“Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”―George Orwell, Animal Farm

What should we expect in 2021?

So far, it looks like this year is going to be plagued by more of the same brand of madness, mayhem, manipulation and tyranny that dominated 2020.

Frankly, I’m sick of it: the hypocrisy, the double standards, the delusional belief by Americans at every point along the political spectrum that politics and politicians are the answer to what ails the country, when for most of our nation’s history, politics and politicians have been the cause of our woes.

Consider: for years now, Americans, with sheeplike placidity, have tolerated all manner of injustices and abuses meted out upon them by the government (police shootings of unarmed individuals, brutality, corruption, graft, outright theft, occupations and invasions of their homes by militarized police, roadside strip searches, profit-driven incarcerations, profit-driven wars, egregious surveillance, taxation without any real representation, a nanny state that dictates every aspect of their lives, lockdowns, overcriminalization, etc.) without ever saying “enough is enough.”

Only now do Americans seem righteously indignant enough to mobilize and get active, and for what purpose? Politics. They’re ready to go to the mat over which corporate puppet will get the honor to serve as the smiling face on the pig for the next four years.

Talk about delusion.

It’s so ludicrous as to be Kafkaesque.

A perfect example of how farcical, topsy-turvy, and downright perverse life has become in the America: while President Trump doles out medals of commendation and presidential pardons to political cronies who have done little to nothing to advance the cause of freedom, Julian Assange rots in prison for daring to blow the whistle on the U.S. government’s war crimes

You’d think that Americans would be outraged over such abject pandering to the very swamp that Trump pledged to drain, but that’s not what has the Right and the Left so worked up. No, they’re still arguing over whether dead men voted in the last presidential election.

Either way, no matter which candidate lost to the other, it was always going to be the Deep State that won.

And so you have it: reduced to technicalities, distracted by magician’s con games, and caught up in the manufactured, highly scripted contest over which beauty contestant wears the crown, we have failed to do anything about the world falling apart around us.

Literally.

Our economy—at least as it impacts the vast majority of Americans as opposed to the economic elite—is in a shambles. Our infrastructure is falling apart. Our government has been overtaken by power-hungry predators and parasites. And our ability—and fundamental right—to govern our own lives is being usurped by greedy government operatives who care nothing for our lives or our freedoms.

Our ship of state is being transformed into a ship of fools.

We stand utterly defenseless in the face of a technological revolution brought about by artificial intelligence and wall-to-wall surveillance that is re-orienting the world as we know it. Despite the mounting high-tech encroachments on our rights, we have been afforded a paltry amount of legislative and judicial protections. Indeed, Corporate America has more rights than we do.

We stand utterly powerless in the face of government bureaucrats and elected officials who dance to the tune of corporate overlords and do what they want, when they want, with whomever they want at taxpayer expense, with no thought or concern for the plight of those they are supposed to represent. To this power elite, “we the people” are good for only two things: our tax dollars and our votes. In other words, they just want our money.

We stand utterly helpless in the face of government violence that is meted out, both at home and abroad. Indeed, the systemic violence being perpetrated by agents of the government—inflicted on unarmed individuals by battlefield-trained SWAT teams, militarized police, and bureaucratic government agents trained to shoot first and ask questions later—has done more collective harm to the American people and their liberties than any single act of terror or mass shooting.

We stand utterly silenced in the face of government and corporate censors and a cancel culture that, in their quest to not offend certain viewpoints, are all too willing to eradicate views that do not conform. In this way, political correctness has given way to a more insidious form of group think and mob rule.

We stand utterly locked down in the face of COVID-19 mandates, restrictions, travel bans and penalties that are acclimating the populace to unquestioningly accede to the government’s dictates, whatever they might be (as long as they are issued in the name of national security), no matter how extreme or unreasonable.

We stand utterly intimidated in the face of red flag laws, terrorism watch lists, contact tracing programs, zero tolerance policies, and all other manner of police state tactics that aim to keep us fearful and compliant.

We stand utterly indoctrinated in the collective belief that the government—despite its longstanding pattern and practice of corruption, collusion, dysfunction, immorality and incompetence—somehow represents “we the people.”

Despite all of this, despite how evident it is that we are mere tools to be used and abused and manipulated for the power elite’s own diabolical purposes, we somehow fail to see their machinations for what they truly are: thinly veiled attempts to overthrow our republic and enslave the citizenry in order to expand their power and wealth.

It is a grim outlook for a new year, but it is not completely hopeless.

If hope is to be found, it will be found with those of us who do not rely on politicians that promise to fix what is wrong but instead do their part, at their local levels, to right the wrongs and fix what is broken. I am referring to the builders, the thinkers, the helpers, the healers, the educators, the creators, the artists, the activists, the technicians, the food gatherers and distributors, and every other person who does their part to build up rather than destroy.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, “we the people” are the hope for a better year. Not Trump. Not Biden. And not the architects and enablers of the American Police State.

Until we can own that truth, until we can forge our own path back to a world in which freedom means something again, we’re going to be stuck in this wormhole of populist anger, petty politics and destruction that is pitting us one against the other.

In that scenario, no one wins.

There’s a meme circulating on social media that goes like this:

If you catch 100 red fire ants as well as 100 large black ants, and put them in a jar, at first, nothing will happen. However, if you violently shake the jar and dump them back on the ground the ants will fight until they eventually kill each other. The thing is, the red ants think the black ants are the enemy and vice versa, when in reality, the real enemy is the person who shook the jar. This is exactly what’s happening in society today. Liberal vs. Conservative. Black vs. White. Pro Mask vs. Anti Mask. The real question we need to be asking ourselves is who’s shaking the jar … and why?

Whether red ants will really fight black ants to the death is a question for the biologists, but it’s an apt analogy of what’s playing out before us on the political scene and a chilling lesson in social engineering. So before you get too caught up in the circus politics and conveniently timed spectacles that keep us distracted from focusing too closely on the government’s power grabs, first ask yourself: who’s really shaking the jar?

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].

Originally published by The Rutherford Institute

In the end, only a Grand Coalition of all Covidian parties will become inevitable, either as a consequence of a rebellion or prior to one…

The Greek government is trying to excel in its imposition of totalitarian rules for a non-existent Covid crisis. Magnifying alleged PCR positives and blowing infections out of all proportion, they shut down Greece in early November by imposing draconian measures. The Covid Coup of early March has metastasized into a full blown Covid Junta as areas in Western Athens have had a full 24 hour curfew imposed on them. Citizens have been quoted on MSM as stating this has nothing to do with a virus but a full-blown attempt at a Junta.

PM Mitsotakis in a video conference call with Klaus Schwab’s Great Reset book on his desk

September 2020

Whilst hotels were partially opened in the summer but a whole series of roadblocks were created on tourists from PCR tests for entrance into Greece, the banning of certain islands from tourists, night curfews, etc., the actual numbers were miniscule to support the tens of thousands that work in the industry or supply it. The collapse in the tourist trade was catastrophic, and as most businesses were closed down during the draconian years of the IMF-EU imposed austerity, the economy entered the new Great Depression already on its knees and it will now be blown up completely. That is why even more draconian measures are sought and imposed.

Mitsotakis’ New Democracy is fully embedded to Merkel’s EU and she dictates the agenda. The covidclowns in Athens are only too eager to please and the reason is simple. Since Syriza came to power, they have shown that they are more pro-EU than the EU itself and they know the opposition wants even more measures than are being proposed or implemented.

Old habits die hard: Afghanis and Pakistanis celebrate in central Athens despite lockdown measures

After making masks compulsory for shopping and public transport, the government then made mask wearing compulsory everywhere the moment you leave the house with €300 fines, SMS messages in order to leave, and not allowing people to leave the region/area they live in. Fines became like confetti when the changes were first implemented, but to what extent any are paid is another issue. Coupled with compulsory mask wearing in schools and the defeat of the student protests due to the Lockdown Left, the government implemented a second lockdown in early November which continues till this article was written, and they want to extend it to Easter and possibly indefinitely.

Economic Meltdown Anew

Having been the guinea pigs for the Eurocrisis that was magnified beyond all proportion for lilliputian Greece, they have now chosen for themselves to be the Covidclowns for Davos’ Great Reset. Without any serious functioning industries left anymore and relying mostly on imports and the tourist trade, they are being imploded one lockdown after another on dubious excuses regarding infections and Covid deaths. The ever evolving Covid-1984 goalpost serves an agenda, that which destroys the independence of all and turns them into dependent appendages of a higher authority whose aim is to instil fear via virus terrorism and to ensure people no longer meet or act independently of governments. The closest description are prisoners of an open prison who are free to act within certain limits and their life is regulated.

The collapse of GDP year-on-year but beginning from the first lockdown early March 2020 until March 2021 will probably be in the region of around 25%, equivalent in one year to what took four to occur between 2010 and 2014, but you won’t hear that being said anywhere as a boom is always literally round the corner. The only problem for most people is that they can never find that corner, and it isn’t due to a lack of working google maps.

The two reasons Greece and its people survived (not everyone of course, that is) in the last decade was the fact that hundreds of thousands of citizens went abroad for work, and North African coupled with Turkish tourism collapsed due to the wars/upheavals in those regions. But the 2020 collapse in tourism which registered probably a 80% downturn in both numbers and takings will eventually take its toll as it will complete a full cycle (Easter 2020-Easter 2021).

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Police roadblocks in the Western Greater Athens region of Aspropirgos

The Greek riot police have spent over a decade cracking heads open and targeting the most vulnerable in society, usually pensioners, women, and children. They actually get a buzz out of it that breaks the boredom of hanging around doing nothing. Twice in the past they have been defeated: intheriots over a dump site which was withdrawn in Keratea, Greece and in the islands of the Aegean over illegal immigration. A third event is developing, this time round the Covid dictatorship in Western Athens, the old rustbelt of Aspropirgos (which in the last three decades has been populated by ex-Russian Pontiac Greeks who arrived in the mid-1980s and settled in the region) and a northern town called Kozani which has also been in extreme lockdown.

The curfew has been imposed from 6pm till 5am and helicopters and drones have been circling the areas daily with police roadblocks in and out of the roads that connect the region. All shops and markets apart from supermarkets are to be closed. Hundredsgotinvolved in battles with the riot police for a series of nights. These areas have become a testing site to roll this out nationally, and it’s no coincidence that locals interviewed in the media mentioned that this is all about going national (i.e. a new Junta). Just as this is being written, a new lockdown has been announced, nationally restricting movements from 9pm to 5pm and re-closing everything apart from supermarkets. The aim of course is to lock Greece down from 6pm and block all movements. This appears to be an EU agenda as France announced similar types of measures as well.

Theriotpolice’s role has now been elevated in imposing around-the-clock curfews, the problem being that there aren’t enough of them and going into local areas in such a brutal manner only shows their limitations. This role can only realistically be imposed by an army with shoot to kill orders.

The Covidian Junta is trying to impose a Woke Dictatorship whereby people volunteer to stay imprisoned indefinitely, and if they come out, then we send riot police out to crack a few skulls. This would work if there was an active segment of the population on the streets pushing for people to stay in, but they are all shielding from life in general, hence the arrival of the riot police only inflames passions and inevitably leads to their defeat as they can’t take on locals in their own areas. Apart from the riots in Aspropirgos, a motorcade rally now occurred in Kozani, with emphasis that no political parties are allowed to be present.

Lockdown Left Propping Up New Democracy

Never in the history of Greece has there been such a total and complete unison in politics by all the representatives in Parliament. The previous decade of course showed that they were in unison in particular when fake left Syriza took over and New Democracy voted alongside them for the 3^rd Memorandum. Now,though, they are in lockstep behind endless rounds of lockdowns, which according to the World Bank are to go on for a full five years (funding has been secured for that aim).

The leaders of the official left parties Syriza and KKE rushed to get the Pfeizer vaccine and no other. Not the Russian, but Pfeizer’s, the one that the government was allegedly going to roll out for millions within weeks but which now has been derailed as only a few thousand arrived and are now on hold. Having told everyone that lockdowns are the only way for stopping the virus but then they don’t stop it, they now tell everyone that the vaccine will but then they stop its rollout, which begs the question that if lockdowns were successful, then why were they continued? And if they weren’t successful, then why weren’t they discontinued?

World Bank documentation stating that funding for Covid goes on till 2025

The Greek government has voted through a (Great Reset) Bankruptcy Law and now individuals will be treated as corporations. Without your knowledge, creditors can apply for default. So for any loan you have taken out or for any money you owe, if they push for bankruptcy and you own any assets, then they will go for them….real asset stripping will occur, not the fake ones that occurred before when they fake Left allegedly got involved in stopping them. This time around, there won’t even be any fake protests as the Lockdown Left will be at home wearing a mask and keeping ‘safe’. This is the number one priority of all political discourse nowadays: how to save oneself from death by dying one lockdown at a time.

In the end, only a Grand Coalition of all Covidian parties will become inevitable, either as a consequence of a rebellion or prior to one…

Julian Assange’s legal victory this week was bittersweet. In a stunning decision, British judge Vanessa Baraitser denied Donald Trump’s request for extradition of Assange to the United States, ruling that he was at high risk of suicide if he were extradited because the U.S. prison system could not protect him.

But at the same time, Baraitser spent most of her 132-page decision supporting the Trump administration’s case against Assange, which amounts to the criminalization of national security journalism.

So even as press freedom advocates celebrate that Assange has escaped facing charges under the U.S. Espionage Act — charges that carry 175 years in prison — they are also lamenting Baraitser’s acceptance of virtually all of the Trump administration’s attacks on investigative journalism.

Extradition Would Be “Oppressive” Due to Assange’s Mental Condition

The U.K. 2003 Extradition Act forbids extradition if “the physical or mental condition of the person is such that it would be unjust or oppressive to extradite him.”

If Assange is extradited to the United States, he would be incarcerated in a U.S. supermax prison and held in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day under onerous conditions, the judge found.

Baraitser relied heavily on the written testimony of Professor Michael Kopelman, emeritus professor of neuropsychiatry at Kings College London, who diagnosed Assange with recurrent depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Baraitser cited Kopelman’s assertion, “I am as confident as a psychiatrist ever can be that, if extradition to the United States were to become imminent, Mr. Assange will find a way of suiciding.” She noted that other experts corroborated Kopelman’s predictions of suicide.

The judge wrote, “The detention conditions in which Mr. Assange is likely to be held are relevant to Mr. Assange’s risk of suicide.” She cited testimony by prison experts as well as mental health experts. If he were sent to the U.S., Assange would face incarceration under onerous special administrative measures leaving him in virtual isolation from all other human beings.

Thus, Baraitser found, “Faced with conditions of near total isolation and without the protective factors which moderate his risk at HMP Belmarsh [where Assange is currently imprisoned], I am satisfied that the procedures described by Dr. Leukefled will not prevent Mr. Assange from finding a way to commit suicide.”

“I am satisfied that the risk that Mr. Assange will commit suicide is a substantial one,” Baraitser concluded. “I find that the mental condition of Mr. Assange is such that it would be oppressive to extradite him to the United States of America.”

Baraitser’s decision is ultimately an indictment of the brutal U.S. prison system that wouldn’t be able to protect Assange if he were sent there.

National Security Journalism Under Threat From Judge’s Ruling

But Baraitser had no problem with the U.S. government prosecuting Assange for practicing journalism.

This is the first time a journalist has been indicted under the Espionage Act for publishing truthful information. Journalists are allowed to publish material illegally obtained by a third person if it is a matter of public concern. The U.S. government has never prosecuted a journalist or newspaper for publishing classified information.

The indictment charges that Assange and WikiLeaks obtained and published classified material that Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning had provided to the organization. Many of the charges allege that Assange had “reason to believe that the information would be used to damage the interests of the U.S. or used to the advantage of a foreign nation.” The material that Assange and WikiLeaks published contained evidence of war crimes committed by the United States.

They published 400,000 field reports about the Iraq War, 15,000 unreported deaths of Iraqi civilians and evidence of the systematic murder, torture and rape by the Iraqi army and authorities that was ignored by U.S. forces.

They published 90,000 reports about the war in Afghanistan, including the Afghan War Logs, which recorded more civilian casualties by coalition forces than the U.S. military had reported.

And they published the Guantánamo Files — 779 secret reports about the U.S. government’s torture and abuse of 800 men and boys in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

The most notorious release by WikiLeaks was the 2007 “Collateral Murder” video, in which a U.S. Army Apache helicopter gunship targeted and fired on unarmed civilians in Baghdad. At least 18 civilians were killed — including two Reuters reporters and a man who came to rescue the wounded — and two children were injured. An Army tank drove over one of the bodies, severing it in half. That video portrays the commission of three separate war crimes prohibited by the Geneva Conventions and the U.S. Army Field Manual.

Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, told Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! that, “the point of the prosecution [of Assange] is to criminalize national security journalism.” It goes to the heart of what journalists do, he said, “protecting confidential sources, communicating with them confidentially, cultivating sources, publishing classified secrets. These are the pillars of investigative journalism, of national security journalism in particular.”

Jaffer provided written testimony at Assange’s hearing. He noted that in 1973, Harold Edgar and Benno Schmidt Jr. called the Espionage Act a “loaded gun pointed at newspapers and reporters who publish foreign policy and defense secrets.”

If publication of national security secrets violated the Espionage Act, we wouldn’t know about U.S. government misconduct in the “war on terror.” In his interview with Goodman, Jaffer cited The Washington Post’s exposé of the CIA black sites, the torture and abuse of prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq that The New Yorker and “60 Minutes II” disclosed, and the warrantless surveillance program revealed by The New York Times.

Noam Chomsky said at a January 4 webinar (in which I participated) that the Biden administration will now be spared the embarrassment of putting Assange on trial, but at the same time, the threat to press freedom has been strengthened by Baraitser’s ruling.

Chomsky noted that the government always invokes national security when it doesn’t want the people “to know what they’re doing in their name.” National security really means “the security of the state against its own citizens,” he said.

Four Blackwater mercenaries committed war crimes when they used machine guns and grenade launchers to kill or wound at least 31 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad in 2007. They were convicted and were serving long prison terms. In a move that fueled outrage throughout Iraq, Trump pardoned all four men. Contrast that with the 2007 Collateral Murder video, which contains evidence of U.S. war crimes, also in Baghdad. The helicopter crew was never prosecuted. Trump pardoned individuals who committed war crimes but indicted Assange who revealed them.

The U.S. government is appealing to the High Court to reverse Baraitser’s denial of extradition. If the U.S. loses there, it can appeal to Britain’s Supreme Court. The appellate process will take several months.

It is unlikely that Baraitser’s ruling will be reversed on appeal. She limited her decision to a narrow ground — Assange’s mental health — and accepted most of the U.S. government’s allegations.

On January 6, the defense will request that Assange be released on bond pending appeal.

Originally published on Truthout. Reprinted with permission.

Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and a member of the advisory board of Veterans for Peace. Her most recent book is Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues.

There were several events typical of predictive programming. 

The World Economic Forum October 21^st 2020 meeting and the Great Reset was one (1). 

Here in Britain the orchestration of central, NHS and local responses to a respiratory disease suggested that plans were laid before the Wuhan outbreak was announced on the 12^th of December 2019. 

For instance, the title of a most complex and lengthy bill nodded through in 48 hours in the Mother of Parliaments, was ‘The 2019/2020 Coronavirus Bill’.  This would have required drafting lawyers and committees of MPs to crawl over this miscarriage for at least a month or so pre-Wuhan.

Click the screen below to view to WEF Great Reset Propaganda Video.

The Virus

In my earlier article (2)  I focus on the apocalyptic atmosphere being engendered by the ‘hype’ attached to this recent addition to the ubiqitous corona virus family, first characterised in the 1960s.  That it was probably ‘engineered’ –i.e. not of natural origin by mutation, might have been an excuse for more fear than logic determined.

There was a feeling of ‘End Times’ under a blackening sky; an inevitable spiral into the failure of systems with increased suffering and loss, especially for that large majority world wide who live hand to mouth.

The Pandemic and Geopolitics

Under the vast and masked distraction, and without the possibility of publics gathering in protest, a long planned attack on Iran was in those many psychopathic minds. (2)  The latter are the zealots for destruction of other humans calling a nuclear weapon ‘tactical’.

The Propaganda Campaign

The strategy has been to scare a large majority out of their remaining wits, and to keep repeating the big lie – that Covid_19 (C19) is very infectious and likely lethal.

Every body set up to drive the policies, and there are hundreds, has been corrupt.

The corruption and mendacity of politicians is vast in scale, but ‘they’ press on without any accountability and ‘laugh in the faces’ of those who know.

Sustaining Obedience. The Mask, Social Distancing 

The gullibility is extraordinary in most, and obedience almost complete.

Nine months from the start at least half the shoppers in the local country towns are masked as they move about or queue observing anti-social distancing.

Some ride cycles in brisk winter weather with faces muzzled.

Attempts to tell the wearers that they will have varieties of bacteria and viruses in the culture medium within the gauze are met with blank eyes.

That some species in the masks which are fingered constantly, tucked into pockets and removed for every encounter, are probably pathogenic, evinces no reaction.

“I’m seeing patients that have facial rashes, fungal infections, bacterial infections.  … In February and March we were told not to wear masks. What changed? The science didn’t change. The politics did. This is about compliance. It’s not about science… (Dr. James Meehan) 

The Behavioural Insights Team (now Independent of the Uk government)(3) will be measuring compliance via the masks as seen in CCTV footage at supermarkets, petrol stations etc.

With the same title exactly in the US, these psychologists of the mass mind will know how the mask has many benefits for control of the polity.  De-personalization, submission, stifling of speech, and anonymity are some of the gains as perceived in the fascist mind.

Fascism – the author’s definition:

the subjugation of the individual’s will and freedom by an overweening state.  Humanity withers, freedom of speech is stifled and the soul dies. Self preservation becomes a dominant drive.

The suffering is largely silent, and the complacent middle classes spend time ordering their food on line for home delivery.

The print and broadcast media is in lock step, the main message being that there are many thousands of ‘cases’ or ‘infections’ each day – conflating the many positive RT-PCR ‘tests’ (4) with disease.

Many are oblivious to this obvious lie.  Their ductility is ensured by their lack of logic, inquiry and a desert of information.

The Bailouts, Handouts and Social Safety Nets

‘Funny’ money dished out, pacifies the many and memories are in milliseconds.

That ‘austerity’ was enforced after the exchequer baled out the banks with an amount equal to five years worth of NHS spending – £540 billion, in 2008 is not remembered, and the consequences of a record National Debt now does not hit home.

Surveillance and Social Control

The current situation in this ‘demi-paradise’ is of accelarating fear and ever closer surveillance and control.

This is the BBC ‘news’ today (5).

  “Covid-19: Concern at ‘unprecedented’ infection level in England”.

‘The mutant strain of C19 is very ‘infectious’ and the ambulance service and the receiving hospitals are being overwhelmed.’

There is no let up in the lying; the evil of it tends to overwhelm the conscientious.

Locally, in Devon (Southern England), are these things true?

1. Is there a bounty to some health authority if Covid-19 is on the death certificate – as was the case in the US?
2. Did the relative dying of a ruptured aneurysm in hospital have Covid-19 put on his death certificate?
3. There was an accident on the coastal road in Torbay. A car rolled over and the road was closed, It was said the driver had just driven away from the English Riviera Centre where a Covid-19 ‘vaccine’ had been injected.  What are the facts?

But all is not lost.  At present it can be said that if the British were in 1939, what the morasse is like now, Hitler would have walked straight in.

But there are many who see through the propagandare nero, and as poverty bites, the trampled will resist more and a revolution of the mind will restore the freedoms and the common sense.

This was Trafalgar Square in late September 2020  (6).

*

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Notes

1. https://www.weforum.org/videos/welcome-to-the-jobs-reset-summit?collection=jobs-reset-summit-2020
2. https://www.globalresearch.ca/israel-america-and-britain-building-a-pretext-to-wage-war-on-iran-setting-the-scene-for-a-broader-war/5680621
3. https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/behavioural-insights-team
4. https://www.globalresearch.ca/coronavirus-scandal-breaking-merkel-germany/5731891
5. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55462701
6. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hBxleGUxig

You tune into the great BOOB and channel surf the ( so called ) News and News Talk shows, and you hear this over and over: We are a DEMOCRACY.

The Democratic Party leaning stations love to ram this continually down our throats. The right wing outlets seem to be SO far gone that they don’t even attempt to sell this **** to their viewers.

Such is the fate of this republic.

Take a look at this current Senatorial run-off election in Georgia, the one that has gotten so much attention. One surmises that for lovers of this Two Party/One Party con this election could decide the balance of power in the Senate.

As many of us should realize by now the Senate is AKA The Super Rich Man’s Club replete with super rich or water carriers for the super rich. One of the current Georgia Senators is a super rich cousin of the powerful Sonny Perdue, former Governor of the state.

David Perdue made his fortune as a management consultant for major corporations. HIs real ‘ claim to fame’ was just this past year when he made money from the Covid 19 influenced stock market crash from information he gathered at closed door Senate meetings. This should be enough to have him either censored from the Senate or indicted.

His opponent, Jon Ossoff, has an equally ‘ checkered past’ in Democratic Party politics.

Ossoff was a student at Georgetown U. when he volunteered to write speeches for Hank Johnson in 2006. Johnson was selected ( the term I will use) by the big machers in the Democratic Party to run against Rep. Cynthia McKinney. Ms. McKinney ( who I later voted for as President when she ran on the 2008 Green Party ticket ) was one of the most outspoken critics of the Iraq invasion, along with her doubts as to the official 9/11 Commission’s findings

In a nutshell, McKinney was a ‘ breath of progressive fresh air’ during those days. Her party could NOT tolerate her for her stances on many issues. Bernie Sanders could only wish e had the same views on things that she had. Ossoff made damn sure that this woman would lose her seat… and she did!

Now we come to Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler, appointed to that seat just 13 months ago. Loeffler, married to NY Stock Exchange Chairman Jeffery Sprecher, is said to be worth $500 million.

Her husband is also “filthy rich”. As with Perdue, Loeffler had information from being on important Senate Committees that it is reported her husband may have used to make a fortune during this pandemic.

Duh, they call this ‘ Insider trading’ and it is ILLEGAL.

To hear her speak publically, as with Perdue, one can easily ascertain that she is not a ‘ bright candle’. As we all know, ‘ Money talks’. Her opponent, Pastor Raphael Warnock, fits in with the moderate wing of the Democratic Party. He will always make sure that he stays as close to the other ( so called ) moderate Democrats.

The good pastor, who has stood for many noble causes during his tenure as head of the late MLK Jr’s church, is aware of just how far his party will allow him to go. As with this previous presidential election, we the voters really have a scant choice. To vote for Trump and his Republican minions would be almost sacrilegious. Thus, to get rid of these parasites we had to vote for more kinder and gentler parasites. Sad.

This Two Party/One Party con job has been only getting more lethal through the decades. The super rich have succeeded in capturing any remnants of what we were schooled in as pure Democracy. As with the Jim Morrison lyrics:

” When I was back there in seminary school someone put forth the proposition that you can

‘ Petition the Lord with Prayer’ , ‘ Petition the Lord with prayer’ , Petition the Lord with prayer’…..

YOU CANNOT PETITION THE LORD WITH PRAYER!!!

Ditto for thinking that we are living in a Democracy.

Worse than that, we are even worse than a Banana Republic. Why? Well, in most of these Banana Republics the populace knows that their electoral system is a ruse, a scam.

They know just how easy it is for the super rich to run things through fixed elections. Amerika operates on a much more sophisticated con. They make sure there are only two parties to choose from. The rest of any third party movements are either co-opted or forced through the use of money in elections to become mostly invisible to the public. We see in each and every recent presidential election the higher amounts of money spent on campaigns. This obscenity, like the battery commercial, just ‘ Keeps on Keepin on’.

As this new Biden administration will reveal, just like with Obama before him, little will be done to counteract the super rich who run this empire.

We will see the same ‘ Food Fight’ by the two parties that will give Zero to working stiffs. Zero!

When the day comes that a  mass of people finally show up at the halls of Congress, at the statehouses and the city councils, as well as the local offices of their elected officials , and look them in the eyes and demand change concerning vital issues….

PA Farruggio

January 5th, 2021

Philip A Farruggio is a contributing editor for The Greanville Post. He is also frequently posted on Global Research, Nation of Change, Countercurrents.org, and Off Guardian sites. He is the son and grandson of Brooklyn NYC longshoremen and a graduate of Brooklyn College, class of 1974. Since the 2000 election debacle Philip has written over 400 columns on the Military Industrial Empire and other facets of life in an upside down America. He is also host of the ‘ It’s the Empire… Stupid ‘ radio show, co produced by Chuck Gregory. Philip can be reached at [email protected].

It’s Big Pharma, It’s Big Money. It’s the multibillion dollar global vaccine market.

In August 2019, five months before the onslaught of the Covid-19 crisis, two of the largest Worldwide Pharma conglomerates decided to join hands in a strategic relationship which barely made the headlines. 

In an August 2019 Press release GSK confirmed the formation of a major partnership with Pfizer entitled the Consumer Health Joint Venture:

While the two companies had envisaged a “separation” clause following a process of restructuring, GSK and Pfizer have nonetheless integrated their decision making, specifically with regards to the vaccine market:

“With our future intention to separate, the transaction also presents a clear pathway forward for GSK to create a new global Pharmaceuticals/Vaccines company, with an R&D approach focused on science related to the immune system, use of genetics and advanced technologies,  …  Ultimately, our goal is to create two exceptional, UK-based global companies, with appropriate capital structures” (GSK)

What is at stake is the de facto formation of a Big Pharma Worldwide monopoly with a global network of “partners”.

Most of the so-called 125 (“small pharma”) candidates are involved in subcontracting (out-sourcing) manufacturing and marketing activities on behalf of the Big Pharma conglomerates.

The COVAX Initiative and Big Pharma

The COVAX initiative launched in April 2020 was intended to facilitate the Worldwide  distribution of the Covid vaccine. It is coordinated by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, and the World Health Organization (WHO) (all of which are partially funded by the Gates foundation).

In turn, the Gates foundation is a major shareholder of the Big Pharma vaccine conglomerates including GSK and Pfizer:

Sanofi and Glaxosmithkline were awarded about $2.1 billion in July from the U.S. Operation Warp Speed to support development and large-scale manufacturing of their adjuvanted recombinant protein subunit vaccine, providing the federal government with 100 million doses. The companies also have supply deals with the U.K., Canada and Gavi, an international vaccine alliance. (BioWorld, December 202o, emphasis added)

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The November 2020 Launching of the Covid Vaccine

Were the standard animal lab tests using mice or ferrets conducted?

Or did Pfizer, Moderna  “go straight to human “guinea pigs.”? Human tests began in late July and early August. “Three months is unheard of for testing a new vaccine. Several years is the norm.”  

Our thanks to Large and JIPÉM

This caricature by Large + JIPÉM  explains our predicament:

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

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

And why do we need a vaccine for Covid-19 when both the WHO and the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have confirmed unequivocally that Covid-19 is  “similar to seasonal influenza”. 

The unspoken answer is “Big Money”.

Biggest Vaccine Operation in World History

The plan to develop the Covid-19 vaccine is profit driven. It is supported by corrupt governments serving the interests of Big Pharma.

The US government had already ordered 100 million doses back in July 2020 and the EU is to purchase 300 million doses. It’s Big Money for Big Pharma, generous payoffs to corrupt politicians, at the expense of tax payers.

The objective is ultimately to make money, by vaccinating the entire planet of 7.8 billion people for SARS-CoV-2.

The Covid vaccine in some cases envisages more than one shot. If this plan were to go ahead as planned, it would be the largest vaccine initiative in World history and the biggest money making operation for Big Pharma.

Moreover, under the Pfizer Moderna initiative, the mRNA vaccine will have an impact on the human genome.

The ID2020 Digital Vaccine Identity Platform

And there is also the project promoted by GAVI to insert a “digital passport”.

It’s called the ID2020 Agenda, which, according to Peter Koenig constitutes “an electronic ID program that uses generalized vaccination as a platform for digital identity”.

“The program harnesses existing birth registration and vaccination operations to provide newborns with a portable and persistent biometrically-linked digital identity”. (Peter Koenig, March 2020)

The Founding Partners of ID2020 are Microsoft, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) among others.

It is worth noting the timeline: The ID2020 Alliance held their Summit in New York, entitled “Rising to the Good ID Challenge”, on September 19, 2019, exactly one month prior to nCov-2019 simulation exercise entitled Event 201 at John Hopkins in New York:

Is it just a coincidence that ID2020 is being rolled out at the onset of what the WHO calls a Pandemic? – Or is a pandemic needed to ‘roll out’ the multiple devastating programs of ID2020? (Peter Koenig, March 2020)

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ID2020 is part of a “World Governance” project which, if applied, would roll out the contours of what some analysts have described as a Global Police State embedding through vaccination the personal details of several billion people Worldwide.

The creation of false opposites has been a long-standing obstacle to human progress.

From the ancient pleasure-seeking Epicureans who argued against the logic-heavy Stoics of ancient Rome to the war of “salvation through faith vs works” that schismed western Christianity, to the chaotic emotional energy driving the Jacobin mobs of France whose passions were only matched by the radical Cartesian logic of their Girondin enemies; humanity has long been manipulated by oligarchs who knew how to set the species to war against itself. Although these operations have taken many forms, the desired effect has always been the same: divide-to-conquer bloodbaths which drowned out the saner voices of Cicero (executed in 44 BCE), Thomas More (executed in 1535 CE), or Jean Sylvain Bailly (executed in 1793 CE).

Today’s polarization across the Trans-Atlantic world has reached a fevered pitch with the “right wing conservatives” shouting for liberty and less government while left wing liberals call for more government and top-down reforms of the system (with Great Reset technocrats laughing in the background).

Everyone with half a brain should be able to sense that the danger of civil war and economic meltdown hang over our destinies like a sword of Damocles, but instead of hearing calls for restoring the SCIENTIFICALLY PROVEN traditions of American System banking that author Ellen Brown recently documented in her powerful new essay, we find only feuding sects that assert we must EITHER have top-down centralized planning OR bottom-up free markets laissez faire policies devoid of any government intervention.

To the degree that this false debate continues the overtones of France’s 1789-94 bloodbath will be heard growing louder with every passing day.

Keynes vs Hayek: A False Dualism

In this first of a three-part series, I will argue that the source of this confusion among Americans was first concocted in London during the height of the depression, centering on the figures of two London-based Malthusian hedonists. One was top-down economist John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) and the other played the role of his supposed opponent in the form of “bottom up” advocate Friedrich von Hayek (1899-1992).

To put it another way, these two fundamentally anti-republican ideologues whose lives were each devoted to the hereditary systems of empire constructed a widely publicized debate that asserted two opposing economic theories, either 1) government must spend arbitrarily to create jobs OR 2) government must cut budgets, end social safety nets and public services and let the strong survive leaving each unit of society to its own (supposedly) self-regulating passions.

The constants among both apparent opponents (who remained friends throughout their lives) were that 1) neither believed that INTENTION or MIND should govern economic policy (Keynes believed in arbitrary “make work” which could not differentiate between the qualitative difference of a $100 paycheck to a digger of random holes vs $100 paycheck to an engineer building a dam), and 2) both believed equally in the universal validity of Malthus’s population theories, and of Bernard Mandeville’s satanic belief that personal vice creates public virtue. Both theories have underpinned British imperial grand strategy for over two centuries.

It is also important to hold in mind that this 1932 debate emerged at a time that the world government agenda driven by the Bank of England and League of Nations were on the ascendency. This operation, in which both Keynes and von Hayek were thoroughly enmeshed, demanded fascist regimes control the world under a “scientifically managed” bankers’ dictatorship.

One month after the London Times October 17, 1932 publication began to print arguments from proponents of both schools on how to best end the depression, Franklin Roosevelt was elected to the U.S. presidency.

With his presidential victory, a specific form of economic planning was restored to the republic that had nothing to do with either school of Keynes or Hayek and everything to do with something uniquely embedded in the U.S. Constitutional traditions that petrified the hereditary empires of Europe’s old nobility.

In the years leading up to his victory, FDR had worked closely with a grouping of bipartisan American congressmen and senators to revive a form of political economy which involved the paradoxical coexistence of increased government involvement together with massive increase in entrepreneurism, and private sector growth. The fact that FDR is attacked by communists for being a capitalist shill while being simultaneously attacked by capitalists for being a communist shill to this very day is a sign of this ongoing confusion and a testament to the effectiveness of British intelligence propaganda.

The systemic inability for modern Americans to resolve the ‘FDR paradox’ today is due entirely to a sleight of hand pulled by the very same imperial power that has never forgiven the USA for declaring its independence in 1776.

What Ben Franklin Created

When Benjamin Franklin (1705-1790) had orchestrated his life-long project of establishing a new nation on this earth founded upon the principle of the sanctity of the individual (enunciated in the 1776 Declaration of Independence) and the sanctity of the General Welfare (as outlined in the Constitution’s 1787 pre-amble), he and his leading co-thinkers demonstrated a profoundly philosophical understanding of the political economy and also nature of true freedom which citizens must re-learn – quickly.

In order to give practical meaning to the ideals of individual (bottom up) freedom and national (top down) collective well-being enshrined in America’s founding documents, a new system of political economy was created by Franklin and his closest followers among the founding fathers.

This new system did not arise ex nihilo but was itself based upon the greatest traditions of French dirigisme of Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619-1683), and earlier Cameralist schools of economic planning which grew out of the creation of the first modern nation states of France’s Louis XI and England’s Henry VII. For the first time in history (at least since the short-lived effort by Charlemagne in the 8^th century), the idea of “money”, “value”, “profit” were tied not to the passive capital off which feudal landlords fed parasitically, or bounty to be looted, but rather the improvement of the lives of people from whom the legitimacy of government was recognized to originate.

Throughout the 18^th century, Benjamin Franklin became a leading American force for this school of thought which was outlined in his 1729 On the Necessity for a Paper Currency. In this influential essay, the young scientist argued for a system of finance, colonial scrip, and value governed by the growth of manufacturing and full spectrum economics. In his essay Franklin battled the British establishment who argued that the colonies should forever remain agrarian, backward and cash cropping, saying:

“As Providence has so ordered it, that not only different Countries, but even different Parts of the same Country, have their peculiar most suitable Productions; and like wise that different Men have Genius’s adapted to Variety of different Arts and Manufactures, Therefore Commerce, or the Exchange of one Commodity or Manufacture for another, is highly convenient and beneficial to Mankind.”

Some of Franklin’s leading protégé’s who carried this tradition into the 19^th century included the first U.S. Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804), John Jay (1745-1829), Gouverneur Morris (1752-1816), Robert Morris (1734-1806), Isaac Roosevelt (1726-1794) (great-great grandfather to Franklin Roosevelt) and later Henry Clay (1777-1852), John Quincy Adams (1767-1848), Matthew Carey (1760-1839). Matthew Carey’s son Henry C. Carey (1793-1879) became a leading economic advisor to Abraham Lincoln.

All of these figures defended the right of the young republic to develop “full spectrum economics” in order to gain true independence from the City of London.

Henry C. Carey’s Seminal works that rallied the nation’s patriots to the cause of the American System included The Principles of Political Economy (1840), How to Outdo England Without Fighting Her (1865), Unity of Law (1872) and more. It was in The Harmony of Interests (1856) that Carey famously foretold of the emerging global fight between open vs closed systems that would define the post Civil War decades:

“Two systems are before the world; the one looks to increasing the proportion of persons and of capital engaged in trade and transportation, and therefore to diminishing the proportion engaged in producing commodities with which to trade, with necessarily diminished return to the labor of all; while the other looks to increasing the proportion engaged in the work of production, and diminishing that engaged in trade and transportation, with increased return to all, giving to the laborer good wages, and to the owner of capital good profits… One looks to pauperism, ignorance, depopulation, and barbarism; the other in increasing wealth, comfort, intelligence, combination of action, and civilization. One looks towards universal war; the other towards universal peace. One is the English system; the other we may be proud to call the American system, for it is the only one ever devised the tendency of which was that of elevating while equalizing the condition of man throughout the world.”

What did the “American System” Do?

While the British System of laissez fair free trade demanded that governments do nothing, regulate nothing and plan nothing in order for the magical creative animal spirits of the self-regulating markets to “do their thing”, the American System took a very different approach.

By applying protectionism, national banking, internal improvements and public credit, the American System was driven by the idea that “value” was located not in money or any material thing existent in the ephemeral “now” but rather in the development of the creative powers of mental activity of the people. Lincoln outlined this concept beautifully in his powerful “On Discoveries and Inventions” (1858) and this principle governed the creation of the Greenbacks when private bankers made every effort to cripple the Union’s access to credit needed to win the war.

Using protection, all nations have the right and even duty to prevent the cheap dumping of foreign goods by imposing a tariff upon imports, thus ensuring that local production be favored. Dumping was an old practice of economic warfare which the British had honed since the 17th century crushing its colonies’ efforts to build up local manufacturing on countless occasions (and continues to be a key element of economic warfare masquerading behind the veneer of globalization in our current age).

As demonstrated in the LPAC documentary 1932, whenever American System-followers in Russia, Germany, Italy, Japan, China, Spain and France applied protection, rail, and dirigiste credit, prosperity, independence and abundance flourished. Whenever these policies were abandoned, those nations were crippled and manipulated into wars by foreign interests.

Between 1880-1930, this system was led by nationalist forces affiliated with President Garfield (1831-1881), President Ulysses Grant (1822-1885), Governor William Gilpin (1813-1894), President McKinley (1843-1901), Secretary of State James Blaine (1830-1893), and President Warren Harding (1865-1923). Each time it began to take hold the system was derailed by timely assassinations and it was only able to emerge once more in 1932.

How Franklin Roosevelt Revived the American System

With Roosevelt’s entry into office, the British Empire (using its Wall Street lackies) that had intentionally orchestrated the Great Depression in 1929 had realized that the American System was coming back to life for the first time in decades.

While Warren Harding’s short-lived presidency saw a few noble attempts to resurrect the McKinley-Lincoln traditions of the republican party, his convenient “death by oyster poisoning” in 1923 ensured that the revival of the American System would not succeed. Over Harding’s dead body, free trade, bank deregulation, and speculation ran rampant throughout the “roaring twenties” led by Andrew Mellon, the Morgan dynasty and their puppet Calvin Coolidge. This decay turned the once-productive industrial economy of America into a casino of bubbles built on unpayable debts and over-extended broker call loans that went up in smoke in 1929.

The “solution” that the financial oligarchy provided to the world in anticipation of the fear and starvation unleashed by the planned meltdown of the banking system was a novel economic miracle solution called “fascism”. This system soon swept the world from Italy, Germany, Austria and Spain. Within Britain, Canada and the USA, Wall Street/London sponsored fascist movements arose with lightning speed offering to solve all financial woes “and put food on the table” for millions of traumatized citizens. In a world of fear and instability, the masses were proving all too willing to ignore Ben Franklin’s sage advice by giving up their liberties to achieve a bit of security.

It was within this context that Franklin Roosevelt’s call to kick the money changers out of the temple and declare war on the abuses of Wall Street was an unexpected breath of fresh air for millions of suffocating citizens. With FDR’s sabotage of the 1933 London Conference, the empire gasped as their carefully laid plans for world government run by local fascist enforcers were going up in smoke. Wall Street’s assassination plot in February 1933 and a military coup plot in 1934 failed, as the Pecora Commission shone the light of truth upon the abuses of those bankers that created the great depression.

After putting dozens of leading bankers in prison, prosecutor Ferdinand Pecora described the operation years later: “Under the surface of the governmental regulation of the securities market, the same forces that produced the riotous speculative excesses of the ‘wild bull market’ of 1929 still give evidence of their existence and influence. Though repressed for the present, it cannot be doubted that, given a suitable opportunity, they would spring back to their pernicious activity.”

In Washington, a bi-partisan network of patriotic statesmen representing the Lincoln-McKinley-Harding traditions rose to prominence and shaped in large measure the policies which came to be known as the New Deal together with associated bank reforms of the Glass-Steagall, national credit, protectionism, and large-scale megaprojects known as the “four corners” vision (Tennessee Valley authority/Rural Electrification, Hoover Dam, Grand Coulee dam/Colorado River development, and St Lawrence Seaway).

Much like the Belt and Road Initiative today, these large-scale macro projects governed the tens of thousands of smaller state, county and municipal “micro” projects within a top-down dynamic.

The Keynesian Myth

Even though today’s popular narrative has asserted that FDR’s New Deal was a Keynesian innovation managed by the nebulous “Brain Trust”, the reality is that Keynes believed that FDR was a buffoon and FDR believed the Fabian eugenicist could only be considered a detached ivory tower mathematician but not a competent economist.

In her autobiography, FDR’s Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins recorded the 1934 interaction between the two men when Roosevelt told her: “I saw your friend Keynes. He left a whole rigmarole of figures. He must be a mathematician rather than a political economist.” In response Keynes, who was then trying to coopt the intellectual narrative of the New Deal stated he had “supposed the President was more literate, economically speaking.”

The ‘American System’ Caucus

Those forgotten forces who have been nearly written out of history were American statesmen who had battled against the Federal Reserve Act in 1913, stood up to the police state apparatus begun by Teddy Roosevelt’s FBI in 1908, and against America’s turn towards imperialism with the death of McKinley. They were the men who risked much to stand up against the League of Nations World government schemes launched in 1919, and against the Wall Street/CFR takeover of U.S. foreign and internal policy.

Senator George Norris showcasing the web of controls managed by the Wall Street oligarchs

These names which should be celebrated today, interfaced closely with FDR and his allies Harry Hopkins and Henry Wallace. Some of their names include Senator Robert Lafollette Jr (R-Iowa) (1895-1953), Sen. Robert Wagner (D-NY) (1877-1953), Sen. Peter Norbeck (R-SD) (1870-1936), Sen. Edward Costigan (D-Colo.) (1874-1939), Senator George Norris (R-Neb) (1861-1944) and Rep. William Lemke (R-N.D.)(1878-1950). These were a few of the leading men that some historians have dubbed “the American System Caucus”, and while this article doesn’t leave room for their story, rest assured that more will be said about them in a future installment.

While it would be a lie to say that there was no such thing as a “Brain Trust” or that Keynesian economists and Rhodes Scholars were not to be found among this group, the idea that this was the “cause” of the New Deal is a pure fiction.

Taking Back Control of Credit Policy

While surgery was begun on the cancerous financial system and unpayable debts depriving the nation of the credit needed to commence a reconstruction policy of the physical economy (over 50% of U.S. industrial potential was destroyed and unemployment hit 25%), Franklin Roosevelt’s long time ally Harry Hopkins worked with Harold Ickes to provide emergency work for over 3 million people in the first months under the Public Works Administration and Works Progress Administration.

Although FDR could not destroy the private Federal Reserve that had taken control of U.S. monetary policy 30 years earlier, he was able to impose his own man (Marinner Eccles) onto it in 1934, forcing the beast to start obeying national law for the first time ever. Despite this maneuver, Wall Street oligarchs continued to sabotage FDR’s recovery by constricting credit, refusing to purchase treasury notes at strategic moments, or even speculating against the U.S. dollar itself. To get around these manipulations, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) was brought online to function as a surrogate national bank channeling billions of dollars into small and medium businesses, industrial growth, and infrastructure projects.

Psy Ops vs the New Deal: The Rise of the Austrian School

Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Mellon-Morgan-Rockefeller interests ran a multifaceted psychological war against the population. After their coup plans failed due to Gen. Butler’s brave whistleblowing in 1934, these groups created a think tank calling itself the “American Liberty League”. The irony of the word “Liberty” used by an organization whose controllers sponsored fascism before and even during WWII should not be lost on anyone.

Through powerful oligarchs like William Randolph Hearst, Henry Luce, the Morgans, the Warburgs, the Duponts, and the Rockefellers, the Liberty League controlled the majority of mainstream media outlets, radio stations, and publishing houses in the USA, at the same time they co-ordinated with the newly re-organized FBI under J. Edgar Hoover. These groups worked hard to paint FDR as a Keynesian who only created inflationary “make work jobs” without any concrete intention for the future productive powers of labor. Through this sleight of hand, FDR’s enemies were able to invent a straw man that they could then refute by promoting the anti-Keynesian model known as the “Austrian School” that had formerly grown out of the British System inspired theories of Carl Menger (retainer for the Habsburg empire) and his aristocratic disciples Ludwig von Mises, Friedrick von Hayek, Frank Knight, and Sir John Claphan.

By 1940, the American Liberty League formerly disbanded. However with FDR’s death its cabal of controllers spawned dozens of new think tanks that were enmeshed with the Council on Foreign Relations and Mont Pelerin Society mothership founded in 1947 by von Hayek and a group of eugenics-loving oligarchs whom we will encounter in a following report..

Over the coming decades, the Liberty League morphed into hundreds of new think tanks which began with the American Enterprise Association (AEA) [later American Enterprise Institute] founded by Liberty League leader Raymond Moley and sponsored by General Mills, Chemical Bank and Bristol Meyers.

Other think tanks built up by this network over the years included the Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, Hudson Institute, Mises Institute, Manhattan Institute etc… which would set the groundwork for the later “conservative revolution” of the 1970s. This “Austrian School” revolution would spring to life once the 1945-1971 Keynesian perversion of Bretton Woods ended with the 1971 floating of the dollar off of the fixed exchange rate gold reserve system.

Under this post-1971 era, a new god of the “markets” would replace the old god of “the state” and a new ethic of post-industrial consumerism would replace the former system of Keynesian controls that defined the post-WWII era. Those anti-Keynesian leaders of the American System tradition such as Henry Dexter White, Franklin Roosevelt, Wendell Wilkie, Sumner Welles, and Harry Hopkins were taken out of power through various means between 1945-1946 as the Anglo-American establishment regained control over U.S. foreign and internal policies. This Keynesian takeover destroyed the positive potential of the Bretton Woods Institutions which were designed originally to internationalize the New Deal via the creation of cheap credit for global development and win-win cooperation.

In our next installments, we will look more deeply into the sordid minds and political operations controlling the figures of John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich von Hayek.

The author can be reached at [email protected]

Originally published on Strategic Culture Foundation

Xi Jinping’s frequent references to Mao Zedong, along with Xi’s own claims to ideological originality, have fueled debate over the significance of Maoism in the PRC today.

The discussion recalls an earlier debate, at the height of the Cold War, over the meaning of Maoism itself. This paper revisits that earlier controversy, reflected in arguments between Benjamin Schwartz and Karl Wittfogel, with an eye toward their contemporary relevance.

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Nearly a century after its founding in 1921, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) again trumpeted the ideological contributions of its paramount leader.  The insertion into the Party Constitution of a reference to “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” in 2018 was the first time since Mao Zedong (in 1945) that a sitting CCP leader received such recognition. Unlike Mao’s successor Deng Xiaoping, who famously pronounced that the (political) color of a cat did not matter so long as it caught mice, Xi Jinping donned the mantle of ideological authority once worn by Chairman Mao. Not surprisingly, contemporary observers ponder the continuing relevance of Maoism in post-Mao China.¹

The discussion of Xi Jinping’s Maoist tendencies evokes a previous debate, conducted during the Cold War, over the authenticity and import of Maoism itself. Benjamin I. Schwartz introduced the term “Maoism” into the English lexicon in his 1951 book Chinese Communism and the Rise of Mao.² Tracing the development of Chinese Communism in its early years, Schwartz argued that the essence of Maoist ideology reflected practical lessons drawn from the experience of concrete political struggle rather than derived from pure theory. Maoism, Schwartz proposed, was a pragmatic strategy of revolution that (in its initial iteration) grafted useful elements of Marxism-Leninism, most notably a disciplined and hierarchical Communist Party, onto a mobilized peasant mass base.³

While Schwartz described the CCP as “an elite of professional revolutionaries which has risen to power by basing itself on the dynamic of peasant discontent,” he focused not on the social and economic problems that had created the “objective conditions” for discontent, but on “the ideas, intentions and ambitions of those who finally assume the responsibility for meeting them.”⁴ In other words, Schwartz undertook a kind of intellectual/political/psychological history that situated his subjects in the world of strategic struggle rather than in some disembodied dialogue with the Marxist canon. His primary sources were the writings and speeches of the principal CCP leaders, the official resolutions and other documents issued by the Party, and the unofficial letters and memoirs of a wide range of participants and engaged observers – in Chinese, Japanese, Russian, German and English. Beginning with the co-founders of the CCP, Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao, and continuing with subsequent Communist leaders Qu Qiubai, Li Lisan and Wang Ming, Schwartz shows how the Party line shifted repeatedly in tandem with the changing political circumstances of the day and the predilections of paramount leaders. Only in the final two chapters (Chapters 12 and 13) does he address the ascendency of Mao Zedong and his revolutionary strategy.

Benjamin I. Schwartz

The discussion of Mao occupies less than 15% of the book, but it was Schwartz’s treatment of Maoism as a distinctive strategic ideology that sparked debate. Schwartz observes that Mao’s rural revolution was forced to deviate from the dictates of Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy after the Nationalists’ crackdown in 1927 cut the Communist Party off from its previous foothold among factory workers in Shanghai and other industrial cities.⁵ The CCP’s turn from urban proletariat to rural peasantry marked “the beginning of a heresy in act never made explicit in theory.”⁶ According to Schwartz, then, Maoism originated as an unacknowledged yet highly consequential departure in practice from the strictures of Soviet doctrine. A decade later, however, when war with Japan allowed the CCP to “harness nationalist sentiment to its own cause” there occurred a “profound change in the psychology of the Communist leadership which may itself spring from nationalist sentiment.” The result was that in wartime Yan’an “Mao was now sufficiently self-confident to take the initiative in the field of theoretical formulation . . . intent on proving that developments in China represented a unique and original development in the course of human history.”⁷

With our twenty-twenty hindsight, Schwartz’s argument about the origins and evolution of Maoism seems commonsensical and incontrovertible. But that was not the situation when his book first appeared. Schwartz’s thesis that Mao’s revolutionary recipe “was not planned in advance in Moscow, and even ran counter to tenets of orthodoxy which were still considered sacrosanct and inviolate in Moscow at the time” directly challenged the reigning “totalitarian model” that depicted the People’s Republic of China as a replica of the USSR.⁸ His stress on the significance of Maoism as a distinctive ideology not only contradicted the proclamations of Soviet propagandists; it also disputed the firmly held beliefs of many vehemently anti-Soviet scholars. As Schwartz noted, “An immense effort is currently being made by orthodox Stalinist historiography to present the Chinese Communist success as the result of Stalin’s own prescience and masterly planning. It is strange to note that this myth has been accepted and even insisted upon by many who regard themselves as the Kremlin’s bitterest foes.”⁹

Schwartz’s challenge to a generic “totalitarian model,” applicable to Communist and fascist regimes alike, elicited dissent from its defenders.¹⁰ The most acerbic was a series of diatribes penned by Karl August Wittfogel, a former German Communist who had fled Hitler’s Third Reich to become a vocal critic of Communism in both the Soviet Union and China. A professor of Chinese history at the University of Washington, Wittfogel had gained notoriety in the field by accusing fellow Sinologist Owen Lattimore of Communist sympathies at the McCarran hearings on the “loss” of China.¹¹ In Wittfogel’s view, Chinese Communism was a carbon copy of Russian Communism. He rejected the notion that Mao Zedong had been an innovator in any sense of the word; every strategic move and ideological justification that marked the Chinese revolutionary experience, he insisted, could already be found full-blown in Leninism. For Wittfogel, Chinese Communist doctrine did “not exhibit any originality, ‘Maoist’ or otherwise.”¹² 

Karl August Wittfogel

Mao’s revolutionary road, according to Wittfogel, was Russian designed and Russian engineered. To be sure, Schwartz also credited Lenin with substantial influence on the course of Chinese Communism, but he did not believe that the Chinese revolution was merely the duplication of a familiar Bolshevik blueprint. As Schwartz replied, “Now it is, of course, true that Lenin opened the doors to all subsequent developments of world Communism. This does not mean, however, that he marched through all doors which he opened and that all the developments of Stalinism in the Soviet Union and of Maoism in China are simply untroubled applications of Lenin’s teachings.”¹³

This early Cold War controversy over the meaning of Maoism, rather than an arcane academic exercise, was actually a debate over the future of the Communist bloc. Schwartz’s contention that Maoism in China (like Titoism in Yugoslavia) reflected a departure from orthodox Russian doctrine anticipated the advent of fissures within the Communist world stemming from disparate national experiences and attendant “isms”: “the fate of doctrine may in the course of time have a profound effect on the relationship among Communist states such as China, Jugoslavia [sic] and the Soviet Union which are not directly subject to each other.”¹⁴ Here was a prescient insight that Chalmers Johnson would later elaborate in Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power when he argued that the Chinese and Yugoslavian states’ defiance of Soviet domination was a product of their both having risen to power on the backs of peasant nationalist revolutions.¹⁵ By the time that Johnson’s book was published in 1962, the Sino-Soviet split was already a visible fait accompli.

Occurring on the heels of the toxic Congressional hearings on the “loss” of China, the debate over Maoism reflected a deep divide in academic and policy circles.¹⁶ Advocates of the totalitarian model such as Wittfogel and some of his colleagues at the University of Washington asserted that Schwartz and his Harvard colleagues, in identifying the existence of an alternative Maoist path, constituted a dangerous cabal that – if not guilty of Maoist sympathies themselves – were at the very least naive about the Communist monolith. In the inaugural issue of The China Quarterly in 1960, Wittfogel’s “The Legend of Maoism” referred to the Harvard scholars as a “‘Maoist’ group” and detailed their inter-connections in a quasi-conspiratorial tone: “Suffice it to say that in substance the ‘Maoist’ thesis was first outlined in 1947 by John K. Fairbank; that Prof. Fairbank was the ‘teacher and guide’ of Benjamin Schwartz who in 1951 coined the term ‘Maoism’ and elaborated on its meaning; that Prof. Fairbank fulfilled editorial functions in the preparation of the Documentary History of Chinese Communism, a collection of documents with explanatory introductions mainly written by Prof. Schwartz and Conrad Brandt and published in 1952; and that in 1958 Prof. Fairbank reasserted the ‘Maoist’ thesis . . . ”¹⁷

Even after Soviet advisers had abruptly withdrawn from China following Mao Zedong’s announcement of his radical Great Leap Forward in 1958, Wittfogel continued to dismiss as “fictitious” the suggestion that the CCP might act contrary to the desires of Moscow. To Wittfogel’s mind, the claim that China’s alternative revolutionary tradition had facilitated a tendency toward nationalistic independence, although ostensibly academic, betrayed a nefarious political motive: “This argument, known as the ‘Maoist’ thesis, is historical in form, but political in content.”¹⁸ Chiding Schwartz and company for an “inadequate understanding of the doctrinal and political Marxist-Leninist background,” Wittfogel accused them of having concocted a “legend of ‘Maoism’.”¹⁹ Former Communist and member of the Frankfurt School of critical theory that he was, Wittfogel assumed the role of doctrinal arbiter: “The authors of the Documentary History, who created the ‘Maoist’ myth in 1951-52, had ample opportunity in subsequent studies of Chinese thought to correct their errors. But instead of doing so, they kept repeating their key conclusions . . . based on an inadequate reproduction of Lenin’s ideas … and on the misrepresentation of Mao’s behavior.”²⁰

The “faulty views” of Schwartz and his colleagues were politically dangerous, Wittfogel contended, because they undermined American resolve to win the Cold War: “Their damaging consequences are not restricted to their impact on purely academic understanding. For the political confusion they have engendered has strongly affected opinion-molders and policy-makers in this country, and has thus hampered the development of a clear, consistent and far-sighted policy for coping with the Chinese Communist threat. In this important respect, these views have done a distinct disservice to the free world . . . . The survival of the free world hangs in the balance.”²¹

In Wittfogel’s account, the dangers posed by “Maoism” had spread far beyond the ivory tower, yet he looked to the academy for rectification: 

It has been said that the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. Today, the ideas which the scholars and opinion-molders hold are no less crucial for the decisions the policy-makers will make. Where, then, we may ask, are the schools, the universities, the foundations and research centers that will determine victory – or defeat – in the present cold war?²²

Public intellectuals imbued with the proper political outlook, he suggested, were needed to fill the breach.

With Harvard having allegedly concocted a dangerous “’Maoist’ thesis,” another academic institution would have to produce the antidote. Thankfully, such a remedy was close at hand due to the scholarly efforts of Wittfogel and his cold-warrior colleagues (George Taylor, Franz Michael, Donald Treadgold, and others) who had assembled at the University of Washington’s newly founded Far Eastern and Russian Institute. Wittfogel claimed to speak for the group: “It is vital to our survival that the record be set straight, and a small but growing number of Far Eastern specialists are doing just that. A realistic comparative study of the historical roots of Chinese and Soviet Communism is possible. And such a study enables us to remove the widespread misconceptions regarding the character and intent of the present Chinese and Soviet regimes.”²³ Among the many publications by scholars at the Far Eastern and Russian Institute expounding on the totalitarian model, no doubt Wittfogel had in mind above all his own forthcoming Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power.²⁴ Wittfogel’s study attributed the origins of Chinese and Russian totalitarianism to age-old traditions of state domination in both societies.

Irritated by the barrage of criticism directed at him and his colleagues, the usually unflappable Benjamin Schwartz returned fire with a sharp rejoinder entitled “The Legend of the ‘Legend of Maoism’.” “For some years now,” he wrote, “Prof. Wittfogel has been obsessed with the view that Fairbank, Schwartz and Brandt (an indivisible entity) have committed an ‘error’ (not an accidental error!) which has led to incalculably evil results in our struggle with world Communism.”²⁵ Schwartz rejected “Wittfogel’s conception of Marxism-Leninism as a ‘doctrine and strategy of total revolution,’ as a ready-made science of power with established recipes for dealing with all situations – a science which is never surprised by new contingencies.”²⁶  Instead of this formulaic totalism, Schwartz reminded readers that his primary goal in Chinese Communism and the Rise of Mao had been to trace the actual process by which Mao gained control of the Chinese Communist movement, creating the conditions for Maoism to become the dominant strategic and policy line within the CCP. The implications of Maoist departures (in practice if not always in acknowledged ideological doctrine) were, moreover, continuing to unfold: “the end of the story is not yet in sight.”²⁷

Schwartz readily acknowledged that in seeking to explain the opaque development of Chinese Communism, “we have all committed errors,” but he emphasized that his own conception of Maoism derived from an effort to understand the lived experience of Mao and his comrades as they groped in fits and starts toward a workable strategy of revolution. As such, his empirical method differed fundamentally from Wittfogel’s theoretically-predetermined mode of scholarship, whose claim for correctness resided in a supposedly authoritative grasp of Marxist-Leninist doctrine. Schwartz called on Wittfogel to discard his superiority complex in favor of a less rigid approach: “It is in fact high time that Prof. Wittfogel overcame the illusion that his particular experiences and his particular ‘theories’ vouchsafe for him some peculiar access to an understanding of Communism not available to the rest of us.”²⁸ 

Published some seven decades ago, Benjamin Schwartz’s study of Maoism has remarkable resonance today for our understanding of ideology in contemporary China as well as for our methods of scholarship. His grounded yet dynamic conception of ideology –as an articulation of practical strategy on the part of individual leaders with important implications for subsequent political developments – is a useful corrective to arguments that Xi Jinping Thought can be ignored simply because it does not make major theoretical advances beyond Mao Zedong Thought, to say nothing of classical Marxism-Leninism. Xi himself presents his ideas as building on three central principles of Mao Zedong Thought: “seeking truth from facts” (pragmatism), the “mass line” (populism), and “independent sovereignty” (patriotism).²⁹ The core concepts are repurposed to address contemporary challenges. Manifestly motivated by a desire to avoid what he regards as fatal missteps of Soviet leaders from Khrushchev to Gorbachev that led to the eventual collapse of the USSR, Xi – much like Mao at Yan’an – strives to sum up key lessons extracted from the CCP’s own experience as it has departed from the Russian prototype. Benjamin Schwartz was ahead of his day in realizing that Communist leaders were not necessarily more restrained by doctrinal orthodoxy than other politicians. But, he insisted, this did not mean that their ideology or utterances were insignificant; on the contrary, their speeches and writings provide critical insight into the origins and long-term implications of their political strategies.

For Schwartz, in the end the crucial point was less Mao’s doctrinal deviation than the claim to ideological originality on the part of a leader whose concrete political accomplishments had made him confident enough to seek to project his and his country’s influence on the world stage. As Schwartz observed in 1965, this process of asserting the CCP’s ideological independence, first evident in Yan’an, accelerated after 1956 following Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin and Mao’s launch of the Hundred Flowers Campaign, as the PRC gradually distanced itself from the Soviet orbit in favor of declaring an alternative “Maoist vision.”³⁰ Roderick MacFarquhar would describe the events of 1956-57 as “a major turning point in the history of the People’s Republic,” marked by Mao’s advocacy of a “new militancy at home and abroad” that would ultimately result in the Cultural Revolution.³¹

Schwartz’s characterization of the Maoist vision of 1956 could easily have been written of the work report delivered by Xi Jinping at the 19th Party Congress some sixty years later: 

The vision involves not only a conception of the good society of the future but also a sanctified image of the methods by which this vision is to be achieved. Certainly Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist ideology is one of the main sources of this vision, but this does not preclude the possibility that in some of its aspects it coincides with certain traditional Chinese habits of thought and behavior.³² 

Xi’s three hour and twenty minute work report touted the value of “Chinese wisdom” and the “Chinese approach” in crafting political solutions for global challenges. As he stated boldly, “We have every confidence that we can give full play to the strengths and distinctive features of China’s socialist democracy, and make China’s contribution to the political advancement of mankind.” Xi took a page right out of Mao’s Hundred Flowers playbook by zeroing in on what he identified as the “principal contradiction” (主要矛盾) currently facing Chinese society; namely, “the people’s ever-growing need for a better life” versus the country’s “unbalanced and inadequate development.”³³ Setting a date of 2035, two decades in the future, for the full attainment of “socialist modernization,” the CCP’s paramount leader offered a familiar formula for reaching this future vision: the Communist Party must continue to “lead in everything.”

History does not repeat itself, but contemporary CCP theoreticians and propagandists do comb the historical record for ideological inspiration and legitimation. Studies of the Maoist past are therefore of more than academic interest in understanding current and future political developments. While it would be facile to equate the disquiet generated in the Communist world at the time of Mao’s Hundred Flowers Campaign, in the wake of destalinization and the Hungarian Revolt, with the current disarray in the capitalist world, brought about by Brexit and the Trump presidency, catalytic moments of international disorder do seem to create opportunities for the assertion of an alternative Chinese ideological authority.³⁴ Such openings merit systematic comparative attention.

In trying to plumb the enduring importance of CCP ideology, however, the post-Mao China field until very recently has offered few signposts. For nearly four decades after Mao’s death, political scientists largely acceded to Deng Xiaoping’s famous maxim that the “black cat, white cat” distinction did not matter; under the pragmatic imperatives of market reforms, the ideological correctness of the Mao era had seemingly been relegated to the dustbin of PRC history. In reality, of course, Deng’s formulation of “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” carried its own ideological and political implications, as would Jiang Zemin’s “Three Represents” and Hu Jintao’s “Scientific Development Outlook.” But under Xi Jinping, ideology in the PRC has reclaimed an explicit primacy and global ambition that scholars can no longer ignore; from Xi’s articulation of a “China Dream” to his latest “Thought for a New Era,” the project of publicizing and popularizing the “visionary” ideas of the top leader again occupies a commanding place on the CCP’s agenda.³⁵ The astonishing amount of Propaganda Department support earmarked for the study of Xi Jinping’s “theoretical innovations” attests to the priority that the Party puts on this all-out ideological effort.³⁶

Like Mao Zedong, Xi Jinping portrays his vision as a continuation of China’s revolutionary tradition. In his 2020 New Year’s greeting, Xi recalled retracing the route of the Red Army so as to tap into an “inexhaustible source of motivation during our Long March of the New Era.” Xi, like Mao, also stresses his close connection to the peasantry: “As usual, no matter how busy I was, I spent time visiting people in the countryside.”³⁷ Despite this apparent endorsement of revolutionary populism, Xi’s own tightly disciplined governance is actually a far cry from Mao’s tumultuous rule. Xi Jinping’s obsession with Party control is more reminiscent of the leadership style of Mao’s nemesis, former head of state Liu Shaoqi, than of the mercurial Great Helmsman himself.³⁸ Yet Xi shares with Mao a penchant to herald the Chinese experience as a development model with wide reaching application. Even after the stain of the Covid-19 crisis, in his speech before the UN General Assembly in September 2020 Xi Jinping unabashedly hailed China’s “new development paradigm” as a post-pandemic panacea for global recovery.³⁹

Communist parties are prone to portray their ideology as a blueprint for future action, but classic studies of ideology reveal that it is more usefully regarded as a summation of past and present experience: “The pedigree of every political ideology shows it to be the creature, not of premeditation in advance of political activity, but of meditation upon a manner of politics. In short, political activity comes first and a political ideology follows after.”⁴⁰ As Benjamin Schwartz recognized, when the CCP spotlights the “visionary” thought of its paramount leader, it is presenting an authoritative outline of what it deems to be proven practical political theory. 

Benjamin Schwartz’s work has much to teach us not only about the legacy of Maoism and its contemporary relevance, but about research methods more generally. His admonitions against a doctrinaire mindset that makes truth claims based on adherence to theoretical orthodoxy are well worth remembering. If these days few scholars attempt to force their analyses into the old procrustean bed of Marxist-Leninist Theory, other theoretical straightjackets can nonetheless be found in abundance. From Rational Choice Theory at one pole to Post-Modern Theory at the other, social scientists and humanists alike advance arguments on grounds of stale theoretical authority rather than fresh research discovery. While Schwartz’s scholarship was certainly not atheoretical, his theories – like Maoism itself – derived from empirical investigation. Citing a Hunan proverb, Mao Zedong once likened the Chinese revolution to straw sandals; with no preset pattern, they “shaped themselves in the making.”⁴¹ Benjamin Schwartz’s Chinese Communism and the Rise of Mao adopts a similarly open-ended and responsive approach.

The 19th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in October 2017 offered poignant reminders that even in heralding a “New Era” guided by Xi Jinping Thought, the CCP self-consciously recalls previous chapters in its eventful past. A banner festooned across the back wall of the auditorium in the Great Hall of the People proclaimed, “不忘初心” (Don’t forget our original intention). To be sure, the Party’s claims to historical continuity are often highly contrived, but its assertions of revolutionary and cultural lineage are nonetheless central to its identity. Xi Jinping himself often invokes the adage “吃水不忘挖井人” (When drinking the water, don’t forget those who dug the well) – a phrase associated with Mao’s legacy. At the opening ceremony of the 19th Party Congress, he called upon delegates to bow their heads in silence to remember the contributions of Chairman Mao and other early leaders of the CCP. Taking a cue from those whose history and politics we study, we too might be advised at this advent of a “new era” to recall the achievements of our own intellectual ancestors.

Notes

¹ Roderick MacFarquhar, “Does Mao Still Matter?” in Jennifer Rudolph and Michael Szonyi, eds., The China Questions: Critical Insights into a Rising Power (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2018): Chapter 3; Sebastian Heilmann and Elizabeth J. Perry, eds., Mao’s Invisible Hand: The Political Foundations of Adaptive Governance in China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011).

² Benjamin I. Schwartz, Chinese Communism and the Rise of Mao (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1951). The Chinese Communist Party itself has always referred to Mao’s ideological contributions simply as “Mao Zedong Thought” (毛泽东思想), in contrast to the “isms” （主义）of Marxism, Leninism, and Stalinism. In coining the term “Maoism,” Schwartz was thus implying a degree of originality and importance that elevated Mao into the pantheon of leading Communist theorists.

³ Schwartz, 1951: 189.

⁴ Schwartz, 1951: 199, 2.

⁵ Elizabeth J. Perry, Shanghai on Strike: The Politics of Chinese Labor (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993).

⁶ Schwartz, 1951: 191.

⁷ Schwartz, 1951: 201.

⁸ Schwartz, 1951: 5. For classic statements of the totalitarian model, which presented the framework as equally applicable to Communist and fascist regimes, see Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Schocken Books, 1951); and Carl Joachim Friedrich, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956).

⁹ Schwartz, 1951: 5.

¹⁰ Peter S.H. Tang, Communist China Today (New York: Praeger, 1957); Richard L. Walker, China Under Communism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955); Richard L. Walker, The Continuing Struggle: Communist China and the Free World (New York: Athene Press, 1958); Franz H. Michael and George E. Taylor, The Far East in the Modern World (New York: Henry Holt, 1956).

¹¹ Robert P. Newman, Owen Lattimore and the “Loss” of China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992): 334-335.

¹² Karl A. Wittfogel, “The Historical Position of Communist China: Doctrine and Reality,” The Review of Politics, Vol. 16, No. 4 (October 1954): 464.

¹³ Benjamin Schwartz, “On the ‘Originality’ of Mao Tse-tung,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 3, No. 1 (October 1955): 74-75.

¹⁴ Schwartz, 1955: 76.

¹⁵ Chalmers A. Johnson, Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power: The Emergence of Revolutionary China, 1937-1945 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962).

¹⁶ On Wittfogel’s role in the hearings, see Stanley I. Kutler, The American Inquisition: Justice and Injustice in the Cold War (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982): 201; and Ellen Schrecker, No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986): 165.

¹⁷ Karl A. Wittfogel, “The Legend of ‘Maoism,’” The China Quarterly, No. 1 (January – March 1960): 76, 73. On the occasion of his sixtieth birthday in 1967, John Fairbank would “confess” to this “conspiracy” by composing some humorous doggerel that concluded with the lines: 

The files, when examined, will demonstrate
That this “Fairbank” so-called was a syndicate
Who were busy writing memos and in other ways
During Benjamin Schwartz’s earlier phase.

John King Fairbank, Chinabound: A Fifty-Year Memoir (New York: Harper and Row, 1982): 448.

¹⁸ Karl A. Wittfogel, “Peking’s ‘Independence’,” The New Leader (July 20-27, 1959): 13.

¹⁹ Wittfogel, (Jan-March) 1960: 75.

²⁰ Wittfogel, (April-June) 1960: 28-29.

²¹ Wittfogel, 1959: 17.

²² Wittfogel, 1959: 17.

²³ Wittfogel, 1959: 17.

²⁴ Karl A. Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957).

²⁵ Benjamin Schwartz, “The Legend of the ‘Legend of Maoism’,” The China Quarterly, No. 2 (April – June 1960): 35.

²⁶ Schwartz, 1960: 36.

²⁷ Schwartz, 1960: 36.

²⁸ Schwartz, 1960: 42.

²⁹ Xi Jinpiing, “Uphold and Properly Apply the Spirit of Mao Zedong Thought” (坚持与运用好毛泽东思想活的灵魂) in Talks on Governing the Country (谈治国理政) (Beijing: 2014): 25-31.

³⁰ Benjamin I. Schwartz, Communism and China: Ideology in Flux (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968): 171ff.

³¹ Roderick MacFarquhar, The Origins of the Cultural Revolution: Contradictions Among the People, 1956-1957 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974): 317.

³² Schwartz, Communism and China: 171-172; Chris Buckley, “China Enshrines ‘Xi Jinping Thought,’ Elevating Leader to Mao-like Status,” New York Times (October 24, 2017).

³³ On the central role of “contradictions” in CCP ideology, see Franz Schurmann, Ideology and Organization in Communist China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970): Chapter I.

³⁴ The historical parallel is far from exact, however: at the 8th Party Congress in 1956, Mao’s Thought was dropped from the Party Constitution.

³⁵ Elizabeth J. Perry, “The Populist Dream of Chinese Democracy,” Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 74, no. 4 (December 2015); Chen Cheng, The Return of Ideology: The Search for Regime Identities in Postcommunist Russia and China (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2016); Zeng Jinghan, The Chinese Communist Party’s Capacity to Rule: Ideology, Legitimacy and Party Cohesion (New York: Palgrave, 2016).

³⁶ That more than twenty major Chinese universities within a week of the 19th Party Congress had already established new departments for the teaching of Xi’s Thought is further evidence of its political significance.

³⁷ Full text: Chinese President Xi Jinping’s 2020 New Year speech – CGTN

³⁸ On Liu Shaoqi’s leadership style, see Lowell Dittmer, Liu Shaoqi and the Chinese Cultural Revolution (New York: Taylor and Francis, 1998).

³⁹ Full text: Xi Jinping’s speech at General Debate of UNGA – CGTN

⁴⁰ Michael Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics (New York, Basic Books: 1962): 118-119.

⁴¹ Mao Zedong, “Speech at a Supreme State Conference” (January 28, 1958). Quoted in John Bryan Starr, Continuing the Revolution: The Political Thought of Mao (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979): ix.

Da un processo ingiusto – quello di Londra a Julian Assange, fondatore di WikiLeaks – è scaturita una sentenza che a prima vista appare giusta: la non-estradizione del giornalista negli Stati uniti, dove lo attende una condanna a 175 anni di reclusione in base alla Legge sullo spionaggio del 1917. Resta da vedere, al momento in cui scriviamo, se e in che modo Assange verrà scarcerato dopo sette anni di confino all’ambasciata ecuadoregna e quasi due anni di carcere duro a Londra.

Si parla di rilascio su cauzione, ma, se Washington fa appello contro la sentenza (come appare certo), il procedimento di estradizione può essere riaperto e Assange deve restare a disposizione della magistratura in Gran Bretagna. C’è poi il fatto che nel verdetto la giudice Vanessa Baraister si è detta convinta della «buona fede» delle autorità Usa e della regolarità di un possibile processo negli Stati uniti, motivando il verdetto solo con «ragioni di salute mentale» che potrebbero portare Assange al suicidio.

Che cosa in realtà ha determinato, in questo momento, la non-estradizione di Julian Assange negli Usa? Da un lato la campagna internazionale per la sua liberazione, che ha portato il caso Assange all’attenzione dell’opinione pubblica. Dall’altro il fatto che un processo pubblico a Julian Assange negli Usa sarebbe estremamente imbarazzante per l’establishment politico-militare. Quale prova dei «crimini» di Assange l’accusa dovrebbe mostrare i crimini di guerra Usa, portati alla luce da WikiLeaks. Ad esempio, quando nel 2010 essa ha pubblicato oltre 250.000 documenti statunitensi, molti dei quali etichettati come «confidenziali» o «segreti», sulle guerre in Iraq e Afghanistan. Oppure quando nel 2016, al momento in cui Assange era già confinato nell’ambasciata ecuadoregna a Londra, WikiLeaks ha pubblicato oltre 30.000 email e documenti inviati e ricevuti tra il 2010 e il 2014 da Hillary Clinton, Segretaria di Stato dell’Amministrazione Obama.

Tra questi una email del 2011, la quale rivela il vero scopo della guerra Nato alla Libia perseguito in particolare da Usa e Francia: impedire che Gheddafi usasse le riserve auree della Libia per creare una moneta pan-africana alternativa al dollaro e al franco Cfa, la moneta imposta dalla Francia a 14 ex colonie. Insieme alle decine di migliaia di documenti, che hanno portato alla luce i veri scopi di questa e altre operazioni belliche, WikiLeaks ha pubblicato le immagini video delle stragi di civili in Iraq e altrove, mostrando il vero volto della guerra.

Quello che oggi viene nascosto dai grandi media. Mentre nella guerra del Vietnam degli anni Sessanta i resoconti giornalistici e le immagini delle stragi suscitarono un vasto movimento contro la «sporca guerra», contribuendo alla sconfitta Usa, il giornalismo di guerra è oggi sempre più irreggimentato: ai corrispondenti embedded, al seguito delle truppe, viene mostrato solo ciò che vogliono i comandi, gli unici autorizzati a fornire «informazioni» nei loro briefing. I pochi veri giornalisti operano in condizioni sempre più difficili e rischiose, e spesso i loro resoconti vengono censurati dai grandi media, nei quali domina la narrazione ufficiale degli eventi.

Il giornalismo d’inchiesta di WikiLeaks ha aperto crepe nel muro di omertà mediatica che copre i reali interessi di potenti élite le quali, operando nello «Stato profondo», continuano a giocare la carta della guerra, con la differenza che oggi, con le armi nucleari, essa può portare il mondo alla catastrofe finale. Violare le stanze segrete di questi gruppi di potere, portando alla luce le loro strategie e le loro trame, è un’azione assai rischiosa per i giornalisti e per coloro che, ribellandosi all’omertà, li aiutano a scoprire la verità. Emblematico è il caso di Chelsea Manning, l’attivista statunitense accusata di aver fornito a WikiLeaks documenti di cui era venuta a conoscenza lavorando quale analista di intelligence dell’Esercito Usa durante la guerra in Iraq. È stata per questo condannata a 37 anni di detenzione in un carcere di massima sicurezza e, rilasciata dopo 7 anni di carcere duro, è stata di nuovo incarcerata per essersi rifiutata di testimoniare contro Assange e, dopo un tentativo di suicidio, rimessa in temporanea libertà.

Manlio Dinucci

In early December I travelled to Venezuela to be an election observer at their national assembly election. I was part of a group of eight persons from Canada and US organized by CodePink. There were about two hundred international observers in total, including the Latin American Council of Electoral Experts.  I have previously been an official election observer in Honduras and was an unofficial observer at the 2015 Venezuela national assembly election.

Meeting Opposition Leaders

Before the election, our small group met eight leaders of the Democratic Alliance. This is the major opposition coalition. Pedro Jose Rojas of Accion Democratica said the US sanctions are not doing what is claimed; they are hurting average citizens. Bruno Gallo of Avanca Progressista said Venezuela needs negotiation not confrontation. Juan Carlos Alvarado of the Christian Democratic Party said Venezuelans have been “victims of politics” and that dialogue and flexibility are needed. Several leaders spoke about the importance of the national assembly and the road to change is through voting not violence. Several leaders expressed the wish for better relations with the US; another one said Venezuelan sovereignty needs to be respected.  The common request was to end US sanctions and interference in Venezuelan politics.

We visited the factory where voting machines were assembled, tested and certified. The staff was openly proud of their work. In March this year, nearly all the pre-existing voting computers were destroyed in a massive fire at the main election warehouse. There were calls to delay the December election. But in six months, forty thousand new computers were ordered, built, assembled, tested and certified for the December election. 

The Election Process

On election day, Sunday December 6, we visited many different elections sites. Typically, the election voting takes place at a school, with five or ten classrooms designated as “mesas”.  Each voter goes to his or her designated classroom / “mesa”.

The voting process was quick and efficient, with bio-safety sanitation at each step. The first step is to show your identity card and prove your identity with fingerprint recognition. Step 2 was to make your voting choices at the touchscreen computer and receive a paper receipt. Step 3 is to verify the receipt matches your voting choice and deposit the receipt in a ballot box. The fourth and final step is to sign and put your fingerprint on the voting registry.  The entire voting process took about 3 minutes.

At the end of the voting day, we observed the process of tabulating the votes. At each “mesa”, with observers from other parties present,  the paper receipts were recorded one by one. At the end, the results were compared to the digital count.  Voting results were then transmitted to the headquarters for overall tabulation.

Election results were announced by the Council for National Election (CNE) which manages the entire process.  CNE leaders are not permitted to be members of any party and the CNE leadership was recently changed at the request of the opposition.  In our discussion with leading opposition members, they complained about incumbent party advantages but acknowledged the election process is free, fair and honest.

PBS Newshour Special

With this firsthand experience, on December 29 I watched a PBS Newshour segment about the Venezuela election and overall situation.   PBS reporter Marcia Biggs said, “Maduro’s party essentially ran unopposed in this month’s election.”   As noted above, this is untrue. 

In fact, there were 107 parties and over 14,000 individuals competing in the December 6 election for 277 national assembly seats. While 8 parties were in alliance with the governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), there were over 90 opposition parties. The strongest opposition coalition was the Democratic Alliance comprising 7 opposition parties.  The Democratic Alliance won 1.1 million votes or 18% of the vote. The LEFT opposition to the PSUV, under the banner of the Communist Party of Venezuela, received 168 thousand votes. 

Reporter Marcia Biggs claimed that “politics permeates everything in Venezuela and can determine whether you support Maduro and eat or go hungry.” This claim is based on a campaign statement by PSUV Vice President Diosdado Cabello encouraging people to vote. He jokingly said that women are in the forefront and can say to their family, “No vote, no food.” Video of him making the statement is here.  This statement has been distorted out of all meaning and context.

The PBS story showed a fistfight in the national assembly, implying that it was the Venezuelan government.  But, as reported in the “Juan Guaido surreal regime change reality show”,  the fight was between competing factions of the Venezuelan opposition. 

When they showed Juan Guaido climbing over a fence, that was a publicity stunt to distract from the important news that Luis Parra was elected Speaker of the national assembly one year ago.  That was embarrassing because Guaido’s claim to be “interim president” was based on his being Speaker.

Election turnout was lower than usual at 31% but one needs to account for the election taking place despite covid19 with no mail-in voting. Also, millions of registered voters have had to leave the country due to economic hardship. Also, transportation is difficult due to gasoline scarcity. This was a national assembly election, equivalent to a US mid-term election, which gets lower turnout. Note that 95% of voting eligible Venezuelans are registered voters compared to just 67% in the USA.  Thus a turnout of 50% registered voters in the US equates to 33% of eligible voters.

US Meddling in Venezuela

The star of the 7-minute PBS story is Roberto Patino, the Venezuelan director of a food distribution charity. The report neglects to mention that Patino is associated with a major US foreign policy institution. He is a Millennium Leadership fellow and “expert” at the neoliberal Atlantic Council where the “regime change” goals against Venezuela are  clear.  His food charity “Alimenta la Solidaridad” is allied with the “Rescue Venezuela” funded by the US with the apparent goal of undermining the Venezuelan government and promoting “interim president Juan Guaido”.

Roberto Patino says the Venezuelan government is “very paranoid and they see conspiracies all over.” Paranoia is a mental condition where there is fear of imaginary threats.  But US threats and aggression against Venezuela are not imaginary; they are very real:

In 2002 the US supported the kidnapping and coup against the popular and elected President Hugo Chavez. The years have gone by but US hostility persists. 

* In August 2018 there was a drone assassination attempt on the Venezuelan President. 

* In January 2019 the US declared that it would not recognize the elected President Maduro and instead recognized Juan Guaido as “interim president”.  His background is described in the article “The Making of Juan Guaido: How the US regime change laboratory created Venezuela’s coup leader”

* In February 2019 President Trump threatened military intervention against Venezuela.

* In March 2019, there was massive power blackout caused by sabotage of the electrical grid, with probable US involvement.

*In May 2020, two former US Special Forces soldiers and other mercenaries were arrested  in a failed attempt to overthrow President Maduro.

* In June 2020, the US Navy warship Nitze began provocative “freedom of navigation” patrols along the Venezuelan coast.

* In August 2020, the US seized four ships carrying much needed gasoline to Venezuela.

* In September 2020, in a attempt to undermine the Venezuelan election, the US imposed sanctions on political leaders who planned to participate.

* The US 2021 stimulus bill includes $33Million for “democracy programs for Venezuela”. 

Based on the past twenty years, Venezuela’s government has good reason to be on guard against US threats, meddling and intervention. The PBS program ignores this history. 

Another hero of the show is the exiled politician Leopoldo Lopez. He was imprisoned in 2014 for instigating street violence known as “guarimbas” which led to the deaths of 43 people. 

Like Patino, Lopez  is from the Venezuelan elite, studied in the US and has major public relations support in the US. Like Guaido, Leopoldo Lopez is more popular in Washington than his home country. 

Will the US respect Venezuelan sovereignty?

If the PBS Newshour reporters had not been so biased, they would have interviewed members of the moderate opposition in Venezuela. Viewers could have heard Democratic Alliance leaders explain why they participated in the election, why they are critical of US economic sanctions and US interference in their domestic affairs. That would have been educational for viewers. 

On January 5, the newly elected national assembly will commence in Venezuela.  The fig leaf pretense of Juan Guaido as “interim president” of Venezuela will be removed because he is no longer in the national assembly.  In fact, he was removed as speaker of the national assembly one year ago.

But viewers of the PBS special did not learn this. Instead, they received a biased report ignoring the moderate opposition and promoting a few US supported elites.  The report ignores or denigrates the efforts of millions of Venezuelans who carried out and participated in an election which compares favorably with the election process in the US.  You would never know it from PBS, and you might not believe it, unless you saw it with your own eyes.

Rick Sterling is an investigate journalist based in the SF Bay Area of California. He can be contacted at [email protected]

Images provided by the author

This text was originally published on October 28, 2020 shortly before the US November elections.

This message is for anyone who has concerns about the upcoming U.S. elections, the potential for chaos and civil unrest, or those who fear what a “second wave” of Covid-19 could mean for the future of humanity. 

We are in the last few months of a tumultuous year and it appears there might be more unprecedented events on the way. As we near election 2020, it’s important to step back and analyze the potential plans of the “Predator Class”.

Specifically, it’s important to understand a number of recent government simulations and exercises.

First, let’s look at the exercise known as Event 201.

Event 201

One year ago, on October 18, 2019, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation partnered with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and the World Economic Forum on a high-level pandemic exercise known as Event 201. Event 201 simulated how the world would respond to a fictional coronavirus pandemic known as CAPS which swept around the planet. The simulation imagined 65 million people dying, mass lock downs, quarantines, censorship of alternative viewpoints under the guise of fighting “disinformation,” and even floated the idea of arresting people who question the pandemic narrative.

Coincidentally, one of the players involved with Event 201 was Dr. Michael Ryan, the head of the World Health Organization’s team responsible for the international containment and treatment of COVID-19. Ryan has called for looking into families to find potentially sick individuals and isolate them from their families.

Due to the vast web of connections between Bill Gates and nearly every organization connected to the COVID-19 fight, a growing number of researchers are questioning the motivations of Gates and the other officials involved in the Event 201 exercise.

Simulations and Scenarios:

Crimson Contagion (August 2019), 

Another exercise known as Crimson Contagion simulated an outbreak of a respiratory virus originating from China. From August 13 to August 16, 2019, Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), headed by Alex Azar, partnered with numerous national, state, and local organization for the exercise. According to the results of the October 2019 draft report, the spread of the novel avian influenza (H7N9) resulted in 110 million infected Americans, 7.7 million hospitalizations, and 586,000 deaths.

Clade X (May 2018)

Another simulation known as Clade X took place on May 2018. This event examined the response to a pandemic resulting from the release of a fictional virus known as Clade X. In the simulation, the virus was released by a terror group called A Brighter Dawn. As the outbreak spread through the United States, the participants asked what would be needed if the President issued a federal quarantine, noting that authorities would need to “Determine (the) level of force authorized to maintain quarantine.” The Clade X exercise also resulted in the federal government nationalizing the healthcare system.

The leaders of these controversial pandemic simulations that took place before the Coronavirus crisis have longstanding connections to the U.S. Intelligence and the U.S. Department of Defense. Even more troubling is that key players in the exercises – specifically, Event 201 and Clade X – share a common history in another biowarfare simulation known as Dark Winter.

Darkest Winter Exercise (June 2001)

The Dark Winter exercise took place in June 2001, only months before the 9/11 attacks. This exercise took place at Andrews Air Force Base in Camp Springs, Maryland, and involved several Congressmen, a former CIA director, a former FBI director, government insiders and privileged members of the press. The exercise simulated the use of smallpox as a biological weapon against the American public.

During the Dark Winter exercise authorities attempt to stop the spread of “dangerous misinformation” and “unverified” cures, just like with the Event 201 simulation.

Dark Winter further discusses the suppression and removal of civil liberties, such as the possibility of the President to invoke “The Insurrection Act”, which would allow the military to act as law enforcement upon request by a State governor, as well as the possibility of “martial rule.” The script says martial rule may “include, but are not limited to, prohibition of free assembly, national travel ban, quarantine of certain areas, suspension of the writ of habeas corpus [i.e. arrest without due process], and/or military trials in the event that the court system becomes dysfunctional.”

What is important to know is Dark Winter was largely written and designed by Tara O’Toole and Thomas Inglesby of the Johns Hopkins Center along with Randy Larsen and Mark DeMier of the Analytic Services (ANSER) Institute for Homeland Security.

O’Toole, Inglesby, and Larsen were directly involved in the response to the alleged anthrax attacks which took place in the days after September 11, 2001. These scientists personally briefed Vice President Cheney on Dark Winter.

Simulation Event 201

Coincidentally, Event 201 was co-hosted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, which is currently led by Dark Winter co-author Thomas Inglesby. Tara O’Toole was also a key player in the Clade X simulation.

The name for the exercise comes from a statement made by Robert Kadlec, a veteran of the George W. Bush administration and a former lobbyist for military intelligence/intelligence contractors. In the script, Kadlec states that the lack of smallpox vaccines for the U.S. populace means that “it could be a very dark winter for America.” Kadlec is now leading HHS’ Covid-19 response and was also involved in the Trump administration’s 2019 “Crimson Contagion” exercises.

Eerily, Kadlec’s statements in 201 exercise were recently repeated nearly word for word by Richard Bright, former director of Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority. Bright was recently celebrated as a whistleblower who attempted to hold the Trump administration accountable during the COVID-19 battle. However, while speaking in front of Congress, Bright stated, “without clear planning and implementation of the steps that I and other experts have outlined, 2020 will be darkest winter in modern history.” Now, maybe Bright is simply a concerned scientist warning about the potential for more sick people, but his use of the phrase “darkest winter” is hard to ignore.

When hearing the statements from Kadlec and Bright we ought to consider the corporate media’s promotion of a potential “second wave” of COVID-19. Bill Gates and other influential pundits and health authorities have consistently warned about a second wave which was slated to arrive in the fall of 2020. As of mid-October 2020, reports are beginning to come in that “cases are on the rise”. This is what makes the statement from Richard Bright all the more concerning.

Election 2020 Chaos Incoming?

This leads us to a number of recent simulations of the 2020 U.S. election which have resulted in chaos and potential civil war. It would be easy to dismiss these exercises as politically driven fantasy if the people involved had not already publicly advised their candidate not to concede the election under any circumstances.

Most recently, media reports indicated the Transition Integrity Project (TIP) held a number of exercises simulating what might happen in the event Donald Trump loses the 2020 election, but refuses to leave office. The TIP itself is a secretive group made up of “Never Trump” neocon Republicans and Democrats associated with the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton.

The Boston Globe reported that the TIP met in June to simulate the 11-week period between Election Day on November 3rd and Inauguration Day on January 20, 2021. The exercises state that “Trump and his Republican allies used every apparatus of government — the Postal Service, state lawmakers, the Justice Department, federal agents, and the military — to hold onto power, and Democrats took to the courts and the streets to try to stop it.”

The TIP envisioned one scenario where Trump wins and Biden refuses to concede and instead asks for a recount and makes several demands, including to give statehood to Washington, DC and Puerto Rico, and divide California into 5 states. In the exercises Joe Biden is played by John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign manager and chief of staff to former President Bill Clinton. The simulations essentially end in a constitutional crisis where there is no clear President and the Supreme Court or possibly the military play a deciding role.

This unprecedented event could be disastrous for American life as it is likely activists from both sides of the vote would take to the streets to protest what they believe is a theft by their opponents. If you think protests and fights between “extreme leftists” and “extreme right” wingers are contentious, just wait until they both feel shafted during the presidential election.

Those opposed to Trump will claim Biden won and Trump is attempting to steal the election and create a fascist dictatorship. The Trump supporters will say the Radical Leftist Democrats are attempting a coup to establish a “Communist Police State”. The result will be neighbor turning against neighbor, family members disowning one another, and some political activists may escalate their tactics from protests to violence.

Other groups were similarly engaged in “war games” that predicted complete chaos in the U.S. on election day as well as the imposition of martial law. This includes the “Operation Blackout” simulations conducted by the U.S.-Israeli company, Cybereason. That company has considerable ties to the U.S. and Israeli intelligence.

Operation Blackout involved hackers taking control of city buses around the U.S., crashing into voters waiting in line at polling stations, hacked traffic lights causing accidents, and the release of “deepfakes” to manipulate the public. The simulation resulted in the cancellation of the 2020 election and the imposition of martial law.

While Donald Trump continues to stoke the flames of division and uncertainty surrounding election 2020, the Establishment is also preparing for the possibility of martial law in response to this chaos. Meanwhile, the public is being prepped for a second wave of COVID-19 infections which could lead to the foreshadowed Darkest Winter. While we don’t care to instill fear we do encourage everyone to heed these warnings and be prepared for potential unrest in the days and weeks following the election.

Are You Prepared?

In conclusion, I believe we may have a narrow window of time to inform our friends and family, and motivate them to prepare for what may be on the horizon.

We can spend our time attempting to convince them of the lies of COVID-19.

We can also try to educate them about the numerous exercises predicting chaos and civil unrest across the United States.

As important as education is in the Information War; now might be the time to focus our energy on helping our families be prepared for what may come. Rather than attempting to convince them to see what you see or believe what you believe, perhaps we can simply help keep them safe until they can clearly see the writing on the wall.

Again, if you are hearing of these exercises and topics for the first time, please listen with an open mind.

I want to emphasize that I do not write these words in hopes of inspiring fear or stress. In fact, I hope that this analysis can paint a clear enough picture of the grim reality we are facing so we may act! It is only by honestly facing our circumstances that we can hope to influence and change the path of humanity.

This is a historic time to be alive and we have the opportunity to play a powerful role. It’s time to shake off the shackles and expose those who seek to hold us back for their own sick purposes.

The barrister-brewed humour of Edward Fitzgerald QC, one of the solid and stout figures defending a certain Julian Assange of WikiLeaks at the Old Bailey in London, was understandable.  Time had worn and wearied the parties, none more so than his client.  Fitzgerald had asked for water, but then mused that its absence could hardly have been as bad as the horrors of war in the Battle of Iwo Jima.  What mattered was the decision on extradition. 

Kevin Gosztola of Shadowproof also gave us a sense of the scene.

“I see a bench of a glass container, where Assange will be isolated during the announcement of his extradition decision.  This has been standard practice during this case, even after he complained about how it infringed upon his ability to participate in his defense.”

As it transpired, District Justice Vanessa Baraitser went against her near perfect streak of granting extraditions by blocking the request by the US government for 17 charges based on the Espionage Act of 1917 and one of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion.  Crudely put, she accepted the grounds of poor mental health, evidence that Assange was a suicide risk, and that his conditions of detention in a US supermax prison facility might well accentuate it.  She also noted a “real risk that … Assange will be subject to restrictive special administrative measures [SAMs].”

Should the publisher be “subjected to the extreme conditions of SAMs, [his] mental health will deteriorate to the point where he will commit suicide with the ‘single minded determination’ described by Dr [Quinton] Deeley.”  She was further “satisfied that Mr Assange’s suicidal impulses will come from his psychiatric diagnoses rather than his own voluntary act.”  Accordingly, “it would be oppressive to extradite [Assange] to the United States of America.”

But for those unwilling to digest the headline act and specious highlights, the decision of Justice Baraitser was also an expansive effort to salvage the credibility of state-sanctioned persecution while dishing it out to the defendant.  Central to her judgment was reasoning crafted to deny the exceptional, political nature of the Assange case and its threat to journalism.

She did not accept, for instance, that Assange would be treated differently – in other words, “be subject to harsh detention conditions on the basis of his political opinions or nationality.”  She further failed to accept that the case against Assange might be “manipulated for political purposes at the behest of the executive or the CIA.”

The mountain of evidence submitted by defence witnesses demonstrating the markedly politicised nature of the Department of Justice’s actions, left little impression.  As Reprieve’s board president Eric Lewis statedduring the trial, individual prosecutors might well be acting in good faith but “the [DOJ] is highly politicised and many Americans would agree with that sentiment.”  Baraitser’s response: “there is no credible evidence” to reach a conclusion “that federal prosecutors have improper motives for bringing these charges or to find they have acted contrary to their obligations and responsibilities of impartiality and fairness.”  Things remain perennially micro with some judicial minds.

Baraitser pays homage to state power and dirties the role played by WikiLeaks and whistleblowers.  The defence had argued Assange engaged in activities as an investigative journalist, and that such conduct would be protected by Article 10 of the European Charter of Human Rights providing the right to freedom of expression and information.

But the judge evidently had different ideas uncritically focusing on the alleged conspiracy to commit computer intrusion between Chelsea Manning and Assange.  In doing so, there was little engagement with the defence’s demonstration that the hacking allegation is deeply flawed and speculative, both in terms of attributable identity and on the matter of execution.   The testimony from Patrick Eller, formerly of the US Army Criminal Investigation Command headquarters at Quantico, was particularly damning.  Manning, Eller revealed on September 25, 2020, “already had legitimate access to all the databases from which she downloaded the data.”  To have logged “into another user account would not have provided her with more access than she already possessed.”

Baraitser merely accepted the prosecution submission that Assange had “agreed to use the rainbow tools, which he had for the purpose of cracking Microsoft password hashes, to decipher an alphanumeric code [Manning] had given him.”  The code was tailored for “an encrypted password hash stored on a Department of Defence computer connected to the SIPRNet [Secret Internet Protocol Router Network].”  But Eller’s testimony, referring to Manning’s court martial records, makes the point that she never supplied the two files essential in generating the decryption key for the password hash.  “At the time, it would not have been possible to crack an encrypted password hash, such as the one Manning obtained.”  In any case, Manning already had access, making any conspiracy needless.

None of this mattered a jot.   “This is the conduct which most obviously demonstrates Mr Assange’s complicity in Ms Manning’s theft of the information, and separates his activity from that of the ordinary investigative journalist.”  Assange had also allegedly engaged in conduct that would amount to offences in English law, not only with Manning, but with “computer hackers Teenager, Laurelai, Kayla, Jeremy Hammond, Sabu and Topiary to gain unauthorised access to a computer”.

The judge also took a withering view to the publisher’s “wider scheme, to work with computer hackers and whistle blowers to obtain information for WikiLeaks.”  She latched onto the US prosecution’s keenness to target Assange’s philosophy, citing the “Hacking at Random” conference held in August 2009 and the “Hack in the Box Security Conference” in October that year.  “Notwithstanding the vital role played by the press in a democratic society, journalists have the same duty as everyone else to obey the ordinary criminal law.”  The right to freedom of expression was mediated by imposed responsibilities and the “technical means” used in gathering information.

Clearly keeping in mind the deterrent function of such stifling instruments as The Official Secrets Act of 1989, Baraitser remained staunchly establishment in relegating journalism to the lowest pegs of significance.  Motivation is irrelevant, the public interest merely a construction best left to the paternally learned.  Those with secrets had to be prevented from disclosing them; the role of whether information should be made available for public consumption had to be left to “trusted people in a position to make an objective assessment of the public interest”.

The credulous acceptance of most of the evidence by Assistant US attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, Gordon Kromberg, boggles.  Kromberg made a good go of convincing Baraitser that the case against Assange was far from “unprecedented” and would not attract the free speech protections of the US First Amendment.  Criminalising the intentional disclosure of names of intelligence agents and sources, by way of example, was still consistent with First Amendment rights.  Weakly, the judge claimed that, “Cases which raise novel issues of law are not so uncommon.”

Untroubled by any potential desecration of press freedoms, Baraitser resorted to vague hypotheticals.  Whether the prosecution would raise the issue of excluding Assange from the protections of the First Amendment for publishing national defence information or otherwise did not raise “a real risk that a court would find that Mr Assange will not be protected by the US Constitution in general or by the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment in particular.”  Convoluted understatement chokes the dangerous implication.

The “harm” thesis – that Assange’s publishing activities supposedly put people at risk – was seen as credible.  Little stock is put in his redaction efforts, many of which were extensively documented at the trial.  Instead, an opportunistic, careless figure emerges, one who endangered “well over one hundred people” and caused “quantifiable” harm – loss of employment, the freezing of assets.  Even if Assange had been “acting within the parameters of responsible journalism” he had no vested “right to make the decision to sacrifice the safety of these few individuals, knowing of their circumstances or the dangers they faced, in the name of free speech.”

The reasoning of the judge on the US-UK Treaty would have also caused shudders across the fourth estate.  Extradition treaties, she affirmed, confirmed no enforceable rights.  And Parliament, in its wisdom, had taken “the decision to remove the political offences bar which had previously been available to those facing extradition.”  She accepted, in whole, the US submission that the regime upon which extradition would be dealt with obligated the court to follow a set of “imperative steps” which did not “include a consideration of the political character of the offence”.

For human rights organisations and those defending press freedom, the judgment remains rewarding in terms of outcome, unsatisfactory in terms of reasoning.  It leaves the appalling treatment of Assange, at the hands of UK authorities guided by US instruction, unaccounted for.  As Amnesty International described it, the verdict “does not absolve the UK from having engaged in this politically-motivated process at the behest of the USA and putting media freedom and freedom of expression on trial.”  WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson was characteristically blunt in his assessment.  “It is a win for Julian Assange – but it is not a win for journalism.”

The US Department of Justice, keen to prolong Assange’s suffering, promises to appeal, though the grounds on mental health will prove hard to impeach.  A bail application is due to be submitted by the defence in a few days.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.  Email: [email protected]

Planet Lockdown and US Dollar Hegemony: Catherine Austin Fitts

By Catherine Austin Fitts, January 04 2021

This sit down interview with Catherine Austin Fitts covers the spectrum of the current situation we find ourselves in. It was conducted as a part of the full length documentary.

Master Biden Speaks

By Margaret Kimberley, January 04 2021

The civil rights groups’ rather basic requests for voting rights protections and the need for federal intervention to address police brutality were minimized and dismissed by the president-elect.

Generation Betrayed. The Corona Regime in Schools. The Future of Our Children

By Michael Hüter, January 04 2021

As a historian, I have been deeply appalled for months at how a whole society, whole nations, can be led collectively into division and, above all, irrationality solely on the basis of mass PCR tests.

The Raging 2020s. Soleimani Geopolitics, One Year On 

By Pepe Escobar, January 04 2021

One year ago, the Raging Twenties started with a murder. The assassination of Maj Gen Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), was an act of war. 

US Imperialism Defeated: UK Court Blocks Extradition of Julian Assange

By Dr. Leon Tressell, January 04 2021

The judge sided with all of the American claims against Assange. However, she justified her decision on the grounds that Assange would be a suicide risk if he were extradited to the US due to the horrendous conditions in their supermax prisons.

Assange Wins. The Cost: The Crushing of Press Freedom, The Labelling of Dissent as Mental Illness

By Jonathan Cook, January 04 2021

The unexpected decision by Judge Vanessa Baraitser to deny a US demand to extradite Julian Assange, foiling efforts to send him to a US super-max jail for the rest of his life, is a welcome legal victory, but one swamped by larger lessons that should disturb us deeply.

Living in Dark Times: I Revolt, Therefore I Am!

By Dr. Rudolf Hänsel, January 04 2021

Most citizens instinctively feel that “Something is Rotten in the State of Denmark” and “Time is Out of Joint” (Shakespeare). However, a sense of authority and a mental obedience reflex prevent them from distrusting the brazen lies of politicians, scientists and the mass media and from saying no. With this behaviour they stabilise the totalitarian system.

2020: Annus Horribilis, The Worst Is Yet to Come? Poverty, Unemployment, Despair

By Stephen Lendman, January 04 2021

Well over 100,000 small businesses went bankrupt or otherwise shut down permanently because of draconian lockdowns, quarantines and related policies. According to Gallup survey data, “Americans’ mental health ratings s(ank) to a new low” in 2020 — with no end to mass-misery in prospect.

COVID-19: The Emergence of the Pandemic Industrial Complex

By Brian Berletic, January 04 2021

There is one industry who stands out above all others to benefit, an industry notorious for its deeply rooted corruption, and an industry that has already been caught using its ties with international organizations like the WHO to declare pandemics, stoke hysteria, and profit handsomely from the resulting chaos. It’s the West’s pharmaceutical industry.

Sure, I could have written my last article for Health Impact News for the year 2020 with a look back on how terrible the year was, but looking forward to better times in 2021. Undoubtedly, that would have been a more popular article.

But then I would have had to lie to you. Because if one truly understands what has happened in 2020, then you should also understand that this Plandemic was just the prelude, and things are now about to get a lot worse.

2019 is history, and we will NEVER go back to the kind of life we had back then. The Globalists know this, and for those who reject being spoon-fed the propaganda that is called “news” in the pharma-owned corporate media, we know it too.

Since there has been a threat hanging over us in the Alternative Health media of being censored once the new COVID vaccines started being distributed, I have already written what needs to be understood at the close of 2020, since I had no idea how much longer we would be allowed to continue publishing and have worked hard to get this information to our readers as quickly as possible.

So here is the review.

Pretty much everything concerning COVID19 was predicted and planned for before the first cases were even reported in Wuhan, China at the beginning of the year. See our page on the “Plandemic” in our COVID Information Center.

The Globalists have also announced what is in the pipeline and coming next.

That includes a Dark Winter, and a “Digital Pandemic” which will strike our infrastructure through Cyber attacks and make COVID19 look like “a small disturbance” in comparison, according to Klaus Schwab, the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum. See:

Why is the Corporate Media Predicting a “Dark Winter”?

WARNING! “Dark Winter” Begins! Next Phase is “Digital Pandemic” as Cyber Wars Start

Things will not get better until a significant portion of our population understands that Government is our ENEMY, no matter who is in office, because politicians at the top are puppets being controlled by their handlers, the Shadow Government that is run by the corporate Wall Street Billionaires and the Central Bankers.

Those who still believe that Trump is not one of them and expect him to save our nation, you will be sorely disappointed soon, even if he does come through and start arresting people in the “Deep State” and retains the presidency.

I have previously written who is the top person running the show, and explained many times now how we are uselessly fighting each other if we prefer one political party over the other.

Unmasking Who is Behind the Plandemic and Rioting to Usher in the New World Order

The Myth of Right vs. Left, Liberal vs. Conservative – Top 9 Myths Believed by BOTH Sides to Usher in a New World Order

For my real end of the year message to you, please read:

Is God’s Judgment About to Fall on America? What is the “Mark of the Beast”?

As we end this year on a very somber note, I share with you this video published by ReallyGraceful about what this year has done to our children.

Leaving a lucrative career as a nephrologist (kidney doctor), Dr. Suzanne Humphries is now free to actually help cure people.

In this autobiography she explains why good doctors are constrained within the current corrupt medical system from practicing real, ethical medicine.

One of the sane voices when it comes to examining the science behind modern-day vaccines, no pro-vaccine extremist doctors have ever dared to debate her in public.

Brian Shilhavy is Editor, Health Impact News

For 2021, we encourage our readers to make research a priority and to spread word of their findings to others; to ask questions and not to settle for unsatisfactory answers; to make decisions based on what’s proven rather than what’s convenient.

To this end, from its inception in 2001, Global Research has established an extensive archive of news articles, in-depth reports and analysis on issues which are barely covered by the mainstream media. We believe in the power of information and analysis to bring about far-reaching change: the more people become aware of the subversive, insidious processes attempting to manipulate the many to benefit the few, the less they can turn a blind eye to the injustice that surrounds us.

If you value the service we provide, we need your support! Running a large scale independent news website is a costly endeavour and we would not be here if it were not for your contributions. We kindly ask you to consider becoming a recurring member or making a donation to keep the Global Research project alive and well in the new year:

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One year ago, the Raging Twenties started with a murder.   

The assassination of Maj Gen Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), alongside Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iraq’s Hashd al-Sha’abi militia, by laser-guided Hellfire missiles launched from two MQ-9 Reaper drones, was an act of war. 

Not only the drone strike at Baghdad airport, directly ordered by President Trump, was unilateral, unprovoked and illegal: it was engineered as a stark provocation, to detonate an Iranian reaction that would then be countered by American “self-defense”, packaged as “deterrence”. Call it a perverse form of double down, reversed false flag.   

The imperial Mighty Wurlitzer spun it as a “targeted killing”, a pre-emptive op squashing Soleimani’s alleged planning of “imminent attacks” against US diplomats and troops. 

False. No evidence whatsoever. And then, Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi, in front of his Parliament, offered the ultimate context: Soleimani was on a diplomatic mission, on a regular flight between Damascus and Baghdad, involved in complex negotiations between Tehran and Riyadh, with the Iraqi Prime Minister as mediator, at the request of President Trump. 

So the imperial machine – in complete mockery of international law – assassinated a de facto diplomatic envoy.  

The three top factions who pushed for Soleimani’s assassination were US neo-cons – supremely ignorant of Southwest Asia’s history, culture and politics – and the Israeli and Saudi lobbies, who ardently believe their interests are advanced every time Iran is attacked. Trump could not possibly see The Big Picture and its dire ramifications: only what his major Israeli-firster donor Sheldon Adelson dictates, and what Jared of Arabia Kushner whispered in his ear, remote-controlled by his close pal Muhammad bin Salman (MbS).

The armor of American “prestige”

The measured Iranian response to Soleimani’s assassination was carefully calibrated to not detonate vengeful imperial “deterrence”:  

precision missile strikes on the American-controlled Ain al-Assad air base in Iraq. The Pentagon received advance warning. 

Predictably, the run-up towards the first anniversary of Soleimani’s assassination had to degenerate into intimations of US-Iran once again on the brink of war.  

So it’s enlightening to examine what the Commander of the IRGC Aerospace Division, Brigadier General Amir-Ali Hajizadeh, https://www.tasnimnews.com/fa/news/1399/10/13/2423366/

told Lebanon’s Al Manar network:

“The US and the Zionist regime [Israel] have not brought security to any place and if something happens here (in the region) and a war breaks out, we will make no distinction between the US bases and the countries hosting them.”

Hajizadeh, expanding on the precision missile strikes a year ago, added, “We were prepared for the Americans’ response and all our missile power was fully on alert. If they had given a response, we would have hit all of their bases from Jordan to Iraq and the Persian Gulf and even their warships in the Indian Ocean.”

The precision missile strikes on Ain al-Assad, a year ago, represented a middle-rank power, enfeebled by sanctions, and facing a huge economic/financial crisis, responding to an attack by targeting imperial assets that are part of the Empire of Bases. That was a global first – unheard of since the end of WWII. It was clearly interpreted across vast swathes of the Global South as fatally piercing the decades-old hegemonic armor of American” prestige”.      

So Tehran was not exactly impressed by two nuclear-capable B-52s recently flying over the Persian Gulf; or the US Navy announcing the arrival of the nuclear-powered, missile loaded USS Georgia in the Persian Gulf last week. 

These deployments were spun as a response to an evidence-free claim that Tehran was behind a 21-rocket attack against the sprawling American embassy in Baghdad’s Green Zone. 

The (unexploded) 107mm caliber rockets – by the way marked in English, not Farsi – can be easily bought in some underground Baghdad souk by virtually anybody, as I have seen for myself in Iraq since the mid-2000s.  

That certainly does not qualify as a casus belli – or “self-defense” merging with “deterrence”. The Centcom justification  actually sounds like a Monty Python sketch: an attack “…almost certainly conducted by an Iranian-backed rogue militia group.” Note that “almost certainly” is code for “we have no idea who did it”.  

How to fight the – real – war on terror 

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif did take the trouble (see attached tweet) to warn Trump he was being set up for a fake casus belli – and blowback would be inevitable. That’s a case of Iranian diplomacy being perfectly aligned with the IRGC: after all, the whole post-Soleimani strategy comes straight from Ayatollah Khamenei.  

And that leads to the IRGC’s Hajizadeh once again establishing the Iranian red line in terms of the Islamic Republic’s defense: “We will not negotiate about the missile power with anyone” – pre-empting any move to incorporate missile reduction into a possible Washington return to the JCPOA. Hajizadeh has also emphasized that Tehran   has restricted the range of its missiles to 2,000 km. 

My friend Elijah Magnier, arguably the top war correspondent across Southwest Asia in the past four decades, has neatly detailed the importance of Soleimani. 

Everyone not only along the Axis of Resistance – Tehran, Baghdad, Damascus, Hezbollah – but across vast swathes of the Global South is firmly aware of how Soleimani led the fight against ISIS/Daesh in Iraq from 2014 to 2015, and how he was instrumental in retaking Tikrit in 2015.  

Zeinab Soleimani, the impressive General’s daughter, has

profiled the man, and the sentiments he inspired. And Hezbollah’s secretary-general Sayed Nasrallah, in an extraordinary interview,  stressed Soleimani’s “great humility”, even “with the common people, the simple people.”  

Nasrallah tells a story that is essential to place Soleimani’s modus operandi in the real – not fictional – war on terror, and deserves to be quoted in full:  

 “At that time, Hajj Qassem traveled from Baghdad airport to Damascus airport, from where he came (directly) to Beirut, in the southern suburbs. He arrived to me at midnight. I remember very well what he said to me: “At dawn you must have provided me with 120 (Hezbollah) operation commanders.”

I replied

“But Hajj, it’s midnight, how can I provide you with 120 commanders?”

He told me that there was no other solution if we wanted to fight (effectively) against ISIS, to defend the Iraqi people, our holy places [5 of the 12 Imams of Twelver Shi’ism have their mausoleums in Iraq], our Hawzas [Islamic seminars], and everything that existed in Iraq. There was no choice. “I don’t need fighters. I need operational commanders [to supervise the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units, PMU].”

This is why in my speech [about Soleimani’s assassination], I said that during the 22 years or so of our relationship with Hajj Qassem Soleimani, he never asked us for anything. He never asked us for anything, not even for Iran. Yes, he only asked us once, and that was for Iraq, when he asked us for these (120) operations commanders. So he stayed with me, and we started contacting our (Hezbollah) brothers one by one. We were able to bring in nearly 60 operational commanders, including some brothers who were on the front lines in Syria, and whom we sent to Damascus airport [to wait for Soleimani], and others who were in Lebanon, and that we woke up from their sleep and brought in [immediately] from their house as the Hajj said he wanted to take them with him on the plane that would bring him back to Damascus after the dawn prayer. And indeed, after praying the dawn prayer together, they flew to Damascus with him, and Hajj Qassem traveled from Damascus to Baghdad with 50 to 60 Lebanese Hezbollah commanders, with whom he went to the front lines in Iraq. He said he didn’t need fighters, because thank God there were plenty of volunteers in Iraq. But he needed [battle-hardened] commanders to lead these fighters, train them, pass on experience and expertise to them, etc. And he didn’t leave until he took my pledge that within two or three days I would have sent him the remaining 60 commanders.”

Orientalism, all over again 

A former commander under Soleimani that I met in Iran in 2018 had promised me and my colleague Sebastiano Caputo that he would try to arrange an interview with the Maj Gen – who never spoke to foreign media. We had no reason to doubt our interlocutor – so until the last Baghdad minute we were in this selective waiting list. 

As for Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, killed side by side with Soleimani in the Baghdad drone strike, I was part of a small group who spent an afternoon with him in a safe house inside – not outside – Baghdad’s Green Zone in November 2017. My full report is here.  

Prof. Mohammad Marandi of the University of Tehran, reflecting on the assassination, told me, “the most important thing is that the Western view on the situation is very Orientalist. They assume that Iran has no real structures and that everything is dependent on individuals. In the West an assassination doesn’t destroy an administration, company, or organization. Ayatollah Khomeini passed away and they said the revolution was finished. But the constitutional process produced a new leader within hours. The rest is history.” 

This may go a long way to explain Soleimani geopolitics. He may have been a revolutionary superstar – many across the Global South see him as the Che Guevara of Southwest Asia – but he was most of all a quite articulated cog of a very articulated machine.  

The adjunct President of the Iranian Parliament, Hossein Amirabdollahian, told Iranian network Shabake Khabar that Soleimani, two years before the assassination, had already envisaged an inevitable “normalization” between Israel and Persian Gulf monarchies.

At the same time he was also very much aware of the Arab League 2002 position – shared, among others, by Iraq, Syria and Lebanon: a “normalization” cannot even begin to be discussed without an independent – and viable – Palestinian state under 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as capital.  

Now everyone knows this dream is dead, if not completely buried. What remains is the usual, dreary slog: the American assassination of Soleimani, the Israeli assassination of top Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the relentless, relatively low-intensity Israeli warfare against Iran fully supported by the Beltway, Washington’s illegal occupation of parts of northeast Syria to grab some oil, the perpetual drive for regime change in Damascus, the non-stop demonization of Hezbollah.    

Beyond the Hellfire 

Tehran has made it very clear that a return to at least a measure of mutual respect between US-Iran involves Washington rejoining the JCPOA with no preconditions, and the end of illegal, unilateral Trump administration sanctions. These parameters are non-negotiable.

Nasrallah, for his part, in a speech in Beirut on Sunday, stressed, 

“one of the main outcomes of the assassination of General Soleimani and al-Muhandis is the calls made for the expulsion of US forces from the region. Such calls had not been made prior to the assassination. The martyrdom of the resistance leaders set US troops on the track of leaving Iraq.” 

This may be wishful thinking, because the military-industrial-security complex will never willingly abandon a key hub of the Empire of Bases.  

More important is the fact that the post-Soleimani environment transcends Soleimani.  

The Axis of Resistance – Tehran-Baghdad-Damascus-Hezbollah – instead of collapsing, will keep getting reinforced. 

Internally, and still under “maximum pressure” sanctions, Iran and Russia will be cooperating to produce Covid-19 vaccines, and the Pasteur Institute of Iran will co-produce a vaccine with a Cuban company. 

Iran is increasingly solidified as the key node of the New Silk Roads in Southwest Asia: the Iran-China strategic partnership is constantly revitalized by FMs Zarif and Wang Yi, and that includes Beijing turbo-charging its geoeconomic investment in South Pars – the largest gas field on the planet. 

Iran, Russia and China will be involved in the reconstruction of Syria – which will also include, eventually, a New Silk Road branch: the Iran-Iraq-Syria-Eastern Mediterranean railway. 

All that is an interlinked, ongoing process no Hellfires are able to burn. 

The unexpected decision by Judge Vanessa Baraitser to deny a US demand to extradite Julian Assange, foiling efforts to send him to a US super-max jail for the rest of his life, is a welcome legal victory, but one swamped by larger lessons that should disturb us deeply.

Those who campaigned so vigorously to keep Assange’s case in the spotlight, even as the US and UK corporate media worked so strenuously to keep it in darkness, are the heroes of the day. They made the price too steep for Baraitser or the British establishment to agree to lock Assange away indefinitely in the US for exposing its war crimes and its crimes against humanity in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

But we must not downplay the price being demanded of us for this victory. 

https://twitter.com/Jonathan_K_Cook/status/1346059260539637760

A moment of celebration

We have contributed collectively in our various small ways to win back for Assange some degree of freedom, and hopefully a reprieve from what could be a death sentence as his health continues to deteriorate in an overcrowded Belmarsh high-security prison in London that has become a breeding ground for Covid-19.  

For this we should allow ourselves a moment of celebration. But Assange is not out of the woods yet. The US has said it will appeal the decision. And it is not yet clear whether Assange will remain jailed in the UK – possibly in Belmarsh – while many months of further legal argument about his future take place. 

The US and British establishments do not care where Assange is imprisoned – be it Sweden, the UK or the US. What has been most important to them is that he continues to be locked out of sight in a cell somewhere, where his physical and mental fortitude can be destroyed and where he is effectively silenced, encouraging others to draw the lesson that there is too high a price to pay for dissent. 

The personal battle for Assange won’t be over till he is properly free. And even then he will be lucky if the last decade of various forms of incarceration and torture he has been subjected to do not leave him permanently traumatised, emotionally and mentally damaged, a pale shadow of the unapologetic, vigorous transparency champion he was before his ordeal began.

That alone will be a victory for the British and US establishments who were so embarrassed by, and fearful of, Wikileaks’ revelations of their crimes. 

Rejected on a technicality 

But aside from what is a potential personal victory for Assange, assuming he doesn’t lose on appeal, we should be deeply worried by the legal arguments Baraitser advanced in denying extradition. 

The US demand for extradition was rejected on what was effectively a technicality. The US mass incarceration system is so obviously barbaric and depraved that, it was shown conclusively by experts at the hearings back in September, Assange would be at grave risk of committing suicide should he become another victim of its super-max jails.à 

One should not also discard another of the British establishment’s likely considerations: that in a few days Donald Trump will be gone from the White House and a new US administration will take his place. 

There is no reason to be sentimental about president-elect Joe Biden. He is a big fan of mass incarceration too, and he will be no more of a friend to dissident media, whistleblowers and journalism that challenges the national security state than was his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama. Which is no friend at all. 

But Biden probably doesn’t need the Assange case hanging over his head, becoming a rallying cry against him, an uncomfortable residue of the Trump administration’s authoritarian instincts that his own officials would be forced to defend. 

It would be nice to imagine that the British legal, judicial and political establishments grew a backbone in ruling against extradition. The far more likely truth is that they sounded out the incoming Biden team and received permission to forgo an immediate ruling in favour of extradition – on a technicality. 

Keep an eye on whether the new Biden administration decides to drop the appeal case. More likely his officials will let it rumble on, largely below the media’s radar, for many months more. 

Journalism as espionage 

Significantly, Judge Baraitser backed all the Trump administration’s main legal arguments for extradition, even though they were comprehensively demolished by Assange’s lawyers. 

Baraitser accepted the US government’s dangerous new definition of investigative journalism as “espionage”, and implied that Assange had also broken Britain’s draconian Official Secrets Act in exposing government war crimes.

She agreed that the 2007 Extradition Treaty applies in Assange’s case, ignoring the treaty’s actual words that exempt political cases like his. She thereby opened the door for other journalists to be seized in their home countries and renditioned to the US.

Baraitser accepted that protecting sources in the digital age – as Assange did for whistleblower Chelsea Manning, an essential obligation on journalists in a free society – now amounts to criminal “hacking”. She trashed free speech and press freedom rights, saying they did not provide “unfettered discretion by Mr Assange to decide what he’s going to publish”.

She appeared to approve of the ample evidence showing that the US spied on Assange inside the Ecuadorian embassy, both in violation of international law and his client-lawyer privilege – a breach of his most fundamental legal rights that alone should have halted proceedings. 

https://twitter.com/kgosztola/status/1346043748078260226 

Baraitser argued that Assange would receive a fair trial in the US, even though it was almost certain to take place in the eastern district of Virginia, where the major US security and intelligence services are headquartered. Any jury there would be dominated by US security personnel and their families, who would have no sympathy for Assange. 

So as we celebrate this ruling for Assange, we must also loudly denounce it as an attack on press freedom, as an attack on our hard-won collective freedoms, and as an attack on our efforts to hold the US and UK establishments accountable for riding roughshod over the values, principles and laws they themselves profess to uphold. 

Even as we are offered with one hand a small prize in Assange’s current legal victory, the establishment’s other hand seizes much more from us.

Vilification continues

There is a final lesson from the Assange ruling. The last decade has been about discrediting, disgracing and demonising Assange. This ruling should very much be seen as a continuation of that process.

Baraitser has denied extradition only on the grounds of Assange’s mental health and his autism, and the fact that he is a suicide risk. In other words, the principled arguments for freeing Assange have been decisively rejected.

If he regains his freedom, it will be solely because he has been characterised as mentally unsound. That will be used to discredit not just Assange, but the cause for which he fought, the Wikileaks organisation he helped to found, and all wider dissidence from establishment narratives. This idea will settle into popular public discourse unless we challenge such a presentation at every turn.  

 Assange’s battle to defend our freedoms, to defend those in far-off lands whom we bomb at will in the promotion of the selfish interests of a western elite, was not autistic or evidence of mental illness. His struggle to make our societies fairer, to hold the powerful to account for their actions, was not evidence of dysfunction. It is a duty we all share to make our politics less corrupt, our legal systems more transparent, our media less dishonest.

Unless far more of us fight for these values – for real sanity, not the perverse, unsustainable, suicidal interests of our leaders – we are doomed. Assange showed us how we can free ourselves and our societies. It is incumbent on the rest of us to continue his fight.

 This essay first appeared on Jonathan Cook’s blog: https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net.

“We have to reserve the right to bomb N…” (British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, 1932(1))

Historical human rights abuses are not explained well in most school textbooks or by the mainstream media. They celebrate Columbus as an explorer, failing to note that the purpose of his voyage was plunder, and that he should be remembered for helping to start the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the genocide of the people of Haiti. Britain’s human rights record is appalling. Some of Britain’s most famous seafarers, such as Sir Francis Drake, were actually pirates (notice the Sir – being a criminal does not affect your chances of receiving an honour if your crimes are committed on behalf of the government). The explorer Henry Stanley (famous for the line “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”) assisted King Leopold II of Belgium in controlling the people of the Congo, so that he could steal their rubber. King Leopold is most famous for cutting off the hands of the native population. One of Stanley’s key roles was in persuading local chiefs to sign treaties they did not understand.(2) Commerce was (and still is) more important than human rights.  

Gradually, there has been a steady improvement in how governments from many nations treat their citizens. In most countries slavery has been abolished. Women and minorities are supposed to have equal rights, and we have agreements on how prisoners are treated. Each year, a couple of countries removed the death penalty.(3) Many of us recognised that our earlier exploitation of some groups of people was no longer acceptable. 

In 1947 the United Nations came up with the Universal Declaration on Human Rights.(4) This is a surprisingly long list of rights that every person is entitled to. The right to life perhaps being the most important, but also freedom from slavery and torture. However, the Declaration was flawed from the beginning because the five most powerful nations at the time (US, Britain, Russia, China and France) violated the rights of their citizens or their colonies on a regular basis, even whilst the declaration was being created.(5) British negotiators were aware that the authorities in some British colonies carried out murder, torture and rape. Authorities in other British colonies regularly detained people, hindered freedom of movement and controlled the holding of meetings. British colonies were therefore being governed in ways that contradicted the declaration.(6) 

Whatever progress we had made came to an abrupt halt following the terrorist attacks in New York on September 11^th, 2001. We have gone backwards significantly for the last 20 years.(7)Steadily increasing standards of human rights and personal freedoms have been set aside as we fly people abroad for torture, and destroy multiple countries in the Middle East.

Mass Murder Is Not A Crime If You Call It War – And You’re British or American

“The American army’s use of its massive fire-power is so unrestrained that all US military operations are in reality the collective punishment of whole districts, towns and cities.” (Patrick Cockburn, 2005(8))

An important part of the propaganda system in Britain and the US is that we have been conditioned over many years to assess a country’s human rights record based on the treatment of its own people. However, it is more accurate to also include human rights violations committed by our governments and their armies in other countries. When we do this, it becomes clear that many of the worst human rights atrocities are committed by the US and British governments when they go to war, or when they supply weapons or provide assistance to murderous dictators. The version of war that we see in the US and British media bears little relationship to what actually goes on when the US and Britain invade another country. The media shows us videos of precision bombs hitting their targets. What they rarely show is the mass slaughter and maiming of human beings, and the destruction of entire cities using the most devastating weapons available.

We have also been conditioned to think of human rights as what are known as political rights, such as the right to vote, freedom of speech (which means the right to criticise your government), and the right to a free press. These rights are regularly violated in many countries. However, there are even more important rights within the 1948 declaration, such as the right to life. In other words, the right not to be shot by an invading army. It is these more important rights that are violated by the US and British governments when they invade other countries.

If we examine the activities of US soldiers in wartime, we find that they commit mass murder on a regular basis. A good example was the ‘Highway of Death’. In 1991, the Iraqi army had just invaded Kuwait, but they agreed to a ceasefire and were withdrawing their troops. The US White House Press Secretary, Marlin Fitzwater, stated that “The United States…will not attack retreating Iraqi forces.”(9) Two thousand Iraqi vehicles were returning on the main highways between Kuwait and Iraq. US planes destroyed vehicles at the front and rear of the column, so vehicles in-between could not move. They then methodically destroyed everything, killing thousands of people, not discriminating between civilians and the military. The people on the ground were defenceless. The pilots described this as a ‘Turkey Shoot’.(10) Eyewitnesses report US soldiers burying the bodies quickly to hide them before journalists arrived.

Also in 1991, when the US military invaded Iraq, they were equipped with armoured bulldozers, and they fitted bulldozer blades to the front of some tanks. These were used to push sand into the Iraqi trenches. Iraqi soldiers, most of whom were conscripts, were buried alive in their trenches, including many who were trying to surrender. The conscripts were poorly equipped and had no weapons that were effective against the US armour. Others were just burned alive by dropping napalm bombs on the trenches. The staff of the US commander, General Schwarzkopf, privately estimated that 50-70,000 Iraqis were killed in approximately 70 miles of trenches.(11) These massacres went almost unreported by the mainstream media.

 It is interesting to compare media reporting of slaughter committed by US troops with other atrocities committed elsewhere. The Serbian leader, Slobodan Milosevic, was accused of genocide in Srebrenica in 1995, where 8,000 people died. The media made him out to be a monster. In contrast, when US forces slaughtered large numbers of people in the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2004, the mainstream Western media offered virtually no criticism. Fallujah had been cut off so that none of the men could leave, and then bombed from the air. One observer compared Fallujah to Dresden, the German city that had been destroyed by firebombing during World War Two.(12) According to eyewitnesses, the use of incendiary weapons that could not be put out with water had melted some of the victims.

One Set of Rules For Everyone Else – No Rules For The Powerful 

From 1945-1949 the German leaders from World War Two were tried for their crimes at the Nuremberg Trials. They were found guilty of three sets of crimes. Crimes against peace, which means going to war in the first place; crimes against humanity, such as mass murder; and breaking the rules of war (see below). This whole procedure was hypocritical, because the US and Britain had regularly committed all three sets of crimes before the trials began, and they have committed all three sets of crimes on numerous occasions since.(13) 

The conclusion at the end of the trials was that invading another country is one of the worst crimes any group of people can commit, because it encompasses every violent act that follows. However, many of the military actions carried out by the US since 1945 and listed in earlier posts are crimes of this type. If we judged US crimes by the standards of Nuremberg, every US President since WW2 would have been found guilty of serious crimes.(14) Despite the US and Britain being responsible for, or actively supporting, many of the world’s worst war crimes and human rights violations throughout the last seventy years, the notion of holding these governments to account is rarely discussed by politicians or the mainstream media. In practice we have ‘victor’s justice’, where the losers can be prosecuted for war crimes, but the victorious side is not. The US is now so powerful that it is not prosecuted for any of its crimes. Neither is Britain. 

Over the years, legal experts have created ‘rules of war’, which most people think of as the rules that apply after the war has started. These are discussed regularly by the media when other countries violate them, but are mostly ignored by decision-makers in the US and British governments. In the real world, once war begins, there are no rules. There is an expression, ’in time of war, law is silent’ and former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once said “In the struggle for life and death there is in the end no legality”.(15) The former US representative at the UN, John Bolton, has made it clear that International Law does not apply to the US.(16) The historical evidence clearly shows that in any war, both sides ignore the rules as and when they choose. Discussions about the rules, after a war has started, are analogous to debating whether a violent rapist wore a condom.(17) Going to war in the first place is the real crime. Once war begins, debating the rules within that war is a propaganda technique to shift responsibility for wrongdoing onto individual soldiers, rather than the politicians who created the war.  

The Iraq and Afghanistan war logs that were released by Wikileaks show clearly that once war begins, soldiers commit human rights abuses on a daily basis. They murder, torture and injure civilians, then cover up those crimes.(18) War is death, destruction, mutilation, violence and rape on an enormous scale. When our politicians vote for war, they are voting for the industrial-scale slaughter of human beings.  

Human Rights Are Currently Just Public Relations 

Politicians and the mainstream media present the world in a simplistic way, which has been described as the ‘3 V’s division of humanity – villains, victims and victorious saviours’, where the US are always presented as the victorious saviours.(19) The evidence shows this is just propaganda. We have already seen in earlier posts that the US has come close to genocide in Korea, Vietnam and Iraq; has killed large numbers of people in Afghanistan, Libya and many other countries; has supported dictators committing genocide in Indonesia; and it has also supported regimes in central Africa that have fought wars where upwards of 4 million people have died. The US and British governments have ignored human rights whenever it has suited them. They have never taken human rights seriously. When they criticise another governments’ human rights record, it is not because of a genuine concern for human rights. 

Useful Websites

Wikileaks Iraq war logs https://wikileaks.org/irq/

Wikileaks Afghan War Diary https://wikileaks.org/afg/

Further Reading

Kirsten Sellars – The Rise and Rise of Human Rights

Jean Bricmont – Humanitarian Imperialism

Notes

1) David Lloyd George, cited in Mark Curtis, The Great Deception, 1998, p.135.

2) Francis Drake is discussed in Krzysztof Wilczynski, ‘The Gentleman Pirate’, at www.piratesinfo.com/biography/biography.php?article_id=32

Henry Stanley is discussed in Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost, 2012

Christopher Columbus is discussed at Dylan Matthews, ‘9 Reasons Christopher Columbus was a murderer, tyrant and scoundrel’, Vox, 12 Oct 2015, at

https://www.vox.com/2014/10/13/6957875/christopher-columbus-murderer-tyrant-scoundrel

3) Amnesty International, ‘Death Penalty Facts and Figures’, April 2019, at https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/04/death-penalty-facts-and-figures-2018/

4) Universal Declaration of Human Rights, at

https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/

5) Kirsten Sellars, The Rise and Rise of Human Rights, 2002, p.7

6) Kirsten Sellars, The Rise and Rise of Human Rights, 2002, p.95

7) https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2019/country-chapters/united-states

8) Patrick Cockburn, ‘We must avoid the terrorist trap’, The Independent, July 11, 2005, at

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/patrick-cockburn-we-must-avoid-the-terrorist-trap-5346486.html

9) Michael K. Duffy, Peacemaking Christians: The future of just wars, pacifism, and nonviolent resistance, 1995, p.65

10) Joyce Chediac, ‘The Massacre of Withdrawing Soldiers On The Highway of Death’, in Ramsey Clark et al, War Crimes: A Report on United States War Crimes against Iraq, 1992, at http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/International_War_Crimes/Massacre_JChediac_WC.html

See also Geoff Simons, The Scourging of Iraq: Sanctions, Law and Natural Justice, 1996

There were actually multiple massacres carried out by the US military on different highways. Most mainstream news sources have tried to play down the severity of these events, but there were some mainstream eyewitnesses:

Journalist Robert Fisk arrived very quickly and said he saw bodies everywhere

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

Journalist Peter Turnley said he saw US soldiers burying many bodies in large graves before other journalists arrived.

Peter Turnley, ‘The unseen gulf war’, Dec 2002, at http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0212/pt_intro.html

see also Seymour Hersh, ‘Overwhelming Force: What happened in the final days of the gulf war?’, The New Yorker, 22 May 2000, pp.49-82, at

https://cryptome.org/mccaffrey-sh.htm

11) Maggie O’Kane, ‘How To Tell Lies And Win Wars’, Muslim and Arab Perspectives 2:11-12, 1995, pp.31-43, at

www.missionislam.com/nwo/gulfwar.htm

See also, Noam Chomsky, Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky, 2003, footnotes at

http://www.understandingpower.com/ 

12) Rory McCarthy and Peter Beaumont, ‘Civilian cost of Battle for Fallujah Emerges’, 14 Nov 2004, at

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/nov/14/iraq.iraq3

For more on Fallujah, see also Dahr Jamail, ‘What I Saw In Fallujah’, 5 Nov 2007, The New Statesman, at

http://www.dahrjamail.net/2007/11/05/what-i-saw-in-fallujah/ 

David Cromwell and David Edwards, ‘Some Matter More – When 47 Victims Are Worth 43 Words’, Medialens, 22 July, 2008, at

https://www.medialens.org/2008/some-matter-more-when-47-victims-are-worth-43-words/

13) Kirsten Sellars, The Rise and Rise of Human Rights, 2002, p.34

 14) Noam Chomsky, ‘If the Nuremberg laws were applied…’, 1990, at

https://chomsky.info/1990____-2/

 15) Kirsten Sellars, The Rise and Rise of Human Rights, 2002, p.36

 16) Fred Kaplan, ‘Send Bolton Wandering: Why The Senate Should Reject Bush’s UN Nominee’, Slate, 5 April 2005, at

www.slate.com/id/2116264/

 17) Jean Bricmont, Humanitarian Imperialism, 2005, p.147

 18) Wikileaks, ‘Iraq war logs’, at https://wikileaks.org/irq/

 Wikileaks, ‘Afghan war diary’, at https://wikileaks.org/afg/

 19) Diana Johnstone, ‘Why the French hate Chomsky’, Counterpunch, June 12, 2010

https://www.counterpunch.org/2010/06/14/why-the-french-hate-chomsky/

Rod Driver is a part-time academic who is particularly interested in de-bunking modern-day US and British propaganda. This is the ninth 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.

This article was first posted at medium.com/elephantsintheroom

Today at the Old Bailey in London Judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange should not be extradited to the United States. The judge sided with all of the American claims against Assange. However, she justified her decision on the grounds that Assange would be a suicide risk if he were extradited to the US due to the horrendous conditions in their supermax prisons.

Journalist John Pilger has pointed out that this decision does not reflect how fair the British justice system is. Rather, the judge, faced with evidence that Assange has been spied upon in the Ecuadorian embassy and therefore not received a fair trial, used a legal technicality to save face. Pilger notes:

“This is wonderful! It’s a face saving cover for the British to justify their disgraceful political trial of Assange on America’s behalf.’’

On Wednesday the judge will rule on whether Assange can be released on bail while he awaits the US appeal. Of course, the US Department of Justice will argue that Assange should remain in Belmarsh maximum security prison until the appeal hearing takes place.

We should celebrate this defeat of the American Empire but remember that this was not a victory for press freedom. Pulitzer prize winning journalist Glenn Greenwald has observed:

“This wasn’t a victory for press freedom. Quite the contrary: the judge made clear she believed there are grounds to prosecute Assange in connection with the 2010 publication.’’

The Defend Assange campaign has summarised the 118 page opinion of the judge in which she sided with the US prosecution on every key issue:

“The judge ruled:

• The U.K. Extradition Act should take precedence over the U.S.-U.K. Extradition Treaty, and the former removed the clause barring extradition for political offences
• The charges against Assange in the U.S. would be considered offences in the U.S.
• Assange’s conduct “went beyond that of a journalist” in agreeing to help Chelsea Manning crack a password and in telling her that “curious eyes never run dry,” encouraging her to leak more files
• The release of unredacted cables was “indiscriminate”
• Defence arguments about Assange’s political opinions were “extraneous”
• There was insufficient evidence that the charges were “pressurized” by the Trump Administration and instead showed healthy internal debate
• Though the intelligence community has harshly criticized WikiLeaks, it doesn’t speak for the administration
• It isn’t the UK court’s place to comment on the case of UC Global spying on Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy, as it doesn’t have access to court documents in the case against UC Global in Spain
• Assange’s prospective jury pool in the Eastern District of Virginia would come from a large county, can’t prove it would only be ex-national security and ex-military officials
• Challenges of the U.S. prosecution’s “over broadness” and “vagueness” should be made in a U.S. court, not adjudicated here, no reason to think Assange wouldn’t have constitutional rights when tried in the U.S. — “This court trusts that a US court will properly consider Mr Assange’s constitutional right to free speech”
• On whether it would be oppressive to extradite: I accepted Prof Kopelman opinion that Mr Assange suffers from a recurrent depressive disorder, that Assange has suicidal ideation, and would be ‘single-minded’ in attempt to end his life
• Potential conditions in a US prison: CIA views Assange as hostile, still a security risk; Assange likely to be sent to ADX Florence, would be held in serious isolation
• The purpose of Special Administrative Measures is to minimize communications, and prisoners have extreme limitations. These conditions were considered by all experts to have deleterious impact on Assange’s mental health
• Mr Assange has the intellect and determination to follow through with suicidal ideation
• Therefore I rule it would be unjust to extradite Mr Assange. The US has the right to appeal.’’

During the extradition trial the defence lawyers for Assange presented compelling evidence against all of the key points of the US prosecution mentioned above.

We should celebrate this victory for journalist Julian Assange who has shown great courage in standing up to the psychological torture imposed on him by a collection of governments led by the US and UK.

“Protecting children from all dangers is my damned father’s duty,” sang Reinhard Mey. Our offspring currently need protection from the rigid corona regime in schools.

Serious damage is done to our sons and daughters through masking and social distance rules, through constant ventilation in freezing cold and the suppression of their vital needs for contact and impartiality – both physically and mentally.

In addition, their self-confidence is broken by the constant suggestion that they are a changing risk of infection. In addition, they are trained into conformism and submission to constraints.

Which generation is growing up there? Do we think our children are not systemically relevant and are we therefore only too willing to sacrifice them on the altar of the prevailing corona narrative? We must finally defend ourselves against the organized lovelessness to which our children are exposed.

As a historian, I have been deeply appalled for months at how a whole society, whole nations, can be led collectively into division and, above all, irrationality solely on the basis of mass PCR tests.

For weeks I have been wondering: Where is the so-called academic elite of Europe in the areas of history, political science, sociology and psychology which stands up and says: Enough! With a total “war against the virus”, according to Emmanuel Macron, – as in any war – thousands or millions of “civilians” – in this case healthy people – lose their livelihoods, make sick, and ultimately killed (1).

Where are the many celebrities in Europe from science, the arts, literature, music and film who come together in public and shout: Enough! We demand an end to Covid-19 totalitarianism, not just in the media!

Three years ago the renowned German historian Philipp Blom, who lives in Vienna, wrote the admonishing book: “What is at stake!” Meanwhile everything is at stake: human rights, social peace, freedom, democracy, prosperity, work, tolerance, public health – not because of the virus, but the highly disproportionate nature of measures such as “lockdown” – and simply human dignity.

For all these humane achievements people fought for centuries and many lost their lives. These achievements are not a law of nature, not divisible, not negotiable, not interpretable and also not measurable.

It was not without reason that the greatest peacemaker of all time, Mahatma Gandhi, gave us a warning: Whoever accepts injustice in silence is complicit!

As a reminder: the legacy of totalitarianism and fascism: Between 1914 and 1970, around 100 million people lost their lives in all world wars and civil wars, in all totalitarian societies in Europe, both right-wing and left-wing ideologies.

All of Europe’s totalitarian systems – National Socialism, Stalinism, Italian fascism, Franco’s dictatorship in Spain, etc. – they were all made possible not by those in power, not by the leaders and commanders, but without exception and again and again by the tolerant or silent majority. By the informers, but also by those who were discouraged and fearful. By those concerned about their belongings. In the end, almost everyone lost everything: their belongings, honor and human dignity.

I am writing here not only as a historian and researcher on the rights of children, but primarily as a father of three.

Most of the public play facilities for children were closed on World Playday for Children on May 29th and World Children’s Day on June 1st, while beer gardens and hardware stores had been open for weeks.

A society that implicitly says that children and young people are not “systemically relevant” does not want a future!

Since the end of March at the latest and until today, all international studies on SARS-CoV-2 have shown the following:

Children and adolescents play no role in the infection process, they rarely become infected and, if at all, they usually do not get sick at all (2).

A positive PCR test result does not automatically mean: infected! By now every journalist – also in Germany and Austria – should be familiar, understandable and comprehensible. And infected with SARS-CoV-2 does not automatically mean that you get Covid-19.

It is not without reason that every PCR test manufacturer points out: The test is not suitable for diagnostic purposes.

Therefore, mask compulsory and quarantine for children and adolescents, based solely on a positive PCR test, are child abuse and simply a crime of humanity.

Because to this day there is not a single evidence-based medical and therefore no legal justification for this!

The “Parents Stand Up” initiative carried out a nationwide survey among schoolchildren about the requirement to mask in schools. A first interim report of 2,300 questionnaires shows the following devastating picture:

For example, 44.1 percent of the students surveyed suffer from breathing difficulties. 73 percent of headaches, 86.4 percent of fatigue, 65.7 percent of concentration disorders, 38 percent of dizziness and around 36 percent of anxiety states.

As a reminder, for centuries the schools of Europe were primarily a place of religious, political or ideological indoctrination and also a place of violence. For months I have been oppressed by the feeling that, since March, Europe has literally released all the negative spirits of the last centuries from the bottle in one fell swoop.

Now a small excerpt from the interim evaluation of 2,300 questionnaires at mainly German kindergartens and schools in 2020:

In some crèches and kindergartens, parents have to leave their children at the door, even during the so-called acclimatization phase, because adults are not allowed to accompany them!

School classes with masks and wet jackets sit all day in classrooms with the windows open!

Again and again, students collapse because of wearing masks and are also punished with denunciation and exclusion!

Again and again it is suggested to young people that if you don’t wear a mask you are a murderer! In the meantime, however, dozens of studies have shown that wearing everyday masks to curb the spread of the virus does absolutely nothing.

Schoolchildren are only allowed to drink and go to the toilet according to the schedule, not when needed!

In some schools it is no longer allowed to shower and blow-dry your hair after swimming lessons!

Again and again children are terrified, with the argument: If you don’t wear a mask, it’s your fault when grandpa and grandma die!

This list is madness, it is pathology. Here healthy people are made sick.

A human rights disaster.

With what right – in the double sense of the word – do we simply steal everything from an entire generation of children and young people? Relationship and friendship, education and training, sport and health, freedom and self-efficacy, the acquisition of vital skills, simply and completely the future!

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, recently spoke of a “human rights disaster” at the 41st session of the Human Rights Council. “But if the rule of law is not respected, the health emergency threatens to turn into a human rights catastrophe, the negative effects of which will long surpass those of the pandemic itself,” warned the UN High Commissioner.

To all the highest and constitutional judges in Germany and Austria: Immediately end all Covid-19 measures for young people, for children and adolescents, end the mask requirement and school closings, end the exaggerated hygiene and distance rules, come to your senses and look to Sweden!

The young Astrid Lindgren, author of Pipi Longstocking, wrote in her diary in the 1940s: “Mankind has lost its mind.”

Sweden in 2020. To date, this country has not carried out a lockdown, nor has it introduced a general mask requirement. No school closings and, above all, no masking requirements for children and young people. In Sweden, the hundred thousand people prophesied by Angela Merkel, Sebastian Kurz, Christian Drosten and Co have not died to this day. Sweden does not make the healthy sick and does not abuse its children and adolescents with mask force.

Could it be that Covid-19 has mutated into a political virus in many parts of Europe? A small but possibly clarifying detail: Sweden is still neither in the euro zone nor a member of NATO. While Germany and Austria, for example, are in the second “lockdown”, schools, restaurants, fitness studios, cinemas, etc. are open in neighboring Switzerland.

First judgment on the general obligation to quarantine

A Portuguese court of appeal (Tribunal da Relação de Lisboa) is the first court in Europe to lift the general quarantine requirement for those who have tested positive with a judgment of November 11, 2020. His reasoning: The principle “in dubio pro reo” applies to courts. The PCR tests are unreliable and tested positive means neither necessarily contagious nor infected. According to the court, a medical diagnosis can only be made by a doctor (3).

Can it be that we are merely witnessing a gigantic and historically unprecedented medical-political abuse of power?

That a virus is being used as a scapegoat for something else?

Children and adolescents are not a virus risk for society, not even for the old, the sick and the elderly. Children are and will remain our only future!

Anyone who cannot stand a child’s laughter, who cannot bear the mental health of a child, who forces children to use masks and distance rules, is sick themselves. Not suffering from Covid-19, but from lovelessness, ignorance, hatred and dehumanization.

The history of mankind shows one thing impressively: no epidemic, no single virus can cause as much hardship, suffering, illness, misery and even death as a mentally ill society, human presumption and, above all, overconfidence.

We should protect our children from that!

*

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Notes

(1) On March 16, 2020, French President Emmanuel Macron spoke of war seven times in his State of the Union address (1st lockdown) regarding the corona crisis: “We are at war, a health war, for sure. We are not fighting against an army or any other nation, but the enemy is there, insecure, fleeting and on the advance. (…) We are at war. “

(2) There are now numerous international online platforms that publish uncommented international research reports, studies, evaluations, court rulings, etc. on Covid-19. For example the Swiss platform Swiss Policy Research.

(3) The original court ruling is available at: infosperber.ch

A selection of international research results on SARS-CoV-2 and children and adolescents:

The Icelandic tracing pioneer Kari Stephanson, CEO of deCODEgenetics, did not find a single case in which a child under ten had infected their parents.

The director of the US CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention), Robert Redfield, said that the number of additional suicides and drug deaths among adolescents in recent months has been far greater than the number of Covid-19 deaths.

According to the US state health authority CDC, three times more children up to 14 years of age have died of influenza than of Covid-19 (101 versus 31) since the beginning of 2020. To put that in perspective: The USA has around 328 million inhabitants and the general mental and physical health of children and adolescents in the USA has been consistently poor for over 20 years than in any other western country. Even before Covid-19 and for years, around 2.5 million children in the United States have been homeless.

A joint report from Sweden (without closing primary schools) and Finland (with closing primary schools) found that there was no difference in infection rates among children in the two countries. This joint state report was published by Sweden and Finland via the international press agency Reuters, which reported on it on July 15, 2020. So weeks before the state corona terror was introduced in schools in some German federal states such as North Rhine-Westphalia or Bavaria.

A British study found that up to 60 percent of children and adolescents and around 6 percent of adults already have cross-reactive antibodies against the new coronavirus that have arisen through contact with previous coronaviruses.

After the first lockdown, Saxony was the first federal state to start regular school operations, which were scientifically supported by Dresden University. Study leader Reinhard Berner explained to the Frankfurter Allgemeine on July 13th that in terms of Covid-19, in summary, children act more as a brake on the infection than as a carrier. See also “Corona consequences for children”

As well as at michael-hueter.org

Featured image is from Yakov Hanzelmann/Shutterstock.com

This sit down interview with Catherine Austin Fitts covers the spectrum of the current situation we find ourselves in.

It was conducted as apart of the full length documentary.

We are releasing the full interview for the betterment of public understanding of the situation.

Catherine’s analysis can be found at: https://home.solari.com

The full film, when released, will be available at https://www.PlanetLockdownFilm.com

The civil rights groups’ rather basic requests for voting rights protections and the need for federal intervention to address police brutality were minimized and dismissed by the president-elect.

Joe Biden is nothing if not consistent. He has always been an unreconstructed racist and a crass mediocrity. Barack Obama had to admit that he chose Joe Biden as his running mate despite knowing that he is “not always self-aware.”

Biden certainly wasn’t aware or didn’t care about either his demeanor or the substance of his discussions with people referred to as civil rights leaders recently. He and Kamala Harris met with Derrick Johnson, Vanita Gupta, Rev. Al Sharpton, Sherrilyn Ifill, Melanie Campbell, Marc Morial, Kristen Clarke, and Cedric Richmond. The supposedly confidential meeting was leaked to the media and can now be seen on youtube .

No one ever steps forward and admits to leaking anything as important as a recording with a president elect, but someone did just that. There is conjecture that Biden did the deed himself, so as to accomplish what Bill Clinton did with his Sister Souljah moment used to embarrass Jesse Jackson. It is also akin to Barack Obama’s continued finger wagging and demeaning of black people. Politicians love to use a beat down of black people as a signal to white people. They are then reassured that black people will not receive any consideration they consider worthwhile or threatening to their interests.

“It is akin to Barack Obama’s continued finger wagging and demeaning of black people.”

Regardless of the identity of the leaker, it is very important that the meeting was made public. We saw in real time the problematic nature of what passes for leadership. They began with platitudes crediting Biden with being a supporter of civil rights, which he never was, to advocating for Covid vaccine usage without acknowledging the complexities which make black people cautious about taking it. The group’s rather basic requests for voting rights protections and the need for federal intervention to address police brutality were minimized and dismissed by the man that millions of black people helped to win the presidency.

Biden exhibited his usual cringe worthiness during the meeting. “White Europeans will be in the minority by 2040. You all will have to learn to work with Hispanics. Who make up a larger percentage of the population than you do.” During his campaign Biden at one point spoke of Latinos as being more “diverse” than blacks and one would assume more worthy of his attention. Not content to tell black people that they mattered less than another group, he added his own Bidenesque bizarre commentary such as an assertion that “biracial commercials,” his words, were proof of progress.

In a loud voice and in the manner of a bullying boss Biden dashed any hopes that he would use executive orders to enact policies that he can’t get passed because of Republican congressional opposition. He accused Melanie Campbell of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, of not reading his policy paper because she disagreed with him. He was vehement about not using the power of executive orders to thwart congressional Republicans and claimed concerns about constitutionality as an excuse for doing as little as he possibly can.

Biden didn’t call anyone a “dog faced pony soldier” or advocate that police aim to shoot in the legs. Nor did he resurrect Corn Pop. We must be thankful for small favors. But Biden is still the bigot who warned of a “racial jungle.”

In a hectoring tone Biden claimed that the assembled group shouldn’t expect him to do very much at all. Even their meager demand of black cabinet officials was met with insult, “If it doesn’t count for y’all to hell with y’all,” said the man that the black political class supported and defended. Al Sharpton helped by praising Cedric Richmond, who Biden promised to have at “every meeting,” and vouched for Biden and Harris as being substantive people. Sharpton played his role of scoundrel, making the case that black people should not only get jobs but ought to be held to the same weak ethical standards as crooked white people. In case there was any question about where his loyalties lie, he added, “I will never embarrass you.” We can translate that to mean that Sharpton is on board with anything that Master Biden should want. Such a pledge would not be uttered by anyone who wants to make real change.

No canard was left untouched either. Biden promised to do little in the way of reforming the police. “That’s how they beat the living hell out of us across the country, saying that we’re talking about defunding the police.” Democrats do everything they can to marginalize the left but when they lose blame the very people whom they have excluded to explain away their own failures.

Biden came across as a plantation owner telling the field hands that they have a good life and ought to be grateful. That is who Biden has been ever since he was elected to the Senate in the early 1970s. As for dismissing demands from black people, he honed those skills as Obama’s vice president.

There will be no salvation for black people with a Biden administration. Neo-liberalism and vague efforts on what passes for civil rights are all that can be expected. We heard it straight from the plantation master’s mouth.

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Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well at patreon.com/margaretkimberley and she regularly posts on Twitter @freedomrideblog. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.

Featured image is from BAR

The following episode of the Simpsons was released in 2010.

It is a satire. But at the same time it reveals the unspoken truth. The writer of the script is an award winning author and political analyst. Michael Price

This episode was not “taken out of the blue”?  In 2010 when The House Cat Flu  episode was broadcast on TV in November 2010,  the  World was recovering from the 2009 H1N1 swine flu pandemic which turned out to be “fake”.

In the Meow Apocalypse, it was a campaign against the house cat.

In the REAL LIFE 2009 H1N1 swine flu pandemic, it was a worldwide campaign against the pig. Hundreds of thousands of pigs were slaughtered. 

The WHO was and remains controlled by Big Pharma. In 2009, WHO Director General Margaret Chan ordered 4.9 billion doses of an H1N1 vaccine from the pharmaceutical industry. It was  a multibillion dollar scam.

And there lessons to be drawn in regards to the ongoing 2020-2021 corona crisis. 

scroll down for details on the H1N1 Swine flu pandemic scam.

***

VIDEO: House Cat Flu, the Meow Apocalypse

The H1N1 Swine Flu Pandemic

In 2009, hundreds of thousands of pigs were executed Worldwide, despite the fact that  the WHO had confirmed that there was no danger of transmission from pigs to humans.

And then what happened, an authoritative study by the John Hopkins School of Public Health was released saying that humans could infect the pigs. Putting Meat on the Table Industrial Farm Animal Production in Americas, see also Washington Post, May 9 2009).

Based on incomplete and scanty data, the WHO Director General nonetheless predicted with authority that: “as many as 2 billion people could become infected over the next two years — nearly one-third of the world population.” (World Health Organization as reported by the Western media, July 2009).

It was a multibillion bonanza for Big Pharma supported by the WHO’s Director-General Margaret Chan. 

In June 2009, Margaret Chan made the following statement:

“On the basis of … expert assessments of the evidence, the scientific criteria for an influenza pandemic have been met. I have therefore decided to raise the level of influenza pandemic alert from Phase 5 to Phase 6.  The world is now at the start of the 2009 influenza pandemic. … Margaret Chan, Director-General, World Health Organization (WHO), Press Briefing  11 June 2009)

What “expert assessments”?

In a subsequent statement she confirmed that:

“Vaccine makers could produce 4.9 billion pandemic flu shots per year in the best-case scenario”,Margaret Chan, Director-General, World Health Organization (WHO), quoted by Reuters, 21 July 2009)

A financial windfall for Big Pharma Vaccine Producers including GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, Merck & Co., Sanofi,  Pfizer. et al.

The same Big Pharma companies are also behind the coronavirus pandemic.

Fake News, Fake Statistics, Lies at the Highest Levels of Government

The media went immediately into high gear (without a shred of evidence). Fear and Uncertainty. Public opinion was deliberately misled

“Swine flu could strike up to 40 percent of Americans over the next two years and as many as several hundred thousand could die if a vaccine campaign and other measures aren’t successful.” (Official Statement of Obama Administration, Associated Press, 24 July 2009).

“The U.S. expects to have 160 million doses of swine flu vaccine available sometime in October”, (Associated Press, 23 July 2009)

Wealthier countries such as the U.S. and Britain will pay just under $10 per dose [of the H1N1 flu vaccine]. … Developing countries will pay a lower price.” [circa $40 billion for Big Pharma?] (Business Week, July 2009)

But the pandemic never happened.

There was no pandemic affecting 2 billion people…

Millions of doses of swine flu vaccine had been ordered by national governments from Big Pharma. Millions of vaccine doses were subsequently destroyed: a financial bonanza for Big Pharma, an expenditure crisis for national governments.

There was no investigation into who was behind this multibillion fraud. 

Several critics said that the H1N1 Pandemic was “Fake”

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), a human rights watchdog, is publicly investigating the WHO’s motives in declaring a pandemic. Indeed, the chairman of its influential health committee, epidemiologist Wolfgang Wodarg, has declared that the “false pandemic” is “one of the greatest medicine scandals of the century.” (Forbes, February 10, 2010)

And in January 2010, the WHO responded with the following statement

The Western media which provided daily coverage of  the pandemic, remained mum (with some exceptions) on the issue of financial fraud and disinformation.

I should emphasize that the present Public Health Crisis concerning China’s novel coronavirus is of an entirely different nature to that of H1N1.

But there important lessons to be learnt from the 2009 H1N1 Pandemic: 

The fundamental issue we must address pertaining to both present as well as previous public health emergencies:

Can we trust the Western media?

Can we trust the World Health Organization (WHO)?

Can we trust the US government  including the US Centers  for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), all of which are serving the interests of Big Pharma (at tax payers’ expense).

Abstract

Masks and respirators do not work. There have been extensive randomized controlled trial (RCT) studies, and meta-analysis reviews of RCT studies, which all show that masks and respirators do not work to prevent respiratory influenza-like illnesses, or respiratory illnesses believed to be transmitted by droplets and aerosol particles.

Furthermore, the relevant known physics and biology, which I review, are such that masks and respirators should not work.

It would be a paradox if masks and respirators worked, given what we know about viral respiratory diseases: The main transmission path is long-residence-time aerosol particles (< 2.5 μm), which are too fine to be blocked, and the minimum-infective-dose is smaller than one aerosol particle.

The present paper about masks illustrates the degree to which governments, the mainstream media, and institutional propagandists can decide to operate in a science vacuum, or select only incomplete science that serves their interests. Such recklessness is also certainly the case with the current global lockdown of over 1 billion people, an unprecedented experiment in medical and political history.

Conclusion regarding masks that do not work

No RCT study with verified outcome shows a benefit for HCW or community members in households to wearing a mask or respirator. There is no such study. There are no exceptions. Likewise, no study exists that shows a benefit from a broad policy to wear masks in public (more on this below).

Furthermore, if there were any benefit to wearing a mask, because of the blocking power against droplets and aerosol particles, then there should be more benefit from wearing a respirator (N95) compared to a surgical mask, yet several large meta-analyses, and all the RCT, prove that there is no such relative benefit. Masks and respirators do not work.

Precautionary Principle turned on its head with masks

In light of the medical research, therefore, it is difficult to understand why public-health authorities are not consistently adamant about this established scientific result, since the distributed psychological, economic and environmental harm from a broad recommendation to wear masks is significant, not to mention the unknown potential harm from concentration and distribution of pathogens on and from used masks.

In this case, public authorities would be turning the precautionary principle on its head (see below).

Physics and Biology of Viral Respiratory Disease, and why masks do not work

In order to understand why masks cannot possibly work, we must review established knowledge about viral respiratory diseases, the mechanism of seasonal variation of excess deaths from pneumonia and influenza, the aerosol mechanism of infectious disease transmission, the physics and chemistry of aerosols, and the mechanism of the so-called minimum-infective-dose.

In addition to pandemics that can occur anytime, in the temperate latitudes there is an extra burden of respiratory-disease mortality that is seasonal, and which is caused by viruses. For example, see the review of influenza by Paules and Subbarao (2017). This has been known for a long time, and the seasonal pattern is exceedingly regular.

For example, see Figure 1 of Viboud (2010), which has “Weekly time series of the ratio of deaths from pneumonia and influenza to all deaths, based on the 122 cities surveillance in the US (blue line). The red line represents the expected baseline ratio in the absence of influenza activity,” here:

The seasonality of the phenomenon was largely not understood until a decade ago. Until recently, it was debated whether the pattern arose primarily because of seasonal change in virulence of the pathogens, or because of seasonal change in susceptibility of the host (such as from dry air causing tissue irritation, or diminished daylight causing vitamin deficiency or hormonal stress). For example, see Dowell (2001).

In a landmark study, Shaman et al. (2010) showed that the seasonal pattern of extra respiratory-disease mortality can be explained quantitatively on the sole basis of absolute humidity, and its direct controlling impact on transmission of airborne pathogens.

Lowen et al. (2007) demonstrated the phenomenon of humidity-dependent airborne-virus virulence in actual disease transmission between guinea pigs, and discussed potential underlying mechanisms for the measured controlling effect of humidity.

The underlying mechanism is that the pathogen-laden aerosol particles or droplets are neutralized within a half-life that monotonically and significantly decreases with increasing ambient humidity. This is based on the seminal work of Harper (1961). Harper experimentally showed that viral-pathogen-carrying droplets were inactivated within shorter and shorter times, as ambient humidity was increased.

Harper argued that the viruses themselves were made inoperative by the humidity (“viable decay”), however, he admitted that the effect could be from humidity-enhanced physical removal or sedimentation of the droplets (“physical loss”): “Aerosol viabilities reported in this paper are based on the ratio of virus titre to radioactive count in suspension and cloud samples, and can be criticized on the ground that test and tracer materials were not physically identical.”

The latter (“physical loss”) seems more plausible to me, since humidity would have a universal physical effect of causing particle / droplet growth and sedimentation, and all tested viral pathogens have essentially the same humidity-driven “decay”. Furthermore, it is difficult to understand how a virion (of all virus types) in a droplet would be molecularly or structurally attacked or damaged by an increase in ambient humidity. A “virion” is the complete, infective form of a virus outside a host cell, with a core of RNA or DNA and a capsid. The actual mechanism of such humidity-driven intra-droplet “viable decay” of a virion has not been explained or studied.

In any case, the explanation and model of Shaman et al. (2010) is not dependant on the particular mechanism of the humidity-driven decay of virions in aerosol / droplets. Shaman’s quantitatively demonstrated model of seasonal regional viral epidemiology is valid for either mechanism (or combination of mechanisms), whether “viable decay” or “physical loss”.

The breakthrough achieved by Shaman et al. is not merely some academic point. Rather, it has profound health-policy implications, which have been entirely ignored or overlooked in the current coronavirus pandemic.

In particular, Shaman’s work necessarily implies that, rather than being a fixed number (dependent solely on the spatial-temporal structure of social interactions in a completely susceptible population, and on the viral strain), the epidemic’s basic reproduction number (R0) is highly or predominantly dependent on ambient absolute humidity.

For a definition of R0, see HealthKnowlege-UK (2020): R0 is “the average number of secondary infections produced by a typical case of an infection in a population where everyone is susceptible.” The average R0 for influenza is said to be 1.28 (1.19-1.37); see the comprehensive review by Biggerstaff et al. (2014).

In fact, Shaman et al. showed that R0 must be understood to seasonally vary between humid-summer values of just larger than “1” and dry-winter values typically as large as “4” (for example, see their Table 2). In other words, the seasonal infectious viral respiratory diseases that plague temperate latitudes every year go from being intrinsically mildly contagious to virulently contagious, due simply to the bio-physical mode of transmission controlled by atmospheric humidity, irrespective of any other consideration.

Therefore, all the epidemiological mathematical modelling of the benefits of mediating policies (such as social distancing), which assumes humidity-independent R0 values, has a large likelihood of being of little value, on this basis alone. For studies about modelling and regarding mediation effects on the effective reproduction number, see Coburn (2009) and Tracht (2010).

To put it simply, the “second wave” of an epidemic is not a consequence of human sin regarding mask wearing and hand shaking. Rather, the “second wave” is an inescapable consequence of an air-dryness-driven many-fold increase in disease contagiousness, in a population that has not yet attained immunity.

If my view of the mechanism is correct (i.e., “physical loss”), then Shaman’s work further necessarily implies that the dryness-driven high transmissibility (large R0) arises from small aerosol particles fluidly suspended in the air; as opposed to large droplets that are quickly gravitationally removed from the air.

Such small aerosol particles fluidly suspended in air, of biological origin, are of every variety and are everywhere, including down to virion-sizes (Despres, 2012). It is not entirely unlikely that viruses can thereby be physically transported over inter-continental distances (e.g., Hammond, 1989).

More to the point, indoor airborne virus concentrations have been shown to exist (in day-care facilities, health centres, and onboard airplanes) primarily as aerosol particles of diameters smaller than 2.5 μm, such as in the work of Yang et al. (2011):Such small particles (< 2.5 μm) are part of air fluidity, are not subject to gravitational sedimentation, and would not be stopped by long-range inertial impact. This means that the slightest (even momentary) facial misfit of a mask or respirator renders the design filtration norm of the mask or respirator entirely irrelevant. In any case, the filtration material itself of N95 (average pore size ~0.3−0.5 μm) does not block virion penetration, not to mention surgical masks. For example, see Balazy et al. (2006).

Mask stoppage efficiency and host inhalation are only half of the equation, however, because the minimal infective dose (MID) must also be considered. For example, if a large number of pathogen-laden particles must be delivered to the lung within a certain time for the illness to take hold, then partial blocking by any mask or cloth can be enough to make a significant difference.

On the other hand, if the MID is amply surpassed by the virions carried in a single aerosol particle able to evade mask-capture, then the mask is of no practical utility, which is the case.

Yezli and Otter (2011), in their review of the MID, point out relevant features:

• most respiratory viruses are as infective in humans as in tissue culture having optimal laboratory susceptibility
• it is believed that a single virion can be enough to induce illness in the host
• the 50%-probability MID (“TCID50”) has variably been found to be in the range 100−1000 virions
• there are typically 103−107 virions per aerolized influenza droplet with diameter 1 μm − 10 μm
• the 50%-probability MID easily fits into a single (one) aerolized droplet

For further background:

• A classic description of dose-response assessment is provided by Haas (1993).
• Zwart et al. (2009) provided the first laboratory proof, in a virus-insect system, that the action of a single virion can be sufficient to cause disease.
• Baccam et al. (2006) calculated from empirical data that, with influenza A in humans, “we estimate that after a delay of ~6 h, infected cells begin producing influenza virus and continue to do so for ~5 h. The average lifetime of infected cells is ~11 h, and the half-life of free infectious virus is ~3 h. We calculated the [in-body] basic reproductive number, R0, which indicated that a single infected cell could produce ~22 new productive infections.”
• Brooke et al. (2013) showed that, contrary to prior modeling assumptions, although not all influenza-A-infected cells in the human body produce infectious progeny (virions), nonetheless, 90% of infected cell are significantly impacted, rather than simply surviving unharmed.

All of this to say that: if anything gets through (and it always does, irrespective of the mask), then you are going to be infected. Masks cannot possibly work. It is not surprising, therefore, that no bias-free study has ever found a benefit from wearing a mask or respirator in this application.

Therefore, the studies that show partial stopping power of masks, or that show that masks can capture many large droplets produced by a sneezing or coughing mask-wearer, in light of the above-described features of the problem, are irrelevant. For example, see such studies as these: Leung (2020), Davies (2013), Lai (2012), and Sande (2008).

Why there can never be an empirical test of a nationwide mask-wearing policy

As mentioned above, no study exists that shows a benefit from a broad policy to wear masks in public. There is good reason for this. It would be impossible to obtain unambiguous and bias-free results:

• Any benefit from mask-wearing would have to be a small effect, since undetected in controlled experiments, which would be swamped by the larger effects, notably the large effect from changing atmospheric humidity.
• Mask compliance and mask adjustment habits would be unknown.
• Mask-wearing is associated (correlated) with several other health behaviours; see Wada (2012).
• The results would not be transferable, because of differing cultural habits.
• Compliance is achieved by fear, and individuals can habituate to fear-based propaganda, and can have disparate basic responses.
• Monitoring and compliance measurement are near-impossible, and subject to large errors.
• Self-reporting (such as in surveys) is notoriously biased, because individuals have the self-interested belief that their efforts are useful.
• Progression of the epidemic is not verified with reliable tests on large population samples, and generally relies on non-representative hospital visits or admissions.
• Several different pathogens (viruses and strains of viruses) causing respiratory illness generally act together, in the same population and/or in individuals, and are not resolved, while having different epidemiological characteristics.

Unknown aspects of mask-wearing

Many potential harms may arise from broad public policies to wear masks, and the following unanswered questions arise:

• Do used and loaded masks become sources of enhanced transmission, for the wearer and others?
• Do masks become collectors and retainers of pathogens that the mask wearer would otherwise avoid when breathing without a mask?
• Are large droplets captured by a mask atomized or aerolized into breathable components? Can virions escape an evaporating droplet stuck to a mask fiber?
• What are the dangers of bacterial growth on a used and loaded mask?
• How do pathogen-laden droplets interact with environmental dust and aerosols captured on the mask?
• What are long-term health effects on HCW, such as headaches, arising from impeded breathing?
• Are there negative social consequences to a masked society?
• Are there negative psychological consequences to wearing a mask, as a fear-based behavioural modification?
• What are the environmental consequences of mask manufacturing and disposal?
• Do the masks shed fibres or substances that are harmful when inhaled?

Conclusion

By making mask-wearing recommendations and policies for the general public, or by expressly condoning the practice, governments have both ignored the scientific evidence and done the opposite of following the precautionary principle.

In an absence of knowledge, governments should not make policies that have a hypothetical potential to cause harm. The government has an onus barrier before it instigates a broad social-engineering intervention, or allows corporations to exploit fear-based sentiments.

Furthermore, individuals should know that there is no known benefit arising from wearing a mask in a viral respiratory illness epidemic, and that scientific studies have shown that any benefit must be residually small, compared to other and determinative factors.

Otherwise, what is the point of publicly-funded science?

The present paper about masks illustrates the degree to which governments, the mainstream media, and institutional propagandists can decide to operate in a science vacuum, or select only incomplete science that serves their interests. Such recklessness is also certainly the case with the current global lockdown of over 1 billion people, an unprecedented experiment in medical and political history.

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Dr. Dennis Rancourt is Ph.D from University of Toronto (1984), and is a former professor of physics at the University of Ottawa.

Sources

• Baccam, P. et al. (2006) “Kinetics of Influenza A Virus Infection in Humans”, Journal of Virology Jul 2006, 80 (15) 7590-7599; DOI: 10.1128/JVI.01623-05
• Balazy et al. (2006) “Do N95 respirators provide 95% protection level against airborne viruses, and how adequate are surgical masks?”, American Journal of Infection Control, Volume 34, Issue 2, March 2006, Pages 51-57. doi:10.1016/j.ajic.2005.08.018
• Biggerstaff, M. et al. (2014) “Estimates of the reproduction number for seasonal, pandemic, and zoonotic influenza: a systematic review of the literature”, BMC Infect Dis 14, 480 (2014).
• Brooke, C. B. et al. (2013) “Most Influenza A Virions Fail To Express at Least One Essential Viral Protein”, Journal of Virology Feb 2013, 87 (6) 3155-3162; DOI: 10.1128/JVI.02284-12
• Coburn, B. J. et al. (2009) “Modeling influenza epidemics and pandemics: insights into the future of swine flu (H1N1)”, BMC Med 7, 30.
• Davies, A. et al. (2013) “Testing the Efficacy of Homemade Masks: Would They Protect in an Influenza Pandemic?”, Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness, Available on CJO 2013 doi:10.1017/dmp.2013.43
• Despres, V. R. et al. (2012) “Primary biological aerosol particles in the atmosphere: a review”, Tellus B: Chemical and Physical Meteorology, 64:1, 15598, DOI: 10.3402/tellusb.v64i0.15598
• Dowell, S. F. (2001) “Seasonal variation in host susceptibility and cycles of certain infectious diseases”, Emerg Infect Dis. 2001;7(3):369-374. doi:10.3201/eid0703.010301
• Hammond, G. W. et al. (1989) “Impact of Atmospheric Dispersion and Transport of Viral Aerosols on the Epidemiology of Influenza”, Reviews of Infectious Diseases, Volume 11, Issue 3, May 1989, Pages 494-497,
• Haas, C.N. et al. (1993) “Risk Assessment of Virus in Drinking Water”, Risk Analysis, 13: 545-552. doi:10.1111/j.1539-6924.1993.tb00013.x
• HealthKnowlege-UK (2020) “Charter 1a – Epidemiology: Epidemic theory (effective & basic reproduction numbers, epidemic thresholds) & techniques for analysis of infectious disease data (construction & use of epidemic curves, generation numbers, exceptional reporting & identification of significant clusters)”, HealthKnowledge.org.uk, accessed on 2020-04-10.
• Lai, A. C. K. et al. (2012) “Effectiveness of facemasks to reduce exposure hazards for airborne infections among general populations”, J. R. Soc. Interface. 9938-948
• Leung, N.H.L. et al. (2020) “Respiratory virus shedding in exhaled breath and efficacy of face masks”, Nature Medicine (2020).
• Lowen, A. C. et al. (2007) “Influenza Virus Transmission Is Dependent on Relative Humidity and Temperature”, PLoS Pathog 3(10): e151.
• Paules, C. and Subbarao, S. (2017) “Influenza”, Lancet, Seminar| Volume 390, ISSUE 10095, P697-708, August 12, 2017.
• Sande, van der, M. et al. (2008) “Professional and Home-Made Face Masks Reduce Exposure to Respiratory Infections among the General Population”, PLoS ONE 3(7): e2618. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0002618 Shaman, J. et al. (2010) “Absolute Humidity and the Seasonal Onset of Influenza in the Continental United States”, PLoS Biol 8(2): e1000316. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1000316
• Tracht, S. M. et al. (2010) “Mathematical Modeling of the Effectiveness of Facemasks in Reducing the Spread of Novel Influenza A (H1N1)”, PLoS ONE 5(2): e9018. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0009018
• Viboud C. et al. (2010) “Preliminary Estimates of Mortality and Years of Life Lost Associated with the 2009 A/H1N1 Pandemic in the US and Comparison with Past Influenza Seasons”, PLoS Curr. 2010; 2:RRN1153. Published 2010 Mar 20. doi:10.1371/currents.rrn1153
• Wada, K. et al. (2012) “Wearing face masks in public during the influenza season may reflect other positive hygiene practices in Japan”, BMC Public Health 12, 1065 (2012).
• Yang, W. et al. (2011) “Concentrations and size distributions of airborne influenza A viruses measured indoors at a health centre, a day-care centre and on aeroplanes”, Journal of the Royal Society, Interface. 2011 Aug;8(61):1176-1184. DOI: 10.1098/rsif.2010.0686.
• Yezli, S., Otter, J.A. (2011) “Minimum Infective Dose of the Major Human Respiratory and Enteric Viruses Transmitted Through Food and the Environment”, Food Environ Virol 3, 1-30.
• Zwart, M. P. et al. (2009) “An experimental test of the independent action hypothesis in virus-insect pathosystems”, Proc. R. Soc. B.2762233-2242

Memories are thick of this: the respectful, even reverential German introduction of a comedy sketch; the scratchy string orchestral music that adds a layering of anticipation.  Black-and-white film.  Dining room, white tablecloth, silver chandeliers.  The names Freddy Frinton and May Warden.  An English show broadcast on German public TV networks without subtitles.  Family members, perched, sprawled, slumped, comfortable, lightly sozzled, eyes glued to an 18-minute sketch with only two actors: the attentive butler by the name of James, played by the roguish Frinton; the spinster lady of the birthday moment, Miss Sophie, played by Warden.

This 90^th birthday is characterised by notable absences. After nine decades, mortality has done its bit of gathering.  The venerable lady has been left the sole survivor of a circle of beloved friends.  The bawdy subtext here is that they are all males and must have been a rather naughty crew at that.  She misses them, and longs for their company.

The task for James seems, at least initially, innocuous. The table, with Miss Sophie at the head, is set for the spectral guests: Admiral von Schneider, Mr Pomeroy, Sir Toby and Mr Winterbottom.  James assumes the role of each of the departed, standing before each empty seat for each course that will be served.  “They are all here, Miss Sophie,” begins James.  But his task is not merely to mimic them and assume their persona with conviction; he is also required to drink their share.  The task is formidable, challenging both sobriety and liver.  A different set of drinks must accompany the servings for the phantom guests: sherry with the mulligatawny soup; white wine with the fish; champagne with the bird; port with the fruit.

Through the course of the sketch, there are the tireless favourites for the audience.  James trips over the head of a tiger skin rug with stubborn, unfailing regularity.  Drinks are poured and drunk with gusto. Drinks are spilled.  There is slurring.  Before each course, the butler always inquires with increasing desperation: “The same procedure as last year, Miss Sophie?”  The insistent reply follows: “The same procedure as every year, James.”

Dinner for One, or the 90^th Birthday, was recorded in 1963 and found a ceremonial home across Germany’s regional public TV channels.  Scribbled by Lauri Wylie in the 1920s, it had its London premier in 1948, making its way to Broadway in 1953.  Frinton secured the rights in the 1950s.  Both he and May had been performing it as a routine seaside resort gig, very much a music hall staple destined for modest obscurity.  In 1963, German TV presenter Peter Frankenfeld, on a mission of cultural reconnaissance, was in one of those audiences in Blackpool.  He fell in love.  Frinton and May were invited to perform on his program Guten Abend before a live Hamburg audience at the Theater am Besenbinderhof, where it was recorded by NDR (Norddeutscher Rundfunk).  In 1972, the ritual of showing the program as a New Year’s Eve special was established.

The date, Dinner for One retains the Guinness World Record for the most repeated program in history.  It has created a commemorative industry in Germany. It spurs drinking competitions and inspires cookery.  It has even inspired productions in various dialects: Hessian and Kölsch.

In 2017, more than 12 million Germans saw the show.  But it remains unknown, for the most part, to audiences in the US and UK.  Of the Anglophone states, Australia has had a decent, smattering acquaintance. Northern European states in Scandinavia and the Baltic are also familiar.  It took till December 31, 2018 for the production to be shown in Britain.

Dinner for One has managed to emerge from its subcultural cocoon in music hall entertainment and heavy German consumption.  Netflix took interest in it in 2016, if only to promote its own programs with a parody.  The imaginary guests, on that occasion, were Saul Goodman (Michael Pan in Better Call Saul); Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey in House of Cards), Pablo Escobar (Wagner Moura in Nacros) and Crazy Eyes (Uzo Aduba in Orange in the New Black).

As with all rituals, viewing Dinner for One comes with its presumptive historical and cultural baggage.  For German audiences, this is a British museum piece with perennial relevance.  There is more than a tang of hierarchy to it.  Frinton and May converse in a setting of nostalgia and the whiff of a departed empire.  Stefanie Bolzen, the UK and Ireland correspondent for Die Welt, was not wrong to wonder if the sketch had re-enforced such assumptions celebrated by the staunchest Brexiteers.  The UK is leaving the European Union, but this little jewel of British slapstick remains the emotional preserve of German audiences, so much so it has become indigenous.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

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The recent amendments to the Russian Constitution confirm that domestic document’s precedence over international law, and while Russia still respects the latter, it won’t ever let it be exploited for “lawfare” like in the Yukos case.

This is the second of a 2-part beginners’ guide to the weapons industry. The first part is called ‘Selling Weapons – The Most Corrupt Industry in the World’

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“We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportion…we must not fail to comprehend its grave implication…in councils of government we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence by the military-industrial complex”. (US President Eisenhower 1961(1))

A military-industrial complex exists when the connection between politicians, industry and the military becomes so strong that governments end up taking political and military decisions partly because it is in the interests of companies that can make profit from war and weapons sales. Despite President Eisenhower’s warning in 1961, this is actually the system that exists in the US today. Over a quarter of US senators and congressmen have investments in weapons corporations.(2)

Senior government officials and advisors come from the weapons industry, and can find ready employment within the industry when their government careers end. One study found that 84% of retiring US generals go into senior positions in weapons companies. In earlier administrations, Caspar Weinberger, George Schultz, William Perry and James Baker were just a few of the people who had senior jobs with weapons companies before or after having a top job in the US government. The connections between the US government and weapons companies became even stronger under former President George W. Bush. Vice-President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld made big profits due to the shares that they continued to hold in weapons companies whilst in office.(3) Some individuals now work simultaneously in the weapons industry and in government. As one expert pointed out:

“it’s impossible to tell where the government ends and Lockheed begins”.(4)

The same is true in Britain, with senior personnel moving between weapons companies and government jobs. During his time as Prime Minister, Tony Blair effectively became a salesman for Britain’s biggest weapons company, British Aerospace, when he personally tried to promote weapons deals with India, Saudi Arabia and Zimbabwe.(5)

In her book, The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein points out that the military-industrial complex has now become ‘disaster capitalism.’ Weapons companies buy subsidiaries so they now profit from both destruction and reconstruction. They own private healthcare companies that profit by treating the wounded, they own construction companies so they profit from re-building after a war, and they own security companies so they profit from our fear of terrorism.(6) A significant part of the US economy is now based on the premise that the US will be fighting multiple wars well into the future. Without these wars, parts of the US economy would collapse.

The production of ever more expensive and sophisticated weapons systems becomes an end in itself. These weapons may not serve any particularly useful purpose. The scientists within the corporations just come up with better weapons and these get made. This was highlighted at the height of the cold war (discussed in an earlier post) when there was a discussion about whether to replace existing nuclear missiles with a bigger, more powerful design called MX. One commentator pointed out that there was “no good reason to justify the existence of the MX missile” as the existing system was perfectly adequate. A group of scientists had worked out how to build it, so they tried to persuade the US government to buy it.(7) The missile was deployed, but only in small numbers. The Seawolf submarine and the V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor assault aircraft are just two examples of US weapons systems that nobody wants, yet they have cost the taxpayer billions of dollars.(8) Most recently, the F35 jet has an estimated cost of $1.5 trillion, but repeatedly fails its test flights. The US government regularly overpays contractors by absurd amounts. Most famously, they paid $2,043 for a nut that would normally cost a few cents. The ten biggest weapons companies in the US all repeatedly defraud the US government. 

Profits from conflict – no ethics in the weapons industry

Weapons sales abroad are presented in the media in the same way as other financial news. British Aerospace or Boeing wins a contract to supply the government of ‘insert repressive regime here’ with ground attack planes. The companies that make these weapons and the shareholders who profit from them talk about sales, prices, earnings and dividends. The government ministers who proudly assist with these sales at arms fairs think mostly about the relationships they build with foreign leaders. The consequences of these sales – death, disability, repression and destruction on a huge scale – are mostly ignored.

There are many examples of weapons being supplied to both sides in a conflict.(9) India and Pakistan have had almost continuous disputes over Kashmir, yet British and US companies supply weapons to both sides.(10) This is an example of corporations profiting by fuelling conflict. It is possible that some conflicts would end much faster, some would stop immediately, and some might never start if the participants were not supplied with weapons by advanced nations. The current war in Yemen is a good example of weapons keeping a conflict going. Saudi Arabia receives almost all of its weapons from the US, Britain and France. If those three countries stopped supplying weapons, and stopped providing the expertise to operate and maintain those weapons, the war would almost certainly end quickly.(11)

The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) gave $11 billion of weapons to terrorists in Afghanistan during the 1990s. These have since been used by terrorists in wars throughout central Asia and the Middle East. Weapons that had been sold to Libya were stored in warehouses. When the US and Britain destroyed Libya in 2011, the warehouses were looted and the weapons became widely available to anyone who wanted one. Weapons sales make the world less safe.

The insanity of the current system becomes obvious when weapons sold by rich countries are used against their own armies. Peacekeepers in Somalia, Bosnia and Rwanda all found themselves facing weapons supplied by their own governments.(12) British weapons were used against British troops in Iraq.(13) During the Falklands War between Britain and Argentina in 1982 (a dispute that has been likened to two bald men fighting over a comb(14)), Argentina was using warships built in Britain, and other weapons purchased from other advanced nations.(15) The Argentinians sank a British warship using an Exocet anti-ship missile, supplied by France, launched from a warplane, also supplied by France.(16) At the time, Argentina was being run by the military, who had overthrown the civilian government. The invasion of the Falklands would have been much less likely to happen if advanced nations had not provided Argentina’s military leaders with weapons. Perhaps just as important, the military government would have been much less likely to come to power in the first place if they had not been supplied with weapons and supported by other nations.

There are no good arguments supporting huge weapons expenditure

One sometimes hears arguments suggesting that we should be able to sell weapons to countries that are peaceful and democratic. But it is impossible to know if a country will remain peaceful in the future, and it is democracies such as the US and Britain that have been responsible for many recent war crimes. Politicians sometimes try to defend weapons exports on economic grounds, but many of those exports are actually paid for by US and British taxpayers. The subsidies to weapons companies are greater than the money raised through weapons sales. We could provide far more jobs by spending the money in other industries.

It is perfectly reasonable to argue that if Britain or the US is going to have a military for defensive purposes, then they should have the best equipment available. But when was the last time that any weapons were really used by the British or US military for defence? For Britain the answer is probably 1940. For the US the answer is ‘not in living memory’. There is no evidence that any country will attack Britain or the US in the near future. The corruption involved in the weapons trade is so profitable for everyone involved that military spending is not about ‘security’ at all.

It’s all about offence – not defence 

The weapons industry is usually referred to as the defence industry. This is a glaring example of how language is used as propaganda. In 1947, the US had a government labeled the ‘war department’. This was changed to the ‘Defence Department’.(17) In the UK, the War Office (together with other departments) became the Ministry of Defence. If it were labeled ‘the Minstry of Invasion and Occupation’, people might be more critical of what they do. Similarly, if the ‘defence’ industry were labeled the ‘mass murder and maiming industry’, people would realise how destructive it is. By hiding the criminal nature of these activities behind the word ‘defence’, people are misled into believing that it is fairly harmless. Weapons are used for invading other countries, or to control people who do not agree with their government.  

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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 eighth 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) Jim Garrison and Pyare Shivpuri, The Russian Threat, 1983, p.260.

The original draft of the speech used the term “military-industrial-congressional complex” to indicate that the assistance of congress plays an important part in maintaining the power and influence of weapons companies within the US economy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military-industrial_complex

2) Ralph Forbes, ‘151 congressmen derive profit from war’, 5 May 2008, at http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/151_congressmen_derive_financi.html

3) Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine, 2007, p.311.

Donald Rumsfeld held shares in Gilead and Dick Cheney held shares in Halliburton. 

4) Danielle Brian, cited in Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine, 2007, p.319

5) Saferworld, ‘The good, the bad and the ugly – a decade of Labour’s arms exports’, May 2007, at https://www.saferworld.org.uk/resources/publications/264-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly—a-decade-of-labours-arms-exports 

6) Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine, 2007, p.381

7) Jim Garrison and Pyare Shivpuri, The Russian Threat, 1983, pp.147-156. One officer said of the MX, “there is no earthly strategic doctrine to justify their existence” (p.156)

8) Mark Zepezauer, Take The Rich Off Welfare, 2005, pp.54-75

9) Human Rights Watch, ‘Money Talks: Arms Dealing With Human Rights Abusers’, April 1999, at www.hrw.org/reports/1999/bulgaria 

10) Mark Curtis, Web of Deceit, 2003, p.189

11) Arron Merat, ‘The Saudis couldn’t do it without us’: the UK’s true role in Yemen’s deadly war’, The Guardian, 18 June 2019, at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/18/the-saudis-couldnt-do-it-without-us-the-uks-true-role-in-yemens-deadly-war 

12) Mark Curtis, Web of Deceit, 2003, p.186

13) Jennifer Erickson, Dangerous Trade: Arms Exports, Human Rights and International Reputation, 2015, P.115

14) Jorge Luis Borges, cited in Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine, 2007, p.137

15) Martin Middlebrook, The Argentine Fight For The Falklands, 2003

16) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exocet

17) Noam Chomsky, ‘Creating the horror chambers’, interview with Dan Falcone, Jacobin, July 2015, at https://chomsky.info/072015-2/

Featured image is from Fort Russ News

Although the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Africa does not  in any way rival the existing public health situation in Western Europe and the United States, the presence of a new variant in South Africa and other regions of the continent emphasizes the necessity of independent efforts on the part of the African Union (AU) member-states to advance a policy of self-reliance.

To the extent that the newly formulated African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) can move the 1.3 billion people towards a better standard of living along with greater control over the means of production within the society, it should be supported by progressive and peace-loving forces throughout the world.

The AfCFTA aspirations are by no means new to the post-colonial era. Leaders such as Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, founder of the Republic of Ghana, advocated the revolutionary unification of Africa under a scientific socialist system. In the interim during 1963 at the founding of the AU predecessor, the Organization of African Unity (OAU), Nkrumah issued numerous appeals for unification including the book entitled “Africa Must Unite”, which was published to coincide with the maiden summit of the continental body.

Even after the May 25, 1963 first summit of the OAU in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Nkrumah and others continued to promote the notions of continental integration and unification. The 1964 summit in Cairo, Egypt took up the question of the national oppression of Africans in the United States with the intervention of Malcolm X. These developments in 1964, were utilized by the AU and the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to raise once again in 2020 the institutional racism and brutality carried out by the state in the world’s leading capitalist country. The brutal murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis further enraged the international community after reports of the brutal killings of Ahmaud Arbery in Brunswick, Georgia and Breonna Taylor in Louisville.

The enhancement of Africa’s status within the broader international community would inspire and encourage those within the Diaspora who are struggling for self-determination, national liberation, social justice and equality. As Nkrumah noted during the 1960s and early 1970s, the liberation of Africa would be a tremendous inspiration to all Black and oppressed peoples throughout the planet.

With specific reference to the potential role of AfCFTA, the mission of the project says:

“The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is a free trade area, outlined in the African Continental Free Trade Agreement among 54 of the 55 African Union nations.  AfCFTA is the largest in the world in terms of participating countries since the formation of the World Trade Organization. The agreement was brokered by the African Union (AU) and was signed on by 44 of its 55 member states in Kigali, Rwanda on March 21, 2018. The agreement initially requires members to remove tariffs from 90% of goods, allowing free access to commodities, goods, and services across the continent. The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) estimates that the agreement will boost intra-African trade by 52 percent by 2022.”

Problems prevalent within the AU member-states in 2020 are by-product of the legacies of slavery, colonialism, neo-colonialism and all aspects of imperialism. The decline in commodity prices within the agricultural and mining sectors has been a major impediment to the export-driven African economies for several years. These vulnerabilities on the continent have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic impact within the imperialist states.

Impediments to Implementations of the AfCFTA Project

In the leading economy of East Africa, the Republic of Kenya, there has been a recent diplomatic row which has erupted with neighboring Somalia. There is both a maritime and inland dispute over borders in the Indian Ocean offshore along with the areas of Jubaland in southern Somalia. Kenya has also aggravated tensions by hosting the leader of the breakaway northern region known as Somaliland. The area has not been recognized as independent by either the United Nations or the AU. (See this)

Kenya has deployed its troops to Somalia as part of the U.S.-engineered efforts to control the political situation inside that country since the late 2000s. Aerial strikes have been carried out by the Pentagon now under the banner of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM). Kenyan soldiers have functioned within the United Nations-mandated African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) which is ostensibly designed to stabilize the government in Mogadishu and to defeat the al-Shabaab group that has waged war against the federal regime for a decade. These developments have surely complicated the potential for normalized relations necessary for the facilitation of trade and economic integration.

A report published on December 24 says of the situation that:

“There is growing concern the tensions between Kenya and Somalia may erupt into fighting, due to a military buildup along the two countries’ borders. The Somalia federal government has sent troops to the border town of Beled-Hawo, while forces from Somalia’s Jubaland region, which enjoys a good relationship with Kenya, are stationed in the nearby Kenyan town of Madera…. Hundreds of fighters allied to Jubaland Interior Minister Abdirashid Janan have been stationed in Madera for months. Last March, these forces launched a cross-border attack in Beled Hawo, killing dozens. On Tuesday (December 22), Madera residents took to the streets to demand the Jubaland forces to leave and stop endangering their lives. The protest took place after the Somali government sent hundreds of soldiers to secure the Beled-Hawo area…. Last week, Somalia cut diplomatic ties with Kenya. The federal government accuses Kenya of interfering with its internal affairs — an accusation that Kenyan officials deny. George Musamali is the head of the Center for Risk Management in Africa. He says any conflict between Kenya and Somalia would be felt beyond the border area.”

Meanwhile in the Economic Community of West Africa (ECOWAS) region a military coup in Mali on August 20 posed a major challenge to this body which represents 15 member-states. ECOWAS immediately deployed a delegation to Mali headed by former Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan to demand in no uncertain terms that the mutinous soldiers relinquish control to the previously elected administration. The leaders of the coup were trained by the Pentagon at military colleges in the U.S. This same phenomenon was true in regard to the putsch of 2012 where the lower-ranking officers involved in overthrowing an elected government were products of the pro-imperialist education given to soldiers by the Pentagon.

After much discussion, it was decided that an interim administration would be established which included both opposition political forces and the coup makers. ECOWAS threatened the suspension of Mali from the organization prohibiting trade and normal diplomatic relations with the landlocked country if the mutinous troops did not return to the barracks. Since August, problems are continuing with the military further threatening the stability of the country.

Mali has been inflicted for decades by an internal dispute inherited from French colonialism with the Tuareg population in the north. After the escalation in fighting in 2012-2013, France intervened militarily with the assistance of AFRICOM already operating in the country. Nonetheless, the northern insurgency has been heavily infiltrated by jihadist groups whose origins and backing tend to coincide with the aims of imperialism in Africa and West Asia.

ECOWAS during 2019 introduced a single monetary unit in the effort to promote cross border trade and travel. By the latter months of 2020, this launch of the “Eco” regional currency was suspended under the guise that the initiative was premature. Even with these apparent good intentions, the existence of armed opposition groups in several other states notwithstanding Mali, including Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso and Cameroon, only serves to provide a rationale for the continued presence of AFRICOM as well as the French-led Operation Barkhane, which inevitably prevents the realization of Pan-African unity.

These conflicts internally and over colonial-drawn territorial boundaries are not conducive to the implementation of the AfCFTA program of unity and cooperation. There is the necessity of resolving these issues as an imperative towards genuine independence and sovereignty for Africa and its people.

Political Stability as a Prerequisite for Pan-Africanism

An equitable distribution of resources in AU member-states could create the atmosphere for peace and security. Even short of civil war and border conflicts, there is unrest periodically over the legitimacy of governments and the character of governance. For example, in Ivory Coast and Guinea-Conakry, widespread outbreaks of violence were the direct result of dissent over whether the administrations in these states had the right to continue their tenure in office.

Nigeria #EndSARS protest movement

In Nigeria, the most populous state within the AU which is said to have the largest economy on the continent, was the scene of a national youth-led rebellion in October prompted by police misconduct carried out by the notorious Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS). Dozens of people were killed in further repression against the #EndSARS Campaign demonstrations at the hands of the police and military. In response there were violent retaliations targeting the Supreme Court, a prison, a leading television station and the home of the Lagos state governor, among other symbols of the state and national economy.

Within the context of the AU there is the Peace and Security Council (PSC) whose charge is to ameliorate conflict throughout the continent. According to its mission statement:

“The African Union leads policy making and implementation of decisions aimed at ensuring that Africa achieves Aspiration 4 of Agenda 2063 which aspires for ‘A peaceful and secure Africa’ through the use of mechanisms that promote a dialogue-centered approach to conflict prevention and resolution of conflicts and establishing of a culture of peace and tolerance nurtured in Africa’s children and youth through peace education. The Agenda 2063 flagship initiative of Silencing the Guns by 2020 is at the core of activities being put in place to ensure Africa is a more peaceful and stable continent.

The key AU Organ for promoting peace and security on the continent is the Peace & Security Council (PSC) which is the standing decision-making organ of the AU for the prevention, management and resolution of conflicts. It is a collective security and early warning arrangement intended to facilitate timely and efficient responses to conflict and crisis situations in Africa. It is also the key pillar of the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA), which is the framework for promoting peace, security and stability in Africa.”

In order for this division of the AU to function effectively there must be the resolution of the class, national and micro-nationality conflicts which are stifling qualitative development. The settling of these disputes is necessary for the AfCFTA project to reach its minimal goals leading to the decisive years ahead.

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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from the author

First published on January 27, 2020, this article is of relevance to an understanding of recent developments including the so-called Second Wave. The similarity of the symptoms of Covid-19 and seasonal influenza was known and documented from the very outset, reported in numerous peer reviewed articles.

The politicians are liars.  The media are liars. 

According to The British Medical Journal in a November 2020 report:

“Politicians and governments are suppressing science. They do so in the public interest, they say, to accelerate availability of diagnostics and treatments.  … Science is being suppressed for political and financial gain. Covid-19 has unleashed a state corruption on a grand scale, and it is harmful to public health.[1] Politicians and industry are responsible for this opportunistic embezzlement. So too are scientists and health experts. The pandemic has revealed how the medical-political complex can be manipulated in an emergency—a time when it is even more important to safeguard science.

The liars confirm their own lies: The studies of Dr. Anthony Fauci et al in the New England Journal of Medicine as well as the WHO acknowledge that Covid-19 has similar features to seasonal influenza (Viruses A and B).  What these scientific statements convey is that SARS-2 (which causes Covid-19) is not a killer virus. In fact quite the opposite.

But neither the governments nor the media have reassured public opinion. The fear campaign not only prevails, it is gaining momentum.

At this juncture of the Covid-19 crisis, governments have launched extreme lockdown measures in response to a so-called “Second Wave”, which starting in October-November coincides in the Northern Hemisphere with the annual surge of seasonal influenza.

These totalitarian measures adopted by corrupt governments are based on “science being suppressed for political and financial gain”. 

Below is the incisive analysis of  Tom Clifford reporting from Beijing in late January 2020 at the very outset of the corona crisis. 

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, January 2, 2021

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Figures quoted for the coronavirus pertain to late January 2020

The common flu virus will infect millions across the globe. It can be easily spread and will especially strike the young and the elderly. But this is not what has been described as the Wuhan virus. The common flu is far deadlier. This is not to downplay the Wuhan coronavirus flu, or to give it its medical name, 2019-nCoV.

The common flu causes up to 5 million cases of severe illness worldwide and kills up to 650,000 people every year, according to the World Health Organization 

In the US:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that so far this season, there have been at least 15 million flu illnesses for the 2019-2020 season, 140,000 hospitalizations and 8,200 deaths in the U.S. The CDC reports there have been 54 reported flu-related pediatric deaths this season from Influenza B viruses. (The Hill)

China’s Coronavirus

Keeping track of Wuhan virus figures is difficult, not least because of the two-week incubation period. The coronavirus outbreak, which is concentrated in Wuhan, a major transport hub in central eastern China, has so far killed 56 and infected almost 2,000.

The initial symptoms of coronavirus are typically similar to those of a cold or flu, which means it is hard for people to know if they are infected, especially given that the outbreak has coincided with flu season. The mayor of Wuhan said on Sunday evening that he expected another 1,000 or so new cases. But the National Health Commission in Beijing said the number of people currently under medical observation for the virus is 30,453. This raises immediate questions about how and where they are being observed.

The response to the outbreak has been criticized with people complaining that announcing restrictions hours before they could be properly implemented allowed people to evade quarantine. The strict restrictions also risk causing resentment and distrust of authorities and the health messages they deliver.

A massive construction effort is being undertaken in Wuhan to build a 1,000-bed hospital for the virus patients.

In the past week [mid January], the number of confirmed infections has more than tripled and cases have been found in 13 provinces in China, as well as the municipalities Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing and Tianjin. The virus has also been confirmed in Hong Kong, Macau, Japan, Nepal, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, the United States, and Vietnam.

The virus seems to have a 3 percent mortality rate. However, this could be an overestimate since there may be a far larger pool of people who have been infected by the virus but who have not suffered severe enough symptoms to attend hospital and so have not been counted in the data.

Consequently, it is difficult to gauge just how contagious it is. A crucial difference is that unlike flu, there is no vaccine for the new coronavirus, which means it is more difficult for vulnerable members of the population – elderly people or those with existing respiratory or immune problems – to protect themselves.

The common flu does not grab the headlines. But attach a foreign name to a virus – such as Ebola, Zika and Wuhan – and then the headlines flow.

Apart from the obvious health concerns, there is a political dimension. Some countries, including the US, France, Australia and Japan have suggested that they want to evacuate their citizens from Wuhan and nearby areas. Just how this would take place is unclear.

Images of foreigners being airlifted or bussed out of Wuhan, while Chinese citizens remain, could see passions rise. At the very least, it will appear that there is special treatment for foreigners.

The streets of Beijing this morning are eerily quiet. Residents of the capital would normally be celebrating Chinese new year, the year of the rat, that started on Saturday, by attending temple fairs.

All such fairs have been cancelled. Apart from the family fun on offer at the fairs, they provide a setting where families can pay homage to deceased relatives. Fake money and food would be burnt to appease the spirits of the deceased and ensure good health prosperity for the year ahead.

There is no anger on the streets but a sense of confusion and apprehension. This coming week should see hundreds of millions of people return from the hometowns where the celebrated the new year to their cities of work.

A clearer picture will then emerge of the scale of the problems facing the authorities.

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Featured image is from EWAO

Among Global Research’s most popular 2020 articles

Translated from Chinese for Global Research; first published in January 2020.

Enough is enough. Enough hypocrisy for this one world.

What do you want from us, anyway? What Do You Really Want from Us?

When we were the sick man of Asia, we were called “the yellow peril”.

When we are billed to be the next superpower, we are called “the threat”.

When we were poor, you invaded our cities and erected signs reading, “No dogs or Chinamen Allowed”.

When we’re rich and loan you cash, you blame us for your national debts.

When we closed our doors, you smuggled drugs to open our markets.

When we embrace free trade, you blame us for taking away your jobs.

When we tried communism, you hated us for being communist.

When we embrace capitalism, you hate us for being capitalist.

When we were falling apart, you marched in your troops and wanted your “fair share”. When we tried to put the broken pieces back together again, “Free Tibet”, you screamed,

It was an invasion! When, because of you, Xinjiang and Tibet were lost in chaos and rampage, you demanded rules of law.

When we uphold law and order against violence, you call it violating human rights.

When we had a billion people, you said we were destroying the planet. When we tried limiting our numbers, you said we abused human rights.

When we build our industries, you call us polluters.

When we sell you goods, you blame us for global warming.

When we buy oil, you call it exploitation and genocide.

When you invade countries for oil, you call it liberation.

When we were silent, you said you wanted us to have free speech. When we are silent no more, you say we are brainwashed xenophobes.

“Do you understand us, we asked”? “Of course we do”, you said, “We have Fox News and CNN and The Economist.”

And today in 2020, we are doing our best to cope with an unknown virus epidemic, but nothing we do is good enough to please you.

We quarantined the infected area but your CNN publishes a dirty article telling us that’s “too aggressive”, and that we are “violating human rights” and making “a blueprint for racial segregation”. But if we didn’t do that, you would condemn us for not taking stronger measures.(1)

So what do you really want from us?

Enough is enough. Enough hypocrisy for this one world.

China’s leaders don’t need to be directed by the USA, and Americans are not entitled to teach China about “peace” or “human rights” or anything else.

And why isn’t this earth big enough for all of us?

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Note

(1) https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/26/health/quarantine-china-coronavirus/index.html

This article was first crossposted in August.

Denmark boasts one of the lowest COVID-19 death rates in the world. As of August 4, the Danes have suffered 616 COVID-19 deaths, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University.

That’s less than one-third of the number of Danes who die from pneumonia or influenza in a given year.

Despite this success, Danish leaders recently found themselves on the defensive. The reason is that Danes aren’t wearing face masks, and local authorities for the most part aren’t even recommending them.

This prompted Berlingske, the country’s oldest newspaper, to complain that Danes had positioned themselves “to the right of Trump.”

“The whole world is wearing face masks, even Donald Trump,” Berlingske pointed out.

This apparently did not sit well with Danish health officials. They responded by noting there is little conclusive evidence that face masks are an effective way to limit the spread of respiratory viruses.

“All these countries recommending face masks haven’t made their decisions based on new studies,” said Henning Bundgaard, chief physician at Denmark’s Rigshospitale, according to Bloomberg News. (Denmark has since updated its guidelines to encourage, but not require, the use of masks on public transit where social distancing may not be possible.)

Denmark is not alone.

Despite a global stampede of mask-wearing, data show that 80-90 percent of people in Finland and Holland say they “never” wear masks when they go out, a sharp contrast to the 80-90 percent of people in Spain and Italy who say they “always” wear masks when they go out.

Dutch public health officials recently explained why they’re not recommending masks.

“From a medical point of view, there is no evidence of a medical effect of wearing face masks, so we decided not to impose a national obligation,” said Medical Care Minister Tamara van Ark.

Others, echoing statements similar to the US Surgeon General from early March, said masks could make individuals sicker and exacerbate the spread of the virus.

“Face masks in public places are not necessary, based on all the current evidence,” said Coen Berends, spokesman for the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment. “There is no benefit and there may even be negative impact.”

In Sweden, where COVID-19 deaths have slowed to a crawl, public health officials say they see “no point” in requiring individuals to wear masks.

“With numbers diminishing very quickly in Sweden, we see no point in wearing a face mask in Sweden, not even on public transport,” said Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s top infectious disease expert.

What’s Going on With Masks?

The top immunologists and epidemiologists in the world can’t decide if masks are helpful in reducing the spread of COVID-19. Indeed, we’ve seen organizations like the World Health Organization and the CDC go back and forth in their recommendations.

CDC does not currently recommend the use of facemasks to help prevent novel #coronavirus. Take everyday preventive actions, like staying home when you are sick and washing hands with soap and water, to help slow the spread of respiratory illness. #COVID19 https://t.co/uArGZTJhXj pic.twitter.com/yzWTSgt2IV

— CDC (@CDCgov) February 27, 2020

For the average person, it’s confusing and frustrating. It’s also a bit frightening, considering that we’ve seen people denounced in public for not wearing a mask while picking up a bag of groceries.

Opening day at Trader Joe’s in North Hollywood, Ca.

Karen is mad she was mask shamed… pic.twitter.com/pF3Zgj3w2E

— Rex Chapman🏇🏼 (@RexChapman) June 27, 2020

The truth is masks have become the new wedge issue, the latest phase of the culture war. Mask opponents tend to see mask wearers as “fraidy cats” or virtue-signalling “sheeple” who willfully ignore basic science. Mask supporters, on the other hand, often see people who refuse to wear masks as selfish Trumpkins … who willfully ignore basic science.

There’s not a lot of middle ground to be found and there’s no easy way to sit this one out. We all have to go outside, so at some point we all are required to don the mask or not.

It’s clear from the data that despite the impression of Americans as selfish rebel cowboys who won’t wear a mask to protect others, Americans are wearing masks far more than many people in European countries.

Polls show Americans are wearing masks at record levels, though a political divide remains: 98 percent of Democrats report wearing masks in public compared to 66 percent of Republicans and 85 percent of Independents. (These numbers, no doubt, are to some extent the product of mask requirements in cities and states.)

Whether one is pro-mask or anti-mask, the fact of the matter is that face coverings have become politicized to an unhealthy degree, which stands to only further pollute the science.

Last month, for example, researchers at Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy responded to demands they remove an article that found mask requirements were “not based on sound data.”

The school, to its credit, did not remove the article, but instead opted to address the objections critics of their research had raised.

First, Do No Harm

The ethics of medicine go back millennia.

The Hippocratic Oath famously calls on medical practitioners to “first, do no harm.” (Those words didn’t actually appear in the original oath; they developed as a form of shorthand.)

There is a similar principle in the realm of public health: the Principle of Effectiveness.

Public health officials say the idea makes it clear that public health organizations have a responsibility to not harm the people they are assigned to protect.

“If a community is at risk, the government may have a duty to recommend interventions, as long as those interventions will cause no harm, or are the least harmful option,” wrote Claire J. Horwell Professor of Geohealth at Durham University and Fiona McDonald, Co-Director of the Australian Centre for Health Law Research at Queensland University of Technology. “If an agency follows the principle of effectiveness, it will only recommend an intervention that they know to be effective.”

The problem with mask mandates is that public health officials are not merely recommending a precaution that may or may not be effective.

They are using force to make people submit to a state order that could ultimately make individuals or entire populations sicker, according to world-leading public health officials.

That is not just a violation of the Effectiveness Principle. It’s a violation of a basic personal freedom.

Mask advocates might mean well, but they overlook a basic reality: humans spontaneously alter behavior during pandemics. Scientific evidence shows that American workplaces and consumers changed the patterns of their travel before lockdown orders were issued.

As I’ve previously noted, this should come as no surprise: Humans are intelligent, instinctive, and self-preserving mammals who generally seek to avoid high-risk behavior. The natural law of spontaneous order shows that people naturally take actions of self-protection by constantly analyzing risk.

Instead of ordering people to “mask-up” under penalty of fines or jail time, scientists and public health officials should get back to playing their most important role: developing sound research on which people can freely make informed decisions.

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Featured image: From left to right: Professor Henning Bundgaard, Tamara van Ark, Anders Tegnell | Composite image by FEE (Rigshospitalet, Wikimedia Commons)

First published on July 28, 2020

The World Economic Forum (WEF) has just made a grandiose discovery and declared (21 July 2020) under the alarming title “This is now the world’s greatest threat – and it’s not coronavirus”. The superb discovery is listed as “Affluence is the biggest threat to our world, according to a new scientific report.” (See this).

This “shocking and revealing news” is the “main conclusions of a team of scientists from Australia, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, who have warned that tackling overconsumption has to become a priority. Their report, titled Scientists’ Warning on Affluence, explains that “affluence is the driver of environmental and social impacts, and therefore, true sustainability calls for significant lifestyle changes, rather than hoping that more efficient use of resources will be enough.”

So as to better understand the context of the WEF statement, lets backtrack a bit. On June 3, 2020, WEF founder and executive chairman, Klaus Schwab, presented what the WEF and all the elites and oligarchs behind it call The Great Reset:

“The world must act jointly and swiftly to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts and working conditions… Every country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed. In short, we need a ‘Great Reset’ of capitalism.”

According to author Matthew Ehret-Kump, the gathering included elites from “the IMF, World Bank, UK, USA, corporate and banking sector” all looking “to take advantage of COVID-19 to shut down and “reset” the world economy under a new operating system entitled the Green New Deal.”

Gary Barnett writes on July 16, 2020

“…This is the most dangerous time in the history of man. The seriousness of this plot cannot be underestimated. It is not due to any threat of conventional war or nuclear decimation, it is based on the fact that this is a psychological war waged by psychopaths against all mankind, and it is being advanced by a small group of monsters that have taken control of the minds of the masses through long-term indoctrination and policies meant to breed dependency.”

And,

“Fear is the new weapon of mass destruction, not because it is legitimate, but because the people have lost all will to be free, have lost all ability to think, and seek shelter and comfort as a collective herd only capable of existence in a society that is based on totalitarian rule.”

And finally,

“Longing for freedom without the courage to claim it, is a meaningless endeavor, as any real demand by the masses would leave the governing elite naked and afraid. All that is necessary to achieve liberty is to want it, and this alone can defeat tyranny.”

Gary Barnett also quotes from “The Politics of Obedience” by Étienne de la Boétie:

“He who thus domineers over you has only two eyes, only two hands, only one body, no more than is possessed by the least man among the infinite numbers dwelling in your cities; he has indeed nothing more than the power that you confer upon him to destroy you.”

Well, the WEF finally got it right. Affluence and all that creates affluence and ever bigger affluence, widens the gap, rich-poor – and creates abject poverty, misery, famine and death.

According to the World Food Program (WFP), without covid, every year some 9 million people die from famine or hunger-related diseases. The WFP projects the number of people facing acute food insecurity (IPC/CH 3 or worse) stands to rise to 265 million in 2020, up by 130 million from the 135 million in 2019, as a result of the economic impact of COVID-19 (see this). Many – too many – of these people may die.

Death by famine is murder, according to Jean Ziegler, Swiss activist and former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food.

The WEF calls for a Great Reset.

Yes, a Reset is needed, but not WEF-style.

A Reset people-style is more what can save Mother Earth and all her sentient beings, including humanity. A Reset could start with a global Debt Jubilee (debt forgiveness), so that people who can no longer pay their rent, their mortgages because due to a Deep Dark State elite-made covid-crisis they have lost their jobs, their income, their entire livelihood – debt forgiveness, so that this ever-growing segment of people will be able to keep their shelter and hopefully their sanity.

The WEF calls for “lifestyle changes”, but fails to explain what it means, and who has to change their lifestyle – the rich or the poor? While the WEF preaches for the Great Global Reset, more justice, more environmental protection, capitalism for “stakeholders”, rather than just for shareholders – RT reports that due to the covid-depression, unemployment and poverty, in the US alone, 28 million home evictions loom. And that’s probably just the beginning. Compare this with the 10 million of the 2008 / 2009 also man-made crisis.

There are currently about half a million people homeless in the US. The European Union (EU) doesn’t publish these figures, but they may be at least as high and likely higher. At the same time there are 1.5 million apartments empty in the US – about three times as many as there are homeless. Add to this the 28 million homes that may become empty in the coming months.

The 2008 crisis may be an indication. It took the banks many years to sell the 10 million “vacated” homes – and many are still not sold and rot on the rotten free market. In the bottomless depression of this covid-disaster it is even unlikelier that the banks will sell their brutally confiscated loot.

How does that fit Mr. Schwab’s, the WEF’s narrative? If the WEF was serious with the grandiose Reset for more justice, they would put the money where their mouth is – and generate the funds necessary to help the jobless to keep their homes, bail them out, or ask for a government supported debt and rent forgiveness, for all who are unemployed, with a temporary basic income of, say US$ 2,000 / month, for as long as it takes to put the economy back to work. “Temporary” – because a permanent basic income creates dependence, enslaves, and discourages the capitalist system even further from creating jobs, and use instead Artificial Intelligence (AI). This would cost a fraction from what the FED has already spent to bail out banks and financial institutions – according to the WaPo of 15 April 2020 (see this), more than 6 trillion.

In the meantime, and since mid-April, with the looming increase in corporate and banking failures, this figure may have doubled or tripled. But so what. It’s just fiat money, new debt, never to be paid back. Under this wicket principle of bailing out the rich, the FED could easily throw in another, say, 5 trillion and bail out the poor, take away a big portion of their misery, with, say a US$ 2,000 monthly minimum income for several years. Now more than ever, QE (Quantitative Easing) is of the order. Until the economy can walk again. This, in the medium to long term, would pay back by a multiple in terms of benefits to the US macro-economy. People without anxiety, without fear, would be productive and could help in reshaping the covid-destroyed economy.

By the way, this principle of bailing out the poor applies to every capitalist country, where the first to suffer are the poor, the job-dependent people. It might also apply in developing countries, where often up to 70% of the economy is made up of the informal sector, paying the unemployed a minimum wage, regardless whether they had a contractual work arrangement or not.

Though, it doesn’t look like Mr. Schwab, alias the WEF, has this kind of justice is mind.

The amassing of extreme affluence is only possible because the west is living in a turbo-capitalist system, or in a neoliberalist scheme which is slowly but surely turning into a form of economic neo-fascism with the political consequences that will likely follow. As an example, in the two months from mid-March to mid-May 2020 – so far the worst corona crisis months, when the world was basically shut down, when unemployment and accompanying misery and famine soared to proportions never known in mankind’s history – the billionaires in the US have added another 434 billion dollars to their wealth.

Again, yes, the WEF has got it right – even saying that this has to change; the world needs a better-balanced socioeconomic system and needs to do more to protect the environment and Mother Earth altogether. Of course. Nice words. But what’s the WEF’s agenda behind the words?

A legitimate question: What is the WEF and who is behind the WEF? – What makes the WEF so omni-powerful?

The WEF was created in 1971 by Klaus Schwab, a German engineer and economist. As of this day, he is at the helm of this powerful club of the rich. The WEF was created and is as of this day an NGO. It was founded as a European Management Forum, with Headquarters in Cologny, a lush suburb of Geneva, Switzerland. Its legal status is a foundation, a mere NGO (see this).

The WEF has absolutely no legal international status or role – for example, as the United Nations does – that would allow the WEF to issue edicts and rules to the world on how it should be run and behave, let alone exert control over the world’s population and decide over the fate of some 7.8 billion people (UN est. 2020 population).

Yet, that’s precisely what the WEF pretends to do – and that already for at least two or three decades. And most of the western leaders – and many non-westerners of the 193 UN members – accept the WEF as a World Authority on economic policy and political thinking. They put the WEF’s authority above that of the United Nations.

Why? – Does anybody ever ask how an NGO, the WEF, assumes for itself the power to stand above the UN, above every nation in the world and dictates as a proxy for its corporate-finance-military complex membership, basically who is to live and who is to die, by imposing a globalized economic system that has brought only abject misery to the majority of people? – And will continue to do so, if we don’t stop it.

Similar statements could be made about the G7 and the G20 – they are not even NGOs, but merely clubs of the self-declared richest and most powerful nations in the world. They too, not unlike the WEF which works hand-in-hand with the Great “Gs”, have taken over the role of the UN – to make world economic and political policy. They pretend to call the shots over war and peace. In their elitist capitalist interest, of course. Not in the interest of the people.

This is totally illegitimate and extremely dangerous.

Now, who is behind the WEF? Who are the members and players of the WEF?

They are the cream of the crop of the elite, they are the very Affluent the WEF claims are the problem, they are those who they pretend have to ‘adjust’ so that the world can continue functioning – in a “sustainable” way. – “Sustainable”, the omni-present term everywhere, overused and abused, exactly by those who chastise the world of living in unsustainable ways. They are corporate and financial magnates, former and present politicians, Hollywood personalities – and more. They are the front window of the Deep Dark State.

They are the ones, attempting to introduce the “New Green Deal”, a deviation from the current consumption based economy, to an economy based on “green” capitalism; electric cars (largely based on hydrocarbon-produced electricity), and GMO-based bio (sic) agriculture, “clean” Artificial Intelligence (AI), “green cities”, where workers (not yet wiped out by AI) cannot afford to live – and more of that sort of thing. A Green Agenda is good propaganda. It sells easily to the populace, who doesn’t ask any questions.

Do we all grasp it? – The WEF – a little NGO of a suburb of Geneva, Switzerland – acts above the UN – and has been doing so for a while. And We, The People, let it happen. We protest a bit every January when the WEF clan meets in the luxurious resort of Davos, Switzerland, to tell us what’s up their sleeves for the future of mankind and for the world. But that’s all.

Then they go “home” and disappear behind the curtain again for a year, or so we believe, and then appear again with new ideas and rules and ways to impose behavior for the 99.999% of the people of the world. And, again, this little rich NGO, without any international legal status, keeps acting like God, way above and beyond the United Nations, which, in turn, was created by nations of the world to arbitrate over conflicts for peace. Doing nothing against the WEF, letting it be and taking ever more power, means as much as accepting heir rule – it means approving of its illegitimate status as a supreme world authority.

It seems that’s what we have been doing, lately – to the detriment of the world economy, harming the social fabric of our multicultural world, as imperfect as it may be – but it has a legitimate existence. Now that existence has been shred to pieces – yes, largely by the WEF and its cohorts and cronies, WHO, the Johns Hopkins University School of Health, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. They are behind the corona disaster. Event 201 is the last testimony to this effect.

They are supported by a myriad of other world scene actors, and extended arms of the affluent oligarchs and institutions, who pretend to rule the world, the IMF, World Bank, FED, the globe’s pharma imperia, private banking and financial institutions, i.e. Wall Street and its international affiliates, and not to forget the world’s war industrial complex.

The Global Destruction that the WEF now wants to fix by a Global Reset, WEF style, has been – and is being caused – by an invisible enemy, a virus, a corona virus, the same that is at the base of most flue outbreaks. The western media trumpet messages of corona fear 24 x 7 into our brains, so it must be true. But, it ain’t true at all.

The corona pandemic, what is now called COVID-19, had been carefully planned, probably for decades, at least since the 2010 Rockefeller Report, which outlines the first phase of this global destruction that we are experiencing now “The Lockstep Scenario” (p. 18 of the 2010 Rockefeller Report).

The Event 201 was the last and final important exercise, a corona pandemic simulation and its consequences – 65 million deaths in 18 months and a devastated stock market, bankruptcies no end – was the “dry run” before the outbreak, first in China, and a few weeks later throughout the world. This event was co-sponsored by the WEF, the Bill Gates Foundation and the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health.

A number of today’s key actors in maintaining the momentum afloat – also called the Fear Indoctrination – were also present at Event 201, such as WHO, UNICEF, the IMF, the World Bank – and representatives from various UN agencies. The UN is fully complicit in this criminal and genocidal endeavor.

It shows that the UN has no teeth; a world body created after WWII, …. “The United Nations is an international organization founded in 1945 after the Second World War by 51 countries committed to maintaining international peace and security, developing friendly relations among nations and promoting social progress, better living standards and human rights” (see this).

This just shows that that the WEF, a little NGO, has more power than the UN, and has in fact coopeted the UN and many of its agencies to follow the dictate of the elitist oligarchs, or the Dark Deep State – that stand behind the WEF.

Why do we allow it?

This Great Global Reset that the WEF predicts and plans, is of course driven by another agenda than the “Good of The World”. These self-nominated masters of the universe, some of the very same affluent people the WEF claims are the biggest risk for humanity, are now turning around and giving away their riches so that there will be a better equilibrium in the distribution of Mother Earth’s wealth, more justice, more respect for human rights, less consumerism and – an absolute protection of the environment and of unrenewable resources? – Not likely.

To the contrary, as has already been proven. The planned collapse of the world economy has created unfathomable misery by bankruptcies mostly of small and medium enterprises, to be gobbled up by large corporations – and by syphoning off what was left of the social safety nets in the Global North as well as the Global South. Another enormous shift of resources from the bottom to the top – as testified by the 434 billion dollars additional riches of US billionaires (see above) – and this does not include the sum of additional billionaire-wealth around the globe.

Having said that affluence is the biggest threat to the world, without going into any details, the WEF argues that “true sustainability will only be achieved through drastic lifestyle changes” and calls “for a great reset of capitalism in the wake of the pandemic.”

An excerpt from “In the Stranglehold of the Untruth”, by Gerd Reuther, Rubikon News – (translated from German) – may put the WEF’s agenda in yet another perspective:

“A “pandemic“ of overwhelming false-positive test results, mask obligation without an increase of infection risk, Covid “mass-outbreaks” without sick people, gigantic money transfers without compensation. Corona made possible what no counter reformation or counter information was able to achieve. How many Covid-deaths did you know personally? Probably not many. In the meantime, however, almost everyone knows someone who went crazy. Societies have bypassed the planet on the way to the abyss.”

We can only speculate what the Great Reset could mean for the world’s citizens. Let’s give it a try. This is what the affluent oligarchs through their corporate, finance, pharma and military affiliation, may intend to impose on the “big masses below them”.

• To achieve the WEF’s Great Global Reset, number one is maintaining or increasing the cadence of the ongoing false fear propaganda and lies, as described above by Gerd Reuther in Rubikon.News. This has to be a relentless effort and should not be a problem, as all western Anglo-American propaganda and news outlets and their other-languages affiliates are fully coopted.
• Another one or more lockdowns with masks and social distancing, confinement, to further diminishing human contact through isolation; a “masked society” loses self-esteem, the fear and anxiety lower people’s immune system, making them vulnerable to all kinds of diseases, especially the mask obligation which has people breathe their own highly toxic CO2 –anything exceeding the level of 1,000 ppm CO2 is above tolerance – wearing a mask may increase inhaling CO2 to a rate of 10,000 ppm, or higher (see this).
• Less consumerism, through extreme austerity, low-wage work, gigantic unemployment to continue, causing insecurity, anxieties and fear for survival, thus, preparing the populace’s mindset for more manipulation, more enslavement – and desperately waiting for THE VACCINE.
• Replacing the fruit of work, namely wages for proud labor, by a universal basic income (UBI), creating a dependence on the system and demolishing human work and what’s left of self-esteem.
• The WEF also calls for “stakeholder capitalism”. Anybody knows what it means? Google describes it as follows: “Stakeholder capitalism is a system in which corporations are oriented to serve the interests of all their stakeholders. … Under this system, a company’s purpose is to create long-term value and not to maximize profits and enhance shareholder value at the cost of other stakeholder groups.”

In other words, this would be a drastic and welcome change from the neoliberal corporate shareholder capitalism, if by “other stakeholder groups” the common consumer is meant. Highly unlikely. – More likely is that long-term benefits (profits) should accumulate more equally to shareholders, as every shareholder is also a stakeholder. But not every stakeholder is a shareholder. Consumers, common people, are left behind.

• And finally, there is a strong drive to reduce the world population; Bill Gates is one of the key drivers and has said so openly on various occasions. One of his most flagrant admissions is his TED Talk in 2010, “Innovating to Zero”, in California, where he says nonchalantly, “if we are doing a real good job, we may be able to reduce “the world population by 10% to 15% – see this. This eugenics agenda fits the WEF agenda perfectly. Less people, fewer resources. Those that remain, can be more abundantly shared among the beautiful and powerful.

To close this essay on the WEF’s Great Global Reset, let me repeat the quote from “The Politics of Obedience” by Étienne de la Boétie: “He who thus domineers over you has only two eyes, only two hands, only one body, no more than is possessed by the least man among the infinite numbers dwelling in your cities; he has indeed nothing more than the power that you confer upon him to destroy you.”

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Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; New Eastern Outlook (NEO); RT; Countercurrents, Sputnik; PressTV; The 21st Century; Greanville Post; Defend Democracy Press; The Saker Blog, the and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Featured image is from Strategic Culture Foundation

As I write on January 1, 2021, the new year is not starting very auspiciously.  Ominous pronouncements are coming from the usual high places and their media mouthpieces, announcing “highly contagious virus variants” of so-called Covid-19. 

Joseph Biden has warned of “A Very Dark Winter” to come. 

His use of that term “Dark Winter” has been echoed by officials everywhere adept at reading the talking points handed to them. The echo chamber is resounding with dark warnings.

Anthony Fauci and the CDC are predicting hundreds of thousands of deaths this month alone. 

These officials are now saying the vaccines they are rolling out will take time; will not eliminate the virus, etc.  Hedging their bets as they announce utter disaster to come, rather like a fire and brimstone warning from Jonathan Edwards for the sins of celebrating festive times.

Guess who will be blamed? 

Grim projections are following the holidays like buzzards to a dead carcass.  Just follow the mainstream corporate media headline news to confirm this.

You don’t need any linked directions from me.

I prefer to be brief so you can read about the incredibly important 2014 book by Graeme MacQueen, The 2007 Anthrax Deception. 

Then read his book. (click front cover to order from Clarity Press)

His analysis of the anthrax attacks tied to 9/11 sheds important light on the current corona virus crisis.

Then listen to this new video – before it is disappeared – with Heiko Schöning speaking about the 2001 anthrax deceptions and those being perpetrated today. 

Schöning is a German doctor and one of the world-wide leaders fighting to expose the truth about COVID-19 and the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset.”

Of relevance to the current debate on the Covid19 vaccine, this article on the H1N1 vaccine was first published on November 20, 2009.

In 2009, the Canadian media provided us with detailed coverage on the adverse health impacts of the vaccine including two recorded deaths, one in Quebec and the other in Manitoba. What is the situation today with regard to media coverage? With some exceptions, the mainstream media is not informing the public. And reports on the adverse impacts of the covid-19 vaccine published by social media and the online independent media are the object of various forms of censorship.

***

“It is a serious thing [vaccine] that has the potential to kill” according to Dr. Neil Rau, an infectious disease expert, in a CTV interview, but do not worry: “leading experts insist, the benefits of the H1N1 vaccine vastly outweigh the risks” (Swine Flu Support Center, emphasis added)

A new development in the H1N1 Vaccine Saga is unfolding in Canada.

Whereas health officials are pushing for an acceleration of the vaccination program,  there is evidence of  so-called “unusual adverse reactions” including three recently recorded deaths directly resulting from the vaccine.

In the meantime, health authorities have called for the withdrawal of 170,000 (higher risk) doses of the vaccine produced by GlaxoSmithKline. The initiative, of which the importance is being downplayed, is said to have come from the manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline, which expressed concern on higher than normal adverse reactions to the vaccine.

“Canada’s H1N1 flu vaccine manufacturer has asked the provinces to temporarily discontinue vaccinating Canadians from a lot of vaccine shipped in October due to a higher risk of adverse reactions, says a Manitoba health official.

Dr. Joel Kettner, Manitoba’s chief public health officer, said Thursday that GlaxoSmithKline has asked that the October batch be taken out of circulation because it produced serious and immediate anaphylactic reactions in one out of 20,000 vaccinations, compared with one out of 100,000 in other shipments.

“We’ve been asked by the manufacturer GSK to not use this vaccine at this time pending further investigation,” he said. (Winnipeg Free Press, 20 November 2009)

The government is involved in a cover-up. The initial headlines stated “more than 100,000 doses”, but then read on, the number is 170,000 doses.

The CTV report admits that “it is a serious thing, it has the potential to kill”.

Too Late to Withdraw the 170,000 Defective Doses

The question is whether the doses can be withdrawn or whether they have already been used. The first news reports from Manitoba indicate that:

Of the 63,000 doses shipped [to Manitoba], only 630 remained unused by the four regional health authorities in Manitoba that received them. (Ibid)

This report would suggest that the risky GSK vaccine doses have already been used.

A subsequent report confirms that out of the 63,000 doses, 900 unused doses of the H1N1 vaccine were withdrawn by health authorities “after health authorities received word other vaccines from the same batch have been causing higher rates of allergic reactions than expected.” (Flu vaccine batch pulled in Manitoba, Winnipeg Sun, 20 November 2009).

The question is what happened to the remaining 62,100 doses of the higher risk vaccine batch, which were used to vaccinate people in Manitoba?

Has there been a followup regarding those people in Manitoba who received the higher risk H1N1 vaccine injection? What is the situation in other provinces in which the higher risk vaccine does were distributed?

Manitoba Health authorities casually confirm, in this regard, that “most of the vaccine Manitoba received from the suspect lot had already been used by the time the province received the alert on Wednesday” [November 18, 2009]. (Winnipeg Free Press, 20 November 2009, emphasis added)

Manitoba and Quebec : Three deaths resulting from the H1N1 Vaccine

The news reports have highlighted deaths resulting from the H1N1 flu (often unconfirmed), while obfuscating several recorded deaths resulting directly from the vaccine. These vaccine related deaths are occurring at the very outset of the vaccination program,

According to CTV News, 20 November 2009) “The province is currently investigating two deaths — both adults who died within seven days of getting the H1N1 shot” (Family questions if H1N1 shot caused Manitoba woman’s death, November 20, 2009, emphasis added).

Manitoba officials acknowledge  69 “adverse events” after people received the swine flu shot, including the two deaths. (CBC.ca report, 17 November 2009)

However, unless the families speak out, the authorities will not provide details. CTV interviewed the family of one of the victims. No details on the other death in Manitoba are available:

“The family of a 38-year-old Manitoba woman who died five days after receiving the H1N1 vaccine are looking for answers as to why it happened.

Soo Lee Wong and her daughter, Angela Truong, both got the H1N1 shot on November 5th.

The family says Wong, who had diabetes, started getting sick a day after getting vaccinated and died a few days later.

Doctors told the family Wong died of a blood infection. More tests will be done to see if the vaccine played any role.

Wong’s husband, Thoon Truong, is also caring for his seven-year-old daughter Angela, who has been in the hospital with a fever and swollen, painful legs.

He wants to know whether the two cases related to the vaccine or to something else.

The province is currently investigating two deaths — both adults who died within seven days of getting the H1N1 shot.

Although it’s still early, Manitoba’s chief medical officer of health Dr. Joel Kettner says immunizations were not likely the cause of the deaths. CTV News | Family questions if H1N1 shot caused Manitoba woman’s death, November 20, 2009)

It should be noted that these two deaths in Manitoba may have been associated with the injection of the higher risk H1N1 vaccine doses, which health authorities had called for withdrawal.

Quebec: One Death

An 80-year-old Quebec man was reported dead after taking the H1N1 Swine Flu vaccination. Health officials have dismissed the case, “stating that it’s too soon to link the death and vaccine.”  Quebec man dies after taking H1N1 vaccine, Digital Journal, 18 November 2009).

The Quebec health authorities have refused to provide details:

“Quebec’s Director of Public Health Protection, Dr. Horacio Arruda, did not know why the man took the vaccine and that final test results, which are expected to come in December, will determine whether or not the man died from the vaccine.

Canada.com reports the man died in the last three weeks but provincial officials declined to reveal details, citing confidentiality concerns. Arruda has said that most allergic reactions occur right away, which is the reason why many patients are asked to stay in the centers, “We can’t say there is a causal association between the death and the flu shot.”

Nevertheless, Arruda is confident that the death will not discourage people from taking the vaccine but urged that serious reactions to the H1N1 shot are rare, “I understand that everyone is worried.”” (Quebec man dies after taking H1N1 vaccine, Digital Journal, 18 November 2009)

The statements by senior health officials are notoriously ambiguous: while they concur that: “there is no evidence the vaccine is dangerous.”, they nonetheless acknowledge the deaths resulting from the vaccine (Statement of Quebec’s Director of Public Health Protection, Dr. Horacio Arruda, (The Canadian Press: Quebec health officials investigating possible death from H1N1 vaccine. November 18, 2009).

Of relevance to the ongoing debate on the Covid vaccine, this incisive article by Dr. Gary Kohls was first published by Global Research on May 3, 2017.

***

“The full extent of the Gardasil scandal needs to be assessed: everyone knew when this vaccine was released on the American market that it would prove to be worthless…I predict that Gardasil will become the greatest medical scandal of all time because at some point in time, the evidence will add up to prove that this vaccine, technical and scientific feat that it may be, has absolutely no effect on cervical cancer and that all the very many adverse effects which destroy lives and even kill, serve no other purpose than to generate profit for the manufacturers. Gardasil is useless and costs a fortune and decision-makers at all levels are aware of it! Cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome, paralysis of the lower limbs, vaccine-induced MS and vaccine-induced encephalitis can be found, whatever the vaccine.” — Dr Bernard Dalbergue (former Merck employee)

“No vaccine manufacturer shall be liable…for damages arising from a vaccine-related injury or death.” – President Ronald Reagan, as he signed The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) of 1986, absolving drug companies from all medico-legal liability when children die, are injured or are disabled from vaccine injuries, thus reversing many of the intentions of the original legislation establishing the FDA

“The human immune system is divided into two major classes: 

1) Cellular Immunity,(for which injected vaccines do absolutely nothing, except to weaken it) located in the mucous membranes of the gastrointestinal and respiratory tracts and their respective lymph nodes and

2) Humoral Immunity, with production of antigen-specific antibodies by plasma cells in the bone marrow. For eons of time the mucous membranes of the gastrointestinal and respiratory tracts have been the primary sites of infectious microbe entry into the body so that, of necessity, mucosal/cellular immunity has evolved as the primary defense system, with humoral immunity serving a secondary or backup role…Vaccines are reversing these roles, attempting to substitute vaccine-induced humoral immunity for the far more efficient mucosal immunity, the latter in turn undergoing a process of “atrophy of disuse” as a result of this role-switching.” – Harold Buttram, MD 

“In the field of chemical toxicology it is universally recognized that combinations of toxins may bring exponential increases of toxicity; ie, a combination of two chemicals may bring a 10-fold increase in toxicity, three chemicals 100-fold increases. This same principle almost certainly applies to the immunosuppressive effects of viral vaccines when administered in combination, as with the MMR vaccine, among which the measles vaccine is (known to be)exceptionally immunosuppresive.” – Harold Buttram, MD

“…the NIH (National Institutes of Health) is incapable of conducting conflict-free research. …it is clear that the system managing our vaccine program is corrupt beyond repair and needs a complete overhaul.”  – Lori Mellwain, National Autism Association board chair

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” –Upton Sinclair, whose 1903 novel “Jungle” led to President Theodore Roosevelt’s pushing through the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.

***

Last year there was an article published in my local newspaper describing an outbreak of a syndrome afflicting a group of young women. The syndrome was eventually labeled by the Mayo Clinic as Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS). As with most of the many iatrogenic illnesses (whose known causes are drug-induced or are caused by physician-prescribed “treatments” such as vaccine administration), the medical establishment regards POTS as having “no known cause”.

The young women involved were students that had, according to the article, been ill for an unspecified number of months. The young women were underclass women in a local high school, where they had found each other and started a support group. At least two of them had had symptoms since age the early teens, the typical age at which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) mandate (for pre-sexually active girls) a series of three intramuscular, aluminum-containing inoculations using one of the two FDA-approved, so-called “anti-cervical cancer” vaccines (the Human Papilloma Virus [HPV] vaccines Gardisil and Cervarix).

The Big Pharma giant Merck (of Vioxx and MMR/mumps infamy) makes and markets Gardisil and the equally large Big Pharma giant GlaxoSmithKline (of Paxil and Wellbutrin infamy) makes and markets Cervarix. Gardisil contains 4 genetically-engineered human papilloma virus-like antigens in it and Cervarix contains 2. The two vaccines have been approved by the heavily conflicted FDA (corrupted by industry shills) for safety and efficacy and have been pushed by the equally heavily conflicted CDC and AAP. The vaccines are described in more detail in previous Duty to Warn columns (see the links below).

The young women had been sickened for months with symptoms that included (according to the newspaper article) dizziness, light-headedness, fainting, headaches, stomach pains, cramps, nausea, “brain fog”, flushing, purplish legs, reddened hands and numbing fatigue. The most frustrating symptom mentioned in the article was that of chronic fatigue.

Because I had been doing a lot of research on the American epidemic of vaccine-induced (and therefore iatrogenic) illnesses, I wondered if some of the women had received their series of aluminum-containing HPV shots – or perhaps may have received other vaccinations known to cause vaccine-injuries. Unfortunately I was unable to find out more specific clinical details, but the information given made me want to search the literature.

Eventually, I found out that some of the young women had eventually gone to the Mayo Clinic where they received a diagnosis of Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (“of unknown etiology”) – and therefore the girls were offered no cure or suggestions about prevention. And one can assume that they weren’t given any advice about avoiding receiving any toxic substance that could have triggered the illness. Read on.

Even though the FDA approved the vaccine to (theoretically) prevent HPV-associated cancer of the uterine cervix, no one will ever be certain if any cancers will actually be prevented until 20 – 30 years from now, because that is how long cancer of the cervix takes to develop after exposure to the carcinogenic virus. And the clinical trial results presented to the FDA only lasted a few years! Nevertheless, the FDA approved the inoculants, and the CDC and AAP immediately started recommending the very expensive shots (up to $130 per shot, not including office visit charges!) for girls of middle school age before there is any sexual activity).

Merck’s safety review group acknowledged a number of adverse events observed in the clinical trials of Gardisil, which physicians are supposed to inform patients or parents about before obtaining permission to inject the hazardous substance into the bodies of children.

Gardisil’s product insert states:

 “local injection site reactions, syncope (fainting), dizziness, nausea, headaches, hypersensitivity reactions (such as rashes, hives, itching and anaphylaxis), Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS), transverse myelitis, motor neuron disease, venous thromboembolic events (blood clots), pancreatitis, autoimmune disorders, pregnancy, and death.” 

The website of the prestigious Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, just like the websites of most other major clinics that benefit financially from aggressive over-vaccination agendas, mentions the following list of innocuous-sounding adverse effects from HPV inoculations:

“may cause soreness at the injection site (the arm), headaches and low-grade fever. Sometimes dizziness or fainting occurs after the injection. Remaining seated for 15 minutes after the injection can reduce the risk of fainting. In addition, Cervarix might also cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea or abdominal pain.”   

Note that the Mayo Clinic cleverly fails to mention any of the serious life-threatening adverse effects that were listed by the manufacturers, specifically not mentioning death or autoimmune disorders. The principle of informed consent is obviously being side-stepped – even by the Mayo Clinic.

Soon after Gardisil was introduced into the CDC’s recommended pediatric vaccination schedule, the independent Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) started reporting numerous adverse events related to the HPV injections, including fainting, pain at the injection site, headaches, nausea, fever, tonic-clonic (jerking) muscular movements and seizure-like activity. Fainting was particularly common after injections. The fainting spells sometimes caused serious injuries, such as head injuries.

Just two years after Gardisil’s introduction into the US market, VAERS reported 32 deaths, more or less equally distributed after the first, second or third inoculation. The median interval from vaccination to death was 14.5 days.

Other less-frequent illnesses reported by VAERS included:

“autoimmune hemolytic anemia, idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura, lymphadenopathy, pulmonary embolus, nausea, pancreatitis, vomiting, asthenia (weakness), chills, death, fatigue, malaise, autoimmune diseases, hypersensitivity reactions (including anaphylactic/anaphylactoid reactions, bronchospasm, and urticaria), arthralgia, myalgia, acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, dizziness, Guillain-Barré syndrome, headache, motor neuron disease, paralysis, seizures, syncope (sometimes resulting in falling with injury), transverse myelitis, and deep venous thrombosis.” 

According to the VAERS website, as of January 2015 there have been 220 HPV vaccine-related deaths, 1,283 chronically disabled patients, 3,945 hospital admissions, 12,305 admissions to emergency rooms, 595 abnormal Pap smears (including 262 cases of cervical dysplasia and 100 cases of cervical cancer!). Note that the FDA has previously admitted that as few as 1% of adverse reactions to drugs or vaccines are ever reported by patients or physicians so these numbers are likely to be falsely low. The real number of adverse events related to HPV could be as high as 100 times more that the reported statistics above!

Vaccine-related illnesses or deaths, just like many chronic illnesses from toxic exposures, can be delayed by months. Therefore it is likely that adverse reactions to any vaccine (or prescription drug, for that matter) may not be recognized by the patient or her doctor as being caused by the toxic substance, particularly the occurrence of a vaccine-induced chronic fatigue syndrome, autoimmune disorders or POTS.

It is also likely, since physicians are widely and thoroughly indoctrinated into the belief system that all vaccines are totally safe and totally effective, they would tend to be unwilling to admit to any vaccine-related adverse event.

I end this article with some more quotes from vaccinology and immunology experts about the serious problems of America’s vaccine industry (and the studied lack of media attention to the truth about vaccines and iatrogenic illnesses) and then end with a few excerpts from some of the multitude of medical journal articles that support the assertions and warnings above.

Knowledgeable and informed observers of Big Pharma’s tendency to habitually lie about the value of their newest blockbuster products are shocked at how the medical establishment has accepted these new and dangerous vaccines without much skepticism. Just claiming that Gardisil will prevent future cancers of the cervix is almost laughable – if it weren’t so serious.

My column on the absurdity of the medical profession mandating a series of routine HPV vaccinations to all adolescents on the untested and unproven theory that they will prevent cancer 20 – 30 years in the future, can be accessed at:

http://duluthreader.com/articles/2015/04/15/5155_open_letter_to_eric_holder_regarding_the_big

My column about vaccine-induced injuries, including vaccine-induced chronic childhood illnesses, vaccine-induced autoimmune disorders, aluminum adjuvant toxicity and vaccine-induced mitochondrial toxicity can be accessed at:

http://duluthreader.com/articles/2015/12/30/6472_a_look_back_at_some_of_my_2015_duty_to_warn

And my column about the vaccine compensation program that is designed to compensate victims of vaccine-induced injury or death is at:

https://www.transcend.org/tms/2016/03/duty-to-warn-big-pharmas-nefarious-control-of-health-care-and-the-vaccine-injury-compensation-program/

Below are some useful quotes and also abstracts from peer-reviewed medical journal articles that pertain to and support this discussion.

***

“The autism epidemic is real, and excessive vaccinations are the cause.” – Dr Bernard Rimland

“Completely unvaccinated children have less chronic disease and a lower risk of autism than

vaccinated children.” — J. B. Handley, Jr – founder of Operation Rescue

“The soaring incidence of physical and mental illnesses among today’s children (may be) causally related to current childhood vaccine programs. Primary among these is the large-scale contamination of the measles, mumps, and influenza vaccines with retroviruses capable of engrafting their genetics into the DNA of childhood recipients. This is rendered more likely because of the cavalier disregard with which combinations of viral vaccines are now being administered, primarily involving the MMR vaccines…in spite of the toxicology principle that combinations of toxins may bring exponential (10-fold or 100-fold) increases in toxicity.” – Harold Buttram, MD

“The really sad thing is the amount of doctors I’ve spoken to who say to me, ‘Del, I know that vaccines are causing autism, but I won’t say it on camera because the pharmaceutical industry will destroy my career just like they did to Andy Wakefield.'”  — Del Bigtree, Producer of “Vaxxed: From Cover-up to Catastrophe”

“…our current results are consistent with the existing evidence on the toxicology and pharmacokinetics of Aluminum adjuvants which altogether strongly implicate these compounds as contributors to the rising prevalence of neurobehavioral disorders in children. Given that autism has devastating consequences in a life of a child, and that currently in the developed world over 1% of children suffer from some form of Autism Spectrum Disorder, it would seem wise to make efforts towards reducing infant exposure to aluminum from vaccines.“ — C A Shaw, PhD

“There is a serious problem with vaccine safety. Vaccine aluminum adjuvant has adverse neurological effects, at dosages that are recommended by the US CDC. Vaccine critics are supported by the science. Parents refusing to vaccinate according to the recommended CDC schedule are supported by the science. Use aluminum-containing vaccines with great caution, or not at all.” – C. A. Shaw, PhD http://vaccinepapers.org/category/aluminum/

“Aluminum is an experimentally demonstrated neurotoxin and the most commonly used vaccine adjuvant…research clearly shows that aluminum adjuvants have a potential to induce serious immunological disorders in humans. In particular, aluminum in adjuvant form carries a risk for autoimmunity, long-term brain inflammation and associated neurological complications and may thus have profound and widespread adverse health consequences.” — From Tomljenovic and Shaw’s journal article “Aluminum Vaccine Adjuvants: Are They Safe?”

***

Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia (POTS) with Chronic Fatigue After HPV Vaccination as Part of the “ASIA Syndrome”

Tomljenovic L, Colafrancesco S, Perricone C, and Shoenfeld Y

Abstract

We report the case of a 14-year-old girl who developed postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS) with chronic fatigue 2 months following Gardasil vaccination. The patient suffered from persistent headaches, dizziness, recurrent syncope, poor motor coordination, weakness, fatigue, myalgias, numbness, tachycardia, dyspnea, visual disturbances, phonophobia, cognitive impairment, insomnia, gastrointestinal disturbances, and a weight loss of 20 pounds.

The psychiatric evaluation ruled out the possibility that her symptoms were psychogenic or related to anxiety disorders. Furthermore, the patient tested positive for ANA (1:1280), lupus anticoagulant, and antiphospholipid.

On clinical examination she presented livedo reticularis and was diagnosed with Raynaud’s syndrome. This case fulfills the criteria for the autoimmune/auto-inflammatory syndrome induced by adjuvants (ASIA).

Because human papillomavirus vaccination is universally recommended to teenagers and because POTS frequently results in long-term disabilities (as was the case in our patient), a thorough follow-up of patients who present with relevant complaints after vaccination is strongly recommended.

***

Autoimmune/inflammatory syndrome induced by adjuvants (Shoenfeld’s syndrome): clinical and immunological spectrum

Shoenfeld, Y. et al

Abstract

An adjuvant is a substance that enhances the antigen-specific immune response, induces the release of inflammatory cytokines…The immunological consequence of these actions is to stimulate the innate and adaptive immune response. The activation of the immune system by adjuvants, a desirable effect, could trigger manifestations of autoimmunity or autoimmune disease. Recently, a new syndrome was introduced, autoimmune/inflammatory syndrome induced by adjuvants (ASIA), that includes postvaccination phenomena, macrophagic myofasciitis, Gulf War syndrome and siliconosis. This syndrome is characterized by nonspecific and specific manifestations of autoimmune disease. The main substances associated with ASIA are squalene (Gulf War syndrome), aluminum hydroxide (postvaccination phenomena, macrophagic myofasciitis) and silicone with siliconosis.

***

Long-term persistence of vaccine-derived aluminum hydroxide is associated with chronic cognitive dysfunction^,

Gherardi RK, et al

Abstract

Macrophagic myofasciitis (MMF) is an emerging condition, characterized by specific muscle lesions assessing long-term persistence of aluminum hydroxide within macrophages at the site of previous immunization. Affected patients mainly complain of arthromyalgias, chronic fatigue, and cognitive difficulties. We designed a comprehensive battery of neuropsychological tests to prospectively delineate MMF-associated cognitive dysfunction (MACD).

Compared to control patients with arthritis and chronic pain, MMF patients had pronounced and specific cognitive impairment. MACD mainly affected (i) both visual and verbal memory; (ii) executive functions, including attention, working memory, and planning; and (iii) left ear extinction at dichotic listening test. Cognitive deficits did not correlate with pain, fatigue, depression, or disease duration. Pathophysiological mechanisms underlying MACD remain to be determined.

In conclusion, long-term persistence of vaccine-derived aluminum hydroxide within the body assessed by MMF is associated with cognitive dysfunction, not solely due to chronic pain, fatigue and depression.

***

A role for the body burden of aluminium in vaccine-associated macrophagic myofasciitis (MMF) and chronic fatigue syndrome

Exley C, Gherardi RK, et al

Abstract

Macrophagic myofasciitis and chronic fatigue syndrome are severely disabling conditions which may be caused by adverse reactions to aluminium-containing adjuvants in vaccines. While a little is known of disease aetiology both conditions are characterised by an aberrant immune response, have a number of prominent symptoms in common and are coincident in many individuals. Herein, we have described a case of vaccine-associated chronic fatigue syndrome and macrophagic myofasciitis (MMF) in an individual demonstrating aluminium overload. This is the first report linking the latter with either of these two conditions and the possibility is considered that the coincident aluminium overload contributed significantly to the severity of these conditions in this individual. This case has highlighted potential dangers associated with aluminium-containing adjuvants and we have elucidated a possible mechanism whereby vaccination involving aluminium-containing adjuvants could trigger the cascade of immunological events which are associated with autoimmune conditions including chronic fatigue syndrome and macrophagic myofasciitis.

***

Dr Kohls is a retired physician from Duluth, MN, USA. In the decade prior to his retirement, he practiced what could best be described as “holistic (non-drug) and preventive mental health care”. Since his retirement, he has written a weekly column for the Duluth Reader, an alternative newsweekly magazine. His columns mostly deal with the dangers of American imperialism, friendly fascism, corporatism, militarism, racism, and the dangers of Big Pharma, psychiatric drugging, the over-vaccinating of children and other movements that threaten American democracy, civility, health and longevity and the future of the planet. 

Alleged Mutation of the H1N1 virus, then in 2009 and now in 2020-2021 with the SARS-2-CoV virus. 

This article was first published on September 29, 2009.

***

The World Health Organization, the UN agency (ir-)responsible for declaring a Phase 6 “PANDEMIC” global alert over what it calls H1N1 Influenza A or Swine Flu, whose chief Dr Margaret Chan has repeatedly warned that while Swine Flu to date had been rather mild, that the emergency declaration was necessary because it “could mutate” aggressively into a deadly pandemic killing millions, now admits well into the flu season in the Northern Hemisphere that H1N1 has apparently not mutated. 

Margaret Chan, the head of the World Health Organization, at a meeting with health officials in her native Hong Kong, has just stated that the swine flu virus has not yet mutated into a more deadly strain. WHO Director of the Initiative for Vaccine Research, Dr Marie-Paule Kieny, reinforced that statement in a press conference September 24 in Geneva when she stated, “we are lucky that the pandemic is moderate in severity that most people experience a mild illness and recover spontaneously.”  That means recovery with no vaccination, no Tamiflu or other dangerous ”antiviral” drugs. Just with letting nature take its course.

Last summer, when the WHO decided to declare a global “pandemic emergency” over what it called the H1N1 Influenza A global spread, it also announced in a notice buried among its press releases that most countries had stopped testing ill populations for H1N1, and that the WHO therefore simply arbitrarily “assumed” all patients with a stated set of symptoms were automatically H1N1 victims. So the H1N1 pandemic case counts, to quote the WHO, “no longer reflect actual disease activity.”

The symptoms the WHO listed as indication that a patient has H1N1? A fever, cough, sore throat, headache… in short, all the symptoms of a common cold. The pandemic declaration by the agency entrusted by the UN with monitoring and guarding the world’s health came anyway, on recommendation of the WHO’s “experts,” the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts, or SAGE.

However, even though the WHO admits it is not testing patients for H1N1 around the world, they also state that the H1N1 “pandemic virus” is becoming more common than the common seasonal flu virus. A simple question in the interest of accuracy: How in hell’s blazes do they know that if they stopped testing around the world? Gut feeling? WHO’s “intuition” that everyone who has a fever, cough, headache and or sore throat around the world automatically must have H1N1?  The alarming aspect of this entire charade is that it will likely have severe health consequences for millions or tens of millions of some three billion people around the world targeted to get injections of largely untested so-called H1N1 Swine Flu vaccines.

Vaccines for South nations?

Equally bizarre is the fact that in her latest comments, the WHO’s Chan seemed preoccupied with how to get vaccines to poorer countries mainly in the Southern Hemisphere. Yet the same WHO Strategic Advisory Group of Experts, SAGE, states on the WHO official website that H1N1 does not pose a major risk to the Southern Hemisphere.

The number of swine flu cases is now expected to rise as the Northern Hemisphere moves into winter, WHO Director-General Margaret Chan says. But she claims that the biggest challenge in combatting the pandemic would be ensuring enough vaccines got to the world’s poorest countries. Three billion doses could be produced worldwide annually, enough to cover almost half the world’s population, Chan said.

The WHO is working to raise a billion dollars to help buy vaccines for developing countries that cannot produce them themselves. The United States and several other countries have stated they plan to make 10 percent of their vaccine supply available to others in need. The vehicle to raise funds for the apparently not-threatened countries of the south is a public-private partnership of the WHO established in 2000, called GAVI.

Tricks with WHO death data

Another little known fact about the WHO pandemic operation which gives their dire warnings about H1N1 the necessary gravitas to scare the dickens out of pregnant women, parents and just about anybody, are the death statistics constantly cited when data on purported H1N1 cases are mentioned. As of the last report at end September 2009 the WHO claimed 3917 deaths due to H1N1 Influenza A or Swine Flu.

In most cases, even the WHO and the Atlanta US Government’s CDC has been forced to admit, deaths were in patients who already had some severe respiratory disorder or grave illness when they contracted what was named H1N1 Influenza A. They never to date have offered the slightest proof that it was not those grave prior illnesses which caused death and that the flu symptoms were merely a coincident event, what epidemiologists term an “opportunistic infection.”

But it gets even more interesting. The WHO, it turns out, lumps its statistics for flu deaths together with those from pneumonia, a completely separate and far more common illness and a far larger cause of death, in a disease classification it calls “Influenza and Pneumonia (J09-J18).”

So in 2007 the WHO recorded 21883 deaths attributed to “flu and pneumonia” without dividing each as to direct cause. But of those WHO classifications, flu itself only goes for symptoms in categories J09-J11. The entire rest of the categories deal with pneumonia and related lung infectious manifestations. Yet far and away the largest group of deaths from infectious diseases comes from pneumonia, not from influenza. The number of certified deaths from “influenza virus”, with or without pneumonia complications was a far less alarming 14 persons in 2007. This clever trick allows pharmaceutical manufacturers like GlaxoSmithKline or Baxter Labs to promote their “flu” vaccines.

If we are dealing with an illness whose symptoms in the vast majority of cases are mild and disappear from itself with no medication after five or more days, and whose mortality rate is at worst infinitesimally small, there would be no need for panic, no need to line up in queues to get jabbed with untested vaccines whose contents including various adjuvants like aluminum hydroxide and nanoparticles are potentially nerve crippling or even death-causing. But then that would not be “good” for Bill Gates, David Rockefeller and other members of the Good Club, would it?

F. William Engdahl, author of Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order.

F. William Engdahl is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization

In a December 9, 2020, Twitter thread,¹ Michael P. Senger, an attorney and author of the September 2020 article,² “China’s Global Lockdown Propaganda Campaign,” reviewed the largely hidden impacts of global lockdowns. Ivor Cummins’ video also reviews data showing just how “hugely ineffective” lockdowns have been.

As one would expect, shutting down businesses for extended periods of time leads to businesses going under for impaired cash flow from lack of revenue. Back in August 2020, Bloomberg reported³ that more than half of all small business owners feared their businesses wouldn’t survive. They were right.

According to a September 2020 economic impact report⁴ by Yelp, 163,735 U.S. businesses had closed their doors as of August 31, 2020, and of those, 60% — a total of 97,966 businesses — were permanent closures.⁵ As noted by Senger:⁶

“That ’leaders’ across the world transformed into tyrants, believing they had a right to bankrupt their subjects, is the core evil of lockdown.”

The Greatest Wealth Transfer in History

How does shutting small businesses but allowing big box stores to stay open protect public health? There’s really no rhyme or reason for such a decision, other than to shift wealth away from small, private business owners to multinational corporations.

While working-class Americans have been forced to file for unemployment by the tens of millions, the top five richest people in the U.S. increased their wealth by 26% between March 18 and June 17, 2020.⁷ Since the beginning of the pandemic, the collective wealth of 651 billionaires in the U.S. rose by more than 36% ($1 trillion).⁸ The assets of these 651 billionaires is now nearly double that of the combined wealth of the least wealthy 165 million Americans.

As noted by Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness, “Never before has America seen such an accumulation of wealth in so few hands.”⁹

Far from being the great equalizer, COVID-19 is the greatest wealth transfer scheme in the history of the world. Indeed, you may as well call it what it is: grand-scale asset theft from the poor and middle class. A December 14, 2020, article¹⁰ in The Defender reviews who has benefited from pandemic measures the most, from the finance and tech industries to the pharmaceutical and military-intelligence sectors.

Minority-Owned Businesses Have Taken Biggest Hit

According to an August 10, 2020, article¹¹ by Forbes, pandemic measures had eliminated nearly half of all Black-owned small businesses in the U.S. by the end of April 2020. It cites data from a New York Fed report,¹² which found that “Black-owned businesses were more than twice as likely to shutter as their white counterparts.”

While nationally representative data on small businesses showed active business ownership dropped 22% between February and April 2020, the number of businesses owned by Blacks dropped by 41%. The decline in Latin-owned businesses was 32%; Asian-owned 26%; and White-owned 17%. According to Forbes:¹³

“At the same time, Black-owned firms, already smarting from a Great Recession that hurt them badly, already entered the crisis with ‘weaker cash positions, weaker bank relationships, and preexisting funding gaps.’ ‘Even the healthiest Black firms were financially disadvantaged at the onset of COVID-19,’ said the report.”

Mere weeks into the pandemic, Americans were lining up at food banks. An April 12, 2020, article¹⁴in The New York Times showed miles-long lines in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Miami, Florida and elsewhere:

“In many cities, lines outside food pantries have become glaring symbols of financial precarity, showing how quickly the pandemic has devastated working people’s finances.

In San Antonio, 10,000 families began arriving before dawn on Thursday at a now-shuttered swap meet hall to receive boxes of food. Normally, 200 to 400 families might show up during a normal food distribution.

‘It’s a wave of need,’ said Eric Cooper, president of the San Antonio Food Bank. ‘They were all let go. There’s no savings. There’s no slack in their household budget. The money’s run out. It just shows how desperate people are.’”

The situation is much the same in other countries. An April 10, 2020, report¹⁵ by the Financial Times cited survey results showing an estimated 3 million Britons had gone without food at some point in the previous three weeks. An estimated 1 million people had by then already lost all sources of income.

Anna Taylor, executive director for the Food Foundation in the U.K., told the Financial Times there’s a “food poverty problem that has not been dealt with” that is now becoming glaringly apparent — and that was mere weeks into the pandemic. We’re now nine months down the line, and governments around the world are again calling for lockdowns over the winter holidays.

Mental Health Slides as Despair Grows

That forcing people into poverty will have a detrimental effect on their mental health is also not surprising. A Canadian survey¹⁶ in early October 2020 found 22% of Canadians experienced high anxiety levels — four times higher than the prepandemic rate — and 13% reported severe depression.

In the U.S., an August 2020 survey^17,18 by the American Psychological Association found Gen-Z’ers are among the hardest hit in this regard, with young adults aged 18 to 23 reporting the highest levels of stress and depression.

More than 7 out of 10 in this age group reported symptoms of depression in the two weeks before the survey. Among teens aged 13 to 17, 51% said the pandemic makes it impossible to plan for the future. Sixty-seven percent of college-aged respondents echoed this concern.

With despair comes drug-related problems, and according to the American Medical Association, the drug overdose epidemic has significantly worsened and become more complicated this year. “More than 40 states have reported increases in opioid-related mortality as well as ongoing concerns for those with a mental illness or substance use disorder,” the AMA reported in an Issue Brief¹⁹ updated December 9, 2020.

A list of national news included in the AMA’s brief²⁰ include reports of increases in overdose-related cardiac arrests, surges in street fentanyl leading to deaths in the thousands and a “dramatic increase” in illicit opioid fatalities. Spikes and record numbers of overdose deaths have been reported in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware, District of Columbia, Illinois, Florida and many other states.

Young Adults Dying in Greater Than Normal Numbers

That pandemic measures are doing more harm than good can also be seen in Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data^21,22 showing that, compared to previous years, excess deaths among 25- to 44-year-olds has increased by a remarkable 26.5%, even though this age group accounts for fewer than 3% of COVID-19-related deaths.

To put it bluntly, in our misguided efforts to prevent the elderly and immune compromised from dying from COVID-19, we’re sacrificing people who are in the prime of their lives. As noted by Senger:²³

“Per CDC, despite mass PCR testing and disproportionate false positives, at least 100,947 excess deaths in 2020 were not even linked to COVID-19 AT ALL. In other words, over 100,000 Americans were murdered this year by their OWN GOVERNMENT.”

Lockdowns Dramatically Increase Domestic Abuse

Rising despair is also reflected in statistics showing dramatic increases in domestic abuse, rape, child sex abuse and suicides. By July 2020, Ireland reported a 98% increase in people seeking counseling for rape and child sex abuse.²⁴

Data from the British group Women’s Aid showed 61% of domestic abuse victims reported abuse had worsened during the lockdown.²⁵ The number of women killed by their domestic partners also doubled during the first three weeks of lockdowns in the U.K.²⁶

In the U.S., data²⁷ from a Massachusetts hospital revealed a dramatic jump in patients seeking emergency care after being battered by their domestic partner in the nine weeks between March 11 and May 3, 2020, when the state had ordered schools closed.

During this time, 26 patients were treated for domestic abuse injuries that included strangulation, stabbing, burns and gunshot wounds. That’s just one shy of the number of cases seen in the same time period during 2018 and 2019 combined. In other words, domestic abuse cases were nearly double the annual norm for that hospital.

In early April 2020, United Nations secretary-general Antonio Guterres warned²⁸ of a “horrifying” surge in global domestic abuse linked to pandemic lockdowns as calls to helplines in some countries had by then already doubled.²⁹ The number of people looking into divorce in the U.S. was also 34% higher in March through June 2020 compared to the same time frame in 2019.³⁰

Children Brought to Suffer in Countless Ways

Child abuse, meanwhile, is less likely to be detected and reported thanks to virtual schooling. As noted by Human Rights Watch:³¹

“More than 1.5 billion students are out of school. Widespread job and income loss and economic insecurity among families are likely to increase rates of child labor, sexual exploitation, teenage pregnancy, and child marriage.

Stresses on families, particularly those living under quarantines and lockdowns, are increasing the incidence of domestic violence … ‘The risks posed by the COVID-19 crisis to children are enormous,’ said Jo Becker, children’s rights advocacy director at Human Rights Watch …

Child abuse is less likely to be detected during the COVID-19 crisis, as child protection agencies have reduced monitoring to avoid spreading the virus, and teachers are less able to detect signs of ill treatment with schools closed.”

There are signs of rising child abuse though, including a British study³² that found a shocking 1,493% rise in the incidence of abusive head trauma among children during the first month of the lockdown, compared to the same time period in the previous three years.

Children are also in danger of falling behind socially and developmentally, even if they’re not exposed to direct abuse. In November 2020, The Guardian reported that many children are regressing mentally and physically as a result of the lockdowns.³³

The Washington Post reported³⁴ scholastic achievement gaps have widened in the U.S. and early literacy among kindergarteners has seen a sharp decline this year.

According to The Economist,³⁵ American children over the age of 10 cut physical activity by half during the lockdown, spending most of their time playing video games and eating junk food. Indeed, closing parks and beaches right along with small businesses and schools was undoubtedly among the most ignorant and destructive pandemic measures of all.

Suicide Epidemic

Preventing healthy people from working and upending everyone’s lives has also (as expected) resulted in a massive rise in suicide, and abnormal spikes became apparent within weeks of the initial lockdowns.

As noted by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in “How the Government Uses Fear to Control,” research from the 1980s found that for every 1-point rise in unemployment there were 37,000 excess deaths, 4,000 excess imprisonments and 3,300 excess admissions into mental institutions. Kennedy also cites recent data from a hospital in San Francisco that stated they saw one year’s-worth of suicides in a single month, a 1,200% increase.

In September 2020, Cook Children’s Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas, admitted a record number of 37 pediatric patients who had tried to commit suicide. Dr. Kia Carter, medical director of Psychiatry at Cook Children’s told CBS:³⁶

“September of 2020 has been the highest month ever that we’ve seen suicidal patients admitted to our medical center … Suicide has become the second leading cause of death for kids and adolescents in the last year, versus two years ago when it was the third leading cause of death.”

In Japan — which didn’t even implement lockdowns — government statistics reveal more people died from suicide in the month of October than have died from COVID-19 all year.³⁷ While only 2,087 Japanese had died from COVID-19 as of November 27, 2020, the suicide toll in October alone was 2,153. Women make up the lion’s share of suicides, and hotlines are also reporting that women are confessing thoughts of killing their children out of sheer desperation.

Developing World Fares Even Worse

As horrible as all of these statistics are, they don’t even begin to compare to the tragedies taking place in developing nations. In India, millions of migrant workers were stranded early on in the pandemic without a way to make a living and unable to leave the cities due to lockdown orders.³⁸

Food lines stretched for miles in South Africa at the end of April 2020³⁹ and in Saudi Arabia, “hundreds if not thousands” of African migrants — mostly Ethiopian men — have been left to die from lack of food and water in COVID-19 detention centers after a moratorium on deportation was issued in April, according to an August 30, 2020, report by The Telegraph.⁴⁰

The United Nations estimates pandemic responses have “pushed an additional 150 million children into multidimensional poverty — deprived of education, health, housing, nutrition, sanitation or water,”⁴¹ and at the end of April 2020 warned the world was facing “famine of biblical proportions, with only a limited amount of time to act before starvation claims hundreds of millions of lives.”⁴²

“All this for a virus that caused no above-average mortality in countries without lockdowns — and which WHO estimates already infected 10% of people worldwide by October. In other words, all for absolutely nothing,” Senger writes.⁴³

Pandemics Highlight Pre-Existing Health Inequalities

Indeed, an ever-growing number of doctors, academics and scientists are now questioning the validity of using PCR tests to diagnose “cases,” the usefulness of face masks, the questionable classification of COVID-19 deaths, and the suppression of scientifically verified methods of prevention and treatment, as well as the safety and usefulness of COVID-19 vaccines.

There are clear problems in all of these areas, yet questions and logical thinking have been, and continue to be, met with harsh resistance and denial. Those leading the charge in terms of pandemic responses have not been shy about their censoring of counter-narratives, almost without exception.

When it comes to the disease itself, we now know certain comorbidities significantly raise your risk of complications and deaths. Among the top ones are obesity, insulin resistance and vitamin D deficiency.

While these conditions are exceptionally common overall, they’re particularly prevalent in Black and indigenous communities, and when combined with inadequate access to health care, these groups also end up being disproportionally affected by COVID-19.⁴⁴

COVID-19 Is a Class War

While the media and political and economic institutions claim the pandemic narrative is based on scientific consensus, this clearly isn’t the case. There’s no evidence supporting universal mask use, for example, and there’s even less scientific support for lockdowns — a strategy based on a high school project that won third place.⁴⁵

James Corbett of the Corbett Report discusses this shocking revelation in the video above. Now, as many small businesses are failing thanks to months-long shutdowns and employment opportunities look bleak, world leaders are suddenly joining the World Economic Forum in calling for a Great Reset of the economy.⁴⁶

This is hardly a random coincidence. This plan, which has been in the works for decades, will further empower and enrich wealthy, unelected powerbrokers while enslaving and impoverishing everyone else. The fact that the pandemic has been used to shift wealth from the poor and middle class to the ultra-wealthy is clear for anyone to see at this point. As noted by IPS News:⁴⁷

“The COVID pandemic has not been the ‘Great Equalizer’ as suggested by the likes of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and members of the World Economic Forum. Rather, it has exacerbated existing inequalities along gender, race and economic class divides across the world.⁴⁸”

The Global Restructuring

At this point, it should be obvious for anyone paying attention that the pandemic is being prolonged and exaggerated for a reason, and it’s not because there’s concern for life. Quite the contrary.

It’s a ploy to quite literally enslave the global population within a digital surveillance system⁴⁹ — a system so unnatural and inhumane that no rational population would ever voluntarily go down that road.

“The ‘Great Reset’ seeks to … expand corporate control of natural resources and state surveillance of individuals,” IPS News writes.⁵⁰ “In the post-pandemic ‘Great Reset,’ there would not be much life left outside the technological-corporate nexus dominated by monolithic agribusiness, pharmaceutical, communication, defense and other inter-connected corporations, and the governments and media serving them.

The proponents of the ‘Great Reset’⁵¹ envisage a Brave New World where, ‘You will own nothing. And you will be happy. Whatever you want, you will rent, and it will be delivered by drones.’

But it is more likely that this elite-led revolution will make the vast majority of humanity a powerless appendage of technology with little consciousness and meaning in their lives.”

It should also be clear that most if not all pandemic restrictions to freedom are meant to become permanent. In other words, these past nine months have been a preview of the world the technocratic elite wants to implement as part of the new social and economic order.

If this is the first time you’re hearing any of this, be sure to review “Who Pressed the Great Reset Button?” “The Pressing Dangers of Technocracy,” “The Global Takeover Is Underway” and “Coronavirus Fraud Scandal — The Biggest Fight Has Just Begun.”

Now’s the Time to Fight Back

It’s important to understand that now’s the time to fight back: to resist any and all unconstitutional edicts. Once the “new world order” is in place, you will no longer be able to do a thing about it.

Your life — your health, educational and work opportunities, your finances and your very identity — will be so meshed with the automated technological infrastructure that any attempt to break free will result in you being locked out or erased from the system, leaving you with no ability to learn, work, travel or engage in commerce.

It sounds far-fetched, I know, but when you follow the technocratic plan to its inevitable end, that’s basically what you end up with. The warning signs are all around us, if we’re willing to see them for what they actually are. The only question now is whether enough people are willing to resist it to make a difference.

Most important of all is the need to release the fear. It’s a fearful public that allows the technocratic elite to dictate the future and rip away our personal freedoms. It’s fear that allows tyranny to flourish. Really look at the data, so you can see for yourself that panic is unwarranted, and that the so-called “solutions” to the pandemic are in fact a path of total destruction.

This destruction — both moral and economic — is necessary for the Great Reset to occur. The technocratic elite need everything and everyone to fall apart in order to justify the implementation of their new system. Without this desperation, no one would agree to what they have planned.

For practical strategies on how you can respond in light of all the tyrannical interventions that have been imposed on us, check out James Corbett’s interview with Howard Lichtman below. I also recommend reading “Constitutional Sheriffs Are the Difference Between Freedom and Tyranny.”

Last but not least, now is also the time to take control of your own health. Make it a point to really take care of yourself. Remember, insulin resistance, obesity and vitamin D deficiency top the list of comorbidities that significantly raise your risk complications and death from COVID-19.

These are also underlying factors in a host of other chronic diseases, including mental health problems, so by addressing them, you’ll improve your chances of getting through this challenging time with your health and sanity intact. You can find tons of information about how to reverse all of these issues by searching my article archives.

*

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Notes

^{1, 6, 23, 43} Twitter Michael P. Senger December 9, 2020

² Tablet Mag September 15, 2020

³ Bloomberg August 11, 2020

^4, 5 CNBC September 16, 2020

⁷ Institute for Policy Studies June 18, 2020

^8, 9 Childrens Health Defense December 14, 2020

¹⁰ The Defender December 14, 202

^11, 13 Forbes August 10, 2020

¹² New York Fed August 2020

¹⁴ New York Times April 12, 2020 (Archived)

¹⁵ Financial Times April 10, 2020

¹⁶ Global News Canada October 10, 2020

¹⁷ APA Stress in America 2020

¹⁸ CNBC October 21, 2020

^19, 20 AMA Issue Brief Updated December 9, 2020

²¹ MMWR October 23, 2020; 69(42);1522–1527

²² Daily Wire October 22, 2020

²⁴ Irish Times July 20, 2020

^25, 30 CNBC October 30, 2020

²⁶ ITV.com April 27, 2020

²⁷ WebMD August 18, 2020

²⁸ UN April 6, 2020

²⁹ STV.tv July 1, 2020

³¹ HRW.org April 9, 2020

³² Archives of Disease in Childhood Published Online First: 02 July 2020. doi:10.1136/archdischild-2020-319872

³³ The Guardian November 9, 2020

³⁴ The Washington Post October 30, 2020

³⁵ The Economist July 19, 2020

³⁶ CBS October 27, 2020

³⁷ CNN November 30, 2020

³⁸ Wall Street Journal March 29, 2020 (Archived)

³⁹ Youtube April 30, 2020

⁴⁰ The Telegraph August 30, 2020

⁴¹ UN News September 17, 2020

⁴² The Guardian April 21, 2020

^44, 47, 50 IPS News December 1, 2020

⁴⁵ Townhall May 20, 2020

⁴⁶ Weforum.com June 24, 2020

⁴⁸ Psychology Today August 3, 2020

⁴⁹ World Economic Forum Digital Transformation July 2020 (PDF)

⁵¹ Global Research November 9, 2020

Featured image: Public domain image from Wiki’s COVID-Protest page.

Spain Plans a “Registry” for Those Who Refuse COVID Vaccine

By Zero Hedge, December 30, 2020

As Europe begins vaccinating the first wave of high-priority patients, a “glitch” has already emerged: many health-care workers and others have refused to take the vaccine, as skepticism and suspicion remain elevated.

Why Senators Must Reject Avril Haines Director of National Intelligence

By Medea Benjamin and Marcy Winograd, December 30, 2020

She is the affable assassin who, according to Newsweek, would be summoned in the middle of the night to decide if a citizen of any country, including our own, should be incinerated in a U.S. drone strike in a distant land in the greater Middle East.

The Peace Discourse that Disappeared: Go on with Passion and Detachment

By Jan Oberg, December 30, 2020

Look at and listen in to three spheres of contemporary Western society – politics, research and media: The word” peace” and related words, such as the UN Charter norm of” making peace by peaceful means”, nonviolence, negotiations – have disappeared.

Syrian Refugees Flee as Their Tents Are Torched in Lebanon

By Steven Sahiounie, December 30, 2020

On December 26, hundreds of Syrian refugees fled their refugee camp in the Miniyeh region near the coastal city of Tripoli in north Lebanon after their tents were burned when fighting broke out between local youths and camp residents.

Selling Weapons – The Most Corrupt Industry in the World

By Rod Driver, December 30, 2020

The US government has the highest military spending in the world, with approximately one-third of the world’s military expenditure. Britain consistently figures in the top 10.

The New Film “Seven”. Scientific Study of WTC Building 7

By Kevin Ryan, December 30, 2020

The study was led by structural engineering professor J. Leroy Hulsey and took nearly five years to complete. It evaluated the possibilities for destruction of WTC 7 using two versions of high-tech computer software that simulated the structural components of the building and the forces that acted upon it on September 11th.

The Julian Assange Pardon Drive

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, December 30, 2020

The odds are stacked against Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks publisher who faces the grimmest of prospects come January 4.  On that day, the unsympathetic judicial head of District Judge Vanessa Baraitser will reveal her decision on the Old Bailey proceedings that took place between September and October this year.

Economic Matters in Ukraine Are at Standstill

By Paul Antonopoulos, December 30, 2020

An exception to this “quiet” year was Kiev’s attempt to manufacture a humanitarian crisis by cutting off water supplies from the North Crimean Canal to the peninsula. This human rights violation was to the disinterest of the UN Human Rights Commission.

As World Sours on Coal, Top Producer Indonesia Tries to Sweeten It at Home

By Nithin Coca, December 30, 2020

With consumption, travel and commuting all suppressed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers from the Global Carbon Project calculate carbon dioxide emissions fell a record 7% in 2020.

Hearts Full of Scepticism, Farmers Agree for Talks with Centre on Dec 30

By Sabrangindia, December 30, 2020

Addressing local protests, the organisation hailed nearly 10,000 farmers who assembled in Patna on Tuesday in solidarity the farmers’ struggle. They decried the lathi-charge that took place. Similarly, they thanked the massive turnout witnessed at Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu.

Notre site Web en français, mondialisation.ca

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Nuestro sitio web en español, globalizacion.ca

According to the WHO, seasonal flu/influenza practically disappeared this year in the southern hemisphere.

“In tropical South America, there were no influenza detections…”

“Globally… influenza activity remained at lower levels than expected for this time of the year.”

Lower means flu practically didn’t show up this year like always before.

Where have all the flu outbreaks gone? See below.

Separately, the WHO claimed that “various hygiene (including mask wearing) and physical distancing measures…likely played a role in reducing influenza virus transmission.”

Mask-wearing is ineffective and potentially harmful to health.

Masks are porous. They have to be. Otherwise wearers would suffocate.

Aerosol spores are minuscule. Able to penetrate all masks and concentrate beneath them risks greater harm to wearers than avoiding their use.

Everything ordered or recommended this year for protection did infinitely more harm than good — notably from lost jobs and income during lockdowns and quarantines.

The CDC casually said “(s)easonal influenza activity in the United States remains lower than usual for this time of year.”

It practically disappeared — or did it?

Covid is “seasonal influenza” in disguise — in the US and worldwide.

In its latest weekly reporting period pre-yearend, the CDC said:

“The percentage of respiratory specimens testing positive for influenza at clinical laboratories is” one-10th of 1%.

It’s practically nonexistent.

For the three-month period in the US ending in late December, findings were vitually the same.

There’s almost no seasonal influenza showing up this year because their outbreaks are called covid.

Overall worldwide, seasonal influenza is around 98% lower this year than in earlier flu seasons.

WHO spokesperson Dr. Sylvie Briand recently claimed that “literally there was nearly no flu in the Southern Hemisphere” in 2020, adding:

“We hope that the situation will be the same in the Northern Hemisphere” at end of this flu season.

If the current trend continues as is highly likely, the incidence of seasonal influenza will be minuscule compared to previous years in northern and southern hemispheres.

At the same time in the US nationwide and worldwide, high numbers of covid are reported.

If accurately identified, they’d be called influenza that shows up annually in the US and abroad like clockwork.

It’s unaccompanied by fear-mongering mass hysteria, lockdowns, quarantines, mask-wearing, social distancing, and most important:

No economic collapse occurs that caused the Greatest Main Street Depression in US history this year that’s likely to be protracted to maintain social control and continue transferring unprecedented amounts of wealth from ordinary people to the wealthy.

They’re enjoying a bonanza of riches from what’s going on at the expense of most others.

On December 15, Nature.com noted that “(m)easures meant to tame the coronavirus pandemic are quashing influenza and most other respiratory diseases” — calling what’s going on the “influenza fizzle.”

Claiming “lockdowns stopped flu in its tracks, (outbreaks) plummet(ting) by 98% in the United States” ignored that what’s called covid is seasonal influenza.

The great 2020 disappearing flu passes largely under the mass media’s radar.

Media proliferated mass deception and power of repetition get most people to believe that what’s harmful to health and well-being is beneficial.

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/

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization 

On the morning of December 30th, warplanes of the Israeli Air Force once again carried out strikes on alleged Iranian targets in the countryside of Damascus. According to reports one person was killed and 3 others injured in the attack.

Earlier, an unidentified, unmanned aerial vehicle struck several oil tanks near the village of al-Hamran, which is located north of the town of Manbij in northern Syria. The village is situated on the contact line between territories controlled by Turkish-backed forces and the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

According to local sources, the oil tankers belonged to SDF-linked oil smugglers, who were selling oil looted from the US-controlled oil fields on the eastern bank of the Euphrates to Turkish-linked entities. This oil smuggling business sheds light on the real face of the Kurdish SDF leadership, which likes to make loud statements about its alleged patriotism and its plans to expel the Turkish Army from northern Syria.

In Idlib, three Russian service members received minor injuries as a result of an ATGM strike on their armoured vehicle, the Russian Defense Ministry reported on December 29. The report said that an armored personnel carrier of the Russian Military Police came under attack from the territory controlled by Turkish-backed militants. Russian forces, in cooperation with the Turkish military and Syrian security forces, are looking for those involved.

These developments came as the Turkish Armed Forces were working to evacuate their observation point near the town of Tell Touqan. This was one of their last remaining points within the territories, which have been liberated by the Syrian Army.

Over the past months, Turkey has withdrawn a group of its posts, which had been besieged by Syrian troops. In light of this, the recent increase in attacks by Turkish proxies along the contact line may be a part of the Turkish game aimed at demonstrating that any decrease of the Turkish military presence in Greater Idlib would lead to the deterioration of the security situation there.

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Since COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, families have been separated, businesses have been shuttered and schools have been closed down. Many people are living their lives shrouded in fear of Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 — a direct response to media coverage and health officials’ claims of its dire associated risks.

Understanding the real risks, and being able to make choices on how to live your life in response to them, is only possible, however, if you have real facts, like how many have died from the virus and what the death rate actually is. Is it a lethal virus that warrants lockdowns and panic, or is it one more akin to influenza, which can indeed be deadly but, in most cases, is not?

Early on during the pandemic, COVID-19 infection mortality rate claims varied from 2.7% to 7%, with most being in the 4% range. But according to some experts, the actual infection mortality rate may be much lower, ranging from 0.05% to 1%, with a median of about 0.25%.¹

The number of COVID-19 deaths may also be skewed, as health officials may count deaths from unrelated causes — even gunshots and motorcycle accidents — as COVID-19 deaths if the person had the virus within the last 30 days.²

Are COVID-19 Deaths Being Inflated?

In Grand County, Colorado, five COVID-19 deaths were reported, but according to coroner Brenda Bock, two of them were actually deaths from gunshot wounds. Speaking to CBS4 News, Bock spoke out against the misleading classifications, as the deaths from gunshot wounds were counted as COVID-19 deaths because the victims had tested positive within 30 days.

The distinction comes down to some tricky working: deaths “among” COVID-19 cases and deaths “due to” COVID-19. Someone who died with COVID-19 may be counted as a death among COVID-19 cases, even if the virus had nothing to do with their death. When a death is said to be “due to” COVID-19, this is intended when COVID-19 caused or significantly contributed to the death.

According to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, even deaths among COVID-19 cases must be reported to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC):

“This information is required by the CDC and is crucial for public health surveillance, as it provides more information about disease transmission and can help identify risk factors among all deaths across populations.”³

But according to Bock, the inflated numbers could hurt the region’s economy, which is largely dependent on tourism:

“It’s absurd that they would even put that on there. Would you want to go to a county that has really high death numbers? Would you want to go visit that county because they are contagious? You know I might get it, and I could die if all of a sudden one county has a high death count. We don’t have it, and we don’t need those numbers inflated.”⁴

Washington state was also accused of inflating COVID-19 deaths, by up to 13%. According to the Freedom Foundation, the state’s Department of Health was counting every death in a person who had previously tested positive for COVID-19 as related to the virus.

While the governor denied the inflation, internal emails revealed in May 2020 that the Department of Health (DOH) was, in fact, counting deaths in their official COVID death numbers that weren’t directly due to the virus.⁵

By December 2020, Washington’s DOH had responded by subtracting more than 200 deaths from its COVID-19 fatality count after “methodological improvements.” However, a Freedom Foundation analysis suggests their fatality counts are still too high. And if this is going on in Washington, it’s likely happening in other states and countries as well.

According to the analysis, some of the questionable examples of the DOH’s “COVID-19 deaths” include the following:⁶

Motorcycle Death Initially Counted as COVID-19 Death

Another misleading instance occurred in Orlando, Florida, where a man in his 20s who died in a motorcycle accident was initially counted as a COVID-19 death because he had tested positive. In a significant stretch, Orange County health officer Dr. Raul Pino told FOX 35 News, “[Yo]u could actually argue that it could have been the COVID-19 that caused him to crash.”⁷

That death was reportedly removed from the official count, but how many others weren’t? In April 2020, Dr. Ngozi Ezike, director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, also detailed the loose case definition being used for COVID-19 deaths:

“If you were in hospice and had already been given a few weeks to live, and then you also were found to have COVID, that would be counted as a COVID death. It means technically even if you died of a clear alternate cause, but you had COVID at the same time, it’s still listed as a COVID death.

So, everyone who’s listed as a COVID death doesn’t mean that that was the cause of the death, but they had COVID at the time of the death.”⁸

Are Total Deaths in 2020 Excessive?

Michael Yeadon, Ph.D., a former vice-president and chief scientific adviser of the drug company Pfizer and founder and CEO of the biotech company Ziarco, now owned by Novartis, said in an interview, “You cannot have a lethal pandemic stalking the land and not have excess deaths.” Yet, excess deaths on the level of a lethal pandemic just aren’t occurring.

About 1,700 people die each day in the U.K. in any given year, Yeadon says — but many of these deaths are now falsely attributed to COVID-19. “I’m calling out the statistics, and even the claim that there is an ongoing pandemic, as false,” he said, noting that the definition of a “coronavirus death” in the U.K. is anyone who dies, from any cause, within 28 days of a positive COVID-19 test.

In the U.S., it’s a similar story. As of December 22, 2020, the provisional total death count from all causes, according to the CDC, is 2,835,533.⁹ For comparison, the total number of deaths from all causes in 2018 was 2,839,205¹⁰ while in 2019 it was 2,854,838.¹¹

Some estimates suggested that 2020 deaths may top 3.2 million when all the final figures are added up,¹² but how many of those deaths are directly attributable to COVID-19?

According to Yeadon, some of the slight uptick in deaths being presorted in the U.K. — primarily people aged 45 to 65, with equal distribution between the sexes — are mainly from heart disease, stroke and cancer, which suggests they are excess deaths caused by inaccessibility of routine medical care as people are either afraid of or discouraged from going to the hospital.

These deaths may be characterized as being COVID related, but that’s only because they have been falsely lumped into that category due to a positive test being recorded within 28 days of death. In the U.S., other deaths have also increased, including, according to Robert Anderson of the CDC, “an unexpected number of deaths from certain types of heart and circulatory diseases, diabetes and dementia.”¹³

Drug overdose deaths are also at record numbers. According to the AP, in late December 2020, “the CDC reported more than 81,000 drug overdose deaths in the 12 months ending in May, making it the highest number ever recorded in a one-year period.”¹⁴

Flu Deaths Disappear

Another curiosity in 2020 is what happened to the flu. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) tracks influenza (flu) and pneumonia deaths weekly through the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) Mortality Reporting System. But, “April 4, 2020 was the last week in-season preliminary burden estimates were provided,” the CDC wrote on its 2019-2020 U.S. flu season webpage.¹⁵

The reason the estimates stopped in April is because flu cases plummeted so low that they’re hardly worth tracking. In an update posted December 3, 2020, the CDC stated:

“The model used to generate influenza in-season preliminary burden estimates uses current season flu hospitalization data. Reported flu hospitalizations are too low at this time to generate an estimate.”¹⁶

They also added, “The number of hospitalizations estimated so far this season is lower than end-of-season total hospitalization estimates for any season since CDC began making these estimates.”¹⁷ Meanwhile, the “COVID” deaths the CDC has been reporting are actually a combination of pneumonia, flu and COVID deaths, under a new category listed as “PIC” (Pneumonia, Influenza, COVID).

Their COVIDView webpage, which provides a weekly surveillance summary of U.S. COVID-19 activity, states that levels of SARS-CoV-2 and “associated illnesses” have been increasing since September 2020, while the percentage of deaths due to pneumonia, flu and COVID-19 has been on the rise since October.¹⁸

As noted by professor William M. Briggs, a statistical consultant and policy advisor at The Heartland Institute, a free-market think tank, “CDC, up until about July 2020, counted flu and pneumonia deaths separately, been doing this forever, then just mysteriously stopped … It’s become very difficult to tell the difference between these,”¹⁹ referring to the combined tracking of deaths from “PIC.”

Selection Bias and Problems With Testing

Dr. Reid Sheftall has also suggested that COVID-19 fatality rates may be inflated, by about 40 times. In an interview with Ivor Cummins, a biochemical engineer with a background in medical device engineering,²⁰ he said selection bias was being used in the counting of cases, and organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and CDC were drastically undercounting the number of people who were infected, which inflated the mortality rate.

Sheftall looked for data in which every case had been counted, ending up with a cruise ship, in which every person had been tested, and a small town in Germany that had also tested all residents. “When I crunched the numbers, the infection fatality rate came out to 0.14%, so I knew … there were some gross errors going on.” Sheftall cited COVID-19 survival rates by age, posted by the CDC September 10, 2020, which are as follows:²¹

• Ages 0 to 19: 99.997%
• Ages 20 to 49: 99.98%
• Ages 50 to 69: 99.5%
• Ages 70 and up: 94.6%

This translates into a 0.1% infection fatality rate, using the CDC’s own numbers. More than 224.5 million COVID-19 tests have been conducted in the U.S,²² which includes an unknown number of tests conducted on people with no symptoms.

The costs for such testing could be used for a more productive purpose, according to Sheftall, particularly for asymptomatic people. “The whole basis of medicine,” he says, is to test people with symptoms so you can find out what’s wrong and treat them accordingly:

“In 2017 to 2018 … between 70 and 80 million people in America got the flu … nobody noticed for the most part and no one was tested. I’m a doctor and I vaguely remember that it was a bad flu season. That was it. And yet with COVID we’re testing so many people you wouldn’t believe it.”²³

What’s more, positive reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests have proven remarkably unreliable with high false result rates, and a positive test does not mean that an active infection is present.

Fear May Be Causing More Deaths

Taken together, what’s clear about the COVID-19 fatality rates being reported is that there’s a lot of room for error and misinterpretation. Solid analysis of any “excess” deaths being attributed to COVID-19 are needed before policy decisions are made. When this was done in England in October 2020, deaths were only 1% higher than expected, and many of them were due to heart disease, stroke and diabetes.

“Notably” fewer deaths due to respiratory conditions and acute respiratory infections were found, yet deaths occurring in homes due to non-COVID-causes increased. This may be another sad outcome of the fear being propagated in relation to COVID-19. According to the study,

“The data suggest that mortality has shifted from hospital to home, especially for deaths not associated with COVID-19. This ‘displacement’ may be due to the reluctance of individuals to receive treatment in hospital or of clinicians to admit non-covid patients … Deaths in the home remain persistently high, and yet they receive little attention.”²⁴

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Notes

¹ Greek Reporter June 27, 2020

² ZeroHedge December 17, 2020

³ Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment September 28, 2020

⁴ CBS Local December 14, 2020

⁵ Freedom Foundation August 18, 2020

⁶ Freedom Foundation December 16, 2020

⁷ FOX 35 Orlando July 16, 2020

⁸ Week April 20, 2020

⁹ U.S. CDC, Provisional Death Counts for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)

¹⁰ U.S. CDC, Deaths and Mortality

^{11, 12, 13, 14} AP December 21, 2020

^15, 16, 17 U.S. CDC, 2019-2020 U.S. Flu Season: Preliminary In-Season Burden Estimates

¹⁸ COVIDView December 11, 2020

¹⁹ YouTube, Discernable November 24, 2020, The Flu Has Disappeared!

^20, 21, 23 The Fat Emperor, Podcast, December 11, 2020

²² COVIDTracking.com December 17, 2020

²⁴ The Center for Evidence-Based Medicine October 23, 2020

Featured image is from OffGuardian

For decades US-based Boeing and European aerospace giant, Airbus, have dominated global civilian aviation in what many in the industry describe as a duopoly. But as is the case in so many other industries as of late, China’s economic and technological rise has raised questions about the future of this duopoly.

COMAC is working to position itself to meet this demand and in the process eventually establishing itself as a reliable aerospace company capable of manufacturing and maintaining civilian airliners around the globe on par with Boeing and Airbus.

Russia’s United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) is similarly expanding its operations and already enjoys a share of foreign civilian aviation markets, however small in comparison with Boeing and Airbus.

Together, COMAC and UAC through the China-Russia Commercial Aircraft International Corporation  (CRAIC), are developing a long-range wide-body twinjet airliner that would further enhance the competitiveness of both companies.

Designated the CR929, the new aircraft is expected to make its first flight by 2025, before being introduced to the market in following years.

The ability for the CR929 to compete head-to-head with Boeing and Airbus at the moment seems unlikely. What is more likely is that it, along with other offerings from both COMAC and UAC, will prove themselves first in the Russian and Chinese civilian aviation markets, before future developments are more widely accepted by others internationally.

It is a long-term plan that takes into account not only the current geopolitical climate, but one that takes into consideration a future international order that has tilted considerably more toward the multipolar and away from the West’s current unipolar order, and an order that has produced and still jealously protects the Boeing-Airbus duopoly.

In fact, among the growing list of US sanctions against both China and Russia, several are designed specifically to target the civilian aviation industries of both nations.

These include sanctions that will prohibit Western corporations from providing systems and components to either country that would eventually make their way into the CR929 and future aircraft designs.

Such sanctions will  undoubtedly delay the development of CR929 and setback the Chinese and Russian civilian aviation industries, but just as is the case with sanctions aimed at Chinese telecom giant Huawei, these sanctions are unlikely to entirely stop either nation’s civilian aviation industries.

Additionally, such sanctions invite the possibility of retaliatory sanctions which might include the exclusion of companies like Boeing from China’s massive and still growing civilian aviation market.

This would help compensate for the technical setbacks COMAC, its products and those it is jointly developing with Russia’s UAC face from US sanctions and give it the time and space it needs to mature its technology within China’s domestic market, to eventually, directly compete with Boeing and Airbus internationally.

Thus, while the threat by COMAC and UAC to the West’s civilian aviation duopoly is not immediate, it is present and growing. Because of the West’s inability or lack of confidence to compete fairly in open markets with China and Russia, it is creating the conditions COMAC and UAC need to develop their aircraft in a market protected by retaliatory sanctions and in a market more than large enough to sustain both companies.

The saying, “what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger” appears to be apt here. If COMAC and UAC can continue developing world class airliners despite current pressure from the US, developing the systems domestically that the US seeks to deny the companies from Western suppliers, both companies will come out stronger because of it.

At the same time, it isn’t difficult to imagine China’s partners across Asia, particularly in Southeast Asia adopting COMAC aircraft some time in the near future, with many already having bought UAC’s Sukhoi Superjets.

Constructive competition and a balance between great powers is a key feature of multipolarism. The deconstruction of the West’s civilian aviation duopoly will be a key metric to measure multipolarism’s success in the coming years as COMAC, UAC and their joint venture, the CR929 take shape and hopefully soon, take flight.

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Gunnar Ulson is a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Featured image is from NEO

On December 9, the US war department announced its “distribution plan” for covid mass-vaxxing.

Service members to be vaxxed include active duty personnel — including National Guard troops — their family members, war department civilian personnel and their families.

“Distribution will be conducted in phases,” it was announced.

US forces in South Korea — including military and civilian healthcare personnel — will be vaxxed first with Moderna’s high-risk, inadequately tested, experimental vaccine.

Like Pfizer’s entry into the covid mass-vaxxing sweepstakes, Moderna’s vaccine in NOT approved by the FDA.

Both were given Emergency Authorization Use (EAU) green-lighting for widespread mass-vaxxing — despite the high-risk of what the CDC calls an “health impact event” or an “adverse event.”

Either may require medical treatment for what’s potentially life-threatening like anaphylaxis — or any one or more major illnesses that can cause death like heart disease and cancer.

In five days after US mass-vaxxing began on December 14, over 5,000 “health impact events” were reported.

How many more went unreported is unknown. Nor is there information on the seriousness of health issues experienced.

All vaccines are high-risk. Experimental ones like Pfizer’s and Moderna’s may cause widespread serious health issues only known much later.

During the 1991 Gulf War, around 150,000 US troops were vaxxed for anthrax.

Short-term it caused redness, swelling and fever that’s associated with all vaccines.

Serious health issues weren’t discovered until later called Gulf War syndrome.

Experimental anthrax vaccines contained squalene-based adjuvants that caused severe autoimmune diseases and deaths among Gulf War veterans later on.

They included rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, neuritis risking later paralysis, uveitis risking blindness, neurological harm, congenital disabilities in offspring, cognitive impairment, and systemic lupus erythematosus, among other health issues.

The latter disease can harm joints, skin, brain, lungs, kidneys, and blood vessels.

From 1990 to 2001, over two million doses of anthrax vaccine were administered to US military personnel.

According to Stars and Stripes, the Veterans Affairs Department denied over 80% of benefits claims filed by military vets for health issues related to the Gulf War or later vaxxing for anthrax.

Research showed that squalene-based adjuvants are directly linked to Gulf War syndrome.

US military personnel were used and abused as unwitting lab rats. Many became ill. Thousands died.

One Gulf War vet likely spoke for many others, saying the following:

“Was the character of my valor less intense than those at Lexington?”

“Was the pain of my wounds any less severe than those at Normandy?”

“And was my loneliness any less sorrowful than those at Inchon?”

“Then why am I forgotten amonst those remembered as ‘heros?’ ”

Squalene adjuvants are a key ingredient in many vaccines.

It’s unclear if they’re used in Pfizer and Moderna covid vaccines.

Smith, Kline & French (SKF) expects its covid vaccines that contain squalene adjuvants will be approved and distributed.

It’s preparing to supply adjuvants for 1 billion doses — together with Sanofi, Sanofi, Clover Biopharmaceuticals, Medicago, and Innovax, its covid vaccine development partners.

SKF claims that adjuvant technology can “create a stronger and longer-lasting immunity against infections,” according to a company press release.

Omitted was information on hazards to human health from their use.

Soviet Russia researchers earlier called squalene adjuvants “a biological time bomb.”

Others called compulsory vaxxing (likely containing them) “medical barbarism.”

Pediatrician Robert S. Mendelsohn, author of Confessions of a Medical Heretic, called vaxxing “a medical time bomb,” adding:

The “greatest threat to childhood diseases lies in the dangerous and ineffectual efforts made to prevent them.”

He urged parents to reject vaxxing for their children. In many states, it’s mandatory.

Not so far for covid but perhaps it’s coming to get medical passports for employment, attending school, air travel, and other public activities.

Will daily lives and routines ahead no longer be possible without proof of covid vaxxing?

Commander of US forces in South Korea General Robert Abrams said the following to USFK troops:

“I want you to make an informed decision for you and your family regarding the vaccine.”

If mass compliance doesn’t follow, will he mandate covid vaxxing for everyone he commands.

Refusal would risk possible bad conduct or dishonorable courts-martial punishment.

If mandated for US military personnel or all Americans, it’ll breach Nuremberg Code principles. It’s 10 points include:

1. Voluntary consent on matters relating to human health.

2. Procedures yielding positive results that benefit individuals and society.

3. Procedures based on positive experimentation results.

4. Physical and mental suffering prohibited.

5. Whatever risks death or disability is forbidden.

6. Risks taken should never exceed sought benefits.

7. Proper preparation in suitable facilities should precede procedures followed.

8. Only scientifically qualified individuals should conduct them.

9. At any time during treatment, individuals may cancel it at their discretion.

10. Scientifically qualified individuals involved must terminate procedures if too high a risk of harm to human health exists.

A brave new world order is unfolding in plain sight — facilitated by covid that’s largely seasonal flu/influenza.

Outbreaks occur around six months annually with no lockdowns, quarantines, mask-wearing, social distancing, fear-mongering-created mass hysteria, and Main Street economic Depression.

What’s happening is a dystopian nightmare that caused enormous harm to millions of ordinary people in the US and elsewhere.

Is a permanent draconian way of life in the US and West the new abnormal — enforced by police state harshness?

Is the old order gone, life as before not coming back?

What was unthinkable not long ago are nations more unsafe and unfit to live in than before seasonal flu/influenza showed up masquerading as covid.

Is the worst yet to come?

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from The Freedom Articles

Global Research Editor’s Note

This article first published by Global Research on May 24, 2019 is of utmost relevance to the ongoing debate on the Covid Vaccine.

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In October 2014, the conference of Catholic bishops in Kenya released a statement regarding the tetanus vaccine programme implemented under UN auspices. (see the statement below)

The issue was subsequently addressed by Kenya’s Catholic Doctors Association. (see article below).

Published below are the following texts:

• a recent review article pertaining to the 2014 findings of Kenya’s Catholic Doctors Association concerning the tetanus vaccine. No update is provided in this article with regard to Kenya.
• the original 2014 statement by the Conference of Catholic Bishops.
• the 2014 response by UNICEF and the WHO with regard to the tetanus vaccine.

May 23, 2019

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According to LifeSiteNews, [November 2014] a Catholic publication, the Kenya Catholic Doctors Association is charging UNICEF and WHO with sterilizing millions of girls and women under cover of an anti-tetanus vaccination program sponsored by the Kenyan government.

The Kenyan government denies there is anything wrong with the vaccine, and says it is perfectly safe.

The Kenya Catholic Doctors Association, however, saw evidence to the contrary, and had six different samples of the tetanus vaccine from various locations around Kenya sent to an independent laboratory in South Africa for testing.

The results confirmed their worst fears: all six samples tested positive for the HCG antigen. The HCG antigen is used in anti-fertility vaccines, but was found present in tetanus vaccines targeted to young girls and women of childbearing age. Dr. Ngare, spokesman for the Kenya Catholic Doctors Association, stated in a bulletin released November 4:

“This proved right our worst fears; that this WHO campaign is not about eradicating neonatal tetanus but a well-coordinated forceful population control mass sterilization exercise using a proven fertility regulating vaccine. This evidence was presented to the Ministry of Health before the third round of immunization but was ignored.” (Source.)

Dr. Ngare brought up several points about the mass tetanus vaccination program in Kenya that caused the Catholic doctors to become suspicious:

Dr. Ngare told LifeSiteNews that several things alerted doctors in the Church’s far-flung medical system of 54 hospitals, 83 health centres, and 17 medical and nursing schools to the possibility the anti-tetanus campaign was secretly an anti-fertility campaign.

Why, they ask does it involve an unprecedented five shots (or “jabs” as they are known, in Kenya) over more than two years and why is it applied only to women of childbearing years, and why is it being conducted without the usual fanfare of government publicity?

“Usually we give a series three shots over two to three years, we give it anyone who comes into the clinic with an open wound, men, women or children.” said Dr. Ngare.

But it is the five vaccination regime that is most alarming. “The only time tetanus vaccine has been given in five doses is when it is used as a carrier in fertility regulating vaccines laced with the pregnancy hormone, Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (HCG) developed by WHO in 1992.” (Source.)

UNICEF: A History of Taking Advantage of Disasters to Mass Vaccinate

It should be noted that UNICEF and WHO distribute these vaccines for free, and that there are financial incentives for the Kenyan government to participate in these programs. When funds from the UN are not enough to purchase yearly allotments of vaccines, an organization started and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, GAVI, provides extra funding for many of these vaccination programs in poor countries. (See: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Vaccine Empire on Trial in India.)

Also, there was no outbreak of tetanus in Kenya, only the perceived “threat” of tetanus due to local flood conditions.

These local disasters are a common reason UNICEF goes into poorer countries with free vaccines to begin mass vaccination programs.

Health Impact News reported last year that UNICEF began a similar mass vaccination program with 500,000 doses of live oral polio vaccine in the Philippines after a Super Typhoon devastated Tacloban and surrounding areas. This was in spite of the fact there were no reported cases of polio in the Philippines since 1993, and people who have had the live polio vaccine can “shed” the virus into sewage systems, thereby causing the actual disease it is supposed to be preventing. (See: No Polio in the Philippines Since 1993, But Mass Polio Vaccination Program Targeted for 500,000 Typhoon Victims Under Age 5.)

A very similar mass vaccination with the live oral polio vaccine occurred among Syrian refugees in 2013, when 1.7 million doses of polio vaccine were purchased by UNICEF, in spite of the fact that no cases of polio had been seen since 1999. After the mass vaccination program started, cases of polio began to reappear in Syria. (See: Are UNICEF Live Polio Vaccines Causing Polio Among Syrians? 1.7 Billion Polio Vaccines Purchased by UNICEF.)

It seems quite apparent that UNICEF and WHO use these local disasters to mass vaccinate people, mainly children and young women. Massive education and propaganda efforts are also necessary to convince the local populations that they need these vaccines. Here is a video UNICEF produced for the tetanus vaccine in Kenya. Notice how they use school teachers and local doctors to do the educating, even though the vaccines are produced by western countries.

At least in Kenya, Catholic doctors are acting and taking a stand against what they see as an involuntary mass sterilization campaign designed to control the population of Africans.

Statement from WHO and UNICEF on the Tetanus Vaccine in Kenya

The World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) express their deep concern about the misinformation circulating in the media on the quality of the Tetanus Toxoid (TT) Vaccine in Kenya.

The allegations are that the tetanus vaccine used by the Government of Kenya and UN agencies is contaminated with a hormone (hCG) that can cause miscarriages and render some women sterile. These grave allegations are not backed up by evidence, and risk negatively impacting national immunization programmes for children and women.

Human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) is a hormone produced by the placenta, during pregnancy. hCG is also produced in the pituitary glands of males and females of all ages. However, very high levels pose risks to pregnancy.

We have taken note of test results claiming to show levels of hCG in samples submitted to some clinical laboratories. However it is important to note that testing for the content of a medicine, e.g TT Vaccine needs to be done in a suitable laboratory, and from a sample of the actual medicine/vaccine obtained from an unopened pack and not a blood sample. Furthermore the Pharmacy and Poisons Board – the legally mandated National Regulatory Authority has the capacity and mandate to determine the quality, safety and efficacy of medicines and to advise the Government accordingly.

WHO and UNICEF confirm that the vaccines are safe and are procured from a pre-qualified manufacturer. This safety is assured through a three-pronged global testing system and the vaccine has reached more than 130 million women with at least two doses of TT vaccines in 52 countries.

Given most tetanus cases in Kenya are among newborns, the target group of Kenya’s TT vaccination campaigns is girls and women (15-49 years), with a particular emphasis on those in the most marginalized areas. We note with concern that Kenya is one of the 25 countries where tetanus is still a public health problem, killing hundreds of newborns every year.WHO and UNICEF reiterate our readiness to support the Government of Kenya in its efforts to provide safe and quality assured vaccines for the immunization programmes.

Dr. Custodia Mandlhate
WHO Representative Kenya

Dr. Pirkko Heinonen
Acting Representative
UNICEF Kenya

For more information kindly contact:

Edita Nsubuga
Chief of Communication, UNICEF Kenya
Tel: +254 (20) 762 2977
Email: [email protected]

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Featured image is from UNICEF