Global Research

In early November, the Azerbaijani-Turkish advance in the directions of the Lachin corridor and the town of Shusha in the Nagorno-Karabakh region slowed down.

The main factors are the fierce resistance of Armenian forces, the complicated terrain, deteriorating weather conditions and overextended communications that run through recently captured territories, where Armenian sabotage units are still able to deliver regular attacks. 9 villages, the capturing of which Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev announced recently, are in fact located inside the territory captured by Azerbaijani forces earlier. This showcases the lack of progress of Baku’s forces in the recent battles.

Commenting on this situation, Armenian sources argue that right now Yerevan has been preparing a powerful counter-attack to push the Azerbaijanis out of the south of Karabakh. The only factor that allegedly stops Armenia from such a move right now is the commitment of the Armenians to the reached ceasefire agreements that Baku blatantly violates.

Meanwhile, the Armenian side continues to regularly release updates about the losses of Azerbaijan in the conflict. The Azerbaijani military allegedly lost 10 UAVs, 21 armoured vehicles, and 103 soldiers in recent clashes. While the high casualties of the sides are not a secret and widely confirmed by visual evidence regularly appearing from the ground, the claims that the Turkish-Azerbaijani bloc somehow lost the strategic initiative in the war are at least overestimated. Azerbaijani artillery, combat drones and even warplanes still regularly pound fortified positions, manpower and military equipment of the defending forces. The Armenians do not have enough means and measures to protect its supply columns and manpower from regular and intense airstrikes.

As of November 3, Azerbaijani forces supported by the Turks and Turkish-backed Syrian militants are still deployed within striking distance of Lachin and Shusha. The loss of any of these points may mark the collapse of the entire Armenian defense in the area. Any large Armenian counter-attack, if it does not deliver a rapid and devastating blow to the Turkish-Azerbaijani forces, will likely not allow to achieve a strategic success. Instead, it will uncover the existing Armenian units and increase the number of casualties from air and artillery strikes. The dominance in the air also means an advantage in reconnaissance and target accusation. In these conditions, small regular counter-attacks mostly aimed at disturbing the advancing Azerbaijani-Turkish units, and undermining their efforts to secure the newly captured positions, look more likely. Despite the lack of notable Azerbaijani gains in recent days, the Armenian defense is still in crisis and, if Ankara and Baku succeed in securing communications and regrouping their forces, the new push towards the Lachin-Shusha-Stepanakert triangle seems to be inevitable.

The diplomatic attempts to de-escalate the conflict have so far led to little progress as Turkey and Azerbaijan feel themselves too close to the desired military victory. President Aliyev wants to write his name down in history as the leader that returned Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan, while his Turkish counterpart Erdogan sees himself as the sultan of the New Ottoman Empire, pretending be the leader of the entire Turkic world and even wider – of all the muslims in the Middle East, Caucasus and Central Asia.

The entire Turkish foreign policy of previous years was a policy of aggressive advances, confrontations and raising bets. This led to particular diplomatic and economic problems on the international scene and undermined the Turkish national economy. However, it looks like the Turkish leadership believes that the potential revenue of turning the Neo-Ottoman and pan-Turkic declarations into a hard reality will generate revenue of such a scale that it would allow to compensate for existing tactical difficulties. Therefore, the Turkish-Azerbaijani stance towards the further confrontation in Karabakh is not something surprising.

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Incisive article first published on April 14, 2020

“Researchers in Wuhan…reported that, of 37 critically ill Covid-19 patients who were put on mechanical ventilators, 30 died within a month. In a U.S. study of patients in Seattle, only one of the seven patients older than 70 who were put on a ventilator survived; just 36% of those younger than 70 did.” (“With ventilators running out, doctors say the machines are overused for Covid-19”, STAT News)

Think about that for a minute. What these figures mean is that, if you’re over 70 and you’re put on a ventilator because you have coronavirus, you’re probably going to die. More importantly, it means that it was probably the ventilator that killed you. Isn’t that something the public ought to know?

I think it is.

“One in seven” is very poor odds. They aren’t the odds a rational person would bet his life on unless he had a death wish or a very serious gambling problem. So what’s going on here, and why is there so much misleading blabber about ventilators?

The root problem seems to be that coronavirus is a relatively new phenomenon and the methods for treating it are still in their early phases. Nothing is set in stone, not yet at least. Even so, you might have noticed that, when British Prime Minister Boris Johnson contracted the infection and was bundled off to ICU, the medical team did NOT put him on a ventilator, but put him on oxygen instead. And the difference couldn’t be more striking, because today, after 3 days in ICU, Johnson is alive, whereas he probably would be dead if he was intubated. Yes, I am making a judgment about something of which I cannot be entirely certain, but I think I’m probably right. If Johnson had been put on a ventilator, he probably would have died.

But, why, that’s what we want to know?

The answer to that question can be found in the article cited above. Take a look:

“Many (coronavirus) patients have blood oxygen levels so low they should be dead. But they’re not gasping for air, their hearts aren’t racing, and their brains show no signs of blinking off from lack of oxygen.

That is making critical care physicians suspect that blood levels of oxygen, which for decades have driven decisions about breathing support for patients with pneumonia and acute respiratory distress, might be misleading them about how to care for those with Covid-19. In particular, more and more are concerned about the use of intubation and mechanical ventilators. They argue that more patients could receive simpler, noninvasive respiratory support, such as the breathing masks used in sleep apnea, at least to start with and maybe for the duration of the illness.

The question is whether ICU physicians are moving patients to mechanical ventilators too quickly. “Almost the entire decision tree is driven by oxygen saturation levels,” said the emergency medicine physician, who asked not to be named so as not to appear to be criticizing colleagues.” (“With ventilators running out, doctors say the machines are overused for Covid-19”, STAT News)

Okay, so doctors are making their decisions based on “blood oxygen levels”, right? But blood oxygen levels might signal the need for a different treatment for coronavirus patients than they do for pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) patients. In other words, one size does not fit all. The problem is that too many people are ending up on ventilators when ventilators are undermining their chances for survival. Here’s more:

“….one of the most severe consequences of Covid-19 suggests another reason the ventilators aren’t more beneficial. In acute respiratory distress syndrome, which results from immune cells ravaging the lungs and kills many Covid-19 patients, the air sacs of the lungs become filled with a gummy yellow fluid. “That limits oxygen transfer from the lungs to the blood even when a machine pumps in oxygen,” Gillick said.

As patients go downhill, protocols developed for other respiratory conditions call for increasing the force with which a ventilator delivers oxygen, the amount of oxygen, or the rate of delivery, she explained. But if oxygen can’t cross into the blood from the lungs in the first place, those measures, especially greater force, may prove harmful. High levels of oxygen impair the lung’s air sacs, while high pressure to force in more oxygen damages the lungs.

“We need to ask, are we using ventilators in a way that makes sense for other diseases but not for this one?” Gillick said. “Instead of asking how do we ration a scarce resource, we should be asking how do we best treat this disease?” (STAT News)

Can you see the problem? Virus victims develop a mucousy-yellow gunk in their lungs that prevents oxygen from transferring to the blood. Forcing more air into their lungs with a ventilator, doesn’t help that process, it just damages the lungs. In short, it is the wrong treatment for this particular illness. This explains why Johnson was not put on a ventilator, because the risks far outweighed the potential benefits. Here’s more from the same article:

“In a small study last week in Annals of Intensive Care, physicians who treated Covid-19 patients at two hospitals in China found that the majority of patients needed no more than a nasal cannula. Among the 41% who needed more intense breathing support, none was put on a ventilator right away. Instead, they were given noninvasive devices such as BiPAP; their blood oxygen levels “significantly improved” after an hour or two. (Eventually two of seven needed to be intubated.) The researchers concluded that the more comfortable nasal cannula is just as good as BiPAP and that a middle ground is as safe for Covid-19 patients as quicker use of a ventilator…..“Anecdotal experience from Italy [also suggests] that they were able to support a number of folks using these [non-invasive] methods,” Japa said.” (STAT News)

So the treatment for patients with coronavirus is rapidly evolving, but serious mistakes are undoubtedly still being made. One can only wonder how many people might have survived their trip to ICU had their physicians been more aware of the non-invasive alternatives? But don’t think for a minute that I’m blaming anyone for using methods or devices that may be discarded in the near future. I’m not, but from my vantage point, it looks like the over-dependence on ventilators might have been a very costly mistake. Check out this last clip from the article:

“Because U.S. data on treating Covid-19 patients are nearly nonexistent, health care workers are flying blind when it comes to caring for such confounding patients. But anecdotally, Weingart said, “we’ve had a number of people who improved and got off CPAP or high flow [nasal cannulas] who would have been tubed 100 out of 100 times in the past.” What he calls “this knee-jerk response” of putting people on ventilators if their blood oxygen levels remain low with noninvasive devices “is really bad. … I think these patients do much, much worse on the ventilator.”

That could be because the ones who get intubated are the sickest, he said, “but that has not been my experience: It makes things worse as a direct result of the intubation.” High levels of force and oxygen levels, both in quest of restoring oxygen saturation levels to normal, can injure the lungs. “I would do everything in my power to avoid intubating patients,” Weingart said.” (STAT News)

“Flying blind” sums it up perfectly. Doctors and health care workers have proceeded on the basis of guesswork and intuition without any empirical evidence that they’ve settled on the proper treatment for the infection. That should give us all pause.

Assuming that we’re still in the early days of the pandemic, many of us might have to decide whether we’ll allow ourselves or a loved one to be put on a ventilator. This new research could help us to make a more informed decision. I certainly hope so.

Please watch this excellent 6 minute video of Dr Cameron Kyle Sidell, E.R. and Critical Care Doctor, NY City

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Mike Whitney is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

According to “racist thinking”, certain groups of people innately have inferior characteristics that make them undesirable, unworthy, and dispensable. The purveyors of racist views believe they, in contrast, are superior, exceptionally worthy, and indispensable.

There is a virtually unrecognized form of racism that affects almost every human being on Earth.

It is a form of racism that denigrates billions of people and abusively claims that almost all in that group are intrinsically weak in character and hopelessly so.

More specifically, this is a racism that claims that all human beings are, by nature, predominantly and hopelessly selfish and largely unworthy.  It is a racism directed against the entire Human Race.

Who has promoted this perception of Human Nature and the Human Race?  How accurate, complete, and wise is this perception?  Who benefits from its promotion?

This view of the Human Race happens to be the cornerstone, the foundation of the world’s prevailing economic model-–an economic model that affects everyone on earth.  This economic model, Corporate Capitalism, espouses a shallow, incomplete, negative, pessimistic, and abusive view of Human Nature.  Capitalism claims that human beings, by nature, are predominantly selfish and hopelessly so.

Capitalists use this view to claim that capitalism is “the only realistic economic model” and that economic models based on Human Goodness and altruism are doomed to failure, “because of Human Nature.” Corporate capitalism justifies itself with this view.   Corporate capitalism depends upon, requires, and rewards this view of Human Nature and Human Beings.

The above view of human nature accentuates the negative behavioral capacities of human beings and is incomplete.  It largely ignores the positive capacities of human nature.  It is anti-people in that it shows little respect for and little faith in the positive behavioral capacities of human beings. It also ignores how the social milieu can up-regulate or down-regulate expression of people’s positive or negative behavioral capacities, individually and collectively.

There is another, more positive, more complete, more accurate, deeper, healthier, and more helpful understanding of “human nature.”  It is this:

All human beings innately have capacities for both altruistic and selfish behaviors.  There is probably a spectrum regarding the extent to which individual people possess and express innate altruistic capacities versus innate selfish capacities.  At one end of the spectrum are people who possess and express large capacities for altruism, compared to their capacities for and/or expression of selfishness.   At the other end are people who possess and express large capacities for selfishness, compared to their capacities for and/or expression of altruism.  In the exact middle are people who possess roughly equal capacities (for altruism and selfishness) and express those capacities roughly equally.  There is probably a bell-shaped curve regarding the distribution of these innate capacities and the ability to express them—although it is likely that this curve, in actuality, is shifted considerably towards the altruistic end—that is, considerably more than half of people probably fall along the altruistic half of the spectrum. (See Note #9, Human Nature—A Graphic Depiction.)

This more comprehensive understanding of Human Nature also emphasizes the great extent to which the social milieu can either up-regulate or down-regulate expression of the behavioral capacities of people, individually and collectively.

As with all forms of racism, the racism that capitalism directs against the entire Human Race is abusive, oppressive, demeaning, dispiriting, demoralizing, depressing, controlling, shaming, powerful, and leaves people, individually and collectively, feeling insecure, unworthy, “dirty,” fearful, ashamed, powerless, and hopelessly trapped. Though not as horrific in scale, these feelings are similar to those experienced by women who have been chronically subjected to the physical and emotional torment of abusive, controlling men who systematically damage a female’s self-confidence, self-esteem, and self-worth.  Though not as horrific in scale, these feelings are also similar to those endured throughout history by oppressed populations throughout the world—Africans; African-Americans; indigenous peoples on all continents; and exploited, impoverished, and abused peoples throughout the world.

So, the racism that affects the most people in the world is the anti-Human racism espoused, promoted, practiced, and powerfully imposed by corporate capitalism.  Just as abused women deserve to be freed from the abusive men who control them; all members of the Human Race deserve to be freed from the view of Human Nature that corporate capitalism uses to control and abuse them.  Just as abused women and the many severely oppressed populations in the world deserve to discover, celebrate, and protect their abundant goodness and worth; the Human Race as a whole deserves to discover, celebrate, and protect its human goodness and worthiness.  Just as informed solidarity helps abused women and other oppressed groups to challenge their oppressors; informed solidarity can help free the Human Race from the oppression of corporate capitalism and its racist view of Human beings.  In this liberation effort, those who have experienced the greatest degrees of racism and have been exploited the most can provide invaluable insight and great leadership. They deserve our greatest attention.

Although capitalism’s negative and abusive view of human nature and the Human Race is the greatest source of its power and control over human beings, this view is also its greatest weakness, its Achilles heel.  For, if this view of human nature is exposed and effectively challenged, capitalism’s power will collapse.   Just as the power of an abusing male dissolves when he is exposed and held to account; the power of corporate capitalism will dissolve when its view of human nature is fully exposed and it is held to account.

Just as liberated women are free to evolve into the marvelous women they were intended to become; a Human Race, liberated from capitalism’s abusive view of Human Nature,  becomes free to develop new, healthy social arrangements and the Social Beauty that human beings were intended to create and enjoy.

So, in addition to continually addressing the horrible systemic racism that has been directed against specific groups within the Human Race (e.g. the racism experienced by African Americans, Asian-Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans, et al), the systemic racism that capitalism has directed against the entire Human Race also needs to be exposed and corrected.  While continuing to address the racism that has been directed against individual groups of people, it will be important for all groups to avoid generalization, stereotyping, divisiveness, intolerance, and violence—all of which are counterproductive and distract from the additional task of recognizing and correcting the racist view of Humanity promoted by the capitalist economic model. Capitalism depends on a strategy of “divide and conquer” to gets its way. Such division distracts people from recognizing and addressing the deepest roots of their oppression.  The Human race must avoid falling into that trap of division and entrenched polarization. (At least to some extent, have we already fallen into that trap—a trap set by and even financed by powers behind corporate capitalism?)

Liberation of the Human Race and creation of widespread Social Beauty will become possible only when one of the most pervasive and powerful forms of racism—the anti-Human racism espoused, practiced, and imposed by corporate capitalism—is effectively challenged.  Exposure and correction of the anti-Human racism promoted by capitalism is a key to the elimination of the horrific racism experienced by Africans, African-Americans, indigenous populations, and oppressed people throughout the world.  Elimination of all forms of racism and creation of Social Beauty will require replacement of the capitalist economic model and its abusive view of Human Nature with an economic model based on a healthier and more accurate view of Human Nature.  All of Humanity, including all the most obvious historical and current victims of racism, can unite to develop a healthier economic model, healthier social arrangements, and, thereby, Social Beauty bereft of racism.

In short, we must all become anti-racists, and this includes being anti-capitalist—because capitalism, fundamentally, is based on, justified by, and depends upon its anti-Human racism.  Capitalism without its anti-human racism is no longer capitalism.

Bottom line: Capitalism is a racist economic model. It promotes a negative, abusive, denigrating, demoralizing, and inaccurate view of human nature and the entire human race, and it leads to unhealthy social arrangements and behaviors. We need to expose this abuse and replace capitalism with an economic model that is based on a more accurate understanding of human nature and creates kinder, more healthy and helpful social arrangements. This is best accomplished by encouraging all groups of people to unite and collaborate to expose and replace capitalism with a deeper understanding of human nature and a healthier economic model (e.g. Public Economy).

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Rob Rennebohm, MD is a pediatrician, pediatric rheumatologist, and social clinician who writes about Social Beauty and encourages all to evaluate illness of society in the Social Clinic.  His writings, including analysis of the COVID-19 pandemic, are posted on the following website: notesfromthesocialclinic.org 

He can be reached at: [email protected]

Featured image is from Black Agenda Report

Bulgaria’s veto against North Macedonia’s accession into the European Union (EU) remains very likely despite initial speculations that it would not obstruct the former Yugoslav country from joining the bloc. Bulgarian Foreign Minister Ekaterina Zakharieva said that her country would block North Macedonia from joining the EU if it did not recognize that its national identity and language has Bulgarian roots.

If decisionmakers in the North Macedonian capital of Skopje agree, then Sofia is ready to recognize Macedonian as one of the official languages ​​of North Macedonia as long as it “acknowledges the historical truth.”

“We are not disputing their right for self-determination, neither their right to call their language what they like. We are ready to re-confirm the current realities, but they have to acknowledge the historical truth,” Zaharieva told Reuters.

Bulgaria was the first country to recognize the independence of North Macedonia when it separated from collapsing Yugoslavia in 1991. It was first called the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia when it achieved independence. However, despite being the first country to recognize its independence, Sofia does not recognize their language as Macedonian and emphasizes that not only is their language a dialect of Bulgarian, but also their ethnicity.

Sofia and Athens stress that the Macedonian nation and language was engineered by Yugoslav communists in the late 1940’s to legitimize Marshal Tito’s claims over the northern Greek province of Macedonia, and to also weaken Bulgarian identity in the region so they would not make demands for unification with Bulgaria. Сenturies earlier, most people in what is today’s North Macedonia considered themselves Bulgarian. So the Yugoslavs had established a committee in 1945 to “create” a Macedonian language. In fact, Venko Markovski, a communist politician who participated in the Commission for the Creation of the Macedonian Alphabet in 1945 stated in an interview for Bulgarian National Television only seven days prior to his death that ethnic Macedonians and the Macedonian language do not exist and were the result of Comintern’s plans for the Balkans.

However, with the collapse of European communism in the early 1990’s, attempts of re-Bulgarianization were made against the people now calling themselves Macedonian. Further complexing the issue is Skopje’s insistence that a Macedonian minority exists in Bulgaria.

“Our concerns come from the never-ending claims for a Macedonian minority in Bulgaria. The acknowledgment of Bulgarian roots would put an end to this,” Zaharieva told.

Last Thursday, North Macedonia’s Prime Minister Zoran Zaev said he hoped the two countries would find a solution, but said that the identity and language of the country were not up for debate. It appears that North Macedonia’s first steps towards accession into the EU will end even before they begin.

Bulgarian demands are not new and it is likely they will opt to veto. Western powers interested in North Macedonia’s accession into the EU are expected to push Bulgaria to take a step back from their demands or form a compromise. North Macedonia’s problem is that even if accession negotiations start, there is still a long way to go.

On the other hand, there are many internal problems in the EU. This makes it difficult for the bloc to move towards enlargement in the coming years. At the top of the problems is the pandemic that is enough to put a brake on all enlargement processes. But there is also the deep division within the EU on how to deal with Turkey’s aggression against member states Greece and Cyprus.

From the Greek perspective, Bulgaria’s opposition to North Macedonia joining the EU is humiliating. Not only has it undermined Greece’s supposed elevated position to guide Balkan countries into joining the EU, but undermines Greece’s decision to recognize a Macedonian language in 2018. Athens effectively involved itself into a dispute that does not concern them, especially since there is no specific international agreement that defines language.

The 2018 Prespa Agreement that settled the name of “North Macedonia” between Athens and Skopje, was solely signed so that North Macedonia could join NATO, creating a host of other issues.

A few months ago, Bulgaria submitted to the capitals of the other EU Member States a lengthy memorandum entitled “Explanatory Memorandum on the Relations between the Republic of Bulgaria and the Republic of North Macedonia in Relation to the EU Enlargement, Accession and Stabilization Process.” Central to this memorandum is the national and linguistic interventions that took place in North Macedonia after World War II.

However, for all of Bulgaria’s opposition for North Macedonia to join the EU, they made no objections to them joining NATO. This suggests that Bulgaria found resisting Russian influence in the Balkans to be a bigger priority then the reclamation of the Bulgarian language and identity in North Macedonia. This of course is a curious decision, even when ignoring Bulgaria’s shared religion, alphabet and Slavic heritage with Russia.

Although Bulgaria’s independence was only secured thanks to Russian assistance against the Ottoman Empire, today Sofia is fully integrated into the Atlanticist world system, which is why they did not oppose North Macedonia’s accession into NATO, but takes a different line into integrating the former Yugoslav country into the EU. Bulgaria will likely veto the process into starting North Macedonia’s accession into the EU. For Brussels, this will not be a major issue as they are already dealing with a second wave of COVID-19, Turkish aggression against two member states, and a new wave of terrorism that has already struck France and Austria.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

President Donald Trump has succeeded, aided and abetted by a willing and corrupt senate, in ramming through his third Supreme Court nominee, the very conservative Amy Coney Barrett. Her successful appointment to the nation’s highest court does not bode well for freedom and justice at home or abroad.

There has been much conversation about Barrett’s Catholic faith, which, in and of itself, is entirely irrelevant to any discussion of her qualifications. But there are many issues that are pertinent to any conversation about her lack of suitability for her new position, and one of them does relate to her religious beliefs.

The new Supreme Court justice is a member of an organization called ‘People of Praise’, comprised mainly, but not exclusively, of Catholics. It grew from the Pentecostal movement, and “The group organizes and meets outside the purview of a church and includes people from several Christian denominations, but its members are mostly Roman Catholic.”

Female members of ‘People of Praise’ are referred to as ‘handmaids’, and former members state that women are expected to be totally submissive to their husbands. Coral Anika Theill, who was part of the group for many years and has written a book about her experiences, Bonshea: Making Light of the Dark’, states that her husband accompanied her to doctor’s appointments to assure that she was not obtaining birth control. Rebekah Powers was raised in the group, but left at age 18. She has stated that “It has taken decades of therapy and hard work to overcome the intense feelings of shame and fear of damnation that she said marked her childhood.”

While Barrett’s association with the ‘People of Praise’ cult should have disqualified her, one might argue that that is placing too much emphasis on her religious beliefs. This writer thinks that emphasis is completely appropriate, but if not, let’s look at another extremely troubling aspect of her history.

For several years, a terrorist organization called the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (Mujahadeen-e-Khalk; known simply as MEK) was officially designated a terrorist organization by the United States government. The sole purpose of the existence of the MEK is to overthrow the government of Iran and install a right-wing replacement, one that would be reminiscent of the brutal reign of the Shah of Iran.

“From 2000 to 2001, Barrett was part of a team that represented the National Council of Resistance of Iran. The council was seeking a review of its then designation as a ‘foreign terrorist organization’ by the US government.” In 2012, the ‘terrorist’ designation was removed, and since then the MEK has received the support of prominent Republicans, including former National Security Advisor John Bolton and the erratic former New York City mayor, and now Trump attorney, Rudi Giuliani, who refers to the MEK as a ‘government in exile’. This statement is ludicrous; every reputable poll of Iranians, both those living in Iran and those in other nations, indicates that they oppose both the goals and tactics of the MEK. But as Trump’s attorney, one must not look too closely at facts.

Masquerading as a pro-democracy organization, the secretive group is responsible for the deaths of at least 12,000 Iranians. On June 28, 1981, the group bombed the Islamic Republic Party headquarters in Tehran, killing seventy-three people. The group has been accused of working with Israel to assassinate Iranian scientists.

The group’s treatment of its own members is not much better. For example, Reza Sadeghi had been a member of MEK for twenty-six years and hds not left the MEK compound for more than ten years. “During that time, he’d had no contact with his family or news of them. The MEK leadership had forced him and most of the other cadres living at Camp Ashraf to abandon even their closest relationships. Most painful for Sadeghi were thoughts of his son, Paul, his only child, now 16 years old. Sadeghi hadn’t seen or spoken to Paul since he’d arrived in Iraq.”

In 2020, Sadeghi told the organization’s leaders that he was leaving to find his son. He was detained and forced into a truck. “’You’re dead,’ one of Sadeghi’s captors told him. ‘We are going to put you in the ground, and no one will ever know what happened to you.’ Forced disappearances and solitary confinement were not uncommon at Camp Ashraf, and Sadeghi was sure he would be executed.” He was able to escape and was, ironically, rescued by two U.S. terrorists (soldiers) who were out patrolling.

The MEK was started by Massoud Rajavi and his wife, Maryam, who fancied themselves the next rulers of Iran, once they and their 2,000 – 3,000 followers were able to convince the 80,000,000 Iranians to reject the Islamic Revolution they fought so hard for, and follow them. Like Giuliani, realistic thinking is not their strong suit. As of this writing, Massoud Rajavi is believed to be dead, and his wife is seldom, if ever, seen in public.

This is the organization that the United States’ newest Supreme Court justice has defended. These are the people – who have killed thousands of Iranians and who support the overthrow of the sovereign, people’s government of Iran – that Barrett says are not terrorists. The Intercept reported that many female members over the years were force to have sex with Rajavi; many were forced to be sterilized, so they would not be distracted by children, and could fully devote their time to Rajavi and his unholy cause. Based on her association with the ‘People of Praise’ cult, this is probably just fine with her.

As of this writing, the U.S. election has not been decided. It is disheartening to imagine that so much of the citizenry has bought into Trump’s lies, Islamophobia, xenophobia, racism and misogyny. A Biden victory will not bring substantial change, but would not necessarily spell the end of any semblance of democracy. Should Trump be re-elected, it is likely that the MEK will continue to receive praise and financial assistance from the U.S. government. Other organizations, perhaps Black Lives Matter, may be designated terrorist organizations. In the Orwellian world of Donald Trump, this is only too possible. And the gradual erosion of human rights and respect for international law, neither of which the U.S. ever cared much about anyway, will become a fast-moving landslide.

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In 36 years of living in Latin America I have learned that any time a country changes its conditions so that poverty decreases and the standard of living improves, the United States wages some kind of war on that country. It has waged unconventional warfare on Nicaragua since the Sandinistas returned to the presidency in 2007 providing millions of dollars to nongovernmental organizations, more than 25 different media, three “human rights” groups and many individuals whose job is to lie for their salaries. Since 2017, the US  Agency for International Development (USAID) has disbursed over $89 million  with the primary focus on “governance” and promoting challenges to the Nicaraguan government. Another aspect of US aggression is the economic sanctions. The U.S. uses its influence to oppose any loan, financial or technical assistance to the government of Nicaragua from international banks and organizations.

In July this year, USAID contracted a US company to head up the current phase of their war through the November 2021 elections. The plan is titled RAIN – Responsive Action in Nicaragua. It is a thinly veiled plan to mount domestic and international pressure for “regime change” in Nicaragua. RAIN is a plan to undermine public order with actions [violent and otherwise] before, during and after the 2021 elections. The document suggests there is a crisis and “economic debacle” with potential to become a “humanitarian emergency” due to Covid-19. Since March the opposition focused most of their attention on telling lies in the media. This strategy had some success internationally but not much at home since Nicaragua has the lowest Covid mortality rate in the region.

The opposition is now on to new topics – like trying to spread the lie that some of the grass-fed beef that is exported to the US is from Indigenous land supposedly stolen in recent years. Although Nicaragua has had some problem with this, it has been much less under the Sandinista government than under the three previous US-supported governments.

One reason the government has a good relationship with much of the Indigenous is their commitment to granting title to the original territories. There are now autonomous indigenous governments elected according to their ancestral forms of organization. There are 23 original territories with 314 communities and 200,000 people. Nearly 38 thousand square kilometers have been titled to the indigenous groups.  They have non-transferrable titles, helping to curb illegal land sales and deforestation. The authorities that administer these lands are designated by the communities themselves.

This is 31% of the national territory and more than 55% of the territory of the Caribbean Coast where 61% have some type of forest. Nicaragua has gained great credibility in environmental issues and was just voted to be part of the World Bank’s Carbon Fund Board (Informe Pastran, 23 Oct. 2020).

There is now a special battalion patrolling these extremely large expanses of land in coordination with many of the Miskito and Mayagna communities.  Since 2007 special emphasis has been given to improving every aspect of life in the Autonomous Regions increasing dramatically health and school facilities, electricity, potable water, sanitation, good paved roads and decreasing every aspect of poverty.

There are internal disputes related to selling land among the 75 different communities of the Mayagna. Their communities elect their own authorities. But things aren’t perfect and the violence is sometimes internal. On Jan. 29, Gustavo Sebastian, president of the Mayagna indigenous territory government, said that a group of Mayagnas shot at a group of community members in an act of revenge for a December 2019 action. Four men were killed, two hospitalized with injuries and 12 homes burned. Then on February 12 the police captured the leader of the group responsible for the January violence in Alal and Wakuruskasna. (Radio La Primerisima, 12 Feb. 2020)

On October 22, Solón Guerrero, director of the Federation of Nicaraguan Cattlemen’s Association, stated that they will present documents that prove that their group signed agreements to protect the reserves held by the indigenous populations. The executive director of the Nicaraguan Chamber of the Meat Industry, Juan Bautista Velásquez, said that the cattle that are processed are identified with two tags, because the cattle come from farms certified by the Institute for Agricultural Protection and Health (IPSA). He said that if the North American market was cancelled, more than 600 thousand people would lose their jobs and 140 thousand producers would be affected.

This misleading story is being promoted by members of Nicaragua’s opposition who are paid with USAID or NED (National Endowment for Democracy) funds. It is a new attempt to interfere with and hurt Nicaragua. Now it is under the guise of protecting indigenous people. While it is true that things are not perfect in Nicaragua, the advances and protections for Indigenous people are much better than in most other countries. Certainly the U.S. treatment of indigenous people is no model to follow. While there are periodic incidents of friction or conflict in the vast expanse of the autonomous zones, this has little to do with the cattle raising and beef export industry where hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans work.

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Nan McCurdy is a United Methodist Missionary and 36 year resident of Nicaragua. She is currently working with the rural poor in Puebla Mexico and can be reached at [email protected]

Good people of the Third World should not let themselves be taken in by worldwide satellite beamed CIA-fed media prattling on continuously about American democracy during ongoing presidential elections. Sadly, Americans are duped into participating  in elections that back crimes against humanity ordered by the ruling genocidal Wall St. plutocracy which militarily and financially plunders 3rd World humanity. 

The good people of the Third World should not let themselves be taken in by worldwide satellite beamed CIA-fed media prattling on continuously about American democracy during ongoing presidential elections. Sadly, Americans are duped into participating  in elections that back crimes against humanity ordered by the ruling genocidal Wall St. plutocracy which militarily and financially plunders 3rd World humanity and corrupts American society.

A great many Americans voting believe the lies their criminal corporate media pours out daily, and are therefore gung-ho proud of Americans killing media-designated ‘bad guys” all around the world. These completely fooled Americans are happy to vote for the next commander-in-chief, but a substantial amount of Americans voting know they have been  and are unhappy with what they feel is a mockery of the so called democratic process that has them voting for a choice that is still represents evil.

Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark, once the highest law officer of the USA, who helped write both important civil rights laws, speaks to his fellow Americans clearly, and meant that all the world should know this truth.

“We’re not a democracy. It’s a terrible misunderstanding and a slander to the idea of democracy to call us that. In reality, we’re a plutocracy: a government by the wealthy.”:

One of the most internationally powerful plutocrats in US history, John Pierpont Morgan, in a candid moment admitted, ”Of all forms of tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of plutocracy”:

The well respected third president of the USA, Thomas Jefferson, saw the plutocracy coming when he said,“I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”

Already in 1922, America’s most famous economist Thorstein Veblen wrote,

 ”The current situation in America is by way of being something of a psychiatrical clinic...Perhaps the commonest and plainest evidence of an unbalanced mentality is to be seen in a certain fearsome and feverish credulity with which a large proportion of Americans are affected…. There is a visible lack of composure and logical coherence, both in what they will believe and in what they are ready to do about it.” 

Veblen assumed depression to  be the normal condition  in a business-enterprise economy, to be relieved in periods of excitation caused by stimuli not intrinsic to the system like war and expansion abroad. Veblen saw the modern business leader as essentially a latter-day predatory warrior. [Thorstein Veblen by Douglas Dowd, 1966]

Veblen’s observation is born out by Americans always having been willing to follow criminal orders and bomb, invade and occupy other people’s lands the world over.

Paul Craig Roberts, former editor of the Wall Street Journal, and Undersecretary of the Treasury under President Reagan, in his article, The Looting Machine Called Capitalism, wrote,

“Americans are the least exceptional people in human history. Americans have no rights at all. We hapless insignificant beings have to accept whatever capitalists and their puppet government impose on us. And we are so stupid we call it ‘Freedom and Democracy America.’”

Americans today are wildly mesmerized in avid interest in who will be president for the next four years. However, given the continual American wars in smaller countries and perpetual ramped up fear of nuclear Armageddon, its obviously of some greater significance who will serve as Commander-in-Chief of the American worldwide genocidal killing machine, because whether Americans realize it or not, they, each citizen, has a portion of citizen co-responsibility for the crimes of their fellow Americans ‘serving’ as soldiers following criminal, and therefore illegal, orders.

Those Americans voting, who believe the lies their criminal corporate media pours out daily and are therefore gung-ho proud of Americans killing media-designated ‘bad guys” everywhere and anywhere, believe US democracy makes them and all Americans to be above the law – above all law. On the other hand, that substantial amount of Americans voting, who know they have been frightened into voting for what they hope is the lesser of two evils are well aware of their tacit complicity in the crimes against humanity in other peoples countries. Some more modest amount of Americans voting, or refusing to vote, realize that they have already been prosecuted in the court of public opinion and in the hearts of parents of children blown to pieces or starved to death by the actions of Americans. Hopefully, this is what people overseas, especially in nations under American attack, understand.

At the same time a multitude of Americans vote, other Americans have been fueling, arming and target selecting for the Saudi airstrikes for five years. Already back in November 2017, Save the Children reported that 130 children were dying every day, with 50,000 children already believed to have died in 2017. The U.N. officials said more than 20 million people, including 11 million children, are in need of urgent assistance, with 7 million totally dependent on food assistance. The U.N. has called it the “worst humanitarian crisis in the world.”

US CIA controlled media is so sure of the headlock it has on the American public, its mainstream media can even inform of Yemeni children dying from bombs & starvation knowing its captive audience will not turn against their American killing machine. Even the most eye-rebounding photos  published in wars supporting New York Times Yemen Girl Who Turned World’s Eyes to Famine Is Dead (Published 2018) and seen on PBS television channels did not put a dent in American solidarity with its government’s and military’s genocidal actions in Yemen – prosecutable genocidal crimes against humanity.

During the current presidential election campaign criminal war promoting news and entertainment networks are making no mention of President Trump’s veto of a bipartisan Congressional resolution that would have forced an end to American military involvement in Saudi Arabia’s civil war in Yemen a year and a half ago.

In One American Ear and Out the Other

In 2008, for two weeks the major networks telecasted as humorous, Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s cry, his finger pointed to the sky, “God bless America? No, no, God damn America for her crimes against humanity!”

In 2012, prime times news during the Republican debates of presidential candidates, candidate Rep. Ron Paul was heard denouncing “all US bombings and invasions beginning with those in Korea as illegal, unconstitutional and a horrific loss of human life.”

But nothing seems to effect a change in American dedication to their military and its military’s heritage (of gore, death and destruction).

American film maker Michael Moore’s castigates his fellow Americans as“sick and twisted violent people that we’ve been for hundreds of years, it’s something that’s just in our craw, just in our DNA. Americans kill people, because that’s what we do. We invade countries. We send drones in to kill civilians.”

In one American ear and out the other.

Martin Luther King made bold headlines in newspaper throughout the world with, “The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today is my government. In Vietnam we may have killed a million already, mostly children.” King cried out, “Silence is treason!” but at home extremely few Americans spoke out in agreement,  many spoke against him, most were silent, and King was shot to death within the year.

This archival research peoples historian activist is convinced that no change will be coming from anywhere in the American led First World, especially now as it is hard pressed losing its hegemony to a future multipolar world with China’s economy now the largest.

Some of us work to somehow make this Americans killing millions of children come to be a topic of conversation in the Third World for the children’s lives that could be saved once enough people became enraged enough to demand prosecution and justice.

Once USA-EU loses world economic hegemony and can no longer sanction, the many nations that have seen their children murdered by Americans and their European allies will demand justice in the courts of a reconstituted and reorganized democratic United Nations. In the meantime let’s have faith that the astounding intelligence witnessed in the miraculous achievements in outer and inner space will eventually manifest itself in ending the five centuries of European and American genocide for money and power.

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This article was originally published on Countercurrents.org.

Jay Janson is an archival research peoples historian activist, musician and writer; has lived and worked on all continents; articles on media published in China, Italy, UK, India and in the US by Dissident Voice, Global Research; Information Clearing House; Counter Currents, Minority Perspective, UK and others; now resides in NYC; First effort was a series of articles on deadly cultural pollution endangering seven areas of life emanating from Western corporate owned commercial media published in Hong Kong’s Window Magazine 1993; Howard Zinn lent his name to various projects of his; Weekly column, South China Morning Post, 1986-87; reviews for Ta Kung Bao; article China Daily, 1989. Is coordinator of the Howard Zinn co-founded King Condemned US Wars International Awareness Campaign, and website historian of the Ramsey Clark co-founded Prosecute US Crimes Against Humanity Now Campaign, which Dissident Voice supports with link at the end of each issue of its newsletter.

Featured image is from cc.org

A final rule to remove the iconic species from the Endangered Species Act has now been published. Read more about the science and politics of wolf conservation.

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As expected the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today issued a rule that would remove gray wolves (Canis lupus) from the protection of the Endangered Species Act.

The long-in-the-works move becomes effective 60 days after its publication in the Federal Register on election day — Jan. 4, 2021. It will put wolf conservation back in the hands of states and tribes, each of which would then have the right to decide on their own acceptable wolf population levels or hunting limits.

Ironically, the new rule comes less than a week before residents of Colorado will vote on a ballot measure to reintroduce wolves to the state. Many states maintain their own endangered species lists, which can offer protection if federal rules do not, but experts argue that states lack the resources to protect endangered species within their borders without federal support.

The announcement was made during an off-the-record phone call to which few media were invited, and to which this reporter’s request to attend received no response.

Still, it immediately generated criticism from scientists and conservationists, who have worked for decades to restore the species in the lower 48 U.S. states.

“This delisting is an unfortunate and politically driven decision as the best available science provides evidence that the gray wolf’s population is not fully restored throughout its historic range,” wrote Jacob Carter of the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Five scientists who are experts on gray wolf taxonomy, ecology and genomics reviewed the FWS’s proposed delisting of the gray wolf last year and found serious issues with the science.”

The Service and livestock trade groups, on the other hand, position the current state of wolf recovery as a major success. “Today’s action reflects…the parameters of the law and the best scientific and commercial data available,” Secretary of the Interior David L. Bernhardt said in a press release, which positioned the rule as part of ongoing efforts to “reform” the Endangered Species Act. “After more than 45 years as a listed species, the gray wolf has exceeded all conservation goals for recovery. Today’s announcement simply reflects the determination that this species is neither a threatened nor endangered species based on the specific factors Congress has laid out in the law.”

Conservationists argue that wolf populations have not reached sustainable levels and that delisting the species would then open them up to future hunting, which could further devastate populations. To see what could happen, look no further than Idaho, where wolf hunting is legal. Recent analysis by the Western Watersheds Project found that 570 wolves — including 35 pups, some just weeks old — were killed by hunters, trappers and government officials in the year ending June 30.

This delisting effort continues a twisting, turning path toward wolf conservation in this country, which has seen the iconic species gain and lose protection multiple times.

And as always, the story is not yet fully written. Conservation groups have already announced their intention to sue — a process they’ve won in the past.

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Having conquered, colonised and regimented cyberspace and its flow of data, driven away from us and in to orbit in secret stores, telecommunications companies are now looking to occupy public infrastructure with their next generation data network 5G.

Because 5G technology needs a much denser network of 10 to 100 times as many antenna locations, companies are vying to carve up city-owned, public infrastructure — utility poles, streetlights — to host new equipment. When the conflict comes out in to the open in congress this year and climaxes it will raise questions about and draw public attention towards the tensions between the cumbersome but constitutional processes of local government and the demands of corporations to have their way quickly.

“Today, it can take a year or more to get a permit, but only an hour to install a small cell. This has to change,” says Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure.

Local governors have voiced critique over corporations’ use of their clout in the state legislatures to override, suppress, local democracy. Corporations keep restating the tired efficiency argument over and over again. Why should their cheapest, chosen method triumph over public will? Why should we foot the bill of interception and surveillance we never voted for? They own a company, or conglomerate. But a company or conglomerate is not the entirety of the public will. They aren’t because they are privatised, Wall Street floating authoritarian transnationals that offer nothing but secrecy, control and social and environmental degradation. They have the same effect on democracy, justice and equality as fascism. Corruption has allowed these companies to come in and rob all our private data the better to target us as captive consumers. We got nothing in return. They added nothing to the community but an invisible prison.

If you value your voice and freedom your only choice is to oppose 5G’s assault on local democracy and vote for candidates that defend your power and the principle of public ownership. Apathy, by signalling public acquiesence in the prostration of legislature to corporate agendas, will result in no less, no more than an escalation of lobbying that runs against the public interest, to further simplify, streamline and automate our captivity. Like the vast censorship and surveillance systems they created, corporations are hybrids, old elite networks as well as armed with cyber-equipment. It is no accident nor footnote to history that the success of silicon valley and its vision resulted in the single biggest expansion of control over citizens ever seen. Physical occupation of public utilities is a natural consequence and farthest extension of the algorhythmic logic of a new age society in which the current problem is the conquest of unaccountable power over cyberspace. Many of us have unwitting been attending to the task of bloating corporate data warehouses on social media, sleepwalking in to dystopia. But having to see our land and utilities weaponised against us so blantantly in this heist may wake us up, may be one step too far.

Make no mistake, this technology has been engineered to service more than consumer needs alone. Let’s for a second pretend it was. Then why would it be included and praised in a congressionally-mandated National Security Strategy report released by the White House? The report mandates federal agencies use startup technology more quickly in the field and pushes to improve deployment strategy. It also hopes for more collaboration between technology companies and the Defense Department, essentially creating, or staunching, an interface between Defense and Silicon Valley. Why is it wrong to hack and hold to account a government when we are monitored through the technology we consume, when government is supposed to be based on a fair balance of power? The disparities grow deeper per byte of information created or consumed.

The telecoms and big data lobby must not be allowed to control politicians. That the system allows it is a symptom of a deeply dysfunctional political culture where politicians spend less time representing citizens than on lobbying work for corporations to fundraise for re-election. Communities must be listened to and grassroots expertise and ownership of utilities acknowledged if we are to make democracy an enduring reality and put an end to censorship and surveillance.

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Scotland has failed to meet a ten-year-old target to prevent damage to precious marine wildlife, according to a leaked Scottish Government report seen by The Ferret.

The report reveals that “priority” seabed habitats meant to be protected around the coast have declined in five large areas since 2011. Seagrass, flame shells, seaweed beds and tubeworm reefs have been destroyed by the fishing industry and pollution, it says.

Campaigners warn that these habitats – vital for fish and as a store for carbon – are now “perilously close” to being wiped out after a “decade of decline”. They accuse ministers of breaking promises made a decade ago to prevent the marine environment from being harmed.

Experts describe the declines as “shocking” and “tragic” and call for damaged habitats to be restored. The Scottish Government says it is “working towards a full assessment” of the state of Scotland’s seas that will be published “in due course”.

The Marine Scotland Act was agreed by the Scottish Parliament in March 2010. It required the Scottish Government to ensure the “protection and enhancement of the health of the Scottish marine area”.

This involved conserving a series of key habitats, seen as vital for plants and animals and as nurseries for fish. They are described as “priority marine features”.

They include swaying green fields of seagrass and small, bright orange, multi-tentacled shellfish called flame shells. There are also beds of purple seaweed known as maerl and “serpulid” reefs created by red, pink and orange tubeworms.

Video thanks to Howard Wood

The leaked report is called a “Scottish Overall Assessment 2020” and examines the state of six vital habitats in 11 marine regions around Scotland. It is a draft dated October 2019 compiled by scientists from the government’s NatureScot, formerly Scottish Natural Heritage, and Marine Scotland.

The report’s main conclusion is that the marine habitats in five regions have shrunk between 2011 and 2019. “The target of no loss…has not been achieved in the Moray Firth, West Highlands, Outer Hebrides, Argyll and Clyde regions,” it says.

A summary table from the report lists the five areas in red for having failed to meet the target. There is “insufficient data” to judge whether Scotland’s six other marine regions have met the targets or not, it adds.

Summary table from leaked Scottish Government report, showing habitat losses between 2011 and 2019.

The report blames the declines on dredging, trawling, anchoring, overfishing and engineering works. It also fingers climate change, ocean acidification and pollution from fish farms and other sources, as well as diseases and storms.

Losses have been particularly severe in the Argyll marine area. Since 2011 it has lost 53 per cent of its flame shell beds and 35 per cent of its serpulid tubeworm reefs, known as aggregations, as well as unspecified areas of seagrass and horse mussel beds.

The report highlights a “marked deterioration” and “widespread fragmentation” of serpulid reefs in Loch Creran in Argyll. The cause is said to be “uncertain”, though there has been damage from fishing and pollution in the past.

According to the leaked report, more than 90 per cent of the serpulid reefs in Loch Teacuis, an arm of Loch Sunart in the West Highlands, have been lost. Virtually all of the blue mussel beds in the Dornoch Firth, part of the Moray Firth marine region, are said to have gone.

Loch Fyne in the Clyde region has lost 10 per cent of its maerl beds and nine per cent of its flame shell beds. The report points out these have been damaged by scallop dredging in the past.

The Sound of Barra in the Outer Hebrides has lost 27 per cent of its seagrass beds, partly because of the construction of the causeway connecting Eriskay and South Uist in 2001.

The report stresses that there is “low confidence” in its overall assessments because records only exist for a “small proportion” of the habitats. There is also “uncertainty” over how much human activities can be blamed for the declines, it says.

Video thanks to Community of Arran Seabed Trust (COAST).

The unpublished government report was obtained by the campaign group, Open Seas. It contrasted the report’s bleak scientific assessments with the Scottish Government’s upbeat announcement in September that 30 per cent of Scotland’s seas was now protected by marine conservation areas.

Phil Taylor, head of policy for Open Seas, accused ministers of failing in their duty to protect and enhance the health of the marine environment. “The declines are really serious and show these habitats are now perilously close to being effectively wiped out in our seas,” he said.

“Human impacts, including expansion of scallop dredging in the 1990s and the deregulation of bottom trawling in inshore waters, have contributed to widespread decline. Scotland’s underwater habitats have been reduced to isolated patches covering a fraction of their former extent.”

Taylor pointed to estimates in the report suggesting that only small beds of flame shells and maerl were left in the Clyde marine region. Both were believed to have been widespread 50 years ago.

“These habitats are the foundation of a functioning ecosystem, and they are important for capturing and storing carbon, for fish to spawn and feed,” he told The Ferret.

“We cannot afford yet another decade of decline. The Scottish Government is required by law to protect inshore marine habitats from bottom-towed fishing, but has repeatedly missed its own deadlines.”

Professor Murray Roberts, a leading expert on marine ecology from the University of Edinburgh, urged action to stem the losses. “The declines in iconic Scottish marine habitats in this unpublished report are shocking,” he said.

“It is simply tragic to think that we might have lost over 90 per cent of the beautiful tubeworm reefs from the western Highlands. Thanks to global climatic change, the seas across the world are warming, becoming more acidic and running short of the oxygen vital to life.”

He added: “It’s essential humanity’s use of marine ecosystems becomes sustainable and that we protect and restore the patchwork of iconic habitats that define Scotland’s marine natural heritage.”

Underwater wildlife on a flame shell bed. Photo thanks to NatureScot.

Our Seas, a coalition of 69 coastal business, community and environmental groups in Scotland, described the situation as urgent. “The last fragments of these once widespread habitats are being further degraded within our own lifetimes,” said the group’s co-ordinator, Ailsa McLellan.

“The Scottish Government maintains that 30 per cent of our seas are protected. But this is misleading because many of these supposedly protected areas have no protective measures in place at all.”

She maintained that only around five per cent of the inshore seabed had permanent protection from bottom-towed fishing gear. “If the Scottish Government continues to sit on its hands whilst remnant habitats disappear from our seas, then it will be failing us as a nation,” she said.

The Scottish Greens contended that targets were useless without government action to meet them.

“These figures show a shocking level of environmental destruction to Scotland’s marine environment,” said the party’s environment spokesperson, Mark Ruskell MSP.

“The Scottish Government cannot continue to hide behind its targets. It needs to act to stop this destruction now.”

Close-up of serpulid reef. Photo thanks to NatureScot.

The Marine Conservation Society warned that business-as-usual was driving a “spiral of ocean decline” that had to be reversed. The new findings painted “a worrying picture”, according to the society’s head of conservation in Scotland, Calum Duncan.

“If hundreds of hectares of valuable carbon-storing, nursery-providing, biodiversity-enriching living reef and seagrass habitat have been lost in the years since the Marine Scotland Act was established to help protect and enhance our seas, then everyone should be concerned,” he said.

“The true picture of loss is likely to be even greater since the trends for most habitats in most regions appears to be unknown.”

Video thanks to Community of Arran Seabed Trust (COAST).

The Scottish Government’s wildlife agency, NatureScot, confirmed that it had contributed to the leaked report as part of a full assessment of Scotland’s seas. “NatureScot’s assessment is based on data from seabed surveys carried out mainly in marine protected areas between 2011 and 2018,” said a spokesperson for the agency.

“The losses reported may be caused by a range of pressures including those associated with human activities or natural drivers of change including storm action and fluctuations in recruitment of the habitat-forming species.”

Nature Scot pointed out that management measures were put in place in 2016 to protect the most sensitive seabed habitats. “It will take time for the benefits of these measures to be seen and for this to be reflected in the results of our marine protected area monitoring work,” the spokesperson added.

The Scottish Government reiterated that more than 30 per cent of Scotland’s seas were covered by protection areas designed to achieve conservation objectives while allowing “sustainable use” to continue.

A government spokesperson said: “We are working towards a full assessment of Scotland’s waters that will inform our vital work in supporting nature conservation, marine planning, and helping to develop new approaches to marine management. This work will be published in due course.”

The Scottish White Fish Producers Association and the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation (SFF) declined to comment on an unpublished report. They pointed to SFF’s environmental policy statement publishedon 9 October 2020.

This committed this fishing industry to “taking all necessary and appropriate measures to ensure that the fisheries and ecosystems in which they operate are accessed and managed responsibly to preserve their sustainable use for current and future generations.”

SFF said it “supports the principle of marine protected areas for conservation of biodiversity and geodiversity features in particular areas, and will continue to work towards striking a balance between conservation and sustainable harvesting.”

It also “acknowledges that its fisheries are a shared resource at national and international level” and promised to “cooperate with all relevant stakeholders.”

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The Ferret’s policy is to publish documents on which our stories are based whenever possible. In this case, however, we have decided not to release the full text of the draft Scottish Government report on the marine environment in order to protect sources.

This story was published in tandem with the Sunday National.

Featured image: Flame shell thanks to NatureScot.

On October 29, 2020, Joseph Cannataci, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Privacy delivered an address to the General Assembly warning that “Widespread use of contact tracing technology to fight the Covid-19 pandemic has led to almost incessant and omnipresent surveillance in some parts of the world.”

Cannataci continued:

“This is a very disturbing trend;  all-pervasive surveillance is no panacea for COVID-19”  According to the news release, he was “concerned about reports of personal and health data being used to exert control over citizens, possibly to little public health effect.”

The UN Secretary-General expressed exactly his own concern that “certain governments or national entities are using the pretext of COVID to increase surveillance and limit the space for dialogue.”

This is an alarming trend,  and the General Assembly’s Third Committee (Human Rights) held an interactive dialogue on 29 October, 2020 with the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Privacy.  The resolution on the right to privacy in the digital age has been adopted by the Third Committee since the sixty-eighth session without a vote.  This year, Brazil and Germany introduced an updated draft, which covers such topics as use of artificial intelligence, spread of misinformation, digital divides, and protection of the right to privacy while developing technological means in response to disasters, epidemics and pandemics (COVID-19).  As of today, this draft has been co-sponsored by more than 40 Member States.

This concern is paramount, as wide-spread, and, indeed, targeted surveillance has been used to terrorize people, a devastating example of which occurred during the McCarthy witch-hunts in the United States. These abuses did not end with McCarthy’s demise, as the FBI continued dictatorial abuse of their powers, keeping under illegal surveillance such public leaders as Martin Luther King, the renowned actress Jean Seberg, and any and all dissidents during the anti-Vietnam war organizations in the USA, and the Sanctuary Movement.  The surveillance and lies spread about the courageous American actress Jean Seberg were tantamount to psychological rape, staggering and criminal violation of all the most intimate spaces of her life.  This violation of her privacy led to her suicide, a goal undoubtedly sought by the Bureau. The FBI was often complicit in murder of both well-known and little-known dissidents, including the Black Panthers, who were, almost to a man, murdered.

An important documentation of this deadly national surveillance by the FBI was published in the non-fiction book, “The Burglary,” by Washington Post correspondent, Betty Metzger.  Files violating the privacy, violating the most intimate spaces of  the lives of peaceful demonstrators, were compiled in the so-called democracy of the USA, and these abuses of privacy, rationalized by pseudo-threats to “national security” have been a scourge and a menace to the lives of American citizens.  One of the most scandalous and egregious examples of FBI Gestapo tactics can be summarized by J. Edgar Hoover’s description of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt as “The most dangerous woman in America.”  The FBI file on the widow of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was larger than 6000 pages.  Her authorship of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was considered communist propaganda.  Eleanor Roosevelt described the FBI as an American Gestapo, the description of them also used by Ernest Hemingway, whom they hounded to suicide.

The abuse of Covid-19 intimate personal data provides a perfect opportunity and mask for political repression, and ultimately for political violence.  The United Nations attention to this danger is crucial.  It is also a recognition that certain so-called conspiracy theories may be based on fact.

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Carla Stea is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and Global Research’s Correspondent at UN headquarters, New York. 

Featured image is from Shutterstock

Jeremy Corbyn “is as much a racist or anti-semite as my former boss Nelson Mandela” and must be restored to membership of the Labour Party, former South African MP Andrew Feinstein told a rally in defence of the ex-Labour leader on Sunday night.

Mr Feinstein, the son of a Holocaust survivor who lost 39 relatives in the Nazi camps of Auschwitz and Theresienstadt, stressed that the Labour left must have “zero tolerance” for anti-semitism.

But he denounced “an attempt by the mainstream media and the Labour Party leadership to wish away left-wing Jews” who supported Mr Corbyn, “to behave as if we do not exist … an attempt to do away with an extraordinary tradition of Jewish socialism and support for liberation movements from Pretoria to Palestine.”

The former MP spoke at a Defend Jeremy Corbyn, Fight Racism, Build Socialism rally called by the Radical Alliance, a group of Labour and non-Labour socialists, alongside MPs including John McDonnell and Ian Lavery, trade unionists and socialist and anti-racist campaigners and activists.

Unison assistant general secretary Roger McKenzie, speaking in a personal capacity, said that he would not walk away from his friend Mr Corbyn, having “stood side by side with him on picket lines and at anti-racist demonstrations. This is someone who hasn’t flinched from the anti-racist struggle in the 30-plus years I’ve known him.”

Unite’s Howard Beckett said that Britain could have a Labour government now, potentially avoiding the Tories’ disastrous mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic, had Mr Corbyn not been undermined by Labour MPs and staff and by “a shadow cabinet, Keir Starmer foremost among them, who betrayed our class over Brexit and allowed it to divide us to the extent that we failed to win an election.”

Julia Bard of the Jewish Socialists Group warned that the entanglement of anti-semitism in Labour’s left-right struggle in recent years had “made anti-semitism on the left much more difficult to challenge.”

But when minorities including Jews are under attack around the world, “who should we go to for support — institutions that have declared support for Trump like the Board of Deputies, that refuse to criticise the Tories for their close links to fascists across Europe, or to people like Jeremy, who has anti-racism woven through his political being?”

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Featured image: South African political legends Nelson Mandela, former South African MP Andrew Feinstein and former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn (Source: Morning Star)

Video: The Second Wave: Testing, Testing, “Covid is on the Rise”. The Lockdown

By Peter Koenig and Prof Michel Chossudovsky, November 03 2020

Peter Koenig and Prof. Michel Chossudovsky discuss “The Second Wave” in a new GRTV video interview.

COVID and Its Man-Made Gigantic Collateral Damage: The Great Reset – A Call for Civil Disobedience

By Peter Koenig, November 03 2020

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When WHO broadened its definition of global pandemic in 2009, H1N1 vaccine makers profited at taxpayers’ expense. COVID vaccine makers will likely reap even more benefits.

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In the years leading up to 2009, the World Health Organization (WHO) worked alongside vaccine manufacturers, namely GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), to ensure that European and African countries entered into contracts to vaccinate their citizens in the event of an unforeseen global flu pandemic.

These dormant, or “sleeping contracts,” stipulated that if a global pandemic were to occur, it would trigger the contracts, specified pharmaceutical companies would manufacture flu vaccines and the respective governments would pay the vaccine manufacturers.

On June 11, 2009, WHO Director-General Margaret Chan declared H1N1 swine flu to be a global pandemic, triggering the dormant contracts and throwing the pharmaceutical and vaccine industry into high gear.

Chan was able to make this declaration based on WHO’s official definition of a pandemic, which was updated just a month before declaring the H1N1 pandemic — WHO deleted its definition of a pandemic from the organization’s website and replaced it with a new, more flexible definition.

Under the new definition, WHO no longer required that anyone die from an illness before the organization could declare a pandemic. The new definition stipulated only that infections be geographically widespread.

At the time WHO declared the H1N1 swine flu a pandemic, only 144 people worldwide had died from the infection. As Wolfgang Wodarg, then chair of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe’s Health Committee, explained:

“The WHO had a definition of a pandemic, which it defined as a virus with high mortality and high morbidity. And in 2009 they suddenly dropped those two characteristics, saying nothing about severity or mortality.”

WHO wasn’t solely responsible for the decision to declare H1N1 a pandemic. WHO officials had consulted an emergency panel of 160 scientists on the International Health Regulations Committee. Although the identities of these scientists weren’t publicly known at the time, a 2010British Medical Journal investigation revealed that many of the committee members who voted to declare H1N1 a pandemic had financial ties to flu vaccine manufacturers, including GSK.

The declaration of H1N1 as a pandemic launched $18 billion worth of “dormant” flu vaccine contracts, and allowed GSK to push its vaccine, Pandemrix, onto countries all over the world.

The Pandemrix vaccine caused severe, life-long, adverse neurological reactions, including narcolepsy and cataplexy (the sudden, brief loss of voluntary muscle tone triggered by strong emotions), in at least 1,300 children across Europe. It’s possible even more children were injured, as it’s estimated that only 10% of adverse reactions are reported through national adverse event reporting systems.

According to Reuters and other news reports, researchers believed the culprit behind the injuries caused by the GSK H1N1 vaccine was GSK’s AS03 adjuvant, added to the vaccine to stimulate a powerful immune response.

In Germany, controversy erupted when German newspaper Der Spiegel reported that top politicians and government employees were going to receive Celvapan, Baxter’s non-adjuvanted H1N1 vaccine, even though the government was publicly promoting GSK’s Pandemrix.

According to a British Medical Journal investigation, GSK’s own internal safety reports showed that GSK was aware of the safety problems with Pandemrix, but never disclosed them to the public. The most alarming data point was a five-fold increase in deaths among those who received Pandemrix, compared with people who received H1N1 swine flu vaccines that didn’t contain the adjuvant.

Lawsuits against the drugmaker began to pile up, but taxpayers ended up footing the bill for millions in damages — because the dormant vaccine contracts included full legal indemnity for the vaccine makers.

The panic that surrounded H1N1 swine flu and the subsequent rush to get vaccinated was in part driven by inflated and widely disseminated models which incorrectly predicted thousands upon thousands of people would die from the flu.

These models were provided by Professor Neil Ferguson and his team of researchers at Oxford’s Imperial College. Ferguson’s group advised the UK government to prepare for at least 65,000 deaths. By the end of the pandemic, H1N1 swine flu had claimed the lives of just 457 people.

Paul Flynn, the vice chairman of the Council of Europe’s European Health Committee, said of the H1N1 swine flu debacle: “The world has been subjected to a stunt by the greed of the pharmaceutical companies.”

Eleven years later, on March 11, 2020, WHO, relying on the same attenuated definition of a pandemic, declared COVID-19 to be a global pandemic.

Many governments based their COVID-19 prevention policies, including border closures and lockdowns, on computer models designed by Ferguson and his team at Oxford, despite the exponential inaccuracies of the model he had provided during the H1N1 pandemic.

Ferguson’s models predicted more than 2.2 million Americans would die from COVID-19. To date, about 229,000 have died.

Oxford’s Imperial College has received more than $180 million dollars from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — making the self declared largest funder of vaccines in the world the second-largest funding source of Oxford’s Imperial College.

Oxford’s Imperial College also has financial ties to an organization founded and funded by the Gates Foundation, GAVI the Vaccine Alliance, a public–private global health partnership focused on increased access to vaccines.

Moncef Slaoui, the chief scientist in charge of U.S. efforts to find a COVID-19 vaccine, now known as Operation Warp Speed, was GSK’s Chairman of Vaccines in 2009. Slaoui oversaw the development and safety testing of GSK’s H1N1 Pandemrix.

In July 2020, Sanofi and GSK secured a $2.1 billion deal to supply the U.S. with 100 million doses of their vaccine. The partnership is a collaboration between a modified Sanofi flu shot and GSK’s AS03 adjuvant, the same compound believed to be responsible for causing permanent brain damage in at least 1,300 European children during the H1N1 swine flu.

If history repeats itself and GSK’s COVID vaccine causes adverse effects, taxpayers — not the vaccine maker — will once again be on the hook for damages. This is because in March 2020, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued a declaration under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act, or PREP Act, that broadens immunity for COVID vaccine makers, protecting them “against any claim of loss caused by, arising out of, relating to, or resulting from the manufacture, distribution, administration or use of medical countermeasures,” including vaccines.

These new protections are on top of those already granted to vaccine makers under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) of 1986. NCVIA’s purpose is to eliminate the potential financial liability of vaccine manufacturers in the face of vaccine injury claims.

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Featured image is from CHD

The real story behind the so-called “second-wave” Covid-19 infection

The entire world at this point in time is being conditioned that the Covid-19 infection has gotten worse and the “second wave” of the PLANdemic is already here to wreak renewed havoc. This mind conditioning is happening right now when herd immunity is already gradually seeping into the populace.

Governments are alarmed because if herd immunity becomes undeniably obvious, people will go through the daily grind of normal life and things will slowly stabilize. Economies will recover and get on the right track. This the governments don’t like as they toe their respective lines that draw mandate from their “overlord,” i.e., the US.

More immediately crucial in the general program of systems control is the vaccine whose development, production, and implementation is overseen by the US. People MUST be vaccinated by hook or by crook, so to speak. Having this in mind, it is therefore important to create the hype of a “second wave” to further scare people until that time when the vaccine is already available.

And if the thinking segment will seriously take note of and focus on what has been going on in laboratories where such vaccines are being developed, the so-called medical scientists involved in it are fast-tracking the process because they are running against time especially now that a growing number of people are getting into the realization that the “virus infection” is not as deadly and risky as the stories the scaremongers have been spreading around.

In other words, now that the vaccine isn’t quite ready yet, people should remain scared and in fact more scared than before as government creates an atmosphere of heightened alert even to the point of using the police–both local and national–to impose mobility restriction similar to what they implemented during the previous months from April to July.

The new hermeneutics of infirmity: A totalizing path pointing all illnesses to Covid-19

The “first wave” stabilized and the “second wave” has come in. What do we expect when the “second wave” stabilizes? Of course, the “third wave”. There will be “waves” and “stabilizations”. And who knows if these “infected” people are really infected by Covid-19 based on the testing instruments and procedures being used? The truth is, the fear campaign continues and the media will always be flooded with scare stories to hold people at bay. Are we already in the “second wave”? Then, we need to brace up for the third and the fourth and the fifth ad infinitum while in Sweden, there are none of these waves as life’s been going on normally.

In the rest of the world, “strict restrictions” go on as they are triggered by statistics based on tests being conducted without taking heed of their inaccuracies and therefore unreliability. Even those with a severe cold or the flu are tested positive and added on the list. The statistics get bloated and the paranoid populace gets alarmed and more scared.

Within the entire gamut of this plan is a trajectory of phases and the last phase is to finally promote and distribute worldwide the vaccine whose development and production have been financed and promoted by the same criminals behind the virus. And who are these criminals? These are the same people whose billions of earnings come from their control of the global information technology (IT) machinery.

Is it just mere coincidence that while they continually concoct scare narratives to terrorize the globe, people have to “work from home” (teleworking) and students have to study via online (home study)? Remember that in this circumstance, we ought to heavily rely on the computer, the computer programs, and the operating systems that they peddle. This entire state of affairs is nothing but pure and simple systematic manipulation of the global economy.

This is what they call “the new normal” which now reigns all over the world–a ruse that has been strongly defended by terrorized paranoids. The worst outcome of it is the way the economy has already been heading to disaster. Clowns are in control and instead of defying them, we have been toeing their lines.

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Prof. Ruel F. Pepa is a Filipino philosopher based in Madrid, Spain. A retired academic (Associate Professor IV), he taught Philosophy and Social Sciences for more than fifteen years at Trinity University of Asia, an Anglican university in the Philippines.

Featured image: Crowds of people on Preciados street in Madrid on September 5.OLMO CALVO / EL PAÍS

As the UN General Assembly gears up for a series of votes on 16 annual resolutions in support of Palestinian human rights, Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) and the Coalition of Canadian Palestinian Organizations (CCPO) are calling on the Canadian government to repeat last year’s vote in favour of Palestinian self-determination.

“We were very pleased last year when Canada supported the UN resolution for Palestinian self-determination last year, despite the protests of right-wing groups,” said Thomas Woodley, President of CJPME. “Nevertheless, repeating that vote this year would demonstrate that it was made on principle, and not simply a tactic to garner votes for Canada’s Security Council bid,” said Woodley.

The tendency since 2006 of Canadian governments to provide diplomatic cover for Israeli human rights abuses is understood to be one of the reasons why Canada lost its bid for a Security Council seat in June.

“It’s time for the Canadian government to prove its enduring commitment to the Palestinian aspiration for self-determination,” said the Coalition of Canadian Palestinian Organizations. “Canadian Palestinians expect Canada to show up for our community, which has suffered greatly from constant Israeli violations of our rights, whether under Israel’s occupation, as second-class citizens in Israel, or as refugees.”

The vote in 2019 to support Palestinian self-determination was a welcome change, as it broke with Canada’s recent pattern of voting “No” or abstaining on every Palestine-related motion. Through this vote, Canada aligned itself with both international law, and the vast majority of the international community: 167 countries voted “Yes” compared to only 5 who voted “No.”

For example, CJPME and the CCPO call attention to the resolution on Jerusalem, which stresses that Jerusalem remain a shared city, and calls for a negotiated agreement respecting the legitimate concerns of both the Palestinians and Israelis.

Perplexingly, since 2015 the Canadian Government has mostly maintained its pro-Israel voting pattern at the UN, which started in 2006. To make sense of these changes over time, CJPME has created a new resource, the UN Dashboard, which allows Canadians to explore how Canada has voted on these resolutions from 2000-2020.

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Death due to influenza is over-reported.  The Centers for Disease Control distributes a figure of 36,000 deaths a year from the flu.  But data from the American Lung Association reveals flu-related deaths as low as a few hundred in a year in the U.S. (See chart below). The overstated deaths are believed to serve as promotion for vaccination campaigns.

The Cochrane Group, a global network of independent investigators, analyzes the validity of scientific evidence.  In 2018 the Cochrane Group published an analysis of eight clinical trials involving over 5000 elderly participants in an effort to determine if vaccination prevents the flu.  The analysis revealed 6% of unvaccinated seniors (they were given a placebo shot) were reported to have the flu compared to 2.4% of vaccinated individuals (58% relative reduced risk).

The problem is, 94% of senior adults in this study did not get the flu.  So, the success of massive vaccination programs to inoculate millions to spare a few people from getting the flu is limited from the get-go.  Thirty (30) people need to be vaccinated to prevent one person from experiencing flu symptoms.

So, at best, flu vaccines can only be 3.3% effective in preventing the flu.  The CDC will “advertise” that studies like this one indicate flu shots are 58% effective (6.0% to 2.4% reduction in flu cases).  So, in hard numbers, the public is led to falsely believe 58 out of 100 people will be protected from getting the flu if vaccinated.  That idea is deceitful.  It is actually 6 in 100 get the flu and 2.4 in 100 get the flu if vaccinated; 94 in 100 receive no benefit from vaccination because they remain healthy and uninfected, presumably because their immune system wards off any respiratory tract infection.

Remote chance flu vaccine saves lives

The chance that flu vaccination reduces risk for death is even more remote.  In this study of 5000 senior adults, death occurred in 1 in 177 who received an inactive (placebo) vaccine and 1 in 184 who received the flu shot.  So, 5.6 in 10,000 seniors would get the flu and be hospitalized and die if unvaccinated and 5.4 in 10,000 seniors would get the flu and die if vaccinated.

An analysis of 75 published studies by the Cochrane Group concluded there is uncertainty over the safety and effectiveness of flu vaccination in the elderly.

In 2016 the Cochrane Group published a study of 12,742 healthcare workers who care for older institutionalized adults (over age 60).  The Cochrane evaluators concluded that vaccination of healthcare workers had little effect upon the number of elderly residents who developed laboratory-confirmed influenza.

Pre-vaccination immunity is predicator of vaccine effectiveness

A study published in 2015 shows that pre-vaccination immunity was the best predictor that vaccination would prevent the flu; 66.3% of adults over age 50 who were vaccinated did not develop adequate immunity.

What is the take-home lesson?  Maintenance of the immune system is paramount.

According to conventional assessments of levels of immunity in populations at large, there are not sufficient antibodies to COVID-19 coronavirus to produce herd immunity.  The world populations then must wait for a licensed vaccine.  But antibodies are not the end-all measure of immunity.

“The death rate is more a result of whether or not your population is immune prepared more than the particular strain of the virus.”  — Denis Rancourt, PhD, Ontario Civil Liberties Association

Most human populations are already immune

Antibodies are not being found to be a reliable measure of immunity.  A number of studies now show that 20-50% of people with no known exposure to COVID-19 already exhibit immunity against this virus.  This suggests vaccination would be almost meaningless to as much as half of the people.

Only a minority of people display antibodies against COVID-19.  But (zinc dependent) T-memory cells, produced in the thymus gland, pre-exist and are ready to prevent COVID-19 infection in 20-50% of subjects.

Exposure à infection à disease NOT!

This means “exposure does not necessarily lead to infection, and infection does not necessarily lead to disease, and disease does not necessarily product detectable antibodies,” says a report entitled “COVID-19: Do Many People Have Pre-existing Immunity?, in the British Medical Journal (BMJ).

Therefore, the percentage of a population needed to produce herd immunity is far lower when a significant portion are unable to transmit the virus, the BMJ report reveals.

An immunologist says: “If you lift lockdown you should see an immediate and commensurate increase in cases (and deaths), but that hasn’t happened.  That is just a fact!”

In Sweden, a study reveals 60% of family members of infected patients produced antibodies while 90% had T-cell activity.

T-cells finally getting publicity

The BMJ report bemoans that T-cells have received “scant attention” in news media.  T-cells also facilitate long-lasting immunity.

Researchers concede that through vaccination, stimulation of antibodies and T-cells are hoped for to induce protective immunity.

Apparently, many people are already immune.  The idea of mandated vaccination appears to be massive over-treatment given these realities.

Public health authorities and politicians are pre-committed to vaccination, have already pre-purchased billions of dollars of these vaccines, and are prematurely and overly committed to their use regardless of these facts.  Stockpiling of unproven vaccines has already begun because politicians have pre-paid for them.

Rushed-To-Market Vaccines May Not Save Lives

Disease investigator Peter Doshi, speaking out in another volume of the British Medical Journal, says none of the trials of COVID-19 coronavirus vaccines are designed to prove whether these needle jabs reduce the likelihood of illness, hospitalization or death.  None of the trials underway are fashioned to determine whether vaccines interrupt transmission of the virus.

Doshi says a study may just show a vaccine reduces a symptom such a chronic cough and gain licensure, without reducing transmission, hospitalization or death.

In fact, these COVID-19 discoveries suggest the entire vaccine industry is propped by scientific ignorance of T-cell immunity.

The knowledge that T-cell immunity is dependent upon zinc, a trace mineral, suggests the public can protect themselves against all viruses and other infectious disease threats with an inexpensive, non-problematic, preventive remedy that is at hand.

Zinc along with vitamin D puts the brakes on (normalizes) the immune response to thwart an over-active immune (autoimmune) response.

Appropriately-dosed zinc lozenges, taken 5 times a day, preferably with a zinc ionophore like quercetin to facilitate entry into infected cells, are appropriate when sore throats, fevers, chronic cough and shortness of breath occur.

An authoritative report entitled “T-Cells Are The Superstars In Fighting COVID-19,” posted at Children’s Health Defense quotes Carsten Geisler, a prominent researcher at the University of Copenhagen, to say: “When a T cell is exposed to a foreign pathogen, it extends a signaling device or ‘antenna’ known as a vitamin D receptor, with which it searches for vitamin D,” and if there is an inadequate vitamin D level, “they won’t even begin to mobilize.”

In other words, adequate vitamin D is critically important for the activation of T-cellsfrom their inactive naïve state.

Another lesson: the red wine molecule resveratrol binds to an activates the vitamin D receptor, a doorway for vitamin D to enter cells.

Very little if any of the information provided herein is getting to the masses. Public health authorities are solely committed to vaccination.  It would be best to access Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Children’s Health Defense and the National Vaccine Information Centerfor accurate information about infectious disease and vaccines.

If considering vaccination, which will become THE major issue facing populations after the P model COVID-19 Vaccine Consent/Refusal Form by this author is available from Knowledge of Health, Inc.  Proceeds go to the National Health Federation vaccine consent defense fund.  Two copies of the 18-page consent/refusal form are available for $12.95 (shipping included).  The consent form can be ordered online at www.covid19consent.com or by sending a check or money order for $12.95, payable to Knowledge of Health, Inc., 1502 Foothill Blvd, Suite 103, La Verne, California 91750.

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Bill Sardi is writing from La Verne, California.

Since 2010, Drone Wars UK has been shining a spotlight on the military’s use of drones and the impact on peace and security around the globe. Now, both in the US and in Europe, large military-grade drones which fly ‘beyond visual line of sight’ (BVLOS) are moving from the battlefield to the domestic front.

Here in the UK, the government is rapidly pushing ahead with plans to enable large unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to fly freely within UK airspace as part of its Airspace Modernisation Strategy.  These plans are keenly supported by the growing drone industry and the Ministry of Defence (MoD) who are taking a significant lead in this area with plans, for example, to fly the latest version of the Predator drone – which the MoD is calling ‘Protector’  – in UK airspace.  Ministers argue that the planned changes present exciting opportunities for business to create high-tech jobs and to boost the economy across the UK.  While these plans may well be a boon for some, it is vital that the negative aspects of ‘beyond visual line of sight’ (BVLOS) drone use within the UK are examined, and if such flights are to go ahead, privacy and safety protections are factored in from the start.

It should be noted that there are no plans for primary legislation to implement these changes which would given an opportunity to subject these changes to democratic scrutiny via parliamentary debate. Instead a quango, the Airspace Change Organising Group (ACOG), has been established by the Department for Transport (DfT) and Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), to coordinate and implement government plans in this area.  We believe it is vital that this democratic deficit is publicised and challenged and the public have their say in controlling drones in UK skies.

Over the past few months, we have seen military drones deployed at the UK border to deter refugees crossing the channel, the RAF advancing plans to fly the ‘Protector’ drone in the UK,  UK coastguard and police assessing large Israeli drones for operations and other drone test programmes advanced under the COVID crisis.

Alongside our continuing focus on the military use of drones, we will now have a related programme examining the opening of UK skies to large BVLOS drones and in particular their use for security and surveillance purposes within the UK.

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Featured image is from Drone Wars UK

The World Health Organization (WHO) recently admitted that lockdowns cause more harm than good. Following this announcement, one would have expected American politicians to immediately end the lockdowns. After all, the WHO ‘s pronouncements are considered infallible, so much so that social media sites silence anyone who dares challenge the great and powerful WHO. Yet, governors, mayors, and other government officials across the country are ignoring the WHO’s anti-lockdown position.

Instead of admitting that the lockdowns were a mistake, many in the political class, which includes a disturbing number of medical professionals whose positions and prestige depend on government, claim that we cannot return to normalcy until a coronavirus vaccine is in wide use. This suggests that people among the majority of Americans who do not wish to be vaccinated will remain under lockdown or be forced to be vaccinated against their will.

The assault on our liberty will not end with deployment and use of a vaccine. Moncef Slaoui, the chief adviser of the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed, a “public-private partnership” in charge of producing and delivering a coronavirus vaccine, has said that those who receive a vaccine will be monitored by “incredibly precise … tracking systems.” Slaoui has also indicated that tech giants Google and Oracle will help the government keep tabs on the vaccinated individuals. So, the vaccine program will lead to an increase in government surveillance!

Slaoui is just the latest “expert” to endorse forcing the American people to relinquish their few remaining scraps of privacy to stop coronavirus. Dr. Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates have urged development of a digital certificate for those vaccinated for coronavirus. People without the certificate would find their liberty severely restricted.

Those who think that the new surveillance system will be limited to coronavirus should remember that Social Security numbers were only supposed to be used to administer the Social Security program. They should also consider that the PATRIOT Act’s expansion of warrantless wiretapping was supposed to be limited to stopping terrorists. However, these powers have been used for a wide variety of purposes. Whenever government is given power to abuse our rights for one reason it will inevitably use that power to abuse our rights for other reasons as well.

Fauci and Gates’ digital certificate could, and likely will, be expanded to include proof individuals have received a variety of other vaccines and medical treatments. The digital certificate could even extend to monitoring a person’s lifestyle choices on the grounds that unhealthy habits make one more susceptible to diseases.

The digital certificate could also be tied to the REAL ID program to deny individuals who have not been vaccinated the right to travel. It could also be combined with a future mandatory E-Verify system to deny unvaccinated individuals the right to hold a job. Those who consider this “paranoia” should consider Britain is already developing a covid passport.

Liberty lost in the “war on covid” will not be voluntarily returned when the coronavirus threat ends — assuming the government ever stop moving the goal posts and declares the coronavirus threat is over. Instead, the people must be prepared to take back their liberty from the politicians. Fortunately, we still have the ability to do so by the peaceful means of educating our fellow citizens and pressuring our elected officials to reverse course. We must all do what we can to use these peaceful tools before we are in a “dark winter” of authoritarianism.

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More than a century on, millions of Palestinian refugees continue to grapple with the devastating upshots of the Balfour Declaration, which led to a significant upheaval in the lives of Palestinians.

Issued on November 2, 1917, the declaration turned the Zionist aim of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine into a reality when Britain publicly pledged to establish “a national home for the Jewish people” there.

The pledge came in the form of a letter from Britain’s then-foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, addressed to Lionel Walter Rothschild, a figurehead of the British Jewish community.

Though the Balfour Declaration included the admonition that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”, the British mandate was set up in a way to equip Jews with the tools to establish self-rule, at the expense of the Palestinian Arabs.

The efforts made by the London-based Palestinian Return Centre (PRC) in this regard have been on the go over recent years to urge Britain to apologize to the Palestinians for the tragedy that has befallen them as a result of the Balfour Declaration.

The Balfour Apology Campaign (BAC), kick-started by PRC some seven years ago, falls within the above context as it matches ongoing endeavors to hold Britain historically, morally, and politically accountable for the dispossession and displacement of 750,000 civilians from their own and only homeland—Palestine—to give way for the establishment of the self-proclaimed state of Israel.

As a result, nearly 7 million Palestine refugees have become scattered all over the world, torn from the nourishment of home and the warmth of family.

Reaching out to a plethora of British and EU diplomats and MPs, PRC has been striving to mobilize worldwide support for the campaign and communicate its demands to official bodies, mainly the British government. Contacts have been held around the clock with NGOs, youth movements, and student events to that very end.

In 2017, an e-petition headed up by PRC and launched on the official website of the British Parliament, attracted fewer than 14,000 signatures by British nationals. Duty-bound to respond to the petition, after it managed to pass the benchmark for an official response, the never-sorry government responded 10 days later, only to confirm that it will not extend any apology over the Balfour pledge.

“The Balfour Declaration is an historic statement for which HMG does not intend to apologize,” the government said at the time. “We are proud of our role in creating the State of Israel. The task now is to encourage moves towards peace.”

A spokesperson said the Declaration was written in a world of “competing imperial powers” as the First World War raged and Ottoman Empire diminished, claiming: “In that context, establishing a homeland for the Jewish people in the land to which they had such strong historical and religious ties was the right and moral thing to do, particularly against the background of centuries of persecution.”

Yet, the Government’s statement accepted that the Declaration “should have called for the protection of political rights of the non-Jewish communities in Palestine, particularly their right to self-determination” but said that lasting peace must now be established through a two-state solution.

The response sparked universal condemnation, with activists and NGOs dubbing it as a sign of Britain’s failure to pay heed to the horrendous crimes committed by Zionist gangs who crept into Palestine during the British Mandate and embarked on systematic massacres and ethnic genocides that brought about the displacement of millions of Palestinians from over 570,000 Palestinian villages in 1948.

As BAC campaigners sought to pass the 100,000 yardstick for a parliament discussion, the parliamentary follow-up committee abruptly altered the cut-off date, reducing it from six months to two months and a half only under the guise that snap elections had been called.

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Featured image is from PRC

Since Trump took office in January 2017, I’ve sharply criticized his domestic and geopolitical agenda — with ample supporting evidence to make my case.

I support neither right wing of the US one-party state — nor farcical elections when held that always turn out largely the same way.

The rarest of rare exceptions prove the rule.

The US is a predatory belligerent state, an imperial state, a pariah state, a rogue state, a police state — a nation fostering inequality between haves and have-nots.

Both right wings of the one-party state take turns running things.

While I deplore and oppose both a Trump v. Biden/Harris in power, I fear the latter more than the former over the next four years.

If you loved Obama/Biden’s 8-year record of shame, you’ll be wild about Biden/Harris.

Or will it be the latter alone because of the former’s diminished ability to perform what’s required of a head of state, a real possibility.

Examples are numerous, including twice on the stump confusing Trump with GW Bush as his opponent.

During Obama/Biden’s tenure, seven countries were terror-bombed in eight years: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.

None of the above threatened the US. Throughout the post-WW II period, no nations anywhere threatened US security.

Yet since June 1950, Washington has been perpetually at war against one country after another — by hot and/or other means.

The Obama/Biden regime launched preemptive wars on Syria and Libya, smashing and destroying both countries, transforming them into charnel houses.

Massacring hundreds of thousands of their people, displacing countless numbers more, ISIS and likeminded jihadists became US ground forces in both countries and elsewhere.

Obama/Biden staged coups in Honduras, Paraguay, Brazil, and Ukraine.

They supported Israeli wars on Palestine, and tried replacing Venezuelan democracy with fascist rule.

They enforced puppet rule in Haiti and continued Plan Colombia aid that’s been responsible for massacres, disappearances and torture of regime opponents.

They were militantly hostile toward Russia and China, risking confrontation with both countries.

For eight years, they waged war on humanity at home and abroad, along with handing greater wealth to Wall Street, war-profiteers and other corporate predators.

There’s virtually nothing redeeming about Trump’s near-four years in office — with one major exception.

While continuing wars of aggression he inherited and waging it by other means on Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, China, Russia, North Korea, and other countries, he launched no new hot wars on his own.

Since Franklin Roosevelt goaded imperial Japan to attack the US to get the war he wanted, few US presidents served out their time in office without attacking other nations.

Gerald Ford was a rare exception.

Although surrounded by the likes of Henry Kissinger, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney — who never met an independent country they didn’t want smashed — the only belligerent stain on Ford’s record was permitting Indonesia to rape and destroy East Timor.

Jimmy Carter was another exception, at age-86 in 2011 saying:

During his four years in office from January 1976 to January 2000, “(w)e never dropped a bomb. We never fired a bullet. We never went to war.”

To his credit as well, he called Bolivarian Venezuela’s election process “the best in the world” — real democracy, what’s banned in the US and other Western countries.

On issues of war and peace, his time in office was blemished by supporting an array of tyrants and drawing Soviet Russia into its Afghan quagmire in the 1980s.

Yet he didn’t preemptively attack another nation during his tenure, how most US presidents operated post-WW II — directly and/or by waging proxy wars to replace independent governments with subservient pro-US ones.

Obama/Biden’s 8-year tenure was pockmarked by endless wars.

Like most US presidents — Trump included — Obama broke every major pledge made, delivering betrayal, not “hope,” “change,” peace, “a new era of openness,” universal healthcare, financial reform, ending torture, illegal spying and detention without trial.

While campaigning in 2007, he said the following:

“I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out (of Afghanistan) by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do.”

“I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this (and the Iraq) war(s). You can take that to the bank.”

Both countries remain illegally occupied by unwanted US forces.

War in Afghanistan continues since October 2001 — against Iraq intermittently since March 2003, first directly, then using ISIS proxy forces, the nation unstable today because of US belligerence, other hostile policies, and presence of its occupying forces.

Obama also promised to close Guantanamo during his first year in office. It remains open, one of many US gulag torture prisons operating globally.

He vowed to “fulfill” the goal of Israel and long-suffering Palestinians “liv(ing) side by side” in two states at “peace.”

He pledged to end torture, illegal spying and detention without trial.

He said he’d observe “democratic values.”

All of the above pledges were systematically breached. Polar opposite policies were pursued throughout his time in office.

Biden partnered in all of the above and much more, a record hostile to peace, equity, justice, and the rule of.

In earlier articles, I explained his disturbing near-half century of shame as US senator and vice president — that should automatically disqualify him from any public office.

On Tuesday, voting-age Americans will go the polls to elect federal, state and local officials — other than about 90 million who already voted by mail or in-person and many millions more who’ll abstain because change for a nation safe and fit to live in is excluded from ballots.

Whatever the outcome, one thing is certain.

I’ve said it many times before and I’ll say it again.

When the dust settles post-election — that may take days or longer to learn if Trump or Biden/Harris won — not a damn thing worth voting for will change.

That’s the disturbing reality of how US fantasy democracy works — for privileged interests exclusively at the expense of ordinary Americans.

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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 Adam Schultz/Flickr

With quarrels raging over disappearing campaign lawn signs, rattled American liberals may now appreciate how being ‘a minority’ feels.

Desecration and theft of lawn signs in support of Republicans or Democrats are reported in many American neighborhoods this year, with Democrats being particularly unsettled by what they regard as an existential threat. (Although their experience surrounding this issue is trifling compared to what Muslims, Black, and Jewish minorities historically encountered, and still face.)

I appreciate the panic aroused by gatherings of armed Trump supporters and other menacing actions, most recently against Biden’s bus. But perhaps fears manifest around lost lawn signs by these mainly white middle class folks are exaggerated and misplaced.

One local upstate N.Y. paper tactfully addresses the problem of stolen campaign posters with “When political signs disappear”. It may have adopted this approach to temper overstated calls for help.

I agree that anything stolen off one’s manicured lawn is upsetting. But, hey: it’s only a two-foot square paper poster pushed into the turf– a rather timid expression of one’s political leanings.

From reports of thefts I’ve tracked in my county, local police (often mistakenly perceived as solidly allied with ‘conservatives’) swiftly responded, charging two suspects—in one case a known teenage vandal, in the other, sole 20-year old. There was no indication of armed vigilantes shooting up Democratic neighborhoods or defacing homes. Although unfounded rumors prompted some Democratic supporters to remove their signs or spurn the suggestion they host one. (“I think I’ll pass this year”, or “Let me think about it.”) True, some signs were stolen or dislodged. But crying “I felt violated!”, as one householder wrote on a community website about a stolen poster. Really? What about brave citizens who film police wantonly brutalizing and murdering our Black men in the street?

The current dilemma over lawn signs doubtless derives in part from stress surrounding this contentious presidential election at the same time that Covid restrictions continue to unravel our lives.

Something else is at play. Fear aroused by these posters is related to changing demographics in regions like mine where a population of newcomers, mainly former New York and New Jersey urbanites, are not integrated into these rural surroundings. Many are retirees who had enough of city life. Others can afford a weekend home in the bucolic Catskills. Younger arrivals here find they can manage their business by internet. Growing herbs and squash, raising goats and chickens as a hobby, they constitute the new gentry. Only now, they realize they’re outsiders who arrived from places where they’d been the majority, snugly surrounded by other Democrats. They read their revered New York Times while frequenting country taverns where they share advice re local sources for multi-grain-seed-saturated breads, and rustic furniture. Perfectly understandable.

That’s their culture. Like migrant minorities anywhere, their values differ from longtime residents who in this region prefer beer, who like deer hunting, who fish for food, who regularly attend church, whose parents are military veterans, and who work in local diners and municipal offices. And yes, most own trucks.

There’s little socializing between the two communities. A newcomer driving through our forested hills reacts to a barn with a Trump sign plastered across its side as if there’s a sniper behind the weather vane on the roof. Self-proclaimed progressives assume any truck owner is not college educated, probably owns a gun, and really doesn’t understand politics. They call them ‘trumpers’ and whisper really ugly epithets about ‘them’.

These newcomers are rattled not because of any significant physical threat. They feel, in many cases for the first time, that they are a minority. When they realize this is the source of their discomfort, they can move forward, and maybe learn to dialogue with their opponents, something they have not managed despite proud declarations of ‘getting to know our neighbors’.

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B. Nimri Aziz is an anthropologist and journalist who’s worked in Nepal since 1970, and published widely on peoples of the Himalayas. A new book on Nepali rebel women is forthcoming. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research. 

Featured image is from the author

The Modi government has earned the distinction as the “first non-western” voice to come out in support of French President Emmanuel Macron over the recent horrific killings in that country. This distinction apparently presents itself as too good to miss. The Rajya Sabha TV slotted a programme to castigate “Islamist terrorism” in France. 

Religious fundamentalism is repugnant. Indians should know it better than anybody, and what is happening in France is not difficult to understand. The French condition bears striking resemblance to India’s widespread social pathology. 

Islamophobia is on surge in French society, too. The thinly-veiled anti-Muslim statements, barbs and innuendos by senior French ministers are a daily occurrence. If assailants stabbed two Muslim women wearing veil near the Eiffel Tower, it no longer makes news. Patently anti-Muslim attitudes give respectability to Islamophobia and fuel social tensions, as France is also a multi-ethnic society like India. 

The Pew Research Center found in their Global Attitudes Survey in 2017 that 54.2% of the French regarded themselves as Christians, with 47.4% belonging to the Catholic Church. Islam is the second-most widely professed religion in France. Christians number roughly 38 million while Muslims account for close to 5.5 million. [Around 21 million French people do not have affiliation with any religion.] 

However, although Christianity is the most represented religion in France, there is deep disquiet in the Christian mind bordering on paranoia that feeds into Islamophobia. In democracies, it is a special responsibility for trade unions, churches, local newspapers and other public institutions to help foster social cohesion and promote civic participation and incubate the sense of responsibilities of citizenship, but that is not happening in France. 

Social tensions are also exacerbated due to the uneven growth and yawning social inequalities. The Internet significantly contributes to the radicalisation of society. Most important, in the most recent decades, there has been an overall weakening of the national ideology of secularism. France’s political and intellectual traditions have weakened.  

Enter Macron. Just a few days before the current mayhem, on October 2, in a long-awaited national address, Macron unveiled a plan to defend France’s secular values against what he termed “Islamist radicalism.” 

“Islam is a religion that is in crisis all over the world today, we are not just seeing this in our country,” Macron said. His core theme was that his government will make “no concessions” in a new drive to push religion out of education and the public sector in France. 

He announced that the government would present a bill in December to strengthen a 1905 law that officially separated church and state in France. The new measures, Macron said, are aimed at addressing a problem of growing “radicalisation” in France and improving “our ability to live together”. 

This may seem a fine thing to do in the best traditions of separation of the state and religion. But the devil lies in the detail. Thus, while “secularism is the cement of a united France,” and Macron’s new law permits people to belong to any faith of their choosing, the outward displays of religious affiliation would be banned in schools and the public service! (By the way, wearing the hijab is already banned in French schools and for public servants at their workplace.) 

Macron claimed he is seeking to “liberate” Islam in France from foreign influences by improving oversight of mosque financing. There would also be closer scrutiny of schools and associations exclusively serving religious communities. In effect, Macron announced that France is once again evaluating its relationship with its Muslim minority, the largest in Europe. 

Macron’s remarks produced a furious reaction in the Muslim community. A prominent French Muslim activist tweeted: “The repression of Muslims has been a threat, now it is a promise. In a one hour speech Macron emboldened the far right, anti-Muslim leftists and threatened the lives of Muslim students by calling for drastic limits on home schooling despite a global pandemic.” 

Macron was speaking one week after a man attacked two people with a meat cleaver outside the former Paris offices of the Charlie Hebdo satirical weekly, an assault condemned by the government as an act of “Islamist terrorism”! 

What is Macron up to? In a nutshell, Macron is a besieged politician today. His electorate is abandoning him and he thinks he can save his political career by taking a page out of the far right’s playbook. Macron has failed to deliver on his promises, especially on the economy. Rampant street protests and major public sector strikes show that disaffection is growing exponentially. The so-called Gilets Jaunes (yellow vests) protests highlighted the depth of alienation. Macron has to order force to quell the protests.   

Major demonstrations erupted through last year against pension reforms, fuel-price hikes, police violence, and unemployment. The year ended with one of the longest public transportation strikes in French history, which paralysed the country. 

The upheaval has halved Macron’s ratings from approximately 60 percent in 2017 when he got elected as president. In the last municipal elections in June, his party suffered a crushing defeat. Macron is getting frantic, as the presidential election in April 2022 draws closer. 

Fanning the flames of Islamophobia is a desperate attempt by Macron at gaining political ground —- specifically, at the expense of the far right. Macron estimates that Islamophobia holds the key to galvanise the supporters of the far right. 

Macron is succeeding. A chorus of media pundits and politicians across the political spectrum has lately united in the conviction that French “values” are under threat and that the general population needs to mobilise for a fight. 

The mood is captured in a tweet by a senior politician Meyer Habib, deputy chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee at the National Assembly — “To arms, citizens”, using an evocative phrase from the French national anthem. 

The air is thick with highly provocative demands — that this “war” should include the rescinding of citizenship for Muslim migrants, obligation to adopt French first names, reinstatement of death penalty, etc. 

Now, the belligerent rhetoric has also put on the defensive Macron’s main political opponent in the presidential election, the socialist leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, head of the France Insoumise (Unbowed France) party, against whom a smear campaign has begun for voicing disquiet over the stigmatisation of Muslims in the French society. 

In an attempt to undermine the Left by associating it with “Islamism”, which has a very negative connotation in the minds of the French majority, Mélenchon has been branded as an “Islamo-leftist”. This character assassination campaign may work to Macron’s advantage. 

But to be fair to Macron, he is only riding a popular wave, since for well over two decades, the French state has been moving in a vicious circle in its relationship with its Muslim citizens. Ali Saad, noted French sociologist and media critic focusing on the influence of mass media, wrote recently,

“The [French] state still does not acknowledge the fact that Islam is a religion of France, that it is not wise to systematically remind or refer to French Muslims by their racial or geographic origins, and that French Muslim issues are inherently French issues.

“The state does not want to recognise the fact that there is no empirical evidence to suggest that religion is a primary motivator for violent extremism and that radicalisation is a social phenomenon… The state has done little to address job and housing discrimination, police brutality, poverty and everyday racism and yet it accuses the French Muslim community of failing to “integrate” or even of “separatism”. It has relied on a security-centred approach in which Islam has been systematically perceived as an evil that society should confront, and Muslims as a threat to the way of life and to fundamental rights, such as freedom of expression.” 

In a nutshell, the French state has separated itself from the Muslim segment of the population and is insisting on treating them as outsiders. There is refusal to acknowledge that multiculturalism is innate to plural societies and should be embraced as such. (This is where Britain puts France to shame.) 

All in all, the Modi government shouldn’t have popped up as a flag carrier in the barricades where Macron has positioned himself. It draws attention needlessly to India’s deep-rooted malaise. It is sheer naiveté to assume that the crisis in France is over the the “French version of absolute liberty” (whatever that may mean.)  

This is a familiar Indian sight: a discredited politician taking a plausible route to stage a comeback and get re-elected — and that too, in the chaotic times of the pandemic. Inability to see Macron for the cowardly politics he practises makes us apologists for bigotry. 

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The U.S. election will end today, more or less, and we Americans will suffer another four years of putting up with serial nonsense out of a White House and Congress that couldn’t care less about us no matter who is elected. Whether the party where everything changes or the party where everything remains the same wins the inevitable result will be further aggrandizement of authoritarian power combined with increased distancing of government from the people who are ruled.

Amidst all the gloom, however, there is one great success story. That is the tale of how Israel and its friends in politics and financial circles have been able to screw every possible advantage out of both major parties simultaneously and apparently effortlessly. Israel might be the true undisputed winner in the 2020 election even though it was not on the ballot and was hardly mentioned at all during the campaign.

Jewish billionaires with close ties to Israel have been courted by the two major parties, both to come up with contributions and to urge their friends in the oligarch club and media to also respond favorably. The Democrats’ largest single donor is entertainment mogul Haim Saban while the Republicans rely on casino multi-billionaire Sheldon Adelson. It is estimated that 60% of the political contributions for the Democrats comes from Jewish sources and Saban is the single largest contributor. He is also an Israeli holding dual citizenship. Adelson, who may also hold dual citizenship and is married to an Israeli, is the major supporter of the Republicans, having coughed up more than $100 million in recent elections.

Both Saban and Adelson have not been shy about supporting Israel as their first priority. Saban is on record as supporting Joe Biden “because of his track record on supporting Israel and its alliance with the United States.” Adelson, who was drafted into the U.S. Army in the 1950s, has said that he would much rather have served in the Israel Defense Force. Saban and Adelson are joined in their love fest with Israel by a number of Israel-firsters in Congress and the Administration, all eager to shower unlimited political support, money and weapons on the Jewish state.

In the latest manifestation of noblesse oblige, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper stopped off in Israel last week to present his counterparts with a significant bit of assistance, all funded by the American taxpayer, of course. According to sources in Washington and Jerusalem, the U.S. “will grant Israel direct access to highly classified satellites such as the missile detection birds known as SBIRS and ensure Israel gets critical defense platforms in a very short time by using production slots planned for the U.S armed forces.” Israel will also be given “deeper access to the core avionic systems” of the new F-35 fighter that it has been obtaining from Washington.

The claimed rationale for the upgrade is the Congressionally mandated requirement for the U.S. to maintain Israel’s “qualitative military edge” in light of the impending sale of the F-35 to Arab states that have recently established diplomatic relations with Israel. At the time, Israeli sources were suggesting that the Jewish state might need $8 billion in new military hardware upgrades to maintain its advantage over its neighbors. It is presumed that the American taxpayer will foot the bill, even though there is a serious financial crisis going on in the U.S.

The satellite detection system operates from aerial platforms that are deployed on helicopters. The astute reader will notice that no U.S. security interest is involved in the latest giveaway to Israel. On the contrary, Israel will be receiving material from “production slots planned for the U.S. armed forces,” reducing America’s own ability to detect incoming missiles. And there will also be considerable damage to American defense interests in that Israel will inevitably steal the advanced F-35 technology that they will be given access to, re-engineer it for their own defense industries and sell it to clients in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. They have done so before, selling U.S. developed missile technology to China.

Congress is also doing its bit. A bill, the so-called “U.S.-Israel Common Defense Authorization Act,” is making its way through the House of Representatives and will authorize the provision of U.S. manufactured bunker buster bombs to Israel. As the bombs would only be useful in Israel’s neighborhood to bomb hardened sites in Iran, the message being sent is obvious. The Massive Ordnance Penetrator weighs 30,000 pounds and is capable of destroying targets located deep underground. Oddly, Israel doesn’t have a plane capable of carrying that weight so the presumption is that the White House will also have to provide the bomber. The bill is co-sponsored by two leading Israel firsters in Congress Democrat Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey and Republican Brian Mast of Florida.

Israel is also seeking an upgrade of some of its other fighter aircraft. It reportedly has approached the Pentagon seeking to buy the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor, a single-seat, twin-engine, all-weather stealth tactical fighter aircraft that was originally developed for the United States Air Force (USAF). Its stealth capability, top speed, maneuverability combined with advanced air-to-air and air-to-ground weapon systems, makes it the best air superiority fighter in the world.

Unfortunately for Israel, the F-22 is not currently available and is only operated by the USAF. Current U.S. federal law prohibits the export of the plane to anyone to protect its top secret advanced stealth technology as well as a number of advances in weaponry and situational awareness. But if deference to Israel’s wishes is anything to go by, one might safely bet that the Jewish state will have received approval to acquire the plane by inauguration day in January. And it is a safe bet that Israeli defense contractors will have reverse engineered the stealth and other features soon thereafter.

The U.S. government has been pandering to Israel in other ways, to include labeling, and sanctioning, prominent human rights groups that have criticized the Jewish state as anti-Semitic. It has also strengthened existing sanctions against Iranian financial institutions , reportedly in an attempt to make it more difficult for a President Biden to reinstate the suspended Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that sought to monitor the Iranian nuclear program. The sanctions come on top of other moves to destroy the Iranian economy, to include “…that the U.S., along with Israel, has in recent months carried out sabotage attacks inside Iran, destroying power plants, aluminum and chemical factories, a medical clinic and 7 ships at the port of Bushehr…”

Other recent developments favoring Israel include Congress’s legislating Israeli government veto authority over U.S. sales of weapons to any other Middle Eastern nation. The bill is called “Guaranteeing Israel’s QME [Qualitative Military Edge] Act of 2020” (H.R. 8494). There has also been the expansion by Executive Order of U.S. funded illegal West Bank Jewish settlements’ science development projects that will eventually compete with American companies.

In truth, the United States has become Israel’s bitch and there is hardly a politician or journalist who has the courage to say so. Congress and the media have been so corrupted by money emanating from the Israeli lobby that they cannot do enough to satisfy America’s rulers in Jerusalem. And for those who do not succumb to the money there is always intimidation, career-ending weaponized accusations of holocaust-denial and anti-Semitism. It is all designed to produce one result: whoever wins in American elections doesn’t matter as long as Israel gets what it wants. And it almost always gets what it wants.

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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.

Featured image: Sheldon Adelson, left, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, center, and Adelson’s wife, Miriam (photo by Eyal Warshavsky)

On Sunday, October 11, Mohammad was lying on the road, holding his foot and screaming in pain. “You treat us worse than dogs!” he shouted at the hospital. A twenty-year-old refugee from the province of Homs in Syria he, like so many of his countrymen, had fled the war in an attempt to build a life in Europe. He arrived on the Greek island of Samos, where he has been living for the last thirteen months.

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Mohammad is one of over 2.5 million refugees who since 2015 have been fleeing war, torture and rape—mostly in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq—and making their way to Europe. Many of them used Samos, Lesbos and several other Aegean islands as the gateway, making the short but dangerous crossing from Turkey in ramshackle boats. Initially they were permitted to continue to the Greek mainland and eventually on to Western Europe. However, the 2016 agreement between Turkey and the European Union forced asylum seekers to remain on the islands, turning them into virtual prisons. There they would stay—some of them for years—in abhorrent conditions, living in overcrowded, filthy camps that have been compared to concentration camps.

In the Samos camp, the conditions lead to serious health concerns.

“There are many hygiene-related diseases, such as scabies, lice, bedbugs and skin infections. I also see a lot of patients with mental health issues. They come here having experienced trauma at home, and then the camp conditions exacerbate their difficulties. I see a great deal of depression, anxiety, panic attacks and suicidal ideation,” said Dr. Andre Simpson, a doctor who works on Samos.

Despite the health problems, access to medical care is extremely limited. The single doctor in the camp—responsible for all 4,500 asylum seekers— is so overwhelmed that refugees often spend the night in front of his office in hopes of being seen the following day. For emergencies or to see a specialist they must go the local hospital.

Mohammad had not come from Syria alone. He brought with him two screws that surgeons had inserted into his right foot to repair a gaping hole left by several bullets.

“It looks like they opened up the foot and just stuffed all the bones in there that a foot should have,” said Dr. Simpson, who saw Mohammad’s X-rays on Samos. “It will need to be amputated.”

When Mohammad arrived on Samos, he immediately informed the camp authorities about his foot, but it wasn’t until eleven months later that he was finally able to see a doctor. (At the time, the hospital’s official policy mandated that only one refugee could be seen for every six non-refugees, creating enormous backlogs.)

The pain he had been enduring since the operation became excruciating when he slipped and fell in the camp the previous day. Four of his friends carried him down the steep incline from his tent (there is no stretcher in the camp) to the road, where a policeman agreed to call an ambulance to take him to the local hospital.

Mohammad speaks no English and asked me to translate for him at the hospital, but I was refused entry by the guard. I wondered how the doctors could possibly treat him without being able to communicate with him.

As I waited outside, a Syrian couple arrived. The woman was about to give birth, but the guard told her roughly to wait. She sat down in the street, in obvious pain. Eventually she was allowed to enter, but her husband would have to miss the birth of his child.

After two hours Mohammad emerged from the hospital, carried by his friend.

“They didn’t even look at my foot,” he seethed. “They gave me an injection and a prescription for painkillers. ‘Go! Go!’ they yelled at me. “I can’t take the pain anymore! I’m going to cut my foot off!”

Earlier in the day Mohammad had taken five times the maximum dose of the painkiller diclofenac. The injection in the hospital turned out to be the same drug.

“What they did was highly irresponsible,” said Dr. Simpson. “It is malpractice. The injection could have caused life-threatening kidney failure. All because they didn’t bother trying to talk to him.”

According to Greek law, the Samos hospital’s emergency room cannot turn patients away, but stories abound of it doing precisely the opposite.

“It happens all the time,” said Francois, a young Cameroonian refugee. “They just shout at us and wave us away.” The consequences of this behavior became tragic in June, when a young Ghanaian man died a few hours after being refused entry, complaining of severe headaches.

Many refugees come to Europe because of its reputation as a place where human rights are respected. They are shocked at the treatment they receive, both by the authorities and local residents.

“Nobody cares about our rights here,” Mohammad said. “I was better off in Syria.”

Some of my friends arrived and offered to give him a ride back to the camp. It felt like an absurd gesture, in the face of what had just happened at the hospital and all that he had experienced on Samos, and I was not surprised when he refused. He cursed and limped off slowly in the direction of the camp.

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Prof. Richard Hardigan is a university professor in the United States, whose work has appeared in Al Jazeera, Huffington Post, and other websites. My book, The Other Side of the Wall: An Eyewitness Account of the Occupation in Palestine, was published by Cune Press. My website is richardhardigan.com.

Featured image is from the author

The going narrative in the west is: “Covid is on the Rise – we are entering the second wave – we must protect our people.”

The offered recipe is testing-testing-testing – it is the instrument for increasing “cases”. The more you test, the more cases you have. Is that so difficult to understand? If tomorrow the world stops “testing”, covid is gone. Finito. Back to life. That’s what they don’t want, though. “They”, the higher-ups. Let me call them the diabolical Deep Dark State.

However, testing and the testing results are never analyzed. How many positives are asymptomatic, who are the “positives’, what are their age groups? According to all those doctors around the world who have stepped out of the Matrix and formed associations of medical professionals and related scientists, most of them call themselves Doctors for the Truth, in Germany, Belgium, Spain, France, Switzerland, Austria, Netherlands, Denmark, Peru, the USA and more – more than 80% of the “positives” are asymptomatic, meaning asymptomatic people feel nothing and never get sick.

About ten to fifteen percent have slight to more serious symptoms, but do not need hospitalization – and the rest who may be hospitalized is above 75 or 80 years of age almost all of them with one to several comorbidities. Of those who die, most die from a medical pre-condition – coronary disease, diabetes, cancer – with “tested” covid-19, but not from covid-19.

According to the various associations of Doctors for the Truth, concluded based on their experience, more than 50% of the so-called RT-PCM (Reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction) deliver “false positives”. Of course, the labs, hospitals and doctors who perform them are aware. But they are silenced with a carrot or a stick. And the “false positives” conveniently help drive covid statistics through the roof.

But who would have an interest in that?

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Curiously, very curiously – in the northern hemisphere – also called the Global North- the hundreds of years-old common flu has literally disappeared. From one year to another. We have just entered the season of the common flu, or “influenza”. Fall and winter are typical for the annual flu and cold. But nobody talks about it. Suddenly the flu has evaporated. – No flu statistics. No mainstream media, no coopted doctors, hospitals or Covid Task Force, and, of course, no government officials, especially not those from the sacrosanct Health Authorities, would ever mention the word flu or “influenza”. – Why? They don’t think that We, the people could get the idea. Or do they?

The Second Wave – Peter Koenig and Prof. Michel Chossudovsky from Global Research on Vimeo.

Is it possible that the flu has been adopted, integrated into covid? This is just an innocent question, of course. One ought not to speculate with things that could put authorities in a corner, or worse, imply that they have been lying to the people who elected them, to the very people who pay their salaries.

And why would they do that? Do they have an obscure reason? Someone, something high-high above them, who tells them, all 193 UN nations at once, they have to cheat their people, because these high-high above them, sinister dark un-people have an agenda to implement? Perhaps Bill Gates’ Agenda ID2020, accompanied by WEF’s Klaus Schwab’s “Covid-19 – The Great Reset” (July 2020, available on Amazon and everywhere)?

It is indeed, possible, that governments around the globe have been coopted, by carrot or by stick (to put it benignly), to drive up covid statistics, covid “cases”; and what’s more convenient in the fall-winter season than converting the common flu which in any case, when tested, will show corona viruses. The flu and covid viruses are very-very similar; they are practically undistinguishable in a test.

Ask the doctors who stepped out of the Matrix, the doctors for the truth, virtually all flu viruses contain a proportion of corona viruses, as high as 17% to 20%. So, telling what is what is almost impossible, and even less so, if the mix-up can be favorable for covid – and help drive the covid statistics up and up and up.

But who would be interested in making the pandemic look worse than it already is? Isn’t it, that everybody wants to “flatten the curve”? At least that’s what they said during the first wave. It justified the first lockdown. Why would it be different in the second wave? And yes, we are suddenly in the midst of the second wave. But nobody dares talking again about flattening the curve.

Virtually all governments have assured their people – frankly, we are more subjects, than people for them, subjects that are manipulated with lies and masks and social distancing, separated from their loved ones through senseless quarantines – these potentially resisting subjects, WE, were assured that there will be no second lockdown, that the countries, the world, could not afford a second lockdown. However, gradually but with giant steps, these dictatorial governments, almost all of whom have quietly and without consultation of the people, adopted “Health Emergency Laws” – a close equivalent to Martial Law – have closed all the windows and doors, so that “bang” another lockdown is on the plate. And again, nowhere to escape.

Germany, France, Spain, Belgium, Austria, Portugal, Greece, the UK, and so far, partly Switzerland – have just declared within the last 48 hours a lockdown, or a quasi-lockdown, with curfews and “house arrests” – isolation at home, shop closings, work-from-home rules, and more.  Worse may follow. People take it. Benign protests only. But no steadfast and unrelenting resistance yet.

(French second full lockdown protest, initially until end November 2020 – AP Photo, Daniel Cole). Others governments are weighing in, rather “when” than “if” – they want to take this draconian step, eviscerating the last shred of the remaining economy, and causing detrimental damage to humanity, social damage, from isolation, social distancing – not being able getting together with family and friends. In some countries like Canada, the tyrannical Trudeau government has already announced that this year “Christmas may be cancelled” – meaning, no visits with families and friends. Others may follow suit. Can you imagine!

In a recent interview with RT, Stanford University Professor, medical doctor and President Trump’s Covid advisor, Scott Atlas, called the lockdown policies an “epic failure” and argued they are “killing people,”. Atlas added, “The public-health leadership have failed egregiously, and they’re killing people with their fear-inducing shutdown policies.” And further, “The lockdowns will go down as an epic failure of public policy by people who refuse to accept, they were wrong.”

Atlas then pointed to job losses, rising suicides, rising drug abuse and the harm being done to young people, tying the issues to the Covid-19 restrictions put in place. He referred to a study showing that 25 percent of Americans aged 18 to 24 thought about killing themselves in June “due to the lockdown,” he said. And what’s maybe worse, “We’re creating a generation of neurotic children, forcing them to wear masks and be six feet apart from their friends, or not even have school in person.”

People do not take it! Resist!

France, under President Macron, is already considering a third wave. RT reports, “France’s minister of solidarity and health, Olivier Veran, has said he cannot rule out a third wave of the coronavirus, as the country enters a second national lockdown.

As they battle a new spike in Covid-19 cases, French officials are already concerned about the threat of a third wave. Discussing the situation on France Info radio, Veran told listeners that, due to the severity of the virus and the speed at which it’s spreading, it’s not possible to rule out a third wave, even if the second peak is brought under control.

Defending the government’s decision to implement a second national lockdown, which comes into effect at midnight on Thursday (29 October), Veran claimed that it’s “nobody’s failure,” but said there are challenges with containing the spread, as they are dealing with an “invisible enemy.”

A second wave, worldwide, was already predicted in May 2020 – because those who call the shots on the “innocent” people knew exactly that the flu season will come, as it does every year.

Now, the flu is blended in with covid, mixed up and adding to the dramatic hike of covid “cases”, covid statistics. This and the media hype will create more FEAR, more – or rather – THE justification for a second lockdown – and obedience, yes, the scared are weak and vulnerable, they are manipulable – especially when threatened at the same time with disproportionately huge fines for disobedience. FEAR is the strongest weapon of these tyrants.

The FEAR factor, makes new parents accept that hospitals impose upon them to wear masks when receiving their newborn. Faceless parents, fearsome world. Their newborn and later toddlers and children will know their parents with masks. Facial expressions are hidden.

The child is being isolated in plain sight from their parents.

That’s what this monstrous dictatorship, to which every government of this world is submissive, wants. Alienated children – a generation that grows up in a faceless society.

This is a sinister form of child abuse that may destroy an entire generation.

But that’s what the eugenists behind this covid cum 5G atrocity want – heartless, emotionless people, who may easily become dispensable. The dispensable people – is not a new term. It has been used regularly in the circles of the current US Administration – to designate people who are in their views worthless for society.

This reminds of an infamous Henry Kissinger saying,

“Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.

These words were spoken already in the 1960s, by a eugenist. That’s what Kissinger is, a Rockefeller protégé, sharing his Master’s deepest thoughts, and he is joined by Bill Gates, who doesn’t make a secret of wanting to reduce “drastically” the world population. It would therefore not come as a surprise, if the Great Reset also had in mind reducing food supply.

Even without disrupting food supplies, the poor will have no money to purchase food.

They will enter a painful phase of famine, parents seeing their children starve – and many will succumb to famine, death by famine.

This is the natural consequence of what’s already happening – bankruptcies abound, unemployment rises into unheard dimensions. The International Labor Office (ILO) predicts by end 2020 to mid-2021 that up to half of the world’s workforce may be out of work – most of them in the Global South, where about 70% of labor is “informal”, meaning no social safety nets, no pensions, no unemployment benefits, nothing.

Simultaneously, The World Food Program (WFP) predicts a Famine Pandemic – the consequences of which are far more disastrous than those of the so-called “covid-pandemic”. The WFP reports that today already 821 million people go to bed hungry every night, and an additional 135 million people facing crisis levels of hunger or worse. That means 135 million people on earth are marching towards the brink of starvation.

WFP predicts that Covid-19 will likely add another 130 million, who could be facing starvation by the end of 2020. That’s a total of 265 million people on the brink of death from starvation by the end of 2020. (See this)

The world’s governments – and all 193 UN members participate in one way or another – they are genocidal, since they know exactly what they are doing.

Enter the Great Reset, referred to above. It presents a disaster plan of total destruction – the 4^th Industrial Revolution, based on IT, algorithms, robotism, transferring assets from the bottom to the top, what’s left of them, converting them into an “eco-friendly” way into a new capitalism, painted green, The New Green Deal. Will people fall for it? Propaganda is strong. Propaganda had already started with the 1992 Environmental Conference in Rio (The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), from 3-14 June 1992. This conference set the pace for the climate hype that ensued and to which by now almost the entire world is enslaved, leading to “How Dare You” Greta – and now the New Green Deal.

In this 4^th Industrial age, where robots call the shots, we the surviving people, other than the commanding elite, of course, would become tele-commanded obedient servants, a bit like Aldous Huxley’s futuristic “Brave New World”.

We can resist. Peacefully of course. For example, no more testing. Nobody goes “testing” – and within no time the covid figures would decline. Covid would actually stop. And the common flu, as it does every year, would bother us a bit. But no reason for fear, because there ae plenty of remedies – but NO Vaccines.

We have to peacefully engage in dialogue with the police and military, explain to them what’s at stake – they must understand that they are only the obedient servants of an abject rich elite’s agenda that has nothing to do with protecting public health, that, to the contrary, they are destroying public health and humanity. Police and military are just like us, We, the People. Once this dark sinister elite reached their goal of total control and take-over, police and military will be discarded and replaced by robots. That’s already in the books.

We have to talk to medical personnel in hospitals, clinics and medical practitioners, as well as to teachers from Kindergarten to primary school, all the way to universities – explain to them “sinister plan”- and what it has already done to humanity, to the world’s socioeconomic fabric.

And finally, we have to engage with the numerous country-associations of thousands of medical doctors, virologists, immunologists and other scientists in the bio-medical field, who have stepped out of the matrix and sided with the people, often at the detriment of their careers – and worse.

No more testing – and covid will be gone. And no vaccines.

Only in unison we are strong and can overcome. And overcome we shall.

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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. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

The horrific terrorist attacks in France and the confrontation that erupted between Paris and Ankara has questioned alliances and changed the geopolitical landscape in the East Mediterranean and Africa. Many are calling this a “clash of civilizations” between the liberal secular West, led by France, and reactionary extreme Islamism, led by Turkey.

However, a stronger argument to make is that the confrontation between French President Emmanuel Macron and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is nothing more than a reflection of the ongoing clash for dominance in the East Mediterranean and Africa. Paris and Ankara have their own reasons for camouflaging this confrontation in terms of a cultural and religious conflict rather than a struggle for geopolitical supremacy.

Macron is taking advantage of the justified anger against terrorist attacks perpetrated in France by radical Muslims so that he can galvanize the collective subconscious of Europe. He hopes that this will create the right environment for the imposition of sanctions against Turkey that the EU, particularly Germany, Italy, Spain, Hungary and Malta, have been reluctant to pass despite Ankara’s daily violations of Greek and Cypriot sovereignty.

For his part, Erdoğan is consciously weaponizing a fake “Islamophobia” controversy. He is attempting to boost his reputation in the eyes of the Islamic World as the only leader that dares to challenge France’s neo-colonial policies. However, the Turkish president does this by enacting his very own neo-colonial policies in the East Mediterranean and Africa. At the same time, Erdoğan is challenging any potential sanctions against his country by presenting them as “Christian Europe’s” vengeful response to Muslim Turkey.

Both leaders however bear a corresponding responsibility for the rise of Islamic extremism in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Before Macron was elected, French President Nicolas Sarkozy supported the jihadist invasion of Libya and played a key role in funding al-Qaeda-linked militant groups after the removal of long time Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi. These jihadist groups then expanded into neighboring African countries and even reached as far as Syria in the Middle East. Although Macron may try and wipe his hands clean of the actions of Sarkozy and his successor François Hollande, it must be remembered that it was the current French president who said in a statement on April 14, 2018 that France’s “red line has been crossed,” referring to a chemical weapon attack on Douma that was initially blamed on the Syrian government but then debunked. Macron authorized French strikes to target the Syrian Army, thus once again directly supporting terrorist groups based in the Arab country.

Respectively, Turkey has been for years a supply station and a safe haven for organizations that eventually became the core of ISIS and Al-Nusra. As is often the case, both countries lost control of the extremist organizations they sponsored, with tragic consequences for the peoples of Africa, the Middle East and Europe.

Both Macron and Erdoğan are taking advantage of the volatile security situation in France with absolute cynicism, while at the same time hiding their real responsibility for the rise of Islamic terrorism. Erdoğan says Macron’s agenda is an anti-Islamic crusade, but rather it is a campaign of dismantling Turkish-backed Muslim Brotherhood networks that have existed in France for decades.

The French president will also use this agenda to attack his political opponents too. French Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer even accused left-wing politicians of “ideological synergy” in the terrorist attacks and named at least 50 Muslim groups as “moral perpetrators.” These groups are now threatened with closure by the French authorities.

Macron’s rhetoric is being echoed by a large section of the public that are angry over the horrific slaughter of innocent civilians by terrorists. Besides domestically attacking his opponents, Macron will use this fake notion of a “clash of civilizations” as an opportunity to galvanize EU-wide sanctions against Turkey in the context of his wider rivalry with Erdoğan in the East Mediterranean and Africa. Turkey has been making significant inroads in France’s former colonies in Africa and is rapidly expanding its influence. In fact, Erdoğan  is so emboldened that part of this expansion includes direct support for terrorist organizations outside of France’s former colonies, like Boko Haram in Nigeria and Al-Shabaab in Somalia.

France does not compete with the U.S. or the United Kingdom for influence and economic dominance over its former colonies in Africa. Turkey however has risen to the challenge, portraying itself as an Islamic “anti-colonialist”. However, in the East Mediterranean, Erdoğan is acting unilaterally and akin to 19th century imperial empires in his attempt to extract resources from the continental shelves of Greece and Cyprus, something that has also antagonized the French president. In fact, only yesterday Erdoğan admitted that every Turkish soldier that dies in Syria “means these lands become our own country,” suggesting he is engaging in territorial expansionism.

Both Macron and Erdoğan are engaging in a geopolitical struggle that has only galvanized and increased because of this false notion of a “clash of civilizations.” Rather, both leaders are using this notion to challenge each other as they struggle for dominance over Africa and the East Mediterranean. France, motivated by pan-Europeanism and protecting its corporate oil interests in the East Mediterranean, will continue to challenge Turkey’s efforts to extract resources from the continental shelves of Greece and Cyprus. Macron however will find it difficult to challenge Turkish advances in Africa as Erdoğan is utilizing Islamic solidarity and a persona of challenging French colonialism despite behaving as a traditional empire in the East Mediterranean and Syria.

The French-Turkish rivalry was once a bilateral struggle. But with Turkey encouraging terrorist attacks in France, Erdoğan has effectively forced Europe to strongly back Macron. This will likely lead to the decision to impose sanctions against Turkey in next month’s European Council meeting and Erdoğan has only made it difficult for Germany, Spain, Italy, Hungary and Malta to veto the sanctions.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

No matter which party wins the White House on November 3, one thing is certain: The objective crisis of the system will force the winning political party to be guided by a logic that concludes domestic repression and warmongering abroad are necessary.

From occupied Philadelphia to occupied Palestine, the people in the colonized spaces of empire will find it hard to discern a difference between how Democratic and Republican oppressors treat them. In Philadelphia, Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecutors borrowed a page from the Obama administration’s DOJ playbook. If folks recall, after the Baltimore uprisings in 2015, Obama’s DOJ slapped federal charges on the resisters Obama had referred to as “thugs and criminals.” Just last week, the Trump DOJ swept into Philly and nationalized a local law enforcement by arresting and slapping federal felony charges against four African activists.

So, while the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) takes no official position on the election or on its outcome, we have been consistent as an alliance: We are clear the fight for our people will continue. We do not have the luxury of believing any illusions to the contrary.

That is why the demands we raised as part of our Candidate Accountability Campaign will continue and will anchor our umbrella campaign, No Compromise, No Retreat: Defeat the War Against African/Black People in the U.S. and Abroad.

Those demands include:

• Opposing the militarization of U.S. police through the Department of Defense’s 1033 program
• Stopping Israeli training of U.S. police forces
• Working for the closure of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM)
• Advocating for the closure of 800+ U.S. foreign military bases
• Opposing Trump’s “Operation Relentless Pursuit” and all federal anti-crime measures
• Opposing all military, economic (including sanctions and blockades) and political interventions
• Demanding an end to U.S. participation in the white supremacist NATO structure
• Calling for at least 50% cuts to the U.S. military budget
• Requiring the U.S. Department of Justice document and investigate the use of lethal force by domestic police officers
• Demanding the passage of Congressional resolutions that commit the United States to uphold international law and the U.N. Charter
• Calling on the U.S. Congress to pass legislation and/or resolutions to support the global abolition of nuclear weapons, such as seen with the U.N. Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons

BAP is clear: It is only through the construction of alternative, independent popular power that the suffering caused by the irreversible crisis of the system can be mitigated. We must move to create a new system in which war, militarism and repression are permanently eliminated from the realm of human concerns.

For the exploited, colonized and oppressed, our fate will not be determined on November 3. The U.S. duopoly is incapable of addressing our human needs because the interests of the people and the planet—and the goal of peace—are contrary to the narrow interests both the Democratic and Republican parties are committed to upholding.

Therefore, there will be No Compromise and No Retreat in the face of evil—lesser or otherwise.

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As judged by their public records, Trump and Biden are unfit for the nation’s highest office.

Time and again, both figures showed that they serve privileged interests exclusively at the expense of ordinary people they’re dismissive toward.

It’s how Dem and Republican standard bearers consistently operate, the nation from inception a fantasy democracy, never the real thing.

Its ruling class members run things for their own benefit, most others exploited to serve their interests.

When elections are held, governance of, by, and for everyone equitably is off the ballot.

Same old, same old wins every time, wealth and powerful interests alone served.

This time is no different from any others earlier. The choice for voters is none at all when between the evil of two lessors.

That said, questions about Biden’s cognitive and physical fitness remain unanswered, but speculation is rife about his ability — or lack thereof — to serve in the highest US office.

Numerous US presidents were ill in office, including Trump with covid disease from which he’s reportedly fully recovered.

It’s likely given his marathon campaigning during which he’s shown no visible signs of physical impairment.

Eight former US presidents died in office, four from natural causes. Four others were assassinated.

Former presidents suffered from a range of serious illnesses while in office.

Throughout much of his tenure, George Washington was ill from a long laundry list of health issues, including  influenza, pneumonia, diphtheria, tuberculosis, smallpox, malaria, dysentery, and dental problems, along with visual and hearing impairment.

In 1944, Dem party officials knew Franklin Roosevelt was dying. So did close associates.

Yet he ran for reelection, won for the fourth time, took office in January 1945 and died around three months later in April.

Shortly before his death, Harry

Truman described him as “(p)hysically…going to pieces.”

Six former US presidents were incapacitated in office, including Woodrow Wilson from a severe stroke and Dwight Eisenhower after suffering a heart attack from which he recovered.

Little over a month after taking office, William Henry Harrison passed away in 1841.

Among other health issues, Andrew Jackson suffered from lead poisoning, Lincoln from smallpox, Grover Cleveland from cancer, Harding from congestive heart failure, Jack Kennedy from numerous illnesses.

Hospitalized over three dozen times when alive, JFK was given last rites three times.

Biden’s physical and cognitive health are matters of concern. Even WaPo last March said the following:

“It’s fair to speculate whether Biden is mentally fit to be president.”

If elected, he’ll be age-78 when taking office, his birthday on November 20.

He’ll be older than Ronald Reagan on the day he left office.

“There’s plenty of cause for concern” about whether Biden is able to handle the rigors of high office, said WaPo prior to his nomination as Dem standard bearer.

He’s made numerous misstatements while campaigning.

Earlier he said “I think we can win back the House” now controlled by Dems. He called Super Tuesday “Super Thursday.”

Campaigning earlier in South Carolina, he said:

“My name’s Joe Biden. I’m a (Dem) candidate for the United States Senate.”

Twice he confused Trump with GW Bush as his challenger for the White House.

Time and again, he’s been factually incorrect in explaining what he was involved in earlier, requiring damage control corrections from staff.

He falsely claimed to have worked with China’s Deng Xiaoping on the 2016 Paris Climate Accord. Deng died in 1997.

He claimed that “150 million people have been killed (by guns) since 2007” in the US — his false figure about 45% of the nation’s 330 million population.

He said Dems should “choose truth over facts.” Often he’s unsure what state he’s in.

He falsely called his late son Beau “the attorney general of the United States.”

He confused former UK Prime Minister Theresa May with Margaret Thatcher.

Most everyone makes gaffes at times and occasionally is forgetful. It’s part of the human condition.

For Biden, it happens repeatedly in public remarks. In August 2019, WaPo columnist Dana Millbank called him a “gaffe machine.”

In New Hampshire last year, he said: “What’s not to like about Vermont?”

He falsely said “Bobby Kennedy and Dr. King had been assassinated in the ’70s.”

Along with JFK in 1963, RFK and MLK were victims of state-sponsored assassinations in 1968.

While campaigning, Biden said “poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.”

He falsely said mass-shootings in El Paso and Dayton occurred in Houston and Michigan.

He mistook the Second Amendment for the First one.

He called Obama “the first African American in the history of the United States.”

He once introduced Obama as his “Barack America” running-mate.

He also called him “the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean.”

He claimed Franklin Roosevelt appeared on television in 1929, long before it existed.

The gaffe list goes on endlessly. One thing about Biden is sure.

When unscripted — and even the other way around — when speaking publicly, it’s uncertain what he’ll say, mean, or understand.

Age isn’t the issue. It’s Biden’s physical and mental ability to handle the nation’s highest office, a condition that can be sound or impaired at any age.

After 1988 surgery for a brain aneurysm and pulmonary thrombosis, signs of Biden’s deterioration began appearing.

He’s not physically and mentally what he used to be long ago.

Yet what should be publicly explained is kept under wraps.

In public, he exhibited visible hand and body tremors that are common symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease.

His handwriting is smaller than in earlier years. His frequent misstatements, confusion, and flawed memory are cognitive impairment symptoms.

If elected to succeed Trump, will running-mate Kamala Harris take over as president before end of his term in office?

They’re both tainted by considerable baggage, she notably by a disturbing prosecutorial and political history.

As Alameda County CA assistant DA, San Francisco DA, and California state AG, she blocked exculpatory evidence, defended unconstitutional practices, and prevented prosecution of wealthy individuals.

Loyola Law School Project for the Innocent in Los Angeles/Law Professor Lara Bazelon explained that when urged to embrace criminal justice reforms as a district attorney and then (as) state’s attorney general, (Harris) opposed them or stayed silent,” adding:

She “fought tooth and nail to uphold wrongful convictions that had been secured through official misconduct that included evidence tampering, false testimony and the suppression of crucial information by prosecutors.”

Given Biden’s uncertain physical and cognitive state, electing him on Tuesday may elevate Harris to the nation’s highest office — a figure whose public record shows consistent support for privileged interests exclusively and injustice over the other way around.

Whatever presidential and congressional race results on Tuesday, wealth, power, and privilege will benefit exclusively like most always before.

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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.

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”—George Orwell

The American people remain eager to be persuaded that a new president in the White House can solve the problems that plague us.

Yet no matter who wins this presidential election, you can rest assured that the new boss will be the same as the old boss, and we—the permanent underclass in America—will continue to be forced to march in lockstep with the police state in all matters, public and private.

Indeed, it really doesn’t matter what you call them—the Deep State, the 1%, the elite, the controllers, the masterminds, the shadow government, the police state, the surveillance state, the military industrial complex—so long as you understand that no matter which party occupies the White House in 2021, the unelected bureaucracy that actually calls the shots will continue to do so.

In the interest of liberty and truth, here are a few hard truths about life in the American police state that will persist no matter who wins the 2020 presidential election. Indeed, these issues persisted—and in many cases flourished—under both Republican and Democratic administrations in recent years.

Police militarization will continue. Thanks to federal grant programs allowing the Pentagon to transfer surplus military supplies and weapons to local law enforcement agencies without charge, police forces will continue to be transformed from peace officers to heavily armed extensions of the military, complete with jackboots, helmets, shields, batons, pepper-spray, stun guns, assault rifles, body armor, miniature tanks and weaponized drones. “Today, 17,000 local police forces are equipped with such military equipment as Blackhawk helicopters, machine guns, grenade launchers, battering rams, explosives, chemical sprays, body armor, night vision, rappelling gear and armored vehicles,” stated Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury. “Some have tanks.”

Overcriminalization will continue. In the face of a government bureaucracy consumed with churning out laws, statutes, codes and regulations that reinforce its powers and value systems and those of the police state and its corporate allies, we will all continue to be viewed as petty criminals, guilty of violating some minor law. Thanks to an overabundance of 4,500-plus federal crimes and 400,000-plus rules and regulations, it is estimated that the average American actually commits three felonies a day without knowing it. In fact, according to law professor John Baker, “There is no one in the United States over the age of 18 who cannot be indicted for some federal crime.” Consequently, we now find ourselves operating in a strange new world where small farmers who dare to make unpasteurized goat cheese and share it with members of their community are finding their farms raided, while home gardeners face jail time for daring to cultivate their own varieties of orchids without having completed sufficient paperwork. This frightening state of affairs—where a person can actually be arrested and incarcerated for the most innocent and inane activities, including feeding a whale and collecting rainwater on their own property—is due to what law scholars refer to as overcriminalization.

Jailing Americans for profit will continue. At one time, the American penal system operated under the idea that dangerous criminals needed to be put under lock and key in order to protect society. Today, as states attempt to save money by outsourcing prisons to private corporations, imprisoning Americans in private prisons run by mega-corporations has turned into a cash cow for big business. In exchange for corporations buying and managing public prisons across the country at a supposed savings to the states, the states have to agree to maintain a 90% occupancy rate in the privately run prisons for at least 20 years. Such a scheme simply encourages incarceration for the sake of profits, while causing millions of Americans, most of them minor, nonviolent criminals, to be handed over to corporations for lengthy prison sentences which do nothing to protect society or prevent recidivism. Thus, although the number of violent crimes in the country is down substantially, the number of Americans being jailed for nonviolent crimes such as driving with a suspended license is skyrocketing.

Poverty will continue. Despite the fact that we have 46 million Americans living at or below the poverty line, 16 million children living in households without adequate access to food, and at least 900,000 veterans relying on food stamps (mind you, these are pre-COVID numbers, which have only got worse during this pandemic), enormous sums continue to be doled out for presidential excursions (taxpayers have been forced to pay at least $100 million so that Donald Trump could visit his golf clubs and private properties more than 500 times during his four years in office).

Endless wars that enrich the military industrial complex will continue. Having been co-opted by greedy defense contractors, corrupt politicians and incompetent government officials, America’s expanding military empire is bleeding the country dry at a rate of more than $15 billion a month (or $20 million an hour)—and that’s just what the government spends on foreign wars. That does not include the cost of maintaining and staffing the 1000-plus U.S. military bases spread around the globe. Incredibly, although the U.S. constitutes only 5% of the world’s population, America boasts almost 50% of the world’s total military expenditure, spending more on the military than the next 19 biggest spending nations combined. In fact, the Pentagon spends more on war than all 50 states combined spend on health, education, welfare, and safety. Yet what most Americans fail to recognize is that these ongoing wars have little to do with keeping the country safe and everything to do with enriching the military industrial complex at taxpayer expense. Consider that since 2001, Americans have spent $10.5 million every hour for numerous foreign military occupations, including in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Police shootings of unarmed Americans will continue. No matter what our party politics, race, religion, or any other distinction used to divide us, we all suffer when violence becomes the government’s calling card. Remember, in a police state, you’re either the one with your hand on the trigger or you’re staring down the barrel of a loaded gun. At least 400 to 500 innocent people are killed by police officers every year. Indeed, Americans are now eight times more likely to die in a police confrontation than they are to be killed by a terrorist. Americans are 110 times more likely to die of foodborne illness than in a terrorist attack. Police officers are more likely to be struck by lightning than be made financially liable for their wrongdoing. As a result, Americans are largely powerless in the face of militarized police.

SWAT team raids will continue.  More than 80,000 SWAT team raids are carried out every year on unsuspecting Americans for relatively routine police matters. Nationwide, SWAT teams have been employed to address an astonishingly trivial array of criminal activity or mere community nuisances including angry dogs, domestic disputes, improper paperwork filed by an orchid farmer, and misdemeanor marijuana possession, to give a brief sampling. On an average day in America, over 100 Americans have their homes raided by SWAT teams. There has been a notable buildup in recent years of SWAT teams within non-security-related federal agencies such as the Department of Agriculture, the Railroad Retirement Board, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Office of Personnel Management, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Education Department.

The government’s war on the American people will continue.  “We the people” are no longer shielded by the rule of law. While the First Amendment—which gives us a voice—is being muzzled, the Fourth Amendment—which protects us from being bullied, badgered, beaten, broken and spied on by government agents—is being disemboweled. Consequently, you no longer have to be poor, black or guilty to be treated like a criminal in America. All that is required is that you belong to the suspect class—that is, the citizenry—of the American police state. As a de facto member of this so-called criminal class, every U.S. citizen is now guilty until proven innocent. The oppression and injustice—be it in the form of shootings, surveillance, fines, asset forfeiture, prison terms, roadside searches, and so on—will come to all of us eventually unless we do something to stop it now.

Government corruption will continue.  The government is not our friend. Nor does it work for “we the people.” Americans instinctively understand this. When asked to name the greatest problem facing the nation, Americans of all political stripes ranked the government as the number one concern. In fact, almost eight out of ten Americans believe that government corruption is widespread. Our so-called government representatives do not actually represent us, the citizenry. We are now ruled by an oligarchic elite of governmental and corporate interests whose main interest is in perpetuating power and control. Congress is dominated by a majority of millionaires who are, on average, fourteen times wealthier than the average American.

The rise of the surveillance state will continue. Government eyes are watching you. They see your every move: what you read, how much you spend, where you go, with whom you interact, when you wake up in the morning, what you’re watching on television and reading on the internet. Every move you make is being monitored, mined for data, crunched, and tabulated in order to form a picture of who you are, what makes you tick, and how best to control you when and if it becomes necessary to bring you in line. Police have been outfitted with a litany of surveillance gear, from license plate readers and cell phone tracking devices to biometric data recorders. Technology now makes it possible for the police to scan passersby in order to detect the contents of their pockets, purses, briefcases, etc. Full-body scanners, which perform virtual strip-searches of Americans traveling by plane, have gone mobile, with roving police vans that peer into vehicles and buildings alike—including homes. Coupled with the nation’s growing network of real-time surveillance cameras and facial recognition software, soon there really will be nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

The erection of a suspect society will continue. Due in large part to rapid advances in technology and a heightened surveillance culture, the burden of proof has been shifted so that the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty has been usurped by a new norm in which all citizens are suspects. This is exemplified by police practices of stopping and frisking people who are merely walking down the street and where there is no evidence of wrongdoing. Making matters worse are Terrorism Liaison Officers (firefighters, police officers, and even corporate employees) who have been trained to spy on their fellow citizens and report “suspicious activity,” which includes taking pictures with no apparent aesthetic value, making measurements and drawings, taking notes, conversing in code, espousing radical beliefs and buying items in bulk. TLOs report back to “fusion centers,” which are a driving force behind the government’s quest to collect, analyze, and disseminate information on American citizens.

Government tyranny under the reign of an Imperial President will continue. The Constitution invests the President with very specific, limited powers: to serve as Commander in Chief of the military, grant pardons, make treaties (with the approval of Congress), appoint ambassadors and federal judges (again with Congress’ blessing), and veto legislation. In recent years, however, American presidents have anointed themselves with the power to wage war, unilaterally kill Americans, torture prisoners, strip citizens of their rights, arrest and detain citizens indefinitely, carry out warrantless spying on Americans, and erect their own secretive, shadow government. The powers amassed by each past president and inherited by each successive president—powers which add up to a toolbox of terror for an imperial ruler—empower whomever occupies the Oval Office to act as a dictator, above the law and beyond any real accountability. The grim reality we must come to terms with is the fact that the government does whatever it wants, freedom be damned. More than terrorism, more than domestic extremism, more than gun violence and organized crime, the U.S. government has become a greater menace to the life, liberty and property of its citizens than any of the so-called dangers from which the government claims to protect us. This state of affairs has become the status quo, no matter which party is in power.

The government’s manipulation of national crises in order to expand its powers will continue. “We the people” have been the subjected to an “emergency state” that justifies all manner of government tyranny and power grabs in the so-called name of national security. Whatever the so-called threat to the nation—whether it’s civil unrest, school shootings, alleged acts of terrorism, or the threat of a global pandemic in the case of COVID-19—the government has a tendency to capitalize on the nation’s heightened emotions, confusion and fear as a means of extending the reach of the police state. Indeed, the government’s answer to every problem continues to be more government—at taxpayer expense—and less individual liberty.

The bottom line is this: nothing taking place on Election Day will alleviate the suffering of the American people. Unless we do something more than vote, the government as we have come to know it—corrupt, bloated and controlled by big-money corporations, lobbyists and special interest groups—will remain unchanged. And “we the people”—overtaxed, overpoliced, overburdened by big government, underrepresented by those who should speak for us and blissfully ignorant of the prison walls closing in on us—will continue to trudge along a path of misery.

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, these problems will continue to plague our nation unless and until Americans wake up to the fact that we’re the only ones who can change things for the better and then do something about it. If there is to be any hope of restoring our freedoms and reclaiming control over our government, it will rest not with the politicians but with the people themselves.

After all, Indeed, the Constitution opens with those three vital words, “We the people.”

What the founders wanted us to understand is that we are the government.

There is no government without us—our sheer numbers, our muscle, our economy, our physical presence in this land. There can also be no police state—no tyranny—no routine violations of our rights without our complicity and collusion—without our turning a blind eye, shrugging our shoulders, allowing ourselves to be distracted and our civic awareness diluted.

No matter which candidate wins this election, the citizenry and those who represent us need to be held accountable to this powerful truth.

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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].

It’s an oxymoron with a long history: American democracy.  In referring to the United States, it does not exist.  Nor does it take a follower of refrigerated communism to note the obvious point that democracy plays a small part in the processes of the US political system. It is a republic, with all the glorious, problematic and deep seated problems that term implies.  Factions are held in check; neither must get too powerful.  To ensure political, propertied stability, the worst side of human nature is to be guarded against.  One way lies the rule of the mob; the other, the tyrant. 

The conservative Heritage Foundation, in a report published in June 2020, reiterates the point.  “America is a republic.”  It was never meant to be a “pure democracy”.  Issue is taken with various non-republican solutions which are becoming popular: Congressional-term limits; abandoning the Senatorial filibuster; inflating the number of Supreme Court justices; “developing more effective and immediate ways to express the will of the majority”.

One initiative intended to shore up the democratic deficit has come in the proposal to circumvent or abolish the Electoral College, an idea that captured the imaginations of Senators Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y) in April last year.  The Electoral College damns numerical voting majorities in favour of overly weighted college votes.  The US republic has witnessed five instances when the popular vote did not carry the day: 2016, 2000, 1888, 1876 and 1824.

In introducing a constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College system, Senator Schatz suggested that “the person who gets the most votes should win.  It’s that simple.”  For Senator Durbin, “the Electoral College is a relic from a shameful period in our nation’s history, and allows some votes to carry greater weight than others.”

The issue of making elections more direct to popular voice is a debate worth having.  But it is hard to imagine these senators being as enthusiastic to such reform had Hillary Clinton won the 2016 election for their party. 

The creation of the US republic – by white, privileged land owners fearful of either a return to monarchy or the usurpation of democratic impulse – suggested the need for containment, neutralisation, the levelling out of factional interest.  Extol the virtues of human nature; but ensure that such nature be contained by such doctrines as the separation of power.  As James Madison wrote in the tenth essay of the Federalist Papers (1787), “Among the numerous advantages promised by a well-constructed Union none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction.”  

Such a background is instructive in debunking the false option available to US voters on November 3.  One recurring theme here is that of democracy versus Trump.  This was always a false opposition, and continues the libel against his supporters perpetrated with disastrous import by Hillary Clinton.  (Never forget “the basket of deplorables”.)  In the initial days after the 2016 presidential election, there were voices to be heard in San Francisco’s Castro District calling, not for more democracy but less: the disenfranchisement of ignorant voters who could let such a man have the keys to the White House.  Early on, the seeds of the Russia canard was also sown, an attempt by a traumatised establishment to suggest that the man in the White House was nothing more than a puppet of the Kremlin.  All of this served, at least for the Democrats and Trump’s critics, to distract from the weaknesses and problems that had imperilled their own political position.  Losses can always be explained away by exogenous cause, a method of deflection Trump knows all too well.

During Trump’s time in office, the spectre of tyranny has not been realised.  It was predicted by some conservatives and those of more progressive bent in the initial days of the presidency.  Yes, the president has fiddled and courted external powers to assist his political efforts; attacked the fourth estate; mocked science and its high priests as a pandemic rages; embraced the odd conspiracy theory on the way; tampered with appointments.  He has brought Twitter and Fox News into the White House.  Reality television has become staple in a presidency that has, at times, resembled a grotesque caricature of power rather than power itself.  But for all that, the optimistic might have much to say that the Republic, despite ailing, still has some fight in it.

This has not stopped commentary from the presidium of talking heads warning about Trump as the anti-democratic, even totalitarian figure, suggesting that a vote for Joe Biden is somehow more democratic, more decent and enlightened.  On the eve of the US election, we have scholars of authoritarianism and fascism signing a letter with a less than subtle allusion to the president that democracy “is either withering or in full-scale collapse globally”.  The scholars lament the passing of a golden era “in the years following the end of the Cold War,” when “democracy appeared to be flourishing everywhere”. 

It does not make much time for the signers of the letter to get to the president.  “Whether Donald J. Trump is a fascist, post-fascist populist, an autocrat, or just a bumbling opportunist, the danger to democracy did not arrive with his presidency and goes well beyond November 3^rd, 2020.”  It is admirable for the signatories to take the long view, though such language can come across as silly.  For one, the scholars, having been so caught up with seeing authoritarianism everywhere, have probably neglected to identify the content of democracy with any precision.  There is also surely a vast difference between terms such as “fascist” and a “bumbling opportunist” but labels in the academe can start to clot the mix of reason after a time.

In such cases, it becomes easy to adopt a didactic tone of warning.  Mark Kenny of the Australian National University’s Australian Studies Institute does just that, taking aim at the US voter.  “A decisive rejection of Trumpism offers national redemption.  His re-election, the opposite.  In 2020, there will be no innocence and no buyer’s remorse.”  The problem, as always with such assessments of Trump, is that this president was not responsible for the US republic’s banishment from Eden.  There was never any innocence to take in the first place.

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

Tourism, which is the third largest export sector in the global economy, is among the worst impacted sectors by the global pandemic. According to the research data analyzed and gathered by StockApps.com, international tourist numbers in 2020 could decline by 58% to 78%.

In that scenario, visitor spending could plummet from the 2019 figure of $1.5 trillion to between $310 billion and $570 billion in 2020. It would translate to a loss of $910 billion to $1.2 trillion in tourism exports.

Não é o Covid, mas a notícia passou quase desapercebida: o Japão descarregará no mar mais de um milhão de toneladas de água radioactiva da central nuclear de Fukushima.

O acidente catastrófico de Fukushima foi provocado pelo tsunami que, em 11 de Março de 2011, atingiu a costa nordeste do Japão, submergindo a central e provocando a fusão dos núcleos de três reactores nucleares. A central foi construída na costa somente a 4 metros acima do nível do mar, com diques de protecção de 5 metros de altura, numa área sujeita a tsunami com ondas de 10-15 metros de altura. Além do mais, houve sérias deficiências no controlo das centrais efectuado pela Tepco, a empresa privada que administra a central: no  momento do tsunami, os dispositivos de segurança não entraram em funcionamento.

Para arrefecer o combustível derrretido, foi bombeada água pelos reactores durante anos. A água, que ficou radioactiva, foi armazenada dentro da central em mais de mil tanques enormes, acumulando 1.23 milhões de toneladas. A Tepco está a construir outros tanques mas, em meados de 2022, também estarão cheios.

Devendo continuar a bombear água nos reactores derretidos, a Tepco, de acordo com o governo, decidiu descarregar no mar a água acumulada até agora, depois de tê-la filtrado para torná-la menos radioactiva (porém não se sabe até que ponto) por meio de um processo que durará 30 anos. Também há lodo radioactivo acumulado nos filtros da central de descontaminação e grandes quantidades de solo e outros materiais radioactivos armazenados em milhares de barris de betão.

Como admitiu a própria Tepco, é particularmente grave a fusão ocorrida no reactor 3 carregado com Mox, uma mistura de óxidos de urânio e plutónio, muito mais instável e radioactiva. O Mox para este e outros reactores japoneses foi produzido em França, utilizando escórias nucleares enviadas do Japão.

A organização Greenpeace denunciou os perigos derivados do transporte deste combustível de plutónio ao longo de dezenas de milhares de quilómetros. Denunciou, igualmente, que o Mox favorece a proliferação de armas nucleares, pois o plutónio pode ser extraído com mais facilidade e, no ciclo de exploração do urânio, não há uma linha divisória nítida entre o uso civil e o uso militar do material físsil.

Já se acumularam no mundo (segundo estimativas de 2015), cerca de 240 toneladas de plutónio para uso militar directo e 2.400 toneladas para uso civil com as quais podem ser produzidas armas nucleares, além de cerca de 1.400 toneladas de urânio altamente enriquecido para uso militar.

Bastariam algumas centenas de quilos de plutónio para provocar cancro do pulmão aos 7,7 biliões de habitantes do planeta, e o plutónio permanece letal durante um período correspondente a quase dez mil gerações humanas. Acumulou-se assim um potencial destrutivo capaz de, pela primeira vez na História, fazer desaparecer a espécie humana da face da Terra.

Os bombardeamentos nucleares de Hiroshima e Nagasaki; mais de 2.000 explosões nucleares experimentais na atmosfera, no mar e no subsolo; o fabrico de ogivas nucleares com potência equivalente a mais de um milhão de bombas de Hiroshima; os inúmeros acidentes com armas nucleares e os acidentes ocorridos em centrais nucleares civis e militares, tudo isto provocou uma contaminação radioactiva que afectou centenas de milhões de pessoas.

Uma parte de cerca de 10 milhões de mortes anuais por cancro em todo o mundo – documentadas pela OMS – é atribuída aos efeitos a longo prazo da radiação. Em dez meses – novamente de acordo com dados da Organização Mundial de Saúde – o Covid-19 causou cerca de 1.2 milhões de mortes em todo o mundo. Perigo a não subestimar, mas que não justifica o facto dos meios de comunicação mediática, em especial a televisão, não terem informado que mais de um milhão de toneladas de água radioactiva serão descarregadas no mar da central nuclear de Fukushima, resultando que, ao entrar na cadeia alimentar, aumentará ainda mais as mortes por cancro.

Manlio Dinucci

il manifesto, 03 de Novembro de 2020

Artigo original em italiano :

Fukushima, dilaga la pandemia nucleare

ilmanifesto.it

Tradutora: Maria Luísa de Vasconcellos

 

GUERRA NUCLEAR: O DIA ANTERIOR

De Hiroshima até hoje: Quem e como nos conduzem à catástrofe

FREE PDF

Manlio Dinucci : Geógrafo, jornalista e geopolitólogo. Livros mais recentes: Laboratorio di geografia, Zanichelli 2014 ; Diario di viaggio, Zanichelli 2017 ; L’arte della guerra / Annali della strategia Usa/Nato 1990-2016, Zambon 2016, Guerra Nucleare. Il Giorno Prima 2017; Diario di guerra Asterios Editores 2018; Premio internazionale per l’analisi geostrategica atribuído em 7 de Junho de 2019, pelo Club dei giornalisti del Messico, A.C.

 

Foto: Una parte degli oltre mille serbatoi pieni di acqua radioattiva, accumulati nella centrale nucleare di Fukushima. 

Non è Covid, per cui la notizia è passata quasi inosservata: il Giappone scaricherà in mare oltre un milione di tonnellate di acqua radioattiva dalla centrale nucleare di Fukushima.

Il catastrofico incidente di Fukushima fu innescato dallo tsunami che, l’11 marzo 2011, investì la costa nord-orientale del Giappone, sommergendo la centrale e provocando la fusione dei noccioli di tre reattori nucleari.

La centrale era stata costruita sulla costa appena 4 metri sul livello del mare, con dighe frangiflutti alte 5 metri, in una zona soggetta a tsunami con onde alte 10-15 metri. Per di più vi erano state gravi mancanze nel controllo degli impianti da parte della Tepco, la società privata di gestione della centrale: al momento dello tsunami, i dispositivi di sicurezza non erano entrati in funzione.

Per raffreddare il combustibile fuso, è stata per anni pompata acqua attraverso i reattori. L’acqua, divenuta radioattiva, è stata stoccata all’interno della centrale in oltre mille grandi serbatoi, accumulandone 1,23 milioni di tonnellate. La Tepco sta costruendo altri serbatoi, ma a metà del 2022 anch’essi saranno pieni.

Dovendo continuare a pompare acqua nei reattori fusi, la Tepco, in accordo col governo, ha deciso di scaricare in mare quella finora accumulata, dopo averla filtrata per renderla meno radioattiva (non si sa però in quale misura) con un processo che durerà 30 anni.

Vi sono inoltre i fanghi radioattivi accumulatisi nei filtri dell’impianto di decontaminazione, stoccati in migliaia di container, ed enormi quantità di suolo e altri materiali radioattivi.

Come ha ammesso la stessa Tepco, particolarmente grave è la fusione avvenuta nel reattore 3 caricato con Mox, un misto di ossidi di uranio e plutonio, molto più instabile e radioattivo. Il Mox per questo e altri reattori giapponesi è stato prodotto in Francia, utilizzando scorie nucleari inviate dal Giappone.

Greenpeace ha denunciato i pericoli derivanti dal trasporto di questo combustibile al plutonio per decine di migliaia di chilometri. Ha denunciato inoltre che il Mox favorisce la proliferazione delle armi nucleari, poiché se ne può estrarre più facilmente plutonio e, nel ciclo di sfruttamento dell’uranio, non esiste una netta linea di demarcazione tra uso civile e uso militare del materiale fissile.

Si sono accumulate finora nel mondo (secondo stime del 2015) circa 240 tonnellate di plutonio per uso militare diretto e 2.400 tonnellate per uso civile, con cui si possono però produrre armi nucleari, più circa 1.400 tonnellate di uranio altamente arricchito per uso militare.

Basterebbero poche centinaia di chilogrammi di plutonio a provocare il cancro ai polmoni ai 7,7 miliardi di abitanti del pianeta, e il plutonio resta letale per un periodo corrispondente a quasi diecimila generazioni umane.

Si è così accumulato un potenziale distruttivo in grado, per la prima volta nella storia, di far scomparire la specie umana dalla faccia della Terra.

I bombardamenti nucleari di Hiroshima e Nagasaki; le oltre 2.000 esplosioni nucleari sperimentali nell’atmosfera, in mare e sottoterra; la fabbricazione di testate nucleari con una potenza equivalente a oltre un milione di bombe di Hiroshima; i numerosi incidenti con armi nucleari e quelli ad impianti nucleari civili e militari, tutto questo ha provocato una contaminazione radioattiva che ha colpito centinaia di milioni di persone.

Una parte dei circa 10 milioni annui di morti per cancro nel mondo – documentati dall’Oms – è attribuibile agli effetti a lungo termine delle radiazioni. In dieci mesi, sempre secondo i dati dell’Organizzazione mondiale della sanità, il Covid-19 ha provocato nel mondo circa 1,2 milioni di morti.

Pericolo da non sottovalutare, ma che non giustifica il fatto che i mass media, in particolare quelli televisivi, non abbiano informato che oltre un milione di tonnellate di acqua radioattiva sarà scaricata in mare dalla centrale nucleare di Fukushima, col risultato che, entrando nella catena alimentare, farà ulteriormente aumentare le morti per cancro.

Manlio Dinucci

(il manifesto, 3 novembre 2020)

If the Deep State Wants Biden to Win, He Will

By Lauren Smith, November 02 2020

Open Letter to the COVID-Corrupted Media. Non-stop Reporting, Alarming and Fearmongering

By Peter Koenig, November 01 2020

Freedom of speech on the Internet is all but extinct, and on the eve of the 2020 US elections, a de facto “free speech court” is going to make sure it never comes back. On Facebook at least.

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Days away from the most polarized electoral contest in American history, social media companies like Facebook have vowed to censor any voices which they and their partners in the federal government consider inconvenient. According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook is ready to implement election information strategies that have been in the works for years.

Company spokesman Andy Stone told the WSJ that the social media giant will be applying the “lessons” learned from previous elections in accordance with the designs of “hired experts” and vague references to “new teams,” who are leveraging their “experience across different areas to prepare for various scenarios.”

Mark Zuckerberg’s de facto monopoly over online peer-to-peer communication tools has given Facebook an inordinate amount of influence over the political narratives at both national and regional levels, which it has shown a willingness exercise with topics like the Philippines and Palestine.

Last week, the company took a major step in solidifying its grip over the content purveyed on its platform with the official launch of the Facebook Oversight board. A body that is to function like a ‘Supreme Court’ for chat rooms, if you will, with the power to review any decisions regarding post removals or deplatforming and to make policy recommendations. Members have been drawn from “law experts… rights advocates” and journalists from around the world. The oversight board currently boasts 20 members.

Four members – two of which have extensive experience in the U.S. judicial system – serve as the board’s co-chairs and were handpicked by Facebook, according to The Guardian. Other board members include former Danish prime minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, who is also a co-chair and is perhaps only remembered outside of Denmark for her selfie faux pas at Mandela’s funeral in 2013 when she was photographed taking a group photo with Barack Obama and David Cameron during the commemoration.

Judges of little character

Thorning-Schmidt’s insensitive moment at the laying-in-state of one of the most significant figures of the 20th century may be less damning to her presence on a social media oversight board than the tax-evasion scandal involving her husband – a British MP –, which ended up costing her re-election. When confronted over the accusations, she retorted that if her intention had really been to evade taxes, she would have done so “much more elegantly.” Despite these questionable instances and her reputation as an “extravagant” woman with expensive tastes, Thorning-Schmidt remains among the least objectionable figures on the oversight board.

Emi Palmor, for example, presents a much more alarming profile. One of 16 non-chair members of the board, Palmor is a former General Director of the Israeli Ministry of Justice, she was directly responsible for the removal of tens of thousands of Palestinian posts from Facebook. Before being fired from that job, Palmor had created the so-called “Internet Referral Unit” at the ministry; a cybersecurity team that deliberately targeted and took down the aforementioned content, and whose nomination to the Facebook oversight board was loudly protested by pro-Palestinian advocacy groups back in May.

Palmor posing with Israeli Prime Ministers Benjamin Netanyahu in 2016. Photo | Israeli Government Press Office

Inviting a literal state censor from a country with such an atrocious record of oppression and overt ethnic cleansing policies to serve in a supervisory role at one of the largest content networks in the world, should be reason enough for concern. Perhaps, even reason enough to call for the board’s dissolution given that such an egregious choice of personnel reveals an unacceptable political bias in an ostensibly impartial quasi-judicial body.

A clear agenda

A look at the other co-chairs on the oversight board leaves no doubt as to which interests Facebook intends to further through its sham social media traffic court. It might not be a surprise to learn that an American company would tap American legal minds to form part of a dispute resolution body, as Jamal Greene, an oversight board co-chair, describes it.

Greene is a Dwight Professor of Law Columbia Law School who served as an aide to Sen. Kamala Harris during the highly-controversial Senate confirmation hearings of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Prior to this, he was a law clerk for late Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who wrote the 1997 Internet decency controls decision that shot down legislation that sought to regulate online speech. An auspicious sign, perhaps, but tempered by Steven’s own pragmatist views on free speech, leaving the door open to context when protecting the “public interest” surrounding the first amendment.

Sitting alongside Greene and Helle Thorning-Schmidt on the oversight board’s co-chairmanship is Michael McConnell; a constitutional law scholar who served seven years as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit court. McConnell wrote the dissenting opinion in the seminal “Ten Commandments” case, which centered around the government’s authority to decide which monuments can be erected in a public park.

Judge McConnell, who has been floated as a potential Supreme Court nominee more than once and is “highly regarded for his writing on church-state law,” argued in favor of the government’s discretionary powers, claiming that private donations to public facilities – like the ten commandments monument in a public park in Utah, that spurred the case – became “government speech” and, therefore within the purview of governmental authority.

Rounding out the co-chair suite is Catalina Botero Marino, a Colombian attorney and former special rapporteur for freedom of expression at the Organization of American States (OAS); an organization well-known for being Washington’s mouthpiece for D.C.-aligned policy in Latin America.

Botero expressed her position on the very topic she will be dealing with first-hand in her new position as co-chair of the Facebook oversight board in a 2019 paper titled “Towards an Internet Free of Censorship: standards, contexts, and lessons from the Inter-American Human Rights System.” In it, Botero reveals why she was tapped to join the make-shift panel of social media judges when she defines freedom of expression as “individual and collective self-government” and highlights her “utmost concern” over the “deliberately false circulation of information, created and put into circulation with the purpose of deceiving the public” in electoral processes.

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Raul Diego is a MintPress News Staff Writer, independent photojournalist, researcher, writer and documentary filmmaker.

Featured image: Graphic by MintPress News

“Djab Wurrung women are in an abusive relationship with Victoria’s government.” – Sissy Eileen Austin, The Guardian, Sep 14, 2019

It was a penultimate day in the Australian state of Victoria.  The state government had announced that some of harshest coronavirus lockdown restrictions in the developed world would be easing.  Melbourne’s restaurants, bars and cafes could resume inviting customers through their doors.  Retail outlets could reopen.  Confident claims of “crushing the virus” frothed and bubbled on social media. 

This elevation of mood provided ideal distraction for another ugly event.  Early last week also saw the arrest of 60 people protesting the removal of a fiddleback tree deemed sacred to some members of the Djab Wurrung people.  It was akin, one academic suggested, to seeing Notre Dame cathedral in Paris burn.  The tree was the fruit of a practice involving the placing of a child’s placenta, with a seed, into the earth.  This is not the only one: other birthing trees of even older vintage are threatened by the Western Highway upgrade.  Over centuries, they have provided sanctuary for the safe delivery of generations of Djab Wurrung people.

The removal of the 350 year old “directions tree” – a spiritual site for guidance – is seen as cold and necessary business, part of a widening of a section of the Western Highway between Buangor and Ararat.  It is also a stretch of highway connecting Melbourne and Adelaide, a bloody section of road known for fatalities and injuries.  In the words of Premier Daniel Andrews, “If we waited around for an absolute consensus, then that deadly stretch of road would go unimproved, and we would see more people dying.”

As a spokesperson for Victoria Police explained in a statement, “Police have a strong dedicated presence along the Western Highway today as part of an operation to remove camps and protestors from restricted areas as highway work construction continues between Buangor and Ararat.” 

Since 2018, the Djab Wurrung Heritage Protection Embassy has had a presence along the existing highway between Ararat and Buangor, a generally peaceful guerrilla faction protecting cultural, sacred growth.  The protest group sees the contested area as “part of the song line” bolstered by the findings of artefacts.  Were the full upgrade to be implemented along the 12km stretch, “3,000 trees will be gone, including the sacred trees and their protected habitats.”

According to Greens senator Lidia Thorpe, the destruction of such trees was tantamount to inflicting spiritual murder.  Their forms evoked human shape – such as the “grandfather tree” resembling “an old man guarding” the birth site.  “When these trees, these places are destroyed, it’s like a death.  We can’t get them back.”

With the eviction by police last week, one of the embassy members, Amanda Mahomet, claimed to have been expelled from her home.  “It’s been our home not by choice, for 3 years.  Everything you have physically, mentally and spiritually has been ripped from us in a matter of minutes, and to watch innocent friends and family there protecting country forcibly and violently removed was traumatic.”

Journalist Madeline Hayman-Reber of the Gomeroi yinnar was furious and inconsolable.  “The Andrews Government had used today as a political distraction from the desecration of a sacred Djab Wurrung women’s site, to silence the voices of Djab Wurrung mob, women and allies.”  The action was “completely sinister.  While the colony is celebrating, mob are in mourning.”

The picture is a more clotted one.  The Victorian government claims that the felled tree did not have cultural significance – at least to the members of the Eastern Maar Aboriginal Corporation, who were consulted in assessing the site.  Aged and majestic as it was, local elders failed to detect the standout markers of cultural significance present in other vegetation.  In a statement by the EMAC, the tree sported “no cultural modifications” and was “unlikely to have pre-dated European civilisation”.  In February 2019, the government did make a concession of sorts, agreeing to change the originally planned route of the highway.  In the process, 15 trees inside the boundary were spared. 

As with other battles over matters of cultural importance, development objectives clash with local political differences.  Thorpe is adamant that the Corporation did not have a monopoly of a voice for all Djab Wurrung people.  Lawyer Michael Kennedy, who represents Thorpe’s mother, Marjorie, wonders why a cheaper route which would follow the old northern part of the highway was not taken.  The reply from Major Road Projects Victoria has been unequivocal: that route fell short of design standards and environmental protection; 8,000 trees would have also been lost, as opposed to the current number of 3,000.

To date, the protesters have had some measure of success in the courts.  Despite the arrests and the loss of the directions tree, an interim injunction was granted by a Victorian Supreme Court judge halting the road project till the next court hearing on November 19.  Federal intervention, however, has not been forthcoming.

The executive officer of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Legal Services, Roxanne Moore, has also demanded an inquiry into the circumstances leading to the arrests at the embassy camp.  She had her eye on “the use of these COVID-19 powers by Victoria Police” and instances of police violence.  “We really need to see some serious scrutiny being put on to police actions for the Djab Wurrung protest.” 

Victoria Police subsequently confirmed that a number of protesters were arrested for breaching COVID-19 regulations, yet another instance of protests being quelled by the use of pandemic powers.  In a statement, the police claimed that there was no inappropriate use of force, or “issues requiring medical attention”.  Gabriel Lillington, the last protestor at the site, described a rough, workmanlike approach by the authorities in removing members of the embassy.  The police “just tried to read out a trespass statement and they immediately started forcibly moving protesters and the Indigenous Djab Wurrung people.”

The message of reconciliation has certainly taken a concerted beating.  Rhetorically, the Andrews government has been pleased to pursue negotiations towards a treaty.  Functionally, and practically, the agenda for development continues, marked by weaknesses in the Traditional Owner Settlement Act and the legal structure on protecting sacred sites.  As with other instances of sacred site desecration in Australia, the pattern is similar: proposed development, potentially destructive to the site in question; claims of full consultation with elders and local community members; disagreement among indigenous members. 

For Djab Wurrung woman Sissy Eileen Austin, this was all too much.  She promises to step down from the First Peoples’ Assembly, the body representing aboriginal interests in the Victorian treaty negotiations.  The felling of the fiddleback, and the removal of the protestors, has soured an already troubled process.  “There are conflicting agendas here,” writes Austin, “one where the government is supporting the progression of the treaty and the other where they’re comfortable in proceeding with the irreversible destruction of significant cultural heritage.” A relationship complex and abusive.

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

Featured image is from @ScottLudlam / Instagram

Introduction

In November, 2017, Former Sudanese Pres. Omar Al-Bashir paid a quick and urgent arranged visit to pleading with President Putin “that his country needs protection from the U.S. and could serve as a gateway to Africa for Moscow”.

Al-Bashir, speaking at the start of his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, accused the U.S. of fomenting the conflict in Sudan. Al-Bashir added that “we need protection from the U.S. aggressive actions.” [1]

What really prompted President Al-Bashir was the fact that he realized that there were secret “Balkanization of Sudan” plan is on the way since he planned to bring majority of Sudanese Soldiers from Yemen’s civil war “killing Fields” which he reduced to only 5000 soldiers from the high 15000 in 2015 the start of Saudi war on Yemen.

Al-Bashir managed the relationship with Russia personally. He visited Putin twice in the past two years, despite an arrest warrant issued against him by the International Criminal Court, which indicted al-Bashir in 2009 for war crimes and genocide against his own people. Putin was glad to welcome him during both visits, the first time in his residence in Sochi and the second time in the Kremlin. But since al-Bashir’s downfall on Thursday after 30 years in power, the Russian authorities have avoided publicly taking sides in the ongoing struggle for power.”

Historical background of western Neo-colonial interventions, balkanization and hybrid warfare on Sudan  1956- Present.

Sudanese civil wars 1955-72 and the 2^nd civil war 1983-2005; which in all purposes was a continuation of the first one was all because of marginalization, poverty, ethnic, tribal and religious marginalization of  black African majority tribes in the South Vs the Arab-majority northern fueled by western Christian fundamentalist corporate empire Geostrategic and religious interests in balkanizing Sudan as economic, political  powerhouse in Africa, -Sudan was –

“Too Big & rich with mineral resource and too weak to defend itself”

For Anglo-American European Zionist Christendom empire at the time of independence.

The British colonial system never intended to let go a united, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, animist, Christian and Islamic and independent Sudan. The British created internal divisions and segregations of S.Sudan from Sudan proper way before independence. They ruled Sudan through the “Anglo-Egyptian Condominium from 1889- 1956” which based the colonial administration in Cairo, Egypt, and The  British troops in Khartoum Sudan. The British and later on American and EU countries zoomed on the Arab versus Black African cleavage of Sudan from  1956 independence onwards in order to set motion, the eventual Balkanization , destruction and division of Greater Sudan Republic which was rich in Mineral and Natural resources and to be left alone.

The Israeli Yinon Project for Sudan and the Horn of Africa region.

Before 1956 independence, Sudan was targeted for Balkanization such as the famous Anglo-French ‘Sykes-Picot plan’ into Southern Anamist-Christian Black African vs Muslim-Arab North, thus, undermining the Geopolitical, and political economy of a united, democratic multi-cultural &  multi-ethnic Sudan.

Right after independence Sudan faced typical colonial underdevelopment problems in all sectors of its economy, internal-strife, and western supported southern separatist rebels (AnyaNaya) – the First Sudanese Civil War (1955–1972). A separate movement that rose during the Second Sudanese Civil War were, in turn, called Anyanya II. Anyanya means “snake venom” in the Madi language.[3]

 The 2^nd Anyaya Uprising ended when the Anyanya signed the Addis Ababa Agreement with the Government in 1972.[4].

Even after Khartoum Govt signed peace agreements with Southern Anyanya rmovements a more lethal, well armed , politically and foreign motivated Sudanese Peoples Liberation Movement(SPLM) emerged with  Anglo-American,European,Canadian and Israeli support and funding in 1983 which created sever deaths , destructions and committed murder and mayhem of unspeakable Crimes against both southern lives and properties. Fully armed by Isreal, Europe , supported with ideological , Media and political campaigns  around western wolrd, projecting the war as ‘Ethno-religouse War of Black African Christians-against Murderous Arab Muslim Genocidal Govt., in Khartoum . And over the years this self-differentiation of the peoples of Sudan has been diffused and socialized into the collective psyche of South Sudanese.

The Yinon Project for the Balkanization of Sudan from 1956-Present.

The balkanization of Sudan both from its links to the Arab world and  into a  weak, ethnically, tribally, religiously, militarily, economically unsustainable state-lets(Bantustans just like former Apartheid white SA) . This balkanization  dates bk before the independence of sudan in 1956.

Before the independence , Sudan and Egypt were one country in practice Up  until 1956 independece of Sudan ,”There was a strong movement to keep Egypt and Sudan United as a single Arab state, which was struggling against British and Israeli(Anglo-Zionist) Geopolitical interests in the region. London, however, fuelled Sudanese regionalism against Egypt in the same manner present –day Kharoutm. Egyptians were portrayed as exploiting just as how the non-Southern Sudanese have been  portreayed as exploiting the South Sudanese”[5].

Thus strong racially, ethnically, religiously charged regionalism has been at work in South Sudan against the rest of Sudan.

From 1983 Onwards,  Anglo-American, European, Canadian and Israeli govts have armed the southern Sudanese rebels to the death as well carried Media  Anti-Khartoum info wars and racist, islamophobic campaigns making the war as one of Southern Christian Blacks against Northern Arab Islamist Govt. of Khartoum.

Conculusions

In conclusions, “The balkanization of Sudan is also tied to the Yinon Plan in the M.E. N.A. , which is a continuation of British stratagem. The strategic objective of the Yinon Plan is to ensure Israeli superiority through the balkanization of the Middle Eastern and Arab states into smaller and weaker states. It is in this context that Israel has been deeply involved in Sudan.

Israeli strategists viewed Iraq as their biggest strategic challenge from an Arab state.

This is why Iraq was outlined as the centre piece to the balkanization of the Middle East and the Arab World.

The Atlantic in this context published an article in 2008 by Jeffrey Goldberg called “After Iraq: A report from the new Middle East—and a glimpse of its possible future“.

In the Goldberg article a map of the Middle East was presented that closely followed the outline of the Yinon Plan and the map of a future Middle East presented by Lieutentant-Colonel (retired) Ralph Peters in the U.S military’s Armed Forces Journal in 2006.”

Jeffrey Goldberg Atlantic Map 

It is also no coincidence that aside from a divided Iraq a divided Sudan was shown on the map. Lebanon, Iran, Turkey, Syria, Egypt, Somalia, Pakistan, and Afghanistan were also presented as divided nations too. Of importance to East Africa in the map, illustrated by Holly Lindem for Goldberg’s article, Eriteria is occupied by Ethiopia, which is a U.S. and Israeli ally, and Somalia is divided into Somaliland, Puntland, and a smaller Somalia.[6]

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Prof. Dr. Bischara Ali EGAL is the Executive Director & Chief Researcher of http://horncsis.org/.

Notes

1)   Sudan’s President Omar Al Bahir visits Russia, Asks protection from US. VOA November 23, 2017. https://www.voanews.com/africa/sudans-president-visits-russia-asks-protection-us (accessed august 13, 2020)

2) The Balkanization of Sudan: The Redrawing of the Middle East and North Africa byMahdi Darius Nazemoroaya, January 02, 2011;GR.

3) Wikipedia  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anyanya (accessed September 23, 2020)

4) IBID

5) ) South Sudan’s Total Collapse Could Lead to the Destabilization of Central and Eastern Africa.By Korybko, Andrew (2017) https://www.globalresearch.ca/south-sudans-total-collapse-could-lead-to-the-destabilization-of-central-and-eastern-africa/5578993 (Accessed October 28, 2020)

6)Nazemroaya, Mahdi Darius ,The Balkanization of Sudan: The Redrawing of the Middle East and North Africa . Globalreasech January 02, 2013

7) https://www.theafricareport.com/41877/sudan-declares-an-economic-state-of-emergency/?utm_source=newsletter_tar_daily&utm_campaign=newsletter_tar_daily_15_09_2020&utm_medium=email&utm_content=top_stories_article_3(accessedSeptember 14,2020)

8)  https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7722/j.ctt1h64pck (accessed September 16, 2020)

9)   Division of Sudan into 4 regions and the removal of Sudanese Armed forces in Arabic language by  saber_mashhour;sept.1, 2020  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irYPTdtATZ8 (accessed September 14, 2020)

10)  Sudan Leadership divided over whether Normalize ties with Isreal, by MEMO Staff, sept.21, 2020. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200921-sudan-leadership-divided-over-whether-to-normalise-ties-with-israel/ (accessed September 22, 2020)

11) https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/10/3/dagalo-israeli-ties-will-remove-sudan-from-us-terrorism-list

12)  Sudan: Fatwa bans normalizing Ties With Isreal. October2, 2020.

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20201002-sudan-fatwa-bans-normalising-ties-with-israel/ (accesed oct.3, 2020)

13) Svetlana Ekimenko, We need  Israel- Top Sudanese Official  Hints at possible Looming Change in Relations with Tel Aviv. Sputnik, October 3, 2020. https://sputniknews.com/world/202010031080654990-we-need-israel-top-sudan-official-hints-at-possible-looming-change-in-relations-with-tel-aviv/  (accessed 4, 2020)

14) https://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/sudan/facts.html (accessed spet.24, 2020)

15) After Sudan Peace deals , the hard task of gathering the Guns, by  Arab News, October 10, 2020. https://www.arabnews.com/node/1745821/middle-east (accessed October 10, 2020)

16) Reviving the New  Sudan Vision  by Amir Ahmad Naser, Aljazeer Opinion; January, 27, 2012.

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2012/1/27/reviving-the-new-sudan-vision/ (accesed october11, 2020)

17) Sudan now Africa’s Third Largest Oil Producer by Afrol News, October 12, 2020. http://www.afrol.com/articles/21889

18) https://orientalreview.org/2019/03/05/sudans-state-of-emergency-might-herald-a-phased-leadership-transition/

19) https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/10/24/sudans-political-parties-reject-israeli-normalisation-deal (accessed October 24, 2020)

20)  Sudan has no Cash to pay Dameges for 1998 Embassy Bombings by Nabeel  Biajo, May 20,2020 for VOA. https://www.voanews.com/africa/analyst-sudan-has-no-cash-pay-damages-1998-embassy-bombings (accessed october 24,2020)

21) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-04/sudan-ends-30-years-of-islamic-law-by-separating-religion-state (accessed September 4, 2020)

On all things Iran under both right wings of the US war party, transforming the country into a subservient vassal state is a high priority.

Regardless of whether Republicans or Dems control the White House and/or Congress, things won’t change ahead.

That’s been firm policy in Washington since Iranians ended a generation of US-installed fascist tyranny in 1979.

Since that time, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been target No. One in the oil-rich Middle East for regime change by Washington’s ruling class.

Bipartisan US policy aims to regain control over the country’s vast hydrocarbon resources — along with wanting Israel’s main regional rival neutralized.

So far, US strategy focused on war by other means since its orchestrated 1980s Iran/Iraq war.

Under Trump since 2017, maximum pressure has been and continues to be prioritized.

It’s all about wanting to inflict maximum human pain and suffering on the Iranian people that includes medical terrorism to prevent imports of medicines, medical equipment and related supplies.

It’s also all about piling on sanctions and more of the same to try isolating Iran.

The latest ones came in late October.

On October 23, the Trump regime unilaterally in breach of the UN Charter sanctioned five Iranian entities and IRGC officials on phony charges of “interfering in our elections.”

Ignored was that throughout US history, no evidence ever showed foreign meddling in the process by any foreign government — not Iran, Russia, or any others.

In stark contrast, clear evidence revealed unlawful US interference in scores of foreign elections throughout the post-WW II period.

On October 26, the Trump regime unlawfully sanctioned entities, individuals and vessels connected to Iran’s energy industry.

They included Iran’s Oil Ministry, its minister, the National Iranian Oil Company, National Iranian Tanker Company, and various other Iranian officials.

On Friday, October 30, more illegal US sanctions were imposed — in a futile attempt to “constrain (Iran’s) oil and petrochemical sales.”

Iran’s Arya Sasol Polymer Company, Binrin Ltd, Bakhtar Commercial Co., Kavian Petrochemical Co., and Strait Shipbrokers PTE. Ltd were targeted.

Officials connected to these firms were also sanctioned.

Everything the Trump regime and its predecessors threw at Iran since its 1979 revolution failed to achieve regime change — including their war of words.

Islamic Republic resilience preserved and protected the nation’s sovereign independence from diabolical USA aims.

US establishment media serve as imperial state press agents, managed news misinformation and disinformation their specialty.

One of the latest examples came from NBC News  on Thursday, saying:

“Top US officials were briefed on an active threat against Pentagon leaders (sic)” — citing customary unnamed sources, adding:

“US military, intelligence and law enforcement officials were briefed late last month on a threat against the Pentagon’s most senior leaders while they are on American soil…”

The “threat…remains active.” A Hollywood-style cloak and dagger scenario followed, saying:

Last month, when a “Defense Department leader left the Pentagon…in a government-owned black SUV driven by a member of his security detail…an unknown vehicle immediately began to follow them…”

“The driver, identified as an Iranian national, was in a vehicle with Virginia license plates and trailed closely behind the official SUV for five to seven miles…”

“The Pentagon and the FBI disagree about whether it was a serious attempt to target a senior Defense Department leader…”

According to an FBI probe, the above “was not part of any larger threat to senior military leaders or connected directly back to Iran…”

In other words, the above scenario smacks of fake news that surfaces repeatedly against nations on the US target list for regime change — notably Russia, China and Iran.

In its report, NBC cited no sources by name. Nor was any evidence presented to suggest an Iranian threat against any US officials domestically or abroad.

Throughout Islamic Republic history since 1979, Iran never attacked another country or its officials preemptively.

It justifiably acted in self-defense when attacked as the UN Charter and other international law permit.

In stark contrast, the US, NATO, Israel, and their imperial partners committed acts of aggression against targeted nations time and again.

Since creation of the Jewish state, it’s been perpetually at war on Palestinians by hot and other means — with full US-led Western support.

Iran supports peace, stability, cooperative relations with other countries and the rule of law.

The nation, its government, and military pose no threat to any other countries and their officials — except in self-defense if attacked, the legal right of all nation states.

A Final Comment

NBC News said key congressional members were not  briefed on the alleged incident.

“The White House declined to comment, including on whether President Donald Trump was briefed…”

The above anti-Iran accusation lacks credibility.

Why brief the White House and congressional leaders on what no evidence exists to prove the above scenario.

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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 InfoBrics

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The Globalization of War: America’s “Long War” against Humanity

Michel Chossudovsky

The “globalization of war” is a hegemonic project. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-6-0

Year: 2015

Pages: 240 Pages

List Price: $22.95

Special Price: $15.00

Click here to order.

The DreamWorks version of Madagascar is exactly that, a fantasy. The island nation is no unpeopled paradise teeming with dancing lemurs, as depicted in the animated Madagascar film. On the contrary, almost all of its lemur species are being driven to extinction by humans. This World Lemur’s Day, it is worth pointing out that the Covid-19 pandemic poses a threat to our primate cousins as well.

Lemur conservation work in Madagascar can be traced back several decades, but was still in its nascency in 1986, when American primatologist Patricia Wright traveled to southeastern Madagascar in search of a ghost, an animal long believed to be extinct: the greater bamboo lemur. She found it, and she found a fight worth fighting: saving the island’s endemic lemurs. When Wright told residents there that she wanted to create a park that would attract plane-loads of tourists, they laughed. Lemurs are central to Malagasy culture, but the idea that people would travel thousands of kilometers to catch a glimpse of them was laughable.

Wright proved them wrong. Over three decades, she worked with locals to build a national park in one of the world’s most impoverished countries, where three out of four people live on less than $1.90 a day. Founded in 1991, Ranomafana National Park has over the years become one of the island’s most-visited attractions. Then Covid-19 hit. Overnight, foreign visitors disappeared, and so did income.

Ranomafana is not alone; parks across Africa saw revenues plummet as countries clamped borders shut and imposed lockdowns in response to the pandemic.

The broader economic fallout is expected to force 26 million people in sub-Saharan Africa, including Madagascar, into poverty, as per the World Bank. Madagascar is staring at shocking levels of hunger and deprivation. “An empty stomach has no ears,” Jonah Ratsimbazafy, one of the nation’s top environmentalists, likes to say. The pandemic and its complications have made one thing clearer than ever: the fate of the country’s flora and fauna is inextricably linked to the fate of its people.

The world’s oldest island bursts at the seams with biological riches — almost 90 percent of its plants and animals are found nowhere else on the planet. What’s more, new species are described with fantastic regularity. Today, for example, there are twice as many known lemur species as there were back in the early 1990s.

But less than 10 percent of Madagascar’s primary forests remain today. A newly discovered lemur species was named for Ratsimbazafy earlier this year, but it is already threatened because the woodland it occupies is shrinking fast. Even before the novel coronavirus struck, the biodiversity hotspot was losing rich habitat to deforestation at an alarming rate.

The 160-square-mile Ranomafana National Park is one of the last remaining refuges for Madagascar’s natural wealth. Photo by Hannah Jane.

Ranomafana is one of the last remaining refuges for Madagascar’s natural wealth. The Centre ValBio (CVB), a world-class research center established by Wright just outside the park, regularly hosts scientists and students. And the steady stream of tourists hasn’t just fueled a hotel boom; it supports a host of livelihoods, from guides to local farmers. It is a rare ecotourism-based conservation success in the country.

Still, the pressures on the island’s natural resources are unrelenting. Since Wright’s first visit in the mid-1980s, Madagascar’s population has more than doubled. Less than 20 percent of people have access to grid power. Wood charcoal is the primary source of energy, and forests are routinely cleared for firewood as well as for subsistence farming. Hardships caused by the pandemic have complicated efforts to stem the tide of deforestation and poaching and could undo years of painstaking gains.

“These people who had been making their money off of tourism, now suddenly have to go chop down the forest,” Wright, a professor at Stony Brook University, NY, said. “It could be so severe that we would end up losing all those lemurs and all that forest if Covid-19 continues.”

“I’m just terrified that everything I worked for, for 35 years, it is going to be gone,” Wright added.

As the world obsesses over how to guard humans against diseases that lurk in the wild, the danger to wilderness from the scourge of human needs and greed is graver than ever. While more needs to be done to preserve what remains in places like Madagascar, the pandemic is a moment of reckoning for the conservation community, and also a stress test, albeit an extreme one.

In Madagascar, conservation activities are funded mainly by foreign donors, most notably European countries and the US. The pandemic offers a glimpse of what could happen if outside support from tourism is curtailed, and if foreign experts and scientists aren’t on the ground spearheading conservation efforts. Will protections endure, or will they collapse?

Despite past success, Wright is also taking a hard look at what works in the long run. CVB is pushing activities like planting marketable plant species like vanilla and cinnamon. “I am certainly going to encourage that we diversify more, we cannot rely so much on outside resources, on tourism and study-abroads,” she said.

Ensuring that people who depend on forests have viable alternatives is a difficult task, but it is also critical. “Every conservation proposal that has ever been written talks about bolstering resilience, safeguarding livelihoods, addressing poverty,” Alasdair Harris, who runs the marine NGO, Blue Ventures, said. “Now is your chance to prove it.”

It is also a test of our convictions. Despite being faced with an uncertain financial future, donors and funders must dedicate more, not less, funds for conservation, recognizing that the pandemic has made conditions more challenging on the ground. Conservationists and animal lovers must also do more to ensure lasting improvements in the lives of people who do — and sacrifice — the most to protect the planet’s most vulnerable inhabitants.

If we fail, lemurs could become entirely relegated to the realm of fantastical animated films for future generations.

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Malavika Vyawahare is a staff writer specializing in Madagascar for the award-winning environmental news service Mongabay.

There doesn’t appear to be much difference between the testing protocols of the dozens of pharmaceutical companies that are working on developing a vaccine for the elusive (and therefore dubious) SARS virus that has not actually yet been isolated in the lab, much less been reproducibly-grown in living tissue cultures. 

The evidence for the existence of the new SARS-CoV-2 virus in any given patient has mostly been assumptive in the current alleged pandemic which has relied on testing with the equally dubious PCR test kits that have been manufactured by any number of fly-by-night outfits which are making unreliable test kits.

The “case” incidence and death statistics of the current alleged pandemic must therefore be also regarded as dubious because the PCR test’s inventor has repeatedly asserted that his test CANNOT be used for diagnostic purposes.

However, the aggressively Big Pharma/Big Media-promoted “conventional  wisdom”  says that if the PCR test turns out to be positive (even if the PCR-positive individual is totally asymptomatic, always wore the masks and never ever developed Covid symptoms) that subject must be assumed to be so infectious that he must be quarantined for weeks. If the subject does not comply with the quarantine order, he or she can– in certain jurisdictions – be arrested and imprisoned.

What should be of concern to thinking people is the fact that some of these pharma companies (not to mention that many of the PCR test kit manufacturers) are indeed just “start-ups” – like the National Institutes of Health’s (and Anthony Fauci’s) favorite vaccine company Moderna, whose business only involves vaccine development – not manufacture.

Yet Moderna is deeply involved in the race for FDA approval, and its stock price has sky-rocketed on hopes that it might massage its test results enough to get its Covid-19 vaccine approved (or at least be given Emergency Use Authorization [EUA] by the FDA).

Despite its sky-high stock price ($67 per share as of October 30, 2020), Moderna has yet to earn a single penny from the sale of any of its handful of experimental vaccines. It has, not surprisingly, developed its protocol for testing its 2-dose experimental Covid-19 vaccine that is essentially the same as the announced protocols of Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca and Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccines in that half of the approximately 30,000 volunteers that they have amassed will be injected with two doses of its active vaccine (each of which contains uncertain-to-be-safe ingredients). The other half will be injected with a placebo. (Interestingly, in the past, some vaccine-testing companies have added a tissue-toxic ingredient that will cause injection-site symptoms presumably so that the placebo group won’t know if they got the vaccine or not.)

There are reportedly any number of start-up and established pharmaceutical corporations world-wide that are also trying to be the next block-buster vaccine-seller on the planet, but NONE of them, much less the four experimental vaccine companies listed below, have been following time-honored methods of testing its experimental drugs and vaccines on lab animals, a serious breach of protocol that has become the “new normal” in order to comply with President Trump’s Operation Warp Speed, agenda which Trump has been pushing in order to produce a vaccine – any vaccine – before his re-election bid is decided!!

Of course, the fast-tracking (aka, “short-circuiting”) of normal vaccine safety and efficacy studies has been condemned by all ethical scientists that don’t have economic or professional “conflicts of interest” that guarantee profitable results from the dangerous pseudoscientific pro-vaccine stances that Big Pharma shills like those in the Trump administration and the current HHS, NIH, CDC, NIAID and FDA has taken over the past 10 months.

Conditional, tentative, Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) from the already corporate-compromised FDA is likely to be granted even if the data that is presented to the FDA regulatory commissions are flawed and/or statistically insignificant – which means that the vaccine has not been proven to be safe and effective, especially in the long-term, which, by definition, can’t be safely assessed for many years. Sadly, the members of most standard “regulatory” commissions are often corporate shills that have ulterior motives.

There are 30,000 volunteers in each drug company’s study groups and they are essentially healthy, essentially middle-aged, eager and “patriotic” volunteers. Half of the 30,000 will be injected with a series of two immunologically-active vaccines. The other 15,000 members of the group will get two shots of a placebo that is supposed to be immunologically-inactive. None of the 30,000 will be informed as to which group they are in.

The approximately 30,000 total human guinea pigs that signed up for the Moderna study will be monitored until a paltry 53 of the 30,000 volunteers gets positive (and very dubious) PCR test results! The 53 may not have – and may never develop – SARS signs and symptoms for them to be included in the study!

Of course, false-positive PCR tests are extremely common and can happen to anybody, especially people who have had a common cold, which is often caused by simple, benign coronaviruses.

The designers of the Moderna study – just like the other drug companies that are in the race – will argue that their study should be considered relevant, reportable to the FDA as theoretical proof of effectiveness but they cannot claim that their vaccine is either safe or effective long-term.

However, these short-term studies can only be partially relied upon for short-term safety and effectiveness if 13 or fewer of the 53 PCR-positive “cases” occurred in the vaccinated population while at the same time 40 or more of the positive PCR “cases” occurred in the placebo group. What won’t be discussed will be the fact that over 14,900 of both the placebo group and the vaccine group also didn’t have positive PCR tests Covid-19 symptoms!

It is totally appropriate for legitimate doubters of America’s Big Pharma-co-opted drug and vaccine regulatory agencies to ask the question, “What kind of Big Pharma-influenced, profit-oriented, junk science is behind the studies that are being hastily approved by the likes of the obviously co-opted HHS, NIH, CDC, NIAID and FDA?

It is also totally appropriate for the public to have full information about what kind of coercive pro-vaccine influence is coming from such Trump appointees as his HHS director (and non-physician) Alex Azar, who came into Trump’s administration from a $2 million dollar per year CEO post at Big Pharma/Big Vaccine giant Eli Lilly. Azar also is part of Trump’s Operation Warp Speed, which is the impetus behind the fast-tracking of vaccine development, which is certain to be a disaster.

There will surely be dubious conclusions coming from all of the other provably untrustworthy pharmaceutical corporations that are in the race to develop an Emergency Use Authorized-vaccine that will not have been proven to be either safe or effective long-term – but will certainly be unaffordable.

Suspiciously, the major investment partner of start-up Moderna is actually the US government regulatory and funding body called the National Institutes of Health (including the CDC and the NIAID) which reportedly has a 50% financial stake in the company.

One can safely assume that – given the corrupt capitalist system that has thoroughly taken over our nation – that every Moderna shareholder (even our government bureaucracies) will do everything they can do to promote its products.

One must suspect also that these government agencies and their buddies in the corporate world are doing everything they can to keep the sheeple from noticing the most important data points in the studies discussed.

And one of those bits of information is that at least 29,800 of the 30,000 volunteers in Moderna’s vaccine trials, will likely not become infected whether the got the placebo or the vaccine. What could easily happen long-term is that a significant number of the 15,000 in the vaccine group, are at risk of developing disabling chronic illnesses such as autoimmune disorders.

What About the Vaccine Trials of Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca, et. al.?

The other significant statistical realities that won’t be pointed out in the corporate-controlled medical journals (or the corporate-controlled media) are the concepts of “Actual Vaccine Efficacy” and “Relative Vaccine Efficacy”, which are akin to the likewise purposely hidden-from view Actual Risk Reduction (AAR) and Relative Risk Reduction (RRR) that are often ignored in drug efficacy trials.

For Moderna, 13 positive PCR tests in the 15,000 member vaccine arm of their trial 13/15,000 = 0.00086) is an arbitrarily chosen data point that, when compared to the placebo trial may represent some sort of significance. 0.00086 is an obviously miniscule number that is the same as a percentage figure of 0.086 %.

And 40 or more positive PCR tests in Moderna’s placebo group of 15,000 subjects (40/15,000 = 0.0027) likewise represents a similarly miniscule percentage figure of 0.27 %. Subtracting 0.086 % from 0.27 % will obtain the “actual” miniscule benefit of being vaccinated (0.086 %) with Moderna’s potentially toxic vaccine vs. receiving the presumably innocuous placebo.

However, the falsely-inflated “relative” vaccine effectiveness numbers means that in calculating the Moderna results takes the fraction 13/40 (which = 0.325 in decimal terms, and which is 32.5% in percentage terms. The corporation’s mathematicians, in the standard method of calculating relative risk reduction (RRR), subtracts the 0.325 from “1”, resulting in a decimal number of  0.675 (which, in percentage terms is 67.5%).

So Moderna statisticians – who may, incidentally, own shares in the company – will then report to his bosses at corporate headquarters the “relative” effectiveness rate of 67.5 %, which the bosses will receive as positive, whereas it is a actually a deceptively inflated figure when it is put side-by-side with the actual vaccine effectiveness number of 0.184.

Note that Pfizer’s experimental vaccine trial also uses the PCR positivity number of 32 in the 30,000 group, 25 in the 15,000 placebo group, and 7 in the 15,000 vaccine group as starting statistical analysis points.

Using those numbers, Pfizer’s statisticians are actually reporting out the falsely-inflated Relative Risk Reduction/Relative Vaccine Effectiveness numbers (rather than the Actual Risk Reduction (ARR) numbers to America’s easily propagandized press corps and medical professionals, who can be relied upon to report – over and over again – the inflated benefits to their listeners, viewers and patients.

Predictably, Johnson & Johnson is also using the same mathematical trickery as the other Gang of Four, using as their arbitrary PCR-positivity break-points the following numbers: 77 PCR-positive tests among the 30,000 total group; 59 PCR-positive tests in the 15,000 person placebo group, and17 PCR-positive tests in the 15,000-person vaccine group.

AstraZeneca is doing the same, just using slightly different numbers of PCR-positivity: 50 in the 30,000 group, 38 in the15,000 placebo group and 12 in the 15,000 vaccinated group.

What we seem to have is well expressed in my version of Mark Twain’s famous quote: “There are 3 (or 4) kinds of lies: Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics and Covid Statistics”.

Discuss.

Dr Gary G. Kohls lives in the USA and writes a weekly column, entitled Duty to Warn, for the Duluth Reader, Duluth, Minnesota’s alternative newsweekly magazine. His columns deal with the dangers of American Friendly Fascism, corporatism, Oligarchy, militarism, racism, malnutrition, and Big Pharma’s over-drugging and over-vaccinating agendas as well as other movements that threaten the environment, democracy, civility, health and the sustainability and livability of the planet and the future of the children. Dr. Kohls is a frequent contributor to Global Research 

Many of Dr Kohls’ columns have been archived at a number of websites, including:

http://duluthreader.com/search?search_term=Duty+to+Warn&p=2; 

http://www.globalresearch.ca/author/gary-g-kohls;

http://freepress.org/geographic-scope/national;

https://www.lewrockwell.com/author/gary-g-kohls/?ptype=article; and

https://www.transcend.org/tms/author/?a=Gary%20G.%20Kohls,%20MD

Featured image is from Shutterstock

The mainstream talks about many features regarding the electoral system, but neglects its most important feature: co-optation. 

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Trabajadores: How would you describe the electoral process in the United States?

Arnold August (AA): The U.S. ruling elite provides itself with the most advanced electoral process in the world based on co-optation. Some analysts describe the American electoral system as principally being characterized by money and a high degree of corruption. Both these features are well understood in the U.S. and abroad and the U.S. system easily accommodates itself to this. The permanent mainstream news media never misses an occasion to express itself on political funding and corruption. As well, there are over 25 American TV satires on politics, often ridiculing the most banal features of the political/electoral system.

One can talk about anything regarding the electoral system, but not its most important feature: co-optation.

Through the subterfuge of co-optation, the status quo is maintained by alternating exclusively between the two imperialist political parties, while suppressing alternative revolutionary political options. Co-optation is so effective in the US, more than in any other country, because in addition to unlimited corporate support for both parties, it has at its disposal the most sophisticated multi-faceted media to shape public opinion. The central feature of this process is for the elite to co-opt anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist and anti-racist struggles, making them its own in order to avoid revolutionary struggle by the working class and other sections of society.

TR: Can you provide an example of co-optation?

AA: Yes, let’s take the case of Obama’s first election and mandate in 2008. It is also useful as once again he is a leading figure in the current presidential election. During the George W. Bush years, the standing and reputation of the U.S. hit a new low, both domestically and abroad. The elite saw Barack Obama as the solution.

In my second book, Cuba and Its Neighbours: Democracy in Motion, I deal with it in this way:

“Let us initiate this theme beginning with the international aspect. Zbigniew Brzezinski was a former National Security adviser to President Bill Clinton. Brzezinski wrote in his 2008 book Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower about the “global alienation from America and worldwide doubts about Bush’s leadership.” He also expressed a pre- occupation with the “increasing linkage in Latin America between the rise of democracy [in reference to countries such as Venezuela] and the rise in anti-American sentiments.” Brzezinski goes on to write about how George W. Bush “misunderstood the historical moment … and undermined America’s geopolitical position.”

Brzezinski was also apprehensive about Europe being “increasingly alienated.” Latin America was “becoming populist and anti- American.” He highlighted the “intensifying hostility to the West through- out the world of Islam [and] an explosive Middle East.” During the Democratic primaries in 2007, Brzezinski came out in favour of Obama versus Hillary Clinton. Brzezinski’s reason was that Obama “recognizes that the challenge is a new face [and has] both the guts and intelligence to address that issue [world affairs] and to change the nature of America’s relationship with the world.” Another example of wide-scale fear was expressed regarding U.S. credibility in Egypt and Latin America. It consisted of what was declared at a high- profile panel held in November 2008 featuring the establishment’s think-tank, the Council on Foreign Relations, whose representative said, “The election of an African-American had effectively countered propaganda about U.S. racism.”

Domestically, the integrity and authority of the capitalist system was a source of distress. The credibility gap is most evident among African- Americans. Michelle Alexander is an African-American civil rights advocate and Stanford (California) Law School professor. She published one of the most impressive books on U.S. society and recent history, bringing the readers into the stark reality faced by African-Americans.

The two-party system provides the opportunity for the elites to present one presidential candidate as different and better than the other. The credibility gap among African-Americans was a major preoccupation for the ruling circles.”

However, on the traces of the Obama case study, once having won the election by co-optation, the same basic policies continued at home and abroad, with the addition of some policies of his own:

• Did not persecute George W. Bush war crimes.
• Used drones to kill U.S. citizens abroad.
• S. military forces were at war for all eight years of Obama’s tenure, the first two-term president with that distinction.
• Launched airstrikes or military raids in at least seven countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan.
• With the assassination of Khadafi in Libya, the most advanced country in Africa, Obama converted it into the chaos of an open-air slave market.
• Used the Patriot Act to spy on U.S. citizens. As a senator in 2005, Obama condemned the PatriotAct for violating the rights of American citizens, but in 2011, Obama signed a four-year renewal.
• On whistle blower persecution, his National Defense Authorization Act allowed for imprisonment indefinitely of journalists, activists and human-rights workers based on what could be vague allegations.
• Obama’s Department of Justice head, Eric Holder, cleared the vigilante who killed Trayvon Martin and the cop who murdered Mike Brown.
• Called Ferguson protesters thugs protesting the murder of Mike Brown.
• The value of military equipment transferred to domestic police departments increased by 2,400% and has been used primarily against Black and Brown communities.
• Record deportation: Obama Has Deported More People Than Any Other President
• Direct or indirect coups in Honduras, Paraguay, Brazil.
• Honduras became one of main sources of immigration.
• Wall Street 2008 bail out to the tune of approximately $500B.
• Cuba:

1. Guantanamo: did not close it by blaming it on Congress, but had the right to do so.
2. Blockade against Cuba: Claimed that he was in favour of lifting it but was blocked by Congress. However, an American Constitutional Lawyer said the President has the right to do it.

• While opening up toward Cuba in December 2014 and March 2015, Obama also initiated sanctions against Venezuela, Cuba’s most important economic, political and moral ally. The main positive points of that “thaw,” included the freedom of the remaining Cuban Five and easing of travel and other restrictions.

TR: Throughout the campaign, the current president and presidential candidate Donald Trump tried to impose the suppression of votes that mainly affects the population of Afro-descendants, Latinos and the poorest people. What do you think?

AA: This is true and it is the most grotesque feature of voter suppression. However, let us take a look at other forms of voter suppression.

• An impressive anti-capitalist, imperialist third party exists that stands against all the domestic and foreign policies of both the Democrats and Republicans. Both the presidential (Howie Hawkins) and vice-presidential (Angela Walker) candidates are workers and trade union activists. This is the Green Party. There are other examples. The Democrats have used their position in some state courts to block this third party from being on the ballot, thus suppressing the rights of those citizens who want to vote Green. The Democrats were able to knock the Greens off the ballot in Montana, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania where the Green petitions had two to three times the required signatures, which was difficult to do in the Covid lockdown. But the Democrats are also legislating party suppression. For example, in New York the Democrats rammed through a law attached to the state budget bill in April while attention was focused on the pandemic that triples the number of votes the Greens need to keep their ballot line.
• The duopoly sets a 15% threshold through their Commission on Presidential Debates to get into the debates. This means that a party needs at least 15% approval as per the selected national public opinion polling organizations. So that is a no-win situation for any third party. In order to increase their popular support, they have to get into the debates, but in order to get into the debates, they need a 15% polling support, difficult to be reached.
• Even though I do not believe that Bernie Sanders is a socialist, Biden admitted that Obama led the behind-the-scenes negotiations against the Sanders bid for the presidential nomination and in favour of Biden. There are reports that many disaffected potential Bernie voters will not vote for Biden, thus de facto eliminating their right to vote.

Yet, a recent Gallup poll showed that 57% of Americans are in favour of a major third party. Only about 55% of eligible voters actually vote. In other words, there are large sections of the voting age population that are de facto disenfranchised.

The Green Party is supported by the most important Black organizations and many other organizations and media outlets on the left, that is perhaps millions of people. The Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates for the Green Party, Howie Hawkins and Angela Walker (an Afro-American), are both workers.

In this resistance to the duopoly at the grassroots, Afro-Americans have traditionally played a leading ideological and organizational role. To discuss the American electoral process without taking into account – first and foremost – the Afro-American poor, working class and revolutionaries is devoid of all meaning. The U.S. state, after all, still carries vestiges of slavery and the genocide of Native Americans, all in the service of capitalism. It its bosom grows its very antithesis. This is the Afro-American revolutionary tradition that naturally gravitates toward Marxist thinking and action against capitalism at home and imperialist expansion in every corner of the world, especially the global south.

However, in the current elections, the Biden-Harris ticket, with the help of Barack and Michelle Obama, are trying to co-opt the Black Lives Matter Movement, along with concern about COVID-19 and the economic crisis. Once again, as was the case for Hilary Clinton in her 2016 race against Trump, there is very little enthusiasm for Biden.

When co-optation does not fully work to dupe the people, the lesser-of-two-evils rationale is trotted out, taking advantage of the fact that the Green Party and others are still marginalized. The hope is that through co-optation, despite the limitations of the Biden campaign, people would vote for Biden as the lesser of two evils. This will work to a certain extent, but as Malcom X pointed out long ago:

“The white conservatives aren’t friends of the Negro, but they at least don’t try to hide it. They are like wolves; they show their teeth in a snarl that keeps the Negro always aware of where he stands with them. But the white liberals are foxes, who also show their teeth to the Negro but pretend that they are smiling. The white liberals are more dangerous than the conservatives; they lure the Negro, and as the Negro runs from the growling wolf, he flees into the open jaws of the ‘smiling’ fox. One is the wolf, the other is a fox. No matter what, they’ll both eat you.”

Is falling into the trap of the lesser of two evils just a fleeting moment at the polling booth with no consequences? I do not believe so. It collectively eats away at the revolutionary movement at the base and sucks its energy. When one gives up principle, is there is an end in sight? Seeking the lesser evil is part of an ideology that is ongoing and infects the movement like a cancer. When does it stop? When is the line drawn in the sand? Much of the anti-duopoly left asks: When should all progressive forces concentrate in building a strong People’s Party to take on the duopoly by voting Green now, as a step toward a new mass socialist, anti-imperialist party?

TR: For some analysts, the current presidential campaign has shown that the American democratic model is in crisis. Do you share this opinion? What elements of judgment would allow to affirm something like this?

AA: No, the U.S. model is not in crisis; in fact, it is doing fine. As long as it maintains the capacity to transfer power from one of the two major parties to another through co-optation, unfettered by a viable third option by relying on the lesser-of-two-evils option, there will be no crisis. As I write this piece, one may notice on social media more and more personalities on the left are advocating a Biden vote as the lesser of two evils, either in all states, or in swing states. To capitulate to the lynching of the left by the Obama/Biden apologists will leave sequels behind. Even then, those who have succumbed to the lesser-of-two-evils are not a majority on the left.

The system will indeed be in crisis, as you ask, but only once the people break out of the two-party framework, unhesitatingly see through co-optation and its instrument the lesser of two evils, and thus mount a challenge to the status quo.

TR: What could change for Latin America and the Caribbean if the Democratic candidate wins and what if the Republican wins? What differences exist between the two platforms in terms of foreign policy? 

AA: Why not ask first: how will the election outcome affect working people, Afro-Americans and the revolutionary left in the US? I am not being facetious. During the rebellion that followed the murder of George Floyd, every single day, the revolutionary left in general and especially the Afro-American left, following Malcolm X, brought this out onto the streets and in their alternative media. They cannot separate the struggle against the U.S. government domestically from the role of the U.S. abroad. Furthermore, to bring home the point that what the people on the streets of the U.S. are facing is what the peoples of the global south also face, often providing Cuba and Venezuela as targets of U.S. fury.

That being said, taking Latin America and the Caribbean as a region, little will change. In my view the litmus test to evaluate where a party or candidate stands is Venezuela. Therefore, there will be no significant shift since the U.S. regime change program against President Maduro, based on a so-called “humanitarian crisis” or on his supposed “human rights violations,” is a bipartisan issue extending into every pore of the decrepit Democratic Party, including its so-called left wing represented by Sanders and AOC.

Even on Cuba, although Biden has said he would return to the Obama policy, I have my doubts. Firstly, did you notice that when Obama travelled to Florida last week to speak in support of Biden, Obama did not say a word about Cuba? Furthermore, also last week, from Miami two Playa Giron right-wing “veterans” openly abandoned Trump to endorse Biden. We know that an endorsement is a two-way street; one is expected to follow through once elected.

Secondly, during the entire time Trump hacked away at the Obama policy since 2017, Obama did not say a word to defend his own legacy. In my last two books, I made it clear that it is foolhardy to entertain illusions about Obama and his apologists.

TR: In an effort to “make America great again,” the administration of Donald Trump has declared a trade war against its main economic rivals, mainly China. Could continuity in that policy be expected for whoever is elected tomorrow on November 3? 

AA: While it is true that Trump has declared a trade war against China, however during this presidential campaign the Democratic Party has declared a “war” so to speak against what it calls Trump’s cozying up to dictators such as China’s  President Xi. In other words, as on virtually all international issues, the Biden camp attacks Trump from the right. Thus, it is responsible for pushing the American political landscape even further to the right. In the last presidential debate, both candidates were squabbling as to which one is more hawkish on Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. In fact, while Trump defended his policy of trying to broker a peace deal between South Korea (80% support a peaceful solution in the South) and North Korea, all Biden had to say is that the leaders of all the above-mentioned countries are “thugs.”

However, whether it is Biden or Trump who wins, it is not either one of them who can decide everything about China. China is preparing itself economically and military to defend itself against any incursion. I visited China several years ago. Their accomplishment in bringing so many millions of people out of poverty is impressive, as is its current plans to accelerate this process. The movement of China on the international scene is objective: it represents an economic, political, cultural and spiritual challenge to U.S. hegemony. Thus, the U.S., being an imperial power, is hell bent on world domination and thus the containment of China. There is an unprecedented, bipartisan, racist U.S. campaign being waged against China.

However, the U.S. (the lowest any society has sunk since WW II) is no match for China and its millennium-long civilisation, coupled with its modern political system and unique approach to socialism. Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and others in the region have a powerful friend in China, whose wisdom and power can overcome anyone in the White House.

Modified version based on an interview by Trabajadores TR (Cuba) published in Spanish.

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This article was originally published in Spanish on Trabajadores.

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Global Risks as an Axiological Issue

The issue of global risks is basically an axiological (value) matter that requires a thorough analysis of certain socio-political factors viewed through the lens of universalizable moral principles that promote human flourishing in terms of

(1) amelioration/alleviation of suffering;

(2) resolution of conflict; and

(3) promotion of happiness.

In this consideration, global risks basically threaten the human condition by putting the planet Earth, which is the abode of all living organisms including humans, in a very precarious situation.

Projecting global risks at their most horrifying conclusion is tantamount to an anticipation of the seemingly incontrovertible annihilation of the Earth’s biosphere. Without exaggerating the foreshadowed diabolical prospect, the issue of global risks has been the most serious concern of sensible people who have long been disseminating all over the world valuable information on the global risks that presently haunt us and can ultimately lead to wiping out life on the planet if not immediately and efficiently addressed.

The present reality obtaining in today’s world is critically menaced by four horrific risks that have been aggressively and invasively petrifying the globe: (1) environmental degradation leading to the destruction of the ecosystems; (2) massive threat of nuclear destruction; (3) catastrophic wars of attrition commonly known as terrorism; and (4) biological warfare which is also a form of terrorism called bioterrorism and the accompanying lies that intensify it. In general, these global risks are superficially taken separately as four distinct and hence unrelated issues. Nevertheless, a closer and more detailed examination of their dynamics points to a deeper reality that they are interconnected–even intertwined to a certain extent–in terms of the colossal power base that logistically sustains them and from which their disastrous energy emanates.

Environmental Degradation Leading to the Destruction of the Ecosystems

Many nations that have grown to become global powers have by and large spawned supreme and dominant industrial magnates, commercial tycoons and multinational investment financiers. A lot (though not all) of these big-business heavyweights’ industries largely–even totally–depend on raw materials collected and gathered at extremely cheap costs from natural resources found in underdeveloped and developing countries particularly in Asia, Africa, and Central and South America.

While engaged in such kind of no-holds-barred activities, it is indeed lamentable that they have never actually been bothered by the environmental destruction their minions and vassals have continually perpetrated just to achieve their main goal of increasing their wealth to unlimited proportion and stretching the scope of their business empires to inexhaustible dimensions. To achieve their nefarious schemes, they even entice leaders of developing and underdeveloped countries by offering them enormous gifts of financial bounty once allowed by these leaders to avail of and extract raw materials from available natural resources.

In other instances, these industrial giants even construct and/or rent buildings and transform them into factories in less well-off countries to avail of their cheap labor. While engaged in labor exploitation, they are also operating production machines that emit highly toxic smoke in the atmosphere and in certain cases extremely hazardous chemical wastes that contaminate waterways like streams and rivers and lead to the decimation of edible water animals.

Massive Threat of Nuclear Destruction

The same global powers have steadily and uncompromisingly used the threat of nuclear attacks to sustain their political dominance and assure their economic ascendancy. This is common in certain parts of the globe where they announce to the rest of the world that their presence is constantly challenged and thus unrelentingly threatened on the basis of a fabricated lie to sustain their own self-serving interests. They have been stockpiling nuclear weapons with the capability of annihilating populations right close to the frontiers of their perceived adversaries like Iran and Russia, just to name the most threatening countries according to their distorted interpretation.

Underneath all these undertakings is the same perennial agenda of the same global powers that have continually threatened the global environment for the same motive of controlling certain regions of the planet to gain immense politico-economic hegemony. Their vehement reaction against countries that have their own nuclear power initiatives is emphatically made known by demonizing such countries through the use of mainstream media owned, operated, and controlled by billionaires who are the major power players within their turfs. Simply put, they are allergic to equal power platforms which are understandable from the point of view of imperialistic domination.

Catastrophic Wars of Attrition Commonly Known as “Terrorism”

We are living witnesses to the savagery and ferocity of war machinery deployed by these global powers as they literally razed to the ground previously prosperous and progressive countries like Iraq, Libya and Syria among others. We are spectators to the horrifying scenario of how they massively destroy properties even national monuments and heirlooms of historical and cultural significance. We are helpless onlookers as they slaughter defenseless populations caught amidst wars that they flagrantly started.

These global powers are the real terrorists up to destroy nations that obliterate the trajectory of their hegemonic goal and wreck geographical locations of enormous resources like petroleum to take control over them. In a related event, the most explosive target that registers on their crosshair is oil-rich Venezuela against whose independent posturing and flat defiance these global powers have imposed absolute economic sanctions.

This whole demonization programme started all the way back at the inception of the 21st century as an aftermath of the 9/11 tragedy that demolished New Yorks World Trade Center twin towers. With all the lies compounded to cover the real motives and issues behind this catastrophic event, the so-called “war against terrorism” was officially launched during a press conference when then POTUS George W. Bush issued to the world the illogical statement, “If you are not with us, you are against us.”

Biological Warfare a.k.a. Bioterrorism and the Accompanying Lies that Intensify It

A global power using viruses, bacteria, and insects among others to paralyze and even kill people, animals or plants to derail, destroy and devastate national economies is a declaration of war. This is biological warfare also know as bioterrorism. Side-by-side with it is a massive scare propaganda to strike fear in the hearts of people who generally develop deep-set paranoia as the media unceasingly concoct terrifying narratives that they feed as news items on TV, radio, newspaper and the internet. This is the catastrophic event the world has been going through for almost a year now. Media outlets subservient to the “scare narratives” imposed by the criminals behind the spread of this scourge called Covid-19 have regularly been coming out with reports aimed to intensify fear and in the process impose control over the populace through stringent restrictive measures like lockdowns and confinements.

In the present crisis that the world has been experiencing, one thing is certain: We’ve been deceived–and immensely deceived–by the creators of this virus (1) to take total control over the global economy and (2) to sell to us the vaccines they have been developing. A truckload of circumstantial pieces of solid evidence point to certain international organizations and foundations as leading participants in the invention/creation and spread of the coronavirus. But here is the twist that shatters the story of the lethal virus: According to a series of meticulous and in-depth  tests conducted by independent medical scientists in the fields of virology and epidemiology, this so-called Covid-19 is never as deadly as it is described in stories its creators and propagandists have been spreading all over the world. Besides the PCR tests being conducted are quite disappointingly inaccurate so that the bloated statistics of people tested positive is absolutely unreliable.

In a lot of instances, the majority of test results are “positive”. But the crazy thing here is, a lot of those people tested “positive” have never really been seriously sick. So, in the final analysis, coronavirus is not a reality to them. It is nothing but a figment of the imagination. The problem could be in the inaccuracy of the testing tools and/or procedure. Or perhaps, the truth is, the world has long been actually conned by the criminal creators of this bullshit of a PLANdemic.

Conclusion

We can blame a lot of factors–mainly political and economic–to get alarmed at and concerned about the risks that have been threatening the globe and its inhabitants. We have in fact identified them quite well. We could even strengthen them with a myriad of proofs sustaining their reality if we delve much more deeply. However, beyond all these considerations, there is only one single culprit that has long been the cause of global destruction and that is we human beings. We may utter our strongest disagreement to this claim and reason out that we’ve never been actually and directly involved in any of these circumstances. But our utter silence and obvious nonchalance to the point of openly expressing an opinion that getting seriously engaged in this cause is an exercise in futility is the most harmful attitude that heavily contributes to the intensification of serious risks jeopardizing all of life on planet Earth.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” (Edmund Burke)

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Prof. Ruel F. Pepa is a Filipino philosopher based in Madrid, Spain. A retired academic (Associate Professor IV), he taught Philosophy and Social Sciences for more than fifteen years at Trinity University of Asia, an Anglican university in the Philippines.

Featured image is from Media Lens

The Social Dilemma that is currently streaming on Netflix has garnered much attention by raising a single question – how have we come to accept as normal the fact that a few hundred tech-enthusiasts in Silicon Valley has had an unprecedented impact on billions of lives around the world?

Directed by Jeff Orlowski, the Social Dilemma features tech industry insiders raising ethical concerns about business models that shape our everyday digital experience. 

Though the docudrama has topped charts, the narrative on reckoning with this digital Frankenstein moment is not new. For example, Black Mirror is a popular show streaming on Netflix that speculates on how unchecked tech developments can result in a dystopian world. What makes Social Dilemma unique is perhaps because it features an array of “prodigal tech-bros” – usually white males who got rich working for big tech, but then got disillusioned and subsequently achieved “enlightenment”.

The tech-bros point out that most platforms were started with good intentions to improve the quality of human lives. However, due to the advancements in AI, coupled with a shareholder model of revenue maximization, these platforms have become weaponized by those with nefarious interests. This has threatened liberal democracies, leading to political polarization. We are warned that a civil war is on the horizon, ironically triggered by social networks apparently aimed at bringing people together.

However, this oversimplified techno-determinist presentation of a social problem misses the wood for the trees. Can right-wing authoritarianism, xenophobia, fake news and mental health issues be boiled down to the business models of web-based platforms? Once we examine this basic premise, it becomes immediately clear that a lack of sociological nuance sends wrong messages. Apart from triggering moral panic – exemplified in reviews that talk about wanting to throw away your mobile phone into the garbage bin – the documentary eschews a patient and critical examination of contemporary capitalism, which unarguably shapes the operations of digital media. To grasp things by the root, we need to understand what is actually social about the social dilemma.

 

 

What’s left unsaid?

The first major silence in the documentary is on the political economy of contemporary capitalism. Without such an understanding, the Social Dilemma gravely confuses correlation with causality – in at least two fields, viz. mental health and political trends. Jonathan Haidt, who is a prominent social psychologist, briefly appears to flag concerns about the “gigantic increase” in depression and anxiety among American teens, ostensibly due to social media. However, reducing a social phenomenon to a single factor is not particularly helpful.  The evidence is also mixed, as a similar upsurge in suicide rates cannot be seen in several European countries despite high prevalence of phone usage.

The documentary also talks about young women facing “Snapchat Dysmorphia”, as they pursue unrealistic feminine beauty standards in their pursuit for validation. Here again, instead of questioning the patriarchal male gaze that has existed for decades, we are left with blaming the tools that make it possible. While cyberbullying has certainly become a cause of worry, we often forget that social media is also an effective tool for mobilizing and organizing resistance – as seen from Tahrir Square to the recent Pride Marches amidst the pandemic.

The tech-bros express concern over society becoming more divided than ever. In India, commentators often speak as if  “WhatsApp universities” are the primary cause of political polarization. We are constantly reminded that the political sphere is a battlefield of ideas. However, this obfuscates the material structures that have fostered such anxieties in the first place. The pitfalls of liberalism lies in their ignorance – often deliberate – of the social structures that has enabled the normalization of unreason around the world.

The last few decades have witnessed profound shifts in the balance of class forces through the dismantling of the welfare state, union-busting, liberalization of private capital, deregulation in the name of easing business and the financialisation of the economy. The decline of stable jobs, accompanied by the rise of what the late David Graeber called “bullshit jobs” has created deep resentment among the working classes. Right-wing exclusionary ideologies prey on such economic anxieties to put the blame on minorities. We need to be clear that social media is not the cause for this, but certainly becomes a platform to project these economic insecurities as cultural anxieties.

The second major silence is on how technologies are produced in any society. We often turn a blind eye to the massive state involvement in producing several technologies from the touch screen to Google’s search engine algorithm, as Mariana Mazzucato has pointed out.  These same tech companies (including Netflix) are notoriously involved in large-scale tax evasion, which has among other things fueled austerity policies that has hurt the working class. This brute fact not only busts the libertarian myths around private initiative, but also raises questions about the obscene wealth made by Silicon Valley executives. In the tech-bro narrative, technology appears to arise out of vacuum due to the brilliance of a few programmers. In reality, technology is socially produced.

More importantly, we often ignore the unpaid labour time that is involved in the production, consumption and distribution of information that is central to the everyday existence of web-based platforms. The documentary points out how targeted advertising has manipulated our psychological vulnerabilities. But what is left unsaid is how our seemingly mundane activities actually constitute ‘unpaid labour’ (called digital prosumption labour), as advertising revenues constitute a primary source of profit for most web-based platforms.  Statements like “if you are not selling something, then you are the product” should be reinterpreted taking into account this unpaid labour.

Society at crossroads

These two silences – on political economy as well as the social production of technologies – make The Social Dilemma analytically and politically impotent. Accumulation is inherent to the logic of capitalism – the business models simply reflect what is possible for capital at any given point of time. Seeing capitalism as an expansionary system for the pursuit of profit warns us against the futility of proposals that call for ‘breaking up big tech’ – there is no reason why smaller facebooks or googles would treat data differently. The rampant trend of acquisitions by big tech only confirms the general tendency towards centralization in capitalism.

That labour not only creates value, but also has the potential to shape and transform the world, is what makes the insights of Marx so relevant. This is true of cyberspace as well – which is merely a manifestation of a historically specific mode of organising production. This leads to more important questions. How can we strengthen alternatives to corporate social media that do not pursue profit from unpaid ‘leisure’ time? How do we organize a truly democratic cyberspace based on collective ownership? More importantly, is this possible without radical challenges to the capitalist society we live in? It is high time we face the real dilemma that confronts us – which is social, not technological – lest we regress to barbarism.

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Aabid Firdausi MS is a research student at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India. He is interested in studying the social and spatial dynamics of contemporary capitalism.  He tweets at @_aabid_.

Earlier this week I reported how a mere 6 companies control almost everything we see in the corporate media. On the corporate news networks, it is common to use “doctors” to get a specific message across to the public, by using their “appeal to authority,” where facts and real science are not even needed to convince the masses. See:

Brainwashing the Masses: 6 Companies Own Almost ALL of the Media in the U.S. – Using Medical “Doctors” to Sell Their Message

This is true beyond just the corporate media news broadcasts, which are controlled by the Billionaires on Wall Street, primarily the pharmaceutical industry today.

But it goes beyond just news broadcasts, as their propaganda can be even more effective in the entertainment industry, where critical thinking skills are relaxed all in the name of “entertainment.”

Earlier this year the film “Out of Shadows” was released online by Hollywood insiders, and it was viewed by over 15 million people on YouTube before they took it down.

This is a must watch for anyone who has not seen it yet:

One of the new buzz words being used in the corporate media recently is the mention of a “Dark Winter” for 2020. Joe Biden mentioned it also in the last debate.

This is a term that has a previous history, and Derrick Broze, who was recently banned on YouTube and had his popular channel removed, has created a new 12 and half minute documentary on the history of this term, and what it means.

This is not a conspiracy “theory” documentary that is full of speculation, as you will see.

And remember, back in July this year we published the comments of CDC director Robert Redfield that showed they were already planning and expecting “massive deaths” this fall, giving further evidence that this is all a big plan that is in place, perhaps to coincide with the National Elections coming next week. See:

The CDC is Planning for Massive Deaths this Fall

If you have not yet viewed the documentary PLANDEMIC produced by Mikki Willis, which gives solid historical evidence that this kind of “pandemic” has been planned for years now, this too is a must viewing, if you want to be fully informed and not be subject to the mind control efforts of the corporate media. See:

PLANDEMIC: Full Feature Film Released Online Amidst Tremendous Opposition and Attempts to Censor it

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The Darkest Winter

by Derrick Broze
The Conscious Resistance

Click here to watch the video.

Transcript:

This message is for anyone who has concerns about the upcoming U.S. elections, the potential for chaos and civil unrest, or those who fear what a “second wave” of Covid-19 could mean for the future of humanity. If you have found this message on your own please share it with your friends and family. If someone you care about recommended you watch this, please do so with an open mind.

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

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

Event 201

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

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

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

Crimson Contagion and Clade X

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

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

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

Darkest Winter

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

During the Dark Winter exercise authorities attempt to stop the spread of “dangerous misinformation” and “unverified” cures, just like with the Event 201 simulation. Dark Winter further discusses the suppression and removal of civil liberties, such as the possibility of the President to invoke “The Insurrection Act”, which would allow the military to act as law enforcement upon request by a State governor, as well as the possibility of “martial rule.” The script says martial rule may “include, but are not limited to, prohibition of free assembly, national travel ban, quarantine of certain areas, suspension of the writ of habeas corpus [i.e. arrest without due process], and/or military trials in the event that the court system becomes dysfunctional.”

What is important to know is Dark Winter was largely written and designed by Tara O’Toole and Thomas Inglesby of the Johns Hopkins Center along with Randy Larsen and Mark DeMier of the Analytic Services (ANSER) Institute for Homeland Security. O’Toole, Inglesby, and Larsen were directly involved in the response to the alleged anthrax attacks which took place in the days after September 11, 2001. These individuals personally briefed Vice President Cheney on Dark Winter.

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

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

Eerily, Kadlec’s statements in 2001 exercise were recently repeated nearly word for word by Richard Bright, former director of Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority. Bright was recently celebrated as a whistleblower who attempted to hold the Trump administration accountable during the COVID-19 battle. However, while speaking in front of Congress, Bright stated, “without clear planning and implementation of the steps that I and other experts have outlined, 2020 will be darkest winter in modern history.” Now, maybe Bright is simply a concerned scientist warning about the potential for more sick people, but his use of the phrase “darkest winter” is hard to ignore.

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

Election 2020 Chaos Incoming?

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

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

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

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

This unprecedented event could be disastrous for American life as it is likely activists from both sides of the vote would take to the streets to protest what they believe is a theft by their opponents. If you think protests and fights between extreme leftists and extreme right wingers are contentious, just wait until they both feel shafted during the presidential election. Those opposed to Trump will claim Biden won and Trump is attempting to steal the election and create a fascist dictatorship. The Trump supporters will say the Satanic Radical Leftist Democrats are attempting a coup to establish a Communist Police State. The result will be neighbor turning against neighbor, family members disowning one another, and some political activists may escalate their tactics from protests to violence.

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

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

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

Are You Prepared?

In conclusion, I believe we may have a narrow window of time to inform our friends and family, and motivate them to prepare for what may be on the horizon. We can spend our time attempting to convince them of the lies of COVID-19. We can also try to educate them about the numerous exercises predicting chaos and civil unrest across the United States. As important as education is in the Information War; now might be the time to focus our energy on helping our families be prepared for what may come. Rather than attempting to convince them to see what you see or believe what you believe, perhaps we can simply help keep them safe until they can clearly see the writing on the wall.

Again, if you are hearing of these exercises and topics for the first time, please listen with an open mind. I want to emphasize that I do not write these words in hopes of inspiring fear or stress. In fact, I hope that this analysis can paint a clear enough picture of the grim reality we are facing so we may act! It is only by honestly facing our circumstances that we can hope to influence and change the path of humanity. This is a historic time to be alive and we have the opportunity to play a powerful role. It’s time to shake off the shackles and expose those who seek to hold us back for their own sick purposes.

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As events unfold in France centring around Islamophobia, there is a feeling of déjà vu. We have witnessed a few times before this sequence of events.  There is some provocation or other targeting the Prophet Muhammad initiated by a non-Muslim group or institution. Predictably, Muslims react.  In the midst of demonstrations and rallies, an act of violence occurs perpetrated by an offended Muslim and/or his co-religionists. The violent act leads to further demonization of Muslims in the media which by this time is in a frenzy.  Feeling targeted, some Muslim groups escalate their emotional response, sometimes causing more deaths to occur of both Muslims and non-Muslims even in countries far away from the place where the provocation first occurred. One also hears of calls to boycott goods produced in the country where it all started.

On this occasion too it was French president Emmanuel Macron’s vigorous assertion that cartoons of the Prophet produced by the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, in January 2015 and republished since  represented freedom of speech that angered a lot of Muslims in France and elsewhere, though some other remarks he had made recently about ‘Islam being in crisis’ and ‘Islamic separatism’ had also annoyed some people. However, it was the beheading of a French schoolteacher who had shown the cartoons in a class discussion on freedom of speech by a Muslim youth of Chechen origin that provoked not only Macron but also other leaders and a huge segment of French society to react with hostility towards Muslims and even Islam. It should be emphasised that almost all major Muslim leaders and organisations in France also condemned the beheading.  So did many Muslims in other parts of the world.

It is not enough just to denounce an ugly, insane murder of this sort. Not many Muslim theologians have argued publicly that resorting to mindless violence to express one’s anger over a caricature of the Prophet is an affront to the blessed memory of God’s Messenger. For even when he was physically abused in both Mecca and Medina, Prophet Muhammad did not retaliate with violence against his adversaries. He continued with his mission of preaching justice and mercy with kindness and dignity. It is such an attitude that should be nurtured and nourished in the Muslim world today especially by those who command religious authority and political influence among the masses.

If a change in approach is necessary among some Muslims, French society as a whole should also re-appraise its understanding of freedom of speech. Freedom of speech should never ever glorify the freedom to insult, to mock, to humiliate another person or community or civilisation. Respect for the feelings and sentiments of the religious other should be integral to one’s belief system, whether it is secular or not. Just because the French State and much of French society have marginalised religion, it does not follow that it should also show utter contempt for a Muslim’s love and reverence for his/her Prophet especially when 6 million French citizens profess the Islamic faith.

Indeed, respecting and understanding the sentiments and values that constitute faith and belief has become crucial in a globalised world where at least 80 % of its inhabitants are linked in one way or another to some religion or other.  We cannot claim to be champions of democracy and yet ignore, or worse, denigrate what is precious to the majority of the human family. This does not mean that we should slavishly accept mass attitudes towards a particular faith. Reforms should continue to be pursued within each religious tradition but it should not undermine respect for the foundations of that faith.

French leaders and elites who regard freedom of speech or expression as the defining attribute of their national identity, should also concede that there have been a lot of inconsistencies in their stances.  A French comedian, Dieudenne, has been convicted in Court eight times for allegedly upsetting “Jewish sentiment” and is prohibited from performing in many venues. A cartoonist with Charlie Hebdo was fired for alleged “ anti-Semitism.”  There is also the case of a writer, Robert Faurisson in the sixties who was fined in Court and lost his job for questioning the conventional holocaust narrative. Many years later, the French intellectual Roger Garaudy was also convicted for attempting to re-interpret certain aspects  of the holocaust.

The hypocrisy of the French State goes beyond convictions in Court. While officials are rightfully aghast at the violence committed by individuals, France has a long history of perpetrating brutal massacres and genocides against Muslims and others. The millions of Algerians, Tunisians and Moroccans who died in the course of the French colonisation of these countries bear tragic testimony to this truth. Vietnam and the rest of Indo-China reinforce this cruel and callous record.  Even in contemporary times, the French State has had no qualms about embarking upon military operations from Afghanistan and Cote d’ Ivore  to Libya and North  Mali  which serve its own interests of dominance and control rather than the needs of the people in these lands.

Honest reflections upon its own misdeeds past and present are what we expect of the French state and society in 2020. There is no need to pontificate to others. This is what we would like to see all colonial powers of yesteryear do —- partly because neo-colonialism is very much alive today.

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Dr Chandra Muzaffar is the president of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST), Petaling Jaya, Malaysia.

Even without a crystal ball, it’s predicted that presidential candidate and former Vice-President Joe Biden will win the 2020 United States presidential election. However, this forecast is not based on record voter turnout or the magnitude of bad press generated by every corporate-controlled news media organization other than Fox against President Donald Trump or any personal bias, but simply because Biden will win if the Deep State wants it. The obvious rift between the Deep State and President Donald Trump, as evidenced by the preposterous and debunked Russiagate scandal, is contrasted by Biden and the CIA’s declared love fest.

While Trump’s done the ruling elite’s bidding at the expense of everyone else with his domestic tax cuts for the wealthy, the evisceration of the Environmental Protection Agency’s oversight function as well as international isolationist policiesevidenced by his withdrawal from peace, trade, nuclear and environmental agreements/accords and increases in unlawful unilateral economic sanctions, extrajudicial killings, lawfare, and piracy, this is still not enough “goodwill” for the greedy Deep State. They want it all!

Additionally, Trump’s severe narcissistic personality disorder mistakenly allows him to believe he is in charge and not the unelected actors behind the scenes. This and being undeniably a loose cannon costs Trump dearly. Surely, Biden would have already invaded Venezuela, and North Korea as the Obama/Biden war crime legacy is substantial. The former duo were drone kings with a litany of extrajudicial killings in the Middle East as well as war criminals against the people of Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan, Honduras and numerous countries with the expansion of Africom under their watch.

Bush Republicans for Biden

So, when Bush Republicans line up for Biden, and Biden speaks glowingly about the faded glory of our Intelligence Community/Cartel (IC) and his wish to be chummy again with them, you know he’s going to win.  By the way, the US military and IC are doing swimmingly. Note that the Military and Intelligence Community’s 2019 budgets were $686.1 billion and $81.7 billion respectively. For comparison, in the same period, the military budget for China and Russia was $177.6 billion and $46.4 billion respectively.

Of course, Bush Republicans behind Biden remain the Deep State’s cheerleaders. The Bush family and the CIA have long-standing familial ties dating back to Samuel P. Bush, Dulles, and the Rockefeller banking & fossil fuel cartel amongst others.  Further, Afghanistan and Iraq have long been on the CIA’s shortlist for conquest and the Bush/Cheney ticket was an unfettered way to accomplish its expansionist goals.

“President Dwight D. Eisenhower was under no illusion about the ominous changes being brought about by men like Prescott Bush, Averell Harriman, the Dulles brothers, and many others. During his Farewell Address to the Nation on January 17, 1961, Eisenhower tried to warn the American people saying:

“We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. We must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted”.

As summarized by Philip Agee in Inside the Company: CIA Diary “the CIA’s main goal is to guarantee a favorable foreign investment climate for U.S Industry.” Thus, the CIA’s mission intrinsically remains at odds with that of the general tax-paying public.

Voting

Our voting system won’t save us. It’s a sham and been historically rigged against the impoverished, women, and people of color, but this fact was never more apparent to everyone than in Bush v Gore. So, let’s look back in history before we look ahead to this upcoming election. Remember Bush was selected as president by the Supreme Court, not us.

Prior to the 2000 election, Bev Harris exposed issues with black box voting that involved no paper trail, easy hacking, and tampering. Pundits reported unusual divergence from exit polls, and it all came to a crescendo with claims by the CEO of Diebold (the manufacturer of voting machines) that he was “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year”. Simultaneously, voter disfranchisement methods were documented by Greg Palast and others via the gerrymandering of voting districts; reduced polling locations; too few voting machines and failure to replace broken ones in black/brown and low-income communities; as well as the use of flawed voter/felon “scrub” lists; ominous changes in voter ID requirements; fake ballots; missing ballots; poorly constructed and/or confusing hard to read instructions on ballots; voter intimidation; and understaffed polling sites, etc. Yet, here we stand in 2020 and nothing has changed substantially for the better.

While Bush v Gore resulted in massive protests, they were suppressed by the media until newfound patriotic rhetoric involving the attack of the World Trade Center could be released – which many on all sides of the political spectrum continue to believe was a false flag operation. Additionally, 911 allowed for the overnight passage of the extraordinarily oppressive and unconstitutional Patriot Act – an act Biden proudly takes credit for drafting.

The military-industrial complex and Deep State always need an enemy to expend munitions on, and new countries’ wealth to plunder. The captive news and entertainment media readily assist them in their efforts. We’ve gone from fearing “Islamic terrorists” to hating Russians for “election meddling” to now despising the Chinese for besting our economy in GDP and prevailing over Covid-19.

Color Revolutions

The ruling elite and Deep State love color revolutions and proudly conduct them in countries that object to US corporate plunder by using Gene Sharp and the Albert Einstein Institution methodology of “non-violent” revolution through captive human rights organizations’ fake reports, and through USAID and NGOs like National Endowment for Democracy (NED) to fund and foment dissent.  Additionally, social & news media, video games, Hollywood productions, and false flag operations are used to goad targets into unproductive action.  So, why wouldn’t the Deep State use this well-oiled machine here at home against us?

Color revolutions are best understood like a robbery scam, where one assailant squirts catsup on your shirt to distract you while their accomplice stealthily picks your pocket.

Civil War

Thus, civil wars to defend Trump or Biden will only usher in more social control/surveillance measures to “restore order” and sadly the news media and operatives under the Deep State’s control will encourage our contrived fight until we beg them to help us by taking away any remaining constitutional rights we have left. Without surprise, Palentir, the Deep State’s favorite Minority Report styled predictive surveillance software, is now publicly traded.

The legislation against our right to protest and assemble is already written and will certainly be justified as emergency measures. A civil war over two corporate candidates will only add protestors, renamed “domestic terrorists”, to our private prison population – which is the highest per capita in the world. So, let’s not be the CIA’s tool. Instead, let’s hold back on civil war and collectively strike for an honest & representative electoral system; the end of regime change wars/unilateral economic sanctions; freedom from the prison-industrial complex/police & surveillance state; the protection of economic, human, and civil rights; and the abolition of the Federal Reserve finance capital cartel system. While we are at it, let’s especially watch our politicians’ invasive proposed bills/acts closely that use fear to turn us into their snitches.

Conclusion

Either way, this is a corporate election and we the people ultimately lose.

Third parties remain our only real choice in this election and both the Republican and Democratic corporate parties are united in their efforts to destroy them. So, resist the temptation to see the world in CIA contrived dichotomies such as black/white, women/men, left/right, Trump/Biden, etc. and instead focus on the puppeteers that are stealing our wealth and constitutional rights while we are distracted watching this catsup squirt car crash of an election. Vote Libertarian, Green, Socialist, or whatever to keep our true alternatives alive.

Power to the people!

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Lauren Smith is an independent journalist and member of the Green Party and Sanctions Kill.com. Her work has been published by American Patriots, Aim4truth, Alliance for Global Justice, Black Agenda Report, Blacklisted News, Common Dreams, Counterpunch, The Duran, Ecoterra, Global Research, CA, Internationalist.360, Monthly Review, Survivalnews1, State of the Nation, and Telesur amongst others. She holds a BA in Politics, Economics, and Society from SUNY at Old Westbury and an MPA in International Development Administration from New York University.  Her historical fiction novel based on Nicaragua’s 1979 revolution is due out in 2021.

Almost all of America’s Democratic and Republican voters are simply closed-minded, and refuse to acknowledge that each of this nation’s two political Parties is controlled by its billionaires and is profoundly corrupt, not allowing any progressive legislation (but only conservative and liberal legislation, which is backed by billionaires) to get through, nor any progressive jurist to receive a high court appointment, nor any progressive Presidential candidate to win the Party’s nomination — such as Bernie Sanders in 2016, and in 2020.

It’s a dictatorship by America’s Republican and Democratic billionaires, no democracy, at all, and the vast majority of voters in each Party refuse to recognize this core reality about today’s America. To them, it’s Democrats versus Republicans, instead of billionaires versus the public. They are wrong, and they don’t even care that they are wrong.

For example, on the Republican side, the fact that Donald Trump’s coronavirus leadership has been a catastrophic failure and is recognized throughout the world to be so, is ignored by some and denied by others, but it’s not recognized by Republican voters — they are in reality-denial about it. Also, for another example, these voters are in reality-denial about Trump’s racism and race-baiting. They deny the clear evidence of it.

However, on the Democratic side, the fact that Joe Biden is profoundly corrupt is simply ignored, as is the fact that he stole the nomination from Sanders by lying through his teeth.

As is the fact that Biden was the U.S. Senate’s leading advocate in the Democratic Party for continuing segregation (‘separate but equal’). He was a stealthy bigot, not only on segregation, but on criminal justice. Also, the fact that Biden is an ardent proponent of U.S. imperialism and of the privatization of infrastructure in the conquered countries so as to sell them off to U.S.-and-allied investors, is likewise totally ignored by Democrats. (The main difference between Biden and Trump on foreign policy is over which country is the most important to conquer: for Trump it’s China; for Biden it’s Russia; but both want to conquer also Syria, Iran, Venezuela, and a few others.)

Perhaps the truth that both Republican and Democratic voters resist more strongly than any other is that the Republicans’ leadership regarding coronavirus-policy has been disastrously myth-laden and bad, and that Democrats are better only in that they are not leading this disaster, but Democrats have actually gone along with Trump on it wherever the polls were showing that a majority of the public were supporting his policy on the given matter. In other words: Biden’s policy has been simply to gloat over Trump’s getting all of the blame, and to avoid crucial specifics on what his own policy and priorities would be. But a choice between two evils is still evil — it’s an evil system. What is evil there is not merely the options, but the corrupt system that restricts those options to only ones that are acceptable to the actual rulers, to the very few — the aristocracy — that benefit from, and control, the corruption. That’s what’s more evil than either of the two nominees is. It is the people who are financing their political careers. And this is the reality that the vast majority of America’s voters, in both Parties, refuse to recognize. They refuse to recognize the more-fundamental problem, which problem is the trap that the country has degenerated into. Without recognizing that more-fundamental problem, there is no way out of it — not even possibly a way out of it.

Here is how disastrous it is, as reflected in the coronavirus results:

Great leadership on this matter was recognized right at the very start of the soaring pandemic:

On 5 April 2020, Suze Wilson, of Massey University, headlined “Three reasons why Jacinda Ardern’s coronavirus response has been a masterclass in crisis leadership”, and she wrote of New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern:

Imagine, if you can, what it’s like to make decisions on which the lives of tens of thousands of other people depend. If you get things wrong, or delay deciding, they die.

Your decisions affect the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people, resulting in huge economic disruption, mass layoffs and business closures. Imagine you must act quickly, without having complete certainty your decisions will achieve what you hope.

Now imagine that turning your decisions into effective action depends on winning the support of millions of people.

Yes, you do have enforcement capacity at your disposal. But success or failure hinges on getting most people to choose to follow your leadership – even though it demands sudden, unsettling, unprecedented changes to their daily lives.

This is the harsh reality political leaders around the world have faced in responding to COVID-19.

As someone who researches and teaches leadership – and has also worked in senior public sector roles under both National and Labour-led governments – I’d argue New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is giving most Western politicians a masterclass in crisis leadership.

Three communication skills every leader needs

When it comes to assessing New Zealand’s public health response, we should all be listening to epidemiologists like Professor Michael Baker [Otago U., “‘Overjoyed’: a leading health expert on New Zealand’s coronavirus shutdown [announced 23 March 2020], and the challenging weeks ahead” March 23, 2020]. On Friday, Baker said [“Coronavirus: NZ with a chance to be only Western nation to eradicate COVID-19 – expert”, 3 April 2020]. New Zealand had the “most decisive and strongest lockdown in the world at the moment” – and New Zealand is “a huge standout as the only Western country that’s got an elimination goal” for COVID-19. …

What has been the result of that policy?

At the moment, as I write, the definitive website tracking the Covid-19 cases and deaths around the world, which is https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries, shows that the United States has had 26,860 cases per million residents, and 695 deaths per million residents. By contrast: New Zealand has had 388 cases per million residents, and 5 deaths per million residents. Per million people, America has 69 cases for each coronavirus case in N.Z., and 139 deaths for each such death in N.Z. That’s the difference between a society that serves its population, and a society that doesn’t. The difference is huge multiples, not merely a few percent.

But not all of the blame for this goes to Donald Trump, and not all of the credit for this goes to Jacinda Ardern. A dysfunctional society, such as America, has far lower levels of public trust in its leaders, because it has far less reason than New Zealanders do to trust their leaders. Even if Trump had been trying to do what Ardern did, Americans would have been vastly more resistant to it, than New Zealanders were. New Zealanders love their country, and don’t hate each other trying to grab control of it, out of fear that ‘the other side’ might win, as the case is in America. In America, the actual other side — the behind-the-scenes rulers — already have control, no matter which of their two Parties dominates, and so the only real solution for that dictatorship is for the public to take the country back from them. But this can’t be done if the voters are in denial of that reality. The head-in-the-sand approach can’t do it. But that’s the approach in America.

If Michael Baker was able to recognize as early as March 23rd that N.Z. was “looking like the only Western country with a chance of eradicating COVID-19,” then maybe his prediction’s coming true (to the extent that it has) wasn’t only luck.

But how well have the best non-Western countries been doing on this matter?

Here are the best coronavirus-performers among them (and, for the most part, they are countries that Americans have been taught to despise): Vietnam (12 and 0.4), Cambodia (17 & 0), Taiwan (23 & 0.3), Burundi (46 & 0.08), Niger (50 & 3), Thailand (54 & 0.8), China (60 & 3), Papua (65 & 0.8), Yemen (69 & 20), Chad (87 & 6), Burkina Faso (117 & 3), DRC (124 & 3). Mali (171 & 7), Benin (209 & 3), Somalia (246 & 6), Uganda (250 & 2), South Sudan (257 & 5), Togo (264 & 6), Liberia (278 & 16), Angola (283 & 8), Nigeria (298 & 5), Malawi (306 & 9), Syria (310 & 15), Sudan (311 & 19), Mozambique (386 & 3). And all of those can be compared to N.Z. (388 & 5).

Above those were: Rwanda (389 & 3), Sri Lanka (392 & 0.7), South Korea (506 & 9), Zimbabwe (554 & 16), Cuba (582 & 11), Madagascar (608 & 9), Hong Kong (which is China’s richest city: 706 & 14), and Japan (768 & 14).

The next-lowest Western country is Australia (1,076 & 35). Therefore, the two best-performers in the West were N.Z. and Australia, which suggests that one of the common factors for their shared remarkable success is simply their being geographically isolated in the same region, which is predominantly non-Western, more Asian.

Then, the next-best Western country is Finland (2,700 & 64). Then Greece (3,027 & 56). Then Venezuela (3,153 & 27). Then Norway (3,332 &51). Then Estonia (3,337 & 64). Then Lithuania (4,040 & 50). Then Germany (5,359 & 121).

America isn’t the world’s worst coronavirus-country, at 26,860 & 695, but it’s certainly the worst large country, because it is the world’s 12th-worst, and its population is 331.6 million, whereas the second-largest of the worst 12 has only 11.6 million: Belgium (27,661 & 931). The third-largest of them, Israel, has 9.2 million (33,770 & 265). The 4th-largest, Panama, has 4.3 million (29,796 & 607). Five of the worst 12 countries have under 1 million population. America is the unchallengeable giant of the baddies, but Brazil has 213 million population, and its figures, which place it as the 16th-worst country (25,328 & 738), are very close to America’s.

So: both of the bad giants, America and Brazil, have Governments that are diametrically the opposite of N.Z.’s Government. Whereas N.Z.’s is democratic socialist, America’s and Brazil’s are fascist libertarian (otherwise called authoritarian neoliberal). Of course virtually all countries call themselves “democratic,” but most (actually) are not — it’s just PR, propaganda, for them. An international survey in 53 countries asked residents “Yes” or “No” on “My country is democratic,” and America ranked #38 out of the 53, with the top 10 countries, in order, being: Taiwan, Denmark, Switzerland, S. Korea, China, Austria, Vietnam, India, Norway, and Argentina. At the very bottom, #53, was Venezuela.

It’s therefore obvious that, even if America was, at some former time, a great country, it isn’t any longer. But, if it used to be, then it has declined enormously. Surveys show that Americans don’t think that the country is improving, but instead that it’s “on the wrong track.”

Obviously, America is getting worse, not better. Also obviously, neither of the two billionaire-controlled Parties even has any sincere intention of reversing that decades-long trend into the abyss. The people who control it won’t let go of it. And the public don’t want to take control of it.

They don’t even want to recognize how dire America’s condition, and direction, are. More of the same is acceptable to them; and, so, control of the country gyrates from Democratic billionaires to Republican billionaires and then back again, ad infinitum, but being the billionaires all the time, no real change. The billionaires face no effective resistance, in America, because the voters for each of the two Parties think that their “them” (“not us”) is the other Party, instead of being the nation’s billionaires. In such a circumstance, what group will even try to take the country back from the few hundred individuals who have controlled it, now, for decades — at least ever since 1981, if not since 1945? It’s going from bad to worse, but how bad will it get? Is there anythingto reverse that decades-long trend? Certainly, a prerequisite would be for Democrats and Republicans to face, no longer to deny, the political reality in America. Nothing indicates any such tendency, as of yet. Therefore, lots worse seems likely.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

Will the November 3rd election earthquake trigger a stock market Tsunami or just a few inconsequential waves lapping on the market shore?

 Here we stand just a few days away from the US presidential election with the liberal MSM in a state of electoral fever as their preferred candidate is way ahead on the polls looking set to win, just as their favoured candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016 was way head of the polls so unlike 2016 there is an edge to the frenzy of their activity given the awareness that the polls tend to be wrong, skewed against conservative voters and opinions.

However, 2020 is even more chaotic than 2016, as this year there is the backdrop of the chinese virus raging across the US and especially in many US swing states that is contributing towards new cases of infection soaring to new plandemic highs with deaths already having broken above 230,000! Near double all of the US lives lost in all of the wars since 194 that acts as a continuing noose around the US economy, though that has so far not been enough to full fill that which the perma stock market doom merchants have been proclaiming for a more than a decade, an end to the stocks bull market.

The stock market has largely marked time in a tight trading range with all wondering if Trump being 10%+ behind in the polls can manage to pull off another election miracle as he did in 2016.

This article is an excerpt from my latest in-depth analysis that concludes in a detailed stock market trend into January 2021.

Stock Market Trend Forecast into Janaury 2021, Final Election Forecast Matrix

• Stock Market Big Picture
• Dow Short-term Analysis
• Dow Long-term Trend Analysis
• VIX Analysis
• 2020 vs 2016 and 2012
• ELLIOTT WAVES
• Seasonal Trend / Election Cycle
• Dow Stock Market Trend Forecast Conclusion
• US Presidential Election Forecast Matrix Final Update
• AI Stocks – AMD is Killing Intel

However, the whole of this extensive analysis has first been made available to Patrons who support my work so do consider becoming a Patron by supporting my work for just $3 per month. https://www.patreon.com/Nadeem_Walayat.

US Presidential Election 2016 Forecast Accuracy Review

Can Trump still win in 2020 despite being 10 points behind Biden in the polls? Let’s find out from someone who did accurately predict both that the UK would vote to LEAVE the EU and that Trump would win the US Presidential election in 2016 despite what the pollsters, pundits, bookies and markets were stating at the time, as illustrated by my articles and videos at the time. And similarly I also accurately forecast the outcome of the 2012 and 2008 US Presidential elections.

• 26th Sept 2016 – US Presidential Election 2016 Forecast – Trump BrExit Win?
• 4th Oct 2016 – Donald Trump Path to Presidency US Election Win Reality
• 12th Oct 2016 – Can Trump Still Win Despite Opinion Polls, Bookmakers and Pundits all Saying Hillary has Won?
• 2nd Nov 2016 – US Presidential Election Forecast 2016 – America to Vote for Trump BrExit!
• 5th Nov 2016 – Hillary Halts Trumps Polls Surge, But Trump Advance Continues in BrExit Swing States

US Presidential Forecast Matrix 2020 Final Update

The pandemic was supposed to play out with smaller successive waves after an initial first worst wave.

Unfortunately the Trump administrations handling of the pandemic has been disastrous to such an extent that America’s pandemic resembles the Trump Tower escalator with each successive wave higher than the one before.

Thankfully increased medical intelligence about the virus has lowered the death rate somewhat though this may prove temporary when the number of daily cases starts overwhelming the healthcare system again.

And don’t take this as me picking on the US for the UK has been similarly abysmally negligent in it’s handling of the Pandemics 2nd wave which if left to run would exceed the first peak high by Mid November. With the UK death rate now running at 350 per day and doubling every 9 days. So the government instead of acting 5-6 weeks ago is now being forced to implement panic measures hence today’s news of a NEW UK lockdown starting on bonfire night, the 5th of November.

It’s the economy stupid, and where the economy is concerned Covid ensures that Trump’s odds of being re-elected were poor just on this one metric alone, what with number unemployed soaring by 10 million to 14 million, GDP 10% lower and a collapse in personal incomes, then the stock market taking a last week election dive, all of that is before taking into account the electoral impact of 235,000 american deaths! on route to what? 500,000 deaths by the end of winter? As Biden would say “Come on Man” Trump always had a poor chance of winning under such dire circumstances!

Therefore my final forecast conclusion remains unchanged in that I expect Biden to win on 49.1% of the vote with Trump losing on 46.4%, with the balance distributed amongst independant’s.

However, it should be noted that Hillary lost to Trump 48.2% to 46.1% in 2016, though I HAVE factored in a 0.8% electoral college advantage to Trump in my Matrix, because at the end of the day it is the electoral college that determines who wins than the popular vote. In which respect I expect Biden to win over 300 electoral college votes, so unlike 2016, I am not expecting this election to be close.

What if there had been no Chinese Virus Pandemic?

Then Trump would easily have beaten Biden on 49.8% to 45.7%.

Could Trump pull off another election miracle like 2016?

We’ll as the following video of what happened in 2016 illustrates that when one is dealing with intense delirium and intense MSM delusional bias, then yes it IS possible even if I and many others are unable to see how that could be possible this time round.

AMD Killing Intel, Nvidia Next?

Earlier this month we had another huge reminder of why Intel’s stock price has been stagnating for the past 3 years whilst at the same time stickleback competitor AMD’s stock price has soared into the stratosphere.

It all comes down to AMD’s Zen series of processors that began with Zen 1 in Mid 2017 that so far have matched or beat every expectation just as was the case with the October launch of AMD’s Zen 3, 5000 series of processors that now not only beat Intel but crushes Intel’s best retail CPU the 10 core 10900k launched only a few months ago when it is pitted against the similarly priced 5900x, AMD now even decidedly take the gaming crown away from Intel’s flag ship processor where on average the 5900x beats the 10900k by a good 7% in gaming. And then AMD has their 16 core Intel killing 5950x CPU.

The following ALL CPUs market share graph illustrates how things look set to play out as AMD displaces Intel and becomes the worlds dominant x86 CPU supplier over the next 12 months whilst likely to beat Intel in the desktop CPU market before the end of this year!

For more watch my 14 minute video of why AMD is Killing Intel with it’s Zen series of processors.

I will update AI Stocks buying levels in a future article.

Again this article is an excerpt from my latest in-depth analysis that concludes in a detailed trend forecast for the stock market into January 2021.

Stock Market Trend Forecast into January 2021, Final Election Forecast Matrix

• Stock Market Big Picture
• Dow Short-term Analysis
• Dow Long-term Trend Analysis
• VIX Analysis
• 2020 vs 2016 and 2012
• ELLIOTT WAVES
• Seasonal Trend / Election Cycle
• Dow Stock Market Trend Forecast Conclusion
• US Presidential Election Forecast Matrix Final Update
• AI Stocks – AMD is Killing Intel

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This article was originally published on The Market Oracle.

Nadeem Walayat has over 30 years experience of trading derivatives, portfolio management and analysing the financial markets, including one of few who both anticipated and Beat the 1987 Crash. Nadeem’s forward looking analysis focuses on UK inflation, economy, interest rates and housing market. He is the author of five ebook’s in the The Inflation Mega-Trend and Stocks Stealth Bull Market series that can be downloaded for Free.

Featured image is a screenshot from an NBC News video

 

As the multi-sector, global response to the coronavirus tightens the noose around civil liberties, CommonPass stands out as one of the most appalling and dangerous attacks on basic human rights in the name of public health.

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Imagine standing at a TSA security checkpoint on your way home for the holidays. You’re getting ready to go through the awkward travel procedures instituted almost immediately after 9/11 when the Transportation and Security Administration (TSA) was created and air travel in the United States morphed into a search and seizure operation with the implied possibility of your detention and interrogation.

The initial outrage such expressions of implicit state violence caused early on eventually gave way to begrudging acceptance. But now, a new layer of “security,” that could restrict freedom of movement even further, is being rolled out at several ports of entry in partnership with health technology industry leaders, academic institutions, and government health entities in more than three dozen countries.

A new digital certificate called CommonPass, designed to serve as a clearance mechanism for passengers based on a health diagnosis underwent its first transatlantic test on October 21 under the watchful eye of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) at Heathrow Airport in London. There, a group of select participants embarked on United flight 15 to Newark, New Jersey after being screened and tested for COVID-19 at the point of departure in a largely ceremonial exercise that included initiative co-founders, Paul Meyer and Bradley Perkins.

The app’s first trial run took place with much less media fanfare last month on a Cathay Pacific Airways flight from Hong Kong to Singapore and marked the beginning of the CommonPass pilot project launched by The Commons Project non-profit organization in-tandem with the World Economic Forum.

Travel industry insiders claim that CommonPass will allow international travel to resume before a COVID-19 vaccine is made widely available by applying standard methods for certification of lab results and vaccination records of travelers through the CommonPass Framework, based on criteria set by the governments of each port of entry.

Graphic from a Commons Project presser lays out the basics of the CommonPass

J.D. O’Hara, CEO of one of the world’s largest travel services companies and one of the participants at Wednesday’s CommonPass trial run, hailed the app’s ability to “verify health

information in a secure, verified manner,” while Roger Dow of the U.S. Travel Association released a statement praising it for paving a “way forward” for the global economy in the wake of the pandemic.

As the multi-sector, global response to the coronavirus tightens the noose around civil liberties, CommonPass stands out as one of the most appalling and dangerous attacks on basic human rights in the name of public health and is rife with a potential for abuse so great, that it behooves us to find out more about the people and interests behind it.

Feudal revivalists

In medieval times, the ‘commons’ denoted the de facto and collective ownership of land, which peasants used to plow, sow and harvest or raise sheep and cattle. The rise of the land-owning classes in post-Magna Carta Europe, and England in particular, slowly eviscerated this form of communal privilege through the enclosure system, which redistributed the commons to the proto-capitalist class in partnership with the monarchies and create the system of oppressive labor exploitation known as feudalism.

Starting in 1604, the Enclosure Acts of England created legal property rights for land that had belonged to the farmers and shepherds, forming the basis of modern-day capitalism. Today, that scene is being repeated as the Internet, an information ‘commons’ is being carved out by Big Tech and led by organizations like The Commons Project, which avails itself of a name that connotes the total opposite of its purpose.

Co-founders Paul Meyer and Bradley Perkins are the non-profit’s CEO and Chief Medical Officer, respectively. Perkins began his career over thirty years ago at the Center for Disease Control and, for nearly a decade, worked at the RAND corporation’s health care policy division, RAND Health Advisory Board. Meyer, for his part, is a Yale law school graduate, who was writing President Clinton’s speeches years before receiving his graduation diploma from the storied institution. Both have extensive career histories in the fields of health and technology, though in very different areas and with strange bedfellows along the way.

In 2009, Perkins became the Chief Technology Officer for a publicly-traded cross-national operator of hospitals and clinics called Vanguard Health Systems. Vanguard had been established with funding from Morgan Stanley and controlled by the Blackstone Group since 2004, maintaining control all though the company’s IPO in 2011. Two years later, Vanguard was acquired by Tenet Healthcare, creating the third-largest investor-owned hospital company in the United States with a total of 65 hospitals nationwide and over 500 healthcare facilities.

Paul Meyer, center, is pictured in a screenshot of a media briefing touting CommonPass

Besides being one of the biggest healthcare companies in the United States, Tenet is also one of the most notoriously corrupt. The same year it bought Vanguard, it was slapped with a major whistleblower complaint that disclosed the company’s fraudulent practices. That lawsuit resulted in a $514 million settlement. A more recent case involving a conspiracy between Oklahoma orthopedic surgeons at one of its facilities was settled for $66 million in 2019. But, Tenet’s problems go back even further to the early 2000s when fraud and performing unneeded surgeries led to a multitude of lawsuits and even a Senate investigation.

The Vanguard deal marked the end of Perkins’ tenure there, who chose to take a $1.9 million package instead of joining the newly merged conglomerate like its CEO and much of its staff did. He would move on to create a company of his own called Sapiens Data Science; a health tech platform that provides access to “credible scientifically validated data algorithms” and looks to create a “new revolutionary health ecosystem.”

Meyer’s background is more complicated, and his arrival on the healthcare scene runs through different channels linked to American intelligence cover operations dating back to NATO’s war in Kosovo and the former Yugoslavia during the early Clinton years. It is his involvement with an infamous human-trafficking outfit known as the International Rescue Committee or IRC, that should be cause for concern given his role in The Commons Project and flagship CommonPass app.

The Meyer of Kosovo

Before he was named Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum or Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute, and even before becoming a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations and receiving MIT’s 2003 Humanitarian of the Year award, Paul Meyer found himself in war-torn Kosovo installing a new Internet infrastructure system to replace the one destroyed in the war, only days after NATO bombs had stopped shelling the Serbian people.

Barely out of law school and having spent two years writing President Clinton’s speeches as the conflict in the former Yugoslavia was transpiring, Meyer was tapped by the IRC to lead a UN and private relief effort called the Internet Projekti Kosova (IPKO) or Kosovo Internet Project, with tech-savvy local Akan Ismaili to handle the complex technical issues and Teresa Crawford from the Advocacy Project to “uplink” satellites in the region with the stated purpose of reuniting displaced Albanian families. The system was set up atop a building used by the British KFOR Civil-Military Cooperation CIMIC and British Royal Engineers were also brought onto the project, among others.

Eventually, the IRC gave the project to a non-profit organization “dedicated to providing wide access to the Internet in Kosovo.” IPKO is today the largest telecom, internet, and cable TV company in Kosovo. Meyer remains involved through the IPKO Foundation, which he co-founded to provide “free technology education” to Kosovar students.

By the 1950s, the IRC was known to be an “integral link” in the CIA’s covert network led by Tony Blair protégé and former British Foreign Minister, David Miliband since 2013. In 2018, the IRC was embroiled in a child-sex trafficking scandal dubbed the “sex-for-food scandal” covered extensively by Whitney Webb in a recent article. The organization’s cover-up of dozens of sex abuse, bribery and fraud allegations resulted in the U.K. government withdrawing its funding from the organizations. However, no IRC employees were prosecuted over the 37 incidents detailed in the report.

Currently, the IRC is very involved in the implementation of a biometric ID system for refugees of the ongoing conflict in Myanmar, a project funded by the Rockefeller Foundation-backed ID2020 Alliance, which also funds The Commons Project. IRC’s Mae La initiative, however, receives most of its funding through the notorious CIA-cutout USAID and intends to create a “blockchain-based digital identification” system using iris recognition technology to give refugees access to IRC’s services in Thailand. Long term goals include rolling health, work and financial data together into a single ID system, that will determine access to food, healthcare and mobility.

We want your DNA

The difference between IRC’s Mae La project and The Commons Project is a question of class. Class status, to be specific. But, it is essentially the same idea and covers the same interests of the groups and individuals who form part of the Commons Project’s board of trustees; many of whom have been part of the digital tracking and healthcare technology space for years.

People like Linda Dillman, who ran Wal-Mart’s implementation of RFID employee tracking technology as the retail giant’s CIO or the former Chief Technology Officer for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Bryan Sivak, who is now a Managing Director at Managing Director at Kaiser Permanente, one of the largest healthcare insurance plan providers in the nation. Other trustee affiliations stand out, as well, such as Will Fitzpatrick, General Counsel to the Omidyar Network and George W. Bush’s Assistant Secretary of Defense, Health Affairs, Dr. William Winkenwerder, Jr.

At the core of these efforts is the desire to create a DNA-based population screening agenda, which people like Perkins and Meyer are forcefully pushing forward. Perkins worked as the CMO at a company called Human Longevity, Inc., which “combines state-of-the-art DNA sequencing and expert analysis with machine learning, to help change medicine to a more data-driven science.”

Meyer developed a precursor to CommonPass in 2016, when he merged his mobile health services company, Voxiva, which implemented the “first nationwide digital disease surveillance systems in Peru and Rwanda” in partnership with the CDC, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), with Sense Health to form a health messaging service called Wellpass Meyer described as “an integrated platform… [that] helps overcome the challenges of deploying fragmented engagement and population health solutions.”

Dubious technology

The reliability of the DNA-based, algorithmically-deduced health diagnoses used for the CommonPass trial run must also be called into question given the history of the company furnishing the technology. Prenetics, Ltd is the Hong Kong-based, Alibaba-funded company that also performed the COVID-19 testing for the UK’s Premier League’s Project Restart, which used a similar health status app called Covi-Pass, covered by this author in June.

Prenetics’ COVID tests rely on DNA-based technology it acquired in 2018, when it purchased DNAFit; a company founded by South African businessman Avrom “Avi” Lasarow, who came on board after the merger as Prenetics’ Chief Executive Officer for Europe, Middle East and Africa. Lasarow, who also heads the Premier League’s coronavirus testing program, just settled a civil case against him in the U.S. last May for nearly $60,000 surrounding allegations of “deceptive health claims”.

“Lifestyle genetics pioneer” Lasarow has a long track record of settling out of court over such issues, including a lawsuit brought by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in 2015, which accused Lasarow Healthcare Technologies Ltd., aka L Health Ltd., and two other defendants of making false or unsubstantiated claims regarding a “melanoma detection” app. As part of that settlement, Lasarow was “prohibited from making any misleading or unsubstantiated claims about the health benefits or efficacy of any product or service.”

Prenetics has been reportedly working on establishing a partnership with VSTE Enterprises, the same company that developed the V-Code technology that underpins Covi-Pass, since May. Nevertheless, such red flags pale in comparison to the individuals and organizations that are behind CommonPass, itself, who have plans for a much vaster digital enclosure based on DNA population screening technologies through initiatives like the The Commons Project, which aims to fundamentally transform medicine and impose new limits on our freedom of movement as the CommonPass rollout is slated to quickly expand to other routes across Asia, Africa, the Americas, Europe and the Middle East.

A common thread

Just as Bush’s Aviation and Transportation Security Act opened the doors for certain technology and security sectors to flourish in the wake of 9/11, this novel health-focused expansion of the national security state has bypassed all levers of democratic power to allow for the entrenchment of a far larger and more dangerous group of entities, within the health, technology and life sciences industries together with an increasingly more powerful clique of federal health agencies and officials, like Robert Kadlec, who are pushing for a full spectrum surveillance society.

Taking your shoes off at the airport and exposing your body to radiation has become routine now at every airport in the nation and most ‘temporary’ laws passed through emergency legislation remain on the books nearly two decades later. Precedent demands that we assume the same will occur with the majority of the new restrictions on our freedom of movement and quality of life currently being implemented throughout the country and the world.

Rolling back these draconian measures is not in any of their plans, as promised by the president of the U.S. Travel Association, Roger Dow, who confidently asserted after Wednesday’s successful CommonPass trail run, that the app will let us “navigate out of the crippling economic fallout of COVID-related travel restrictions and quarantine requirements,” adding that it will “pay further dividends for more seamless and convenient travel even once the pandemic has subsided.”

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Raul Diego is a MintPress News Staff Writer, independent photojournalist, researcher, writer and documentary filmmaker.

Featured image: The CommonPass generated QR code is shown. Original image sourced from the Common Project

Over the years, Small and Medium Scale Businesses (SMEs) have been uttermost focus for the Russian government recognizing the fact that these provide employment and support the overall economy. Despite the coronavirus pandemic, the government has seriously prioritized the sector, urged the support of financial institutions in order the secure, at least, incomes and employment places of the population.

Late October, two significant business events were held in Moscow. The first was the annual gathering of the Valdai Discussion Club and the second was Russia Calling! Investment forum. At both gatherings, President Vladimir Putin gave an overview of the small and medium scale business sector in the changing economy of Russia. Besides this, he has been talking about the importance of strengthening support for businesses during weekly executive meetings with Ministers of State.

But what is interesting is that the Valdai Discussion Club and the Russia Calling participants had the chance to express their views and give assessment of the economy with the Russian leader. On the other hand, Putin had the opportunity, not only to listen to academics and researchers, sometimes even opposing views of the current developments, but also enjoyed interactive exchange of opinions with potential investors, an insight into the mood of business partners both in Russia and abroad. It gave them an idea of government priorities and plans about the economic development.

President Vladimir Putin addressed the plenary session of the 12th VTB Capital Russia Calling! Investment Forum held on October 29 from his office in Novo-Ogaryovo, located in Moscow Region. The main theme of the event was Global Challenges, Local Remedies. As usual, the forum brought together from all over the world, business leaders, investment managers and consultants, as well as international experts in the field of the economy and finance.

Obviously, the key issue here is increasing the income of citizens and increasing their involvement in the Russian economy. The epidemiological situation in the country – the spread of the coronavirus – is affecting businesses, especially small and medium-sized companies involved in retail, transportation and consumer services.

Despite the complicated epidemiological situation, Putin has asked business owners and managers to be socially responsible and to comply with all the working conditions of their employees and workers, while the government also fine-tunes measures for supporting companies and businesspeople in the current conditions. These includes both short-term and long-term measures.

“We are focusing on support for small and medium-sized businesses. We have halved the insurance premiums for these companies, from 30 to 15 percent. This is a permanent decision that does not apply to the current crisis period alone. Small and medium-sized businesses working in the affected sectors can delay tax and insurance premium payments for the first quarter of 2020 by up to six months,” Putin told the gathering.

As these enterprises continue to face problems, the government has decided to extend the moratorium for planned inspections of small businesses until the end of 2021. This becomes necessary to reduce the administrative and tax burdens for tens of thousands of companies employing millions of Russian citizens, thus preserving jobs and people’s incomes.

Despite the difficult year, Russia has maintained macroeconomic stability, prevented an inflation hike and ensured financial market stability. This is a solid basis for taking further steps to consolidate the efforts of the state and the business community, overcome the decline, restore employment and bring the national economy back to the growth trajectory.

“We intend to act and are already taking measures in such key spheres as stimulating investment, promoting exports and ensuring a broad-based introduction of digital technologies. These factors can definitely set the trend for long-term quality growth. I would like to emphasize that joint coordinated action is especially important, when government measures to develop the infrastructure, improve legislation and provide direct support to economic sectors are complemented with business investment in the creation of new, modern and highly paid jobs. Only in this case will we see a combined effect and a real result for the entire economy and for the welfare of the people,” according to the president.

He reiterated that stimulating investment is a priority at the current moment, bearing in mind the goal of long-term future-oriented economic development, and pointed out that reliable and safe mechanisms for investing in new financial instruments are available to both Russian and international investors. The government values every partner who wants to work together with Russia.

That digital transformation is one of Russia’s national goals in the coming decade. It is an extremely important condition for enhancing economic growth and improving the quality of life for the people.

Russia’s leading companies have long been and very successfully investing in these spheres, spreading to new niches and products and actually growing into what is now described as “econsystems” and the development of competition in this sphere will give a powerful impetus to the economy and will help many small and medium-sized companies expand their marketing channels.

During the Q&A session, Putin emphasized that the Government of the Russian Federation has taken a considerable package of measures to support small and medium-size companies, include subsidized loans and grants for maintaining the number of jobs and delayed tax payments, and limiting excessive pressure from administrative bodies. The government has proposed extending the term for cancelling inspections for a fairly long period, for next year.

“We see that generally, as I have said, we are acting effectively, but at the same time, we know that these support measures do not reach every company for many reasons. We are perfectly aware of the fact that today businesses in the food services and other services continue to be in a fairly complicated situation. We will certainly respond to this, just as we did to the situation in large companies, for that matter,” he said with high assurance while adding that small businesses, however, are definitely in the spotlight providing employment to about 20 million people, which is a big number in Russia.

Nevertheless, the small and medium-sized business segment, above all in the high-tech area, is extremely important. There was a suggestion that major companies to generate the need for and establishment of an entire cluster of start-ups around them consisting of small and medium-sized businesses. It is important to create conditions to generate the need for the products and services – this is what is important.

In an earlier videoconference, during the final plenary session of the 17th Annual Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club, Putin gave the state of the economy.

“We took a number of serious steps to support the economy. This support amounted to 4.5 percent of the GDP. Some other countries allocated even more funds for this purpose. The point is actually not so much the amount of allocated funds but their effective use. We disposed of these funds quite effectively, in a selective way and using the considerable resources accumulated in the past years, as well as relying on the macroeconomic indicators and all other positive achievements of the past years, to support small and medium-sized businesses, and even large companies and the whole industries,” he explained in his speech to this gathering.

What is needed is to adjust support for certain sectors, for example, for small and medium-sized businesses. Certain parts of this work require additional support, maybe the extension of tax benefits and some other measures that are due to expire shortly, and will get through this difficult period together, with the people’s support and trust.

Putin stressed that technology, of course, online education, telemedicine and other advanced solutions – all the modern digital technologies that have been increasingly penetrating all spheres, forcing politicians, legal professionals, and administrative regulators, to move towards decision-making at a faster pace than they used to. This is definitely changing the world.

Everything we are discussing today will soon become the responsibility of young people. Young people will have to deal with all of the problems discussed today. Speaking about Russia, its young citizens, who are still growing up and gaining experience, will have to do this in the 21st century. They are the ones who will have to confront new and probably even more difficult challenges.

They have their own views on the past, present and future, – that Russian people will always retain their best qualities: patriotism, fortitude, creativity, hard work, team spirit and the capacity to surprise the world by finding solutions to the most difficult and even seemingly insoluble problems. Worthy to note that Vladimir Putin’s role, indeed and in practical terms, to remain in the history of Russia has something completely different – ensuring the interests of the Russian people, the Russian state, strengthening Russia.

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Kester Kenn Klomegah is a frequent and passionate contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: President Vladimir Putin and Chairman of VTB Bank Management Board Andrei Kostin at the Russia Calling! Investment Forum. (Source: Kester Kenn Klomegah)

A new tranche of sanctions imposed by the US on Iran has exacerbated the insulin shortage crisis in the Islamic Republic and boosted its smuggling, patients and doctors told Middle East Eye.

On 8 October, the US Treasury announced that it was blacklisting 18 major Iranian banks, effectively cutting Tehran off from the international financial system.

The move defied European allies who warned it would limit Tehran’s ability to purchase humanitarian imports amid a worsening currency crisis and the coronavirus pandemic.

European nations have opposed a blanket sanctioning of Iran’s financial sector because it exposes European banks that do business with the blacklisted banks and other companies to punitive measures by Washington.

Meanwhile, human rights advocates have warned about the devastating consequences of the latest sanctions on the daily lives of Iranians, including blocking their access to essential drugs and food.

Insulin supply has been particularly affected by the latest sanctions.

“It has been a year since insulin pens have disappeared from all pharmacies,” Niloofar Zolfaghari, a journalist who has been desperately looking for insulin pens for her ailing father, told Middle East Eye.

“But in the past few weeks, things have worsened as we can’t even find anything in the black market to buy,” she added.

‘There is no insulin’

A campaign titled “There is no insulin” has been trending in recent weeks on Iranian social media, with members of the public calling on authorities to intervene to resolve the crisis.

Diabetes is a growing illness in Iran, with 11 percent of the population over 25 years suffering from it, according to Ali-Reza Mahdavi, the official in charge of controlling diabetes in Iran’s health ministry.

According to Farza Peirouyan, the secretary of the National Academy of Health Economics, there are 4.5 million diabetic patients in Iran, 600,000 of whom need a daily Insulin shot.

On 26 September, before the insulin crisis reached its peak, 120 endocrinologists penned a letter to Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani urging him to address the problem of the drug’s shortage in the market.

As the crisis deepened, many took part in the social media campaign, where they called on officials to resolve the problem to avert the loss of thousands of lives.

“I must decide soon to eat and lose my sight or a body part. Or I [decide] not to eat so that my blood sugar does not rise and I [get] to live without insulin,” tweeted Mahshid Saeedi, one Iranian user on Twitter.

The hashtags related to the campaign have been used mainly by non-political users, according to one social networks researcher.

Exploitation by black market

Zolfaghari, who has struggled to secure insulin pens for her diabetic father, said that black market dealers are taking advantage of the crisis.

One seller of contraband medicines offered to sell her expired insulin for triple the usual price.

“I told the guy wouldn’t these go bad? He replied, let it be, you cannot find any of these anymore. And for sure we did not buy it.”

She added that she eventually found a pharmacy that sold her three insulin pens, thanks to one of her father’s connections.

“There are only a few pharmacies that still have insulin pens, and they just sell it to the people they know.”

Banking hurdles

Dr Arash Anissian, the chairman of Ibn Sina hospital in Tehran and an importer of medicine and medical equipment, said the sanctions have added greater obstacles to his work.

He explained that the government offers underpriced foreign exchange currency to the importers of the medicine, and the Central Bank is tasked with providing importers with the amount of foreign exchange they need to purchase the goods.

“The problem is that in the new phase of sanctions, our banks cannot work directly with foreign banks, intermediary banks also have a lot of restrictions, and the central bank cannot provide foreign exchange due to reduced oil sales,” he told MEE.

“Therefore, the medicine is either not sent [to Iran], or fails to obtain the customs clearance in case the importer settles debt with the central bank,” he added.

According to Anissian,

”sometimes [our money] enters a foreign bank through the accounts of Iranian banks or some intermediary accounts, but the foreign bank does not recognise its origin and either blocks it or returns the money – hence the disruption in the import of medicine and equipment.”

Ali Shariati, a businessman and member of Iran’s Chamber of Commerce, said that new sanctions are deterring foreign companies from dealing with Iranians.

“Our personal experience is that when sanctions are increased, some [foreign] companies aren’t willing to deal with Iranians as they don’t want to face possible punitive consequences,” he told MEE.

Iranian businesswoman Negin Shayegan who serves as a member of the Medical Equipment Specialists Association and the Chamber of Commerce said in response to a question by MEE on Twitter that owing to the new round of sanctions, the money she had paid to a foreign company was blocked, so it could not be withdrawn.

In a separate tweet, she also said that Halk Bank of Turkey could only transfer money for medicine and food until the end of September due to the new round of sanctions.

Smuggling

Besides US sanctions, smuggling is said to be exacerbating the insulin crisis in Iran.

According to Mahmoud Najafi Arab, a member of the Chamber of Commerce, the government’s decision to offer foreign currency exchange at a price below the market’s is encouraging some people to smuggle medicine out of the country.

To do this, insulin is imported using the underpriced foreign exchange currency, but is later smuggled out of the country as the importer is able to sell it at a much higher price abroad.

However, the chairman of the Diabetes Association in Iran told local media that the problem with insulin has existed since last year, adding that he, along with 300 NGOs, wrote a letter to the UN a year ago, warning it about the effects of sanctions on patients.

Simultaneously, US-based Iranian anti-government activists insist that corruption and smuggling, rather than the Trump administration’s sanctions, are the major factors leading to the scarcity of insulin in Iran.

“Iraq seized the ‘largest cargo of trafficked pharmaceutical products from Iran’ in Diyala. International media tells us Iran faces a shortage of pharma products due to sanctions. If it is true why [does] Tehran send large cargos of the much-needed drugs to Iraq?” Saeed Ghasseminejad, a senior member of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said on Twitter.

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Featured image: Basalin, insulin produced by Iran (Photo: IRIB)

The U.S. Justice Department announced on Thursday that President Donald Trump’s administration sold over 1.1 million barrels of refined petroleum that were onboard the Luna vessel, which was seized by the United States from Iran on August 14, 2020.

“The ships’ owner transferred the petroleum to the government, and we can now announce that the United States has sold and delivered that petroleum,” the Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division John Demers said.

The Trump administration justified its action by arguing that the money from the oil sale to Caracas would supposedly benefit the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)-Quds Force, which is considered a terrorist organization.

In recent years, Venezuela has faced gasoline supply problems because of the arbitrary and unilateral sanctions that the U.S. government established as a mechanism to destabilize the Bolivarian revolution and President Nicolas Maduro.

Don't let Trump orchestrate a coup in Venezuela!
Tell Congress to oppose US military intervention & protect the DC Venezuelan Embassy from ILLEGAL takeover by violent pro-Juan Guaidó opposition thugs. #HandsOffVenezuelahttps://t.co/GXXEEsDG65

— TURN THE OTHER CHEEK. PATIENTS IS A VIRTUE. MEEK. (@Alexistori5) October 28, 2020

In this context, the United States even threatened to send troops to the Caribbean to prevent the supply of fuel to the South American country.

On May 23, the first of the ships loaded with fuel from Iran arrived in Venezuela’s territorial waters. Almost three months later, the Department of Justice reported that Washington had achieved “the largest seizure of fuel shipments from Iran,” for a total amount of 1,116 million barrels of oil, which Venezuela had already paid for.

“The U.S. insisted on chasing the gasoline we were importing. It even stole three million barrels from us,” President Maduro said on October 28.

The day before, the main Venezuelan refinery was attacked by a missile, an act labeled as terrorist by the Oil Minister Tareck El Aissami.

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Featured image: Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division John Demers, Washington DC, U.S., 2020.  | Photo: EFE

People who live in the path of a Hurricane (upon the first warning) take all necessary steps to safeguard themselves, their families and their livelihood. In the world of politics, when political storms are forming, most people are not prepared and are inexperienced in how to respond to new situations.

The 2020 Presidential Election (in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic crisis and mass layoffs) has become a political hurricane that is making everyone anxious and worried.

The fascistic minded President Trump with his armed militia supporters is the eye of this historically unprecedented political hurricane. For months the Trump Administration has verbally and physically prepared the nation for a coup to form an authoritarian government by undermining the U.S. Constitution.  The plot to kidnap the Governor of Michigan by well-trained militiamen, the message of “stand by” to the far-right groups and the latest President tweet ‘I LOVE TEXAS’ regarding harassing a Biden campaign bus by a bunch of Trump supporters in trucks on the Texas highways; all in all indicates that President Trump undoubtedly believes his victory will be by Bullets not by Ballots in this election.

The Democratic Party leadership with the Biden campaign is not willing to organize and mobilize the majority of working people who are ready to fight back against any form of fascism which is threatening minorities, women, youth, immigrants and dissents. As a matter of fact, the Democratic Party is more afraid of working people uprising than fascistic minded President Trump.

They are trying to distract people to be fearful of the plot of imaginary and abstract cyber activities of “foreign” enemies like Russia or other countries than the real and active domestic terrorist groups with unfamiliar names such as “Proud Boys” (who promote civil war in the U.S.), “Three Percenters” and “Oath Keepers”. In fact, both parties and both candidates have a lot in common. Both parties already are activating the National Guard and Police to suppress all possible demonstrations during and after November 3rd in the name of the “safety” of communities. President Trump is mobilizing soldiers and federal agents including notorious ICE agents for rapid deployment to different cities to intimidate his opponents.

The unsolvable differences between the Republican and Democratic parties are more tactical than principled contradictions. The aim of both parties as the representatives of the 1% is to protect the interest of the wealthy elite in the U.S.

Both parties believe in suppressive “Law and Order” to control mass movements and support an aggressive “Foreign Policy” through a ruthless military with deadly nuclear arsenals to regain the U.S. hegemony worldwide. It is also imperative to understand that the Trump phenomenon is a natural result of decades of corrupt policies of a bankrupt capitalist system that allows a fascistic-minded con man to reside in the White House.

Like the aftermath of a natural disaster, working people and the poor will suffer the most through this election. However, the working people and their allies as producers of the strength and prosperity of society have the greatest power to stop venomous fascists or their pretentious soft-spoken twin. The keyword is to be independent of all capitalist politicians. Working people in the U.S. should rely on their own strength and power to organize according to the need of their communities. In the 21st century, insecurity, hunger, poverty and disease are universal problems and working people in the U.S. must reach out in solidarity with their sisters and brothers in other countries to combat these problems in unity. Nature and advanced technology offer many solutions that are beneficial to the majority of people but not profitable for the wealthy minority. Peace and prosperity are possible when working people find the most conscious and revolutionary elements in their class to lead. History offers the victorious path so we don’t repeat the mistake of false and superficial leaders.

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Massoud Nayeri is a graphic designer and an independent peace activist based in the United States. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the author

The 2020 U.S. presidential election campaign has evolved into a bitter contest between a politician and a plutocrat, both of whom advance policies that favor the rich.  One is a criminal; the other is a con artist.  Joseph Biden is the criminal.  Donald Trump is the con artist.

The American people will choose their president on November 3.  What they cannot do is elect a candidate that will pursue their interests.  The two-party system restricts campaigns to a competition between corporate Democrats and corporate Republicans, none of whom have the peoples’ interests in mind.  The upcoming election will allow voters to select which party will rule the country on behalf of an owning class that has become obscenely wealthy at the expense of working people, most of whom face a desperate struggle for survival.

To deceive voters, candidates use populist rhetoric to conceal plutocratic rule behind a facade of democratic governance.  U.S. elections ensure the continuity of plutocratic rule, not its interruption.  That’s the essence of American politics .  No election is democratic that costs $11 billion to finance.  In a dollar democracy, the White House is transformed into the most expensive brothel in America, followed closely by the Capitol Building, where the prostitutes are more numerous, if not more profligate.

Stripped of ideological subterfuge, American citizens vote to select their slave-masters.  By so doing, they legitimate a government of, by, and for Wall Street banks, multinational corporations, the military industrial complex and the national security autocracy.  Popular representation is a fiction in a government awash in corporate money and ossified by bureaucratic power.

The election will also sanctify imperialism, as the entire political establishment is committed to protecting U.S. empire. These truths can never be told to the electorate.  They must be hidden within a matrix of ideological deception.

The Democrats don the mask of identity politics to conceal their allegiance to the American plutocracy.  They pose as defenders of economic and social rights for women, sexual minorities, immigrants, racial minorities, and workers.  The politics of the ‘New Democrats’ reeks of hypocrisy as their deeds contradict their words.

For example, under Barack Obama, Democrats claimed to advance the universal rights of women while prosecuting wars in seven Muslim countries that destroyed the lives of Afghani, Pakistani, Iraqi, Libyan, Syrian, Somali and Yemeni women, not to mention American women who lost sons and daughters fighting those wars.  They advocated for LGBTQ rights while supporting countries like Saudi Arabia, Brunei, Qatar and Oman that persecute and execute gay people.  They supported DACA while expelling record numbers of undocumented immigrants.  They endorsed voting rights for minorities while imposing mass incarceration on the Black and Latino underclass disenfranchising millions of convicted felons.  They favored a centrist version of the neoliberal agenda by promoting international trade agreements, capital flight and corporate bailouts, to the detriment of American workers.  Lest anyone forget, Joseph Biden was Barack Obama’s vice-president for eight years and bears full responsibility for the criminality of the Obama administration.

The Republicans hide behind the flag and the bible to advance their vision of free market fundamentalism on behalf of the owning class.  They use the politics of fear inspiring loyalty from a segment of the population threatened by globalism, multiculturalism, secularism and economic insecurity.  They appeal to the victims of free trade, capital flight and the outsourcing and offshoring of jobs they say, with some justification, resulted from the policies of Democrats, despite their complicity in promoting the mobility of capital.

The Republicans pander to social prejudice in a society they helped fracture by stoking the fires of racist, xenophobic, sexist and homophobic prejudice to win support for an extreme version of the Washington neoliberal consensus they present as economic liberty.  They favor a completely privatized economy that will do away with corporate regulations, reduce taxes on the rich and the corporate sector and eliminate social benefits, including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.  Along with their Democratic counterparts, the Republicans support a domestic police state to augment an interventionist foreign policy based on international gangsterism and war.  Donald Trump is the leader of this party of murderers and bandits.

In sum, the Democrats and Republicans are two militaristic neoliberal parties that manage the global affairs of the American plutocracy.  As for the specific policy choices of the standard bearers, history provides a stark record of their venality.

Joseph Biden is an unapologetic interventionist in foreign policy who promotes aggression and war to maintain the U.S. empire.  He is a self-admitted Zionist.  He is pro-AIPAC.  He is a war-criminal.  Biden was Barack Obama’s front man in the aftermath of the 2014 coup d’état in Ukraine that subjugated that country to the IMF and provoked a civil war.  Along with Obama and Hillary Clinton, he refused to condemn the 2009 right-wing coup in Honduras led by graduates of the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia.   While serving as Obama’s vice-president, he supported regime change in Libya, dirty war in Syria, Saudi war in Yemen, and the pivot to Asia.  As a U.S. senator, he supported Bill Clinton’s war in Yugoslavia and George W. Bush’s war in Iraq.  In the second presidential debate with Trump, he called the leaders of Russia, China and North Korea “thugs,” a perfect projection of his own persona.

Domestically, Biden is a ‘law and order’ Democrat who masqueraded as a liberal for his entire political career.  He is a crypto-racist.  He is a globalist who supported Clinton’s NAFTA, Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership, and Reagan’s attempt to undercut New Deal legislation.  He supports fracking, which is good news for the oil and gas industry.  With friends like Biden, peace activists, environmentalists, workers and racial minorities do not need enemies.

Donald Trump in a member of the owning class.  As a real estate mogul and celebrity entertainer, he used to buy politicians who created a tax code that allowed him to pay only $750.00 in federal income taxes in 2016-2017 and no income taxes in 10 of the 15 years prior to his becoming president.  Tiring of the hired help and wanting to advertise his brand name, he ran for the nation’s highest office in 2016 and to the surprise of many, himself included, won.

Trump was clever enough to exploit popular hatred of Washington’s swamp of corruption and fear of immigrants having learned the dark arts from his mentor, the notorious Roy Cohn.  He used the fake right-wing populist rhetoric of Steve Bannon to defeat the miserable Hillary Clinton.  Once elected, Trump failed to deliver on his promise to bring jobs back to the United States, rebuild the country’s infrastructure, build a wall across the entire Southern border and end the country’s interminable wars.

Trump did give fellow members of his class an astonishing $1.5 trillion in tax cuts to be paid for with deep cuts in Social Security and Medicare should he be sent to Washington for a second term.  Militarists can rest easy, as no cuts are planned for a Pentagon budget that mushroomed during Trump’s first term, with the support of corrupt Democrats.

Trump has exposed himself as a fraud who traffics in the politics of illusion.  He sells a pollyannaish optimism that is divorced from social reality.  The American dream has become a nightmare for millions who grimly face the reality of a gutted economy.  That does not stop the orange billionaire from intoning that his administration created the greatest economy in the nation’s history prior to the covid lockdown.  It may have been a great economy for the investor class, but not for workers.

At heart, Trump is a committed capitalist entrepreneur.  His administration’s economic policies can be characterized as neo-liberalism on steroids, operating behind a veneer of economic nationalism.  Trump does not oppose globalization and free trade.  He wants a better deal for American corporations within the globalized economy.  On the domestic front, he signed executive orders that further deregulate the financial,  fossil fuel,  food and nursing home industries.  As a ‘law’ and ‘order’ president, Trump repressed Black Lives Matter protests with the same intensity that Barack Obama repressed Occupy Wall Street, but with less finesse, an Obama forte, making himself an easy target for racial justice advocates.

In foreign policy, Trump’s ‘America First’ strategy has caused him to run afoul of the political and military establishment because his unorthodox and impulsive approach to foreign relations is unpredictable.  Policy differences notwithstanding, Trump is an imperialist commander-in-chief who defends U.S. empire as ruthlessly as his predecessors, despite his efforts to befriend Russia and withdraw troops from Afghanistan.

His attempt to normalize relations with Russia was subverted by the national security autocracy and the Democratic party during Russiagate and Ukrainegate witch-hunts that were designed to block détente and remove him from office.  The first scheme succeeded while the second one failed.

Trump’s proposal to withdraw troops from Afghanistan was opposed by Democrats and key members of the Republican establishment who are firmly committed to anti-Russian aggression that aims to assert U.S. global hegemony.

His proposal to withdraw troops from Syria was fraudulent, as those forces were merely deployed to Syrian oil fields in a blatant display of Imperial aggression.

Elsewhere in the Middle East, Trump continues the U.S. military occupation of Iraq and support for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen.  In occupied Palestine, he moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, recognized Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights, brokered a peace deal between the settler state and the United Arab Emirates, and gave a green light to Benjamin Netanyahu to begin annexation of the West Bank.  Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear agreement, assassinated one of Iran’s top generals, and imposed killer sanctions on that country.

On other fronts, he orders unremitting assaults on socialism in Venezuela and Cuba, wages trade war with China, and continues Obama’s drone war.  To hide imperial aggression, he is attempting to have Julian Assange extradited to the United States to face charges under the espionage act, launching a direct assault on the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of the press.

The American people desperately need to face reality by rejecting the politics of illusion.  The Democrats and their supporters think that by removing Trump, they will bring the country together and “Heal America’s Soul.”  The Republicans think by re-electing Trump, the economy will rebound and they will “Make America Great Again.”  Both are mistaken.

America’s problems are deeply rooted in the failure of neoliberal capitalism, a system that begets privation, war and environmental destruction.  It is globally unsustainable.  Only systemic change will save the planet and its people. Unfortunately, no viable candidate will appear on the November ballot to offer that option.

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Donald Monaco is a political analyst who lives in Brooklyn, New York.  He received his Master’s Degree in Education from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1979 and was radicalized by the Vietnam War.  He writes from an anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist perspective.  His recent book is titled, The Politics of Terrorism, and is available at amazon.com.

Featured image is from Global Justice Now