Global Research

First published by Global Research on September 24, 2020, this analysis of former Pfizer V-P Michael Yeadon has been the object of censorship.

In a stunning development, a former Chief Science Officer for the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer says “there is no science to suggest a second wave should happen.”

The “Big Pharma” insider asserts that false positive results from inherently unreliable COVID tests are being used to manufacture a “second wave” based on “new cases.”

Dr. Mike Yeadon, a former Vice President and Chief Science Officer for Pfizer for 16 years, says that half or even “almost all” of tests for COVID are false positives. Dr. Yeadon also argues that the threshold for herd immunity may be much lower than previously thought, and may have been reached in many countries already.

In an interview last week Dr. Yeadon was asked:

“we are basing a government policy, an economic policy, a civil liberties policy, in terms of limiting people to six people in a meeting…all based on, what may well be, completely fake data on this coronavirus?”

Dr. Yeadon answered with a simple “yes.”

Dr. Yeadon said in the interview that, given the “shape” of all important indicators in a worldwide pandemic, such as hospitalizations, ICU utilization, and deaths, “the pandemic is fundamentally over.”

Yeadon said in the interview:

“Were it not for the test data that you get from the TV all the time, you would rightly conclude that the pandemic was over, as nothing much has happened. Of course people go to the hospital, moving into the autumn flu season…but there is no science to suggest a second wave should happen.”

In a paper published this month, which was co-authored by Yeadon and two of his colleagues, “How Likely is a Second Wave?”, the scientists write:

“It has widely been observed that in all heavily infected countries in Europe and several of the US states likewise, that the shape of the daily deaths vs. time curves is similar to ours in the UK. Many of these curves are not just similar, but almost super imposable.”

In the data for UK, Sweden, the US, and the world, it can be seen that in all cases, deaths were on the rise in March through mid or late April, then began tapering off in a smooth slope which flattened around the end of June and continues to today. The case rates however, based on testing, rise and swing upwards and downwards wildly.

Media messaging in the US is already ramping up expectations of a “second wave.”

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Survival Rate of COVID Now Estimated to be 99.8%, Similar to Flu, Prior T-Cell Immunity

The survival rate of COVID-19 has been upgraded since May to 99.8% of infections. This comes close to ordinary flu, the survival rate of which is 99.9%. Although COVID can have serious after-effects, so can flu or any respiratory illness. The present survival rate is far higher than initial grim guesses in March and April, cited by Dr. Anthony Fauci, of 94%, or 20 to 30 times deadlier. The Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) value accepted by Yeadon et al in the paper is .26%. The survival rate of a disease is 100% minus the IFR.

Dr. Yeadon pointed out that the “novel” COVID-19 contagion is novel only in the sense that it is a new type of coronavirus. But, he said, there are presently four strains which circulate freely throughout the population, most often linked to the common cold.

In the scientific paper, Yeadon et al write:

“There are at least four well characterised family members (229E, NL63, OC43 and HKU1) which are endemic and cause some of the common colds we experience, especially in winter. They all have striking sequence similarity to the new coronavirus.”

The scientists argue that much of the population already has, if not antibodies to COVID, some level of “T-cell” immunity from exposure to other related coronaviruses, which have been circulating long before COVID-19.

The scientists write:

“A major component our immune systems is the group of white blood cells called T-cells whose job it is to memorise a short piece of whatever virus we were infected with so the right cell types can multiply rapidly and protect us if we get a related infection. Responses to COVID-19 have been shown in dozens of blood samples taken from donors before the new virus arrived.”

Introducing the idea that some prior immunity to COVID-19 already existed, the authors of “How Likely is a Second Wave?” write:

“It is now established that at least 30% of our population already had immunological recognition of this new virus, before it even arrived…COVID-19 is new, but coronaviruses are not.”

They go on to say that, because of this prior resistance, only 15-25% of a population being infected may be sufficient to reach herd immunity:

“…epidemiological studies show that, with the extent of prior immunity that we can now reasonably assume to be the case, only 15-25% of the population being infected is sufficient to bring the spread of the virus to a halt…”

In the US, accepting a death toll of 200,000, and an infection fatality rate of 99.8%, this would mean for every person who has died, there would be about 400 people who had been infected, and lived. This would translate to around 80 million Americans, or 27% of the population. This touches Yeadon’s and his colleagues’ threshold for herd immunity.

The authors say:

“current literature finds that between 20% and 50% of the population display this pre-pandemic T-cell responsiveness, meaning we could adopt an initially susceptible population value from 80% to 50%. The lower the real initial susceptibility, the more secure we are in our contention that a herd immunity threshold (HIT) has been reached.”

Masthead for “Lockdown Skeptics.org” publisher of “How Likely is a Second Wave?” | Source

The False Positive Second Wave

Of the PCR test, the prevalent COVID test used around the world, the authors write:

“more than half of the positives are likely to be false, potentially all of them.”

The authors explain that what the PCR test actually measures is “simply the presence of partial RNA sequences present in the intact virus,” which could be a piece of dead virus which cannot make the subject sick, and cannot be transmitted, and cannot make anyone else sick.

“…a true positive does not necessarily indicate the presence of viable virus. In limited studies to date, many researchers have shown that some subjects remain PCR-positive long after the ability to culture virus from swabs has disappeared. We term this a ‘cold positive’ (to distinguish it from a ‘hot positive’, someone actually infected with intact virus). The key point about ‘cold positives’ is that they are not ill, not symptomatic, not going to become symptomatic and, furthermore, are unable to infect others.”

Overall, Dr. Yeadon builds the case that any “second wave” of COVID, and any government case for lockdowns, given the well-known principles of epidemiology, will be entirely manufactured.

In Boston this month, a lab suspended doing coronavirus testing after 400 false positives were discovered.

An analysis of PCR-based test at medical website medrxiv.org states:

“data on PCR-based tests for similar viruses show that PCR-based testing produces enough false positive results to make positive results highly unreliable over a broad range of real-world scenarios.”

University of Oxford Professor Carl Heneghan, Director of Oxford’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, writes in a July article “How Many COVID Diagnoses Are False Positives?”:

“going off current testing practices and results, Covid-19 might never be shown to disappear.”

Of course, the most famous incidence of PCR test unreliability was when the President of Tanzania revealed to the world that he had covertly sent samples from a goat, a sheep, and a pawpaw fruit to a COVID testing lab. They all came back positive for COVID.

Made in China

In August, the government of Sweden discovered 3700 false COVID positives from test kits made by China’s BGI Genomics. The kits were approved in March by the FDA for use in the US.

Second Waves of Coronaviruses Not Normal

Dr. Yeadon challenged the idea that all pandemics take place in subsequent waves, citing two other coronavirus outbreaks, the SARS virus in 2003, and MERS in 2012. What may seem like two waves can actually be two single waves occurring in different geographical regions. They say data gathered from the relatively recent SARS 2003 and the MERS outbreaks support their contention.

In the case of the MERS:

“it is actually multiple single waves affecting geographically distinct populations at different times as the disease spreads. In this case the first major peak was seen in Saudi Arabia with a second peak some months later in the Republic of Korea. Analysed individually, each area followed a typical single event…”

In the interview, when questioned about the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918, which came in successive waves during World War I, Yeadon pointed out that this was an entirely different kind of virus, not in the coronavirus family. Others have blamed general early century malnutrition and unsanitary conditions. World War I soldiers, hard hit, lived in cold mud and conditions the worst imaginable for immune resistance.

Saudi and Korea Waves of MERS Coronavirus

Lockdowns Don’t Work

Another argument made by Yeadon et al in their September paper is that there has been no difference in outcomes related to lockdowns.

They say:

“The shape of the deaths vs. time curve implies a natural process and not one resulting mainly from human interventions…Famously, Sweden has adopted an almost laissez faire approach, with qualified advice given, but no generalised lockdowns. Yet its profile and that of the UK’s is very similar.”

Mild-Mannered Yeadon Demolishes Man Who Started It All, Professor Neil Ferguson

The former Pfizer executive and scientist singles out one former colleague for withering rebuke for his role in the pandemic, Professor Neil Ferguson. Ferguson taught at Imperial College while Yeadon was affiliated. Ferguson’s computer modelprovided the rationale for governments to launch draconian orders which turned free societies into virtual prisons overnight. Over what is now estimated by the CDC to be a 99.8% survival rate virus.

Dr. Yeardon said in the interview that “no serious scientist gives any validity” to Ferguson’s model.

Speaking with thinly-veiled contempt for Ferguson, Dr. Yeardon took special pains to point out to his interviewer:

“It’s important that you know most scientists don’t accept that it [Ferguson’s model] was even faintly right…but the government is still wedded to the model.”

Yeardon joins other scientists in castigating governments for following Ferguson’s model, the assumptions of which all worldwide lockdowns are based on. One of these scientists is Dr. Johan Giesecke, former chief scientist for the European Center for Disease Control and Prevention, who called Ferguson’s model “the most influential scientific paper” in memory, and also “one of the most wrong.”

It was Ferguson’s model which held that “mitigation” measures were necessary, i.e. social distancing and business closures, in order to prevent, for example, over 2.2 million people dying from COVID in the US.

Ferguson predicted that Sweden would pay a terrible price for no lockdown, with 40,000 COVID deaths by May 1, and 100,000 by June. Sweden’s death count is now 5800. The Swedish government says this coincides to a mild flu season. Although initially higher, Sweden now has a lower death rate per-capita than the US, which it achieved without the terrific economic damage still ongoing in the US. Sweden never closed restaurants, bars, sports, most schools, or movie theaters. The government never ordered people to wear masks.

Dr. Yeadon speaks bitterly of the lives lost as a result of lockdown policies, and of the “savable” countless lives which will be further lost, from important surgeries and other healthcare deferred, should lockdowns be reimposed, .

Yeardon is a successful entrepreneur, the founder of a biotech company which was acquired by Novartis, another pharmaceutical giant. Yeadon’s unit at Pfizer was the Asthma and Respiratory Research Unit. (Yeadon, partial list of publications.)

Sweden During International “Lockdowns”

Why is All This Happening? US Congressman Says He is Convinced of “Government Plan” to Continue Lockdowns Until a Mandatory Vaccine. Conspiracy Theories?

The list of news items grows which reflects unfavorably upon the narrative being played out on the major television networks, of a mysterious, “novel” virus which has been controlled only by an unprecedented assault on individual rights and liberties, now ready to pounce again, on already suffering populations with no choice but to submit to further government orders.

Governors have quietly extended their powers indefinitely by shifting the goalpost, without saying so, from “flattening the curve” to ease the strain on hospitals, to “no new cases.” From “pandemic,” to “case-demic.”

In Germany, an organization of 500 German doctors and scientists has formed, who say that government response to the COVID virus has been vastly out of proportion to the actual severity of the disease.

Evidence of chicanery mounts. Both the CDC, and US Coronavirus Task Force headed by Dr. Deborah Birx, are candid that the definition of death-by-COVID has been flexible, and that the rules favor calling it COVID whenever possible. This opens the possibility of a vastly inflated death count. In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo’s administration is under federal investigation for all but signing the death warrants for thousands of nursing home elderly, when the state sent COVID patients into the nursing homes, over the helpless objections of nursing home executives and staff.

Why are the major media ignoring what would seem to be an eminently newsworthy item, an industry rockstar like Yeadon, calling out the biggest guns in the public health world? Would not the Sunday talk shows, the Chris Wallaces and Meet the Press, want to grill such a man for record audiences?

Here the talk may turn to dark agendas, and not just mere incompetence, obtuseness, and stupidity.

One opinion was put forth by US Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY) when he said on the Tom Woods Show on August 16th:

“The secret the government is keeping from you is that they plan to keep us shut down until there is some kind of vaccine, and then whether it’s compulsory at the federal level, or the state level, or maybe they persuade your employers though another PPP program that you won’t qualify for unless you make your employees get the vaccine, I think that’s their plan. Somebody convince me that’s not their plan, because there is no logical ending to this other than that.”

Another theory is that the COVID crisis is being used consolidate never-before-imaged levels of control over individuals and society by elites. This is put forth by the nephew of the slain president, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., son of also-assassinated Bobby Kennedy. In a speech at a massive anti-lockdown, anti-mandatory COVID vaccination rally in Germany, Bobby Jr. warned of the existence of a:

“bio-security agenda, the rise of the authoritarian surveillance state and the Big Pharma sponsored coup d’etat against liberal democracy…The pandemic is a crisis of convenience for the elite who are dictating these policies,”

In a lawsuit, Kennedy Jr.’s medical witnesses warn that mandatory flu shots many make children more susceptible to COVID.

The warnings of dire intentions of Kennedy’s “elite” are coming from more mainstream sources. Dr. Joseph Marcela, of the highly trusted, mega-traffic medical information site Mercola.com, has penned a careful review of one doctor’s claims of genetics-altering vaccines coming our way.

And it does not assuage fears that a defense establishment website, Defense One, reports that permanent under-the skin biochips, injectable by the same syringe that holds a vaccine, may soon be approved by the FDA. It does not help the anti-conspiracy theory cause that, according to Newsweek, Dr. Anthony Fauci actually did give NIH funding to Wuhan lab for bat coronavirus research so dangerous it was opposed on record by 200 scientists, and banned in the US.

In 1957, a pandemic hit, the H2N2 Asian Flu with a .7% Infection Fatality Rate, which killed as many people per capita in the US as the COVID has claimed now. There was never a single mention of it in the news at the time, never mind the extraordinary upheaval that we see now. In 1968 the Hong Kong Flu hit the US (.5% IFR,) taking 100,000 people when the US had a markedly lower population. Not single alarm was raised, not a single store closed nor even a network news story. The following summer the largest gathering in US history took place, Woodstock.

Mass hysteria is never accidental, but benefits someone. The only question left to answer is, who?

August Protest in Berlin Against Lockdown, and Against Mandatory COVID Vaccination| Source

Woodstock 1969

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Grassroots mobilization has led the Biden administration to pledge to end the war in Yemen; further activism is needed to make him follow through on his promise and to pressure Saudi Arabia to end its blockade

Six years ago, in the early hours of March 26, 2015, a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia and backed by the United States began a bombing campaign in Yemen.

Endorsed by the Obama-Biden administration as a sort of consolation prize to Saudi Arabia after signing the nuclear deal with Iran, the airstrikes and blockade imposed on Yemen have led to what the UN has described as the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

With Biden now the president, activists have been able to secure important–if vague–promises from him to end U.S. complicity in the war.

The coming weeks present a unique and critical opportunity for holding his administration to the task.

[Source: google.com]

The Saudi-led coalition’s blockade on Yemen has spelled disaster for millions of Yemenis.

Death and Destruction

The war has caused approximately one-quarter of a million direct deaths. Additionally, in 2020 alone, 172,000 people were internally displaced, 79% of whom are women and girls. In total, approximately four million people have been displaced over the last six years.

Displaced family in Marib, Yemen. [Source: news.un.org]

Nearly three-quarters of the population is in need of humanitarian aid, and an estimated 13.5 million Yemenis are in a food emergency. In addition to violence and a looming famine, in 2020 alone, there have been 229,887 cases of cholera, approximately one-fourth of which have been children under five years old.

COVID has exacerbated conditions in Yemen: Only half of the healthcare system in Yemen is intact and, out of the country’s 333 districts, 67 have no doctor. Additionally, over the summer, Yemen had one of the highest COVID mortality rates in the world, at 27 percent, which is more than five times the global average.

A year ago, as the pandemic was striking Yemen, the Trump administration decided to suspend humanitarian assistance to northern Yemen where the majority of the Yemeni population lives.

On March 11, 2021, the press reported that the Biden administration will restore the assistance to northern Yemen, helping to save lives.

Fewer than two weeks earlier, however, on March 1, 2021, the UN Donor’s conference raised less than half of the UN’s necessary amount to provide services in Yemen. Aid is critical for the survival of thousands of Yemeni people, especially as a result of the pandemic.

Although the U.S. has at various points tried to distance itself from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) violent missions against civilians, the Pentagon has exponentially increased its arms sales to Saudi Arabia since the Kingdom began its airstrikes on Yemen.

In the five years before the war, the United States sold approximately $3 billion worth of arms to Saudi Arabia. However, in the first five years of the war (2015-2020), the U.S. agreed to sell to it more than $64.1 billion worth of arms.

[Source: inthesetimes.com]

Weapons made in the U.S. have been used in some of the deadliest attacks in Yemen including the bombing of a funeral hall in Sanaa, where at least 140 people were killed and 600 were injured, the bombing of the Mastaba market, where 97 were killed, including 25 children, and the bombing of a school bus, killing 40 children and wounding dozens.

Wreckage from Mastaba market in March 2016. The weapons used were made in the U.S. [Source: hrw.org]

By supplying the Saudi/Emirati-led coalition with these weapons, spare parts, and tactical and intelligence assistance, United States participation in this war has played a key role in perpetuating the humanitarian crisis.

Radhya al-Mutawakel, chairwoman of Mwatana for Human Rights, an organization that records violations from all sides of the war in Yemen, informed CNN that, “in more than one way and during more than one incident, remnants of American weapons have been found at the site of airstrikes that killed civilians.” The U.S. has now enabled this devastation for six years.

The United States government has long valued its alliance with Saudi Arabia as a strategic hedge against Iran, which has been accused of backing the Houthi rebels. Saudi Arabia is the top importer of U.S. weapons. It also sells the U.S. cheap oil and struck a deal years ago to sell its oil on the foreign market in U.S. dollars, which helps keep the latter as the world’s dominant currency.^[1]

Some experts have argued that an additional interest for the U.S. has been control of the strategically located island of Socotra off the coast of Yemen.

The nefarious nature of the Saudi regime has been exposed with the release of a report stating that U.S. intelligence found that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. This recent news has amplified calls for Saudi Arabia to be held accountable for its human rights abuses, including its involvement in Yemen, and for the West to stop weapons sales to the Kingdom.

President Biden’s decision to not penalize the Crown Prince was a major blow to human rights activists around the world. The decision may not be surprising, however, considering Saudi Arabia’s strategic value to the U.S., and in the opinion of CovertAction Magazine editors, Biden’s long history of supporting the U.S. overseas empire.

Growing Western Opposition to the War

During Biden’s campaign for President, he pledged to stop supporting the Saudi/Emirati-led aggression in Yemen and to stop selling arms to oppressive regimes such as Saudi Arabia.

Specifically, he promised to “end U.S. support for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, and make sure America does not check its values at the door to sell arms or buy oil.”

On January 25, 2021, Biden’s first Monday in office, tens of thousands of people around the world participated in online and on-the-ground protests as part of a Global Day of Action: World Says No to War on Yemen.

A total of 385 organizations from 28 countries signed the statement Action Corps circulated calling for the day of action, making this the largest anti-war coordination since the 2003 Iraq war protests. The day of action was a highlight in a multi-year grassroots movement to stop Western backing of the Saudi/UAE-led coalition in Yemen.

Four demands of 385 organizations from 28 countries:

1. Stop foreign aggression on Yemen.

2. Stop weapons and war support for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

3. Lift the blockade on Yemen and open all land and seaports.

4. Restore and expand humanitarian aid for the people of Yemen.

As a result of years of grassroots organizing, advocacy, and mounting pressure that culminated in the day of action, the Biden administration has announced a number of significant decisions about Yemen. On the day of action, his administration announced they would lift some of the deadly sanctions against the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Since then, he temporarily paused a number of arms sales to Saudi Arabia, cancelled two planned arms sales, reversed the Foreign Terrorist Organization designation of the Houthi rebels and, in his first major foreign policy speech as President, announced the U.S. would end support for “offensive operations” in Yemen.

While activists and Members of Congress have rightly demanded clarity about Biden’s policy in Yemen going forward, these announcements reflect years of mobilizing on the part of humanitarians, anti-war activists, constitutional conservatives, libertarians, and anti-imperialists. The President’s statements also represent a tremendous window of opportunity to actually end the war.

In his article, Yemen Can’t Wait: Why a Global Day of Action Has Created a Chance for Change, Chris Nineham explains that a number of factors have made the war unsustainable and unwinnable for Saudi Arabia.

These factors include the high financial cost of the war in the midst of an economic recession, loss of territory to the Houthi rebels, and an increasingly negative opinion of the war on the part of Americans, Brits and Europeans. At the end of January, Italy permanently blocked arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE. A February 11 vote in the EU parliament called on all Member States “to halt the export of arms to all members of the Saudi-led coalition.”

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Featured image: Brendan Bell-Taylor, Action Corps Idaho organizer, and Laura Burton protest the war on Yemen in front of the Idaho State Capitol, in Boise, on January 25, 2021, as part of a Global Day of Action: World Says No to War on Yemen. Sen. Jim Risch, U.S. senator from Idaho, is the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. [Source: twitter.com]

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The US-led anti-Chinese Quad alliance of itself, Australia, India, and Japan might be on the brink of collapse according to influential BJP ideologue Subramanian Swamy, who warned that Washington might expel New Delhi from this bloc if it goes through with its planned purchase of Russia’s S-400 air defense systems.

One of the most geopolitically consequential blocs of the 21^st century is unquestionably the Quad, a US-led anti-Chinese alliance that also includes Australia, India, and Japan. It presents one of the greatest strategic challenges to the emerging Multipolar World Order because of the potential that it has to offset China’s historic rise and therefore the new model of International Relations that it’s bringing to the forefront of global affairs. Many analysts have wondered what could possibly be done to stop the Quad, but most of them have since thrown up their hands in despair and seemingly accepted it as a fait accompli that they’re powerless to prevent. That strategic fatalism might have been a bit too premature, however, after influential BJP ideologue Subramanian Swamy’s public warning on Twitter on Thursday.

Russian publicly financed international media outlet Sputnik reported on his tweet, which read that “I notice none of my facts on Twitter have been proved wrong: 1. China has crossed LAC and occupied our territory. 2. Govt says disengagement has led to PLA withdrawal from Indian side of LAC is false 3. India buying S400 from Russia will lead to US expelling India from QUAD.” The reader should also be reminded that Swamy published a hateful anti-Russian article last October that elicited a very strong condemnation from the Russian Embassy in India at the time. India has the right to conduct its foreign affairs however it so chooses in line with what it describes as its “multi-alignment” strategy, but there should be little question in light of his recent statements that Swamy is seemingly pro-American with his outlook and at the very least unfriendly towards Russia.

This influential figure’s statements are at variance with what the Russian and Indian governments officially regard as their special and privileged strategic partnership that’s recently been experiencing a renaissance over the past few years, especially after Prime Minister Modi attended the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok in September 2019 as President Putin’s guest of honor. Despite some bumps in the road in the year and a half since, ties are back on the positive track following Foreign Secretary Shringla’s visit to Moscow last month. Quite clearly, Russian-Indian relations remain strong, which provides a much-needed element of certainty in the midst of what can be described as World War C, or the full-spectrum paradigm-changing processes catalyzed by the international community’s uncoordinated attempt to contain COVID-19.

The US’ repeated threats to sanction India for its planned S-400 purchase from Russia run the risk of complicating American-Indian relations, particularly when it comes to their hitherto close military cooperation in attempting to “contain” China through the Quad.

Nevertheless, Prime Minister Modi remains determined to go through with the deal, which speaks of how highly he regards Russia’s role in India’s “multi-alignment” “balancing” act no matter how imperfectly he’s thus far executed it. Swamy’s warning can therefore be interpreted as pressure upon the premier from within his own government, which shows that some influential forces don’t agree with Prime Minister Modi’s strategic direction. They’d do well to reconsider their views though since it’s arguably in all of Eurasia’s interests that India concludes the S-400 deal with Russia.

Swamy might actually be right for once, though much to the detriment of the American-aligned grand strategic vision that he seemingly sympathizes with. The US might not literally expel India from the Quad if it receives Russia’s S-400 air defense systems, but their anti-Chinese military coordination would certainly be adversely affected, especially if America imposes sanctions like it’s repeatedly threatened to do. That, however, would by default strengthen India’s ties with Russia and China, thus providing a much-needed impetus for reviving their trilateral cooperation through through RIC and thereby strengthening both BRICS and the SCO as well. This could in turn accelerate the rise of the Eurasian Century, especially as it was recently articulated by Pakistani officials during last week’s inaugural Islamabad Security Dialogue.

In connection with that, it also deserve mention that ties between India and Pakistan are gradually thawing as a result of recent developments between the two, particularly last month’s surprise ceasefire that continues to hold at the time of this analysis’ publication and earlier reports that the UAE is secretly trying to broker a more comprehensive solution to the UNSC-recognized disputed territory of Kashmir. The resultant reduction of American influence in India in the aftermath of Washington likely going through with its sanctions threats against New Delhi could potentially remove the greatest threat to peace in the region since the US wouldn’t be as powerful as before to divide and rule South Asia by exploiting this unresolved conflict.

In other words, India’s purchase of Russia’s S-400s would be in both of those countries’ interests as well as China’s and Pakistan’s when one considers the larger Eurasian strategic picture. The Quad probably won’t collapse, nor is it to be expected that the US would expel India from this alliance, but the group’s anti-Chinese military capabilities might take a strong hit as New Delhi would be less prone to closely cooperate with Washington in this respect if it becomes victimized by American sanctions for its sovereign decision to go through with its Russian air defense deal. With these interconnected dynamics in mind, observers can therefore rightly describe the S-400 deal as potentially being a grand strategic game-changer provided that India retains the political will to go through with it despite Swamy’s and other influential forces’ efforts to stop it.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

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

“Biden was a man who believed in regime change. Biden was a man who believed Saddam Hussein was the personification of evil. Biden was a man who believed that we had to use whatever means necessary up to and including war to remove Saddam Hussein from power. And Joe Biden recognized that weapons inspections, if allowed to proceed would undermine his effort. This is why he had to discredit the inspections.” – Former Chief UN Weapons inspector Scott Ritter (included in interview.)

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Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in December of 1991 the U.S., NATO and the world had entered a brand new era. With the threat of the Soviets launching an invasion of the European Union now essentially moot, it would seem the hostile military alliance had lost its usefulness. [1]

But in 1999, the U.S. led cavalry found a new lease on life! Negotiations between the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the Kosovo Liberation Army fighting for an independent ethnic Albanian state broke down. After the pivotal  Račak massacre in January of 1999, NATO took the role of instituting a military ‘peacekeeping force’ to restrain both sides. When talks at the Château de Rambouillet, outside Paris failed to arrive at an agreement, international monitors withdrew and then the KLA with the air support from NATO launched the beginning of a 78 day war. [2][3]

NATO then went to war on Afghanistan two years later on the excuse they were defending themselves from terrorism which they never proved emerged from that country. [4][5]

Two years after that, the U.S. and the UK, together with a small list of belligerents attacked the beleaguered country of Iraq, on the principle assertion this country decimated by the first war in 1991 and years of devastating sanctions, posed a threat to America and the world by virtue of his devastating supply of ‘weapons of mass destruction.’ Of course, the UN weapons inspectors dedicated to finding and destroying his entire supply of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons could not verify their existence any longer. But with Colin Powell’s famous presentation providing the proper pretext, the world stood a month later and watched in horror as the Coalition of the Willing subjected the former Mesopotamia to a truly Shock and Awe Spectacle.

The war killed at least 100,000 civilians. The leader Saddam Hussein was executed. The war lasted until December of 2011. And absolutely no weapons of mass destruction were found!

The War on Yugoslavia launched on March 24, 1999. The War in Iraq launched March 19, 2003.

Once again, in chapter 3 of our series on wars launched in March, the Global Research News Hour looks at these two principal conflicts which would reshape the wartime trajectory the U.S. would pursue at a time when threats from Russia were reduced.

Our first half hour features a few comments made by guests of a past show speaking of the background of the War on Yugoslavia. A brief summary of their comments are supplied in a 20 minute period. They include Professor Michel Chossudovsky, Živadin Jovanović, James Bissett and Scott Taylor.

In our second half hour, we are delighted to have former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter on to recount his insights into the falseness of the pretext of weapons of mass destruction, his understanding of the real motive of the war, his take on the former Senator Joe Biden who sounded like a hawk 23 years ago (see video below), and his take on the timing of wars almost always in March.

d

Professor Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal, Editor of Global Research. In May of 1999 he published the in depth analysis of the conflict in Yugoslavia in the article NATO’s War of Aggression against Yugoslavia: Who are the War Criminals? For these and related writings he received the 2014 Gold Medal for Merit of the Republic of Serbia.

Živadin Jovanović served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia between 1998 and 2000. Since 2005, he has served as President of the Belgrade Forum for a World of Equals, a non-profit organization which is a member of the World Peace Council. The Forum supports world peace and non-interventionism and opposes “humanitarian wars”.

James Bissett is a Canadian diplomat with a 36 year track record of public service in the Departments of Citizenship and Immigration and Foreign Affairs. He was Canada’s ambassador to Yugoslavia from 1990 until 1992, with responsibility for Albania and Bulgaria. A consistent critic of the West’s policies in the former Yugoslavia, Bissett testified at the Trial of Slobodan Milošević as a defence witness.

Scott Taylor is a former soldier, a journalist, and the Publisher/Editor of the Canadian military magazine Esprit de Corps. Taylor reported from the ground during and after NATO’s 1999 assault on the former Yugoslavia. He is the author of several books including Diary of an Uncivil War: The Violent Aftermath of the Kosovo Conflict (2002).

Scott Ritter is a U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence officer, former UN Chief Weapons Inspector from 1991 -1998, and is currently engaged as a commentator and columnist on Huffington Post, RT OP-ED, and the American Conservative.

(Global Research News Hour Episode 310)

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Notes:

1. https://intpolicydigest.org/the-end-of-nato/
2. Peter Beaumont and Patrick Wintour (July 18, 1999) ‘Kosovo: the untold story’, The Guardian; https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/jul/18/warcrimes.balkans
3. Timothy W. Crawford (April 1, 2001) ‘Pivotal Deterrence and the Kosovo War: Why the Holbrooke Agreement Failed’, Brookings; https://www.brookings.edu/articles/pivotal-deterrence-and-the-kosovo-war-why-the-holbrooke-agreement-failed/
4. https://www.nato.int/docu/update/2001/1001/e1002a.htm
5. https://www.globalresearch.ca/was-america-attacked-by-afghanistan-on-september-11-2001/5307151

“Fraudulent Marketing”: The Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine Is an “Unapproved Product” which Is “Permitted for Use”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, March 26 2021

Should we trust Big Pharma Companies which have a criminal record? In a historic US Department of Justice decision in September 2009, Pfizer Inc. pleaded guilty to criminal charges. It was “The Largest Health Care Fraud Settlement in Its History”

Welcome to the “COVID Testing Industrial Complex”, Which Is Fast Becoming a $100 Billion a Year Industry

By Jordan Schachtel, March 26 2021

The COVID-19 Testing Industrial Complex in the United States is completely out of control, and the American taxpayer has been drafted into churning out hundreds of millions of dollars per day to keep it afloat.

Scientist to FDA: You Are Ignoring ‘Clear and Present Danger’ Associated with COVID Vaccine

By Dr. Hooman Noorchashm and Children’s Health Defense, March 26 2021

In an email to FDA officials, Pfizer executives and media, Dr. Hooman Noorchashm warns many more will die needlessly from COVID vaccines “if we carelessly and indiscriminately” vaccinate people already infected with the virus.

AstraZeneca Vaccine Correlated to Blood Clots, Death. Norwegian Physician Pål Andre Holme

By Line Fausko, Martha CS Holmes, and Oda Ording, March 26 2021

The experts who have examined the three hospitalized health workers believe that the AstraZeneca vaccine triggered a strong immune response. One of the health workers died. The cause of our patients’ condition has now been found, says chief physician and professor Pål Andre Holme.

Elephants in Africa Face Grave Extinction Threat, New Expert Assessment Finds

By Center For Biological Diversity, March 26 2021

In a long-awaited move, the International Union for Conservation of Nature announced today that elephants in Africa face a serious risk of extinction. At the same time, it is officially identifying African elephants as two distinct species: savanna elephants and forest elephants.

Video: The Conflict in North Syria: US Continues to Smuggle Oil, While Turkey Complains to Russia It Can’t

By South Front, March 25 2021

The intensity of the conflict in Syria’s northeast refuses to die down, as more and more strikes are carried out targeting each involved party’s interests. For its part, MSM reports on all of these, but many of them are presented in a light, much different from reality.

“Two Fatal Errors in its Assessment of the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic”. What SAGE Has Got Wrong

By Dr. Mike Yeadon, March 26 2021

Dr Mike Yeadon has a degree in biochemistry and toxicology and a research-based PhD in respiratory pharmacology. He has spent over 30 years leading new medicines research in some of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, leaving Pfizer in 2011 as Vice President & Chief Scientist for Allergy & Respiratory.

UK’s Baroness Caroline Cox Slams the “Undeclared Economic War” on Syria

By Baroness Caroline Cox, March 26 2021

Over nine million Syrians are food insecure at the moment, and an estimated nine out of 10 live below the poverty line.

Why Scottish Independence Could be Main Obstacle to ‘Global Britain’

By Johanna Ross, March 26 2021

It was announced on Wednesday that government buildings across the UK would now be required to fly the UK flag at all times. This of course won’t go down too well in Scotland, where the Union Jack is, for many, an offensive reminder of London control.

The “Corona Crisis” and the War of “The Super-Rich” against the Earth’s Citizens

By Emanuel Pastreich, March 26 2021

Corporations, multinational investment banks, and the super-rich that hide behind them have launched the final stage this year of a ruthless war of a tiny few against the great majority of humanity.

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

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Corporations, multinational investment banks, and the super-rich that hide behind them have launched the final stage this year of a ruthless war of a tiny few against the great majority of humanity.

Although they pay off their puppets in the media to float happy tales of some happy resolution to the dire situation of the moment, they already know that the die is cast, that they are committed to a strategy of distracting, seeding division, undermining rational thinking and using a combination of blatant intimidation with open bribery to slowly, systematically, overpower and reduce to slavery 99.98% of the Earth’s population.

They know already, according to the calculations of their supercomputers, what will happen if they are not successful in this plan. They also know that catastrophic climate change and biodiversity loss will make it impossible for them to monopolize the wealth and the resources for long.

There is literally no limit to how far they will go.

The tools they use to pursue this war against the citizens of the Earth are technology, propaganda and disinformation campaigns, threats against individuals who display leadership skills and massive bribes for the leaders who are allowed to be covered in the media to represent the conservative and the progressive causes.

They also employ as part of this strategy an intimate knowledge of certain key weaknesses in the brain, and the potential for exploiting the human inclination to determine truth based on a vague sense of the mood of the herd, rather than logic. That is to say they are investing billions in hidden money to systematically create social pressure that makes citizens conform with pointless mandates for masks or vaccines that are launched from diverse platforms as a means of inducing the population to police itself.

Without such a strategy, the super-rich could not possibly seize control of the entire Earth.

There has been extensive research by corporations, and by the CIA and Department of Defense (government organizations exploited to hide the true entities demanding such research) into how humans can be manipulated without their knowledge, and compelled through imperceptible persuasion to permit, or even aid, their own disenfranchisement without us even being aware of this silent and invisible takeover.

Such operations have been undertaken before, but never on this global scale. New developments in super-computing and the global integration of, and deregulation of, finance, has made such a master plan possible for the first time.

Recent developments are best viewed as the final acceleration of a process by which corporations bribed and lobbied all authority figures in government and academics to go along with a process of privatization, commercialization, and automation that now means that a tiny handful of people can control every aspect of human experience in an absolute sense while the vast majority of citizens cannot even conceive of what is taking place. We have not reached that state yet, but Elon Musk, Bill Gates and others believe, based on the calculations of supercomputers, that it is now possible.

The super-rich has also invested wisely in the establishment of a panoply of sham activists, or toothless, “feel good, do nothing” NGOs.

These “movements” are allowed to appear in the corporate-controlled media, and they pretend to respond to corporate power, but they purposely discourage citizens from organizing themselves (they ask only for donations, or attendance at protests, but they pointedly do not empower people to form their own groups or achieve financial and ideological independence).

Such NGOs are silent about the mass manipulation of the media and of politics by global finance—even though that is the primary cause of the political problems we face.

If we follow the current trajectory, there will not be a single part of our lives that is completely controlled by a multinational corporation in the next few years.

We do not have that long to act.

Image on the right is from Natural News

The push for mandatory COVID-19 “vaccines” in the face of the overwhelming scientific evidence against them is not a matter of mistaken science or bad policy. It is rather a process of preparing government officials, doctors, reporters, and other media figures to follow orders from above that have no rational basis.

After this “softening-up process,” which is carefully calibrated on the basis of secret CIA torture programs designed to test the weaknesses of the human psyche, a rougher and more brutal form of the rule can be implemented.

The mask mandate was the first step in the implementation of this form of massive psychological warfare. It is, to use the technical term, a slow “rape of the mind.”

The enormous restructuring of governance and the economy described by the World Economic Forum as the “Great Reset” is not a secret and anyone who takes the time to read that book, and related documents, can figure out about 70% of what is their agenda is.

The citizen will be convinced that he or she operates within a functional country and that there is some process by which the politicians at the top take actions on their behalf. But the super-rich cares nothing for nation-states and their populations and they use politicians to deflect attention away from themselves. Every time a politician takes a fall, it is to distract you from the predations of the rich. Every attack on minorities is a trick to get you hooked on race and diversity and distracted from the concentration of wealth.

We are increasingly subject to the whims of unaccountable global powers, and the intentionally render us passive, open to persuasion, and therefore incapable of resistance, by the media that is controlled by those powers.

The super-rich relies on two approaches to psychological manipulation that go back to the 1930s and before but have been perfected by recent research.

The first technique is the use of traumatic events that are reported on in a sensationalist and unscientific manner in the media so as to induce a deep sense of shock, disorientation and confusion in the population as a whole. The mental trauma of such events, whether the 9.11 incident, or the hyped-up COVID-19 crisis, or the “armed insurrection” at the Capitol, is used to induce passivity and receptivity to profound institutional shifts that would otherwise be impossible.

Naomi Klein describes this approach as the “shock doctrine” and although she hesitates to delve too deeply into the degree to which it has become national policy, she accurately traces the approach back to the torture programs designed to test the limits of the human psyche.

Such trauma affects the reactive and emotional part of the human brain known as the amygdala, bringing on a “fight or flight” response in the psyche that overrides the rational, integrative, response to external events that would be carried out by the prefrontal cortex in normal conditions.

Because we as individuals, and as populations, are unaware of how the amygdala has taken over decision making from the prefrontal cortex because of these engineered shocks, we are unable to organize, or even conceive of, a response to the real threat. Instead, we focus on the cooked-up threats offered to us by the commercial media like Islamic terrorism in the case of 9.11 or the spread of a dangerous virus in the case of the COVID-19 operation.

The second strategy is to induce a hypnotic state in the brain of the individual, and the population as a whole, through the constant repetition of certain themes and images through advertisements, commercials, images, and themes articulated in movies, TV shows, reporting, and even the packaging of products.

The stimulation alternates between the intentionally boring and distracting images and direct appeals to the pleasure centers of the brain such as the desire for food, for sexual arousal, or for pleasant experiences.

The advertisements promoting the enjoyment of food and encouraging low-level sexual arousal are not only, or even primarily, aimed at selling products. They are intended to induce a state of passivity in the population.

The CIA explains the process,

“Hypnosis is basically a technique which permits acquisition of direct access to the sensory motor cortex and pleasure centers, and lower cerebral (emotional) portions of the right side of the brain following successful disengagement of the stimulus screening function of the left hemisphere of the brain. The right hemisphere which functions as the noncritical, holistic, nonverbal and pattern-oriented component of the brain, appears to accept what the left hemisphere passes to it without question. Consequently, if the left hemisphere can be distracted either through boredom or through reduction to a soporific, semi-sleep state, external stimuli to include hypnotic suggestions are allowed to pass unchallenged into the right hemisphere where they are accepted and acted on directly.”

(FOIA document “Analysis and Assessment of Gateway Process” June 9, 1983 (US Army Intelligence and Security Command)

CIA-RDP96-00788R001700210016-5

The scale of this experiment in mass hypnosis to render the citizens of all the world passive, and unable to resist persuasion from authority figures is unprecedented. This process is being undertaken slowly, over months and years, following complex algorithms that are kept secret.

It is critical in this process that individuals be isolated from each other, unable to communicate except through mediums controlled by multinational corporations, and that they be offered only ineffective and superficial organizations to join organizations in which they will be incapable of participating in the decision-making process, or of effecting change. Quarantine, lockdowns, social distancing, and the promotion of a narcissistic consumption culture are critical to that process.

The result is that the citizens of the United States, and around the world, are being reduced to consumers of products supplied by multinational corporations who cannot even conceive of how the world has been radically transformed in this great reset.

They are being rendered passive and unresponsive so that the super-rich can quickly seize complete control of the systems by which countries are governed, by which money and finance are determined, the media by which information is distributed, the universities and research institutes by which authoritative perspectives backed by science are presented, the farms and distribution systems by which food is provided, the aquafers and irritation systems by which water is provided, and every other aspect of human experience.

When we awake from this slumber, if we ever do, we will discover that every aspect of our lives is controlled by unaccountable powers which we cannot understand, which we have no way to challenge and which will increase slowly and systematically the means by which we are made slaves, and, if necessary, destroyed.

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Emanuel Pastreich served as the president of the Asia Institute, a think tank with offices in Washington DC, Seoul, Tokyo and Hanoi. Pastreich also serves as director general of the Institute for Future Urban Environments. Pastreich declared his candidacy for president of the United States as an independent in February, 2020

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

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This article was first published in December 2020.

The COVID-19 Testing Industrial Complex in the United States is completely out of control, and the American taxpayer has been drafted into churning out hundreds of millions of dollars per day to keep it afloat. This continually growing behemoth, which was spawned in 2020 because of the urgent insistence of select, powerful members of the U.S. “public health expert” class, has no intention of exiting the stage quietly. Individuals and healthcare-related corporations are getting filthy rich off of this broken, corrupt industry, which largely produces junk tests, and has contributed to an out of control, ongoing “casedemic” in the United States.

Despite the fact that this industry has failed to do anything positive for “public health” related to the coronavirus epidemic, some in the industry are even devising plans to put a COVID testing kit in every home in America. The COVID-19 Testing Industrial Complex has produced a shockingly high revenue stream over the course of a year.

How to Test Every American for COVID-19, Every Day – The Atlantic https://t.co/wWgVZyG5Ud

— Andy Slavitt 🇺🇸💉 (@ASlavitt) August 17, 2020

To get a sense of all of the costs involved, I researched the average COVID-19 testing costs at some of the biggest labs and testing manufacturers in the U.S. The FDA has now cleared well over 100 entities (and even a dozen China-based companies) with Emergency Use Authorizations (EUAs) that allow for these companies to deploy tests in the United States. Here’s the breakdown:

The cost of COVID-19 tests range anywhere from $20-$850. The median cost of a COVID-19 test is around $129 per test. And that’s just the cost of the test itself. This price range does not include the additional costs — including, at a bare minimum for most, the costs of specimen collection and a doctor’s visit — to the insurance provider, federal, state and local governments (which has the taxpayer foot the bill for people who can’t afford a test), and/or the patient.

The United States COVID-19 Testing Industrial Complex now churns out around two million COVID-19 tests per day. That puts the current median cost for COVID testing in America (not including the additional costs) at approximately $254 million dollars per day, $7.6 billion per month, and $91.4 billion per year. To put that in context, That’s more annual cash than the revenue generated by U.S. corporate behemoths such as Boeing, Intel, FedEx, Facebook, and Target.

As for the profits being generated by the COVID testing industry, we can get an accurate count on that number by discovering the financial filings of major testing labs. Quest, the U.S. testing giant that handles about 20% of all COVID tests across the United States, estimates it takes in $42 in revenue per test, with the average processing coming in at $29. That would come out to $26 million in profits per day, $780 million per month, and $9.3 billion in pure profits per year. And that’s only for the lab side of the equation. Remember, getting a COVID-19 test involves several other elements, such as the aforementioned physician’s visit and specimen collection costs, which significantly increases the revenue stream for the entire COVID testing industry.

COVID testing is most rampant in the United States, but it is very much a global industry. Worldometers.com has tracked around 1.1 billion total COVID-19 tests. Calculated with the U.S. cost average, the global COVID testing industry has cost over $141 billion thus far.

Many have summarized that the ongoing vaccine deployment efforts will act to shutter the COVID Testing Industrial Complex, but it’s important to remember a few things about the current state of testing in America.

First and foremost, Our COVID-19 testing accuracy problem has not been solved. Governments on all levels in the United States have not cleaned up our inaccurate testing regime.

People who get the vaccine — putting aside whether it works or not — will very likely still test positive for the coronavirus in large numbers. The vaccine trials had very strict standards for diagnosing positive cases. The trials required both a positive test and recognizable symptoms for someone to be labeled COVID-19 positive.

In the clinical trials, Big Pharma outfits used a much lower cycle threshold (read about the cycle threshold problem at Rational Ground) than the average COVID-19 test in order to get a more accurate diagnosis.

On the other side of the table, Our FDA-authorized testing regime includes mostly junk tests (their cycle thresholds are too high, generating a massive amount of false positives, leading to our national “casedemic”) and diagnoses asymptomatic people as COVID-19 positive. The vaccine trials and our current testing reality are worlds apart. This problem will almost certainly emerge in the coming days and weeks, and it’s going to cause lots of confusion in the public. Who knows if the “public health experts” who are so inclined to promote testing will weaponize this problem to demand even more testing and more restrictions, to keep you safe and COVID-free, of course…

Here's everything you need you know about PCR tests and the wrong-headed strategy of testing people who are asymptomatic .https://t.co/7ezuYzNReE

— RationalGround.com (@Rational_Ground) September 13, 2020

Now approaching $100 billion in annual costs directly associated with it, the COVID Testing Industrial Complex is becoming too big to fail, and it’s long past time for legislators across the nation to rein it in before this broken, corrupt industry becomes a permanent fixture in America.

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Featured image is from The Dossier

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Below is the report of EuroNews confirming Denmark’s Decision to Suspend the Astrazeneka Vaccine.

The Danish Health and Medicines Authority said they were still assessing the use of the jab in its vaccination programme.  

Earlier this month, Denmark and several other EU member states halted the rollout of AstraZeneca vaccines after reports of several serious cases of blood clots.

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

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In an email to FDA officials, Pfizer executives and media, Dr. Hooman Noorchashm warns many more will die needlessly from COVID vaccines “if we carelessly and indiscriminately” vaccinate people already infected with the virus.

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From CHD’s editor: Following the March 19 death of 32-year-old Benjamin G. Goodman after receiving the Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccine, Dr. Hooman Noorchashm wrote the email below. In it, Noorchashm warns of the “clear and present danger” posed by administering COVID vaccines to people already infected with the virus. 

The email is addressed to Dr. Janet Woodcock, acting commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), but Noorchashm copied others, including the FDA’s Peter Marks, several Pfizer executives, reporters at CBS News, Fox News and The New York Times, and other scientists and colleagues.

This is not the first time Noorchashm has written to the FDA recommending that people be screened for COVID before being vaccinated — in fact, it’s the third. He has yet to receive a response.

Here’s the text of Dr. Noorchashm’s email

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Dear Dr. Woodcock,

Here I am writing to report to you the death of Mr. Benjamin G. Goodman of NY within a day following vaccination with the J&J COVID-19 vaccine.

This is his obituary. He was 32 and otherwise healthy:

Attached, you may read his mother’s Facebook posting about his death.

Dr. Woodcock, it is untenable for you and your colleagues to be ignoring these deaths and vaccine complications without lifting a finger to do anything — simply this: These complications are mounting and CDC and FDA’s surveillance systems are missing the signal — the signal is deafening on social media!

And these are NOT Russian bots infiltrating our SM platforms, these are Americans being harmed and ignored … by YOU and our public health system.

As an immunologist, I know that these vaccines are some of the most powerful and effective we’ve ever made. I know them, I understand them and I know that we need them to achieve herd immunity.

But, as I’ve told you before, we are deploying this defensive weapon wildly indiscriminately in the midst of a pandemic outbreak, while many are “the recently infected.” It is my professional opinion as an immunologist and physician that this indiscriminate vaccination is a clear and present danger to a subset of the already infected.

I know fully well that it is highly likely that many more lives will be saved from these vaccines than harmed by them in this pandemic. But THAT is no justification for relinquishing your duty as a chief public health officer in the U.S. to guard and defend the safety of this minority subset in harm’s way from indiscriminate vaccination.

So now you have a few names … “Anecdotes,” our colleagues call them … “N’s of 1,” know only too well … J. Barton Williams, Kassidi Lyn Kurill, Benjamin G. Goodman, Marvin Hagler, Hank Aaron, Larry King … there will be many more, at the rate we are going.

But the press and all your colleagues in public health are inclined to see these as “unrelated” to our savior vaccines.

I write here, knowing that efficacy and safety are two distinct and equally critical parameters in medical care — and knowing that you all are sacrificing the latter to the former.

But you cannot go on like this — you must see Benjamin Goodman, J. Barton Williams, Kassidi Lyn Kurill, Marvin Hagler, Hank Aaron, Larry King …

There will be many more in the coming months as we carelessly and indiscriminately vaccinate the already infected, millions a day … It is a near certainty.

Hooman Noorchashm M.D., Ph.D.

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Hooman Noorchashm MD, Ph.D. is a physician-scientist. He is an advocate for ethics, patient safety and women’s health.

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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Below is the Google Translation of the original article in Norwegian. (There are some minor errors in translation). 

The original in Norwegian  (VG.no) (See also Broadcast in Norwegian)

Professor on suspected vaccine side effects: – The cause has been found

The experts who have examined the three hospitalized health workers believe that the AstraZeneca vaccine triggered a strong immune response. One of the health workers died.

The cause of our patients’ condition has now been found, says chief physician and professor Pål Andre Holme to VG.

A group at Rikshospitalet, led by Holme, has worked hard to find out why three health workers under the age of 50 were admitted with severe blood clots after taking the AstraZeneca vaccine.

The experts have worked on the basis of a hypothesis that the vaccines triggered an unexpected immune reaction in the sick health workers, who have triggered the system so that a combination of blood clots and low platelets has been obtained.

It is this theory that they now believe they have confirmed.

Our theory that this is a strong immune response that most likely comes after the vaccine, [which] has been found. In collaboration with the section for advanced platelet immunology at UNN, we have now detected specific antibodies against platelets that can give such an image, which we know from other parts of medicine, but then with drugs as the triggering cause, the superior [physician ]explains.

You say most likely?

We have the reason. And there is no other thing than the vaccine that can explain that we have received that immune response, says Holme.

Why is it nothing more than the vaccine?

Around 120,000 Norwegians have so far been vaccinated with AstraZeneca. Thus, very few cases of suspected serious side effects have been reported among the total number of vaccinated. Norway has temporarily paused vaccination, read more further down in the case.

This is how a blood clot occurs. Specific antibodies.  Holme emphasizes that it is not antibodies in the blood in general that are the problem. We are talking about very specific antibodies.

What has happened in the body from the time they took the vaccine until FOUND THE CAUSE?

We take the vaccine to get an immune response to what we are to be protected against. Then you get, among other things, the development of antibodies. Some antibodies can then react so that they can activate the platelets, as in these cases, and cause a blood clot. And because we have these antibodies on the surface, they are removed from the circulation, thus they get too low platelets, says Holme. A very rare condition.

On Sunday, one of the three health workers who were admitted to Rikshospitalet died. They have all been treated for a very rare condition.

They came in with acute pain They had blood clots in unusual places, such as the stomach and brain. In addition, they had bleeding and low platelet counts

We will soon decide the way forward. Large parts of Europe, including Norway, have in the last week put the AstraZeneca vaccination on pause.

After Norway and Denmark reported the suspected serious side effects, other countries have reviewed their own data to look for similar cases.

Steinar Madsen at the Norwegian Medicines Agency says they have been informed that the Rikshospitalet event has meant that there is talk of a strong immune response – but he says he can not comment on details now.

The Adverse Reaction Committee of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), where Norway also sits, has a meeting on Thursday about the case and is expected to issue a statement.

This will to a large extent also be taken into account when assessing this on a European basis, that Norway has made such a solid effort to find out about this here, says Madsen.

Once the EMA has issued a statement, it is up to national authorities to decide the way forward for their respective countries.

VG [Norwegian News Agency] has been in contact with AstraZeneca, which does not wish to comment on the matter at this time but will await the EMA’s decision.

Translated by United for Truth  (our thanks to United for Truth)

Original source VG.no

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First published on March 6, 2021

Should we trust Big Pharma Companies which have a criminal record?

In a historic US Department of Justice decision in September 2009, Pfizer Inc. pleaded guilty to criminal charges. It was “The Largest Health Care Fraud Settlement in Its History”

Pharmacia [Pfizer] & Upjohn Company has agreed to plead guilty to a felony violation of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act ….

See below for details.

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Pfizer Inc, is currently involved in marketing its experimental mRNA vaccine with the relentless support of national governments.  Amply documented, barely reported by the media, numerous cases of  deaths and injury have occurred.

What is at stake is what you might call “C. Y. A.” namely,

“the bureaucratic technique of averting future accusations of policy error or wrongdoing by deflecting responsibility in advance” (William Safire, NYT,)

Extensive fraud and coverup prevail at the highest levels of government.

The “Green Light” to market the experimental mRNA vaccine was granted back in December 2020, despite the fact that according to the FDA, the vaccine is an “unapproved product”.

The FDA in its ambiguous statement has provided a so-called Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, namely “to permit the emergency use of the unapproved product, … for active immunization…” (see below)

Pfizer “Largest Health Care Fraud” 2009

Déjà Vu: Flash Forward to 2020-2021

How on earth could you trust a Big Pharma vaccine conglomerate which pleaded guilty to criminal charges by the US Department of Justice including “fraudulent marketing” and “felony violation of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act”?

The 2020-2021 mRNA vaccine violations far surpass the health care fraud committed by Pfizer Inc in 2009.

“Fraudulent marketing” is an understatement: The mRNA vaccine announced by Pfizer, Moderna Inc, Johnson and Johnson and Astrazeneka  is based on an experimental gene editing mRNA technology which has a bearing on the human genome.  The standard animal lab tests using mice or ferrets were not conducted.  Pfizer “went straight to human “guinea pigs.”

Human tests began in late July and early August 2020. “Three months is unheard of for testing a new vaccine. Several years is the norm.”

Our thanks to Large and JIPÉM

This caricature by Large + JIPÉM  explains our predicament:

Mouse No 1: “Are You Going to get Vaccinated”,

Mouse No. 2: Are You Crazy, They Haven’t finished the Tests on Humans”

“The plan to develop a vaccine is profit driven. It is supported by corrupt governments serving the interests of Big Pharma. The US government had already ordered 100 million doses back in July and the EU is to purchase 300 million doses. It’s Big Money for Big Pharma, generous payoffs to corrupt politicians, at the expense of tax payers.”

See Michel Chossudovsky, The 2020 Worldwide Corona Crisis: Destroying Civil Society, Engineered Economic Depression, Global Coup d’État and the “Great Reset” E-Book, February 26, 2021

So-called “emergency use” has been granted to Pfizer with a view to promoting a pharmaceutical product which is “experimental”, “unapproved” by the FDA and outright dangerous.

Legal Definitions are Turned Upside Down: The Transition from “Unapproved” to “Approved” 

• “unapproved” by the FDA,
• “permitted” (under emergency use) by the FDA
• and then “approved” by the US government’s health authorities
• resulting in numerous deaths and injuries.

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Last week the UK’s new Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development, and Foreign Policy was published, outlining the country’s future geopolitical strategy. The 114 page document, which I discuss in a previous article, conveys a clear message: the days of Britain taking a backseat in international affairs is over. (This translates as more meddling in the affairs of other states of course – soft power manipulation, supporting regime change etc). Britain is back, so get out your Union Jack flags and remember the lyrics to ‘Rule Britannia’.

Incidentally, it was announced on Wednesday that government buildings across the UK would now be required to fly the UK flag at all times. This of course won’t go down too well in Scotland, where the Union Jack is, for many, an offensive reminder of London control. Indeed, the SNP’s Mhairi Black said: “If the Tories think an overload of Union Jacks on buildings is the answer to promote the strength of the Union, then it shows how thin the case for the Union is.”

However, the idea of promoting the British flag very much ties with Boris Johnson’s nationalist crusade, to celebrate ‘Britishness’ and regain some national pride which he has indicated in the past we are lacking in.

Ironically however Boris Johnson himself has been integral in the current divide between north and south. An unpopular figure in Scotland, his leadership has only boosted the case for Scottish independence, along with Brexit, of which he was a key proponent. Scotland has maintained its opposition to Brexit (it voted against it) and has stated that in an independent Scotland it would seek to rejoin the EU. The SNP have criticized the way the Scottish government was not properly consulted during Brexit negotiations. This apparent disregard for Scottish concerns on the matter have rubbed salt in the wound of a nation already disgruntled by being forced out of the EU against its will.

Scotland has never been closer to independence. Public opinions polls consistently show a majority in favour of dismantling the Union. And given Boris Johnson’s plans for ‘Global Britain’ this could be a real stumbling block, for two main reasons. For Scotland’s foreign policy would likely be – based on both SNP policy documents and think-tank publications – non-interventionist, involving a significant reduction in military expenditure.

Take for example, this document written by two Scottish academics and published by Scottish think-tank ‘Common Weal’. It clearly states ‘Scotland would be an international actor of a fundamentally different character from the UK.’  It says that an independent Scotland would reject the traditional British approach of ‘projecting power’, as historically it has ‘invited international criticism due to the damage that has sometimes been visited upon the “recipients” of this projected power’.

Furthermore it is suggested that the country’s ‘“military behaviour” would be guided by specific, dedicated articles within a written constitution… this would also give Scottish governments recourse to constitutional protection against taking action in instances where they were solicited by other international actors to ‘get involved’ in military operations which might be of questionable morality, or which might be considered against Scotland’s national interests.’

Such an approach of legal framework would contrast greatly with current UK legislation, as we have seen in recent years with regime change operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and missile strikes on Syria – all which have been carried out against the will of much of the population, particularly north of the border.

The second area in which an independent Scotland would cause problems for the UK’s ‘power projection’ plans is also outlined in the “Common Weal” paper: nuclear weapons. The document clearly states that Scotland would be free of them, something which would cause England some problems in terms of where to store them all. It is believed there are around 200 nuclear weapons based at Coulport in Scotland; it would be tricky getting them all down to Devonport, 170 miles away, and it’s been suggested there isn’t enough storage space there anyway. Removal of these nuclear weapons has been described as a ‘bedrock’ policy of the SNP, who recently accused the UK government of hypocrisy by signing up to the non-proliferation treaty but increasing its nuclear stockpile at the same time.

It’s worth pointing out that the SNP have also traditionally been opposed to NATO membership, changing their policy only in 2012 under the condition that the military block would give up its nuclear weapons – not likely to happen anytime soon. Therefore any hope London has of working together with Scotland in the area of defence is compromised by i) Scotland not becoming a NATO member and ii) it abandoning its nuclear capability.

Geographically too, Scotland has been important for UK defence. Firstly in terms of being an experimental playground for biological weapons; such as the anthrax testing on Gruinard island and for honing missile defence systems – the Ministry of Defence uses 115,000 square kilometres of airspace in the Hebrides, and Cape Wrath is the only naval firing range in Britain. Also strategically its location has been said to be vital in defending Britain from the so-called ‘Russian threat’ we hear much about nowadays.

An Economist article last year outlined this in detail, stating that Scotland’s ‘northerly latitude is ideal for projecting air and naval power into key Atlantic sea lanes and bastions of Russian power in the High North’. It also explains how typhoons can be launched from RAF Lossiemouth in Moray to ‘Russian bombers from Murmansk that approach British airspace’.  As I have stated in previous articles, the Russian threat is a complete misreading of Russian foreign policy objectives, but it can be used by British leadership to justify military expenditure.

Given Boris Johnson’s plans that were obviously long in the pipeline for ‘Global Britain’ it shows remarkable lack of foresight that no real attempts have been made by the UK government to reach out to Scots. There has been a mad rush recently to move civil servants up to Glasgow, and a concerted media effort to undermine the Scottish government and the First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, but it’s all a bit late.

Scots have, by now, been persuaded that the Westminster government, over its handling of Brexit, has no real regard for Scotland and its wishes. And a combination of arrogance and genuine disregard for Scotland has led Johnson’s government to adopting a laissez-faire approach. The result: the independence train has already left the station and there’s no catching up with it. As such, Boris Johnson would be better advised to rethink his foreign policy strategy, as if Scotland has anything to do with it, there won’t be any ‘Global Britain’ left to project.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Johanna Ross is a journalist based in Edinburgh, Scotland. You can follow the author on Twitter.

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

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In a long-awaited move, the International Union for Conservation of Nature announced today that elephants in Africa face a serious risk of extinction. At the same time, it is officially identifying African elephants as two distinct species: savanna elephants and forest elephants.

The reclassification — part of an update to IUCN’s Red List of Threatened Species — could boost recognition of the dire plight of forest elephants. Forest elephant populations were found to have declined by more than 80% in the last 93 years. Savanna elephant populations declined by more than 50% over the last 75 years.

Both forest and savanna elephants are threatened by ivory poaching and habitat loss and encroachment.

“Forest elephants are finally getting the recognition they deserve, but now we have to crack down on the poaching of these desperately imperiled animals,” said Tanya Sanerib, international legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Acknowledging forest elephants as a unique species is just the first step.”

Today’s IUCN update deemed forest elephants to be critically endangered because of steep declines caused by poaching and habitat destruction. But IUCN also downgraded the status of the more prevalent savanna elephants from vulnerable to endangered.

“This is a signal to the United States and the international community that major resources must be put into curbing ivory poaching and trafficking, closing remaining domestic ivory markets, and saving these marvelous, irreplaceable engineers of the forest and savanna from extinction,” said Sanerib.

Even if poaching were halted today, forest elephants will take decades to recover because of their slow reproductive rates. Both assessments highlighted that illegally trafficked ivory has increased “substantially” since 2006, according to seizure data.

Savanna elephants (Loxodonta africana) have larger frames and ears and curving ivory tusks and are found in southern, eastern and central Africa. Forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis) have slightly smaller builds and ears and thinner, straighter ivory and are found in western and central Africa.

IUCN simultaneously released new assessments for 6,472 other species around the globe, and nearly a third of those species were deemed threatened with extinction. Among the species, numerous primates (monkeys, marmosets and others) were deemed endangered, as well as several fireflies, frogs (including many coqui species), turtles and sharks.

In 2019 a global assessment estimated that 1 million species worldwide face extinction if business as usual continues without transformative change. The Center’s Saving Life on Earth plan calls for $100 billion for species and habitat conservation, half the Earth to be protected for wildlife, and dramatic cuts in pollution and plastics.

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Featured image: Forest elephants. Credit: Brett Hartl / Center for Biological Diversity

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).

This article was first published in October 2020

Note: The Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE) has a mandate to advise the WHO “on overall global policies and strategies, ranging from vaccines and technology, research and development, to delivery of immunization and its linkages with other health interventions.”

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“It’s Easier to Fool People Than It Is to Convince Them That They Have Been Fooled.” – Mark Twain

Dr Mike Yeadon has a degree in biochemistry and toxicology and a research-based PhD in respiratory pharmacology. He has spent over 30 years leading new medicines research in some of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, leaving Pfizer in 2011 as Vice President & Chief Scientist for Allergy & Respiratory. That was the most senior research position in this field in Pfizer. Since leaving Pfizer, Dr Yeadon has founded his own biotech company, Ziarco, which was sold to the world’s biggest drug company, Novartis, in 2017.

Abstract

SAGE made – and continues to make – two fatal errors in its assessment of the SAR-CoV-2 pandemic, rendering its predictions wildly inaccurate, with disastrous results. These errors led SAGE to conclude that the pandemic is still in its early stages, with the vast majority (93%) of the UK population remaining susceptible to infection and that, in the absence of more action, a very high number of deaths will occur.

• Error 1: Assuming that 100% of the population was susceptible to the virus and that no pre-existing immunity existed.
• Error 2: The belief that the percentage of the population that has been infected can be determined by surveying what fraction of the population has antibodies.

Both of these points run entirely counter to known science regarding viruses and to a significant amount of evidence, as I will demonstrate. The more likely situation is that the susceptible population is now sufficiently depleted (now <40%, perhaps <30%) and the immune population sufficiently large that there will not be another large, national scale outbreak of COVID-19. Limited, regional outbreaks will be self-limiting and the pandemic is effectively over. This matches current evidence, with COVID-19 deaths remaining a fraction of what they were in spring, despite numerous questionable practices, all designed to artificially increase the number of apparent COVID-19 deaths.

Introduction

The ‘scientific method’ is what separates us from pre-renaissance peoples, who might tackle plagues with prayer. We can do better, but only if we’re rigorous. If an important theory isn’t consistent with the findings it purports to oversee, then we’ve got it wrong. Honest scientists occasionally are forced to accept they’ve gone astray and the best scientists then go back and distinguish what they’ve assumed from what can be shown beyond reasonable doubt.

After nearly 35 years of work leading teams in new drug discovery, and trained in several biological disciplines, I like to think I’ve a good nose for spotting inconsistencies. I was once told by a very senior person who, at the time, was responsible for an R&D budget similar to the GDP of a small country that they’d noticed I did have an outstanding talent for “spotting faint patterns in sparse data, long before the competition did”. I’ll take that. Sometimes I spot inconsistencies in my own thinking (more commonly, it must be admitted, others do that for me); on other occasions it can be about others’ scientific work. This is an example of the latter – specifically, SAGE.

It is my contention that SAGE made – and tragically, continues to make to this very day – two absolutely central and incorrect assumptions about the behaviour of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and how it interacts with the human immune system, at an individual as well as a population level.

I will show why, if you’re on SAGE and have accepted these two assumptions, you’d believe that the pandemic has hardly begun and that hundreds of thousands of people will probably die in addition to those who’ve died already. I can empathise with anyone in that position. It must cause despair that politicians aren’t doing what you’ve told them they must do.

If, like me, you’re sure that the pandemic, as a ghastly public health event, is nearly over in UK, you will probably be with me in sheer astonishment and frustration that SAGE, the Government and 99% of the media maintain the fiction that this continues to be the biggest public health emergency in decades. I have written about the whole event in detail before (Yeadon et al, 2020). Mortality in the UK in 2020 to date, adjusted for population, lies in 8th place out of the last 27 years. It’s not been that exceptional a year from a mortality point of view.

It’s my view that SAGE has been appallingly negligent and should be dissolved and reconstituted properly.

Crucially, I will show that because the proportion of the population remaining susceptible to the virus is now too low to sustain a growing outbreak at national scale, the pandemic is effectively over and can easily be handled by a properly functioning NHS. Accordingly, the country should immediately be permitted to get back to normal life.

Background

A few pieces of background. In spring, membership of SAGE was initially treated like a state secret. Eventually, membership was revealed. I will say that, for myself, I was disappointed. I looked up the credentials of all the members. There were no clinical immunologists. No one who had a biology degree and a post-doctoral qualification in immunology. A few medics, sure. Several people from the humanities including sociologists, economists, psychologists and political theorists. No clinical immunologists. What there were in profusion – seven in total – were mathematicians. This comprised the modelling group. It is their output that has been responsible for torturing the population for the last seven months or so.

I cannot stress how important it is, whenever you hear the word “model”, that you ask who has the expertise in the thing that’s purportedly being modelled. It is no use whatever if the modellers are earnest and brilliant if they are not top quality experts in the phenomenon being modelled. Because you may be sure that from models come future scenarios – predictions if you will. If the model is constructed by people who are not subject-matter experts about the thing being modelled, then if they’ve constructed it in error, they will not know it. The outputs are expert-neutral, but they’ve assumed a power that is disproportionate. I think I understand why. Back to those pre-renaissance people. In times of uncertainty, those who purport to be expert leech appliers and bile colour interpreters became very important. They are seen to an extent as wizards of the modern age. In short, they are assumed to be seers – those who can foretell the future.

As an aside, it was my misfortune for a few years, while still a VP of respiratory research and new drug discovery, to have no choice but to work with a group of modellers, who had been brought in by credulous senior management. They claimed to be able to model certain pathological disease processes and, because of the insights they said their models would provide, show me new and effective ways to tackle difficult diseases, like severe asthma, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and the like. I smelled a rat. I spent many days with them. I would ask, “How do you know that you’ve included in your model all the important biological processes which bear on the output, the patients’ clinical condition?” No answer. I also asked, “How do you know what to assume is the starting condition for each of what you assert are the key variables?” They couldn’t adequately answer that, either. I told them that, if I put my empiricist’s reservations to one aside, and went with the flow, we wouldn’t know for a decade whether that had been the right call. Silence. I didn’t find their help much use. I hope I wasn’t too close-minded. But every one of the team, mostly mathematicians and computer programmers, were clever, earnest and really thought they could help. It’s a lesson I’ve never forgotten.

Flaws in Imperial College’s Modelling

I will now show you the two, absolutely fatal flaws in the infamous model of Imperial College. There may be other weaknesses, but these two alone are sufficient to explain why SAGE thinks the roof is about to fall in, whereas the wet science, the empirical data, says something entirely different. I believe we could, and should, lift every measure that’s in place, certainly everywhere south of the Midlands. It would probably be fine everywhere, but that’s to step into a firefight that is not needed and would detract from the force of my argument.

What are these two assumptions? They are so basic and alluring that you might need to read this twice.

If you don’t have the stomach to wade through all this, have a look at the two pie charts below.

First, the Imperial group decided to assume that, since SARS-CoV-2 was a new virus, “the level of prior immunity in the population was essentially zero”. In other words, “100% of the population was initially susceptible to the virus”.

You will be forgiven for thinking this surely doesn’t matter much and is a scientific debating point, rather than something core and crucial. And isn’t it a reasonable thing to think? I’m afraid it does matter, very much. Its not a reasonable thing to assume, either. I will come back to this first assumption in a moment.

But before that, the second fatal assumption, which was that, over time, the modellers would be able to determine what percentage of the population had so far been infected by surveying what fraction of the population had antibodies in the blood. That number is about 7%.

Surely, this too cannot be so terribly important? And isn’t it true, anyway? Again, I regret to inform the reader that yes, its absolutely central. And no, its not true.

Dr Yeadon has adjusted the size of the susceptible population in Chart 2 so it is between <30% and <40%

These charts are not intended to be mathematically perfect, as it’s not possible to convey all the subtleties of the situation. For example, we know that young children are rarely made ill by the virus and seem poor transmitters. The 10% value captures 2/3rd of those aged 0-11y. The prior immunity segment derives from work conducted entirely in adult volunteers – no children are included in that estimate of the size of the population that has prior immunity. The conclusion these charts seek to convey is that SAGE’s belief that 93% remain susceptible is completely at variance with with data from the world’s best scientists, which shows that the remaining proportion of the population susceptible to the virus is below 40%. So the population as a whole is above the so-called “herd immunity threshold”. The pandemic is effectively over, with small, self-limiting outbreaks which will soon subside.

The Two Wrong Assumptions

Before I come back to the scientific evidence that the modellers have got two, central assumptions wrong, let us just walk through the consequences for policy if these incorrect assumptions are allowed to stand.

Its easiest to show why this matters by reference to a simple graphic (see Chart 1). Let us accept for purposes of illustration SAGE’s first assumption. The pie represents 100% of the UK population, all susceptible to becoming infected by the novel virus. Each infected individual might infect several others nearby. This would be easy, as everyone is susceptible. Now apply SAGE’s second assumption, that around 7% of the UK population has antibodies in the blood (NHS, Aug 2020). Surely it’s logical to accept that “over 90% of the UK population remain susceptible to the virus”, as the most recent SAGE minutes state (SAGE, Sept 21st 2020). To all practical purposes, nothing much has changed. 93% is quite close to 100%. As a scientist, if I had blocked, for example, 7% of an enzyme that converts one biochemical molecule to another in the body, I wouldn’t expect a big response in the patient. And this is, in fact, what SAGE is telling Government behind the scenes and also telling all of us, on the radio and the television news.

Because the SAGE advisors claim so many deaths (43,000) have arisen from so few infections (4.7 million) that implies they accept that an infection fatality ratio of 0.9%. But the person who is pre-eminent in this field, John Ioannidis, has just published the results of his extensive worldwide survey and concluded the best estimate of IFR is around 0.2% (Ioannidis, 2020). SAGE’s estimate of lethality has not been revised downward since about February. It’s not central to this piece, so I’ll just leave it there. I will say though, that history shows that estimates of the lethality of each new infectious agent is always and everywhere overestimated during the event itself. This happens primarily because we undercount the people infected but who displayed no or minor symptoms and also because people, earnestly enough, prefer to err on the side of the precautionary principle. The precautionary principle, taken to extremes, as SAGE has done repeatedly, leads to “collateral damage”. Those not in the model are discounted completely and nothing which happens to them as a result of the model’s outputs and policy responses matters a jot. Thus, the precautionary principle becomes ethically dreadful.

I’ll now tell you what I believe are the real values to be used for those two assumptions. Then I’ll show you how this radically alters the position. If I am correct, the pandemic is weeks from being completely over and is already done and dusted everywhere south of the Midlands (with the possible exception of Wales – I have not tracked the evolution of the pandemic there adequately enough to say).

I’ll also offer some challenges to my own position, because as I’ve said, the adequacy and completeness of a theory can be tested by seeing whether predictions which flow from it actually happen. If the predictions fit observed reality, I would like to think that scientists of all stripes as well as attentive lay people will start to think: “This competing view might well be correct, and if it is, doesn’t that mean a whole lot of things we’re doing need looking at again?” That is my sincere hope and is the sole reason why I’m doing this.

The First Wrong Assumption

To SAGE’s first assumption. I believe that it was ridiculous to have said that, because it’s a novel virus, no one in the population would have immunity and so 100% of the population was, at the start, susceptible to it.

It’s ridiculous because while SARS-CoV-2 is indeed novel, coronaviruses are not. There’s no such thing as an ‘ancestor-less virus’. You will recall at least two, then-novel coronaviruses in the recent past: SARS in 2003 and MERS in 2012 (Zhu et al, 2020). While they didn’t spread worldwide, they are very similar, both at a sequence level and at a structural level, to SARS-CoV-2.

But there’s much more than these infamous coronaviruses. For reasons I don’t understand, given the significance of what I’m about to tell you, none of the so-called medical correspondents and science journalists on radio and TV have ever (as far as I know) spoken of the four, endemic, common-cold inducing coronaviruses. It’s well understood by clinicians and scientists who’ve spent any time reading the scientific literature that at least four coronaviruses circulate freely in UK and elsewhere where they’ve been studied. They have names: OC43, HKU1, 229E and NL63 (Zhu et al, 2020). They were first discovered around 55 years ago and, since they are seasonal (for reasons that are not completely understood), some researchers track their annual arrival and departure. Incidentally, because of the spike protein, which is unique to coronaviruses, but largely shared across the family, any PCR test reliant on primers to the sequences encoding the spike protein might well cross-react and pick up and detect as SARS-CoV-2 anyone having a coronavirus common cold at the time of sampling (see Cepheid Innovation Technical Datasheet). These four coronaviruses are but a handful of the literally scores of respiratory viruses which, together, cause between a quarter and a third of what we call the common cold (Gupta, 2020). Symptoms of infection with any of these endemic coronaviruses cause the constellation of symptoms you’d expect if you get an upper respiratory tract infection, or a cold. Some people get really minor, if any symptoms at all. Some get really heavy colds and it takes a couple of weeks before you throw them off. Regrettably, a few elderly and already ill people die after what in younger, more healthy people, causes no more than a cold.

It is my belief and that of multiple, top quality research groups around the world, that many individuals who’ve been infected by one or more of these endemic, common-cold producing coronaviruses in the past, have a long-lived and robust immunity, not only to those viruses, but to closely related viruses. SARS-CoV-2 is one such closely-related virus. Note the similarity of some of these viruses: SARS-CoV-2 is 80% identical to SARS at the gene level and the fusion subunit of all these common cold coronaviruses has high identity to the equivalent sequence of SARS-CoV-2 (Zhu et al, 2020). In researching this specific information, I came across scientists on discussion boards. One of them, responding to emerging data that immunologists were discovering SAR-CoV-2 reactive T-cells in patients never exposed to the virus, speculated that varying exposure and immunity to common cold coronaviruses might play a role in defining susceptibility to the novel virus. My insight is not new. What surprises me is that no one advising the government has done anything with this information.

As an experienced life scientist, I would have predicted that before any experiments had been done those who’d been infected by any of those common cold-causing coronaviruses would now be carrying a level of resistance – let us call it immunity – to infection by closely-related viruses. At the heart of things, this is because that’s the way the incredible molecular machinery that is the innate and adaptive immune system works. To not expect such cross-over is, I submit, once again to demonstrate the lack of the requisite understanding to build a model reliable enough to use. I’m not going to try to detail all the evidence, though it’s there in the references in my earlier, detailed article (Yeadon et al, 2020) for anyone who wants to examine it. In short, multiple research groups across Europe and the US have shown that no less than 20% and no more than 80% (clustering around 30%) of the population had robust responses of T-cells in their blood to SARS-CoV-2 BEFORE the virus reached their countries. More recently still, a fantastic piece of research in one of the top two leading research journals, Science, was published that explains how so many people had prior immunity to SARS-CoV-2, even though their immune systems had never seen that particular, novel virus (Mateus et al, 2020). At its heart, this latest piece of work used a series of pieces of common cold coronaviruses to see if they would activate those T-cells. They did. And the pieces that were best at doing this are the very same pieces of shared structure that each of them has in common with SARS-CoV-2. I like to explain it by saying: “No, those people had never met SARS-CoV-2 before, but they had tangled with several of its cousins, and prevailed.” Their immune systems will never forget those encounters. This, again, is how it works. There isn’t any substantial doubt about this.

There is no question that this is relevant. The nature of the responses was similar to the type of responses seen in people who had, some years before, been vaccinated and then challenged with whatever was in the vaccine. A study was conducted to see if immunity persisted. It has separately been shown that a group of people who’d been infected by SARS in to around 2003 still had robust T-cell responses to that virus 17 years later (Le Bert et al, 2020). Magically, the same people who had recovered from SARS – 17 years ago – also possessed T-cell immunoreactivity against the novel virus, which their bodies had never seen. This is in the other, top two science journal, Nature. This isn’t even a surprise to people with my training. It’s understood that, though there are several lines of defence in the immune system, such as innate immunity, antibodies and T-cells, it is T-cells which are of central importance in responses to respiratory viruses. Viruses harm you by gaining access to the inside of your cells. They are then beyond the reach of antibodies, which are very large molecules which cannot get inside cells. Your body copes by recognizing viral infection is a very specific way and T-cells are at the very heart of that defence mechanism.

I recognize some people will still express doubts about the claim that a significant minority of people had – and continue to have – prior immunity to SARS-CoV-2. However, I am completely sure that any scientist with good knowledge of the human immune system and of our responses to respiratory viruses will agree “this data is important”. If I put it the other way around and instead ask: “Given these findings, by leading clinical immunologists around the world, who independently have obtained the same findings, do you think its safe for us to ignore it and assume no one has resistance to the virus?” They would reply with a flat: “No.”

I believe I have provided more than adequate evidence that a significant proportion (30%) of the population went into 2020 armed with T-cells capable of defending them against SAR-CoV-2, even though they had never seen the virus. This is because they’d been previously infected by one of more common cold-producing coronaviruses. SAGE was naively wrong to assume “everyone was susceptible”.

The Second Wrong Assumption

I’m now going to turn to the second assumption. Recall that SAGE believes that less than 10% of the population have so far been infected by SARS-CoV-2. The reason they say that, presumably, is because that is the proportion of the population in whose blood antibodies to the virus have been found in seroprevalence surveys (NHS, Aug 2020). I was incredulous that they could possibly believe this was a fair measure of the fraction who’d been infected. I say this because its well understood that not every person, infected by a respiratory virus, goes on to produce antibodies. And many people, having prior immunity, never get properly infected anyway. We know that almost all those who became very unwell and were in hospital did produce antibodies, sometimes such that this could be detected months later. But those who had milder responses to the virus did not all produce antibodies. Those who did produced smaller amounts and often this faded away within a few weeks. Those who had no symptoms or only mild symptoms often made no antibodies at all. What is remarkable though is that all the people studied did have those T-cells in their blood, capable of responding to SARS-CoV-2. They had all become immune to the virus, even though they didn’t all have circulating antibodies. I can make this claim because, of the 750 million people which the WHO recently estimated have been infected so far, almost no one has been reinfected. Yes, a small handful appear to have been reinfected. But note that a far higher proportion than a handful in three quarters of a billion people have various immune deficiencies. These are far outliers. The fact is that people don’t get reinfected. This is normal. Again, it is how the immune system works. If it didn’t, we would not be here. See Burgess et al (2020) for more details.

Back to the low proportion of people who produce antibodies after infection. This also is not a surprise to clinical immunologists and those with a good understanding of mammalian immune systems. Consider this: a large number of young, healthy people don’t need to go through the slow, complex and energy-intensive process of making antibodies. They used other arms of the immune system, such as the so-called innate immune system, to shrug off the virus. Their bodies took a careful note of the invader and prompted T-cells to remember it for the future. But for these people, it was easy to rid themselves of the virus and leave no trace in the form of antibodies.

What we can conclude from this is that SAGE is wrong to rely on percentage seroconversion (antibodies) as a reliable guide to the proportion of the population who’ve been infected. This is a truly dreadful error, one that could not have been made but for the inadequate skillsets of the members of SAGE. I’m sorry, but I have to say it. They had too many mathematicians and no one with the right experience to interpret the data coming in from fieldwork. The only thing beyond this that we can say about the progress of the pandemic in UK is the proportion of people infected is NOT 7%.

It is important to arrive at an estimate for this missing number. If SAGE is right, then many more remain susceptible and at risk than I am saying. What proportion have in fact been infected? There is no easy way to know this. However, I have used two, quite independent methods to estimate it and I’m relieved and pleased that they yield similar estimates. It’s generally true than when you really don’t know a quantity yet must adopt an estimate for some purpose, the ideal way to do this is to use methods whose accuracy or error is independent. If you get similar answers, while it’s not proof, it’s generally considered powerful evidence that the answer is of the right order of size. This is most especially true if predictions made on the strength of the estimates also appear to have been correct. This is true on this occasion, so I personally have high confidence that my estimate is correct.

How Many People Have Really Been Infected?

The first method for estimating the proportion of the population that has been infected by SARS-CoV-2 is, rather grimly, to work backwards from what is known as the infection fatality ratio (IFR). The IFR is an imperfect tool, but it asks the question, if we include a perfect cross-section of the population, how many infections, statistically, are followed by one death? The IFR is being calculated by literally dozens of research groups around the world. Some have intensively surveyed a city during the pandemic and so they have a good handle on how many people were infected over time. Obviously, they know how many died, having tested positive. Looking at reviews of these studies, I think a fair estimate of the IFR is 0.2% (Ioannidis, 2020). To make the arithmetic simple, imagine an IFR of 0.1%. This is the same as saying 1 person in a 1000 (perfectly representative) people die after infection. In this thought experiment, 43,000 deaths (roughly the number who have died with or of SARS-C0V-2 in UK to date) would have been preceded by 43 million infections. An IFR of 0.2% means that I in 500 people infected did succumb and this implies approximately 21.5 million people have been infected. This is 32% of our population of 67 million. That estimate might be a little high, but I’m confident it’s a great deal closer to the real number than SAGE’s 7%.

There is another method, more rough and ready, but it can serve to see what a different approach yields. I mentioned earlier that not every infection goes on to yield antibodies. We know for certain that SAGE’s 7% is a substantial underestimate. I have discussed this issue with a number of scientists in recent months. We agreed that while, at minimum, 7% have been infected, these 7% were mostly the more severely unwell people. For each of these, we believe that between two and three others will have had moderate symptoms (lower amounts of antibodies, most of whose levels will have waned) or light symptoms if any, with very low or no antibodies, and these people will all be missed in serological surveys. This allows me to tentatively convert the raw 7% to values ranging from 21% to 28% (three-fold or four-fold the base value). Despite the numerical gymnastics, which I think are methodologically not unreasonable, the outcome is gratifyingly in agreement with the estimate arrived at by the IFR method.

I believe I have shown by two independent methods that SAGE’s estimate of the proportion of the population who’ve so far been infected by SARS-C0V-2 is a gross and amateur underestimate and that a more realistic estimate is in the mid-20s to low-30s per cent.

Recap

Lets recap. SAGE says everyone was susceptible and only 7% have been infected. I think this is literally unbelievable. They have ignored all precedent in the field of immunological memory against respiratory viruses. They have either not seen or disregarded excellent quality work from numerous, world-leading clinical immunologists which show that around 30% of the population had prior immunity. They should also have excluded from ‘susceptible’ a large subset of the youngest children, who appear not to become infected, probably because their immature biology means their cells express less of the spike protein receptor, called ACE2. I have not assumed all young children don’t participate in transmission, but believe a two thirds value is very conservative. It’s not material anyway.

So SAGE is demonstrably wrong in one really crucial variable: they assumed no prior immunity, whereas the evidence clearly points to a value of around 30% (and nearly 40% if you include some young children, who technically are ‘resistant’ rather than ‘immune’).

To the second assumption, I believe I have systematically dismembered their belief that just 7% have been infected. I have not just dismissed their value but sought to replace it and have done so using two independent methods, yielding a convergent value. It’s not 7% who have been infected, but, according to these two methods, somewhere the mid-20s to low-30s per cent.

Whither the “Second Wave”?

Where does the evidence lead us? SAGE argues that the pandemic has only just begun. This is, of course, palpable nonsense. Even lay people can tell this is a very odd claim. It’s just a respiratory virus. Yes, it’s new, but other than it is apparently a little greater in its lethality than the average seasonal influenzas, it is not more lethal than is flu in its worst years. And like all prior respiratory viruses, they arrive, many become unwell and sadly, some die, generally those of advanced or very advanced age and already chronically ill – and then it fades away.

This hasn’t happened yet, in part, because this is the first “social media pandemic”. People have a moment to moment interest in things they wouldn’t mostly notice, unless they or one of their relatives, sadly, succumbs. As Dr John Lee said recently, “The whole covid drama has really been a crisis of awareness of what viruses normally do, rather than a crisis caused by an abnormally lethal new bug” (Lee, 2020). I do not think Dr Lee goes far enough though. We have been under the writ of this thoroughly incompetent group of unaccountable scientists and modellers for many months. During that time, they have completely upended society in myriad ways. We are now walking around wearing masks! Those of us who’ve studied the practical challenges of getting inhaled drugs into the right places in patients lungs – to treat asthma, for example – know full well that such flimsy pieces of cloth absolutely do not prevent the transmission of respiratory viruses (Macintyre et al, 2015). It seems not to be understood that in the ‘hierarchy of medical evidence’, the results of a well-conducted, randomized clinical trial is not superseded by someone showing you a video of vapour moving around a person’s head.

But the main reason the pandemic hasn’t faded away is simply because SAGE says it hasn’t. Seriously. In practice, it has all but disappeared. Numerous NHS Trusts have had zero deaths for weeks or just a sporadic few. I mentioned earlier that a correct and adequate theory would give rise to testable predictions. Let us examine some of them, resting now on the values I have derived for the percentage of the population who were susceptible and the proportion who have been infected.

As the pie chart shows (see Fig 2), if you accept what I hope I’ve successfully argued are more realistic values than those adopted by SAGE, you can see the crucial difference. The remaining proportion of the population who might get infected, take part in transmission and perhaps become ill and die is now very small, certainly under 40% and possibly less than 30%. I’m told that once the fraction of the population susceptible to infection falls low enough, probably somewhere in the mid-30s, where I think it is now, if not lower (at a national level), then that population can no longer support an expanding outbreak of disease (Lourenco et al, 2020 and Gomez et al, 2020). As a result, it wanes and disappears (to be replaced by the next respiratory virus, perhaps influenza).

I think this is exactly what has happened. In terms of predictions, my take on the pandemic is that, at a national level, the greatly reduced proportion of the population that remains susceptible now means we will not see another large, national scale outbreak of COVID-19. Viruses do not do waves. That’s just a myth based on poor understanding of influenza at the end of WW1, a century ago.

Regional Outbreaks

My perspective does indicate, though, that smaller, regional and self-limiting outbreaks are not only possible, but expected. This is because the country is not a perfect mixing bowl of people. Some areas were hit extremely hard in the spring. But not everywhere. Another prediction is that areas hit the hardest in the spring will not now see any great number of cases and deaths. I point simply to London where, at this stage of the spring part of the pandemic, the capital city alone experienced hundreds of deaths every day. It is over, there. It is most unlikely to return, because the kind of immunity involved is robust and durable. A vulnerable person, walking now in London, is much less likely to catch this virus than in the spring, simply because around them there are now far fewer people carrying it and from whom they might catch it. Think for a moment: that is precisely what IS happening, right now, in London. That’s why the deaths are a tiny fraction of what they were in spring. This matches my prediction. SAGE would say nothing has changed. It clearly has.

A comparison of Covid deaths in the first six weeks of the epidemic with Covid deaths in the last six weeks

I have another prediction. Where we do regrettably see outbreaks, these will develop much more slowly than in the spring because the virus is finding it ever harder to find the next person to infect. With colleagues, we’ve carefully examined all the available data (cases, hospitalizations and deaths). What we see is that the slope of each of the rising variables, despite much error and perhaps a little mischief (false positives, defining as COVID-19 admissions people who had no such symptoms on admission and only tested positive days or even weeks later), is much less steep than in the spring, as my proposition indicates is to be expected towards the end of a national outbreak (see figures below created by RuminatorDan). As the proportion of people who can participate in transmission falls and falls, so eventually the number of people leaving hospital will exceed those being admitted. In each of these regional outbreaks (which by the way, are continuations at lower levels of the primary event, interrupted mostly by summer weather and perhaps partly by restrictions), I expect within a few weeks that the effects will crest and begin to decline. And then, nationally, it will be over. This does appear to be happening in Spain already (OWID).

SAGE is Worse Than Useless

SAGE has nothing useful to tell us. As currently constituted, they have an inappropriate over-weighting in modellers and are fatally deficient in pragmatic, empirical, evidence-led experienced scientists, especially the medical, immunological and expert generalist variety. It is my opinion that they should be disbanded immediately and reconstituted. I say this because, as I have shown, they haven’t a grasp of even the basics required to build a model and because their models are often frighteningly useless (Lee, 2020), a fact of which they seem unaware. Their role is too important for them to get a second chance. They are unlikely to revise their thinking even if they claim they have now fixed their model. The level of incompetence shown by the errors I have uncovered, errors which indirectly through inappropriate ‘measures’, have cost the lives of thousands of people, from avoidable, non-COVID-19 causes, is utterly unforgivable.

As a private individual, I am incandescent with rage at the damage they have inflicted on this country. We should demand more honesty, as well as competence from those elected or appointed to look after aspects of life we cannot manage alone. SAGE has either been irredeemably incompetent or it has been dishonest. I personally know a few SAGE members and with the sole exception of a nameless individual, it is an understatement that they have greatly disappointed me. They have rebuffed well-intentioned and, as it turned out, accurate advice from at least three Nobel laureate scientists, all informing them that their modelling was seriously and indeed lethally in error. Though this may not have made the papers, everyone in the science community knows about this and that SAGE’s inadequate replies are scandalous. I have no confidence in any of them and neither should you.

No Need For a Vaccine

There is absolutely no need for vaccines to extinguish the pandemic. I’ve never heard such nonsense talked about vaccines. You do not vaccinate people who aren’t at risk from a disease. You also don’t set about planning to vaccinate millions of fit and healthy people with a vaccine that hasn’t been extensively tested on human subjects. This much I know after 30 years in the pharmaceutical industry. Yet there are such moves afoot. One thought piece suggests that anyone who refuses vaccination should be subject to indefinite house arrest (Mello et al, 2020). In some countries, there is talk of “no jab, no job”. There have even been job adverts for openings in NHS Wales for people to “oversee the vaccination of the entire population”. Any such proposals are not only completely unnecessary but if done using any kind of coercion at all, illegal. I would completely understand and would consider accepting early use of a vaccine only if done with fully informed consent and, even then, only if offered to the most vulnerable in our community. Other proposals have, to me, the whiff of evil about them and I will oppose them as vigorously as I have followed the pandemic so far.

I am not an epidemiologist. I’m not a mathematician, either. I do think, though, that I’m a highly experienced life scientist, who has held positions of significant responsibility in large organisations set up to identify and advance experimental medicines. I have had to make big decisions from time to time, using every ounce of experience, imagination, ingenuity and often found myself reading at speed into new areas, tentatively getting to grips with new concepts and knowledge. I’ve always been a collaborator, seeking to work with the most talented individuals I could. I’ve done this repeatedly across a more than 30-year career in new drug discovery. To this day, in notionally early retirement, I advise clients who are building new biotechnology companies, who are dealing with very diverse diseases and novel therapeutic approaches. I respectfully suggest that this background has ideally placed me to assess others’ propositions and assumptions and to bring well-grounded science to bear on complex issues, of which the SARS-CoV-2 is but one, albeit perhaps the most important work I’ve ever done.

The main point from these graphs is the trend line. The rising number of cases and deaths is proceeding 4x more slowly now than in the spring. This doesn’t prove that we are nearing the end state, but this observation is consistent with that concept.

Thanks to RuminatorDan for the analyses and figures.

Update: This article was revised on October 21st to enlarge the percentage of the UK population that is still susceptible to infection, from 28% to <30 and <40%.

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References

Yeadon et al (2020). “How Likely is a Second wave?” Lockdown Sceptics, September 7th 2020. Updated September 8th 2020.

NHS (Aug 15 2020).

SAGE minutes (September 21st 2020), Summary of the effectiveness and harms of different non-pharmaceutical interventions.

Burgess, et al. (2020). “Are we underestimating seroprevalence of SARS-CoV-2?“, BMJ, September 3rd 2020

Ioannidis, J. (2020). “Global perspective of COVID‐19 epidemiology for a full‐cycle pandemic“, European Journal of Clinical Investment, October 7th 2020

Zhu, et al (2020). “From SARS and MERS to COVID-19: a brief summary and comparison of severe acute respiratory infections caused by three highly pathogenic human coronaviruses“, Respiratory Research, August 27th 2020

Cepheid Innovation Technical Datasheet (Xpert Xpress SARS-CoV-2), page 32.

Gupta, S. (2020). “Matt Hancock is wrong about herd immunity“, Unherd, October 14th 2020

Mateus et al (2020) “Selective and cross-reactive SARS-CoV-2 T cell epitopes in unexposed humans“, Science, October 2nd 2020

Le Bert et al (2020). “SARS-Cov-2 specific T cell immunity in cases of Covid19 and SARS and uninfected controls“, Nature, July 15th 2020

Lee, J (2020). “The fatal mistake which led to lockdowns“, The Spectator, July 11th 2020

Macintyre et al (2020). “A cluster randomized trial of cloth masks compared with medical masks in healthcare workers“, BMJ Open, April 22nd 2015

Lourenco et al (2020). “The impact of host resistance on cumulative mortality and the threshold of herd immunity for SARS-CoV-2“, MedRxIV, October 1st 2020

Gomez et al (2020). “Individual variation in susceptibility or exposure to SARS-CoV-2 lowers the herd immunity threshold“, MedRxIV, May 21st 2020

Mello, M, et al (2020). “Ensuring uptake of vaccines against SARS-CoV-2“, New England Journal of Medicine, October 1st 2020

Featured image: Chief Medical Officer, Professor Chris Whitty, and Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, give a Coronavirus Data Briefing in 10 Downing Street. Picture by Pippa Fowles/No 10 Downing Street.

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Ed Lehman began protesting for peace during the Vietnam War — and he never stopped. Now, after over 50 years of activism, the Regina resident is being honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Saskatchewan Council For International Cooperation (SCIC).

Lehman is the editor for the Saskatchewan Peace News, is the head of the Regina Peace Council, a member of Peace Quest Regina, and is also involved with the Making Peace Vigil.

“This award is a recognition of work that I’ve done in the area of global cooperation and social justice and solidarity with people around the world,” Lehman said.

When Lehman first got into activism, the primary issues that caught his attention were imperialism, colonialism, youth unemployment and the mistreatment of First Nations people in Canada.

“This period now that we’re in,” Lehman said. “It seems like all these issues that we were discussing 50 years ago have come to the floor again.”

Lehman has condemned Canada and the United States’s role in perpetuating colonialism domestically and imperialism abroad.

“Personally I feel,” Lehman said. “If we’re going to fight colonialism we have to fight it at home, but we also have to fight what our countries are doing internationally.”

Lehman notes that these issues don’t receive a great deal of coverage in the Canadian media which is why he is always organizing events.

Lehman was nominated for the award by fellow activist and close friend David Gehl.

“[Ed] has been very active,”Gehl  said. “He edits the Saskatchewan Peace News, our regular bulletin. He knows people across Canada in the peace movement in many different organizations. I think he’s a leader.”

“He had a lot of personal experiences that enriched his life,” Gehl said. “He’d seen many different cultures, I think he has quite a rich life experience.”

Gehl and Lehman have been friends since high school. Gehl’s family was heavily involved in politics. Lehman credits his connection to Gehl for changing his views on the Vietnam War during his teenage years, one of the issues that sparked Lehman’s lifelong commitment to peace activism.

 “It’s a lifelong achievement award, and Ed has been very active lifelong for the 50 years that I’ve known him,” Gehl said. “I think he fits the bill. I think he’s been really important for raising the profile of the Regina Peace Council, he’s taken a lot of the initiatives to have the conferences and I know he joined the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute.”

The event is scheduled to happen March 23 from 6:30 to 8:30 CST.  Registration information can be viewed here.

When Ed learned that he was being given the award, he insisted that the virtual event be centred around a discussion of Canadian foreign policy rather than himself.

“I think it’s typical of Ed,” Gehl said. “The SCIC was unable to have a public award ceremony but they did offer to have a public event and Ed wanted it not to focus on him so much as to focus on Canadian foreign policy. So he was able to suggest that they would have a webinar focused on Canadian foreign policy in the 21st century.”

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(4) Karen Horney, Neurosis and Human Growth

(5) Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals/Ecce Homo

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Blinken was clearly speaking from experience. Since the United States dispensed with the UN Charter and the rule of international law to invade Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, and has used military force and unilateral economic sanctions against many other countries, it has indeed made the world more deadly, violent and chaotic.

But after two decades of unilateral U.S. foreign policy in which the United States has systematically ignored and violated international law, leaving widespread death, violence and chaos in its wake, U.S. foreign policy may finally be coming full circle, at least in the case of Afghanistan.

So, after 20 years of war and lawlessness, is the United States finally ready to give the “rules-based order” a chance to prevail over U.S. unilateralism and “might makes right,” instead of just using it as a verbal cudgel to browbeat its enemies?

What’s going on in Afghanistan?

In February 2020, the Trump administration signed an agreement with the Taliban to fully withdraw U.S. and NATO troops from Afghanistan by May 1, 2021.

The Taliban had refused to negotiate with the U.S.-backed government in Kabul until the U.S. and NATO withdrawal agreement was signed, but once that was done, the Afghan sides began peace talks in March 2020. Instead of agreeing to a full ceasefire during the talks, as the U.S. government wanted, the Taliban only agreed to a one-week “reduction in violence.”

Eleven days later, as fighting continued between the Taliban and the Kabul government, the United States wrongly claimed that the Taliban was violating the agreement it signed with the United States and relaunched its bombing campaign.

Despite the fighting, the Kabul government and the Taliban managed to exchange prisoners and continue negotiations in Qatar, mediated by U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, who had negotiated the U.S. withdrawal agreement with the Taliban. But the talks made slow progress, and now seem to have reached an impasse.

The coming of spring in Afghanistan usually brings an escalation in the war. Without a new ceasefire, a spring offensive would probably lead to more territorial gains for the Taliban—which already controls at least half of Afghanistan.

This prospect, combined with the May 1st withdrawal deadline for the remaining 3,500 U.S. and 7,000 other NATO troops, prompted Blinken’s invitation to the United Nations to lead a more inclusive international peace process that will also involve India, Pakistan and the United States’s traditional enemies, China, Russia and, most remarkably, Iran.

This process began with a conference on Afghanistan in Moscow on March 18-19, which brought together a 16-member delegation from the U.S.-backed Afghan government in Kabul and negotiators from the Taliban, along with U.S. envoy Khalilzad and representatives from the other countries.

The Moscow conference laid the groundwork for a larger UN-led conference to be held in Istanbul in April to map out a framework for a ceasefire, a political transition and a power-sharing agreement between the U.S.-backed government and the Taliban.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has appointed Jean Arnault to lead the negotiations for the UN. Arnault previously negotiated the end to the Guatemalan Civil War in the 1990s and the peace agreement between the government and the FARC in Colombia, and he was the Secretary-General’s representative in Bolivia from the 2019 coup until a new election was held in 2020. Arnault also knows Afghanistan, having served in the UN Assistance Mission to Afghanistan from 2002 to 2006.

If the Istanbul conference results in an agreement between the Kabul government and the Taliban, U.S. troops could be home sometime in the coming months.

President Trump—belatedly trying to make good on his promise to end that endless  war— deserves credit for beginning a full withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. But a withdrawal without a comprehensive peace plan would not have ended the war. The UN-led peace process should give the people of Afghanistan a much better chance of a peaceful future than if U.S. forces left with the two sides still at war, and reduce the chances that the gains made by women over these years will be lost.

It took 17 years of war to bring the United States to the negotiating table and another two-and-a-half years before it was ready to step back and let the UN take the lead in peace negotiations.

For most of this time, the U.S. tried to maintain the illusion that it could eventually defeat the Taliban and “win” the war. But U.S. internal documents published by WikiLeaks and a stream of reports and investigations revealed that U.S. military and political leaders have known for a long time that they could not win. As General Stanley McChrystal put it, the best that U.S. forces could do in Afghanistan was to “muddle along.”

What that meant in practice was dropping tens of thousands of bombs, day after day, year after year, and conducting thousands of night raids that, more often than not, killed, maimed or unjustly detained innocent civilians.

The death toll in Afghanistan is unknown. Most U.S. airstrikes and night raids take place in remote, mountainous areas where people have no contact with the UN human rights office in Kabul that investigates reports of civilian casualties.

Fiona Frazer, the UN’s human rights chief in Afghanistan, admitted to the BBC in 2019 that “…more civilians are killed or injured in Afghanistan due to armed conflict than anywhere else on Earth….The published figures almost certainly do not reflect the true scale of harm.”

No serious mortality study has been conducted since the U.S. invasion in 2001. Initiating a full accounting for the human cost of this war should be an integral part of UN envoy Arnault’s job, and we should not be surprised if, like the Truth Commission he oversaw in Guatemala, it reveals a death toll that is ten or twenty times what we have been told.

If Blinken’s diplomatic initiative succeeds in breaking this deadly cycle of “muddling along,” and brings even relative peace to Afghanistan, that will establish a precedent and an exemplary alternative to the seemingly endless violence and chaos of America’s post-9/11 wars in other countries.

The United States has used military force and economic sanctions to destroy, isolate or punish an ever-growing list of countries around the world, but it no longer has the power to defeat, re-stabilize and integrate these countries into its neocolonial empire, as it did at the height of its power after the Second World War. America’s defeat in Vietnam was a historical turning point: the end of an age of Western military empires.

All the United States can achieve in the countries it is occupying or besieging today is to keep them in various states of poverty, violence and chaos—shattered fragments of empire adrift in the twenty-first century world.

U.S. military power and economic sanctions can temporarily prevent bombed or impoverished countries from fully recovering their sovereignty or benefiting from Chinese-led development projects like the Belt and Road Initiative, but America’s leaders have no alternative development model to offer them.

The people of Iran, Cuba, North Korea and Venezuela have only to look at Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, Libya or Somalia to see where the pied piper of American regime change would lead them.

What is this all about?

Humanity faces truly serious challenges in this century, from the mass extinction of the natural world to the destruction of the life-affirming climate that has been the vital backdrop of human history, while nuclear mushroom clouds still threaten us all with civilization-ending destruction.

It is a sign of hope that Biden and Blinken are turning to legitimate, multilateral diplomacy in the case of Afghanistan, even if only because, after 20 years of war, they finally see diplomacy as a last resort.

But peace, diplomacy and international law should not be a last resort, to be tried only when Democrats and Republicans alike are finally forced to admit that no new form of force or coercion will work. Nor should they be a cynical way for American leaders to wash their hands of a thorny problem and offer it as a poisoned chalice for others to drink.

If the UN-led peace process Secretary Blinken has initiated succeeds and U.S. troops finally come home, Americans should not forget about Afghanistan in the coming months and years. We should pay attention to what happens there and learn from it. And we should support generous U.S. contributions to the humanitarian and development aid that the people of Afghanistan will need for many years to come.

This is how the international “rules-based system,” which U.S. leaders love to talk about but routinely violate, is supposed to work, with the UN fulfilling its responsibility for peacemaking and individual countries overcoming their differences to support it.

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

Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher with CODEPINK and the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.

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Despite a failed military coup attempt by Guaido with Washington’s backing in April 2019 in Venezuela, the Biden administration reinstate Juan Guaido as the “interim president” again!

While the Biden administration continues Trump’s disastrous “maximum pressure” sanctions against the Venezuelan people, Wall Street and foreign oil companies push to lift a ban on diesel fuel swaps with Venezuela to regain their profits.

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Massoud Nayeri is a graphic designer and an independent peace activist based in the United States. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Massoud Nayeri

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Well, I’ve had personally the privilege of witnessing the poverty, the trauma, the displacement due to suffered by local communities in Damascus, Sydnaya, Latakia, Homs and at last of Aleppo, visited several times. And I continue to seek to raise the suffering of the people in parliament. Just as a reminder, over nine million Syrians are food insecure at the moment, and an estimated nine out of 10 live below the poverty line and million Syrians in parliament and the suffering of the people.

And in January this year, I sent a letter to the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, to urge the lifting of economic sanctions against Syria. The letter was signed by 80 other people, including many colleagues in the House of Lords, two former British ambassador to Syria, one of them, my friend Peter Ford, and other people from different arenas, George Tenet, the former chief of general staff of the British Army, north west of spitted former first sea lord and chief of naval staff.

And someone you heard earlier, of course, the right Reverend Dr Ted Williams, the former archbishop of Canterbury and many other people. It was also signed by international diplomats, human rights experts and some of the most senior church leaders in the Middle East. They briefly on this is the prime minister for the call to the United Nations, special rapporteur on unilateral coercive measures. And they don’t do it. Who appealed at the end of December, the United States, to lift its complex web of economic sanctions that severely harm the people of Syria.

Sanctions that have not been approved by the UN Security Council. The special rapporteur stated that US sanctions, I quote, violate the human rights of Syrian people and also could exacerbate the already humanitarian situation in Syria, especially in the case of Covid-19 pandemic, end of quote. They suffer what they call suffering by blocking the aid, trade and investment necessary, the serious health system and economy to function. The special rapporteurs findings reflect a growing consensus within humanitarian aid and human rights communities that the sanctions are driving Syria into an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe. I could give a lot more details. You’ve had enough already, and I know speaking out of turn because of our network connections. But I would just highlight the sanctions cure just as surely as bombs dropped.

Bombs can be aimed at military targets and sometimes, unfortunately, civilian targets and the sanction regimes nearly everyone suffers from in Syria. Effects have been devastating. Millions of people out of work, skyrocketing prices and poverty, a crippled health care system and hunger and death for many of the most vulnerable. It is high time the undeclared economic war being waged against the Syrian people by the United States, United Kingdom, European Union and their allies to come to an end.

And I hope very much that the important conference will help to bring that around.

So moving from there tonight, from there, sorry, I move to what I should do, which is to have the great privilege of giving what I just like to offer a very profound vision thanks to all the distinguished people, because this is very, very important conflict.

We’ve been so fortunate to work with speakers from Syria, from the front line of faith and freedom and other experts from around the world, and most importantly, to hear voices in country who don’t hear enough of in Britain and to hear the heartbreaking realities that exist in Syria today and to hear the truths that are so often hidden in mainstream narratives.

And you have to just the BBC like I do, I’ve complained again and increased the coverage of Syria related to areas in the region.

So a huge many of those who face the pressure, so many people have a lot of pressure not to take part in such a conference.

They’ve had the courage to speak out and they will pay a high price. But we’re here because we believe we believe in the truth. We believe in the need because of the suffering. The people of the Syrian crisis began 10 years ago today. The suffering of the Syrian people has gone on, as we all know, to be here for far too long. And the current policies of the international community are only prolonging violence and instability in the country and compounding the profound suffering of millions of people, innocent people.

So I passionately hope that the voices today will promote. A path to stability and peace. And finally, of course, thank you so much, Dr. Makram and the European Center for the Study of Extreme Extremism. And disorganized, because I’ve been running around trying to get my network and organize this very important event, but seriously, I’m sure we all hope and pray that what we have heard today echoes in the corridors of power. And challenges the people to reflect on the too often unreported realities in this context.

And as I say, very, very biased reporting. I’m sure we’re all aware and to support Syria to decide its own future and to rebuild your magnificent country, its wonderful history in a way that is the wishes of the Syrian people and to bring hope, peace and freedom for your people. You’ve suffered for far too long without it. You’ve deserved it for a long time. And I’m sure everyone has taken part in this very, very important conference, which we do thank you very much for arranging, will agree that it is long overdue that the people of Syria are respected for wonderful history, respected for your civilization, and respected for the contribution you can make the world when countries such as the United States in my own country stop penalizing you and allow you to develop your own justice, peace, freedom and democracy.

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The Rise of the Eurasian Century. The China -India -Pakistan Triangle

By Andrew Korybko, March 25 2021

Fast-moving recent developments inspire hope that the Eurasian Century is rising a lot quicker than even the most optimistic observers could have expected.

Anthony Blinken at NATO Summit: Nord Stream 2 Is “Bad for Europe”, “Bad for the US”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, March 25 2021

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was categorical; At the NATO venue in Brussels on March 23, he stated in no uncertain terms that Nord Stream 2 was a bad idea. “Bad for Europe, bad for the US”

Sowing The Seeds of War. China and Russia’s Lack of Trust. “Washington’s Hegemonic Aspirations Could Result in a Devastating War”

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, March 25 2021

China Is Losing Patience with Washington. “You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry,” China tells Washington, and China is getting angry.

“The One Who Accuses Is the One Who Is” – President Putin’s Response to Biden’s Calling Him a “Killer”

By Peter Koenig, March 25 2021

When President Putin spoke later to the media in Moscow, answering a question about his reaction to Biden’s accusing him to be a “killer”, Putin just said, “I wish him good health, and I mean it without irony.”

Facts About COVID-19

By Swiss Policy Research, March 25 2021

Lethality: According to the latest immunological studies, the overall infection fatality rate (IFR) of covid-19 in the general population is about 0.1% to 0.5% in most countries, which is most closely comparable to the medium influenza pandemics of 1957 and 1968.

America Against the World: Everyone Is a “Frenemy”. Putin is a “Killer” Russia “Must Pay the Price”

By Philip Giraldi, March 25 2021

There are certainly a number of reasons why the United States government is now only viewed favorably by the Israelis, but totally tone deaf foreign and economic policies have to be right up there in how the world sees Washington.

India: A Year of Pandemic, Deadlock, Disaster and Dissent

By Adv Dr Shalu Nigam, March 25 2021

The virus has not only resulted in damages resulting in high mortality and morbidity, but it has also made adverse qualitative changes in the lives of billions while its socio-political repercussions have devastated economies in the Global South.

In a Shift, Pakistan Suing for Peace with India

By FM Shakil, March 25 2021

Pakistan has unveiled a new “geo-economic vision” that offers to “bury the past” with neighboring rival India if it reciprocates with a “relaxation” on the two sides’ long-running dispute over Kashmir.

Russia, China to Resist US but Engagement Is Preferred Option

By M. K. Bhadrakumar, March 25 2021

The US President Joe Biden’s “killer” remark about his “soulless” Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin was outrageous by any yardstick — even by his own long history of diplomatic gaffes. But Moscow won’t accept it as a sign of dementia.

Increasing Nukes and Trimming the Military: Global Britain’s Skewed Vision

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, March 25 2021

Nuclear weapon states and their allies still persisted in calling the document unhelpful and unrealistic; the self-appointed realists have preferred the go-slow approach of disarmament, a form of moderated insanity.

Does Weed-killing Chemical “Paraquat” Cause Parkinson’s Disease? Multiple Law Suits in the U.S.

By U.S. Right to Know, March 25 2021

Multiple lawsuits are pending in the United States alleging the weedkilling chemical paraquat causes Parkinson’s disease, and the first case to go to trial over the allegations against Syngenta over paraquat and Parkinson’s was originally scheduled for April 12 but was rescheduled for May 10 in St. Clair County Circuit Court in Illinois.

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***

The intensity of the conflict in Syria’s northeast refuses to die down, as more and more strikes are carried out targeting each involved party’s  interests.

For its part, MSM reports on all of these, but many of them are presented in a light, much different from reality.

On March 23^rd, a video emerged showing the Damascus government forces conduct a strike on Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

The shelling targeted the terrorist fortifications and depots. MSM, in conjunction with various Western-backed organizations such as the “International Rescue Committee”, shifted the story and claimed that a civilian hospital had been struck.

As such, the narrative is this – the “Bloody Assad Regime” is back at it, targeting civilians and killing its own people.

As might be expected this media campaign is part of the attempts by the US to rebrand HTS as a “former terrorist” and now reformed organization, in order to have another ally, in a different part of Syria.

The Damascus government’s recent punishment of HTS and the Turkish-backed militants in northeastern Syria is happening with Russian support and is part of a wider push to liberate more areas of Syria.

Ankara is dissatisfied with this, even summoning the Russian Ambassador to complain about the severe strikes that Moscow had carried out on terrorist targets.

The Turkish side insists that artillery and air strikes on positions and infrastructure of Turkish-funded terrorists in Greater Idlib violated the ‘de-escalation agreement’. No mentions were made of the violations that are frequently carried out by these same terrorists.

Turkey would like to continue to enjoy the smuggled oil it used to receive from the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces.

The United States, still benefits from that smuggled oil. On March 23^rd, a convoy of more than 300 tankers left Syria’s Hasaka region and entered Iraq.

Washington’s oil repatriation is not proceeding without a hitch either. On March 23^rd, several rockets hit a US military base near the Conico oil field in the Syrian province of Deir ez-Zor. Lebanon’s al-Mayadeen TV reported that the US suffered casualties. Little else is known.

Being subject to rocket strikes, and having convoys hit by IEDs was commonplace in Iraq, but it appears that it has now also come to plague Washington’s forces in Syria.

The profits from that smuggled oil could potentially be used to cover a recent loss by the US – an MQ-9 Reaper was downed in Yemen, by Ansar Allah.

Despite officially not supporting the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen, the Biden Administration appears to still be up to Washington’s old activities.

The Houthis, as Ansar Allah is commonly known, are riding high due to their recent successes and continue their regular drone strikes on various Saudi positions and infrastructure behind enemy lines.

The Abha Airport, alongside other locations in the south of the Kingdom, is subject to frequent attacks.

Riyadh is providing ample opposition, carrying out approximately 30 or more airstrikes each day. Still, it would seem that the Saudi-led coalition is being steadily pushed back.

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***

I often quote one simple statement by Nawal El-Saadawi– a bold and brilliant retort to a question put to her by an NPR radio host many years ago. A lesson for me, but for many others too.

I was accompanying the Egyptian writer to the Manhattan studio of the national radio network, and sat behind her in the glass-walled booth as the interview got underway. It was the early 1990s when the Western public was newly aware of Muslim people—as individual women and men. The interviewer (a well-known radio personality) actually began with a question other guests might stumble over, be outraged by, or possibly be moved to cancel the discussion altogether.

“Are you a good Muslim?”, asked the host.

Nawal’s reply? Cool and succinct, but not unkind– as was her habit:

“That’s between God and me.”

This retort made an enormous impression on me personally, but also informed my understanding of media’s subtle ways of controlling dialogue. El-Saadawi’s handling of that question later inspired my widely circulated article Is She Muslim?.

Today, as news of her passing spreads, it’s gratifying to read the many tributes to the inimitable author and activist Nawal El-Saadawi. She completed 89 years of an extraordinary life and career that went from early medical work into villages of her native Egypt, to authorship of autobiographies and novels, to incarceration following her criticisms of Anwar Sadat, to international conferences, and visiting professorships in the West.

She was extraordinary on all fronts– highly energetic intellectually and physically, relishing any opportunity to dialogue and to criticize, infinitely patient and ready to explain over and over again for an infinitely naïve public the links between patriarchy and capitalism, between patriarchy and a myopic Western feminism, to build her Arab Women’s Solidarity Association, and to continue writing.

As you will hear in this audio clip from my February, 2000 interview with her, how El-Saadawi possessed a powerful voice and a skill to make clear seemingly complex issues.

Although she frequently visited the West to speak and teach, and however tense and threatening the politics in her homeland, she always returned there to write and to involve herself in the ongoing insecurity and political upheaval within Egypt.

I met Dr. Nawal on many occasions, both in U.S.A. and in Cairo. Our first meeting was during one of her visits to New York in the early 1990s when she was seen largely as a ‘loose cannon’. Oh, she was unpredictable. No one in that largely middle-class NGO audience knew what to expect. But she was gaining attention as an Arab spokesperson. Not only was the ‘Arab woman’ a new phenomenon to be seen and heard in person. Islam was growing in controversy following Salman’s Rushdie’s Satanic Verses and the newly established theocracy in Iran.

El-Saadawi first came to prominence with her 1980 book The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World. There, she exposed to the global community, the physical mistreatment of young women in her country through a puberty rite later labeled ‘female genital mutilation’. Her exposé was sensational in a way that embarrassed many Arabs and Muslims. It was incorrectly associated with Islamic teachings and it aroused in the wider public a very negative image of both Islam and Arab women as victims of Islam. (To the present, those connections persist in the minds of many.)

I don’t know if El-Saadawi ever was able to shed her close association with that issue; the concept which shocked so many may have pursued her reputation to the end. This she would doubtless find unfortunate. Because her understanding of Islam was not at all negative and her exploration of women in history and society was deep and enlightening.

She understood cultural underpinnings more deeply than most anthropologists and sociologists. She often talked about how, in its own way, Western culture and secular rituals ‘mutilate’ Western women who are furthermore subject to their own ‘veiling’ prescriptions. She shocked us with analogies she drew between East and West, pointing out the bizarre practices and demands on women by Western culture. Some radical feminists understood this. But few others did. As for reforming our Western habits, she always returned to the barriers of patriarchy.

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This was originally published on the author’s blog site.

BN Aziz whose anthropological research has focused on the peoples of the Himalayas is the author of the newly published “Yogmaya and Durga Devi: Rebel Women of Nepal”, available on Amazon. 

Featured image: El-Saadawi (r) with her husband, novelist Sherif Hetata, 1990 (Source: Barbara Nimri Aziz)

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***

Fast-moving recent developments inspire hope that the Eurasian Century is rising a lot quicker than even the most optimistic observers could have expected. The relevant events are last month’s Chinese-Indian synchronized disengagement and the Indian-Pakistani ceasefire, the US’ threats to sanction India for its planned purchase of Russia’s S-400 air defense systems, the scandals that America provoked last week with China and Russia, last week’s inaugural Islamabad Security Dialogue, and the latest progress in resolving the Afghan War. The importance of all five will now be briefly discussed prior to putting them into the larger strategic context.

The China-India-Pakistan triangle over the UNSC-recognized disputed territory of Kashmir always had a high conflict potential, which the world was reminded of during the Indian-Pakistani air battle of February 2019 and last summer’s Chinese-Indian clashes in the Galwan River Valley.

All sides to their credit realized that their interests are best served by stabilizing the tense situation there through last month’s earlier mentioned synchronized disengagement and ceasefire. This de-escalates everything and creates a conductive environment for peacefully resolving their disagreements.

The US’ repeated threats to sanction India for its planned purchase of Russia’s S-400 air defense systems will also improve the security situation in Eurasia, as strange as it may sound. India must by now realize that the US isn’t as reliable of an ally as some in the country had previously thought. America is attaching unacceptable political, economic, and strategic strings to military cooperation with India through the Quad that many suspect is tacitly aimed at containing China. Should Washington go through with its threats, then New Delhi might in turn take a step back from the Quad, which would by default further improve Chinese-Indian relations.

Last week’s Anchorage meeting between Chinese and American diplomats ended with the latter patronizingly talking down to the former and thus preventing a lot of meaningful progress from being made. In addition, US President Joe Biden’s agreement with an interviewer who asked him whether he thought that Russian President Vladimir Putin was a “killer” prompted Moscow to recall its ambassador for the first time since 1998. Coincidentally, Russia’s Foreign Minister visited Beijing this week to discuss strengthening bilateral ties, which aren’t aimed against any third party such as the US but are only intended to improve the situation in Eurasia.

The inaugural Islamabad Security Dialogue was also held last week and saw Prime Minister Imran Khan, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, and Chief Of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa jointly present Pakistan’s new multipolar grand strategy. Importantly, Islamabad encouraged New Delhi to take the first step towards resolving their dispute over Kashmir in order for Pakistan to then facilitate Indian connectivity with Afghanistan, the Central Asian Republics, and beyond (perhaps as far as Russia and the EU too). This very friendly outreach could revolutionize Eurasia’s economic connectivity capabilities if India positively responds to Pakistan.

Finally, the recent progress that’s been made on peacefully resolving the Afghan War could unlock the potential for Central Asian-South Asian connectivity. This is especially so when considering last month’s agreement between Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Uzbekistan to construct a railway between them. Keeping in mind the Pakistani political, diplomatic, and military leaderships’ unprecedented joint outreach to India last week, then the plausible possibility exists of finally pioneering a Central Asian-South Asian connectivity corridor upon the eventual end of the Afghan War. This would unquestionably be to all of the Eurasian supercontinent’s benefit.

Altogether, the fast-moving developments of recent weeks strongly point to the rise of the Eurasian Century. China, India, Pakistan, and Russia all share the same goal of improving connectivity between them and their many partners, with their visions increasingly converging in light of the latest events.

The best-case scenario is that the Chinese-Indian synchronized disengagement and Indian-Pakistani ceasefire hold in parallel with meaningful progress being made on resolving the Afghan War and the Kashmir dispute. That outcome would enable all players to more easily resist the US’ divide-and-rule schemes and thus ensure a win-win future for all.

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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

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***

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was categorical; At the NATO venue in Brussels on March 23, he stated in no uncertain terms that Nord Stream 2  was a bad idea. “Bad for Europe, bad for the US”

Below is the substance of his statement on behalf of President Biden: 

“President Biden has been very clear, he believes the pipeline is a bad idea, bad for Europe, bad for the United States, ultimately it is in contradiction to the EU’s own security goals,”

“It has the potential to undermine the interests of Ukraine, Poland and a number of close partners and allies,”  (quoted by Reuters)

The US sponsored propaganda campaign is ongoing with a view to ultimately stalling the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project.

The project is 95% completed. It is scheduled to be launched in September, 2021.

Is the US intent upon sabotaging this 9.3 billion dollar project?

Sanctions against the EU are ongoing. The CO2 climate discourse is being used profusely to stall Nord Stream 2.

The Biden administration in mid-March made clear it is committed to complying with the sanctions legislation put in place with bipartisan support in Congress, and called on companies involved to “immediately abandon work on the pipeline”. This dampened expectations for a deal between Germany and the U.S., which arose when the Biden administration did not sanction new entities involved in the project in late February. (Clean Energy Wire)

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***

Multiple lawsuits are pending in the United States alleging the weedkilling chemical paraquat causes Parkinson’s disease, and the first case to go to trial over the allegations against Syngenta over paraquat and Parkinson’s was originally scheduled for April 12 but was rescheduled for May 10 in St. Clair County Circuit Court in Illinois. The trial is expected to be delayed due to precautions related to the Covid-19 virus.

That Illinois case – Hoffman V. Syngenta – is one of several pending against Syngenta alleging the company’s paraquat products cause Parkinson’s Disease. The Hoffman case also names Chevron Phillips Chemical Co. and Growmark Inc. as defendants. Chevron distributed and sold Gramoxone paraquat product in the United States in an agreement with a Syngenta predecessor called Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), which introduced paraquat-based Gramoxone in 1962. Under a license agreement, Chevron had the right to to manufacture, use, and sell paraquat formulations in the U.S.

Lawyers around the United States are advertising for plaintiffs, seeking to draw in thousands of people who’ve been exposed to paraquat and now suffer from Parkinson’s.

One of the most recently filed cases was brought in federal court. That lawsuit is Durbin V. Syngenta.

Several scientific studies have linked paraquat to Parkinson’s, including a large study of U.S. farmers jointly overseen by multiple U.S. government agencies.  Farmers use paraquat in the production of many crops, including corn, soy and cotton.

Parkinson’s is an incurable progressive nervous system disorder that limits a person’s ability to control movement, causing tremors, loss of balance and eventually often leaving victims bedridden and/or bound to a wheelchair. The disease is not necessarily fatal but typically becomes severely debilitating.

Dutch neurologist Bastiaan Bloem, who recently authored a book about Parkinson’s, blames widespread exposure to herbicides such as paraquat, along with other toxic chemicals used in agriculture and manufacturing, for the spread of the disease.

Acutely Toxic 

Along with fears about links between paraquat and Parkinson’s, paraquat is also known to be an extremely acutely toxic chemical that can quickly kill people who ingest very small amounts. In Europe, the sale of paraquat has been banned since 2007, but in the United States the pesticide is sold as a “Restricted Use Pesticide” due to “acute toxicity.”

As part of discovery in the Parkinson’s litigation, lawyers have obtained internal records from Syngenta and its predecessor corporate entities dating back to the 1960s. Many of these documents are sealed, but some have started to come to light.

Those unsealed discovery documents, which include copies of letters, minutes of meetings, study summaries, and emails, are being made available on this page.

Most of the documents unsealed to date deal with corporate discussions about how to keep paraquat herbicides on the market despite its deadliness, through measures designed to reduce accidental poisonings. Specifically, many of the documents detail an internal corporate struggle over the addition of an emetic, a vomit-inducing agent, to paraquat products.  Today, all Syngenta paraquat-containing products include an emetic called “PP796.”  Liquid paraquat-containing formulations from Syngenta also include a stenching agent to produce a foul odor, and a blue dye to differentiate the dark-colored herbicide from tea or cola or other beverages.

EPA Review 

Paraquat is currently undergoing the EPA’s registration review process, and on Oct. 23, 2020, the agency  released a proposed interim decision (PID) for paraquat, which proposes mitigation measures to reduce human health and ecological risks identified in the agency’s 2019 draft human health and ecological risk assessments.

The EPA said that through collaboration with the National Toxicology Program at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the agency completed a “thorough review” of the scientific information on paraquat and Parkinson’s Disease and concluded that the weight of evidence was insufficient to link paraquat to Parkinson’s disease. The agency published this “Systematic Review of the Literature to Evaluate the Relationship between Paraquat Dichloride Exposure and Parkinson’s Disease.”

USRTK will add documents to this page as they become unsealed.

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***

The Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) published a report showing that China broke the world record for most wind power capacity installed in a single year in 2020, with 52 gigawatts (GW) of new capacity — doubling the country’s annual installations compared to the previous year.

“The incredible and rapid growth of wind power in the region has been led by China, which now has more wind power capacity than Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America combined,” said Feng Zhao, head of market intelligence and strategy at the GWEC.

“We were expecting an installation rush in China last year due to the phase-out of the onshore wind Feed-in-Tariff by the end of 2020, but the Chinese wind market exceeded our original forecasts by over 73 percent,” Zhao added.

“Top-down policies requiring wind and solar be integrated into the power grid, rather than subsidy support, would probably drive the greater transition to renewables”, Liang Wanliang, a China director for the GWEC, said.

UNCTAD Trade and Development Report 2020 shows that China's export recovery in the second half of 2020 is better than expected and projects China's economic growth at 8.1% in 2021. It reflects the international community's confidence in China's economic development. pic.twitter.com/kygBXWTXmg

— Spokesperson发言人办公室 (@MFA_China) March 19, 2021

China’s Central Committee for Financial and Economic Affairs on Monday addressed that its country needed a new kind of electrical system centered around new energy, which was interpreted as a signal of continued strong policy support for renewables.

This Asian country aim to have CO2 emissions peak before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060, and its government moves sparked optimism for a breakthrough in global climate negotiations.

Meanwhile, the share of clean energy consumption in China has risen from 19.1 percent in 2016 to 24.3 percent in 2020, according to China’s National Bureau of Statistics.

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Featured image: Workers installing an offshore wind turbine at a wind farm, Fuqing, China, June 12, 2020. | Photo: Xinhua

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***

On March 16, 2021, ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos held an exclusive interview with President Joe Biden. In the context of the United States’ chief intelligence office releasing an unclassified report on foreign meddling in the 2020 US election, concluding that Russian President Vladimir Putin oversaw sweeping efforts aimed at “denigrating” President Joe Biden’s candidacy, Biden told Stephanopoulos that he had warned Putin about a potential response during a call in late January.

This is verbatim the ABC News Report of March 17, 2021:

“He will pay a price,” Biden said. “We had a long talk, he and I, when we — I know him relatively well. And the conversation started off, I said, “I know you and you know me. If I establish this occurred, then be prepared.”

Stephanopoulos then asked: “So you know Vladimir Putin. You think he’s a killer?”

“Mmm hmm, I do,” Biden replied.

Stephanopoulos: “So, what price is he going to pay?”

Biden: “The price he is going to pay, well, you’ll see shortly.”

Stephanopoulos also asked Biden, when you met him (Putin, in the past), you told him that he didn’t have a soul… and Biden retorted: yes, I told him. And Putin responded, “we understand each other.”

When President Putin spoke later to the media in Moscow, answering a question about his reaction to Biden’s accusing him to be a “killer”, Putin just said, “I wish him good health, and I mean it without irony.”

Speaking on television, reflecting philosophically, Putin said,

“I remember when we were young, playing in the playground and accusing each other of little things, we always see ourself in the mirror and project our own image of ourselves on to the other, like “the one who accuses is the one who did it”.

President Putin last Thursday (18 March) challenged Biden to talk, “I invite President Biden to talk on Friday or on Monday publicly online live…” to which Biden did not respond. Presumably given Biden’s often confused mind, to put it benignly, he was advised to abstain from such a conversation with President Putin.

The tension between the US and Russia has hardly been stronger and the diplomatic relation between the two countries is at its lowest in the past decades. President Putin recalled immediately the Russian Ambassador from Washington for “consultation” – a euphemism for declaring a serious rupture in the relationship of the two countries.

Later in a small media gathering in Moscow, Mr. Putin said he would deal with America on his terms. He also philosophized about Biden’s thoughtless slandering, when he talked to ABC’s anchor Stephanopoulos. He referred to children accusing one another, the going saying is, “the one who accuses is the one who is”. This is equally valid for adults.

When later asked at a Press Conference whether Biden regretted having suggested Putin was a “killer”, the White House Press Secretary, Jen Psaki, replied, “No. The President gave a straight answer to a straight question.” – That reflects all too well the intellectual and diplomatic level of US Presidents and their entourage. Though Biden may be a special case of being a blind-folded bully, previous US Presidents’ track record is not much better.

President Putin is one of the world’s most brilliant Statesman. The other one is China’s President Xi Jinping.

Together, their alliance, their vision and diplomacy, their conflict avoidance – and constant search for peaceful solutions to world disorders – have kept our planet out of a nuclear Armageddon for the last couple of decades. That’s quite an achievement, given the warmongers in Washington and by extension in Europe – and given the over two-dozen NATO bases in Europe, inching ever closer to the gates of Moscow and surrounding China – all the way through the South China Sea.

Obama once promised he would station more than half of the US Navy fleet in the South China Sea, making sure China was surrounded from everywhere. He made true on his promise. Its Obama’s infamous “Pivot to Asia”. And so, he did with Russia. That included and still includes deadly economic sanctions on countries that once-upon-a-time counted with Washington – and Europe – as partners.

How many people were killed by these sanctions in North Korea, Russia, China?

How many were – and still are – being killed by the totally illegal sanctions – illegal by any standards of international law – in Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, Libya, Iran, Pakistan, DPRK (North Korea) – and by extension through Israel in Palestine – and many more nations of our planet?

– Let alone the “eternal war on terror” – an invention to keep killing people for the good of the United States, for their control over humanity – and not least for the enormous profit bonanza of the US military industrial complex.

Shall we mention the mass killing caused by President Clinton when he initiated NATO intervention in former Yugoslavia;

or the six still ongoing wars, initiated by President father Bush with the first Gulf war in 1991, then officially expanded by son Bush in 2001 and 2003 with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, then further expanded by four more wars in the Middle East – Libya, Syria, Sudan and Yemen – under the Obama Administration.

And how about the explicitly Obama-approved massive extra-judiciary drone killings around the world, with focus on the Middle East?

Aren’t we talking about tens and tens of thousands of deaths, assassinated people, a genocide by US presidents with the complicity of so-called European leaders (sic)?

Did President Putin and President Xi ever call them “killers” or murderers? – They could have, but they didn’t.

However, that is what President Putin meant when he referred to Biden’s call him a “killer” –

“I’m rubber and you are glue. Whatever you say bounces off of me and sticks to you”, or rather “the one who accuses is the one who is”.

The emperor and the emperor’s servants are a cabal of “killers” – a better fitting term is mass murderers.

Now President Biden, then VP to Obama was an intimate part of it, of clamping down on Russia and China. Biden was also part of the intensification of the Iraq war, as well as of the destruction of Libya and the brutal murder of President Qadhafi. Though Hillary’s initiative (then Obama’s Secretary of State), Biden fully supported her.

So, President Putin’s wise response was remarkable. See video below.

“The one who accuses is the one who is” – he said, referring to a psychic wisdom that one looks in the mirror when accusing others of a crime or a sin.

In other words, Biden projects his own character onto Putin. Mr. Putin, politely and diplomatically said, they were different, had different cultures and different values. He also wished President Biden good health – genuinely good health, no irony, he stressed.

Before closing on such a conciliatory note, Putin referred to some American atrocities, dating back to the very beginning of American history which started with the indiscriminate slaughter of tens of thousands of indigenous Americans, for which American Presidents were responsible.

Also mentioned should be the brutal killings in Iraq, with special focus on the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, as well as Afghanistan’s Bagram Airbase detention center and lately the infamous Pul-e-Charkhi Prison, also known as the Afghan National Detention facility, outside of Kabul – and renovated by the US Corps of Engineers to accommodate war prisoners taken by US / NATO forces. And not least, nor last, the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp in Cuba.

These are just a few of the hundreds of detention camps around the world, where thousands of prisoners were tortured and executed under orders and supervision of the US / NATO. Since WWII an estimated 20 to 30 million people were killed due to direct or indirect US intervention around the world. War crimes abound.

Yet, Mr. Putin didn’t call any of the US Presidents a “killer”. But it is crystal clear what he meant, when he said, “The one who accuses is the one who is”.

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This article was originally published on New Eastern Outlook.

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 OffGuardian

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China Is Losing Patience with Washington. “You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry,” China tells Washington, and China is getting angry.

Beijing warns US and its UK, Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand puppets to give up pretending they constitute “world opinion.” See this. 

This rebuke to the “Five Eyes” follows a strong dressing down delivered by Yang Jiechi, a ruling member of the Chinese government to the Biden regime at the Alaska talks.  Yang Jiechi told the US delegation that “the United States does not have the qualification to say that it wants to speak to China from a position of strength.”  In other words, who do you think you are?  Where did you get the idea that your self-serving position constitutes international public opinion and that you can lean on us to comply with your position?

In their most recent public statements President Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov have stopped pleading with the West to be nice.  Putin acknowledged that Washington only wants a hegemonic relationship with Russia, a relationship inconsistent with Russian sovereignty, and Lavrov said that the EU’s hostility to Russia could result in Russia breaking off relations with Europe.  

Washington is probably too arrogant to hear what it is being told.  This is why I am concerned that Washington’s hegemonic aspiration can result in a devastating war.  It is easy to rouse Americans, especially patriotic Trump supporters, against Russia and China.  The American Establishment did not allow Trump to improve relations with Russia, but it did permit him to worsen relations with China.  But what sense does it make for Trump supporters, defined by the Biden regime as “Trump insurrectionists,” “enemies of democracy,” and “America’s greatest threat,” to support the Biden’s regime’s propaganda against Russia and China?  

Washington and its presstitutes sound like a broken record with their complaints about human rights violations in China and Russia’s alleged poisoning of Navalny, Washington’s man with whom to replace Putin. Washington’s hypocrisy does not impress China and Russia.  Washington’s puppet states go along with it, but most of the world regards the US as the human rights abuser with its 20 years of destrution of Muslim countries and its evil, inhuman, and illegal treatment of Julian Assange.  Whatever human rights violations China and Russia might have committed, they pale in comparison with Washington’s enormous crimes against humanity, crimes that include protection of Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians.

The long years of Washington’s hypocrisy has, I fear, destroyed world respect for Washington’s veracity and integrity.  I am afraid that China and Russia have concluded that it is impossible to come to terms with a government whose words are limited to propaganda. The resulting Russian and Chinese lack of trust in Washington, together with Washington’s quest for hegemony, makes the danger of war high.

There doesn’t seem anything to do about this risk from within the US.  Judging from the content of most articles on Johnson’s List, a daily collection of articles about Russia, Russian studies in the US are no longer serious and consist largely of accusatory propaganda that presents Russia as Washington wants Russia presented.  

Americans do not understand the risks that Washington is taking with China and Russia, because the media do not explain the facts and the risks to them. Stephen Cohen, recently deceased, was perhaps America’s last academic Russian expert.  He and I shared the concern that Washington’s intent to damage Russia was sowing the seeds of war. For our efforts, we were labeled “Russian dupes.”  For intelligent commentary on Russia, a person turns to The Saker and Andrei Martyanov, not to university departments of Russian studies. Unfortunately for understanding, all who put truth in the way of Washington’s propaganda are dismissed as “pro-Kremlin.”

Silencing the voices of sanity is how wars come about.

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

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This is a report by TeleSur which points to the fact that the so-called “Health Passport” is being being adopted in the EU as well as China.

The broader implications of a Health Passport as well as the issue of fundamental human rights including the right to refuse to be vaccinated is not mentioned by TeleSur.

#COVID19 | China has launched a "health passport" for citizens wishing to travel abroad, similar to initiatives emerging in the European Union and the United States to facilitate health controls across borders amidst global COVID-19 vaccination campaigns. pic.twitter.com/OmRtJ7OhWt

— teleSUR English (@telesurenglish) March 12, 2021

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There are certainly a number of reasons why the United States government is now only viewed favorably by the Israelis, but totally tone deaf foreign and economic policies have to be right up there in how the world sees Washington. Rather than conform to how other nations are expected to behave, the U.S. has elevated “exceptionalism” and “leader of the free world” nonsense to a dogma where it believes itself allowed to behave without restraint in defense of what it claims to be its interests. As all countries act in support of interests, that would at least be understandable but the odd thing is that the various constituencies that make up the U.S. government do not even have any clear vision of what is and is not good for the country and American people as a whole.

President Joe Biden’s recent labeling of Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “killer” combined with a threat to make Russia “pay a price” due to its alleged meddling in American elections is a perfect example of imperial over-reach by the clowns currently prowling the corridors of power in Washington. The not so thinly veiled threat was derived from an intelligence assessment that claimed that Russia had favored the candidacy of Donald Trump and had been circulating disinformation to damage Biden and his family. The assessment provided no evidence to back-up what was claimed, which was innocuous in any event, but it was enough to trigger a malaprop response from the U.S. president. The more canny Putin has responded by suggesting a live televised “debate” with Biden, who, refused to take up the offer, knowing that if he had he would have quite likely “gaffed” his way to incoherence.

Some other recent stories indicate both that Washington does not even know how to be nice to its friends and that the White House is hardly in control of what goes on its own doorstep. There is considerable discussion over the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline which is planned to connect Russian gas with German customers.

It would be good business for Russia and also for Germany since the gas is cheaper than other available supplies. The Trump Administration announced that it would oppose the project on “security grounds” and last week Secretary of State Tony Blinken stated that it was a bad deal because “this pipeline is a Russian geopolitical project intended to divide Europe and weaken European energy security.” He also warned that companies working on the pipeline must cease work immediately or face “harsh” U.S. sanctions. Most of the companies are Western European and nominally NATO allies of the U.S. and Nord Stream 2 will likely be completed for good economic reasons.

Washington will throw a hissy fit, in part because it wants to sell the more expensive American gas to the Germans. Biden is, for what it’s worth, continuing and doubling down on the Trump policy towards the project. It is a totally unnecessary insult to America’s European allies, has nothing to do with national security, and if Washington kills the project, it will give fuel to anti-U.S. sentiment while also serving to increase tension with Russia.

Another story that keeps popping up in the British media concerns Washington’s unwillingness to deal with a driving incident in August 2019 that killed an English teenager. The driver of the car that struck motorbiker Harry Dunn was Anne Sacoolas, a U.S. citizen, whose husband worked in an unspecified job in intelligence at RAF Croughton, an airbase in central England. She was driving her husband’s SUV on the wrong side of the road and the British police initially charged her with “causing death by dangerous driving.”

The U.S. Embassy quickly became involved, flying Sacoolas home on a military flight and reporting to the British authorities that she was protected by diplomatic immunity and would not be answerable for what had occurred. The British government and media did not agree and, in truth, Sacoolas was not necessarily covered by immunity because she was not a diplomat and was not performing any official function when the incident occurred. The British Foreign Office submitted a request for extradition so Sacoolas could face trial, but it was rejected by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Currently the parents of Harry Dunn are suing in a Virginia court for civil damages against Sacoolas and the U.S. judge has let the case proceed. Anne Sacoolas is reportedly in hiding and has offered to do community service in the U.S. while also making a cash donation to a suitable charity in Harry’s memory.

The tale has taken an interesting turn in that it has been suggested, though not confirmed, that Anne was an intelligence officer like her husband Jonathan, which may have been the motive for removing her from England in the first place.

But the point is that Anne Sacoolas should have stayed in the UK, where she would have had a fair hearing over an incident that was ultimately an accident. Instead, the United States has chosen to play hard ball with a close ally and friend. The British public and media have not forgotten Anne Sacoolas and remain angry about how the U.S. responded to Harry’s death. It is reported that Prime Minister Boris Johnson has personally raised the issue of Sacoolas with both the Trump and Biden Administrations, stating that “We have always asked for extradition. The denial of that we have always seen as a denial of justice.” It would be the right thing to do from many perspectives to let the case be handled in British courts, but there is no sign that Washington will be accommodating.

So the beat goes on.

Anyone who expected a change in tone in foreign policy due to the transition from Trump to Biden has to be disappointed.

Insulting Russia’s leader, telling the Germans how to run their economy, and refusing a reasonable British extradition request are all in a day’s work for the White House, which appears to be oblivious to the damage that is being done to broad U.S. interests.

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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 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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Note: the tables from the original source are not displaying or have been removed.

All the data is indicated for Pfizer, Moderna and Astrazeneca. 3,964 Dead 162,610 Injuries:

The Breakdown:

Total reactions for the experimental vaccine AZD1222 (CHADOX1 NCOV-19) from Oxford/ AstraZeneca: 451 deaths and 54,571 injuries to 13/03/2021

Total reactions for the experimental mRNA vaccine Tozinameran (code BNT162b2, Comirnaty) from BioNTech/ Pfizer: 2,540 deaths and 102,100 injuries to 13/03/2021

Total reactions for the experimental mRNA vaccine mRNA-1273 (CX-024414) from Moderna: 973 deaths and 5,939 injuries to 13/03/2021

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The European database of suspected drug reaction reports, EudraVigilance, is now tracking reports of injuries and deaths following the experimental COVID-19 “vaccines.”

Here is what EudraVigilance states about their database:

This website was launched by the European Medicines Agency in 2012 to provide public access to reports of suspected side effects (also known as suspected adverse drug reactions). These reports are submitted electronically to EudraVigilance by national medicines regulatory authorities and by pharmaceutical companies that hold marketing authorisations (licences) for the medicines.

EudraVigilance is a system designed for collecting reports of suspected side effects. These reports are used for evaluating the benefits and risks of medicines during their development and monitoring their safety following their authorisation in the European Economic Area (EEA). EudraVigilance has been in use since December 2001.

This website was launched to comply with the EudraVigilance Access Policy, which was developed to improve public health by supporting the monitoring of the safety of medicines and to increase transparency for stakeholders, including the general public.

The Management Board of the European Medicines Agency first approved the EudraVigilance Access Policy in December 2010. A revision was adopted by the Board in December 2015 based on the 2010 pharmacovigilance legislation. The policy aims to provide stakeholders such as national medicines regulatory authorities in the EEA, the European Commission, healthcare professionals, patients and consumers, as well as the pharmaceutical industry and research organisations, with access to reports on suspected side effects.

Transparency is a key guiding principle of the Agency, and is pivotal to building trust and confidence in the regulatory process. By increasing transparency, the Agency is better able to address the growing need among stakeholders, including the general public, for access to information. (Source.)

Their report through March 13, 2021 lists 3,964 deaths and 162,610 injuries following injections of three experimental COVID-19 shots:

COVID-19 MRNA VACCINE MODERNA (CX-024414), COVID-19 MRNA VACCINE PFIZER-BIONTECH (TOZINAMERAN), and COVID-19 VACCINE ASTRAZENECA (CHADOX1 NCOV-19).

There is also data for a fourth experimental COVID “vaccine,” COVID-19 VACCINE JANSSEN (AD26.COV2.S). We have not included data from the Johnson and Johnson COVID shot in this report, but will do so in future reports.

A Health Impact News subscriber in Europe ran the reports for each of the three COVID-19 shots we are including here, and here is the summary data through March 13, 2021.

Total reactions for the experimental mRNA vaccine Tozinameran (code BNT162b2, Comirnaty) from BioNTech/ Pfizer: 2,540 deaths and 102,100 injuries to 13/03/2021

COVID-19 MRNA VACCINE PFIZER-BIONTECH (TOZINAMERAN)

• 7,604 Blood and lymphatic system disorders incl. 15 deaths
• 4,636 Cardiac disorders incl. 276 deaths
• 22 Congenital, familial and genetic disorders incl. 2 deaths
• 2,683 Ear and labyrinth disorders
• 52 Endocrine disorders
• 2,941 Eye disorders incl. 2 deaths
• 23,074 Gastrointestinal disorders incl. 125 deaths
• 72,072 General disorders and administration site conditions incl. 957 deaths
• 102 Hepatobiliary disorders incl. 12 deaths
• 1,928 Immune system disorders incl. 11 deaths
• 6,020 Infections and infestations incl. 275 deaths
• 2,198 Injury, poisoning and procedural complications incl. 32 deaths
• 4,565 Investigations incl. 111 deaths
• 1,567 Metabolism and nutrition disorders incl. 49 deaths
• 37,365 Musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders incl. 22 deaths
• 55 Neoplasms benign, malignant and unspecified (incl cysts and polyps) incl. 3 deaths
• 44,993 Nervous system disorders incl. 185 deaths
• 81 Pregnancy, puerperium and perinatal conditions incl. 2 deaths
• 57 Product issues
• 3,742 Psychiatric disorders incl. 28 deaths
• 525 Renal and urinary disorders incl. 37 deaths
• 545 Reproductive system and breast disorders
• 8,788 Respiratory, thoracic and mediastinal disorders incl. 294 deaths
• 10,808 Skin and subcutaneous tissue disorders incl. 18 deaths
• 229 Social circumstances incl. 6 deaths
• 69 Surgical and medical procedures incl. 4 deaths
• 4,820 Vascular disorders incl. 74 deaths

Total reactions for the experimental mRNA vaccine mRNA-1273 (CX-024414) from Moderna: 973 deaths and 5,939 injuries to 13/03/2021

COVID-19 MRNA VACCINE MODERNA (CX-024414)

• 330 Blood and lymphatic system disorders incl. 9 deaths
• 501 Cardiac disorders incl. 96 deaths
• 1 Congenital, familial and genetic disorders
• 116 Ear and labyrinth disorders
• 6 Endocrine disorders
• 181 Eye disorders incl. 2 deaths
• 1,283 Gastrointestinal disorders incl. 40 deaths
• 4,198 General disorders and administration site conditions incl. 393 deaths
• 21 Hepatobiliary disorders
• 219 Immune system disorders incl. 1 death
• 515 Infections and infestations incl. 57 deaths
• 236 Injury, poisoning and procedural complications incl. 16 deaths
• 411 Investigations incl. 36 deaths
• 165 Metabolism and nutrition disorders incl. 18 deaths
• 1,727 Musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders incl. 23 deaths
• 12 Neoplasms benign, malignant and unspecified (incl cysts and polyps) incl. 3 deaths
• 2,324 Nervous system disorders incl. 111 deaths
• 15 Pregnancy, puerperium and perinatal conditions
• 4 Product issues
• 271 Psychiatric disorders incl. 14 deaths
• 93 Renal and urinary disorders incl. 10 deaths
• 34 Reproductive system and breast disorders incl. 1 death
• 817 Respiratory, thoracic and mediastinal disorders incl. 93 deaths
• 740 Skin and subcutaneous tissue disorders incl. 11 deaths
• 48 Social circumstances incl. 3 deaths
• 40 Surgical and medical procedures incl. 4 deaths
• 368 Vascular disorders incl. 32 deaths

Total reactions for the experimental vaccine AZD1222 (CHADOX1 NCOV-19) from Oxford/ AstraZeneca: 451 deaths and 54,571 injuries to 13/03/2021

COVID-19 VACCINE ASTRAZENECA (CHADOX1 NCOV-19)

• 1,180 Blood and lymphatic system disorders incl. 11 deaths
• 2,080 Cardiac disorders incl. 63 deaths
• 17 Congenital, familial and genetic disorders
• 1,237 Ear and labyrinth disorders
• 41 Endocrine disorders
• 1,977 Eye disorders incl. 1 death
• 17,491 Gastrointestinal disorders incl. 15 deaths
• 42,367 General disorders and administration site conditions incl. 198 deaths
• 32 Hepatobiliary disorders incl. 1 death
• 578 Immune system disorders
• 3,340 Infections and infestations incl. 46 deaths
• 853 Injury, poisoning and procedural complications incl. 2 deaths
• 2,384 Investigations incl. 3 deaths
• 2,676 Metabolism and nutrition disorders incl. 5 deaths
• 22,858 Musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders incl. 4 deaths
• 19 Neoplasms benign, malignant and unspecified (incl cysts and polyps) incl. 2 deaths
• 32,490 Nervous system disorders incl. 41 deaths
• 22 Pregnancy, puerperium and perinatal conditions
• 11 Product issues
• 3,105 Psychiatric disorders incl. 3 deaths
• 560 Renal and urinary disorders incl. 4 deaths
• 266 Reproductive system and breast disorders
• 4,293 Respiratory, thoracic and mediastinal disorders incl. 33 deaths
• 6,815 Skin and subcutaneous tissue disorders incl. 2 deaths
• 99 Social circumstances incl. 2 deaths
• 138 Surgical and medical procedures incl. 4 deaths
• 1,656 Vascular disorders incl. 11 deaths

This is public information funded by the European Medicines Agency (EMA), but it is obviously being censored by the corporate media.

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In an explosive Senate hearing on March 18, Dr. Anthony Fauci clashed with Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul over a subject that has characterized much of the White House health adviser’s recent commentary on Covid-19: the specter of reinfection, caused by one of the emerging variants of the virus.

Several recent studies suggest that both natural and vaccine-induced immunity to Covid-19 is robust at least for the medium term, and even those hinting at possible reinfections suggest it is a rare phenomenon mainly afflicting people with severely weakened immune systems.

Fauci nonetheless maintains that reinfections, particularly from the South African variant of the virus, are not only commonplace but justify maintaining a suite of restrictive nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPI) such as lockdowns, mask mandates, and social distancing regulations – perhaps even for another year.

Paul pressed Fauci to cite the scientific literature supporting this claim, to no avail. Instead, Fauci deflected the question by repeating platitudes about masks and exaggerating a recent study about reinfections. According to Fauci, previously recovered people who “were exposed to the variant in South Africa” reacted “as if they had never been infected before. They had no protection.”

A Danish study that Fauci later referenced to justify this assertion made no such claim about reinfection being widespread. Quite the contrary, its authors concluded “that protection against repeat SARS-CoV-2 infection is robust and detectable in the majority of individuals, protecting 80% or more of the naturally infected population who are younger than 65 years against reinfections.”

They did further observe “that individuals aged 65 years and older had less than 50% protection against repeat SARS-CoV-2 infection” and recommended targeted vaccinations for this group to bolster immunity. But even this finding came with several acknowledged limitations, as the study was not designed to test for repeat infection among the vast number of mild or asymptomatic cases of the disease, or to directly verify whether suspected reinfection cases were the result of misclassified lingering infections.

The study did not, however, support Fauci’s contention that reinfections are becoming commonplace.

Last week’s hearing is not the first time in recent memory that Fauci has exaggerated the evidence around reinfection, specifically invoking the South African variant. In early February, a pair of studies produced evidence that reinfections from this strain were possible, although at this point they appear to be rare. The first confirmed one single case of reinfection from the South African variant after extensive testing to rule out a misclassified lingering infection.

The second, conducted as part of the Novavax vaccine trial, indirectly inferred that a tiny number of its participants may have become reinfected with the South African variant, “suggest[ing] that prior infection with COVID-19 may not completely protect against subsequent infection by the South Africa escape variant.”

In no sense did either study claim that reinfections are commonplace or widespread. If anything, they were measured scientific calls for further investigation of each possibility. Yet here is how Fauci described them in a mid-February interview with CNN: “[t]he experience of our colleagues in South Africa indicates that even if you’ve been infected with the original virus, that there is a very high rate of re-infection to the point where previous infection does not seem to protect you against re-infection, at least with the South African variant.”

This sort of overstatement is a familiar theme for the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) lead infectious disease bureaucrat, dating all the way back to his mishandling of the AIDS crisis in the early 1980s. Fauci has a bad habit of seizing onto a small kernel of scientific data, drawing sweeping inferences upon it through unfounded speculation, and then presenting his own exaggerated spin to the public as if it is a matter of scientific fact.

Fauci’s Mutating Scientific Commentary

All the more curious, Fauci’s recent exaggerations about Covid-19 reinfection place him in direct conflict with another “expert” assessment of the very same question: his own, at various points over the course of the pandemic in the last year.

On March 28, 2020 – just shy of a year before his recent tangle with Senator Paul – Fauci aggressively contested the likelihood of reinfection in an interview with the Daily Show’s Trevor Noah. “It’s never 100%,” he explained, “but I’d be willing to bet anything that people who recover are really protected against re-infection.”

The NIH administrator’s many credulous enthusiasts in the news media will likely respond to such contradictory assertions by claiming that Fauci is simply updating his assessment in light of new evidence. Yet his track record over the past year suggests a very different story. Far from incorporating the latest scientific findings, Fauci appears to selectively invoke or downplay the specter of reinfection based on whether or not it serves his political objectives of the moment.

Fauci’s claims about reinfection do not follow a consistent trajectory of emerging evidence about whether or how frequently it happens. Instead they vacillate between depicting the possibility as either an overblown fear, concerning only a few rare cases, or an imminent cause for alarm that could spread to the entire population.

During the first several months of lockdowns in the United States, Fauci repeatedly asserted that immunity from the virus would preclude reinfection among those who had contracted the disease and recovered. “It’s a reasonable assumption that this virus is not changing very much,” he explained on an early April 2020 webcast for the Journal of the American Medical Association. “If we get infected now and it comes back next February or March we think this person is going to be protected.”

Fauci repeated a similar claim in a July 2020 interview with NIH director Francis Collins, who specifically asked him about the possibility of reinfection. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a rare case of an individual who went into remission and relapse,” he explained, “But Francis, I could say with confidence that it is very unlikely.”

These early statements aligned with Fauci’s political messaging in the first few months of the pandemic. He was operating under the assumption that lockdowns would successfully contain the virus, even praising Europe at the time for “successfully” pulling off this strategy (the fall second wave would belie this claim, as well as the notion that lockdowns even minimally guard against the course of the virus). If the United States would only accept similar measures through the summer and perhaps fall, the pandemic could be tamed through NPIs. Meanwhile, reinfections remained a non-issue in Fauci’s eyes.

When medical researchers documented one of the first confirmed cases of reinfection last August, Fauci saw no cause for alarm. During a virtual address to the staff of the Walter Reed Medical Center on August 26, he dismissed the prospect as “purely rare and anecdotal.” Fauci continued: “In every anecdotal case I’ve seen, there could have been another explanation for that. So, I can say that although we have to leave open the possibility, it is likely so, so rare that right now with what we know, it’s not an issue.”

Keep in mind that this description could just as easily apply to the recent studies of the South African strain, which have only confirmed or suggested a tiny number of reinfections. Fauci simply interpreted these earlier studies with greater caution and restraint against exaggerating their implications.

Not long after his August 2020 remarks, Fauci’s messaging on reinfections shifted to an opposite tack. With the looming prospect of another round of lockdowns in the fall, a group of scientists convened for a weekend meeting at AIER. On October 4^th they issued the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD), challenging the efficacy of Fauci’s lockdown-centered strategy and calling attention to the widespread collateral harms it had inflicted on society. Instead, the GBD argued, we should adopt a strategy of “focused protection” for the most vulnerable until we built up herd immunity in the general population.

Herd immunity is a biological fact rather than a policy strategy. It comes about through the combination of naturally acquired immunity from recovered persons, and vaccine-induced immunity among the still-vulnerable. With anticipated testing and approval of the first vaccines in the late fall or winter, focused protection offered a viable pathway to reopening and thereby alleviating the widespread social and economic destruction caused by the lockdowns over the last year.

Suddenly Fauci began pivoting his messaging on reinfections. Shortly after the GBD came out, White House coronavirus adviser Dr. Scott Atlas endorsed “focused protection” as an alternative to a perpetual cycle of lockdowns. Fauci himself previously conceded the reality of herd immunity effects in the spring and summer when he pointed out that reinfections were anecdotal, rare, and unlikely. But now he saw his political authority being challenged by the GBD authors and by Atlas’s parallel recommendations.

On October 16, 2020 Fauci accordingly went on CNN with a new message of alarm about reinfections: “We’re starting to see a number of cases that are being reported of people who get re-infected, well-documented cases of people who were infected after a relatively brief period of time. So you really have to be careful that you’re not completely immune.”

Fauci’s statement implied that he had access to a growing body of new evidence on reinfection. In reality, he had a textbook example of the type of case he previously characterized as “rare and anecdotal” in August when he was trying to allay fears of the same phenomenon. A few days prior to the October CNN interview, a team of researchers in the Netherlands reported a single confirmed case in which an 89-year-old patient undergoing treatment for advanced cancer had contracted the disease, recovered, and then passed away after becoming reinfected with another strain. To Fauci however, the possibility of reinfection – once dismissed as an uncommon occurrence – became a political tool to ward off the GBD’s challenge to the lockdowns.

For the next several weeks, Fauci raised the reinfection specter whenever the subject of herd immunity came up. “We have seen specific instances of re-infection, people who got infected, recovered, and got infected with another SARS Covid-2,” he claimed in a C-Span interview that aired on November 12^th. This statement came in response to questions about herd immunity from the NIH’s Francis Collins – the same person who asked a similar question in July. Recall Fauci’s answer then: “I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a rare case of an individual who went into remission and relapsed…But Francis, I could say with confidence that [re-infection] is very unlikely.”

On November 18^th Pfizer announced the successful completion of its vaccine trial and intention to seek emergency authorization from the FDA within a matter of days. Fauci, who had been deprecating the herd immunity concept and hinting at reinfection only a week prior, pivoted his messaging yet again.

In a sense, he had no other option. The central premise of vaccination is to expedite reaching herd immunity in the population. As the GBD authors noted, natural immunity among the recovered and vaccination among the still-vulnerable work in concert with each other, bringing society above the necessary threshold for population-wide herd immunity. Initially, Fauci concurred,stating in an interview on November 22^nd that “if you get an overwhelming majority of the people vaccinated with a highly efficacious vaccine, we can reasonably quickly get to the herd immunity that would be a blanket of protection for the country.

Within a matter of days, Fauci’s rhetoric shifted even further away from reinfection and toward touting the medium-term efficacy of immunity after vaccination. On November 27^th he told McClatchy News: “From what we know of the duration thus far of immunity, I would be surprised if it turns out to be a 20-year duration, but I would also be surprised if it was less than a year. I think it would probably be more than a year.” A few days later, Fauci told Fox News that the country would reach herd immunity once about 70% received the vaccine.

Then the goalposts shifted

Faced with mounting political pressures to relax lockdowns and other NPI measures in the wake of the vaccine, Fauci began casting about for new rationales to extend their duration. In a now-notorious interview with the New York Times’s Donald McNeil on December 24^th, Fauci bumped his herd immunity threshold upward toward 90%. The lower targets from the previous month, he now insisted, were part of an elaborate noble lie to coax the public into greater compliance with his own directives: “When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent. Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’ so I went to 80, 85.”

Throughout this period, the public discussion around Covid-19 refocused on the emergence of new variants of the disease caused by ongoing mutations of the original virus. Fauci’s messaging shifted as well, focusing again on the matter of reinfections with a clear message of downplaying the risk. That’s the argument he conveyed to California Governor Gavin Newsom in a brief webcast on December 31, 2020. The new UK variant, he insisted at the time, “doesn’t seem to evade the protection that’s afforded by the antibodies that are produced by vaccines…people who have been infected don’t seem to get reinfected by this.”

With each new strain however, Fauci’s message continued to pivot. By mid-February, as noted above, he was again raising the specter of reinfection from the new South African variant as a pretext for keeping mask mandates and social distancing requirements in place, even after vaccination. Fauci also pivoted away from setting target thresholds for herd immunity as vaccination numbers rapidly rose in the early spring. On March 15, 2021 he told a White House press conference that “We should not get so fixated on this elusive number of herd immunity” and should instead simply focus on vaccinating as many people as we can.

Fauci’s exchange with Rand Paul over the possibility of reinfections would take place later that same week, where he again engaged in unfounded speculation based on emerging evidence from the South African variant. While the aforementioned studies of this variant documented orinferred the possibility of reinfection, neither supported the claim that this was common or widespread.

Except Fauci’s depiction of them offered no such nuance. Instead, he offered Paul a sweeping generalization at the March 18, 2021 hearing. People with prior Covid-19 infection “had no protection” from the South African variant, according to Fauci. He doubled down on the exaggerated speculation the next day, telling CNN “I’m afraid, if people hear what Rand Paul says, and believe it, and you have an elderly person who has been infected, and they decide, ‘Well, Rand Paul says let’s not wear a mask,’ they won’t. They could get reinfected again and get into trouble.”

In just under a year’s time, Fauci’s messaging on reinfection and herd immunity has now mutated across dozens of variants of its own, each conveniently aligning with his political messaging of the moment. Although reinfection from new strains continues to be an avenue of research and investigation, the evidence we currently have suggests it remains uncommon. That hasn’t stopped America’s “leading infectious disease authority” from indulging in wildly irresponsible speculation from a national stage though, invariably appealing to alarmism as a pretext for continuing the same failed lockdown policies he has been peddling for over a year now.

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Phil Magness is a Senior Research Fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research. He is the author of numerous works on economic history, taxation, economic inequality, the history of slavery, and education policy in the United States.

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In a “highly unusual” statement Tuesday, a U.S. health agency said AstraZeneca may have included “outdated information” in its clinical trial results, which may have led to the vaccine maker providing the public with an incomplete view of its efficacy data.

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

“We urge the company to work with the Data and Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) to review the efficacy data and ensure the most accurate, up-to-date efficacy data be made public as quickly as possible,” the NIAID said.

AstraZeneca immediately responded saying the numbers published Monday were based on a “pre-specified interim analysis with a data cut-off” of Feb. 17. The company promised to “immediately engage with the DSMB to share their primary analysis with the most up-to-date efficacy data” and to issue the results of the primary analysis within 48 hours.

The DSMB is an independent expert group that sees trial data before the pharmaceutical companies, the doctors running the trials or even the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), according to CNN. It has the authority to advise a company of positive interim findings or to halt a trial over safety concerns, which is what happened to AstraZeneca last September after a study participant developed neurological symptoms.

In an interview with Good Morning America, NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci explained the sequence of events. Fauci said that the DSMB and AstraZeneca reviewed the trial data together before the vaccine maker issued its press release. But when AstraZeneca issued its press release, the DSMB “got concerned and wrote a rather harsh note to them and with a copy to me saying that in fact the data that was in the press release were somewhat outdated and might in fact be misleading a bit and wanted them to straighten it out.”

That’s when NIAID issued its statement advising AstraZeneca that it “better get back with the DSMB to make sure that the correct data gets put into a press release,” Fauci said. Fauci said that DSMB picking up this discrepancy is really “a safeguard.”

In a statement to the Science Media Centre in the UK, Stephen Evans, professor of pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said that members of the DSMB sometimes disagree with investigators over vaccine trial results, but usually in private. “So this is unprecedented in my opinion,” Evans said.

As analysts scrambled to interpret the statement, one scientist claimed the U.S. government stopped just short of accusing AstraZeneca of manipulating its trial data.

“This is a highly unusual statement by the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). It comes close to accusing Oxford/AZ of having wilfully misrepresented some results from their recent U.S. vaccine trial,” tweeted Francois Balloux, professor and director of the UCL Genetics Institute.

This is a highly unusual statement by the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). It comes close to accusing Oxford/AZ of having wilfully misrepresented some results from their recent US vaccine trial. https://t.co/cj86TYdY7e

— Prof Francois Balloux (@BallouxFrancois) March 23, 2021

According to The New York Times, companies sponsoring drug or vaccine trials typically wait for the monitoring board to review analyses and conclude that the study has yielded an answer before they announce trial results.

In recent days, the monitoring board’s analysis of the AstraZeneca trial was delayed several times because the board asked for revised reports from those handling trial data on behalf of the company. The monitoring board ultimately conveyed the results of the study to AstraZeneca in a meeting over the weekend, leading to the company’s press release Monday morning.

Dr. Eric Topol, a clinical trials expert at Scripps Research in San Diego, said it was “highly irregular” to see such a public display of friction between a monitoring board and a study sponsor. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” he told the Times after the institute’s statement was released. “It’s so, so troubling.”

According to Zero Hedge, the AstraZeneca vaccine — which is a linchpin of the World Health Organization’s effort to vaccinate poorer countries via its Bill Gates-approved COVAX initiative — once again finds itself mired in controversy. Notably, in its most recent data, AstraZeneca neglected to include key information, such as  the number of trial participants who developed “severe COVID.” AstraZeneca President Ruud Dobber, during an interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box, said the number was “5,” shortly after the data were released.

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

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

European governments like Germany and France responded by initially limiting the jab to patients under the age of 65. In the U.S., officials suspended AstraZeneca’s study in 30,000 Americans for an unusual six weeks last fall, as frustrated regulators sought details about neurological problems reported in Britain.

The latest controversy comes after 20 countries suspended use of AstraZeneca last week based on reports of rare blood clots, some resulting in death, in healthy people who received the vaccine. Although The European Medicines Agency (EMA) found the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID vaccine “may be associated with very rare cases of blood clots,” it deemed the vaccine “safe and effective” and encouraged countries to use it, The Defender reported.

Two independent research teams in Norway and Germany announced Friday they identified antibodies that provoke immune reactions leading to the type of blood clots experienced by some people who received AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine. Although many countries resumed their vaccination program with AstraZeneca’s vaccine after the EMA’s preliminary findings, some countries, including France, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland, have not lifted their restrictions on its use, according to The British Medical Journal.

AstraZeneca said it would continue to analyze the new data and prepare to apply in the coming weeks for Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) from the FDA, reported the Times. If approved in the U.S. AstraZeneca would become the fourth available vaccine stateside, joining Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson.

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

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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On the occasion of the 45th anniversary of the military coup in Argentina this Wednesday, documents declassified by the National Security Archive (NSA) indicate that the U.S. government was aware of the plots led by coup leader Jorge Videla in 1976.

Cables signed by the former U.S. Ambassador to Argentina Robert Hill showed early meetings with coup instigator Emilio Massera who was a member of the Military Board installed on March 24, 1976.

“The embassy has already indicated discreetly and through third parties to the Military that the U.S. will recognize a new government in Argentina,” Hill wrote.

The documents also proved that the then U.S. Undersecretary of State William Rogers briefed Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and the White House National Security Council (NSC) in mid-February about the destabilization plans.

“The military government will be friendly to the U.S; however, in stepping up the fight against the guerrillas, it is almost certain they will engage in human rights violations that would generate international criticism,” Rogers stressed.

24 de Marzo Día de la Memoria, Verdad y Justicia. Hoy abrazamos a todos los que siguen buscando su identidad robada, llorando sus desaparecidos y a un pueblo entero que fue víctima de la última dictadura civico militar en Argentina. Nunca Más. pic.twitter.com/8eBZgQTgSq

— Lucía Bonifatti (@LBonifatti) March 24, 2021

The meme reads, “March 24: Day of Memory, Truth, and Justice. We embrace all those people who continue to search for their stolen identities and mourn their disappeared relatives. We recall an entire nation that was a victim of the last civic-military dictatorship. Nevermore”

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officials accompanied by then-Republican Senator Jesse Helms visited Buenos Aires just 12 days before the coup. Cables showed Videla’s intentions to seek recommendations for handling “the public relations aspect.”

“My presence out of the country when the coup happens would, I think, be a fact in our favor indicating the non-involvement of the U.S. Embassy and the U.S. Government,” Hill warned.

The dictatorship lasted until 1983, left a toll of 30,000 disappeared people and almost 500 children with substituted identity. In 1979, a mission by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights visited Argentina where it received 5,580 complaints of kidnappings, torture, and murder.

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Featured image: The sign refers to the 30,000 people killed by the dictatorship, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2017. | Photo: EFE

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The US President Joe Biden’s “killer” remark about his “soulless” Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin was outrageous by any yardstick — even by his own long history of diplomatic gaffes. But Moscow won’t accept it as a sign of dementia. 

Moscow is certain that Biden was in full possession of his faculties and was speaking in the immediate context of two US intelligence reports — regarding foreign election interference in 2020 and Donald Trump and his supporters’ bid to exploit the ensuing discord to propagate that the election was “stolen”. 

In short, Moscow sees Biden’s remark as driven more by the exigencies of domestic politics where the Democrats are yet to consolidate their election success and demonising Russia continues to be useful. Moscow paid more attention to Biden’s subsequent remark that he could “walk and chew gum at the same time” — ie., interact with Putin whichever way he likes. 

It reflects supreme self-confidence that the US needn’t fear the consequences of its behaviour, as the Kremlin bends over backward to prevent it from spiralling into open hostility. The condescending attitude is nothing new. Former secretary of state Madeline Albright, the “godmother” of some key figures in Biden’s foreign policy team, once described the US as “the indispensable nation.” 

Hence Putin’s decision to call Biden’s bluff and invite him to come for a livestream discussion with him on the future of the US-Russia relationship. The Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said,

“Certain comments were made by Mr. Biden, and these remarks are quite unprecedented, so in order not to let these statements harm bilateral Russian-American relations, which are already in a deplorable state, President Putin suggested discussing the situation but doing so openly.” 

He added with a straight face,

“Since Biden’s remarks themselves were quite unprecedented, then it’s not possible to rule out unprecedented modes of communication.”

Indeed, for a couple of days, Biden seemed pondering over Putin’s proposition, even hinting Friday that “I’m sure we’ll talk at some point.” But the Russian Foreign Ministry confirmed on Monday that the White House finally decided to turn down Putin’s taunting invite. 

“One more opportunity has been missed to find a way out of the deadlock in Russian-US relations created through the fault of Washington. Responsibility for this lies entirely with the United States,” it said.

To be sure, the Russian-American relations are entering a new phase, thanks to Biden’s intemperate remark. Washington may not enjoy in future the latitude to “walk and chew gum” same time. 

The point is, Biden’s behaviour highlighted that in comparison with the highly-structured Soviet-American confrontation where both sides took each other most seriously, the US attitude in the recent years acquired an air of flippancy, lacking interest to take responsibility for words or actions, leave alone in producing any new constructive bilateral agenda for the relationship — and even not to jeopardise the global strategic stability. 

By a curious coincidence, Beijing has also shifted to a somewhat similar frame of mind lately. In fact, Putin spoke on the same day that Yang Jiechi, Politburo member and director of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission Office of the Chinese Communist Party, also emphasised at the talks in Alaska with top American diplomats that Beijing will do no matter what it takes to resist US bullying and interference in China’s internal affairs and safeguard its core interests. (See my blog Talks in Alaska can be transformative for US-China ties)

It is entirely conceivable that Moscow and Beijing have been exchanging notes before concluding that the Biden Administration is setting a trajectory for its Russia-China diplomacy principally with an eye on the domestic audience. From a foreign policy perspective, Biden’s team is holding a weak hand. The US’ political economy is in serious disarray and disrepair and Trump left America adrift like a beached whale. On the other hand, the burning desire to pitch for global hegemony — matched, equally, by the seething fury and despair that China is set to overtake it shortly — has gotten the better of rational thinking. 

The talks in Alaska signalled a historic shift in Chinese attitudes, summed up neatly in those three resounding sentences from Yang —

“So let me say here that, in front of the Chinese side, the United States does not have the qualification to say that it wants to speak to China from a position of strength. The U.S. side was not even qualified to say such things even 20 years or 30 years back, because this is not the way to deal with the Chinese people. If the United States wants to deal properly with the Chinese side, then let’s follow the necessary protocols and do things the right way.” 

To be sure, the meeting between China’s State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi and the visiting Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Guilin City on March 22-23 underscored beyond doubt that the Biden administration’s dual containment strategy has boomeranged. The Chinese press release (here) signals that joint resistance to the US’ pressure tactic and countermeasures will henceforth be the leitmotif of the Sino-Russian strategic coordination. This marks a qualitatively shift toward overt strategic coordination to “firmly fight back” against perceived US attempts to threaten the “the security of their own governments and systems…, their legitimate rights and common interests… (and) stability in the areas around the two countries.” 

Lavrov’s trip aimed to boost strategic coordination with China, but Moscow does not aim to turn the US into a permanent enemy. Moscow and Beijing share the perspective that Biden’s policies are tougher than Trump’s. China, in particular, had hopes that Biden will act more reasonably but these hopes have been dashed, so China is trying to find other ways to strengthen its position — the strategic coordination with Russia forms part of it. As for Russia, it tried to turn Biden’s “killer” remark around to create a setting for engagement between Putin and Biden. 

Biden’s domestic compulsions are real. Thus, even as Secretary of State Antony Blinken left for the NATO foreign ministers meeting in Brussels (March 23-24), he got a written reminder from two powerful Democratic senators — Sen. Bob Menendez, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Sen.  Jeanne Shaheen, Subcommittee Chairman for the Subcommittee on Europe and Regional Security Cooperation — to “accelerate the process of building new sanctions packages” apropos the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project between Russia and Germany. The senators urged Blinken “to use all the tools available to stop the pipeline’s construction.” 

On the contrary, both Russia and China would prefer that the US returns to the path of mutual respect and diplomacy. Indeed, the setting up of a US-China working group on climate change heralds the arrival of John Kerry on the scene. As for the Kremlin, it is quietly pleased that amidst all the sound and fury over the “killer” remark, the US-Russia consultations on space security went through as planned on Tuesday. Peskov reiterated that the Kremlin valued the cooperation with the US in outer space and hoped for its continuation. 

In some ways, arguably, the  theatrical developments also work fine for the Kremlin. Interestingly, Russia’s State Duma (parliament) passed legislation today allowing Putin to run for president for two more 6-year terms after the present term ends in 2024 — effectively until 2036. No doubt, the Russian public will accept the need of continuity in Kremlin leadership in such times of trouble. 

Beijing cannot but be aware of the Russian paradigm. The red line for Russia and China is that the US seeks regime change through colour revolutions. Hence their determination to pool efforts and work together to counter US hegemony and reshape the international political system based on the principle of equality. Trust Biden to respond. 

Certainly, it was no coincidence that the White House decision carrying the imprimatur of Biden to restore the Minsk embassy to ambassadorial level — signifying the summary denouement to an attempted colour revolution that Moscow countered with extraordinary grit and doggedness  — was transmitted to the Belarus foreign minister on March 22 soon after Blinken’s return from Alaska. Clearly, Biden’s diplomatic experience is not to be doubted. 

Both Russia and China estimate that the US plan to encircle them by deploying an alliance system is doomed to fail and realism will dawn sooner or later. They are convinced that they are on the right side of history. 

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Featured image: State Councilor & Foreign Minister Wang Yi (second from right) and Russian FM Sergey Lavrov (L) held talks in Guilin, March 23, 2021 (Source: Indian Punchline)

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New details about the British government’s plans to allow US defence manufacturer General Atomics to conduct experimental flights of its new SkyGuardian drone in the UK this summer have emerged in MOD documents published on the Civil Aviation Authority’s (CAA) website.

SkyGuardian flights are to be conducted from RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire, beginning in July and lasting until September, and then from RAF Lossiemouth in North East Scotland, until mid to late October.  The RAF is acquiring a version of the SkyGuardian drone, which it is calling Protector, and which will be modified for UK requirements. Protector will enter service in 2023 to replace the UK’s current Reaper armed drone fleet.  General Atomics’ SkyGuardian flights are significant because they signal the coming integration of large drones, such as Protector, into UK airspace.  This is set to further normalise the use of large drones within the UK, not only by the military, but a host of other operators.

The planned SkyGuardian flights also raise concerns over safety and questions about undue corporate influence over the UK government and airspace regulators. In terms of safety, both RAF Waddington and RAF Lossiemouth are surrounded by houses, school buildings and local businesses. Planned flights of the same drone over San Diego in the US last year did not go ahead, apparently after safety objections from US airspace regulator, the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA).  The flights instead took place away well from populated areas. US and British armed forces have regularly flown large drones for more than twenty years, yet the constant communication links which they rely on are often lost. Such drones also continue to crash for several other reasons—including poor maintenance and pilot error.  Recent public polling carried out for UK Drone Watch found that 67% of respondents were worried about the safety implication of large drones flying in the UK, with 70% agreeing that such flights should be kept to segregated airspace. 

The UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) has applied to the UK’s airspace regulator – the CAA – for a ‘temporary danger area’ to be established around both RAF Waddington and RAF Lossiemouth. This is to provide segregated airspace for up to 10,000 feet for approximately 10 miles around the bases to separate SkyGuardian from other aircraft as it takes off and lands. However, above this height, and for much of the time SkyGuardian will be flying in the UK, it will be unsegregated. Therefore, when the CAA makes its decision (in mid-April) on whether to approve the SkyGuardian flights, it will also need to consider if the on-board Detect and Avoid (DAA) technology that the aircraft will be equipped with meets UK air safety requirements.

A DAA capability is required for drones wishing to fly outside segregated airspace, and beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) of the pilot. The MOD has argued that such technology has been approved by the FAA for use in the US and hopes it will meet UK safety standards, whilst noting the ‘differences between airspace in the UK and the USA’.  Moreover, the FAA only granted an ‘experimental certificate with caveats’ and this was awarded based on data about the safety of SkyGuardian provided by General Atomics itself. The recent drone crash near Gatwick Airport shows what can happen when there is not rigorous assessment of such aircraft by independent authorities. The CAA’s review of the DAA system that General Atomics want SkyGuardian to use in the UK must therefore be of the highest standard.

UK airspace is being used as a guinea pig by General Atomics not only to test their new technology, but also to show off their latest hardware to other potential customers.  During the visit, SkyGuardian is set to undertake ‘a series of operational capability demonstrations’ for the UK, and other NATO members, and demonstrate the drone’s maritime capability.  The drone will also participate in the UK’s Joint Warrior Exercise in late September over Scotland and the North Sea. General Atomics could potentially make billions of dollars from sales of their new drones if they can eventually get approval from airspace regulators to fly them in unsegregated domestic airspace and thus market SkyGuardian as being ‘civilian airspace compliant’.

The MOD documents published on the CAA’s website identify several ‘opportunities’ that the SkyGuardian flights provide to interested parties. These include:

• progressing the integration into UK airspace of ‘future State RPAS’ i.e., Remotely Piloted Air Systems, such as Protector.
• testing the design of the long-term airspace changes proposed by the MOD to allow Protector to fly from RAF Waddington.
• demonstrating SkyGuardian ‘against current military assets’—including other RAF aircraft, such as Typhoon.
• demonstrating SkyGuardian to ‘other Government Departments’ including the UK’s Maritime and Coastguard Agency and Border Force.
• providing ‘fly-bys’ at air shows and the Belgian Air Force’s 75^th Anniversary event

General Atomics should not be allowed to use the UK’s airspace as a glorified testing ground and showroom just so they can sell armed drones to US allies. Airspace regulators appear to be under pressure from the Ministry of Defence and government ministers to approve these flights despite questions about the safety of the technology involved. Residents of Lincolnshire, North East Scotland—and those living in between—need to know the risks of large military drones being flown over their homes and workplaces. Drone Wars strongly opposes this proposal and we shall be working with MPs, peers and the public to challenge it.

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Too often international “aid” seems to be like the rich and powerful buying “indulgences” to atone for their sins in medieval times. Certainly it is commonly doled out to gloss over global inequities. It’s definitely a tool Ottawa employs to present itself as generous while sustaining unequal corporate and imperial power structures that benefit Canada.

At a recent donor meeting the Canadian government pledged $70 million for Yemen. To explain the donation Minister of International Development Karina Gould declared,

“Yemen is undergoing the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, and its people deserve decisive action. Their suffering must end, and their rights and dignity must be protected. We must do everything possible to make this happen.”

But Gould’s “everything possible” doesn’t include stopping Canada from fueling a six-year-old Saudi-led war that has left over 100,000 Yemenis dead. In response to the international development minister’s announcement World Beyond War Canada’s Rachel Small tweeted, “genuinely floored by the hypocrisy. $295 million in aid to Yemen since 2015 is a drop in the bucket compared to $6 billion in weapons Canada exported to Saudi Arabia in the same period. As Karina Gould knows the most important action needed for Yemen is for Canada to stop arming Saudi Arabia.”

According to Statistics Canada data for January, Canadian armoured vehicle sales reached a whopping $487 million, the largest ever monthly total. Canada also exported $4.8 million worth of “arms and ammunition” to the Saudis in January. Additionally, Montreal-based flight simulator company CAE has trained Saudi pilots in numerous locales. “Under Trudeau, Canada Is Saudi Arabia’s Most Dedicated Gunrunner”, explains a recent article by Kelsey Gallagher of Project Ploughshares.

In a sign of the depraved state of Liberal discourse, Canada’s ambassador to the UN, Bob Rae, simply denies it all. He recently claimed, “we don’t sell arms to any of the parties to the conflict” in Yemen while six months ago Rae responded to a UN report that documented Canada’s role in fueling the conflict by labeling Canadian exported armoured vehicles “jeeps”. “It’s not what you’d call a weapon,” he said.

Alongside the weapon deliveries, the Liberals have mostly ignored Saudi violence in Yemen. They have rarely criticized Saudi bombing and when they have it has been in polite terms.

At best Canada’s aid to Yemen is a bandage on a humanitarian catastrophe spurred by a war Ottawa fuels.

A similar dynamic is at play with Canadian aid for international COVID-19 support. In December Canada put up $485 million to help impoverished nations access vaccines. But Ottawa has hoarded vaccines, having amassed enough to inoculate the entire Canadian population five times over. More troublingly, the government has refused to support a World Trade Organization (WTO) proposal calling for a temporary waiver of certain rules on intellectual property rights to allow poor countries to produce COVID-19 vaccines. The World Health Organization and over 100 countries back the “Waiver from certain provisions of the TRIPS Agreement for the Prevention, Containment and Treatment of COVID-19”. Canada and a number of other rich countries are refusing to support an initiative opposed by Big Pharma. Under mounting pressure over the five-month-old proposal, the Trudeau government now denies it opposes the patent waiver, claiming it simply wants more information about the effectiveness of the proposal. In the meantime, the initiative has been repeatedly put off and much of the Global South has little access to COVID vaccines.

Canada’s COVID donation masks Ottawa’s unwillingness to challenge Big Pharma and the broader intellectual property rights lobby.

Individual aid projects are often helpful (though many are not). Still, progressives shouldn’t spend time calling for more aid. In a just world, transfer payments from wealthier regions to poorer ones would smooth out inequities. But, in the here and now it’s important to be cautious about feeding ‘more Canada’ ideology that enables destructive, interventionist, policies.

Rather than pushing for more aid, progressives should challenge corporate and imperial power structures. In this vein, activists recently delivered a letter to the PMO signed by 68 groups, representing one million Canadians, demanding an end to arms sales to Saudi Arabia. Similarly, dozens of groups sent a letter to Trudeau last week calling on Canada to support a WTO waiver for COVID vaccines.

Beyond specific campaigns, we need social movements and political parties to challenge the arms economy and upward flow of wealth spurred by intellectual property rights accords and other forms of exploitation. In brief we need masses of Canadians questioning an unjust status quo.

We need to build a peaceful, fair world where aid is given because we are all our sisters’ keepers.

*

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***

Campaigners for the abolition of nuclear weapons had every reason to clink glasses with the coming into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in January.  Nuclear weapon states and their allies still persisted in calling the document unhelpful and unrealistic; the self-appointed realists have preferred the go-slow approach of disarmament, a form of moderated insanity. 

In March, it became clear that the United Kingdom, one of the opponents of the TPNW, had decided not only to look the other way but walk in the opposite direction.  The threshold of British nuclear warheads is to be increased to 260, though the authorities maintain an intentional ambiguity about the exact number.  This reverses a decision arrived at a decade ago, which promised to cut the maximum threshold for nuclear warheads from 225 to 180 by the middle of this decade.  In the words of the Defence Command Paper of the Ministry of Defence, titled Defence in a Competitive Age,

“Some nuclear-armed states are increasing and diversifying their arsenals, while increases in global competition, challenges to the multilateral order, and proliferation of potentially disruptive technologies all pose a threat to strategic stability.”

Such a direction is very much at odds with public support for Britain joining the TPNW.  A poll conducted in January for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament found that 59% of the public expressed support for signing the treaty, including 50% of conservative voters and 68% of Labour voters.  The policy also breaches undertakings made under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to pursue efforts to disarm.  Beatrice Fihn, Executive Director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, decried the decision as “toxic masculinity on display”, “irresponsible, dangerous and violates international law.”  UNA-UK’s Head of Campaigns Ben Donaldson remarked that the UK government could best “invest in measures to combat climate change and pandemics, not trigger a dangerous new arms race.”

The push towards more nukes would seem to be a compensation for reducing numbers in other areas of defence.  While the nuclear arsenal is slated to increase, the number of soldiers in service will decline: from the current target of 82,040 to 72,500 in 2025.  (Even here, a bit of make-believe is taking hold, given that the Army currently has 76,350 soldiers in service.)  Effectively, Britain wants to roar with less, all part of what Defence Secretary Ben Wallace calls “increased deployability and technological advantage”. 

The justifications for doing so, outlined in the Defence Command Paper, are the immemorial ones: new threats, new security environments, and a topsy-turvy world. 

“The notion of war and peace as binary states,” writes Wallace in the paper’s foreword, “has given way to a continuum of conflict, requiring us to prepare our forces for more persistent global engagement and constant campaigning, moving seamlessly from operating to war fighting.”

The review identifies “four overarching trends” of concern for the UK: the growing importance of the Indo-Pacific, China’s assertiveness and “the influence of middle powers”; systemic inter-state competition, including between governments with “democratic and authoritarian values”; the challenge of technology, beneficial “but also becoming an arena of intensifying geopolitical competition”; and various transnational challenges requiring “collective action, such as climate change, biosecurity risks, terrorism and serious and organised crime.” 

This sounds much an ominous promise to commit Britain to a state of affairs reminiscent of that most absurd of US policies: the waging of permanent war for permanent peace.  But Wallace wishes to be farsighted, urging the dinosaurs to move over and forget “the shield of sentimentality to protect previously battle-winning but now outdated capabilities.” 

The theatre for this commitment will not just be the conventional ones centred on the NATO alliance.  Officially, Britain is again looking east of Suez, with an eye to drawing in old allies.  “Our partnerships with Canada, Australia and New Zealand will be at the heart of our tilt towards the Indo-Pacific, as we work to support them to tackle the security challenges in the region.” Central to the “tilt” will be the maritime partnership with India.  The object of the exercise is clear enough.  “The rising power of China is by far the most significant geopolitical factor in the world today.”  Britain had “to be prepared to push back to protect our values and global interests, while maintaining our ability to cooperate in tackling global challenges such as climate change and the mutual benefits of our economic relationship.”

The way this Global Britain vision is going to be achieved is a novel one.  Fewer personnel will have fewer tanks (reduced from 226 to 148 upgraded versions).  The RAF will oversee the retirement of its older Typhoons (“equipment that has increasingly limited utility in the digital and future operating environment”) and Hercules transport aircraft.  The Navy will also farewell its share: two of the oldest T23 frigates.  “We will bring Type 31 and Type 32 frigates into service, these new vessels are not just replacements for existing platforms, they will be more flexible than their predecessors.” 

The defence paper abounds in the terms of an accountant gone wild, intoxicated by notions of bottom lines and efficiencies.  Fleets are to be rationalised or retired; capabilities must be increased; the stress must be on the digital.  But on the subject of nuclear weapons, Global Britain’s eyes remain very much focused on the past, shackled to the notion that a greater number of nukes somehow guarantee security. A certifiably barbaric relic of thinking.

*

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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]

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

Reviews

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

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

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

Billionaire Wealth: Who Are the 10 Biggest Pandemic Profiteers?

By Chuck Collins, March 24 2021

A year ago, the Institute for Policy Studies published “Billionaire Bonanza 2020: Wealth Windfalls, Tumbling Taxes and Pandemic Profiteers,” and began tracking billionaire wealth gains as unemployment surged.

“The Big Picture” Is Ignored in the COVID Debate. What Is the End Game?

By Peter Koenig, March 24 2021

What is the “Big Picture” of Covid-19, alias SARS-CoV-2 ? – Is it what we could also call the end-game, or what Aldous Huxley called the “Brave New World” (1932), science-fiction – gradually turning into reality in the form of the UN Agenda 2030 – with the implementing tool of the Bill Gates created Agenda ID2020?

European Union to Vote this Week on Vaccination Travel Passport

By Children’s Health Defense, March 24 2021

The European Commission’s digital “Green Passport,” which would provide proof of vaccination and negative COVID test, would be used to exempt holders from quarantine and other restrictions.

US Hypersonic Missiles in Europe Five Minutes from Moscow

By Manlio Dinucci, March 24 2021

About six years ago, when we titled “Are the missiles returning to Comiso?” in il Manifesto (June 9, 2015), our hypothesis that the US wanted to bring their nuclear missiles back to Europe was ignored by the entire political-media arc. Subsequent events have shown that the alarm, unfortunately, was well founded.

Video: The Brand New Space Race. “Who Will Reach Mars First, Who Will Colonize the Moon”

By South Front, March 24 2021

The brand-new space race is upon us. It moves into two directions – who will reach Mars first, who will colonize the Moon, as it is nearby. Resources need to be extracted, and the US wants them to be available to it and its corporations.

Silently Disciplining Research. “Freedom of Speech Is the Right to Scrutinize Power and Society”

By Prof. Ola Tunander, March 24 2021

Researchers who question the legitimacy of US wars, seem to experience being ousted from their positions in research and media institutions. The example presented here is from the Institute for Peace Research in Oslo.

Welcome to “Shocked and Awed” 21st Century Geopolitics. A “Real Game-Changing Moment”

By Pepe Escobar, March 24 2021

It took 18 years after Shock and Awe unleashed on Iraq for the Hegemon to be mercilessly shocked and awed by a virtually simultaneous, diplomatic Russia-China one-two.

“The Lion and the Eagle”: The Interaction of the British and American Empires (1783-1972)

By Jim Miles, March 24 2021

The 200 year historical span of Kathleen Burk’s “The Lion and the Eagle” shows the changes in the interactions between the newly formed United States and its imperial drive and the ongoing imperial drive of the British.

Despite Official Denials Racist Violence Against Asians Continues in the United States

By Abayomi Azikiwe, March 24 2021

March is International Women’s History Month and the threats towards oppressed and racially marginalized people in the United States are intensifying. An attack by a 21-year-old white male against three Asian-owned spas in Atlanta and Cherokee County in Georgia resulted in the shooting deaths of eight people including six women of Asian descent.

Will Israel Use ‘Bunker-Buster’ Bombs Against Iran’s Nuclear Program?

By Timothy Alexander Guzman, March 24 2021

There are former Israeli government officials and Israel Defense Forces (IDF) veterans that have suggested that dropping a 30,000 pound bunker-busting bomb to destroy Iran’s nuclear program might be a possible solution.

We Are Living Through a Time of Fear – Not Just of the Virus, but of Each Other

By Jonathan Cook, March 24 2021

Welcome to the age of fear. Nothing is more corrosive of the democratic impulse than fear. Left unaddressed, it festers, eating away at our confidence and empathy.

Video: Bill Gates and “Philantro-Imperialism”

By Dr. Vandana Shiva and Berenice Galli, March 24 2021

The so-called philanthropists, Bill Gates in particular, are taking more and more power over our governments. Vandana Shiva warns us on how this is bringing new and more dangerous threats to our agriculture, food, seed sovereignty, and to the biodiversity of our planet.

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).

***

On this day ten years ago, the Obama administration launched air strikes over Libya under the banner of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which culminated in the killing of Libya’s long-time ruler Muammar Qaddafi on October 21, 2011.

The bombing was presented to the public as a moral imperative that was necessary to stop imminent massacres and genocide by Qaddafi who had cracked down violently on allegedly pro-democracy protesters inspired by the Arab Spring.

Speaking from Brasilia on March 19, 2011, President Barack Obama stated that “the use of force is not our first choice. It is not a choice I make lightly. But we cannot stand idly by when a tyrant tells his own people that there will be no mercy.”

Obama making the case for war on Libya, March 28, 2011. [Source: whitehouseblogs.com]

A decade later, Obama’s words ring incredibly hollow.

Libya has descended into years of civil war and anarchy in the aftermath of the U.S. and NATO bombing, which killed hundreds of people.

The percentage of the population that has access to electricity and quality education and health care has declined precipitously from the period of Qaddafi’s rule (1969-2011).

Only four of 97 hospitals in the country currently function and 260,000 students have been deprived of education.

Oil production—the lifeline of Libya’s economy—fell dramatically after the U.S.-NATO invasion, and in some places, gasoline can only be obtained on the black-market.

Tens of thousands of Libyans have risked their lives undertaking a harrowing journey across the Mediterranean trying to escape the ravages of their homeland which has seen the reintroduction of slavery.’

Desperate Libyans undertake a life-threatening journey across the Mediterranean in an attempt to escape their war-ravaged land. [Source: journal-neo.org]

Human Rights Watch’s 2020 report paints a devastating indictment of the post-Qaddafi government which has used heavy weapons to suppress demonstrations against corruption and poor living standards, sanctioned massive human rights violations by allied militia fighters including the indiscriminate shelling of residential neighborhoods, and detained and mistreated thousands of migrants who were intercepted at sea.^[1]

One of the dominant warlords, Khalifa Hiftar, was a longtime CIA asset who had led Libya’s invasion of Chad in the 1980s before defecting from Qaddafi’s regime.

According to Human Rights Watch, Hiftar’s forces have used banned cluster munitions in their drive for control of Libya while planting land mines and booby traps in Tripoli’s southern suburbs.

A confidential UN report detailed how Blackwater founder, Erik Prince, who has close ties to U.S. intelligence, coordinated an $80 million operation backed by the Trump administration, which supplied arms and mercenaries to Hiftar illegally and planned to form a hit squad to track and kill Libyan commanders opposed to him.^[2]

In September 2020, two families brought lawsuits in the U.S. against Hiftar, accusing his forces of atrocities during a months-long siege of Ganfouda in Benghazi in 2017. Two previous lawsuits against Hiftar accused him of sanctioning extrajudicial killings and torture.^[3]

Libya’s most recently appointed Prime Minister, Abdul Hamid Dbeiba was meanwhile alleged to be involved in corruption, money laundering, financing of the Muslim Brotherhood, and vote buying. According to Tarek Megerisi of the European Council on Foreign Relations, his “family name leaves a bad taste in Libyans mouths.”

Media Disinformation

In the weeks leading up to the U.S.-NATO bombing, the U.S. media were filled with sensationalistic articles demonizing Qaddafi in the manner of Saddam Hussein on the eve of the 2003 Iraq War.

Characteristic was a report by ABC News correspondent Martha Raddatz on February 22, 2011, in which she proclaimed that “Gadhafi’s brutal side has emerged once again. This time, flying in cargo planes full of African mercenaries, who don’t even speak the language, to do his dirty work. Trained killers gunning down residents and protesters in cold blood.”

It was the CIA and rebel coalition that were the ones employing foreign mercenaries, however; Arab jihadists who committed atrocities that were blamed on Qaddafi.

Human Rights Watch would later count about 350 protesters killed before the U.S.-NATO intervention—not the thousands described in many media accounts.

A number of journalists repeated unfounded claims by Susan Rice, the U.S. Ambassador to the UN, that Qaddafi had supplied his soldiers with Viagra in order to carry out mass rapes.

That the protest movement against Qaddafi was backed by Western interests was evident in slogans that read: “NATO Air: Just Do It.”

The media, echoing the State Department and Pentagon line, however, depicted the anti-Qaddafi protesters as “heroic”—to quote from the liberal New Yorker magazine—spotlighting hip youth participants who spoke about democracy.

Left out was the fact that Benghazi, where the protests began, was a bastion of Islamic fundamentalism.

YouTube videos showed demonstrators—some of whom waved the flag of Libya’s pre-revolutionary monarchy—chanting “Muammar is the enemy of Allah” and other Islamist slogans, and one was observed cutting the throat of a Qaddafi supporter and severing his head.^[4]

Protesters in Benghazi hoist pre-revolutionary Libyan flag. [Source: kentonxtfiles.wordpress.com]

On the day of the bombing attack, CNN aired an interview by Don Lemon, then a rising young star on the network, with Mohammed Nabbous, who was depicted as a hero for risking his life to present the truth about Qaddafi’s brutality to the world.

Nabbous had set up a TV network, Al-Hurra, in Benghazi that received USAID and USIA funding, and was killed by a sniper hours before the bombing commenced.

His case was used to convey the impression of a good versus evil struggle, though African media presented the war more accurately as a neocolonial one.

The Lady Hawks

The most gung-ho proponents of the war in the U.S. were liberal feminists such as U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and National Security Council adviser Samantha Power, who urged Obama to “man up against the crazy Qaddafi.”

Most of the men in Obama’s inner-circle, including CIA Director John Brennan and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, were more reluctant warriors.

“How odd,” wrote New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, to “see the diplomats as hawks and the military as doves,” and to “see Rush Limbaugh [conservative radio host] and Samantha Power on the same side.”

Rice, Clinton and Power had all come of age politically in the 1990s and claimed to harbor regrets that they did not do more to promote intervention to halt genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda.

When the African Union (AU) came up with a peace agreement that would allow Qaddafi to step down and set up elections, Power claimed that the AU was “acting foolishly.”^[5]

According to the New York Times, Obama told aides to draft up military plans after a meeting in which Susan Rice told him that it was possible to get a resolution to the UN Security Council that would authorize the ability to bomb the Libyan government tanks on the road to Benghazi, the rebel stronghold.

The Washington Post reported that yet another administration woman, Gayle Smith, Obama’s special assistant, joined Ben Rhodes and the troika of other women to push for war.

Brian Katulis, of the Center for American Progress, stated that “Hillary and Susan Rice were key parts of this story because Hillary got the Arab buy-in and Susan worked the U.N. to get a 10-to-5 vote, which is no easy thing.” These efforts “put the United States in a much stronger position because [it gave them] the international support that ma[de] th[e war] more like the 1991 Gulf War than the 2003 Iraq War.”

In her 2014 memoir Hard Choices, Clinton claimed that the Libyan rebels captured Tripoli “by late summer 2011,” without mentioning the U.S. or NATO’s actions.

At that point in the Libyan war, the NATO bombardment of Libya had expanded massively, beyond the declared mission of “protecting civilians” as required by the UN resolution.

Kucinich Calls for Obama’s Impeachment

After the bombing commenced, Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) called for Obama’s impeachment because Obama never obtained authorization for bombing from Congress in violation of the 1973 War Powers Act.

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) took to the Senate floor to broadcast a quote from Obama in the Boston Globe four years earlier when he had said “the president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”^[6]

The House of Representatives, by a 268-145 vote, passed a resolution asserting that the president had failed to provide a compelling rationale for bombing.

Targeting a Long-Time Foil of the American Empire

The regime change operation targeting Qaddafi had been years in the making.

Born to a poor family in Sirte which fought against Italian colonial rule, Qaddafi first came to power in a bloodless 1969 revolution against the Sanussi King Idris, a corrupt U.S. and British ally who gave concessions to Western oil companies in return for military and technical aid.^[7]

King Idris [Source: trtworld.com]

King Idris also allowed a large U.S. military base at Wheelus, near Tripoli, along with rights to a naval port, air and ammunition storage facility at Tabruk, a guided-missile range in Tripoli, a communications site at Derna, and a radar station and airfield at Benghazi and Cape Misrata.

A Pan-Arab and African supportive of the Palestinian cause, Qaddafi kicked out the U.S. military when he came to power in 1969 and placed Libya’s high-quality light sweet crude oil under national control, reinvesting profits in health and education.

Colonel Qaddafi following the 1969 Libyan Revolution. [Source: sputniknews.com]

Life expectancy increased from 54 to 71 years under his rule, the literacy rate went from 6 to 88 percent, and homelessness was eliminated.^[8]

Through its state-owned bank which did not charge interest, Libya also financed an African satellite that slashed communications costs and became a world leader in hydraulic engineering due to development of a man-made river that won a major UNESCO award for “remarkable scientific research on water usage in arid areas.”^[9]

Sign on route to great man-made river. [Source: amusingplanet.com]

The late South African journalist Ruth First wrote a book entitled Libya: The Elusive Revolution, which emphasized Qaddafi’s top-down approach to government, although many felt a sense of participation in decision-making afforded through local councils and Qaddafi’s Green Book promoted a system of direct democracy.

Tribal conflict was averted through power-sharing and women’s rights were advanced.^[10]

The New York Times, which was always highly critical of Colonel Qaddafi, conceded that, in Libya, the intention was that “everyone is involved in every decision … Tens of thousands of people take part in local committee meetings to discuss issues and vote on everything from foreign treaties to building schools.”^[11]

A UN report, issued ironically during the U.S.-NATO bombing, praised Qaddafi’s human rights achievements, which included the bettering of “legal protections” for citizens, improving women’s rights, educational opportunities and access to housing.

The Nixon administration had first considered assassinating Qaddafi right after he came to power. President Ronald Reagan then undertook another assassination attempt in 1986 based on dubious pretexts—an attack which left up to 100 civilians dead including Qaddafi’s fifteen-month old adopted daughter.^[12]

A leaked memorandum by National Security Advisor, Admiral John Poindexter, called for a disinformation campaign and regime change strategy, which was reinvigorated in 2011.^[13]

Qaddafi had ironically cooperated with the U.S. in the Global War on Terror, in part because the main opposition to his regime came from Islamists.

When Obama was elected president, Qaddafi wrote him a letter in which he addressed him as “my son” and stated. “I have said to you before that even if Libya and the United States enter into war, God forbid, you will always remain my son, and I have all the love for you as a son, and I do not want your image to change with me.”

Qaddafi continued: “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?”

Obama’s betrayal was set in motion by a speech that Qaddafi gave before the UN General Assembly in September 2009 where he juxtaposed praise for Obama with demand for the return of $777 trillion that had been stolen from Africa by the colonial powers.

In the same speech, Qaddafi called for investigation into the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld, John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.^[14]

Picking up the mantle of Ghanaian leader Kwame Nkrumah, Qaddafi at the time was promoting a Central African Court, and a Monetary Fund and Bank capable of lessening African dependence on Western financial institutions.

He was planning to re-nationalize significant parts of the oil sector, had spurned a building contract with Bechtel, a San Francisco-based construction giant which builds military bases, and had initiated 50 major economic projects with China.

Further, Qaddafi was beginning efforts to initiate a new currency with Libya’s vast gold and silver holdings that could undercut the French franc and U.S. dollar, and refused to cooperate with the U.S. military’s Africa command (AFRICOM), stating that he preferred it to remain headquartered in Europe.^[15]

Following the outbreak of the rebellion in February 2011, Saif al-Islam Qaddafi, Muammar’s son, told Libyans that those cajoling the protesters “were Libyans who lived in Europe and USA, whose children went to school there and who were comfortable and want [now] to come and rule us and Libya. They want us to kill each other then come, like in Iraq.”

Saif emphasized that Libya was different from Tunisia or Egypt, that “if there was disturbance, it will split several states. It was three states before 60 years ago. Libya are Tribes not like Egypt. There are no political parties, it is made of tribes. We will have a civil war like in 1936. American oil companies played a big part in unifying Libya. Who will [if Qaddafi is removed] manage this oil? How will we divide this oil amongst us? Who will spend on our hospitals? All this oil will be burnt by the Baltagiya (thugs), they will burn it.”

“A civil war would also disrupt the $200 billion in development projects currently underway.” Three quarters of our people, Saif said “live in the East in Benghazi, there is no oil there, who will spend on them? Your children will not go to schools or universities. There will be chaos.”^[16]

Saif’s analysis proved to be prescient as Libya was indeed thrust into civil war and chaos as well as destitution by the U.S.-NATO invasion.

False Pretexts: The Abu Salim Massacre

The revolt in Benghazi—a trigger for national protests against Qaddafi—was initiated by families of the victims of the Abu Salim massacre in February 2011 after Qaddafi arrested a lawyer, Fathi Terbil, who had demanded a public inquiry.

During the Abu Salim massacre, prison guards opened fire on rebellious Islamist prisoners at the Abu Salim prison near Tripoli in June 1996, killing an unknown number.

Drawing of executions at Abu Salim prison in June 1996. [Source: amnesty.org]

The facts surrounding this incident, including the number of deaths, remain murky and there is no evidence that Colonel Qaddafi himself gave any orders to execute prisoners.

After Qaddafi’s ouster, the new governing council claimed to have unearthed mass graves to confirm that more than 1,200 people died but these were actually filled with animal bones.^[17]

Barack Obama in a speech before the U.S. Army War College nine days after authorizing air strikes on Libya, claimed that “we had seen Qaddafi hang civilians in the streets and kill over a thousand people in a single day.”^[18]

The latter was a veiled reference to the Abu Salim massacre which has never been confirmed or linked to Qaddafi.

Obama in his War College speech stated further as a pretext for bombing the need to protect civilians in Benghazi from a massacre by Qaddafi’s forces.

However, Qaddafi had not perpetrated any bloodbaths in any of the cities his forces had recaptured and Libyan tanks on the road to Benghazi were bombed not when they were advancing but during their retreat.^[19]

The London Daily Telegraph reported that a bloodbath took place when the Sanussi (anti-Qaddafi) rebels took control of Benghazi, after which Al-Qaeda flags were seen flying over the courthouse.^[20]

Operation Odyssey Dawn

The Obama administration spent about $1 billion on Libya’s “revolution” and helped NATO with everything from munitions to surveillance aircraft, carrying out roughly 20 percent of the over 26,000 bombing sorties in the seven-month Operation Odyssey Dawn.

U.S.-NATO jet bombers dropped cluster munitions, phosphorus and fuel-air explosives which are outlawed under international law.

In the opening hours of the campaign, the USS Florida launched 100 cruise missiles against Libyan air defenses, creating an entry corridor for the airstrikes that followed.

U.S.-NATO air strikes over Tripoli. [Source: libyanfreepress.com]

Predator drones flew overhead for hundreds of hours, chronicling the “patter of life below” to prepare target selection for B-2 stealth bombers and Hellfire and Tomahawk missiles with depleted uranium warheads.

Civilians only loosely linked to Qaddafi’s regime were targeted in the bombing. Buildings and homes were hit along with desalinization plants and the man-made river and water pipe infrastructure supplying over four million people.^[21]’

The town of Sirte, a Qaddafi stronghold envisioned as the center of a united Africa, was reduced to a “ghost town filled with the stench of death,” as one eyewitness described it.^[22]

Qaddafi’s home was bombed in another illegal assassination attempt that killed his son and three of his grandsons.

A major ethnic cleansing operation was also carried out by rebel forces in Misrata targeting pro-Qaddafi Blacks who had racial slurs painted on the walls of their abandoned homes.

Misrata resident Umm Bubakr told the BBC that. “They bombed and shot at us and we had to run away. I ran away with my kids. I’ve lost a boy and I don’t know whether he is alive or dead. And now we are here [refugee camp where militias would kidnap young men], with no future. We are scared, we need a solution to our problem, and we want to go home.”

The final assault on Tripoli was led by Qatari Special Forces paid by the CIA and Pakistani ISI mercenaries.

When Qaddafi was found with the assistance of U.S. predator drones hiding in a sewer pipe, rebels tortured and sodomized him with a sharpened two-foot pole and then shot him in the head and displayed his body in a meat locker.

Libyans snap photos of Qaddafi after his death in Misrata. [Source: albawaba.com]

In an interview with ABC News, Hillary Clinton subsequently proclaimed: “We came, we saw, he died,” a twisted play on the words of Julius Caesar following his victory over the King of Bosporus at the Battle of Zela around 47 B.C.

[Source: twitter.com]

CIA Director John Brennan told speechwriter Ben Rhodes that Qaddafi’s death marked a “fitting end for one of the biggest rats of the 20^th century.” No Western leader would ever be characterized in this way.

Aftermath

After Qaddafi was ousted, President Obama confiscated a whopping $30 billion from Libya’s Central Bank.

Having learned nothing from the ill-fated de-Baathification policy in Iraq—which created an insurgency by excluding former Baath party members from Iraq’s government—the Obama administration promoted a law barring anyone formally tied to the Qaddafi regime from holding office for ten years.

Supported by the Muslim Brotherhood, Libya’s first post “liberation” president, Mohammed Youssef el-Magariaf, had been expelled from Libya in 1980 when he was ambassador to India for stealing millions of dollars that had been earmarked for building a mosque.^[23]

El-Magariaf and Hillary Clinton. [Source: wikiwand.com]

Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril, a University of Pittsburgh Ph.D. in political science, had promoted privatization and economic liberalization measures while heading the National Planning Council prior to his defection from Qaddafi’s regime.

As civil war broke out, the U.S., according to Clare Lopez, a former CIA officer, switched sides in the War on Terror by facilitating the provision of weapons to known Al-Qaeda militias and figures, including through the United Arab Emirates.

These figures included Abdelhakim Belhadj, long-time leader of the Islamic insurgency against Qaddafi who oversaw pogroms against the black-skinned Tawherga.

Belhadj had previously met with Osama bin Laden, fought with the Taliban in Afghanistan and against the U.S. in Iraq, and helped plan a horrific March 2004 train bombing in Madrid.

The U.S. alliance with jihadists against the secular left fit with a pattern dating to the Cold War where Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and other Ivy League intellectuals envisioned an arc of Islam as a bulwark against Pan-Arab socialism.^[24]

The new Grand Mufti of Libya following Qaddafi’s ouster, Sheikh Sadeq al-Ghariani, issued fatwas legitimizing polygamy and banning women from marrying foreigners and called on the Ministry of Education to delete passages on democracy and freedom of religion from textbooks.

Libya’s great patriot Imam Sheikh Khaled Tantoush, who was against radical Islam, was meanwhile imprisoned and tortured in a Misrata jail for over five years.

In 2012, the Obama administration denied a request from Libyan tribal elders to cleanse the country of Islamic terrorists in return for the departure of U.S.-NATO soldiers.

The result was an atrocity-laden environment epitomized by incidents such as the February 2015 beheading by ISIS militants of 21 Egyptian oil workers on a beach near Tripoli, destruction and vandalism of Sufi shrines and mosques, assassination of former Qaddafi officials, and shooting of homosexuals.^[25]

Blowback came with the killing of the U.S. ambassador Christopher Stevens, and three other embassy staffers by Islamic militants who had been empowered by the U.S.-NATO war.

A University of California graduate with a “talent for breaking bread with men in camouflage fatigues,” according to a profile in Vanity Fair, Stevens allegedly ran an illicit arms pipeline that provided 50,000 shoulder-fired rockets to jihadist rebels in Syria.

At the end of his presidency, Obama acknowledged the Libyan War to have been a “shit show,” though he cowardly tried to blame British Prime Minister David Cameron.

The scope of the calamity is almost immeasurable in human terms, with an estimated 600,000 Libyans killed and countless more displaced, as Libya has become a haven for illicit arms transfers and international terrorism.

Why No Large Antiwar Movement

As we come upon the ten-year anniversary of the Libyan War, it is important to ask why no larger U.S.-based antiwar movement ever developed.’

A main reason is partisan politics.

Many liberals who traditionally oppose wars abhorred the radicalization of the GOP and considered its attacks on President Obama to be rooted in racism, and so were prone to defend many of Obama’s policies.

The reliance on air power and the fact that no U.S. citizens died in the operation was also significant as was the media’s biased coverage and effective demonization of Qaddafi.

Progressives who might have opposed past wars did not want to identify with Qaddafi and were swayed by the idea that U.S. military force could help save the Libyan population from major massacres or genocide.

The alternative media, furthermore, framed the Libyan conflict in the same biased way as the mainstream media.

For example, on the day that the U.S.-NATO bombing commenced, the progressive outlet Democracy Now! aired an interview with Mohammed Nabbous, the anti-Qaddafi martyr interviewed also on CNN, whose news network was subsidized by U.S. government agencies.

In the preceding weeks, Democracy Now! ran a number of interviews by correspondent Anjali Kamat with anti-Qaddafi activists—many of whom sought foreign intervention.

The activists were presented heroically as champions of human rights, while Qaddafi was depicted as a murderous despot comparable to Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and Tunisia’s Zine el Abadine Ben Ali who had been ousted in the Arab Spring.

Democracy Now! gave credence to allegations of black mercenaries, air raids by Qaddafi and other propaganda advanced by the State Department and rebel coalition, while failing to report on Qaddafi’s accomplishments and resistance to AFRICOM, and on the fact that the U.S., Britain and France had sent in military advisers to train anti-Qaddafi forces in advance of the bombing.^[26]

Anjali Kamat [Source: democracynow.org]

Ugandan scholar Mahmoud Mamdani observed that “what struck me about Anjali’s description [of the situation in Libya] is that the backdrop is missing. The backdrop is the manner of change in Libya, the heavy involvement of external forces in expediting, rapid fashion, change in Libya, and that manner of involvement being basically bombardment. In East Africa, which is where I’ve been for the last eight months, this has been the cause of huge concern, huge concern [particularly over the threat of regime change through external involvement and what this will mean for the rest of Africa].”^[27]

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

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

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Jeremy Kuzmarov is Managing Editor of CovertAction Magazine and author of four books on U.S. foreign policy, including Obama’s Unending Wars (Clarity Press, 2019) and The Russians Are Coming, Again, with John Marciano (Monthly Review Press, 2018). He can be reached at: [email protected].

Notes

[1] Human Rights Watch, World Report 2020, Libya, https://www.ecoi.net/en/document/2022716.html#:~:text=HRW%20–%20Human%20Rights%20Watch%20World%20Report%202020,group%20known%20as%20the%20Libyan%20National%20Army%20%28LNA%29.

[2] After an alleged meeting between Hiftar and Prince in Cairo on April 15^th, 2019, Trump publicly recognized Hiftar’s “significant role in fighting terrorism and securing Libya’s oil resources,” and supported Hiftar’s advance in Tripoli in a shift from previous U.S. backing of the government that Hiftar was trying to topple.

[3] Human Rights Watch, World Report 2020, Libya, https://www.ecoi.net/en/document/2022716.html#:~:text=HRW%20–%20Human%20Rights%20Watch%20World%20Report%202020,group%20known%20as%20the%20Libyan%20National%20Army%20%28LNA%29.

[4] See Peter Hoekstra, Architects of Disaster: The Destruction of Libya (New York: The Calamo Press, 2015), 73; Wayne Madsen, “Dispatches from Tripoli, Libya during the NATO Bombing Campaign of 2011,” in The Illegal War on Libya, ed. Cynthia McKinney (Atlanta: Clarity Press Inc., 2012), 31. Madsen who reported from Libya, emphasized that the protesters were largely Salafists who subscribed to the extremist Wahhabist sect version of Islam promoted by the Saudi Arabian Royal family, United Arab Emirates and Qatari Royal family—all three countries being members of the anti-Qaddafi Arab front supporting the U.S.-NATO attack on Libya.

[5] Jeremy Kuzmarov, Obama’s Unending Wars: Fronting the Foreign Policy of the Permanent Warfare State (Atlanta: Clarity Press Inc., 2019), 121, 122.

[6] Kuzmarov, Obama’s Unending Wars, 126.

[7] Kuzmarov, Obama’s Unending Wars, 120.

[8] Kuzmarov, Obama’s Unending Wars, 120.

[9] The Illegal War on Libya, McKinney, ed.

[10] The Illegal War on Libya, McKinney, ed.

[11] The people’s councils at times criticized Qaddafi and passed measures he opposed. Qaddafi had wanted to abolish capital punishment, for example, and promoted home-schooling over traditional schools but was outvoted on these matters. The people’s councils also rejected a plan by Qaddafi to give oil proceeds directly to each family.

[12] See Maximilian Forte, Slouching Towards Sirte: NATO’s War on Libya and Africa(Montreal: Baraka Books, 2012); Noam Chomsky, Pirates and Emperors: Old and New: International Terrorism in the Real World (Boston: South End Press, 2003).

[13] Bill Schaap, “The Endless Campaign: Disinforming the World on Libya,” CovertAction Information Bulletin, Number 30 (Summer 1988), 76; Bob Wodward, “Ghadafi Target of Secret U.S. Deception Plan,” The Washington Post, October 2, 1986.

[14] See The Illegal War on Libya, McKinney, ed., 253-274.

[15] Sirte, Slouching Towards Sirte; The Illegal War on Libya, McKinney, ed.; Vijay Prashad, Arab Spring, Libyan Winter (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2012).

[16] “Saif Qaddafi, Speech, February 21, 2011,” in email from Hilary Clinton to Oscar Flores, WikiLeaks Hillary Clinton email archive, https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/24538

[17] Kuzmarov, Obama’s Unending Wars, 126.

[18] Quoted in Kuzmarov, Obama’s Unending Wars, 125.

[19] Kuzmarov, Obama’s Unending Wars, 129.

[20] Kuzmarov, Obama’s Unending Wars, 129.

[21] Kuzmarov, Obama’s Unending Wars, 128, 129.

[22] Forte, Slouching Towards Sirte.

[23] Magarief had been head of the Islamist opposition to Qaddafi in the 1980s and 1990s when he survived various assasination attempts.

[24] See Robert Dreyfuss, Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped to Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2005).

[25] Kuzmarov, Obama’s Unending Wars, 132.

[26] Don DeBar, “Radio Pacifica’s Descent: From Voice of the Voiceless to Partner in the Imperial Information War,” in The Illegal War on Libya, McKinney, ed., 166, 171. DeBar notes that, in eight months of coverage, not a single voice was presented on Democracy Now challenging the foundations of the war. Democracy Now’s bias was evident in host Amy Goodman’s characterization of an address by Saif Al-Islam, warning about a civil war in Libya and blaming the violence on Islamic fundamentalists and foreigners, as rambling.

[27] See Bruce Dixon, “Are Democracy Now!’s Libya Correspondents Feeding Us the State Department and Pentagon Line on Libya?” Black Agenda Report, October 5, 2011, https://www.blackagendareport.com/content/are-democracy-nows-libyan-correspondents-feeding-us-state-department-and-pentagon-line-libya

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This Report by Stat News focusses on statements by Anthony Fauci pertaining to the Astrazeneka vaccine.

Fauci has supported the mRNA vaccine from the very outset. His statements against Astrazeneka do not address the more fundamental issue, namely that the mRNA vaccine is a dangerous “unapproved”(according to the FDA)  “experimental” drug.

There is fierce competition between four major Big Pharma conglomerates, all of which are involved in marketing the mRNA vaccine, namely Pfizer, Moderna Inc, Johnson and Johnson and Astrazeneka.

Fauci was asked “whether he was worried about people’s confidence in the AstraZeneca vaccine and others”. His response

“Obviously that’s a concern whenever something like this happens, that it could erode public trust, yes.”

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U.S. health officials raised concerns early Tuesday that positive results that AstraZeneca announced Monday for its Covid-19 vaccine may have been based on “an incomplete view of the efficacy data” from a clinical trial and relied on “outdated information,” throwing another curveball in the saga of the company’s vaccine.

In a statement issued soon after midnight Tuesday morning, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said it had been informed about the data questions by the data and safety monitoring board auditing the trial. DSMBs consist of independent medical experts who review data produced from clinical trials.

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

In an interview Tuesday morning with STAT, Anthony Fauci, the head of the NIAID, said the DSMB raised concerns because it felt the results in a AstraZeneca press release Monday looked more favorable than more recent data from the vaccine study had shown.

“I was sort of stunned,” Fauci said. “The data and safety monitoring board were concerned that the data that went into the press release by AZ was not the most accurate and up-to-date data. That is what the DSMB communicated to AZ in a rather harsh note. Having seen that letter we could not just let it go unanswered.”

Asked why NIAID released its unusual statement, Fauci said,

“We just felt we could not remain silent. Because if we did remain silent, we could be understandably accused of covering something up. And we definitely didn’t want to be in that position.”

He added:

“In my mind, it’s an unforced error by the company.”

To Read the Complete Article click here

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A security source in Tripoli said that all the Syrian mercenaries were placed in one camp west of the city of Tripoli, in order to facilitate their transfer in batches to the Maitika airport.

The source added that Turkish and Libyan planes would transport them to a border city in Turkey in preparation for pushing them to the Syrian city of Afrin.

The source explained that the first flights took off yesterday.

And in early December, the United Nations Acting Envoy Stephanie Williams revealed the presence of 20,000 foreign and mercenary force” in Libya, considering this a horrific violation of national sovereignty. She also indicated that there are 10 military bases in Libya, which are partially or totally occupied by foreign forces. And mercenaries.

On December 22, Turkey extended the deployment of its soldiers, experts, and mercenaries for a period of 18 months.

Several media reports spoke of  actual Turkish preparations to bring its militia from the Syrian armed men present in Libya back to their country, days after the formation of a Libyan national unity government headed by Abd al-Hamid al-Dabaiba.

Regarding this, sources reported what is being circulated among the militants present in Libya that is Turkey has already issued an order for them to be prepared for a return to Syria provided that returning all of them will be completed within the next ten days.

The sources reported that the return of dozens of militants belonging to the Turkish backed “Sultan Murad” faction was registered on Sunday, but it is circulated that this return is temporary, not permanent, as they will be transferred to Turkey in order to complete their contracts, without knowing their final destination.

On the other hand, the weights indicate that these militants returning from Libya will be thrown into the Yemeni conflict to fight against the Houthis,

Several armed factions in rural Aleppo, including Hamzat Division and Sultan Murad announced the opening of offices in Hewar Kilis area to register the names of militants wishing to travel to Yemen, tempting them with monthly salaries up to $2500.

Despite the opening of these offices, no Syrian militants have yet been sent to Yemen, and what is currently taking place is merely tempting and mobilizing fighters, in the context of the Turkish policy based on exploiting the militants and plunging them into the regional conflicts in the region to serve its interests.

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A year ago, the Institute for Policy Studies published “Billionaire Bonanza 2020: Wealth  Windfalls, Tumbling Taxes and Pandemic Profiteers,”  and began tracking billionaire wealth gains as unemployment surged.  We teamed up with Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) to track the wealth growth of America’s billionaires over the last year.  This report summarizes the extraordinary growth in wealth of those now 657 billionaires based on real-time data from Forbes on March 18, 2021.

Here are highlights from the last 12 months of billionaire wealth growth:

• The combined wealth of the nation’s 657 billionaires increased more than $1.3 trillion, or 44.6 percent, since the pandemic lockdowns began. [See Master Table] Over those same 12 months, more than 29 million Americans contracted the virus and more than 535,000 died from it. As billionaire wealth soared over, almost 80 million lost work between March 21, 2020, and Feb. 20, 2021, and 18 million were collecting unemployment on Feb. 27, 2021
• There are 43 newly minted billionaires since the beginning of the pandemic, when there were 614. A number of new billionaires joined the list after initial public offerings (IPOs) of stock in companies such as Airbnb, DoorDash, and Snowflake.
• The increase in the combined wealth of the 15 billionaires with the greatest growth in absolute wealth was $563 billion or 82 percent. [See table 1] The wealth growth of just these 15 represents over 40 percent of the wealth growth among all billionaires. Topping the list are Elon Musk ($137.5 billion richer, 559 percent), Jeff Bezos ($65 billion, 58 percent) and Mark Zuckerberg ($47 billion, 86 percent).

The 10 biggest “Pandemic Profiteers” saw the greatest percentage increase in their wealth—at least 300 percent. [See Table 2]

They mostly multiplied their fortunes in the world of online goods, services and entertainment, as forcibly homebound Americans shopped, invested and diverted themselves in isolation. They include the owners of ecommerce leaders Quicken Loans, Square, Carvana, and cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase; social media sites Snapchat and Twitter; online streaming platform Roku; and digital ad agency Trade Desk. 19 other billionaires experienced increases of over 200% while 48 others more than doubled their fortunes with 100%+ gains.

1. Bom Kim (670 percent/$7.7 billion): A U.S. citizen and founder of the e-commerce giant Coupang, the Amazon of South Korea. Kim’s fortune surged as high as $11 billion after the company’s IPO in early March.
2. Dan Gilbert (642 percent/$41.7 billion): Owner of Quicken Loans, which capitalized on cloistered citizens tapping online financing. Lives in Michigan.
3. Ernest Garcia II (567 percent/$13.6 billion): Biggest shareholder of Carvana, the online car sales and auto-financing giant. Arizona.
4. Elon Musk (559 percent/$137.5 billion): Musk is now the second wealthiest Americans—at nearly $138 billion—as his shares in Tesla, Space-X and other companies that he owns continue to climb. Lives in Texas.
5. Brian Armstrong (550 percent/$5.5 billion): Chief executive of Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the country. California resident.
6. Bobby Murphy (531 [ercent/$10.1 billion): Co-founder of Snapchat, with his Stanford fraternity brother, Evan Spiegel. California resident.
7. Evan Spiegel (490 percent/$9.3 billion): Co-founder of Snapchat with his other billionaire super-gainer, Bobby Murphy. California resident.
8. Jack Dorsey (396 percent/$10.3 billion): Co-founder and CEOs of both Twitter and Square, the small business payment app. Lives in California
9. Anthony Wood (331 percent/$5.3 billion): Founder of Roku, which enables online TV video streaming. California resident.
10. Jeff Green (300 percent/$3 billion): Californian founder and chairman of The Trade Desk, a digital advertising firm.

Other notable billionaire wealth gains during the pandemic

• Eric Yuan, co-founder of video-conferencing technology Zoom, saw his wealth rise by $8.4 billion during the pandemic year, a gain of 153 percent. A year ago, Yuan had $5.5 billion which increased to $13.9 billion. Last year Zoom paid no federal income taxes on its $660 million in profits, which increased by more than 4,000 percent.
• The three owners of Airbnb saw their wealth accelerate thanks to their pandemic year IPO. Brian Chesky’s wealth increased from $4.1 billion to $14.6 billion, a gain of $10.5 billion, an increase of 256 percent. Nathan Blecharazyk and Joe Gebbia, with equal ownership stakes valued at $4.1 billion a year ago, each saw their wealth increase to $13.2 billion, for gains of $9.1 billion each, or 222 percent.
• Jim Koch, owner of Boston Beer Company and brewer of the Sam Adams brand, saw his wealth increase from $1.3 billion to $3.2 billion, a gain of $1.9 billion over the pandemic year, or 146 percent.
• Dan and Bubba Cathy, the owners of drive-through sensation Chick-Fil-A, saw their combined wealth of $6.8 billion rise to $16.6 billion, a gain of $9.8 billion over the pandemic year, or 144 percent.
• Harold Hamm, the politically connected oil and gas fracker, saw his wealth increase from $2.4 billion to $7.5 billion during the pandemic year, an increase of 5.1 billion, or 212.5 percent.

Of 17 industry categories, billionaires in the technology industry had the greatest collective wealth growth—$564 billion, or nearly 68 percent. [See Table 3]

They were worth $1.4 trillion on March 18, 2021, or one-third of the billionaires’ total. The titans of Wall Street—the Finance & Investment industries—saw their wealth grow by $226 billion—a nearly 37 percent increase. Automotive industry billionaires had the biggest percentage point increase in wealth—317 percent based on an increase in wealth of $172 billion. That was largely driven by the extraordinary rise in Elon Musk’s wealth—$137.5 billion or 559 percent.

All but three states saw the wealth of their billionaire residents increase. [See Table 4]

Topping the list in total wealth growth are California at $551 billion, Washingtonat $134.6 billion, and New York at $116.4 billion. The top three states with the greatest percentage increase in wealth are Michigan at 164 percent, Arizona at 110 percent, and Hawaii at 107 percent.

Billionaire wealth growth is calculated between March 18, 2020 and March 18, 2021, based on Forbes data compiled in this report by ATF and IPS. March 18 is used as the unofficial beginning of the crisis because by then most federal and state economic restrictions responding to the virus were in place. March 18 was also the date that Forbes picked to measure billionaire wealth for the 2020 edition of its annual billionaires’ report, which provided a baseline that ATF and IPS compare periodically with real-time data from the Forbes website. PolitiFact has favorably reviewed this methodology.

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Chuck Collins directs the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies, where he also co-edits Inequality.org.

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Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday during the latter’s two-day visit to the People’s Republic that “We should act as guarantors of justice in international affairs.”

He also added that “China is ready to promote the international system established by the United Nations, protect the world order based on international law, and abide by universal values such as peace, development, justice, democracy, equality and freedom.” This was preceded by Mr. Lavrov’s support the day earlier for their shared Venezuelan partner’s earlier proposal to assemble a worldwide anti-sanctions coalition. He said that “We must form a maximally wide coalition of countries that would combat this illegal practice.”

Russia’s top diplomat also declared on Monday that

“We must deviate from the use of the West-controlled international payment systems. We must lower risks of sanctions by means of enhancing our own technical self-dependence, transition to payments in national currencies and international currencies, which are alternative to the [US] dollar.”

The two Foreign Ministers then released a joint statement calling for a UN Security Council (UNSC) summit “to resolve humankind’s common problems in the interests of maintaining global stability.”

Before the world’s eyes, a real-life Justice League is quickly emerging, jointly led by China and Russia. These two rising powers are multipolar and strictly ascribe to the principles of the UN Charter. They stand in firm opposition to America’s hegemonic bullying and its doomed philosophy of zero-sum gains. By embracing its foil of win-win cooperation, they hope to inspire the rest of the international community to follow their lead in charting a new era of International Relations with their excellent bilateral ties serving as the perfect example.

It deserves mention that this year also marks the 20^th year anniversary of their historic Treaty of Good- Neighborliness, Friendship and Cooperation, which stands in hindsight as a defining moment in International Relations whereby two large and powerful countries proved that it’s possible to put aside their past differences in cooperating to build a better future for all. The resilience and lasting relevance of this pact serves as proof that pragmatic relations are always mutually beneficial and stabilize the international system.

The US should seriously consider China and Russia’s joint call for convening an urgent UNSC summit at the earliest availability. America’s aggression has destabilized the world, made all the worse by the fact that everyone is still struggling to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of continuing to provoke those two countries, Washington should pragmatically cooperate with them on matters of shared interest such as nuclear non-proliferation, climate change, epidemiological security, cyber security, and reviving the global economy.

In the event that America declines their peaceful proposal, then it’ll finally expose its true intentions once and for all before the eyes of the world. The real-life Justice League jointly led by China and Russia will continue to peacefully promote their new model of International Relations inspired by the shining example of their comprehensive and strategic partnership with the aim of restoring true equality to the global system. The first order of business clearly rests in enhancing victimized nations’ capabilities to resist unilateral sanctions.

America’s policy of economic coercion was long considered to be the ace up its sleeve that it could pull out in lieu of costly military pressure to more easily impose its will onto others, yet that trick is increasingly losing its luster as China and Russia take meaningful steps to neutralize its effectiveness. Their real-life Justice League will inevitably succeed in fulfilling Mr. Wang’s vision of “act[ing] as guarantors of justice in international relations” by restoring the primacy of international law and genuine equality between all nations with time.

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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.

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The European Commission’s digital “Green Passport,” which would provide proof of vaccination and negative COVID test, would be used to exempt holders from quarantine and other restrictions.

On March 17, the European Commission proposed a digital “Green Passport” to facilitate the safe free movement of citizens within the EU during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The “interoperable” certificates would provide evidence that a person has been vaccinated or has tested negative for COVID. The pass would include information on the brand of the vaccine, date and place of inoculation and the number of doses administered, as well as information from a lab or hospital confirming negative test results.

Holders of the certificate (a QR code on a phone app or on paper) would be exempt from quarantine and other restrictions. The document would be common to all EU citizens, but it will be up to member countries to decide on how to use it.

The commission is also working with the World Health Organization and the International Civil Aviation Organization to ensure that the Green Pass would be recognized internationally. In the meantime, the passport would allow bilateral deals between EU countries and non-member states, provided the commission approves these deals.

Countries have different reactions according to their needs and to their confidence rate in vaccination. Greece and Spain are eager to use the passport to reopen their tourist economies, while France has low uptake of the vaccine, with close to half the population hesitant.

Many also find that there is not enough data on the vaccines and that it’s too early to issue such a certificate. Plus, there is still uncertainty about whether the vaccine can actually stop the disease from spreading.

Several European countries are now reinstating lockdowns and restrictions fearing a third wave. Vaccination and the Green Pass are presented as the “only way out” of the pandemic. The Green Pass is being promoted as a temporary solution, but many believe it will remain in place long after the pandemic is over.

The European Parliament and member states are rushing to vote on the proposal this week. One can only marvel at how legislators can decide, without debate, on such an important issue that violates fundamental principles of the Treaty of the European Union and violates individual rights.

Senta Depuydt, president of Children’s Health Defense Europe, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., chairman, Children’s Health Defense, have expressed their concerns in this letter to the European Parliament

Depuydt and Kennedy urge others to contact European Parliament members on social media, by email or by phone to express their views on this critical matter.

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“The remedy is worse than the disease.”—Francis Bacon

One way or another, the majority of Americans will survive COVID-19.

It remains to be seen, however, whether our freedoms will survive the tyranny of the government’s heavy-handed response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Indeed, now that the government has gotten a taste for flexing its police state powers by way of a bevy of lockdowns, mandates, restrictions, contact tracing programs, heightened surveillance, censorship, overcriminalization, etc., we may all be long-haulers, suffering under the weight of long-term COVID-19 afflictions.

Instead of dealing with the headaches, fatigue and neurological aftereffects of the virus, however, “we the people” may well find ourselves burdened with a Nanny State inclined to use its draconian pandemic powers to protect us from ourselves.

Therein lies the danger of the government’s growing addiction to power.

What started out a year ago as an apparent effort to prevent a novel coronavirus from sickening the nation (and the world) has become yet another means by which world governments (including our own) can expand their powers, abuse their authority, and further oppress their constituents.

Until recently, the police state had been more circumspect in its power grabs, but this latest state of emergency has brought the beast out of the shadows.

It’s a given that you can always count on the government to take advantage of a crisis, legitimate or manufactured. Emboldened by the citizenry’s inattention and willingness to tolerate its abuses, the government has weaponized one national crisis after another in order to expand its powers.

The war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on illegal immigration, asset forfeiture schemes, road safety schemes, school safety schemes, eminent domain: all of these programs started out as legitimate responses to pressing concerns and have since become weapons of compliance and control in the police state’s hands.

It doesn’t even matter what the nature of the crisis might be—civil unrest, the national emergencies, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters”—as long as it allows the government to justify all manner of government tyranny in the name of so-called national security.

This coronavirus pandemic has been no exception.

Not only have the federal and state governments unraveled the constitutional fabric of the nation with lockdown mandates that sent the economy into a tailspin and wrought havoc with our liberties, but they have almost persuaded the citizenry to depend on the government for financial handouts, medical intervention, protection and sustenance.

This past year under lockdown was a lesson in many things, but most of all, it was a lesson in how to indoctrinate a populace to love and obey Big Brother.

What started off as an experiment in social distancing in order to flatten the curve of this virus, and not overwhelm the nation’s hospitals or expose the most vulnerable to unavoidable loss of life scenarios quickly became strongly worded suggestions for citizens to voluntarily stay at home and strong-armed house arrest orders with penalties in place for non-compliance.

Every day brought a drastic new set of restrictions by government bodies (most have been delivered by way of executive orders) at the local, state and federal level that were eager to flex their muscles for the so-called “good” of the populace.

There was talk of mass testing for COVID-19 antibodies, screening checkpoints, mass surveillance in order to carry out contact tracing, immunity passports to allow those who have recovered from the virus to move around more freely, snitch tip lines for reporting “rule breakers” to the authorities, and heavy fines and jail time for those who dare to venture out without a mask, congregate in worship without the government’s blessing, or re-open their businesses without the government’s say-so.

To some, these may seem like small, necessary steps in the war against the COVID-19 virus, but they’re only necessary to the Deep State in its efforts to further undermine the Constitution, extend its control over the populace, and feed its insatiable appetite for ever-greater powers.

After all, whatever dangerous practices you allow the government to carry out now—whether it’s in the name of national security or protecting America’s borders or making America healthy again—rest assured, these same practices can and will be used against you when the government decides to set its sights on you.

The war on drugs turned out to be a war on the American people, waged with SWAT teams and militarized police. The war on terror turned out to be a war on the American people, waged with warrantless surveillance and indefinite detention. The war on immigration turned out to be a war on the American people, waged with roving government agents demanding “papers, please.”

This war on COVID-19 could usher in yet another war on the American people, waged with all of the surveillance weaponry at the government’s disposal: thermal imaging cameras, drones, contact tracing, biometric databases, etc.

Unless we find some way to rein in the government’s power grabs, the fall-out will be epic.

Everything I have warned about for years—government overreach, invasive surveillance, martial law, abuse of powers, militarized police, weaponized technology used to track and control the citizenry, and so on—has coalesced into this present moment.

The government’s shameless exploitation of past national emergencies for its own nefarious purposes pales in comparison to what is presently unfolding.

It’s downright Machiavellian.

Deploying the same strategy it used with 9/11 to acquire greater powers under the USA Patriot Act, the police state—a.k.a. the shadow government, a.k.a. the Deep State—has been anticipating this moment for years, quietly assembling a wish list of lockdown powers that could be trotted out and approved at a moment’s notice.

It should surprise no one, then, that the Trump Administration asked Congress to allow it to suspend parts of the Constitution whenever it deems it necessary during this coronavirus pandemic and “other” emergencies. It’s that “other” emergencies part that should particularly give you pause, if not spur you to immediate action (by action, I mean a loud and vocal, apolitical, nonpartisan outcry and sustained, apolitical, nonpartisan resistance).

In fact, the Department of Justice (DOJ) started to quietly trot out and test a long laundry list of terrifying powers that override the Constitution.

We’re talking about lockdown powers (at both the federal and state level): the ability to suspend the Constitution, indefinitely detain American citizens, bypass the courts, quarantine whole communities or segments of the population, override the First Amendment by outlawing religious gatherings and assemblies of more than a few people, shut down entire industries and manipulate the economy, muzzle dissidents, “stop and seize any plane, train or automobile to stymie the spread of contagious disease,” reshape financial markets, create a digital currency (and thus further restrict the use of cash), determine who should live or die.

These are powers the police state would desperately like to make permanent.

Don’t make the mistake of assuming that anything will change for the better under the Biden administration. That’s not how totalitarian regimes operate.

Bear in mind, however, that the powers the government officially asked Congress to recognize and authorize barely scratch the surface of the far-reaching powers the government has already unilaterally claimed for itself.

Unofficially, the police state has been riding roughshod over the rule of law for years now without any pretense of being reined in or restricted in its power grabs by Congress, the courts or the citizenry.

As David C. Unger, observes in The Emergency State: America’s Pursuit of Absolute Security at All Costs:

“For seven decades we have been yielding our most basic liberties to a secretive, unaccountable emergency state – a vast but increasingly misdirected complex of national security institutions, reflexes, and beliefs that so define our present world that we forget that there was ever a different America. … Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness have given way to permanent crisis management: to policing the planet and fighting preventative wars of ideological containment, usually on terrain chosen by, and favorable to, our enemies. Limited government and constitutional accountability have been shouldered aside by the kind of imperial presidency our constitutional system was explicitly designed to prevent.”

This rise of an “emergency state” that justifies all manner of government tyranny in the name of so-called national security is all happening according to schedule.

The civil unrest, the national emergencies, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters,” the government’s reliance on the armed forces to solve domestic political and social problems, the implicit declaration of martial law packaged as a well-meaning and overriding concern for the nation’s security: the powers-that-be have been planning and preparing for such a crisis for years now, not just with active shooter drills and lockdowns and checkpoints and heightened danger alerts, but with a sensory overload of militarized, battlefield images—in video games, in movies, on the news—that acclimate us to life in a totalitarian regime.

Whether or not this particular crisis is of the government’s own making is not the point: to those for whom power and profit are everything, the end always justifies the means.

The seeds of this present madness were sown several decades ago when George W. Bush stealthily issued two presidential directives that granted the president the power to unilaterally declare a national emergency, which is loosely defined as “any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions.

Comprising the country’s Continuity of Government (COG) plan, these directives, which do not need congressional approval, provide a skeletal outline of the actions the president will take in the event of a “national emergency.”

Mind you, that national emergency can take any form, can be manipulated for any purpose, and can be used to justify any end goal—all on the say so of the president.

Just what sort of actions the president will take once he declares a national emergency can barely be discerned from the barebones directives. However, one thing is clear: in the event of a national emergency, the COG directives give unchecked executive, legislative and judicial power to the executive branch and its unelected minions.

The country would then be subjected to martial law by default, and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights would be suspended.

The emergency state is now out in the open for all to see.

Unfortunately, “we the people” refuse to see what’s before us.

This is how freedom dies.

We erect our own prison walls, and as our rights dwindle away, we forge our own chains of servitude to the police state.

Be warned, however: once you surrender your freedoms to the government—no matter how compelling the reason might be for doing so—you can never get them back.

No government willingly relinquishes power. If we continue down this road, there can be no surprise about what awaits us at the end.

That said, we still have rights. Technically, at least.

We should not voluntarily relinquish every shred of our humanity, our common sense, or our freedoms to a nanny state that thinks it can do a better job of keeping us safe.

The government may act as if its police state powers trump individual liberties during this COVID-19 pandemic, but for all intents and purposes, the Constitution—especially the battered, besieged Bill of Rights—still stands in theory, if not in practice.

The decisions we make right now—about freedom, commerce, free will, how we care for the least of these in our communities, what it means to provide individuals and businesses with a safety net, how far we allow the government to go in “protecting” us against this virus, etc.—will haunt us for a long time to come.

At times like these, when emotions are heightened, fear dominates, common sense is in short supply, liberty takes a backseat to public safety, and democratic societies approach the tipping point towards mob rule, there is a tendency to cast those who exercise their individual freedoms (to freely speak, associate, assemble, protest, pursue a living, engage in commerce, etc.) as foolishly reckless, criminally selfish, outright villains or so-called “extremists.”

Sometimes that is true, but not always.

There is always a balancing test between individual freedoms and the communal good.

What we must figure out is how to strike a balance that allows us to protect those who need protecting without leaving us chained and in bondage to the police state.

Blindly following the path of least resistance—acquiescing without question to whatever the government dictates—can only lead to more misery, suffering and the erection of a totalitarian regime in which there is no balance.

Whatever we give up willingly now—whether it’s basic human decency, the ability to manage our private affairs, the right to have a say in how the government navigates this crisis, or the few rights still left to us that haven’t been disemboweled in recent years by a power-hungry police state—we won’t get back so easily once this crisis is past.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the government never cedes power willingly. Neither should we.

A year ago, I warned that this was a test to see whether the Constitution—and our commitment to the principles enshrined in the Bill of Rights—can survive a national crisis and true state of emergency.

Nothing has changed on that front.

James Madison, the “father” of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights and the fourth president of the United States, once advised that we should “take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.”

These COVID-19 restrictions are far from the first experiment on our liberties. Yet if “we the people” continue to allow the government to trample our rights in the name of so-called national security, we can be assured that things will get worse, not better.

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president The Rutherford Institute. His books Battlefield America: The War on the American People and A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State are available at www.amazon.com. He can be contacted at [email protected]. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

Featured image is from The Freedom Articles

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***

What is the “Big Picture” of Covid-19 (the disease), alias SARS-CoV-2 (the virus)? – Is it what we could also call the end-game, or what Aldous Huxley called the “Brave New World” (1932), science-fiction – gradually turning into reality in the form of the UN Agenda 2030 – with the implementing tool of the Bill Gates created Agenda ID2020 – see here?

We are at the beginning of the end-game. We are in what the 2010 Rockefeller Report calls “The Lockstep” scenario.

See here.

This is the first one of four scenarios, prompted by an invisible enemy, a virus, a corona virus, akin to the one that was at the origin of the SARS outbreak in China in 2002 to 2004.

This virus is to be propagated as a huge deadly danger. It’s a brainwashing fear campaign. The decision for the launch was taken during Event 201, in NYC on 18 October 2019 – a few weeks before the actual SARS-CoV-2 outbreak. And it was confirmed by the World Economic Forum (WEF) conference in January 2020 in Davos, Switzerland.

Event 201, hosted by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (funded and created by the  Rockefeller Foundation) and the WEF, was chiefly a computer simulation of a SARS-like pandemic, killing some 65 million people in 18 months – and destroying the world’s economy as we know it – see here.

What was foreseen [in the simulation] was a pandemic against humanity. The virus was called nCoV-2019, later renamed CoV-SARS-2.  The “disease” associated with the virus was named “Covid-19” by the WHO. The close companion of the virus was FEAR – weaponized Fear.

Together, with a huge propaganda and brainwashing effort, the entire world – 193 UN member countries were called a covid risk – and WHO declared a pandemic – as we later found out, it was a plandemic – on 11 March 2020. Imagine! With only about 44,279 “cases” worldwide (outside of China), the World Health Organization calls it a pandemic. The world fell in shock. When people are in shock, they are gullible to accept anything – see Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine” (2008).

A worldwide lockdown was ordered by an invisible Globalist Cabal to all 193 UN member governments at once, by mid-March 2020. Governments were bought, corrupted, coopted or threatened into behaving as ordered by a worldwide common must-narrative. The entire UN system was and is as of today part and parcel of this worldwide fraud. Indeed, those government leaders, who did not follow the narrative, who defied the plandemic – risked severe “punishment”.

The President of Burundi,  Pierre Nkurunziza, died unexpectedly on 8 June 2020 shortly before the official end of his term. He was the longest-ruling president in Burundian history. His death was diagnosed as a heart attack. He was known for defying the official narrative of covid-19, and of kicking WHO out of his country – shortly before his death.

Tanzania’s popular President John Magufuli, died on March 17, 2021, from “heart complications”, in a hospital in Dar es Salaam. Mr. Magufuli was one of Africa’s most prominent coronavirus sceptics. He called for prayers and herbal-infused steam therapy to counter the virus. Shortly before his death, he said that he had PCR tests carried out on a papaya and a goat – and the tests came back positive, implying that the notorious PCR test kits were pre-tainted with the virus. [While no evidence, these untimely deaths raise question marks].

The public at large is being kept in the dark about what the Deep State, the corporate, banking and high-tech communication oligarchs, or simply the Globalist Cabal’s real plan is behind the covid fraud.

The so far almost invisible Big Picture, also called The Great Reset, or in the UN Agenda 2030 jargon, “Build Back Better” – consists of a threefold objective:

(i) Taking over total control of humanity, as in One World Order (OWO); by electromagnetic manipulation (that’s where 5G, later 6G come in); by digitizing everything, including all money; by converting humans into transhumans; they – Mr. Klaus Schwab, the co-author of the Great Reset, and his cabal, call it the 4^th Industrial Revolution;

(ii) Shifting assets and resources from the middle and the bottom of society to the top few; and

(iii) Drastically reducing world population, via a eugenist depopulation agenda. Eventually, a small globalist elite – all those associated with managing and governing the OWO-tyranny – plus a relatively small world population of serfs – or what Aldous Huxley called the “Epsilon people” (the lowest cast working people) – in today’s world, “transhumans”, would survive. The serfs or Epsilon people, would all be electronically [digitally] controlled and manipulated, so they would not transgress into seeking their erstwhile “freedom” lost.

The Rockefeller-led Bilderberg Society and Rockefeller’s protégé Henry Kissinger, have been propagating a reduced world population for decades. Remember Henry Kissinger’s infamous saying:

“Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.”

Bill Gates is today’s chief proponent of a reduced world population. He has also recently become the largest private farmland owner in the United States. He reportedly owns 242,000 acres (about 980 square kilometers) of farmland across 18 states. What does he intend to do with this farmland? – Well, who controls the food, controls the people. Gates is also a significant shareholder and partner in (Bayer-)Monsanto’s GMO seed- and pesticides branch.

At this point we can only speculate. But some of the not so farfetched speculations would indicate that Bill Gates under the guise of environmental protection (i. e. the good-old “climate change agenda”) and the New Green Deal – he may want to produce synthetic food, laboratory produced meat and GMO (genetically modified) grains and vegetables. This synthetic GMO-food, spiked with toxic pesticides, will then compete with ‘real food’ which – under the neoliberal market forces will become ever rarer – affordable only by the elite.

Synthetic food may include all kinds of “health and disease agents” to regulate population. The Epsilon people will of course have no clue. As the Great Reset concludes – They will own nothing and be happy.

While this is going on in the shadows, invisible for most people, the media make sure that the debate – official by governments, and unofficial by anti-covid protesters – is entirely focused on covid, the infection, the invisible atrocious enemy, the fear-mongering, plus all the repressive covid-measures, masking, social distancing, semi- versus full lockdowns, travel restrictions, vaxxing or not vaxxing – and the so-called obligatory electronic vaccination passports, akin to the Agenda ID2020.

All are concentrating on the covid-virus. Almost nothing lets you suspect that there is a Big Picture, a much larger, much deadlier agenda behind this all, that the virus and the atrocious Fear it promotes, is but an instrument to reach the larger objectives, those listed above.

Hardly does any public or unofficial debate, even massive anti-covid measures protests, like the „Wake up the World“ demo by the World Freedom Alliance – in Copenhagen on February 4, 2021 touch the Big Picture, what awaits us at the end of the UN Agenda 2030: You own nothing and are happy.

We are at war. Not just against an invisible enemy, the corona virus and the weaponized factor of FEAR, but also against our own ignorance and unconsciousness.

Plus, against the Global Cabal – the WEF and its Great Reset with its treacherous, fake New Green Deal, a new ultra-neoliberal capitalism, painted green – and intent of swallowing us all under the fake agenda of climate change and environmental protection, the rebirth of the Greta-agenda.

The British PM, Boris Johnson, addressed on 8 October 2020 via video his conservative Tory Party with  these words:

“After all we have been through, it is not enough just to go back to before. We have lost too much, we have mourned too many. We have been through too much frustration and hardship just to settle for the status quo and to think that life can go on as before the plague, and we will not.”  Hence, this government wants to “build back better” (UN slogan for Great Reset).

Let’s compare this with the words of Klaus Schwab in his “Covid-19 – The Great Reset”: Many of us ask, when will we return to normality?

Screenshot Financial Review November 22, 2020

According to Schwab: 

“Many of us are pondering when things will return to normal. The short response is: NEVER.

The world as we knew it in the early months of 2020 is no more.

For many, life as they’ve always known it is unravelling at alarming speed.

Deep, existential crises also favor introspection and can harbor the potential for transformation. The fault lines of the world – most notably social divides, lack of fairness, absence of co-operation, failure of global governance and leadership – now lie exposed as never before, and people feel a time of reinvention has come.”

Wow! This is strong and quite insensitive language for the many people who died on covid-19 and especially – for those hundreds of millions, if not billions, who have lost everything, their jobs, their homes, their income – their families and friends – those who suffer from famine, who now live in misery, at the edge of sheer existence – those who are driven to commit suicide.

The grandiose WEF, the Rockefellers, Gates, Prince Charles, the Director General of WHO, the Chief of the IMF, the UN Secretary General, and all those who participated in the planning of this “pandemic” during Event 201, never mention these people. In other words, for this small elite, the planners and organizers of the Great Reset, those who represent the concept: You own nothing and are happy – these dumped-into-poverty “epsilon people” are dispensable.

If we cannot master the covid fraud, put an end to it, even unseating and bringing to justice the 193 lying, cheating and eventually murderous UN member governments – how can we come to grips with and escape the fangs of the “Big Picture”, The Great Reset – that eventually will deprive us of our daily nutrition, rendering us infertile and sterile with toxic artificial food with the forced vaccines – and bring about a mass genocide through genome-altering mRNA-type vaccines, pesticide-GMO food – with a soulless, masked life in solitude?

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

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

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

***

About six years ago, when we titled “Are the missiles returning to Comiso?” in il Manifesto (June 9, 2015), our hypothesis that the US wanted to bring their nuclear missiles back to Europe was ignored by the entire political-media arc. Subsequent events have shown that the alarm, unfortunately, was well founded. Now, for the first time, we have the official confirmation.

A few days ago, on March 11, one of the top US military authorities, General James C. McConville, Chief of Staff of the United States Army confirmed it. Not in an interview with CNN, but during a speech at an experts’ meeting at the George Washington School of Media and Public Affairs – here we have the official transcript General McConville not only reported that the US Army is preparing to deploy, evidently aimed at Russia, new missiles in Europe, but revealed that they will be hypersonic missiles, an extremely dangerous new weapon system.

This decision creates a very high-risk situation, similar or worse than that one Europe experienced during the Cold War, as front line of the nuclear confrontation between the US and the USSR.

Hypersonic missiles – their speed is 5 times faster than that of sound (Mach 5), that is more than 6,000 km / h – constitute a new weapon system with a nuclear attack capacity superior to that of ballistic missiles. While these follow an arc trajectory for the most part above the atmosphere, the hypersonic missiles instead follow a low altitude trajectory in the atmosphere directly towards the target, which they reach in less time by penetrating the enemy defenses.

In his speech at the George Washington School of Media and Public Affairs, General McConville revealed that the US Army is preparing a “task force” with “a long-range precision fires capability that can range anywhere from hypersonic missiles to mid-range capability, to precision strike missiles and these systems have the ability to penetrate an Anti-Access Aerial Denial environment”. The General stated that “ We see the future of that being in the Pacific, probably two in the Pacific ” (evidently directed against China); we see one in Europe (evidently directed against Russia); and we’re building them as we speak”.

In an official statement DARPA informed to have commissioned Lockheed Martin to manufacture “a ground-launched intermediate-range hypersonic weapons system”, that is, missiles with a range between 500 and 5500 km belonging to the category that was prohibited by the Treaty on Intermediate Nuclear Forces signed in 1987 by President Gorbachev and President Reagan; the treaty was torn apart by President Trump in 2019. According to the technical specifications provided by DARPA, itt will be “a novel system enabling hypersonic boost glide weapons to rapidly and precisely engage critical, time-sensitive targets while penetrating modern enemy air defenses. The program is developing an advanced booster capable of delivering a variety of payloads at multiple ranges and compatible mobile ground launch platforms that can be rapidly deployed”.

The Army Chief of Staff and the Pentagon Research Agency therefore informed that the United States will soon deploy hypersonic missiles, armed with “ a variety of payloads” (that is, nuclear and conventional warheads), in Europe (there are rumors of a probable first base in Poland or Romania). Intermediate-range nuclear hypersonic missiles installed on “ mobile ground launch platforms “, that is, on special vehicles, could be rapidly deployed in the NATO countries closest to Russia (for example the Baltic Republics). Having already the ability to fly at around 10,000 km/h, the hypersonic missiles will be able to reach Moscow in around 5 minutes.

Russia is also building hypersonic intermediate-range missiles but, by launching them from its own territory, it cannot hit Washington. However, the Russian hypersonic missiles will be able to reach US bases in a few minutes, first of all nuclear ones such as  Ghedi and Aviano bases, and other targets in Europe. Russia, like the United States and other nations, is deploying new inter-continental missiles: the Avangard is a hypersonic vehicle with a range of 11,000 km and armed with multiple nuclear warheads which, after a ballistic trajectory, glides over 6,000 km at speed almost 25,000 km/h. Hypersonic missiles are also being built by China. Since hypersonic missiles are guided by satellite systems, the confrontation is increasingly taking place in space: for this purpose, the US Space Force was created in 2019 by the Trump Administration.

Air and Naval Forces, that have greater mobility, are also equipped with hypersonic weapons. These weapons open a new phase of the nuclear arms race, making the New Start Treaty, just renewed by the US and Russia, largely outdated. This race passes more and more from the quantitative level (number and power of nuclear warheads) to the qualitative level (speed, penetrating capacity and geographical location of the the nuclear delivery vehicles).  In the event of an attack or presumed attack, the response is increasingly entrusted to artificial intelligence, which must decide the nuclear missiles’ launch in a few seconds or fractions of a second. It exponentially increases the possibility of a nuclear war by mistake, a risk that occurred several times during the Cold War. “Doctor Strangelove” will not be a mad general, but a supercomputer gone mad. Lacking the human intelligence to stop this mad rush to catastrophe, the survival instinct should at least be triggered, so far only awakened by Covid-19.

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This article was originally published in Italian on Il Manifesto.

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

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

Reviews

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

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

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

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 brand-new space race is upon us.

It moves into two directions – who will reach Mars first, who will colonize the Moon, as it is nearby. Resources need to be extracted, and the US wants them to be available to it and its corporations.

The second aspect of the race comes down to who will be able to establish the most military and reconnaissance infrastructure in space to have the upper hand in harvesting resources.

Currently, if the United States is asked, Russia and Beijing are working rapidly to militarize the cosmos, while Washington is sitting idly.

After all, the first deployment of the US Space Force was to Qatar. The US is the party that keeps involving private companies in its space endeavors and changing its legislation to militarize formally ‘civil’ and ‘private’ space projects.

In order to compete, and live up to the constant accusations of Washington of “militarization of space”, Beijing and Moscow have joined forces to reach Mars.

Currently, the most reliable way of reaching space are Russian launch vehicles, and SpaceX is attempting to match it and provide its technology to the US government.

Elon Musk’s efforts are still short, as the latest test showed.

Another setback to US efforts is that as a result of the constant accusations and claims of militarization, Russia withdrew from the American lunar project Deep Space Gateway.

Washington has proven itself as a disloyal partner when it comes to sharing the glory and resources of space.

Shortly thereafter, Russia and China announced a project to create an international scientific lunar station. Not a Russian and Chinese one, but an international one – those who wish to cooperate are welcome.

Roskosmos Chief Dmitry Rogozin has spent no effort mocking the landing of the Mars rover, saying that when Washington is ready to land humans on the red planet, they would be greeted by Russians there.

Other countries such as India, Israel and others also wish to partake in the space race, but they are still far behind in terms of their capability.

While spreading the loudest claims of its adversaries militarizing space, the United States is attempting to do specifically that. Even if the US statements regarding numerous Russian attack satellites in orbit were true, and every nation’s space infrastructure is under threat, how can it even be considered that Washington is not moving in the same direction?

The United states actively attempts to take control and impose its “democratic will” across the globe, in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan. How unlikely is it that it attempts to do the same in space?

The space race is yet another field in which Washington’s sanctions, accusations and antagonism have forced its competitors into partnership and closer relations.

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***

The Biden administration continues to engage in that favourite activity White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki can only describe as “circling back”.  And much circling is taking place in the context of Afghanistan. 

The cupboard of calamities is well stocked, with the US facing an emboldened Taliban keen to hold Washington to its word in withdrawing the last troops by May 1.  In doing so, there is little chance that the US sponsored government in Kabul would survive.  But dithering past the date will also be an open invitation to resume hostilities in earnest.

As things stand with the Afghanistan Peace Agreement, the Taliban have every reason to chortle.  “There is little sign that this particular peace process,” opines Kate Clark of the Afghan Analysts Network, “has blunted the Taliban’s eagerness, in any way, to pursue war.”  Not only have they been brought into any future power sharing arrangements with Kabul; they are also entertaining a new constitution with a good dose of Islamic policing.  A powerful Islamic Jurisprudence Council with veto powers over laws is contemplated.  All of this comes with the departure of US troops provided the Taliban prevent Al Qaeda and other designated terrorist groups from operating within the country’s borders.

Cadres of the security establishment in Washington are worried at easing the imperial footprint.  Left with few options, the Biden administration has resorted to delaying tactics, hoping for the creation of an interim power-sharing government that would lead to a more comprehensive peace settlement.  

Policy wonks are not impressed.  Madiha Afzal and Michael E. O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institute take a withering view of the Taliban: they are not to be trusted on any reduction in violence or constructive power sharing.  The only question for them is whether US forces remain, or leave.  As with previous justifications for keeping up the pretence for foolish, bloody and failed interventions, the argument is a familiar hoary old chestnut: to extricate yourself from the nightmare would see the perpetration of a bigger one.  “As difficult as it is to remain in this longest war, the most likely outcome of pulling out of Afghanistan would be very, very ugly, including ethnic cleansing, mass slaughter and the ultimate dismemberment of the country.”

Afzal and O’Hanlon acknowledges the bill to be considerable, though they do so with cool regret: the cost to the US taxpayer could be up to $10 billion annually; 10 to 20 casualties would also be added to the accounts “if the Taliban resumes its previous use of force against US forces.”  Not taking up the burden would encourage the troops of other countries to leave while seeing conflict move to the cities, “which have generally remained under government control throughout the past two decades.”

With the interim government plan taking shape, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has decided to further baffle allies in Kabul.  In a letter to Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani seen by TOLOnews, Blinken states that, “Although we have not yet completed our review of the way ahead, we have reached an initial conclusion that the best way to advance our shared interests is to do all we can to accelerate peace talks and to bring all parties into compliance with their commitments.”

To this waffle, Blinken has a suggestion: “pursuing a high-level diplomatic effort with the parties and with regional countries and the United Nations.”  The Foreign Ministers of Russia, China, Pakistan, Iran, India and the United States should be convened by the UN. Written proposals to the Taliban and Ghani are also promised “aimed at accelerating discussions on a negotiated settlement and ceasefire.” While they are not meant to “dictate terms to the parties,” the Afghans have every reason to assume the opposite, given that they involve “foundational principles that will guide Afghanistan’s future constitutional and governing arrangements”, “a new inclusive government” and “terms of a permanent and comprehensive ceasefire.”

Then comes the insertion of Turkey, which would have come as a delight to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, busily shredding the remnants of liberal democracy in his country.  Senior-level meetings of both sides would take place in Turkey “in the coming weeks to finalize a peace agreement.”  Hardly a vote of confidence for supporters of constitutional strength and sobriety, and striking coming from an individual who enjoys berating states such as China for their human rights blemishes.

The rest of Blinken’s points resemble a counselling session: a revised proposal for a Reduction-in-Violence strategy that will take 90 days; the need for all Afghan leaders to remain united and, in doing so, “build consensus on specific goals and objectives for a negotiation with the Taliban about governance, power-sharing, and essential supporting principles”.  Blinken then falls into that unfortunate habit prevalent in the advertising school of thought in US foreign policy.  Tactics and “public messaging that will demonstrate unity of effort and purpose” should be pursued.  Public relations should do it.

The tone of the note, with its Quiet American theme, did not impress various Afghan advocates.  Kabul-based lawyer Kawun Kakar found the “prescriptive nature and context of the letter disturbing.”  He acknowledged that the US was “frustrated by the ‘endless war’” and the lengthy talks in Doha but imposing “complicated substantive” and “procedural conditions” and “deadlines do not seem realistic.”  The parties, as things stood, were simply too far apart to guarantee any durable peace, while letting in other major powers into an already messy picture was ill-considered.

Vice President Amrullah Saleh did little to hide his dissatisfaction. 

“They [the Americans] have the right to decide on 2,500 US soldiers and sign deals with the Taliban as they please.  But it is also our right to make decisions about 35 million people of Afghanistan not based on anyone else’s calendar.”

Biden’s Afghanistan policy risks fouling up even before anything solid is minted. “US forces will stay,” worries Eli Lake, “risking a new round of attacks from the Taliban.  But they will not stay long, depriving the US of its already dwindling leverage to force the Taliban to adhere to the 2020 deal.”  The worst of all worlds.

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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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Dr. Peter McCullough explains in testimony that known successful treatments of COVID were censored from the media, and this censorship was responsible for the COVID deaths.

Medical bureaucrats such as Fauci were focused on Big Pharma vaccines, not on treatment. 

Our thanks to Dr. Paul Craig Roberts for bringing this important testimony  to our attention.

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Biden’s recent statements about Putin “killer without a soul” don’t teach us much about Russia. Τhey teach us more about America itself. In a peculiar way, they confirm the profound decline of the United States in particular, and of capitalism in general, especially in its more extremist, neoliberal forms.

The Western political class and “elite” have brainwashed, in a very successful way, not only the public opinion, but also themselves. They really consider Putin as a criminal. His real crime is the fact that the Russian President, in their eyes, has stolen from them the omnipotence, which they had won with the Soviet collapse back in 1989-91. They always hoped and they still hope Putin’s government was nothing else but an incomprehensible “accident”. In their vision, history would eventually make up for the loss in some way and return Russia to the state of the banana republic it had under President Yeltsin, once Putin is gone.

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Researchers who question the legitimacy of US wars, seem to experience being ousted from their positions in research and media institutions. The example presented here is from the Institute for Peace Research in Oslo (PRIO), an institution that historically has had researchers critical of wars of aggression – and which can hardly be labelled friends of nuclear arms.

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A researcher is said to seek objectivity and truth.

But he or she learns to select their research topics and arrive at conclusions in accordance with what the authorities and management expect, and this despite the fact that academic freedom is codified in Norway through the “freedom to express oneself publicly”, “freedom to promote new ideas” and “freedom to choose method and material». In today’s societal discourse, freedom of speech seems to be reduced to the right to offend other people’s ethnicity or religion.

But freedom of speech should be about the right to scrutinize power and society. My experience is that the opportunity to express freely as a researcher has become increasingly limited during the last 20 years. How did we end up here?

This is my story as a researcher. For almost 30 years I worked at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), from 1987 to 2017. I became a senior researcher after completing my doctorate in 1989 and led the Institute’s program for foreign and security policy. I received my professorship in 2000 and wrote and edited a number of books on international politics and security policy.

After the Libya War in 2011, I wrote a book in Swedish about this war, about how Western bomber aircraft coordinated operations with Islamist rebels and ground forces from Qatar in order to defeat the Libyan army. (I wrote another book on the Libya War in Norwegian, published in 2018.) Western countries were allied with radical Islamists, just as in Afghanistan in the 1980s. In Libya, Islamists carried out ethnic cleansing of black Africans and committed war crimes.

On the other hand, the media claimed that Muammar Gaddafi bombed civilians and planned a genocide in Benghazi. US senator John McCain and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton talked about “a new Rwanda”. Today we know that this was pure misinformation or rather disinformation. In a special report from 2016, the British House of Commons’ Foreign Affairs Committee rejected all allegations of government forces’ violence against civilians and threats of genocide. There was no evidence for this. The war turned out to be a “war of aggression”, in other words, “the worst of all crimes,” to quote the Nuremberg tribunal.

Denied book launch

I launched my Swedish Libya book in Stockholm in December 2012 and planned a similar seminar at PRIO in Oslo. My colleague Hilde Henriksen Waage had just launched her book Conflict and Great Power Politics in the Middle East for a packed hall at PRIO. I liked the concept and decided together with our communication director and my immediate superior to hold a similar PRIO seminar on my book Libyenkrigets Geopolitik (The Geopolitics of the Libya War).

We set a date, venue and format. A former head of Norwegian Intelligence Service, General Alf Roar Berg, agreed to comment on the book. He was experienced from the Middle East and ten years of experience from top positions in the intelligence service in the 1980s and 1990s. Berg’s counterpart in the United States was Director of the CIA Robert Gates, who in 2011 was Secretary of Defense. He had also visited Berg in Oslo.

Gates was a critic of the Libya War – in conflict with Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. She had even put a stop to the US Africa Command’s successful negotiations with the Libyan government. She did not want negotiations, but war, and she got President Barack Obama involved in this. When asked if American forces would participate, Gates replied, “Not as long as I’m in this job.” Shortly afterwards, he announced his resignation. Alf Roar Berg had been as critical as Gates was.

But when PRIO’s director at the time, Kristian Berg Harpviken, was informed about my Libya seminar, he reacted sharply. He suggested an “internal seminar” or a panel “on the Arab Spring” instead, but he did not want a public seminar on the book. He did not want to be associated with a critical book about the war, but more importantly: he hardly wanted a critique of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or of her ground forces from Qatar, which had played a vital role in the war. Harpviken had held talks at PRIO with Qatar’s foreign minister. And Clinton’s man in Oslo, Ambassador Barry White, had been a guest at the PRIO director’s private birthday party.

PRIO established in the United States

PRIO had also established the Peace Research Endowment (PRE) in the United States. The board consisted of President Bill Clinton’s Chief of Central Command, General Anthony Zinni. He had led the bombing of Iraq in 1998 (Operation Desert Fox). In parallel with holding the board position in PRE, he was chairman of the board in the USA for what is perhaps the most corrupt weapons manufacturer in the world, BAE Systems, which already in the 1990s had given Saudi princes bribes in the order of 150 billion Norwegian kroner at today’s monetary value.

The chairman of the PRIO-established PRE was President Clinton’s Under Secretary of the Army Joe Reeder, who had helped fund Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. He had served on the board of the US National Defense Industrial Association and already the same month as the Iraq war began, he was engaged in getting contracts in Iraq. He had held a central legal position for a lobbying company that in 2011 marketed the rebels’ Libya War.

There may seem to have been a link between PRIO’s unwillingness to criticize the war in Libya and PRIO’s attachment to the Clinton family’s military-industrial network.

But PRE’s board also included a former Republican governor and PRIO contact, David Beasley, now head of the World Food Program and the Nobel Peace Prize laureate for 2020. He was nominated to this position by President Trump’s former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, who, like Hillary Clinton, had threatened to wage a “humanitarian war” against Syria.

Whatever the explanation, my investigation into these wars was not popular with PRIO’s leadership.

In an e-mail on 14 January 2013, director Harpviken described my Swedish book on the Libya War as “deeply problematic”. He demanded a “quality assurance mechanism” so that PRIO could “prevent similar mishaps” in the future. While PRIO found my Libya book unacceptable, I lectured on the Libya War to the annual GLOBSEC conference in Bratislava. My counterpart on the panel was one of Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ closest assistants. Among the participants were ministers and security policy advisers, such as Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Spreading war to the Middle East and Africa

Today we know that the war in 2011 destroyed Libya for decades to come. The weapons of the Libyan state were spread to radical Islamists throughout the Middle East and North Africa. More than ten thousand surface-to-air missiles to shoot down aircraft ended up in the hands of various terrorists. Hundreds of armed fighters and a large number of weapons were transferred from Benghazi to Aleppo in Syria with disastrous consequences. The civil wars in these countries, in Libya, Mali and Syria, were a direct result of the destruction of the Libyan state.

Hillary Clinton (C) gestures with Libyan soldiers upon her departure from Tripoli,  October 18, 2011. 

Hillary Clinton’s adviser Sidney Blumenthal wrote that a victory in Libya could open the way for a victory in Syria, as if these wars were only a continuation of the neoconservative wars that began with Iraq and were to continue with Libya, Syria, Lebanon and end with Iran. The war against Libya also prompted countries such as North Korea to intensify their interest in nuclear weapons. Libya had ended its nuclear weapons program in 2003 against guarantees from the United States and Britain not to attack. Nevertheless, they attacked. North Korea realized that US-British guarantees were worthless. In other words, the Libya War became a driving force for the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

One may ask why PRIO, with scholars who historically have been critical of all wars of aggression and hardly have belonged to the close friends of nuclear weapons, is now seeking to stop a critique of such a war and at the same time ally itself with the more problematic part of the military-industrial complex?

But this development may reflect a general adjustment within the research community. Research institutes must be funded, and from around the year 2000, researchers have been required to secure their own funding. Then they also had to adapt their research and conclusions to the financing authorities. During PRIO luncheons, it seemed more important to discuss how to finance projects than to discuss actual research issues.

But I also believe there are other, particular, reasons for PRIO’s radical change.

“Just War”

First of all, during the recent decade, PRIO has during the recent decade been increasingly engaged in the issue of “just war”, in which the Journal of Military Ethics is central. The journal has been edited by Henrik Syse and Greg Reichberg (who also sat on the PRE board). Their thinking is based on Thomas Aquinas’ idea of ​​”just war,” a concept also significant in President Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech for 2009.

But every war seeks a “humanitarian” legitimation. In 2003, it was claimed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. And in Libya in 2011, it was said that Muammar Gaddafi threatened genocide in Benghazi. However, both were examples of gross disinformation. In addition, the consequences of a war are often naturally impossible to predict.

The term “just war” has been used since 2000 to legitimize several wars of aggression. In all instances, this has had catastrophic results.

In 1997, PRIO’s then-director Dan Smith asked me if we should hire Henrik Syse, a well-known Norwegian conservative profile. I knew Syse’s supervisor for his doctorate, and considered it a good idea. I thought Syse could add to the spectrum of PRIO. I had no idea then that this, together with the points I argue below, would eventually exclude any interest in realpolitik, military detente and the exposing of military-political aggression.

“Democratic peace”

Secondly, PRIO researchers connected to the Journal of Peace Research had developed the thesis of “democratic peace”. They believed they could show that democratic states do not wage war against each other. However, it became clear that it was up to the aggressor, the United States, to define who is democratic or not, such as Serbia. Maybe the United States was not so democratic itself. Perhaps other arguments were more prominent, such as economic ties.

But for the neo-conservatives, the thesis of “democratic peace” came to legitimize any war of aggression. A war against Iraq or Libya could “open up for democracy” and thus for peace in the future, they said. Also, one or another researcher at PRIO supported this idea. For them, the idea of ​​”just war” was compatible with the thesis of “democratic peace”, which in practice led to the thesis that the West should be allowed the right to intervene in non-Western countries.

Destabilization

Thirdly, several PRIO employees were influenced by the American scholar Gene Sharp. He worked for regime change by mobilizing for mass demonstrations to overthrow “dictatorships”. Such “color revolutions” had the support of the United States and were a form of destabilization aimed primarily at countries that were allied with Moscow or Beijing. They did not take into account to what extent such destabilization could trigger a global conflict. Sharp was at one point the PRIO leadership’s favorite for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Sharp’s basic idea was that with the dictator and his people ousted, the door to democracy would open. It turned out that this was rather simplistic. In Egypt, Sharp’s ideas allegedly played a role for the Arab Spring and the Muslim Brotherhood. But its takeover turned out to escalate the crisis. In Libya and Syria, it was claimed that peaceful protesters opposed the violence of the dictatorship. But these protesters had been “supplemented” from day one by the military violence of Islamist insurgents.

The media’s support for the uprising insurgents was never confronted by institutes such as the PRIO, which had catastrophic consequences.

PRIO’s annual conference

Fourthly, PRIO’s participation in international peace research conferences and Pugwash conferences in the 1980s and 1990s has been replaced by participation in US political science conferences in particular. The big, annual conference for PRIO is currently the International Studies Association (ISA) Convention, held annually in the United States or Canada with more than 6,000 participants – primarily from the United States, but also from European and other countries. ISA’s president is elected for one year and has been American since 1959 with a few exceptions: In 2008–2009, PRIO’s Nils Petter Gleditsch was president.

Researchers at PRIO have also been associated with universities and research institutes in the United States, such as the Brookings Institution and the Jamestown Foundation (established in 1984 with the support of the then CIA Director William Casey). PRIO has become increasingly “American” with many American researchers. I would like to add that the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs ( NUPI ), on the other hand, is more «European».

From Vietnam to Afghanistan

Fifthly, the development at PRIO is a question of generational differences. While my generation experienced the 1960s and 1970s’ US-initiated coups and bombing of Vietnam and the killing of millions of people, PRIO’s later leadership was marked by the Soviet war in Afghanistan and by US support for Islamic insurgents in the fight against the Soviet Union.

In the early 1990s, PRIO’s later director Kristian Berg Harpviken had been the leader of the Norwegian Afghanistan Committee in Peshawar (in Pakistan near Afghanistan), where aid organizations in the 1980s lived side by side with intelligence services and radical Islamists.

Hillary Clinton claimed in 2008 that there had been a political consensus in the United States in the 1980s for supporting radical Islamists – just as she supported the Islamists in Libya in 2011. But in the 1980s, it was not yet known that the United States with the CIA was behind the war in Afghanistan through their support to the uprisings as early as July 1979, with the intention to deceive the Soviets into supporting their ally in Kabul.

Brzezinski visits Osama bin Laden and other Mujahideen fighters during training.

In this way the United States had “the opportunity of giving the Soviet Union its Vietnam War”, to quote President Carter’s security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski (see also later Defense Secretary Robert Gates). Brzezinski had himself been responsible for the operation. In the 1980s, it was also not known that the entire Soviet military leadership had been opposed to the war.

For the new generation at PRIO, the United States and Islamic insurgents were seen as allies in the conflict with Moscow.

The realities of power

I wrote my doctoral dissertation in the 1980’s on US Maritime Strategy and northern European geopolitics. It was published as a book in 1989 and was on the curriculum at the US Naval War College. In short, I was a scholar who recognized the “realities of power.” But in strict, normative terms, I saw already in the early 1980s an opportunity for a detènte between the great power blocs – just as Willy Brandt, and later, Olof Palme in Sweden, saw it. After the Cold War, we discussed with diplomats about finding a practical solution to the East-West divide in the High North. This led to what became the Barents Region Cooperation.

In 1994, I co-edited an English book titled The Barents Region, with contributions from researchers as well as Norwegian Foreign Minister Johan Jørgen Holst and his Russian colleague Andrei Kosyrev – with a foreword by former Norwegian foreign minister, Thorvald Stoltenberg. I also wrote and edited books on European development and security policy, attended conferences and lectured worldwide.

My book on European geopolitics in 1997 was on the curriculum at Oxford University. I participated as a civilian expert in Sweden’s official submarine investigation in 2001, and after my books on submarine operations in 2001 and 2004, my work played a central role for the official Danish report Denmark During the Cold War (2005). It referred to my, and CIA’s chief historian Benjamin Fischer’s, books and reports, as the most important contributions to the understanding of President Reagan’s program for psychological operations.

My new “submarine book” (2019) was launched in February 2020 at NUPI, not at PRIO, with comments by the former director at both institutions, Sverre Lodgaard.

Possible head of research

Following my appointment as Research Professor (Researcher 1, equivalent to two doctorates) in 2000, I wrote books and articles and evaluated articles for the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and the Royal United Service Institute. I sat on the advisory committee for a journal at the London School of Economics and on the board of the Nordic International Studies Association.

In 2008, I applied for the new position as director of research at NUPI – the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs. Director Jan Egeland did not have the academic qualifications required. An international committee was appointed to evaluate the applicants. It found that only three of them were qualified for the position: a Belgian researcher, Iver B. Neumann at NUPI, and myself. Neumann eventually got this position – as one of the most qualified scholars in the world within “International Relations Theory”.

Ironically, while I was evaluated as qualified to lead all research at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, my director at PRIO wanted to force upon me an “academic supervisor”. Experiences like this are likely to deter most people from any kind of critical work.

Research is meticulous work. Researchers usually develop their manuscripts based on comments from qualified colleagues. The manuscript is then sent to an academic journal or publisher, who allows their anonymous referees to reject or approve the contribution (by “peer reviews”). This usually requires additional work. But this meticulous academic tradition was not enough for PRIO’s management. They wanted to check everything I wrote.

An article in Modern Times (Ny Tid)

On January 26, 2013, I was summoned to the director’s office after having had an op-ed about Syria in print in the Norwegian weekly Ny Tid (Modern Times). I had quoted the UN Special Envoy to Syria, Robert Mood, and former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who had said that the Security Council’s 5 permanent members had all agreed on “a political settlement in Syria” on June 30, 2011, but the Western states had sabotaged it “at the subsequent meeting” in New York.

However, for PRIO my quoting these two was unacceptable.

On 14 February 2013, PRIO asked me in an e-mail to accept “quality assurance measures [that] relate to all printed publications, including shorter texts such as up-eds [sic]”. I was to be assigned a person who was to examine both my academic papers and op-eds before they were sent out of the house.

It was de facto about creating a position as a “political officer”. I must admit that I started having trouble sleeping.

However, I received support from professors in several countries. The Norwegian trade union (NTL) said that it is not possible to have an exclusive rule for only one employee. But this commitment to control everything I wrote, was so strong that it can only be explained by the pressure from the Americans. A candidate for the position as National Security Adviser to President Ronald Reagan, in no uncertain terms, let me know that what I had written “would have consequences” for me.

The time that followed, turned out to be bizarre.

Whenever I was to give a lecture for security policy institutions, these institutions were immediately contacted by certain people who wanted to stop the lecture. I learnt that if you raise questions about the legitimacy of the US wars, you will be pressured out from research and media institutions.

America’s most famous critical journalist, Seymour Hersh, was pushed out of The New York Times and then out of The New Yorker. His articles on the My Lai massacre (Vietnam, 1968) and Abu Ghraib (Iraq, 2004) had a deep impact throughout the United States. But Hersh can no longer publish in his home country (see a previous issue of Modern Times and this Whistleblower supplement p. 26). Glenn Greenwald, who worked with Edward Snowden and who co-founded The Intercept, was also pushed out of his own magazine in October 2020 after being censored.

Trade union support

I got a permanent position at PRIO in 1988. Having a permanent position and support from a trade union is probably the most important thing for any researcher who wants to retain a certain degree of academic freedom. According to PRIO’s statutes, all researchers have «full freedom of expression». But without a union that can back you by threatening to go to court, the individual researcher has little influence.

In the spring of 2015, PRIO’s management had decided that I should retire with pension. I said that this was not up to them and that I had to talk to my union, NTL. My immediate superior then replied that it did not matter what the union said. The decision about my retirement had already been made. Every day, for a full month, he came into my office to discuss my retirement. I realized that this would be impossible to stand.

I spoke to a former chairman of the PRIO board, Bernt Bull. He said that “you must not even think about meeting the management alone. You have to bring the union with you». Thanks to a couple of wise NTL representatives, who negotiated with PRIO for months, I got an agreement in November 2015. We concluded that I would retire in May 2016 in exchange for continuing as Research Professor Emeritus “at PRIO” with full access to “computer, IT- support, e-mail and access to the library as other researchers have at PRIO”.

In connection with my retirement, the seminar «Sovereignty, Subs and PSYOP» was arranged in May 2016 in Oslo. Our agreement had given me access to office space even after I retired. During a meeting with the Director on 31 March 2017, NTL proposed that my office space contract be extended until late 2018 since the funding had now been provided.

Three days later, the director returned after having travelled to Washington during the weekend. He said that an extension of the contract was not acceptable. Only after NTL again threatened with legal action, did we reach an agreement.

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Ola Tunander is a Research Professor Emeritus at PRIO.

Notes

1. The links in this article have been added by the editor here; the original newspaper version did not contain them.
2. If you want to learn more about the mainstreaming of PRIO and its “enlightened absolutist leadership” go here.
3. This is how PRIO presents itself and is financed.

Featured image is by Jan Oberg/The Transnational

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It took 18 years after Shock and Awe unleashed on Iraq for the Hegemon to be mercilessly shocked and awed by a virtually simultaneous, diplomatic Russia-China one-two.

How this is a real game-changing moment cannot be emphasized enough; 21^st century geopolitics will never be the same again.

Yet it was the Hegemon who first crossed the diplomatic Rubicon. The handlers behind hologram Joe “I’ll do whatever you want me to do, Nance” Biden had whispered in his earpiece to brand Russian President Vladimir Putin as a soulless “killer” in the middle of a softball interview.

Not even at the height of the Cold War the superpowers resorted to ad hominem attacks. The result of such an astonishing blunder was to regiment virtually the whole Russian population behind Putin – because that was perceived as an attack against the Russian state.

Then came Putin’s cool, calm, collected – and quite diplomatic – response, which needs to be carefully pondered. These sharp as a dagger words are arguably the most devastatingly powerful five minutes in the history of post-truth international relations.

In For Leviathan, it’s so cold in Alaska, we forecasted what could take place in the US-China 2+2 summit at a shabby hotel in Anchorage, with cheap bowls of instant noodles thrown in as extra bonus.

China’s millennial diplomatic protocol establishes that discussions start around common ground – which are then extolled as being more important than disagreements between negotiating parties. That’s at the heart of the concept of “no loss of face”. Only afterwards the parties discuss their differences.

Yet it was totally predictable that a bunch of amateurish, tactless and clueless Americans would smash those basic diplomatic rules to show “strength” to their home crowd, distilling the proverbial litany on Taiwan, Hong Kong, South China Sea, “genocide” of Uighurs.

Oh dear. There was not a single State Dept. hack with minimal knowledge of East Asia to warn the amateurs you don’t mess with the  formidable head of the Foreign Affairs Commission at the CCP’s Central Committee, Yang Jiechi, with impunity.

Visibly startled, but controlling his exasperation, Yang Jiechi struck back.  And the rhetorical shots were heard around the whole Global South.

They had to include a basic lesson in manners: “If you want to deal with us properly, let’s have some mutual respect and do things the right way”. But what stood out was a stinging, concise diagnostic blending history and politics:

The United States is not qualified to talk to China in a condescending manner. The Chinese people will not accept that. It must be based on mutual respect to deal with China, and history will prove that those who seek to strangle China will suffer in the end.

And all that translated in real time by young, attractive and ultra-skilled Zhang Jing – who inevitably became an overnight superstar in China, reaping an astonishing 400 million plus hits on Weibo.

The incompetence of the “diplomatic” arm of the Biden-Harris administration beggars belief. Using a basic Sun Tzu maneuver, Yang Jiechi turned the tables and voiced the predominant sentiment of the overwhelming majority of the planet. Stuff your unilateral “rules-based order”. We, the nations of the world, privilege the UN charter and the primacy of international law.

So this is what the Russia-China one-two achieved almost instantaneously: from now on, the Hegemon should be treated, all across the Global South with, at best, disdain.

An inevitable historical process

Pre-Alaska, the Americans went on a charming offensive in Japan and South Korea for “consultations”. That’s irrelevant. What matters is post-Alaska, and the crucial Sergey Lavrov-Wang Yi meeting of Foreign Ministers in Guilin.

Lavrov, always unflappable, clarified in an interview with Chinese media how the Russia-China strategic partnership sees the current US diplomatic train wreck:

As a matter of fact, they have largely lost the skill of classical diplomacy. Diplomacy is about relations between people, the ability to listen to each other, to hear one another and to strike a balance between competing interests. These are exactly the values ​​that Russia and China are promoting in diplomacy.

The inevitable consequence is that Russia-China must “consolidate our independence: “The United States has declared limiting the advance of technology in Russia and China as its goal. So, we must reduce our exposure to sanctions by strengthening our technological independence and switching to settlements in national and international currencies other than the dollar. We need to move away from using Western-controlled international payment systems.”

Russia-China have clearly identified, as Lavrov pointed out, how the “Western partners” are “promoting their ideology-driven agenda aimed at preserving their dominance by holding back progress in other countries. Their policies run counter to the objective international developments and, as they used to say at some point, are on the wrong side of history. The historical process will come into its own, no matter what happens.”

As a stark presentation of an inevitable “historical process”, it doesn’t get more crystal clear than that. And predictably, it didn’t take time for the “Western partners” to fall back into – what else – their same old sanction bag of tricks.

Here we go again: a US, UK, EU, Canada “alliance” sanctioning selected Chinese officials because, in Blinken’s words, “the PRC [People’s Republic of China] continues to commit genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang.”

The EU, UK, and Canada didn’t have the guts to sanction a key player: Xinjiang party chief Chen Quanguo, who’s a Politburo member. The Chinese response would have been – economically – devastating.

Still, Beijing counterpunched with its own sanctions – targeting, crucially, the German far-right evangelical nut posing as “scholar” who produced the bulk of the completely debunked “proof” of a million Uighurs held in concentration camps.

Once again, the “Western partners” are impermeable to logic. Adding to the already appalling state of EU-Russia relations, Brussels chooses to also antagonize China based on a single fake dossier, playing right into the Hegemon’s not exactly secret Divide and Rule agenda.

Mission (nearly) accomplished: Brussels diplomats tell me the EU Parliament is all but set to refuse to ratify the China-EU trade deal painstakingly negotiated by Merkel and Macron. The consequences will be immense.

So Blinken will have reasons to be cheerful when he meets assorted eurocrats and NATO bureaucrats this week, ahead of the NATO summit.

One has to applaud the gall of the “Western partners”. It’s 18 years since Shock and Awe – the start of the bombing, invasion and destruction of Iraq. It’s 10 years since the start of the total destruction of Libya by NATO and its GCC minions, with Obama-Biden “leading from behind”. It’s 10 years since the start of the savage destruction of Syria by proxy – complete with jihadis disguised as “moderate rebels”.

Yet now the “Western partners” are so mortified by the plight of Muslims in Western China.

At least there are some cracks within the EU illusionist circus. Last week, the French Armed Forces Joint Reflection Circle (CRI) – in fact an independent think tank of former high officers – wrote a startling open letter to cardboard NATO secretary-general Stoltenberg de facto accusing him of behaving as an American stooge with the implementation of NATO 2030 plan. The French officers drew the correct conclusion: the US/NATO combo is the main cause of appalling relations with Russia.

These Ides of March

Meanwhile, sanctions hysteria advance like a runaway train. Biden-Harris has already threatened to impose extra sanctions on Chinese oil imports from Iran. And there’s more in the pipeline – on manufacturing, technology, 5G, supply chains, semiconductors.

And yet nobody is trembling in their boots. Right on cue with Russia-China, Iran has stepped up the game, with Ayatollah Khamenei issuing the guidelines for Tehran’s return to the JCPOA.

1. The US regime is in no position to make new demands or changes regarding the nuclear deal.

2. The US is weaker today than when the JCPOA was signed.

3. Iran is in a stronger position now. If anyone can impose new demands it’s Iran and not the US.

And with that we have a Russia-China-Iran triple bitch slap on the Hegemon.

In our latest conversation/interview, to be released soon in a video + transcript package, Michael Hudson – arguably the world’s top economist – hit the heart of the matter:

The fight against China, the fear of China is that you can’t do to China, what you did to Russia.  America would love for there to be a Yeltsin figure in China to say, let’s just give all of the railroads that you’ve built, the high-speed rail, let’s give the wealth, let’s give all the factories to individuals and let the individuals run everything and, then we’ll lend them the money, or we’ll buy them out and then we can control them financially.  And China’s not letting that happen. And Russia stopped that from happening. And the fury in the West is that somehow, the American financial system is unable to take over foreign resources, foreign agriculture. It is left only with military means of grabbing them as we are seeing in the near East. And you’re seeing in the Ukraine right now.

To be continued. As it stands, we should all make sure that the Ides of March – the 2021 version – have already configured a brand new geopolitical chessboard. The Russia-China Double Helix on high-speed rail has left the station – and there’s no turning back.

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This article was originally published on Asia Times.

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

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (L) meets Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (R) in Beijing, China on March 23, 2021. Photo: Russian Foreign Ministry/Handout/Anadolu Agency

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***

March is International Women’s History Month and the threats towards oppressed and racially marginalized people in the United States are intensifying.

An attack by a 21-year-old white male against three Asian-owned spas in Atlanta and Cherokee County in Georgia resulted in the shooting deaths of eight people including six women of Asian descent.

Corporate and government-controlled media outlets in the U.S. have been either hesitant or resistant to labelling these incidents as hate crimes which were racially motivated. Nonetheless, a number of Asian American leaders which have been interviewed on these same television channels and websites are clearly saying that the mass killings in Georgia cannot be viewed in isolation from the escalation of hostilities since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic during 2020 as well as a centuries-long history of discrimination directed towards Asian people.

The Georgia shootings occurred while there are daily reports of Asians and Asian Americans being routinely insulted and physically assaulted on the streets of numerous municipalities from New York City to the Bay Area of California. Former U.S. President Donald Trump utilized the coronavirus pandemic as a weaponized foreign policy tool to justify his tariffs imposed during the early phase of his administration.

Often referring to COVID-19 as the “Wuhan and China Virus”, the former president known for his bigoted attitudes deliberately sought to promote hatred towards Asian people in the U.S. and internationally. These statements compounded the false notions of Asian people not being a part of U.S. society whether they were born inside the country or not.

For several decades since the advent of the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements in the U.S., the ruling class has attempted to craft an image of Asians as a “model minority” which is not concerned with demonstrations and other political actions related to ending racism and national oppression. Even with these false narratives aimed at dividing the non-European sectors of the population, the discriminatory practices and stereotypes which characterize Asians as a “permanent other”, the contradictions between the a-political characterizations of the community and the actual impact of racial violence are being illustrated.

Consequently, the failure of leading corporate news agencies and government outlets to describe the attacks in Georgia as racist hate crimes, speaks to the ongoing efforts by the state and ruling class to deny the basis for unity among people of color communities. For example, when vigilantes and police killed Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Hakim Littleton, among others during 2020, the question of racial motivation was immediately raised from the masses of African Americans and their allies around the U.S. This could not be ignored by the mainstream media as millions poured into the streets across the country and the world in response to racist violence.

According to an article published by The Conversation online news magazine, Prof. Pawan Dhingra, a sociologist and expert in American Studies at Amherst College, wrote on the present situation saying:

“I have researched and taught on Asian America for 20 years, including on the pernicious effects of stereotypes and attacks on individuals. Race can play a role in violence and prejudice, even if the offender does not clearly express a racist intent. Much remains unknown about the attacks in Atlanta, but the man charged with the murders has said he did not have a racial prejudice against people of Asian descent. Rather, he has claimed he has a sexual addiction. But that statement indicates that he assumed these women were prostitutes, whether that is true or not. This assumption, and the resulting violence, is just one of many that Asian Americans have suffered through the years.” (See this)

History of Racism Against Asians in the U.S.

There has also been the tendency within the corporate media to frame the attacks and discriminatory behavior towards Asian people within the context of the coronavirus pandemic of 2020. Yet this notion obscures and distorts the actual social status of Asian people in the U.S.

Japanese Internment Camps during the 1940s (LA Times)

Since at least the 19th century, Congress and successive administrations have enacted laws designed to restrict the number of Asians allowed into the country. There are numerous incidents of massacres and lynching directed against the Asian communities. In 1942, after a declaration of war against Imperial Japan, 110,000 Japanese Americans were forcibly detained and relocated to internment camps until 1945 when the administration of President Harry Truman utilized two atomic weapons in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The same article mentioned above by Prof. Dhingra notes that the racial and gender characteristics of discrimination and violence date back long before the recent rash of attacks:

“The presupposed connection between Asian women and sex dates back almost 150 years. In 1875, the U.S. Congress passed the Page Act, which effectively barred Chinese women from immigrating, because it was impossible to tell if they were travelling ‘for lewd and immoral purposes,’ including ‘for purposes of prostitution’. The assumption that all Chinese women were of questionable moral character placed the burden on the women themselves to somehow prove they were not prostitutes before being allowed to immigrate.”

Later in 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act to deny citizenship to immigrant workers many of whom built large sections of the U.S. railway systems. One source on the rationale behind the legislation emphasizes that:

“The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was the first significant law restricting immigration into the United States. Many Americans on the West Coast attributed declining wages and economic ills to Chinese workers. Although the Chinese composed only .002 percent of the nation’s population, Congress passed the exclusion act to placate worker demands and assuage prevalent concerns about maintaining white ‘racial purity.’” (See this)

The degree to which workers in the U.S., presumably white workers, were opposed to Chinese immigration, represented the impact of bourgeois ideology on the European American population groups which are often convinced that any social gains made by oppressed peoples of color calculates as a net loss for their elevated class status. Even today in the 21st century, the hostilities expressed towards the peoples of Asia within various U.S. political circles and the capitalist-oriented media, further reinforce the violence and repression against Black, Brown and Indigenous peoples.

The Foreign Policy Dimension and Specter of Socialism

Underlying a considerable portion of the antagonistic posture towards Asians is the role of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) related to its development over the last 72 years. China is led by the Communist Party which directs large sections of the economy and state structures.

The first diplomatic engagement between the administration of President Joe Biden and the PRC was disastrous, leading to no substantial agreements among the two leading economies in the world. Washington represented by Secretary of State Anthony Blinken took on the historic Cold War posture accusing China of attempting to spread its influence within the Asia-Pacific region. Nonetheless, the U.S. has failed in all of its military adventures in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen and Palestine, creating the large-scale deaths, injuries and displacements of millions throughout the globe.

Although the State Department accused China of human rights violations against Muslims, the people of Hong Kong and Taiwan, Beijing responded by pointing to the racial oppression which remains pervasive in the U.S. Ironically, these remarks by the Biden administration came during the same week as the mass shooting of eight people in Georgia, six of which were of Asian descent.

U.S. imperialist ambitions inherently clash with the aspirations of socialist countries and the national liberation movements. Consequently, people in the U.S. must turn away from national chauvinism and racism which guides the domestic and foreign policies of the capitalist state and the ruling class.

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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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***

The 200 year historical span of Kathleen Burk’s “The Lion and the Eagle” shows the changes in the interactions between the newly formed United States and its imperial drive and the ongoing imperial drive of the British.   In general, the former overtook the latter with the United States momentarily being the single superpower, but still with strong ties to Britain and the remnants of empire and the Commonwealth.   Along the way there were agreements and disagreements as well as many commonalities that pervaded both empires.

North America’s dividing line – the U.S.-Canada border

The first two chapters cover the not so well known minor conflict between Britain and the U.S. over the border between Canada and the U.S. as they spread across the continent.   The only actual war, although there were other skirmishes – including one in which the only casualty was a pig – was the war of 1812 which ended with both sides able to claim some kind of victory.

Apart from these descriptions the overriding theme became that of both countries not really wanting to go to war with each other in spite of political rhetoric.  Britain was preoccupied with France and other European countries all striving for a ‘balance’ in Europe from which to control all the different colonial enterprises overseas.  The United States remained financially tied to Britain through various loans and debts, while the U.S. navy for much of the time could not match the power of the British navy’s ability to blockade their former colony.

By the time the border was fully resolved (1903) the power differential between the two empires had shifted.  The U.S had settled many of its internal problems, and its navy grew to a strong enough position to negate any possible British threat.  Throughout most of this time, while technically independent, “the U.S. was a developing country, an economic and financial colony of Britain.”  The U.S.’ industrial production grew significantly but Britain “did maintain its overwhelming supreme position…in finance.”  The pound sterling was the world’s “only reserve currency and the City of London was the world’s financial centre.”

A discussion that was not developed was the manner in which both empires looked at the ‘new world’ and how they treated the indigenous people and the resources of the land.  For all the talk of freedom and independence, control of the land and the people, and power and money ruled the empires.  This becomes much more evident in Burk’s discussion concerning China and Japan.

Empirical parallels

The histories of the “opening” of China and Japan are – or should be – relatively well known.  What stands out in Burk’s discussion, much of it extracted from original journals and government records, are the arrogance and self-aggrandizement of both empires in their self-righteous roles to control the resources and people of the world.   Underneath it all lies the largest factor – racism.

From the Chinese perspective, “Any relationship between the Celestial Empire and a foreign country must be as one between supreme ruler and vassal…the uncultured barbarian would recognize the superiority of Chinese civilization…by bringing tribute and taking part in full Court ritual” – kowtowing.   The British of course refused to kowtow and expected to be treated as an equal and indeed saw itself as the superior power.

“The Chinese saw Western Ocean barbarians as warlike and dangerous and the British as the most dangerous of all. The Emperor warned…that ‘England is stronger and fiercer than the other countries in the Western Ocean.  Since things have not gone according to their wishes, it may cause them to stir up trouble.’”

As for British cultural superiority, the first British ambassador, Viscount Macartney, after presenting British presents to the Emperor, “was taken from pavilion to pavilion and realised just how relatively unimpressive were the objects that he had brought from Britain.”

Burk’s discussion develops the history through the opium wars, the intrusions of the other European powers, and more importantly for this work, shows how the U.S. adventures in China more or less rode along on the coat-tails of the other empires, in particular the British.

Japan was different in many aspects, but the same racial arrogance from both empires becomes obvious, and the use of military power – at least the threat of using it – is one of the main bargaining points of U.S.diplomacy.  Japan was a unified country but at the time of initial U.S. interventions, a power struggle was developing between the Emperor and the Shogunate.  At this point the U.S. “remained an economic colony of Britain”  and used mainly threats to coerce the Japanese into accepting trade relations.

The British in Japan showed the same arrogance towards the Japanese as they did the Chinese and their actions “were largely conditioned by Britons’ experience in China…assuming there were few differences between Asian countries,” and that “Japan had no right to prevent other countries from sharing its riches.”  At the initial stages the U.S. “had substantial economic interests in China, not least in the opium trade, but relatively little diplomatic or military influence,” and was “running behind the British.”   British negotiations with Japan came mostly as military threats.

The Japanese were in a different position than China, and between the two factions, the one that succeeded to power wished to acquire “scientific and engineering knowledge” in order to push out the barbarians after they had mastered the technology.

Empires reversed…

The last chapter covers a large span from 1897 to 1972.  During that period two World Wars and several financial crises affected the relationship.  World War II was the final turning point as one of the U.S.’ goals was “significant control over international finance.”  The Bretton Woods agreement which essentially established this formally is only mentioned in regards to the financial havoc created by the U.S.’ Vietnam War.  The Suez Crisis and the Israeli attack on its Arab neighbours combined with the financial demise of the British pound, brought the U.S. empire to full dominance militarily and financially. The U.S. became the prime supporter of the colonial-settler state of Israel militarily and financially, while Britain remained as a military empire in its own right with 145 bases around the world to complement those of the U.S.

…current events

In her very short epilogue “Envoi”,Burk ends on a confusing note.  She talks briefly about the U.S.’ empire of bases and then mentions the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.  Her next statement, her next to last statement, reads, “As long as these countries can be protected without becoming protectorates, this American power will be welcomed, or at least tolerated.”  By the rules of grammatical sequencing this refers to Afghanistan and Iraq, making the statement a rather sad wilfully ignorant ending as there is no way the U.S.’ presence in either of these two countries is either welcomed or tolerated.

If it is an improper grammatical reference to 130 countries with the military bases then its sentiment remains highly arguable.  The many countries with bases (which do include Afghanistan and Iraq) may have governments accepting U.S. bribes, graft, and financial manipulation, but it is not likely the everyday citizen is as accepting of the U.S. presence.

…and beyond

That small point aside – and it is the only point in the book that I question marked – both empires have moved on.  The U.S. is no longer the sole superpower, although it remains the most powerful military and financial empire.  It uses both its military power (mostly – covertly and overtly) and financial power – sanctions mainly – vis a vis its control of the “Washington consensus” institutions (the IMF, World Bank, BIS, SWIFT et al).  Britain remains within the U.S. thrall, supporting the arrogance and imperial lies that sustains domestic support during the election cycles.  As a part of NATO, as a member of the “Five Eyes”, with veto power on the Security Council at the UN, and maintaining a recently renewed arsenal of 260 nuclear weapons, Britain is no slouch.

Concomitant with that is the residual power of the “City”, the London financial district.  The LIBOR, the London Interbank Offered Rate still powers much of the world’s financial interactions.  Established much more recently, the LBMA, the London Bullion Market Association, comprises the largest gold and silver markets in the world.  It would be unusual if these two organizations do not liaise with their U.S.counterparts to maintain control of the current global financial position in which the US$ is now the world reserve currency.

Also important financially are the other polar elements of world power, China and Russia.  Both have mainly extricated themselves from direct U.S. currency manipulations (it’s not all that easy) and both have accumulated large amounts of the “barbarous relic” – gold – which many of the world’s central banks are also accumulating or repatriating from New York and London.

With Brexit, with the COVID crisis, and with the U.S. ‘recovering’ from four years of an overtly racist government, the entanglements between the two empires will continue with that racism and general arrogant outlook towards the rest of the world.  Kathleen Burk’s “The Lion and the Eagle” is an excellent history covering the events and attitudes of the politicians involved with this ongoing duet.

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***

On Mother’s Day in Syria, Sunday, March 21, the terrorists in the western countryside of Aleppo province launched missiles aiming at neighborhoods of Al-Salihin and Al-Firdous in east Aleppo.  The missiles slammed into houses, stores, and parked cars in the residential neighborhoods.  Two were killed, while dozens were injured, including small children.  The dead and injured were received at Aleppo University hospital and Al-Razi Hospital.

The terrorists who launched the missiles perhaps are the very same persons who had once occupied east Aleppo.  When the Syrian Arab Army was poised to enter into east Aleppo in December 2016, many terrorists fled north to Turkey, and some eventually traveled west and re-entered Syria at Idlib province, which is just west of Aleppo province. Some of the terrorists left Turkey on smugglers’ boats and now lived scattered around Europe.

East Aleppo had been highlighted on western media for years, until December 2016 when the Syrian Arab Army liberated the area from Al Qaeda and their allies.  The residents were free at last from the strict Sharia law which the Radical Islamic terrorists had imposed upon the unarmed civilians, who were terrorized into submission.

The terrorists ran prisons, in which they kept men and women, and in some cases children, who refused their orders.  They treated passive civilians as slaves and demanded obedience. In some cases, the oppressed civilians became identified with their oppressors, in what is termed “Stockholm Syndrome”.

When freed in 2016, many left for family members in west Aleppo, or to displacement camps. Some were lucky enough to be able to return home to buildings that were livable still after years of war. In the years since 2016, Aleppo had begun to recover and inch its way back towards the industrial power it once was.  US-EU sanctions prevent the citizens from importing necessary items from abroad to fully rebuild, and the lack of electricity, caused by the US-EU sanctions preventing the importation of fuel, also severely hampered full recovery.

The missiles on Sunday were targeting civilians, as there is no Syrian military presence there. The motive for the deadly attack is not at all clear, as the terrorists were targeting their former enclave and innocent unarmed civilians.

On the very same day, the Russian military bombed targets near the Turkish border in Idlib province, which is to the west of Aleppo.

The Syrian military and their Russian allies were targeting Al Qaeda terrorists and their warehouses of stolen oil.  The US occupation forces were directed by President Trump to steal the oil in eastern Syria and allow the Kurdish separatists to use the oil as a source of income.  The SDF and YPG allied with the US in the fight against ISIS, and though Trump had declared a victory and wanted to withdraw, the Pentagon prevented him, and he acquiesced by allowing US troops to remain to prevent Syrian citizens from access to their own nation’s energy resources, which kept the Syrian civilians from rebuilding their lives after 10 years of war.

The Kurdish separatists sold the stolen oil to the terrorists in Idlib. In the end, alliances between the US-backed Kurds and Al Qaeda terrorists came down to business deals and war-profiteering.

Western media was flooded with reports of the aerial attack and casualties, but not one report of the terrorist’s attack on civilians in Aleppo.  The biased Western media glorifies the only area in Syria under the occupation of Al Qaeda.  The mainstream western media outlets all report that Idlib is the ‘last rebel stronghold in Syria’.  Al Qaeda is not a ‘rebel’ group. The UN, US, and EU all designate Al Qaeda as an outlawed terrorist group. The UN charter demands all countries fight Al Qaeda where ever they find them.

There are about two million civilians in Idlib who are being held as human shields. Some may be following Radical Islam as a political ideology, and supporters of their captors.  Yet others are just trying to survive under dire circumstances beyond their control.

International charities, including the UN, supply food, medicine, and basic supplies to the people in Idlib, which in turn supplies the terrorists.  Idlib has been a haven for Al Qaeda for years. The constant supply of basic goods and medicines keeps Idlib surviving.  The US and its allies do not want Idlib to be liberated from terrorist control. If that happened, the Syrian conflict would be over, and Damascus would have won.  The US foreign policy on Syria dictates that there cannot be any military solution.  Idlib, and its human contents, are being used as a bargaining chip in the political solution of Idlib, which has never begun.

The terrorists in Idlib represent the US and its allies.  When the US Army fought ISIS in Syria they killed thousands of unarmed civilians in Reqaa in the process.  The terrorists were embedded among the civilians. However, when Syria and Russia fight Al Qaeda in Idlib they are accused of war crimes.

The US and its allies have used terrorists to further their political goals in Syria.  The goal was to unseat the President of Syria and install a pro-US puppet.  A similar plan worked for a short time in Egypt before a second revolution by the people brought down the American puppet, Morsi, who was part of the Muslim Brotherhood.  Likewise, the Muslim Brotherhood is outlawed in Syria, and the terrorists in Idlib are aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood government of President Erdogan of Turkey, who supplies Idlib with support and military protection.

Recently, Pope Francis of the Vatican made a plea that both sides in the Syrian conflict should negotiate peace in Syria.  Comments on the Syrian street could be heard questioning who did the Pope think were the two sides?  On the one side is the Syrian government in Damascus, and the other side is armed terrorists holding civilians as human shields. The question is: is it right to negotiate with Al Qaeda?  Western countries refuse to negotiate with terrorists, but the same countries demand Syria to sit down at a table and give concessions to flesh-eating decapitators.

The western media sold their audience on the ‘Free Syrian Army’ as freedom fighters and armed rebels.  US Senator John McCain and President Obama were their biggest supporters. However, they lacked the support of the Syrian people.  Their numbers dwindled and they became useless, then they called out to their brothers-in-arms, Al Qaeda, who responded by sending in thousands of fighters from the four corners of the globe, using Turkey as their transit point.  The CIA funded, armed, and trained them for years until Trump shut Timber Sycamore down in 2017. Though Idlib is not held by the Free Syrian Army, Turkey and Qatar have kept up their support of the terrorists who are aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood.  The US is aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood because it serves a political purpose, whereas Saudi Arabia, the Arab Gulf monarchies, and Egypt stand in opposition to the terrorist group. Senate Republican Ted Cruz called out again in the US Congress to designate the Muslim Brotherhood in the US a terrorist group.  Pro-Obama Democrats, as well as some Republicans, are not in support of the bill Cruz put forth.

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

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