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Between November 11 and 16, 2020, between the passing of Hurricane Eta and the arrival of Hurricane Iota, the Tortilla con Sal media collective visited Nicaragua’s Autonomous Region of the Northern Caribbean Coast. There we interviewed representatives of different indigenous and afro-descendant territorial governments in Siuna, Bilwi, Waspam and community members of the Miskito communities of Wisconsin and Santa Clara. We also spoke with cattle farmers, residents and officials from the municipalities of Siuna and Prinzapolka about various aspects of the area’s social and economic development. The interviews confirm the success of Nicaragua’s indigenous and afro-descendant peoples in their historic struggle to reclaim their ancestral rights.

The conversations also confirm that the indigenous peoples of Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast have achieved progressive restitution of their rights in large part due to the commitment to the reincorporation of the Caribbean Coast by the FSLN (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional) ever since their historic program of 1969. While in government in 1987, the FSLN passed Law 28 “Statute of Autonomy of the Regions of the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua”. Later, while in opposition, the FSLN in 2005 managed to secure the passage of Law 445 “Law of Communal Property Regime of the Indigenous Peoples and Ethnic Communities of the Autonomous Regions of the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua and of the Bocay, Coco, Indio and Maíz Rivers”.

To date on Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast, 23 original peoples’ territories have been titled and delimited, covering 314 communities with a territorial extension of 37,859.32 km² in which lives a population of more than 200,000 people in more than 35,000 families. The area is equivalent to 31% of the national territory and more than 55% of the territory of Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast. A significant body of laws, administrative norms and declarations attest to the reality of an innovative and ambitious process vindicating the rights of Nicaragua’s indigenous and afro-descendant peoples.

The interviews collected here also explain how these legislative and administrative advances were achieved in various extremely adverse contexts. For example, in 1987 Nicaragua was in the seventh year of a war imposed by the U.S. government in which much of Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast was the scene of constant military conflict.

Then, after 1990, during the period of the Liberal party governments, the process of defending and promoting the rights of Nicaragua’s native peoples was in effect deliberately undermined. So, when Daniel Ortega and the FSLN took office in January 2007, they inherited a process seriously sabotaged and damaged by the neoliberal policies of the previous sixteen years.

The interviews collected here demonstrate, too, the great scope of the process of restitution of the rights of Nicaragua’s original peoples since 2007, in all its social, political, economic and cultural complexity. For example, they clarify that the leaders of the Indigenous and Afro-descendant Territories are people elected by their communities not on the basis of political allegiances but on the basis of community criteria.

Their Territorial Governments and their Community Governments are two of the five levels of government working together in the Autonomous Regions of the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua. The two levels of government of the indigenous peoples collaborate intimately with the relevant instances of the National Government, with the Regional Governments and with the respective municipal authorities.

This system of government has enabled important changes on Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast, for example, in terms of electrification and the development of health and water infrastructure and land communications with the Pacific Coast and also in terms of judicial practice, education and health care.

On the Northern Caribbean Coast, the new road to Bilwi, which includes the construction of a 240-meter long bridge over the Wawa River, will shorten the overland travel time to Managua from 24 to 12 hours. In 2021, the entire northern Caribbean coast will be connected to the national electric power system.

A new regional hospital and a new drinking water system are being built in Bilwi. Economic democratization promoted by the central government has promoted new commercial possibilities for the region’s agricultural, fishing and other producers.

In this context of infrastructure modernization and important social and economic advances, the political opposition desperately uses downright falsehoods exploiting the issue of property conflicts in order to attack the Sandinista government led by President Comandante Daniel Ortega.

The big lie promoted by the political opposition in relation to the phenomenon of property conflicts in the territories and communities of the native peoples is that the Sandinista government promotes the invasion by mestizo families of indigenous and afro-descendant lands.

These interviews with indigenous and afro-descendant leaders completely disprove this gross lie. Instead, they explain the historical context in which indigenous leaders associated with the Miskito Yatama political party, have sold lands that were allocated to them under the government of Violeta Chamorro.

Subsequently, during the period in which Yatama and the ruling government Liberal party controlled the regional government and most of the region’s municipal authorities, various corrupt indigenous leaders continued with the illegal sale of indigenous lands to mestizo families. The natural consequence of this process has been that the mestizo families who bought those lands, in turn sold them on to other mestizo families, thus making the problem progressively more complicated and difficult to solve.

The problem of property conflicts only became international news from 2012 onward because in that year the FSLN displaced Yatama in the municipal elections as the region’s main political force and then in 2014 managed to gain control of the regional government.

The following table indicates the development of the change of political control in the Northern Caribbean of Nicaragua at the municipal level through the results of municipal elections from 2008 to 2017.

In 2009 Yatama and the Constitutional Liberal Party controlled seven of the eight municipalities in the Northern Caribbean Region. In the 2012 municipal elections Yatama and the Independent Liberal Party won four municipalities between them and the FSLN also four. Then in 2014 Yatama lost the regional elections to the FSLN and in the 2017 municipal elections the FSLN won seven municipalities, leaving only the municipality of Mulukukú in the hands of the PLC. Yatama and the PLC still won a good number of municipal councilors, but without overall control of any municipality.

In response to this decline in the power and influence of Yatama and the Liberal parties in the region, an intense smear campaign has been mounted against the Sandinista government. The campaign is promoted by Yatama and its allies in Nicaragua’s non-governmental organizations associated with the national political opposition, such as the Movimiento Renovador Sandinista, financed from the United States and countries of the European Union.

Similarly, Yatama lost influence at the territorial government level partly because of the deep internal differences within the party and partly because many community members stopped giving the same level of support they had previously given to Yatama’s historic leader Brooklyn Rivera and the indigenous leaders associated with him.

This reality of the unfolding political scene in the Caribbean Coast region of Nicaragua has been systematically suppressed, both by national opposition aligned media and intellectuals and, internationally, by foreign academics and intellectuals allied with Yatama and the MRS. However, the testimony of the indigenous leaders in these interviews convincingly demonstrates the reality, completely disproving the lies that have been spread internationally.

In relation to the issue of bad faith on the part of non-governmental human rights organizations, it may well be worth noting the personal testimony from our visit to interview community members of the Miskito communities of Wisconsin and Santa Clara in the Tasba Raya area, southwest of Waspam. Since 2013, this area has been the scene of some of the most violent incidents of conflict between the indigenous peoples and mestizo settlers.

We arrived in Wisconsin around four o’clock in the afternoon on Saturday, November 14th, 2020. Despite the heavy rains from Hurricane Eta, the road had not deteriorated so badly as to prevent our journey. We went to Wisconsin and Santa Clara because we wanted to talk to people there about their version of local history and events in their community since 2012.

However, the people we were seeking in Wisconsin told us they did not want to be interviewed because they were being watched by community members collaborating with the Center for Justice and Human Rights of the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua (CEJUDHCAN) led by Lottie Cunningham Wren. One of the people we wanted to talk to told us, in the presence of three witnesses, they were especially afraid to be interviewed because shortly before our visit, at a community assembly with CEJUDHCAN, Lottie Cunningham Wren had incited hatred against this person, saying that they deserved “to have their throat cut”.

Wisconsin is an impoverished community. However, the people observing our visit had the latest smart phones with which they filmed us. When we asked how it was possible for these very poor people to have such expensive cell phones, we were told that the phones were given out by Lottie Cunningham Wren and her colleagues to CEJUDHCAN collaborators in the community. In any case, we agreed with the community members at that time to record some brief interviews on the subject of local property conflicts and their possible resolution, which we did in a superficially friendly but somewhat tense atmosphere.

Indeed, without the presence of the territorial authorities who accompanied us, we believe it would not have been possible to record interviews in this community. Subsequently, after recording the interviews in Wisconsin, we went to the community of Santa Clara.

There, the community members spoke freely, without fear. They explained what had happened to them in previous years. They spoke of their anxieties and fears regarding the Mestizos and explained their hopes of being able to resolve the problem of property conflicts according to the law.

In both communities, Wisconsin and Santa Clara, the community members insisted that they wanted to avoid the kind of violent incidents of the past and called on the regional and central government authorities to provide the necessary support to expedite the last phase of the titling of their lands, which is called remediation. This term is interpreted in different ways, but the Wisconsin and Santa Clara community members believe that this phase requires clearing a direct lane between the already established trig points in order to clearly define the limits of each territory on the ground.

Taken together, this series of interviews provides an extensive overview of the reality of the Northern Caribbean Coast region based on the concrete experiences of five of the region’s territorial leaders as well as local community members. An undeniable part of that experience has been the incitement to violence by political forces and allied organizations in opposition to the government.

The interviews make clear the mercenary role of foreign funded neocolonial clients like Lottie Cunningham Wren and CEJUDHCAN in that regard. But they also make clear how Liberal party activists and municipal officials have historically promoted the illegal invasion of indigenous lands.

They also highlight the political aspect of organized crime activities in the region, for example the massacre of three police officers in June 2018 near Mulukukú. That massacre occurred in the context of a long-running campaign of systematic harassment in the Mining Triangle of Siuna, Rosita and Bonanza in which dozens of Sandinista militants have been killed in recent years.

It has been a campaign of violence promoted by people associated with the region’s Liberal parties very similar to what has happened in the South Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua. There, the activities of the so-called Anti-Canal Movement have been used to cover up organized crime activities aimed at displacing Sandinista families from the area on the municipal border between Nueva Guinea and Bluefields.

The interview series “Nicaragua 2018 – Uncensoring the Truth” extensively details the criminal activities promoted at the time by Anti Canal Movement leaders Francisca Ramirez and Medardo Mairena. Similarly, the interviews compiled here on the reality of Nicaragua’s Northern Caribbean Coast region reveal how opportunist local NGOs such as CEJUDHCAN distort the truth under the guise of promoting the rights of indigenous peoples.

These interviews demonstrate once again that international human rights organizations by no means rigorously and seriously corroborate the denunciations they receive. On the contrary, they act in a morally obtuse, methodologically incompetent and politically biased way, in effect promoting the sinister anti-democratic and anti-humanitarian political agenda of the U.S. government and its allies.

In doing so, they harm and betray the human rights of the very populations they falsely claim they want to defend. Their bad faith has been demonstrated on multiple occasions in the case of Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela as well as other countries defending their autonomy and sovereignty against the North American and European imperialist powers.

When former UN Human Rights Rapporteur Alfredo de Zayas said in relation to Venezuela “I realized that the media narrative does not correspond to reality” he could just as well have been talking about Nicaragua. Taken together, the interviews compiled here offer yet more confirmation of the moral bankruptcy of the Western human rights industry and the international media that disseminate their reports with no serious effort to corroborate them, while suppressing other information, such as interviews like these, which contradict them.

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Is Wi-Fi sickness a disability? The California Court of Appeal just said it is in Brown v. Los Angeles Unified School District (2d Dist., Div. Eight), Case No. B294240. In a case that tests the limits of California’s liberal pleading standard, the appellate court green-lighted a claim of a woman who asserted a disability of “electromagnetic hypersensitivity,” or, as the concurring justice put it, “Wi-Fi sickness.”

The trial court had sustained a demurrer, granting judgment for the employer, a school district. The appellate court revived the plaintiff’s claim for failure to provide a reasonable accommodation.

The court acknowledged that it is likely the first to recognize Wi-Fi sickness as a disability under laws against discrimination. In fact, the court discussed contrary federal court authority, distinguishing those cases by concluding that the definition of “disability” in California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act is broader than in the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Apart from the holding that Wi-Fi sickness is a disability under FEHA, California employers should take note of the facts alleged about the failure to provide a reasonable accommodation.

After the school district installed a new Wi-Fi system, the plaintiff teacher complained of headaches and other symptoms caused by exposure to the electromagnetic waves. The school district initially tried to accommodate the teacher by turning off the Wi-Fi in her classroom and an adjacent one. The teacher said that her symptoms persisted and asked for additional accommodations. By that point, the school district’s consultant had reported that the Wi-Fi and radio frequencies at the school “evidenced a safe and non-hazardous working environment.” Based on that report, the school district did not grant any further accommodation, and the teacher sued.

In his concurring opinion, Justice Wiley expressed reluctance “about giving any sort of green light to this unprecedented and unorthodox disability claim.” But that’s exactly what the court did.

The decision serves as a reminder of just how easy it is to survive a pleading challenge in California.

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The commander of U.S. military forces in the Pacific region submitted a request to Congress March 1 for $27.3 billion in new anti-China spending. Admiral Philip Davidson, who can fairly be termed an anti-China fanatic, leads the Indo-Pacific Command made up of 380,000 military and civilian personnel and a vast array of air, land and sea weaponry. It is the largest of the 11 commands that span the globe and outer space — the enforcers of the most far-flung empire in history.

The funding increase that Davidson is seeking for his command — not the total allocation — is greater than the entire budget of the whole armed forces of Brazil.

In an October 2020 public forum, Davidson stated: “I believe China is the strategic threat of the century to the U.S., but really certainly to the entire free world.” Extreme hostility toward China has been expressed by other top officials in the new administration, including by President Biden himself.

In reality, it is the United States which has engaged in endless war for many decades that is the real “strategic threat” to its allies as well as it enemies.

Red line denoting the Pentagon’s “first island chain” (Wikimedia Commons)

The Indo-Pacific Command covers 34 countries encompassing 60% of the world’s population. As a part of the “pivot to Asia” announced under the Obama administration — and continued under Trump and now Biden — a major shift is underway. The aim is to base over 70% of U.S. overseas military forces in the Asia/Pacific region, clearly aimed at the People’s Republic of China.

The additional request comes on top of the $738 billion Pentagon budget for this year which passed — as do all military budgets — with overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress. The Pentagon budget is larger than the military budgets of the next 13 countries combined, and four times the size of China’s.

The Pentagon and virtually the entire political establishment falsely promote Cold War-style propaganda depicting China as an aggressor. But it is not China that is encircling the United States with military power — it is the other way around. Davidson’s request for additional funding is explicitly meant to accelerate the encirclement.

The ‘First Island Chain’ — A sacrifice zone in Pentagon planning

In his demand for extra funds, Davidson wrote that the United States “requires highly survivable, precision-strike networks along the first island chain, featuring increased quantities of ground-based weapons. … These networks must be operationally decentralized and geographically distributed along the western Pacific archipelagos.”

The “first island chain” in Pentagon-ese are those island states and provinces ringing China’s east coast, including Japan, Okinawa, Taiwan, northern Philippines, Borneo and smaller islands. As a glance at a map of the region shows, Taiwan — a province of China still ruled by the side of the civil war that was defeated in 1949 — is the key link of the chain and would be of immense strategic importance in case of a war. This motivates the vast U.S. military sales to Taiwan.

The words “requires highly survivable, precision-strike networks along the first island chain” means that the Pentagon anticipates those countries would suffer major losses in case of a U.S. war on China. John Foster Dulles, the former U.S. secretary of state who devised the island chain strategy in the 1950s, referred to these countries as “unsinkable aircraft carriers.”

Such an outcome means nothing to the war planners. Nor do they regard participation as optional. “These networks must be … geographically distributed along the western Pacific archipelagos” (writer’s emphasis).

Contrary to the media propaganda here, China is not seeking either a new war or global domination. Nor do any of the peoples of the region, who have suffered greatly at the hands of imperialism, want a new war.

As the latest demand for ever-greater military spending makes clear, the grave danger of new wars comes from the Pentagon, the military-industrial corporations, and the capitalist politicians in Washington. They are fanning the flames of racism and chauvinism to prepare public opinion for aggression to come.

A new U.S. war with China would threaten the world with unthinkable destruction. The danger of such a war cannot be ignored, it must be resisted.

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The European Union has been keeping up appearances in encouraging the equitable distribution of vaccines to combat SARS-CoV-2 and its disease, COVID-19.  Numerous statements speak to the need to back the COVAX scheme, to ensure equity and that no one state misses out.  And EU member states could be assured of a smooth vaccine rollout, led by the EU apparatus, humming with needle jabbing efficiency.  Negotiating as a bloc, lower prices could be assured, along with an appropriate supply of vaccines across the 27 member states. 

These initial hopes have been shredded.  While the vaccination programs in Israel, the United Kingdom and even the United States have gathered form and speed, it has stuttered and stumbled in the EU.  The companies behind the vaccines have been patchy in their production lines.  Authorities have put halts on jabs and in some cases, introduced rationing.      

In January, the manufacturers of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine informed the European Commission that it would ship fewer doses to the bloc than originally understood.  “While there is no scheduled delay to the start of shipments of our vaccine should we receive approval in Europe,” a spokesperson for AstraZeneca explained, “initial volumes will be lower than originally anticipated due to reduced yields at a manufacturing site within our European supply chain.”  The initial cut in supply was dramatic: from the initially promised number of 90 million does, the number would be 40 million. 

Stella Kyriakides, European commissioner for health and food safety, was indignant. Discussions with the company, she recorded on Twitter, “resulted in dissatisfaction with the lack of clarity and insufficient explanations.”  Members of the EU were “united: vaccine developers have societal and contractual responsibilities they need to uphold.” 

The company then promised in early February to make up the missing doses.  In this, the EU was found wanting in its contractual negotiations with AstraZeneca.  The EU-AstraZeneca deal, written in Belgian law, stresses the “best reasonable effort” of both parties to deliver the goods in question and acting in good faith.  The UK-AstraZeneca agreement, written in English law, also contains the best reasonable effort clause, but features a toothier provision.  Should AstraZeneca or its subcontractors be persuaded to do anything that might hold up the supply of vaccine doses, the UK government reserves the right to terminate the contract and invoke penalties.

The EU was left with essentially meek retaliations: withholding payments till the company coughed up promised supply, or till it assisted finding other producers who might make the vaccine.  Tellingly, the EU had also waived its right to sue AstraZeneca in the event of delays. 

The UK negotiators were also sharp enough to clarify the chain of supply (places of manufacture, for instance), putting the onus on the company to cover any unpredicted fall promised doses.  The EU, in an act fit for commercial dunces, had tied itself in knots. 

The AstraZeneca drama was but one in what can only be seen as a failure in manufacture, supply and distribution.  Pfizer-BioNTech, having made a deal for the supply of 300 million doses with the EU, also saw reductions in their deliveries to enable its Belgium processing plant to increase capacity.  In January, Italy was informed about successive reductions of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine: 20% and 29% in respective quarters of the month.  The more granular picture was even more severe, with various Italian regions seeing a fall of 60% of doses.

This picture of struggle was repeated that same month in Poland, Romania, the Czech Republic, Germany’s North Rhine-Westphalia and the Spanish capital, Madrid. Rationing of distribution was introduced by the Spanish government.  Polish officials were sufficiently angered by Pfizer-BioNTech to threaten legal action. 

Hungary, preferring a different, more unilateral way of coping with the shambles, approved the use of other vaccines otherwise held up in the queue of the European Medicines Agency.  The vaccines from China’s Sinopharm and Russia’s Sputnik V have passed regulator muster, with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán himself receiving the former at the end of last month.  “Without the Chinese and Russian vaccines,” the pugnacious populist reasoned, “we would have big problems.” 

Last month, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was rather confessional in a speech on the failings of the EU vaccination policy.  “We were late in granting authorisation. We were too optimistic about mass production.  And maybe we also took for granted that the doses ordered would actually arrive on time.”

The European scene was ready for a more global brawl over vaccines and their shipments.  On February 26, Italian authorities urged the European Commission to block 250,700 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine destined for Australia.  The reason was put down to AstraZeneca’s failure to live up to expectations in supply and Australia not being a “vulnerable country”.  The request was also based on the EU export control mechanism on COVID-19 vaccines, introduced in January with the intention to block exports of vaccines outside the union.  “The objective of this measure,” came the European Commission’s justification, “is to ensure timely access to COVID-19 vaccines for all EU citizens and to tackle the current lack of transparency of vaccine exports outside the EU.”

Since its inception, the European Commission has proved slow on the draw; 174 authorisations for millions of shots to 30 countries have been granted.  Set to expire on March 31, the European Commission is proposing the extension of this measure into June.  Many member states approve.  France even went so far as to publicly back Italy’s request.  The country’s Health Minister Olivier Véran summed up the mood in an interview with BFMTV channel: “Believe me, the more doses I have, the happier I am as health minister.” 

Germany also added its voice of approval.  “In general,” stated German government spokesman Steffen Seibert, “vaccine exports aren’t stopped as long as the contracts with the EU are abided by.”  Cattily, Seibert excused the EU’s regulatory restrictions by claiming that many “vaccines go from the EU to third countries, while nothing or almost is exported from the United States and Great Britain.”  German Health Minister Jens Spahn was more reserved, warning that such moves could cause “problems in the medium term by disrupting the supply chains for vaccines”. 

Australia’s protests were more of minor irritation than anger.  Canberra had, according to Health Minister Greg Hunt, “raised the issue with the European Commission through multiple channels, and in particular we have asked the European Commission to review this decision.”  Prime Minister Scott Morrison was even understanding to a point, acknowledging that Italy was seeing a death rate of 300 a day.  Europe faced “an unbridled situation.  That is not the situation in Australia.”

Vaccine patriotism was always going to surface to dampen any optimism on the part of public health utopians.  Countries and self-interest come before the noble aspirations of humanity.  The Director General of the World Trade Organization, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala laments that WTO members, to the extent they had “export restrictions or even prohibitions of these goods [vaccines]” were holding “back recovery.” 

A great danger to the EU in this ugly affair will be whether certain nation states within the family will take its efforts in combating COVID-19 seriously.  As shown by Hungary’s example, the bunglers in Brussels risk being ignored altogether. 

As for the blocking of vaccine exports to third countries, Bernd Lange, the German MEP who chairs the European Parliament’s trade committee, is gloomy and regretful.  The European export mechanism risked constituting a de facto ban.  “Pandora’s box opened,” he wrote on Twitter in response to the Italian decision.  “Mistake.”  Imitators would follow, as could “fatal consequences on supply chains.”  A global conflict over the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines is in the offing. 

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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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This article was first published on Global Research in February 2018.

People today spend a lot of time talking about conspiracy theories.

These theories often do harm because they divert attention away from the facts and thereby allow real crimes and other harmful effects to continue.

Such conspiracy theories can be spotted based on three basic characteristics.

1. They lack evidence.
2. They spread widely before the facts are examined.
3. Much simpler alternatives are not considered.

For example, take the most popular conspiracy theory of recent times—the official account for the crimes of 9/11.

1. This theory was produced by mythologist Philip Zelikow, who, before the investigation began, created an outline that was kept secret from his own Commission staff. Zelikow’s outline determined the outcome of the investigation before any facts were examined. Moreover, the 9/11 Commission claimed sixty-three times in its report that it could find “no evidence” related to important aspects of the crimes. Evidence that the Commission did rely on, as a basis for its report, was later found to be false. Similarly, the evidence collected and held secret by World Trade Center investigating agency NIST was later found to contradict the agency’s conclusions. Much of that evidence is still being held secret including the computer model data that NIST was forced to substitute for physical testing that contradicted its conclusions.
2. The conspiracy theory reports provided by the 9/11 Commission and NIST spread quickly before anyone could examine them. Getting government representatives to commit to any explanation for what had happened on 9/11 took years but, once ready, news media sources were prepped in advance to allow rapid parroting of the official line. The timing of NIST’s reports coincided with political events, like each anniversary of the 9/11 crimes, so that media could quickly present the official story while public interest was high but critical review was not possible. With the report on WTC 7, the public was given just three weeks to comment on a report that was nearly seven years in the making. The report was later found to be unscientific and false.
3. The official conspiracy theory for 9/11 calls for belief in unbelievable things. That is, to believe the official account you must accept that otherwise honest military leaders will lie repeatedly for years to make themselves look bad. Buildings will collapse in unprecedented ways, through the path of most resistance, with no scientific evidence to explain it. The Secret Service will fail to do its job, insider trading can occur with no insiders, and “the enemy”—a vaguely defined group of dark-skinned people who just happen to live on strategically critical resources—can remain omnipotent and elusive. All the while, much simpler explanations are evident but cannot be considered.

The official conspiracy theory for 9/11 has led to tremendously harmful effects. Many Americans have forgotten completely what it means to be an American. An ongoing terrorism lottery, that could select any of us as a victim at any time, continues with no end in sight. And the 9/11 Wars that were based on the official account are bankrupting the nation both financially and morally.

Yes, conspiracy theories are a problem when not examined closely. Let’s all take a closer look at this one.

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This article was originally published by Dig Within.

Featured image is from the author.

by Michel Chossudovsky

ISBN Number: 9780973714715

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

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

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

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

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‘They have discovered smart weapons. We have discovered something more important: people think and feel.’ – Fidel Castro

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the failure of most Western capitalist countries in their public health policies.

Decades of neoliberal austerity, of cuts in health and education programs induced by restructuring programs by the IMF and the World Bank, are now showing their results in alarming numbers of contagion and deaths spreading throughout Latin America, Europe and the U.S.

In the West, Cuba has set an example of efficiency and shown that another way is possible in the fight against the pandemic. The numbers speak for themselves; we only need to compare Cuba with other countries or even big cities with similar populations to get a very clear picture of the difference in results.

With a population of about 11,350,000 people, Cuba has had – as of February 21 – 45,361 cumulative cases of COVID-19 with 300 deaths.

The Greater New York City area, with a population of about 18,800,00, has a cumulative total of 700,815 cases with 28,888 deaths. Switzerland, with a smaller population than Cuba, about 8,600,000 people, has 550,224 cumulative cases of COVID-19 with 9,226 deaths. How to explain that a country that has far fewer resources than a city like New York or a country like Switzerland can be so much more efficient in its fight against the pandemic?

The answer is simple: the Cuban Revolution of 1959 focused the few resources available in the country on building a health care system that would serve the needs of the people first, and not the interests of the various sectors of privatized medicine, such as medical insurance plans, big pharmaceutical companies and the expensive ‘high-tech’ medicine of which the developed countries are so proud.

Public Health History 

After the Revolution, almost half of the Cuban doctors left the country, greatly limiting the new government’s ability to meet the health needs of its population. The revolutionary government decision was to invest in the training of new health professionals – in people – and to expand access to medical care to the rural population and especially to black Cubans, who had hitherto been left out. In this way, Cuba was able to increase the number of nurses from 2,500 in 1958 to 4,300 a decade later. Through its massive vaccination campaigns, Cuba eliminated polio in 1962, malaria in 1967, neonatal tetanus in 1972, diphtheria in 1979, congenital rubella syndrome in 1989, post-cause meningitis in 1993, rubella in 1995, and tuberculous meningitis in 1997.

Today, Cuba’s infant mortality rate is lower than that of the United States and less than half that of the black population in the United States. By 1983, just over two decades after the Revolution, life expectancy in Cuba had increased to 73.8 years, when in the previous period it had been only 58.8 years.

While many public health experts often attribute the chronic shortage of health care in Latin America to lack of resources, the Cuban Revolution has shown that when limited resources are distributed equitably and with an emphasis on people and prevention, public health outcomes previously unimaginable can be achieved. Neoliberalism, imposed by force in many Southern countries, and chosen by Northern economic elites as the preferred policy in their own countries, led to a path opposite to the Cuban one. And the COVID-19 pandemic is showing very clearly which path was the right one.

In the rich countries of the North, neoliberal austerity has for decades caused successive reductions in health budgets, with cuts especially in the number of qualified personnel available. Cuba, by contrast, has invested in the training of an ever-increasing number of health professionals. When the pandemic arrived, it was clear that Cuba already had the necessary personnel and resource allocation capacity to face such a situation. In the wealthy countries of the North, by contrast, the lack of personnel and public infrastructure was compounded by an inability to take the right measures when these conflicted with established private interests.

Consequently, for the first time, Cuba was asked to bring its aid to some rich and developed Northern countries, such as Italy. Cuban doctors and other health professionals also took their aid to Andorra and to France’s ultra-marine Caribbean departments of Martinique and Guadeloupe. One cannot imagine a greater demonstration of the bankruptcy of the neoliberal model.

The Cuban Revolution, from its very beginning and despite all the material difficulties faced by the new government, did everything possible to help other countries. In 1963, only four years after the Revolution, still struggling with enormous internal problems, Cuba sent its first medical aid mission to Algeria, a nation devastated after decades of a bloody war of independence against France. In 1966, with the help of 200,000 doses of polio vaccine donated by the Soviet Union, Cuba and its medical personnel, in collaboration with the government of Congo, coordinated the vaccination of more than 61,000 children in what was the first mass vaccination campaign in Africa. To date, Cuba has sent some 124,000 health professionals to provide medical care in more than 154 countries.

Besides this impressive aid brought by its own medical personnel to various parts of the world, another important contribution of Cuba is the training of health professionals, mainly from poor countries, at its Escuela Latino Americana de Medicina (ELAM – Latin American School of Medicine). Founded in 1999, ELAM trains students according to the Cuban model of Medicina General Integral (MGI – General Integral Medicine), focusing mainly on public health and primary care, with a holistic approach to understanding health, including disciplines such as biology, sociology, and politics. ELAM’s foreign students have all expenses paid by the Cuban state, except for airfare. By 2020, ELAM had graduated 30,000 new doctors from over 100 countries, mainly from Africa but including from the poorest areas of the United States. Many of these students would have no chance of studying medicine in their home countries, and upon their return provide an invaluable and sometimes previously unavailable service to their fellow citizens, including, now, care related to the pandemic. According to ELAM, there are about 52,000 health professionals from Cuba working in 92 countries, which means that Cuba has more doctors working abroad than all the health professional contributions of the G-8 countries combined.

Owing to their commitment to the health of people, especially the poorest and most disadvantaged, and not to a privatized health system in which profit determines where and how to allocate resources, Cuban doctors are frequent targets of attacks from the far right in the countries where they work. In Brazil, following the coup d’état against elected president Dilma Rousseff and the illegal ascension to power of Jair Bolsonaro, Cuban doctors had to leave the country. The same occurred in Bolivia after the coup against President Evo Morales and in Honduras after the coup against President Zelaya. In all these cases, it was the poor who suffered the most, for Cuban medical professionals were the only ones providing care previously unavailable to them. In 1979 Cuba sent a medical mission to Grenada, and by 1982 this country saw a 25% reduction in its infant mortality rate, thanks mainly to the work done by Cuban professionals. But the United States invaded Grenada in 1983, and the Cuban health workers were expelled.

Regarding the pandemic of COVID-19, however, the example that perhaps best reveals the disastrous consequences that the combined effect of sending away the Cuban doctors and imposed structural readjustments can cause in a country is the case of Ecuador. Following the election of President Lenin Moreno in 2017, the Cuban health professionals working in this country with the support of the previous President Rafael Correa had to leave, and the International Monetary Fund recommended a 36% cut in the health budget, a measure adopted by President Moreno. These two actions left the country with virtually no health care system, hence no defense in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, the city of Guayaquil alone, Ecuador’s largest, with about 2,700 million inhabitants, had an estimated 7,600 deaths due to the pandemic, a number more than 25 times higher than that of all of Cuba.

The medical brigades and ELAM have so far been Cuba’s two greatest contributions in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. But another extremely important one is on the way: the Sovereign II vaccine, produced by the Finlay Vaccine Institute in Havana. Cuba hopes to immunize its entire population with its own vaccine later this year. Once again, Cuba’s socialist approach to vaccine production differs radically from that adopted by the world’s capitalist nations. The result of Cuba’s international experience, accumulated through its many missions conducted in various parts of the world, the Cuban vaccine is a hope for the poor nations since, again, Cuba’s international solidarity can be counted on. According to an article by W. T. Whitney, Jr:

“100 million doses of Sovereign II are being prepared, enough to immunize all 11 million Cubans, beginning in March or April. The 70 million remaining doses will go to Vietnam, Iran, Pakistan, India, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua. Sovereign II ‘will be the vaccine of ALBA’ explained Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, referring to the solidarity alliance established in 2004 by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Cuba’s Fidel Castro.”

The article’s author added:

“‘Cuba’s strategy in commercializing the vaccine represents a combination of what’s good for humankind and the impact on world health. We are not a multinational where a financial objective comes first,’ says Vicente Vérez Bencomo, director of Cuba’s Finlay Vaccine Institute. Income generated by vaccine sales abroad will pay for health care, education, and pensions in Cuba, just as is the case with exports of medical services and medicines.”

In contrast to the Cuban approach, the author further wrote:

“According to forbes.com in November 2020, ‘If Moderna’s [vaccine] can get FDA approval and can make enough doses, its top line could be nearly $35 billion higher … than … in the last 12 months.” Another report suggests that, ‘The companies (Pfizer and Moderna) stand to earn billions of dollars in profits from their COVID vaccines this year [and] there will be more profits in later years.’ The companies ‘claim the rights to vast amounts of intellectual property’.

“With corporations in charge, distribution of Covid-19 vaccines is skewed. As of January 27, ‘some 66.83 million doses have been sent out, of which 93 percent were supplied to only 15 countries.’ In Latin America, only Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and Chile have secured purchase contracts adequate for immunizing entire populations. The companies’ contracts with African nations allow for immunization of only 30 percent of Africans in 2021. Meaningful immunization has yet to begin there.

“The wealth divide determines distribution. Epidemiologists at Duke University report that, ‘While high-income countries represent only 16% of the world’s population, they currently hold 60% of the vaccines for COVID-19 that have been purchased so far.’ Cuban journalist Randy Alonso reports that only ‘27 percent of the total population of low and middle-income countries can be vaccinated this year’.”

Since its revolution, Cuba has been under uninterrupted attack by the Empire and its accomplices.

Economic sanctions and blockades make its population suffer and harm considerably Cuba’s capacity to keep doing the international work. Even so, this small nation, always so stubborn and generous continues to be a source of hope for the world. Above all, Cuba points the way forward, with great firmness, detachment, courage, and an inexhaustible joy.

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The world has been fixated for months on novel-coronavirus PCR testing, contact tracing and vaccination.

Meanwhile, another major part of the Covid biomedical complex has received far less attention: the use of antibodies for detecting, diagnosing and treating infection with the novel coronavirus.

Hundreds of antibodies have been approved for these purposes since January 2020. And hundreds more are poised to start being marketed soon.

This is part of the biomedical gold rush: by last summer already, antibodies were on track to become the most lucrative medical product, with global revenue projected to reach nearly half a trillion dollars by 2024. Profit margins in the range of 67% aren’t uncommon.

Pharma giants such as AstraZeneca, Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline and Eli Lilly are among the companies grabbing the largest chunks of the novel-coronavirus-antibody market. And some of the most muscular government agencies, including Anthony Fauci’s US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the US’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, are part of the action (see, for example, the second-last section of this article, on antibodies used to treat Covid).

Virtually every study and piece of marketing material related to Covid is premised on scientists having positively and correctly identified the presence of the novel coronavirus (also known as SARS-CoV-2) in the material they’re working with.

The job of that identification is usually given to antibodies that are said to bind to the novel coronavirus. The assumption is these antibodies are able to pick out the virus and only the virus from among every other organism and substance surrounding it.

Unfortunately it turns out that the antibodies rarely (if ever) do that. This is because of, among other things, inadequate verification of the antibodies’ accuracy in targeting the virus by the companies that manufacture and sell them. And there’s even less verification by government regulators.

Let’s take a 30,000-foot tour of a couple of the main features of the antibody-industry landscape, which is awash in complexity and cash.

Can Antibodies be Created That Only Bind to One Type of Virus or Another?

Antibodies are tiny, finely-tuned, parts of our immune system. One of their main functions is to seek out viruses and bacteria that may have the potential to cause disease. Antibodies bind to and neutralize these microbes so they can’t multiply and spread.

Humans and our ancestors have been making antibodies in our bodies to fend off infections for millions of years. Then a few decades ago companies got involved in the discovery and manipulation of antibodies, partnering with university labs.

There are two main categories of antibodies. One is ‘polyclonal’ antibodies. These are garden-variety antibodies that bind to a variety of different substances and/or organisms.

The other is monoclonal antibodies. As the name implies, cloning is involved in their creation. First an antibody that is specific to a particular amino-acid sequence (amino acids are the building blocks of proteins) of interest – for example, one from a protein on the surface of a virus or bacterium — is identified. Then the immune-system cell which produced that antibody is ‘cloned’ in the lab. As a result, each set of monoclonal antibodies binds to that particular amino-acid sequence.

I emailed one of the English-speaking world’s leading authorities on monoclonal antibodies, Harvard Medical School professor Clifford Saper, to get clarity on this. I asked him if it’s true that, as most in the antibody-commercializing arena claim, a monoclonal antibody can be created that’s specific for (that is, binds to) just one type of virus or just one other type of organism.

Saper replied [bolding and italics added by me for emphasis]:

“No, there is no such thing as a monoclonal antibody that, because it is monoclonal, recognizes only one protein or only one virus. It will bind to any protein having the same (or a very similar) sequence.”

The implication of Saper’s statement is that any attempt to use a monoclonal antibody to verify the presence of the novel coronavirus will yield a large rate of false-positive results. That is, they will indicate that the novel coronavirus is detected when in fact it hasn’t been. That’s because there’s a high probability that the monoclonal antibody is binding to something else besides the virus (this is known as ‘cross-reacting’).

(I recommend this review paper by Saper, and this one and this one co-authored by Yale pathology professor David Rimm, to anyone wishing to learn about antibody validation.)

And in fact, the vast majority of antibodies and monoclonal antibodies marketed as being specific for the novel coronavirus were developed years ago for detecting SARS-CoV-1. They were then simply repurposed for identifying SARS-CoV-2 — with very few if any checks for whether they also cross-react to other organisms or substances.

I sought confirmation of this repurposing from Zhen Lu. She’s the North American marketing manager for Sino Biological, a Beijing-headquartered company that develops and sells, among other things, hundreds of antibodies. Lu replied to me via email, “Yes, antibodies are repuposed [sic].”

I also checked and received confirmation from Pratiek Matkar, a senior staffer from BenchSci, an antibody-database company. And to see for myself, I logged into the BenchSci database (Matkar granted me a guest account), selected all antibodies for the novel coronavirus, and looked to see which organisms had been used in cross-reactivity tests for them. SARS-CoV-1 was the only one that came up in this check.

This all explains something I observed last week: Sino Biological had just changed the content of its home page for the section of their website on antibodies against SARS-CoV-2. The page now announces that they’ve introduced new “matched antibody pairs” that work better at finding the virus. The pair consists of a “capture antibody” and a “detection antibody.”

And they claim these pairs are more accurate at finding the novel coronavirus: that they “have high specificity without cross-reactivity with MERS-CoV, [or with the common human coronaviruses] 229E, NL63, HKU1, [and] OC43.”

The only way I can interpret that is they know the antibodies they’ve been marketing for months as being specific for the novel coronavirus bind to other things, such as common human coronaviruses. 

How Are Antibodies Harnessed in Tests for the Novel Coronavirus?

One of the main types of tests for the virus contains antibodies that are ostensibly specific for the novel coronavirus. The way they’re designed to work is that if the virus is present in a blood sample the antibodies bind to it and, as a result, the test gives a positive signal.

The other type of test contains sequences of protein from the novel coronavirus; if antibodies to the virus are present in a blood sample, they bind to the protein sequences and produce a positive result.

The manufacturers are supposed to conduct accuracy checks of their test kits before they put them on the market. These checks largely consist of estimation of the rates of false positives and false negatives (the latter is a negative result when the antibody or protein of interest is contained in the sample being tested by the kit).

However, companies do this cursory accuracy check with only very few samples of a small number of viruses — and rarely on bacteria or any other of the millions of biological substances that can be present in the blood.

Despite this very inadequate validation and the strong incentive for the companies to make their products look good, as documented last May by David Crowe, the manufacturers often record a significant rate of false positives. The false positives are to everything from West Nile virus to various types of human coronaviruses.

Usually the companies and governments wave that off as insignificant. Occasionally though, the test kits are so bad that they’re taken off the market.

For example, an antibody-testing kit sold by a company called Chembio Diagnostics was launched on March 31, 2020. It was almost immediately granted Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). An EUA allows companies to rush products onto the market with very minimal oversight. Brazil and the European Union also gave the nod for the Chembio test to be sold in their jurisdictions in April and May 2020, respectively.

Then in June 2020 the FDA pulled it off the market. The agency said ”this test generates a higher than expected rate of false results.” (Note that the top table on page 13 of the product insert for that “revoked” Chembio test indicates it cross-reacts to the human coronavirus 229E.)

But in November 2020 the Chembio antibody test again was approved for use in Brazil. And on January 14, 2021, the test got the nod in the European Union, the UK and Ireland.

Is it identical to the rest that was so inaccurate it was pulled off the market last June? It’s hard to tell. There is no product insert for it that I could find. In fact there’s very little information about it on the webpage for the test; you have to request the information. I submitted a request on Jan. 23 and haven’t received it yet.

Two of the heads of the FDA branch that approves testing devices penned a February 18, 2021, New England Journal of Medicine article. In it, the pair admitted that the FDA’s EUAs allowed too-loose approvals for serology tests.

They indicated the FDA has tightened its criteria for approval of these tests. They also point to efforts by other government agencies to evaluate serology tests. But the pair don’t say a word about the need to move toward objective, thorough test validation. They also are mute on the fact that EUAs are still being issued.

(Also note that the FDA and Health Canada listings of the 65 serology tests approved to date in the US and 19 approved to date in Canada continue to give the sensitivity [correct identification of positive samples] of the tests by ‘positive percent agreement’ and specificity [correct identification of negative samples] by ‘negative percent agreement.’ These are relative measures of accuracy – that is, compared to other tests – rather than objective/absolute accuracy, and therefore are poor facsimiles of accuracy.)

One of the many major figures in the Covid-biomedical complex who are priming the pump of the antibody pipeline is Ian Lipkin. He’s director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University in New York. Lipkin is involved at high levels in many global organizations including the World Health Organization and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as well in pharmaceutical companies. (And he is quoted in a ‘fact-check’ of a July 2020 article I co-authored with Patrick Corbett titled, “No one has died from the coronavirus.” Lipkin states, among other things, in the fact-check piece that “Conspiracy theorists are not persuaded by data.”)

Lipkin co-authored a Feb. 12, 2021, paper in which he and his team claimed to have identified, using a new ‘peptide-microarray’ technology they invented, 29 amino-acid sequences unique to the novel coronavirus. They assert that antibodies specific to the sequences could be created – and that these in turn could be harnessed “to facilitate diagnostics, epidemiology, and vaccinology” for Covid. (The only conflict Lipkin and some of his co-authors disclose in the ‘competing interests’ paragraph at the end of article is that they invented the peptide-microarray technology described in the article.)

Do Antibodies Used to Treat Covid Fare Any Better?

Antibodies are also being marketed to treat Covid. Some are sold singly (known as ‘monotherapy’) and others in pairs. They are deemed to confer ‘passive immunity.’

Among the most-reported-on set of antibodies for treating Covid is the Regeneron monoclonal antibodies casirivimab and imdevimab. This pair reportedly was used in October 2020 to treat then-U.S. President Donald Trump. The combo subsequently was granted an EUA by the FDA on November 21, 2020. It also is being considered for approval by Health Canada.

I’d like to focus on a somewhat lesser-known monoclonal antibody called bamlanivumab. It’s being used both singly and as one half of a pair for treatment of symptomatic Covid patients early in the course of their infection. The antibody was discovered, and clinical study of it started, by the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (which is headed by Anthony Fauci) and a Vancouver, British Columbia-based company called AbCellera Diagnostics. The antibody is being manufactured and sold by Eli Lilly. It costs more than $1,200 a vial.

AbCellera is developing a significant pipeline of other antibodies. Its capabilities for this were developed over the past two-plus years as part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Pandemic Prevention Platform program.

(AbCellera also has received hundreds of millions of dollars from the Canadian government, including for building an antibody-manufacturing plant. And Peter Thiel, who co-founded both PayPal and Palantir, is a board member. So is John Montalbano, who’s also on the board of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and until 2015 was CEO of RBC [Royal Bank of Canada] Global Asset Management. This and significant positive media coverage helped propel the company to the biggest Canadian-biotech-company Initial Public Offering to date, on Dec. 11, 2020.)

Bamlanivumab was given an EUA by the FDA on November 9, 2020, for treatment of mild to moderate Covid. And Health Canada gave the monotherapy an interim authorization on November 17. It’s not getting much traction in clinical practice so far in Canada, though, perhaps because of the less-than-stellar results from clinical trials (see below).

But this hasn’t deterred the Canadian and US federal governments, which combined have purchased close to half a million of these tests. For example, most recently, on February 26, the US government bought 100,000 vials.

The only study on bamlanivimab made public prior to the November 9 FDA approval was one posted October 1, 2020, on the website of the online-only journal bioRχiv. [My Feb. 3, 2021, and Feb. 11, 2021, articles — on the new variants and the associated modelling papers, respectively – noted that the journal and its sister publication medRχiv contain only non-peer-reviewed articles and were created by an organization headed by Mark Zuckerberg and his wife.]

The study used rhesus monkeys and provided very extensive details about how the antibody was discovered and checked for specificity to the novel coronavirus. The researchers concluded that the antibody – at that time known as LY-CovV555 — has “potent neutralizing activity” against SARS-CoV-2.

On January 14 I emailed the lead author of that paper, Bryan Jones. He’s a researcher in Lilly’s Biotechnology Research Program. I asked Jones where in their paper is the proof the antibody is specific to SARS-CoV-2 (and therefore isn’t binding to something else instead of, or in addition to, the novel coronavirus).

He responded promptly, as follows [bolding added by me for emphasis]: “While we did determine that LY-CoV555 is specific to SARS-CoV-2 (and doesn’t bind to the spike protein of SARS-CoV), that is not specified or detailed in any of the figures or tables [in the paper].”

Jones pointed me to several parts of the paper and supplemental material published with it that he said show, via indirect extrapolation, that the antibody is specific for the novel coronavirus.

That’s not exactly convincing.

Then on December 22 a study in the New England Journal of Medicine gave a thumbs-down to the usefulness of bamlanivimab in people hospitalized after receiving a Covid diagnosis. The paper noted that in late October the study was stopped because the antibody didn’t help the patients any more than did placebo.

But this didn’t deter Lilly.

On January 21, 2021, the company issued a news release about a study of bamlanivumab in residents and staff of nursing homes. They claimed their research showed that the antibody “significantly reduced the risk of contracting symptomatic COVID-19.”

However, they didn’t back this up with much information. The study hasn’t been published in a journal or presented at a scientific/medical meeting. And there’s no word on when it will be.

Despite that, on the same morning the release was sent out by Lilly, glowing articles appeared in major media outlets stating that the study showed bamlanivumab appears to significantly reduce Covid symptoms in the frail elderly.

For example a Bloomberg article was posted at 8 a.m. on Jan. 21 with the headline, “Eli Lilly Antibody Cuts Covid-19 Risk Up to 80% in Nursing Home Study.” The article was carried in many other media outlets such as the Globe & Mail.

The article quoted Lilly’s Chief Scientific Officer Daniel Skovronsky as saying, “This is an urgent situation. Where there’s an outbreak in nursing homes and people haven’t yet received the vaccine, this could be a potential way to protect them before they get it.”

And January 21 New York Times piece by senior science journalist Gina Kolata quotes a vaccine expert at Boston Children’s Hospital, Ofer Levy, who wasn’t one of the scientists involved in the study, as saying, “I see only positives here. This is a win.”

Kolata also reported that Lilly plans to ask the FDA for an EUA for bamlanivimab for prevention of Covid in the frail elderly, focusing on those in nursing homes and long-term-care homes.

In parallel, Lilly is pivoting to using bamlanivumab in combination with another monoclonal antibody called etesevimab. A study on this combination in people with mild or moderate Covid was published on January 21, 2021. The results indicate it doesn’t reduce symptoms, but only lowers the viral load of people.

This didn’t deter Lilly either; it’s spinning this in the media as a very positive result. And so is the FDA: on February 9 the agency issued an EUA for the combination of the two antibodies for treating mild or moderate COVID.

Then the next twist in the plot happened, on February 16: a paper published that day in bioRχiv indicated that bamlanivumab doesn’t neutralize the South African and Brazilian variants of the novel coronavirus.

I’ll Leave the Last Words to Scott Adams

Dilbert-cartoon creator Scott Adams makes this observation on page 13 of his book Loserthink:

“One thing I can say with complete certainty is that it is a bad idea to trust the majority of experts in any domain in which both complexity and large amounts of money are involved.”

This perfectly describes the situation with antibodies for the novel coronavirus.

Buyer beware, follow the money, and stay tuned.

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After obtaining an MSc in molecular biology from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Calgary, Rosemary Frei became a freelance writer. For the next 22 years she was a medical writer and journalist. She pivoted again in early 2016 to full-time, independent activism and investigative journalism. Her website is RosemaryFrei.ca.

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The new leadership of the United States is attempting to position itself as the strongman in the Middle East. Or at least make it appear so.

Following the Biden Administration’s first strike on pro-Iranian groups on or near the Syrian-Iraq border, it showed that it can bite. What was left is to show that nothing can hurt it. In recent months, its bases have been under rocket fire. Its convoys have been targeted by IED attacks numerous times. None of these, however, resulted in any significant injuries or deaths.

As such, Washington needs to look further back and one thing stands out – it happened more than a year ago.

The time has come to correct the blemish that is the Iranian ballistic missile strike on the Ain al-Asad base in Iraq in 2020, which happened in response to the US assassination of Iranian Brigadier General Qassem Soleimani.

The strike took place on January 8th, and initially official reports said that it had caused close to no damage. Then it turned out that helicopters had been almost entirely destroyed, and that buildings had been razed. Finally, in the following weeks and months, dozens of soldiers turned out to have had “traumatic brain injuries”.

What really happened? US TV channel CBS made a special documentary on the strikes and released it on March 1st, 2021. The recollection is based on the Pentagon’s version of events and the timeline that the US Defense officials have provided.

On January 8th, hours before the strike all the soldiers knew it was coming and hid to safety. The flights of the Iranian missiles were all tracked by US Central Command. More than 50 aviation units and 1,000 people were evacuated. 16 missiles were launched from 3 different locations, five of which missed. A video was released, taken by an UAV, showing that the base “didn’t receive any significant damage”. All the grainy footage showed was finding an excuse and attempting to change the facts one year later.

The United States is attempting to present it in a way that shows its one strike along the Syrian-Iraqi border as a significant one, while downplaying the most notable strike on its own positions in the last year.

The Biden administration wants to present itself as the strong man, and promises to send more troops to the region. Trump’s troop withdrawal and limited military involvement approaches have been abandoned.

In reality, its convoys are under constant fire in Iraq and its positions are regularly targeted. And they are targeted in such a precise manner, that no human life is taken, except a few exceptions.

Who, exactly is Biden trying to impress?

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

Michel Chossudovsky

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

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-6-0

Year: 2015

Pages: 240 Pages

List Price: $22.95

Special Price: $15.00

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Covid related restrictions put in place since early 2020 caused infinitely more harm than any combination of major diseases.

What never should have been instituted by US, Western and other governments should end straightaway.

Lockdowns, quarantines, scam PCR tests, face masks that don’t protect and risk harm, socially destructive social distancing, and mass-jabbing with unapproved, experimental, hazardous drugs were ordered based on Big Lies and mass deception.

Texas and Mississippi took steps in the right direction — short of restoring normal life entirely.

On Tuesday, Texas Governor Gregg said the following:

“It is now time to open Texas 100%.”

Restrictions never should have been imposed in the first place.

Abbott: “(P)eople and businesses don’t need the state telling them how to operate” any longer.

Nor did they since seasonal flu was renamed covid as part of a state-sponsored mass deception campaign to get millions of Americans and others abroad to self-inflict harm on themselves.

Abbott said he’s rescinding “most of (his) earlier (covid related) executive orders.”

Starting March 10, “all businesses of any type are allowed to open 100%.”

His spokesperson confirmed that his action applies to all public activities, including sporting events, other forms of entertainment, dining, work places, and retail store shopping.

Mask-wearing in public is no longer required.

Abbott stopped short of exposing and ordering an end to hazardous to health mass-jabbing that doesn’t protect and risks irreversible harm or death when used as directed.

His order left it optional for businesses to stick with the mask-wearing mandate for employees and/or customers.

It lets them decide whether to operate at full or limited capacity.

After his announcement, the H-E-B grocery chain said customers no longer are required to wear face masks in its stores.

Under Abbott’s order, if hospitalizations from seasonal flu — now called covid — rise above 15% of capacity of facilities in any of the state’s 22 hospital regions for seven straight days, covid “mitigation strategies” may be judicially ordered in affected counties.

At the same time, his order prohibits jail time or other penalties for violators.

State universities are reviewing the new order before deciding whether to end restrictions.

North Texas University said in-person commencement this year will require masks and social distancing.

Rice University indicated no plan to end mask-wearing on campus.

Texas public schools may continue virtual learning over classroom instruction.

The latter is second class eduction that prevents students from interacting with each other and teachers — an important part of what education and learning are all about.

Abbott’s order calls for schools to follow “guidance issued by the Texas Education Agency.”

On Tuesday, the TEA said it’ll update its guidance this week.

Critics of Abbott’s order unjustifiably called it “extraordinarily dangerous…a death warrant for Texans…killing the people of Texas,” and other unacceptable fear-mongering claims.

Separately on Tuesday, Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves announced the following:

Lifting the state’s mask wearing mandate in public, he said he’s  getting out of the business of telling people what they can and cannot do.

“The reason the government is no longer telling you that is because of the actions we’ve taken over the last 12 months has gotten us to a point where our total hospitalizations today the second day of March 2021 is about where we were in late May” last year, he said, adding:

“This new order removes all of our county mask mandates and allows businesses to operate at full capacity without state-imposed rules or restrictions.”

“If businesses or individuals decide to take additional precautions, they are absolutely within their rights.”

According to State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs:

“Do stuff outdoors. Don’t group together indoors with a lot of folks.”

“There’s no way in heck I would go sit in a crowded bar right now indoors or out really. Please exercise caution right now.”

The order was effective on March 2 through at least end of month.

K-12 school still requires masks where social distancing isn’t possible.

K-12 extracurricular activities outdoors is limited to 50% of capacity and 25% of seating indoors.

Capacity for indoor bowl and arena seating was increased to 50%.

The above orders in Texas and Mississippi are steps in the right direction.

Other states loosening restrictions this week include Arkansas, Massachusetts, North Carolina and Virginia.

It’s good news but short of entirely normalizing activities as existed before seasonal flu was renamed covid last year.

Nor did new orders halt harmful to health mass-jabbing with experimental, hazardous drugs.

As expected, CDC director Rochelle Walensky said the following at a mass deception White House briefing:

“I am really worried about reports that more states are rolling back the exact public health measures we have recommended to protect people from” covid (sic).”

“At this level of cases with variants spreading, we stand to completely lose the hard earned ground we have gained (sic).”

The pro-Pharma, pro-mass-jabbing NYT and other establishment media expressed concern about loosened restrictions.

Washington Post editors said the following:

Texas Governor Abbott “is gambling with the health of his state and beyond (sic).”

His “decision is premature and reckless (sic).”

“(T)he result of opening too soon will be viral spread, and more suffering (sic).”

The above and similar fear-mongering is responsible for getting most Americans to falsely feel endangered by a killer virus.

The same one shows up annually in similar and/or new strains during flu season that lasts from around October to May.

Until 2020, it’s been unaccompanied by everything instituted over the past year, along with mass deception to manipulate people to feel endangered when there’s nothing to fear but fear itself.

According to Pharma-connected Anthony Fauci, it’s OK for small groups to gather as long as people together were inoculated for covid — instead of warning against the hazards of using unapproved, experimental drugs.

Since unacceptable federal, state, and local policies were instituted last year, unprecedented harm affected public health and welfare of most people.

As long as mass-jabbing for covid and other unacceptable policies remain in place, enormous harm will continue increasing exponentially.

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

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

My two Wall Street books are timely reading:

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

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

“Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity”

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

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

***

Just over two months into the new year, 2021 has already seen a flurry of public banking activity. Sixteen new bills to form publicly-owned banks or facilitate their formation were introduced in eight U.S. states in January and February. Two bills for a state-owned bank were introduced in New Mexico, two in Massachusetts, two in New York, one each in Oregon and Hawaii, and Washington State’s Public Bank Bill was re-introduced as a “Substitution.” Bills for city-owned banks were introduced in Philadelphia and San Francisco, and bills facilitating the formation of public banks or for a feasibility study were introduced in New York, Oregon (three bills), and Hawaii. 

In addition, California is expected to introduce a bill for a state-owned bank later this year, and New Jersey is moving forward with a strong commitment from its governor to implement one. At the federal level, three bills for public banking were also introduced last year: the National Infrastructure Bank Bill (HR 6422), a new Postal Banking Act (S 4614), and the Public Banking Act (HR 8721). (For details on all these bills, see the Public Banking Institute website here.)

As Oscar Abello wrote on NextCity.org in February, “2021 could be public banking’s watershed moment.… Legislators are starting to see public banks as a powerful potential tool to ensure a recovery that is more equitable than the last time.”

Why the Surge in Interest?

The devastation caused by nationwide Covid-19 lockdowns in 2020 has highlighted the inadequacies of the current financial system in serving the public, local businesses, and local governments. Nearly 10 million jobs were lost to the lockdowns, over 100,000 businesses closed permanently, and a quarter of the population remains unbanked or underbanked. Over 18 million people are receiving unemployment benefits, and moratoria on rent and home foreclosures are due to expire this spring.

Where was the Federal Reserve in all this? It poured out trillions of dollars in relief, but the funds did not trickle down to the real economy. They flooded up, dramatically increasing the wealth gap. By October 2020, the top 1% of the U.S. population held 30.4% of all household wealth, 15 times that of the bottom 50%, which held just 1.9% of all wealth.

State and local governments are also in dire straits due to the crisis. Their costs have shot up and their tax bases have shrunk. But the Fed’s “special purpose vehicles” were no help. The Municipal Liquidity Facility, ostensibly intended to relieve municipal debt burdens, lent at market interest rates plus a penalty, making borrowing at the facility so expensive that it went nearly unused; and it was discontinued in December.

The Fed’s emergency lending facilities were also of little help to local businesses. In a January 2021 Wall Street Journal article titled “Corporate Debt ‘Relief’ Is an Economic Dud,” Sheila Bair, former chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and Lawrence Goodman, president of the Center for Financial Stability, observed:

The creation of the corporate facilities last March marked the first time in history that the Fed would buy corporate debt… The purpose of the corporate facilities was to help companies access debt markets during the pandemic, making it possible to sustain operations and keep employees on payroll. Instead, the facilities resulted in a huge and unnecessary bailout of corporate debt issuers, underwriters and bondholders….This created a further unfair opportunity for large corporations to get even bigger by purchasing competitors with government-subsidized credit.

….This presents a double whammy for the young companies that have been hit hardest by the pandemic. They are the primary source of job creation and innovation, and squeezing them deprives our economy of the dynamism and creativity it needs to thrive.

In a September 2020 study for ACRE called “Cancel Wall Street,” Saqib Bhatti and Brittany Alston showed that U.S. state and local governments collectively pay $160 billion annually just in interest in the bond market, which is controlled by big private banks. For comparative purposes, $160 billion would be enough to help 13 million families avoid eviction by covering their annual rent; and $134 billion could make up the revenue shortfall suffered by every city and town in the U.S. due to the pandemic.

Half the cost of infrastructure generally consists of financing, doubling its cost to municipal governments. Local governments are extremely good credit risks; yet private, bank-affiliated rating agencies give them a lower credit score (raising their rates) than private corporations, which are 63 times more likely to default. States are not allowed to go bankrupt, and that is also true for cities in about half the states. State and local governments have a tax base to pay their debts and are not going anywhere, unlike bankrupt corporations, which simply disappear and leave their creditors holding the bag.

How Publicly-owned Banks Can Help 

Banks do not have the funding problems of local governments. In March 2020, the Federal Reserve reduced the interest rate at its discount window, encouraging all banks in good standing to borrow there at 0.25%. No stigma or strings were attached to this virtually free liquidity – no need to retain employees or to cut dividends, bonuses, or the interest rates charged to borrowers. Wall Street banks can borrow at a mere one-quarter of one percent while continuing to charge customers 15% or more on their credit cards.

Local governments extend credit to their communities through loan funds, but these “revolving funds” can lend only the capital they have. Depository banks, on the other hand, can leverage their capital, generating up to ten times their capital base in loans. For a local government with its own depository bank, that would mean up to ten times the credit to inject into the local economy, and ten times the profit to be funneled back into community needs. A public depository bank could also borrow at 0.25% from the Fed’s discount window.

North Dakota Leads the Way

What a state can achieve by forming its own bank has been demonstrated in North Dakota. There  the nation’s only state-owned bank was formed in 1919 when North Dakota farmers were losing their farms to big out-of-state banks. Unlike the Wall Street megabanks mandated to make as much money as possible for their shareholders, the Bank of North Dakota (BND) is mandated to serve the public interest. Yet it has had a stellar return on investment, outperforming even J.P. Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs. In its 2019 Annual Report, the BND reported its sixteenth consecutive year of record profits, with $169 million in income, just over $7 billion in assets, and a hefty return on investment of 18.6%.

The BND maximizes its profits and its ability to serve the community by eliminating profiteering middlemen. It has no private shareholders bent on short-term profits, no high-paid executives, no need to advertise for depositors or borrowers, and no need for multiple branches. It has a massive built-in deposit base, since the state’s revenues must be deposited in the BND by law. It does not compete with North Dakota’s local banks in the retail market but instead partners with them. The local bank services and retains the customer, while the BND helps as needed with capital and liquidity. Largely due to this amicable relationship, North Dakota has nearly six times as many local financial institutions per person as the country overall.

The BND has performed particularly well in economic crises. It helped pay the state’s teachers during the Great Depression, and sold foreclosed farmland back to farmers in the 1940s. It has also helped the state recover from a litany of natural disasters.

Its emergency capabilities were demonstrated in 1997, when record flooding and fires devastated Grand Forks, North Dakota. The town and its sister city, East Grand Forks on the Minnesota side of the Red River, lay in ruins. The response of the BND was immediate and comprehensive, demonstrating a financial flexibility and public generosity that no privately-owned bank could match. The BND quickly established nearly $70 million in credit lines and launched a disaster relief loan program; worked closely with federal agencies to gain forbearance on federally-backed home loans and student loans; and reduced interest rates on existing family farm and farm operating programs. The BND obtained funds at reduced rates from the Federal Home Loan Bank and passed the savings on to flood-affected borrowers. Grand Forks was quickly rebuilt and restored, losing only 3% of its population by 2000, compared to 17% in East Grand Forks on the other side of the river.

In the 2020 crisis, North Dakota shone again, leading the nation in getting funds into the hands of workers and small businesses. Unemployment benefits were distributed in North Dakota faster than in any other state, and small businesses secured more Payroll Protection Program funds per worker than in any other state. Jeff Stein, writing in May 2020 in The Washington Post, asked:

What’s their secret? Much credit goes to the century-old Bank of North Dakota, which — even before the PPP officially rolled out — coordinated and educated local bankers in weekly conference calls and flurries of calls and emails.

According Eric Hardmeyer, BND’s president and chief executive, BND connected the state’s small bankers with politicians and U.S. Small Business Administration officials and even bought some of their PPP loans to help spread out the cost and risk….

BND has already rolled out two local successor programs to the PPP, intended to help businesses restart and rebuild. It has also offered deferments on its $1.1 billion portfolio of student loans.

Public Banks Excel Globally in Crises

Publicly-owned banks around the world have responded quickly and efficiently to crises. As of mid-2020, public banks worldwide held nearly $49 trillion in combined assets; and including other public financial institutions, the figure reached nearly $82 trillion. In a 2020 compendium of cases studies titled Public Banks and Covid 19: Combatting the Pandemic with Public Finance, the editors write:

Five overarching and promising lessons stand out: public banks have the potential to respond rapidly; to fulfill their public purpose mandates; to act boldly; to mobilize their existing institutional capacity; and to build on ‘public-public’ solidarity. In short, public banks are helping us navigate the tidal wave of Covid-19 at the same time as private lenders are turning away….

Public banks have crafted unprecedented responses to allow micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), large businesses, public entities, governing authorities and households time to breathe, time to adjust and time to overcome the worst of the crisis. Typically, this meant offering liquidity with generously reduced rates of interest, preferential repayment terms and eased conditions of repayment. For the most vulnerable in society, public banks offered non-repayable grants.

The editors conclude that public banks offer a path toward democratization (giving society a meaningful say in how financial resources are used) and definancialization (moving away from speculative predatory investment practices toward financing that grows the real economy). For local governments, public banks offer a path to escape monopoly control by giant private financial institutions over public policies.

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This article was first posted on ScheerPost. 

Ellen Brown is an attorney, chair of the Public Banking Institute, and author of thirteen books including Web of Debt, The Public Bank Solution, and Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age.  She also co-hosts a radio program on PRN.FM called “It’s Our Money.” Her 300+ blog articles are posted at EllenBrown.com. 

She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is CC BY 3.0

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Before trekking through open Himalayan valleys, tourists might stroll along Thamel, Kathmandu’s congested quarter of hiker hostels, bakeries and cafes. They’d pass a landscape studded with bookstores, and perhaps pause to flip through glossy picture books and Tibet-wisdom manuals, lingering to inspect storybooks or development reports stacked on higher shelves. On exiting, they’ll pass a rack of 3 or 4 English language dailies.

Only visitors really curious about the how the nation’s citizens think and feel might search out a volume of poetry or a novel by a local writer. If so, they’ll find a surprising number of Nepalis choosing to pen their experiences, their struggles and their dreams in English. 

Nepali prose and poetry in English is of course far less than exists in Nepali language which on its part has grown enormously in recent years. But there’s a correlation between literature in the two languages going back to Nepal’s most widely read and revered poet, Laxmi Prasad Devkota (1909-1959). Although Devkota did not live beyond 50, he penned no fewer than 24 volumes of essays and poetry, including epic poems. His work is recited and discussed by Nepalis young and old today.

Devkota was highly proficient in English as well as learned in Sanskrit and Nepali. Kumari Lama, Assistant Professor of English, Tribhuvan University and a literary critic, speaks fondly of her country’s supreme literary figure: “He was my introduction to English literature; I decided to pursue this field of study as a result of that exposure.”Besides translating other Nepali authors and rendering Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ into Nepali, Devkota composed in English, e.g., ‘Bapu and other sonnets’ in tribute to Mahatma Gandhi.

Devkota was writing and translating seventy-five years ago. Nepal was barely connected to the English-speaking world then, and English was exclusive to privately tutored children of royalty and high officials.

Lecturer, translator and poet Mahesh Paudyal also attributes to Devkota his introduction to English literature. “I read his English essays and poems in my first university course in non-Nepali literature.”

Today we find a new generation of Nepali writers among the ranks of international authors of modern English literature. Kumari Lama highlights Manjushree Thapa and Samrat Upadhyay for pushing the boundaries of Nepali creativity into English. With stories set within Nepal and in the diaspora, these authors attract an enthusiastic Nepali following while also winning a solid western readership. They are joined by Peter Karthak, Shushma Joshi, Sangeeta Rajamajhi, Abhi Subedi, Niranjan Kumar, and Narayan Wangle whose Palpasa Café is translated into no less than 12 languages. Now established in the international literary community their writings offer a compassionate, personalized experience of Nepal which is simply absent in ethnographies, touristic journals and development studies of the country.

Perhaps from Devkota’s inspiration, we find Nepali-language literature and English literature by Nepalis still interconnected. Thapa, Nepal’s most widely published author in English, is also engaged in translations from Nepali to English, e.g. This Country is Yours, a collection of 49 authors.

Online literary platforms feature Nepalis composing in English alongside translations of stories, poems and essays penned in Nepali. Publiknama is one; another is TheGorkhaTimes, recently launched by Paudyal and colleagues. Executive editor Himanshu Kunwar notes that readers access TGT from more than 100 nations.

La.lit literary magazine is a handsome production by Nepalis in the U.K. which features creative writing (including translations) by Nepalis across the world.

Nepal itself hosts venues like Himalayan Readers Corner in Pokhara and Martin Chautari in Kathmandu. The Open Institute directed by writer Muna Gurung and Aahwaan with a focus on women also sponsor literary discussions and workshops in both languages.

Considering the strong Indian presence in Nepal through film and other media, one might have expected India’s celebrated English-language authors to have impacted Nepal in this field. While this may have been so earlier, Ms. Lama and Mr. Paudyal minimize Indian influence today.

Kumari Lama points to domestic political factors behind the groundswell in literature within Nepal. “First, when democracy took hold in 2008, we had an expanded opportunity for free and open dialogue. Second, Nepal’s many indigenous minorities eagerly began writing about their aspirations and history which were earlier suppressed or altogether banned.” Paudyal agrees the nationalist movement that ushered in free speech was a great impetus to creative writing.

Global factors and the internet are impacting Nepal too. “We communicate with sister Asian cultures through English; it’s our common medium with Bangladesh, China, Korea, Japan, and Malaysia. That includes literature,” explains Lama.

As a professor of literature, Lama sees fewer students enrolled in university English Literature programs, whereas more Nepalis seek to master English for economic reasons. Whether they work inside Nepal or have ambitions to study overseas, being able to converse in English is essential.

And if the millions of jobless in search of work in the Arab states or Malaysia know no English when they set out, many return to Nepal with a conversational knowledge of the language.

To appreciate just how embedded and promising English literature in Nepal is today, we can consult Manjushree Thapa’s A Translation Manual: To Bring English Literature to Nepali Readers published in 2002 and Paudyal’s 2017 survey Nepali Literature in English. Finally, Kumari Lama’s 2017 review What they are writing in English offers an excellent comparative critique of authors (and others) discussed above.

Or on your next Himalayan trip, add a Nepali novel to your souvenirs.

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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. 

All images in this article are from the author

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***

March 2, 2021 was the five year anniversary of the murder of Berta Cáceres, who opposed the Agua Zarca dam in Honduras.  That date was less than one month after the deaths of dozens of people from Tehri Dam disaster in Uttarakhand, India.  The two stories together tell us far more about consequences of the insatiable greed of capitalism for more energy than either narrative does by itself.

In addition to being sacred to the indigenous Lenca people of Honduras, the Gualcarque River is a primary source of water for them to grow their food and harvest medicinal plants.  Dams can flood fertile plains and deprive communities of water for livestock and crops.  The Lenca knew what could happen if the company Desarrollos Energéticos SA (DESA) were to build the Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam on the Gualcarque.  As Nina Lakhani describes in Who Killed Berta Cáceres?, the La Aurora Dam, which started generating electricity in 2012 “left four miles of the El Zapotal River bone dry and the surrounding forest bare.”

In 2015, Cáceres won the Goldman Environmental Prize for organizing opposition to the Agua Zarca.  She had been a co-founder of the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH).  The following year, thousands of Lenca marched to the capital Tegucigalpa demanding schools, clinics, roads and protection of ancestral lands.  Indigenous groups uniting with them included Maya, Chorti, Misquitu, Tolupan, Tawahka and Pech.  Lakhani describes that “From the north coast came the colorfully dressed, drumming Garifunas: Afro-Hondurans who descend from West and Central African, Caribbean, European and Arawak people exiled to Central America by the British after a slave revolt in the late eighteenth century.”

A Garifuna leader, Miriam Miranda remembered that Berta stopped to sketch anti-imperialist murals on the US airbase in Palmerola.  As Berta and Miranda became close during the more than two decades of joint work Berta began to identify with the Garifuna.  She loved going with Miranda to the town of Vallecito to join Garifuna rituals with drums, smoke and dancing while enjoying herb-infused liquor.

She knew that the Garifuna suffered landgrabs parallel to rivergrabs the Lencas experienced.  Lakhani relates how the government ignored the ancestral land claims of the Garifuna as it gave land to “settlers” who sold them to palm oil magnates.  In less than a decade lands held by Garifuna communities plummeted from 200,000 to 400 hectares.

Similarly, in the Bajo Aguán region the government allowed construction of a resort on ancient Garifuna burial sites and ancestral lands. The community was not consulted prior to the landgrab and 150 people died resisting it.

Manufacturing impressions

The dam-building elite had a thorn in its side that threatened the megaprojects.  Due in no small part to 1995 efforts of Berta’s mother Doña Austra, Honduras had signed onto the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention of the International Labor Organization (known as ILO 169).  It guarantees the right of indigenous communities to have “free, prior and informed consultations” for any development affecting their land, culture or way of life.

The first tactic of the elite for getting around this obstacle was to promise enormous benefits such as building roads and schools.  Or else, they claimed that the project would bring electricity for homes, a health clinic, an ambulance, and a flood of jobs.  By the time the project was completed, few or no benefits had materialized.  Who Killed Berta Cáceres? documents what happened in communities that did not fall for empty promises.  For the Honduran Los Encimos dam, the power brokers bused in hundreds of people from neighboring El Salvador to sign a decree favoring the project.  Following an October 2011 town hall meeting when residents voted 401 to 7 against the Agua Zarca dam, the mayor curried favor of the elite by issuing a permit for it two months later.

Representatives of the company owning the future dam, DESA, repeated the absurd claim that they only bought land from willing sellers.  Dam proponents then denounced Berta’s COPINH organization as causing the division.  In other words, the developers were skilled at shouting that project opponents were doing what they, the dam pushers, were in fact doing.  Outside observers would then have difficulty distinguishing fact from fiction.  If these impression management tricks failed to overcome Earth defenders, the method of threats and violence remained.

Threats and hit lists

Berta was rare as she “could understand and analyze local struggles in a global context and had the capacity to unite different movements, urban and rural, teachers and campesinos, indigenous groups and mestizos.”  More than any other reason, this meant that Berta would be targeted by the cabal of business owners, government heads, military brass and foreign investors.

Berta had told Lakhani that “Seventy million people were killed across the continent for our natural resources.”  When a researcher for the Goldman prize committee visited Berta in Tegucigalpa, she asked him what would happen if she died before receiving the prize money, a question no recipient had asked before.  She had been warned not to stay in the same hotel two nights in a row.

Nina Lakhani documents how widespread and intensely grisley the murders in Honduras were.  “Olvin Gustavo García Mejía was widely feared by COPINH.”  He boasted of having a personal hit list with Berta’s name on it.  In March 2015, Olvin used his machete to chop off the fingers of a dam opponent.

Even more revealing were eyewitness reports to Lakhani from First Sergeant Rodrigo Cruz who saw a military hit list which included Berta.  Cruz had survived a specialist training so grueling that only 8 of 200 completed it. The graduation ceremony included killing a dog, eating the raw meat, and getting a hug from the commander.

On one mission Cruz reported being “ordered to shovel decomposing human remains into sacks which they took to an isolated forest reserve, doused them in diesel, petrol and rubbish and burned.”  At Corocito he saw “torture instruments, chains, hammers and nails, no people, but fresh clots of blood.”  During his Trujillo mission “naval colleagues handed over plastic bags containing human remains.  Later that night they tossed them into a river heaving with crocodiles.”  After seeing Berta’s name on a hit list belonging to his lieutenant, Cruz was sent on an extensive leave.  When he heard that Berta was dead, he fled from Honduras fearing that he himself would be murdered.

The Honduran elite discovered another weapon for its arsenal against environmental defenders: criminalization.  During a 2020 interview with InSight Crime, Lakhani reported a pattern suggestively similar to that practiced in the US and many other countries: “People are still being killed but really the main weapon being used currently is criminalization.  There’s so much fear involved, and it can really break up and silence a movement. All of your energy and resources go to trying to stay out of prison.”

2009 coup as a game changer

On January 27, 2006 Manuel Zelaya was inaugurated as president of Honduras as an advocate of modest reforms such as such as reforestation, small business assistance, reduction of fossil fuels and an end to open pit mining.  But even these baby steps were too much for the country’s increasingly corrupt elites, who had the military march him out of his home in pajamas and into exile on June 28, 2009.  As bad as the situation was before 2009, the coup intensified the violence.

Though Barack Obama acknowledged that the coup was a coup, his underling Hillary Clinton quickly altered the official rhetoric, claiming that it was not a coup.  She explained “in her 2014 memoir, Hard Choices, the US ensured that elections could take place before the ousted president, Manuel Zelaya, was restored to office.”  This helped the coup ensure that Zelaya and his tiny improvements would not show their face again.

The economic consequences of the coup were an avalanche of projects attacking the country’s land, water, air and indigenous cultures.  The congress rushed to approve them without studies or oversight required by Honduran law.  During the next eight years, almost 200 mining projects received a nod.  Lakhani records how, during one late night session in September 2010 congressional president Juan Orlando Hernández “sanctioned 40 hydroelectric dams without debate, consultation or adequate environmental impact studies.”  John Perry wrote in CounterPunch that “Cáceres received a leaked list of rivers, including the Gualcarque, that were to be secretly ‘sold off’ to produce hydroelectricity. The Honduran congress went on to approve dozens of such projects without any consultation with affected communities. Berta’s campaign to defend the rivers began on July 26, 2011 when she led the Lenca-based COPINH in a march on the presidential palace.”

Dubious partners of green energy

So-called “green” energy companies profited at least as much as other corporations from the great sell-off of Honduran treasures.  Lakhani’s research reveals that on June 2, 2010, the National Electric Company approved contracts for eight renewable energy corporations, including DESA, the owners of the Agua Zarca dam project.  Though it had no track record of constructing anything, it received permits, a sales contract, and congressional approval.  A 50-year license for the dam sailed through without any free, prior or informed consent from the Lenca people.  Lakhani also documents that January 16, 2014 was a particularly good day

“… for solar and wind entrepreneurs as congress approved 30 energy contracts for 21 companies in one quick sitting.  There was no bidding process… After the rivers were all sold, they started on wind and solar contracts…  Honduras boasts more than 200 tax exemption laws, which cost state coffers around $1.5 bn each year.  Renewable energy entrepreneurs have benefited enormously, saving a whopping $1.4 bn between 2012 and 2016.”

Even the World Bank had its finger in the pie, despite its requirement to give socially responsible loans.  It sought to cover up its role in Agua Zarca by channeling funds through intermediaries.

Lakhani also relates stories of (a) how six members of congress embezzled $879,000 using a fake environmental group, Planeta Verde (Green Planet); (b) connections between a criminal family and the solar company Proderssa; and, (c) the link between the solar plant in Choluteca and Douglas Bustillo, who was sentenced to 30 years for his role in the murder of Berta.

Jorge Cuéllar writes that, “DESA’s Agua Zarca hydroelectric project, like similar megaprojects, effectively reconfigures communities into sacrifice zones for insatiable energy needs.”  “Alternative” energy (Alt E) is just one more category of energy which is added to the mix with fossil fuels.  Increases in Alt E are not replacing fossil fuels, but are mainly being used to create feelings of do-goody.  In cases where there is a preference for Alt E, it is due to short term profit.  As Lakhani explains, “African palms were the most profitable crops because the oil was sold to North America and Europe for biofuel and could be traded in the carbon credit market.”

A farcical trial

On March 2, 2016 Berta Cáceres was brutally murdered in her hometown of La Esperanza in western Honduras.  The trial that followed was a transparent cover up.  As Vijay Prashad notes, none of the executives of DESA, the dam company responsible for the murder, were charged with the crime.  Lakhani reported in the InSight Crime interview that “The crime was never framed as political murder, as gender-based violence or a hate crime against indigenous people despite the vitriolic and racist language that was used in phone chats about the Lenca people. There was a decision to make sure that anybody political, and the military and police as institutions, would be completely left out.”

Adam Isacson hit the nail on the head in his blog when describing those found guilty as “… just trigger-pullers, mid-level planners, or scapegoats… They are employed by Honduras’s elite, but they aren’t of the elite. They’re on the make, and have found a rare path to social mobility in Honduras, beyond gang membership and drug trafficking.”

Lakhani’s own account reflects how bizarre and contrived the trial was.  She recalls that “My request to read the admitted documents was denied. ‘Yes, it’s a public trial, yes, the documents are public, no, you can’t read them,’ said the court archivist.”  She heard international observers being told “Don’t worry, people will be convicted” as if it was common knowledge that the outcome had been prescripted.   It was yet another exercise in impression management.

US role

Though there is no evidence that the US directly planned and executed the 2009 coup, its role has been to ensure that the coup remains intact.  As Isacson asks, “Why did 1 in every 37 citizens of Honduras end up detained at the US-Mexico border in 2019, after fleeing all the way across Mexico? Why did 30,000 more Hondurans petition for asylum in Mexico that same year?”  People are fleeing Honduras in such numbers in large part because the coup gang has shown that if it can get away with murdering someone as well known as Berta, it can murder anyone.

In the New York Journal of Books, Dan Beeton observes that “authors of the assassination have yet to be brought to justice. The US government could insist that this happen; it could pressure Honduran authorities to find and arrest them, but it has not…” In fact, Lakhani points out that the US is doing the opposite by persecuting those trying to escape from the violence: “… in 2010 US border patrol detained 13,580 Honduran nationals.  The numbers jumped to over 91,000 in 2014 under Deporter-in-Chief Barack Obama.”

Though the US insists that it does not train the executioners in the Honduran militarized police, it does not deny that it trains the trainers – many of torturers in Central America attended the notorious School of the Americas.  Even if the US were to withdraw its support from individual criminals in Honduras, they would be replaced by clones who would preserve the post-coup structure and power.  Control was successfully passed from a mildly reformist Zelaya government to a criminal extractionist network which permeates state and corporate institutions.  With aide and comfort from the US, the Honduran energy mob has reinvented itself.

Coming to Uttarakhand

The story of dams in India may seem highly different from events on the other side of the globe.  But lurking deep beneath surface appearances an eerie consistency links the two.  One similarity between the widely separated areas is that, as in Honduras, the Indian government has aggressively pursued a development strategy of mines, logging and hydro-power.  This often results in tribal people suffering the disruption of their farming systems and relocation.

On February 7, 2021 a deluge washed away two power plants of the Tehri Dam on the Bhagirathi River in the Garhwal region of Uttarakhand, India.  At least 32 people were found dead and more than 150 were missing.  The event barely made it to US media but has been extensively covered by the progressive Indian online publication Countercurrents.  With 34 people trapped, “Rescue workers armed with heavy construction equipment, drones and even sniffer dogs were struggling to penetrate the one-and-a-half-mile long tunnel that filled with ice-cold water, mud, rocks and debris.”

A pic of the Tehri dam taken from a moving bus… the Tehri dam on the Bhagirathi river is a man made wonder, and is the largest rock and earth fill dam in Asia. The reservoir of the dam drowned the District headquarters of Tehri, which have now been shifted to New Tehri (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Years before construction of the Tehri Dam began, there was controversy regarding if it should even be built.  Bharat Dogra, a regular contributor to Countercurrents, wrote that “the Environmental Appraisal Committee (River Valley Projects) of the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India … has come to the unanimous conclusion that the Tehri Dam Project, as proposed, should not be taken up as it does not merit environmental clearance.”

The region has a history of dam disasters:

“At least 29 workers were killed in a serious accident at the Tehri dam site (in Uttarakhand) on August 2 2004… On 14 February 2010 six workers died and 16 were seriously injured in Kinnaur district (Himachal Pradesh) when stones and boulders destabilized by the blasting work carried out for dam construction… Over 154 workers were killed in a span of 12 years, as over one worker was killed every month during the construction of the Nagarjunasagar dam.”

Actually existing dangers in the Himalayas 

Several factors compound dangers of dams which are built in hazard-prone region of the Himalayas.  First is the observation by seismologist Prof. James N. Brune that “No large rock-fill dam of the Tehri type has ever been tested by the shaking that an earthquake in this area could produce… Given the number of persons who live downstream, the risk factor is also extreme.”  Second, the reservoirs created by the dams can themselves increase the likelihood of quakes, a phenomenon called reservoir induced seismicity.  Third is the huge tectonic plate below India called the “Indian Plate.”

As economist Bharat Jhunjhunwala explains, “The rotation of the earth is causing this plate to continually move northward just like any matter moves to the top in a centrifugal machine. The Indian Plate crashes into the Tibetan Plate as it moves to the north. The pressure between these two plates is leading to the continual rise of the Himalayas and also earthquakes in Uttarakhand in particular.”   The result is an earthquake in the region roughly every 10 years.

Which of these was the primary cause of the February 2021 dam disaster?  None of them.  According to public health specialist Dr. Anamika Roy, the most likely cause was “retreating glaciers which result in the formation of proglacial lakes, which are often bounded by their sediments and stones, and therefore any breach in the boundaries may lead to a large stream of water rushing down the streams and lakes resulting in a flood down streams.”  Dr. Roy thinks that climate change is a leading factor in the formation of proglacial lakes.

Professor of glaciology and hydrology Dr. Farooq Azam suggests that a hanging glacier falling from 5600 meters could have caused a rock and ice avalanche, leading to the dam accident.  Taken together, these factors indicate that the Himalayan region is a very bad place to build a dam.  We might even say that the reason for the Tehri dam disaster was that the dam was built.

Social problems of dam disasters 

Bharat Dogra details a host of problems for those constructing dams in very remote areas such as the Himalayas:

• First, a large portion of those constructing dams are migrant workers who are less familiar with floods and other risks than are local residents;
• Second, even if migrant workers begin to understand on-site risks, they have little or no ability to find other employment if companies order them to continue at their jobs;
• Third, migrant workers typically live in temporary housing that offers little protection;
• Fourth, not being near to family or friends, they have little ability to go to others with health problems, special needs, distress, or risk; and,
• Fifth, it is easier for contractors to suppress information concerning accidents so that workers or surviving families may not receive compensatory payments.

Common to all of these issues is the fact that laboring in remote parts of the world leaves workers out of the pubic eye, meaning that they can easily be ignored or quickly forgotten after a tragedy.

A different type of tragedy results from the release of water from the dam reservoir.  The two types are (a) routine releases, which are typically scheduled to occur during peak demand for hydropower generation, and (b) emergency releases, which occur during heavy rain or other high water events.  Release disasters are typically due to emergency releases.  But, on April 11, 2005 thousands of pilgrims attending a religious fair at Dharaji in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh were in the water when 150 were swept away by a huge water surge, causing the death of 65.  This was caused by a routine water release from the Indira Sagar dam on the Narmada River.  Bad judgment during routine operation of a dam can be as deadly as bad judgment regarding where to build a dam.

Dams in the time of exponential growth

It is an obscenity to call hydro-power “clean” when it is so closely tied to destruction of aquatic life, threats to land-dwelling flora and fauna, displacement of indigenous people and destruction of their culture, murder of Earth defenders, and exploitation of workers.  It is a double obscenity to claim that hydro-power is an “alternative” to fossil fuels when dams can produce more greenhouse gases than does coal.  Not only do their reservoirs produce methane by rotting organic matter, dams interfere with the ability of downstream ecosystems to remove carbon and they require massive amounts of fossil fuel for the manufacture of concrete and steel for their construction and removal of their debris when they reach the end of their life cycle.

Nor are dams “renewable.” They do not last nearly as long as the rivers they disrupt.  Concrete and steel eventually rot, which leads to construction of yet another dam.

A core problem of dams is their exponential growth during the 21^st century as it becomes increasingly obvious that they can more rapidly replace fossil fuel energy than can solar and wind power.  The climate crisis is fundamentally due to the uncontrollable growth of capitalism, which requires exponential expansion of energy production.

Exponential expansion means that every year requires not just more energy but a larger quantity of new energy than the year before.  Eternal economic growth was the root cause behind the murder of Berta Cáceres and the hundreds or thousands of other Earth defenders in Honduras and across the globe.  The unquenchable thirst for energy is why India foreshadows a world building an increasing number of dams where dams should not be built.

To satisfy their need for energy, corporations first grab the low hanging fruit.  Energy fruit can be “low hanging” because it is in an extremely good location, and/or current land owners are eager for the development, and/or those living on the land can be easily swayed.  The nature of first picking that which is lowest hanging means that, once it is gone, the energy corporations will go to the next lowest hanging fruit.  As time goes by, capital will get closer and closer to the most difficult-to-pick fruit until the last drop of energy is sucked from the planet.  Obviously, having less corrupt politicians and an educated and organized people is much better.  But this will not stop them from being victimized – it will only place them later in line.

Is “free, prior and informed consent” real or an illusion?  As time passes, the commitment to infinite energy growth intensifies pressure to falsify consent.  What is presented to poor people throughout the world who do not have enough to feed and clothe their families is the question “Do you voluntarily choose to improve your life by giving consent to this project which will destroy the lives of your grandchildren or great-grandchildren after you are gone or do you chose to watch your children go without schools and medical care right now?  Thank you so much for your free and prior consent to this dam/wind farm/solar array.”

There are essential lessons to learn from the murder of environmentalists and dam collapses.  Capital must bring more violence to communities when using less violence for building dams is not as effective.  Capital must build in increasingly unsafe locations after the safest locations are used up.  If dams which threaten the fewest number of aquatic species are built first, then corporate expansion dictates that dams which threaten more riparian extinctions are next in line.  Capital must move into increasingly biodiverse environments after less biodiverse environments are no longer available.

This is true for the construction of dams just as it is true for fossil fuels.  It is also true for the location of solar arrays and the location of wind farms.  It is likewise the case for mining the massive number of minerals that go into the production of various type of energy.  This is why “alternative” energy cannot be “clean” or “renewable.”  Perhaps it is time to realize that there is only one form of “clean” energy – less energy.

A webinar at 7 pm CT on March 10, 2021 will honor the life of Berta Cáceres with a panel featuring Nina Lakhani, author of Who Killed Berta Cáceres?: Dams, Death Squads, and an Indigenous Defender’s Battle for the Planet.  Email the address of the author below for details.

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Don Fitz ([email protected]) is on the Editorial Board of Green Social Thought where a version of this article was first published.  He was the 2016 candidate of the Missouri Green Party for Governor.  His book on Cuban Health Care: The Ongoing Revolution has been available since June 2020.

Featured image is CC BY 3.0

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***

Let’s not mince words.

Biden and hardliners around him are like their predecessors.

They’re hostile toward virtually everything just societies hold dear — notably democracy the way it should be.

The US and West have fantasy versions, the real thing virtually banned.

Established by Hugo Chavez in 1999, continued by Nicolas Maduro, Venezuelans have governance of, by, and for everyone equitably — social democracy.

US policymakers consider it a threat of a good example — why they’ve gone all out to replace it with fascist tyranny short of hot war that remains an ominous possibility.

Since establishment of Venezuelan social democracy, US regimes from the Clinton co-presidency to Obama/Biden, then Trump, and now Biden/Harris aim to return the country to client state status.

They seek control over its vast oil resources, the world’s largest.

In 2013, Obama/Biden killed Chavez. Poisoned or infected with cancer causing substances, four major surgeries in 18 months couldn’t save him.

At the time, William Blum explained that the CIA worked diligently to develop substances that could kill without leaving a trace.”

“I Personally believe that Hugo Chavez was murdered by the United States,” he said.

Coup plots against him and Maduro failed. Other dirty tricks worked no better, including intermittent, US orchestrated, street violence.

Virtually everything US regimes threw at Venezuela to eliminate its model social democracy failed.

Further attempts are virtually certain. The US is hellbent to transform all sovereign independent nations into subservient client states.

It’s likely just a matter of time before another attempted regime change plot surfaces.

At the same time, endless US war by other means continues.

In 2015, Obama/Biden declared Bolivarian social democracy an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States (sic).”

On Wednesday, Biden/Harris reaffirmed the above, saying the following:

“(C)ircumstances described in Executive Order 13692 (2015), and subsequent executive orders issued with respect to Venezuela, have not improved (sic), and they continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States (sic).”

“Therefore in accordance with section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act (50 USC 1622(d), I am continuing for 1 year the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13692 (sic).”

Bolivarian Venezuela prioritizes peace, stability, and cooperative relations with other countries — threatening no one, surely not the USA, armed and dangerous with nuclear and other super-weapons.

Biden’s new executive order maintains a US state of war by other means on the Bolivarian Republic.

No US national emergency exists with Venezuela or any other countries. No US enemies exist.

So time and again they’re invented by US policymakers to justify what’s unjustifiable under international and US constitutional law.

On March 2, Tony Blinken’s spokesman Ned Price said the following:

His boss spoke with widely despised, usurper-in-waiting, self-declared Venezuelan president with no legitimacy Guaido.

“Blinken stressed the importance of a return to democracy in Venezuela through free and fair elections (sic).”

After Maduro’s PSUV party won an overwhelming legislative majority last December with over two-thirds public support — a landslide triumph — the EU withdrew support for Guaido as (self-declared) interim president (with no legitimacy).

Jimmy Carter called Venezuela’s electoral process “the best in the world” for good reason. Elections when held are scrupulously open, free and fair.

When Maduro was reelected in May 2018, over 150 members of the International Electoral Accompaniment Mission said the following:

“The technical and professional trustworthiness and independence of the National Electoral Council of Venezuela are uncontestable.”

The Council of Electoral Experts of Latin America, one of the observer groups, said “results communicated by the National Electoral Council reflect the will of the voters who decided to participate in the electoral process.”

Similar assessments follow all Bolivarian elections.

They shame US fantasy democracy — a totalitarian police state, masquerading as democratic.

According to Price, Blinken is “increas(ing) multilateral pressure… for a peaceful, democratic transition (sic).”

Longstanding US policy calls for eliminating Bolivarian social democracy, wanting Venezuela transformed into a vassal state under US-installed puppet rule.

The above is how the scourge of US imperialism operates worldwide.

All nations free from its control are targeted for regime change — wars by hot and/or other means its favored strategies.

Illegal sanctions are weapons of war by other means.

Blinken said they’ll remain in place to continue US maximum pressure on the country.

Venezuelan social democracy conflicts with US imperial aims to dominate planet earth, control its resources, and exploit its people everywhere.

As long as Bolivarianism exists, both right wings of the US war party won’t likely cease trying to eliminate it.

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

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

My two Wall Street books are timely reading:

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

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

“Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity”

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

Featured image: Protest against U.S. intervention on Venezuela, in front of the White House, Washington DC. (Credit)

“If they’re going to take the next step on their plan to re-engineer both the financial system and global governance with it, you needed all sorts of actions in the economy that would be very difficult to justify politically through another financial crisis. So, rather than have a financial crisis they decided to have a health care crisis!”

– Catherine Austin Fitts from this week’s interview

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

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The Real Agenda

Throughout the world, we have seen nearly a year of devastating hardships facing broad sectors of the global population, people confined to their homes (if they have one), people compelled by law to going to any indoor location outside the home wearing a diaper over their faces, social distancing, businesses in large masses going under, and now facing denial of certain privileges if you don’t get the experimental vaccine shot.

Politicians, chief public health officers, and media have all normalized these practices as being what ‘science’ demands of our citizens. The alternative is utter devastation of people across the planet. And the people by and large have gone along with it.

Some scientists have observed that SARS-CoV-2 is not the massive killer everyone accuses it of being. The RT-PCR test was exposed eventually even the the World Health Organization of elevating numbers of false positives among case loads. ‘Experts’ have, suspiciously, equated dying with the SARS-COV-2 as equivalent to dying because of the SARS-COV-2 to the point where even if a person infected died in an automobile accident, he is placed on the COVID-19 list. Meanwhile, the tragic consequences to life and limb affected by the lockdowns are taking an even more dynamic toll on people everywhere. [1]

These facts and arguments are amply documented on past episodes of this program over the course of the last few months, and throughout Global Research, including the e-book by Professor Michel Chossudovsky.

So the rationality of the chief personnel instructing the public to abandon their rights in the name of protecting public health is ….well….missing!

Further, it is absolutely untrue that the mass of humanity is equally abandoning certain privileges to fight the virus as a single species. According to the BBC, the ‘Billionaire Club’ have seen their collective wealth soar by as much as 27% on average. And according to the BBC, the big pharmaceutical corporations have truly been cashing in on the new fascination with ever before tested experimental vaccine against an ailment that is not as harmful as they claim.

The question we are going to explore in this part of our investigation, is into the subject of why this immense spectacle was orchestrated. For this discussion we are very honored to have two individuals with us.

In our first half hour, we are joined by the Catherine Austin Fitts. She has a background as an investment banker, investment adviser and government official. For the duration of her interview, she explains that COVID is a cover for a major move by the G7 Central Banks to re-organize their financial systems under a plan called ‘Going Direct Reset.’ This would result in a major flush of economic wealth upwards, and bring in new technologies that would resemble a return to control of the mass population. This all masked by an effort to ‘protect public health.’

In our second half hour, we are introduced to a remarkable theory by psychologist and psychopathologist Dr. Mila Alečković-Bataille. She examines the history of psychological manipulation and the relevance to the current crisis.

Catherine Austin Fitts is the president of Solari, Inc., publisher of the Solari Report, and managing member of Solari Investment Advisory Services, LLC. She served as managing director and member of the board of directors of the Wall Street investment bank Dillon, Read & Co. Inc., as Assistant Secretary of Housing and Federal Housing Commissioner at the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development in the first Bush Administration. She blogs at solari.com

Dr. Mila Alečković-Bataille is a professor of psychopathology and psychology. She holds a doctorate from The Sorbonne, University in Paris. She has written over 100 scientific papers in several languages, as well as several books. And she is a member of the World Society of Psychopathology of Expression and Art Therapy. And In 2015 she was the President of the International Congress of Psychopathology.

(Global Research News Hour Episode 307)

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The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM out of the University of Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca .

Other stations airing the show:

 CJSF 90.1 FM from the Burnaby mountain campus of Simon Fraser University at 90.1 FM to most of Greater Vancouver, from Langley to Point Grey and from the North Shore to the US Border, through MP3 streaming and through a speaker located just outside the station. The show airs Thursdays at 9am local time.

CIXX 106.9 FM, broadcasting from Fanshawe College in London, Ontario. It airs Sundays at 6am.

WZBC 90.3 FM in Newton Massachusetts is Boston College Radio and broadcasts to the greater Boston area. The Global Research News Hour airs during Truth and Justice Radio which starts Sunday at 6am.

Campus and community radio CFMH 107.3fm in  Saint John, N.B. airs the Global Research News Hour Fridays at 7pm.

CJMP 90.1 FM, Powell River Community Radio, airs the Global Research News Hour every Saturday at 8am. 

Caper Radio CJBU 107.3FM in Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia airs the Global Research News Hour starting Wednesday afternoon from 3-4pm.

Cowichan Valley Community Radio CICV 98.7 FM serving the Cowichan Lake area of Vancouver Island, BC airs the program Thursdays at 9am pacific time. 

Notes:

1. www.globalresearch.ca/the-second-wave-destroying-peoples-lives-global-coup-detat/5728207

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Why the Biden Administration Is Dead Wrong to Oppose International Criminal Court War Crimes Inquiry in Occupied Palestine: A Betrayal of the Rule of Law

By Prof. Juan Cole, March 05 2021

Since Palestine as a permanent UN observer state is a member of the ICC and invited the court into its territory, the International Criminal Court has every right to investigate violations of the Rome Statute that took place in those territories.

Palestine: Blinken Blinks on Human Rights

By M. K. Bhadrakumar, March 05 2021

The statement exposes that the Joe Biden Administration has blinked for a second time on the human rights situation in West Asia by refusing to even acknowledge that the ICC investigation into the “Palestinian situation” is about human rights first and foremost.

US ‘Virtual Ambassador’ to Venezuela Hosts Insurrectionist Summit Ahead of Biden’s Guaidó Recognition

By Anya Parampil and Max Blumenthal, March 05 2021

A closed-door Bogotá summit of fugitive Venezuelan insurrectionists highlighted James Story’s role as Washington’s manager of the radical right-wing opposition. So who is the US “virtual ambassador” to Venezuela?

Ex-PMs Call on Japan to ‘Eradicate’ Nuclear Power

By Bradley K. Martin, March 05 2021

A bipartisan duo of former prime ministers is beating the drums for Japan to totally “eradicate” nuclear energy in the country and rely instead on renewables.

A Global Demand to 35 Governments: Get Your Troops Out of Afghanistan

By World Beyond War, March 05 2021

These troops range in number from Slovenia’s 6 to the United States’ 2,500. Most countries have fewer that 100. Apart from the United States, only Germany has over 1,000. Only five other countries have more than 300.

Bipartisan Senators Seek to Strip Biden of War Powers

By Mish, March 05 2021

Sens. Tim Kaine and Todd Young on Wednesday introduced bipartisan legislation that would repeal decades-old authorizations for the use of military force in the Middle East, amid escalating tensions between the U.S. and Iran in the region.

“Complete Loss of Trust”: Half of French Home Health Workers Say They’ll Resist Taking Vaccine

By Zero Hedge, March 05 2021

Astounding new figures out of France suggest what is no doubt a broader global trend of hesitancy and skepticism when it comes to the current big push to ‘vaccinate all’.

The Impact of COVID-19 on Pediatric Mental Health

By FAIR Health, March 05 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on mental health, particularly on that of young people. Defining the pediatric population as individuals aged 0-22 years, and focusing on the age groups 13-18 years and 19-22 years, FAIR Health studied the effects of the pandemic on US pediatric mental health.

460 Dead 243,612 Reported Injuries from COVID-19 Vaccines Reported in the U.K.

By Brian Shilhavy, March 05 2021

The UK Government’s reporting system for COVID vaccine adverse reactions from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency released their latest report today, March 4, 2021.

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 governments of Albania, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mongolia, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, Ukraine, UK, and US all still have troops in Afghanistan and need to remove them. These troops range in number from Slovenia’s 6 to the United States’ 2,500. Most countries have fewer that 100. Apart from the United States, only Germany has over 1,000. Only five other countries have more than 300.

Governments that used to have troops in this war but have removed them include New Zealand, France, Jordan, Croatia, Ireland, and Canada.

We plan to deliver a big THANK-YOU to every government that removes all of its troops from Afghanistan, along with the names and comments of every signer of this petition.

We plan to deliver a demand to remove all troops to every government that has not done so, along with the names and comments of every signer of this petition.

Click here to add your name!

The U.S. government is the ring-leader, and the bulk of its killing is done from the air, but — given the deficiency in democracy in the U.S. government, which is now on its third president who promised to end the war but hasn’t — it is critical that other governments withdraw their troops. Those troops, present in token numbers, are there to legitimize behavior that could otherwise be recognized as lawless and outrageous. A government lacking the courage to reject U.S. pressure has no business sending any number of its residents to kill or risk dying in a U.S./NATO war.

This petition will be signed by people in each nation involved in the war, including the nation of Afghanistan.

Please sign the petition, add comments if you have anything to add, and share with others.

After signing, please use the links on the next page to share on social media, email to friends, and embed on your own websites!

If you want to be part of delivering the petition to a particular government, contact World BEYOND War.

Thanks for all you do for peace!

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***

This article was originally published on GR in March 2020.

Seventy-five years ago, on 6 March 1945, the Third Reich launched what was to be its final great offensive of World War II, called Operation Spring Awakening (Unternehmen Frühlingserwachen). This attack, not well known today, was directed eastwards through the heart of Europe against the Red Army.

It was envisaged by Nazi Germany’s dictator Adolf Hitler, as he expounded on his plans in the Berlin Führerbunker, that the assault would prove to be a turning point in the war – akin to Russia’s victories at Stalingrad and in the Caucasus, which had proven critical in the Soviets’ recovery. (1)

As the year 1945 continued beyond its first weeks, among those whom the Nazi hierarchy could place their trust in were figures like Joachim Peiper, a panzer commander and SS Lieutenant-Colonel (Obersturmbannführer), someone whose legacy in the following decades has been romanticised by sections of the US Army and the Pentagon. Peiper, aged 30 in 1945 and with distinctive Nordic features, was someone with a highly aggressive reputation in combat.

Peiper was designated a considerable role in Operation Spring Awakening. He had long established himself as a war criminal, whose forces committed a number of atrocities on eastern and western fronts. It is often the case that ruthless men with few scruples make such formidable and dangerous soldiers.

From 1939 until 1941, Peiper served as SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler’s main adjutant. Peiper was standing adjacent to Himmler when, on 20 September 1939, they witnessed the murder of 20 Polish intellectuals by ethnic German paramilitaries working for the Nazis. On 13 December 1939, Peiper was present again with Himmler to see the gassing of residents at a psychiatric facility, near the city of Poznan in Poland. (2)

He was furthermore familiar with the apparatus of Nazi concentrations camps from early on; during the winter of 1940-1941, Peiper had accompanied Himmler on a visit to at least one concentration camp (3). In February 1941, Himmler confided in Peiper of the impending designs to invade the USSR; and, during the first half of June 1941, he was in attendance when Himmler outlined plans for the murder of 30 million people of Slavic birth in the East.

Peiper was acquainted with Reinhard Heydrich, perhaps the most sinister Nazi of all, and who was considered a possible successor to Hitler. The wives of Heydrich and Peiper were also friends.

In the post-1945 years, Peiper became something of a folk hero in some right-wing German circles, and also in the top echelons of power in America. As recently as mid-December 2019 Peiper, in Waffen-SS uniform, was being publicly glorified by the US military and its government branches in “commemorating the 75th anniversary of one of the most critical battles in history [Battle of the Bulge]”. (4)

The American XVIII Airborne Corps wrote of Peiper that, “The fate of his beloved nation rested on his ability to lead his men”. Peiper’s photograph was then relayed on official Facebook pages of the US Department of Defense and the US Army’s 10th Mountain Division. Unsurprisingly, the Pentagon subsequently came under heavy criticism, and the images of Peiper were deleted.

Peiper had received some of the highest decorations in Nazi Germany, and he was known personally to Hitler since at least the autumn of 1939. Peiper was in attendance when Hitler met the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco at Hendaye, south-western France, on 23 October 1940.

Also familiar to the Nazi top brass was Peiper’s adjutant, Werner Wolff, who would likewise participate heavily in Operation Spring Awakening. In 1945, Wolff was 22-years-old and an SS First Lieutenant (Obersturmführer), who like Peiper became the embodiment of Nazi racial stereotype, with his blonde hair, square jaw and athletic features.

Both Wolff and Peiper had participated in a number of major conflicts together, including the Third Battle of Kharkov in the spring of 1943, when the outnumbered Germans drove Soviet armies from what was the USSR’s third largest city. Wolff was one of the Nazis’ most acclaimed young soldiers. He distinguished himself repeatedly in their eyes against both the Soviets and western Allies; Wolff, for example, destroyed a number of Soviet tanks single-handed in fierce fighting during the Battle of Kursk, in the summer of 1943. (5)

At the beginning of the Ardennes Offensive, on 17 December 1944 Peiper and his unit wiped out American battalions in their path, before advancing a remarkable 16 miles in just 12 hours of fighting, moving comfortably into eastern Belgium (6). They had now reached the outskirts of the town of Stavelot, in Liege province.

It is no exaggeration to note that much of the success of the entire Ardennes Offensive rested on Peiper and his adjutant, Wolff, operating at his side (7). Otto Skorzeny, a top SS commando and one of the very few to have access to Hitler, had himself placed high hopes on Peiper’s role in this attack.

Peiper was unable, however, to advance much further beyond Stavelot – as, while waiting for German forces to catch up from behind, he realised that their fuel supplies were running dangerously low. A shortage of oil was a growing issue for the Germans as the war dragged on, with their access to raw materials in the East limited due to Soviet advances into Reich-occupied territory. Peiper was dependent upon the Tiger II heavy tank, which consumed petrol at half a mile a gallon.

By Christmas Day 1944 the Ardennes Offensive was in serious trouble, as the skies and atmosphere cleared of cloud and fog, with pale winter sunshine breaking through. Now the much larger number of Allied aircraft, with a clear view of the ground below, could wreak havoc on the German war machine by destroying hundreds of panzers and other Wehrmacht armoured vehicles.

Hitler responded on New Year’s Eve 1944 by launching what would be the final major German offensive of World War II on the Western front. It was dubbed Operation Nordwind, with the advance commencing through north-eastern France and around the famous Alsace-Lorraine region.

On 28 December 1944 Hitler, speaking to his divisional commanders in preparation for Operation Nordwind, issued an “exterminating” order to be directed against Allied troops; but specifically with the Americans in mind, who Hitler wished to exact retribution on for their indiscriminate air raids over German cities.

At the Adlerhorst mountain headquarters in western Germany, Hitler outlined of his plans that,

“It is a matter of destroying and exterminating the enemy forces wherever we find them… I hope that we will succeed especially to push the right wing ahead fast, to open the roads to Saverne. Then push at once into the Rhine plains to liquidate the American divisions. The goal must be the annihilation of these American divisions… I don’t have to explain to you a second time what depends on it”. (8)

In spite of initial gains, as with the Ardennes Offensive this next German assault ran out of steam, due to a combination of fuel shortages along with the greater numbers of Allied aircraft and tanks.

Regardless, it had taken the Allied troops more than six months to advance from the beaches of Normandy to the forests of the Ardennes, a little over 300 miles in total. During the Battle of France in mid-1940, the Germans covered a similar distance in three weeks. As they marched into French territory from 10 May 1940, Heinz Guderian’s 2nd Panzer Division advanced 200 miles in just 10 days, brushing aside French and British divisions, before reaching the English Channel at Abbeville on 19 May 1940. (9)

Almost five years later, Hitler now put his hopes on another large-scale offensive to the east, Operation Spring Awakening, which he started planning by himself from mid-January 1945. All of the generals were opposed to it, apart from Hitler’s old loyalist Sepp Dietrich, who would lead the attack with his 6th SS Panzer Army.

Spring Awakening’s execution was made possible after a little known German victory against Soviet forces in northern Hungary, called Operation Southwind (Unternehmen Südwind), which concluded on 24 February 1945 and was “a brilliant success” (10). Over 400 square kilometres of ground had been recaptured from the Soviets in Operation Southwind. With the Red Army bridgehead over the River Garam destroyed, this laid the basis for Spring Awakening to begin less than two weeks later.

In the Führerbunker conference room Hitler said of Spring Awakening that, “All we have to do is show the enemy once more, by a smashing success, that he cannot win the war. Without Stalin’s fanatical determination, Russia would have collapsed in the autumn of 1941. Frederick the Great, too, in a hopeless situation fought on with indomitable energy.

He deserved the name ‘the Great’ not because he won in the end, but because he remained intrepid in misfortune”. (11)
For Spring Awakening, the Germans managed to amass 400,000 men who were to be directed at first into oil rich western Hungary, so as to reach the great Danube river, before pushing on to retake the Hungarian capital Budapest.

Spring Awakening comprised of 10 panzer divisions, five infantry divisions, two SS Cavalry divisions, with 900 Luftwaffe aircraft in support overhead (12). German forces were equipped with 900 panzers and Sturmgeschütz (Stugs), the latter consisting of armoured fighting vehicles which were in effect miniature panzers.

The attack began at dawn on 6 March 1945, with the weather at that point favourable with low cloud cover, thick fog, and snow actually falling. It was similar to conditions at the commencement of the Ardennes Offensive almost three months before.

On the opening day of Spring Awakening, the Germans advanced only a few kilometres, before success arrived in the immediate time following, as the 6th SS Panzer Army advanced 20 miles. By the 9th of March, a degree of panic was setting in among the Soviet leadership, as notable German advances continued up to the 11th of March.

It was on that day, 11 March 1945, that Hitler visited the Eastern front for what would be the last time. He travelled by motor car from the Führerbunker in Berlin north-eastwards to the city of Stettin, near the Baltic Sea, and today in Poland. Since early 1940, Stettin was a base of operations for the German 2nd Motorised Infantry Division, and later the 12th Panzer Division.

Heinz Linge, Hitler’s servant and chief valet, was present in the vehicle as they drove through idyllic, unspoilt countryside, with the sound of Wehrmacht and Soviet artillery fire heard on occasion rumbling in the background.

In his memoirs originally published in 1980, Linge highlights the direct role of Hitler in the Holocaust, and he dismisses claims from Nazi apologists that the dictator was not privy to crimes against humanity committed in the concentration camps.

“That is pure nonsense” Linge wrote, when reflecting on assertions that Hitler was in practical ignorance of the extermination of Jewish populations. Linge continued, “I was often on hand when, with sparkling eyes and trembling voice, he [Hitler] would say that he would rid himself ruthlessly of anybody who opposed him”. (13)

Since his appointment on 24 January 1935 to that of the Führer’s valet, Linge spent almost every waking hour in his master’s presence, attending to his requirements. In later years as the fighting wore on, Linge’s position became prominent and Hitler relied even more heavily on him, notwithstanding that he was also an SS officer. Hitler sometimes asked Linge to back him up in key arguments during military conferences – whenever German generals, or officers, had the gall to intimate that the Nazi leader was contradicting himself, or that his comments were inconsistent.

On such instances, which became more commonplace after 1942, Linge was invariably standing at the back of the conference room and Hitler would demand, “Linge, what did I say then and what did the general suggest?” With all eyes turned towards Linge, he then swiftly analysed the dictates of stenographers, with the valet confirming that Hitler indeed made the exact point in question, and had not since changed his argument; while now it was the military men who were contradicting themselves, seemingly undermining their positions.

In the meantime, Linge recalled of their final journey to the Eastern front in March 1945,

“Our car drove over ploughed fields, pasture and meadows to Stettin, which was still held by German forces. It needed all his [Hitler’s] physical energy to endure, but he would not give in. Crossing ploughed land one morning to reach a Luftwaffe command post, suddenly the farmers were around us with their wives. They seemed to have forgotten the close thunder of the Russian artillery. They had apparently not expected to see him, Hitler, right at the front, and one felt at once the effect that Hitler had on them even though he was now old, grey, bent and degenerating. He did not speak to them, but gave a jovial wave”. (14)

Four days later, by the 15th of March 1945, Operation Spring Awakening literally ground to a halt in the mud, with the temperature having risen and rain fallen. In the following hours, the Soviets counter-attacked with overwhelming force, and after a few days they had forced the Germans back to their original positions at the start of Spring Awakening. The final nail in the Nazi coffin was being hammered home.

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

Notes

1 Albert Speer, Spandau: The Secret Diaries (Fontana, London, 1977), p. 29

2 David G. Williams, Jochen Peiper Justice Denied (lulu.com, 16 Mar. 2015)

3 Jeff Rutherford, “Rutherford on Westemeier, ‘Joachim Peiper: A biography of Himmler’s SS Commander'”, H-German, November 2007, https://networks.h-net.org/node/35008/reviews/45264/rutherford-westemeier-joachim-peiper-biography-himmlers-ss-commander

4 Katie Shepherd, “‘Vile and disturbing’: US Army unit marks Battle of the Bulge with picture of Nazi war criminal who massacred Americans”, Washington Post, 17 December 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/12/17/joachim-peiper-nazi-war-criminal-photo-shared-us-army-units-battle-bulge/

5 Lloyd Clark, Kursk: The Greatest Battle, (Headline Review, 24 May 2012)

6 Stuart Smith, Otto Skorzeny: The Devil’s Disciple (Osprey Publishing, 20 Sep. 2018), p. 182

7 Smith, Otto Skorzeny: The Devil’s Disciple, p. 181

8 US Lieutenant-Colonel J.C. Lambert, Armored Cavalry Journal, Roster of Armored Cavalry Officers on Active Duty, Armored Rescue, p. 37

9 Martin H. Folly, The Palgrave Concise Historical Atlas of World War II, (Palgrave Macmillan; 2004 edition, October 6, 2004) p. xxiii

10 Major General Michael Reynolds, “Hitler’s Last Offensive: Operation Spring Awakening”, Warfare History Network, 31 October 2016, https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/2016/10/31/hitlers-last-offensive-operation-spring-awakening/

11 Speer, Spandau: The Secret Diaries, p. 29

12 Peter McCarthy and Mike Syron, Panzerkrieg: The Rise and Fall of Hitler’s Tank Divisions, (Robinson; New Ed edition, 2003-09-12)

13 Heinz Linge, With Hitler to the End (Frontline Books, 1 July 2009), p. 92

14 Linge, With Hitler to the End, p. 175

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***

On March 3, the US State Department has put on its website a hilarious statement titled The United States Opposes the ICC Investigation into the Palestinian Investigation. 

In a nutshell, the statement exposes that the Joe Biden Administration has blinked for a second time on the human rights situation in West Asia by refusing to even acknowledge that the ICC investigation into the “Palestinian situation” is about human rights first and foremost. 

The State Department’s argument essentially narrows down to a bureaucratic point questioning the ICC’s jurisdiction to investigate the human rights violations issues that involve the state of Israel and, secondly, that “Palestinians do not qualify as a sovereign state and therefore, are not qualified to obtain membership as a state in, participate as a state in, or delegate jurisdiction to the ICC.” 

Human rights issue ought to be felt in the blood and felt along the heart. They are not the stuff of cold reasoning from legal angle or of political expediency. The State Department statement on the hapless Palestinian brings to mind what Pablo Picasso once said, “Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.” 

Such sophistry to quibble over the tragic plight of the Palestinians will reduce the American diplomats to con artists on the global stage. The fact of the matter is that The State of Palestine is recognised by 138 UN members, and since 2012 it has a status of a non-member observer state in the United Nations. Palestine is a member of the Arab League, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the G77, the International Olympic Committee, and other international bodies.

The US is punishing the messenger — ICC’s prosecutor — for showing the audacity to rake up the Palestinian issue when she is due to retire in June! 

The State Department claims that it “remains deeply committed to ensuring justice and accountability for international atrocity crimes” but ICC happens to be “a Court of limited jurisdiction. Moreover, the United States believes a peaceful, secure and more prosperous future for the people of the Middle East depends on building bridges and creating new avenues for dialogue and exchange, not unilateral judicial actions that exacerbate tensions and undercut efforts to advance a negotiated two-state solution. We will continue to uphold our strong commitment to Israel and its security, including by opposing actions that seek to target Israel unfairly.” 

It is a laughable contention riddled with contradictions and paradoxes. What does it all amount to? Succinctly put, the state department says, “Show me the Face and I will show you the Rule.”  But what is it that unnerves the Biden Administration when it comes to the ICC investigation on Israel? From an Israeli perspective, read the report by Axios titled International Criminal Court opens Israel-Palestine war crimes probe.

Fundamentally, it is the very same cynical mindset that made the Biden Administration duck for cover when in all propriety it should have sanctioned the Saudi Crown Prince for ordering the murder — and indeed executing it with such ghoulish relish — of Jamal Khashoggi who, incidentally, also happened to be a resident of the US apart from being a “strategic asset” of the US security establishment.

The Biden Administration is lost for words to explain its cowardice. On top of it, it changed its mind sheepishly and decided on second thoughts to delete three Saudi names that were originally listed in the CIA report on Khashoggi’s murder rebased by the White House last Friday. Apparently, that is because those 3 top henchmen in the Saudi security apparatus also happen to be interlocutors with whom the US security agencies continue to do business. How could the US possibly sanction its own Saudi collaborators, isn’t it? 

Both in the case of Israel and the Saudi Crown prince, if the US is in such an acute predicament caught between a rock and the hard place, it is solely because Washington has been complicit in the human rights violations by Israel and Saudi Arabia all along. The US has so much blood on its hands that all the perfumes of Arabia cannot wipe them clean. 

Surely, Israel wouldn’t have got away with murder all this while with such impunity without the certainty that it could hide behind the US if an hour of reckoning ever came its way. As for Saudi Arabia, it committed horrific crimes from a human rights perspective only because it has been the US’ preferred geopolitical tool for the past several decades. 

Pray, why did the CIA confer on the former Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Nayef the George Tenet medal in 2015? Mike Pompeo as CIA chief travelled to Riyadh to personally confer the medal on Prince Nayef! Simply put, top US officials in successive administrations swam the same river of blood that Prince Nayef took in the unspeakable “war on terror.” 

Today, the Biden Administration dare not annoy the 35-year old Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman who is highly likely to succeed his father when the crunch time comes as the next monarch and may go on to rule the kingdom for decades — although the noted expert on Saudi Arabia and ex-CIA hand Bruce Riedel at Brookings Institution may know better when he maintains that MBS is in actuality less secure than the administration thinks. 

On March 3, in his “first major speech as Secretary” titled A Foreign Policy for the American People, delivered from the Ben Franklin Room, a venue full of history in the State Department, Blinken shied away from claiming to be a crusader for human rights. The cold shower of realism after the Khashoggi fiasco probably explains it. 

Blinken had previously claimed that human rights topic will figure as the centre of the US foreign policy. But in a chastened mood, he listed yesterday the “eight top foreign policy priorities of the Biden administration” as follows: Covid-19 pandemic and global health security; economic recovery; “shoring up” democracy from authoritarianism and nationalism; “a humane and effective immigration system”; “revitalising” the ties with allies and partners; climate crisis and green energy revolution; America’s “leadership in technology”; and, relationship with China. 

Blinken decided that a human rights crusade won’t fly when it stands exposed as doublespeak and hypocrisy. Despite such robust canvassing by the White House, the ASEAN has refused to back the Anglo-American regime change agenda in Myanmar. 

Even the US’ closest ASEAN partner Singapore has counselled “national reconciliation and stability” and a “negotiated compromise to the current situation” in Myanmar, and, above all, stressed the need to “engage, rather than isolate” that country. 

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Featured image: Blinken meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on June 16, 2016 (Public Domain)

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***

The UK Government’s reporting system for COVID vaccine adverse reactions from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency released their latest report today, March 4, 2021.

The report covers data collected from December 9, 2020, through February 21, 2021, for the two experimental COVID vaccines currently in use in the U.K. from Pfizer and AstraZeneca.

They report a total of 460 deaths and 243,612 injuries.

For the COVID-19 mRNA Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine analysis they report:

• 2033 Blood disorders including 1 death
• 1032 Cardiac disorders including 25 deaths
• 3 Congenital disorder
• 713 Ear disorders
• 10 Endocrine disorders
• 1242 Eye disorders
• 9360 Gastrointestinal disorders including 11 deaths
• 26,394 General disorders including 111 deaths
• 17 Hepatic disorders
• 466 Immune system disorders
• 1863 Infections including 33 deaths
• 393 Injuries including 1 death
• 965 Investigations
• 525 Metabolic disorders including 1 death
• 11,565 Muscle & tissue disorders
• 20 Neoplasms
• 16,107 Nervous system disorders including 14 deaths
• 29 Pregnancy conditions including 1 death
• 1235 Psychiatric disorders
• 187 Renal & urinary disorders
• 338 Reproductive & breast disorders
• 3575 Respiratory disorders including 12 deaths
• 6042 Skin disorders including 1 death
• 16 Social circumstances
• 45 Surgical & medical procedures
• 992 Vascular disorders including 1 death

Total reactions for the COVID-19 mRNA Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine: 212 deaths and 85,179 injuries

For the COVID-19 vaccine Oxford University/AstraZeneca analysis they report:

• 799 Blood disorders
• 1516 Cardiac disorders including 30 deaths
• 13 Congenital disorders
• 891 Ear disorders
• 24 Endocrine disorders
• 1613 Eye disorders
• 17,597 Gastrointestinal disorders including 5 deaths
• 56,377 General disorders including 146 deaths
• 22 Hepatic disorders
• 410 Immune system disorders
• 3016 Infections including 32 deaths
• 668 Injuries including 1 death
• 1878 Investigations
• 2057 Metabolic disorders including 2 deaths
• 19,241 Muscle & tissue disorders
• 13 Neoplasms including 1 death
• 34,656 Nervous system disorders including 14 deaths
• 19 Pregnancy conditions
• 2773 Psychiatric disorders
• 453 Renal & urinary disorders including 1 death
• 229 Reproductive & breast disorders
• 4059 Respiratory disorders including 10 deaths
• 7872 Skin disorders including 1 death
• 39 Social circumstances
• 117 Surgical & medical procedures including 1 death
• 1274 Vascular disorders including 1 death

Total reactions for the COVID-19 vaccine Oxford University/AstraZenec vaccine: 244 deaths and 157,637 injuries

For the COVID-19 vaccine brand unspecified analysis they report:

• 4 Blood disorders
• 2 Cardiac disorder including 1 death
• 9 Ear disorders
• 11 Eye disorders
• 79 Gastrointestinal disorders
• 289 General disorders including 1 death
• 1 Hepatic disorders
• 1 Immune system disorders
• 10 Infections including 1 death
• 5 Injuries including 1 death
• 11 Investigations
• 26 Metabolic disorders
• 77 Muscle & tissue disorders
• 177 Nervous system disorders
• 22 Psychiatric disorders
• 7 Renal & urinary
• 1 Reproductive & breast disorders
• 18 Respiratory disorders including 1 death
• 38 Skin disorders
• 1 Social circumstances
• 7 Vascular disorders

Total reactions for the COVID-19 vaccine brand unspecified vaccines: 4 deaths and 796 injuries

The UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency concludes:

The overall safety experience with both vaccines is so far as expected from the clinical trials.

Based on current experience, the expected benefits of both COVID-19 vaccines in preventing COVID-19 and its serious complications far outweigh any known side effects.

Full details found on the UK Government website.

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The NATO Dynamic Manta anti-submarine warfare exercise took place in the Ionian Sea from February 22 to March 5. Ships, submarines, and planes from the United States, Italy, France, Germany, Greece, Spain, Belgium, and Turkey participated in it. The two main units involved in this exercise were a US Los Angeles class nuclear attack submarine and the French nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle together with its battle group, and a nuclear attack submarine was also included.

Soon after the exercise, the Charles de Gaulle carrier went to the Persian Gulf. Italy, which participated in the Dynamic Manta with ships and submarines, was the entire exercise “host nation”: Italy made the port of Catania (Sicily) and the Navy helicopter station (also in Catania) available to the participating forces, the Sigonella air station (the largest US / NATO base in the Mediterranean) and Augusta (both in Sicily) the logistics base for supplies. The purpose of the exercise was the hunt for Russian submarines in the Mediterranean that, according to NATO, would threaten Europe.

At the same time, the Eisenhower aircraft carrier and its battle group are carrying out operations in the Atlantic to “demonstrate continued US military support for allies and a commitment to keep the seas free and open.” These operations – conducted by the Sixth Fleet, whose command is in Naples and base is in Gaeta – fall within the strategy set out in particular by Admiral Foggo, formerly head of the NATO Command in Naples: accusing Russia of wanting to sink with its submarines the ships connecting the two sides of the Atlantic, so as to isolate Europe from the USA. He argued that NATO must prepare for the “Fourth Battle of the Atlantic,” after those of the two World Wars and the cold war. While naval exercises are underway, strategic B-1 bombers, transferred from Texas to Norway, are carrying out “missions” close to Russian territory, together with Norwegian F-35 fighters, to “demonstrate the readiness and capability of the United States in supporting the allies.

Military operations in Europe and adjacent seas take place under the command of US Air Force General Tod Wolters, who heads the US European Command and at the same time NATO, with the position of Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, this position is always covered by a US General.

All these military operations are officially motivated as “Europe defense from Russian aggression,” overturning the reality: NATO expanded into Europe with its forces and even nuclear bases close to Russia. At the European Council on February 26, NATO Secretary-General Stoltenberg declared that “the threats we faced before the pandemic are still there,” placing first “Russia’s aggressive actions” and, in the background, a threatening “rise of China.” He then stressed the need to strengthen the transatlantic link between the United States and Europe, as the new Biden administration strongly wants, taking cooperation between the EU and NATO to a higher level. Over 90% of the European Union’s inhabitants, he recalled, now live in NATO countries (including 21 of the 27 EU countries). The European Council reaffirmed “the commitment to cooperate closely with NATO and the new Biden administration for security and defense, “making the EU militarily stronger. As Prime Minister Mario Draghi pointed out in his speech, this strengthening must take place within a complementarity framework with NATO and in coordination with the USA.

Therefore, the military strengthening of the EU must be complementary to that of NATO, in turn, complementary to the US strategy. This strategy actually consists in provoking growing tensions with Russia in Europe, so as to increase US influence in the European Union itself. An increasingly dangerous and expensive game, because it pushes Russia to militarily strengthen itself. This is confirmed by the fact that in 2020, in full crisis, Italian military spending stepped from 13th to the 12th worldwide place, overtaking the place of Australia.

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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.

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***

A closed-door Bogotá summit of fugitive Venezuelan insurrectionists highlighted James Story’s role as Washington’s manager of the radical right-wing opposition. So who is the US “virtual ambassador” to Venezuela?

US “virtual ambassador” to Venezuela James “Jimmy” Story promised to answer a series of questions sent to him by The Grayzone this February 24. But after a Whatsapp exchange with this reporter during which Story offered to explain why he regularly alternated between Gargamel and the Smurfs as his avatar on the messaging app, the promised exchange never took place.

On March 2, Story’s assistant, David Fogelson, informed The Grayzone that the virtual ambassador “won’t be able to do the interview.” He offered no further details on Story’s turnabout.

That same day, during a Zoom event with the Venezuelan American Association of the US, Story boasted that his willingness to accept a few critical questions from his online audience “shows a transparency that the regime [in Caracas] does not show.”

The Grayzone’s unanswered questions to Story related to a closed-door summit the ambassador hosted between February 19 and 26 at the Bogotá Marriott hotel.

In a meeting at his home listed on the summit’s agenda, the ambassador served up barbecued meats and fine libations to a group of fugitive Venezuelan insurrectionists and far-right opposition leaders as they planned the next phase of the US-backed regime-change operation against the elected leftist government in Caracas.

The details of the meeting came to light after a Colombian official leaked news of the meeting to Venezuela’s government.

“Here is the agenda from the meeting that someone from the Duque government, angered that this is taking place on their soil, sent us,” tweeted the president of Venezuela’s National Assembly, Jorge Rodríguez, on February 22.

The tweet was accompanied by a screenshot of a document which outlined the itinerary of the conference, which was called “Visit of the Venezuelan Presidential Commission.”

Ya están meneando la colita en el Marriot de Bogotá, @leopoldolopez, @JulioBorges , Manuel Rosales. Hoy llega el arrastrado de @carlosvechio. Aquí la agenda de reuniones que alguien del gob de Duque, indignado de que eso ocurra en su suelo, nos envía. Abro hilo indignado pic.twitter.com/fBIF3Pu1na

— Jorge Rodríguez (@jorgerpsuv) February 22, 2021

According to Rodríguez, the summit’s attendees included right-wing opposition leader Leopoldo López, attorney and former lawmaker Julio Borges, and former Exxon lawyer Carlos Vecchio, who now serves as “ambassador” for Guaidó in Washington.

All three men are currently evading either criminal charges or prison sentences in Venezuela for crimes ranging from incitement of violence to participation in attempts to assassinate Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Following the delegates’ arrival to Bogotá, the first event listed on their agenda was a welcome barbecue which took place on Sunday, February 21. Story confirmed the cookout on his weekly “Alo Embajador” YouTube livestream, noting that he roasted a pig. Joined by Juan Guaidó as his guest, Story insisted that he did not serve 18-year-old whiskey, as the Colombian source claimed to Rodríguez.

According to the agenda tweeted by Rodríguez, the Venezuelan coup-plotters spent Monday, February 22, gathered at Story’s residence. Topics for discussion included how to encourage “a transition from a position of strength” in Venezuela as well as the potential for unity among opposition parties.

The week-long summit also allotted time for conversations exploring the possibility of invoking the interventionist “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine in order to justify the invasion of Venezuela under the guise of humanitarian protection, as well as at least six “meetings with Washington.” Insistent that a broad panoply of the opposition was on board with Washington’s agenda, Story claimed to The Grayzone that 25 parties participated in the conference.

Several US agencies were listed in agenda documents as participants in the meetings. They included the State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs; the State Department Office of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor; the United States Agency for International Development (USAID); and the White House National Security team. Think tanks were also listed as participants, but were left unnamed.

The event highlighted Story as the Biden administration’s de facto manager of the radical wing of Venezuela’s opposition that seeks regime change at all costs. The apparent outcome of the meeting suggested he has played a pivotal role in ensuring continuity between the Trump and Biden administrations on Venezuela.

On March 2, a week after the summit in Bogotá, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken formally recognized Juan Guaidó as “Interim President,” endorsing the maximalist Trump policy that rejected negotiations or any accommodation with Venezuela’s elected, UN-recognized President Nicolás Maduro.

Despite his central role in the Venezuelan regime-change scheme, Story has escaped the international scrutiny that other US officials like former State Department liaison to Venezuela Elliott Abrams have received. Story’s backstory may be less intriguing than that of Abrams, and certainly less sordid. However, he has been at the forefront of the US infiltration of South America, and helped set the stage for the assault on Venezuelan sovereignty through his participation in the Plan Colombia counter-insurgency campaign that consolidated Bogotá as a right-wing base of US influence.

Portraits of a putschist

James Story’s official title is US ambassador to Venezuela, though he has not worked inside the country since March of 2019. He is currently based in neighboring Colombia, where he coordinates Washington’s efforts to overthrow the Maduro government from within the US embassy in Bogotá.

In his official biography, he is described as a “career Senior Foreign Service Officer” with experience working in Afghanistan, Mozambique, Mexico, and Brazil.

Following a three-year stint as the US Consulate General in Rio, Story moved to Caracas in July of 2018 to serve as deputy chargé d’ affaires. The Venezuelan government had expelled chargé d’affaires Todd Robinson in May of that year, making Story the highest ranking US official in Venezuela.

Within six months of Story’s arrival in Venezuela, in January of 2019, the US announced its recognition of Juan Guaidó, a previously unknown opposition lawmaker, as president. As he worked to propel the coup, Story got close and personal with the self-proclaimed “interim president” and other opposition leaders.

On March 3, 2019, Story posted a photo to his Facebook profile showing himself on a friendly hike with former presidential candidate and rightist opposition figure Henrique Capriles Radonski during his time in Caracas.

“Climbed the Avila today with former Mayor, Governor, and Presidential candidate Henrique Capriles,” Story declared.

“The Venezuelan people love him,” Story enthused.

The following afternoon, Story posted a photo he took of Guaidó standing on top of a car surrounded by supporters with the caption, “Venezuela’s Interim President Juan Guaidó is back.”

Guaidó was returning from a regional tour during which he participated in a failed attempt to violate Venezuela’s sovereignty by ramming a convoy of USAID trucks across the country’s border. Story’s photo shows him in close proximity to the self-proclaimed “president,” and suggests he played a role in shepherding Guaidó from place to place.

Two weeks after publishing the photo, on March 11, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza informed Story that US diplomatic staff were no longer welcome in the country.

Story’s attraction to toppling leftist leaders was not limited to Venezuela. When a far-right military coup drove Bolivia’s elected president, Evo Morales, out of the country, destroyed his house, burned his sister’s home, poisoned his dogs, and orchestrated a national campaign of terror against his supporters, Story took to Facebook to celebrate the anti-democratic putsch.

In March 2020, Story promoted the multimillion-dollar bounty the Trump administration placed on the heads of Venezuelan President Maduro and several political allies on the dubious grounds that they were leaders of a previously unknown and likely non-existent drug cartel allegedly called “Cartel of the Suns.”

The photos remain on Story’s Facebook page as mementos of his proud role as de facto manager of the radical figures vaulted by the US to the helm of Venezuela’s opposition, and of his own dedication to regime change by any means.

When appearing in the US media, however, Story assumes a dramatically different image as a Southern gentleman with a careful, diplomatic touch.

AP’s February 1, 2019 puff piece of James Story

Behind the puff pieces, Story’s real role comes to light

In a glowing profile of James Story, whom it billed as a “steely huntsman at helm of embattled US Embassy in Caracas,” the Associated Press proclaimed that the diplomat’s “down-home Southern charm has opened doors.”

“In a rare feat for U.S. diplomats in Venezuela, who are usually ensconced in the hilltop U.S. Embassy compound liaising with opposition politicians,” gushed the AP, “Story has managed to establish a rapport with a number of powerful Venezuelan government officials, all the while gingerly sidestepping the political minefield running through anti-Maduro Miami that has made engagement a risky endeavor for any U.S. official. He also won the respect of his staff by joining the embassy’s softball team within days of arrival.”

Since his expulsion from Venezuela in March 2019, Story has worked out of the US embassy in Bogotá under a variety of titles, with former US President Donald Trump most recently appointing him to serve as “ambassador” to Venezuela in May of 2020.

Due to the US’ continued recognition of Guaidó – despite his failure to secure control of Venezuela’s government or even unite the country’s fractured opposition – no official diplomatic ties currently exist between Caracas and Washington. Until news of the recent summit of Venezuelan fugitives in Bogotá came to light, Story’s duties as “virtual ambassador to Venezuela based in Colombia” remained shrouded in mystery.

In its fawning portrait of Story, the AP quoted his former boss, US diplomat John Feeley, as saying “he can deftly sip cocktails with the diplomats but his heart is still somewhere duck-hunting in an early morning blind.”

Story brought his interest in foreign intrigue together with his passion for southern hospitality by serving up platters of grilled pork to a crew of fire-breathing coup leaders gathered at his home in Bogotá. But Story’s talents extended beyond charming the representatives of Latin American oligarchy, and into the murky world of drug wars and paramilitary repression.

A drug warrior defends bombing peasants with chemical weapons

Perhaps the most disturbing yet little known detail in James Story’s biography relates to his time working out of the US embassy in Colombia.

For roughly 25 years, the US oversaw an aerial fumigation program in Colombia, spraying approximately 4.4 million acres of its land with the cancer-causing herbicide known as glyphosate. (In the US, this substance is known as RoundUp. Its manufacturer, Monsanto, has paid out $10 billion to settle a class action lawsuit filed by cancer victims.)

The aerial crop eradication policy had a devastating impact on Colombia’s rural population. Thousands of people are estimated to have been forced to flee their homes as a result of the fumigations, while people living in affected areas “report[ed] skin, respiratory and gastrointestinal issues” according to the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL).

“In addition to impacts on human health, environmental damages are also rampant. Spraying has led to massive crop loss,” CIEL added. “Residual spray has led to chemical seepage into groundwater and aquifers. The destruction of non-targeted plants has damaged some of the most biologically diverse regions, jeopardizing their very existence.”

In 2011, CNN featured a rare report exposing the US aerial fumigation program’s role in destroying the livelihoods of Colombian farmers. The CNN segment covered a documentary about Avelardo Joya, one of the 3.5 million Colombians internally displaced under the US government’s Plan Colombia counter-insurgency campaign.

The US crop eradication policy ruined Joya’s cacao and plantain farm, making him a refugee in his own country.

“They’ve destroyed our food,” Joya lamented to the filmmakers. “That’s the only thing they destroy, because our food crops cannot resist the poison they drop.”

To balance its report, CNN managed to find one voice willing to speak positively about the fumigation program. It belonged to the current US “virtual ambassador” to Venezuela.

“The aerial eradication program run by the government of Colombia has been extraordinarily successful,” Story proclaimed from within the comfort of his air-conditioned office, where he worked at the time as director of the narcotic affairs section of the US embassy.

Story went on to claim the policy resulted in a 40 percent drop in coca cultivation, while admitting, “there is some drift that happens” with regard to neighboring farms.

The full CNN segment featuring Story’s comments is embedded below:

Watch the video here.

According to the US embassy’s website, its narcotic affairs section in Colombia “advises the Ambassador on counternarcotics policy and works in close coordination with DOJ, DHS, and U.S. military counterparts.”

The US “virtual ambassador” to Venezuela has been marketed as an affable Southern gentleman, and there’s little reason to doubt he can serve up a lip-smacking rack of ribs. But the real story about Story lies behind the media-crafted image of the “steely huntsman,” and in the bowels of the US national security architecture, where coups are hatched, puppets are groomed, and peasants are transformed into refugees by the millions.

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Anya Parampil is a journalist based in Washington, DC. She has produced and reported several documentaries, including on-the-ground reports from the Korean peninsula, Palestine, Venezuela, and Honduras.

The editor-in-chief of The Grayzone, Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books, including best-selling Republican Gomorrah, Goliath, The Fifty One Day War, and The Management of Savagery.

Featured image is from The Grayzone

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The International Criminal Court (ICC) has decided to look into war crimes committed in the Israeli-Occupied Territories of Palestine. Outgoing chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, said that the decision to go forward was reached after a painstaking 5-year review. The investigation will begin in 2014, suggesting that the court will consider war crimes by both Israeli officials and Hammas ones during the 2014 Gaza conflict.

Ms. Bensouda had announced on February 6 of this year that the Court had found that it had the competency to investigate war crimes committed in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, but had not yet decided whether actually to do so.

Now it is clear that there is an appetite on the court to go forward.

The Rome Statute that acts as a charter for the ICC defines Apartheid as a war crime, such that Israel flooding its own citizens onto Palestinian land as grabby squatters may well be part of the court’s brief. Israeli actions contravene the 1949 Geneva Conventions on occupied territories.

Al-Quds al-Arabi [Arab Jerusalem], a pan-Arab London daily, quoted the foreign ministry of the Palestine Authority as welcoming the decision, saying that it demonstrated the court’s principled stand and its independence, and its dedication to the principles of the 2002 Rome Statute.

The state of Palestine brought the motion to the International Criminal Court in 2018 after having tried for three years to get the far right, expansionist government of Binyamin Netanyahu to stop colonizing Palestinian land and resources. The state of Palestine was recognized as a permanent observer state by the UN General Assembly in 2012, giving it the same status that the Vatican enjoys. That status allowed Palestine to join the International Criminal Court in 2015.

The ICC cannot investigate Israel proper, since Tel Aviv is not a signatory to the Rome Statute and the court only has jurisdiction over signatories. The only other way the court can intervene is if the UN Security Council forwards a case to it, as happened when Moammar Gaddafi began shooting down Libyans in February, 2011. Because the US generally wields its veto to protect Israel, the International Criminal Court is unlikely to get a referral regarding Israel.

Since, however, Palestine joined the ICC in 2015, and since Palestine brought a complaint in 2018, the court has decided that it now has jurisdiction over the Palestinian territories. Since those are where most of the war crimes occur, the court now has a wide range of issues to consider.

Al-Quds al-Arabi notes that Bensouda cautioned that this process would take some time. Some work will be delayed because of the pandemic. The first step will be to set priorities for investigation.

The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken denounced the court’s decision, saying “The United States firmly opposes and is deeply disappointed by this decision. The ICC has no jurisdiction over this matter. Israel is not a party to the ICC and has not consented to the Court’s jurisdiction, and we have serious concerns about the ICC’s attempts to exercise its jurisdiction over Israeli personnel.”

He added that the US ““will continue to uphold our strong commitment to Israel and its security, including by opposing actions that seek to target Israel unfairly.”

Blinken is flat out wrong on every point he makes. The ICC is not investigating crimes on Israeli soil, but in the Palestinian Occupied territories. Since Palestine as a permanent UN observer state is a member of the ICC and invited the court into its territory, the International Criminal Court has every right to investigate violations of the Rome Statute that took place in those territories. As for Israeli personnel, if they committed their crimes in Palestine, they are liable to prosecution.

The ICC is not treating Israel unfairly. It will also look at Hamas violations. Moreover, it isn’t unfair to investigate a country for committing war crimes when it has actually, like, committed war crimes. Blinken sounds like every convict in prison, who has been unfairly persecuted and never did murder that old lady to get at her purse.

Blinken already let the crown prince of Saudi Arabia off without sanctions for murdering Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Now he is running interference for Netanyahu. He is quickly becoming the face of American hypocrisy, which only wants sanctions on Russians and Iranians who are rivals but never on officials from countries that talk nice about the US.

Although it may itself be under scrutiny, Al Jazeera says, the Hamas party-militia that rules the Palestinian Gaza Strip welcomed the announcement. Spokesman Hazim Qasim said, “Hamas welcomes the decision of the International Criminal Court to investigate the crimes of the Israeli Occupation against our people.” He added, “Our resistance is a legitimate resistance and comes within the framework of defense on our people.”

For his part, Israeli foreign minister Gabriel “Gabi” Ashkenazi rejected the decision of the ICC, calling it “morally and legally bankrupt.” He said, “The decision to open an investigation against Israel is beyond the court’s mandate, and a waste of the international community’s resources by a biased institution that has lost all legitimacy.”

Al-Quds al-Arabi further quoted Ashkenazi as saying, “Israel will take all necessary steps to protect its citizens and its troops from legal persecution.”

I think all criminals view legal prosecution as a form of persecution.

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Featured image: Israeli soldier aim at Palestinians protesting confiscation of their land by Jewish settlements in Kufr Qadoom vsillage near the West Bank city of Nablus, Oct. 11, 2019. (Photo by Nidal Eshtayeh/Xinhua)

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Senators Go After Endless Wars

In a long overdue effort Bipartisan Senators Introduce Bill to Strip Biden of War Powers.

Sens. Tim Kaine and Todd Young on Wednesday introduced bipartisan legislation that would repeal decades-old authorizations for the use of military force in the Middle East, amid escalating tensions between the U.S. and Iran in the region.

Kaine (D-Va.) and Young (R-Ind.) unveiled the measure as lawmakers have expressed frustration with President Joe Biden’s decision to launch airstrikes in Syria last week without first seeking congressional approval. It also comes just hours after an Iraqi military base housing U.S. troops and civilian contractors was hit by rocket attacks.

The bill would repeal the 1991 and 2002 authorizations that cleared the way for a prolonged military conflict in Iraq, culminating in calls from Democrats and Republicans alike to end the so-called “forever wars” in the region.

Senators from across the ideological spectrum signed onto the Kaine-Young bill as co-sponsors on Wednesday, including Sens. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).

“Last week’s airstrikes in Syria show that the executive branch, regardless of party, will continue to stretch its war powers,” Kaine said. “Congress has a responsibility to not only vote to authorize new military action, but to repeal old authorizations that are no longer necessary.”

Biden angered congressional Democrats when he launched airstrikes against Iran-backed military installations in Syria, with lawmakers lamenting that the White House did not consult with Congress ahead of time and did not properly notify them about the strikes.

Congress has largely abdicated its constitutional authority to declare war, and presidents from both parties have used outdated authorizations to legally justify U.S. military action — including, and perhaps most notably, the 2001 authorization for the use of military force against al Qaeda and the Taliban, which was approved in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. The Kaine-Young bill, though, only deals with the 1991 and 2002 measures, which are entirely focused on Iraq.

No Longer Necessary?!

Not quite. Those bills were never necessary and never should have been passed at all, in any form.

Bush, Obama, and Trump all made terrible use of those bills.

Congress and Congress alone should authorize war and be damn careful when it does.

Warmongers on both sides, notably Hillary Clinton, agreed to fight a stupid second war with Iraq on what any reasonable person should have seen as a pack of lies by Bush and Cheney.

We are still there needlessly and senselessly.

Republicans would not strip Trump but some will be happy to strip Biden. Better late than never, but still not enough.

One Step Further

Congress should go one step further and set a timeline for all troops to return from everywhere starting with the Mideast and Cuba, preferably immediately.

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Featured image is Sen. Tim Kaine (Public Domain)

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Astounding new figures out of France suggest what is no doubt a broader global trend of hesitancy and skepticism when it comes to the current big push to ‘vaccinate all’. 

Reuters in covering the country’s vaccine rollout finds that merely around “half of health workers in French care homes do not want to be vaccinated” — even after many of these routinely witness the ravages of COVID-19 on the elderly and infirm.

“There’s a complete loss of trust,” one home health care worker and trade union representative was cited in the report as saying, reflecting resistance to the growing pressure put on often underpaid staff in difficult working conditions who are being ordered to get vaccinated lest they risk the safety of the elderly patients. And another reflected a common answer of “I’m going to wait a bit”.

The intense skepticism and pushback stems from the fact that it’s both the government that’s reportedly underpaying them, while also demanding they get the jab.

Reuters presents a common refrain among the frontline care-givers as follows:

Marie-France Boudret, who works in a French home for the elderly, watched a patient suffocate to death in front of her because COVID-19 had infected his lungs. But when her employer offered her a vaccine against the virus, the nurse hesitated.

“I have some doubts,” said Boudret, 48. “I prefer to wait.”

The trend is also being observed across Europe, raising deep concerns among health officials that the elderly population remains at great risk to the degree that large portions of health workers refuse or at least delay the jab.

The report offers as nearby examples Germany and Switzerland, where resistance to the vaccine among home healthcare staff could be even greater than in France. “In Germany, care home operator BeneVit Group surveyed staff in November and found only 30% wanted to get vaccinated,” writes Reuters.

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Over the past year France has struggled to contain a series deadly coronavirus outbreaks at nursing homes and elderly care facilities, akin to similar tragedies in New York and other places in the US:

After 36 coronavirus-related deaths at a nursing home on France’s Cote D’Azur, the regional public health authority said it has launched an investigation into why so many people died https://t.co/OeaQOaaIoG pic.twitter.com/81ILtMNwxR

— Reuters (@Reuters) April 17, 2020

And of Switzerland, the report cites the following: “Peter Burri, head of ProSenectute, Switzerland’s biggest advocacy group for seniors, said at most half of nursing staff in the medical sector were willing to get inoculated.”

France has lately been debating whether or not older people with pre-existing conditions should receive AstraZeneca’s vaccine. Previously Paris warned against it, however, on Tuesday government health officials revised the stance which had been taken out of caution over lack of data from clinical trials, and has now lifted the ban for people 65 and up.

Currently France is approaching the 4 million mark (at 3.8 million) in terms of recorded total COVID invections since the pandemic began, including over 87,000 deaths.

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Featured image is from Viacheslav Lopatin | scaliger – stock.adobe.com

Trump & Biden’s Secret Bombing Wars

By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, March 04 2021

Unbeknownst to many Americans, the U.S. military and its allies are engaged in bombing and killing people in other countries on a daily basis. The U.S. and its allies have dropped more than 326,000 bombs and missiles on people in other countries since 2001, including over 152,000 in Iraq and Syria.

The Dangers of A “Sino-American Hot War”: Joe Biden’s China Policy. Can He Stop the Shooting War Against China?

By Prof. Joseph H. Chung, March 04 2021

The forty years of the Cold War have made us endure hunger, fear and hopelessness. The year old pandemic has made us desperate and vulnerable. Now, we are facing a new global threat, namely the Sino-American hot war which may mean the end the human civilization.

Biden Does Not Say Where and How ‘America Is Back’

By Michael Jansen, March 04 2021

US President Joe Biden insists, “America is back.” He says the US has returned to the world stage as a prominent actor and leader after four years of absence and wrong-headed policies adopted by the Trump administration. But, Biden does not say where and how “America is back.”

Biden, Afghanistan and Forever Wars

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, March 04 2021

The papers are full of suggestions on what US President Joe Biden should do about his country’s seemingly perennial involvement in Afghanistan. None are particularly useful, in that they ignore the central premise that a nation state long mauled, molested and savaged should finally be left alone.

The Bamiyan Buddhas: An Afghan Tale

By Pepe Escobar, March 04 2021

The destruction process started with the legs of the Great Buddha: one of them was already cut at the knee and the other at the femur. It took them four days – using mines, explosives and even artillery. The Taliban forced local Hazara youth to drill holes in the statues: those who refused were shot dead.

Orwell in Disguise: US Congress Passes the So-Called “For the People Act”

By Stephen Lendman, March 04 2021

Congressional legislation most always serves special interests, not all Americans equitably. Deceptive Orwellian language disguises intent. It’s common practice for much congressional legislation.

Death Rates Skyrocket in Israel Following Pfizer Experimental COVID “Vaccines”

By Brian Shilhavy, March 04 2021

We have previously reported how Israel rapidly vaccinated the highest percentage of their population with experimental COVID vaccines after the Israeli government struck a bargain with Pfizer to secure millions of doses of their mRNA COVID vaccines.

Our Children Are Crying. “The Covid Stranglehold”

By Peter Koenig, March 04 2021

This world needs a generation that can lead us out of the mess of dystopian values that was created predominantly by a western civilization of greed. The covid crisis, man-made, served the destruction of the world economy, as well as the ensuing World Economic Forum (WEF) designed “Great Reset”.

Putin Blasts World Economic Forum “Honchos” at Davos “Gabfest”

By Mike Whitney, March 04 2021

Why is Vladimir Putin standing up to the richest and most powerful men in the world? Why is he bad-mouthing their “pet project” Globalization and trash-talking their “Great Reset”?

Anti-Asian Hate Crimes Rose 150% in Major U.S. Cities, Finds Study

By Countercurrents.org, March 04 2021

Hate crimes targeting Asian-Americans rose 150% in U.S.’s largest cities last year, even as overall hate crimes decreased, according to alarming new data released Tuesday.

Lawsuit Challenges Trump Administration’s Eleventh-hour Approval of Dangerous Pesticide Banned in More than 100 Countries

By Center For Biological Diversity, March 04 2021

Public-interest groups sued the Environmental Protection Agency today over its rushed decision in the final days of the Trump administration to reapprove previously cancelled uses of the dangerous pesticide aldicarb on Florida oranges and grapefruits.

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Congressional legislation most always serves special interests, not all Americans equitably.

Deceptive Orwellian language disguises intent.

It’s common practice for much congressional legislation.

On Wednesday, majority House Dems passed so-called HR 1 — For the People Act of 2021.

There’s nothing remotely democratic about their hostile to peace, equity, justice, and the rule of law agenda.

They stole Election 2020 and likely have more of the same in mind ahead.

HR 1 passed almost entirely along party lines.

Majority Dem House members adopted the measure in 2019.

It died in the GOP controlled Senate, perhaps facing a repeat defeat ahead.

Pelosi’s dark hands are pushing the measure opposed by the ACLU. See below.

Any measure 791 pages in length contains provisions to oppose, not support.

Few if any congressional members read the measure and other overly lengthy ones they vote up or down on anyway.

According to Pelosi, “(e)verything is at stake (sic). We must win this race, this fight (sic).”

“At the same time as we are gathering here to honor our democracy (sic), across the country over 200 bills are being put together, provisions are being put forward to suppress the vote (sic).”

She and other undemocratic Dems know all about voter suppression and related dirty tricks.

There’s nothing remotely democratic about a notion they abhor.

HR 1 contains provisions to facilitate election theft ahead.

Former congressman Ron Paul called the measure “one of the most dangerous bills for both election integrity and free speech that I have ever seen.”

HR 1 “is an attempt by the absolute worst of the Washington, DC statists to take over your state and local elections, while they institutionalize seriously questionable practices like universal mail-in and early voting.”

“Pelosi sponsored HR 1, a bill designed to allow her party to take over elections, and she did it as soon as she retook the speaker’s gavel.”

Provisions include:

“Forcing states to allow same-day walk-up voter registration.”

“Making it illegal to clean out voter rolls of deceased or non-residents.”

“Forcing states to allow early voting.”

“Forcing states to allow vote-by-mail, which is fraught with opportunities to commit fraud.”

“Forcing taxpayers to subsidize candidates they don’t align with politically, and

“Policing online speech about elections with new broad and sweeping powers.”

“They also fear any dissenters to their agenda, because it’s so unpopular among the general public, they know they must crush any dissent at the same time.”

“HR 1…also empowers federal regulators to categorize and regulate speech.”

The ACLU said the following about HR 1.

It supports provisions that “strengthen federal protections for the right to vote.”

Other provisions are unacceptable.

They “unconstitutionally burden the speech and associational rights of many public interest organizations and American citizens.”

“These provisions will chill speech essential to our public discourse and would do little to serve the public’s legitimate interest in knowing who is providing substantial support for candidates’ elections.”

In its current form, the ACLU opposes HR 1.

It should be split into a number of measures to be considered separately.

The ACLU supports legislation that strengthens the democratic process — opposing what goes the other way.

HR 1 as now drafted falls short.

The ACLU urged congressional members “to vote ‘no’ on passage of the bill” in its current form.

House members passed what an evenly divided Senate can defeat by use of the filibuster that requires a 60% majority to end debate.

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

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

My two Wall Street books are timely reading:

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

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

“Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity”

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

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Why is Vladimir Putin standing up to the richest and most powerful men in the world?

Why is he bad-mouthing their “pet project” Globalization and trash-talking their “Great Reset”?

Does he really think these corporate mandarins and “silver spoon” elites are going to listen to what he has to say or does he realize that they’re just going to hate him more than ever? Why is he doing this?

Here’s what’s going on: At the end of January, Putin was given the opportunity to address the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland (online). The WEF is a prestigious assembly of political leaders, corporatists and billionaire elites many of whom are directly involved in the massive global restructuring project that is currently underway behind the smokescreen of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Powerful members of the WEF decided that the Coronavirus presented the perfect opportunity to implement their dystopian strategy which includes a hasty transition to green energy, A.I., robotics, transhumanism, universal vaccination and a comprehensive surveillance matrix that detects the location and activities of every human being on the planet. The proponents of this universal police state breezily refer to it as “The Great Reset” which is the latest make-over of the more familiar, “New World Order”. There’s not a hairsbreadth difference between the Reset and one-world government which has preoccupied billionaire activists for more than a century. This is the group to which Putin made the following remarks:

“I would like to speak in more detail about the main challenges ..the international community is facing…. The first one is socioeconomic….. Starting from 1980, global per capita GDP has doubled in terms of real purchasing power parity. This is definitely a positive indicator. Globalisation and domestic growth have led to strong growth in developing countries and lifted over a billion people out of poverty….Still, the main question… is what was the nature of this global growth and who benefitted from it most…..

… developing countries benefitted a lot from the growing demand for their traditional and even new products. However, this integration into the global economy has resulted in more than just new jobs or greater export earnings. It also had its social costs, including a significant gap in individual incomes…. According to the World Bank, 3.6 million people subsisted on incomes of under $5.50 per day in the United States in 2000, but in 2016 this number grew to 5.6 million people....

Meanwhile, globalisation led to a significant increase in the revenue of large multinational, primarily US and European, companies…In terms of corporate profits, who got hold of the revenue? The answer is clear: one percent of the population.

And what has happened in the lives of other people? In the past 30 years, in a number of developed countries, the real incomes of over half of the citizens have been stagnating, not growing. Meanwhile, the cost of education and healthcare services has gone up. Do you know by how much? Three times…

In other words, millions of people even in wealthy countries have stopped hoping for an increase of their incomes. In the meantime, they are faced with the problem of how to keep themselves and their parents healthy and how to provide their children with a decent education….

These imbalances in global socioeconomic development are a direct result of the policy pursued in the 1980s, which was often vulgar or dogmatic. This policy rested on the so-called Washington Consensus with its unwritten rules, when the priority was given to the economic growth based on a private debt in conditions of deregulation and low taxes on the wealthy and the corporations….

As I have already mentioned, the coronavirus pandemic has only exacerbated these problems. In the last year, the global economy sustained its biggest decline since WWII. By July, the labour market had lost almost 500 million jobs…. In the first nine months of the past year alone, the losses of earnings amounted to $3.5 trillion. This figure is going up and, hence, social tension is on the rise.” (“Session of Davos Agenda 2021 Online Forum, Putin Addresses World Economic Forum, Jan 27, 2021)

Why is Putin telling his elitist audience these things?

Does he think these fatcats don’t know how the system works or how it was originally set up?

Does he think they are unaware of the glaring flaws in a system that shifts all of the profits to obscenely wealthy corporations and scheming elites while working people slip further into debt and desperation?

Putin knows how globalisation works, just as he knows who it was designed to benefit. It’s no secret. Check out this quote from the Russian president in a speech nearly 5 years ago:

“Back in the late 1980s-early 1990s, there was a chance not just to accelerate the globalization process but also to give it a different quality and make it more harmonious and sustainable in nature. But some countries that saw themselves as victors in the Cold War, not just saw themselves this way but said it openly, took the course of simply reshaping the global political and economic order to fit their own interests.

In their euphoria, they essentially abandoned substantive and equal dialogue with other actors in international life, chose not to improve or create universal institutions, and attempted instead to bring the entire world under the spread of their own organizations, norms and rules. They chose the road of globalization and security for their own beloved selves, for the select few, but not for everyone.” (President Vladimir Putin, Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club)

“To the victor belongs the spoils”? Isn’t that what Putin is saying, that Washington figured its Cold War triumph entitled them to create a system whereby they could pillage and loot the rest of the world with impunity?

Indeed, that is precisely what he’s saying. And he knows what he’s talking about, too.Putin has followed developments in global trade for over 20 years. He knows the system is rigged and he knows who rigged it. And now he’s telling them in no uncertain terms that they are responsible for the mess the world is in today. “The world is in crisis, because you fu**ed up.” That’s what he’s saying. It’s not a subtle message, he’s simply laying it on the line. Check out this blurb from an earlier speech by Putin where he shows that he’s not just a capable leader but also an astute critic of social trends linked to globalization:

“It seems like elites don’t see the deepening stratification in society and the erosion of the middle class…(but the situation) creates a climate of uncertainty that has a direct impact on the public mood. Sociological studies conducted around the world show that people in different countries and on different continents tend to see the future as murky and bleak. This is sad. The future does not entice them, but frightens them. At the same time, people see no real opportunities or means for changing anything, influencing events and shaping policy. As for the claim that the fringe and populists have defeated the sensible, sober and responsible minority – we are not talking about populists or anything like that but about ordinary people, ordinary citizens who are losing trust in the ruling class. That is the problem…. ” (President Vladimir Putin, Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club)

In this one brief comment, Putin shows that he has a better grasp of ‘what is going on’ in the west than any of the numbskulls in congress today. And notice how he ignores the hype about “racial justice”, BLM, “white supremacy” and the other “racialized” bunkum that’s propagated in the media today. He’s not hoodwinked by that nonsense. He knows it’s just another diversion promoted by the cadres of dirtbags who use race and identity politics to conceal their role in the ongoing class war. That’s what’s really going on. The men that Putin is addressing in his speech are the very same men who are doing everything in their power to eviscerate democracy, skewer the middle class and grind America’s working population into dust. It’s plain old class war dolled-up to look like racial unrest. Here’s more from Putin:

“…During the past 20 years we have created a foundation for the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution (AKA–“The Great Reset”) based on the wide use of AI and automation and robotics. The coronavirus pandemic has greatly accelerated such projects and their implementation. However, this process is leading to new structural changes, I am thinking in particular of the labor market. This means that very many people could lose their jobs unless the state takes effective measures to prevent this. Most of these people are from the so-called middle class, which is the basis of any modern society.

…. The rise of economic problems and inequality is splitting society, triggering social, racial and ethnic intolerance. Indicatively, these tensions are bursting out even in the countries with seemingly civil and democratic institutions that are designed to alleviate and stop such phenomena and excesses.

The systemic socioeconomic problems are evoking such social discontent that they require special attention and real solutions. The dangerous illusion that they may be ignored or pushed into the corner is fraught with serious consequences.” (Putin, WEF)

Putin understands that the Covid-related lockdowns and closing of “non-essential” businesses is merely prelude for the massive societal restructuring project elites have in store for us. They’ve already put millions of people out of work and expanded their surveillance capabilities in anticipation of the social unrest they are deliberately inciting. Putin thinks this futuristic strategy is unnecessarily reckless, disruptive and fails to account for intensifying social animosities and widening political divisions that are bound to have a catastrophic impact on democratic institutions. But Putin also knows that his appeal for a more cautious approach will be brushed aside by the billionaire powerbrokers who set the policy and call the shots. Here’s more:

“Society will still be divided politically and socially. This is bound to happen because people are dissatisfied not by some abstract issues but by real problems that concern everyone regardless of the political views that people have or think they have. Meanwhile, real problems evoke discontent.”

This is a recurrent theme with Putin and one that shows that he has a deeper understanding of what is really happening in both the United States and Europe than any of his peers.

Populist candidates, like Trump, have not gained momentum due to thier abilities and charisma, but because the financial situation of millions of Americans continues to deteriorate forcing them to seek remedies outside the establishment candidates. The economic distress is real and widespread and, as Putin notes, it is expressing itself in outbursts of discontent, frustration and rage. Here’s more:

“So, the key question today is how to build a programme of actions in order to not only quickly restore the global and national economies affected by the pandemic, but to ensure that this recovery is sustainable in the long run, relies on a high-quality structure and helps overcome the burden of social imbalances. Clearly… economic growth will largely rely on fiscal incentives with state budgets and central banks playing the key role.

Actually, we can see these kinds of trends in the developed countries and also in some developing economies as well. An increasing role of the state in the socioeconomic sphere at the national level obviously implies greater responsibility and close interstate interaction when it comes to issues on the global agenda.

Calls for inclusive growth and for creating decent standards of living for everyone are regularly made at various international forums. This is how it should be, and this is an absolutely correct view of our joint efforts.

It is clear that the world cannot continue creating an economy that will only benefit a million people, or even the golden billion. This is a destructive precept. This model is unbalanced by default. The recent developments, including migration crises, have reaffirmed this once again.” (Putin, WEF)

Putin’s recommendations, of course, are going to be dismissed with a wave of the hand by the men in power. The last thing these sociopaths want is “inclusive growth.. and decent standards of living for everyone.” That’s not even on their list, and why would it be. After all, they know what they want. “They want more for themselves and less for everyone else.” (George Carlin) Which is why the system works the way it does, because it was constructed with that one solitary goal in mind.

Putin also acknowledges the need for greater state intervention in the economy to counterbalance the more destructive effects of “smash and grab” capitalism. And, while he rejects the swift and far-reaching structural changes (The Great Reset) that would precipitate massive social upheaval, he does support a larger role for the state in providing essential fiscal stimulus, employment and a more equitable distribution of the wealth. This does not imply that Putin supports state socialism. He does not. He merely supports a more regulated and benign form of Capitalism that veers from the “scorched earth” model backed by powerful members of the WEF and other elitist organizations.

With that in mind, Putin makes these specific recommendations:

“We must now proceed from stating facts to action, investing our efforts and resources into reducing social inequality in individual countries and into gradually balancing the economic development standards of different countries and regions in the world. This would put an end to migration crises.”

The focus of this policy aimed at ensuring sustainable and harmonious development are clear. They imply the creation of new opportunities for everyone, conditions under which everyone will be able to develop and realize their potential regardless of where they were born and are living

I would like to point out four key priorities, as I see them.

First, everyone must have comfortable living conditions, including housing and affordable transport, energy and public utility infrastructure. Plus, environmental welfare, something that must not be overlooked.

Second, everyone must be sure that they will have a job that can ensure sustainable growth of income and, hence, decent standards of living. Everyone must have access to an effective system of lifelong education, which is absolutely indispensable now and which will allow people to develop, make a career and receive a decent pension and social benefits upon retirement.

Third, people must be confident that they will receive high-quality and effective medical care whenever necessary, and that the national healthcare system will guarantee access to modern medical services.

Fourth, regardless of the family income, children must be able to receive a decent education and realize their potential. Every child has potential.” (Putin, Davos)

What does it mean that the current president of Russia is now throwing his weight behind a program that is nearly identical to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s economic Bill of Rights? Doesn’t that seem a bit odd? After all, Putin is a devout Orthodox Christian, a strong proponent of the traditional family, a self-avowed social conservative, and a hardscrabble survivor of the failed Soviet state. Who would have thought that such a man would support a program that provides a decent standard living to every member of society regardless of their circumstances?

But it makes sense, doesn’t it? Putin is pushing for a return to the heavily-regulated “Heyday” of 20th Century capitalism, when workers’ wages were still on the rise, when college tuition and health care were still affordable, and when the American Dream was still within reach of the average guy. People were happier then, because they felt that if they applied themselves, worked like hell, and stashed their savings in the bank; they’d eventually reach their goal. But that’s not true anymore. People are much more pessimistic now and no longer believe that America is the land of opportunity.

Putin wants to rekindle that optimism. He wants to avoid social unrest by implementing programs that provide a more equitable distribution of the wealth. This isn’t a return to Communism. It’s sensible way to soften the harsher effects of unrestrained capitalism, which is presently ravaging the West. Here’s Putin again:

“This is the only way to guarantee the cost-effective development of the modern economy, in which people are perceived as the end, rather than the means…. A strategy, also being implemented by my country, hinges on precisely these approaches. Our priorities revolve around people, their families, and they aim to ensure demographic development, to protect the people, to improve their well-being and to protect their health. We are now working to create favourable conditions for worthy and cost-effective work and successful entrepreneurship and to ensure digital transformation as the foundation of a high-tech future for the entire country, rather than that of a narrow group of companies.

We intend to focus the efforts of the state, the business community and civil society on these tasks and to implement a budgetary policy with the relevant incentives in the years ahead….” (Putin, Davos)

Imagine a political leader who actually put the needs and well-being of his people before the special interests of his deep-pocket donors and shady corporate buddies. Imagine a leader who stood eye-to-eye with the big money guys and told them that their system “sucked” and that they were taking too much for themselves leaving nothing for anyone else. Imagine a leader who invited more criticism, hectoring, demonizing and punitive sanctions for “speaking truth to power” in order to stand on the side of ordinary working people, pensioners, cast-offs and the other victims of this globalist rip-off system.

The reason Putin spoke out at the WEF confab and put himself at risk, was because Putin is one of the “good guys” who actually believes that everyone deserves a shot at a decent life. And that’s what sets Putin apart from the other leaders in the world today. He doesn’t just “talk the talk”, he also “walks the walk.”

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Mike Whitney is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from The Unz Review

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***

On Saturday Mumia Abu-Jamal was hospitalized.  When he put in a sick call slip and was seen by the SCI Mahanoy medical staff he was taken immediately to the hospital suffering chest pain and shortness of breath. Diagnosed with congestive heart failure he was given a battery of tests.  It is unclear how long Mumia was hospitalized, but by Wednesday he was in isolation in the prison’s infirmary.  This diagnosis of a weakened heart requires careful monitoring and treatment.

At the hospital his seriology blood test was positive for Covid-19. This followed three negative, or false negative COVID-19, tests  and a negative antigen test administered recently by the medical staff at SCI Mahanoy.

After initial treatment for fluid build up in his body, he was discharged from the local private hospital and put in isolation in the prison infirmary.   On Wednesday he was able to reach his supporters who were gathering in Philadelphia at 3 Penn Sq. outside the DA’s office, demanding that he receive appropriate medical attention.  He expressed his gratitude for the world wide support and attention to his and other elders with life threatening conditions in prison.

We must remember that the prison infirmary at SCI Mahanoy is the very same place that in 2014 diagnosed Mumia as having critically low blood sugar, ie a diabetic episode or reaction to a topical steroid he was taking for a raging skin condition.  The infirmary then ignored the notation in his chart to monitor his blood sugar levels for three weeks.  It was not until  he fainted and went into renal failure that he was rushed to the hospital.  His lawsuit in that case Abu-Jamal v. Wetzel is still pending.  It took a federal civil rights lawsuit, the order of a preliminary injunction, and world wide protests for Mumia to receive the fast acting anti viral cure to his belatedly diagnosed Hepatitis C.

The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections has repeatedly failed to provide adequate care for our family members.

We, the people, must toss aside our fears.  It is not the time to hesitate and we cannot give into despair. Decarceration is not a dream; it is a necessity.

We need to take action now!

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Please consider reaching out to the following:

• Gov Tom Wolf: 717-787-2500
• PA DA Larry Krasner: 267-456-1000; @DA_LarryKrasner
• Prison SCI Mahanoy: 570-773-2158
• PA DOC Secretary John Wetzel: 717-728-2573

Script:

My name is _____ and I demand:

1. The immediate and unconditional release of Mumia Abu-Jamal, who has congestive heart failure & has been diagnosed with COVID-19 and is vulnerable.

2. The immediate release of all political prisoners.

3. The immediate release of all elders, aging prisoners over the age of 50, people who have contracted COVID, and all others who are especially vulnerable to death through COVID-19.

Write Mumia a personal note:

Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal AM 8335
SCI Mahanoy
PO Box 33028
St Petersburg, FL 33733

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Russophobic US-led Western actions continue sinking to new depths.

In short order, they hit a new low under Biden, hardliners controlling his geopolitical agenda, and their EU counterparts.

Last December, former US envoy to Russia Thomas Pickering said sanctions imposed on Russia by Washington weren’t working, adding:

“It’s a huge country, great resilience, lots of resources.”

Pickering predicted tougher sanctions by Biden, along with pushing US allies to go in the same direction.

Russia earlier warned Washington and Brussels that it reserves the right to respond in its own way at a time of its choosing to “unlawful self-defeating” sanctions by its policymakers over Navalny or for other unacceptable reasons.

On March 2, Brussels in cahoots with the Biden regime imposed unlawful sanctions on “high-profile” Russian officials.

According to the Official Journal of the European Union, they include the following individuals:

Prosecutor-General Igor Krasnov, Investigative Committee head Alexander Bastrykin, Federal Penitentiary Service head Alexander Kalashnikov, and Director of the National Guard Viktor Zolotov, among others.

Targeted individuals are barred from traveling to EU countries. Any assets held in the West will be frozen.

Shortly after the above was announced, the Biden regime followed suit with its own sanctions.

They include export controls on seven Russian officials, along with a Russian research institute.

US/EU actions were coordinated. According to a White House spokesperson, Russia was sanctioned for poisoning (sic), arresting and imprisoning Navalny, along with actions against protesters in Russian cities last month.

The spokesperson defied reality by claiming that the US “is neither seeking to reset our relations with Russia, nor are we seeking to escalate,” adding:

“We believe that the United States and our partners must be clear and impose costs when Russia’s behavior crosses boundaries that are respected by responsible nations, and we believe there should be guard rails on how these adversarial aspects of our relationship play out.”

“(A)s part of a robust inter-agency response to the poisoning (sic) and imprisonment of opposition figure Alexey Navalny, the Treasury Department is designating seven senior members of the Russian government.”

In addition, 14 Russian entities were blacklisted. Thirteen are private companies, nine located in Russia, three in Germany, one in Switzerland, plus a Russian research institute.

The spokesperson falsely accused them of involvement in chemical and biological weapons development and production — citing no evidence because none exists.

Further actions against Russia are coming, he added.

Tuesday’s coordinated US/EU actions escalated US-led hostility toward Moscow.

They further undermined mutual trust. Russian relations with the West are at a new low through no fault of its own.

In public remarks since taking office, Biden and hardliners around him expressed implacable hostility toward Moscow.

The US and EU sanctioned Russia on the phony pretext of human rights violations related to legal actions against convicted felon Navalny, cracking down on foreign orchestrated street protests on his behalf that turned violent, and expelling EU diplomats for participating in them.

Pretexts are easy to invent. If what’s explained above didn’t happen, something else would have been used as an excuse for sanctioning Russia.

Vladimir Putin earlier explained that the US sanctioned Russia 46 times during Trump’s tenure — by the White House and Congress, what Sergey Lavrov called “far-fetched pretexts.”

He also warned that Moscow is prepared to cut ties with the EU if unlawful sanctions by Brussels harm Russia’s economy.

Earlier he called what’s now unfolding in Washington and Brussels “sanctions for the sake of sanctions, for one’s own pleasure to punish.”

They “do not bring fruit and cannot divert us from our policy of protecting the nation’s interests.”

Lavrov’s spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said if more EU sanctions are imposed on Russia, an appropriate response “will follow inevitably.”

“It is absolutely unacceptable to use human rights and refer to democratic principles as a geopolitical instrument.”

“(W)e reaffirm our fundamental position that it is unlawful to impose unilateral restrictions in bypassing the UN Security Council.”

In response to US/EU sanctions announced Tuesday, Sergey Lavrov said the following:

The latest Western measures are “illegitimate and unilateral of the kind (that the US and) EU members who follow (its) example almost always resort to without any reason.”

An appropriate Russian response will likely follow ahead.

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

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

My two Wall Street books are timely reading:

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

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

“Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity”

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

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

***

We have previously reported how Israel rapidly vaccinated the highest percentage of their population with experimental COVID vaccines after the Israeli government struck a bargain with Pfizer to secure millions of doses of their mRNA COVID vaccines.

Vera Sharav wrote:

It is astonishing that the government of Israel entrusted the health of the people to Pfizer; by entering into a secret contract that enrolled the Israeli population to become research subjects, without their knowledge or consent.

To date, Israel has vaccinated over 53% of their population, twice the percentage of the next closest nation, Britain, with 26.9%.

Source.

The “official news” published by the corporate media claiming that the vaccines have been effective in reducing rates of COVID in Israel has been scrutinized and examined by Aix-Marseille University Faculty of Medicine Emerging Infectious and Tropical Diseases Unit’s Dr. Hervé Seligmann and engineer Haim Yativ, who published their results on a discussion forum website called “Nakim.”

The information quickly went viral, and has now been translated into several languages and addressed on various news sites around the world, including Arutz Sheva 7, IsraelNationalNews.com.

Mordechai Sones writes:

A front-page article appeared in the FranceSoir newspaper about findings on the Nakim website regarding what some experts are calling “the high mortality caused by the vaccine.”

The paper interviews Aix-Marseille University Faculty of Medicine Emerging Infectious and Tropical Diseases Unit’s Dr. Hervé Seligmann and engineer Haim Yativ about their research and data analysis.

They claim that Pfizer’s shot causes “mortality hundreds of times greater in young people compared to mortality from coronavirus without the vaccine, and dozens of times more in the elderly, when the documented mortality from coronavirus is in the vicinity of the vaccine dose, thus adding greater mortality from heart attack, stroke, etc.”

Dr Hervé Seligmann works at the Emerging Infectious and Tropical Diseases Research Unit, Faculty of Medicine, Aix-Marseille University, Marseille, France. He is of Israeli-Luxembourg nationality. He has a B. Sc. In Biology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and has written over 100 scientific publications.

FranceSoir writes that they follow publications, data analyzes, and feedback from various countries on vaccination, and have therefore taken an interest in the Nakim article, asking to interview them in order to understand their analysis and its limitations.

The authors of the article declare they have no conflicts or interests other than having children in Israel.

After a presentation, the authors discussed their data analysis, the validations carried out, limitations, and above all, their conclusions that they compare with data received via a Health Ministry Freedom of Information Act request.

Their findings are:

• There is a mismatch between the data published by the authorities and the reality on the ground.
• They have three sources of information, besides the emails and adverse event reports they receive through the Internet. These three sources are Israeli news site Ynet, the Israeli Health Ministry database, and the U.S. federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database.
• In January 2021, there were 3,000 records of vaccine adverse events, including 2,900 for mRNA vaccines.
• Compared to other years, mortality is 40 times higher.
• On February 11, a Ynet article presented data related to vaccination. The authors of the Nakim article claim to have debunked this analysis based on data published by Ynet itself: “We took the data by looking at mortality during the vaccination period, which spans 5 weeks. By analyzing these data, we arrived at startling figures that attribute significant mortality to the vaccine.”
• The authors say “vaccinations have caused more deaths than the coronavirus would have caused during the same period.”
• Haim Yativ and Dr. Seligmann declare that for them, “this is a new Holocaust,” in face of Israeli authority pressure to vaccinate citizens.

They also invite specialists to complete their analyses, and intend to pursue legal follow-up to their discovery. The Health Ministry was not available for comment on a FranceSoir query regarding the findings.

The authors also deplored “the fact of not being able to communicate on this vital information” to their fellow citizens.

Full article here.

Mordechai Sones also has his own radio broadcast in Israel, and a few weeks ago he began his broadcast by reading the names of 28 people who have died following the Pfizer experimental COVID mRNA injections.

The list begins with some elderly Rabbis, but also includes young people who reportedly had no existing health problems and died suddenly, including a 25-year-old woman.

After reading these 28 names, Mordechai states:

The list continues, but cannot be brought here in its entirety due to time constraints.

An Israeli man who posted this reading on YouTube stated:

I made this short video with an audio broadcast of Mordechai Sones; so that I could pass on the information that many people here in Israel have been dying after receiving the Pfizer Covid-19 Vaccine.

But none of this information seems to be making it into the mainline media.

I am calling on everyone to pray and seek the Lord to have this evil thing stopped immediately.

Here is the video from our Rumble Channel, and it is also on our Bitchute Channel.

I think it is safe to conclude that what is happening in Israel right now with the massive roll out of the experimental Pfizer COVID mRNA vaccine is a test of what the Globalists desire to roll out in other countries around the world, so everyone should be watching carefully what Israel is doing right now to see what is probably coming to the U.S. and other countries around the world.

From Mordechai Sones’ Facebook Page.

Israel has now started a “Green Pass” program that requires people to show proof of COVID vaccination to gain entrance to “registered” places of business. This was published yesterday, 2/28/21 in The Jerusalem Post:

The country is expected to further return to routine on Sunday and to facilitate this, the Health Ministry will roll out its “green passport” program.

A green passport will be required to enter certain places and to participate in certain activities. Only people who have been vaccinated or have recovered from coronavirus will be eligible for one.

As part of the program, registered gyms, theaters, hotels, concerts and synagogues will be able to operate starting next week.

“We are giving a huge line to vaccinators,” Health Minister Yuli Edelstein said on Thursday during an extensive briefing.

“This is the first step back to an almost normal life.”

Welcome to the new “almost normal.” Will the Israelis and other populations around the world comply with this?

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***

Hate crimes targeting Asian-Americans rose 150% in U.S.’s largest cities last year, even as overall hate crimes decreased, according to alarming new data released Tuesday.

There were 122 hate crimes targeting Asian-Americans in 16 of the U.S.’s most populous cities in 2020, according to a study of police records by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, compared to 49 such crimes in those cities in 2019.

The first spike in anti-Asian hate crimes occurred in March and April, according to the study, “amidst a rise in COVID cases and negative stereotyping of Asians relating to the pandemic.”

New York City saw the biggest increase, recording 28 such hate crimes in 2020 compared to only three in 2019 — an 833% jump. Other cities with especially large upticks included Philadelphia and Cleveland, which both saw 200% increases; and Boston and Los Angeles, which both saw increases of over 110%.

These spikes, according to the study, occurred even as overall hate crimes in those cities fell 7%, a drop likely caused by coronavirus lockdown measures, which created “a lack of interaction at frequent gathering places like transit, commercial businesses, schools, events, and houses of worship.”

The study, first reported by Voice of America, is seen as a reliable predictor of annual FBI hate crime statistics for the whole country, released every November.

Brian Levin, executive director at the hate and extremism center, told HuffPost he predicts the FBI data for 2020, once it is released this fall, will show a “century-high” number of hate crimes targeting Asian Americans.

“For our Asian-American friends and neighbors, this is similar to a post 9/11 time, similar to what we saw with Muslims and Arab-Americans,” Levin said, referring to the increase in hate crimes targeting those groups after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Rep. Grace Meng (D-N.Y.), whose district in Queens has recently seen anti-Asian hate crimes, told HuffPost that racist rhetoric and misinformation from public officials is to blame.

“We saw discriminatory rhetoric coming from President Trump and Members of Congress including from the highest-ranking Republican in the House,” Meng said in a statement Tuesday.

“Although Donald Trump is no longer in office, his past anti-Asian rhetoric and use of terms like ‘Chinese virus’ and ‘Kung-flu’ continues to threaten the safety of the Asian American community,” Meng said, adding that “so many Asian Americans” are currently “living in fear.”

For more than a year, Asian Americans have faced a deluge of attacks fueled by racist, nativist and xenophobic sentiments surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. As president, Trump exacerbated these attacks by continually referring to the pandemic using racist terms and scapegoating China, where the virus was first detected, to downplay his shambolic response to the pandemic.

This hate and fearmongering is another chapter in a long history of racism, nativism and xenophobia against Asian Americans, beginning in the 19th century, when Asian immigrants were deemed “the yellow peril” and accused of being filthy disease carriers.

Throughout the pandemic, Asian-American and Pacific Islander advocacy groups and local governments have recorded sharp upticks in anti-Asian racist attacks and harassment. Since last March, the group Stop AAPI Hate has collected nearly 3,000 reports from 47 states and the District of Columbia — everything from being verbally attacked or spat on to being physically assaulted or denied services. The number is likely an undercount because the incidents are self-reported.

In recent weeks, there has been a wave of high-profile incidents, including in New York City and the San Francisco Bay Area, both with large and robust Asian American communities. Many of the attacks have involved older Asian Americans.

In one of his first acts as president, Joe Biden condemned anti-Asian racism and pledged to take more action, and the Department of Justice has said it will devote more resources to investigating such incidents.

Meng, in her statement to HuffPost on Tuesday, said she also plans to reintroduce her COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, which would require the DOJ to provide Congress with regular updates on the status of reported hate incidents tied to the pandemic.

Local law enforcement in places like New York and California have also started more concerted efforts since last year, though some Asian American advocacy groups have expressed concern about law enforcement involvement.

Death of an elderly Thai immigrant after being shoved to the ground, slashing face of a Filipino-American in the face, and slapping of a Chinese woman and then set on fire are 3 of the main recent violent attacks on Asian-Africans. Violent attacks on Asian-Americans is part of a surge in abuse since the start of the pandemic a year ago.

From being spat on and verbally harassed to incidents of physical assault, there have been thousands of reported cases in recent months.

Advocates and activists say these are hate crimes, and often linked to rhetoric that blames Asian people for the spread of Covid-19.

The FBI warned at the start of the Covid outbreak in the U.S. that it expected a surge in hate crimes against those of Asian descent.

Late last year, the UN issued a report that detailed “an alarming level” of racially motivated violence and other hate incidents against Asian-Americans.

It is difficult to determine exact numbers for such crimes and instances of discrimination, as no organizations or governmental agencies have been tracking the issue long-term, and reporting standards can vary region to region.

The advocacy group Stop AAPI Hate said it received more than 2,800 reports of hate incidents directed at Asian Americans nationwide last year. The group set up its online self-reporting tool at the start of the pandemic.

Local law enforcement is taking notice too: the New York City hate crimes task force investigated 27 incidents in 2020, a nine-fold increase from the previous year. In Oakland, California, police have added patrols and set up a command post in Chinatown.

In recent weeks, celebrities and influencers have spoken out after several disturbing incidents went viral on social media.

Here are some of the recently reported attacks:

• An 84-year-old Thai immigrant in San Francisco, California, died last month after being violently shoved to the ground during his morning walk.
• In Oakland, California, a 91-year-old senior was shoved to the pavement from behind.
• An 89-year-old Chinese woman was slapped and set on fire by two people in Brooklyn, New York.
• A stranger on the New York subway slashed a 61-year-old Filipino American passenger’s face with a box cutter.
• Asian-American restaurant employees in New York City told the New York Times they now always go home early for fear of violence and harassment.
• An Asian-American butcher shop owner in Sacramento, California found a dead cat – likely intended for her – left in the store’s parking lot; police are investigating it as a hate crime.
• An Asian-American family celebrating a birthday at a restaurant in Carmel, California, was berated with racist slurs by a Trump-supporting tech executive.
• Several Asian-Americans homeowners say they have been abused with racial slurs and had rocks thrown at their houses.

Situation in California

Over six million Asian-Americans live in California, according to the latest population estimates, by far the most in any U.S. state. They make up more than 15% of residents in the state.

In Los Angeles County, hate crimes against Asian Americans are up 115%, CBS News reported.

There are more local efforts to combat the hate too.

In Orange County, neighbors stepped in to help out an Asian American family after a group of teenagers repeatedly targeted them for months with little police intervention. Neighbors now stand guard outside the family’s home each night, the Washington Post reported.

A March 2, 2021 report from California by KABC said:

Surveillance camera video shows vandals ringing the doorbell at the Ladera Ranch home of Haijun Si and his family in the middle of the night. Sometimes, the culprits pound on the door, throw rocks and shout out racial slurs. The family has been harassed for months.

“This harassment started almost immediately upon them moving here and the fact that it’s so clearly tied to their race is deeply upsetting,” said Olivia Fu, a Ladera Ranch resident.

Fu was among a large group of community members who held a cultural festival over the weekend to show unity and condemn hate and racism.

“We need to stand in solidarity with the Asian community,” said one speaker at the event.

Small business owners in Orange County’s nail salon industry joined local government and law enforcement leaders to stand against an increase in hate crimes against Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders.

There’s growing concern about a string of violent attacks on Asian Americans.

In New York, a man was stabbed in the back in Chinatown Thursday night. A suspect is now in custody charged with a hate crime.

In another brutal incident, a Chinese woman was attacked outside a bakery.

“Sad, fearful, most of all outraged. This is 2021, it’s unacceptable,” said California Sen. Dave Min, who participated in the weekend community event.

With incidents of anti-Asian hate crimes on the rise during the pandemic, two SoCal congresswoman are introducing a measure to help protect the AAPI community.

In Los Angeles, authorities are investigating a possible hate crime at a Buddhist temple in Little Tokyo. Vandals knocked over lanterns, shattered a window and set a fire in the entryway.

In Orange County, community volunteers have formed a neighborhood watch, sitting outside the Si family’s home to keep vandals away.

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***

“We know they really want you to get a vaccine passport. That is the ultimate goal.” 

Watch the video below.

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***

We want the Government to commit to not rolling out any e-vaccination status/immunity passport to the British public. Such passports could be used to restrict the rights of people who have refused a Covid-19 vaccine, which would be unacceptable.

Sign the petition here.

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***

The papers are full of suggestions on what US President Joe Biden should do about his country’s seemingly perennial involvement in Afghanistan.  None are particularly useful, in that they ignore the central premise that a nation state long mauled, molested and savaged should finally be left alone.  Nonsense, say the media and political cognoscenti.  The Guardian claims that he is “trapped and has no good choices”.  The Wall Street Journal opines that he is being “tested in Afghanistan” with his opposition to “forever wars”.  The Washington Post more sensibly suggests that Biden take the loss and “add it to George W. Bush’s record.” 

The Afghanistan imbroglio for US planners raises the usual problems.  Liberals and Conservatives find themselves pillow fighting over similar issues, neither wishing to entirely leave the field.  The imperium demands the same song sheet from choristers, whether they deliver it from the right side of the choir or the left.  The imperial feeling is that the tribes of a country most can barely name should be somehow kept within an orbit of security.  To not do so would imperil allies, the US, and encourage a storm of danger that might cyclonically move towards other pockets of the globe. 

It never occurs to the many dullard commentators that invading countries such as Afghanistan to begin with (throw Iraq into the mix) was itself an upending issue worthy of criminal prosecution, encouraged counter-insurgencies, theocratic aspirants and, for want of a better term, terrorist opportunists.

The long threaded argument made by the limpet committers has been consistent despite the disasters.  Drum up the chaos scenario.  Treat it as rebarbative.  One example is to strain, drain and draw from reports such as that supplied by the World Bank.  “Conflict is ongoing, and 2019 was the sixth year in a row when civilian casualties in Afghanistan exceeded 10,000.  The displacement crisis persists, driven by intensified government and Taliban operations in the context of political negotiations.”  The report in question goes on to note the increase in IDPs (369,700 in 2018 to 462,803 in 2019) with “505,000 [additional] refugees returned to Afghanistan, mainly from Iran, during 2019.”

The come remarks such as those from David von Drehle in the Washington Post.  His commentary sits well with Austrian observations about Bosnia-Herzegovina during the latter part of the 19^th century.  “Nearly 20 years into the US effort to modernize and liberalize that notoriously difficult land, Taliban forces once more control the countryside, and they appear to be poised for a final spring offensive against the parts of the Afghan cities that remain under government control.”  The savages, in short, refuse to heel. 

Von Drehle, to his credit, at least suggests that the US take leave of the place, admitting that Washington was unreservedly ignorant about the country.  He quotes the words of retired L. General Douglas Lute: “We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan.”  Tellingly, the general admitted that, “We didn’t know what we were doing.”

Fears exist as to how the May 2021 deadline for withdrawing all US military forces looms.  Anthony H. Cordesman is very much teasing his imperial masters in Washington as to what is best.  “Writing off the Afghan government will probably mean some form of Taliban victory.”  This is hardly shocking, but Cordesman prepares the terrain for the hawks.  “This will create increased risks in terms of extremism and terrorism, but it is far from clear that these risks will not be higher than the risks of supporting a failed Afghan government indefinitely into the future and failing to use the same resources in other countries to support partners that are more effective.”  This is the usual gilded rubbish that justifies the gold from a US taxpayer.  But will it continue to stick?

A few clues can be gathered on future directions, though they remain floated suggestions rather than positions of merit.  The Biden administration’s Interim National Security Strategic Guidance waffles and speaks mightily about democracy (how refreshing it would be for him to refer to republicanism) which, in a document on national security, always suggests overstretch and overreach. “They are those who argue that, given all the challenges we face, autocracy is the best way forward.”  But he also inserts Trumpian lingo.  “The United States should not, and will not, engage in ‘forever wars’ that have cost thousands of lives and trillions of dollars.”

Afghanistan comes in for special mention, and again, the language of the Trump administration is dragged out for repetition.  “We will work to responsibly end America’s longest war in Afghanistan while ensuring that Afghanistan does not again become a safe haven for terrorists.”  Not much else besides, and certainly no express mention of grasping the nettle and cutting losses.  And there is that troubling use of the word “responsibly”.

The default position remains the use of force, which the US “will never hesitate to” resort to “when required to defend our vital national interests.  We will ensure our armed forces are equipped to deter our adversaries, defend our people, interests, and allies, and defeat the threats that emerge.”  Again, the stretch is vast and imprecise.

Given that position, the withdrawal of the remaining 2,500 US troops in the country is bound to become a matter of delay, prevarication and consternation.  Quiet American imperialism, at least a dusted down version of it, will stubbornly continue in its sheer, embarrassing futility.  The imperial footprint will be merely recast, if in a smaller form. 

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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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***

In the beginning, they were the Bamiyan Buddhas: the Western  Buddha statue, 55 meters high, and the Eastern, 38 meters high, carved for decades since 550 A.D. from porous sandstone cliffs, the intricate details modeled in clay mixed with straw and coated with stucco.

Xuanzang, the legendary traveling monk of the early Tang dynasty who journeyed to India in search of Buddhist manuscripts, saw them in all their – colored – glory in the 7^th century.

Then, with Islam taking over these high central lands of Afghanistan, local Hazara folklore slowly turned them into the Romeo and Juliet of the Hindu Kush.

They became “Solsol” (“year after year”, or, more colloquially, the prince of Bamiyan) and “Shahmana” (“the king’s Mother”, or colloquially a princess from a remote kingdom). As lovers, they could not be united as a couple in this world; so they chose to turn into statues and stand close to each other forever.

And then, twenty years ago, after a millennium and a half of living history, the Taliban blew them up.

Killing Romeo and Juliet

Solsol and Shahmana lived since their inception among the Hazaras, who speak Dari, a Persian dialect with numerous words of Mongol and Turk origin. The Hazaras are partly descendants of Genghis Khan’s troops who infiltrated these mountains in the 13^th century. Hazaras – who I had the pleasure to meet mostly in Kabul in the early 2000s – remain essentially Mongols, but linguistically Persianized, having adopted the old agricultural tradition of the Iranian mountains.

The Hazaras are diametrically opposed by the Pashtuns  – who had an extremely complex ethno-genesis before the early 18^th century, when they coalesced into great federations of nomad tribes. Their code of conduct – the Pashtunwali – is straightforward, regulating most of all a mechanism of sanctions.

The number one sanction is death: this is a poor society, where sanctions are physical, not material. Islam added moral elements to pashtunwali. And then there are juridical norms imposed by hereditary noblemen – which function like the carpet tying the room together: these come from the Turk-Mongols.

The modern Afghan state was created in the late 19^th century by Abd-ur-Rahman, the “Iron Emir”. He pulled that off via a “Pashtunization” of the region that was locally known as the north of Turkestan. Then he integrated the Hazaras in the central mountains via bloody military campaigns.

Hazara lands were opened to Pashtun nomad tribes – who featured not only shepherds but also merchants and caravan entrepreneurs. Increasingly plunged into debt, the Hazaras ended up becoming economic hostages of the Pashtuns. Their way out was to emigrate to Kabul – where they hold mostly menial jobs.

And that brings us to the heart of the problem. Hazaras are Shi’ites. Pashtuns are Sunni. Pashtuns consider themselves the owners of Afghanistan – even as there’s persistent, major infighting among Pashtun groups. Pashtuns simply detest the Westphalian concept of the nation-state: most of all they see themselves as an empire within an empire.

This implies that ethnic minorities are marginalized – if they can’t find some sort of accommodation. Hazaras, because they are Shi’ites, were extremely marginalized during Taliban rule, from 1996 to 2001.

The Taliban rolled out en masse from Pakistani madrassas in 1994:  the overwhelming majority were Pashtuns from rural areas between Kandahar and Paktiya. They had spent many years in camps scattered along the Pakistani tribal areas and Balochistan.

The Taliban became instantly successful for three reasons:

1. Implementation of Sharia law.
2. Their fight against the lack of security after the 1980s jihad instrumentalized by the Americans to give the USSR its “own Vietnam” (Brzezinski’s definition), and the subsequent warlord anarchy.
3. Because they incarnated the return of the Pashtuns as the leading Afghan force.

No reincarnation?

All of the above supplies the context for the inevitable destruction of Solsol and Shahmana in March 2001. They were the symbols of an “infidel” religion.  And they were situated in Shi’ite Hazara land.

Months later, after 9/11, I would learn from Taliban officials close to ambassador Abdul Salam Zaeef in Islamabad that first they blew up “the little one, which was a woman” then “her husband”; that implies the Taliban were very much aware of local folklore.

The destruction process started with the legs of the Great Buddha: one of them was already cut at the knee and the other at the femur. It took them four days – using mines, explosives and even artillery. The   Taliban forced local Hazara youth to drill holes in the statues: those who refused were shot dead.

Yet that was not enough to kill oral tradition. Even the young Hazara generation, born after the smashing of the Buddhas, still delights in the tale of Solsol and Shahmana.

But will they ever reincarnate as living statues? Enter the usually messy “international community”. In 2003, Unesco declared the site of the Bamiyan Buddhas and the surrounding caves a “World Heritage Site in Danger.”

Still, Kabul and Unesco can’t seem to agree on a final decision. As it stands, Solsol will not be rebuilt; Shahmana, maybe. On and off, they resurrect as 3-D holograms.

What happened so far is “consolidation work at the Eastern Buddha niche”, finished in 2015. Work at the Western Buddha niche started in 2016. A Bamiyan Expert Working Group gets together every year, featuring the administration in Kabul, Unesco experts and donors, mostly German and Japanese.

Ishaq Mawhidi, the head of the Culture and Information Department of Bamiyan, is sure that “90 percent of the statues can be rebuilt with the debris”, plus fragments of smaller statues currently preserved in two large warehouses on site.

The Afghan Ministry of Culture correctly argues that reconstruction work will require a formidable team, including Buddhism scholars, archeologists specialized in Gandhara art, historians, ethnographers, historiographers specialized in the first centuries of the first millennium in Afghanistan.

It will have to be eventually up to wealthy donors such as Berlin and Tokyo to willingly finance all this – and justify the costs, considering Hazara lands barely have been granted with working roads and electricity by the Kabul central government.

It’s always crucial to remember that the Bamiyan Buddhas blow up is a crucial case of deliberate destruction of world cultural heritage – alongside appalling instances in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Libya and Mali. They all connect, directly and indirectly, to the causes and consequences of imperial Forever Wars and their spin-offs (never forget that the Taliban initially were fully courted by the Clinton administration).

The Buddha of Dushanbe

In the end, I never managed to see Solsol and Shahmana. The Taliban would not issue a travel permit for foreigners under any circumstances. After 9/11 and the expulsion of the Taliban from Kabul, I was negotiating a safe passage with Hazara fighters, but then something bigger came up: bribing a Pashtun commander to take a small group of us to Tora Bora to see the Empire B-52 Show against Osama bin Laden.

Instead of Solsol and Shahmana – either standing up in their niches, or blown up to smithereens – I finally managed to see the next best option: the reclining Buddha of Dushanbe.

Afghanistan may be the “graveyard of empires” – the last act being enacted as we speak. And, to a certain extent, a graveyard of Buddhas. But not neighboring Tajikistan.

The original Buddha of Dushanbe saga was published by Asia Times in those heady 9/11 days. It happened as my photographer Jason Florio and myself were waiting for days for a helicopter to take us to the Panjshir valley in Afghanistan.

Eighteen years later, like a Jorge Luis Borges short story, it all came down full circle before I traveled the Pamir highway in late 2019. I went to the same museum in Dushanbe and there he was: the 13 meter-long “sleeping lion”, found in the Buddhist monastery of Ajinateppa, resting on pillows, in glorious parinirvana, and fully restored, with help from an expert from the Hermitage in St. Petersburg.

Somewhere in unknown spheres beyond space and time, Solsol and Shahmana will be benevolently smiling.

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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: Smaller 38 meter “Eastern” Buddha (Public Domain)

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***

“Children are the world’s most valuable resource, and its best hope for the future”. – John F. Kennedy

What President Kennedy said over half a century ago, is more valid today than ever. This world needs a generation that can lead us out of the mess of dystopian values that was created predominantly by a western civilization of greed. The covid crisis, man-made, served the destruction of the world economy, as well as the ensuing World Economic Forum (WEF) designed “Great Reset”. If not stopped by our youth and coming generation, Covid cum Great Reset is about to give civilization the final blow.

However, the dark forces of the Global Cabal, the Deep State, has plunged humanity – all 193 UN member states at once, into a global catastrophe of epic proportions. To break that globalist spell and to get out of the disaster still unfolding, the world needs thinking people, courageous people, informed and awakened people; people who are not afraid to swim against the stream, to stem the ever-increasing flow of misinformation and government and media lies. It takes educated people. It takes people who dare to resist.

We are experiencing today just the contrary. The minute global elite that has taken a covid-stranglehold on the world’s 7.8 billion people, is doing everything to keep our children, the generations that are supposed to lead the world and humanity into a bright future, uneducated, scared, socially unfit to communicate, to take initiatives, to lead. Today’s youth is depressed by this constant fear propaganda, by the authorities (sic) rules of confinement, not being able to see their friends, to play with them, communicate with them, to do the healthiest social activities there are – exchanging ideas with peers, acquaintances and friends.

One might think, there is a purpose behind it all. Could it be, that this minute diabolical Globalist Cabal, those who are behind “The Great Reset”, co-authored by the WEF’s founder and CEO since the NGO’s creation in 1971, Klaus Schwab – could it be that these people have a plan, namely to leave the world to a generation of uneducated, fear-indoctrinated people, who are used to and have been trained to follow orders, obey authorities and believe their very leaders’ (sic) lies and fall for their manipulations?

Screenshot from weforum.org

It doesn’t take rocket science to believe that this could, indeed, be part of the Cabal’s “demonic” plan: breaking our society apart. Leaving behind no natural and new leaders to shape the world according to the real needs of the people, of our children – not the imposed “needs” of an egocentric dictatorial cabal.

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In a new book (in German), “Generation Mask – Corona: Fear and Challenge” (Generation Maske – Corona: Angst und Herausforderung), the immunologist and toxicologist Professor Stefan W. Hockertz illustrates the plight of our children in this artificially induced age of corona. He asks in particular the question, what does this pandemic – better called plandemic – do with our children and adolescents?

They are being flooded by autocratic measures they do not understand, like being forced to cover their faces by wearing masks in school, it’s like a forced-hiding of their identity from their friends and peers; being obliged to follow strict rules of social distancing – don’t get close to your friend, for the protection of your health, you need a distance to your friend, you can no longer freely communicate, and even if you could, due to the covered face, you could not read your friends facial expressions – which is key to any useful conversation, between kids as well as adults.

Our kids in the west are being fear-induced and permanently indoctrinated, by radio, TV-broadcasts, by permanently having to listen to “case” figures, infections, hospitalizations and death rates. Never mind, that most of these figures are false or distorted, made even more meaningless by absurdly obsessive testing-testing-testing.

To crown it all off – newspapers and magazines depict pictures of coffins, not one or two, but hundreds, mass graves – they are utterly disturbing for adults, let alone for children – fear is being weaponized and replaced by more fear – followed by depression, the perspective of no future — and often and ever more frequently ending in suicide, children’s, adolescents’ suicides are skyrocketing.

Children who are the least vulnerable to the covid disease, are forced into mass-testing, entire communities, by order of the mayor or the governor – all the way to kindergarten. Testing with hurtful nasal swaps, as often as once or twice a month, and if positive – high percentages of these PCR tests – so far, the only covid test method available in the west – are false positives.

The Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test is a technique used to “amplify” small segments of DNA. If over-amplified, the test results become positive, false positives. Maybe there is a purpose for over-amplifying – increasing the “case figures”, justifying more repression. If one kid tests positive in one of the periodic school tests – the entire class is ordered into quarantine, schooling from home, via computer, Skype, Zoom.

That’s in the wealthy west. What about in the Global South, where not everybody can afford the necessary electronic equipment for “home-schooling”? – There will simply be no schooling, no learning – no interchange with classmates. No education.

Testing is traumatic, especially for young children. It is hurtful and scares a kid on several levels, physically – a swap-stick deep into the upper nose, into the sinus cavities, is hurtful and can be even traumatic for children; – and psychologically, what if I’m positive? “All my school mates and teachers have to stay home because of me”; or “I could infect my parents and frail grand-parents”.

Guilt is everywhere. Guilt is like fear. It makes people pliable, manipulable – takes all initiative and enthusiasm for life away.

For many kids – this continuous repression makes them aggressive, frustrated and eventually so depressed, that many see no way out – as they see no future in their lives. They are crying from despair, crying from fear, crying from isolation – crying for not being able to congregate with their friends, classmates and peers – and crying for seeing no way out.

What is being done to our children is inhuman. The unilateral, viciously applied repressive measures of confinement, not being able to physically go to school and mix and exchange with friends is destructive. It may leave a deep dent in the social and psychological fabric and subsequent behavior of this future post-covid generation.

No doubt, with a few exceptions, most of the 193 UN member countries applying the same oppressive rules, are aware of what they are doing. They know what and why they are doing what they are doing. They are in complicity and in one way or another corrupted and perhaps coerced to adhere to the dictate from “above” – or else, if they don’t follow the ruling narrative. Yet, with a minimum of integrity of our leaders, this would not be happening.

First, they destroy the world’s economy in proportions never seen in recent history,

then they destroy our future generations – so there are no flag-bearers of a new generation into a bright future, once we, our children’s parents, have disappeared out. Our children are being primed as slaves for a minute diabolical elite, to become transhumans for the Great Reset.

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In his book, Dr. Stefan Hockhertz articulates these concerns and worries of the children, for parents, teachers and authorities to understand them. With the objective of stemming against this catastrophically oppressive trend, Dr. Hockhertz also uses the book to uncover lies and manipulations of governments and the media.

He corrects false information and outright lies, but also invites to a dialogue for bringing about more objectivity and less dictatorial rules. After all, this is not a deadly pandemic, but has developed into a plandemic – where clearly a set of different, societally harmful objectives is being played out – and relentlessly pursued.

As an immunologist and toxicologist, Dr. Hockhertz also corrects the highly propagated alleged over-fatality and informs about the dangers of the “vaccines”, especially the RNA-based inoculations. He warns against these vaccines – which, in fact, are no vaccines, but rather gene-therapy injections. They have not been sufficiently researched and tested to be considered safe. To the contrary, primary inoculation results are disastrous in terms of serious side effects and death rates. And this only after less than six months into a worldwide vaccination campaign.

See also Dr. J. Bart Classen’s January 18, 2021 peer-reviewed Research Paper “COVID-19 RNA Based Vaccines and the Risk of Prion Disease”, written for the SCIVISION Publication “Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ISSN 2639-9458) – (see this).

The paper points to the potential medium- to long-term disabling neurological effects, especially degenerative diseases, that may be linked o RNA-based inoculations. This would be disastrous for children. Entire generations could be wiped out, so to speak.

We must not allow this to happen. We must listen to our children’s grief. We must clear the path for a bright future for our children, for our successor generation and for the future of humanity.

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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 by Xavier Donat

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

***

US President Joe Biden insists, “America is back.” He says the US has returned to the world stage as a prominent actor and leader after four years of absence and wrong-headed policies adopted by the Trump administration. But, Biden does not say where and how “America is back.”

America is certainly not back to generating the hopes raised by the advent of the Obama-Biden administration in early 2009. As the first black US president, Barack Obama promised and was expected to deliver on his promises, particularly to this region and the wider Muslim world. On January 22, 2009, two days after his inauguration, Obama appointed former Senator George Mitchell as special envoy for the Palestinian-Israeli peace process. Mitchell was a highly significant choice, as he must have been the first senior level figure with Lebanese background to be selected to broker a deal. As the man who made his name as a peacemaker in the successful Northern Ireland peace process, he was told to get to the area “as soon as possible” to relaunch negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis. Obama followed up his appointment with an interview with Al Arabiya television on January 26, in which he expressed optimism over the possibility of a settlement between Palestinians and Israelis.

Obama met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on May 19 to urge freezing Israeli colonisation and a deal based on the “two-state solution” involving the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Obama recommitted the US to this goal and reiterated his demand for a halt to Israeli colonisation during his encounter with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on May 28.

On June 4, Obama made history by delivering a speech at Cairo University in which he called for the creation of a Palestinian state, an end to Israeli colonisation of Palestinian lands, and negotiations with Iran.  Obama’s aim was to reset relations with the Muslim world and “communicate that the Americans are not your enemy”.

Obama failed miserably on the Palestinian front due to Israeli intransigence. He also failed to convince Muslims of US goodwill. But, he did launch negotiations with Iran which culminated in the signing in 2015 of the landmark agreement providing for curbing Iran’s nuclear activities in exchange for lifting punitive sanctions.

Biden has, so far, done nothing on the Palestinian front but to promise to renew humanitarian funding cancelled by Donald Trump without committing to sums and delivering cash, and he is making a mess of dealings with Iran over the nuclear programme abandoned by Trump in 2018.

During his election campaign, Biden repeatedly vowed to return to the Iran nuclear deal, Obama’s chief foreign policy success.  As his vice president, Biden was involved in the effort to bring Iran to the negotiating table and secure its adherence to an agreement which was win-win for all concerned. As soon as he took office, Biden should have promptly signed an executive order for US reentry to the deal, as he did to rejoin the Paris climate accord, from which Trump also withdrew the US. By taking urgent action, Biden would have preempted efforts by members of his own administration to stall reentry and by pro-Israeli lobby groups and legislators to block the return of the US.  Biden failed this test, putting the nuclear accord at great risk.

During his election campaign, Biden repeatedly vowed to return to the Iran nuclear deal, Obama’s chief foreign policy success. As his vice president, Biden was involved in the effort to bring Iran to the negotiating table and secure its adherence to an agreement which was win-win for all concerned. As soon as he took office, Biden should have promptly signed an executive order for US re-entry to the dea, as he did to rejoin the Paris climate accord, from which Trump also withdrew the US. By taking urgent action, Biden would have pre-empted efforts by members of his own administration to stall reentry and by pro-Israeli lobby groups and legislators to block the return of the US.  Biden failed this test, putting the nuclear accord at great risk.

First and foremost, Biden and his senior aides insist that Iran should be first to return to comppliance with the terms of the accord by halting uranium enrichment to levels above 3.67 per cent purity, dispose of its stocks of enriched uranium above the amount permitted, warehouse advanced centrifuges banned by the deal, and allow UN inspectors to continue conducting snap inspections of undeclared installations and sites.

Iran has, quite rightly, responded by arguing that since Trump walked away from the deal, Biden should first return he US to compliance by rejoining the deal and lifting sanctions imposed by Trump. Tehran was in full compliance when Trump withdrew and continued to comply for 14 months before resorting to retaliation. Iraq insists that it has taken such action in line with Article 36 of the accord which allows it to reduce compliance if one or more signatories  do not comply.

While Biden has stuck to his demand that Tehran should be first, he was offered a face-saving proposal by Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif who, on February 1, suggested that the two sides should ask the European Union Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell to create a mechanism which would enable Iran and the US to return to the deal simultaneously. Although this amounted to a serious concession by Tehran, Zarif’s proposition was ignored by the US and its allies, the three Western European signatories of the deal, Britain, France and Germany.

Instead, the Europeans proposed an informal meeting of all seven signatories of the deal, including themselves, the US, Iran, Russia and China, to discuss compliance. The US accepted but, following days of deliberation, Iran rejected the invitation.

Iran’s refusal came after the US conducted air raids in eastern Syria on pro-Iranian Iraqi Shia militia factions. Washington claims the bombings, Biden’s first, were in retaliation for recent rocket attacks on Iraqi bases hosting US forces and Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone where the US embassy is located. US Defence Secretary LLoyd Austin justified targeting fighters in Syria by saying they belong to the same groups attacking US forces and personnel in Iraq. The Pentagon chose to hit in Syria because strikes in Iraq would increase pressure on Prime Minister Mustafa Kadhimi from powerful Shia militia commanders and politicians to order the full withdrawal of US forces from that country.

War-torn Syria has become a free-fire zone where anyone can bomb without worrying about criticism or consequences. Israel has been lobbing missiles into Syria on a weekly basis without interference or comment by Biden or his administration.

The administration has added insult to injury by submiting a complaint against Iran to the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Organisation (IAEA), currently meeting in Vienna. Although the US is responsible for the crisis over the nuclear accord, the administration accuses Iran of non-compliance and of refusing to explain particles of enriched uranium found by IAEA inspectors in undeclared locations. Since censure of Iran by the IAEA could torpedo the accord, Biden is playing a dangerous game which can only roil this unstable region if the US and Iran do not return to full compliance with the nuclear deal. “America is back!” Indeed. Back to traditional bad behaviour.

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Featured image: The Israeli and American flags displayed on the walls of the Old City in Jerusalem (Photo: Yonatan Sindel)

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This March many remember Hugo Chávez. He passed away eight years ago. It is a very short time when measured in terms of the fresh memories we have of him. He is remembered as the Comandante, Comandante Supremo, creator of the Bolivarian Revolution, founder of the Fifth Republic. He has been the architect of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, of which he was president from 1999 to 2013, and one of the most progressive constitutions in the world.

Some, interpreting his own words on August 5, 1999, believe he was the reincarnation of Simón Bolívar, not in a metaphysical sense, but in an ideological sense. During the first session of the National Constituent Assembly that produced the 1999 Constitution, he said:

“When we ask in Venezuela today, where does this revolution come from? We inevitably have to fall back into the figure and time, and in the Bolivarian context when the first republics that arose in that Venezuelan land were born. ‘It is Bolívar,’ Neruda said, ‘who wakes up every 100 years’: but Neruda, who was a revolutionary, assimilated Bolívar’s awakening with the awakening of the people. He wakes up every 100 years, when the people wake up. This is where this revolution comes from.”

But many believe he is still among us in terms of his legacy. There is no aspect of human development, political leadership, ideological renovation and geopolitical impact that Chávez has not influenced in some noticeable way.

Venezuela today is the epicenter of a revolutionary movement that wants to establish a different political paradigm for Latin America; a paradigm with an autochthonous ideology with historical and cultural elements, not only repeating the past, but also adding new elements and experiences from the global context of our era. Chávez called this new paradigm Socialism of the 21st Century.

His generosity of thinking made it implicit that he was not offering a final worked out theory or ideology. Chávez only indicated the path towards a just society. His path had clear landmarks leading in the correct direction such as independence, sovereignty, justice, peace, UNITY, democracy, popular power, ANTI-IMPERIALISM. Some he marked in capital letters, in a figure of speech. But the work had to be done with the involvement of all Venezuelans as protagonists, as builders of their just society.

What Chávez unmistakably provided was a solid foundation on which to build that society. A foundation that would reunite Venezuelans and Latin-Americans to their historical roots, and with that it would be able to resist the US endless imperial hybrid warfare. He was well aware of Simón Bolívar’s famous statement, “The United States seems to have been created by Providence to plague [Latin] America with misery in the name of freedom”. Chávez offered “Bolivarianism” as the antidote to the plague.

Perhaps the two words of which we are often defensive, Bolivarian Revolution, capture Chávez’s full legacy when we look at the core of their meaning.

The word “Bolivarian” revives the independence values ​​of the 19th century based on the integrationist vision of Simón Bolívar, the idea of ​​civic-military unity of Ezequiel Zamora, and the liberating popular education of Simón Rodríguez, who was the mentor of Simón Bolívar. Hugo Chávez took from them his own vision of building the Bolivarian Patria Grande (Great Homeland) based on the original principles of sovereignty and independence, with the people as protagonists. Recalling in an interview the founding of the Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement in 1982, the forerunner of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, Chávez said: “That was what we were pursuing, a revolution, a political, social, economic and cultural transformation inspired in the proposition of Bolívar [Zamora and Rodriguez]. This is how we designed what we have called the ‘tree with the three roots’, which is our ideological source.“

These historical roots are what make us identify the Venezuelan political phenomenon, with nationalistic and patriotic characteristics, as “Bolivarianism.”

However, in the expression “Bolivarian Revolution”, it is the word “Revolution” that identifies the “tree with three roots” or the “ideological source” of Bolivarianism. It is the word Revolution that is associated with Chavismo. But Chavismo is a projection of Bolivarianism into the future. It is a growing entity that is inevitably shaped by the political environment and the global context at every single point in time.

Chavismo with its Bolivarian roots is what is known as the Bolivarian Revolution. These two words cannot be separated without irremediably losing its original meaning. The tree cannot be separated from the roots without losing the harvest of its fruits.

In the span of eight years since the death of Hugo Chávez Venezuela has undergone one of the most severe economic warfare launched by the US with criminal coercive measures that are crippling the Venezuelan economic system. But Chávez’s legacy as he originally offered it still stands today. His legacy included his trust in the Venezuelan people and his political successor, Nicolás Maduro. Venezuela owes it to the Maduro government and the Venezuelan people to hold on to his legacy at any cost because the Bolivarian project has not been completed, and it will not be completed unless all are on board.

Imperialism is seeking to create cracks in the Bolivarian Revolution at the slightest sign of weakness. This is the time to pay attention to Chávez’s landmarks. Two in particular: UNITY and ANTI-IMPERIALISM, and follow the compas that points to socialism. If the road is blocked, a detour may be necessary that will rejoin the main path. This is not the time to enter the dangerous political maze of doubts and blames. And it is never the time to be divided. The Bolivarian Revolution cannot die. The price of losing the Bolivarian Revolution is too high.

As Fidel once said, “History tells us that a defeated revolution must pay the victors in blood.”

Perhaps Hugo Chávez meant to give us another message with his image of the tree with three roots. A tree resists the impacts of stormy winds by bending before returning to its straight position, otherwise it snaps and dies.

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Nino Pagliccia is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from EFE/Miguel Gutierrez

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The forty years of the Cold War have made us endure hunger, fear and hopelessness.

The year old pandemic has made us desperate and vulnerable. Now, we are facing a new global threat, namely the Sino-American hot war which may mean the end the human civilization.  

These are the three post-WWII era mega crises. These crises have different causes, but one of the most important causes is the selection of wrong leaders who make wrong judgments and execute misleading decisions because of their political debts, personal interests, unrealistic ambitions and corruption.

Therefore, the only way to prevent mega crises is the proactive participation of ordinary people in policy decisions. The virtue of ordinary people’s proactive participation has been shown in South Korea. The South Korea’s success in the anti-COVID war was possible because of President Moon Jae-in’s inspiring leadership and ordinary Koreans’ enthusiastic proactive participation.

The present paper has the following messages.

First, Washington is prepared to undertake a shooting war, if China continues to threaten its global interests. As for China, it is too big and too strong to go back; it will increasingly assert itself either for bargaining purpose or preparing for the hot war. In other words, the shooting war is very possible.

Second, Washington tries to avoid the shooting war, if possible, because it is costly.

Third, Washington will try to subjugate China through China taming (bashing) operation. China bashing will likely to fail.

Fourth, since China bashing is likely to fail, Washington may choose the shooting war as the solution.

Fifth, since Washington cannot succeed with China bashing and since the shooting war is too costly, the wise alternative approach is its cooperative and productive coexistence with China.

Sixth, China should make it clear that it has no ambition to replace the U.S. as global hegemonic power on the one hand and, on the other, try to harmonize its regime with the American regime.

Before we get into the main body of the paper, I thought I should say a few words on the current scholarly debate on the possible Sino-American shooting war. There are those who claim the possibility of shooting war, while there are those who argue that the shooting war can be avoided.

For instance, Graham Allison, in his book “Destined for War” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: 2017), claims that Sino-American shooting war is a real possibility. Allison explains that when a new power challenges the existing one, the shooting war has been the rule rather than exception. The rival powers fall into complex and complicated dynamics of hostile relations that leads to the hot war. Allison calls this dynamics as “Thucydides Trap” referring to ancient Greek historian, Thucydides, who wrote about the war between Athena (new power) and Sparta (existing power).

According to Allison, in the world, there have been nineteen Thucydides traps of which only three avoided the shooting war, one of which was the rivalry between the U.S. and the British Empire.

On their part, Fena Zhang and Richard Ned LeBow in their book “Taming Sino-American Rivalry” (Oxford University Press: 2020) argue that the shooting war between the U.S. and China can be avoided through persuasion and diplomacy. Moreover, these authors make an important point that the probability of the shooting war depends also on leader’s wisdom and leadership quality.

This paper discusses two types of China bashing: the ideological bashing and the economic bashing.

Ideological China Bashing 

There are those who describe the U.S.-China conflict as civilization clash. However, a closer look at the history of Washington-Beijing relations shows that this view is only partially true. During the era of the Cold War (1950-1990) the Washington-Beijing relation was cordial, friendly and even cooperative.

In 1970, Richard Nixon went to see Mao Zedong and he was successful in normalizing the bilateral diplomatic relations in 1979. What made these countries to cooperate was the threat of the Soviet Union which was the common enemy of both countries. Since the opening of China by Deng Xiaoping in 1978, the Sino-American relations were not hostile, even cordial.  George W. Bush was hostile to the Chinese politico-economic regime, because it was not a Christianity-based regime. But, the 911 tragedy made him to cooperate with China to fight against international terrorism. This shows that Washington does cooperate with Beijing when it is necessary

True, under Barack Obama, the Sino-American relations were more hostile and belligerent, but this had little to do ideology; it was rather the friction attributable to Beijing’s militarization of the South China Sea and Washington’s China containment strategy.

However, under Donald Trump, the Chinese regime has become one of the chief components of Washington’s China demonization.

In the post-CIVID era, the ideological conflict may become more serious, if China’s assertiveness intensifies and if Washington’s hegemonic status is compromised. The Washington’s establishment will argue that the Chinese socialism with Chinese characteristics will threaten Washington’s politico-economic regime. Therefore, China should be induced – even forced – to change its present regime and adopt the American regime. The question is: “Will China do it?”

I argue that China will never adopt the so-called “Washington democracy” or capitalism for two reasons. One is the very philosophical foundation of the Chinese system and the other is the weakness of American system.

China cannot escape from thousands-year old philosophical and religious traditions.

The Chinese system of thoughts has been formed by Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism.

Confucius statue, Shanghai

These three systems of thoughts seem to have provided the philosophical foundation of Chinese politico-economic system, namely, pragmatism, harmonious social order.

The Chinese pragmatism is largely inspired by Taoist notion of relative truth. According to Taoism, the universe is governed by the harmonious co-existence of the positive energy (yang) and the negative energy (Um). There is nothing absolute; there is no absolute truth; everything is relative. This way of thinking has provided the justification of Chinese pragmatism. This is a sharp contrast to the philosophical and religious tradition of the West which highly values the dichotomy of bad-good and the exclusive absolute truth. As a result, the Western politico-economic regime is dogmatic and exclusive.

The importance of harmony is another Chinese philosophical tradition. Taoism as well as Buddhism highly value harmony through compassion, humility and frugality in human relations including interpersonal relations, the ruler-ruled relations and inter-government relations.

The third element of Chinese way of thinking attaches paramount importance to the hierarchical social order. The hierarchical social order derives from collectivism requiring the subordination of personal interests to those of the collective entity such as family and the country. However, such social order is possible only through harmonious social relations made possible by obedience. This notion of harmonious hierarchical social order comes from the teaching of Confucius.

The combination of pragmatism, value relativism and harmonious social order explain the pragmatic nature of Chinese socialism à la Chinoise (Chinese way) where the political system is socialism ruled by the Communist Party in which the ruler-ruled relations are Confucian relations in which the ruler “looks after the citizens” with paternalistic love and the citizens obey ruler for the good of the country. It appears that this system will not change easily even in the long run, because it is very soul of the Chinese people; it is a part of Chinese DNA. It is about the time that Washington establishment stops demonizing China for its regime.

There is another reason for China’s reluctance of adopting American democracy. In the eyes of Chinese opinion leaders, American democracy is a failure, because it is unable to solve racism, human right violation, mass killing on the streets, starving children, the worsening income distribution and rising poverty. It is possible that the Chinese people think that their hybrid politico-economic regime is not inferior to the American system.

There is another worry for Washington; it is the alleged danger of the propagation of  “Chinese socialism”. This is a big surprise to me. Is the American regime is so weak that it is threatened by the Chinese regime? But, China has no intention of making its regime a politico-economic gospel and spread in Asia and throughout the world. Even if China wanted it, it has to confront the objection by Asian countries including ASEAN countries and South Korea. These countries are not what they were in the 19th century. They are no longer Chinese tributary countries; they are prosperous and they can defend themselves.

As for the Chinese relations with Washington, Xi Jinping made it clear that China wanted to coexist peacefully with Washington. Xi Jinping said this:

“The vast Pacific Ocean must have enough space to accommodate both China and the United States.” (quoted by Zhand-Le Bow, p.111)

The implication of the foregoing analysis is that Washington should give up the ambition of making China to adopt American democracy and the neo-liberal capitalism. Moreover, it is about the time to stop the demonization of China by the fabrication of the danger of global domination of Chinese regime. There is no danger of “Yellow Peril.” The more productive approach of Washington’s China policy would be one of peaceful and cooperative coexistence.

This is precisely what Xi wants. On June 7-8, 2013, at the shirtless talk with Barack Obama at the Sunnylands Estate in California, Xi Jinping (left) proposed a new inter-super power relations based on no conflict, no confrontation, mutual respect and win-win relations. This is important to remember this. China has no ambition of replace the U.S. as the master of the world; even if it wanted, it cannot. So, Biden should stop ideological China bashing.

Economic China Bashing 

The fundamental objective of Washington’s strategy of economic war is to prevent Chinese economy from catching up the American economy. Washington’s strategy consists in preventing the Chinese economy from growing faster than the American economy. To do this, Chinese economy should be made less productive, while the American economy should be made more productive. The economic war can takes place in three areas of economic activities: the demand for goods (and services), the supply of goods and the economic regime change.

Demand-side Strategy

The demand-side strategy involves the measures designed to increase the country’s domestic and foreign demand on the one hand and, on the other, debilitate the rival country’s foreign demand and domestic demand.

The American domestic demand had been falling even before the pandemic because of the lopsided income distribution caused by pro-business neoliberal government policies. Moreover, the prolonged pandemic has given the coup de grâce to the domestic demand. The pandemic has totally destroyed the SMEs that are the creators of jobs and the sources of the income of the ordinary Americans. For China, the early removal of lockdown has made possible the early revival of the economy. As a result, as far as the domestic demand is concerned, China is doing better than the U.S.

China’s foreign demand for goods involved in the Sino-American economic war is its exports of goods to the U.S. In 2019, its value was USD 360 billion.

On the other hand, American foreign demand is its exports to China; its value was USD 110 billion. This means that China’s dependence on the American market is 3.17, while the American dependence of the Chinese market is 0.67. In other words, as far as the foreign demand is concerned, China is more vulnerable than the U.S. However, China can increase more easily its foreign demand than the U.S. because China can diversify its exports partners by exporting more to developing countries. As for Washington, its main trade partners being developed countries, its capacity to diversify its trade partners may not be easy. It is to be noticed that, in 2021, the GDP growth rate for developing countries will be 7.4% as against 5.4% for developed countries. This may make the diversification of Chinese exports more effective.

The outcome of the demand-side Sino-American battle is not clear cut, but one thing sure is that the U.S. will not be the winner.

Supply-side Strategy

The supply-side strategy consists in expanding the country’s production capacity and reducing that of the rival country. The production capacity is determined in function of the supply of production factors such as labour, capital, technology, knowledge, and entrepreneurship as well as the number of firms producing goods and services.

For the time being, the U.S. seems to have, relatively speaking, more weapons in hand. First, Washington may continue to re-shore American firms in China. But the possibility is not great. In fact according to a recent survey results announced by American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai on September 9, 2020 as many as 92% pf American firms in China will remain in China despite the pandemic and the Sino-American trade war. This is understandable, because the cost of re-shoring and resettlement could be high.

The second weapon Washington has is more effective. Its objective is the prevention of the transfer of American knowledge and technology to China. The ammunitions include the reduction of the number of the Chinese students in the U.S., the restriction of the activities of U.S.- based Chinese media, the penal punishment of the theft of technologies, the sanctions against American firms selling technologies to Chinese forms, the creation of a black list of Chinese companies which deserve surveillance and other measures. These ammunitions will sooner or later hurt the Chinese economy.

China would like to hit back, but the impact of the hit may not be great for the simple reason that China depends much on American knowledge and technology. But, China will try to strengthen its self-sufficiency in technology and knowledge and in the long run it may succeed.

In short, as far as the supply-side war is concerned, the U.S. seems to have favourable edge over China.

Structural Adjustment Strategy

The long-run results of Sino-American economic war depend on the extent to which the domestic market can lead the economic growth. The decades-long experience with neoliberal economic system has given us one lesson, namely, the fact that we cannot rely on the exports of goods for sustained economic growth. This is due to several related factors.

First, as the universal reduction of tariffs continues, the marginal positive impact of free trade on GDP growth is decreasing. Second, as more and more advanced technology is applied for the production of exported goods, the exports-generated jobs is decreasing. Third, as more and more imported intermediary goods are used for the production of exported goods, the trickling effects of exports on the economy is declining. For these reasons, the sustained growth of the economy increasingly depends on the domestic market which depends on SMEs.

The lopsidedness of income distribution is more than the issue of social justice and welfare; it is now the issue of sustained economic growth. The unequal income distribution in favour of the rich and against the ordinary people means the weakening of the domestic demand and, if it continues, economic growth itself will be compromised. Indeed, the decades-long stagflation in Japan was due to the shrinking income of ordinary Japanese people for decades leading to the destruction of SMEs and the domestic market.

The lopsidedness of income distribution is often measured by the Gini coefficient. It varies from zero to 100. The higher the Gini, more lopsided becomes the income distribution in favour of the rich. In 2019, the U.S. pre-tax Gini was 48.7, the highest among developed countries.

We distinguish between the pre-tax Gini and after-tax Gini. The difference between the two represents the efficiency of the government’s effort to improve the income distribution.

The following figures show the effectiveness of government’s efforts of improving the income distribution of advanced countries: Australia (20.2%), Canada (26.0%), Demark (41.0%), France (41.3%), Germany (35.5%), U.K (21.4) and the U.S. (13.2%). Thus, the U.S. has not only the worst income distribution but also the most inefficient income redistribution policy.

Chinese Gini is the same as the U.S. Gini. But the reasons can be different. In the U.S. the high Gini is due to the government’s failure to tax sufficiently large corporations and to distribute the tax money to ordinary Americans. On the other hand, the high Gini in China is related to the low level of economic growth. The Gini is high at the early stage of economic growth, but, as the economy grows further it falls.

We have examined the nature of Sino-American economic war. We have examined the demand-side and supply-side strategies. We have not found any winner. We have examined also the structural adjustment strategy. Here, China may have some advantage. However, one thing is clear; there is no guarantee that the China will win.

To conclude, the possibility of Washington’s wining the ideological war and the economic battle looks uncertain. If this is the case, Washington might conclude that the only way of subduing China would be the shooting war.

But, the shooting war is costly. So, if Washington wants to avoid the war, and if it cannot succeed in China bashing, the only way left is the coexistence with China. Washington should reconsider Xi Jinping’s win-win cooperative coexistence. That is what the world would like to see, because it is good for the global security and prosperity.

It is sincerely hoped that Biden will envisage the U.S.-China policy not in terms of short-run interest of Washington but in terms of log-run interests of the U.S. and the world.

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Professor Joseph H. Chung is professor of economics and co-director of the East Asia Observatory (OAE) of the Study Center for Integration and Globalization (CEIM), University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM).

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

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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Black Americans have been the least inclined of any racial or ethnic group to say they’d get vaccinated against the coronavirus. The proportion of Black people who said they’ll probably or definitely take the shot has risen over time – but even by mid-January, with two COVID-19 vaccines authorized for emergency use in the U.S., only 35% of Black survey respondents said they’d get it as soon as they could, or already had gotten the shot.

Will you get a COVID-19 vaccine?

The Kaiser Family Foundation surveyed American adults in mid-January, asking “When an FDA approved vaccine for COVID-19 is available to you for free do you think you will…?” Black participants were least likely to say they had already received the shot or were hoping to be immunized as soon as possible. Black adults (43%) were significantly more likely than white adults (26%) to say they wanted to “wait and see.”

At the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately harmed Black, Indigenous and other people of color in comparison to white members of American society. With Black Americans being hospitalized at rates 2.9 times higher than white Americans and dying from COVID-19 at rates 1.9 times higher, you might assume that Black people would be lining up at breakneck speed to receive the vaccine as soon as it’s available to them.

But the Black community has reasons for distrust – even beyond what might be attributed to the mixed messaging of the nation’s COVID-19 response. And it’s not a simple or sole matter of miseducation. I’m a medical humanist and bioethicist who studies history, ethics and literature to understand racial and gender health disparities. My research explores the history of unethical and abusive treatment Black Americans have experienced at the hands of the medical establishment. Based on past experience, Black people have many legitimate reasons to be in no hurry to get the vaccination.

A troubling track record

The American medical establishment has a long history of unethical treatment of Black research subjects. Medical ethicist Harriet A. Washington details some of the most egregious examples in her book “Medical Apartheid.” There’s the now notorious Tuskegee syphilis experiment, in which the government misled Black male patients to believe they were receiving treatment for syphilis when, in fact, they were not. That study went on for a total of 40 years, continuing even after a cure for syphilis was developed in the 1940s.

Perhaps less widely known are the unethical and unjustified experiments J. Marion Sims performed on enslaved women in 1800s U.S. that helped earn him the nickname the “father of modern gynecology.” Sims performed experimental vesicovaginal fistula surgery on enslaved women without anesthesia or even the basic standard of care typical for the time.

Sims experimented on Anarcha, a 17-year-old slave, over 30 times. His decision not to give anesthesia was based on the racist assumption that Black people experience less pain than their white peers – a belief that persists among medical professionals today. Historian Deirdre Cooper Owens elaborates on this case and many other ways Black women’s bodies have been used as guinea pigs in her book “Medical Bondage.”

Cases of medical malfeasance and malevolence have persisted, even after the establishment of the Nuremburg code, a set of medical ethical principles developed after World War II and subsequent trials for crimes against humanity.

In 1951, doctors harvested cervical cancer cells from a Black woman named Henrietta Lacks without her permission. Researchers went on to use them to create the first immortal cell culture and subjected her descendants to ongoing study for years without informed consent. Investigative journalist Rebecca Skloot details the cascade of ethical violations in her book “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.” Despite heightened awareness after the book’s publication, the ethical violations continued when a group of scientists mapped the HeLa genome without her family’s knowledge or consent.

Advances in genomics are still being used to resuscitate theories of racial “science.” For example, a now-debunked 2007 study purported to isolate a so-called “warrior gene” in Maori Indigenous men and argued they are genetically “hard-wired” for violence. Scientists and news outlets in the U.S. jumped on board, suggesting there’s a genetic predisposition for Black and Latino males to engage in gang activity.

Legal scholar Dorothy E. Roberts explains in her book “Fatal Invention” how incidents like this one perpetuate the harm of race-based science. Using biological data and flawed reasoning tainted by racial stereotyping reinforces racist beliefs about Black people. Such logic focuses on purely biological factors and ignores the social and systemic factors that produce negative and inequitable health outcomes.

While there is now an ample body of scholarly research that reveals these truths about racism in the medical establishment, Black Americans need only to gather around the kitchen table with a few friends and family to share and hear personally experienced stories of medical malfeasance.

Present-day persistence of racism in health care

Even though their experiences at the hands of researchers like J. Marion Sims were central to advances in modern gynecology, today Black women have not benefited from these advances to the same degree as white women. Black women still suffer worse outcomes and more deaths from gynecologic cancers and have worse health and more deaths affiliated with childbearing, just to name two.

When tennis star Serena Williams gave birth, she saw firsthand how Black women are disbelieved by the medical establishment. She might have died from postpartum blood clots if she hadn’t advocated for herself in the face of dismissive medical professionals.

Black people are acutely aware of this history of racism in the medical establishment, and the ways it persists today on both an individual and a collective level. Stereotypes about Black patients, whether the result of explicit or implicit bias, continue to affect the care they receive and their medical outcomes. Again and again, when surveyed, Black Americans report that medical providers don’t believe them, won’t prescribe necessary treatments, including pain medication, and blame them for their health problems.

And the association between racism and increased disease cases and deaths has held true during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Overcoming these challenges

Ongoing trust issues around the COVID-19 vaccines are just the latest indication of racial health disparities in the U.S.

Still, there are ways to begin to close the COVID-19 racial health and mortality gap. Vaccinations for Black people may otherwise continue to lag in proportion to population size.

An important first step is for health care workers and policymakers to learn these painful histories and develop strategies informed by an understanding of the systemic racism Black Americans face.

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Esther Jones is Associate Professor of English, affiliate with Africana Studies and Women’s & Gender Studies, Clark University.

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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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On Tuesday’s Tucker Carlson Tonight, the eponymous host exposed many of the ills emanating from lockdown restrictions, including the devastating effect wrought on American children, whom he noted are now “10 times more likely to die from suicide than from the coronavirus they’re meant to be protected from.”

During a blistering opening monologue, Carlson referenced a recently published FAIR Health study, The Impact of COVID-19 on Pediatric Mental Health, which highlights the developments in the mental health of children as a result of locking down the country.

The statistics therein demonstrate that “kids are depressed and dejected and they are regressing.”

“The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on mental health, particularly that of young people. School closures, having to learn remotely, and isolating from friends due to social distancing have been sources of stress and loneliness,” Carlson said.

“Among children aged 13 to 18 – teenagers – insurance claims for intentional self-harm were up 90 percent in March of 2020 compared to the previous year. The next month, in April, self-harm cases rose by nearly 100 percent.”

Continuing, Carlson drew attention to the astronomical rise in “claims for medical help related to drug overdoses,” which rose by “95 percent in March and then to 119 percent in April, and those numbers remained elevated through the fall.”

“Why was this happening? Mental illness caused by coronavirus lockdowns.”

“For the age group 13 to 18 in April 2020, insurance claims for generalized anxiety disorder increased 93.6 percent. As a percentage of all medical claims in April of 2019, major depressive disorder claims increased 83.9 percent and adjustment disorder claims by 89.7 percent.”

Concluding from the above, Carlson made the grim observation that “children are 10 times more likely to die from suicide than from the coronavirus they’re meant to be protected from.”

“That is the new normal that Andrew Cuomo and The New York Times are working to make permanent in this country,” he stated.

Carlson flagged the extreme-leftist teachers’ unions of America as perpetuating the lockdown problem, noting in particular the president of the Los Angeles Teachers’ Union, Cecily Myart-Cruz, who said, “Some voices are being allowed to speak louder than others. We have to call out the privilege behind the largely white, wealthy parents driving the push for a rushed return.”

Matt Meyer, the head of the Berkeley teachers’ union, also came under fire after it was revealed by a group of parents that he has been sending his children to private school for in-person education, defying his own public advocacy for the shutdown of public schools.

Speaking in January, Meyer said,

“Real-life children do not keep their masks on, they do not keep distance from each other or their teachers. Given the realities of working with real children in person, we need to account for the inevitable lapses in risk mitigation practices by choosing a standard of lower transmission for reopening.”

Dr. Marty Makary, professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the Bloomberg School of Health, told Carlson that “public health research always lags behind reality. … We’re going to see a lot of research come out on the restrictions, particularly against kids, and this is the first of many research studies and it looks pretty grim.”

Using the national FAIR Health study, Makary lamented the “91 percent increase in kids, Tucker, who come to us as doctors because they tried to hurt themselves at a time when all medical utilization has been cut in half.” He noted there has been a “300 percent increase in some parts of the country where there are very strict restrictions against kids and school closures.”

Makary added that there has been “a 63 percent increase in overdoses. Twenty-three percent of all emergency room visits at one point last year were from mental illness complaints.”

“This is the first of many studies that’s going to tell us that many of these policies were basically an abuse by one group that has power over another group, and they exercise that power unfairly just because they could.”

Makary described the “fundamental problem” with accountability for locking down as a result of having “not looked at the totality of data on the health of kids and health consequences.”

He explained:

“If you were to ask me if you left your home could you get bacterial meningitis, the answer will always be yes; but if people stay isolated there will be more health consequences against that individual, and as a scientist, you’ve got to look at the totality of data on health outcomes. Those CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) guidelines that came out, Tucker, they were flawed. They were filled with dogma, they contradicted top CDC scientists who published in the journal the American Medical Association three weeks prior that schools don’t significantly contribute to transmission, and if they were applied to the airline industry, every plane in the U.S. would be grounded. Why is it that adults get to pack into planes, and they do it safely with masks, but kids are last in the reopening plan? That is an abuse of power.”

Carlson added that the reason for keeping schools shut is not the science, as has been demonstrated, but rather it is on account of the teachers’ unions that have “inordinate political power.”

Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume told Carlson that “as powerful as I thought they (teachers’ unions) were, I did not realize they were powerful enough to do what they’ve succeeded in doing.”

“We saw the most recent manifestation of that when the director of the CDC came out and said, you know, that the science shows it’s safe to reopen schools without everyone being vaccinated. And in a matter of hours, really, the Biden administration had come out and said, ‘Well, she (the director) was speaking for herself,’ which gave you a sense of how afraid the Biden administration, newly in power, is of what the teachers’ unions say,” continued Hume.

Hume laid blame on “the effect of the media coverage in particular, and of a lot of the pronouncements of public health officials as well” for the “nation’s attitude” on allowing children back to school.

This narrative was, according to Hume, “very powerful and the sense of fear that it engendered in the American body politick has been the strongest thing we’ve seen, really, in terms of people’s unwillingness to face the data as it became clearer and clearer.”

“Scientists have said, almost in (sic) the beginning, that this is a disease that way disproportionately affects the elderly and those with certain attendant comorbidities, and that everyone else was, if not completely safe against the disease, then largely so.”

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Public-interest groups sued the Environmental Protection Agency today over its rushed decision in the final days of the Trump administration to reapprove previously cancelled uses of the dangerous pesticide aldicarb on Florida oranges and grapefruits.

The decision allows 100,000 acres of citrus to be treated with up to 2.5 million pounds of products containing aldicarb, a pesticide banned in more than 100 countries and one of only 36 pesticides classified as “extremely hazardous” by the World Health Organization.

“This approval of aldicarb is just one more assault on the men and women who harvest our citrus crops in Florida, who do ‘essential’ work but who are treated as dispensable,” said Jeannie Economos, coordinator of the Pesticide Safety and Environmental Health Project at Farmworker Association of Florida. “No one should risk their health and the health of their families in the course of doing a hard day’s labor feeding America.”

Aldicarb’s approval on Florida citrus came with lightning speed after a legally mandated public comment period that ended on Jan. 6. One day later, more than 100 pages of risk assessment documents were finalized, and on Jan. 12 — eight days before the transition to a new presidential administration — the Trump EPA finalized the approval.

“The outrageous decision to just ignore all the troubling research and expand use of this dangerous neurotoxin reeks of political interference,” said Nathan Donley, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity. “We’re asking the court to make the EPA do its job and protect people and the environment. Florida’s rivers, lakes and streams should not be a dumping ground for poisons forbidden in countries across much of the globe.”

This approval came after representatives from the citrus industry lobbied the EPA, which had previously committed to banning aldicarb, to approve use of the neurotoxic pesticide on the nation’s citrus. The lobbying efforts included a meeting directly with the agricultural advisor to then-EPA administrator and Trump loyalist Andrew Wheeler.

“The former Trump administration is no longer in charge of EPA, but many of the actions it took at the behest of chemical agriculture remain in place,” said Dr. Olga Naidenko, Environmental Working Group’s vice president for science investigations. “Aldicarb is a potent neurotoxic pesticide that is especially risky for young children who are exposed through food or proximity to the fields where it’s sprayed. The EPA must follow the science and not the demands of the pesticide industry and ban the use of aldicarb on Florida’s citrus crops.”

In addition to being designated as “extremely hazardous” by the WHO, aldicarb is also one of the few pesticides — along with DDT — subject to regulation under the Rotterdam Convention, an international treaty designed to reduce trade of the most hazardous chemicals in the world. The United States is one of only a few countries around the world that has not ratified the treaty.

Aldicarb is a known neurotoxin that can impair normal brain development in young children. Harms to people are similar to those seen in wildlife, where exposure can cause developmental defects, dizziness and blurred vision, abdominal pain and vomiting.

In 2011 the EPA and Bayer reached an agreement to end the use of aldicarb in the United States after the EPA found that its ongoing use posed unacceptable dietary risks to infants and young children. The crop use that resulted in the highest risk to infants and children was citrus, which Bayer agreed to cancel immediately. While the other uses of aldicarb were being phased out, AgLogic applied for, and received, approval for use on a small subset of other crops, like cotton and sweet potatoes.

After the 2011 phaseout of most uses, U.S. agricultural use of aldicarb has been consistently low, with under 100,000 pounds used each year. Despite its low use in recent years, aldicarb was detected in drinking-water systems in six states serving nearly 1 million people between 2015 and 2017.

The EPA’s approval of aldicarb on Florida citrus crops is projected to exponentially increase use across the state.

Today’s lawsuit was filed by the Farmworker Association of Florida, Center for Biological Diversity and Environmental Working Group in the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals.

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A no-holds-barred carnage of wolves in Wisconsin last week, which ended with trophy hunters killing nearly twice the sanctioned quota of animals in just under 60 hours, offers a terrible glimpse into just what lies ahead for these beloved native American carnivores unless the Biden administration moves swiftly to restore their federal protections.

Wisconsin’s wolf hunt was, from start to finish, an example of the worst wildlife management practices. The state was not prepared for a February hunt and was forced by a court ruling to rush into one without a clear, updated, scientific plan. ​

A whopping 2,380 wolf hunting permits — twice as many as are typically issued for hunts in the state — were made available for a quota of 119 wolves over what was supposed to be a week-long season. Little if any input was sought from Wisconsinites and tribal nations, which have opposed the hunts, or from the scientific community. The hunt also occurred during the breeding season for wolves, putting pregnant females in the crosshairs.

In less than 60 hours, 216 wolves had been slaughtered and all of the hunting zones had to be closed. We now know that nearly half the wolves killed were females. Entire wolf families were likely destroyed. And worst of all, nearly 85 percent of the animals killed were hunted down by packs of dogs — an extremely cruel and unsporting practice that no other state allows for wolf hunting.

“The swift pace of the wolf kills, mostly by hunters using trailing hounds, took the DNR by surprise. And the overage was made worse by a state statute that requires 24-hour, rather than immediate, notice of the season closure,” Paul A. Smith, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel’s outdoors editor, wrote in an article critical of the hunt.

We have issued many warnings predicting exactly such a horrific scenario since the federal delisting of wolves last year by the Trump administration. In Wisconsin, where some state officials and lawmakers had begun plotting a wolf hunt even before the federal delisting was finalized, we led a strong campaign to stop a February hunt, convincing the state’s Natural Resources Board and Gov. Tony Evers, in a letter, that an early hunt would be unscientific and illegal, with disastrous consequences for the wolves. Shortly after receiving our letter, the DNR announced they would not open a trophy hunt until November 2021 and committed to transparency and broad public engagement before doing so. Soon after, we helped thwart another attempt by some lawmakers to open a February hunt.

Unfortunately, an out-of-state trophy hunting group sued the state to open season earlier this month—a request the court granted, opening the door to a bloodbath. ​

In amicus briefs we filed with the court, we argued ​this hunt was ​not only scientifically unjustifiable but illegal under the state’s own law. The consequences of the court’s misguided decision underscores the importance of our fight — in federal court and elsewhere — to return Endangered Species Act protections to wolves.

We already know that Wisconsin is planning to open another hunt in the fall. And it is not the only one. In the Northern Rocky Mountains, where wolves had already lost their federal protections prior to the January national delisting, states are trying drastically to expand their trophy hunting seasons. Some lawmakers in Montana, for instance, are pushing forward numerous bills that would radically increase the number of wolves killed by trophy hunters and trappers. Wolves also continue to face grave threats in Idaho and Wyoming.

Wildlife agencies in other Great Lakes states, like Minnesota and Michigan, have committed to working to update their state wolf management plans and consult with scientists and tribes prior to considering a trophy hunting or trapping season. But in Minnesota some state lawmakers are trying to force a hunt, and bills were recently introduced that would require a season for wolves. However, another bill that would prohibit such a season was recently introduced as well. And in Michigan, the Senate Natural Resources Committee recently passed a resolution to urge the Natural Resources Commission to hold a wolf hunt even prior to updating their state management plan.

We have even seen a bill introduced in the 117th Congress by Rep. Thomas Tiffany, R-Wisc., that would remove gray wolves in Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota and Wyoming from the Endangered Species Act indefinitely. The bill seeks to preempt any litigation that could potentially lead to federal protections being restored to wolves.

If you live in one of these states, it is crucial that you keep a watchful eye on decision-makers and continue to speak up for wolves. With trophy hunters raring to go after America’s wolves, and given the clout they have, in many cases, with state DNR officials and some lawmakers, this is a tough fight. But we have the majority of Americans, who are opposed to wolf trophy hunting, on our side and we are working to stop this cruel pastime on several fronts. ​

We are now suing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service over the delisting decision to remove gray wolves in the lower 48 states from the Endangered Species Act, and we will continue to press the Biden administration’s Department of the Interior to restore federal protections for this species. We will also continue to fight state plans to open and expand wolf trophy hunts. Wolves need all of our help, and yours. These gorgeous animals today occupy only 15 percent of their historic range in this country: they are far from recovered, and in no state to withstand more carnage, in Wisconsin or anywhere else they call home.

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Sara Amundson is president of the Humane Society Legislative Fund.

Featured image: A whopping 2,380 wolf hunting permits — twice as many as are typically issued for hunts in the state — were made available for a quota of 119 wolves over what was supposed to be a week-long season. Photo by JAMcGraw/iStock.com

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***

An old territorial dispute in South America is reaching its most tense point in decades. The territory known as Essequibo has been mutually claimed by Guyana and Venezuela since the 19th century when Guyana still belonged to the United Kingdom. In 1897, the Venezuelan and British authorities agreed to submit their dispute to an arbitrary international court in Paris, which ruled that the land belonged to the UK. For decades, the arbitration decision was accepted by Caracas, but in 1948 Venezuelan authorities revealed some irregularities in the trial, which were documented in old government files. As a result, the decision was considered null, and years later, in 1963, Venezuela formally submitted its territorial claim to the United Nations, and the dispute remains unresolved till today, when the interests of foreign oil companies threaten to increase the tensions.

As a region rich in oil, Essequibo has recently entered the map of the large multinationals in this sector, especially the American Exxon Mobil. More than that, the economic sanctions imposed on Venezuela and the political alignment of Guyana with Washington contribute to create an even more controversial scenario. Guyana has the support of the large private oil sector and the American government, while Venezuela remains alone. Last year, the case was filed with the International Court of Justice, but Venezuela did not accept it and remained out of the trial.

However, in a sentence on December 18, 2020, the Court proclaimed its competence to intervene in the dispute, despite Venezuela’s position. It is necessary to highlight that, regardless of any decision taken by the Court over who really has sovereignty in Essequibo, this sentence must be considered null, since the absence of Venezuelan consent prevents the execution of the sentence. The need for consent is one of the most elementary principles of international law and the very fact that the Court declares itself competent already leads us to question whether its judges are really impartial – clearly, the norms of international law are being violated in favor of Guyana.

Guyana has publicly admitted that its expenses for the court case in The Hague were paid by Exxon Mobil. Although the American oil company has been operating in Guyana for decades, its interest has been greatly increased with the recent discoveries of oil reserves and investors are willing to do anything to ensure the exploration of local natural resources. Currently, Exxon Mobil is interested in expanding its facilities over an area of more than 26,000 square kilometers, which not only crosses the disputed territory in Essequibo, but also violates Venezuelan undisputed national territory.

With this scenario of clear attack on Venezuelan national sovereignty and possible collaboration of the International Court with one of the parties, Venezuela is at a disadvantage mainly due to its diplomatic weakness. Venezuela, at this point, lacks sufficient influence to cause the Court to review its decision or judge the case in a really partial way. For that, only strong international alliances can help Caracas. The large nations that are not aligned with Washington and have so far cooperated strongly with Venezuela, Russia and China, might be provoked by the Venezuelan government to incite international pressure in this regard. Only these two countries can mediate a parallel agreement that may be established between Caracas and The Hague in order to choose between two paths: either Venezuela agrees to submit to trial on the condition that there is a partial judgment and without the influence of private companies, or the Court declines jurisdiction. As the first scenario is unlikely and difficult to monitor, the most viable route would be for The Hague to abdicate any form of judgment.

It is important to mention that, in the absence of international judgment, what is in force in Essequibo is the Geneva Agreement of 1966, which did not decide on sovereignty in the region, but, in search of a peaceful solution, defined what activities would be allowed or prohibited in Essequibo. Oil exploration by foreign companies is not allowed, so, in principle, Guyana is violating the agreement and its activities could only become lawful if there was a decision by the International Court on the matter, allowing exploration. As Venezuela does not submit to the Court, the trial is impossible and, therefore, exploration remains prohibited and Guyana is committing an international offense.

However, more worrying than that is the fact that the American military is working in Essequibo, carrying out tests with the aim of intimidating Venezuela and pressuring Caracas to renounce its demands. There are American military ships in Essequibo “protecting” Exxon Mobil facilities and provoking Caracas. In addition, considering that the American company wants to publicly explore areas within Venezuelan territory, what will become of the American presence? If Caracas does not allow the activities of Exxon Mobil, it is the Venezuelan right to control or even destroy the facilities in its territory. And what would be the American reaction to that – considering Biden’s aggressive interventionist policy?

It is for these reasons that, more than ever, countries of greater international relevance must mediate the issue in order to maintain the status of illegality to the Exxon Mobil’s activities. With international pressure, it is possible that the American company will retreat or that at least the American military in the region will leave and with that we would have a reduction in tensions.

Still, it is possible that with international mediation a mutual exploration agreement will be reached that allows both countries to enjoy the local wealth, without, however, allowing companies that violate the Geneva Agreement to operate.

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

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***
On February 25th, President Biden ordered U.S. air forces to drop seven 500-pound bombs on Iraqi forces in Syria, reportedly killing 22 people. The U.S. airstrike has predictably failed to halt rocket attacks on deeply unpopular U.S. bases in Iraq, which the Iraqi National Assembly passed a resolution to close over a year ago. 

The Western media reported the U.S. airstrike as an isolated and exceptional incident, and there has been significant blowback from the U.S. public, Congress and the world community, condemning the strikes as illegal and a dangerous escalation of yet another Middle East conflict.

But unbeknownst to many Americans, the U.S. military and its allies are engaged in bombing and killing people in other countries on a daily basis. The U.S. and its allies have dropped more than 326,000 bombs and missiles on people in other countries since 2001 (see table below), including over 152,000 in Iraq and Syria.

That’s an average of 46 bombs and missiles per day, day in day out, year in year out, for nearly 20 years. In 2019, the last year for which we have fairly complete records, the average was 42 bombs and missiles per day, including 20 per day in Afghanistan alone.

So, if those seven 500-pound bombs were the only bombs the U.S. and its allies dropped on February 25th, it would have been an unusually quiet day for U.S. and allied air forces, and for their enemies and victims on the ground, compared to an average day in 2019 or most of the past 20 years. On the other hand, if the unrelenting U.S. air assault on countries across the Greater Middle East finally began to diminish over the past year, this bombing may have been an unusual spike in violence. But which of these was it, and how would we know?

We don’t know, because our government doesn’t want us to. From January 2004 until February 2020, the U.S. military kept track of how many bombs and missiles it dropped on Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, and published those figures in regular, monthly Airpower Summaries, which were readily available to journalists and the public. But in March 2020, the Trump administration abruptly stopped publishing U.S. Airpower Summaries, and the Biden administration has so far not published any either.

As with the human casualties and mass destruction that these hundreds of thousands of airstrikes cause, the U.S. and international media only report on a tiny fraction of them. Without regular U.S. Airpower Summaries, comprehensive databases of airstrikes in other war-zones and serious mortality studies in the countries involved, the American public and the world are left almost completely in the dark about the death and destruction our country’s leaders keep wreaking in our name. The disappearance of Airpower Summaries has made it impossible to get a clear picture of the current scale of U.S. airstrikes.

Here are up-to-date figures on U.S. and allied airstrikes, from 2001 to the present, highlighting the secrecy in which they have abruptly been shrouded for the past year:

Numbers of bombs and missiles dropped on other countries by the U.S. & its allies since 2001

Total                152,096* + ?                    81,638 + ?           65,534                    26,712

Grand Total = 325,980 + Trump & Biden’s Secret Bombing 2020-2021

**Other Countries: Lebanon, Libya, Pakistan, Palestine, Somalia.

These figures are based on U.S. Airpower Summaries for Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria; the Bureau of Investigative Journalism’s count of drone strikes in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen; the Yemen Data Project‘s count of Saudi-led airstrikes in Yemen; the New America Foundation’s database of foreign airstrikes in Libya; and other published statistics. Figures for 2021 are only through January.

There are several categories of airstrikes that are not included in this table, meaning that the true numbers of airstrikes are certainly higher. These include:

• Helicopter strikes: Military Times published an article in February 2017 titled, “The U.S. military’s stats on deadly airstrikes are wrong. Thousands have gone unreported.” The largest pool of airstrikes not included in U.S. Airpower Summaries are strikes by attack helicopters. The U.S. Army told the authors its helicopters had conducted 456 otherwise unreported airstrikes in Afghanistan in 2016. The authors explained that the non-reporting of helicopter strikes has been consistent throughout the post-9/11 wars, and they still did not know how many actual missiles were fired in those 456 attacks in Afghanistan in the one year they investigated.
• AC-130 gunships: The airstrike that destroyed the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan in 2015 was not conducted with bombs or missiles, but by a Lockheed-Boeing AC-130 gunship. These machines of mass destruction, usually manned by U.S. Air Force special operations forces, are designed to circle a target on the ground, pouring howitzer shells and cannon fire into it, often until it is completely destroyed. The U.S. has used AC-130s in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, and Syria.
• Strafing runs: U.S. Airpower Summaries for 2004-2007 included a note that their tally of “strikes with munitions dropped… does not include 20mm and 30mm cannon or rockets.” But the 30mm cannons on A-10 Warthogs and other ground attack planes are powerful weapons, originally designed to destroy Soviet tanks. A-10s fire 65 depleted uranium shells per second to blanket an area with deadly and indiscriminate fire, but that does not count as a “weapons release” in U.S. Airpower Summaries.
• “Counter-insurgency” and “counter-terrorism” operations in other parts of the world. The United States formed a military coalition with 11 West African countries in 2005, and now has a drone base in Niger, but we have not found a database of U.S. and allied air strikes in that region, or in the Philippines, Latin America or elsewhere.

It was clearly no coincidence that Trump stopped publishing Airpower Summaries right after the February 2020 U.S. withdrawal agreement with the Taliban, reinforcing the false impression that the war in Afghanistan was over. In fact, U.S. bombing resumed after only an 11-day pause.

As our table shows, 2018 and 2019 were back-to-back record years for U.S. airstrikes in Afghanistan. But how about 2020? Without the official records, we don’t know whether the withdrawal agreement led to a serious reduction in airstrikes or not.

President Biden has foolishly tried to use airstrikes in Syria as “leverage” with Iran, instead of simply rejoining the Iran nuclear agreement as he promised during the election campaign. Biden is likewise trailing along in Trump’s footsteps by shrouding U.S. airstrikes in the secrecy that Trump used to obscure his failure to “end the endless wars.”

It is entirely possible that the highly publicized February 25th airstrikes, like Trump’s April 2017 missile strikes on Syria, were a diversion from much heavier, but largely unreported, U.S. bombing already under way elsewhere, in that case the frightful destruction of Mosul, Iraq’s former second city.

The only way that Biden can reassure the American public that he is not using Trump’s wall of secrecy to continue America’s devastating airwars, notably in Afghanistan, is to end this secrecy now, and resume the publication of complete and accurate U.S. Airpower Summaries.

President Biden cannot restore the world’s respect for American leadership, or the American public’s support for our foreign policy, by piling more lies, secrets and atrocities on top of those he has inherited. If he keeps trying to do so, he might well find himself following in Trump’s footsteps in yet another way: as the failed, one-term president of a destructive and declining empire.

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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 a freelance writer and a researcher with CODEPINK, and the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.     

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***

Dozens of U.S. law firms have formed a coalition to fight a new $2 billion settlement proposal by Monsanto owner Bayer AG that aims to contain the company’s ongoing liability related to claims that Roundup herbicides cause a type of cancer known as non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL).

The settlement is designed to compensate people who have been exposed to Roundup products and either already have NHL or may develop NHL in the future, but who have not yet taken steps to file a lawsuit.

The small group of lawyers who put the plan together with Bayer say it will “save lives” and provide substantial benefits to people who believe they developed cancer from exposure to the company’s herbicide products.

But many lawyers criticizing the plan say if it is approved it would set a dangerous precedent for other types of litigation involving large numbers of people injured by the products or practices of powerful corporations.

“This is not the direction we want the civil justice system to go,” said attorney Gerald Singleton, whose firm has joined with more than 60 other law firms to oppose Bayer’s plan. “There is no scenario under which this is good for plaintiffs.”

Bayer’s settlement plan was filed with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Feb. 3, and must be approved by U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria in order to become effective. A prior settlement plan submitted last year was scorned by Chhabria and then withdrawn. The judge has been overseeing the federal multidistrict Roundup litigation involving thousands of plaintiffs from around the United States.

Responses to the settlement plan are due March 3 and a hearing on the matter is set for March 31.

A key concern is that current Roundup users who may develop cancer and want to sue in the future will automatically be subject to terms of the class settlement unless they officially opt out of the settlement within a specific time period. One of the terms they would be subject to would bar them from seeking punitive damages in any future lawsuit.

Those terms and others laid out are wholly unfair to farm workers and others who are expected to develop cancer in the future from exposure to the company’s herbicide products, according to Singleton. The plan benefits Bayer and provides “blood money” to the four law firms that worked with Bayer to design the plan, he said.

Those firms working with Bayer to draft and administer the plan would receive a proposed $170 million if the plan takes effect.

Elizabeth Cabraser, one of the lawyers who crafted the new proposed settlement, said the criticism is not a fair description of the settlement. In truth, she said, the plan “provides significant and urgently-needed outreach, education, healthcare access, and compensation benefits” for people who have been exposed to Monsanto’s Roundup herbicides but have not yet developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL).

“We seek approval of this settlement because it will save lives and enhance quality of life through early diagnosis, assist people… inform them and raise public awareness about the link between Roundup and NHL…” she said.

A spokesman for Bayer did not respond to a request for comment.

The new proposed settlement is aimed at future cases and is separate from the $11 billion Bayer has earmarked to settle existing U.S. Roundup cancer claims. The people impacted by the class settlement proposal are only individuals who have been exposed to Roundup but are not yet in litigation and have taken no steps toward any litigation.

Bayer has been struggling to figure out how to put an end to the Roundup cancer litigation since buying Monsanto in 2018. The company lost all three trials held to date and lost the early rounds of appeals seeking to overturn the trial losses.

Juries in each of the trials found not only that Monsanto’s glyphosate-based herbicides cause cancer but also that Monsanto spent decades hiding the risks.

Though the proposed settlement states that it “addresses the four concerns the Court raised regarding the prior, withdrawn settlement,” Singleton and other lawyers involved in the opposition said the new settlement proposal is just as bad as the first.

In addition to the concerns that class members would not have the right to seek claims for punitive damages, the critics also object to the four-year “standstill” period blocking the filing of new lawsuits. The critics also say the plan for notifying people of the class settlement is not sufficient. Individuals would have 150 days following the notification to “opt out” of the class. If they do not opt out, they are automatically in the class.

Critics also object to the proposed formation of a science panel that would act as a “guidepost” for an “extension of compensation options into the future” and to provide evidence about the carcinogenicity – or not – of Bayer’s herbicides.  Given Monsanto’s documented history of manipulating scientific findings, the science panel work would be suspect, said Singleton.

The initial settlement period would run for at least four years and could be extended after that period.  If Bayer elects not to continue the compensation fund after the initial settlement period, it will pay an additional $200 million as an “end payment” into the compensation fund, the settlement summary states.

“Substantial compensation” offered

The law firms that drafted the agreement with Bayer said in their filing to the court that the settlement is structured to provide potential future plaintiffs with “what most serves their interests,” including an option for “substantial compensation” if they develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

The plan calls for the establishment of a compensation fund to make awards of between $10,000 and $200,000 per individual class member. “Accelerated Payment Awards” of $5,000 would be available on an expedited basis, requiring just a showing of exposure and diagnosis.

Those people first exposed to Roundup products at least 12 months prior to their diagnosis would be qualified for awards. Awards of  more than $200,000 could be made for “extraordinary circumstances.” Those qualified class members who were diagnosed with NHL before January 1, 2015, would not receive awards more than $10,000, according to the plan. 

The settlement would provide free legal advice and provide ”support to assist class members in navigating, registering, and applying for Settlement benefits.”

Additionally, the proposal states that the settlement will fund medical and scientific research into the diagnosis and treatment of NHL.

Notably, the plan states that no one will lose their right to sue unless they choose to accept compensation from the compensation fund, and no one needs to make that choice until that individual class member is diagnosed with NHL. They would not be able to seek punitive damages but could seek other compensation.

“Any class members who do not file a claim and accept individual compensation retain their right to sue Monsanto for compensatory damages on any legal theory, including personal injury, fraud, misrepresentation, negligence, fraudulent concealment, negligent misrepresentation, breach of warranty, false advertising, and violation of any consumer protection or unfair and deceptive acts or practices statute,” the plan states.

To alert people to the class action settlement, notices would be mailed/emailed to 266,000 farms, businesses and organizations and government entities where the company’s herbicides could have been used as well as to 41,000 people who have non-Hodgkin lymphoma and asked to receive information about their disease. Additionally posters would be mailed to 2,700 stores asking them to post notices of the class action settlement.

As part of the proposed settlement, Bayer said it would seek permission from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to add information on the labels of its glyphosate-based products such as Roundup that would provide links to access to scientific studies and other information about glyphosate safety. But critics say providing a website links is inadequate and Bayer needs to put a straightforward warning of cancer risk on the weed killing products.

The proposed class action settlement threatens to affect “hundreds of thousands or even millions” of people who have been exposed to Roundup and “raises ‘unique’ and profound questions” under the U.S. Constitution, according to a court filing in opposition to the Bayer plan made by plaintiffs’ lawyer Elizabeth Graham.

Graham told the court that if the plan is approved it could have a “dramatic effect not only on this litigation, but on the future of mass tort litigation.”

Black farmers

 The National Black Farmers Association (NBFA) weighed in on the issue on Wednesday, submitting a lengthy filing with Chhabria’s court that states a “substantial proportion” of its more than 100,000 members “have been exposed to and potentially injured by Roundup, and its active ingredient glyphosate.”

Many of the farmers have already developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma they blame on Roundup use, and “an even larger proportion fear that they will soon develop symptoms,” the NBFA filing states.

The NBFA wants to see Roundup products removed from commerce or other changes made to protect farmers, the filing states.

The concerns of the NBFA need to be addressed by the court, particularly as Bayer looks to “settle a class action with a set of attorneys who purport to be representing the future interests of all farmers who have been exposed to Roundup but are yet to develop the cancers it causes.”

Lawsuits in Australia

As Bayer works to bring an end to Roundup litigation in the United States, the company is also dealing with similar claims by farmers and others in Australia. A class action filed against Monsanto is underway, and the lead plaintiff John Fenton, who applied Roundup as part of farm work. Fenton was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2008.

A series of key dates have been established: Monsanto has until March 1 to provide discovery documents to plaintiffs’ lawyers and June 4 is the deadline set for the exchange of expert evidence.  The parties are to enter into mediation by July 30 and if nothing is resolved the case would go to trial in March 2022.

Fenton said while he would “love the opportunity” to go to trial and tell his story, he hopes mediation will resolve the matter. “I think the consensus is starting to change thanks to what has been happening in the US. Farmers are more aware and I believe they do take more precautions than they used to.

Fenton said he hopes that Bayer ultimately will put a warning label on Monsanto’s glyphosate herbicides.

“At least with a warning the user can make up their own mind about what PPE (personal protective equipment) they choose to wear.”

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First published on GR in April 2020.

Incisive article which revealed the timeline of what has now been unfolding.

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As if it was planned in advance, billions of people around the globe are being forced step by rapid step into a radically different way of life, one that involves far less personal, physical and financial freedoms.

Here is the template for rolling this out.

STEP 1

A new virus starts to spread around the world. The World Health Organization (WHO) declares a pandemic.

International agencies, public-health officials, politicians, media and other influential voices fan fear by focusing almost exclusively on the contagiousness of the virus and the rising numbers of cases, and by characterizing the virus as extremely dangerous.

Within a few days governments at national and local levels also declare states of emergency. At lightning speed they impose lock-down measures that confine most people to their homes – starting withclosing schools – and shut down much of the global economy. World markets implode.

The stunned, fearful and credulous public – convinced over the previous few years that their bodies do not have the natural ability to react to pathogens by producing antibodies that confer long-lasting immunity – largely complies willingly.

The first weekly virtual class on local emergency and crisis responses to COVID-19 is held for mayors and other city officials around the world.Coordinated by a handful of American organizations in the academic, medical, financial, political and transportation spheres, the classes feature guests ranging from Barack Obama to Bill Gates.

STEP 2

National, state/provincial and municipal leaders, as well as public-health officials, start daily press briefings. They use them to pump out frightening statistics and modelling asserting the virus has the potential to kill many millions.

Most of this information is hard to decipher and sheds little real light on the natural course of the virus’s spread through each geographic area.

Officials and media downplay or distort inconveniently low death tolls from the virus and instead focus on alarming statistics produced by compliant academics, social-media influencers and high-profile organizations.

The main message is that this is a war and many lives are at stake unless virtually everybody stays at home. Mainstream media amplify the trope that the world is at the mercy of the virus.

Simultaneously, central banks and governments hand out massive amounts of cash largely to benefit the big banks. And they bring in giant private-sector financial firms to manage the process despite these global companies’ very poor track record in the 2008-2009 crash. Governments also rapidly start to create trillions of pounds’ worth of programs that include compensating businesses and workers for their shutdown-related losses.

STEP 3

There is a concerted effort by all levels of government and public health to very rapidly ramp up testing for viral RNA, along with production of personal protective equipment.

They push aside the need for regulation, including quality standards and independent verification of tests’ rates of accuracy, by insisting that fast approval and roll-out are imperative for saving lives.

Models are released that predict snowballing of numbers of cases, hospitalizations and deaths even under best-case scenarios.

At about the same time, public-health officials significantly loosen the criteria for viral infections, outbreaks and deaths, particularly in the oldest members of society. That increases the numbers of cases and deaths ascribed to the new pathogen.

The media continue to clamour for more testing and for severe punishment of people who aren’t completely compliant with the lock-down measures.

As a result, there’s little backlash as police and military with sweeping new powers enforce these measures and give stiff penalties or even jail terms to those who disobey orders. States also monitor with impunity massive numbers of people’s movements via their cellphones.

Vast human resources are focused on tracking down people who have had contact with a virus-positive individual and confining them to their homes. Thus the portion of the public exposed to the virus remains relatively small.

It also contributes to social isolation. Among many effects, this enables those in control to even further erase individual and collective choices, voices and power.

STEP 4

When the numbers of cases and deaths start to plateau, local officials claim it’s too early to tell whether the virus has finished passing through their population and therefore, restrictive measures must continue.

An alternative narrative is that if such measures aren’t kept in place there will be a resurgence of cases and deaths. Yet another is that the continuing climb in elderly persons’ deaths means all bets are off for the time being.

They admit that initial models incorrectly predicted there would be a tsunami of cases, ICU admissions and deaths. However, they assert more time is needed before it can be determined whether it’s safe to loosen some of the restrictions and let children return to school or adults go back to work.

Officials do not try to calculate the overall skyrocketing cost to their populations and economies of the shut-downs and other measures against, nor do they discuss what cost level may be too high.

They and powerful media organizations also push for the massive virus-testing over-capacity to be used to surveil the general population for viral DNA in their bodies. At the same time, the roll-out begins of widespread blood testing for antibodies to the virus.

Meanwhile, new data are published showing the virus has a high capacity to mutate. Scientists and officials interpret this as meaning a larger medical arsenal will be needed to combat it.

STEP 5

About two or three weeks later, the dramatic increase in testing for viral DNA produces the desired goal of a significant upsurge in the number of people found positive for the virus.

Public-health officials add jet fuel to the surge by adding to their case and death tallies the large number of people who are only suspected – and not lab-test-confirmed – to have had an infection. Politicians and public-health officials tell the populace this means they cannot return to their jobs or other activities outside the home for the time being.

Governments work with public-health agencies, academics, industry, the WHO and other organizations to start to design and implement immunity-passport systems for using the results of the widespread antibody testing to determine who can be released from the lock-downs. This is one of many goals of the seven steps.

Meanwhile, government leaders continue to highlight the importance of vaccines for besting the virus.

STEP 6

Large-scale human testing of many different types of antivirals and vaccines begins, thanks to a concerted push from the WHO, Bill Gatesand his collaborators, pharmaceutical and biotech companies, governments and universities.

Large swaths of the population don’t have the antibodies to the virus because they’ve been kept from being exposed to it; they eagerly accept these medications even though they’ve been rushed to market with inadequate safety testing. They believe these medical products offer the only hope for escaping the virus’s clutches.

STEP 7

Soon the new virus starts another cycle around the globe – just as influenza and other viruses have every year for millennia. Officials again fan the flames of fear by positing the potential for millions of deaths among people not yet protected from the virus.

They rapidly roll out virus and antibody testing again, while companies sell billions more doses of antivirals and booster vaccines.

Governments simultaneously cede control of all remaining public assets to global companies. This is because local and national governments’ tax bases were decimated during Step 1 and they’re virtually bankrupt from their unprecedented spending in the war against the virus in the other steps.

The overall result is complete medicalization of the response to the virus, which on a population level is no more harmful than influenza.

This is coupled with the creation of permanent totalitarianism controlled by global companies and a 24/7 invasive-surveillance police state supported by widespread blossoming of ‘smart’ technology.

The key players repeat the cycle of hysteria and massive administration of antivirals and booster shots every few months.

And they implement a variation of steps 1 to 7 when another new pathogen appears on the planet.

Sounds far-fetched? Unfortunately, it’s not.

With the arrival of COVID-19 many countries quickly completed Steps 1, 2 and 3.

Step 4 is well under way in a large number of jurisdictions.

Step 5 is on track to start in early May.

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Rosemary Frei has an MSc in molecular biology from a faculty of medicine and was a freelance medical writer and journalist for 22 years. She is now an independent investigative journalist in Toronto, Ontario. You can find her earlier article on the novel coronavirus for Off-Guardian here, watch and listen to an interview she gave on COVID19 and follow her on Twitter.

All images in this article are from OffGuardian

First published March 21, 2020

United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had a slip of the tongue while addressing the American people from the White House when he stated that COVID-19 is “a live exercise”.

“This is not about retribution,” Pompeo explained. “This matter is going forward — we are in a live exercise here to get this right.”

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@realDonaldTrump is mad that the deep state took control through Continuity of Government, there has been a coup? pic.twitter.com/GcrjNNvVsc #Covid_19 #CoronavirusPandemic #MartialLaw

— Shepard Ambellas 🎙 (@ShepardAmbellas) March 21, 2020

With a disgusted look on his face, President Trump replied: “You should have let us know.”

THE COMPLETE TRANSCRIPT: 

Pompeo’s statement might be misinterpreted when taken out of context.

It is important to focus on the broader context of Secretary of State Pompeo’s statement.

The transcript is below. Pompeo was referring to China and China’s Communist Party. This is the transcript. (emphasis added). (GR Editor)

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What is actually going on here? Does the White House care to explain?

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Featured image is from Gage Skidmore CC BY 2.0

First published by GR on April 18, 2020

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For over twenty years Bill Gates and his Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) have been vaccinating foremost children by the millions in remote areas of poor countries, mostly Africa and Asia. Most of their vaccination program had disastrous results, causing the very illness (polio, for example in India) and sterilizing young women (Kenya, with modified tetanus vaccines). Many of the children died. Many of the programs were carried out with the backing of the WHO and – yes – the UN Agency responsible for the Protection of Children, UNICEF. 

Most of these vaccination campaigns were implemented without the informed-consent of the children, parents, guardians or teachers, nor with the informed-consent, or with forged consent, of the respective government authorities. In the aftermath, The Gates Foundation was sued by governments around the world, Kenya, India, the Philippines – and more.

Bill Gates has a strange image of himself. He sees himself as The Messiah who saves the world through vaccination – and through population reduction.

Around the time, when the 2010 Rockefeller Report was issued, with its even more infamous “Lock Step” Scenario, precisely the scenario of which we are living the beginning right now, Bill Gates talked on a TED show in California, “Innovating to Zero” about the use of energy.

He used this TED presentation to promote his vaccination programs, literally saying, “If we are doing a real good job vaccinating childen, we can reduce the world population by 10% to 15%”. Watch this video from TED Talk at 04:21 or watch directly below.

Screenshot from the transcript on TED Talk

This sounds very much like eugenics.

The video, the first 6’45”, “The Truth about Bill Gates and his Disastrous Vaccination Program”, will tell you all about it.

Read also Gates’ Globalist Vaccine Agenda: a Win-Win for Pharma and Mandatory Vaccination by Robert F Kennedy Jr

Robert F Kennedy Jr, an avid Defender of Children’s Rights and anti-vaccination activist, has launched a petition sent to the White House, calling for “Investigations into the ‘Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’ for Medical Malpractice & Crimes Against Humanity“

Screenshot 

“At the forefront of this is Bill Gates, who has publicly stated his interest in “reducing population growth” by 10-15%, by means of vaccination. Gates, UNICEF & WHO have already been credibly accused of intentionally sterilizing Kenyan children through the use of a hidden HCG antigen in tetanus vaccines”. (Excerpt from text of Petition)

Link to the Petition.

If you wish to Sign the Petition click Here  

(At the time of writing, the petition had over 265,000. It requires 100,000 for an answer from the White House)

Video: Robert F. Kennedy Junior

See also brief video featuring Author Bill Still ( 6 min) entitled The Truth about Bill Gates and his disastrous Vaccination Programs around the World

Robert. F. Kennedy Exposes Bill Gates’ Vaccination Agenda

Now Mr. Gates and his allies, including Big-Pharma, WHO, UNICEF, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of NIAID / NIH, a close ally of Mr. Gates  – and of course, Agenda ID2020, are proposing to (force) vaccinate 7 billion people around the globe, with their concoction of a (so far) untested coronavirus vaccine. This is a multi-billion dollar bonanza for  Big Pharma and for all those who support the vaccine. Nobody will really know what the vaccine cocktail will contain. They intend to start with the Global South (Developing Countries) and then gradually move North (Developed Countries).

Mind you, there is no need for a vaccine to cure the corona virus. There are many cures:

French Professor Didier Raoult, who is one of the world’s top 5 scientists on communicable diseases, suggested the use of hydroxychloroquine (Chloroquine or Plaquenil), a well-known, simple, and inexpensive drug, also used to fight Malaria, and that has shown efficacy with previous coronaviruses such as SARS.  By mid-February 2020, clinical trials at his institute and in China already confirmed that the drug could reduce the viral load and bring spectacular improvement. Chinese scientists published their first trials on more than 100 patients and announced that the Chinese National Health Commission would recommend Chloroquine in their new guidelines to treat Covid-19. (Peter Koenig, April 1, 2020)

Be aware, awake, alert and warned.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21st Century; Greanville Post; Defend Democracy Press, TeleSUR; The Saker Blog, the New Eastern Outlook (NEO); and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.
Peter Koenig is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

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

***

First published on Global Research in April 2020.

In Part 1 we looked at the reasons why questioning the coronavirus lockdown, despite the ever present allegation, does not demonstrate a callous disregard for human life. We are going to expand on why it doesn’t in this article.

I am based in the UK so much of this discussion relates to the decisions of the British State, but this is a global policy agenda and similar policies are found across the developed world. Effectively a small group of policy decision makers have placed an estimated 3.5 billion people under house arrest. It is only possible for them to do so with our consent. Consent is carefully cultivated by controlling the information we are given.

For the vast majority their only source of information is the corporate mainstream media (MSM) and the public announcements of the State. This article is written, as ever, in the hope people will do their own research and make up their own minds.

We are going to look at the evidence which strongly suggests the State and the MSM, adhering to a globalist agenda, have colluded to mislead the public into believing the COVID 19 (C19) threat is far greater than it actually is.

C19 can be fatal for those with pre-existing comorbidities, and possibly even some without, as can other forms of pneumonia and influenza-like respiratory illness. However, while every C19 death has been reported, none of the far greater number of people who have died in the UK this year from other respiratory infections have even been mentioned.

Systems have been created to ensure the C19 statistics are as terrifying as possible. Their statistical product is so vague it borders upon meaningless. It seems we have been inculcated with misplaced fear to justify the lockdown regime, to convince us to accept it and prepare us for what is to come.

I apologise for the article’s length but I hope you will read it in its entirety. There’s a lot of ground to cover, so please grab a coffee before we begin.

Lockdown advised by WHO?

The World Health Organisation (WHO) is financed through a combination of assessed and voluntary contributions.

Assessed contributions are paid by nation states for WHO membership and figures are released quarterly.

Voluntary contributions are additional contributions from member states and “other partners.” For some reason these figures haven’t been reported for more than three years.

About 80% of the WHO’s finances come from voluntary contributions.

In its most recent 2017 voluntary contribution report the WHO accounted for the $2.1 billion it received from private foundations and global corporations.

This compared to just over $1 billion voluntarily provided by governments.

Contributors included GlaxoSmithKline, Bayer AG, Sanofi, Merck and Gilead Sciences whose drug remdesivir is currently being trialled, along side the off patent hydroxychloroquine, as a possible preventative treatment for COVID 19.

The remdesivir trial is part of the WHO’s SOLIDARITY trials.

The third-largest single contributor in 2017 was GAVI. Formerly called the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, they contributed nearly $134 million. GAVI are partnered with the WHO, UNICEF, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Bank to sell vaccines globally.

The World Bank contributed nearly $146 million themselves and the largest individual payment, by some margin, at nearly $325 million came from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). Though like many other foundations and corporations, through their various networks of interlinked partnerships, their overall contribution was much higher.

Among other beneficiaries of the BMGF’s generosity are the Vaccine Impact Modelling Consortium (VIMC) led by Professor Neil Ferguson.  They are based at Imperial College London and are directly funded by the BMGF and GAVI. Their objective is to provide statistical data analysis for the BMGF and GAVI in order for them to sell more vaccines.

Prof. Ferguson not only led the team who created the hopelessly inaccurate prediction which the U.S and UK governments based their lockdown regimes upon, he also co-founded the MRC Centre for Outbreak Analysis and Modelling who worked with the WHO in 2009 to create ridiculous computer models predicting the H1N1 pandemic.

In 2009 the world went crazy after the WHO declared the H1N1 influenza pandemic. This resulted in billions being spent on very expensive H1N1 vaccines and antiviral treatments although it turned out the pandemic was indistinguishable from seasonal flu.

The only people who benefited from pointless vaccines and unnecessary medication were the manufacturers GlaxoSmithKline, Roche and Novartis. Each of these pharmaceutical corporations were among the largest voluntary contributors to the WHO in 2008/2009 financial year.

With an $84 million investment, the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche were the largest single contributor into the WHO’s coffers that year. Luckily, as it turned out, they could afford it because sales of their unnecessary Tamiflu H1N1 medication rocketed to more than £3 billion following the WHO’s declared H1N1 pandemic. Which was just a coincidence.

The whole debacle resulted in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) launching an investigation into the WHO to look into the issue of a “falsified pandemic.” During the subsequent hearing the epidemiologist Dr Wolfgang Wodarg said:

The WHO basically held the trigger for the pandemic preparedness plans, they had a key role to play in deciding on the pandemic. Around 18 billion dollars was spent on this pandemic worldwide. Millions were vaccinated for no good reason. It is not even clear that the vaccine had a positive effect, because it was not clinically tested.”

At the same hearing Professor Dr Ulrich Keil, Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Epidemiology at the University of Munster, said:

A number of scientists and others are questioning the decision of the WHO to declare an international pandemic. The H1N1 virus is not a new virus, but has been known to us for decades […] In Germany, about 10,000 deaths are attributed to seasonal ‘flu, especially among older and frail people. Only a very small number of deaths, namely 187, can be attributed to the H1N1 virus in Germany – and many of those are dubious.”

Of course nothing came of it because PACE were making allegations against the World Health Organisation. The WHO don’t break the rules, they make the rules. Amazingly, probably because no one ever learns anything from history, we all believed the WHO this time.

To imagine these huge investments made by pharmaceutical corporations and private foundations don’t buy influence is so naive it barely warrants mention. The WHO is essentially a policy lobby group for the powerful globalists who own it. Why an organisation with such significant and clear conflicts of financial interests should be considered a global health authority is anyone’s guess.

On the 11th March the WHO declared the SARS-CoV-2 global pandemic. On 15th March 2020 UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock stated that vulnerable people would be required to quarantine themselves or self isolate. 

The State issued a set of guidelines for avoiding the spread of infection. On the 16th March UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson issued a statement advising people to practice social distancing, avoid non essential travel and warned that drastic measures may be needed to protect the NHS and the most vulnerable.

On the 18th of March the Director General of the BMGF funded WHO Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus gave a virtual press conference. He stated:

WHO continues to call on all countries to implement a comprehensive approach with the aim of slowing down transmission and flattening the curve. This approach is saving lives and buying time for the development of vaccines and treatments. As you know, the first vaccine trial has begun……This virus is presenting us with an unprecedented threat”

We are about to discuss why COVID 19 is not an unprecedented threat. On the 20th of March Boris Johnson ordered the closure of all venues for social gathering, such as pubs, cafes and restaurants. On March 23rd the UK State legislated for the Coronavirus Act and placed the UK in lockdown. Just as the WHO and their other partners called on them to do.

Lockdown to protect the NHS

The NHS was created to protect us, that’s why we pay for it. It is difficult to pinpoint exactly when this relationship flipped on its head.

After years of chronic underfunding by successive governments of all persuasions, interminable mismanagement, savage ideologically driven austerity cuts, crippling Private Finance Initiative debts and increasing privatisation for corporate profit, there is absolutely no reason to believe the State cares about either our health or the NHS.

Every single major health policy and legislative decision, made over the last few decades, clearly demonstrates that it doesn’t.

The basic premise, apparently believed by so many, that the State has now decided to act to keep us safe is tragically comical. For us to swallow this tripe we need to be sufficiently terrified to willingly accept the imagined protection of the State. The MSM has been doing its best to make sure we are and that we do. The 24 hour fear-porn cycle is a wonder to behold.

Most of this is based upon claims about deaths and stories about desperately overloaded hospitals struggling to cope with the pressure. Meanwhile, as millions of British people remain under house arrest, glued to their TV’s and fondle pads, the data that has been released by official sources doesn’t back up any of the tales we have been spun.

This inconvenient truth has been reported by very few in the MSM print media and has been met with deafening silence on our TV’s. Rather, the data has been convincingly spun to tell a story that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

Evidence of NHS overload is entirely absent. The State will claim this is thanks to the lockdown regime. Certainly the fact that people with other serious conditions haven’t been treated has alleviated pressure on the NHS. Unfortunately, the evidence also indicates the lockdown regime is probably killing them in increasing numbers. Though it seems unlikely the State will claim responsibility for that.

The Financial Times reported that close to half of the UK’s hospital beds were empty. With just 60% of acute beds occupied this is 30% less than this time last year.

In the same period last year the NHS was creaking under the pressure of demand, prompting then Prime Minister Theresa May to suggest scrapping NHS targets. Once again, the State was only concerned with how the figures looked not about people dying on trolleys in corridors. This year it cares, honest!

During a supposed global pandemic we’ve had the lowest ever national A&E attendance. Manchester hospitals report a 57% bed occupation rate compared to their average of 94%.

Most concerning is the huge drop in cardiology patients. With Heart disease killing more than 40,000 people under the age of 75 every year in the UK, and with a reported rise in fatalities last year, this prompted Professor John Howarth from North Cumbria Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust to express grave concern.

“I am really worried that people are not seeking the help they need for important conditions other than Covid-19.”

Indeed, if your world view is supplied by the MSM, deaths from anything other than C19 seem to have become practically irrelevant in the space of a few weeks. The Health Service journal (HSJ) reports that the NHS has four times as many empty beds as normal. Confirming that more than 40% of acute beds are unoccupied.

Even in London, the alleged epicentre of the C19 pandemic, that figure is still nearly 29%.

The much publicised Nightingale temporary hospitals, a mobilisation the MSM were keen to portray as putting the nation on a war footing, which were allegedly required to cope with the surge of C19 patients, aren’t necessary.

Of the 1,555 Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds available in London 1,245 are occupied. So questions must be asked why 19 patients, who presumably needed intensive care, were seemingly moved unnecessarily into the 4,000 bed London Nightingale over the Easter weekend.

Contrary to the claimed justification for the lockdown, as many have repeatedly warned, the health consequences of the lockdown regime could far outweigh the risks presented by C19.

Excess mortality this year is higher than average but reported coronavirus deaths form a smaller part of that bigger picture.

The HSJ reported a senior NHS sources who stated:

There could be some very serious unintended consequences. While there will be a lot of covid-19 fatalities, we could end up losing more ‘years of life’ because of fatalities relating to non-covid-19 health complications.”

The deputy director of research at the Nuffield Trust Sarah Scobie echoed this concern:

The PHE [Public Health England] data suggests there could be significant problems already developing for heart disease related conditions patients, for example. Attendances relating to myocardial infarction at emergency departments have dropped right down, whereas ambulance calls in relation to chest pain have gone right up.”

Not only is there no evidence that the NHS is even close to struggling to cope with a non-existent surge, the likely severe health consequences of the State’s lockdown policy are starting to emerge. When we look at the data on claimed COVID 19 deaths the picture only becomes more alarming.

Lockdown and reported deaths

Everyday, for weeks, the MSM has reported every single UK death which was supposedly due to COVID 19. This has been central to their effort to convince us of the severity of the pandemic. The reporting always supports the State’s narrative that the lockdown is necessary.

Under normal circumstances, when someone dies, a person who knows them well, such as a family member, or someone who was physically close to the person at the time of death, is the qualified informant who can notify the registrar of the circumstances and non medical details of the death.

That is not true for suspected C19 patients. For them a funeral director, who has almost certainly never met the deceased, can be the qualified informant. This places far more emphasis on the Medical Certificate of Cause of Death (MCCD) as registration can take place without any input from family or anyone else familiar with the circumstances of the death.

Prior to the Coronavirus Act, the last attending doctor to the deceased had the responsibility to register the death. However, in the case of suspected C19 deaths, that duty can be discharged by a doctor who has never met the patient.

The UK State guidance for C19 patients states:

When an MCCD is completed the medical causes are listed sequentially with the immediate cause of death at the top and the underlying cause of death at the bottom of the list. For example, heart failure caused by pneumonia stemming from influenza would list the immediate cause of death as a heart attack and the underlying cause as influenza. That underlying cause is usually diagnosed through positive test results.

It is crucial to understand that for C19 to be recorded on the MCCD, as the underlying cause of death, there does not need to be any test based diagnosis of the syndrome. Diagnosis can simply be from observation of symptoms or CT scans. The guidance to medical practitioners states:

Given this seeming lack of clarity, guidance from the Royal College of Pathologists (RCP) is also concerning.

In circumstances where C19 is merely believed to be a factor they advise that there is no need for a post mortem.

If a death is believed to be due to confirmed COVID-19 infection, there is unlikely to be any need for a post-mortem examination to be conducted and the Medical Certificate of Cause of Death should be issued.”

Post-mortems are not standard procedure and are normally required only where the cause of death is unknown or where the circumstances appear suspicious. However, the recommendation of the RCP is another part of a systemic approach to C19 deaths which is inexplicably opaque.

Even when a sample test is undertaken to identify C19, questions remain. The RT-PCR test commonly used to test for C19 does not appear to be very reliable, nor is it designed as a diagnostic tool for identifying viruses.

A study from the Department of Microbiology, Queen Mary Hospital, University of Hong Kong found wild variations in RT-PCR accuracy. It was found to be between 22%  – 80% reliable depending on how it was applied. This general unreliability has been confirmed by other studies. Further studies show clear discrepancies between RT-PCR test results and clinical indication from CT scans.

Most of these studies indicate RT-PCR failure to detect C19 in symptomatic patients, so-called “false negative” tests. When Chinese researchers from the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics School of Public Health conducted data analysis of the RT-PCR tests of asymptomatic patients they also found an 80% false positive rate.

Having passed peer review and publication the paper was subsequently withdrawn for what seem quite bizarre reasons. It was removed from the scientific literature because it “depended on theoretical deduction.” The paper was not testing an experimental hypothesis, it was an epidemiological analysis of the available statistical data. All such statistical analysis relies upon theoretical deduction. The claimed reason for withdrawal suggests that all data analysis is now considered to be completely useless.

It seems scientific claims that C19 numbers are underestimated are fine, claims they are overestimated are not. Either way, whether false negative or false positive, there is plenty of evidence to question the reliability of the RT-PCR test for diagnosing COVID 19.

The MSM has suggested that enhanced RT-PCR testing can detect the virus SARS-CoV-2 and, in particular, the amount of it in the patient’s system, the viral load. This is disinformation.

The Nobel winning scientist who devised PCR, Karry Mullis, speaking about the use of PCR to detect HIV stated:

Quantitative PCR is an oxymoron. PCR is intended to identify substances qualitatively, but by its very nature is unsuited for estimating numbers [viral load]…These tests cannot detect free, infectious viruses at all…The tests can detect genetic sequences of viruses, but not viruses themselves.”

Reported C19 deaths can be registered without a test clearly diagnosing any coronavirus, let alone C19. The death can be signed off by a doctor who has never seen the patient and can then be registered by someone who has never met the deceased and was nowhere near them when they died.

Further provision in the Coronavirus Act then allows for the body to be cremated, potentially against the family’s wishes, ensuring a confirmatory autopsy is impossible, though it is unlikely one will be conducted anyway.

To say this raises questions about the official reported statistics is an understatement. Questions in no way allege either medical malpractice or negligence. Neither are required for significant confusion to occur because the potential for widespread misreporting of causes of death seems to be a core element of the C19 MCCD process the State has constructed.

Lockdown the data

At the time of writing The UK is said to have 93,873 cases with 12,107 deaths attributed to C19. Both the infection and mortality rates are showing a declining trend.

Given the apparent haphazard reliability of tests, strange reporting procedures and oddly relaxed registration requirements, the claimed attribution is pretty weak.

Coupled with the data which shows unusually low hospital admissions, with little to no evidence of the widely anticipated “surge,” justification for the State’s lockdown of society and the economy appears painfully thin. The evidence base does not improve when we look at the official data.

ONS Data

The Office of National Statistics (ONS) have released analysis of the C19 deaths that occurred during March 2020.

In total 3,912 deaths were recorded of which 3,372 (86%) listed C19 as the underlying cause of death. Of these, 38 (1%) were cases where C19 was only suspected as the underlying cause, meaning neither a test nor any clear clinical presentation was observed. The problem is that the RT-PCR test, supposedly confirming C19, doesn’t tell us much either.

Of the 3,372 deaths recorded with underlying C19, approximately 3,068 had at least one comorbidity with the majority having more than two. Not only does the RT-PCR test fail to provide any reliable proof that these people even had C19 the existence of other comorbidities provides further reason to question if the C19 was a contributory factor.

Of the 3,912 people who died, 540 of them merely mentioned C19 on the MCCG with no indication that it contributed to the deaths. With at least 91% of patients having comorbidities, there is very little evidence that the people who died with a C19 infection wouldn’t have died without.

The age profile of the deceased is practically identical to standard all cause mortality in the UK. If C19 is a viral pandemic it is one that behaves like normal mortality.

And yet, despite all this, the MSM reported every one of them to the public as confirmed C19 deaths.

Another, perhaps even more alarming possibility has arisen. While heart disease accounts for 14% of C19 comorbidities, reported deaths from heart disease have mysteriously dropped by the corresponding amount during the same period. This clearly indicates that patients dying from other causes, such as heart failure, are being recorded, and certainly reported by the MSM, as dying from C19.

This illustrates a far more complex picture than we have been given to believe. Why have the State and the MSM made so many alarming claims about people dying from C19 when the evidence supporting those claims is, at best, questionable?

None of this is the fault of medical practitioners or bodies like the Office Of National Statistics (ONS). The ONS system has been both reliable and informative for many years. Yet once again, in the case of C19 deaths, the State felt it was necessary to make some changes.

On the March 30th the MSM reported that the UK State had instructed the ONS to change the way they record C19 deaths. Explaining the change to recording “mentions” of COVID 19 an unnamed spokesperson for the ONS said:

It will be based on mentions of Covid-19 on death certificates. It will include suspected cases of Covid-19 where someone has not been tested positive for Covid-19.”

This habit of states deciding to change the C19 mortality data, by adding in people who are assumed to have died from it, appears to be a global policy. The China CDC did the same and the U.S have just added a significant number to their statistics.

In every case the revision increases and never decreases the fatality statistics. Why do states around the world feel the need to do this? Is it because they are concerned about statistical rigour or are they more concerned about justifying their lockdown regimes?

The ONS reported all cause mortality for week 14 ending April 3rd. They recorded 16,387 deaths which was 6,082 higher than the ONS 5 year average. They stated that 21.2% of total deaths “mentioned” Covid 19. The MSM immediately pounced on this claiming this meant COVID 19 had pushed up the death toll to unprecedented levels. This was outrageous disinformation. That is not what the data showed.

The ONS stated that of the 6,082 excess deaths 3,475 “mentioned” coronavirus. Of those 1,466 also mentioned influenza and pneumonia. Consequently, while registered deaths are 6,082 above the 5 year average, only 2009 of those solely mentioned C19 with 4,073 mentioning other underlying causes. It is worth remembering only C19 deaths can be “mentioned” without a clear positive test result. 

Therefore, at least 67% of that excess mortality is being caused by other unknown factors that no one seems to care about. The MSM have absolutely no interests at all in this more severe health crisis. Why not? Once again they have completely misled the public and deny the existence of another, more significant reason for concern. Perhaps anticipating this the ONS stated:

“Influenza and Pneumonia” has been included for comparison, as a well-understood cause of death involving respiratory infection that is likely to have somewhat similar risk factors to COVID-19.”

Short of openly stating that C19 is no more deadly than any other pneumonia like illnesses, the ONS appear to be trying to get a message across. Perhaps they can’t say it directly.

ONS data showing mortality in 2020 comparing C19 to other respiratory illness

As the so called pandemic has progressed more in depth studies have begun to emerge. Initial findings from Chinese scientists indicate that SARS-CoV-2 has an infection fatality rate (IFR) of between 0.04% and 0.12%. which is comparable to flu pandemics with an estimated IFR of 0.1%. None of these have required a lockdown regime.

Further studies have highlighted the overestimated risk allegedly presented by SARS-CoV-2. [Including a new study released just yesterday – ed.]

For the year to date, the ONS showed a comparison of the deaths mentioning C19 and deaths mentioning pneumonia and Influenza. Deaths this year from pneumonia and influenza appear to stand at around 30,000.

Quite clearly, according to the ONS, other respiratory infections, like pneumonia and influenza, currently pose a significantly greater threat to life than COVID 19. Something is certainly pushing up mortality in the UK but, at the very most, only 33% of that increase is vaguely attributable to C19.

Lockdown to cover a myriad of sins

The MSM have recently started floating the idea that the lockdown regime could become the new normal.

According to the State it may be necessary to go in an out of various levels of the regime from time to time, depending on the State’s threat assessment. This is based on scientific research bought and paid for by pharmaceutical corporations and private foundations including GlaxoSmithKline (Wellcome Trust).

Seeing as it is increasingly evident that the C19 threat has been massively over-hyped, why would the State and its globalist partners want the economic destruction to continue?

Firstly it delivers on a number of long held globalist objectives.

A cashless society, mandatory vaccination, universal basic income, a surveillance state, restricted freedom of movement and a complete restructuring of the global economy have already been touted as necessary following the “pandemic.” All of these ambitions and economic realities existed before the pandemic first emerged in China.

The State has already moved towards censoring anyone who questions vaccines. It is vital to understand that the canard of the antivaxxer is a meaningless trope.

It is entirely possible to accept that vaccines can contribute towards effective preventative public health programs while, at the same time, questioning the efficacy and purpose of some vaccines. Vaccines are not all the same.

The State’s and the MSM’s insistence that anyone who question any vaccines is some sort of whacked out, new age, science Luddite is total nonsense. No one will be permitted to question vaccines, and that fact alone should be sufficient to raise anyone’s suspicion.

From GAVI to the WHO and from the BMGF to Imperial College the response to the C19 pandemic has been driven by foundations and pharmaceutical corporations with considerable investments in vaccine development. Of course they would like to see global mandatory vaccination.

To just ignore this, because you’ve been told by the MSM that questioning any vaccine is a “conspiracy theory”, not only evidences a lack of critical thinking it demonstrates a degree of brainwashing.

Global financial institutions, such as the IMF, have been advocating the cashless society for years. A cashless society will allow central banks to control every aspect of your life.

Everything you buy can be tracked and your purchases could easily be limited to exclude certain items.

Although there is very little evidence that handling cash presents any increased threat of infection that hasn’t stopped the MSM from selling the idea.

The impact of the lockdown regime across the globe has already had a devastating economic impact. All the indicators are that the regime will throw the global economy into a deep depression. The longer it continues the worse it will get.

The tendency of some to claim this doesn’t matter because saving life is the only concern is hopelessly myopic. The link between poverty and significantly increased mortality is beyond dispute. The cure will definitely be far worse than the disease.

As millions are forced into unemployment the outlook isn’t good. However, while the State will undoubtedly claim that unemployment has been caused by the C19 crisis, in truth the imminent economic collapse was already driving up unemployment before the crisis began.

This has led to increasing calls for the State to provide a Universal Basic Income.

This will create mass dependency upon the State for  huge swathes of the population. Affording the State immeasurable control over people’s lives. In a cashless society, people who don’t behave in accordance with State regulations, could be punished financially. Instant fines will be commonplace.

We are already seeing how that control can be deployed within a surveillance society as the State and its compliant MSM put the idea of immunity passports into the public imagination.

The link between this and mandatory vaccination is obvious. This proposed policy comes straight from the heart of the globalist think tanks.

ID2020 is a globalist initiative which intends to provide everyone on earth with an authorised identity. GAVI, Microsoft, BMGF and the Rockerfeller Foundation are among the happy ID2020 alliance who will decide who you are allowed to be.

Biometric ID controlled by your friendly ID2020 globalists – Because they care!

Comically they claim that proving who you are to the State is somehow a human right. This is utter bilge. I don’t know about you, but I know who I am and so do the people I care about. I couldn’t care less who the State thinks I am. Like everyone else on Earth you were born with inalienable human rights. The State doesn’t define what they are, they just choose to ignore them.

ID2020 is in no way objective. Your digital biometric ID can be “good” which means it can also be “bad.” Bill Gates and Rockerfellers are among those who state:

With a “good” digital identity you can enjoy your rights to privacy, security, and choice.”

Which means you can’t if its “bad.” As longs as you are a good citizen, do as you are told, get your mandatory vaccinations and don’t step out of line, you can have your rights because megalomaniacs think they are gods who have the power to allow or deny them.

Your digital ID will control the information you are allowed to access and your immunity passport will almost certainly be part of your State authorised identity as we move towards something indistinguishable from China’s social credit system.

It will be used to monitor your behaviour.

Your immunity passport status will depend upon where you go and who with. The State has decided that we all need contact tracing apps to regulate who we meet and limit our freedom of movement.

If you meet the wrong person or go to the wrong area, or perhaps fail to produce your authorisation Q-code on demand, then you will be locked down.

Perhaps the biggest deception of all is yet to come as the State manoeuvres to blame the C19 for the economic collapse.

Firstly, it isn’t C19 but rather the lockdown regime that has sped up destruction of the economy, but that destruction was inevitable anyway. The 2008 credit crunch was a failure of the banks. They speculated in the markets and lost.

As a result we have endured a decade of austerity to bail them out. Socialism only applies to those who can afford it. Austerity has reduced essential public services to rubble, and now, when we supposedly need them most, we’ve all been placed under house arrest to stop us using them while many of the most vulnerable have been ignored. The irony is laughable.

While we’ve all suffered austerity, the central banks have been printing funny money, blowing up the debt bubble to unimaginable proportions.

The result has been increasing consumer debt, staggering levels of corporate borrowing and, though government deficits have reduced, government debt is off the charts, even in comparison to 2010 levels.

This kind of debt-based economy was never sustainable and global financiers have known it for years.

What the globalists needed was a reason to reset the economy without losing power. Perhaps it is another coincidence that the C19 lockdown regime just happens to deliver both the mechanism and the excuse to press that global reset button. That it also ushers in all the globalist’s desires is just another in a very long line of remarkable coincidences.

Now that global terrorism is no longer a daily threat and global warming has been put on the back burner, the new normal of the ever shifting threat from pandemic seems to be the novel war on terror. Training, funding and equipping terrorist groups has served the State well in the first two decades of the 21st century but now it is ready to move on to the next phase by exploiting a terror closer to the heart of every home. Disease.

In their totality, for those willing to look, it is transparent that these response measures have coalesced to create the framework for a totalitarian dictatorship. One rolling out at pace in the UK. Similar draconian diktats have sprung up across the globe.

A coordinated global effort like this doesn’t just happen. It takes years of training and planning. The only people who can’t see it are those who, for whatever reason, choose not to.

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First posted on GR on April 13, 2020

Vaccines, for Bill Gates, are a strategic philanthropy that feed his many vaccine-related businesses (including Microsoft’s ambition to control a global vaccination ID enterprise) and give him dictatorial control of global health policy.

Gates’ obsession with vaccines seems to be fueled by a conviction to save the world with technology.

Promising his share of $450 million of $1.2 billion to eradicate Polio, Gates took control of India’s National Technical Advisory Group on Immunization (NTAGI) which mandated up to 50 doses (Table 1) of polio vaccines through overlapping immunization programs to children before the age of five. Indian doctors blame the Gates campaign for a devastating non-polio acute flaccid paralysis (NPAFP) epidemic that paralyzed 490,000 children beyond expected rates between 2000 and 2017. In 2017, the Indian government dialed back Gates’ vaccine regimen and asked Gates and his vaccine policies to leave India. NPAFP rates dropped precipitously.

The most frightening [polio] epidemics in Congo, Afghanistan, and the Philippines, are all linked to vaccines.

In 2017, the World Health Organization (WHO) reluctantly admitted that the global explosion in polio is predominantly vaccine strain. The most frightening epidemics in Congo, Afghanistan, and the Philippines, are all linked to vaccines. In fact, by 2018, 70% of global polio cases were vaccine strain.

In 2014, the Gates Foundation funded tests of experimental HPV vaccines, developed by Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK) and Merck, on 23,000 young girls in remote Indian provinces. Approximately 1,200 suffered severe side effects, including autoimmune and fertility disorders. Seven died. Indian government investigations charged that Gates-funded researchers committed pervasive ethical violations: pressuring vulnerable village girls into the trial, bullying parents, forging consent forms, and refusing medical care to the injured girls. The case is now in the country’s Supreme Court.

South African newspapers complained, ‘We are guinea pigs for the drug makers.’

In 2010, the Gates Foundation funded a phase 3 trial of GSK’s experimental malaria vaccine, killing 151 African infants and causing serious adverse effects including paralysis, seizure, and febrile convulsions to 1,048 of the 5,949 children.

During Gates’ 2002 MenAfriVac campaign in Sub-Saharan Africa, Gates’ operatives forcibly vaccinated thousands of African children against meningitis. Approximately 50 of the 500 children vaccinated developed paralysis. South African newspapers complained, “We are guinea pigs for the drug makers.” Nelson Mandela’s former Senior Economist, Professor Patrick Bond, describes Gates’ philanthropic practices as “ruthless and immoral.”

In 2010, Gates committed $10 billion to the WHO saying, “We must make this the decade of vaccines.” A month later, Gates said in a Ted Talk that new vaccines “could reduce population”. In 2014, Kenya’s Catholic Doctors Association accused the WHO of chemically sterilizing millions of unwilling Kenyan women with a  “tetanus” vaccine campaign. Independent labs found a sterility formula in every vaccine tested. After denying the charges, WHO finally admitted it had been developing the sterility vaccines for over a decade.  Similar accusations came from Tanzania, Nicaragua, Mexico, and the Philippines.

A 2017 study (Morgenson et. al. 2017) showed that WHO’s popular DTP vaccine is killing more African children than the diseases it prevents. DTP-vaccinated girls suffered 10x the death rate of children who had not yet received the vaccine. WHO has refused to recall the lethal vaccine which it forces upon tens of millions of African children annually.

[Global public health officials] say he has diverted agency resources to serve his personal philosophy that good health only comes in a syringe.

Global public health advocates around the world accuse Gates of steering WHO’s agenda away from the projects that are proven to curb infectious diseases: clean water, hygiene, nutrition, and economic development. The Gates Foundation only spends about $650 million of its $5 billion dollar budget on these areas.  They say he has diverted agency resources to serve his personal philosophy that good health only comes in a syringe.

In addition to using his philanthropy to control WHO, UNICEF, GAVI, and PATH, Gates funds a private pharmaceutical company that manufactures vaccines, and additionally is donating $50 million to 12 pharmaceutical companies to speed up development of a coronavirus vaccine. In his recent media appearances, Gates appears confident that the Covid-19 crisis will now give him the opportunity to force his dictatorial vaccine programs on American children.

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

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Three months after losing the war in Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan still continues his quest to find the perfect excuse.

The most recent one backfired, heavily.

On February 24^th, in an interview, Pashinyan claimed that the reason Armenia lost the war against Azerbaijan was Russia’s Iskander missile.

According to his estimations the missile only exploded 10% of the time upon impact. As such, the “40-year-old weapon” was ineffective, and led to Yerevan’s defeat.

He has gone through almost every possible reason for losing the war, except admitting poor leadership and gross mismanagement of the forces.

Deputy Chief of the Armenian Armed Forces General Staff Tiran Khachatryan immediately rebuked Pashinyan, saying that his claim was “frivolous”.

In response, the Armenian Prime Minister released the official from his position.

Following that, the head of the Armenian Armed Forces General Staff, Onik Gasparyan released a statement, signed by all his deputies and other military officials demanding that Nikol Pashinyan immediately resign from the country’s leadership.

Pashinyan, in response, did what he does best – said that he had released the Chief of the General Staff, because he would not be questioned.

He called his supporters to take to the streets because this constituted a “military coup” and began “actively” leading the country through Facebook livestreams.

There are protests in Yerevan, both in support and against Nikol Pashinyan. His leadership has all but failed, and he alone undermines the vestiges of Armenia’s statehood.

Following his statements, he was mocked by the Russian Defense Ministry, which denied that the Iskander had been used in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

He was also mocked by Azerbaijan’s president Ilham Aliyev, who called his statements “anecdotal”. He also entirely denied that the Iskander had been used at all during the conflict.

Even Turkey released a statement playing along with the “military coup” narrative, saying that it was against it. Understandable, for Ankara, Armenia under inadequate leadership is a perfect neighbor.

After months of excuses, various accusations against past leadership, current military leadership, its own citizens and Russia, Pashinyan went too far. He still refuses to hang onto power, but he is becoming increasingly isolated in his attempt to “leave power in the people’s hands,” as he calls refusing to resign.

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The US is implacably hostile toward nations free from its control. None are adversarial. None threaten US security. None are at war with other nations. None are involved in destabilizing activities.

Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, and other independent nations seek cooperative relations with other countries, confrontation with none.

Yet they’re all on the US target list for regime change — war by hot and/or other means Washington’s favored strategies by both right wings of its war party.

What’s been going on throughout most of the post-WW II period is symptomatic of a nation in decline.

At the expense of vital homeland needs, the US spends more on militarism, belligerence, so-called homeland security, and related war on humanity harshness than other major nations combined.

Living by the sword is self-defeating, a lesson not learned by US policymakers.

Washington’s rage to rule the world unchallenged, its imperial arrogance and unwillingness to change heads it for eventual arrival in history’s dustbin.

A separate article discussed coordinated US/EU sanctions on Russia — unjustifiably justified by a litany of bald-faced Big Lies.

Separately on Tuesday, the State Department defied reality with the following fabricated accusation:

Biden’s Secretary of State Blinken “determined that the Government of the Russian Federation has used a chemical weapon against its own nationals (sic).”

No evidence suggests it. None was presented by the US or EU to support the charge — invented, not legitimate, as part of longstanding US-led Western war on Russia by other means.

Along with US sanctions discussed in a same-day article, the State Department announced the following on Russia:

1. “Termination of assistance to Russia under the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961…”

2. “Termination of (virtually nonexistent US) arms sales…to Russia…”

3. “Termination of (nonexistent US) foreign military financing for Russia…”

4. “Denial of (nonexistent US) credit or other financial assistance…to Russia…”

5. “Prohibition on the export to Russia of any goods or technology” related to security.

Unlawfully imposed sanctions “will remain in place for a minimum of 12 months.”

“They’ll only be removed…if the executive branch determines and certifies to Congress that the Russian government has met” its unacceptable demands.

Russian/US space cooperation is at least largely unaffected by the above.

Sanctioned Russian officials include Pavel Anatolievich Popov, Aleksei Yurievich Krivoruchko, Sergei Vladilenovich Kiriyenko, Andrei Veniaminovich Yarin, Alexander Vasilievich Bortnikov, Igor Victorovich Krasnov and Alexander Petrovich Kalashnikov.

They’re involved in Russian Federation defense.

Russia’s Presidential Executive Office First Deputy Chief of Staff was targeted.

So was head of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), its prosecutor general, and Federal Penitentiary Service director.

In response to the above, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the following:

The US and EU “teamed up (to) ma(ke) a hostile move towards Russia by announcing (unlawful) new sanctions” for fabricated reasons.

“US policy…increasingly aggravat(es) bilateral relations that Washington has already brought to a complete halt.”

Falsely claiming that Russia “poisoned” convicted embezzler, unregistered foreign agent Navalny with a “chemical warfare agent” is a phony “pretext for continuing undisguised interference in our domestic affairs, and we will not accept this.”

“Based on the principle of reciprocity, we will respond but not necessarily with symmetrical measures.”

“Any hopes to impose something on Russia by way of sanctions or other pressure have failed in the past and will fail now.”

“If the US is not ready for an equitable and reasonable dialogue, this is their choice.”

“Regardless of the US’ enthusiasm for sanctions, we will continue to consistently and resolutely uphold our national interests and rebuff any aggression.”

“As a serial violator of international treaties and agreements on arms control and the non-proliferation of weapons, Washington is, by definition, deprived of the moral right to ‘lecture’ others.”

Separately on Tuesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the following:

“We will react to (coordinated US/EU sanctions) by all means.”

“Nobody has cancelled the rules of diplomacy. Reciprocity is one of these.”

“We have already repeatedly expressed our attitude to the unlawful unilateral sanctions…introduced by (the US and EU) without practically any excuse.”

“They have nothing to present by way of substantiating the alleged poisoning of Navalny in any way.”

“Those who treated him (in Berlin) conceal the facts that could throw light on what happened to him and instead of honestly cooperating they are economical with the truth.”

“When they start ‘punishing’ us (unlawfully), such decisions do not reflect well on them.”

“We will respond to this by all means.”

Hostile US-dominated Western actions against Russia risk confrontation if things are pushed too far.

Instead of pursuing peace, stability, and cooperative relations with other countries, US policymakers wage endless wars by hot and other means to dominate them, including against invented enemies like Russia.

Britain and EU bloc countries march in lockstep with Washington’s war on humanity.

If continues unchecked, there’s no good ending to what lies ahead.

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

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

My two Wall Street books are timely reading:

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

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

“Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity”

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

Featured image is from OneWorld