Global Research

A carefully research video report on the role of Bill Gates in the “Battle Against Fake News”

Bill Gates initiative is supported by

“Adobe, Arm, BBC, Intel, Microsoft and Truepic in a coalition to develop end to end open standard for tracing the origin and evolution of digital content”

Under the helm of Bill Gates,

“Technology and media entities join forces to create standards groups aimed at building trust in online content”. 

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Video Production by Really Graceful (RG)

Video: Joe Biden on Iraq War: “Taking this Son of a ****, Taking Saddam Down”

By Joe Biden, March 02 2021

As documented below in a September 1998 Senate hearing, Joe Biden was a firm supporter of the Invasion of Iraq on the grounds that Saddam Hussein “had weapons of mass destruction”.

What Jordan’s Prince Hassan Fails to Recognize: Palestinian Struggle Is an Advance Guard of the Arab Liberation Movement

By Rima Najjar, March 02 2021

Déjà vu washed over me as I read a letter by Prince Hassan bin Talal of Jordan addressing Israelis, published in Yedioth Ahronoth (Feb 26, 2021), the largest Israeli newspaper (Hebrew). It is a letter clearly written within the “one-homeland-two-state” initiative framework.

Joe Biden Championed the Iraq War. Will that Come Back to Haunt Him Now?

By Mark Weisbrot, March 02 2021

Biden himself had enormous influence as chair and argued strongly in favor of the 2002 resolution granting President Bush the authority to invade Iraq.

On British Colonialism, Antisemitism, and Palestinian Rights

By Avi Shlaim, March 02 2021

In December 2016, then British Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative government formally adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)’s working definition of antisemitism.

Biden’s Journey: Change Is Imperceptible

By Philip Giraldi, March 02 2021

The new White House Team has been in place for more than a month and it is perhaps time to consider where it is going with America’s fractured foreign policy.

US Foreign Policy: “War Is Peace”. Plans to Partition Syria

By Stephen Lendman, March 02 2021

A permanent state of war on invented enemies is longstanding US policy. It’s been this way throughout most of the post-WW II period. Terror-bombing Syria last Thursday was one of many examples — escalating US aggression against the nation and people by Biden.

Biden’s Syria Attack: An Actual Impeachable Offense

By Rep. Ron Paul, March 02 2021

Last Thursday President Biden continued what has sadly become a Washington tradition: bombing Syria. The President ordered a military strike near the Iraqi-Syrian border that killed at least 22 people.

Whistleblower: 25% of Residents in German Nursing Home Died After Pfizer Vaccine

By Children’s Health Defense, March 02 2021

Reiner Fuellmich and Viviane Fischer, attorneys and founding members of the German Corona Investigative Committee, interview a caregiver in a Berlin nursing home who describes what happened during and after the rollout of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine.

Video: Violent US-backed Hong Kong-Style Mobs in Thailand Continue

By Brian Berletic, March 02 2021

US-backed anti-government protesters in Thailand have once again “rebranded” to shake off the image of an unpopular, violent mob only to stage a poorly attended, extremely violent protest as their first “rally.”

‘Eles descobriram armas inteligentes. Nós descobrimos algo mais importante: as pessoas pensam e sentem.’ Fidel Castro

A crise COVID-19 tem revelado o fracasso da maioria dos países capitalistas ocidentais em suas políticas de saúde pública. Décadas de austeridade neoliberal, de cortes em programas de saúde e educação induzidos por programas de reestruturação pelo FMI e pelo Banco Mundial, mostram agora seus resultados em números alarmantes de contágio e de mortes se espalhando pela América Latina, Europa e sobretudo pelos EUA.

No ocidente, Cuba tem dado um exemplo de eficiência e mostrado que um outro caminho é possível na luta contra a pandemia. Os números falam por si, basta compararmos Cuba com outros países ou mesmo grandes cidades com populações semelhantes para termos um quadro muito claro da diferença nos resultados.

Com uma população de cerca de 11,350,000 pessoas, Cuba teve até agora – 21 de fevereiro –  45,361 casos acumulados  de COVID-19  com 300 mortes. A cidade de Nova York, com cerca de 18,800,00 de habitantes, tem um total acumulado de 700,815 casos com 28,888 mortes. A Suíça, com uma população menor que a de Cuba, cerca de  8,600,000 pessoas, tem 550,224 casos acumulados de COVID-19 com  9,226 mortes. Como explicar que um país que dispõe de muito menos recursos que uma cidade como Nova York ou um país como a Suíça possa ser tão mais eficiente em sua luta contra a pandemia? A resposta é simples: a Revolução Cubana de 1959 concentrou os poucos recursos disponíveis no país na construção de um sistema de saúde que atendesse às necessidades da população – das pessoas – em primeiro lugar – e não aos interesses dos diversos setores da medicina privatizada – dos planos de saúde às grandes empresas farmacêuticas, passando pela cara medicina ‘high-tech’ da qual os países desenvolvidos tanto se orgulham.

Após a Revolução, praticamente a metade dos médicos cubanos deixou o país, limitando enormemente a capacidade do novo governo de atender às necessidades de saúde de sua população. A decisão do governo revolucionário foi de investir na formação de novos profissionais de saúde – em pessoas – e de ampliar o acesso aos cuidados médicos à população rural e sobretudo aos negros, até então deixados de fora. Deste modo, Cuba foi capaz de aumentar o número de enfermeiros e enfermeiras de 2,500 em 1958 para 4,300 em uma década. Através de suas massivas campanhas de vacinação, Cuba eliminou a polio em 1962, a malária em 1967, tetano neonatal em 1972, difteria em 1979, síndrome da rubéola congênita em 1989, meningite pós-caxumba em 1993, rubéola em 1995 e meningite tuberculosa em 1997. Atualmente, a taxa de mortalidade infantil em Cuba é menor do que a dos Estados Unidos e menos da metade do que a da população negra nos Estados Unidos.

Em 1983, pouco mais de duas décadas depois da Revolução, a expectativa de vida em Cuba já tinha aumentado para 73.8 anos, quando no período anterior era de apenas  58.8 anos. Enquanto muitos especialistas em saúde pública costuman atribuir à falta de recursos a crônica insuficiência de atendimento médico na América Latina, a Revolução Cubana mostrou na prática que quando recursos limitados são distribuídos de maneira equitativa e com ênfase em pessoas e em prevenção, pode-se obter resultados em saúde pública  antes inimagináveis. O neoliberalismo, imposto pela força em muitos países do Sul,  e escolhido pelas elites econômicas do Norte como política preferencial em seus próprios países, levou a um caminho oposto ao Cubano.

E a pandemia de COVID-19 está mostrando com muita clareza qual caminho foi o mais acertado. Nos países ricos do Norte, a austeridade neoliberal tem causados há décadas sucessivas reduções nos orçamentos da área da saúde,  sobretudo com cortes no número de pessoal qualificado disponível.Cuba, ao contrário, investiu na formação de um número cada vez maior de profissionais da saúde. Quando a pandemia chegou, era claro que Cuba já dispunha do pessoal e da capacidade de alocação de recursos necessários para enfrentar uma tal situação. Nos países do Norte , ao contrário, à falta de pessoal e de infratestrutura pública somaram-se a incapacidade de tomar as medidas corretas quando estas se opunham aos interesses privados já estabelecidos. Consequentemente, pela primeira vez,  Cuba foi solicitada a levar a sua ajuda a alguns países ricos e desenvolvidos do Norte, como a Itália. Os médicos e outros profissionais de saúde cubanos também levaram sua ajuda à Andorra e aos departamentos ultra-marinos da França no Caribe, Martinica e Guadalupe. Não se pode imaginar uma demonstração maior da falência do modelo neoliberal.

A Revolução Cubana, desde o seu início e apesar de todas as dificuldades materiais enfrentadas pelo novo governo, fez todo o possível para ajudar países mais pobres e em dificuldades. Em 1963, apenas quatro anos depois da Revolução, lutando ainda com enormes dificuldades internas, Cuba enviou sua primeira missão de ajuda médica à Algéria, nação que acabava de sair  de décadas de uma sangrenta guerra de independência contra a França. Em 1966, com a ajuda de 200.000 doses de vacinas contra poliomielite doadas pela União Soviética, Cuba e seu pessoal médico, em colaboração com o governo do Congo, coordenou a vacinação de mais de 61,000 crianças no que foi a primeira campanha de vacinação em massa na África. Até o presente, Cuba já enviou cerca de 124.000 profissionais de saúde para prestar cuidados médicos em mais de 154 países.

Ao lado desta impressionante ajuda levada pelo seu próprio pessoal médico à várias partes do mundo, uma outra contribuição fundamental de Cuba é a formação de profissionais da saúde vindos sobretudo de países pobres em sua Escola Latino Americana de Medicina, a ELAM. Fundada em 1999, a ELAM forma estudantes de acordo com o modelo cubano de Medicina Geral Integral (MGI), com o foco principalmente em saúde pública e cuidados primários, com uma abordagem holística na compreensão da saúde, incluindo disciplinas como biologia, sociologia e política. Os estudantes estrangeiros da ELAM tem todas as despesas pagas pelo Estado Cubano, exceto as passagens. Em 2020, a ELAM já havia formado 30,000 novos médicos vindos de mais de 100 países, principalmente da África. Muitos destes estudantes não teriam a menor possibilidade de estudar medicina em seus países de origem e, ao retornar, providenciarão um serviço inestimável e por vezer antes inexistente aos seus concidadãos, incluindo cuidados relativos à pandemia. De acordo com a ELAM, há cerca de 52,000 profissionais da saúde de Cuba trabalhando em 92 países, o que faz com que Cuba tenha mais médicos trabalhando no exterior do que todas as contribuições de profissionis de saúde enviados pelos países do G-8 somadas.

Devido ao seu comprometimento com a saúde de pessoas, principalmente dos mais pobres e desprovidos, e não com um sistema de saúde privatizado onde o lucro determina onde e como alocar recursos, os médicos cubanos são alvos frequentes dos ataques da extrema direita nos países onde atuam. No Brasil, em seguida ao golpe de estado contra a presidente eleita Dilma Rousseff e à ascenção ilegal ao poder de Jair Bolsonaro, os médicos cubanos tiveram que deixar o país. O mesmo ocorreu na Bolívia em seguida ao golpe contra o presidente Evo Morales e em  Honduras, depois do golpe contra o presidente Zelaya. Em todos estes casos foram sempre os pobres os mais atingidos pois ficaram sem o atendimento médico providenciado pelos profissionais cubanos, muitas vezes o único cuidado que já haviam recebido até então.  Em 1979 Cuba enviou uma missão médica para Granada e em 1982 este país apresentou uma  redução de 25% na taxa de mortalidade infantil, graças sobretudo ao trabalho realizado pelos profissionais cubanos. Mas os Estados Unidos invadiram Granada em 1983 e os trabalhadores de saúde cubanos foram obrigados a deixar o país.

Em relação à pandemia de COVID -19,  o exemplo que talvez melhor revele as consequências desastrosas que o efeito combinado da saída de médicos cubanos e imposição de reajustes estruturais podem causar num país é o caso do Equador. Em seguida à eleição do Presidente Lenin Moreno em 2017 os profissionais de saúde cubanos que trabalhavam no país com o apoio do Presidente Rafael Corrêa foram expulsos e o Fundo Monetário Internacional recomendou um corte de 36% no orçamento da saúde, medida adotada pelo Presidente Moreno. Estas duas ações deixaram o país praticamente sem um sistema de saúde e sem defesa diante da pandemia. Em consequência, só a cidade de Guayaquil, a maior do Equador, com cerca de 2,700 milhões de habitantes, teve um número estimado de  7.600 mortos devidos à pandemia, um número mais de 25 vezes maior do que o de Cuba.

As brigadas médicas e a ELAM são importantes contribuições de Cuba na luta contra a pandemia de COVID-19. Mas uma outra contribuição, decisiva, está a caminho: a vacina Soberana II, produzida pelo Instituto de Vacinação Finlay de Havana. Cuba espera imunizar ainda este ano toda a sua população com a sua própria vacina. Uma vez mais, a abordagem socialista de Cuba na produção de vacinas difere radicalmente da adotada pelas nações capitalistas do mundo. Fruto da experiência internacional acumulada de Cuba, através de suas muitas missões conduzidas em várias partes do mundo, a vacina cubana é uma esperança para as nações pobres pois, mais uma vez, pode-se contar com a solidariedade de Cuba. De acordo com um artigo de W. T. Whitney Jr. (ver https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/cuba-develops-covid-19-vaccines-takes-socialist-approach/):

“100 milhões de doses da Soberana II estão sendo preparadas, o suficiente para imunizar todos os 11 milhões de cubanos, com o  início da vacinação acontecendo  em Março ou Abril. Os 70 milhões de doses restantes irão para o Vietnam, Iran, Paquistão, Índia, Venezuela, Bolívia, e Nicarágua. A Soberana II ‘será a vacina da ALBA’,  como explicou a vice-presidente venezuelana Delcy Rodríguez, referindo-se à aliança de solidariedade estabelecida em 2004 pelo presidente venezuelano Hugo Chavez e o cubano Fidel Castro.”

E autor do artigo citado acrescentou:

“’A estratégia de Cuba na comercialização da vacina representa uma combinação do que é bom para a humanidade e o impacto na saúde mundial. Não somos uma multinacional onde um objectivo financeiro vem primeiro’, diz Vicente Vérez Bencomo, director do Instituto de Vacinas Finlay de Cuba. Os rendimentos gerados pela venda de vacinas no estrangeiro irão pagar os cuidados com saúde, educação e pensões em Cuba, tal como acontece com as exportações de serviços médicos e medicamentos.”

Em contraste com a abordagem cubana, o autor citado escreveu:

“Segundo o forbes.com em Novembro de 2020, ‘Se a [vacina] da  Moderna conseguir a aprovação da FDA (Food and Drug Administration, órgão regulador dos EUA)  e conseguir fazer doses suficientes, a sua margem superior de lucro poderá ser quase 35 mil milhões de dólares mais alta … do que … nos últimos 12 meses’. Outro relatório sugere que, ‘As empresas (Pfizer e Moderna) vão ganhar milhares de milhões de dólares em lucros com as suas vacinas COVID este ano [e] haverá mais lucros em anos posteriores’As empresas ‘reivindicam os direitos a vastas quantidades de propriedade intelectual’.”

“Com as empresas sendo responsáveis, a distribuição de vacinas COVID-19 é distorcida. Desde 27 de Janeiro, ‘foram enviadas cerca de 66,83 milhões de doses, das quais 93 por cento foram fornecidas apenas a 15 países’. Na América Latina, apenas o Brasil, Argentina, México, e Chile conseguiram contratos de compra adequados para imunizar populações inteiras. Os contratos das empresas com nações africanas permitem a imunização de apenas 30 por cento dos africanos em 2021.”

“A divisão da riqueza determina a distribuição. Os epidemiologistas da Universidade de  Duke relatam que, ‘embora os países de elevado rendimento representem apenas 16% da população mundial, possuem atualmente 60% das vacinas para a COVID-19 que foram compradas até o  momento’. O jornalista cubano Randy Alonso relata que apenas ‘27% da população total dos países de rendimento baixo e médio podem ser vacinados este ano’.”

Desde que realizou sua revolução, Cuba segue sob ininterrupto ataque do Império e de seus comparsas.Sua população sofre com as sanções e bloqueios econômicos, que comprometem muito também seus esforços de solidariedade internacional. Mesmo assim, esta pequena nação, sempre tão teimosa e generosa  segue sendo uma fonte de esperança para o mundo. Sobretudo, Cuba aponta o caminho a seguir, com muita firmeza, despojamento, coragem e uma inesgotável alegria.

                                                                                                                       Franklin  Frederick

Si sta svolgendo nello Ionio, dal 22 febbraio al 5 marzo, l’esercitazione Nato Dynamic Manta di guerra anti-sottomarino. Vi partecipano navi, sottomarini e aerei di Stati Uniti, Italia, Francia, Germania, Grecia, Spagna, Belgio e Turchia. Le due principali unità impegnate in questa esercitazione sono un sottomarino nucleare Usa da attacco della classe Los Angeles e la portaerei francese Charles de Gaulle a propulsione nucleare assieme al suo gruppo di battaglia, comprendente anche un sottomarino nucleare da attacco. La Charles de Gaulle, subito dopo, andrà nel Golfo Persico. L’Italia, che partecipa alla Dynamic Manta con navi e sottomarini, è la «nazione ospite» dell’intera esercitazione: ha messo a disposizione delle forze partecipanti il porto di Catania e la stazione elicotteri della Marina sempre a Catania, la stazione aeronavale di Sigonella (la maggiore base Usa/Nato nel Mediterraneo) e la base logistica di Augusta per i rifornimenti. Scopo dell’esercitazione è la caccia ai sottomarini russi nel Mediterraneo che, secondo la Nato, minaccerebbero l’Europa.

In questi stessi giorni la portaerei Eisenhower e il suo gruppo di battaglia stanno effettuando operazioni nell’Atlantico per «dimostrare il continuo sostegno militare Usa agli alleati e l’impegno a mantenere i mari liberi e aperti». Tali operazioni – condotte dalla Sesta Flotta, il cui comando è a Napoli e la cui base è a Gaeta – rientrano nella strategia enunciata in particolare dall’ammiraglio Foggo, già a capo del Comando Nato di Napoli: accusando la Russia di voler affondare le navi che collegano le due sponde dell’Atlantico, così da isolare l’Europa dagli Usa, egli sostiene che la Nato si deve preparare alla «Quarta battaglia dell’Atlantico», dopo quelle delle due guerre mondiali e della guerra fredda. Mentre sono in corso le esercitazioni navali, bombardieri strategici B-1, trasferiti dal Texas in Norvegia, stanno effettuando «missioni» a ridosso del territorio russo, insieme a caccia F-35 norvegesi, per «dimostrare la prontezza e capacità degli Stati uniti nel sostenere gli alleati». Le operazioni militari in Europa e nei mari adiacenti si svolgono sotto il comando del generale della US Air Force Tod Wolters, che è a capo del Comando Europeo degli Stati Uniti e allo stesso tempo della Nato, con la carica di Comandante Supremo Alleato in Europa che spetta sempre a un generale statunitense.

Tutte queste operazioni militari vengono ufficialmente motivate come «difesa dell’Europa dalla aggressione russa», capovolgendo la realtà: è stata la Nato a espandersi in Europa, con le sue forze e basi anche nucleari, a ridosso della Russia. Al Consiglio Europeo il 26 febbraio, il segretario generale della Nato Stoltenberg ha dichiarato che «le minacce che avevamo di fronte prima della pandemia sono ancora lì», mettendo al primo posto «le azioni aggressive della Russia» e, sullo sfondo, una minacciosa «ascesa della Cina». Ha quindi sottolineato la necessità di rafforzare il legame transatlantico tra Stati Uniti ed Europa, come vuole fortemente la nuova amministrazione Biden, portando a un livello superiore la cooperazione tra Ue e Nato. Oltre il 90% degli abitanti dell’Unione Europea, ha ricordato, vive oggi in paesi della Nato (di cui fanno parte 21 dei 27 paesi Ue). Il Consiglio Europeo ha ribadito «l’impegno a cooperare strettamente con la Nato e la nuova amministrazione Biden per la sicurezza e la difesa», rendendo la UE militarmente più forte.

Come ha precisato il premier Mario Draghi nel suo intervento, tale rafforzamento deve avvenire in un quadro di complementarietà con la Nato e di coordinamento con gli Usa. Quindi il rafforzamento militare della UE deve essere complementare a quello della Nato, a sua volta complementare alla strategia Usa. Essa consiste in realtà nel provocare in Europa crescenti tensioni con la Russia, così da accrescere l’influenza statunitense nella stessa Unione Europea. Un gioco sempre più pericoloso, perché spinge la Russia a rafforzarsi militarmente, e sempre più costoso. Lo conferma il fatto che nel 2020, in piena crisi, la spesa militare italiana è salita dal 13° al 12° posto mondiale scavalcando quella dell’Australia.

Manlio Dinucci

Introductory note

As documented below in a September 1998 Senate hearing, Joe Biden was a firm supporter of the Invasion of Iraq on the grounds that Saddam Hussein “had weapons of mass destruction”.  

Foreign policy arrogance. In the second video, see the confrontation between Senator Joe Biden and Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter.

“The American People were deceived into this war”, said Senator Dick Durbin. Do not let yourself be deceived again by Joe Biden.

The Biden administration is committed to military escalation in the Middle East with the direct participation of Israel in US Central Command (USCENTCOM). 

Currently the US military is involved in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen. The illegal war of aggression against Syria is ongoing marked by direct US-Israeli bombing raids.

The US is threatening Iran. Biden has intimated that the (illegal) US strikes against Syria are a warning to Iran to “be careful”. 

Is Biden committed to waging so-called “forever wars” under a humanitarian label?

The Project for the New American Century –formulated by the Neocons in the late 1990s, was adopted by the GWB administration.

We will “fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars”. (PNAC)

In 2006, under the Bush administration, The Pentagon launched The “Long War” against “Islamic Extremism”.

America’s “Long War” was to replace the “War on Terrorism”.

And in 2014, the Obama-Biden adminstration launched its “counter terrorism” bombing campaign against Iraq and Syria.

The entire foreign policy discourse is based on a Lie, namely that so-called “Islamic Extremism” (a creation of US intelligence) was threatening the American homeland, requiring  the deployment of US sponsored covert, counter-terrorist forces (also consisting of private sector mercenaries). These covert special forces are now deployed throughout the Middle East, as well as in sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and South East Asia.

Preemptive nuclear war was first put forward by the Bush administration as a “first strike” means of self defense.

And then under the Obama-Biden administration (2009-2017)  a 1 trillion dollar nuclear weapons program was launched with a means to defending the homeland…

Biden remains a firm supporter of the nuclear option.

We are at a dangerous crossroads. Biden is committed to the “globalization of war”.

The truth is a powerful and peaceful weapon. 

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, March 2, 2021

***

Selected quotations from Video

“The primary policy is to keep sanctions in place to deny Saddam the billions of dollars that would allow him to really crank up his program, which neither you nor I believe he’s ever going to abandon as long as he’s in place,”

“You [Scott Ritter] and I believe, and many of us believe here, as long as Saddam is at the helm, there is no reasonable prospect you or any other inspector is ever going to be able to guarantee that we have rooted out, root and branch, the entirety of Saddam’s program relative to weapons of mass destruction.

“You and I both know, and all of us here really know, and it’s a thing we have to face, that the only way, the only way we’re going to get rid of Saddam Hussein is we’re going to end up having to start it alone — start it alone — and it’s going to require guys like you in uniform to be back on foot in the desert”

“You know it and I know it.”

Scott Ritter was the chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq (1991- 1998).

Renowned author and distinguished foreign policy analyst, Scott Ritter is the author of “Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein.” 

***

In this second video Senator Biden Admonishes Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter, September 3, 1998

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).

***

It’s déjà vu time for Palestine; we have lived through the same fiasco before only to get bogged down in the Oslo poisoned swamp.

Déjà vu washed over me as I read a letter by Prince Hassan bin Talal of Jordan addressing Israelis, published in Yedioth Ahronoth (Feb 26, 2021), the largest Israeli newspaper (Hebrew). It is a letter clearly written within the “one-homeland-two-state” initiative framework.

The rhetoric of Prince Hassan’s letter includes references to climate change, weapons of mass destruction (meaning nuclear), global security (meaning terrorism) and Covid19, all of which, other than Israel’s own security, were not in the political lingo or horizon of the Oslo Accords (ratified in 1993 and 1995). But the outline of the plot to draw Palestinians away from a struggle for liberation is much the same. In historian Nur Masalha’s analysis, it is even worse:

“One homeland — two states”, a solution that seeks to legitimize Zionism in all of Palestine, is a discourse much worse than the traditional “two-state solution” and the solution to full Palestinian sovereignty in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This initiative can only strengthen the Israeli grip on the West Bank and reinforce reactionary Arab powers (within the Palestinians and in the Arab world) that seek normalization with Israel.

Following is an excerpt of the letter [translated from an Arabic translation of the Hebrew. In the Arabic translation of the letter on which I am basing this blog post, every reference Prince Hassan makes to Israel is, oddly, in quotes.]

Jordan faces a triple threat: increased number of refugees it hosts, budget cuts, and the need to support a vulnerable population. The Corona epidemic has only worsened the situation. Of course, we are not alone in this campaign. Corona poses a threat to health and the economy in every country… This is perhaps the greatest test of solidarity and compassion the world has ever known. Within such a reality, cooperation between all parties to revive our region is essential.

… The main point is that no country in the Middle East can solve its problems on its own. We must work together to advance our common regional goals. The alternative is a reality in which competing countries are rushing to maximize domestic consumption toward unlimited resource depletion. This is a tragedy that will hurt everyone. Water cooperation in a low-potable water region would be a good place to start.

We can take inspiration from the coal and steel community in Europe or the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. It is encouraging to see that despite the conflicts between the countries of Southeast Asia, and despite the great and varied diversity of political systems, these countries are cooperating in the face of very few common trade challenges. This comes at a time when trade between Arab countries represents less than ten percent of its total commercial activity.

Our region is characterized by a mixture of oil and human resources that can help build pluralistic and modern societies, encourage political and economic reforms, and reduce inequality. We must work to increase the stability of the countries of the region — including the State of Palestine, which will be present alongside “Israel” in the framework of an arrangement based on a two-state solution, political affiliation and close economic cooperation. Such a political settlement must involve the division of Jerusalem; taking into account the Abrahamic religions (Islam and Judaism), maintaining the security and integrity of Al-Aqsa Mosque, and rejuvenating the Palestinian leadership to sit in Jerusalem — the capital of “Israel” and Palestine — will complete the bilateral parties. Israel and the Arab countries that are ready for this could really start the process. Other countries in the region, including Turkey and Iran, could join in due course. Time for a fresh start.

In a short introduction to the letter, the Israeli reporter Smadar Perry gushes with assurances to the Israeli reader that “Prince Hassan is keen to keep his door open to Israelis.”

Perry also assures his Israeli readers that “Senior officials in Amman with whom I spoke are convinced that Prince Hassan would not have started publishing an article he wrote in an Israeli newspaper without a green light from King Abdullah himself.”

These are mostly people he has known from the start of the peace process in which he participated deeply on the side of King Hussein … Recently, there was a secret meeting between him and a group of Israelis in key positions who did not know him personally, and most of them had never visited Jordan. Two weeks later, the prince had another conversation through Zoom with five other Israelis known to the kingdom on the topic: How can the peace process be strengthened? … In the message he sends to readers in “Israel” through these pages, he tries to open a new window, to cautiously break the deadlock in the relations between the two countries.

The letter attempts to engage Israelis as if they have agency to act, assuming they are rational, decent human beings who are capable of appreciating global economic, climate and security forces (“the creation of a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction,” he says). It attempts to engage Israeli leaders as if they are capable of cooperating in good faith and as if hegemony in the region is not their raison d’être.

It’s the kind of “courting” letter Prince Hassan would never write to engage Jordanian citizens, who, in fact, don’t have agency and whose leaders have zero leverage both with Israel and in the region.

Instead, Jordanians may or may not hear of Prince Hassan’s secret meetings with Israeli officials similar to those his brother King Hussein regularly used to conduct. That’s because, decades after the 1994 Wadi Araba peace treaty between Jordan and Israel, widespread “people to people” ties have not materialized. Nor will they ever materialize without a just resolution of the Nakba.

In the letter, Prince Hassan references this same treaty between Jordan and Israel positively, as an achievement to build on:

October of this year marks the 27th anniversary of the signing of the peace treaty between Jordan and “Israel,” the same historic agreement that marked the beginning of the end of the long and tragic conflict between Israelis and Palestinians and represented an important milestone towards peace between the peoples of the region.

The Wadi Araba peace treaty had been incentivized by Washington in the same way Trump’s deal incentivized the recent “normalization” between the Gulf countries and Israel. If it has achieved anything, it is to make Jordan, a client state of the US, a perpetual supplicant to both Israel and the US.

In seeking prosperity, peace and stability “in the region,” what Prince Hassan fails to recognize is a fundamental principleof our Palestinian struggle:

The Palestinian people, recognizing their role as an advance vanguard of the Arab liberation movement in the struggle against imperialism and Zionism, calls upon all of the democratic and progressive forces and popular movements of the world to provide all forms of support to the struggle to achieve their full rights and national liberation.

Prince Hassan was 43 years old in 1991, when the Palestinian delegation attended the “Madrid Peace Conference” under cover provided by Jordan, by-passing the decisions of the Palestinian National Council. He is now 73 years old and, based on this letter, has learned hardly anything about the true nature of the “peace process” or the true nature of the Zionist regime with whom he is dealing “in secret.”

Advocates of the one-homeland/two-state confederation between what remains of Palestine and Israel believe that “in the long run, one might envision transforming the confederation into one federal state, with the autonomous regions Israel, West Bank, and Gaza.”

Given the experience of the “interim” agreement of Oslo that lasted decades and netted enormous strategic gains exclusively for Israel and the US, it is hard to understand on what exactly such advocates base their faith.

It is much saner to advocate, as Nur Masalha says, for the One Democratic State Campaign: a progressive liberation movement, an ambitious movement with a future vision that seeks to end the colonization of Palestine and change the reality on the ground from the river to the sea. These tasks are not easy and cannot be accomplished in the short term:

The discourse of “political realism” is also a refrain of the Oslo architects. In the name of “political realism”, we Palestinians found ourselves mired in the Oslo swamp…. The discourse of “one homeland— two states” is essentially the “two-state solution incomplete”: without full and effective Palestinian sovereignty in the West Bank, no Israeli decolonization, and Palestinian “coexistence” with Jewish settlers in the West Bank.

The Oslo two-state “peace process” is dead. Israelis and Palestinians need to consider a just and equitable alternative, which means one democratic state, not a so-called binational state that entrenches and legitimizes the apartheid status quo, political Zionism, settler-colonialism, and Israel as a Jewish state.

In an excellent analysis of the letter published in al Arabi al Jadeed, Lamis K. Andoni wonders:

Al-Hassan bin Talal proposes a solution based on the establishment of two states, Israeli and Palestinian, at a time when it has become clear, and for some time now, the “Palestinian state” that Israel might accept, is a monolithic and isolated entity without sovereignty, in which Israel controls its outlets, its sky — literally what’s underground and what’s above. Regarding the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, it means the cancellation of all historical and legal rights, the most important of which is the right of the Palestinian refugees to return to their homes. The question here is: Why does Jordan accept giving free gifts that further weaken the already dysfunctional balance of power? How can Jordan call on the Palestinians to give up all their cards, and then talk about a solution acceptable to the Palestinians, unless there is no place for the opinion [will] of the Palestinians in the first place?

It’s time for a fresh start for Palestine, as Prince Hassan says, but a truly fresh start, not a variant mutation of the toxic past.

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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.

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This article originally published on The Intercept in January 2020 provides an incisive perspective and understanding of President Joe Biden’s foreign policy “commitment” to waging war in the Middle East.

All of this was known and documente before the 2020 elections.

So-called progressives played a key role in supporting his candidacy.

M. Ch. GR Editor

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Former Vice President Joe Biden this week [early January 2020] continued to maintain the fiction that he stood against the war in Iraq “the very moment” it began in 2003. The claim has been easily taken apart by fact checkers — Biden publicly supported the war before, during, and after the invasion — but a 1998 Senate hearing sheds additional light on his determination to confront Iraq over weapons of mass destruction.

In 1998, U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter resigned in protest and accused the international community of not giving him and his colleagues the support they needed to carry out their job in Iraq, which had agreed in 1991 to destroy its chemical weapons stockpile. He was called to testify before the Senate in September 1998, where Biden, who was then the highest-ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations committee, grilled him. In the course of the questions, Biden made revealing remarks about where he stood on regime change in Iraq.

Biden thanked Ritter for forcing senators to “come to our milk,” by which he meant forcing them to make a decision on what to do about Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his alleged weapons of mass destruction program.

Biden told Ritter that no matter how thorough the inspections, the only way to eliminate the threat was to remove Saddam Hussein.

“The primary policy is to keep sanctions in place to deny Saddam the billions of dollars that would allow him to really crank up his program, which neither you nor I believe he’s ever going to abandon as long as he’s in place,” Biden said, characterizing former President Bill Clinton’s administration’s policy. “You and I believe, and many of us believe here, as long as Saddam is at the helm, there is no reasonable prospect you or any other inspector is ever going to be able to guarantee that we have rooted out, root and branch, the entirety of Saddam’s program relative to weapons of mass destruction. You and I both know, and all of us here really know, and it’s a thing we have to face, that the only way, the only way we’re going to get rid of Saddam Hussein is we’re going to end up having to start it alone — start it alone — and it’s going to require guys like you in uniform to be back on foot in the desert taking this son of a — taking Saddam down,” Biden said. “You know it and I know it.”

Hussein, it turned out, did not have an active WMD program.

During questioning, Biden mocked Ritter as “ol’ Scotty boy” and suggested that his demands — that the international community compel Iraq to cooperate with inspectors — if met, would give Ritter the unilateral authority to start a war in Iraq. Biden argued that such decisions belonged to higher-level officials. “I respectfully suggest they have a responsibility slightly above your pay grade, to decide whether or not to take the nation to war,” Biden said. “That’s a real tough decision. That’s why they get paid the big bucks. That’s why they get the limos and you don’t. I mean this sincerely, I’m not trying to be flip.”

He ended by redeploying his unusual idiom in thanking Ritter.

“The reason why I’m glad you did what you did: We should come to our milk. We should make a decision,” Biden said.

Biden’s earlier suggestion that “taking Saddam down” was the only way to guarantee an end to the WMD program left little doubt where Biden would later come down on the issue.

Biden’s grilling of Ritter is important because it gives context to claims Biden later made: First, that when he voted in favor of the invasion of Iraq as a senator, he did not mean to vote for war, but hoped the resolution would empower inspectors to get back into Iraq and monitor the program. And second, that he never believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

On the first claim, Biden told NPR last year that former President George W. Bush “looked me in the eye in the Oval Office. He said he needed the vote to be able to get inspectors into Iraq to determine whether or not Saddam Hussein was engaged in dealing with a nuclear program. … He got them in and before you know it, we had ‘shock and awe.’”

But according to Biden’s own statements in 1998, he believed that Hussein could never be trusted to eliminate his program, no matter how many inspectors were admitted.

In October 2004, by which time it had become clear there were no WMDs, Biden told an audience at the Council on Foreign Relations, “I never believed they had weapons of mass destruction.”

In fact, as Biden had said in 1998, he believed not only that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, but no amount of inspections or diplomacy could guarantee their removal. That, he told Ritter, could only be done by “guys like you in uniform to be back on foot in the desert taking this son of a — taking Saddam down.”

Biden’s thought process puts critical hearings he held in 2002 as chair of the Foreign Relations Committee in sharper context. That summer, as the world was focused on the war in Afghanistan, from where the attacks of September 11, 2001, had been launched, Biden sought to begin “a national dialogue” on Iraq. During a series of high-profile hearings, he feigned neutrality, but his earlier questioning of Ritter leaves no doubt where he stood: Iraq had WMDs, and the only way to disarm Iraq with confidence was to depose Saddam Hussein. Biden, given his chairmanship, was a leading voice on foreign policy within the party. He had voted against the first Gulf War, waged by Bush’s father, and wasn’t considered a knee-jerk hawk. His support for the 2003 war made Democratic opposition ultimately untenable — even as Ritter, in the run up to it, loudly made the case against war, arguing that the WMD claims were overhyped.

Biden had reason to disbelieve the WMD claims. In a classified hearing on September 24, 2002, at the urging of a staff member, Biden asked then-CIA Director George Tenet what evidence of WMDs the U.S. had “technically collected.”

“None, Senator,” Tenet said, according to an account in the book “Hubris,” by Michael Isikoff and David Corn. Biden, wondering if there was some highly classified evidence, asked Tenet, “George, do you want me to clear the staff out of the room?” Tenet told him no. “There’s no reason to, Senator.”

“‘None, Senator’ — that answer will ring in my ears as long as I live,” the staffer later told the authors. Later in that same hearing, Biden heard from two government witnesses who rejected the “aluminum tubes” claim that had been circulating, and would later become a centerpiece of Secretary of State Colin Powell’s presentation to the United Nations.

Biden, to be sure, was not a full-throated advocate for the war on Bush’s terms, and throughout the fall, worked with Republican Sens. Richard Lugar and Chuck Hagel to try to build support for a narrower authorization, that would only allow Bush to attack Iraq for the purpose of dismantling a WMD program. But the effort was undercut by House Democratic leaders, and particularly Rep. Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., who pushed ahead with Bush’s broader resolution. “I was angry,” Biden later said, according to “Hubris.” “I was frustrated. But I never second-guess another man’s political judgment.”

Biden was also aware of the difficulty of invading and occupying Iraq, unlike some of his Republican colleagues. In February 1998, the News Journal of Wilmington reported that Biden saw invasion as unlikely.

Though some Republicans have urged the military to remove Saddam from power entirely, Biden said there was little will for that in Congress. Such a move would require a bloody ground war, the use of 300,000 to 500,000 ground troops, and some kind of continuing presence in Iraq while a new government is installed, he said.

Yet during the summer 2002 hearings, Biden claimed that “one thing is clear, these weapons must be dislodged from Saddam Hussein, or Saddam Hussein must be dislodged from power.” Given that he was already on record believing that the weapons could never effectively be dislodged from Saddam Hussein, that left only one option: war. Biden voted for the Iraq war resolution on October 11, 2002, three weeks after hearing from Tenet in the classified session.

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Veoma cenjeni gospodine Predsedniče!

Dozvolite mi da Vam se ponovo obratim, ali najpre bih želeo da Vam uputim srdačne čestitke povodom Vašeg rodjendana.

Pošto me već poznajete iz mojih prethodnih pisama, ne moram da Vam se detaljnije predstavljam. Ja sam diplomirani psiholog, doktor pedagogije i poslednjih decenija sam radio kao profesor u Nemačkoj u obrazovanju odraslih. Duže od godinu dana živim u Srbiji zajedno sa svojom suprugom, Srpkinjom koja je penzionisani diplomata. Pošto gotovo svakodnevno do mene dolaze veoma uznemirujuće vesti iz moje bivše domovine, obraćam se sada Vama.

Za razliku od Srbije, u Nemačkoj i okolnim zemljama su već mesecima svi restorani ii barovi zatvoreni i gradjani se žale zbog veoma restriktivnih političkih mera, koje dovode do ekstremnih psihičkih, fizičkih i privrednih posledica odnosno šteta. Ljudi se žale i zbog sve jačeg pritiska da se vakcinišu vakcinama, koje posebno u domovima za stare, dovode do teških nuz pojava, šta više i do smrti. Političari tvrde da veoma nepopularne mere kao što su pomenute inekcije, nošenje maski ili socijalna distanca preduzimaju isključivo zbog zaštite zdravlja stanovništva. Gradjani, medjutim, više ne veruju u to.

Pošto ja nameravam da i nadalje živim ovde u Srbiji, želeo bih da od Vas saznam koje planove imate Vi i Vaša vlada za Srbiju? Da li će se uskoro prestati sa neprijatnim i problematičnim nošenjem maski koje izobličuju lice? Da li će i u Srbiji biti uvedena obavezna vakcinacija za sve gradjane? Pored toga bi me interesovalo, da li se i u Srbiji slušaju samo mišljenja naučnih ekseparta koja se dopadaju vladi? Ili će se moći čuti i druga gledišta – i da li će se čuti i glas naroda?

Gospodine Predsedniče, bio bih Vam veoma zahvalan, ako bi ste odgovorili na moja pitanja i ako bi ste mogli da me umirite.

U tom očekivanju ostajem s prijateljskim pozdravima,

Vaš Rudolf Hänsel

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Dear Mr. President!

Let me address you again, but first I would like to send you my heartfelt congratulations on your birthday.

Since you already know me from my previous letters, I do not have to introduce myself to you in more detail. I am a graduate psychologist, doctor of pedagogy and in recent decades I have worked as a professor in Germany in adult education.

I have been living in Serbia for more than a year together with my wife, a Serbian woman who is a retired diplomat. Since very disturbing news from my former homeland comes to me almost every day, I am addressing you now.

Unlike in Serbia, in Germany and the surrounding countries, all restaurants and bars have been closed for months and citizens complain about very restrictive political measures, which lead to extreme psychological, physical and economic consequences or damage. People are also complaining about the growing pressure to get vaccinated with vaccines, which, especially in old people’s homes, lead to severe side effects, and even more to death. Politicians claim that very unpopular measures such as the mentioned injections, wearing masks or social distance are taken solely to protect the health of the population. Citizens, however, no longer believe in it.

Since I intend to continue living here in Serbia, I would like to know from you what plans do you and your government have for Serbia? Will they soon stop wearing uncomfortable and problematic masks that distort the face? Will compulsory vaccination be introduced in Serbia for all citizens? In addition, I would be interested in whether only the opinions of scientific experts who like the government are listened to in Serbia as well? Or will other views be heard – and will the voice of the people be heard?

Mr. President, I would be very grateful if you could answer my questions and if you could calm me down.

In that anticipation, I remain with friendly greetings,

Rudolf Hansel

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Below are relevant excerpts from an important article by Mark Weisbrot originally published in The Guardian in February 2020.

Click here to Access the complete article

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….

When the war was debated and then authorized by the US Congress in 2002, Democrats controlled the Senate and Biden was chair of the Senate committee on foreign relations. Biden himself had enormous influence as chair and argued strongly in favor of the 2002 resolution granting President Bush the authority to invade Iraq.

“I do not believe this is a rush to war,” Biden said a few days before the vote. “I believe it is a march to peace and security. I believe that failure to overwhelmingly support this resolution is likely to enhance the prospects that war will occur …”

But he had a power much greater than his own words. He was able to choose all 18 witnesses in the main Senate hearings on Iraq. And he mainly chose people who supported a pro-war position. They argued in favor of “regime change as the stated US policy” and warned of “a nuclear-armed Saddam sometime in this decade”. That Iraqis would “welcome the United States as liberators” And that Iraq “permits known al-Qaida members to live and move freely about in Iraq” and that “they are being supported”.

The lies about al-Qaida were perhaps the most transparently obvious of the falsehoods created to justify the Iraq war. As anyone familiar with the subject matter could testify, Saddam Hussein ran a secular government  ….

…. But Iraq in 2002 was devastated by economic sanctions, had no weapons of mass destruction, and was known by even the most pro-war experts to have no missiles that could come close to the United States. The idea that this country on the other side of the world posed a security threat to America was more than far-fetched. The idea that the US could simply invade, topple the government, and take over the country without provoking enormous violence was also implausible. It’s not clear how anyone with foreign policy experience and expertise could have believed these ideas.

…. Regardless of Biden’s intentions – which I make no claim to know or understand – the resolution granting President Bush the authority to start that war, which Biden pushed through the Senate, was a major part of that deception.

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Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. He is the director of Worth the Price? Joe Biden and the Launch of the Iraq War (2020).

Featured image is from Oxfam International

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In December 2016, then British Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative government formally adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)’s working definition of antisemitism. It was the first government in the world to do so, marking yet another milestone in the 100-year history of British support for Zionism and callous disregard for Palestinian rights. 

The “original sin” was the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which promised to support the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people”, provided that nothing was done to “prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”. In 1917, Arabs constituted 90 percent of the population of Palestine; Jews made up less than 10 percent.

The declaration was thus a classic colonial document: it granted the right to national self-determination to a small minority, while denying it to the majority. To add insult to injury, the declaration referred to 90 percent of the country’s inhabitants as “non-Jewish communities in Palestine”, relegating them to an inferior status. Although grotesquely imbalanced in favour of Jews, the declaration at least included a promise to protect the civil and religious rights of Palestinians – but even this promise was never kept.

The British mandate for Palestine lasted from 1920 until midnight on 14 May 1948, the date the State of Israel was proclaimed. The first high commissioner for Palestine, Herbert Samuel, was a Jew and an ardent Zionist. Partiality towards Jews was evident from day one; the cornerstone of the mandate was to deny representative institutions as long as Arabs were the majority in Palestine.

In the end, Britain over-fulfilled its promise to Zionists by helping the “national home” evolve into a Jewish state, while betraying its pledge to Palestinians. Britain’s betrayal gave rise to the Palestinian Great Revolt of 1936-39. This was a nationalist uprising, demanding Arab independence and an end to the policy of open-ended Jewish immigration and land purchases.

The revolt was suppressed with utter ruthlessness and brutality by the British army and police. Britain resorted to the entire panoply of colonial measures, including martial law, military courts, detention without trial, caning, flogging, torture, extra-judicial killings, collective punishment and aerial bombardment. Nearly 20,000 Palestinians were killed or wounded during the revolt, and villages were reduced to rubble.

In the process of crushing the uprising, Britain broke the backbone of the Palestinian national movement. British actions gravely weakened Palestinians and strengthened Zionists, as the two national movements moved inexorably towards a final showdown. Palestine was not lost in the late 1940s, as is commonly believed; it was lost in the late 1930s, as a result of Britain’s savage smashing of Palestinian resistance and support for Jewish paramilitary forces.

Anti-Arab racism

An undercurrent of anti-Arab racism coloured Britain’s entire handling of the mandate for Palestine. In 1937, future British Prime Minister Winston Churchill said:

“I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right.

“I do not admit, for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly-wise race … has come in and taken their place.”

A Black Lives Matter protester had a point when, in June 2020, he sprayed graffiti on a Churchill statue in London’s Parliament Square to add the words “was a racist”. Churchill held Arabs in contempt as racially inferior. His description of Palestinian Arabs as a “dog in a manger” is shocking, but not entirely surprising; racism usually goes hand in hand with colonialism.

As the British mandate for Palestine approached its inglorious end, Britain persisted in its anti-Palestinian stance. When the United Nations voted in November 1947 to partition mandatory Palestine into two states, Britain adopted an official posture of neutrality. Behind the scenes, however, it worked to abort the birth of a Palestinian state.

Haj Amin al-Husseini, the leader of the Palestinian national movement, fell out with Britain over its pro-Zionist policy in Palestine and made contact with Adolf Hitler during the Second World War. In British eyes, a Palestinian state was synonymous with a mufti state; accordingly, Britain’s hostility towards Palestinians and Palestinian statehood was a constant factor in its foreign policy from 1947-49.

Wiped off the map

Britain gave a green light to its client, King Abdullah of Transjordan, to send his British-led little army into Palestine upon expiry of the British mandate, to capture the West Bank – which was intended to be the heartland of the Palestinian state. The winners in the war for Palestine were King Abdullah and the Zionist movement; the losers were Palestinians. Around 750,000 Palestinians, more than half the population, became refugees, and the name Palestine was wiped off the map.

In short, Britain played a significant but little-known part in the Nakba, the catastrophe that overwhelmed Palestinians in 1948. When Jordan formally annexed the West Bank in 1950, Britain and Pakistan were the only UN members to recognise it.

Against the backdrop of Black Lives Matter, the reassessment of Britain’s colonial past and the drive to decolonise school curricula, some scholars have leapt to the defence of the British Empire. Nigel Biggar, the Regius professor of theology at the University of Oxford, for example, defends the British Empire as a moral force for good.

Christopher Hilton / Statue of Cecil Rhodes, High Street frontage of Oriel College, Oxford / CC BY-SA 2.0

Referencing Cecil Rhodes and the campaign to remove his statue from Oriel College, Biggar conceded that Rhodes was an imperialist, “but British colonialism was not essentially racist, wasn’t essentially exploitative, and wasn’t essentially atrocious”. The British Empire’s record in Palestine, however, is rather difficult to reconcile with the benign view of the learned professor.

Shameful legacy

The Conservative Party and its leaders are the standard-bearers of this shameful legacy of unqualified British support for Israel and indifference to Palestinian rights. Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) is by far the most powerful pro-Israel lobbying group in Britain, and its membership includes around 80 percent of Tory members of parliament. Since the May 2015 general election, CFI has sent 24 delegations with more than 180 Conservatives to visit Israel.

The last three leaders of the Conservative Party have been uncritical supporters of the State of Israel. Former Prime Minister David Cameron described himself as a “passionate friend” of Israel and insisted that nothing could break that friendship.

Theresa May was probably the most pro-Israeli leader in Europe during her premiership. In an address to CFI in 2016, she described Israel as a “remarkable country … a thriving democracy, a beacon of tolerance, an engine of enterprise, and an example to the rest of the world”. She spoke of Israel as “a country where people of all religions and sexualities are free and equal in the eyes of the law”.

May reserved her sharpest criticism for the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, which works to end international support for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians and to pressure Israel to comply with international law. BDS is a non-violent, global grassroots campaign whose principal demands – the right of return of 1948 refugees, an end to occupation, and equal rights for Israel’s Palestinian citizens – are grounded in international law. This movement, May stated, “is wrong, it is unacceptable, and this party and this government will have no truck with those who subscribe to it”.

May reminded her audience that Britain was entering a “special time” – the centenary of the Balfour Declaration – and went on to deliver a wholly one-sided verdict on this colonial document: “It is one of the most important letters in history. It demonstrates Britain’s vital role in creating a homeland for the Jewish people. And it is an anniversary we will be marking with pride.” There was no mention of Britain’s failure to uphold even the minimal rights of Palestinians.

National rights

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has a slightly more nuanced take on Britain’s record as a colonial power in Palestine. In his 2014 book on Churchill, he described the Balfour Declaration as “bizarre”, “tragically incoherent” and an “exquisite piece of Foreign Office fudgerama”. This was one of the rare examples of sound judgement and historical insight on Johnson’s part. But in 2015, on a trip to Israel as mayor of London, Johnson hailed the Balfour Declaration as “a great thing”.

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

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The new White House Team has been in place for more than a month and it is perhaps time to consider where it is going with America’s fractured foreign policy. To be sure, when a new administration brings in a bunch of “old hands” who made their bones by attacking Syria and Libya while also assassinating American citizens by drone one might hope that those mistakes might have served as valuable “lessons learned.” Or maybe not, since no one in the Democratic Party ever mentions the Libya fiasco and President Joe Biden has already made it clear that Syria will continue to be targeted with sanctions as well as with American soldiers based on its soil. And no one will be leaving Afghanistan any time soon. The Biden team will only let up when Afghanistan is “secure” and there is regime change in Damascus.

A big part of the problem is that the personnel moves mean that the poison from the Barack Obama years has now been reintroduced into the tottering edifice that Donald Trump left behind. Obama’s United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice once made the case for attacking the Libyans by explaining how Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi provided his soldiers with Viagra so they could more readily engage in mass rapes of presumably innocent civilians.

Unfortunately, Sue is back with the new administration as the Director of the Domestic Policy Council where she will no doubt again wreak havoc in her own inimitable fashion. She is joined at the top level of the administration by Tony Blinken as Secretary of State, Avril Haines as Director of National Intelligence, Jake Sullivan as National Security Advisor, Samantha Power as head of USAID and retired General Lloyd J. Austin as Secretary of Defense. All of the appointees are regarded as “hawks” and have personal history working with Biden when he was in Congress and as Vice President, while most of them also served in the Obama administration.

Be that as it may, Joe Biden and whoever is pulling his strings have assembled a group of establishment warmongers and aspirant social justice engineers that is second to none. Those who expected something different than the usual Democratic Party template have definitely been disappointed. Hostility towards China continues with warships being sent to the South China Sea and the president is seeking to create a new Trans-Atlantic alliance directed against both Beijing and Moscow. The Europeans are reportedly not enthusiastic about remaining under Washington’s thumb and would like some breathing room.

In a phone conversation where it would have been interesting to be a fly on the wall, Biden warned Russian President Vladimir Putin that the United States would no longer ignore his bad behavior. The official White House account of the call included the following pithy summary:

“President Biden reaffirmed the United States’ firm support for Ukraine’s sovereignty. He also raised other matters of concern, including the SolarWinds hack, reports of Russia placing bounties on United States soldiers in Afghanistan, interference in the 2020 United States election, and the poisoning of Aleksey Navalny.”

And to be sure, there have already been a number of issues that Biden might have dealt with by executive order, like lifting the illegal and unjustified blockade of Cuba, that could have inspired some hope that the new administration would not be just another bit of old wine in new bottles. Alas, that has not taken place but for a series of moves to unleash another wave of illegal immigration and to “protect LGBTQ rights globally.” Biden has also retained a heavy military presence in Washington itself, possibly as part of a Constitution-wrecking plan to tackle what he is referring to as “domestic terrorism.” The domestic terrorists being targeted appear to largely consist of people who are white working and middle class and voted for Trump.

In some ways, foreign policy might have been the easiest fix if the new administration were really seeking to correct the misadventures of the past twenty years. Quite the contrary, Biden and his associates have actually reversed the sensible and long overdue policies initiated by Donald Trump to reduce troop strength in Germany and bring the soldiers home from Syria and Afghanistan. Biden has already committed to an indefinite stay in Afghanistan, America’s longest “lost” war, and has covertly sent more soldiers into Syria as well as Iraq.

As regards Latin America, the U.S. clearly is prepared to double down on regime change in Venezuela, continuing its Quixotic support of Juan Guaido as president. Meanwhile, the new Secretary of State Tony Blinken has clearly indicated that there will be no end to deference to Israeli interests in the Middle East. Under questioning by Congress, he has insisted that Israel will be “consulted” on U.S. policy to include arms sales in the region, which has been interpreted to mean that Jerusalem will have a veto, and has confirmed that his view on Iran is identical to that of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Both are apparently promoting the view that Iran will have enough enriched uranium to construct a weapon within a few weeks, though they have not addressed other technical aspects of what would actually be required to build one. Netanyahu has been making the claim about the Iranian threat since the 1980s and now it is also an element of U.S. policy.

Biden and Blinken have also moved forward slowly on a campaign commitment to attempt renegotiation of the 2015 JCPOA nuclear agreement with Iran that President Trump withdrew from in 2017. As a condition to re-start discussions, the Iranian leadership has demanded a return to the status quo ante, meaning that the punitive sanctions initiated by Trump would have to be canceled and Iran would in return cease all enrichment activities.

Biden and Blinken, which admittedly sounds a bit like a vaudeville comedy duo, have reportedly agreed to withdraw the Trump sanctions but have also suggested that Iran will have to make other concessions, to include ending its ballistic missile development program and ceasing its “meddling” in the Middle East. Iran will refuse to agree to that, which means that the bid to renegotiate could turn out to be nothing more than a bit of theater involving multilateral “discussions” hosted by the European Union and the pointless hostility between Washington and Tehran will continue.

And speaking again of Israel, there have been concerns expressed by the usual suspects because Biden had not called Netanyahu immediately after the inauguration. It may be true that the president was sending a somewhat less than subtle message signaling that he was in charge, but the call has now taken place and everything is hunky-dory. As a separate issue, the Jewish state has, of course, the world’s only secret nuclear arsenal, estimated to consist of at least 200 bombs, and it also has several systems available to deliver them on target. For no reasons that make any sense, the United States since the time of President Richard Nixon has never publicly confirmed the existence of the weapons, preferring to maintain “nuclear ambiguity” that allows Israel to have the weapons without any demands for inspections or constraints on their use. The most recent four presidents have, in fact, signed secret agreements with Israel not to expose the nuclear arsenal. Biden has apparently not done so yet, but appeals by international figures, including most recently South African Desmond Tutu, had produced some expectations that the new administration might break with precedent.

Giving aid to Israel is, in fact, illegal due to the Symington Amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act, which bans U.S. economic and military assistance to nuclear proliferators and countries that seek to acquire nuclear weapons. But Biden has already indicated that he would not under any circumstances cut aid to Israel, so the matter would appear to be closed. In any event the Symington Amendment includes an exemption clause that would allow the funding to continue as long as the president certifies to Congress that continued aid to the proliferator would be a vital U.S. interest. Given Israel’s power in both Congress and the White House it is not imaginable that its aid would be affected no matter what Netanyahu and his band of criminals choose to do.

So, it would seem that Biden is unprepared to either pressure or pursue any distancing from Israel and its policies, not a good sign for those of us who have encouraged some disengagement from the Middle East quagmire. And one final issue where some of us have hoped to see some movement from Biden has also been a disappointment. That is Julian Assange, who is fighting against efforts to have him extradited from England to face trial and imprisonment in the U.S. under the Espionage Act. Many observers believe that Assange is a legitimate journalist who is being set up for a show trial with only one possible outcome. The entire process is to a large extent being driven by a desire for revenge coming largely from the Democratic Party since Assange was responsible for publishing the Hillary Clinton emails as well as other party documents. Biden has already indicated that the process of extraditing Assange will continue.

So, Biden has been a major disappointment for those who expected that he might change course regarding America’s pathological involvement in overseas conflicts while also having the good sense and courage to make relations with countries like Iran and Israel responsive to actual U.S. interests. Finally, it would be a good sign if Assange were to be released from the threat of trial and prison, if only to recognize that free speech and a free press benefit everyone, but that is perhaps a bridge too far as the United States moves inexorably towards a totalitarian state intolerant of dissent.

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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.org address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected]

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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***

Recall GWB:

“I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we’re really talking about peace.” George W. Bush

Recall Joe Biden

“I do not believe it is a rush to war [Iraq] but a march to peace and security,” Joe Biden

***

A permanent state of war on invented enemies is longstanding US policy.

It’s been this way throughout most of the post-WW II period.

Terror-bombing Syria last Thursday was one of many examples — escalating US aggression against the nation and people by Biden.

The Syrian Arab Republic threatens no one. President Assad is supported by most Syrians.

Yet Obama/Biden launched preemptive war on the country in March 2011.

US forces illegally occupy northern and southern areas.

The Pentagon and CIA use ISIS and likeminded jihadists as proxy forces to advance US imperial aims in Syria and elsewhere.

Washington under both right wings of its war party intends permanent occupation of the country.

Sergey Lavrov noted the diabolical scheme, saying:

Washington is “making the decision to never leave Syria, even to the point of destroying this country” — more than already he should have added.

Lavrov also stressed the US forces occupy “Syrian territory illegally, in violation of all norms of international law, including Security Council Resolutions on reconciliation in the Syrian Arab Republic.”

“They continue to play the separatism card.”

“They continue to block, using their levers of pressure on other states, any supply even of humanitarian aid, not to mention equipment and materials necessary to restoring the economy in the territories controlled by the government, and in every way possible force their allies to invest in territories outside Damascus’s control.”

“At the same time, they illegally exploit Syria’s hydrocarbon resources” by stealing them.

Longstanding US plans call for partitioning Syria and other regional countries for easier control.

According to former Global Policy Forum director James Paul, partitioning Syria “is the Israeli solution,” adding:

The Jewish state’s “overarching goal is to weaken every Arab state by bringing religion and ethnicity into the equation.”

The plan for Syria is partitioning it into Kurdish, Alawite and Sunni states.

Balkanization of Middle East countries is also longstanding US policy.

Regional expert Mahdi Nazemroaya earlier explained that

“(r)egime change and balkanization in Syria is very closely tied to the objective of dismantling the ‘resistance bloc’ formed by Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, the Palestinians, and various Iraqi groups opposed to the US and Israel.”

US/NATO/Israeli regional aggression aims to achieve this objective — what failed so far and won’t likely fare better ahead, but continues anyway.

In cahoots with Israeli interests, Obama/Biden launched preemptive war on Syria in 2011.

For hardliners in both countries, the road to Tehran runs through Damascus.

Control over the Syrian Arab Republic is seen as a way to weaken and isolate Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

According to Algerian academic Abdelkrim Dekhakhena, Bush/Cheney’s 2003 aggression against Iraq “metamorphosed into an apocalypse that swept the core nations of the region.”

“Chaos and destruction” followed with no end of it in prospect.

Washington’s notion of democracy building is suppressing its emergence everywhere and eliminating it wherever it exists.

Endless US Middle East wars created instability and human misery.

US regional aggression is aided by ISIS and other terrorist groups — created by the CIA to advance Washington’s control over regional countries, their resources and populations.

According to Biden’s doublespeak through his press secretary Psaki — paid to lie for her boss — he OK’d escalated US aggression in Syria to “protect Americans (sic),” adding:

Further aggression will aim to “deescalate tensions.”

The above doublespeak mumbo jumbo defines Washington’s war is peace policy.

Endless US wars by hot and/or other means have nothing to do with democracy building, pursuing peace, or protecting Americans.

They have everything to do with advancing Washington’s diabolical imperial agenda that prioritizes unchallenged global dominance.

Psaki also defied reality by claiming that preemptive terror-bombing of Syria on Thursday underwent a “thorough legal process (sic).”

There’s nothing remotely legal about naked aggression in Syria or anywhere else.

A decade of US war against the Syrian Arab Republic and its long-suffering people perhaps will continue in perpetuity.

The same diabolical agenda continues in Afghanistan, Yemen, and Libya, along with war by other means against numerous invented US enemies — notably China, Russia and Iran.

Washington’s rage to dominate other countries by brute force defines what the scourge of imperialism is all about.

There’s no end of it in prospect.

Biden’s longstanding support for wars on invented enemies suggests further escalation of hostilities on his watch.

Confrontation by belligerence and other means will likely be prioritized over pursuing peace and cooperative relations with other countries.

It’s the diabolical American way — addicted to warmaking, abhorring peace and stability.

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

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

My two Wall Street books are timely reading:

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

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

“Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity”

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

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***

The American Rescue Plan (ARP) was passed in the House this past week and now heads to the Senate, where it will no doubt be changed before it becomes law some time in mid-March. The current unemployment benefits expire on March 14.

While we don’t know what the final bill will look like, at least now we can get an idea of what is in it. Overall, as expected, the provisions in the bill will help to provide some financial assistance to some people, but they won’t solve the crises we face. And the Biden administration is backtracking on promises made on the campaign trail.

As Alan Macleod writes, Biden has abandoned raising the minimum wage, ending student debt and the promised $2,000 checks. His focus is on forcing people back to work and school even as new, more infectious and more lethal variants of the virus causing COVID-19 threaten another surge in cases and deaths. There is only one promise Biden appears to be keeping, and that is one he made to wealthy donors at the start of his campaign when he said, “nothing would fundamentally change.”

Despite this, people are organizing across the country for their rights to economic security and health and an end to discrimination. These struggles are necessary as we cannot expect either of the capitalist parties to act in the people’s interest. But together, we can demand that one of the wealthiest nations on earth upholds its responsibility to provide the basic necessities for its people. This is consistent with a People(s)-Centered Human Rights approach.

What is and isn’t in the ARP?

The current version of the American Rescue Plan contains provisions that would provide money to people earning less than $75,000 per year. One is the one-time $1,400 check.  Another is raising the tax credit for families with children, which will benefit those who file tax returns but leave out the millions of poor people who don’t.

The ARP will also extend unemployment benefits until the end of August and increase the enhanced benefits to $400/week. Unlike the previous bills, this one includes workers who left their jobs because of unsafe conditions and those who had to leave work or reduce their hours to care for children. The benefits are retroactive for some workers who were denied benefits.

While this will temporarily improve the economic situation for many people, it is not a plan to address the poverty crisis in the United States nor is it sufficient to support people through the current recession and pandemic. People will still face barriers to receiving the aid. Instead of making the programs something that people have to apply for, the government could provide monthly checks to everyone with incomes under a certain amount automatically. Numerous examples show that putting money into people’s hands, such as through a guaranteed income or giving unrestricted lump sums, improves their well-being.

An increase in the federal minimum wage to $15/hour, a promise of Joe Biden and the Democratic Party, is in the House version of the bill, but it will not be in the Senate version unless the White House or Democrats intervene, which they seem unwilling to do. The minimum wage increase is being blocked by the Senate Parliamentarian, but the Vice President could override the decision or the Democrats could take steps to work around the Parliamentarian, as has been done in the past on other issues. They are choosing not to take this stand.

The ARP also fails to extend the eviction moratorium, which will expire at the end of March. While it does contain funds for rental assistance, they are being given to the Treasury Department to disburse to the states, so it is not clear how these funds will help people directly. A recent study found that corporate landlords received hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies and tax breaks last year but continued to evict thousands of people. When the eviction moratorium ends, those who cannot pay the back rent risk being evicted.

The health benefits in the ARP are not only inadequate but they are set to further enrich the medical-industrial complex, as I explain in “Biden’s Health Plan Shifts Even More Public Dollars into Private Hands.” The ARP is fulfilling a laundry list provided by private health insurers, hospitals and medical lobbying groups. It will subsidize the cost of insurance premiums but leave those who have health insurance still struggling to pay out-of-pocket costs and at risk of bankruptcy if they have a serious accident or illness.

And finally, another group that is being left out is those who have student debt. I spoke with Alan Collinge of Student Loan Justice on Clearing the FOG this week. He said the current student loan burden is likely over $2 trillion and that the vast majority of debtors will never be able to repay . Collinge argues that it is imperative the Biden administration cancel student debt using an executive order, which he has the power to do, rather than leaving it to Congress. If the President does it, then the debt disappears (tax payers have already paid for the loans), but if Congress does it, which is unlikely to happen, they would have to offset the ‘cost’ through cuts to other programs or by raising taxes. Collinge also explains that cancelling student debt would be a significant economic stimulus.

All in all, the current ARP is another attempt by Congress to throw more money at a failed system that doesn’t change anything fundamentally. We must demand more.

The case for wealth redistribution

Lee Camp recently made the case for a massive change in the direction of wealth redistribution based on a new study that finds “the cumulative tab for our four-decade-long experiment in radical inequality has grown to over $47 trillion from 1975 through 2018. At a recent pace of about $2.5 trillion a year, that number we estimate crossed the $50 trillion mark by early 2020.” This amounts to over $1,000 per month per person in wealth that has been redistributed to the top or almost $14,000 per year.

It is time to reverse the direction of this wealth redistribution from one of consolidation at the top to one that creates greater wealth equality. This could be accomplished in a number of ways. In the middle of the last century, it was done through extremely high taxes on the wealthy and government investment in programs for housing and education. Camp advocates for taking all wealth over $10 million and redistributing it to the bottom 99.5% in a way that benefits the poorest the most.

Raising wages is another way to redistribute wealth. Professor Richard Wolff explains there are ways to raise wages without harming small businesses by providing federal support to them to offset the costs. Think of it as a reversal of the hundreds of billions in subsidies that have been given to large corporations, which they use to buy up and inflate the value of their stocks, to the small and medium businesses. It is smaller businesses that are most likely to keep wealth in their communities, unlike large corporations that extract wealth, and are the major drivers of the US economy. Small businesses alone comprise 44% of US Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

If workers earned higher wages, it would also save the government money that is currently spent on social safety net programs such as Medicaid and food stamps for low-wage workers. These programs enable large corporations to profit off worker exploitation, especially Walmart, Amazon and McDonalds, according to the DC Report.

Robert Urie points out that another price society pays for the gaping wealth divide is state violence and incarceration. He writes, “At $24 per hour, the inflation and productivity adjusted minimum wage in the U.S. from 1968, workers were still being added to employer payrolls. The point: $24 – $7.25 = $16.75 per hour plus a rate of profit is one measure of economic expropriation from low wage workers in the U.S. Maintaining an unjust public order is critical to the functioning of this exploitative political economy. Most of the prison population in the U.S. comes from neighborhoods where the minimum wage affects livelihoods.” Imagine the many ways that greater economic security would positively benefit families and communities.

People are fighting back

In our current political environment, we cannot expect Congress and the White House to do what is necessary to protect the health and security of people without a struggle that forces them to do so. There are many ways people are fighting locally for their rights through resistance and creating alternative systems. Here are a few current examples.

On February 16, fast food workers in 15 cities went on strike to demand $15 an hour. Other low-wage workers joined them. Last Monday, in Chicago, Black owners of McDonalds franchises began a 90-day protest outside of the McDonalds headquarters because of discrimination against them. They say, “McDonald’s has denied the Black franchisees the same opportunities as white operators and continually steer them to economically depressed and dangerous areas with low volume sales.”

In Bessemer, Alabama, workers are conducting a vote to start the first union for Amazon employees. If they succeed, it will be an amazing feat considering that Alabama is a right-to-work state and Amazon is doing what it can to stop them. In Arizona, another right-to-work state, workers at two universities are leading an effort to unionize all higher education employees in the state. They are concerned that federal funding provided to keep universities open will not be used in a way that protects all workers. They cite recent practices that prioritize the financial well-being of the universities over worker health and safety.

Some workers are taking power in other ways. Bus drivers in Silicon Valley organized with the support of community members to stop fare collections and only allow boarding in the rear, moves designed to aid passengers during the recession and protect drivers during the pandemic. They were committed to doing this whether management agreed to it or not. Others are building worker-owned platform cooperatives to challenge platform corporations that exploit their labor such as Spotify and Uber.

Others are working to meet people’s basic needs through mutual aid. Food not Bombs has been feeding people throughout the pandemic in various cities. In Santa Cruz, CA, they are out every day to feed the houseless despite being hassled by the city and moved around. A rural area in Canada that includes 65,000 people pulled together it local resources to make sure everyone is fed through a food policy council of elected officials, organizations and stakeholders. They reallocated their budget from events and travel to food security. They opened their seed banks to support local gardening efforts and commandeered unused buildings as spaces for assembling food boxes that were delivered to those in need.

These examples illustrate the tremendous power people have to force changes and create support networks in their communities when they organize together. While we should continue to expose and pressure Congress and the White House to invest in programs that provide for people’s needs, that is a function of government after all, we also need to organize in our communities to build popular power and create alternative systems that will slowly build the society we need.

“Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can quietly become a power no government can suppress, a power than can transform the world.” – Howard Zinn

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***

Escalation in the Middle East appears imminent, due to various incidents that took place throughout the reigon.

On February 25th, the Israeli-owned vehicle carrying vessel – MV Helios Ray was rocked by a heavy explosion, but didn’t sink. According to the owner of the vessel, it wasn’t known what had struck the Helios Ray, but likely it was “missiles or a mine placed on the bow.” It took two days of investigation to reach an obvious conclusion – Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said that Iran had carried out the attack.

Israeli TV reported that the assessment claimed that the Iranian navy had fired two missiles at the Israeli-flagged ship. Israeli Experts were allegedly on the way to the UAE, where the ship was anchored. There is no confirmation nor denial from Iran, as of yet, but Israel is already using this presumed attack for a potential escalation.

In recent weeks, Tel Aviv has been pushing to form a military security pact with Gulf States against Tehran. While having its interests targeted in the Gulf of Oman, Israel is still carrying out its usual activity towards Syria, and immediately responded to the alleged Iranian aggression.

On February 28th, Syrian air defense forces over Damascus were activated to repel an Israeli attack, launched from above the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. The Israeli Air Force likely targeted alleged Iranian targets, but Israel provided no comment on the matter.

Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said Israel was taking action “almost weekly” to prevent Iranian entrenchment in Syria. However, this is not just any action, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has once again claimed that Israel “was winning the war” against Iran.

Another informal Israeli ally – Saudi Arabia is currently suffering at the hands of the Axis of Resistance.

Yemen’s Ansar Allah – the Houthis – announced that their Air Force had carried out a large-scale operation in the Kingdom on February 28th. The operation, dubbed “Deterrent Balance 5,” targeted military positions in Riyadh. In total, a spokesman for the Houthis, said that a Zulfiqar ballistic missile, nine Samad-3 loitering munitions, and six Qasef-2K drones struck a network of Saudi military positions. This was likely in response to Saudi Arabia’s increased airstrike activity.

A February 28th warplane raid left 5 civilians, including a woman and a child dead. In Yemen, on the ground the fight is continuing in the Marib district.

Marib City and the Dam are currently beyond reach, and Saudi Arabia carries out increasingly more airstrikes and violations of the al-Hudaydah ceasefire. There are heavy clashes between the Ansar Allah and Saudi-led forces in the Talaat al-Hamra, Hamajira and Balaq mountains, with the Houthis purportedly taking the upper hand.

The situation is reaching a critical point, with the Axis of Resistance attempting to push on the US, Israel and their other allies on all fronts.

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***

Pentagon on February 25, 2021:

“At President Biden’s direction, US military forces earlier this [Thursday] evening conducted airstrikes against infrastructure utilized by Iranian-backed militant groups in eastern Syria,” said spokesman John Kirby in a statement on Friday.

“These strikes were authorised in response to recent attacks against American and Coalition personnel in Iraq, and to ongoing threats to those personnel,” he said. (Here another report).

If you had any doubts – which you should not if you have followed him over the years – about Biden’s attitude to warfare, this bombing in Eastern Syria should clarify things for you.

It is true that both Russia and Iran operate in Syria, but whether you like it or not, they have been invited by the Syrian government in response to the Western+Arab allies’ attempt at regime-change in Syria that started in spring 2011. Being in another country by invitation is not against international law; regime change and occupation by one sovereign state of another is.

We remember President Trump proudly stating that the US has secured the oil – that is, Syria’s oil.

What strikes me when going through CNN, BBC, NYT and other media reports this morning is that the US is just “retaliating” in a non-escalating manner for something done to American personnel in Iraq. The NYT first wrote that one US personnel had been killed and later corrected itself that one had been injured. All interviewed are Americans – not one of them raising any issues. According to some sources, mentioned by Reuters, as many as 17 pro-Iranian militia people may have been killed last night.

None of these leading Western mainstream media offers a background, mentions international law, or mentions how many may have been killed. It comes through as a megaphone for the US, Pentagon and the Biden administration.

One is reminded of how Pravda operated in the Soviet Union.

The map on top is self-explicable. The US has 10 illegal bases in Syria and it’s building the 11th in Hasakah. Just about 1,5 years ago, reliable US military sources wrote that the US is leaving Syria – “What it means for American bases in Syria to be occupied by Syrian and Russian forces” (!).

Today the reality is a different one: 140.000 barrels of oil are stolen per day from oil fields in the Hasakah region and transported by trucks to Iraq. A similar report here with slightly different information.

Below are some facts about the mindboggling – I guess to many – US military presence in Syria and Iraq – two countries in which it has nothing to do.

This reporting is a very good example of what I have maintained for years: Lies and fake is old hat – just more sophisticated and widespread than before. Omission – the background, larger framework, perspectives, news bureaus, and counterpoints that are left out. Deliberately.

Interesting fact sites

Wikipedia: List of US military installations in Iraq

Co-bases: US military bases in Iraq

Middle East Monitor, MEMO: US continues to reinforce military bases in Syria

And note the take on this by CNN’s international security editor, Nick Paton Walsh: Biden sends a message to Iran, but with a scalpel instead of a sledgehammer

David Andelman on CNN, February 27, 2021: The tough message Biden just sent Iran

Try to use various search engines and you’ll find that a search like “U.S. military bases in Syria” gives very little. Not even Wikipedia has such an entry. It is reasonable to assume that this is controversial, or sensitive, to an extent that public information about them has been reduced.

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Jan Oberg is a peace and future researcher, art photographer and global citizen, born in Denmark in 1951.

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***

Reiner Fuellmich and Viviane Fischer, attorneys and founding members of the German Corona Investigative Committee, interview a caregiver in a Berlin nursing home who describes what happened during and after the rollout of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine.

In this 40-minute video, Reiner Fuellmich and his associate Viviane Fischer, attorneys and founding members of the German Corona Investigative Committee, interview an unidentified whistleblower at a nursing home in Berlin, Germany.

The whistleblower, a caregiver, describes what happened at the care facility during and after the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines. The whistleblower’s voice has been distorted to protect the individual’s identity, and is in German with English subtitles.

The whistleblower describes how seven of 31 nursing home residents with dementia died after the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine, and an eighth was near death at the time the interview was recorded.

After the second dose, 11 more residents became seriously ill and one more died.

In other words, 25% of the residents died immediately, and 36% were severely injured within a short time.

The video contains de-identified footage from the nursing home, where a team of three or four people, including a soldier in uniform, vaccinate residents, in many cases using force. The footage is troubling as it shows some people resisting the shots, being being vaccinated nonetheless.

Fischer has filed a complaint on behalf of the whistleblower with prosecutors and the police. They seek an investigation by law enforcement and publicity about this information to halt further deaths.

An investigation into the deaths at this particular nursing home won’t be the first investigation into deaths among elderly in care facilities, after being vaccinated with a COVID vaccine — there have been many reports of elderly people dying after the vaccines.

In January, officials in Norway and Germany said they were looking into deaths following the vaccine. Last month, in Spain, officials temporarily halted vaccines after 46 nursing home residents died after getting the vaccine.

The Global Times reported last week that 16 elderly people in Switzerland died following COVID vaccinations.

In the U.S., according to the latest available data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, the average age of those who died following COVID vaccines is 77.8.

Children’s Health Defense is working closely with Fuellmich and his associates at the German Corona Investigative Committee to seek information and justice regarding COVID-19.

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***

Last Thursday President Biden continued what has sadly become a Washington tradition: bombing Syria. The President ordered a military strike near the Iraqi-Syrian border that killed at least 22 people. The Administration claims it struck an “Iranian-backed” militia in retaliation for recent rocket attacks on US installations in Iraq.

As with Presidents Obama and Trump before him, however, Biden’s justification for the US strike and its targets is not credible. And his claim that the US attack would result in a “de-escalation” in the region is laughable. You cannot bomb your way toward de-escalation.

Biden thus joins a shameful club of US leaders whose interventions in the Middle East, and Syria specifically, have achieved nothing in the US interest but have contributed to the deaths of many thousands of civilians.

President Trump attacked Syria in 2018 in what he claimed was retaliation for the Assad government’s use of chemical weapons against its own citizens. The Trump Administration never proved its claim. Logic itself suggests how ridiculous it would have been for the Syrian president to have used chemical weapons in that situation, where they achieved no military purpose and would almost certainly guarantee further outside attacks against his government.

Trump’s 2018 attack only added to the misery of the Syrian people, who suffered under US sanctions and then suffered President Obama’s “Assad must go” intervention that trained and armed al-Qaeda affiliated groups to overthrow the government.

Trump’s airstrike on Syria did nothing to further real American interests in the region. But sending in 100 Tomahawk missiles to blow up a few empty buildings did a great deal to further the bottom line of missile-maker Raytheon.

Interestingly, Biden’s Secretary of Defense came to the Administration straight from his previous position on the board of, you guessed it, Raytheon. Libertarian educator Tom Woods once quipped that no matter who you vote for you get John McCain. Perhaps it’s also fair to say that no matter who you vote for you get to enrich Raytheon.

The Democrats wasted four years trying to remove Trump from office under the bogus “Russiagate” lie and then the equally ridiculous and discredited claim that Trump led an insurrection against the government on January 6th. Yet when Trump started raining bombs down on Syria with no Congressional declaration of war or even authorization, most Democrats stood up and cheered. Left-wing CNN talking head Fareed Zakaria swooned, “I think Donald Trump became president of the United States last night.”

In fact, initiating a war against a country that did not attack and does not threaten the United States without Congressional authority is an impeachable offense. But both parties – with a few exceptions – are war parties.

President Biden should be impeached for his attack on Syria, as should have Trump and Obama before him. But no one in Washington is going to pursue impeachment charges against a president who recklessly takes the United States to war. War greases Washington’s wheels.

Isn’t it strange how we’ve heard nothing about ISIS for the past couple of years, but suddenly the mainstream media tells us the ISIS is back and on the march? When President Biden says “America is back,” what he really means is “the war party is back.” As if they ever left.

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The Panama Canal project is much older than just the US imperialistic endeavor and completion of the 20^th century that most people associate it with that led to the birth of a new republic.

Leaving aside all issues regarding the indigenous population of the Americas, their suffering and their contribution, this article will focus only on the actions and plans of European conquerors with regard to the canal.

To be fair we have to say that the first well known Western man looking for an imperialistic trade water-route to Asia connecting the Atlantic and the ‘Southern Sea,’ (an early name for the Pacific Ocean in the first decades of the European invasion: ‘Mar del Sur’) was Christopher Columbus in the journeys that followed his first ‘discovery’ expedition, although he never actually reached that vast ocean. Historical chronicles and books teach us that later on Vasco Nuñez de Balboa and his men, following Rio Chagres, were the first Westerners to wash themselves in the Pacific after crossing what would become known as the Isthmus of Panama. But it’s quite unknown that even the Castilian-Extremaduran conqueror Hernan Cortes – worldwide-known for his victory and destruction of the Aztec social system and culture – launched himself into that adventure. And it is also unknown to most that since Cortes’ enterprise of the 16^th century, many projects to find a route and even to build a canal linking the two oceans were presented to Spain’s’ king by Spanish individuals and institutions.

Vasco Nuñez de Balboa’s expedition. Source: Wikipedia.

Later on, that pathway became such an important ideal imperialistic tool for European powers that they started to fight for the possession of those lands, long before the French started the excavations for the canal in the 19^th century and the United States of America completed it in the 20th. Indisputably, the US was not brighter than others. At that point in history such an idea was feasible because the US could learn from the technological, scientific and geographical knowledge and the failures accumulated in the previous decades and centuries by the earlier attempts at the canal. This, of course, is how human knowledge, including technological achievements, is built up.

The Conquistador and the Jungle

Hernan Cortes (1), and his contemporaries, thought it was not impossible to find a water-passage towards the Spice Islands. It was no consolation to know there was already a path to the Pacific through the Magellan Strait or around Cape Horn in Southern Patagonia which was a long and dangerous route to Asia that started to be used by Europeans from 1520. Cortes’ intuition told him it was possible to open another, easier and shorter way. Obsessed with the idea it could be through Central America, in 1524 he sent one of his men, Cristobal de Olid, to ‘Hibueras,’ the name given by Columbus to Honduras due to her deep bays.

After arriving de Olid was convinced by other conquistadors and decided to free himself from Cortes and to accomplish the enterprise for his own glory. It was a death sentence. As soon as Cortes was informed of de Olid’s plan he sent a loyal man of his, Francisco de las Casas.

Helped by a storm de Olid was able to imprison de las Casas. But after a little while, de Olid started to pay attention to his prisoner’s words and thought he could convert him into an ally. It is said that while having dinner together one night, de las Casas raised his hand, caught his host’s head and stuck a knife in his throat!

Anaware of what was going on in Honduras, Cortes was anxious. He thought that due to the distance the temptation was too strong for his emissary and decided to undertake the feat himself. With a little army he set off for the ‘Hibueras’ lands. It was a bad decision. Looking for a waterway, the luxuriant jungle prevented him from passing and disoriented him. He ended up losing his way and his army. One by one his men fell, and also his native hostages, among them the last Aztec Emperor Cuauhtémoc. Fearing an Indian revolt, Cortes hung all native captives after accusing them of treason. In the end, exhausted by the useless exploration he finally concluded that he could trust las Casas’ loyalty and returned to Vera Cruz, where other conquistadors thought he was already dead and had already planned to succeed him. In European history, this was the first attempt at finding a waterway connecting the Atlantic and the Pacific.

Other Spanish Projects

In 1524, the same year Cortes sent de Olid to Honduras, Charles I of Spain, better-known as Charles V King of Spain, Aragon and Emperor of the Holy Roman-German Empire, suggested digging a canal in order to more easily trade and travel to South America. In 1529 a first project was presented but the technological and scientific knowledge of the time did not allow its materialization.

Later on, as shown by British historian Hugh Thomas, Gaspar de Espinosa y Luna, a Spanish conqueror, politician and businessman based in current Peru – who financed the expeditions of Francisco Pizarro and Diego de Almagro against the Incas (1532), proposed to the Council of the Indies (the most important administrative organ of the Spanish Empire for America and the Philippines) the digging of a canal and the creation of an alternative route. Only the road from Panama City (facing the Pacific) to Camino de Cruces City (on the banks of the river Chagres), from where the merchandise would arrive to the Atlantic on boats, was carried out and this became the main colonial route to the Viceroyalty of Peru (Spanish South America) until the XIX century.

In the middle of the XVI century Antonio Galvão, a Portuguese sailor, stressed again the need of an artificial canal, which became a trendy intention anew. But in 1590 the Spanish Jesuit missionary and naturalist José de Acosta reported about the difficulty of connecting the two oceans as some were requesting while warning of the strategic risks its use by Spanish enemies could mean. Later on, under the ruling of Philip III (1598-1621) the Council of the Indies blocked a similar project commissioned to Dutch builders exactly for those reasons. History also reports of British people occupying lands in what is known today as Panama with the same purpose. Then the idea of building a water-route disappeared for some decades, until the 19^th century when the famous German geographer Alexander Von Humboldt revived it to invigorate trade and the flow of people through a canal. And thanks to Von Humboldt, France, the United States and Great Britain became very interested again.

A Brief and Approximate History of the Panamanian Territory

In the colonial period Panama was the northernmost part of the Viceroyalty of Peru (Spanish South America). During the first decades of Spanish colonization, Portobelo, on the Atlantic side of the Isthmus, was the main harbor for all goods travelling from South America to Spain and Europe and vice versa as the routes through the Magellan Strait and Cape Horn were considered not only too long and expensive but also too dangerous. After a few decades the Isthmus and its Portobelo port lost its unique strategic importance as Cartagena de Indias, in current Colombia, became another vital harbor of Hispanic South America.

Viceroyalty of Peru in the first centuries (dark and light green). Source: Wikipedia.

In 1739 the northern part of the Viceroyalty of Peru was spilt up and a new Spanish administrative area, the Viceroyalty of New Granada, was established. This new division was considered necessary in order to counter the increasing French and English smuggling and improve the protection of the area against the frequent marine attacks carried out by foreign European powers in the area (mainly England and Holland). The capital of the new-born viceroyalty became Santa fe de Bogota, the current Colombian capital. Within its territory Panama was included.

After independence from Spain, in 1821, Panama became part of the Republic of Gran Colombia which consisted, more or less, of today’s Colombia, Venezuela, Panama and most of Ecuador. In 1830, 9 years later and nearly 90 years after the first administrative dismemberment of the Viceroyalty of Peru, from the Viceroyalty of New Granada were born, roughly, the Republics of Ecuador, Venezuela and Gran Colombia. The territory of Panama was part of the latter.

The fathers of Hispanic American Independence and the canal

It is little-known that heroes of Spanish American independence were aware of the importance the Panama canal would have in the future of trade and it is quite unknown that the most eminent forefather of these movements, Francisco de Miranda from Caracas – who conceived of the union of Hispanic American territories through an Inca Federation – even offered its construction and a shared control of it to the English, historically considered the most seasoned enemies of the Hispanic world.

”On the 27^th of March 1790, Miranda presented his first ”Plan for the constitution, organization and establishment of a free and independent government in Southern America” (meaning Hispanic America) to the British prime minister William Pitt. In exchange for financial and military support, Miranda offered to England trade preferences, a participation in the exploitation of Hispanic American riches and the possibility of building a navigation canal in the isthmus of Panama” tells historian and philosopher Carmen L. Bohórquez.

”All major world powers thought of building a canal through the isthmus of Panama as planned by Humboldt. Liberators Simon Bolivar and Francisco de Miranda offered the British rights over the canal in exchange for weapons and support against the Spaniards in their independence struggle as they considered Great Britain their natural ally against Spain. During the Pact of Paris in 1797, Miranda presented his idea of opening a canal in Panama or Nicaragua, ”the fast and easy communication between the Atlantic Ocean and the Southern Sea (Mar del Sur), will be for England of great interest,” documents Patricia Galeana in her bookEl Tratado Mc Lane Ocamo, la comunicación interoceánica y el libre comercio. Afterwards, tells the historian, ”Colombia sent an envoy to London with the objective of obtaining a loan and involving British capitalists in the construction of the canal.”

France, England, the United States and the Panama Canal

Due to the strategic importance of the Isthmus of Panama – the thinnest mainland of the Americas – allegedly in the second decade of the 19^thcentury New Granada started receiving proposals for the realization of the canal but all were refused as Bogota thought it should be built with its own resources and administered locally.

By then Spain was practically already knocked out. Hispanic American independent countries and its elites were in turmoil. Most of them were militarily and financially weak or already under the orbit of the Anglo-Saxon and French Empires. The Brazilian elite were not interested much in their neighbors and since the beginning of the century were deeply involved with the United Kingdom. Therefore there was plenty of room to fill the void.

In 1846 the Mallarino-Bidlack Treaty was signed between the Republic of New Granada and the United States of America. In summary, the fundamental clause established that ”the citizens, ships and merchandise of the United States will enjoy the ports of New Granada, including those of the Isthmus of Panama, of all franchises, privileges and immunities, regarding trade and navigation; and that this equality of favors will be extended to the passengers, correspondence and merchandise for the US, that transit through said territory.” Furthermore it was given to the former British colony the right to build a canal in the New Granadian territory. But London was not so happy about this.

In the same years England seized territories in present Panama, Nicaragua and Honduras. For the US’ elite these occupations were a barrier to its 1823 Monroe Doctrine – ‘America for the Americans’ – and its 1845 Manifest Destiny ideology – a cultural belief that the US is destined by God to expand its dominion and expand capitalism and its ‘democracy’ over the Americas. The barrier was demolished with the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty signed between the USA and Great Britain in 1850. Among its most important known points were that neither one nor the other would keep for itself exclusive predominance over the canal and both would protect it. Many have seen in this treaty an act of respect towards Latin American countries, but it was principally an agreement of power-sharing over the area.

Even so, at the end the Anglo-Saxon project of a canal was not realized. And it ended up in the hands of the French.

Fernand de Lesseps, after a long career as a French diplomat and following his success in the construction of the Suez Canal in 1869 (it seems the first project was made in the Republic of Venice in the 16th century), was appointed by the Paris’ Société de Géographie as president of the Panama Canal Company in 1879. But the French project failed as de Lesseps did not take into account the different environmental conditions: in Panama canal-workers had to deal with a jungle and not a desert. He did not take into consideration the different water-levels between the two oceans and projected a sea-level canal. The company resulted in a huge scandal in France and in 1889 went bankrupt and lost its French investors’ money. It was in that moment that Lesseps and other important, rich French businessmen involved in the project went to the USA in search of economic support. By then Panama was still part of New Granada.

The Proclamation of Independence of Panama

In the beginning the US was interested in building the canal in Nicaragua but under the pressure of the French lobby, in 1899, a US commission was set to determine which site was better, Nicaragua or Panama. Nevertheless in 1901 US Secretary of State John Hay pressed the Nicaraguan government for its approval: Nicaraguan elite would receive $1.5 million in ratification, $100,000 annually, and the U.S. would “provide sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity.” Nicaragua’s elite were not satisfied. They asked for 6 million of ratification instead but the project got blocked by a US court decision. Undoubtedly the influence of the French in the final decision was fundamental. Nicaragua was ruled out. In 1901 the United States and England signed the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty in which both countries did NOT recognize Colombian sovereignty over the isthmus and gave it the status of ‘area of international importance.’

The treaty nullified the 1850 Clayton-Bulwer concordat (which arranged a shared authority over the canal) and gave the USA the right to create and control it. In this way Colombia was forced to cede and in 1903 an agreement was reached with the government of Bogota. The Hay-Herrán Treaty was signed but the Colombian Senate rejected it worrying about its territorial sovereignty. The rejection provoked a world scandal among nations ruled by imperialistic elites: how dare Colombia make decisions over its own territory!

Another cartoon of 1903. It depicts the French businessman De Lesseps (left) and US president Theodore Roosevelt. Source: Wikipedia.

Immediately after such a refusal, Washington (USA) engendered the independence of Panama supported by a power-greedy Panamanian elite and by a small portion of local people and on November 3, 1903, Panama became a new republic, receiving $10 million from the US. No blood was spilled. Theodore Roosevelt, president of the US, applied his famous Big Stick Policy sending the US Navy to the Colombian offshore while an Anglo-German blockade was stationed against Caracas (Venezuelan capital). Panama’s new government also gained for the canal an annual payment of $250,000 for ‘rent’ and guarantees of independence while the US obtained the rights to the canal strip “in perpetuity.” As was to be expected, on November 6 Roosevelt’s government was the first to formally recognize the new-born republic, followed the day after by France. And before the end of that month another 15 countries of Europe, America and Asia did the same.

At that point the deal was made. The United States paid the French 40,000,000 dollars for the trains, machinery, excavations and rights – an enormous amount compared to what it was offering to Nicaragua (1.5 million initially) or Panama (10 million). On this particular issue it’s worth noting that French author Gabriel J. Loizillon in his book Philippe Bunau-Varilla: L’Homme du Panama claims that the enterprise used by the US for the construction of the canal was that of Philippe Bunau-Varilla who earlier was a de Lesseps’ subcontractor and later greatly invested in the second French company for the construction of the canal. Bunau-Varilla was one of the main French lobbyists working within the US. It is said that before the birth of the republic of Panama he had already drafted the new Panamanian constitution, come up with the flag, and military establishment, and promised to float the entire Panamanian government on his own checkbook.

Construction of the Panama Canal in 1907. Source: Wikipedia.

The Panama Canal was inaugurated in 1914. It is reckoned it costed the lives of 20,000 workers under the French and an equal amount of men under the US – under the French principally coming from the French Antilles, later from the Anglophone Caribbean islands. Its construction also destroyed the lives of thousands of people living in the area that were expropriated and the local ecosystem.

The US benefited millions from the canal in exchange of an annual rent of $250,000 dollars. After the opening the main beneficiaries were US corporations belonging to tycoons like the Rockefeller’s Standard Oil (later Exon, Exxon, Esso, Mobil and many others) and banker Pierpont Morgan (J.P. Morgan & Co., Federal Steel Company, Chase Bank). Morgan had also been appointed in 1903 as fiscal agent for the newly independent Republic of Panama and carried out his ‘duties’ through US and French financial institutions. Not much has changed since then. After the canal returned to Panamanian sovereignty in 1999, it keeps working principally with countries under the orbit of the US Empire. The canal is mainly used by the US, followed by China (the US’ biggest goods trading partner), Chile, Japan and South Korea.

But business is business and the golden age of the Panama Canal could be close to its end. The Northwest Passage in Northern Canada could be the future cheaper and shorter waterway between the Pacific and the Atlantic due to climate warming. This could be a great loss for the corrupt Panamanian elite, but not a real tragedy. If the world destructive and selfish capitalist system does not fall, Panama’s tax haven structure (2) could be enough to keep it wealthy and well-afloat in the upcoming years – a wealth from which about 37% of Panamanians are completely excluded, 4 out of every 10 persons in the country.

Indisputably, the history of the Panama Canal doesn’t show us only its imperialistic function, its corrupt character and all the unjustifiable sacrificial death it has produced for the sake of greed, power and money. But also that the project, for what we know, dates back to 1513. Its construction was possible thanks to the knowledge and ideas gathered over time. Columbus’ journeys, Balboa’s expedition (1513), the Spanish construction of the Viceregal Peruvian Northern trade route through the Rio Chagres, de Lesseps’ failures…These are some ‘contributions’ I have mentioned in this report but the list could grow exponentially even embracing cultures that today have disappeared. And this is valid not only for the Panama Canal, but for all human knowledge and achievements. They don’t belong to one person, one culture or one nation but are the result of a slow and long cross-border process.

(1) Most people believe Hernan Cortes was an uneducated Castilian man. It’s not true. He was a poor aristocrat, who also studied at the University of Salamanca and according to historians was a cultured man.

(2) Panama represents an important but only a small part of the world tax heaven structure. Most tax and laundering paradises are under London’s control in British extraterritorial jurisdictions.

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Crimes Against Humanity in the Aegean is a 43 page report from the Legal Centre Lesvos (LCL) published on February 1^st 2021. It is impressive on many levels. The detail provided in their investigation of refugee push backs in the Eastern Aegean over the past year is meticulous and includes powerful and distressing eye witness evidence from some of the refugees who suffered the push backs.

The Report provides overwhelming evidence of criminal activity by state agencies which is systematic following a clear pattern often involving the use of ‘commandos’ – i.e. unidentifiable hooded and masked armed men who attack the boats as they attempt to cross to Greece – working in close co-operation with the Hellenic Coast Guard and Frontex, the EU border guards. As always, the relevant state agencies deny that push backs are happening; total denial accompanied with impunity.

“Despite the numerous reports and investigations showing the widespread and systematic nature of this ongoing practice, the Greek state continues to dismiss such allegations as ‘fake news.’

Europe has been perpetrating violence against migrants at its borders with complete impunity for so many years that it seems EU and Greek authorities believed that under the cover of the COVID-19 pandemic they could escalate their attack on migrants in the Aegean region without anyone reacting.” (Lorraine Leete, Co-ordinator, LCL, Feb 2021)

Against this trend however, on February 23^rd 2021, the European Parliament began its investigation into the push back activities of Frontex which is not only in the process of forming an army 10,000 strong but is now the biggest single agency of the EU.

As Birgit Sippel, one of the people in the parliament demanding the inquiry said:

“Frontex’s reputation has gone from bad to worse in recent months. Change starts from the top and that’s why we urged the Frontex Director to stand down, following repeated allegations of fundamental rights violations at the EU’s borders. While Mr Leggeri is still in office, he is not in control of the situation. The result is not only that the credibility of the EU’s largest agency is in shreds, but it has meant that the disgraceful and unacceptable push backs of vulnerable people at Europe’s borders keep taking place. Frontex’ decision to pull out of Hungary, where push backs were well documented even after a recent ruling of the European Court of Justice, is a welcome first step in the right direction. But this step comes too late and is too little to restore the confidence in the Executive Director of the EU’s largest agency.” (See this)

With its notion that change starts from the top with the top being identified as the person deemed to be in charge of the organisation, it is good to see key figures named and being held to account. But given that the EU in its various institutions including the parliament has conspicuously failed until now to act on the criminal push backs despite compelling evidence suggests that we might well be disappointed by their efforts.

As LCL remind us, in March 2020 Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, thanked Greece for being “Europe’s shield” at the very time Greece unilaterally and illegally suspended the right to asylum and embarked on push backs which involved the use of lethal force, sugared with an additional 700 million euros for border and migration management followed in June 2020 by a further 10.75 million euros for the reinforcement of Greece’s eastern borders.

Ineffective Accountability

“The foregoing laundry list of ongoing violations entailed in the modus operandi of collective expulsions in the Aegean only underscored the ineffectiveness of existing accountability mechanisms. A number of extensively evidenced complaints on collective expulsions in the Aegean have already been submitted to the Greek courts, the Hellenic Parliament, the Greek National Commission of Human Rights, the European Commission and other EU institutions and the European Court of Human Rights by numerous civil society and legal actors including LCL, yet collective expulsions in the Aegean continue with absolute impunity” (LCL Report, p.32).

This is what I have also witnessed over 15 years living on Samos. There has been no shortage of reports detailing the daily horrors confronting the refugees on the island; no shortage of visitors who have been shaken by what they witness and not least countless testimonies of the refugees who have been or who are, still here. But all with little or no consequence. The authorities don’t give a damn about the living conditions of the refugees here. You would need to be living on another planet not to know this. We are now coming to the end of winter. The island has been pounded by storms, winds and rain. It has been very cold. Every winter here is a challenge both for locals with no income who can’t heat their homes and the refugees living in their shacks and tents in the jungle. Every winter NGOs and volunteers file their reports detailing these horrors. NOTHING CHANGES.

That so many refugees survive their ordeals on the frontier islands is almost entirely due to the refugees themselves. It is their efforts in building shelters that can withstand the harsh weather, in providing food and clothes especially for those facing problems that sees them through. And the efforts are wide and varied from caring for the sick and distressed to making Covid masks. It is a community of many layered solidarities between and within the nationalities and the generations. It is sad and reprehensible that many of those who work with (on) refugees fail to acknowledge this, including many of the volunteers who drop by the island to ‘help’. Charity and not solidarity epitomises much of this effort (but I will write more on this in a later article).

I defy anyone to tell me of any positive state action that benefits the refugees on Samos and more widely in Greece. Has the food improved or is it still shit? Has the Covid threat and shadow stopped the endless queues for food or any service? Have the managers of the camp accepted offers of support from the appropriate medical NGOs to develop a Covid strategy? Why are those who test positive quarantined in overcrowded containers? Every opportunity to make something better is shunned as exemplified by the new but as yet unopened camp on a remote and exposed hill top on Samos and the decision to open a new camp on Lesvos (replacing the fire destroyed Moria camp) on a site contaminated with dangerous levels of lead. On every dimension of life, from education to health the actions of the authorities have been cruel. And for years and years they get away with it. Critical and outraged reports are brushed aside, and “as if impunity was not enough, four human rights monitoring and migrants solidarity groups which have all publicly denounced collective expulsions in the Aegean, have been identified by Greek police in an investigation that accuses them of espionage, forming and membership of a criminal organisation, violating state secrets and violating the immigration code.” (LCL, p.34)

Deterrence

The European state agencies involved with refugees have been explicit in placing deterrence as the core principle of its strategy in trying to halt or at least moderate the flow of refugees from the broken and war torn countries of the middle east. On no account were these push factors to be aided by pull factors from within Europe itself. So no safe passage for refugees. Instead the death journeys across the seas or through militarised borders. And should you be lucky enough to make it, the ancient British Poor Law principle is practised namely that your living conditions and application for asylum should be so uncomfortable and degrading that you would do anything to keep away.

But as the LCL Report demonstrates all too clearly the dynamic of deterrence is and has moved on to greater violence and cruelties. As I read the accounts of the push backs at sea I could not stop thinking about what was going on in the heads of those carrying out these practices which included throwing terrified families and children into the sea at night to climb into tiny rubber dinghies which would take them to the Turkish coast and (hopefully) rescue from the Turkish coastguards. What goes through the minds of the Greek crews who drive their boats at speed at the small refugee dinghies knowing full well the dangers posed to the refugees as the bow waves roll over them?

These are important questions for as the LCL report makes clear,

“The complex network and multiplicity of actors involved in collective expulsions in the Aegean would require independent international institutions with significant investigative powers to trace modes of liability. In this context, international criminal law’s foundational logic that atrocities are ‘committed by men, not abstract entities,’ and its promise to de-naturalise the banality of evil appears more appropriate.” (LCL, p.35)

It is clear, that to date the efforts of those who compile, record and publish their damning reports of ongoing atrocities against so many refugees in Greece have had no impact on changing policy or practice. Perhaps it is time to change the focus in the struggle to ‘de-naturalise the banality of evil’; looking more to those who do this work. And its not just on the push backs where we should be thinking of what can be done. After all, how does a person feed another with food they would never touch ? How do you quarantine Covid victims with 20 others in a locked container with no toilet ? How do you tell refugees that they have to leave their accommodation four weeks after getting their asylum because now they have to live like Greeks supporting and housing themselves through work? Even without Covid this is not easy in Greece. With Covid it is almost impossible. Throughout this winter thousands of refugees have lost their homes and been forced onto the streets or into overcrowded squats.

And without exception, all refugees here have to deal with an Asylum Service that does not give a damn for you. It is evident the moment you arrive at virtually any Asylum Office where crowds of refugees are compelled to wait outside in all weathers to even get inside. So much for respect. Take Fahima and Yousef from Algeria. They have had 2 rejections for asylum which they appealed last September with the help of a lawyer. The court in Athens which heard the appeal made its decision at the end of October 2020. As of this day they have no idea what that decision was. They plead but get no answer. Torture for them. Take Mohammed, he was told in January that he had to travel from Samos to Athens to be interviewed over his application for family re-unification. He takes around 100 euros a month. The Asylum Service offered no expenses. The same for Younis who was faced with the same problem when told that he would have to go to Athens to collect his asylum papers. When he got to the office, he found a note pinned on the door informing him that his interview had been postponed (Covid) and to await further notice. These are just a few instances from Samos. Similar examples are legion.

The spectrum of cruelties is wide and the ‘doctrine of do no harm’ enshrined in international refugee law is endlessly breached. And breached by people ‘doing their jobs’. Within Greece the challenge of ensuring people to do indecent jobs quietly and without fuss seems to fall along two related dimensions. One is protection and the other is extreme regulation. Protective measures range widely from body armour, small arms, chemical weapons at one extreme through to ensuring that state agents carry no identifying insignia at the other. (Moreover, with or without legislation, most adults in Greece know that you don’t openly photograph the police in any context if you value your well being.)

Fear plays a significant role in this country in sustaining unacceptable and often criminal activity across vast parts of the society. It is a fear that goes well beyond ‘police phobia’ in a society which has endured massive economic and social decline over the past 15 years and is now worsened further by the Covid pandemic. Poverty is deep and widespread. Birth rates are plummeting. Those who can leave the country. The fear of losing your job is an ever-present worry for many and a remarkable percentage of those who work with refugees as in the Asylum Service are on short-term contracts often renewed but never secure. With high rates of unemployment it follows that many simply keep their heads down and mouths shut. Any step out of line can carry severe consequences.

In addition, over the years a raft of regulations and procedures have been implemented which explicitly constrain in great detail, those working in any formal capacity with refugees. A condition for working with refugees in Greece even as an individual (registered) volunteer or an NGO demands obedience to the Greek authorities. Criticism of the authorities is not allowed. On no account are you to disclose to any outside persons or organisations any aspect of your job or your experience including photographs. These are all set out in the contracts of employment and engagement which now run to pages and pages. Failure to comply brings disciplinary action and dismissal. Translators currently employed in the camp on Samos for example are forbidden from talking or socialising with any refugees outside their work time. I spoke just 2 weeks ago with a translator who when not working in the camp stays in his hotel room so as to avoid any contact with refugees as he was frightened about losing his job. Similar restrictions were introduced for the ‘volunteers’ who were forbidden to develop personal relationships with refugees which included not visiting refugee homes. (It should be noted that a few volunteers have resigned over the years because of these restrictions). Considerable effort has gone into ensuring all those who came to Samos as volunteers should be formally registered. This was entirely motivated by the concern to control and regulate their activities. These regulatory frameworks have not emerged to protect refugees nor the volunteers for that matter.

Regulations which seek to hide and close off any scrutiny have no place in welfare work with any group of people where the possibility of positive support demands that we identify the problems and challenges people confront. But instead we have front line workers gagged, frightened to speak out for fear of losing their job. This is the case in Greece. Many here generally fear complaining about any state crimes and violence because they fear the repercussions especially when their complaints concern the police. This must change and effective protection measures implemented for all those who have cause to complain. Quite simply, as we have learnt, refugee engagements in darkness are all too likely to be cruel and dangerous. But without effective and trustworthy protection for those who complain or just reveal poor practice then it is almost certain that the current darkness will continue. (There is something deeply sad about all this. Working with refugees should be celebratory and joyous as we help those seeking life and security in Europe. It is work that should bring pride and not shame to those involved. In all their diversities refugees enrich our lives and our societies despite all they have endured.)

Even with all these efforts, we should not assume that the authorities have stopped all front line workers from supporting refugees when possible. My evidence comes mainly from refugees who have been employed in the camps and by many of the bigger agencies as translators/facilitators. Taking advantage of their supervisors’ lack of language, translators are able to say things to the refugees which are not understood by their managers. They can and do tell refugees what they need to say or not say when asking for help or information. They tell them when they are being lied to or are being giving useless information. Oppressive welfare systems all face the problem that no matter how many procedures and regulations are imposed on their front line workers, there are always points in practice where workers and recipients inter-act without supervision; where there are opportunities for help and support however small. I have no reason to doubt that there are many front line workers, not only refugee employees, involved in such activities. But without any imaginative support networks these activities understandably remain largely hidden from view.

The impunity which cloaks the illegal activities of so many of the key actors plays a key role in ensuring the continuation of daily state violence. It naturalises the banality of evil. It banishes any notion of a common humanity. In its wake it brings secrecy, corruption and dismay. Refugees are casualties of this impunity but so are the majority of Greeks who live daily with a state that in so many ways fails the people.

A final plea! I believe that the work of organisations such as the Legal Centre Lesvos and Front Lex is of great importance for as Front Lex notes:

“EU migration policy constitutes a flagrant breach of all the international and European law frameworks regulating migration and borders: refugee, human rights, maritime and criminal law. For the first time since WWII, European institutions, governments and officials are committing countless crimes against humanity. These atrocious crimes are targeting the most vulnerable population on earth: civilians in need of international protection. Front-Lex reinstates the Law at Europe’s borders by holding the EU, its Member States and their officials responsible.

Through legal actions and public trials, we will seek to terminate EU migration policy, provide remedy for its victims, and hold the culprits to account.“ (See this)

They need our support. The stakes could not be higher, both for the refugees and indeed for us all:

We do expect Frontex to comply with its own regulations, the [EU treaties] and European and international human rights and criminal law. In case they won’t we will expect the competent courts to force them to do so. In case they won’t, well, this would be a sad day for the rule of law and mean the EU dropped its liberal ethos altogether.”

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This past Wednesday, at a very important meeting with the FSB board, President Putin laid it all out in stark terms:

We are up against the so-called policy of containing Russia. This is not about competition, which is a natural thing for international relations. This is about a consistent and quite aggressive policy aimed at disrupting our development, slowing it down, creating problems along the outer perimeter, triggering domestic instability, undermining the values that unite Russian society, and ultimately to weaken Russia and put it under external control, just the way we are witnessing it transpire in some countries in the post-Soviet space. 

Not without a touch of wickedness, Putin added this was no exaggeration: “In fact, you don’t need to be convinced of this as you yourselves know it perfectly well, perhaps even better than anybody else.”

The Kremlin is very much aware “containment” of Russia focuses on its perimeter: Ukraine, Georgia and Central Asia. And the ultimate target remains regime change. 

Putin’s remarks may also be interpreted as an indirect answer to a section of President Biden’s speech at the Munich Security Conference ( Here is an excellent analysis, in Russian). 

According to Biden’s scriptwriters,   

Putin seeks to weaken the European project and the NATO alliance because it is much easier for the Kremlin to intimidate individual countries than to negotiate with the united transatlantic community (…) The Russian authorities want others to think that our system is just as corrupt or even more corrupt.

A clumsy, direct personal attack against the head of state of a major nuclear power does not exactly qualify as sophisticated diplomacy. At least it glaringly shows how trust between Washington and Moscow is now reduced to less than zero. As much as Biden’s Deep State handlers refuse to see Putin as a worthy negotiating partner, the Kremlin and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have already dismissed Washington as “non-agreement capable”.  

Once again, this is all about sovereignty. The “unfriendly attitude towards Russia”, as Putin defined it, extends to “other independent, sovereign centers of global development.” Read it as mainly China and Iran. All these three sovereign states happen to be categorized as top “threats” by the US National Security Strategy. 

Yet Russia is the real nightmare for the Exceptionalists: Orthodox Christian, thus appealing to swathes of the West; consolidated as major Eurasian power; a military, hypersonic superpower; and boasting unrivalled diplomatic skills, appreciated all across the Global South.  

In contrast, there’s not much left for the Deep State except endlessly demonizing both Russia and China to justify a Western military build-up, the “logic” inbuilt in a new strategic concept named  NATO 2030: United for a New Era.  

The experts behind the concept hailed it as an “implicit” response to French President Emmanuel Macron declaring NATO “brain dead”. 

Well, at least the concept proves Macron was right.  

Those barbarians from the East 

Crucial questions about sovereignty and Russian identity have been a recurrent theme in Moscow these past few weeks. And that brings us to February 17, when Putin met with Duma political leaders, from the Liberal Democratic Party’s Vladimir Zhirinovsky – enjoying a popularity surge – and the Communist Party’s Gennady Zyuganov to United Russia’s Sergei Mironov, as well as State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin.  

Putin stressed the “multi-ethnic and multi-religious” character of Russia, now in “a different environment that is free of ideology”:  

“It is important for all ethnic groups, even the smallest ones, to know that this is their Motherland with no other for them, that they are protected here and are prepared to lay down their lives in order to protect this country. This is in the interests of us all, regardless of ethnicity, including the Russian people.” 

Yet Putin’s most extraordinary remark had to do with Ancient Russian history: 

Barbarians came from the East and destroyed the Christian Orthodox empire. But before the barbarians from the East, as you well know, the crusaders came from the West and weakened this Orthodox Christian empire, and only then were the last blows dealt, and it was conquered. This is what happened…we must remember these historical events and never forget them.

Well, this could be enough material to generate a 1,000-page treatise. As it stands, let’s try at least to – concisely – unpackage it.  

The Great Eurasian Steppe – one of the largest geographical formations on the planet – stretches from the lower Danube all the way to the Yellow River. The running joke across Eurasia is that “Keep Walking” can be performed back to back. For most of recorded history this has been Nomad Central: tribe upon tribe raiding at the margins, or sometimes at the hubs of the Heartland: China, Iran, the  Mediterranean.  

The Scythians (see, for instance, the magisterial The Scythians: Nomad Warriors of the Steppe, by Barry Cunliffe) arrived at the Pontic steppe from beyond the Volga. After the Scythians, it was the turn of the Sarmatians to show up in South Russia. 

From the 4^th century onwards, Nomad Eurasia was a vortex of marauding tribes, featuring, among others, the Huns in the 4^th and 5^th centuries, the Khazars in the 7^th century, the Kumans in the 11^th century, all the way to the Mongol avalanche in the 13^th century.  

The plot line always pitted nomads against peasants. Nomads ruled – and exacted tribute. G. Vernadsky, in his invaluable Ancient Russia, shows how “the Scythian Empire may be described sociologically as a domination of the nomadic horde over neighboring tribes of agriculturists”.  

As part of my multi-pronged research on nomad empires for a future volume, I call them Badass Barbarians on Horseback. The stars of the show include, in Europe, in chronological order, Cimmerians, Scythians, Sarmatians, Huns, Khazars, Hungarians, Peshenegs, Seljuks, Mongols and their Tatar descendants; and in Asia, Hu, Xiongnu, Hephtalites, Turks, Uighurs, Tibetans, Kirghiz, Khitan, Mongols, Turks (again), Uzbeks and Manchu.    

Arguably, since the hegemonic Scythian era (the first protagonists of the Silk Road), most of the peasants in southern and central Russia were Slav. But there were major differences. The Slavs west of Kiev were under the influence of Germania and Rome. East of Kiev, they were influenced by Persian civilization. 

It’s always important to remember that the Vikings were still nomads when they became rulers in Slav lands. Their civilization in fact prevailed over sedentary peasants – even as they absorbed many of their customs.   

Interestingly enough, the gap between steppe nomads and agriculture in proto-Russia was not as steep as between intensive agriculture in China and the interlocked steppe economy in Mongolia. 

(For an engaging Marxist interpretation of nomadism, see A.N. Khazanov’s Nomads and the Outside World).    

The sheltering sky  

What about power? For Turk and Mongol nomads, who came centuries after the Scythians, power emanated from the sky. The Khan ruled by authority of the “Eternal Sky” – as we all see when we delve into the adventures of Genghis and Kublai. By implication, as there is only one sky, the Khan would have to exert universal power. Welcome to the idea of Universal Empire. 

In Persia, things were slightly more complex. The Persian Empire   was all about Sun worship: that became the conceptual basis for the divine right of the King of Kings. The implications were immense, as the King now became sacred. This model influenced Byzantium – which after all was always interacting with Persia. 

Christianity made the Kingdom of Heaven more important than ruling over the temporal domain. Still, the idea of Universal Empire persisted, incarnated in the concept of Pantocrator: it was the Christ who ultimately ruled, and his deputy on earth was the Emperor. But Byzantium remained a very special case: the Emperor could never be an equal to God. After all, he was human. 

Putin is certainly very much aware that the Russian case is extremely complex. Russia essentially is on the margins of three civilizations. It’s part of Europe – reasons including everything from the ethnic origin of Slavs to achievements in history, music and literature. 

Russia is also part of Byzantium from a religious and artistic angle (but not part of the subsequent Ottoman empire, with which it was in military competition). And Russia was influenced by Islam coming from Persia.

Then there’s the crucial nomad influence. A serious case can be made that they have been scholarly neglected. The Mongol rule for a century and a half of course is part of the official historiography – but perhaps not given its due importance. And the nomads in southern and central Russia two millennia ago were never properly acknowledged. 

So Putin may have hit a nerve. What he said points to the idealization of a later period of Russian history from the late 9^th to early 13^th century: Kievan Rus. In Russia, 19^th century Romanticism and 20^th century nationalism actively built an idealized national identity. 

The interpretation of Kievan Rus poses tremendous problems – that’s something I eagerly discussed in St. Petersburg a few years ago. There are rare literary sources – and they concentrate mostly on the 12^th century afterwards. The earlier sources are foreigners, mostly Persians and Arabs.  

Russian conversion to Christianity and its concomitant superb architecture have been interpreted as evidence of a high cultural standard. In a nutshell, scholars ended up using Western Europe as the model for the reconstruction of Kievan Rus civilization. 

It was never so simple. A good example is the discrepancy between Novgorod and Kiev. Novgorod was closer to the Baltic than the Black Sea, and had closer interaction with Scandinavia and the Hanseatic towns. Compare it to Kiev, which was closer to steppe nomads and  Byzantium – not to mention Islam. 

Kievan Rus was a fascinating crossover. Nomadic tribal traditions – on administration, taxes, the justice system – were prevalent. But on religion, they imitated Byzantium. It’s also relevant that until the end of the 12^th century, assorted steppe nomads were a constant “threat” to southeast Kievan Rus. 

So as much as Byzantium – and later on even the Ottoman Empire –  supplied models for Russian institutions, the fact is the nomads, starting with the Scythians, influenced the economy, the social system and most of all, the military approach.     

Watch the Khan  

Sima Qian, the master Chinese historian, has shown how the Khan had two “kings”, who each had two generals, and thus in succession, all the way to commanders of a hundred, a thousand and ten thousand men. This is essentially the same system used for a millennia and a half by nomads, from the Scythians to the Mongols, all the way to Tamerlane’s army at the end of the 14^th century.    

The Mongol invasions – 1221 and then 1239-1243 – were indeed the major game-changer. As master analyst Sergei Karaganov told me in his office in late 2018, they influenced Russian society for centuries afterwards. 

For over 200 years Russian princes had to visit the Mongol headquarters in the Volga to pay tribute. One scholarly strand has qualified it as “barbarization”; that seems to be Putin’s view. According to it, the incorporation of Mongol values may have “reversed” Russian society to what it was before the first drive to adopt Christianity.    

The inescapable conclusion is that when Muscovy emerged in the late 15^th century as the dominant power in Russia, it was essentially the successor of the Mongols. 

And because of that the peasantry – the sedentary population – were not touched by “civilization” (time to re-read Tolstoy?) Nomad Power and values, as strong as they were, survived Mongol rule for centuries. 

Well, if a moral can be derived from our short parable, it’s not exactly a good idea for “civilized” NATO to pick a fight with the – lateral –  heirs of the Great Khan.

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This article was originally published on Asia Times.

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

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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At least 20 Israeli arms dealers have been arrested by Israel’s secret police over several months, in what is now being revealed as one of Israel’s biggest arms-industry scandals in history. 

The story is under a gag-order in Israel, and only a few scant facts have been printed by Israeli newspapers. Even the destination country for the arms remains unnamed.

Even so, there have been enough details coming out for the Israeli public to pick up the pieces and foreign platforms to publish what everyone already knew: suicide drones appear to have been developed in Israel to be sold to China.

Richard Silverstein, a Middle East Eye contributor, was one of the first to name Beijing in his blog, in a post published on 11 February. He noted that this was not the country’s first scandal involving the sale of attack drones, and it came as no surprise considering the lack of oversight by the Israeli defence ministry.

“There have been numerous similar problematic sales to China in the past, many of which have angered the US. Israel plays a dangerous game of both cultivating trade with China while trying to maintain the close relationship with the US,” Silverstein told MEE.

“In this case, the aerospace engineer who coordinated the ring of military technology thieves may have been acting for his own enrichment, but he also created a potentially damaging scandal just as the US changes administrations, welcoming a president who is far more reluctant to look the other way regarding Israel stepping over the line than his predecessor.”

Antony Loewenstein, an independent journalist, filmmaker and author, said that the recent scandal is just the latest example of Israel’s defence sector going rogue.

“Israel has a largely unregulated defence industry, allowing the Israeli government and its private companies to sell weapons, surveillance equipment and hi-tech to some of the most despotic regimes in the world from Uganda to the Philippines,” he told MEE.

“It’s time for the Israeli state to be held accountable for this decades-long practice.”

Despite the lack of regulations on the Israeli arms industry, this time Israel’s secret police (ISA) conducted an investigation and stopped the arms-dealing ring, indicating that the diplomatic cost of the deal in terms of the relationship with Washington would be too heavy to bear.

The sale marks the second time that China has purchased “loitering” munitions from Israeli manufacturers. The first time was in 1998.

These weapons, nicknamed “suicide drones,” have become a trademark of two Israeli arms companies: Israeli Aerospace Industries (IAI) and Aeronautics Ltd, which was bought by Rafael.

Suicide drones, a hybrid between a drone and a missile, hover in the air for hours before the operator directs them to explode on a target. They are expensive, carry less firepower than artillery, and are as indiscriminate and inaccurate as other drones, so what is their strategic value?

Terror factor

Newcastle University scholar Jamie Allinson pointed to the psychological value of suicide drones to commanders of powerful military forces who covet the only weapon that they do not have in their arsenal: the suicide bomber.

Human soldiers are reluctant to perform suicide missions, but suicide drones can take their place.

The deciding factor is terror: just as populations are terrorised by the thought that a stranger may turn out to be a suicide bomber and kill without warning, so can they be terrorised by a suicide drone that can drop from the sky without warning.

Israeli-made suicide drones were used extensively by Azerbaijan in its recent conflict with Armenia over the disputed area of Nagorno-Karabakh.

By turning loitering munitions into an Israeli trademark weapon, although other countries produce them as well, Israeli arms companies have capitalised on the assumption that Israelis are familiar with suicide bombings.

While it is unlikely that Chinese generals suffer from suicide-bomber envy, China could however gain valuable intelligence from these drones, which are being increasingly employed by Nato forces.

A new database on Israeli exports launched by the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organisation, lists three arms-export deals between Israel and China between 1998 and 2008: they involved missiles, loitering munitions and a satellite for the Beijing Olympics.

“The Israeli military export law from 2007 does not include human rights-related monitoring, consideration and restrictions because it was not legislated with that in mind,” researcher and anti-militarist activist Sahar Vardi told Middle East Eye.

“It was legislated for one reason only: to allow the state, and its foreign affairs interests, to restrict sales in situations in which it is not in Israel’s political interest.”

Vardi said that this policy meant that arms sales to countries like Myanmar, which has committed ethnic cleansing against Rohingya people, have been allowed to take place, which she describes as not surprising.

“Israel tests, develops, and more importantly markets its weapons as ‘battle proven’ – that ‘battlefield’ is Palestinian cities and villages under Israeli occupation.”

According to the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronot, the value of the loitering munitions illegally sold to China was a few tens of millions of dollars.

Under $1m was confiscated from the account of the ringleader, indicating that the payment to the arms dealers was meagre.

Why would over 20 Israeli arms dealers take such a tremendous risk for such a small payoff?

Conditional US aid

Considering the long-term decline in Israeli defence spending; the 2015 urgent appeal of Israeli arms companies to the government warning of a crisis in arms sales; the Memorandum of Understanding signed by then-president Barack Obama in 2016 revoking the special privilege of Israeli arms companies to receive a piece of US military aid; and the new political movement by ex-generals aimed at ousting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he faces corruption charges, a picture emerges that the Israeli security elite has been losing its hegemonic position in the Israeli economy.

This deep crisis of the Israeli security elite offers an explanation as to why these arms dealers chose to ignore the risks and sell suicide drones to China.

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For the first time in history, China overtook the US in 2020 as the Euro Area’s (EA) top trading partner.

According to the research data analyzed and published by Comprar Acciones, imports from China to the EA increased by 5.6% while exports surged by 2.2% during the year. The same period saw a drop of 13.2% in EA imports from the US as well as an 8.2% decline in exports.

Following the pandemic-related slowdown, vaccine approvals raised hope of an economic turnaround toward the end of the year. But for many European nations, recovery was hampered by the second wave of Covid-19 cases. These prompted strict social restrictions for a second time.

During the period between January and December 2020, the Euro area exported goods worth €2.13 trillion to the rest of the world. Compared to the previous year, that marked a 9.2% decline. Imports similarly fell by 10.8% from 2019 to €1.89 trillion, while Intra-Euro area trade fell by 8.9%.

However, based on improvements in trade, the region seems to be on the path to recovery. The Euro area as a whole exported goods worth €190.7 billion in December 2020, up by 2.3% YoY. It was the first increase on record during the year since February 2020.

Imports from the rest of the world during the month totaled €161.5 billion, marking a 1.3% decline from December 2019. Intra-euro area trade, on the other hand, rose by 0.9% in the same period to €148.7 billion.

China’s Economy to Grow by 8.1% in 2021

The reason behind China’s international trade performance is that it is the only region in the world that is going through a V-shaped recovery. Consequently, it is closer to pre-pandemic performance than the rest of the world.

China is projected to post the second highest GDP growth in 2021. According to IMF projections, it is set to post an 8.1% growth during the year, slowing down to 5.6% in 2022. Its growth rate in 2020 was 2.3%.

India is expected to lead with an 11.5% growth rate, following an 8% decline in 2020. In 2022, the growth will slow down to 6.8%.  SP Global Ratings projects a 10% growth rate for India’s fiscal 2022, signaling a recovery to pre-pandemic levels. The period will run from April 2021 to the end of March 2022. For fiscal 2021, it estimates a decline of 7.7% for South Asia’s largest economy.

In the Euro area, Spain, which had the largest contraction in 2020 is expected to lead the recovery. Its GDP fell by 11.1% during the year and is projected to grow by 5.9% in 2021 and 4.7% in 2022.

The UK is forecast to grow by 4.5% in 2021, increasing to 5% in 2022. Its contraction in 2020 was the largest on record since the Great Frost of 1709. It had the second largest decline in the Euro area plummeting by 10%. The decline was higher than the 8% that Refinitiv analysts expected for the year. It was more than twice the fall recorded in 2009 following the global financial crisis and slightly worse than the 9.7% decline posted in 1921.

According to its Office for National Statistics, the GDP showed a slight recovery in Q4 2020, growing by 1%. This was slightly higher than Refinitiv’s estimated 0.5%.

China-US GDP Gap Narrowed to $6.2 Trillion in 2020 from $7.1 Trillion in 2019

The US economy contracted by 3.4% in 2020 according to the IMF and is projected to grow by 5.1% in 2021 and 2.5% in 2022. According to the US government’s preliminary reports though, the decline was slightly lower at 2.3% to $20.93 trillion.

These figures denote a significant divergence between the US decline and the growth of China’s GDP. Consequently, Nomura economists forecast that China will overtake the US as the world’s largest economy sooner than expected. China’s 2020 GDP was $14.7 trillion (101.6 trillion yuan).

As such, China fell behind the US by $6.2 trillion in 2020, compared to $7.1 trillion in 2019. Based on Nomura’s estimates, China will take the place of the US as the top economy globally by 2028. In case the Chinese currency strengthens to 6 yuan per dollar, it could happen by 2026.

JP Morgan analysts forecast that it could take China eight to 10 years to catch up with the US. On the other hand, China Renaissance projects that due to the impact of the pandemic, China will overtake the US three to five years sooner than previously estimated.

However, the real challenge would be for China to overtake the US in terms of GDP per capita. While China’s per capita GDP was $11,000 in 2020, the US had more than five times the figure, at $63,200.

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Nica is a BA Political Science graduate, startup founder and financial expert. She has an entrepreneurial spirit and started several startups from a young age, eventually becoming fascinated with stocks, cryptocurrencies and the blockchain economy. She specializes in financial tech and her expertise is in writing detailed tutorials and guides on how to invest in stocks and cryptocurrencies.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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At a time in my life when I barely knew drones existed, a young Lebanese mother mourning the death of her six-year-old daughter, Zainab, helped me understand how monitoring by drones terrified her and her neighbors.

It was the summer of 2006, during a war referred to as the Israeli-Hezbollah war.

Kathy Kelly in Beirut, Lebanon, during the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah war. [Source: Farah Mokhtarazadei]

On July 30^th, around 1:00 a.m., Israeli warplanes fired missiles at buildings in Qana, Lebanon, a small village in southern Lebanon. One missile, a bunker buster supplied by the U.S. corporation Raytheon, caused a three-story building to collapse, killing an extended family of 27 people. Fifteen of them were children.

[Source: google.com]

Two weeks later, with a team of international observers, I visited Qana because of reports of a massacre there.

Driving toward the village, we saw men preparing cement structures for burials.

We entered the village on foot and saw men arranging white plastic chairs for guests who came to mourn with family members.

Four women sitting quietly in an outdoor patio invited Farah Mokhtarazadei and me to join them.

Each time a neighboring woman arrived, the women would stand and embrace one another. They had borne their pain for 18 days, since the bombs slammed into homes in their village. The mass funeral had been delayed until families could safely gather for burials.

One mother had suffered injuries. Under her veil, she wore a medical hood, and a thick brace encircled her neck.

She stiffly shifted her tall, slender body, unable to point across the street to what was once a building where frightened children huddled together for shelter during the bombing. One of those children was her six-year-old daughter, Zainab.

She winced as she tried to gesture upward. “Didn’t they know?” she asked. “Didn’t they see?”

Later, I realized she was referring to surveillance drones, overhead, which she was sure must have filmed children running back and forth between their homes and this building. Umm Zainab said we must be able to see how close the two homes were. Yes, we could see. We listened to the drone of an unmanned surveillance plane criss-crossing the skies above. Couldn’t they see?

Umm Zainab asked one of the children to bring her a stack of newspapers. One front-page photo showed Zainab held aloft, lifeless, by a strong, helmeted relief worker who seemed to be shouting in agony. Another photo showed Zainab lying next to two-year-old Zahr’a.

The force of the explosion apparently damaged the internal organs of the little girls, as they slept. Their bodies were not mutilated.

Then Umm Zainab placed in my hands a framed photo of Zainab, a curly headed little girl with huge dark eyes posing seriously for the camera. One could only imagine her smile. “Who are the ‘terrorists’?” Umm Zayneb whispered, slowly reaching over to point at Zainab’s photo. “Is she the ‘terrorist’?”

Umm Zainab and her neighbors endured the sheer terror of being monitored, constantly, by those evidently willing and certainly able to kill their children.

In Beirut, Lebanon, during the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah war, Farah Mokhtarazadei, Kathy Kelly, and Michael Birmingham visit a site which was bombed by the Israeli Defense Forces. [Source: Ramzi Kysia]

Khaisor, Pakistan

I recall hearing an anguished account, in 2009, from a Pakistani man whose village, Khaisor, was struck by drones.

There, village elders, following their custom, had welcomed strangers who asked for a meal. U.S. military drone surveillance was presumably tracking the strangers. The home where the meal was served may have been deemed a Taliban stronghold.

At 4:00 a.m. the following morning, the U.S. bombed the home, killing 14 women and children and two elders.

[Source: infowars.com]

I asked our guest if he could ever imagine people in his village being willing to converse with ordinary U.S. people about possibilities for peace. He looked at me as though I were a bit off my rocker. “Who would ever be so crazy,” he asked, “as to not want peace? We would only ask you to leave your weapons outside.”

Leave the weapons outside. Leave them out of the toolkit. I think this advice can help persuade people, worldwide, to endorse a total ban on development, storage, sale, and use of weaponized and surveillance drones.

The proliferation of weaponized drones threatens people throughout the world, making it easier than ever for militaries to wage war. See the long list of hundreds of drone attacks in Pakistan alone.

Drone technology makes assassination physically safer for the perpetrator, thus encouraging nation-states to use assassination as a basic element of foreign policy.

Not only countries but also insurgent groups and paramilitaries continually acquire and use drones, raising possibilities for retaliation, blowback and mistrust.

Clearly, assassination and killing on suspicion violate the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Whoever gives the order becomes the judge, jury and executioner, unchecked by due process.

The targeted person or group never has an opportunity to appear before a court of law.

Between 2010 and 2019, I visited the Afghan Peace Volunteers (APVs) in Kabul several times a year, making 30 trips in all.

Four blimps steadily hovered over Kabul, equipped with surveillance cameras to constantly film people below. Unseen but likewise functioning as “eyes in the skies” were surveillance and weaponized drones.

These machines acquired hundreds of miles of video footage which was analyzed by teams of U.S. military and intelligence personnel, ostensibly to establish patterns of life in Afghanistan.

I believe far more valuable information is regularly gathered by the APVs who hike up steep mountainsides, along icy paths, during harsh winter months to visit widows and orphans living in hovels, lacking food and clean water.

They sit with the women, accepting tea and the warmth of utterly simple hospitality, while asking basic survey questions: How many times each week does this family eat beans? What is the source for your water? What is your rent? Who earns an income for this family?

Answers are recorded in notepads, and if the last question elicits a response indicating the main income earner is under 12 years of age, that family will likely be invited to participate in APV projects helping families to survive.

Afghan peace volunteers. [Source: charterforcompassion.org]

The APVs have enabled widows to earn a living wage by manufacturing heavy blankets which are then distributed free of charge at refugee camps in Kabul. They have also developed programs for “street kids,” helping them become literate and rely on a caring community.

An estimated 600,000 children hawk goods like tissues and cigarettes on the streets of Kabul to earn money for their displaced families who have fled to refugee camps.

I remember seeing my young friend, Habib, at work in a Kabul street. In one hand, he carried a scale, his other hand holding the hand of his younger brother. He earned a meager wage by placing the scale on the ground so that people could weigh themselves.

He and his brother would then return to their home which consisted of a piece of plastic held up by four poles. For warmth, they relied on blankets issued by the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees).

The young APV surveys actually do help establish patterns of information about daily life in Kabul, and the information truthfully pertains to life and death matters, as well as imminent needs.

A recent assessment of Afghanistan’s crisis in terms of food insecurity notes that 13 million people are projected to face a “Crisis” or higher levels of food insecurity by March 2021. More than 40% of Afghanistan’s children are acutely malnourished. Covid-19 impacts, high food prices, reduced income and ongoing conflict are key drivers of food insecurity.

Drones criss-crossing the skies and hunting for high-value targets create a distraction from actual crises afflicting people in Afghanistan. Instead of suggesting ways to alleviate suffering, U.S. drone surveillance potentially sets the stage for criminal assassination. What’s more, people learn very little about the consequences of these attacks.

Consider, for example, the plight of Afghan laborers, in September 2019, who were hired to collect pine nuts. Their employer had already notified provincial authorities, by letter, that migrant laborers would encamp outside his farm.

On September 17, 2019, exhausted from their day’s work, about 150 migrant laborers set up an overnight camp. In the early hours of the following morning, a U.S. drone attacked, killing at least 32 people. More than 40 others were wounded. The U.S. military claims ISIS fighters were hiding among those who were killed.

There are no reports to help us know the names and ages of those who were killed or to learn what help was available for the wounded. How many were children?

In a remote, rural area of eastern Afghanistan, what are the odds of maimed and wounded survivors being offered X-rays, surgery, or medication?

As part of a broader effort to sell more weapons overseas, the Trump administration, in July 2020, relaxed rules regarding export of aerial drones to U.S. allies.

This was a change long sought by drone manufacturers such as General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, maker of the MQ-9 Reaper.

Under President Trump, the U.S.’s easing of restrictions on aerial strikes led to an increase of attacks across the Middle East, Afghanistan and neighboring countries.

For example, according to Neta Crawford’s research for the Cost of War Project, U.S. and allied air strikes in Afghanistan killed 700 civilians in 2019—the largest annual casualty count since the beginning of the war in Afghanistan over 19 years ago.

“Funeral of Afghanistan’s latest drone strike victims in Nangarhar province,” journalist Emran Feroz wrote on Twitter. “Like many others, they will remain nameless & invisible.” (Photo: @Emran_Feroz/Twitter)

By August 2019, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism documented 4,251 aerial strikes in Afghanistan for that year alone, saying this was more than double the total in all of 2018 and noting that most aerial strikes in Afghanistan came from drones.

Drone U.S. Strikes in Afghanistan

Total U.S. Drone Strikes in Afghanistan. (January 2004 to February 2020) [Source: thebureauinvestigates.com]

Biden has never publicly criticized President Obama’s legacy of expanding the use of drones, and his pick for top spy chief, Avril Haines, played a central role in Obama’s secretive drone war.

Former Deputy National Security Advisor Avril Haines (center, standing) jokes with then-President Barack Obama and his National Security Adviser, Susan Rice (L), and Homeland Security Adviser Lisa Monaco in the White House on December 5, 2015.(Photo: Pete Souza/White House) 

Writing for The Intercept, Elise Swain notes that Biden has pledged to end “endless wars” and has advocated for a strategy of “counterterrorism plus,” relying on a combination of Special Forces and aerial strikes.

But if President Biden wants to end endless wars, he should completely scrap reliance on militarism and weapons to solve problems. Taking weapons out of the toolkit pushes people in powerful places to stop provoking cold wars and the proxy wars they spawn.

Banning weaponized and surveillance drones would enhance our capacity to work toward meeting human needs. Countries could free up scientists and innovators to collectively tackle the greatest terrors we face, such as the terrors related to climate catastrophes, the likelihood of ongoing pandemics, the threat of nuclear annihilation, and the suffering caused by vast income inequities.

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Kathy Kelly is a peace activist and author whose efforts to end military and economic wars have sometimes led her to live in war zones and U.S. federal prisons. She can be reached at: [email protected].

Featured image: Organized by Veterans for Peace, large demonstration at General Atomics where attack drones are made. (Poway, California) [Source: worldbeyondwar.com]

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The Washington Post has published an op-ed by Dorry Segev and Marty Makar, professors at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Because they apparently understand some medicine, Segev and Makar feel comfortable throwing out some central planning ideas.

In their essay, they call for “local lawmakers to allow ‘immunity nights’ or designated days or times for businesses to accommodate immune customers at a higher capacity.”

“It’s time we mature our guidance,” they add.

The “papers please” details:

Here’s how it could work: Businesses such as restaurants would allow those with documentation of immunity to enter with 100 percent capacity during certain times. Documentation could be in the form of an app-based boarding pass or a QR code showing proof of vaccination, antibodies against the disease or a prior positive coronavirus test — similar to arenas scanning tickets or bars checking IDs.

How damn mad can you get?

For a virus that is not a serious threat to 99.9% of the population (and appears to be reaching herd immunity), these two want to launch a documentation program?

Do they have any sense of history and understanding of how government often expands its authoritarian grip one step at a time? Do they not know that you should never create another crack in the wall by which government authoritarian measures can be expanded, especially when it comes to tracking and “papers please”?

Have Segev and Makar ever heard of freedom where businesses can each choose their own guidelines, especially for a virus that is not a serious threat to 99.9% of the population?

Remarkably, their essay discusses all kinds of objections to their plan but never goes near the foundations. Not once is it discussed what is wrong with the argument raised by those who point to the fact that the low risk of the virus causing a serious consequence means no special measures are required. They don’t discuss the unknown long-term effects of the vaccine, nor do they address the objections to the suffocation of basic freedoms that they support via their authoritarian government tracking plan. Or have they not even thought of these objections?

My view of “follow the science” takes its lead from Richard Feynman who wrote, “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.”

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The mainstream media have inaccurately reported that Pfizer’s and Moderna’s new COVID-19 vaccine trials found no potential risk of Bell’s palsy, a condition that causes the faces of patients to be paralyzed and droop on one side. 

The “observed incidence of Bell’s palsy in the vaccine arms is between three to five times and seven times higher than would be expected in the general population,” researchers from the Precision Vaccines Program in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Boston Children’s Hospital in Boston said in a paper published late February in The Lancet.

“Combining data from both trials, among nearly 40,000 vaccine arm participants, there were seven Bell’s palsy cases compared with one Bell’s palsy case among placebo arm participants,” wrote Harvard Medical School infectious disease and pediatric specialists Al Ozonoff, Etsuro Nanishi, and Ofer Levy.

The researchers looked at publicly available data from the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccine trials that they said “suggested an imbalance in the incidence of Bell’s palsy following vaccination compared with the placebo arm of each trial.”

Comparing the trial data to that of the general population in detail, they reported that “this finding signals a potential safety phenomenon and suggests inaccurate reporting of basic epidemiological context to the public.”

Bell’s palsy is a condition often mistaken for a stroke because many of the symptoms are similar, but it is not as serious. The condition results from dysfunction of a cranial nerve that directs the muscles on one side of the face, including those that control eye blinking and smiling, according to National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

Most symptoms, including pain, distorted facial features, watery eyes, and inability to close one eye or speak, drink or eat normally, will improve within a few weeks and a complete recovery is usually anticipated within six months.

Symptoms of Bells palsy. Pacific Neuroscience Institute

In some cases, people have lingering effects, however, and others may be burdened with symptoms for life. Former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien suffered Bell’s palsy as a child and was permanently affected.

Mainstream media reports have dismissed the higher incidence of Bell’s palsy in the trials as comparable with the normal rate of the condition.

In December, the CBC interviewed Pfizer Canada president Cole Pinnow, who said,

“I can appreciate the concern, but I’m going to defer to scientific experts who look at the data in totality. From what I understand, they say that that incidence is on par with the general population and therefore isn’t considered to be statistically significant.”

The Boston researchers say that “this reporting is based on a misconception, driven by a subtle distinction between rates and proportions, that has persisted in the lay media.”

Since the trial participants were followed only for a median of two months, the incidence was significantly higher than the estimated incidence rate of Bell’s palsy in the general population, which ranges from 15 to 30 cases per 100 000 person-years.

The cause of most cases of Bell’s palsy is unknown, although it has been linked in previous medical reports to infections and various vaccines, including the influenza vaccine and the meningococcal vaccine when given in tandem with other vaccines.

A Swiss intranasal influenza vaccination was discontinued in 2001 after 46 cases of Bell’s palsy were reported and a subsequent study estimated conservatively that the relative risk of Bell’s palsy was 19 times the risk in the controls, corresponding to 13 excess cases per 10,000 vaccinated individuals within 1 to 91 days after vaccination.

“Overall, both passive and active surveillance systems will be important to ensure vaccine safety,” The Lancet paper researchers write. “While we call for robust surveillance for potential mRNA vaccine-associated Bell’s palsy, we also note that Bell’s palsy usually self-resolves and we feel the available coronavirus mRNA vaccines offer a substantial net benefit to public health.”

As of February 26, the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention included 177 reports of patients who developed symptoms that included Bell’s Palsy after COVID-19 vaccinations. While the VAERS data does not imply that the vaccine is the cause of the condition in the reported cases, it is a reportable condition of concern. A sampling of VAERS reports include:

A 38-year-old Iowa woman who received the first dose of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine on December 29, 2020. “Patient’s adverse reactions started day of vaccination with right arm pain up to right ear as well as complete tongue numbness,” the VAERS report states. By January 1, the patient had “increased Bell’s Palsy symptoms including: inability to raise left eyebrow, inability to close left eye in its entirety, teeth being numb on left side, and numbness and tingling in left foot and left hand (from palm to fingers).” The patient was hospitalized for two days and her symptoms had improved but had not fully resolved at the time of the report on January 4.

A 35-year-old Minnesota physician reported to VAERS that she had received a second dose of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine on January 15 and on the same day started to experience pain in the left side of her face which intensified over the following days and spread to her ear and jaw. She also experienced a tingling sensation in the left side of her forehead and facial weakness and a Bell’s palsy diagnosis was confirmed on the fourth day after the shot.

A 51-year-old New York woman received a second dose of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine on January 29 and began to experience a “headache (and) sharp right side pain in my neck, jaw, and ear” the same day. The following day she woke up and found that the right side of her face was numb, and her right eye would not blink. She underwent a CT scan and was hospitalized and diagnosed with Bell’s palsy before being discharged on January 31 with instructions to consult a neurologist, immunologist, ophthalmologist, and her primary care physician.

A case report published February 21 in the Journal of Neurology describes a previously healthy 37-year-old male with no other likely triggers who developed Bell’s palsy within a few days of vaccination with Pfizer/BioNTech’s mRNA COVID-19 vaccine.

As well, a YouTube video posted on December 26 features a tearful woman who says she is a nurse from Nashville, Tennessee who developed Bell’s palsy three days after a COVID vaccination shot.

A December 10 Food and Drug Administration (FDA) briefing document from the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee Meeting on Pfizer’s COVID vaccine states that the “observed frequency of reported Bell’s palsy in the vaccine group is consistent with the expected background rate in the general population, and there is no clear basis upon which to conclude a causal relationship at this time, but FDA will recommend surveillance for cases of Bell’s palsy with deployment of the vaccine into larger populations.”

The statement was removed from the subsequent FDA briefing notes on Moderna’s vaccine, according to The Lancet commentary.

Requests to Pfizer and Moderna’s media offices on Friday to respond to the commentary in The Lancet were not immediately answered.

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The CDC has done another data dump today into the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a U.S. Government funded database that tracks injuries and deaths caused by vaccines.

The data goes through February 18, 2021, with 19,907 recorded adverse events, including 1,095 deaths following injections of the experimental COVID mRNA shots by Pfizer and Moderna.

Besides the recorded 1,095 deaths, there were 4,151 visits to Emergency Room doctors, 403 permanent disabilities, and 2,298 hospitalizations.

Over 71% of the recorded deaths were over the age of 65, but there were also 158 deaths where the age was “unknown,” and it is likely that a majority of those deaths were among the elderly as well.

Several questions about this data remain unanswered. For example, why is data only released every Friday? Why can’t the public see the actual reports submitted as it comes in? Is the CDC releasing ALL of the data, or are they filtering it?

For example, earlier today we reported on the death of 28-year-old Haley Link Brinkmeyer from Indiana, which occurred in late January.

But a search for deaths in the State of Indiana reveals only 16 deaths recorded so far, and all above the age of 44. Haley’s is not included, even though the mother stated on a social media post that they suspected the vaccine, and that the coroner was investigating it as a vaccine related death.

We have reported other occasions where people injured by a COVID experimental vaccine report their injury to VAERS, but it never shows up.

The CDC also updated their Selected Adverse Events Reported after COVID-19 Vaccination page on February 25, 2021, where they are now stating that VAERS has received 1,099 reports of death following experimental COVID vaccines. They are almost back to the original number of 1,170 deaths that they reported two weeks ago.

However, there is nothing to worry about, because:

“CDC and FDA physicians review each case report of death as soon as notified and CDC requests medical records to further assess reports. A review of available clinical information including death certificates, autopsy, and medical records revealed no evidence that vaccination contributed to patient deaths.”

UK Reports

The UK Government also has a reporting system for COVID vaccine adverse reactions from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency.

Their latest report goes through February 25, 2021. They supply three reports: one from the experimental Pfizer COVID vaccine, one from the experimental AstraZeneca COVID vaccine, and one where the “vaccine brand is unspecified.”

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

• 1835 Blood disorders
• 919 Cardiac disorders including 23 deaths
• 1 Congenital disorder
• 620 Ear disorders
• 6 Endocrine disorders
• 1098 Eye disorders
• 8506 Gastrointestinal disorders including 10 deaths
• 24,313 General disorders including 107 deaths

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

• 577 Blood disorders
• 1069 Cardiac disorders including 22 deaths
• 6 Congenital disorders
• 617 Ear disorders
• 14 Endocrine disorders
• 1157 Eye disorders
• 12,776 Gastrointestinal disorders including 3 deaths
• 41,429 General disorders including 127 deaths

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

• 2 Blood disorders
• 1 Cardiac disorder including 1 death
• 8 Ear disorders
• 8 Eye disorders
• 58 Gastrointestinal disorders
• 223 General disorders including 1 death

Nothing to worry about here either, as the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency concludes:

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

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

Don’t you feel better now that the vaccines have finally arrived to save the world?

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Despite the purported 95% effectiveness of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla announced Thursday that the vaccine maker is testing a third dose of its vaccine in anticipation of annual booster shots.

In a press release, Pfizer stated its goal was to understand the effect of a booster on immunity against COVID caused by the circulating and newly emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants and to engage in ongoing discussions with the U.S Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and European Medicines Agency regarding a clinical trial to test a modified mRNA vaccine.

Pfizer director and board member Scott Gottlieb, who also served as former FDA commissioner in charge of vaccine approval, told CNBC the vaccine maker is exploring two paths to boost effectiveness of the COVID vaccine.

The first study will give 144 participants from the phase 1 clinical trial conducted last May a third lower-dosage of the current two-dose formulation. The second study involves testing a modified version of the existing vaccine designed to provide broad defense against a range of COVID mutations.

Pfizer hopes to prepare for a potential rapid adoption of the vaccine to address new variants that will allow for the development of booster vaccines within weeks. This “regulatory pathway” is already established for other infectious diseases like influenza, said the vaccine maker.

Pfizer’s CEO hopes a third dose will boost the immune response even higher or will offer protection against COVID variants.

“Every year, you need to go to get your flu vaccine,” Bourla said. “It’s going to be the same with COVID. In a year, you will have to go and get your annual shot for Covid to be protected,” Bourla told NBC News.

The Pfizer-BioNTech COVID vaccine is not yet licensed by the FDA but has obtained Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to prevent COVID-19 for use in ages 16 years and older. The emergency use of this vaccine is only authorized as long as “circumstances exist justifying the authorization of emergency use.”

The FDA has said it is willing to authorize booster shots based on small clinical trials, accepting data on how well vaccines prime the immune system rather than holding out for long-term safety and efficacy results on protecting against COVID-19.

Moderna is also bolstering its worldwide manufacturing capacity in anticipation of a sustained demand for COVID-19 boosters in the coming years. The company plans to test additional doses of their vaccine, booster shots and a new shot combined with its current vaccine as soon as regulators give the green light.

As The Defender reported last week, Bill Gates is also on record suggesting a “third shot” could be required to combat COVID.

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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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The scary red numbers are all going down. Check any newspaper or covid tracking website you want. Cases. Deaths. Hospitalisations. They’re all going down, sharply, and have been for weeks, especially in the US and UK.

So, why would that be?

Pundits across the media world have made suggestions – from vaccines to lockdowns – but there’s only one that makes any real sense.

It’s Not Vaccines

The assumption most people would make, and would be encouraged to make by the talking heads and media experts, is that the various “vaccines” have taken effect and stopped the spread of the “virus”.

Is this the case? No, no it’s not.

The decline started in mid-January, far too early for any vaccination program to have any effect. Many experts said as much:

Dr. Wafaa El-Sadr, professor of epidemiology and medicine at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, said the falling case numbers can’t be attributed to the COVID-19 vaccine, because not even a tenth of the population has been vaccinated, according to the CDC.

Further, the drop is happening simultaneously in different countries all around the world, and not every country is vaccinating at the same rate or even using the same vaccine. So no, the “vaccines” are not causing the drop.

It’s Not Lockdown Either

Another suspect is the lockdown, with blaring propaganda stating that all the various government-imposed house arrests and “distancing” measures have finally had an impact.

That’s not it either.

Sweden, famously, never locked down at all. Yet their “cases” and “Covid related deaths” have been dropping exactly in parallel with the UK:

Clearly, if countries that never locked down are also seeing declines in case numbers, the lockdown cannot be causing them.

So what is?

The WHO PCR Test Guidelines

Maybe for our answer, we should look at the date the decline started.

Observe this graph:

As you can see, the global decline in “Covid deaths” starts in mid-to-late January.

What else happened around that time?

Well, on January 13th the WHO published a memo regarding the problem of asymptomatic cases being discovered by PCR tests, and suggesting any asymptomatic positive tests be repeated.

This followed up on their previous memo, instructing labs around the world to use lower cycle thresholds (CT values) for PCR tests, as values over 35 could produce false positives.

Essentially, in two memos the WHO ensured future testing would be less likely to produce false positives and made it much harder to be labelled an “asymptomatic case”.

In short, logic would suggest we’re not in fact seeing a “decline in Covid cases” or a “decrease in Covid deaths” at all.

What we’re seeing is a decline in perfectly healthy people being labelled “covid cases” based on a false positive from an unreliable testing process. And we’re seeing fewer people dying of pneumonia, cancer or other disease have “Covid19” added to their death certificate based on testing criteria designed to inflate the pandemic.

Just as we at OffG predicted would happen the moment the memo was published.

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On March 1, 1954, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and the Department of Defense exploded a huge thermonuclear bomb on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, where they had been testing bombs since 1946. Between 1946 and 1958, the United States detonated 67 nuclear bombs in the Marshall Islands — vaporizing entire islands and exiling hundreds of people from their homes.

One peculiar legacy of the U.S. nuclear testing was the introduction of the “bikini” swimsuit, named after the first two nuclear tests on Bikini atoll. French fashion designer Louis Reard hoped his new swimsuit sensation would cause the same reaction as when people first saw the mushroom clouds of atomic bombs. Other legacies of this nuclear destruction are not so pleasant to look at. 

The designers of Castle Bravo seriously miscalculated the yield of their “device.” They predicted it would yield between five and six megatons (a megaton is equivalent to one million tons of TNT). Scientists were shocked when Castle Bravo produced an astounding 15 megaton yield, 1,000 times as powerful as the U.S. nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

This fearsome blast resulted in massive radiation contamination, in the Marshall Islands and as far away as Guam, 1,200 miles away. U.S. authorities later cleaned up contaminated soil on Enewetak Atoll, where it had detonated the bulk of its weapons tests, and where it had also conducted a dozen biological weapons tests and dumped 130 tons of irradiated soil from the Nevada testing site. It then deposited the atoll’s most lethal debris and soil into a huge dome, which locals call “the Tomb.” The dome is now at risk of collapsing from rising seas and other effects of climate change.

Marshallese Suffer Grave Health Consequences

As the nuclear testing occurred, the Marshallese were not informed of the potential dangers. A Senator of the Marshall Islands Parliament, Jeton Anjain, explained the effects of Castle Bravo, “Five hours after detonation, it began to rain radioactive fallout at Rongelap. The atoll was covered with a fine, white, powder- like substance. No one knew it was radioactive fallout. The children played in the ‘snow.’ They ate it.” 

Many Marshallese have suffered from forced relocation, burns, birth defects, and cancers. Researchers have conducted numerous studies on the health effects of nuclear tests conducted by the U.S. in the Marshall Islands. In 2005, the National Cancer Institute reported that that the risk of contracting cancer for those exposed to fallout was greater than one in three. Many adults developed cancerous thyroid nodules, two or three decades after the testing ended. In 2010, the National Cancer Institute suggested that up to 55% of all cancers in the northern atolls are a result of nuclear fallout.

Tony deBrum, the former Foreign Minister of the Marshall Islands, argued that the U.S. nuclear test victims “have been taken from us before their time,” so the U.S. could learn more about the “effects of such evil and unnecessary devices.”

“Our people have suffered the catastrophic and irreparable damage of these weapons, and we vow to fight so that no one else on earth will ever again experience these atrocities. The continued existence of nuclear weapons and the terrible risk they pose to the world threaten us all.”

– Tony deBrum

As a boy, de Brum was unavoidably a witness to several of these tests, including Castle Bravo. He and his family lived about 200 miles away, on Likiep Atoll. He was nine years old. He later described it thus: “No sound, just a flash and then a force, the shock wave . . . as if you were under a glass bowl and someone poured blood over it. Everything turned red: sky, the ocean, the fish, my grandfather’s net.

“The Sun Rose in the West”

“People in Rongelap nowadays claim they saw the sun rising from the West. I saw the sun rising from the middle of the sky. . . . We lived in thatch houses at that time, my grandfather and I had our own thatch house and every gecko and animal that lived in the thatch fell dead not more than a couple of days after. The military came in, sent boats ashore to run us through Geiger counters and other stuff; everybody in the village was required to go through that.”

The Rongelap Atoll was inundated with radioactive fallout from Castle Bravo and rendered uninhabitable. “The Marshall Islands’ close encounter with the bomb did not end with the detonations themselves,” de Brum said more than half a century later, in his 2012 Distinguished Peace Leadership Award acceptance speech. “In recent years, documents released by the United States government have uncovered even more horrific aspects of this burden borne by the Marshallese people in the name of international peace and security.”

These included the natives’ deliberately premature resettlement on contaminated islands and the cold-blooded observation of their reaction to nuclear radiation, not to mention U.S. denial and avoidance, for as long as possible, of any responsibility for what it did.

Tony deBrum Fought For Independence and Climate Justice

In 2014, Foreign Minister deBrum was the driving force behind an extraordinary initiative.  The Marshall Islands, which had gained independence in 1986, filed lawsuits, both in the International Court of Justice and U.S. federal court, against the nine nations that possess nuclear weapons, demanding that they start living up to the terms of Article VI of the 1970 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which includes these words:

“Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”

The lawsuits brought by the Marshall Islands government and the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation were dismissed on legalistic grounds, more or less amounting to “nuclear weapons are above the law.”

Mr. deBrum, who helped gain his nation’s independence from the United States in 1986 — and then helped sue the United States for allegedly breaching an international treaty on nuclear nonproliferation — died of cancer on Aug. 22, 2017 in Majuro, the capital city of his Pacific island nation. He was 72. His death was announced by Hilda C. Heine, the president of the Marshall Islands:

“He fought for our independence, he fought against the tyranny of nuclear weapons and for nuclear justice for our people, and he led the international fight against climate change,” Heine said in a statement. “The very existence of the Paris agreement owes a lot to Tony deBrum.”

 “I wonder how many in this room have actually witnessed a detonation of a nuclear weapon,” Mr. deBrum said to 191 nations in the U.N. General Assembly hall in April 2015, when he was the republic’s minister of foreign affairs. He paused for effect, then continued: “I have.” The Marshallese people “still carry a burden which no other people or nation should ever have to bear.”

Nuclear Guinea Pigs

Previously classified documents reveal that the U.S. performed dangerous experiments on some Marshallese to learn how radiation damages the human body. Over the course of four decades and 72 research trips to the islands, U.S. medical teams examined the Marshallese using X-rays and photography, and took samples of blood, urine and tissue. Some Marshallese were even injected with radioisotopes and subjected to experimental surgery. Since that time, the U.S. government has formally recognized some of the harm caused by the bombings, and it has provided minimal health care and government assistance on the Marshall Islands. But those programs aren’t available to Marshallese who have migrated to the United States.

Today, there are more than 23,000 Marshallese living in the U.S., with communities in Arkansas, Washington, Oregon and California, as well as in Hawaii. They were able to migrate because of an agreement made between the Marshall Islands and the U.S. — the Compact of Free Association. The Compact allows Marshallese to work and live freely on U.S. soil for as long as they want, but does not convey citizenship.  Because of their unique migration status, several states are denying Marshallese access to Medicaid. Marshallese communities in the U.S. remain poor and isolated, and too often face discrimination and bullying.

Marshallese Lives Matter

To say that the Marshallese have been used and abused by U.S. militarism would be a gross understatement.  The bombing of their islands and destruction of their environment and health are gross human rights violations and continuing crimes.  The men, women and children of the Marshall Islands have been treated as sub-human guinea pigs, and then discarded with little care or concern.  It is all the more outrageous that their mistreatment continues to this day – in their home islands and in the United States, where they are denied meaningful reparation or even adequate healthcare.

To make matters worse, the Marshall Islands are gradually disappearing underwater, claimed by the rising seas of global warming.  People all over the globe are also rising up to meet the challenges of climate catastrophe.  The movement to abolish nuclear weapons is also growing. The UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons went into effect on January 22, 2021.  This is a watershed moment for peace-loving people.

March 1, the date of the Castle Bravo detonation, is a national holiday in the Marshall Islands.  It is called “Nuclear Victims Remembrance Day” or just “Remembrance Day.” Some Marshallese actually call it “Bikini Day,” but not after the revealing swimwear. Those of us in the United States must remember what our government has done in our name.  We must take better care of past victims of nuclear testing.  And we must do all we can to prevent a nuclear war that would claim many millions more. Before it is allowed to destroy human civilization, we can – and we must – bring an end to nuclear weapons and war.

March 1 Events: A 24-hour Round the World virtual commemoration will take place on March 1; also Youth Fusion Elders, an intergenerational dialogue on nuclear abolition. The crew of the historic anti-nuclear sailboat, Golden Rule, a project of Veterans For Peace, has invited Marshallese leaders to sail with them in Honolulu Bay on March 1, Nuclear Victims Remembrance Day.

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Gerry Condon is a Vietnam-era veteran and war resister, a longtime antiwar activist, and a former president of Veterans For Peace. He can be reached at gerrycondon@veteransforpeace.org.

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The non-partisan Congressional Research Service maintains a list of every “notable” use of U.S. military force abroad. As of June of last year, the list ran on for 46 pages. Last night, President Joe Biden added his first entry when he ordered airstrikes on militia forces on the Iraq-Syria border. What happens next will help determine just how many more pages get added during the rest of the Biden administration. 

While details are still emerging, the basic outlines of the airstrikes appear to be that the president ordered them in retaliation for recent missile strikes on U.S. forces in Iraq, particularly the February 15 strike that killed a Filipino defense contractor and injured a U.S. servicemember in Erbil, Iraq. It’s worth noting that this was seemingly not an isolated incident, with multiple attacks having occurred off and on for some time now on various bases housing U.S. personnel throughout Iraq.

As is often the case with recent instances of U.S. military force abroad, a debate has quickly emerged on what legal authority such an attack was conducted under and if it complied with international law. The administration claims it acted in self-defense. Multiple members of Congress have weighed in, with some of Congress’s strongest war powers champions either outright rejecting or raising significant concerns about the administration’s claims.

These are all important questions, and they deserve urgent and fulsome answers. Yet even as we get to the bottom of these issues, we should not lose sight of what the entire episode says about where we find ourselves today and the strategic choices sitting on Joe Biden’s desk awaiting answers.

Browsing through those 46 pages of military force, you’ll notice something striking. The first century and a half of our nation’s history, from its founding through the end of World War II, take up less than one quarter of the entries. Moving from there to the end of the Cold War only takes another pair of pages. The journey from the start of 1991’s Operation Desert Storm to the present, though, will take you through more than 30 long pages of airstrikes, invasions, and other instances of trying to bomb our way to peace.

Making sense of that history requires us to not just debate legal questions — important and serious though they are — but to begin to reckon with the big picture, structural questions at the very core of our broken status quo of endless war.

Once again, our nation used its ultimate power without the very public and purposeful debates our founders enshrined as our most important check against war. When the framers were choosing where to put the power to declare war in the hands of their new government, they had a choice between the executive and Congress.

Living in a time of monarchs who sent their nations to war for petty grievances and personal aggrandizement, they wisely chose the latter. They wanted the government to have to debate and vote in public about whether or not we should commit ourselves to war. They wanted the public to have a chance to weigh in and say no. They wanted it to be hard to go to war. And for two centuries, that mostly worked. Yesterday’s strikes in Syria remind us, though, just how badly the current system is broken — how far we’ve come from the way it’s supposed to work.

Whatever authority was used to launch the strikes, it has been nearly 20 years since Congress debated and weighed in on our wars in the Middle East. The U.S. forces who came under attack in Erbil are serving in a mission that itself has never been explicitly authorized, which only highlights the absurd paradox of debating the legality of self defense authority in an otherwise illegal, unauthorized mission.

The fact of the matter is whatever is happening today in Iraq and Syria is a state of conflict, an endless war, existing in a perpetual cycle of attack and counterattack, retaliation and retribution, that can only be broken by choosing to walk away. There is no winning an endless war, there is only loss and suffering, not least of all for the people in Iraqi, Syria, and Iran on whose homes we are waging it.

Thankfully, there is another path forward. Six years ago, the United States, along with Germany, France, the United Kingdom, China, Russia, and Iran collectively successfully negotiated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the JCPOA or Iran nuclear deal. After decades of trying to resolve security challenges on the battlefield with little success, the JCPOA represented a historic bet on diplomacy. At its core, the JCPOA is a demonstration that a country’s diplomats could achieve what their warriors had failed to: a resolution of their differences and a mutually beneficial path forward.

It was not a comprehensive peace, few ever are. Rather, it was a step-by-step process, starting by constraining Iran’s nuclear program and eliminating the risk of nuclear proliferation, that could and should have been built upon with further progress on our countries’ numerous other challenges. Unfortunately, Donald Trump chose to walk away — despite his own administration’s recognition that the deal was working — and embark on a path of “maximum pressure.” That path brought the United States and Iran to the brink of all-out, direct war multiple times during his presidency and remains one of the key drivers of the instability and conflict so violently on display this week in Iraq and Syria.

Today, as President Biden assesses his next steps, he would do well to remember how we got here, and use this opportunity to quickly and sharply change course. He should, of course, begin by ending “maximum pressure” and rejoining the JCPOA, putting the United States and Iran firmly back on the path of diplomacy. That alone, of course will not be enough to undo the damage already done not just in the last four years but the last 30. To achieve that will require the president fulfilling another campaign promise: to truly end our endless wars in the Middle East.

That will be no small undertaking, and it will require questioning and rejecting the status quo thinking that led him to his first airstrikes. But the alternative is unthinkable. Failing to do so will not only mean Joe Biden adds even more pages of military misadventures to the 46 that came before him, he will have missed a historic chance to choose peace, diplomacy, and justice, over war.

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Featured image: President Joe Biden, joined by Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, delivers remarks during a press conference Wednesday, Feb. 10, 2021, at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)

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It is India, not Pakistan with the oldest and fastest growing nuclear program. India enjoys the leverage over Pakistan regarding fissile material estimates because it started its fissile material production more than two decades earlier than that of Pakistan. In 1972, during Multan’s conference at Nawab Sadiq Hussain Qureshi’s ‘White House,’ Bhutto made it clear that he wanted the scientists to be ready to deliver if India exploded the nuclear device. Pakistan was ready, fully knowing Indian intentions, but only decided to start its small scale-cum-indigenous fissile material production after Indian 1974 nuclear tests.

Over years, India has continuously accrued large stocks of Reactor Grade Plutonium (RGPu). Indian placement of eight of its Nuclear Power Plants under IAEA safeguards because of Indo-U.S. nuclear deal. Nevertheless, the spent fuel which was already generated by these reactors is not subject to safeguards. Hence, some of this spent fuel has already been reprocessed and directed to be used for nuclear weapons.

According to the estimates provided by independent scholars, it has been deduced that India has the intentions as well as the capacity to produce at least 356 nuclear weapons. Likewise, even when the fuel needs are met by India for its Fast Breeder Reactor which is 500MW, India is still prepared with the capacity to produce maximum number of 493 weapons. Another alarming evidence paving way to the fastest growing nuclear program is the fact that, by 2039, India will be able to acquire six FBRs. The time when these FBRs will be able to add a surplus of 28 nuclear weapons per year. As these estimates were calculated in 2016, the capacity of India to produce such weapons will have only increased, considering its operational nuclear triad. This has resulted in blind eyed uncapping of the oldest, biggest and fastest growing nuclear arsenal among non-NPT nuclear weapon states.

India is in a process to build a clandestine nuclear city in Chakkakere. One of the motivations behind this nuclear city is to acquire additional enriched uranium fuel for consumption by Indian thermonuclear weapons. According to a report, it is debated that India will be able to retain 1050 enrichment machines in its Saperative Work Units (SWU) in addition to older 700 centrifuges.

Herewith, India could attain 42000 SWUs per year. This will be more than enough to harvest Weapon Grade Uranium up to 403 pounds per year. Even when India dedicates INS Arihant with 143 pounds, it will be left with an optimal capacity to fuel approx. 22 thermonuclear weapons.

However, on the other hand, other analysts accurately challenge the aforementioned estimates of enrichment capacity through un-fuzzy math. They state that, from the Rattehalli Rare Materials Plant (RMP) and Bhabha Atomic Research Center’s (BARC) facilities, Indian enrichment capacity sums to 42300 SWUs per year. It is important to note that India needs only 5835 SWUs to 10375 SWUs for its planned nuclear submarines which are 4 to 5 in number. Startlingly, this equates to only 24 percent of India’s total capacity. The remaining 75 percent, i.e. 31925 SWUs will be enough to produce nukes. Once this secret enrichment facility is operative, it will increase Indian enrichment capacity to 100,000 SWUs per year. This was the main reason why India has not kept many of its facilities under IAEA safeguards.

The underplayed estimates of Indian nuclear weapons which discredit Indian intentions to use reactor grade plutonium for nuclear weapons coupled with blind eyed policies of the West towards Indian nuclear modernization can be a sharp coup-de-grâce to the strategic stability in the region.

These false estimates can generate a false narrative of India being a state with no intentions to be a global power (Which is untrue). It is to say that a man has a gun, but, he will never shoot at me. The international scholars need to realize that downplaying Indian nuclear weapon estimates will only lead the foreign policies of major powers astray. This will pose serious challenges for the U.S. in the future where India starts challenging the U.S. when Indian interests start to diverge.

A few western scholars equate the South Asian case to Cold War through Missile Gap Theory. According to this Missile Gap, during Cold War, there was a perception in the U.S. that the Soviet Union was developing and then increasing its nuclear superiority. This led to the U.S. garnering public support to increase defense spending to counter this threat, thereby, fueling arms race.

In contrast, Pakistan does not want to opt for an arms race in South Asia, rather, is defending its stance on the issue via restraint and responsibility. Pakistan’s development of nuclear weapons was and still is driven by regional drivers including Indian hegemonic designs.

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Ms. Anum A. Khan is a visiting Senior Research Fellow at Strategic Vision Institute (SVI), Islamabad, and a PhD Scholar at Defense and Strategic Studies Department (DSS), Quaid-e-Azam University Islamabad.

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Another meeting of European Union foreign minister’s took place this week, with one of the main topics being the new sanctions against Russia. The EU’s Chief of Diplomacy, Josep Borrell, said on Monday that “It’s clear that Russia is on a confrontational course with the European Union. In the case of Mr Navalny, there is a blunt refusal to respect their engagements, including the refusal of taking into account the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights.”

In this context, on the eve of the meeting, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis initiated contact with his colleagues, particularly Navalny’s 2018 Presidential campaign staff head, Leonid Volkov, and the head of the Russian Anti-Corruption Foundation, Ivan Zhdanov. Both this, and Borrell’s humiliation during his visit to Moscow earlier this month, as well as Russia’s refusal to comply with the ruling made on Navalny by the European Court of Human Rights, should have prompted European diplomats to support tough sanctions against the Eurasian country. These sanctions would have included a wide circle of those close to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Lithuania’s hope was for the EU to suspend the Nord Stream 2 project. As Germany opposes the suspension of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, Landsbergis even desperately suggested:

“Let us give Vladimir Putin the opportunity to hold a free election to the State Duma this autumn with the participation of the opposition. Until then, let us stop the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.”

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said that the EU would not remain silent and would impose additional sanctions on Russia, but also noted that even in the current situation, we need to think about maintaining a constructive dialogue with Russia, because without Moscow, various international conflicts cannot be resolved. Athens was even more blunt and said days before sanctions were imposed that “Greece believes that the European Union must maintain open channels of communication and dialogue with Russia because we have many common problems. Therefore, there must always be an open channel.”

For his part, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov openly stated that Moscow’s relations with the EU have hit a low point and that they are prepared to end them. The EU reacted nervously to his statement, but did not lose the determination to somehow provoke Russia. As Lavrov pointed out, it is straightforward in Europe that sanctions against Russia are the standard response now when Moscow enacts its interests.

It can also be interpretated that the EU, despite endless complaints from Lithuania and Poland, are making tokenistic sanctions against Moscow to somewhat appease anti-Russia member states without destroying the Nord Stream 2 project. In fact, there is a huge divide in the EU between states that are aggressively Russophobic and those who want positive relations with Moscow, while most member states remain indifferent.

The sanctions agreed by the EU’s foreign ministers are unlikely to make any economic impact against Russia, rendering them symbolic just to quieten the complaints emanating from Vilnius and Warsaw. Lithuania, which thought that the EU would act more harshly towards Russia, at least for now, failed once again.

It should be noted that during the EU’s ministerial meeting, they spoke with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Earlier, American President Joe Biden talked a lot about the need to fight Russia together. Therefore, it is likely that Blinken encouraged his European colleagues to take an aggressive position against Moscow. However, the result shows that the EU, at least for now, is not enacting Washington’s wishes. And in general, the EU’s conversation with Blinken concluded that they must form a joint global leadership to fight the pandemic and deal with recovery, mitigate climate change and ensure the promotion of democratic values.

Russia’s opponents in Washington and across Europe are doing everything they can to harm the EU’s political and economic relations with Moscow. Despite this, Berlin will not give up its policy of symbolic sanctions. The weak sanctions show that EU’s relationship with the U.S. is uncertain. Biden seems to have formulated his priorities in the fight for so-called democracy, but so far there are no indications that the EU intends to comply unconditionally with all of Washington’s instructions.

More importantly, Moscow appears tired of looking sensible in the face of endless public accusations made by the EU and is becoming firmer with its tone. Moscow understands that a radical curtailment of relations with the EU will only benefit its opponents, such as Lithuania and Poland. Therefore, its tougher tone is likely a warning to the EU that it should not cross red lines like the Americans want them to because there will be a response from Moscow.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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Forget Al-Qaeda, Washington has a new domestic enemy in town and they are called the White Supremacists.  But the reality is that the new enemy is basically anyone who disagrees with the US government will be considered a terrorist.  For the Democratic Party and its mainstream-media lapdogs, January 6^th, 2021 will live in infamy, in fact, there was even talk on making that day, a federal holiday.  It all began when Trump supporters who showed up in Washington D.C. to reject Joe Biden’s 2020 election results because they claimed that the elections had been stolen, but the Democrats insisted that it was not. 

Then, the unimaginable happened, the so-called White Supremacists invaded the US capital, declaring war on the treasonous congress members who were about to certify Joe Biden’s election victory.  It is widely known as ‘The storming of the capital’ which does sound like a name made for a Hollywood movie.  The Democrats say that they feared for their lives, some people were injured and even killed during the chaos.  There are many questions concerning as to who were the people behind the protests because many of the protesters believed that they were doing something right for their democracy, so it is quite possible that they were led by agent provocateurs.  So was it a domestic false-flag operation by placing agent provocateurs to blame all conservative Trump supporters who happen to be pro-2^nd amendment, law-abiding citizens?  As of now, we still don’t know for sure.

The Biden administration and the rest of the Democratic party are in-lock step with the Military-Industrial Complex and the globalist cabal who are using the January 6^th incident to further erode the basic freedoms of the US population.

We can say with certainty that the US is one false-flag operation away for the Biden administration to declare war on “right-wing” conservatives and everyone else who does not agree with their policies.

One thing to keep in mind is that if they go after one specific group of people, in due time, they will go after everyone else.  The mainstream media circus of CNN, MSNBC and a number of print media networks including The New York Times are using the term ‘White Supremacy’ to demonize certain groups of people who happen to support Trump.

They say that the White Supremacists are a major threat against anyone who shares the same values of the Democratic Party.  However, Washington’s war on terrorism did not start with the “White Supremacists” on January 6^th, it began on September 11^th,2001 with Al-Qaeda led by their mastermind, Osama Bin Laden who allegedly attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

It is known as the September 11^th Attacks, a proven false-flag operation conducted by the Bush regime and his Neocon cabal with help from their Israeli and to an extent, their Saudi counterparts.

The September 11^th attacks allowed Washington to set its sights on invading Afghanistan in early October 2001, but also on Saddam Hussein who was accused of supporting Al-Qaeda, but at the same time, it also initiated the process of targeting US citizens at home and abroad.  

On October 26^th, 2001, the Bush administration signed into law the USA Patriot Act against international and domestic terrorism. In Section 802 of the bill, it defines what can be considered domestic terrorism, but the interesting part of the document clarifies which intended acts imposed by the alleged perpetrators can be considered terrorism.

The Patriot Act states that suspected terrorists can “intimidate or coerce a civilian population”and “can influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion” or they can “affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping” as long as the acts of terrorism is within US jurisdiction.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) published an analysis on how the USA Patriot Act can be used on US citizens, ‘How the USA Patriot Act Redefines “Domestic Terrorism” says that “Section 802 does not create a new crime of domestic terrorism”  but it “does expand the type of conduct that the government can investigate when it is investigating “terrorism.”  The ACLU confirmed that “The USA PATRIOT Act expanded governmental powers to investigate terrorism, and some of these powers are applicable to domestic terrorism.”  Examples that the ACLU brings to the table involves various types of organizations that oppose US government policies:

The definition of domestic terrorism is broad enough to encompass the activities of several prominent activist campaigns and organizations. Greenpeace, Operation Rescue, Vieques Island and WTO protesters and the Environmental Liberation Front have all recently engaged in activities that could subject them to being investigated as engaging in domestic terrorism

The absurdity of the Patriot Act on how they can define who or what can fall under the domestic terrorism category mentioned by the ACLU was Vieques Island which is part of Puerto Rico where protests took place against the US Navy’s occupation and constant bombing of Vieques.  Vieques can be used as an example as to how far the US government can go under these new Domestic Terrorism laws.

To better understand what led to the decades-long protests in Puerto Rico began with the US military occupation of Vieques by the US Navy in 1938.  The US Navy had managed to occupy a large portion of the island with the forced evictions of thousands of Puerto Rican residents from their homes, most had to relocate to other areas of the island while active training exercises where taking place.

Bombing sites were open in close proximity to populated areas.  There were other activities conducted by the US Navy that included air-to-ground bombings, ship-to-shore shelling and other maneuvers sometimes in coordination with other allied countries who participated.  The history of civil disobedience campaigns in Puerto Rico began in the 1970’s with the Puerto Rican population forcing US Navy out of Culebra Island, another island east of Puerto Rico in 1974 and continued its struggle to the island of Vieques with the formation of the Comite pro Rescate y Desarrollo de Vieques (Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques, CPRDV).  It was not just dropping bombs, which was a very serious problem, but it was also what was in those bombs that was a major concern for the future of the island.

The US government had been dropping bombs that polluted the air and contaminated the island’s soil and its water supplies.  For many years, the US Navy had used depleted uranium, a metal that is made from uranium hexafluoride, technically a compound known as “Hex” used to enrich uranium.  In the nuclear industry, DU is called uranium 238 isotope.  Dr. Doug Rokke is a scientific expert on depleted uranium and former veteran of the 3rd U.S. Army Medical Command’s Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical (NBC) research team released a report titled “Depleted Uranium: Uses and Hazards” exposed what was happening:

The incident in Puerto Rico involved the deliberate use of DU in preparation for combat in Kosovo.  Although DU use is prohibited except during combat, the Navy fired at least 258 rounds in Vieques.  Navy personnel have reported that the Navy has been firing DU into Vieques for years but this was the first time they were caught.  Vieques is currently a national and international issue with confirmed environmental contamination and documented adverse health effects similar to those already observed

In 1998 alone, there were more than 20,000 bombs that were dropped on the island while live training exercises were taking place throughout the year.  In April 19^th, 1999, David Sanes, a civilian security guard was killed by an accidental misfire from two F-18 bombs which ignited mass protests on the island.  Many around the world including Americans such as the phony opportunist, the reverend Al Sharpton who moonlights for extra cash on MSNBC sometimes participated in acts of civil disobedience against the US government and its occupied territory.

The ACLU said that “the protesters illegally entered the military base and tried to obstruct the bombing exercises” therefore, according to the ACLU its “domestic terrorism” since the protesters basically broke federal law “by unlawfully entering the airbase and their acts were for the purpose of influencing a government policy by intimidation or coercion.”  Under the USA Patriot Act “the act of trying to disrupt bombing exercises arguably created a danger to human life – their own and those of military personnel.”  In other words, the US government had established a new set of powers that can be used on the Vieques protesters whose actions “falls within the overbroad definition of domestic terrorism.” Despite the fact that a crime committed by the US government against the Puerto Rican people practically destroying the beautiful island with some of the best beaches in the world with depleted uranium, the Vieques protesters would now be considered “Domestic Terrorists.”  This is not dismissing the fact that there has been individuals and movements throughout US history who have committed serious acts of terrorism, because there were incidents.  However, under these new Domestic Terrorism laws, they can target anyone who opposes US government policies or corruption on any issue will be punished accordingly.

The Mainstream-Media Bypasses Al-Qaeda for White Supremacy

The Southern Poverty Law (SPLC) Center, a left-wing nonprofit legal advocacy organization which specializes in civil rights and public interest cases supported by Soros’s ‘Open Society Foundation, J. P. Morgan Chase and others have been leading the charge against White Supremacists:

The vast majority of hate groups – including neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan, racist skinheads, neo-Confederates  and white nationalists – adhere to some form of white supremacist ideology. Not surprisingly, the number of white nationalist groups, those particularly electrified by Trump’s presidency, surged by almost 50 percent – from 100 groups to 148 – in 2018.

But in an equal yet opposite reaction, black nationalists groups also expanded their ranks, growing from 233 chapters in 2017 to 264 in 2018. These groups are typically antisemitic, anti-LGBT and anti-white. Unlike white nationalist groups, however, they have virtually no supporters or influence in mainstream politics, much less in the White House

So how many neo-Nazis, neo-Confederates, Ku Klux Klan members are there?  Are they really a threat to a population of 320 million US citizens?

According to a 2016 article published by the Associated Press (AP)

‘At 150, KKK sees opportunities in US political trends’ stated that “the Alabama-based SPLC says there’s no evidence the Klan is returning to the strength of its heyday. It estimates the Klan has about 190 chapters nationally with no more than 6,000 members total, which would be a mere shadow of its estimated 2 million to 5 million members in the 1920s.” 

Even the left-wing based, The Daily Beast which published an article entitled ‘How Many Nazis Are There in America, Really? reiterates what the AP exposed:

However, they estimate that the KKK counts between 5,000 and 8,000 members nationwide. Back in the 1920’s, when cities across the south were erecting monuments to Confederate generals, the Klan had 4 million members. As Roger L. Simon points out, this would be an impressive decrease even if the population of the U.S. hadn’t swelled since the 1920’s. Back then, the Klan constituted about 4 percent of the entire U.S. population. Now, the KKK is near its nadir. That would make them less than 0.003 percent of the population, even on the higher end of the SPLC’s estimate. “It’s a small group of real bad people,” Simon writes

How many neo-Nazis exist in the US? The London-based news organization, The Independent published an article in 2017 with a title that reeks of pure propaganda ’22 million Americans support neo-Nazis, new poll indicates’ reported that  a “Washington Post ABC poll” that was conducted during a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia claimed that:

“If extrapolated to the entire US population, nine per cent would equate to 22 million people” and that “according to the survey, 83 per cent of Americans think holding neo-Nazi views is unacceptable.” 

However, one of the biggest neo-Nazi organizations in the US who call themselves the National Socialist Movement (NSM) has about several hundred members according to the Zionist Anti-Defamation League (ADL) archives who said that it is “the largest neo-Nazi group in the United States” and “Nonetheless, despite the stability of having the same leader for nearly two decades, the group has not managed to attract a large following. It has consistently maintained a membership of several hundred members.”

In other words, White Supremacist groups that the Democratic Party and the mainstream-media who claim that they are threat is an over-exaggeration.  We could probably say that there are over 250,000 neo-Nazis and other ultra right-wing extremists operating in the US, and that is a generous number.

Is White Supremacy an excuse to go after law-abiding citizens just like how Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State was used to invade countries in the Middle East?

Here is something to think about, in a federal study called the 2011 National Gang Threat Assessment – Emerging Trends confirmed that there are at least 33,000 gangs with 1.4 million gang members in the US.  So who is a bigger threat if you look at the numbers?

The  Washington Post recently’ headlined ‘The agency founded because of 9/11 Shifts to Face the Threat of Domestic Terrorism’ sounded the alarm on who can be considered domestic terrorists, and some will surprise you.

The article began its piece from a tragic incident that occurred in 2019 when a “21-year white man” killed 23 Latinos with an Ak-47 in El Paso, Texas.  They claim that the authorities said that “he wanted to kill Latinos.”  The media mentioned the incident that occurred in El Paso to remind the public that it is the conservatives who are armed and dangerous because of this 21 year-old deranged white man who wanted to stop the invasion of illegal immigrants from invading the US.

It was indeed a horrible crime, but that “white man” does not represent all conservatives in the US, but the media wants you to believe their narrative to create a deeper divide among the US population.

The Washington Post article goes on to say that the “the Jan. 6 attack has left many lawmakers, and especially Democrats, insisting that domestic terrorism has eclipsed the threat from foreign actors such as the Islamic State and al-Qaida.”The article said that

“the DHS and its agencies are responsible for securing the country’s borders, ports, transportation and cybersystems, generally leaving the monitoring of extremist groups and terrorism investigations to the FBI” but according to the article “the DHS and its agencies have nearly eight times as many employees as the FBI, and calls for the department to play a more muscular role in combating domestic extremism have policymakers looking at new ways to use its resources.”

Are they expanding the role of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other federal agencies to target White Supremacists?

Homeland Security Investigations, a branch of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), has about 6,000 agents nationwide who investigate drug smuggling, human trafficking and illicit goods or currency. The branch has not focused on countering domestic extremism, but it’s an armed component of the DHS that, in theory, could have a more hands-on role stopping homegrown terrorists and white supremacists

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a bi-partisan think tank based in Washington, D.C. who in the past and present employed several familiar US government officials who worked in both Democrat and Republican administrations since its founding released an analysis on Domestic Terrorism.  Some of the most infamous war criminals are associated with the CSIS include long-time Globalist Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinki, the former national security advisor to the Carter administration and former CIA director under Barack Obama, Leon Panetta.  The CSIS published a brief on June 17, 2020 titled ‘The Escalating Terrorism Problem in the United States’ made their case claiming that the threat of Domestic Terrorism has become a major problem within the US:

The United States faces a growing terrorism problem that will likely worsen over the next year. Based on a CSIS data set of terrorist incidents, the most significant threat likely comes from white supremacists, though anarchists and religious extremists inspired by the Islamic State and al-Qaeda could present a potential threat as well. Over the rest of 2020, the terrorist threat in the United States will likely rise based on several factors, including the November 2020 presidential election

Interestingly, the analysis excludes religious terrorism associated with Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State (ISIS) and other terrorist organizations (especially when it is well-known that certain factions of the US government has supported these same terrorist groups in the past),

”while religious terrorism is concerning, the United States does not face the same level of threat today from religious extremists—particularly those inspired by Salafi-jihadist groups such as the Islamic State and al-Qaeda—as some European countries.”

So their focus is on Domestic Terrorism, “there are three broad types of right-wing terrorist individuals and networks in the United States,” the categoriesare “white supremacists, anti-government extremists, and incels” who have certain types of ideologies and a specific threat level they might impose including other factors that can fall under the realm of Domestic Terrorism.

However, they say that terrorists operate “under a decentralized model” and that the “threats from these networks comes from individuals, not groups.”  The CSIS brief points out that terrorist networks who “operate and organize to a great extent online”, leaving the door open for more censorship, “right-wing terrorists have used various combinations of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Gab, Reddit, 4Chan, 8kun (formerly 8Chan), Endchan, Telegram, Vkontakte, MeWe, Discord, Wire, Twitch, and other online communication platforms.”

It also highlights the threat of right-wing groups who are mostly described as “anti-government extremists” such as the militias who are legal under the US constitution and the Sovereign Citizen Movement and others who see the US government as threat to their civil liberties, “most militia extremists view the U.S. government as corrupt and a threat to freedom and rights.”

One of the militias ‘The Three Percenters’ believe in their right to bear arms and to limit the power of the U.S. government over the American people mentioned an incident that occurred on August 2017 when an alleged member of the Three Percenters by the name of Jerry Varnell “a 23-year-old who identified as holding the “III% ideology” and wanted to “start the next revolution, attempted to detonate a bomb outside of an Oklahoma bank, similar to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.”

The majority of militia members are law abiding citizens.  The original Three Percenters website published a home-page in response to the mainstream-media’s demonization campaign, “We Are Not The” Three Percenters. We are “A” group of Three Percenters, known at The Three Percenters Original.  Our group is the exact opposite of what is being reported about Three Percenters in the news today.” their reaction to what the media has been accusing them of is made clear on to what they stand for, “We’re not violent. We’re not anti-government. We’re not extremists. We’re not a militia. We’re not white supremacists. We’re not racists. We’re not terrorists.  We DID NOT conspire or participate in the DC riots and Capitol breach on January 6th.”

The CSIS claims that right-wing activities occurred in various US states and even in Puerto Rico, “these incidents occurred in 42 states, Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico.”  The most concerning claim made by the CSIS is described in a section called ‘The Rising Specter of Terrorism’ mentioned the possibility of those who oppose Covid-19 lockdowns.  They describe what factors can contribute to domestic terrorism because it “will likely increase based on several factors, such as the November 2020 presidential election and the response to the Covid-19 crisis.”

The CSIS admits that both factors do not cause terrorism, but they do say it can “fuel anger and be co-opted by a small minority of extremists as a pretext for violence.”  They say that those who seek violence are strong supporters of former President Donald Trump.  The CSIS brief admits that far-left extremism also exists.  “Alternatively, some on the far-left could resort to terrorism if President Trump is re-elected. In June 14, 2017, James Hodgkinson—a left-wing extremist—shot U.S. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise.”  They conveniently blame Trump for Hodgkinson’s crime.  It’s fair to say that The Washington Post and the CSIS cherry-picked certain incidents to prove their point.  They even said that anti-vaxxers can turn to violence since they oppose the dictates of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Big Pharma, “on the far left and far right, some anti-vaxxers—who oppose vaccines as a conspiracy by the government and pharmaceutical companies—have threatened violence in response to Covid-19 response efforts.”

So who is on the list?

From what it looks like, Biden’s team led by the long-time Democrat warmonger Susan Rice, the former diplomat and policy advisor under Bill Clinton and Barack Obama is now the Director of the United States Domestic Policy Council with other Democrats who want to confiscate weapons from law-abiding citizens.  As I mentioned earlier, they will target all militias who are pro-2nd Amendment who follow the US constitution first.

So who is on the list?

What I will exclude from the list are the billionaire-funded organizations such as Black Lives Matter and others who do the bidding for the Democratic Party establishment.

However, there are many organizations and movements within the US and its colonial territories that will be on the government’s domestic terror watch list who are considered a threat to their agenda of total control over the people.  One of them will surely be the Anti-War movement which obviously want to end all US wars, which is a threat to the Military Industrial Complex.

Then there is the anti-GMO movement who fight for the right to healthy food which is another threat to the Big Food industry such as Monsanto.  Then you have Pro-life movements, a clear threat to the Democrat-supported Planned Parenthood organization.

You have the 911 Truth movement, anti-vaccination movements, various Indigenous organizations including the American-Indian movement, another big one never mentioned in the media is the Tax Protest movement which is another threat to the establishment because without the US government’s Internal Revenue Service (IRS) who tax its people to death, they won’t be able to impose its American-style democracy around the world.

They will also target Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, the Libertarian Party, The Green Party, Anti-Israel and Pro-Palestinian organizations, student activists who protest for real economic and social change will also be on the list.

They will eventually try to go after the Alternative Media through more censorship and other available means.  Washington will also target their ‘commonwealth’ territories including political parties who want independence from the US government including the Puerto Rico Independence Party and other political movements, the Hawaiian Sovereignty Movement and the growing independence movement in the island-nation of Guam.  Then they will also go after individuals or what they call suspected “lone wolves” who don’t agree with the US government.

This is just the beginning, tyranny has come to haunt US citizens.  Over the last 70 years or so, US military interventions around the world has killed tens of millions of people. Now the war is coming to the US. The guns are now pointing inward on its own population.  I am sure many good people in the US will resist in some form because if they don’t, someday in the Orwellian future, many will find themselves in re-education camps.  I will conclude with the German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemoller who spoke out during the rise of the Nazis when they were purging various ethnic groups they did not like and those who did not agree with their fascist ideology.  Niemöller was eventually arrested on July 1^st, 1937 for activities against the Nazi Party.  Here is what he said:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

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Timothy Alexander Guzman writes on his blog site, Silent Crow News, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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Fifty-six years after the assassination of Malcolm X, new details from a former New York Police Department officer’s deathbed confession has further implicated the NYPD and FBI in the killing. Raymond Wood, the former NYPD officer, requested the letter be publicized only after his death due to fears of retaliation. Wood’s cousin, Reggie Wood, read out the letter’s contents in a press conference held in New York City on Saturday. Malcolm X’s family has demanded that the investigation of his murder be reopened.

Malcolm X, an iconic revolutionary and fighter for Black liberation, was assassinated on February 21, 1965, in the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem. Three men were tried and sentenced to prison for their role in the murder, but the official investigation has always been criticized for its failure to scrutinize the role of the government.

Wood’s letter claims that the NYPD and the FBI conspired to cover up the details of Malcolm X’s killing.

“I participated in actions that in hindsight were deplorable and detrimental to the advancement of my own Black people. My actions on behalf of the New York City Police Department were done under duress and fear,” the letter stated.

Furthermore, a press release described:

“Without any training, Wood’s job was to infiltrate civil rights organizations and encourage leaders and members to commit felonious acts. He was also tasked with ensuring that Malcolm X’s security detail was arrested days prior to the assassination, guaranteeing Malcolm X didn’t have door security while at the Audubon Ballroom.”

This evidence of FBI involvement in conjunction with local police departments is hardly without precedent. This is a part of a larger pattern, which includes the infamous Counter-Intelligence Program, also known as COINTELPRO. COINTELPRO was established in 1956 targeting the Communist Party and grew to have a particular focus on destroying the Black liberation movement. The FBI accomplished this through illegal wiretapping, surveillance, harassment, spreading false rumors, and even assassinations.

This revelation comes at an important time, particularly in the wake of renewed public consciousness about the murder of leading Black Panther Fred Hampton, who was also killed by the FBI and Chicago police in 1969. The FBI is also widely believed to have been involved in the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.

The FBI has a long history of disrupting progressive movements using all possible underhanded and illegal tactics in their arsenal. Despite its attempts at rehabilitating its image, this institution continues to be an incredibly repressive force protecting the interests of the United States government against all those who seek a better, more just world.

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Canada is supporting a dictatorship in Haiti. And our government is not just offering some vague assistance, but rather is paying for the central instrument of that dictatorship’s repression. Ottawa is backing a violent police force that keeps Jovenel Moïse’s regime in power.

Last week a public letter was released criticizing Canada’s “support for a repressive, corrupt Haitian president devoid of constitutional legitimacy.” It was signed by three current MPs and three former MPs, as well as Noam Chomsky, David Suzuki, Naomi Klein, Roger Waters, El Jones and 500 others.

The letter notes that Canada “continues to fund and train a police force that has violently repressed anti-Moïse protests. The Canadian ambassador in Haiti has repeatedly attended police functions all the while refusing to criticize their repression of protesters. On January 18 ambassador Stuart Savage met the controversial new head of police Leon Charles to discuss ‘strengthening the capacity of the police.’”

In November Moïse appointed Charles head of the police. The former military man oversaw the police in the 17 months after the 2004 US, France and Canada-sponsored coup against elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and thousands of other elected officials. At that time the US Naval Academy-trained Charles publicly referred to a “war” the police waged against the pro-democracy sector. A 2004 University of Miami human rights report found that Charles “routinely [gave] orders to stop political demonstrations” while an early 2006 Council on Hemispheric Affairs report noted that “he oversaw the gunning down of unarmed pro-Aristide Lavalas demonstrators by his own men, even … planting weapons on the innocent victims’ corpses.” Thousands were killed in political violence after the overthrow of Aristide.

Even before the 2004 coup Charles was close to the country’s oligarchs. He reportedly participated in a July 2003 meeting organized by leading sweatshop owner and opposition figure, André Apaid, where he tried to bribe “several Lavalas street leaders in Cité Soleil” to join the opposition. In “Loyal to Washington, New Police Chief Léon Charles Specializes in Counter-Insurgency Intelligence Gathering and Repression” Haiti Liberté editor Kim Ives writes, “under Léon Charles in 2004 and 2005, the Haitian police became a virtual private army of Haiti’s bourgeoisie, which provided officers with weapons and money.”

Charles oversaw the reincorporation of hundreds of human rights abusing former soldiers into the police force. At the time US officials privately reported, according to cables released by WikiLeaks, “Charles was unwilling or unable to discipline or arrest officers that everybody knows are corrupt and colluding with the kidnappers.”

Amidst significant criticism of his appointment, ambassador Savage met Charles. Even if one questions whether the meeting with Charles was designed to bolster a police force that’s maintaining a dictatorship, why exactly is Canada’s ambassador in Haiti meeting the head of the police? Does Guatemala’s ambassador in Ottawa meet the head of the RCMP?

Unfortunately the answer to why a Canadian ambassador would meet with the head of Haiti’s police is obvious.

Much to the delight of Haiti’s über class-conscious elite, Ottawa took the lead in strengthening the repressive arm of the Haitian state after the 2004 coup. Since then Canada has pushed to increase the size of the Haitian National Police (HNP) from 5,000 to over 15,000.

But the population has identified police as a leading threat to their safety. Haitian prisons are full of poor individuals in pre-trial limbo. In 2017 Le Regroupement des Haïtiens de Montréal contre l’occupation d’Haïti explained that the UN-US-Canada effort to “develop and professionalize the existing National Police… will actually translate into more repression of the Haitian people … The power to maintain order…is really the power to defend the status quo, the power to keep intact the dominant order…One cannot pretend to ‘reinforce’ the rule of law when the state, by its nature and orientation, exists only to defend without compromise the interests of the dominant class and of a certain political class.”

Canadian officials have previously suggested that strengthening the HNP was good for business. After meeting Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe in 2014 Canada’s International Development Minister, Christian Paradis, linked strengthening the HNP to “attracting private investment”. Paradis said, “we discussed the priority needs of the country as well as the increased size of the Haitian National Police (PNH), in order to create a climate to attract private investment.”

Through its diplomatic and policing support for Jovenel Moïse, notes the public letter, Canada is “propping up a repressive and corrupt dictatorship in Haiti.” More than that, it is supporting a police force (with the emphasis on force) that is imposing an extremely inequitable economic order.

Is this how Canadians want their “aid” dollars used?

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The United States military Thursday (Feb. 25) carried out airstrikes targeting Iranian-backed militias in Syria in retaliation for rocket attacks on U.S. targets in Iraq — the first military action undertaken by the Biden administration.

The strikes reportedly resulted in multiple deaths — a grave violation of international law, according to Notre Dame Law School professor Mary Ellen O’Connell, a respected expert on international law and the use of force.

“The United Nations Charter makes absolutely clear that the use of military force on the territory of a foreign sovereign state is lawful only in response to an armed attack on the defending state for which the target state is responsible,” O’Connell said. “None of those elements is met in the Syria strike. There is no right of reprisal, right to use military force for deterrence, right to attack Iran on the territory of Syria, or right to use major military force in response to the type of violence that occurred last week.

“President Biden has done much to restore the United States’ standing in the world in a short time following the chaotic years of the Trump administration,” she said, “but among Trump’s lawless actions were reprisal attacks in Syria.”

In 2017 and 2018, President Donald Trump ordered dozens of Tomahawk missile strikes on Syria in retaliation for chemical weapons attacks. But, O’Connell said, international law “clearly and unreservedly” prohibits the use of military force for retaliation, reprisal or deterrence.

“President Biden has named an effective diplomat to resolve issues with Iran,” O’Connell said. “But Robert Malley’s job just became far more difficult if not impossible. Malley is supposed to tell Iran that it has a duty under international law to comply with the Iran nuclear deal. What about the U.S. duty under the United Nations Charter?”

Iran has a grievance for the 2020 assassination of Commander Qassem Soleimani, a senior Iraqi security official. The criticism for that killing, along with nine others who were with him, led to a Congressional resolution restricting the president’s right to attack Iran.

“Congress should have demanded that the president adhere strictly to the law,” O’Connell said. “President Biden wants the world to recover better from the pandemic. He has promised respect for the law, especially following the Jan. 6 attack on the capitol. The law forbids retaliatory military force.

“This lawlessness will not lead to stability in the Middle East,” she continued. “Quite the opposite. Even if Iran does not counter-attack, unlawful military action will not advance any appropriate policy. For the U.S. to achieve the stature it should enjoy in the world, we must respect the rule of law. And the rule of law begins with the prohibition on the use of force.”

O’Connell is Notre Dame’s Robert and Marion Short Professor of Law and Research Professor of International Dispute Resolution in the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. She is the author of “The Popular but Unlawful Armed Reprisal,” and is co-author of “Self-Defense against Non-State Actors.” O’Connell has served as a Fulbright Fellow at the Norwegian Nobel Institute and also has been a professional military educator for the U.S. Department of Defense.

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***

“A billion dollars is wildly more than anyone needs, even accounting for life’s most excessive lavishes. It’s far more than anyone might reasonably claim to deserve, however much he believes he has contributed to society”(Tom Scocca(1)) 

Most people who are successful like to believe that their success is due to either intelligence or hard work. However, there are many case studies showing that success for individuals involves many other factors. The economy is rigged to help those who already have wealth(2); those who are born into the right families; those who go to the right schools and universities; those with the right political connections. The billionaire investor, Warren Buffett, has famously said:

“If I had been a female, my life would have been entirely different…I had two sisters that have every bit the intelligence that I had, have every bit the drive, but they didn’t have the same opportunities.”

Many of the most successful people had opportunities laid out on a plate in front of them. Taking those opportunities involves a combination of luck, gambling, ruthlessness, cheating, talent and hard work.

Inheritance and Family Wealth 

In the past, a huge proportion of wealth was inherited. This decreased for a while during the 20^th century, when tax rates were very high, but it is now on the rise again because of more complex ways of hiding wealth and avoiding tax. A recent study indicated that one-third of billionaire wealth came from inheritance.(3) There has always been a question about whether it is fair for some people to inherit large fortunes, but there is an additional argument for questioning inheritance. Historically, powerful people and big companies have been ruthless in their pursuit of wealth. This is particularly true with land. Originally, most land was common land, shared by everyone. In Britain, over a period of a few hundred years, the most ruthless landowners took more and more land from everyone else.(4) Much of the wealth that is inherited today was accumulated by previous generations using unethical or criminal means.

All over the world, families form dynasties with significant control over major businesses. The US Walton family, who control Wal-Mart, are perhaps the most famous, with wealth totalling an estimated $215 billion(5) yet the Wal-Mart organisation is notorious for exploiting its employees.

Recent Evidence 

Most people mistakenly believe that excessively wealthy people are usually entrepreneurs, but in a recent study of the richest 0.1% of the population, it was found that only 4% were entrepreneurs.(6) On the 2014 UK list of 100 richest people, only 2 of them were entrepreneurs. Approximately one-third of people with excessive wealth work in finance, and another third were corporate professionals in other fields. In a study of billionaires from all over the world, it was found that many of them gained their wealth from industries that rely heavily on support from the government, or from businesses that dominate an industry (monopoly).(7)

Free Lunches for Individuals – Ownership of Stockmarket Investments

We have seen in earlier posts that big companies extract excess wealth from the economy (known as ‘rent’ or a ‘free lunch’) because they are dominant in their industry, or by using a range of criminal or unethical techniques such as fraud, exploitation and offloading costs onto others. The richest people own a large proportion of shares in those big companies and therefore receive large amounts of unearned income. The increase in value of these shares over time also plays a big part in helping the rich become richer. An economist called Thomas Piketty wrote a landmark book in 2013 called ‘Capital in the 21^st Century’ explaining that returns to finance outstrip growth, which means that people who already have wealth are able to increase it more quickly than the rest of society. Often their wealth is taken from the rest of society.

Warren Buffett, mentioned above, had a number of different investment strategies, but a key one was to invest in companies that were so dominant in their industries that they could make monopoly profits for a long time. This would include companies such as Coca-cola and McDonalds, IBM and Microsoft in the past, and Apple more recently.

In 2008 there was a global financial crisis. The causes of this are discussed in a later post. It was widely noted that the 1,000 richest people in Britain doubled their wealth in the five years after the crisis, despite the fact that the economy was doing badly and many people were suffering.(8) The policy known as ‘quantitative easing’, where governments gave money to banks to stop them going bust, turned out to create hugely increased wealth for the richest people, because the value of the things they already owned increased. We then had the remarkable situation where the British government claimed it had to decrease social spending (known as austerity), whilst at the same time it was offering tax breaks to the rich.(9)

Ownership of Land and Property 

Studies looking at land and property investments show they can provide huge returns, because investors receive both capital gains (where something increases in value) and income.(10) Land and property tend to increase in value substantially in the long term because there is usually a shortage of it, particularly in the most desirable locations.

Factors that affect land and property prices include government spending on public infrastructure such as railways, and banks providing bigger mortgages. The former Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, once said:

“Land is by far the greatest of monopolies…the land monopolist only has to sit still and watch complacently his property multiplying in value, sometimes many fold, without either effort or contribution on his part.”(11)

The same is true of housing.

If you own a £100,000 house and it doubles in value, you receive £100,000 unearned wealth. If you own a £10,000,000 house and it doubles in value, you receive £10,000,000 unearned wealth. If you rent someone else’s house, you get nothing, but your rent is likely to go up, and it has become harder for you to buy a property in future. The rise in value of property actually makes the poor poorer. It is a huge transfer of wealth from poor to rich. The richer you are, the more the system is loaded in your favour. 

Unlimited Executive Pay 

In 1965, chief executives at big companies in the US were paid approximately 20 times as much as the average worker. By 2007 this had jumped to 400 times as much.(12) There appears to be no upper limit to how much chief executives can demand.(13) Yet recruitment consultants have pointed out that there is nothing special about the people who run most big companies – for every successful applicant there are 100 other people who could do the job just as well, possibly better. Their astronomical pay is not about talent, intellect or hard work. It is simply because the system is rigged for their benefit. Even in years when a business makes a loss, many executives receive large payments. Most notably, finance-industry executives paid themselves huge amounts even when their companies collapsed during the 2008 financial crisis.

Outright criminal activity such as drugs, money-laundering and fraud 

In Russia they have a saying – “never ask a rich man how he made his first million.”(14) It is estimated that 2-5% of global economic activity is criminal(15) – that’s $3-7 trillion per year.

Stealing From The Company 

Individuals can also make personal fortunes by stealing from their companies in various ways,(16) including fromcompany pension funds.(17) The system is such that people are able to buy a company, then use the company to borrow money to pay themselves back. They load the company up with debt, then extract wealth from it to make themselves rich.(18) If the company goes bust, the law allows these people to keep the money they have extracted, without having to pay back all of the company’s debts.

Money 

The rigged nature of the world’s financial system is so important that it will be discussed in multiple posts later on.

The Role of Society in Creating Wealth – A Pyramid of Knowledge 

It has been suggested that most wealth is due to the inheritance of knowledge from the past, accumulated over thousands of years(19) which means that there really is no such thing as a self-made person.(20) We have a pyramid of knowledge, going right back to the invention of writing and mathematics. All that any one individual or company does is to add a single stone to the top of this pyramid. The developments that take place tend to be a natural evolution of the technology that exists at that moment in time. For example, lots of companies were writing internet search engines at the same time as Google, but Google became dominant (for a variety of reasons, including the support of the US government(21)). If the Google search engine had never been created, a different one (or a small group of them) would probably have become dominant. These people have not done anything exceptional, and do not deserve immense wealth.

“The personal contribution to society of extremely wealthy people is not as important as meets the eye, in the sense that, if they did not exist, other talented, hard-working, and risk-taking people would fill their shoes.”(22)

It is also important to recognise the role that state schools and universities; financial and legal systems; transport, communications and information networks; healthcare; and more general infrastructure play in creating a system that enables people and businesses to succeed. All companies in advanced nations have access to large numbers of well-educated, healthy people with specialist skills to work in their companies. They use modern equipment, which has been developed over many generations. They have networks of experts and other businesses to call upon for purchases, sales and all manner of additional knowledge and skills. Warren Buffett noted that if he had been born into a tribe, his talents would not have been very useful, and he could not have become rich. The creation of immense human wealth has been a joint activity, involving millions of people.

Even the mainstream magazine, The Economist, has recognised that the ‘knowledge economy’ is largely based upon knowledge that is inherited.(23)

Personal and Political connections matter 

With some businesses in certain industries, such as newspapers and technology, the company is almost the same as the individual. Bill Gates was synonymous with Microsoft. Rupert Murdoch controlled a huge media empire. Russian billionaires control energy companies, which they obtained because they had the right political connections when Russia privatised much of its economy (known as crony capitalism). These individuals are able to lobby the government in exactly the same way that companies lobby governments to change laws and regulations to suit them.

Some billionaires own private islands where they can entertain political decision-makers.(24) The heads of various banks and weapons companies have direct access to policymakers. People used to joke that the head of British Aerospace had a key to the Prime Minister’s office.(25) In the US at the highest levels, senior personnel from finance actually are the government.

A case study of Bill Gates(26) provides an excellent example for questioning why anyone deserves excessive wealth. His success was partly down to being born in the right family, and involved a great deal of luck. He went to a private school that was one of the first in the world to have a computer for its students to use. At the time computers were rare and expensive. Paul Allen, another co-founder of Microsoft, had also been at the same school. The software that Gates wrote, which became the main operating system for IBM and then for many other computers, was no better than other systems available at the time. His mother had personal connections to the chairman of IBM, and this helped him get the contract that led to the dominance of Microsoft.(27)

The US government had invested immense amounts of money into developing the technology industries as an extension of its military, and then encouraging private firms to develop on the back of this. Gates was in the right place at the right time, as miniaturisation of computer technology was rapidly spreading around the world.

Economics textbooks don’t discuss how the economy is rigged to help the rich 

As we have seen, much individual wealth has nothing to do with merit, and where merit plays a part, such as creating a new product, the rewards are excessive, for what is often a very small contribution to human society. In earlier posts I discussed the idea of Bloodsucker Capitalism, where the most powerful companies are able to extract wealth in a variety of criminal or unethical ways.(28) Many excessively wealthy individuals benefit from this. Economics textbooks don’t discuss how the economy is rigged to help the rich get richer, often at the expense of everyone else.

Abolish Billionaires  

The mainstream press occasionally discuss one or two of these issues, but until recently did not get anywhere close to discussing the full extent of the problem, and tended to present rich people in positive terms. However, in the last couple of years there have been a small number of articles explaining that the presence of excessively wealthy people is an obvious sign of an economic system that is not working properly, with the recommendation that we abolish billionaires.(29)

*

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This article was first posted at medium.com/elephantsintheroom

Rod Driver is a part-time academic who is particularly interested in de-bunking modern-day US and British propaganda, and explaining war, terrorism, economics and poverty, without the nonsense in the mainstream media. 

Notes 

1) Tom Scocca, ‘No Billionaires’, Hmm Daily, 16 Oct 2018, at https://hmmdaily.com/2018/10/16/no-billionaires/

2) Andrew Van Dam, ‘It’s better to be born rich than gifted’, Washington Post, 10 Sep 2018, at https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/10/09/its-better-be-born-rich-than-talented/

3) Max Lawson, ‘Billionaires are a sign of economic failure’, Inequality.org, 26 August 2019 https://inequality.org/research/billionaires-sign-econ-failure/ 

4) George Monbiot, ‘A Land Reform Manifesto’, 22 Feb 1995, at https://www.monbiot.com/1995/02/22/a-land-reform-manifesto/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure

5) Sean Ross, ‘Top 10 of the Wealthiest families in the world’, Investopedia, 21 Jan 2012, at https://www.investopedia.com/articles/insights/052416/top-10-wealthiest-families-world.asp

6) Linda McQuaig and Neil Brooks, The trouble with billionaires: How the Super-Rich Hijacked the World, 2013

7) Didier Jacobs, Extreme Wealth is not Merited’, Oxfam Discussion Paper, Nov 2015, at https://www-cdn.oxfam.org/s3fs-public/file_attachments/dp-extreme-wealth-is-not-merited-241115-en.pdf

8) 2005-2015 Sunday Times Rich List.

9) Oxfam Media Briefing, ‘The G7’s Deadly Sins: How the G7 is fuelling the inequality crisis’, 22 Aug 2019, at https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/620853/mb-g7-inequality-crisis-220819-en.pdf 

Didier Jacobs, Extreme Wealth is not Merited’, Oxfam Discussion Paper, Nov 2015, at https://www-cdn.oxfam.org/s3fs-public/file_attachments/dp-extreme-wealth-is-not-merited-241115-en.pdf

10) Samuel Jefferies, Property vs Shares – Which is the Better Investment?, Money Nest, 2021, at https://www.moneynest.co.uk/property-vs-shares/ 

11) Land Value Tax Campaign, ‘Winston Churchill said it all better than we can’, 14 Feb 2010 https://www.landvaluetax.org/history/winston-churchill-said-it-all-better-then-we-can 

12) Lawrence Mishel and Julia Wolfe, ‘CEO Compensation has grown 940% since 1978’, Economic Policy Institute, 14 Aug 2019, at https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-compensation-2018/

13) Adam Hurting, ‘Why CEOs Make So Much Money’, Forbes, 22 June 2015, at https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamhartung/2015/06/22/why-ceos-make-so-much-money/ 

14) MoneyWeek, ‘How Britain’s Richest Man Made His £13bn Pile – and got a halo in the process’, 11 May 2015, at https://moneyweek.com/390674/profile-of-len-blavatnik 

15) United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Money Laundering, at https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/money-laundering/overview.html

16) Eric Mack, ‘Just as you always suspected, Most CEOs admit to stealing company ideas when they leave’, Inc, 24 July 2018, at https://www.inc.com/eric-mack/just-as-you-always-suspected-most-ceos-admit-to-stealing-company-ideas-when-they-leave.html 

17) Ellen Schultz, ‘How Business Elites Looted Private Sector Pensions’, PSC-Cuny, March 2012, at https://psc-cuny.org/clarion/march-2012/how-business-elites-looted-private-sector-pensions

18) Matt Taibbi, Greed and Debt: The true story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital’, Rolling Stone, 13 Sep 2012, at https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/greed-and-debt-the-true-story-of-mitt-romney-and-bain-capital-183291/

19) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mathematics

20) Linda McQuaig and Neil Brooks, The trouble with billionaires: How the Super-Rich Hijacked the World, 2013

21) Julian Assange, When Google Met Wikileaks,

22) Didier Jacobs, Extreme Wealth is not Merited’, Oxfam Discussion Paper, Nov 2015, at https://www-cdn.oxfam.org/s3fs-public/file_attachments/dp-extreme-wealth-is-not-merited-241115-en.pdf

23) The Economist, ‘America’s New Aristocracy’, 24 Jan 2015, at http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21640331-importance-intellectual-capital-grows-privilege-hasbecome-increasingly.

The Economist, ‘Dynasties’, 18 April 2015, at http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21648639-enduring-power-families-business-and-politicsshould-trouble-believers

24) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necker_Island_(British_Virgin_Islands)

25) David Leigh and Robert Evans, ‘BAE’s Lobbying’, The Guardian, 8 June 2007, at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/jun/08/bae1

26) Linda McQuaig and Neil Brooks, The trouble with billionaires: How the Super-Rich Hijacked the World, 2013

27) Taylor Locke, ‘ How Bill Gates’ Mom helped Microsoft get a deal with IBM in 1980 – and it propelled the company’s huge success’, CNBC 5 Aug 2020, at https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/05/how-bill-gates-mother-influenced-the-success-of-microsoft.html

28) Joseph Stiglitz, ‘America has a monopoly problem – and it’s huge’, The Nation, 23 Oct 2017, at https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/america-has-a-monopoly-problem-and-its-huge/ 

29) Farhad Manjoo, ‘Abolish Billionaires’, New York Times, 2 June 2019, at https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/opinion/abolish-billionaires-tax.html

“It is sheer white supremacist power that managed to undermine the second election of Aristide because what few people understand in what is happening in Haïti today is that what we are observing is a struggle of White Supremacy against the Black Majority in Haïti and that struggle is the whole history of Haïti and it hasn’t changed.”

Jean Saint-Vil (from this week’s interview)

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

On February 7, 2021, Jovenel Moïse, was supposed to step down from his role as president according to Haitian legal authorities.

But instead, the 52 year-old politician, according to the Associated Press, announced at the Port-au-Prince airport that he had been the near victim of an overthrow attempt and death instituted by more than 20 people including Supreme Court Judge Yvickel Dabrezil.

This president of Haiti who has ruled by decree since January 13, 2020, the man who has cracked down on protesters, allegedly orchestrated acts of corruption, and instituted police reforms with accelerating tendencies toward oppression, intends to serve one more year citing the five year mandate in the Republic of Haiti’s constitution. Moïse’s analysis, however, discounts the fact that the date of his term is tied with the date of the election, and not the date he started serving.

But in spite of push back from the political opposition, the Haitian Bar Federation, the Supreme Court, and the Higher Council of the Judicial Power (CSPJ), not to mention legions of protesters in the streets of Port-au-Prince, the president does have the backing of the military, the police and one powerful guardian of democracy – U.S. President Joe Biden! [1]

Another notable figure appearing to give Moïse the nod is Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a man notable for taking a knee during an anti-racism protest on June 5. Considering these two figures are now aiding and abetting Haiti in what some are calling a return to the dictatorial politics of Papa Doc Duvalier is appalling!

This week, on the Global Research News Hour, we are taking a closer look at the latest incident in Haiti’s history, the role of Canada and the United States in these developments historically and the role people in those two countries can play in reshaping the future bondage or freedom of a people.

First up, Kim Ives gives us an update on how Jovenel Moise started securing his dictatorship months ago, and how the big imperialist leaders are backing him. Then in the second half hour Jean Saint-Vil brings us more in depth coverage of the role of Canada and the U.S. historically and how ordinary Canadians and Americans can play a role in backing Haiti’s appeals for democracy and freedom.

Kim Ives is a founder and a writer and editor for Haiti Libré with offices in Port-au-Prince, Haiti and Brooklyn, New York. He was previously worked as a writer and photographer for Haïti Progrès for 23 years.

Jean Saint-Vil was born and raised in Port-au-Prince, Haiti and is currently based in Ottawa. He has been an activist who helped to found the Canada Haiti Action Network. He has been featured as political analyst by Canadian radio and television as well as by Embassy Magazine, ZNet and Rogers Ottawa Television.

The Canadian Foreign Policy Institute is hosting a discussion on February 28 at 7:30pm. Speakers to include Haiti Betrayed film-maker Elaine Brière, and activist Jean Saint-Vil.

(Global Research News Hour episode 306)

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

Transcript: Interview with Jean Saint-Vil, Feb. 24, 2021.

Global Research News Hour: How did Canadian and US agencies shape the landscape to suit the return of Haïti to a Papa Doc Duvalier dictatorship rule?

Jean Saint-Vil: That first government lasted seven months. And the coup took place by direct intervention of the CIA which used the remnants of what they used to call the Forces Armées d’Haïti, the military, to overthrow, and the president’s life was barely saved. And he spent three years in exile during which the United States government had officials basically pressured Aristide as if he was a hostage to return on the condition that he’s going to apply policies of the candidate who was against him who was the well banked official Marc Bazin. Privatization to stop things like doubling the minimum wage, etc. So, all of the literacy programs, the health care programs, all of this he had to abandon if he accepted to return with the Americans.

The thing is he didn’t have really a choice in the matter. And so, there was a transition in the United States at the time between Bill Clinton and George H. W., the elder. and Clinton returned with President Aristide in 1994, essentially to observe that his mandate was stolen because the Haïtian constitution does not allow you to have two consecutive terms, and so he had to organize elections for someone to replace him.

And so, logically everybody knew that the Haïtian people are not stupid! They realized that their democracy was stolen from them by the CIA, and we know that G.H.W. Bush was the former Director of the CIA – I mean, we’re not confused about what happened. It’s the same story of what happened in the Congo when the White Supremacists forces overthrow Prime Minister Patrice Lamumba and put puppets in his place. So, they took away Aristide’s first mandate, and the people basically were waiting for the next opportunity to elect him again, which they did. And that’s where we started to see the direct and active involvement of Canadian officials in the undermining of the second Aristide government. He was elected in the same year that George Bush the lesser was also supposedly elected – remember the Florida fiasco.

Two elections. The one in Haïti where anybody could have predicted the outcome months ahead of time because people knew they stole the first mandate from Aristide. And then George Bush who got his brother Jeb Bush to help him win Florida and therefore the U.S. presidency. Yet, you see the reaction. President Aristide is being maligned in political circles, diplomatic circles, the OAS, everybody tweeting him as if he stole the election in 2000. Yet if you ask them, okay, so they say George Bush stole the election in 2000. Yet if you asked them ok, so they say George Bush stole the 2000 elections from Al Gore. Who did Aristide steal the election from in 2000? And then silence, because they cannot point to anybody. It’s a stupid question. It’s not based on fact. It is sheer white supremacist power that managed to undermine the second election of Aristide because what few people understand in what is happening in Haïti today is that what we are observing is a struggle of White Supremacy against the Black Majority in Haïti and that struggle is the whole history of Haïti and it hasn’t changed.

It is seldom discussed, and I’m one of the rare people who talk about it, that there are twelve White families in Haïti that control the economy of that country. In collaboration – because they could not have done that on their own – in cahoots with their cousins in White North America and in Europe.

This is not something that’s particular to Haïti. I mean we saw it play out in Bolivia and in other places. However, in Haïti, it takes a very wicked form. So, if you take for instance one personality, one family, his name in André Apaid, he’s a White American who owns TV stations, the sweat shops, things of the sort in Haïti and he participated in both coups – 1991 and 2004. And to this day, this man is essentially the equivalent of Cecil Rhodes in the old Rhodesia. So, the latest puppet president that they’ve put in place. So you know the Core group in Haïti is for all intents and purposes the equivalent of the Lima Group as they use it to try to overthrow a legitimate government in Venezuela and put a puppet of their own like him.

So, that Core group is setting up a fake president in Haïti, Jovenel Moïse, and you can see, you know, Haïtians have used all kinds of graphic representations to say that this dude is a fake president, he’s a fake entrepreneur, he’s a fake banana farmer, but he’s a real money launderer, a real thief, a real drug dealer. And all of these things are documented! And everybody who does any research about who Jovenel Moïse is have that information. However, he is serving a very good purpose by helping those twelve mafia families in Haïti maintain the economy and sharing it with a few Black Haïtians who are their collaborators, their partners in crime.

GR: There was a story about a group – well, it was a senator’s wife that had purchased about a $4.2 million piece of property and it was really quite controversial. It brings up the whole issue of the ways in which the Duvaliers of the world through money laundering and enabling Haïtian control and other things through the Royal Bank and other crooked accounts are operating. Could you maybe elaborate a little bit on that incident and how…

JS: Yeah!

GR: …that figures into the larger…

JS: Actually, the name of the senator in question is Rony Célestin and his wife Marie-Louisa Aubin Célestin was also consul at the Montreal Consulate, Haitian Consulate. I mean, despotism is the feature of that fake government that was established in Haïti after the coup. See?

What people need to realize is that Haïti had seven thousand elected officials. When the invasion happened in February 2004, and they removed all of these elected officials including the president who was shipped to Africa in exile. Okay? But sometimes people forget about the other seven thousand elected officials. So they were replaced by unelected thugs, some of them convicted criminals. And later when they studied organizing fake elections that are completely under the control of the foreign powers. The United Nations are used for that, the OAS, the Core group, they’re the ones who carry that balance. They control the whole thing. They declare when there is going to be an election.

Well, Haïti is not an independent country right now. Okay? So, this guy, Rony Célestin, was first elected as a lower chamber member of parliament –  député – in those fake elections of 2011, which gave us also as president someone who doesn’t actually qualify because he has U.S. citizenship: Michel Martelly. But Hilary Clinton came into Haïti and said that he has to be the one who goes to the second round and eventually he became president. So, it’s in those same fake elections that Rony Célestin became a member of the lower chamber, and then he was given the title of senator in the second set of fake elections in 2016.

And now, when they found out, and it’s actually a local Haïti an activist who does a Facebook blog and YouTube blog in Montreal – his name is Marvin John Coleman – who put out the information about this outrageous situation. I mean, people from all over the place are calling me and saying, “Jean. Can you actually buy a house, cash, for $4.2 million in Canada?” And I’m saying I didn’t know that I could do that! Ha ha.

GR: Ha ha!

JS: Of course, I never asked myself the question because I know I don’t have that kind of money! But, you know, you have all of the media that is available to us here and none of them put out the story. You know, this guy had the story out for several weeks, and eventually it became too embarrassing to ignore it and it made it to La Presse and so in the news.

And you know what this guy had said to defend himself? He said that he was always rich – not that he was always rich, but he was rich before he became a member of the ruling party. And that he made his money because he has a special contract with the government to produce oil. Haïti doesn’t produce oil, okay? So what it means is that this fake government, they distribute all the contracts among themselves, and so he’s saying that he makes about $8 million a month. So, you know, this $4.2 million people are making a big deal out of this – this is like money that he uses to buy spices for his cooking. That’s what he said, actually! Okay?

So, now the question is, who facilitated such a thing in Montreal? Because I mean you don’t go and buy houses like that, and it’s not just one house. He has a lot of houses that his wife has purchased in Montreal, etc, so it will be interesting to see what the investigation shows. But often what is not talking about is the underlying story of the corruption that we were talking about here. That is, the money that became very evident in circulation in Haïti since 2008, it’s origin is actually Venezuela.

There’s a Petro-Caribbean fund, which is an arrangement that President Hugo Chavez started in the Caribbean, and several countries have used those funds to invest in their infrastructure. And if there’s one thing that Haïti always needed, it’s the opportunity to invest in its physical infrastructure – roads, healthcare, things like that – because as you understand, to what its history, Haïti has been at war with White Supremacy. So whenever Haïtians had a progressive president or leader, we had what they call “gun-boat diplomacy.” If you look at the whole 19th century when it’s not a German boat that heads up in the Port-au-Prince harbor and says that they going to blow the national palace with the president unless a ransom of one million dollars is paid, a few months later it’s the British who show up, and then a few months later it’s the Spanish, etc, etc. So – and the French collected from 1825 to 1947 the equivalent of $40 billion from the impoverished people of Haïti.

So you understand that it is in that context that when the Petro-Caribbean funds were mobilized, Haïtians saw an opportunity for them to finally move away from that situation, ridiculous situation such as when President Aristide was elected in 1991, where the national budget of Haiti was the equivalent of some kind of a high school in Canada. Okay? You can’t do much. And of course, when we had the government of Aristide, he was boycotted by the IMF, the World Bank, you know. In fact Haïti was being ransomed by the IDB, because the IDB was pressured by the United States, Canada and the European Union to say that before Haïti can access loans that were approved for its health care and for structure, etc, the government of Aristide had to pay loans that were taken by the Duvalier dictatorship, and which were never paid. Because of course, Duvalier was a dictator who stole the money and went to France with it, and put it in Swiss banks.

So, this is the context that this Petro-Caribbean funds came in. And what happened is that Hilary Clinton and Bill Clinton were very much present in Haïti at the time. And that’s why Hilary Clinton insisted that Michel Martelly becomes president of Haïti. Although he was fifth in the group of people who were moving from the first round to the second round, and only the first top people are supposed to win in the second round. Hilary Clinton, and the OAS – you know this is well documented – you had even officials like Ricardo Seitenfus, the Brazilian member of the OAS, who actually wrote a book to say, “This is outrageous! You guys are playing with the lives of Haïtians, because this is not the result of the election. It’s the White men and women who went in there and changed the election results.”

GR: So, what is that…

JS: The reason why they did that is that the United States wanted to squander the Petro-Caribbean funds. They wanted it to fail. And what better way to do it than to put a puppet in there who they know to be corrupt, and of course, no investigation has been able to be conducted since in detail, although there has been some studies that show that, you know for instance, that Martelly, his wife, his son, all of them were involved in stealing millions and possibly billion of dollars in cahoots with Bill Clinton when the Clinton Foundation was inescapable in anything that has to do – especially after the earthquake where if you are friends of Bill, you couldn’t get a contract in Haïti. And that’s why people need to ask for the CBC and other instances in our country to go and investigate…

GR: Well, what if…

JS: …where the money went.

GR: Well, you’re getting to the next thought that I had. The issue of solidarity with the Haïtian people? Because this would strike most people as an outrage! I mean we saw how much animosity there was towards the killing of George Floyd, and yet now with the protests there have been scores of people who have been subjected to it by the police, trained by the Canadian authorities. What needs to come together in Haïti and in Canada to ensure restoration for the Haïtian people?

JS: Yes, so with Solidarité Québec-Haïti , Montreal and Ottawa based group that we’ve been trying to educate ourselves and fellow Canadians about what’s happening in Haïti. We focus on dignity, justice and reparations, because Haïti is an international crime scene. It’s an ongoing crime! And our country unfortunately participated in this crime. It’s documented.

You have tons of books like Yves Engler’s Canada in Haïti: Waging war Against the Poor (Majority), (Upholding a coup: ) Haïti’s New Dictatorship by Justin Podur, or Jeb Sprague’s Paramilitarism and the Assault on Democracy in Haïti – I mean, it’s well documented. Okay?

The Ottawa Initiative on Haïti where the meeting took place here at Meech Lake to overthrow the legitimate government of Haïti and replace it by these thugs like Rony Célestin who bought this $4.2 million mention in Montreal – I mean, all of this is known to us. So, now what we asking is for people to become citizens, and that means to take a closer look at Canadian foreign policy, and ask ourselves, “Have we done everything in our power to remove, to banish any trace of racism and White Supremacy in Canadian foreign policy.” Because in 2021, we cannot pretend to be obfuscated and walking the streets because of what happened in Minneapolis about George Floyd, and pretend not to see that this is also happening in the realm of international politics. Okay?

I mean, Haïti currently have knees on its neck, and those knees have been on the Haïtian neck for centuries, and it is related to race, because like I mentioned, it is not a coincidence that the richest person in Haïti, his name is Gilbert Bigio, and he’s not of African descent whereas the Haïtian population is 99 percent of African descent! It’s not a coincidence, because these guys have their own private ports, and they inherit those ports, those contracts where they have exclusive rights. So Jovenel Moïse just issued a decree on February the 8th where he allocated eight thousand six hundred hectares of land to André Apaid, the same guy who participated in the coups and participated in a fraudulent election. And when you do fraud, according to the Haïtian electoral law, they were supposed to be banished for at least ten years, and put in jail for at least two years. But, of course, the Core group, the OAS, and the United Nations intervened, and so instead of banishing the people who were caught because there was an investigation – that’s why the election was delayed – they were caught cheating in the election, and instead of applying the law and putting in jail, the Haïtians who were put in power were so cowardly, they accepted the pressure from the United Nations and the OAS, and really the U.S. Embassy – that really runs the show down there. And they allowed him to remain as president, and now the Haïtian people are demonstrating on a regular basis, and they are being killed.

Today I am watching the news because kidnappings are happening in high numbers every day, and the phenomenon we’ve never had before is that these kidnappings are not only happening in the capital city, but they’re happening in the country-side. There are some areas that were very productive for agriculture, in particular rice production, and now the peasants are leaving those places because gangs have taken over. And Haïti doesn’t produce guns. So how come this island is receiving so many weapons and ammunitions on a regular, steady pace. Okay?

And you see this young man who are you know not dressed in any rich way and they have, you know, weapons that are like seven thousand, eight thousand dollars. It’s not a mystery because a few cases have happened where they found the weapons cash and invariably it’s those twelve families that have access to the ports that control the import-export business in Haïti who bring in those weapons. And a characteristic of this situation is that they’re asking sometimes a million or two million dollar ransom per kidnapped person. Yet, they have never kidnapped a millionaire in Haïti…

GR: Could you…

JS: …but Millionaires exist, ha ha.

GR: Just to bring it…

JS: But they don’t kidnap millionaires. They’re kidnapping people who go on vacation as a diaspora, or even some of the most impoverished people. Because the idea is that they’re not really looking just for money, they’re creating a situation of terror especially along the border, that being near the waterfront, okay? So that people can sell their land cheaply to those families and so they can take it over. So they’re creating – that’s why they’re setting up those guns in those areas.

GR: Just bringing it back to our topic of solidarity, I know that there’s an event coming this weekend.

JS: Yes!

GR: Do you want to say a little bit about who’s in it and what they’re doing?

JS: Yes! So, on Sunday the 28th of February, we are having a showing of the film Haïti Betrayed, which Canadian film-maker Elaine Brière produced and it’s the first work that documented – I mean the film work – that documented so well what happened and what is happening in Haïti. Featured in that film, several other people have participated in it. You will see some Canadian officials like Denis Coderre, Denis Paradis who participated in some of these outrageous meetings. And it’s actually available online now.

So, what the week people can go on foreignpolicy.ca. They will see the announcement, and then Haïti Betrayed is the name of the film. And after, at 7:30 EST, we will have an open discussion about Canadian Foreign Policy towards Haïti and what we suggest should be done. And I have repeatedly made the call to several Canadian Prime Ministers and governments to really, really think about an overhaul of Canadian foreign policy towards Haïti.

We could have influence in the region! I mean, we’ve had so many stupid bids to get a seat at the United Nations that never went anywhere because we are trying to get there by being subservient to the United States. This is a ridiculous strategy! Canada is too beautiful of a nation for that kind of an approach.

I mean, Haïti needs to develop its mining industry, okay? Haïtians want to exploit their gold reserves. But they don’t want the same model that is being applied in Guatemala or in the Congo. Where the natives are impoverished, and they have a proper government in their country that is there to mobilize the military to control the natives whose lands are being stolen. And then the multi-national companies shows up, you know, exploits the land, takes the gold and leaves nothing for the people, especially without any sort of remediation for environmental protection.

What we’re saying is that we want a normalized relationship between Canada and Haïti. So, Haïtians and Canadians should mobilize so that Haïtians have the last word as to who is their president, who is their prime minister, who is their government, and whether or not they will exploit their minds, their natural resources. If they decide to not exploit it that’s their business. But if they want to invite Canadians to participate, it should not be on the old colonial terms!

I mean, I particularly think that, in the day when people are talking about the end of white supremacy and George Floyd and all of this Black Lives Matter, it will need to really take seriously what it means that Black Nationhood matters! I mean, we don’t treat countries in Europe like that!

Why? Why is it we understand that it wouldn’t make sense for a bunch of Black diplomats in Ottawa to meet and have a discussion about removing the Queen of England from power? We understand that would be stupid! Barbaric! Unacceptable! Then why is it that people who are supposedly intelligent people can have a meeting here at Meech Lake, all of them White, and they decide they’re going to kidnap the president of Haïti, not only that, but they’re going to do that in the year of the bi-centennial of the end of racial slavery!

GR: Yeah…

JS: But, you know, the same people will be out there in the streets, Black Lives Matter! Heh heh Heh.

GR: Jean Saint-Vil, its been a real pleasure speaking to you again! Thank you so much for sharing this information with our listeners!

JS: Thank you! And thank you for the beautiful work that you guys are doing in globalresearch.ca!

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Notes:

1. countercurrents.org/2021/02/stop-supporting-brutal-moise-regime-in-haiti/

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***

Last month, after a year-long investigation, former Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder and eight other officials were charged for their roles in the Flint water crisis – the environmental disaster that shocked the nation seven years ago. All nine defendants pleaded not guilty to 42 charges, including willful neglect of duty, manslaughter, extortion, perjury and obstruction of justice.

In Flint, extremely high levels of lead in the city’s drinking water had wide-ranging and severe health effects, including a community-wide outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease, a form of pneumonia. The children of Flint experienced serious and lasting health problems, including lost teeth. A study conducted by the state found that from 2014 to 2017, the share of third graders with reading proficiency plummeted from about 42 percent to less than 11 percent. Lead is a potent neurotoxin that can cause diminished IQ in young children.

The water crisis in Flint, a majority-Black city of about 100,000, is the “most egregious” example of environmental injustice and racism in recent history, says Paul Mohai, a University of Michigan professor who has studied the U.S. environmental justice movement for decades. The Michigan Civil Rights Commission’s investigation foundthat the water crisis resulted from “systemic racism that was built into the foundation and growth” of the city.

This sobering fact is true of the entire nation.

Environmental racism in America disproportionately burdens communities of color with health hazards and polluted environments through policies, structures and practices. As the Michigan commission said: “Environmental Justice requires that all people and communities receive the equal protection of environmental and public health laws, and should have an equal and meaningful voice in decisions related to their environment.”

Many of the most polluted places in our nation are close to or even in poor, largely non-white communities. According to a recent report by the Shriver Center on Poverty Law and Earthjustice, 70 percent of the country’s Superfund sites, America’s most polluted environments, are located within a mile of government-assisted housing, where a majority of residents are typically Black.

In EWG’s almost three decades, we have seen time and time again how racism lies at the root of many of the worst threats to public health. Here are just two tragic examples:

PCBs in a small Southern town

In Anniston, Ala., another largely Black community, carcinogenic PCB chemicals contaminated the soil and water for almost half a century, unbeknownst to the residents. The chemical manufacturer Monsanto routinely dumped toxic waste into a creek on the west side of town and released millions of pounds of PCBs into open landfills.

For decades, Monsanto deceived the residents of Anniston, attempting to cover up the extent to which their community had been contaminated by these toxic chemicals. When government and environmental laws failed them, community organizers had to take matters into their own hands and file their own lawsuits against Monsanto to ensure justice.

In 2002, EWG worked with local activists in Anniston to help draw attention to Monsanto’s decades-long deception and coverup of its PCB contamination, which ultimately resulted in a $700 million fine after the company was found guilty by the state of “negligence, wantonness, suppression of truth, nuisance, trespass, and outrage.” Still, today Anniston remains one of the most toxic cities in the U.S.

Factory farms in North Carolina

In North Carolina, intensive hog and poultry confined animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, place an immense burden on the environment and the health of the residents in rural, poor and largely minority communities.

In 2017, an Environmental Protection Agency review of a civil rights suit alleging discriminatory impacts of state permitting of hog operations found a “linear relationship between race/ethnicity [of residents within three miles of industrial hog operations] and … density of hogs.” Duke University researchers found that North Carolina communities located near these concentrated hog operations had higher total and infant deaths, deaths due to anemia, kidney disease, tuberculosis, septicemia and higher hospital admissions, and emergency room visits of low birthweight infants.

In 2016, in collaboration with Waterkeeper Alliance and local environmental justice advocates, EWG mapped the location of every swine and poultry factory farm in North Carolina, allowing residents to see for the first time how many CAFOs are close to their homes, schools, churches and places of work.

On the long road to environmental justice, the U.S. has far to go.

Following a vote of the Virginia legislature this week, a state “long associated with racist and segregationist behavior” is expected to become the first Southern state to declare that racism is a public health crisis. The sponsor of the measure, Delegate Lashrecse D. Aird, told USA Today that systemic racism “defines the Black experience in our nation and in our commonwealth.” The resolution, she added, “provides the framework for all of us to formally and finally reckon with those injustices so we can build a more equitable and just society for us all.”

To address systemic racism, we must acknowledge the role race and racism have played in our history and how they continue to affect the present; develop a deeper understanding of how structural racialization and implicit bias influence decision-making; and ensure that public concerns get heard and addressed. Until all communities are met with equal protection, racial equity and justice must be the foundation of environmental and public health laws and standards.

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***

After the European Commission convened to discuss the potential of so called ‘vaccine passports’ Thursday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters that “We have all agreed that we need vaccine certificates.”

Bloomberg reports that Merkel added

“In the future, it will certainly be good to have such a certificate but that will not mean that only those who have such a passport will be able to travel; about that, no political decisions have been made yet.”

The German leader also stated

“This will make travelling within the EU possible and could pave the way for further travel from third countries into the EU,” suggesting that it will take three months to implement a vaccine passport system.

The report also notes that Commission President Ursula von der Leyen urged member states to make haste in agreeing a Europe wide system before Big Tech gets there first.

Von der Leyen reportedly cited Israel’s ‘Green Pass’ system, which the country is using as a domestic internal document, denying entry for the unvaccinated topublic spaces including sports events, restaurants and hotels.

While admitting that it is “unclear whether you can transmit the disease even if you are vaccinated,” the Commission leader stated “It is important to have a European solution because otherwise others will go into this vacuum.”

“Google and Apple are already offering solutions to the WHO [World Health Organization]. And this is sensitive information so we want to be very clear here that we offer a European solution,” Von der Leyen emphasised.

Alex Patelis, chief economic adviser to Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, noted

“If we as European Union don’t provide a solution, somebody else will, whether it’s going to be the U.S. big tech companies or somebody else, the solution will be provided.”

“Let’s get the infrastructure ready,” Patelis added.

French President Emmanuel Macron has expressed skepticism over the notion of vaccine passports, but stated

“We’ll have, in the end, a harmonious EU approach,” adding “It’s obvious because there is no other choice.”

While there have been scant reports of Apple or Google developing vaccine passports, and the WHO has expressed caution on the issue, there are plenty of other schemes under development and being rolled out, as we have repeatedly highlighted.

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***

Don Foreman, National Union Representative for the 55,000 members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), did an exclusive February 21 interview for The Canada Files. In the interview, he responded to a question about his own immediate personal reaction to Pompeo’s last-minute designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism. Foreman said it “was one of disgust at a last-ditch effort to completely end all progress made between the two countries under the previous administration.” Asked if he had a message to the Canadian Government that had not taken a stand: 

“My message to the government is simple. Cuba knows who its friends are. The Canadian people are included as friends and are speaking up. The time has come when the Government should immediately speak out on behalf of the Canadian people and condemn the addition of Cuba to any terrorist list by the US administration.”

Furthermore, as reported in The Canada Files, two New Democratic Party MPs took a stand. In addition, the CUPW issued the following statement:

“The United States Must Stop Penalizing Cuba

Friday, January 15, 2021

On January 11, the United States put Cuba back on their list of State Sponsors of Terrorism, having removed it from the list in 2015 as part of an agreement between the nations to restore diplomatic relations.

CUPW condemns this move. The State Department has no democratic mandate to designate countries this way; the list serves only to isolate and punish countries that, for whatever reason, are seen by the US government as uncooperative. We hope that this does not indicate a reversal of the slow rapprochement with Cuba that began under President Obama.

CUPW and our postal worker allies in Cuba would rather see an end to a pattern of sanctions since 1960 that have only hurt the Cuban people. The embargo – called el bloqueo in Cuba – is viewed internationally as outside of the norms of international relations and a violation of the United Nations Charter.

It’s particularly ironic for Cubans, who have experienced terrorism that was condoned by U.S. officials, and who lobbied for years to free the Cuban Five – Cuban agents who were detained by the United States after handing over information intended to help the U.S. prevent a terrorist attack.

We support the sovereignty and self-determination of Cuba, and we ask our members to stand with the Cuban people, who have been victims of terrorism and reject it in all its forms.”

World opposition 

Governments and associations from around the world spoke out, such as China, Russia, Iran and Venezuela. The World Peace Council (WPC) added its voice. However, it is striking that the Coordinating Bureau of the Non-Aligned Movement, composed of 120 countries almost all from Asia, Africa and Latin America and the African Union, composed of all 55 states on that continent, dared to raise their voices. These two associations are based in the Global South, namely in Asia, Africa and Latin America/Caribbean, with Africa belonging to both institutions.

In North America, the corporate media, normally so attracted to the term ‘terrorism,’ refuses to report on these positions held by countries in the Global South? However, this is not surprising as they also censure voices even in their own northern regions, such as the trade union organization cited above.

“Terrorism” is a highly-charged, partisan political term developed over the centuries. It is wielded by the colonial and imperial powers to the detriment of the South, the countries that have unanimously condemned the US for its latest move. It first emerged during the French Revolution of the 18th century, used by the bourgeoisie to characterize and intimidate its opponents, the Jacobins. The victims of this weaponized term are mostly countries in the South.

Cuba, Venezuela and Ecuador 

Look at Cuba for example. The 1960 blockade has as its explicit goal, “denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.” Overt US-backed terrorist activities got under way soon after the 1959 Revolution, resulting since then in some 1,000 documented incidents, with more than 3,000 deaths and 2,000 injuries. The blockade is multidimensional and includes economic and cultural warfare, involving ideological, political and artistic assault, as well as the most obvious bilateral economic and extraterritorial restrictions (involving third countries that would like to trade with Cuba.)

It must therefore be said that US Cuba policy, with its differing degrees of animosity depending on the administration, is itself a genuine form of terrorism geared to overthrow the government. It is no accident that one of the most important Cuban media outlets, Cuba Debate, carries as part of its banner “contra el terrorismo mediático” (against media terrorism).

The US labels President Maduro as a “narco-terrorist” without any evidence, going so far as to slap a terrorist-type bounty on his head similar to the “wanted dead or alive” pathology of the Far West. Crippling sanctions against Venezuela were initiated by Obama and increased multifold by the Trump administration, even during the pandemic. They were interspersed with paramilitary terrorist attacks against Chavistas, government buildings and even an assassination attempt against Maduro.

The goal of the sanctions and the accompanying demonizing of Maduro, as it was against Salvador Allende in Chile, was in their own words to “make the economy scream.” In the case of Allende, it was intended to cause harm and suffering, leading up to a full-scale terrorist attack on the elected president, on the pretext of saving the economy. The objective is no different some 50 years later, in Venezuela.

Ecuador is in the vortex of elections in which the successor to Rafael Correa, Andrés Arauz, is on the verge of victory. The US and Colombia have made a last-ditch effort to stall the movement led by Arauz, using “terrorism” as the preferred weapon. Colombia, like the US, has added the leftist Colombian National Liberation Army (ELN) to its terrorist list. “The Colombian Attorney General Francisco claimed to have ‘intelligence’ proving that the Union for Hope (UNES) electoral coalition, Mr. Arauz’s party and the vehicle of supporters of former president Rafael Correa, was funded by the National Liberation Army (ELN).

Asia, Africa and the Middle East 

In Asia, Western powers terrorized and massacred the Vietnamese people. Palestinians are under a permanent terrorist siege (apartheid). In Africa, the colonial powers assassinated anti-colonialist leaders, as part of its war against Black people on the African continent. The US has terrorized and assassinated black people on its own territory, such as the Black Panther Party in the 1960s and 70s.

There is no end to the list of victims. Many valuable books have been published that detail all these crimes. Who cannot forget ‘The War on Terror” after September 11, 2001, still going on today, whereby millions of people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya have been killed, maimed and displaced? Rather than being a war on terror, it is war by the US terrorists and its allies against the peoples in those regions.

As these lines are being written, all eyes are on Haiti. It was the first country to follow the initial ‘terrorists” of the French Revolution, the Jacobins, to establish the first black republic. Yet the supposed inheritors of the French Revolution’s Liberté, équalité et fraternité, in the French Republic, and its variety in the US, are presently terrorizing the Haitian people.

Peoples of the world must remain vigilant against the use of the term “terrorism.” It is arbitrarily manipulated by the biggest terrorists of all, the US and its allies, against the peoples of the Global South, all of whom condemn the US for designating Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism.

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This article was originally published on The Canada Files.

Arnold August is a Montreal-based author and journalist whose articles are published in web sites across North America, Latin America, Europe and the Middle East in English, Spanish and French. He is a Fellow at the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute.

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***

According to the Pentagon, the U.S. strike was in response to the February 15 rocket attack in northern Iraq that killed a contractor working with the U.S. military and injured a U.S. service member. Accounts of the number killed in the U.S. attack vary from one to 22.

Ironically, Jen Psaki, now Biden’s White House spokesperson, questioned the lawfulness of attacking Syria in 2017, when it was the Trump administration doing the bombing. Back then she asked: “What is the legal authority for strikes? Assad is a brutal dictator. But Syria is a sovereign country.”

The airstrikes were supposedly authorized by the 20-year-old, post-9/11 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), legislation that Rep. Barbara Lee has been trying for years to repeal since it has been misused, according to the congresswoman, “to justify waging war in at least seven different countries, against a continuously expanding list of targetable adversaries.”

The United States claims that its targeting of the militia in Syria was based on intelligence provided by the Iraqi government. Defense Secretary Austin told reporters: “We’re confident that target was being used by the same Shia militia that conducted the strike [against U.S. and coalition forces].”

But a report by Middle East Eye (MEE) suggests that Iran has strongly urged the militias it supports in Iraq to refrain from such attacks, or any warlike actions that could derail its sensitive diplomacy to bring the U.S. and Iran back into compliance with the 2015 international nuclear agreement or JCPOA.

“None of our known factions carried out this attack,” a senior Iraqi militia commander told MEE. “The Iranian orders have not changed regarding attacking the American forces, and the Iranians are still keen to maintain calm with the Americans until they see how the new administration will act.”

The inflammatory nature of this U.S. attack on Iranian-backed Iraqi militias, who are an integral part of Iraq’s armed forces and have played a critical role in the war with ISIS, was implicitly acknowledged in the U.S. decision to attack them in Syria instead of in Iraq. Did Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, a pro-Western British-Iraqi, who is trying to rein in the Iranian-backed Shiite militias, deny permission for a U.S. attack on Iraqi soil?

At Kadhimi’s request, NATO is increasing its presence from 500 troops to 4,000 (from Denmark, the U.K. and Turkey, not the U.S.) to train the Iraqi military and reduce its dependence on the Iranian-backed militias. But Kadhimi risks losing his job in an election this October if he alienates Iraq’s Shiite majority. Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein is heading to Tehran to meet with Iranian officials over the weekend, and the world will be watching to see how Iraq and Iran will respond to the U.S. attack.

Some analysts say the bombing may have been intended to strengthen the U.S. hand in its negotiations with Iran over the nuclear deal (JCPOA). “The strike, the way I see it, was meant to set the tone with Tehran and dent its inflated confidence ahead of negotiations,” said Bilal Saab, a former Pentagon official who is currently a senior fellow with the Middle East Institute.

But this attack will make it more difficult to resume negotiations with Iran. It comes at a delicate moment when the Europeans are trying to orchestrate a “compliance for compliance” maneuver to revive the JCPOA. This strike will make the diplomatic process more difficult, as it gives more power to the Iranian factions who oppose the deal and any negotiations with the United States.

Showing bipartisan support for attacking sovereign nations, key Republicans on the foreign affairs committees such as Senator Marco Rubio and Rep. Michael McCaul immediately welcomed the attacks. So did some Biden supporters, who crassly displayed their partiality to bombing by a Democratic president.

Party organizer Amy Siskind tweeted: “So different having military action under Biden. No middle school level threats on Twitter. Trust Biden and his team’s competence.” Biden supporter Suzanne Lamminen tweeted: “Such a quiet attack. No drama, no TV coverage of bombs hitting targets, no comments on how presidential Biden is. What a difference.”

Thankfully though, some Members of Congress are speaking out against the strikes. “We cannot stand up for Congressional authorization before military strikes only when there is a Republican President,” Congressman Ro Khanna tweeted, “The Administration should have sought Congressional authorization here. We need to work to extricate from the Middle East, not escalate.” Peace groups around the country are echoing that call. Rep. Barbara Lee and Senators Bernie Sanders, Tim Kaine and Chris Murphy also released statements either questioning or condemning the strikes.

I am very concerned by last night’s strike by U.S. forces in Syria. The president has the responsibility to keep Americans safe, but for too long administrations of both parties have interpreted their authorities in an extremely expansive way to continue war. This must end. pic.twitter.com/AnU2On6QC1

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) February 26, 2021

Americans should remind President Biden that he promised to prioritize diplomacy over military action as the primary instrument of his foreign policy. Biden should recognize that the best way to protect U.S. personnel is to take them out of the Middle East. He should recall that the Iraqi Parliament voted a year ago for U.S. troops to leave their country. He should also recognize that U.S. troops have no right to be in Syria, still “protecting the oil,” on the orders of Donald Trump.

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

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

Featured image is from CODEPINK

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

Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

Year: 2015

Pages: 240 Pages

List Price: $22.95

Special Price: $15.00

Click here to order.

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***

The use of universal lockdowns in the event of the appearance of a new pathogen has no precedent. It has been a science experiment in real time, with most of the human population used as lab rats. The costs are legion. 

The question is whether lockdowns worked to control the virus in a way that is scientifically verifiable. Based on the following studies, the answer is no and for a variety of reasons: bad data, no correlations, no causal demonstration, anomalous exceptions, and so on. There is no relationship between lockdowns (or whatever else people want to call them to mask their true nature) and virus control.

Perhaps this is a shocking revelation, given that universal social and economic controls are becoming the new orthodoxy. In a saner world, the burden of proof really should belong to the lockdowners, since it is they who overthrew 100 years of public-health wisdom and replaced it with an untested, top-down imposition on freedom and human rights. They never accepted that burden. They took it as axiomatic that a virus could be intimidated and frightened by credentials, edicts, speeches, and masked gendarmes.

The pro-lockdown evidence is shockingly thin, and based largely on comparing real-world outcomes against dire computer-generated forecasts derived from empirically untested models, and then merely positing that stringencies and “nonpharmaceutical interventions” account for the difference between the fictionalized vs. the real outcome. The anti-lockdown studies, on the other hand, are evidence-based, robust, and thorough, grappling with the data we have (with all its flaws) and looking at the results in light of controls on the population.

Much of the following list has been put together by data engineer Ivor Cummins, who has waged a year-long educational effort to upend intellectual support for lockdowns. AIER has added its own and the summaries. The upshot is that the virus is going to do as viruses do, same as always in the history of infectious disease. We have extremely limited control over them, and that which we do have is bound up with time and place. Fear, panic, and coercion are not ideal strategies for managing viruses. Intelligence and medical therapeutics fare much better.

(These studies are focused only on lockdown and their relationship to virus control. They do not get into the myriad associated issues that have vexed the world such as mask mandates, PCR-testing issues, death misclassification problem, or any particular issues associated with travel restrictions, restaurant closures, and hundreds of other particulars about which whole libraries will be written in the future.)

1. “A country level analysis measuring the impact of government actions, country preparedness and socioeconomic factors on COVID-19 mortality and related health outcomes” by Rabail Chaudhry, George Dranitsaris, Talha Mubashir, Justyna Bartoszko, Sheila Riazi. EClinicalMedicine 25 (2020) 100464. “[F]ull lockdowns and wide-spread COVID-19 testing were not associated with reductions in the number of critical cases or overall mortality.”

2. “Was Germany’s Corona Lockdown Necessary?” by Christof Kuhbandner, Stefan Homburg, Harald Walach, Stefan Hockertz. Advance: Sage Preprint, June 23, 2020. “Official data from Germany’s RKI agency suggest strongly that the spread of the coronavirus in Germany receded autonomously, before any interventions became effective. Several reasons for such an autonomous decline have been suggested. One is that differences in host susceptibility and behavior can result in herd immunity at a relatively low prevalence level. Accounting for individual variation in susceptibility or exposure to the coronavirus yields a maximum of 17% to 20% of the population that needs to be infected to reach herd immunity, an estimate that is empirically supported by the cohort of the Diamond Princess cruise ship. Another reason is that seasonality may also play an important role in dissipation.”

3. “Estimation of the current development of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in Germany” by Matthias an der Heiden, Osamah Hamouda. Robert Koch-Institut, April 22, 2020. “In general, however, not all infected people develop symptoms, not all those who develop symptoms go to a doctor’s office, not all who go to the doctor are tested and not all who test positive are also recorded in a data collection system. In addition, there is a certain amount of time between all these individual steps, so that no survey system, no matter how good, can make a statement about the current infection process without additional assumptions and calculations.”

4. Did COVID-19 infections decline before UK lockdown? by Simon N. Wood. Cornell University pre-print, August 8, 2020. “A Bayesian inverse problem approach applied to UK data on COVID-19 deaths and the disease duration distribution suggests that infections were in decline before full UK lockdown (24 March 2020), and that infections in Sweden started to decline only a day or two later. An analysis of UK data using the model of Flaxman et al. (2020, Nature 584) gives the same result under relaxation of its prior assumptions on R.”

5. “Comment on Flaxman et al. (2020): The illusory effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions on COVID-19 in Europe” by Stefan Homburg and Christof Kuhbandner. June 17, 2020. Advance, Sage Pre-Print. “In a recent article, Flaxman et al. allege that non-pharmaceutical interventions imposed by 11 European countries saved millions of lives. We show that their methods involve circular reasoning. The purported effects are pure artefacts, which contradict the data. Moreover, we demonstrate that the United Kingdom’s lockdown was both superfluous and ineffective.”

6. Professor Ben Israel’s Analysis of virus transmission. April 16, 2020. “Some may claim that the decline in the number of additional patients every day is a result of the tight lockdown imposed by the government and health authorities. Examining the data of different countries around the world casts a heavy question mark on the above statement. It turns out that a similar pattern – rapid increase in infections that reaches a peak in the sixth week and declines from the eighth week – is common to all countries in which the disease was discovered, regardless of their response policies: some imposed a severe and immediate lockdown that included not only ‘social distancing’ and banning crowding, but also shutout of economy (like Israel); some ‘ignored’ the infection and continued almost a normal life (such as Taiwan, Korea or Sweden), and some initially adopted a lenient policy but soon reversed to a complete lockdown (such as Italy or the State of New York). Nonetheless, the data shows similar time constants amongst all these countries in regard to the initial rapid growth and the decline of the disease.”

7. “Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions against COVID-19 in Europe: a quasi-experimental study” by Paul Raymond Hunter, Felipe Colon-Gonzalez, Julii Suzanne Brainard, Steve Rushton. MedRxiv Pre-print May 1, 2020. “The current epidemic of COVID-19 is unparalleled in recent history as are the social distancing interventions that have led to a significant halt on the economic and social life of so many countries. However, there is very little empirical evidence about which social distancing measures have the most impact… From both sets of modelling, we found that closure of education facilities, prohibiting mass gatherings and closure of some non-essential businesses were associated with reduced incidence whereas stay at home orders and closure of all non-businesses was not associated with any independent additional impact.”

8. “Full lockdown policies in Western Europe countries have no evident impacts on the COVID-19 epidemic” by Thomas Meunier. MedRxiv Pre-print May 1, 2020. “This phenomenological study assesses the impacts of full lockdown strategies applied in Italy, France, Spain and United Kingdom, on the slowdown of the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak. Comparing the trajectory of the epidemic before and after the lockdown, we find no evidence of any discontinuity in the growth rate, doubling time, and reproduction number trends. Extrapolating pre-lockdown growth rate trends, we provide estimates of the death toll in the absence of any lockdown policies, and show that these strategies might not have saved any life in western Europe. We also show that neighboring countries applying less restrictive social distancing measures (as opposed to police-enforced home containment) experience a very similar time evolution of the epidemic.”

9. “Trajectory of COVID-19 epidemic in Europe” by Marco Colombo, Joseph Mellor, Helen M Colhoun, M. Gabriela M. Gomes, Paul M McKeigue. MedRxiv Pre-print. Posted September 28, 2020. “The classic Susceptible-Infected-Recovered model formulated by Kermack and McKendrick assumes that all individuals in the population are equally susceptible to infection. From fitting such a model to the trajectory of mortality from COVID-19 in 11 European countries up to 4 May 2020 Flaxman et al. concluded that ‘major non-pharmaceutical interventions — and lockdowns in particular — have had a large effect on reducing transmission’. We show that relaxing the assumption of homogeneity to allow for individual variation in susceptibility or connectivity gives a model that has better fit to the data and more accurate 14-day forward prediction of mortality. Allowing for heterogeneity reduces the estimate of ‘counterfactual’ deaths that would have occurred if there had been no interventions from 3.2 million to 262,000, implying that most of the slowing and reversal of COVID-19 mortality is explained by the build-up of herd immunity. The estimate of the herd immunity threshold depends on the value specified for the infection fatality ratio (IFR): a value of 0.3% for the IFR gives 15% for the average herd immunity threshold.”

10. “Effect of school closures on mortality from coronavirus disease 2019: old and new predictions” by Ken Rice, Ben Wynne, Victoria Martin, Graeme J Ackland. British Medical Journal, September 15, 2020. “The findings of this study suggest that prompt interventions were shown to be highly effective at reducing peak demand for intensive care unit (ICU) beds but also prolong the epidemic, in some cases resulting in more deaths long term. This happens because covid-19 related mortality is highly skewed towards older age groups. In the absence of an effective vaccination programme, none of the proposed mitigation strategies in the UK would reduce the predicted total number of deaths below 200 000.”

11. “Modeling social distancing strategies to prevent SARS-CoV2 spread in Israel- A Cost-effectiveness analysis” by Amir Shlomai, Ari Leshno, Ella H Sklan, Moshe Leshno. MedRxiv Pre-Print. September 20, 2020. “A nationwide lockdown is expected to save on average 274 (median 124, interquartile range (IQR): 71-221) lives compared to the ‘testing, tracing, and isolation’ approach. However, the ICER will be on average $45,104,156 (median $ 49.6 million, IQR: 22.7-220.1) to prevent one case of death. Conclusions: A national lockdown has a moderate advantage in saving lives with tremendous costs and possible overwhelming economic effects. These findings should assist decision-makers in dealing with additional waves of this pandemic.”

12. Too Little of a Good Thing A Paradox of Moderate Infection Control, by Ted Cohen and Marc Lipsitch. Epidemiology. 2008 Jul; 19(4): 588–589. “The link between limiting pathogen exposure and improving public health is not always so straightforward. Reducing the risk that each member of a community will be exposed to a pathogen has the attendant effect of increasing the average age at which infections occur. For pathogens that inflict greater morbidity at older ages, interventions that reduce but do not eliminate exposure can paradoxically increase the number of cases of severe disease by shifting the burden of infection toward older individuals.”

13. “Smart Thinking, Lockdown and COVID-19: Implications for Public Policy” by Morris Altman. Journal of Behavioral Economics for Policy, 2020. “The response to COVID-19 has been overwhelmingly to lockdown much of the world’s economies in order to minimize death rates as well as the immediate negative effects of COVID-19. I argue that such policy is too often de-contextualized as it ignores policy externalities, assumes death rate calculations are appropriately accurate and, and as well, assumes focusing on direct Covid-19 effects to maximize human welfare is appropriate. As a result of this approach current policy can be misdirected and with highly negative effects on human welfare. Moreover, such policies can inadvertently result in not minimizing death rates (incorporating externalities) at all, especially in the long run. Such misdirected and sub-optimal policy is a product of policy makers using inappropriate mental models which are lacking in a number of key areas; the failure to take a more comprehensive macro perspective to address the virus, using bad heuristics or decision-making tools, relatedly not recognizing the differential effects of the virus, and adopting herding strategy (follow-the-leader) when developing policy. Improving the decision-making environment, inclusive of providing more comprehensive governance and improving mental models could have lockdowns throughout the world thus yielding much higher levels of human welfare.”

14. “SARS-CoV-2 waves in Europe: A 2-stratum SEIRS model solution” by Levan Djaparidze and Federico Lois. MedRxiv pre-print, October 23, 2020. “We found that 180-day of mandatory isolations to healthy <60 (i.e. schools and workplaces closed) produces more final deaths if the vaccination date is later than (Madrid: Feb 23 2021; Catalonia: Dec 28 2020; Paris: Jan 14 2021; London: Jan 22 2021). We also modeled how average isolation levels change the probability of getting infected for a single individual that isolates differently than average. That led us to realize disease damages to third parties due to virus spreading can be calculated and to postulate that an individual has the right to avoid isolation during epidemics (SARS-CoV-2 or any other).”

15. “Did Lockdown Work? An Economist’s Cross-Country Comparison” by Christian Bjørnskov. SSRN working paper, August 2, 2020. “The lockdowns in most Western countries have thrown the world into the most severe recession since World War II and the most rapidly developing recession ever seen in mature market economies. They have also caused an erosion of fundamental rights and the separation of powers in a  large part of the world as both democratic and autocratic regimes have misused their emergency powers and ignored constitutional limits to policy-making (Bjørnskov and Voigt, 2020). It is therefore important to evaluate whether and to which extent the lockdowns have worked as officially intended: to suppress the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and prevent deaths associated with it. Comparing weekly mortality in 24 European countries, the findings in this paper suggest that more severe lockdown policies have not been associated with lower mortality. In other words, the lockdowns have not worked as intended.”

16.”Four Stylized Facts about COVID-19” (alt-link) by Andrew Atkeson, Karen Kopecky, and Tao Zha. NBER working paper 27719, August 2020. “One of the central policy questions regarding the COVID-19 pandemic is the question of which non-pharmeceutical interventions governments might use to influence the transmission of the disease. Our ability to identify empirically which NPI’s have what impact on disease transmission depends on there being enough independent variation in both NPI’s and disease transmission across locations as well as our having robust procedures for controlling for other observed and unobserved factors that might be influencing disease transmission. The facts that we document in this paper cast doubt on this premise…. The existing literature has concluded that NPI policy and social distancing have been essential to reducing the spread of COVID-19 and the number of deaths due to this deadly pandemic. The stylized facts established in this paper challenge this conclusion.”

17. “How does Belarus have one of the lowest death rates in Europe?” by Kata Karáth. British Medical Journal, September 15, 2020. “Belarus’s beleaguered government remains unfazed by covid-19. President Aleksander Lukashenko, who has been in power since 1994, has flatly denied the seriousness of the pandemic, refusing to impose a lockdown, close schools, or cancel mass events like the Belarusian football league or the Victory Day parade. Yet the country’s death rate is among the lowest in Europe—just over 700 in a population of 9.5 million with over 73 000 confirmed cases.”

18. “Association between living with children and outcomes from COVID-19: an OpenSAFELY cohort study of 12 million adults in England” by Harriet Forbes, Caroline E Morton, Seb Bacon et al., by MedRxiv, November 2, 2020. “Among 9,157,814 adults ≤65 years, living with children 0-11 years was not associated with increased risks of recorded SARS-CoV-2 infection, COVID-19 related hospital or ICU admission but was associated with reduced risk of COVID-19 death (HR 0.75, 95%CI 0.62-0.92). Living with children aged 12-18 years was associated with a small increased risk of recorded SARS-CoV-2 infection (HR 1.08, 95%CI 1.03-1.13), but not associated with other COVID-19 outcomes. Living with children of any age was also associated with lower risk of dying from non-COVID-19 causes. Among 2,567,671 adults >65 years there was no association between living with children and outcomes related to SARS-CoV-2. We observed no consistent changes in risk following school closure.”

19. “Exploring inter-country coronavirus mortality“ By Trevor Nell, Ian McGorian, Nick Hudson. Pandata, July 7, 2020. “For each country put forward as an example, usually in some pairwise comparison and with an attendant single cause explanation, there are a host of countries that fail the expectation. We set out to model the disease with every expectation of failure. In choosing variables it was obvious from the outset that there would be contradictory outcomes in the real world. But there were certain variables that appeared to be reliable markers as they had surfaced in much of the media and pre-print papers. These included age, co-morbidity prevalence and the seemingly light population mortality rates in poorer countries than that in richer countries. Even the worst among developing nations—a clutch of countries in equatorial Latin America—have seen lighter overall population mortality than the developed world. Our aim therefore was not to develop the final answer, rather to seek common cause variables that would go some way to providing an explanation and stimulating discussion. There are some very obvious outliers in this theory, not the least of these being Japan. We test and find wanting the popular notions that lockdowns with their attendant social distancing and various other NPIs confer protection.”

20. “Covid-19 Mortality: A Matter of Vulnerability Among Nations Facing Limited Margins of Adaptation” by Quentin De Larochelambert, Andy Marc, Juliana Antero, Eric Le Bourg, and Jean-François Toussaint. Frontiers in Public Health, 19 November 2020. “Higher Covid death rates are observed in the [25/65°] latitude and in the [−35/−125°] longitude ranges. The national criteria most associated with death rate are life expectancy and its slowdown, public health context (metabolic and non-communicable diseases (NCD) burden vs. infectious diseases prevalence), economy (growth national product, financial support), and environment (temperature, ultra-violet index). Stringency of the measures settled to fight pandemia, including lockdown, did not appear to be linked with death rate. Countries that already experienced a stagnation or regression of life expectancy, with high income and NCD rates, had the highest price to pay. This burden was not alleviated by more stringent public decisions. Inherent factors have predetermined the Covid-19 mortality: understanding them may improve prevention strategies by increasing population resilience through better physical fitness and immunity.”

21. “States with the Fewest Coronavirus Restrictions” by Adam McCann. WalletHub, Oct 6, 2020. This study assesses and ranks stringencies in the United States by states. The results are plotted against deaths per capita and unemployment. The graphics reveal no relationship in stringency level as it relates to the death rates, but finds a clear relationship between stringency and unemployment.

22. The Mystery of Taiwan: Commentary on the Lancet Study of Taiwan and New Zealand, by Amelia Janaskie. American Institute for Economic Research, November 2, 2020. “The Taiwanese case reveals something extraordinary about pandemic response. As much as public-health authorities imagine that the trajectory of a new virus can be influenced or even controlled by policies and responses, the current and past experiences of coronavirus illustrate a different point. The severity of a new virus might have far more to do with endogenous factors within a population rather than the political response. According to the lockdown narrative, Taiwan did almost everything ‘wrong’ but generated what might in fact be the best results in terms of public health of any country in the world.”

23. “Predicting the Trajectory of Any COVID19 Epidemic From the Best Straight Line” by Michael Levitt, Andrea Scaiewicz, Francesco Zonta. MedRxiv, Pre-print, June 30, 2020. “Comparison of locations with over 50 deaths shows all outbreaks have a common feature: H(t) defined as loge(X(t)/X(t-1)) decreases linearly on a log scale, where X(t) is the total number of Cases or Deaths on day, t (we use ln for loge). The downward slopes vary by about a factor of three with time constants (1/slope) of between 1 and 3 weeks; this suggests it may be possible to predict when an outbreak will end. Is it possible to go beyond this and perform early prediction of the outcome in terms of the eventual plateau number of total confirmed cases or deaths? We test this hypothesis by showing that the trajectory of cases or deaths in any outbreak can be converted into a straight line. Specifically Y(t)≡−ln(ln(N/X(t)),is a straight line for the correct plateau value N, which is determined by a new method, Best-Line Fitting (BLF). BLF involves a straight-line facilitation extrapolation needed for prediction; it is blindingly fast and amenable to optimization. We find that in some locations that entire trajectory can be predicted early, whereas others take longer to follow this simple functional form.”

24. “Government mandated lockdowns do not reduce Covid-19 deaths: implications for evaluating the stringent New Zealand response” by John Gibson. New Zealand Economic Papers, August 25, 2020. “The New Zealand policy response to Coronavirus was the most stringent in the world during the Level 4 lockdown. Up to 10 billion dollars of output (≈3.3% of GDP) was lost in moving to Level 4 rather than staying at Level 2, according to Treasury calculations. For lockdown to be optimal requires large health benefits to offset this output loss. Forecast deaths from epidemiological models are not valid counterfactuals, due to poor identification. Instead, I use empirical data, based on variation amongst United States counties, over one-fifth of which just had social distancing rather than lockdown. Political drivers of lockdown provide identification. Lockdowns do not reduce Covid-19 deaths. This pattern is visible on each date that key lockdown decisions were made in New Zealand. The apparent ineffectiveness of lockdowns suggests that New Zealand suffered large economic costs for little benefit in terms of lives saved.”

25. “Lockdowns and Closures vs COVID – 19: COVID Wins” by Surjit S Bhalla, executive director for India of the International Monetary Fund. “For the first time in human history, lockdowns were used as a strategy to counter the virus. While conventional wisdom, to date, has been that lockdowns were successful (ranging from mild to spectacular) we find not one piece of evidence supporting this claim.”

26. “Effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions on COVID-19: A Tale of Three Models” by Vincent Chin, John P.A. Ioannidis, Martin A. Tanner, Sally Cripps, MedXriv, July 22, 2020. “Inferences on effects of NPIs are non-robust and highly sensitive to model specification. Claimed benefits of lockdown appear grossly exaggerated.”

27. “Assessing Mandatory Stay‐at‐Home and Business Closure Effects on the Spread of COVID‐19” by Eran Bendavid, Christopher Oh, Jay Bhattacharya, John P.A. Ioannidis. European Journal of Clinical Investigation, January 5, 2021. “Implementing any NPIs was associated with significant reductions in case growth in 9 out of 10 study countries, including South Korea and Sweden that implemented only lrNPIs (Spain had a non‐significant effect). After subtracting the epidemic and lrNPI effects, we find no clear, significant beneficial effect of mrNPIs on case growth in any country. In France, e.g., the effect of mrNPIs was +7% (95CI ‐5%‐19%) when compared with Sweden, and +13% (‐12%‐38%) when compared with South Korea (positive means pro‐contagion). The 95% confidence intervals excluded 30% declines in all 16 comparisons and 15% declines in 11/16 comparisons.”

28. “Lockdown Effects on Sars-CoV-2 Transmission – The evidence from Northern Jutland” by  Kasper Planeta Kepp and Christian Bjørnskov. MedXriv, January 4, /2021.”The exact impact of lockdowns and other NPIs on Sars-CoV-2 transmission remain a matter of debate as early models assumed 100% susceptible homogenously transmitting populations, an assumption known to overestimate counterfactual transmission, and since most real epidemiological data are subject to massive confounding variables. Here, we analyse the unique case-controlled epidemiological dataset arising from the selective lockdown of parts of Northern Denmark, but not others, as a consequence of the spread of mink-related mutations in November 2020. Our analysis shows that while infection levels decreased, they did so before lockdown was effective, and infection numbers also decreased in neighbour municipalities without mandates. Direct spill-over to neighbour municipalities or the simultaneous mass testing do not explain this. Instead, control of infection pockets possibly together with voluntary social behaviour was apparently effective before the mandate, explaining why the infection decline occurred before and in both the mandated and non-mandated areas. The data suggest that efficient infection surveillance and voluntary compliance make full lockdowns unnecessary at least in some circumstances.”

29. “A First Literature Review: Lockdowns Only Had a Small Effect on COVID-19” by Jonas Herby, SSRN, January 6, 2021. “How important was the economic lockdowns in the spring of 2020 in curbing the COVID-19 pan-demic and how important was the lockdown in comparison to voluntary changes in behavior? In the spring, the overall social response to the COVID-19 pandemic consisted of a mix of voluntary and government mandated behavior changes. Voluntary behavior changes occurred on the basis of information, such as the number of people infected, the number of COVID-19-deaths and on the basis of the signal value associated with the official lockdown combined with appeals to the population to change its behavior. Mandated behavior changes took place as a result of the ban-ning of certain activities deemed non-essential. Studies which differentiate between the two types of behavioral change find that, on average, mandated behavior changes accounts for only 9% (median: 0%) of the total effect on the growth of the pandemic stemming from behavioral changes. The remaining 91% (median: 100%) of the effect was due to voluntary behavior changes. This is excluding the effect of curfew and facemasks, which was not employed in all countries.”

30. “The effect of interventions on COVID-19” by Kristian Soltesz, Fredrik Gustafsson, Toomas Timpka, Joakim Jaldén, Carl Jidling, Albin Heimerson, Thomas B. Schön, Armin Spreco, Joakim Ekberg, Örjan Dahlström, Fredrik Bagge Carlson, Anna Jöud & Bo Bernhardsson . Nature, December 23, 202. “Flaxman et al. took on the challenge of estimating the effectiveness of five categories of non-pharmaceutical intervention (NPI)—social distancing encouraged, self isolation, school closures, public events banned, and complete lockdown—on the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). On the basis of mortality data collected between January and early May 2020, they concluded that only one of these, the lockdown, had been effective in 10 out of the 11 European countries that were studied. However, here we use simulations with the original model code to suggest that the conclusions of Flaxman et al. with regard to the effectiveness of individual NPIs are not justified. Although the NPIs that were considered have indisputably contributed to reducing the spread of the virus, our analysis indicates that the individual effectiveness of these NPIs cannot be reliably quantified.”

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This text, crossposted on GR was first published in October 2020

It is of relevance in understanding the governments’ decision to enforcing a lockdown in defiance of scientific evidence.

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October 2020  

Dr. Bonnie Henry,
British Columbia Provincial Health Officer,
Ministry of Health,
Victoria, BC V8W 3C9

Dear Dr. Henry,  

I am a physician who has been in family medical practice in BC for more than 40 years and a member of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC since 1978.   

I am writing this letter with the hope that you will be able to clarify the basis of your decision-making that has led our provincial government, health ministry, regional health officers, hospitals, medical staff, WorkSafe BC, businesses, and everyday citizens to follow pandemic policies that do not appear based on high-quality scientific research and, in fact, appear to be doing everyone a great deal of harm.¹ 

The early intent of mitigation measures to “flatten the curve”, when we knew very little about SARS-CoV-2, its mode of transmission, and the severity of COVID-19, was reasonable. I believe that most physicians in Canada, myself included, whether active or retired, prepared themselves to take part on the front lines for the expected COVID-19 tsunami. Very soon it was apparent that the expected overwhelming of the hospital system was not going to occur, and now BC physicians have questions about the appropriateness of your public health policies.

The epidemiological evidence clearly shows that the “pandemic” is over and no second wave will follow. The evidence has been available for at least 4-5 months and is irrefutable.^2–4 Yet, in spite of this substantial body of research, your office is perpetuating the narrative that a pandemic still exists and a second wave is expected. This false story is being used to justify public health policies that appear to have no health benefits, have already caused considerable harm, and threaten to create more harm in the future.

As you are aware, Sweden took an entirely different approach and, as of mid-September, their infection rate reached an all-time low and Covid-19 related deaths were at zero; 22 of 31 European countries, most of which enacted strict lockdowns, had higher infection rates. Sweden has also largely escaped the financial ruin and catastrophic mental health problems experienced in other countries, including Canada and the U.S.A.

Dr. Lawrence Rosenberg, Montréal’s medical officer, has stated “this COVID virus is much like the seasonal flu”.

A group of over 400 Belgian doctors have stated “COVID is not a killer virus, but a treatable condition”.

Eighteen Canadian doctors wrote the Ontario Premier, Doug Ford, stating “your policies risk significantly harming our children with lifelong consequences”. The Ontario policies are very similar to those of British Columbia.

In 2011, a review of the literature by the British Columbia Centres for Disease Control that sought to evaluate the effectiveness of social distancing measures such as school closures, travel restrictions, and limitations on mass gatherings as a means to address an influenza pandemic concluded that “such drastic restrictions are not economically feasible and are predicted to delay viral spread, but not impact overall mortality”. [Italics added]

Specifically, there appears to be no scientific or medical evidence for^5–6 

1. Self-isolation of asymptomatic people
2. social distancing
3. facemasks
4. arbitrary closure of businesses
5. closure of schools, daycares, park amenities, and playgrounds
6. the discontinuance of access to education, medical, dental, chiropractic, naturopathic, hearing, dietary, therapeutic, and other support for the physically and mentally disabled, particularly special needs children with neurological disorders
7. the closing down of or restrictions on religious places of worship.

According to the CDC Pandemic Severity Index, none of these measures have been warranted. The Great Barrington Declaration, signed by more than 30,000 health scientists and medical doctors from around the world, adds support for this statement.

Surprisingly, the recommendation for reducing COVID-19 morbidity and mortality by supplementing with vitamin D, a measure that is supported by high-quality research, has been absent from your frequent public broadcasts and professional bulletins.⁷

Optimizing nutrition is a convenient, inexpensive, and safe method of improving immune resistance and has been confirmed through numerous studies for both prevention and treatment of COVID19. As far as I am aware, you have never mentioned something as simple as vitamin D supplements for our most vulnerable citizens. Yet, it was the promise to protect these same citizens that was used to justify the lockdown of a healthy population and the closure of businesses.

Why are you still using PCR testing?

The Deputy Chief Medical Officer for Health in Ontario has publicly stated that the PCR test yields over 50% false positives.

A New York Times investigative report found that PCR testing yields up to 90% false positives due to excessive amplification beyond the recommendations of the manufacturer.

The PCR test was never designed, intended or validated to be used as a diagnostic tool. Even the Alberta Health Services COVID-19 Scientific Advisory Group has stated “clinical sensitivity and specificity values have not been determined for lab developed RT-PCR testing in Canada”.⁸

Despite expert consensus, you continue to use this inappropriate and inaccurate test to report so-called “cases” and justify your decisions.^9-18

The public health definition of a “case” is very broad. As all experienced doctors know, a “case” is a patient with significant symptoms who is often hospitalized. A “case” is not a person who simply has a questionably positive PCR test and presents with no symptoms or an unrelated diagnosis. Pictures of healthy young adults standing in line to get PCR tests, with a cell phone in one hand and a Starbucks coffee in the other, are everywhere in the media. These are not sick people and do not need testing.

Nevertheless, your public announcements repeatedly emphasize that the “case” counts are rising and we are in big trouble. Recently, “out-of-control” case counts were used to justify a second lockdown in Ontario and Quebec. Curfews have been put into place. People are being asked to risk their livelihoods to make sacrifices for the general good, based on Public Health’s misrepresentation of “cases” as sick people.

Meanwhile, hospitalizations, ICU admissions, and deaths from COVID-19 have dropped to pre-pandemic levels. Where are all the patients?

Why not simply tell the public that

• the PCR testing is not reliable and is meaningless for diagnosing COVID-19
• positive PCR test results do not represent sick patients,
• rarely are people now becoming ill from SARS-CoV-2,
• provincial hospitals are essentially empty of COVID-19 patients,

• decisions should not be based on “cases” in the news,
• the morbidity/mortality of COVID-19 has not exceeded seasonal influenza,
• the median age of death from COVID-19 in Canada was 85 years,
• the pandemic is over, and
• no second wave is coming?

It is your duty as the provincial health officer to provide facts, not propaganda, and make every effort to stop the public panic. The only reason for emphasizing “cases” is to induce more fear and thereby compliance in the name of promised safety.

Why are children being pursued with a new rinse-and-spit saliva test that is also based on a worthless PCR test? Children have been terrorized and are being given the message that they can never be trusted not to infect their family and friends — essentially, that they are naturally bad. The insistence on covering their faces with masks, a proven useless and even harmful measure, only worsens this sense of shame. The psychological fallout from such messaging is going to be horrific. One only needs to walk down Main Street to already see the catastrophic effects of these messages on the mental and emotional health of families.

The excess death toll from partial lockdowns, social distancing and other public health measures is staggering. The Canadian media reports that provincial measures have been shown to create 12:1 more deaths than the virus; there has been a 40% increase in heart attack deaths in Canada from fear, anxiety and cancelled hospital procedures; suicide and drug overdose deaths have increased and outnumber COVID-19 deaths by a ratio of 3:1; suicides have doubled in BC since April; and anxiety and depression, food insecurity, domestic violence, and child abuse have skyrocketed. With unnecessary school closures, the ability of teachers to identify children subject to abuse and malnourishment has been curtailed. Many of our friends, family and patients died alone, terrified, and isolated against their will in facilities and nursing homes. That cruel policy was unjustified and inhuman.

How is it possible that a doctor with your previous training and experience did not anticipate the collateral damage of your public health policies – the economic disruption, the psychological and physical health consequences, and the deaths from despair?

The mainstream media has created a religion out of public health, one based on superstition, not science, with the power to rule over an obedient public. The news channels have raised you to almost saint-like status. Tea towels, shoes and murals have been designed to celebrate your accomplishments. Yet, your public directives do not make sense, contradict the research, and are causing people a great deal of harm. As a fellow doctor, I appeal to you to re-examine your policies and change direction before Public Health causes irreparable damage to our province’s health and economic well-being. That about-face will require you to meet the obligations of your office.

Sincerely,

Stephen Malthouse, MD

Member, College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia,

Denman Island, British Columbia

Email: [email protected]

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Notes

1. http://ocla.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/OCLA-Report-2020-1-Criticism-ofGovernment-Response-to-COVID19.pdf  
2. https://docs4opendebate.be/en/#petitie  
3. https://www.flixxy.com/is-the-pandemic-over.htm  
4. https://hubpages.com/politics/Pfizer-Chief-Science-Officer-Second-Wave-Based-onFake-Data-of-False-Positives-for-New-Cases-Pandemic-is-Over  
5. The Doctor Is In: Scott Atlas and the Efficacy of Lockdowns, Social Distancing, and Closures https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biC4nHPYtbA   
6. https://www.sott.net/article/434796-The-Science-is-Conclusive-Masks-andRespirators-do-NOT-Prevent-Transmission-of-Viruses  
7. https://www.cimadoctors.ca/cima-covid-19-policy/  
8. Alberta Health Services COVID-19 Scientific Advisory Group. How do the testing characteristics for the Alberta Health Services lab-developed test for COVID-19 differ between samples collected from nasal, nasopharyngeal, and throat swabs? 15 April 2020 [Internet].  https://www.albertahealthservices.ca/assets/info/ppih/if-ppihcovid-19-sag-comparison-of-testing-sites-rapid-review.pdf (accessed 16 May 2020).  
9. https://bpa-pathology.com/covid19-pcr-tests-are-scientifically-meaningless/  
10. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/antibody-tests-for-covid-19-wrong-half-thetime-cdc-says/ar-BB14DD2E  
11. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/29/health/coronavirus-testing.html  
12. http://republicbroadcasting.org/news/bombshell-who-coronavirus-pcr-test-primersequence-is-found-in-all-human-dna/  
13. https://childrenshealthdefense.org/news/covid-19-testing-pcr-a-critical-appraisal/  
14. https://bpa-pathology.com/covid19-pcr-tests-are-scientifically-meaningless/  
15. Zhang GH et al. Potential false-positive rate among the ‘asymptomatic infected individuals’ in close contacts of COVID-19 patients.CMA.J.CN, 2020 Mar 5;41(4):485-488.  
16. https://bpa-pathology.com/covid19-pcr-tests-are-scientifically-meaningless/  
17. Insert from sample COVID testing kit: RealStar® SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR Kit 1.0 For research use only! The RealStar® SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR Kit 1.0 is a reagent system, based on realtime PCR technology, for the qualitative detection and differentiation of lineage B-betacoronavirus (B-βCoV) and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) specific RNA. For research use only
    (RUO)! Not for use in diagnostic procedures.[Italics added]
18. Insert from sample COVID testing kit: LightMix® Modular SARS-CoV Assays. Roche continues to monitor the virus, SARS-CoV-2, that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and is pleased to announce the availability of the LightMix Modular Assays used to detect this virus. These assays are for Research Use Only (RUO*) on the LightCycler® 480 and/or cobas z 480 instruments, and Roche is the exclusive distributor for these assays. The MagNA Pure 96 instrument or High Pure Viral Nucleic acid kit can be used for extraction. The three LightMix Modular assays are used to detect the SARS and CoV genes outlined in the table below in human tracheal aspirates or bronchoalveolar lavage samples from individual human donors. These assays are not intended for use as an aid in the diagnosis of coronavirus infection. [Italics added] 
19. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/symptoms/flu-vs-covid19.htm   

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According to new data released today, as of Feb. 12, 15,923 adverse reactions to COVID vaccines, including 929 deaths, have been reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) since Dec. 14, 2020.

VAERS is the primary mechanism in the U.S. for reporting adverse vaccine reactions. Reports submitted to VAERS require further investigation before a determination can be made as to whether the reported adverse event was directly or indirectly caused by the vaccine.

The latest VAERS data show that 799 of the deaths were reported in the U.S., and that about one-third of those deaths occurred within 48 hours of the individual receiving the vaccination.

As is consistent with previous VAERS data reports, 192 of the reported deaths — or 21% — were cardiac-related. As The Defender reported earlier this month, Dr. J. Patrick Whelan, a pediatric rheumatologist, warned the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in December that mRNA vaccines like those developed by Pfizer and Moderna could cause heart attacks and other injuries in ways not assessed in safety trials.

Of the 929 deaths reported since Dec. 14, 2020, the average age of the deceased was 77.8 and the youngest was 23. Fifty-two percent of the reported deaths were among men, 45% were women and 3% are unknown. Fifty-eight percent of the deaths were reported in people who received the Pfizer vaccine, and 41% were related to the Moderna vaccine.

States with the highest reported number of deaths were:

• California (71);
• Florida (50);
• Ohio (38);
• New York (31);
• Kentucky (41);
• Michigan (31); and
• Texas (31)

CBS Detroit reported this week that a 68-year old news anchor died one day after being vaccinated for COVID of a suspected stroke.

Reports of deaths among elderly people after being vaccinated for COVID continue to surface, including the article published this week by The Defender about 46 nursing home residents in Spain who died within one month of receiving the Pfizer vaccine.

According to the latest data, 3,126 “serious” adverse reactions have been reported. Adverse reaction reports from the latest CDC data also include:

• 34 miscarriages and pre-term births
• 917 anaphylactic reactions, 70% of which were reported after a Pfizer vaccine and 30% after the Moderna vaccine
• Bell’s palsy (Pfizer 75%; Moderna: 25%)

So far, only Pfizer and Moderna vaccines — approved for emergency use, but not fully licensed — are being used in the U.S.

AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine, which does not use mRNA technology, was approved for emergency use this week by the World Health Organization, paving the way for some countries to start using it. However, as The Defender reported this week, some nations have said they won’t use it, citing safety and efficacy concerns.

FiercePharma reported today that the FDA may reject the AstraZeneca vaccine over concerns relating to efficacy, especially against new COVID variants, and manufacturing issues.

News reports indicate that a growing number of people, including nearly 30% of healthcare workers, now say they don’t want the COVID vaccine, citing safety concerns.

The Washington Post reported this week that nearly a third of military personnel are opting out of the vaccines, and ESPN reported that top NBA players are reluctant to promote the vaccine.

Meanwhile, the FDA has not yet implemented systems to monitor the safety of the experimental COVID vaccines. FDA officials told The New York Times they don’t expect the systems to be up and running before the Biden administration reaches its goal of vaccinating 100 million Americans — nearly one third of the U.S. population.

As of Feb. 19, about 56.3 million people in the U.S. had received one or both doses of a COVID vaccine.

While the VAERS database numbers may seem sobering, according to a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services study, the actual number of adverse events is likely significantly higher. VAERS is a passive surveillance system that relies on the willingness of individuals to submit reports voluntarily.

According to the VAERS website, healthcare providers are required by law to report to VAERS:

• Any adverse event listed in the VAERS Table of Reportable Events Following Vaccination that occurs within the specified time period after vaccination
• An adverse event listed by the vaccine manufacturer as a contraindication to further doses of the vaccine

The CDC says healthcare providers are strongly encouraged to report:

• Any adverse event that occurs after the administration of a vaccine licensed in the United States, whether or not it is clear that a vaccine caused the adverse event
• Vaccine administration errors

However, “within the specified time” means that reactions occurring outside that timeframe may not be reported, in addition to reactions suffered hours or days later by people who don’t report those reactions to their healthcare provider.

Vaccine manufacturers are required to report to VAERS “all adverse events that come to their attention.”

Historically, however, fewer than fewer than 1% of adverse events have ever been reported to VAERS, a system that Children’s Health Defense has previously referred to as an “abject failure,” including in a December 2020 letter to Dr. David  Kessler, former FDA director and now co-chair of the COVID-19 Advisory Board and President Biden’s version of Operation Warp Speed.

A critic familiar with VAERS’ shortcomings bluntly condemned VAERS in The BMJ as “nothing more than window dressing, and a part of U.S. authorities’ systematic effort to reassure/deceive us about vaccine safety.”

CHD is calling for complete transparency. The children’s health organization is asking Kessler and the federal government to release all of the data from the clinical trials and suspend COVID-19 vaccine use in any group not adequately represented in the clinical trials, including the elderly, frail and anyone with comorbidities.

CHD is also asking for full transparency in post-marketing data that reports all health outcomes, including new diagnoses of autoimmune disorders, adverse events and deaths from COVID vaccines.

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

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First published on December 25, 2020

On December 1, 2020, the ex-Pfizer head of respiratory research Dr. Michael Yeadon and the lung specialist and former head of the public health department Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg filed an application with the EMA, the European Medicine Agency responsible for EU-wide drug approval, for the immediate suspension of all SARS CoV 2 vaccine studies, in particular the BioNtech/Pfizer study on BNT162b (EudraCT number 2020-002641-42).

Dr. Wodarg and Dr. Yeadon demand that the studies – for the protection of the life and health of the volunteers – should not be continued until a study design is available that is suitable to address the significant safety concerns expressed by an increasing number of renowned scientists against the vaccine and the study design.

On the one hand, the petitioners demand that, due to the known lack of accuracy of the PCR test in a serious study, a so-called Sanger sequencing must be used. This is the only way to make reliable statements on the effectiveness of a vaccine against Covid-19. On the basis of the many different PCR tests of highly varying quality, neither the risk of disease nor a possible vaccine benefit can be determined with the necessary certainty, which is why testing the vaccine on humans is unethical per se.

Furthermore, they demand that it must be excluded, e.g. by means of animal experiments, that risks already known from previous studies, which partly originate from the nature of the corona viruses, can be realized. The concerns are directed in particular to the following points:

• The formation of so-called “non-neutralizing antibodies” can lead to an exaggerated immune reaction, especially when the test person is confronted with the real, “wild” virus after vaccination. This so-called antibody-dependent amplification, ADE, has long been known from experiments with corona vaccines in cats, for example. In the course of these studies all cats that initially tolerated the vaccination well died after catching the wild virus.
• The vaccinations are expected to produce antibodies against spike proteins of SARS-CoV-2. However, spike proteins also contain syncytin-homologous proteins, which are essential for the formation of the placenta in mammals such as humans. It must be absolutely ruled out that a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 could trigger an immune reaction against syncytin-1, as otherwise infertility of indefinite duration could result in vaccinated women.
• The mRNA vaccines from BioNTech/Pfizer contain polyethylene glycol (PEG). 70% of people develop antibodies against this substance – this means that many people can develop allergic, potentially fatal reactions to the vaccination.
• The much too short duration of the study does not allow a realistic estimation of the late effects. As in the narcolepsy cases after the swine flu vaccination, millions of healthy people would be exposed to an unacceptable risk if an emergency approval were to be granted and the possibility of observing the late effects of the vaccination were to follow. Nevertheless, BioNTech/Pfizer apparently submitted an application for emergency approval on December 1, 2020.

CALL FOR HELP: Dr. Wodarg and Dr. Yeadon ask as many EU citizens as possible to co-sign their petition by sending the e-mail prepared here to the EMA.

Nachtrag: Wegen teilweiser Überlastung der Server hier der Inhalt der E-Mail und die Kontaktadressen zum späteren Selbst-Versenden:

An: [email protected]; [email protected]

Betreff: Co-signing the petition of Dr. Wodarg, Germany, and Dr. Yeadon, UK (submitted on 1-Dec-2020)

Dear Sir or Madam, I am hereby co-signing the petition of Dr. Wodarg and Dr. Yeadon to support their urgent request to stay the Phase III clinical trial(s) of BNT162b (EudraCT Number 2020-002641-42) and other clinical trials.

The full text of the petition of Dr. Wodarg and Dr. Yeadon can be found here:

I hereby respectfully request that EMA act on the petition of Dr. Wodarg and Dr. Yeadon immediately. Regards 

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Via a Monday Twitter post, President Joe Biden made an unqualified assertion that the experimental coronavirus vaccines, which are not even vaccines under the normal meaning of vaccines, the United States government is encouraging Americans to take are “safe” for everyone. However, taking a look through the fact sheets for recipients and caregivers regarding the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna experimental coronavirus vaccines, available at the website of the US government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, you find a very different representation.

If there’s one message I want to cut through to everyone in this country, it’s this: The vaccines are safe.

For yourself, your family, your community, our country — take the vaccine when it’s your turn and available. That’s how we’ll beat this pandemic.

— President Biden (@POTUS) February 22, 2021

These fact sheets warn that there are many known health risks of taking either vaccine and that there are also other potential health risks that remain unknown because the experimental vaccines went through rushed and incomplete testing.

Biden stated the following in his tweet:

If there’s one message I want to cut through to everyone in this country, it’s this: The vaccines are safe.

For yourself, your family, your community, our country — take the vaccine when it’s your turn and available. That’s how we’ll beat this pandemic.

Wow. It would be absurd to make such a claim even about the many vaccines that have gone through complete regular testing. There is a basis for arguing taking such injections for many people can be expected to provide greater benefit than detriment. But, to say outright that those vaccines are safe for any particular person is to give false assurance. And to say outright that they are safe for everyone is preposterous.

People are hurt by vaccines that have gone through the full, regular testing process. Further, recognition of the predictable heightened danger for some people taking such vaccines leads doctors to recommend that those individuals not take them at all.

Looking at the fact sheets for recipients and caregivers for the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna experimental coronavirus vaccines makes clear how far off Biden’s blanket assurance of safety is. The US government is admitting there are potential negative health consequences of taking the experimental vaccines.

The first warning sign in the fact sheets for the two experimental vaccines is in the fact sheets’ titles. Both titles refer to the “emergency use authorization” of the vaccines. At the end of the fact sheets it is explained that emergency use authorization means the experimental coronavirus vaccines have “not undergone the same type of review as an FDA approved or cleared product.” Further, it is made clear that the emergency use authorization does not mean the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has determined the vaccines are safe. Instead, “the FDA decision is based on the totality of scientific evidence available showing that the product may be effective to prevent COVID-19 during the COVID-19 pandemic and that the known and potential benefits of the product outweigh the known and potential risks of the product.”

Unlike Biden who seems to say everyone should rush out and take the vaccines, the fact sheets explicitly say that some people should not receive the injections: people under a certain age (16 for Pfizer-BioNTech and 18 for Moderna), as well as people who have “had a severe allergic reaction after a previous dose of this vaccine” (both vaccines have a two shot regimen) or “had a severe allergic reaction to any ingredient” of the respective vaccines.

The fact sheets for both the Pfizer-BioNTech and the Moderna experimental coronavirus vaccines also include this section that suggests that, for particular individuals, taking one of the vaccines will carry greater risk of harm and may be better avoided:

WHAT SHOULD YOU MENTION TO YOUR VACCINATION PROVIDER BEFORE YOU GET THE [PFIZER-BIONTECH or MODERNA] COVID-19 VACCINE?

Tell your vaccination provider about all of your medical conditions, including if you:

• have any allergies

• have a fever

• have a bleeding disorder or are on a blood thinner

• are immunocompromised or are on a medicine that affects your immune system

• are pregnant or plan to become pregnant

• are breastfeeding

• have received another COVID-19 vaccine

For each of the experiment vaccines, the respective fact sheets also provide a list of some of potential health harms from receiving the vaccinations — potential health harms Biden seems to claim do not exist.

The Pfizer-BioNTech experimental coronavirus vaccine fact sheet provides these details about risks from having the shots:

WHAT ARE THE RISKS OF THE PFIZER-BIONTECH COVID-19 VACCINE?

Side effects that have been reported with the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine include:

• injection site pain

• tiredness

• headache

• muscle pain

• chills

• joint pain

• fever

• injection site swelling

• injection site redness

• nausea

• feeling unwell

• swollen lymph nodes (lymphadenopathy)

Similarly, the Moderna experimental coronavirus vaccine fact sheet provides these details about risks from having the shots:

WHAT ARE THE RISKS OF THE MODERNA COVID-19 VACCINE?

Side effects that have been reported with the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine include:

• Injection site reactions: pain, tenderness and swelling of the lymph nodes in the same arm of the injection, swelling (hardness), and redness

• General side effects: fatigue, headache, muscle pain, joint pain, chills, nausea and vomiting, and fever

Both experimental coronavirus vaccines’ fact sheets also provide this warning:

There is a remote chance that the [Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna] COVID-19 Vaccine could cause a severe allergic reaction. A severe allergic reaction would usually occur within a few minutes to one hour after getting a dose of the [Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna] COVID-19 Vaccine. For this reason, your vaccination provider may ask you to stay at the place where you received your vaccine for monitoring after vaccination. Signs of a severe allergic reaction can include:

• Difficulty breathing

• Swelling of your face and throat

• A fast heartbeat

• A bad rash all over your body

• Dizziness and weakness

These may not be all the possible side effects of the [Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna] COVID-19 Vaccine. Serious and unexpected side effects may occur. The [Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna] COVID-19 Vaccine is still being studied in clinical trials.

So, are the experimental coronavirus vaccines safe? The answer is “no” according to the fact sheets provided at the FDA website. There are significant known dangers from taking the vaccines. Also, especially given the rushed and abbreviated testing of the experimental vaccines, there may be numerous unlisted health problems that arise in people who receive the shots.

Biden says to everyone in his tweet “take the vaccine when it’s your turn and available.” A wiser course is for people to consider the potential risks carefully and make their own informed decisions regarding taking the experimental coronavirus vaccines.

The experimental coronavirus vaccines’ fact sheets are a good starting point for that risk investigation. It may also be worthwhile to take a look at a few of my earlier articles — “Everyone Should Take the Experimental Coronavirus Vaccines? Dr. Joseph Mercola Says No.” from February 3, “Worries of Coronavirus Vaccine Deaths and Injuries in America and Abroad” from January 19, “Coronavirus Vaccinations Seem to be Causing 50 Times the Adverse Events of Flu Vaccinations after Just the First of Two Shots” from January 6, and “Doctors, Normal and Abnormal” from December 19.

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US foreign policy has clearly continued in the same direction, without missing a beat. Unlike in previous transitions in the White House, this time US President Joe Biden has not even really tried to promise even the faintest hope that it wouldn’t. 

The following article is the second in a series of interviews with a nurse who works in a hospital on the outskirts of Toronto, Ontario.

She has provided sufficient evidence, and links to public records, to satisfy me that she is indeed a nurse working for over a decade in multiple Canadian hospitals, serving both in the emergency room and intensive care unit. To protect her identity, position and family, details about her and her place of work have been changed or omitted, without altering her message.

Life-Threatening Reactions After COVID-19 Vaccination

JOHN C. A.: Are you being forced to take the COVID-19 vaccine?

NURSE ANDREA: I’ve not been forced to take it (yet).  The pressure is more social, rather than a legal or occupational requirement, at this time.  Most people seem to get vaxed because they want to socially signal that they “believe in science.”

The politically-induced vaccine supply restriction in Canada, that is making most people upset, is actually to my advantage.  Everyone keeps asking, “Andrea, did you get the vaccine?”  My standard reply is something like, “No, I already had my tubes tied; I don’t need any more medically induced infertility,” or I say, “No, I’m just exploiting everyone else’s enthusiasm for self-imposed medical experimentation.”

JOHN: How have the other staff members responded to their first injection of the COVID-19 vaccine?

NURSE ANDREA: I was just talking to a colleague who has no history of passing out easily, but she completely lost consciousness after getting the vaccine.  In medical terms, this is called a syncope.  Anecdotally, she was told at the vax clinic (off the record) that about one in ten people were experiencing syncope after injection. It seems to happen randomly.

My colleague said she witnessed someone pass out as they were walking to the exit!  This is extremely dangerous because even if the syncope is benign, all it takes is a bump to the head on the way down resulting in severe injury or death.  Imagine: a healthy young person with almost zero chance of dying from COVID, driven by media and social pressure to “believe in science,” getting jabbed with fake immune stimulation and dying. Seems kinda evil to me.

Vaccinated Patients Filing into Otherwise Underused ERs

JOHN: Have you seen any adverse reactions among patients?

NURSE ANDREA:  A patient came to the emergency department with severe lightheadedness and an episode of chest pain.  They had a hard time standing. I was taking their history and they told me they had recently taken the corona vax.

Of course, there are other possible causes for symptoms, such as mild heart attack or recent dietary change involving severe caloric restriction.  But how do we really know if the vax didn’t precipitate, or act as one (among the confluence of factors) that led to hospital admission?

The history of medicine is replete with entrenched fantasies about cause and effect — especially when the government, pharmaceutical, and agricultural big players are involved.

Vaccine Reactions Not Being Recorded Properly

JOHN: Did the doctor record her condition as a possible vaccine reaction?

NURSE ANDREA: The doctor immediately dismissed the idea that the corona vax could have played any role in the patient’s symptoms. It got me thinking, how much data about possible reactions to the vax are simply not being collected because of the bias of the clinician to ignore them?

JOHN: How many of these patients, following a COVID-19 rejection, are elderly?

NURSE ANDREA: We’re seeing a surge of patients come to the hospital from the nursing homes after getting vaxed.  These poor folks, in their 80s and 90s with chronic heart and lung disease, can’t handle the metabolic stimulation caused by the COVID vax.

I have to be intellectually honest and say I can’t ascribe direct causation by the vax for their presentation.  It could be a urinary infection or bacterial pneumonia, for example.

But what I find shocking is how, for instance, my recent patient had “COVID” back in January (and survived despite being extremely elderly with severe heart, lung, and kidney conditions).  According to the CDC, immunity for COVID is supposed to last 90 days after infection, yet my patient got vaccinated anyway, well within the window of immunity.  One of my colleagues said, “Are they literally trying to kill this patient!?”  And yet, the doctor in emergency says, “I think it’s COVID”.  Doesn’t Occam’s razor apply if the patient is within the window of immunity from COVID, just got vaxed yesterday, and is here today with a severe immune response requiring hospitalization?

JOHN: What exactly are the symptoms you are seeing in these elderly people after receiving the COVID-19 vaccination?

NURSE ANDREA: Fever, extreme chills, tremors, headache, weakness, lightheadedness, and shortness of breath are symptoms that stand out to me. Nothing too specific which makes it hard to differentiate right away whether it’s from the vax, some other underlying problem, or combination of both, especially when patients are just walking in off the street or offloading from an ambulance stretcher.

Hospitals Long Track Record of Administering Dangerous and Ineffective Pharmaceuticals

JOHN: Are the doctors truly overlooking the correlation or are they simply not saying anything?

NURSE ANDREA: I think we clinicians in general are heavily biased toward belief in the efficacy of our interventions. For example, in hospitals, there are many routine prescriptions, such as laxatives, sedatives, and antacids that have zero evidence of benefit.  Sleeping pills, sedatives, and antipsychotic medication are actually quite dangerous.

Despite the evidence of danger with these drugs, many doctors routinely prescribe them and many nurses unquestioningly administer them because they appear to work, at least in the short run.

Consider the following highly realistic scenario: a delirious elderly patient constantly wanders the hallway without a mask while touching public surfaces, which generates extra concern from staff, especially during a “pandemic” when everyone is supposed to remain distanced and surfaces remain sanitized.  In response, we give the patient a drug to “settle them down.”  So they sleep for a night, and the next day the nurse gives a report and says, “The patient slept well and didn’t wander after I gave the pill to help them sleep.”  This gets reported to the doctor who is pleased that the patient stayed in bed and didn’t wander around disrupting other patients, causing an infection control concern, or creating an inconvenience for the staff.

Consequently, the patient continues to get drugged every night.  Then, after a few days, the delirium is worse and the patient starts their usual wandering. However, now they are loaded up with sedatives and can’t keep their balance. The cascade of nightly drugging results in a fall, leading to severe maiming and/or death.

JOHN: It sounds the like this aspect of “new normal” — using unproven methods to seemingly deal with a problem — isn’t all that new.

NURSE ANDREA: The lesson here is that much of what we are doing right now in response to COVID (such as constant mask enforcement, vaccinating the elderly with limited physiologic reserves to handle the side-effects, and keeping them isolated and locked up in rooms “for their own safety”) is all part of the same myopic mindset that has always plagued medicine and the healthcare system broadly.

JOHN: It’s strange how medicine will look back and laugh at practices like blood letting, yet continue with equally unscientific and harmful practices.

NURSE ANDREA: I believe that when we look back on all this intervention for COVID — both pharmaceutical and not — we will be ashamed of what we have done.  Just as countless patients in the past have been defacto murdered with tranquilizers, we are murdering people today with interventions aimed at controlling or curing COVID.

JOHN: Thank you for speaking out.

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

Video: The Stats on COVID-Vaccine Injury and Death Don’t Add Up

By Rosemary Frei, February 26 2021

There’s a big mystery that needs to be solved. It’s how many people are getting sick and dying from the Covid vaccines.

Why Joe Biden Will Continue the US War on Nord Stream 2 till the Bitter End

By Johanna Ross, February 26 2021

Any doubts as to whether Joe Biden will continue Donald Trump’s opposition to Nord Stream 2 should now be laid to rest. With 18 companies quitting the gas pipeline project this week following threats of US sanctions, there has never been so much pressure on Angela Merkel to ditch the scheme.

There Is No Crisis for NATO’s Italian Military

By Manlio Dinucci, February 26 2021

While Italy is paralyzed by the “economic crisis that the pandemic unleashed” (as Draghi defined it in his programmatic speech), there is a sector that is not affected but is in full development: the NATO Italian military sector.

SARS Variants, Spike Proteins and More All Rest on One Big Fat Assumption

By Makia Freeman, February 26 2021

Without virus isolation, the SARS variants brainwashing theme is being increasingly pushed by the NWO (New World Order) social engineers to prop up the pandemic.

UK and Greece Collude to Push New ‘Vaccine Passport’ on Holiday Travelers

By 21st Century Wire, February 26 2021

As 21WIRE reported earlier this week, despite various public denials by UK ministers it has been revealed that the Government is indeed planning to roll-out a new Vaccine Passport.

US-China Win-Win Cooperation? The Competitive Mindset is Destined to Fail

By Andrew Korybko, February 23 2021

The simple solution to “winning the competition of the future” with China is for the US to stop perceiving relations in a zero-sum manner and instead embrace the paradigm shift of regarding them in a win-win cooperative manner.

Scientists: Vaccination Before Every Holiday May be Needed

By Steve Watson, February 26 2021

Scientists at Oxford University have suggested that people may need to have a coronavirus vaccination not once, not twice, but EVERY time they want to travel out of their home country.

US Doctors Propose ‘Vaccine Bill of Rights’ to Protect Citizens from Forced Shots

By Patrick Delaney, February 26 2021

With a push for vaccine mandates on the rise, America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLDS) has provided a tool to assist state law makers in protecting the rights and dignity of their constituents in the face of such intrusive, dangerous and unnecessary proposals.

The Issue of Vaccines: Open Letter to Dr. Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Federal President of Germany

By Dr. Rudolf Hänsel, February 26 2021

As an independent scientist, I am very well informed about the very questionable “efficacy” and “tolerability”, especially of the vaccines offered in Germany, due to my international networking with safe friends and colleagues, and I understand the hesitation of my fellow citizens.

Haiti Betrayed: Screening and Discussion

By Global Research News, February 26 2021

To commemorate the anniversary of the US/France/Canada led overthrow of Haiti’s elected government, we are hosting a screening and discussion of Haiti Betrayed, a powerful indictment of Canada’s role in the 2004 coup and subsequent policy in the country.

US Sponsored Coup d’État: The Destabilization of Haiti

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, February 26 2021

This article was written in the last days of February 2004 in response to the barrage of disinformation in the mainstream media. It was completed and published on February 29th, the day of President Jean Bertrand Aristide’s kidnapping and deportation by US Forces.