driven approach (italics mine) and consider providing more stable and predictable resource streams for partnership activities. NATO’s Open Door Policy should be upheld and reinvigorated. NATO should expand and strengthen partnerships with Ukraine and Georgia.”

Here’s to The Triple Threat. Yet the Top of the Pops – as in fat, juicy industrial-military complex contracts – is really here:

The most profound geopolitical challenge is posed by Russia. While Russia is by economic and social measures a declining power, it has proven itself capable of territorial aggression and is likely to remain a chief threat facing NATO over the coming decade.  

NATO may be redacting, but the master script comes straight from the Deep State – complete with Russia “seeking hegemony”; expanding Hybrid War (the concept was actually invented by the Deep State); and manipulating “cyber, state-sanctioned assassinations, and poisonings – using chemical weapons, political coercion, and other methods to violate the sovereignty of Allies.”

Beijing for its part is using “force against its neighbors, as well as economic coercion and intimidatory diplomacy well beyond the Indo-Pacific region. Over the coming decade, China will likely also challenge NATO’s ability to build collective resilience.”

The Global South should be very much aware of NATO’s pledge to save the “free world” from these autocratic evils.

The NATO interpretation of “South” encompasses North Africa and the Middle East, in fact everywhere from sub-Saharan Africa to Afghanistan. Any similarity with the presumably defunct “Greater Middle East” concept of the Dubya era is not an accident.

NATO insists this vast expanse is characterized by “fragility, instability, and insecurity” – of course refusing to disclose its own role as serial instability perpetrator in Libya, Iraq, parts of Syria and Afghanistan.

Because ultimately…it’s all Russia’s fault: “To the South, the challenge includes the presence of Russia and to a lesser extent China, exploiting regional fragilities. Russia has reinserted itself in the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean. In 2015, it intervened in the Syrian Civil War and remains there. Russia’s Middle East policy is likely to exacerbate tensions and political strife across the region as it extends an increasing amount of political, financial, operational, and logistical assets to its partners. China’s influence across the Middle East is also growing. It signed a strategic partnership with Iran, is the largest importer of crude oil from Iraq, wedged itself into the Afghanistan peace process, and is the biggest foreign investor in the region.”

Here, in a nutshell, and not exactly in code, is the NATO road map all the way to 2030 to harass and try to dismantle every relevant nook and cranny of Eurasia integration, especially those directly linked to New Silk Roads infrastructure/connectivity projects (investment in Iran, reconstruction of Syria, reconstruction of Iraq, reconstruction of Afghanistan).

The spin is on a “360-degree approach to security” that will “become an imperative”. Translation: NATO is coming for large swathes of the Global South, big time, under the pretense of “addressing both the traditional threats emanating from this region like terrorism and new risks, including the growing presence of Russia, and to a lesser extent China.”

Hybrid war on two fronts

And to think that in a not so distant past there used to be some flashes of lucidity emanating from the US establishment.

Very few will remember that in 1993 James Baker, former Secretary of State under Daddy Bush, advanced the idea of expanding NATO to Russia, which at the time, under Yeltsin and a gang of Milton Friedmanesque free marketeers, was devastated, but ruled by “democracy”. Yet Bill Clinton was already in power, and the idea was duly discarded.

Six years later, no less than George Kennan – who invented the containment of the USSR in the first place – determined that the NATO annexation of former Soviet satellites was “the beginning of a new Cold War” and “a tragic mistake”.

It’s immensely enlightening to relieve and re-study the whole decade between the fall of the USSR and the election of Putin to the presidency through the venerable Yevgeny Primakov’s book Russian Crossroads: Toward the New Millenium,  published in the US by Yale University Press.

Primakov, the ultimate intel insider who started as a Pravda correspondent in the Middle East, former Foreign Minister and also Prime Minister, looked closely into Putin’s soul, repeatedly, and liked what he saw: a man of integrity and a consummate professional. Primakov was a multilateralist avant la lettre, the conceptual instigator of RIC (Russia-India-China) which in the next decade evolved towards BRICS.

Those were the days – exactly 22 years ago – when Primakov was on a plane to Washington when he picked up a call by then Vice-President Al Gore: the US was about to start bombing Yugoslavia, a slav-orthodox Russian ally, and there was nothing the former superpower could do about it. Primakov ordered the pilot to turn around and fly back to Moscow.

Now Russia is powerful enough to advance its own Greater Eurasia concept, which moving forward should be balancing – and complementing – China’s New Silk Roads. It’s the power of this Double Helix – which is bound to inevitably attract key sectors of Western Europe – that is driving the Hegemon’s ruling class dazed and confused.

Glenn Diesen, author of Russian Conservatism: Managing Change Under Permanent Revolution, which I analyzed in  Why Russia is Driving the West Crazy , and one of the best global analysts of Eurasia integration, summed it all up: “The US has had great difficulties in terms of converting the security dependence of the allies into geoeconomic loyalty, as evident by the Europeans still buying Chinese technologies and Russian energy.

Hence permanent Divide and Rule, featuring one of its key targets: cajole, force, bribe and all of the above for the European Parliament to scotch the China-EU trade/investment deal.

Wang Yiwei, director of the Center for European Studies at Renmin University and author of the best made in China book about the New Silk Roads, clearly sees through the “America is back” bluster: “China is not isolated by the US, the West or even the whole international community. The more hostility they show, the more anxiety they have. When the US travels around the globe to frequently ask for support, unity and help from its allies, this means US hegemony is weakening.”

Wang even forecasts what may happen if the current “leader of the free world” is prevented from fulfilling his exceptional mission: “Don’t be fooled by the sanctions between China and the EU, which is harmless to trade and economic ties, and EU leaders won’t be that stupid to totally abandon the China-EU Comprehensive Agreement on Investment, because they know they would never get such a good deal when Trump or Trumpism returns to the White House.”

Shocked and Awed 21^st Century Geopolitics, as configured in these crucial past two weeks, spells out the Unipolar Moment is six feet under. The Hegemon will never admit it; hence the NATO counterpunch, which was pre-designed. Ultimately, the Hegemon has decided not to engage in diplomatic accommodation, but to wage a hybrid war on two fronts against a relentlessly demonized strategic partnership of peer competitors.

And as a sign of these sorry times, there’s no James Baker or George Kennan to advise against such folly.

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This article was originally published on Asia Times.

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

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s address at North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters in Brussels on March 24, entitled Reaffirming and Reimagining America’s Alliances, is a landmark, a watershed articulation of the most far-ranging and perhaps the final initiative of the West to preserve and extend world domination; a crusade inaugurated by the U.S. and the thirty-member global military bloc it leads to bifurcate the world into the West and, to use the words of Zbigniew Brzezinski, its partners, vassals and tributaries on one hand and a small handful of incorrigible holdouts against the order Blinken represents on the other. The second group of countries being, if you will, the foreign policy equivalent of Neanderthals and deplorables as those terms have been employed in the American body politic over the past five years.

Despite more than the usual quotient of vapid, saccharine and unctuous words – shared values of democracy and human rights, the right of all people everywhere to be treated with dignity and have their fundamental freedoms respected, the global commons, a world with greater health, stronger democracies, and more opportunity for more people, opportunities for their families and communities, a free and open rules-based order, our ability and willingness to openly confront our own shortcomings, stand up for the free and open system that we know provides the best conditions for human ingenuity, dignity, and connection, we need to have a positive vision that can bring people together in common cause (all direct quotes) – when the dross is removed his words are chilling to an alarming degree.

And not only in reference to issuing a blanket diktat to the world to submit to the U.S. and NATO rules-based international order (their collective catchphrase) but a domestic equivalent of it for nationals as well as nations. Neanderthals can be nations and individuals alike.

On the international plane, Blinken yet further escalated the broadsides he and his American and NATO colleagues have been launching against Russia and China to a steadily intensifying degree of late.

Not long into his speech he almost gratuitously introduced lines like “an increasingly assertive China,” then proceeded to promote the nation from a pesky competitor to a military threat. As Blinken also obligatorily made reference to NATO’s Article 5 collective military assistance clause, for him to accuse a nation of posing a threat to the U.S. and its allies is a grave accusation indeed. But he hardly limited the number of alleged threats posed by China to its assertive behavior. Nor was he sparing of Russia.

In one paragraph he laid out the alliance’s writ of indictment against both China and Russia for posing a threat to the “international system” no less. Of a multitude of threats the modern equivalent of the Cold War’s free world faces –

“The first is military threats from other countries. We see this in China’s efforts to threaten freedom of navigation, to militarize the South China Sea, to target countries throughout the Indo-Pacific with increasingly sophisticated military capabilities. Beijing’s military ambitions are growing by the year. Coupled with the realities of modern technology, the challenges that once seemed half a world away are no longer remote. We also see this in the new military capabilities and strategies Russia has developed to challenge our alliances and undermine the rules-based order that ensures our collective security. These include Moscow’s aggression in eastern Ukraine; its build-up of forces, large-scale exercises, and acts of intimidation in the Baltic and Black Sea, the Eastern Mediterranean, the High North; its modernization of nuclear capabilities; and its use of chemical weapons against critics on NATO soil.“

The two global malefactors were then lumped into the same category as Iran and North Korea, with the last two “pursuing nuclear and missile capabilities that threaten U.S. allies and partners,” as a quadripartite Eurasian Axis of Evil.

The sweep of subject matter – all more or less consisting of existential threats (to leave no cliché unused) to the unoffending, congenitally trusting West – and unsparing denunciations directed at the targeted offenders in the speech put Winston Churchill’s Iron Curtain address at Fulton, Missouri in 1946 in the shade as they say.

Not relenting, hardly pausing for breath, Blinken took further jabs at China and Russia for issues as far away from military threats as imaginable; for example: “From China’s blatant economic coercion of Australia, to Russia’s use of disinformation to erode confidence in elections and in safe, effective vaccines – these aggressive actions threaten not only our individual countries, but also our shared values.”

The two “authoritarian” (NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s standard adjective for them) nations are also lambasted for the “use of disinformation campaigns and weaponized corruption to fuel distrust in our democracies, and cyberattacks that target our critical infrastructure and steal intellectual property.”

To respond to the virtually all-encompassing threats he detailed, he first recommended what would be the absolute ultima ratio regum of options – nuclear weapons – in stating “we must ensure that our strategic nuclear deterrent remains safe, secure, and effective, particularly in light of Russia’s modernization.”

As for China, in addition to mentioning working with U.S. and NATO partners Japan and South Korea, he touted employing “the group of countries we call ‘the Quad’ – Australia, India, Japan, and the United States,” adding that President Biden recently hosted the first-ever “leader-level summit” of that anti-Chinese alliance. Incidentally, Blinken referred to the current administration as the Biden-Harris administration, the first time an American government has been identified in that manner.

He also celebrated “deepening NATO-EU cooperation,” emphasizing that the European Union joined the U.S., Britain and Canada in leveling sanctions against China over “the atrocities being committed against Uyghurs in Xinjiang.”

As nations not willing to toe the line of the rules-based international order must be confronted and defeated, so must the citizens within countries not prepared to sacrifice their sovereignty and dignity to a neoliberal supranational order; even those in NATO nations who display their disloyalty to the new order by voting the wrong way. Because, Blinken stated, “Our shared values of democracy and human rights are being challenged – not only from outside our countries, but from within.” He trumpeted the need to “confront the democratic recession around the world.”

Readers will supply their own parallels for political regimes that exclusively focus on portraying themselves being mercilessly threatened by and needing to relentlessly counterattack underhanded, insidious adversaries both at home and abroad; regimes for which that dual accusation serves both as raison d’être and preferred method of deflecting attention from their own ineptitude, their own crimes. An individual exhibiting such violent delusions of persecution would be diagnosed a paranoid schizophrenic. A dangerous one. A distinct threat to himself and others.

As seen above, China and Russia are not only “undermin[ing] the rules-based order,” but China in particular is “now actively working to undercut the rules of the international system,” China and Russia both are in various devious ways ” erod[ing] confidence in elections,” sowing “distrust in our democracies” and threatening the monopoly of American and other Western vaccine manufacturers.

It’s no secret that in the past twenty years Euro-Atlantic elites have been displeased with the results of federal elections around the world (as in the monarchical We are not amused); in NATO countries themselves such results have occurred at various times in Slovakia, Poland, Italy, Hungary, Lithuania, the Czech Republic and even the U.S. once. Any nation, any official, any voter who questions the transcendent sublimity of Atlanticism will be eliminated.

The reason that Slovakia was not included in NATO’s first round of post-Cold War expansion with its Visegrad Four partners in 1999 and had to wait five more years to enter the alliance is because Slovaks had the temerity to vote the wrong way. NATO, the U.S. and the EU bore the People’s Party – Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (ĽS-HZDS) of Vladimír Mečiar an abiding animus. Only after he and his party had been swept aside could Slovakia join the NATO “alliance of democracies.” Mečiar threw in the towel in 2000 when he saw that his nation had been punished sufficiently for his putative sins. His HZDS colleague Augustín Marián Húska said at the time: “The NATO war against Yugoslavia in 1999 was also a signal to us, to not pursue any vision of political independence anymore. We have seen what will happen to forces that want to be independent.”

This month marks the twenty-second anniversary of NATO’s war against Yugoslavia. The message to the world about the new post-Cold War order was delivered with bombs and Tomahawk cruise missiles. By NATO.

Rick Rozoff is a geopolitical analyst and frequent contributor to Global Research

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

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“If behavioral psychologists helped to shape the government’s strategy on mass vaccination, then in what other policies were they involved? Were these the “professionals” who conjured up the pandemic restrictions? Were the masks, the social distancing and the lockdowns all promoted by “experts” as a way to undermine normal human relations and inflict the maximum psychological pain on the American people? Was the intention to create a weak and submissive population that would willingly accept the dismantling of democratic institutions and the imposition of a new political order? These questions need to be answered.” (From the text)

Let’s assume for a minute, that the vaccination campaign is led by people who genuinely want to end the current crisis and restore the country to “normal”. Let’s also assume, that they believe that mass vaccination is the best way to achieve that objective by preventing the spread of the virus and, thus, reducing the death toll. Is that sufficient justification for silencing vaccine critics and conducting a nation-wide brainwashing operation aimed at controlling public opinion?

No, it’s not. People need to hear both sides of the story, in fact, that’s the only way they can make an informed decision about how they wish to proceed. The media has no right to commandeer the airwaves and control whatever people hear and see. And they have no right to deliberately exclude the medical professionals and other experts whose views conflict with the official narrative. The only way that people can offer their informed consent for vaccination, is if they’re able to weigh the risks and benefits for themselves. But that’s only possible if they have access to many diverse sources of information which, at present, they don’t. Increasingly, the only message that most people hear is the one that is provided by the government in collaboration with industry honchos and other elites. Traditionally, this type of state media is called “propaganda” which is a term that certainly applies here.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out how this has affected the debate on vaccines, namely, there isn’t one. The skeptics have been dismissed as antivaxx loonies while an entirely new regime of experimental vaccines is being praised as a “miracle drug”. At the same time, the government –which has aligned itself with the industry it’s supposed to regulate– is doing everything in its power to pressure people into getting vaccinated. What we’re seeing is the most extravagant Madison Avenue “product launch” in America’s 245-year history, and it’s coming at us full-throttle from all sides. It’s virtually impossible to turn on the TV or radio without being deluged by one emotive vignette after the other all of which are aimed at promoting vaccination. How does this respect the right of the individual to make his own informed decision free from government coercion?

It doesn’t. This is flagrant indoctrination and yet no one talks about it. It’s shocking. Have you noticed how the critics of the mRNA vaccines have been prevented from expressing their views in the media? Have you noticed how the doctors, scientists, virologists, epidemiologists and public health experts have all been blocked from appearing on the cable news channels or excluded from the nation’s leading newspapers? Have you noticed how these critics been attacked on social media, censored on FaceBook and removed from Twitter? Have you noticed the lengths to which the media has gone to eliminate any challenge to the “official narrative” and to denounce, ridicule or blacklist anyone who dares to offer a conflicting opinion?

Why? Why is the media preventing these experts from articulating their reservations to the American people directly?

It’s obvious, isn’t it? It’s because the people that are managing this campaign don’t want anything that veers from the “official narrative”. They don’t want people thinking for themselves, they don’t want people searching alternate websites that challenge the new prevailing doctrine on vaccines, they don’t want people who read the details about the trials or the medical journals or the research papers. They don’t want you to question their motives, or weigh the risks and benefits of getting vaccinated. They don’t want you to notice that their vaccine never completed long-term trials or met the normal standards for product safety. They don’t want you to consider the fact that mRNA is a relatively new technology with a checkered past that includes some very disturbing animal trials in which all the animals died. They don’t want you to think about any of this. They want you to shut up, stand in line, turn off your brain, and roll up your sleeve. And, anyone who disagrees with that sentiment, is being censored.

Am I being unfair?

That’s not my intention. And –believe it or not– my intention is not to criticize the vaccines themselves, but the manner by which they are being shoved down our throats. That, I object to strongly because it violates the people’s right to informed consent. A lopsided, nationwide public relations blitz that relentlessly glorifies vaccines while deliberately excluding even the slightest criticism from respected professionals, does not respect the rights of the people. It’s brainwashing, pure and simple.

And why have behavioral psychologists been employed by the government to promote the vaccination campaign? Why have they concocted a strategy designed “to change people’s beliefs and feelings about vaccination” to inform “people about the prosocial benefits of vaccination”, and to “intervene on behavior directly”, which means that you’re given an appointment, and told that you will be getting your vaccination at the end of the session.” Psychologists call this a “presumptive recommendation” which effectively eliminates the element of personal choice by creating a scenario in which getting vaccinated is a fait accompli. How is this not coercion?

It is coercion, subconscious coercion. The doctor is strong-arming the patient into getting vaccinated by making it look like its standard procedure. That puts pressure on the patient to follow the path of least resistance, which is compliance. It’s a clever tactic, but it is also transparently manipulative.

The behavioral psychologists who have helped to shape the government’s policy, believe that the emphasis should be placed on the “safety and effectiveness” of the vaccines. That’s the cornerstone for building public support. At the same time, they show no interest in providing evidence that would support their claims, which suggests that “safe and effective” is nothing more than a meaningless bromide that is invoked to dupe the sheeple into getting inoculated.

You might have also heard the term “vaccine hesitancy” used to describe the people who have decided not to get vaccinated. The moniker is clearly intended to denigrate vaccine skeptics by suggesting that they have a mental condition, like paranoid schizophrenia. This is an effective way to discredit one’s enemies, but it also shows the glaring weakness of the pro-vaccine position. If the proponents of vaccination had something of substance to offer, they would rely on facts and data rather than ad hominin attacks. As it happens, the facts do not support their position. Besides, “vaccine hesitancy” is not a character flaw or a mental condition, it’s the sign of someone who has taken responsibility for his own health and welfare. Ask yourself this: Why would a normal, rational person be eager to have an experimental cocktail injected into his bloodstream potentially triggering all manner of long-term ailments or death? Is that the choice a normal person would make?

As far as I can see, behavioral psychologists are playing a critical role in this mass vaccination campaign. According to a report put out by the National Institutes of Health, it appears that a rapid response team has been formed to attack the opinions of people who challenge the “official narrative”. Check out this blurb from the report titled “COVID-19 Vaccination: Communication: Applying Behavioral and Social Science to Address Vaccine Hesitancy and Foster Vaccine Confidence”:

Mitigate the impact of COVID-19-related misinformation…

The spread of health-related misinformation was a significant public health concern well before the COVID-19 pandemic. During the last decade, vaccine-related discourse online and in the media has been plagued by misinformation. Anti-vaccine groups have leveraged political and social divisions to diminish trust in vaccines, pushed false narratives questioning the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, spread false claims about adverse outcomes, and downplayed the risks of the disease’s vaccines protect against.….

COVID-19 vaccine communication efforts cannot ignore misinformation and must take actions, informed by behavioral and communication research, to identify emerging rumors and respond in a way that is informed by behavioral science. Real-time, agile, and scalable monitoring of discourse concerning COVID 19 vaccination—including conspiracy theories, rumors, and myths—can support a swiftly developed and implemented response. “Misinformation surveillance” efforts should identify the most prominent sources of misinformation, the tactics being used, and the groups most at risk of being exposed to and influenced by the rumors. This information, in addition to data regarding the dynamics and patterns of misinformation spread, could help inform the appropriate response and best targets for intervention efforts….

Correcting the false claim contained in the message, exposing the tactics used by disinformation agents, and inducing skepticism by highlighting the ulterior motives of these actors are all potentially effective strategies for mitigating the impact of misinformation…” (“COVID-19 Vaccination* Communication: Applying Behavioral and Social Science to Address Vaccine Hesitancy and Foster Vaccine Confidence”, the National Institutes of Health)

Repeat: “Misinformation surveillance”… “disinformation agents”… “the ulterior motives of these actors“??

Really? Now who’s sounding paranoid?

This is very scary stuff. Agents of the state now identify critics of the Covid vaccine as their mortal enemies. How did we get here? And how did we get to the point where the government is targeting people who don’t agree with them? This is way beyond Orwell. We have entered some creepy alternate universe.

Here’s more on the topic from a statement by Arthur C. Evans Jr., PhD, CEO of the American Psychological Association, in response to the approval by an advisory panel of the Food and Drug Administration of a vaccine against COVID-19:

“We recognize that there are pockets of resistance to vaccines, distrust of the medical establishment and misinformation about vaccines generally….Some populations are understandably less likely to accept vaccinations due to a legacy of mistrust rooted in unethical public health practices.

“It is critical that leaders across the political spectrum unite behind messages of vaccine safety and transparency.” ..

Enlist credible spokespeople who can connect with diverse communities, especially those where mistrust and skepticism run high. When leaders talk about vaccines as standard practices, as opposed to options, people are more likely to accept them.Research suggests building trust and providing clear information about vaccines can improve vaccination uptake rates. It is critical that leaders across the political spectrum unite behind vaccine safety and transparency, clearly explaining what is in the vaccine and what it does and doesn’t do in the body.

Consider the wide variety of factors that motivate human behavior. Behavioral science indicates that people are more likely to adhere to vaccine recommendations when they believe they are susceptible to the illness, when they want to protect others, when they believe the vaccine is safe or at least safer than the illness, and when their concerns and questions are managed respectfully by doctors and experts.” (“APA Welcomes Step Toward First U.S. Vaccine Approval”, American Psychological Association)

Is it really ethical for the APA to be involved in a mass vaccination campaign? Is this the role an organization like this should play in a democratic society? Should the APA use its unique understanding of human behavior to persuade people on behalf of the government and big pharma? And, more importantly, if behavioral psychologists helped to shape the government’s strategy on mass vaccination, then in what other policies were they involved? Were these the “professionals” who conjured up the pandemic restrictions? Were the masks, the social distancing and the lockdowns all promoted by “experts” as a way to undermine normal human relations and inflict the maximum psychological pain on the American people? Was the intention to create a weak and submissive population that would willingly accept the dismantling of democratic institutions, the dramatic restructuring of the economy, and the imposition of a new political order?”

These questions need to be answered.

Surprisingly, the resistance to vaccination is nearly as strong today as it was a year ago. According to PEW Research:

(only) “69% of the public intends to get a vaccine – or already has….

Those who do not currently plan to get a vaccine (30% of the public) list a range of reasons why. Majorities cite concerns about side effects (72%), a sense that vaccines were developed and tested too quickly (67%) and a desire to know more about how well they work (61%) as major reasons why they do not intend to get vaccinated.

Smaller shares of those not planning to get a vaccine say past mistakes by the medical care system (46%) or a sense they don’t need it (42%) are major reasons why they don’t plan to get a vaccine; 36% of this group (11% of all U.S. adults) say a major reason they would pass on receiving a coronavirus vaccine is that they don’t get vaccines generally.

The new national survey by Pew Research Center, conducted Feb. 16 to 21 among 10,121 U.S. adults. (“Growing Share of Americans Say They Plan To Get a COVID-19 Vaccine – or Already Have“, PEW Research)

So, despite the nonstop propaganda blitz, a significant portion of the population remains unconvinced, unimpressed and steadfast. Go figure? Of course, this is just Round 1. Soon, persuasion will turn into coercion, and from coercion to outright force. It’s already clear that air-travel will require vaccine passports, and that public transit, concerts, libraries, restaurants and, perhaps, even grocery stores could follow soon after. Vaccination looks to be the defining issue of the next few years at least. And those who resist the edicts of the state will increasingly find themselves on the outside; outcasts in their own country.

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Mike Whitney is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from The Unz Review

First published on February 3, 2021

Alarming News. In Germany (according to report) the Parliament (Bundestag) ratified on 29 January 2021, the implementation of Agenda ID2020.

Two months later: March 2021. And  now it’s the European Parliament. It’s the ‘Digital Green Pass’

This is a centralized general electronic data collection of every citizen to which every government agency, police – and possibly also the private sector would have access.

It covers all that is known about an individual citizen, now up to 200 points of in formation and possibly more as time goes on, from your bank account to your shopping habits, health records (vaccination records, of course), your political inclinations, and probably even your dating habits and other entries into your private sphere. 

Agenda ID2020 was designed by Bill Gates as part of the “vaccination package”. It is backed by the Rockefeller Foundation, Accenture, the WEF and GAVI (Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, now simply called the Vaccine Alliance), also a Gates creation (2001), with HQ in Geneva, Switzerland.

GAVI is located next door to the WHO. GAVI is called a public private partnership,

The public part being WHO, plus a number of developing countries;

The private partners are, of course a series of pharmaceutical companies, i. e. Johnson & Johnson, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck & Co. … and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The German extra-governmental Corona Commission, consisting of hundreds of medical doctors, virologists, immunologists, university professors – and lawyers, including Dr. Reiner Füllmich, co-founder of the Commission, has special concerns that the current Corona-Vaccines (Pfizer, Moderna), may include nano-particles that could be accessible to electro-magnetic radiation, i. e. 5G and the subsequent 6G. 

This is precisely what was foreseen in the design of Agenda ID2020, in which Bill Gates and GAVI had a major role, and in which case the ID2020 might be vaccine-implanted and be remote-accessible by EM-geared computers, robots or algorithms (see, in German “Wirkungsweise und Gefahren der aktuellen Corona-Impfungen in Deutschland mittels mit Nanopartikeln umhüllter mRNA-Impfstoffe – Corona Ausschuss Germany 37th Conference” (31 January 2021)

The adoption of Agenda ID2020 still has to be approved by the German Federal Council, but there is little chance the Council will reject it.

Agenda 2020 in Switzerland

Similarly, in Switzerland, Agenda ID2020 – an all-electronic ID – linking everything to everything of each individual citizen will come to a popular vote on 7 March 2021.

And that’s not all, the Swiss government wants to outsource management of Agenda ID 2020 to the private sector — unbelievable!!! – You imagine a bank or insurance company dealing (and selling) your data!!!! — Just imagine what will happen with your personal information – unthinkable.

In the longer-run – who knows how long – as foreseen by Bill Gates, the properties for an electronic ID – i. e. an electromagnetic field (EMF) – will be implanted in your body, either along with a vaccine – maybe it’s already happening with the covid jabs, or separately in the form of injectable nano-chips.

Early trials were carried out mid-last year in school classes of remote villages in Bangladesh.

With the complacent Swiss being what they are, it is very possible if not likely that the government’s proposal will be accepted on 7 March. Then what?

Is this the beginning of adopting the all-digitized Agenda ID2020 throughout Europe, the world?

Or – maybe other EU countries have already quietly and secretly – no questions asked – envisaged inserting the Agenda ID2020 in their Constitution.

For more details of Agenda ID 2020 – see below.

The Coronavirus COVID-19 Pandemic: The Real Danger is “Agenda ID2020”

By Peter Koenig, April 26, 2020

Once every citizen on the planet – according to Bill Gates – about 7 billion-plus will be ID-chipped, the control of a small globalist elite will be close to total.

With an electromagnetic field and with 5G / 6G EM-waves allowing inputs and access of data in your body – the control of each individual is almost complete. The “almost” refers to the planned access to your brainwaves.

This is supposed to be happening through a Brain Computer Interface (BCI), called Neurolink (https://neuralink.com/) – developed by Elon Musk. (see video)

It presents an interface of electronic waves with the human brain which, by then, will have been converted into an electromagnetic field (EMF), so that it can receive digital commands that will influence our behavior, or can be turned off – RIP – as may be is most convenient for the Global Cabal. 

Let’s not let this happen.

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

Peter Koenig is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

All Global Research articles can be read in 27 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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There has been a massive backlash in the UK to a proposal to mandate COVID vaccinations to enter a pub, with one pub chain owner branding the idea “appalling” and “almost certainly illegal.”

As we highlighted yesterday, despite months of the government assuring the public that there would be no ‘domestic vaccine passport’, Boris Johnson told a committee,

“The concept of vaccine certification should not be totally alien to us” and said that it should be up to landlords on whether to enforce it.

During an appearance on told talkRADIO, Hugh Osmond, the founder of UK pub chain Punch Taverns, labeled the proposal “the most appalling idea” and said it was “almost certainly illegal.”

Hugh Osmond, founder of Punch Taverns, says allowing pubs to demand vaccine passports is “the most appalling idea” and “almost certainly illegal”.

“It would be incredibly discriminatory against young people who haven’t even been offered the vaccine yet”@JuliaHB1 | @hughosmond pic.twitter.com/wx02bBhDj2

— talkRADIO (@talkRADIO) March 25, 2021

Osmond also pointed out that innumerable people in their 20s and 30s would be discriminated against because they won’t be offered the vaccine for months.

Adam Brooks, a publican who runs several pubs, echoed that sentiment when he tweeted, “Anything but normal trading past June 21st is an utter DISGRACE. “Once every adult has been OFFERED vaccination, the Government & Health care system has done its job. Life has to return.”

. @toryboypierce
You honestly believe pubs that don’t mandate passports will struggle badly ?!
I was born into this industry and lived above pubs or owned them nearly all my life .
I can confidently tell you that couldn’t be further from the truth.
I WONT BE DOING THIS !

— Adam Brooks (@EssexPR) March 25, 2021

Kate Nicholls, the CEO of hospitality trade association UKHospitality, also blasted the idea as not “necessary or proportionate” and said it would “would put lots of businesses in a very difficult position.”

Steve Baker MP, deputy chairman of the COVID Recovery Group, warned that the domestic vaccine passport could extend to virtually every area of life.

“First they said we’ll need them to watch the football, and today that it may be papers for the pub.”

“Whether the state legislates for it, recommends it or simply allows it the result will be the same: a two-tier Britain that prevents pregnant women from taking part in society, given that the government is telling them not to take the vaccine.”

“Or one where we turn back the clock and tolerate businesses turning away customers from communities which have shown an unfortunate hesitancy to take up the offer of a vaccine.”

“We must not fall into this ghastly trap.”

Pete Tiley of the Salutation Inn told the Telegraph’s Adrian Tierney-Jones,

“Adding a vaccine passport check on top will create further hassle and aggravation, and will make going for a relaxing pint tougher than getting through airport security.”

However, Becky Newman at the Bricklayer’s Arms in Putney supported the idea, telling Tierney-Jones,

“I imagine it’s going to take a year or so for people to begin to feel relaxed again about being in public spaces. So, with this in mind, I think I am quite pro-vaccine passport. It feels quite community spirited.”

After a subsequent backlash on Twitter from her potential customers, Newman quickly changed her mind, stating, “General consensus from customers on Twitter so far is a big fat no!”

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Iran and China on Saturday signed a 25-year “strategic cooperation” agreement as Beijing expands its trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative.

“Our relations with Iran will not be affected by the current situation, but will be permanent and strategic,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi was quoted by Iranian news agencies as saying.

“Iran decides independently on its relations with other countries and is not like some countries that change their position with one phone call.”

Wang met President Hassan Rouhani before he and his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, signed the agreement, which is expected to include Chinese investments in key sectors such as energy and infrastructure.

Negotiations for the deal, started five years ago, sparked controversy in Iran last year over the purported secret nature of the proposed agreement, with virtually no details of its contents having been released.

Rouhani’s adviser, Hesameddin Ashena, said that the cooperation pact between the two allies is an example of “successful diplomacy”.

“A country’s strength is in its ability to join coalitions, not to remain isolated,” he was cited by Iranian media as saying.

Saeed Khatibzadeh, an Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, said the document was a “roadmap” for trade, economic and transportation cooperation, with a “special focus on the private sectors of the two sides”.

China is Iran’s largest trading partner and was one of the biggest buyers of Iranian oil before then US president Donald Trump reimposed unilateral sanctions in 2018 after abandoning a nuclear agreement with Tehran and world powers.

In 2016, China agreed to increase bilateral trade by more than 10 times to $600bn over a decade.

Its commerce ministry said on Thursday that Beijing will try to safeguard the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, to which it is party, and defend the legitimate interests of its relations with Iran.

US President Joe Biden hopes to revive the nuclear deal, but the process has been stalled, with Tehran and western powers remaining at odds over which side should return to the agreement first.

Iran says that Washington must first lift all economic sanctions it imposed, while Biden has insisted that Tehran must first reverse steps taken to reduce its commitments under the agreement in response to the sanctions.

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This article was originally published on GR in May 2017.

Almost 10 years ago (on 20 October 2011), President Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi, of Libya was brutally killed by NATO troops, instigated by then Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton of the Obama Administration and supported by Joe Biden, then Vice President – today President of the United States.

Libya was a bustling economy, where people had free education, free health care, free housing – and where their President, Muammar Gaddafi, a visionary, wanted to help Africa out of western dependence and neo-colonial oppression, making Africa a sovereign Continent, with a sovereign monetary system, detached from the Bank of France and the Bank of England, controlling its own resources and its own monetary resouces.

Gaddafi was NOT a human rights abuser, as the west and western media conveniently painted him. To the contrary, Gaddafi was a leader for the people of Libya and for Africa. He wanted Africa to be free. That was his sin. The real abusers, mostly France, the UK and the United States, couldn’t allow the resources richest Continent or the planet be independent. The west coveted these resources. 

So, they launched a NATO attack under false pretenses, on Libya and Gaddafi – and killed the one that could have liberated Africa from the fangs of western exploitation.

Today, Libya is a sad chaotic tribal state that can hardly be called a country. It has become a slave trading place under the watch of western powers. 

The criminals responsible for this misery are still free. One of them goes as far as accusing President Putin of being a “killer”, to which Mr. Putin rightly responds, “The one Who Accuses is the One Who Is”.

In fact, this minute group of super-wealthy and powerful oligarchs, pretend to run the world – and convert sovereign states into a One World Order, with a uniform culture, uniform language, uniform values, uniform monetary system, under a Globalist tyrannical cabal.

-Peter Koenig, March 28, 2021

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The Text below is the transcript of the interview between Alex Knyazev of Russia TV24 and Peter Koenig.  

Questions Russia TV24: What were the reasons Mr. Gaddafi was killed and NATO invaded Libya?

PK: Mr. Muammar Gaddafi was certainly not killed for humanitarian reasons.

Mr. Gaddafi wanted to empower Africa. He had a plan to create a new African Union, based on a new African economic system. He had a plan to introduce the ‘Gold Dinar’ as backing for African currencies, so they could become free from the dollar dominated western monetary system, that kept and keeps usurping Africa; Africa’s vast natural resources, especially oil and minerals. As a first step, he offered this lucrative and very beneficial alternative to other Muslim African states, but leaving it open for any other African countries to join.

At the time of Gaddafi’s atrocious murdering by Hillary Clinton, then Obama’s Secretary of State, and the French President Sarkozy, driven by NATO forces, on 20 October 2011 – Libya’s gold reserves were estimated at close to 150 tons, and about the same amount of silver. The estimated value at that time was US$ 7billion.

It’s your guess who may have stolen this enormous treasure from the people of Libya. As of this date, it is nowhere to be found.

Gaddafi also wanted to detach his oil sales from the dollar, i.e. no longer trading hydrocarbons in US dollars, as was the US / OPEC imposed rule since the early 1970s. Other African and Middle Eastern oil and gas producers would have followed. In fact, Iran had already in 2007, a plan to introduce the Tehran Oil Bourse, where anyone could trade hydrocarbons in currencies other than the US dollar. That idea came to a sudden halt, when Bush (George W) started accusing Iran of planning to build a nuclear bomb which was, of course a fabricated lie, confirmed by the 16most prominent US security agencies- and later also by the UN body for nuclear safety – the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in Vienna. Washington needed a pretext to stop the Tehran Oil Bourse which would have decimated the need for dollars, and thereby most probably would have meant the end of the dollar hegemony.

Saddam Hussein had the same idea. He promised as soon as the murderous and criminal embargo imposed by the UN – of course dictated by Washington – would end in 2000, he would sell his petrol in euros. He was killed.

Gaddafi’s new plan for Africa would have meant an entirely new banking system for Africa, away from the now western (mainly France and UK) central banks dominated African currencies. -It could have meant the collapse of the US dollar -or at least an enormous blow to this fake dollar based western monetary system.

So, the Gold Dinar was not to happen. Anybody – to this day- who threatens the dollar hegemony will have to die. That means anybody other than China and Russia, because they have already a few years ago largely detached their economy from the dollar, by implementing hydrocarbons as well as other international contracts in gold or the respective local currencies. That alone has already helped reducing dollar holdings in international reserve coffers from almost 90% some 20 years ago to a rate fluctuating between 50% and 60% today.

The also Washington / CIA induced “Arab Spring” was to turn the entire Middle East into one huge chaos zone- which today of course, it is. And there are no plans to secure it and to return it to normalcy, to what it was before. To the contrary, chaos allows to divide and conquer – to Balkanize, as is the plan for Syria and Iraq. One of the Washington led western goals of this chaos of constant conflict is to eventually install a system of private central banks in the Middle Eastern / North African countries controlled by Washington – privately owned central banks, à la Federal Reserve (FED), where the neocons, the Rothschilds and freemasonry would call the shots. That is expected to help stabilize the US dollar hegemony, as the hydrocarbons produced in this region generate trillions of dollars in trading per year.

Gaddafi also wanted to introduce, or had already started introducing into Africa a wireless telephone system that would do away with the US / European monopolies, with the Alcatels and AT and T’s of this world, which dominate and usurp the African market without scruples.

Gaddafi was not only the leader of Libya, he had ambitions to free Africa from the nefarious fangs of the west. Despite being called a dictator and despot by the west – they do that to anyone who doesn’t submit to Washington’s rules – he was very much liked by Libyans, by his people. He had a more than 80% approvalrate by the Libyan people. Libya’s oil fortune has allowed him to create a social system in his country where everybody would benefit from their land’s riches – free health care, free education, including scholarships abroad, modern infrastructure, top-notch technology in medicine, and more.

Russia TV24: Why the gold dinar would be unacceptable for the western leaders? Or not?

PK: Yes, the gold Dinar was totally unacceptable for western leaders. It might have devastated the US dollar hegemony, as well as Europe’s control over the African economy – which is nothing less than neo-colonization of Africa – in many ways worse than what happened for the past 400 or 800 years of murderous military colonization and oppression -which is by the way still ongoing, just more discretely.

Look at the Ivory Coast 2010 presidential elections. Theirarguably ‘unelected’ President, Alassane Ouattara (picture on the right), was in a tie with the people’s candidate, Laurent Gbagbo. Gbagbo said he won the election and asked for a recount which was denied. Ouattara, a former IMF staff, was pushed in, basically by ‘recommendation’ of the IMF. He is the darling of the neoliberal international financial institutions – and is leading a neocon government – an economy at the service of western corporations. That’s what they wanted. That’s what they got. Modern colonization is well alive and thriving. I call this a financial coup, instigated by foreign financial institutions.

Mr. Laurent Gbagbo was accused of rape, murder and other atrocities and immediately transferred to the International Criminal Court (sic-sic) – what justice? – in The Hague, where he was waiting five years for a trial which started on 28 January 2016 and is ongoing. On 15 May 2017, it was extended at the Prosecutor’s request to collect further evidence. This by all likelihood is just a farce to dupe the public into believing that he is getting a fair trial. Already in hearings in 2014, Gbagbo was found guilty of all charges, including murder, rape and other crimes against humanity. Like Slobodan Milošević, he is an inconvenient prisoner, or worse would he be as a free man. So, he will most likely be locked away – and one day commit ‘suicide’ or die from a ‘heart attack’.  The classic. That’s how the west does away with potential witnesses of their atrocious crimes. End of story. Nobody barks, because the ‘free world’has been made believe by the western presstitute media that these people are inhuman tyrants. That’s precisely what the western media’s headlines proclaimed about Muammar Gaddafi: Death of a Tyrant.

On the other hand, in 2015, Ouattara was “reelected by a landslide”. That’s what western media say. Colonization under African ‘leadership’. He is protected by the French army.

Back to Libya: Take the specific case of France and West and Central Africa. The French Central Bank, the Banque de France, backs the West and Central African Monetary Union’s currency, the CFA franc. The West African Central Bank, for example, is covered, i.e. controlled, by about 70% of the Banque de France. Banque de France has an almost total control over the economy of its former West African colonies. No wonder, Sarkozy, a murderer and war criminal – sorry, it must be said, backed Hillary’s – also a murderer and war criminal, push for NATO to destroy the country and kill thousands of Libyans, including Libya’s leader, Muammar Gaddafi. Hillary’s infamous words: ‘We came we saw he died’. And that she said shamelessly, jokingly, laughing. Would the term human being still apply to such a monster?

Russia TV24: What countries are mostly interested in the Libyan recovery and why? What are the chances for the economy of Libya to be repaired?

PK: Well, if anybody should be interested in Libya’s recovery it would be first the Libyans who are still living in Libya, because they are now living in a Libya of chaos and high crime, of mafia-economics, of tyranny by gang leadership. They certainly have an interest to return to normalcy. North African neighboring countries should also be interested in restoring order and rebuilding Libya’s infrastructure and economy, stopping the spill-over of high crime and terrorism. They have lost an important trading partner.

Of course, the rest of Africa, who have suffered from continuous colonization of the west, after Gaddafi’s demise, should also be interested in reestablishing Libya. They know,it will never be the same Libya that was there to help their economy, to help them prying loose from the western boots and fangs of exploitation.

And Europe -should be most interested in reestablishing order and a real economy in Libya- cleaning it from a murderous Mafia that promotes drugs and slave trade ending up in Europe. Libya today is one of the key hubs for the boat refugees from Africa to Europe.Instead of helping Libyans to come to peace within its borders and to rebuild their country, the European Commission launched in 2015 a new European Border and Coast Guard Agency, targeting specifically Libya – destroying refugee boats, if they cannot stop them from leaving Tripoli, Benghazi and other Libyan Sea ports.

Of course, spineless Europe doesn’t dare saying they would like to remake Libya into a functional state.Libya is Washington’s territory – and Washington wants chaos to continue in Libya.As such Libya is a formidable ground for training and recruitment of terrorists, drug and slave trading; a country where crime prospers and the CIA takes their cut, as these criminal activities are directed by the CIA and their affiliates. The rest of the world doesn’t see that. For them it’s all the fault of the dictator Gaddafi, who thanks goodness was eliminated by the western powers, lords of money and greed.

Russia TV24: Decades ago Libya was very successful from an economic point of view. What main things could you remember?

PK: Libya was economically and socially a successful country, arguably the most successful of Africa. Prosperity from oil was largely shared by Gaddafi with his countrymen. Libya had a first-class social safety net, an excellent transportation infrastructure, free medical services, and modern hospitals, equipped with latest technology medical equipment, free education for everyone – and students could even receive scholarships to study abroad.

Under President Gaddafi, Libya built friendly relations based on solidarity with other African States and was always ready to help if a ‘brother nation’ was in trouble. Gaddafi was a bit like Hugo Chavez in South America. He had a large heart and charisma, maybe not so much for western leaders, but certainly for Libya’s own population. Yet, he is accused of tyranny by the West, and is said to having financially supported Sarkozy’s Presidential campaign – Sarkozy, the very ‘leader’ (sic-sic),who then helped Hillary lynch Gaddafi. If that doesn’t say a lot about Europe’s criminal leaders – what will?

Muammar Gaddafi was accused by Washington – an accusation immediately repeated by the spineless European puppets, of being responsible for the December 1988 PanAm Flight 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland. More than 240 people perished in the crash. Not a shred of evidence was discovered that Libya was behind the plot. But it was a good reason to start a program of sanctions against Gaddafi’s regime. It was most likely a false flag. What interest would anybody have to bring down that flight, other than clamping down on an oil-rich country.

Russia TV24: Now we see oil production has grown to at least 50% of the 2011 level. Can we expect it to continue growing and affecting the oil market?

PK: Yes, Libyan oil production has increased to about 50% of its 2011 level. Libya is known for her high premium light petrol, commanding premium prices. It is a market niche which might well be affected by Libya’s stepped up production. But who really benefits from this production increase? – Most likely not the Libyans, but the international corporations, mostly American and French oil giants. They call the shots on the production levels. They are part of the international cartel of oil price manipulators, as are the Wall Street banksters,predominantly Goldman Sachs.

Russia TV24: The sanctions against Libya are lifted and all barriers for foreign investments have disappeared as well. Does it mean the county will face recovery soon?

PK: Sanctions may be lifted, but that does not mean that foreign investments will now flow to Libya. The country is still under chaos and disarray – and in my opinion will stay so in the foreseeable future. That’s in Washington’s interest.Investors are reluctant to put their money into a crime nest and a terrorist breeding ground which is working closely with Washington and its secret services – to provide terrorists to fight US-proxy wars around the Middle East, for example in Syria and Iraq – and now even in Afghanistan – and who knows where else.

Russia TV24: How do you assess the political situation in the country today?

PK: As much as I would like to end on a positive note, it is difficult. As long as the CIA, chief instigator of all wars in the Middle East, is using the purposefully created Libyan chaos to train and recruit Islamic State fighters, Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups which vary only in name but have the same objective – namely regime change in Syria – prospects for a foreseeable bright future are dim.

Of course, a lot depends on the unpredictable Trump Presidency. Will he seek peace in the Middle East? – That would be the surprise of the Century – or will he continue on the track dictated by the Deep State (not least to save his skin) – continue destruction of the Middle East, Balkanization of Syria – all as a stepping stone to Full Spectrum Dominance – as is written in the American Bible – the PNAC – Plan for a New American Century – which outlines the ‘American Pax Romana’. They were the bloodiest 200 – 300 years of the Roman Empire. Here comes the positive note: It is unlikely that the American empire will last that long. It’s on its last legs.When it finally falters, Libya may recover, and so may the rest of the world.

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

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

First published by Global Research on September 24, 2020, this analysis of former Pfizer V-P Michael Yeadon has been the object of censorship.

In a stunning development, a former Chief Science Officer for the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer says “there is no science to suggest a second wave should happen.”

The “Big Pharma” insider asserts that false positive results from inherently unreliable COVID tests are being used to manufacture a “second wave” based on “new cases.”

Dr. Mike Yeadon, a former Vice President and Chief Science Officer for Pfizer for 16 years, says that half or even “almost all” of tests for COVID are false positives. Dr. Yeadon also argues that the threshold for herd immunity may be much lower than previously thought, and may have been reached in many countries already.

In an interview last week Dr. Yeadon was asked:

“we are basing a government policy, an economic policy, a civil liberties policy, in terms of limiting people to six people in a meeting…all based on, what may well be, completely fake data on this coronavirus?”

Dr. Yeadon answered with a simple “yes.”

Dr. Yeadon said in the interview that, given the “shape” of all important indicators in a worldwide pandemic, such as hospitalizations, ICU utilization, and deaths, “the pandemic is fundamentally over.”

Yeadon said in the interview:

“Were it not for the test data that you get from the TV all the time, you would rightly conclude that the pandemic was over, as nothing much has happened. Of course people go to the hospital, moving into the autumn flu season…but there is no science to suggest a second wave should happen.”

In a paper published this month, which was co-authored by Yeadon and two of his colleagues, “How Likely is a Second Wave?”, the scientists write:

“It has widely been observed that in all heavily infected countries in Europe and several of the US states likewise, that the shape of the daily deaths vs. time curves is similar to ours in the UK. Many of these curves are not just similar, but almost super imposable.”

In the data for UK, Sweden, the US, and the world, it can be seen that in all cases, deaths were on the rise in March through mid or late April, then began tapering off in a smooth slope which flattened around the end of June and continues to today. The case rates however, based on testing, rise and swing upwards and downwards wildly.

Media messaging in the US is already ramping up expectations of a “second wave.”

Source

Source

Source

Source

Survival Rate of COVID Now Estimated to be 99.8%, Similar to Flu, Prior T-Cell Immunity

The survival rate of COVID-19 has been upgraded since May to 99.8% of infections. This comes close to ordinary flu, the survival rate of which is 99.9%. Although COVID can have serious after-effects, so can flu or any respiratory illness. The present survival rate is far higher than initial grim guesses in March and April, cited by Dr. Anthony Fauci, of 94%, or 20 to 30 times deadlier. The Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) value accepted by Yeadon et al in the paper is .26%. The survival rate of a disease is 100% minus the IFR.

Dr. Yeadon pointed out that the “novel” COVID-19 contagion is novel only in the sense that it is a new type of coronavirus. But, he said, there are presently four strains which circulate freely throughout the population, most often linked to the common cold.

In the scientific paper, Yeadon et al write:

“There are at least four well characterised family members (229E, NL63, OC43 and HKU1) which are endemic and cause some of the common colds we experience, especially in winter. They all have striking sequence similarity to the new coronavirus.”

The scientists argue that much of the population already has, if not antibodies to COVID, some level of “T-cell” immunity from exposure to other related coronaviruses, which have been circulating long before COVID-19.

The scientists write:

“A major component our immune systems is the group of white blood cells called T-cells whose job it is to memorise a short piece of whatever virus we were infected with so the right cell types can multiply rapidly and protect us if we get a related infection. Responses to COVID-19 have been shown in dozens of blood samples taken from donors before the new virus arrived.”

Introducing the idea that some prior immunity to COVID-19 already existed, the authors of “How Likely is a Second Wave?” write:

“It is now established that at least 30% of our population already had immunological recognition of this new virus, before it even arrived…COVID-19 is new, but coronaviruses are not.”

They go on to say that, because of this prior resistance, only 15-25% of a population being infected may be sufficient to reach herd immunity:

“…epidemiological studies show that, with the extent of prior immunity that we can now reasonably assume to be the case, only 15-25% of the population being infected is sufficient to bring the spread of the virus to a halt…”

In the US, accepting a death toll of 200,000, and an infection fatality rate of 99.8%, this would mean for every person who has died, there would be about 400 people who had been infected, and lived. This would translate to around 80 million Americans, or 27% of the population. This touches Yeadon’s and his colleagues’ threshold for herd immunity.

The authors say:

“current literature finds that between 20% and 50% of the population display this pre-pandemic T-cell responsiveness, meaning we could adopt an initially susceptible population value from 80% to 50%. The lower the real initial susceptibility, the more secure we are in our contention that a herd immunity threshold (HIT) has been reached.”

Masthead for “Lockdown Skeptics.org” publisher of “How Likely is a Second Wave?” | Source

The False Positive Second Wave

Of the PCR test, the prevalent COVID test used around the world, the authors write:

“more than half of the positives are likely to be false, potentially all of them.”

The authors explain that what the PCR test actually measures is “simply the presence of partial RNA sequences present in the intact virus,” which could be a piece of dead virus which cannot make the subject sick, and cannot be transmitted, and cannot make anyone else sick.

“…a true positive does not necessarily indicate the presence of viable virus. In limited studies to date, many researchers have shown that some subjects remain PCR-positive long after the ability to culture virus from swabs has disappeared. We term this a ‘cold positive’ (to distinguish it from a ‘hot positive’, someone actually infected with intact virus). The key point about ‘cold positives’ is that they are not ill, not symptomatic, not going to become symptomatic and, furthermore, are unable to infect others.”

Overall, Dr. Yeadon builds the case that any “second wave” of COVID, and any government case for lockdowns, given the well-known principles of epidemiology, will be entirely manufactured.

In Boston this month, a lab suspended doing coronavirus testing after 400 false positives were discovered.

An analysis of PCR-based test at medical website medrxiv.org states:

“data on PCR-based tests for similar viruses show that PCR-based testing produces enough false positive results to make positive results highly unreliable over a broad range of real-world scenarios.”

University of Oxford Professor Carl Heneghan, Director of Oxford’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, writes in a July article “How Many COVID Diagnoses Are False Positives?”:

“going off current testing practices and results, Covid-19 might never be shown to disappear.”

Of course, the most famous incidence of PCR test unreliability was when the President of Tanzania revealed to the world that he had covertly sent samples from a goat, a sheep, and a pawpaw fruit to a COVID testing lab. They all came back positive for COVID.

Made in China

In August, the government of Sweden discovered 3700 false COVID positives from test kits made by China’s BGI Genomics. The kits were approved in March by the FDA for use in the US.

Second Waves of Coronaviruses Not Normal

Dr. Yeadon challenged the idea that all pandemics take place in subsequent waves, citing two other coronavirus outbreaks, the SARS virus in 2003, and MERS in 2012. What may seem like two waves can actually be two single waves occurring in different geographical regions. They say data gathered from the relatively recent SARS 2003 and the MERS outbreaks support their contention.

In the case of the MERS:

“it is actually multiple single waves affecting geographically distinct populations at different times as the disease spreads. In this case the first major peak was seen in Saudi Arabia with a second peak some months later in the Republic of Korea. Analysed individually, each area followed a typical single event…”

In the interview, when questioned about the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918, which came in successive waves during World War I, Yeadon pointed out that this was an entirely different kind of virus, not in the coronavirus family. Others have blamed general early century malnutrition and unsanitary conditions. World War I soldiers, hard hit, lived in cold mud and conditions the worst imaginable for immune resistance.

Saudi and Korea Waves of MERS Coronavirus

Lockdowns Don’t Work

Another argument made by Yeadon et al in their September paper is that there has been no difference in outcomes related to lockdowns.

They say:

“The shape of the deaths vs. time curve implies a natural process and not one resulting mainly from human interventions…Famously, Sweden has adopted an almost laissez faire approach, with qualified advice given, but no generalised lockdowns. Yet its profile and that of the UK’s is very similar.”

Mild-Mannered Yeadon Demolishes Man Who Started It All, Professor Neil Ferguson

The former Pfizer executive and scientist singles out one former colleague for withering rebuke for his role in the pandemic, Professor Neil Ferguson. Ferguson taught at Imperial College while Yeadon was affiliated. Ferguson’s computer modelprovided the rationale for governments to launch draconian orders which turned free societies into virtual prisons overnight. Over what is now estimated by the CDC to be a 99.8% survival rate virus.

Dr. Yeardon said in the interview that “no serious scientist gives any validity” to Ferguson’s model.

Speaking with thinly-veiled contempt for Ferguson, Dr. Yeardon took special pains to point out to his interviewer:

“It’s important that you know most scientists don’t accept that it [Ferguson’s model] was even faintly right…but the government is still wedded to the model.”

Yeardon joins other scientists in castigating governments for following Ferguson’s model, the assumptions of which all worldwide lockdowns are based on. One of these scientists is Dr. Johan Giesecke, former chief scientist for the European Center for Disease Control and Prevention, who called Ferguson’s model “the most influential scientific paper” in memory, and also “one of the most wrong.”

It was Ferguson’s model which held that “mitigation” measures were necessary, i.e. social distancing and business closures, in order to prevent, for example, over 2.2 million people dying from COVID in the US.

Ferguson predicted that Sweden would pay a terrible price for no lockdown, with 40,000 COVID deaths by May 1, and 100,000 by June. Sweden’s death count is now 5800. The Swedish government says this coincides to a mild flu season. Although initially higher, Sweden now has a lower death rate per-capita than the US, which it achieved without the terrific economic damage still ongoing in the US. Sweden never closed restaurants, bars, sports, most schools, or movie theaters. The government never ordered people to wear masks.

Dr. Yeadon speaks bitterly of the lives lost as a result of lockdown policies, and of the “savable” countless lives which will be further lost, from important surgeries and other healthcare deferred, should lockdowns be reimposed, .

Yeardon is a successful entrepreneur, the founder of a biotech company which was acquired by Novartis, another pharmaceutical giant. Yeadon’s unit at Pfizer was the Asthma and Respiratory Research Unit. (Yeadon, partial list of publications.)

Sweden During International “Lockdowns”

Why is All This Happening? US Congressman Says He is Convinced of “Government Plan” to Continue Lockdowns Until a Mandatory Vaccine. Conspiracy Theories?

The list of news items grows which reflects unfavorably upon the narrative being played out on the major television networks, of a mysterious, “novel” virus which has been controlled only by an unprecedented assault on individual rights and liberties, now ready to pounce again, on already suffering populations with no choice but to submit to further government orders.

Governors have quietly extended their powers indefinitely by shifting the goalpost, without saying so, from “flattening the curve” to ease the strain on hospitals, to “no new cases.” From “pandemic,” to “case-demic.”

In Germany, an organization of 500 German doctors and scientists has formed, who say that government response to the COVID virus has been vastly out of proportion to the actual severity of the disease.

Evidence of chicanery mounts. Both the CDC, and US Coronavirus Task Force headed by Dr. Deborah Birx, are candid that the definition of death-by-COVID has been flexible, and that the rules favor calling it COVID whenever possible. This opens the possibility of a vastly inflated death count. In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo’s administration is under federal investigation for all but signing the death warrants for thousands of nursing home elderly, when the state sent COVID patients into the nursing homes, over the helpless objections of nursing home executives and staff.

Why are the major media ignoring what would seem to be an eminently newsworthy item, an industry rockstar like Yeadon, calling out the biggest guns in the public health world? Would not the Sunday talk shows, the Chris Wallaces and Meet the Press, want to grill such a man for record audiences?

Here the talk may turn to dark agendas, and not just mere incompetence, obtuseness, and stupidity.

One opinion was put forth by US Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY) when he said on the Tom Woods Show on August 16th:

“The secret the government is keeping from you is that they plan to keep us shut down until there is some kind of vaccine, and then whether it’s compulsory at the federal level, or the state level, or maybe they persuade your employers though another PPP program that you won’t qualify for unless you make your employees get the vaccine, I think that’s their plan. Somebody convince me that’s not their plan, because there is no logical ending to this other than that.”

Another theory is that the COVID crisis is being used consolidate never-before-imaged levels of control over individuals and society by elites. This is put forth by the nephew of the slain president, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., son of also-assassinated Bobby Kennedy. In a speech at a massive anti-lockdown, anti-mandatory COVID vaccination rally in Germany, Bobby Jr. warned of the existence of a:

“bio-security agenda, the rise of the authoritarian surveillance state and the Big Pharma sponsored coup d’etat against liberal democracy…The pandemic is a crisis of convenience for the elite who are dictating these policies,”

In a lawsuit, Kennedy Jr.’s medical witnesses warn that mandatory flu shots many make children more susceptible to COVID.

The warnings of dire intentions of Kennedy’s “elite” are coming from more mainstream sources. Dr. Joseph Marcela, of the highly trusted, mega-traffic medical information site Mercola.com, has penned a careful review of one doctor’s claims of genetics-altering vaccines coming our way.

And it does not assuage fears that a defense establishment website, Defense One, reports that permanent under-the skin biochips, injectable by the same syringe that holds a vaccine, may soon be approved by the FDA. It does not help the anti-conspiracy theory cause that, according to Newsweek, Dr. Anthony Fauci actually did give NIH funding to Wuhan lab for bat coronavirus research so dangerous it was opposed on record by 200 scientists, and banned in the US.

In 1957, a pandemic hit, the H2N2 Asian Flu with a .7% Infection Fatality Rate, which killed as many people per capita in the US as the COVID has claimed now. There was never a single mention of it in the news at the time, never mind the extraordinary upheaval that we see now. In 1968 the Hong Kong Flu hit the US (.5% IFR,) taking 100,000 people when the US had a markedly lower population. Not single alarm was raised, not a single store closed nor even a network news story. The following summer the largest gathering in US history took place, Woodstock.

Mass hysteria is never accidental, but benefits someone. The only question left to answer is, who?

August Protest in Berlin Against Lockdown, and Against Mandatory COVID Vaccination| Source

Woodstock 1969

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Grassroots mobilization has led the Biden administration to pledge to end the war in Yemen; further activism is needed to make him follow through on his promise and to pressure Saudi Arabia to end its blockade

Six years ago, in the early hours of March 26, 2015, a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia and backed by the United States began a bombing campaign in Yemen.

Endorsed by the Obama-Biden administration as a sort of consolation prize to Saudi Arabia after signing the nuclear deal with Iran, the airstrikes and blockade imposed on Yemen have led to what the UN has described as the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

With Biden now the president, activists have been able to secure important–if vague–promises from him to end U.S. complicity in the war.

The coming weeks present a unique and critical opportunity for holding his administration to the task.

[Source: google.com]

The Saudi-led coalition’s blockade on Yemen has spelled disaster for millions of Yemenis.

Death and Destruction

The war has caused approximately one-quarter of a million direct deaths. Additionally, in 2020 alone, 172,000 people were internally displaced, 79% of whom are women and girls. In total, approximately four million people have been displaced over the last six years.

Displaced family in Marib, Yemen. [Source: news.un.org]

Nearly three-quarters of the population is in need of humanitarian aid, and an estimated 13.5 million Yemenis are in a food emergency. In addition to violence and a looming famine, in 2020 alone, there have been 229,887 cases of cholera, approximately one-fourth of which have been children under five years old.

COVID has exacerbated conditions in Yemen: Only half of the healthcare system in Yemen is intact and, out of the country’s 333 districts, 67 have no doctor. Additionally, over the summer, Yemen had one of the highest COVID mortality rates in the world, at 27 percent, which is more than five times the global average.

A year ago, as the pandemic was striking Yemen, the Trump administration decided to suspend humanitarian assistance to northern Yemen where the majority of the Yemeni population lives.

On March 11, 2021, the press reported that the Biden administration will restore the assistance to northern Yemen, helping to save lives.

Fewer than two weeks earlier, however, on March 1, 2021, the UN Donor’s conference raised less than half of the UN’s necessary amount to provide services in Yemen. Aid is critical for the survival of thousands of Yemeni people, especially as a result of the pandemic.

Although the U.S. has at various points tried to distance itself from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) violent missions against civilians, the Pentagon has exponentially increased its arms sales to Saudi Arabia since the Kingdom began its airstrikes on Yemen.

In the five years before the war, the United States sold approximately $3 billion worth of arms to Saudi Arabia. However, in the first five years of the war (2015-2020), the U.S. agreed to sell to it more than $64.1 billion worth of arms.

[Source: inthesetimes.com]

Weapons made in the U.S. have been used in some of the deadliest attacks in Yemen including the bombing of a funeral hall in Sanaa, where at least 140 people were killed and 600 were injured, the bombing of the Mastaba market, where 97 were killed, including 25 children, and the bombing of a school bus, killing 40 children and wounding dozens.

Wreckage from Mastaba market in March 2016. The weapons used were made in the U.S. [Source: hrw.org]

By supplying the Saudi/Emirati-led coalition with these weapons, spare parts, and tactical and intelligence assistance, United States participation in this war has played a key role in perpetuating the humanitarian crisis.

Radhya al-Mutawakel, chairwoman of Mwatana for Human Rights, an organization that records violations from all sides of the war in Yemen, informed CNN that, “in more than one way and during more than one incident, remnants of American weapons have been found at the site of airstrikes that killed civilians.” The U.S. has now enabled this devastation for six years.

The United States government has long valued its alliance with Saudi Arabia as a strategic hedge against Iran, which has been accused of backing the Houthi rebels. Saudi Arabia is the top importer of U.S. weapons. It also sells the U.S. cheap oil and struck a deal years ago to sell its oil on the foreign market in U.S. dollars, which helps keep the latter as the world’s dominant currency.^[1]

Some experts have argued that an additional interest for the U.S. has been control of the strategically located island of Socotra off the coast of Yemen.

The nefarious nature of the Saudi regime has been exposed with the release of a report stating that U.S. intelligence found that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. This recent news has amplified calls for Saudi Arabia to be held accountable for its human rights abuses, including its involvement in Yemen, and for the West to stop weapons sales to the Kingdom.

President Biden’s decision to not penalize the Crown Prince was a major blow to human rights activists around the world. The decision may not be surprising, however, considering Saudi Arabia’s strategic value to the U.S., and in the opinion of CovertAction Magazine editors, Biden’s long history of supporting the U.S. overseas empire.

Growing Western Opposition to the War

During Biden’s campaign for President, he pledged to stop supporting the Saudi/Emirati-led aggression in Yemen and to stop selling arms to oppressive regimes such as Saudi Arabia.

Specifically, he promised to “end U.S. support for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, and make sure America does not check its values at the door to sell arms or buy oil.”

On January 25, 2021, Biden’s first Monday in office, tens of thousands of people around the world participated in online and on-the-ground protests as part of a Global Day of Action: World Says No to War on Yemen.

A total of 385 organizations from 28 countries signed the statement Action Corps circulated calling for the day of action, making this the largest anti-war coordination since the 2003 Iraq war protests. The day of action was a highlight in a multi-year grassroots movement to stop Western backing of the Saudi/UAE-led coalition in Yemen.

Four demands of 385 organizations from 28 countries:

1. Stop foreign aggression on Yemen.

2. Stop weapons and war support for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

3. Lift the blockade on Yemen and open all land and seaports.

4. Restore and expand humanitarian aid for the people of Yemen.

As a result of years of grassroots organizing, advocacy, and mounting pressure that culminated in the day of action, the Biden administration has announced a number of significant decisions about Yemen. On the day of action, his administration announced they would lift some of the deadly sanctions against the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Since then, he temporarily paused a number of arms sales to Saudi Arabia, cancelled two planned arms sales, reversed the Foreign Terrorist Organization designation of the Houthi rebels and, in his first major foreign policy speech as President, announced the U.S. would end support for “offensive operations” in Yemen.

While activists and Members of Congress have rightly demanded clarity about Biden’s policy in Yemen going forward, these announcements reflect years of mobilizing on the part of humanitarians, anti-war activists, constitutional conservatives, libertarians, and anti-imperialists. The President’s statements also represent a tremendous window of opportunity to actually end the war.

In his article, Yemen Can’t Wait: Why a Global Day of Action Has Created a Chance for Change, Chris Nineham explains that a number of factors have made the war unsustainable and unwinnable for Saudi Arabia.

These factors include the high financial cost of the war in the midst of an economic recession, loss of territory to the Houthi rebels, and an increasingly negative opinion of the war on the part of Americans, Brits and Europeans. At the end of January, Italy permanently blocked arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE. A February 11 vote in the EU parliament called on all Member States “to halt the export of arms to all members of the Saudi-led coalition.”

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Featured image: Brendan Bell-Taylor, Action Corps Idaho organizer, and Laura Burton protest the war on Yemen in front of the Idaho State Capitol, in Boise, on January 25, 2021, as part of a Global Day of Action: World Says No to War on Yemen. Sen. Jim Risch, U.S. senator from Idaho, is the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. [Source: twitter.com]

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The US-led anti-Chinese Quad alliance of itself, Australia, India, and Japan might be on the brink of collapse according to influential BJP ideologue Subramanian Swamy, who warned that Washington might expel New Delhi from this bloc if it goes through with its planned purchase of Russia’s S-400 air defense systems.

One of the most geopolitically consequential blocs of the 21^st century is unquestionably the Quad, a US-led anti-Chinese alliance that also includes Australia, India, and Japan. It presents one of the greatest strategic challenges to the emerging Multipolar World Order because of the potential that it has to offset China’s historic rise and therefore the new model of International Relations that it’s bringing to the forefront of global affairs. Many analysts have wondered what could possibly be done to stop the Quad, but most of them have since thrown up their hands in despair and seemingly accepted it as a fait accompli that they’re powerless to prevent. That strategic fatalism might have been a bit too premature, however, after influential BJP ideologue Subramanian Swamy’s public warning on Twitter on Thursday.

Russian publicly financed international media outlet Sputnik reported on his tweet, which read that “I notice none of my facts on Twitter have been proved wrong: 1. China has crossed LAC and occupied our territory. 2. Govt says disengagement has led to PLA withdrawal from Indian side of LAC is false 3. India buying S400 from Russia will lead to US expelling India from QUAD.” The reader should also be reminded that Swamy published a hateful anti-Russian article last October that elicited a very strong condemnation from the Russian Embassy in India at the time. India has the right to conduct its foreign affairs however it so chooses in line with what it describes as its “multi-alignment” strategy, but there should be little question in light of his recent statements that Swamy is seemingly pro-American with his outlook and at the very least unfriendly towards Russia.

This influential figure’s statements are at variance with what the Russian and Indian governments officially regard as their special and privileged strategic partnership that’s recently been experiencing a renaissance over the past few years, especially after Prime Minister Modi attended the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok in September 2019 as President Putin’s guest of honor. Despite some bumps in the road in the year and a half since, ties are back on the positive track following Foreign Secretary Shringla’s visit to Moscow last month. Quite clearly, Russian-Indian relations remain strong, which provides a much-needed element of certainty in the midst of what can be described as World War C, or the full-spectrum paradigm-changing processes catalyzed by the international community’s uncoordinated attempt to contain COVID-19.

The US’ repeated threats to sanction India for its planned S-400 purchase from Russia run the risk of complicating American-Indian relations, particularly when it comes to their hitherto close military cooperation in attempting to “contain” China through the Quad.

Nevertheless, Prime Minister Modi remains determined to go through with the deal, which speaks of how highly he regards Russia’s role in India’s “multi-alignment” “balancing” act no matter how imperfectly he’s thus far executed it. Swamy’s warning can therefore be interpreted as pressure upon the premier from within his own government, which shows that some influential forces don’t agree with Prime Minister Modi’s strategic direction. They’d do well to reconsider their views though since it’s arguably in all of Eurasia’s interests that India concludes the S-400 deal with Russia.

Swamy might actually be right for once, though much to the detriment of the American-aligned grand strategic vision that he seemingly sympathizes with. The US might not literally expel India from the Quad if it receives Russia’s S-400 air defense systems, but their anti-Chinese military coordination would certainly be adversely affected, especially if America imposes sanctions like it’s repeatedly threatened to do. That, however, would by default strengthen India’s ties with Russia and China, thus providing a much-needed impetus for reviving their trilateral cooperation through through RIC and thereby strengthening both BRICS and the SCO as well. This could in turn accelerate the rise of the Eurasian Century, especially as it was recently articulated by Pakistani officials during last week’s inaugural Islamabad Security Dialogue.

In connection with that, it also deserve mention that ties between India and Pakistan are gradually thawing as a result of recent developments between the two, particularly last month’s surprise ceasefire that continues to hold at the time of this analysis’ publication and earlier reports that the UAE is secretly trying to broker a more comprehensive solution to the UNSC-recognized disputed territory of Kashmir. The resultant reduction of American influence in India in the aftermath of Washington likely going through with its sanctions threats against New Delhi could potentially remove the greatest threat to peace in the region since the US wouldn’t be as powerful as before to divide and rule South Asia by exploiting this unresolved conflict.

In other words, India’s purchase of Russia’s S-400s would be in both of those countries’ interests as well as China’s and Pakistan’s when one considers the larger Eurasian strategic picture. The Quad probably won’t collapse, nor is it to be expected that the US would expel India from this alliance, but the group’s anti-Chinese military capabilities might take a strong hit as New Delhi would be less prone to closely cooperate with Washington in this respect if it becomes victimized by American sanctions for its sovereign decision to go through with its Russian air defense deal. With these interconnected dynamics in mind, observers can therefore rightly describe the S-400 deal as potentially being a grand strategic game-changer provided that India retains the political will to go through with it despite Swamy’s and other influential forces’ efforts to stop 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.

“Biden was a man who believed in regime change. Biden was a man who believed Saddam Hussein was the personification of evil. Biden was a man who believed that we had to use whatever means necessary up to and including war to remove Saddam Hussein from power. And Joe Biden recognized that weapons inspections, if allowed to proceed would undermine his effort. This is why he had to discredit the inspections.” – Former Chief UN Weapons inspector Scott Ritter (included in interview.)

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Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in December of 1991 the U.S., NATO and the world had entered a brand new era. With the threat of the Soviets launching an invasion of the European Union now essentially moot, it would seem the hostile military alliance had lost its usefulness. [1]

But in 1999, the U.S. led cavalry found a new lease on life! Negotiations between the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the Kosovo Liberation Army fighting for an independent ethnic Albanian state broke down. After the pivotal  Račak massacre in January of 1999, NATO took the role of instituting a military ‘peacekeeping force’ to restrain both sides. When talks at the Château de Rambouillet, outside Paris failed to arrive at an agreement, international monitors withdrew and then the KLA with the air support from NATO launched the beginning of a 78 day war. [2][3]

NATO then went to war on Afghanistan two years later on the excuse they were defending themselves from terrorism which they never proved emerged from that country. [4][5]

Two years after that, the U.S. and the UK, together with a small list of belligerents attacked the beleaguered country of Iraq, on the principle assertion this country decimated by the first war in 1991 and years of devastating sanctions, posed a threat to America and the world by virtue of his devastating supply of ‘weapons of mass destruction.’ Of course, the UN weapons inspectors dedicated to finding and destroying his entire supply of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons could not verify their existence any longer. But with Colin Powell’s famous presentation providing the proper pretext, the world stood a month later and watched in horror as the Coalition of the Willing subjected the former Mesopotamia to a truly Shock and Awe Spectacle.

The war killed at least 100,000 civilians. The leader Saddam Hussein was executed. The war lasted until December of 2011. And absolutely no weapons of mass destruction were found!

The War on Yugoslavia launched on March 24, 1999. The War in Iraq launched March 19, 2003.

Once again, in chapter 3 of our series on wars launched in March, the Global Research News Hour looks at these two principal conflicts which would reshape the wartime trajectory the U.S. would pursue at a time when threats from Russia were reduced.

Our first half hour features a few comments made by guests of a past show speaking of the background of the War on Yugoslavia. A brief summary of their comments are supplied in a 20 minute period. They include Professor Michel Chossudovsky, Živadin Jovanović, James Bissett and Scott Taylor.

In our second half hour, we are delighted to have former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter on to recount his insights into the falseness of the pretext of weapons of mass destruction, his understanding of the real motive of the war, his take on the former Senator Joe Biden who sounded like a hawk 23 years ago (see video below), and his take on the timing of wars almost always in March.

d

Professor Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal, Editor of Global Research. In May of 1999 he published the in depth analysis of the conflict in Yugoslavia in the article NATO’s War of Aggression against Yugoslavia: Who are the War Criminals? For these and related writings he received the 2014 Gold Medal for Merit of the Republic of Serbia.

Živadin Jovanović served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia between 1998 and 2000. Since 2005, he has served as President of the Belgrade Forum for a World of Equals, a non-profit organization which is a member of the World Peace Council. The Forum supports world peace and non-interventionism and opposes “humanitarian wars”.

James Bissett is a Canadian diplomat with a 36 year track record of public service in the Departments of Citizenship and Immigration and Foreign Affairs. He was Canada’s ambassador to Yugoslavia from 1990 until 1992, with responsibility for Albania and Bulgaria. A consistent critic of the West’s policies in the former Yugoslavia, Bissett testified at the Trial of Slobodan Milošević as a defence witness.

Scott Taylor is a former soldier, a journalist, and the Publisher/Editor of the Canadian military magazine Esprit de Corps. Taylor reported from the ground during and after NATO’s 1999 assault on the former Yugoslavia. He is the author of several books including Diary of an Uncivil War: The Violent Aftermath of the Kosovo Conflict (2002).

Scott Ritter is a U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence officer, former UN Chief Weapons Inspector from 1991 -1998, and is currently engaged as a commentator and columnist on Huffington Post, RT OP-ED, and the American Conservative.

(Global Research News Hour Episode 310)

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The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM out of the University of Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca .

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Notes:

1. https://intpolicydigest.org/the-end-of-nato/
2. Peter Beaumont and Patrick Wintour (July 18, 1999) ‘Kosovo: the untold story’, The Guardian; https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/jul/18/warcrimes.balkans
3. Timothy W. Crawford (April 1, 2001) ‘Pivotal Deterrence and the Kosovo War: Why the Holbrooke Agreement Failed’, Brookings; https://www.brookings.edu/articles/pivotal-deterrence-and-the-kosovo-war-why-the-holbrooke-agreement-failed/
4. https://www.nato.int/docu/update/2001/1001/e1002a.htm
5. https://www.globalresearch.ca/was-america-attacked-by-afghanistan-on-september-11-2001/5307151

“Fraudulent Marketing”: The Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine Is an “Unapproved Product” which Is “Permitted for Use”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, March 26 2021

Should we trust Big Pharma Companies which have a criminal record? In a historic US Department of Justice decision in September 2009, Pfizer Inc. pleaded guilty to criminal charges. It was “The Largest Health Care Fraud Settlement in Its History”

Welcome to the “COVID Testing Industrial Complex”, Which Is Fast Becoming a $100 Billion a Year Industry

By Jordan Schachtel, March 26 2021

The COVID-19 Testing Industrial Complex in the United States is completely out of control, and the American taxpayer has been drafted into churning out hundreds of millions of dollars per day to keep it afloat.

Scientist to FDA: You Are Ignoring ‘Clear and Present Danger’ Associated with COVID Vaccine

By Dr. Hooman Noorchashm and Children’s Health Defense, March 26 2021

In an email to FDA officials, Pfizer executives and media, Dr. Hooman Noorchashm warns many more will die needlessly from COVID vaccines “if we carelessly and indiscriminately” vaccinate people already infected with the virus.

AstraZeneca Vaccine Correlated to Blood Clots, Death. Norwegian Physician Pål Andre Holme

By Line Fausko, Martha CS Holmes, and Oda Ording, March 26 2021

The experts who have examined the three hospitalized health workers believe that the AstraZeneca vaccine triggered a strong immune response. One of the health workers died. The cause of our patients’ condition has now been found, says chief physician and professor Pål Andre Holme.

Elephants in Africa Face Grave Extinction Threat, New Expert Assessment Finds

By Center For Biological Diversity, March 26 2021

In a long-awaited move, the International Union for Conservation of Nature announced today that elephants in Africa face a serious risk of extinction. At the same time, it is officially identifying African elephants as two distinct species: savanna elephants and forest elephants.

Video: The Conflict in North Syria: US Continues to Smuggle Oil, While Turkey Complains to Russia It Can’t

By South Front, March 25 2021

The intensity of the conflict in Syria’s northeast refuses to die down, as more and more strikes are carried out targeting each involved party’s interests. For its part, MSM reports on all of these, but many of them are presented in a light, much different from reality.

“Two Fatal Errors in its Assessment of the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic”. What SAGE Has Got Wrong

By Dr. Mike Yeadon, March 26 2021

Dr Mike Yeadon has a degree in biochemistry and toxicology and a research-based PhD in respiratory pharmacology. He has spent over 30 years leading new medicines research in some of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, leaving Pfizer in 2011 as Vice President & Chief Scientist for Allergy & Respiratory.

UK’s Baroness Caroline Cox Slams the “Undeclared Economic War” on Syria

By Baroness Caroline Cox, March 26 2021

Over nine million Syrians are food insecure at the moment, and an estimated nine out of 10 live below the poverty line.

Why Scottish Independence Could be Main Obstacle to ‘Global Britain’

By Johanna Ross, March 26 2021

It was announced on Wednesday that government buildings across the UK would now be required to fly the UK flag at all times. This of course won’t go down too well in Scotland, where the Union Jack is, for many, an offensive reminder of London control.

The “Corona Crisis” and the War of “The Super-Rich” against the Earth’s Citizens

By Emanuel Pastreich, March 26 2021

Corporations, multinational investment banks, and the super-rich that hide behind them have launched the final stage this year of a ruthless war of a tiny few against the great majority of humanity.

All Global Research articles can be read in 27 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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Corporations, multinational investment banks, and the super-rich that hide behind them have launched the final stage this year of a ruthless war of a tiny few against the great majority of humanity.

Although they pay off their puppets in the media to float happy tales of some happy resolution to the dire situation of the moment, they already know that the die is cast, that they are committed to a strategy of distracting, seeding division, undermining rational thinking and using a combination of blatant intimidation with open bribery to slowly, systematically, overpower and reduce to slavery 99.98% of the Earth’s population.

They know already, according to the calculations of their supercomputers, what will happen if they are not successful in this plan. They also know that catastrophic climate change and biodiversity loss will make it impossible for them to monopolize the wealth and the resources for long.

There is literally no limit to how far they will go.

The tools they use to pursue this war against the citizens of the Earth are technology, propaganda and disinformation campaigns, threats against individuals who display leadership skills and massive bribes for the leaders who are allowed to be covered in the media to represent the conservative and the progressive causes.

They also employ as part of this strategy an intimate knowledge of certain key weaknesses in the brain, and the potential for exploiting the human inclination to determine truth based on a vague sense of the mood of the herd, rather than logic. That is to say they are investing billions in hidden money to systematically create social pressure that makes citizens conform with pointless mandates for masks or vaccines that are launched from diverse platforms as a means of inducing the population to police itself.

Without such a strategy, the super-rich could not possibly seize control of the entire Earth.

There has been extensive research by corporations, and by the CIA and Department of Defense (government organizations exploited to hide the true entities demanding such research) into how humans can be manipulated without their knowledge, and compelled through imperceptible persuasion to permit, or even aid, their own disenfranchisement without us even being aware of this silent and invisible takeover.

Such operations have been undertaken before, but never on this global scale. New developments in super-computing and the global integration of, and deregulation of, finance, has made such a master plan possible for the first time.

Recent developments are best viewed as the final acceleration of a process by which corporations bribed and lobbied all authority figures in government and academics to go along with a process of privatization, commercialization, and automation that now means that a tiny handful of people can control every aspect of human experience in an absolute sense while the vast majority of citizens cannot even conceive of what is taking place. We have not reached that state yet, but Elon Musk, Bill Gates and others believe, based on the calculations of supercomputers, that it is now possible.

The super-rich has also invested wisely in the establishment of a panoply of sham activists, or toothless, “feel good, do nothing” NGOs.

These “movements” are allowed to appear in the corporate-controlled media, and they pretend to respond to corporate power, but they purposely discourage citizens from organizing themselves (they ask only for donations, or attendance at protests, but they pointedly do not empower people to form their own groups or achieve financial and ideological independence).

Such NGOs are silent about the mass manipulation of the media and of politics by global finance—even though that is the primary cause of the political problems we face.

If we follow the current trajectory, there will not be a single part of our lives that is completely controlled by a multinational corporation in the next few years.

We do not have that long to act.

Image on the right is from Natural News

The push for mandatory COVID-19 “vaccines” in the face of the overwhelming scientific evidence against them is not a matter of mistaken science or bad policy. It is rather a process of preparing government officials, doctors, reporters, and other media figures to follow orders from above that have no rational basis.

After this “softening-up process,” which is carefully calibrated on the basis of secret CIA torture programs designed to test the weaknesses of the human psyche, a rougher and more brutal form of the rule can be implemented.

The mask mandate was the first step in the implementation of this form of massive psychological warfare. It is, to use the technical term, a slow “rape of the mind.”

The enormous restructuring of governance and the economy described by the World Economic Forum as the “Great Reset” is not a secret and anyone who takes the time to read that book, and related documents, can figure out about 70% of what is their agenda is.

The citizen will be convinced that he or she operates within a functional country and that there is some process by which the politicians at the top take actions on their behalf. But the super-rich cares nothing for nation-states and their populations and they use politicians to deflect attention away from themselves. Every time a politician takes a fall, it is to distract you from the predations of the rich. Every attack on minorities is a trick to get you hooked on race and diversity and distracted from the concentration of wealth.

We are increasingly subject to the whims of unaccountable global powers, and the intentionally render us passive, open to persuasion, and therefore incapable of resistance, by the media that is controlled by those powers.

The super-rich relies on two approaches to psychological manipulation that go back to the 1930s and before but have been perfected by recent research.

The first technique is the use of traumatic events that are reported on in a sensationalist and unscientific manner in the media so as to induce a deep sense of shock, disorientation and confusion in the population as a whole. The mental trauma of such events, whether the 9.11 incident, or the hyped-up COVID-19 crisis, or the “armed insurrection” at the Capitol, is used to induce passivity and receptivity to profound institutional shifts that would otherwise be impossible.

Naomi Klein describes this approach as the “shock doctrine” and although she hesitates to delve too deeply into the degree to which it has become national policy, she accurately traces the approach back to the torture programs designed to test the limits of the human psyche.

Such trauma affects the reactive and emotional part of the human brain known as the amygdala, bringing on a “fight or flight” response in the psyche that overrides the rational, integrative, response to external events that would be carried out by the prefrontal cortex in normal conditions.

Because we as individuals, and as populations, are unaware of how the amygdala has taken over decision making from the prefrontal cortex because of these engineered shocks, we are unable to organize, or even conceive of, a response to the real threat. Instead, we focus on the cooked-up threats offered to us by the commercial media like Islamic terrorism in the case of 9.11 or the spread of a dangerous virus in the case of the COVID-19 operation.

The second strategy is to induce a hypnotic state in the brain of the individual, and the population as a whole, through the constant repetition of certain themes and images through advertisements, commercials, images, and themes articulated in movies, TV shows, reporting, and even the packaging of products.

The stimulation alternates between the intentionally boring and distracting images and direct appeals to the pleasure centers of the brain such as the desire for food, for sexual arousal, or for pleasant experiences.

The advertisements promoting the enjoyment of food and encouraging low-level sexual arousal are not only, or even primarily, aimed at selling products. They are intended to induce a state of passivity in the population.

The CIA explains the process,

“Hypnosis is basically a technique which permits acquisition of direct access to the sensory motor cortex and pleasure centers, and lower cerebral (emotional) portions of the right side of the brain following successful disengagement of the stimulus screening function of the left hemisphere of the brain. The right hemisphere which functions as the noncritical, holistic, nonverbal and pattern-oriented component of the brain, appears to accept what the left hemisphere passes to it without question. Consequently, if the left hemisphere can be distracted either through boredom or through reduction to a soporific, semi-sleep state, external stimuli to include hypnotic suggestions are allowed to pass unchallenged into the right hemisphere where they are accepted and acted on directly.”

(FOIA document “Analysis and Assessment of Gateway Process” June 9, 1983 (US Army Intelligence and Security Command)

CIA-RDP96-00788R001700210016-5

The scale of this experiment in mass hypnosis to render the citizens of all the world passive, and unable to resist persuasion from authority figures is unprecedented. This process is being undertaken slowly, over months and years, following complex algorithms that are kept secret.

It is critical in this process that individuals be isolated from each other, unable to communicate except through mediums controlled by multinational corporations, and that they be offered only ineffective and superficial organizations to join organizations in which they will be incapable of participating in the decision-making process, or of effecting change. Quarantine, lockdowns, social distancing, and the promotion of a narcissistic consumption culture are critical to that process.

The result is that the citizens of the United States, and around the world, are being reduced to consumers of products supplied by multinational corporations who cannot even conceive of how the world has been radically transformed in this great reset.

They are being rendered passive and unresponsive so that the super-rich can quickly seize complete control of the systems by which countries are governed, by which money and finance are determined, the media by which information is distributed, the universities and research institutes by which authoritative perspectives backed by science are presented, the farms and distribution systems by which food is provided, the aquafers and irritation systems by which water is provided, and every other aspect of human experience.

When we awake from this slumber, if we ever do, we will discover that every aspect of our lives is controlled by unaccountable powers which we cannot understand, which we have no way to challenge and which will increase slowly and systematically the means by which we are made slaves, and, if necessary, destroyed.

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Emanuel Pastreich served as the president of the Asia Institute, a think tank with offices in Washington DC, Seoul, Tokyo and Hanoi. Pastreich also serves as director general of the Institute for Future Urban Environments. Pastreich declared his candidacy for president of the United States as an independent in February, 2020

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This article was first published in December 2020.

The COVID-19 Testing Industrial Complex in the United States is completely out of control, and the American taxpayer has been drafted into churning out hundreds of millions of dollars per day to keep it afloat. This continually growing behemoth, which was spawned in 2020 because of the urgent insistence of select, powerful members of the U.S. “public health expert” class, has no intention of exiting the stage quietly. Individuals and healthcare-related corporations are getting filthy rich off of this broken, corrupt industry, which largely produces junk tests, and has contributed to an out of control, ongoing “casedemic” in the United States.

Despite the fact that this industry has failed to do anything positive for “public health” related to the coronavirus epidemic, some in the industry are even devising plans to put a COVID testing kit in every home in America. The COVID-19 Testing Industrial Complex has produced a shockingly high revenue stream over the course of a year.

How to Test Every American for COVID-19, Every Day – The Atlantic https://t.co/wWgVZyG5Ud

— Andy Slavitt 🇺🇸💉 (@ASlavitt) August 17, 2020

To get a sense of all of the costs involved, I researched the average COVID-19 testing costs at some of the biggest labs and testing manufacturers in the U.S. The FDA has now cleared well over 100 entities (and even a dozen China-based companies) with Emergency Use Authorizations (EUAs) that allow for these companies to deploy tests in the United States. Here’s the breakdown:

The cost of COVID-19 tests range anywhere from $20-$850. The median cost of a COVID-19 test is around $129 per test. And that’s just the cost of the test itself. This price range does not include the additional costs — including, at a bare minimum for most, the costs of specimen collection and a doctor’s visit — to the insurance provider, federal, state and local governments (which has the taxpayer foot the bill for people who can’t afford a test), and/or the patient.

The United States COVID-19 Testing Industrial Complex now churns out around two million COVID-19 tests per day. That puts the current median cost for COVID testing in America (not including the additional costs) at approximately $254 million dollars per day, $7.6 billion per month, and $91.4 billion per year. To put that in context, That’s more annual cash than the revenue generated by U.S. corporate behemoths such as Boeing, Intel, FedEx, Facebook, and Target.

As for the profits being generated by the COVID testing industry, we can get an accurate count on that number by discovering the financial filings of major testing labs. Quest, the U.S. testing giant that handles about 20% of all COVID tests across the United States, estimates it takes in $42 in revenue per test, with the average processing coming in at $29. That would come out to $26 million in profits per day, $780 million per month, and $9.3 billion in pure profits per year. And that’s only for the lab side of the equation. Remember, getting a COVID-19 test involves several other elements, such as the aforementioned physician’s visit and specimen collection costs, which significantly increases the revenue stream for the entire COVID testing industry.

COVID testing is most rampant in the United States, but it is very much a global industry. Worldometers.com has tracked around 1.1 billion total COVID-19 tests. Calculated with the U.S. cost average, the global COVID testing industry has cost over $141 billion thus far.

Many have summarized that the ongoing vaccine deployment efforts will act to shutter the COVID Testing Industrial Complex, but it’s important to remember a few things about the current state of testing in America.

First and foremost, Our COVID-19 testing accuracy problem has not been solved. Governments on all levels in the United States have not cleaned up our inaccurate testing regime.

People who get the vaccine — putting aside whether it works or not — will very likely still test positive for the coronavirus in large numbers. The vaccine trials had very strict standards for diagnosing positive cases. The trials required both a positive test and recognizable symptoms for someone to be labeled COVID-19 positive.

In the clinical trials, Big Pharma outfits used a much lower cycle threshold (read about the cycle threshold problem at Rational Ground) than the average COVID-19 test in order to get a more accurate diagnosis.

On the other side of the table, Our FDA-authorized testing regime includes mostly junk tests (their cycle thresholds are too high, generating a massive amount of false positives, leading to our national “casedemic”) and diagnoses asymptomatic people as COVID-19 positive. The vaccine trials and our current testing reality are worlds apart. This problem will almost certainly emerge in the coming days and weeks, and it’s going to cause lots of confusion in the public. Who knows if the “public health experts” who are so inclined to promote testing will weaponize this problem to demand even more testing and more restrictions, to keep you safe and COVID-free, of course…

Here's everything you need you know about PCR tests and the wrong-headed strategy of testing people who are asymptomatic .https://t.co/7ezuYzNReE

— RationalGround.com (@Rational_Ground) September 13, 2020

Now approaching $100 billion in annual costs directly associated with it, the COVID Testing Industrial Complex is becoming too big to fail, and it’s long past time for legislators across the nation to rein it in before this broken, corrupt industry becomes a permanent fixture in America.

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Featured image is from The Dossier

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Below is the report of EuroNews confirming Denmark’s Decision to Suspend the Astrazeneka Vaccine.

The Danish Health and Medicines Authority said they were still assessing the use of the jab in its vaccination programme.  

Earlier this month, Denmark and several other EU member states halted the rollout of AstraZeneca vaccines after reports of several serious cases of blood clots.

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In an email to FDA officials, Pfizer executives and media, Dr. Hooman Noorchashm warns many more will die needlessly from COVID vaccines “if we carelessly and indiscriminately” vaccinate people already infected with the virus.

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From CHD’s editor: Following the March 19 death of 32-year-old Benjamin G. Goodman after receiving the Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccine, Dr. Hooman Noorchashm wrote the email below. In it, Noorchashm warns of the “clear and present danger” posed by administering COVID vaccines to people already infected with the virus. 

The email is addressed to Dr. Janet Woodcock, acting commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), but Noorchashm copied others, including the FDA’s Peter Marks, several Pfizer executives, reporters at CBS News, Fox News and The New York Times, and other scientists and colleagues.

This is not the first time Noorchashm has written to the FDA recommending that people be screened for COVID before being vaccinated — in fact, it’s the third. He has yet to receive a response.

Here’s the text of Dr. Noorchashm’s email

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Dear Dr. Woodcock,

Here I am writing to report to you the death of Mr. Benjamin G. Goodman of NY within a day following vaccination with the J&J COVID-19 vaccine.

This is his obituary. He was 32 and otherwise healthy:

Attached, you may read his mother’s Facebook posting about his death.

Dr. Woodcock, it is untenable for you and your colleagues to be ignoring these deaths and vaccine complications without lifting a finger to do anything — simply this: These complications are mounting and CDC and FDA’s surveillance systems are missing the signal — the signal is deafening on social media!

And these are NOT Russian bots infiltrating our SM platforms, these are Americans being harmed and ignored … by YOU and our public health system.

As an immunologist, I know that these vaccines are some of the most powerful and effective we’ve ever made. I know them, I understand them and I know that we need them to achieve herd immunity.

But, as I’ve told you before, we are deploying this defensive weapon wildly indiscriminately in the midst of a pandemic outbreak, while many are “the recently infected.” It is my professional opinion as an immunologist and physician that this indiscriminate vaccination is a clear and present danger to a subset of the already infected.

I know fully well that it is highly likely that many more lives will be saved from these vaccines than harmed by them in this pandemic. But THAT is no justification for relinquishing your duty as a chief public health officer in the U.S. to guard and defend the safety of this minority subset in harm’s way from indiscriminate vaccination.

So now you have a few names … “Anecdotes,” our colleagues call them … “N’s of 1,” know only too well … J. Barton Williams, Kassidi Lyn Kurill, Benjamin G. Goodman, Marvin Hagler, Hank Aaron, Larry King … there will be many more, at the rate we are going.

But the press and all your colleagues in public health are inclined to see these as “unrelated” to our savior vaccines.

I write here, knowing that efficacy and safety are two distinct and equally critical parameters in medical care — and knowing that you all are sacrificing the latter to the former.

But you cannot go on like this — you must see Benjamin Goodman, J. Barton Williams, Kassidi Lyn Kurill, Marvin Hagler, Hank Aaron, Larry King …

There will be many more in the coming months as we carelessly and indiscriminately vaccinate the already infected, millions a day … It is a near certainty.

Hooman Noorchashm M.D., Ph.D.

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Hooman Noorchashm MD, Ph.D. is a physician-scientist. He is an advocate for ethics, patient safety and women’s health.

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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Below is the Google Translation of the original article in Norwegian. (There are some minor errors in translation). 

The original in Norwegian  (VG.no) (See also Broadcast in Norwegian)

Professor on suspected vaccine side effects: – The cause has been found

The experts who have examined the three hospitalized health workers believe that the AstraZeneca vaccine triggered a strong immune response. One of the health workers died.

The cause of our patients’ condition has now been found, says chief physician and professor Pål Andre Holme to VG.

A group at Rikshospitalet, led by Holme, has worked hard to find out why three health workers under the age of 50 were admitted with severe blood clots after taking the AstraZeneca vaccine.

The experts have worked on the basis of a hypothesis that the vaccines triggered an unexpected immune reaction in the sick health workers, who have triggered the system so that a combination of blood clots and low platelets has been obtained.

It is this theory that they now believe they have confirmed.

Our theory that this is a strong immune response that most likely comes after the vaccine, [which] has been found. In collaboration with the section for advanced platelet immunology at UNN, we have now detected specific antibodies against platelets that can give such an image, which we know from other parts of medicine, but then with drugs as the triggering cause, the superior [physician ]explains.

You say most likely?

We have the reason. And there is no other thing than the vaccine that can explain that we have received that immune response, says Holme.

Why is it nothing more than the vaccine?

Around 120,000 Norwegians have so far been vaccinated with AstraZeneca. Thus, very few cases of suspected serious side effects have been reported among the total number of vaccinated. Norway has temporarily paused vaccination, read more further down in the case.

This is how a blood clot occurs. Specific antibodies.  Holme emphasizes that it is not antibodies in the blood in general that are the problem. We are talking about very specific antibodies.

What has happened in the body from the time they took the vaccine until FOUND THE CAUSE?

We take the vaccine to get an immune response to what we are to be protected against. Then you get, among other things, the development of antibodies. Some antibodies can then react so that they can activate the platelets, as in these cases, and cause a blood clot. And because we have these antibodies on the surface, they are removed from the circulation, thus they get too low platelets, says Holme. A very rare condition.

On Sunday, one of the three health workers who were admitted to Rikshospitalet died. They have all been treated for a very rare condition.

They came in with acute pain They had blood clots in unusual places, such as the stomach and brain. In addition, they had bleeding and low platelet counts

We will soon decide the way forward. Large parts of Europe, including Norway, have in the last week put the AstraZeneca vaccination on pause.

After Norway and Denmark reported the suspected serious side effects, other countries have reviewed their own data to look for similar cases.

Steinar Madsen at the Norwegian Medicines Agency says they have been informed that the Rikshospitalet event has meant that there is talk of a strong immune response – but he says he can not comment on details now.

The Adverse Reaction Committee of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), where Norway also sits, has a meeting on Thursday about the case and is expected to issue a statement.

This will to a large extent also be taken into account when assessing this on a European basis, that Norway has made such a solid effort to find out about this here, says Madsen.

Once the EMA has issued a statement, it is up to national authorities to decide the way forward for their respective countries.

VG [Norwegian News Agency] has been in contact with AstraZeneca, which does not wish to comment on the matter at this time but will await the EMA’s decision.

Translated by United for Truth  (our thanks to United for Truth)

Original source VG.no

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First published on March 6, 2021

Should we trust Big Pharma Companies which have a criminal record?

In a historic US Department of Justice decision in September 2009, Pfizer Inc. pleaded guilty to criminal charges. It was “The Largest Health Care Fraud Settlement in Its History”

Pharmacia [Pfizer] & Upjohn Company has agreed to plead guilty to a felony violation of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act ….

See below for details.

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Pfizer Inc, is currently involved in marketing its experimental mRNA vaccine with the relentless support of national governments.  Amply documented, barely reported by the media, numerous cases of  deaths and injury have occurred.

What is at stake is what you might call “C. Y. A.” namely,

“the bureaucratic technique of averting future accusations of policy error or wrongdoing by deflecting responsibility in advance” (William Safire, NYT,)

Extensive fraud and coverup prevail at the highest levels of government.

The “Green Light” to market the experimental mRNA vaccine was granted back in December 2020, despite the fact that according to the FDA, the vaccine is an “unapproved product”.

The FDA in its ambiguous statement has provided a so-called Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, namely “to permit the emergency use of the unapproved product, … for active immunization…” (see below)

Pfizer “Largest Health Care Fraud” 2009

Déjà Vu: Flash Forward to 2020-2021

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

The 2020-2021 mRNA vaccine violations far surpass the health care fraud committed by Pfizer Inc in 2009.

“Fraudulent marketing” is an understatement: The mRNA vaccine announced by Pfizer, Moderna Inc, Johnson and Johnson and Astrazeneka  is based on an experimental gene editing mRNA technology which has a bearing on the human genome.  The standard animal lab tests using mice or ferrets were not conducted.  Pfizer “went straight to human “guinea pigs.”

Human tests began in late July and early August 2020. “Three months is unheard of for testing a new vaccine. Several years is the norm.”

Our thanks to Large and JIPÉM

This caricature by Large + JIPÉM  explains our predicament:

Mouse No 1: “Are You Going to get Vaccinated”,

Mouse No. 2: Are You Crazy, They Haven’t finished the Tests on Humans”

“The plan to develop a vaccine is profit driven. It is supported by corrupt governments serving the interests of Big Pharma. The US government had already ordered 100 million doses back in July and the EU is to purchase 300 million doses. It’s Big Money for Big Pharma, generous payoffs to corrupt politicians, at the expense of tax payers.”

See Michel Chossudovsky, The 2020 Worldwide Corona Crisis: Destroying Civil Society, Engineered Economic Depression, Global Coup d’État and the “Great Reset” E-Book, February 26, 2021

So-called “emergency use” has been granted to Pfizer with a view to promoting a pharmaceutical product which is “experimental”, “unapproved” by the FDA and outright dangerous.

Legal Definitions are Turned Upside Down: The Transition from “Unapproved” to “Approved” 

• “unapproved” by the FDA,
• “permitted” (under emergency use) by the FDA
• and then “approved” by the US government’s health authorities
• resulting in numerous deaths and injuries.

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