Global Research

The Cuba Solidarity Campaign adds its voice to the worldwide condemnation of the outgoing Trump administration’s listing of Cuba as a ‘state sponsor of terrorism’.

Trump’s move is designed to hinder the incoming Biden administration from reprising the Obama era’s rapprochement with Havana. Obama’s decision to formally remove Cuba from the terrorism list in 2015 was an important step that led to the restoration of diplomatic relations later that year.

Returning Cuba to the list is a unilateral measure that has been widely condemned and ridiculed. It is further evidence, if any is needed, of how sections of the right-wing in the US bully those who oppose its neo-liberal policies.

The move panders to the powerful, far-right anti-Cuba groups in Florida, who wield significant power within the Republican Party and form part of Trump’s core support.

Richard Burgon MP said it was “a disgraceful decision made for cynical political objectives and based upon lies. Obama rightly removed Cuba from this classification and I hope that Joe Biden does so too, and swiftly.”

There are already so many sanctions in place, tightened further by Trump, that the terrorism listing is unlikely to have significant or immediate effects. However it will entrench the sanctions policy, adding weight to the threats against international companies wishing to trade with Cuba, and it will make it more difficult for the incoming US administration to move towards an alternative policy of rapprochement and engagement with the island.

The US announcement is discredited, dishonest and comes from a morally bankrupt administration. Cuba is not in any way ‘a state sponsor of terrorism’. The opposite is true: Cuba is a state victim of terrorism. Since 1959, over 3,000 Cubans have lost their lives to terrorist acts, most of which have emanated from the US. These include numerous early acts of aggression and sabotage following the 1959 Revolution, peaking in the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, the bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1976 killing 73 people, and the hotel bombings in Havana in the 1990s designed to destroy the growing Cuban tourist industry.

The only terrorist aggression involving Cuba is coordinated, sponsored and perpetrated from the territory of the US, whose government is complicit and responsible for these atrocities.

We call on the incoming Biden administration to reverse this outrageous decision, and for good people across the world to join the campaign for an end to the US’s illegal blockade. Countries need to be able to engage and cooperate with each other in a spirit of mutual respect and understanding. At this time of worldwide pandemic, friendship across frontiers is surely the only way forward.

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Vehicles move slowly a few metres down the crowded main street of Aizarya, a Palestinian suburb east of Jerusalem, before stopping again.

Islam Rabea, a 23-year-old minibus driver, pulls on the handbrake and begins musing again.

“This town is more crowded than a can of tuna fish,” he says. “There’s one entrance, which is also the only exit, and I drive people to it back and forth all day.”

Aizarya’s only route to the outside world is to the east via an Israeli-built road, facing the entrance of Maale Adumim, the largest illegal Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank, built almost entirely on lands belonging to the Palestinian town.

To the west is Abu Dis, another Jerusalem suburb flanked by Israel’s separation wall, which forces all Abu Dis’s traffic to pass through Aizarya and exit east.

Last week, however, the Israeli government approved a project that would build extensive new sections of its separation wall around Aizarya’s north and east, severing it from the Israeli road and direct route to Jerusalem it has enjoyed for centuries, which now would be only accessible to Israeli settlers.

Israel’s government has allocated 14m shekels ($4.3m) for the project, according to Israeli NGO Peace Now.

Aizarya wouldn’t be totally cut off by the scheme. A new entrance to the town and Abu Dis would be erected to the north. That would move traffic towards Ramallah, away from the settlers’ view, and sever it from Jerusalem, the city that Aizarya has always been a satellite of.

“It wouldn’t change much for me, as a minibus driver. I’d still have to drive through this crowded cage to the new way out. But it would cut the town off completely from Jerusalem,” Rabea says.

‘Greater Jerusalem’ and Israeli annexation

This is not merely a traffic issue.

By funnelling Aizarya’s people away from Jerusalem and running the separation wall along the edge of the town, the suburb would be further cut off from the surrounding lands that Palestinian residents for centuries have worked and lived on.

The more would see Aizarya’s lands not already settled on by Israel as “effectively annexed”, according to its mayor, Issam Faroun, who says that his town would be “stripped of its lands – to the bone”.

In order to raise its geopolitical influence, Russia has been making efforts identifying mega infrastructure projects such as nuclear power and energy, natural resources exploration and talks consistently about increasing trade with Africa. On the other hand, Russia primarily needs to work on a coordinated mechanism for financing these corporate policy initiatives and further push for increased trade with Africa.

On November 23, a videoconference organized by Federation Council of Russia, Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Russia and Business Russia Association, focused partly on identifying funding sources for exports, concretizing proposals for increasing exports to Africa and looking at facilitating amendments to the Russian legislation if required to promote exports to the African market.

Senator Igor Morozov, a member of the Federation Council Committee on Economic Policy, and newly elected Chairman of the Coordinating Committee on Economic Cooperation with Africa, noted during the meeting that in conditions of pressure from sanctions, it has become necessary to find new markets, new partners and allies for Russia.

“This predetermines the return of Russia back to Africa, makes this direction a high priority both from the point of geopolitical influence and in the sphere of trade and economic context.”

“It is important for us to expand and improve competitive government support instruments for business. It is obvious that over the thirty years when Russia left Africa, China, India, the USA, and the European Union have significantly increased their investment opportunities there in the region,” Morozov stressed.

With a renewed growing interest in the African market, Russians are feverishly looking for establishing effective ways of entry into the huge continental market. As result, Senator Igor Morozov unreservedly suggested creating a new structure within the Russian Export Center – an investment fund. He explained thus:

“Such a fund could evaluate and accumulate concessions as a tangible asset for the Russian raw materials and innovation business.”

The Coordinating Committee for Economic Cooperation with African States was created on the initiative of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation and Vnesheconombank with support from the Federation Council and the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation. It has had support from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Economy and Trade, the Ministry of Natural Resources, as well as the Ministry of Higher Education and Science.

During a restructuring meeting with the Coordinating Committee for Economic Cooperation with African States, President of the Russian Chamber of Chamber and Industry, Sergei Katyrin, said

“the primary task now to accelerate Russia’s economic return to African continent, from which we practically left in the 90s and now it is very difficult to increase our economic presence there in Africa.”

According to Katyrin, Russia’s economic presence in Africa today is significantly inferior in comparison to the positions of leading Western countries and BRICS partners.

“It’s time to overcome this yawning gap. Today, we face a difficult task to ensure the activities of Russian entrepreneurship on the African continent in the new conditions, taking into account all the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic.”

Katyrin stressed the necessity to resolve financial mechanism for business and for infrastructural projects.

“We need a state financial mechanism to support the work of Russian business in Africa otherwise it will be very difficult to break through the fierce competition of Western companies with such support. We need to focus on those areas where you can definitely count on success,” he told the meeting.

With the participation of representatives of business and expert circles, this committee’s primary task is to consolidate the efforts of business, government and public structures of Russia, facilitate the intensification of economic activities in Africa. It has the responsibility for adopting a more pragmatic approach to business, for deepening and broadening existing economic collaborations and for the establishment of direct mutually beneficial contacts between entrepreneurs and companies from Russia and African countries.

During this October meeting, the participants discussed various issues and acknowledged that the committee has achieved little since its establishment. The meeting identified factors that have hindered its expected achievements and overall performance since 2009. Admittedly, a quick assessment for over one decade (2010 to 2020) has shown very little impact and tangible results.

The committee’s document listed more than 150 Russian companies as members, most of them hardly seen participating in business events in order to get acquainted with investment opportunities in Africa.

Notwithstanding the setbacks down these years, Russians are still full of optimism. Completely a new team was put in place during the meeting hosted by the Russian Business Chamber. Russian Senator Igor Morozov was elected as the new Chairman of the Coordinating Committee for Economic Cooperation with African States.

Over the years, experts have reiterated that Russia’s exports to Africa could be possible only after the country’s industrial based experiences a more qualitative change and argued the benefits for introducing tariff preferences for trade with African partners.

“The situation in Russian-African foreign trade will change for the better, if Russian industry undergoes technological modernization, the state provides Russian businessmen systematic and meaningful support, and small and medium businesses receive wider access to foreign economic cooperation with Africa,” Professor Alexey Vasileyev, former director of the Institute for African Studies (IAS) under the Russian Academy of Sciences.

As a reputable institute established during the Soviet era, it has played a considerable part in the development of African studies in the Russian Federation. For over 25 years, Professor Vasileyev directed the Institute for African Studies. His research interests extend beyond the Middle East. For instance, he carried out analysis of socio-economic problems of Africa, including Sub-Saharan Africa. He has many books and monographs including the one titled Africa: The Stepchild of Globalization and Africa, the Challenges of the 21st Century.

Professor Vasileyev, now the Chair for African and Arab Studies at the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (since 2013), and Special Representative of Russian President for Relations with African leaders (2006–2011), pointed out that the level and scope of Russian economic cooperation with Africa has doubled in recent years, “but unfortunately Russian-African cooperation is not in the top five of the foreign players in Africa.”

Speaking particularly about trade, the professor noted that not all African countries have signed agreements with Russia, for example, on the abolition of double taxation. He urged African countries to make trade choices that are in their best economic interests and further suggested that Russia should also consider the issue of removal of tariff and non-tariff restrictions on economic relations.

In order to increase trade, Russia has to improve its manufacturing base and Africa has to standardize its export products to compete in external markets. Russia has only few manufactured goods that could successfully compete with Western-made products in Africa. Interestingly, there are few Russian traders in Africa and African exporters are not trading in Russia’s market, in both cases, due to multiple reasons including inadequate knowledge of trade procedures, rules and regulations as well as the existing market conditions, he said.

He believes that it is also necessary to create, for example, free trade areas.

“But before creating them, we need information. And here, I am ready to reproach the Russian side, providing little or inadequate information to Africans about their capabilities, and on the other hand, reproach the African side, because when our business comes to Africa, they should know where they go, why and what they will get as a result,” Professor Vasileyev explicitly added.

The United States, European Union members, Asia countries such as China, India and Japan, have provided funds to support companies ready to carry out projects in various sectors in African countries. Some have publicly committed funds, including concessionary loans, for Africa.

For example, during the last Ministerial Conference of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), Chinese President Xi Jinping said

“China will expand cooperation in investment and financing to support sustainable development in Africa. China provided US$60 billion of credit line to African countries to assist them in developing infrastructure, agriculture, manufacturing and small and medium-sized enterprises.”

It fully understands Africa’s needs and its willingness to open the door to cooperation in the field of scientific and technological innovation on an encouraging basis. The method for financing the building of infrastructure is relatively simple. In general, governments obtain preferential loans from the Export-Import Bank of China or the China Development Bank, with the hiring of Chinese building contractors.

The Chinese policy banking system allows leading Chinese state-owned enterprises to operate effectively in Africa, with the majority of these active in infrastructure and construction in Africa. China has always been committed to achieving win-win cooperation and joint development with Africa. Russia could consider the Chinese model of financing various infrastructure and construction projects in Africa.

Official proposals for all kinds of support for trade and investment has been on the spotlight down the years. In May 2014, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov wrote in one of his articles:

“we attach special significance to deepening our trade and investment cooperation with the African States. Russia provides African countries with extensive preferences in trade.”

Lavrov wrote:

“At the same time, it is evident that the significant potential of our economic cooperation is far from being exhausted and much remains to be done so that Russian and African partners know more about each other’s capacities and needs. The creation of a mechanism for the provision of public support to business interaction between Russian companies and the African continent is on the agenda.”

After the first Russia-Africa Summit in the Black Sea city, Russia Sochi in October 2019, Russia and Africa have resolved to move from mere intentions to concrete actions in raising the current bilateral trade and investment to appreciably higher levels in the coming years.

“There is a lot of interesting and demanding work ahead, and perhaps, there is a need to pay attention to the experience of China, which provides its enterprises with state guarantees and subsidies, thus ensuring the ability of companies to work on a systematic and long-term basis,” Foreign Minister Lavrov explicitly said.

According to Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Ministry would continue to provide all-round support for initiatives aimed at strengthening relations between Russia and Africa.

“Our African friends have spoken up for closer interaction with Russia and would welcome our companies on their markets. But much depends on the reciprocity of Russian businesses and their readiness to show initiative and ingenuity, as well as to offer quality goods and services,” he stressed.

Amid these years of Western and European sanctions, Moscow has been looking for both allies and an opportunity to boost growth in trade and investment. Currently, Russia’s trade with Africa is less than half that of France with the continent and 10 times less than that of China. Asian countries are doing brisk business with Africa. According to UNCTAD’s World Investment Report 2020, the top five investors in the African continent are Netherlands, France, the United Kingdom, the United States and China.

In 2018, Russia’s trade with African countries grew more than 17 per cent and exceeded $20 billion. At the Sochi summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he would like to bring the figure $20 billion, over the next few years at least, to $40 billion.

In practical reality, from January 2021 marks the start of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), gives an additional signal for foreign players to take advantage of this new opportunity in Africa. As trumpeted, the AfCFTA has a lot more on offer besides the fact that it creates a single market of 1.3 billion people.

That said however, Russia, of course, has its own approach towards Africa. It pressurizes no foreign countries neither it has to compete with them, as it has its own pace for working with Africa. With the same optimism towards to taking emerging challenges and opportunities in Africa, Russia has to show financial commitment especially now when the joint declaration from the first historic Summit held in October 2019 ultimately seeks a new dynamism in the existing Russia-Africa relations.

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Kester Kenn Klomegah, previously worked for Inter Press Service (IPS), and now a frequent and passionate contributor to Global Research.

Early in the pandemic, “trust the science!” could actually be used in a debate without attracting derisive laughter. But as the flip-flops, mistakes and, yes, lies have accumulated, a consensus seems to be forming that the health care authorities are no more trustworthy than the people running Congress or the Fed.

For proof, let’s start with vitamin D, which sure seems to lessen the severity of coronavirus infections. As the chart below illustrates (couldn’t find the source, but google “covid vitamin D” and you’ll find lots of studies that track with this data), people with higher levels of vitamin D in their bloodstream tend to experience covid-19 as a non-event while people low levels found the infection life-threatening.

There are obvious questions about causality here, so calling vitamin D a “cure” is going way too far. But if it has even a marginal effect – and the data suggest considerably more — a rational government would, you’d think, be handing out vitamin D like Halloween candy. In fact, since we’re mandating/prohibiting all kinds of other behaviors, we might expect vitamin D consumption to be required along with masks and social distancing.

Even covid-czar Anthony Fauci recently said:

“If you are deficient in vitamin D, that does have an impact on your susceptibility to infection. So I would not mind recommending — and I do it myself — taking vitamin D supplements.”

So why aren’t family-sized bottles of vitamin D arriving in the mail from the CDC? A cynic might wonder if the fact that Big Pharma doesn’t make much money from cheap, widely available supplements plays a role in the government’s apparent lack of interest.

Now about those lockdowns. Tom Woods has been producing charts that appear to show virtually no difference in virus outcomes between US states with aggressive lockdown policies and those without. California, for instance, has shuttered most of its small businesses and imposed widespread curfews, while Florida hasn’t. Here’s the result:

As for the rest of the world – where they’re supposedly doing better than the US – the pattern of zero correlation between lockdowns and virus spread seems to be holding. France imposed a full national lockdown in March – after which the virus spiked. Then they added mask mandates (indoor and outdoor), with fines attached. And daily new cases soared.

Then of course there’s the lying. Dr. Fauci first claimed that masks don’t help – when he believed they did help — because he feared mask shortages for health care workers. He also admits to changing the official line on herd immunity according to what he thinks we’re ready to hear.

And, in what sounds more like incompetence than dishonesty, he’s apparently been answering the question “when will life go back to normal?” with whatever pops into his head at the time. In early 2020, it was the coming Autumn. In July, it was “a year or so.” More recently it’s “well into 2021.”

But the biggest and by far the most outrageous reason for this growing mistrust has to be the World Health Organization which, well, read for yourself:

WHO official urges world leaders to stop using lockdowns as primary virus control method

The World Health Organization’s special envoy on COVID-19 urged world leaders this week to stop “using lockdowns as your primary control method.”

“We in the World Health Organization do not advocate lockdowns as the primary means of control of this virus,” Dr. David Nabarro said to The Spectator’s Andrew Neil. “The only time we believe a lockdown is justified is to buy you time to reorganize, regroup, rebalance your resources, protect your health workers who are exhausted, but by and large, we’d rather not do it.”

Nabarro went on to point out several of the negative consequences lockdowns have caused across the world, including devastating tourism industries and increased hunger and poverty.

“Just look at what’s happened to the tourism industry in the Caribbean, for example, or in the Pacific because people aren’t taking their holidays,” he said. “Look what’s happened to smallholder farmers all over the world. … Look what’s happening to poverty levels. It seems that we may well have a doubling of world poverty by next year. We may well have at least a doubling of child malnutrition.”

In the United States, lockdowns have been tied to increased thoughts of suicide from children, a surge in drug overdoses, an uptick in domestic violence, and a study conducted in May concluded that stress and anxiety from lockdowns could destroy seven times the years of life that lockdowns potentially save.

The health care establishment could have saved a lot of time — and embarrassment — by just asking regular people about this stuff.  But then they would have made a lot less money.

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Will the COVID-19 vaccine become mandatory? That’s a question many are asking these days and, by the looks of it, the answer may well be yes — although as I’ll explain later, I suspect the harms of the vaccine will become so apparent that it’ll kill such efforts before they become widespread.

In a January 1, 2021, Newsweek interview,¹ Dr. Anthony Fauci said he was “sure” some institutions and businesses will require employees to be vaccinated, and that it’s “quite possible” the vaccine will be required for overseas travel.

When asked about the possibility of mandating the vaccine on a local level, such as for children attending school, he stated that “Everything will be on the table for discussion.” That said, he pointed out that since “we almost never mandate things federally” — with regard to health — he doesn’t believe a national vaccine mandate will be enacted.

In related news² December 21, 2020, presidential candidate Joe Biden rolled up his sleeve to get publicly inoculated against COVID-19, stating that the vaccine was “nothing to worry about.” He’s also gone on record saying he will push for a 100-day mask mandate in federal buildings if he wins the presidency.³

Can Experimental Vaccines Be Mandated?

While many vaccines are required by state or local law, the thing that sets the COVID-19 vaccine apart from all others is the fact that it is still an experimental vaccine. While Moderna and Pfizer have been granted emergency use authorization for their respective vaccine candidates, they still haven’t even completed Stage 3 clinical trials yet.

The mRNA technology used in these vaccines is also experimental, and the sheer speed at which the vaccines have been developed and tested precludes us from knowing much about their side effects, especially in the long term.

As of December 18, 2020, the adverse event rate in the U.S. was 2.79%.⁴ This means your risk of harm from the vaccine is far greater than your risk of dying from COVID-19, which has an overall noninstitutionalized infection fatality rate of just 0.26%.⁵ Among those under the age of 40, the infection fatality rate is a mere 0.01%.⁶

If an experimental vaccine were to be mandated, it would set a frightening precedent and pave the way for all sorts of nonconsensual medical experimentation on the general public, going forward.

In a December 29, 2020, article⁷ in JAMA, the authors discuss the legal possibility of mandating COVID-19 vaccines, stating that “SARS-CoV-2 vaccines hold promise to control the pandemic and help restore normal social and economic life.”

However, this is questionable, considering the fact that the effectiveness of the vaccines is only measured by their ability to lessen moderate to severe COVID-19 symptoms such as cough and headache. Presumably, this would lower the risk of hospitalization and death for vaccinated individuals.

However, as explained in “How COVID-19 Vaccine Trials Are Rigged,” the vaccines were not evaluated for their ability to actually prevent infection and transmission of the virus. And, if the vaccine cannot reduce infection, hospitalizations or deaths, then it cannot create the vaccine-acquired herd immunity required to end the pandemic.

What’s more, in a November 26, 2020, BMJ article,⁸ Peter Doshi, associate editor of The BMJ, points out that while Pfizer claims its vaccine is 95% effective, this is the relative risk reduction. The absolute risk reduction is actually less than 1%. He also stresses that severe side effects appear commonplace:

“Moderna’s press release states that 9% experienced grade 3 myalgia and 10% grade 3 fatigue; Pfizer’s statement reported 3.8% experienced grade 3 fatigue and 2% grade 3 headache. Grade 3 adverse events are considered severe, defined as preventing daily activity. Mild and moderate severity reactions are bound to be far more common.”

New York Considers Forced Vaccination Bill

None of these open questions is stopping the New York Senate from considering a forced vaccination bill (A416⁹). As reported by constitutional attorney KrisAnne Hall:¹⁰

“January 6 New York Assemblymen will be asked to vote on a bill that will authorize the Governor and/or health officials to seize custody of New Yorkers, imprison, and force vaccinate them without due process.

This bill is not only a threat to the Constitution of New York, the people of New York, but also everyone in America if you consider the way certain legislation can spread throughout America in the age ‘crisis’ …

If passed this legislation will place in the hands of the Governor, or his designated agent, the full and autonomous authority to ‘order’ the ‘removal’ and ‘detention’ of every person the Governor or his ‘delegee’ determines ‘may pose’ a ‘significant and imminent threat to public health’ …

Once some health department worker thinks a New Yorker is a carrier or contact to a carrier, that person will be seized and held without hearing, trial, due process, or bond for a period of time to be determined by the health department.”

As noted by Hall, this bill violates the U.S. Constitution in several different ways. For starters, it eliminates your right to due process before forcing you into the custody of health officials, as well as your right to trial “as required by Article I sec 1 and Article VI Sec 18a of the New York Constitution.”

It also “arbitrarily reduces the well-established standard of strict scrutiny required for the infringement of these fundamental rights to the lesser standard of ‘clear and convincing evidence’ which will be determined solely by the Governor or some worker in the New York Health Department.” This, in turn, violates the constitutional principle of separation of powers.

Thirdly, “A-416 is a bold violation of Article 1 sec 5 and Article 1 sec 12 of the New York Constitution” as it would deprive you of your “inherent rights to due process related to a search and seizure” of your property and/or your body.

“New Yorkers cannot allow that to happen. Everyone in New York needs to contact their Senator and Assemblyman and DEMAND they vote no on A-416. Everyone in America needs to contact their State and demand that such legislation never be drafted,” Hall writes.¹¹

In her blog post, Hall includes sample letter and phone scripts you can use when contacting your representatives.

Blackmailing the Public to Force Vaccine Uptake

Getting back to the JAMA article¹² discussing the legal possibility of mandating COVID-19 vaccines, the authors point out that mandating a vaccine while it’s still under an emergency use approval is “legally and ethically problematic.”

“Vaccine mandates are unjustified because an EUA requires less safety and efficacy data than full Biologics License Application (BLA) approval. Individuals would also likely distrust vaccine mandates under emergency use, viewing it as ongoing medical research,” the article states.

Once the vaccine is fully licensed, however, vaccine mandates “could be imposed in multiple sectors,” according to the authors. Still, they point out that “Given the rarity of adult mandates, states are unlikely to enact mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations for the adult population, especially in the absence of long-term safety data.”

Private companies, on the other hand, can require vaccination as a condition of employment, and according to a Yale CEO survey, 71% of company executives supported the implementation of COVID-19 vaccine mandates in the workplace.¹³

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has already ruled that businesses can compel their employees to get vaccinated, and that they may fire those who refuse. Employers must, however, allow for medical exemptions and “offer reasonable accommodations based on religion or disability.”¹⁴

Schools may also end up requiring COVID-19 vaccination for students, faculty and staff, and it seems likely the vaccine may simply be added to the ACIP-recommended list of childhood vaccinations. Most troubling, however, is the proposal to require vaccination as a condition of service. According to the JAMA article:¹⁵

“It is foreseeable that businesses in certain high-risk settings could require proof of vaccination as a condition of service, such as in long-distance travel (plane, rail, bus), restaurants, and entertainment (sports, movies, theater).

While states might be constitutionally barred from requiring vaccines to participate in religious worship, it is conceivable that some churches, synagogues, or mosques might consider such conditions for congregants. Local or state governments could also require vaccination as a condition of service.”

To be clear, even if state and federal governments don’t mandate the vaccine, by barring unvaccinated people from traveling, participating in social events and even entering into government buildings, they are essentially mandating it. Unvaccinated people would become second-class citizens that aren’t permitted to work, travel, conduct business or engage socially. What kind of life is that?

Yet this is precisely what we may be facing. As noted by the JAMA authors, “If scientific and logistical challenges can be overcome, linking vaccinations as a condition of providing service could be an effective incentive for vaccination.” They really should call it what it is: blackmail.

Many Front-Line Workers Refuse COVID-19 Vaccine

Distribution of Pfizer’s and Moderna’s vaccines began at the end of December 2020. In the U.S., most states have elected to begin distribution among front-line health care workers and in senior care facilities. However, despite media fanfare, many health care workers are leery of the vaccine.

According to news reports, about half of all front-line workers in Riverside County, California, have refused the vaccine,¹⁶ as have 60% of nursing home staff in Ohio,¹⁷ 40% of staff at Chicago’s Loretto Hospital¹⁸ and 40% of LA’s front-line workers.¹⁹ Similar rates of vaccine refusal are being reported in several European countries.²⁰

Interestingly, a survey by the National Association of Health Care Assistants revealed a whopping 72% of certified nursing assistants plan to refuse the vaccine,²¹ as are 55% of firefighters in New York, according to a December 2020 poll by the Uniformed Firefighters Association.²² The reason for this widespread hesitation is as understandable as it is justifiable. As noted in the Western Journal:²³

“Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, any skepticism about the virulence of the virus or wisdom of draconian shutdowns was met with the mantra ‘follow the science’ to stifle any serious debate.

All along the way, however, officials did anything but as they imposed useless mask mandates, allowed Black Lives Matter protests despite closing businesses and imposing social distancing on everyone else, and even expressed skepticism about any vaccine simply because it was developed at the behest of President Donald Trump.

But worst of all, officials undermined science by suggesting that vaccination distribution begin based on race rather than in the nursing home populations that were actually ravaged by the virus.

In short, governments and the medical community killed any credibility they had at the beginning of the pandemic with their repeated hypocrisy and mixed messages. It’s no wonder these workers are reluctant to follow them now and are instead relying on their gut instincts to mistrust the untested vaccine and COVID-19 agenda.”

Side Effects and Deaths Are Stacking Up

The fact that high rates of side effects and sudden deaths are already being reported will hardly improve matters in coming weeks and months. For example, January 4, 2021, RT reported²⁴ that health authorities in Portugal were “on alert” after the sudden death of a 41-year-old pediatric surgery assistant who had been in good health. She was found dead in her bed just two days after being inoculated with Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.

December 30, 2020, the Daily Star reported²⁵ the death of an elderly resident in Lucerne, Switzerland, five days after receiving the Pfizer vaccine. The man had previously “reacted negatively” to the seasonal influenza vaccine. According to the report, he suffered from dementia but was otherwise in good health.

December 26, 2020, a Boston doctor with severe shellfish allergy suffered a life-threatening anaphylactic reaction to the Moderna vaccine. As reported by RT:²⁶

“Within minutes, Sadrzadeh’s tongue and throat began to tingle and go numb, a reaction that he associated with his shellfish allergy. Even more concerning, his blood pressure then dipped so low that it wasn’t even detectable with a monitor. Luckily, the doctor had brought his own EpiPen, which he administered on himself before hospital staff rushed him to the emergency room …

‘I feel that if I did not have my EpiPen with me, I would be intubated right now, because it was that severe,’ he said, adding that it was the worst allergic reaction he had experienced since he was 11 years old. The physician said he now recommends that people with allergies receive the vaccine in a hospital setting, instead of getting it from a clinic or local provider …

The concerning case is the first of its kind to be linked to the Moderna jab. Officials with the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are investigating at least six cases of severe allergic reactions occurring in people who took the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.”

A December 21, 2020, article²⁷ in The Defender reported the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is investigating a series of allergic reactions to the Pfizer vaccine. Aside from the Boston doctor, other reports of allergic reactions, including anaphylactic shock, include four health care workers in Illinois and three health care workers in Alaska.²⁸ Cases of anaphylaxis also emerged within days of the rollout of Pfizer’s and Moderna’s vaccines in the U.K.²⁹

Thousands Injured in Mere Days

According to the CDC,³⁰ by December 18, 2020, 112,807 Americans had received their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine. Of those, 3,150 suffered one or more “health impact events,” defined as being “unable to perform normal daily activities, unable to work, required care from doctor or health care professional.”

That’s 2.79%. Extrapolated to the total U.S. population of 328.2 million, we can then expect 9,156,780 Americans to be injured by the vaccine if every single man, woman and child is vaccinated. Is this really reasonable for a virus that has an average survival rate of 99.74%?³¹

In the end, I suspect and predict that widespread mandates for COVID-19 vaccination will not take place. I believe there will simply be too many injuries and deaths from the first and second rounds of vaccinations, and that will destroy any and all vaccine mandate arguments.

Allergy Alert

Many suspect polyethylene glycol (PEG), found in both Pfizer’s and Moderna’s vaccines, might be the culprit causing allergic reactions and anaphylaxis. According to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., “studies show that 1 in 7 Americans may unknowingly be at risk of experiencing an allergic reaction to PEG.”³²

Kennedy believes “everyone should be screened for anti-PEG antibodies before getting the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines,” adding that “It is unconscionable that, instead, the FDA and CDC are encouraging people to go ahead and risk a life-threatening anaphylactic reaction and just assume that someone will be on hand to save them.”³³

It’s worth noting that the CDC has updated its vaccine guidance in response to reports of allergic reactions to the Pfizer vaccine, stating that:³⁴

“If you have had a severe allergic reaction to any ingredient in an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, you should not get either of the currently available mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. If you had a severe allergic reaction after getting the first dose of an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, CDC recommends that you should not get the second dose.

CDC has also learned of reports that some people have experienced non-severe allergic reactions within 4 hours after getting vaccinated (known as immediate allergic reactions), such as hives, swelling, and wheezing (respiratory distress).

If you have had an immediate allergic reaction — even if it was not severe — to any ingredient in an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, CDC recommends that you should not get either of the currently available mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.

If you had an immediate allergic reaction after getting the first dose of an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, you should not get the second dose … People who are allergic to PEG or polysorbate should not get an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine.”

COVID-19 Outbreaks Occurring Among Vaccinated

Yet another interesting problem that has arisen is that many newly vaccinated individuals are suddenly testing positive for COVID-19. In a San Jose, California, hospital, 51 employees tested positive within 10 days of vaccination, although it’s unclear whether all of them had actually received the vaccine.³⁵

One died from COVID-19 complications. Interestingly, the outbreak is being blamed on an employee who showed up wearing an inflatable Christmas costume. The same pattern has been reported elsewhere.

For example, in Israel, 21 residents of a retirement home tested positive for the virus after receiving the vaccine.³⁶ Authorities pointed out that since two doses are required to provide protection against SARS-CoV-2, you can still catch it after the first dose. The same argument was made in the San Jose hospital case.

A doctor in Philadelphia also tested positive after taking the vaccine,³⁷ as did a nurse in San Diego.³⁸In each case, health authorities have insisted that it’s not the vaccine causing the problem but, rather, the fact that the shot needs time to work.

Overall, there’s plenty of reason to be cautious and delay COVID-19 vaccination as long as possible. As mentioned earlier, I believe that, in time, the harms will become apparent enough that any talk about mandating these vaccines will simply evaporate.

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Notes

¹ Newsweek January 1, 2021

² NBC News December 21, 2020

³ 9 News Australia December 4, 2020

^4, 29, 30 CDC.gov Anaphylaxis following mRNA COVID-19 vaccine receipt (PDF)

^5, 6, 31 Annals of Internal Medicine September 2, 2020 DOI: 10.7326/M20-5352

^{7, 12, 13, 14, 15} JAMA December 29, 2020 DOI: 10.1001/jama.2020.26553

⁸ The BMJ Opinion November 26, 2020

⁹ New York Senate Assembly Bill A416

^10, 11 KrisAnneHall.com

^16, 17 NBC News December 31, 2020

¹⁸ NPR January 1, 2021

¹⁹ Newsweek December 31, 2020

²⁰ Zerohedge December 27, 2020

^21, 23 Western Journal January 4, 2021

²² NBC New York December 6, 2020

²⁴ RT January 4, 2021

²⁵ Daily Star December 30, 2020

²⁶ RT December 26, 2020

^{27, 28, 32, 33} The Defender December 21, 2020

³⁴ CDC.gov COVID-19

³⁵ ABC 7 News January 5, 2021

³⁶ The Jerusalem Post January 3, 2021

³⁷ NBC Philadelphia December 31, 2020

³⁸ Kiro7 News December 30, 2020

Featured image is from Health Impact News

Cuban blood left its stamp on the conscience of the world after the Angolan Wars of 1975-1988.  Corporate politicians are united in their desire for us to ignore this reality.

Fed up with foreign wars, Portuguese officers overthrew Prime Minister Marcello Caetano on April 25, 1974.  Many former colonies had the opportunity to define their own future.

Angola had been the richest of Portuguese colonies, with major production in coffee, diamonds, iron ore and oil.  Of the former colonies, it had the largest white population, which numbered 320,000 of about 6.4 million.  When 90% of its white population fled in 1974, Angola lost most of its skilled labor.

Three groups juggled for power.  The Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), headed by Agostinho Neto was the only progressive alternative.  The National Front for the Liberation of Angola (NFLA), led by Holden Roberto, gained support from Zaire’s right-wing Joseph Mobutu, a conspirator in the assassination of Patrice Lumumba.  Jonas Savimbi, who ran the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), worked hand-in-hand with South Africa’s apartheid regime.

Portugal told South Africa to remove its troops from Angola, which it did by October, 1974.  Recently defeated in Viet Nam, the US felt unable to send troops.  Encouraged by the Ford administration South Africa returned to Angola within a year.

Meanwhile, Fidel Castro’s representatives met with Neto along with the head of MPLA’s recently organized militia, the Popular Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola (FAPLA).  Not eager to intervene, Cuba declined to give financial support.

The South African invasion began October 14 when many of its white troops pretended to be UNITA forces by darkening their faces with “Black Is Beautiful” camouflage cream.  By November, Fidel knew that without help the Angolan capital would fall to apartheid forces and he approved military assistance.  The small number of Cubans who arrived were critical in stopping the South African drive to Angola’s capital, Luanda.

Intense hostility between UNITA and the FNLA resulted in the latter being crushed by early 1976, simplifying the conflict to battles between the MPLA and UNITA, with their allies.  Cuban troops reached the southern border with Namibia, completely pushing out the forces of apartheid.

Multiple factors propelled Cuba’s entry.  The 1959 revolution was so intensely opposed by the US that it became clear that the best defense of Cuba would be an offense.  A campaign in Africa would be less likely to provoke a direct confrontation, largely because most Americans did not see Africa as part of their backyard.  A huge number of Cubans are of African descent and revolutionaries saw anti-racism as core to their politics.  Fidel referred to the anti-apartheid struggle as “the most beautiful cause.”

The second phase of war 

Since the fighting seemed to decrease, the number of Cuban soldiers in Angola dropped from 36,000 in April 1976 to under 24,000 within a year.  However, when France and Belgium sent troops to Zaire, Cuba halted its troop withdrawal.

Throughout the Angolan conflict, South Africa and the US ignored international law and acted as if it was perfectly natural for South Africa to dominate Namibia.  After South African planes massacred Namibian refuges at the Cassinga camp in Angola in May 1975 US President Jimmy Carter brushed it aside and quipped that “we hope it’s all over.”

Memories of that massacre stayed in the mind of a 12 year old girl, Sophia Ndeitungo: “The first Cubans I ever saw were the soldiers who came” to rescue them.  Most Cubans were white, so she “…thought they were South Africans.  Later, we understood that not all whites are bad.”  Sophia was relocated to Cuba’s Isle of Youth to study.  She graduated from Havana’s medical school, married another Cassingan refugee, returned to Namibia, and became head of its armed forces medical services in 2007.  For thousands of black Africans, Cubans were the only white people who showed them any kindness.

Exuberant over the 1980 US election of Ronald Reagan, South Africa stepped up its raids in Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Lesotho, Swaziland, and Botswana.  In August 1981 South Africa poured 4000 to 5000 troops into southern Angola with tanks and air support.  It expanded tactics to include poisoning wells, killing livestock and destroying food distribution and communications.  It was in this context that Cuba began sending 9000 troops back to Angola during August 1983.

Savimbi: Ally of US and South Africa 

Throughout the Carter administration and the early Reagan years, the US increased its flow of weapons to UNITA.  As early as 1974 UNITA’s leader Savimbi had established contacts with the Portuguese dictatorship and promised South Africa that he would help them build an anti-communist bloc.  Savimbi spoke fluent English, oozed self-confidence, cleverly manipulated his audience, knew just what Americans wanted to hear, and was “without scruple.”  In other words, his combination of qualities was a perfect fit for a CIA front man.

Savimbi consolidated his local power by executing village opponents as “sorcerers.”  He had total control and did not tolerate dissent.  By 1980, in addition to ridding UNITA of those who challenged him, Savimbi had “…the wives and children of the dissenters burned alive in public displays to teach the others.”

Special Forces Colonel Jan Breytenbach saw Savimbi as a “manipulator extraordinaire … As a political leader, he was very good.  I would compare him to Hitler.”  This comparison to Hitler was not a slighting of Savimbi – it was a compliment, as multiple top South African politicians had been members of pro-Nazi groups.

Among those who overlooked Savimbi’s campaigns of mass destruction was President Jimmy Carter, who took time out of his schedule of human rights advocacy to arrange the flow of secret US dollars to UNITA.  In 1985 Steve Weissman summed up attitudes that spanned both parties:  “We wanted to hurt Cuba, and we wanted to help people who wanted to hurt Cuba.  When Savimbi said that he was ‘fighting for freedom against Cuba’ – this was his trump card.  It was impossible to counter it. Savimbi had one redeeming quality: he killed Cubans.”

South African attitudes toward Savimbi fit into its broader perspective of utter contempt for blacks.  Deaths of whites were followed by announcements from the army and newspaper obituaries in the press.  Deaths of black soldiers were not broadcast either by their military superiors or by the press at home.

South African views mirrored those of US politicians.  A 1971 amendment to the US sanctions bill by former KKK member and Democrat Senator Harry F. Byrd (VA) exempted chrome, thereby pulling all teeth from consequences to the white minority government of Rhodesia.  A much-publicized July 1986 speech by Reagan lavished praise on South African whites who he said gave great opportunity to blacks.

Conflicts between allies

Considerable discord between allies arose from the marriage of necessity between Cuba and the Soviet Union.  Cuba’s strategy had been for it to confront the better armed and trained South African forces and for Angola’s FAPLA to counter internal enemies in guerrilla warfare.  The Soviets believed that FAPLA should develop a conventional army with tanks and heavy weapons to fight South Africa.

But Angolan troops had virtually no formal education.  Officers might have reached the second, third or fourth grade, but the army’s rank and file typically had never been to school and were unable to master sophisticated weapons provided by the Soviets.

While Cuba advocated FAPLA’s concentrating on UNITA, it simultaneously cautioned that the Angolan military should have Cuban backup whenever venturing into territory largely surrounded by UNITA and South African troops.  President Neto died in September 1979 and his successor, José Eduardo dos Santos, was often lured by Soviet visions of having a conventional army strong enough to overcome both opposition forces.

Throughout the conflict, the Soviets acted as if the primary weapons of war were logistical plans, tanks and weapons, while for Cuba the maps of war were drawn from the hearts and minds of those who used these weapons.  Cuba understood that the Angolan front was part of a broad campaign against racist domination across southern Africa.

By March 1976, Cuba’s initial victory over South Africa let loose a “tidal wave” against white racist rule as blacks became joyfully aware that apartheid forces were vulnerable.  In September 1977 Steve Biko died in police custody and within a month the government had banned 18 organizations and the most important black newspaper.  In September 1984 a new South African constitution bestowed political participation upon “coloreds” and Indians while denying the same rights to blacks.  Black townships in the industrial centers of the country exploded.  Massive demonstrations, strikes, school walkouts and boycotts of white owned stores spread like wildfire.  Soon funerals for victims of state repression were added to the events.

The ceremony for awarding the Noble Peace Prize to Bishop Desmond Tutu drew a huge rally.  Open opposition to apartheid mushroomed hand-in-hand with intensification of the war in Angola.  By 1987 the South African demonstrations were so large that thousands of white solders were assisting police within its borders.

Soviets were generally aloof from those they came to protect.  Africans themselves noticed how quickly Cuban soldiers, doctors, and others stationed near them melded into their society.  One recruit remembered that “The Cubans ate what we ate, slept in tents like us, lived as we did.’”  Physician Oscar Mena described his work in Angola as a “beautiful experience.”  Soviets in Angola seemed to think of it more as a job.  Battlefields reflected the cultural chasm – Soviet advisers stood on the sidelines of fighting while Cubans always joined in combat.

Dancing barefoot on a razor’s edge

In 1985 the Soviets persuaded Angola to attack UNITA’s stronghold in Mavinga, despite dire warnings from Havana that they would have to go through an area controlled by UNITA and create a supply line that it could not possibly defend.  It met with a disastrous defeat.  The same tragedy was repeated in 1987.

Afterwards, South Africa’s General Geldenhuys boasted of its victory to the press, which sparked intense global repudiation since that country had claimed non-involvement in Angola.  Was the time now ripe for Cuba to launch an all-out attack on South Africa’s forces?  This decision had Fidel dancing on a razor’s edge.

The most delicate balancing act was with the Soviet Union.  Without its financial aid, Cuba could not carry out the war.  Without its donation of military supplies, Angola’s FAPLA would be unable to fight.  But its repeated bungling of strategic decisions threatened every aspect of the war.

No less sensitive was Angola, which seemed mired in corruption.  Yet, the MPLA government was vastly superior to whatever Savimbi would usher in.  A victory in Angola would strike a mortal blow into the heart of apartheid; but, Cuba could not go forward without approval from Luanda.

Cuba had saved its most powerful weapons for self-protection in the event of a US invasion.  As Cubans drew weary of a decade and a half of sacrifice, Fidel and Raúl knew that being too cautious might mean missing an opportunity that would never repeat itself.  However, moving too quickly could cause a defeat that would demoralize and exhaust the Cuban troops, doctors, and people at home.

They also knew that thousands of white soldiers became unavailable for service in Angola because they were needed in South Africa to suppress dissent.  Reagan’s embroilment in the Iran-Contra scandal left the US unable to go on an attack.

Cuba’s leaders agreed that the hour had arrived to send vastly more troops and arms to Angola, including its best planes, its best pilots and its most sophisticated weapons.  In March 1988 FAPLA and Cuba defended the town of Cuito Cuanavale as it was attacked by South African and UNITA troops.  Enough Cuban planes and pilots had arrived for them to score a victory in the air.  At the same time Angolan troops drove back the ground attack.  South African troops were demoralized as it signaled the beginning of the end.  Nelson Mandela observed that this key battle “destroyed the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressor.”

Despite the clear defeat of apartheid forces, US diplomats continued to tell their Soviet counterparts that South Africa would not leave Angola until all Cuban troops were gone.  Fidel told the Soviet negotiator to “… ask the Americans why has the army of the superior race been unable to take Cuito, which is defended by blacks and mulattoes from Angola and the Caribbean?”

Cuban negotiator Risquet politely told them “The South Africans must understand that they will not win at this table what they have failed to win on the battlefield.”  Knowing that a full invasion of Angola would be rebuffed internationally, result in thousands of casualties, and potentially leave the country unable to defend itself from internal black rebellion, South African politicians gave the nod to its commanders to leave.  Its troops were withdrawn from Angola by August 30, 1988.

In Angolan elections dos Santos of the MPLA defeated Savimbi (49.8% to 40.1%).  In April 1990 South African president Frederick de Klerk legalized the African National Congress and South African Communist Party as he freed Nelson Mandela, who was elected to head the country in April 1994.

Many of the parallels between the US in Viet Nam and Cuba in Angola were striking and both foreign interventions had a profound effect on public consciousness.  Yet, Cuba was defending an actual country from invasion while the division of Viet Nam into “North” and “South” was a figment of the imaginations of French and Americans, which is to say that no foreign invasion occurred.  It was no coincidence that Cuba treated Angola as a sovereign state (despite many differences) while US politicians had as much respect for Vietnamese as a puppeteer has for his many toys.

No one appreciated the political reality more than South Africans who opened Freedom Park in Pretoria in 2007.  Its Wall of Names includes 2103 Cubans who lost their lives in the Angolan war.  Cuba is the only foreign country represented on the Wall.

Note.  This article is based on the following: information documented in Piero Gleijeses’ Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976-1991 (2013); interviews by Hedelberto López Blanch which appear in his book Historias Secretas de Médicos Cubanos (2005); interviews by the author reported in his book Cuban Health Care: The Ongoing Revolution (2020); and interviews by Candace Wolf in her unpublished paper, The Zen of Healing (2013).  A version of this article appeared in openDemocracy.

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

With over 800 million people, rural India is arguably the most interesting and complex place on the planet but is plagued by farmer suicides, child malnourishment, growing unemployment, increased informalisation, indebtedness and an overall collapse of agriculture.

Given that India is still an agrarian-based society, renowned journalist P Sainath says what is taking place can be described as a crisis of civilisation proportions and can be explained in just five words: hijack of agriculture by corporations. He notes the process by which it is being done in five words too: predatory commercialisation of the countryside. And another five words to describe the outcome: biggest displacement in our history.

In late November 2018, a charter was released by the All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee (an umbrella group of around 250 farmers’ organisations) to coincide with the massive, well-publicised farmers’ march that was then taking place in Delhi.

The charter stated:

“Farmers are not just a residue from our past; farmers, agriculture and village India are integral to the future of India and the world; as bearers of historic knowledge, skills and culture; as agents of food safety, security and sovereignty; and as guardians of biodiversity and ecological sustainability.”

The farmers stated that they were alarmed at the economic, ecological, social and existential crisis of Indian agriculture as well as the persistent state neglect of the sector and discrimination against farming communities.

They were also concerned about the deepening penetration of large, predatory and profit hungry corporations, farmers’ suicide across the country and the unbearable burden of indebtedness and the widening disparities between farmers and other sectors.

The charter called on the Indian parliament to immediately hold a special session to pass and enact two bills that were of, by and for the farmers of India.

If passed by parliament, among other things, the Farmers’ Freedom from Indebtedness Bill 2018 would have provided for the complete loan waiver for all farmers and agricultural workers.

The second bill, The Farmers’ Right to Guaranteed Remunerative Minimum Support Prices for Agricultural Commodities Bill 2018, would have seen the government take measures to bring down the input cost of farming through specific regulation of the prices of seeds, agriculture machinery and equipment, diesel, fertilisers and insecticides, while making purchase of farm produce below the minimum support price (MSP) both illegal and punishable.

The charter also called for a special discussion on the universalisation of the public distribution system, the withdrawal of pesticides that have been banned elsewhere and the non-approval of genetically engineered seeds without a comprehensive need and impact assessment.

Other demands included no foreign direct investment in agriculture and food processing, the protection of farmers from corporate plunder in the name of contract farming, investment in farmers’ collectives to create farmer producer organisations and peasant cooperatives and the promotion of agroecology based on suitable cropping patterns and local seed diversity revival.

Now in 2020, rather than responding to these requirements, we see the Indian government’s promotion and facilitation of – by way of recent legislation – the corporatisation of agriculture and the dismantling of the public distribution system (and the MSP) as well as the laying of groundwork for contract farming.

This legislation comprises three acts: The Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act 2020, Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act 2020 and Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act 2020

Although the two aforementioned bills from 2018 have now lapsed, farmers are demanding that the new pro-corporate (anti-farmer) farms laws are replaced with a legal framework that guarantees the MSP to farmers.

According to an article by the Research Unit for Political Economy (RUPE), it is clear that the existence of MSPs, the Food Corporation of India, the public distribution system and publicly held buffer stocks constitute an obstacle to the profit-driven requirements of global agribusiness interests who have sat with government agencies and set out their wish-lists.

RUPE notes that India accounts for 15 per cent of world consumption of cereals. India’s buffer stocks are equivalent to 15-25 per cent of world stocks and 40 per cent of world trade in rice and wheat. Any large reduction in these stocks will almost certainly affect world prices: farmers would be hit by depressed prices; later, once India became dependent on imports, prices could rise on the international market and Indian consumers would be hit.

At the same time, the richer countries are applying enormous pressure on India to scrap its meagre agricultural subsidies; yet their own subsidies are vast multiples of India’s. The end result could be India becoming dependent on imports and the restructure of its own agriculture to crops destined for export.

RUPE concludes:

“Vast buffer stocks would still exist; but instead of India holding these stocks, they would be held by multinational trading firms, and India would bid for them with borrowed funds.”

Instead of holding physical buffer stocks, India would hold foreign exchange reserves.

Successive administrations have made the country dependent on volatile flows of foreign capital and India’s foreign exchange reserves have been built up by borrowing and foreign investments. The fear of capital flight is ever present. Policies are often governed by the drive to attract and retain these inflows and maintain market confidence by ceding to the demands of international capital.

This throttling of democracy and the ‘financialisation’ of agriculture would seriously undermine the nation’s food security and leave almost 1.4 billion people at the mercy of international speculators and foreign investment.

But agricapital’s free-for-all bonanza and the planned displacement of tens of millions of cultivators mirrors what has been happening across the world for many decades: the consolidation of a global food regime based on agro-export mono-cropping (often with non-food commodities taking up prime agricultural land) linked to sovereign debt repayment and foreign exchange inflows and earnings and World Bank/IMF ‘structural adjustment’ directives.

The outcomes have included a displacement of a food-producing peasantry, the dominance of Western agri-food oligopolies and the transformation of countries from food self-sufficiency to food deficiency. Little wonder then that among the owners of global agribusiness family firm Cargill 14 are now billionaires – the very company that profited from running down India’s edible oils sector in the 1990s.

It is not that India needs these people. It is already the world’s largest producer of milk, pulses and millets and the second-largest producer of rice, wheat, sugarcane, groundnuts, vegetables, fruit and cotton. This is despite India’s farmers already reeling from the effects of 30 years of neoliberal policies, decades of public underinvestment/disinvestment and a deliberate strategy to displace them at the behest of the World Bank and predatory global agri-food corporations.

If unrepealed, the recent legislation represents the ultimate betrayal of India’s farmers and democracy as well as the final surrender of food security and food sovereignty to unaccountable corporations. This legislation is wholly regressive and will eventually lead to the country relying on outside forces  to feed its population – and a possible return to hand-to-mouth imports, especially in an increasingly volatile world prone to conflict, public health scares, unregulated land and commodity speculation and price shocks.

A shift towards food sovereignty – encompassing local people’s right to healthy and culturally appropriate food and their ability to define and control their own food and agriculture systems – is key to achieving genuine independence, national sovereignty, food security and facilitating farmers’ demands.

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Colin Todhunter is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research.

New York Times admits schemes could lead to “a dystopic system that would limit the rights of people who have been careful to avoid infection and are unable or unwilling to be vaccinated”

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Several more countries have indicated that they are to adopt vaccination passports, meaning anyone crossing their borders will need to be able to prove they have been inoculated against coronavirus.

It is being reported that the South African government is working on implementing an entire Covid-19 vaccine ‘ID system’, which will not only encompass the so called ‘passports’, but will also include “management and surveillance of the Covid-19 vaccine,” as well as “an integrated track-and-trace system,” and “a dashboard system… to capture the reasons given for vaccine refusal.”

The country’s COVID battle has come under scrutiny in recent weeks with a purported super ‘mutation’ of the virus being discovered there.

The South African Department of Health has announced that all citizens who are vaccinated will be placed on a national register and provided with a vaccination card.

Meanwhile, in Europe, another country has indicated it will adopt the vaccination passport scheme with Ukrainian health officials announcing that all vaccinated people will be entered into an electronic health care database.

“When mandatory vaccination passports are introduced at the international level, Ukrainian doctors will be able to promptly issue a certificate of vaccinations,” said chief sanitary doctor of Ukraine Viktor Liashko.

Another country said to be mulling the introduction of COVID passports is Russia. The New York Times reported that

“The Russian government is considering issuing coronavirus health certificates that could ease travel and commerce for people who have been vaccinated.”

The Times quoted the head of the Russian Parliament’s committee on public health, Dmitri Morozov, who said that a Covid passport was “very important and needed.”

“This is great, this is the new world,” Morozov reportedly stated.

The Times also noted that

“A regional governor in Russia, Radi Khabirov, proposed on Monday that Covid passport holders receive discounts at stores, as an incentive for people to obtain the certificate.”

The report also noted that

“President Vladimir V. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said on Tuesday that the government is considering issuing Covid passports.”

After the Times report was published, Russian state media denied that a COVID passport scheme to limit travel had been discussed by Peskov or the Kremlin.

“We are far from a unified point of view on this subject right now, there are no consistent approaches or a consensus on this subject,” Peskov said, but added that “this subject is circulating, it’s being worked out.”

Interestingly, while the likes of the New York Times has reported on other countries adopting the COVID passports, in its coverage of Russia potentially doing the same, it paints a much darker picture, stating that

“Opponents fear a dystopic system that would limit the rights of people who have been careful to avoid infection and are unable or unwilling to be vaccinated.”

“Russia has a grim history rooted in the Soviet era of controlling citizens’ movements, through a residency permit system that was never fully abolished,” the Times report continues.

So when Russia do it, it’s bad, but when other countries do it, it’s part of restoring ‘open society’. Hmmmm.

While scores of countries are now slowly moving toward the implementation of vaccination passports, airlines appear to have fully embraced the idea and essentially already have them in place.

Emirates airlines has announced that it will be trialling the IATA Travel Pass ‘digital passport’ which shows passengers’ proof of Covid-19 tests and other entry requirements when flying.

Adel Al Redha, Emirates’ Chief Operating Officer said that

“While international travel remains as safe as ever, there are new protocols and travel requirements with the current global pandemic.”

“We have worked with IATA on this innovative solution to simplify and digitally transmit the information that is required by countries and governments into our airline systems, in a secure and efficient manner,”Al Redha continued, adding “We are proud to be one of the first airlines in the world to pilot this initiative, which will provide an enhanced customer experience and conveniently facilitate our customers’ travel needs.”

As we reported last November, the IATA, the world’s largest air transport lobby group, expects its COVID travel pass app to be fully rolled out in the first months of 2021.

Other airlines, including United Airlines and Cathay Pacific have already trialled the IATA’s scheme.

Meanwhile, American Airlines has reportedly partnered with biometric authentication provider VeriFLY to develop its own COVID passport app, which will be rolled out within days.

“We support the implementation of a global program to require COVID-19 testing for travelers to the United States, and we want to do everything we can to make travel a seamless experience for customers,” Julie Rath, the vice president of customer experience at American Airlines, said in a statement.

Virgin Atlantic owner Richard Branson has also thrown his weight behind the vaccination passport idea, telling CNBC he hopes that soon

“there will be a proof-of-vaccination piece of paper that people can use to be able to get on a plane without having to be tested or without having to quarantine.”

“Vaccination is everything. Once vulnerable people, in particular, have been vaccinated, I think all kinds of businesses can start opening up again: restaurants, travel companies, cruise companies,” Branson declared.

The narrative of adopting vaccination passports is now so ubiquitous that it would be surprising not to see them adopted world-wide, despite the fact that even the World Health Organisation has warned that such schemes should absolutely not be implemented while there is no proof that vaccinations can provide immunity to coronavirus.

“Being vaccinated should not exempt international travellers from complying with other travel risk reduction measures,” the WHO committee stressed during its meeting held on January 14.

Others have warned that the adoption of vaccination passports will inevitably lead to a two-tier society, and must be prevented.

“The immunity passport could become a ‘passport for privilege,’ accentuating the divide between those who already have a comfortable position in society and those on the margins,” warns Dr Israel Butler, Head of Advocacy, at the Civil Liberties Union for Europe, Liberties.

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New peer-reviewed study of adverse events following MMRV vaccines highlights the urgent need for independent research on vaccine safety and the importance of informed consent and vaccine choice.

***

As health officials strive to brush off as “coincidences” the mounting number of deaths and other serious adverse reactions occurring worldwide in connection with Pfizer’s and Moderna’s experimental mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, the need for independent scrutiny of vaccine safety data has never been more apparent.

A new peer-reviewed study about adverse events following immunization (AEFI) and the measles-mumps-rubella-varicella (MMRV) vaccine brings home the urgent need for independent research.

The study, published by two northern Italian researchers on an open access platform suggests that most existing safety monitoring systems, whether in Italy or the U.S., are “utterly inadequate to document the real incidence of serious AEFIs and that current methods of assessing [vaccine-related] causality may be questioned.”

The study also reveals how an unbiased reanalysis of adverse event data puts the lie to the “reassuring conclusions” officials like to disseminate about vaccine safety.

Scrutinizing the existing data

Italy made MMRV vaccination compulsory for young children in 2017. In their 2021 open access study, Italian researchers Paolo Bellavite and Alberto Donzelli indirectly assess the impact of this policy by examining the incidence of MMRV-related AEFI as reported to or studied by Italy’s pharmacovigilance system.

Bellavite and Donzelli note that while Italy’s vaccine surveillance “is mainly of the ‘passive’ type” (characterized, as in the U.S., by vast underreporting), it also includes occasional “active vigilance” studies.

Bellavite and Donzelli summarize the findings of one such study, conducted in the region of Apulia in 2017 and 2018. The Apulia study’s university- and health-department-based researchers asked the parents of more than 2,500 children to keep diaries for three weeks post-MMRV-vaccination. The researchers then followed up with phone calls and review of relevant hospitalization records.

The Apulia researchers detected 992 post-MMRV adverse events among the 2,149 children for whom they were able to complete the three-week telephone follow-up — an AEFI reporting rate of 462 events per 1000 enrolled children. One hundred nine of the 992 adverse events (11%) met World Health Organization (WHO) criteria classifying them as “serious,” meaning fatal or life-threatening; requiring intervention or hospitalization; or causing persistent disability or incapacity.

The most common serious adverse events experienced by young MMRV recipients in Apulia were hyperpyrexia (very high fever in excess of 106°F — a medical emergency), neurological symptoms (including balance disorders and agitation), gastrointestinal problems and thrombocytopenia (abnormally low platelet levels). All of the adverse events are listed as side effects in the package insert for the Merck-manufactured MMRV vaccine (brand name ProQuad) as well as in the inserts for a number of other childhood and adult vaccines. (Notably, the healthy 56-year-old Florida doctor who recently died after getting Pfizer’s mRNA COVID-19 vaccine developed an ultimately fatal form of thrombocytopenia three days after vaccination.)

The MMRV insert also lists dozens of other post-vaccination reactions, including anaphylaxis, febrile seizures, muscle and joint pain, arthritis, bleeding disorders, autoimmune problems and serious infections, including both measles and varicella (chickenpox)!

The next step for the Apulia investigators was to apply the WHO’s causality assessment algorithm to their findings. According to the inflexible and somewhat paradoxical WHO criteria,

“Only reactions that have previously been acknowledged in epidemiological studies to be caused by the vaccine are classified as a vaccine-product-related-reaction. New serious adverse reactions that emerge post-licensure “are labelled as ‘coincidental deaths/events’ or ‘unclassifiable.’”

Even so, the Apulia study showed that 82 of 109 serious adverse reactions displayed a causal association “consistent with MMRV immunization.” This translates to 38 serious adverse events per 1,000 children enrolled — or one in 26.

In the U.S., which relies almost exclusively on passive surveillance, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) has received 13,382 reports of MMRV-related adverse events since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved ProQuad in 2005 — an average of 836 reported incidents annually over the 16 years.

VAERS classifies roughly one in 20 of these (4.7%) as “serious,” including 19 deaths. Over the same time frame (that is, since 2005), VAERS accumulated another 40,070 reports of adverse events following MMR vaccination (2,500 annually on average), with one in 10 categorized as serious.

A 2016 FDA study that looked at 204 VAERS reports (through 2014) for infants who, largely due to “vaccination errors,” received the MMR or MMRV vaccines before nine months of age (rather than at the recommended 12 to 15 months of age) found that nearly one in six of the reported adverse events (17%) were serious.

Critiquing the spin

Knowledgeable experts have roundly criticized the WHO algorithm for being biased toward rejecting vaccine-related causality (describing the algorithm as being “not fit for purpose”).

Thus, the fact that there was one serious WHO-confirmed adverse event for every 26 enrolled children should have been extremely noteworthy.

Apparently, the Apulia researchers did not think so. As Bellavite and Donzelli note, though the Apulia study was unique in applying WHO causality assessment methods to comprehensive active surveillance data, the investigators vastly downplayed their own results, describing serious AEFIs as “absolutely rare” and reporting that “the active surveillance program confirmed and reinforced the safety profile of the [MMRV] vaccine.”

Bellavite and Donzelli dispute this tame characterization of the Apulia findings, explaining the following:

• An AEFI rate of 38 per 1000 — one in 26 — should appropriately be classified as “common” rather than “absolutely rare.”
• Apulia’s active surveillance data, when compared with Italian health authorities’ passive surveillance data, show a MMRV-related rate of serious AEFIs “hundreds of times higher than expected.”
• Comparing the serious AEFIs that showed a consistent MMRV-related causal association (as per the WHO algorithm) to the Italian Medicines Agency’s passive surveillance data reveals an even greater “977 times difference.”
• The frequency of serious, MMRV-related neurological and gastrointestinal symptoms identified through active surveillance — which stands out in comparison to the incidence documented in the literature and passive surveillance systems — should be interpreted as a safety signal.
• Projecting the AEFI rate of 38 per 1000 onto an Italian birth cohort would yield “tens of thousands of serious AEFIs.”

In the U.S., the FDA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researchers maintain that neither the MMR nor MMRV vaccines display “any major safety concerns,” despite the thousands of adverse events reported each year and the vast iceberg of additional adverse reactions that go unreported.

U.S. regulators’ nonchalance is further contradicted by a U.S. government study estimating that one of every 39 vaccines administered results in vaccine injury.

Bellavite and Donzelli also call attention to other considerations typically ignored or overlooked by researchers for whom a “confirmed” vaccine safety profile is the a priori conclusion — considerations that are as pertinent in the U.S. as they are in Italy. For example:

• Studies focusing on vaccine-related adverse events should take into account each and all rounds of vaccination. The Apulia research was limited to reactions following the first MMRV injection only.
• Vaccine safety surveillance rarely (if ever) accounts for administration of multiple vaccines at one time, yet the same-day injection of the MMRV and hepatitis A vaccines in Italy — and multiple combination vaccines in one healthcare visit in the U.S. — could be a factor contributing to elevated AEFI rates.
• In persons with underlying genetic susceptibilities or a concomitant infectious or inflammatory disease, vaccination “can act as a synergistic or triggering factor” and should not be discounted when considering causality.

Drawing appropriate conclusions

Overall, Bellavite and Donzelli are unsparing in their critique of the systems usually relied on to monitor vaccine safety. Discussing “the inadequacy of passive surveillance to represent the real incidence of even short-term AEFIs, both of mild and serious kind,” they recommend directing more resources toward active surveillance of representative samples of the population, while also continuing to collect spontaneous reports through passive surveillance to capture “rare events that active surveillance would have little chance to intercept.”

These and other recommendations, articulated by Children’s Health Defense and many others, have fallen on deaf ears in the U.S.

More broadly, the Italian authors emphasize the fundamental principles of vaccine choice and informed consent, stating that “the choice of whether to vaccinate or not [is] a choice that must be made by the patient or by parents of underage children, properly advised by their doctors.”

They also noted how vaccine mandates alter doctors’ roles and turn them into “public officer[s] enforcing the government’s decisions.” Americans who are leery of experimental COVID-19 vaccines — and the improbable fairy tales being spun about the vaccines’ risk-benefit calculus — would likely agree with the Italians’ conclusions. The principle of informed consent cannot be satisfied “by a generic statement of a ‘safe profile’ or ‘lack of worrying signals,’” particularly when researchers ignore evidence of serious adverse effects in a significant percentage of vaccine recipients.

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Featured image is from CHD

The New Domestic War on Terror Is Coming

By Glenn Greenwald, January 20 2021

The last two weeks have ushered in a wave of new domestic police powers and rhetoric in the name of fighting “terrorism” that are carbon copies of many of the worst excesses of the first War on Terror that began nearly twenty years ago.

A Belligerent Foreign Policy Towards the Middle East: The Legacy of US President Donald J. Trump

By Timothy Alexander Guzman, January 20 2021

As the Trump era is coming to an end, his legacy in the Middle East will be described by the Palestinians, Syrians, Iranians and the rest of the Arab world as aggressive, dangerous and extremely reckless.

Biden’s Key Role in the Crime of the Century: The 2003 U.S. Invasion of Iraq

By Jeremy Kuzmarov, January 20 2021

Joe Biden presents himself as an empathetic guy who is willing to go the extra mile to help people overcome their personal tragedies. However, Biden has throughout his career endorsed policies that caused countless personal tragedies for millions of people.

“Covid Relief Plan”: Biden Lifts Health Care Plan from Insurance Lobbyists

By Andrew Perez and Julia Rock, January 20 2021

It adopts proposals from health insurance lobbying groups’ recent letter to lawmakers demanding lucrative new subsidies for insurance companies, at a moment when those corporations have recorded record profits as millions lose coverage and many face claims denials.

The Deep State’s Stealthy, Subversive, Silent Coup to Ensure Nothing Changes

By John W. Whitehead, January 20 2021

No doubt about it: the coup d’etat was successful. That January 6 attempt by so-called insurrectionists to overturn the election results was not the real coup, however. Those who answered President Trump’s call to march on the Capitol were merely the fall guys.

Video: The Silent Enemy: The Lockdown Concerto of Dr. Ronald B. Brown, PhD

By John C. A. Manley, January 20 2021

He disrupted the academic world with his peer-reviewed paper exposing the exaggerated threat of an “invisible enemy” (the novel coronavirus). In an interview, Dr. Brown said that “the public’s overreaction to the coronavirus pandemic was based on the worst miscalculation in the history of humanity.”

British Medical Journal: Pfizer and Moderna’s “95% Effective” Vaccines—Let’s be Cautious and First See the Full Data

By Dr. Peter Doshi, January 19 2021

In the United States, all eyes are on Pfizer and Moderna. The topline efficacy results from their experimental covid-19 vaccine trials are astounding at first glance. Let’s put this in perspective.

China Health Experts Call for Suspension of COVID Vaccines as Norway Investigates 33 Deaths, Germany Probes 10 Deaths

By Children’s Health Defense, January 19 2021

Norway upped the number of deaths under investigation, from 23 last week to 33, while in Germany, health officials said they are investigating 10 deaths that occurred among elderly patients who received the COVID vaccine.

Dystopia Now! – Surveillance Through Vaccine Certificates, Digital IDs, and Biometric Data

By Jesse Smith, January 19 2021

No matter the origin or true lethality of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus pandemic has been utilized to implement broader agendas that have been planned well in advance.

Destroying the Web of Life: The Destruction of Earth’s Biodiversity Is Accelerating

By Robert J. Burrowes, January 19 2021

In August 2010, the secretary-general of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, Ahmed Djoghlaf, warned that ‘We are losing biodiversity at an unprecedented rate.’ According to the UN Environment Program, ‘the Earth is in the midst of a mass extinction of life’ with scientists estimating that ‘150-200 species of plant, insect, bird and mammal become extinct every 24 hours’ which is nearly 1,000 times the ‘natural’ or ‘background’ rate.

We’re Being Locked-down for an Infection Fatality Rate of Less than 0.2%? Dr. Richard Schabas to Ontario Premier Doug Ford

By Dr. Richard Schabas, January 19 2021

The national lockdown was never part of our planned pandemic response nor is it supported by strong science. Two recent studies on the effectiveness of lockdown show that it has, at most, a small COVID mortality benefit compared to more moderate measures. Both studies warned about the excessive cost of lockdowns.

The Basic Principles of War Propaganda: The US Lies About Every War

By Rod Driver, January 19 2021

Propaganda as a science really got under way during World War 1 (WW1). The British and the German governments both brainwashed their populations into believing that the other country was a demonic enemy that had to be defeated.

The situation in Syria’s Idlib appears to be, once again, on the brink of escalation, with the US preoccupied with what’s happening at home, and Turkey attempting to push towards Ain Issa, while being targeted by its own proxies.

The terrorist threat is far from removed, and attacks are common, moments of calm in the country’s east and northwest appear to be few and far between. The situation that’s transpiring is, to a large degree, due to Turkey’s actions and its policies.

Ankara, too, is suffering from it, since the many of the groups that it backs, officially or otherwise, seem to be eager to bite the hand that feeds. On January 16th, Turkish troops in observation posts in Idlib were targeted by sniper fire from a group that calls itself “Saryat Ansar Abu Baker As-Siddiq”. According to the group itself, three Turkish soldiers were shot. One appears to be in critical condition.

This is the group’s third attack against Turkey, with the first taking place in November of 2020, and then in December of 2020. The December attack resulted in one Turkish soldier’s death. Other reports of Turkish proxies attacking Ankara’s armed forces occasionally take place.

The Turkish military maintains more than 60 posts, camps and bases throughout Greater Idlib. Most of them are located in terrorist-controlled areas, and attacks on them are rather infrequent due to Ankara’s close ties with terrorists operating in the area. Nonetheless, as the recent attacks show, this policy has some weak sides for the Turkish personnel deployed.

Ankara is attempting to encroach near the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)-controlled area, attempting to establish an observation post near Ain Issa. A push on SDF positions is expected, but there will be a defense.

Meanwhile, Iran has been expanding its presence in Syria despite the endless Israeli-US attempts to oppose this. Tehran’s forces deployed a signal intelligence system along Syria’s border with Jordan. This may be used to either spy on the US forces deployed in Jordan, or even on Israel.

Iran has ample opportunity, Tel Aviv is likely to be on the back foot, since the US’ Biden administration is likely to support Israel less than that of Trump. This provides Tehran with a chance to dig in and reinforce its position and prepare an asymmetric response to its geopolitical opponents.

There is likely to be an advent of a new round of confrontation in the conflict zone, with the Syrian Arab Army still struggling to get rid of ISIS cells in the Homs-Deir Ezzor desert, Turkey focused on the SDF and being targeted by militants in Idlib, and Iran attempting to focus on its opponents.

Both Ankara and Tehran are likely taking a chance to improve their positions in Syria due to the lull in American activity in the face of the unprecedented chaos in the United States. At the same time, the new US administration would not likely support the Trump-announced troop withdrawal effort. So, Washington still has a word to say.

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War is merely the continuation of politics by other means(1) — Claus Von Clausewitz

They are playing a game. They are playing at not playing a game. If I show them I see they are, I shall break the rules and they will punish me. I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game. — R.D. Laing

“A continuation of politics by other means.”  

One could just as easily say that politics is the continuation of war by other means. And perhaps surmise that the strategies of war games can also be pursued within a “predatory culture”(2) via interpersonal games.

The battle for dominance in the fields of war, sports and business often mirrors personal struggles for domestic one-upmanship. Family politics may follow patterns of office politics and vice versa. Fear and greed as demonstrated on Wall Street can poison human relationships in a more personal arena.

Games of all sorts often use the terminology of war, as the pursuit of war uses the terminology of games. People put on their “game face” in the bathroom rmirror as they prepare to sally forth to engage with the citadel of commerce. They put on their game masks, their “personas”(3), to face the world. Now, alas, even that is insufficient, and must be further disguised with one more layer behind which to hide.

Just as there are tactics of war, there are tactics in business. How many aspiring CEOs pursuing an MBA have a copy of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War in their college backpack? And how many acknowlege warlike tactics in personal games with friends and family?(4)

Is it any less satisfying to feel one’s power over a lover, than to feel the thrill of martial music, while astride a prancing charger viewing one’s invincible army massed on the plain below? Is the art of seduction not often compared to a successful military campaign? The “battle of the sexes,” though now a tired cliche, could appear to a warring couple as a fight to the death with the enemy they are in bed with. 

So the question left hanging out to dry, if not twisting gently in the breeze, is how these tactics relate to the shaping of personality. Do the power politics of the larger world insert themselves into our personas to shape our personal strategies, the strategies we use to engage with others in our everyday social relationships? 

If the pursuit of power shapes the landscapes of war, sports and business, it can also shape our personal landscape and even the expression of our personality–of who we think we are. Conscious or unconscious shaping of our personality can be a means to pursue strategic advantage in love or war. 

If “all the world’s a stage, and the men and women merely players,”(5) can we not assume an appropriate persona to suit our desires? Do we not learn who we would like to be “when we grow up” as children playing house or doctor? Perhaps we may craftily weave a “tangled web,” when “first we practice to deceive,”(6) far better than we let on, even to ourselves. 

It could be possible that some of us have taken, not Hamlet’s advice to the players: “Suit the word to the action, the action to the word,”  but follow another path to “smile, and smile, and be a villain.”(7)

As Shakespeare’s Richard III prepares to play the part of the lover, confiding to the audience his plans to transform his discontent, so might we prepare to play parts on our own personal stages. And even disguise from ourselves our true intentions, much as a Method(8) actor gets lost in the part, virtually “becoming” the role.

Perhaps in a culture of dissembling, of dark and smokey mirrors, we may be better actors than we think. 

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S. M. Smyth was a founding member of the 2006 World Peace Forum in Vancouver and organized a debate about TILMA at the Maple Ridge City Council chambers between Ellen Gould and a representative of the Fraser Institute. 

Notes

(1) The phrasing of the Clausewitz quote has been disputed.

(2) Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class

(3) Wikipedia, Persona

(4) Eric Berne, Games People Play

(5) Shakespeare, As You Like It

(6) Walter Scott, Marmion

(7) Shakespeare, Hamlet

(8) Stanislavski, An Actor Prepares, Method acting

So far, it’s unclear if Trump will face Senate trial on the fraudulent charge of inciting insurrection — as a private citizen.

He had nothing to do with the January 6 storming of Capitol Hill. Nor did his nonviolent supporters in Washington.

Anti-Trump elements were responsible for what Dems in Washington falsely blamed him.

According to Trending Politics:

“(F)ederal law enforcement officials have told CNN that they believe the January 6th storming of the Capitol was planned ahead of time by bad actors instead of a random riot inspired by President Trump’s speech.”

Nothing Trump said or tweeted called for inciting insurrection, just the opposite.

He urged legitimate nonviolent protests, not the other way around.

What happened was well-planned in advance by forces hostile to Trump — wanting him further demonized for the wrong reasons, not legitimate ones.

They want him banned from politics to prevent him from running again for president in 2024.

There’s plenty of wrongdoing to hold him and most other US elected and appointed officials accountable for.

Impeachment charges against Trump on December 18, 2019 and on January 13, 2021 had no constitutional or US statute law validity.

They were and remain politicized for the above reasons.

Throughout US history, 15 Senate trials were conducted in response to 19 officials impeached by the House, including judges.

Three US presidents were impeached, Trump alone twice — both times on politicized charges with no validity.

What’s clear based on facts is unreported by hostile-to-Trump establishment media.

Yet most Americans believe what’s false because of anti-Trump media propaganda.

According to Pew Research on January 15, “68% of the public does not want Donald Trump to remain a major political figure in the future.”

In stark contrast, “64% of voters express(ed) a positive opinion of” Biden.

Pew Research also reported that 54% of respondents supported Trump’s removal from office despite nearing the end of his term.

Overall, “Republicans and (Dems) remain deeply divided” as they have been throughout Trump’s tenure, according to reported findings by Pew Research on January 15.

Only 52% of Republicans and “Republican-leaning independents say Trump bears any responsibility for” the Capitol Hill incident.

Only 21% of these respondents believe Trump should be removed from office before end of his tenure — in stark contrast to virtually all Dems and Dem “leaners (95%).”

“(A)nd 83% (of this group) favor his removal as president.”

At the same time, “a large segment of Trump voters” believe he was reelected on November 3 last year.

Among all respondents, “65%” believe Biden defeated Trump.

Clearly it was the other way around.

Most Americans are at least largely unaware of Biden’s betrayal of the public trust in office for a near-half century as senator and vice president.

They know little or nothing about his support for wars by hot and other means on invented enemies, corporate profiteering, and indifference toward peace, equity, justice, and the rule of law.

Hostile-to Trump throughout his time in office CNN actually reported the following:

“Evidence uncovered so far, including weapons and tactics seen on surveillance video, suggests a level of planning that has led investigators to believe the attack on the US Capitol was not just a protest that spiraled out of control, a federal law enforcement official says.”

The above is correct for mentioning pre-planning and incorrect at the same time.

There was nothing happenstance about orchestrated January 6 storming of Capitol Hill’s main building — no evidence that Trump promoted or otherwise supported it.

Establishment media overall and anti-Trump Dems refuse to admit the above.

Militant anti-Trump elements want him tried and convicted of phony charges by Senate trial.

Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell shifted from Trump backer to antagonist, on Tuesday saying to following:

Storming of Capitol Hill on January 6 was “provoked by (Trump) and other powerful people (sic).”

“The mob was fed lies (sic).”

“(T)hey tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of the first branch of the federal government which they did not like (sic).”

He hasn’t decided whether to go along with trying Trump for the charge of inciting insurrection — he and at least most other congressional members know is politicized, not true.

A two-thirds super-majority is required to convict if a Senate trial is held — requiring 17 Republicans to conspire with 50 undemocratic Dems against Trump after leaving office.

A separate vote would be required to ban him from seeking public office again.

Reportedly, McConnell and Senate Dem leader Chuck Schumer met to set rules for a Senate trial if held.

The evenly divided Senate is Dem-controlled because in case of 50 – 50 votes, Harris becomes the tie-breaking one.

Without GOP support, convicting Trump won’t happen. Enough Republicans have to go along for a required two-thirds majority.

What earlier seemed highly unlikely is now uncertain but very possible.

As things now stand, a politicized Senate trial is likely.

Nothing stands in its way with McConnell willing to conspire with Schumer in conducting one.

While its outcome is more likely not to convict Trump, the other way around could be its outcome.

If thing turn out this way, Trump will be the only US president ever impeached, tried and convicted.

Notably it would be after leaving office for politicized reasons lacking legitimacy, justifiable ones ignored.

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

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

My two Wall Street books are timely reading:

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

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

“Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity”

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

Featured image is by Gage Skidmore via Flickr

Montenegro’s military — and maybe NATO — want the Sinjajevina Highlands for maneuvers; traditional herding communities want these biodiverse alpine pasturelands conserved.

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Mileva “Gara” Jovanović’s family has been taking cattle up to graze in Montenegro’s Sinjajevina Highlands for more than 140 summers. The mountain pastures of the Sinjajevina-Durmitor Massif are the largest on Europe’s Balkan Peninsula, and they’ve provided her family not only with milk, cheese, and meat, but with an enduring livelihood and the means to send five of her six children to university.

“It gives us life,” said Gara, an elected spokesperson for the eight self-described tribes who share the summer pasture.

But, Gara says, this alpine pasture — “the Mountain,” she calls it — is under serious threat, and with it the tribes’ way of life. Two years ago, Montenegro’s military moved ahead with plans to develop a training ground where soldiers would carry out maneuvers and artillery practice in these grasslands.

No stranger to the daunting challenges of life as an alpine herder, Gara said that when she first heard of the military’s plans, it brought her to tears. “It’s going to destroy the Mountain because it’s impossible to have both the military polygon there and cattle,” she told Mongabay.

A map showing the approximate location of the proposed military polygon in the Sinjajevina pasturelands. Image courtesy of Pablo Domínguez (inset courtesy of Google Earth Engine).

Anthropologists who have studied the region say that pastoralists have been bringing their herds to the Sinjajevina grasslands for around 3,000 years. Now, Gara fears that the military’s use of the land will utterly disrupt the current natural balance that 250 local families have carefully cultivated.

The tribes are all part of the same ethnic group, and they meet periodically to discuss the management of the pasturelands. Thanks to their nurturing efforts, verdant grasses carpet the Mountain each spring that feed not only their cattle, sheep and horses. The long-sustained partnership between natural and human communities also engenders a unique and richly specied landscape, while snowmelt flowing down from Sinjajevina supplies Montenegro with water and supports its human population.

“Maintaining a diversity of uses and practices up there is helping conserve some very valuable stuff,” Pablo Domínguez, an environmental anthropologist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) at the University of Toulouse, told Mongabay.

Milan Sekulović, who leads the Save Sinjajevina Association, with a horse on Sinjajevina Mountain. Image courtesy of Milan Sekulović.

The battle over Sinjajevina’s future — whether it remains a rare example of nature coexisting alongside humanity, or becomes a proving ground for kitted-out troops and heavy artillery — has embroiled not just Gara, the eight tribes, and the government of a small Balkans nation; it may also figure significantly into the global geopolitics of NATO and the European Union.

To many, including Gara, the two paths are incompatible. That stance led to a 51-day protest in late 2020. Around 150 farmers and activists camped on the Mountain in the fall, blocking the military’s deployment with little more than their presence and sheer determination.

For now, at least, they’ve succeeded, coinciding with a seismic, generational political shift in Montenegro. Today, the challenge that preservation proponents like Gara and Domínguez face is to parlay this ephemeral triumph into permanent protections for Sinjajevina and its people.

A highland and homeland of surprising diversity

The Sinjajevina grasslands cover a rocky, rolling plain in northern Montenegro of more than 450 square kilometers (147 square miles), according to the government, amid the craggy dolomitic peaks and limestone karsts of the Dinaric Alps.

Average elevations of 1,600 meters (5,250 feet) mean that impassable snows blanket the high pastures for five or six months each year. During that time, herders vacate their katuns — small, seasonal alpine outposts — until the warmth of late spring returns.

These grasslands border Durmitor National Park and the Tara River Basin Biosphere Reserve, both UNESCO World Heritage Sites where the rivers that drain these heights converge, plunging into Europe’s deepest river gorge.

At first glance, Sinjajevina appears boundless and quiet — even barren. In the military’s view, “It is empty,” said Petar Glomazić, a documentary filmmaker. Since 2019, Glomazić has co-led a coalition of international and local human rights groups, environmental NGOs and the European Union’s Green Party in a push to stop Montenegro’s military from commandeering the heart of Sinjajevina.

A katun on Sinjajevina Mountain. Image courtesy of the Save Sinjajevina Association.

Those initial impressions of the region’s emptiness can be deceiving. Sinjajevina’s pastures are capable of fattening 10,000 cattle and 70,000 sheep each summer, according to estimates by agricultural scientists. But through the ages, these “semi-natural” grasslands — a designation given because the ecosystem’s persistence depends in part on human activities — have remained an oasis of ecological stability.

“That way of life, that very sustainable way of life, has been there for centuries,” Glomazić said.

Beyond Sinjajevina, in the lands below, the people and the environment alike have been hammered by centuries of human-induced tumult in a politically turbulent region. The Balkans sit at the nexus of trade routes connecting Europe and Asia and along the borders between now-defunct empires and religious divisions. That location has led to repeated conflicts amid shuffled power structures over many centuries.

Gara’s tribe, the Bjelopavlići, trace their legal claim to Sinjajevina back to the 1880s. After a war with the Ottoman Empire, King Nikola I gave the Bjelopavlići the legal right to graze their herds there in recognition of their efforts and sacrifice in holding off the Turks.

Gara and her six children descend from that line of pastoralists who have shepherded their flocks to the Mountain, first by foot, a journey that took three to four days, and now with trucks. They’ve endured two world wars, the formation and disintegration of nation-states, the rising and falling tide of Communism, and a vicious ethnic conflict that brutalized the Balkan Peninsula in the 1990s.

For their part, Gara’s children remain committed to preserving the way of life that their mother and others have kept alive, said her daughter, Persida Jovanović.

A cow on the pastures of Sinjajevina. Image courtesy of the Save Sinjajevina Association.

The eight tribes feel certain that stripping human influence from the grasslands would trigger an immediate change in the landscape, Gara said — one that could bankrupt the ecosystem and profoundly disrupt the balance that exists there today.

“Our ancestors, and us today, have unwritten laws how to keep the Mountain clean, especially the spring water,” Gara said. This code governs how early in the season people can bring their livestock to the high pastures, the number of animals allowed, where they can drink to keep waters free of pollution, and other considerations to encourage the renewed production of grasses year after year.

These handed-down strategies have in turn helped preserve wild animal and plant life.

“It is really a beautiful example of symbiosis of humans and nature. That nature would be different without the humans,” Glomazić said, “and vice versa.”

Vanishing global grasslands

Maintaining this time-honored balance requires a delicate dance between traditional pastoral livelihoods and nature — a dance that’s dying out around the world, especially on grasslands as humanity converts them for industrial agribusiness and other modern uses.

In 2020, a team of researchers in Japan, led by Taiki Inoue of the University of Tsukuba in Nagano, looked at plant communities in the Sugadaira Highland grasslands. Japan’s Sugadaira, like Sinjajevina, has hosted herders for thousands of years. More recently, pastoralists have abandoned parts of these Asian grasslands, as they find it harder to make a living herding in today’s world.

The researchers compared the number of plant species living in the grasslands with those living in the forests that sprung up in the herders’ absence and in new grasslands created after loggers cleared some of those forests. They found that the old grasslands — at least 160, and in some cases thousands, of years old — had the widest plant variety by far. Younger grasslands, stemming from deforestation over the past 52 to 70 years, had fewer plant species, but still more than the forest itself.

The authors note that, globally, grasslands are diminishing. About 13% of Japan’s land area was covered by grassland in the early 20th century, a figure that dropped to 1% by the early 2000s. Likewise, in recent decades, Brazil lost half of its vast Cerrado savanna biome, the largest grasslands now left on Earth. Given these precipitous declines, the authors suggest that conservation efforts should target the oldest “hotspot grasslands” where biodiversity is greatest — places like Sinjajevina.

Collecting herbs on Sinjajevina Mountain. Image courtesy of Milan Sekulović.

Part of what makes the hotspots “hot” stems from their susceptibility to takeover by powerful institutions such as modern governments or corporations, which in turn derives from how grasslands are typically managed by traditional communities, Domínguez said.

Grasslands are often communally shared, rather than being privately owned by a single individual, family or other legally deeded entity. Domínguez noted that it doesn’t make much sense to divide up a grass-covered landscape among herders for individual exploitation. In expansive range systems like Sinjajevina, livestock need vast spaces so they do not overexploit the grasses available on a single plot. Sometimes, these commonly managed pastoral areas are even pejoratively referred to as “badlands.” He said this misnomer is due to the incorrect assumption that land is only good when it can be exploited intensively. In fact, he added, such so-called badlands often sustain many times more natural and cultural values than does intensive farming.

In contrast with conventional modern agriculture, the herders of Sinjajevina share the sprawling pastures, across which they move their animals from place to place, adhering to a strict code of self-imposed regulations to avoid overtaxing any one location. As a result, the pastures can offer people sustainable livelihoods almost indefinitely. Gara’s family is living proof that this approach to caring for the commons works, Domínguez said.

But the small population — 250 families in the case of Sinjajevina — leaves these herders in a position where they can “hardly oppose a central state or NATO in their land grabbing,” he said.

Humans and nature in concert

Though Sinjajevina has thrived in balance for centuries, it turns out that the “beautiful” symbiosis” found there — so rare, and becoming more so in the world’s grasslands, rainforests, and other landscapes — isn’t well understood by scientists.

Ecologist Vladimir Pešić said that the dearth of data on Sinjajevina makes it “very difficult to talk [about] from a scientific point of view” what would happen if the military turns part of it into a training ground.

“We can only speculate,” said Pešić, a professor at the University of Montenegro. But, he added, “For sure there will be an impact on the Tara River canyon ecosystem.”

Milan Sekulović, the secretary-general for the Montenegrin NGO Save Sinjajevina Association, still walks with his family’s herds to the Mountain every spring. He noted that the military incursion risks ruining “one big ecological resource because we still don’t know what we exactly have.”

A lake on Sinjajevina Mountain. Image courtesy of the Save Sinjajevina Association.

In fact, the government’s Agency for Nature and Environmental Protection of Montenegro (EPA) probed the ecology of Sinjajevina before the military had — publicly, at least — shown interest in the Mountain. That research, released in 2018, was an initial step toward protecting the Sinjajevina Highlands as a regional nature park.

The study revealed a striking amalgam of plant and animal species, many found in few other places. Researchers recorded 1,300 plant species, 56 of which live only on the Balkan Peninsula. The massif boasts dozens of bird and mammal species, as well as a handful of protected amphibian and reptile species, including the karst viper (Vipera ursinii macrops), a small, venomous snake that thrives in mountain grasslands but whose numbers have dwindled along with its favored habitat.

The EPA study led to the promise of funding from the European Union to establish a park that would protect both the ecosystem and the herders’ way of life.

Other government documents attest to Sinjajevina’s ecological value. A 2015 reportfrom the Montenegrin Ministry of Sustainable Development and Tourism notes that Sinjajevina is a bulwark for threatened mammals, of both the wild and domesticated sort, including the Piva sheep that local shepherds developed.

What’s more, scientists say Sinjajevina feeds Montenegro’s other regions. Every spring, alpine rivers swell with melting snow, gushing down from limestone peaks and providing a vital source of clean freshwater for Montenegro’s population. Pešić, the lead editor of a book called The Rivers of Montenegro, explained that the snowfall on the Mountain was a “very important” water source for the Balkan nation.

Montenegrin Prime Minister Zdravko Krivokapić (left) and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg speak to the press on Dec. 15, 2020, at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium. Image courtesy of NATO.

Zdravko Krivokapić, the country’s new prime minister, recently acknowledged this reliance, noting the urgent need to better understand how altering Sinjajevina will impact not just the immediate environment and the people who live there, but also the broader population of Montenegro.

“We have to be very careful about everything that we are doing,” Krivokapić told NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg at a joint press conference on Dec. 15, 2020. “We have to find the best solution in order to meet the needs of NATO requirements and our [national] plans, and to preserve the essential value, which is, first and foremost, our environment.”

Gara was more forthright in her assessment. “If they do the military exercises in Sinjajevina, they’re going to pollute our rivers and mountains,” she said. “The waters that come from Sinjajevina — I think they go to half of the country. If those waters are polluted, everything else is polluted.”

Winds of (geo)political change

Considering these concerns, why, then, would Montenegro have chosen to move ahead with military plans that could endanger the country’s environment and water supply?

Several sources speculated to Mongabay that the push for a Sinjajevina training ground wasn’t driven by Montenegro’s army alone, which at full muster comprises fewer than 2,400 active soldiers. Instead, it is possible that Montenegro’s position on Europe’s southeastern flank is seen as strategic by NATO, and perhaps the European Union, of which Montenegro is not yet a member. But those military goals could also put Montenegro at odds with the EU’s stringent requirements for protecting nature.

Through a spokesperson, NATO declined to comment, except to direct Mongabay to the press conference held by the organization’s secretary-general and Montenegrin Prime Minister Krivokapić on Dec. 15.

European Commission spokesperson Ana Pisonero, on behalf of the EU Commissioner for Neighbourhood and Enlargement, acknowledged to Mongabay that the military training area overlaps with a UNESCO World Heritage Site — the Tara River Biosphere Reserve — and that Sinjajevina is a candidate for inclusion in the European Community’s Natura 2000 network.

Milan Sekulović and another protester at the Margita camp, where activists blocked a military exercise for 51 days in late 2020. Image courtesy of Milan Sekulović.

The Natura 2000 program includes threatened species habitat and breeding areas, often in places where humans also use the landscape. These spots don’t have the strict protections of national parks and preserves, but EU bylaws require member nations to manage them sustainably.

Pisonero noted that a 2020 EU report required Montenegro to prioritize “urgent measures to preserve and improve the ecological value of protected areas and potential Natura 2000 sites.”

She said the report called for any military operations in Sinjajevina to “be planned and monitored in line with the UNESCO principles of socio-cultural and ecological sustainability.” Pisonero also pointed out that the remaining unfulfilled requirements related to the environment and climate change for Montenegro’s admission to the EU were “among the most demanding.”

“To progress on the EU-accession path, the country must deepen and speed up reforms,” Pisonero said. “The faster Montenegro aligns with EU legislation, [and] conducts and implements necessary reforms, the faster it will be in a position to join.”

Military incursions begin

In the summer of 2019, the movement to protect Sinjajevina called for the cancelation of the March 2019 decree creating the military training ground. The activist coalition argued that, in addition to the risks to the environment, the government hadn’t carried out the necessary consultations and assessments to comply with the international principle of free, prior and informed consent.

“No negotiations with anybody,” Domínguez said. “They just declared it.”

To draw attention to the military’s plans, close to 10,000 people signed a series of petitions organized by Save Sinjajevina and groups from abroad, including Land Rights Now, the Indigenous Peoples’ and Community Conserved Areas and Territories (ICCA) Consortium, the International Land Coalition, and the Common Lands Network. And nearly 100 local and international NGOs from as far away as the Philippines, Indonesia and Burundi signed a statement supporting the measures.

Gara, along with Save Sinjajevina’s Sekulović, said that the tribes weren’t even told the size or the location of the troop training ground.

The Montenegrin Ministry of Defense did not respond to telephone and emailed requests for comment. However, available estimates put the proposed area at between 100 and 250 km2 (39 and 97 mi2). Wider ecological impacts could also occur as military missions travel to and from alpine areas.

In September, Thomas Waitz, a member of the European Parliament and co-chair of the EU Green party, visited Sinjajevina and voiced his support via tweet for keeping the military out.

“Military exercises here will have devastating consequences for farmers, animals, and the natural environment,” Waitz later told Mongabay in an email. “We need to protect this vital ecosystem and say no to military destruction.”

Still, in late September 2019, an international contingent of around 300 soldiers armed with explosives moved into Sinjajevina for military exercises.

“Now we are in the situation when you must fight for your home against your own army,” Sekulović said in an interview. “It’s a strange situation, but it’s real.”

Proponents of militarizing Sinjajevina have called the protesters traitors, saying they’re standing in the way of national defense in a volatile region. And the conservation movement’s leaders worried that their movement’s resistance wouldn’t be sufficient to end the military’s plans.

New government, new resistance

Then, in August 2020, the results of Montenegro’s elections buoyed the hopes of Sinjajevina’s defenders.

In all but a few of the past 30 years, Milo Djukanovic has led Montenegro as either president or prime minister. But Djukanovic’s grip on power in the Balkans appears to be on the wane: In last August’s election, the loss of seats by Djukanovic’s Democratic Party of Socialists meant that a new government coalition would soon rule Montenegro. That has opened the door for a ruling coalition that’s ostensibly more attuned to environmental issues and specifically Sinjajevina.

One of the members of that new coalition, the United Reform Action (URA) party, recently became a member of the EU Green Party. URA leader Dritan Abazović, who in December 2020 became Montenegro’s deputy prime minister, signaled his support of conservation prior to the formation of the new government in a tweet, writing in October, “There will be no military exercises on #Sinjajevina!” He called the preservation of the Mountain’s pastures a “significant victory” for the people and the environment of the little Balkan nation.

But that claim quickly collided with reality, as hundreds of soldiers, including not just Montenegrins but also international troops, reportedly planned to camp and carry out shelling exercises in the Margita area of Sinjajevina.

The Save Sinjajevina Association responded with dogged resistance. Beginning Oct. 16, some 150 protesters camped in the Margita area, where they believed the exercise would take place. They stayed for nearly two months, withstanding plummeting temperatures and winter storms and standing in the way of a military takeover at the heart of Sinjajevina.

Throughout November 2020, the soldiers remained close to Margita, to the frustration of Domínguez and other supporters of the Save Sinjajevina movement.

In Podgorica, the capital, talks among the newly elected members of the coalition failed to produce a working government, first missing one deadline in November, and then another. That led to concerns about whether URA leader Abazović, even with the support of the EU Greens, would in fact have the final say on the military training ground.

Relief on the Mountain

Finally, on Dec. 5, the coalition came together and formed a new government. The same day, incoming Minister of Defense Olivera Injac announced that the protesters should “go home freely.”

“I will be very happy to visit our natural pearl together with my colleagues and talk to the locals as soon as the opportunity arises,” Injac said, according to the Montenegrin newspaper Vijesti — an announcement that was “welcomed” by the European Commission, spokesperson Ana Pisonero said.

That same day, the protesters decamped, based on a promise from Injac that the military’s presence on the Mountain would be reevaluated. Still, the activists remain steadfast in calling for the permanent cancelation of the decree that created the training ground. They also want to see a park designated in Sinjajevina and created with the involvement of local communities and protection of traditional livelihoods in a region buffeted by political vagaries.

However, they worry whether the initial support their movement has marshaled will last, particularly in the context of global politics involving NATO, the EU and Montenegro’s place in Europe. Montenegro, after all, is a country in flux: The new governing coalition represents the first meaningful change in the country’s leadership in three decades, and it remains a young nation that only arose in its current form out of the former Yugoslavia less than two decades ago.

“It is surely too early to say if this decision is going to be stable and definitive,” Domínguez said in an email to Save Sinjajevina supporters, “and we will have to look very carefully at the developments.”

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John Cannon is a staff features writer with Mongabay. Find him on Twitter: @johnccannon

Featured image: Activists on Sinjajevina celebrated a victory on Dec. 5 when the newly formed government promised to reevaluate the military’s use of the pasturelands. Image courtesy of Milan Sekulović.

Zakaria acts as the informal Democratic Party CNN “spokesperson,” especially on international issues. The following may possibly provide us with an idea of what Biden is thinking. Aired January 17, 2021.

Guest: CNN Global Affairs Analyst and New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser.

From the full extract of the official CNN Transcript dealing mainly with Cuba:

ZAKARIA: Secretary Pompeo spent the better part of the week making big pronouncements and bigger moves on the world stage. He said that al-Qaeda’s new home base is in Iran. He labeled Cuba a state sponsor of terror and the Houthis in Yemen a foreign terrorist organization.

GLASSER: And so you have it as an example, I think, of how the U.S. has, sort of, abdicated leadership in the region. And, you know, there’s real costs to this. He’s also seeking to impose political costs, of course, on the incoming Biden administration if they seek to reverse this, if they reverse the Cuba designation, that they are somehow going to be in league with terrorists. You can just imagine, you know, the campaign commercials that—that Mike Pompeo is cutting in his mind.

ZAKARIA: Right. So—and if you look at the Cuba and the Iran ones, they seem both entirely of that—of that nature. You know, he’s designating Cuba as a state sponsor of terror. You know, it falls on the Biden administration to awkwardlyhave to, you know, undo that designation.

But both of them are—would be very awkward, politically, to undo, right?

GLASSER: Well, that’s exactly it, or they think that they will.
ZAKARIA: Unfortunately, Susan—I’m so sorry, but I’ve got to—I’ve got to let you go. We will—we will come back to this and to you because it’s always a pleasure.

GLASSER: Thank you, Fareed.”

***

Both Zakaria and Glasser go on to predict that, should Biden try to undo these designations, Pompeo and Trump will have a perfect excuse to attack the new administration. Yet, if they were at all honest, both would argue against this excuse rather than allowing it to hang in the air as a reasonable alibi for the State Department’s parting shot.

Compare this CNN transcript to the statement by eight US Senators. Furthermore, why did the CNN not cite this?

“Klobuchar, Leahy, and Colleagues Demand Answers from The State Department About Move to Designate Cuba a State Sponsor of Terrorism

WASHINGTON – On Friday January 8, 2021, U.S. Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Jack Reed (D-RI), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), and Tina Smith (D-MN) sent a letter to Secretary of State Michael Pompeo expressing concern over reports that the Trump Administration would designate Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism without formal consultation and review by Congress. The Senators also asked the State Department to commit to conducting a formal review before designating any nation a state sponsor of terrorism or removing any such designation. Without consulting Congress, today the State Department announced its intent to redesignate Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism.” 

We note that Pompeo placed Cuba on the list without a formal review by the Congress. However, if Pompeo could do this so easily, then Biden, far from feeling “awkward,” could remove Cuba from the list on January 20.

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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.

After condemning the pro-Trump invasion of the Capitol, the incoming Biden administration invited Carlos Vecchio – a coup leader charged in the 2014 torching of the Venezuelan Attorney General’s office – to its inaugural ceremony.

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As Washington recovered from shock and outrage caused by pro-Trump hooligans storming the United States Congress – breaking windows, smashing doors, and intimidating police officers in order to push their way inside – a sense of pre-inaugural excitement began to sweep the nation’s capital. Who would be attending incoming President Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20, scheduled to take place exactly two weeks following the Capitol riot?

While heavily armed National Guard troops descended onto Washington’s streets to set up check-points, construct fences around government buildings, and establish their military presence, news about the upcoming swearing-in ceremony began to trickle out in the media.

Lady Gaga was booked to belt out the National Anthem, while Jennifer Lopez, John Legend, Bruce Springsteen, and a host of other Democratic Party-aligned pop artists were scheduled to perform throughout the day. Former Trump cabinet members, including Vice President Mike Pence, Supreme Court Justices, and lawmakers were all expected to attend, though the National Mall would be closed to the general public.

Beyond entertainers and high-level federal officials, foreign dignitaries were invited to join a smaller-than-usual group of individuals permitted to witness the day’s festivities. Among those dignitaries is Carlos Vecchio, a former Exxon lawyer who currently serves as US-recognized “Interim President” Juan Guaidó’s envoy in Washington. When the Trump Administration initiated a coup against Venezuela’s government in January of 2019, Vecchio became Guaidó’s ambassador, and has risen to prominence as the de facto leader of a US-based exile lobby dedicated to toppling Venezuela’s UN-recognized government.

The Biden team’s decision to invite Vecchio was a disappointing sign to those hoping the new administration would break from Trump’s failed and destructive policy of recognizing Guaidó as Venezuela’s leader. In the two years since Washington appointed the previously unknown opposition figure to lead its attempt at regime change, Guaidó has failed to rally public support in Venezuela or gain control of any government ministry. The country’s military remains loyal to President Nicolás Maduro and the United Nations still recognizes the Maduro government’s authority.

Beyond giving the appearance that Biden will continue the Trump Administration’s doomed Venezuela policy, Vecchio’s presence at the presidential swearing-in ceremony was filled with irony. In the days following the Capitol riot, Biden and his allies have denounced the violent takeover of Congress as an assault on democracy, with the incoming president himself declaring the rioters to be “domestic terrorists.”

Yet Carlos Vecchio, the Guaidó ally with a fresh ticket to Biden’s inauguration, is responsible for leading his own assault on his home country’s democracy – and is currently wanted in Venezuela for inciting a violent attack on the Attorney General’s office in Caracas.

After condemning Trump for inspiring the Capitol riot, Biden sent inaugural invite to @carlosvecchio – Venezuelan coup leader charged with inciting insurrectionist 2014 attack on gov't building.

See what Vecchio's charged for here, it might seem familiarhttps://t.co/S3nJHdccrk pic.twitter.com/zb6umY3WJ4

— Anya Parampil (@anyaparampil) January 18, 2021

Biden’s guest charged with inspiring a violent assault on Venezuela’s public institutions

On February 12, 2014, right-wing opposition leader Leopoldo López led a feverish rally of his supporters in the heart of Venezuela’s capital, Caracas. For over a month, López and his political allies had been holding demonstrations aimed at overthrowing newly-elected president Nicolás Maduro, who came into office following snap elections held in the aftermath of Hugo Chávez’s death.

Carlos Vecchio, the corporate lawyer who went on to represent Juan Guaidó in Washington, also spoke at the demonstration, and stood loyally by López’s side as he delivered his incendiary speech calling for an angry march to the Attorney General’s office, and whipping the crowd into chants of, “No fear! No fear!”

López’s supporters heeded his call and charged straight for the office of Venezuela’s Public Prosecutor, eventually setting the building on fire. Columbia University’s Global Freedom of Expression project concededthe mayhem “resulted in the death of two people and considerable damage to public property.”

López and his allies, including Vecchio, were charged for their role in inciting the destruction. López was eventually sentenced to 13 years in prison for his actions, while Vecchio fled to the United States to escape “incitement of violence” charges.

The attack on Venezuela’s public institutions in February of 2014 mirrored events that would take place in Washington DC roughly six years later, when President Donald Trump delivered a speech on the White House eclipse instructing his supporters to march to the Capitol as lawmakers voted to cerity his election loss. Within minutes of arriving at Congress, Trump’s followers overwhelmed the meager crowd of police deployed to protect the legislature and forced their way inside – unafraid to shatter doors and windows as they did so.

Following the violent breach of the Capitol, incoming president Joe Biden characterized the mob’s actions as “an unprecedented assault on our democracy, an assault literally on the citadel of liberty, in the United States Capitol itself” and “an assault on the rule of law.” Democrats in the House of Representatives quickly moved to impeach Trump, charging the president with “incitement of insurrection.”

In light of their outraged response to the Capitol raid, which they branded an act of illegal insurrection, Biden and his allies might be sympathetic to the Venezuelan government, which similarly moved to charge López and his co-conspirators, including Vecchio, for their role in encouraging a blitz on government buildings after the country’s Attorney General’s office was torched by a politically-charged mob.

Instead, the wanted coup leader Vecchio was welcomed by a bipartisan crew of top Washington politicians including President Trump, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Florida neocon Senator Marco Rubio, and former Democratic Party Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

The violent actions of Vecchio and his allies were hardly limited to the events of February 12, 2014. The chaotic demonstrations they led lasted until May of that year, resulting in the deaths of 49 people and roughly 10 billion dollars in damage. Regime change rampages by Venezuela’s opposition have featured assaults on journalists, the construction of barricades manned by vandals, and the burning to death of political opponents.

On June 13, 2017, activists set Venezuela’s Supreme Court on fire following jailed opposition leader López’s call for a rebellion against the Maduro government. Days later a police officer named Óscar Pérez hijacked a government helicopter and attempted to launch four grenades at the Court while firing live bullets at the country’s Interior Ministry. (Trump honored Pérez during a political rally in South Florida on February 18, 2019).

For his part, Juan Guaidó has led two failed campaigns of violent insurrection against Venezuela’s government. In April of 2019, he called for an uprising against President Maduro while a group of a few dozen soldiers launched an attack on the La Carlota Air Base in Caracas. While the rebellion failed to generate popular support, López was broken out of house arrest during the day’s events, leading to his eventual exile in Spain.

Roughly a year later, Guaidó was exposed at the center of yet another coup plot when former U.S. Green Beret Jordan Goudreau accused the politician of contracting his services to carry out a botched capture or kill operation targeting President Maduro. Goudreau, who previously provided private security for Trump campaign rallies, produced a contract containing Guaidó’s signature along with a voice recording of Guaidó allegedly discussing the deal though Guaidó himself has denied involvement.

Biden and the Democrats reacted with indignation when the U.S. Capitol was breached for just one afternoon, immediately initiating Trump’s second impeachment by the House of Representatives. Within days, the Capitol was surrounded with unscalable fencing and 25,000 National Guard soldiers were summoned to occupy central Washington DC – more than three times the amount of troops deployed to Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan combined.

It would be instructive to imagine how Democrats would have responded if Trump or his supporters attempted anything like the years-long campaign of insurrection by Venezuela’s opposition – and did so with the full-throated support of a foreign power. What if Trump supporters had set up barricades around Washington DC, preventing residents from leaving or entering their own neighborhoods? What if they had lit the Supreme Court on fire and bombed it from the air in a stolen military helicopter? And how would Democrats have reacted if Trump had contracted foreign mercenaries to capture or kill Biden?

Anyone troubled by these hypothetical scenarios should be equally disturbed that Carlos Vecchio, a veteran coup leader allied with seditious forces in his home country, will be present at Biden’s inauguration on January 20.

Sen. Durbin lobbies for Venezuelan coup leaders hours after condemning Trumpist “insurrection”

In the lead up to the House vote on President Trump’s impeachment, on January 11, U.S. Senator Dick Durbin tweeted, “The President and his Republican enablers incited a violent mob into storming the Capitol… This was an assault on our democracy, our national security, and our Constitution. There must be accountability, including impeachment.”

Hours later Durbin took to Twitter again to boast of his meeting with incoming Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, saying the two discussed “his plan for the State Department in the Biden Administration.”

According to the senator’s office, Durbin explicitly advocated the Biden administration preserve support for Juan Guaidó, whom he described as Venezuela’s “Interim-President.”

We thank you @SenatorDurbin for addressing with the nominee for US Secretary of State @ABlinken the critical situation of Venezuela, the actions to restoring democracy hijacked by Nicolas Maduro's dictatorship, and the necessary support to the Venezuelan people. https://t.co/IUTNVPbTI7

— CARLOS VECCHIO (@carlosvecchio) January 13, 2021

“We thank you Senator Durbin for addressing with the nominee for U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken the critical situation of Venezuela, the actions to restoring democracy hijacked by Nicolas Maduro’s dictatorship, and the necessary support to the Venezuelan people,” Vecchio tweeted in response to news of the conversation.

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

Featured image is from The Grayzone

He disrupted the academic world with his peer-reviewed paper exposing the exaggerated threat of an “invisible enemy” (the novel coronavirus).

In an interview, Dr. Brown said that “the public’s overreaction to the coronavirus pandemic was based on the worst miscalculation in the history of humanity.”

Now, in this music video, Dr. Ronald B. Brown, PhD, presents a melancholy tapestry of sounds and images exposing the understated harm of a real, yet “silent enemy” (the coronavirus control measures)…

SILENT ENEMY

This classical composition was performed and recorded by Brown in his home studio, using samples of orchestral instruments. In addition to pursuing a second PhD in epidemiology, Dr. Brown is a professional timpanist with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestra in Ontario, Canada.

In an interview, Dr. Brown said that “the public’s overreaction to the coronavirus pandemic was based on the worst miscalculation in the history of humanity.”

Dr. Ronald B. Brown’s paper, Public Health Lessons Learned From Biases in Coronavirus Mortality Overestimation, has remained the most read article in the journal of Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness for last six months. A follow up article is currently under peer review with the same journal.

“I can promise readers many more insights about the pandemic,” says Dr. Brown, “assuming the manuscript gets published.

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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. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the author

The last two weeks have ushered in a wave of new domestic police powers and rhetoric in the name of fighting “terrorism” that are carbon copies of many of the worst excesses of the first War on Terror that began nearly twenty years ago. This trend shows no sign of receding as we move farther from the January 6 Capitol riot. The opposite is true: it is intensifying.

We have witnessed an orgy of censorship from Silicon Valley monopolies with calls for far more aggressive speech policing, a visibly militarized Washington, D.C. featuring a non-ironically named “Green Zone,” vows from the incoming president and his key allies for a new anti-domestic terrorism bill, and frequent accusations of “sedition,” “treason,” and “terrorism” against members of Congress and citizens. This is all driven by a radical expansion of the meaning of “incitement to violence.” It is accompanied by viral-on-social-media pleas that one work with the FBI to turn in one’s fellow citizens (See Something, Say Something!) and demands for a new system of domestic surveillance.

Underlying all of this are immediate insinuations that anyone questioning any of this must, by virtue of these doubts, harbor sympathy for the Terrorists and their neo-Nazi, white supremacist ideology. Liberals have spent so many years now in a tight alliance with neocons and the CIA that they are making the 2002 version of John Ashcroft look like the President of the (old-school) ACLU.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security website, touting a trademarked phrase licensed to it in 2010 by the City of New York, urging citizens to report “suspicious activity” to the FBI and other security state agencies

The more honest proponents of this new domestic War on Terror are explicitly admitting that they want to model it on the first one. A New York Times reporter noted on Monday that a “former intelligence official on PBS NewsHour” said “that the US should think about a ‘9/11 Commission’ for domestic extremism and consider applying some of the lessons from the fight against Al Qaeda here at home.” More amazingly, Gen. Stanley McChrystal — for years head of Joint Special Operations Command in Iraq and the commander of the war in Afghanistan — explicitly compared that war to this new one, speaking to Yahoo News:

I did see a similar dynamic in the evolution of al-Qaida in Iraq, where a whole generation of angry Arab youth with very poor prospects followed a powerful leader who promised to take them back in time to a better place, and he led them to embrace an ideology that justified their violence. This is now happening in America….I think we’re much further along in this radicalization process, and facing a much deeper problem as a country, than most Americans realize.”

Anyone who, despite all this, still harbors lingering doubts that the Capitol riot is and will be the neoliberal 9/11, and that a new War on Terror is being implemented in its name, need only watch the two short video clips below, which will clear their doubts for good. It is like being catapulted by an unholy time machine back to Paul Wolfowitz’s 2002 messaging lab.

The first video, flagged by Tom Elliott, is from Monday morning’s Morning Joe program on MSNBC (the show that arguably did more to help Donald Trump become the GOP nominee than any other). It features Jeremy Bash — one of the seemingly countless employees of TV news networks who previously worked in Obama’s CIA and Pentagon — demanding that, in response to the Capitol riot, “we reset our entire intelligence approach,” including “look[ing] at greater surveillance of them,” adding: “the FBI is going to have to run confidential sources.” See if you detect any differences between what CIA operatives and neocons were saying in 2002 when demanding the Patriot Act and greater FBI and NSA surveillance and what this CIA-official-turned-NBC-News-analyst is saying here:

The second video features the amazing declaration from former Facebook security official Alex Stamos, talking to the very concerned CNN host Brian Stelter, about the need for social media companies to use the same tactics against U.S. citizens that they used to remove ISIS from the internet — “in collaboration with law enforcement” — and that those tactics should be directly aimed at what he calls extremist “conservative influencers.”

“Press freedoms are being abused by these actors,” the former Facebook executive proclaimed. Stamos noted how generous he and his comrades have been up until now: “We have given a lot of leeway — both in the traditional media and in social media — to people with a very broad range of views.” But no more. Now is the time to “get us all back in the same consensual reality.”

In a moment of unintended candor, Stamos noted the real problem: “there are people on YouTube, for example, that have a larger audience than people on daytime CNN” — and it’s time for CNN and other mainstream outlets to seize the monopoly on information dissemination to which they are divinely entitled by taking away the platforms of those whom people actually want to watch and listen to:

(If still not convinced, and if you can endure it, you can also watch MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski literally screaming that one needed remedy to the Capitol riot is that the Biden administration must “shutdown” Facebook. Shutdown Facebook).

Calls for a War on Terror sequel — a domestic version complete with surveillance and censorship — are not confined to ratings-deprived cable hosts and ghouls from the security state. The Wall Street Journal reports that “Mr. Biden has said he plans to make a priority of passing a law against domestic terrorism, and he has been urged to create a White House post overseeing the fight against ideologically inspired violent extremists and increasing funding to combat them.”

Meanwhile, Congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA) — not just one of the most dishonest members of Congress but also one of the most militaristic and authoritarian — has had a bill proposed since 2019 to simply amend the existing foreign anti-terrorism bill to allow the U.S. Government to invoke exactly the same powers at home against “domestic terrorists.”

Why would such new terrorism laws be needed in a country that already imprisons more of its citizens than any other country in the world as the result of a very aggressive set of criminal laws? What acts should be criminalized by new “domestic terrorism” laws that are not already deemed criminal? They never say, almost certainly because — just as was true of the first set of new War on Terror laws — their real aim is to criminalize that which should not be criminalized: speech, association, protests, opposition to the new ruling coalition.

The answer to this question — what needs to be criminalized that is not already a crime? — scarcely seems to matter. Media and political elites have placed as many Americans as they can — and it is a lot — into full-blown fear and panic mode, and when that happens, people are willing to acquiesce to anything claimed necessary to stop that threat, as the first War on Terror, still going strong twenty years later, decisively proved.

An entire book could — and probably should — be written on why all of this is so concerning. For the moment, two points are vital to emphasize.

First, much of the alarmism and fear-mongering is being driven by a deliberate distortion of what it means for speech to “incite violence.” The bastardizing of this phrase was the basis for President Trump’s rushed impeachment last week. It is also what is driving calls for dozens of members of Congress to be expelled and even prosecuted on “sedition” charges for having objected to the Electoral College certification, and is also at the heart of the spate of censorship actions already undertaken and further repressive measures being urged.

This phrase — “inciting violence” — was also what drove many of the worst War on Terror abuses. I spent years reporting on how numerous young American Muslims were prosecuted under new, draconian anti-terrorism laws for uploading anti-U.S.-foreign-policy YouTube videos or giving rousing anti-American speeches deemed to “incite violence” and thus provide “material support” to terrorist groups — the exact theory which Rep. Schiff is seeking to import into the new domestic War on Terror.

It is vital to ask what it means for speech to constitute “incitement to violence” to the point that it can be banned or criminalized. The expression of any political viewpoint, especially one passionately expressed, has the potential to “incite” someone else to get so riled up that they engage in violence.

If you rail against the threats to free speech posed by Silicon Valley monopolies, someone hearing you may get so filled with rage that they decide to bomb an Amazon warehouse or a Facebook office. If you write a blistering screed accusing pro-life activists of endangering the lives of women by forcing them back into unsafe back-alley abortions, or if you argue that abortion is murder, you may very well inspire someone to engage in violence against a pro-life group or an abortion clinic. If you start a protest movement to object to the injustice of Wall Street bailouts — whether you call it “Occupy Wall Street” or the Tea Party — you may cause someone to go hunt down Goldman Sachs or Citibank executives who they believe are destroying the economic future of millions of people.

If you claim that George W. Bush stole the 2000 and/or 2004 elections — as many Democrats, including members of Congress, did — you may inspire civic unrest or violence against Bush and his supporters. The same is true if you claim the 2016 or 2020 elections were fraudulent or illegitimate. If you rage against the racist brutality of the police, people may go burn down buildings in protest — or murder randomly selected police officers whom they have become convinced are agents of a racist genocidal state.

The Bernie Sanders campaign volunteer and hard-core Democratic partisan, James Hodgkinson, who went to a softball field in June, 2017 to murder Republican Congress members — and almost succeeded in fatally shooting Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) — had spent months listening to radical Sanders supporters and participating in Facebook groups with names like “Terminate the Republican Party” and “Trump is a Traitor.”

Hodgkinson had heard over and over that Republicans were not merely misguided but were “traitors” and grave threats to the Republic. As CNN reported, “his favorite television shows were listed as ‘Real Time with Bill Maher;’ ‘The Rachel Maddow Show;’ ‘Democracy Now!’ and other left-leaning programs.” All of the political rhetoric to which he was exposed — from the pro-Sanders Facebook groups, MSNBC and left-leaning shows — undoubtedly played a major role in triggering his violent assault and decision to murder pro-Trump Republican Congress members.

Despite the potential of all of those views to motivate others to commit violence in their name — potential that has sometimes been realized — none of the people expressing those views, no matter how passionately, can be validly characterized as “inciting violence” either legally or ethically. That is because all of that speech is protected, legitimate speech. None of it advocates violence. None of it urges others to commit violence in its name. The fact that it may “inspire” or “motivate” some mentally unwell person or a genuine fanatic to commit violence does not make the person espousing those views and engaging in that non-violent speech guilty of “inciting violence” in any meaningful sense.

To illustrate this point, I have often cited the crucial and brilliantly reasoned Supreme Court free speech ruling in Claiborne v. NAACP. In the 1960s and 1970s, the State of Mississippi tried to hold local NAACP leaders liable on the ground that their fiery speeches urging a boycott of white-owned stores “incited” their followers to burn down stores and violently attack patrons who did not honor the protest. The state’s argument was that the NAACP leaders knew that they were metaphorically pouring gasoline on a fire with their inflammatory rhetoric to rile up and angry crowds.

But the Supreme Court rejected that argument, explaining that free speech will die if people are held responsible not for their own violent acts but for those committed by others who heard them speak and were motivated to commit crimes in the name of that cause (emphasis added):

Civil liability may not be imposed merely because an individual belonged to a group, some members of which committed acts of violence. . . .

[A]ny such theory fails for the simple reason that there is no evidence — apart from the speeches themselves — that [the NAACP leader sued by the State] authorized, ratified, or directly threatened acts of violence. . . . . To impose liability without a finding that the NAACP authorized — either actually or apparently — or ratified unlawful conduct would impermissibly burden the rights of political association that are protected by the First Amendment. . . .

While the State legitimately may impose damages for the consequences of violent conduct, it may not award compensation for the consequences of nonviolent, protected activity. Only those losses proximately caused by unlawful conduct may be recovered.

The First Amendment similarly restricts the ability of the State to impose liability on an individual solely because of his association with another.

The Claiborne court relied upon the iconic First Amendment ruling in Brandenburg v. Ohio, which overturned the criminal conviction of a KKK leader who had publicly advocated the possibility of violence against politicians. Even explicitly advocating the need or justifiability of violence for political ends is protected speech, ruled the court. They carved out a very narrow exception: “where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action” — meaning someone is explicitly urging an already assembled mob to specific violence with the expectation that they will do so more or less immediately (such as standing outside someone’s home and telling the gathered mob: it’s time to burn it down).

It goes without saying that First Amendment jurisprudence on “incitement” governs what a state can do when punishing or restricting speech, not what a Congress can do in impeaching a president or expelling its own members, and certainly not social media companies seeking to ban people from their platforms.

But that does not make these principles of how to understand “incitement to violence” irrelevant when applied to other contexts. Indeed, the central reasoning of these cases is vital to preserve everywhere: that if speech is classified as “incitement to violence” despite not explicitly advocating violence, it will sweep up any political speech which those wielding this term wish it to encompass. No political speech will be safe from this term when interpreted and applied so broadly and carelessly.

And that is directly relevant to the second point. Continuing to process Washington debates of this sort primarily through the prism of “Democrat v. Republican” or even “left v. right” is a sure ticket to the destruction of core rights. There are times when powers of repression and censorship are aimed more at the left and times when they are aimed more at the right, but it is neither inherently a left-wing nor a right-wing tactic. It is a ruling class tactic, and it will be deployed against anyone perceived to be a dissident to ruling class interests and orthodoxies no matter where on the ideological spectrum they reside.

The last several months of politician-and-journalist-demanded Silicon Valley censorship has targeted the right, but prior to that and simultaneously it has often targeted those perceived as on the left. The government has frequently declared right-wing domestic groups “terrorists,” while in the 1960s and 1970s it was left-wing groups devoted to anti-war activism which bore that designation. In 2011, British police designated the London version of Occupy Wall Street a “terrorist” group. In the 1980s, the African National Congress was so designated. “Terrorism” is an amorphous term that was created, and will always be used, to outlaw formidable dissent no matter its source or ideology.

If you identify as a conservative and continue to believe that your prime enemies are ordinary leftists, or you identify as a leftist and believe your prime enemies are Republican citizens, you will fall perfectly into the trap set for you. Namely, you will ignore your real enemies, the ones who actually wield power at your expense: ruling class elites, who really do not care about “right v. left” and most definitely do not care about “Republican v. Democrat” — as evidenced by the fact that they fund both parties — but instead care only about one thing: stability, or preservation of the prevailing neoliberal order.

Unlike so many ordinary citizens addicted to trivial partisan warfare, these ruling class elites know who their real enemies are: anyone who steps outside the limits and rules of the game they have crafted and who seeks to disrupt the system that preserves their prerogatives and status. The one who put this best was probably Barack Obama when he was president, when he observed — correctly — that the perceived warfare between establishment Democratic and Republican elites was mostly theater, and on the question of what they actually believe, they’re both “fighting inside the 40 yard line” together:

A standard Goldman Sachs banker or Silicon Valley executive has far more in common, and is far more comfortable, with Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan than they do with the ordinary American citizen. Except when it means a mildly disruptive presence — like Trump — they barely care whether Democrats or Republicans rule various organs of government, or whether people who call themselves “liberals” or “conservatives” ascend to power. Some left-wing members of Congress, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) have said they oppose a new domestic terrorism law, but Democrats will have no trouble forming a majority by partnering with their neocon GOP allies like Liz Cheney to get it done, as they did earlier this year to stop the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and Germany.

Neoliberalism and imperialism do not care about the pseudo-fights between the two parties or the cable TV bickering of the day. They do not like the far left or the far right. They do not like extremism of any kind. They do not support Communism and they do not support neo-Nazism or some fascist revolution. They care only about one thing: disempowering and crushing anyone who dissents from and threatens their hegemony. They care about stopping dissidents. All the weapons they build and institutions they assemble — the FBI, the DOJ, the CIA, the NSA, oligarchical power — exist for that sole and exclusive purpose, to fortify their power by rewarding those who accede to their pieties and crushing those who do not.

No matter your views on the threat posed by international Islamic radicalism, huge excesses were committed in the name of stopping it — or, more accurately, the fears it generated were exploited to empower and entrench existing financial and political elites. The Authorization to Use Military Force — responsible for twenty-years-and-counting of war — was approved by the House three days after the 9/11 attack with just one dissenting vote. The Patriot Act — which radically expanded government surveillance powers — was enacted a mere six weeks after that attack, based on the promise that it would be temporary and “sunset” in four years. Like the wars spawned by 9/11, it is still in full force, virtually never debated any longer and predictably expanded far beyond how it was originally depicted.

The first War on Terror ended up being wielded primarily on foreign soil but it has increasingly been imported onto domestic soil against Americans. This New War on Terror — one that is domestic in name from the start and carries the explicit purpose of fighting “extremists” and “domestic terrorists” among American citizens on U.S. soil — presents the whole slew of historically familiar dangers when governments, exploiting media-generated fear and dangers, arm themselves with the power to control information, debate, opinion, activism and protests.

That a new War on Terror is coming is not a question of speculation and it is not in doubt. Those who now wield power are saying it explicitly. The only thing that is in doubt is how much opposition they will encounter from those who value basic civic rights more than the fears of one another being deliberately cultivated within us.

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This is the second of two posts about war propaganda, and the last of four posts about propaganda more generally.

“War will exist until the distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige as the warrior does today” (John F.Kennedy(1))

War Propaganda Runs Through Our Culture 

Hollywood movies about war or spying tend to portray the US military, or James Bond, as the ‘good guys’ involved in ‘goodies vs baddies’ conflicts, with little discussion of the crimes of the US and British militaries and their spy agencies. The US military cooperates closely with these productions provided that they have final script approval, and can change scripts or scenes that they do not like. Where movies have tried to say anything negative about the US military, cooperation has been refused. They expect to have a generally patriotic view of the US, with the military portrayed as heroes, always with good intentions. These films actually help to recruit people for the military. The US navy provided planes, pilots and warships for the 1986 movie ‘Top Gun’. This led to a big rise in applications for people to become US fighter pilots. A more recent development has been the use of internet adverts for Hollywood movies, which deceptively take people to disguised army recruitment websites.(2)

One of the best examples of CIA propaganda is their manipulation of the film version of George Orwell’s book ‘Animal Farm.’ The book highlights the fact that politicians in both capitalist and communist countries can be corrupted by power. The CIA bought the film rights, knowing that it could be used as a propaganda tool. The CIA’s film version omits the most important part of the ending (which criticises capitalism) creating the impression that it is only a criticism of communism.(3)

The developers of many computer video games work closely with the US military. There is increasing use of drones in the military, piloted by soldiers thousands of miles away. What they see on their control screens is indistinguishable from a video game. The content of some games involves overthrowing governments in countries such as Venezuela.(4)  Evidence from wars in Afghanistan and Iraq indicates that US soldiers participate in war as if they are playing a video game, and therefore they can convince themselves that their actions have no consequences.

Never Question The Soldiers 

One of the strongest parts of any pro-war propaganda system is convincing everyone that whatever criticisms they make, they must always support the troops. But the job of a British or American soldier has nothing to do with freedom or democracy. They are trained killers whose job is to invade and occupy other countries, and kill anyone who gets in the way. Britain’s military is much smaller than that of the US, but British propaganda plays an important role in generating support for war.(5) Military veterans are always praised on television when they appear at public events. When large numbers of people are being slaughtered in Iraq, there is a big difference between saying ‘The valiant British and American soldiers in Iraq were viciously attacked by terrorists, but successfully defended themselves’ and ‘The British and American occupation forces murdered large numbers of Iraqi people’. Variations of the first comment appear in US and British media regularly, but the second is a more honest way of describing what is going on.

Groups of former soldiers, such as ‘Veterans for Peace’, are now coming forward to explain that basic training is a form of brainwashing, and that the version of war that they experience, which is the mass slaughter of innocent people, is completely different from the propaganda.(6)

Brainwashing Begins In Childhood 

Children’s comic books about World War 2, such as Commando and War Picture Library, were very popular for decades after the war. They had a strong focus on patriotism and heroism. They stereotyped people from enemy countries as cruel or cowardly, and used derogatory terms such as jerries, huns or krauts for German people, eyeties for Italian people, or nips for Japanese people.(7) A generation of children grew up with a very distorted view of the war and people in other countries.

Astute readers will have realised that the materials in these blogs are not taught in schools. Most young people reach adulthood with no understanding of how the world really works. This is because governments do not want citizens to understand the crimes they commit.

In 2007 the British government decided to increase its military propaganda in schools and society more generally. It is encouraging more schools to have cadet forces. Sports competitions for injured soldiers, such as the Invictus games in the UK, and the Warrior games in the US, are intended to present former soldiers as heroes.(8) The link between the military and the British Royal family also plays a propaganda role. More recently, Britain’s cybersecurity agency, GCHQ, started running courses in schools teaching hacking skills, and inviting young children to visit them.(9) One campaign group noted:

“Armed Forces Day, Remembrance Day, Uniform to Work Day, Camo Day [where people wear camouflage], in the streets, on television, on the web, at sports events, in schools, advertising and fashion – the military presence in UK civilian life is increasing daily”(10)

All of the activities described above are forms of militarism, where people are encouraged to see the military, and spying, in positive terms; to think of violent, military solutions as the best way to solve international disagreements; and to ignore peaceful alternatives. There is no discussion of British and US war crimes, or the illegal spying activities of GCHQ(11) and its US equivalent, the NSA. Encouraging children to play with military vehicles and weapons, and to watch military parachutists or airshows, is intended to indoctrinate them. School trips to war museums have a similar effect. Ideas learned at a young age come to seem like common sense, as opposed to propaganda intended to serve the interests of rich and powerful people. These activities play a direct role in recruiting soldiers, but just as importantly, they recruit a large number of people to support militarism unquestioningly.(12)

The Power of Patriotism 

The military activities mentioned above also indoctrinate people into thinking about patriotism and nationalism, which are incredibly powerful propaganda tools.(13) Putting the head of a Monarch or an Emperor onto coins was one of the earliest forms of propaganda, and stamps with the Queen on them have a similar purpose. Royal pageants and processions are celebrated as major national events. We are encouraged to think of our country as a single entity, to be proud of it, and to forget, ignore, or be unaware of the crimes of our government, and the fact that most people have little in common with the billionaires and millionaires who dominate political decision-making. It makes it easy for decision-makers to generate support for foreign wars, and to describe others as ‘the enemy’.

Propaganda Works on Politicians Too 

It is important to realise that some government propaganda is targeted at politicians. This is where the intelligence services come in. Most people think that intelligence services exist to provide accurate information. This is only partly true. Some parts of the intelligence services have a secondary role, which is to present information that supports policy. The US decided to invade Iraq a long time before the invasion actually happened. From that point onwards, they were trying to find intelligence that would give them a good excuse to invade. Intelligence officers in Britain were told that if they did not sign up to a dossier on Weapons of Mass Destruction, that they knew was untrue, that would be the end of their careers. In the US, whole new departments were set up. The Office of Strategic Influence was set up in 2001 to support the war on terror through psychological operations (PSYOPs), which includes creating fake stories and propaganda. The Office of Special Plans was set up in 2002 specifically to ‘re-interpret’ data to create a case for war. If the data did not support war, officers would be told that this was not what their superiors wanted to hear, and they should try again until they came up with the ‘right’ result.(14)

Anti-war opinions are being censored – Manipulating Information on the Internet 

The internet is becoming increasingly important as a source of information, particularly for young people. Wikipedia began as an online encyclopedia that could be edited by anyone. On some non-political topics, it is a useful source of information. Unfortunately, most edits are now made by a small number of people. There is strong evidence that some of these people are not honest, independent researchers. They work to protect the establishment against its critics.(15) Critical websites such as The Grayzone have been blacklisted by Wikipedia, even though it has an outstanding track record of investigative journalism.(16) Many anti-war activists, including the former ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, discovered that their Wikipedia entries had all been changed hundreds of times in very negative ways by a single individual (or, more likely, a group of people operating under a single username).

Critical writers have noted that Facebook and Twitter censor their output, and Google manipulates search results so that critical work does not appear on the first page of results. This means that it is becoming more and more difficult for people to find information that challenges the mainstream view.

Some Propaganda is More Subtle – Newspeak and Euphemisms 

Most of the war propaganda discussed so far is reasonably obvious, once people have been made aware that it is propaganda. However, as with other forms of propaganda, war propaganda actually permeates our society.

We saw in an earlier post about the weapons industry that the word defence is actually a euphemism for invasions, occupations, mass murder and maiming. There are many other words that are intentionally used to give a misleading impression of what’s going on. The following is just a short selection of the more obvious ones:

• National interest means the interests of the biggest corporations, and the rich and powerful more generally
• International community means the US government and any country that can be bribed or threatened to support the US
• Rogue state is a country that the US does not like. In reality, the biggest rogue state is the US, with Britain also having a global reputation for ignoring international law and committing war crimes.
• Official secrets and national security are mechanisms to help the most powerful people cover up their crimes.

George Orwell, the author of ‘1984’, used the term ‘Newspeak’ to describe how the government and the media use language as a weapon to limit the range of ideas that people consider reasonable, and to distort our understanding of important issues. For example, politicians such as Jeremy Corbyn, who object to invasions or drone assassinations, are labeled as ‘soft-on-defence’ or ‘soft-on-terror’,(17) when in fact they are objecting to serious crimes by our government. If you watch any mainstream news program, particularly on the BBC, you eventually realise that Newspeak is being used all the time.

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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. This is the fifteenth in a series entitled Elephants In The Room, which attempts to provide a beginners guide to understanding what’s really going on in relation to war, terrorism, economics and poverty, without the nonsense in the mainstream media.

Notes 

1) John F. Kennedy, cited in David Swanson, War is a Lie, 2011, p.133

2) Jonathan McIntosh, ‘Military recruitment and Hollywood’, Pop Culture Detective, 28 Sep 2016, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5xfBtD6rLY 

3) Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters, 2001

Laurence Zuckerman, ‘How The Central Intelligence Agency Played Dirty Tricks With Culture’, The New York Times, 18 March 2000, at https://www.nytimes.com/2000/03/18/books/how-the-cia-played-dirty-tricks-with-culture.html

4) Ben Norton and Max Blumenthal, ‘War games: Pentagon/CIA push regime change propaganda in video games’, The Grayzone, 15 April 2019, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72v7PWJUyxY

5) Mark Curtis, Web Of Deceit, 1998, p.22

6) https://www.veteransforpeace.org/

https://vfpuk.org/

7) James Chapman, British Comics: A Cultural History, 2011

8) John Kelly, ‘Western Militarism and the Political Utility of Sport’, 17 August 2017, at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/297917074_Western_Militarism_and_the_Political_Utility_of_Sport 

9) Matt Kennard, ‘Revealed: The UK’s largest intelligence agency is infiltrating British schools’, DeclassifiedUK, 2 June 2020, at https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-06-02-revealed-the-uks-largest-intelligence-agency-is-infiltrating-british-schools/#gsc.tab=0 

10) War School (2018) synopsis, at https://www.war.school/test

11) Russell Brandon, ‘UK admits it spied illegally for 17 years, is sorry, won’t stop’, The Verge, 7 Oct 2016, at https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/17/13305270/uk-illegal-surveillance-gchq-investigatory-powers-tribunal 

12) www.ppu.org.uk/everyday-militarism

13) David Cromwell and David Edwards ‘Patriotism as Propaganda – Part 1’, Medialens, 8 Jan 2007, at https://www.medialens.org/2007/patriotism-as-propaganda-part-1/ 

David Cromwell and David Edwards, ‘Patriotism as propaganda – Part 2: Voluntary Subjection Cannot be Forced’, 9 Jan 2007, Medialens, at https://www.medialens.org/2007/patriotism-as-propaganda-part-2/

14) Craig Murray, ‘Murder in Samarkand – Document 1 – FCO Comment’, pp.158-159,  http://www.inference.org.uk/sanjoy/craig-murray/FCO_Comment.html 

Seymour M. Hersh, ‘Selective Intelligence: Donald Rumsfeld has his own special sources. Are they reliable?’, New Yorker, 5 May 2003, at https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/05/12/selective-intelligence

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

15) Craig Murray, The Philip Cross Affair, 18 May 2018, at https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/05/the-philip-cross-affair/

16) Ben Norton, ‘Wikipedia Formally Censors Grayzone as Regime-change Advocates Monopolize Editing, Global Research, 10 June 2020, at https://www.globalresearch.ca/wikipedia-formally-censors-grayzone-regime-change-advocates-monopolize-editing/5715810

17) Boris Johnson, ‘Corbyn has been soft on terror for 30 years’ – video, The Guardian, 6 Jun 2017, at https://www.theguardian.com/politics/video/2017/jun/06/boris-johnson-corbyn-has-been-soft-on-terror-for-30-years-video

Featured image by Nathaniel St. Clair

As the Trump era is coming to an end, his legacy in the Middle East will be described by the Palestinians, Syrians, Iranians and the rest of the Arab world as aggressive, dangerous and extremely reckless.  Israelis will say that Trump was one of the most supportive and loyal American presidents to the State of Israel. The Israeli government even named a settlement after Trump in the Golan Heights called ‘Trump Heights.’ 

So how will history judge Trump’s Middle East policies?

For starters, Trump had increased tensions with all of Washington’s and Israel’s long-time enemies including the one country whose been on the hit list since 1979, Iran.  In mid January 2021, Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani criticized Trump’s policies towards Iran, “a president who lacked political understanding took the helm of a country, and was accompanied by a stupid foreign minister and an ignorant and radical national security advisor. He handled everything with his gambling and business-oriented mind, and we finally saw how his term ended” and that “no one could believe this law-breaker [Trump] would order riot against his own nation, his own security, and the country’s legislature, and provoke people against the very democracy they believe in”  proclaimed Rouhani.  On February 2017, Trump’s former National Security advisor Michael Flynn presented a short and threatening statement towards Iran:

Recent Iranian actions involving a provocative ballistic missile launch and an attack against a Saudi naval vessel conducted by Iran-supported Houthi militants underscore what should have been clear to the international community all along about Iran’s destabilizing behavior across the entire Middle East

Flynn spoke on the types of threats that come from Iran “including weapons transfers, support for terrorism and other violations of international norms.”  Flynn’s final words of the statement did not at all sit well with Tehran “as of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice.”  Not a good start to diplomatic relations.  Fast forward to May of 2018, taking advice from Israel’s Prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump announced the US withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal with Iran, calling it “a horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made” and that “It didn’t bring calm, it didn’t bring peace, and it never will.”  

The next day, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei called Trump’s decision “inane and superficial.” In the following months, the Trump regime prepared to impose economic sanctions on Iran targeting its banking, energy, shipbuilding, and financial sectors if they did not follow Washington’s demands.  As tensions, increased, Washington designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a branch of the Iranian Armed Forces as a “foreign terrorist organization,” Iran retaliated by designating the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) as a “terrorist organization.”

In the following year, President Trump then imposed new sanctions on Iran by targeting numerous areas of production including aluminum, copper, iron and the steel sectors.  A number of incidents including tanker explosions in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and a pipeline attack in Saudi Arabia prompted Trump to order US troops to the region and that created more tensions between Tehran and Washington.  Then in early 2020, the Trump regime approved a drone strike that killed Qasem Soleimani, the well-respected commander of Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Forces who led the fight against terrorists in the region and Mahdi al-Muhandis, the vice president of Hashd al-Shaabi group.  Trump said “what the United States did yesterday should have been done long ago.”   Tehran condemned the attack vowing to retaliate. History will remember when Trump threatened to hit 52 Iranian targets including cultural sites as a response to any attack on U.S. citizens on twitter:

Iran has been nothing but problems for many years. Let this serve as a WARNING that if Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets, we have targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no more threats!

A few days later, Iran made its threat a reality when the Revolutionary Guards Corps fired several missiles at the Ain al-Assad airbase in Iraq where US and Iraqi forces were based. The Revolutionary Guards released an official statement after the retaliation:

In Operation Martyr Soleimani in the early hours of Wednesday, tens of ground-to-ground missiles were fired at the U.S. base and successfully pounded Ain al-Asad Base

Luckily, a war between the US and Iran did not happen.  On January 20th, Trump is set to depart from the White House, now Iran will have to wait and see what happens under the new President-Elect and self admitted Zionist and long-time supporter of Israel, Joe Biden.

From Planning the Assassination of Bashar al-Assad to Stealing Syrian Oil

In September 2020, The Hill published a report on Trump’s plan to assassinate Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad titled ‘Trump says he wanted to take out Syria’s Assad but Mattis opposed it’ claimed that Trump had admitted to a plan to have Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad assassinated while he criticized former Defense Secretary James Mattis.   Trump’s “assassination operation” was discussed on Fox & Friends when he said that “I would’ve rather taken him out. I had him all set. Mattis didn’t want to do it. Mattis was a highly overrated general.” According to The Hill “The president added that he did not regret the decision not to target Assad, saying he “could’ve lived either way.”

The report also noted another quote from Trump on the idea of assassinating the Syrian president in a book written in 2018 by mainstream-media journalist Bob Woodward titled ‘Fear; Trump in the White House’ which Trump denied when he was asked about the plot and said that it was “never even discussed” and “No, that was never even contemplated, nor would it be contemplated and it should not have been written about in the book.”

However, according to Woodward “Trump urged Mattis that the U.S. should f—— kill Assad” after a chemical attack that occurred on April 2017 on civilians in the town of Khan Shaykhun in Idlib Syria. “Mattis reportedly went along with the president’s demands during the phone call, but immediately told aides after hanging up that they would take a “much more measured” approach.” Despite the fact that the mainstream media journalists have an extreme hatred towards Trump, it is quite possible that Israel did attempt to influence him to assassinate Assad and create a political crisis in Syria.

Trump also has been calling for the US to take Iraq and Syria’s oil for some time.  An ABC news report has claimed that Trump said that the “U.S. will be keeping the oil” in Northeastern Syria  after that his administration was “looking into the specifics” of the situation at hand. In 2020, Trump kept his promise.  Last August, Newsweek published a report ‘Syria Says Donald Trump ‘Stealing’ Its Oil, After U.S. Company Makes Deal to Drill.’ The report said that Crescent Delta Energy and ‘Pentagon-backed militia’ or elements of ISIS and other terrorist groups who are allied with US and Israeli forces are operating in Syria’s oil fields:

Syria has accused President Donald Trump of stealing the country’s oil, after U.S. officials confirmed that a U.S. company has been allowed to operate there in fields under the control of a Pentagon-backed militia.

In remarks delivered Tuesday and sent to Newsweek by the Syrian permanent mission to the United Nations, representative Bashar al-Jaafari told the U.N. Security Council that “the U.S. occupation forces, in full view of the United Nations and the international community, took a new step to plunder Syria’s natural resources, including Syrian oil and gas” through the recent establishment of a company called “Crescent Delta Energy.”

This firm, “with the sponsorship and support of the US Administration, has entered into a contract with the so-called ‘Syrian Democratic Forces/SDF’ militia, an agent of the US occupation forces in northeastern Syria, with the aim of stealing Syrian oil and depriving the Syrian state and Syrian people of the basic revenues necessary to improve the humanitarian situation, provide for livelihood needs and reconstruction,” he added

Last December, another development took place against Syria with the Trump regime sanctioning President Bashar al-Assad’s wife, Asma and several members of her family.  Sanctions were also imposed on the Central Bank of Syria, a member of parliament and several businesses that are associated with the Assad government according to The Hill.  “Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the sanctions mark the fifth anniversary of the adoption of the United Nations Security Council resolution aimed at laying out a political solution to end the conflict in Syria.”  

Trump Announces Jerusalem As Israel’s Capital

In 2017, Trump announced the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and the new location of the US embassy that was originally located in Tel Aviv, the Palestinians responded by the ‘Day of Rage’,setting off  protests in several areas including where 2 Palestinians were killed and hundreds more wounded after Israeli forces bombed the Gaza strip and many more were injured by either live fire or by rubber bullets in the West Bank.  Fast forward to January 2020, the Associated Press reported on Trump’s Mideast peace plan that favored Israel which at this point in time, should not have surprised anyone:

Trump’s plan envisions a disjointed Palestinian state that turns over key parts of the West Bank to Israel. It sides with Israel on key contentious issues that have bedeviled past peace efforts, including borders and the status of Jerusalem and Jewish settlements, and attaches nearly impossible conditions for granting the Palestinians their hoped-for state

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called it “nonsense” and Netanyahu called it a “historic breakthrough” and that “it’s a great plan for Israel. It’s a great plan for peace.” Then Netanyahu promised to move forward to annex the Jordan Valley and the rest of the illegal Israeli settlements.

The US-Saudi Arms Deal and the Houthis Are Now a State Sponsor of Terror

Trump was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for bringing peace between Israel and UAE which was not about peace between the two, it’s was about creating a US-Israel-UAE alliance against Iran and creating long-term buyers of US and Israeli made weapons to the Emiratis.  Israel and the UAE have been collaborating in the areas of security in terms of protecting the UAE’s oil fields for more than a decade or so.  Israel’s Mossad has a long-time relationship with the UAE’s military that conduct covert spying operations against Iran adding to the fact that high-level Israeli officials had been visiting the UAE for many years.  So Trump’s peace deal was another complete farce.  The US and Israel basically have a good-long standing relationship with the Gulf State monarchies who both view Iran as their common enemy.

One of Trump’s first visit to the Middle East as US president was to Saudi Arabia to sell US weapons which he did successfully after sealing a $110 billion deal plus an additional $350 billion deal over a 10-year period.  The US is preparing Saudi Arabia for a long-term war with its adversaries in the region which brings us to the Houthis of Yemen who the Trump regime will designate as a terrorist organization by January 19th.  The US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo released a statement on the matter and said that “the designations are also intended to advance efforts to achieve a peaceful, sovereign, and united Yemen that is both free from Iranian interference and at peace with its neighbors.”   

Despite the fact that Trump fired his advisor at the time, Neocon John Bolton, a war hawk who wanted to launch more wars in the Middle East was a good move. However, Trump’s legacy based on his decisions during his time in the White House will be remembered as a disaster, a president that made Israel great for Israelis and America hated even more than ever.

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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.

Featured image is from the author

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.

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Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on January 8 that Tehran was in no rush for the United States to rejoin the 2015 nuclear deal formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), but, he also said, sanctions on Iran must be lifted immediately. “If the sanctions are lifted, the return of the Americans makes sense,” he insisted. President-elect Joe Biden has announced his plan to return to the deal soon after he is sworn into office. “If Iran returns to strict compliance with the nuclear deal,” he wrote in an op-ed for CNN, “the United States would rejoin.” His Iranian counterpart, President Hassan Rouhani, has also expressed willingness to return to the deal, stating that, “Iran could come into compliance with the agreement within an hour of the United States doing so.”

Five years ago, after years of intensive negotiations, six world powers managed to sign the world’s most comprehensive nuclear agreement with Iran. While the agreement was a political one, it was also ratified by the UN Security Council in Resolution 2231. And, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the organization tasked with verifying the agreement’s technical aspects, Iran was fully complying with the deal for about three years, until President Trump withdrew from it in May 2018. In response to the US violations of the nuclear agreement, Iran too reduced some of its commitments. Most recently, on January 4, Iran announced that it had increased its uranium enrichment levels to 20 percent.

Although reviving the agreement is certainly still possible, it won’t be easy. The two sides will need to overcome nine hurdles to make it happen.

First, the sequencing of a mutual return could be an immediate problem. Iran expects the United States to lift sanctions first, because it  was the Trump administration that withdrew first. While Tehran’s demand is legitimate, Washington may ask that Iran come into full compliance before lifting sanctions. Indeed, a straightforward reading of the quotation from Joe Biden’s op-ed suggests just that. In this scenario, after Joe Biden’s executive order rejoining the deal, Iran and the world powers can meet and agree on a realistic plan with a specified timeline of proportionate reciprocal actions.

Second is the issue of what compliance constitutes. During the Obama administration there was one major barrier to the full realization of the terms of the agreement: Many US primary sanctions, targeting US citizens and permanent residents, organizations, and individuals that engage in trade and business with their Iranian counterparts, remained intact. These sanctions limited the economic benefits of the deal for Iran. The 29th paragraph of the deal clearly states that all signatories will refrain from any policy specifically intended to directly and adversely affect the normalization of trade and economic relations with Iran. This cannot be achieved without abolishing the primary sanctions.

Third, the Trump administration imposed numerous sanctions against Iran under the guise of terrorism and human rights, aimed at preventing the Biden administration from returning to the deal. For a clean implementation of the agreement, Biden will need to remove all of these sanctions as well.

Fourth, Trump’s withdrawal from the agreement and violation of the UN Security Council Resolution 2231 as well as other international commitments has damaged US credibility abroad. There is now a widespread belief among policy makers in Iran that the United States will simply not live up to its end of the bargain, no matter what that bargain is. This naturally raises the important question: What guarantees are there that the United States will remain committed to the deal in the post-Biden era?

Fifth, because of Trump’s maximum pressure policy, the Iranian economy has suffered hundreds of billions of dollars of losses while Iran was in full compliance with the terms and conditions of the deal. Some Iranian leaders, including Iran’s foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, have demanded compensation for the economic damage the country suffered after the United States withdrew. The challenge will be to find a mechanism to compensate for the economic damages that the Trump administration inflicted on the Iranian economy.

Sixth, the “snapback” mechanism built into the agreement allows any country to force the UN Security Council to reimpose multilateral sanctions against Iran if Iran fails to fulfill its commitments. But this is one-sided: There is no such remedy for Iran if other parties fail to do their part. This became abundantly clear when the Trump administration first withdrew from the deal and then tried to unilaterally re-impose multilateral sanctions on Iran through the snapback mechanism. It was as if the injurer was demanding punishment for the injured. Although the UN Security Council rejected the US demand, the stunt revealed the structural flaw of the snapback.

Seventh, in the first week of December 2020, the Iranian parliament passed a bill mandating Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization to resume enriching uranium to 20 percent purity. The legislation also requires the Iranian government to cease voluntary implementation of the IAEA’s Additional Protocol within two months of the bill’s enactment if the other signatories fail to fully deliver on their commitments under the agreement. And after three months, the Atomic Energy Organization is obliged to begin using at least 1,000 second generation centrifuges. In short, president-elect Biden will need to move fast.

Eighth, there are some in the United States who are worried that Trump may start a reckless last-ditch war with Iran before leaving office. While this concern is overblown, there should be no doubt that US partners in the region will do whatever they can to prevent Biden’s return to the deal. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already said as much. To be sure, the hardliners in Iran are also fundamentally opposed to the deal.

Ninth, some pundits and politicians in Washington want Biden to leverage the Trump administration’s sanctions to pressure Iran to accept additional commitments beyond the original agreement as a condition for US return to compliance. These include limiting Iran’s missile capability, extending the so-called “sunset” clauses within the deal, or resolving regional disputes. But from Iran’s perspective, such demands are a non-starter. As the spokesperson for Iran’s foreign ministry said recently, “No negotiation has been, is being, or will be held about Iran’s defense power.”

Despite these hurdles, Biden should nevertheless seek a reentry into the deal. Only a clean and full implementation by all parties can save the world’s most comprehensive nuclear agreement, contain rising US-Iran tensions, and open the path toward more confidence building measures. That path should include, upon Biden’s issuing an executive order to rejoin the JCPOA, the creation of a working committee of parties to the agreement tasked with ensuring full compliance by all signatories, and a forum, organized by the UN secretary general, in which Iran and the Gulf countries can discuss a new structure for improving security and cooperation in the region.

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Ambassador Seyed Hossein Mousavian is a Middle East Security and Nuclear Policy Specialist at Princeton University and a former chief of Iran’s National Security Foreign Relations Committee. His book, A Middle East Free of Weapons of Mass Destruction, was published in May 2020 by Routledge. His latest book, A New Structure for Security, Peace, and Cooperation in the Persian Gulf, was published in December 2020 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Joe Biden presents himself as an empathetic guy who is willing to go the extra mile to help people overcome their personal tragedies.

However, Biden has throughout his career endorsed policies that caused countless personal tragedies for millions of people.

The best example is his support for the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.

It led to the deaths and wounding of thousands of U.S. soldiers, killing of an estimated one million Iraqis, and destabilization of a wide swath of the Middle East.

In 2002, Biden was riding high, as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in his 30^th year in the Senate.

Having supported Ronald Reagan’s invasion of Grenada in 1983 and bombing of Libya in 1986, Biden went on to embrace George H.W. Bush’s invasion of Panama in 1991, and Bill Clinton’s bombing of Kosovo in 1999.^[1]

When Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein (1979-2003) invaded Kuwait in 1991, Biden did vote against invading Iraq, believing that Bush had not made the case for war and that Hussein could be contained through an international embargo.

However, once Bush went to war, Biden declared that he was giving Bush his total support, and praised Bush for displaying real “leadership,” never mentioning the 110,000 civilians who died.^[2]

Following the 9/11 attacks, Biden supported the invasion of Afghanistan and tried to raise funds for a Marshall Plan-type program to fund the country’s reconstruction.

Biden was so well connected to President George W. Bush in this period that he had a secure phone line to the White House set up in his home and met with Bush privately to plot out a public relations message for the Afghan War.^[3]

The New Republic termed Biden “the Democratic Party’s de facto spokesman on the war against terrorism.” 

In a CSPAN talk before the Council on Foreign Relations in October 2001, Biden framed the War on Terror as an apocalyptic struggle between civilization and a trans-national terrorist entity who would bring violent disorder and chaos to the world.

Biden called for a strong U.S. commitment to the Middle East to defeat al-Qaeda and help empower “moderate Muslims,” while pushing for better efforts at public diplomacy.

When asked about Iraq, Biden said he was not in favor of immediate invasion, but rather for imposing a “smarter sanctions” policy and generating consensus for a multilateral coalition that would support the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

Several months later, Biden told a crowd of 400 Delaware National Guard officers that, “if Saddam Hussein is still there five years from now, we are in big trouble … It would be unrealistic, if not downright foolish, to believe we can claim victory in the war on terrorism if Saddam is still in power.”

“Take This Son of a Bitch Down”

Biden’s support for regime change in Iraq went back to the late 1990s.

After the first Persian Gulf War, Saddam had agreed to destroy Iraq’s chemical weapons stockpile and to allow weapons inspectors into the country.

Senator Biden supported President Clinton’s decision to remove the weapons inspectors in 1998 in order to launch a four-day bombing campaign, despite being warned that it would likely end Saddam’s cooperation. Subsequently, Biden insisted that “Saddam kicked the [inspectors] out.”

Biden presides over hearings where he advocated for regime change in Iraq in 1998. [Source: theintercept.com]

Scott Ritter, the chief UN weapons inspector, 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.

Ritter 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.

Biden told Ritter—whom he referred to condescendingly as “old Scotty Boy”—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 the then Clinton administration’s policy.

Biden continued:

Mobilizing Support for War

Biden followed up on these statements at the end of July 2002 by chairing hearings in the Senate that were designed to mobilize congressional support for Operation Iraqi Freedom, whose goal was the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

Biden stated that the purpose of the hearings was to initiate a “national dialogue” on Iraq.

However, the witnesses were skewed to represent alarmist views about Saddam and his alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and to support a preemptive strike. The three who testified on the subject of al-Qaeda, falsely claimed it received direct support from Iraq.

Former UN Assistant Secretary-General Hans Von Sponeck complained about the “deliberate distortions and misrepresentations” that “make it look to the average person in the U.S. as if Iraq is a threat to their security.”^[5]

Biden set the tone in his opening remarks when he emphasized that

These comments echoed a New York Times op-ed Biden published the first day of the hearings with Richard Lugar (R-IN), which suggested that continued containment of Saddam raised the “risk that Mr. Hussein will play cat-and-mouse with inspectors while building more weapons” and that “if we wait for the danger to become clear and present, it may be too late.”

The first witness at the hearings was Richard Butler, a diplomat-in-residence at the Council on Foreign Relations and former executive chairman of the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), an inspection regime designed to ensure Iraqi compliance with international protocols on WMD after the first Persian Gulf War.

Butler testified that Saddam’s claims that he had no WMDs was false. Rather, Iraq had the components that were needed to manufacture nuclear weapons and a weaponized biological warfare program with capability of loading anthrax onto missile warheads, and had terminated UNSCOM’s work in order to hide the truth.

In Butler’s view, Saddam was a war criminal who should be on trial at The Hague alongside Serb leader Slobodan Milošević. 

The next witness, Khidir Hamza, was an Iraqi nuclear scientist who had defected from Saddam’s regime and told his story in the book, Saddam’s Bombmaker: The Daring Escape of the Man Who Built Iraq’s Secret Weapon, written with Jeff Stein.

Claiming that Iraqis would welcome an American invasion “with open arms,” Hamza warned that Saddam Hussein had “turned Iraqi science and engineering enterprises into a “giant weapons making body.”

He said that Iraq possessed more than ten tons of uranium, and one ton of slightly enriched uranium, which he claimed was enough to allow them to build three nuclear weapons by 2005. Saddam was also well into chemical warfare production and developing biological warfare capabilities.

Image on the right: Khidir Hamza [Source: wikipedia.org]

According to Hamza, Saddam was a vicious tyrant who had hunted down defectors in exile like his brother-in law Hussein Kamel, who was killed in 1996.

Saddam was further linked to Islamic fundamentalism, training foreign jihadist fighters at an Iraqi intelligence camp twenty miles south of Baghdad, including in tactics of hijacking which was confirmed allegedly by satellite photos.

The Iraqi ambassador to Turkey, Farouk Hijazi, had traveled to Afghanistan and met with Osama bin Laden in 1998.

Most, if not all of Hamza’s information on Iraq’s nuclear weapons program was untrue, and UNSCOM inspectors insist that Hamza was never actually part of Iraq’s nuclear program.

David Albright, who wrote a series of articles on Iraq’s nuclear program, stated that Hamza’s unreliability stemmed from his support for U.S. military action. He told me he wanted to get a gun himself and go back and fight with his sons.

UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter heavily criticized the use of Hamza’s testimony as a rationale for invading Iraq. He said:

These comments provide a stinging rebuke of Biden and his deceit of the American people.

Witness after witness that followed Hamza advanced a similar underlying message to him.

Charles Duelfer, the former executive chairman of UNSCOM, stated from the outset that he favored regime change in Iraq, and highlighted, as a source of comparison, the 1919 Versailles Treaty’s failure to prevent Hitler from rearming Germany despite an inspections regime that had been set up.

Duelfer asked subsequently “whether we were prepared to give back the Saddam regime control over the oil revenues.” He stressed that “our highest priority should be convincing Iraqis in Iraq that they will be better off when Saddam was gone, and that he will be gone.”

Lieutenant General Thomas G. McInerney, the former Assistant Vice Chief of the Air Force, detailed before the committee how regime change could be accomplished through “blitz warfare”–a “24-hour, 7 day a week campaign,” using “precision weapons,” and “supported by fast mobbing ground forces and heavy, light, airborne amphibious, special covert operations working with [Iraqi] opposition forces.”

One of the hearings’ main academic experts, Fouad Ajami, director of Middle East Studies at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, emphasized an alleged linkage between Iraq and 9/11 and said that Muslim hatred of America resulted from jealousy of American success and talent–among the untalented–and not historical factors or opposition to U.S. foreign policies.

Image below: Fouad Ajami, an Arab Uncle Tom. [Source: wikipedia.org]

Ajami went on to suggest that Americans would be greeted in Baghdad and Basra with “kites and boom boxes”—as they allegedly had been in Kabul.

Residents of these cities were “eager for deliverance from the tyranny and the great big prison of Saddam Hussein.”

Rend al-Rahim Francke, a cousin and close associate of Ahmed Chalabi—a con man who helped lobby for the Iraq War—echoed Ajami in claiming that American troops would be greeted as liberators and said that there would be no civil war after the U.S. invaded.

A member of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which was set up to lobby Congress to support an invasion of Iraq, she proposed a Bonn meeting for Iraq modeled on Afghanistan to help select the post-Saddam leadership.

The Bonn conference was highly unpopular among Afghans, however, because foreigners selected their leaders for them, and it went against the idea of democracy.

After Saddam was overthrown, Francke was appointed Iraqi ambassador to the U.S., and in 2004 was a guest of Laura Bush in the First Lady’s box at George W. Bush’s State of the Union address. Subsequently, she established the Iraqi-American Freedom Alliance, whose aim was to show the positive consequences of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq.

The few skeptics who testified at the hearing mainly raised questions about tactics, economic cost and military feasibility of regime change and how long it might take to stabilize the country, but not about the potential cost for Iraqis or hidden underlying motives behind U.S. policy.^[6]

Dr. Phebe Marr, an Iraq expert and former professor at the National Defense University, was characteristic in considering the goal of regime change to be “ambitious.”

She stated:

In short, the United States should try to be good colonials and initiate a sustained long-term military and political commitment or none at all—hardly an anti-war position.

In the afternoon session of the last day, former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger(1981-1987), branded Saddam Hussein as a “purveyor of evil” and “implacable” and “permanent foe of the United States,” and former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger (1993-1996), called Saddam a “menace to his own people and the stability of the region.”

Emphasizing Saddam’s link to terrorist groups such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Hamas, and al-Qaeda’s growing presence in Iraq, Weinberger was most strident in his support for preemptive war.

The United States, he said, had successfully “changed several regimes after World War II” and “in each case, the result was a “vast and major improvement.”

Exclusion of Voices for Peace

While Senator Russell Feingold (D-WI) praised Biden for “producing a very fine moment in the history of the [Senate Foreign Relations] Committee,” anti-war Senators Lincoln Chafee (R-RI) and Paul Wellstone (D-MN) raised concern about the lack of balance.

Chafee told Biden that the panel he had set up “gave the perspective that the threat [from Saddam and his alleged WMDs] was very real, very immediate” but that it would have been “good to have a different perspective [offered].”

Wellstone was able to get inserted into the record three principled anti-war statements.

The first was written by Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). She provided a warning from Nelson Mandela that “attacking Iraq would be a disaster,” and predicted that it would “kill thousands of civilians,” risk the lives of U.S. military personnel, lead to a “long and bloody occupation” and “cost billions of dollars urgently needed at home.”]

Bennis noted that there were absolutely no verifiable reports regarding Iraq’s WMD program or evidence of Iraqi involvement in the 9/11 terrorist attacks—Iraq was in fact antagonistic to bin Laden and vice versa—and she said that preemptive strikes were illegal under international law.

The second anti-war statement came from J. Daryl Byler of the Mennonite Central Committee’s Washington Office, who advocated for a regional approach to Iraq’s disarmament and establishment of an international tribunal as a right way to investigate allegations of crimes against humanity by Saddam Hussein.

Byler noted that, for more than 20 years, ordinary Iraqis had suffered from the aftermath of the Iran-Iraq and Gulf Wars and impact of UN sanctions intended to contain and control the Iraqi government, and that a U.S. invasion would make a bad situation worse and result in the deaths of thousands of children and civilians.

Byler predicted that the war would further destabilize the Middle East and provide “yet another example that the world’s superpower is unilaterally able to impose its will and wish on less powerful countries.” An Iraqi evangelical church leader told his delegation that “we hope that someday your country will stop doing everything with force.”

The third anti-war statement was written by Dr. Peter Pellet, emeritus professor of nutrition at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Dr. Colin Rowat, a professor of economics at the University of Manchester.

They emphasized the humanitarian crisis resulting from the U.S. bombing of the electrical grid during the first Persian Gulf War and imposition of economic sanctions and believed that the civilian costs of new military action would be greater than in 1990.

The three principled anti-war statements contrasted markedly with the rest of the hearings and were prescient in their analysis and warnings.

They did not command the same attention, however, as the regular panelists since they were not issued in-person.^[7]

Their inclusion was a masterful trick designed to sustain the illusion that all sides were represented in the “national dialogue.” Really, however, it was a staged political event designed to lay the groundwork for war.

Afterwards, President Bush thanked Biden for holding the hearings, and Biden went on all the major television networks to argue for war, citing the lopsided testimony he had arranged. “We have no choice but to eliminate the threat,” he told Meet the Press.^[8]

Twisting the Truth

Image on the right: Scott Ritter giving a lecture at the Harvard Kennedy school pointing to the lack of evidence for WMDs. He was a key figure excluded from the hearing. [Source: news.harvard.edu]

In his memoir, Promises to Keep—published in 2007 when he was running to be the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee—Biden claimed that the two days of expert testimony at the Senate hearings were “a good start to educating the country about the monumental difficulties of opening up another military front.”

Biden wrote that “not wanting the president to get locked into going to war,” his intention was to “make public the disincentives to going to war in Iraq.”^[9]

Prior to the hearings, Biden wrote that President Bush personally assured him that “there was no plan to take down Iraq” and that he was confident at the time that “Secretary of State Colin Powell was trying to dissuade the president from an invasion.”

Ten days later, however, Biden read in the Washington Post that Bush had signed an intelligence order directing the CIA to undertake a comprehensive covert program to topple Saddam Hussein, including lethal authority to capture the Iraqi president.” Biden wrote that he didn’t ask the administration to send any witnesses as such because “I didn’t want to force their hand.”^[10]

Biden leaves the impression that he was opposed to the war and trying to stop it and did not want to give the Bush administration a voice, stating that the consensus of the experts was that Saddam “was five to ten years away from developing a nuclear weapon” and “not an imminent threat.”

However, in his introductory remarks and accompanying New York Times op-ed, Biden had stated that Saddam was a major threat who had to be confronted, and the experts at the hearings testified that Saddam was a grave threat, had WMD, was linked to al-Qaeda, and would have a nuclear weapon within three years; not five to ten.

Biden directly contradicted what he wrote in in his memoir when he told Meet the Press host Tim Russert in April 2007 that “everyone in the world thought he [Saddam] had them [WMDs]. The weapons inspectors said he had them.”

In an attempt to show the hearings promoted a cautionary message, Biden referenced the testimony of military expert Anthony Cordesman, who said that war was not a game and quoted from the Roman philosopher Pliny the Elder: “Small boys throw stones at frogs in jest. But, the frogs do not die in jest. The frogs die in earnest.”^[11]

Cordesman, however, promoted an alarmist narrative about Saddam in his testimony, warning about his possession of anthrax weapons with nuclear lethalities, and capacity for carrying out chemical and biological weapon attacks directed against U.S. bases and troops in the Persian Gulf. Cordesman further insinuated the need for a full-scale ground invasion since air strikes would not be enough.^[12]

Biden Ignores CIA Director’s Assessment

One month and a half after the hearings, Biden gained access to information that disproved the WMD claims, though he never acted upon it.

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.”

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 promoting preemptive war.

General Colin Powell has called his 2003 speech to the United Nations, laying out the Bush administration’s rationale for war in Iraq, a “blot” on his record. The speech set out to detail Iraq’s weapons program, but as the intelligence confirmed, that program was nonexistent. The former Secretary of State acknowledged that his report to the Security Council was only intended to give credit to the accusations from the administration and that the intelligence services had not “worked properly.” [Source: volatirenet.org]

Biden nevertheless would go on to vote in favor of the war on Iraq, even though he knew that the stated reasons—that Saddam had WMD—was unproven or false, and lied about this later.

Biden Votes for War

After hearing from Tenet, Biden, with Richard Lugar and Chuck Hagel (R-NE), proposed an alternative to George W. Bush’s war resolution that would only allow Bush to attack Iraq for the purpose of destroying WMD and only after seeking UN approval.

If the UN turned Bush down, he would have to come back to Congress and prove Saddam posed a WMD threat so “grave” that only military action could eliminate it.

When Biden’s plan was derailed, however, through the work of Dick Gephardt (D-MI), the Democratic Party leader in the House, Biden backed Bush’s war resolution.

On October 10, 2002, on the eve of the vote, Biden repeated before the Senate his claims about Saddam’s threat and pursuit of nuclear weapons and framed military intervention as a “march to peace and security,” specifying that the “threat need not be imminent for us to take action.”

The next day, Biden was one of 77 Senators who voted to authorize military force in Iraq, joining fellow Democrats Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid, John Kerry, and Dianne Feinstein.

In early November, Biden introduced the Iraqi Scientists Liberation Act before the Senate, which granted permanent residency status to 500 Iraqi scientists if they supplied information on weapons of mass destruction.

The clear intent was to lure defectors like Khidir Hamza who could validate the Bush administration’s stated reasons for going to war, while giving the impression that the U.S. was trying to destroy Iraq’s WMD.

Years later, when campaigning for higher office, Biden told NPR that he had voted for war only after he got a commitment from Bush that he needed the vote to get inspectors into Iraq to determine whether or not Saddam was establishing a nuclear program. According to Biden, his mistake was to trust Bush.

Bush’s office denied Biden’s version of events, however, saying that his recollections were wrong.

Biden later conceded that he had misspoke and at a Democratic Party debate said that he “never should have voted to give [President] Bush the authority to go in and do what he said he was going to do.”

Staying the Course

When Bush issued an ultimatum to Saddam on March 17, 2003—leave or be invaded—Biden predictably backed him.^[13]

Four months later, Biden told a gathering at the Brookings Institution that he had cast “the right vote [on the war], and it would be a correct vote today.”

Biden went on to praise the leadership of the Coalition Provisional Authority, a corrupt and incompetent organization. Its chief, Paul Bremer, was “first-rate,” Biden said mere months after Bremer disbanded the Iraqi army, leading directly to the rise of an insurgency and civil war.

Biden called Bernard Kerik, the former NYPD Commissioner tasked with building a new police force, “a serious guy with a serious team.” However, Iraq’s police would soon become indistinguishable from sectarian death squads, and Kerik would later plead guilty to tax fraud and other federal corruption charges.

In the summer of 2003, as security broke down in Iraq, Biden’s solution was “more foreign troops to share our mission.” 

At the 2004 Democratic Party Convention at the Fleet Center in Boston, Biden tried to deflect responsibility away from himself and onto President Bush.

Biden admitted at the time that the intelligence “was hyped to justify going to war,” causing “America’s credibility and security [to] have suffered a terrible blow.” 

This was a stunning admission in light of the role Biden had played in “hyping” the Iraqi threat.

Biden said he felt that the worst legacy of the Iraq war was not its human costs, but rather a “further hardening of the Vietnam syndrome that afflicts some in the Democratic Party—a distrust of the use of American power.”

These comments reflected Biden’s longstanding neoconservative outlook and disdain for the Vietnam era anti-war movement, which was unaffected by his shifting position on Iraq.

As a law student at Syracuse University in the late 1960s, Biden had derided Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) activists who occupied the Chancellor’s office to protest the Vietnam War, calling out “look at these assholes.”^[14]

A Neocolonial Solution

In July 2005, as Iraq descended into nightmarish sectarian violence, Biden told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that he remained “hopeful” about the situation, despite some of his earlier critical comments, and that U.S. forces had “turned a political corner of sorts.” Subsequently, Biden said that “calling it quits and withdrawing” would be a “gigantic mistake.”

Biden in this period routinely voted for billion-dollar war appropriations and used his status as Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee to “advocate loudly for more troops and better police training,” which he considered key to successful counterinsurgency.^[15]

In May 2006, Biden penned a New York Times op-ed, with Leslie Gelb of the Council on Foreign Relations, which rejected the false choice of “staying the course” or “bringing the troops home,” but aimed to wind down the U.S. military presence “responsibly.”

This was to be achieved by establishing three largely autonomous regions, one for each of Iraq’s major ethnic and confessional groups, presided over by a nominally national Baghdad government, something he called “unity through autonomy.”

The model was the Dayton accords on Bosnia, which kept the country whole by dividing it into ethnic federations, and allowing Muslims, Croats and Serbs to retain separate armies. These accords were deeply flawed, however, in that they enshrined the violent division of Bosnia along ethnic lines.

In September 2007, Biden prevailed upon his fellow senators to endorse his flawed proposal in a lopsided 75-23 vote. Outside of Kurdistan, there was zero support among Iraqis, who saw the proposal as a neocolonial strategy designed to break up, divide and weaken their country.

The plan so tarnished Biden’s reputation that, in August 2008, when he was named Barack Obama’s running mate, Iraqis across the political spectrum reacted with dismay.

“This choice of Biden is disappointing, because he is the creator of the idea of dividing Iraq,” Saleh al-Mutlaq, head of National Dialogue, one of the main Sunni Arab blocs in parliament, told Reuters that day.

“We rejected his proposal when he announced it, and we still reject it. Dividing the communities and land in such a way would only lead to new fighting between people over resources and borders. Iraq cannot survive unless it is unified, and dividing it would keep the problems alive for a long time.”

Obama’s Point Man

Despite Biden’s unpopularity and complicity in the destruction of Iraq, Obama appointed him as his point man there, allegedly telling him: “Joe, you do Iraq.”

This was not in hindsight a very smart move.

Robert Ford, a one-time diplomat at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, blames Biden for helping to fuel the rise of the Islamic State when he decided to support the return of the sectarian Shia politician Nouri al-Maliki as Prime Minister in 2010.

According to Emma Sky, who was the political adviser to Raymond Odierno, the commanding general of U.S. forces in Iraq that year, Biden seemed preoccupied with the idea of irreconcilable sectarian differences during a visit.

Odierno told Biden that the previously secular al-Maliki had become so sectarian and authoritarian that Iraqis feared him, and a secular leader would be more welcome, Sky recalled in her memoir, “The Unraveling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq.”

“I tried to explain the struggle between secularists and Islamists, and how many Iraqis wanted to move beyond sectarianism,” Sky wrote. “But Biden could not fathom this. For him, Iraq was simply about Sunnis, Shia and Kurds.”

As Sky pushed back on Biden’s belief that sectarian differences were the key to Iraq, she wrote: “He was clearly irritated by me. ‘Look, I know these people,’” he went on. “‘My grandfather was Irish and hated the British. It’s like in the Balkans. They all grow up hating each other.’”

The result, as Reidar Visser observed in 2011, was an al-Maliki government “made up of mostly pro-Iranian Shiite Islamists,” with the secular Iraqiya Party, which had won a plurality of votes in the March 2010 parliamentary elections, sidelined.

Though Biden was close to al-Maliki, when Arab-Spring style protests erupted, Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry quietly worked to help install Haidar al-Abadi, the former communications minister who was committed to privatizing Iraq’s economy in line with the original goals of the 2003 military invasion.

Al-Abadi tried to increase Sunni participation in government and root out corruption in the army and police, while securing a $1.5 billion pledge from the Obama administration to train the Iraqi security forces and sell F-16 fighter jets.

In 2016, frustration with Al-Abadi’s government resulted in a revolt led by Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who won parliamentary elections in 2018.

Al-Sadr had mobilized his Mahdi army to resist the U.S. occupation of Iraq after the toppling of Saddam Hussein and drew Iraq closer to Iran. His ascendancy reflected the failings of U.S. policy, which Biden had been integral to.

Supporting Another War on an Enemy He Helped Create

Image below: Moqtada al-Sadr [Source: wikipedia.org]

After overseeing troop withdrawals in 2011, Biden played an important role in the second Iraq War, which began when the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS)—led by former Saddamist Generals, al-Qaeda terrorists and disaffected Sunnis—took over swaths of territory in Iraq in the summer of 2014 with Turkish backing.

In June 2014, the Obama administration ordered thousands of troops back into Iraq without authorization from Congress, claiming that the troops would serve in an advisory capacity, and that ISIS was equivalent to al-Qaeda, against which the U.S. had already declared war.^[16]

According to Brett McGurk, a former U.S. official with extensive experience in Iraq, Biden supported the strategy known as “by, with, and through” to fight ISIS, in which America left most of the fighting to local soldiers and used its special forces, intelligence, and air power.

The heavy focus on air strikes deriving from Biden’s strategy resulted in untold civilian casualties. A study published in the New York Times Magazine determined that one in five of the 27,500 coalition air strikes over Iraq resulted in at least one civilian death, more than 31 times that acknowledged by the coalition. The second war in Iraq, the authors noted, “may be the least transparent war in recent American history.”^[17]

The U.S. forces in Iraq were commanded by General Lloyd Austin, whom President-elect Biden appointed as the first African American Secretary of Defense.

Austin helped oversee the razing of Mosul by U.S. and Iraqi forces which deployed rocket-assisted munitions and powerful explosive weapons that caused blast-related injuries.

The New York Times described “a panorama of destruction in the neighborhood of Judida so vast one resident compared the destruction to that of Hiroshima, Japan. There was a charred arm, wrapped in a piece of red fabric poking from the rubble, rescue workers in red jumpsuits who came wore face masks to avoid the stench, some with rifles slung over their shoulders, searching the wreckage for bodies.”^[18]

Biden’s involvement in Iraq by this time had come full circle.

During his vice presidency he found himself championing another dirty war against an enemy he had been instrumental in creating—first by supporting preemptive war against Saddam Hussein, and then by supporting the ethnic division of the country and sectarian politicians like Nouri al-Maliki.

Biden himself has suffered from his poor decisions—his son Beau died from brain cancer suspected to have derived from toxic exposure at Balad Air Base north of Baghdad, where the U.S. military burned an estimated 140 tons of waste a day in open air burn pits.^[19]

It is unclear as of this writing what President Biden might do to further torture Iraqis in the next four years.

Certainly, he will follow through with previously announced troop withdrawals, but will also continue to sustain military advisory and training programs, special forces operations, air strikes and private military contractors as part of a light footprint approach.

The ultimate aim is to gain access to military bases and Iraq’s oil fields, which is what the long Iraq War has always really been about.

*

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Jeremy Kuzmarov is Managing Editor of CovertAction Magazine.

Notes

[1] Branko Marcetic, Yesterday’s Man: The Case Against Joe Biden (London: Verso, 2020), 159.

[2] Marcetic, Yesterday’s Man, 140.

[3] Marcetic, Yesterday’s Man, 148.

[4] Ryan Grim, “Five Years Before Invasion, Said the Only Way of Disarming Iraq Is ‘Taking Saddam Down,’” The Intercept, January 7, 2020, https://theintercept.com/2020/01/07/joe-biden-iraq-war-history/. Biden repeated his call for war in an oped in The Washington Post in September 1998 in which he wrote: “as long as Saddam Hussein is at the helm, no inspectors can guarantee that they have rooted out the entirety of Saddam Hussein’s weapons program. And I said [at the Senate hearing] the only way to remove Saddam is a massive military effort, led by the United States.”

[5] Marcetic, Yesterday’s Man, 151.

[6] Many of the skeptics endorsed a strengthening of economic sanctions—which were known to have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children from disease and malnutrition—and expanded aid to Iraqi opposition groups, even though the U.S.-sponsored ones were led by charlatans like Ahmed Chalabi, who had been sentenced to twenty-two years in prison in Jordan for bank fraud.

[7] The Senate Foreign Relations Committee was willing to fly one witness in from Australia but would not allow authors of the anti-war statements appear in person—even though at least one, Phyllis Bennis, lived in Washington.

[8] Marcetic, Yesterday’s Man, 151.

[9] Joe Biden, Promises to Keep (New York: Random House, 2007), 332, 333.

[10] Biden, Promises To Keep, 332.

[11] Biden, Promises to Keep, 333.

[12] According to an article in National Business Review, Cordesman was said to have been “48 per cent” convinced on the need to invade Iraq in 2003, but contends that “concerns over Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction were valid.” Jeremy Hall, “The Clash Within Civilizations,” National Business Review, September 17, 2006, https://web.archive.org/web/20110611061421/http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/the-clash-within-civilizations

[13] Marcetic, Yesterday’s Man, 153.

[14] Biden, Promises to Keep, 159. It is uncertain if this story is true.

[15] Biden, Promises to Keep, 348.

[16] See Jeremy Kuzmarov, Obama’s Unending Wars: Fronting the Foreign Policy of the Permanent Warfare State (Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2019), 180.

[17] Azmat Khan and Anand Gopal, “The Uncounted: An on-the-Ground Investigation Reveals That the U.S. led Battle Against ISIS—Hailed as the Most Precise Air Campaign in History—is Killing Far more Iraqi Civilians than the Coalition Has Acknowledged,” The New York Times Magazine, November 19, 2017, 43-47.

[18] Kuzmarov, Obama’s Unending Wars, 181, 182.

[19] In a 2019 speech to the Service Employees International Union, Joe Biden said that, because of Beau’s “exposure to burn pits, in my view, I can’t prove it yet, he came back with stage four glioblastoma. Eighteen months he lived, knowing he was going to die.”

Featured image: Biden was sworn into office by Associate Justice John Paul Stevens on January 20, 2009. (Public Domain)

“You have such a fervent, passionate, evangelical faith in this country…why in the name of God don’t you have any faith in the system of government you’re so hell-bent to protect? You want to defend the United States of America, then defend it with the tools it supplies you with—its Constitution. You ask for a mandate, General, from a ballot box. You don’t steal it after midnight, when the country has its back turned.”—Seven Days in May (1964)

No doubt about it: the coup d’etat was successful.

That January 6 attempt by so-called insurrectionists to overturn the election results was not the real coup, however. Those who answered President Trump’s call to march on the Capitol were merely the fall guys, manipulated into creating the perfect crisis for the Deep State—a.k.a. the Police State a.k.a. the Military Industrial Complex a.k.a. the Techno-Corporate State a.k.a. the Surveillance State—to swoop in and take control.

It took no time at all for the switch to be thrown and the nation’s capital to be placed under a military lockdown, online speech forums restricted, and individuals with subversive or controversial viewpoints ferreted out, investigated, shamed and/or shunned.

This new order didn’t emerge into being this week, or this month, or even this year, however.

Indeed, the real coup happened when our government “of the people, by the people, for the people” was overthrown by a profit-driven, militaristic, techno-corporate state that is in cahoots with a government “of the rich, by the elite, for the corporations.”

We’ve been mired in this swamp for decades now.

Every successive president starting with Franklin D. Roosevelt has been bought lock, stock and barrel and made to dance to the Deep State’s tune.

Enter Donald Trump, the candidate who swore to drain the swamp in Washington DC. Instead of putting an end to the corruption, however, Trump paved the way for lobbyists, corporations, the military industrial complex, and the Deep State to feast on the carcass of the dying American republic.

Joe Biden will be no different: his job is to keep the Deep State in power.

Step away from the cult of personality politics and you’ll find that beneath the power suits, they’re all alike.

Follow the money.  It always points the way.

As Bertram Gross noted in Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America, “evil now wears a friendlier face than ever before in American history.”

Writing in 1980, Gross predicted a future in which he saw:

…a new despotism creeping slowly across America. Faceless oligarchs sit at command posts of a corporate-government complex that has been slowly evolving over many decades. In efforts to enlarge their own powers and privileges, they are willing to have others suffer the intended or unintended consequences of their institutional or personal greed. For Americans, these consequences include chronic inflation, recurring recession, open and hidden unemployment, the poisoning of air, water, soil and bodies, and, more important, the subversion of our constitution. More broadly, consequences include widespread intervention in international politics through economic manipulation, covert action, or military invasion…

This stealthy, creeping, silent coup that Gross prophesied is the same danger that writer Rod Serling envisioned in the 1964 political thriller Seven Days in May, a clear warning to beware of martial law packaged as a well-meaning and overriding concern for the nation’s security.

Incredibly enough, almost 60 years later, we find ourselves hostages to a government run more by military doctrine and corporate greed than by the rule of law established in the Constitution. Indeed, proving once again that fact and fiction are not dissimilar, today’s current events could well have been lifted straight out of Seven Days in May, which takes viewers into eerily familiar terrain.

The premise is straightforward.

With the Cold War at its height, an unpopular U.S. President signs a momentous nuclear disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union. Believing that the treaty constitutes an unacceptable threat to the security of the United States and certain that he knows what is best for the nation, General James Mattoon Scott (played by Burt Lancaster), the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and presidential hopeful, plans a military takeover of the national government.  When Gen. Scott’s aide, Col. Casey (Kirk Douglas), discovers the planned military coup, he goes to the President with the information. The race for command of the U.S. government begins, with the clock ticking off the hours until the military plotters plan to overthrow the President.

Needless to say, while on the big screen, the military coup is foiled and the republic is saved in a matter of hours, in the real world, the plot thickens and spreads out over the past half century.

We’ve been losing our freedoms so incrementally for so long—sold to us in the name of national security and global peace, maintained by way of martial law disguised as law and order, and enforced by a standing army of militarized police and a political elite determined to maintain their powers at all costs—that it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when it all started going downhill, but we’ve been on that fast-moving, downward trajectory for some time now.

The question is no longer whether the U.S. government will be preyed upon and taken over by the military industrial complex. That’s a done deal, but martial law disguised as national security is only one small part of the greater deception we’ve been fooled into believing is for our own good.

How do you get a nation to docilely accept a police state? How do you persuade a populace to accept metal detectors and pat downs in their schools, bag searches in their train stations, tanks and military weaponry used by their small town police forces, surveillance cameras in their traffic lights, police strip searches on their public roads, unwarranted blood draws at drunk driving checkpoints, whole body scanners in their airports, and government agents monitoring their communications?

Try to ram such a state of affairs down the throats of the populace, and you might find yourself with a rebellion on your hands. Instead, you bombard them with constant color-coded alerts, terrorize them with shootings and bomb threats in malls, schools, and sports arenas, desensitize them with a steady diet of police violence, and sell the whole package to them as being for their best interests.

This present military occupation of the nation’s capital by 25,000 troops as part of the so-called “peaceful” transfer of power from one administration to the next is telling.

This is not the language of a free people. This is the language of force.

Still, you can’t say we weren’t warned.

Back in 2008, an Army War College report revealed that “widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.” The 44-page report went on to warn that potential causes for such civil unrest could include another terrorist attack, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters.”

In 2009, reports by the Department of Homeland Security surfaced that labelled right-wing and left-wing activists and military veterans as extremists (a.k.a. terrorists) and called on the government to subject such targeted individuals to full-fledged pre-crime surveillance. Almost a decade later, after spending billions to fight terrorism, the DHS concluded that the greater threat is not ISIS but domestic right-wing extremism.

Meanwhile, the police have been transformed into extensions of the military while the nation itself has been transformed into a battlefield. This is what a state of undeclared martial law looks like, when you can be arrested, tasered, shot, brutalized and in some cases killed merely for not complying with a government agent’s order or not complying fast enough. This hasn’t just been happening in crime-ridden inner cities. It’s been happening all across the country.

And then you’ve got the government, which has been steadily amassing an arsenal of military weapons for use domestically and equipping and training their “troops” for war. Even government agencies with largely administrative functions such as the Food and Drug Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Smithsonian have been acquiring body armor, riot helmets and shields, cannon launchers and police firearms and ammunition. In fact, there are now at least 120,000 armed federal agents carrying such weapons who possess the power to arrest.

Rounding out this profit-driven campaign to turn American citizens into enemy combatants (and America into a battlefield) is a technology sector that has been colluding with the government to create a Big Brother that is all-knowing, all-seeing and inescapable. It’s not just the drones, fusion centers, license plate readers, stingray devices and the NSA that you have to worry about. You’re also being tracked by the black boxes in your cars, your cell phone, smart devices in your home, grocery loyalty cards, social media accounts, credit cards, streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon, and e-book reader accounts.

So you see, January 6 and its aftermath provided the government and its corporate technocrats the perfect excuse to show off all of the powers they’ve been amassing so assiduously over the years.

Mind you, by “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats.

I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law.

I’m referring to the corporatized, militarized, entrenched bureaucracy that is fully operational and staffed by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the country and calling the shots in Washington DC, no matter who sits in the White House.

This is the hidden face of a government that has no respect for the freedom of its citizenry.

Brace yourself.

There is something being concocted in the dens of power, far beyond the public eye, and it doesn’t bode well for the future of this country.

Anytime you have an entire nation so mesmerized by the antics of the political ruling class that they are oblivious to all else, you’d better beware.

Anytime you have a government that operates in the shadows, speaks in a language of force, and rules by fiat, you’d better beware.

And anytime you have a government so far removed from its people as to ensure that they are never seen, heard or heeded by those elected to represent them, you’d better beware.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we are at our most vulnerable right now.

All of those dastardly seeds we have allowed the government to sow under the guise of national security are bearing demon fruit.

The gravest threat facing us as a nation is not extremism but despotism, exercised by a ruling class whose only allegiance is to power and money.

*

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People  is available at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected]. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

This article was originally published on EFF in June 2018.

So why do we know so little about it?

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is quietly building what will likely become the largest database of biometric and biographic data on citizens and foreigners in the United States. The agency’s new Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology (HART) database will include multiple forms of biometrics—from face recognition to DNA, data from questionable sources, and highly personal data on innocent people. It will be shared with federal agencies outside of DHS as well as state and local law enforcement and foreign governments. And yet, we still know very little about it.

The records DHS plans to include in HART will chill and deter people from exercising their First Amendment protected rights to speak, assemble, and associate. Data like face recognition makes it possible to identify and track people in real time, including at lawful political protests and other gatherings. Other data DHS is planning to collect—including information about people’s “relationship patterns” and from officer “encounters” with the public—can be used to identify political affiliations, religious activities, and familial and friendly relationships. These data points are also frequently colored by conjecture and bias.

In late May, EFF filed comments criticizing DHS’s plans to collect, store, and share biometric and biographic records it receives from external agencies and to exempt this information from the federal Privacy Act. These newly-designated “External Biometric Records” (EBRs) will be integral to DHS’s bigger plans to build out HART. As we told the agency in our comments, DHS must do more to minimize the threats to privacy and civil liberties posed by this vast new trove of highly sensitive personal data.

DHS Biometrics Systems—From IDENT to HART

DHS slide showing growth of its legacy IDENT biometric database

DHS currently collects a lot of data. Its legacy IDENT fingerprint database contains information on 220-million unique individuals and processes 350,000 fingerprint transactions every day. This is an exponential increase from 20 years ago when IDENT only contained information on 1.8-million people. Between IDENT and other DHS-managed databases, the agency manages over 10-billion biographic records and adds 10-15 million more each week.

DHS slide showing breadth of DHS biometric and biographic data

DHS’s new HART database will allow the agency to vastly expand the types of records it can collect and store. HART will support at least seven types of biometric identifiers, including face and voice data, DNA, scars and tattoos, and a blanket category for “other modalities.” It will also include biographic information, like name, date of birth, physical descriptors, country of origin, and government ID numbers. And it will include data we know to by highly subjective, including information collected from officer “encounters” with the public and information about people’s “relationship patterns.”

DHS slide showing expansion of its new HART biometric and biographic database

HART will Impinge on First Amendment Rights

DHS plans to include records in HART that will chill speech and deter people from associating with others.

DHS’s face recognition roll-out is especially concerning. The agency uses mobile biometric devices that can identify faces and capture face data in the field, allowing its ICE (immigration) and CBP (customs) officers to scan everyone with whom they come into contact, whether or not those people are suspected of any criminal activity or an immigration violation. DHS is also partnering with airlines and other third parties to collect face images from travelers entering and leaving the U.S. When combined with data from other government agencies, these troubling collection practices will allow DHS to build a database large enough to identify and track all people in public places, without their knowledge—not just in places the agency oversees, like airports, but anywhere there are cameras.

Police abuse of facial recognition technology is not a theoretical issue: it’s happening today. Law enforcement has already used face recognition on public streets and at political protests. During the protests surrounding the death of Freddie Gray in 2015, Baltimore Police ran social media photos against a face recognition database to identify protesters and arrest them. Recent Amazon promotional videos encourage police agencies to acquire that company’s face “Rekognition” capabilities and use them with body cameras and smart cameras to track people throughout cities. At least two U.S. cities are already using Rekognition.

DHS compounds face recognition’s threat to anonymity and free speech by planning to include “records related to the analysis of relationship patternsamong individuals.” We don’t know where DHS or its external partners will be getting these “relationship pattern” records, but they could come from social media profiles and posts, which the government plans to track by collecting social media user names from all foreign travelers entering the country.

Social media records, even if they are publicly available, can include highly personal and private information, and the fear that the government may be collecting and searching through this information may cause people to self-censor what they say online. The data collected also won’t be limited to information about foreign travelers—travelers’ social media records may include information on family members and friends who are U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents, two groups protected explicitly by the Privacy Act. As the recent, repeated Facebook scandals are showing us, even when you think you have done everything you can to protect your own data, it could easily be disclosed without your control through the actions of your friends and contacts or Facebook itself.

DHS’s “relationship pattern” records will likely be misleading or inaccurate. DHS acknowledges that these records will include “non-obvious relationships.” However, if the relationships are “non-obvious,” one has to question whether they truly exist. Instead, DHS could be seeing connections among people that are based on nothing more than “liking” the same news article, using the same foreign words, or following the same organization on social media. This is highly problematic because records like these frequently inform officer decisions to stop, search, and arrest people.

DHS plans to include additional records in HART that could be based on or impact First Amendment protected speech and activity. Records will include “miscellaneous officer comment information” and “encounter data.” These types of information come from police interactions with civilians, and are often collected under extremely questionable legal circumstances. For example, ICE officers use mobile devices to collect biometric and biographic data from people they “encounter” in the field, including via unauthorized entry into people’s homes and Bible study groups, and in public places where people congregate with other members of their community, such as on soccer fields, in community centers, and on buses. “Encounters” like these, whether they are conducted by ICE or by state or local police, are frequently not based on individualized suspicion that a civilian has done anything wrong, but that doesn’t prevent the officer from stockpiling any information obtained from the civilian during the encounter.

Finally, DHS relies on data from gang databases (its own and those from states), which often contain unsubstantiated data concerning people’s status and associations and are notoriously inaccurate. DHS has even fabricated gang status as an excuse to deport people.

HART Will Include Inaccurate Data and Will Share that Data with Other Agencies

DHS is not taking necessary steps with its new HART database to determine whether its own data and the data collected from its external partners are sufficiently accurate to prevent innocent people from being identified as criminal suspects, immigration law violators, or terrorists.

DHS has stated that it intends to rely on face recognition to identify data subjects across a variety of its mission areas, and “face matching” is one of the first components of the HART database to be built out. However, face recognition frequently is an inaccurate and unreliable biometric identifier. DHS’s tests of its own systems found significantly high levels of inaccuracy—the systems falsely rejected as many as 1 in 25 travelers. As a Georgetown report recently noted, “DHS’ error-prone face scanning system could cause 1,632 passengers to be wrongfully delayed or denied boarding every day at New York’s John F. Kennedy (JFK) International Airport alone.”

DHS’s external partners are also employing face recognition systems with high rates of inaccuracy. For example, FBI has admitted that its Next Generation Identification database “may not be sufficiently reliable to accurately locate other photos of the same identity, resulting in an increased percentage of misidentifications.” Potential foreign partners such as police departments in the United Kingdom use face recognition systems with false positive rates as high as a 98%—meaning that for every 100 people identified as suspects, 98 in fact were not suspects.

DHS Slide Showing Partner Agencies

People of color and immigrants will shoulder much more of the burden of these misidentifications. For example, people of color are disproportionately represented in criminal and immigration databases, due to the unfair legacy of discrimination in our criminal justice and immigration systems. Moreover, FBI and MIT research has shown that current face recognition systems misidentify people of color and women at higher rates than whites and men, and the number of mistaken IDs increases for people with darker skin tones. False positives represent real people who may erroneously become suspects in a law enforcement or immigration investigation. This is true even if a face recognition system offers several results for a search instead of one; each of the people identified could be detained or brought in for questioning, even if there is nothing else linking them to a crime or violation.

In addition to accuracy problems inherent in face recognition, DHS’s own immigration data has also been shown to be unacceptably inaccurate. A 2005 Migration Policy Institute study analyzing records obtained through FOIA found “42% of NCIC immigration hits in response to police queries were ‘false positives’ where DHS was unable to confirm that the individual was an actual immigration violator.” A 2011 study of DHS’s Secure Communities program found approximately 3,600 United States citizens were improperly caught up in the program due to incorrect immigration records. As these inaccurate records are propagated throughout DHS’s partner agencies’ systems, it will become impossible to determine the source of the inaccuracy and correct the data.

HART Is Fatally Flawed and Must Be Stopped

DHS’s plans for future data collection and use should make us all very worried. For example, despite pushback from EFF, Georgetown, ACLU, and others, DHS believes it’s legally authorized to collect and retain face data from millions of U.S. citizens traveling internationally. However, as Georgetown’s Center on Privacy and Technology notes, Congress has never authorized face scans of American citizens.

Despite this, DHS plans to roll out its face recognition program to every international flight in the country within the next four years. DHS has stated “the only way for an individual to ensure he or she is not subject to collection of biometric information when traveling internationally is to refrain from traveling.”

This is just the tip of the iceberg. CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan has stated CBP wants to be able to use biometrics to “confirm the identity of travelers at any point in their travel,” not just at entry to or exit from the United States. This includes creating a “biometric pathway” to track all travelers through airports, from check-in, through security, into airport lounges and shops, and onto flights. Given CBP’s recent partnerships with airlines and plans to collect social media credentials, this could also mean CBP plans to track travelers from the moment they begin their internet travel research. Several Congress members have introduced legislation to legitimize some of these plans.

Congress has expressed concerns with DHS’s biometric programs. Senators Edward Markey and Mike Lee, in a recent letter addressed to the agency, stated, “[w]e are concerned that the use of the program on U.S. citizens remains facially unauthorized[.] . . . We request that DHS stop the expansion of this program and provide Congress with its explicit statutory authority to use and expand a biometric exit program on U.S. citizens.” The senators have urged DHS to propose a rulemaking to clarify its plans for biometric exit. Congress also withheld funds last year from DHS’s Office of Biometric Identity Management.

DHS’s Inspector General criticized the agency last year for failure to properly train its personnel on how biometric systems worked and noted that the agency’s reliance on third parties to verify travelers leaving the country “occasionally provided false departure or arrival status on visitors.” The OIG is again investigating the biometric exit program this year and plans to “assess whether biometric data collected at pilot locations has improved DHS’s ability to verify departures.” The Government Accountability Office has also looked into the agency’s programs, criticizing the reliability of DHS’s data and the agency’s failure to evaluate whether a program that collects biometrics from all travelers leaving the country was even feasible.

However, these actions are not enough. DHS needs to end its plans to use its HART database to collect even more biometric and biographic information about U.S. citizens and foreigners. This system poses a very real threat to First Amendment-protected activities. Further, DHS has a well-documented history of poor data management, and face recognition has a high rate of misidentifications. Congress must step in with more oversight and act now to put the brakes on DHS’s broad expansion of data collection.

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Featured image is from EFF

President-elect Joe Biden’s new COVID relief plan does not adopt existing Democratic legislation to expand government sponsored medical coverage nor does it propose a promised public health insurance option. Instead, it adopts proposals from health insurance lobbying groups’ recent letter to lawmakers demanding lucrative new subsidies for insurance companies, at a moment when those corporations have recorded record profits as millions lose coverage and many face claims denials.

Those initiatives — which could further boost insurers’ skyrocketing profits — were recently recommended in a letter to lawmakers from America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, two insurance lobby groups in Washington that have opposed the expansion of government-sponsored health care programs.

A few days after the letter was sent, AHIP said that “health insurance providers are eager to assist the Biden health team.”

Biden’s inaugural committee has received donations from at least two major health insurers, Anthem and Centene, which both offer plans on state marketplace exchanges. Centene’s CEO bundled donations for Biden’s presidential campaign, and Biden’s first major campaign fundraiser was headlined by Independence Blue Cross’s CEO.

During the 2020 primary campaign, Biden repeatedly demonized Medicare for All legislation offered by Rep. Pramila Jayapal and Sen. Bernie Sanders, questioning how the country would pay for it and proposing a public health insurance option people can buy into instead. Democrats previously considered creating a public option during ACA negotiations a decade ago — AHIP secretly bankrolled a successful $100 million advocacy campaign to kill it.

While Medicare for All could actually save the country up to $650 billion annually, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Biden is now proposing some of the most costly and inefficient ways to expand health insurance coverage. The moves could still leave people exposed to substantial out-of-pocket costs — from deductibles, copays, and coinsurance — that act as barriers to care.

Nightmare Deductibles And Widespread Claim Denials

Pushing people onto ACA plans and subsidizing COBRA coverage would be expensive — but not necessarily popular.

Health care coverage purchased through the ACA marketplace costs 83 percent more than Medicaid coverage, and ACA plans leave patients with ten times the amount of out-of-pocket costs, according to a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The researchers concluded that marketplace plans cost so much more than Medicaid because private insurers pay “higher prices for the same services.” Hospitals often bill people with employer health insurance plans, which are maintained under COBRA, more than twice as much as those with Medicare or Medicaid.

The Biden proposal does include a measure to slightly lower the percentage of Americans’ annual incomes that insurers can collect through premiums — from a maximum of 9.86 percent to 8.5 percent. Altogether, the Biden transition says its plan “would reduce premiums for more than ten million people and reduce the ranks of the uninsured by millions more.”

The ACA marketplace was a centerpiece of Democrats’ 2010 health care reform law, but only a small slice of Americans are actually buying insurance plans this way now — often people who are self-employed, independent contractors, or gig workers. The ACA exchanges are only currently “a miniscule part of the health insurance system,” the People’s Policy Project wrote last month.

While the marketplace was billed as allowing people to shop for health insurances, in reality the state exchanges offer few choices, and most are expensive. The average lowest-cost premium for bronze-level plans is $321 this year, though the numbers vary widely by state.

The premiums are pricy, but an even bigger issue is the nightmarish deductibles people with ACA plans are expected to pay before their insurance company actually starts footing their medical bills. The average bronze plan deductible on the individual market was nearly $5,900 in 2019.

Deductibles are lower on silver and gold-tier plans, but the average lowest-cost monthly premiums this year are $436 for silver plans and $482 for gold.

Poorer enrollees may qualify for subsidized premiums or cost-sharing reductions limiting their maximum out-of-pocket expenses — but those reduced out-of-pocket maximums are still substantial.

Making matters worse, health insurers deny nearly one in five claims for in-network care by patients with ACA plans, according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation for 2017. For some insurers, about 40 percent of claims are rejected.

Moving the uninsured into these plans would be a massively expensive way to expand coverage — and if insurers are still allowed to impose huge out-of-pocket costs and deny claims with regularity, it may not help people much at all.

Backing Away From A Public Option

During the 2020 campaign, a health care industry front group called the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future (PAHCF), spent $4.5 million on advertisements attacking Medicare for All. The group launched a late wave of ads in South Carolina — where Biden’s strong performance helped propel him to victories around the country.

PAHCF’s tax return shows it is steered by executives from AHIP and lobbying groups for pharmaceutical companies and investor-owned hospitals. The industry group raised more than $55 million in 2019, and it has made clear that it would fight against a federal public option plan, just as AHIP did in 2009 and 2010. It also spent millions of dollars in 2020 to block a state level public option in Colorado.

Biden consistently campaigned in support of a public health insurance option, and after the primary, a joint task force made up of Biden and Sanders allies negotiated a fairly robust public option plan.

“The public option will provide at least one plan choice without deductibles, will be administered by the traditional Medicare program, not private companies, and will cover all primary care without any copayments and control costs for other treatments by negotiating prices with doctors and hospitals, just like Medicare does on behalf of older people,” the task force wrote.

The Democratic National Committee’s 2020 platform included a similar pledge: “Democrats will also make available on the marketplace a public option administered through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) which includes a platinum-level choice, with low fees and no deductibles. Low-income Americans will be automatically enrolled in the public option at zero cost to them, though they may choose to opt out at any time.”

Now, on the eve of his presidency, Biden is proposing a much more conservative health insurance expansion plan proposed by the health insurance industry. If enacted, the plan could head off any talk in Washington of a public option plan down the road.

There are many other options available. Democratic lawmakers could choose to rally around existing legislation to enact an emergency Medicare for All program, or they could press for a public option, as the party and its incoming president promised.

Biden could use his executive authority to expand Medicare during the pandemic, using emergency provisions in the Affordable Care Act. Democrats could also seek to expand Medicaid to cover more people.

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Early in 2012, I started having debilitating cognitive lapses, pressure headaches, nausea and worse when around wireless and electronic devices. 

That winter and spring, I’d put in long hours, drafting an eco-themed novel, writing for a hyperlocal news blog and starting to update a climate series I’d done for the site five years before.

But my worsening symptoms felt more extreme than simply too-much-screen-time fatigue. By late May, I could not sit down at any keyboard without losing my ability to work within minutes.

“What changed before this began?” one doctor asked me. As we explored the question, technology kept coming up.

Not only had I logged extra computer time in recent months, but a new community-wide wireless internet service had started nearby. My symptoms consistently worsened within what I later learned was the range of that service. The 12-mile trips from my country home into town, where this new provider and others had transmitters, often left me so impaired it took days to recover.

Was it possible higher levels of wireless radiation had crashed my health?

My search for answers led me deep into a topic that has expanding relevance for the environmental beat in the current COVID-19 era.

Recent lockdowns and more time online — plus the push for rapid expansion of 5G infrastructure, now touted for economic recovery (see sidebar) — are increasing our exposures to non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation (EMR, aka electromagnetic fields or EMF). This includes the radiofrequency radiation, or RFR, emitted by wireless devices.

Are these exposures safe? That’s hotly debated, so you’ll find plenty of story potential at the intersection of wireless tech, health and environment.

Plus, Project Censored — which since 1976 has publicized important news stories missed by mainstream media — says the health risks of wireless technologies are underreported. The topic has made the group’s annual list of Top 25 Censored Stories in 2012-13, 2017-18 and 2018-19.

The safety debate

Arguments over these health risks center on whether RFR, which includes microwave frequencies, does much or any harm when below intensities that heat tissue.

Those who say that low-intensity RFR poses little risk include the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, or FCC, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, or FDA, the Institute of Electrical  and Electronics Engineers, the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection and the wireless industry.

Accordingly, safety standards and guidelines in the United States and many other locations are based on avoiding RFR’s tissue-heating effects.

Those concerned about this approach say thousands of studies — such as research cited by the BioInitiative Report, Physicians for Safe Technology, Americans for Responsible Technology, Understanding EMFs, Electromagnetic Radiation Safety and Environmental Health Trust — conclude that RFR can hurt us at levels well below those microwave ovens used for cooking.

[DISCLOSURE: In October 2019, the author became one of four directors of a small family foundation whose donations include some to charities which research and/or educate the public about wireless radiation health risks, among them: Environmental Health Trust, the Golomb Research Group at University of California-San Diego and others not mentioned in this story.]

The non-thermal biological effects linked to RFR by these studies include increased cancer risk, DNA damage, sperm degradation and more.

The International EMF Scientist Appeal says these effects can occur at intensities of RFR considered safe by “most international and national guidelines.” The appeal, now signed by more than 250 scientists from more than 40 countries, asks the United Nations, its sub-organizations including the World Health Organization, or WHO, and its member nations for greater public health protection from EMF exposure.

Echoing those concerns, a 2018 Lancet Planetary Health article reported that, of 2,266 studies evaluated, 1,546 “demonstrated significant biological or health effects associated with exposure” — both acute and chronic — to anthropogenic EMR, including RFR.

In contrast, the wireless industry says “the overall balance” of RFR science shows little risk, as Mark Hertsgaard and Mark Dowie wrote in 2018 in The Nation. Their article also reported that when industry-funded research is excluded, larger proportions of studies show low-intensity RFR can cause harm.

Hertsgaard and Dowie described an analysis by Henry Lai, a bioengineering professor emeritus at the University of Washington who showed that while 67 percent of independently-funded studies found biological effects from cellphone radiation, just 28 percent of industry-funded studies did the same. A 2007 analysis in Environmental Health Perspectives replicated Lai’s findings.

This sort of published science has had limited influence on public policy, especially since passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. This law bars states and localities from regulating wireless facilities based on RFR-related environmental concerns. Subsequent legal rulings determined that this includes concerns about RFR’s health risks.

Thus, no wireless infrastructure policies can be based on RFR research showing non-thermal health effects except at the federal level, mainly through the FCC.

Against this backdrop — and sometimes obscured by special-interest spin or tales of conspiracy — several issues are playing out, offering multiple angles for stories.

Cancer: Can wireless radiation increase the risk?

There’s “clear evidence” for rare cancers called schwannomas of the heart, concludes a 2018 paper by the U.S. National Toxicology Program, or NTP, and “some evidence” it’s a yes for malignant gliomas of the brain.

Although aspects of the NTP’s rodent study have been debated by scientists and regulators, Italy’s Ramazzini Institute has corroborated the NTP findings. Both long-term studies show “an increase in the incidence of tumors of the brain and heart in RFR-exposed Sprague-Dawley rats,” the Ramazzini study says.

Despite the NTP findings, the FDA — which initially called for the study — responded with a statement affirming the acceptability of current cell phone safety standards. Uncertainty remains about possible responses from other agencies now planning to review RFR’s carcinogenicity, including the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer, or IARC.

As early as 2011, enough research had linked RFR to cancer so that IARC listed it as “possibly carcinogenicto humans.” Other agencies and scientific organizations have issued similar cautions. Now, some scientists want IARC to step up its RFR designation to “probable carcinogen” or definite “carcinogen.” IARC has prioritized this issue for consideration in the near future.

Meantime, wireless cancer risk studies continue to accumulate. One example is a meta-analysispublished November 2, 2020 in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. This study found that “cell phone use with cumulative call time more than 1,000 hours significantly increased the risk of tumors.” It noted that 1,000 hours corresponds to roughly 17 minutes a day for 10 years.

Regulators — including the FCC — continue to argue that existing wireless safety guidelines are adequate. But the issue is going before federal judges. Pending in court are lawsuits claiming people’s tumors came from cell phone use, as well as lawsuits challenging FCC safety regulations.

On another regulatory front, should consumers have the “right to know” of possible wireless cancer risks — for instance, via point-of-sale notices as mandated until recently in Berkeley, California? The city’s test-case ordinance required retailers to post warnings recommending that customers heed safety instructions required in phone manuals by the FCC but rarely read. These include the typically half-inch distance users should keep cell phones away from the body to meet exposure guidelines (keeping live phones in bras or pockets, for instance, does not generally do so).

Though the wireless industry sued Berkeley shortly after the 2015 passage of its ordinance, early rulings sided with the city, and included industry losses (subscription required) in the U.S. Supreme Court. But as Bob Egelko reported (subscription required) in the San Francisco Chronicle, a June 2020 court filing by the FCC led a federal district judge to rule in September that Berkeley’s ordinance interfered with federal oversight of the cellphone industry.

The city will leave its law unenforced for now. According to Egelko, an attorney representing Berkeley said the ordinance “remains on the books awaiting a better FCC.” This story might resurface early this year.

What about other health effects?

Numerous studies link low-intensity RFR exposures with various biological impacts, including heart and circulatory problems, neurological disorders, immune system changes, reduced fertility, blood-brain barrier leakage, sleep disruption, memory impairment and more.

A 2015 review article in Electromagnetic Biology and Medicine explored one explanation for this variety of potential effects: the “significant activation” by low-intensity RFR of “key pathways generating reactive oxygen species” — in other words, generation of free radicals which can build up in biological tissues to create oxidative stress and related effects such as DNA damage.

Effects of this type were documented in 93 of the 100 human tissue, animal and plant studies that the article examined. The researchers write that this could explain “a range of biological/health effects of low-intensity RFR” and give this type of environmental exposure “a wide pathogenic potential.”

Children and pregnant women might be particularly vulnerable to such effects. Imaging in human head models like that done in a 2018 study published in Environmental Research has shown that children’s thinner skulls allow more RFR penetration of their brains. This has raised concerns about WiFi in schools, as well as the additional screen time required by pandemic-era digital schooling.

What happened to me in 2012 is called electromagnetic hypersensitivity, or EHS, which is also known as electrosensitivity. It is considered an “idiopathic environmental illness” by the WHO and is not included as a separate condition in that agency’s International Classification of Diseases.

A recent edition of Physician’s Weekly calls EHS a “clinical syndrome characterized by … a wide spectrum of non-specific multiple organ symptoms.” Headaches, fatigue, insomnia and cognitive impairments are most common but a variety of other symptoms from heart arrhythmias to nausea to tinnitus are also reported, and can range from mild to disabling.

Although some have suggested EHS is psychogenic, research is accumulating that concludes that it is not. Dr. Beatrice Golomb, who studies the condition, has stated that “[EHS] symptoms arise from physiological injury.” [Editor’s Note: See disclosure above.]

A 2020 paper by Dominique Belpomme and Philippe Irigaray lists EHS biomarkers — including oxidative stress by-products in blood samples and scan-detected blood-flow changes in the brain — and asks that EHS now be included as a separate condition in the WHO’s International Classification of Diseases.

Surveys of countries from Finland to Taiwan have estimated that EHS affects from 0.7% to 13.3% of studied populations. Noting an upward trend, a 2006 letter to Electromagnetic Biology and Medicine by scientists Örjan Hallberg and Gerd Oberfeld asked, “Will we all become electrosensitive?” Already, write Belpomme and Irigaray, “millions of people may in fact be affected by EHS worldwide.”

How might wireless radiation affect nature?

Researchers have reported that birds and bees lose their navigational ability near cell towers, while treessport damaged leaves and foliage die-off. Studies also suggest that RFR might contribute to bird population declines, bee colony collapse disorder and recent dramatic drops in insect numbers.

A 2013 review of 113 plant and animal studies catalogs these and other findings on RFR’s impacts. So does Dr. Cindy Russell of Physicians for Safe Technology in her article, “Wireless Silent Spring,” which draws parallels between toxic chemicals and EMR.

Such impacts concerned the U.S. Department of the Interiorin 2014, when it wrote to the FCC that wireless safety guidelines did not adequately protect wildlife. But now, within Interior, the National Park Service is expanding wireless facilities, writes Christopher Ketcham — including in the Grand Tetons, as reported by Jimmy Tobias (who conducted his investigation with funding from the Society of Environmental Journalists’ Fund for Environmental Journalism).

These articles hint at openings for more media coverage of wireless tech’s effects on nature. Study findings, too, raise opportunities for more reporting. Just how serious are the effects of RFR on flora and fauna? How might they impact various species in combination with factors such as habitat loss, chemical pollution or climate change?

More reporting issues and angles

• Wireless from space: Recent and proposed satellite launches will vastly expand wireless services from space. Astronomers complain these satellites obscure the night sky; others warn of potential health effects. What might be the cumulative impact of 50,000-plus wireless-from-space satellites and their transmitting/receiving equipment on Earth?
• 5G and forecasts: 5G has raised concerns beyond health — security, privacy and the integrity of weather forecasting among them. Columbia Journalism Review recently covered meteorologists’worries. As 5G develops, will it impair collection of accurate water vapor data, as they fear, and compromise weather and climate forecasts?
• Misleading media: Journalists can do a better job drilling down to the facts on wireless radiation. Misleading media reports are all over the map. Recent stories with headlines like “5G networks have few health impacts, study finds,” covered research that examined one 5G wavelength but did not include mm waves. Conversely, conspiracy theory stories alleging 5G horrors are overshadowing “real 5G issues,” according to Investigate Europe, a nonprofit cross-border team of European journalists based in Germany.
• Our technological footprint: The internet’s energy and ecological footprint is already large. How much bigger might the demand for mobile wireless connectivity make energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions and other impacts on planetary health?
• Wary insurers: The insurance industry was early among businesses to recognize climate change risks. Is its approach to wireless tech similar? Insurance policies class EMF as a “pollutant” and don’t offer product liability coverage for devices. A related paper by Michigan Technological University Professor Joshua Pearce recognizes potential wireless liability risks, advising that cell towers be sited away from schools and hospitals due to growing evidence of health effects.
• Environmental justice: Some science suggests EMR and toxic chemicals, including metals, can have synergistic health impacts. Since higher toxic exposures often occur in low-income areas, tribal communities and communities of color, does placing wireless transmitters in those locations — especially if used in place of fiber to close the digital divide — constitute an environmental justice issue?
• Smart meters: “Smart” utility meters, which often transmit data using RFR, continue to elicit health complaints. Are you covering any? A 2011 SEJ TipSheet written by the late environmental journalist Robert Weinhold provides relevant background.
• Medical EMR assessments: The non-specific symptoms sometimes attributed to EMR exposures — such as headache or fatigue — led the American Academy of Environmental Medicineto suggest in 2012 that doctors routinely ask patients about their electromagnetic environments. How many doctors do so? How much might they overlook this or other environmental factors that could contribute to illness?
• Safer tech R&D: Is there potential for safer tech? Is your nearest university engineering department doing any feature-worthy research along these lines? In the last section of his article, “Wireless Wake-Up Call: A New Paradigm in EMF Science,” engineer Jeromy Johnson covers areas of safer tech research and development — possible starting points for interview questions or background research.
• Home improvements: If we don’t use wireless, what then? Stories about creating lower-RFR homes with cabled and corded alternatives might find a bigger audience among the pandemic period’s homebound populace.

By the way, journalist Louis Slesin of Microwave News is an ongoing source of story ideas and insights into EMR science and policy. Another useful source is Joel Moskowitz, director of U.C. Berkeley’s Center for Family and Community Health, whose Electromagnetic Radiation Safety blog regularly posts summaries of and links to recent studies on EMR and health.

Some final words

I’m still electrosensitized, although not nearly as debilitated as in the first years after my health crashed. Avoiding RFR, I’ve found, has been the most effective way to avoid symptoms and maintain my health (see sidebar for how you can reduce your own potential risks). I don’t own a cell phone or anything wireless, and no longer use computers, at least not directly (helpful others typed up this story).

In the documentary Full Signal, Swedish EMR scientist Olle Johansson said that those of us with EHS might be “the lucky ones:” to avoid difficult symptoms, we often radically reduce our EMR exposure, thus cutting our potential risk of future — perhaps worse — health consequences.

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Long-time SEJ member Katie Alvord is an award-winning freelance writer whose work has appeared in a range of publications. She received the 2007 AAAS Science Journalism Award for Excellence in Online Reporting, for writing a series on Lake Superior Basin climate change. She has also worked with and written for libraries, government agencies and nonprofit groups, and is the author of “Divorce Your Car!” Marjorie Alvord, Katie’s sister, contributed research, computerization and editorial material for this story.

Featured image is by Alistair McIntyre, Pixabay

National environmental groups filed a lawsuit today in the Southern District of New York challenging the Trump administration’s reinterpretation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which eliminated longstanding, vital protections for more than 1,000 species of waterfowl, raptors and songbirds.

Under the Trump administration’s revised interpretation, the Act’s protections will apply only to activities that are specifically intended to kill birds. So-called “incidental” take, regardless of its impact on bird populations or how foreseeable that impact is — such as letting birds drown in uncovered oil pits — is rendered immune from enforcement under the law.

“Trump’s tenure has been a reign of terror for the environment, and his cruel insistence on destroying this century-old law is a testament to his total disregard for wildlife,” said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The revised rule is nothing but a gift to oil companies and other polluters, allowing them to kill birds without legal consequence. The courts rightfully stopped this farce once before, and we hope this latest suit again fully restores legal protection to birds that desperately need it.”

Had the Trump administration’s policy been in place at the time of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, British Petroleum would have avoided paying more than $100 million in fines to support wetland and migratory bird conservation to compensate for more than a million birds the accident was estimated to have killed.

“Trump’s rollback of migratory bird protections is an appalling and inexcusable give-away to corporate polluters who don’t want to face any consequences for killing birds,” said Bonnie Rice, Sierra Club’s endangered species representative. “Two-thirds of North America’s birds are imperiled by climate change. More than three billion birds have vanished since 1970. We need more protections, not less, in the face of this massive loss and the current human-caused extinction crisis.”

“We are back in the courts to fight the Trump administration’s callous decision to eliminate protections for migratory birds,” said Jamie Rappaport Clark, president and CEO of Defenders of Wildlife. “Even though a federal court already ruled that the administration’s reinterpretation of the MBTA was illegal, it pushed forward with its rulemaking to cement this destructive policy into law. We are here to overturn this terrible decision once and for all.”

Background

The Trump administration began its assault on the Migratory Bird Treaty Act in December 2017 with a legal opinion authored by Daniel Jorjani, the solicitor of the Department of the Interior and a former Koch Industries employee. This opinion has already allowed birds deaths across the country that could have easily been avoided. In May 2018 the Center and allies filed suit in the Southern District of New York to challenge the proposed revision, resulting in a blistering court decision overturning the opinion.

Flouting the court ruling invalidating the basis for the reinterpretation, the Trump administration moved ahead with finalizing the rule on Jan. 4, along with a flurry of other last-minute actions aimed at eviscerating an array of essential environmental laws and regulations.

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The following are excerpts of an important article published by the British Medical Journal. The author Dr Peter Doshi is associate editor of The BMJ.

To read the complete BMJ article click here

In the United States, all eyes are on Pfizer and Moderna. The topline efficacy results from their experimental covid-19 vaccine trials are astounding at first glance. Pfizer says it recorded 170 covid-19 cases (in 44,000 volunteers), with a remarkable split: 162 in the placebo group versus 8 in the vaccine group. Meanwhile Moderna says 95 of 30,000 volunteers in its ongoing trial got covid-19: 90 on placebo versus 5 receiving the vaccine, leading both companies to claim around 95% efficacy.

Let’s put this in perspective.

First, a relative risk reduction is being reported, not absolute risk reduction, which appears to be less than 1%.

Second, these results refer to the trials’ primary endpoint of covid-19 of essentially any severity, and importantly not the vaccine’s ability to save lives, nor the ability to prevent infection, nor the efficacy in important subgroups (e.g. frail elderly). Those still remain unknown.

Third, these results reflect a time point relatively soon after vaccination, and we know nothing about vaccine performance at 3, 6, or 12 months, so cannot compare these efficacy numbers against other vaccines like influenza vaccines (which are judged over a season).

Fourth, children, adolescents, and immunocompromised individuals were largely excluded from the trials, so we still lack any data on these important populations.

I previously argued that the trials are studying the wrong endpoint, and for an urgent need to correct course and study more important endpoints like prevention of severe disease and transmission in high risk people. Yet, despite the existence of regulatory mechanisms for ensuring vaccine access while keeping the authorization bar high (which would allow placebo-controlled trials to continue long enough to answer the important question), it’s hard to avoid the impression that sponsors are claiming victory and wrapping up their trials (Pfizer has already sent trial participants a letter discussing “crossing over” from placebo to vaccine), and the FDA will now be under enormous pressure to rapidly authorize the vaccines.

But as conversation shifts to vaccine distribution, let’s not lose sight of the evidence. Independent scrutiny of the underlying trial data will increase trust and credibility of the results. There also might be important limitations to the trial findings we need to be aware of.

Most crucially, we need data-driven assurances that the studies were not inadvertently unblinded, by which I mean investigators or volunteers could make reasonable guesses as to which group they were in.

Blinding is most important when measuring subjective endpoints like symptomatic covid-19, and differences in post-injection side-effects between vaccine and placebo might have allowed for educated guessing. Past placebo-controlled trials of influenza vaccine were not able to fully maintain blinding of vaccine status, and the recent “half dose” mishap in the Oxford covid-19 vaccine trial was apparently only noticed because of milder-than-expected side-effects. (And that is just one of many concerns with the Oxford trial.)

…

Neither Moderna nor Pfizer have released any samples of written materials provided to patients, so it is unclear what, if any, instructions patients were given regarding the use of medicines to treat side effects following vaccination, but the informed consent form for Johnson and Johnson’s vaccine trial provides such a recommendation:

“Following administration of Ad26.COV2.S, fever, muscle aches and headache appear to be more common in younger adults and can be severe. For this reason, we recommend you take a fever reducer or pain reliever if symptoms appear after receiving the vaccination, or upon your study doctor’s recommendation.”

There may be much more complexity to the “95% effective” announcement than meets the eye—or perhaps not. Only full transparency and rigorous scrutiny of the data will allow for informed decision making. The data must be made public.

To read the complete BMJ article click here

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Peter Doshi is associate editor of The BMJ.

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Was liegt näher, als sich an den Weisheiten großer europäischer Dichter und Denker wie Goethe, Schiller, Rolland oder Camus zu erfreuen und Kraft daraus zu schöpfen. Sind wir nicht alle – jeder einzelne! – dringend gefordert, uns nicht weiter zu blinden Dienern korrupter Regierungen im Sold einer verbrecherischen Milliardärs-Clique zu erniedrigen, sondern unserem persönlichen Gewissen zu folgen, unser Recht auf individuellen und kollektiven Widerstand wahrzunehmen und gegen sie aufzustehen? Dieser Akt der Empörung schließt – oft abgesondert von der trägen Herde – zivilen Ungehorsam und weitere gewaltfreie individuelle und gemeinschaftliche Handlungen mit ein. Der Mensch kommt dabei zu sich selbst. Romain Rolland warnte in einer ähnlich finsteren Zeit wie der heutigen in seinem Antikriegs-Roman „Clerambeault“ vor der Gefahr des Versinkens der Einzelseele im Abgrund der Massenseele. (1) Freie Seelen und starke Charaktere müssten verblendeten Regierungen und deren Strippenziehern im Hintergrund Schach bieten – aus Liebe zur Menschheit.

Der Worte sind genug gewechselt, …

In dem Goethes „Faust“ entliehenen Zitat-Fragment „Der Worte sind genug gewechselt,…“ wird dazu aufgerufen, den Worten auch Taten folgen zu lassen. Viele unerschrockene Aufklärer in den alternativen sozialen Medien haben uns ja unermüdlich darüber informiert,

• dass wir den Mut haben sollten, uns unseres eigenen Verstandes zu bedienen,
• dass man keinem Politiker die Macht übergeben dürfte,
• dass die geplante und in Teilen bereits umgesetzte „Neue Weltordnung“ der sogenannten Elite ein „Verbrechen gegen die Menschheit“ darstellt, das sie eines Tages vor einem neuen „Nürnberger Prozess“ zu verantworten hat,
• dass die Aufforderung zur sozialen Distanzierung und der Maulkorb-Zwang ebenfalls verborgene Ziele verfolgt,
• dass das Schüren irrationaler Ängste (wie zum Beispiel vor dem Tod durch einen Virus) ein bewährtes Disziplinierungs- und Herrschaftsmittel Regierender ist,
• dass die gleichgeschalteten und konzernabhängigen Lügen-Medien („Journaille“) dabei eine erbärmliche und unheilvolle Rolle spielen,
• dass man den unwillkürlichen Reflex des absoluten geistigen Gehorsams aufgeben kann und
• dass man sich durch das Auflehnen gegen die illegal verordneten Einschränkungen der persönlichen Freiheiten wieder als Mensch fühlt.

… lasst mich auch endlich Taten sehn!

Warum sollte es nicht auch den Bürgern unserer Generation gelingen, was jungen und älteren Männern und Frauen des deutschen Widerstands drei Generationen früher gelang: Aufstehen gegen schreiendes Unrecht und Gesetzlosigkeit. Nein, eine Grenze hat Tyrannenmacht! (Schiller) Und die Kraft dafür kommt nicht aus körperlichen Fähigkeiten; sie entspringt einem unbeugsamen Willen. (Gandhi). Nicht an der Menschheit verzweifeln! Der Mensch ist gut. Das Böse wird nicht siegen!

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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel ist Erziehungswissenschaftler und Diplom-Psychologe.

Noten

[1] Reinbeck bei Hamburg (1988). Aus dem Französischen übersetzt von Stefan Zweig. Ersterscheinung 1920 im Pariser Verlag Ollendorff. Ursprünglicher Titel „Einer gegen alle“ (1917)

La portaerei Cavour, dopo essere stata ristrutturata nell’Arsenale militare di Taranto per imbarcare i caccia F-35B a decollo corto e atterraggio verticale, sta per salpare verso gli Stati uniti.

Lo ha annunciato l’attaché navale presso l’Ambasciata italiana a Washington, precisando che dalla metà di febbraio la portaerei sarà dispiegata nella base a Norfolk, in Virginia, per ottenere la qualifica che le permetterà di partecipare a «operazioni congiunte» con la Marina e il Corpo dei marines degli Stati uniti.

Si prepara così la partecipazione della nave ammiraglia della Marina italiana a missioni Nato sotto comando Usa in distanti teatri bellici.

Tutto ciò costa, sia in termini politici legando sempre più l’Italia alla strategia di guerra Usa/Nato, sia in termini economici.

La portaerei Cavour è costata 1,3 miliardi di euro; i 15 F-35B per la Marina costano 1,7 miliardi. Si aggiungono le spese operative: un giorno di navigazione della Cavour costa oltre 200 mila euro e un’ora di volo di un F-35 oltre 40 mila euro. Gli altri 15 F-35B acquistati dall’Italia vanno all’Aeronautica, insieme a 60 F-35A a capacità nucleare.

La portaerei Cavour © Marina Militare

C’è però un problema: nel 2019 è stata varata un’altra portaerei, la Trieste, che dovrà imbarcare un numero di caccia F-35B maggiore di quello della Cavour: essi dovranno essere acquistati con un costo complessivo ancora più alto.

Per dotarsi di questi e altri armamenti, l’Italia deve accrescere la spesa militare: i 26 miliardi di euro annui non bastano più, occorre passare ad almeno 36 miliardi annui come stabilito dalla Nato e ribadito dal neopresidente democratico Joe Biden.

Ma dove trovare i soldi in una situazione di crisi come quella attuale?

Ed ecco l’idea geniale, partorita dal Center for American Progress, uno dei più influenti think tank di Washington legato al Partito democratico: la Nato crei una propria banca per risolvere il «gap finanziario». In altre parole, una volta istituita la banca, i paesi dell’Alleanza che non hanno i fondi per accrescere la spesa militare al livello richiesto, li possono ricevere in prestito dalla stessa Nato attraverso la nuova istituzione finanziaria.

Nessun problema, quindi, per l’Italia: se non ha i 10 miliardi di euro da aggiungere ogni anno alla propria spesa militare, glieli presta la Banca Nato a un non precisato tasso di interesse.

L’Italia, però, accumulerebbe in tal modo un nuovo, crescente debito estero con un organismo controllato dagli Stati uniti, che detengono il comando della Nato.

Nel presentare il progetto, il think tank sottolinea che immediatamente «l’amministrazione Biden dovrà ripristinare l’impegno dell’America nei confronti della Nato e spingere l’Alleanza a rafforzarsi», in primo luogo per «difendere l’Europa dalla aggressione russa».

Da qui la necessità che «la Nato istituisca una propria banca per investire in capacità militari fondamentali».

Tra queste sicuramente gli F-35 della statunitense Lockheed Martin che, con gli altri colossi dell’industria bellica, sarebbe la principale beneficiaria della Banca Nato: ad esempio sarebbe la banca a finanziare l’acquisto di altri F-35B per la Marina italiana, pagando alla Lockheed Martin miliardi di dollari, che noi italiani dovremmo rimborsare con gli interessi sempre con denaro pubblico.

Oltre a questa, vi sono altre funzioni che la Banca Nato dovrebbe svolgere. «Investire in infrastrutture a duplice uso»: ponti che permettano in Europa il transito anche di pesanti mezzi corazzati da Ovest ad Est e reti 5G per uso anche militare. Fornire a paesi e regioni «una alternativa rispetto a quella di rivolgersi a banche di rivali della Nato, come Cina e Russia».

La Banca Nato avrebbe, in generale, la funzione di «accrescere la capacità dell’Alleanza di affrontare le sfide finanziarie del conflitto», poiché «qualsiasi significativo sforzo militare dipende dalla capacità economica e finanziaria».

Chiaro è il messaggio agli alleati europei: «Il finanziamento dell’Alleanza non può essere solo responsabilità americana, deve essere una responsabilità condivisa».

Questo, nelle linee essenziali, è il progetto della Banca Nato che, prima di essere presentato dal think tank di Washington, è stato vagliato da politici che andranno a ricoprire importanti incarichi nell’amministrazione Biden.

Manlio Dinucci

Russian anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny inexplicably decided to return to the same country that he claimed had unsuccessfully tried to kill him, curiously timing his trip to coincide with the immediate run-up to Biden’s inauguration in what some suspect is nothing more than a Hybrid War provocation to establish the “publicly plausible” pretext for the incoming president to intensify his country’s anti-Russian crusade following Navalny’s detainment in response to his probation violations.

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“In war, truth is the first casualty” (Aeschylus(1))

A Very Brief History of War Propaganda

Propaganda as a science really got under way during World War 1 (WW1). The British and the German governments both brainwashed their populations into believing that the other country was a demonic enemy that had to be defeated. The famous writer, Aldous Huxley, once wrote that: 

“The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human”(2)

The war itself, and the propaganda that helped to create the war, has been described as an:

“extraordinary state accomplishment – mass enthusiasm at the prospect of a global brawl that otherwise would mystify those very masses, and that shattered most of those who actually took part in it.”(3)

Students of propaganda are usually aware that Germany’s propaganda minister in the 1930s and 40s, Goebbels, had a large propaganda library. He was very interested in the scientific approach to propaganda and he followed the research of early propaganda pioneers.

He used this to minimise criticism of German policy, whilst at the same time he carried out a campaign against the Jews which led to millions of them being killed.(4) However, propaganda by Britain and the US relating to these wars is discussed much less. We are encouraged to think that during WW1 and WW2, the British and US were ‘the good guys’, but this is an example of propaganda through re-writing history. In 1914 (beginning of WW1) and also in 1939 (beginning of WW2) Britain was the dominant imperial power in the world, and the US and France had their own colonial territories. This involved many invasions and occupations, and a great deal of mass murder, torture and rape. Germany wanted its own Empire, so both wars (sometimes described as a single war divided into 2 parts) were fights for imperial supremacy. None of these nations deserve the label ‘the good guys’ in either world war. They were all run by insane leaders who were prepared to slaughter millions of people for their own ends.(5)

There is further evidence of US and British criminality in those periods. In 1917, the Russian people overthrew their rulers (known as the Tsars) and withdrew from World War 1. Britain and the US then invaded Russia, in 1918, to (unsuccessfully) try to overthrow the new government. Similarly, after WW2, many Greek people wanted to govern themselves, but Britain and the US invaded Greece to (successfully) get the pre-war dictators back into power.(6) The Russians in WW1 and the Greeks in WW2 had initially fought on the same side as the US and Britain. The idea that Britain and the US were not the ‘good guys’ during that period is almost unmentionable in polite US and British society, and is almost never mentioned in the mainstream press.

Don’t Show The Reality of War – Censorship by Omission 

The most effective propaganda technique of all is to block discussion so thoroughly that almost no-one realises that there is an important topic not being talked-about. When the US invaded Panama in 1989, they finished the fighting before any reporters were even aware that there was an invasion taking place. When Ethiopia invaded Somalia in 2006, the US army fought, in secret, alongside the Ethiopians, so there was no discussion of it in the US or British press. Proxy warfare, where the US and Britain supply weapons to someone else, such as Saudi Arabia, to do the fighting allows the US and Britain to minimise scrutiny, and avoid challenges to the legality of their actions.

There are two other issues where the most effective propaganda is not talking about something. The first of these is not showing what war is really like for the people on the receiving end of British and US bombs. Bodies of men, women and children everywhere; people maimed or disabled for life; the ruined lives of people who have lost mothers, fathers, children or other relatives; the destruction of whole cities and, ultimately, whole nations.

The second is not engaging with the act of going to war as a monstrous crime. Where war crimes are discussed, the focus is on individual actions within war. There will occasionally be a discussion in the mainstream press about whether a war is illegal. But these discussions are often quite technical and use legal terminology, giving the impression that it’s a finely balanced debate, with strong arguments to say the war is legal. This is propaganda. Destroying a nation, or invading a country to overthrow the government, is never legal. It is the crime of aggressive war – one of the worst crimes that any group of people can commit.(7)

Similarly, there are other aspects of war that are rarely discussed by the press. There is an ongoing attempt to block proper investigation into the effects of depleted uranium (DU) used in modern ammunition. Thousands of tons have been used in Iraq and Afghanistan. The number of babies born with birth defects in these regions has increased significantly. The Italian government has announced that some of its soldiers have died from DU poisoning. Belgium has now banned DU weapons but so far the US and British governments have successfully avoided a proper investigation, despite the fact that some US Gulf war veterans are now disabled due to DU.(8) There is virtually no mention of this issue in the US and British media, and therefore no widespread public pressure to do anything about it.

Lie About Our Weapons and Death Tolls 

The videos we see during wartime of smart bombs precisely hitting their targets are another form of propaganda. They give us the impression that weapons are accurate and that civilians will be relatively unscathed. The government would like us to believe that more accurate weapons lead to fewer civilian casualties, but this is a myth. In order to minimise US casualties, their strategy is to use enormously destructive air power from long range, with an approach that has been described as “shoot first, ask questions later.”(9) They deliberately attack weddings and funerals. In practice, civilians are being slaughtered in huge numbers. The expression ‘collateral damage’ is also an example of propaganda. It is intended to give the impression that civilian deaths are accidental, when in fact US strategy guarantees that most deaths will be civilian. To confuse people over the scale of civilian deaths, the US now label every military-age man in a warzone as a combatant or a terrorist.(10)

Leaders repeatedly lie about the scale of casualties, although for changing reasons. Historically, they would exaggerate the number of enemy deaths to improve morale among their own soldiers and their civilian population. These days they understate the number of dead civilians in order to minimise objections to war. During discussions relating to casualty figures in Vietnam, a foreign office representative explained that it was important for every spokesperson to keep “stonewalling” so no one knew the true figures, which were in the millions.(11)

There has been a great deal of propaganda about the number of people killed in Iraq. A 2006 report in the medical journal, The Lancet, using the best research methods available, suggested that the number of deaths in Iraq was over 600,000. The best estimate of deaths by 2007 was over a million.(12) US and British politicians regularly appeared in the media trying to persuade the public that the true figure was much lower, but leaked reports show that their own experts believed the figures to be correct.(13) In 2007, Americans were asked their estimate of civilian deaths in Iraq. The average answer was under 10,000, a tiny fraction of the true figure.(14) Clearly, government and media propaganda is highly effective at making sure that ordinary people have little understanding of the true consequences of war. It was noted that the official figures were clearly absurd. If they had been correct then the death rate in the middle of a war zone would have been only half the death rate in US cities such as Detroit or Baltimore. In 2014 the US air force increased the scale of their bombing in Iraq and Syria, reducing some cities, such as Mosul, to ruins. The current death toll in Iraq is likely to be over 2 million,(15) but this figure is rarely mentioned in the mainstream.

The US Lies About Every War 

In many of the earlier posts we have seen examples of recent war propaganda. The use of exaggerated threats such as communism, terrorism, or weapons of mass destruction, or exaggerating atrocities to justify war. A detailed study of 25 US wars, from 1945 onwards, was carried out in 1992. The conclusion was that the US government lied about all of them.(16) The US military provides an endless stream of retired officers and specialists to fill airtime on TV channels whenever the US government wants to promote its wars. They are vetted beforehand to ensure that they will say the right things.

If the US decides to overthrow the leadership of another country, then almost everything that we hear in the mainstream news about that country contains elements of propaganda. A good example is the phrase ‘axis of evil’ that President Bush used in 2002 to describe Iraq, Iran and North Korea. There is nothing particularly ‘evil’ about these countries or their leaders. Their human rights records were no worse than many of the US’s allies, and they posed no military threat to the US or Britain. Presenting the enemy as evil is an extremely powerful form of propaganda.

Smearing Whistleblowers 

Propaganda is also used when whistleblowers and journalists expose war crimes. A standard technique is to deflect attention elsewhere by smearing the journalist or the whistleblower. They will say that the journalist has caused harm to others. No evidence will be presented. The immense harm caused by the war crimes is ignored. This was one of the techniques used to discredit Julian Assange and Wikileaks. The US government eventually admitted in court that they had no evidence of anyone ever being killed due to Wikileaks’ releases about US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Where it is impossible to deny wrongdoing, the attention will be focused on lower-ranking individuals, so that the senior people who determine policy again escape scrutiny. This was the case with the torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, where a small number of low-ranking soldiers were prosecuted, even though evidence emerged that the torture was US government policy.(17) Journalists have exposed serious crimes by US, British, Australian and New Zealand soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan. No senior people have been prosecuted, but whistleblowers have been prosecuted and imprisoned, and some journalists have been arrested.(18)

The Basic Principles of War Propaganda 

Having already written many of these posts on propaganda, I came across the writing of Anne Morelli, who wrote a book called “The basic Principles of War Propaganda” in 2001.(19) It has not been fully translated into English, but the ideas have been discussed. Morelli studied propaganda throughout the last century by all sides and came up with a summary that is described as the 10 principles of war propaganda:

1) We don’t want war, we are only defending ourselves

2) Our adversary is solely responsible for this war

3) Our adversary’s leader is inherently evil and resembles the devil

4) We are defending a noble cause, not our particular interests

5) The enemy is purposefully committing atrocities; if we are making mistakes this happens without intention

6) The enemy makes use of illegal weapons

7) We suffer few losses, the enemies losses are considerable

8) Recognised intellectuals and artists support our cause

9) Our cause is sacred

10) Whoever casts doubt on our propaganda helps the enemy and is a traitor

It is remarkable how consistently these principles have been used to justify recent US and British wars. The leaders of Iraq, Libya, and Syria, (Hussein, Gadaffi, and Assad) were all portrayed as evil. In Afghanistan, the Taliban were portrayed as evil. We were repeatedly told that they were committing atrocities or using illegal weapons, even whilst our governments and militaries were slaughtering millions of people and destroying whole nations. Critics of these wars have been demonized, particularly in relation to Syria. Whilst not every one of these principles applies to every US and British invasion, it provides a good framework for understanding how war propaganda works.

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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. This is the fifteenth in a series entitled Elephants In The Room, which attempts to provide a beginners guide to understanding what’s really going on in relation to war, terrorism, economics and poverty, without the nonsense in the mainstream media.

Notes

1) Quote is usually attributed to Aeschylus, a Greek dramatist (525 – 456BC), but the dictionary of modern proverbs indicates that this attribution was not used before the 1980s, so the source is contested.

2) Aldous Huxley, The Olive Tree, 1937

3) Mark Crispin Miller, Introduction to Edward Bernays, Propaganda, 2004, p.11 (originally published in 1928)

4) Stauber and Rampton, Toxic Sludge Is Good For You, 1995, p.24 

5) Nicholson Baker, Human Smoke: The beginnings of World War II, the end of civilization, 2008

6) Ian Sinclair, ‘Retrieved from the memory hole: British intervention in Greece in the 1940s’, openDemocracy, 19 June 2017, at https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/retrieved-from-memory-hole-british-intervention-in-greece-in-1940s/

7) The closest we might have come to a situation where an invasion was justified would be when the Vietnamese army invaded Cambodia to overthrow the Genocidal dictatorship of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in January 1979. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide

8) Christian Fraser, ‘Uranium ‘killing Italian Troops’’, BBC News, 10 Jan 2007, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6247401.stm

Willem Van den Panhuysen, ‘Belgium Bans Uranium Weapons and Armour’, Global Research, 23 March 2007, at https://www.globalresearch.ca/belgium-bans-uranium-weapons-and-armour/5167

Project Censored, ‘US/British Forces Continue Use of Depleted Uranium Weapons Despite Massive evidence of Negative Health Effects’, 2004 (updated 29 April 2010), at https://www.projectcensored.org/8-us-british-forces-continue-use-of-depleted-uranium-weapons-despite-negati/?doing_wp_cron=1591940256.1105339527130126953125

For more on depleted uranium, see International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons (ICBUW), at https://www.icbuw.eu/en/

9) https://www.psr.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/body-count.pdf

10) Conor Friedersdorf, ‘Under Obama, men killed by drones are presumed to be terrorists’, The Atlantic, 29 May 2012, at https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/05/under-obama-men-killed-by-drones-are-presumed-to-be-terrorists/257749/

11) Mark Curtis, Unpeople, 2004, p.237 

12) Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S.Davies, ‘The staggering death toll in Iraq’, Salon, 19 Mar 2018, at https://www.salon.com/2018/03/19/the-staggering-death-toll-in-iraq_partner/

13) Owen Bennett-Jones, ‘Iraq death survey was robust’, BBC World Service, 26 March 2007 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6495753.stm

14) Nancy Benac, cited in PSR, ‘Body Count: Casualty Figures after 10 years of the “War on Terror”’, Physicians for Social Responsibility, March 2015, at https://www.psr.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/body-count.pdf

15) Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S.Davies, ‘The staggering death toll in Iraq’, Salon, 19 March 2018, at https://www.salon.com/2018/03/19/the-staggering-death-toll-in-iraq_partner/ 

16) John Quigley, The Ruses for War, 1992 

17) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisoner_abuse

18) Nicky Hager, Other People’s Wars: New Zealand in Afghanistan, Iraq and the war on terror, 2011 

19) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Basic_Principles_of_War_Propaganda

US President Donald Trump can be considered guilty of many things, but he can’t be considered guilty of not attempting to preserve the fruits of his labor.

This can be seen in the maximum pressure campaign against Iran, his endless antagonism directed against China, the unstoppable crusade against the Nord Stream 2, and most recently, and one would say most notably – the premier product of his presidency: the US Space Force.

It is no secret that under the guidance of Trump and Co., the United States has advanced rapidly in terms of space exploration (move aside Elon Musk), and especially militarily.

The largest leap so far, is an Executive Presidential Order on promoting small modular nuclear reactors for Space Exploration (and National Defense). After all, the US was the first country to develop nuclear energy and use it, back in 1951 in Arco, Idaho.

Because the US Space Force plans to not only go to Space, but also reach the far reaches of the cosmos (possibly together with the “Galactic Federation”). It needs better energy, since solar power can’t always be used (you could go too far from the Sun, and who knows if other stars work in the same way, surely Trump doesn’t).

Nuclear reactors of up to 100 kilowatts may be needed to support human habitats, ISRU, other facilities, and rovers on both on the Moon and on Mars.

After all, just over a year ago the US Space Force got its first recruits, now called Guardians, and they’ve not even faced a lawsuit from ViacomCBS for ripping off the Star Trek logo, and from Disney for simply copying the name of the “Guardians of the Galaxy.”

These are only some of the successes – they also got their first deployment; it should be mentioned that it was off US soil – to Qatar, which is in the Middle East, not in Space. But why should that be a deterrent to Trump and his Space Force’s enthusiasm?

There’s really nothing new in space, and the race to get the upper hand in it. It’s been going on for years, and neither Neil Armstrong nor Yuri Gagarin put a pin in it.

In terms of militarization there have been concerns for a while, and all the leading powers have expressed their worries and have accused each other, more than once. The end of those empty accusations has come, however, and if nothing else, the US Space Force has lifted the arms race above the atmosphere.

It is unknown if Joe Biden and his administration will continue developing the Space Force and continue Trump’s legacy. Even if it does, it’s a significant question how it will do so.

Until then, however, other Middle Eastern countries (and potentially outer space at some point) should get ready, because Trump’s Space Force is coming to shake things up!

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Norway upped the number of deaths under investigation, from 23 last week to 33, while in Germany, health officials said they are investigating 10 deaths that occurred among elderly patients who received the COVID vaccine.

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China health experts say Norway and other countries should suspend the use of mRNA vaccines like those produced by Pfizer and Moderna, especially among the elderly, according to Global Times.

Norway health officials said last week they were investigating the deaths of 23 elderly people who died shortly after receiving the vaccine, and had confirmed 13 of those were directly related to the vaccine.

Today, Bloomberg reported that the number of deaths under investigation in Norway had risen to 33 and that all had occurred in people ranging from age 75 to 80. According to Bloomberg, Camilla Stoltenberg, head of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, said at a press conference today:

“It is important to remember that about 45 people die every day in nursing homes in Norway, so it is not a given that this represents any excess mortality or that there is a causal connection.”

The Norwegian Medicines Agency previously told Bloomberg that all of the deaths occurred in people who received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which until Friday was the only COVID vaccine approved for use in Norway.

The Norwegian Institute of Public Health, which had originally prioritized the elderly for the vaccine, has since revised its advice to urge more caution when vaccinating the elderly, especially those with underlying conditions.

The institute told Bloomberg that “for those with the most severe frailty, even relatively mild vaccine side effects can have serious consequences. For those who have a very short remaining life span anyway, the benefit of the vaccine may be marginal or irrelevant.”

The Institute also admitted to Global Times that the clinical trials that resulted in emergency approval of the vaccine included “very few people over the age of 85,” but added “we assume that the side effects will largely be the same in the elderly as in those over 65 years of age.”

According to the Global Times, a Beijing-based immunologist who requested anonymity said the mRNA vaccines had not proven safe for large-scale use or for preventing infectious diseases. Noting that people over 80 have weaker immune systems, he said they should not receive the vaccine, but instead should take medicines to improve their immune systems.

Meanwhile, The BMJ and other news outlets reported last week that in Germany, the Paul Ehrlich Institute is investigating 10 deaths in people ranging in age from 79 to 93 who died shortly after receiving the COVID vaccine.

U.S. health officials continue to push COVID vaccinations in nursing homes, despite growing resistance among nursing home employees to take the vaccine.

So far, there’s no word of any investigation into the deaths of 29 elderly people at a nursing home in New York. According to a Jan. 9 news report from Syracuse.com, a single nursing home in upstate New York vaccinated 193 residents beginning on Dec. 22 and subsequently reported 24 deaths within the span of a couple of weeks.

The facility attributed the deaths to a COVID-19 “outbreak,” even though there had been no COVID-19 deaths in any nursing homes in the entire county “until the first three deaths … were reported Dec. 29.”

Florida health officials and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are investigating the death of a 56-year-old doctor who died of a rare autoimmune disease 15 days after getting the Pfizer vaccine. A Johns Hopkins scientist told the New York Times it was a “medical certainty” that the death was related to Pfizer’s vaccine.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is investigating numerous severe allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, in healthcare workers who received the vaccine.

Sunday night, California health officials called for a pause on the use of a huge batch of Moderna’s COVID vaccine due to its ”higher-than-usual number of possible allergic reactions.” As The Defender reported this morning, California’s top epidemiologist Dr. Erica S. Pan is recommending providers pause the administration of lot ‘041L20A’ of the Moderna COVID vaccine.

According to the latest figures, updated Jan. 7, from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), 66 deaths have been reported in the U.S. as being possibly related to a COVID vaccine. It’s estimated that only 1% of vaccine injuries are reported to VAERS.

Anyone who suspects an injury or death related to the COVID vaccine, or any vaccine, can go to the VAERS website and file a report.

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New allegations have surfaced, accusing Syrian President Assad of some connection to the Beirut Port blast.  Allegations don’t need proof, and they are a tool used repeatedly by the US against nations and leaders who they deem as an enemy.

Lebanese officials had for years known the dangerous chemicals were improperly stored at the port.  No one took any action to ensure the safety and security of the residents of the area.  It was hinted that Hezbollah must be to blame, but it was later proven that Hezbollah had no control over the Port and its contents.

Faysal Itani, a political analyst and deputy director of the Center for Global Policy at Georgetown University wrote that the Port, like other aspects of Lebanese society, suffered from a “pervasive culture of negligence, petty corruption and blame-shifting.”

Now, they must find a scapegoat. Almost three months ago, Walid Jumblatt began unsubstantiated accusations against President Assad, accusing him of having a hand in the Beirut Port blast. Recently, a Lebanese filmmaker aired a segment on a Beirut TV channel, Al Jadeed, in which he makes some connections to Syrian-Russian businessmen. These men vigorously deny any connection to the blast.

Lebanon may become a failed state in terms of the government, banking, economy, electricity, medical care, and security.  President Macron of France has tried to help, but the Lebanese officials refuse to comply with common-sense measures.

The Beirut Port blast highlighted in deadly terms the depths of the failure of the administration. Now, a filmmaker and a corrupt politician are trying to blame President Assad. This would not be the first time the Assad government has been blamed without proof.

Rafik Hariri’s assassination

Rumors and unsubstantiated accusations were hurled at President Assad and his government after the death of Rafik Hariri’s death.

Rafik Hariri, a dual Lebanese-Saudi citizen, was a billionaire businessman who served as prime minister of Lebanon five times, with his last term in office in 2004, after which he aligned himself with the opposition in parliament and was a symbol of Saudi influence after the end of the Lebanese civil war.

On February 14, 2005, Hariri got into his car and after his motorcade passed along the seafront corniche, a truck bomb tore through his vehicle, leaving a massive crater and ripping the facades of the surrounding buildings.

In August 2005, four Lebanese generals were arrested at the request of the UN investigator but were released nearly four years later without charge.

Hariri’s son, Saad, led a coalition of anti-Syrian parties known as March 14, which was backed by the US and Saudi Arabia.

Saad Hariri, who had blamed Syria for his father’s death, retracted his accusation against Damascus in 2010.

On August 18, 2020, an UN-backed court found a member of the militant group Hezbollah guilty of involvement in the assassination of Hariri. Judges at the Netherlands-based Special Tribunal for Lebanon said Salim Ayyash had a central role in the bomb attack in Beirut in 2005 that killed Hariri.

They acquitted three other defendants, who like Ayyash were tried in absentia. The prosecution’s case relied on the analysis of calls between mobile phones that it said were used to plan, prepare, and execute the attack. One of the judges, David Re, said the court had found motive but not evidence.

Hezbollah denied any involvement, and the judges said no evidence implicated the Shia militant group’s leaders.

Saad Hariri told reporters outside the court: “I think today everybody’s expectation was much higher than what came out, but I believe the tribunal came out with a verdict that is satisfying and we accept it.”

Chemical use

President Obama, the architect of the US-NATO attack on Syria for ‘regime change’ made a famous speech in which he said the use of chemical weapons in Syria would be a ‘red line’.  In mid-March 2013 the ‘rebels’ in Syria attacked Khan al-Assal, a small town near Aleppo, and killed about 30 people, and injured others. The Syrian government began requesting the UN to send investigators, but the UN did not quickly respond. The UN was standing politically with the US, UK, France, and trying to pin the blame on Syria.

Carla Del-Ponte, a former Swiss attorney-general, and prosecutor with the International Criminal Tribunal said in May 2013, “strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof” suggesting the ‘rebels’ have used the nerve agent, sarin.

On August 18, 2013, a UN team of investigators arrived in Damascus, with Chemical weapons expert Ake Sellstrom in the lead. Before they could visit Khan al-Assal, the ‘rebels’ attacked East Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus on August 21, and uploaded videos that went viral on news media.  Claims of thousands dead from a sarin attack were made but without proof.

Ake Sellstrom said on August 24, 2013, “The weapons looked quite professional. But who has been using them, none of that we could conclude.”

Investigative journalist, Seymour M. Hersh, published “The Red Line and the Rat Line” which exposed the reason Obama decided not to attack Syria in September 2013 was the sample of the sarin used in East Ghouta was proven to not have come from a Syrian government source.

President Assad accused rebel groups supported by the US, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia of using chemical weapons to blame Syria because they were losing. The Syrian Arab Army has troops, weapons, and aircraft.  It has no motive to use chemical weapons when in a winning position.  It especially defies logic to ask for the UN inspectors to arrive to investigate chemical use by ‘rebels’, only to then use them just as the inspectors are unpacking their bags.

The repeated use of unsubstantiated accusations against President Assad and his government is not new, but an ongoing western led media war against Syria. This new accusation about the Beirut Port blast is a new chapter in a very old story.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is an award-winning journalist. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

After a resounding victory in the first real elections in which the Congolese participated, Patrice Lumumba became Prime Minister of Congo from 24 June 1960 until his overthrow and imprisonment on 14 September of the same year by Colonel Joseph-Désiré Mobutu and his supporters. Mobutu then ruled the country, first in the shadow, then directly from 1965 until his overthrow in 1997.

On 17 January 1961, Lumumba, this great fighter for Congo’s independence, for social justice and for internationalism, was tortured and then executed, along with several of his comrades, by Congolese leaders complicit with Western powers, as well as by Belgian police and soldiers. Lumumba was only 35 years old and could have continued to play a very important role in his country, in Africa and at a global level.

As journalist Colette Braeckman wrote,

“Patrice Lumumba, the Congolese Prime Minister who was illegally removed from office in September, placed under house arrest and then detained in Thysville, had been sent to Katanga on 17 January 1961. Five hours after his arrival on Katangan soil, he was put to death with his two companions Maurice M’Polo and Robert Okito.” [1]

Among the Congolese leaders who directly participated in the killing of Lumumba, we find Moïse Tshombé, self-proclaimed president of the Congolese province of Katanga, which seceded on 11 July 1960, less than two weeks after the independence of Congo on 30 June 1960. The Katangan secession proclaimed by Moïse Tshombe was supported by Belgium and the large Belgian mining corporations that controlled that part of Congo (see below) with a view to destabilizing the government led by Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba.

At least five Belgian policemen and soldiers were present at the assassination. Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, one of the major Congolese leaders responsible for the assassination of Lumumba, did not attend the murder as he was in in the capital city in the West of the country.

Belgium’s responsibility in the assassination of Lumumba in January 1961 was established by several historians, among whom Ludo De Witte in The assassination of Lumumba and was was the subject of a commission of inquiry within the Belgian Parliament in 2001-2002. See also Ludo De Witte’s interview in 2018,(in French).

In it De Witte sums up in simple words the causes that led to the assassination of Lumumba:

“Lumumba was a victim of imperialism. Actually the powers that wanted to continue imperial rule in Congo, replace a colonial system with a neocolonial system, a system in which Africans would wield political power but controlled by Western powers and their corporations. This is the neocolonialism Lumumba wanted to fight and this is why he was assassinated.”

We should remember the speech delivered by the the Prime Minister of the Republic of Congo, Patrice Lumumba, in reply to what Baudouin, King of the Belgians had said, namely,

“Congo’s independence is the culmination of the Belgian ‘civilising mission’ devised by the genius of Leopold II, which he launched with tenacious courage and which was continued with perseverance by Belgium.”

During the proclamation of Congo’s independence on June 30, 1960, the Prime Minister of Congo, Patrice Emery Lumumba, gave a memorable speech

In his speech Lumumba insisted that justice be done for the Congolese people. Here is an English translation of it.

Speech delivered in Parliament after those by King Baudouin and President Joseph Kasavubu, on the day of the proclamation of the independence of the Republic of Congo.

“Men and women of the Congo,

Victorious independence fighters,

I salute you in the name of the Congolese Government.

I ask all of you, my friends, who tirelessly fought in our ranks, to mark this June 30, 1960, as an illustrious date that will be ever engraved in your hearts, a date whose meaning you will proudly explain to your children, so that they in turn might relate to their grandchildren and great-grandchildren the glorious history of our struggle for freedom.

Although this independence of the Congo is being proclaimed today by agreement with Belgium, an amicable country, with which we are on equal terms, no Congolese will ever forget that independence was won in struggle, a persevering and inspired struggle carried on from day to day, a struggle, in which we were undaunted by privation or suffering and stinted neither strength nor blood.

It was filled with tears, fire and blood. We are deeply proud of our struggle, because it was just and noble and indispensable in putting an end to the humiliating bondage forced upon us.

That was our lot for the eighty years of colonial rule and our wounds are too fresh and much too painful to be forgotten.

We have experienced forced labour in exchange for pay that did not allow us to satisfy our hunger, to clothe ourselves, to have decent lodgings or to bring up our children as dearly loved ones.

Morning, noon and night we were subjected to jeers, insults and blows because we were ‘Negroes’. Who will ever forget that the black was addressed as ‘tu’ not because he was a friend, but because the polite ‘vous’ was reserved for the white man?

We have seen our lands seized in the name of ostensibly just laws, which gave recognition only to the right of might.

We have not forgotten that the law was never the same for the white and the black, that it was lenient to the ones, and cruel and inhuman to the others.

We have experienced atrocious sufferings, being persecuted for political convictions and religious beliefs, and exiled from our native land: our lot was worse than death itself.

We have not forgotten that in the cities the mansions were for the whites and the tumbledown huts for the blacks; that a black was not admitted to the cinemas, restaurants and shops set aside for ‘Europeans’ that blacks travelled in the barge’s holds, under the feet of the whites in their luxury cabins.

Who will ever forget the shootings which killed so many of our brothers, or the cells into which were mercilessly thrown those who no longer wished to submit to the regime of injustice, oppression and exploitation used by the colonialists as a tool of their domination?

All that, my brothers, brought us untold suffering.

But we, who were elected by the votes of your representatives, representatives of the people, to guide our native land, we, who have suffered in body and soul from colonial oppression, we tell you that henceforth all that is finished with.

The Republic of Congo has been proclaimed and our beloved country’s future is now in the hands of its own people.

Brothers, let us commence together a new struggle, a sublime struggle that will lead our country to peace, prosperity and greatness.

Together we shall establish social justice and ensure for everyone a fair remuneration for their labour.

We shall show the world what the black man can do when working in liberty, and we shall make the Congo the pride of Africa.

We shall see to it that the lands of our native country truly benefit its children.

We shall revise all the old laws and make them into new ones that will be just and noble.

We shall stop the persecution of free thought. We shall see to it that all citizens enjoy to the fullest extent the basic freedoms provided for by the Declaration of Human Rights.

We shall eradicate all discrimination, whatever its origin, and we shall ensure for everyone a station in life befitting their human dignity and worthy of their labour and their loyalty to the country.

We shall institute in the country a peace resting not on guns and bayonets but on concord and goodwill.

And in all this, my dear compatriots, we can rely not only on our own enormous forces and immense wealth, but also on the assistance of the numerous foreign states, whose co-operation we shall accept when it is not aimed at imposing upon us an alien policy, but is given in a spirit of friendship.

Even Belgium, which has finally learned the lesson of history and need no longer try to oppose our independence, is prepared to give us its aid and friendship; to that end an agreement has just been signed between our two equal and independent countries. I am sure that this co-operation will benefit both countries. For our part, we shall, while remaining vigilant, try to observe the engagements we have freely made.

Thus, both in the internal and the external spheres, the new Congo, our beloved Republic to be created by my government, will be rich, free and prosperous. But to attain our goal without delay, I ask all of you, legislators and citizens of the Congo, to give us all the help you can.

I ask you all to forget your tribal quarrels: they weaken us and may cause us to be despised abroad.

I ask you all not to shrink from any sacrifice that might ensure the success of our grand undertaking.

Finally, I ask you unconditionally to respect the life and property of fellow-citizens and foreigners who have settled in our country. If the conduct of these foreigners leaves much to be desired, our Justice will promptly expel them from the territory of the Republic; if, on the contrary, their conduct is good, they must be left in peace, for they, too, are working for our country’s prosperity.

The Congo’s independence is a decisive step towards the liberation of the whole African continent.

Our government, a government of national and popular unity, will serve its country.

I call on all Congolese citizens, men, women and children, to set themselves resolutely to the task of creating a national economy and ensuring our economic independence.

Eternal glory to the fighters for national liberation!

Long live independence and African unity!
Long live the independent and sovereign Congo!”

Lumumba, a fighter for internationalism

Before becoming Prime Minister, Lumumba had woven steadfast connections with a number of anti-imperialist, panafricanist and internationalist movements and people. In December 1958, he attended the All African Peoples’ Conference in Accra where he met among others the Caribbean-Algerian psychiatrist and freedom fighter Frantz Fanon, the Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah and the Cameroonian anti-colonialist leader Félix-Roland Moumié. [2] He made a speech in which he said, “The fundamental aim of our movement is to free the Congolese people from the colonialist regime and earn them their independence. We base our action on the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man — rights guaranteed to each and every citizen of humanity by the United Nations Charter — and we are of the opinion that the Congo, as a human society, has the right to join the ranks of free peoples.” He concluded with the following words, “This is why we passionately cry out with all the delegates: Down with colonialism and imperialism! Down with racism and tribalism! And long live the Congolese nation, long live independent Africa!”

At the end of the All African Peoples’ Conference, Lumumba was appointed a permanent member of the co-ordinating committee, as Saïd Bouamama recalls in his Figures de la révolution africaine. [3] Lumumba was also in close contact with Belgian anticolonialist and anticapitalist militants such as Jean Van Lierde, who worked in support of the revolution in Algeria and who maintained close ties [4] with the weekly La Gaucheand its main driving force, Ernest Mandel.

A few weeks after the conference in Accra, Lumumba and his movement held a meeting to report on the proceedings of the anticolonialist summit in Léopoldville, then capital of the Belgian Congo. He called for the independence of Congo before an audience of 10,000. He described the goal of the Mouvement National Congolais as “to liquidate the colonialist regime and the exploitation of men by men.” [5]

According to Le Monde Diplomatique of February 1959, a riot broke out in Léopoldville following the conference, beginning 4 January1959. This is what the French monthly had to say: “The origin of the riot is directly related to the All-Africa Peoples’ Conference in Accra. It was as the leaders of the Mouvement National Congolais — headed by the president of the movement, Mr. Lumumba — were preparing to hold a public meeting on the subject that the unrest first broke out. With the authorisation of the Governor General of the Belgian Congo, Mr. Cornelis, a delegation of Congolese nationalists, led by Mr. Lumumba, had travelled to Ghana in December. It was as the delegation was preparing to report on its visit and its work, on 4 January, that the police gave the conference attendees and those who had come to hear them the order to disperse.” [6]

It is important to point out that during the year 1959, the repression organised by colonialist Belgium resulted in the deaths of dozens if not hundreds of people. One example of the extent of the repression: in October 1959, during the national congress of the Mouvement National Congolais (MNC) in Stanleyville, police fired into the crowd, killing 30 and wounding hundreds. Lumumba was arrested a few days later, tried in January 1960 and sentenced to six months in prison on 21 January 1960.

But protest was so intense that out of fear, the regime in Brussels decided to defuse the situation by calling local elections in which the Congolese were allowed to participate. Lumumba was freed on 26 January, only a few days after his sentencing. Finally, following the local elections, a general election was held in May 1960, the first in the history of the Belgian Congo. The Mouvement National Congolais (MNC) won the election and as a result Lumumba was appointed prime minister.

The sequence of events that led to the coup against Lumumba and to his assassination

Following Lumumba’s speech of 30 June, the Belgian government, the monarchy and the heads of the major Belgian companies present in Congo decided to destabilize Lumumba and provoke the secession of Katanga, the province where most of the raw materials (copper, cobalt, radium) were extracted. Congolese accomplices immediately stepped up in the form of Moïse Tshombé, proclaimed president of Katanga on 11 July 1960, President Joseph Kasa-Vubu, who revoked Lumumba in September 1960 despite having no constitutional authority to do so, and Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, who led a coup d’état a few days later and had Lumumba arrested, despite the fact that his ministers had expressed their confidence in him and that his party was the leading party in the parliament. Mobutu, who had had a military career during the colonial period and was a former journalist for the pro-colonial press in Congo, had managed to be appointed to the rank of colonel in the new army and quickly turned against Congo’s elected government.

Belgium, as a member of NATO, had a heavily-equipped military zone in Western Germany extending from the Belgian border to that of the Soviet-aligned countries. The Belgian general staff had at its disposal a considerable military arsenal, at least partly originating in the USA, and NATO allowed them to deploy aircraft, troop transports and even warships which bombarded Congolese positions in the Congo estuary. The US government and CIA were also at the controls “alongside” the Belgians, with whom they had decided to assassinate Lumumba. [7]. France was also on board. In a telegram dated 26 August 1960, the director of the CIA, Allen Dulles, told his agents in Léopoldville, concerning Lumumba: “Consequently, we concluded that his removal must be an urgent and prime objective and that under existing conditions this should be a high priority of our covert action.” [8]

We should mention that on 12 August 1960, Belgium had signed an accord with Tshombé, recognising de facto the independence of Katanga. The attempts made by Lumumba’s government to deal with the secession were fully legitimate, but were fought against by the major Western powers.

Despite his arrest by Mobutu, Lumumba did not capitulate and maintained contact with the ministers who remained faithful to their commitments, and with his comrades. A clandestine government led by Antoine Gizenga was established in Stanleyville. Lumumba managed to escape from his jailers on 27 November 1960 and attempted to join up with the government in Stanleyville, but was arrested a few days later in transit. In January 1961, with Lumumba still highly popular, Mobutu and the Western powers feared that a popular revolt would lead to the leader’s liberation and decided to have him executed. The operation leading to Lumumba’s execution was directly accompanied and directed by Belgians on orders from Brussels. On 17 January 1961, Lumumba, Maurice Mpolo and Joseph Okito were taken in an airplane piloted by a Belgian crew to Élisabethville, the capital of Katanga, and handed over to the local authorities. They were then tortured by Katangese leaders, including Moïse Tshombé, and by Belgians. They were shot that evening by soldiers under the command of a Belgian officer.

According to the testimony of Belgian Gerard Soete, then police commissioner in charge of setting up a “Katangese national police force”, the three bodies were transported 220 kilometres from the place of execution, and were buried in the earth behind a termite mound, in the middle of a wooded savannah.

Image on the right: Mobutu and Ronald Reagan

The AFP, which had collected this testimony, reports that three days later the bodies were moved again to delete any possibility of tracking them. Soete said he was accompanied by “another white man” and a few Congolese when they cut up the corpses with saws and dissolved them in acid. [9]

Belgium’s support for the Mobutu dictatorship

The Belgian army intervened twice in the Congo to help Mobutu and his dictatorial regime to crush the resistance of Lumumbist organizations, first in November 1964 with the operation Red Dragon and Black Dragon, respectively at Stanleyville and at Paulis. On this occasion, the operation was jointly led by the Belgian army, Mobutu’s army, the General Staff of the US army and mercenaries, among whom some anti-Castro Cubans.

In a speech delivered at the UN General Assembly in November 1964, Ernesto Che Guevara condemned this intervention, as he also did in a speech delivered in Santiago de Cuba, “today, the most poignant and pervasive memory that stays with us is that of the Congo and of Lumumba. Today, in that country that is both so distant and so near to our hearts, historical events have occurred which we have to know about, as we have to learn from what has been experienced. The other day, Belgian parachutists assaulted the city of Stanleyville.” (excerpt from Che Guevara’s speech in Santiago de Cuba on 30 November 1964, on the occasion of the 8^th anniversary of the town’s uprising led by Frank País (translation CADTM, from the French version).

The second intervention of the Belgian army occurred in Kolwezi in the heart of the mining area of Shaba (Katanga) in May 1978 in collaboration with the French army and Mobutu’s army.

Litigation still in progress in Belgium concerning the assassination of Lumumba

The Belgian courts have not yet handed down a judgment concerning the murder of Lumumba. If the case has remained open, it is only due to the ongoing actions of all those who are determined to see justice done. The Lumumba family continues its actions toward revealing the truth. A Belgian examining magistrate is still in charge of the case since it has been classified as a war crime to which no statute of limitations applies. And as the family’s attorney, Christophe Marchand, pointed out to Belgian television on 23 June 2011 “the main instigators are all dead today (…) but former advisors and attachés of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are still alive.”

Image below: Lumumba in Brussels (1960) (CC – Wikimedia)

Lumumba has become an emblematic figure

The figure of Patrice Lumumba has traversed history and still serves today as an example for all who champion the emancipation of peoples. Lumumba never surrendered.

Such was his popularity under the regime of the dictator Mobutu that the latter decreed Patrice Lumumba a national hero in 1966. Not satisfied with having overthrown him in September 1960 and with being one of the main organizers of his murder, Mobutu attempted to steal a part of his aura. The day of his execution, 17 January, is a bank holiday in Congo-Kinshasa.

In Brussels, after years of actions by anticolonialist militants, the municipal council voted on 23 April 2018 to create a square, the Place Patrice-Lumumba, which was officially inaugurated on 30 June of the same year, the date of the 58^th anniversary of the independence of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

But all of that amounts to very little.

Beyond the need to disseminate the truth about Lumumba’s struggle and to demand that justice be done him, his struggle and that of all the women and men of Congo who fought against all forms of spoliation, oppression and exploitation must be continued.

That is why the CADTM feels that the Belgian authorities must:

• Recognise publicly and name all of the abuses and crimes committed against the people of Congo by Léopold II and the Belgian monarchy, and make official excuses;
• Deepen and extend the task of remembrance by involving the appropriate personnel both in public education and popular educational activities and including in institutional areas;
• Restore all Congolese cultural property to the Congolese;
• Actively support the review of all colonialist symbols in public spaces in Belgium;
• Conduct a historical audit of debt in order to make unconditional financial reparation and retrocession for the amounts extracted during the colonisation of Congo;
• Take action within the multilateral institutions (World Bank, IMF, Paris Club, etc.) so that their members totally and unconditionally cancel repayment of all odious debt on the Democratic Republic of Congo;
• Publicly support all moratoria on repayment of debt enacted by the government of Congo in order to improve the public health system and face the epidemic of CoViD-19 and other diseases which cause deaths that would be entirely preventable if expenditures on public health are increased.

The CADTM supports the various collectives calling for actions in Belgium in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests and all those who are taking action in the area of awareness of colonialism.

The CADTM supports the Congolese people in facing the health, economic and social consequences of the CoViD-19 crisis. In spite of the diktats of creditors and the serious failures of successive Congo governments, which have resulted in severe repression and flagrant denial of fundamental human rights, social movements in Congo have resisted. The CADTM supports these and other struggles for social justice.

Source : World Bank, CD-Rom, GDF, 2001

“In many cases, the loans were used to corrupt governments during the Cold War. The issue was not whether the money was improving a country’s welfare, but whether it was leading to a stable situation, given the geopolitical realities in the world.” \

Joseph E. Stiglitz, Chief Economist of the World Bank from 1997 to 1999, Nobel Laureate in Economics in 2001, on a French television show L’Autre mondialisation (The Other Globalization), on Arte, March 7, 2000

Therefore, the IMF and the WB, where de Groote was a senior official, became complicit in the abuses committed by the Mobutu regime against human, economic, social and cultural rights inasmuch as they maintained their support for the dictatorial system, which did not at all honour its financial obligations.

“The issue of the moral responsibility of the creditors was particularly apparent in the case of Cold War loans. When the IMF and the World Bank lent money to the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s notorious ruler Mobutu, they knew (or should have known) that most of the money would not go to help that country’s poor people, but rather would be used to enrich Mobutu. It was money paid to ensure that this corrupt leader would keep his country aligned with the West. To many, it doesn’t seem fair for ordinary taxpayers in countries with corrupt governments to have to repay loans that were made to leaders who did not represent them.” – Joseph Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents, 2002

Mobutu and his clan used the State coffers as a steady and plentiful source of personal enrichment with three different kinds of misappropriation: legal, illegal, and mysterious expenditures. The legal ones, such as the presidential endowment, was allocated without any control. The illegal expenditures are described in the Blumenthal report (this secret report was made public in 1982), [20] which indicates that it was impossible to control the State’s financial transactions since the presidential office hardly made a distinction between personal expenses and public spending. Erwin Blumenthal identified at least seven bank accounts held abroad that were used to channel money directly to Mobutu’s personal bank accounts or to corrupt political figures. Erwin Blumenthal’s message was clear: “The corruptive system in Zaire with all its wicked and ugly manifestations, its mismanagement and fraud will destroy all endeavours of international institutions, of friendly governments and of commercial banks towards the recovery and rehabilitation of Zaire’s economy. Sure, there will be new promises by Mobutu, […] but no (repeat: no) prospect for Zaire’s creditors to get their money back in any foreseeable future.” [21]

Since 1979, the main lenders to Mobutu’s regime, closely connected to the IMF, had known and been aware of these fraudulent practices, and of the risk they were taking by continuing to lend to Mobutu.

As indicated in this report, the third category of embezzlement consisted of “mysterious expenditures.” One of the State’s largest budget items (accounting for 18% according to a 1989 World Bank study) was “other goods and services,” a hotchpotch with little information on how the expenditures were allocated. According to World Bank experts, most of the money was used for extravagant expenditures as well as to purchase military equipment. This shows that the World Bank was also well aware of the illegal use made of the loans it was granting.

By the mid-1970s, it was clear that the money injected into Zaire in the form of loans or grants was systematically misappropriated. They were either directly transferred to personal bank accounts held abroad  [22] or invested in prestigious, inadequate, and/or useless projects that helped many people to get richer, but certainly did not help the sustainable industrialisation of the economy. For instance, according to the Office of ill-gotten gains (Office des biens mal acquis, OBMA), which was created at the National Conference, Mobutu supposedly pocketed a 7% commission on the value of the Inga hydroelectric plant. The investigation could not be pursued to its conclusion because of resistance from official circles.  [23]

J. de Groote actively supported Mobutu’s regime and intervened several times to improve the relationships between the IMF, the World Bank and Mobutu, although he was very well placed to know in detail what Blumenthal denounced in his report. He also knew about the serious violations of human rights committed by the Mobutu regime.

Yet in 1994, at the end of his term, de Groote said he was satisfied with his action vis-à-vis Congo-Kinshasa. While all along, the vast majority of the Congolese people lived in great misery, the persecutions and assassinations of opponents were rife, and the economy was devastated.

Belgian private corporations systematically derived profits from the relationships between Belgium and the Congo

The excerpt below speaks for itself. It was pronounced by Jacques de Groote in a speech given in 1986 to a group of Belgian company directors, and then published in the Bulletin de la Fédération des Entreprises de Belgique (Newsletter of the Federation of Belgian Companies). “The advantages Belgium derives from its participation in the activities of the Group’s institutions– as do all World Bank member countries – can be measured in terms of flow-back, that is to say the relationship between, on the one hand, the total amount of disbursements made by the IDA (International Development Association, which is part of the World Bank Group) or the World Bank in favour of a country’s companies, when these companies sign contracts, and, on the other hand, the contributions of this country to the Bank’s capital, as well as to the IDA’s resources. Flow-back is thus the relationship between what the companies obtain via the sales of equipment or consulting services and what Belgium provides as a contribution to the IDA’s resources and to the Bank’s capital. The flow-back from the World Bank toward industrialised countries is significant, and has continually increased: for all industrialised countries, it has increased from 7 to 10 from the end of 1980 to the end of 1984. In other words, for one dollar put into the system, the industrialised countries got back $7 in 1980 and receive $10.5 today.”  [31]

Jacques de Groote after the end of his term at the IMF and World Bank

In his interview with Béatrice Delvaux from Le Soir in March 1994, at the end of his term at the IMF, de Groote congratulated himself on the role he had played in the decision made by Belgium to adopt the neoliberal agenda in the 1980s.

Béatrice Delvaux : “You did, however, from Washington play a major role in the orientation of Belgian economic policy. You provided a guarantee from the IMF for the economic shift at the beginning of the 1980s, in close relationship with the Poupehan group?”  [32] J. de Groote’s response: “Absolutely, and I’m extremely proud of this. I am even extremely satisfied. At that time, we completed studies that enabled the major economic policy options to be defined for Belgium, which were then discussed with Alfons Verplaetse, [33] and other figures including Wilfried Martens.”  [34]

These statements provide a good illustration of the close relationships between figures like De Groote and the key political leaders in a particular country. De Groote acknowledged, moreover, that the independence of the Belgian National Bank was only for the form, because Belgian (monetary) policy was defined in a very small, secretive circle bringing together key stakeholders, ranging from the Prime Minister to the Governor of the National Bank, and including the head of the Christian Unions and representatives of corporate management, all in cahoots with the IMF.

Belgium’s attitude after Mobutu’s fall

Belgium was complicit in whitewashing the odious debt accumulated by Mobutu. Instead of acknowledging that it had to be cancelled because it was illegitimate, Belgium got involved in the setting up of a complex mechanism whereby the Congolese people were bound to lose and the creditors that had helped the former regime were to win

After Mobutu’s fall, in spite of pleas from the CADTM and other organizations, the Belgian government did not do anything to help the Congolese people retrieve the money that Mobutu and his clan had embezzled and invested in cash or real estate in Belgium. Yet a country like Switzerland had moved a long way in that direction, for once. But the ties between the Belgian ruling class and Mobutu’s clan were so tight that nothing conclusive was done even though some magistrates tried to take positive measures.

Later, Belgium was complicit in whitewashing the odious debt accumulated by Mobutu. Instead of acknowledging that it had to be cancelled because it was illegitimate, Belgium got involved in the setting up of a complex mechanism whereby the Congolese people were bound to lose and the creditors that had helped the former regime were to win.

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This article was originally published on CADTM.

Translated by Snake Arbusto and Christine Pagnoulle

Source of the two appendices: Éric Toussaint, “Reply to the letter by Philippe, King of the Belgians, about Belgium’s responsibility in the exploitation of the Congolese people”

Eric Toussaint is a historian and political scientist who completed his Ph.D. at the universities of Paris VIII and Liège, is the spokesperson of the CADTM International, and sits on the Scientific Council of ATTAC France. He is the author of Debt System (Haymarket books, Chicago, 2019), Bankocracy (2015); The Life and Crimes of an Exemplary Man (2014); Glance in the Rear View Mirror. Neoliberal Ideology From its Origins to the Present, Haymarket books, Chicago, 2012 (see here), etc.

Notes

Today – Friday 15th January – over 50,000 restaurants are planning to open, an act of mass civil disobedience against “anti-Covid” lockdown measures which have massively hurt the restaurant business, especially small family-owned businesses.

Spreading through social media under the hashtag #IoOpro (“I am opening”), the movement is largest country-wide act of civil disobedience since lockdowns began.

Italain opposition MP Vittorio Sgarbi has backed the movement, saying in an interview:

Open up, & don’t worry, in the end we will make them eat their fines”.

Italy’s government is already facing internal conflict and crisis, an early election is a possibility.

A similar movement already started in Mexico on January 12th, when hundreds of restaurant owners gathered to protest the lockdowns:

Mexico 🇲🇽 Epic scenes, Over 500 restaurants have joined forces, agreeing to open up together, defying LOCKDOWN. Forced closed since Dec 18, they've stated it's either 'WE OPEN UP OR WE DIE'. Long Live the People 💥👊 pic.twitter.com/PeSQpaGtqb

— ✖️TIME ✖️2✖️RISE✖️ (@itstime2rise) January 12, 2021

The “I am Open” protest is spreading across Europe as well, with variants already taking hold in German-speaking Switzerland (#Wirmachenauf) and Poland (#OtwieraMY).

It’s good to be reminded that, no matter how much it looks like the new normal is spreading unopposed, it’s not. People all over the world are resisting where they can. That’s what “Covid Positive” is all about.

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Featured image is from OffGuardian

In August 2010, the secretary-general of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, Ahmed Djoghlaf, warned that ‘We are losing biodiversity at an unprecedented rate.’ According to the UN Environment Program, ‘the Earth is in the midst of a mass extinction of life’ with scientists estimating that ‘150-200 species of plant, insect, bird and mammal become extinct every 24 hours’ which is nearly 1,000 times the ‘natural’ or ‘background’ rate. Moreover, it ‘is greater than anything the world has experienced since the vanishing of the dinosaurs nearly 65m years ago.’

See ‘Protect nature for world economic security, warns UN biodiversity chief’.

Two months later, at the tenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, held from 18 to 29 October 2010, in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture in Japan, a revised and updated Strategic Plan for Biodiversity, including the Aichi Biodiversity Targets, for the 2011-2020 period was adopted.

See ‘Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020, including Aichi Biodiversity Targets’.

You can read the 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets on the Convention’s website. They were ambitious but represented a realistic assessment of what needed to be achieved by 2020 if national governments were to achieve the longer term goal of ‘Living in Harmony with Nature’ by 2050. The 2050 Vision for Biodiversity required ‘a significant shift away from “business as usual” across a broad range of human activities.’

See ‘Global Biodiversity Outlook 5’.

So how have we done in the past ten years?

In 2015, distinguished conservationists Professor Gerardo Ceballos, Anne H. Ehrlich and Professor Paul R. Ehrlich published their book titled The Annihilation of Nature: Human Extinction of Birds and Mammals which tells the story of humanity’s ‘massive and escalating assault on all living things on this planet’ precipitating what is now Earth’s sixth great mass extinction: ‘a time of darkness for our planet’s birds and mammals’.

Noting that the roots of this destruction ‘run deep through time’ with human hunting and other activities responsible for pushing populations of animals to extinction long before the agricultural revolution (which began about 10,000 years ago), they observe that the current collective assault on animals, plants and microbes has reached a level so horrendous that ‘any alarm call we might sound will be too faint to match the tragedy that is unfolding’. But while the decimation of life that is currently underway is being caused by Homo sapiens, the consequences of this decimation will also have impact on humanity itself because the life-forms being annihilated are ‘working parts of life-support systems on which civilization depends’.

Despite the impressive statistics that record the demise of life on Earth and the fundamental threat this extinction crisis poses, Cebellos and the Ehrlichs are well aware that the public and politicians generally are not reacting emotionally to this crisis as do those who are ‘deeply familiar with the impoverishment of nature’. They hope we can relate to the fate of the last Spix’s macaw, a male that searched fruitlessly for a mate until it disappeared from the savannah of northeastern Brazil in 2000.

And did you know that even the iconic African lion may be facing extinction in the wild? In 2015, as a result of decades of hunting, disease and habitat loss, only 23,000 lions remained in Africa’s vast savannahs: less than 10% of what roamed there in 1950. There are fewer lions today.

But separately from species extinctions, Earth continues to experience ‘a huge episode of population declines and extirpations, which will have negative cascading consequences on ecosystem functioning and services vital to sustaining civilization’. In a 2017 report, Professor Ceballos and his coauthors describe what they label ‘a “biological annihilation” to highlight the current magnitude of Earth’s ongoing sixth major extinction event.’ Moreover, local population extinctions ‘are orders of magnitude more frequent than species extinctions. Population extinctions, however, are a prelude to species extinctions, so Earth’s sixth mass extinction episode has proceeded further than most assume.’

See ‘Biological annihilation via the ongoing sixth mass extinction signaled by vertebrate population losses and declines’.

Beyond even this, however, many additional species are now trapped in a feedback loop that will inevitably precipitate their extinction as well because of the way in which ‘co-extinctions’, ‘localized extinctions’ and ‘extinction cascades’ work once initiated and as has already occurred in almost all ecosystem contexts. See the (so far) six-part series ‘Our Vanishing World’.

Have you seen a flock of birds of any size recently? A butterfly?

What is Driving the Sixth Mass Extinction?

Homo sapiens. And the key tool is always destruction of habitat, whether on land or in the ocean.

Of course, particular human behaviours have a huge impact. Fighting wars (or even just wasting resources to manufacture weapons and other military infrastructure) is one (particularly given that the perpetual war in which the US is engaged is to secure resources and markets), destroying the climate is another and deploying 5G is yet another. But there are many other destructive human behaviours too.

Consider the forests. Just last year, 6.5 million hectares of pristine forest were cut or burnt down for purposes such as clearing land to establish cattle farms so that many people can eat cheap hamburgers, mining (much of it illegal) for a variety of minerals (such as gold, silver, copper, coltan, cassiterite and diamonds) and logging to produce woodchips so that some people can buy cheap paper (including cheap toilet paper).

See ‘Our Vanishing World: Rainforests’.

One outcome of this destruction is that 40,000 tropical tree species are now threatened with extinction. In addition, rainforest destruction is also the primary cause of species extinctions globally given the number of species that live in rainforests.

See ‘Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services’.

Another outcome is that ‘the precious Amazon is teetering on the edge of functional destruction and, with it, so are we’.

See ‘Amazon Tipping Point: Last Chance for Action’.

And in relation to another major habitat that is being destroyed, consider the world’s oceans. In summary, the oceans are warming, acidifying and deoxygenating; being contaminated with nuclear radiation, by offshore oil and gas drilling as well as oil spills; being damaged by deep sea mining; being polluted by industrial (including chemical) and farming wastes while being damaged in a myriad other ways and being overfished.

In short: the oceans are under siege on a vast range of fronts and are effectively ‘dying’. For a comprehensive 18-point summary,

see ‘Our Vanishing World: Oceans’.

If you like, you can read comprehensive summaries of the fate of Earth’s birds and insects too.

See ‘Our Vanishing World: Birds’ and ‘Our Vanishing World: Insects’.

What is the State of Play in early 2021?

In a report published by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) in May 2020, the authors observe that ‘Nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history – and the rate of species extinctions is accelerating, with grave impacts on people around the world now likely.’ With a total estimated number of animal and plant species on Earth of 8 million (of which 5.5 million are insect species), an accelerating daily extinction rate combined with an ongoing decline in ecosystem health, the report concludes that 1,000,000 species of life on Earth are threatened with extinction.

See ‘Nature’s Dangerous Decline “Unprecedented”; Species Extinction Rates “Accelerating”’ and ‘A million threatened species? Thirteen questions and answers’.

And the latest edition of the Convention on Biological Diversity’s flagship publication ‘Global Biodiversity Outlook 5’was published on 18 August 2020. It reports that ‘Humanity stands at a crossroads with regard to the legacy it leaves to future generations. Biodiversity is declining at an unprecedented rate, and the pressures driving this decline are intensifying. None of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets will be fully met.’

But this is an understatement, to put it politely.

In their commentary on this predicament in November 2020, scholars Ruchi Shroff and Carla Ramos Cortés note that ‘Despite wide-spread international calls to curb the sixth mass extinction, no single goal of the Convention of Biological Diversity’s Aichi Biodiversity Targets, for the second consecutive decade, have been met. In some cases, biodiversity loss has been made worse as no action has been taken to curb pesticide use, pollution, fossil fuels and plastics.’

See ‘The Biodiversity Paradigm: Building Resilience for Human and Environmental Health’.

But the destruction is far worse than suggested by this. Given, as already noted above, the ongoing destruction of rainforests and oceans, not to mention other habitats ranging from wetlands to deserts, the annihilation of life on Earth continues to accelerate with no indicators signaling that this destruction is being slowed in any way.

Therefore, destruction of biodiversity remains one of the four primary paths to human extinction (along with nuclear war, the deployment of 5G and the climate catastrophe).

Is it too late to do anything?

It might be. As mentioned above: Because many species are now trapped in a feedback loop that will inevitably precipitate their extinction because of the way in which ‘co-extinctions’, ‘localized extinctions’ and ‘extinction cascades’ work once initiated, many further extinctions are now inevitable.

However, we can take action to save those individuals and species not yet trapped in a feedback loop and that might yet be saved. But if you wait for governments or corporations to act responsibly, you will wait in vain as the last 20 years has demonstrated.

So you have some powerful options to consider. The first, and most important, is to consider the ways in which you can reduce your own consumption. The planetary environment is only being destroyed so that governments and corporations can respond to consumer demand. Everything from military spending and war to the extraction and burning of fossil fuels are fundamentally driven by what you buy. And each and every item that you buy has a negative environmental impact. There are no exceptions.

If you reduce your own consumption and increase your self-reliance, you will reduce the burden that extraction, transport, manufacture and distribution of resources imposes on the natural environment resulting in the destruction of habitat and the annihilation of biodiversity.

One option to consider is ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’ which outlines a graduated series of steps for reducing consumption and increasing self-reliance.

If you want to better understand why so many human beings are addicted to endless consumption, see ‘Love Denied: The Psychology of Materialism, Violence and War’. There is more detail on the origins of this behaviour in ‘Why Violence?’and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.

If you are inclined to campaign to defend biodiversity in one context or another, whether by campaigning to end war, halt the climate catastrophe, stop the deployment of 5G or end wildlife trafficking for example, consider doing so strategically.

See ‘Nonviolent Campaign Strategy’.

You might also consider signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’.

Conclusion

One species – Homo sapiens – is annihilating life on Earth, driving at least 200 species to extinction each day. In the time it took you to read this article, another species of life on Earth vanished into the fossil record.

This annihilation of life is driven by our over-consumption. As Mahatma Gandhi, already wearing his own homespun cloth, noted more than 100 years ago: ‘Earth provides enough for every person’s need but not for every person’s greed.’

Of course, many people around the world are not responsible for over-consuming; they live life on its margins, with barely enough to eat let alone thrive. And this reflects inequities built into a global economic system that prioritizes profit for the few, not resources for living for all.

So that means that the burden for reducing consumption must fall on those in industrialized societies who benefit from the maldistribution of planetary resources.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once noted that ‘The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.’

If we are to prove him wrong, we do not have much time left.

This is because Homo sapiens is a part of the web of life. And we are ruthlessly destroying that web.

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Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is [email protected] and his website is here. He is a frequent contributor to ‘Global Research’.

The Earth Pledge

Out of love for the Earth and all of its creatures, and my respect for their needs, from this day onwards I pledge that:

1. I will listen deeply to children. See ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’.
2. I will not travel by plane
3. I will not travel by car
4. I will not eat meat and fish
5. I will only eat organically/biodynamically grown food
6. I will minimize the amount of fresh water I use, including by minimizing my ownership and use of electronic devices
7. I will not own or use a mobile (cell) phone
8. I will not buy rainforest timber
9. I will not buy or use single-use plastic, such as bags, bottles, containers, cups and straws
10. I will not use banks, superannuation (pension) funds or insurance companies that provide any service to corporations involved in fossil fuels, nuclear power and/or weapons
11. I will not accept employment from, or invest in, any organization that supports or participates in the exploitation of fellow human beings or profits from killing and/or destruction of the biosphere
12. I will not get news from the corporate media (mainstream newspapers, television, radio, Google, Facebook, Twitter…)
13. I will make the effort to learn a skill, such as food gardening or sewing, that makes me more self-reliant
14. I will gently encourage my family and friends to consider signing this pledge.

Founded in 1971, the Geneva-based World Economic Forum (WEF) meets annually in Davos, Switzerland.

It brings together top business and political leaders, along with likeminded pro-New World Order economists and pseudo-journalists.

Calling itself “an independent international organization committed to improving the state of the world by engaging leaders in partnerships to shape global, regional and industry agendas” is cover for its diabolical agenda.

The WEF’s Great Reset about to be formally rolled out aims to establish ruler-serf societies worldwide.

It wants ordinary people exploited serve the privileged few worldwide that goes beyond what Orwell and Huxley imagined.

It’s a diabolical scheme promoted by the WEF’s executive chairman Klaus Schwab — a dystopian nightmare wrapped in deceptive equitable socioeconomic rhetoric.

Made-in-the-USA covid (renamed seasonal flu/influenza) that unleashed lockdowns, quarantines, social distancing, and harmful to human health mask-wearing caused unprecedented economic collapse in the US, West, and elswhere.

Events of last year — continuing in 2021 with no end of them in prospect — were planned by dark forces before unleashed on unsuspecting billions of people worldwide.

For Schwab and likeminded extremists, what’s going on is a “unique window of opportunity” for global leaders to reshape “global relations…national economies, the priorities of societies, the nature of business models, and the management of a global commons…”

Instead of serving “the dignity” and interests “of every human being,” it intends exploiting them.

The Great Reset is an updated new world order, a diabolical socioeconomic “revamp” worldwide.

If achieved, life as once existed will be replaced by Dante’s Hell.

According to upcoming late January Davos Agenda propaganda:

“The (covid) pandemic has demonstrated that no institution or individual alone can address the economic, environmental, social and technological challenges of our complex, interdependent world (sic).”

“The pandemic has accelerated systemic changes that were apparent before its inception (sic).”

“The fault lines that emerged in 2020 now appear as critical crossroads in 2021 (sic).”

“The time to rebuild trust (sic)) and to make crucial choices is fast approaching as the need to reset priorities and the urgency to reform systems (sic) grow stronger around the world (sic).”

“The Davos Agenda is a pioneering (sic) mobilization of global leaders to shape the principles, policies and partnerships needed in this challenging new context (sic).”

“It is essential for leaders from all walks of life to work together virtually for a more inclusive, cohesive and sustainable future as soon as possible in 2021 (sic).”

Seven diabolical themes that pretend to be beneficial for societies and their people are worlds apart from what’s claimed.

They include the following:

“How to save the planet” by plundering it for maximum profit-making.

Exploitive economies masquerading as “fairer” ones.

“Tech” for pure evil called “good.”

“Socit(ies) & future of work” to be  under ruler-serf rules worldwide.

“Better business” by maximum exploitive harshness.

Unhealthy “futures” pretending to be the other way around.

“Beyond geopolitics” pretending that “we’re all in this together.”

Calling for “nations…to change” is code language for promoting abolition of sovereign rights according to the rule of law.

Late January Davos Agenda will formally launch exploitive Great Reset policies to be exposed, condemned and opposed.

A Final Comment

Great Reset New World Order policies include digital mass-surveillance worldwide.

It calls for monitoring virtually everything about our daily lives to control them.

Pretending to support “sustainable development” and “stakeholder capitalism” is polar opposite what’s planned.

Great Reset policies aim to more greatly empower wealth, power and privileged interests at the expense of ordinary people worldwide.

It promotes global control by and exploitation of most people by their privileged few masters.

Great Reset pusher Schwab called for “not letting (made-in-the-USA covid and economic collapse) go to waste.”

Selling it involves mass deception because understanding what’s planned would assure mass-rejection.

Nothing intended will improve public health, welfare, safety and societies fit to live in — just the opposite.

The WEF’s slogan “build back better” is mass deception to disguise what’s diabolically planned.

Reject and resist are the only options.

The alternative is Great Reset New World Order enslavement by a higher power that’s hostile to a safe and and fit to live in world.

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

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

My two Wall Street books are timely reading:

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

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

“Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity”

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

Featured image is from OffGuardian

Below is an important letter from former Ontario Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Richard Schabas, addressed to Ontario Premier Doug Ford.

“The national lockdown was never part of our planned pandemic response nor is it supported by strong science”.

“Two recent studies on the effectiveness of lockdown show that it has, at most, a small COVID mortality benefit compared to more moderate measures. Both studies warned about the excessive cost of lockdowns.”

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We’d like to thank Mark Taliano for bringing this to our attention.

With the mainstream media still obsessing about the January 6th “violent coup attempt” at the US Capitol Building, the incoming Biden Administration looks to be chock full of actual purveyors of violent coups. Don’t look to the mainstream media to report on this, however. Some of the same politicians and bureaucrats denouncing the ridiculous farce at the Capitol as if it were the equivalent of 9/11 have been involved for decades in planning and executing real coups overseas. In their real coups, many thousands of civilians have died.

Take returning Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, for example. More than anyone else she is the face of the US-led violent coup against a democratically-elected government in Ukraine in 2014. Nuland not only passed out snacks to the coup leaders, she was caught on a phone call actually plotting the coup right down to who would take power once the smoke cleared.

Unlike the fake Capitol “coup,” this was a real overthrow. Unlike the buffalo horn-wearing joke who desecrated the “sacred” Senate chamber, the Ukraine coup had real armed insurrectionists with a real plan to overthrow the government. Eventually, with the help of incoming Assistant Secretary of State Nuland, they succeeded – after thousands of civilians were killed.

As we were unfortunately reminded during the last four years of the Trump Administration, the personnel is the policy. So while President Trump railed against the “stupid wars” and promised to bring the troops home, he hired people like John Bolton and Mike Pompeo to get the job done. They spent their time “clarifying” Trump’s call for ending wars to mean he wanted to actually continue the wars. It was a colossal failure.

So it’s hard to be optimistic about a Biden Administration with so many hyper-interventionist Obama retreads.

While the US Agency for International Development (USAID) likes to sell itself as the compassionate arm of the US foreign policy, in fact USAID is one of the main US “regime change” agencies. Biden has announced that a top “humanitarian interventionist” – Samantha Power – would head that Agency in his Administration.

Power, who served on President Obama’s National Security Council staff and as US Ambassador to the UN, argued passionately and successfully that a US attack on the Gaddafi government in Libya would result in a liberation of the people and the outbreak of democracy in the country. In reality, her justification was all based on lies and the US assault has left nothing but murder and mayhem. Gaddafi’s relatively peaceful, if authoritarian, government has been replaced by radical terrorists and even slave markets.

At the end of the day, the Bush Republicans – like Rep. Liz Cheney – will join hands with the Biden Democrats to reinstate “American leadership.” This of course means more US overt and covert wars overseas. The unholy alliance between Big Tech and the US government will happily assist the US State Department under Secretary of State Tony Blinken and Assistant Secretary of State Nuland with the technology to foment more “regime change” operations wherever the Biden Administration sees fit. Finish destroying Syria and the secular Assad? Sure! Go back into Iraq? Why not? Afghanistan? That’s the good war! And Russia and China must be punished as well.

These are grave moments for we non-interventionists. But also we have a unique opportunity, informed by history, to denounce the warmongers and push for a peaceful and non-interventionist foreign policy.

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Featured image is from SCF

This 92nd anniversary of the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. comes at a time of great historical conjunctures inside the United States and around the globe.

For the last ten months the country has been imperiled by the worst public health crisis in more than a century where nearly 400,000 have perished due to the COVID-19 pandemic amid the infections of more than 24 million people.

The public health disaster is a direct result of the failure of the outgoing administration of President Donald J. Trump to adequately address the advent and rapid spread of the virus, seeking instead to downplay the pandemic while the widespread sickness and death throughout the land has prompted an unprecedented economic downturn. Millions are jobless and facing imminent foreclosure and eviction absent of much needed drastic federal, state and municipal interventions aimed at guaranteeing housing, food, water and education for the majority of working and oppressed people.

COVID-19 and its concomitant social ills has not for one minute eased the level of institutional racism, economic exploitation and state repression which has been the hallmark of U.S. capitalism and imperialism for several centuries. The brutal police and vigilante executions of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Hakim Littleton, among others, exemplifies the character of the ruling class during this period.

Fortunately, in line with our tradition of resistance to injustice, millions are rising up to mobilize against the wanton arrest, prosecution, injuring and killing of African Americans and other communities of color. These demonstrations and rebellions since late May in particular, has alerted the world that the U.S. can in no way claim to be the paragon of democracy and human rights in which it describes itself.

In response to this renewed mass uprising among the people, thousands have been arrested and dozens killed. The administration has deployed state and federal forces into municipalities with the expressed intent to suppress the unrest. Both locally and nationally, the ruling interests have sought to denigrate and demoralize anti-racist activists.

These efforts have failed miserably in the last few months. People continued to come into the streets to protest while at the same time they have registered and voted in record numbers sending a clear message that racism and state repression must end immediately.

The Trump administration launched a well-funded propaganda and psychological warfare campaign to convince its supporters that the inevitable electoral defeat on November 3 could have only occurred as the result of massive fraud. Despite the rejection by the majority along with the court systems at all levels, in regard to these endless misrepresentations of the actual situation in the U.S., the right-wing has persisted in promoting these lies to the point of advocating the declaration of Marshall Law which could only be consolidated through a neo-fascist coup.

The Significance of the January 6 Coup Attempt in Washington, D.C.

Despite the shocking events of earlier this month when thousands of Trump supporters stormed Capitol Hill, these developments should not have taken any politically conscious person by surprise. The administration had signaled the need for extra-judicial and violent actions against not only working class and oppressed peoples but also others who would dare stand in the way of such a program of reaction.

The ultimate realization of a neo-fascist and racist coup of this character would in fact disenfranchise tens of millions of principally African Americans and other voters from oppressed communities. It requires the throwing out of all the advances won through more than a century-and-a-half of protracted struggle related to civil rights and universal suffrage.

Even some among the spokespersons for the ruling class through its media outlets and other public platforms contemplated the apparent complicity of not only the White House and members of Congress in the attempted coup. Obviously, which has been the case historically, the overlap between military, intelligence and law-enforcement personnel easily became operational. It has been the policy of successive Democratic and Republican administrations to further militarize the police and to continue to replenish the prison-industrial-complex where more than 2.5 million remain incarcerated as millions of others are subjected to grossly overreaching judicial and law-enforcement supervision.

How can these ultra-rightist and militarist forces be defeated? We know from the history of the U.S. that the racist and reactionary forces are deeply embedded in the security apparatus of the capitalist state. If sections of the ruling class which are in disagreement with the Trump program attempts to purge these reactionary elements from the bureaucracy it could trigger even more violent unrest. One key aspect of the failure of the January 6 putsch was the lack of support among the highest levels of the military and intelligence structures. Although the Trump administration prodded the generals, intelligence heads, state politicians and the leaders of the Senate, including Vice President Mike Pence, to engage in the attempt to overthrow the electoral will of the people, these forces did not feel compelled to engage in a dictatorial solution to the contemporary crisis of racial capitalism and imperialism.

This is not to say that under a different set of circumstances such a coup would not gain the allegiance of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, leading political officials, government bureaucrats and directors of intelligence agencies. Only the masses of people properly organized and militant could be in a social position to reverse a right-wing coup through the use of general strikes, school boycotts and direct action. Consequently, our objective is to enhance the capacity of the working class, the nationally oppressed and other popular sectors of the population to guard against the advent of fascism and for the acquisition of genuine democracy and social emancipation.

Imperialist Militarism as an Outgrowth of Domestic Racism and Neo-fascism

During the last year of Dr. King’s life, he took a firm position in opposition to the U.S. genocidal war in Vietnam. King linked the struggle against imperialist war abroad with the need to eradicate poverty and institutional racism inside the country. Such a view in 1967-68 as well as in 2021 places one at loggerheads with the ruling class.

Nonetheless, we know that the actual enemies of the masses of people in the U.S. are in Washington, D.C., on Wall Street and other areas where the exploitation and repression of the majority remains in force. The peoples of Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean are not the inherent adversaries of the working class and nationally oppressed. In fact, the working and struggling masses of the world are the natural allies of the people within the U.S.

Therefore, we must be forthright in our solidarity with the peoples of Palestine, the Western Sahara, Yemen, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Venezuela, and all other oppressed and struggling nations throughout the globe. The total liberation of these geo-political regions will assist in the efforts of people inside the U.S. in their struggles to win genuine freedom and self-determination.

Let us continue our fight to prevail over the forces of racism and reaction in the U.S. and internationally. The securing of a federal holiday in honor of Dr. King some 35 years ago was not an end within itself. These concessions from the ruling class must be utilized to push the movement towards newer heights of achievement.

We salute all organizers in the city of Detroit, the state of Michigan, nationally and internationally. We will continue to march towards the objectives of eliminating all forms of injustice and oppression in our lifetimes and for future generations to come.

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Author’s note: These remarks were delivered at the Virtual 18th Annual Detroit MLK Day Rally and Cultural Program held on Monday January 18, 2021. This event brought together over 30 speakers and cultural workers to honor the social justice and antiwar legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Azikiwe, a co-founder of MLK Day in Detroit in 2004, has served as both a speaker and emcee at all of the previous rallies, demonstrations and cultural programs. Others presentations at this event were delivered by Jesus Rodriguez Espinoza, editor and publisher at the Orinoco Tribune based in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela; Darnell Summers, former GI war resister, musician and target of the United States government’s counter-intelligence program (COINTELPRO); Aurora Harris, Detroit poet, author and lecturer at the University of Michigan-Dearborn; Blair Anderson, former Black Panther Party member and political prisoner; Sammie Lewis, organizer for Detroit Will Breathe (DWB); Nakia Wallace, co-founder of DWB; Tristan Taylor, co-founder and organizer with DWB; Anthony Ali, artist and organizer with DWB; Sarah Torres, event co-chair, musician, technician and member of Moratorium NOW! Coalition; Saydi Sarr, co-founder of the African Bureau for Immigration and Social Affairs (ABISA); Clarence Thomas, retired member of the International Longshoreman and Warehouse Workers Union Local 10 (ILWU); Efren Peredes, juvenile lifer and prison organizer; Jae Bass, Detroit spoken word artist and organizer for DWB; a Peoples’ Spirit of Detroit award was given to DWB for their pioneering role in the anti-racist movement; Yvonne Jones, Moratorium NOW! Coalition organizer and spokesperson for the Racial Profiling Across 8 Mile billboard campaign; among many others. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on Detroit, the entire event was held online. Here is the link to the entire program streamed over You Tube.

Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

President-elect Joe Biden is planning to cancel the controversial Keystone XL pipeline on the first day of his administration, a document reported by CBC on Sunday suggests.

A coalition of civil society organisations has written to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to request that it opens formal infringement procedures against France’s government for entrenching Islamophobia and structural discrimination against Muslims.

In a 28-page document seen by Middle East Eye, 36 organisations from 13 countries have submitted a complaint to the UNHRC in which they outline “clear violation of a number of basic rights that are protected in legislation that is ratified by Paris”.

The document alleged that France’s actions and policies in relation to Muslim communities violated international and European laws, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

The signatories include the Strasbourg-based European Muslim Initiative for Social Cohesion, the Muslim Association of Britain and the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Macron singles out Muslims

The complaint begins by setting out a chronology of addresses by French President Emmanuel Macron that specifically singles out Muslim communities.

This included a 2019 speech shortly after an attack in which four police officers were killed, in which Macron promoted a “society of vigilance” against the “Islamist hydra”. He called on people to report those at risk of “radicalisation” to authorities, citing at-risk factors such as growing a beard or regularly practising ritual prayer.

It also mentioned remarks from February 2020 when the French president announced plans “against separatism”, targeting Muslim communities and organisations. This included approval of imams by the state and an indirect tax on every Muslim who performs the Islamic pilgrimage of Hajj to finance counter-radicalisation programmes.

Most recently, the document mentioned a high-profile speech from October in which Macron described Islam as a “religion that is in crisis all over the world”, in remarks that led to protests around the world and an international boycott of French goods from individuals in several Muslim countries.

Two weeks after Macron’s speech, Samuel Paty, a teacher in the suburbs of Paris, was beheaded outside his school after he showed cartoon pictures of the Prophet Muhammad during a class on free speech. The assailant, an 18-year-old Russia-born Chechen refugee, was killed by French police near the scene of the attack.

The coalition of groups accused the French government of exploiting Paty’s death “for racist and Islamophobic purposes”.

Targeted attacks

A regime change project in Russia was launched on Sunday with the return of political activist Alexei Navalny to Moscow. It was a highly symbolic event — except that Navalny was travelling by an aeroplane from Germany and not in a sealed train.

Navalny’s rebranding from an obscure rabble rouser to an international celebrity through the past 5-month period is apparently complete. And the timing of his arrival in Moscow is perfect. Moscow had forewarned that he’d be detained for interrogation, being on the wanted list. And this while the Biden Administration is hitting the ground on coming Wednesday, raring to go.

The presidential elections are scheduled to be held in Russia in March 2024 and the next couple of years will be crucial for the Kremlin politics. The big question is whether President Vladimir Putin would seek another six-year term or not.

Putin keeps everyone guessing. Another term as president is his for the asking, as his popularity continues to soar, built on a solid record of achievements in consolidating Russia’s comprehensive national power, steering the country’s resurgence on the world stage and enhancing its international prestige and ensuring the global strategic balance.

Putin is the anchor sheet of the Russian boat. Unsurprisingly, he makes a formidable adversary for the US. The Russian analysts expect Biden to turn the US-Russia-China triangle to Washington’s advantage by engaging China and isolating Russia. Basically, in Biden’s world view, China is a competitor but is pragmatic and open to deal-making, and will remain neutral in the US’ confrontation with Russia.

Generally speaking, Biden and the Obama-era officials who comprise his national security team are rooted in their belief that the Russian power calculus is inherently fragile. From such a perspective, Navalny’s return to Russia becomes a moment of truth. The coming weeks would show the extent of popular support he actually enjoys.

The outgoing US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has lost no time to issue a strongly worded statement on Sunday regarding Navalny, demanding his “immediate and unconditional release” while also taunting Putin indirectly as an insecure leader. How far Pompeo contrived to create a precipitate situation for the incoming Biden administration we do not know. Such a possibility cannot be ruled out.

At any rate, in diplomatic terms, Navalny’s detention in Moscow is being turned into a cause célèbre of the transatlantic alliance at a juncture when Europe has been harping on its strategic autonomy from the US and Germany has pushed back at US pressure to scuttle the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project. A German-Russian rapprochement will not be to the linking of Washington and London and some European capitals. The EU Foreign Affairs Council meeting on January 25 is expected to discuss the case of Navalny.

Possibly, the stage is being set for a US-Russia collision right at the outset of the Biden presidency. In anticipation of the gathering storms, perhaps, the Kremlin made an extraordinary move on Saturday with the former president Dmitry Medvedev authoring an op-ed in the state news agency Tass on Russia’s relations with the US. In a lengthy analysis, Medvedev laid bare the archaic political system in America with election rules drawn from the 18th century body polity that virtually negate the essence of truly democratic mandates for the elected presidents, which ultimately renders the US an “unpredictable partner” for its allies and partners alike.

Medvedev acknowledged,

“We expect it is highly likely that the United States will consistently pursue an anti-Russian policy… Biden has not yet said anything positive about Russia. On the contrary, his rhetoric has always been openly unfriendly, harsh, even aggressive… Our relations are likely to remain extremely cold in the coming years. And right now we do not expect anything but the continuation of a tough anti-Russian policy.”

But, interestingly, Medvedev concluded by making an impassioned plea for moderation in the US policies and conveying Russia’s readiness to work with Biden. No doubt, the essay has been written to draw Biden’s attention.

The US Central Intelligence Agency has traditionally spearheaded the cutting edge of the American policy toward Russia. And for the first time, a former diplomat William Burns who is also an experienced “Russia hand”,will be heading the agency in the Biden Administration. Burns’ memoirs The Back Channel is openly critical of Putin, where he candidly writes that “Basically, we’re facing a Russia that’s too big a player on too many important issues to ignore… It’s a Russia whose assertiveness in its neighbourhood and interest in playing a distinctive Great Power role beyond it will sometimes cause significant problems.”

Burns examines the Russian motivations in domestic and international politics and surveys the US decision on NATO’s expansion towards Russia’s western borders in the mid-1990s, the dismemberment of Yugoslavia in the late 1990s, the US’ invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the US deployment of missile defence in Europe soon afterward as defining moments in the relationship. To be fair, he takes a rational view and takes note of the genesis of Russia’s progressive alienation from the West. Nonetheless, the bottom line is that he advocates a hard line toward Russia.

In Burns’ words,

“Managing relations with Russia will be a long game, conducted within a relatively narrow band of possibilities. Navigating such a great-power rivalry requires tactful diplomacy—maneuvering in the gray area between peace and war; demonstrating a grasp of the limits of the possible; building leverage; exploring common ground where we can find it; and pushing back firmly and persistently where we can’t… We ought to traverse it without illusions, mindful of Russia’s interests and sensibilities, unapologetic about our values and confident in our own enduring strengths. We should not give in to Putin—or give up on the Russia beyond him.”

Succinctly put, Burns sees the troubled relationship with Russia as something to be managed rather than fostered or nurtured and he is deeply pessimistic about the prospects of any improvement so long as Putin continues to be in power. Conceivably, Biden shares such a perspective too, and one main consideration amongst others in his decision to put Burns as the head of the CIA would be that the US diplomacy in the period ahead will be navigating a turbulent phase in the relationship, where the American interests lie in promoting a change of regime in the Kremlin, which will of course essentially devolve upon the measure of success of the spy agency’s covert operations to destabilise Russia.

Top Kremlin officials had alleged in September that Moscow had definite information that CIA operatives were working with Navalny in Germany. If so, Navalny is a strategic asset that the CIA will not give up easily. But all indications are that Moscow is also digging in for the long haul. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has rebuked the Russia’s Western partners and urged them “to show politeness, exclude methods of diplomatic boorishness and honour their international obligations in the situation” involving  Navalny.

That being the case, to be sure, the CIA is all set to make a hyper-aggressive opening move on the Russian chessboard — the Danish Gambit! In the game of chess, the Danish opening usually lasts less than 20 moves as white will either breakthrough and checkmate the king early on or white will fail miserably and be left in shambles. This is not for the faint of heart.

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Featured image: Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny was detained at the airport in Moscow upon arrival from Germany, January 17, 2021  (Source: Indian Punchline)

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독자 여러분, 최근 Global Research에 번역 플러그인을 도입했음을 알려 드리게되어 기쁩니다. 웹 사이트의 상단 배너에있는 “웹 사이트 번역”드롭 다운 메뉴를 사용하면 버튼 클릭으로 전체 웹 사이트를 번역 할 수있는 27 개의 다른 언어 중에서 선택할 수 있습니다. 우리는 당신이 그것을 시험해 보도록 초대하고 당신이 필요로하는 어떤 피드백이라도 [email protected] 으로 보내 주시기 바랍니다

Dear Readers, we are happy to announce that we recently introduced a translation plug-in to Global Research. Located in the top banner of the website, the “Translate Website” drop-down menu allows you to select from 27 different languages into which the entire website can be translated at the click of a button. We invite you to test it out and please feel free to send any feedback you may have to [email protected]

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Fighting a Corona Phantom

By Julian Rose, January 18 2021

Covid 19 is a phantom. Slaying a phantom is what the mythic Spanish hero Don Quijote attempted to do by ‘tilting at windmills’ he imagined to be monsters. But now almost everybody has got into the act.

The Digital-Financial Complex is the True Center of Power: “Is the Goal to Ignite Massive Civil Unrest?”

By Ernst Wolff, January 18 2021

The politics of both Democrats and Republicans have for months been dominated by their dispute over the outcome of the U.S. election in November. Neither side misses an opportunity to systematically stir up emotions. Thus, both parties are deliberately inflaming the mood amongst a population whose living conditions have recently deteriorated drastically.

Video: How Bill Gates Monopolized Global Health. The Vaccine

By James Corbett, January 18 2021

Who is Bill Gates? A software developer? A businessman? A philanthropist? A global health expert?This question, once merely academic, is becoming a very real question for those who are beginning to realize that Gates’ unimaginable wealth has been used to gain control over every corner of the fields of public health, medical research and vaccine development.

No Evidence COVID-19 Vaccines Will Block Spread of Coronavirus

By Marco Cáceres, January 18 2021

But what exactly does “efficacy” mean when it comes to COVID-19 vaccines? Does it mean that the vaccines will prevent people from becoming infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus? Does it mean that they will prevent people who have the virus from spreading it to others? Based on clinical trials, there is no evidence the vaccines will prevent either.

Operation “Lipstick on a Pig”: Was the “Violent Insurrection” at the Capitol a 9/11 Retread?

By Emanuel Pastreich, January 18 2021

The Federal government, the production of money by the Federal Reserve, the educational system and the corporate media from which citizens get all information has been taken over definitively by the multinational corporations.

Western Society in Crisis: Repression and Impoverishment of Their Own People

By Stephen Sefton, January 18 2021

The traditional motto of Western foreign policy and diplomacy has always been “do what we want, or else…”. Now, domestically, the underlying, unspoken but still extremely clear variation on that message Western elites now offer their own peoples is “don’t worry, our sadism is good for you…”

The Corona Crisis: The Conspiracy Is Obvious. Here Are Facts to Construct a Theory

By Jack Dresser, January 18 2021

Specifically, we must demand investigation of the following documented events and questionable policies brought to public attention during this crisis.  These questions are central but by no means comprehensive.  More emerge every day.

“Leaking”: Digital Activism Is Today’s New Radicalism

By Megan Sherman, January 18 2021

A new radicalism is rocking the foundations of modern politics, rapidly destroying venerated but defunct notions about our political systems and replacing them with new activism and political configurations of astonishing sophistication and power.

Microsoft, Big Tech Coalition Developing Rockefeller Funded COVID Vaccine Passports

By Steve Watson, January 18 2021

A coalition of big tech companies, including Microsoft is developing a COVID passport, with the expectation that a digital document linked to vaccination status will be required to travel and get access to basic services.

Thirty Years Ago: The Gulf War

By Manlio Dinucci, January 17 2021

Thirty years ago, in the early hours of January 17, 1991, Operation “Desert Storm” began in the Persian Gulf, this war against Iraq opened the sequence of wars after the Cold War. The USA and its allies launched it at the moment when, after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union were about to dissolve.

Vaccines: “Death by Coincidence”. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

By Robert F. Kennedy Jr, January 17 2021

The official handling last week of the deaths of two Danes and a Miami doctor following their COVID jabs highlights the gaping holes in the government’s surveillance system for detecting post-marketing vaccine reactions.

The Sheep Syndrome.

By Peter Koenig, January 17 2021

Today and during the last few days new “measures” – restrictions of freedom imposed by governments for reasons of “public health security”, i. e. preventing the spread of covid infections – have been tightened throughout Europe.

Thirty years Ago. The 1991 Gulf War: The Massacre of Withdrawing Soldiers on “The Highway of Death”

By Joyce Chediac, January 17 2021

I want to give testimony on what are called the “highways of death.” These are the two Kuwaiti roadways, littered with remains of 2,000 mangled Iraqi military vehicles, and the charred and dismembered bodies of tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers, who were withdrawing from Kuwait on February 26th and 27th 1991 in compliance with UN resolutions.

Fortress Washington Occupied and Militarized

By Stephen Lendman, January 18 2021

The nation’s capital resembles occupied Baghdad’s Green Zone that’s half-way around the world from Washington DC. Seven-foot-high non-scalable barricades topped with razor wire surround the Capitol and various federal buildings.

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” – Martin Luther King

There was a man speaking on the radio this morning and it was a speech not often heard on public radio stations. The voice was both noble and articulate. It was soon apparent it was none other than Martin Luther King Jr. speaking in his calm, distinctive style telling a story about how he was stabbed by a woman and narrowly escaped death; a foreshadowing of what was soon to come. This was his last speech; the next day he was assassinated on April 4, 1968.

Robert F. Kennedy, upon hearing of the assassination gave an impromptu speech later that day in Indianapolis before a predominately black crowd. His remarks are often considered one of the greatest speeches ever given by an American politician. Kennedy said,

“What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness, but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice towards those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.”

These comments seem timely today, not only due to the ongoing racial tension but also while we watch two political parties squaring off in an alarming confrontation, threatening to tear the country to shreds.

In 1999 the King family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against restaurant owner Loyd Jowers and other “unknown conspirators” for the murder of Martin Luther King. Loyd Jowers claimed in an interview in 1993 that he had conspired with the mafia and the federal government to kill King. The family lawyer William F. Pepper, who was also the last attorney of alleged shooter James Earl Ray argued that Ray was not the shooter but was framed by the FBI, the CIA, the military, the Memphis police, and organized crime figures. “There is abundant evidence of a major high level conspiracy in the assassination of my husband, Martin Luther King, Jr.,” Coretta King said at a press conference in that same year.

History has revealed that the FBI under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover launched a relentless propaganda campaign against MLK that contributed to the results of a Gallup poll conducted in 1966, that revealed only 33% of Americans had positive feelings toward Dr. King. Hoover despised Martin Luther King, that much seems obvious, but the “why” is harder to ascertain: on the surface Hoover claimed King was a “threat to national security” due to his relationship with known-Communist and one of his closest advisers, Stanley David Levison.

MLK’s son Dexter King gave a more lucid and perhaps philosophical understanding of his father’s death: “It is not about who killed Martin Luther King Jr., my father. It is not necessarily about all of those details. It is about: Why was he killed? Because if you answer the why, you will understand the same things are still happening. Until we address that, we’re all in trouble. Because if it could happen to him…if it can happen to this family, it can happen to anybody.”

It is apparent that the establishment was threatened by Martin Luther King—J. Edgar Hoover made him an object of the FBI’s COINTELPRO program from 1963 until his death. FBI agents recorded his extramarital liaisons and reported on them to government officials, and on one occasion mailed King a threatening anonymous letter that urged him to commit suicide. These recordings were also sent to pastors and even to his wife Coretta but all recipients refused to make the recordings public.

The unpleasant truth is that there is a thick scar of racism running across the underbelly of America that rises to the surface on occasion like a great beast rolling over. The Black Lives Matter movement that gained strength over the summer months of the past year is ample proof that the beast is still breathing but maybe, just maybe it is a dying beast, cornered and trapped in its final death throes. More than one commentator has suggested we are currently witnessing the downfall of the Republican party and its dubious choice of a president has only accelerated the accompanying fall of white supremacism.

The ancient Israelites were infamous for stoning their prophets and America seems to have gone down a similar path with a growing list of extra-judicial assassinations and incarcerations of their most outspoken critics; it is fair to say that Martin Luther King was a modern prophet. Though he is known as the leader of a movement in the United States to free African-Americans from racial segregation and discrimination, his captivating rhetoric elevated all human beings to a higher level. He spoke from a universal platform about what it means to be a human being in the face of tyranny. Martin Luther King Jr., at the age of 35 became the youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and on accepting this award on December 10^th of 1964 he said, “I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.”

Someday, somebody will need to explain why so many human beings are threatened by those advocating freedom, equality, peace and brotherhood. The awful truth is that some human beings don’t really want freedom and equality; some seem to relish tyranny and find solace in the worship of tyrants. For the rest of us, the goal is the same every day: Fight the good fight and speak the healing words that will bring brotherhood and lasting peace to our troubled world. Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

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Richard Revelstoke is an activist, musician and author of several books, hailing from Vancouver, Canada.

First posted in May 2020, James Corbett documents the devastating impacts of the Covid-19 vaccine

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Who is Bill Gates? A software developer? A businessman? A philanthropist? A global health expert?

This question, once merely academic, is becoming a very real question for those who are beginning to realize that Gates’ unimaginable wealth has been used to gain control over every corner of the fields of public health, medical research and vaccine development.

And now that we are presented with the very problem that Gates has been talking about for years, we will soon find that this software developer with no medical training is going to leverage that wealth into control over the fates of billions of people.

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The media could not move faster to support the impeachment of Donald Trump and to place the responsibility for inciting a “violent insurrection” at his feet.  

Whether it was the progressive magazine The Nation, the conservative newspaper the Wall Street Journal, or the revolutionary socialist website WSWS, the conclusion about Trump was the same: he had organized and led an armed group of dangerous extremists to seize control of the Congress with the intention of subverting the Constitution, overturning the election and attacking liberal politicians.

The view being promoted in the media is that Trump and his ignorant followers, claiming a stolen election without any evidence, spouting conspiracy theories about COVID19, are universally assumed to pose an immediate threat to the security of the United States.

CNN announced that Trump was “ isolated and wallowing in self-pity in the White House” as he awaited trial, and even possible imprisonment. The possibility that some part of the claims of fraud in the election might have grounds in fact, that some conspiracies about COVID19 are real, did not cross anyone’s mind.

It is true that hostile forces have taken control of Washington D.C.

But they were not wearing MAGA red hats or waving Confederate flags. No, the takeover was at a much higher level.

The Federal government, the production of money by the Federal Reserve, the educational system and the corporate media from which citizens get all information has been taken over definitively by the multinational corporations Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and SpaceX (and others), and those companies, and the banks that fund them, have taken home some ten trillion dollars from the Federal Reserve through a series of COVID19 bailouts that remain opaque, if not explicitly classified.

But that real takeover of the Capitol has not been mentioned in the press. All attention is on a selfish, ignorant, racist and dangerous Donald Trump who stands in contrast to a rational, scientific and compassionate Biden administration.

Yet any careful consideration of this “armed attack” on the Capitol suggests that rather than a failed insurrection by dangerous right-wing forces trying to destroy democracy, it was closer to Grand Guignol, to sensationalist theater.

That attack, documented for us in carefully posed scenes, was but the first act of “Operation Lipstick on a Pig,” a move to decorate the radical crackdown on freedom of expression and of assembly to oppose corporate tyranny with the trappings of a multicultural, progressive, feminist, scientific and rational administration.

Over the last few days, Posse Comitatus has been buried in a shallow grave. The military takeover was passed over for talk about whether or not Kamala Harris would wear a sari to the inauguration.

Source: Emanuel Pastreich

9/11 at a fire sale price

When EU Commissioner Thierry Breton referred to the “attacks” as “Capitol Hill — the 9/11 moment of social media,” he was not kidding. He spelled out precisely what is going to unfold over the next few months as “Operation Lipstick on a Pig” swings into overdrive.

In effect, the Biden administration, loaded up with minorities and women at the highest levels, will use this ethnic PR as a sweet syrup to help Americans swallow down the launch of the most repressive regime in American history. As Naomi Klein famously stated, bringing about such a shift requires the “shock doctrine” a deep trauma for the entire nation that will force acceptance of a “new normal.”

Breton explicitly refers to this attack as a “paradigm shift for global security” like 9/11.

“We are all still shocked by the images of protesters storming the U.S. Congress to halt the certification of the next U.S. president. The attack on the U.S. Capitol — a symbol of democracy — feels like a direct assault on all of us.”

Just as 9/11 marked a paradigm shift for global security, 20 years later we are witnessing a before-and-after in the role of digital platforms in our democracy.

The paradigm shift he is suggesting is one in which social media companies are made responsible for whatever people post (even though the hyped up COVID19 pandemic is the reason people have been forced to be dependent on social media corporations) and therefore those corporations have a responsibility to ban anything that they deem dangerous.

He claims we need a Digital Markets Act that will allow us to shut down misinformation immediately and ban those who engage in such threats. There is of course some legitimacy to this argument. But the article assumes that the “truth” can be determined by for-profit and morally bankrupt companies like Twitter and Facebook, or by billionaires, or by the government agencies that now function as own subsidiaries of investment banks.

In any case, the analogies between the Capitol attack and 9/11 are not random; they are intentional.

Just like after the 9/11 incident, everyone who has institutional authority has been called in to testify as to the horrific nature of the attack—before anyone has had a chance to think deeply about what actually happened. Moreover, the enemy is decided for us early on by a series of journalism scoops, Islamic terrorists in the first case, conservative white nationalists in this case, to make sure that we don’t think too much.

In the case of the insurrection at the Capitol, Wikipedia (which did not exist back in 2001) has decided that it was “a riot and violent attack” “carried out by a mob of supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump.” Case closed.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff, without exception, signed a letter without precedent stating that was “a violent riot” and “direct assault on the U.S. Congress” that was led by the president of the United States.

The executive director of the Union of Concerned Scientists Kathleen Rest condemned the attack as “a violent intimidation of our elected representatives and by extension all of us. It is not a peaceful protest. It is insurrection.”

In other words, if you have any doubts as to what happened on January 6, you should increase your dosage of antipsychotic medication because people will just think you are crazy. Even worse, thinking in a scientific manner could lead to you being associated with right-wing domestic terrorists.

But what happened on Capitol Hill on January 6, and why is it not being subject to a rigorous analysis?

Already, there have been extensive discussions on the Internet about how the photographs and videos fail to document any form of “violent insurrection” and how most photographs appear staged.

The protestors held no weapons in the photographs and videos released at the time. The terrible violence was only fed to us later through media reports of dubious reliability.

The videos of the protestors pushing against the Capitol Police are pure keystone cops. No one could possibly engage in that sort of roughhousing with the police and not end up on the ground handcuffed in a few seconds unless both sides were in on the game.

The strangest footage was that of the protestor Ashli Babbitt being shot in the neck by a Capitol Police officer (she reportedly died soon after). In the video, Babbitt is shot by a revolver that we are told was held by the police officer and falls to the ground. Some nearby attend to her while others mill around, checking their smart phones and calling out, “shots fired.”

Such a scene is improbable. If a police officer shot into a crowd of protesters and someone fell to the ground, the rest would run for cover as fast as they could, or hit the ground immediately. Unless they were battle hardened soldiers, the only thing in their mind would be avoiding being the next one shot.

But everyone seemed to know that only one person would be shot. That scene, most the scenes, just smell phony, like a low-budget 9.11 aimed at stirring up fear in preparation for a massive clampdown.

Stage set for a granola-flavored version of the “Patriot Act?”

Whereas the 9/11 incident served as an opportunity to induce national trauma and prepare for the reduction of civil rights and for the march towards foreign wars, the attack on the Capitol is being used to pave the way towards a massive crackdown on domestic political opposition and possibly the use of the military to suppress any resistance.

Whereas Al Qaeda and the threat of Islamic nationalism and terrorism were presented as the threat after 9/11, and then used as an excuse to secure massive budgets for military and intelligence contractors while restricting the activity of citizens, this time “domestic terrorism” is the new threat on the block.

Whereas terror after 9/11 was presented by CNN and the New York Times as Arabs wearing turbans, this time it is white men wearing MAGA hats are the target.

The isolationist white militias that have nominally supported Donald Trump are dangerous and a real threat. They have carried out real attacks on multiple occasions.

So also the Islamic military groups that worked out of Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2001 were serious threats. But the relationship between those extremists and the 9/11 incident was never made clear and there was nothing to justify those foreign wars, or the end of civil liberties, that resulted. So also, today, the relationship between the MAGA “white nationalists” and the Capitol incident is far from clear. What we do know is given to us by the corporate media, not trustworthy sources of scientific analysis.

We can already detect in editorials and news briefings the outlines of a new version of the Patriot Act taking form, this time focused on “domestic terrorism.”

The original Patriot Act cleared away all the limits on the spying on foreigners, starting with those accused of the 9/11 attacks, and opened the doors for general spying on the entire world, and spying, not by an accountable government, but by private intelligence contractors who sold their trawl catch to the highest bidder.

This new “Patriot Act,” dressed up as a progressive effort to reign in intolerant, violent and ignorant Trump followers, aims to strip American citizens of all legal defenses against the authority of Federal Government and to allow for the deployment of the military within the United States to defend against domestic terrorism, real or trumped up.

The hyping of the Capitol incident goes beyond a drive to cement into place the Biden administration before its legitimacy can be questioned. The argument driven home to all Americans by the media coverage is that those who have doubts about the lockdown on personal freedom taking place, or about the COVID19 vaccine regime that Biden has made his highest economic, security and social priority, are in the same camp as these domestic terrorists.

The COVID19 task force has expressed its intention to work with the military domestically to disperse vaccinations to the public (perhaps by force). At the same time, DARPA has suddenly entered the medical field with a broad range of new medical tools, including vaccines, related to COVID19. That militarization of medicine has ominous implications.

The spread of dangerous misinformation and “conspiracy theories” is treated, post-Capitol attacks, as the equivalent of war. By extension, anyone who suggests that COVID19 is not a pandemic at all, but a scheme by the rich and powerful to destroy civil society and to push for needless vaccines using modified RNA and microchips can be considered now a domestic terrorist.

Tech giants will be justified, in the interests of national security, in shutting down, or punishing, without any legal due process, those who spread information that they have determined to be “false.” Already Facebook and Twitter are banning medically supported reports by qualified doctors questioning COVID13 policies.

As large parts of the intelligence community have been sold off to Facebook, Google and Amazon over the last year, the nature of the true threat should be clear.

Remember that it was quarantine and distance learning that has made it difficult to meet with friends and family in person. We are forced to communicate via social media, or platforms like WhatsApp, Zoom or Skype that are run for profit, and over the policies of, we have no say. We can be placed in cyberjail, or banned, at the whim of these corporations at precisely the moment they we are allowed no other means to communicate with others except through them.

It was no surprise that the politician groomed as the face of the youthful left, Alexanderia Ocasio-Cortez, was chosen to lay the groundwork for military rule and the end of free expression in social media.

She rushed to The Guardian to express her terror about the Capitol attacks,

“I myself did not even feel safe going to that extraction point because there were QAnons and white supremacist sympathizers and, frankly, white supremacist members of Congress in that extraction point who I know and who I had felt would disclose my location.”

The comments seem far removed from the actions of the rowdy crowd who entered the Capitol on January 6. But then again, the fact that the occupation was for show does not mean that it was harmless.

Ocasio-Cortez pinned the responsibility for this “violent insurrection” on big tech, stating, ” Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook bear partial responsibility for Wednesday’s events, period.”

Interestingly, she argues that Facebook the corporation helped these dangerous domestic terrorists organize their attack and therefore it is responsible. But she does NOT suggest that Facebook be broken up, or run as a public monopoly, or that the decision as to what is true and what is false should be subject to rigorous external review. She is pressuring Facebook to be more aggressive in shutting down any communication, that it deems to be dangerous.

In other words, she is giving a progressive stamp of approval for the control of public communication by multinational corporations.

It is fine with her if Twitter blocks Donald Trump without any legal process, or Facebook blocks Press News for giving Americans too much truth.

Politico used the favorite “9/11” term “intelligence failure” to refer to the investigations of the Capitol incident scheduled for no less than four house committees. The formal letter announcing investigations, states,

“This still-emerging story is one of astounding bravery by some U.S. Capitol Police and other officers; of staggering treachery by violent criminals; and of apparent and high-level failures — in particular, with respect to intelligence and security preparedness.”

We are being set up for another series of dishonest committee meetings like those of 2001 and 2002 in which politicians will drone on and on about intelligence failures while the criminals stand unmolested in plain view.

What we need now is not show trials, or the takeover of Washington D.C. by the military, but rather an objective, international, scientific investigation of what happened in the Capitol on January 6 that does not involve any media players linked to the global financial forces that stand to benefit from the militarization of American governance.

It was too easy to reduce Donald Trump to a dangerous caricature, a new Osama bin Laden who can be used to justify a crackdown on domestic dissent at precisely the moment that a dangerous vaccine regime is being rolled out with the cooperation of the military.

And by the way, an international investigation of the 9/11 incident might be helpful too.

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More than a hundred candidates who ran in municipal elections last November in cities across Brazil’s Amazonian states are on the environmental regulator’s “dirty list” for violations committed over the past decade.

That’s the finding from an analysis by Agência Pública, a nonprofit investigative journalism agency in Brazil. It found 118 of the candidates for mayor and deputy mayor in the Nov. 15 polls had previously been fined for deforestation, illegal burning, exploitation of native forest located in reserves, or providing false information to environmental agencies to cover up illegal activities. The politicians include 51 who were in office at the time of the election, and 28 who ran for reelection.

Among those fined by IBAMA, the federal environmental protection agency, were four mayors and two deputy mayors of the six municipalities in the state of Pará notorious for the Aug. 10, 2019, “day of fire” — a series of blazes set by the agribusiness sector to clear land. The politicians are Valmir Climaco, the mayor of Itaituba, who was reelected; Raimundo Batista Santiago of Jacareacanga; Valdinei José Ferreira and his deputy, Maurício de Lima Santos, from Trairão, both of them reelected; and Ubiraci Soares Silva and his deputy, Gelson Luiz Dill, of Novo Progresso. (Dill ran against Silva in the election and won.) Together, the six men have racked up fines of 7.8 million reais ($1.5 million) for environmental violations, though none were accused of having participated in the burning during the “day of fire.”

These four cities, plus Altamira and São Félix do Xingu, were responsible for 79% of the fire outbreaks detected in the state of Pará on Aug. 10 and 11 last year, according to a survey by Greenpeace.

Itaituba’s Valmir Climaco, a former gold miner and cattle rancher, was last year sentenced to four years and nine months in jail for destroying 746 hectares (1,843 acres) of native forest in neighboring Altamira between 2002 and 2004. He was found to have laundered the timber through Madeireira Climaco, a company that appears on the declaration of assets he submitted to electoral authorities.

He also has three charges against him for damage to vegetation and for carrying out works without the requisite license. Two of these charges, dating from 2012 and 2015, are still pending trial.

In 2019, the Federal Prosecution Service (MPF) sought the removal of Climaco as Itaituba’s mayor after he apparently threatened officials from Funai, the federal agency for Indigenous affairs. The officials were slated to inspect Climaco’s ranch, which sits on land claimed by the Munduruku Indigenous people, but in June 2019 the mayor said he would only receive the inspectors “at bullet point.” The following month, the Federal Police (PF) found 583 kilograms (1,285 pounds) of cocaine on the ranch.

In total, Climaco is the subject of 45 federal criminal citations, according to his declaration to electoral authorities.

Cattle graze next to burning vegetation in Lábrea, Amazonas state. Politicians with business interests in cattle ranching have been fined by IBAMA for deforestation, illegal logging and infractions within conservation areas. Image by Christian Braga/Greenpeace.

From miner to mayor

A two-hour drive south of Itaituba lies the municipality of Trairão, whose mayor is also accused of deforestation. Valdinei José Ferreira, known as “Django,” was convicted in April 2020 for destroying 1,300 hectares (3,200 acres) of Amazon forest. He has denied the charge, despite IBAMA detecting the deforestation on his farm in 2012.

Ferreira has been embroiled in other environmental crimes. He was recently ordered to pay more than 43,000 reais ($8,300) in fines imposed by IBAMA in 2011 and 2012, after he was caught operating an illegal sawmill. He has also been accused by prosecutors of illegal logging inside a conservation area in Itaituba in December 2007. A verdict is pending in that case.

Ferreira’s deputy at Itaituba City Hall, Maurício de Lima Santos, has also been accused of deforestation by the Pará state Attorney General’s Office. The alleged violation occurred in Itaituba II National Forest, in neighboring Novo Progresso municipality.

Santos has also been accused by prosecutors of illegally entering another national forest, in Trairão, in 2014 with machinery intended for logging, without the required authorization.

In Novo Progresso itself, where the mass burning of the “day of fire” was likely coordinated, the mayor and deputy mayor have also been fined by IBAMA for environmental violations.

Ubiraci Soares Silva, the outgoing mayor, is a defendant in a lawsuit filed by IBAMA since 2015; as of 2017, he has been liable for fines exceeding 1.7 million reais ($328,000), according to the newspaper O Globo, for the illegal occupation of land inside Jamanxim National Forest.

His deputy, Gelson Luiz Dill, recently elected the new mayor, was fined a total of 4.3 million reais ($825,000) on two charges of destroying a combined 198.4 hectares (490 acres) in the same park in 2017 and 2018, according to the NGO Repórter Brasil.

Dill claims the fines are a form of retaliation for his actions in defense of farmers and ranchers in the region. “It’s because I denounce the irregularities of these environmental agencies that are burning producers’ machinery and producers’ properties,” he said.

Dill is himself a rancher, with 2,473 head of cattle valued at 1.9 million reais ($366,000), according to his declaration to electoral authorities.

Agribusiness and slave labor

Twelve of the 28 mayors and deputy mayors of municipalities in the Brazilian Amazon who ran for reelection are farmers, ranchers or loggers.

Fernando Gorgen, who was reelected as mayor of Querência in Mato Grosso state, declared 17.2 million reais ($3.3 million) in assets to electoral authorities. This figure includes his shareholdings in two cattle-breeding companies in the state of Tocantins and a farm in Querência. His wealth grew 260% in the four years he was in charge of the municipality.

Gorgen and his brothers were fined in 2018 by the Mato Grosso state environmental office for defrauding deforestation permits. IBAMA accused them of responsibility for the clearing of more than 5,000 hectares (12,400 acres) of the Amazon forest. Gorgen claimed he wasn’t the owner of the farm where the illegal deforestation had occurred, saying he was “mistakenly pointed out as one of the [land clearing] protagonists by Operation Siriema,” a law-enforcement operation carried out by IBAMA and the Mato Grosso state prosecutor’s office.

In Nova Canaã do Norte, another municipality in Mato Grosso, the reelected mayor, Rubens Roberto Rosa, was also fined for an environmental violation while in office in 2017. Like Gorgen, he is a cattle rancher and a millionaire: for last year’s election, he declared an inheritance of 25.9 million reais ($5 million), which includes 7,334 head of cattle and five farms.

In 2013, he was named on the “dirty list” of employers using slave labor, following raids by prosecutors on two of his properties. In a lawsuit, the MPF alleged that Rosa kept the workers “in conditions analogous to slavery, since they were subject to sleeping in shacks under the protection of plastic tarpaulins, had precarious food and no drinking water, sharing the environment with venomous animals, living without any conditions of hygiene, and staying several kilometers away from their places of origin.” A verdict is pending in the case.

Contacted by Agência Pública, Rosa claimed there were no criminal charges pending against him, and that the slave labor lawsuit was the result of a “setup” by a former worker. On the fines and allegations levied against him by IBAMA, he said he had paid all the compensation required for the deforestation he had caused, and that there were no recent charges pending. Rosa also said he carried out forest clearing before the Forest Code came into force and tightened the permissible area of land allowed to be deforested.

IBAMA personnel with seized timber from an illegal logging site within an Indigenous reserve in Brazil’s Roraima state. Candidates with links to logging were among those who ran in municipal elections across Brazil last November. Image courtesy of IBAMA.

The most fined mayor, and the most mayors fined

Among all the politicians fined for environmental violations in the Amazon, the record holder is the current deputy mayor of Alto Araguaia in Mato Grosso state: Freud Fraga dos Santos. A cattle rancher, he has been fined 13 times between 2012 and 2019, yet was still reelected alongside the city’s mayor, Gustavo Melo.

Freud was denounced in 2014 by the MPF in the state of Pará as a member of a gang of deforesters and land grabbers in Novo Progresso. According to the MPF complaint, the group invaded public lands, deforested and burned the areas to establish cattle pastures, and then sold the lands as ranches. According to the investigation, at least 15,500 hectares (38,300 acres) were deforested, resulting in environmental damage equivalent to at least 500 million reais ($96 million).

At the time, the Federal Police, IBAMA, the Brazilian tax authorities and the Attorney General’s Office considered the gang one of the most destructive in the Amazon.

“We don’t recognize his involvement in anything,” said Marlon Arthur Paniago de Oliveira, the deputy mayor’s lawyer in the case. “It is important to clarify that the judicial process is still in the court, and it is certain that he has never had any conviction in criminal proceedings of any kind, in any degree or jurisdiction,” he added.

Mato Grosso, besides having the politician with the most fines, is also the state with most candidates fined. In Colniza, on the border with Amazonas state, five of the 10 mayor-deputy mayor tickets in the November election had candidates with environmental fines. Most of these were for violations against vegetation and environmental control.

The problem isn’t just confined to municipalities in the Brazilian Amazon. The Agência Pública report found six candidates for mayor and deputy mayor in municipalities in other parts of the country were fined by IBAMA for violations committed in the Amazonian states. In total, 11 mayors and deputy mayors currently in office outside the Amazon have been hit with a fine in the region at some point.

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This article was first published in Portugue by Agência Pública.

Authors: Aline Maciel, Bianca Muniz, Bruno Fonseca, Ciro Barros from Agência Pública

Featured image: IBAMA personnel carrying out a raid in 2018 on an illegal mining operation in Tenharim Indigenous Territory in the state of Amazonas. The region is home to extensive forest massifs that are under pressure from criminal groups. Five politicians fined for environmental crimes were elected in the state in 2020. Image courtesy of Vinícius Mendonça/IBAMA.

On Nov. 9, 2020, Pfizer, Inc. announced that the experimental messenger RNA (mRNA) BNT162b2 vaccine for COVID-19 it developed in partnership with Germany’s BioNTech SE had an efficacy rate of 90 percent, based on the results of human clinical trials on the vaccine.^{1 2 3} This news was followed up a week later with an announcement by Moderna, Inc. on Nov. 16 that its experimental mRNA mRNA-1273 for COVID-19 showed an efficacy of 94.5 percent.^{4 5 6}

Seemingly not to be outdone by Moderna and perhaps in anticipation of an impending emergency use authorization (EUA)—not “approval”—by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the first COVID-19 vaccine to be distributed to the U.S. public and used, Pfizer revised upward the efficacy of its BNT162b2 vaccine to 95 percent on Nov. 18.^{7 8 9} The FDA granted an EUA for the BNT162b2 vaccine on Dec. 11. It followed with an EUA for the mRNA-1273 vaccine on Dec. 18.^{10 11}

During the past two months, other pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies have revealed efficacy rates for COVID-19 vaccines they have developed. On Nov. 23, the United Kingdom’s AstraZeneca plc announced that its experimental AZD1222 COVID-19 vaccine, developed in partnership with Oxford University, had attained an efficacy of 70 percent during clinical trials. On Dec. 14, Russia’s Gamaleya National Center of Epidemiology and Microbiology announced its Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine was 91.4 percent efficacious. On Dec. 30, China’s Sinopharm Group Co. Ltd. announced its COVID-19 was 79.34 percent efficacious.^{12 13 14}

Many other pharmaceutical companies, universities and government agencies are continuing to work on their own COVID-19 vaccines that they hope to submit for governmental approval or at least EUAs over the next year. They are proceeding with clinical trials to determine the safety and efficacy of their products. The market for COVID-19 vaccines has begun to take shape and some of the early leading manufacturers have become apparent. Additionally, a bar has been set for the range of effectiveness expected of a COVID-19 vaccine. An efficacy rate of 95 percent is currently considered to be the gold standard for COVID-19 vaccines.

What is Meant by “Efficacy” of COVID-19 Vaccines?

But what exactly does “efficacy” mean when it comes to COVID-19 vaccines? Does it mean that the vaccines will prevent people from becoming infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus? Does it mean that they will prevent people who have the virus from spreading it to others? Based on clinical trials, there is no evidence the vaccines will prevent either. In an interview last month with NBC’s Lester Holt, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla acknowledged he didn’t know if the BNT162b2 vaccine would prevent the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. “I think this is something that needs to be examined. We are not certain about that right now with what we know,” Bourla said.¹⁵

Bourla’s comments were echoed by Moderna’s chief medical officer, Tal Zaks, MD. In an interview with Axios on Nov. 23, Dr. Zaks noted, “When we start the deployment of [the mRNA-1273] vaccine, we will not have sufficient concrete data to prove that this vaccine reduces transmission.”¹⁶¹⁷

“These COVID vaccines are preventing clinical disease, we don’t know if they prevent transmission [of the SARS-CoV-2 virus],” says infectious disease expert Chris Beyrer, MD of the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. According to vaccines expert David Diemert, MD of George Washington University, it is not known if the COVID-19 vaccines will prevent the SARS-CoV-2 virus from entering the body or leaving a vaccinated body.^{18 19 20}

Preventing Infection is Not “Primary Endpoint” of COVID-19 Vaccines

Similar views were expressed last year by Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) which partnered with Moderna on the development of the mRNA-1273 vaccine. At Yahoo Finance’s All Markets Summit on Oct. 26, Dr. Fauci was asked the following question by reporter Anjalee Khemlani:

I wonder about the effectiveness. That’s something that has been a topic of conversation, and I’ve heard a broad range of commentary, from… it will block the virus entirely to it will simply diminish the most severe cases. And if anyone experiences the virus, it will actually be a milder version. So based on what you know right now and what you’re seeing, do you anticipate that the first sets of vaccines out the door will be more of a less effective blocker of the virus?^{19 22}

Dr. Fauci responded:

That’s the primary endpoint of most of the [vaccines] is to prevent clinical disease, to prevent symptomatic disease. Not necessarily to prevent infection… that’s a secondary endpoint. But the primary thing you want to do is that if people get infected—prevent them from getting sick. And if you prevent them from getting sick, you will ultimately prevent them from getting seriously ill. So that’s what we want to do. The first, which we call the primary endpoint, is that.^{21 22}

He added:

If the vaccine also allows you to prevent initial infection, that would be great. But what I would settle for, and all of my colleagues would settle for, is the primary endpoint—to prevent clinically recognizable disease. And that’s what we hope happens.^{19 22}

More recently, Dr. Fauci was asked specifically by Newsweek if people who get a COVID-19 vaccines could still pass on the SARS-CoV-2  to others. He answered: “That’s a good question. We don’t know that yet. We do not know if the vaccines that prevent clinical disease also prevent infection.”^{23 24}

Finally, the World Health Organization (WHO) is also not particularly bullish on the ability of COVID-19 vaccines to control the SARS-CoV-2 contagion. “I don’t believe we have the evidence on any of the vaccines to be confident that it’s going to prevent people from actually getting the infection and therefore being able to pass it on,” said the WHO’s chief scientist, Soumya Swaminathan, MD.^{23 25}

In short then, what has been measured in the trials on the BNT162b2 and mRNA-1273 vaccines, as well as other experimental COVID-19 vaccines, is not whether they prevent infection with and transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus but how well they can prevent or minimize symptoms of COVID-19 disease that can be caused by the virus. There is no evidence to suggest the vaccines will have any effect in terms of protecting people from getting the virus and spreading it.

It doesn’t look like these COVID-19 vaccines are going to come anywhere close to being the proverbial ‘silver bullet.’

Marco Cáceres is managing editor of the weekly journal newspaper The Vaccine Reaction established and published by the non-profit National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), which launched the TVR website in 2015.

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Notes

¹ Ellis R. Pfizer Says COVID Vaccine 90% Effective. WebMD Nov. 9, 2020.

² Kounang N. Pfizer says early analysis shows its Covid-19 vaccine is more than 90% effective. CNN Nov. 9, 2020.

³ Neergaard L, Johnson LA. Pfizer says COVID-19 vaccine is looking 90% effective. The Associated Press Nov. 9, 2020.

⁴ Cohen E. Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine is 94.5% effective, according to company data. CNNNov. 16, 2020.

⁵ McNamara D. Moderna: Data Shows COVID Vaccine 94.5% Effective. WebMD Nov. 16, 2020.

⁶ Park A. Moderna’s COVID-19 Vaccine Is 94.5% Effective. Here’s What That Really Means. TIME Nov. 17, 2020.

⁷ Hopkins JS. Pfizer Says Covid-19 Vaccine Is 95% Effective in Final Data, Will Seek Authorization. The Wall Street Journal Nov. 18, 2020.

⁸ Morello L. Pfizer says vaccine is 95 percent effective in updated data. Politico Nov. 18, 2020.

⁹ Reals T, Gandel S. Pfizer says vaccine is 95 percent effective in updated data. CBS News Nov. 18, 2020.

¹⁰ Press Release. FDA Takes Key Action in Fight Against COVID-19 By Issuing Emergency Use Authorization for First COVID-19 Vaccine. U.S. Food and Drug Administration Dec. 11, 2020.

¹¹ Press Release. FDA Takes Additional Action in Fight Against COVID-19 By Issuing Emergency Use Authorization for Second COVID-19 Vaccine. FDA Dec. 18, 2020.

¹² Crist C. AstraZeneca Says COVID-19 Vaccine 70% Effective. WebMD Nov. 23, 2020.

¹³ Russia’s Sputnik V Vaccine Is 91.4% Effective, Developers Confirm. The Moscow Times Dec. 14, 2020.

¹⁴ Gan N.  China approves Sinopharm Covid-19 vaccine, promises free shots for all citizens. CNNDec. 31, 2020.

¹⁵ Choi J. Pfizer chairman: We’re not sure if someone can transmit virus after vaccination. The Hill Dec. 3, 2020.

¹⁶ Axios. Moderna CMO: A vaccine doesn’t mean we change behavior. Twitter Nov. 23, 2020.

¹⁷ Manskar N. Moderna boss says COVID-19 vaccine not proven to stop spread of virus. New York Post Nov. 24, 2020.

¹⁸ Cáceres M. Wanna Fly? Proof of Vaccination, Please. The Vaccine Reaction Dec. 6, 2020.

¹⁹ Gregory M. VERIFY: Moderna, Pfizer vaccines may prevent disease, but not infection. WUSA9 Nov. 19, 2020.

²⁰ Gregory M. VERIFY: Will the COVID-19 vaccine stop you from spreading it to others? Experts don’t know yet. WUSA9 Nov. 20, 2020.

²¹ Sheets M. Dr Fauci warns that early COVID-19 vaccines will only prevent symptoms from arising – not block infection. Daily Mail Oct. 27, 2020.

²² Yahoo Finance. Dr. Anthony Fauci on coronavirus, vaccines, and stopping the spread. YouTube Oct. 26, 2020.

²³ Fisher BL. WHO, Fauci Warn COVID-19 Vaccines May Not Prevent Infection and Disease Transmission. The Vaccine Reaction Jan. 3, 2021.

²⁴ Kim S. Dr. Fauci on Mandatory COVID Vaccines: ‘Everything Will Be on the Table’. NewsweekJan. 1, 2021.

²⁵ Colson T. Top WHO scientist says vaccinated travelers should still quarantine, citing lack of evidence that COVID-19 vaccines prevent transmission. Business Insider Dec. 29, 2020.

Featured image is from Health Impact News

The Great Covid Hoax

Covid 19 is a phantom. Slaying a phantom is what the mythic Spanish hero Don Quijote attempted to do by ‘tilting at windmills’ he imagined to be monsters. But now almost everybody has got into the act, because they have been ordered to follow Quijote’s example by the perpetrators of the grand hoax called Covid -19. 

The more one slashes at the phantom with one’s trusty sword, the more tired one gets, because a phantom is a phantom – and a sword does no more harm to it than shooting bullets at a hurricane does to annihilate the eye of a storm. Nevertheless, a large percentage of mankind – under instruction – is doing just that, and after a while it gets tiring.

Yes, phantoms are phantoms. One can try to concrete them in or wall them out. One can try to ‘isolate’ one’s self against them; wear masks to scare them away; avoid others who may be harbouring phantoms under their clothes, all this and more – but do they care? No, not one iota!

People get scary feelings when talking about ghosts. Especially on cold winter evenings when the lamps burn low and the last embers of the fire are dying-away with the clock creeping up to the witching midnight hour. And this ghostly virus called Covid-19 is inciting the same kind of feelings in susceptible people all over this planet – even when the sun is up and the sky is blue. A particularly menacing apparition, wouldn’t you agree?

However, those who invented this chimera are not phantoms. Nor are they stupid. They saw a big chance to scare the pants off people and took it. They needed to scare the pants off people to get them to ‘obey’. A scared person will do almost anything he/she is told to do if they think their life  is threatened.  And what the perpetrators did was to take an existing viral infection called ‘flu’, give it a new fancy name and get governments and global media bosses to agree to run with the deception.

It wasn’t that difficult to do, because most of those involved in these professions already live in a phantom world themselves. This was just one more scam to sell to the great listening/watching passive public.

The ‘master perpetrators’ thought this ruse up decades ago. They only needed to give a small tweak to the old flu causal agent to make it seem like a new ‘deadly strain’ and get most of the medical profession hopping around like kangaroos in the arctic circle, searching desperately for the source of something that had become instantly labelled ‘a global pandemic’, but whose real title was ‘global hoax’. A ‘plandemic/scamdemic’ as others have astutely observed.

My God, how the spooks got running once this ‘pandemic’ thing took-off. It seemed like all the lascivious news editors of the world’s media (6 corporations own 90% of it) fell on ‘the pandemic’  as a free gift from hell. One could almost see their eyes turning red with glee at this unprecedented chance to scare their followers witless. 

But the stats tell the real story.  The flu ‘with a twist’ – unpleasant and occasionally dangerous as all flu’s are – comes up with the same morbidity numbers as the standard winter flu. Statistically they are as near as damn’ it identical. And there lies the nature of the phantom. Even when there is a small variation, it’s because the number of (deeply flawed) PCR tests have increased, thereby upping the false positives.

With Ministers of Health, Economics, Digitalisation and who knows what more – all equally devoted to adhering to the divide and conquer advice of the deep state placement at the head of the World Health Organisation, ‘we the people’ had almost nowhere to turn to get a handle on this madness. All ‘traditional’ sources of information – already steeped in the role of printing and broadcasting lies rather than truths – remain to this day wedded to government edicts, regardless of how utterly fatuous and devoid of reason they are.

Fortunately, a smallish percentage of the populace can still smell a rat once it’s out on the loose.  Fortunately this includes real doctors, real scientists, the occasional mainstream news columnist, broadcaster/publisher and really quite a lot of individual entrepreneurs committed to genuine investigative journalism.

However, since the deep state control system has its minions placed in all social and economic key positions of authority, those ready and able to convey truth are forced to find other ways of getting their messages out.

This brings me to a prescient point: since ‘mainstream’ is locked into making phantoms seem real, and since most of the human race  are addicted to their mainstream lie machines, the emergent ‘movement for truth’ is going to have to self organise in order to form the foundations of a de-politicised and de-corporatised society/community which completely parts company with the poisoned status quo.

We pursuers of truth are presently on our life-rafts, dazed by the rapidity of the phantom’s progress in barring our very real freedoms of speech, movement and thought, while simultaneously performing a further turn of the fascist screw on our capacity to remain sane and healthy in body, mind and spirit.

While Klaus Schwab and fellow trolls at the World Economic Forum announce the dystopian details of the Six Great Falsifications known as ‘The Great Reset’ : Zero Carbon, Green New Deal, Fourth Industrial Revolution, Agenda 2030, Transhumanist Smart Cities and New World Order – we are rowing our life rafts through the rip-currents towards solid land.

A land destined to serve as the fresh foundation from which to kick start (once again) the evolution of truth, trust and global human emancipation. The real evolutionary dynamic of humanity, presently cut off from its true path by the predators of chaos, destruction and fear.

The nearer we get to that promised land the clearer our sense of direction becomes; the more settled our emotions, the more calm our thoughts and the more lucid our vision.

It becomes possible to recognise, quite clearly, the darkly malevolent nature of the power structure we have been, wittingly or unwittingly, contributing to for much of our lives. We can begin to understand how it is actually the direct expression of a demonic state of mind, reinforced by Satanic and Masonic initiates whose rituals are played-out in all the main capitals of the world, many centres of government, the church as well as at corporate banker elite secret society gatherings.

It is this explicitly anti-human cabal which has ‘been in charge’  for as long as one cares remember and long before that.

What the Covid phantom did was to bring it all out in the open. Unable to resist the tantalising ‘control prize’, the forces of darkness have – maybe for the first time – come out ‘en masse’ into the open. Now they are throwing their weight around mercilessly, resorting to genetically modified vaccines and enforced home imprisonment in an attempt to wrap-up their mission to capture the planetary soul and to achieve a permanent lockdown of the insuppressible power of love and light.

There are many tiers to the darkside pyramid of course. Many on the lower tiers know not what goes on above them. Our political figureheads are not at the top end. They are simply ever open to being manipulated by those that are.

For example 33% Masons have the ability to manipulate dark power, but many masons think they are part of an organisation dishing-out benevolent gifts to those in need. It is this type of ‘unknowing’ that keeps mankind in slavery to the masters of deception. The largely hidden puppet-masters who tweak the strings of the unknowing and the uncaring.

‘The darkest hour is just before dawn’ and that dawn is closer than most think. We can already see the outlines of the shore beckoning beyond the stormy sea. We must be bold in our determination to reach that shore – and to blow aside all the phantoms that try to obscure our innate capacity to be united – as creative masters of our own destinies.

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Julian Rose is an early pioneer of UK organic farming, writer, international activist, entrepreneur and holistic teacher. His latest book ‘Overcoming the Robotic Mind – Why Humanity Must Come Through’ is particularly recommended reading for this time: see www.julianrose.info. 

Featured image is from dreamstime

The visit of Moldovan President Maia Sandu to Ukraine last week is the first interaction between the two neighboring countries at the highest level in recent years. For Sandu, this trip became her foreign policy premiere since she became president on December 24, 2020. We could observe in her meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that there is a good level of personal interaction between the two leaders.

The Three Seas Initiative project was discussed in relation to the implementation of a partnership with the EU. The Three Seas Initiative is a forum comprising of twelve European Union members located between the Baltic, Adriatic and Black Seas and has the aim of fostering closer cooperation. Both Moldova and Ukraine want to be involved in the Three Seas Initiative despite not being European Union member states.

Both Sandu and Zelensky are radically opposed to Russia in the belief that it will help their countries prospects into becoming European Union and NATO members. The Moldovan and Ukrainian leaders discussed “mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity” and their willingness to face “geopolitical challenges” together with the traditional allusion of a common “aggressor.” They never directly named Russia, but given their known position against Moscow, it is obvious who their statement was directed towards.

Sandu and Zelensky are oriented towards the same circles in the West. Both aim to integrate their countries into Euro-Atlantic structures, despite the unlikeliness that Moldova or Ukraine will become member states of the European Union or NATO in the foreseeable future. As a result of their willingness to appease Western interests in Eastern Europe, Russian influence in the post-Soviet space is being challenged. But now that the political situation in the United States is showing signs of instability, it is not convenient for them to make openly direct statements against Russia.

The issue of Crimea and the Crimean Platform was deliberately avoided by both presidents in the part of the meeting that was revealed to the public. This is likely because such maneuvers require consultation with the incoming Joe Biden administration. Sandu and Zelensky most likely considered it premature to make such statements regarding Crimea. This decision is despite Ukraine launching the Crimean Platform just a mere few months earlier as part of their strategy to “de-occupy” the peninsula after it reunited with Russia in 2014 in a referendum that adhered to all international norms and standards.

When the new administration in Washington stabilizes, it will become clearer whether Moldova’s and Ukraine’s Western partners are ready to use them against Russia. Although they will likely find support from Biden if they continue their opposition to Russia, there will be elections for a new German Chancellor on September 26 and Angela Merkel will not be running. The victor could determine whether Berlin, the de facto leader of the European Union, will continue to loyally follow Washington’s foreign policy or pursue an independent one.

Away from the public eye and ear, it is likely that Sandu and Zelensky privately discussed possibilities of joint pressure against Russia in Transnistria and Donbass. Although Donbass is well known to Westerners, Transnistria is almost unheard of. The small territory is wedged between Ukraine and Moldova. It has a de facto independence but is internationally recognized as a part of Moldova despite the majority of the population being either Russian or Ukrainian.

It should be remembered that during last year’s election campaign, Sandu announced that she will focus on “eliminating the Russian military presence” without mentioning a political settlement in the Transnistrian dispute, thus threatening to warm up a frozen conflict. Given the geography, Ukraine and Moldova are able to blockade Transnistria. This would sever transport links and economic flows.

During the meeting between Sandu and Zelensky, only two public initiatives came to be known – the creation of a certain transportation corridor between the capitals of Ukraine and Moldova, and the organization of a presidential council of the two countries. However, regarding the first initiative, it must have a strong economic justification to be attractive to potential investors. Given the current state of low economic interaction between Ukraine and Moldova, as well as their economic crises, such a justification will be very difficult to find.

The Presidential Council is a more realistic initiative, although the idea itself is not new. The statement about it is a sign that Moldova and Ukraine have agreed to pursue certain policies together. Even if those policies are not clear yet, it will undoubtedly include how they can collectively counter Russian influence in Transnistria and Donbass.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

Featured image is from The Dubrovnik Times 

“We just want the facts, please.” –Detective Joe Friday, Dragnet

“You notice a powerful and obnoxious odor of mendacity in this room?”  The question boomed by Big Daddy in Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof may have never been more urgent than today.

We should all be asking this question and demanding straight answers. The sense of smell provided us by nature in our self-protection toolbox is indispensable when dangers are invisible and inaudible – denied view and voice by those empowered and trusted by the public.  This leaves us to follow our noses, and when investigations are met with obvious stonewalling and gaslighting we are probably on the right track.

CIA Document 1035-960 referred to nose-following investigations of the dubious Warren Commission report on JFK’s assassination as “conspiracy theories,” a dismissive term repeatedly invoked ever since to discredit challenges and evade honest examination of evidence of unspeakable crimes by the powerful. The same tactic was employed after 9/11.  Searches for truth and justice by determined private citizens meet with long delays, multiple roadblocks, and buried hope. I see this script again in the covid-19 pandemic declarations and radically destructive responses by power wielders in the US and worldwide. We cannot allow similar delays and obfuscation this time around.

Is theory an impermissible word?  Of course not. A theory is a conceptual model developed to account for evidence, connecting identified data points.  This is the fundamental method of science.  In behavioral theory construction, complex social and political events obviously involve multiple participants.  When the events are criminal or otherwise need to be hidden, participants must necessarily plan and prepare secretly.  When official explanations from government and its compliant media stenographers are highly suspicious, empirically unlikely or obvious nonsense, we have the duty as citizens to inquire independently and build our own theoretical models.  In crime as well as science, multiple theories typically arise before the final breakthrough in empirical demonstration or courtroom proof.

The “theories” immediately proclaimed by government sources following each of the four seminal assassinations of the 1960s, and of 9/11, involved no scientific method.  Each warped the course of history without valid empirical foundations. By the time citizen investigators have uncovered and assembled enough evidence to construct realistic storylines, it has been much too late.  Massive damage to our rights and freedoms grounded in official stories have already been institutionalized. We have inflicted mass-murderous wars on other peoples. Wrongs remain unresolved, often exacerbated and simply better disguised.  Evidence is cold, and perpetrators have died or disappeared voluntarily or involuntarily.

The official lies become enshrined as history. Our government, “news” media, educational curricula and cultural legends have relentlessly lied and betrayed us about everything – the congenial Thanksgiving feast between Pilgrims and their targeted genocide victims, about anti-colonial independence movements as “international communism,” about Iraqi WMDs, about Israeli innocence in the face of Palestinian “terrorism.” Why should we believe them now about anything that doesn’t match the obvious or easily discoverable facts?  There is a conspiracy, a very big one, obvious by now to everyone seeking the pieces missing  from the covid-19 jigsaw puzzle. I encountered an example when submitting this seditious composition through my gmail account to which I was directed by the submission portal provided.  Almost all the hyperlinks were “unable” to access their sites, so I switched to a private account and they all reappeared.  By reading further, you too may experience the now-designated-guilty pleasure of sedition.

Many Americans, over 50,000 health and bioscience research professionals, and common-sensible people worldwide are questioning whether the government declaration of a covid-19 pandemic and “public health emergency” permitting state suspension of civil rights were justified. These indefinite suspensions include violation of our 1^st Amendment right to freedom of assembly, potential threats to 4^th Amendment security of our homes and persons, 6^th and 7^th Amendments due process rights, as well as rights to liberty, privacy, freedom of movement, work, and education specified by Universal Declaration of Human Rights Articles 3, 9, 12, 13, 20 and 26.

Considering the severe impacts of government actions upon employment, small businesses, public mental health, opportunities for vulture capitalism transferring massive assets from everyday citizens to multinational banks, massive corporations and the wealthiest citizens through the deceptive CARES Act, We the People are owed a thorough and fully independent investigation of this economically catastrophic management of a perceived public health threat amplified by alarmist reporting before necessary facts were available.

Specifically, we must demand investigation of the following documented events and questionable policies brought to public attention during this crisis.  These questions are central but by no means comprehensive.  More emerge every day.

Origins

Two exercises precisely anticipating this pandemic were held in 2019. Event 201 sponsored by Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was held in NYC in October.  Crimson Contagion, a series of DHHS simulations envisioning a pandemic outbreak beginning in China, had previously been held in Washington between January and August.  These are not only de facto suspicious, but why was our public health system so unprepared?

The federal government failed to obtain prevalence data to provide a valid denominator in morbidity and mortality rate assessments, data provided by Stanford University and USC studies in late April, some six weeks after a “pandemic” was declared without these necessary parameters.

These California studies based on indices of ongoing or recent infection in subject samples from Santa Clara and Los Angeles counties estimated prevalence rates of 3-4%, with case morbidity risk of about 1.5% and case fatality risk of .15%. Since business closures are the prevention modality causing the most economic hardship and exacerbation of other health problems, I did a further analysis in late May comparing covid-19 fatalities (from NYT reports over 90 days between January 21 and April 21) of the 13 states that did not close “non-essential” businesses with 13 neighboring states that did (identified by USA Today), which show an indistinguishable difference slightly favoring the open states, with both reporting about three deaths per 100,000 population.  As of mid-January, 2021, the worldwide population fatality rate is currently .00026 – with deaths of some two million in a population approaching eight billion. Do epidemiologists define these fatality risks as a “pandemic” or “public health emergency”?

NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci had information from China in January that reflected these modest predicted rates, but failed to notify the public, publishing this only in a Feb. 28 paper in the New England Journal of Medicine.  In this paper he anticipated an infection death rate of less than 1%, comparable to a “severe seasonal influenza,” including China’s report of “higher morbidity and mortality among the elderly and among those with coexisting conditions.” This would have suggested simply protecting the vulnerable elderly.

Nevertheless, a society-wide lockdown has continued into January 2021, inflicting severe economic, social, psychological and collateral medical hardships on millions that have caused far more deaths than covid-19.  But following nine months of this lockdown the worldwide CFR is even below Dr. Fauci’s early expectations, yet Fauci et al. still decline to blow the “game over” whistle.

Can Drs. Fauci, Redfield and Birx be trusted?

U.S. military documents show that Redfield and Birx—both military HIV research science officers at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in 1992—knowingly falsified scientific data published in the New England Journal of Medicine and the AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses journal, engaging in “a systematic pattern of data manipulation, inappropriate statistical analyses and misleading data presentation in an apparent attempt to promote the usefulness of the GP160 AIDS vaccine.”

An Air Force tribunal on Scientific Fraud and Misconduct agreed that Redfield’s “misleading or, possibly, deceptive” information “seriously threatens his credibility as a researcher.”  Dr. Redfield admitted that his analyses were faulty and deceptive, agreed to publicly correct them, but continued making false claims at three subsequent international HIV conferences and perjured himself in testimony before Congress, claiming that his vaccine cured HIV to secure $20 million support for his research program.  Public Citizen stated in a 1994 letter to Henry Waxman’s Congressional Committee that this money induced the Army to kill the investigation and “whitewash” Redfield’s offenses.

Also hunting the HIV golden goose, Dr. Fauci blocked publication (see minutes 12-18 of this video) of Dr. Frank Ruscetti’s study confirming French Dr. Luc Montagnier’s identification of the HIV virus to buy time for Dr. Robert Gallo’s American team to catch up and force the Pasteur Institute to share lucrative patent rights.  Fauci then succeeded in transferring the research program from Gallo’s National Cancer Institute to his own NIAID, gaining massive revenue allocations by Congress including long-ongoing collaboration with DARPA on gain-of-function bioweapons research disguised as “biodefense” thereby evading bioweapons treaty prohibitions.

There is credible evidence that this virus has been lab-modified from SARS 1. If so, this likely originated from collaborations including US and Chinese bioweapons laboratories at the University of North Carolina BSL3 lab, the Wuhan BSL4 lab, and Harvard.  Dr. Charles Lieber, a nanotechnology expert and ex-chair of the Harvard Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, was arrested and indicted in 2020 for lying to federal investigators about unreported $50,000 monthly income from China.

These collaborations are documented in joint authorship of scientific articles by University of North Carolina, Harvard and Wuhan scientists, and by two $3.7 million grants to Wuhan from the NIAID in 2014 and 2019 through EcoHealth Alliance, an NIAID pass-through organization. Their collaboration apparently moved from UNC to Wuhan in 2014 following Congressional disapproval of our thinly veiled bioweapons research and a 2013 SCOTUS judgment confirming a previous decision that genetic material cannot be patented.

Irrespective of the origin of covid-19, all our BSL3 and BSL4 labs in the U.S. and overseas should be closed as morally indefensible existential threats to humanity.

Exploitation

Reuters and Politico reported White House meetings in January including Pentagon and CIA officials that excluded public health officials.  The pandemic media preoccupation has been used as cover to further impose illegal sanctions on Iran and Venezuela, transfer Venezuelan state funds into a NY Federal Reserve account of Juan Guaido, quickly sponsor an aborted invasion of Venezuela by private mercenaries under a $150 million contract with Guaido, and distract from the November 2019 “lithium coup” (now overturned) against the elected president of Bolivia.

The presumed pandemic has been used in the US and worldwide to justify state infringements on freedom and privacy and in some places police abuse, and there is now a movement within government health agencies to condition certain civil rights on mandatory vaccinations.

With tens of thousands of small, independent businesses squeezed or ruined as “non-essential,” big box, chain and online businesses have taken over much of the economy. Wealth of the world’s billionaires has increased obscenely while the entrepreneurial middle classes, working classes, and poor struggle and sink.

Corruption, Fraud and Deception

Doctors report being incentivized to hospitalize ($13,000) and to ventilate ($39,000) covid-19 patients although ventilation may often be the wrong treatment, even causing iatrogenic death. Inappropriate use of ventilators despite early warnings by conscientious physicians competent in emergency and infectious disease medicine appear to have killed [yet to be fully confirmed and investigated] hundreds or thousands of patients.

Doctors have been instructed by the CDC to list covid-19 as primary cause-of-death whenever present or presumed irrespective of chronic co-morbidities that have heretofore been reported as primary with acute infectious diseases listed as secondary contributors.

A long-established, safe, inexpensive drug – hydroxychloroquine – when combined with zinc and prescribed at the early outpatient stage has been demonstrated highly effective in multiple studiesworldwide including prominent advocacy and publication by NY Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, but has been prohibited for use by American physicians and fraudulently demonized by studies that administered it at inappropriate, hospitalized, late stages of treatment in potentially lethal dosages, a criminal effort to discredit an effective, inexpensive outpatient treatment that obviates the need for $3000 remdesivir and desperately rushed development of new and dangerous vaccines. The shocking, coordinated campaign to deceptively discredit this low-cost, very effective prevention and early intervention medication is described by Dr. Simone Gold in her short, very readable book, I Do Not Consent.

Many leading molecular biologists, virologists, epidemiologists, and infectious disease specialists have explained that masking, social distancing, business restrictions and closures, and touch avoidance prolongs rather than prevents spread of a viral infection since these measures delay “herd immunity” among the large low-risk majority whose immunity will subsequently protect the high-risk minority.  Sweden followed this model with no lockdown or draconian social interaction modifications to permit development of herd immunity, had a somewhat higher CFR than neighboring Norway due largely to failure to protect nursing home residents, but had a lower rate than any major European country other than Germany and has now returned to normalcy with none of the  collateral damage widespread elsewhere.  Our government and media have only cited comparison with Norway, which has much lower population density than Sweden spread along its long, fjord-divided coastline communities.

Denmark also followed a permissive model, with masking optional and infrequent.  This facilitated a nationwide randomized controlled study of masking effectiveness with experimental and control subjects instructed to wear or not wear masks in public, with social reactions neutralized as a contributing factor.  With its large sample size (c. 6,000), stratified random sampling design controlling for regional variations, 30-day exposure window during the height of the pandemic, use of 3-layer surgical masks, satisfactory (80%) subject completion rate, and multiple outcome criteria, the study findings are conclusive to the naked eye irrespective of the statistical analysis necessary for scientific publication. The best comparison sample with unmasked controls were about half the treatment subjects who masked consistently as directed, where the infection rates were 2.0% (masked) and 2.1% (controls), with inconsistent maskers leading the others at 1.7%.  These findings have been wholly ignored by our government and press.

Vitamins C and D are effective for both prevention and treatment, and well-established anti-inflammatory drugs such as budesonide and ivermectin have proven highly effective in preventing and reducing the immune system overreactions that account for respiratory distress and collateral organ damage. Simple antibiotics such as azithromycin prevent opportunistic bacterial pneumonia. These effective, inexpensive, well-established preventive and treatment protocols have been ignored by our public health establishment and its captive press. Instead,  newly minted vaccines promising massive Big Pharma development subsidies and projected profits have been relentlessly promoted as the only solution from the beginning.  The low death rate – almost exclusively confined to the elderly with significant co-morbidities and virtually zero among the school-aged – has been concealed along with the absurdity of health-compromising masks, social distancing and touch avoidance in the very low-risk populations.

The Vaccine Rescue Plan

The declared “pandemic” has been prolonged to await rescue by vaccine through a frantic interweaving of contact tracing and PCR testing – a method its inventor, Nobel Prize laureate Kary Mullis, has explained only identifies viral molecules that are often inconsequential and does not identify disease.  A positive finding may simply indicate virus encountered and subdued with immunity acquired, leaving some battlefield detritus. Compounding  this, there are many false positives. The public has been terrorized into readiness to seek safety exclusively in a vaccine – a highly suspicious agenda of the NIAID, CDC and WHO.

There is widespread concern that covid-19 vaccinations could be mandated or made a condition of certain civil rights (e.g., assembly, access to public spaces) despite use of experimental technologies, very inadequate safety testing, and a long record of vaccine injuries documented by decades of court records.

The 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act  should be repealed, which immunized vaccine manufacturers from liability due to many business-ruinous lawsuits for lifelong disabilities, thereby removing the necessity of thorough safety testing in their business model and leading to a proliferation of highly profitable vaccines without sufficient risk/benefit evaluation. Following this legislation, vaccine injury claims have been defended by the U.S. Department of Justice in a Vaccine Court with some $4.2 billion in judgments paid through 2019 plus court costs at taxpayer expense despite denying most claims by parents.  The 2020 PREP Act should also be repealed, which extended immunity from vaccine liability to the US government as well, leaving vaccine-injured citizens with no legal protection or recourse. Restoration of both these rightful consumer-protection liabilities has become increasingly important as bizarre and alarming reactions producing irreversible autoimmune conditions are already reported in response to novel-technology mRNA vaccines that may better meet the definition of genetic engineering than vaccination – what Dr. Simone Gold calls insertion of “experimental biological agents” into our cells perhaps including penetration of the blood-brain barrier (see minutes 55-1:05 in this video).

There are worrisome institutional conflicts-of-interest as well. Bill Gates has stated his ambition to establish a global system and production capacity to vaccinate the entire world for this and future pathogens.  His dystopian vision of a technocratic health safety regime fits seamlessly into the very disturbing Agenda 20-30 and World Economic Forum visions of centralized world control, which would increase rather than broadly redistribute the power and wealth of the .001%, and would disempower situational, local, regional and national approaches to this and all other challenges to human welfare and survival while smothering individual, organizational and cultural identities. This is an agenda of which the covid-19 measures imposed upon us across the globe are an obvious harbinger.

In addition, Gates has undisclosed conflicts-of-interest with the massive looming vaccine profit center. The Gates Foundation, Gates-established/controlled GAVI Alliance, and Gates-funded CHAMPS program through Emory University provide indispensable funding to the CDC and WHO.  Following US withdrawal of WHO support by President Trump, the Gates Foundation and GAVI now provide more funding to the WHO than any of the 192 nations it serves.  To mesmerize public acceptance through news propaganda, the pharmaceutical industry provides enormous TV advertising revenues, about equivalent to the fast food industry and exceeded only by the automotive industry.

Requiring covid-19 vaccination as a condition of school attendance would be not only unjustified but arguably criminal.  Oregon pediatrician Paul Thomas, who has scrupulously provided parents with informed choice whether or not to vaccinate their children, performed a review of his clinical records over 10 years comparing health outcomes of vaccinated and unvaccinated children. Collaborating with research analyst Dr. James Lyons-Weiler, Dr. Thomas found striking differences in overall health with the unvaccinated children far healthier across all illness outcome measures.

Resistance

These facts are now being introduced into evidence in lawsuits across the world where most jurisdictions do not provide liability immunity to pharmaceutical manufacturers.

Attempts to investigate these essential questions, scrupulously fact-based, have been ignored or casually dismissed as “conspiracy theories” by the mainstream press. Alternative web-based and social media reports and assertions by hundreds of physicians, medical research scientists, independent and citizen journalists, civil rights attorneys and everyday fed-up citizens challenging the official narrative have met smothering censorship by the dominant internet platforms. Due in no small measure to this blatant censorship, public opposition is growing, rejecting mainstream propaganda and responding to emerging counter-narrative revelations with dismay, anger and aroused will to resist.

The urgent need to mount vigorous resistance goes far beyond the current health-panic-induction agenda – possibly an intended checkmate – by obviously coordinated world power managers. The methods, motives and orchestration of this dark global theatric that we are not allowed to dig into, identify and examine lead us back toward the sponsors of Crimson Contagion – the vaccine-obsessed Gates Foundation, the Great Reset vision of World Economic Forum Davos denizens, and Big Pharma as their instrument and beneficiary.  Or would that just be another ridiculous conspiracy theory?

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Jack Dresser, Ph.D. is a retired psychologist and NIH-funded research scientist associated with Oregon Research Institute, where he served as Principal Investigator on projects developing and evaluating high-risk behavior prevention and early intervention programs.  Before these studies he directed several projects funded by the U.S. Department of Education developing drug and alcohol abuse prevention and early intervention programs for school districts in northern and southern California and Oregon.  He began his professional career as a U.S. Army psychologist during the Vietnam War, and is national vice-chair of the Veterans for Peace working group on Palestine and the Middle East.  For several years he has co-hosted a weekly radio show titled “Racism, Empire and Survival” on www.kepw.org in Eugene, Oregon that focuses on the propaganda fueling and maintaining violent U.S./NATO/Israeli imperialism and the false histories packaged as education that provide the framing into which government and media propaganda is seamlessly fitted.

Liberals may be able to argue with Fox News or even Republican politicians. But what happens when a peer reviewed study comes out of one of their coveted and prestigious universities in California potentially showing that their collective reaction to Covid may have been completely worthless and, as a result, may have done exceptionally more harm than good?

Along those lines, it seems like a good idea to point out that a new peer reviewed study out of Stanford is questioning the effectiveness of lockdowns and stay-at-home orders (which it calls NPIs, or non-pharmaceutical interventions) to combat Covid-19. The study’s lead author is an associate professor in the Department of Medicine at Stanford.

“The study did not find evidence to support that NPIs were effective in preventing the spread,” according to Outkick, who published the report.

The study, co-authored by Dr. Eran Bendavid, Professor John P.A. Ioannidis, Christopher Oh, and Jay Bhattacharya, studied the effects of NPIs in 10 different countries, including England, France, Germany and Italy.

And, when all was said and done, it concluded that: “In summary, we fail to find strong evidence supporting a role for more restrictive NPIs in the control of COVID in early 2020.”

In fact, the study found  “no clear, significant beneficial effect of more restrictive NPIs on case growth in any country.”

From the study:

“In the framework of this analysis, there is no evidence that more restrictive non-pharmaceutical interventions (“lockdowns”) contributed substantially to bending the curve of new cases in England, France, Germany, Iran, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, or the United States in early 2020. By comparing the effectiveness of NPIs on case growth rates in countries that implemented more restrictive measures with those that implemented less restrictive measures, the evidence points away from indicating that more restrictive NPIs provided additional meaningful benefit above and beyond less restrictive NPIs. While modest decreases in daily growth (under 30%) cannot be excluded in a few countries, the possibility of large decreases in daily growth due to more restrictive NPIs is incompatible with the accumulated data.”

The study even looked into the potential of stay-at-home orders facilitating spread of the virus:

“The direction of the effect size in most scenarios point towards an increase in the case growth rate, though these estimates are only distinguishable from zero in Spain (consistent with non-beneficial effect of lockdowns). Only in Iran do the estimates consistently point in the direction of additional reduction in the growth rate, yet those effects are statistically indistinguishable from zero. While it is hard to draw firm conclusions from these estimates, they are consistent with a recent analysis that identified increase transmission and cases in Hunan, China during the period of stay-at-home orders from increased intra-household density and transmission. In other words, it is possible that stay-at-home orders may facilitate transmission if they increase person-to-person contact where transmission is efficient such as closed spaces.”

It continues:

“We do not question the role of all public health interventions, or of coordinated communications about the epidemic, but we fail to find an additional benefit of stay-at-home orders and business closures. The data cannot fully exclude the possibility of some benefits. However, even if they exist, these benefits may not match the numerous harms of these aggressive measures. More targeted public health interventions that more effectively reduce transmissions may be important for future epidemic control without the harms of highly restrictive measures.”

You can read the full study here.

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