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Ten years ago. March 18-19, 2011; This week we commemorate the beginning of the US-NATO led war on Syria. Our thoughts are with the people of Syria.

The US has no intention of going after the terrorists in Syria. The Al Qaeda affiliated terrorists continue to be  supported by Washington. 

This article recounts the 2017 Raqqa Exodus first published in November 2017.

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Defense Secretary James “Mad Dog” Mattis confirmed in May 2017 Washington’s resolve to annihilate the ISIS-Daesh terrorists:

“Our intention is that the foreign fighters do not survive the fight to return home to north Africa, to Europe, to America, to Asia, to Africa. We are not going to allow them to do so… (emphasis added, quoted in the BBC report entitled Raqqa’s Dirty Secret)

That was the “political narrative” of the Pentagon. The unspoken truth is that Uncle Sam had come to the rescue of the Islamic State. That decision was in all likelihood taken and carried on the orders of the Pentagon rather than the US State Department.

Also among these fighters were several senior Pakistani military and intelligence officers, who had been sent to the war theater by the Pakistani military. The presence of high-ranking Pakistani military and intelligence advisers in the ranks of Taliban/ Al Qaeda forces was known and approved by Washington.

President Bush had intimated: “We’re smoking them out. They’re running, and now we’re going to bring them to justice.” (see CNN, November 26, 2001). They were never smoked out. They were airlifted to safety.

On the orders of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the exodus (airlifting) of Al Qaeda fighters had been facilitated by US forces in liaison with the Pakistan military:

“The Administration ordered the US Central Command to set up a special air corridor to help insure the safety of the Pakistani rescue flights from Kunduz to the northwest corner of Pakistan”

… According to a former high-level American defense official, the airlift was approved because of representations by the Pakistanis that “there were guys- intelligence agents and underground guys-who needed to get out.” (Seymour Hersh, op cit)

In other words, the official story was: it was not our decision:  “we were tricked into it” by the Pakistani ISI.

Out of some 8000 or more men, 3300 surrendered to the Northern Alliance, leaving between 4000 and 5000 men “unaccounted for”. According to Hersh’s investigation, based on Indian intelligence sources, at least 4000 men including two Pakistani Army generals were evacuated. (Ibid)

The same sense of denial prevailed. US officials admitted, however, that

“what was supposed to be a limited evacuation apparently slipped out of control, and, as an unintended consequence, an unknown number of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters managed to join in the exodus.”  (quoted in Hersh op cit)

“Unintended evacuation” of Al Qaeda fighters?

 “Terrorists”  and “Intelligence Assets” 

Compare Seymour Hersh’s account in the “Getaway” out of Kunduz pertaining to the US sponsored evacuation of  hard core Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters to the “Escape” of ISIS-Daesh fighters out of the besieged city of Raqqa in Northern Syria.

The foreign and Pakistani Al Qaeda fighters were flown to North Pakistan, to the areas which were subsequently the object of US drone attacks. Many of these fighters were also incorporated into the two main Kashmiri terrorist rebel groups, Lashkar-e-Taiba (“Army of the Pure”) and Jaish-e-Muhammad (“Army of Mohammed”).

What is the next destination of the foreign fighters who have been evacuated out of Raqqa, with the support of the US Military?

To read the complete BBC report entitled Raqqa’s Dirty Secret,by Quentin Sommerville and Riam Dalati click here 

Ten Years ago. March 19, 2011 marks the commencement of the US-NATO led war on Libya which was conducive to the destruction of an entire country and the impoverishment of its population.

Today our thoughts are with the people of Libya.  

This article was originally published by Global Research in September 2011,  following the devastation triggered by seven months of intensive NATO bombings.

Today, Libya as a country and a nation state has been destroyed. Under Nuremberg, the leaders of the NATO member states involved in the war on Libya are war criminals.

What is disturbing is that this US-NATO led war against the people of Libya had been firmly endorsed by so-called “progressive” nongovernmental organizations in support of an Al Qaeda affiliated “Opposition”.

The intervention was justified under NATO’s mandate of “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P).

Prominent Western intellectuals tacitly endorsed the conduct of a so-called “humanitarian war” on Libya.

Michel Chossudovsky, March 20, 2021

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“There is no tomorrow” under a NATO sponsored Al Qaeda rebellion. 

While a  “pro-democracy” rebel government has been instated, the country has been destroyed.

Against the backdrop of war propaganda, Libya’s economic and social achievements over the last thirty years, have been brutally reversed:

The [Libyan Arab Jamahiriya] has had a high standard of living and a robust per capita daily caloric intake of 3144. The country has made strides in public health and, since 1980, child mortality rates have dropped from 70 per thousand live births to 19 in 2009. Life expectancy has risen from 61 to 74 years of age during the same span of years. (FAO, Rome, Libya, Country Profile,)

According to sectors of the “Progressive Left” which endorsed NATO’s R2P mandate:

“The mood across Libya, particularly in Tripoli, is absolutely —like there’s just a feeling of euphoria everywhere. People are incredibly excited about starting afresh. There’s a real sense of rebirth, a feeling that their lives are starting anew. (DemocracyNow.org, September 14, 2011 emphasis added)

The rebels are casually presented as “liberators”. The central role of Al Qaeda affilated terrorists within rebel ranks is not mentioned.

“Starting afresh” in the wake of destruction? Fear and Social Despair, Countless Deaths and Atrocities, amply documented by the independent media.

No euphoria…. A historical reversal in the country’s economic and social development has occurred. The achievements have been erased.

The NATO invasion and occupation marks the ruinous “rebirth” of Libya’s standard of living  That is the forbidden and unspoken truth:  an entire Nation has been destabilized and destroyed, its people driven into abysmal poverty.

The objective of the NATO bombings from the outset was to destroy the country’s standard of living, its health infrastructure, its schools and hospitals, its water distribution system.

And then “rebuild” with the help of donors and creditors under the helm of the IMF and the World Bank.

The diktats of the “free market” are a precondition for the instatement of  a Western style “democratic dictatorship “.

About nine thousand strike sorties, tens of thousands of strikes on civilian targets including residential areas, government buildings, water supply and electricity generation facilities. (See NATO Communique, September 5, 2011. 8140 strike sorties from March 31 to September 5, 2011)

An entire nation has been bombed with the most advanced ordnance, including uranium coated ammunition.

Already in August, UNICEF warned that extensive NATO bombing of Libya’s water infrastructure “could turn into an unprecedented health epidemic “ (Christian Balslev-Olesen of UNICEF’s Libya Office, August 2011).

Meanwhile investors and donors have positioned themselves. “War is Good for Business’. NATO, the Pentagon and the Washington based international financial institutions (IFIs) operate in close coordination. What has been destroyed by NATO will be rebuilt, financed by Libya’s external creditors under the helm of the “Washington Consensus”:

“Specifically, the [World] Bank has been asked to examine the need for repair and restoration of services in the water, energy and transport sectors [bombed by NATO] and, in cooperation with the International Monetary Fund, to support budget preparation [austerity measures] and help the banking sector back on to its feet [The Libyan Central bank was one of the first government buildings to be bombed]. Employment generation for young Libyans has been added as an urgent need facing the country.” (World Bank to Help Libya Rebuild and Deliver Essential Services to Citizens emphasis added)

Libya’s Development Achievements

Whatever one’s views regarding Moamar Gadaffi, the post-colonial Libyan government played a key role in eliminating poverty and developing the country’s health and educational infrastructure. According to Italian Journalist Yvonne de Vito,

“Differently from other countries that went through a revolution – Libya is considered to be the Switzerland of the African continent and is very rich and schools are free for the people. Hospitals are free for the people. And the conditions for women are much better than in other Arab countries.” (Russia Today, August 25, 2011)

These developments are in sharp contrast to what most Third World countries were able to “achieve” under Western style “democracy” and “governance” in the context of a standard IMF-World Bank Structural Adjustment program (SAP).

Public Health Care

Public Health Care in Libya prior to NATO’s “Humanitarian Intervention” was the best in Africa.

“Health care is [was] available to all citizens free of charge by the public sector. The country boasts the highest literacy and educational enrolment rates in North Africa. The Government is [was] substantially increasing the development budget for health services…. (WHO Libya Country Brief )

Confirmed by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), undernourishment was less than 5 %, with a daily per capita calorie intake of 3144 calories. (FAO caloric intake figures indicate availability rather than consumption).

The Libyan Arab Jamahiriya provided to its citizens what is denied to many Americans: Free public health care, free education, as confirmed by WHO and UNESCO data.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO): Life expectancy at birth was 72.3 years (2009), among the highest in the developing World.

Under 5 mortality rate per 1000 live births declined from 71 in 1991 to 14 in 2009
(http://www.who.int/countryfocus/cooperation_strategy/ccsbrief_lby_en.pdf)
 

Libyan Arab Jamahiriya General information

2009  Total population (000)  6 420

Annual population growth rate (%)  2.0

Population 0-14 years (%) 28

Rural population (%)  22

Total fertility rate (births per woman)  2.6

Infant mortality rate (0/00) 17

Life expectancy at birth (years)  75

GDP per capita (PPP) US$   16 502

GDP growth rate (%)  2.1

Children of primary school-age who are out of school  (%)  (1978) 2

Source: UNESCO. Libya Country Profile

Libyan Arab Jamahiriya (2009)

Total life expectancy at birth (years)   72.3
Male life expectancy at birth (years)   70.2
Female life expectancy at birth (years)  74.9
Newborns with low birth weight (%)  4.0
Children underweight (%)   4.8
Perinatal mortality rate per 1000 total births 19.0
Neonatal mortality rate  11.0
Infant mortality rate (per 1000 live births) 14.0
Under five mortality rate (per 1000 live births) 20.1
Maternal mortality ratio (per 10000 live births) 23.0

Source WHO http://www.emro.who.int/emrinfo/index.aspx?Ctry=liy  

Education

The adult literacy rate was of the order of 89%, (2009), (94% for males and 83% for females). 99.9% of youth are literate (UNESCO 2009 figures, See UNESCO, Libya Country Report)

Gross primary school enrolment ratio was 97% for boys and 97% for girls (2009) .
(see UNESCO tables at

http://stats.uis.unesco.org/unesco/TableViewer/document.aspx?ReportId=121&IF_Language=eng&BR_Country=4340&BR_Region=40525

The pupil teacher ratio in Libya’s primary schools was of the order of 17 (1983 UNESCO data), 74% of school children graduating from primary school were enrolled in secondary school (1983 UNESCO  data).

Based on more recent date, which confirms a marked increase in school enrolment, the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in secondary schools was of the order of 108% in 2002. The GER is the number of pupils enrolled in a given level of education regardless of age expressed as a percentage of the population in the theoretical age group for that level of education.

For tertiary enrolment (postsecondary, college and university), the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) was of the order of 54% in 2002 (52 for males, 57 for females).
(For further details see http://stats.uis.unesco.org/unesco/TableViewer/document.aspx?ReportId=121&IF_Language=eng&BR_Country=4340&BR_Region=40525

Women’s Rights

With regard to Women’s Rights, World Bank data point to significant achievements.

“In a relative short period of time, Libya achieved universal access for primary education, with 98% gross enrollment for secondary, and 46% for tertiary education. In the past decade, girls’ enrollment increased by 12% in all levels of education. In secondary and tertiary education, girls outnumbered boys by 10%.” (World Bank Libya Country Brief, emphasis added)

Price Controls over Essential Food Staples

In most developing countries, essential food prices have skyrocketed, as a result of market deregulation, the lifting of price controls and the eliminaiton of subsidies, under “free market” advice from the World Bank and the IMF.

In recent years, essential food and fuel prices have spiralled as a result of speculative trade on the major commodity exchanges.

Libya was one of the few countries in the developing World which maintained a system of price controls over essential food staples.

World Bank President Robert Zoellick acknowledged in an April 2011 statement that the price of essential food staples had increased by 36 percent in the course of the last year. (See Robert Zoellick, World Bank)

The Libyan Arab Jamahiriya had established a system of price controls over essential food staples, which was maintained until the onset of the NATO led war.

While rising food prices in neighbouring Tunisia and Egypt spearheaded social unrest and political dissent, the system of food subsidies in Libya was maintained.

These are the facts confirmed by several UN specialised agencies.

“Missile Diplomacy” and “The Free Market”

War and Globalization are intiricately related.  The IMF and NATO work in tandem, in liason with the Washington think tanks.

The NATO operation purports to enforce the neoliberal economic agenda. Countries which are reluctant to accept the sugar coated bullets of IMF “economic medicine” will eventually be the object of a R2P NATO humanitarian operation.

Déjà Vu? Under the British Empire, “gun boat diplomacy” was a means to imposing “free trade”. On October 5, 1850, England’s Envoy to the Kingdom of Siam, Sir James Brooke recommended to Her Majesty’s government that:

“should these just demands [to impose free trade] be refused, a force should be present, immediately to enforce them by the rapid destruction of the defenses of the [Chaopaya] river… Siam may be taught the lesson which it has long been tempting– its Government may be remodelled, A better disposed king placed on the throne and an influence acquired in the country which will make it of immense commercial importance to England” (The Mission of Sir James Brooke, quoted in M.L. Manich Jumsai, King Mongkut and Sir John Bowring, Chalermit, Bangkok, 1970, p. 23)

Today we call it “Regime Change” and “Missile Diplomacy” which invariably takes the shape of a UN sponsored “No Fly Zone”. Its objective is to impose the IMF’s deadly “economic medicine” of austerity measures and privatization.

The World Bank financed “reconstruction” programs of war torn countries are coordinated with US-NATO military planning. They are invariably formulated prior to onslaught of the military campaign…

Confiscating Libyan Financial Assets

Libya`s frozen overseas financial assets are estimated to be of the order of $150 billion, with NATO countries holding more than $100 billion.

Prior to the war, Libya had no debts. In fact quite the opposite. It was a creditor nation investing in neighboring African countries.

The R2P military intervention is intended to spearhead the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya into the straightjacket of an indebted developing country, under the surveillance of the Washington based Bretton Woods institutions.

In a bitter irony, after having stolen Libya’s oil wealth and confiscated its overseas financial assets, the “donor community” has pledged to lend the (stolen) money back to finance Libya’s post-war “reconstruction”.   Libya is slated to join the ranks of indebted African countries which have driven into poverty by IMF and the World Bank since the onsalught of the debt crisis in the early 1980s:

The IMF promised a further $35-billion in funding [loans] to countries affected by Arab Spring uprisings and formally recognized Libya’s ruling interim council as a legitimate power, opening up access to a myriad of international lenders as the country [Libya] looks to rebuild after a six-month war.  …

Getting IMF recognition is significant for Libya’s interim leaders as it means international development banks and donors such as the World Bank can now offer financing.

The Marseille talks came a few days after world leaders agreed in Paris to free up billions of dollars in frozen assets [stolen money] to help [through loans] Libya’s interim rulers restore vital services and rebuild after a conflict that ended a 42-year dictatorship.

The financing deal by the Group of Seven major economies plus Russia is aimed at supporting reform efforts [IMF sponsored structural adjustment] in the wake of uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East.

The financing is mostly in the form of loans, rather than outright grants, and is provided half by G8 and Arab countries and half by various lenders and development banks. (Financial Post, September 10, 2011,

http://www.truthseeker444.blogspot.com/

Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (Emeritus) at the University of Ottawa. He is the Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal and Editor of the globalresearch.ca website. He is the author of The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order (2003) and America’s “War on Terrorism” (2005). He is also a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His writings have been published in more than twenty languages.

“This is injustice, it is clear aggression, and it is uncalculated risk for its consequences on the Mediterranean and Europe…We are confronting Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, nothing more. What would you do if you found them controlling American cities with the power of weapons? Tell me how would you behave, so that I could follow your example?”

– Col Muammar Gaddafi, speaking to President Obama by letter in March 2011 [1]

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A French plane, one of twenty in the Libyan region, attacked and destroyed its first target at 1645 GMT on March 19, 2011. [2]

These were soon joined by British fighter jets and US cruise missiles.[3]

Framed as enforcing a No-Fly zone authorized by the UN Security Council, the targets of these attacks were predominantly tanks and armoured vehicles, at least according to a spokesperson for the French Defense Ministry. Within days, these fighting forces merged under the command of  NATO Allied Joint Force Command in Naples, along with the arms embargo against Libya under the name Operation Unified Protector.[4][5]

The coalition soon expanded to encompass nineteen other partners including Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Denmark, Greece, Italy, Jordan, the Netherlands, Norway, Qatar, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates. For seven months, according to Global Security, this crusade by these “Guardians of Humanitarianism” punched Libya with 26,500 sorties, including over 9,700 strike sorties. [6] 

According to Julien Teil, film-maker of the documentary film “The Humanitarian War,” the military action on the part of NATO was launched in response to an initiative of the Benghazi based Libyan League for Human Rights and their head  Soliman Bouchuiguir, accusing Colonel Muammar Gaddafi of human rights violations. 

This initiative led to a petition signed by 70 Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) demanding the U.S., EU, and the UN to: 

“mobilize the United Nations and the international community and take immediate action to halt the mass atrocities now being perpetrated by the Libyan government against its own people.”

This is what set in motion a process of military intervention under the pretext of the “Responsibility to Protect.”[7]

At the time Gadaffi was killed gruesomely by counter-revolutionaries, Libya had the highest GDP per capita on the continent, with fewer people below the poverty line than in the Netherlands.

Today, according to a study from the United Nations Office for Community Health Affairs, Libya is suffering a major humanitarian crisis. In a population with 7.4 million people, 1.3 million are in need of humanitarian assistance, with 700,000 of them needing food assistance.[8][9]

On the 10th anniversary of the launching of this war, the Global Research News Hour will attempt to decipher the REAL reasons for the invasion of Libya, taking a more detailed look at what has happened to it since, and what this could mean for the future of the country, and the African continent.

In our first half hour, we hear back from a long-time correspondent, Abayomi Azikiwe. He breaks down the true motives of the assault, the historical legacy of Muammar Gaddafi, and how the shattering of Libya will impact the broader African community.

In our second half, we have another long-timer joining us…Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya! The man was in Libya during the height of the war almost ten years ago. Following a replay of a former interview conducted by CKUW colleague Scott Price, we hear a more recent conversation in which he reflects on the humanitarian forces driving the war, the treatment of the Black African migrant situation, and of his cherished memories of the people he met there, and his positive outlook for the future.

Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire, and has appeared as a commentator on several media outlets. He is also a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is an interdisciplinary sociologist and an award-winning author and geopolitical analyst, and author of The Globalization of NATO (Clarity Press) and a forthcoming book The War on Libya and the Re-Colonization of Africa. He is a Sociologist and Research Associate at the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), a contributor to the Strategic Culture Foundation (SCF) and a member of the Scientific Committee of Geopolitica, Italy.

(Global Research News Hour Episode 309)

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Notes:

1. www.ndtv.com/world-news/libya-us-and-allies-continue-air-assault-on-gaddafis-forces-450533
2. www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-12795971
3. ibid
4. ibid
5. NATO No-Fly Zone over Libya Operation UNIFIED PROTECTOR, NATO; www.nato.int/nato_static/assets/pdf/pdf_2011_03/20110325_110325-unified-protector-no-fly-zone.pdf
6. www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/unified-protector.htm
7. mises.org/library/humanitarian-wars-and-their-ngo-foot-soldiers
8. www.telesurenglish.net/analysis/Libya-Before-and-After-Muammar-Gaddafi-20200115-0011.html
9. Humanitarian Needs Overview: Libya (December 2020), UNOCHA; www.telesurenglish.net/analysis/Libya-Before-and-After-Muammar-Gaddafi-20200115-0011.html

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).

***

During the 20th century Cold War with the Soviet Union, there were US Soviet experts who were concerned that the Cold War was partly contrived and, therefore, needlessly dangerous. Stephen Cohn at Princeton University, for example, believed that exaggerating the threat was as dangerous as underestimating it.  On the other hand, Richard Pipes at Harvard believed that the CIA dangerously underestimated Soviet military power and failed to grasp Soviet strategic intentions.

In 1976 President Gerald Ford and CIA Director George H.W. Bush commissioned an outside panel of experts to evaluate the CIA’s National Intelligence Estimates. This group was known as Team B.  Under Pipes’ leadership Team B created the perception that the US faced a dangerous “window of vulnerability.”

In conventional wisdom, in order to close this window of vulnerability President Reagan began an American arms buildup.  On this point conventional wisdom is wrong. The Reagan military buildup was as much hype as reality.  Its purpose was to bring the Soviets to the negotiating table and end the Cold War in order to remove the threat of nuclear war. 

Reagan’s supply-side policy had fixed the problem of worsening trade-offs between employment and inflation, thus making an arms buildup possible.  In contrast, Reagan regarded the Soviet economy as broken and unfixable.  He reasoned that a new arms race was more than the Soviets could afford, and that the threat of one would bring the Soviets to the table to negotiate the end of the Cold War.

The Soviet Union collapsed when hardline communists, convinced that Gorbachev was endangering the Soviet Union by giving up too much too quickly before American intentions were known, placed President Gorbachev under house arrest. 

The Yeltsin years (1991-1999) brought the dismemberment of the Soviet Empire and was a decade of Russian subservience to the United States.  

Putin came to power as the American neoconservatives were girding up to establish US and Israeli hegemony in the Middle East. As General Wesley Clark told us, seven countries were to be overthrown in 5 years. The American preoccupation with the Middle East permitted Putin to throw off American overlordship and reestablish Russian sovereignty.  Once Washington realized this, the American establishment turned on Putin with a vengence.  

Stephen Cohen, Jack Matlock (Reagan’s ambassador to the Soviet Union), myself and a few others warned that Washington’s refusal to accept Russian independence would reignite the Cold War, thus erasing the accomplishment of ending it and resurrecting the specter of nuclear war. But Washington didn’t listen.  Instead, Cohen and I were put on a list of “Russian agents/dupes,” and the process of trying to destabalize Putin began.  In other words, once an American colony always an American colony, and Putin became the most demonized person on earth.

Today (March 17) we had the extraordinary spectacle of President Biden saying on ABC News that President Putin is a killer, and “he will pay a price.”  This is a new low point in diplomacy.  It does not serve American interests or peace.  

Yesterday a CIA-Homeland Security report was declassified. The “report” is blatant propaganda. It alleges that Russia interfered in the 2020 election with the purposes of “denigrating President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party, supporting former President Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process, and exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the US.” “Russiagate” is still with us despite the failure of the three-year Mueller investigation to find a scrap of evidence.

We desperately need a new Team B like the one the CIA commissioned in 1976 to check on itself.  But in those days discussion and debate was possible.  Today they are not.  We live in a world in which only propaganda is permitted.  There is an agenda. The agenda is regime change in Russia.  No facts are relevant.  There will be no Team B to evaluate whether the Putin threat is exaggerated.

The anti-Russian craze that has been orchestrated in the US and throughout the Western world leaves the US in an extremely dangerous situation.  Americans and Europeans perceive reality only through the light of American propaganda.  American diplomacy, military policy, news reporting, and public undersranding are the fantasy creations of propaganda.

The Kremlin has shown amazing forbearance of Washington’s inanities and insults.  It was the Democrat Hillary Clinton who called President Putin the “new Hitler,”  and now Democrat Biden calls Putin “a killer.”  American presidents and presidential candidates did not speak of Soviet leaders in these terms. They would have been regarded by the American population as far too deranged to have access to the nuclear button.

Sooner or later the Kremlin will understand that it is pointless to respond to demonization with denials.  Yes, the Russians are correct. The accusations are groundless, and no facts or evidence is ever provided in support of the accusations.  Sooner or later the Kremlin will realize that the purpose of demonizing a country is to prepare one’s people and allies for war against it.

Washington pays no attention to Maria Zakharova and Dmitry Peskov’s objections to unsubstaniated accusations.

When “sooner or later” is, I do not know, but the Russians haven’t reached that point.  The Kremlin reads the latest allegations as an excuse for more sanctions against Russian companies and individuals. This reading is mistaken.  Washington’s purpose is to demonize Russia and its leadership in order to set Russia up for regime change and, failing that, for military attack.

In the United States Russian Studies has degenerated into propaganda.  Recently, two members of the Atlantic Council think tank, Emma Ashford and Matthew Burrows, suggested that American foreign policy could benefit from a less hostile approach to Russia. Instantly, 22 members of the think tank denounced the article by Ashford and Burrows.

This response is far outside the boundaries of the 20th century Cold War.  It precludes any rational or intelligent approach to American foreign policy.  Sooner or later the Kremlin will comprehend that it is confronted by a gangster outfit of the criminally insane.  Then what happens?

*

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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.

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102
Print Edition: $10.25 (+ shipping and handling)
PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

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

Reviews

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

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

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

A Decade Ago: US-NATO Invasion of Libya and Its Consequences

By Shane Quinn, March 19 2021

Ten years ago, on 19 March 2011, the United States and its military arm NATO unleashed a sustained bombardment against Libya, where Colonel Muammar Gaddafi had been in charge for over four decades.

Has Biden’s Description of Putin as a Killer Finally Dispelled Kremlin Hopes for Good Relations?

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, March 19 2021

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded to Biden’s unacceptable characterization of Russia’s president as a killer by stating that Biden had made it clear that “he doesn’t want to normalize relations.”

Permanent Warfare and the “War On Terror”

By Mark Taliano, March 19 2021

The “War on Terror” is a fraud. Washington supports the very same terrorists that it claims to be fighting. Washington’s wars are anti-humanitarian and anti-democratic, and they are all based on criminal war lies and public deceptions. This needs to end.

Green Passes and Dark Inequalities: The Push for COVID Immunity Passports

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, March 19 2021

Sensible, ideal, wonderful – if you happen to be in the European Union. This is the air of confidence surrounding the March 17 proposal for a digital COVID immunity passport, or what is officially being called the Digital Green Certificate.

Biden’s Tough-guy Flexing at ‘Soulless Killer’ Putin Would be Funny if the Consequences Weren’t So Serious

By Scott Ritter, March 19 2021

Joe Biden’s effort to label Vladimir Putin as a “soulless killer” is the latest in a series of fact-free allegations that define US-Russian relations today. The real aim is to make Biden look like the strong leader he isn’t.

Norwegian Experts Say Deadly Blood Clots Were Caused by the AstraZeneca COVID Vaccine

By Ida Irene Bergstrøm, March 19 2021

“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.

The Engineered Destruction and Political Fragmentation of Iraq

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, March 19 2021

The objective is to engineer a civil war in Iraq, in which both sides are controlled indirectly by US-NATO. The scenario is to arm and equip them, on both sides, finance them with advanced weapons systems and then “let them fight”.

US Crimes against the People of Iraq, Vietnam, Nicaragua, … : Denial, Selective Perception and Military Atrocities.

By Felicity Arbuthnot, March 19 2021

It was under the watch of his father, George Bush, Snr., that in 1991, thousands of Iraqi conscripts were buried alive in southern Iraq…

“We Don’t Do Body Counts”: The Iraq Death Toll 15 Years After the US Invasion

By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, March 19 2021

March 19 2021 marks 18 years since the U.S.-U.K invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the American people have no idea of the enormity of the calamity the invasion unleashed. The US military has refused to keep a tally of Iraqi deaths.

“The Russians Are Coming, Not Again…”: Biden Regime Imposes More Illegal Sanctions on Russia

By Stephen Lendman, March 19 2021

On Wednesday, Biden regime hardliners escalated already heightened tensions with Russia. More sanctions were imposed on the phony pretext of poisoning Navalny.

The Puppet Masters: Is There Really a Deep State?

By Philip Giraldi, March 19 2021

One problem with the theory about total global dominance through espionage is the sheer logistics of it all. Directing political and economic developments in two hundred nations simultaneously must require a lot of space and a large staff.

New Cold War Is Built on Humanitarian Interventionist Lies and Dismissal of Actual War Crimes

By Danny Haiphong, March 19 2021

A revolutionary’s first commitment is to the truth. But deciphering the truth has become a difficult task in the United States, not least because the misinformation apparatus is both enormous and tied directly to the imperatives of imperialist state itself.

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).

***

As a former intelligence officer, I find it amusing to read articles in the mainstream media that blithely report how the latest international outrages are undoubtedly the work of CIA and the rest of the U.S. government’s national security alphabet soup. The recurring claim that the CIA is somehow running the world by virtue of a vast conspiracy that includes the secret intelligence agencies of a number of countries, using blackmail and other inducements to corrupt vulnerable politicians and opinion makers, has entered into the DNA of journalists worldwide, frequently without any evidence that the current crop of spies is capable to doing anything more complicated than getting out of bed in the morning.

One problem with the theory about total global dominance through espionage is the sheer logistics of it all. Directing political and economic developments in two hundred nations simultaneously must require a lot of space and a large staff. Is there a huge office hidden in Langley? Or the Pentagon? Or in the White House West Wing itself? Or is it in one of the secure facilities that have been popping up like mushrooms just off of the Dulles Toll Road in Herndon Virginia?

To provide evidence that intelligence agencies extend their tentacles just about everywhere, the other claim that is nearly always made is that all former spooks are part of the conspiracy, as once you learn the secret handshake to join CIA, NSA or the FBI you never stop being “one of them.” Well, that might be true in some cases but the majority of former spooks are quite happy to be “former,” and one might also observe that many voices in the anti-war movement, such as it is, come from intelligence, law enforcement or military backgrounds. Of course, the conspiracy theorists will explain that away by claiming that it is a conspiracy within a conspiracy, making the dissidents little better than double agents or gatekeepers who are put in place to make sure that the opposition doesn’t become too effective.

Given the fact that how the so-called American “Deep State” actually gets together and plots is unknown, one would have to concede that it is an organization without much structure, unlike the original Turkish Deep State (Derin Devlet), which coined the phrase, that actually met and had centralized planning. I would suggest that the problem is one of definitions and it also helps to know how the national security state is structured and what its legitimate mission is. The CIA, for example, employs about 20,000 people, nearly all of whom work in various divisions that collect information (spying), analysis, technology and also are divided into staffs that work transnationally on issues like terrorism, narcotics, and nuclear proliferation. The overwhelming majority of those employees have political views and vote but there is a consensus that what their work entails is apolitical. The actual politics of how policy comes out the other end is confined to a very small group at the top, some of whom are themselves political appointees.

To be sure, one can and probably should oppose the policies of regime change that the Agency is engaged in worldwide but there is one important consideration that has to be understood. Those policies are set by the country’s civilian leadership (president, secretary of state and national security council) and they are imposed on CIA by its own political leadership. The Agency does not hold referenda among its employees to determine which foreign policy option is preferable any more than soldiers in the 101^st Airborne are consulted when they receive orders to deploy.

Nearly all current and former intelligence officers that I know are, in fact, opposed to the politics of U.S. global dominance that have been pretty much in place since 9/11, most particularly as evidenced by the continued conflict with Russia, the ramping up of aggression with China, and the regime change policies relating to Syria, Iran and Venezuela. Those officers often consider the invasions and exercise of “maximum pressure” to have been failures. Those policies were supported by truculent language, sanctions and displays of military readiness by the Trump Administration but it now appears clear that they will all be continued in one form or another under President Joe Biden, likely to include even more aggression against Russia through proxies in Ukraine and Georgia.

The officers engaged in such operations also observe that regime change has basically come out of the closet since 2001. George W. Bush announced that there was a “new sheriff in town” and the gloves would be coming off. Things that the intelligence agencies used to do are now done right out in the open, using military resources against Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria while the biggest change of all, in Ukraine in 2014, was largely engineered by Victoria Nuland at the State Department. The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was also active in Russia supporting opposition parties until the Kremlin forced them to leave the country.

So, it is fair to say that the Deep State is not a function of either the CIA or the FBI, but at the same time the involvement of John Brennan, James Clapper and James Comey in the plot to destroy Donald Trump is disturbing, as the three men headed the Agency, the Office of National Intelligence and Bureau. They appear to have played critical leadership roles in carrying out this conspiracy and they may not have operated on their own. Almost certainly what they may have done would have been either explicitly or implicitly authorized by the former President of the United States, Barack Obama, and others in his national security team.

It is now known that President Barack Obama’s CIA Director John Brennan created a secret interagency Trump Task Force in early 2016. Rather than working against genuine foreign threats, this Task Force played a critical role in creating and feeding the meme that Donald Trump was a tool of the Russians and a puppet of President Vladimir Putin, a claim that still surfaces regularly to this day. Working with Clapper, Brennan fabricated the narrative that “Russia had interfered in the 2016 election.” Brennan and Clapper promoted that tale even though they knew very well that Russia and the United States have carried out a broad array of covert actions against each other, including information operations, for the past seventy years, but they pretended that what happened in 2016 was qualitatively and substantively different even though the “evidence” produced to support that claim is weak to nonexistent.

I would, nevertheless, argue that their behavior, though it exploited intelligence resources, was not intrinsic to the organizations that they led, that the three of them were part and parcel of the real Deep State, which consists of a consensus view on running the country that is held by nearly all of the elements that together make up the American Establishment, with its political power focused in Washington and its financial center in New York City. It should come as no surprise that those government officials who are complicit in the process are often personally rewarded with highly paid sinecure jobs in financial services, which they know nothing about, when they “retire.”

The danger posed by the Deep State, or, if you choose, the Establishment, is that it wields immense power but is unelected and unaccountable. Even though it does not actually meet in secret, it does operate through relationships that are not transparent and as the media is part of it, there is little chance that its activity will be exposed. One notes that while the Deep State is mentioned frequently in the national media there has been little effort to identify its components and how it operates.

Viewed in that fashion, the argument that there exists a cohesive group of power brokers who really run the country and are even able to coopt those who are ostensibly dedicated to keeping the country safe becomes much more plausible without denigrating the many honest people who are employed by the national security agencies. The Deep State conspirators don’t have to meet to plot as they all understand very well what has to be done to maintain their supremacy. That is the real danger. The Biden Administration will surely demonstrate over the next several months that the Deep State is still with us and more powerful than ever as it operates both inside and outside the government itself. And the real danger comes from the Democrats now in charge, who are if anything more given to playing with consensus politics that involve phony threats than were the Republicans.

*

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

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).

***

“When a Soviet submarine gets stuck on a sandbar off the coast of a New England island, its commander (Theodore Bikel) orders his second-in-command, Lieutenant Rozanov (Alan Arkin), to get them moving again before there is an international incident. Rozanov seeks assistance from the island locals, including the police chief (Brian Keith) and a vacationing television writer (Carl Reiner), while trying to allay their fears of a Communist invasion by claiming he and his crew are Norwegian sailors.”

That was in 1966. and The Russians. “They are at it Again…” 

***

On Wednesday, Biden regime hardliners escalated already heightened tensions with Russia.

More sanctions were imposed on the phony pretext of poisoning Navalny.

Ignored were heroic efforts by Russian doctors to save him after falling ill last summer from what was diagnosed as a metabolic disorder en route to Moscow.

No poisoning occurred. Yet the long ago debunked Big Lie refuses to die.

When Washington imposes sanctions on invented adversaries and enemies, phony pretexts are easy to concoct.

If Russia wanted Navalny eliminated — a political nobody with scant public support — he’d have been done away with long ago.

Moscow doesn’t operate this way, longstanding US/Western/Israeli practice it abhors.

At most, Navalny is a minor irritant too insignificant to matter.

He’s now imprisoned through late 2023 for lawbreaking related to embezzling millions of dollars for personal use.

Biden’s Commerce Department said it’s blocking the export of  technology, software, and related items to Russia for national security reasons, a meaningless action, saying:

The department “is committed to preventing Russia from accessing sensitive US technologies that might be diverted to its malign chemical weapons activities (sic).”

Left unexplained is that so-called “sensitive US technologies” were at least largely blocked for export to Russia long ago, especially anything related to weaponry.

Bilateral trade is minimal. Russian technology serves the country’s needs.

For many items related to national security and other applications, it’s superior to what’s available in the West.

When repeated ad nauseam, Big Lies take on a life of their own — no matter how convincingly debunked.

According to the Biden regime’s commerce department, inventing its own false reality:

“By deploying illegal nerve agents against dissidents (sic), both inside and outside its borders (sic), the Russian government has acted in flagrant violation of its commitments under the Chemical Weapons Convention and has directly put its own citizens and those of other countries at mortal risk (sic).”

The above applies to US war on humanity at home and abroad — worlds apart from how Moscow operates.

More sanctions are coming. They’ll only serve to further exacerbate bilateral relations already in tatters.

According to White House spokesperson Jen Psaki:

“(T)here is an ongoing review and while we have announced the key conclusions from an intelligence community assessment on the poisoning of Alexei Navalny (sic), there is an ongoing review of other areas where we have ongoing concerns (sic),” adding:

“Our relationship will look different” from Trump’s.

“We will be direct (sic). We will speak out on areas where we have concerns (sic), and certainly the Russians will be held accountable for the actions that they have taken (sic).”

In response to the latest Biden regime sanctions, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said they widened the breach between both sides, making normalization of bilateral relations impossible as things now stand.

A Final Comment

In response to escalated US war on Russia by other means, Putin, in part, turned the other cheek instead of sharply slamming what’s unacceptable and hostile, saying:

“As for the statement by my American counterpart, we really are, as he said, personally acquainted.”

“What would I answer him? I would tell him: Stay healthy. I wish him good health,” adding:

“The US and the US leadership…seek to have certain relations with us, but only in areas that are of their own interest and only on their conditions.”

“Although they think we are the same, we are different people.”

“We have different genetic, cultural, and moral codes.”

“They will have to live with that despite all the attempts to hinder our development.”

“Regardless of sanctions and insults, they will have to live with that.”

On Thursday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stressed that Biden regime hardliners reject normalization with Moscow, adding:

“We will proceed on that basis.”

Over the next few days, Russian officials will decide how they’ll deal with Biden regime hardliners ahead.

The only language they understand is toughness, what I’ve stressed many times before.

Good faith diplomatic outreach to Washington fails when tried.

Showing weakness when strength is needed assures betrayal whenever hollow US promises are made.

Russia and other nations ill-treated by Washington should respond by giving its ruling authorities a taste of their own medicine — short of waging war.

Nothing else registers with its hardliners. Nothing else has a chance to work.

When the US perceives weakness in an adversary, it takes full advantage.

Russia is too soft in its dealings with Washington.

It assures worsening bilateral relations, not the other way around.

It’s notably been this way since Obama/Biden replaced democratic rule in Ukraine with Nazi infested fascist tyranny.

Since that time, Russian/US bilateral relations steadily deteriorated.

Since Biden replaced Trump in January, they nearly reached a breaking point.

Perhaps it’s coming in the weeks or months ahead.

Notably, Russian lower house State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin slammed Biden’s hostile remarks about Putin, calling him “a killer,” saying:

“Biden has insulted the citizens of our country with his statement.”

“This is a tantrum that comes from powerlessness.”

“Putin is our president. Attacking him is an attack on our country.”

Trump while in office “maintained rhetoric appropriate to the level of head of state.”

Biden’s statement…is beyond common sense. This is no way for the leader of” any nation to behave toward a foreign counterpart.

Based on what’s happened with more unlawful US sanctions on Russia coming ahead, bilateral relations most likely will deteriorate further.

Chances for improving them appear nil.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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

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

My two Wall Street books are timely reading:

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

https://www.claritypress.com/product/how-wall-street-fleeces-america/

“Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity”

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

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

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).

***

US foreign policy isn’t pretty. Rhetoric suggesting otherwise is subterfuge.

Hegemons like the US don’t negotiate. They demand.

Longstanding US geopolitical aims are all about seeking dominion over planet earth, its resources and populations — wanting other nations worldwide subservient to its will.

Nations free from its control are targeted for regime change, forever wars by hot and/or other means its favored tactics.

Diplomatic outreach by independent countries to the US for improved relations are exercises in futility.

Promises made by its policymakers are hollow, betrayal following time and again.

In response to Biden calling Vladimir Putin soulless, a killer, Russia’s leader proposed a “discussion” with his counterpart on live television.

“Without any delays and directly in an open, direct discussion,” he added.

“I don’t want to put this off for long.”

“(W)e could do it tomorrow or Monday. We are ready at any time convenient for the American side.”

Asked on Thursday if he’ll agree to discuss bilateral issues live on television with Putin, Biden ducked the question.

With bilateral relations more dismal than at any time in modern memory and sinking to new depths, the likelihood of dominant US Russophobes turning a page for improved relations with Moscow is virtually nil.

Washington considers Russia a mortal enemy — for its sovereign independence, not for any threats to US security.

None exist from Russia, China, Iran or other countries.

When claimed otherwise, they’re invented, a pretext for unbridled militarism and belligerence.

The US considers China its top national security threat — for its growing prominence on the world stage, its economic strength, heading toward surpassing America’s, perhaps in a decade or less.

Beijing prioritizes cooperative relations with other countries, polar opposite how the US operates.

Last December, Trump’s DNI John Ratcliffe falsely called China “the greatest threat to America today (sic), and the greatest threat to democracy and freedom worldwide since World War II (sic),” adding:

“Beijing intends to dominate the US and the rest of the planet economically, militarily and technologically (sic).”

The above sentiment is bipartisan in the US, both right wings of its war party militantly hostile toward China and other nations free from their control.

Sino/US talks in Anchorage, Alaska continue for a second day on Friday.

Discussing them on Thursday, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said the following:

“The US side proposed to have this dialogue with China, and China accepted this proposal, a constructive gesture showing our sincerity towards resuming China-US dialogue and exchange and improving and developing China-US relations.”

“The Chinese side will make clear its positions and concerns on relevant issues during this dialogue.”

“All topics that can be discussed are on the table.”

“On issues that bear on China’s sovereignty, security and core interests, no one shall expect China to make any compromise or trade-offs.”

“China is determined and resolute in safeguarding its core interests.”

“It is a fool’s errand that serves no purpose at all to try to set the tempo for the dialogue through ‘megaphone diplomacy,’ or to gang up on China.”

While engaging in good faith diplomatic outreach with the US, an effort to improve bilateral relations, Beijing knows how time and again its best intentions for cooperative relations with Washington aren’t good enough.

Ahead of talks, Tony Blinken repeated false claims about detention of millions of Uyghurs in Xinjiang by China, along with expressing “deep concerns with actions by China (on) Hong Kong (and) Taiwan (sic).”

He slammed nonexistent Chinese cyberattacks on the US (sic) and “economic coercion toward our allies (sic)” — invented issues he raised in bilateral talks.

It made for frosty discussions in Anchorage on Thursday, perhaps more of the same Friday.

In response on Thursday, China’s Central Committee official/Foreign Affairs Director Yang Jiechi reportedly accused the US of brandishing a big stick and exerting financial supremacy to pressure other nations into compliance with its will, adding:

“The US has no competence whatsoever to take a patronizing tone with China. It won’t work on us.”

By raising phony national security concerns, Washington threatens cooperative international relations.

Supported by international law, China strongly objects to US interference in its internal affairs.

Yang also slammed US human rights abuses and its “cold war mentality.”

Calling for “no confrontation, no conflict, mutual respect and win-win cooperation with the United States,” Yang and other Chinese officials know that dominant US hardliners have other aims in mind in dealings with the world community of nations.

Separately on Thursday, an unnamed member of China’s delegation in Anchorage said the following:

“The Chinese mission has arrived at the (US) invitation in Anchorage with sincere intentions to hold strategic dialogue with the United States and was preparing (for talks) in line with the protocol earlier agreed on by both parties,” adding:

“However, the US party has significantly gone beyond the time limit during the opening speech resorting to baseless attacks and accusations concerning the Chinese foreign and internal policy, thus provoking a conflict.”

“This is not in line with the ethics of the treatment of the guests and violates the diplomatic protocol.”

“The Chinese party has made a harsh response.”

Before talks began, Beijing’s envoy to Washington Cui Tiankai said the Chinese side does not have high expectations “or fantasies” about improving bilateral relations from two days of talks, adding:

On all things related to China’s core interests, including its sovereign rights and territorial integrity, they’ll be no compromises with the US.

A Final Comment

On Friday, China’s official People’s Daily broadsheet the People’s Daily slammed Biden’s State Department for “slander(ing) the decision of the National People’s Congress (NPC) of China to improve the electoral system of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), and threatened to implement financial sanctions against Chinese officials,” adding:

“Such practice of hegemony and interventionism seriously violated international law and the norms governing international relations, and interfered in China’s domestic affairs.”

“It fully revealed the vicious intention of the US to disrupt Hong Kong and hinder China’s stability and development.”

“No interference or slander can shake China’s resolution to safeguard its national sovereignty, security, (and) development interests…”

“The US had better quit political threatening as soon as possible.”

Bilateral relations are frosty. They’re more likely to worsen ahead than improve.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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

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

My two Wall Street books are timely reading:

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

https://www.claritypress.com/product/how-wall-street-fleeces-america/

“Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity”

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

***

You’ve heard of them, no doubt, the U.S. rulers who can’t rule too well and are always getting surprised by events or fed bad advice by their underlings.  Their “mistakes” are always well intentioned.  They stumble into wars through faulty intelligence.  They drop the ball because of bureaucratic mix-ups. They miscalculate the perfidy of the elites whom allegedly they oppose while ushering them into the national coffers out of necessity since they are too big to fail.  They never see the storm coming, even as they create it.  Their incompetence is the retort to all those nut cases who conjure up conspiracy theories to explain their actions or lack thereof.  They are innocent.  Always innocent.

They and their media mouthpieces offer Americans, who are most eager to accept, what Lutheran pastor and anti-Nazi dissident Dietrich Bonhoeffer, executed at age thirty-nine by Hitler, called cheap grace: “Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves.  Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance…”

These incompetents are, in the immortal words of the New York newspaper columnist Jimmy Breslin, “The Gang Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight.”

Except they could and can.

They’ve actually shot a lot of people, here and abroad.  It’s one of their specialties.  But they mean well.  They screw up sometimes, but they mean well.  They care, even while they kill millions with their guns and bombs. But they have their followers.

As another dissident thirty-nine-year-old pastor, executed by the American state, Martin Luther King, Jr. said: “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

Mainstream Media Pseudo-Debates

The U.S. rulers have their defenders.  Most are corporate mainstream journalists whose jobs are to defend the ruling elites of both political parties.  They will criticize across the political divides depending on their organizations’ political leanings at the moment. But they will never attack the fundamentals of the oligarchic war system since they are part of it. Their jobs depend on it.  So CNN and The New York Times will obsessively attack Trump while Fox News will do the same to Obama or Biden. This is a game.

These days such massive media conglomerates are seemingly starkly divided and basically serve as adjuncts of one political party or the other.  They are essentially political propagandists for either the Democrats or the Republicans and have abandoned any pretense to be anything else.  They speak to their respective audiences in self-enclosed vacuums. They promote the divide that runs down the middle of the USA, a divide they helped to create.

Some have argued that this radical division of the media turf is because of economic and business factors; that the media organizations and their “journalists” have seen this strategy as the path to greater profits. There is probably some truth in this.  But it is a small part.

For all sides of the corporate media serve the same overarching political function: to divide and conquer the population; to set the so-called left against right; middle America against the east and west coasts; white against black; working class against middle-class; men against women; husbands against wives, etc. To keep people, who in reality should be allies, fighting with each other.  It is a classic strategy of divide-and-conquer that is carried out by the mainstream media pursuant to their unstated mandate. It is not an accident and has been conducted with a vengeance in recent years.

And crucially, it is anchored in the false premise of the myth of left vs. right with a reasonable center somewhere between.  Such a center has never existed. While left and right might once have been useful categories, they have long since outlived their usefulness. They now just serve to engender pseudo-debates.

Pseudo-debates are not new but they are highly effective.  They are debates based on false premises. In this case, the premise is that the massive corporate media conglomerates are not part of the same system of control and containment of the population, but are genuine opponents in the battle for truth and democracy.  Accept this premise and you have entered into endless debates leading nowhere.  It is a classic method of intelligence agencies to sow uncertainty and confusion and to have people following Alice down the rabbit hole, tumbling and tumbling into an endless void as they argue continually about nothing.[1]

Dr. E. Martin Schotz has brilliantly explicated this trick in the case of the assassination of President Kennedy (“Certainly no honest person could ever accept the ‘single bullet theory’.”) where people are still debating a false mystery almost sixty years after the fact.  He writes:

The lie is that there is a mystery to debate. And so we have pseudo-debates. Debates about meaningless disputes, based on assumptions which are obviously false….Perhaps many people think that engaging in pseudo-debate is a benign activity. That it simply means that people are debating something that is irrelevant. This is not the case. I say this because every debate rests on a premise to which the debaters must agree, or there is no debate. In the case of pseudo-debate the premise is a lie. So in the pseudo-debate we have the parties to the debate agreeing to purvey a lie to the public. And it is all the more malignant because it is subtle. The unsuspecting person who is witness to the pseudo-debate does not understand that he is being passed a lie. He is not even aware that he is being passed a premise. It is so subtle that the premise just passes into the person as if it were reality. This premise—that there is uncertainly to be resolved—seems so benign. It is as easy as drinking a glass of treated water. But the fact remains that there is no mystery except in the minds of those who are willing to drink this premise. The premise is a lie, and a society which agrees to drink such a lie ceases to perceive reality. This is what we mean by mass denial.[2]

The entire corporate media ideological spectrum operates under the umbrella of oligarchic control, something that is not new, just more egregious with every passing day. More in your face. The corporate media serve as the mouthpieces for those oligarchs, but they try to convince their separate audiences that this isn’t so. They give people enemies – false ones. Objects to hate.

But just like symptoms are not the disease, they give people a focus upon which to rivet their attention while the disease goes unattended. As with a drug addict, the taking of drugs is not the fundamental problem, although it becomes one and might kill you.  The problem is why one takes drugs; what is it that is one feels needs to be tranquilized and silenced.  Or, as the writer William Saroyan once flippantly said regarding the claim that smoking causes cancer: “You may tend to get cancer from the thing that makes you want to smoke, not from the smoking itself.”

The corporate mainstream media are the drug that serves to hide the core truth of an oligarchic cancerous warfare state drunk on power and using propaganda to play both sides. Everyone has become pawns in their game.

A recent example serves to illustrate a method in their madness.  There is a new, ongoing Spotify podcast – “Renegades: Born in the USA” – featuring Barack Obama and the singer Bruce Springsteen in conversation. Two rebels – it’s of course ridiculous – but there it is.  Two super rich celebrities stroking each other’s egos in an upper class setting.  One a singer, who rose to prominence out of nowhere as the voice of the small-town beleaguered working class; the other, a mixed-race politician who rose to prominence out of nowhere from a family background redolent of the CIA. Two icons of popular and political culture crossing over with a smooth patina of mixed-arts bullshit telling listeners they we need to return to the good old days when political centrism served the great American ideal that they both share.  People are supposed to take this conversation between “buddies” seriously, as the two sit mask-less with their feet seemingly touching at a time when people are told to wear masks and avoid close contact with those outside their households.  As Bruce strums his guitar, any half-way sentient person would realize he was being played, even while the meaning of the song was so twisted that he was enjoying it.

Left-wing Gatekeepers

Then, if we switch from the mainstream corporate media to alternative voices, especially prominent ones on the left, we notice something even stranger.

I think most readers would agree that the two seismic events of the last twenty years are the current COVID- 19 issue and the September 11, 2001 attacks.  The latter, not only because of all the victims that died that day, but for how it led to so much death and destruction around the world, the endless war on terror, the invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc., the ensuing loss of basic liberties and privacy via the Patriot Act, etc. The former for obvious current reasons of death and further loss of basic liberties under the lockdowns as governments throughout the world institute unprecedented  measures of control, etc.  Clearly these two events stand out over the decades. They bookend twenty years of massive U.S. war crimes, the growth of the national security complex, an obscene increase in wealth for the wealthiest, and the loss of privacy and civil liberties for all.

And as everyone knows, September 11^th and COVID-19 have resulted in great controversies and much debate because of their serious implications and the obvious questions about the official story lines raised by many respectable writers and researchers of varying political perspectives.  At the very least, one would expect that leftist/liberal critics of the so-called Deep State and the machinations of the elite’s wars and propaganda would have engaged in these discussions about these two seminal events or written analytic articles about them.

But for a core group of prominent left/liberal critics, these two subjects have been avoided like they are of no importance. No debates, no discussions, no analyses – simply silence, as if they didn’t happen and there was nothing to discuss. Cases closed: the government has spoken. Let us move on to more important matters.

But that is wrong.  For example, in about a dozen closely reasoned books of his own and with other international researchers, David Ray Griffin has raised innumerable questions that show that the official September 11 story is full of holes.

Canadian writer Graeme MacQueen has written a devastating exposé of the linked anthrax attacks that followed September 11, showing clearly that they were a U.S. government operation.  I myself have raised significant questions about what I call the linguistic mind-control associated with the attacks in “Why I Don’t Speak of 9/11 Anymore.”  The dissident literature is enormous.

A few of Griffin’s points are illustrative of the many anomalies in the official account. There are so many, and not just from Griffin but from other researchers, that  I will mention just a few about the building collapses, what Griffin calls “miracles of science.”  The contradictions about the hijackers are also voluminous.

Here are a few such scientific miracles:

The Twin Towers and WTC 7 were the only steel-framed high-rise buildings ever to come down without explosives or incendiaries.  The Twin Towers, each of which had 287 steel columns, were brought down solely by a combination of airplane strikes and jet-fuel fires.  WTC 7 was not even hit by a plane, so it was the first steel-framed high-rise to be brought down solely by ordinary building fires.  These World Trade Center buildings also came down in free fall – the Twin Towers in virtual free fall, WTC 7 in absolute free fall – for over two seconds.

Although the collapses of the WTC buildings were not aided by explosives, the collapses imitated the kinds of implosions that can be induced only by demolition companies.   In the case of WTC 7, the structure came down symmetrically (straight down, with an almost perfectly horizontal roofline), which meant that all 82 of the steel support columns had to fall simultaneously, although the building’s fires had a very asymmetrical pattern.  The South Tower’s upper 30-floor block changed its angular momentum in midair.  This 30-floor block then disintegrated in midair.

I could go on and on with examples.  The simple point is that there are so many absurdities in the official story that to ignore them is an act of intellectual and moral betrayal.  Anyone who has closely studied the government’s 9/11 Commission Report knows it is highly fictional.

The same is true for dissenting voices on the COVID-19 issue.  Three publications in particular have published an enormous amount of well-reasoned critiques of the official version of the COVID-19 narrative: Global Research, Off-Guardian, and Children’s Health Defense.  All present many articles by serious writers who raise innumerable questions and make irrefutable points about this matter.

And again, the point is not simple agreement with the dissenters’ arguments, but the need to engage their critiques.  Here too the silence is resounding, for it says “we buy the official account.”

Consider these few:

The man who invented the test used to determine the so-called COVID positive test results, the Nobel Prize winning chemist, Kary Mullis, has said that the test cannot do that, it is not a diagnostic test, and therefore all the test results are meaningless.

Additionally, there is serious doubt that the virus called SARS-CoV-2 causes a disease called COVID 19 since there is no evidence that the virus has ever been isolated.

Assuming for argument’s sake, however, that the PCR test can detect  a specific virus, even Anthony Fauci himself, and the World Health Organization (one hour after Biden was sworn into office), have both said that the PCR test in order to have any accuracy must be performed at cycles below 35 thresholds while for a year those tests have been done at thresholds much higher, resulting in vast numbers of false positives.  Cycle thresholds are the level at which the PCR test is said to detect a sample of the COVID-19 virus.

Furthermore, eminent voices such as Michel Chossudovsky and Peter Koenig at Global Research, Robert Kennedy, Jr. at Children’s Health Defense, and Catte Black and Kit Knightly at Off-Guardian have for a long time been vociferously objecting to the official narrative with a vast amount of additional analyses involving the consequences of the wide-spread lockdowns.  Such dissidents have had to fight against an organized campaign of censorship that should raise the alarm for anyone who cares about truth.

For leftists who remain silent on these fundamental issues, I can assure them that these critiques of the official explanations of September 11, 2001 and COVID-19 are not right-wing conspiracies but are the work of leftists digging deep for truth.

It is therefore more than odd that certain left/liberal writers completely avoid these issues.  One must assume, therefore, that they accept the official explanations for these events, just as this coterie of  leftist/liberal critics dismiss the voluminous and detailed critiques of the Warren Commission and the assassination of President Kennedy.  From their silence one can assume that these matters are of no importance because the authorities have given us the truth.

One such deceased left-wing writer, who can stand in for the group of living writers I allude to, was the well-known and often brilliant journalist Alexander Cockburn, the founder of Counterpunch Magazine.  In Cockburn’s case, however, and to his credit even though he had no idea what he was talking about regarding September 11, 2001 and the JFK assassination, he did not remain silent but expressed his bile in ways he thought piercing but which made him appear quite ignorant.  Cockburn had a sharp tongue and liked to ridicule anyone who disagreed with him.  He excoriated all who questioned the JFK assassination or September 11 as “conspiracy nuts,” “lunatics” involved with “kookery.”

Echoing the CIA’s conspiracy meme, his name calling was offensive and his ignorance of these matters extraordinary.  But he was a star leftist, an untouchable. Few wished to criticize him.  He started with the assumption that government stupidity, incompetence, and screw-ups allow these terrible events to happen, and then without a shred of evidence, concluded that is why they happened.  All evidence and logic to the contrary, he derisively dismissed as the work of fools. Only Cockburn and a government that admits mistakes were made were right.  His arguments on these matters were pseudo-debates based on a premises he conjured out of thin air.

He was a master incompetent of the incompetence theory, one that many prominent leftists follow today, such as a recent passing comment by one of them on the COVID-19 matter as a mishandling by the ruling elite.  The implicit assumption being that the basic government and mainstream media tale is correct and all would be far better if the Trump administration hadn’t screwed up. Nothing further is forthcoming or necessary. Let us proceed on the assumption that the official account is true and that the government’s  inept response is the problem. Failure of leadership.  Government negligence.  Incompetence.

And anyone who even harbors a suspicion that there may be more to the story is engaging in conspiratorial thinking.  Of course this is the same response given to those who for twenty years have researched and questioned the government’s account of September 11, 2001.  The 9/11 omission story. The fictional account that will dominate the news as the twentieth anniversary approaches this September.  Will any of those liberal/leftists who have remained silent all these years let it pass as truth?  I suspect so but hope not.

The Need for Dialogue

So we have pseudo debates on one hand and silence on the other when what is required is not self-censorship but open critical dialogue on these fundamental matters. “There comes a time when silence is betrayal,” said Martin Luther King from the pulpit of Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 when he condemned the Vietnam War and broke his own silence in opposition to many of his advisers. A year later to the day, like JFK, he was murdered by the warfare state he condemned. Like Senator Robert Kennedy two months later.  They were killed by very competent people.

Dr. Martin E. Schotz wrote twenty-six years ago in History Will Not Absolve US that those he had in mind for their defense of the Warren Commission were “such individuals as Noam Chomsky, Alexander Cockburn, the editors of The Nation magazine, and, if everyone remembers, I.F. Stone as well.  I think the positions of these individuals are very important because in their surprising (to us) dishonesty and willingness to cooperate with the warfare state in covering up the crime, there is obviously something to be learned.”

Yes, there is. It is time for all people of good will to stop finding excuses for the ruling elites, whether through incompetence theories or the silent refusal to publicly engage the government and its critics on the most important issues of our time – September 11, 2001 and COVID-19.  Those Schotz names above are heroes for many on the liberal/left today who follow in their stead.  It’s as though they have found it necessary to mimic their teachers’ lessons.  Better logic would have them analyzing the premises of September 11 and COVID-19.  Start with the basics.  Be explicit.  Tell us why you are silent.

It’s time to graduate from this school of denial.

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Notes

[1] https://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/HWNAU/letterToVJS.html#partIa

[2] https://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/FalseMystery/COPA1998EMS.html#s2

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***

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded to Biden’s unacceptable characterization of Russia’s president as a killer by stating that Biden had made it clear that “he doesn’t want to normalize relations.”  In the Kremlin does hope burn eternal?  It has been obvious to me for many years that Washington does not want normal relations with Russia or any country. Washington wants a hegemonic relationship with Washington as the hegemon and Russia as the obedient puppet as Russia was during the Yeltsin decade.

Just consider the past four years of Trump’s presidency.  Trump declared his intention of normalizing relations with Russia and for this reason his presidency was destroyed by the American Establishment.

There is no prospect of Russia having normal relations with the US and its Empire.  The destruction of Trump’s presidency and the theft of his reelection is proof that the American Establishment will not tolerate a president who intends a normal diplomatic relationship with a sovereign Russia. This one intention was all it took to destroy Trump’s presidency.  Trump was immediately confronted with three years of orchestrated “Russiagate,” followed by two attempted impeachments of Trump on false grounds, and his reelection was stolen. The American judiciary refused to even look at the overwhelming evidence of the stolen election.  Did the Kremlim really believe that Biden was going to repeat Trump’s self-destruction and make friends with Russia?

Despite all the clarity in Biden’s accusation, backed up by White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki that “the Russians will be held accountable,”  Russian Foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova reaffirmed Russia’s interest in “preventing the irreversible degradation” of Russian bilateral ties with the US.

Amazing.  It seems the Kremlin is incapable of acknowledging reality.  In 2016 Hillary Clinton, who was expected to be the next US president, called Putin the “new Hitler.”  How does this differ from Biden calling Putin a killer? It is official Western policy to demonize Putin and Russia. The demonization of Putin and Russia  has been underway for years.

Putin’s forbearance is remarkable. He treats these calculated insults as if they are water off a duck’s back.  But Putin’s response does not serve peace or Russian interests.

***

Dear President Putin,

Please permit me to offer an explanation of the threat that you and the entire world face.  Washington and the American foreign policy establishment hates your guts.  They hate you because you restored Russia’s sovereignty and, thereby, put a powerful country in the way of American hegemony.  Remember the Wolfowitz Doctrine (1992):

“Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.”

You, President Putin and you alone, are [viewed by Washington] responsible for the “re-emergence of a new rival . . . sufficient to generate global power.”  Therefore, you are an unpardonable constraint on American hegemony, and “our first objective” is to remove the constraint you place on American hegemony.

This neoconservative policy remains in place. No alternative has come forward. Recently, two Russian analysts at the hegemonic Atlantic Council suggested that Washington pursue a less hostile approach to Russia.  They were immediately denounced by the other 22 members of the council’s foreign policy experts. See this.

It could not be stated any clearer that Russia is in Washington’s way.  Does the Kremlin lack people familiar with the English language?

Whoever is advising the Kremlin is an idiot.  Every time the Kremlin replies to insults and false accusations from Washington, the Kremlin hands to the entire Western media—a propaganda ministry, the likes of which has never before existed on earth and can be found only in science fiction such as George Orwell’s 1984—the opportunity to repeat the charge:  “Today the Kremlin spokesman denied that Putin is a killer.”

If I may offer my advice, President Putin, explain to Peskov and to Zakharov not to respond to accusations and insults.  Ignore them.  Say nothing. Stop trying to appeal to Washington and its NATO puppets.  The fact that Russia believes facts are relevant is seen by the West as a sign of great weakness.  Facts don’t matter in the West.  Russiagate proved that for you.  

Go about your business where you are welcomed and regarded as a potential protector against Washington, such as Iran.  Form an explicit mutual defense pact with China.  Not even criminally insane Washington will take on Russia and China.  Add Iran and the Taliban.  The best way to keep Islamic terrorism out of the Russian Federation is to befriend them and turn them against Washington.  Beat Washington at its own game.  And by all means, stop permitting Israel and Washington from attacking Syrian territory.  Until you show Russia’s power, you will not be taken seriously. The longer you are not taken seriously, the greater the likelihood that threats against Russia will mount until nuclear war arrives.  Obviously, Russia is not taken seriously with American Democrat leaders describing the President of Russia as the “new Hitler” and “a killer.”  No American president dared to speak of a Soviet leader, where there actually was justification for the charge, in such terms.

I offer this advice not because I am pro-Russia and anti-America, but because I worked with President Reagan to achieve the goal of ending the Cold War and its threat of nuclear Armageddon.  People can go on all they want about climate change and Covid, but nuclear war is an end times occurance.

The American neoconservative intent to acquire world hegemony will bring nuclear war unless you turn Russia’s back to the decadent, corrupt, and dying West and protect with decisive force the interests of Russia and her friends.  Washington denies you friends in Europe.  Find them elsewhere.  The peace of the world is at stake.

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This article was originally published on PCR Institute for Political Economy.

Paul Craig Roberts has had careers in scholarship and academia, journalism, public service, and business. He is chairman of The Institute for Political Economy. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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***

The hallmark of any institution is the ability to withstand ironic dysfunction.  The United States under the stewardship of that unintentional comic George W. Bush made John Bolton ambassador to the United Nations.  Bolton had loathed the body, wishing for it to implode under its own weight.  The parliamentary chamber of the European Union, between 1999 and 2020, hosted that most anti-EU of proponents, the bilious Nigel Farage.  Hatred for European institutions did not stop the little Englander from drawing a salary and being rather cavalier with his expenses.

The Organisation for Economic Development is the latest institution to encounter its dose of fair perversion. For the first time in its history, its secretary general will be from outside the Americas and Europe.  In terms of birth, Mathias Cormann is Belgian.  But in terms of pedigree, he is a veteran of Australian conservative politics, having been a cabinet minister and, it should be said, powerbroker, in the Liberal Party.

Very little chance was given to Cormann in his bid.  The field of applicants seemed too varied, too strong.  His abysmal record on climate change policy was seen as the most obvious handicap.  “Governments are not stupid, they have highly intelligent officials and ambassadors who work out what is really going on and advise them,” claimed Bill Hare, climate change scientist and chief executive of Climate Analytics.  

But the former finance minister kept making it through the rounds.  Lobbying efforts on his behalf were unsparing.  Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison rang numerous world leaders.  Meetings were held between senior officials and ambassadors.  Candidates began withdrawing their bids. 

Swiss candidate Philipp Hildebrand, whose pitch focused on climate change, pulled out, citing lack of support.  The former EU trade commissioner, Cecilia Malmström, fell at the final hurdle.  She had also promised an aggressive approach towards climate change, declaring that she would use her post to globalise Europe’s carbon-tax scheme on high-emission imports.  This was a bit much even for the new climate conscious administration in Washington.

Of the 37 ambassadors to the OECD, a few recorded the view that it had been a “very close race”.  France and the UK decided on Cormann but Malmström was unable to secure a unified bloc of voters.  Christopher Shorrock, the UK representative, told the Financial Times that both candidates had “broad support” but a straw poll showed “Cormann as the candidate with the most support”. 

Sending Cormann to the OECD could be seen as a Trojan horse gesture on the part of Australia’s Morrison government.  As a front bencher in right wing administrations, climate change was treated as a secondary concern.  Suggestions to turn his adopted country towards the goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2050 were denigrated as the musings of extremists.   

The Australian Greens leader, Adam Bandt, was almost desperate in trying to convince each of the ambassadors with a vote not to appoint him.  His letter from last November to the voting bloc documented various highlights of Cormann’s time in parliament.  He had voted to “repeal Australia’s successful carbon price” in 2014.  He had attempted to abolish the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Australian Renewal Energy Agency.  “As finance minister, he tried to abolish the very same green finance bodies he will no doubt be promoting as evidence of his green credentials for the job.”

The OECD itself has reproached Australia’s climate change policies.  In a 2019 report, the organisation notes Australia’s “progress in decoupling the main environmental pressures from economic growth” but that it remains “one of the most resource- and carbon-intensive OECD economies”.  The country was on track to meet its 2020 climate target but needed to “intensify efforts to reach its Paris Agreement goal of reducing GHG emissions (including emissions from land use change and forestry) by between 26% and 28% below its 2005 levels by 2030.” 

Cormann’s lobbying exercise, one well aided by the tax-payer funded services of a Royal Australian Air Force jet, chose to focus on other matters.  Here was a European connected to the Asia-Pacific.  He was keen to be a “consensus” candidate.  If needed, he would waffle about the green agenda.  During his campaign, he proposed that the OECD “provide important global leadership to drive ambitious and effective action on climate change” and “help economies around the world achieve global net-zero emissions by 2050”.

In a statement released after his selection thanking the organisation, Cormann made the mandatory salute to environmental policy, putting the case that the OECD will continue to “drive and promote global leadership on ambitious and effective action on climate change to achieve global net-zero emissions by 2050.”  But it was merely one of a range of other objectives: maximising the economic recovery in the wake of the pandemic, reaching multilateral understanding on digital taxation and, as ever, the promotion of “market-based policies and a rules-based international order”.  

His vision statement similarly talks of the need to “get to zero net emissions as soon as possible.  Climate policy responses will increasingly need to factor into long-term planning.”  Not exactly the sort of language he was known for when a member of the Australian government.

The narrative of a climate change vandal turned green advocate failed to convince the environmental lobby that campaigned against Cormann as a viable choice.  On being notified of Cormann’s appointment, Greenpeace’s international executive director Jennifer Morgan was aghast.  “We have little confidence in Mr Cormann’s ability to ensure the OECD is a leader in tackling the climate crisis when he himself has an atrocious record on the issue, including opposition to carbon pricing.”

It is unlikely that the new secretary general will be able to do much in the way of redirecting climate change policy.  The consensus, if it can be called that, is increasingly towards decarbonising the economy even as COVID-19 recovery is pursued.  Whether the OECD continues being relevant with Cormann at the helm is the pressing question.  Till an answer is provided, activists such as Hare will just have to accept that governments can be monumentally stupid.

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

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***

The “War on Terror” is a fraud. Washington supports the very same terrorists that it claims to be fighting. Washington’s wars are anti-humanitarian and anti-democratic, and they are all based on criminal war lies and public deceptions. This needs to end.

Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard described the war on Syria in these words:

“There are two things you need to address in Syria. One is a regime change war that was first launched by the United States in 2011, covertly led by the CIA. That is a regime change war that has continued over the years, that has increased the suffering of the Syrian people and strengthened terrorist groups like al Qaeda and ISIS because the CIA was using American taxpayer dollars to provide arms and training equipment to these terrorist groups to get them to overthrow the government.

So that is a regime change war that we should not have been waging.” (1)

More recently, Congresswoman Gabbard denounced not only the criminal war against Syria, but also the unilateral, criminal economic embargo imposed on Syrians:

“I am glad to hear that some of my former colleagues in Congress are speaking out against the recent unconstitutional airstrikes in Syria, but they’re ignoring the bigger issue, the regime change war the United States continues to wage in Syria, using al-Qaida, al-Nusra terrorists as our proxy ground force and who now occupy and control the city of Idlib, imposing Sharia law and cleansing the area of most Christians and religious minorities. The Biden administration continues to use our military to illegally occupy northeastern Syria to, quote, take the oil as Trump so crassly but honestly put it, violating international law.

A modern day siege of draconian embargo and sanctions similar to what the Saudi U.S. alliance employed in Yemen is causing death and suffering for millions of innocent Syrians, depriving them of things like food, medicine, clean water, energy, warm and making it impossible for the Syrian people to try to begin to rebuild their war torn country.” (2)

Not only does the aforementioned economic embargo collectively punish all Syrians, but it also serves to empower ISIS, al Qaeda, and SDF proxies.

In a recent interview with Richard Medhurst, investigative reporter Vanessa Beeley explains that whereas Washington is imposing sanctions on the Syrian people, it is NOT imposing sanctions on al Qaeda, ISIS and SDF (all Washington proxies) inside Syria. Furthermore, all Western “humanitarian” aid (sic), she says, goes to al Qaeda. (3)

Western-supported terrorist-controlled areas in Syria have always been anti-democratic. It is not a secret. It is openly proclaimed.

As Western leaders demonize Russia and China, and promise more permanent warfare, they are extracting vast sums of tax dollars from their own people, who are being increasingly impoverished and oppressed themselves.

The money being spent to support terrorism, and to destroy countries and peoples, should be spent on pro-Life agendas, not pro-war, pro-Death agendas.

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Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017. Visit the author’s website at https://www.marktaliano.net where this article was originally published.

Notes

(1) Kudos to Tulsi Gabbard for Telling The Truth. Lest We Forget … – Mark Taliano

(2) Thank you Tulsi Gabbard for Condemning Washington’s on-going support for al Qaeda and affiliated Terrorists. – Mark Taliano

(3) Washington Supports al Qaeda and ISIS / Richard Medhurst Interviews Vanessa Beeley – Mark Taliano

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Sensible, ideal, wonderful – if you happen to be in the European Union.  This is the air of confidence surrounding the March 17 proposal for a digital COVID immunity passport, or what is officially being called the Digital Green Certificate. 

The Digital Green Certificate is actually a bundle of three: vaccination certificates stating the brand of vaccine used, data and place of inoculation and number of doses administered; negative test certificates (either a rapid antigen test or a NAAT/RT-PCR test); and medical certificates for those who have recovered from COVID-19 in the last 180 days.

The measure is discrimination made sound, preference made prominent.  The essential requirement to obtain such a pass is evidence that you have been vaccinated by a jab with a vaccine approved by the European Medicines Agency.  But the European Commission did append a qualification to this requirement.  Member states could decide whether to accept vaccines that the EMA had yet to approve.  Not in itself reassuring, given the varied approaches European states have taken to the international vaccine market.

Such administrative and bureaucratic impositions are the stuff of nightmares for ethicists and philosophers.  For those in economics, business and management, it is an eminently sensible idea that will enable people to move within Europe, preferably in time for summer. 

The director of Eagle Travel, David Reculez, put the case for the defence.  “For us, the travel agencies, the new certificate is really a good hope because it will definitely help people to travel again.”  People wanted to travel in a safe way without being hampered by “hard rules or quarantine”. 

Countries with tourist-heavy economies – Greece, Spain and Croatia, for instance – are enthused.  On February 23, Greece’s Digital Governance Minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis announced the use of vaccination passports.  Agreements have been struck with Israel, Cyprus and Serbia to enable a generous flow of vaccinated residents this summer.  Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has had the ear of the EU President Ursula von der Leyen, pushing for a unified EU position on the matter, despite his country’s separate bilateral efforts.

France, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium are, to various degrees, opposed and sceptical.  France’s minister of state for tourism, Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne thought “the idea of restricting movement to only people who are vaccinated” a “premature” debate given that only “4 to 5% of the European populace had been vaccinated.”  The country’s minister for European Affairs Clément Beaune found it “shocking, while this vaccination campaign is still underway in Europe, that there would be more rights for some people than for others.  This is not our conception of protection and access to vaccines.”

A number of health practitioners and bioethicists hold similar concerns.  Sarah Chan of the Usher Institute for Population Health Sciences and Informatics in Edinburgh makes a convincing case for the prosecution.  “I think vaccine passports have the potential to be unnecessarily divisive.  It’s likely to lead to negative consequences, particularly in being unfair and creating inequalities.”

In February, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that “there are still critical unknowns regarding the efficacy of vaccination” including combating variants of SARS-CoV-2; the duration of protection following vaccination; the timing of booster doses and whether vaccination offered protection against asymptomatic infection. 

Prioritising vaccinations for travel “could result in inadequate supplies of vaccines for priority populations considered at high risk of severe COVID-19 disease.”  To introduce “a requirement of vaccination as a condition for travel has the potential to hinder equitable global access to a limited vaccine supply and would be unlikely to maximize the benefits of vaccination for individual societies and overall global health.”

We can already see the green pass concept deployed in Israel.  The incentive to do so is clear.  “With the green pass,” encourages the voiceover of an advertisement promoting the idea, “doors simply open in front of you … We’re returning to life.” 

The country has been using an app to show who has been fully inoculated against coronavirus or those who have recovered from infection.  For both vaccinated individuals and recovered coronavirus patients, the pass is valid till June 6, 2021. It acts as a form of exclusive access, a mark of approval should you wish to go to concerts, theatres, gyms and hotels.  Hoteliers such as Armin Grunewald, whose establishment can be found near the Sea of Galilee, told the Guardian that, “People were looking happy and liberated”. 

Cryptographers and students of information security were less merry.  The Ramzor app has been blighted by problems since it was launched.  In the view of computer scientist Orr Dunkelman, based at Haifa University, it unnecessarily reveals information such as the date a person recovered from COVID-19 or received a vaccine.  It also employs an old encryption library susceptible to security breaches.  Ran Bar Zik, software columnist for Haaretz, goes so far as to call it “a catastrophe in the making,” suggesting a paper vaccination form instead.

In February, the Knesset approved a law allowing the Health Ministry to provide the name, national identification number, phone number and address of any citizen who can be vaccinated but has not received a jab, to a range of authorities.  These include the Education Ministry and the Welfare Ministry.  At the time of its passage, Tamar Zandberg of the Meretz party suggested that, “Disclosing such information is a slippery slope, and damage’s people’s privacy.” 

An uncomfortable spectre is unfolding.  While paperwork certifying good health has been a feature of transport and travel – the WHO’s Yellow card showing certified vaccinations for such infections as cholera, plague and typhoid being a most known example – COVID-19 green certificates are another matter.  Epidemiologist Christopher Dye and sociologist Melinda C. Mills, writing in Science, remark that, “The greatest risk is that people for whom vaccination is unacceptable, untested, inaccessible, or impossible are denied access to goods and services.”  They consider the various instances where inequity can manifest: ethnic minorities reluctant to take the jab; a lack of data on vaccine efficacy for people at risk (pregnant women for instance); unreachable, undocumented migrants; the digital technological divide; and eligibility requirements.

In a global sense, the unvaccinated in the COVID-19 age risk becoming the great modern unwashed, derided or ignored, socially and politically excluded.  The effect is analogous to depriving people of passports, alienating them from citizenship citing biomedical grounds.  Dye and Mills are optimists confident that such passports can “be guided by exemplary science, appropriate technologies, and fair use for all.”  But as with previous categories of the invisible and the undocumented, verifiable vaccination passes loom as rigid hierarchies of compliance, surveillance and division. 

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

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To manufacture consent for its own constant aggressions the US claims its competitors are guilty of even greater crimes – sheer inventions that never happened.

A revolutionary’s first commitment is to the truth. But deciphering the truth has become a difficult task in the United States, not least because the misinformation apparatus is both enormous and tied directly to the imperatives of imperialist state itself. Whatever separation that existed between the military industrial complex and the U.S. corporate media is a thing of the past.

U.S. imperialism has spent much of the last decade gradually escalating a New Cold War with China and the media has manufactured consent for each and every one of its aggressive policies. A new Gallup poll revealed that 80 percent of the U.S. public  possess a negative opinion of China. Only Iran and the DPRK, two of the most villainized nations of the U.S. propaganda machine, are viewed with more disdain among Americans.

The U.S. public is bombarded with anti-China media headlines from across the political spectrum. Humanitarian interventionist lies represent the most dangerous form of misinformation currently fueling the U.S.’s New Cold War. Most prominent is the fable that a “genocide” is being committed against Muslims in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

This month, CNN published a report  from the Newslines Institute that claims to independently verify “genocide” in Xinjiang for the first time. The report offered no revelations beyond claims that have already been regurgitated for several years by dubious sources such as Radio Free Asia  and Adrian Zenz , a far-right Christian fundamentalist who believes it is his God-given mission to take down the Communist Party of China.

The Newsline Institute is itself a dubious source of information. The head of the Washington-based think tank, Ahmed Alwani , is a former advisor to the U.S. African Command. It should be noted that the U.S. African Command was a leading force in the U.S.-NATO overthrow of Libya in 2011—an intervention which relied upon the same Muslim Brotherhood-backed proxies linked to Alwani. Managing Editor Robin Blackburn  is a former editor for Stratfor, a private intelligence firm known as the “Shadow CIA.”

“The head of the Newsline Institute is a former advisor to the U.S. African Command.”

Whether it is the tens of millions of dollars that the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has poured into the World Uyghur Congress  or the unknown sums flowing from military contractors  to the coffers of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), it is clear that the sources peddling humanitarian interventionist narratives in the U.S. corporate media are far from trusty worthy. This hasn’t stopped the Joe Biden administration from endorsing the “genocide” narrative for the purposes of rebranding the New Cold War.

While some believed Biden would reduce tensions with China, the temperature of the New Cold War has risen in recent weeks following the latest militarist maneuvers of new administration. Earlier this month, 27.4 billion USD was requested by the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command for an “anti-China missile network”  that would run along key islands on China’s border such as Okinawa, Taiwan, and the Philippines. Biden joined the anti-China “Quad” alliance of Japan, India, and Australia on March 12th for the first international summit of his tenure as U.S. president. The alliance was given new life under the Trump administration after more than a decade of inactivity. That Biden would choose the “Quad” as his first summit  sends a clear message that the U.S.-led New Cold War on China will continue under the pretext of strengthening alliances and addressing “humanitarian” concerns.

“The temperature of the New Cold War has risen following the latest militarist maneuvers of new administration.”

Humanitarian interventionism renders the U.S. empire’s maneuvers mundane to the passive observer. The truth, however, is that humanitarian interventionism masks the actual war crimes committed by the United States and its imperial lackies. Repeated claims of “genocide” in China or “chemical weapons” in Syria are held to a far higher level of import than the verifiable genocide being committed against the Palestinians by the U.S.’s top ally in Israel or the tens of thousands of Venezuelans who have died  from the impact of U.S. sanctions. Not one minute in the U.S. press is spent on the millions of deaths produced from the quarter century-long invasion of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by U.S.-sponsored regimes in Rwanda and Uganda or the tens of millions dead or displaced in the aftermath of the U.S.-led invasions of Libya and Syria beginning in 2011.

It would still be too simple to characterize humanitarian interventionism as a mere cover for war crimes in service of U.S. hegemony. The mixture of humanitarianism with the act of war itself oozes of American exceptionalism. The U.S. empire is assumed to be the pinnacle of civilization in possession of a deep capacity to bring about enlightenment even through the most violent of methods. A common sense is developed where there is nothing in the empire’s track record, past or present, which can arouse scrutiny of its humanitarian ambitions. U.S. hegemony is neither desired nor opposed; it just is.

Behind the illusion of strength rests a foundation of systemic decay. Humanitarian interventionism not only rebrands war crimes as human rights operations but also erases the true motivations behind them. The U.S. has grown accustomed to pursuing humanitarian wars in moments when its interests are threatened. In 2014, Obama intensified U.S. support for violent rightwing opposition figures  and sanctions  against Venezuela once it became clear that the death of Hugo Chavez would not mark the end of the Bolivarian Revolution. The Syrian government has been accused multiple times of using chemical weapons on civilians  since 2016 despite being in the most favorable position to defeat U.S. and other foreign-backed proxies since the war began over a decade ago.

Enter China. China has contained the COVID-19 pandemic and is the only major economy posting positive growth amid a global depression. Furthermore, the instability that once wracked China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region has ceased to exist thanks to the efforts of the government in curbing terrorism and alleviating poverty. Stability and growth have allowed China to move forward on its plans to develop a massive publicly financed global trade network through the Belt and Road Initiative .

Calls for humanitarian interventionism have grown louder as the U.S.’s decline continues to run parallel to China’s rise on the world stage. Whether the New Cold War turns into a hot war will not be determined by the U.S.’s restraint in the realm of politics. History has proven that the U.S. empire is built to destroy. Rather, the question of war and peace will be determined by how much grassroots opposition can be developed against the bogus humanitarian narratives driving the lust for U.S. interventionism in the 21st century.

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Danny Haiphong is a contributing editor to Black Agenda Report and co-author of the book “American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: A People’s History of Fake News- From the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror.” Follow his work on Twitter @SpiritofHo and on YouTube as co-host with Margaret Kimberley of Black Agenda Report Present’s: The Left Lens. You can support Danny at www.patreon.com/dannyhaiphong

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“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.

“The reason for the condition of our patients has been found”, chief physician and professor Pål Andre Holme announced to Norwegian national newspaper VG today.

Holme led the work to find out why three health workers under the age of 50 were hospitalized with serious blood clots and low levels of blood platelets after having taken the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine. One of the health workers died on Monday.

The experts have worked on a theory that it was in fact the vaccine which triggered and unexpected and powerful immune response – a theory they now believe they have confirmed.

“Our theory that this is a powerful immune response which most likely was caused by the vaccine has been found. 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 to VG.

“Nothing but the vaccine can explain why”

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.

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 affected health workers all came into the hospital with a very rare condition:

• They had acute pain
• They had blood clots in unusual places, such as their stomachs and brains
• In addition, they had bleedings and low levels of platelets

EMA expected to conclude later today

The Norwegian Medicines Agency does not wish to comment on the conclusions from Oslo University Hospital.

“We have to look at the results first, I don’t want to comment on this now”, says Medical Director Steinar Madsen to NTB, The Norwegian News Agency.

The Safety Committee of the European Medicines Agency are expected to conclude on the matter later today, and Madsen says he awaits their results.

AstraZeneca also declines to comment the conclusion of the Norwegian experts.

“We await the decisions of the EMA later today before we will comment on this”, Media Relations Director Christina Malmberg Hägerstrand says to NTB.

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Featured image: “We have the reason. Nothing but the vaccine can explain why these individuals have had this immune response”, says professor and chief physician Pål Andre Holme. (Photo by Stian Lysberg Solum / NTB)

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This article was originally published in March 2018.

March 19 2021 marks 18 years since the U.S.-U.K invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the American people have no idea of the enormity of the calamity the invasion unleashed. The US military has refused to keep a tally of Iraqi deaths. General Tommy Franks, the man in charge of the initial invasion, bluntly told reporters, “We don’t do body counts.” One survey found that most Americans thought Iraqi deaths were in the tens of thousands. But our calculations, using the best information available, show a catastrophic estimate of 2.4 million Iraqi deaths since the 2003 invasion.

The number of Iraqi casualties is not just a historical dispute, because the killing is still going on today. Since several major cities in Iraq and Syria fell to Islamic State in 2014, the U.S. has led the heaviest bombing campaign since the American War in Vietnam, dropping 105,000 bombs and missiles and reducing most of Mosul and other contested Iraqi and Syrian cities to rubble.

An Iraqi Kurdish intelligence report estimated that at least 40,000 civilians were killed in the bombardment of Mosul alone, with many more bodies still buried in the rubble.  A recent project to remove rubble and recover bodies in just one neighborhood found 3,353 more bodies, of whom only 20% were identified as ISIS fighters and 80% as civilians. Another 11,000 people in Mosul are still reported missing by their families.

Of the countries where the U.S. and its allies have been waging war since 2001, Iraq is the only one where epidemiologists have actually conducted comprehensive mortality studies based on the best practices that they have developed in war zones such as Angola, Bosnia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Guatemala, Kosovo, Rwanda, Sudan and Uganda. In all these countries, as in Iraq, the results of comprehensive epidemiological studies revealed 5 to 20 times more deaths than previously published figures based on “passive” reporting by journalists, NGOs or governments.

Two such reports on Iraq came out in the prestigious The Lancet medical journal, first in 2004 and then in 2006. The 2006 study estimated that about 600,000 Iraqis were killed in the first 40 months of war and occupation in Iraq, along with 54,000 non-violent but still war-related deaths.

The US and UK governments dismissed the report, saying that the methodology was not credible and that the numbers were hugely exaggerated. In countries where Western military forces have not been involved, however, similar studies have been accepted and widely cited without question or controversy. Based on advice from their scientific advisers, British government officials privately admitted that the 2006 Lancet report was “likely to be right,” but precisely because of its legal and political implications, the U.S. and British governments led a cynical campaign to discredit it.

A 2015 report by Physicians for Social Responsibility, Body Count: Casualty Figures After 10 Years of the ‘War on Terror,” found the 2006 Lancet study more reliable than other mortality studies conducted in Iraq, citing its robust study design, the experience and independence of the research team, the short time elapsed since the deaths it documented and its consistency with other measures of violence in occupied Iraq.

The Lancet study was conducted over 11 years ago, after only 40 months of war and occupation. Tragically, that was nowhere near the end of the deadly consequences of the Iraq invasion.

In June 2007, a British polling firm, Opinion Research Business (ORB), conducted a further study and estimated that 1,033,000 Iraqis had been killed by then.

While the figure of a million people killed was shocking, the Lancet study had documented steadily increasing violence in occupied Iraq between 2003 and 2006, with 328,000 deaths in the final year it covered. ORB’s finding that another 430,000 Iraqis were killed in the following year was consistent with other evidence of escalating violence through late 2006 and early 2007.

Just Foreign Policy’s “Iraqi Death Estimator” updated the Lancet study’s estimate by multiplying passively reported deaths compiled by British NGO Iraq Body Count by the same ratio found in 2006. This project was discontinued in September 2011, with its estimate of Iraqi deaths standing at 1.45 million.

Taking ORB’s estimate of 1.033 million killed by June 2007, then applying a variation of Just Foreign Policy’s methodology from July 2007 to the present using revised figures from Iraq Body Count, we estimate that 2.4 million Iraqis have been killed since 2003 as a result of our country’s illegal invasion, with a minimum of 1.5 million and a maximum of 3.4 million.

These calculations cannot possibly be as accurate or reliable as a rigorous up-to-date mortality study, which is urgently needed in Iraq and in each of the countries afflicted by war since 2001.  But in our judgment, it is important to make the most accurate estimate we can.

Numbers are numbing, especially numbers that rise into the millions. Please remember that each person killed represents someone’s loved one. These are mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, sons, daughters. One death impacts an entire community; collectively, they impact  an entire nation.

As we begin the 16th year of the Iraq war, the American public must come to terms with the scale of the violence and chaos we have unleashed in Iraq. Only then may we find the political will to bring this horrific cycle of violence to an end, to replace war with diplomacy and hostility with friendship, as we have begun to do with Iran and as the people of North and South Korea are trying to do to avoid meeting a similar fate to that of Iraq.

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Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Global Exchange and CODEPINK: Women for Peace, is the author of the new book, Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection. Her previous books include: Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control; Don’t Be Afraid Gringo: A Honduran Woman Speaks from the Heart, and (with Jodie Evans) Stop the Next War Now (Inner Ocean Action Guide). Follow her on Twitter: @medeabenjamin

Nicolas J S Davies is the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq and of the chapter on “Obama At War” in Grading the 44th President: A Report Card on Barack Obama’s First Term as a Progressive Leader.

Featured image is from Oxfam International.

Brazil’s Lula in a Wilderness of Mirrors

By Pepe Escobar, March 18 2021

A surprising Supreme Court decision that, while not definitive, restores Lula’s political rights has hit Brazil like a semiotic bomb and plunged the nation into a reality show being played in a wilderness of shattered mirrors.

UK Breaks Law on Nukes: Boris Johnson Announced a 40% Increase in Britain’s Nuclear Arsenal

By Kate Hudson, March 18 2021

Yesterday Boris Johnson announced a 40% increase in Britain’s nuclear arsenal. Today the arsenal stands at around 200 nuclear warheads. Each is about 8 times the power of the Hiroshima bomb which killed over 200,000 people.

Myanmar: Hidden Opposition Violence

By Brian Berletic, March 18 2021

As is common with US-backed color revolutions around the globe, the Western media will attempt to cover up opposition violence for as long as possible until shifting the narrative toward a “reluctant civil war” in which opposition groups were “given no choice” but to take up arms.

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A Budget to Defend the American People, Not the Weapons Makers

By Tristan Guyette, March 18 2021

Policymakers insist that they cannot afford to provide relief to millions of Americans struggling during a pandemic, cannot afford to provide universal health care, and cannot find funds for education. Despite this, the massive National Defense Authorization Act passes each year.

How the US Military Subverted the Afghan Peace Agreement to Prolong an Unpopular War

By Gareth Porter, March 18 2021

Appointed in the final days of Trump’s presidency to remove all US troops from Afghanistan, Douglas Macgregor tells The Grayzone how military leadership undermined the withdrawal and pressured Trump to capitulate.

China Advances in South America

By Lucas Leiroz de Almeida, March 18 2021

Washington’s gradual “negligence” in relation to the countries of the south of the American continent has opened up more and more space for the Chinese approach in the region.

“Russia-AgainGate”: Dead-End In US-Russia Relations? Putin “Must Pay A Price” for Election Meddling, Says Biden

By Stephen Lendman, March 18 2021

Given their world’s largest thermonuclear arsenals, other super-weapons, and long-range delivery capabilities able to strike targets everywhere with precision accuracy, no bilateral relationship is more crucial to keep peaceful and cooperative.

India’s Cunning De-escalation after Setting Kashmir Alight

By Tom Hussain, March 18 2021

Within the space of five years, they have meticulously manipulated the Kashmir dispute in ways which few if any people foresaw. Now they have managed to negotiate a de-escalation along both fronts in Kashmir set alight by their brinkmanship.

Palestinian Elections: Abbas Moves to Stamp Out Constructive, Strategic Change within Fatah

By Rima Najjar, March 18 2021

The 85-year-old Abbas is trying to nip in the bud this homegrown challenge to Fatah’s autocratic grip on the West Bank, once again demonstrating how averse the PA’s structure is to a true national liberation project.

Vaccine Passports, “Medical Martial Law” and the Stockholm Syndrome

By Jesse Smith, March 18 2021

Almost one year ago, former President Trump declared a national emergency and the White House announced a 15-day plan to slow the spread of the coronavirus. The upsurge in totalitarianism since these edicts were installed is mind-boggling.

Manlio Dinucci, esperto di geopolitica e geografia umana, giornalista presso il Manifesto, scrittore di successo e curatore della rubrica L’Arte della guerra, interviene oggi sui temi del Sars-Cov2 evidenziandone la dimensione geopolitica e biopolitica.

“Nel 2019, molto prima dello scoppio della pandemia in Cina, ci furono numerose operazioni in ambito speculativo finanziario che trovarono giustificazione solo a pandemia avvenuta. Ma come potevano saperlo prima? Il virus potrebbe anche avere un’origine naturale, ma ad oggi abbiamo le prove che l’emergenza sanitario politica è stata preparata.“

Sentenza lapidaria che dovrebbe portare a riflettere chiunque abbia compreso il ruolo che hanno i mercati finanziari nel contesto postdemocratico descritto dal sociologo Colin Crouch.

Dinucci prosegue poi con denunciare il documento col quale la Rockfeller Foundation descriveva un mondo senza proprietà privata, completamente sotto il controllo delle multinazionali, che si stanno riconfigurando come moderni feudi di natura economica.

Tra i temi caldi,  la necessità di costruire un piano  di resistenza organizzato finalizzato ad una rinascita, e la necessità di recuperare le generazioni danneggiate dalla cultura del Covid.

E ancora la necessità di prender distanza dalla tanto decantata resilienza, laddove il cittadino per non spezzarsi è disposto a piegarsi, in favore del recupero di una cultura della resistenza. La resistenza è quella disposizione d’animo che non cede e non concede.

L’intervento si è dimostrato profondo e di ampio respiro, e ha saputo ricostruire la trama che collega l’emergenza pandemica ai desideri proibiti del potere. E le domande sono arrivate copiose.

Segui l’intervento completo!

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In short order since replacing Trump two months ago by brazen election rigging, Biden and hardliners in charge of his geopolitical agenda have gone all out to wreck already greatly deteriorated Russian/US relations.

What’s going on is madness that’s likely to deteriorate further, not improve.

Given their world’s largest thermonuclear arsenals, other super-weapons, and long-range delivery capabilities able to strike targets everywhere with precision accuracy, no bilateral relationship is more crucial to keep peaceful and cooperative.

During Cold War years, relations between both countries were largely civil. Mutually assured destruction (MAD) prevented the unthinkable.

Things changed dramatically after Obama/Biden replaced democratic rule in Ukraine with Nazi-infested fascist tyranny in Europe’s heartland, bordering Russia.

The color revolution got Crimeans to rejoin their motherland, choosing democratic freedom over fascism.

Donbass in Ukraine’s southeast broke away from Kiev for the same reason, refusing to accept tyrannical rule.

Washington falsely accused Russia of invading Ukraine.

Sanctions war followed for nonexistent “Russian aggression” and other invented pretexts.

Putin earlier explained that during Trump’s tenure, the US (unlawfully) sanctioned Russia 46 times.

US war by other means included going all-out to block completion of Russia’s Nord Stream II gas pipeline to Germany and the so-called Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) – targeting Russia, Iran and North Korea.

Despite Trump’s objections to the hostile measure, calling it “seriously flawed,” House and Senate members overwhelmingly adopted it, DJT signing it into law in August 2017.

Only 5 of 535 US lawmakers voted against it.

The measure sanctioned Russia for (nonexistent) US election meddling, permitting Crimeans to rejoin their motherland, and involvement of Moscow in Syria — combatting US-supported jihadists, turning the tide of war, changing the dynamic on the ground, enabling Damascus to regain control over most of the country.

Notably on Wednesday, Russia recalled its envoy to Washington Anatoly Antonov for consultations. See below.

It came in response to a contrived US intelligence community assessment (ICA), falsely saying:

“We assess that…Putin authorized, and a range of Russian government organizations conducted, influence operations aimed at denigrating President Biden’s candidacy and the (Dem) Party, supporting former President Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process, and exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the US (sic).”

Like virtually always when Washington accuses invented adversaries of all sorts of things they had nothing to do with, no corroborating evidence is presented because none exists.

Along with the above, Biden threatened to make Putin “pay a price” for nonexistent Kremlin US election meddling and other phony pretexts, claiming Russia’s leader doesn’t “have a soul (sic).”

Asked if he thinks he’s “a killer,” he responded: “Uh-huh. I do,” adding:

“The price he’s gonna pay we’ll– you’ll see shortly.”

Hostile US actions and Biden’s tough talk dangerously escalated bilateral tensions.

While both countries maintain diplomatic relations, they’re effectively in tatters.

Escalating US war on nonbelligerent Russia threatening no one and Vladimir Putin personally could rupture ties altogether — risking confrontation by accident or design.

On Wednesday, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the following:

Antonov was recalled to Moscow “for consultations conducted with the aim of analyzing what should be done and where to go in the context of ties with the US,” adding:

He’ll “fly to Moscow for consultations on March 20.”

“He will hold meetings at the Russian Foreign Ministry and other government agencies to discuss ways of correcting the Russian-US ties, which are now in a crisis.”

“The current situation stems from Washington’s deliberate policy.”

US hardliners “ha(ve) been deliberately driving bilateral cooperation to a dead end in the recent years.”

The Biden regime’s “non-constructive policy towards our country is in the interest of neither Russia nor the United States, and certain reckless statements of US senior officials pose a threat of utter collapse to bilateral relations, which are already excessively confrontational.”

On Wednesday at a State Department press briefing, Blinken’s deputy press secretary Jalina Porter said the following about Biden regime actions against Russia:

“(W)e engage in ways that advance American interests.”

“We also remain clear-eyed about the challenges that Russia pose (sic). We can’t underscore that enough (sic).”

“(E)ven as we work with Russia to advance US interests, we’ll be able to hold Russia accountable for any of their malign actions (sic).”

Separately, Zakharova accused the Biden regime of recklessly bringing Russian/US relations “to a dead end,” adding:

Because “the atmosphere is already heated enough, I will simply say that I cannot remember anything like that” earlier.

In response to fabricated US accusations, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called them “absolutely groundless and unsubstantiated.”

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov stressed that Biden is wrecking any chance for normalizing bilateral relations.

While Moscow seeks to avoid “irreversible degradation of ties,” that’s where things are heading at this time.

The US bears full responsibility for what’s going on.

Much the same is happening with Sino/US relations.

Note: Russia Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will visit Beijing on March 22 and 23 — recent events surely to be a topic for discussion.

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

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

My two Wall Street books are timely reading:

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

https://www.claritypress.com/product/how-wall-street-fleeces-america/

“Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity”

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

Featured image is from OneWorld

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In children and young adults from age birth to 19, the survival rate of COVID-19 is 99.997%.^1,2 In most cases, symptoms are mild or nonexistent. Among children who were hospitalized, 0.19% of children died from COVID-19, with researchers concluding in a 2021 study, “Hospitalization and in-hospital death are rare in children diagnosed with COVID-19.”³

Despite the fact that COVID-19 has had little impact, physically, to children, health officials are setting the stage for widespread vaccination of this population. The University of Oxford, which is collaborating on a COVID-19 vaccine with AstraZeneca, is already enrolling children between the ages of 6 years and 17 years and 8 months in their U.K. vaccine trial.⁴

A COVID vaccine for infants and children is every bit as unnecessary, dangerous and foolish as the hepatitis B vaccine is for infants that I have been railing against for the past two decades.

Moderna is also enrolling 3,000 children between the ages of 12 and 17 to test their COVID-19 vaccine, using the same dose given to adults,⁵ while Pfizer also expanded its clinical trials to include children as young as 12.⁶ Johnson & Johnson even announced on February 28, 2021, that it plans to test its COVID-19 vaccine on infants, including newborn babies, pregnant women and people with compromised immune systems.

“They did not get into a lot of detail about it but did make it clear they will be pursuing pediatric and maternal coronavirus immunization studies,” Dr. Ofer Levy, a member of the FDA’s advisory committee who reviewed Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine data, told The New York Times.⁷

It’s Gene Therapy — Not a Vaccine

The COVID-19 vaccine really isn’t a vaccine in the medical definition of a vaccine. It’s more accurately an experimental gene therapy, of which the effectiveness and safety are far from proven. During the first six weeks the vaccine was available, more than 500 post-vaccination deaths and nearly 11,000 other adverse events were reported to the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).⁸

According to Children’s Health Defense (CHD), professor Dolores J. Cahill, Ph.D., a molecular biologist and immunologist, “expects to see successive waves of adverse reactions to the experimental messenger RNA (mRNA) injections ranging from anaphylaxis and other allergic responses to autoimmunity, sepsis and organ failure.”⁹

Considering that children are at extremely low risk from COVID-19, vaccination offers them far more risk than benefit, and parents may be understandably reluctant to volunteer their children to receive this experimental and unlicensed gene therapy. Public health officials have made it clear, however, that vaccination of children is expected. CHD reported:¹⁰

“Already last April — when next to nothing was known about COVID’s epidemiology, and candidate vaccines had barely begun to be studied — Bill Gates set the stage for the pediatric push, declaring that the end goal is to make COVID-19 vaccines ‘part of the routine newborn immunization schedule.’”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), also stated that 85% to 90% of the U.S. population, including children, will need to receive a COVID-19 vaccine before life can return to normal, and he suggested that first graders may be authorized to be vaccinated by September 2021.¹¹

Using ‘Herd Immunity’ to Justify Vaccinating Children

Since children themselves have little reason to get a COVID-19 vaccine, health officials are spinning the notion that children must be vaccinated for the sake of herd immunity. Now, they want you to think that not only should you look at the people around you as vectors of disease, but also the children, who could be asymptomatic carriers, silently bringing a deadly disease to grandma’s house.

What’s being largely ignored, however, are the studies showing that children are not driving the COVID-19 pandemic and, in fact, appear less likely to transmit COVID-19 than adults.¹²

“In short, public health leaders say, parents must ‘vaccinate the young to protect the old.’ Given the federal government’s estimate that one vaccine injury results from every 39 vaccines administered, it seems clear that officials expect children to shoulder 100% of the risks of COVID vaccination in exchange for zero benefit,” CHD noted.¹³

Herd immunity, which occurs when enough people acquire immunity to an infectious disease such that it can no longer spread widely in the community, is calculated using reproductive number, or R-naught (R0), which is the estimated number of new infections that may occur from one infected person.¹⁴

R0 of below 1 (with R1 meaning that one person who’s infected is expected to infect one other person) indicates that cases are declining while R0 above 1 suggests cases are on the rise. It’s far from an exact science, however, as a person’s susceptibility to infection varies depending on many factors, including their health, age and contacts within a community.

The initial R0 calculations for COVID-19’s HIT were based on assumptions that everyone has the same susceptibility and would be mixing randomly with others in the community. But a study published in Nature Reviews Immunology suggested that the herd immunity threshold for COVID-19 may need to be adjusted because children are less susceptible to the disease:¹⁵

“Another factor that may feed into a lower herd immunity threshold for COVID-19 is the role of children in viral transmission. Preliminary reports find that children, particularly those younger than 10 years, may be less susceptible and contagious than adults, in which case they may be partially omitted from the computation of herd immunity.”

COVID Gene Therapy May Not Prevent Transmission

Another point being largely ignored in the mainstream media is that it’s unknown if the COVID-19 vaccines prevent transmission, putting a major hole in the push for vaccine-driven herd immunity.

Unlike conventional vaccines, which use an antigen of the disease you’re trying to prevent, the COVID-19 injections contain synthetic RNA fragments encapsulated in a nanolipid carrier compound,¹⁶ the sole purpose of which is to lessen clinical symptoms associated with the S-1 spike protein, not the actual virus.

They do not actually impart immunity or inhibit transmissibility of the disease. In other words, they are not designed to keep you from getting sick with SARS-CoV-2; they only are supposed to lessen your infection symptoms if or when you do get infected.^17,18

At a virtual press conference held by the World Health Organization (WHO) on December 28, 2020, WHO officials warned there is no guarantee that COVID-19 vaccines will prevent people from being infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus and transmitting it to other people.¹⁹

In a New Year’s Day interview with Newsweek, Fauci reinforced the WHO’s admission that health officials do not know if COVID-19 vaccines prevent infection or if people can spread the virus to others after getting vaccinated.²⁰

Although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) in December 2020 for Pfizer/BioNTech²¹ and Moderna²² to release their experimental mRNA vaccines for use in the U.S., the companies only provided evidence from clinical trials to demonstrate that their vaccines prevented mild to severe COVID-19 disease symptoms in vaccinated participants compared to unvaccinated trial participants.

The companies did not investigate whether the vaccines prevent people from becoming asymptomatically infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus and/or transmitting it to other people.^23,24

Meanwhile, if you or your child recovered from COVID-19 or had an asymptomatic case, you likely already have some level of protective immunity²⁵ — another factor being largely ignored in the push to vaccinate children. In fact, trials suggested there’s no benefit to getting vaccinated among those who have been previously infected with COVID-19.²⁶

Fauci’s Involvement With Medical Patents

Watch the video here.

While Fauci is not named on the patent of Moderna’s vaccine, the NIH has a 50% stake in it,²⁷ and the recognition that would come with a successful vaccine launch would certainly include Fauci. NIH scientists may also collect royalties from vaccines they’re involved with.²⁸

The video above, with David E. Martin, Ph.D., a national intelligence analyst, also goes into detail about Fauci’s involvement with medical patents. Martin has pointed out that even though Moderna “very clearly did not have the legal right, and they did not have the contractual rights, they didn’t have the licensing rights” required to enter into a federal contract, they were still somehow pushed to the front of the line by the NIH and Fauci.

In the Fauci/COVID-19 Dossier prepared by Martin, he describes multiple criminal violations he believes are associated with “COVID-19 terrorism,” including gain of function research that was carried out by NIAID in violation of an NIH moratorium. Part of the dossier also spells out some of Fauci’s patents in detail along with the NIAID’s “economic bonanza”:²⁹

“Since the passage of the Bayh Dole Act (Pub. L. 96-517, December 12, 1980), federally funded research has been an economic bonanza for U.S. universities, federal agencies, and their selected patronage. For the first decade following Bayh Dole, NIH funding doubled from $3.4 billion to $7.1 billion. A decade later, it doubled again to $15.6 billion.

In the wake of September 2001, the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) saw its direct budget increase over 300% without accounting for DARPA funds of as much as $1.7 billion annually from 2005 forward. In 2020, NIH’s budget was over $41 billion.

What has become of the $763 billion of taxpayer funds allocated to making America healthier since inventors have been commercially incentivized? Who has been enriched? The answer, regrettably, is that no accountability exists to answer these questions. The NIH is the named owner of at least 138 patents since 1980.

The United States Department of Health and Human Services is the named owner of at least 2,600 patents. NIAID grants or collaboration have resulted in 2,655 patents and patent applications of which only 95 include an assignment to the Department of Health and Human Services as an owner.

… NIAID’s Director, Dr. Anthony Fauci is listed as an inventor on 8 granted U.S. patents. None of them are reported in NIAID, NIH, or GAO reports of active licensing despite the fact that Dr. Fauci reportedly was compelled to get paid for his interleukin-2 ‘invention’ — payments he reportedly donated to an unnamed charity.”

Conflicts Are Rampant

It’s worth noting that Moderna has no legal rights to a key patent for its vaccine delivery system, and company executives are among those who have dumped their stock. Both Moderna and the NIH are essentially engaged in patent infringement, as a core part of the technology — the lipid nanoparticle (LNP) technology that is part of the vaccine delivery system — belongs to a small Canadian biotech company called Arbutus.³⁰

Moderna sought to invalidate the patent owned by Arbutus Biopharma, but lost the challenge at the end of July 2020.³¹ After losing the challenge, Moderna said their LNP technology is actually far more advanced than Arbutus’ and claimed “the LNP used to make mRNA-1273, its Covid-19 vaccine candidate, is not covered by the Arbutus patent.”³² “In short,” the Dossier notes:³³

“… while Moderna enjoys hundreds of millions of dollars of funding allegiance and advocacy from Anthony Fauci and his NIAID, since its inception, it has been engaged in illegal patent activity and demonstrated contempt for U.S. Patent law.

To make matters worse, the U.S. Government has given it financial backing in the face of undisclosed infringement risks potentially contributing to the very infringement for which they are indemnified.”

Conflicts of interest are also rampant at NIH, where, since 2012, health researchers receiving federal funding have reported more than 8,000 significant financial conflicts of interest totaling at least $188 million.³⁴ In 2006,³⁵ evidence was also uncovered showing that 916 NIH researchers had secretly received royalty payments for drugs and other inventions while working for the government.

Fauci was among those who had “received tens of thousands of dollars in royalties for an experimental AIDS treatment they invented [interleukin-2]. At the same time, their office has spent millions in tax dollars to test the treatment on patients across the globe.”

While it appears inevitable that the experimental COVID-19 gene therapy injections will soon be pushed on children, considering the many unanswered questions and conflicts in place, some may prefer to put off getting vaccinated against COVID-19 for as long as possible while waiting for the real truth to emerge.

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, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13} Children’s Health Defense February 11, 2021

² U.S. CDC, COVID-19 Planning Scenario

³ European Journal of Pediatrics January 20, 2021

⁴ Oxford University Vaccine Trial

⁵ WCVB January 28, 2021

⁶ Business Insider India October 13, 2020

⁷ The New York Times February 28, 2021

¹² Pediatrics 2020; doi: 10.1542/peds.2020-004879

¹⁴ The New York Times April 23, 2020

¹⁵ Nat Rev Immunol. 2020 Sep 9 : 1–2

¹⁶ The Scientist November 25, 2020

¹⁷ Johns Hopkins Medicine January 21, 2021

¹⁸ World Health Organization January 26, 2021

¹⁹ World Health Organization. Coronavirus disease (COVID-2019) Press Briefings: Dec. 28, 2020

²⁰ Kim S. Dr. Fauci on Mandatory COVID Vaccines: ‘Everything Will Be on the Table.’ Newsweek Jan. 1, 2021

²¹ FDA. Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine. Dec. 11, 2020

²² FDA. Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine. Dec. 18, 2020

²³ CBS. FDA releases details on Pfizer vaccine’s effectiveness against COVID-19. Dec. 8, 2020

²⁴ Baumgaertner E. Can COVID-19 vaccines get us herd immunity? ‘The jury is definitely still out.’ Los Angeles Times Dec. 26, 2020

²⁵ Reynolds CJ, Swadling L et al. Discordant neutralizing antibody and T cell responses in asymptomatic and mild SARS-CoV-2 infection. Science Immunology

²⁶ WWMT January 29, 2021

²⁷ Public Citizen June 25, 2020

²⁸ Children’s Heath Defense July 7, 2020

²⁹ The Fauci/COVID-19 Dossier

^30, 32 Forbes July 29, 2020

³¹ Reuters July 23, 2020

³³ The Fauci/COVID-19 Dossier, Page 24

³⁴ ProPublica December 6, 2019

³⁵ Alliance for Human Research Protection October 26, 2006

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Once again, international trade and medical diplomacy have been playing a central role in international relations and defining alliances between countries and economic blocs. Washington’s gradual “negligence” in relation to the countries of the south of the American continent has opened up more and more space for the Chinese approach in the region. Like the strong Chinese presence in Central America and the Caribbean, it is possible that in the near future Beijing will have a major influence in South America.

Recently, at a commemorative event celebrating the 30th anniversary of the founding of Mercosur, a conference was held in Washington with the participation of the bloc’s foreign ministers. The event was organized by the think tank Atlantic Council and brought together Felipe Solá, from Argentina, Ernesto Araújo, from Brazil, Euclides Acevedo, from Paraguay and Francisco Bustillo, from Uruguay – completing the four founding countries of the South American bloc. At the time, the American government received severe criticism for not cooperating properly with the countries of the south. Bustillo was the author of the harshest criticisms. According to the Uruguayan diplomat, currently, only China is seeking the attention of South America and offering cooperation proposals.

In general, the diplomats’ common demand was for the US to pay more attention to South America and to be more solicitous with possibilities for international cooperation. The Chinese attempt to enhance its influence in the region certainly attracts these nations, but there is still a tendency in most countries on the American continent to seek to favor Washington in the first place, before any other nation. In general, despite any ideological differences or divergences of interests, the nations of Mercosur still see the US as their great international ally. This is most likely due to regional proximity and historical ties – even though these ties have always taken place in an exploratory and disrespectful way.

Mercosur is reluctant to go deeper into business with China because it fears the consequences that may come from the US and for that reason, they claim American attention. But, as Washington ignores them, more strength China gains to penetrate the region. Bustillo, in this regard, also openly stated that it is important for Washington to recognize that “there is still a bloc that supports the West”, making it clear that this situation of support may not last as long if the US does not rush to overcome Chinese proposals.

The points where South Americans most ask for help are in business partnerships and medical cooperation. The situation of the new coronavirus in South is on the brink of a real catastrophe – mainly in Brazil, where the numbers are already approaching the terrible mark of 3,000 deaths per day. The absence of any American support initiative with the distribution of vaccines creates an inclination in the South to cooperate with China, which is advancing strongly in its medical diplomacy with Coronavac.

As time passes and the pandemic worsens, economic instability in Latin countries leads to a rapid search for solutions. There is no way to overcome the current economic and social crisis without going through a comprehensive collective immunization plan, as emergency health measures, lockdown, and the number of sick and dead are the main reasons for the calamity. With this, the world power that offers the fastest solution to Mercosur on the issue of vaccines, will immediately have access to a greater availability of economic cooperation with these countries.

Currently, across Latin America, there are enough vaccine doses to vaccinate only less than 3% of the population. 87% of these doses are concentrated in Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Argentina. The president of the Argentine Red Cross, Diego Tipping, recently pointed out that “two thirds of the vaccines were destined for the most powerful countries and only 0.1% for the 50 poorest countries”. Equity in the global distribution of vaccines has been a strong agenda for Latin governments. However, it should be noted that, even with few doses, the Chinese vaccine is still the majority in Latin America, mainly in Mercosur – followed by Russia. This certainly inclines these countries to further increase medical cooperation and to elevate it to a status of economic partnership.

In parallel to this, some factors need to be considered. The long-awaited economic agreement between Mercosur and the European Union is finally showing signs that it will come out soon. The current presidency of the European bloc has already shown an interest in speeding up procedures and this may lead to a revitalization not only of bilateral relations between the EU and Mercosur but also of Mercosur itself, which for years has been practically paralyzed and with few active cooperation. This happens precisely in the midst of the beginning of a historic agreement between Europeans and Chinese. In turn, Mercosur approaches Vietnam and Indonesia as a way of gaining access to the Asian common market, the RCEP.

If Mercosur opens space for Chinese cooperation, we will have a broad scenario of global economic alliance, considering that, most likely, in parallel to the partnership with China, a partnership with the EU will come and this will insert South America in the EU-RCEP market route. With this situation, there would hardly be any possibility of a change in the outcome of the global trade war between China and the US, as conditions were being created for a global pro-China market.

But at present Mercosur leaders are still loyal to their relations with Washington and are taking their demands to the US. It remains to be seen whether Mercosur is in Joe Biden’s priority concerns.

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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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According to Fight Chronic Diseases.org, nearly half of Americans have one or more chronic diseases.

They’re responsible for around 70% of US deaths annually.

They’re disabling, destroy the quality of life and shorten lifespans.

The American Action Forum calls growing numbers of chronic diseases a national crisis that costs nearly $4 trillion annually, around 20% of GDP.

Spiraling healthcare costs make treatment unaffordable for millions of US households.

Health issues notably affect the aged. Yet US children are disproportionately ill.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Children’s Health Defense (CHD) calls “the chronic disease epidemic” affecting US children “the greatest crisis” the nation faces.

Mass-jabbing with experimental, high-risk, DNA altering, unapproved, rushed to market drugs based on Big Lies and mass deception is making crisis conditions far worse.

According to CHD, over half of US children suffer from one or more chronic diseases.

They include autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), asthma, allergies, pediatric autoimmune conditions and others.

In the last 30 years, the incidence of diseases in children grew dramatically — at a time of life when most US children were healthy and normal long ago.

No longer because of increased use of heavy metals, pesticides, fluoridated water, herbicides, toxic drugs, air pollutants, artificial food additives, hazardous to health GMO foods and ingredients, and other environmental toxins that risk the health and well-being of everyone.

Vaccines are another major culprit. None are safe. They don’t preserve health.

Time and again, they cause diseases they’re supposed to protect against.

They create customers for other drugs, the more taken, the greater the risk of serious adverse events and shortened lifespans.

In the 1950s, the US had one of the world’s highest life expectancy rates.

Today it’s one of the lowest among developed nations.

It has the world’s highest child poverty rate among developed nations and increasing social inequality.

US children have never been more adversely affected by chronic illnesses than today — what CHD calls the “sickest generation,” adding:

“Life expectancy is falling and infant mortality is rising.”

“US children are 76% more likely to die before their first birthday than infants in other wealthy countries.”

“A study conducted from 2001-2004 found that half of US youths (ages 13-18) had been diagnosed with at least one mental, emotional, and/or behavioral disorder.”

“Top military leaders report seven in ten young Americans aged 17-24 are unfit to serve in the US military because of obesity, asthma, hearing and eyesight problems and mental illness.”

Instead of fostering wellness as a national priority, an epidemic of sickness harms most Americans, including over half the nation’s children.

The world’s richest country is unhealthy, things worsening, not improving.

Among developed nations, Americans have shorter lifespans, more illnesses and injuries — despite around double the per capita amount spent on healthcare.

What should be a model system for the world community to emulate is dysfunctional for most of its people.

Sickness is prioritized over good health because the latter is unprofitable.

Among developed nations, the US has one of the highest per capita rate of infant mortality, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, strokes, respiratory illnesses and other diseases.

Millions of adverse prescription drug reactions happen annually.

Over 100,000 Americans die each year from prescribed drugs, including vaccines.

The above toll is rising sharply because of mass-jabbing with hazardous to health covid drugs.

Millions of Americans lack health insurance. Many millions more are inadequately covered because it’s unaffordable.

At a time of made-in-the-USA Main Street Depression with over 25% of working-age Americans jobless, most others way underemployed, the health and well-being of countless millions of households greatly eroded.

Instead of going all-out to stimulate economic growth by jobs creation and other policies to end hard times for most people, US policymakers serve privileged interests at the expense of most others.

The worst of times most likely lie ahead.

As long as US policymakers serve sickness industry interests over wellness, the crisis of chronic diseases is likely to worsen, not improve, including for the nation’s children.

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

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

My two Wall Street books are timely reading:

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

https://www.claritypress.com/product/how-wall-street-fleeces-america/

“Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity”

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

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Appointed in the final days of Trump’s presidency to remove all US troops from Afghanistan, Douglas Macgregor tells The Grayzone how military leadership undermined the withdrawal and pressured Trump to capitulate.

In an exclusive interview with The Grayzone, Col. Douglas Macgregor, a former senior advisor to the acting secretary of defense, revealed that President Donald Trump shocked the US military only days after the election last November by signing a presidential order calling for the withdrawal of all remaining US troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year.

As Macgregor explained to The Grayzone, the order to withdraw was met with intense pressure from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), Gen. Mark M. Milley, which caused the president to capitulate. Trump agreed to withdraw only half of the 5,000 remaining troops in the country. Neither Trump’s order nor the pressure from the JCS chairman was reported by the national media at the time.

The president’s surrender represented the Pentagon’s latest victory in a year-long campaign to sabotage the US-Taliban peace agreement signed in February 2020. Military and DOD leaders thus extended the disastrous and unpopular 20-year US war in Afghanistan into the administration of President Joe Biden.

A peace agreement the Pentagon was determined to subvert

The subversion of the peace agreement with the Taliban initiated by the US military leadership in Washington and Afghanistan began almost as soon as Trump’s personal envoy Zalmay Khalilzad negotiated a tentative deal in November 2019. The campaign to undermine presidential authority was actively supported by then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper.

In February 2020, under heavy pressure to amend the agreement, Trump ordered Khalilzad to deliver the Taliban an ultimatum: agree to a full ceasefire as a prelude to a broader peace deal, including negotiations with the Afghan government, or the deal was off. The Taliban refused the immediate ceasefire with Kabul, however, offering instead a “reduction in violence” for seven days to establish a conducive atmosphere for implementing the peace agreement that had already been fleshed out in detail. It then gave the US its own ultimatum: if the US refused the offer, its negotiators would walk away from the table.

To salvage the deal, Khalilzad agreed to the Taliban proposal for a one-week “reduction of violence” by both sides. The adversaries reached further understandings on what such a “reduction in violence” would mean: the Taliban agreed there would be no attacks on population centers and Afghan stationary military targets, but reserved the right to attack government convoys if they exploited the reduction to seize control of new areas.

The US-Taliban peace agreement signed on February 29 called for a withdrawal of US troops from the country in two stages. First, the US agreed to reduce its troop levels to 8600 within 4.5 months and remove forces from five military bases ahead of a final withdrawal that would take place in May 2021. Second, the US and its allies pledged to “refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Afghanistan or intervening in its domestic affairs.”

The Taliban promised in turn that it would “not allow any of its members, other individuals or groups, including al-Qaeda, to use the soil of Afghanistan to threaten the security of the United States and its allies.”

Those two commitments obliged US and Taliban forces not to attack each other. The agreement also specified that the Taliban would enter into “intra-Afghan negotiations on March 10, 2020, after the two Afghan parties were to have exchanged prisoners.”

They also required the Taliban to keep al-Qaeda personnel out of Afghanistan – a pledge the Taliban military commission appeared to implement in February when it issued an order to all commanders forbidding them from “bringing foreign nationals into their ranks or giving them shelter.”

But the pact did not provide for the immediate ceasefire between Taliban and Afghan government forces which the U.S. military and Pentagon demanded. Instead “a permanent and comprehensive ceasefire” was to be negotiated between the two Afghan parties.

With startling swiftness and determination, Pentagon officials and military leadership exploited the open-ended terms of the ceasefire to derail the implementation of the agreement.

Secretary of Defense Esper claimed the peace deal allowed the US military to defend Afghan forces, blatantly contradicting the agreement’s text. He then pledged to come to the defense of the Afghan government if the Taliban began mounting attacks on its forces, setting the stage for American violations on the ground.

Esper’s promise of continued US military support, made public in Congressional testimony days later, gave the Afghan government a clear incentive to refuse any concessions to the Taliban. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani promptly refused to go ahead with a promised prisoner exchange until formal negotiations with the Taliban had begun.

The Taliban responded by initiating a series of attacks on government troops at checkpoints in contested areas. The US military command in Afghanistan responded with an airstrike against Taliban forces engaged in one of those operations in Helmand province. US officials said privately that the airstrike was “a message to the Taliban” to continue what they described as the “reduction in violence commitment they had agreed…”

The combination of Esper’s assurance to the Afghan government and the US airstrike showed the hand of the Pentagon and military leadership. It was clear they had no intention of passively accepting a deal to withdraw the remaining US personnel from Afghanistan, and would do whatever they could to unravel it.

Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, the head of Central Command, further highlighted the Pentagon’s opposition to the deal when he declared in congressional testimony that troop withdrawals would be determined by “conditions on the ground.” In other words, it was up to the judgment of military commanders, rather than the terms of the agreement, to determine when U.S. troops would be withdrawn.

Shaping a false narrative on the agreement

The military’s plan to sabotage the agreement hinged on creating the false impression that the Taliban had reneged on its commitments. This ruse was advanced mostly publicly by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Esper.

In an interview with CBS News, Pompeo mentioned “a detailed set of commitments that the Taliban have made about the levels of violence that can occur…” But that was a deliberate obfuscation. Though the Taliban had agreed to the seven-day “reduction in violence,” it did not apply to the peace agreement signed on February 29, 2020.

On March 2, Esper told reporters, “This is a conditions-based agreement…. We’re watching the Taliban’s actions closely to assess whether they are upholding their commitments.” That same day, US commander in Afghanistan Gen. Scott Miller stated through a spokesman on Twitter, “The United States has been very clear about our expectations — the violence must remain low.”

Once again, the Pentagon and the US command were dictating conditions to the Taliban outside the actual written terms of the peace agreement.

The Pentagon and military command’s ploy was advanced through a story leaked to the New York Times and published on March 8. Below the headline, “A Secret Accord With the Taliban: When and How the U.S. Would Leave Afghanistan,” the story referred to two “secret annexes” to deceptively suggest that the agreements reached with the Taliban were not fully reflected in the publicly available text.

The Times’ ploy recalled the national hysteria the paper triggered last summer when it legitimized an Afghan intelligence fraud by publishing a series of lengthy articles claiming Russia had paid Taliban fighters bounties for dead American service members. Indeed, the “secret annexes” story was simply the latest political deception deployed by the Pentagon to torpedo plans for a US withdrawal.

Despite the article’s assertion that the two documents “lay out the specific understandings between the United States and the Taliban,” the only specific reference in the story to any such understanding mentioned “commitments from the Taliban not to attack American forces during a withdrawal.” However, that explicit commitment was missing from the actual terms of the published accord.

As the Times acknowledged in its article, when Esper and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley appeared before the House Armed Services Committee just three days before the agreement was signed, both were asked about any “side deals with the Taliban.” Neither said they were aware of any unpublished agreements. Pompeo, who also denied the existence of any “side deals” with the Taliban, referred to them as “military implementation documents.”

The evidence clearly indicated that the so-called “secret annexes” were, in fact, internal US documents on US policy related to the agreement.

In April 2020, the Taliban accused the United States of flagrantly violating the deal, citing 50 attacks by US and Afghan forces between March 9 and April 10, including 33 drone attacks and eight night raids by Special Operations forces. By the summer, as the Taliban stepped up attacks on government checkpoints in areas bordering territory under their control, US forces in Afghanistan and the Defense Department informed the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) that the orders to Afghan government forces allowed them to preemptively strike Taliban positions.

The war thus returned to the situation that prevailed before the agreement was signed and the peace deal was effectively shattered.

Meanwhile, the US military continued to accuse the Taliban of failing to adhere to the agreement. In July, the US government-run Voice of America reported that McKenzie had “told VOA the Taliban has not kept up their commitments agreed to in the U.S.-Taliban peace deal, leading to one of the ‘most violent’ periods of the war in Afghanistan.”

Reversing a presidential order for withdrawal

Following Trump’s defeat in the November 2020 presidential election, and after fashioning the strategy to sabotage the Afghan peace agreement, Esper, McKenzie, and Miller agreed on a memorandum from the “chain of command” warning Trump against further withdrawal from Afghanistan until “conditions” had been met. These terms included a “reduction in violence” and “progress at the negotiating table.”

Trump reacted to the memo with outrage, swiftly firing Esper on November 9. He replaced him with Christopher Miller, the former head of the US counter-terrorism center who agreed with Trump on withdrawal from Afghanistan.

That same day, Trump asked Col. Douglas Macgregor to serve as Miller’s “senior adviser.” Macgregor was an outspoken advocate of withdrawal from Afghanistan and a harsh critic of other US wars in the Middle East, from Iraq to Syria. During a January 2020 interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News, Macgregor blasted Pentagon leadership for its failure to find a path out of Afghanistan.

Once inside the Pentagon, Macgregor immediately took on the task of enabling a rapid and complete withdrawal from Afghanistan. Just how close Trump came to withdrawing all US troops before leaving office had not been reported until now. Macgregor recounted the episode to The Grayzone.

According to Macgregor, he met Miller on November 10 and told him that a pullout from Afghanistan could only be accomplished by a formal presidential order. Later that day, Macgregor dictated the language of such an order to the White House by phone.

The draft order stated that all uniformed military personnel would be withdrawn from Afghanistan no later than December 31, 2020. Macgregor told the staffer to get a National Security Presidential Memorandum from the White House files to ensure that it was published in the correct format.

Macgregor’s White House contact informed him in the morning of November 11 that Trump had read the memorandum and immediately signed it. On November 12, however, he learned that Trump had met with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley, national security adviser Robert O’Brien, and Acting Secretary Miller. Trump was told that the orders he placed in the memorandum could not be executed, according to Macgregor’s White House contact.

Milley argued that a withdrawal would harm the chances of negotiating a final peace settlement and that continued US presence in Afghanistan had “bipartisan support,” Macgregor was informed. Later that night, Macgregor learned that Trump had agreed to withdraw only half of the total: 2500 troops. Trump had once again given in to military pressure, as he did repeatedly on Syria.

The maneuvering by the Pentagon to obstruct the Trump administration’s initiative to end an extremely unpopular war in Afghanistan was just one example in a long-established pattern of undermining presidential authority over matters of war and peace.

When he was vice president, Joe Biden witnessed first-hand the pressures the Pentagon brass imposed on Barack Obama to escalate the war in Afghanistan. With the peace agreement’s May 1 deadline for final US withdrawal just weeks away, Biden is certain to face another round of maximum pressure to keep US troops in the quagmire of Afghanistan, supposedly as “leverage” on the Taliban.

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Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist who has covered national security policy since 2005 and was the recipient of Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in 2012.  His most recent book is The CIA Insider’s Guide to the Iran Crisis co-authored with John Kiriakou, just published in February.

Featured image: Retired Colonel Douglas Macgregor (Photo credit: US Army / public domain)

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***

Policymakers insist that they cannot afford to provide relief to millions of Americans struggling during a pandemic, cannot afford to provide universal health care, and cannot find funds for education. Despite this, the massive National Defense Authorization Act passes each year in an allegedly bipartisan fashion.

As Democratic Representatives Barbara Lee of California, Mark Pocan of Wisconsin, and Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts state in a letter sent to President Biden,

“Our federal budget is a statement of our national values, and part of undoing the damage of the last four years is re-evaluating our spending priorities as a nation. That re-evaluation should begin with the Department of Defense.”

The budget for 2021 clocked in at more than $740 billion. Passed during the throes of the pandemic in mid-2020, Congress awarded $130 billion more than requested for the nuclear-armed Columbia class submarine program. While these same legislators whittled down the second round of stimulus payments to Americans to $600, they simultaneously lined defense contractor’s pockets.

These priorities, putting weapons before citizens, are clearly to the detriment of not just those living in the United States, but to those across the globe. The Pentagon intends to request more funding for nuclear weapons this year as part of a Trump Administration-mandated revival of sea-launched cruise missiles, a program that had been retired more than a decade ago under President Obama.

These weapons would eventually equip the Navy with twenty to thirty nuclear-armed submarines, doubling its current fleet size, while also increasing the risk of a mistake or miscalculation, and aggravating relations with China further.

In addition to sea-launched missiles, the Pentagon is also planning to modernize ground-based strategic defense systems despite compelling evidence that this is unnecessary. Located in states such as Nebraska and Colorado, this system replaces intercontinental ballistic missiles, though both are often referred to as the nuclear sponge, based on a strategy of drawing incoming domestic attacks away from major cities.

In essence, the United States has designated these states as sitting ducks, ready to soak up a nuclear attack. Representatives of these states claim the jobs are worth the risk, yet only 18 percent of Americans agree. Not only does the perpetuation of these weapons put these communities at risk, the contract benefits a single manufacturer: Northrop Grumman.

Small portion of the National Defense Authorization Act funds go toward mitigating the damage these nuclear weapons have already caused, by funding retrospective solutions such as cleanup, health care, and victim compensation. Communities impacted by nuclear weapons see little progress year after year, despite the evidence of ongoing harm.

In 2019, reports emerged that the Runit dome was cracking, allowing radioactive waste to seep into the surrounding Pacific ocean. The Runit dome was constructed in 1977 as a temporary measure to contain thousands of gallons of nuclear waste remaining from tests the United States conducted on atolls in the Pacific Ocean from the 1940s to the 1950s. Few improvements have been made since, and U.S. lawmakers have repeatedly denied responsibility.

Despite agreeing to pay $150 million in restitution in 1986, a 2010 hearing makes it clear only a fraction has so far been paid out, decades later.

As climate change causes the tides to rise, Runit will only deteriorate further, and other nuclear waste storage solutions, many near rising tides as well, are at similar risk. The United States has designated Yucca mountain, a space sacred to the Western Shoshone Nation, as a final resting place for U.S. nuclear waste, but protests at the local and legislative levels have stalled construction. This waste has been shuffled around the country while it waits for a final destination, often spending periods of time stored in lower-income areas where residents’ protests are dismissed.

The treatment of the Marshallese underscores a hard truth about U.S. nuclear policy: the abandonment of its long list of victims, spanning from veterans to Indigenous communities. Groups subjected to nuclear fallout from testing, called downwinders, have faced similar neglect from the government that exposed them.

Nearly every year, amendments are offered to the National Defense Authorization Act that would expand the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, another half-measure offered to victims of nuclear pollution, yet nearly all have failed.

This act, which is set to expire in 2022 unless it’s renewed, currently provides a one-time payment of $50,000 to $100,000 to a select group of victims that does not include New Mexican downwinders. These small payments are a drop in the bucket when one considers the lifetime of various cancers many victims experience. New Mexico, the birthplace of the nuclear age, has documented decades of proof that the nuclear fallout from the Trinity test caused a range of cancers, reproductive issues, and health concerns identical to those of other fallout victims in the included states: Utah, Nevada, and Arizona.

Even if this act is renewed before its expiration next year, it leaves hundreds of thousands of victims and their family members—who are often left to carry the financial burden—behind, including those on the Marshall Islands.

Nuclear weapons pose a grave threat to the climate; they would, if used, rapidly accelerate climate change and cause a nuclear winter. Their very existence and proliferation are a threat to the well-being of the planet. Countless people have already suffered due to the creation of our current arsenal, and expanding it, during a pandemic no less, is a cruel testament to the values of our lawmakers.

Standalone bills have been introduced to solve many of these issues, but they are often championed primarily by representatives from impacted states, or fiercely opposed when money is on the line. The Invest in Cures Before Missiles Act, introduced by Democratic Representatives Ro Khanna of California and Ed Markey of Massachusetts, shifts funding away from modernizing the ICBM systems and into COVID-19 response. Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Representative Joe Courtney of Connecticut have also introduced a bill to halt funding for Trump’s revival of sea-launched cruise missiles.

The National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2022 poses a unique opportunity to seize agency over the defense budget and lobby representatives to support amendments such as those that provide compensation for downwinders and move funds away from expensive, redundant weapons programs.

The Biden Administration, in its first defense request, would do well to heed Lee, Pocan, and Auchincloss’s call.

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Tristan Guyette is the National Field Manager for Beyond the Bomb, a people-powered movement to end the threat of nuclear war. Previously, they have worked on reproductive justice and voter rights issues.

Featured image: Protest against nuclear weapons (photo via Creative Commons)

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***

“It’s better to die on your feet than to live on your knees”, ascribed to Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, is quoted by many, but few seem willing to live it. In any case, the pharmaceutical industry and its operatives throughout government, media and the medical establishment have terrorized an already infantilized society and brought it to its collective knees. A compelling 6-minute video of a 9/11 Truth march in Brussels in 2007 quotes a marcher: 

“I’m coming back to Europe, because I saw what happened to the American people. They’ve been taken hostage for the last 20 years by a group of people who destroyed them physically, spiritually and intellectually, and now they’re trying to do the same thing in Europe.”

Applying an inferential form of thought — a connecting of dots, so to speak — to draw logical and highly probable conclusions, once valued as critical thinking, is now shunned as conspiracy theorizing.

Consider a NY Times opinion piece covering the judgments of “digital literacy” experts claiming that “overthinking” an issue, or to “use reasoning”, may be counterproductive. Instead, high school and college students are to be coached in a “SIFT” method allowing one to evaluate a report in mere seconds, like “fact checkers” do.

Really! Almost predictably, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., introduced without question as “… a prominent anti-vaccine activist, falsely alleging a link between the human papillomavirus vaccine and cancer…”, is used as an example of how SIFT can rapidly assess and reject an article. “Look how fast this is” says an expert as he uses Google to lead in 15 seconds to … Wikipedia!, both famously hostile to views opposing official narrative. Nevertheless, one is prompted to scroll quickly, check out the last sentence, and “move on”.

Such superficiality as social norm will be fatal, because never has there been greater need at mass level for clear thinking and an unflinching grasp that the vaccine industry has become a weaponized system for taking control of global society, with mandated masking as a social engineering strategy to prepare for mass vaccination by governmental edict. Those who have fathomed the direction of events know that the worst lies ahead. Italian Archbishop C.M. Vigano’, like many others, sees a point at which those refusing injection will be forced into detention centers. The U.S. has many already in place, and there’s plenty of room to spare. Avoiding forced injection would be impossible when imprisoned.

Well before Covid19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO), the vaccine industry had mobilized its forces at political levels from national to state to local, in media  —  both print and broadcast —  and in the schools of public health that now yield the “health experts” showcased by mainstream journalists. Trust in public health officials has plummeted and deservedly so. WHO has evolved into essentially THE vaccine industry, funded primarily by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance whose interests, according to a recent WHO director, drive WHO policy. A Swiss scientist and whistleblower with impeccable credentials, Dr. Astrid Stuckelberger, who worked for years within WHO, recently exposed the pervasive corruption by Gates and the Vaccine industry, their iron control of WHO and its Member States (i.e., the nations of the world), and the massive death that has resulted from their vaccination programs in India and Africa. Her interview by the Corona Investigative Committee is worth anyone’s 30 minutes. The Corona Investigative Committee itself maintains a bullet-point rundown of its findings.

193 member countries of the United Nations have made themselves “Contracting Parties” of WHO and have agreed to abide by its Constitution which obliges nations (“Members” in caps) to “take action” on rules adopted by the WHO’s Health Assembly. The Assembly has authority to create regulations concerning “quarantine requirements”, “diagnostic procedures” and “labelling of biological, pharmaceutical and other products”. Moreover, the Director-General and his/her representative may “by agreement with Members” gain direct access to national health organizations, both governmental and non-governmental (the latter including medical schools).

Articles 66 and 67 of the Constitution are particularly threatening as they grant that the WHO “shall enjoy in the territory of each Member such legal capacity [and] such privileges and immunities as may be necessary for the fulfillment of its objective and for the exercise of its functions.” 

The Constitution provides the WHO absolute immunity and carte blanche control, and the few world leaders who have rejected the WHO’s Covid19 Pandemic demands have placed themselves at grave risk. The “by agreement with Members” clause in the WHO Constitution is toothless, because the governmental and non-governmental entities of Member nations (e.g., CDC, NIH, schools of public health in the U.S.) are, like the WHO itself, awash in foundation/ pharmaceutical industry cash and are so corrupt that a group of CDC scientists complained (maintaining anonymity). Anthony Fauci’s NIAID (an agency of NIH) has been described as an “incubator for the Pharmaceutical Industry”.

The CDC exists as a complex public/private entity with 501(c)(3) status allowing for huge infusions of industrial and foundation money and control. Both CDC and NIAID own patents (here here here). In sum, there exists a grid of powerful interlocking elements that include the WHO, the pharmaceutical industry, national bureaus of health, media, medical schools and organizations, and powerful foundations, all dedicated to a future of routinely and heavily injected humanity.

The PCR test is famous for false positives, as even the World Health Organization now admits. The Nobel laureate creator of PCR stated that it should never be used as a diagnostic tool for infectious diseases. Nevertheless, the WHO says “test, test, test”, so stupidity prevails, PCR continues to be used, and “cha-ching!”, the money rolls in. Philosopher John Lord Griffin, with humorous intent, makes points with brief multiple choice questions to showcase the obvious, e.g.: If PCR tests come up with 97% false positives, identify inoperative fragments of virus, and artificially amplify a minute sample 2 to the 40th times to make it look more impressive, does it make sense to test?

a) Of course, it helps us see what otherwise wouldn’t be noticed

b) Yes, any test is better than no test

c) No

During the “Covid19 Pandemic”, flu drops unexpectedly to virtually nil (Here, here, here). A sampling of 685,243 yields not a single case of flu because of … masks? But wait!, both are viruses and should respond similarly. Epidemiologists willing to speak up state the obvious: Flu is being counted as Covid19. A graduate student at Johns Hopkins posts data showing the inverse relationship between Covid19 and flu, and the school removes it, but not before some good soul saves it. At the same time, the CDC inflates Covid mortality.

Studies by the dozens over decades revealed that masking the public does not prevent viral transmission to any statistically measurable degree. Only in Spring 2020 was the remarkable power of the mask to divide a populace newly appreciated and employed as a psychological weapon to be made a “new normal”, even as prolonged masking was declared by neurologists willing to risk their reputations as unhealthy, particularly in children. We’ve been so psychologically bullied that even when allowed to go maskless, many have come to feel naked and in need of their face covers, like children clutching security blankets.

The mRNA technology in Covid19 “jabs” is not “vaccine” according to standard definition but a form of gene therapy never before tried on humans. Repetitive media reference to “vaccines” is a lie to deceive. Both Moderna and Pfizer have admitted their injectables do not prevent infection or transmission, and that their synthetic mRNA is designed to cause recipients to produce an “S1 spike protein” which itself can produce dangerous side effects (aka “adverse events”). Late health impacts will be coming in years down the road. If in waves they will most certainly be charged to “spikes” or new, more deadly, “variant” forms.

There is no longer excuse for medical practitioners and researchers to be unaware of the massive corruption in the WHO, NIH, CDC, and in the Pharmaceutical/ Bloomberg/ Gates     Foundation “supported” schools of public health. Even a vaccine industry whistleblower – a Pfizer VP no less – sees the “whiff of evil” in mass vaccination of healthy people.

Although there are the Great Barrington Declaration, the Frontline Doctors, and other international medics (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and more) exposing deceit in the Covid19 Pandemic-Lockdown scenario, they are not enough. For doctors to be silent has become a betrayal of “First do no harm”. In connection with this, those who research pre-2020 medical studies find that it was fully understood that mass masking does not hinder viral transmission. Therefore, mask advocacy now by medical practitioners is based on post-Covid19 Pandemic propaganda. This reinforces the suspicion that ongoing relationships with pharmaceutical salespeople have become primary information sources for doctors. In essence, our medical system has been highjacked by the profit-driven pharmaceutical industry.

The current injection offensive is intended as only the first in a future filled with similar campaigns. Elon Musk may be providing insight into where this can lead with Neuralink. His artificial intelligence (AI) technology uses implanted chips for brain-machine interfacing and control.

But it should not be long before chip technology melds with injectables, as nanotechnology is expanding so rapidly that what is being written about it is outdated within months. Technology of control that can be downloaded into the human body appears to have no limits. A clear and critical view reveals that humanity is on a path leading to a world in which injectables going by the name of “vaccines” are to be mandatory for all, and on a continuing basis, essentially forever. That’s the harsh reality we’re facing.

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***

Yesterday Boris Johnson announced a 40% increase in Britain’s nuclear arsenal.

Today the arsenal stands at around 200 nuclear warheads. Each is about 8 times the power of the Hiroshima bomb which killed over 200,000 people. That’s a killing capacity of hundreds of millions. How can Johnson conceivably justify that arsenal, never mind increasing it?

A key question being asked across media and parliament is: Is it legal?

The answer is a resounding No. Increasing Britain’s nuclear arsenal contravenes our legal obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Britain ratified in 1970. The Treaty requires countries that have nuclear weapons to disarm, and those that don’t have them not to get them. There is no way in which increasing a nuclear arsenal is legitimate under the Treaty.

But it’s not just new warheads that are illegal, it’s the whole Trident replacement project as well. When Blair’s government was first pursuing Trident replacement in 2005, Matrix Chambers gave a legal opinion which found that the replacement of Trident would be a material breach of the Treaty because it requires ‘each of the parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament.’

So not only are additional warheads illegal, but Trident replacement is illegal, and the failure to disarm our existing nuclear weapons contravenes the Treaty.

Bizarrely, British governments always assert their unflinching commitment to the NPT, and the Integrated Review is no exception. It states: ‘We are strongly committed to full implementation of the NPT in all its aspects, including nuclear disarmament’.

Sadly, that’s just not true. Indeed our government – with all its Review’s talk of the ‘rules-based order’, the super soft power of the BBC, its leadership in diplomacy – completely ignores the Treaty, and its decision this week has fired a Trident missile through any pretence at fulfilling its legal obligations. It has racheted up global tensions, presumably to reinforce Johnson’s image of a ‘global Britain’, punching above its weight and being a force in the world.

Despite its non-compliance with the Treaty, the Review is quick to assert that ‘there is no credible alternative route to nuclear disarmament’ except the NPT. This is a thinly veiled reference to the government’s hostility to the UN’s new Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons which came into force in January. The government’s decision to increase its nuclear arsenal very clearly demonstrates why so many countries – largely from the global south – have given up hope in the NPT process which has been rendered meaningless by the actions of states such as ours.

Johnson’s decision to increase Britain’s nuclear arsenal is a serious problem. It’s not just that we would rather the money was spent on something more useful; or that this flagrant breach of the NPT may encourage others to pursue nuclear weapons; it’s a question of what kind of world we want to see, what role we want Britain to play and what it actually stands for. Rearming with weapons of mass destruction is not something that we can accept.

We must find it in ourselves to reject the dangerous humbug the government spouts about nuclear weapons, their claim that ‘the UK will continue to work internationally to reduce the risk of nuclear conflict and enhance mutual trust and security’. This is just nonsense and we know it. I urge everyone to join CND and get active: this is getting out of hand.

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“Vaccine Secrets,” an animated video created by parents of vaccine-injured children, fact checks the many statements used to convince parents that vaccines are safe and effective.

When it comes to vaccines, the prevailing narrative is that they are a modern miracle.

But what if that isn’t true? What if vaccines are potentially more dangerous to some people than the diseases they were designed to prevent?

“Vaccine Secrets,” an animated video, explores these questions and more. The video was created by parents who followed the rules. They vaccinated their children according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s schedule.

These parents thought they were doing the right thing, that they were protecting their children. Sadly, they learned they had done just the opposite.

As this video points out, some children can withstand the mercury, aluminum and other industrial chemicals that are in vaccines — but others can’t.

“Vaccine Secrets” fact checks the many statements used to convince parents that vaccines are safe and effective, and dispels many of the myths perpetuated about vaccines, including:

• Deaths from vaccine-preventable diseases were almost zero before the vaccines to prevent them were manufactured.
• Vaccines themselves have caused deaths and injuries in tens of thousands of previously healthy children.
• Vaccines can and do cause autism. The government admitted this when it compensated a family whose healthy child developed autism after vaccination.
• Vaccines earn the big pharmaceutical companies billions of dollars every year.
• When vaccines injure or kill a child, the drug company that produced the vaccine is completely free from liability.

Children’s Health Defense provides links to sources backing up all of the facts outlined in the video.

Watch the video here.

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***

„Angst essen Seele auf“ ist der Titel eines deutschen Melodrams der Regisseur-Ikone Rainer Werner Fassbinder aus dem Jahr 1974. Jeder ehemalige „Altachtundsechziger“ kennt diesen mehrfach ausgezeichneten Film. Er beeinflusste Filmemacher weltweit. In der gegenwärtigen Situation wird man klammen Herzens an ihn erinnert: Ruchlose Politiker und Mediziner schüren seit über einem Jahr mithilfe der Journaille irrationale Ängste der Bürger vor Krankheit und qualvollem Erstickungs-Tod, um sie zu disziplinieren und zu beherrschen. Ihr Ziel ist die Etablierung einer „Neuen Weltordnung“. Sie betreiben damit das Werk des Teufels und nicht das Werk Gottes.

Der 96jährige Arzt und hochdekorierte Wissenschaftler Professor Karl Hecht aus der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik (DDR) hat in einem bereits im Dezember 2020 aufgezeichneten Interview von „QS24.tv / Natur-Medizin“ darauf hingewiesen, dass bei „Corona“ die wahren Ursachen übersehen werden. Sie sei eine normale Infektionskrankheit, die durch ein gesundes inneres Milieu, wozu vor allem ein starkes Immunsystem gehöre, gut bewältigt werde.

Wir werden derzeit mit einem „Politikum“ und nicht mit einer Corona-Pandemie konfrontiert, so der weltweit anerkannte Professor für Neurophysiologie. Es handle sich um eine „Luftverschmutzungs- und Elektrosmog-Pandemie“, auf die Corona „aufgepfropft“ wurde. Mit der Verabreichung von Vitamin C (Askorbinsäure) bekäme man die gegenwärtige Infektionserkrankung – wie bereits zu DDR-Zeiten nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg – gut in den Griff. China hat es schon 2020 erfolgreich vorexerziert.

Auch die Angst, die jeden Tag neu geschürt würde, sei ein stark krankmachender Faktor, der zudem eine verzweifelte Hilflosigkeit auslöse. Man müsse sich immer an der Gesundheit orientieren, nicht an der Krankheit. Alle von Politikern auf höhere Anweisung hin ergriffenen Maßnahmen wie Freiheitsbeschränkung, Demonstrationsverbot und soziale Isolierung seien kontraproduktiv und weitere krankmachende Faktoren.

Das Video der „QantiSana.TV Fernseh-, Produktions- und Betriebs AG (QS24.tv) Schweizerisches Gesundheitsfernsehen“, Abteilung Naturmedizin, ist jedem Interessierten nur zu empfehlen. Es ist ausgesprochen aufklärerisch und wirkt beruhigend. Nach Auskunft von QS24.tv kann man auf YouTube jede gewünschte Sprache als Untertitel einstellen.

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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel ist Diplom-Psychologe und Erziehungswissenschaftler. 

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***

“Angst essen Seele auf” (Fear Eats The Soul) is the title of a German melodrama by iconic director Rainer Werner Fassbinder from 1974. Every former “Altachtundsechziger” knows this multi-award-winning film. It influenced filmmakers worldwide. In the current situation, one is reminded of him with a sore heart: For over a year, nefarious politicians and doctors, with the help of the journaille, have been stirring up irrational fears of illness and agonising death by suffocation among the citizens in order to discipline and control them. Their goal is the establishment of a “New World Order”. They are thus doing the work of the devil and not the work of God.

The 96-year-old doctor and highly decorated scientist Professor Karl Hecht from the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) pointed out in an interview by “QS24.tv / Natur-Medizin” already recorded in December 2020 that the true causes are overlooked in “Corona”. It is a normal infectious disease, he said, which is well managed by a healthy internal environment, including above all a strong immune system.

We are currently confronted with a “political issue” and not a Corona pandemic, says the world-renowned professor of neurophysiology. It is an “air pollution and electrosmog pandemic” onto which Corona has been “grafted”. With the administration of vitamin C (ascorbic acid), the current infectious disease could be well controlled – as it was in GDR times after the Second World War. China has already successfully demonstrated this in 2020.

Fear, which is stoked anew every day, is also a strong sickening factor that also triggers a desperate helplessness. One must always orient oneself towards health, not illness. All measures taken by politicians on higher orders, such as restriction of freedom, banning of demonstrations and social isolation, were counterproductive and further pathogenic factors.

The video of the “QantiSana.TV Fernseh-, Produktions- und Betriebs AG (QS24.tv) Schweizerisches Gesundheitsfernsehen”, Department of Natural Medicine, can only be recommended to anyone interested. It is extremely informative and has a calming effect. According to information from QS24.tv, you can set any desired language as subtitles on YouTube, see this.

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

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***

As has become customary in recent weeks, after the relative success of the Axis of Resistance on battlefields across the Middle East, Israel delivered a reminder of its interest in Syria.

On March 16^th, Damascus’ air defense repelled a missile barrage, which was heading towards targets surrounding the Syrian capital.

A statement by the Syrian Arab Army said that the missiles had been launched from the direction of the occupied Golan Heights and targeted undisclosed positions around Damascus. Most of the missiles were reportedly intercepted and no casualties were observed. There was minimal damage.

Strikes such as these are commonplace and happen somewhat regularly, especially now in 2021, when Tel Aviv considers its interests under even more threat than usual due to the Biden Administration’s relative passivity towards Iran.

The Israeli strike was not the only attack on Damascus in recent days. On March 15^th, Syrian security forces foiled a terrorist attack intended to target unspecified areas in Damascus. As a result, three terrorists were killed and three were arrested. All six were wearing explosive belts.

Separately, in what is likely a positive development for Damascus, Russian forces moved into an oil field and gas field in the northeast Raqqah governorate.

Russian military reinforcements alongside units from the Russian-backed Fifth Armored Division arrived at al-Thawra oil facility which produces around 2,000 bpd.

Earlier, on March 12^th, Russian forces entered the Toueinane gas field, also in the same area.

This is a small, but notable shift highlighting a change in the balance of power in northern Syria. Since Russia is allied with Damascus, prior to that most of Syria’s oil went to the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces or various Turkish proxies.  Most of the oil still goes out of Syria, but this is a movement in another direction.

In addition, Russia’s Defense Ministry said that Turkish forces are carry out military movements and acts in Raqqa countryside in violation of a Memorandum of Understanding that Ankara signed with Moscow.

According to a statement, the Russian side is extremely worried about transporting military equipment affiliated to the Turkish armed forces and establishing fortifications and support points in the suburbs of Ain Issa.

This is an attempt at a Turkish response to recent shelling by the Syrian Arab Army in the area surrounding Aleppo, and other positions where Turkish proxies operate. Ankara can’t afford to lose access to all of its cheap oil, and as such needs to provide some semblance of resistance before losing access to it.

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The Syrian first lady has been accused by a London based law firm of terrorism and war crimes, which stem from her support of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA), through her speeches, meeting with and comforting the mothers of slain soldiers, and meeting with the women’s branch of the SAR.

The crime she is accused of is patriotism, and support of the legitimate armed forces of the government of Syria, who have battled Radical Islamic terrorists, such as groups affiliated with Al Qaeda, and the Islamic State (ISIS).  The SAA has been fighting groups that are recognized by the UN, US, and EU as terrorist groups.  The UN charter states all members must fight terrorism wherever they find it.

The accusations

The British-born wife of Syria’s President, Bashar al-Assad, is facing possible terrorism charges and the loss of her British citizenship after the police opened a preliminary investigation into claims she has incited, aided, and encouraged war crimes by the Syrian government forces.

She is being investigated in response to legal complaints alleging her speeches and public appearances in support of the Syrian army implicate her in its crimes, including the use of chemical weapons.

The London Metropolitan Police war crimes unit began its inquiries into Asma al-Assad earlier this year and is determining if there is enough evidence to launch a full investigation.

The accuser

Legal filings against Asma al-Assad were submitted by Guernica 37 International Justice Chambers, a conflict-focused international justice law firm.

“The evidence compiled, in our view, legally speaking, far exceeds what may be considered reasonable comment or mere propaganda and amount to the incitement, encourage and/or aiding and abetting of war crimes and crimes against humanity,” said Toby Cadman, the joint head of chambers at Guernica 37.

“What she is suspected of doing is having incited acts that have resulted in death in Syria. Meeting with troops, making public statements, glorifying conduct of the army that has resulted in half a million deaths and the use of chemical and other forms of banned weapons. It is not just that she is the wife of the president, our allegations are she has actively campaigned and actively participated in those crimes and so she must face justice,” Cadman said.

The accused

Asma Akhras was born in 1975 in Acton, in west London, and educated in London before becoming Syria’s first lady in 2000.

She was employed by the investment bank JP Morgan and worked in Paris, New York, and London, where she specialized in mergers and acquisitions.  She had been working two years when she resigned to be married.

The Syrian Arab Army

The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) is the national military force.  The soldiers are drafted from all able-bodied Syrian males who are at least 18 years of age and not enrolled in University.  The fighting force is Syrian exclusively and foreigners or mercenaries are prohibited. Like any national army, they are fighting to defend their land and families. Service is mandatory, and those serving are from every community in Syria: Christians and Muslims.

The forces are protecting the borders from invasion, and civilians from terrorists or foreign occupations.  The civilians of every country on earth are depending on their national army for protection and defense.  A civilian might be able to defend their home and family with a rifle, but they would be defenseless facing a tank confiscated by a terrorist group, or a Turkish military helicopter, like what occurred in Kessab on March 21, 2014.

Kessab, a Christian village in northern Syria, was attacked, invaded, and occupied for three months by the US-sponsored Free Syrian Army (FSA), along with their allies, Al Qaeda foreign terrorists, who used Turkey as their transit point.

It was the SAA who fought the international terrorists for three months and liberated the village, where the terrorists had raped, maimed, kidnapped, and looted.

War crimes of the ‘rebels’

The US-sponsored and supported FSA have committed war crimes and atrocities, which were reported by western media sources as early as 2012. The US tried to portray the FSA as ‘freedom fighters’ and ‘moderate rebels’; however, they beheaded, ate the flesh of humans, and instituted Sharia law (Islamic law) in areas they controlled.  They were never secular, or moderate, as evidenced by their early banner “Christians to Beirut, Alawis to the grave.”

The FSA lacked the support of the majority of the Syrian people.  They had a loyal base, those following the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is based on the same Radical Islamic principles as ISIS. The FSA supporters were a minority in Syria, and this led to their defeat and demise. They were banking on the SAR breaking down and defecting to the FSA, but that never happened.  Once the FSA began to be defeated by the SAR, they called on their allies Al Qaeda, and international terrorists from the four corners of the earth began flooding into Syria from Turkey.

War crimes of terrorists

In 2014, the Islamic State (ISIS) took control of a large portion of Syria. The SAR fought ISIS but became weak due to fighting on several fronts, not only ISIS but the Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria, Jibhat al-Nusra.  In late 2015 the Russian military arrived to fight alongside the SAR to fight ISIS, as well as Jibhat al-Nusra, which is designated as a terrorist group by the UN, US, and EU.

Idlib is the last terrorist-occupied area in Syria, and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham holds about two million people as human shields.  The group had formerly been named Jibhat al-Nusra, but after the UN, US, and EU had designated them a terrorist group, they changed their name since the US had been supporting them as ‘rebels’ in Idlib. The name change was to re-brand them and allow the US and their Arab Gulf allies to continue supporting the terrorists.

Chemical accusations

In May 2013, Carla Del Ponte, a former Swiss attorney-general and prosecutor with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), said evidence points to the ‘rebels’ using sarin gas.  She was a leading member of a UN commission of inquiry.

In April 2018 veteran Middle East war correspondent Robert Fisk went in search of the chemical claims made in Douma.  Fisk had maintained an anti-Assad stance throughout the war, but he went to Douma with open eyes, looking for the truth. What he found there was the other side of the video shown around the world. After interviewing doctors, nurses and bystanders he found the gas video was patients overcome not by gas but by oxygen starvation in the tunnels and basements in which they lived, on a night of wind and heavy shelling that stirred up a dust storm.

The terrorists had everything to gain from using chemicals on civilians, to elicit a military response from the US against the SAR.  Though chemicals were proven to be used, there has never been any proof that it was the SAR who used them.

The war in Syria is over. Refugees and displaced persons have been returning. The battlefields are silent, but the final political negotiations have not been concluded.  Idlib and the northeast will be part of the final political solution.

The accusations against Asma al-Assad are about judging the legality of the SAR.  In any war, there are the innocent who are affected by being caught in the middle.  To judge the actions of the SAR in Syria, the people of Aleppo, Homs, and Damascus must be consulted. The question of who liberated their neighborhoods from armed terrorists will be answered by, “the SAR”.  If the SAR were believed to be gassing civilians, wouldn’t the civilians in Syria be in fear and loathing of the troops? Yet, most civilians remained in Syria, weathering the war, and sending their sons, brothers, and husbands to the SAR.  Some who left Syria were politically opposed to the Syrian government, but the majority left as economic migrants, seeking a safe place free of terrorism, and the opportunity of an income.

The accusations brought by Guernica 37 in London are part of the western pressure on the Syrian government, which began in March 2011 in Deraa.  Syria was never a civil war; it was a foreign-backed project for ‘regime change’ drafted in Washington, DC., Paris, and London.

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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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***

At long last, there is a credible challenge from within to the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority (PA), an increasingly autocratic and unpopular body that has a limited administrative function over enclaves in the Israeli occupied territories.

This challenge constitutes a growing hope. As political analyst Mamdouh al-’Iker puts it,

“These [upcoming Palestinian] elections may hold an opportunity to create, even if a tiny crack, in the wall of our current reality, through which we would embark on a change towards… independence and our right to self-determination and return. Saving our national project requires change on more than one level.”

But Mahmoud Abbas seems determined to stamp out constructive, strategic change even within Fatah itself.

In mid-January 2021, Abbas’s office issued a decree that Palestinian legislative (parliamentary) elections will be held on 22 May and presidential elections on 31 July in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.

Abbas’s response to an alternative election slate proposed by Nasser al-Qidwa, nephew of Yasser Arafat and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Yasser Arafat Foundation, shows how far he is prepared to go to keep the horrific political status quo.

The slate includes a diverse list of names from inside and outside Fatah and is backed by Hani al-Masri, General Manager of Masarat Center. Al-Qidwa also endorsed imprisoned Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti for president, should the latter decide to run. Abbas responded with two memos on March 11, 2021, one stripping al-Qidwa from his Fatah membership and another, via the General Manager of the PLO Palestine National Fund, halting funding for the Yasser Arafat Foundation. (See What is the Fate of Fatah? [Arabic])

The 85-year-old Abbas is trying to nip in the bud this homegrown challenge to Fatah’s autocratic grip on the West Bank, once again demonstrating how averse the PA’s structure is to a true national liberation project.

Abbas’s announcement of the elections, the first in 15 years, was widely seen in the Western press as “an effort to heal long-standing internal divisions… to try and present a united front [among Palestinian factions] since Israel reached diplomatic agreements last year with four Arab countries” and to reset relations with Joe Biden after Trump had cut off all aid, proposing a Mideast plan that would have allowed Israel to annex parts of the occupied West Bank.

Alaa Tartir, fellow of Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network, tells us what the above means in plain language:

The decision to hold elections is largely due to external — both international and regional — pressure and conditionality… the Palestinian Authority (PA) — and implicitly the leadership of Hamas — wanted to send a clear message to the new US administration that they are “ready for business”, they are ready to return to the “old normal”, and they are ready to receive the US financial “aid” … happy to return to the “negotiation table” … under strong pressure from the donor community (especially the Europeans) to “renew their democratic mandate.”

In other words, as Tartir explains, the legislative and presidential elections announcement is not due to “home-grown, local, people-driven reasons.” Furthermore,

donors are only interested in “nominal democracy”, and they are interested in seeing “the Palestinians going to the ballot box”, as one senior European diplomat told me, adding “we understand this is not real democracy, but it is better than nothing, and we are here to support.”

Both the EU and the US are prepared to act against the will of the Palestinian people by holding back vital aid, as they did in 2006 after Hamas won the last parliamentary elections.

But what Abbas is doing now in the way he is responding to an internal Fatah party challenge does not even have that tenuous logic behind it. He appears to be responding to a power struggle within Fatah for the sake of holding on to a strategy that has long failed in achieving its goals.

Yara Hawari, another fellow of Al-Shabaka, states that

there is much reason to believe the Palestinian elections scheduled for later this year will neither be free nor fair… It is unlikely that any Israeli government would permit Palestinian elections in Jerusalem, as doing so would amount to acknowledging a legitimate Palestinian presence in the city, and therefore challenge the Israeli claim of sovereignty over the entire metropolis. Moreover, the Israeli regime may even try to prevent Palestinian Jerusalemites from taking part in the elections by threatening to revoke their residence permits if they do so.

That prediction is already playing out. Claiming that his activities in Jerusalem undermine its authority, Israel has issued Palestinian Governor of occupied Jerusalem Adnan Ghaith an order banning any communication with President Mahmoud Abbas for seven days, “while renewing the ban on him entering the occupied city for six months.”

The PA, with its corruption and insistence on fearful obedience from its subjects without accountability or oversight, stands shoulder to shoulder with the Israeli authorities in attempting to prevent a viable political alternative from emerging in the Palestinian political arena within the occupied territories.

On March 16, Hani al-Masri blogged about rumors regarding the postponement of the elections, because of the impediments the pandemic poses, because the PA does not have Israel’s approval and the lack of agreed-upon mechanism for holding elections in the city of Jerusalem, because Israel is sending signals regarding its displeasure with Hamas’s participation, because of the

lack of clarity of the American position on the elections, as the matter is still under examination, with concerns that Hamas, which the US classifies as a “terrorist” organization, will win again [as it did in the legislative elections of 2006]… and because of concerns and uncertainty about the new slates…[and] disagreements within the Fatah and Hamas movements, and widespread popular opposition to the Joint List that could be reflected in the ballot boxes, as they were not based on agreements, nor on ending the division [between the two movements]… The election process is nothing more than an attempt to engineer and ensure certain results in a way that achieves containment and reproduction of the status quo, putting individual interests over the national interest.

Al-Masri’s assessment regarding the election process was verified at the meeting (on March 16, 2021) in Cairo of Palestinian factions participating in the upcoming general elections to discuss “key issues linked to the elections.” [Al-Masri, who had been part of the delegations invited to the first meeting in Cairo, was not invited to this one.]

Image on the right: Mustafa Barghouti (March 16, 2021) at the Cairo meeting of Palestinian factions participating in the upcoming general elections

Upon emerging from the meeting in Cairo, Mustafa Barghouti, General Secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative (PNI), expressed his deep regret that no agreement had been reached to amend the election statute (specifically, lowering the age of candidacy, raising the percentage of representation in the Legislative Council elections for women, and reducing the fees for participation in the elections). Agreement was blocked, he explained, under the pretext that it is not permissible to introduce amendments after the issuance of a law, “even though, on previous occasions, the law had, in fact, been amended even while the electoral process was taking place.”

The parties did commit “not to exercise any form of pressure, intimidation, treason, blasphemy, violence, or any form of blackmail against any of the candidates or voters.”

Neither Fatah in the West Bank nor Hamas in Gaza has a popular mandate and both parties are maintaining their limited rule over these two occupied Palestinian territories through authoritarianism and corruption.

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

She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Left: Dr. Nasser al-Qidwa, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Yasser Arafat Foundation; Right: Hani Almasri, General Manager of Masarat Center — مركز مسارات

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***

A surprising Supreme Court decision that, while not definitive, restores Lula’s political rights has hit Brazil like a semiotic bomb and plunged the nation into a reality show being played in a wilderness of shattered mirrors.   

At first, it looked like three key variables would remain immutable. 

• The Brazilian military run the show – and that would not change. They maintain total veto power over whether Lula may run for president for a third term in 2022 – or be neutralized, again, via whatever juridical maneuver might be deemed necessary, at the time of their choosing.
• President Bolsonaro – whose popularity was hovering around 44% – would now have free rein to mobilize all strands of the right against Lula, fully supported by the Brazilian ruling class.
• Pinochetist Economics Minister Paulo Guedes would continue to have free rein to completely destroy the Brazilian state, industry and society on behalf of the 0.001%.

But then, 48 hours later, came the Lula tour de force: a speech and press conference combo lasting a Proustian three hours – starting with a long thank you list on which, significantly, the first two names were Argentina President Alberto Fernandez and Pope Francis, implying a future Brazil-Argentina strategic axis.

During those three hours, Lula operated a masterful pre-emptive strike. Fully aware he’s still not out of the legal woods, far from it, he could not possibly project himself as a revolutionary leader. In the complex Brazilian matrix, only the evolution of social movements will in the distant future create the political conditions for some possibility of radical revolution.

So Lula opted for the next-best play: he completely changed the narrative by drawing a sharp contrast to the dreadful wasteland presided over by Bolsonaro. He emphasized the welfare of Brazilian society; the necessary role of the state, as social provider and development organizer; and the imperative of creating jobs and raising people’s incomes.

“I want the Armed Forces taking care of the nation’s sovereignty,” he stressed. The political message to the Brazilian military – who hold all the cards in the current political charade – was unmistakable.

On the autonomy of the Brazilian Central Bank, he remarked that the only ones who profited from it comprised “the financial system.” And he made it quite clear the main circumstance in which “they should be afraid of me” will be if choice chunks of productive Brazil – as in national energy giant Petrobras – are sold for nothing. So he firmly positioned himself against the ongoing neoliberal privatization drive.

Obama-Biden

Even knowing that Obama-Biden were the (silent) overseers of the slow motion lawfare coup against President Dilma Rousseff from 2013 to 2016, Lula could not afford to be confrontational with Washington.

Refraining from throwing a fragmentation bomb he didn’t mention that then-Vice President Biden spent three days in Brazil in May 2013 and met Dilma – discussing, among other key issues, the fabulous pre-salt oil reserves. One week later, the first installment of a rolling Brazilian color revolution hit the streets.

Lula skirted another potential fragmentation bomb when he said,

“I had the intention to build a strong currency with China and Russia so not to be dependent on the U.S. dollar. Obama knew about it.”

That’s correct: but Lula could have stressed that this was arguably the fundamental motivation for the coup – and for the destruction of an emergent Brazil, then 6^th largest economy in the world and accumulating vast political capital across the Global South.

Lula is far from secure enough to take the risk of indicting the whole, elaborate Obama-Biden/FBI/Justice Department operation that created the conditions for the Car Wash investigation racket – now totally unmasked. The US deep state is watching. Watching everything. In real time. And they won’t let their tropical neo-colony slip away without a fight.

Still, the Lula Show was an incantatory, hypnotic invitation to tens of millions of people glued to their smartphones, a society terminally exhausted, appalled and infuriated by a multi-pronged tragedy presided over by Bolsonaro.

Hence the inevitable, subsequent vortex.

What is to be done?

If confirmed as the ultimate comeback kid, Lula faces a Sisyphean task. The unemployment rate is 21.6% nationally, over 30% in the poorer northeastern regions.

It reaches nearly 50% among 18-24-year-olds. The emergency government help in times of pandemic was initially set at a little over $100 – to loud opposition protests. Now that it’s been scaled down to a paltry $64, the opposition is clinging to the previous $100 it rejected.

For 60% of the Brazilian working class monthly wages are less than what was the minimum wage in 2018, at the time valued around $300.

In contrast to relentless impoverishment, a hefty chunk of Brazilian industrialists would like to see the Guedes hardcore neoliberal orchestra keep playing unencumbered. That implies serial super-exploitation of the work force and indiscriminate sell-off of state assets. A large proportion of the pre-salt deposits – in terms of reserves already discovered – is not Brazilian-owned anymore.

The military de facto handed over the nation’s economy to transnational finance. Brazil virtually depends on mercenary agro-business to pay its bills. As soon as China reaches food security, with Russia as a major supplier, this arrangement will vanish – and foreign reserves will dwindle.

To talk about “de-industrialization” in Brazil – as the liberal left does – makes no sense whatsoever, as rapacious industrialists themselves support neoliberalism and rentism.

Add to it a narco-trafficking boom as a direct consequence of the nation’s industrial collapse, coupled with what could be defined as the incremental US-style evangelicalization of social life expressing the predominant anomie, and we have the most graphic case of disaster capitalism ravaging a major Global South economy in the 21^st century.

So what is to be done?

No smoking gun

Of course there’s no smoking gun. But all the shadowplay points toward a deal. Now seemingly rallying around him are, with the exception of the military, the same actors who tried to destroy Lula – what is dubbed the “juristocracy,” powerful media interests, the goddess of the market.

After all, Bolsonaro – the incarnation of a military project rolled out since at least 2014 – is not only bad for business: his psychotic inconsequence is downright dangerous.

For instance, if Brasilia cuts off Huawei from 5G in Brazil, sooner rather than later agro-business mercenaries will be eating their own soya beans, as Chinese retaliation will be devastating. China is Brazil’s top trade partner.

Key plot twists remain unanswered. For instance, whether the Supreme Court decision – which may be reverted – was taken only to protect the Car Wash investigation, actually racket, and its crypto Elliott Ness-style superstar, now discredited provincial judge Sergio Moro.

Or whether a new judicial via crucis for Lula may be unleashed if their handlers so decide. After all, the Supreme Court is a cartel. Virtually every one of the 11 justices is compromised to one degree or another.

The paramount variable is what the imperial masters really want. No one inside the Beltway has a conclusive answer. The Pentagon wants a neo-colony – with minimum Russia-China influence, that is, a fractured BRICS. Wall Street wants maximum plunder. As it stands, both the Pentagon and Wall Street never had it so good.

Obama-Biden 3.0 want some continuity: the sophisticated early-to-mid 2010s project of shattering Brazil via Hybrid War developed under their patronage. But now that must proceed under “acceptable” management; for the Dem leadership Bolsonaro, on every level, is irredeemably linked to Trump.

So this is the crucial deal to watch in the long run: Lula/Obama-Biden 3.0.

Brasilia insiders close to the military are spinning that if the deep state/Wall Street consortium gets its new basket of goodies – China out of 5G, increased weapons sales, the privatization of Eletrobras, new Petrobras price policies – the military may discard Lula again anytime.

Always in negotiation mode, Lula had been in action even before the Supreme Court decision. In late 2020, Kirill Dmitriev, head of the Russian Development Investment Fund which financed the Sputnik V vaccine, took a meeting with Lula, after he identified the former president as one of the signatories of a petition by Nobel Economics prize Muhammad Yunus calling for Covid-19 vaccines to be a common good. The meeting was firmly encouraged by Russian President Putin.

This eventually led to tens of millions of doses of Sputnik V being available for a group of Brazilian northeastern states. Lula played a key part in the negotiation. The federal government, initially bowing to heavy American pressure to demonize Sputnik V, but then confronted with a vaccine disaster, was forced to jump on the bandwagon and now is even trying to take the credit for it.

As it stands, this enthralling telenovela political frenzy may be exhibiting all the hallmarks of a psyops crossover between MMA and WWE – starring a few good guys and an abundance of heels.

The (military) house would like to give the impression it is controlling all the bets. But Lula – as the consummate political practitioner of “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” – should never be underestimated.

As soon as the taming of Covid-19 allows it – to a great extent thanks to Sputnik V – Lula’s best bet will be to hit the road. Unleash the battered working masses in the streets, energize them, talk to them, listen to them. Internationalize the Brazilian drama while trying to bridge the gap between Washington and the BRICS.

And act like the true leader of the Global South he never ceased to be.

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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.

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).

***

According to an article in Database Italia, the complaint lodged last week in the Hague court accusing the Israeli government of violating the Nuremberg code has been confirmed. A decision is now awaited.

A complaint was filed in The Hague Tribunal by lawyers Ruth Makhacholovsky and Aryeh Suchowolski last weekend regarding violations of the Nuremberg Code by the Israeli government and other parties. We recall that the People of Truth organization has filed a complaint against the Israeli government, which is carrying out illegal experiments on Israeli citizens through the Pfizer vaccination.

”The organization includes lawyers, doctors, public activists and the general public, who have chosen to exercise their democratic right not to receive experimental medical treatment (Corona vaccine), and feel under great and serious pressure. illegal acts by the Israeli government, parliamentarians and ministers, senior representatives of the public, mayors, etc.”

Therefore, and taking into account the above, they ask:

1. L’immediate cessation of medical experience and administration of vaccines to the Israeli public.

2. Ask the government adopt all legislative procedures that do not violate the principle of informed consent of a person to receive the medical treatment described above, which denies legal status in Israel and in Israeli democracy, including avoiding the creation of a health passport, giving the names of unvaccinated people to local authorities or to any other competent legislator.

3. Take the most severe measures against any public, commercial or employment entity that violates state labor laws or other matters necessary to prevent coercion or solicitation of vaccines, as well as discrimination, against those who choose not to receive the vaccines. innovative medical care mentioned above.

4. Draw your attention to the fact that a copy of this document will also be sent to the media around the world for violating the Nuremberg Code. Relevant in all countries of the free world.

5. And as a final remark, it should be noted that it was only recently that a Council of Europe decision was taken on 27/1/21, in which all authorities are ordered not to exercise pressuring or soliciting people to take the Corona vaccine in any way. Therefore, whatever is good for advanced European countries is certainly also good for Israel – and the balance is obvious ”.

Lawyer Ruth Makhachovsky told Israel News:

“Pfizer’s experiment in the State of Israel was carried out in violation of the Nuremberg Code, which is part of international criminal law and is under the jurisdiction of the Hague tribunal. We are now awaiting a decision”.

Link to the cause.

Link to the observations of the European Council.

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***

Changes are taking place on the Brazilian political scene. Former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva recently returned with great political strength, reversing years of popular antipathy. After a controversial judicial decision that extinguished all the prosecutions against him, Lula demonstrated his capacity for political articulation and is making public some maneuvers he had been secretly carrying out until now, the results of which tend to have a great impact in Brazil about a year before of the upcoming presidential elections.

The most notable result of Lula’s articulations is the arrival of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine in Brazil. In the coming weeks, tens of millions of doses of the vaccine will be sent to Brazil, reversing the result of months of the federal government’s campaign against the Russian product. Lula’s role in the arrival of vaccines was fundamental. The ex-president held talks with some of his contacts abroad to try to get around the diplomatic crisis brought about by the Bolsonaro government with his pandemic denialism. Together with the former Health Minister and current deputy Alexandre Padilha, Lula was in contact with the Russian authorities in a parallel diplomacy work.

The work started last year, when Lula, still removed from public life, signed an international manifesto in favor of the classification of vaccines as “common good for humanity” in a campaign for a wide distribution of vaccines for poor countries. The former president was then contacted by the director of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, Kirill Dmitriev, at the request of President Vladimir Putin himself. Putin and Dmitriev’s intention was to show the Russian desire to cooperate with Brazil in medical diplomacy and expand the distribution of Sputnik V. Lula immediately accepted the proposals.

It is curious to note that when Lula started to negotiate with the Russians in November last year, according to information provided by Padilha himself, Brazil had only the Chinese vaccine, whose production center is the Butantan Institute, commanded by the Government of São Paulo. At the same time, the federal government had the ambition to bring the vaccine from Astrazeneca, but there was still no forecast for the arrival of the doses. Across the country, strong pressure was beginning to emerge for Brazil to purchase vaccines from other laboratories, as the death toll grew day by day. Although some local governments tried to negotiate the purchase of Sputnik V with Russian authorities, the federal government was strongly opposed to admitting such a vaccine in its national immunization plan, just as it had done with Coronavac. Lula emerged as a figure parallel to the small-scale negotiations by state governments and Bolsonaro’s anti-vaccine crusade and presented terms favorable to the acquisition of the product, which explains his success.

Lula’s strategy was to create alternatives to non-viable negotiations with the federal government by establishing an alliance between the Russians and a consortium of Brazilian governors allied to him, mainly in the Northeast region, where the former president shows greater political strength. After the meeting between Lula and Dmitriev by videoconference, governors of Lula’s party began to negotiate directly with RDIF. The governor of the State of Bahia, Rui Costa, who is a member of Lula’s party, led the negotiations. As a result, 39 million vaccines were purchased by Brazilians.

This case shows us how the Bolsonaro government’s incompetence in managing the health crisis is leading to the need for a stronger parallel diplomacy – and this will certainly harm the federal government itself. Bolsonaro has so far made two speeches in relation to the pandemic. At first, his posture tended to total denialism. Later, Bolsonaro gradually admitted the seriousness of the virus, but, in return, endorsed an anti-scientific discourse on vaccines and, for reasons of political alliance, started a crusade against Russian and Chinese vaccines – arguably the most efficient so far produced – in favor of the vaccines of Astrazeneca and Pfizer, which represented their international interests in political alliance with Americans and British. Bolsonaro did not consider popular interests and local governments, in addition to underestimating the strength of some of his greatest political opponents, such as Lula.

Lula’s return to political life is very controversial. The Court’s decision that annulled all legal prosecutions against him constitutes nothing more than a political maneuver against Bolsonaro. Lula is far from being a socialist or extreme left politician. He is a great conciliator and has always sought to simultaneously serve the interests of the economic elites and popular classes. Thus, it is likely that some sectors of Brazilian politics will see him as a more stable figure than Bolsonaro and will come to support him as an alternative for the 2022 elections. This is the position of the judiciary class, for example – which led it to cancel the processes. Lula can now run for election again or nominate a candidate and support him more emphatically. And certainly, the fact that he got millions of vaccines and immunized a large part of the population will be his main electoral speech.

However, for 2022, we cannot forget the figure of João Dória, governor of the State of São Paulo who commands the Brazilian production of Coronavac through the Butantan Institute. Dória started a great political polarization against Bolsonaro and, according to several sources, plans to run for president in 2022. Dória has the production of Coronavac – the most widespread vaccine in Brazil so far – as his main discourse and this creates a previous scenario of vaccine-based electoral dispute: Lula will support Sputnik V, Dória will support Coronavac and Bolsonaro will support Pfizer and Astrazeneca’s products. In this scenario, Bolsonaro is visibly the weakest part. Not only was he unable to produce such vaccines on a large scale in Brazil, but he probably will also not be able to because of technical and financial infeasibility. In addition to being the most expensive, the Pfizer vaccine, for example, requires refrigeration to -70 degrees Celsius to keep it conserved. Such a technology does not exist in Brazil, which makes an immunization plan based on this vaccine impossible.

Either Bolsonaro radically changes his stance on vaccines and stops basing his immunization plan on purely ideological issues, or his political future will be the electoral defeat in 2022.

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

Featured image is from InfoBrics

COVID – Bioethics, Eugenics and “Death Panels”: “A Warning”

By Peter Koenig, March 17 2021

193 UN member countries, in unison and lockstep, closed their borders, economies and live-societies. It marked the beginning of the planet’s economic and societal destruction – all for an invisible enemy, a corona virus that could never have hit the entire globe at the same time. So, what’s the plot?

Upcoming Sino/US Talks in Alaska

By Stephen Lendman, March 17 2021

On Thursday, China’s Central Committee official/Foreign Affairs Director Yang Jiechi and Foreign Minister Wang Yi will meet with Biden regime’s top “diplomat” Tony Blinken and national security advisor Jake Sullivan in Anchorage, Alaska.

Britain’s “Pivots to Asia” to Contain China

By Tom Clifford, March 17 2021

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his admirals are looking at a new horizon stretching through crowded seaways east from India to Japan and south from China to Australia.

Video: The Houthis Continue Their Push, but Is Erdogan Coming to the Saudi Kingdom’s Rescue?

By South Front, March 17 2021

Yemen’s Ansar Allah are unrelenting in their offensive, both on positions inside the country, and in attacks on Saudi Arabia’s infrastructure within the Kingdom.

New High in Americans’ Perceptions of China as “U.S.’s Greatest Enemy”à

By Mohamed Younis, March 17 2021

China is upheld as an Enemy of America. America’s perceptions regarding China are manipulated both by the media and official government statements. This article documents the role of gallup polls in manipulating American perceptions concerning China.

20+ Countries Suspend Use of AstraZeneca Vaccine, but Regulators Insist ‘Benefits Outweigh Risks’

By Megan Redshaw, March 17 2021

More than 20 countries have either suspended or said they will delay Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccinations based on reports of deaths or injuries — in most cases related to blood clots — in healthy people who received the vaccine.

War Crimes: From Bloody Sunday in Derry, Northern Ireland to Croatia, Kosovo and Iraq

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, March 17 2021

Almost forty years later: The 5000 page Saville Commission Report into the 1972 Bloody Sunday massacre in Derry, Northern Ireland, fails to identify who were the perpetrators, both within H.M government and the British Army.

The Reason Why NATO Demolished Libya Ten Years Ago

By Manlio Dinucci, March 17 2021

Ten years ago, on March 19, 2011, US / NATO forces began the air-naval bombing of Libya. The war was directed by the United States, first through the Africa Command, then through NATO under US command.

Ten Years On, the US Still Promotes Failed Regime-change Policy in Syria

By Scott Ritter, March 17 2021

The US has only one objective in Syria—regime change. The fact that it has been unable to achieve this after ten years of trying does not appear to deter the Biden administration from embracing failure.

Video: Mass Vaccination in a Pandemic: Benefits versus Risks: Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche

By Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche and Dr. Philip McMillan, March 17 2021

Geert Vanden Bossche PhD, is an internationally recognised vaccine developer having worked as the head of the Vaccine Development Office at the German Centre for Infection Research.

Video: Bioethics and the New Eugenics

By The Corbett Report, March 17 2021

Forced vaccination. Immunity passports. The erection of a biosecurity state. For the first time, the eugenics-infused philosophers of bioethics are on the verge of gaining real power. And the public is still largely unaware of the discussions that these academics have been engaged in for decades.

COVID-19 and Girls’ Education in East Asia and Pacific

By UNICEF, March 17 2021

In the East Asia and Pacific region, the pandemic brought education provision in all of the 27 countries supported by UNICEF programmes to a standstill disrupting the lives and affecting the learning of over 325 million children at its peak in April 2020.

Digital Trails: How the FBI Is Identifying, Tracking and Rounding Up Dissidents

By John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead, March 17 2021

With every new smart piece of smart technology we acquire, every new app we download, every new photo or post we share online, we are making it that much easier for the government and its corporate partners to identify, track and eventually round us up.

Voices from Syria by Mark Taliano and The Dirty War on Syria by Tim Anderson: Purchase these two essential books on Syria for one low price.

*SPECIAL OFFER: Voices from Syria + The Dirty War on Syria

Author Name: Mark Taliano / Tim Anderson

ISBN Number: 978-0-9879389-1-6 / 978-0-9737147-8-4

Year: 2017 / 2016 – Pages: 128 / 240

List Price: $41.90

Special Price: $19.95 – Click to purchase

Voices from Syria, by Mark Taliano

Mark Taliano talks and listens to the people of Syria. He reveals the courage and resilience of a Nation and its people in their day to day lives, after more that six years of US-NATO sponsored terrorism.

“Syria is an ancient land with a proud and forward-looking people, to which we sent mercenaries, hatred, bloodshed and destruction.

Syrians welcomed me to their country as one of their own. These are their stories; these are their voices.”

Reviews:

Mark Taliano exposes the barbarity of Washington’s latest regime change aspirations. The West’s political spin is laid bare in the words of the Syrian people.

–Felicity Arbuthnot, Veteran Middle East War Correspondent.

Canadian Mark Taliano has brought together an excellent mix of anecdotes and analysis to create a very accessible short book on the terrible Syrian conflict. It should serve as a primer for all those who feel curious, dissatisfied or cheated by the near monolithic war chorus of the western corporate media.

Mark is one of those few westerners who took the trouble to travel to Syria during this war, to talk to Syrians of all ranks and see for himself the human reality of this country which, in 2011, became the latest target of the Washington-led coalition.He deftly mixes stories from soldiers, doctors, politicians, clerics and ordinary citizens with his prior reading. That reading includes the invaluable insights of a new generation of investigative journalists, in particular Eva Bartlett and Vanessa Beeley. Start with Mark’s first chapter ‘In Their Own Voices’ and you won’t put it down. He humanises the Syrian people, their culture and their nation in a way that is normally not permitted at wartime.

–Tim Anderson, Distinguished Author and Senior Lecturer of Political Economy, University of Sydney, Australia

Also available in PDF format delivered to your e-mail address:

**Voices from Syria**

Author: Mark Taliano

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-9-1

Year: 2017

Product Type: PDF File

List Price: $6.50

Special Offer: $5.00 

Mark Taliano speaks from Syria:

The Dirty War on Syria: Washington, Regime Change and Resistance, by Tim Anderson

The Dirty War on Syria has relied on a level of mass disinformation not seen in living memory. In seeking ‘regime change’ the big powers sought to hide their hand, using proxy armies of ‘Islamists’, demonising the Syrian Government and constantly accusing it of atrocities. In this way Syrian President Bashar al Assad, a mild-mannered eye doctor, became the new evil in the world.

As western peoples we have been particularly deceived by this dirty war, reverting to our worst traditions of intervention, racial prejudice and poor reflection on our own histories. This book tries to tell its story while rescuing some of the better western traditions: the use of reason, ethical principle and the search for independent evidence.

Reviews: 

Tim Anderson  has written the best systematic critique of western fabrications justifying the war against the Assad government. No other text brings together all the major accusations and their effective refutation. This text is essential reading for all peace and justice activists.

-James Petras, Bartle Emeritus Professor, University of Binghampton, New York.

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).

***

The Director of National Intelligence’s latest report about alleged Russian meddling in the US’ 2020 elections consists of a 15-page document which assesses with “high confidence” that President Putin “was aware of and probably directed Russia’s influence operations” aimed at shaping the outcome of America’s democratic process, including by relying on a proxy network of supposedly foreign intelligence-linked US contacts who “denigrat[ed] President Biden and the Democratic Party” in parallel with supporting former President Trump’s suspicions of mail-in ballots and social media censorship among other topics. This shockingly amounts to US spies unprecedentedly attempting to intimidate dissident Americans.

In The Words Of America’s “Intelligence Community”

What follows are pertinent excerpts from the report:

“We have high confidence in our assessment; Russian state and proxy actors who all serve the Kremlin’s interests worked to affect US public perceptions in a consistent manner…We assess that President Putin and other senior Russian officials were aware of and probably directed Russia’s influence operations against the 2020 US Presidential election…The primary effort the IC uncovered revolved around a narrative-that Russian actors began spreading as early as 2014-alleging corrupt ties between President Biden, his family, and other US officials and Ukraine. Russian intelligence services relied on Ukraine-linked proxies and these proxies’ networks-including their US contacts-to spread this narrative to give Moscow plausible deniability of their involvement.

…

Throughout the election, Russia’s online influence actors sought to amplify mistrust in the electoral process by denigrating mail-in ballots, highlighting alleged irregularities, and accusing the Democratic Party of voter fraud…Russian state media, trolls, and online proxies, including those directed by Russian intelligence, published disparaging content about President Biden, his family, and the Democratic Party, and heavily amplified related content circulating in US media, including stories centered on his son. These influence actors frequently sought out US contributors to increase their reach into US audiences. In addition to election-related content, these online influence actors also promoted conspiratorial narratives about the COVID-19 pandemic, made allegations of social media censorship, and highlighted US divisions surrounding protests about racial justice.

Russian online influence actors generally promoted former President Trump and his commentary, including repeating his political messaging on the election results; the presidential campaign; debates; the impeachment inquiry; and, as the election neared, US domestic crises…Moscow’s range of influence actors uniformly worked to denigrate President Biden after his entrance into the race. Throughout the primaries and general election campaign, Russian influence agents repeatedly spread unsubstantiated or misleading claims about President Biden and his family’s alleged wrongdoing related to Ukraine…Even after the election, Russian online influence actors continued to promote narratives questioning the election results and disparaging President Biden and the Democratic Party.”

21st-Century McCarthyism? 

As can be clearly concluded from the above excerpts, America’s own spies openly accused dissident Americans of being Russian intelligence assets – if not outright agents – actively participating in a foreign influence operation aimed at meddling in their country’s elections.

This determination was reached solely as a result of their public criticisms of Biden, the Democrat Party, mail-in ballots, the politicization of the COVID-19 pandemic (described by the author as World War C), objectively existing social media censorship policies (including the undeniable example of former President Trump’s deplatforming), Antifa and “Black Lives Matter’s” Hybrid War of Terror on America, and the self-professed regime change “conspiracy” by a “well-connected cabal of powerful people” that Time Magazine proudly bragged about the Democrats successfully executing against Trump.

In other words, dissident Americans’ peaceful and responsible exercise of their constitutionally enshrined freedom of speech – including by repeating what their own president at the time was saying – is being held against them as supposed proof that they were secretly meddling in their elections on behalf of Russia.

This can only be described as 21st-century McCarthyism since the spy faction of America’s permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”) is once again actively denigrating the country’s dissidents and therefore quite literally meddling in their own country’s democratic process despite ironically accusing Moscow of doing the exact same thing.

Not only is this meant to intimidate all those who dare to publicly voice their opposition to the ruling Democrat Party and its proxies (including the RINOs), but it’s also intended to revive the debunked conspiracy theory that Trump was actually a “Russian agent/asset”.

Concluding Thoughts

America is in for dark days ahead as Biden’s “Dark Winter” statement becomes a reality even quicker than some of the most critical voices such as the author himself could have predicted. The US’ spy agencies are sending the clearest signal yet that they’ll politically repress all those who dare to publicly oppose the ruling Democrat Party and its proxies.

This could predictably take the form of first harassing them with their taxes and then perhaps calling them into local FBI field offices to be interrogated, after which they might even have false espionage or other related charges filed against them in order to send a chilling message to all others. This unprecedented attack against American dissidents is arguably much worse than anything that the country ever experienced during the era of traditional McCarthyism, and it won’t improve anytime soon since the Democrats are solidly in control of the “deep state” and eager to snuff out all dissent whenever and wherever it arises.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

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

Featured image is from OneWorld

Today March 17, 2021 marks the tenth anniversary of the US-NATO-Israel war against the people of Syria. Below is a review of Mark Taliano‘s book entitled “Voices from Syria”

Our thoughts are with the People of Syria.

***

Telling the truth about the events taking place in Syria before world public opinion is an uphill battle because the real agenda of the terrorism-backers  who are seeking to destroy the Middle East, must remain unspeakable.

This fact is clarified by Canadian author Mark Taliano, in his book entitled ‘Voices from Syria’ with a view to shedding light on the truth, refuting the lies, with a view to reaching global peace and destroying the cancer of terrorism.

“The ‘Global War on Terrorism’ also known as the ‘war on Terror’ is a fraud. It is literally a global war for terror. Empire creates and uses extremist terrorist proxies, including ISIS (also called by its Arabic acronym, Daesh), to advance its geopolitical goals,” Taliano says in his book, indicating that the neoconservative “West” and its allies want to destroy the Middle East so that they can control it.

Peace activist Janice Kortkamp wrote on her FB in November 2016:

FALSE: The Syrian war began when president Bashar al-Assad brutally put down peaceful protests.

TRUE: The Syrian war was planned in earnest by the US since 2005. The Syrian soldiers and police were not even allowed to carry weapons until the ‘peaceful protesters’ had slaughtered several hundreds of police and soldiers.

Scores of testimonies from Syrians, open-source western documents and historical memory are used by the Canadian author to prove that Syria, which refuses to be a vassal of US-led forces of predatory capitalism, is on the front line against the dictatorship of this globalizing economic ideology that favours the dominance of capital and markets over people and nation-state.

“Wahhabi Saudi Arabia, the Gulf monarchies, Israel, and NATO are trying to impose this hidden driver of imperialism, called ‘International Capital’ on Syria,” the author asserts, quoting Robin Mathews as saying

“ A characteristic of imperial globalization is criminal manipulation of people and events for the profit of a few. It includes massive ‘disinformation’ about equality, benefits, social development, law, improved standards of living etc. the disinformation is spread by ‘authoritative’ news sources. In the hands of gigantic, wealthy, private corporations, globalization is a process which works to erase sovereign democracies and replace them with ‘treaties’ sub-states, economic colonies ruled by faceless, offshore, often secret, unaccountable power.”

Taliano says in the preface of his book (composed of 6 chapters) that the secular government of Syria is led by the elected president Bashar al-Assad, who is progressive and forward-looking. President al-Assad has earned the support of most Syrians by providing for them and by protecting them. Healthcare and education, including higher education, are free in Syria. Before the externally orchestrated and perpetrated war on Syria started, Syria was one of the safest countries in the world to visit.

Testimonies

Testimonies from Syrians living in Syria affirm that what is happening in the country is neither revolution nor civil war. Everybody in Syria knows that Washington is the mastermind and the main planner of the war and it supports terrorists by all means.

Those terrorists [ ISIS, al-Qaeda/ al-Nusra Front, White Helmets, Hayet Tahrir al-Sham HTS] are western proxies, none of them are moderate. They perpetrated hundreds of heinous crimes against Syrian civilians and in Syria.

A witness to the massacre at Adra area in Damascus countryside described the scene in these words:

“The ‘rebels’ began to attack the government centers and attacked the police stations- where all the policemen were killed after only a brief clash because of the large number of attackers. They (the attackers) then headed to the checkpoint located on the edge of the city before moving to the clinic where they slaughtered one from the medical staff and put his head in the popular market. They then dragged his body in front of town’s people who gathered to see what is happening. Bakery workers who resisted their machinery being taken away were roasted in their own oven. Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS fighters went from house to house with a list of names and none of those taken away then has been seen since.”

This is just one story out of hundreds of stories narrated by Syrians and obfuscated by Mainstream Media that has created a state of mass political imbecilisation amongst western media consumers.

The western media serves as an agency for imperial war rather than as an agency for truth and justice, according to Taliano, who underlined that voices of truth, justice and peace are suppressed.

Tim Anderson, Australian political economist and author, posted these words in July 2016:

“In my country (Australia) we have seen five years of a near monolithic war narrative on Syria, and associated wartime censorship of dissenting views. Although I have probably written more than any other Australian academic on the conflict in Syria I have been effectively black-listed from the Australian corporate and state media, because what I say does not fit the official line.”

Feigned humanitarianism

Moreover, the Canadian author talked in his book about feigned humanitarianism as a cover for crimes of the highest order and western crimes against law and order. He referred to Canada’s contribution to the cause of the disease metastasizing overseas when it chooses to ally itself with the cancer rather than the cure.

“The cancer is NATO and its allies, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan. We are the countries funding the terrorists, and we are the cancer that wants to illegally impose regime change in Syria,” Taliano stresses, making comparison between Russia’s intervention to cure the terror disease in Syria and NATO countries’ intervention to enable and support terrorism in Syria.

Not only Syria, but also Libya, Iraq and Ukraine have been infested with terrorists to destroy these countries and subjugate the population. For example in Syria, the western terrorists attacked 67 of the country’s 94 national hospitals between 2011 and 2013.

The Canadian author mentioned a list of President al-Assad’ notable accomplishments since 2000. Among them we number: Construction and restoration of 10.000 mosques, 500 churches, 8000 schools, 2000 institutes, 40 universities besides development of tourism, public transportation.

He, in addition, elaborated strategies used by colonizers to achieve their goals in the region. These strategies are starvation, indiscriminate bombing of civilian populations, illegal sanctions, and ‘divide and conquer’.

Taliano underscored that genocidal corporate media presstitutes follow the all-too-familiar script of blaming the victim for the crimes perpetrated by aggressor nations as it creates war propaganda.

He called for the need to build a consensus for truth, justice and peace, instead of building a consensus for war and first-strike nuclear attacks.

“As a first step, we would do well to boycott toxic mainstream media messaging, which favours lies, injustice and war…Mainstream media often uses public-relations-engineered sources for its stories- the ‘White Helmets’ and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) are good examples.”

“Historical memory teaches us that the dirty war against Syria is consistent with previous illegal wars of aggression and western-sourced evidence demonstrates beyond a reasonable doubt that we are, yet again, the terrorists,” Taliano says.

He concluded by saying in his preface:

“As a visitor I felt shame, but Syrians welcomed me as one of them.”

All in all, “Voices from Syria” is a very interesting documentary book that includes clues about lies and crimes of western media against people in Syria, Libya, Ukraine, Iraq and beyond.

Order Mark Taliano’s Book “Voices from Syria” directly from Global Research.

Mark Taliano combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes  the mainstream media narratives on Syria. 

Voices from Syria 

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-1-6

Author: Mark Taliano

Year: 2017

Pages: 128 (Expanded edition: 1 new chapter)

List Price: $17.95

Special Price: $9.95 

Click to order

Today March 17, 2021 marks the tenth anniversary of the US-NATO-Israel war against the people of Syria.

Our thoughts are with the People of Syria.

Ten Years Ago: The onset of the The War on Syria

This article was first published on March 14, 2017

***

They lied about Iraq, they lied about Libya, but at least you can learn about what is going on in Syria with the help of people like Mark Taliano.

Mark, a retired Ontario teacher, visited Syria as part of the Third Tour of Peace. Through the contacts he made, he was able to write a booklet about the perspectives of Syrians under siege by the NATO/GCC assault on their country.

He discusses his book, Voices from Syria, and also the news about a team of Swedish doctors refuting the White Helmets’ pretensions of being first responders.

Excerpt from Foreword to Voices from Syria by Michel Chossudovsky:

We bring to the attention of our readers Mark Taliano’s Book entitled Voices from Syria. In contrast to most geopolitical analysts of the Middle East, Mark Taliano focusses on what unites humanity with the people of Syria in their struggle against foreign aggression. Taliano talks and listens to the people of Syria. He reveals the courage and resilience of a Nation and its people in their day to day lives, after more than five years of US-NATO sponsored terrorism and more than two years of US “peacemaking” airstrikes which have largely targeted Syria’s civilian infrastructure.

Taliano refutes the mainstream media. The causes and consequences of the US-led war on Syria, not to mention the extensive war crimes and atrocities committed by the terrorists on behalf the Western military alliance are routinely obfuscated by the media. He is committed to reversing the tide of media disinformation, by reaching out to Western public opinion on behalf of the Syrian people. Voices from Syria provides a carefully documented overview of life in Syria, the day to day struggle of the Syrian people to protect and sustain their national sovereignty.

**New Book: Voices from Syria**

Author: Mark Taliano

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-9-1

Year: 2017

Product Type: PDF File

List Price: $6.50

Special Offer: $5.00 

Click to order

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).

***

Whenever US intelligence community reports claim foreign interference in or threats to federal elections, no credible evidence supports allegations because none exists.

House, Senate, and Mueller probes into alleged Russian US 2016 election interference ended with a collective whimper, not a bang.

Mueller’s much ado about nothing politicized probe notably stood out as a witch hunt fiasco.

His 19-lawyer team, 40 FBI special agents, intelligence analysts, forensic accountants, and other professional staff spent around $25 million.

They issued 2,800 subpoenas, 500 search warrants, almost 50 orders authorizing use of pen registers, 13 requests to foreign governments for evidence, over 230 orders for communication records, interviewed about 500 individuals, and made 34 politicized indictments on dubious charges unconnected to his mandate.

The Mueller team discovered no evidence of Russian US election meddling, no collusion with Trump to triumph over Hillary, no  obstruction of justice.

Time, energy, and millions of dollars spent amounted to a colossal waste of the above.

Whenever claims or allegations surface about Russian or other foreign interference in US election, they fabricated.

Left unexplained is why would Russia or any other country interfere in America’s one-party rule political process with two right wings?

Whenever farcical US elections are held, dirty business as usual continuity always wins.

Ordinary Americans have no say over how they’re governed or by whom.

Powerful interests decide who holds high office.

The US war party runs things, notably throughout the post-WW II period.

Its ruling authorities serve Wall Street, the military, industrial, security, media complex, and other corporate interests, along with high-net worth individuals — at the expense of ordinary people everywhere.

Americans get the best “democracy” money can buy, a fantasy version, never the real thing.

Yet on Tuesday, an unclassified version of a so-called US intelligence community assessment (ICA) maintained the myth of “foreign threats” to Election 2020.

Despite no evidence suggesting it, the report claimed — with “high confidence” — that Vladimir Putin authorized efforts to undermine Biden’s presidential campaign, saying the following:

“We assess that…Putin authorized, and a range of Russian government organizations conducted, influence operations aimed at denigrating President Biden’s candidacy and the (Dem) Party, supporting former President Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process, and exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the US (sic).”

Whenever claims like the above aren’t corroborated by credible evidence, they’re groundless.

No evidence remotely suggests that Russia or any other nations ever interfered in the US electoral process — or threatened it in any way.

In response to the ICA, Russia’s Washington embassy sharply as follows, saying:

“The document prepared by the US intelligence community is yet another set of groundless accusations against our country of interfering in American internal political processes.”

“The conclusions of the report on the conduct by Russia of influence operations in America are confirmed solely by the confidence of the intelligence services in their correctness.”

“No facts or concrete evidence of such claims (are) provided.”

The March 10-dated ICA said “the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, and the Secretary of Homeland Security, will impose appropriate sanctions for activities determined to constitute foreign interference in a US election (sic).”

Yet the ICA also said that “(w)e have no indications that any foreign actor attempted to alter any technical aspect of the voting process in the 2020 US elections, including voter registration, casting ballots, vote tabulation, or reporting results,” adding:

“Some foreign actors, such as Iran and Russia, spread false or inflated claims about alleged compromises of voting systems to undermine public confidence in election processes and results (sic).”

The ICA also dubiously claimed that Venezuela and Cuba acted in unspecified ways to “influence” Election 2020 results (sic).

Notably missing from the ICA was credible evidence to corroborate claims made.

The conclusion is self-evident.

Like virtually always before, claims about foreign interference in US elections or threats to undermine them — by Russia or other nations — are politicized rubbish when made.

They’re part of longstanding US war by other means on nations free from its control.

It’s waged by both right wings of the US war party.

Instead of fostering peace, stability, cooperative relations with other countries, and adherence to the rule of law, the US consistently goes the other way.

In so doing, it’s furthering its own decline. History’s dustbin awaits its arrival — where all former empires reside.

*

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

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

My two Wall Street books are timely reading:

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

https://www.claritypress.com/product/how-wall-street-fleeces-america/

“Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity”

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

***

Geert Vanden Bossche PhD, is an internationally recognised vaccine developer having worked as the head of the Vaccine Development Office at the German Centre for Infection Research.

Coordinated Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation’s Ebola Vaccine Program and contributed to the implementation of an integrated vaccine work plan in collaboration with Global Health Partners (WHO, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, CDC, UNICEF), regulators (FDA) and vaccine manufacturers to enable timely deployment or stockpiling of Ebola vaccine candidates.

Highlighting the principle of using a prophylactic vaccine in the midst of a pandemic. Likely to create more more viral variants in the process.

Sharing his perspective on mass vaccination in COVID-19.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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

***

“There is a plot in this country to enslave every man, woman and child. Before I leave this high and noble office, I intend to expose this plot.” – John F. Kennedy

On March 11, 2020, a year ago, the worldwide lockdown went into effect. 193 UN member countries, in unison and lockstep, closed their borders, economies and live-societies. It marked the beginning of the planet’s economic and societal destruction – all for an invisible enemy, a corona virus that could never have hit the entire globe at the same time.

So, what’s the plot?

In 1935, 86 years ago, Dr. Arthur Guett, Nazi Director of Public Health, said:

“The ill-conceived `love of thy neighbor’ has to disappear, especially in relation to inferior or asocial creatures. It is the supreme duty of a national state to grant life and livelihood only to the healthy and hereditarily sound portion of the people in order to secure the maintenance of a hereditarily sound and racially pure folk for all eternity….”

These words spoken almost a century ago by Dr. Guett, Adolf Hitler’s Director of Public Health, are sending shivers down the spine. Yet, they are ringing true and right down the alley of today’s Eugenists. Such thinking should be scary for the public at large – except, the public at large is being kept in the dark of what the Globalist Cabal’s real plan is behind the covid fraud.

It is three-fold – taking over total control of humanity, as in One World Order; shifting assets and resources from the middle and the bottom of society to the top few; and – drastically reducing world population.

The Video entitled Bioethics and the New Eugenics (39 min video – 8 March 2021, click below) produced by James Corbett illustrates best what the world’s eugenists have in mind, when they talk about Bioethics, Eugenics and – Death Panels.

Yes – Death Panels would decide who is to live and who is to die. The elderly, who do no longer contribute to civilization, but are rather a (cost) burden on society, should go first.

For the Corbett Report Transcript including sources and references click here 

The eugenics people are talking freely about forced “euthanasia” and after-birth abortions, nothing else but infanticide, meaning killing infants, whom doctors or the “Death Panel” decide their life has no future, is not worth living, will not be contributing to society, but is rather a burden for humanity.

The age of 75 is mentioned as a possible “deadline” for people having to die. Whether those who decided this “deadline” included themselves is not known.

To come to grips with the pandemic, better called Plandemic, a massive worldwide vaccination program has been set in motion. According to Bill Gates, the world will not return to “somewhat normal” before at least 7 billion people have been vaccinated. And we are not talking about a normal or traditional vaccination. The predominant inoculations that are being promoted in the west, are mRNA-type injections.

mRNA stands for messenger ribonucleic acid. They’re single-stranded molecules that carry genetic code from DNA in a cell’s nucleus to ribosomes, which make protein in the cells. These molecules are called messenger RNA because they carry instructions for producing proteins from one part of the cell to another. www.nature.com, Nov 19, 2020

These mRNA vaxxes are experimental.

“[mRNA vaccines] prospects have swung billions of dollars on the stock market, made and imperiled scientific careers, and fueled hopes that it could be a breakthrough that allows society to return to normalcy after months living in fear” (See this).

The mRNA vaxxes have numerous serious side effects and have caused premature death, at the rate of a multiple higher than the traditional vaccines. See here and here.

This is not taking into account the potential long-term negative effects, of which there is today no experience available, but disturbing scientific predictions abound. See here Dr. Lee Merritt and more below.

Let it be clear. The push for mRNA-type vaccines only comes from the West. Russia, China, India, Iran and others have distanced themselves from this type of vaccines, which officially are not even allowed to be called vaccines, but were admitted under a special “Emergency Law” on a trial or “experimental” basis only (see this), making humans into guinea pigs.

Russia and China have developed their own tradition-based vaccines, i. e. injection of a weakened virus that will produce antibodies and trigger the immune system when it gets in contact with the real virus. Science has decades of experience with this type of preventive inoculation, but zero experience with the mRNA-type jabs.

They tell us that people in nursing homes or in hospitals with co-morbidities are the most vulnerable ones to catch covid. Therefore, they are given priority to get the jab. Is it a coincidence that these people are also the most vulnerable ones to become victims of serious “side effects” – and disproportionately many die – from the mRNA injections?

The ongoing vaccination programs everywhere in the west focus on the elderly – and the immediate death rate among vaxxed nursing home inmates, is indeed high, as shown in England, Spain and elsewhere. See this and this. It so happens that people in nursing homes are also the least “productive” in term of contributing to societal well-being. They are a cost for society.  Hence, they typically enter the attention of the eugenists.

Doesn’t this look like it’s all planned? Administering so-called vaccines (a misnomer and outright lie used by western governments) that potentially kill in the short and long-run, and that have been observed as including sterilizing and infertility agents – vaxx-injections for which western governments, US, Europe, including Switzerland – literally refuse to offer their population non-RNA alternatives, like the Russian Sputnik V and the Chinese Sinovac and Sinopharm?

One of the most flagrant cases is Switzerland. At the beginning of the “vaccination” campaign, when Switzerland like many other countries claimed a “shortage” of vaccines, Russia offered them Sputnik V. Switzerland apparently did not even have the curtesy to reply. In a recent press conference, the Swiss Health Minister was asked why they would not import Sputnik V. In a slightly arrogant tone, he replied, “we never even considered it.” – One cannot, but wonder why.

By the way, “shortages” are artificially induced. What is in short supply is wanted by the people. In this case, a vaccine in short supply, incites people to want it. Its mind manipulation 101. A method to increase the relatively low willingness to vaccinate.

In Germany, where the public pressure is high, and as a consequence, in the EU Commission and Parliament, the debate about approving Sputnik V has started. This all the while Sputnik V has passed WHO’s litmus test and has been permitted and is currently being used in more than two dozen countries.

The plan, as we know, is to “Reset” the world – according to the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) founder and CEO, Klaus Schwab, “Covid-19 – The Great Reset”. The caveat is, resetting the world in line with the methods and objectives of a super-rich financial and Big-Tech platform’s objectives – which include a massive population reduction.

This has been a little-veiled dream of Bill Gates, Rockefeller and a whole bunch of UK and US-American eugenists, who are actively at work – and the instrument to fulfill their diabolical project is the massive covid-vaccination campaign, imposed to various degrees by every one of the 193 UN member countries and by the UN body itself. Those on top of the UN and at the head of these 193 UN member governments know exactly what they are doing and why they are doing it.

See this: “Shocking: Former FEMA/HDS Celeste Solum w/David Icke: #Covid Magnetic Tagging; Vaccines for Mass Depopulation & More.“

In the meantime, several medical doctors, virologist and immunologists have broken their silence, exited the matrix and are expressing their conscience to the people, the potential victims of this massive vaccination crime.

One of them is Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche, PhD. He is a vaccine research expert. He has a long list of companies and organizations he’s worked with on vaccine discovery and preclinical research, including GSK, Novartis, Solvay Biologicals, and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Dr Vanden Bossche also coordinated the Ebola vaccine program at GAVI (Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization) in Geneva, with office buildings just next to WHO. – A coincidence?

Dr. Vanden Bossche, gave a stunning interview on 6 March 2021 on the Benefits versus Risks of mRNA-type injections.

Dr. Geert Vandem Bossche essentially says that the individual adverse effects and even deaths from the vaccines, do not provide a clue of the far bigger impending Global Catastrophe.

He said that the mRNA-type vaccines are destroying people’s immune system, and they will be utterly unable to cope with the more virulent versions of the virus that will emerge due to the vaccines. The result could result in significant levels of mortality a few months to a few years down the road after vaccination. He also said he could morally no longer remain silent.

This plays exactly into the eugenists agenda.

On March 7, 2021, Dr. Vandem Bossche, also wrote an Open Letter to WHO, calling for an immediate stop of the worldwide vaccination campaign, here. He warns, “We’re Risking Creating a Global, “Uncontrollable Monster.”

In the meantime, western countries are jumping from one wave to the next, from one lockdown to the next. Many European countries have already announced that a third wave may be not far off. Italy just announced their third-wave lockdown, covering at least the period over Easter 2021. Germany and Switzerland also warned their people of a third wave, if restrictions, aka repression, is not obeyed.

What most people do not know is that a virus infection, as is covid, doesn’t come in waves. It starts slow, then peaks, and finally it ebbs off – and is over. Call it herd immunity. This is being witnessed currently in India, whose approach of dealing with covid was and is very different from the west. It is not based on coercion into vaccination, but on treatment of the virus by traditional, inexpensive medication that has a long history of positive results of dealing with viral infections, such as Ivermectin and hydrochloroquine, and others. China also mastered their covid epidemic by medication, not by vaccination.

This is the typical graph of covid-19 in India. It peaks and then declines – and the disease is over. This is also a typical flu curve.

Below is the covid curve in Spain and is representative for many other European countries, as well as for the United States.

It is clear that the figures in the west are very much manipulated with the purpose of coercing people into accepting the vaccine.

People have a hard time understanding and accepting to what extent our western governments are “evil”, deceiving their electorate, those who pay their salaries and benefits. Once people grasp what is going on and accept the treacherous, deceptive and corrupt character of those they believed to be their leaders, the awakening may happen, and, with it, massive civil disobedience may put an end to this diabolical plan.

What has been prepared decades ago and is being played out in full sight since the beginning of 2020, looks like the world’s largest blackmail, coercion, corruption, and outright threats campaign of all times in the history of mankind.

And so far, none of the 193 UN member countries’ so-called leaders (sic) have come forward, have had the courage to follow their conscience – if they have one – and divulge to the globe’s 7.8 billion population what is going on, what is being planned by the Eugenists who raise the issue of “who is destined to die and who may live” – and why. – And who is behind it all? – Why are these heads of state following “Higher Orders” that may lead to a worldwide genocide, unknown in recent history?

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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.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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We bring to the attention of our readers this important report by James Corbett

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At first glance, bioethics might seem like just another branch of ethical philosophy where academics endlessly debate other academics about how many angels dance on the head of a pin in far-out, science fiction like scenarios.

What many do not know, however, is that the seemingly benign academic study of bioethics has its roots in the dark history of eugenics. With that knowledge, the dangers inherent in entrusting some of the most important discussions about the life, death and health of humanity in the hands of a select few become even more apparent.

For the Corbett Report Transcript including sources and references click here 

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Concluding Comments of the Corbett Report on Bioethics

From its inception, the field of bioethics has taken its moral cue from the card-carrying eugenicists who founded its core institutions. For these academicians of the eugenics philosophy, the key moral questions raised by modern medical advances are always utilitarian in nature: What is the value that forced vaccination or compulsory sterilization brings to a community? Will putting lithium in the water supply lead to a happier society? Does a family’s relief at killing their newborn baby outweigh that baby’s momentary discomfort as it is murdered?

Implicit in this line of thinking are all of the embedded assumptions about what defines “value” and “happiness” and “relief” and how these abstract ideas are measured and compared. The fundamental utilitarian assumption that the individual’s worth can or should be measured against some arbitrarily defined collective good, meanwhile, is rarely (if ever) considered.

The average person, however—largely unaware that these types of questions are even being asked (let alone answered) by bioethics professors in obscure academic journals—may literally perish for their lack of knowledge about these discussions.

All things being equal, these types of ideas would likely be treated as they always have been: as a meaningless parlor game played by ivory tower academics with no power to enforce their crazy ideas. All things, however, are not equal.

Perhaps taking a page from the notebook of his brother, Rahm, about the utility of crisis in effecting societal change, Ezekiel Emanuel declared in 2011 that “we will get health-care reform only when there is a war, a depression or some other major civil unrest.” He didn’t add “pandemic” to that list of excuses, but he didn’t have to. As the events of the past year have borne out, the public are more than willing to consider the previously unthinkable now that they have been told that there is a crisis taking place.

Forced vaccination. Immunity passports. The erection of a biosecurity state. For the first time, the eugenics-infused philosophers of bioethics are on the verge of gaining real power. And the public is still largely unaware of the discussions that these academics have been engaged in for decades.

At the very least, Bill Gates can relax now: We can finally have the discussion on death panels.

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Trading places. What took so long?

From east of Suez to up the Yangtze. Customers at the bars in Beijing were celebrating but it wasn’t Britain’s pivot to Asia that had them chatting loudly and back slapping.

St Patrick’s Day, March 17, was the reason for their unmasked jollity in the bars and pubs. More than 50 years after the then Labour defence secretary Denis Healey announced the United Kingdom’s cash-strapped retreat in 1968 from east of Suez, Britain is back. Well, talking about it. 

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his admirals are looking at a new horizon stretching through crowded seaways east from India to Japan and south from China to Australia. Britain, or in reality the Tory high command, believes the European Union stifled the imperial drive, robbing Britain of its true place, a dominating global role. Britain’s decline, some Tories believe, can be traced to the EU, the introduction of comprehensive education and spreadable butter.  Is a Covid-19-weakened but vaccine-rate –buoyed Johnson, in response, wrapping himself in the flag and embarking on an imperial fantasy?

Asia is the new economic center and the UK is lagging behind in its dealings with it. China is the only Asian country in Britain’s top 10 markets. The US, Germany and Ireland are the top 3, according to the Database of British Products & Verified British Exporters.

Clearly something is askew. Ireland, of course, has proximity but it also has a population of approx 5 million. That is about the size of my Beijing neighborhood. And here comes the contradiction. Britain is changing policy primarily not to boost trade with China but to counter it, politically, militarily and economically. Sure, London says, we’ll do business with Beijing if the right opportunity comes along. I wouldn’t count on it.

In a word, Britain wants to contain China. There are legitimate reasons to boost trade with Asia but containing China is ludicrous both in its reasoning and consequences. It is also impossible.

Britain has announced it will send its brand new aircraft carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth, to the South China Sea and give Beijing a shot across the bows in a “that’ll teach ‘em’’ show of weakness. It meant to do so earlier but delays and cost overruns put back the deployment. It dare not go into the South China Sea alone, real politik demands that Washington set the timeline and sends its ships to, um, well, protect it and make sure matters do not get out of hand. No point going up the Yangtze without a paddle. Of course it will be described as allies working together, to send a united message. In truth, China is not worried.

They know how to deal with former 20^th century concession holders of its territory.

In February 2019, the then UK defense secretary, Gavin Williamson, now an incredibly unpopular minister of education kept in his post as a lightning rod, announced HMS Elizabeth would travel to the South China Sea and be prepared to use lethal force to defend free and open waterways. China, after enjoying a fit of the giggles, responded by withdrawing its invitation to the chancellor, Phillip Hammond, to visit for trade talks. 

The Chinese are not anti-English. Far from it. Every school in China teaches English or wants to if teachers and resources are available. In England about 13 percent of state schools and 50 percent of independent schools teach Chinese. The fortunes of English soccer teams are passionately followed in China. Who do you support is a common question. Pre-pandemic, students wanted to go to Britain to study. Many did. London and Edinburgh were top destinations for Chinese tourists.

 China aside, Britain should not be under any illusion that its return to Asia will usher in a new age of the Raj.

The region is the powerhouse of the global economy. From the east bank of the Bosphorus to Tokyo Bay, it accounts for half of global economic output and more than half the world’s population. And this is growing. Within its geography it has the world’s two most populous nations, China and India and the second and third largest economies in the world, China and Japan as well as the world’s largest democracy, India. 

The Asia pivot is a tantalizing prospect. But how well has lockdown London thought this through? Asian countries want visas for their nationals to study and work in Britain. Will the UK be prepared to give India and the other Asian countries access to UK markets, as well as tens of thousands of visas?

Asians were victims of rampant saber-led globalization in the age of empire.

They want, and will get, a better deal this time.  

Anchors aweigh!  

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On Thursday, China’s Central Committee official/Foreign Affairs Director Yang Jiechi and Foreign Minister Wang Yi will meet with Biden regime’s top “diplomat” Tony Blinken and national security advisor Jake Sullivan in Anchorage, Alaska.

It comes at a time of no easing of US war on China by other means, Biden continuing Trump’s hostile agenda toward Beijing.

Ahead of Thursday’s meeting, Blinken and US war secretary Lloyd Austin are visiting Japan and South Korea through Wednesday for discussions focused on China and North Korea — nonbelligerent nations threatening no one.

Last Friday, Biden’s double participated in a virtual summit with leaders of India, Japan and Australia, so-called Quad nations, their meeting discussed in a Monday article.

Their alliance is all about countering China’s growing prominence regionally and worldwide.

The US seeks to undermine Beijing’s political, economic, technological, and military development — what failed so far and is highly unlikely to fare better ahead.

Regional instability, to the extent that it exists, is because of Washington’s imperial presence, its rejection of peace, stability, and cooperative relations with all nations regionally and worldwide.

Thursday’s Sino/US meeting will be the first between officials of both countries since Biden replaced Trump by election theft.

According to Blinken’s spokesman Price, talks will be “difficult.”

“We’ll be frank, and explain how Beijing’s actions and behavior challenge the security, the prosperity, the values of not only the United States, but also our partners and allies (sic).”

The above reinvention of reality is one of many examples of how the US falsely blames other nations for its own hostile actions.

US relations with China and other countries free from its control are more likely to worsen ahead than improve with undemocratic Dems running the White House and Congress.

US politicians and bureaucrats time and again falsely blame China and other independent countries of things they had nothing to do with.

It’s why normal relations between these nations and the US are virtually impossible to achieve — ruling regimes in Washington bearing full responsibility.

Biden’s press secretary Psaki said his geopolitical team will work with regional nations to “pressure” Beijing.

Talks in Anchorage are certain to be tense with no prospect for breakthroughs on issues where significant differences exist between the US and China.

Price noted that there’s “a long litany of (bilateral) disagreements,” adding:

“We will certainly not pull any punches” in discussing them.

“Any follow-up engagements with the Chinese officials after Anchorage have to be based on the proposition that we’re seeing tangible progress and tangible outcomes on the issues of concern.”

“We’re not looking to engage in talks for the sake of talks.”

“We are looking for Beijing, again, to demonstrate that seriousness of purpose (sic).”

According to China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, both “sides are still deliberating on the agenda items.”

“We hope we can have candid dialogues on issues of mutual concerns. The Chinese side will present our position.”

“Both sides should have an accurate understanding on each other’s policy intention, manage our differences and to bring Sino-US relations back on the right track.”

Chances of achieving this aim are virtually nil. According to Political Science Professor Xiaoyu Pu:

“The Biden (regime) is not eager to significantly improve the bilateral relationship.”

“From the US domestic perspective, it is neither possible nor desirable…”

Heightened tensions between both nations are unlikely to ease because of US hostility toward countries free from its control.

Looking ahead, that dismal state is highly unlikely to change.

A state of war by hot and/or other means exists between the US and nations unwilling to sell their soul to a higher power in Washington.

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

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

My two Wall Street books are timely reading:

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

https://www.claritypress.com/product/how-wall-street-fleeces-america/

“Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity”

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

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***

Yemen’s Ansar Allah are unrelenting in their offensive, both on positions inside the country, and in attacks on Saudi Arabia’s infrastructure within the Kingdom.

The Houthis, as Ansar Allah are more widely known, released a video showing their recent raid on positions of Saudi-backed forces in the area Rashah Al-Gharbia in Najran province. It was purportedly successful, and one of many recent ones.

The battlefield is in flux, a constant back and forth. The Houthis push in one direction, and are pushed back in another. Heavy clashes continue in the Balaq mountain area, as well as on the Ghubari mountain in the Kadha region. These are two locations that are set very far apart, Balaq is near Marib and the battle for the city continues. Ghubari is to the very south, near Taiz. It is safe to say that the fighting is happening all along the contact line, and not at just at a single location.

In what has become a regular event, the Houthis carried out yet another drone strike within Saudi Arabia’s borders. On March 15th, they attacked attacked Abha Airport and King Khalid Airport in Khamis Mushait with 3 Qasef 2k drones. The Houthi spokesman claimed that the strike was successful and hit all of its targets.

Not all, however, is always successful and goes without a hitch, of course. A missile was reportedly launched by the Houthis from the Central Security Camp in the area of Shabban, near the Ibb city center. It malfunctioned and fell on the side of the al-Naqlin Mountian on the outskirts of Ibb city. A large explosion was heard. A similar missile was launched on the previous day, in the same direction. No impact was reported. Still, the Houthi’s successes has caused waves.

There are reports that Turkey, after sending militants to Azerbaijan and Libya, is now priming to send “Syrian mercenaries” to Yemen. They are to fight on behalf of the Saudi-led coalition against Ansar Allah.

In case of emergency, Iran is likely to provide the Houthis with some more support in the form of weapons and hardware, as it has done repeatedly in the past. On March 15th, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps revealed a brand-new advanced missile site, which is essentially an “underground city”.

Iranian state media dubbed it an advanced “missile city” containing cruise and ballistic missiles able to hit targets at “multiple ranges” and with a 360-degree firing radius. As such it can support its allies from the Axis of Resistance all around.

The fighting in Yemen is showing a promise of worsening in the coming weeks and months, and the Houthis will need all the help they can get, especially if Turkey indirectly joins the fray.

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***

China is upheld as an Enemy of America.

America’s perceptions regarding China are manipulated both by the media and official government statements

This article documents the role of gallup polls in manipulating American perceptions concerning China.

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Forty-five percent of Americans now say China is the greatest enemy of the U.S., more than double the percentage who said so in 2020. That year, Americans were equally as likely to say either China or Russia was the U.S.’s greatest enemy. The current shift coincided with a period when the global economy and human activity were severely impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, which originated in China.

The Feb. 3-18 poll also finds favorable views of China among U.S. adults falling for the second straight year, putting the figure at a historically low 20%.

The rise in perceptions of China as the United States’ greatest enemy is accompanied by a sharp decline since 2020 in those mentioning Iran (down 15 percentage points to 4%), as well as four-to-five-point declines in mentions of Iraq and North Korea and smaller declines in a handful of other countries.

Perceptions of Russia as the United States’ greatest enemy, now 26%, were essentially unchanged from a year ago when 23% named it. But it is down from 32% who did so in 2019 when it ranked first overall. The 9% of Americans who view North Korea as their country’s greatest enemy is a noticeable turn from previous years when rhetorical tensions, military escalations and missile testing were more elevated. In 2018, 51% named North Korea as the greatest enemy.

Americans’ Perceptions Over Time

Over the past several years, there have been noticeable fluctuations between the country perceived as the nation’s greatest adversary; China last ranked No. 1 in 2014, Russia topped the list in 2020, 2019 and 2014, and North Korea ranked highest in 2018 and 2016.

Prior to China, Russia and North Korea’s top rankings, Americans named Iran (2006-2008, 2011 and 2012) and Iraq (2001 and 2005) as the United States’ greatest enemy.

While North Korea continues to hold the overall record high of 51% as the U.S.’s greatest enemy, that focus has now shifted to its ally and primary benefactor, China.

There are noticeable partisan differences in perceptions of the greatest enemy of the U.S, with Republicans naming China as the top country and Democrats citing Russia. While 76% of Republicans name China as the greatest enemy, 43% of independents and 22% of Democrats do so. Conversely, close to half of Democrats name Russia (47%) compared with one in four independents (24%) and just 6% of Republicans.

Who Is the World’s Leading Economic Power?

While Americans perceive China as the country’s top enemy, half also believe that China is the world’s leading economic power. This perception has noticeably increased since 2020, likely because of the COVID-related decline in the U.S. economy in the past year. While China has made strong progress in its overall GDP growth, it remains the world’s second-largest economy to the United States.

Since 2000, Americans have alternated between choosing China or the United States as the leading economic power, often influenced by the current health of the U.S. economy. The 50% of Americans perceiving the U.S. as the top economic power a year ago was the highest in two decades, reflecting the nation’s strong economic performance just before the pandemic.

Far fewer Americans select the European Union (5%), Japan (4%), Russia (2%) or India (1%) for this distinction. Of these, only Japan has been chosen by 10% or more in Gallup’s trend since 2000, with those instances occurring more than a decade ago.

A separate question in the survey asks Americans which country they think will be the leading economic power in 20 years. The public’s views are more evenly split on this question, with 46% choosing China and 40% the United States. Again, this is a switch from last year when the majority (53%) predicted the U.S. would have this role, nearly matching the record high 55% selecting the U.S. in 2000.

No more than 4% foresee the European Union, Japan, India or Russia achieving this distinction in 20 years.

Record High See Chinese Economic Power as Critical U.S. Threat

A new high of 63% of Americans says the economic power of China is a critical threat to the vital interests of the U.S. in the next 10 years. An additional 30% describe it as an important, but not critical, threat.

The 63% who believe China’s economic power is a critical threat is up from 46% the last time the question was asked in 2019 and is more than 10 points above the prior highs of 52% in 2013 and 2014.

Views that China’s economic rise is a critical threat to the vital interests of the United States have climbed among all party groups. Today 81% of Republicans, 59% of independents and 56% of Democrats view China’s economic rise as such a threat. In 2019, fewer in all party groups held that view, including 54% of Republicans, 47% of independents and 37% of Democrats.

Bottom Line

Perceptions of China as the greatest enemy of the U.S. are at a high point in Gallup’s trend at the same time its favorable rating is at a low point. The specific concern some Americans have over China, namely its economic power, is identified as a threat to the vital interests of the U.S. by most Americans. In addition, half of Americans view China as the leading economic power in the world today. These developments make U.S. foreign policy toward China especially important, as the tension between the two nations has only grown over the past decade during both the Barack Obama and Donald Trump administrations.

View complete question responses and trends (PDF download).

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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).

***

There is evidence of competition and confrontation between Big Pharma conglomerates.

This article focusses on acts of sabotage directed against Russia’s and Cuba’s vaccines.

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As Brazil’s death toll from the Covid-19 pandemic nears 275,000, documents reveal that Washington pressured the Brazilian government not to buy Russia’s “malign” Sputnik V vaccine – a decision which may have costed many thousands of lives.

Malign influences

The US Department of Health and Human Services recently published its Annual Report for 2020.

“2020 was one of the most challenging years in the history of our country and in the history of the Department of Health and Human Services”, former US Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar introduces the report.

“There is an end to the pandemic in sight”, he continues, “with the delivery of safe and effective vaccines through Operation Warp Speed”.

Tucked away on page 48, the report shockingly reveals how the US pressured Brazil to reject Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine.

Under the subheading “Combatting malign influences in the Americas”, the report announces:

OGA used diplomatic relations in the Americas region to mitigate efforts by states, including Cuba, Venezuela, and Russia, who are working to increase their influence in the region to the detriment of US safety and security. OGA coordinated with other U.S. government agencies to strengthen diplomatic ties and offer technical and humanitarian assistance to dissuade countries in the region from accepting aid from these ill intentioned states. Examples include using OGA’s Health Attaché office to persuade Brazil to reject the Russian COVID-19 vaccine, and offering CDC technical assistance in lieu of Panama accepting an offer of Cuban doctors. [emphasis added]

It is also striking that the US dissuaded Panama from accepting Cuban doctors, who have been on the global front line against the pandemic, working in over 40 countries.

As well as Brazil, the US has despatched Health Attachés to China, India, Mexico and South Africa, likely charged with carrying out similar activities.

The documents demonstrate how Washington views global health in strict power terms, willing to sacrifice countless lives in order to deny Official Enemies a soft power victory.

Catastrophic response

Brazil has suffered the world’s second-worst number of Covid-19 death rates, with Bolsonaro’s Covid-19 policy being described as “homicidally negligent”.

Throughout 2020, the Brazilian government consistently refused to pursue any vaccine but AstraZeneca’s, baffling medical experts.

A group of Brazilian mayors urged Health Minister Eduardo Pazuello to resign, writing:

“His leadership did not believe in vaccination as a way out of the crisis and did not carry out the necessary planning for the acquisition of vaccines”.

With deaths soaring, Bolsonaro eventually and belatedly opened discussions for the delivery of Sputnik V vaccines.

Secret documents published by Brasil Wire also revealed that the UK had lobbied Brazil on behalf of AstraZeneca as well as British mining firms, showing that the US is not the only country leveraging power on behalf of pharmaceutical multinationals in Latin America.

This is only the latest scandalous episode in Bolsonaro’s handling of the pandemic, and malign US interference in the region.

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