Global Research

Trump Tells Pompeo: Go Wild on Iran, Just Don’t Risk ‘World War III’

By Erin Banco and Asawin Suebsaeng, December 03 2020

President Donald Trump may only have seven weeks left in office, but he’s given his top advisers the green light to batter the Iranian regime—anything that doesn’t hazard a full-on war before Joe Biden is inaugurated.

After this New Wave of Lockdowns, Most People Will Accept Any “Solution” Because They Will be So Desperate

By Michael Snyder, December 03 2020

The first wave of lockdowns knocked us into the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s, it sent suicide rates soaring all over the globe. Now another wave of lockdowns is being instituted all over the planet, and this is going to perfectly set the stage for the “solutions” that the elite plan to offer all of us in 2021.

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

By Dr. Peter Doshi, December 03 2020

Despite the existence of regulatory mechanisms for ensuring vaccine access while keeping the authorization bar high, it’s hard to avoid the impression that sponsors are claiming victory and wrapping up their trials, and the FDA will now be under enormous pressure to rapidly authorize the vaccines.

Censorship in the Biden Era

By Margaret Kimberley, December 03 2020

The racist right wing was certainly ascendant during his administration, but the danger of fascism won’t leave Washington with Donald Trump. The obnoxious racist may be the public face of tyranny, but there is another danger coming from sectors of the Democratic Party. Their goal is to censor any points of view that undermine their neoliberal and imperialist narratives.

Yemen: Trump Is Showering Saudi Arabia with Last-Minute Gifts

By Ahmed AbdulKareem, December 03 2020

While the administration of Donald Trump readies its exit from the White House and the Middle East, Saudi Arabia’s use of American diplomatic cover and weapons alike has taken on a fevered pace as the Kingdom deepens the tragedy it has afflicted upon Yemen.

Video: The Problem with the COVID Vaccine. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

By Robert F. Kennedy Jr and Theo Von, December 03 2020

The Nuclear Bomb Is Ready: In Italy Soon. The B61-12 has a Nuclear Warhead with 4 “Selectable Power Options”

By Manlio Dinucci, December 03 2020

The test was carried out on August 25 at the Tonopah shooting range in the Nevada desert. An official statement confirmed its full success: it was a real nuclear attack, proof that the fighter carried out at supersonic speed and in stealth attitude (with  nuclear bombs placed in its internal hold) has the capability to penetrate through enemy defenses.

Election Fraud: Where’s the Independent Press? The Mainstream Press Has Failed America

By Jacob G. Hornberger, December 03 2020

The problem with the mainstream press in the Trump-Biden race is the speed by which it concluded that the 2020 presidential election was not marred by fraud. It reached its conclusion before the election was even over.

UK Minister Warns Brits Could be “Denied Normal Life” If They Do Not Receive COVID Vaccination

By Joseph Jankowski, December 03 2020

Brits could be denied entry into bars, theaters, and sporting events if they can not prove they’ve received vaccination against COVID-19, according to the head of the United Kingdom’s vaccine rollout.

Pakistan Pressured by Saudi Arabia and UAE to Recognize and Accept the State of Israel

By Junaid S. Ahmad, December 03 2020

The COV-19 vaccine is now front page news.

The following article was first published by Global Research on March 17, 2020, following the first tests of a vaccine conducted by Moderna Inc. with human volunteers in Seattle on March 16.

Author’s Note and Update

The COVID-19 Vaccine Project had been envisaged several months prior to the official identification of the virus on January 7, 2020 by China’s health authorities. 

At the 201 Simulation meeting in October 19, 2019 under the auspices of John Hopkins, the development of a vaccine for a fictitious novela virus was envisaged.

 According to Richard Hatchett, CEO of  the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) an organization sponsored and financed by the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the Gates Foundation the project to develop a vaccine commenced not only prior to the discovery and identification of the coronavirus (January 2020) but several months prior to the October 2019 simulation exercise. “We did that in the last year or so [early 2019]. … ” ( see interview below)

According to the WEF Video below, produced in relation to the 201 Simulation, “the organizers created a virus” 

“the current strain of the coronavirus [201 simulation], known as 2019-nCoV, but claimed that the death toll could run in the millions if the virus were resistant to modern vaccines … ” (November 2019 analysis of the 201 Simulation)

Ironically, on January 30th, the WHO defined the new virus as 2019-nCoV, i.e. the same name as the “organizers invented disease” used in the 201 simulation in October 2019. No doubt a coincidence.

It was only later that Covid-19 was identified by the WHO not as a virus but as a disease: coronavirus disease (COVID-19), the Virus was identified as “severe acute respiratory syndrome” coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)

Video; The World Economic Forum was a partner in The 201 Simulation.

Video Produced by the World Economic Forum in association with the 201 John Hopkins Simulation

Two weeks after the virus had been formally identified by the PRC (Jan 7, 2020), a vaccine for the novel coronavirus was announced by CEPI at the Davos World Economic Forum, January 20-24, 2020.

Michel Chossudovsky, September 18, 2020, November 25, 2020

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The tendency is towards a Worldwide lockdown spearheaded by fear and media disinformation. Currently, hundreds of millions of people Worldwide are under lockdown. 

What is the next step in the evolution of the COVID-19 Crisis?  

The lead entity for the novel coronavirus vaccine initiative is the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) an organization sponsored and financed by the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. 

Note the chronology: The development of the 2019 nCoV vaccine was announced at the Davos World Economic Forum (WEF) a week prior to the official launching by the WHO of  a Worldwide Public Health Emergency (January 30) at a time when the number of “confirmed cases” Worldwide (outside China) was 150 (including 6 in the US). 

The pandemic was launched by the WHO on March 11. And five days later, barely covered by the media, the first tests involving human volunteers were conducted in Seattle on March 16.  

CEPI is seeking a “monopoly” role in the vaccination business the objective of which is a “global vaccine project”, in partnership with a large number of “candidates”. It announced funding for its existing partnership with Inovio and The University of Queensland (Australia). In addition, CEPI confirmed (January 23) its contract with Moderna, Inc. and the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has been instrumental in waging the fear and panic campaign across America: “Ten Times Worse than Seasonal Flu”.

According to a report of the WHO pertaining to China’s epidemic (which has currently been resolved):

The most commonly reported symptoms [of COVID-19] included fever, dry cough, and shortness of breath, and most patients (80%) experienced mild illness. Approximately 14% experienced severe disease and 5% were critically ill. Early reports suggest that illness severity is associated with age (>60 years old) and co-morbid disease. (largely basing on WHO’s assessment of COVID-19 in China)

Screenshot The Hill, March 19, 2020

The Central Role of CEPI

CEPI is dealing simultaneously with several pharmaceutical companies. The Moderna- NIAID in all likelihood is slated to implement the COV-19 vaccine in the US.

On January 31st, the day following the WHO’s official launching of the global public health emergency and Trump’s decision to curtail air travel with China, CEPI announced its partnership with CureVac AG, a German-based  biopharmaceutical company. A few days later, in early February, CEPI “announced that major vaccine manufacturer GSK would allow its proprietary adjuvants— compounds that boost the effectiveness of vaccines — to be used in the response”. (The pandemic was officially launched on March 11)

There are many “potential vaccines in the pipeline” with “dozens of research groups around the world  racing to create a vaccine against COVID-19”.

In turn the EU and the US are currently competing for the vaccine markets on behalf of powerful pharmaceutical conglomerates, with the European Commission “offering up to €80 million in financial support to the CureVac AG” after it was reported that Trump “was attempting to secure exclusive access to a COVID-19 vaccine it is developing”, under the auspices of NIAID headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci.

The October 2019 Coronavirus Event 201 Simulation Exercise

The coronavirus was initially named nCoV-19 by CEPI and the WHO: exactly the same name as that adopted in the WEF-Gates-John Hopkins Event 201 (2019-nCov) pertaining to a coronavirus simulation exercise held in Baltimore in mid October 2019.

The Event 201 John Hopkins simulation addressed the development of an effective vaccine in response to millions of cases (in the October 2019 simulation) of the 2019 nCoV. The simulation announced a scenario in which the entire population of the planet would be affected. “During the initial months of the pandemic, the cumulative number of cases [in the simulation] increases exponentially, doubling every week. And as the cases and deaths accumulate, the economic and societal consequences become increasingly severe.”

The scenario ends at the 18-month point, with 65 million deaths. The pandemic is beginning to slow due to the decreasing number of susceptible people. The pandemic will continue at some rate until there is an effective vaccine or until 80-90 % of the global population has been exposed. From that point on, it is likely to be an endemic childhood disease.

The COV-19 Global Vaccination Program 

CEPI (on behalf of Gates-WEF, which funded the simulation exercise) is currently playing a key role in a large scale (global?) vaccination program in partnership with biotech companies, Big Pharma, government agencies as well as university laboratories.

The foregoing statement by CEPI was made nearly two months prior to the official declaration of a pandemic on March 11.

“We’re having conversations with a broad array of potential partners”. And critical to those conversations is: What’s the plan to make very large quantities of vaccine within a time frame that is potentially relevant to what people seem to be increasingly certain will be a pandemic, if it isn’t already there? …” [Richard Hatchett, CEPI CEO in interview with stat.news.com].  …

The underlying focus is to develop a global vaccine.

And part of that was doing a global survey of manufacturing capacity to think about where we wanted to plant the manufacturing of any successful products we were able to bring forward.

Of significance, Hackett  confirmed that the project to develop a vaccine commenced not only prior to the discovery and identification of the coronavirus (January 2020) but several months prior to the October 2019 simulation exercise.

“We did that in the last year or so. …  We are using the information that we have collected and have that team now thinking about opportunities for scaling vaccines of various different types. That is a work in progress. For some of the technologies the tech transfer [to a manufacturer] may be something that could be done in a time frame that was pertinent to the epidemic, potentially.

I think it is going to be really important to engage those folks who have access to really substantial production capacity. And having the big producers at the table — because of their depth, because of their experience, because of their internal resources — would be very, very important.

The candidate vaccines will be very, very quick. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of NIAID [who has been spreading panic on network TV], is out in public as saying he thinks the clinical trial for the Moderna vaccine may be as early as the spring. (emphasis added)

What is unfolding in real life is in some regards similar to the October 2019 simulation exercise at John Hopkins. The scenario is how to produce millions of vaccine shots on the presumption that the pandemic will spread.

The CEPI sponsored vaccine conglomerates had already planned their investments well in advance of the global Worldwide health emergency (January 20th).

I [Hackett] think part of the general strategy is to have a large number of candidates. [and] you want to have enough candidates that at least some of them are moving rapidly through the process.

And then for each candidate, you need to ask yourself the question: How do you produce that? … [And] how are you going to get to that point with production at a scale that is meaningful in the context of a disease that is going to infect the whole of society? (Interview conducted by Helen Branswell, statsnews, February 3, 2020)

Moderna Inc 

Moderna Inc based in Seattle is one of several candidates involved and supported by CEPI.

Moderna announced on February 24th the development of “an experimental mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, known as mRNA-1273″. “The initial batch of the vaccine has already been shipped to U.S. government researchers from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)” headed by Dr. Antony Fauci.

While Moderna Inc initially stated that the first clinical trials would commence in late April, tests involving human volunteers started in mid-March in Seattle: (bear in mind the pandemic was officially launched on March 11)

Michael Fomento  concludes:

Even within the agency, the director of the WHO Collaborating Center for Epidemiology in Munster, Germany, Dr. Ulrich Kiel, has essentially labeled the pandemic a hoax. “We are witnessing a gigantic misallocation of resources [$18 billion so far] in terms of public health,” he said.

They’re right. This wasn’t merely overcautiousness or simple misjudgment. The pandemic declaration and all the Klaxon-ringing since reflect sheer dishonesty motivated not by medical concerns but political ones.

Unquestionably, swine flu has proved to be vastly milder than ordinary seasonal flu. It kills at a third to a tenth the rate, according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates. Data from other countries like France and Japan indicate it’s far tamer than that.

In a case of what must be called incriminating timing – the facts established after official conclusions and reprisals were declared – the scientists and experts of Porton Down, the UK’s leading chemical weapons research facility, declared their extensive investigations in to the nerve agent used in the attempted murder of double agent Skripal and his family in Salisbury have concluded the country of origin is unidentifiable. By now most people have realised that, by proxy, the government, its agents in the media, are decidedly wrong, and not unintentionally, deliberately misleading the public in order to justify escalating a diplomatic crisis with Russia, the centre of which are punitive sanctions including the expulsion of 60 diplomats.

And consider the fact the subsequent day’s BBC bulletin at six o’clock made no attempt to redress its consistent, manifold errors reporting on the Skripal case and instead featured, to diversionary fanfare, a routine hip operation for Prince Phillip as a leading story. I roll my eyes every time every tragedy is declared a false flag by theorists who generate more fear and confusion than knowledge, more heat than light, but history tells us government conspiracies are real, and it’s beginning to look solid that this was one of them.

The government and its agents in media built their analysis dominantly on a foundation of selective hearing and selective presentation of cherry picked intelligence combined with sabrerattling rhetoric of anti Russian snarking; the hallowed mutual detente between Russia and the West following the downfall of the USSR isn’t sacred enough in May and Johnson’s eyes to be deemed untouchable.

Their behaviour decidedly has violated a norm which has kept international relations more stable, more peaceable since 1991 and which, having been forfeited by this government now for whatever cynical, narrow, self serving reasons, is fast being supplanted by the old norm of aggression and retrenchment of diplomacy.

Of course much of detente is public show and we, as the saying goes, kept up the Cold War through diplomacy, “warfare by other means.” We spar with Putin often, but this time, something is different. This time we took aim at a state and government who, regardless of how brutal, how thoroughly rotten its methods to propel and sustain the position of its political star, is still innocent and in the early stages itself of dealing with and investigating a crime and trauma against one of its citizens through whom the UK, itself known to deploy gruesome, underhanded tactics against declared enemies, strategic threats, has launched a sabrerattling campaign based on no credible knowledge.

Through Skripal’s case the UK state has slung dirt at an easy target who, media savvy, laugh at and welcome these stories and get them under their own thumb because it helps Putin’s own propaganda. You only need basic knowledge of international relations to know that Putin will do everything to be seen, either through genuine terror or desperately through the illusion of it, as a fearful, omnipotent dictator leading the chase followed by the West, who can cow anyone standing in opposition to his cause.

The government and media’s vacation from the truth was deeply disturbing, and its hasty action to impose sanctions without recourse to due process of allowing time to mature facts and conclusions indicative of a preplanned affair on the books for some time. This was a false flag and time may vindicate the Russians, for the facts, as they blossom, have ever more incriminated the UK as the predictable cardboard cutout villains.

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It is not often that one can agree with the pronouncements made by former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director John Brennan, but his tweeted comment on the killing of Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh suggesting that the incident “…was a criminal act & highly reckless. It risks lethal retaliation & a new round of regional conflict. Iranian leaders would be wise to wait for the return of responsible American leadership on the global stage & to resist the urge to respond against perceived culprits” was both restrained and reasonable. Or it was at least so until sentence two, which was clearly intended to attack Donald Trump and praise the incoming Joe Biden administration, which Brennan just might be seeking to join.

Bearing in mind that John Brennan was the guiding hand behind President Barack Obama’s kill lists of Americans who were marked for death by drone it is difficult to understand what moral high ground he seeks to occupy in the slaying of Fakhrizadeh. Brennan, who was a leading critic of Trump and who may have led the clandestine effort to undermine his election and term in office, subsequently found himself in an exchange of tweets with Republican Senator from Texas Ted Cruz which degenerated into a trading of insults. Cruz responded “It’s bizarre to see a former head of the CIA consistently side with Iranian zealots who chant ‘Death to America.’ And reflexively condemn Israel. Does Joe Biden agree?” This produced a riposte by Brennan that “It is typical for you to mischaracterize my comment. Your lawless attitude & simple-minded approach to serious national security matters demonstrate that you are unworthy to represent the good people of Texas.”

The assassination of Fakhrizadeh, the “father of Iran’s nuclear program,” took place on a road near the town of Absard to the east of Tehran. According to initial accounts, the Iranian scientist, who has long been targeted by name and in public fora by Israel, was traveling in an SUV together with his wife plus bodyguards and a driver. Initial reports suggested that there was a Nissan truck parked on the opposite side of the road loaded with what appeared to be wood, though it may have turned out that the wood was concealing a bomb which may have been triggered by a signal from a surveillance satellite. The bomb was detonated to disable Fakhrizadeh’s vehicle before an attack on the car by five or six gunmen with automatic weapons who had emerged from a vehicle following the SUV began, again according to initial reports, including reporting by eye witnesses. The Iranian official news agency FARS is now claiming, however, that the attack was carried out by a remote controlled machine gun concealed on the truck, which subsequently exploded, and no human attackers were involved. It is presumed that the bodyguards and driver were killed in the exchange. Fakhrizadeh was badly wounded and died in hospital shortly thereafter. Photos of the SUV reveal shattered windows, blood streaks, and numerous bullet holes as well as other damage from what may have been the bomb.

Iranian news agencies are now reporting that at least one of the attackers has been arrested, and if that is true he will surely be made to talk regarding what he knows. They are also reporting that two of the assailants were killed in the exchange with the bodyguards, which, if true, means they will possibly be identified. Clearly, the attack was well planned, was able to employ considerable resources, and was based on intelligence that would be very hard to obtain, particularly as the Iranian government was taking steps to protect Fakhrizadeh, to include details of his travels.

The killing comes just two weeks after intelligence officials confirmed that Al Qaeda’s second-highest leader Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah was shot dead together with his daughter by alleged Israeli supplied assassins on a motorcycle on August 7^th. The hit was reportedly carried out at the request of the United States based on Abdullah’s claimed involvement in the 1998 deadly attacks on two U.S. Embassies in East Africa. The claim that Iran has been harboring al-Qaeda is already being used by the Trump White House to justify increased pressure on Iran and it might possibly even serve as part of a casus belli.

The two assassinations are not linked except perhaps in terms of sending a message to high level Iranians that they are not safe even in their own country even when they are given bodyguards. The claim that Fakhrizadeh was in charge of a secret Iranian weapons program, made regularly by Israel and the U.S., is not generally believed by most authorities. Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which nuclear armed Israel is not, and its facilities are subject to regular unannounced inspections.

Likewise, the killing of Qods Force commander General Qassem Soleimani in January in a U.S. drone attack was intended more regarding sending a message concerning possible consequences of reckless behavior than it was about actually killing one man. Whatever programs Fakrizadeh and Soleimani were involved in will continue without them. Nevertheless, assassination of Iranians linked to the country’s former and current nuclear program has been Israeli policy since 2010. As many as a dozen Iranian scientists and technicians reportedly have been killed. So-called “targeted killings” have been a regular feature of Israel’s “national defense” strategy. In addition to the Iranians, at least seventy Palestinians have been assassinated.

Though Israel has clearly ordered the assassinations, it is generally believed that the actual preparation for the attacks have been carried out by Mojahedin e Khalq or MEK, a Marxist cult that came into prominence at the time of the Iranian revolution against the Shah. It is generally regarded as a terrorist group that once was virulently anti-American and killed a number of U.S. officials. MEK is a curious hybrid creature in any event in that it pretends to be an alternative government option for Iran even though it is despised by nearly all Iranians. At the same time, it is greatly loved by the Washington Establishment which would like to see the Mullahs deposed and replaced by something more amenable to western and Israeli worldviews.

MEK is run like a cult by its leader Maryam Rajavi, with a number of rules that restrict and control the behavior of its members. One commentary likens membership in MEK to a modern-day equivalent of slavery. The group currently operates out of a secretive, heavily guarded 84-acre compound in Albania that is covertly supported by the United States, as well as through a “political wing” front office in Paris, where it refers to itself as the National Council of Resistance of Iran.

MEK, which is financially supported by Saudi Arabia, stages events in the United States in Europe where it generously pays politicians like John Bolton, Rudy Giuliani and Elaine Chao to make fifteen-minute speeches praising the organization and everything it does. It’s paying of inside the Beltway power brokers proved so successful that it was removed from the State Department terrorist list in 2012 by Hillary Clinton even though it had killed Americans in the 1970s. MEK also finds favor in Washington because it is used by Israel as a resource for anti-Iranian terrorism acts currently, including assassinations carried out in Tehran. Israel, in fact, directs most terrorist acts carried out by MEK inside Iran.

So those are the players and, at first glance, one might reasonably come to the Ockham’s razor conclusion, i.e. that Israel ordered MEK to kill Fakhrizadeh, an order which was then executed. But that would be to ignore some of the politics currently playing out in Washington. First of all, Israel would not have carried out the high-level assassination without the consent of the White House. Indeed, U.S. intelligence resources might well have played a key role in locating the Iranian scientist. Second, the Trump Administration has clearly adopted a policy of “maximum pressure” against Iran, which has included strangling the country’s economy through sanctions, condoning Israeli attacks in Syria and elsewhere, and destabilizing moves, to include assassinations, designed to make the nation’s leadership both vulnerable and nervous. It is the application of an Israeli strategic doctrine referred to as “Campaigns Between Wars,” meaning constant aggression to erode an enemy’s ability to fight without actually crossing a line that would start a shooting war.

A direct role by the Trump Administration in the assassination should not be ruled out as it is clearly seeking to harden Iranian antipathy towards any new comprehensive arms control or nuclear agreement with the incoming Biden team. Trump himself reportedly raised the possibility of bombing Iran earlier this month, though he was talked out of it by his national security team, but the Israeli Army meanwhile is on alert in case of an American attack. There are confirmed reports that B-52 bombers, capable of deploying the 30,000 pound penetrator bombs that can destroy targets deep underground, have been sent to the Middle East, presumably to Qatar where the U.S. has its principal airbase in the region. They would presumably be used against Iran’s main nuclear development site at Natanz.

Israel is in a strong position right now. Iran has significant military resources to respond to the killing, including the drones and missiles it developed and used in September 2019 to devastate the state-owned Saudi Aramco oil processing facilities at Abqaiq and Khurais in eastern Saudi Arabia. But if it does react robustly to the assassination and sparks a conflict that inevitably would include the United States, it would be a war that Bibi Netanyahu has long sought, destroying Iran at what he hopes would be minimal cost to Israel. If Iran does not respond, Israel will no doubt push the White House to be even more aggressive in its remaining time in office while hardliners within Iran will also demand an end to any agreements with western powers. Taken together, that would make sure that any attempt by the Biden administration to engage diplomatically with Iran would fail. The ultimate provocation by the United States would, of course, be to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities. Unthinkable? Perhaps, but perhaps not. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz is already reporting that “U.S. President Donald Trump has more than a month before he leaves the White House, and on his way out he could set the world on fire. In starting this conflagration, it seems as though he plans to strike every match in the box. Standing beside him, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would be more than happy to lend him a lighter.”

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Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org,address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected]. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Credits to the owner of the featured image

Putting aside the relics of past Cold War theatrics, Pakistan has been consistently struggling to advance peace and justice in the world. The struggle though has intensified. Pakistan currently experiences unprecedented pressure from the conservative Gulf monarchies of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, as well as the United States, to accept the Apartheid State of Israel. The Pakistani people would never succumb to this pressure. They have always stood in solidarity with the Palestinians and the Kashmiris, and no amount of coercion now is going to diminish their resolve. There is hardly a more pro-Palestinian population than the Pakistanis.

The matter should dare not have even arisen before Islamabad, about normalizing ties with a state that militarily occupies, brutalizes, and prevents justice to an occupied people. Israel has effectively destroyed any iota of a ‘peace process,’ has expanded settler-colonization of the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem and ruthlessly displaced the Palestinians for decades. The Gaza Strip has been converted into an ‘open air prison,’ regulating all aspects of the lives of these people who are subject to routine Israeli bombardment and massacres. The ‘normalization’ then is that of deep injustice, sheer violence, ceaseless land theft and constant humiliation.

Indeed, Palestine is a symbol of an ongoing struggle for justice and dignity in a world where oppression of the weak reigns strong. Pakistan cannot bow down to these pressures if it is to maintain the moral authority to stand against any form of oppression, including critically that of India’s in Kashmir. The Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, cannot follow the morally bankrupt path of his predecessors. He would be morally accountable to the Pakistani population, as well to the Palestinians, and everyone who has struggled for decades to end this oppression.

Islamabad not only has to take into consideration the wishes of its own people, but also the objective interests of the state. There are many compelling reasons as to why Islamabad should stand firm on its stance. There are several Gulf countries, like Qatar and Kuwait, that are already standing strong and are not moving an inch towards recognition.

Even if one puts aside the question of the inherent immorality of Israeli barbarism towards the suffering Palestinians, from the point of view of pure self-interested realpolitik – there is nothing to be gained by Pakistan here. Giving into these threats is not going to benefit Pakistan. It is certainly not going to give any leverage to Pakistan with Israel or India, rather, the vice versa will occur. It is laughable to believe that recognizing Israel will engender Tel Aviv to jeopardize its deeply intimate friendship with Modi to appease a groveling Islamabad. The costs for Islamabad, on the other hand will be incalculable: Pakistan will be at an utter loss in maintain its legitimate moral high ground on the issue of Kashmir.

The pressures to normalize, too, will most likely be short-lived. It is just matter of standing strong till it dies out. Once Biden takes over as the President of the United States on January 20, the pressure will diminish. In addition, there are also many powerful countries which do not support recognition. These include Turkey and Iran.

These threats are mostly hollow or far-exaggerated, and lack substance. The power of this UAE-MBS (Saudi Arabia)-Tel Aviv axis is over-stated as their inability to weaken Qatar or defeat the Yemeni resistance can testify. At the same time, Pakistan has diplomatic and security levers against the UAE and Saudi Arabia that it can use strategically to cripple the not-so-subtle configuration of protective military power Islamabad has in the Gulf.

Even if we take some of these possible threats to Pakistan on face value, and assume that Pakistani workers will be expelled from Saudi Arabia and potentially the UAE, the loss of remittances is likely to be harmful to the Pakistan economy in the short-term, but also be harmful to the UAE and Saudi Arabia – since it will take at least 1-2 years to replace those workers. It is to be noted that the percentage of these workers is quite high. In the medium and the long run, the return of these workers to Pakistan could reverse the brain drain, reduce reliance on remittances, and create opportunities within the country itself. This could potentially create a policy window for greater reform. Pakistan can use this moment of humiliating pressure and threats by ostensibly ‘brotherly Muslim countries’ as a catalyst to re-set Pakistan’s foreign, domestic and socio-economic relations, as well as re-build its economic structure.

The Pakistani state needs to unequivocally proclaim that recognition of the current Israeli Apartheid state is simply off the table. Prime Minister Imran Khan needs to mobilize the people and take the National Assembly into confidence about the intense pressures being put on Islamabad to submit to this act of treachery. The military high command should also be informed and persuaded of the dangers to Pakistan at this critical junction by being on the wrong side of history once again  — when in fact we thought we had finally escaped those archaic and reactionary winds that blew us in that direction the previous decades of Pakistan’s short history as a nation.

Defending Palestine’s rights in the current conjuncture, means resisting the Palestinization of Kashmir, defending Kashmir’s rights means preventing Pakistan from becoming Balkanized like Palestine.  Moral imperatives, religious obligation, Islamic solidarity and national interests are all aligned to reject any move to recognize Tel Aviv. To do otherwise would be a betrayal of not only the Palestinians, but country of Pakistan, its people, its future – and would also be a rejection of our faith.

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Dr. Junaid S. Ahmad is the Director of the Center for Muslim World Studies, and is Professor of Religion and Global Politics in Islamabad, Pakistan.

Die Rädelsführer der weltweiten Verschwörung gegen uns Bürger haben die Realisierung ihrer diabolischen Pläne einer Neuen Weltordnung NWO und einer Eine-Welt-Regierung nach chinesischem Vorbild sowie eines „Großen Neustarts“ und einer „Vierten Industriellen Revolution“, der Verschmelzung physischer und digitaler Identität (Transhumanismus), bereits weiter vorangetrieben als wir ahnen. WEF-Gründer Klaus Schwab bestätigt dies. (1) Viele Mitbürger fragen sich, wie kam das Böse nur in die Welt und wieso kann eine kleine Clique finsterer Gestalten die ganze Welt ins Chaos stürzen, wo der Mensch doch von Natur aus gut sei. Da man die Mahnrufe des menschlichen Gemeinschaftsgefühls zwar unterdrücken, jedoch nie gänzlich ausmerzen kann, wird die soziale menschliche Natur langfristig wieder die Oberhand gewinnen. Das Geschenk der Evolution besteht nämlich im sittlichen Bewusstsein des Einzelnen, in der Einsicht in die Verantwortung aller gegenüber allen. Wenn wir weiterhin die Gemeinschaftsgefühle pflegen und verstärken und den Menschen besser in das soziale Gefüge einordnen, dann wird der Wille zur Macht und Herrschaft über andere durch die sozialen Bindungen eingeschränkt werden – und das Böse wird nicht siegen. 

Wie kann der Vater von zwei Kindern Babys erschießen?

Im Klappentext des Buches von Bernd Greiner „Krieg ohne Fronten. Die USA in Vietnam. I have died in Vietnam. But I have walked the face of the moon” steht geschrieben :

“Die Bilder der zerstörten Dörfer, der von Napalm verbrannten Kinder, von einem Land, auf das mehr Bomben geworfen wurden als auf alle Schauplätze des Zweiten Weltkrieges zusammen, prägen die Erinnerung an den Vietnamkrieg und die Jahre zwischen 1965 und 1975. In einem 1969 von CBS ausgestrahlten Interview schilderte der US-Soldat Paul Meadlo das Massaker von ‚My Lai’ so:“ 

„Ich hatte meine Waffe auf Automatik gestellt. Deshalb kann man nicht sagen, wie viele man erschossen hat. Ich habe vielleicht 10 oder 15 von ihnen erschossen.“ – 

„Männer, Frauen und Kinder?“ – „Männer, Frauen und Kinder.“ –

„Und Babys?“ – „Und Babys.“ –

„Sind Sie verheiratet?“ – „Ja.“ –

„Kinder?“ – „Zwei.“ –

„Wie alt?“ – „Der Junge ist zweieinhalb, das Mädchen anderthalb.“ –

„Dann drängt sich doch die Frage auf, wie der Vater von zwei kleinen Kindern Babys erschießen kann.“ – „Keine Ahnung. Es kommt halt vor.“ –

„Wie viele Menschen wurden an diesem Tag erschossen?“ – „Ich schätze an die 370.“ (2)

Der renommierte amerikanische Sozialpsychologe Philip Zimbardo erläutert in seinem Buch „Der Luzifer-Effekt. Die Macht der Umstände und die Psychologie des Bösen“ (2008), wie wir alle für die Versuchungen „der finsteren Seite“ anfällig sind. Er führt aus, dass situative Kräfte und gruppendynamische Prozesse zusammenwirken können, um aus anständigen Männern und Frauen Ungeheuer werden zu lassen. (3) Karl Marx hat – gestützt auf Ludwig Feuerbach – bereits lange vor ihm die Auffassung vertreten, dass das Bewusstsein des Menschen durch die gesellschaftlichen Verhältnisse geprägt wird (Das Sein bestimmt das Bewusstsein).

Alfred Adler: „Der Mensch ist von Natur aus gut“

„Der Mensch ist von Natur aus nicht böse. Was auch ein Mensch an Verfehlungen begangen haben mag, verführt durch seine irrtümliche Meinung vom Leben, es braucht ihn nicht zu bedrücken; er kann sich ändern. Er ist frei, glücklich zu sein und andere zu erfreuen.“ (4)

Diese Aussage des Begründers der Individualpsychologie ist eine unumstößliche Erkenntnis der wissenschaftlichen Psychologie: Der Mensch ist ein naturgegeben soziales, auf die Gemeinschaft seiner Mitmenschen ausgerichtetes und vernunftbegabtes Wesen mit einer natürlichen Neigung zum Guten, zur Wahrheitserkenntnis und zum Gemeinschaftsleben. Diese Eigenschaft hilft ihm, die Gesetze der Natur beziehungsweise das Naturrichtige besser zu erkennen. Vor diesem Menschen müssen wir auch keine Angst haben. Er möchte in Freiheit und Frieden leben, ohne Gewalt und Krieg – so wie wir alle.

Das „Naturrecht“, ein „von der Natur gegebenes Recht“ sagt, dass es etwas gibt, was von Natur aus recht ist. Es unterscheidet sich vom durch Menschen gesetztes, sogenanntes „positives Recht“ dadurch, dass es dem Menschen allein schon deshalb zusteht, weil er Mensch ist. Da es durch keinen Machthaber oder wie auch immer gearteten Mehrheitsbeschluss geschaffen wird, ist es vorstaatliches Recht. Das heißt, die Gesetze eines Staates müssen sich kritisch am Naturrecht messen lassen. Das Wissen darüber, was von Natur aus recht ist, macht es möglich, totalitären Ideologien und Diktaturen von einem festen mitmenschlichen Standpunkt aus entgegenzutreten und ein Gefühl der Empörung gegen Unrecht und Unmenschlichkeit zu empfinden. (5)

Wie ist das Böse in die Welt gekommen?

Der religiöse Mythos des Abendlandes hat den Ursprung der Gewalt und des Bösen auf den Sündenfall der ersten Menschen zurückgeführt. Aus dem Paradies durch eigene Schuld vertrieben, wussten sie, was gut und was böse sei. In einer anderen Version des religiösen Denkens wird geschildert, wie Gott die Welt in aller Vollkommenheit geschaffen habe. Doch dann lehnte sich einer seiner Engel gegen ihn auf; es sei Satan gewesen, der dazu verurteilt wurde, Fürst der Unterwelt zu sein. Seitdem wirken die Macht des Lichtes und die der Finsternis gegeneinander; ihr Kampf beherrsche den Gang der Weltgeschichte. Doch dieser religiöse Mythos trägt zur Erklärung des Bösen nichts bei.

Im 19. Jahrhundert hat Charles Darwin die züchtende und auswählende Macht des „Kampfes um das Dasein“ in der Tierwelt erkannt, der das „Überleben des Tüchtigsten“ sichert. Einige seiner Schüler übertrugen diese Erkenntnis auch auf die Menschenwelt. Sie proklamierten das Gesetz des Daseinskampfes und glaubten, die Triebfeder des Fortschritts gefunden zu haben. Der Kampf aller gegen alle würde die menschliche Rasse reinigen und erhöhen. Diese Ideologie wurde vom Wirtschaftsleben des Manchester-Liberalismus übernommen. Doch sie ist ebenso falsch wie inhuman. Die Forschung hat inzwischen erwiesen, dass im Tierreich nicht nur der „struggel for life“, sondern auch das Prinzip der gegenseitigen Hilfe wirksam ist.

Der russische Anarchist, Geograph und Schriftsteller Fürst Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921) beobachtete sowohl die Natur als auch die Naturwesen und bezog seine Erkenntnisse auf den Menschen. In seinem Buch „Die gegenseitige Hilfe in der Tier- und Menschenwelt“ (Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution) schreibt Kropotkin, dass in Natur und Gesellschaft keineswegs nur ein Kampf aller gegen alle stattfinde, sondern dass ebenso das Prinzip der „gegenseitigen Hilfe“ vorherrsche. Diejenigen Lebewesen, die dieses Prinzip umsetzen, würden erfolgreicher überleben. (6) Die höher organisierten Lebewesen würden in Verbänden, Gruppen und Herden leben. In ihnen habe sich ein Herdeninstinkt herausgebildet, der gelegentlich die Arterhaltung über die Selbsterhaltung stelle.

In der Menschenwelt spielen soziale Gefühle und gemeinschaftliche Verbundenheit sicherlich eine ebenso große Rolle wie der Wille zur Macht und der Eigennutz. Da der Mensch frei ist, sein Leben selber zu gestalten, hat er die Möglichkeit der Wahl; sie ist die Möglichkeit des Guten und Bösen. Der Mensch ist nicht von vorneherein bestimmt, Wolf oder Lamm zu sein. Wenn der Mensch das Böse tut, so hat er sich zuvor dafür entschieden; er hat es zuvor gewollt. Die Brutalität auf menschlicher Ebene ist nicht Schicksal, sondern die Entscheidung für das Böse. Doch warum hat sich der Mensch in der Menschheitsgeschichte immer wieder für das Böse entschieden?

Der Ursprung des Bösen liegt nicht in der menschlichen Natur, sondern in den Daseinsbedingungen, die der Mensch zu Beginn der Zeiten auf der Erde vorgefunden hat. Da er den übermächtigen Naturgewalten hilflos und verlassen ausgeliefert war, muss er große Angst vor der Welt empfunden haben. Diese Angst schuf die Illusion der Götter, die sich hilfreich der Menschen annehmen sollten. Sie entfesselte auch eine starke Aggression, indem die feindselige Umwelt die Kampfbereitschaft ständig in Atem hielt.

Es lag nahe, den anderen Menschen als potentiellen Feind zu empfinden. Hinzu kamen die Schwierigkeiten der Nahrungsbeschaffung, die unter Umständen den Kampf um den Futterplatz notwendig machten. So erschien die Gewalt als ein Ausweg, als ein Mittel, das eigene Leben zu schützen und zu bewahren. Die Verlockung zur Gewalttätigkeit war umso größer, als die sozialen Bindungen noch keinen festen Zusammenhalt ergaben. (7)

Das menschliche Gemeinschaftsgefühl und der Geist der Verantwortlichkeit müssen die Gewalttätigkeit beenden

„Das Streben nach Herrschaft“, schreibt Alfred Adler, der Begründer der Individualpsychologie, „ist ein verhängnisvolles Blendwerk und vergiftet das Zusammenleben der Menschen. Wer die Gemeinschaft will, muss dem Streben nach Macht entsagen!“ Die „tiefste Idee aller Kultur“ sei die endgültige Erhebung des Gemeinsinns zur leitenden Idee. Die Kulturentwicklung besteht im Wesentlichen darin, dass sich die Stimme des Menschheitsgewissens mehr und mehr Gehör verschafft und dass der Geist der Verantwortlichkeit an die Stelle der Gewalttätigkeit tritt. Aus der Einsicht um die Zusammengehörigkeit aller, die Menschenantlitz tragen, erwuchsen die Lehren der sittlichen Führer der Menschheit, die Weisheit des Laotse, das Gebot der Nächstenliebe und die unzähligen Formen des gesellschaftlichen Lebens und Verhaltens, in denen der Gemeinsinn zum Ausdruck kommt.

Unter uns Menschen spielen soziale Gefühle und gemeinschaftliche Verbundenheit ganz gewiss eine ebenso große Rolle wie der Wille zur Macht und der Eigennutz, denn der Mensch ist zur Hingabe und Selbstaufopferung fähig. Alle unsere Bestrebungen in der Welt und der Wissenschaft sollten das Leitmotiv haben, in Zukunft einen Menschentypus hervorzubringen, für den – wie es Alfred Adler formulierte – Gemeinschaftsgefühl und mitmenschliche Verbundenheit ebenso selbstverständlich sind wie das Atmen. (8)

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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel ist Erziehungswissenschaftler und Diplom-Psychologe.

Noten

1. https://deutsch.rt.com/gesellschaft/109670-transhumanismus-wef-gruender-schwab-prophezeit/

2. Greiner, B. (2017). Krieg ohne Fronten. Die USA in Vietnam. Hamburg. Klappentext

3. Zimbardo, Ph. (2008). Der Luzifer-Effekt. Die Macht der Umstände und die Psychologie des Bösen

4. Alfred Adler zitiert nach: Rattner, J. (1980). Die Individualpsychologie Alfred Adlers. München, S. 17; Quelle: https://beruhmte-zitate.de/zitate/123126-alfred-adler-der-mensch-ist-von-natur-aus-nicht-bose-was-auch/

5. http://www.nrhz.de/flyer/beitrag.php?id=27120;
https://www.globalresearch.ca/dispel-the-magical-belief-in-author…-power-and-violence-strengthen-community-feelings/5729560?

6. Kropotkin, P. (2011). Gegenseitige Hilfe in der Tier- und Menschenwelt. Grafenau; englischer Originaltitel: Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution

7. a.O.; Leakey, R. E. / Lewin, R. (1978). Wie der Mensch zum Menschen wurde. Neue Erkenntnisse über den Ursprung und die Zukunft des Menschen. Hamburg

8. Ansbacher, H. L. / Antoch, R. F. (Hrsg.). (1982). Alfred Adler. Psychotherapie und Erziehung. Ausgewählte Aufsätze; Band I: 1919-1929. Frankfurt

While President Trump continues to maintain that the presidential election was marred by massive fraud, the mainstream press continues to maintain that Trump’s charges are “false” and “baseless” and that his allegations are damaging trust in America’s democratic electoral system.

Actually, however, it’s the other way around: It’s the mainstream press, owing to its extreme deferential attitude toward the Washington, D.C., establishment, that has severely damaged trust in America’s democratic system.

Of course, this isn’t the first election in which the losing side has charged that he has been cheated out of his victory. In virtually every election cycle, there is at least one political candidate that charges that he lost because of fraud committed by the other side.

But let’s face it: Sometimes there is fraud. As I have pointed out before (see here and here and here), there is now no doubt that Lyndon Johnson employed fraud to win the 1948 U.S. Senate race in Texas against popular Governor Coke Stevenson. Johnson told a South Texas crony who controlled some South Texas counties to keep his poll results open in case Johnson needed extra votes to win. When the vote-counting was over, Johnson did need a few more votes to win. He called his crony, a man named George Parr, and Parr ordered a local election judge to produce 200 additional votes for LBJ, which then gave Johnson the win. Many years later, the election judge confirmed that he had done this. The 200 signatures on the voter list were all in the same ink, and the names of the 200 voters were in alphabetical order. If Johnson had lost the election, he never would have become vice-president or president, which truly made him a truly illegitimate president in U.S, history, one who ended up sending tens of thousands of American men to their deaths in a senseless war thousands of miles away in Southeast Asia.

The problem with the mainstream press in the Trump-Biden race is the speed by which it concluded that the 2020 presidential election was not marred by fraud. It reached its conclusion before the election was even over.

Now, it’s very possible that Trump’s assertions are, in fact, false and baseless, but how could the mainstream press know that before or immediately after the election without even the semblance of any press investigation into the allegations?

Perhaps the mainstream press believed that the stealing of an election through fraud is simply inconceivable. But how can it be inconceivable when it is undisputed that LBJ won his Senate race through fraud? If it happened once, doesn’t that negate the idea of inconceivability?

It certainly can’t be that the press immediately conducted an investigation and found no evidence of fraud in the Trump-Biden race because the mainstream press reached its conclusions immediately and never conducted any independent investigation.

And that’s the core of the problem — the mainstream press’s deference to the Washington, D.C., establishment by automatically embracing its official position that the election was honest and above board.

In a free society, the citizenry necessarily depend on an independent press to keep government honest. The citizenry simply lack the resources and time to investigate official misconduct. Thus, they necessarily depend on a vibrant, dynamic independent press to do this job for them.

That’s where the mainstream press has failed America and has severely damaged America’s democratic system. It has essentially become a loyal lapdog of the Washington, D.C., establishment, never daring to challenge it, question, or investigate it at a fundamental level.

That’s why people don’t trust the mainstream press. That’s one big reason why mainstream papers have lost massive numbers of subscribers ever since the Internet came into existence. People know that when it comes to confronting political power with truth, they are going to find it on the Internet rather than in the mainstream press.

In the meantime, the mainstream press cannot figure out why people don’t blindly accept its pronouncements. They cannot figure out why people have been leaving them in droves and going to the Internet for answers. They cannot figure out why people don’t trust them or believe what they say.

Now, I’m not saying that the mainstream press should go out and investigate every charge of fraud that every loser of a political race makes. What I am saying is that when there are extreme anomalies with respect to votes, as there have been in the Trump-Biden race, it is incumbent on an independent press to severely scrutinize them. Extreme anomalies, of course, don’t equate to fraud but they do equate — or should equate — to the need for extremely careful scrutiny to ensure that there is no fraud.

An independent press is in the best position to perform such an investigation. If America were characterized by such a press, it would actually strengthen, not weaken, America’s democratic system because then people would be more assured that elections were not marred by fraud. When you instead have a passive and deferential press that automatically defers to the D.C. establishment, immediately concludes that the election is on the up and up despite extreme anomalies, and just pokes fun of the losing candidate for asserting fraud, that tends to make people suspicious, distrustful, and cynical,

Of course, the passive and deferential nature of the mainstream press has been going on for much longer than the 2020 presidential race. One of the best examples is the Kennedy assassination. From the time Kennedy was declared dead, the mainstream press has always automatically accepted the official version of events of the national-security establishment, never daring to conduct independent investigations into whether that version was false and baseless.

In the 1970s, after the House Select Committee on Assassinations met to reinvestigate the assassination, several enlisted men came forward with a remarkable story. They said that they had secretly carried the president’s body into the morgue almost 1 1/2 hours before the body was officially reintroduced into the morgue. They said they they had been sworn to secrecy on the weekend of the assassination and had been forced to sign secrecy oaths. Their superiors threatened them with extreme punitive action if they ever disclosed what they had seen or done.

Now, wouldn’t you think that that was something that the mainstream press would find worth investigating? Were these enlisted men lying? Were they just making up a story? Why would the do that? Why would the national-security establishment be sneaking the president’s body into the morgue? Why was the military in charge of the autopsy?

Wouldn’t just one mainstream investigative reporter want to investigate such things? Well, if he did, he would be fired by every mainstream paper in the land, owing to the passivity and deferential attitude that the mainstream press have had about the Kennedy assassination since the beginning.

In the 1990s, the Assassination Records Review Board discovered the existence of a Marine Sergeant named Roger Boyajian, who told the ARRB that it was his team that secretly carried the president’s body into the morgue at 6:35 p.m., almost 1 1/2 hours before the official entry time of 8 p.m. Boyajian even produced a copy of his official report that he had submitted to the military immediately after the assassination weekend in November 1963, a report that the military had kept secret. HIs statement and his report confirmed what those enlisted men has said back in the 1970s.

Did the mainstream press then conduct an investigation? Not on your life. It was still considered verboten for any mainstream news media outlet to investigate any aspect of the Kennedy assassination.

When Congress enacted the law that established the ARRB, someone slipped a provision into the law that prohibited the ARRB from investigating any aspect of the Kennedy assassination. It was a prohibition that was strictly enforced by the ARRB board of trustees. Now, wouldn’t you think that some enterprising, independent-minded mainstream investigative reporter would want to find out why anyone would want to keep the ARRB from investigating things it discovered while securing the release of long secret records of the national-security establishment? Nope. It just didn’t happen.

The ARRB also discovered the existence of a woman named Saundra Spencer. She was a chief petty officer in charge of the Navy’’s lab at its photography center in Washington, D.C. She had a top secret security clearance and worked closely with the White House on both classified and unclassified photographs.

Spencer told the ARRB a remarkable story. She said that on the weekend of the assassination, she had been asked to develop, on a top-secret basis, the photographs of President Kennedy’s autopsy, which had been conducted by the U.S. national-security establishment on the night of the assassination. Spencer had kept her secret for more than 30 years.

Spencer was shown the official autopsy photographs in the record. After closely examining them, she said: No, those are not the autopsy photographs I developed. The ones I developed showed a massive exit-sized wound in the back of the president’s head. The photographs in the official record show the back of the president’s head to be fully intact.

Now, wouldn’t you think that that would be enough to get the mainstream press to send an investigative reporter out to get to the bottom of this, especially given that Spencer’s testimony about the massive exit-sized wound in the back of Kennedy’s head matched the statements of the treating physicians at Parkland Hospital, along with the treating nurses, two FBI agents, a Secret Service agent, and others? Wouldn’t you think that fraudulent autopsy photographs would be enough to generate such an investigation?

Nope. The position of every mainstream paper in the country has always been: “Stay away from the Kennedy assassination. That’s what the national-security establishment wants and that’s the way it’s going to be.”

The ARRB made another remarkable discovery. It discovered that there were two separate brain examinations in the Kennedy autopsy. At the first one, the president’s brain was “sectioned,” which meant cutting it like a loaf of bread to study the trajectory of the bullet that hit the president in the head. At the second brain exam, the brain was fully intact.

There is one big problem: Once a brain is sectioned, it cannot reconstitute itself. That means that the second brain exam had to have involved a brain that wasn’t the same brain at the first exam.

Wouldn’t you think that the mainstream press would find this worth investigating? Nope. And it’s not like they weren’t aware of the two brain exams. The Washington Post and the Associated Press both carried stories on the ARRB’s discovery (see here and here). Unfortunately, as astounding as it is, the discovery of a fraudulent brain exam was not enough to induce the mainstream press to follow up with aggressive investigations to get to the bottom of this.

Many years ago, the American people discovered the existence of Operation Mockingbird, a secret illegal operation of the CIA to convert journalists in the mainstream press into CIA assets and operatives. Mainstream journalists who were asked to serve loved it and considered it a great honor to secretly serve the national-security establishment.

Today, the CIA need not bother because the entire mainstream press has willingly made itself a de facto asset of the national-security state. The American people have been left without an independent mainstream press whose mission is to keep the government honest and instead rely on people on the Internet to perform that service. In the process, the mainstream press has done a tremendous disservice to the American people and to America’s democratic processes by abdicating its responsibility to be a watchdog, not a lapdog, to the Washington, D.C., establishment.

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Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics.

Featured image is from Countercurrents.org

Brits could be denied entry into bars, theaters, and sporting events if they can not prove they’ve received vaccination against COVID-19, according to the head of the United Kingdom’s vaccine rollout.

Nadhim Zahawi, the newly appointed minister to oversee the UK’s COVID-19 vaccine deployment, says the proof of vaccination could be held on a phone application already used in Britain as part of the government’s track and trace system.

“… I think you’d probably find that restaurants and bars and cinemas and other venues, sports venues, will probably also use that system as they’ve done with the app,” Zahawi told the BBC on Monday.

“The sort of pressure will come both ways: from service providers – who will say ‘look, demonstrate to us that you have been vaccinated’ – but also we will make the technology as easy and accessible as possible.”

Zahawi explained that while the vaccine should be voluntary, he believes Brits will find that most businesses will require proof of vaccination before providing service.

“I think people have to make a decision but I think you’ll probably find many service providers will want to engage in this in the way they did with the app,” he said.

In September, England’s National Health Service launched a smart phone app that alerts users if they have spent more than 15 minutes around or have been within six feet of another user who has tested positive for COVID-19. It also warns users if they have been in a pub, restaurant, or other kind of hospitality venue at the same time as someone who has symptoms.

Zahawi denied to provide any deadlines on when the vaccine would hit the UK market but did express hope that it would be available before Christmas.

The Ministers “new normal” outlook comes on the heels of Australia’s largest airline announcing that it is considering mandating a COVID-19 vaccinations for travelers who wish to fly with them internationally.

“We are looking at changing our terms and conditions to say, for international travelers, that we will ask people to have a vaccination before they can get on the aircraft,” CEO of Qantas airline, Alan Joyce said in an interview with Aussie news last week.

“I think that’s going to be a common thing talking to my colleagues in other airlines around the globe.” Joyce would add.

Perhaps coming as no surprise, both Nadhim Zahawi and Alan Joyce have ties to the World Economic forum, the organization behind the “Great Reset” agenda which has the stated goal of molding a post COVID world to its vision.

Well would you know it. We I’ll be damned lol #qantas pic.twitter.com/8a0nbcYuvx

— The Mood 2020 (@themood2020) November 24, 2020

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Joseph Jankowski is the Editor-at-Large for Planet Free Will. His works have been published by major news publications such as ZeroHedge.com and Infowars.com.

Featured image: Nadhim Zahawi | Image Credit: Number 10/Flickr

Peruvian Doctors for the Truth have issued a short video, explaining the enormous risks of the three different types of vaccines currently on the market in Peru, two of them are genetically engineered in one way or another and will affect the human DNA. Humans would become “transhumans”, like genetically modified corn, soja, cotton – and more.

The breaking part of this news is that there is yet another medication, called IVERMECTIN, that has been FDA-approved and already successfully applied in Southern Peru, in Argentina and elsewhere. See this.

Ivermectin, a medication known for over 60 years, has been applied successfully for many infectious diseases – including river-blindness, throughout Africa. It was highly recommended by WHO, at a time when WHO still had a human touch.

The third vaccine would be recreating a weaker version of the virus in your body. The more traditional type of vaccine. But none of them has been seriously tested.

The trans-genetic ones have not even been animal-tested. And the few voluntary tests that were carried out in particular with the Moderna vaccine have left disastrous results. While none of the 40 robust volunteers died, all of them had serious side effects, serious health problems and had to be hospitalized – and the long-term consequences are not known. How they turn around now, Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca, claiming up to 95% efficiency. What a joke!!! Never tested – and lying to the people, so they will buy into the fraud.

The long-term consequences of any of these vaccines are not known, will not be known for a long time. And nobody can sue any of the pharma companies, they are “immune” under the 1986 Supreme Court ratified National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) (42 U.S.C. §§ 300aa- 1 to 300aa-34).

Pharma companies can never be sued for any damage their vaccines cause.

One of the long-term effects of covid-19 vaccines, may be reduced virility for men and infertility for women. This fits the Bill Gates, Rockefeller et al eugenics agenda (Bill Gates TedTalk in 2010 – “Innovating to Zero”). Provides an early flavor of what the Gates and Co. clan have in mind for humanity.

With support of WHO, Bill Gates initiated in 2010 and 2014 in Kenya a tetanus toxoid (TT) vaccination program:

In 1993, WHO announced a “birth-control vaccine” for “family planning”. Published research shows that by 1976 WHO researchers had conjugated tetanus toxoid (TT) with human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) producing a “birth-control” vaccine. Conjugating TT with hCG causes pregnancy hormones to be attacked by the immune system. Expected results are abortions in females already pregnant and/or infertility in recipients not yet impregnated. Repeated inoculations prolong infertility. Currently WHO researchers are working on more potent anti-fertility vaccines using recombinant DNA. WHO publications show a long-range purpose to reduce population growth in unstable “less developed countries”. By November 1993 Catholic publications appeared saying an abortifacient vaccine was being used as a tetanus prophylactic. In November 2014, the Catholic Church asserted that such a program was underway in Kenya. Three independent Nairobi accredited biochemistry laboratories tested samples from vials of the WHO tetanus vaccine being used in March 2014 and found hCG where none should be present. In October 2014, 6 additional vials were obtained by Catholic doctors and were tested in 6 accredited laboratories. Again, hCG was found in half the samples. Subsequently, Nairobi’s AgriQ Quest laboratory, in two sets of analyses, again found hCG in the same vaccine vials that tested positive earlier but found no hCG in 52 samples alleged by the WHO to be vials of the vaccine used in the Kenya campaign 40 with the same identifying batch numbers as the vials that tested positive for hCG. Given that hCG was found in at least half the WHO vaccine samples known by the doctors involved in administering the vaccines to have been used in Kenya, our opinion is that the Kenya “anti-tetanus” campaign was reasonably called into question by the Kenya Catholic Doctors Association as a front for population growth reduction.

The Kenyan Government sued WHO – which is immune for lawsuits, but had to officially apologize.

Since Bill Gates and his Foundation are behind this obsessive vaxxer craze, and they are supported by the very institution – a UN organization- imagine!!! – WHO – for which Bill Gates is one of the biggest single funders, it is not unlikely that Covid vaccines may contain similar sterilization components – the effect of which may not be seen immediately – but only over time, and especially, the weakened virility and fertility may be passed on genetically to future generations.

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Back to the three vaccines the medical doctor of Peru’s Doctors for the Truth mentions. The vaccine based on replication of a weaker virus version – has not been tested either. The Tuberculosis vaccine – a similar type – was tested for 17 years before it was applied large-scale. The next-in-line for SARS was tested during 5 ½ years.

We are talking about enormous risks – and with the fear – the extreme fear instilled in people – it is likely that there will be long lines when the vaccines become available – and people think after being inoculated with one of them, they will be home free and life will go back to “normal”.

It will not. Be aware. Life will not go back to normal.

Only our fierce resistance may eventually bring a return to something similar to what we once knew as normal. But it will be a new “normal” made by the people, for the people; and NOT by an ultra-rich elite – of which the 193 UN member governments and their respective parliaments were coopted as being part – bought, coerced, bribed. Not a “new normal”, as proposed by the World Economic Forum (WEF) – The Great Reset (Klaus Schwab – July 2020), or the IMF, The Great Transformation.

This is just the beginning. If you let yourself be inoculated by these treacherous politicians – like Boris Johnson – who orders vaccination to start next week, i.e. in the week beginning on 7 December 2020 – with a vaccine that has not been tested, you may be in for nefarious surprises.

People, victims of the British warp-speed vaccination program, have no idea what is being jabbed into their bodies. This man, PM of the UK – is inhuman. The harm he may inflict on the British population is criminal. BoJo, one who serves a higher order, but for nothing does he serve the people of the country that he had been chosen to serve, the people who pay his salary. If so far, the vaccination is not forced or compulsory, it is nevertheless heavily encouraged with fear propaganda.

The solution? – First, No Fear; second: Civil disobedience. Boycott he vaccination program, demand being treated by alternatives, like Ivermectin – and there are many others – many of which are banned by governments. They were forced to ban them, by the very higher “orders” that are in bed with the pharma industry, for profit greed – trillions of dollars – to be made by the vaccine campains.

Say no to vaccination en masse, and count on herd immunity which is the logical next phase – and no vaccine is needed. Do not get bogged-down in fear.

Stand up for your rights. Fear is killing your self-esteem.

Your civil and human rights cannot, I repeat, CANNOT, be obliterated as the reigning 193 UN member governments are intent of doing. See also The Secret Agenda of the World Bank and the IMF.

Unfortunately, there is hardly a government left that is not coopted, coerced or bought by these so-called higher and darker forces, these forces that might very much be related to what people like Joe Biden and Barak Obama refer to when they warn repeatedly – like a ritual – We are facing a Very Dark Winter.

No constitution in the world gives them the right to eviscerate your civil and human rights. Do not follow the mainstream media – look for alternative information – and when you see that such information suddenly disappears from the internet, from youtube, or is being “fact-checked”, you know that you are on the right track.

There has never in recent history been a time of more censoring of more “fake news” planted by the very mainstream media.

Be aware.

Be self-assured.

Do not give in to Fear.

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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 online journals such as Global Research; ICH; New Eastern Outlook (NEO) and more. 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. 

Peter is also co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020). He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Credits to the owner of the featured image

Included in his plans to fight the coronavirus, presumptive president-elect Joe Biden has pledged to appoint “a fully empowered supply commander in charge of filling in the gaps” in the production and supply of “essential” items needed to fight the virus.

On his website, Biden elaborates on his plan, declaring that his “supply commander” would “take command of the national supply chain for essential equipment, medications, and protective gear.”

This very Soviet-sounding position is necessary, Biden insists, because “We can no longer leave this to the private sector.”

Leaving aside Biden & Company’s laughable assertion that America’s medical industry reflects any sort of unfettered laissez-faire operation, his proposal for a centralized, command-driven medical “supply chain” under the direction of a government commander betrays a stunning ignorance of the complex and interconnected patterns of production and exchange that make up the economy.

As George Mason University economist Don Boudreaux explained in an April 2020 article published by the American Institute for Economic Research,

“The first reality is that, in our modern economy nearly every productive enterprise is connected to every other productive enterprise. This connectedness is the phenomenon alluded to by the term ‘supply chain.'”

But this term, however, is “highly misleading,” Boudreaux wrote. “Today’s economy is not a series of supply chains running side by side with each other, each largely distinct from, and independent of, the others.”

“Instead of a collection of distinct supply chains,” he continued, “our modern economy is a single globe-spanning web of interconnectedness. Within this web every output is the product of countless inputs and each kind of input typically is used to produce countless different kinds of outputs.”

The complex nature of this process of deploying a dizzying array of scarce resources with alternative uses for use in different finished products does not occur in cleanly separated and hermetically sealed “supply chains.”

“This web of interconnectedness—the complexity of which is beyond human comprehension—is indispensable for our modern mass prosperity. Yet its existence—its ‘everything-is-connected-in-some-way-to-everything-else’ reality—means that there are no objective and clear lines separating ‘critical supplies’ from ‘uncritical’ ones,” Boudreaux added.

To help clarify the interconnectedness of our economy, Leonard Read’s classic 1958 essay “I, Pencil” can prove instructive.

When asking what will be considered “essential equipment, medications, and protective gear,” we must further examine the inputs required to produce these items.

Read highlighted how the pencil requires cedar wood from Oregon, which in turn requires saws and trucks and ropes to transport the raw wood to the sawmill in California, which itself requires steel for its equipment along with electricity, land, concrete, and countless other inputs. And that is just the tip of the iceberg for the wood. The lead itself, the rubber for the eraser, and the lacquer for the finish each likewise require many inputs from around the world, all necessary in order to complete the pencil.

Now imagine just how complex the processes are for producing medications, medical equipment, and protective gear. And the inputs required to produce these items will also require other inputs. If we trace back the process far enough for items like medicine and medical equipment, the list of raw materials, capital goods, labor, etc. that need to be diverted from other uses, the list would become unfathomable—certainly so for any single “supply commander.”

Moreover, not just the production process itself, but also the distribution and storage of such “essential” goods to hundreds of millions of people and healthcare workers across the nation will require substantial resources.

Importantly, nearly every resource directed to the production and distribution of these “essential” items will have alternative uses for which they will no longer be available. The result is that the “supply chains” for each and every one of these alternative products and inputs will be impacted, for instance in the form of shortages or inflated prices.

How many of these impacted items would also be considered “essential,” but for noncovid purposes? For instance, other lifesaving medicines or critical medical supplies, or food supplies? And to what degree?

No central authority could possibly know this; indeed, the top-down “supply commander” model could end up doing more harm than good.

Too often, progressives and other interventionists view an unhampered market as “chaos,” something needing to be reined in under the direction of a wise central planner, or “commander.””

However, the impulse to default to centralizing economic decision-making over such a complex ecosystem as the economy is a threat not just to our liberty, but to our well-being. The need for market prices based on private property to freely function and efficiently direct scarce resources to where they are needed most becomes even more critical in times of emergency.

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Bradley Thomas is creator of the website EraseTheState.com, and is a libertarian activist and writer with nearly fifteen years of experience researching and writing on political philosophy and economics.

Featured image is from The Grayzone

On the face of it, an alliance between Turkey and Ukraine seems like a rather odd creation, yet one that may surprisingly durable simply because neither country has anywhere else to turn. What practically dooms them to a partnership if not an outright alliance is their unenviable geographic and geopolitical position of occupying the strange “no man’s land” between Russia, NATO, and the Middle East. It is, of course, largely a predicament of their own making.

Ukraine, with considerable Western backing and encouragement but nevertheless mostly through efforts of a faction of its own oligarchy, opted out of the Russia-centered network of loose alliances, trade partnerships, and other forms of cooperation that were mutually beneficial to the two in the previous two decades.

But that defection was not rewarded by the West in a way the likes of Poroshenko, Yatsenyuk, Avakov, Parubiy, and other architects of the Maidan coup expected. Merely being stridently anti-Russian did not prove enough to warrant a shower of US and European cash, only onerous IMF loans which moreover come with conditions Kiev elites are in no hurry to abide by. EU foreign policy chief Josef Borrel lecturing Kiev that the European Union is not an “ATM machine” delivered that point loud and clear: Kiev is supposed to privatize whatever crown jewels its economy still has (at this point, mainly agricultural land), fight corruption of its own elites and facilitate the corruption of Western elites. Joseph Robinette Biden Junior is hardly the only Western politician with a talentless son in need of a lucrative sinecure. There are entire Western companies eager to participate in the thinly disguised plunder that the privatization of Ukraine’s economy will inevitably turn into.

A Kiev court’s recent decision to declare the country’s anti-corruption institutions that were painstakingly stood up with considerable aid and tutelage from Western governments, down to screening appropriately-minded individuals for the job, looks as if it were calculated to send a middle-finger gesture to Borrel in terms even dense EU bureaucratic hacks will comprehend. Pro-EU newspapers like Kiev Post were quick to label this a “death of democracy”, presumably with the intent of interesting EU and NATO in sponsoring yet another Maidan since last one seems not to be delivering the goods. The expected shower of Western weaponry has not materialized, probably because NATO is afraid to give Ukraine so much aid that it will risk a full-blown war with Russia.

Erdogan’s Turkey, by contrast, is in process of de-facto opting out of NATO, though neither Turkey nor the alliance itself want to take the final step of severing ties completely. NATO membership is still beneficial to Turkey. While the procurement of Russian S-400 air defense systems angered NATO and US in particular, resulting in the expulsion of Turkey from the F-35 program and the cancellation of F-35 sale to the country, evidently Ankara hopes that by nominally remaining in the alliance it limits NATO and EU sanctions that would no doubt be far harsher if it were totally out of the alliance. The hope that Turkey, possibly post-Erdogan, will yet see the error of its ways and return to the fold, prevents NATO from adopting harsher stances that would definitely push Ankara away. Yet the drifting apart is unmistakable, and the animosity between Turkey’s leaders and their Western European counterparts is so intense as to beggar belief. While Germany’s Merkel is careful to tip-toe around the issue due to fear of another wave of refugees as well as unrest among the large Turkish diaspora in Germany, France’s Macron seems to have taken a personal affront to Erdogan’s suggestion he might need a mental evaluation and will press the issue of EU sanctions against Turkey at future Union summits.

But from Turkey’s perspective, getting a cold shoulder from the EU is par for the course. Its own migration to the geopolitical gray zone of Eurasia was motivated by EU’s failure to admit Turkey as a member after decades of leading it by the nose and promising neighborhood in some nebulously distant future right after Hell froze over. Like Ukraine, Turkey was not seeking EU membership because of some mythical “shared values”. It, too, saw EU as an ATM machine that would shower Turkey, one of the poorest countries on the continent, with development assistance and moreover allow Turks to freely travel and work throughout the Union. Needless to say, neither of these prospects appealed to pretty much any European country, no matter how close or distant it was geographically. So after decades of leading Turkey by the nose, EU politely put an end to the charade citing problems with Turkey’s democracy. Thus snubbed, Erdogan opted to chart an independent course and appears to be finding a similarly snubbed oligarch clique in Kiev looking for ways the two countries could extract mutual benefit from their isolated status.

There are plenty of those to be had, as limited as Ukraine’s and Turkey’s resources are, compared to such patrons as EU, NATO, US. Faced with isolation and even a potential ban on arms exports, Turkey has a strong incentive to exploit the resources of the Ukrainian defense industry and engage in some export substitution in case vital supplies are no longer available from the West. Canada’s and Austria’s ban on exports of optronics and engines needed for the Bayraktar TB2 combat drones means Ukraine’s ability to provide substitutes would be most welcome. Ukraine, for its part, would not be against deploying a huge attack drone fleet of its own in the hopes of replicating Azerbaijan’s successful offensive against Nagorno-Karabakh on the Donbass, though there Ukraine’s drones would probably run afoul of Novorossiya’s air defenses in the same way Turkish drones were brought to heel over Idlib.

Turkey’s Altay main battle tank is likewise little more than an assembly of components imported from other countries, particularly Germany. Since Germany has already placed a ban on export of powerpacks and transmissions for the Altay, Turkey has been casting about for replacements, looking as far as China. Whether Ukraine’s developments in this realm can be adopted to rescue the Altay project remain to be seen. However, the Oplot powerpacks and transmissions can probably be adapted to Altay use, resulting in Turkey realizing its goal of a home-grown MBT. Ultimately, the greater the contribution of Ukrainian defense industry to Turkey’s military modernization, the more freedom of action it would bestow on Turkey and make it less dependent on other foreign sources of military hardware who can exert influence over Turkey simply by withholding future technical support.

If the United States were to follow up on the F-35 expulsion with a ban on servicing Turkish F-16s which form the mainstay of its airpower, the result would be crippling of the country’s air combat capabilities that drones cannot compensate for and which would be sorely missed in any confrontation with another comparable power like Greece. Turkey’s efforts to develop an indigenous fighter aircraft would benefit from Ukraine’s technological contributions and its own interest in indigenous aircraft designs. For Ukraine, the relationship would be an opportunity to acquire NATO-compatible weaponry with the caveat that it would have to pay in full for every last drone, either with cash or in kind. Turkey’s economic situation is not so strong as to allow largesse in the form of free military aid to anyone.

Mitigating against the long-term development of what Zelensky referred to as “strategic partnership” with Turkey is the erratic behavior of Erdogan who seeks to dominate any and all partners and tries to see how far he can push before the partners push back. This practice has led to the confrontations in Syria, Libya, and eastern Mediterranean. Ukraine, in contrast to Russia, France, and even Greece, is hardly in a position to push back. The most dangerous aspect of Turkish politics, from Ukraine’s perspective, is the ideology of Pan-Turkism that just might transform Ukraine’s Tatar community into a proxy force for Turkey right inside Ukraine, adding yet another fissure to the already fractured political picture. On the plus side, Erdogan does not appear interested in “combating corruption” in Ukraine, though that does not preclude the possibility Turkey’s military collaboration with Ukraine might not cost Ukraine dearly, though not to the same extent as EU-promoted privatization efforts.

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In his first words as President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee for Secretary of State, Antony  Blinken said, “we have to proceed with equal measures of humility and confidence.” Many around the world will welcome this promise of humility from the new administration, and Americans should too. 

Biden’s foreign policy team will also need a special kind of confidence to confront the most serious challenge they face. That will not be a threat from a hostile foreign country, but the controlling and corrupting power of the Military-Industrial Complex, which President Eisenhower warned our grandparents about 60 years ago, but whose “unwarranted influence” has only grown ever since, as Eisenhower warned, and in spite of his warning. 

The Covid pandemic is a tragic demonstration of why America’s new leaders should listen humbly to our neighbors around the world instead of trying to reassert American “leadership.” While the United States compromised with a deadly virus to protect corporate financial interests, abandoning Americans to both the pandemic and its economic effects, other countries put their people’s health first and contained, controlled or even eliminated the virus. 

Many of those people have since returned to living normal, healthy lives. Biden and Blinken should listen humbly to their leaders and learn from them, instead of continuing to promote the U.S. neoliberal model that is failing us so badly.

As efforts to develop safe and effective vaccines begin to bear fruit, America is doubling down on its mistakes, relying on Big Pharma to produce expensive, profitable vaccines on an America First basis, even as China, Russia, the WHO’s Covax program and others are already starting to provide low-cost vaccines wherever they are needed around the world.

Chinese vaccines are already in use in Indonesia, Malaysia and  the UAE, and China is making loans to poorer countries that can’t afford to pay for them up front. At the recent G20 summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned her Western colleagues that they are being eclipsed by China’s vaccine diplomacy.

Russia has orders from 50 countries for 1.2 billion doses of its Sputnik V vaccine. President Putin told the G20 that vaccines should be “common public assets,” universally available to rich and poor countries alike, and that Russia will provide them wherever they are needed.

The U.K. and Sweden’s Oxford University-AstraZeneca vaccine is another non-profit venture that will cost about $3 per dose, a small fraction of the U.S.’s Pfizer and Moderna products.

From the beginning of the pandemic, it was predictable that U.S. failures and other countries’ successes would reshape global leadership. When the world finally recovers from this pandemic, people around the world will thank China, Russia, Cuba and other countries for saving their lives and helping them in their hour of need.

The Biden administration must also help our neighbors to defeat the pandemic, and it must do better than Trump and his corporate mafia in that respect, but it is already too late to speak of American leadership in this context.

The neoliberal roots of U.S. bad behavior 

Decades of U.S. bad behavior in other areas have already led to a broader decline in American global leadership. The U.S. refusal to join the Kyoto Protocol or any binding agreement on climate change has led to an otherwise avoidable existential crisis for the entire human race, even as the United States is still producing record amounts of oil and natural gas. Biden’s climate czar John Kerry now says that the agreement he negotiated in Paris as Secretary of State “is not enough,” but he has only himself and Obama to blame for that. 

Obama’s policy was to boost fracked natural gas as a “bridge fuel” for U.S. power plants, and to quash any possibility of a binding climate treaty in Copenhagen or Paris. U.S. climate policy, like the U.S. response to Covid, is a corrupt compromise between science and self-serving corporate interests that has predictably proved to be no solution at all. If Biden and Kerry bring more of that kind of American leadership to the Glasgow climate conference in 2021, humanity must reject it as a matter of survival.

America’s post-9/11 “Global War on Terror,” more accurately a “global war of terror,” has fueled war, chaos and terrorism across the world. The absurd notion that widespread U.S military violence could somehow put an end to terrorism quickly devolved into a cynical pretext for “regime change” wars against any country that resisted the imperial dictates of the wannabe “superpower.”

Secretary of State Colin Powell privately dubbed his colleagues the “fucking crazies,” even as he lied to the UN Security Council and the world to advance their plans for illegal aggression against Iraq. Joe Biden’s critical role as Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was to orchestrate hearings that promoted their lies and excluded dissident voices who would have challenged them.

The resulting spiral of violence has killed millions of people, from 7,037 American troop deaths to five assassinations of Iranian scientists (under Obama and now Trump). Most of the victims have been either innocent civilians or people just trying to defend themselves, their families or their countries from foreign invaders, U.S.-trained death squads or actual CIA-backed terrorists.

Former Nuremberg prosecutor Ben Ferencz told NPR only a week after the crimes of September 11th, “It can never be legitimate to punish people who are not responsible for the wrong done. We must make a distinction between punishing the guilty and punishing others.” Neither Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Pakistan, Palestine, Libya, Syria or Yemen was responsible for the crimes of September 11th, and yet U.S. and allied armed forces have filled miles upon miles of graveyards with the bodies of their innocent people.

Like the Covid pandemic and the climate crisis, the unimaginable horror of the “war on terror” is another calamitous case of corrupt U.S. policy-making leading to massive loss of life. The vested interests that dictate and pervert U.S. policy, in particular the supremely powerful Military-Industrial Complex, marginalized the inconvenient truths that none of these countries had attacked or even threatened to attack the United States, and that U.S. and allied attacks on them violated the most fundamental principles of international law.

If Biden and his team genuinely aspire for the United States to play a leading and constructive role in the world, they must find a way to turn the page on this ugly episode in the already bloody history of American foreign policy. Matt Duss, an advisor to Senator Bernie Sanders, has called for a formal commission to investigate how U.S. policymakers so deliberately and systematically violated and undermined the “rules-based international order” that their grandparents so carefully and wisely built after two world wars that killed a hundred million people. 

Others have observed that the remedy provided for by that rules-based order would be to prosecute senior U.S. officials. That would probably include Biden and some of his team. Ben Ferencz has noted that the U.S. case for “preemptive” war is the same argument that the German defendants used to justify their crimes of aggression at Nuremberg. 

“That argument was considered by three American judges at Nuremberg,” Ferencz explained, “and they sentenced Ohlendorf and twelve others to death by hanging. So it’s very disappointing to find that my government today is prepared to do something for which we hanged Germans as war criminals.” 

Time to Break the Cross of Iron 

Another critical problem facing the Biden team is the deterioration of U.S. relations with China and Russia. Both countries’ military forces are primarily defensive, and therefore cost a small fraction of what the U.S. spends on its global war machine – 9% in the case of Russia, and 36% for China. Russia, of all countries, has sound historical reasons to maintain strong defenses, and does so very cost-effectively. 

As former President Carter reminded Trump, China has not been at war since a brief border war with Vietnam in 1979, and has instead focused on economic development and lifted 800 million people out of poverty, while the U.S. has been squandering its wealth on its lost wars. Is it any wonder that China’s economy is now healthier and more dynamic than ours?  

For the United States to blame Russia and China for America’s unprecedented military spending and global militarism is a cynical reversal of cause and effect – as much of a nonsense and an injustice as using the crimes of September 11th as a pretext to attack countries and kill people who had nothing to do with the crimes committed.

So here too, Biden’s team face a stark choice between a policy based on objective reality and a deceptive one driven by the capture of U.S. policy by corrupt interests, in this case the most powerful of them all, Eisenhower’s infamous Military-Industrial Complex. Biden’s officials have spent their careers in a hall of mirrors and revolving doors that conflates and confuses defense with corrupt, self-serving militarism, but our future now depends on rescuing our country from that deal with the devil.

As the saying goes, the only tool the U.S. has invested in is a hammer, so every problem looks like a nail. The U.S. response to every dispute with another country is an expensive new weapons system, another U.S. military intervention, a coup, a covert operation, a proxy war, tighter sanctions or some other form of coercion, all based on the supposed power of the U.S. to impose its will on other countries, but all increasingly ineffective, destructive and impossible to undo once unleashed. 

This has led to war without end in Afghanistan and Iraq; it has left Haiti, Honduras and Ukraine destabilized and mired in poverty as the result of U.S.-backed coups; it has destroyed Libya, Syria and Yemen with covert and proxy wars and resulting humanitarian crises; and to U.S. sanctions that affect a third of humanity.  

So the first question for the first meeting of Biden’s foreign policy team should be whether they can sever their loyalties to the arms manufacturers, corporate-funded think tanks, lobbying and consultant firms, government contractors and corporations they have worked for or partnered with during their careers. 

These conflicts of interest amount to a sickness at the roots of the most serious problems facing America and the world, and they will not be resolved without a clean break. Any member of Biden’s team who cannot make that commitment and mean it should resign now, before they do any more damage.

Long before his farewell speech in 1961, President Eisenhower made another speech, responding to the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953. He said, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed…This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”

In his first year in office, Eisenhower ended the Korean War and cut military spending by 39% from its wartime peak. Then he resisted pressures to raise it again, despite his failure to end the Cold War.

Today, the Military-Industrial Complex is counting on a reversion to the Cold War against Russia and China as the key to its future power and profits, to keep us hanging from this rusty old cross of iron, squandering America’s wealth on trillion-dollar weapons programs as people go hungry, millions of Americans have no healthcare and our climate becomes unlivable.

Are Joe Biden, Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan the kind of leaders to just say “No” to the Military-Industrial Complex and consign this cross of iron to the junkyard of history, where it belongs? We will find out very soon.

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Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher with CODEPINK, and the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq. 

The corporate media have joined the incoming administration in deciding what we can and cannot see and hear.

Ever since Donald Trump was elected president in 2016 the country has been warned about the dangers of fascism. It isn’t difficult to see why that is the case, as he banned people from mostly Muslim nations from entering the country, separated families seeking asylum, weakened an already frayed safety net, and undid the protections provided by a variety of government regulations.

The racist right wing was certainly ascendant during his administration, but the danger of fascism won’t leave Washington with Donald Trump. The obnoxious racist may be the public face of tyranny, but there is another danger coming from sectors of the Democratic Party. Their goal is to censor any points of view that undermine their neoliberal and imperialist narratives.

Bill Russo, deputy communications director for the Joe Biden campaign, publicly demanded that Facebook censor more often than it already does. He and others do so under the guise of preventing Trump from spreading misinformation, using the likes of Steve Bannon as a cover for something more sinister. They may accuse Facebook of “shredding the fabric of democracy,” but they are more interested in making sure that the small group of people who are actually leftists will have no platform with which to oppose Biden policies.

The corporate media have already made themselves clear by censoring the president himself. On November 5, 2020 Trump claimed to be a victim of election fraud at a White House news conference. Instead of allowing him to make his statement and then analyzing what he said, the television networks pronounced him a liar and cut away from his remarks.

Trump’s charges are unfounded, but the public should have heard him for themselves and made their own determination about the veracity of his words. But the corporate media are done with him and have joined the incoming administration in deciding what we can and cannot see and hear. They are declaring themselves the arbiters of what information should be made accessible to the rest of the world.

These open attacks against Facebook do require the left to be discerning. Big technology social media platforms are certainly not our friends. They readily silence individuals and pages that question the establishment narrative. Black people risk being kicked off entirely if they utter any words white people may find offensive. But Facebook already buckled under Democratic Party pressure that was ginned up during the Russiagate hoax. They even accepted blame for a non-existent offense. The tale of Russian government memes throwing the election to Trump was false and a useful way to silence dissent and attack another country all at once. It isn’t hard to believe that they will again bend to an establishment that is now back in power.

While keeping Facebook’s history in mind, we must also see through the machinations of a new group of thought police who have made clear that they expect social media to bow to their dictates. That is exactly what Twitter did in censoring a recent news story that was unflattering to Hunter Biden. After protecting the Democratic candidate’s son, Twitter’s CEO showed contrition after the fact and claimed the decision was a mistake.

It isn’t just corporate media who are a danger here. There are individuals on the Biden transition team who have publicly stated their support for official propaganda. Richard Stengel  is the team leader for the United States Global Agency, which includes Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the Middle Eastern Broadcasting Networks. In 2018 Stengel had this to say about official propaganda, “My old job at the State Department was what people used to joke as the chief propagandist. I’m not against propaganda. Every country does it, and they have to do it to their own population. And I don’t necessarily think it’s that awful.” It should be noted that Stengel worked for the State Department during the Barack Obama administration and not that of fascist Trump.

It is clear that Biden will be the more effective evil in this regard. There will be no buffoons like Trump or Bannon spewing obvious hatred and nonsense who can be easily dismissed. Instead we will have well spoken operatives like Stengel, who think that propaganda isn’t so bad.

The people need their own platforms, like Black Agenda Report, that will dissect the lies and obfuscations of an administration greeted with a sigh of relief by millions of people weary of Trump and his policies. Already fossil fuel companies and Congress members who benefit from their largesse are on the transition team as are chemical industry representatives slated to go to the EPA. All will end up in the White House along with self-confessed propagandists. We must be ready to engage them all.

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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

Ten chapters of the national Black Lives Matter organization are in open revolt against the individuals that have treated the mass movement as their personal vehicle for upward political, professional and financial advancement.

In 2013 three Black women social activist friends working in non-profit organizations in California invented the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter which, along with #Ferguson, became most identified  with the mass movement that converged on Ferguson, Missouri, following the police killing of Mike Brown, in August of 2014. Soon the friends created a non-profit pocket to gather funds for favored projects, dubbed the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation. The BLMGNF became the principal beneficiary of millions of dollars in individual and corporate philanthropy, as the social movement broadly described as “Black Lives Matter” mounted the greatest challenge to the racist criminal justice system in the United States since the 1960s. Yet, the disposition of these funds has remained solely at the discretion of the three hashtag and foundation founders — Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi – and their designated operatives.

Ten chapters of the national Black Lives Matter organization are now in open revolt against the hashtag founders and their tightly controlled formations, demanding that the BLMGNF and the recently created Black Lives Matter Political Action Committee and BLM Grassroots be made financially and political “accountable.”

Over the past six years Black Agenda Report has often been critical of the “troika” that treats the mass movement as their personal vehicle for upward political, professional and financial advancement. We hope that the revolt of Black Lives Matter chapters will spark a deep and wide examination of the direction of the U.S.-based Black liberation movement and its relationship to the global struggle against racial capitalism and Euro-American imperialism. This crucial debate now begins in earnest with the “Statement from the Frontlines of the BLM ,” issued earlier this week by chapters in Philadelphia; Washington, D.C.; Chicago; Hudson Valley, New York; Oklahoma City; Indianapolis; Denver; Vancouver, Washington; San Diego, California; and New Jersey. The statement appears below in its entirety:

It is Time for Accountability

It was recently declared that Patrisse Cullors was appointed the Executive Director to the Black Lives Matter Global Network (BLMGN) Foundation. Since then, two new Black Lives Matter formations have been announced to the public: a Black Lives Matter Political Action Committee, and BLM Grassroots. BLM Grassroots was allegedly created to support the organizational needs of chapters, separate from the financial functions of BLMGN. We, the undersigned chapters, believe that all of these events occurred without democracy, and assert that it was without the knowledge of the majority of Black Lives Matters chapters across the country and world.

We became chapters of Black Lives Matter as radical Black organizers embracing a collective vision for Black people engaging in the protracted struggle for our lives against police terrorism. With a willingness to do hard work that would put us at risk, we expected that the central organizational entity, most recently referred to as the Black Lives Matter Global Network (BLMGN) Foundation, would support us chapters in our efforts to build communally. Since the establishment of BLMGN, our chapters have consistently raised concerns about financial transparency, decision making, and accountability. Despite years of effort, no acceptable internal process of accountability has ever been produced by BLMGN and these recent events have undermined the efforts of chapters seeking to democratize its processes and resources.

In the spirit of transparency, accountability, and responsibility to our community, we believe public accountability has become necessary. As a contribution to our collective liberation, we must make clear:

1. Patrisse Cullors, as the sole board member of BLMGN, became Executive Director against the will of most chapters and without their knowledge.
2. The newly announced formation, BLM Grassroots, does not have the support of and was created without consultation with the vast majority of chapters.
3. The formation of BLM Grassroots effectively separated the majority of chapters from BLMGN without their consent and interrupted the active process of accountability that was being established by those chapters.
4. In our experience, chapter organizers have been consistently prevented from establishing financial transparency, collective decision making, or collaboration on political analysis and vision within BLMGN
5. For years there has been inquiry regarding the financial operations of BLMGN and no acceptable process of either public or internal transparency about the unknown millions of dollars donated to BLMGN, which has certainly increased during this time of pandemic and rebellion.
6. To the best of our knowledge, most chapters have received little to no financial support from BLMGN since the launch in 2013. It was only in the last few months that selected chapters appear to have been invited to apply for a $500,000 grant created with resources generated because of the organizing labor of chapters. This is not the equity and financial accountability we deserve.

We remain committed to collectively building an organization of BLM chapters that is democratic, accountable, and functions in a way that is aligned with our ideological values and commitment to liberation. We will move forward with transparency and expound on our collective efforts to seek transparency and organizational unity in a fuller statement in the near future. As we collectively determine next steps, we encourage our supporters to donate directly to chapters, who represent the frontline of Black Lives Matter.

A Fork in the Road for the Movement

Movements are comprised of many components — including timely hash tag purveyors like Garza, Cullors and Tomati. It is to be expected that the various elements that emerge from social upheaval will pursue their own class and professional interests, engendering vigorous debate over the direction and nature of struggle. Black Agenda Report views the chapters’ challenge to the troika’s self-serving monetization of the first mass resistance to the racist rule of rich white men since mass Black incarceration was imposed at the tail end of the Sixties, as both welcome and overdue. As BAR editor and columnist and Black Alliance for Peace national organizer Ajamu Baraka writes in this issue, the chapters that are “raising questions about BLM from the frontlines are doing so not out of a desire to destroy but to strengthen the movement by generating this discussion.” If the Cullors-Garza-Tomati trio treats the movement as their legal property, it is because the corporate state only recognizes property relations, not human and social rights and claims. The trio have parlayed their notoriety and the trust invested in them by grassroots activists to pull the movement into the matrix of big business philanthropy and corporate Democratic politics — the cemetery of people’s struggles. But the movement refuses to be bought or buried.

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BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at [email protected].

While the administration of Donald Trump readies its exit from the White House and the Middle East, Saudi Arabia’s use of American diplomatic cover and weapons alike has taken on a fevered pace as the Kingdom deepens the tragedy it has afflicted upon Yemen, where millions of forgotten people are struggling against a cold winter, starvation, epidemics, and the worst blockade in the modern era.

Since November 3, 2020, when the fifty-ninth quadrennial presidential election began followed by the widespread controversy, lawsuits, and recounts across several states, the oil-riched Kingdom has waged a scorched-earth campaign against the Yemeni districts of Marib and Al-Jawf, as well as border areas in Sana’a, Sadaa, Hajjah, Amran, and Hodeida.

On Friday, Saudi warplanes struck populated neighborhoods in Sana’a with at least 20 airstrikes One person was killed and dozens were injured and a number of purebred Arabian horses were killed in strikes that hit a military college near Suq Al-Rwada. Seven airstrikes hit government buildings located near water pumps.

Thousands of tons of western weapons, particularly from the United States, were also dropped on multiple directorates across the provinces of Sadaa, Marib, and al-Jawf as well as districts and provinces across the country.

The unjustified escalation, which came on the back of a brief period of hope that briefly preceded the U.S. pre-election, was not only a last-minute gift to Saudi Arabia from the Trump administration before he leaves the White House in January, but also served to prevent the advance of the Yemeni army supported by Ansar Allah (Houthis) and tribal fighters in the oil-rich province of Marib.

On the Yemen-Saudi border, an intense Saudi bombing campaign aims to force the remaining residents in the area to flee. Saudi Arabia seeks to establish buffer zones on the border inside Yemeni territory in anticipation of any developments made by the incoming U.S. administration after Riyadh failed to achieve that goal through indirect negotiations with Sana’a, sources told MintPress.

Yemen strikes back

In retaliation for Saudi escalation, the Yemeni army, and Ansar Allah targeted Saudi Arabia’s vital oil sector, striking an oil facility in the Kingdom’s Red Sea city of Jeddah. The facility was targeted by the high precision Quds-2 winged missile, a new generation of locally-made winged missiles that recently entered service after successful tests. In the wake attack, videos circulated on social media show a column of smoke rising from burning flames at the facility as sirens of emergency vehicles can be heard in the background.

Video: Social media footage of the aftermath of an alleged Quds-2 cruise missile attack by Houthi rebels in Yemen targeting an Aramco facility in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. pic.twitter.com/mzLRwG1PfM

— Evan Kohlmann (@IntelTweet) November 23, 2020

The move just days before news was leaked that the British government secretly sent British soldiers to protect Saudi oil facilities in the wake of a similar attack in 2009 and occurred the day after the kingdom hosted a virtual summit of G20 nations.

The spokesman for Yemen’s Armed Forces, Brigadier General Yahya Saree, said in a statement in the wake of the attack that the Saudi oil facility was targeted in response to ongoing Saudi military operations and blockade. He warned foreign companies operating in Saudi Arabia “to avoid vital installations” which could be involved in ongoing operations.

The strike was meant to send a signal to both Saudi Arabia and Israel, according to officials in Sana’a. The strike against the Aramco facility, located more than 390 miles from Yemen’s border, underscores Yemen’s increasing ability to hit targets deeper inside Saudi Arabia with cruise and ballistic missiles, as well as drones. A high-ranking source in Sana’a told MintPress that “the consequences of any insane recklessness by Saudi Arabia, Israel, or the current U.S. administration in the lost time of Trump’s term will be dire to Riyadh, Tel Aviv, and the interests of their allies in the region.” When pressed, he gave no additional details.

“An explosion took place as a result of a terrorist attack by a projectile, causing a fire in a fuel tank at the petroleum products distribution terminal in the north of Jeddah,” the Saudi energy ministry said in a statement. On Tuesday, Abdullah al-Ghamdi, the manager of the North Jeddah Bulk Plant, told reporters during a tour of the facility that one of the 13 tanks used for diesel oil, gasoline, and jet fuel at the facility had been damaged and was out of service, adding “ the attack had been “similar to what happened at Khurais and Abqaiq.”

With super duper technical technology (zoom 500%) you can see the penetration mark I spoke of in the first tweet. Slightly reminiscent of the impacts seen at the Arqaiq last year. pic.twitter.com/cYRyynD0cl

— Aurora Intel (@AuroraIntel) November 23, 2020

As the kingdom’s policy since 2015, when its war began, Saudi Arabia sold the attack to the world as targeting international interests. The Kingdom went further and accused Ansar Allah of attacking an oil tanker in the Red Sea. A Maltese-flagged oil tanker managed by Greece was damaged due to an explosion near Shuqaiq in southwestern Saudi Arabia but Ansar Allah has not yet claimed responsibility for the incident. Prior to that, the Saudi-led coalition claimed on Tuesday that it had removed and destroyed five naval mines in the southern Red Sea.

On Sunday, 15 Saudi troops, including officers, were killed or injured in another retaliatory attack, this one marketing the Saudi-led coalition’s Tadawain Camp in Ma’rib, 20 kilometers east Sana’a, according to Brigadier Yahya Saree, the spokesman of the Yemeni Army. Saree said in a statement on Sunday that missile forces hit the Joint Operations Room of a coalition camp in Marib, killing eight Saudi troops and injuring seven. He added that Yemeni forces are observing enemy movements, and will target them wherever they are. In the wake of Saree’s announcement, Saudi state media announced that Saudi troops were killed in battle with no mention of where or when they were killed.

For his part, Muhammad Abd al-Salam, a spokesman for Ansar Allah, said that Saudi wailing following every painful retaliation is what is required. He added, “the international community has to pressure Saudi Arabia to stop the aggression and [the] blockade because the Yemeni people deserve to voice their suffering too.”

Yemen suffers from the world’s worst humanitarian sparked by five years of Saudi bombing and blockade. The humanitarian crisis has worsened this year as international donations have dried up and the Trump administration has suspended aid to the north of Yemen where most of the country’s population lives. The U.N. The Secretary-General warned last week that Yemen faces the worst famine in decades, saying that the country is in imminent danger and that without immediate action, millions of lives may be lost.

Trump’s parting gift

As the Trump administration gets ready to depart the White House, the Saudi-led Coalition is scrambling to get the last-moment boon by pushing the U.S. to designate Yemen’s most powerful resistance force, Ansar Allah, as a terrorist organization in a move that would not harm the “Houthis,” but would punish millions of innocent Yemenis already suffering from widespread malnutrition, starvation, and disease. ِ

According to media reports, the Trump administration is preparing to designate the Houthis as a terrorist organization before leaving office in January. U.S. policy in Yemen has been a disgrace for the past five years, drawing ire on U.S. soil and from abroad, and few Yemenis were surprised that the Trump administration would enact such a policy on its way out the door after having already suspended aid to 80% of the population residing in the north of the country.

Designating Ansar Allah as a terrorist organization will make an already catastrophic humanitarian crisis even worse and impede the work of the many NGOs providing lifesaving assistance in the country. Almost certainly, the unexpected designation would prevent the critical delivery of food, medical supplies, and other items necessary to combat both COVID-19 and famine, according to international organizations.

“The lives of millions of vulnerable children in Yemen are already at risk—this policy will only deepen their suffering by further restricting humanitarian access to vulnerable communities. Recent evidence continues to point to a worsening malnutrition crisis for children,” said Janti Soeripto, the president and CEO of Save the Children. “Even if a humanitarian exemption is permitted, this designation will likely make reaching children and families more difficult and could also heighten security risks for our staff and hinder the fragile peace process.”

The designation will not only make it more difficult to reach a negotiated settlement to end the war but will put the whole region, particularly in the Red Sea, on the edge. For their part, Ansar Allah will not remain idle by while, as a number of Ansar Allah decision-makers told MintPress, “they see their relatives dying of starvation at a time when others, those who made the country to the worst place on the earth, are blessed with oil and freedom of navigation at sea.” That message, it seems, was delivered to Jeddah on the back of Ansar Allah’s newly minted Quds-2.

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Ahmed Abdul Kareem is a Yemeni journalist. He covers the war in Yemen for MintPress News as well as local Yemeni media.

Featured image is from Another Day in the Empire

Rigged Election 2020 wasn’t the first time it happened in America.

Throughout US history, it occurred time and again at the federal, state and local levels.

“Democracy” by duopoly rule eliminates competition from independent candidates, debauching the process, assuring democracy the way it should be doesn’t exist.

Most often, Republicans and Dems take turns governing.

Despite fulfilling the US privileged class’ wish list at least in most respects — notably by enriching the top 1% more greatly than ever before in a four-year period — it wasn’t good enough.

Pre-election, Trump was targeted for defeat, things pre-arranged, Biden/Harris chosen to replace him in January.

In comparison to past US rigged elections, 2020 grand theft may have been most brazen of all — a conspiracy involving undemocratic Dems, major media across the board, and a few renegade Republicans.

Their aim to replace Trump with Biden/Harris was made possible with electronic ease, vote-flipping, ballot-stuffing, and other shenanigans.

Indisputable, breathtaking, scandalous, and loathsome are a few among countless other adjectives of disgust to describe what happened.

The election came at a time when Pew Research (PR) found that most Americans “feel anger (and) fear (about) state of nation.”

“Few feel proud,” based on survey results reported on June 30.

PR found that 87% of Americans are dissatisfied with “how things are going,” 71% angry “about the state of the country,” 66% fearful.

Only 36% of respondents called Trump great or good, 42% calling him poor or terrible.

Joe Biden fared worse, only 28% calling him great or good, 43% calling him poor or terrible.

Both aspirants for the nation’s highest office were far from the people’s choice, based on the above data.

Yet voting-age Americans were virtually given no choice other than between column A or column B of duopoly rule.

PR also found that 89% of Trump voters were “very concerned about the country’s direction, and (that) Biden’s election would lead to lasting harm to the US.”

A similar overwhelming majority of Biden voters (90%) expressed the same view about a second Trump term.

PR also found that 43% of Republicans expressed concern about mail-in ballot fraud compared to 11% of Dems.

In a 46-minute Wednesday evening address on Election 2020 results, Trump delivered his most detailed denunciation of a “rigged” process, a “coordinated assault and siege” to install Biden/Harris in January.

His hyperbole aside, significant evidence, including from whistleblowers, showed brazen fraud in key swing states — manipulating results to select Biden/Harris over the incumbent.

Paul Craig Roberts cited mathematician Shiva Ayyadurai, explaining that Dominion voting machines in Arizona “weight(ed)” votes instead of tabulating them accurately.

He maintains that for each one cast electronically in the state at polls, Biden got 1.3 votes, Trump only 0.7 votes.

If Dominion Voting Systems rigged things this way in Arizona, it surely manipulated the process similarly in other key swing states where its voting machines are used.

At least 28 US states use its electronic voting machines, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — key swing states.

In 2016, Trump won them all except Nevada.

In 2020, he lost them all, based on dubious official tallies.

According to cyber security expert Stephen Spoonamore, electronic voting machines are inherently flawed.

“(D)esigned (to) steal elections,” they enable losers to be winners, and not just for president.

“There is no electronic system in the world that cannot be hacked” or manipulated, he explained.

“You cannot have secure electronic voting. It doesn’t exist.”

“Paper ballots are the only way to make voting secure.”

Calling himself a “life-long Republican,” he added that on the issue of accurately tabulating election votes, he’s nonpartisan.

Earlier he explained that “(t)here  is a very strong argument” that US 2000 and 2004 elections were “electronically stolen” for Bush/Cheney over Gore.

“(H)anging chads were just a distraction.”

More recently he said:

“If you don’t want people to vote, and if you don’t want people’s vote to count, you want to rule without owning it by a mandate, then you” want voting by electronic machines.

During his Wednesday night address, evidence showed Trump correct, saying there was “an orchestrated effort to anoint a winner” while votes were being counted.

Eleventh hour vote dumps for Biden/Harris, GOP observers denied close access to counting procedures, unverified and back-dated late-arriving ballots for the challengers, and many other dubious practices manipulated things to assure Election 2020 winner Trump lost to losers Biden/Harris.

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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: Creative Commons

In the United States, all eyes are on Pfizer and Moderna. The topline efficacy results from their experimental covid-19 vaccine trials are astounding at first glance. Pfizer says it recorded 170 covid-19 cases (in 44,000 volunteers), with a remarkable split: 162 in the placebo group versus 8 in the vaccine group. Meanwhile Moderna says 95 of 30,000 volunteers in its ongoing trial got covid-19: 90 on placebo versus 5 receiving the vaccine, leading both companies to claim around 95% efficacy.

Let’s put this in perspective. First, a relative risk reduction is being reported, not absolute risk reduction, which appears to be less than 1%. Second, these results refer to the trials’ primary endpoint of covid-19 of essentially any severity, and importantly not the vaccine’s ability to save lives, nor the ability to prevent infection, nor the efficacy in important subgroups (e.g. frail elderly). Those still remain unknown. Third, these results reflect a time point relatively soon after vaccination, and we know nothing about vaccine performance at 3, 6, or 12 months, so cannot compare these efficacy numbers against other vaccines like influenza vaccines (which are judged over a season). Fourth, children, adolescents, and immunocompromised individuals were largely excluded from the trials, so we still lack any data on these important populations.

I previously argued that the trials are studying the wrong endpoint, and for an urgent need to correct course and study more important endpoints like prevention of severe disease and transmission in high risk people. Yet, despite the existence of regulatory mechanisms for ensuring vaccine access while keeping the authorization bar high (which would allow placebo-controlled trials to continue long enough to answer the important question), it’s hard to avoid the impression that sponsors are claiming victory and wrapping up their trials (Pfizer has already sent trial participants a letter discussing “crossing over” from placebo to vaccine), and the FDA will now be under enormous pressure to rapidly authorize the vaccines.

But as conversation shifts to vaccine distribution, let’s not lose sight of the evidence. Independent scrutiny of the underlying trial data will increase trust and credibility of the results. There also might be important limitations to the trial findings we need to be aware of.

Most crucially, we need data-driven assurances that the studies were not inadvertently unblinded, by which I mean investigators or volunteers could make reasonable guesses as to which group they were in. Blinding is most important when measuring subjective endpoints like symptomatic covid-19, and differences in post-injection side-effects between vaccine and placebo might have allowed for educated guessing. Past placebo-controlled trials of influenza vaccine were not able to fully maintain blinding of vaccine status, and the recent “half dose” mishap in the Oxford covid-19 vaccine trial was apparently only noticed because of milder-than-expected side-effects. (And that is just one of many concerns with the Oxford trial.)

In contrast to a normal saline placebo, early phase trials suggested that systemic and local adverse events are common in those receiving vaccine. In one Pfizer trial, for example, more than half of the vaccinated participants experienced headache, muscle pain and chills—but the early phase trials were small, with large margins of error around the data. Few details from the large phase 3 studies have been released thus far. Moderna’s press release states that 9% experienced grade 3 myalgia and 10% grade 3 fatigue; Pfizer’s statement reported 3.8% experienced grade 3 fatigue and 2% grade 3 headache. Grade 3 adverse events are considered severe, defined as preventing daily activity. Mild and moderate severity reactions are bound to be far more common.

One way the trial’s raw data could facilitate an informed judgment as to whether any potential unblinding might have affected the results is by analyzing how often people with symptoms of covid-19 were referred for confirmatory SARS-CoV-2 testing. Without a referral for testing, a suspected covid-19 case could not become a confirmed covid-19 case, and thus is a crucial step in order to be counted as a primary event: lab-confirmed, symptomatic covid-19. Because some of the adverse reactions to the vaccine are themselves also symptoms of covid-19 (e.g. fever, muscle pain), one might expect a far larger proportion of people receiving vaccine to have been swabbed and tested for SARS-CoV-2 than those receiving placebo.

This assumes all people with symptoms would be tested, as one might expect would be the case. However the trial protocols for Moderna and Pfizer’s studies contain explicit language instructing investigators to use their clinical judgment to decide whether to refer people for testing. Moderna puts it this way:

“It is important to note that some of the symptoms of COVID-19 overlap with solicited systemic ARs that are expected after vaccination with mRNA-1273 (eg, myalgia, headache, fever, and chills). During the first 7 days after vaccination, when these solicited ARs are common, Investigators should use their clinical judgement to decide if an NP swab should be collected.”

This amounts to asking investigators to make guesses as to which intervention group patients were in. But when the disease and the vaccine side-effects overlap, how is a clinician to judge the cause without a test? And why were they asked, anyway?

Importantly, the instructions only refer to the first seven days following vaccination, leaving unclear what role clinician judgment could play in the key days afterward, when cases of covid-19 could begin counting towards the primary endpoint. (For Pfizer, 7 days after the 2nd dose. For Moderna, 14 days.)

In a proper trial, all cases of covid-19 should have been recorded, no matter which arm of the trial the case occurred in. (In epidemiology terms, there should be no ascertainment bias, or differential measurement error). It’s even become common sense in the Covid era: “test, test, test.” But if referrals for testing were not provided to all individuals with symptoms of covid-19—for example because an assumption was made that the symptoms were due to side-effects of the vaccine—cases could go uncounted.

Data on pain and fever reducing medicines also deserve scrutiny. Symptoms resulting from a SARS-CoV-2 infection (e.g. fever or body aches) can be suppressed by pain and fever reducing medicines. If people in the vaccine arm took such medicines prophylactically, more often, or for a longer duration of time than those in the placebo arm, this could have led to greater suppression of covid-19 symptoms following SARS-CoV-2 infection in the vaccine arm, translating into a reduced likelihood of being suspected for covid-19, reduced likelihood of testing, and therefore reduced likelihood of meeting the primary endpoint. But in such a scenario, the effect was driven by the medicines, not the vaccine.

Neither Moderna nor Pfizer have released any samples of written materials provided to patients, so it is unclear what, if any, instructions patients were given regarding the use of medicines to treat side effects following vaccination, but the informed consent form for Johnson and Johnson’s vaccine trial provides such a recommendation:

“Following administration of Ad26.COV2.S, fever, muscle aches and headache appear to be more common in younger adults and can be severe. For this reason, we recommend you take a fever reducer or pain reliever if symptoms appear after receiving the vaccination, or upon your study doctor’s recommendation.”

There may be much more complexity to the “95% effective” announcement than meets the eye—or perhaps not. Only full transparency and rigorous scrutiny of the data will allow for informed decision making. The data must be made public.

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Peter Doshi is associate editor, The BMJ.

When people become desperate enough, those in power can get most of them to do just about anything.  The first wave of lockdowns knocked us into the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s, it sent suicide rates soaring all over the globe, and it plunged millions upon millions of ordinary citizens into a deep state of despair.  Now another wave of lockdowns is being instituted all over the planet, and this is going to perfectly set the stage for the “solutions” that the elite plan to offer all of us in 2021.

It has been said that if you want people to be willing to accept a solution, first you have to make them realize that they have a problem.

And once this “dark winter” finally ends, almost everybody will be absolutely desperate to return to their “normal” lives.

With each passing day, more extremely harsh restrictions are being imposed.  For example, a brand new “stay at home order” was just issued in Los Angeles County…

All public and private gatherings with anyone outside a single household are now banned in Los Angeles County, as most of the country grapples with an unprecedented surge of Covid-19.

The ban will last three weeks, starting Monday and ending December 20.

It would be nice if the lockdown actually does get lifted before the end of the year, but for at least the next three weeks all 10 million people living in L.A. County will be forced “to stay home as much as possible”…

All 10 million residents are asked to stay home as much as possible and wear face masks when outside — even when exercising at the beach and parks, said the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, which issued the order last week.

On top of that, California Governor Gavin Newsom is warning that he may soon impose “much more dramatic, arguably drastic” restrictions for the entire state…

California Gov Gavin Newsom just warned that more drastic steps could be taken to contain the virus after the state reported another 15k+ new cases yesterday. The Golden State could be facing “much more dramatic, arguably drastic” measures to contain the spread of the virus. The state also broke its record for hospitalized patients yesterday: The state reported 7,415 coronavirus hospitalizations, with more than 1,700 of those patients in ICUs. The number of hospitalizations broke the state’s previous record of 7,170 in July.

Unfortunately, we are witnessing similar craziness all over the nation.  In New Mexico, the new restrictions that were just instituted created so much panic that people were soon waiting for hours just to get into a supermarket to shop for food…

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) has put immense pressure on businesses with her “abrupt” lockdown order – forcing “nonessential” businesses to close and creating what has been dubbed “modern breadlines” — with people waiting 2-4 hours to enter essential retailers, former GOP Senate candidate Elisa Martinez explained during an appearance on Breitbart News Saturday.

After seeing what the first round of lockdowns did to our nation, why would these politicians want to do it again?

More than 70 million Americans have filed unemployment claims so far in 2020, more than 40 million could be facing eviction in 2021, and there has been a dramatic spike in suicides during this pandemic.

When a 90-year-old woman named Nancy Russell found out that another lockdown was happening in her area, she decided to opt for assisted suicide…

According to CTV News, a 90-year-old woman living in Toronto took her own life via medically assisted suicide, the choice made in large part due to the second surge of coronavirus cases and a looming period of increased restrictions.

As I keep reminding my readers, there is always hope if you look at the bigger picture and suicide is never the answer to anything.

Unfortunately, most people are not getting a message of hope from the mainstream media, and Russell decided that the months ahead were going to be too bleak in her nursing home for her to be able to handle…

Residents eat meals in their rooms, have activities and social gatherings cancelled, family visits curtailed or eliminated. Sometimes they are in isolation in their small rooms for days. These measures, aimed at saving lives, can sometimes be detrimental enough to the overall health of residents that they find themselves looking into other options.

Just as we are hitting a low point with this pandemic, authorities all over the globe are announcing that vaccines will soon be available.

In fact, it is being reported that as many as ten different vaccines could be available by the middle of 2021…

Ten COVID-19 vaccines could be available by the middle of next year if they win regulatory approval, but their inventors need patent protection, the head of the global pharmaceutical industry group said on Friday.

As soon as the public can get them, it is inevitable that millions upon millions of people will rush out to get their shots so that they can return to their “normal” lives.

But what they aren’t telling you is that these new vaccines are entirely different from vaccines that you may have gotten previously.

These new mRNA vaccines will actually “hijack” your cells if you take them…

When Moderna was just finishing its Phase I trial, The Independent wrote about the vaccine and described it this way: “It uses a sequence of genetic RNA material produced in a lab that, when injected into your body, must invade your cells and hijack your cells’ protein-making machinery called ribosomes to produce the viral components that subsequently train your immune system to fight the virus.”

“In this case, Moderna’s mRNA-1273 is programmed to make your cells produce the coronavirus’ infamous coronavirus spike protein that gives the virus its crown-like appearance (corona is crown in Latin) for which it is named,” wrote The Independent.

Under normal circumstances, very few people would sign up to have their cells “hijacked”, but at this point millions upon millions of people will be so desperate for a “solution” that they will take a vaccine no matter what the long-term consequences might be.

And if you don’t take one of the vaccines, you may soon find that you aren’t able to fly internationally…

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) announced this week it is in the final phase of development for what it hopes will be universally accepted documentation that in turn could boost confidence among wary travelers.

The digital health pass would include a passenger’s testing and vaccine information and would manage and verify information among governments, airlines, laboratories and travelers.

If these new “digital vaccine passports” are implemented for international travel, it is probably just a matter of time before they are required for domestic travel as well.

Of course there are lots of people out there that are trying to sound the alarm about all of this, but UN communications director Melissa Fleming says that her organization has already recruited an army of “110,000 information volunteers” to combat the spread of “misinformation”…

Fleming told the World Economic Forum that #PledgetoPause and Verified have “recruited 110,000 information volunteers” thus far. She said “we equip these information volunteers with the kind of knowledge about how misinformation spreads and ask them to serve as kind of ‘digital first-responders’.” Fleming has stated elsewhere that the UN has “reached out to Member States, UN media partners, celebrity supporters” and “businesses” “to help us disseminate to the millions we will need to reach” with the campaign.

They want to control what you think as they lead you into a dystopian future that will ultimately turn into a complete and utter nightmare.

The truth is that none of us will be going back to our “normal lives” ever again.

But the elite will continue to hold that carrot out there in order to get you to do what they want, and millions upon millions of people will fall for it.

*

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Michael Snyder’s brand new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available on Amazon.com.  In addition to my new book, he has written four others that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. He has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News which are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe.

We bring to the attention of our readers, the  Video as well as the complete transcript of Donald Trump’s Speech.

This is for the purpose of information only, discussion and debate.

The US corporate media has sofar provided a slanted and biased analysis of  the 2020 elections. 

Global Research does not endorse either candidate in the 2020 presidential election. 

Full transcript below.

President Donald Trump: (00:00)
Thank you. This may be the most important speech I’ve ever made. I want to provide an update on our ongoing efforts to expose the tremendous voter fraud and irregularities which took place during the ridiculously long November 3rd elections. We used to have what was called, election day. Now we have election days, weeks, and months, and lots of bad things happened during this ridiculous period of time, especially when you have to prove almost nothing to exercise our greatest privilege, the right to vote. As President, I have no higher duty than to defend the laws and the Constitution of the United States. That is why I am determined to protect our election system, which is now under coordinated assault and siege.

President Donald Trump: (00:54)
For months, leading up to the Presidential election, we were warned that we should not declare a premature victory. We were told repeatedly that it would take weeks if not, months, to determine the winner, to count the absentee ballots and to verify the results. My opponent was told to stay away from the election, don’t campaign. “We don’t need you. We’ve got it. This election is done.” In fact, they were acting like they already knew what the outcome was going to be. They had it covered and perhaps they did, very sadly for our country. It was all very, very strange. Within days after the election, we witnessed an orchestrated effort to anoint the winner even while many key states were still being counted.President Donald Trump: (01:44)

The constitutional process must be allowed to continue. We’re going to defend the honesty of the vote by ensuring that every legal ballot is counted and that no illegal ballot is counted. This is not just about honoring the votes of 74 million Americans who voted for me, it’s about ensuring that Americans can have faith in this election and in all future elections.

President Donald Trump: (02:12)
Today I will detail some of the shocking irregularities, abuses and fraud that had been revealed in recent weeks but before laying out just a small portion of the evidence we have uncovered, and we have so much evidence, I want to explain the corrupt mail-in balloting scheme that Democrats systematically put into place that allowed voting to be altered, especially in swing states, which they had to win. They just didn’t know that it was going to be that tough, because we were leading in every swing state by so much, far greater than they ever thought possible. While it has long been understood that the Democrat political machine engages in voter fraud from Detroit to Philadelphia, to Milwaukee, Atlanta, so many other places. What changed this year was the Democrat party’s relentless push to print and mail out tens of millions of ballots sent to unknown recipients with virtually no safeguards of any kind. This allowed fraud and abuse to occur in a scale never seen before. Using the pandemic as a pretext, Democrat politicians and judges drastically changed election procedures just months, and in some cases, weeks before the election on the 3rd of November.

President Donald Trump: (03:45)
Very rarely were legislatures involved and constitutionally, they had to be involved, but very, very rarely, and you’ll see that as we continue to file our suits, it’s constitutionally, absolutely incorrect what took place, even from a legal standpoint. Many states, such as Nevada and California sent millions of live ballots to every person on their voter rolls whether those individuals had requested ballots or not, whether they were dead or alive, they got ballots. Other states such as Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin, instituted universal absentee balloting right in the middle of an election year, sending absentee ballot requests forms to all voters on all rolls. It didn’t matter who they were. This colossal expansion of mail-in voting opened the flood gates to massive fraud. It’s a widely known fact that the voting rolls are packed with people who are not lawfully eligible to vote, including those who are deceased, have moved out of their state, and even our non-citizens of our country.

President Donald Trump: (05:05)
Beyond this, the records are riddled with errors, wrong addresses, duplicate entries, and many other issues. This is not disputed. It has never been disputed. Dozens of counties in the key swing states have more registered voters on the rolls than they have voting age citizens, including 67 counties in Michigan. All of this is evidence. In Wisconsin, the state’s Board of Elections could not confirm the residency of more than 100,000 people, but repeatedly refused to remove those names from its voter rolls before the election. They knew why, nobody else did. I knew why. They were illegal voters. It is a travesty that in the year 2020, we do not have any means of verifying the eligibility of those who cast ballots in an election and such an important election it is, or determining who they are, whether they live in the state or whether they’re even American citizens. We have no idea.

President Donald Trump: (06:21)
We have an in all swing states major infractions or outright fraud, which is far more in numbers or votes then we need to overturn the results of a state. In other words, in Wisconsin, as an example, where we were way up on election night, they ultimately had us miraculously losing by 20,000 votes. I can show you right here, that Wisconsin, we’re leading by a lot and then at 3:42 in the morning, there was this, it was a massive dump of votes, mostly Biden, almost all Biden. To this day, everyone’s trying to figure out, “Where did it come from?” But I went from leading by a lot, to losing by a little and that’s right here. That’s at 3:42 in the morning, that’s Wisconsin, a terrible thing, terrible, terrible thing.

President Donald Trump: (07:33)
But we will have far more, many times more than the 20,000 votes needed to overturn the state. If we are right about the fraud, Joe Biden can’t be president. We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of votes. We’re talking about numbers like nobody has ever seen before. Just as an example, in certain states, we’ll be down by, let’s say, 7,000 votes, but we’ll find later on 20,000, 50,000, 100,00, 200,000 discrepancies or fraudulent votes, and that includes votes that went through when they were not allowed to be seen by Republican poll watchers, because the poll watchers were locked out of the building. Or people that innocently came to vote on November 3rd, who were all excited about their vote, they were happy. They were proud to be citizens of the United States of America, and they went up and they said, “I’d like to vote.” They were told that they can’t vote. “I’m sorry,” they were told, “I’m sorry. You’ve already voted by mail-in ballot. Congratulations. We received a ballot, so you can no longer vote.”

President Donald Trump: (09:03)
They didn’t know what to do. They had no one to complain to, most just left and said, “That’s strange.” But many people complained and complained vehemently, and in a lot of cases, they filled out a provisional ballot, which was almost never used, but in virtually every case was a vote for Trump. In other words, they went in to vote and they were told that they voted and they didn’t vote. They left and they felt horror and they lost respect for our system. This happened tens of thousands of times all over the country. That’s how desperate the Democrats were. They would fill out ballots of people not even knowing if these people were going to show up. When they did show up, they said, “Sorry, you’ve already voted.”

President Donald Trump: (10:07)
On top of everything else, we have a company that’s very suspect. It’s name is Dominion, with the turn of a dial or the change of a chip, you could press a button for Trump and the vote goes to Biden. What kind of a system is this? We have to go to paper, maybe it takes longer. But the only secure system is paper. Not these systems that nobody understands, including in many cases, the people that run them. Although, unfortunately, I think they understand them far too well.

President Donald Trump: (10:46)
In one Michigan County, as an example, that used Dominion systems, they found that nearly 6,000 votes had been wrongly switched from Trump to Biden, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. This is what we caught. How many didn’t we catch? Are there 100s of other examples throughout the country? Are there 1000s? We just got lucky and they called it a glitch, but we found numerous glitches that evening. 96% of the company’s political donations went to Democrats, not surprisingly. Frankly, when you look at who’s running the company, who’s in charge, who owns it, which we don’t know, where are the votes counted? Which we think are counted in foreign countries, not in the United States, Dominion is a disaster. Election authorities in Texas have repeatedly blocked the deployment of Dominion systems due to concerns about security vulnerabilities and the potential for errors and outright fraud. Every district that uses Dominion systems must be carefully monitored and carefully investigated-

President Donald Trump: (12:01)
[inaudible 00:12:00] monitored and carefully investigated, but not only for the future. Right now, we’re worried about the present, and what went on with an election that we won without question. Under my lead, the Republicans won almost every state house in the United States, which they weren’t expected to do. We went up to 16 seats in the house. The numbers are still being tabulated, because there are nine seats that nobody really knows. They don’t know. Two weeks later, it’s still under consideration, because it’s a mess. Republicans were supposed to lose many seats, and instead they won those seats in the house, and a very important election that’s coming up will determine whether, or not we hold the Senate.

President Donald Trump: (12:59)
David Perdue and Kelly Leffler are two tremendous people. Unfortunately, in Georgia, they’re using the same horrible dominion system, and it’s already been out that, think of it, hundreds of thousands of absentee ballots have been requested. You check it out who’s requesting those ballots. The difference is, it’s one state, and we will have our eyes on it like nobody’s ever watched anything before, because we have to win those two Senate seats. The tremendous success we had in the House of Representatives, and the tremendous success we’ve had so far in the Senate, unexpected success all over the country, and right here in Washington.

President Donald Trump: (13:55)
It is statistically impossible that the person, me, that led the charge lost. The greatest pollsters, the real pollsters, not the ones that had us down 17 points in Wisconsin when we actually won, or the ones that had us down four or five points in Florida, and we won by many points, or had us even, and down in Texas, and we won by a lot, not those pollsters, but real pollsters. Pollsters that are fair, and honest said, “We can’t understand a thing like this. It’s never happened before. You led the country to victory, and you were the only one that was lost. It’s not possible.”

President Donald Trump: (14:43)
The speaker of the house of a certain state said, “Sir, I expected to lose my seat, and instead, because of you, and because of that incredible charge, and all of those rallies, we had a tremendous victory, and everybody knows it. You are much more popular than me, sir, except I got many more votes than you did, and it’s impossible that that happened. There is something wrong.” I’ll tell you what’s wrong, voter fraud. Here’s an example. This is Michigan. At 6:31 in the morning, a vote dump of 149,772 votes came in unexpectedly. We were winning by a lot. That batch was received in horror.

President Donald Trump: (15:44)
Nobody knows anything about it. By the way, there’s your line. This is one of many. Here’s what is normal, and all of a sudden, look at that. This is normal, normal. Look even here, normal, and then boom, all of a sudden, I go from winning by a lot to losing a tight race. It’s corrupt. Detroit is corrupt. I have a lot of friends in Detroit. They know it, but Detroit is totally corrupt. Look at this, look at this. That’s at 6:31 in the morning, unexpectedly came in. In the recent recount in Georgia, which means nothing because they don’t want to check signatures, and if you’re not going to check signatures in Georgia, it doesn’t work, but we have a secretary of state, and a governor who made it very difficult to check signatures.

President Donald Trump: (16:41)
Why? You’ll have to ask them, but without a signature match, or a check, it doesn’t matter. They found thousands and thousands of votes that were out of whack, all against me. This was during a recount that I didn’t even think mattered. They found many thousands of votes, and that recount didn’t matter. The one that matters is the one that’s going on now, that because of the fact it’s so close, they had to by law give another recount, but the recount has to be a recount where they check the signatures. Otherwise, they’re just checking the same dishonest thing. It won’t matter.

President Donald Trump: (17:22)
In this case, the signatures on envelopes are the only thing that is relevant. We will compare the signature on the envelope to the signatures from past elections, and we will find that many thousands of people signed these ballots illegally. The Democrats had this election rigged right from the beginning. They used the pandemic, sometimes referred to as the China virus, where it originated as an excuse to mail out tens of millions of ballots, which ultimately led to a big part of the fraud, a fraud that the whole world is watching, and there is no one happier right now than China.

President Donald Trump: (18:10)
Many people received two, three and four ballots. They were sent to dead people by the thousands. In fact, dead people, and we have many examples filled out ballots, made applications, and then, voted, which is even worse. In other words, dead people went through a process. Some have been dead for 25 years. Millions of votes were cast illegally in the swing states alone, and if that’s the case, the results of the individual swing states must be overturned, and overturned immediately. Some people say that’s too far out, that’s too harsh. Well, does that mean we take a precedent, and we’ve just elected a president where the votes were fraudulent?

President Donald Trump: (19:01)
No, it means you have to turn over the election, and everybody knows without going much further, and they’ve seen the evidence, but they don’t want to talk about it what a disaster this election was, a total catastrophe, but we’re going to show it, and hopefully, the courts in particular, the Supreme Court of the United States will see it, and respectfully, hopefully, they will do what’s right for our country, because our country can not live with this kind of an election. We could say, let’s go on to the next one, but no, we have to look also at our past. We can’t let this happen.

President Donald Trump: (19:43)
Maybe you’ll have a revote, but I don’t think that’s appropriate. When those votes are corrupt, when they’re irregular, when they get caught, they’re terminated, and I very easily win. In all states, I very easily win, the swing states, just like I won them at 10 o’clock in the evening, the evening of the election. We’re not looking to show you 25 faulty or fraudulent votes, which don’t mean anything, because it doesn’t overturn the state, or a fifty, or a hundred. We’re showing you hundreds of thousands far more than we need, far more than the margin, far more than the law requires. We can show many times what is necessary to win the state.

President Donald Trump: (20:34)
The media knows this, but they don’t want to report it. In fact, they outright refuse to even cover it, because they know the result if they do. Even what I’m saying now will be demeaned and disparaged, but that’s okay. I just keep on going forward, because I’m representing 74 million people, and in fact, I’m also representing all of the people that didn’t vote for me. The mail-in voting scam is the latest part of their four year effort to overturn the results of the 2016 election, and it’s been like living in hell. Our opponents have proven many times again and again, that they will say, and do anything to get back into power.

President Donald Trump: (21:28)
The corrupt forces who are registering dead voters and stuffing ballot boxes are the same people who have perpetrated one phony and fraudulent hoax after another. You’ve been watching it now for four years. These entrenched interests oppose our movement, because we put America first. They don’t put America first, and we’re returning power to you the American people. They don’t want America first, they only want power for themselves. They want to make money, that’s why they don’t want me as your president. I’ve been investigated from soon after I announced I was running for president. When I immediately went to number one in the Republican primary polls, the investigations never stopped. They went on for four years, and I won them all, I beat them all. Russia, Russia, Russia, the impeachment hoax, and so much more. Robert Mueller spent $48 million of taxpayer money investigating me for two and a half years, issued over 2,800 subpoenas, executed nearly 500 search warrants, issued 230 orders for communications records, and conducted 500 witness interviews, all looking to take me down. There was no collusion in the end, none whatsoever. Senator Marco Rubio, the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee stated, “The committee found no evidence that then candidate Donald Trump, or his campaign colluded with the Russian government.” And, I thank Senator Rubio for that statement.

President Donald Trump: (23:22)
Now, I hear that these same people that failed to get me in Washington have sent every piece of information to New York, so that they can try to get me there. It’s all been gone over, over and over again. For $48 million you go through tax returns, you go through everything. The New York attorney general, who recently ran for office campaigned without knowing me stating, “We will join with law enforcement and other attorneys general across this nation in removing this president from office.” I never met her. It’s important that everybody understand she’s…

President Donald Trump: (24:03)
… better. “It’s important that everybody understands”, she said, “that the days of Donald Trump are coming to an end.” And all it’s been is a big investigation in Washington and New York and any place else that can investigate because that’s what they want to do. They want to take not me, but us down. Then we can never let them do that. Everything has been looked at. A friend of mine, who’s very smart, said, “You’ve probably seen more than anybody else. You’ve probably been investigated more than anybody else. And for you to come out with a clean bill of health makes you probably the cleanest person in this country.”

President Donald Trump: (24:48)
Some people in this administration, but fortunately not all have been beaten down and disparaged. They just disappeared. Nobody knows what happened to them. Why aren’t they active? Why aren’t they involved? There’s so much to be involved in. The corruption is so rampant. They just couldn’t take it anymore. They were threatened by Democrats with impeachment and horrible things were said about them. And they’re good people. Even recently, the head of the GSA was hounded and harassed as she reported, like she has never been before. What can I say? We caught Comey cold, we caught McCabe cold. We caught them all. We’re still waiting for a report from a man named Durham, who I have never spoken to, and I have never met. They can go after me before the election as much as they want, but unfortunately Mr. Durham didn’t want to go after these people, or have anything to do with going after them before the election. So who knows if he is ever going to even do a report.

President Donald Trump: (26:11)
Ut if you look at the lies, and the leaks, and the illegal acts of behavior done by so many people, and their desire to hurt the president of the United States, something should happen. The hardest thing I have to do is explain why nothing is happening with all of these people that got caught spying on my campaign. It’s never happened before and it should never happen again to a president of the United States. All you have to do is watch the hearings and see for yourself. The evidence is overwhelming. The fraud that we’ve collected in recent weeks is overwhelming, having to do with our election. Everyone is saying, ” Wow, the evidence is overwhelming”, when they get to see it. But really it’s too late to change the course of an election. It’s too late to change the outcome.

President Donald Trump: (27:11)
In fact, there is still plenty of time to certify the correct winner of the election and that’s what we’re fighting to do. But no matter when it happens, when they see fraud, when they see false votes and when those votes number far more than is necessary, you can’t let another person steal that election from you. All over the country, people are together in holding up signs, “Stop the steal.” To understand how we will challenge this fraud, it is important to know the problems with mail-in balloting. Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, Georgia, Arizona, and most other states allowed anyone to get an absentee ballot and cast their vote without showing any ID. The voting took place entirely on the honor system, no identification of any kind was required.

President Donald Trump: (28:11)
Most Americans would also be shocked to learn that no state in the country verifies United States citizenship as a condition for voting in federal elections. This is a national disgrace. No other advanced country conducts elections this way. Many European countries have instituted major restrictions on mail-in voting, specifically, because they recognize the nearly unlimited potential for fraud. Out of 42 European nations, all but two prohibit absentee ballots entirely for people who reside inside the country, or else they require those who need absentee ballots to show a very, very powerful ID.

President Donald Trump: (28:54)
Throughout the Democrat effort to dramatically expand mail-in voting, the Democrat party leaders were also, feverishly working to block measures, designed to protect against fraud, such as signature verification, residency verification, or voter ID. And citizenship confirmation was almost unthought of that we should ask for it. Can you believe this? These are not the actions of people who want fair elections. These are the actions of people who want to steal elections, who are willing to create fraud. The only conceivable reason why you would block common sense measures to verify legal eligibility for voting, is you are trying to encourage, enable, solicit, or carry out fraud.

President Donald Trump: (29:47)
It is important for Americans to understand that these destructive changes to our election laws were not a necessary response to the pandemic. The pandemic simply gave the Democrats an excuse to do what they have been trying to do for many, many years. In fact, the very first bill that house Democrats introduced when Nancy Pelosi became speaker, was it attempt to mandate universal mail-in voting and eliminate measures such as voter ID, which is so necessary. Dramatically eroding the integrity of our elections was the Democrats number one priority for a simple reason, they wanted to steal the 2020 presidential election. All of the Democrat efforts to expand mail-in balloting laid the groundwork for the systematic and pervasive fraud that occurred in this election.

President Donald Trump: (30:41)
In Pennsylvania, large amounts of mail-in and absentee ballots were processed illegally. And in secret, in Philadelphia, in Allegheny counties, without our observers present. They were not allowed to be present. In fact, they weren’t even allowed in the same room. They were thrown out of the building and they looked from outside in, but they had no way of even seeing, because there were no windows. And the windows that were there were boarded up. Democrats even went to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to block observers from receiving access. There is only one possible reason that the corrupt Democrat political machine would oppose transparency during the vote counting. It’s because they know they are hiding illegal activity. It’s very simple.

President Donald Trump: (31:32)
This is an egregious, inexcusable. And irreversible harm that stains the entire election, yet this unprecedented practice of excluding our observers, our vote watchers, as some people call them, occurred in Democrat run cities and key states all across the nation. Here are just some of the additional facts that we’ve uncovered. Many voters all across Pennsylvania received two ballots in the mail, and many others received mail-in ballots for which they never applied. So many get ballots, they didn’t even know what they were for. And again, so many received more than one ballot. In some cases, more than two ballots. And they happened to be, for the most part, Democrats.

President Donald Trump: (32:22)
In Fayette County, Pennsylvania, multiple voters received ballots that were already filled out. They didn’t know what happened. In Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, a poll watcher, overheard unregistered voters being told to return later to try to vote under a different name. Tens of thousands of voters across Pennsylvania were treated differently based on whether they were Republicans, or Democrats. Voters who submitted floored ballots in some Democrat precincts were notified and asked to fix their ballots, while Republican precincts, and in particular Republican voters, were not so notified which plainly violates the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution.”If you are a Democrat, we’re going to fix up your ballot. make sure it’s perfect. If you are Republican, don’t even talk about it.”

President Donald Trump: (33:16)
In Michigan, a career employee of the city of Detroit, with the city workers, coaching voters to vote straight Democrat, while accompanying them to watch who they were voting for, violating the law and the sanctity of the secret ballot. You can’t do that. The same workers say she was instructed not to ask for any ID and not to attempt to validate any signatures. She was also told to illegally backdate ballots, many, many ballots, received after the deadline. This is something that is so unconstitutional and she estimates that thousands and thousands of ballots were improperly backdated by her and many others.

President Donald Trump: (34:05)
Other witnesses in Detroit also saw our election officials counting batches of the same ballots many times, as well as illegally duplicating ballots. One observer testified to seeing boxes and boxes of ballots, all bearing the same signature. Another observer in Detroit gave sworn testimony that he saw countless and valid ballots that did not belong to properly registered voters and then witnessed election workers in Wayne County entering fake birth dates into the system, in order to illegally count them. Witnesses of science wore an affidavit, so in other words, you go to jail if you lie, testifying that after election officials announced the last absentee votes had been received, a batch of tens of thousands of ballots arrived, many without envelopes, all voting for Democrats.

President Donald Trump: (35:02)
In Wisconsin, a record number of voters were categorized as indefinitely confined. A status reserved for severely disabled individuals, also for the elderly that allow them to vote without showing ID. Last year, approximately 70,000 people claimed this status statewide. This year, the number miraculously was nearly 250,000 voters, after election officials in Milwaukee and Dane County, a couple of the most corrupt political places in our country, urged citizens to improperly register under this status. And register they did in levels that don’t exist. In Wisconsin, there are approximately 70,000 absentee ballots that do not have matching ballot applications as required by law in Georgia, nine observers have testified to seeing countless irregular ballots without…

President Donald Trump: (36:03)
Testified to seeing countless irregular ballots without the creases or typical markings indicating that the ballots did not arrive in envelopes as required. A poll watcher in Fulton County estimated that approximately 98% of the large number of unusually pristine ballots that she witnessed were for Biden. Highly unusual number. In addition, thousands of uncounted ballots were discovered in Floyd, Fayette, and Walton counties weeks after the election, and these ballots were mostly from Trump voters. They weren’t counted. They were from Trump voters.

President Donald Trump: (36:43)
In Detroit, everybody saw the tremendous conflict and the horrible way that the two Republican canvassers were treated so horribly because they wouldn’t vote when they saw that 71% of the precincts didn’t balance. Also, there were more votes than there were voters. Think of that. You had more votes than you had voters. That’s an easy one to figure, and it’s by the thousands. In Arizona, in-person voters whose balanced produced error messages from tabulation machines were told to press a button that resulted in their votes not being counted. Also in Arizona, the attorney general announced that mail-in ballots had been stolen from mailboxes and hidden under a rock.

President Donald Trump: (37:37)
In Clark County, Nevada, where most of the state’s voters reside, the standards for matching a signature using the signature verification machine were intentionally lowered to allow large numbers of ballots to be counted that otherwise would never have passed muster. This machine was set at the lowest level. According to one report, in order to test the process, nine voters in Clark County cast ballots with intentionally incorrect signatures, and eight of the nine ballots were accepted and counted. They said you could sign your name as Santa Claus, and it would be accepted. Last week, the Clark County Commission threw out the results of a local election after the registrar reported finding, quote, “discrepancies that we can’t explain.” Also in Nevada, some voters were entered into a raffle for more than a dozen gift cards worth as much as $250 if they could prove they had voted.

President Donald Trump: (38:42)
This took place on Indian reservations. One of the most significant indications of widespread fraud is the extraordinarily low rejection rates for mail-in ballots in many key states. These are the states that I had to win. In swing state after swing state, the number of ballots rejected has been dramatically lower than what would have been expected based on prior experience. That means years and years of voting. In Georgia, just 0.2%, that’s substantially less than 1%, of mail-in ballots have been rejected. In other words, almost none have been rejected. They took everything. Nothing was rejected, practically, compared to 6.4% in 2016. There are those that think that 6.4 was a low number.

President Donald Trump: (39:36)
Think of it. Almost none were rejected. The previous election, 6.4% were rejected. We have seen similar declines in Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Michigan. Ballots weren’t rejected, especially if they happen to be in Democrat areas. These irregularities are inexplicable unless there is a deliberate effort to accept ineligible ballots or fraudulent ballots.

President Donald Trump: (40:06)
In Pennsylvania, the secretary of state and the state supreme court in essence abolished signature verification requirements just weeks prior to the election, in violation of state law. You’re not allowed to do that. It has to be approved by the legislature. A judge can’t do it. A state can’t do it. An official can’t do it. The only one that can do it is the legislature.

President Donald Trump: (40:33)
The reason for this is clear. They were not verifying signatures because they know the ballots have not been filled out by the voters in whose names they were cast. In other words, people filled them out that had nothing to do with the names on the ballot. A simple recount of the ballots under these circumstances only compounds the fraud. The only way to determine whether there was an honest vote is to conduct a full review of the envelopes in the relevant states. You will find that many of them, tens of thousands, have fraudulent signatures. A full forensic audit is required to ensure that only legal ballots from lawfully registered voters that were properly cast are included in the final count.

President Donald Trump: (41:25)
This election is about great voter fraud, fraud that has never been seen like this before. It’s about poll watchers who were not allowed to watch. So illegal. It’s about ballots that poured in, and nobody but a few knew where they came from. They were counted, and they weren’t for me. It’s about big leads on election night, tremendous leads, leads where I was being congratulated for a decisive easy victory. All of a sudden, by morning or a couple of days later, those leads rapidly evaporated. It’s about numbers of ballots that were sent that nobody know where they came from. It’s about machinery that was defective, machinery that was stopped during certain parts of the evening, miraculously to open with more votes.

President Donald Trump: (42:24)
It was about many other things, but above all, it was about fraud. This election was rigged. Everybody knows it. I don’t mind if I lose an election, but I want to lose an election fair and square. What I don’t want to do is have it stolen from the American people. That’s what we’re fighting for. We have no choice to be doing that. We already have the proof. We already have the evidence, and it’s very clear. Many people in the media and even judges so far have refused to accept it. They know it’s true. They know it’s there. They know who won the election, but they refuse to say, “You’re right.” Our country needs somebody to say, “You’re right.”

President Donald Trump: (43:12)
Ultimately, I am prepared to accept any accurate election result, and I hope that Joe Biden is as well. We already have the proof. We already have tens of thousands of ballots more than we need to overturn all of these states that we’re talking about. This is an election for the highest office in the greatest country in the history of the world. Every reasonable American should be able to agree, based on what we have already documented, that we need a systematic analysis of the mail-in ballots to review the envelopes. It’s about the signature. If they’re on the envelopes, we can only review the envelopes, and that will tell us everything.

President Donald Trump: (44:01)
This is the absolute minimum we should expect. This is not just about my campaign, although it has a lot to do with who’s going to be your next president. This is about restoring faith and confidence in American elections. This is about our democracy and the sacred rights that generations of Americans have fought, bled, and died to secure. Nothing is more urgent or more important. The only ballots that should count in this election are those cast by eligible voters who are citizens of our country, residents of the states in which they voted, and who cast their ballots in a lawful manner before the legal deadline.

President Donald Trump: (44:43)
Moreover, we must never again have an election in which there is not a reliable and transparent system to verify the eligibility, identity, and residency of every single person who casts a ballot, a very, very cherished ballot. Many very smart people have congratulated me on all we’ve done: the biggest tax cuts in history, regulation cuts, the biggest in history. We rebuilt our military. We took care of our vets like never before, Space Force, and so much more. Then they went on to say, as big and as important as these events were, the single greatest achievement in your presidency will be exactly what you’re doing right now: voter integrity for our nation. It’s more important than any of the things that we discussed.

President Donald Trump: (45:40)
If we don’t root out the fraud, the tremendous and horrible fraud that’s taken place in our 2020 election, we don’t have a country anymore. With the resolve and support of the American people, we will restore honesty and integrity to our elections. We will restore trust in our system of government. Thank you. God bless you. God bless America.

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“The problem with the COVID vaccine is that they recognize that it’s gonna be really hard to get a vaccine so they have been reducing our standards so they can pass the vaccine no matter what.” – Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

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Watch the interview of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. with Theo Von below.

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President Donald Trump may only have seven weeks left in office, but he’s given his top advisers the green light to batter the Iranian regime—anything that doesn’t hazard a full-on war before Joe Biden is inaugurated.

According to multiple U.S. officials familiar with the matter, in recent weeks Trump has taken a more passive role in personally overseeing Iran policy for the critical final months until Inauguration Day. One White House official last week described Trump as mostly “checked out” on this major foreign policy issue, having become consumed by his bumbling legal effort to steal the 2020 election amid the coronavirus pandemic, as well as by other his pet grievances of the moment.

But Trump has given some of his most hawkish administration officials, particularly his top diplomat, Mike Pompeo, carte blanche to squeeze and punish the Islamic Republic as aggressively as they wish in the coming weeks. All Trump asks is that they don’t risk “start[ing] World War III,” as the president has specifically put it in several private conversations with Pompeo and others, according to two senior administration officials.

That has left a host of options at the outgoing administration’s disposal—among them, a suffocating sanctions regime and a studied silence in the face of the assassination of Iranian nationals. Two officials who spoke to The Daily Beast said the administration is set to announce new sanctions on regime-linked companies and individuals in the coming weeks to solidify a years-long effort to paralyze Tehran’s economy.

Knowledgeable sources say those actions are designed to help fulfill various Trump officials’ long-brewing desire to make it more difficult for the Democratic president-elect to rekindle negotiations with Tehran and re-enter a nuclear deal. And it’s a scenario for which Biden lieutenants and allies have long prepared, having already factored into their Iran strategy that current U.S. officials would do nearly everything they could to undermine a revival of Obama-era relations between the adversarial nations.

Trump administration officials who spoke to The Daily Beast frequently point to Pompeo and Elliott Abrams, special representative for Iran, as the leaders of the administration’s last-ditch attempt at pummeling the regime.

Secretary Pompeo has been particularly forward leaning in the administration’s efforts to inflict damage on the Iranian government. In a recent trip to the Middle East, Pompeo met with leaders from Israel, the UAE, and Bahrain on ways all three countries could work together on countering the Islamic Republic. The trip followed on the heels of an announcement by the State Department that it had recently approved a massive sale of F-35 jets to the UAE. The deal has been widely viewed as a way to get Dubai to cooperate with Jerusalem on deterring Iran. And on Friday, Pompeo announced additional Iran-related sanctions, this time targeting Chinese and Russian entities for transferring sensitive technology and items to Iran’s missile program.

Both Pompeo and Abrams, officials say, are supportive of harsh measures, including the quiet backing of covert actions carried out by other actors. One other senior administration official pointed to Central Intelligence Agency Director Gina Haspel as being intimately involved in the administration’s clandestine strategy as it relates to Iran.

The president has repeatedly told his advisers that one of his priorities is to avoid a confrontation with Iran in which American military personnel would die. But Trump is comfortable letting Israel take the lead in targeting, or even slaying, Iranian regime figures in the closing weeks of his presidency, officials said. That includes Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the country’s top nuclear weapons scientist, who was killed Nov. 27 while traveling in a convoy in the northern part of the country.

Two senior Trump administration officials said Israel was behind the attack, confirming global suspicions. One of those same officials, while they did not detail the level of involvement from the U.S., noted that America’s intelligence agencies often share information with Israel on Iran-related matters.

“There’s obviously a close working relationship between Mossad chief Yossi Cohen and Haspel,” said Mark Dubowitz, the CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a right leaning think tank that’s advised the Trump administration on Iran.

Some of the president’s confidants have urged him not to draw too much attention to the killing. The administration has chosen to remain mostly tight-lipped regarding the scientist’s death. A source close to Trump said they had counseled the president in the past few days to avoid gratuitously tweeting about the assassination. Not only would it be a “bad look,” according to this source, it would likely undermine the administration’s public position of keeping the operation at arm’s length, if not farther away.

The two senior administration officials said discussions about taking more active measures to limit Biden’s administration on negotiating a new deal with Iran ramped up this summer and coincided with several of Israel’s covert operations, including the killing of al Qaeda deputy leader Abu Muhammed in Iran, and Israel’s planting of a bomb in one of Iran’s centrifuge facilities.

“The Israelis understand that between now and Jan. 20 they will need to inflict maximum damage on the regime,” Dubowitz said.

The Trump strategy over the next few weeks is clear, one of the senior administration officials said: Continue to use sanctions as a deterrence tool while providing intelligence to regional allies such as Israel that have a mutual goal of damaging the Iranian regime.

That plan isn’t so different from the one the Trump administration has put into action over the past four years. Since Trump took office in 2017, a cohort of top officials, advisers, and external advocacy groups have helped craft and implement a “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran that has relied primarily on the implementation of more than 1,000 sanctions on regime-linked officials and companies while also covertly targeting Tehran’s assets overseas.

The only difference now, officials say, is that the administration not only wants to punish Iran, it also wants to pen in President-elect Biden.

Individuals involved in the crafting of the Trump administration’s Iran policy believe the maximum pressure campaign will limit Biden’s ability to get back on track with Tehran, namely because some of the sanctions may be difficult to lift, especially those focused on human-rights and terrorism. Dubowitz and Trump administration officials familiar with Iranian sanctions said multinational corporations may be so risk averse to doing business with Iran now, following thousands of financial designations, that even if Biden lifts sanctions they will not engage in normal trade relations with Tehran.

Individuals familiar with Team Biden’s thinking say the president-elect has a clear strategy for dealing with Iran and sanctions come January. That plan rests heavily on Biden’s desire to return back to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—the nuclear deal negotiated during the Obama administration—if Iran comes back into compliance.

“If Iran takes the bait, which is clearly the intention behind [the Farikhzadeh assassination], then it probably makes it impossible to return to the JCPOA and diplomacy,” said Jarrett Blanc, the former coordinator for Iran nuclear implementation in the Obama State Department. “If Iran doesn’t take the bait… I don’t know that it really changes the choices that confront the Biden team or Iran in January.”

Any negotiations between a Biden administration and Iran would include conversations about the lifting of some sanctions, two individuals familiar with the Biden team’s thinking on Iran said. But those sanctions would likely only be lifted if and when Tehran complies with a deal.

“Iran says it is prepared to come back in compliance and reverse some of the decisions it’s made. And the U.S. says it would lift some of the sanctions. [There’s] no legal bar to reverse them. Many of them were imposed for political reasons,” said one former senior Obama administration official. “It’s likely going to be a two-step approach for Biden—getting back in and then perhaps renegotiating a different, better deal.”

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Erin Banco is a National Security Reporter.

Asawin Suebsaeng is a White House Reporter.

Featured image is from American Herald Tribune

Alex Salmond is back. Scotland’s former First Minister, under whom the SNP went from strength to strength, has unveiled his own 5-point plan together with MSP Alex Neil, to address the economic aftershocks of the pandemic in Scotland.

There have been rumours for some time of Salmond’s return to the Scottish political scene and this was the first indication that he may do so. Having now left his court case behind him – what some of his supporters believe was a conspiracy to prevent his return – Salmond will have work to do to improve his tarnished public image. It cannot be denied that there was at some point a breakdown in relations between Nicola Sturgeon and her mentor, Alex Salmond, which has led to a divide in the party. Sturgeon, herself, when recently interviewed on Sky News, admitted that Salmond may be ‘angry’ with her because she was not prepared to lie on his behalf concerning allegations of sexual assault. Salmond’s supporters say Sturgeon herself has led a campaign to prevent Alex Salmond from returning to Scottish politics.

Therefore Salmond’s publication of a document outlining a different approach to tackling the fallout from Covid, involving ‘learning lessons from Asia’, is a highly significant move. It is essentially a direct challenge to Nicola Sturgeon’s leadership, in the midst of the pandemic. At the same time, SNP grassroots members staged a rebellion during the party conference over the weekend, by electing a group of figures who disagree with Sturgeon’s independence plan. The group, which includes Joanna Cherry MP, believes the Scottish government should have a plan B should Boris Johnson continue to refuse giving Scotland a Section 30 order to allow another independence referendum. There is a growing swell of support amongst SNP grassroots members and independence activists for a second referendum as a matter of urgency. They believe that the time for such a vote is now, given the momentum the movement has received as a result of Brexit and unpopular Westminster leadership. This faction is (unofficially) led by Salmond and Cherry. There even exists a belief amongst some in this group that Nicola Sturgeon herself secretly doesn’t want independence. This, I consider to be a fallacy. Sturgeon is simply treading carefully, and trying to avoid the turmoil and political arrests we saw in the aftermath of the referendum in Catalonia.

Such divisions in the SNP, do, of course, harm the independence movement. But can Alex Salmond really provide a challenge to Nicola Sturgeon? Unlikely. Salmond may have the support of Joanna Cherry and others in the SNP for his more bullish approach to the independence movement, but Sturgeon’s more cautious style has proved highly popular with the Scottish electorate. Never before has there been so much support for the First Minister, with her approval ratings regularly soaring high above those of Boris Johnson. And only this week it was revealed that support for Scottish independence is at an all-time high of 56%. While Salmond was something of a divisive figure, Sturgeon has been far more popular. It’s almost impossible to see how he could pose any real threat to her position. Although Salmond did a huge deal to make the necessary gains the SNP needed during his 20 years as leader, his time is over. Sturgeon has broader, more mainstream appeal, and her more careful approach was just what was required during the pandemic.

Indeed the SNP is on a high right now after its conference over the weekend. Several new welfare policies were announced which will score the party points with the electorate prior to the Holyrood elections in May next year. Firstly, Scotland becomes the first nation in the world to provide sanitary products free for all women, tackling ‘period poverty’.  Secondly, more money is to be given to low income families – an extra £10 a week per child from February – and before Christmas a separate ‘gift’ of £100 will be paid to every family in receipt of school meals. Another announcement at the conference was the creation of the ‘Young Person’s guarantee’, which will give all young people between 16 and 24 the guarantee of work, education or training. The Pathway to Apprenticeships scheme will provide work-based training and a grant of £100 given to school leavers up to the age of 18.

These measures are all ones which the average working person will ‘feel’ and which will have a genuine impact on their lives. It is likely these initiatives will translate into more votes for the SNP at the ballot box next year, and even more support for independence. Such focus on welfare by the Scottish government creates even more distance between it and the Westminster government. Earlier this year, top economists warned the UK government not to impose new austerity measures in response to the vast spending plans actioned during the pandemic, but there is no doubt that at some point people are going to be asked to tighten their belts. And given the Conservative government’s record on austerity, it is working people on lower incomes who will end up paying the price for future economic recovery.

All in all, it’s a fantastic time for Scottish independence. The mood has never been more buoyant, despite internal divisions. To ensure the independence goal is reached however, the party must unite. If Alex Salmond and his supporters really care about independence then they will give Nicola Sturgeon their full backing and support her strategy to secure #indyref2.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Johanna Ross is a journalist based in Edinburgh, Scotland. You can follow the author on Twitter.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

Millions of Americans Vulnerable to Eviction

By Stephen Lendman, December 02 2020

During the most severe Main Street economic collapse in US history — with over one-fourth of working-age Americans jobless — additional calamity looms in the coming weeks. According to Census Bureau estimates, 30 to 40 million Americans face possible eviction in 2021 for lack of income to pay rent or service mortgages.

Australian War Crimes in Afghanistan Go All the Way to the Top

By Keith Lamb, December 02 2020

The Australian Defense Force’s recent inquiry into Australian special forces conduct in Afghanistan, between 2005 and 2016, reveals that 39 Afghan prisoners and civilians were killed outside of battle, as part of a culture of “competition killings,” where commanders required junior soldiers to shoot prisoners to achieve their first kill.

Bayer Lobbying “Very Strongly” to Change EU’s GMO Regulations to Exempt Gene Editing

By GMWatch, December 02 2020

Speaking during the Bayer Future of Farming online conference, Liam Condon, president of crop science at Bayer, said the company is lobbying “very strongly” to change the EU’s GMO regulations to exempt gene editing.

Ten Years Since WikiLeaks Published the US Diplomatic Cables

By Thomas Scripps, December 02 2020

The documents revealed the vast scope and global reach of US imperialism’s criminal conspiracies against the international working class, and the brutality and corruption of capitalist governments the world over.

Corrupt Science and Elite Power: Covid-19 “Techno-Slavery” and the “Great Reset” Are Now Imminent

By Robert J. Burrowes, December 02 2020

We have long been told that science is an ‘evidence-based approach’ to understanding particular phenomena and thus providing accurate guidance on how to proceed to achieve productive outcomes. Unfortunately, this claim is just propaganda for the unwary.

Joe Biden’s Silence on Ending the Drone Wars. The So-called “Targeted Killings”

By Elise Swain, December 02 2020

President-elect Joe Biden has maintained silence for years on the controversial and continued use of so-called targeted killings — lethal strikes by drones, cruise missiles, and occasionally military special operations raids. Biden has never publicly disavowed or criticized former President Barack Obama’s legacy of expanding the use of drones.

UK Campaign to Stop Killer Robots Writes to Defence Secretary on the UK’s Approach to LAWS

By Chris Cole, December 02 2020

As members of the UK Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, Drone Wars and a number of other UK civil society groups have written to Secretary of State Ben Wallace on the UK’s position on the development of Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems partly in response to recent comments by the Chief of the Defence Staff.

Aerially Sprayed Pesticide Contains the PFAS “Forever Chemicals”. Impacts on Human Health

By PEER, December 02 2020

State efforts to control mosquito-borne illnesses may be creating a new health problem. The insecticide Massachusetts and numerous other states use for mosquito control, both applied aerially and sprayed from trucks along roads, contains per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), according to lab test results.

“Global Policeman”: Why’s the US in the South China Sea?

By Andrew Korybko, December 02 2020

America regards itself as the “global policeman”, hence its arrogant actions, but it was never deputized by the international community to fulfill such a role. Some of China’s maritime neighbors object to its territorial claims, but these are all bilateral disputes that should be handled between Beijing and each of the relevant parties.

Spain on the Brink of Financial Collapse

By Lucas Leiroz de Almeida, December 02 2020

The Spanish economic situation worsens day after day. The national manufacturing sector dropped significantly in November, according to data from IHS Markit, which attributes the decline to the drop in production demand due to the pandemic.

Inizia su Davvero TV, il 1° dicembre alle 22:30, Pangea, programma di politica internazionale a cura del CNGNN (Comitato No Guerra No Nato, Italia) in collaborazione con Global Research (Centro di Ricerca sulla Globalizzazione, Canada).

Il programma sarà trasmesso ogni martedì e venerdì alle 22:30 e replicato nei fine settimana.

Pangea contribuirà a colmare il vuoto di informazione e a contrastare la disinformazione dei grandi media sulle questioni nodali da cui dipende il nostro futuro.

Gli eventi che ci coinvolgono – dall’attuale crisi economica messa in moto dal Covid-19 al crescente confronto militare anche nucleare – vanno visti in un’ottica globale.

A tal fine, insieme a esperti italiani, collaborano a questo programma esperti da altre parti del mondo.

PANGEA: Il programma TV del Comitato No Guerra No Nato & Global Research Canada from Maya Nogradi on Vimeo.

Nella prima trasmissione, il 1° dicembre, il Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, economista, direttore del Centro di ricerca sulla globalizzazione (Canada), parlerà della crisi economica senza precedenti che, innescata dalla pandemia di Covid, sta portando a un colossale trasferimento di ricchezza da una maggioranza sempre più impoverita a una ristretta minoranza sempre più ricca.

Manlio Dinucci, giornalista e geografo, parlerà del coinvolgimento dell’Italia nella sempre più pericolosa strategia della Nato e del conseguente aumento della nostra spesa militare nel momento in cui mancano le risorse per fronteggiare l’attuale crisi economica.

Davvero Tv è la Tv dei cittadini, che ogni giorno vi racconta un mondo diverso e più ricco di sfumature, personaggi, temi e opinioni. Notizie, politica, attualità, cultura, convegni, economia e approfondimenti. La Tv dei cittadini è la sola Tv che lavora per i cittadini, pagata direttamente da loro, e che fa esclusivamente i loro interessi.

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Davvero Tv Sul Digitale Terrestre

Siamo Presenti  in tre regioni di italia:

• Lazio: Canale 632
• Lombardia: Canale 606
• Piemonte: Canale 607

(Ri-Sintonizzate il decoder)

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O In Streaming Live Tramite Internet In Tutta Italia

https://www.davvero.tv/byoblu24-1/videos/byoblu-davverotv-live

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Ti restituiamo i contenuti, oscurati dai social network, che promuovono la libertà di parola e pensiero critico

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Vi Invitiamo A Dare La Massima Diffusione All’iniziativa Attraverso La Vostra Rete Di Contatti

Ci Sentiremo Presto Cercando Di Costruire Reti Se Non Comunali Almeno Regionali Di Nostri Amici Che Si Facciano Protagonisti In Prima Persona Della Necessaria Diffusione Delle Notizie E Delle Proposte Che Facciamo.

Vi Ricontatterò  Anche Per Sollecitare Un Progetto Di Finanziamento Per L’anno 2021 Che Sta Già’ Iniziando A Funzionare Ma Che Deve Estendersi Per Mantenere La Qualità’  Del Servizio Che Forniamo Ma Soprattutto Che Funzioni Da Opera Organizzatrice Di Resistenza *(O Di   Resilienza Come Si Dice Oggi).

Le Interviste Che Abbiamo In Programma Vi Confermeranno Il Valore Di Questo Proposito.A Presto!

America regards itself as the “global policeman”, hence its arrogant actions, but it was never deputized by the international community to fulfill such a role. Rather, it’s more like a dangerously delusional role player than a legitimate law enforcement officer.

I have read enough of the fraud reports, affidavits, and statements from election security and forensic experts to be comfortable in my conclusion that the election was stolen.  But I am not confident that anything will be done about the fradulent election. The American elite no longer believe in democracy. Consider, for example, the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset.  It is anti-democratic, as is globalism. Democracy is in the way of elite agendas. 

Indeed, the reason the elite despise Trump is that he bases himself in the people. Judges will not even preserve the vote record so that it can be investigated. In Georgia a federal judge has refused to stop the Dominion voting machines from being wiped clean and reset—See this. UPDATE: Judge overturns his previous order and reinstates ban on wiping and reseting Dominion machines used in Atlanta. 

For those of you who find it too technical and volumnious to read through the massive evidence of election fraud, here is a brief summary: 

Electoral fraud was organized in all of the states.  The purpose was not to try to steal the red states, but to make the vote look closer than the expected pattern in order to provide cover for extensive fraud in the critical swing states.

The voting machines were programmed to allocate votes with a bias toward Biden. 

The result was to cut back Trump’s margin of victory in red states. 

In swing states more extensive measures were used. The Biden bias programmed in the voting machines was raised. 

As a backup, large numbers of fraudulent mail-in ballots were accumulated in the Democrat-controlled cities in the swing states—Milwaukee, Detroit, and Philadelphia.  Although Georgia is a red state, the same occured in Democrat-controlled Atlanta. 

The reason voting was stopped in the middle of the night in these cities was to prepare the mail-in ballots necessary to overtake Trump’s sizeable lead and enter them into the count.  This is a time when poll watchers were told to go home, and it is a period when both Democrat and Republican watchers observed numerous acts of fraud of every description.  You can review the types of fraud in the references at the end ot this article.

There are proven votes from the grave, from unregistered people, from out-of-state people. There are back-dated mail-in ballots. There are mail-in ballots without a crease, that is, ballots never folded and placed in an envelop, and so on and on.  There are places where the vote exceeds the number of registered voters.

A number of independent unbiased experts have reported that the Biden vote spikes in the early hours of the morning are either impossible or so improbable as to have a very low probability of occurring.  For them to occur simultaneously in different states falls outside the range of believability. 

It is clear that the voting procedures imposed by Democrats in Pennsylvania are in violation of the Pennsylvania state constitution. A Pennsylvania state judge has permitted that suit to go forward and gave her opinion that it would succeed. I am confident that the corrupt Pennsylvania state Supreme Court will overturn her ruling.

Read complete article here

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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts writes on his blog, PCR Institute for Political Economy, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Sources

https://sharylattkisson.com/2020/11/what-youve-been-asking-for-a-fairly-complete-list-of-some-of-the-most-significant-claims-of-2020-election-miscounts-errors-or-fraud/ 

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/11/joe-biden-gets-1000-viewers-watch-thanksgiving-address-live-got-80-million-votes-hah-complete-joke/ 

https://www.hannenabintuherland.com/usa/report-judicial-watch-analysis-finds-29-states-with-voter-registration-over-100/  

https://www.hannenabintuherland.com/usa/report-judicial-watch-analysis-finds-29-states-with-voter-registration-over-100/  

https://www.unz.com/article/election-bomb-shell-the-us-constitution-goes-to-court-or/ 

https://thefederalist.com/2020/11/23/5-more-ways-joe-biden-magically-outperformed-election-norms/ 

https://nypost.com/2020/11/06/trump-won-record-minority-support-yet-the-left-is-calling-it-racism/ 

https://www.theepochtimes.com/judge-republicans-will-likely-win-pennsylvania-election-lawsuit_3596477.html?utm_source=morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2020-11-28 

https://publicintegrityforum.com/pa-data-scientist-i-saw-usb-cards-being-uploaded-to-voting-machines/?utm_source=Email_marketing&utm_campaign=Content_11.28.20&cmp=1&utm_medium=HTMLEmail 

https://thenationalpulse.com/politics/michigan-election-fraud-analysis/ 

https://www.theepochtimes.com/arizona-state-legislature-to-hold-urgent-election-integrity-hearing-with-trumps-lawyers_3594607.html?utm_source=morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2020-11-28 

https://www.theepochtimes.com/data-scientist-weird-spike-in-incomplete-nevada-voter-registrations-some-using-casinos-as-home-address_3595924.html?utm_source=morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2020-11-28 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flOAvE_FTpc 

https://votepatternanalysis.substack.com/p/voting-anomalies-2020 

https://www.theepochtimes.com/thousands-in-georgia-registered-at-postal-commercial-addresses-portraying-them-as-residences-researcher-says_3592165.html?utm_source=morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2020-11-25 

https://www.theepochtimes.com/google-shifted-a-minimum-of-6-million-votes-in-2020-election-dr-robert-epstein_3592527.html?utm_source=morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2020-11-25 

https://www.theepochtimes.com 

https://www.theepochtimes.com/sidney-powells-allegations-in-georgia-so-serious-any-class-may-alter-the-election-results-expert_3596412.html?utm_source=news&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2020-11-28-2 

Featured image is from Creative Commons

Despite significant evidence of Election 2020 fraud, Attorney General Barr proved he’s a fifth column Trump regime member.

Telling AP News that “to date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election (sic)” showed his support for Biden/Harris over DJT — by foul, not fair means — when the latter’s term expires.

Barr also dubiously said “we haven’t seen anything to substantiate… the claim that (Dominion voting) machines were programmed essentially to skew the election results.”

According to a hollow follow-up DOJ spokesperson statement:

“The department will continue to receive and vigorously pursue all specific and credible allegations of fraud as expeditiously as possible (sic).”

What hasn’t been done so far virtually assures DOJ inaction on this vital issue ahead — other than pretending that scrutiny continues.

Significant evidence of election fraud has been clear for weeks. Saying the DOJ hasn’t yet found it doesn’t square with the facts.

According to Trump’s legal team, witnesses to fraud they met with were not contacted by the FBI — what the DOJ probe should have prioritized.

What’s clear from events leading up to Election 2020 and its aftermath is that deep state dark forces want Trump denied a second term — election-rigging their chosen strategy.

While it ain’t over ’til it’s over, their scheme most likely will work.

If it appears that SCOTUS may support the Trump campaign’s legal challenge — a long shot but possible — a JFK fate could await DJT to assure he’s out — pre-or-post January 20 inauguration day.

The US ruling class tolerates no sovereign independent nations free from its control.

It’s increasing intolerant of homeland dissent — notably in the streets and online.

It seeks total control over the state of the nation, planet earth, its resources and populations.

Open, free and fair elections threaten its hegemonic aims.

It’s why duopoly power runs things, two right wings shutting out independents.

It’s also why ordinary Americans have no say over who serves as president, in key congressional posts, and on the nation’s courts.

Corporate-controlled conventional and social media operate as gatekeepers for powerful interests — controlling the message their mandate, suppressing what diverges from the official narrative.

After Barr met with Trump on Tuesday, AP News reported the following:

DJT’s “personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and his political campaign issued the following scathing statement:

“With all due respect to the Attorney General, there hasn’t been any semblance of a Department of Justice investigation.”

“We have gathered ample evidence of illegal voting in at least six states, which they have not examined.”

“We have many witnesses swearing under oath they saw crimes being committed in connection with voter fraud.”

“As far as we know, not a single one has been interviewed by the DOJ.”

“The Justice Department also hasn’t audited any voting machines or used their subpoena powers to determine the truth.”

While directing US attorneys nationwide to investigate “substantial allegations” of election fraud last month, whatever was done, if anything, fell woefully short.

Paul Craig Roberts minced no word about Barr, accusing him of being on “the (Dem) side.”

Instead of opposing and acting to reverse brazen election fraud — depriving Trump of a second term he won — Barr went “nowhere” on this cutting-edge issue.

Election 2020 fraud is the elephant in the room that Barr pretends not to see — nor FBI agents assigned to probe this issue for evidence.

Yet Dominion voting machines were programmed to favor challenger Biden over incumbent Trump.

Along with evidence of significant vote-flipping for Biden/Harris, along with other discovered shenanigans, it’s clear that the process was rigged to assure Trump’s tenure ends on January 20.

Based on what’s known, can anyone ever trust the results of a US federal election ever again?

When votes for candidate A are counted for candidate B, an open, free and fair process no longer exists.

That’s the disturbing reality about US fantasy democracy — the real thing prohibited.

Election 2020 is Exhibit A.

A Final Comment

Biden/Harris won a record low number of US counties.

In stark contrast to Trump carrying 2,497 of the nation’s counties (83.3% of them), Biden/Harris only managed to win the other 16.7%.

Trump also got more votes than any previous GOP presidential candidate in US history.

He drew huge crowds for campaign rallies compared to sparse ones for Biden.

If official Election 2020 results stand, the process will henceforth be remembered as the selection of losers Biden/Harris over winner Trump.

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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.

Since Biden/Harris were dubiously chosen as Dem standard bearers, establishment media across the board bombarded the US public with puff-piece reporting about them — ignoring their dark side.

A former US envoy once described Pompeo as the most “sycophantic and obsequious (figure) around Trump,” adding:

“He’s like a heat-seeking missile for Trump’s ass.”

The same characterization applies to fawning/truth-defying media coverage of Biden/Harris.

While inventing reasons to slam Trump, largely ignoring legitimate ones, mass media reinvented Biden/Harris, disturbing hard truths about them suppressed.

The NYT is the leading print media culprit — fake news over the real thing featured.

Addressing the likely incoming Biden/Harris regime’s economic team, the self-styled newspaper of record falsely claimed its focus is on “workers and income equality (sic),” adding:

The “team…is stocked with champions of organized labor and marginalized workers (sic), signaling an early focus on efforts to speed and spread the gains of the recovery from the pandemic recession (sic).”

“(L)abor unions (will) have increased power (sic).”

“Biden’s team will be focused initially on increased federal spending to reduce unemployment (sic) and an expanded safety net to cushion households that have continued to suffer as the coronavirus persists and the recovery slows (sic).”

It’ll pursue “an economy that gives every single person across America a fair shot and an equal chance to get ahead (sic).”

Reality is worlds apart different from the above rubbish.

In 1963, racist Alabama Governor George Wallace was once quoted saying: “Segregation now, segregation forever.”

Today, both right wings of US duopoly rule are allied in enforcing neoliberalism now, neoliberalism forever — a new millennium form of segregation, with attribution to Wallace’s quote.

Serving privileged interests exclusively at the expense of ordinary Americans is hard-wired US policy.

An earlier land of opportunity for most people is long gone.

Washington’s agenda is heading toward transforming the nation into a ruler/serf society, wrapped in the American flag.

It’s led by whoever chairs the Wall Street owned and controlled Fed under Biden/Harris ahead, their choice for key regime positions, including treasury secretary — neoliberalism now/neoliberalism forever Janet Yellen nominated.

As Obama/Biden Fed chairman from 2014 through the end of their tenure, she handed Wall Street trillions of dollars of near-free money for speculation.

At the same time, she kept interest rates at near-zero, harming millions of low and middle-income savers —while the nation’s privileged class benefitted hugely.

The Fed on her watch and her predecessor Bernanke did nothing for Main Street, nothing for jobs creation, nothing for anything socially related — nothing for ordinary people, focusing solely on benefitting privileged ones.

She at Treasury and current Fed chairman Powell will operate the same way going forward.

Like other Biden/Harris economic team members, Yellen is a Wall Street tool.

According to MaketWatch, “Wall Street is thrilled” by her choice, and no wonder.

She’ll fulfill the Street’s wish list as always before.

Her Treasury deputy Adewale Adeyemo is a former Obama/Biden regime official, followed by serving as a senior BlackRock hedge fund adviser.

She now heads the Chicago-based Obama Foundation.

Investment banker Brian Deeson was named Biden/Harris regime National Economic Council chairman.

Anti-progressive Neera Tanden was named incoming regime budget director.

She’s notable for supporting cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and other social programs, including opposition to a living wage, while supporting imperial aggression, and demeaning Julian Assange.

She was quoted calling him an “agent of a pro-fascist state, Russia (sic)” — its (nonexistent actions) “a key reason of why Trump got elected (sic).”

The above-named figures are subject to Senate confirmation.

They and others named as part of the Biden/Harris economic team are super-rich defenders of corporate predation at the expense of ordinary people everywhere.

Most figures selected by Biden/Harris ill-served ordinary Americans as part of the Obama/Biden regime.

Dirty business as usual continuity defines how US government operates at the federal, state and local levels.

Wall Street, the military, industrial, security media complex, other corporate favorites, and super-wealth will be well served in Washington no matter which wing of duopoly rule runs things.

They’ll benefit while ordinary Americans are exploited by continuing the greatest wealth transfer scheme in world history from them to the US privileged class.

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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 by Tony Webster/Wikimedia Commons

Of relevance to the current debate on vaccines, originally published in 2017

Abstract

In 1993, WHO announced a “birth-control vaccine” for “family planning”. Published research shows that by 1976 WHO researchers had conjugated tetanus toxoid (TT) with human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) producing a “birth-control” vaccine. Conjugating TT with hCG causes pregnancy hormones to be attacked by the immune system. Expected results are abortions in females already pregnant and/or infertility in recipients not yet impregnated. Repeated inoculations prolong infertility. Currently WHO researchers are working on more potent anti-fertility vaccines using recombinant DNA. WHO publications show a long-range purpose to reduce population growth in unstable “less developed countries”.

By November 1993 Catholic publications appeared saying an abortifacient vaccine was being used as a tetanus prophylactic. In November 2014, the Catholic Church asserted that such a program was underway in Kenya. Three independent Nairobi accredited biochemistry laboratories tested samples from vials of the WHO tetanus vaccine being used in March 2014 and found hCG where none should be present. In October 2014, 6 additional vials were obtained by Catholic doctors and were tested in 6 accredited laboratories. Again, hCG was found in half the samples. Subsequently, Nairobi’s AgriQ Quest laboratory, in two sets of analyses, again found hCG in the same vaccine vials that tested positive earlier but found no hCG in 52 samples alleged by the WHO to be vials of the vaccine used in the Kenya campaign 40 with the same identifying batch numbers as the vials that tested positive for hCG. Given that hCG was found in at least half the WHO vaccine samples known by the doctors involved in administering the vaccines to have been used in Kenya, our opinion is that the Kenya “anti-tetanus” campaign was reasonably called into question by the Kenya Catholic Doctors Association as a front for population growth reduction.

Read full article here.

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Authored by: John Oller, Christopher A Shaw, Lucija Tomljenovic, Stephen K. Karanja

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons

State efforts to control mosquito-borne illnesses may be creating a new health problem. The insecticide Massachusetts and numerous other states use for mosquito control, both applied aerially and sprayed from trucks along roads, contains per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), according to lab test results posted today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

Tests commissioned by PEER of a jug of Anvil 10+10, the pesticide used in the aerial spraying programs of Massachusetts, parts of Florida, New York, and many other states, reveals that it contains roughly 250 parts per trillion (ppt) of PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid, a C8 PFAS, manufacture of which has been largely but not completely phased out in the U.S.), and 260 – 500 ppt of HFPO-DA (hexafluoropropylene oxide dimer acid, a “GenX” replacement for PFOA). When PEER alerted Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MADEP) of its findings, MADEP independently tested nine samples of Anvil 10+10 from five different containers, and found eight different PFAS, including PFOA and PFOS.  The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has a 70 ppt Lifetime Health Advisory for PFOA and PFOS in drinking water; some states, including Massachusetts, have much stricter regulatory limits than the EPA Advisory.

PFAS are called “forever chemicals” since they do not break down in the environment and build up in our blood stream. They are associated with a variety of ailments, including suppressed immune function, thyroid disease, testicular and kidney disease, cancers, and liver damage. While PFAS may be added to pesticides as surfactants, dispersants, anti-foaming agents, and/or other uses, it is unclear whether the PFAS found in Anvil 10+10 is an ingredient added by the manufacturer, contained in one of the ingredients supplied to Anvil’s manufacturer by other companies, or whether it is a contaminant from the manufacturing/storage process.

“In Massachusetts, communities are struggling to remove PFAS from their drinking water supplies, while at the same time, we may be showering them with PFAS from the skies and roads,” stated PEER Science Policy Director Kyla Bennett, a scientist and attorney formerly with EPA, who arranged for the testing. “The frightening thing is that we do not know how many insecticides, herbicides, or even disinfectants contain PFAS.” PEER found patents showing chemical companies using PFAS in these products, and recent articles discuss the variety of pesticides that contain PFAS as either an active or an inert ingredient.

In 2019, Massachusetts aerially sprayed 2.2 million acres of the state with this pesticide and, in 2020, sprayed more than 200,000 acres. PFAS are not listed as active ingredients in Anvil 10+10. PEER found PFAS listed as approved inert ingredients on EPA’s “Inert Finder” database. EPA is not required to disclose many inert ingredients in pesticides, and manufacturers usually withhold information about inert ingredients as “trade secrets” or “proprietary” information.

“This PFAS fiasco shows that public trust in EPA having a full accounting of these materials and their safety is utterly misplaced,” added Bennett, whose organization has also been highly critical of EPA’s response to the unfolding PFAS contamination scandals.  “Until EPA acts, states need to adopt their own safeguards and chemical disclosure requirements because they certainly cannot depend upon the diligence of EPA.”

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Featured image is from Pesticide Action Network

The Nagorno-Karabakh region has been nearing the end of the first phase of the implementation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani ceasefire deal that started on November 10.

Late on November 30, Azerbaijani troops started entering the Lachin district in the Nagorno-Karabkah region. This district is being transferred to Azerbaijani forces as a part of the ceasefire agreement reached between Armenia and Azerbaijan earlier in November. Nonetheless, the Lachin corridor, the road linking Armenia with the remaining territory of the Nagorno-Karabah Republic (Republic of Artsakh) will remain under the control of the Russian peacekeeping forces.

Under the aforementioned ceasefire deal, Azerbaijan already established control over the districts of Agdam and Kalbajar. The next step is the restoration of the transport link between the Azerbaijani mainland and Azerbaijan’s Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic as well as the creation of an alternative road between Lachin and Stepanakert that would not pass through the Azerbaijani-controlled area.

Another important factor is the status of Karabkah. The Russian-brokered ceasefire agreement signed by the sides did not address this question, and, therefore, it still has to be settled. Baku insists that Karabakh is an integral part of Azerbaijan and all on what the Armenians leaving there can count on is some cultural autonomy. At the same time, the Armenian leadership, led by Nikol ‘The Basement’ Pashinyan continues its international campaign asking for at least somebody to recognize Nagorno-Karabkah as an independent state because Yerevan itself does not want to do this by itself.

Recently, the French Senate adopted a resolution asking the government to recognize the Republic of Artsakh as an independent state. This move was presented by Armenia as a large-scale diplomatic victory, while in fact the adopted resolution is non-binding and on an official level France does not recognize the state of Artsakh. And even if it does so, it is unclear how Paris would be able to influence the situation in Karabakh. Even in the hottest days of the Second Nagorno-Karabkah War, France limited its support to the Pashinyan government to diplomatic concerns. Some large-scale French-led sanction campaign against Azerbaijan and Turkey over these questions seems like a scenario mostly existing in the dimension of Armenian fairy tales. In the current conditions, the regional stability in Karabakh is guaranteed by the Russian peacekeepers and the commitment of the sides to the ceasefire regime.

Nonetheless, the question of Karabakh’s status remains the important factor in that, in the event of the inability of the sides to come to a comprehensive diplomatic solution making mutual concessions, could once again fuel instability in the South Caucasus.

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“Man’s conquest of Nature, if the dreams of some scientific planners are realized, means the rule of a few hundreds of men over billions upon billions of men.” —C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

Like it or not, the COVID-19 pandemic with its veiled threat of forced vaccinations, contact tracing, and genetically encoded vaccines is propelling humanity at warp speed into a whole new frontier—a surveillance matrix—the likes of which we’ve only previously encountered in science fiction.

Those who eye these developments with lingering mistrust have good reason to be leery: the government has long had a tendency to unleash untold horrors upon the world in the name of global conquest, the acquisition of greater wealth, scientific experimentation, and technological advances, all packaged in the guise of the greater good.

Indeed, “we the people” have been treated like lab rats by government agencies for decades now: caged, branded, experimented upon without our knowledge or consent, and then conveniently discarded and left to suffer from the after-effects.

You don’t have to dig very deep or go very back in the nation’s history to uncover numerous cases in which the government deliberately conducted secret experiments on an unsuspecting populace, making healthy people sick by spraying them with chemicals, injecting them with infectious diseases and exposing them to airborne toxins.

Now this same government—which has taken every bit of technology sold to us as being in our best interests (GPS devices, surveillance, nonlethal weapons, etc.) and used it against us, to track, control and trap us—wants us to fall in line as it prepares to roll out COVID-19 vaccines that owe a great debt to the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency for its past work on how to weaponize and defend against infectious diseases.

The Trump Administration by way of the National Institute of Health awarded $22.8 million to seven corporations to develop artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, etc., with smart phone apps, wearable devices and software “that can identify and trace contacts of infected individuals, keep track of verified COVID-19 test results, and monitor the health status of infected and potentially infected individuals.”

This is all part of Operation Warp Speed, which President Trump has likened to the Manhattan Project, a covert government effort spearheaded by the military to engineer and build the world’s first atomic bomb.

There is every reason to tread cautiously.

There is a sinister world beyond that which we perceive, one in which power players jockey for control over the one commodity that is a necessary ingredient for total domination: you.

By you, I mean you the individual in all your singular humanness.

Remaining singularly human and retaining your individuality and dominion over yourself—mind, body and soul—in the face of corporate and government technologies that aim to invade, intrude, monitor, manipulate and control us may be one of the greatest challenges before us.

These COVID-19 vaccines, which rely on messenger RNA technology that influences everything from viruses to memory, are merely the tipping point.

The groundwork being laid with these vaccines is a prologue to what will become the police state’s conquest of a new, relatively uncharted, frontier: inner space, specifically, the inner workings (genetic, biological, biometric, mental, emotional) of the human race.

If you were unnerved by the rapid deterioration of privacy under the Surveillance State, prepare to be terrified by the surveillance matrix that will be ushered in on the heels of the government’s rollout of this COVID-19 vaccine.

The term “matrix” was introduced into our cultural lexicon by the 1999 film The Matrix in which Neo, a computer programmer/hacker, awakens to the reality that humans have been enslaved by artificial intelligence and are being harvested for their bio-electrical energy.

Hardwired to a neuro-interactive simulation of reality called the “Matrix,” humans are kept inactive and docile while robotic androids gather the electricity their bodies generate. In order for the machines who run the Matrix to maintain control, they impose what appears to be a perfect world for humans to keep them distracted, content, and submissive.

Here’s the thing: Neo’s Matrix is not so far removed from our own technologically-hardwired worlds in which we’re increasingly beholden to corporate giants such as Google for powering so much of our lives. As journalist Ben Thompson explains:

Google+ is about unifying all of Google’s services under a single log-in which can be tracked across the Internet on every site that serves Google ads, uses Google sign-in, or utilizes Google analytics. Every feature of Google+—or of YouTube, or Maps, or Gmail, or any other service—is a flytrap meant to ensure you are logged in and being logged by Google at all times.

Everything we do is increasingly dependent on and, ultimately, controlled by our internet-connected, electronic devices. For example, in 2007, there were an estimated 10 million sensor devices connecting human utilized electronic devices (cell phones, laptops, etc.) to the Internet. By 2013, it had increased to 3.5 billion. By 2030, it is estimated to reach 100 trillion.

Much, if not all, of our electronic devices will be connected to Google, a neural network that approximates a massive global brain.

Google’s resources, beyond anything the world has ever seen, includes the huge data sets that result from one billion people using Google every single day and the Google knowledge graph “which consists of 800 million concepts and billions of relationships between them.”

The end goal? The creation of a new “human” species, so to speak, and the NSA, the Pentagon and the “Matrix” of surveillance agencies are part of the plan. As William Binney, one of the highest-level whistleblowers to ever emerge from the NSA, said, “The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control.”

Mind you, this isn’t population control in the classic sense. It’s more about controlling the population through singularity, a marriage of sorts between machine and human beings in which artificial intelligence and the human brain will merge to form a superhuman mind.

“Google will know the answer to your question before you have asked it,” predicts transhumanist scientist Ray Kurzweil. “It will have read every email you’ve ever written, every document, every idle thought you’ve ever tapped into a search-engine box. It will know you better than your intimate partner does. Better, perhaps, than even yourself.”

The term “singularity”—that is, computers simulating human life itself—was coined years ago by mathematical geniuses Stanislaw Ulam and John von Neumann. “The ever accelerating progress of technology,” warned von Neumann, “gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue.”

The plan is to develop a computer network that will exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to or indistinguishable from that of human beings by 2029. And this goal is to have computers that will be “a billion times more powerful than all of the human brains on earth.”

Neuralink, a brain-computer chip interface (BCI), paves the way for AI control of the human brain, at which point the disconnect between humans and AI-controlled computers will become blurred and human minds and computers will essentially become one and the same. “In the most severe scenario, hacking a Neuralink-like device could turn ‘hosts’ into programmable drone armies capable of doing anything their ‘master’ wanted,” writes Jason Lau for Forbes.

Advances in neuroscience indicate that future behavior can be predicted based upon activity in certain portions of the brain, potentially creating a nightmare scenario in which government officials select certain segments of the population for more invasive surveillance or quarantine based solely upon their brain chemistry.

Case in point: researchers at the Mind Research Center scanned the brains of thousands of prison inmates in order to track their brain chemistry and their behavior after release. In one experiment, researchers determined that inmates with lower levels of activity in the area of the brain associated with error processing allegedly had a higher likelihood of committing a crime within four years of being released from prison. While researchers have cautioned against using the results of their research as a method of predicting future crime, it will undoubtedly become a focus of study for government officials.

There’s no limit to what can be accomplished—for good or ill—using brain-computer interfaces.

Researchers at Duke University Medical Center have created a brain-to-brain interface between lab rats, which allows them to transfer information directly between brains. In one particular experiment, researchers trained a rat to perform a task where it would hit a lever when lit. The trained rat then had its brain connected to an untrained rat’s brain via electrodes. The untrained rat was then able to learn the trained rat’s behavior via electrical stimulation. This even worked over great distances using the Internet, with a lab rat in North Carolina guiding the actions of a lab rat in Brazil.

Clearly, we are rapidly moving into the “posthuman era,” one in which humans will become a new type of being. “Technological devices,” writes journalist Marcelo Gleiser, “will be implanted in our heads and bodies, or used peripherally, like Google Glass, extending our senses and cognitive abilities.”

Transhumanism—the fusing of machines and people—is here to stay and will continue to grow.

In fact, as science and technology continue to advance, the ability to control humans will only increase. In 2014, for example, it was revealed that scientists have discovered how to deactivate that part of our brains that controls whether we are conscious or not. When researchers at George Washington University sent high frequency electrical signals to the claustrum—that thin sheet of neurons running between the left and right sides of the brain—their patients lost consciousness. Indeed, one patient started speaking more slowly until she became silent and still. When she regained consciousness, she had no memory of the event.

Add to this the fact that increasingly humans will be implanted with microchips for such benign purposes as tracking children or as medical devices to assist with our health. Such devices “point to an uber-surveillance society that is Big Brother on the inside looking out,” warns Dr. Katina Michael. “Governments or large corporations would have the ability to track people’s actions and movements, categorize them into different socio-economic, political, racial, or consumer groups and ultimately even control them.”

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, control is the issue.

In fact, Facebook and the Department of Defense are working to manipulate our behavior. In a 2012 study, Facebook tracked the emotional states of over 600,000 of its users. The goal of the study was to see if the emotions of users could be manipulated based upon whether they were fed positive or negative information in their news feeds. The conclusion of the study was that “emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness.”

All of this indicates a new path forward for large corporations and government entities that want to achieve absolute social control. Instead of relying solely on marauding SWAT teams and full-fledged surveillance apparatuses, they will work to manipulate our emotions to keep us in lock step with the American police state.

Now add this warp speed-deployed vaccine to that mix, with all of the associated unknown and fearsome possibilities for altering or controlling human epigenetics, and you start to see the perils inherent in blindly adopting emerging technologies without any restrictions in place to guard against technological tyranny and abuse.

It’s one thing for the starship Enterprise to boldly go where no man has gone before, but even Mr. Spock recognized the dangers of a world dominated by AI. “Computers make excellent and efficient servants,” he observed in “The Ultimate Computer” episode of Star Trek, “but I have no wish to serve under them.”

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People  is available at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected]. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Natural News

As members of the UK Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, Drone Wars and a number of other UK civil society groups have written to Secretary of State Ben Wallace on the UK’s position on the development of Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems partly in response to recent comments by the Chief of the Defence Staff.

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Dear Secretary of State,

We are writing on behalf of the UK Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, in advance of the next meeting of the Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) on ‘Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems’ (LAWS) at the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), as well as the CCW’s meeting of High Contracting Parties. We welcome the UK government’s recognition in the CCW that discussing human control is central to successful international work to address increasing ‘autonomy’ in weapons systems, and that this is an area in which meaningful progress can be made.[1] 

In this regard, we encourage the UK government to work on building recognition and stimulating engagement around the valuable content it has already contributed to the CCW on aspects of human control.[2] Such efforts could help promote convergence among states on useful points of substance and common understanding in this area, both at the normative and operational level.

We also welcome the UK’s working paper exploring ‘the human role in autonomous warfare’ and would appreciate the opportunity to discuss its contents further with you and your ministry.[3] We share the paper’s view that ‘assigning responsibility and preserving dignity’ are key reasons for retaining human control over the use of force. However, the UK’s perspective on human control raises concerns that such control may disproportionally focus on the early stages of weapon systems’ research and development. Although we acknowledge the importance of ensuring human-machine interaction throughout a weapon system lifecycle, we believe that further attention should be placed on how to operationally maintain human control over the use of force on actual, specific battlefield decisions, so as to ensure compliance with International Humanitarian and Human Rights Law. As such, we believe that to preserve legal and ethical compliance, meaningful human control requires positive obligations, including to control location and duration of system use, as well as the specification of targets.

In addition, we would appreciate clarification on what ‘humanitarian benefits’ the UK believes could arise from ‘automating some tasks within the targeting process’.[4] We are particularly interested in better understanding what examples or experiences substantiate the UK government’s argument that autonomy could decrease risks for civilians and advance humanitarian goals. We note that the UN Secretary General’s 2020 report on the Protection of Civilians expresses concerns over LAWS. We share the UN Secretary General’s view that developments in weapons technologies could, in fact, present a major challenge to the protection of civilians in armed conflict.[5]

We agree with the UK’s view that substantial contributions towards delineating the principles and components of meaningful human control over weapons systems will be key to building an effective international framework to construct regulation for human control. However, we are not persuaded by the UK’s position that the existing framework is ‘more than sufficient’ to address the novel moral, ethical, human rights and legal issues that developments in this area pose. We also believe that a ‘compendium of good practice’ should be a tool for the discussion of necessary additional rules—rather than an end point. In this regard, we would like to ask what specific examples of ‘good practice’—for instance practical descriptions and case studies regarding the use and parameters of control of current sensor-based weapons systems—the UK might present at the next GGE meeting and beyond, to concretely allow further discussion across the LAWS community of interest.

In light of the above issues,  we noted with interest the comments made by the UK Chief of Defence Staff, General Sir Nick Carter, in an interview with Sky News on 8th November, where he stated that  the UK ‘will absolutely avail ourselves of autonomous platforms and robotics wherever we can’ and that in the near future ‘I suspect we could have an army of 120,000, of which 30,000 might be robots, who  knows’.[6] These remarks appear to be in conflict with the UK’s official stated policy in respect of LAWS, that being that the MoD ‘has no intention to develop systems that operate without human intervention in the weapon command and control chain.’[7] Given this apparent conflict, we would be grateful to learn the extent to which General Sir Nick Carter’s comments reflect a change in UK official policy.

Finally, we are interested to see the UK’s proposal for the greater involvement of industry in international discussions regarding LAWS.[8] Our experience of engaging with the tech and finance industries has impressed on us the fact that many key stakeholders would welcome clearer international legal regulation to protect their work, ensuring it will not be used for dangerous or unethical purposes and/or safeguarding it against reverse engineering for such unintended applications. We believe the contribution of these industries to international discussions would be welcome, and would be interested to know which sectors and stakeholders the UK expects to invite to help form policy in this area.

We look forward to hearing your response and more detail about the approach the UK government will be taking as the conversation continues in the lead-up to the critical moment of the next CCW Review Conference (currently scheduled for 2021). Ultimately, we believe that the UK can contribute to the success of the overall process by demonstrating leadership in working with other states to both develop a strong shared consensus of the practicalities of meaningful human control over weapons systems and the use of force, as well as building understanding on how to preserve responsibility and human dignity. From the campaign’s perspective, we will continue to work with states to prepare for formal negotiations on a legal framework that prohibits and restricts lethal autonomous weapon systems.

Yours sincerely,

Ann Feltham
Parliamentary Co-ordinator, Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT)

Ben Donaldson
Head of Campaigns, United Nations Association UK (UNA-UK)

Chris Cole
Director, Drone Wars UK

Dave Webb
Chair, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND)

Oliver Feeley-Sprague
Programme Director, Military, Security and Police, Amnesty International UK

Maiara Folly,
Coordinator, UK Campaign to Stop Killer Robots

Dr Rebecca E. Johnson
Director, Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy

Richard Moyes
Managing Director, Article 36

Robert Parker
Director of Policy and Communications, Saferworld

Dr Stuart Parkinson
Executive Director, Scientists for Global Responsibility (SGR)

Taniel Yusef
International Representative, The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom UK (WILPF UK)

Amnesty International student representatives at the universities of Birmingham, Bristol, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Oxford and Warwick.

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Notes

[1] UK commentary on the Guiding Principles: https://documents.unoda.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/20200901-United-Kingdom.pdf

[2] For our analysis of UK contributions up to 2020, see Article 36, ‘From “pink eyed terminators” to a clear-eyed policy response? UK government policy on autonomy in weapons systems’ http://www.article36.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/UK-policy-on-autonomy-in-weapons-systems-2020.pdf

[3] UK Expert paper: The human role in autonomous warfare https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G20/319/98/PDF/G2031998.pdf?OpenElement

[4] UK Expert paper: The human role in autonomous warfare

[5] UN Secretary General 2020 report on the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflicts https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/S_2020_366_E.pdf

[6] Sky News, “World War Three ‘a risk’, says UK defence chief”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACDlPOssea0&feature=emb_logo

[7] Ministry of Defence, Joint Doctrine Publication 0-30.2: Unmanned Aircraft Systems:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/673940/doctrine_uk_uas _jdp_0_30_2.pdf

[8] UK commentary on the Guiding Principles: https://documents.unoda.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/20200901-United-Kingdom.pdf

Featured image is from Drone Wars UK

I want the American public to know right now, we will not be intimidated. American patriots are fed up with the corruption from the local level to the highest level of our government. We are going to take this country back. We will not be intimidated. We are going to clean this mess up right now. President Trump won by a landslide. We are going to prove it. And we are going to reclaim the United States of America for the people who voted for freedom. — Sidney Powell, Washington D.C., 19 November, 2020

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Sidney Powell is emerging as a pivotal figure among those sounding the alarm that the United States is forfeiting its claim to be anything like a democratic country subject to the rule of law. Like Rudolf Giuliani, Powell has been a federal prosecutor. Unlike Giuliani, Powell has made one thing abundantly clear. She will not distinguish between members of the Republic Party and Democratic Party in her prosecutorial approach to solving the still-unresolved outcome of the 2020 US election. “My intent,” Powell asserts, “has always been to expose all the fraud I could find and let the chips fall where they may—whether it be upon Republicans or Democrats.”

Powell’s non-partisan approach to getting at the truth of what actually happened in election 2020 is proving to be infectious. Increasingly individuals are turning up at public demonstrations calling attention to the fraud of this election in ways that promote the need for genuine investigations of a bi-partisan nature. Those seeking investigation more than victory want to see a genuine archaeological dig by forensic experts into the evidentiary morphology of this electoral debacle irrespective of adversarial spins fovouring Republicans or Democrats.

Powell’s commitment to pursuing the high road of non-partisanship in litigating the rigged 2020 election may well have played a role in opening up a split within the personal legal team of President Donald Trump. Giuliani’s strategy points one way and Powell’s strategy points another another. As I see it, Powell will probably continue her case no matter who is residing in the White House after Inauguration Day on January 20, 2021.

As any conscientious and aware observer can easily discern, the main elements of this year’s presidential contest expose the clear outlines of a rigged election displaying a wide variety of cheating techniques. The obvious irregularities began in the early hours of November 4 after President Trump made a speech at the White House emphasizing the large extent of his reported lead especially in important swing states like Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The outcome of voting in Nevada and Arizona would  subsequently move into the category of contested jurisdictions.

When rigged elections come to light, evidence of fraud inflicted on voters is evidence of gross abuse pointed at people and principles. The real crime of facilitating or allowing election fraud goes back to the government’s betrayal of many sacred trusts. The act of voting by enfranchised citizens is meant to be the ultimate embodiment of the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. The effort to rig elections assaults the dignity, interests and constitutional rights of faithful citizens who are cheated of their chance to perform their democratic duty.

People will remember waking up after election night to news reports stating that the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate had somehow zoomed ahead during the dead of night when the vote counting was supposed to have stopped. Starting at around 4:30 am strange occurrences began in many vote tabulation centers. The anomalous developments threw the electoral process into a condition of chaos and disarray that continues yet. In Michigan and Wisconsin, for instance, huge bundles of votes miraculously showed up, all for Joe Biden. As Sean Davis tweeted,

So while everyone was asleep and after everyone went home, Democrats in Michigan magically found a trove of 138,339 votes, and all 138,339 of those “votes” magically went to Biden. That doesn’t look suspicious at all.

What are the odds of flipping a coin 138, 339 times and having it come up tails 138,339 times in a row? A similar all-Biden “vote” dump took place around 6 am in Wisconsin. The resulting graph of the Biden vote in these and other states goes perpendicularly straight up to form so-called vote spikes. The legitimacy of these spikes especially in Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin has become the subject of much scrutiny and sceptical interpretation.

The overall pattern of what transpired is beginning to be pieced together. It seems that the rigged computer voting machines were not sufficiently well rigged to negate the enormous surge of votes for Donald Trump that arose from normal voting on election day. When the voting system shut down it seems to have been to break the trajectory of a big win for Trump. When the process was mysterious set back in motion during the wee hours of the morning of Nov. 4, new techniques of cheating were introduced and deployed to “backfill” the Biden electoral deficit.

To read complete article on The American Herald Tribune click here

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Anthony James Hall has been Editor In Chief of the American Herald Tribune since its inception. Between 1990 and 2018 Dr. Hall was Professor of Globalization Studies and Liberal Education at the University of Lethbridge where he is now Professor Emeritus. The focus of Dr. Hall’s teaching, research, and community service came to highlight the conditions of the colonization of Indigenous peoples in imperial globalization since 1492.

Featured image is from Zooming In with Simone Gao/ YouTube

Scientists from the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Monday that tests of blood samples taken in the United States from December 13 last year revealed evidence of antibodies for the Covid-19 virus, known as Sars-Cov-2.

The samples were taken more than two weeks before the December 31 official confirmation of the outbreak in the central Chinese city of Wuhan and as much as a month earlier than the first confirmed case of Covid-19 in the US on January 19, according to the CDC report.

This article was originally published on Salon in June 2016.

“Unless we take the oil from Libya, I have no interest in Libya,” said Donald Trump in an April 2011 interview on CNN’s “Newsroom.”

The U.S. government was considering military intervention in the oil-rich North African nation at the time. Trump said he would only participate if the U.S. exploited Libya’s natural resources in return.

“Libya is only good as far I’m concerned for one thing — this country takes the oil. If we’re not taking the oil, no interest,” he added.

NATO claimed its U.S.-backed bombing campaign was meant to protect Libyans who were protesting the regime of longtime dictator Muammar Qadhafi. Micah Zenko, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, used NATO’s own materials to show that this was false.

“In truth, the Libyan intervention was about regime change from the very start,” Zenko wrote in an exposé in Foreign Policy in March.

Trump was not the only figure to propose taking Libya’s oil in return for bombing it, however. Neera Tanden, the president of the pro-Clinton think tank the Center for American Progress, proposed this same policy a few months after Trump.

“We have a giant deficit. They have a lot of oil,” Tanden wrote in an October 2011 email titled “Should Libya pay us back?”

“Most Americans would choose not to engage in the world because of that deficit. If we want to continue to engage in the world, gestures like having oil rich countries partially pay us back doesn’t seem crazy to me,” she added in the message, which was obtained by The Intercept.

Liberal hawkishness

Tanden is a close ally of Hillary Clinton, and is frequently named as a likely chief-of-staff in a Hillary Clinton White House. The Center for American Progress, which Tanden leads, was founded by John Podesta, a key figure in the Clinton machine.

Podesta is the chairman of Hillary’s 2016 presidential campaign, and he previously served as chief of staff under President Bill Clinton. With his brother Tony, John also co-founded the Podesta Group, a public affairs firm that has lobbied for the draconian Saudi Arabian regime, among others.

Tanden has expressed hawkish views, although in a statement to Salon she strongly opposed being described as hawkish. The New York Times has described Hillary Clinton as more hawkish than her Republican rivals, although it still endorsed her for president.

The Center for American Progress president invited hard-line right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak in Washington, D.C. in November, after he had spent months aggressively trying to jeopardize the Iran nuclear deal.

Tanden does not comment on international affairs much, but her tweets provide some insight into her hawkish views, which do not reflect the official policy of the Center for American Progress.

In September 2013, when the Obama administration was preparing to bomb Syria, she tweeted support, writing, “On Syria, while I don’t want to be the world’s policeman, an unpoliced world is dangerous. The US may be the only adult in the room left.” Just over a week later, the administration backed off of its plans, in response to enormous backlash — and in fear that it would end up with another Libya on its hands.

During the lead-up to the war in Libya, Tanden expressed support for military intervention. She suggested that Americans should be “chanting” for Qadhafi’s ouster.

Days after the NATO operation was launched, she wrote, “To liberal friends worried re Libya, is there better reason 4 use of US power than 2 protect innocent civilians from slaughter by a madman?”

Less than a month later, Tanden conceded, “This whole Libya thing doesn’t seem to be working out so well.”

Like many liberal figures who supported the NATO bombing of Libya, she stoppedtalking about the country between 2011 and 2014, while it was roiled by violent chaos and extremism.

These tweets came before the October email in which Tanden suggested taking Libya’s oil in return for bombing it. Trump made the same proposal several months before, in April.

After this article was published, Tanden stressed in a statement to Salon that her views do not reflect those of the Center for American Progress, which did not take a position on Libya.

She claimed being labeled “a hawk is a ridiculous caricature,” adding, “I opposed the Iraq war from the beginning.” Tanden noted that the Center for American Progress “was among the first think tanks to lay out concrete plans for ending the war in Iraq.” She also said that she does not support putting U.S. troops in Syria.

“CAP is a think tank,” Tanden stressed, referring to the organization by its acronym. “We have internal discussions and dialogues all the time on a variety of issues. We encourage the deliberation of ideas to spur conversation, push thinking and spark debate. We do this in meetings, on phone calls and yes, over e-mail. One internal e-mail exchange among colleagues — which was leaked to another organization — or a few tweets does not constitute a published, official policy position.”

Salon never once stated that Tanden’s views reflect the Center for American Progress’ official policy, but Tanden accused Salon of implying this.

Leftist critics have long lambasted the Democratic Party’s militaristic foreign policy, arguing it is not much different than the GOP’s. This exploitative idea proposed by both Trump and Tanden lends further credence to the argument that, when it comes to the U.S. empire, the Democratic and Republican parties are much more similar than their adherents make them out to be.

A strange mix

At the time of his April 2011 CNN interview, Trump was considering running as a Republican in the 2012 election. His nationalistic rhetoric then was very consistent to that of today.

Trump lamented that the U.S. was “just not respected” and had become “a laughing stock throughout the world.” He hoped that he could reverse this supposed trend, just as he now promises to “make America great again.”

Trump’s proposal on Libya was consistent with his views on Iraq. He declared at the American Conservative Union’s 40th Conservative Political Action Conference, in 2013, that the U.S. should “take” $1.5 trillion worth of Iraq’s oil to pay for the illegal war.

In his presidential campaign today, Trump has made similar proposals. His foreign policy is a strange mix of skeptical non-interventionism and hawkishness.

In the 2011 CNN interview, Trump expressed skepticism about the rebels in Libya. “They make the rebels sound like they’re from ‘Gone With the Wind,’ very glamorous,” Trump said. “I hear they’re controlled  by Iran. I hear they’re controlled by al-Qaeda.”

The rebels had very little to do with Iran. Iran did express support for the opposition to Qadhafi’s dictatorship, but it staunchly opposed Western military intervention, which it warned was hypocritical, neocolonial in nature and motivated by Libya’s large oil reserves.

By no means were all of the rebels extremists, but there were al-Qaeda-linked elements in the opposition to Qadhafi. Human rights groups documented atrocities committed by extremist rebels, including ethnic cleansing of black Libyans.

After the NATO war toppled Qadhafi, the country was thrown into chaos. Rivaled forces, including extremist groups such as Ansar al-Sharia and eventually ISIS, seized control of swaths of the country, and weapons from Qadhafi’s enormous cache ended up in the hands of extremist groups throughout the region. To this day, large parts of Libya are not under the control of the internationally recognized government.

Disastrous Libya war

Hillary Clinton played the leading role in rallying up U.S. support for the NATO war. Reports have since shown that the Pentagon was skeptical of U.S. involvement at the time, but, under the leadership of Secretary of State Clinton, the Obama administration portrayed it as a humanitarian mission.

President Obama insisted at the beginning of the intervention, “Broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake.” The State Department likewise said “President Obama has been equally firm that our military operation has a narrowly defined mission that does not include regime change.”

Then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates later told The New York Times,

“I can’t recall any specific decision that said, ‘Well, let’s just take him out,’” referring to Qadhafi.

Micah Zenko, the Council on Foreign Relations scholar, showed this to be false.

“This is scarcely believable,” Zenko rejoined in his detailed report. “Given that decapitation strikes against Qaddafi were employed early and often, there almost certainly was a decision by the civilian heads of government of the NATO coalition to ‘take him out’ from the very beginning of the intervention.”

“The threat posed by the Libyan regime’s military and paramilitary forces to civilian-populated areas was diminished by NATO airstrikes and rebel ground movements within the first 10 days,” he explained. “Afterward, NATO began providing direct close-air support for advancing rebel forces by attacking government troops that were actually in retreat and had abandoned their vehicles.” The military intervention continued for more than seven months.

Rebel forces went on to brutally murder Qadhafi, sodomizing him with a bayonet. When then-Sec. Clinton heard that he had been killed, she rejoiced in front of TV cameras, joking, “We came, we saw, he died!”

In April, Obama singled out U.S. support for the NATO war in Libya as the worst decision of his presidency.

Zenko warned that the “intervention in Libya shows that the slippery slope of allegedly limited interventions is most steep when there’s a significant gap between what policymakers say their objectives are and the orders they issue for the battlefield.”

“Unfortunately, duplicity of this sort is a common practice in the U.S. military,” he added.

Interestingly, Trump himself cautioned in an interview on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” in March 2011 that U.S. intervention in Syria would be a “slippery slope.”

“It is a slippery slope and more and more, you realize that we’re over there fighting wars to open up these governments and they would have opened up themselves,” Trump said, expressing skepticism about U.S. military involvement very early on in the war.

Clinton called for the exact opposite in Syria. She would go on to oppose diplomacy and insist the U.S. should support the “hard men with the guns.”

DNC hack

Trump’s unusual mix of anti-interventionist and exploitative foreign policy views are highlighted in the Democratic National Committee’s alleged opposition research.

A hacker broke into the computer network of the DNC and leaked its opposition research on Trump. A 210-page document that appears to be this report highlights Trump’s past remarks on Libya, Syria, Iraq and more.

Also revealed in the report is that Trump bragged that he “screwed” Muammar Qadhafi with an unfair business deal.

U.S. media outlets immediately blamed the DNC hack on the Russian government. Soon after, however, they quietly backed away from the hasty conclusions they made based on what progressive media watchdog Fairness in Accuracy and Reporting pointed out was incredibly flimsy evidence.

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Ben Norton is a journalist, writer, and filmmaker. He is the assistant editor of The Grayzone, and the producer of the Moderate Rebels podcast, which he co-hosts with editor Max Blumenthal. His website is BenNorton.com and he tweets at @BenjaminNorton.

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Today is the tenth anniversary of “Cablegate” when WikiLeaks, leading a group of partner media organisations, began reporting on the contents of hundreds of thousands of leaked United States government diplomatic cables.

The documents revealed the vast scope and global reach of US imperialism’s criminal conspiracies against the international working class, and the brutality and corruption of capitalist governments the world over.

Of historic significance in their own right, the publications followed WikiLeaks’s extraordinary releases earlier that year of the “Collateral Murder” video—showing the killing of Iraqi civilians, including journalists and first responders, by US soldiers—the Afghan War Logs and the Iraq War Logs.

These publications earned WikiLeaks, and in particular its founder, the journalist and publisher Julian Assange, the undying enmity of the ruling class. A vicious campaign of slander and pseudo-legal persecution was launched against Assange that continues to this day. He is currently locked up in London’s Belmarsh maximum security prison awaiting a verdict on his extradition to the US, where he faces a likely sentence of 175 years in the darkest corner of the American prison system, on charges under the Espionage Act.

Just a small sample of the diplomatic cables exposures gives a sense of their significance.

They revealed that the US had knowledge of and approved the military coup that toppled Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in 2006. American officials discussed the possibility of a similar overthrow of the Pakistani government in 2009 with the country’s top general. In 2009, Washington privately supported the military coup against Honduran President Manuel Zelaya and worked to cover up the repression which followed.

US intelligence assets helped to engineer Kevin Rudd’s replacement as Australian prime minister by Julia Gillard in 2010, to ensure a continued Australian presence in the criminal US-led occupation of Afghanistan. Rudd was also targeted for suggesting America make minor accommodations to China’s growing influence in the Asia-Pacific region.

The cables demonstrated that the US government was fully aware of the torture, random arrests, and extra-judicial killings carried out by its ally Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. They proved Washington’s detailed knowledge of state corruption in Tunisia and exposed the government’s collaboration in abrogating the rights of Tunisian citizens detained in Guantanamo Bay. Governments in Pakistan and Yemen were shown to have collaborated with US drone operations in their own countries, responsible for the repeated massacres of civilians.

American officials were aware of an explosion at a BP gas rig in the Caspian Sea in 2008 but took no action to investigate the safety of the company’s other sites. Two years later, an explosion at a rig in the Gulf of Mexico killed eleven people and created the largest marine oil spill in history. During the 2009 Copenhagen climate conference, the US successfully bribed and blackmailed poor countries over development aid to gain support for a watering down of climate commitments.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ordered US embassies and UN representatives to gather personal information, including credit card and frequent flyer account numbers, internet passwords, work schedules and even DNA samples, from UN and foreign government officials. The only realistic purpose being to facilitate similar blackmail operations.

Yet more cables detailed the domination of the Nigerian state by Shell Oil.

Contrary to the claims of the US government that WikiLeaks recklessly endangered vulnerable sources named in the cables, a painstaking and collaborative process was established to review and redact the documents before publication. At Assange’s extradition hearing this September, journalists from all over the world testified to WikiLeaks’ “pioneering” use of encryption to protect sources and documents. The cables were scheduled to be released over the course of a year, on a country-by-country basis, making use of the expertise of local partner media organisations to ensure the appropriate redactions took place. In some cases, the US government itself provided suggestions for redactions.

Evidence heard at the hearing also established that it was Guardianjournalist David Leigh who was responsible for allowing the release of tens of thousands of unredacted cables, which had been securely stored by WikiLeaks, in September 2011. In a hatchet-job on WikiLeaks, WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy, Leigh published the password to a secure online archive containing the cables, making them freely accessible.

Assange called the US State Department to warn them of an impending release but was ignored. He and the other WikiLeaks editors then took the decision to publish the unredacted cables themselves, since the documents were already in the public domain. WikiLeaks’s main media partners, the Guardian, the New York Times, Der Spiegel, El Pais, and Le Monde, used this event as a pretext to break off relations with the organisation and denounce its work.

The American government responded to the initial “Cablegate” publications with an embargo on WikiLeaks. Amazon removed the site from its web servers, PayPal cut off the WikiLeaks account and Mastercard and Visa prevented payments being made to the organisation. Bank of America stopped handling WikiLeaks payments and Swiss bank PostFinance froze Assange’s assets.

WikiLeaks also came under a massive “distributed denial-of-service” (DDoS) attack, effectively preventing users from accessing its site.

Obama’s Democratic Party administration launched a furious salvo of denunciations, with then Vice President Joe Biden calling Assange a “high-tech terrorist” and Hilary Clinton reportedly asking, “Can’t we just drone this guy?” This opened the floodgates to a torrent of demands from Republicans and the right-wing media for his assassination.

Assange was subjected to a sprawling conspiracy, as Sweden launched a manufactured sexual assault investigation to secure his arrest. Swedish prosecutors were encouraged by the UK authorities who used a Swedish extradition request to arbitrarily detain Assange in the Ecuadorian Assembly in London, where he had claimed political asylum. Pseudo-left political organisations abandoned Assange entirely over this smear campaign, or openly attacked him as a “rapist”, despite no charges ever being laid.

In April 2019, the US, UK and a new Ecuadorian government led by Lenin Moreno reached a deal to see Assange illegally seized from the embassy by British police.

The ferocity of the US government and the betrayal of Assange and WikiLeaks by the liberal media and the pseudo-left were driven by a fear of the profoundly radicalising effect of their revelations. The reporting of the diplomatic cables tore the veil off the daily crimes and intrigues of the ruling class and exposed them to millions of people. It threw light on the world which had been created by an unending series of US-led wars of aggression, the “war on terror” and the assault on democratic rights, and the voracious expansion of corporate and financial interests into every corner of the globe. For the embedded liberal media and their affluent pseudo-left allies, WikiLeaks’ exposure of imperialism’s systemic savagery and hostility to democracy broke an unspoken law.

Commenting on the significance of the release, the World Socialist Web Sitewrote on November 30, 2010:

“Underlying the outraged denunciations of the Obama administration and the Republicans over WikiLeaks’ undermining of US ‘national security’ is the anger of a ruling financial aristocracy that must pursue its own predatory and reactionary interests in secret because they are opposed to the needs and aspirations of working people in the US and around the world.”

There was, we explained, one precedent for the exposure—the publishing of the secret treaties and diplomatic documents of the imperialist powers involved in the First World War by the new Bolshevik government, following the Russian Revolution. Leon Trotsky, then People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, wrote at the time:

“Secret diplomacy is a necessary tool for a propertied minority, which is compelled to deceive the majority in order to subject it to its interests. Imperialism, with its dark plans of conquest and its robber alliances and deals, developed the system of secret diplomacy to the highest level. The struggle against imperialism, which is exhausting and destroying the peoples of Europe, is at the same time a struggle against capitalist diplomacy, which has cause enough to fear the light of day.”

Barely more than a month later, the huge political impact of the WikiLeaks releases was reflected in the mass uprising in Tunisia which overthrew long time President Zine El Abadine Ben Ali. The uprising is credited as the spark of the Arab Spring, which saw a wave of protest across much of the Arab world. Events in Tunisia were widely described as “the first WikiLeaks revolution”, having been encouraged by the organisation’s exposure of Tunisian state crimes and corruption.

This surge in the class struggle and the threat of new “WikiLeaks revolutions”—combined with the spur given to anti-imperialist sentiment by the Iraq and Afghan War Logs—are the “crimes” for which Assange will never be forgiven by the ruling class. They are his greatest service to the international working class. WikiLeaks contributed to a growing recognition among workers and young people that state criminality and ruling class conspiracies are not accidents or the work of a few bad individuals, but the product of a whole social system based on the rule of competing oligarchies which must be overthrown.

The scale of these conspiracies grows by the year. This September, journalist Bob Woodward revealed that US President Donald Trump, and Woodward himself, had been aware of the dangers posed by the COVID-19 pandemic in January. The Senate Health Committee and Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a private briefing on COVID later that month, with no records kept of the discussion.

No warnings were made to the population. As several senators began shifting stocks to make a killing when the pandemic hit, the US government prepared the CARES Act—a multi-trillion dollar looting of social wealth to line the pockets of the super-rich. Imperialist governments across the world followed suit. Corruption, profiteering and financial speculation have since become endemic in the global response to the virus.

Assange is having his life destroyed as a warning—to prevent new crimes being met with new exposures which could ignite the massive anger developing in the working class. The fight against imperialism and for the basic democratic and social rights of the population is inseparable from the fight to defend WikiLeaks and secure the freedom of Julian Assange.

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Speaking during the Bayer Future of Farming online conference, Liam Condon, president of crop science at Bayer, said the company is lobbying “very strongly” to change the EU’s GMO regulations to exempt gene editing, according to an article in the Farmers Guardian.

Mr Condon said,

“[We are] promoting very strongly that regulations should catch up with technology and allow this technology to be used, [not only] for the benefit of Europeans, but also for the benefit of others all over the world who look to Europe for regulations.”

According to the Farmers Guardian, Mr Condon described gene editing and CRISPR technology as an “amazing breakthrough” that would allow agriculture to be more sustainable. But he said the main issue was Europe’s regulatory process, which approaches newer GM technology in the same way as “old” transgenic GMOs. This meant it would not be possible to develop crops suited to Europe because it would be too expensive to carry out all the trials that are required here.

In reality, however, neither old nor new GM has the potential to make agriculture more sustainable, as a new scientific review has found.

And the EU’s GMO regulations don’t stop countries carrying out GMO research trials – the UK has up to recently been part of the EU and continues to host such trials – with nothing of value to show for them.

Mr Condon plays the guilt card by invoking droughts and floods in Africa and Asia, claiming, “If Europe continues to make life very difficult for GE, that means that technology will probably also not evolve in Africa where they really need it.”

But GM has failed to produce useful crops for drought and flood conditions, where conventional breeding has succeeded. And the history of GM crops in Africa is one of unmitigated failure that has left livelihoods in ruins – see the book GMO Myths and Truths for detailed accounts of several examples.

Bayer’s Mr Condon needs to form a healthy relationship with the truth and stop misleading Europe’s public and regulators.

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The Australian Defense Force’s (ADF) recent inquiry into Australian special forces conduct in Afghanistan, between 2005 and 2016, reveals that 39 Afghan prisoners and civilians were killed outside of battle, as part of a culture of “competition killings,” where commanders required junior soldiers to shoot prisoners to achieve their first kill.

Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison has apologized, by phone, to Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani. ADF chief, General Campbell, also apologized and directed the blame to a few low-level individual non-commissioned officers and their proteges “who sought to fuse military excellence with ego, elitism, and entitlement.”

However, if Australia wants to atone for the depraved actions, by apparently 19 individuals, it must see these war crimes within the larger political context within Western elites that make wars in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, still at war 19 years on, possible.

Of course, others need to engage in self-introspection too, it’s not just Australian troops that have committed war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. For example, Wikileaks released a classified U.S. military video of its military indiscriminately slaying over a dozen people, including two Reuters staff, in the Iraq suburb of New Baghdad. The British army has also been accused of covering up numerous killings of children in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The censoring of war crimes is, no doubt, seen as a necessary evil by governments who need a veil of morality to cover the immoral abhorrence that is war. The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan though are particularly repugnant as neither were inevitable.

For instance, the conspiracy theory, surrounding the Iraq war, turned out to be a conspiracy fact. It is now widely known that the destruction of Iraq was based on fake weapons of mass destruction claims.

In contrast, Afghanistan is seen as the more “just” war which was sparked by the 911 terrorist attacks. However, outside of the mainstream press, the events of 911 are fiercely disputed. The Journal of 911 Studies and the organization Architects and Engineers for 911 Truth brings together thousands of academics, scientists, engineers, and architects who dispute the official narrative. In addition, 911Truth.org highlights numerous discrepancies of the 911 event.

Even the evidence presented in the mainstream media doesn’t provide a clear justification for the invasion of Afghanistan. Al-Jazeera, among others, reported that Osama Bin Laden, blamed by the Bush administration for the 911 attacks, while praising the attacks, denied his involvement.

According to CNN, the Taliban, which governed Afghanistan in 2001, denounced the 911 attacks as un-Islamic. It offered to hand over Bin Laden on the condition that the U.S. provided evidence of Bin Laden’s involvement. Indeed, the Taliban had offered to give up Bin Laden on numerous occasions before 911.

Within the first week of the U.S. bombing, the Taliban once again made overtures to negotiate the surrendering of Bin Laden but it was rejected by the U.S.

In lieu of both sufficient evidence and diplomacy, Afghanistan, 19 years later, is still in a state of chaos and, depending on one’s viewpoint, Western forces still occupy or are being hosted in Afghanistan.

As we can see, 911 has sparked a never-ending War on Terror, which, according to a Brown University study, has displaced 37 million people, cost $6.4 trillion, and has taken 801,000 lives.

As such, the villainy of the 19 Australian troops is merely a microcosm of macroscopic geopolitical villainy. While individual war crimes must be condemned never-ending hegemonic wars, based on lies and misinformation, represent a greater crime to humanity.

Indeed, Western soldiers are also victims of imperial policies. They are commanded by lunacy to commit lunacy and yet somehow, they are, expected to maintain their sanity and morality. Speaking to friends and acquaintances who have fought on the front line, in these wars, it is clear that for many a part of their humanity will always remain on the battlefields of these far-away lands.

In essence then, General Campbell’s explanation that the maddening actions of the few individuals “who sought to fuse military excellence with ego, elitism and entitlement” apply more to the actions of Western elites who sent them to war in the first place.

For example, the West (namely its elites) has gained and retained its dominance in the world primarily through “military excellence” rather than moral persuasion. The Western ego, full of its own “right,” at the expense of others, is blind to the value and the equality of other civilizations. This mindset backed by the military might lead to elitism where the dictates of the minority feel entitled to enforce their “right” on the world through any means necessary including the madness of a never-ending war.

Thus, while inquiries into individual war crimes are commendable, Western democracies, more than ever, need an inquiry into their deeper systemic problems that make them predisposed to using undemocratic and immoral wars to achieve their strategic ends.

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Keith Lamb is a graduate from the University of Glasgow, Staffordshire University and the University of Oxford. His primary research interests are the international relations of China, neoliberalism and China’s “socialism with Chinese characteristics.”

Credits to the owner of the featured image

The Spanish economic situation worsens day after day. The national manufacturing sector dropped significantly in November, according to data from IHS Markit, which attributes the decline to the drop in production demand due to the pandemic. The decrease in production compared to October was about three percentage points, with Spanish industry reaching alarming levels of threat.

The main problem is a drop in the entire production chain. With the return of the increase in cases of COVID-19, all sectors of the economy retracted. And the biggest drop was precisely in the sectors most marked by the need for social contact. The new recommendations to resume social isolation and preventive measures have profoundly affected the commercial center specialized in serving the public directly. Strengths of the Spanish economy, such as tourism and hotel market, for example, have again declined. However, the Spanish producers chose to keep production at the levels of the previous months when Europe had improved its health situation in relation to the coronavirus. And this was a big mistake. In general terms, there was an overproduction, which, even if moderate, caused the loss of many jobs and the drop of many manufacturers. However, it was not only the consumer-oriented industries that had problems, but also the producers of capital goods, which makes everything even more worrying, as this represents a drop not only in consumption, but in the productive potential of the Spanish national industry.

A recent report by the Bank of Spain has further reduced investor hope in this European country. According to a study carried out by the Bank, between 6 and 10% of Spanish companies will disappear due to liquidity problems as a result of the COVID pandemic. According to data from the same report, 40.6% of Spanish companies are in financial trouble in 2020, compared to 13.9% in 2019. This means that almost half of the Spanish private sector is not making enough profit from its activities to continue producing in long-term. The number is a structural threat to the economy of this European country and represents an evident risk of financial collapse.

When we analyze the economic sectors separately, we have even more worrying data. In the hotel business, 72% of companies have financial problems; in the automotive sector, 65% of companies have such problems; in the transport, storage and commerce sectors, the index is about 42% of the companies. About 2% to 4% of Spanish companies are already in a state of impossible recovery. Big companies have managed to maintain themselves, although they have also noticed difficulties. One of the great fears of experts and investors is that the crisis will hit the small and medium manufacturers heavily, annihilating the competition structure and further increasing the monopolies of large corporations, which have enough power to manage and overcome the crisis.

In fact, the absolute uncertainty about the short-term evolution of the pandemic continues to have a major impact on spending decisions, but it is also necessary to highlight that the development in vaccine research provides companies with a horizon of hope. With positive news regarding vaccines, the confidence of manufacturers and investors in increasing their operations also tends to grow, although it is currently difficult to establish any medium-term project without taking great risks.

Until vaccines arrive, Spain have to deal not only with financial problems but also with growing social tensions due to popular resistance to meet isolation standards. With the end of the year, notably celebrated in Spain – a country with a strong Catholic tradition – the streets of the main metropolises in the country are increasingly crowded. People move around the city, mainly shopping for the parties. The authorities are beginning to worry about the case and are considering further tightening restrictions on circulation and trade. It is possible that a lockdown will be decreed again. This past weekend, the Madrid Municipal Police blocked the main access routes to the city to reduce crowds, but it was not possible to prevent thousands of people from failing to comply with safe distance recommendations.

So, what is the road to Spain? Holiday parties can heat the economy and move the entire production chain, but for that it will be necessary to allow people on the streets, which will increase contagions. This week the country reached the number of 45,000 deaths due to COVID-19, which generates concern and commotion. In fact, isolation standards must be met, despite the economic consequences. Further tightening of health measures will accelerate normalization as it mitigates the effects of the second wave. Only by tightening isolation can the country recover its economy in the short or medium term. As for the current moment, it is up to the Spanish government to inject enough capital to save the small and medium businessmen from bankruptcy.

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Lucas Leiroz is a research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

New Bolivian President Luis Arce is investigating several former officials who served his predecessor Jeanine Áñez. They are accused of corruption or being responsible for massacres. Dozens fled Bolivia for the U.S. and Brazil to avoid prosecution, while others have already been arrested. Those who fled Bolivia mainly went to the U.S., according to National Police.

Although Áñez’s tenure was short, just one year in fact, many in her administration are being investigated for corruption, as well as massacres and repressive acts committed at the beginning of her mandate after the coup against Evo Morales on November 10, 2019. As a result, 37 Evo supporters were killed in street protests, allegedly by the police and military. Their families still demand justice and for this reason the Plurinational Legislative Assembly is carrying out a trial against Áñez’s cabinet for crimes against humanity. When her government signed Decree 4078, they gave free rein for security forces to repress the population, and even kill, without being held accountable.

Currently, the biggest escapees are former Minister of Government Arturo Murillo and former Defense Minister Luis Fernando López. They were behind many of the violent acts committed against the people and did not anticipate being replaced by Arce of the Movement for Socialism (MAS), Evo’s party, following the October 18 election. Murillo was in charge of liaising with police and López with the Armed Forces. They fled Bolivia on November 5, three days before the Áñez government ended, and are accused of having purchased chemical agents for police forces at a premium of $2 million. They took flight FAB-046 to Puerto Quijarro on the border with Brazil, in which they crossed on foot, according to Bolivian police.

For this reason, three immigration officials were detained. Marcel Rivas, former Director of Migration, is accused of having facilitated Murillo’s and López’s escape. Once arrested, Rivas had more charges filed against him because according to Eduardo del Castillo, Minister of Government, the former director illegally issued 495 migration alerts against politicians, journalists, businesspeople and other opponents of Áñez.

Former Vice Minister of Government Javier Issa is in the U.S., according to the National Police. He is accused of participating in the theft and burning of Evo’s military service book. In February, Patricia Hermosa, Evo’s attorney, was arrested when she was carrying several personal documents of the ex-president who wanted to register as a candidate for the senate. However, Murillo ordered for the former president’s military record, that was taken from Hermosa, to be burned to disqualify Evo from running.

In recent days, lawyer Rolando Cruz denounced former Minister of Communication Roxana Lizárraga for crimes of “sedition, conspiracy, terrorism, criminal organization and others.” As evidence, Cruz presented seven videos filmed before and after the coup. The lawyer commented that he had information that Lizárraga was already in the U.S.

As soon as he took office, Arce changed the leadership of the police and the Armed Forces that supported Áñez and appointed Colonel Jhonny Aguilera as the new commander of the Bolivian Police.

“We know that former officials are in the United States. We do not know their status and we do not know the activities they are developing,” the police chief said.

By the Áñez government criminalizing the MAS, attacking the popular national bloc, and restricting progressive forces in Bolivia, they thought they would restrict support for the socialist political party. They were wrong as the biggest issue for Bolivians is reorganizing the economy that was ruined by the Áñez government. For their mistaken belief that the people wanted neoliberalism and would tolerate corruption, the Áñez government are now scrambling to escape Bolivia for Brazil or the U.S. to avoid prosecution.

Áñez herself was arrested trying to escape her native Beni province on the fringes of the Amazon to enter Brazil.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro attempts to model himself on the likes of U.S. President Donald Trump and steers his country into becoming an American bulwark in Latin America. Although Trump has rebuffed Bolsonaro’s attempts to become a close friend, the Brazilian president insists on turning his country towards ultraconservative with the backing of U.S.-linked Evangelical churches and to implement a hyper neoliberal economy – this naturally puts him at odds with progressive forces in the region.

Because of this world view, strengthening cooperation between pro-U.S. neoliberal governments in South America has been a major priority for Bolsonaro. However, this faced a major hurdle after the restoration of democracy in Bolivia as Áñez’s administration relied on the support of the U.S. and neighboring pro-U.S. states for legitimacy. There is little surprise they are now fleeing or attempting to flee Bolivia for the U.S. and Brazil to avoid charges of corruption and crimes against humanity.

Although the U.S. and Brazil are accepting former officials of the Áñez’s administration and suffered a geopolitical loss with the restoration of the MAS government, it is unlikely they will engage in further subversive actions to undermine and destabilize Bolivia, at least in the short term. With Joe Biden potentially ascending to the presidency on January 20, most states are biding their time to see how a new U.S. presidency will position its Latin America policy. Although Trump was heavily involved in the coup attempts in Venezuela and had a hand to play in the successful coup in Bolivia, there is no suggestion yet that a Biden administration will continue such policies.

There is also no suggestion that Biden will oppose regime change operations in South America, which is likely the reason why former Bolivian officials feel comfortable enough to flee to the U.S. So long as Bolsonaro continues to rule Brazil, the Bolivian political opposition will continue to have a neighboring safe haven, meaning that although there might not be U.S. blessing, neoliberal and conservative forces in South America can continue their destabilization campaign across the continent with Brazilian backing.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

Featured image: Jeanine Anez receiving the presidential sash from a representative of the Bolivian military (photo: EFE).

On June 3, 2020, as a consequence of the “global health crisis”, the World Economic Forum WEF in Geneva announced a “unique twin summit” for January 2021 in Davos, Switzerland.(1) The theme should be “The Great Reset”. The WEF defines the “Great Reset” as “a commitment to jointly and urgently create the foundations of our economic and social system for a fairer, more sustainable and resilient future”.

World leaders from government, business and civil society will be invited. In a dialogue conducted by the younger generation, they are to be virtually linked with “stakeholders” worldwide. These are individuals and interest groups with a network in 400 cities around the world who have a legitimate interest in the course and outcome of the summit. All announcements sound “promising and promise a bright future”.

The WEF press release continues:

“The announcement of the ‘Great New Start’ was made by H.R.H. the Prince of Wales and Professor Schwab during a virtual meeting, followed by statements by UN Secretary General António Guterres and IMF Executive Director Kristalina Georgieva.“ 

In addition to the great promises, there are also euphonious names.

IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva already wrote a statement to the World Economic Forum on the day of the summit announcement.

“My thanks to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales and to Professor Schwab for bringing us together.” She goes on to write: “From the perspective of the IMF, we have seen a massive injection of fiscal stimulus to help countries deal with this crisis, and to shift gears for growth to return. It is of paramount importance that this growth should lead to a greener, smarter, fairer world in the future.”(2)

Even the founder and chairman of the World Economic Forum himself felt called upon to make his own statement on the very day of the announcement. Under the headline “Now is the time for a ‘big reset'” and the subtitle “In every crisis there is a chance” Klaus Schwab writes:

“We can bring a better world out of this crisis, (…). To achieve a better outcome (than the 1930s Depression, R.H.), the world must act collectively and quickly to renew 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 technology, must be transformed. In short, we need a ‚great reset’ of capitalism.“ (3)

The creator of the words and ideas for the “Great Reset” is probably the bestselling author and economic development expert Richard Florida with his book “The Great Reset. How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity”.

If one delves into the WEF’s press release and the statements published on it – which is urgently recommended to everyone interested – then some urgent questions arise for the critical contemporary.

For example, the question into which state our economic and social system should be “reset” and restarted after the unprecedented economic and social total crash. Then there is the question of what can be expected from a “return agenda” that will be formulated and implemented by the same global government and economic leaders who deliberately caused the current crash. But the cardinal question is: will the announced “Great New Start” be a blessing for humanity or rather a curse?

The answer to this question should be found out by proven experts – even before the participants of the twin summit in January 2021 get down to work and draft an agenda whose implementation will not be good for humanity. We should be able to prepare ourselves to prevent the worst.

If we think of the current crime against humanity, which has been unleashed worldwide by the “Big Money”, the globalists, foundations, Big Pharma and the WHO on the occasion of the “global corona false alarm”, together with the hypocritical promises of salvation of the kabbalistic World Economic Forum and the predatory International Monetary Fund, then we cannot assume a de-globalization and a turning away from inhuman neoliberalism. The ruling “elite” will use the meeting in Davos to further advance the global control of us citizens by destroying nation states. And this will be a great danger for humanity, which we can only fend off together.

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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel is a graduate psychologist and educationalist.

Notes

(1) http://www.weforum, „The Great Reset: A Unique Twin Summit to Begin 2021“

(2) https://imf.org/en/News/Articles/2020/06/03/sp060320-remarks-to-world-economic-forum-the-great-reset

(3) www.weforum.org, „Now is the Time for a ‘Great Reset’“.

Brazen Election 2020 fraud in Pennsylvania and other key swing states rigged things for Biden/Harris over Trump.

If he’s out and they’re inaugurated on January 20, the events of that day will be an epitaph for open, free, and fair federal elections in the US — never again.

A coup d’etat process will have replaced it henceforth — results of future federal elections to be untrustworthy.

In Pennsylvania, the near-impossible happened.

On election night after polls closed, Trump led Biden/Harris by nearly 700,000 votes.

The next day he led by a 56% – 43% margin — a near-statistically impossible advantage to overcome.

Pennsylvania election returns showed Trump winning by landslide margins in all counties — except Dem-controlled Philadelphia.

Late-arriving mail-in ballots were added to the vote count for three days — despite state law prohibiting procedures followed.

Rules were changed for Election 2020 to benefit Biden/Harris.

The vote distribution pattern in all counties was almost the same — except for Philadelphia, a near-statistical impossibility.

It never happened before in state history nor ever in other states before 2020.

Judicial Watch reported that more people cast ballots in the state than individuals registered to vote, adding:

The same pattern occurred in other states.

For Election 2020, “vote totals (changed after polls closed) because of unprecedented, extraordinary, illicitly secretive, and inherently suspect counting…”

Like other key swing states, Biden/Harris didn’t win Pennsylvania. Results were stolen for them.

Republicans control both houses of the Pennsylvania’s General Assembly by sizable margins — 113-90 in the House, 28-21 in the Senate.

Governor Tom Wolf is a Dem, in office since January 2015.

On Monday, 26 Pennsylvania House GOP lawmakers contested November 3 results — a formal resolution introduced at the 11th hour.

Its text states that “(o)fficials in the Executive and Judicial Branches of the Commonwealth infringed upon the General Assembly’s authority under the Constitution of the United States by unlawfully changing the rules governing the November 3, 2020, election…”

It calls for Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf and Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar to withdraw certification of disputed results.

It also urges the US House and Senate to declare Pennsylvania Election 2020 results in dispute — pending a “forensic investigation” of election law compromises, irregularities and improprieties in tabulating mail-in ballots, as well as canvassing procedures.

In a late Friday news release, the 26 state lawmakers expressed concern about issues raised that “undermined our elector process, and as a result, we cannot accept certification of the results in statewide races.”

“It is absolutely imperative that we take these steps if we are to ensure public trust in our electoral system. Faith in government begins with faith in the elections which select that government.”

“Just as Pennsylvania led the founding of our nation, Pennsylvania should also lead the way by making sure our commonwealth continues to stand as a keystone in our nation where free and fair elections are of paramount concern, no matter the final outcome of those elections.”

A spokesman for House GOP Speaker Brian Cutler said he was uninvolved in drafting the 11th hour resolution.

The 11th hour attempt to challenge and reverse fraud may likely fall short as the state’s   session ended Monday.

GOP House leaders declined to extend the session for consideration of the proposed resolution.

A joint statement by House Majority leader Kerry Benninghoff and Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman said the following:

The Pennsylvania General Assembly “does not and will not have a hand in choosing the state’s presidential electors, or in deciding the outcome of the presidential election.”

Adjourning the legislative session effectively rejects a “forensic investigation” of state election results unless judicially ordered.

State courts to the highest level are highly unlikely to approve it.

A majority US Supreme Court ruling appears to be the only option at this time, a long shot one at best.

However things turn out in the state, PA Hempfield Republican Eric Nelson said he and 25 other House Republicans will release a report that shows “sizable irregularities with mail-in ballots between Nov. 3 and Nov. 4.”

Noting significant irregularities in Allegheny (that includes Pittsburgh), Philadelphia and Delaware counties, he added:

“We have some major problems which need to be addressed before the election results ultimately are certified. My goal is fair, honest and accurate elections.”

In a dubious move last week, Pennsylvania’s Budget and Finance Committee rejected a House resolution request for a statistical review of election results.

On Saturday, the state’s Supreme Court unanimously rejected a lower court ruling that halted certification of election results.

The ruling came a day after the US Third Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a Trump campaign accusation of election fraud in the state — despite hard evidence proving otherwise.

On Monday, Epoch Times contributor Ivan Petchoukov reported the following:

“Pennsylvania State Sen. Doug Mastriano, a Republican, said Friday that the GOP-controlled state legislature will make a bid to reclaim its power to appoint the state’s electors to the Electoral College, saying they could start the process on Nov. 30.

According to Article 2, Section 1, Clause 2 of the US Constitution:

“Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress.”

Even if Pennsylvania’s General Assembly members choose their own electors, they cannot constitutionally override the popular vote in the state.

The 14th Amendment prohibits states from denying the constitutional rights of its citizens without due process, including the right to vote.

Yet when election fraud occurs — Election 2020 Exhibit A — the popular will have been denied by a higher authority.

That’s the apparent result of the November 3 process for US president.

At this time, the Supreme Court alone will have final say on this issue if it chooses to hear Trump’s complaint.

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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 Wikimedia Commons

‘E a primeira coisa que a estrutura de poder dos EUA não quer é que os negros comecem a pensar internacionalmente.’  Malcolm X – Autobiografia

 ‘A cor não é uma realidade humana ou pessoal; é uma realidade política’. James Baldwin, ‘The Fire Next Time’

Os EUA, com a cumplicidade das oligarquias locais, usou de   ‘lawfare’ para derrubar os governos de Manuel Zelaya em Honduras em 2009; de Fernando Lugo no Paraguai em 2012 e de Dima Rousseff no Brasil em 2016. O ‘lawfare’ também foi  utilizado pela perseguição política contra Christina Kirchner na Argentina, contra Rafael Correa no Equador e contra o Ex-Presidente Lula no Brasil. O ‘lawfare’ tornou-se assim  o principal instrumento do Império para impedir o avanço das forças progressistas na América Latina. Antes de sua aplicação internacional, porém, o ‘lawfare’ foi amplamente utilizado pelos EUA na opressão e perseguição política de sua própria população negra em  luta por igualdade racial e direitos civis. Deste modo, a origem do ‘lawfare’ está intrínsecamente ligada ao racismo e à manutenção das hierarquias impostas pelo capitalismo. 

O escritor afro-americano Charles Chessnutt, no artigo ‘ Os Tribunais e o Negro’, publicado em 1908, já denunciava:

‘A função dos tribunais na organização da sociedade moderna é a de proteger os direitos- de mediar as disputas entre o homem e o homem ou entre o indivíduo e o Estado; e depois, pelo seu mandato, de pôr em marcha o braço do executivo para impedir ou punir um erro ou para fazer valer um direito. Obviamente, se este grande poder não for exercido corretamente, se for influenciado por preconceitos ou interesses de classe, não será feita justiça. (…) Em nenhuma parte da história da nossa jurisprudência, este poder dos tribunais foi exercido com mais força do que na questão dos direitos dos negros, e em nenhuma parte foi mais influenciado por preconceitos e interesses de classe’.

Com a libertação dos escravos ao fim da Guerra Civil nos EUA , a oligarquia derrotada dos estados do sul – a Confederação – rapidamente se organizou para impedir que através do voto os afro-americanos pudessem desafiar as hierarquias de poder, utilizando, por um lado, os diversos trinunais e a Suprema Corte – como denunciou Chessnutt na citação acima – em um ‘lawfare’ que impedisse qualquer avanço na conquista de direitos e igualdade pelos afro-americanos. Por outro lado, as oligarquias também utilizaram amplamente o terror para manter os afro-americanos em permanente opressão e longe das urnas. O paralelo com  a atuação dos EUA na América Latina não poderia ser mais exato: aos linchamentos e à Ku Klux Klan correspondem os diversos esquadrões da morte dos regimes apoiados pelo Império: Somoza na Nicarágua, Pinochet no Chile, Stroessner no Paraguai e as ditaduras militares assassinas na Argentina e no Brasil, entre outros. Nos sul dos EUA ou na América Latina o objetivo é o mesmo: impedir os avanços sociais e qualquer mudança na hierarquia de poder que desafie o sistema capitalista. A estreita ligação entre o racismo e a exploração capitalista era um fato reconhecido nos EUA já no século XIX. Frederick Douglass, nascido escravo  por volta de 1818, autor autodidata que fugiu da escravidão e tornou-se talvez o  mais conhecido norte-americano de seu tempo, era um profundo analista da sociedade do seu tempo e, sem ter conhecido Marx,  escreveu:

‘Os donos de escravos, com uma astúcia própria, ao encorajar a inimizade entre os pobres, colocando o homem branco contra os negros, conseguem tornar o referido homem branco quase tão escravo quanto o próprio escravo negro. A diferença entre o escravo branco e o escravo negro é a seguinte: o último pertence a UM escravocrata e o primeiro pertence a TODOS os escravocratas, coletivamente. Tiram do escravo branco indiretamente aquilo que tiram diretamente e sem cerimonia do escravo negro. Ambos são saqueados e pelos mesmos saqueadores. O escravo negro é roubado, pelo seu senhor, de todos os seus ganhos além do que é necessário para a sua sobrevivência física; e o homem branco é roubado pelo sistema escravocrata dos justos resultados do seu trabalho, porque é lançado em competição com uma classe de trabalhadores que trabalham sem salário.’

Dando prosseguimento, no século XX, a esta análise de Frederick Douglass,  o intelectual afro-americano W.E.B. Du Bois escreveu em ‘Black Reconstruction’:

‘O trabalho negro tornou-se a pedra angular não só da estrutura social do Sul (dos EUA), mas também da manufactura e comércio do Norte (dos EUA), do sistema de fábricas inglês, do comércio europeu, da compra e venda em escala mundial; novas cidades foram construídas com base nos resultados do trabalho negro e um novo problema, envolvendo todo o trabalho, branco e negro, apareceu tanto na Europa como na América.(…)De facto, a situação da classe trabalhadora branca em todo o mundo é hoje diretamente ligada à escravatura negra na América, na qual se fundou o comércio e a indústria modernos, que persistiram em ameaçar a mão-de-obra livre até ser parcialmente derrubada em 1863. A casta de cor resultante, fundada e retida pelo capitalismo, foi adotada (…)  pelos trabalhadores  brancos, e resultou na subordinação do trabalho dos negros aos lucros dos brancos em todo o mundo.’

O capitalismo não teria se desenvolvido sem a escravidão e por isso a luta contra o racismo é fundamentalmente também a luta contra o capitalismo. Não é surpreendente portanto que o ‘lawfare’ esteja  instrinsicamente ligado ao racismo.

Foi nos anos 60 do século XX nos EUA que as lutas das forças progressistas encarnadas nos movimentos afro-americanos pela igualdade racial e direitos civis atingiram o seu clímax. Somente nesse período caíram finalmente  as principais barreiras impostas pelo ‘lawfare’ ao avanço dos direitos civis dos afro-americanos, não sem muita luta e muito sangue derramados. Talvez nenhum outro grupo tenha sido mais atacado pela dupla vertente do poder hierárquico da ordem capitalista – ‘lawfare’  e terror violento – do que o partido ‘Pantera Negra’ – Black Panther Party. E através da história do Pantera Negra pode-se compreender muito melhor a história recente da América Latina e sua relação com o Império.

A mais completa história do Pantera Negra é possivelmente o livro ‘Black Against Empire – The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party’ (‘Negros Contra o Império – A História e a Política do Partido Pantera Negra’ numa tradução literal.) dos autores Joshua Bloom e Waldo E. Martin, Jr. Neste estudo os autores escreveram:

“Os Panteras viam as comunidades negras nos Estados Unidos como uma colônia e a polícia como um exército de ocupação. Num ensaio fundador de 1967, Newton ( um dos fundadores do Black Panther) escreveu,'(…) ‘Há uma grande semelhança entre o exército de ocupação no Sudeste Asiático e a ocupação das nossas comunidades pela polícia racista’.”

“(…) em 1970, o Partido tinha aberto escritórios em sessenta e oito cidades, de Wisconsin-Salem a Omaha e Seattle. O Partido Pantera Negra tinha-se tornado o centro de um movimento revolucionário nos Estados Unidos.(…)O diretor do FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, declarou, ‘O partido Pantera Negra representa a maior ameaça à segurança interna do país’.(…) O governo federal e as forças policiais locais de toda a nação responderam aos Panteras com uma campanha sem paralelo de repressão e vilipêndio. Eles alimentaram a imprensa com histórias difamatórias. Colocaram escutas telefónicas nos escritórios dos Panteras em todo o país. Contrataram dezenas de informantes para se infiltrarem nos capítulos dos Panteras.(…)Ao atacar os Panteras Negras como inimigos do estado, os agentes federais procuraram reprimir não só o Partido como organização, mas a possibilidade política que este representava’.

Sabe-se hoje muito mais sobre o papel do FBI na campanha contra o Pantera Negra e contra o movimento pelos direitos civis em geral. O livro de Nelson Blackstock ‘ COINTELPRO – The FBI’s Secret War on Political Freedom’ – (COINTELPRO é a sigla em inglês para Programa de Contra – Inteligência – e o título deste livro em traduçáo livre seria :

Cointelpro – A luta secreta do FBI contra as liberdades políticas) – é uma excelente fonte de informações sobre este tema. Nesta obra o autor afirma:

‘Uma das coisas que transparecem claramente nos documentos do  Cointelpro é que o FBI reservou um ódio especial ao movimento de direitos civis dos negros.’

 Noam Chomsky, que escreveu a introdução ao livro, explica que a função do FBI era de:

‘Bloquear a atividade política legal que se afaste da ortodoxia, confundir a oposição à política estatal, minar o movimento de direitos civis.’

Desta forma, ainda nas palavras de Chomsky, era previsível que ‘os programas de ruptura mais sérios do FBI foram os dirigidos contra os Nacionalistas Negros.(…) Talvez a história mais chocante diga respeito ao assassinato de Fred Hampton e Mark Clark pela polícia de Chicago, dirigido pelo escritório do procurador do estado em dezembro de 1969, em uma batida policial antes do amanhecer em um apartamento de Chicago. Hampton, um dos líderes mais promissores do partido Pantera Negra – particularmente perigoso por causa de sua oposição a atos  ou a retórica violentos e seu sucesso na organização comunitária – foi morto na cama.(…)há agora provas substanciais do envolvimento direto do FBI neste assassinato político ao estilo da gestapo.’

Não é uma coincidência que a operação Lava Jato e o Promotor Deltan Dallagnol no Brasil tenha se aliado justamente ao FBI  em seus esforços para criminalizar o ex-Presidente Lula e o PT. As campanha de difamação e criminalização contra o partido Pantera Negra e contra o PT têm muito em comum.

Um dos principais programas do Pantera Negra era a distribuição de alimentos às comunidades pobres afro-americanas, principalmente às crianças. O partido também distribuia  roupas e organizava cuidados médicos. Alguns dos centros onde o Partido distribuia café da manhã para as crianças sofreram ataques com bombas, tamanha a violência da reação da hierarquia de poder branca e capitalista ao desafio colocado pelos Panteras. Alguns líderes do partido foram assassinados, outros colocados na prisão. Como mencionado, a repressão ao Pantera Negra na dupla vertente ‘lawfare’ e terror violento foi sem precedentes mas não sem paralelos: a repressão do Império aos movimentos sociais e partidos políticos de esquerda na América Latina é semelhante e motivada pelas mesmas razões. A frase fundamental na citação acima expõe com toda a clareza o principal objetivo do Império e de seus cúmplices na América Latina:  ‘ Ao atacar os Panteras Negras – ou  Lula, o PT, Evo Morales, Rafael Correa, Christina Kirchner, Hugo Chávez, Nicolás Maduro – os agentes federais (dos EUA) procuraram reprimir não só o Partido como organização, mas a possibilidade política que este representava.’ 

Ronald Reagan levou adiante a guerra da hierarquia do poder capitalista contra as forças sociais progressistas. Em um outro estudo importante sobre o racismo estrutural nos EUA e sua relação com as políticas de segurança e repressão – Incarcerating the Crisis ( ‘Aprisionando a crise’ em uma traduçâo literal) – o autor Jordan T. Camp escreveu:

“O triunfo do Reaganismo marcou a consolidação de um regime racial e de segurança, um regime neoliberal que tomou forma com as operações durante a Guerra Fria contra o movimento de direitos civis. (Reagan) enviou uma mensagem aos brancos de que seus problemas econômicos tinham sido causados por pessoas de cor que ganharam acesso ao salário social durante o movimento de direitos civis. (…) Estas narrativas neoliberais definiram o comportamento dos desempregados e os  programas sociais como as principais fontes de insegurança econômica. (…) A estratégia de Reagan foi de redirecionar os recursos para longe dos investimentos no setor público e para um orçamento ampliado para o Estado neoliberal de segurança carcerária. (…) Com a eleição de Reagan, os  neoliberais conseguiram capturar o poder do Estado e legitimar seu governo de classe através de apelos à segurança. Em seus dois primeiros anos na Casa Branca, Reagan dobrou o orçamento do FBI e aumentou o orçamento do Departamento Federal de Prisões – Federal Bureau of Prisons – em 30%. O discurso de segurança foi empregado como a principal justificativa para a reestruturação da forma do Estado. Muito semelhante à legitimação pelo Estado Americano do aumento de despesas para medidas agressivas de contrainsurgência na América Central e no apartheid da África do Sul nos anos 80. (…) No início dos anos 80, os Estados Unidos prenderam 420.000 pessoas em prisões federais e estaduais. Durante a próxima década, o número de prisioneiros aumentaria mais de 64% em todo o país.(…) A população carcerária cresceu de duzentas mil pessoas no final dos anos 60 para mais de 2,4 milhões de pessoas nos anos 2000. Atualmente (2016), um em cada trinta e cinco, ou 6,9 milhões de adultos nos Estados Unidos, está na cadeia ou em liberdade condicional. O aumento dos gastos com encarceramento ocorreu juntamente com a redução dos gastos com educação pública, transporte, assistência médica e emprego no setor público. A expansão das prisões coincidiu com uma mudança na composição racial dos presos, passando da maioria branca para quase 70% de pessoas de cor. Os desempregados, os subempregados e os pobres negros e latinos  têm sido desproporcionalmente encarcerados. Com a maior taxa de encarceramento do planeta, os Estados Unidos atualmente encarceram os negros em proporções mais altas do que a África do Sul antes do fim do Apartheid. Todos estes números apontam para uma colisão de raça, classe e poder de Estado carceral sem precedentes históricos, mas certamente não sem explicação histórica.”. 

Este redirecionamento do Estado realizado pelo Governo Reagan ainda é o principal objetivo político das oligarquias da América Latina, com forte resistência dos movimentos sociais e partidos de esquerda. As eleições de Hugo Chavez, Lula, Evo Morales, Rafael Correa e  Christina Kirchner foram respostas à tentativa do Império de promover o ‘encarceramento’ da América Latina. 

O neoliberalismo, que nasceu como uma reação política às ‘concessões’ do capitalismo ao ‘welfare state’, acabou tornando-se também  uma reação contra as conquistas civilizatórias dos anos 60 do século XX. Daí o retorno do racismo mais virulento, dos ataques aos direitos obtidos pelas mulheres e pelos homossexuais. A manutenção da hierarquia capitalista em seu estágio neoliberal depende fundalmentalmente da parcela mais reacionária da população. E o neoliberalismo, por outro lado, tenta reproduzir e manter essas forças sociais. 

A citação de Malcolm X que utilizei no início deste texto define o programa político fundamental de nosso tempo: a internacionalização da luta contra o racismo é também a construçãó da luta internacional contra o capitalismo e suas hierarquias de poder.

Franklin Frederick

Foto : pixabay.com

I for one am getting really excited by the staff that Honest Joe Biden is pulling together for the White House. When I first heard the name Tony Blinken during the Obama kleptocracy I assumed that he was one of those Ivy League lawyer types that proliferate in Washington, likely affiliated with the firm of Winken, Blinken and Nod, which we all know to be in partnership with Dewey, Cheatem and Howe. But I was wrong. He actually was affiliated to a much bigger fraternity, which one might call Zionists in government. You know, those nice well educated, always polite Jewish boys and sometimes girls who have self-designated as foreign policy experts and who work their way up through the various levels of power that might lead to the most coveted positions at the top in the state department and national security apparatus. Blinken was one such striver, and I began to feel the pricking in my thumbs that was telling me that something evil this way was coming when he was mentioned now and again as a former close adviser to the already beatified Barack Obama. And some in the media had observed with approval that he had more recently been briefing Joe Biden, particularly about Israel and the Middle East.

In an interview in the Times of Israel Blinken confirmed Biden’s position on possibly reducing aid to Israel if the Jewish state were to do things that damaged U.S. interests. Blinken “…reiterated Biden’s position that he would not condition aid to Israel. He [Biden] is resolutely opposed to it. He would not tie military assistance to Israel to any political decisions it makes, full stop.”

The question of withholding aid is itself moot as Israel does nothing but “do things” that damage U.S. interests, knowing that no president or the Congress would dare to turn off the money tap, but it is an interesting unambiguous admission from Blinken that both he and Joe Biden put Israeli interests ahead of those of the United States.

Blinken’s personal view of unfettered support for Israel allegedly derives from his stepfather having claimed to be a survivor of the so-called holocaust, a tale that he invoked several times during his acceptance speech on November 24^th. The Times interview concludes with Blinken asserting that “One of the things that’s really shaped the vice president’s… career-long support for Israel and its security is the lesson of the Holocaust. He believes strongly that a secure Jewish homeland in Israel is the single best guarantee to ensure that never again will the Jewish people be threatened with destruction.”

The indefatigable Israel-firster Tony Blinken has also served as a “conduit” to those in government for Israel advocacy groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). And now that we have Tony Blinken as Secretary of State Designate the door will soon be wide open to the Israel Lobby.

If you need to know more about what Tony Blinken is all about you only have to look at his friends and his track record. Israel was inevitably quick off the mark in saluting the appointment, both in its media and through its mouthpieces in the United States. Stalwart Canadian Zionist Mark Dubowitz, who heads the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), tweeted that Blinken would be part of a “…superb national security team. The country will be very fortunate to have them in public service.”

The signal from FDD is particularly important as the organization is directed by the Israeli Embassy in Washington. FDD is the leading neoconservative bastion seeking a war with Iran, Israel’s bête noir. Its Leadership Council has featured former CIA Director James Woolsey, Senator Joe Lieberman, and Bill Kristol. Its advisors and experts are mostly Jewish and most of its funding comes from Jewish oligarchs.

A recent expose by al-Jazeera exposed how FDD and other Lobby groups work directly with the Israeli government, collecting information on U.S. citizens, spying on legal organizations, and both planning and executing disinformation at Israeli direction, making it an Israeli agent by the definition of the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 (FARA). Unfortunately, the Department of Justice has never sought to compel FDD to register under FARA. In fact, the U.S. government has never compelled any part of the vast and powerful Israel Lobby to register.

Tony, inevitably a Harvard graduate plus a JD from Columbia who has never served in the U.S. military, is inevitably a chicken-hawk because that is what America’s Zionists and their political neocon wing are made of. It is a phenomenon that has often been noted. In 2017, Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister Tzipi Hotovely called out American Jews as “people that never send their children to fight for their country, most of the Jews don’t have children serving as soldiers, going to the Marines, going to Afghanistan, or to Iraq. Most of them are having quite convenient lives…” Of 1,300,000 active duty personnel in the U.S. armed forces, only 4,515 are Jewish.

This is how it works: instead of actually fighting in the wars you are promoting, you have your tax-exempt “educational foundations” pour tons of money into a project to go to war and corrupt the politicians to issue the necessary orders so unemployed kids from Arkansas and North Dakota can go off and die for Israel. You yourself remain safe at home, free to deliver bellicose speeches about how Iran threatens the world through its “meddling” in the Middle East. And, of course, about how the dumbass Palestinians have failed to accept the hand of Israel offered in peace.

That is what Tony’s record demonstrates. Blinken has come a long way with Biden, all the way back to the Clinton Administration. And he he has always been there for the Jewish state. During the Obama Administration when relations with Israel were often strained, Blinken was the contact point for “Jewish leaders [differentiating] him from others in the White House at the time who weren’t as sympathetic to Israel’s position.” Dennis Ross, often described as Israel’s lawyer, praises him for having “…an instinctive emotional attachment to Israel,” referring to Blinken’s frequently cited Jewish and refugee roots.

Other media reporting indicates that “Blinken was a top aide to Biden when the then-Sen­a­tor vot­ed to autho­rize the U.S. inva­sion of Iraq, and Blinken helped Biden devel­op a pro­pos­al to par­ti­tion Iraq into three sep­a­rate regions based on eth­nic and sec­tar­i­an iden­ti­ty. As deputy nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er, Blinken sup­port­ed the dis­as­trous mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion in Libya in 2011, and in 2018 he helped launch Wes­t­Ex­ec Advi­sors, a ​‘strate­gic advi­so­ry firm’ that is secre­tive about its clients, along with oth­er Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion alum­ni like Michèle Flournoy. Jonathan Guy­er writes in The Amer­i­can Prospect, ​‘I learned that Blinken and Flournoy used their net­works to build a large client base at the inter­sec­tion of tech and defense. An Israeli sur­veil­lance start­up turned to them. So did a major U.S. defense com­pa­ny.”

Beyond the intersection of government policy and personal profit exhibited by Blinken, the Washington Post in 2013 described Blinken as “[o]ne of the government’s key players in drafting Syria policy” and he recalled that “This is a little bit personal to me, and any of us — and I start with myself — who had any responsibility for our Syria policy in the last administration has to acknowledge that we failed. Not for want of trying, but we failed.” What Tony failed at was overthrowing Syria’s legitimate government and turning the country over to the terrorist linked groups that he and Hillary and Obama were supporting.

The Democrats are particularly good at coming up with secretaries of state that one would like to forget, and that is saying quite a lot given the recent appointees by the Republicans. One recalls immediately the big-hearted Madeleine Albright, who found the killing of 500,000 Iraqi children by sanctions “worth it,” or Hillary Clinton, who laughed out loud as she recalled the death of Libya ruler Muammar Ghaddafi by having a bayonet inserted up his anus. Clinton, who more than anyone launched the war against Africa’s most developed nation, paraphrased Julius Caesar, who, upon returning from a rapid victory in Asia during the Rome’s Second Civil war, described the event as “Veni, vidi, vici,” in English “I came, I saw, I conquered.” For the laughing Hillary it was “I came, I saw, he died!” The anarchy in Libya persists to this day and it included the payback killing of four U.S. Embassy employees in Benghazi in 2012, with Hillary and Susan Rice at the helm. It is generally believed that both Clinton and Rice might well have senior positions in the incoming Biden Administration.

But back to Blinken. Israel loved the way the Trump Administration showered favors upon it, nearly always without any quid pro quo. But for all his Dispensationalist fervor, salesmen like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo were little more than goys who had been seduced by the myth of Israel. They were, as Lenin would have described it, little more than “useful idiots,” which is allegedly an expression that certain Israeli politicians have used to describe their passionate Christian Zionist supporters in the U.S. Now, with Blinken, the Israeli hard liners will have the “real thing,” a convincing Jewish boy who fatuously describes an apartheid Israel as “the anchor and foundation for democracy in the region.” Tony believes in the Zionist cause and will do the Jewish state’s bidding with a malleable Joe Biden. And if Joe should go, there is always Kamala Harris, who is married to a Jewish lawyer lobbyist. Win-win either way.

Even though it’s early days, Blinken joins a number of other American Jews already tagged for senior positions, including Alejandro Mayorkas, the nominee for Secretary of Homeland Security who is a Latino Jew. Ron Klain, Biden’s Chief of Staff and Janet Yellen, his pick for Treasury Secretary, are also Jewish. The liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports how “Having Jewish men and women in prominent government positions is so standard that it’s barely even a talking point…” before observing that “The fact that some of President-elect Joe Biden’s top cabinet picks are Jewish should be a source of pride for the community…‘These people are being chosen because they’re incredibly competent, because they’re incredibly talented, because they’re incredibly experienced,’ Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt told Haaretz in a phone interview.” Indeed, if one believes Greenblatt pressure from the Israel Lobby, the media and billionaire donors as well as networking by the Jewish mafia inside the government itself have nothing to do with it.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected]. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Credits to the owner of the featured image

During the most severe Main Street economic collapse in US history — with over one-fourth of working-age Americans jobless — additional calamity looms in the coming weeks.

According to Census Bureau estimates, 30 to 40 million Americans face possible eviction in 2021 for lack of income to pay rent or service mortgages.

Without federal aid or an extended rent moratorium, a calamity of biblical proportions may unfold in the coming months.

CARES Act legislation that protected vulnerable households from eviction expired at end of July.

In September, a CDC order extended the moratorium through yearend.

The ruling protected millions of Americans from being dispossessed of a roof over their heads.

It applies to individuals earning $99,000 annually or less, and couples earning up to double this amount.

Eligible households had to demonstrate an inability to pay rent or service mortgages during the current hard times.

Landlords can argue against tenants in a housing court to have final say on the issue if things go that far, a process that can take weeks or months.

The CARES Act and CDC order were stopgap measures, leaving the issue of likely protracted economic collapse unresolved for millions of hard-pressed Americans.

In January, payment for deferred rent and mortgage obligations will come due.

It’ll be up to landlords and tenants to work out debt payments — that may include late fees, other penalties, or interest on mortgages.

Public health officials and housing advocates warned of an approaching eviction crisis without federal intervention to prevent it.

According to National Low Income Housing Coalition president Dianne Yental and other housing advocates, it’s vital for congressional legislation to provide at least $100 billion in emergency rental assistance in the coming weeks.

Tenants and landlords both have rights. The former need a residence to live in.

The latter need rent payments to service mortgages, pay property taxes, and cover other expenses.

If Republicans control the Senate and Dems the House for the next two years, it’s unclear if agreement can be reached on providing emergency rental assistance that most likely will be needed throughout 2021 and beyond.

According to a National Council of State Housing Agencies report titled, “Analysis of Current and Expected Rental Shortfall and Potential Evictions in the US:” a

An Apartment List monthly survey begun in June found that about “33% of American rental households did not make on- time rent payments.”

Because of accumulated indebtedness, about “66% of renters expressed concern about eviction within the next six months.”

As of mid-September, from “9.7 million (to) 14.2 million renter households in the (US) may be unable to pay rent and at risk of eviction.”

“That translates to (from) 23.3 million (to) 34 million individual renters.”

By January 2021, arrears on rent payments may be up to $34 billion. At yearend 2021 without federal aid, it could be up to double this amount.

At the same time, up to 30 million renters could face eviction.

Millions of landlords will be vulnerable to foreclosure if unable to service their mortgages.

Nothing remotely like what’s going on ever happened in the US before — with no relief in prospect so far.

Without jobs, there’s no income. Without income, no ability exists to pay rent, buy food, pay medical expenses, and cover other costs of day-to-day living.

For millions of vulnerable Americans, if evicted they’ll have no place to go if unable to live with other family members.

Mass unemployment, growing poverty and deprivation, food insecurity and widespread evictions next year reflect the dire state of things in the US.

What’s happening is likely to be protracted because covid and economic collapse were planned, not accidental.

What’s going on is part of a diabolical plot to transform the US and other Western nations into ruler/serf societies.

The only possible antidote is mass activism in the streets for equity and justice — staying the course, paying the price for positive change, or abandon all hope henceforth.

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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 Abayomi Azikiwe

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon topped 11,000 square kilometers for the first time since 2008 reports the Brazilian government.

According to data released today by Brazil’s national space research institute INPE, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon for the year ending July 31, 2020 amounted to 11,088 square kilometers, an area the size of Jamaica. The loss, which represents a 9.5 percent increase over the same period last year, is nearly triple the 3,925 square kilometer target established in the 2009 National Policy on Climate Change.

The state of Pará accounted for nearly half of forest clearing in 2020 according to the data. Mata Grosso (16 percent of deforestation), Amapá (14 percent), and Rondônia (11 percent) followed. Pará, Mata Grosso, and Rondônia — states where cattle ranching and soy farming have rapidly expanded in recent decades — perennially lead the country in deforestation.

The new data are preliminary. Brazil typically releases the official data a few months into the new calendar year. For example, Brazil revised the preliminary 2019 numbers up 3.8 percent this past June.

The rise in Amazon deforestation was expected. Data from monitoring systems run by INPE and Imazon, an independent Brazilian NGO, had shown monthly deforestation pacing well ahead of last year’s rate.

Environmentalists have blamed the rising deforestation rate on the Bolsonaro administration’s efforts to roll back forest protection, reduce environmental law enforcement and penalties for illegal forest clearing, sack career scientists from federal agencies, and demonize environmental defenders as enemies of the state. In his 2018 presidential campaign, Jair Bolsonaro called for increased logging, mining, dam construction, and agricultural expansion across the Amazon.

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, which accounts for more three-fifths of the forest cover in Earth’s largest rainforest, has been trending upward since bottoming out in 2012 at 4,571 square kilometers.

Scientists fear that rising deforestation and the effects of climate change could tip vast swathes of the Amazon rainforest to a drier savanna-like ecosystem. Such a transition could have dire implications for rainfall across southern South America, which includes the continent’s main agricultural region and its biggest cities. Large-scale Amazon die-off would also trigger substantial greenhouse emissions, further destabilizing global climate.

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Featured image: Fire along the border of the Kaxarari Indigenous territory, in Lábrea, Amazonas state. Taken August 17, 2020. CREDIT: © Christian Braga / Greenpeace

Um vídeo, divulgado, em 23 de Novembro, pelos Sandia National Laboratories, mostra um caça F-35A dos EUA que,voando a velocidade supersónica, a uma altitude de 3.000 metros, lança uma bomba nuclear B61-12 (equipada para o ensaio, com uma ogiva não nuclear). A bomba não cai verticalmente, mas está a planar, até que na cauda se acendam os projecteis que lhe imprimem um movimento de rotação e a B61-12 (guiada por um sistema de satélite) dirige-se para o alvo, que atinge 42 segundos após o lançamento.

O teste foi realizado em 25 de Agosto,do corrente, no polígono de Tonopah, no deserto do Nevada. Um comunicado oficial confirma o seu êxito completo: trata-se do ensaio de um verdadeiro ataque nuclear que o caça efectua a velocidade supersónica e em atitude furtiva (com as bombas nucleares colocadas no porão interno) para penetrar nas defesas inimigas.

A B61-12 tem uma ogiva nuclear com quatro opções de potência seleccionáveis ​​no momento do lançamento, dependendo do alvo a atingir.  Tem a capacidade de penetrar no subsolo, explodindo em profundidade para destruir os bunkers do centro de comando e outras estruturas subterrâneas.

O programa do Pentágono prevê a construção de cerca de 500 bombas B61-12, com um custo estimado de cerca de 10 biliões de dólares (portanto, cada bomba custará o dobro do que custaria se fosse construída inteiramente de ouro). Foi anunciado oficialmente que a produção em série da nova bomba nuclear começará no ano fiscal de 2022, que começa em 1 de Outubro de 2021 (ou seja, dentro de onze meses).

Não se sabe quantas bombas B61-12 serão instaladas pelos EUA em Itália, na Alemanha, na Bélgica e na Holanda para substituir as B61 cujo número efectivo é secreto. Fotos de satélite mostram que foram efectuados trabalhos de reestruturação nas bases de Aviano e Ghedi, em preparação para a chegada das novas bombas nucleares, com as quais serão armados os F-35A da US Air Force e, sob comando USA, os da Força Aérea Italiana.

É facilmente previsível, quando os F-35A prontos para um ataque nuclear com a bomba B61-12 forem instalados no seu território, em que situação se encontrará a Itália. Como base avançada da instalação nuclear USA na Europa, dirigida principalmente contra a Rússia, a Itália encontrar-se-á numa situação ainda mais perigosa. Dependerá ainda mais do que antes, das decisões estratégicas tomadas em Washington, que comportam escolhas políticas e económicas que prejudicam a nossa soberania e os nossos verdadeiros interesses nacionais.

Terá de aumentar a despesa militar da quantia actual de 26 para 36 biliões de euros por ano, aos quais se adicionarão, de acordo com os planos, mais 60 biliões atribuídos para fins militares pelo Ministério do Desenvolvimento Económico e retirados (mais juros) do Fundo de Recuperação. A Itália violará ainda mais do que antes, o Tratado de Não Proliferação, ao qual aderiu em 1975, comprometendo-se a “não receber armas nucleares de quem quer que seja, nem controlar essas armas, directa ou indirectamente”.

Rejeitará ainda mais o recente Tratado da ONU sobre a abolição de armas nucleares, que estabelece: “Qualquer Estado Parte que tenha armas nucleares no seu território, pertencentes ou controladas por outro Estado, deve assegurar a rápida remoção dessas armas”.

Para lançar uma pedra nas águas estagnadas de um parlamento que nada diz sobre todo este assunto, a Distinta Deputada Sara Cunial (Grupo Misto) apresentou uma pergunta com resposta escrita ao Primeiro Ministro e aos Ministérios da Defesa e dos Negócios Estrangeiros. Depois de explicados os factos acima supracitados, a questão passa a ser

Ø   “Se o governo pretende respeitar o Tratado de Não Proliferação de Armas Nucleares, ratificado pela Itália em 1975;

Ø   se pretende assinar e ratificar ONU sobre a Abolição das Armas Nucleares, que entra em vigor em 2021;

Ø   se pretende assegurar, com base no que estabelecem esses tratados, que os Estados Unidos retirem imediatamente qualquer arma nuclear do território italiano e se abstenham de instalar nele as novas bombas B61-12 e outras armas nucleares ”.

Enquanto esperamos ler a resposta do Governo, os Estados Unidos fazem os últimos testes da Bomba, que virão colocar sob os nossos pés.

Manlio Dinucci

Artigo original em italiano :

La Bomba è pronta: tra breve in Italia

ilmanifesto.it

Tradutora : Maria Luísa de Vasconcellos 

The Slow-motion Assassination of Julian Assange

By Kim Petersen, December 01 2020

Despite whatever charges Julian Assange may be accused of, it is well known that the WikiLeaks publisher was targeted for exposing the war crimes of the US government. In an upside-down Bizarro World, the screws are being ever so gradually tightened on Assange by the war criminals and their criminal accomplices.

The Christmas Big Pharma Race Is On: “Back to Normal” When We Get the Covid Vaccine?

By Js Adams, December 01 2020

Ask anyone and they will say things will be back to ‘normal’ as soon as we all have the vaccine. Furthermore, if your only source of news is sponsored by Big Pharma, then you better watch out. Despite what the papers say, a vaccine is an inherently complicated affair, needing various trials to perfect and make absolutely safe for human use.

Concerts, Sport Events: World’s Largest Ticket Agency Plans to Require COVID-19 Testing or Vaccination

By Carolyn Hendler, December 01 2020

On Nov. 11, 2020, Billboard magazine reported that Ticketmaster, the world’s largest ticket agency, revealed it wants to require proof that ticket purchasers have tested negative for the SARS-CoV-2 virus within 24-72 hours before attending an event or have received a COVID-19 vaccine with a year of the event.

RT-PCR Test to Detect SARS-CoV-2 Reveals 10 Major Scientific Flaws at the Molecular and Methodological Level: Consequences for False Positive Results

By Pieter Borger, Bobby Rajesh Malhotra, and et al., December 01 2020

This paper will show numerous serious flaws in the Corman-Drosten paper, the significance of which has led to worldwide misdiagnosis of infections attributed to SARS-CoV-2 and associated with the disease COVID-19.

“Dark Winter” Was the Code Name for a Scenario in Which a Biological Weapon Was Used Against the American Populace

By Michael Snyder, December 01 2020

Could it be possible that the phrase “dark winter”  has some sort of deeper meaning that most of us are not meant to understand?  We have heard that phrase over and over again in recent weeks, and usually it has been used in discussions regarding the current state of the COVID-19 pandemic.

U.S. Centrism: The Radical Betrayal of Global Solidarity

By Black Alliance for Peace, December 01 2020

In the United States, a liberal or a self-identified radical can rationalize supporting a candidate who throws Palestinians under the bus in order to get elected to the U.S. Senate. These same people can remain silent on murderous U.S. economic sanctions. They also can avoid any comment on U.S. imperialist aggression. They can do all of these things and their “progressive” or “radical” credentials would not be questioned.

Scientists and Historians Uncover Further Details of Racist 1921 Tulsa Massacre

By Abayomi Azikiwe, December 01 2020

IMF Refuses to Help Ukraine

By Lucas Leiroz de Almeida, December 01 2020

Diversity in Dance Today: Enlightenment and Romanticist Perspectives

By Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin, December 01 2020

Anarchism and the Avant-Garde: Félix Fénéon at the Museum of Modern Art

By Prof. Sam Ben-Meir, December 01 2020

O engenheiro de petróleo Paulo Henrique Tavares vive atualmente entre a Bielorrússia e a Rússia. Doutorando na capital regional russa de Ufá, na encosta europeia dos Montes Urais, o brasileiro, natural de Santos (SP), nesta pandemia tem se dividido entre sua tese na Universidade Técnica de Petróleo do Estado de Ufá, e alguns projetos na cidade bielorrussa de Gomel, 300 km a sudeste da capital Minsque, próxima à tríplice fronteira com Rússia e Ucrânia.

Hoje funcionário especializado da Petrobrás, na década neoliberal dos anos 1990, o pesquisador foi membro ativo do movimento estudantil uspiano, destacando-se a partir dos 2000 por seu ativismo junto ao movimento de educação política e democratização da universidade pública, em que militou por projetos que se tornariam referências no ensino popular pré-universitário (Cursinhos do Crusp e da Acepusp). Era o começo da série de governos nacionais do Partido dos Trabalhadores – uma época de implementação de políticas socialdesenvolvimentistas que ele considera o início de um processo de “real democratização do país”. 

Geólogo formado pela USP e mestre em Engenharia de Petróleo pela Unicamp, Paulo fala bem o russo. Em seu doutorado, desenvolve um estudo comparativo que aborda os reservatórios russos de pré-sal do norte do Mar Cáspio, relacionando-os com o pré-sal brasileiro, tema que envolve questões energéticas e geopolíticas.

Desde Gomel, onde está morando há alguns meses, Paulo atende esta reportagem, inicialmente em uma chamada telefônica – depois detalhada por correio eletrônico – enquanto caminha por um “limpo e arborizado” parque da “agradável” cidade que é a segunda maior metrópole (meio milhão de habitantes) deste país “muito organizado”. Segundo ele, esta nação eslava, que vem estando em evidência na mídia desde as últimas eleições (vencidas por Lukashenko, em agosto), “só está conflagrada mesmo é nas manchetes da grande imprensa corporativa, tendenciosa como a gente sabe”. 

YMF: Paulo, primeiramente quero agradecer a atenção de sua entrevista, e pedir para que você nos conte um pouco sobre suas pesquisas e trabalho.

PHT: Minha tese parte de uma ideia construída junto com meu orientador, Yuri Katiniov, cuja proposta é cotejar o pré-sal das bacias sedimentares do sudeste do Brasil (Santos e Campos) e o pré-sal da bacia estratégica do Norte do Mar Cáspio. O intuito é compreender semelhanças e possíveis estratégias comuns energéticas, através da comparação dos reservatórios pré-sal russos, que existem aqui com a mesma configuração do pré-sal brasileiro, com a diferença de que, na Bacia do Norte do Cáspio (Rússia), tratam-se de reservatórios em terra ou em águas muito rasas, em contraste aos das águas profundas do Sudeste do Brasil. Um tema que ganha cada vez mais conotações estratégicas na geopolítica contemporânea, como temos visto, infelizmente, desde o pior ângulo, no entreguismo que caracteriza o governo brasileiro. 

YMF: Como você tem entendido as manifestações de rua que vêm ocorrendo desde as últimas eleições? Qual o estado das manifestações opositoras em Gomel e Minsque? Você acredita que os confrontos podem crescer?

PHT: Aqui em Gomel, a população continua levando uma vida perfeitamente normal, e em Minsque não é diferente, apesar de no início ter havido uma ou outra manifestação mais movimentada. Toda essa versão, que se lê diariamente na grande imprensa aí do Brasil e do Ocidente, fala de uma crise que existe “apenas nos jornais” (como dizia a Marilena Chauí). Na realidade, por aqui, quase não se fala disso, especialmente nos meios mais populares. 

Na prática, é como se nada tivesse ocorrendo para além das manchetes da mídia corporativa. É certo que uma semana após as últimas eleições, em agosto, houve de fato uma manifestação de maior peso, ao menos na capital; era um domingo, dia “leve”, em que têm ocorrido as manifestações mais concorridas, à semelhança daquelas recentes promovidas pelos golpistas brasileiros. Acredito que nessa data estiveram presentes um pouco menos do que as 100 mil pessoas de que a imprensa ocidental falou. Porém, nas semanas seguintes estes protestos, capitaneados por uma classe média liberal, minguaram. 

Nesta manifestação de alguns dias atrás (25 de outubro), que foi o ultimato (bem equivocado, aliás) da oposição, novamente se falou em mais de 100 mil pessoas nas ruas de Minsque, mas este número não tem cabimento: avaliando e comparando as imagens das manifestações, eu diria que as de agora não passaram nem de 10 mil pessoas na capital. A polícia não divulgou estimativas, até porque por aqui não há essa tradição de manifestações; e não encontrei em russo ou bielorrusso (língua próxima, que compreendo um pouco) nenhuma fonte que compare o número de pessoas nas ruas. Mas tentei fazer essa estimativa de maneira comparativa, usando várias fotos divulgadas. Vejas que curiosas estas fotos do portal Khoroshie News [1], que vem acompanhando e apoiando este golpe colorido: na sequência de imagens deles, nota-se claramente que em agosto (início das marchas pró-Ocidente), as fotografias eram mais distantes e na praça central; porém, com o passar do tempo, elas foram se aproximando das pessoas – como que para dar aquela impressão de “mais gente”. Percebe-se também que as tomadas atuais preferiram registrar os manifestantes nas avenidas, bem mais estreitas de que a grande praça, o que naturalmente amplifica esta impressão de “multidão”.

Em Gomel, por exemplo, essas manifestações não atraem mais do que uma centena de pessoas. Enfim: a Bielorrússia só está conflagrada mesmo é nas manchetes da grande imprensa, tendenciosa como a gente sabe. Mas infelizmente, as classes médias e altas sabem fazer barulho, têm acesso a bons meios; e acaba que prevalece a versão da oposição pró-ocidental, ecoada pela mídia hegemônica – que tem muitos interesses geoestratégicos nesse processo, e que não tem nada de democrática.

YMF: E quanto às greves com que a oposição ameaça “parar o país”: as paralisações têm ganhado força? Você acredita que os trabalhadores podem se contaminar por esse desejo das elites de “ocidentalização”? 

PHT: Estas greves são uma fantasia da oposição liberal. “Curioso” que no mundo inteiro greve é tratada como “coisa de vagabundo, comunista, gente que não gosta de trabalhar”, e sempre como se seus objetivos fossem somente “políticos”. Mas no caso daqui, os neoliberais convocam as greves por motivações exclusivamente politicas, e são tratados como vítimas pelo discurso “democrático” do capital.

Ainda assim, no último domingo, os opositores fizeram um amplo chamamento pela greve, mas foram ignorados pela população. Houve pequenas movimentações em algumas pequenas fábricas economicamente periféricas, mas nas grandes tudo segue em perfeito funcionamento. E a oposição murcha, como até mesmo a Folha de S. Paulo, jornal historicamente apoiador de golpes [2], admitiu estes dias. 

YMF: O Índice de Desenvolvimento Humano da Bielorrússia é alto, o Índice Gini mostra que a desigualdade no país é uma das menores do mundo. Quais então as alegações para estes protestos? Quem são os grupos ou classes sociais que estão tentando desestabilizar o governo reeleito, quais suas principais reivindicações? Quanto aos apoiadores que votaram no presidente, eles também têm saído às ruas?

PHT: Voltei à Bielorussia pouco após a eleição que confirmou Aleksander Lukashenko como presidente eleito com 80%. Os protestos estão cada vez menores e restritos à capital, e acho que tendem a desaparecer. O que tenho visto em Minsque, são janelas de alguns apartamentos, em bairros de classe média, com a bandeira vermelha e branca [antiga bandeira, que foi usada por nacionalistas e cristãos, hoje símbolo da oposição]; mas no bairro onde moro, um conjunto residencial com mais de mil apartamentos, vi apenas uma única bandeira destas.

A líder da oposição, Svetlana Tsikhanouskaia que recebeu 10% dos votos, hoje está na Lituânia. Ela é esposa de um blogueiro famoso, assumidamente de direita, que foi impedido de participar das eleições por processos jurídicos; e aí, as forças de oposição lançaram o nome da esposa em seu lugar. Svetlana porém não caiu por acaso na política, mas fez diversos cursos na Irlanda [3], patrocinados por ONGs de cunho nitidamente político e antirrusso. Hoje, ela hoje vive de maneira abastada em Vilnius (capital da Lituânia), e em seus “grandes atos” nem cita o nome do marido.

O que vejo de maneira simples, é: a oposição, apesar de minoritária, foi extremamente barulhenta pelo apoio massivo que recebeu do Ocidente, especialmente dos países vizinhos, em que a direita tem estado forte nos últimos tempos: como Polônia, Lituânia e Letônia. Entretanto, conforme a mídia corporativa – voz do Ocidente – começou a dar visibilidade demais à oposição, ela (a oposição) se atrapalhou e acabou criando uma maior aceitação ao Lukashenko. Pois na prática, os opositores querem apenas seguir a cartilha neoliberal, e isso passa pela tática geopolítica da OTAN (que são as forças armadas da aliança ocidental), ou seja: tentar afastar os países próximos da poderosa Rússia, de sua esfera de influência. E isto a qualquer custo, como fizeram na Ucrânia, país hoje arrasado. 

A Ucrânia, onde a aliança ocidental (EUA-UE) bancou e orquestrou um golpe contra o Viktor Yanukovicht, é hoje um país em guerra e que perdeu parte do território (a Crimeia, que antes já tinha sido russa). Vive agora da esmola ocidental para pagar os juros da dívida externa que contraiu. As tarifas básicas – luz, água, impostos e especialmente aquecimento, sem o que não dá para passar o rigoroso inverno de metros de neve – aumentaram quase dez vezes por lá. E há casos de gente que perdeu imóveis hipotecados por conta da carestia. 

Dá para fazer um paralelo entre esses “golpes coloridos” e o nosso golpe jurídico e midiático da Lava-Jato: no começo as esquerdas demoraram para compreender o que estava acontecendo; muitos de nós tardamos a perceber a farsa. Na Ucrânia foi assim, mas agora na Bielorrússia, o povo demonstra estar mais atento. E além disso, por aqui o golpe tem sido muito escancarado, com participação inclusive de grupos violentos fascistas, como no caso ucraniano. 

Sobre a votação massiva do atual presidente, veja que em 2015 houve eleições com números percentualmente muito próximos aos de agora. Por que a oposição não saiu às ruas? Por que o Ocidente aceitou como “limpo” aquele pleito, e não esse? Talvez porque naquele momento pós-golpe ucraniano, não coubessem dois golpes na sequência, um ao lado do outro. E talvez porque, agora, com os enfrentamentos e até provocações do Lukashenko a Moscou, o Ocidente percebeu, com este cenário, um presidente enfraquecido. Mas o Putin logo promoveu as pazes com o Lukashenko, reaproximando-se deste seu aliado estratégico. 

Por seu lado, ocorreu também que a Svetlana Tsikhanouskaia foi cometendo uma série de erros políticos e aumentando a resistência entre os próprios liberais. Ela esperava que a UE e os EUA fizessem como no caso do Juan Guaidó [na Venezuela], reconhecendo ela como a presidenta “de direito”. Mas o Ocidente não ousou fazer isso; apenas impôs algumas sanções. Só que agora, a Bielorrússia não usará mais os portos da Lituânia e da Letônia, vai usar um porto russo; isso vai ter um impacto brutal na economia destes dois pequenos países, cujos portos representam boa parte do orçamento.

Recentemente, começaram a surgir protestos em defesa do Lukashenko (levantando a bandeira atual do país), um movimento que na prática é para tentar barrar os protestos que querem “ucranizar” o país. Porém, tenho achado essa movimentação ainda tímida, dada a oportunidade ímpar de se firmar. Por outro lado, os protestos da direita não assustam mais o governo, e nem o povo. Os trabalhadores ainda preferem, apesar de certo cansaço, o Lukashenko, que pode ter algumas práticas autoritárias, mas mantém importantes políticas sociais. E o povo viu de perto o que aconteceu na vizinha Ucrânia.

Na verdade, ninguém mais acredita nestes “golpes coloridos”, com exceção, a meu ver, de uma esquerda um tanto europeizada, de costumes elitizados, crente que os níveis de vida do centro capitalista – colonialista e neocolonialista – podem ser exportados, mediante apenas “boas intenções”, ao mundo periférico por ela pisado. Não percebem que o nível de vida do “centro do sistema” não poderá nunca existir na “periferia”, onde a miséria é sempre mais miserável – como bem nos lembra Florestan Fernandes. 

 Yuri Martins-Fontes

[Continua]

Referências

[1] https://khoroshienews.info/2020-10-24-17-31-kak-belorusy-vosstali-protiv-lukashenko-massovye-protesty-v-10-foto

[2] https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/mundo/2020/10/greve-geral-fracassa-na-belarus-e-ditadura-mantem-repressao.shtml

[3] https://www.rte.ie/news/player/2020/0810/21816147-belarus-leader-of-the-opposition-svetlana-tikhanovskayas-ties-to-roscrea-county-tipperary/

Ask anyone and they will say things will be back to ‘normal’ as soon as we all have the vaccine. Furthermore, if your only source of news is sponsored by Big Pharma, then you better watch out. Despite what the papers say, a vaccine is an inherently complicated affair, needing various trials to perfect and make absolutely safe for human use.  Case in point, the Mumps Vaccine alone, took four years and that was considered unprecedented. Just look at our success rate for other vaccines in the past: Malaria has been with us for centuries and there was still talk of having a vaccine for it by 1960. Sixty years later and still nothing has changed, apart from the stemming of its spread by cleaner water supplies and improved sanitation methods. In our ultra sanitised environment, we now think of Malaria as a third world problem and yet, despite all our technologies and wisdom, we still cant seem to beat the common cold which is a family of  Rhino, Coxsackie, Adeno and Corona viruses, yet we suddenly have a whole new range of vaccines coming out for Covid-19.

The Pharms Race Is On…

It could be argued that: that was then and this is now but even with our super computers and technologies, all this is superseded by the fact that for time forever, we have fallen prey to corporate con-artists, peddling drugs to a naive and unsuspecting public. So lets just be clear on this. Even today, a vaccine still takes at least eighteen months to test and around five to ten years of perfecting before it can be used for general consumption.  Thus the sudden announcement that Russia  and America suddenly have a workable vaccine should be treated with scepticism. Such as US drug company Pfizer, which announced their vaccine only this week, despite a track record of flogging dodgy drugs. Just look at Russia’s bid with Sputnik V, a rather dubious vaccine that has many scientists nervous.  It seems to be more about who can come out top dog, in what is clearly becoming a new Pharms Race.

With that in mind, lets put the Covid-19 virus in terms of East vs West. Just look at the way the Arms Race brought us to our knees in the last century, hijacking our greatest science and military output, into essentially reducing our nations to a nuclear standoff that lasted decades. Today things haven’t changed, we’ve merely swapped nukes for vaccines, as the Big Pharma superpowers battle it out, using vaccines as ammunition, in which we the people, are caught in the crossfire. China for one, is emerging in this Pharms Race as a formidable contender.

Christmas Vaccine

However, this is the type of blindly naïve ignorance which could spell disaster on a scale beyond imagination. Perhaps this writer has a flare for the dramatic but it should not be understated, that we have no way of knowing what side effects will ensue by taking untested vaccines, such as the ones proposed to combat Covid-19.

Yet the daily tabloids have us believing that a Vaccine will be here by September? But wait a minute: Septembers already come and gone and still no vaccine! Then they said it would be ready for Christmas before finally admitting it was more like sometime next year. Yet, in the sudden and dubious elections, Trump is out and Biden is in, who’s first job in office will be to reconnect funding to the WHO, (that Trump had previously cut, under allegations of corruption). Biden’s next plan of attack will be the relentless roll out vaccines, regardless of whether they work or not.

In the wake of Biden, the papers are quickly backtracking (yet again) and now saying the vaccines will be back with us by Christmas, while trials at Oxford offer little to back this claim. But whatever. Its Christmas! So why not purchase a Yule Tide Vaccine Gift Set for all your family, who cares if it works? Unicef is already stockpiling syringes. By the way, bidding for the Bill Gates Vaccine starts at £477. That’s right. Lots of companies are currently buying up stocks of untested vaccines but are reluctant to try them out on themselves. But that’s ok, because the first to be given the vaccine will be the elderly and GPs are already getting ready to jab the aged and infirm as the Yule tide looms.  What the hell is in this stuff? Nothing good.

Thalmidomide Vaccines

The repurposing of Thalidomide in Covid vaccines should ring alarm bells. How many times have we been duped into something like this before, only to regret it? Big Pharma are much like the street vender variety. Peddling off drugs that in some cases can cost as much as $750 for just for one pill.

Don’t be fooled that just because the world is united under the fight against Covid-19, that big business has suddenly become holier than thou.

More than ever, there are numerous scams already in play, to take your money and put you and your family at risk with experimental vaccines with unforeseen risks, that will not only affect you but affect your offspring. But once it has become common place, it could make the Thalidomide scandal of the last century look quaint by comparison. From 1957 to 1961, over 10,000 children were born with adverse limb deformities, internal organ failure and subsequent brain damage. Since this well documented tragedy, protocols were put in place in order to avoid a repeat.

Yet it seems that public pressure (and hysteria) and Big Pharma have reached a bottleneck of compromises, in order to roll out untested vaccines asap, with zero thought about the potential ramifications. Worst still these drug companies have lobbied for total deniability, should their vaccines fail. Yep that’s right, if Pfizers vaccine ends up giving your kids birth deformities and autism, it’s not their problem, always read the label.

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Dear friends, sisters, brothers, and comrades in the struggle for peace and justice: 

We hope this finds all of you well and safe.

The Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC)-Pakistan is deeply distressed at the way in which the US and the Gulf countries are putting immense pressure, threatening deportation of Pakistan laborers, etc., if Pakistan does not follow their lead and normalize relations with Israel. This is unacceptable for us, as we are relentlessly campaigning with human rights groups here to condemn the harsh Israeli military occupation of the Palestinians.

In this time of the urgent and immediate possible capitulation to DC and the Saudis and the Emiratis, we have created this emergency global petition to present to Prime Minister Imran Khan of Pakistan. He is very much cornered right now (having stated numerous times that he will refuse to bow down to the pressure to normalize ties with Israel), and we hope this petition will tip the favor in his position of rejecting any normalization process with Israel until the military occupation ends, and there is justice for Palestinians — no matter what the traditional military-political establishment in Pakistan says or desires.

As trusted comrades of ours in this struggle for the dignity of Palestinians, we hope you can sign this petition immediately so that we can halt this dangerous and suicidal path our country may be forced to undertake.

During World War I (1914-1918) and the immediately following years (1919-1921), racial tensions escalated inside the United States resulting in numerous efforts by white racists to contain and in many cases remove the presence of African Americans.

One of the most violent disturbances occurred in late May and early June of 1921 in Tulsa, Oklahoma where it is estimated that approximately 300 people were massacred when white mobs, which included law-enforcement agents and National Guard, assaulted the socially burgeoning and self-reliant Black community.

In recent months, forensic specialists and archaeologists have been engaged in attempts to locate unmarked mass graves where some of the victims were buried. Since July, scientists believe that some of the remains have been located and are seeking the legal requirements necessary to conduct further exhumations and testing.

Phoebe Stubblefield, a forensic anthropologist, has been involved in revealing the truth surrounding the massacre for over two decades. She was present at the Oaklawn cemetery, where the victims are said to have been buried, when the first indications of the remains were found in coffins.

The business district along Greenwood Avenue in Tulsa had become known as “Black Wall Street” due to its thriving independent small businesses which largely served an African American community forced by segregation laws to remain insulated. Despite its adherence to the strict edicts of Jim Crow, the white ruling class interests apparently felt threatened by the initiatives of African Americans who had built their own small enterprises, independent religious institutions, and other organizations.

The centenary of this horrendous series of events slated to be commemorated in another six months, has prompted a reexamination of the Tulsa massacre, falsely described in years past as a “riot.” The only “riot” which took place was the invasion of the African American community by armed racist mobs which looted and burned homes, churches and businesses, while murdering hundreds of people. Thousands of Black people were placed in an open-air detention facility in the aftermath of the events where many remained for several days.

Official accounts of the incident narrated by the white establishment in Oklahoma, denied the scale of the violence including the sheer destruction of property and the number of killings. Nonetheless, oral and documented histories by African Americans have always acknowledged the depth of the concerted attacks and the large number of deaths at the hands of the racists.

A series of documentaries and research studies have revealed the level of carnage carried out during the Tulsa unrest. During the late 1990s, the State of Oklahoma appointed a commission to reconstruct the events of May-June 1921. (See this)

A commission report issued in 2001 provided riveting accounts of the developments which sparked the murderous mobs and the efforts to suppress the actual horrors committed against the African American community. The racist vigilantes and police agents were acting in response to allegations that a young African American had assaulted a white woman on an elevator in the downtown area.

Flames across the Greenwood section of Tulsa (Source: Public Domain)

Corporate newspaper accounts at the time evoked the racist myths surrounding the propensity for Black males to assault innocent white women and called upon the authorities to take immediate action. After the youth who was accused of the assault was arrested, armed African Americans descended on the local jail to prevent a lynching of the man held in detention. Soon there were clashes resulting in shots being fired by African Americans and whites. During the subsequent hours and days, the racist militias invaded the African American community where they engaged in a reign of terror. Later there were reports of airplanes flying overhead in the Greenwood neighborhood where incendiary devices were dropped on homes and businesses.

Tulsa Was Not an Isolated Case

The years between WWI and 1921 were marked by racist attacks on African American communities throughout the U.S. where many were displaced, injured and killed. During the same year that the U.S. entered the first imperialist war, 1917, white racist mobs attacked African American communities in East St. Louis (Illinois), Chester (Pennsylvania), Lexington (Kentucky), Philadelphia, among other cities and rural areas.

After the conclusion of WWI, a renewed round of racial violence occurred across the country. In Elaine, Arkansas, where dozens and perhaps hundreds of African American tenant farmers were massacred after attempting to form a union of sharecroppers and domestic workers, it would take the intervention of anti-lynching fighter Ida B. Wells-Barnett along with the NAACP to prevent the execution of several Black men accused of insurrection. Chicago and Washington, D.C. were some of the worst cities affected when African Americans fought pitched battles with white vigilantes, police officers and National Guard soldiers in the summer of 1919.

These racially motivated conflicts coincided with both an upsurge in industrial labor actions and the continuation of state repression which intensified during the War. Thousands of opponents of U.S. involvement in WWI were imprisoned and deported by the government in 1917-1918. The-then Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer gained a horrendous reputation for anti-Black and anti-Labor political investigations and prosecutions. The Palmer Raids of 1919 were specifically designed to thwart the organization of the working class along with the struggle for equality and self-determination among African Americans.

Consequently, the situation in Tulsa in 1921 was reflective of the generally repressive atmosphere prevailing in the U.S. Therefore, it is not surprising that the authorities in Oklahoma went to great lengths to conceal the crimes committed against the African American people in Tulsa.

Live Science magazine published an article on the research being done in the Sexton section of Oaklawn Cemetery in Tulsa. The report notes that: “The Tulsa race massacre wasn’t officially recognized by the state until 2001, and historians have claimed accounts of the violence were suppressed. But in recent decades, Oklahoma and the city of Tulsa have tried to better come to terms with this brutal part of their history. It’s thought that most people who were alive at the time have now passed away; one of the last known survivors, the psychologist and professor Olivia Juliette Hooker, died in 2018 at the age of 103.” (See this)

Reparations Recommended and Denied

After the first commission report in 2001, it was recommended that reparations be paid to the survivors of the 1921 Tulsa massacre. Yet there is no record of any reparations given to African Americans living in Tulsa at the time or their descendants.

Leading up to the 100^th anniversary of the disturbances, a civil lawsuit has been filed with the lead plaintiff being a 105-year-old survivor of the unrest. Ms. Lessie Benningfield Randle, was a young child in 1921 when thousands of members of the white mob destroyed a 35-block area where more than 10,000 African Americans lived. She is thought to be one of only two survivors of the attacks.

The Guardian newspaper reported on the civil litigation saying: “Randle still experiences flashbacks of bodies stacked up on the street as the neighborhood burned, her attorneys said. Other plaintiffs include the great-granddaughter of J.B. Stradford, who owned the Stradford hotel in Greenwood, the largest black-owned hotel in the United States at the time of the massacre, and grandchildren of people killed. The lawsuit accuses the city of Tulsa, Tulsa county, the then serving sheriff of Tulsa county, the Oklahoma national guard and Tulsa regional chamber of being directly involved in the massacre. The defendants, lawyers allege, have ‘unjustly enriched themselves at the expense of the black citizens of Tulsa and the survivors and descendants of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre’.” (See this)

Advocates for African American Liberation and the fight for reparations will be following this most recent case very closely since its outcome will portend much for future claims. The movement for reparations to African people has grown in the last few years with demonstrations, conferences and lawsuits that span from the U.S. to the Caribbean and the African continent.

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

Featured image: Smoldering ruins of African-American homes following massacre. (Source: Public Domain)

On Nov. 11, 2020, Billboard magazine reported that Ticketmaster, the world’s largest ticket agency, revealed it wants to require proof that ticket purchasers have tested negative for the SARS-CoV-2 virus within 24-72 hours before attending an event or have received a COVID-19 vaccine with a year of the event.¹ This would mean that gone are the days when the biggest concern for teens attending concerts was scraping together the money for overpriced tickets and pleading with their parents for permission to stay out late. Adults planning to attend a play in a theater or families going to football games together would have a lot more to worry about than what to wear or where to park.

However, the swift reaction from outraged consumers put pressure on Ticketmaster to walk back the earlier comments made by president Mark Yonich to Billboard that ticket purchasers to events would have their medical history accessed and screened by the U.S.-based ticket agency.

Yonich had told Billboard,

“We’re already seeing many third-party health care providers prepare to handle the vetting—whether that is getting a vaccine, taking a test, or other methods of review and approval—which could then be linked via a digital ticket so everyone entering the event is verified.” He added, “Ticketmaster’s goal is to provide enough flexibility and options that venues and fans have multiple paths to return to events, and is working to create integrations to our API and leading digital ticketing technology as we will look to tap into the top solutions based on what’s green-lit by officials and desired by clients.”

By Nov. 16, TicketNews reported that a statement was issued by Ticketmaster clarifying that the company was “just exploring the ability to enhance our existing digital ticket capabilities” and that event organizers, not Ticketmaster, would have the power to require testing or vaccination as a condition of attending an event:²

We are not forcing anyone to do anything. Just exploring the ability to enhance our existing digital ticket capabilities to offer solutions for event organizers that could include testing and vaccine information with 3rd party health providers. Just a tool in the box for those that may want to use. There is absolutely no requirement from Ticketmaster mandating vaccines/testing for future events… Ticketmaster does not have the power to set policies around safety/entry requirements, which would include vaccines and/or testing protocols. That would always be up to the discretion of the event organizer, based on their preferences and local health guidelines.

Ticketmaster Evaluating Partnerships with Health Companies

Regardless of the weak non-denial denial, it is a fact that Ticketmaster is evaluating options for partnering with health companies to offer concert halls, theaters, stadiums and other large public event organizers the option of requiring people purchasing tickets to show proof of a negative COVID-19 test or proof of vaccination. Ticket purchasers using Ticketmaster could be required to submit personal medical information and have a lab provide the COVID-19 test results or vaccination history to a third-party health company via a digital app.

The third-party health company would then relay the health information to Ticketmaster, which would issue digital tickets to purchasers who were vaccinated or tested negative for COVID-19. Tickets and entry to an event would be denied for those who tested positive or did not submit to testing or vaccination.³

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not yet approved the third-party health care companies that Ticketmaster would employ to collect data about ticket purchaser’s vaccine status or test results. The specific regulations, such as how far in advance testing must be done, would vary according to state laws. State health officials and event organizers would determine the new rules that would be in place at events, such as regulations regarding social distancing, staggered entrance times, contact tracing, mask requirements and sanitization.⁴

Event tickets would need to be purchased prior to submitting vaccination status or testing results to the third-party health care provider. Ticketmaster has not indicated how they would process payments or if they would refund ticket purchasers who tested positive or were unable to get tested or vaccinated prior to the event.⁵

Ticketmaster Denies Requiring COVID-19 Testing or Vaccination

After media outlets broke the story about Ticketmaster’s COVID-19 testing and vaccination plan, the news quickly generated pushback from consumers that it was an assault on medical privacy with substantial potential for abuse. The company then took steps to publicly deny it will require mandatory testing or vaccination of those purchasing tickets to attend events, claiming that providing health information to establish COVID-19 test results or vaccination status will be left up to the event organizer.

“Ticketmaster does not have the power to set policies around safety/entry requirements, which would include vaccines and/or testing protocols,” it said. “That is up to the discretion of the event organizer. Ticketmaster continues to work with event organizers on all COVID safety measures and it will be up to each event organizer to set future requirements, based on their preferences and local health guidelines.”⁶

Ticketmaster management further explained that they are looking into a digital medical status entrance requirement as one of several, “potential ideas” that would allow resumption of public events.⁷

Ticketmaster’s Use of SmartEvent Indicates Desire to Monitor Health Status of Ticket Holders

Despite denying that it plans to implement a digital health tracking system, it seems inevitable that Ticketmaster will use advanced digital technology to run events and monitor attendees. According to a recent press release by Ticketmaster:

Ticketmaster’s robust API capabilities combined with its foundation of digital ticketing allow for the roll out of new features at record speed. Operating in over 30 countries, Ticketmaster has a front-row seat to new tech, health and logistical developments around the world that may be ripe to integrate into its platform.⁸

In fact, Ticketmaster has already implemented SmartEvent, a digital platform that monitors events by determining seating capacity limits, staggering entry times and conducting contact tracing.⁹ Smart Event is essentially a remote box office that has a number of tools that can be used to optimize safety at events. Utilizing algorithms to determine the distance between seats, the Social Distance Seating Tool will set out safe seating arrangements at events.

The Timed Entry Tool will stagger attendees arrival times; the Entry Rate Monitoring Tools will prevent lines from being too crowded; and the Contactless Scanners will check guests in via their cell phone. SafeTix’s Secure Ticket Transfer, “gives organizers the capability to know every fan in the building” and easily conduct contact tracing.¹⁰ As many as 250 organizations including the NFL, MLS and universities have already started using SmartEvent.¹¹

As the world’s largest ticketing agency implements digital technology to monitor the health status of event attendees, NVIC co-founder and president Barbara Loe Fisher’s prophetic warning comes to mind…

Tomorrow, the “new normal” in America may well include the order to “Show me your vaccine papers before you can enter a store or restaurant, go to school, attend a football game, get on a plane, train or subway, obtain a driver’s license, be admitted to a hospital or nursing home, get a room at a hotel or walk on a public beach, if health policy and lawmakers do not use common sense to adopt a more balanced approach to dealing with a virus that, so far, has changed everything.¹²

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Notes

¹ Brooks D. How Ticketmaster Plans to Check Your Vaccine Status for Concerts: Exclusive. Billboard Nov. 11, 2020.

² Clark D. Ticketmaster Walks Back COVID Requirements After Fierce Backlash. TicketNewsNov. 15, 2020.

³ See Footnote 1.

⁴ Ibid.

⁵ Lam S. Live show behemoth Ticketmaster will require PROOF of vaccine or negative Covid-19 test to attend events – report. Reuters Nov. 12, 2020.

⁶ Neale M. Ticketmaster clarifies future safety policy for concert-goers. NME Nov. 12, 2020.

⁷ Ibid.

⁸ Ticketmaster. Ticketmaster Introduces ‘SmartEvent’ Solutions to Help Live Events Welcome Back Fans. Press Release Oct. 29, 2020.

⁹ Savage M. No, Ticketmaster won’t force you to have a Covid vaccine. BBC Nov. 12, 2020.

¹⁰ See Footnote 8.

¹¹ Iahn B. Ticketmaster Creates ‘Smartevent’ Solutions To Welcome Back Fans. The Music Universe Oct. 29, 20230.

¹² Fisher BL. How Fear of a Virus Changed Our World. NVIC Newsletter June 1, 2020.

Credits to the owner of the featured image

Dear President Hamilton,

Herewith I am submitting my petition in defense of academic freedom and free speech, prompted by my unfortunate experience at NYU since Sept. 20, when, as you are well aware, a student in my undergraduate propaganda course, “Mass Persuasion and Propaganda” (MCC-UE 1014), took to Twitter to demand that NYU fire me, for suggesting that the class look into the scientific studies of the effectiveness of masks against transmission of respiratory viruses. It was not the student’s tweets that decided me to publish the petition, but NYU’s response to them: a tweet of thanks from my department chair, with assurances that my department had made her grievance “a priority”; an email from Dean Jack Knott, and Dr. Carlo Ciotoli, to my other students (without myself on copy), hinting that I had dangerously misinformed them, and including links to studies that they should accept without question (studies that I also had encouraged them to read, albeit with an open mind); and pressure from my chair to cancel next semester’s propaganda course (which I’ve been teaching for over twenty years, usually twice a year at least) in favor of two sections of “Film: History and Form” (MCC-UE 1007).

Before giving you some sense of the diversity and eminence of many of the petition’s signatories, I feel it is appropriate to note what’s happened since I published it (although FIRE made you aware of it, in their comprehensive letter of Nov. 13). Evidently angered by its affirmation of my academic freedom, and my request that NYU respect that freedom, a majority of my department colleagues sent Dean Knott a letter on Oct. 21, urging him to order a “review” of my “conduct,” which they deem reprehensible not just because I had suggested that my students read those scientific studies, but, as they assert at length, because I am a menace in the classroom and beyond, engaging in “explicit hate speech,” “intimidation of students, staff and colleagues,” advocating for “an unsafe learning environment,” and otherwise behaving in a manner that bears no relation whatsoever to the way I teach, treat others generally, and always have done. They made that case in hopes that it will obviate my academic freedom, enabling whatever “disciplinary measures” NYU may deem “appropriate.” Although I explained to Dean Knott that my colleagues’ accusations are sheer fantasy, at the urging of NYU’s lawyers he complied with their demand, and ordered that review, which is ongoing.

To say that I am disappointed by my colleagues’ letter, and by Dean Knott’s response to it, is an understatement, as it appears to demonstrate that academic freedom is on thin ice at this university, where I’ve served on the faculty since 1997, and never have encountered anything like this, with my courses always heavily enrolled, with very positive responses from the students. My disappointment is compounded by my colleagues’ readiness to make up, or imagine, that I ever have committed any such transgressions as those which they impute to me, as well as by their eagerness to nullify my academic freedom, even as they claim to hold such freedom dear. (They are now up in arms over Zoom’s recent censorship of Palestinian activist Leila Khaled—censorship that I too have protested.) Their charges have been thoroughly refuted by many of my students, former and current, as well as many visitors to my classes through the years, in statements of support sent to Dean Knott. While that impressive chorus of defense is surely gratifying, I’d rather not have found myself in need of it.

Those many individual pleas that NYU respect my academic freedom are in accord with the view of the petition’s over (as of today) 17,700 signatories, who include professors, scientists, doctors, journalists and whistleblowers from all over the US and the world. The academics include economist James K. Galbraith, at the University of Texas and Bard College; Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia; Mark Edmundson, University Professor at the University of Virginia; Roberto Strongman, Associate Professor of Black Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara; Ross Posnock, Anna S. Garbedian Professor of the Humanities at Columbia; Lynn Comerford, Professor of Human Development, and director of Women’s Studies, at California State University, East Bay; Benjamin Ginsberg, David Ginsberg Professor of Political Science, and Chair of the Hopkins Center for Advanced Governmental Studies in Washington, D.C., at Johns Hopkins; and faculty at schools as various as Trinity, Brown, Pace, University of Zurich, Ohio State, University of Bath, Wheaton College, Morgan State, University of Massachusetts (Amherst), East Carolina University, Virginia Commonwealth University and Okinawa Christian University.

The journalists who have signed the petition include Seymour Hersh, Sharyl Attkisson, Lewis Lapham (editor of Lapham’s Quarterly), Andrew Sullivan, Naomi Wolf, Stephen Jimenez, Kristina Borjesson, Celia Farber, Margaret Kimberly and Anne Garrison (editors at Black Agenda Report), Mnar Muhawesh (editor of Mint Press News), Max Parry, Max Blumenthal and Patrick Henningsen, among others. The scientists and physicians include Dr. David L. Katz, founding director of the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center at Griffin Hospital in Derby, CT (and formerly on the faculty at Yale); Dr. James C. Meehan, specialist in public health and ophthalmology, and former Associate Editor of the Journal of Ocular Immunology and Inflammation; Dr. Meryl Nass, biowarfare epidemiologist; and researchers and clinicians from Lynchburg, Santa Barbara, Green Bay and Lexington, Mass. to La Paz (Mexico), Madrid, Heilbronn, Trier, Changuinoa (Panama) and Rosebery in Australia.

Other noted signatories include Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Oliver Stone, Gov. Don Siegelman of Alabama, Rep. Cynthia McKinney of Georgia, and prominent whistleblowers from the US government, including Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst; Coleen Rowley, former FBI Special Agent; Clement J. Laniewski, former Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army; Marshall Carter-Tripp, former senior State Department official; Elizabeth Murray, former CIA Deputy National Intelligence Officer for the Near East; US Marine and former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter; and Robert Wing, former State Department Foreign Service Officer (and NYU alumnus, who calls what has happened here a “travesty”).

Finally, Ralph Nader, although unable to sign the petition, has issued this statement of support, with his permission for me to use it publicly:

Academic freedom means the freedom to contest received opinion and official truths, on subjects of all kinds. Universities that seek to curb that freedom impede the education of their students and deprive society of invaluable research.

New York University and all universities must stand up to unfounded attacks on academic integrity and encourage professors to teach without interference or threats of punishment.

It is my hope that this petition will persuade you to act quickly to address its urgent plea that NYU respect my academic freedom, which you may do by halting the review demanded by my colleagues, with a public statement reaffirming NYU’s commitment to academic freedom, not only in my case but overall, whether certain students and/or faculty believe in it or not.

The petition is here. There are 17,700 signatories and counting.

Thank you for your time and attention. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Mark Crispin Miller

Department of Media, Culture and Communication

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Featured image is from drhurd.com

Un video, pubblicato il 23 novembre dai Sandia National Laboratories, mostra un caccia Usa F-35A che, volando a velocità supersonica a 3000 metri di quota, lancia una bomba nucleare B61-12 (dotata per il test di testata non-nucleare).

La bomba non cade verticalmente ma plana, finché nella sezione di coda si accendono dei razzi che le imprimono un moto rotatorio e la B61-12 (guidata da un sistema satellitare) si dirige sull’obiettivo che colpisce 42 secondi dopo il lancio.

Il test è stato effettuato il 25 agosto nel poligono di Tonopah nel deserto del Nevada.

Un comunicato ufficiale conferma il suo pieno successo: si tratta della prova di un vero e proprio attacco nucleare che il caccia effettua a velocità supersonica e in assetto stealth (con le bombe nucleari collocate nella stiva interna) per penetrare attraverso le difese nemiche.

La B61-12 ha una testata nucleare con quattro opzioni di potenza selezionabili al momento del lancio a seconda dell’obiettivo da colpire. Ha la capacità di penetrare nel sottosuolo, esplodendo in profondità per distruggere i bunker dei centri di comando e altre strutture sotterranee.

Il programma del Pentagono prevede la costruzione di circa 500 B61-12, con un costo stimato di circa 10 miliardi di dollari (per cui ogni bomba viene a costare il doppio di quanto costerebbe se fosse costruita interamente in oro). È stato ufficialmente annunciato che la produzione in serie della nuova bomba nucleare comincerà nell’anno fiscale 2022, che inizia il 1° ottobre 2021 (ossia tra undici mesi).

Non si sa quante B61-12 verranno schierate dagli Usa in Italia, Germania, Belgio e Olanda per sostituire le B61 il cui numero effettivo è segreto.

Foto satellitari mostrano che sono stati effettuati lavori di ristrutturazione nelle basi di Aviano e Ghedi in preparazione dell’arrivo delle nuove bombe nucleari, di cui saranno armati gli F-35A della US Air Force e, sotto comando Usa, quelli dell’Aeronautica italiana.

In quale situazione si troverà l’Italia, una volta che saranno schierati sul proprio territorio gli F-35A pronti all’attacco nucleare con le B61-12, è facilmente prevedibile. Quale base avanzata dello schieramento nucleare Usa in Europa diretto principalmente contro la Russia, l’Italia si troverà in una situazione ancora più pericolosa.

Dipenderà ancor più di prima dalle decisioni strategiche prese a Washington, che comportano scelte politiche ed economiche lesive della nostra sovranità e dei nostri reali interessi nazionali.

Dovrà accrescere la spesa militare dagli attuali 26 a 36 miliardi di euro annui, cui si aggiungeranno secondo i piani oltre 60 miliardi stanziati a fini militari dal Ministero dello sviluppo economico e tratti (più gli interessi) dal Recovery Fund.

L’Italia violerà ancor più di prima il Trattato di non-proliferazione, al quale ha aderito nel 1975 impegnandosi a «non ricevere da chicchessia armi nucleari né il controllo su tali armi, direttamente o indirettamente».

Rifiuterà ancora di più il recente Trattato Onu sulla abolizione delle armi nucleari, che stabilisce: «Ciascuno Stato parte che abbia sul proprio territorio armi nucleari, possedute o controllate da un altro Stato, deve assicurare la rapida rimozione di tali armi».

Per gettare un sasso nell’acqua stagnante di un parlamento che tace su tutto questo, l’on. Sara Cunial (Gruppo Misto) ha presentato una interrogazione a risposta scritta alla Presidenza del Consiglio e ai Ministeri della Difesa e degli Esteri.

Dopo aver esposto i fatti sopracitati, l’interrogazione chiede «se il Governo intende rispettare il Trattato di non-proliferazione delle armi nucleari, ratificato dall’Italia nel 1975; se intende firmare e ratificare il Trattato ONU sulla abolizione delle armi nucleari, che entra in vigore nel 2021; se intende far sì, in base a quanto stabiliscono tali trattati, che gli Stati uniti rimuovano immediatamente qualsiasi arma nucleare dal territorio italiano e rinuncino a installarvi le nuove bombe B61-12 e altre armi nucleari».

Mentre aspettiamo di leggere la risposta del Governo, negli Usa fanno gli ultimi test della Bomba, che ci verranno a mettere sotto i piedi.

The German Defense Minister’s undiplomatic threat that her country must negotiate “from a position of strength” with Russia, especially regarding military issues, triggered some harsh rebukes from Moscow which aimed to remind her of how unacceptable it is for Berlin to speak in such a way to the Eurasian Great Power.