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“Other people will call me a rebel, but I just feel like I’m living my life and doing what I want to do. Sometimes people call that rebellion, especially when you’re a woman.” — Joan Jett
“Feminism is not a dirty word. It does not mean you hate men, it does not mean you hate girls that have nice legs and a tan, and it does not mean you are a ‘bitch’ or ‘dyke’; it means you believe in equality.” — Kate Nash
“I’d like every man who doesn’t call himself a feminist to explain to the women in his life why he doesn’t believe in equality for women.” — Louise Brealey
The present discussion specifically focuses on
(1) second-wave feminism, also called modern feminism (which emerged in the 1960s and was highlighted by the publication in 1963 of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique) whose principal aim is to end gender discrimination and
(2) post-modern or third-wave feminism (which came out ca. 1990s) whose centerpiece is sexuality as a significant foundation of female empowerment. Antedating these two waves was the pre-modern or first wave ( in the 19th century) feminism whose main concern was on woman’s suffrage or right to vote.
One presupposition that stands out though in dealing with this issue is the fact that feminism as an ideology and a movement is unilaterally a western socio-cultural and politico-economic concern. The height of its assertive defiance is in the context of a western industrial society whose fundamental landscape has been dominated by the male species being simply a continuation and perpetuation of patriarchy in the preceding civilizations both ancient and medieval. If however, we find feminist movements in Asian societies, these are almost certainly the more heavily western-influenced ones.
Feminism, in general, is an assertive stance against social prescriptions that undermine the dignity of the woman as a human being.
We find this woman-debasing condition in almost all social institutions where the rules of the game–both implied and expressed–are almost always male-centered, male-promoting and hence absolutely advantageous to the social standing of the man. In this kind of social arrangement, the man is in full control of major concerns such as organizational leadership, decision-making, rules-formulation and institutional administration among others. In this state of affairs, it is the man who calls the shots, so to speak. It is against this pernicious social setting that the woman has rebelled to actively assert her rights, her dignity, her creativity, her competence, her humanity and the distillation of all these is cogently imbued in the ideological framework of feminism.
Pushed against the male-dominated social wall, the prejudiced woman of the modern western industrial society has seen her disparaged condition and resolved once and for all to rise up and subvert the imbalanced system. With an unwavering will power that even surpassed that of a man’s heart, she has moved onward traversing old and seemingly secured cultural frontiers to claim territories society bestowed on her male counterpart since time immemorial. In this particular instance, feminism is not only an ideology but a movement. Along the rugged socio-cultural terrain, the woman succeeds in demonstrating not only to the man but likewise to the docile segment of her species the reality that she is perfectly able to dabble and accomplish a lot of endeavors culturally assigned to the man without necessarily losing her femininity.
We’ve seen her as an accomplished engineer directing an army of construction workers in a high-rise building project smack at the center of the metropolis.
We’ve witnessed her mettle operating a bulldozer in a highway construction project. Right in the busy inner-city streets,we have boarded countless times the bus or the taxi she drives, or the subway train she operates. Nowadays, she is no longer as defiant and angry as in the past several decades ago hollering invectives against the system in mass mobilizations.
With the total confidence of a seasoned performer, she soberly does her job today with a high sense of achievement while reminiscing the past when such kind of a job wasspecifically categorized within the exclusive domain of the male species. Neither is her competence being challenged by anybody anymore for her place in society being equal to that of the man is already established and secure. These are among the many positive gains of feminism.
However, the struggle is not over yet. Conservative fundamentalist religions which are mainly of so-called Christian rootage in western societies are still around asserting their irrational dogmatism and freak stubbornness despite obvious irrelevance. Suffused with their counterfeit spirituality, these so-called conservative fundamentalists have formulated self-serving moral guidelines to perpetuate the notion that the woman ought to be subjected to the headship of the man. More repugnant than this general mandate is the particular injunction that the woman has no “god-given” right over her body. In other words, she has no choice at all to determine what she thinks is best for her condition in physical terms. The loudest voices from which this notion emanates are those of the fundamentalists–both catholic and evangelical–whose nauseating slogan is “All life is sacred.”
In the light of this imminent concern, post-modern or third-wave feminism is here yet to stay until the moral legitimacy of feminine sexuality is fully achieved over and against the distorted morality of religious fundamentalism and when total woman empowerment is finally an unconditional reality.
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Prof. Ruel F. Pepais a Filipino philosopher based in Madrid, Spain. A retired academic (Associate Professor IV), he taught Philosophy and Social Sciences at Trinity University of Asia, an Anglican university in the Philippines. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia Pacific Research.
“The “protests” did not emanate from internal political cleavages as described by the mainstream media. From the very outset, they were the result of a covert US-NATO intelligence operation geared towards triggering social chaos, with a view to eventually discrediting the Syrian government of Bashar Al Assad and destabilizing Syria as a Nation State.”
In Syria, according to UN numbers, over 400,000 people had died in the war in Syria. According to UNICEF, 12,000 children have died or been injured during the conflict – that’s more than three per day. Since 2011,according to the UN Refugee Agency, 5.5 million are living abroad as refugees and 6.7 million are internally displaced within Syria.
According to multiple reports throughout Western mainstream media the brutality began ten years ago, in the Southwestern Syrian town of Daraa. What started with children getting arrested for scribing anti-government propaganda evolved into protests in cities throughout the country on March 15, 2011. Reportedly, fierce crackdowns on the population left dozens of people dead on the 24th. The ‘peaceful’ demonstrations turned into an organized resistance.[2][3][4]
In 2012, the fighting erupted in cities across the country, with rebels taking hold of many regions including Al-Qusayr, Saraqeb, a section of Aleppo, Maarat Al-Numan and Douma. What apparently started as a peaceful appeal for political and economic reforms, and an action in sympathy with the ‘Arab Spring’ quickly moulted into violence for control of the nation.
Now with retaliation involving Russia, the tide has turned and the rebellion is in retreat.
There are other voices telling an unsettling tale, however. They indicate that the ‘civil war’ is in fact a foreign fueled insurgency largely indifferent to the current lot of the Syrian people. And according to the Global Research dossier Syria: NATO’s Next “Humanitarian” War, the attitude of Syrians was overwhelmingly opposed to the fight and the aims of this cause:
The majority of Syria’s population (including the opponents of the Al Assad government) do not support the “protest movement” which is characterized by an armed insurgency. In fact quite the opposite.
Ironically, despite its authoritarian nature, there is considerable popular support for the government of President Bashar Al Assad, which is confirmed by the large pro-government rallies.
A war has been fought on Syrian soil almost as long as World War I and World War II combined. If the people of Syria support Bashar Al-Assad (at least as far as the 2014 election results indicate) then why exactly is a mountain of corpses and unrelenting echoes of wailing grief animating ten years of torment and suffering? This is among the many questions we seek answers to in the one hour broadcast of the Global Research News Hour.
Coming up first, we have statements by journalist Steven Sahiounie. He talks about the lies about the start of the war, the Free Syrian Army, and the role of Turkey in this endeavor. Acclaimed journalist Gareth Porter comments on the many ways in which the U.S. became a pivotal force of financing, arming and helping the Islamist forces attacking Syria as ‘freedom fighters.’ Finally, the renowned journalist Vanessa Beeley makes her appearance to expand on attitudes toward the Syrian president and the Syrian Arab Army, her pivotal reporting on the White Helmets as fueled and funded by the West, and the continued propaganda role of mainstream media.
Toward the end, all three guest express their attitude of where Syria is headed going into the future.
Steven Sahiounie is a journalist and commentator writing in English and Arabic. He is Syrian and living in Latakia. He specializes in Syrian affairs.
Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist, historian and author who has covered U.S. wars and interventions in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Yemen and Syria since 2004 and was the 2012 winner of the Gellhorn Prize for Journalism. His most recent book is “Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare” (Just World Books, 2014).
Vanessa Beeley is an independent researcher, writer, photographer and peace activist. She has researched the background of the White Helmets and has been visiting Syria since July 2016. In 2017, Vanessa was a finalist for the prestigious Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism which was won by the much-acclaimed Robert Parry that year. In 2019, Vanessa was among recipients of the Serena Shim Award for uncompromising integrity in journalism. She currently lives in Damascus.
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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.
All Global Research articles can be read in 27 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).
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There’s so much to take issue with in this recent Atlantic Council report by arch Russophobe, Swedish economist and senior fellow at the Council Anders Aslund, that it’s hard to know where to begin. His paper, written jointly with Russian social activist Leonid Gozman, entitled ‘Russia after Putin: How to rebuild the state’ is a masterpiece in western pro-regime change propaganda.
The ‘Regime is falling apart’ the report asserts, ‘we do not know when and how Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime will end, but there are signs that it is struggling and the end could come in the foreseeable future’. Anders Aslund is not alone of course in predicting the imminent collapse of Russia. Many ‘Russia experts’ are at it. Take this piece from 2016 entitled ‘Lights out for the Putin Regime: The Coming Russian Collapse’. 5 years on, and Russia is still going strong.
Aslund and his colleague have skipped the difficult bit of course – explaining how the Russian state would collapse – and instead they fantasize as to how they would rebuild the country from scratch. They’d start by dismantling the FSB, of course.
As they put it: ‘Normal countries do not have secret police that suppress their citizens’. Really?
Firstly, what on earth is a ‘normal country’?
Secondly, has Aslund never heard of the CIA, MI5 or even the 77th brigade?
Censorship on social media is taking place all the time. What does he think MI5’s remit is in the UK? We know, for example, that there have been attempts for years to infiltrate the Scottish independence movement, using agents to sow division. And what about the forces that led to the incarceration and arrest of Julian Assange? Authorities in Sweden, the UK and US were all complicit in his persecution.
Each state’s security apparatus plays a role in restricting its citizens, particularly if their activities are deemed a threat to national security. As such the authors are either ignorant in this regard, or are deliberately trying to obfuscate the reader.
The report repeatedly refers to the opinions of ‘ordinary Russians’ throughout, without any data to back up such statements. As an academic, Aslund should be aware of the need for evidence to support sweeping statements like the ones he makes. As a result the paper comes across more like a piece of propaganda. Take, for example, his reference to the recent vote on amendments to the Russian constitution. He states: ‘Russians describe these changes as a ‘nullification’ because they perceive the essence of these changes to be that Putin’s four previous terms as president no longer count.’
Which ‘Russians’ did Aslund talk to? He doesn’t tell us, and doesn’t quote a single survey. In reality, 78% of the Russian population voted for the constitutional amendments. Even the BBC ran with the headline at the time: ‘Putin strongly backed in controversial Russian reform vote.’ The vast majority agreed that the amendments should take place.
Aslund talks about the ‘unfortunate situation of the Russian people.’ On the contrary, Russians’ living standards have increased substantially in the last two decades. Back in 2000, around 29% were living in poverty, now that figure is around 13.5%. Life expectancy was reported in 2019 as 73.4 years – compare that to 65 years back in 2000.
One can also compare Putin’s approval rating to that of other world leaders. One recent poll on Biden’s position rates the newly elected President at 49%. The UK’s Boris Johnson gets a meagre 41%. Putin in February 2021 was rated at 65%, and that figure is pretty consistent for the Russian leader. If the Russian people indeed felt they were hard done by they’d be unlikely to give their leader such an approval rating, surely? The report authors really need to be providing data to support their accusations that Russians themselves want regime change. So far, it looks like Anders Aslund wants it more than anyone else.
There are also somewhat sinister undertones of some of the points made. Leonid Gozman is quoted as saying ‘Russians’ apathy, which is based on a sense of hopelessness, can be turned into hate and aggression towards the authorities. This absolutely stinks of a pro-regime change strategy, an attempt to use weaknesses in the population to further a western imperialist agenda. It’s straight out of the classic regime change manual ‘from dictatorship to democracy’ by Gene Sharp which speaks of identifying the ‘Achilles’ heel’ in the country in order to engineer its collapse: ‘The general public may over time become apathetic, sceptical and even hostile to the regime’ is identified as one of the weak points.
There are many, many problems with this Atlantic Council report for anyone who has lived in, and knows Russia. Too many problems, in fact, for the length of this article. It does not reflect public opinion or take into account Russia’s cultural values which differ from those of the West. It does not reflect Russia’s unique geographical position and historical experience. On the contrary, it puts forward a western agenda, pushing western values, for a western model of what Russia should look like. Keep dreaming about your Russian regime change, Anders Aslund.
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Johanna Ross is a journalist based in Edinburgh, Scotland. You can follow the author on Twitter.
In October 2019, shortly before the COVID outbreak, Gates and other powerful individuals began planning how to censor vaccine safety advocates from social media during a table-top simulation of a worldwide pandemic, known as Event 201.
Denmark, Norway and Iceland today announced they are joining other European countries in temporarily suspending use of the AstraZeneca-Oxford COVID vaccine following reports of blood clots in people who got the vaccine.
Iceland has become the latest European nation to suspend the AstraZeneca jab. The tiny island nation has confirmed roughly 6K COVID cases since the start of the pandemic, which is roughly 2% of the population.
The Prime Minister and Cabinet have put off on receiving the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccination after reports emerged from Europe of blood clots forming among some recipients and a pending review by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) expected to take one to two weeks.
China’s currently ongoing (4-11 March 2021) annual parliamentary meeting, known as the “Two Sessions”, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and the National People’s Congress (NPC), may be the most important of such meetings in recent years.
In a rare moment of truth of CNN Wednesday, Anthony Fauci admitted that there is no scientific reason why people who have had the COVID vaccine are still having their freedoms restricted.
An increasingly clear feature of the covid-19 pandemic is that the public health response is being driven not only by governments and multilateral institutions, such as the World Health Organisation, but also by a welter of public-private partnerships involving drug companies and private foundations.
COVID denialism – a broad term leveled at those who have seen through lies regarding the COVID scamdemic – has been enshrined in legal history and case law, at least in Canada.
Now that we have an identified “domestic terror” problem one should expect at a minimum a massive increase in surveillance of innocent citizens couple with arbitrary arrests and incarcerations. Indeed, the process is already well underway.
Biden’s foreign policy already seems stuck in the militarist quagmire of the past twenty years, a far cry from his campaign promise to reinvigorate diplomacy as the primary tool of U.S. foreign policy. In this respect, Biden is following in the footsteps of Obama and Trump.
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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COVID denialism – a broad term leveled at those who have seen through lies regarding the COVID scamdemic – has been enshrined in legal history and case law, at least in Canada.
This is another horrendous yet sadly predictable step of the COVID agenda, which is none other than the agenda to steal your rights and freedom.
MSM outlet CBC reported last week that a judge stripped a man (who remains anonymous at this stage) of his custody rights in his divorce case with his ex-wife due to his belief that COVID was a hoax, and his subsequent decision to defy social distancing and mask wearing rules. In other words, he was stripped of some of his rights due to his COVID denialism.
The case was heard in late 2020 in the Ontario Superior Court, however Justice George W. King delivered the written decision at the end of January 2021, and the story was just picked up by The Free Thought Project.
Judge Considers Man’s Belief that COVID is a Hoax to be a Factor in Determining his Worthiness as a Father
I have been unable to locate the link to the original ruling, and the CBC article does not link to it, however the article reported that the judge explicitly wrote that the man’s public promotion of his opinions was affecting the health and welfare of his children:
“Ontario Superior Court Justice George W. King denied a Windsor man interim custody of his kids because the man’s fervent anti-masking beliefs means he wouldn’t take appropriate actions to keep them safe from COVID-19. The decision notes the man believes COVID-19 to be a hoax and has boasted in public about flouting health restrictions such as masking and social distancing.
“The health and welfare of the children (and by extension their principal caregiver) should not be jeopardized because of [his] public behaviour in promotion of his opinions,” he wrote.”
This is quite an astounding thing for a judge to write, since it shows how the judge has bought the official COVID narrative hook, line and sinker. The judge is saying that if you challenge the theory (i.e. brainwashing propaganda) that COVID is a highly lethal dangerous disease, that can only be contained or avoided with mandatory social distancing and masking, that therefore you are “jeopardizing” the health of your kids. Wow. It is truly shocking a judge could be so out-of-touch with scientific reality. However, it gets worse. The CBC further reported:
““I have concluded that the respondent’s behaviour is dictated by his world view. Everything else is subordinate to that view, including, but not limited to, his love for his children,” the decision by Justice King read.”
Now that is a supremely arrogant opinion. This man’s love for his children is subordinate to perspective that COVID is a hoax? WTF? I seriously doubt that is true for any parent – that any intellectual belief or world perspective would outweigh their love for their children – and even if it were, how could the judge possibly know that? Only the man himself would know. Besides, he is providing immense care for their welfare by REFUSING to put masks on his kids or allow them to be scared of ginned up COVID fear. He is proving his worth as a father by leading by example and being a good role model in showing his children that one must stand up for truth, freedom and inherent rights rather than be bullied by corrupt authorities. He would be doing great damage to the “health and welfare” of his children by forcing them to go along with the absurd, unscientific and freedom-crushing COVID dictates being foist upon the public.
Judge Blames Man for COVID Denialism When Governmental Lockdown Policies are the Real Culprit
Finally, it turns out this judicial decision will impact whether his children could get vaccinated:
“Justice King called some of what the man had posted about COVID-19 not being real as erroneous, pointing out rise in hospitalizations and deaths due to the virus as well as the effect that has had on health care providers having to delay other medical procedures because of the tax the virus has placed on the system.
“The long-term effects of the pandemic and of delayed treatments to persons with other health conditions is currently unmeasurable,” justice King wrote.
“All of this has occurred while a percentage of our population, including [the man], continue to deny the existence, significance and/or impact of COVID-19.”
The ruling includes giving the mother the power to make decisions around vaccination. But it noted the interim custody was awarded wholly within the context of the pandemic and can be revisited once it subsides.”
This is problem when people can’t distinguish between different causes. The effect of COVID on the health system and the “significance” and “impact” of COVID are all due to governmental reactions and lockdown policies not the virus itself. As I have extensively and exhaustively documented, the virus has never been isolated nor proven to exist as a purified, separate entity. Meanwhile, judges like this ‘Justice King’ character, who being part of the judicial branch is therefore part of the government, are blaming and punishing members of the public (and depriving them of their rights) for standing for the truth and not going along with the COVID Cult, when it is the government itself that is the culprit! The virus didn’t crush small businesses; the government did. The virus didn’t throw people into poverty; the government did. The virus didn’t put a strain on hospitals and the medical treatment system; the government did by mass inculcation of fear. So-called COVID denialism is not the problem; rather, the problem is when people are so programmed they can’t see beyond their noses. It is all the more dangerous when these people occupy positions of power.
This is truly a gross and outrageous betrayal of justice. May the day come soon when the people who have orchestrated and perpetuated this colossal fraud be brought to justice. Some modern Nuremburg Trials would be appropriate.
The implications of such a decision could be far-reaching if it becomes established precedent in Canada and elsewhere. This means that we could be entering an Orwellain dystopia where your unalienable, inherent, sovereign rights can be deprived based on your ideas, theories, beliefs, opinions and world perspectives. In other words, wrongthink is a crime. This case mark another stepping stone into descent for humanity. Hopefully, the pushback against the COVID Cult – led in part by 16 US states who are re-opening – can counterbalance the betrayal of justice that has happened here.
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The Biden presidency is still in its early days, but it’s not too early to point to areas in the foreign policy realm where we, as progressives, have been disappointed–or even infuriated.
There are one or two positive developments, such as the renewal of Obama’s New START Treaty with Russia and Secretary of State Blinken’s initiative for a UN-led peace process in Afghanistan, where the United States is finally turning to peace as a last resort, after 20 years lost in the graveyard of empires.
By and large though, Biden’s foreign policy already seems stuck in the militarist quagmire of the past twenty years, a far cry from his campaign promise to reinvigorate diplomacy as the primary tool of U.S. foreign policy.
In this respect, Biden is following in the footsteps of Obama and Trump, who both promised fresh approaches to foreign policy but for the most part delivered more endless war.
By the end of his second term, Obama did have two significant diplomatic achievements with the signing of the Iran nuclear deal and normalization of relations with Cuba. So progressive Americans who voted for Biden had some grounds to hope that his experience as Obama’s vice-president would lead him to quickly restore and build on Obama’s achievements with Iran and Cuba as a foundation for the broader diplomacy he promised.
Instead, the Biden administration seems firmly entrenched behind the walls of hostility Trump built between America and our neighbors, from his renewed Cold War against China and Russia to his brutal sanctions against Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, Syria and dozens of countries around the world, and there is still no word on cuts to a military budget that has grown by 15% since FY2015 (inflation-adjusted).
Despite endless Democratic condemnations of Trump, Biden’s foreign policy so far shows no substantive change from the policies of the past four years. Here are ten of the lowlights:
1. Failing to quickly rejoin the Iran nuclear agreement. The Biden administration’s failure to immediately rejoin the JCPOA, as Bernie Sanders promised to do on his first day as president, has turned an easy win for Biden’s promised commitment to diplomacy into an entirely avoidable diplomatic crisis.
Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA and imposition of brutal “maximum pressure” sanctions on Iran were broadly condemned by Democrats and U.S. allies alike. But now Biden is making new demands on Iran to appease hawks who opposed the agreement all along, risking an outcome in which he will fail to reinstate the JCPOA and Trump’s policy will effectively become his policy. The Biden administration should re-enter the deal immediately, without preconditions.
2. U.S. Bombing Wars Rage On – Now In Secret. Also following in Trump’s footsteps, Biden has escalated tensions with Iran and Iraq by attacking and killing Iranian-backed Iraqi forces who play a critical role in the war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Biden’s February 25 U.S. airstrike predictably failed to end 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 U.S. attack in Syria has been condemned as illegal by members of Biden’s own party, reinvigorating efforts to repeal the 2001 and 2002 Authorizations for the Use of Military Force that presidents have misused for 20 years. Other airstrikes the Biden administration is conducting in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria are shrouded in secrecy, since it has not resumed publishing the monthly Airpower Summaries that every other administration has published since 2004, but which Trump discontinued a year ago.
3. Refusing to hold MBS accountable for the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khasssoghi. Human rights activists were grateful that President Biden released the intelligence report on the gruesome murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi that confirmed what we already knew: that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman (MBS) approved the murder. Yet, when it came to holding MBS accountable, Biden choked.
At the very least, the administration shcould have imposed the same sanctions on MBS, including asset freezes and travel bans, that the U.S. imposed on lower-level figures involved in the murder. Instead, like Trump, Biden is wedded to the Saudi dictatorship and its diabolical Crown Prince.
4. Clinging to Trump’s absurdist policy of recognizing Juan Guaidó as President of Venezuela. The Biden administration missed an opportunity to establish a new approach towards Venezuela when it decided to continue to recognize Juan Guaidó as “interim president”, ruled out talks with the Maduro government and appears to be freezing out the moderate opposition that participates in elections.
The administration also said it was in “no rush” to lift the Trump sanctions despite a recent study from the Government Accountability Office detailing their negative impact on the economy, and a scathing preliminary report by a UN Special Rapporteur, who noted their “devastating effect on the whole population of Venezuela.” The lack of dialogue with all political actors in Venezuela risks entrenching a policy of regime change and economic warfare for years to come, similar to the failed U.S. policy towards Cuba that has lasted for 60 years.
5. Following Trump on Cuba instead of Obama. The Trump administration overturned all the progress towards normal relations achieved by President Obama, sanctioning Cuba’s tourism and energy industries, blocking coronavirus aid shipments, restricting remittances to family members, putting Cuba on a list of “state sponsors of terrorism,” and sabotaging Cuba’s international medical missions, which were a major source of revenue for its health system.
We expected Biden to immediately start unraveling Trump’s confrontational policies, but catering to Cuban exiles in Florida for domestic political gain apparently takes precedence over a humane and rational policy towards Cuba, for Biden as for Trump.
Biden should instead start working with the Cuban government to allow the return of diplomats to their respective embassies, lift all restrictions on remittances, make travel easier, and work with the Cuban health system in the fight against COVID-19, among other measures.
6. Ramping up the Cold War with China. Biden seems committed to Trump’s self-defeating Cold War and arms race with China, talking tough and ratcheting up tensions that have led to racist hate crimes against East Asian people in the United States. But it is the United States that is militarily surrounding and threatening China, not the other way round. As former President Jimmy Carter patiently explained to Trump, while the United States has been at war for 20 years, China has instead invested in 21st century infrastructure and in its own people, lifting 800 million of them out of poverty.
The greatest danger of this moment in history, short of all-out nuclear war, is that this aggressive U.S. military posture not only justifies unlimited U.S. military budgets, but will gradually force China to convert its economic success into military power and follow the United States down the tragic path of military imperialism.
7. Failing to lift painful, illegal sanctions during a pandemic. One of the legacies of the Trump administration is the devastating use of U.S. sanctions on countries around the world, including Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, North Korea and Syria. UN special rapporteurs have condemned them as crimes against humanity and compared them to medieval sieges. Since most of these sanctions were imposed by executive order, President Biden could easily lift them. Even before taking power, his team announced a thorough review, but, three months later, it has yet to make a move.
Unilateral sanctions that affect entire populations are an illegal form of coercion, like military intervention, coups and covert operations, that have no place in a legitimate foreign policy based on diplomacy, the rule of law and the peaceful resolution of disputes. They are especially cruel and deadly during a pandemic and the Biden administration should take immediate action by lifting broad sectoral sanctions to ensure every country can adequately respond to the pandemic.
8. Not doing enough to support peace and humanitarian aid for Yemen. Biden appeared to partially fulfill his promise to stop U.S. support for the war in Yemen when he announced that the U.S. would stop selling “offensive” weapons to the Saudis. But he has yet to explain what that means. Which weapons sales has he cancelled?
We think he should stop ALL weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, enforcing the Leahy Law that prohibits military assistance to forces that commit gross human rights violations, and the Arms Export Control Act, under which imported U.S. weapons may be used only for legitimate self defense. There should be no exceptions to these U.S. laws for Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Israel, Egypt or other U.S. allies around the world.
The U.S. should also accept its share of responsibility for what many have called the greatest humanitarian crisis in the world today, and provide Yemen with funding to feed its people, restore its health care system and rebuild its devastated country. A recent donor conference netted just $1.7 billion in pledges, less than half the $3.85 billion needed. Biden should restore and expand USAID funding and U.S. financial support to the UN, WHO and World Food Program relief operations in Yemen. He should also press the Saudis to reopen the air and seaports, and throw U.S. diplomatic weight behind the efforts of U.N. Special Envoy Martin Griffiths to negotiate a ceasefire.
9. Failing to back President Moon Jae-in’s diplomacy with North Korea. Trump’s failure to provide sanctions relief and explicit security guarantees to North Korea doomed his diplomacy and became an obstacle to the diplomatic process under way between Korean presidents Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in, who is himself the child of North Korean refugees. So far, Biden has continued this policy of Draconian sanctions and threats.
The Biden administration should revive the diplomatic process with confidence-building measures such as opening liaison offices, easing sanctions, facilitating reunions between Korean-American and North Korean families, permitting U.S. humanitarian organizations to resume their work when COVID conditions permit, and halting U.S.-South Korea military exercises and B-2 nuclear bomb flights.
Negotiations must involve concrete commitments to non-aggression from the U.S. side and a commitment to negotiating a peace agreement to formally end the Korean War. This would pave the way for a denuclearized Korean Peninsula and the reconciliation that so many Koreans desire — and deserve.
10. No initiative to reduce U.S. military spending. At the end of the Cold War, former senior Pentagon officials told the Senate Budget Committee that U.S. military spending could safely be cut by half over the next 10 years. That goal was never achieved, and instead of a post-Cold War “peace dividend,” the military-industrial complex exploited the crimes of Sept. 11, 2001 to justify an extraordinary one-sided arms race. Between 2003 and 2011, the U.S. accounted for 45% of global military spending, far outstripping its own peak Cold War military spending.
Now the military-industrial complex is counting on Biden to escalate a renewed Cold War with Russia and China as the only plausible pretext for further record military budgets that are setting the stage for World War III.
Biden must dial back U.S. conflicts with China and Russia, and instead begin the critical task of moving money from the Pentagon to urgent domestic needs. He should start with at least the 10 percent cut that 93 Representatives and 23 Senators already voted for. In the longer term, Biden should look for deeper cuts in Pentagon spending, as in Rep. Barbara Lee’s bill to cut $350 billion per year from the U.S. military budget, to free up resources we sorely need to invest in health care, education, clean energy and modern infrastructure.
A Progressive Way Forward
These policies, common to Democratic and Republican administrations, not only inflict pain and suffering on millions of our neighbors in other countries, but also deliberately cause instability that can at any time escalate into war, plunge a formerly functioning state into chaos or spawn a secondary crisis whose human consequences will be even worse than the original one.
All these policies involve deliberate efforts to unilaterally impose the political will of U.S. leaders on other people and countries, by methods that consistently only cause more pain and suffering to the people they claim – or pretend – they want to help.
Biden should jettison the worst of Obama’s and Trump’s policies, and instead pick the best of them. Trump, recognizing the unpopular nature of U.S. military interventions, began the process of bringing U.S. troops home from Afghanistan and Iraq, which Biden should follow through on.
Obama’s diplomatic successes with Cuba, Iran and Russia demonstrated that negotiating with U.S. enemies to make peace, improve relations and make the world a safer place is a perfectly viable alternative to trying to force them to do what the United States wants by bombing, starving and besieging their people. This is in fact the core principle of the United Nations Charter, and it should be the core principle of Biden’s foreign policy.
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The claim is often made that President George W. Bush’s war on terror, which produced legislation that was employed to attack Iraq in 2003, eventually morphed into the worst foreign policy mistake in U.S. history when that conflict destabilized the entire region and led to an American multifront military engagement that now appears permanent. Few of those in the policymaking business appreciated that by turning “terrorism” into an especially invidious form of evil allowing governments to arrest or even assassinate without due process and bomb civilians if they fit a profile, Pandora’s box was being opened to expand that authority to commit other heinous abuses of authority.
Jim Bovard has described how post 9/11 there were hundreds of arrests for no good reason, in some cases only because someone had a name or countenance that appeared to be “Arabic.” Congressman Ron Paul and a handful of others observed at the time that the legislation would inevitably be used against domestic enemies of the state as well as against foreign or foreign-linked groups, meaning that the real damage done by the Patriot Act, the Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) and the Military Commissions Act would be felt somewhere down the road, possibly at a point where the original objective of the legislation would be more or less forgotten.
Now that we have an identified “domestic terror” problem one should expect at a minimum a massive increase in surveillance of innocent citizens couple with arbitrary arrests and incarcerations. Indeed, the process is already well underway with FBI Director Christopher Wrayannouncing that there are several thousand terror “cases” under development. There will also be increasing calls to take away guns and to control what is allowed to appear on the internet. Soon Americans will have nothing to measure their remaining liberties by and will be less free to exercise rights including free speech, possibly dramatically so.
So now we have reached a point where we have a government that is committed to further reducing one’s rights in order to “keep us safe” from a domestic threat and congress critters are openly speaking of bringing in “war on terror” type expedients to make sure that they have the tools available to do just that. The Joe Biden White House has made clear that it has embraced fighting domestic terrorists as a top priority. Last week, the Administration sought authorization from the Pentagon to keep thousands of national guard troops in the District of Columbia for 60 days more, presumably to protect the government buildings and staff. The pretext for the continued presence was a vaguely described plot constituting a “potential threat” to overrun the Capitol building on March 4th, a day when it was apparently anticipated that Donald Trump would miraculously be returned to office. The House of Representatives even canceled a session over concerns that they were about to be invaded by a hostile “militia.” Just how “real” the threat was has not been made clear beyond suggestions of “chatter” over the internet, nor has there been any explanation of why the 2,200 strong Capitol Police force is unable to deal with the problem.
Be that as it may, the Biden Administration thinks it knows exactly who the enemy is. The government already has a working definition of a domestic terrorist, i.e. “If you advocate violence as a tool to further political ends, and take concrete steps to do that, you’re a terrorist.” But if you thought that included groups like Antifa and Black Lives Matter (BLM) you would be wrong. For the Biden Administration it is the stereotyped right-wing extremist, who, among other attributes, is represented by the media and government as coming from the class that Hillary Clinton once described as “deplorables.”
The accepted definition of the enemy defies logic as the rioting, arson, and killing that has taken place over the past year has generally been inspired by Antifa and BLM, resulting in major damage and destruction in various cities and states. But the mobs who wrecked and looted have been mostly set free by the courts in the Democratic Party dominated cities. In Portland Oregon 90% of the rioters were not prosecuted, presumably because the local judicial system believed that their “cause was just.” Against that is the trauma of the January 6th incident at the Capitol, much smaller in scope and damages but obviously terrifying to the media and Congress. Also what did occur bore a more comfortable theme for the Democrats which they have been beating to death ever since – “insurrection caused by right wing extremists who were overwhelmingly white and support Donald Trump.” That’s apparently all one needs to initiate a campaign to get rid of such dissidents.
For some suggestions about the direction the Biden Administration will be going in to eliminate domestic terrorism, one only has to review the comments of Attorney General nominee Merrick Garland at his Senate confirmation hearing on February 22nd, where he declared that going after domestic terrorists would be a top administration priority. When asked if he regards the numerous attempts by Antifa and BLM rioters to destroy federal courthouses in Portland and Seattle as acts of domestic extremism or terrorism, he hedged on the issue and replied:
“So an attack on a courthouse while in operation, trying to prevent judges from actually deciding cases, that plainly is, uhm, domestic extremism, uhm, domestic terrorism. An attack simply on a government property at night…or any other kind of circumstances, is a clear crime and a serious one and should be punished. I don’t mean…I don’t know enough about the facts of the example you’re talking about, but that’s where I draw the line. One is…both are criminal, but one is a core attack on our democratic institutions.”
According to the man who almost became a Supreme Court Justice and now appears to be on his way to becoming Attorney General if you attack and seek to destroy a government building when there is no one in it is a different level of criminality than seeking to disrupt what is going on inside during business hours. It clearly is a fine line, or at least Garland sees it that way, but in either case you are making the building non-functional in terms of its intended use. Indeed, groups like BLM have regularly condemned the criminal justice system and if you burn the building down it will be unusable for a long, long time. So clearly what makes something “terrorism” as opposed to only “criminality” is the expectation based on the events of 1/6 that it will be right-wing whites who will be doing the disruption. They are the terrorists.
So, it seems pretty clear that the Biden Administration is now preparing to go after the people that it objects to and will create new laws as necessary to do so. Garland will certainly have a hand in that development. And if anyone is thinking of leaving all of this behind by fleeing to another country where there is an actual rule of law, it would be best to consider the matter again. On February 22nd, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterreswarned that white supremacy right-wing nationalist movements have become a “transnational threat” that has exploited the fear of the coronavirus pandemic to gain support. He said that “White supremacy and neo-Nazi movements are more than domestic terror threats. They are becoming a transnational threat. Today, these extremist movements represent the number one internal security threat in several countries. Far too often, these hate groups are cheered on by people in positions of responsibility in ways that were considered unimaginable not long ago. We need global coordinated action to defeat this grave and growing danger.”
It means you can run but you can’t hide. It looks like there will be a worldwide coalition to extirpate the evils that come automatically with whiteness and, as BLM is now de facto a major constituency of the U.S. Democratic Party, you know that Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi will be leading the charge.
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Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.orgaddress is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected]
He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Featured image: Storming of the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 (TapTheForwardAssist/Wikimedia Commons)
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In October 2019, shortly before the COVID outbreak, Gates and other powerful individuals began planning how to censor vaccine safety advocates from social media during a table-top simulation of a worldwide pandemic, known as Event 201.
Over the last two weeks, Facebook and other social media sites have deplatformed me and many other critics of regulatory corruption and authoritarian public health policies. So, here is some fodder for those of you who have the eerie sense that the government/industry pandemic response feels like it was planned — even before there was a pandemic.
The attached document shows that a cabal of powerful individuals did indeed begin planning the mass eviction of vaccine skeptics from social media in October 2019, a week or two before COVID began circulating. That month, Microsoft founder Bill Gates organized an exercise of four “table-top” simulations of a worldwide coronavirus pandemic with other high-ranking “Deep State” panjandrums. The exercise was referred to as Event 201.
Gates’ co-conspirators included representatives from the World Bank, the World Economic Forum (Great Reset), Bloomberg/Johns Hopkins University Populations Center, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, various media powerhouses, the Chinese government, a former Central Intelligence Agency/National Security Agency director (there is no such thing as a former CIA officer), vaccine maker Johnson & Johnson, the finance and biosecurity industries and Edelman, the world’s leading corporate PR firm.
At Gates’ direction, these eminences role-played members of a Pandemic Control Council, wargaming government strategies for controlling the pandemic, the narrative and the population. Needless to say, there was little talk of building immune systems, off-the-shelf remedies or off-patent therapeutic drugs and vitamins, but lots of chatter about promoting uptake of new patentable antiviral drugs and vaccines.
But the participants primarily focused on planning industry-centric, fear-mongering, police-state strategies for managing an imaginary global coronavirus contagion culminating in mass censorship of social media.
Oddly, Gates now claims that the simulation didn’t occur. On April 12, 2020, Gates told BBC, “Now here we are. We didn’t simulate this, we didn’t practice, so both the health policies and economic policies, we find ourselves in uncharted territory.”
Unfortunately for that whopper, the videos of the event are still available across the internet. They show that Gates and team did indeed simulate health and economic policies. It’s hard to swallow that Gates has forgotten.
Gates’s Event 201 simulated COVID epidemic caused 65 million deaths at the 18-month endpoint and global economic collapse lasting up to a decade. Compared to the Gates simulation, therefore, the actual COVID-19 crisis is a bit of a dud, having imposed a mere 2.5 million deaths “attributed to COVID” over the past 13 months.
The deaths “attributed to COVID” in the real-life situation are highly questionable, and must be seen in the context of a global population of 7.8 billion, with about 59 million deaths expected annually. The predictions of decade-long economic collapse will probably prove more accurate — but only because of the draconian lockdown promoted by Gates.
Gates’ Event 201 script imagines vast anti-vaccine riots triggered by internet posts. The universal and single-minded presumption among its participants was that such a crisis would prove an opportunity of convenience to promote new vaccines, and tighten controls by a surveillance and censorship state.
Segment four of the script — on manipulation and control of public opinion — is most revealing. It uncannily predicted democracy’s current crisis:
The participants discussed mechanisms for controlling “disinformation” and “misinformation,” by “flooding” the media with propaganda (“good information”), imposing penalties for spreading falsehoods and discrediting the anti-vaccination movement.
Jane Halton, of Australia’s ANZ Bank, one of the authors of Australia’s oppressive “no jab, no pay” policy, assured the participants that Gates Foundation is creating algorithms “to sift through information on these social media platforms” to protect the public from dangerous thoughts and information.
George Gao, the prescient director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control, worries about how to suppress “rumors” that the virus is laboratory generated: “People believe, ‘This is a manmade’… [and that] some pharmaceutical company made the virus.”
Chen Huang, an Apple research scientist, Google scholar and the world’s leading expert on tracking and tracing and facial recognition technology, role-plays the newscaster reporting on government countermeasures. He blames riots on anti-vaccine activists and predicts that Twitter and Facebook will cooperate in “identify[ing] and delete[ing] a disturbing number of accounts dedicated to spreading misinformation about the outbreak” and to implement “internet shutdowns … to quell panic.”
Dr. Tara Kirk Sell, a senior scholar at Bloomberg School of Health’s Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, worries that pharmaceutical companies are being accused of introducing the virus so they can make money on drugs and vaccines: “[We] have seen public faith in their products plummet.” She notes with alarm that “Unrest, due to false rumors and divisive messaging, is rising and is exacerbating spread of the disease as levels of trust fall and people stop cooperating with response efforts. This is a massive problem, one that threatens governments and trusted institutions.”
Sell reminds her fellow collaborators that “We know that social media is now the primary way that many people get their news, so interruptions to these platforms could curb the spread of misinformation.” There are many ways, Sell advises, for government and industry allies to accomplish this objective: “Some governments have taken control of national access to the Internet. Others are censoring websites and social media content and a small number have shut down Internet access completely to prevent the spread of misinformation. Penalties have been put in place for spreading harmful falsehoods, including arrests.”
Matthew Harrington, CEO of Edelman Public Relations agrees that social media must fall in line to promote government policy: “I also think we’re at a moment where the social media platforms have to step forward and recognize the moment to assert that they’re a technology platform and not a broadcaster is over. They in fact have to be a participant in broadcasting accurate information and partnering with the scientific and health communities to counterweight, if not flood the zone, of accurate information. Because to try to put the genie back in the bottle of misinformation and disinformation is not possible.”
Stephen Redd, the Admiral of the Public Health Service, has the sinister notion that government should mine social media data to identify people with negative beliefs: “I think with the social media platforms, there’s an opportunity to understand who it is that’s susceptible … to misinformation, so I think there’s an opportunity to collect data from that communication mechanism.”
Adrian Thomas of Johnson & Johnson announces “some important news to share from some of “our member companies [Pharma]”: We are doing clinical trials in new antiretrovirals, and in fact, in vaccines!” He recommends a strategy to address the problems to these companies when “rumors were actually spreading” that their shoddily tested products “are causing deaths and so patients are not taking them anymore.” He suggests, “Maybe we’re making the mistake of reporting and counting all the fatalities and infections.”
Former CIA deputy director, Avril Haines unveiled a strategy to “flood the zone” with propaganda from “trusted sources,” including “influential community leaders, as well as health workers.” He warns about “false information that is starting to actually hamper our ability to address the pandemic, then we need to be able to respond quickly to it.”
Matthew Harrington (Edelman CEO) observes that the Internet — which once promised the decentralization and democratization of information — now needs to be centralized: “I think just to build a little bit on what Avril said, I think as in previous conversations where we’ve talked about centralization around management of information or public health needs, there needs to be a centralized response around the communications approach that then is cascaded to informed advocates, represented in the NGO communities, the medical professionals, et cetera.”
Tom Inglesby (John Hopkins biosecurity expert advisor to the National Institutes of Health, the Pentagon and Homeland Security) agrees that centralized control is needed: “You mean centralized international?”
Matthew Harrington (Edelman) replies that information access should be: “Centralized on an international basis, because I think there needs to be a central repository of data facts and key messages.”
Hasti Taghi (Media Advisor) sums up: “The anti-vaccine movement was very strong and this is something specifically through social media that has spread. So as we do the research to come up with the right vaccines to help prevent the continuation of this, how do we get the right information out there? How do we communicate the right information to ensure that the public has trust in these vaccines that we’re creating?”
Kevin McAleese, communications officer for Gates-funded agricultural projects, observes that: “To me, it is clear countries need to make strong efforts to manage both mis- and disinformation. We know social media companies are working around the clock to combat these disinformation campaigns. The task of identifying every bad actor is immense. This is a huge problem that’s going to keep us from ending the pandemic and might even lead to the fall of governments, as we saw in the Arab Spring. If the solution means controlling and reducing access to information, I think it’s the right choice.”
Tom Inglesby, director of Bloomberg’s Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security concurs, asking if “In this case, do you think governments are at the point where they need to require social media companies to operate in a certain way?”
Lavan Thiru, Singapore’s Finance Minister suggests that the government might make examples of dissidents with “government or enforcement actions against fake news. Some of us, this new regulations are come in place about how we deal with fake news. Maybe this is a time for us to showcase some cases where we are able to bring forward some bad actors and leave it before the courts to decide whether they have actually spread some fake news.”
Read the attached transcript to see how Gates and his government, pharma and intelligence apparatus telegraphed their plans to censor and control the media during the pandemic. In yet another uncanny coincidence, COVID-19 began circulating among global populations within days of Gates’ meeting.
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Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s reputation as a resolute defender of the environment stems from a litany of successful legal actions.
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China’s currently ongoing (4-11 March 2021) annual parliamentary meeting, known as the “Two Sessions”, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and the National People’s Congress (NPC), may be the most important of such meetings in recent years. The event is also celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the Communist Party of China (CPC).
The conference will define China’s internal and external development strategies, as well as her future role on the world stage. China is the only major economy that has mastered the covid-induced economic crisis, ending 2020 with a 2.3% growth. Compare this with economic declines way into the red for the US and Europe, of 25% to 35%, and 10% to 15%, respectively.
These figures may only be indicative. The bulk of the economic fallout from western governments’ mishandling of the covid crisis, i. e. bankruptcies, trade disruption, unemployment and housing foreclosures – a massive slide into poverty – may only be registered in 2021 and beyond.
The greed-driven capitalist system has already plunged tens of millions of westerners – and perhaps hundreds of millions in the Global South – into destitution.
What China decides, at the “Two Sessions” Conference will undoubtedly have an impact on the entire world – in the medium-term (2025) as well as long-term (2035) – and beyond. China’s socialism “with Chinese characteristics” will be an influence for peace, justice and equality, as well as for a multi-polar world.
China’s thousands of years of cultural history and the ensuing Tao-philosophy of non-aggression and conflict avoidance, of a societal spirit of endless creation, as well as long-term thinking, contrasts radically with western conflict and instant-profit seeking.
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The summit is addressing ambitious but attainable 2035 targets, including a 6%-plus growth in the foreseeable future; reduction of unemployment with urban focus; continued food self-sufficiency and environmental improvement targets, a gigantic 18% CO2 reduction, largely through a significant drop in energy consumption (13.5%) per unit of GDP – and this with a projected higher than 6% annual economic output. Environmental improvement and protection targets are way above any environmental objectives of western countries.
The conference may also define China’s guiding role in a worldwide recovery from a covid-related devastated economy. China’s economy has suffered, mainly during the first half of 2020, but her decisive actions have successfully overcome the pandemic’s path of destruction. By the end of 2020, China’s production and services were back to 100%. Thanks to this stellar efficiency, the west and Global South may continue relying on China’s supply of such vital goods as medical equipment, medicines, electronics and more.
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What China’s 2025 Plan and 2035 / 2050 visions may include, is a strong emphasis on economic autonomy and defense.
Economy
Western China bashing with related sanctions, trade and currency wars, may continue also under the Biden Administration – because US / European policies on dealing with China – and Russia for that matter – are made well above the White House and Brussels.
Rapid dedollarization may be an effective way to stem against the western “sanctions culture”. China may soon roll out her new digital Renminbi (RMB) or yuan, internationally, as legal tender for inter-country payments and transfers, and as an international reserve currency.
Reduce demand for US-dollars may incite worldwide investments in the new digital RMB.
Detaching from western dependence, China is focusing trade development and cooperation on her ASEAN partners. In November 2020 China signed a free trade agreement with the ten ASEAN nations, plus Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, altogether 15 countries, including China.
The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, or RCEP, covers some 2.2 billion people, commanding some 30% of the world’s GDP. This agreement is a first in size, value and tenor – worldwide.
China, Russia, as well as the Central Asia Economic Union (CAEU) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), are likewise integrated into the eastern trade block.
RCEP’s trade deals will be carried out in local currencies and in yuan – no US dollars. The RCEP is, therefore, also an instrument for dedollarizing, primarily in the Asia-Pacific Region, and gradually moving across the globe.
Defense
China provides the West’s main supply chain, from medical goods to electronic equipment to almost every sector important to humanity. Yet, western political interference in China’s internal affairs, like in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and Tibet, are endless. Overcoming these aggressions and threats of armed conflicts, is part of China’s forward-looking plan and defense strategy.
Mr. Wang Yi, China’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, recently warned the White House to stop meddling in China’s internal affairs; that reunification with Taiwan is a historic tendency and was the collective wish of the Chinese people. He added, this trend cannot be reversed.
As a forerunner to China’s CPPCC Summit, in his address to the virtual World Economic Forum (WEF) on 25 January 2021, President Xi Jinping stated that China’s agenda was to move forward in the World of Great Change, with her renewed policy of multilateralism, aiming for a multi-polar world, where nations would be treated as equals.
China will continue to vouch for strong macroeconomic growth with focus on internal development which, in turn, will stimulate and contribute to international trade and investments. – China pledges assistance for those that are suffering the most during this pandemic-induced crisis.
President Xi emphasized, there was no place in this world for large countries dominating smaller ones, or for economic threats and sanctions, nor for economic isolation. China is pursuing a global free trade economy. BUT – and this is important – when talking of “globalism” – respect for political and fiscal sovereignty of nations, is a MUST.
On a global scale, President Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) embraces currently more than 130 countries and over 30 international organizations, including 18 countries of the European Union. BRI offers the world participation – no coercion. The attraction and philosophy behind BRI, is shared benefits – the concept of win-win. BRI may be the road to socioeconomic recovery from covid-devastation and cross-border cooperation for participating countries.
China’s achievements in her 71 years of revolution are unmatched by any nation in recent history. From a country largely ruined by western colonization and conflicts, China rose from the ashes, by not only lifting 800 million people out of poverty, becoming food, health and education self-sufficient, but to become the world’s second largest economy today; or, if measured by purchasing power parity (PPP), since 2017 the world’s largest econmy. China is poised to surpass the US by 2025 in absolute terms.
On 4 March, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (Children’s Health Defense), asked the pertinent question, “Can We Forge a New Era of Humanity Before It’s Too Late?” – His answer is simple but lucid: “Unless we move from a civilization based on wealth accumulation to a life-affirming, ecological civilization, we will continue accelerating towards global catastrophe.”
This understanding is also at the forefront of China’s vision for the next 5 and 15 years – and beyond. A China-internal objective is an equitable development to well-being for all; and on a world-scale, a community with shared benefits for all.
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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.
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Much is said in the international media about the Palestinian issue, but the internal ethnic crisis in Israel is ignored. Levels of violence against Arabs in Israeli territory have increased exponentially and this has led to the revolt of several social leaders in these Arab communities. The Israeli authorities justify their violence on the basis of a “policy to combat organized crime”, but, in fact, this rhetoric has been used simply to cover up the killings of Arab youth and children.
On March 10, in a shootout in the Arab-Israeli city of Jaljulia, Muhamad Abdelrazek Ades, a 14-year-old teenager was murdered and his friend, Mustafa Osama Hamed, a 12-year-old child, was injured and is hospitalized in serious condition. Local residents accuse the police of having acted negligently and shot indiscriminately at the population. A member of the Muhammad’s family said the boys left the house at the time of the shooting and were hit by about 20 shots at close range. The case would be tragic if it were unique, but this is a growing phenomenon. Muhammad has been the 23rd fatal victim of Israeli police violence against Arab citizens since the beginning of this year.
More and more young Arabs in Israel are dying in police operations carried out with malpractice and neglect. The head of the Jaljulia city hall, commenting on the case, said that the violence against the Arab community exceeded all possible limits and that the country is at a real civil war. In fact, the situation is one of absolute insecurity for the Arabs. For them there are no laws or guarantees, just endless violence.
The case of Muhammad and Mustafa triggered revolt in the Arab community. Israeli police, on the other hand, respond to criticism only by stating that it was “a mistake” and emphasizing that the families of the youth were involved in organized crime. And, in fact, this has been the practice of the Israeli authorities in cities with an Arab majority: systematically exterminating young people whose families are supposed to be involved in the crime. The high degree of marginalization and exclusion to which the Arabs are subjected on Israeli soil makes organized crime a recurrent practice in some of these communities, especially with regard to economically motivated crimes. However, the Israeli police does not act to combat such crimes using intelligence techniques or investigating the real offenders, but simply systematically exterminating members of these communities, in an act of true ethnic and social cleansing.
Police violence is also intense when Arabs take to the streets to protest and claim their civil rights. In Umm al Fahem, in northern Israel, protests have been almost daily. In a recent demonstration, the number of 10,000 participants was reported, a record for popular demonstrations in these regions. The reason for such an exponential increase is certainly due to the fact that weeks ago, in protests with a much smaller number of participants, police officers wounded 35 protesters, even though the acts were peaceful. In the same vein, after Muhammad’s death, a general strike was declared in Jaljulia. The unnecessary violence of the police only encourages more and more people to take to the streets and with this an endless cycle of popular dissatisfaction and police brutality emerges.
In institutional politics, the Arab community is agitated as much as possible. Community members in Parliament have publicly condemned the recent attacks. The Arab Deputy Aida Touma Silman made harsh statements against the Israeli police, but also emphasized the importance of fighting organized crime, saying that Arab criminals are also responsible for the killings. Although combating all forms of crime is necessary in any region of the planet, it is important to note the high degree of asymmetry in police violence. There is nothing that can explain how a child is shot 20 times at close range simply because his family is involved with criminal organizations.
In parallel to the unrest, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced last week that his government will invest around 45 million dollars to combat violence in the Arab cities. The Arab community leaders did not interpret the government’s attitude as positive, as they rightly believe that this money will be used not to improve social rates in these cities, but to further arm the police and generate more chaos and violence.
In fact, international society remains silent on this, when it should not. Tel Aviv is responsible for the death of every Arab youth. When the policemen who executed the shots against children are spared from any punishment, the state practically takes part in favor of the violence.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Lucas Leiroz is a research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
Featured image is from Palestine Solidarity Campaign
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Update (0954ET): Iceland has become the latest European nation to suspend the AstraZeneca jab.
The tiny island nation has confirmed roughly 6K COVID cases since the start of the pandemic, which is roughly 2% of the population.
Back on the Continent, the EMA (the European equivalent of the FDA) confirmed that it has counted no fewer than 30 incidents of harmful blood clots in patients who received the vaccine, including at least one case in Denmark where the patient died.
This AstraZeneca story isn't getting enough attention. It's going to undermine vaccine takeup. If people are dying it's a disaster for the company too.
Update (0820ET): More countries have followed Denmark by suspending approval of the AstraZeneca-Oxford COVID vaccine. Norway, Denmark, Estonia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Latvia, and Italy have now opted to halt use of the vaccine, creating more problems for Europe’s sluggish vaccine rollout.
The halts follow incidents involving blood clots in patients who recently received the vaccine. Two incidents were reported in Austria, although Vienna is allowing the vaccine to continue to be used, at least for now. Serious cases of blood clotshave been reported in Denmark and other countries as well.
Writer and skeptic Alex Berenson noted in a tweet that the AZ jab isn’t the only COVID shot suspected of causing harmful side effects in a small number of patients.
Just wait until they hear what the mRNA vaccines can do…
Really, though, the side effect profile of the @astrazeneca vaccine is hardly worse than the mRNA shots, but somehow it has faced much more scrutiny. Follow the politics, I mean science.
In a tweet confirming the suspension, Denmark’s health minister said there’s currently no way to know for certain whether the cases of serious blood clots are connected to the vaccine, but the situation certainly warrants ore investigation. “We acted early, it needs to be thoroughly investigated,” he said.
Just days ago, Italian PM Mario Draghi halted a shipment of AstraZeneca jabs to Australia, marking the first time an EU leader invoked rules to prioritize domestic vaccine access. Now, Italian authorities are suspending vaccinations from a current batch of the AstraZeneca jab following a pair of suspicious deaths.
Meanwhile, health authorities in Brussels and London have dismissed these concerns, insisting that the AZ jab is safe, while moving ahead with plans to approve Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose jab.
BREAKING: Johnson & Johnson receives positive opinion for its #COVID19 vaccine from the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human use of the European Medicines Agency, paving the way for approval in the EU. $JNJ
The EU medicines regulator said it was recommending the vaccine be authorized for all adults over 18 “after a thorough evaluation” of JNJ’s data found the vaccine met the criteria for efficacy, safety and quality. The JNJ jab is the fourth to be licensed for use inside the EU.
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Europe’s much-criticized vaccination rollout has just hit another snag, as Danish health authorities are increasingly concerned about harmful side-effects believed to be associated with the AstraZeneca-Oxford jab, the cheap COVID remedy that was supposed to help Europe catch up with the US, UK and Israel.
Danish authorities on Thursday temporarily suspended AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 shot following reports of cases of dangerous blood clots forming inside patients, including one such incident that took place in Denmark. Authorities didn’t specify exactly how many reports of blood clots there had been, but Reuters reports that Austria has also stopped using a batch of AstraZeneca shots while investigating a death attributed to coagulation disorders, along with an illness attributed ot a pulmonary embolism, a condition where one or more of the lung’s arteries becomes blocked by a blood clot. Six other European countries have also reportedly halted distribution of the COVID jab.
“Both we and the Danish Medicines Agency have to respond to reports of possible serious side-effects, both from Denmark and other European countries,” the director of the Danish Health Authority, Soren Brostrom, said in a statement.
The Danish Medicines Agency said the suspension would last for 14 days as authorities launch an investigation into the blood clots, with assistance from other EU member states.
NEW: Danish Health Authority says use of #AstraZeneca COVID19 #vaccine has been halted due to serious cases of blood clots. This follows similar suspension in Austria.
Here's a statement from the European Medicines Agency on the issue yesterday: pic.twitter.com/69WBgoujV1
They did not say how many reports of blood clots there had been, but Austria has stopped using a batch of AstraZeneca shots while investigating a death from coagulation disorders and an illness from a pulmonary embolism.
AstraZeneca claims its vaccine is subject to strict and rigorous quality controls and that there have been “no confirmed serious adverse events associated with the vaccine.” It said it was in contact with Austrian authorities and would fully support their investigation.
“Both we and the Danish Medicines Agency have to respond to reports of possible serious side-effects, both from Denmark and other European countries,” the director of the Danish Health Authority, Soren Brostrom, said. “It is important to emphasize that we have not opted out of using the AstraZeneca vaccine, but that we are putting it on hold.”
The European Medicines Agency said Wednesday there is no evidence linking AstraZeneca to the two cases of blood clots in Austria. The company said the number of (thromboembolic events” (blood clots forming) in people who have received the AstraZeneca vaccine is no higher than that seen in the general population, with 22 cases of such events being reported among the 3MM people who have received it as of March 9.
And at least one investor claimed Denmark’s suspension of AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine on blood clot concerns shows “the detection systems that look for potential safety issues are working,” and that most of these “safety events” would ultimately be linked to natural processes, not the jab.
“It’s good to see the safety signal detection systems working and it’s important that any safety signal is followed-up using the correct protocols,” Shore analyst Adam Barker told Bloomberg. Data from the vaccine’s phase three trials suggests that “you would expect that most safety signals won’t ultimately be linked to the vaccine,” he said.
However, “it’s hard to make judgments on the impact on shareholder value,” he added, given there are “a lot of moving parts.” But ultimately, a risk-reward trade-off with any therapy; “you can only confidently make judgments on that decision when all the data is finalized and clear”
Nevertheless, shares of AZ tumbled on Thursday on signs that the European vaccine rollout is facing fresh skepticism and obstacles. Shares were down more than 2% in London’s mid-morning trade.
Whether Austria and other EU states will follow suit remains to be seen, though at least one other national health authority is reportedly considering a halt: the Norwegian Institute of Public Health and the Medicines Agency are meeting to discuss Denmark’s decision to halt vaccinations using doses of the vaccine, according to reports from state broadcaster NRK.
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Denmark, Norway and Iceland today announced they are joining other European countries in temporarily suspending use of the AstraZeneca-Oxford COVID vaccine following reports of blood clots in people who got the vaccine.
Denmark suspended the shots until further notice after a 60-year-old woman died from a blood clot which formed after she was vaccinated, reported Reuters.
The Danish decision came days after Austrian authorities announced they were suspending a batch of AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine while investigating the death of one person and the illness of another after receiving the shots. The same batch used in Austria was used in Denmark, according to Reuters.
In Austria, a 49-year-old woman died of severe coagulation disorders, and a 35-year-old woman developed a pulmonary embolism –– an acute lung disease caused by a dislodged blood clot –– and is recovering, said The Federal Office for Safety in Health Care (BASG) in Austria.
Austrian newspaper Niederoesterreichische Nachrichten, broadcaster ORF and the APA news agency reported that both women were nurses at the same clinic where the vaccine batch was used.
In a statement provided to Reuters, AstraZeneca said the safety of its vaccine had been extensively studied in human trials and that peer-reviewed data had confirmed the vaccine was generally well tolerated.
Earlier this week, AstraZeneca reported “no confirmed serious adverse events associated with the vaccine” during trials and said it was working with Austria in its investigation.
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Luxembourg have suspended all or part of their AstraZeneca vaccine roll-out as a precaution while they investigate concerns related to blood clots, reported France 24.
According to Reuters, Italy announced it banned a batch of the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine following the deaths of two men who had recently been vaccinated. One man was a 43-year-old naval officer who died after a suspected heart attack the day after his shot. The second man, a 50-year-old policeman, fell ill within 24 hours of his injection, never recovered and died 12 days after being vaccinated. Both men had received shots from AstraZeneca’s ABV2856 batch.
As of March 10, 30 cases of thromboembolic eventshad been reported to EudraVigilance, the system for managing and analyzing information on suspected adverse reactions to medicines which have been authorized or are being studied in clinical trials in the European Economic Area.
As The Defender reported today, 12 prominent doctors and scientists are demanding that EU regulators address seven critical safety issues relating to the AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Moderna COVID vaccines, or withdraw approval of the vaccines for use in the EU.
The UK government is meanwhile urging people to “still go and get their COVID-19 vaccine,” stressing the suspension in multiple countries “is a precautionary measure,” reported EuroNews.
On March 2, The Defender reported that government data showed 43% more reports of injuries related to the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine in the UK, including 77% more adverse events and 25% more deaths compared to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
The MHRA expressed no concern about the number of reports of adverse events connected with AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine.
“The problem with spontaneous reports of suspected adverse reactions to a vaccine are the enormous difficulty of distinguishing a causal effect from a coincidence,” Stephen Evans, professor of pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine told France 24.
Last month two regions in Sweden temporarily halted AstraZeneca COVID vaccinations after 400 people received the vaccine and 100 people experienced adverse reactions leaving them unable to work. Another region observed a surprising number of side effects after a mass vaccination effort of more than 500 people, reported The Defender.
South Africa halted the roll-out of AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine due to low efficacy in February, and European countries France, Germany and Sweden reported more side effects from the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine than from the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
The World Health Organization approved the AstraZeneca-Oxford COVID vaccine for emergency use last month, despite growing safety concerns in other countries and questionable clinical trials.
AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine has not yet been approved for use in the U.S. but the drugmaker plans to file for Emergency Use Authorization with the U.S Food and Drug Administration in the upcoming weeks pending the results of a clinical trial, according to CBS News.
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Megan Redshaw is a freelance reporter for The Defender. She has a background in political science, a law degree and extensive training in natural health.
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In a rare moment of truth of CNN Wednesday, Anthony Fauci admitted that there is no scientific reason why people who have had the COVID vaccine are still having their freedoms restricted.
CNN host John Berman asked Fauci “What’s the science behind not saying it’s safe for people who have been vaccinated – received two doses, to travel?”
“When you don’t have the data and you don’t have the actual evidence, you’ve got to make a judgment call,” Fauci replied, declaring that Americans will just have to trust the CDC:
Fauci, asked “what’s the science” for denying vaccinated Americans a return to travel, can’t explain.
“When you don’t have the data and you don’t have the actual evidence, you’ve got to make a judgment call." pic.twitter.com/lftvNzgA6J
As we reported this week, CNN announced that the CDC is graciously allowing vaccinated Americans some ‘limited freedoms’, prompting a huge backlash on social media where people pointed out that the health body doesn’t grant anyone their God given freedoms.
The Infallible Fauci is a fraud and should be ignored at this point. Go live your lives instead of praying at the alter of overpaid government stooges who are drunk on power they never intend to give away. https://t.co/rA9oKOrmEb
Personally I don’t have the data or actual evidence Fauci is a good person so I guess I’ll just make a judgment call that he’s an evil piece of human garbage 🤷♂️
— Five Times August – “God Help Us All” OUT NOW (@FiveTimesAugust) March 10, 2021
I’m gonna make a judgment call for my kids’ spring break next week and fly to South Carolina to see their vaccinated grandparents. There won’t be a mask in sight all week.
When you [the scientist] don't have the data and you [the scientist] don't have the actual evidence, then you [not-the-scientist, now-the-politician] has to make a judgement call.
Was throwing the baseball after taking no practice reps one of these judgement calls? pic.twitter.com/UOFcLS6o1n
— scholarship recipient nothingburger.com (@LincolnMics) March 10, 2021
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An increasingly clear feature of the covid-19 pandemic is that the public health response is being driven not only by governments and multilateral institutions, such as the World Health Organisation, but also by a welter of public-private partnerships involving drug companies and private foundations.
One leading voice to emerge is the Wellcome Trust, one of the world’s top funders of health research, whose sprawling charitable activities in the pandemic include co-leading a WHO programme to support new covid-19 therapeutics. The Access to Covid-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator project hopes to raise billions of dollars and deliver hundreds of millions of treatment courses in the year ahead, including dexamethasone and a number of monoclonal antibodies.1
At the same time, The BMJ finds, Wellcome itself holds investments in companies producing these same treatments. Financial disclosures from late 2020 show that Wellcome has a £275m (€318m; $389m) stake in Novartis, which manufactures dexamethasone and is investigating additional therapeutics. And Roche, in which Wellcome holds a £252m stake,2 is helping to manufacture monoclonal antibodies with Regeneron. Both Roche and Novartis report having had conversations with WHO’s ACT Accelerator about their therapeutic drugs.3
Wellcome’s financial interests have been published on the trust’s website and through financial regulatory filings but do not seem to have been disclosed as financial conflicts of interest in the context of Wellcome’s work on covid-19, even as they show that the trust is positioned to potentially gain from the pandemic financially.
Revelations of the Wellcome Trust’s financial conflicts of interest follow news reports that another charity, the Gates Foundation, is also positioned to potentially benefit financially from its leading role in the pandemic response. An investigation by the Nation revealed that Gates had more than $250m (£179m; €206m) invested in companies working on covid-19 and cited civil society groups expressing alarm with the outsize influence the billionaire charity wields in the pandemic response, which they see as elevating the role of the drug industry.4
Yet charities such as Gates and Wellcome—and even drug companies—have generally been praised in the news media during the pandemic for their efforts to solve the public health crisis, with relatively little attention paid to their financial interests and with few checks and balances put on their work.
“What the pandemic is doing is buffing the reputation of organisations like Gates and Wellcome and the drug companies, when I don’t think they really deserve that buffing up,” says Joel Lexchin, professor emeritus of York University’s school of health policy and management in Toronto. “I think they’re acting the way they always have, which is, from the drug companies’ point of view, looking after their own financial interests, and from the point of view of the foundations is pursuing their own privately developed objectives without being responsible to anybody but their own boards of directors.”
Conflict of interest?
Mohga Kamal-Yanni, a policy adviser to UNAIDS and other organisations who recently co-wrote a paper citing problems with the Gates Foundation’s influence in the pandemic, says that Wellcome’s investments raise critical questions around transparency and accountability.5
“In covid, these two words have such a huge meaning because we need to know that decisions are being made based on evidence and science,” she tells The BMJ. “Do we know which companies they are talking to? How they make the decisions about funding a particular company—or this product or that one?”
The Wellcome Trust disputes that its investments compromise—or conflict with—its independence. “We are not aware of any situation in our relations with . . . the ACT Accelerator in which a conflict has arisen as a result of our investment portfolio, or in which it would have been necessary for Wellcome representatives to recuse themselves,” a spokesperson said, declining to comment on its investments in Novartis or Roche. “We would never make decisions or advise others about the pandemic response for a reason other than public health.”
Wellcome’s supporters describe the deep well of biomedical expertise the charity brings to the pandemic, prominently from its director, Jeremy Farrar, a famed infectious disease researcher who is credited with playing leading roles in previous outbreaks of Ebola and avian influenza.6,7
Kenny Baillie, a research group leader in the department of genetics and genomics at the University of Edinburgh who has received research funding from Wellcome, says that the charity also deserves credit as a “beacon of probity and good governance.”
He explains, “I certainly can speak to my personal experience interacting with the science side, and there’s been no attempt to influence me or any other researcher I know from doing the best science to benefit humanity.” Yet it is still not clear what governance structures are in place to guarantee that Wellcome’s vast endowment does not influence its agenda setting role through WHO or its other work in the pandemic.
Unitaid, which co-leads the WHO ACT Accelerator project, says that it has a “clear mutual understanding” with Wellcome “that relevant institutional interests will be transparently disclosed.” But, Unitaid told The BMJ last December, “We have not received any declaration of conflict of interest.”
Marc Rodwin, professor of law at Suffolk University in Boston, Massachusetts, says that institutions with financial conflicts of interest can still make valuable contributions to the pandemic response but should not be in a position of influence or decision making.
“I’d go back further than just saying they should recuse themselves from particular decisions. Why are they being chosen in the first place to be in these positions [of authority]?” he asks. “I like the concept of epidemiological risk factor here—it’s just introducing a level of risk that is unnecessary. When there’s a lot of money going around, you don’t want to have those kinds of financial conflicts that can sway those decisions.”
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For almost seven months, Palestine solidarity activists in Canada have been engaged in a struggle to hold their national broadcaster, the CBC, to account. On August 18, 2020, CBC’s current affairs program “The Current” carried an interview with Joe Sacco where the host used the word Palestine. This was deleted in the later online version and CBC apologized for Sacco’s language the next day. Following multiple complaints from listeners, it was learnt that CBC’s official language guide promoted this kind of anti-Palestinian bias.
The issue then went to CBC’s Ombudsman who has finally released his review of the case. His lengthy report concluded “that while The Current did not violate journalistic standards, producers made a poor decision in issuing an apology. Even though the original program was at odds with CBC’s usual practice, it would have been better to leave it as is.”
Canada Palestine Association, whose chair was listed as the complainant by the Ombudsman, issued a statement unpacking the review. They noted that:
“The Ombudsman posed 4 questions. Did CBC violate its own journalistic standards. He answered No. Is CBC’s language guide on Palestine reasonable? Yes, it is. Did the on-air apology violate CBC’s standards? No.
But then question number 4: Was the apology reasonable in this instance? The answer was No, despite the CBC staff adhering to the supposedly ‘reasonable’ language guide.
It might appear positive that the Ombudsman conceded that ‘the decision to excise the word Palestine from future editions, and the decision to make the apology, were both unwise.’ But his conclusion is tainted by the fact that this incident is presented as merely an aberration, against a background of otherwise sound CBC policy on language regarding Palestine. As such, this can only be regarded as mere window-dressing.“
Mondoweiss has covered the case extensively. From the original article by David Kattenburg, to the letter campaign by Just Peace Advocates, to the CodePink statement: all of these were documented and all of them contributed to bringing pressure on CBC. Even this limited victory would not have been possible without such sweeping pushback that shamed CBC management. CPA also highlighted this and stated:
“Perhaps the negative and broad backlash generated by this whole controversy was the main reason for the conclusion that the apology was ‘a poor decision.’ Frankly, CBC looked extremely foolish when news of this controversy broke; the more senior management tried to defend it, the more ridiculous they appeared. Even the guest on the show, Joe Sacco, questioned the apology and noted: ‘To whom, exactly, was the CBC apologizing for using the word ‘Palestine’?“
The role of Ombudsman in media outlets like CBC is something that we need to understand more fully. Are they basically gate-keepers and PR front people for their organizations or are they genuine independent arbiters? The result of this case would lead us to conclude the former is true.
The CPA statement questioned if there is an “in-house hasbara unit” at CBC, given the extreme tone of the relevant language clause on Palestine. One section is particularly egregious:
“So do not refer to Palestine or show a map with Palestine as a country. Use the term ‘pro-Palestinian’ instead of ‘pro-Palestine’ when referring in generic ways to Palestinian supporters.”
The statement also pointed out that “this whole incident simply highlighted how fundamentally flawed CBC’s language guide is, something the Ombudsman refused to acknowledge; in fact, it was the logical extension and outcome of the dictates in the language guide.”
In my last article in Mondoweiss on this CBC debacle, I speculated whether this investigation would produce any genuine change in CBC’s biased policies. I said, “We hope this will not be a case of the mountain labored and brought forth a mouse, as happened with a previous complaintfiled about bias in coverage at CBC.” Regretfully, that is exactly what happened – it produced a mouse.
The issue of whether CBC censors Palestine (or the word Palestine) seemed to be a touchy subject for the Ombudsman, who was insistent that such censorship does not exist. CPA’s response concluded with the following:
“The Ombudsman is adamant that there is no censorship of Palestine at CBC, dismissing such ‘rhetoric’ as ‘simply untrue.’ But what are listeners to understand from a policy that insists staff must not refer to Palestine, must not show a map with Palestine as a country, and must not even use the term pro-Palestine in a generic way? To censor is defined by Merriam-Webster as to ‘suppress or delete as objectionable’; this is exactly what CBC is doing in their language guide.
We know that other listeners have been told several times that CBC guidelines are always being revisited, but to no avail. As the complainant referenced in the Ombudsman’s report, we call on CBC to immediately review its language guide on Palestine and amend it to reflect not only international reality but also to show a commitment to impartiality and follow its declared mission to ‘seek out the truth.’ Their policy as it stands now is both offensive and censorship; its denial of the existence of Palestine as a country, a nation, a people, and a culture with thousands of years of history amounts to institutional and systemic anti-Palestinian racism.
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Featured image: LOGO FOR THE CBC SHOW THE CURRENT (IMAGE: FACEBOOK)
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A video of armed Israeli soldiers arresting a group of five Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank has triggered widespread condemnation from activists and human rights groups, who viewed the incident as “extremely aggressive”.
The video, filmed by a field researcher with Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, was recorded in the Masafer Yatta area of the southern Hebron hills, which is home to dozens of clusters of Palestinian villages and enclaves, as well as several illegal Israeli settlements and outposts.
“I got a call in the early afternoon saying that there were settlers chasing a group of young Palestinian boys near the at-Tuwani village, and that I should go there as fast as I could,” Nasr Nawajaa, a local activist and B’Tselem field researcher told Middle East Eye.
“When I arrived, there were dozens of armed and masked Israeli soldiers pulling the children towards a group of military Jeeps. And I immediately picked up my camera and started filming,” Nawajaa said.
In the video filmed by Nawajaa and published by B’Tselem, dozens of Israeli soldiers in combat gear can be seen grabbing the terrified children and pushing them towards the military vehicles.
Several Palestinian bystanders can be seen attempting to intervene, but to no avail. At one point, an older Palestinian boy can be seen trying to rescue one of the minors, at which point he is grabbed by another soldier and dragged along with the group.
“The children were screaming and crying, pleading with the soldiers to call their parents and wait until their family arrived before taking them away,” Nawajaa told MEE.
He said the soldiers were “extremely aggressive” with the children, who were between eight and 13 years of age.
“The soldiers were treating the children like some hardened criminals, as if they had committed some huge crime,” Nawajaa said, adding that the soldiers “took the children by force.”
According to Nawajaa, the children were detained and taken to the nearby Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba, where they were held inside the military vehicles and interrogated for several hours, before being released to their families in the evening.
“These are just harmless children, what kind of threat could they possibly pose to justify this treatment?” Nawajaa asked.
‘They were just picking vegetables’
The circumstances of the boys’ arrest has drawn widespread condemnation, as it came to light that the children were out picking wild vegetables and herbs when they were detained.
According to Nawajaa, the boys were picking a wild vegetable called “akoub”, which blooms in the spring time in Palestine.
“Many of the families in Masafer Yatta live in poor socio-economic conditions,” Nawajaa told MEE. “‘Akoub can be sold at a good price in the Palestinian market, so many families and their children go out to pick the wild vegetable during this time of year in order to make some money to support themselves.”
Nawajaa noted that while Israel had previously outlawed the picking of akoub, that law was repealed last year, making it legal to pick 5kgs per person in the area where the boys were.
“There was no legal justification for their arrest,” Nawajaa said.
Today, five Palestinian children were arrested by the Israeli military while picking flowers.
This is the reality and trauma Palestinian children face while living under Israel’s brutal apartheid.
The five boys, who are all cousins, were picking and collecting the akoub on the outskirts of Havat Maon, an Israeli settlement south of Hebron. Settlers from Havat Maon then allegedly started harassing and chasing the boys out of the area.
“This is something the settlers do when they see Palestinians close to the settlement,” Mohammad Abu Hmeid, the father of two of the boys told MEE. “Sometimes they even fire live ammunition at the Palestinian shepherds grazing sheep in the area if they get too close to the settlement.”
“I’m just relieved that the boys managed to escape the settlers. God knows what would have happened to them if they didn’t,” the father said.
Abu Hmeid said his sons Jaber, 13, and Saqer, 10, and their three cousins, fled from settlers. They abandoned their buckets, barrels, and akoub, leaving it behind and heading towards their grandfather’s house near at-Tuwani.
It was there that the group of armed Israeli soldiers caught up with the boys, and began arresting them.
According to Abu Hmeid’s testimony, which echoed that of Nawajaa’s, it was the settlers who allegedly called the Israeli soldiers and ordered them to arrest the boys.
“The settlers accused the boys of trying to steal some of their birds, and destroying some of their property,” Abu Hmeid said, adding that the settlers were “making up stories just to get the boys arrested and intimidate them.”
“All they were doing was picking akoub, and that is not a crime,” Abu Hmeid said, adding that the soldiers confiscated the boys’ buckets and barrels, and their plant harvest. “They didn’t pose a threat to anyone. They weren’t doing anything wrong.”
Interrogation, threats and coercion
In the occupied West Bank, Palestinians live under Israeli military law, and when arrested they are charged and tried in military courts that have a conviction rate of over 99 percent against Palestinians.
In comparison, Israeli settlers living in the West Bank in contravention of international law are subject to Israeli civilian law, and never come into contact with the military courts.
While Israeli military and civilian law stipulates the minimum age of criminal responsibility as 12 years old, rights group Defence for Children International – Palestine (DCIP) says that Israeli forces routinely detain Palestinian children younger than this.
According to the group, Israel detains around 700 Palestinian children a year. There are currently 168 child “security” detainees in Israeli prison, and as of 2020, there were 27 children being held in solitary confinement.
DCIP has highlighted that Israel ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which stipulates that children “should only be deprived of their liberty as a measure of last resort, must not be unlawfully or arbitrarily detained, and must not be subjected to torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
According to DCIP, Israel regularly and arbitrarily detains Palestinian children, subjects them to long periods of interrogation without the presence of a parent, legal guardian, or lawyer. Children are often coerced into signing false confessions, in documents written in Hebrew, a language most Palestinian children do not understand.
“From the moment of arrest, Palestinian children encounter ill-treatment and torture at the hands of Israeli forces. Three out of four experience physical violence during arrest or interrogation,” DCIP said.
The process of arrest and detention described by DCIP is similar to what happened to the five boys in the Hebron hills, according to testimony from both Nawajaa and Abu Hmeid, who claim the boys were threatened by the Israeli soldiers during their interrogation in an attempt to coerce them into confessing to a crime they did not commit.
“When the boys were finally released, they were in complete shock,” Abu Hmeid said. “It was only after we took them home and they calmed down a bit that they started to tell us what happened.”
“My sons told us that the soldiers kept the five of them crammed up in the Jeep for the whole time they were detained, and continued to threaten and harass them,” Abu Hmeid said.
At one point, the soldiers allegedly told the boys that their families had been arrested, and that if they didn’t confess to trying to steal from the settlers or to damaging their property, the soldiers would “beat them up.”
“They did everything they could to scare the boys and get them to confess,” Abu Hmeid said, “but the boys kept insisting that they were innocent and didn’t do anything.”
He added that the two oldest boys in the group, including his son Jaber, were summoned for another interrogation with Israeli forces on Sunday.
Abu Hmeid told MEE that while none of the boys were physically tortured during the interrogation, the mental toll that the ordeal has had on the children “has done more than enough damage.”
“They are so scared and terrified, and I don’t know what to do to comfort them,” Abu Hmeid said. “As a Palestinian father, this is one of your worst nightmares. With the Israeli occupation, we can’t even protect our own children.”
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Featured image: B’Tselem says Israeli forces arrested five Palestinian children in the West Bank on Wednesday (B’Tselem/Twitter)
March 12th, 2021 by Center For Biological Diversity
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Community and environmental groups filed a lawsuit Wednesday challenging Kern County’s adoption of an ordinance that would fast-track permitting for oil and gas projects and eliminate future environmental reviews and public participation.
The ordinance adopted Monday by the Kern County Board of Supervisors approved a single environmental impact report to serve as an environmental review for more than 40,000 new oil and gas projects over the coming decades.
“This ordinance is a disaster for public health in Kern County, particularly for low-income communities and Black, Indigenous, Latinx and other communities of color that live next to oil wells and are already harmed daily by fossil fuel pollution,” said Chelsea Tu, senior attorney at the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment, which represents the Committee for a Better Arvin, Committee for a Better Shafter, and Comité Progreso de Lamont in the lawsuit. “Kern communities are bringing this lawsuit in order to protect their families because the county has failed to do so.”
This week’s adoption comes a year after a California appeals court struck down a nearly identical ordinance, which the oil industry spent more than $10 million to develop. The court found that Kern County failed to adequately disclose or mitigate significant health and environmental harms from anticipated projects.
The county’s new environmental impact report has few meaningful changes. It still fails to require adequate environmental review and mitigation and doesn’t protect communities from toxic pollution generated by oil and gas extraction.
“We’re suing to protect community members from this blatant disregard of the need for a thorough and honest environmental review,” said Ann Alexander, a senior attorney at Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). “Kern County deserves better than a rubberstamped fossil fuel nightmare for years to come.”
Kern County accounts for 80% of all oil and gas production in California and has some of the most polluted air in the country. Numerous scientific studies show a direct link between oil and gas pollution and a wide range of serious health harms, including asthma, cancer, high-risk pregnancies and preterm births. A recent Harvard study found 34,000 premature deaths in California in a single year could be attributed to fossil fuel emissions.
“Kern County’s oil production is some of the dirtiest and most damaging in the world for people’s health and our climate,” said Hollin Kretzmann, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute. “Adding tens of thousands of wells will trigger more frequent and severe droughts, heatwaves and wildfires and cause more illness and death. Kern County’s fast-track plan is an appalling violation of our state’s bedrock environmental protection and community right-to-know law.”
Low-income communities and Black, Indigenous, Latinx and other communities of color already suffer pollution-related exposure and serious health problems at disproportionate levels, in Kern County and across the nation. Of the Californians who live within a mile of oil and gas wells and also live within areas identified by CalEPA as most burdened by environmental pollution in general, nearly 92% are people of color.
“County leaders have turned their back on Kern, and we’re filing this lawsuit to stand up for our communities, particularly for low-income communities and communities of color who’ve been disproportionally impacted by air pollution for years,” said Elly Benson, a senior attorney at the Sierra Club. “It’s past time to focus on putting communities and climate first to build a safe, healthy future for Kern residents for generations to come.”
The lawsuit was filed in Kern County Superior Court by Committee for a Better Arvin, Committee for a Better Shafter, Comité Progreso de Lamont, NRDC, Sierra Club and the Center.
Earthjustice and Center on Race, Poverty, and the Environment are providing legal representation alongside NRDC and the Center.
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The Prime Minister and Cabinet have put off on receiving the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccination after reports emerged from Europe of blood clots forming among some recipients and a pending review by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) expected to take one to two weeks.
Adviser to the Center for COVID-19 Situation Administration (CCSA), Honorary Professor Dr. Piyasakol Sakolsatayathorn indicated today that Denmark, Australia and several countries in Europe, which have administered a combined 1 million plus doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine have reported the discovery of a side effect in which blood clots form and lead to undesired symptoms. The vaccination has been halted in those countries and prompted Thai physicians to consider the situation.
Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Siriraj Hospital Dr. Prasit Wattanapa elaborated that AstraZeneca has distributed 1 million doses of ABV 5300 to 17 countries in the European Union, which after being administered, were tied to the death of one person in Denmark and several cases of blood clots. He clarified that the outcomes have yet to be directly attributed to the vaccine but safety protocols mandate that it must be suspended for two weeks pending an investigation.
Iceland and Norway have announced similar suspensions of vaccinations. The EMA has however, declared it has not officially called for a halt on use of the vaccine and supported its safety.
Similar pauses have been announced in Austria, Estonia, Lithuania, Luxembourg and Latvia. All of the countries received the ABV 5300 vaccine, which Thailand has not.
Head of the Center of Excellence in Clinical Virology at the Faculty of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University Dr. Yong Phupaworawan explained today that with a mass vaccination, the chance of discovering an unwanted side effect is possible and should be investigated to see if there are any ties between the vaccination and the symptoms. He confirmed the probe is warranted, as is the halt in the vaccination program, while noting that venous thrombosis is three times more likely in people of African and European descent than in Asians.
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Dr. Tal Zaks, the chief medical officer at Moderna Inc., explained in a 2017 TED talk how the company’s mRNA vaccine was designed to work.
Over the last 30 years, he said, “we’ve been living this phenomenal digital scientific revolution, and I’m here today to tell you, that we are actually hacking the software of life, and that it’s changing the way we think about prevention and treatment of disease.”
He went on to explain [see video below] that the human body is made up of organs and organs are made up of cells.
“In every cell there’s this thing called messenger RNA or mRNA for short, that transmits the critical information from the DNA in our genes to the protein, which is really the stuff we’re all made out of. This is the critical information that determines what the cell will do. So we think about it as an operating system.
“So if you could change that, if you could introduce a line of code, or change a line of code, it turns out, that has profound implications for everything, from the flu to cancer.”
I reported on Feb. 4 that Moderna describes its new vaccine as “a computer operating system” but I was not aware at that time that Zaks had spoken three years ago about this, totally debunking the establishment media’s lie that mRNA vaccines don’t alter your genetic code.
He could not be more clear when he said “We are actually hacking the software of life.”
Zaks stressed that in 2017 his company was working on a vaccine that would not act like any previous vaccine ever created.
“Imagine if instead of giving [the patient] the protein of a virus, we gave them the instructions on how to make the protein, how the body can make its own vaccine,” he said.
Zaks said it took decades to sequence the human genome, which was accomplished in 2003, “And now we can do it in a week.”
He proceeded to reveal, in 2017, his company’s plans to make individual cancer vaccines, tailored to the needs of individual cancer patients, “because every cancer is different.”
Interestingly, one of the most potentially catastrophic side effects of the mRNA vaccine is its interaction with cancer cells. According to a study at New York City-based Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, the mRNA has a tendency to inactivate tumor-suppressing proteins, meaning it can promote the growth of cancer cells.
Both the Moderna and Pfizer injections are experimental mRNA vaccines. The FDA has only granted these injections Emergency Use Authorization [EUA] and they will remain in trials through 2023, yet the government, media and corporations are all promoting them as though they are guaranteed safe.
This systemic deception will, in my opinion, end up being judged in the rear-view mirror of history as one of the most reckless acts of medical treachery ever committed against the human race.
If this so-called vaccine does cause more people to get cancer, think of the possibilities from a purely business point of view.
Based on the predictions of Dr. Zaks, who oversaw the creation of the vaccine now being given to millions of people worldwide, the same Big Pharma companies that could potentially give people cancer with one vaccine could step forward later with another vaccine offering the cure for cancer. If you are the CEO of a mega pharmaceutical who answers to profit-driven Wall Street shareholders, that’s a brilliant strategy!
But is it ethical from a medical point of view? That’s a question nobody is asking.
As I listen to Dr. Zaks lay out the achievements of his company in creating the mRNA vaccine, I cannot help but think of how incredibly arrogant it sounds. That scientists think they can rewrite the genetic code [his words not mine for all you out there who still don’t believe these mRNA vaccines change the genetic code just because some ‘fact checker’ says they don’t], believing they can improve on a person’s God-given genetic makeup is entering dangerous territory. Who’s to say they won’t correct one problem and create something far worse?
Zaks wrapped up his 2017 speech with the following words.
“If you think about what it is we’re trying to do. We’ve taken information and our understanding of that information and how that information is transmitted in a cell, and we’ve taken our understanding of medicine and how to make drugs, and we’re fusing the two. We think of it as information therapy.”
Information therapy. Just like a computer software code.
These scientists truly believe that the human body is nothing more than a machine that can be hacked into and reordered according to some programmer’s instructions.
The same ground-breaking nature of this research that excites some, is what horrifies others.
A person’s genetic makeup is, as Dr. Zak said, “the software of life.”
If this is true, then who should be the ultimate authority over each human being’s genetic software code? If we truly live in a free society, wouldn’t it stand to reason that we would want to have an energetic debate over how to answer that question? Shouldn’t it be the number-one issue being debated in Congress and the media? Instead, nobody is allowed to even ask these questions without being threatened, censored, rebuked, deplatformed. Members of the corporate media who dare broach the question get fired.
Contrary to what some scientists believe, we are not machines. We are human beings with bodies, souls and free wills. Anyone who tries to mandate the acceptance of an experimental gene-altering treatment is going against the international Nuremberg Codes, which require informed consent of any experimental treatment.
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Leo Hohmann is an independent author and journalist whose work is 100 percent reader supported.
March 11, 2020 will stand out in the history of mankind. It’s the Day of the Lockdown applied Worldwide.
Following the “official” declaration of the corona Pandemic by the Director General of the WHO, instructions were transmitted to 193 member states on the United Nations.
The global lockdown started on March 11, 2020. And simultaneously the lives of millions of people in all major regions of the World were in jeopardy.
The lockdown required the closing down of national economies as a means to resolving a public health crisis.
We are at the crossroads of one of the most serious crises in World history.
We are living history, yet our understanding of the sequence of events since the outset of this crisis in January 2020 has been blurred.
Worldwide, people were misled both by their governments and the media as to the causes and devastating consequences of the Covid-19 “pandemic”.
The unspoken truth is that the novel coronavirus provided a pretext and a justification to powerful financial interests and corrupt politicians to precipitate the entire World into a spiral of mass unemployment, bankruptcy, extreme poverty and despair.
In one fell swoop, the lives of Planet Earth’s 7.8 billion people with its diverse cultures, histories and social identities are affected.
All of whom share common values with families, children and friends, living in diverse communities in the planet’s towns, villages and cities.
All of whom cherish humanity and the “value of life” including civil rights, social justice, the right to employment, education, health, culture, music, artistic creation.
And on March 11, 2020, those rights of “All Humanity” were denied. The lockdown requiring the closing down of the global economy was presented to the broader public, nationally and internationally, as a means to “combating the Virus”.
If the public had been informed that Covid-19 is “similar to seasonal Influenza”, the fear campaign would have fallen flat…
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The Pandemic was officially launched by the WHO on March 11, 2020 leading to the Lockdown and closure of the national economies of 190 (out of 193) countries, member states of the United Nations. The instructions came from above, from Wall Street, the World Economic Forum (WEF), the billionaire foundations.
An unelected “public-private partnership” under the auspices of the World Economic Forum (WEF), had come to the rescue of Planet Earth’s 7.8 billion people. The closure of the global economy was presented as a means to “killing the virus”.
Destabilizing the economy of Planet Earth cannot constitute a “solution” to combating the virus. But that was the imposed “solution” which they want us to believe in.
And that is what they are doing.
It’s the destruction of people’s lives. It is the destabilization of civil society.
The Lies were sustained by a massive media disinformation campaign. 24/7, Incessant and Repetitive “Covid alerts” for the last eleven months.
… It is a process of social engineering.
What they want is to hike up the numbers so as to justify the Lockdown.
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People are frightened and puzzled. “Why would they do this?”
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Empty schools, Empty airports, bankrupt grocery stores. The entire urban services economy is in crisis. Shops, bars and restaurants are driven into bankruptcy. International travel and holidays are suspended.
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Video
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At the same time, starting in March 2020, the Worldwide closure of national economies was accompanied by “a Cultural Lockdown” affectingmusic and artistic events: Empty museums, no more operas, no more symphonies, concert halls are closed down Worldwide.
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So-called digital stay home platforms were put forth.
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In the US, museums announced closure on March 12, starting with the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. In France, the Louvre, Versailles and the Eiffel Tower were closed down on March 13th.
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Free Speech is Being Suppressed
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Analysis of what is happening to people Worldwide is the object of routine censorship.
The lockdown narrative is supported by media disinformation, online censorship, social engineering and the fear campaign.
“What are these times when a conversation about trees is almost a crime” said Bertolt Brecht (three months before the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939)
In colleges and universities, the teaching staff is pressured to conform and endorse the official covid narrative. Questioning the legitimacy of the lockdown in online “classrooms” could lead to dismissal.
Several medical doctors who oppose the COVID consensus or the vaccine have been arrested.
Timeline
As we recall, the March 11, 2020 pandemic was preceded by a WHO Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) on January 30th, 2020 at a time when there were there were only 86 cases outside China out of a total population of 6.4 billion.
On the following day, President Trump declared a freeze in air travel with China, which paved the way for the outright freeze of international air transport, not to mention the collapse of the tourist industry.
What Happened in Early March 2020. What Was the Justification for The Lockdown?
The pandemic was almost over in China. And outside China, the number of positive cases was ridiculously low.
In China, in early March the total number of “confirmed infected cases” was 30,448 out of a population of 1.4 billion people.
Outside China (March 5, 2020) confirmed by theWHO Director General Tedros there were 2055 cases reported in 33 countries. Around 80% of those cases were from just three countries (South Korea, Iran, Italy).
March 7, 2020: The number of “confirmed cases” (infected and recovered) in the US was of the order of 430, rising to about 600 (March 8).
Compare that to the figures pertaining to the Influenza B Virus: The CDC estimated for 2019-2020 “at least 15 million virus flu illnesses… 140,000 hospitalizations and 8,200 deaths. (The Hill)
March 11, 2020: The Historic Covid-19 Lockdown
On March 11, The number of confirmed cases outside China (6.4 billion population) was of the order of 44279 and 1440 deaths (figures recorded by the WHO for March 11, (on March 12) (see table right).
In the US, recorded on March 11, 2020, there were according to John Hopkins: 1,335 “cases” and 29 deaths (“presumptive” plus PCR confirmed)
Immediately following the March 11, 2020 WHO announcement, the fear campaign went into high gear.
Stock markets crashed worldwide. On the following morning, the Dow (DJIA) plummeted by 9.99% (A decline of 2,352.60 to close at 21,200.62) Black Thursday, March 12, 2020 was “the Dow’s worst day” since 1987.Financial fraud was the trigger. A massive transfer of financial wealth had taken place in favor of America’s billionaires.
“Stay at Home” confinement instructions were transmitted to 193 member states of the United Nations.
Was this far-reaching decision justified as a means to combating the Virus?
The decision was based on a flawed lockdown model designed by Imperial College London.
Unprecedented in history, applied almost simultaneously in a large number of countries, entire sectors of the World economy were destabilized. Small and medium sized enterprises were driven into bankruptcy. Unemployment and poverty are rampant.
In several developing countries, famines have erupted. The social impacts of these measures are devastating. The health impacts (mortality, morbidity) of these measures including the destabilization of the system of national health care (in numerous countries) far surpass those attributed to Covid-19.
Sounds absurd. Closing down the real economy of Planet Earth is not the “solution” but rather the “cause” of a process of Worldwide destabilization and impoverishment, which in turn has a direct impact on patterns of morbidity and mortality. In this regard, what must be addressed is the causal relationship between economic variables (i.e purchasing power) and the state of health of the population.
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The Lockdown and the Process of Engineered Bankruptcy
The lockdown instructions transmitted to national governments have been conducive to the destabilization of “the national economic landscape”, which consists ofan entire economic and social structure. The “stay at home” lockdown prevents people from going to work.
From one day to the next, it creates mass unemployment (Worldwide). In turn, the lockdown is coupled with the closure of entire sectors of the national economy.
In turn, several hundred million workers Worldwide lose their jobs and their earnings. While national governments have set up various “social safety nets” for the unemployed, the payment of wages and salaries by the employer is disrupted which in turn leads to a dramatic collapse of purchasing power.
The Road Ahead
More than 7 billion people Worldwide are directly or indirectly affected by the corona crisis.
What is required is the development of a broad based grassroots network which confronts both the architects of this crisis as well as the governments involved in carrying out the lockdown and closure of economic activity as a means to combating “V the Virus”.
The legitimacy of politicians and their powerful corporate sponsors must be questioned, including the police state measures adopted to enforce the various policies. (Face masks, social distancing, public gatherings, etc. )
This network would be established (nationally and internationally) at all levels of society, in towns and villages, work places, parishes. Trade unions, farmers organizations, professional associations, business associations, student unions, veterans associations, church groups would be called upon to integrate this movement.
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The above text is in part based on the author’s E-Book which consists of 10 chapters.
The E-Book provides detailed analysis of the public health crisis as well as the underlying social and economic impacts.
We note that a wide range of side effects is being reported following vaccination of previously healthy younger individuals with the gene-based COVID-19 vaccines. Moreover, there have been numerous media reports from around the world of care homes being struck by COVID-19 within days of vaccination of residents.
Using what have already become clichéd industry buzzwords like “transparency,” “trust,” and even “privacy,” IBM’s Digital Health Pass marketing describes the mass tracking app as a “smart way to return to society” that allows people to “return to the activities and things they love.”
Airlines in the US are already in the process of leveraging apps and smartphones to allow travelers to offer proof that they have been vaccinated, or recently tested negative for COVID-19, and they’re not alone.
The Danish Health Authority on Thursday halted the use of the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine for 14 days. It follows reports of “serious cases of blood clots among vaccinated people,” a statement read.
The Marshall Islands–and Bikini specifically–ended up the site of most of the tests of US hydrogen bombs, weapons up to a thousand times more powerful than atomic bombs used in attacks on Japan in 1945.
Unimaginable” levels of radiation still prevail. In the words of Dr. Helen Caldicott, “one millionth of a gram of plutonium, if inhaled can cause cancer”. If not duly addressed, the continued dumping of highly radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean constitutes a potential trigger to a process of global radioactive contamination.
An international NGO devoted to halting the proliferation of nuclear weapons recently released satellite imagery showing that Israel, for the first time in decades, was engaged in new construction at its Dimona nuclear site.
If that ancient place produced the world’s earliest known written novel, the first inscribed legal code, those items don’t fit the allotted page entry. In the imagination of Americans, the name Iraq is not really a country or a desert, not a democracy or a multi-ethnic nation, not a theater-of-war or a cemetery of past patriots.
Since Jovenel Moïse extended his mandate extra-constitutionally on February 7 there has been a wave of criticism against US and Canadian policy in Haiti. The country’s heterogenous opposition have vociferously condemned the foreign powers.
The antecedents for the Montgomery Bus Boycott can be traced back as far as July 1854, when African American teacher and musician, Elizabeth Jennings, attempted to board a horse-driven streetcar in New York City. Jennings, only 24 at the time, was told she could not ride on the car because she was Black.
Emer Cooke, Executive Director, European Medicines Agency, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
28 February 2021
Dear Sirs/Mesdames,
FOR THE URGENT PERSONAL ATTENTION OF: EMER COOKE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE EUROPEAN MEDICINES AGENCY
As physicians and scientists, we are supportive in principle of the use of new medical interventions which are appropriately developed and deployed, having obtained informed consent from the patient. This stance encompasses vaccines in the same way as therapeutics.
We note that a wide range of side effects is being reported following vaccination of previously healthy younger individuals with the gene-based COVID-19 vaccines. Moreover, there have been numerous media reports from around the world of care homes being struck by COVID-19 within days of vaccination of residents. While we recognise that these occurrences might, every one of them, have been unfortunate coincidences, we are concerned that there has been and there continues to be inadequate scrutiny of the possible causes of illness or death under these circumstances, and especially so in the absence of post-mortems examinations.
In particular, we question whether cardinal issues regarding the safety of the vaccines were adequately addressed prior to their approval by the European Medicines Agency (EMA).
As a matter of great urgency, we herewith request that the EMA provide us with responses to the following issues:
1. Following intramuscular injection, it must be expected that the gene-based vaccines will reach the bloodstream and disseminate throughout the body [1]. We request evidence that this possibility was excluded in pre-clinical animal models with all three vaccines prior to their approval for use in humans by the EMA.
2. If such evidence is not available, it must be expected that the vaccines will remain entrapped in the circulation and be taken up by endothelial cells. There is reason to assume that this will happen particularly at sites of slow blood flow, i.e. in small vessels and capillaries [2]. We request evidence that this probability was excluded in pre-clinical animal models with all three vaccines prior to their approval for use in humans by the EMA.
3. If such evidence is not available, it must be expected that during expression of the vaccines’ nucleic acids, peptides derived from the spike protein will be presented via the MHC I — pathway at the luminal surface of the cells. Many healthy individuals have CD8-lymphocytes that recognize such peptides, which may be due to prior COVID infection, but also to cross-reactions with other types of Coronavirus [3; 4] [5]. We must assume that these lymphocytes will mount an attack on the respective cells. We request evidence that this probability was excluded in pre-clinical animal models with all three vaccines prior to their approval for use in humans by the EMA.
4. If such evidence is not available, it must be expected that endothelial damage with subsequent triggering of blood coagulation via platelet activation will ensue at countless sites throughout the body. We request evidence that this probability was excluded in pre-clinical animal models with all three vaccines prior to their approval for use in humans by the EMA.
5. If such evidence is not available, it must be expected that this will lead to a drop in platelet counts, appearance of D-dimers in the blood, and to myriad ischaemic lesions throughout the body including in the brain, spinal cord and heart. Bleeding disorders might occur in the wake of this novel type of DIC-syndrome including, amongst other possibilities, profuse bleedings and haemorrhagic stroke. We request evidence that all these possibilities were excluded in pre-clinical animal models with all three vaccines prior to their approval for use in humans by the EMA.
6. The SARS-CoV-2 spike protein binds to the ACE2 receptor on platelets, which results in their activation [6]. Thrombocytopenia has been reported in severe cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection [7]. Thrombocytopenia has also been reported in vaccinated individuals [8]. We request evidence that the potential danger of platelet activation that would also lead to disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) was excluded with all three vaccines prior to their approval for use in humans by the EMA.
7. The sweeping across the globe of SARS-CoV-2 created a pandemic of illness associated with many deaths. However, by the time of consideration for approval of the vaccines, the health systems of most countries were no longer under imminent threat of being overwhelmed because a growing proportion of the world had already been infected and the worst of the pandemic had already abated. Consequently, we demand conclusive evidence that an actual emergency existed at the time of the EMA granting Conditional Marketing Authorisation to the manufacturers of all three vaccines, to justify their approval for use in humans by the EMA, purportedly because of such an emergency.
Should all such evidence not be available, we demand that approval for use of the gene-based vaccines be withdrawn until all the above issues have been properly addressed by the exercise of due diligence by the EMA.
There are serious concerns, including but not confined to those outlined above, that the approval of the COVID-19 vaccines by the EMA was premature and reckless, and that the administration of the vaccines constituted and still does constitute “human experimentation”, which was and still is in violation of the Nuremberg Code.
In view of the urgency of the situation, we request that you reply to this email within seven days and address all our concerns substantively. Should you choose not to comply with this reasonable request, we will make this letter public.
This email is copied to:
Charles Michel, President of the Council of Europe
Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission.
Doctors and scientists can sign the open letter by emailing their name, qualifications, areas of expertise, country and any affiliations they would like to cite, to [email protected] faithfully,
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Professsor Sucharit Bhakdi MD, Professor Emeritus of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, Former Chair, Institute of Medical Microbiology and Hygiene, Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz (Medical Doctor and Scientist) (Germany and Thailand)
Dr Marco Chiesa MD FRCPsych, Consultant Psychiatrist and Visiting Professor, University College London (Medical Doctor) (United Kingdom and Italy)
Dr C Stephen Frost BSc MBChB Specialist in Diagnostic Radiology, Stockholm, Sweden (Medical Doctor) (United Kingdom and Sweden)
Dr Margareta Griesz-Brisson MD PhD, Consultant Neurologist and Neurophysiologist (studied Medicine in Freiburg, Germany, speciality training for Neurology at New York University, Fellowship in Neurophysiology at Mount Sinai Medical Centre, New York City; PhD in Pharmacology with special interest in chronic low level neurotoxicology and effects of environmental factors on brain health), Medical Director, The London Neurology and Pain Clinic (Medical Doctor and Scientist) (Germany and United Kingdom)
Professor Martin Haditsch MD PhD, Specialist (Austria) in Hygiene and Microbiology, Specialist (Germany) in Microbiology, Virology, Epidemiology/Infectious Diseases, Specialist (Austria) in Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine, Medical Director, TravelMedCenter, Leonding, Austria, Medical Director, Labor Hannover MVZ GmbH (Medical Doctor and Scientist) (Austria and Germany)
Professor Stefan Hockertz, Professor of Toxicology and Pharmacologym, European registered Toxicologist, Specialist in Immunology and Immunotoxicology, CEO tpi consult GmbH. (Scientist) (Germany)
Dr Lissa Johnson, BSc BA(Media) MPsych(Clin) PhD, Clinical Psychologist and Behavioural Psychologist, Expertise in the social psychology of torture, atrocity, collective violence and fear propaganda, Former member Australian Psychological Society Public Interest Advisory Group (Clinical Psychologist and Behavioural Scientist) (Australia)
Professor Ulrike Kämmerer PhD, Associate Professor of Experimental Reproductive Immunology and Tumor Biology at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, University Hospital of Würzburg, Germany, Trained molecular virologist (Diploma, PhD-Thesis) and Immunologist (Habilitation), Remains engaged in active laboratory research (Molecular Biology, Cell Biology (Scientist) (Germany)
Associate Professor Michael Palmer MD, Department of Chemistry (studied Medicine and Medical Microbiology in Germany, has taught Biochemistry since 2001 in present university in Canada; focus on Pharmacology, metabolism, biological membranes, computer programming; experimental research focus on bacterial toxins and antibiotics (Daptomycin); has written a textbook on Biochemical Pharmacology, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada (Medical Doctor and Scientist) (Canada and Germany)
Professor Karina Reiss PhD, Professor of Biochemistry, Christian Albrecht University of Kiel, Expertise in Cell Biology, Biochemistry (Scientist) (Germany)
Professor Andreas Sönnichsen MD, Professor of General Practice and Family Medicine, Department of General Practice and Family Medicine, Center of Public Health, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna (Medical Doctor) (Austria)
Dr Michael Yeadon BSc (Joint Honours in Biochemistry and Toxicology) PhD (Pharmacology), Formerly Vice President & Chief Scientific Officer Allergy & Respiratory, Pfizer Global R&D; Co-founder & CEO, Ziarco Pharma Ltd.; Independent Consultant (Scientist) (United Kingdom)
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References
[1] Hassett, K. J.; Benenato, K. E.; Jacquinet, E.; Lee, A.; Woods, A.; Yuzhakov, O.; Himansu, S.; Deterling, J.; Geilich, B. M.; Ketova, T.; Mihai, C.; Lynn, A.; McFadyen, I.; Moore, M. J.; Senn, J. J.; Stanton, M. G.; Almarsson, Ö.; Ciaramella, G. and Brito, L. A.(2019).Optimization of Lipid Nanoparticles for Intramuscular Administration of mRNA Vaccines, Molecular therapy. Nucleic acids 15 : 1–11.
[2] Chen, Y. Y.; Syed, A. M.; MacMillan, P.; Rocheleau, J. V. and Chan, W. C. W.(2020). Flow Rate Affects Nanoparticle Uptake into Endothelial Cells, Advanced materials 32 : 1906274.
[3] Grifoni, A.; Weiskopf, D.; Ramirez, S. I.; Mateus, J.; Dan, J. M.; Moderbacher, C. R.; Rawlings, S. A.; Sutherland, A.; Premkumar, L.; Jadi, R. S. and et al.(2020). Targets of T Cell Responses to SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus in Humans with COVID-19 Disease and Unexposed Individuals, Cell 181 : 1489–1501.e15.
[4] Nelde, A.; Bilich, T.; Heitmann, J. S.; Maringer, Y.; Salih, H. R.; Roerden, M.; Lübke, M.; Bauer, J.; Rieth, J.; Wacker, M.; Peter, A.; Hörber, S.; Traenkle, B.; Kaiser, P. D.; Rothbauer, U.; Becker, M.; Junker, D.; Krause, G.; Strengert, M.; Schneiderhan-Marra, N.; Templin, M. F.; Joos, T. O.; Kowalewski, D. J.; Stos-Zweifel, V.; Fehr, M.; Rabsteyn, A.; Mirakaj, V.; Karbach, J.; Jäger, E.; Graf, M.; Gruber, L.-C.; Rachfalski, D.; Preuß, B.; Hagelstein, I.; Märklin, M.; Bakchoul, T.; Gouttefangeas, C.; Kohlbacher, O.; Klein, R.; Stevanović, S.; Rammensee, H.-G. and Walz, J. S.(2020). SARS-CoV-2-derived peptides define heterologous and COVID-19-induced T cell recognition, Nature immunology.
[5] Sekine, T.; Perez-Potti, A.; Rivera-Ballesteros, O.; Strålin, K.; Gorin, J.-B.; Olsson, A.; Llewellyn-Lacey, S.; Kamal, H.; Bogdanovic, G.; Muschiol, S. and et al.(2020). Robust T Cell Immunity in Convalescent Individuals with Asymptomatic or Mild COVID-19, Cell 183 : 158–168.e14.
[6] Zhang, S.; Liu, Y.; Wang, X.; Yang, L.; Li, H.; Wang, Y.; Liu, M.; Zhao, X.; Xie, Y.; Yang, Y.; Zhang, S.; Fan, Z.; Dong, J.; Yuan, Z.; Ding, Z.; Zhang, Y. and Hu, L.(2020). SARS-CoV-2 binds platelet ACE2 to enhance thrombosis in COVID-19, Journal of hematology & oncology 13 : 120.
[7] Lippi, G.; Plebani, M. and Henry, B. M.(2020).Thrombocytopenia is associated with severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infections: A meta-analysis, Clin. Chim. Acta 506 : 145–148.
[8] Grady, D. (2021). A Few Covid Vaccine Recipients Developed a Rare Blood Disorder, The New York Times, Feb. 8, 2021.
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Since seasonal flu was renamed covid early last year, the largest-scale, US state-sponsored, war on public health has been ongoing with destructive force.
Casualties are increasing exponentially, the true toll suppressed, the tip of the iceberg alone reported.
What US and UK public health authorities revealed establishment media suppressed — as part of their complicity with dark forces and Pharma, pushing what harms health, not the other way around.
What’s been going on since mass-jabbing for covid began in Europe, then the US, and elsewhere last December, unprecedented harm to public health is just beginning.
No end to it is planned by US-led Western dark forces, intending forever mass-jabbing with booster shots for new annual strains.
The more taken, the greater the harm to growing numbers of people.
Unwittingly playing Russian roulette with their health, they’ve been conned to believe that what doesn’t protect and risks irreparable harm to health is beneficial.
What’s going on with no end of it in prospect is arguably the most diabolical con game in human history — countless millions likely to be irreparably harmed, the body count likely to continue increasing exponentially.
According to Technocracy News on March 9, Moderna’s “top scientist,” Dr. Tal Zaks, said the firm’s mRNA technology in use for covid mass-jabbing is “hacking the software of life.”
He revealed the above on a 2017 talk show, saying that for over the past 30 years:
“(W)e’ve been living this phenomenal digital scientific revolution, and I’m here today to tell you, that we are actually hacking the software of life, and that it’s changing the way we think about prevention and treatment of disease,” adding:
“In every cell there’s this thing called messenger RNA or mRNA for short, that transmits the critical information from the DNA in our genes to the protein, which is really the stuff we’re all made out of.”
“This is the critical information that determines what the cell will do.”
“So we think about it as an operating system” — that irreversibly alters human DNA with unknown, potentially devastating consequences.
“So if you could change that, if you could introduce a line of code, or change a line of code, it turns out, that has profound implications for everything, from the flu to cancer.”
mRNA technology used by the company and Pfizer for covid mass-jabbing is extremely hazardous to human health.
It should be banned, not permitted for use on anyone.
In 2017, Moderna abandoned what it now calls “gene (altering) therapy technology” because tests caused large numbers of adverse effects.
The experimental, inadequately tested, high-risk technology is unapproved by the FDA because of hazards it poses.
The elderly with weakened immune systems are especially vulnerable to harm — that for growing numbers proved lethal.
The technology’s nanoparticle-based delivery system is unapproved because tests showed large numbers of adverse effects.
It contains hazardous polyethylene glycol (PEG) to deliver the DNA-altering drug to human cells.
Moderna and Pfizer use the same technology and nanoparticle delivery system.
Moderna earlier admitted that its lipid nanoparticles (LNP) risks “significant adverse events,” adding:
“No mRNA drug has been approved in this new potential category of medicines, and may never be approved…”
“(T)here can be no assurance that (it) will not have undesired effects.”
Technocracy News cited a Sloan Kettering Cancer Center study, saying mRNA technology may promote growth of cancer cells.
There’s nothing remotely safe and effective of what’s being widely promoted by the greatest-ever/media supported mass deception campaign in modern memory.
Technocracy News stressed that what’s deceptively going on is “one of the most reckless acts of medical treachery ever committed against the human race.”
A Final Comment
None of the above would get out of the starting gate without establishment media complicity.
In the mid-1970s, the US Senate’s Church Committee revealed that the CIA uses domestic and foreign media to aid its diabolical agenda.
They’re bribed and otherwise enlisted to report fake news over the real thing — state-approved propaganda of what’s vital for everyone to know.
The above applies to domestic and geopolitical issues — state-approved talking points over truth-telling journalism.
They’re featured daily in the US and West — in print, on television, even on the silver screen by Hollywood.
We’re repeatedly and consistently lied to by US dark forces and complicit media on virtually all major issues mattering most — notably what affects our health, well-being and fundamental rights.
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Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
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March 2021 began with a mix indiscriminate air strikes by Saudi Arabia, of incredible Houthi activity, and calls for them to halt their attacks, which testifies to their efficacy.
This new round of hostilities is a kind of common occurrence in the Middle East, as the standoff between Iran and the U.S. and its allies appears to be ramping up.
Starting from March 2nd, Ansar Allah, or as they are more colloquially known – the Houthis have been launching steadily increasing waves of suicides drones and missiles on various locations in eastern and southern Saudi Arabia.
It all began with a single Qasef 2K drone being used to target the Abha Airport. On the very next day, to claim that no damage had been done, Riyadh released a video showing that the drone had been intercepted.
There was a short lull in activity, with the intensity of attacks increasing again on March 5th. Several attacks happened all in the same day. Initially, the Houthis targeted the Abha Airport and the King Khalid Airbase with 3 Sammad-3 drones and a Qasef 2k drone. Then, again, Ansar Allah targeted the King Khalid Airbase with 5 Qasef 2k drones.
On the next day the attacks continued, with the Houthis targeting the King Khalid Airbase with a Sammad-3 drone.
On March 7th, the Houthis went even further and targeted the Jeddah Airport with several drones.
Later on the same day, Houthi spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Sari said that a total of 14 suicide drones and six missiles were used in the operation codenamed “Deterrent Balance 6.”
Ten Samad-3 suicide drones and a Zulfiqar ballistic missile were launched at one of Saudi Arabia’s major oil ports, Ras Tanura, on the Persian Gulf.
The Houthis also launched 4 Qasef-2K suicide drones and six Badir artillery rockets at targets in the southern Saudi provinces of ‘Asir and Jizan.
The Saudi-led coalition announced the interception of only two missiles, meaning that the Houthis could consider the operation as a success.
This level of activity from the Houthis has been unseen in recent months, and the group appears to be making progress. In response, Saudi Arabia also began carrying out airstrikes with an intensity that has been absent for a while.
Saudi-led coalition warplanes carried out a series of powerful airstrikes on the Yemeni capital, of Sanaa, and other areas held by the Houthis. Despite the attempt at a Saudi counter-offensive, the Houthis seem undeterred and the attacks are ramping up.
Riyadh, a typical US ally, and an enemy of the Iran-led Axis of Resistance is struggling in the fight, and Houthi raids are likely to increase in the upcoming days and weeks.
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The probe is being carried out by corresponding agencies in other EU-countries as well as the European Medicines Agency (EMA).
The EMA is in charge of the evaluation and supervision of medicinal products in the EU.
“Both we and the Danish Medicines Agency have to respond to reports of possible serious side-effects, both from Denmark and other European countries,” the director of the Danish Health Authority, Soren Brostrom, said in a statement.
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The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) Solidarity Network, made up of allied organizations and individuals, demands the North Atlantic Treaty Organization end its imperialist endeavor in Afghanistan and calls on the United States to abide by the 2020 U.S.-Taliban agreement by exiting Afghanistan by May 1.
The BAP Solidarity Network encourages anti-imperialist, anti-war people and organizations to sign a petition to demand the Biden administration exit Afghanistan. It also has developed a template to help the U.S. public write letters to the editors of news organizations to demand an end to the U.S. intervention.
The BAP Solidarity Network has uncovered through its research that although 2,500 U.S. troops occupy Afghanistan, 11,000 NATO troops representing 36 countries are in the war-riddled country. At a December 16, 2020 meeting, NATO allies agreed to a $1.94 billion 2021 military budget and a $312.5 million 2021 civil budget—all for its Afghanistan operations.
Tod Wolters, commander of the U.S. European Command—one of 11 global command structures the United States uses to dominate every inch of the world—also is NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe. He said, “Everything we do is about generating peace. We compete to win… and if deterrence fails, we’re prepared to respond to aggression, primarily through NATO.” That indicates NATO does not merely advise or train Afghan troops.
Today, the U.S. European Command and NATO, along with the Afghan Forces they finance, are shifting their objectives from the so-called anti-terrorist campaign to “peace building in Afghanistan.”
“The BAP Solidarity Network understands this is only a cover for the real objectives, namely fighting the New Cold War against Russia, China and other countries not aligned with the U.S.-European imperialist consensus,” says Zach Kerner, member of the BAP Solidarity Network.
While increasingly under threat of a global war, the people of Afghanistan continue suffering the immediate brunt of imperialist and capitalist interests in the region. To date, the U.S. empire and its European allies are complicit in the deaths of over 100,000 Afghan adults and children, leaving thousands more injured or permanently disabled. Two decades of dropping 50,000 bombs on a country the size of Texas has left Afghanistan with catastrophic levels of poverty, an economy in shambles, and health care workers struggling with the added burden of the pandemic. Nearly 3 million Afghans refugees have fled their country to escape the violence, making Afghanistan one of the world’s biggest sources of refugees, and over 2 million Afghans have been internally displaced. Two decades of war has cost the U.S. public more than $1 trillion.
Within days of taking office, the Biden administration signaled it would not abide by the U.S.-Taliban agreement, citing the importance of supporting a “stable, sovereign, democratic, and secure future for Afghanistan.”
“This is the same language we hear whenever the United States and NATO conspire to destabilize foreign countries hostile to U.S. and European capital,” says Danny Haiphong, co-coordinator of the BAP Solidarity Network. “But we condemn the threat of the New Cold War and the continued war and occupation of Afghanistan, as we condemn the use of state violence and militarism against poor and working-class people of all nations. That is why we demand the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. and NATO forces as well as the financing of the war machine in Afghanistan and the region.”
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Featured image: Then-Vice President Joe Biden during a tour of the largest military training facility in Afghanistan in 2011. (Photo by Chief Petty Officer Brian Brannon/public domain)
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The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier and its Carrier Strike Group have entered the Mediterranean Sea.
This makes it, currently, the closest aircraft carrier to the Middle East. It has been quite a while since the US hasn’t had one of its super warships deployed in or near the Persian Gulf.
Starting in the spring of 2019, the U.S. Navy has been publicly ordered to keep a near-constant presence in the region, as if this were something new.
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced that a global posture review is taking place, and it would be reconsidered whether a carrier was even needed in the region. Still, the Mediterranean Sea is quite nearby, and the removal of the Carrier Strike Group (CSG) from the Persian Gulf was a political move.
It’s Lloyd Austin’s dream to have a CSG in every hotspot in the world, but resources don’t allow for that.
Still, the US has the amphibious warship USS Makin Island (LHD-8) in the Persian Gulf with a detachment of F-35B fighter jets, so it still has a hefty presence. Further, it is without a doubt possible for the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and its CSG to operate without issue in the Middle East, be it Syria, Iraq or elsewhere, from its current place of deployment.
In Syria itself, as the primary US competitor, alongside Iran, Russian forces are preparing to set up a permanent military base near the city of Palmyra in the Badia Desert. This is not yet confirmed, but according to satellite photos it has a helipad as a runway.
This base is likely planned to support the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) further in their push against both ISIS and Turkish proxies.
On March 9th, the SAA carried out heavy shelling on the positions of Turkish proxies in the village of Jabal Al-Zawiya, in southern Idlib.
Separately, Pro-Turkey opposition factions reportedly thwarted an attempt by the SAA to advance on the Qalaat front in the northern countryside of Latakia. Attacks are frequently repelled in Twitter posts, but nowhere else, demonstrating that the propaganda wing of the Turkish proxies is quite active.
In the days leading up to this, the SAA has been preparing for a large push in the province of Aleppo.
This is likely an attempt to form a uniform front, which can exert equal pressure along the frontline and thin the enemy’s forces to provide opportunity for a breach.
Turkey and its proxies are sure to offer heavy resistance to any advance by the SAA, but so far it appears that this may not be enough.
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Using what have already become clichéd industry buzzwords like “transparency,” “trust,” and even “privacy,” IBM’s Digital Health Pass marketing describes the mass tracking app as a “smart way to return to society” that allows people to “return to the activities and things they love.”
IBM is partnering with Covid-19 mRNA vaccine maker Moderna to track vaccine administration in real time through its various blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, and hybrid cloud services. According to a company press release, the collaboration will “focus on exploring the utility of IBM capabilities in the U.S.,” such as a recently unveiled pilot program for a Covid-19 Digital Health Pass in the State of New York, which effectively deputizes private businesses to enforce government-imposed Covid-19 regulations.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomoannounced the initiative, billed as the “Excelsior Pass,” during his 2021 State of the State Address in January and the program’s initial phase was tested at the Barclays Center during an NBA game, followed by another test at Madison Square Garden for an NHL game on March 2.
According to the state’s official website, the trial runs were designed to maximize “return on investment and saving development time” before submitting the “wallet app” to the Google and Apple app stores.
“The Excelsior Pass will play a critical role in getting information to venues and sites in a secure and streamlined way,” said Cuomo, who in February rolled out the state’s reopening guidelines for sports and entertainment venues, which would pave the way “to fast-track the reopening of these businesses and getting us one step closer to reaching a new normal(emphasis added).”
A promotional image showing the Excelsior Pass
Built on IBM’s Digital Health Pass technology, the QR code-based health data tracking app is only one of multiple blockchain ledger applications the company will leverage as part of its partnership with Moderna. Others include their Blockchain Transparent Supply and Food Trust services, which use the open-source Hyperledger technology to share supply-chain and food sourcing “credibility” data respectively with enterprise customers.
ANNOUNCING: IBM Digital Health Pass will integrate with @salesforce Work. com to help businesses, schools and governments verify vaccine and health status in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
IBM’s Blockchain World Wire cross-border payment processing service rounds out the blockchain ecosystem that will serve to “enhance” supply chain visibility and “real-time” vaccine management and administration.
Transparent coercion
Using what have already become clichéd industry buzzwords like “transparency,” “trust,” and even “privacy,” IBM’s Digital Health Pass marketing literature describes the mass tracking app as a “smart way to return to society” that allows people to “return to the activities and things they love.”
Still in the “voluntary” stages of use, according to IBM’s Steve LaFleche, the Digital Health Pass and similar mobile health verification apps, like CommonPass, cease to be so once government guidelines and regulations force the private sector to enforce their implementation, as in the case of New York’s reopening rules for stadiums, theaters and other venues.
In addition to the already widely-enforced capacity limits, social distancing and mandated facial coverings, Cuomo’s guidelines for venue operation now include the requirement that “all staff and spectators receive a negative COVID-19 PCR test within 72 hours of the event,” as well as the collection of contact information of everyone in attendance in order to “inform contact tracing efforts.”
IBM’s partnership with Moderna allows many of these requirements to be carried out unobtrusively and with minimal fuss for the general population, who are by now used to interfacing with the world on their smartphones. As LaFleche writes, the app “can interoperate easily with other solutions so that people won’t have to rely on multiple apps when going about their daily lives.”
Tethered to the blockchain
The development of these health-tracking, blockchain-based technologies as part of a broader redesign of supply chain and capital organization structures — often referred to as the “new normal” or the “Great Reset — has been in the works since at least 2016. It began with the “Use of Blockchain in Health IT and Health-related Research Challenge,” co-hosted by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), where IBM submitted its white paper, “Blockchain: The Chain of Trust and its Potential to Transform Healthcare – Our Point of View.”
Since April 2020, these efforts have sped up considerably through initiatives like the COVID-19 High Performance Computing (HPC) Consortium, a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) “spearheaded” by IBM and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, which brought Big Tech players like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft together with academic institutions and federal agencies to apply an “unprecedented scale of computing power to support COVID-19 research.”
The PPP applied its “unprecedented” computing power to controversial research topics like the supposed genetic predisposition among African Americans to Covid-19 infection and other areas of focus, such as potential treatments and “medicinal plants,” which can now all be integrated as part of IBM’s blockchain-based applications across the entire economic spectrum.
As covered by MintPress in a recent three-part series by this author, the intersection between blockchain technology and health data is at the center of a global campaign to recreate capitalism as a data-driven economic model based on a so-called “impact investment” paradigm, which purports to solve the world’s health, social and environmental problems through market-based solutions.
“Hacking the software of life”
The collection of our genomic data lies at the core of the fraudulent concept of creating financial incentives around human misery. DNA is the single point of data convergence across humanity that allows for these new “moral” economic models to generate enough volume to replicate present-day economies of scale and design financial instruments to exploit human beings at a cellular level.
Moderna’s former Chief Medical Officer, Tal Zacks, is well aware of the opportunities. On February 25, Moderna announced their CMO’s intention to step down in September as he looks forward to the “next leg of his career.” Zacks will leave a wealthy man, after regularly selling Moderna stock over the course of 2020, making him approximately $1 million a week, according to SEC filings.
In 2017, Zacks delivered a TED Talk in which he plainly states what many of the mRNA vaccine detractors have been warning about. Namely, that these novel vaccination technologies are, in fact, mechanisms designed to manipulate the human genetic code.
Zacks mirrors much of what his colleague and fellow vaccine credential promoter, Dr. Brad Perkins, said in a similar presentation that same year, in which he expounded on the massive potential for profits of these kinds of technologies — and the collection of genomic data, in particular — across the healthcare and insurance industries.
“I’m here today to tell you,” Zacks informed the spectators, “that we’re actually hacking the software of life.” Aiming at a more general audience, Zacks wasn’t as forward as Perkins in his description of the implications, limiting himself to emotional appeals through anecdotal accounts of former patients who might have been saved had they lived through the “phenomenal digital and scientific revolution” of mRNA “information therapy” solutions from which he has profited so handsomely.
Conveniently, IBM’s strong presence in the law enforcement space, as one of the largest providers of digital profiling technologies and AI policing systems in the world, may also help with any obstacles Moderna may face among vaccine-hesitant populations — such as the 3,000 Romanians who took to the streets of Bucharest to protest mass vaccinations, or the refusal of entire communities in Mexico to have their personal sovereignty violated by the world’s newest crop of snake oil salesmen.
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Raul Diego is a MintPress News Staff Writer, independent photojournalist, researcher, writer and documentary filmmaker.
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Airlines in the US are already in the process of leveraging apps and smartphones to allow travelers to offer proof that they have been vaccinated, or recently tested negative for COVID-19, and they’re not alone: Across Europe, a growing number of airlines and countries are adopting, or leaning toward adopting, so-called “vaccine passports”.
France24 reports Wednesday that countries increasingly see these vaccine passports as the best chance to bolster hard-hit tourism industries in places like Spain and Greece. However, since vaccines are still relatively hard to come by in Europe (supplies in the developing world are also scarce) there are concerns that vaccine passports won’t work – while also raising thorny privacy issues.
Most programmes under development are geared towards facilitating travel and come in the form of smartphone apps with varying criteria for a clean bill of health.
Vaccine passports, for example, are a popular way to approach proof of immunity with jab rollouts underway across the globe.
While UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson recently told Britons that they won’t need a vaccine passport to visit the local pub, his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron is considering creating a digital vaccine passport without which French citizens might be barred from visiting restaurants and other public places.
French President Emmanuel Macron recently suggested yet another, more localised form of Covid-free permission slip: the so-called “health pass.”
This certification would only be valid within France’s borders but would allow a fully vaccinated person to, for example, eat in restaurants and attend certain events.
Fortunately, vaccine passports aren’t the only option available to airlines hoping to fight the spread of COVID.
There are also apps that accept positive antibody tests as proof of immunity for those who have had the virus and recovered.
But the World Health Organization has warned that there is no evidence to show that recovered Covid sufferers with antibodies are protected from a second infection.
Even as pressure to implement passports grows, the report notes that vaccine passports do raise some thorny legal issues, while also potentially exacerbating economic inequality as the poor are effectively barred from traveling, while their movements in public are limited.
Making health passports stricter or requiring them for travel could invite legal challenges.
A major worry is that banning unvaccinated people from travelling would exacerbate inequality since access to jabs is far from universal.
There are also concerns over how applications would access users’ personal data.
In France, there is already an official database of citizens who have been vaccinated against Covid-19, approved by the country’s privacy watchdog.
However, the body has warned it will re-examine the issue should the database be put to use in the context of a health passport.
Earlier this week China launched a digital “health certificate” for its 1.3 billion citizens which will record their vaccination status and COVID test status.
In tourism-dependent Greece and Cyprus, vaccination passports are being launched specifically for travel to and from Israel, which has fully vaccinated 44% of its population, and, being situated on the east coast of the Mediterranean, is also located nearby. Denmark and Sweden are also looking to launch health passports soon, while the EU is promising to propose a “green pass” to ease movement within the bloc.
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Lebanon’s political, economic and COVID crises are ballooning while politicians continue to bicker over the formation of a government capable of implementing reforms that could deliver $21 billion in financial aid to rescue the country from collapse.
Caretaker Prime Minister HassanDiab, who resigned last August, has threatened to suspend work to exert pressure on recalcitrant politicians to form the long overdue government. Hizbollah has warned of a social explosion if a new government is not in place soon. Maronite Christian Patriarch Beshara Al Rahi has castigated politicians for the “intentional delay” in establishing a government and said popular protests are justified.
Army chief Joseph Aoun has urged the politicians to resolve Lebanon’s economic crisis quickly while pointing out that his officers and men suffer privation along with the general population. Addressing the political class, he asked, “Where are we headed? What do you intend to do?”
He had no reply from politicians who mismanaged Lebanon’s affairs for decades and have done nothing to tackle its current political, economic, social and COVID crises.
The explosion is already taking place. Lebanese have adopted a new strategy to vent their fury over economic melt-down. Instead of mounting mass protests in central squares in cities and towns, Lebanese are disrupting the movement of people and goods by blocking highways and main roads across the country. The blocking protests have been triggered by the fall in the value of the Lebanese Lira to more than 10,000 to the dollar, driving up the prices of both imported and locally produced essential supplies. While the Lira has hovered around the 8,000 mark for some months, the long-term official rate has been 1,500 to the dollar. To make matters worse salaries have fallen by more than 80 per cent and inflation is running at between 300 and 400 per cent.
The economic and social crises will become more acute if the central bank enacts progressive reductions in subsidies on essential foodstuffs, electricity and fuel. The World Food Programme has warned that this would have “major inflationary repercussions” and impose “an unbearable strain on households” which are already struggling to put food on the table.
If subsidies are ended, the price of bread would triple and the cost fuel would rise 4.5 times. Although financial assistance would be provided to 83 per cent of the population, most Lebanese do not trust the government to deliver monthly payments of $50 for adults and $25 for children. While the World Bank is set to provide $246 million for those suffering extreme proverty, money has a tendency to go astray before reaching the people for whom it is destined.
After Lebanon’s downward economic slide began in mid-2019, Lebanese took to urban streets and squares to call for an end to corruption and mismanagement and the ouster of the sectarian power-sharing regime imposed by France before independence. Tens of thousands joined these largely peaceful protests but the politicians, determined to preserve their paternalist powers and pelf, did not budge: Not even after the horrific explosion in Beirut port that killed more than 200 people and devastated four neighbouring districts.
Appointed last October to form a cabinet of nonpartisan technocrats to deal with the economic crisis and enact reforms, prime minister Saad Hariri awaits presidential approval of his 18 ministers. President Michel Aoun argues Hariri has no authority to dictate who is in his cabinet and insists on key ministries for the Aounist Free Patriotic Movement. Other political factions, naturally, put forward their demands.
Instead of capitulating, Hariri went, as they say in Australia, “walk-about”. He travelled around the region and elsewhere but his absence changed nothing.
COVID vaccinations, which should be dispensed impartially, have even been mismanaged and become politicised. The World Bank provided bankrupt Lebanon with COVID vaccines valued at $34 million to inoculate two million of the six million residents of the country — Lebanese, Palestinians, Syrians and others. The Bank also called for the elderly and health care workers to be first in line for shots which were to be administered at designated locations. Naturally, deputies jumped the queue and the Health Ministry inoculated them in parliament itself, infuriating World Bank officials who threatened to halt to halt funding of the rollout. Lebanon registers 3,000-4,000 cases daily and total infections have reached 400,000 and deaths 5,000. While Lebanon’s self-inflicted travails are largely ignored by the world, Pope Francis, as he wrapped up his historic visit to war-devastated Iraq, promised his next trip will be to Lebanon.
It is significant that the two countries are governed by sectarian regimes imposed by Western occupying powers. France sought to ensure domination of Lebanon by Christians favourable to Paris but two civil wars and constant instability have demonstrated the Lebanese model is a dangerous failure. Nevertheless, in Iraq the US installed a “democratic” Shia fundamentalist government which, ironically, favours Tehran over Washington. In both countries, corruption is rampant and misrule has brought about the collapse of the state. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that, both Lebanese and Iraqis have been rising against sectarian governments since October 2019.
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A 39-year-old woman from Ogden, Utah, died Feb. 5, four days after receiving a second dose of Moderna’s COVID vaccine, according to CBS affiliate KUTV.
Kassidi Kurill died of organ failure after her liver, heart and kidneys shut down. She had no known medical issues or pre-existing conditions, family members said.
The medical examiner could not say whether the autopsy would be automatically forwarded to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and U.S Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Dr. Erik Christensen, Utah’s chief medical examiner, said proving vaccine injury as a cause of death almost never happens.
“Did the vaccine cause this? I think that would be very hard to demonstrate in autopsy,” Christensen told KUTV.
Christensen could think of only one instance where a vaccine as the official cause of death would be seen on an autopsy report. That would be in the case of immediate anaphylaxis where someone received a vaccine and died almost instantaneously.
“Short of that, it would be difficult for us to definitively say this is the vaccine,” Christensen said. “A more likely result would be a lack of answers or an incomplete autopsy.”
An autopsy can provide answers to a family when no disease or red flags are found, or rule out other competing causes of death, Christensen explained. The lack of answers may help a family “understand if the vaccine was a possible cause.”
Christensen said vaccine deaths are possible and do happen.
“Just about every vaccine or anything you do [to] treat someone, when you inject something has a potential for a negative outcome. I’m sure VAERS can verify other vaccines have led to death.”
After her first shot, Kurill, a surgical tech for local plastic surgeons, experienced a sore arm but no other side effects. The day of her second shot she had gone shopping and was fine until she started feeling “not so great that evening,” said her sister Kristin.
According to Kurill’s father, she “got sick right away” after receiving the second shot. She had soreness at the injection site, started to get sick and complained “she was drinking fluids but couldn’t pee.”
Kurill went to the emergency room and was later transported to Intermountain Medical Center for a liver transplant. Both parents were willing to donate portions of their liver to save their daughter, but Kurill died within 30 hours of arriving at the ER.
Kurill’s obituary states that she died from “apparent complications due to the second COVID-19 vaccination.”
Although the CDC says on its website that CDC and FDA physicians review each reported death as soon as notified, it does not appear that autopsies were ordered in any of the other reported Utah cases, according to KUTV.
Last month The Defender reported on a 58-year-old woman who died hours after getting her first dose of the Pfizer vaccine. State and federal officials said they were investigating her death but had not performed an autopsy.
On Feb. 5, officials said that they did not know the cause of Keyes’ death or any underlying conditions that could have contributed to her death, but there was “no evidence it was tied to the vaccine,” reported NBC News.
According to The Virginian Pilot, a public records request related to Keyes’ death revealed concerning emails. State Health Commissioner Norman Oliver told public information officers in a Feb. 5 email that if reporters asked whether an autopsy was done on Keyes, they should say “a full autopsy was not needed in order to ascertain whether the death was related to the vaccination.”
The public records request also revealed that officials inside and outside the health department were “concerned the death of Keyes, who is Black, could worsen vaccine hesitancy among minorities,” reported The Virginian Pilot.
When the health department spokespeople crafted a statement following Keyes’ death, they included Gov. Ralph Northam’s press secretary and another Northam staffer in the editing process. The wording regarding timing of the death after the vaccine went from saying there may appear to be a relationship, “But that is not necessarily the case,” to the timing “is not evidence of it being related,” highlighting their focus on deterring speculation, according to The Virginian Pilot.
The family was forced to get their own private autopsy. Keyes’ daughter said that even before state officials had her mother’s postmortem preliminary test results, the medical examiner’s office told her they would not perform an autopsy. They told her “nothing could be gleaned from an autopsy that would relate the vaccine to her death.”
State officials didn’t answer how medical examiners could thoroughly rule out other potential causes of death triggered by or linked to the shot without an internal examination of the body.
The CDC says no deaths have been attributed to COVID-19 vaccines. However, according to the latest data available from VAERS — which includes reports submitted between Dec. 14, 2020, and Feb. 26, 2021, a total of 1,265 deaths following COVID vaccines have been reported to the system.
Dr. Sheffield with Intermountain explained the difference in numbers of deaths reported and the CDC’s statement of “no vaccine deaths,” saying it comes down to what can and can’t be proven.
“You have to look at what it (the numbers) are saying,” Sheffield told KUTV. “Is it saying the vaccine caused the deaths, or there were deaths in people who received the vaccine? And those are two very different things.”
As The Defender reported last month, the CDC is investigating the death of a 36-year-old doctor in Tennessee who died Feb. 8, about one month after receiving the second dose of a COVID vaccine.
News reports at the time didn’t identify which brand of vaccine the doctor received, though at the time, only the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines were approved for emergency use in the U.S. Dr. Barton Williams’ death was attributed to multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-A) caused by asymptomatic COVID, though he never tested positive for the virus.
In January, The Defender reported on the death of baseball legend Hank Aaron from an “undisclosed” cause 18 days after receiving his first dose of the Moderna vaccine. The New York Times implied that Aaron’s death was unrelated to the vaccine, however no autopsy was conducted.
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Megan Redshaw is a freelance reporter for The Defender. She has a background in political science, a law degree and extensive training in natural health.
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“Every empire, however, tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires, that its mission is not to plunder and control but to educate and liberate.” – Edward W. Said. (Los Angeles Times, July 20, 2003)”
“Geographically, the Horn of Africa is normally understood to comprise Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia. As foreign military forces operate in ways that link deployments on land, in the air and at sea, for the purposes of this paper the Horn of Africa region is defined as a security space comprised of the four core countries plus Kenya, the Seychelles, South Sudan and Sudan, as well as key adjacent maritime areas—the southern Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait” 1
Introduction: Historical Background
The Horn of Africa is a complex site of geopolitical and geostrategic importance, inextricably linked to key aspects of its history and geography. The uptick in engagement by external actors, and their attendant interests, alliances and agendas, underscore the pivotal role of geopolitics in shaping the security and economic trajectory of the region. The proximity of the Horn of Africa to the oil-rich countries of the Persian Gulf, and the vital commercial lanes that transit the Bab al-Mandab and the Gulf of Aden, reinforce the region as a crucial maritime chokepoint and port of call in an increasingly connected global order. 1)
France had African colonies since the European Colonial powers Berlin Conference in 1884, which they divided and took positions of Africa among themselves.
The French presence in Africa dates to the 17th century, but the main period of colonial expansion came in the 19th century with the invasion of Ottoman Algiers in 1830, conquests in West and Equatorial Africa during the so-called scramble for Africa and the establishment of protectorates in Tunisia and Morocco and much of Equatorial and Central Africa.
French colonialism always were interested in Egypt even before Napoleon’s war Egypt in 1789. They also were interested in the countries along the red sea and the Bab el Mandep strait which allows the passage of goods safely through the narrow strait.
And thus, Djibouti (The French Territories of Afar & Isse) came to play when France took possession of Djibouti (called French Somali-land) in 1884. As the Territory of the Afars and the Issas, it remained part of the French republic until independence in 1977,
France is interested in the following :
1) The Safety and continuity of passage of goods and peoples through Bab el Mandep straits and the Red Sea.
2) French power projection in the Horn of Africa region and the littoral states of Red Sea i.e. Egypt, Saudia, and Yemen.
3) The Protection and Preservation of Christian Ethiopia with in the Muslim HOA region.
4) French economic, political and soft-power projections in the HOA and Red Sea litterol nations.
5) French imperial occupation, exploitation under the coattails of AFRICOM/EU/NATO empire of Africa and the littoral states of Egypt, Eritrea, Saudia, Sudan, Yemen and Djibouti which plays a major role as a Hub of western military bases, currently housing US/French/Italian/Chinese/ and Japanese military bases in such small country.
French Neocolonialism in Africa
To protect and influence its interests in post-Independence Africa, France, opted to institutionalize its relationships with its former colonies by singing comprehensive bilateral economic, political, military and cultural accords that binds effectively french control, domination, and presence of the former colonies.
Besides Djibouti, the French controls military bases in Reunion, Seychelles and Kerguelen Islands in the Indian Ocean which connects to the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea via Bab El Mandep straits which is strategically important for economic, military and Geo-strategic purposes.
Thus, France uses and employs its political, economic, military and its United Nations Security Council (UNSC) membership. And as an ally of the US, through NATO and AFRICOM, it projects its powers in the region.
Although the French Colonial Empire is long gone, Paris is still attempting to maintain its global influence through its former colonies, not only in the Red Sea and HOA region, but also in Central and Northern Africa, Another point to note is that the French energy company Total is one of the most important partners for Gas and Oil explorations, operations, sells and marketing in Ethiopia and Kenya – 1950 and 1955 respectively.
The French Oil conglomerate Total holds a 45% interest in three offshore exploration licenses in the Lamu Basin (Near the disputed Somali Maritime border) namely L11a, L11B and L12. 3)
Conclusions
Historically it is evident, that the French seeks to use its former African colonies in the indian ocean Basin and The Red Sea littoral countries for its Geostrategic interests in the region and its competition with Turkey, China and Russia.
There is a Turkish-French Competition in Africa since 2000. Turkey and France are acting as rivals in Africa by creating cooperation with the East, HOA and West African countries. France has joined strategic marriage of convenience with Anti-Turkish Arab countries of Egypt, Saudi, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates may work against Turkey to create their influential zone.
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This article was already published on Academia.edu.
Prof. Dr. Bischara Ali EGAL is Executive Director and Chief Researcher at The Horn of Africa Center for Strategic and International studies (Horncsis.org) https://horncsis.org, Mogadishu, SOMALIA (HOA)
Notes
1) Faith Mabera (2020) The Horn of Africa-Persian Gulf nexus: inter-regional dynamics and the reshaping of regional order in geopolitical flux. INSTITUTE FOR GLOBAL DIALOGUE Issue 136 /April 2020
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It’s Lianghui (“Two Sessions”) time – the annual ritual of the Beijing leadership. The stars of the show are the top political advisory body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference; and the traditional delivery of a work report by the Prime Minister to the top legislature, the National People’s Congress (NPC).
The review of the draft outline of China’s 14th Five-Year Plan will proceed all the way to March 15. But in the current juncture, this is not only about 2025 (remember Made in China 2025, which remains in effect). The planning goes long-range towards targets in the Vision 2035 project (achieving “basic socialist modernization”) and even beyond to 2049, the 100th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China.
Premier Li Keqiang, delivering the government work report for 2021, stressed that the target for GDP growth is “above 6%” (the IMF had previously projected 8.1%). That includes the creation of at least 11 million new urban jobs.
On foreign policy, Li could not draw a sharper contrast with the Hegemon: “China will pursue an independent foreign policy of peace” and will “promote the building of a new type of international relations”.
That’s code for Beijing eventually working with Washington on specific dossiers, but most of all focusing on strengthening trade/investment/finance relations with the EU, ASEAN, Japan and the Global South.
The outline of the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) for the Chinese economy had already been designed last October, at the CCP plenum. The NPC will now approve it. The key focus is the “dual circulation” policy, whose best definition, translated from Mandarin, is “double development dynamics”.
That means a concerted drive to consolidate and expand the domestic market while continuing to push foreign trade/investment – as in the myriad Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects. Conceptually, this amounts to a quite sophisticated, very Daoist, yin and yang balancing.
In early 2021, President Xi Jinping, while extolling Chinese “conviction and resilience, as well as our determination and confidence”, was keen to stress the nation faces “unprecedented challenges and opportunities”. He told the Politburo “favorable social conditions” must be created by all means available all the way to 2025, 2035 and 2049.
Which brings us to this new stage of Chinese development.
The key target to watch is “common prosperity” (or, better yet, “shared prosperity”), to be implemented alongside technological innovations, respect for the environment, and fully addressing the “rural question”.
Xi has been adamant: there’s too much inequality in China – regional, urban-rural, income disparities.
It’s as if in a cool reading of the dialectical drive of historical materialism in China, we would arrive at the following model. Thesis: imperial dynasties. Antithesis: Mao Zedong. Synthesis: Deng Xiaoping, followed by a few derivations (especially Jiang Zemin) all the way to the real synthesis: Xi.
On the Chinese “threat”
Li stressed China’s success in containing Covid-19 domestically; the nation spent at least $62 billion on it. This should be read as a subtle message, addressed especially to the Global South, about the efficacy of China’s governance system to design and execute not only complex development plans but also cope with serious emergencies.
What’s ultimately at stake in this competition between wobbly Western (neo)liberal democracies and “socialism with Chinese characteristics” (copyright Deng Xiaoping) is the capacity to manage and improve people’s lives. Chinese scholars are very proud of their national development plan ethos, defined as SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound).
A very good example is how China, in less than two decades, managed to extricate 800 million people out of poverty: an absolute first in History.
All of the above is rarely evoked as Atlanticist circles drown in virtually 24/7 China demonization hysteria. Wang Huiyao, the director of the Beijing-based Center for China and Globalization, at least had the merit to bring into the discussion Sinologist Kerry Brown of King’s College, London.
Drawing from comparisons between Leibniz – close to Jesuit scholars, interested in Confucianism – and Montesquieu – who only saw a despotic, autocratic, imperial system – Brown re-examines 250 years of entrenched Western positions on China and remarks how is “more difficult than ever” to engage in a reasonable debate.
He identifies three major problems.
1. Throughout modern history, there’s no Western appreciation of China as a strong and powerful nation, and its restored historical importance. Western mindsets are not ready to deal with it.
2. The modern West never really thought of China as a global power; at best as a land power. China was never seen as a naval power, or capable of exercising power way beyond its borders.
3. Propelled by the iron certainty over its values – enter the very much debased concept of “true democracy” – the Atlanticist West has no idea what to make of Chinese values. Ultimately the West is not interested in understanding China. Confirmation bias reigns; the result is China as a “threat to the West”.
Brown points to the key predicament afflicting any scholar or analyst trying to explain China: how to convey China’s extremely complex worldview, how to capture the China story in a few words. Soundbites do not apply.
Examples: explaining how a whopping 1.3 billion people in China have some sort of health security, and how 1 billion enjoy some kind of social security. Or explaining the intricate details of China’s ethnic policies.
Premier Li, delivering his report, vowed to “forge a strong sense of community among the Chinese people and encourage all of China’s ethnic groups to work in concert for common prosperity and development”. He did not specifically mention Xinjiang or Tibet. It’s an uphill task to explain the trials and tribulations of integrating ethnic minorities into a national project amid non-stop hysteria on Xinjiang, Taiwan, South China Sea and Hong Kong.
Come and join the party
Whatever the Atlanticist West’s whims, what matters for the Chinese masses is how the new Five-Year Plan will deliver, practically, what Xi has previously described as “high-quality” economic reform.
Things look good for powerhouses Shanghai and Guangdong – they were already aiming at 6% growth. Hubei – where Covid-19 cases first appeared – is actually targeting 10%.
Based on frenetic social media activity, public opinion confidence in the Beijing leadership remains solid, considering a series of factors. China won the “health war” against Covid-19 in record time; economic growth is back; absolute poverty has been eradicated, according to the original timetable; the civilization-state is firmly established as a “moderately prosperous society” 100 years after the founding of the Communist Party.
Since the start of the millennium, China’s GDP grew no less than 11-fold. Over the past 10 years, GDP more than doubled, from $6 trillion to $15 trillion. No less than 99 million rural people, 832 counties and 128,000 rural villages were the last ones to be extricated from absolute poverty.
This complex hybrid economy is now even engaged in setting up an elaborate, “sweet” trap for Western firms. Sanctions? Don’t be fools; come here and enjoy doing business in a market of at least 700 million consumers.
As I’ve noted last year, the systemic process in play is like a sophisticated mix of internationalist Marxism with Confucianism (privileging harmony, abhorring conflict): the framework for “community with a shared future for mankind”. One country – actually a civilization-state, focused on its renewed historical mission as re-emerging superpower. Two sessions. And so many targets – and all of them achievable.
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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.
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After Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister Marc Garneau and new US Secretary of State Antony Blinken held their first bilateral meeting Global Affairs’ release mentioned China, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba and… Haiti. The first four nations are all in the crosshairs of Washington and Ottawa. But Haiti’s de facto president is in the opposite position. Jovenel Moïse would fall quickly if the US and Canada withdrew their support.
What does it mean that a supposedly ‘unimportant’, impoverished, nation is the only non-enemy government mentioned by those in charge of US and Canadian diplomacy? Is it a recognition that their Haitian puppet might fall or is it a backhanded compliment to the anti-dictatorship movement? Or maybe it reflects the US and Canada’s commitment to credible elections?
On Sunday thousands marched against the dictatorship in Port-au-Prince. A week earlier 100,000 marched in the capital and thousands more protested in a half-dozen other cities. On February 14 nearly 100,000 also marched in Port-au-Prince.
Since Jovenel Moïse extended his mandate extra-constitutionally on February 7 there has been a wave of criticism against US and Canadian policy in Haiti. The country’s heterogenous opposition have vociferously condemned the foreign powers. In the US there have been a number of rallies and online actions. A number of Democratic party senators and congresspeople have also called on the Biden administration to stop propping up Moïse. In Canada three current MPs and three former MPs, as well as Noam Chomsky, David Suzuki, Naomi Klein and 500 others, signed a letter criticizing Ottawa’s “support for a repressive, corrupt Haitian president devoid of constitutional legitimacy.” A coalition of 30 Haitian Canadian groups, as well as the Canadian Labour Congress and Council of Global Unions, have also expressed opposition to Canadian and US policy in Haiti.
Blinken and Garneau are undoubtedly feeling some pressure. At the same time, however, the situation on the ground is fluid and if they want Moïse to remain it is imperative to express their diplomatic backing.
The post Blinken/Garneau meeting release noted that the two discussed a desire “to ensure the upcoming electoral process in Haiti is credible, inclusive and transparent.” But Haiti’s opposition has already rejected elections under Moïse, which few will consider “credible”. In the summer Moïse pushed out the entire electoral council and appointed a new one in contravention of the constitution.
The Canada-US position ensures the opposite of their stated aim. By supporting Moïse as he extends his mandate, rewrites the constitution, criminalizes protests, sets up a new intelligence agency, instigates a gang alliance to terrorize the slums, etc. they are guaranteeing that forthcoming elections won’t be credible. But concern for credibility has not been a defining feature of Ottawa and Washington’s response to Haitian elections over the past 20 years.
After Fanmi Lavalas won more than 70% of 7,000 mayoral, senatorial, etc. positions in 2000 the US and Canada undermined what OAS observers initially called “a great success”, probably Haiti’s most credible ever election. Realizing there was little chance Fanmi Lavalas would be defeated at the ballot box in the foreseeable future, they suddenly claimed the previously employed method to determine whether a runoff was to be held in a handful of Senate seats made the election “deeply flawed”. A few years later they overthrew all the elected officials.
After a two-year coup government repressed pro-democracy forces, the US and Canada financed elections that blocked the most popular political party from participating. On simple procedural grounds the election was also dubious. During the election in 2000 there were more than 10,000 registration centres and some 11,000 polling stations across the country. In 2006 the coup government reduced that number to 500 registration centres and a little more than 800 polling stations, even though they had some $50 million to run the election (mostly from the US, Canada and France). In the poorest neighborhoods, where opposition to the coup was strongest, registration centres were few and far between.
At the last minute former president René Préval entered the race. The coup government sought to block Préval from winning in the first round and the head of the International Mission for Monitoring Haitian Elections, chief electoral officer of Elections Canada Jean-Pierre Kingsley,ardently supported the effort. After an explosion of protest following the discovery of thousands of ballots burned in a dump, the US, French and Canadian ambassadors — who initially insisted the electoral council continue counting votes to force a second round — reluctantly agreed to negotiate with their counterparts from Brazil and Chile, as well as the UN and others to grant Préval a first-round victory. But they used the negotiation to cast doubt on the legitimacy of Préval’s mandate, even though he likely won 60% of the vote.
Not viewing Préval as sufficiently compliant, the US and Canada pushed for presidential elections months after the devastating 2010 earthquake and amidst a deadly cholera outbreak. Following the first round of voting, Canadian and US officials forced the candidate whom Haiti’s electoral council had in second place, Jude Celestin, out of the runoff. According to the official results, Mirlande Manigatreceived 31% of the vote, Celestin 22% and Michel Martelly 21%. With no statistical rationale they removed votes from Celestin, who was allied with Préval, until Martelly was in second place.
Through Martelly’s term he failed to hold legislative elections and ruled by decree. That didn’t stop the US and Canada from supporting the corrupt and thuggish former Ton Ton Macoute. After repeatedly postponing elections Martelly held a poll marred by fraud in 2015. A subsequent audit found that 92% of polling place tally sheets had significant irregularities and 900,000 of the 1.5 million votes cast for president were from accredited poll observers who could vote at any voting station. Despite mass protests against Martelly’s handpicked successor Moïse first round lead, the US and Canada pushed to move forward with the second round of the election as if the first round of voting was legitimate. Riots ultimately forced the cancellation of the second round. In a subsequent redo Moïse ‘won’ an election with few participating.
While the US and Canada claim to support democracy and fair elections in Haiti, history proves otherwise. In reality neither government seems to care about the wishes of ordinary Haitians.
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“The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived and dishonest – but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.” ~ John F. Kennedy
“A poorly trained, apathetic, and gullible media is one of the greatest national security and public health threats to the United States of America, because in such a world not only does there cease to be a watchdog against government, industry, and general hucksterism, but the media itself becomes prone to manipulation, deception, coercion, and outright recruitment by precisely those it is supposed to be watching for the good of the people.” — Marco Caceres Di Iorio
“The media hacks who push the pro-vaccine propaganda and hide the truth are complicit in crimes against humanity…The entire vaccine machine is built on lies of omission and fraudulent science. billions of dollars are quietly paid out by NVICP (National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program) to vaccine-injured people, but the overwhelming majority of vaccine injuries are never reported. Of the thousands that are reported, only a tiny few are compensated. Therefore, the real amounts that should have been paid out to vaccine injured people is in the trillions.” — William Christenson
“Fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events are reported. The CDC’s entire vaccination propaganda campaign rests on their claim that side effects from vaccinations are exceedingly rare, but according to the blatantly pro-over-vaccination, Big Pharma-funded CDC, in 2016 alone, VAERS received 59,117 vaccine adverse event reports. Among those reports were 432 vaccine-related deaths, 1,091 permanent vaccine-related disabilities, 4,132 vaccine-related hospitalizations, and 10,274 vaccine-related emergency room visits. What if these numbers actually represent less than 1% of the total as this report asserts? You multiply those numbers by 100.” – William Christenson (2017)
“As of 1986, only 12.8% of American kids had chronic diseases. That number has grown to 54% among the vaccine generation (ie, Generation V, those children born after lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers were outlawed in 1986) in lockstep with the CDC’s and AAP’s expanding vaccine schedule.” — Robert F. Kennedy, Jr
“Safety testing, which typically requires months and years for other medical products, often lasts only a few days with vaccines – not nearly long enough to spot cancers or chronic conditions like autoimmune diseases (e.g. juvenile diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis), allergic illnesses (e.g. food allergies, allergic rhinitis, eczema, asthma), or neurological and neurodevelopmental injuries (e.g. ADD, ADHD, narcolepsy, epilepsy, seizure disorders, and autism). Vaccine manufacturer’s vaccine inserts that accompany every vial of mandated vaccines include warnings about these and over 400 other injuries including many serious immune, neurological, and chronic illnesses for which FDA suspects that vaccines may be the cause.” – Robert F. Kennedy, Jr
“The children who comprise this vaccine-injured generation are now aging out of schools that needed to build quiet rooms and autism wings, install wobble chairs, hire security guards and hike special ed spending to 25% to accommodate them. They are landing on the social safety net which they threaten to sink. As Democratic lawmakers all around the nation vote to mandate more vaccines and call for the censorship of experts (including parents of vaccine-injured or killed children) that are expressing concerns about vaccine safety, Democratic Presidential candidates argue about how to fix America’s dysfunctional and unaffordable health care system without addressing the reality of the vaccine-related chronic disease and autoimmune disorder epidemic. The good news for Big Pharma, of course, is that many of these vaccine-injured children have lifelong dependencies on unaffordable blockbuster drugs like insulin, Adderall, anti-psychotic drugs, Epi-Pens, asthma inhalers, and diabetes, arthritis, and anti-seizure meds made by the same companies that made the vaccines.” – Robert F. Kennedy, Jr
“An overwhelming majority of the FDA officials directly charged with licensing vaccines, and the CDC officials who effectively mandate them for children, have personal financial entanglements with vaccine manufacturers. These ‘public servants’ are often shareholders in, grant recipients from, and/or paid consultants to vaccine manufacturers, and, occasionally, even patent holders of the very vaccines they vote to approve. Those conflicts of interest motivate them to recommend ever more vaccines with minimal support from evidence-based science” – Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
“The FDA receives 45% of its annual budget from the pharmaceutical industry. The World Health Organization (WHO) gets roughly half its budget from private sources, including Pharma and its allied foundations. And the CDC, frankly, is a vaccine company; it owns 56 vaccine patents and buys and distributes $4.6 billion in vaccines annually through the Vaccines for Children program, which is over 40% of its total budget.” — Robert F. Kennedy, Jr
“The HHS (US Health and Human Services partners with vaccine makers to develop, approve, recommend, and pass mandates for new products and then shares profits from vaccine sales. HHS employees can personally collect up to $150,000 annually in royalties for products they work on. For example, key HHS officials collect money on every sale of Merck’s controversial HPV vaccine Gardasil, which also yields tens of millions annually for the agency in patent royalties.” — Robert F. Kennedy, Jr
“In 1986, Congress—awash in Pharma money (the pharmaceutical industry is number one for both political campaign contributions and lobbying spending on legislators over the past 20 years) enacted a law granting vaccine makers blanket immunity from liability for injuries caused by vaccines. The subsequent gold rush by pharmaceutical companies boosted the number of recommended inoculations from twelve shots of five vaccines in 1986 to 54 shots of 13 vaccines today. A billion-dollar sideline grew into the $50 billion vaccine industry behemoth.” — Robert F. Kennedy, Jr
“Since vaccines are liability-free – and effectively compulsory to a captive market of 76 million children – there is meager market incentive for companies to make them safe. The public must rely on the moral scruples of Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi, and Pfizer. But these companies have a long history of operating recklessly and dishonestly, even with (the many drug) products for which they can be sued for injuries. The four companies that make virtually all of the recommended vaccines are all convicted felons. Collectively they have paid over $35 billion since 2009 for defrauding regulators, lying to and bribing government officials and physicians, falsifying science, and leaving a trail of (incurable chronic illnesses) injuries and deaths from products they knew to be dangerous and still sold under pretense of safety and efficacy.” – Robert F. Kennedy, Jr
“I ate breakfast last week with the president of a network news division at CBS) and he told me that during non-election years, 70% of the advertising revenues for his news division come from pharmaceutical ads. And if you go on TV any night and watch the network news, you’ll see they become just a vehicle for selling pharmaceuticals. He also told me that he would fire a host who brought onto his station a guest who lost him a pharmaceutical account.” — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – See more here.
“The public in both poor and rich countries has a right to scientifically-based evidence that international vaccine programs are as safe as possible and that they have been thoroughly safety-tested. The best metrics for measuring safety are studies comparing health outcomes of vaccinated versus unvaccinated cohorts. Yet, both the CDC and the WHO have aggressively discouraged the pursuit of such studies. – Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
“I knew that MMR (GlaxoSmithKline’s Measles/Mumps/Rubella vaccine) was a mistake from the start. Within 10 seconds I could see that it was a bad idea. All the vaccinations prior to MMR could occur in nature; they had never been combined before. Normally, viruses can’t infect at the same time, so if you put more than one virus into a body at once you are making a grave error. Surely the point of vaccination is to make it safer for children, but with MMR a child could be overwhelmed, and might not recover. The deaths and severe reactions to MMR are just the tip of the iceberg.“ – Dr Peter Mansfield – British general practitioner whose practice was dedicated to reducing his patient’s reliance on doctors by giving them the confidence and information to help themselves
“Even higher levels of aluminium have been found in the brains of individuals, diagnosed with an early-onset form of sporadic (usually late onset) Alzheimer’s disease, who have experienced an unusually high exposure to aluminium through the environment (e.g. Camelford) or through their workplace. This means that Alzheimer’s disease has a much earlier age of onset, for example, fifties or early sixties, in individuals who have been exposed to unusually high levels of aluminium in their everyday lives.” – Christopher Exley, PhD
“No vaccine manufacturer shall be liable…for damages arising from a vaccine-related injury or death.” – President Ronald Reagan, as he signed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) of 1986, absolving drug companies from all medico-legal liability when children die or are disabled from vaccine injuries, thus reversing many of the intentions of original legislative action.
“…the NIH (National Institutes of Health) is incapable of conducting conflict-free research…it is clear that the system managing our vaccine program is corrupt beyond repair and needs a complete overhaul.” – Lori Mellwain, National Autism Association board chair
Safety Recommendation for Parents Who Choose or are Mandated to Vaccinate Their Children, Based on Guidelines of the Autism Research Institute:
Never vaccinate a sick child, even if just a runny nose from a viral infection, as all viruses are immunosuppressive, rendering the child more vulnerable to adverse vaccine reactions.
Never allow more than two vaccines per visit; avoid all combination vaccines.
Administer vitamin C before and after each vaccination, ideally in doses of 500 mgs every four hours during waking hours. Also give vitamin A in standard doses.
All forms of sugar should be avoided for several days before and after vaccines, as sugar has been shown to diminish the protective activities of the immune system by depressing white blood cells’ ability to destroy bacteria.
The following 7 quotes are from Dr. Richard Moskowitz’s brilliantly articulated article, “The Case Against Immunizations”:
“It is dangerously misleading, and indeed the exact opposite of the truth, to claim that a vaccine renders us ‘immune’ to or protects us against an acute disease, if in fact it only drives the disease deeper into the interior and causes us to harbor it chronically instead, with the result that our responses to it become progressively weaker but show less and less of a tendency to heal or resolve themselves spontaneously. What I propose, then, is to investigate as thoroughly and objectively as I can how the vaccines actually work inside the human body, and to begin by simply paying attention to the implications of what we already know. Consider the process of falling ill with and recovering from a typical acute disease, such as the measles, in contrast with what we can observe following (the intramuscular) administration of the measles vaccine.”
“…Once inhaled by a susceptible individual, the [measles] virus undergoes a prolonged period of silent multiplication, first in the tonsils, adenoids, and accessory lymphoid aggregations of the nasopharynx; later in the regional lymph nodes of the head and neck; and eventually, several days later, it passes into the blood and enters the spleen, the liver, the thymus, and the bone marrow, the ‘visceral’ organs of the immune system. Throughout this ‘incubation’ period, which lasts from 10 to 14 days, the patient typically feels quite well, and experiences few or no symptoms of any kind.”
“By the time that the first symptoms of measles appear, circulating antibodies are already detectable in the blood, and the height of the symptomatology coincides with the peak of the antibody response. In other words, the ‘illness’ that we call the measles is simply the definitive effort of the immune system to clear this virus from the blood. Notice also that this expulsion is accomplished by sneezing and coughing, i. e., via the same route through which it entered in the first place. It is abundantly clear from the above that the process of mounting and recovering from an acute illness like the measles involves a general mobilization of the immune system as a whole, including inflammation of the previously sensitized tissues at the portal(s) of entry, activation of leukocytes, macrophages, and the serum complement system, and a host of other mechanisms, of which the production of circulating antibodies is only one, and by no means the most important.”
“Such splendid outpourings indeed represent the decisive experiences in the normal physiological maturation of the immune system in the life of a healthy child. For recovery from the measles not only protects children from being susceptible to it again, no matter how many more times they may be exposed to it, but also prepares them to respond promptly and effectively to any other infections they may encounter in the future. The ability to mount a vigorous acute response to infection must therefore be reckoned among the most fundamental requirements of health and well-being that we all share.”
“By contrast, the live but artificially attenuated measles-virus vaccine is injected directly into the blood, by-passing the normal port of entry, and sets up at most a brief inflammatory reaction at the injection site, or perhaps in the regional lymph nodes, with no local sensitization at the normal portal of entry, no ‘incubation period,’ no generalized inflammatory response, and no generalized outpouring. By ‘tricking’ the body in this fashion, we have accomplished precisely what the entire immune system seems to have evolved to prevent: we have placed the virus directly into the blood and given it free and immediate access to the major immune organs and tissues, without any obvious mechanism or route for getting rid of it.”
“The result is the production of circulating antibodies against the virus, which can in fact be measured in the blood; but this antibody response occurs as an isolated technical feat, without any overt illness to recover from, or any noticeable improvement in the general health of the recipient. Indeed, I submit that exactly the opposite is true, that the price we have to pay for these antibodies is the persistence of viral elements in the blood for long periods of time, perhaps permanently, which in turn carries with it a systematic weakening of our capacity to mount an acute response, not only to the measles, but to other infections as well.”
“Far from producing a genuine immunity, then, my suspicion and my fear is that vaccines act by interfering with and even suppressing the immune response as a whole, in much the same way that radiation, chemotherapy, corticosteroids, and other anti-inflammatory drugs do. Artificial ‘immunization’ focuses on antibody production, a single aspect of the immune process, disarticulates it, and allows it to stand for the whole, in much the same way as chemical suppression of an elevated blood pressure is accepted as a valid substitute for genuine healing or cure of the patient whose blood pressure has risen. It is the frosting on the cake, without the cake. The worst part of this counterfeiting is that it becomes more difficult, if not impossible, for vaccinated children to mount a normally acute and vigorous response to infection, by substituting for it a much weaker, essentially chronic response, with little or no tendency to heal itself spontaneously.” – Dr Richard Moskowitz – from “The Case Against Immunizations”
“The number of ‘cases’ in turn is dependent on the numbers of ‘positive’ PCR tests. You may have seen the term ‘casedemic’ being used to describe the situation, and while that term can also be misused, it legitimately calls attention to the problem of using PCR tests for diagnostic purposes and justifying policies based on ‘cases’…While PCR tests can be useful to confirm a diagnosis of COVID-19, they should never be used by themselves as a diagnostic tool. Yet, in ‘case’ counts, that is precisely what’s been done: people who do not have the disease and are not contagious are being counted as COVID-19 ‘cases’, and these numbers in turn are being cited to justify continued lockdown measures.” – Jeremy R. Hammond, Independent Journalist and Author – www.jeremyrhammond.com
“Covid-19 ‘cases’ are a practically meaningless metric, especially in light of how their numbers are determined by counting ’positive’ results from RT-PCR tests that do not distinguish between viable virus and non-infectious viral RNA. Even the lockdown-loving New York Times has admitted that 90% of so-called ‘cases’ in the US have been individuals who were probably not contagious.” — Jeremy R. Hammond
“Just as there are professional propagandists masquerading as ‘journalists’, so are there propagandists dutifully masquerading in their role as ‘scientists’ to deceive the public in order to manufacture consent for harmful authoritarian policies.” – Jeremy R. Hammond
“…if a person gets a “positive” PCR test result at a cycle threshold of 35 or higher (as applied in most US labs and many European labs), the chance that the person is infectious is less than 3%. The chance that the person received a “false positive” result is 97% or higher.” – Swiss Policy Research
“There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask…While masks may block some droplets, they do not provide the level of protection people think they do. Wearing a mask may also have unintended consequences: People who wear masks tend to touch their face more often to adjust them, which can spread germs from their hands.” — Dr. Anthony Fauci (60 Minutes interview – March 8, 2020)
“Aluminum adjuvants (which are present in many vaccines) cause behavioral abnormalities, abnormal weight gain, learning and memory impairment, motor neuron death/apoptosis, neuromuscular strength deficits, chronic microglial activation/brain inflammation and large increases in brain and spinal cord aluminum content. These adverse effects occur at dosages less than or approximately equal to dosages received by infants according to the CDC vaccine schedule.” – Informed Consent Action Network
“The medical profession is being bought by the pharmaceutical industry, not only in terms of the practice of medicine, but also in terms of teaching and research. The academic institutions of this country are allowing themselves to be the paid agents of the pharmaceutical industry. I think it’s disgraceful.” – Arnold Seymour Relman, MD (1923-2014), Harvard Professor of Medicine and former Editor-in-Chief of the New England Journal of Medicine
(The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) derives a majority of its outside contributions – estimated at more than $25 million per year – from pharmaceutical companies that make vaccines. The pediatricians that the AAP represents derive the majority of their annual revenues from the administration of vaccines to their pediatric patients.) — J.B. Handley
“The majority of studies that authorities point to as proof that vaccines do not cause autism have been published in a journal called Pediatrics, the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics. As we know, the AAP is a trade union for pediatricians.” – J.B. Handley
“You’d be amazed at the number of physicians who don’t know what’s in a vaccine. They’ll say, well, there’s the bacteria, the virus you want to vaccinate against, and then there’s a little immune stimulant in there to help stimulate the immunity so they react against those viral antigens. They don’t know about these other chemicals in there like aluminum, mercury, formaldehyde, special proteins, special lipids that are known to be brain toxic, that are known to induce autoimmunity in the brain. They’re not aware of that. They don’t know that MSG is in a lot of vaccines―monosodium glutamate, a brain excitotoxin. They’re not aware of what’s in the vaccine they’re giving! —Russell Blaylock, MD
“Most physicians haven’t got a clue about vaccines. Physicians are undeservedly endowed with a mantle of authority and therefore most of their patients think vaccines are simple, safe and effective. And therefore, there is nothing much to know about vaccines except that they somehow illicit an immune response and magical antibodies will protect the inoculated patient for life. Total ignorance. But that’s what ‘The Snake’ tells physicians starting in medical school; and, since medical school (and nursing school) professors are also undeservedly endowed with a mantle of authority, both of whose healthcare professional groups believed it from the start. Until they get bit.” – Anonymous Anti-Over-Vaccination activist parent
“The true mortality rate of Corona virus is less than one in 100,000, or ≤ 0.001%, which is even 10 times less than the whistleblowers explain why they died. Therefore, it was not the Corona/COVID-19 virus that killed them. Professor Püschel concludes strongly that we have absolutely no reason to fear that the virus will kill us. The average age of the Corona/COVID-19 dead that Professor Püschel did autopsies on was 80 years old, and they all had one or more severe diseases that could explain why they died. Therefore, it was not the Corona/COVID-19 virus that killed them. Prof Püschel concludes strongly, that we have absolutely no reason to fear that the virus will kill us.” — Søren Ventegodt, MD, Copenhagen, Denmark
“The pharmaceutical industry obviously benefits from the panic over the COVID-19 pandemic. Could it be that the pharmaceutical companies have influenced how the mortality is measured and how the statistics are interpreted? Could commercial interests from the pharmaceutical companies producing vaccines for the world influence the way the World Health Organization (WHO) operates, the information it provided, the advice and guidance it offers to the world? Yes, it is possible, and it could explain how this whole Corona alarm and panic started. The stronger the interest, the less you can trust the data. If there is money involved, you need to be especially skeptical.
“A medical statistic made by a provider or manufacturer of a drug or a vaccine is normally flawed and manipulated to such an extent that you cannot believe in the statistics. To answer this question about how big the influence of the pharma industry might be we need a deep exploration of the WHO, its peoples, the communication between internal organizations in the WHO, and with the industry and people related to the pharmaceutical industry. We need total transparency and full access to all communication in and with the WHO. The lack of openness has earlier made it difficult to investigate the WHO’s Processes.” — see this
“Do you remember the “Swine Flu Scandal” of 2009 and the World Health Organization’s (and the CDC’s) panicky pandemic prognosis at that time? The definition of ‘pandemic’ was changed by WHO 12 years ago to ‘just a worldwide disease’. Many serious illnesses and many deaths were not required anymore, to announce a pandemic. Due to this change the WHO was able to declare the swine flu pandemic in 2009, with the result that (fast-tracked, poorly tested, and therefore dangerous) vaccines were produced and sold worldwide, on the basis of contracts that have been kept secret until today. During the swine flu in 2009, Drosten was one of those who stirred up panic in the population; repeating over and over again that the swine flu would claim many hundreds of thousands, even millions of deaths, all over the world. Thanks to Germany’s Dr Wolfgang Wodarg, this hoax was brought to an end before it would lead to even more serious consequences.” — Dr Reiner Fuellmich
“Also remember that the WHO has lied before, in 2009, when they said the swine flu was dangerous and millions would die, and based on this, most governments bought many vaccines. It turned out that the swine flu was just the normal flu, and what is even more worrying, the vaccines the governments had bought had to be destroyed because of negative side effects. Many children became handicapped because of the swine flu vaccines. There is a conflict of interests in WHO (and the world’s CDCs) because they are sponsored by pharmaceutical industries. The swine flu scandal is documented.” — Dr Reiner Fuellmich
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Dr Gary G. Kohls is a retired American family physician who practiced holistic (non-drug) mental health care during the last decade of his professional career. His patients came to see him asking for help in getting off the psychotropic drugs to which they were addicted and which they knew had sickened them and disabled their brains and bodies. He was successful in helping significant numbers of his patients get off or cut down on their cocktails of drugs using a time-consuming program that was based on psychoeducational psychotherapy, brain nutrient therapy and a program of gradual, closely monitored drug withdrawal.
He warns against the abrupt discontinuation of any psychiatric drug – legal or illicit – because of the common, often serious withdrawal symptoms that can occur in patients who have been taking such drugs. It is important to be treated by an aware, informed physician who is familiar with treating drug withdrawal syndromes and brain nutritional needs.
Dr Kohls lives in Duluth, MN, USA and writes a weekly column for the Duluth Reader, the area’s alternative newsweekly magazine. His columns deal with the dangers of American fascism, corporatism, militarism, racism, malnutrition, Big Pharma’s psychiatric drugging and over-vaccination regimens, and other movements that threaten the environment, prosperity, democracy, civility and the health and longevity of the planet and the populace.
Many of Dr Kohls’ columns have been archived at a number of websites around the world, including these five:
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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Deborah Bunka knows she’s in Hardin County, Iowa, when the smell of manure starts to filter in through her car’s air conditioning.
As the membership director for Iowa Farmers Union, Bunka has spent a lot of time talking to farmers in counties like Hardin, where pigs outnumber people about 37 to 1. And she’s seen firsthand the effects of living in close proximity to so many animals.
“There are parts of this state where you can’t open your windows,” Bunka said.
In Iowa and across the Midwest, the source of the smell can be hard to pinpoint, and that’s by design. The federal government doesn’t keep tabs on livestock operations nationwide, a matter of concern for environmentalists, activists and community members alike.
Iowa is the country’s top pork producer, with around 24 million hogs at any given time, according to industry data. Most of that production comes from concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, large scale livestock operations that raise thousands of animals in enclosed barns.
CAFOs have been a point of contention between the livestock industry and environmental activists since they began to proliferate in the 1990s, overtaking small, pasture-feeding operations as the dominant form of animal agriculture in the US. As the number of livestock producers has declined, the number of animals — hogs, cattle and poultry — has skyrocketed over the past several decades, in part due to rapid consolidation in the industry.
One large CAFO can easily produce more than one million tons of manure per year — more than the yearly waste of a large city. That manure not only causes the smell that Bunka described, but also contributes to water and air pollution when improperly managed.
The animal waste — usually stored in a lagoon or large tank before being spread as fertilizer in crop fields — contains nitrogen, phosphorus and sometimes growth hormones, antibiotics or pathogens such as E. coli. Rainwater can cause lagoons to spill over or wash the manure out of fields and into waterways.
But the full extent of the damage is hard to estimate because the federal government doesn’t keep track of where CAFOs are located. Instead, it’s up to states, researchers and activists to build their own databases.
This work is complicated by the fact that each state has different rules for issuing CAFO permits, on top of those mandated by the federal government.
Generally, any animal feeding operations (AFOs) that discharge waste into federal waterways must apply for a permit from the Environmental Protection Agency or from the state agency designated by the EPA. When a government agency issues such a permit, the applicant’s information is added to a database. The collected information includes the facility type and location, the owner’s name and contact information, the number of animals at the AFO, and the facility’s manure disposal plan.
These databases are useful because they allow agencies to quickly locate the source of a pollution event, schedule facility inspections and track CAFO hotspots. They’re also considered public records, obtainable via a Freedom of Information Act request, which allows journalists, researchers, environmental groups and neighbors to access the same information.
The federal government doesn’t require permits for facilities that claim they pose no risk to water quality, however, meaning thousands of CAFOs aren’t included in these databases. When the EPA tried to expand its reach to cover unpermitted facilities, judges ruled the agency cannot require all CAFOs to apply for a permit, effectively barring the federal government from creating a complete register.
Even before lawsuits blocked the EPA from collecting more data on CAFOs, the agency wasn’t adequately studying the environmental impact of their waste, according to the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan organization that audits federal agencies.
The work of cataloguing these facilities and their environmental impact is left to states, academic researchers and activists, whose combined work has created a patchwork of maps and databases that shed light on the prevalence of CAFOs in the US.
“I think it’s one hundred percent the government’s responsibility to know where CAFOs are, to know the environmental and health impacts each one can have, and to make that available to the public and to people like myself to inform policy making and policy design,” said Lee Miller, lecturing fellow at Duke Law and food and agriculture policy expert.
The EPA doesn’t know where thousands of CAFOs are
The EPA’s authority to regulate CAFOs comes from two pieces of legislation, both passed in 1972: the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act.
While the Clean Air Act doesn’t specifically mention CAFOs, animal operations have to abide by the same emission limits as other industries.
In 2005, in an attempt to develop specific CAFO air emission requirements, the EPA struck a deal with CAFO operators, granting civil protections to the CAFOs that participated in an industry-funded emissions monitoring program.
The EPA was supposed to use the results of the study to determine the best way to measure CAFO air emissions and to enact emissions controls by 2010.
Eleven years later, the agency still hasn’t determined how to measure CAFO air emissions. In August 2020, the EPA released a draft model for estimating swine CAFO emissions and the agency’s website states that draft models for certain emissions from poultry and dairy operations will be released this year.
But what the limits will be, and when they will take effect, is still “TBD.” Until the rules are finalized, protections remain in place for CAFOs that took part in the original monitoring study 15 years ago.
And, without air quality regulations in place, the EPA cannot create a database of CAFOs using its authority under the Clean Air Act.
The agency has successfully documented certain CAFOs using clean water laws. In the 1970s, under authority granted by the Clean Water Act, the EPA began requiring CAFOs to obtain a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit if they planned on discharging waste into federally regulated waterways. It’s the only permit the federal government requires of CAFOs.
But as the number of unpermitted CAFOs dramatically increased in the decades after the acts passed, the EPA sought to bring more of the facilities under federal regulation.
In 2003, the EPA issued a rule that would require all CAFOs to apply for permits unless they could prove that there was no possibility of water contamination. But the regulation was essentially nullified in 2005, when a judge struck down the “duty to apply” part of the rule, stating that the EPA could not regulate CAFOs based solely on the presumption that the facility would pollute.
“In our experience, we can not trust a lot of these operators to self-report, even in the case of something extreme happening, like a manure spill,” Miller said.
Miller co-authored a report about the lack of public information about CAFOs and their effect on the environment for the Natural Resources Defense Council, a nonprofit advocating for environmental protection and anti-climate change policies. Due to this court ruling, CAFOs often decide for themselves whether they need to apply for a NPDES permit, the NRDC report alleges.
And not knowing the exact location of thousands of animal feeding operations makes it harder for regulators to find the source of a manure spill or to know which areas are CAFO-dense and should be closely monitored for pollution, Miller said.
In 2013, after the livestock industry resisted EPA efforts to gather information on CAFOs nationwide, the agency instead requested CAFO databases from each state, creating an extensive federal CAFO database for the first time. The Natural Resources Defense Council then filed a Freedom of Information request for that database. The EPA complied, mailing the NRDC a disk with all of the information they’d gathered from 30 states, including the names and addresses of thousands of farmers.
Citing fears of surveillance or compromised biosecurity, the Pork Producers Council and the American Farm Bureau Federation sued the EPA, claiming that by releasing names and addresses, the EPA had endangered farmers and their livestock. The litigation lasted until 2016, when a judge ruled that the EPA had improperly released farmers’ information and blocked the agency from collecting and publicizing such data in the future. The NRDC returned the unredacted data.
“The pork industry has a long track record of working cooperatively with numerous stakeholders and has never hesitated to share information and data when it was warranted with appropriate government officials and legitimate researchers,” NPPC spokesperson Rachel Gantz wrote in an email to the Midwest Center. “NPPC will continue to vigorously defend the rights and privacy of its producers.”
Gantz declined when asked to provide specific examples of when the NPPC has provided industry data to government officials or researchers.
Iowa officials become “little detectives” in search for missing CAFOs
Much of the fight over CAFO management in the Midwest has played out in Iowa. Bunka got involved nearly 15 years ago with an environmental organization named Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement.
In 2007, the group filed a petition with the EPA, asking federal authorities to investigate the Iowa Department of Natural Resources and seeking stronger enforcement of environmental protection rules. The EPA ignored the petition, however, until Iowa CCI threatened to sue for inaction in 2011.
The threat kicked the EPA into gear, and District 7 of the agency conducted an investigation of the Iowa DNR in 2012.
Investigators found that the Iowa DNR didn’t issue NPDES permits when appropriate, didn’t conduct enough inspections of unpermitted facilities to determine if they needed a permit, failed to act on permit violations in nearly half of the reviewed cases, didn’t impose adequate penalties against rule breakers, and didn’t enforce federal rules governing where CAFOs could and could not be built.
From 2013 to 2018, the EPA and Iowa DNR worked together to address the issues pointed out in the report.
Iowa CCI got involved in the plan by petitioning the Iowa Environmental Protection Commission, a politically-appointed group that oversees the state DNR. For nine months, Bunka traveled across rural Iowa, visiting local events like farmers markets and fairs. She gathered signatures for a petition asking the commission to enact stricter regulations and permitting requirements for CAFOs.
Bunka collected more than 2,000 signatures. She brought the signed papers to the Iowa CCI offices, where staff made photocopies and taped all the papers together before bringing the long list of names to a meeting of the Iowa Environmental Protection Commission, a politically-appointed board that oversees environmental policies in the state.
In the meeting room, staff members wrapped the paper chain all the way around the commissioners, asking them to join the call for an audit of the Iowa DNR.
“There was a lot of gaveling, and then they kicked everyone out and ended the meeting,” Bunka said. The commission never enacted the policies sought by Iowa CCI.
But the work plan brought other reforms to the department, including a requirement to take an inventory of all animal feeding operations in the state.
Iowa DNR employees scoured satellite maps, cross-referencing them with their existing AFO database, and found more than 1,200 previously unidentified medium and large animal feeding operations.
“We’ve become little detectives,” Iowa DNR environmental engineer Cindy Garza said.
Garza considers Iowa’s online databases to be the best in the region, and she’s been involved since the data went online in 2009. The state’s online AFO database contains all of the facilities the department has contact with, she said. That includes medium and large AFOs, which are required by state law to file manure management plans; any facility that’s been cited for violating DNR regulations; the operations located in the department’s 5-year search; all NPDES permitted facilities; and those that register voluntarily with the department.
In all, the online database contains information on nearly 13,000 operations, not all of which are active. The Iowa DNR also maintains an interactive map of the facilities connected to the main AFO database.
While the EPA’s intervention shed light on the prevalence of unpermitted, under-the-radar CAFOs in Iowa, the same attention hasn’t necessarily been paid to other states’ permitting programs.
Detailed CAFO databases are harder to come by in other places. In North Dakota, for example, there is no online database or map of AFOs. Instead, anyone seeking information about the facilities must file a formal open records request. And before the state releases information about specific facilities, the Department of Environmental Quality has to mail out release forms to every operation included in the database notifying them of the request. (In 2019, a Midwest Center reporter fielded about 90 phone calls from AFO owners who’d been notified of the request and provided his phone number by the state.)
Researchers and activists create their own CAFO databases
Without a central database to reference in research, scientists and academics who study agriculture and the environment have found other ways to gather information about CAFOs.
In 2020, two Stanford researchers published a deep-learning artificial intelligence tool that could find CAFOs using Google Maps. The tool used the distinctive aerial appearance of CAFOs– rows of long, rectangular roofed barns, sometimes interspersed with manure lagoons — and scanned satellite images to find the operations. According to a report published in Nature Sustainability, the AI tool accurately detected more than 90 percent of concentrated poultry operations in one region of North Carolina — a state that doesn’t require permits for most poultry CAFOs.
The researchers published the AI tool online, and animal rights activists quickly put it to work building maps of CAFOs across the U.S. One activist group, Project Counterglow, published a crowdsourced map of the entire US using AI to pinpoint CAFOs and cross-reference the operations with existing databases.
The map is the first of its kind, pointing out thousands of CAFOs that aren’t present in government records.
But Project Counterglow doesn’t provide any information about its backers or funding. The website crowdsources information on individual facilities, asking followers to gather and publish evidence of animal cruelty or malpractice on the site. The map sparked concern among the livestock industry, prompting articles about protecting one’s operation from surveillance and fear of bioterrorism.
Project Counterglow did not respond to requests for comment.
Fighting a constant battle for data transparency and stronger CAFO regulation has caused burnout among environmental scientists and policymakers, said Austin Frerick, deputy director of the Thurman Arthur Project at Yale University, which conducts research on competition policy and antitrust enforcements.
“A lot of people who used to be in this space have left because they just got so heartbroken,” Frerick* said. “So a lot of institutional knowledge has been lost.”
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Featured image is from Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting
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An international NGO devoted to halting the proliferation of nuclear weapons recently released satellite imagery showing that Israel, for the first time in decades, was engaged in new construction at its Dimona nuclear site. The reactor there, which first became active in the mid-1960s, manufactures plutonium as fuel for Israel’s reputed stockpile of 80 nuclear warheads.
This excavation has piqued the curiosity of nuclear experts and intelligence agencies around the world. Since the Dimona reactor has long since passed its projected lifespan, some have speculated that Israel may be building a new plutonium reactor.
This seems unlikely, as this element is long lasting, and Israel has already produced enough for current or future needs. Some have speculated that the existing reactor is either substantially shut down or being decommissioned.
If Israel does not need a new reactor to replace the old one, then what else might it be building there? In a recent interview with the Associated Press, Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association, pointed to another critical element in nuclear warheads: tritium. It is a hydrogen isotope used to increase the yield of nuclear warheads. It also makes the explosive reaction more efficient, so less fuel (in Israel’s case, plutonium) is needed.
Tritium has allowed for advances in weapons design, including smaller devices whose explosive power is magnified. It is also used in neutron bombs, which are designed to kill humans while having a reduced blast area. Kimball told the AP that Israel “may want to produce more tritium, a relatively faster-decaying radioactive byproduct used to boost the explosive yield of some nuclear warheads”.
Tritium, like plutonium and other substances used to produce nuclear weapons, is manufactured in a nuclear reactor. It can be produced by irradiating lithium metal. The isotope is less stable than plutonium, meaning it requires replenishing more frequently for use in a nuclear arsenal.
If, as leading nuclear expert Avner Cohen has speculated, the old Dimona reactor is to be retired, Israel would need a new source for the production of tritium. Perhaps a reactor is being specifically built for that purpose.
Construction appears to have begun, according to an analysis of satellite photos, sometime in late 2018 or early 2019. This means that work has likely been underway for around two years. The current images mainly indicate excavation, but no buildings yet being constructed.
Why is the process moving so slowly? It could indicate indecision among policymakers about when and whether to shut down the old reactor, or budgetary constraints preventing a faster pace of construction.
The real nuclear danger
But why has the imagery become public only now, after two years of construction? Given the looming conflict between Israel and US President Joe Biden over the revival of the Iran nuclear negotiations, it’s possible that the US administration wants to remind the world where the real nuclear danger lies – and it’s not in Iran.
If the construction is related to the production of tritium, this would suggest that Israel is not building a new class of nuclear arms, such as the hypersonic weapons of which Russian President Vladimir Putin has boasted – at least not at Dimona. Rather, Israel is likely refining the potency of its existing arsenal.
Satellite images shows significant new construction at the Dimona site https://t.co/Mhyh801Uzp
The ultimate irony of the Dimona project is that no one questions Israel’s right to make nuclear weapons or to improve the lethality of its arsenal. Digging a hole the size of a soccer field to build God-knows-what? Go right ahead. Yet, should a single particle of uranium fall to the ground in a place where it should not be in Iran, the whole international community begins tut-tutting that Tehran is a few weeks from nuclear breakout and imminent catastrophe.
Why the double standard? Why does the world believe that Israel has the right to such an immense arsenal, and that it will maintain it responsibly, while Iran has no right to even a single weapon – and that should the latter create one, it would blow up the world? What has Israel ever done to deserve such credibility, and what has Iran ever done that is so much more heinous as to deserve this level of obloquy?
Keeping enemies in check
In a Facebook exchange with Cohen, he called Benjamin Netanyahu Israel’s most “nuclear-keen” prime minister since David Ben-Gurion, who founded the country’s nuclear programme. Netanyahu has taken far more interest in the nuclear project and made numerous speeches, both at Dimona and at Ben Gurion’s graveside nearby at Sde Boker, threatening Iran with nuclear destruction.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that Netanyahu is any more likely to use such weapons than previous prime ministers. It means that he sees a critical need for Israel to have credible nuclear deterrence to keep its enemies in check. This is a key element of Israel’s geopolitical strategy, a means of projecting power and guaranteeing the nation’s regional dominance.
It fends off threats by hostile forces in Iran, Syria and Iraq. In the past, former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin ordered an attack on an Iraqi nuclear reactor, and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmertordered an attack on a Syrian reactor being built in its eastern desert.
Netanyahu’s obsession with Iran’s nuclear programme might derive from his being loath to be the first Israeli leader to permit an Arab enemy to join the nuclear club.
Over the past decade, the US and Israel have played good cop-bad cop roles regarding the Iranian nuclear threat. US presidents have used a combination of covert sabotage and public diplomacy to advance a policy of restraining Iran, while Israel has, at times, advocated an outright military attack. Both collaborated on the covert Stuxnet malware that destroyed uranium centrifuges.
But the US has never been willing to join in an attack on Iran, despite Netanyahu’s lobbying. Will the Israeli leader show restraint, or will he test Biden’s resolve and Iran’s commitment to negotiations by continuing to assassinate nuclear scientists and otherwise undermine a political-diplomatic approach to resolving the crisis?
Biden has learned from the past experiences of former President Barack Obama not to trust Netanyahu. It is an unenviable position to have to distrust both one’s enemy (Iran) and one’s ally.
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Richard Silverstein writes the Tikun Olam blog, devoted to exposing the excesses of the Israeli national security state. His work has appeared in Haaretz, the Forward, the Seattle Times and the Los Angeles Times. He contributed to the essay collection devoted to the 2006 Lebanon war, A Time to Speak Out (Verso) and has another essay in the collection, Israel and Palestine: Alternate Perspectives on Statehood (Rowman & Littlefield)
ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102 Print Edition: $10.25 (+ shipping and handling) PDF Edition: $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)
Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.
Reviews
“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.” –John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University
“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.” -Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations
Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction. –Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute
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A group of scientists and doctors has today issued an open letter calling on the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to answer urgent safety questions regarding COVID-19 vaccines, or withdraw the vaccines’ authorisation.
The letter describes serious potential consequences of COVID-19 vaccine technology, warning of possible autoimmune reactions, blood clotting abnormalities, stroke and internal bleeding, “including in the brain, spinal cord and heart”.
“Should all such evidence not be available”, the authors write, “we demand that approval for use of the gene-based vaccines be withdrawn until all the above issues have been properly addressed by the exercise of due diligence by the EMA.”
The letter is addressed to Emer Cooke, Executive Director of the EMA, and was sent on Monday 1 March 2021. The letter was copied to the President of the Council of Europe and the President of the European Commission.
It states:
“We are supportive in principle of the use of new medical interventions.” However, “there are serious concerns, including but not confined to those outlined above, that the approval of the COVID-19 vaccines by the EMA was premature and reckless, and that the administration of the vaccines constituted and still does constitute ‘human experimentation’, which was and still is in violation of the Nuremberg Code.”
Video statement by Professor Sucharit Bhakdi, Professor Emeritus of Medical Microbiology and Immunology and Former Chair, Institute of Medical Microbiology and Hygiene:
“No sooner did we deliver our letter than the Norwegian Medicines Agency warnedthat COVID-19 vaccines may be too risky for use in the frail elderly, the very group these vaccines are designed to protect. We would add that, by virtue of the mechanisms of action of the vaccines, to stimulate the production of spike protein, which has adverse pathophysiological properties, there may also be vulnerable people who are not old and already ill. New data shows that vaccine side effects are three times as commonin those who have previously been infected with coronavirus, for example. None of the vaccines have undergone clinical testing for more than a few months, which is simply too short for establishing safety and efficacy.
“Therefore, as a starting point, we believe it is important to enumerate and evaluate all deaths which have occurred within 28 days of vaccination, and to compare the clinical pictures with those who have not been vaccinated.
“More broadly, with respect to the development of COVID-19 vaccines, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has stated in their Resolution 2361, on 27th January 2021, that member states must ensure all COVID-19 vaccines are supported by high quality trials that are sound and conducted in an ethical manner. EMA officials, and other regulatory bodies in EU countries, are bound by these criteria. They should be made aware that they may be violating Resolution 2361 by applying medical products still in phase 3 studies.
“Under Resolution 2361, member states must also inform citizens that vaccination is NOT mandatory and ensure that no one is politically, socially, or otherwise pressured to become vaccinated. States are further required to ensure that no one is discriminated against for not receiving the vaccine.”
The letter comes as a petitionagainst UK Government plans for vaccine passports passed 270,000 signatures, more than double that required to compel consideration for debate by MPs. The petition will be debated in the UK Parliament on 15th March 2021.
Doctors and scientists can sign the open letter by sending their name, qualifications, areas of expertise and country of practice to: [email protected].
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Due to their remote location in the Northern Marshall Islands, the people of Bikini Atoll were spared the worst of the mid-Pacific fighting between the American and Japanese armies in the final years of World War II. Their millennia-old culture and sustainable way of life ended abruptly when, in early 1946, Commodore Ben Wyatt, a representative of the occupying United States Navy, informed King Juda and other Bikini residents that the US would begin to test nuclear weapons near their homes. Wyatt asked the Bikinians to move elsewhere, stating that the temporary move was for “the good of mankind and to end all wars.” Though Wyatt may have believed his words to be true, the show of might by the US that followed neither ended all conflict, nor was the exodus short-lived. Seventy-five years later, Bikinians have yet to return.
Nuclear testing in Bikini and other Marshall Islands, which lasted from 1946 to 1958, received international attention at the time. In those early Cold War days, America demonstrated its nuclear prowess through images of mushroom cloud blasts towering over the Pacific on the cover of Time magazine and other prominent publications. The word Bikini infiltrated popular culture via the name of a two-piece swimsuit (named by a French designer to be “explosive”) and SpongeBob’s home, without simultaneously suffusing our conscience with an awareness of the injustices and suffering those blasts caused the Marshallese people.
It is time, finally, to recognize and right the wrongs perpetrated by the US government in the Marshall Islands. The US forced a new and dangerous technology on the native lands and peoples, without fully comprehending the short- and long-term consequences. The Marshall Islands–and Bikini specifically–ended up the site of most of the tests of US hydrogen bombs, weapons up to a thousand times more powerful than atomic bombs used in attacks on Japan in 1945. Later, when the refugees were briefly returned to Bikini after testing ended, they were exposed to harmful radiation amounts with devastating health effects.
To be sure, the US government has taken steps to monitor and address the contamination that resulted from these nuclear detonations. However, the status quo—studies by the Energy Department for the sake of scientific publications and reports, while Bikinians continue to live on other islands—is not only inadequate, but morally repugnant. Bikini is a native land and water that, over thousands of years, was critical to the people’s sustenance and the bedrock of their culture. While some of those who survived the decades of relocations are still alive, their children and grandchildren, including the descendants of King Juda, have yet to resettle their ancestral home. Without an immediate US-government-funded plan to resettle the living refugees, the millennia-long culture and history tied to the atoll may be lost forever. Also, as one of the highest lying islands in the region, Bikini could be the solution to challenges the Marshallese face from global warming and corresponding rise of sea levels.
But it’s not as simple as saying: “Let’s move the Bikinians back.” A permanent return to the atoll by a multi-generational community would risk serious health effects unless sources of remaining radiological contamination in Bikini’s fruit, soil, and lagoon are addressed and removed, according to our research at Columbia University’s K=1 Project, Center for Nuclear Studies. We have found radioactive materials throughout Bikini Atoll, resulting in background gamma radiation above the limit agreed upon by the Republic of the Marshall Islands and US and levels of cesium-137 in various fruits that violate most relevant international and domestic safety standards. Even the waters surrounding Bikini, a formerly plentiful source of food, are riddled with radioisotopes from the detonations. The cleanup may require a novel scientific approach on par with that used after the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear accidents. That said, a modern nuclear testing cleanup protocol may prove useful in the event of future nuclear incidents in the United States or elsewhere.
The Biden administration has promised to lead in domestic and international spheres with morals and compassion. To do so, it must engage in a truthful, comprehensive accounting of past missteps in the Marshall Islands, regardless of whether the cost of reparations and resettlement exceeds its current pledgeof roughly $110 million to Bikini. Commodore Wyatt’s allegedly “temporary” displacement of Bikinians from their native land has lasted 75 years and counting. Will the Biden administration act with morals to clean remaining radioactive material from US detonations? Will it act with compassion to help Bikinians find their way home?
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Hart Rapaport is an undergraduate at Columbia University majoring in political science & statistics. He conducts research with Columbia’s K=1 Project, Center for Nuclear Studies.
Ivana Nikolić Hughes is a Senior Lecturer in Chemistry at Columbia University and the Director of Frontiers of Science, the required course for Columbia College students. Ivana is also the Director of the K=1 Project, Center for Nuclear Studies in Arts and Sciences. The center is focused on educating students and the broader public on nuclear technology issues.
Featured image: A nuclear weapon test by the US military at Bikini Atoll in 1946. Credit: US Defense Department image via Wikimedia Commons, licensed with PD-USGov-Military.
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***
Should we thank Pope Francis’ invitation to the world to stare into the maw of the Iraqi landscape? Whatever image the holy man conjures with his blessings, it can hardly be more than a fleeting one.
What remains, what might endure, what might rise and be restored–is unspeakable for Americans. A blast of yellow dust obscures the present, replaced by a soft image of robed clerics wandering through ancient Mesopotamia.
Among old timers familiar with Middle East archeology, Iraq was simple– an exotic Mesopotamian desert. It yielded scientific discoveries and allowed the removal of unparalleled creations to distant museums; it inspired novels by Agatha Christie. Oil, a collateral benefit of intellectual explorations, emerged from Mesopotamia.
Today, that place has neither oil nor people…to speak of. It’s reverted to an unthreatening, legendary land: a page in American school texts, a museum lecture. Those lessons, stripped of inhabitants, are illustrated mythical beasts and ancient minarets, brick walls cemented with 4000-year-old bitumen mortar. If that ancient place produced the world’s earliest known written novel, the first inscribed legal code, those items don’t fit the allotted page entry.
In the imagination of Americans, the name Iraq is not really a country or a desert, not a democracy or a multi-ethnic nation, not a theater-of-war or a cemetery of past patriots.
The reference belongs to a fellow American, an undisputedly brave “thank-you-for-your-service” recipient. In his late 30s now, he’ll earn more accolades if victim of an IED –not clean sniper bullets, but something terroristic. If he’s diagnosed with PTSD, he’s secured employment upon retirement. Combat trauma excuses his rage, explains his domestic abuse, references his murder of fellow Americans– co-veterans, neighbors, family—and his drug addiction.
He becomes a pitiable, troubled film hero who displays immense willpower, despite his misdeeds. Or he emerges into a political candidate.
Iraq veteran is a badge of honor, a qualification, for wannabe U.S. politicians today (whatever their party affiliation). Presidential candidates Tulsi Gabbard and Pete Buttigieg boasted war experience. Across the country today, party committees scour towns and neighborhoods to identify such noble figures.
A nearby village hosts a brewery called “Do Good”. The manager explains “Do Good” honors his deceased friend; “He was a sniper in Iraq. Do Good is what he always advocated.”
This transformation from killer-sniper to symbol of democracy took hardly a decade, helped initially by best-selling soldier-authored poetry collections and memoirs, then by Hollywood. Any voter will recall films where American boys emerge valorous: defusing bombs, saving comrades, opening Christmas packages from home, craving fried chicken, caressing photos of newborn children.
To prepare for the glory and pain, the losses and merciless heat, the rigorous sniper training and persistent fear, Mesopotamia needed to be transformed from the benign to the menacing. Kept under the radar, far from American public view, Mesopotamian lads were mobilized against Iranians their own age, enemies along a shared frontier. No Shia or Sunni in Iraq then, only wrathful extremists who’d ousted Washington’s dictator in Tehran.
Never mind the name of a young, promising military officer who sent hardy farm boys into marshy borderlands for face-to-face combat. He gladly took on “religious fanatics”, having earlier served America with his quiet purge of Iraq’s communists.
After 1988 when the two neighbors ended their conflict, Iraq became “The Regime”. Occasionally a real person would emerge with a new memoir of torture under this regime’s “Republican Guard”. Even today, that demon remains more threatening than any Marine-managed torture prison or helicopter gunship firing at children.
“The Regime” became the terror behind the exodus of intellectuals that continues up to today. Uncounted. Highly reputed doctors, renowned engineers, language and history scholars slip away, welcomed by western hospitals and universities after each has somehow managed fees and endured low paid retraining to settle, hushed, in a Michigan or California suburb.
Who won that 1980s border war hardly matters. Kuwait emerged as the victor, defining a new Hitler for the U.S. imagination. How robustly the grimacing face of Saddam gripped the US imagination! Thirty allied nations rallied behind Washington’s call to liberate Kuwait. The global assault was spectacular and efficient—forget about sons and brothers lost on those borders. Forget about the following thirteen silent years while a relentless blockade took a toll greater than any battlefield. Without signs of blood and no American lost, only Iraqi children offered an occasional statistic of malnutrition, disease, or cancer deaths. The quietly murderous U.N. embargowas hardly eventful.
Good Iraq became Kurdistan; some oppressed Shiaa in a triangle of dusty desert pleaded for emancipation. (Nothing about women.) Mesopotamia, modern hospitals, bustling universities, family excursions to Europe and scientific conferences ceded to Saddam and his Republican Guards.
Finally, a motive was found for a full-scale invasion. Was it weapons of mass destruction? Something related to Al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attack? Or the singular Saddam demon? Minorities needing liberation, craving democracy?
A new generation of journalists headed eastward. Prize-winning books followed.
More medics and teachers disappeared. More young people forgot about education, Olympic training, sculpturing, or cultivating their Mesopotamian soil.
Pillaging and killing were massive, but no heart was won. Local newspapers and new television companies flourished and villagers brandished their purple thumbs. Prime-ministers changed seats while whoever was left became Shia-Sunni, Yazidi or Chaldean, Al-Qaeda-ISIS-Daesh.
Exhausted, the Mesopotamian dust settles over another layer of outstanding civilization.
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***
Many people in the United States are aware of the struggle for Civil Rights led by African Americans during the post-World War II period from the late 1940s right through the early 1970s.
Rosa L. Parks, of Alabama, gained international acclaim for her refusal to yield her seat to a white man on a Montgomery bus on December 1, 1955.
Parks’ stance and the organizing work done by the Women’s Political Council led to the formation of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) which conducted a year-long bus boycott that forced the courts to end segregation practices in the city’s public transportation system. It was the actions organized by the African American community in Montgomery that catapulted a young 26-year-old minister, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., into national prominence.
After the developments in Montgomery, the broader movement to end Jim Crow and win universal suffrage gained momentum resulting in numerous court rulings, legislative initiatives and executive orders striking down the legalized “separate but equal” Supreme Court decision of 1896 in the Plessy v. Ferguson case.
Elizabeth Jennings Graham and the Campaign against Segregation in New York
Yet the antecedents for the Montgomery Bus Boycott can be traced back as far as July 1854, when African American teacher and musician, Elizabeth Jennings, attempted to board a horse-driven streetcar in New York City. Jennings, only 24 at the time, was told she could not ride on the car because she was Black.
Jennings immediately objected to the order made by the driver and demanded the right to ride to the First Colored American Congregational Church where she served as the organist. The white driver attempted to remove her physically as she continued to resist. Later a police officer was summoned and the two white men forcefully ejected Jennings from the streetcar.
Her own account which was published in at least two journals, the New York Daily Tribune and Frederick Douglass’s papers, Jennings emphasized:
“I…told him I was a respectable person, born and raised in New York, did not know where he was born, that I had never been insulted before while going to church and that he was a good for nothing impudent fellow for insulting decent persons while on their way to church.”
Jennings’ father, Thomas L. Jennings, was a Free African who had built a skills trade as a tailor. He had gained enormous stature in the New York Black community due to his successful efforts to purchase the freedom of Elizabeth’s mother, of the same name, from enslavement. Thomas L. Jennings supported his daughter Elizabeth in her effort to acquire justice.
At this time in New York City, the omnibuses and streetcars were owned by private corporations. Many of the companies would not allow African Americans to ride or if they did, maintained strict segregationist policies.
“The conductor undertook to get her off, first alleging the car was full, when that was shown to be false. He pretended the other passengers were displeased at her presence. But [when] she insisted on her rights, he took hold of her by force to expel her. She resisted. The conductor got her down on the platform, jammed her bonnet, soiled her dress and injured her person. Quite a crowd gathered. But she effectually resisted. Finally, after the car had gone on further, with the aid of a policeman they succeeded in removing her.”
The legal case would be decided in 1855 after 24-year-old Attorney Chester A. Arthur argued successfully before Brooklyn Circuit Court Judge William Rockwell who ruled in Jennings’ favor. Arthur would later become Vice-President in 1881 and succeeded James Garfield after his assassination the same year. Jennings was awarded monetary damages for the acts of discrimination and violence by the conductor and policeman.
Nonetheless, it would take another two decades of mass actions and legal work to end segregation completely within the New York transportation system. Rallies were held immediately at the First Colored American Congregational Church after the incident involving Jennings. Eventually in 1874, a Civil Rights Act was passed outlawing segregation in the state of New York.
“In 1860, Jennings married a man named Charles Graham. Their only son, Thomas J. Graham, fell ill and died in infancy in 1863. Charles passed away a few years later in 1867. Jennings continued to teach, first at the private African Free School and later in the public schools. She also founded the city’s first kindergarten for African American children, operating it from her home just south of Longacre Square (now Times Square). On June 5, 1901, Jennings passed away at age 74 and was buried in Cypress Hills Cemetery alongside Charles and Thomas.”
Legacy Continued for More Than a Century
By 1883, Ida B. Wells-Barnett (image on the right) had become a teacher and journalist in Memphis, Tennessee, a thriving southern municipality with a highly politicized African American population emerging in the aftermath of enslavement and the Civil War. In 1866, white racist mobs would attack the Black community in Memphis prompted by a conflict over the disarmament of Civil War-era militias staffed by African Americans.
Wells had graduated from Rust College in Mississippi where she was born in 1862 as an enslaved African during the Civil War. Her parents and grandparents died during the yellow fever epidemic of the late 1870s which struck Mississippi and southwest Tennessee.
The known introduction of Wells to political agitation occurred in 1883 when she was forcefully ejected from a non-smoking (women’s car) on the Chesapeake, Ohio and Southwestern Railroad Company line. She filed a lawsuit against the company and won an initial judgement. The case was later overturned on appeal. However, Wells would go on to serve as a co-publisher of the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight newspaper which was circulated in large areas throughout Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas. She became known nationally after her outspoken response to the lynching of three of her friends in Memphis during 1892. (See this)
Eventually, Wells’ newspaper offices were firebombed while she was out of the city on a speaking tour. Her business partner escaped barely with his life. Later Wells would lead an international campaign against lynching in the U.S.
She would relocate to Chicago and marry Ferdinand Barnett in 1895, an attorney and newspaper publisher as well. Wells became a co-founder of the African American women’s club movement which organized hundreds of thousands across the U.S. within cities and rural areas. Wells became an advocate of women’s suffrage and marched defiantly in the front rows of the 1913 national march in Washington, D.C. demanding the passage of a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right of women to vote, which was later ratified in 1920.
Wells-Barnett’s political origins are inextricably linked to the struggle for access to public transportation on a non-discriminatory basis. Her efforts would lay the groundwork for the emergence of the modern movements for Civil Rights, Black Power and Self-Determination in the U.S.
Lessons from Rosa Parks and Claudette Colvin: The Struggle for Public Access Continues
Several months prior to the arrest of Rosa L. Parks in Montgomery, Claudette Colvin, a 15-year-old African American youth, was arrested for refusing to yield her seat to a white woman. The act of defiance by Colvin illustrated clearly that the national mood among Black people was shifting during the mid-1950s.
Image below: Rosa Parks and Claudette Colvin
Nevertheless, for various reasons Colvin’s case did not get the attention that Parks’ did in 1955-56, although she was a plaintiff in the landmark case of Browder v. Gayle, which ended segregation in public transportation in Montgomery. Colvin was an adolescent and an expectant mother. Many felt in Montgomery that the case could have been exploited by segregationists. Parks was a 42-year-old seamstress with a long history of political involvement dating back to the defense campaign of the Scottsboro Boys in the early 1930s in Alabama. The young men were falsely charged with rape of two white women on a freight train in 1931. Only a years-long campaign spared them from the electric chairs. (See this)
Later Parks was active around the effort to win justice for a 24-year-old African American woman, Recy Taylor, who was gang raped by six white hoodlums while walking home from church in Abbeville, Alabama in September 1944. Although the whites were never held accountable for their crimes, the incident further exposed the degree of impunity exercised by segregationists during the period. At the time of her arrest, Parks was the secretary of the Montgomery National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and also worked with E.D. Nixon, a leader within the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, an African American labor organization based in the railroad industry.
Although in the 21st century African Americans ostensibly have fundamental rights to public access and due process, the inequalities of national oppression persist. Municipalities and rural areas are facing even deeper cuts in public services amid the rising gap between the wealthy and the working class. These inequalities are more pronounced when race and nationality are taken into consideration.
Today the struggle for access must encompass the demands related to the need to increase funding for public transportation. Public transportation ranks among other major necessities which must be won by the people including the right to housing, water, utilities, education, environmental quality along with freedom from racist violence and state repression.
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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
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Alena Douhan (image below), the UN special rapporteur on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights, published her preliminary report on February 12 on the impact of US and European sanctions on Venezuela.
The report laid bare how a years-long campaign of economic warfare has asphyxiated Venezuela’s economy, crushing the government’s ability to provide basic services both before and during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“The [Venezuelan] government’s revenue was reported to shrink by 99%, with the country currently living on 1% of its pre-sanctions income,” Douhan found, impeding “the ability of Venezuela to respond to the Covid-19 emergency.”
Douhan thus urged
the governments of the United Kingdom, Portugal and the United States and corresponding banks to unfreeze assets of the Venezuela Central Bank to purchase medicine, vaccines, food, medical and other equipment.
The campaign to overthrow the Venezuelan government, Douhan added, “violates the principle of sovereign equality of states and constitutes an intervention in domestic affairs of Venezuela that also affects its regional relations.”
Douhan’s report follows a Center for Economy and Policy Research (CEPR) paper that estimated that sanctions were responsible for over 40,000 deaths in Venezuela in 2017–18 (FAIR.org, 6/14/19). Though sanctions were not the only factor driving economic hardship, CEPR found that they
exacerbated Venezuela’s economic crisis and made it nearly impossible to stabilize the economy, contributing further to excess deaths. All of these impacts disproportionately harmed the poorest and most vulnerable Venezuelans.
Like the CEPR study, Douhan’s report has been categorically ignored across establishment media.
By omitting the devastating impact of sanctions, corporate media attribute sole responsibility for economic and humanitarian conditions to the Venezuelan government, thereby using the misery provoked by sanctions to validate the infliction of even more misery.
Collective punishment
US and European officials have long admitted that the sanctions regime against Venezuela is collective punishment by design. Speaking to G20 foreign ministers in May 2018, then–British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson announced:
The feeling I get from talking to my counterparts is that they see no alternative to economic pressure—and it’s very sad, because obviously the downside of sanctions is that they can affect the population that you don’t want to suffer. But in the end things have got to get worse before they get better—and we may have to tighten the economic screw on Venezuela.
On March 22, 2019, a senior US government official bragged:
The effect of the sanctions [against Venezuela] is continuing and cumulative. It’s sort of like in Star Wars when Darth Vader constricts somebody’s throat, that’s what we are doing to the regime economically.
A year later, as the Covid-19 virus spread globally, US Attorney General William Barr gloatedthat the pandemic was
good timing, actually.… The [Trump] administration is taking a kind of “kick them while they’re down” approach, seemingly with the hope that by piling on sanctions and other actions, the administration can capitalize on the virus in Iran and Venezuela to spur greater public opposition to the incumbent governments and perhaps regime change.
“Although sanctions do not seem to be physical warfare weapons,” the Lancet (3/18/20) noted, “they are just as deadly, if not more so. Jeopardising the health of populations for political ends is not only illegal but also barbaric.”
Media silence
Many Western journalists, however, appear not to have seen these overt declarations of collective punishment against the Venezuelan population—a crime against humanity under Article 7 of the Statute of the International Criminal Court, according to former UN Expert Alfred de Zayas.
Loath to abandon belief in the fundamentally benign nature of Western foreign policy, corporate scribes have typically presented the devastating effects of sanctions as a mere accusation of Nicolás Maduro. “Maduro…said US sanctions were hurting his administration’s ability to buy medicines and foodstuffs” was the next-to-last paragraph of a Guardian piece (3/17/20) on Covid in Venezuela whose subhead read, “Continuing chaotic situation under Nicolás Maduro leaves hospitals and health services desperately unprepared.”
Often, they fail to mention sanctions at all. In June 2019, for instance, the Guardian’s Tom Phillips reported that “more than 4 million Venezuelans have now fled economic and humanitarian chaos,” citing would-be coup leader Juan Guaidó’s claim that the country’s economic collapse “was caused by the corruption of this regime,” without making any reference to Washington’s campaign of economic warfare.
Keeping with tradition, Douhan’s damning report has been met with stunning silence by establishment media outlets. Neither the Guardian, New York Times, Washington Post nor BBC reported on Douhan’s findings, leaving the task primarily to alternative media (Venezuelanalysis, 2/15/21; Canary, 2/13/21). (CNN—2/13/21—had an exceptional report focused on the UN report, which noted Douhan’s statement that sanctions “constitute violations of international law.”)
The issue is not that Western media are uninterested in Venezuela. In February 2019, the month after Juan Guaidó declared himself president, the Guardian published 67 separate articles about Venezuela, regularly citing the UN on Venezuela’s economic and humanitarian conditions—signaling Maduro’s sole responsibility for a crisis about which something must surely be done.
For example, the Guardian (2/27/19) reported in 2019, “The UN’s political and peace building chief, Rosemary DiCarlo, depicted a devastating collapse in Venezuela’s health system”—while making no reference to sanctions.
Similarly, the New York Times, whose editorial board had supported 10 out of 12 US-backed coups in Latin America since 1954, has regularly covered the deteriorating economic situation in Venezuela with—at best—only fleeting reference to US and European sanctions.
The New York Times (12/5/20), for instance, described how “Yajaira Paz, 35, has lost nearly everything” to the Venezuelan economic crisis: “her mother, dead from a heart problem she could not afford to treat; her brothers, to migration; her faith in democracy, to the nation’s crippled institutions” — omitting any mention of sanctions.
The Washington Post Magazine (3/3/21) ran a similarly emotive article, noting how “the pandemic wore away even more access to basic necessities in a country racked by deepening poverty and crisis,” blaming “the national mismanagement of resources” and, again, ignoring the existence of sanctions.
Corporate media thus consistently emphasizes the gravity of Venezuela’s humanitarian situation while overlooking crucial evidence on the catastrophic impact of sanctions, fortifying the very narratives deployed to justify the economic siege against Venezuela.
The collective silence over Douhan’s report is only the most recent case of propaganda by omission on Venezuela. By refusing to acknowledge Washington and London’s fundamental role in making Venezuela’s “economy scream,” corporate media play a key part in manufacturing consent for regime change.
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John McEvoy is an independent journalist whose work has featured in the International History Review, Declassified UK, the Canary, Tribune, Brasil Wire and others.
This article by Professor Michel Chossudovsky was granted the 2015 Project Censored Award.
Ranked No. 5 among the 25 most censored news stories.
Nuclear radiation resulting from the March 2011 Fukushima disaster –which threatens life on planet earth– is not front page news in comparison to the most insignificant issues of public concern, including the local level crime scene or the tabloid gossip reports on Hollywood celebrities.
The shaky political consensus both in Japan, the U.S. and Western Europe is that the crisis at Fukushima has been contained.
The truth is otherwise. Known and documented, the ongoing dumping of highly radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean constitutes a potential trigger to a process of global radioactive contamination.
This water contains plutonium 239 and its release into the Ocean has both local as well as global repercussions. A microgram of plutonium if inhaled, according to Dr. Helen Caldicott, can cause death:
Certain isotopes of radioactive plutonium are known as some of the deadliest poisons on the face of the earth. A mere microgram (a speck of darkness on a pinhead) of Plutonium-239, if inhaled, can cause death, and if ingested, radioactive Plutonium can be harmful, causing leukemia and other bone cancers.
“In the days following the 2011 earthquake and nuclear plant explosions, seawater meant to cool the nuclear power plants instead carried radioactive elements back to the Pacific ocean. Radioactive Plutonium was one of the elements streamed back to sea.” (decodescience.com). (emphasis added)
It would appear that the radioactive water has already penetrated parts of the Japanese coastline:
Environmental testing of shoreline around the nuclear plant (as well fish, especially Tuna) showed negligible amounts of Plutonium in the seawater. The Plutonium, from what little is reported, sank into the sediments off the Japanese coast.” (Ibid)
A recent report suggests that the Japanese government is intent upon releasing the remaining radioactive water into the Ocean. The proposed “solution” becomes the cause of radioactive contamination of both the Japanese coastline as well as the Pacific Ocean, extending to the coastline of North America.
While the chairman of the Nuclear Radiation Authority recognizes that the water in the tanks is heavily “tainted”, a decision has nonetheless been taken to empty the tanks and dump the water into the Ocean:
The head of Japan’s nuclear watchdog said contaminated water stored at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant should be released into the ocean to ensure safe decommissioning of the reactors.
Shunichi Tanaka, the chairman of the Nuclear Regulation Authority, made the comment Dec. 12 after visiting the facility to observe progress in dismantling the six reactors. The site was severely damaged in the tsunami generated by the 2011 earthquake.
“I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of tanks (holding water tainted with radioactive substances),” Tanaka told reporters, indicating they pose a danger to decommissioning work. “We have to dispose of the water.”
With regard to expected protests by local fishermen over the discharge, Tanaka said, “We also have to obtain the consent of local residents in carrying out the work, so we can somehow mitigate (the increase in tainted water).”
Tanaka has said previously that to proceed with decommissioning, tainted water stored on the site would need to be released into the sea so long as it had been decontaminated to accepted safety standards.
“While (the idea) may upset people, we must do our utmost to satisfy residents of Fukushima,” Tanaka said, adding that the NRA would provide information to local residents based on continuing studies of radioactive elements in local waters.
The inspection tour was Tanaka’s second since he became NRA chief in September 2012. He last visited in April 2013.
During his visit, Tanaka observed work at a trench on the ocean side of the No. 2 reactor building, where highly contaminated water is being pumped out. He also inspected barriers set up around the storage tanks to prevent leaks of tainted water.
Tanaka praised the completion in November of work to remove all spent nuclear fuel from the No. 4 reactor building, as well as changes to work procedures that he said allows for the completion of the work at the No. 2 reactor trench. Hiromi Kumai , NRA Head Signals Massive Release of Tainted Water to Help Decommission Fukushima Site Asahi Shimbun December 13, 2014
The contradictory statements of the NRA chief avoid addressing the broader implications, by giving the impression that the issue is local and that local fishermen off the Fukushima coast will be consulted.
At Fukushima, reports confirm that alpha, beta, gamma particles and neutrons have been released:
“While non-ionizing radiation and x-rays are a result of electron transitions in atoms or molecules, there are three forms of ionizing radiation that are a result of activity within the nucleus of an atom. These forms of nuclear radiation are alpha particles (α-particles), beta particles (β-particles) and gamma rays (γ-rays).
Alpha particles are heavy positively charged particles made up of two protons and two neutrons. They are essentially a helium nucleus and are thus represented in a nuclear equation by either α or . See the Alpha Decay page for more information on alpha particles.
Beta particles come in two forms: and . particles are just electrons that have been ejected from the nucleus. This is a result of sub-nuclear reactions that result in a neutron decaying to a proton. The electron is needed to conserve charge and comes from the nucleus. It is not an orbital electron. particles are positrons ejected from the nucleus when a proton decays to a neutron. A positron is an anti-particle that is similar in nearly all respects to an electron, but has a positive charge. See the Beta Decay page for more information on beta particles.
Gamma rays are photons of high energy electromagnetic radiation (light). Gamma rays generally have the highest frequency and shortest wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum. There is some overlap in the frequencies of gamma rays and x-rays; however, x-rays are formed from electron transitions while gamma rays are formed from nuclear transitions. See the Gamma Rays for more” (SOURCE: Canadian Nuclear Association)
“A neutron is a particle that is found in the nucleus, or center, of atoms. It has a mass very close to protons, which also reside in the nucleus of atoms. Together, they make up almost all of the mass of individual atoms. Each has a mass of about 1 amu, which is roughly 1.6×10-27kg. Protons have a positive charge and neutrons have no charge, which is why they were more difficult to discover.” (SOURCE: Neutron Radiation)
“Many different radioactive isotopes are used in or are produced by nuclear reactors. The most important of these are described below:
1. Uranium 235 (U-235) is the active component of most nuclear reactor fuel.
2. Plutonium (Pu-239) is a key nuclear material used in modern nuclear weapons and is also present as a by-product in certain reprocessed fuels used in some nuclear reactors. Pu-239 is also produced in uranium reactors as a byproduct of fission of U-235.
3. Cesium (Cs-137 ) is a fission product of U-235. It emits beta and gamma radiation and can cause radiation sickness and death if exposures are high enough. …
4. Iodine 131 (I-131), also a fission product of U-235, emits beta and gamma radiation. After inhalation or ingestion, it is absorbed by and concentrated in the thyroid gland, where its beta radiation damages nearby thyroid tissue (SOURCE: Amesh A. Adalja, MD, Eric S. Toner, MD, Anita Cicero, JD, Joseph Fitzgerald, MS, MPH, and Thomas V. Inglesby MD, Radiation at Fukushima: Basic Issues and Concepts, March 31, 2011)
This article was first published on March 21, 2019
The eight year anniversary of the triple meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facility passed mostly without comment in mainstream media circles. In spite of ongoing radiological contamination that will continue to spread and threaten human health for lifetimes to come, other stories dominate the international news cycle. The climate change conundrum, serious though it may be, seemingly crowds out all other clear and present environmental hazards.
As part of efforts to normalize this historic event and cover it up in its magnitude, the Japanese government has invested considerable financial, public relations and other resources into what they are billing the ‘Recovery Olympics‘ set to take place in a year’s time in Tokyo.
But Helen Caldicott warns that the dangers associated with Fukushima have not gone away and remain a cause for concern.
Dr. Helen Caldicott has been an author, physician and one of the world’s leading anti-nuclear campaigners. She helped to reinvigorate the group of Physicians for Social Responsibility, acting as president from 1978 to 1983. Since its founding in 2001 she served as president of the US based Nuclear Policy Research Institute later called Beyond Nuclear which initiates symposia and educational projects aimed at informing the public about the dangers of nuclear power, nuclear weapons, and nuclear war. And she is the editor of the 2014 book, Crisis Without End: The Medical and Ecological Consequences of the Fukushima Nuclear Catastrophe.
On the week marking the eighth anniversary of the Fukushima meltdowns, the Global Research News Hour radio program, hosted by Michael Welch, reached out to Dr.Caldicott to get her expert opinion on the health dangers posed by the most serious nuclear disaster since, at least, the 1986 Chernobyl event.
Global Research: Now the Japanese government is preparing to welcome visitors to Japan for the 2020 Olympic Games, and coverage of the 8th anniversary of the Fukushima disaster is hardly, it seems to me, registered given the significant radiological and other dangers that you cited and your authors cited in your 2014 book, Crisis Without End. Now it’s been more than four years since that book came out. I was hoping you could update our listenership on what is currently being recognized as the main health threats in 2019, perhaps not registered in the book, that you’re currently looking at in relation to the Fukushima meltdown.
Helen Caldicott: Well it’s difficult because the Japanese government has authorized really only examination of thyroid cancer. Now thyroid cancer is caused by radioactive iodine and there were many, many cases of that after Chernobyl. And already, they’ve looked at children under the age of 18 in the Fukushima prefecture at the time of the accident, and … how many children… 100…no 201 by June 18 last year… 201 had developed thyroid cancer. Some cancers had metastasized. The incidence of thyroid cancer in that population normally is 1 per million. So obviously it’s an epidemic of thyroid cancer and it’s just starting now.
What people need to understand is the latent period of carcinogenesis, ie the time after exposure to radiation when cancers develop is any time from 3 years to 80 years. And so it’s a very, very long period. Thyroid cancers appear early. Leukemia appears about 5 to 10 years later. They’re not looking for leukemia. Solid cancers of every organ, or any organ as such appear about 15 years later and continue and in fact the Hibakusha from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki who are still alive are still developing cancers in higher than normal numbers.
The Japanese government has told doctors that they are not to talk to their patients about radiation and illnesses derived thereof, and in fact if the doctors do do that, they might lose their funding from the government. The IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency interestingly set up a hospital – a cancer hospital – in Fukushima along with the Fukushima University for people with cancer, which tells you everything.
So there’s a huge, huge cover up. I have been to Japan twice and particularly to Fukushima and spoken to people there and the parents are desperate to hear the truth even if it’s not good truth. And they thanked me for telling them the truth. So it’s an absolute medical catastrophe I would say, and a total cover up to protect the nuclear industry and all its ramifications.
GR: Now, are we talking about some of the, the contamination that happened 8 years ago or are we talking about ongoing emissions from, for example–
HC: Well there are ongoing emissions into the air consistently, number one. Number two, a huge amount of water is being stored –over a million gallons in tanks at the site. That water is being siphoned off from the reactor cores, the damaged melted cores. Water is pumped consistently every day, every hour, to keep the cores cool in case they have another melt. And that water, of course, is extremely contaminated.
Now they say they’ve filtered out the contaminants except for the tritium which is part of the water molecule, but they haven’t. There’s strontium, cesium, and many other elements in that water – it’s highly radioactive – and because there isn’t enough room to build more tanks, they’re talking about emptying all that water into the Pacific Ocean and the fishermen are very, very upset. The fish already being caught off Fukushima, some are obviously contaminated. But this will be a disaster.
Water comes down from the mountains behind the reactors, flows underneath the reactors into the sea and always has. And when the reactors were in good shape, the water was fine, didn’t get contaminated. But now the three molten cores in contact with that water flowing under the reactors and so the water flowing into the Pacific is very radioactive and that’s a separate thing from the million gallons or more in those tanks.
They put up a refrigerated wall of frozen dirt around the reactors to prevent that water from the mountains flowing underneath the reactors, which has cut down the amount of water flowing per day from 500 tons to about a hundred and fifty. But of course, if they lose electricity, that refrigeration system is going to fail, and it’s a transient thing anyway so it’s ridiculous. In terms… So over time the Pacific is going to become more and more radioactive.
They talk about decommissioning and removing those molten cores. When robots go in and try and have a look at them, their wiring just melts and disappears. They’re extraordinarily radioactive. No human can go near them because they would die within 48 hours from the radiation exposure. They will never, and I quote never, decommission those reactors. They will never be able to stop the water coming down from the mountains. And so, the truth be known, it’s an ongoing global radiological catastrophe which no one really is addressing in full.
GR: Do we have a better reading on, for example the thyroids, but also leukemia incubation—
HC: No they’re not looking–well, leukemia they’re not looking for leukemia…
GR: Just thyroid
HC: They’re not charting it. So the only cancer they’re looking at is thyroid cancer and that’s really high, and you know it’s at 201 have already been diagnosed and some have metastasized. And a very tight lid is being kept on any other sort of radiation related illnesses and leukemia and the like. All the other cancers and the like, and leukemia is so… It’s not just a catastrophe it’s a…
GR: …a cover up
HC: Yeah. I can’t really explain how I feel medically about it. It’s just hideous.
GR: Well I have a brother who’s a physician, who was pointing to well we should maybe, the World Health Organization is a fairly authoritative body of research for all of the indicators and epidemiological aspects of this, but you seem to suggest the World Health Organization may not be that reliable in light of the fact that they are partnered with the IAEA. Is that my understanding…?
HC: Correct. They signed a document, I think in ‘59, with the IAEA that they would not report any medical effects of radiological disasters and they’ve stuck to that. So they are in effect in this area part of the International Atomic Energy Agency whose mission is to promote nuclear power. So don’t even think about the WHO. it’s really obscene.
GR: So what would… the incentive would be simply that they got funding?
HC: I don’t know. I really don’t know but they sold themselves to the devil.
GR: That’s pretty incredible. So there’s also the issue of biomagnification in the oceans, where you have radioactive debris, hundreds of tons of this radioactive water getting into the oceans and biomagnifying up through the food chain, so these radioactive particles can get inside our bodies. Could you speak to what you anticipate to see, what you would anticipate, whether it’s recorded by World Health authorities or not, what we could expect to see in the years ahead in terms of the illnesses that manifest themselves?
HC: Well number one, Fukushima is a very agricultural prefecture. Beautiful, beautiful peaches, beautiful food, and lots of rice. And the radiation spread far and wide through the Fukushima prefecture, and indeed they have been plowing up millions and millions of tons of radioactive dirt and storing it in plastic bags all over the prefecture. The mountains are highly radioactive and every time it rains, down comes radiation with the water. So the radiation – the elements. And there are over 200 radioactive elements made in a nuclear reactor. Some have lives of seconds and some have lives of millions of years or lasts for millions of years will I say. So there are many many isotopes, long-lasting isotopes – cesium, strontium, tritium is another one – but many, many on the soil in Fukushima.
And what happens is – you talked about biomagnification – when the plants take up the water from the soil, they take up the cesium which is a potassium analog – it resembles potassium. Strontium 90 resembles calcium and the like. And these elements get magnified by orders of magnitude in the rice and in the plants. And so when you eat food that is grown in Fukushima, the chances are it’s going to be relatively radioactive.
They’ve been diluting radioactive rice with non-radioactive rice to make it seem a bit better. Now, into the ocean go these isotopes as well, and the algae bio-magnify them by – you know -ten to a hundred times or more. And then the crustaceans eat the algae, bio-magnify it more. The little fish eat the crustaceans, the big fish eat the little fish and the like. And tuna found in – off the coast of California some years ago contained isotopes from Fukushima. Also fish, being caught on the west coast of California contained some of these isotopes. So, it’s an ongoing bio-magnification catastrophe.
And the thing is that you can’t even taste, smell or see radioactive elements in your food. They’re invisible. And it takes a long time for cancers to occur. And you can’t identify a particular cancer caused by a particular substance or isotope. You can only identify that problem by doing epidemiological studies comparing irradiated people with non-irradiated people to see what the cancer levels are and that data comes from Hiroshima and Nagasaki and many, many, many other studies.
GR: Chernobyl as well, no?
HC: Oh, Chernobyl! Well, a wonderful book was produced by the, uh, Russians, and published by the New York Academy of Sciences, called Chernobyl with over 5000 on the ground studies of children and diseases in Belarus and the Ukraine, and all over Europe. And by now over a million people have already died from the Chernobyl disaster. And many diseases have been caused by that, including premature aging in children, microcephaly in babies, very small heads, diabetes, leukemia, I mean, I could go on and on.
Um, and those diseases which have been very well described in that wonderful book, um, which everyone should read, are not being addressed or identified or looked for in the Fukushima or Japanese population.
May I say that parts of Tokyo are extremely radioactive. People have been measuring the dirt from rooves of apartments, from the roadway, from vacuum cleaner dust. And some of these samples, they’re so radioactive that they would classify to be buried in radioactive waste facilities in America. So, that’s number one.
Number two, to have the Olympics in Fukushima just defies imagination. And uh, some of the areas where the athletes are going to be running, the dust and dirt there has been measured, and it’s highly radioactive. So, this is Abe, the Prime Minister of Japan, who set this up to – as a sort of way to obscure what Fukushima really means. And those young athletes, you know, who are – and young people are much more sensitive to radiation, developing cancers later than older people – it’s just a catastrophe waiting to happen.
GR: Dr. Caldicott…
HC:They’re calling it the radioactive Olympics!
GR: (Chuckle). Is there anything that people can do, you know, whether they live in Japan or, say, the west coast of North America to mitigate the effects that this disaster has had, and may still be having eight years later?
HC: Yes. Do not eat any Japanese food because you don’t know where it’s sourced. Do not eat fish from Japan, miso, rice, you name it. Do not eat Japanese food. Period. Um, fish caught off the west coast of Canada and America, well, they’re not testing the fish so I don’t know what you’d do. Um, I mean, most of it’s probably not radioactive but you don’t know because you can’t taste it.
Um they’ve closed down the air-borne radioactive measuring instruments off the west coast of America, uh, but that’s pretty bad, because there still could be another huge accident at those reactors.
For instance, if there’s another large earthquake, number one, all those tanks would be destroyed and the water would pour into the Pacific. Number two, there could be another meltdown, a release – huge release of radiation, um, from the damaged reactors. So, things are very tenuous, but they’re not just tenuous now. They’re going to be tenuous forever.
Corporate news sources are reporting that Austria has suspended their roll-out of the experimental AstraZeneca COVID vaccines after a 49-year-old nurse has died “as a result of severe coagulation disorders,” and a 35-year-old nurse developed a pulmonary embolism following the COVID injections.
Israel has rapidly deteriorated into a segregated culture that discriminates against people who have not received experimental COVID-19 vaccinations, say Israeli citizens who are reaching out for help on media platforms.
In the latest episode of “TRUTH” with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Kennedy sat down with the iconic Naomi Wolf for a spirited discussion on abuse of power, standing up to tyranny and preserving our Constitution.
Maybe you have noticed the rise in public incredulity toward the coronavirus narrative that you hear all day from the mainstream media. More doubts. More opposition. More protests. And far less trust. You are hardly alone.
people are eager for J&J’s “one shot and you’re done” Covid-19 vaccine despite health officials’ fears it may be less effective than Moderna’s and Pfizer’s mRNA competitors. Nevertheless, vaccination centers and pharmacies are racing to get their hands on the new adenovirus-based vaccine.
Over the last few weeks, investors’ sentiment about future inflation and future interest rates has changed. It seems that complacency about inflationary pressures in some parts of the economy is coming to an end.
Will Washington be permanently militarized in the wake of what happened? Will something similar be ordered for New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and other major US cities — on the dubious pretext of protecting national security?
The battlefields are silent, but the suffering continues from US-EU sanctions which deprive citizens of some medical supplies, and building materials to repair their homes and businesses. The economy is in freefall, while COVID-19 has added to the hopelessness many feel.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken made statements saying that there is currently no American interest in carrying out operations and interventions that are too expensive. Meanwhile, the American escalation in northeastern Syria continues and creates uncertainty for the future.
Although Azerbaijan, with assistance from Syrian mercenaries and Turkish special forces, recaptured seven districts surrounding the former Soviet Union’s Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast from Armenian personnel, it appears that a new conflict is about to break out.
Ten Years Ago. This incisive and carefully researched article was first written by Stephen Lendman in April 2013
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In her book titled “No Immediate Danger: Prognosis for a Radioactive Earth,” nuclear power/environmental health expert Rosalie Bertell (1929 – 2012) said:
“Should the public discover the true health cost(s) of nuclear pollution, a cry would rise from all parts of the world and people would refuse to cooperate passively with their own death.”
In her article titled “Radioactivity: No Immediate Danger,” she coined a new word. “Omnicide” describes the ultimate human rejection of life. It’s “difficult to comprehend,” but it’s happening, she said.
She called industrial radioactive pollution “cumulatively greater than Chernobyl. We are now in a no-win situation with radioactive materials, where (it’s) acceptable to have cancer deaths, deformed children and miscarriages.”
Industry propaganda falsely claims nuclear power is clean and green. The nuclear fuel cycle discharges significant amounts of greenhouse gases.
It’s also responsible for hundreds of thousands of curies of deadly radioactive gases and elements in the environment annually.
“Claiming nuclear production of energy is ‘clean,’ ” said Bertell, “is like dieting but stuffing yourself with food between meals.”
Separately, she said:
“There is no such thing as a radiation exposure that will not do damage. There is a hundred per cent possibility that there will be damage to cells. The next question is: which damage do you care about?”
All toxic hazards are serious, she explained. Nuclear radiation is worst of all. It threatens all human life. “Our present path is headed toward species death – whether fast with nuclear war or technological disaster, or slow, by poison.”
Global suicide is certain. Continued nuclear proliferation and Fukushima accelerated it.
March 11 marked its second anniversary. It’s perhaps the worst ever environmental disaster. Reliable experts call large parts of Japan unsafe. They’re too hazardous to live in.
According to Professor Hiroaki Koide, Tokyo’s as contaminated as Fukushima. Thousands of city residents protested. They oppose nuclear power. They want safe energy sources replacing it.
Radiation contamination is widespread. East Asia, North America, Europe and other areas are affected.
Hazardous air, water and land readings across many areas globally are many multiples too high. Future epidemic cancer levels are certain. It occurs when body cells divide and spread uncontrollably. If untreated, it metastasizes and kills.
Michel Chossudovsky calls Fukushima “a nuclear war without a war.” It’s an “unspoken crisis of worldwide nuclear contamination.”
Tens of thousands of children have confirmed thyroid abnormalities. They reflect the tip of the iceberg. Children are especially vulnerable. No radiation dose is safe.
Karl Grossman wants planet earth made a “nuclear free zone.” We barely made it through the last century without a “major nuclear weapons exchange,” he said.
Nuclear energy in all forms is unsafe. Safe, clean, renewable solar, wind, geothermal, and other energy sources are readily available.
Admiral Hyman Rickover (1900 – 1986) was the father of America’s nuclear navy. In January 1982, he told a congressional committee that until a few billion years ago, “it was impossible to have any life on earth.”
“There was so much radiation on earth you couldn’t have any life, fish or anything.” Gradually the amount subsided. “Now, we are creating something which nature tried to destroy to make life possible.”
“Every time you produce radiation, (a) horrible force” is unleashed. “In some cases (it’s) for billions of years, and I think the human race is going to wreck itself.”
“I am talking about humanity. The most important thing we could do is start having an international meeting where we first outlaw nuclear weapons to start off with. Then we outlaw nuclear reactors, too.”
“The lesson for history is when a war starts, every nation will ultimately use whatever weapons are available. That is the lesson learned time and again.” ”
“Therefore, we must expect, if another war, a serious war breaks out, we will use nuclear energy in some form. We will probably destroy ourselves.” Widespread contamination acts in slow motion.
Disturbing reports explain. In early April, around 120 tons of contaminated water leaked from Fukushima’s No. 1’s underground storage tank. It contained an estimated 710 billion becquerels of radioactivity.
Water around the affected tank is highly radioactive. It’s about 800 meters from the Pacific. Government and Tokyo Electric (Tepco) claimed it won’t likely reach it. Numerous previous reports suggest otherwise.
Tepco general manager Masayuki Ono said “(w)e cannot deny the fact that our faith in the underwater tanks is being lost.”
In November 2012, Nature.com headlined “Ocean still suffering from Fukushima fallout,” saying:
“Radioactivity is persisting in the ocean waters close to Japan’s ruined nuclear power plant at Fukushima Daiichi.”
New data show high contamination levels. “The Fukushima disaster caused by far the largest discharge of radioactivity into the ocean ever seen.”
Radiation levels aren’t dropping. “The implications are serious for the fishing industry.”
On December 26, CleanEnergy.org headlined “Japan Continues Struggle with Aftermath from the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster,” saying:
“….an estimated 160,000 (Japanese) citizens still have not returned home. Reports of illness in humans and livestock continue to underscore the far reaching and difficult to predict impacts that a nuclear accident can cause.”
In July 2012, 36% of Japanese children screened had abnormal thyroid growths. Months later an illness called the “Fukushima syndrome” was killing cattle throughout Fukushima Prefecture.
Mutations were found in butterflies and other insects. Their shorter life cycles allow genetic disruptions to show up sooner than in humans or other mammals.
On April 11, Bloomberg.com headlined “Tepco Faces Decision to Dump Radioactive Water in Pacific,” saying:
“Leaks were found in three of seven pits in the past week….” Options for moving contaminated water are limited.
“With Japan’s rainy season approaching, contaminated water levels are likely to increase…”
“Yesterday, Tepco reported another leak of radiated water, this time from a pipe.”
“Pacific bluefin tuna caught off San Diego in August 2011 was found to contain radioactive cesium 10 times higher than fish seized in previous years….” Perhaps its much higher now.
On April 15, Science Daily headlined “The Fukushima Dai-Ichi Power Plant Accident: Two Years On, the Fallout Continues,” saying:
“….(S)cientists are still trying to quantify the extent of the damage.” Most important is “determining just how much hazardous material escaped into the atmosphere….”
Japan Atomic Energy Agency researchers now say previously estimated “137C and 131l” release rates were too low.
On March 11, 2013, nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen said “(t)here’s definitely a large crack, perhaps five inches in diameter, in Fukushima reactor 2.”
Containment is sorely lacking. Pacific Ocean leakage continues.
On April 24, Natural News headlined “Massive, uncontained leak at Fukushima is pouring over 710 billion becquerels of radioactive materials into atmosphere,” saying:
It’s the largest ever plant leakage. Fukushima’s disaster never ends. It “keeps on giving.”
“(N)ew reports indicate that a wealth of new radioactive materials have been spewed into the atmosphere.”
It’s spreading globally. Nuclear radiation is forever. It doesn’t dissipate or disappear. No safe level exists. Every dose is an overdose. Bertell was right. “Omnicide” threatens everyone.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].
His new book is titled “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).
***
A Dem Capitol Hill security report on the January 6 anti-Trump false flag for Biden/Harris to replace DJT ignored the diabolical plot — a US Reichstag fire.
Will Washington be permanently militarized in the wake of what happened?
Will something similar be ordered for New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and other major US cities — on the dubious pretext of protecting national security?
Mandates in place since seasonal flu was renamed covid were unthinkable pre-2020 but happened largely with public compliance?
If ordered, will Americans accept militarized US cities that infringe on public assembly, free movement, and other constitutional rights?
Mass acceptance of social control last year showed that when manipulated by invented threats, most people will go along with what harms their health, well-being and fundamental rights.
The Democrats task force 1-6 recommended initiation of a permanent militarized police battalion staffed with rotating National Guard and Pentagon reserve forces — on the dubious pretext of protecting against violent outbreaks, the report saying:
“Our national capital is a prominent tourist destination, venue for many peaceful First Amendment activities, and a high-value target for foreign terrorists or domestic extremists (sic).”
“Yet it has no dedicated quick reaction force for response to crises.”
No January 6 “violent insurrection” occurred on Capitol Hill.
Hostile-to-Trump elements infiltrated largely nonviolent Trump protesters.
They got access to Capitol Hill after police and federal law enforcers opened barricades surrounding it, permitting their entry into the main building.
Inside, guards led them to designated areas. What happened was orchestrated by anti-Trump dark forces well in advance.
Instead of preventing what happened, Capitol Hill security facilitated it in what appears to have been the climax to a homeland color revolution to end Trump’s election challenge.
Recommendations by the Capitol Security Review task force — headed by retired General Russel Honore — called for the following:
Increasing numbers of city police from 1,800 to around 2,650.
Establishing a new intelligence unit on the pretext of improving civil defense.
Increased funding for militarized equipment, training, permanent retractable fencing around Capitol Hill, along with a “fully integrated system of obstacles, cameras, sensors and alarms.”
Enhanced screening to include “background checks for identification card holders.”
Expanding numbers of Dignitary Protection Service members.
Providing militarized police protection for congressional members.
Empowering the city’s police chief to request greater militarization of the capital to deal with perceived (or invented) emergencies.
Following staged January 6 events, over 25,000 National Guard troops were deployed to the nation’s capital.
Over 5,000 remain. The task force report also recommended that DHS develop an overall security plan for Washington and surrounding areas, adding:
“The collective planning effort would be key to developing a shared understanding for any response effort and better enable unity of effort.”
“This plan should be exercised quarterly through table-top exercises and reinforced in daily operations.”
Congress will likely pass legislation to incorporate task force recommendations, Biden to sign it into law.
Perhaps more repressive legislation will follow, similar to the aftermath of the 9/11 mother of all false flags to that time — police state America to be hardened more than already.
*
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Stephen Lendman 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).
***
Although Azerbaijan, with assistance from Syrian mercenaries and Turkish special forces, recaptured seven districts surrounding the former Soviet Union’s Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast from Armenian personnel, it appears that a new conflict is about to break out. After a humiliating loss due to Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s unpreparedness and/or disinterest in maintaining control over the seven districts, a direct land route was supposedly granted to Azerbaijan so it can access its Nakhchivan exclave via a corridor through Armenia’s Syunik province, which Azerbaijani’s call Zangezur. This was supposedly agreed upon with the signing of the November 10 trilateral (Armenia-Azerbaijan-Russia) ceasefire agreement.
Monte Melkonian, a Lieutenant Colonel from the first Nagorno-Karabakh War (1988-1994), said in the early 1990’s that if Armenians lost Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan, they would next lose Syunik Province, the thin strip of land separating Azerbaijan-proper from Nakhchivan. He stated that “If we lose [Karabakh], we turn the final page of our people’s history.” He believed that if Azerbaijani forces succeeded in deporting Armenians from Karabakh, they would then advance on Syunik and other regions of Armenia. If Azerbaijan were to capture Syunik province, this would not only connect Azerbaijan-proper to Nakhchivan, but it would also give Turkey direct access to the oil and gas rich Caspian Sea and onwards to Central Asia.
Azerbaijan defends its position to recapture Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has also maintained that his country is only interested in recapturing what it calls occupied territory.
However, Turkish and Azerbaijani nationalists have called for the occupation of Syunik province to end Nakhchivan’s detachment from Azerbaijan-proper. Many prominent Armenians warn that the long-term aim of Turkey and Azerbaijan is to create a smaller Armenian rump state based around today’s northern Armenia.It appears that Azerbaijan is preparing for a new military conflict to capture Syunik from Armenia.
Aliyev said during a speech at an economic conference last week that a “new transport corridor will pass through Zangezur, a historic territory of Azerbaijan, and will connect mainland Azerbaijan with its integral part, the Nakhichevan Autonomous Republic, and Turkey.” Ignoring Aliyev’s fallacy that Syunik is historically Azerbaijani territory, Armenian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Anna Naghdalyan claimed that “with such a provocative statement, calling Zangezur a ‘historic Azerbaijani territory’ and making reference to an imaginary corridor, the President of Azerbaijan deliberately undermines the implementation of the November 9 and January 11 trilateral statements. Article 9 of the November 9 trilateral statement does not mention the establishment of a corridor.”
The Azerbaijani president on Tuesday said that “Armenia wants to obstruct the implementation of the Zangezur corridor, but they will not succeed. We will force them.” This is a clear indication that Azerbaijan is prepared to use force to open a transportation corridor through Armenian territory to connect Nakhchivan with Azerbaijan-proper. Aliyev’s statement comes as Azerbaijani media reported at the end of February that Azerbaijani Armed Forces will conduct a special operation in Karabakh. “We cannot tell you exactly which area this will happen, but there is an accumulation of military equipment on both sides,” the report said.
In another suggestion that Azerbaijan is preparing for a new military operation against Syunik province, a Turkish Boeing 737AEW&C early warning and control aircraft was circling near the border with Armenia. This is the same plane codenamed “CENAH01” which was used during the opening days of last year’s war. There are also reports that Azerbaijan is calling up reservists, while at the same time the Turkish and Azerbaijani military have conducted joint exercises near the Armenian border.
The suggestion that Azerbaijan is preparing for a new conflict comes at a time when it appears that Ukraine is preparing for a spring offensive against militias in Donbass. There is a possibility that Azerbaijan and Ukraine, both close allies of Turkey, could launch simultaneous operations to force Russia to make concessions on behalf of Donbass militias and Armenia. Turkey strongly emphasises that Crimea is Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory and that the Tartar minority are supposedly oppressed. In addition, Turkey provides drones to the Ukrainian military and also says it will not hesitate to act against Armenia if it does not succumb to its demands.
Despite Pashinyan’s attempts to pivot Armenia away from Russia and towards the liberal West, Moscow is now helping the Armenian military to reform and rearm. Armenian Defense Minister Vagharshak Harutyunyan said lately that “conducting military reform in Armenia isn’t just planned, but is already being carried out, and our Russian colleagues are directly involved in this process.” According to him, the main efforts will be directed to the development of control systems, intelligence, electronic warfare, air defense and unmanned aircraft, missile forces and artillery. In response, Aliyev said that Russia should not help Armenia modernize its army or provide new weapons.
More importantly, Armenia is a member-state of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). If Armenia is attacked by a non-member state, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Russia would be obligated to provide assistance.
Although it is inconceivable that Azerbaijan, even with Turkish support, would be willing to antagonize Russia into a military conflict, the question begs whether Moscow would be able to handle simultaneous conflicts in the Caucasus and Donbass if Azerbaijan and Ukraine are to launch simultaneous spring offensives, in addition to Russia’s commitments in Syria and indirectly in Libya. It is likely that Turkey would be urging Azerbaijan and Ukraine to make simultaneous actions to gain concessions from Russia, such as forcing Armenia to open a transportation corridor between Azerbaijan-proper and Nakhchevan.
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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.
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There is a “crack in the veneer that Israel can just oppress and destroy Palestinian lives forever” is how Lee Camp sums up after interviewing Sivan Tal in Moment of Clarity about the latter’s decision (along with his wife Dori) to refuse to allow his son to be conscripted in the Israeli military.
Unlike the situation in 2017 with their older daughter Hadas, when she herself publicly refused to enlist and spent 60 days in jail, Sivan and Dori Tal are taking a novel approach to the situation with their son Yair. They are saying that, even though their son is 18, they are still his guardians and are taking on the responsibility of refusing for him.
In this way, they are also challenging the implicit collusion of other Jewish Israeli parents with the crimes of the Zionist apartheid regime against Palestinians, even as they acknowledge the enormous social pressures “from all sides” that such a decision entails, not least for their young son.
It’s hard enough these days of the rise of the fascistic spirit for parents to instill humanistic values in their children. But for those living under a Zionist regime like Sivan and Dori, the battle for the soul of their children is one akin to what is described in The Turn of the Screw.
In a study titled ‘Social and Moral Disintegration of the Zionist Family’ in Journal of Applied Sciences, Adnan Al-Ahmad writes in the introduction:
The Zionist regime in occupied Palestine is a peculiar sort of regime, for it has no resemblance to any social or political in the world. It is a racial and capricious regime which is based on aggression, militarism, territorial expansion, imperialism, deception and hatred of justice and humanity[1]. A notorious entity like the Zionist regime characterized by all these negative features cannot exist and continue without bringing unlimited sufferings and despair to its own subjects, those of neighboring territories and to the totality of the human race.
Sivan and Dori Tal are outspoken about the harm done to their children through indoctrination by the Israeli military at a very early age at school, growing up with no understanding or awareness of the involvement of the Israeli military in horrific war crimes as it continues to maintain the colonization and occupation of Palestine.
One can imagine, therefore, the time and effort it took for them to counteract the intense pressures on their children from outside the home.
In the letter addressed to the conscientious objectors’ committee that they posted on Facebook, Sivan and Dori write:
We have raised him [their son Yair] with love, protected him, supported and educated him for 18 years to the universal values that we believe in. Serving in the IDF stands in stark contrast to these values. Yair is not the property of the state, and the state does not have a moral right to forcibly recruit him to an organization that consistently violates international human rights conventions. We believe that it is our moral duty to oppose his enlistment to the IDF. It is our responsibility as parents.
In answer to a question I asked him, Sivan Tal emphasized the following point:
The message we tried to convey in our letter is that our son’s willingness or unwillingness to enlist or not is not the issue; we take it out of the equation. Our message is that parents’ consent should be mandatory. The Israeli education system and the whole surrounding doesn’t make it a viable option for the young high school graduates to refuse (except for a handful of special ones). They are brainwashed and they are put under heavy pressure to go and we need to challenge the system, and we demand that parents have the right to object [on behalf of their children].
In his talk on Moment of Clarity, Sivan Tal says, “I am Jewish, I love the people, I want to make Israel better not stronger; it’s strong enough already!” He adds:
Israel is committing crimes against Judaism because it uses Judaism as an excuse for all the atrocities taking place in Israel, which is an apartheid state, but in many ways, it is much worse than … South Africa, where nobody questions the nativeness [of the Africans there] or their right to be in their homeland. It takes a very twisted mind to think about our immigration from Europe [to Palestine] as a return from 2000 years ago. [Palestinian Arabs] are native and [yet] we object to their right to live in their homeland… They deserve a better future just like us.
The Tal family on vacation [courtesy Sivan Tal]
At the end of the interview, Lee Camp says, “I knew I couldn’t put ‘Israel’ in the title of this video, because it might get banned or suppressed; maybe it’ll still get suppressed but maybe not at the level of having ‘Israel’ in the title. We’re just seeing it endlessly, that type of suppression, holding down those of us who are speaking against these injustices. And we’ve got to keep doing it; we’ve got to keep fighting back. As Sivan said, we should not let them change us at the end of the day. That should really be the goal.”
Yes, we’ve got to keep fighting back. The Tal family has a lot to teach other Israelis and the world.
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Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem and whose mother’s side of the family is from Ijzim, south of Haifa. She is an activist, researcher and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank.
She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Featured image: Lee Camp (left) and Sivan Tal — captured from Moment of Clarity
Comments Off on Refusing to be Conscripted in the Israeli Military: “We Claim Responsibility for the Political Decisions of Our Young Son, and Our Decision Is — NO!”
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In Washington, military plans for the Middle East are unclear. Biden’s aggressive speech has remained the same since his election campaign, with a strong inclination to guarantee American interests in that region. However, Secretary of State Antony Blinken made statements saying that there is currently no American interest in carrying out operations and interventions that are too expensive. Meanwhile, the American escalation in northeastern Syria continues and creates uncertainty for the future.
After the attack on the Ain al-Asad base in Iraq, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said: “If we assess a further response is warranted, we will take action again in a manner and time of our choosing”. The pronouncement is curious when we consider Blinken’s promises. Would responses be necessary for an attack that left virtually no victims? It is necessary to emphasize that the attack on the American base in Iraq did not happen by chance. Previously, on February 25, American forces bombed installations of an Iraqi Shiite militia in Syria. Still, several mutual attacks have been reported for a long time, and the March 3 attack was certainly the mildest and most harmless of all. However, the American rhetoric from now on will be that this attack “justifies” new measures – such “justification” is simply due to the exaggerated media attention given to the case.
According to most experts, an American response would certainly be carried out through a new attack on enemy bases installed in Syria. The attacks outside Syria are, most of the time, exceptional measures, since it is in Syria that strategic movements occur most frequently. But, until “the great response” is announced, the US has already carried out new attacks in Syria – and no media attention was paid to this in the West. The targets of the most recent attacks were the Kataib Hezbollah and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada militias. The number of victims of the retaliation is still uncertain.
Meanwhile, on the American domestic political scenario, there is a strong outcry for tougher and more effective measures against Washington’s enemies in the US. In particular, radical Democrats claim that the attack is clearly financed and led by Iran. The State Department, having to deal with strategic rather than ideological issues, avoid taking impetuous actions and this causes irritation among globalists. Globalists supported Biden on the basis of his promises to safeguard Western agendas across the planet – and they are really demanding this from the new government. For some representatives of the American elite, Biden has been ineffective so far.
In a recent NBC News article, Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, says:
“‘We’re not going to prejudge.’ State Department spokesperson Ned Price deployed this classic Washington euphemism last week to avoid responding to a question over how much culpability Iran and its Shiite militias bear for recent rocket attacks against a US military base in northern Iraq. (…) Why is the Biden administration not connecting the dots between the Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies — and not doing more to publicly deter this behavior? Is it simply that the new administration is still finding its feet after just one month in office?”
This clash brings us back to the question that all the experts asked when Biden’s promises were made: does Washington really have the strength to recover its global hegemony? The ideologically elite with the mission of “bringing (the American way of) democracy” to all parts of the world cries out for endless wars, interventions, sanctions, blockades, and retaliation. Those who actually operate such measures call for calm and claim for an end to overly expensive operations that only cause stress to the troops and take the lives of Americans away. This clash will not end anytime soon. The ideological part of the government is committed to objectives that require measures that they cannot operate alone – and those able to operate such measures visibly want to avoid them because they know their real conditions and know that every care is necessary when it comes to military operations.
However, the military also wants to respond – its only difference for Democrats is that they recognize their real conditions for action. The American military presence in northeastern Syria is increasing day by day. On March 6, American aircraft landed at the Al-Shaddadah military base carrying about 20 boxes containing missiles. New soldiers also disembarked there. Visibly, violence will escalate in the region and there are no good expectations for the near future.
While Democrats are calling for action against Iran, the military is likely to be concerned with increasing violence in Syria as a proxy war against Tehran and Shi’ite militias. The ideological wing of the Biden government will have to conform to material reality and understand that the current circumstances do not allow for a general increase in the American power of aggression.
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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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India knows that it’s being lied to by the US, “Israel”, and/or Saudi Arabia but is still going along with them anyhow because it naively expects to gain something in return.
The article quotes an unnamed senior official at India’s National Investigative Agency who blames the IRGC for the non-lethal blast that occurred in the country’s capital in late January. Instinctively sensing a false flag attack, I immediately shared my concerns about this previously unconfirmed narrative that was bandied about at the time by Indian and “Israeli” officials in an analysis that I wrote for Pakistan’s Express Tribune asking “Did Iran Really Carry Out An Attempted Anti-Israeli Terrorist Attack In India?”
Iran’s official response to these latest official Indian allegations was reported by Sputnik in its follow-up piece titled “‘Sinister Intentions of Enemies’: Iran Slams Report Claiming IRGC Behind Israel Embassy Blast”. That article quotes the statement released by the Iranian Embassy in India which suggests that “third parties who are angry and dissatisfied with the progress in the relations between the governments of Iran and India” were responsible for what happened. This conforms to my previous speculation that the incident was really a false flag attack that tried too hard to implicate Iran. The question naturally becomes one of who would have the interests and means to carry it out.
Pakistan can be safely excluded from the list of suspects because India would have already blamed it if there was even a shred of evidence that could be spun as implicating Islamabad’s involvement. The very fact that this didn’t happen speaks to the unquestionable absence of such evidence.
Instead, the unnamed Indian official is quoted by Sputnik as saying that the investigation initially “hinted to the role of Islamic State” but that New Delhi eventually decided that the IRGC was really the true culprit. India could have stuck to the ISIS theory in order to avoid further complicating its increasingly complex relations with Iran but ultimately decided to pin the blame on the Islamic Republic, which advanced American, “Israeli”, and Saudi strategic interests.
Those three are therefore the most likely suspects, whether individually, in tandem, or altogether. It can only be speculated how one, some, or all three of them conspired to carry out that attempted attack, but there aren’t any other parties with both the interests and means. Even so, one must ask themselves why India would allow itself to be so obviously manipulated in such a crude manner by going along with the manufactured narrative that Iran was allegedly responsible. New Delhi knows that its statement risks worsening ties with Tehran, but it went ahead with it anyhow. This curiously coincides with new regional strategic developments that might explain the political calculations behind India’s decision.
Uzbekistan, the most populous state in Central Asia and the one with the most promising real-sector (i.e. non-energy) economic prospects, recently opted to go with Pakistan’s N-CPEC+ for connecting to the Indian Ocean instead of the eastern branch of the Indo-Iranian North-South Transport Corridor (NSTC). I wrote about this in my recent analysis for the Express Tribune which informed everyone “Why This Summer’s Central Asia-South Asia Connectivity Conference Will Be Crucial”. I explained that the agreement late last year to pioneer a railway between Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Uzbekistan (tentatively described by me as the PAKAFUZ project after the first letters of each country’s name) makes the NSTC redundant, thereby basically dealing a deathblow to it.
With this observation in mind, India might have calculated that it had nothing more to lose by going with the flow and publicly blaming the IRGC for late January’s attempted terrorist attack in New Delhi. If anything, doing so might have been expected to improve India’s standing in the eyes of its new American, “Israeli”, and Saudi allies. Iran has no means to “punish” India for its provocative allegation since the South Asian state no longer purchases the Islamic Republic’s energy resources like before due to its fear of being targeted by the US’ so-called “secondary sanctions”, and the PAKAFUZ project pretty much put an end to the economic viability of the NSTC’s eastern branch.
These factors help explain why India publicly accused the IRGC of being responsible for that attempted terrorist attack. Even so, India is wrong to have blamed Iran because it knows better than to believe that the Islamic Republic was truly responsible. This experience shows just how much of its supposedly cherished strategic autonomy India has surrendered to its new American, “Israeli”, and Saudi allies in recent years that it now unashamedly blames Iran for supposedly committing out an act of terrorism on its soil despite there being no compelling evidence to prove this. India knows that it’s being lied to by the US, “Israel”, and/or Saudi Arabia but is still going along with them anyhow because it naively expects to gain something in return.
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This article was originally published on OneWorld.
Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
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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March 15 is the date which many use for the start of the Syrian “uprising” in 2011. For many years, the war in Syria was a steady feature of western media; however, in recent years the fighting has stopped, the Geneva peace process has not produced results, and some countries have begun sending Syrian refugees back home. The battlefields are silent, but the suffering continues from US-EU sanctions which deprive citizens of some medical supplies, and building materials to repair their homes and businesses. The economy is in freefall, while COVID-19 has added to the hopelessness many feel. The public still has not received their first vaccinations.
The opposing sides
Western media portrayed the Free Syrian Army (FSA) as freedom fighters for democracy. The atrocities of the FSA went unreported, while the US and their allies used the FSA as their foot-soldiers in the project of ‘regime change’.
Of the 23 million citizens in Syria, about eight million were minorities such as Christians, Druze, and Alawites, who were protected solely by the Syrian government. President Assad is the leader of the Ba’ath Party, the oldest party in Syria, and has a large support base among the Syrian people. Certainly, there is political opposition in Syria, but only a small minority of the opposition support armed revolution and destruction of the state. This is the reason the ‘revolution’ failed: it was not supported by the majority.
Aleppo was attacked by the FSA because it was supportive of the government. The FSA responded by a brutal crackdown on the unarmed citizenry while fighting the citizens who rebelled against their Radical Islamic ideology.
Western media would have you believe most of the deaths in Syria were caused by the Syrian government, but you won’t hear about the thousands of unarmed civilians killed, raped, maimed, and tortured by the FSA and their allies. Equally misreported is the number of Syrian Arab Army soldiers who have died, which is believed to be at least half of the deaths reported.
The FSA stole the wheat reserves in Aleppo and sold them to Turkish traders, ransacked the pharmaceuticals, and destroyed the schools, while they were brutalizing the Syrian people, their homes, and businesses.
The FSA implemented Sharia law, forcing citizens to abide by laws they had never before had to face in secular Syria.
The FSA produced a video widely seen of a 12-year-old child being forced by the FSA to cut off the head of a Syrian Arab Army officer.
When the FSA became defeated on the battlefields they sent out a call for help to their brothers-in-arms Al Qaeda, and the international terrorists began flooding into Syria from Turkey which was their safe-haven. Officially supplying Al Qaeda with cash and weapons was against US laws, so Washington simply outsourced the support to Saudi Arabia and Qatar who both supplied Jibhat al-Nusra, the Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria.
On December 31, 2012, the Huffington Post published, “The West should not be surprised if an Islamic state results from an FSA victory. If so, they will have been complicit in the outcome.”
The US-NATO ‘regime change’ plan for Syria was to culminate in an Islamic State, headed by the Muslim Brotherhood, which had been the political arm of the Syrian opposition supported by the US and EU in Istanbul. The US-engineered the Egyptian election which brought the Muslim Brotherhood to power, only to be driven from office by mass protests.
The group called ISIS capitalized on the chaos the US had created in Syria to proclaim a “caliphate” straddling Syria and Iraq that shocked the world. While the US and EU were supporting the FSA and their Al Qaeda allies, the US coalition forces were fighting to eradicate ISIS.
Terrorists were bussed in surrender deals into the northwestern province of Idlib, where around three million people now live in dire conditions under the occupation of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria.
Chemical claims
In 2012, US President Barack Obama drew a red line in the sand and said the use of chemical weapons in Syria would be met with US military intervention. The terrorist groups interpreted the red line as a green light for them.
In May 2013, Carla Del Ponte, a former Swiss attorney-general and prosecutor with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), said evidence points to the ‘rebels’ using sarin gas. She was a leading member of a UN commission of inquiry.
In August 2013, Obama was faced with a decision to attack Syria in a planned decimation of the government and infrastructure. However, he called it off.
In April 2014, Seymour M. Hersh published an investigation detailing the Obama administration’s illicit weapons highway into Syria operated by the CIA, which also exposed the UK defense lab report to Obama that the sarin gas used in Syria was not from Syrian government sources.
In April 2018 veteran Middle East war correspondent Robert Fisk went in search of the chemical claims made in Douma. Fisk had maintained an anti-Assad stance throughout the war, but he went to Douma with open eyes, looking for the truth. What he found there was the other side of the video shown around the world. After interviewing doctors, nurses and bystanders he found the gas video was patients overcome not by gas but by oxygen starvation in the tunnels and basements in which they lived, on a night of wind and heavy shelling that stirred up a dust storm.
The locals he talked to told of the Jaish al-Islam (Army of Islam) terrorists, supported by the King of Saudi Arabia, who occupied the homes, offices, and businesses and subjugated the residents.
The ‘White Helmets’ were responsible for the video, which took advantage of the situation and wrongly portrayed it as a gas attack. Water was doused on adults and children to provide evidence of a chemical attack.
Days after the Fisk report, Russian officials produced an 11-year-old boy, Hassan Diab, who was in the video at Douma. Western media discredited the Russian press conference as propaganda. The boy was accompanied by his father as he described being unaffected by chemicals, but having been forced to be drenched in water by the ‘White Helmets’.
Most of the Syrian people never left Syria. Had they been all convinced that the government was using chemical weapons, more would have fled. Of those who left for Germany in summer 2015 most were economic migrants looking for a safe place and income.
The foreign actors
The Syrian war was scripted in Washington, DC but the UK, France, and Germany all played their supporting roles. The leaders in 2011 of the US, UK, and France are all gone, and only Germany’s Angela Merkle remains.
Timber Sycamore was a classified weapons supply and training program run by the CIA, headquartered in southern Turkey. In August 2017, President Trump shut down the $1 Billion covert operations which trained, funded, and weaponized Radical Islamic terrorists to fight in Syria. This was done in coordination with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey.
The program lost political support in Congress because much of the weapons were handed over to Al Qaeda, who were allied with FSA. President Barack Obama had begun the program in 2013 to overthrow the government of President Bashar al-Assad but was defeated by defections from the FSA to Jibhat al-Nusra and ISIS.
Russian military entered Syria in late 2015. Moscow did not want to allow a Radical Islamic regime to take power in Syria, because that would threaten the national security of Russia. Moscow knew they could either fight and defeat the terrorists in Syria, or face them later on the streets of Moscow.
Turkey has about 15,000 troops deployed inside Syria and wields significant influence in Idlib, which is occupied by Hayat Tahir al-Sham, the Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria. Turkey is led by a Muslim Brotherhood party that opposes the secular government of Damascus. Additionally, Turkey invaded the northeast corner where separatist Kurds had established a quasi-state. Ankara views the Kurds as terrorists, loyal to the PKK, internationally recognized as a terrorist group, responsible for 30,000 deaths over three decades.
Iran provided support for the Syrian military, as well as humanitarian aid. They have also been part of the Russian and Turkish trio for peace talks and ceasefires.
The next step
The UN peace process is slowly producing a possible new constitution, and presidential elections may be scheduled this summer. Nothing is clear yet, and the political stalemate continues, while the economic situation deteriorates by the day.
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“Investing illusions can continue for a surprisingly long time. Wall Street loves the fees that deal making generates, and the press loves the stories that colorful promoters provide. At a point, the soaring price of a promoted stock can itself become the ‘proof’ that an illusion is reality. Eventually, of course, the party ends, and many business ’emperors’ are found to have no clothes.” Warren Buffett (1930- ), America investor, (in his annual letter of Saturday, Feb. 27, 2021).
“All crises have involved debt that, in one fashion or another, has become dangerously out of scale in relation to the underlying means of payment.” John K. Galbraith (1908-2006), Canadian-born American economist, (in ‘A Short History of Financial Euphoria’, 1994).
“History shows that once an enormous debt has been incurred by a nation, there are only two ways to solve it: one is simply declare bankruptcy, the other is to inflate the currency and thus destroy the wealth of ordinary citizens.” Adam Smith (1723-1790), Scottish economist, father of modern economics, (in ‘The Wealth of Nations’, 1776).
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Over the last few weeks, investors’ sentiment about future inflation and future interest rates has changed. It seems that complacency about inflationary pressures in some parts of the economy is coming to an end.
Even during the economic slowdown brought about by the economic impact of the pandemic, some prices are clearly on the way up. Besides the exuberance in the financial sector where stock and bond prices are frothy, some important prices in the real economy are also strongly increasing.
Sustained price pressures in some important economic sectors
For example, oil prices have increased by more than 50 percent since last year. Construction material prices (lumber, copper, steel, etc.) have skyrocketed by as much as 73% in one year. Because of a strong demand and higher construction costs, real estate prices and rents are rising. For instance, the median home price in the U.S. increased 15% in 2020, while average house prices increased 23% in Canada, during the same period. Food prices have also increased 3.8% in the U.S. and 2.3% in Canada in 2020, and are likely to continue their trend upward in 2021. Even some of the extra liquidity injected into the system has found its way into the cryptocurrency craze, a phenomenon reminiscent of the Tulip mania in Holland in the 17th Century!
The only place where there seems to be little inflation is in the official measures of inflation. In the U.S., the all-items Consumer Price Index (CPI-U) rose only 1.4% in 2020. Even the Producer Price Index (PPI) is up only 1.76% from one year ago. [N.B.: In Canada, the figures are 0.7% (or 1.3% for the CPI excluding gasoline) and 1.4% for durable goods, in 2020].
Currently, the actual inflation rate could be severely underestimated by official figures
Three factors can explain the low inflation reported by official figures. First, one must realize that official inflation indexes are lagging indicators, because important shifts in consumer spending patterns are adjusted every two years. Therefore, during the 2020 pandemic, even though consumers did substantially alter their consumer spending, that shift has not yet been reflected in the official inflation measures.
Secondly, some important sectors (tourism, travel, hotels, restaurants, retail, art and culture, etc.) did experience substantial drops in demand, production and employment, and the prices of their services have declined, artificially pushing the official inflation indexes down. It can be expected that prices in those depressed sectors will bounce back, maybe with a vengeance, once the economic recovery takes hold.
Thirdly, the prices of oil and gasoline were very depressed during most of 2020, and they have since bounced back. Higher energy prices will most probably filter into future measures of inflation.
My tentative conclusion would be that official measures of inflation have seriously underreported the true inflation rate experienced by consumers during the 2020 pandemic.
Many investors have also reached that conclusion. They have realized that the easy-money monetary policies pursued by central banks to boost inflation toward the 2% threshold may have been pushed too far, and that interest rates have been kept ultra low for too long.
This does not mean that more fiscal stimulus is not needed to help workers who have lost their job because of the pandemic and may have trouble going back to their old line of employment.
The clash between central bankers and investors
That is why there has recently been a clash between central bankers and investors about where inflation and interest rates are going to be, once the pandemic is a thing of the past and the economic recovery is well on its way.
The clash pits central bankers, who have been gradually pushing interest rates to ultra low levels with easy-money policies over the last 10 years, and investors, who fear that the after-pandemic economic rebound could be stronger than expected and lead to a resurgence of inflation.
This was epitomized last Thursday March 4, when U.S. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell ruffled investors by declaring that he had no plan to raise interest rates, i.e. not until labor-market conditions are consistent with “maximum employment and inflation is sustainable at 2 percent”. The Governor of the Bank of Canada Mr. Tiff Macklem also seems to subscribe to Mr. Powell’s thesis.
What is the basis for such a clash of perceptions? Essentially, there is a disagreement about how much excess supply there really is in the economy and how robust the economic recovery will be after the pandemic has been vanquished.
On the one hand, central bankers would prefer to keep interest rates on the floor until the economy reaches its full employment level and a higher moderate rate of inflation is attained. On the other hand, investors remember that central banks are known to procrastinate and wait too long to tackle inflationary pressures, ending up overshooting their inflation targets. Indeed, if central bankers wait too long to address inflationary pressures, sooner or later they must step on the monetary brakes, and interest rates shoot up, causing market disruptions.
The pre-1980 period, when central banks waited too long before fighting the creeping inflation, is a good example. In 1980, they pushed interest rates way up, and this brought about the deep 1980-1982 economic recession. [N.B.: In the U.S., the Fed funds rate hit 21% in June 1981, while in Canada, the Bank of Canada interest rate peaked also at 21%, in August 1981.]
Many investors believe that economic conditions are currently reminiscent of what happens after a war, when governments have built up huge debts, and there is a strong pent up demand on the part of consumers who wish to resume spending. By the end of the pandemic, they are forecasting a stronger economic rebound than the one some central banks are expecting.
The Central bankers’ rationale to keep easy-money policies a bit longer
Central bankers presently have two fears, which may explain why they would prefer to keep interest rates ultra low for a few more years.
First, the Fed sees that there are still 10 million fewer jobs today, in the United States, than there were in March 2020. [A similar soft labor market prevails in Canada, as there were 858,000 fewer jobs in January 2021 than in February 2020.] Central bankers think that some structural damage has been done to their economies, especially in the service sector and among young workers, and that it will take time to bring back full employment.
Secondly, the high levels of debt worldwide preoccupy central bankers. Indeed, they see the global financial system becoming overloaded with debt, at all levels, governments, corporations and consumers. They fear that any rise in interest rates would increase the burden of debt service and reduce aggregate demand and, possibly, trigger a financial crisis and an economic recession.
Total global debt is historically very high
Global debt, private and public, is well on its way to reach the unsustainable threshold of 400 percent of global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2021. When interest rates begin rising, this could cause havoc in many ways. Paradoxically, it was the artificially low interest rates of central banks that encouraged such over-indebtedness. And today, those same central banks find themselves trapped in their past policies, and they fear that if they reverted to normal interest rates, it could trigger a global debt crisis.
Indeed, in the aftermath of the Great Recession of 2008, central bankers were very innovative in finding new ways of accommodating politicians who wanted, all at the same time, large tax cuts, higher fiscal deficits, super low interest rates, and faster economic growth, without inflation. This was too good to last for very long.
Central banks in Europe, the U.S., and Japan began to load their balance sheets with government bonds and other financial assets, in the hope of controlling both nominal and real interest rates, and, in so doing, boost economic growth. For example, since March 2020, the NY Fed has been buying $120 billion in Treasury bonds in various maturities and mortgage-backed securities each month, in order to keep interest rates ultra low.
The U.S. Fed’s balance sheet of financial assets, which was less than $1 trillion in 2008, now stands at $7 trillion. The Bank of Canada’s balance sheet stood at C$51 billion in 2008 and now is at C$573 billion. – Central banks can do that (i.e. inject large quantities of new money into the economy), for a while, provided that deflationary pressures are such that inflation does not result. If interest rates start rising, the entire policy could begin unraveling.
Attempts to keep interest rates ultra low in such an environment could simply be impossible, without creating unsustainable financial bubbles.
What could happen if central bankers keep interest rates ultra low for too long?
If central bankers nevertheless attempt to keep nominal interest rates artificially low by increasing the money base and the money supply, it would be like adding fuel to the fire. This will create even more inflationary expectations.
Since the mission of central banks is to prevent excessive inflation from taking hold, while keeping employment high, they have to be careful and make sure that an easy-money policy does not generate strong inflationary expectations.
Already, the unorthodox and unprecedented monetary policy implemented during the last decade has created huge financial bubbles in real estate, in the bond market and in the stock market, with little positive influence on the overall real economy.
It’s possible that central banks have been pursuing short-run financial and economic gains at the cost of serious long-run financial and economic pain. Indeed, if they were to persist in creating bigger and bigger financial bubbles, sooner or later, the day of reckoning will take the form of financial crashes.
Will consumers’ extra savings lead to more spending after the pandemic?
It would seem logical to expect that consumers, both in the U.S. and in Canada, and elsewhere, are going to spend at least part of their extra savings, once the pandemic is conquered. Such a pent up demand is another factor that could boost the economy in the next few years.
This could create a period of economic and financial euphoria with booming markets, fueled by the central bankers’ wholesale printing of money, possibly leading into 2023-2024, (provided, of course, that there is no third wave of virus variants).
Extra high public debts will bring about slower economic growth in the future
Because of the economic impact of the pandemic, many governments around the globe are more indebted than ever, even more so than after World War II, with public debts in advanced economies being over 120 percent of GDP, and growing.
Such a high level of over-indebtedness is bound to be a drag on future economic growth. This is because high public debts tend to push long-term interest rates up, and higher borrowing costs discourage private capital investment and hurt productivity. Extraordinarily high public debts may force governments to raise taxes to meet their ballooning debt service requirements, and this could also be another drag on future economic growth.
Conclusion
Economic conditions in most advanced economies, especially in the U.S. and in Canada, but also in Europe, are at a crucial juncture. There is hope now that the pandemic’s economic drag is about to end, because of the widespread vaccination programs implemented in most countries.
However, is it possible that a fear on the part of investors that inflation could quickly rise during a strong economic recovery, might push long-term interest rates way up? Or will central bankers be able to stick to their policies of ultra low interest rates for another year or two? Both outcomes carry their own risks.
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Fukushima was an avoidable disaster, fuelled by Australian uranium and the hubris and profiteering of Japan’s nuclear industry in collusion with compromised regulators and captured bureaucracies.
The Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission ‒ established by the Japanese Parliament ‒ concluded in its 2012 report that the accident was “a profoundly man-made disaster that could and should have been foreseen and prevented” if not for “a multitude of errors and wilful negligence that left the Fukushima plant unprepared for the events of March 11”.
The accident was the result of “collusion between the government, the regulators and TEPCO”, the commission found.
Mining
But overseas suppliers who turned a blind eye to unacceptable nuclear risks in Japan have largely escaped scrutiny or blame. Australia’s uranium industry is a case in point.
Yuki Tanaka from the Hiroshima Peace Institute noted:
“Japan is not the sole nation responsible for the current nuclear disaster. From the manufacture of the reactors by GEto provision of uranium by Canada, Australia and others, many nations are implicated.”
There is no dispute that Australian uranium was used in the Fukushima reactors. The mining companies won’t acknowledge that fact — instead they hide behind claims of “commercial confidentiality” and “security”.
But the Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office acknowledged in October 2011 that:
“We can confirm that Australian obligated nuclear material was at the Fukushima Daiichi site and in each of the reactors — maybe five out of six, or it could have been all of them”.
BHP and Rio Tinto, two of the world’s largest mining companies, supplied Australian uranium to TEPCO and that uranium was used to fuel Fukushima.
Tsunamis
The mining companies have failed to take any responsibility for the catastrophic impacts on Japanese society that resulted from the use of their uranium in a poorly managed, poorly regulated industry.
Moreover, the mining companies can’t claim ignorance. The warning signs were clear. Australia’s uranium industry did nothing as TEPCO and other Japanese nuclear companies lurched from scandal to scandal and accident to accident.
The uranium industry did nothing in 2002 when it was revealed that TEPCO had systematically and routinely falsified safety data and breached safety regulations for 25 years or more.
The uranium industry did nothing in 2007 when over 300 incidents of ‘malpractice’ at Japan’s nuclear plants were revealed – 104 of them at nuclear power plants.
It did nothing even as the ability of Japan’s nuclear plants to withstand earthquakes and tsunamis came under growing criticism from industry insiders and independent experts.
Vicious cycle
And the uranium industry did nothing about the multiple conflicts of interest plaguing Japanese nuclear regulators.
Mirarr senior Traditional Owner Yvonne Margarula ‒ on whose land in the Northern Territory Rio Tinto’s Ranger mine operated ‒ said she was “deeply saddened” that uranium from Ranger was exported to Japanese nuclear companies including TEPCO.
No such humility from the uranium companies. They get tetchy at any suggestion of culpability, with the Australian Uranium Association describing it as “opportunism in the midst of human tragedy” and “utter nonsense”.
Yet, Australia could have played a role in breaking the vicious cycle of mismanagement in Japan’s nuclear industry by making uranium exports conditional on improved management of nuclear plants and tighter regulation.
Even a strong public statement of concern would have been heard by the Japanese utilities – unless it was understood to be rhetoric for public consumption – and it would have registered in the Japanese media.
Safety
But the uranium industry denied culpability and instead stuck its head in the sand. Since the industry is in denial about its role in fuelling the Fukushima disaster, there is no reason to believe that it will behave more responsibly in future.
Successive Australian governments did nothing about the unacceptable standards in Japan’s nuclear industry. Julia Gillard ‒ Australia’s Prime Minister at the time of the Fukushima disaster ‒ said the disaster “doesn’t have any impact on my thinking about uranium exports”.
Signification elements of Japan’s corrupt ‘nuclear village’ ‒ comprising industry, regulators, politicians and government agencies ‒ were back in control just a few years after the Fukushima disaster. Regulation remains problematic.
Add to that ageing reactors, and companies facing serious economic stress and intense competition, and there’s every reason for ongoing concern about nuclear safety in Japan.
Professor Yoshioka Hitoshi is a Kyushu University academic who served on the government’s 2011-12 Investigation Committee on the Accident at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Stations.
“Unfortunately, the new regulatory regime is … inadequate to ensure the safety of Japan’s nuclear power facilities. The first problem is that the new safety standards on which the screening and inspection of facilities are to be based are simply too lax.
“While it is true that the new rules are based on international standards, the international standards themselves are predicated on the status quo.
“They have been set so as to be attainable by most of the reactors already in operation. In essence, the NRA made sure that all Japan’s existing reactors would be able to meet the new standards with the help of affordable piecemeal modifications ‒ back-fitting, in other words.”
In the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster, UN secretary general Ban Ki Moon called for an independent cost-benefit inquiry into uranium trade. The Australian government failed to act.
Inadequate regulation was a root cause of the Fukushima disaster yet Australia has uranium supply agreements with numerous countries with demonstrably inadequate nuclear regulation, including China, India, Russia, the UnitedStates, Japan, South Korea, and Ukraine.
Overthrow
Likewise, Australian uranium companies and the government turn a blind eye to nuclear corruption scandals in countries with uranium supply agreements: South Korea, India, Russia and Ukraine among others.
In 2011 ‒ the same year as the Fukushima disaster ‒ the Australian government agreed to allow uranium exports to India.
This despite inadequate nuclear regulation in India, and despite India’s ongoing expansion of its nuclear weaponry and delivery capabilities.
A uranium supply agreement with the United Arab Emirates was concluded in 2013 despite the obvious risks of selling uranium into a politically and militarily volatile region where nuclear facilities have repeatedly been targeted by adversaries intent on stopping covert nuclear weapons programs. Australia was planning uranium sales to the Shah of Iran months before his overthrow in 1979.
Forced labour
A uranium supply agreement with Ukraine was concluded in 2016 despite a host of safety and security concerns, and the inability of the International Atomic Energy Agency to carry out safeguards inspections in regions annexed by Russia.
“Australia has no intention of selling uranium to a country which is so obviously in breach of international law as Russia currently is.”
Australia’s uranium supply agreement with China, concluded in 2006, has not been reviewed despite abundant evidence of inadequate nuclear safety standards, inadequate regulation, lack of transparency, repression of whistleblowers, world’s worst insurance and liability arrangements, security risks, and widespread corruption.
Civil society and NGO’s are campaigning to wind back Australia’s atomic exposures in the uranium trade with emphasis on uranium sales to China.
China’s human rights abuses and a range of strategic insecurity issues warrant a cessation of uranium sales. China’s ongoing human rights abuses in Tibet and mass detention and forced labour against Uyghurs in Xinjiang are severe breaches of international humanitarian law and UN Treaties.
A federal Parliamentary Inquiry in Australia is investigating forced labour in China and the options for Australia to respond. A case is before this inquiry to disqualify China from supply of Australian uranium sales – see submission 02 on human rights abuses and submission 02.1 on security risks.
Australia supplies uranium with scant regard for nuclear safety risks. Likewise, proliferation risks are given short shrift.
Australia has uranium export agreements with all of the ‘declared’ nuclear weapons states – the US, UK, China, France, Russia – although not one of them takes seriously its obligation under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to pursue disarmament in good faith.
Carte blanche
Australia claims to be working to discourage countries from producing fissile – explosive – material for nuclear bombs, but nonetheless exports uranium to countries blocking progress on the proposed Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty.
And Australia gives Japan open-ended permission to separate and stockpile plutonium although that stockpiling fans regional proliferation risks and tensions in North-East Asia.
Despite liberal export policies, Australian uranium sales are in long-term decline and now represent only 8.9 percent of world uranium usage.
With the Ranger mine shut down and no longer processing ore for uranium exports, there are only two operating uranium mines in Australia: BHP’s Olympic Dam copper-uranium mine and the smaller General Atomics’ Beverley Four Mile operation ‒ both in South Australia.
Uranium accounts for less than 0.3 percent of Australia’s export revenue and less than 0.1 percent of all jobs in Australia.
One wonders why an industry that delivers so little is given carte blanche by the government to do as it pleases.
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Dr Jim Green is the national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth Australia.
David Noonan is an independent environment campaigner. For further information on BHP’s Olympic Dam mine click here.
Featured image: Senior Traditional Owner Yvonne Margarula was “deeply saddened” that uranium from Rio Tinto’s Ranger mine on Mirarr country in the Northern Territory was exported to Japanese nuclear companies including TEPCO. Photo by Dominic O’Brien via The Ecologist
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Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Meghan and Harry is a perfect case study of how an important political debate about the corrupting role of the monarchy on British life gets shunted aside yet again, not just by the endless Royal soap opera but by supposedly progressive identity politics.
As so often, a focus on identity risks not only blunting our capacity for critical thinking but can be all too readily weaponised: in this case, as the media’s main take-away from the Oprah interview illustrates, by providing an implicit defence of class privilege.
The racism directed at Markle – sorry, the Duchess of Sussex – and baby Archie is ugly, it goes without saying (but maybe more to the point, must be stated to avoid being accused of ignoring or trivialising racism).
The concern expressed by a senior royal during Markle’s pregnancy about Archie’s likely darker skin colour does indeed reveal how deeply ingrained racism is in the British establishment and how much it trickles down to the rest of British society, not least through the billionaire-owned media.
Princely ‘birthright’
But more significant is how the racism demonstrated towards Markle and Archie has played out in the media coverage of the interview and the resulting “national conversation” on social media – nowadays, the only real barometer we have for judging such conversations.
The problem is that, via Oprah, the Sussexes get to frame the significance of the House of Windsor’s racism: both in the threat that, when Charles ascends to the throne, grandson Archie will be deprived of his princely “birthright” because he is of mixed race; and in the fact that Harry and Meghan have been hounded from Palace life into celebrity-style exile in the US.
Let's be clear: only someone still deeply immersed in a lifetime of propaganda would be cheerleading one side or the other in this royal soap opera. It's an endless drama designed to obscure the fact that the system itself ensures privilege for some, exploitation for others https://t.co/TDq0yuAoym
In the process, an important, democratic conversation has yet again been supplanted about why Britain still maintains and reveres these expensive relics of a medieval system of unaccountable rule based on a superior (if no longer divine) blood line.
Instead, the conversation initiated by Oprah is a much more politically muddled one about whether it is right that a “commoner” woman of colour and her mixed-race son are obstructed from fully participating in this medieval system of privilege.
Image makeover
A real political debate about privilege – one that demands greater equality and an end to racist presumptions about blood lines – has been obscured and trivialised once again by a row of the kind preferred by the corporate media: whether most of the Royal Family are too racist to realise that a woman of colour like Meghan could help them with a twenty-first-century image makeover.
As a result, we are presented with a false binary choice. Either we cheer on the Royal Family and implicitly condone their racism; or we cheer on Meghan and implicitly support her battle to better veil the feudal ugliness of the British monarchy.
It ought to be possible to want Archie to live a life equal to “white” babies in the UK without also wanting him to live a life of pomp and circumstance, designed to ensure that other babies – white, black and brown – grow up to be denied the privileges he enjoys by virtue of royal birth.
This is your reminder that Versailles gets double the number of visitors compared to Buckingham Palace.
The way for the country to really get an economic boost from the royal family is therefore to chop all their heads off.
What the Oprah interview does – is designed to do – is derail the intersection of class and race in politically damaging ways.
A meaningful democratic struggle prioritises class unity as the battering ram against establishment power that long ago learnt to protect itself by dividing us through our competing identities. Class struggle does not ignore race; it embraces it and all other socially constructed identities used by power to rationalise oppression. Class subsumes them into a collective struggle strengthened by numbers.
Struggle based on identity, by contrast, is inherently divisive and politically enervating, as the Meghan Markle case illuminates. Her challenge to Royal “tradition” alienates those most invested in ideas of monarchy, “Britishness” or white identity. And it does so while offering no more than a sop to those invested in breaking glass ceilings, even of the kind that aren’t worth smashing in the first place.
Meghan’s fight for the first mixed-race British prince is no more politically progressive than the celebration by the media two years ago of the news that for the first time women were in charge of the military-industrial complex – the one that rains down death and destruction on “Third World” men, women and children.
"Women controlling the military-industrial complex is not feminism, it’s toxic masculinity. The fruit of a sick valuing system that is poisoning our environment and risking nuclear annihilation, writes Caitlin Johnstone." ~ via @consortiumnewshttps://t.co/GPqItPJClh
Strange as it is to recall now – in an age of social media, when anyone can comment on anything, and the “mainstream” media’s billionaire gatekeepers have supposedly been sidelined – ordinary Britons discussed abolishing the monarchy far more in the 1970s, when I was a child, than they do nowadays.
Getting rid of the Royal Family – like getting rid of nuclear weapons, another topic no one talks about seriously any more – was mainstream enough then that Royalists were often forced on to the defensive. As the mood soured among a vocal section of the population, the Queen’s defenders were forced hurriedly to switch from arguments rooted in deference and tradition to more utilitarian claims that the Royals offered “value for money”, supposedly boosting commerce and tourism.
Prince Charles’ engagement in 1981 to a beautiful, demure teenage “English rose”, Princess Diana, looked to many, even at the time, suspiciously like a move to reinvigorate a tired, increasingly unpopular brand.
The media spectacle of a fairytale romance and wedding, followed by years of controversy, disillusionment and betrayal, culminating in divorce and finally Diana’s death / murder, very effectively distracted the British public for the next 16 years from the question of what purpose a Royal Family served. It became only too clear what role they played: they kept us engrossed in a real-life, better-than-TV drama.
Champions of identity
Diana’s supposed struggle to grow from adolescence to womanhood in the glare of media intrusion and under the strictures of “The Firm” created the prototype for a new type of apolitical, Mills and Boon-style identity politics.
Following Diana’s escapades – from the secular saint who cleared landmines to the raunchy princess who had illicit sex with her riding instructor, an army major no less – was far more thrilling than the campaign to end the monarchy and the regressive landed class it still represents.
Diana’s life story helped pave the way to the reinvention of the left through the 1990s – under Tony Blair in the UK and Bill Clinton in the US – as champions of a new social issues-obsessed non-politics.
Both were ushered into power after reassuring the newly triumphant corporate elite that they would harness and divert popular energy away from dangerous struggles for political change towards safe struggles for superficial social change.
In the UK, that was achieved most obviously in Blair’s assiduous courtship of media mogul Rupert Murdoch. Importantly, Blair persuaded Murdoch that, as prime minister, he would not only preserve the economic legacy of the Thatcher years but head further down the path of deregulation.
Murdoch – himself no fan of a British monarchy that had always looked down on him as a vulgar Australian – also understood that the inevitable soap opera quality of exceptional individuals battling the UK’s rigid hierarchy of privilege, spurred on by Blair’s New Labour, would prove great for sales of his newspapers. Just as Oprah knows that the only tangible consequence of the Harry and Meghan interview is that it will rake in many more millions for her own media empire.
Sticking It to the Man
In the new era of identity-saturated non-politics, demands for equality mean removing obstacles so that more women, people of colour and the LGBT community can participate in institutions that represent power and privilege.
These battles are not about overthrowing those systems of privilege, as earlier identity-based struggles such as the Black Panthers’ were. Success serves simply to placate identity-focused groups by helping those of most “merit” elbow their way into the preserves of established power.
Those achievements started with the most visible, least significant areas of the economy, such as sport and celebrity, and led over time to greater access to the professions.
The current excitement among some on the left at Meghan’s “Sticking It to the Man” appears to derive from the disruptive threat she poses to the House of Windsor – not to its economic, social and political power, but to its status as the last hold-out against Blair’s identity-fuelled “revolution”.
The Queen has an opaque, little-discussed prior consent power over legislation she secretly abused to give herself a unique right, decades ago, to conceal from the public the scale of her vast private wealth.
Diana’s emancipation story helped distract us for nearly two decades from confronting central questions about the nature and role of the British establishment in preserving and veiling power.
Now Meghan Markle is expanding the identity story in a new direction, one that once again embraces the story of a young, “headstrong” woman scorned by the Royal Family for snubbing tradition. But this time there is an alluring contemporary twist to the narrative: the Family’s resistance to diversity and its refusal to own its racist past.
Unlike Diana who stood alone and seemingly fragile, Meghan and Harry offer a more relevant, modern picture of a confident, professional young couple standing and fighting together for what is fair, for what should be theirs by right.
This feels important, bold and empowering. But it is the precise opposite. It is more Mills and Boons, but this time with diversity thrown in to generate more appeal on one side and more hostility on the other.
Meghan’s story will continue to work its magic: fascinating, infuriating and pacifying us in equal measure as we focus on what is private, unknowable and can be endlessly contested rather than what is universal, visible and impossible to refute.
Meanwhile, the Royal Family, the perpetuation of privilege and the erosion of democracy will march on as before, in the same long and glorious British tradition.
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Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net.
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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As reported by New Delhi-based World Is One News (WION),1 Pfizer is demanding countries put up sovereign assets as collateral for expected vaccine injury lawsuits resulting from its COVID-19 inoculation. In other words, it wants governments to guarantee the company will be compensated for any expenses resulting from injury lawsuits against it.
WION reports that Argentina and Brazil have rejected Pfizer’s demands. Initially, the company demanded indemnification legislation to be enacted, such as that which it enjoys in the U.S. Argentina proposed legislation that would restrict Pfizer’s financial responsibility for injuries to those resulting from negligence or malice.
Pfizer rejected the proposal. It also rejected a rewritten proposal that included a clearer definition of negligence. Pfizer then demanded the Argentinian government put up sovereign assets — including its bank reserves, military bases and embassy buildings — as collateral. Argentina refused. A similar situation occurred in Brazil. Pfizer demanded Brazil:
“Waive sovereignty of its assets abroad in favor of Pfizer”
Not apply its domestic laws to the company
Not penalize Pfizer for vaccine delivery delays
Exempt Pfizer from all civil liability for side effects
Brazil rejected Pfizer’s demands, calling them “abusive.” As noted by WION, Pfizer developed its vaccine with the help of government funding, and now it — a private company — is demanding governments hand over sovereign assets to ensure the company won’t lose a dime if its product injures people, even if those injuries are the result of negligent company practices, fraud or malice.
Aside from Argentina and Brazil, nine other South American countries have reportedly negotiated deals with Pfizer. It’s unclear whether they actually ended up giving up national assets in return.2
Vaccine Maker Accused of Abusing Its Power
According to STAT News,3 “Legal experts have raised concerns that Pfizer’s demands amount to an abuse of power.” Lawrence Gostin, law professor at Georgetown University and director of the World Health Organization’s Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law told STAT:4
“Pharmaceutical companies shouldn’t be using their power to limit lifesaving vaccines in low- and middle-income countries. [This] seems to be exactly what they’re doing … Some liability protection is warranted, but certainly not for fraud, gross negligence, mismanagement, failure to follow good manufacturing practices. Companies have no right to ask for indemnity for these things.”
Mark Eccleston-Turner, a lecturer in global health law at Keele University in England, added:5
“[Pfizer] is trying to eke out as much profit and minimize its risk at every juncture with this vaccine development then this vaccine rollout. Now, the vaccine development has been heavily subsidized already. So there’s very minimal risk for the manufacturer involved there.”
Don’t Expect Compensation if Injured by COVID-19 Vaccine
In the U.S., vaccine makers already enjoy full indemnity against injuries occurring from this or any other pandemic vaccine under the PREP Act. If you’re injured, you’d have to file a compensation claim with the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP),6 which is funded by U.S. taxpayers via Congressional appropriation to the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS).
While similar to the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP), which applies to nonpandemic vaccines, the CICP is even less generous when it comes to compensation. For example, while the NVICP pays some of the costs associated with any given claim, the CICP does not. This means you’ll also be responsible for attorney fees and expert witness fees.
A significant problem with the CICP is that it’s administered within the DHHS, which is also sponsoring the COVID-19 vaccination program. This conflict of interest makes the CICP less than likely to find fault with the vaccine.
Your only route of appeal is within the DHHS, where your case would simply be reviewed by another employee. The DHHS is also responsible for making the payment, so the DHHS effectively acts as judge, jury and defendant. As reported by Dr. Meryl Nass,7 the maximum payout you can receive — even in cases of permanent disability or death — is $250,000 per person; however, you’d have to exhaust your private insurance policy before the CICP gives you a dime.
CICP will only pay the difference between what your insurance covers and the total payout amount established for your case. For permanent disability, even $250,000 won’t go far. The CICP also has a one year statute of limitations, so you have to act quickly.
This too is a significant problem, as no one really knows what injuries might arise from the COVID-19 vaccine, or when, and this makes tying the injury to the vaccination a difficult prospect. Employers that mandate the COVID-19 vaccine will also be indemnified from liability for side effects. Instead, claims will be routed through worker’s compensation programs.
If the COVID-19 vaccines are as safe as the manufacturers claim, why do they insist on so much indemnification? Do they suspect or know something they’re refusing to admit publicly?
Side Effects Are Inevitable
Of course, those of us who have been looking at the science behind the mRNA technology used to create these novel “vaccines” have long since realized there are tremendous risks involved. For starters, mRNA vaccines are most accurately referred to as gene therapies, as this is what they are.
They effectively turn your cells into bioreactors that churn out viral proteins to incite an immune response, and there’s no off-switch.8 Based on historical and preliminary evidence, significant short- and long-term side effects are, quite frankly, inevitable.
For starters, your body sees the synthetic mRNA as “non-self,” which can cause autoantibodies to attack your own tissues. Judy Mikovits, Ph.D., explained this in her interview, featured in “How COVID-19 ‘Vaccines’ May Destroy the Lives of Millions.”
Free mRNA also drive inflammatory diseases, which is why making synthetic mRNA thermostable — i.e., slowing the breakdown of the RNA by encasing it in lipid nanoparticles — is likely to be problematic. The nanoparticles themselves also pose a risk. COVID-19 vaccines use PEGylated lipid nanoparticles, which is known to cause allergic reactions and anaphylaxis.9,10
What’s more, previous attempts to develop an mRNA-based drug using lipid nanoparticles failed and had to be abandoned because when the dose was too low, the drug had no effect, and when dosed too high, the drug became too toxic.11 An obvious question is: What has changed that now makes this technology safe enough for mass use?
As detailed in my interview with Mikovits, the synthetic RNA influences the gene syncytin, which can result in:
Brain inflammation
Dysregulated communication between the microglia in your brain, which are critical for clearing toxins and pathogens
Dysregulated immune system
Dysregulated endocannabinoid system (which calms inflammation)
Pathogenic Priming and Antibody-Dependent Enhancement
Another significant problem is that we don’t know whether antibody production is protective or pathogenic in coronavirus infections. If pathogenic, vaccinated individuals may be at increased risk of severe illness if they’re exposed to SARS-CoV-2 in the future. As reported in a December 11, 2020, Vaccine: X paper:12
“The first SARS-CoV-2 vaccine(s) will likely be licensed based on neutralizing antibodies in Phase 2 trials, but there are significant concerns about using antibody response in coronavirus infections as a sole metric of protective immunity.
Antibody response is often a poor marker of prior coronavirus infection, particularly in mild infections, and is shorter-lived than virus-reactive T-cells … Strong antibody response correlates with more severe clinical disease while T-cell response is correlated with less severe disease; and antibody-dependent enhancement of pathology and clinical severity has been described.
Indeed, it is unclear whether antibody production is protective or pathogenic in coronavirus infections. Early data with SARS-CoV-2 support these findings. Data from coronavirus infections in animals and humans emphasize the generation of a high-quality T cell response in protective immunity.”
A number of reports in the medical literature have indeed highlighted the risk of pathogenic priming and antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE). As explained in “Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Fire? Due Diligence Warranted for ADE in COVID-19”:13
“ADE is an immunological phenomenon whereby a previous immune response to a virus can render an individual more susceptible to a subsequent analogous infection.
Rather than viral recognition and clearance, the prior development of virus-specific antibodies at a non-neutralizing level can facilitate viral uptake, enhancing replication; a possible immune evasion strategy avoiding intracellular innate immune sensors, or pattern recognition receptors …
ADE of SARS-CoV has also been described14 through a novel FcγRII-dependent and ACE2-independent cell entry mechanism. The authors state15 that this warrants concern in the safety evaluation of any candidate human vaccines against SARS-CoV.”
Similarly, “Pathogenic Priming Likely Contributes to Serious and Critical Illness and Mortality in COVID-19 Via Autoimmunity,” published in the Journal of Translational Autoimmunity, warns that:16
“Failure of SARS and MERS vaccines in animal trials involved pathogenesis consistent with an immunological priming that could involve autoimmunity in lung tissues due to previous exposure to the SARS and MERS spike protein. Exposure pathogenesis to SARS-CoV-2 in COVID-19 likely will lead to similar outcomes.”
So, to be clear, what all of this means is that if you get vaccinated, you may actually be at increased risk for serious illness if/when you’re exposed to any number of mutated SARS-CoV-2 strains in the future.
This is why the recommendation to vaccinate individuals who have previously been infected with SARS-CoV-2, or who have an active SARS-CoV-2 infection, may actually be quite dangerous. Dr. Hooman Noorchashm recently sent a public letter17 to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner detailing these risks.
How mRNA Injections May Trigger Prion Disease
What’s more, in a paper18 titled, “COVID-19 RNA Based Vaccines and the Risk of Prion Disease,” published in Microbiology & Infectious Diseases, Dr. Bart Classen warns there are also troubling evidences suggesting some of the mRNA shots may cause prion diseases such as Alzheimer’s and ALS. He writes:
“In the current paper, the concern is raised that the RNA based COVID vaccines have the potential to cause more disease than the epidemic of COVID-19. This paper focuses on a novel potential adverse event mechanism causing prion disease which could be even more common and debilitating than the viral infection the vaccine is designed to prevent …
Analysis of the Pfizer vaccine against COVID-19 identified two potential risk factors for inducing prion disease is humans. The RNA sequence in the vaccine contains sequences believed to induce TDP-43 and FUS to aggregate in their prion based conformation leading to the development of common neurodegerative diseases.
In particular it has been shown that RNA sequences GGUA, UG rich sequences, UG tandem repeats, and G Quadruplex sequences, have increased affinity to bind TDP-43 and or FUS and may cause TDP-43 or FUS to take their pathologic configurations in the cytoplasm.
In the current analysis a total of sixteen UG tandem repeats were identified and additional UG rich sequences were identified. Two GGΨA sequences were found. G Quadruplex sequences are possibly present but sophisticated computer programs are needed to verify these.
The spike protein encoded by the vaccine binds angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), an enzyme which contains zinc molecules. The binding of spike protein to ACE2 has the potential to release the zinc molecule, an ion that causes TDP-43 to assume its pathologic prion transformation.”
mRNA Technology Has Potential to Cause Microvascular Injury
Additionally, Dr. J. Patrick Whelan, a pediatric rheumatologist specializing in multisystem inflammatory syndrome, submitted a public comment19 to the FDA back in December 2020, in which he expressed concern that mRNA vaccines have “the potential to cause microvascular injury to the brain, heart, liver and kidneys in ways that were not assessed in safety trials.”
He cited research showing that “the spike protein in brain endothelial cells is associated with formation of microthrombi (clots),” and that since no viral RNA has been found in brain endothelium, “viral proteins appear to cause tissue damage without actively replicating virus.”
“Is it possible the spike protein itself causes the tissue damage associated with Covid-19?”he asks. “In 13/13 brains from patients with fatal COVID-19, pseudovirions (spike, envelope, and membrane proteins) without viral RNA are present in the endothelia of cerebral microvessels …
It appears that the viral spike protein that is the target of the major SARS-CoV-2 vaccines is also one of the key agents causing the damage to distant organs that may include the brain, heart, lung, and kidney.
Before any of these vaccines are approved for widespread use in humans, it is important to assess in vaccinated subjects the effects of vaccination on the heart … Vaccinated patients could also be tested for distant tissue damage in deltoid area skin biopsies …”
Reports of Side Effects Are Rapidly Mounting
Around the world, reports are now pouring in of people dying shortly after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. In many cases, they die suddenly within hours of getting the shot. In others, death occurs within the span of a couple of weeks.
In the wake of 29 senior citizen deaths,20 Norway is reportedly considering excluding the very old and terminally ill from getting the AstraZeneca vaccine. According to the Norwegian Medicines Agency:21
“Most people have experienced the expected side effects of the vaccine, such as nausea and vomiting, fever, local reactions at the injection site, and worsening of their underlying condition.”
The Norwegian Institute of Public Health further noted that “for those with the most severe frailty, even relatively mild vaccine side effects can have serious consequences,” and that “For those who have a very short remaining life span anyway, the benefit of the vaccine may be marginal or irrelevant.”22
In Sweden, hospitals in Sörmland and Gävleborg suspended the AstraZeneca vaccine in mid-February 2021 after a full quarter of the vaccinated hospital staff reported side effects. To prevent staff shortages and conduct an investigation, the vaccination push was temporarily paused.23Examples of side effects reported after vaccination with Pfizer’s, Moderna’s and AstraZeneca’s vaccines from around the world include:
Persistent malaise24,25
Bell’s Palsy26,27,28
Extreme exhaustion29
Swollen, painful lymph nodes
Severe allergic, including anaphylactic reactions30,31,32
Thrombocytopenia (a rare, often lethal blood disorder)33,34
Multisystem inflammatory syndrome35
Miscarriages36,37
Chronic seizures and convulsions38,39
Severe headache/migraine that does not respond to medication
Paralysis40
Sleep disturbances
Psychological effects such as mood changes, anxiety, depression, brain fog, confusion, dissociation and temporary inability to form words
Cardiac problems, including myocardial and tachycardia disorders41
Blindness, impaired vision and eye disorders42,43
Stroke44,45
In the U.K., there were 49,472 reported side effects to the Pfizer vaccine and 21,032 reactions to the AstraZeneca vaccine as of January 24, 2021. As reported by Principia Scientific International,46“For both vaccines this equates to 1 in every 333 people suffering an adverse reaction. This rate could actually be higher as some cases may have not been reported …”
Greatest Risk of All: Sudden Death
Perhaps most concerning of all are rapidly mounting reports of sudden death,47,48,49,50,51,52 mostly in the elderly but also in much younger, healthy individuals. In the U.S., COVID-19 vaccines accounted for 70% of vaccine-related deaths between January 2020 and January 2021.
As of February 12, 2021, the number of side effects reported to VAERS totaled 15,923, including 929 deaths.53 Of the 799 deaths reported within the U.S., one-third occurred within 48 hours of vaccination and 21% of them were cardiac-related.
Pfizer’s vaccine was the most dangerous in terms of death, being responsible for 58% of deaths while Moderna’s vaccine accounted for 41% of deaths. Pfizer’s vaccine was also responsible for 75% of Bell’s Palsy cases, compared to Moderna’s at 25%.54
Curiously, based on the data submitted to the FDA, Moderna’s vaccine has a death rate 5.41 times higher than Pfizer’s, yet both are dramatically lower than the national average. As noted by The Defender, the dramatic discrepancy in death rates “deserves notice and requires explanation,” adding:55
“If Moderna’s on-vaccine death rate is so far below the national death rate and also simultaneously more than five times greater than Pfizer’s on-vaccine death rate, then Pfizer’s study sample appears even less representative of the entire population …
Moderna’s screening process and exclusion criteria in the trial led to evidence that the general population is dying at a rate 6.3 times greater than the death rate in the Moderna trial — which means the Moderna study, including its estimated efficacy rate and the vaccine’s alleged safety profile — cannot possibly be relevant to most of the U.S. population.
The super-healthy cohorts studied by Moderna are in no way representative of the U.S. population. Most deaths from COVID-19 involve pre-existing health conditions of the types excluded from both Pfizer and Moderna trials …
Those enrolling in the post-market surveillance studies deserve to know the abject absence of any relevant information on efficacy and risk for them. In their zeal to help humanity, or to help themselves, these people may very well be walking into a situation that will cause autoimmunity due to pathogenic priming, potentially leading to disease enhancement should they become infected following vaccination.”
Do a Risk-Benefit Analysis Before Making Up Your Mind
To avoid becoming a sad statistic, I urge you to review the science very carefully before making up your mind about this experimental gene therapy. Also remember that the lethality of COVID-19 is actually surprisingly low. It’s lower than the flu for those under the age of 60.56
If you’re under the age of 40, your risk of dying from COVID-19 is just 0.01%, meaning you have a 99.99% chance of surviving the infection. And you could improve that to 99.999% if you’re metabolically flexible, insulin sensitive, and vitamin D replete.
So, really, what are we protecting against with a COVID-19 vaccine? These mRNA vaccines aren’t even designed to prevent infection, only to reduce the severity of symptoms. Meanwhile, they could potentially make you sicker once you’re exposed to the virus, and/or cause persistent serious side effects such as those reviewed above.
While I won’t tell anyone what to do, I would urge you to take the time to review the science and weigh the potential risks and benefits based on your individual situation before you make a decision that you may regret for the rest of your life, which can actually be shortened with this vaccine. Undoubtedly, Pfizer and other vaccine makers suspect this as well, which is why Pfizer is bullying nations into covering for any and all of its mistakes.
The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) recently posted more than 50 video presentations from the pay-for-view Fifth International Public Conference on Vaccination held online October 16 to 18, 2020, and made them available to everyone for free.
The conference’s theme was “Protecting Health and Autonomy in the 21st Century” and it featured physicians, scientists and other health professionals, human rights activists, faith community leaders, constitutional and civil rights attorneys, authors and parents of vaccine injured children talking about vaccine science, policy, law and ethics and infectious diseases, including coronavirus and COVID-19 vaccines.
In December 2020, a U.K. company published false and misleading information about NVIC and its conference, which prompted NVIC to open up the whole conference for free viewing. The conference has everything you need to educate yourself and protect your personal freedoms and liberties with respect to your health.
Don’t miss out on this incredible opportunity. I was a speaker at this empowering conference and urge you to watch these video presentations before they’re censored and taken away by the technocratic elite.
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The prism of power which holds together the American empire, that filters public perception, breeds manic worry amongst citizens about imagined enemies. To justify its existence, the military oligarchy that runs America needs enemies. Thus it views peace as an existential threat and invests serious resources into steering the thought and behaviour of the public to serve the murder machine. Although imperialism has targeted varied countries throughout its life, its strategy has remained constant, and forms a pattern of state behaviour that reveals the depravity of American motives in international relations.
The latest target to be confronted by a hostile US geostrategic agenda is China. In terms of its economy and political system, China is nonconformist in a global economy where western capital writes the rules. China represents the threat to US unilateral interventionism of a multipolar world, based on peaceful multilateral cooperation. China is the strongest strategic bulwark against the US agenda to privatise the public infrastructure of foreign nations whose resources the US desires, because western elites aspire to mastery of the globe.
Enmity towards China is supposed to blind captive citizens of capitalist states to the fact China’s system of power is more logical than bourgeois democracy, offering power to skilled public administrators rather than ambassadors of inherited wealth. China’s public administration ethic values and upholds organisational competencies, instead of uncritically obeying the profit motive. All in all, Chinese governance is more in harmony with the ideal of a state that is rationally planned than the chaos of cartel capitalism.
But China is not perfect. Unfortunately, it embraces techniques of surveillance capitalism etc to shut down critique of the state. China’s communications policy conforms to the trend of the state restricting the liberatory flow of ideas on the internet. The public is only as strong as the power of free intelligence within it, and China’s repression of electronic dissidence and whistleblowing on inevitable public corruption puts it in bad company.
Freedom of speech is only as strong as the power of critical inquiry, so we ought to be confident in challenging establishment narratives on China.
But we should avoid becoming patriots for China, lest we live in ignorance of the sublime truth of international human fraternity that transcends the state. All in all, China better represents the spirit of international consensus than America, and it could teach us how to develop capabilities in our public administration, were organised lies not blinding our minds.
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By any historical measure, it was a game-changer: the first meeting since the 7th century between a Roman Catholic Pope and a Shiite spiritual leader regarded as a “source of emulation.”
It will take a long time to assess the full implications of the immensely intriguing 50-minute face-to-face conversation, with interpreters only, between Pope Francis and Grand Ayatollah Sistani at his humble home in a Najaf alley near the dazzling Imam Ali shrine.
An avowedly imperfect parallel is that for the Shiite community of the faithful, Najaf is as pregnant with meaning as Jerusalem is for Christianity.
The official Vatican spin is that Pope Francis went on a carefully choreographed “pilgrimage” to Iraq under the sign of “brotherhood” – not only in terms of geopolitics but as a shield against religious sectarianism, be it Sunnis against Shiites or Muslims against Christians.
Francis went back to the main theme in an extremely frank exchange (in Italian) with the media on his plane back to Rome. Yet what’s most extraordinary is his candid assessment of Ayatollah Sistani.
The Pope stressed,
“Ayatollah Sistani has a saying, I hope to recall it properly: ‘Men are either brothers by religion or equal by creation.’” Francis sees the bridging of this duality also as a cultural journey.
He qualified the meeting with Sistani as delivering a “universal message,” and praised the Grand Ayatollah as “a sage” and “a man of God”: “Listening to him, one cannot but notice it. He’s a person who carries wisdom and also prudence. He told me that for over ten years he has not received ‘people who come to visit me but have other political aims.’”
The Pope added:
“He was very respectful, and I felt honored, even in the final salutations. He never stands up, but he did, to salute me, twice. A humble, and wise, man. It felt good to my soul, this meeting.”
A glimpse of the warmth was revealed in this image, absent from Western mainstream media – which, to a large extent, tried to gaslight, sabotage, ignore, black out or sectarianize the meeting, usually under barely disguised layers of “Shiite threat” propaganda.
They did that because, at the core, Francis and Sistani were delivering an anti-war, anti-genocide, anti-sectarian, and anti-occupation message, which cannot but incur the wrath of the usual suspects.
There were a few frantic attempts to portray the meeting as the Pope privileging quietist Najaf over militant Qom in the Shiite universe – or, in raw terms, Sistani over Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei. That’s nonsense. For context, see the contrast between Najaf and Qom in my Persian Miniatures e-book published by Asia Times.
The Pope has recently written to Ayatollah Shirazi in Iran. Tehran keeps an ambassador in the Vatican and has collaborated for years on scientific research protocols. This pilgrimage, though, was all about Iraq. Unlike those of the West, the media of the Axis of Resistance (Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon) gave it wall-to-wall coverage.
That crucial fatwa
I have been privileged to track Ayatollah Sistani’s movements since the early 2000s, and have visited his office in Najaf several times.
In 2003, when the scarecrow du jour, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, literally blew up revered Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim in front of the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf, Sistani pleaded for no retaliation: The American occupation machine was too powerful and Sistani saw the divide-and-rule dangers of a sectarian Sunni-Shiite war.
Yet in 2004 he single-handedly stared down the mighty occupation apparatus and the dreadful Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) when they were contemplating a bloodbath to get rid of the incandescent cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, then holed up in Najaf.
In 2014, Sistani issued a fatwa conferring legitimacy upon the weaponizing of Iraqi civilians to fight ISIS/Daesh – especially as the takfiris were aiming to attack the quadruple, sacred Shi’ite sanctuaries in Iraq: Najaf, Karbala, Kazimiya and Samarra.
So it was Sistani who legitimized the birth of armed defensive groups which coalesced in the Popular Mobilization Units (PMUs), or Hashd a-Shaabi, later incorporated into the Iraqi Ministry of Defense.
The PMUs were – and remain – an umbrella group, with some closer to Tehran than others and working under the strategic supervision of Major General Qassem Soleimani until his assassination via an American drone strike at Baghdad airport on January 3, 2020.
Never promised you a rose garden
For all the warmth between them, the meeting between the Pope and Sistani may not have been the proverbial rose garden. My colleague Elijah Magnier, the foremost reporter on all things Axis of Resistance, confirmed some startling details with his sources in Najaf:
Sayyed Sistani refused to have his own photographer and did not want any Shiite cleric, nor the directors of his office, to be present at Al-Rasoul Street, where he received His Holiness the Pope…. The Vatican did not issue any statement or take any overt position to recognize and support the Shiites who were killed while resisting ISIS and defending the Christians of Mesopotamia. Thus, Sayyed Sistani did not consider it necessary to issue a “joint document” as the Pope desired and was aiming for, and as he had done in Abu Dhabi when meeting with the Sheikh of Al-Azhar.
Magnier correctly focuses on the subsequent communiqué issued by Sistani’s office – and especially on its roll call vote of No, No, No …. Every No indicts the hegemon.
Sistani denounces the “besieging of populations” – including sanctions; he denies that Iraqis want US troops to stay; when he denounces “violence,” he refers to American bombing.
Additionally, “No to injustice” is Sistani’s message not only to politicians in Baghdad – mired in corruption, not delivering basic services or job opportunities – but also to Washington’s “language of war” in the wider Middle East, from Syria and Iran to Palestine.
Rome sources confirmed there had been negotiations for months aiming at convincing Baghdad to normalize relations with Israel. A “message” was sent through the Vatican. Sistani replied sharply that normalization is impossible. The Vatican remains mum.
One reason to remain mum is that the statement from Sistani’s office makes it clear the Vatican is not doing enough to support Iraq. According to the Najaf source quoted by Magnier, between 2014 and 2017 “the Vatican was silent when the Shiites lost thousands of men defending the Christians (and other Iraqis) and did not receive any attention or even an overt statement of recognition from the Pope for all these years since.”
The statement from Sistani’s office explicitly refers to “displacement, wars, acts of violence, economic blockades, and the absence of social justice to which the Palestinian people are exposed, especially the Palestinian people in the occupied territories.”
Translation: Iraq supports the Palestinian cause.
A crown of thorns
The meeting of Catholicism and Shia Islam did revolve around a geopolitical crown of thorns. Take, for instance, the fact that spokespersons or underlings of a Catholic POTUS, as well as American mainstream media, demonize the enemy du jour as “Iran-backed militias,” “Shiite-backed militias” or “Shiite militias affiliated with Iran.”
This is nonsense. As I found when meeting some of them in Iraq in 2017, PMUs harbor brigades composed not only of Shiites but Iraqis of other religions. For instance, there’s the Council of Scholars of the Sacred Ribat of Muhammad; the Council for Combating Takfiri-Thinking of the Sunnah Fallujah and Anbar; and the Christian Chaldean Brigade led by Rayan al-Kildani, who met Pope Francis.
To be fair, Pope Francis in his pilgrimage did condemn those who instrumentalize religion to engineer wars – to the benefit of Israel, the Saudi oily hacienda, the empire, and all of the above. He prayed at a church destroyed by ISIS/Daesh.
Significantly, Pope Francis handed a rosary to al-Kildani, the head of the Babylon militia of the PMUs. The Pope considers al-Kildani as nothing less than the savior of Christians in Iraq. And yet, al-Kildani is the only Christian on the planet featured on the US terrorist list.
It’s never enough to remember that the PMUs were the target of the recent Biden-Harris excellent bombing adventure on February 25/26: militants were actually bombed in Iraqi, not Syrian territory. The previous overall field commander of the PMUs was Abu al-Muhandis, who I met in Baghdad in late 2017. He was assassinated side by side with Soleimani.
Pope Francis was able to embark on his Iraqi pilgrimage only due to the Hashd al-Shaabi – who were absolutely key, front line actors saving Iraq from partition by takfiris and/or becoming a (fake) Caliphate.
Francis did retrace some of the Prophet’s steps in his Abrahamic pilgrimage, especially in Ur in Babylon; but echoes reach way farther, to al-Khalil (Hebron) in Palestine all the way to modern Syria and Jordan.
A mere pilgrimage won’t change harsh facts on the Mesopotamian ground: 36% unemployment (nearly 50% among the youth); 30% of the population living in poverty; an incoming NATO surge; the hegemon unable to let go because it needs this empire-of-bases hub between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean; widespread political corruption by an entrenched oligarchy.
Francis insisted this was only a “first step,” and it involves “risks.” The best one may hope for, as it stands, is that the Pope and his “humble and wise” interlocutor keep stressing that divide and rule, fanning the flames of religious, ethnic and communitarian strife, benefits only – who else? – the usual suspects.
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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.
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Dr. Helen Caldicott has been an author, physician and one of the world’s leading anti-nuclear campaigners. She helped to reinvigorate the group of Physicians for Social Responsibility, acting as president from 1978 to 1983. Since its founding in 2001 she served as president of the US based Nuclear Policy Research Institute later called Beyond Nuclear which initiates symposia and educational projects aimed at informing the public about the dangers of nuclear power, nuclear weapons, and nuclear war. And she is the editor of the 2014 book, 
