Global Research

People have been using masks for a long time. The oldest masks ever found were 9,000 years old. Masks have been used for religious rituals, for fun, in factories to protect against breathing in chemicals and dust particles, for protection against smog, to punish slaves and gossipy wives, to commit crimes, and, of course, for Halloween. But the focus of this article will be about the medical use of masks.

Bubonic plague recurred in Europe for centuries. In 17th Century Europe, doctors who tended plague victims believed that it spread through poisoned air known as miasma that could create an imbalance in a person’s bodily fluids or humors. To protect themselves, physicians wore a long coat covered in scented wax, a hat and gloves made of goat leather, and a mask with a 6” long bird-like beak filled with herbs, cinnamon, myrrh, and perfume among other things. They also carried a long rod to poke or fend off victims with. Of course, all these silly outfits did was make them look ridiculous.

Image on the right: Carl Flugge

The first doctors to wear a mask in an operating room were Polish surgeon Johann Von Mikulicz Radecki and French surgeon Paul Berger in 1897. They advocated using masks during surgery due to the findings of German bacteriologist Carl Flugge who discovered pathogenic bacteria in saliva. Back then, surgical masks were made of several layers of gauze. The purpose of the surgical mask was, and still is, to prevent respiratory droplets from the physician’s nose and mouth from entering a patient’s open wound, and to protect the surgeon from sprays and splashes from the patient during an operation. But most doctors refused to go along with Radecki and Berger so it took many years after that before surgical masks became standard operating room equipment.

The first physician to have the lay public wear gauze masks was Chinese Doctor Wu Lein Teh during the Manchurian plague of 1910-1911 which killed around 63,000. This paved the way for some cities in our country to force the general public to wear masks during the 1918 influenza pandemic. It became known as the Spanish flu because the first cases were reported in Spain. But it may not have originated there. Due to WWI, news reporting in many countries was disrupted unlike Spain which had remained neutral. The Spanish flu killed between 50-100 million worldwide out of a back then global population of 1.8 billion.

Time Magazine ran a May 1, 2020 article hinting that forcing people to wear masks helped save lives during the 1918 influenza pandemic. Some mask advocates on social media sites like Facebook dogmatically make that claim. The scientific literature disagrees.

A May 12, 2020 article published in the peer review journal Health Affairs emphatically states: “Experts reviewing the evidence from 1918 concluded that flu masks failed to control infection.” The article goes on to cite a 1919 study by Wilfred H. Kellogg for the California State Board of Health: “…mask ordinances applied forcibly to entire communities did not decrease cases and deaths, as confirmed by comparisons of cities with widely divergent policies on masking.” Kellogg concluded: “The case against the mask as a measure of compulsory application for the control of epidemics appears to be complete.” Two other studies cited in the article, one from 1918 and another from 1921, reached the same conclusion.

Before we get into what modern science has to say about masks, it’s important to understand what isn’t science. Authoritative statements made by people with M.D. or PhD after their names is not science–the same goes for celebrities and billionaires. Decrees, directives, and executive orders made by politicians, corporate CEOs, directors of institutions, and public health authorities is not science. They may or may not be telling the truth. You have to check their sources and see if they represent any special interests that could create bias. To blindly believe them because they are so-called experts is to commit the appeal to authority fallacy. A logical fallacy is a mistaken belief based on unsound reasoning.

There are two kinds of scientific research. Observational and experimental. Statistical correlations and computer modeling (epidemiological studies) are examples of observational science. They can be useful in pointing the way to what needs to be looked at more closely and for quality control regarding treatments in clinical practice. These kind of studies can often wind up being very inaccurate if used by themselves.

The gold standard in science are randomized controlled trials with verified outcomes because they eliminate bias and speculation. For example, hormone replacement therapy. Originally, estrogen therapy was thought to reduce heart attacks. This was based on an observational study. But when a randomized controlled trial or experimental study was done it showed that estrogen therapy actually increased the risk of a heart attack. To make it simple, compare what I just said with going on a trip. Epidemiological and other observational studies are the travel route, randomized controlled trials with verified outcomes are the destination.

In the case of masks, some observational/epidemiological studies show that they lowered COVID-19 cases and death rates in places that mandate mask wearing as opposed to places that don’t. But there are also studies that show the opposite. For example, Michigan, population 10,045,000, very punitive lockdown restrictions, strict mask mandates. Sweden, population 10,110,405, no punitive lockdown restrictions, no mask mandates. Total COVID-19 deaths in Michigan: 7,019. Total COVID-19 deaths in Sweden: 5,880. One can cherry-pick this kind of data adnauseam, but it’s all speculation. The bottom line question is: do masks block viral particles? Only experimental studies or randomized controlled trials with verified outcomes can answer this question by testing the masks directly. Such studies have been done numerous times.

Source: Fast Company

Of the most comprehensive studies on masks was done in the United Kingdom in 2008 by the HSE (Health Safety Executive), it’s like our OSHA, entitled: “Evaluating the protection afforded by surgical masks against influenza bioaerosols” “Gross protection of surgical masks compared to filtering facepiece respirators” (N95 masks).

Background: “There is a common misconception amongst workers and employers that surgical masks will protect against aerosols…However, surgical masks are not intended to provide protection against infectious aerosols.”

Aerosols are very fine particles, much smaller than respiratory droplets, that are suspended in the fluid air for long periods of time and can travel quite far. We release these aerosols through breathing and speaking—they can contain large amounts of pathogenic viruses—the part of our body most vulnerable to them is the respiratory system.

In the HSE study, different kinds of masks were tested on a dummy’s head which was exposed to aerosols containing influenza virus particles to see if the masks would filter them out. Influenza virus is supposed to be similar in size to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that supposedly causes COVID-19.

Page 21: “Live infectious virus was extracted in enumerable quantities from the air from behind all the surgical masks tested. This suggests that influenza virus can survive in aerosol particles and bypass/penetrate a surgical mask and that a residual infectious aerosol hazard may exist.”

Page 22: “Even if the mask is manufactured from high efficiency filtering media, a high proportion of particles challenging the surgical mask will enter the breathing zone via breaches in the face seal. Furthermore, a high efficiency filtration media and fluid-resistant layers are likely to increase breathing resistance. This, together with a poor face fit, will increase the degree of leakage around the face seal.”

Page 23: “As surgical masks cannot be fitted well to the face, their use may not be adequate for protection against a residual airborne infection hazard.”

A June 26, 2019 study in Peer J—Journal of Life and Environmental Sciences: “Optimal microscopic study of surface morphology and filtering efficiency of face masks” demonstrated that cloth masks are even worse than surgical masks.

Background: “Low-cost face masks made from different cloth materials are very common in developing countries. The cloth masks (CM) are usually double layered with stretchable ear loops. It is common practice to use such masks for months after multiple washing and drying cycles. If a CM is used for long time, the ear loops become stretched. The loop needs to be knotted to make the mask loop fit better on the face.”

Conclusions: “Filtering efficiency of CM for ambient PM (particulate matter) was poorer than in SM (surgical masks). The poor efficiency was due to the presence of larger sized pores. Our study also demonstrated that washing and drying cycle deteriorates the filtering efficiency due to change in pore shape and clearance. We also found that stretching of the CM surface alters the pore size and potentially decreases the filtering efficiency. The findings of this study suggest that CM are not effective, and that effectiveness deteriorates if used after washing and drying cycles and if used under stretched condition.” And what does the CDC recommend? Washing cloth masks.

Bottom line: all masks, doesn’t matter what kind, have a network of microscopic pores/holes in them. If they didn’t, you wouldn’t be able to breath at all. Unlike the 1911 Manchurian plague which was caused by a bacterial pathogen, respiratory diseases like the Spanish flu are caused by viruses. The average size of most bacteria is between 0.2 and 2.0 microns. Viruses are a lot smaller. SARS-CoV-2 is between 0.06 and 0.14 microns which makes it a lot smaller than the pores in any mask. N95 masks have the smallest pores at 0.3 microns. But viruses don’t travel through the air by themselves—they travel via droplets and aerosols which are larger than the virus, but still small enough to go through the pores in any mask. The larger the pores in the mask the more particles and droplets will get through.

A June 1, 2020 study from AAPS (Association of American Physicians and Surgeons) reported on the filter efficiency of cloth masks and scarves for microscopic particles ranging in size from 0.02 – 1.0 microns: “Cloth masks 10% to 30%,” “Scarves 10% to 20%.” “All of the cloth masks and materials had near zero efficiency at 0.3 um (microns), a particle size that easily penetrates into the lungs.” The study further reported on the efficiency of 44 surgical masks and N95 respirators for particles ranging in size from 0.08 to 0.22 microns: “N95 FFR filter efficiency was greater than 95%.” “Medical masks – 55% efficiency” “General masks – 38%.”

Two things to keep in mind: one virion (cell free virus particle) is enough to cause infection if it enters into a cell and multiplies. This debunks the assertion that masks are better than nothing because they block some viral particles. Additionally, the CDC does not recommend N95 masks be worn by the general public in order to reserve them for health care workers. In order to block at least 95% of infectious viral particles, N95 masks have to be properly fitted to a person’s face in a clinical setting. Instead, the CDC recommends that the general public wear cloth masks which at best filters out only 30% of viral particles. Now I ask you: is this really about public health? Simply stated: wearing any kind of mask to prevent viral diseases is a waste of time.

The most thorough and comprehensive kind of scientific study is a systematic review usually combined with meta-analysis. It sits at the very top of the “Evidence Pyramid.” To quote the North Central University Library in Minnesota: “A systematic review is a high-level overview of primary research on a particular research question that systematically identifies, selects, evaluates, and synthesizes all high quality research evidence relevant to that question in order to answer it. In other words, it provides an exhaustive summary of scholarly literature related to a particular research topic or question. A systematic review is often written by a panel of experts after reviewing all the information from both published and unpublished studies.”

Numerous systematic reviews have been done on masks. All of them came to the same conclusion. Here are two of them:

Peer-review journal: Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses, 2011 study “The use of masks and respirators to prevent transmission of influenza: a systematic review of the scientific evidence” They reviewed 17 studies (see Discussion) and concluded: “None of the studies we reviewed established a conclusive relationship between mask/respirator use and protection against influenza infection.” The authors go on to say: “In conclusion, there is a limited evidence base to support the use of masks and/or respirators in healthcare or community settings.”

Probably the most comprehensive study ever done was by the peer-review journal Canadian Family Physician (CFP) in July 2020: “Masks for prevention of viral respiratory infections among health care workers and the public” “PEER umbrella systematic review” This study included 11 systematic reviews and 18 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of 26,444 participants. The result:

Synthesis: “Overall, the use of masks in the community did not reduce the risk of influenza, confirmed viral respiratory infection, influenzalike illness, or any clinical respiratory infection.”

Community setting:“The use of masks in community settings in general did not reduce the risk of confirmed influenza…or confirmed viral respiratory infection. Results were not statistically significant in any subgroup analysis (masks worn by all, just the sick person, or just the healthy family members at home).”

Health care setting: “Of the 6 RCTs examining the use of masks by health care workers, only two had a control group assigned to no mask. In these trials, masks did not reduce influenzalike illness…any clinical respiratory infection…or confirmed viral respiratory infection compared with no masks.”

Discussion: “Particularly in the community setting, we wanted to see if there was any evidence of benefit from systematic use of masks by the general public outside the home, but we found no such evidence.”

There you have it. The latest most up to date body of knowledge on masks. Dr. Denis Rancourt, PhD summed it up best In his April 2020 paper “Masks Don’t Work” “A review of science relevant to COVID-19 social policy” published in Research Gate. Page 4: “No RCT study with verified outcome shows a benefit for HCW” (health care workers) “or community members in households to wearing a mask or respirator. There is no such study. There are no exceptions.”

Nevertheless, politicians, public health authorities, and the media continue to drone on about a growing body of evidence showing that masks worn by the general public are effective. In its June 5

“Interim Guidance” on masks, the WHO (World Health Organization) admits on page 6 that mask use by the general public “is not yet supported by high quality or direct scientific evidence…” Instead, they assert that “a growing compendium of observational evidence” indicates their possible effectiveness.

A July 31 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) warned that “observational studies” might “reduce the likelihood of a properly designed trial being performed, thereby delaying the discovery of reliable truth…if leaders, commentators, academics, and clinicians cannot restrain the rush to judgment in the absence of reliable evidence, the proliferation of observational treatment comparisons will hinder the goal of finding effective treatments for COVID-19—and a great many other diseases.” (page 4-5)

Another factor to consider is the detrimental effects masks have on the people wearing them. Food servers, friends, and people in general have told me how much they hate wearing masks saying that they can’t breathe, have headaches, and feel exhausted after working in them all day. Still, other people have told me that wearing a mask doesn’t bother them in the least. The couple of times I wore a mask while getting a chair massage and when I went to a city hall to testify against the passage of a mask ordinance, I too felt discomfort and anxiety. In science, these statements are considered anecdotal. An anecdote is a personal narrative about how someone experiences and perceives something minus any scientific data. Sometimes anecdotal evidence is all we have to go on. When it comes to making decisions in our personal lives, it’s usually all we need. Not everything can nor probably ever will be answered via the scientific method. But when it comes to government policies like forcing people to wear masks, socially distance, etc. scientific evidence is a must.

We must breathe air to live. Without air most people would die within 3-5 minutes. Our nose and mouth were not meant to be obstructed. Obviously, masks obstruct breathing. You don’t need science to tell you that. We breathe in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide or CO2. Carbon dioxide is a waste product of various metabolic and biochemical processes. Symptoms of not enough oxygen in the blood and tissues (hypoxemia/hypoxia) and too much CO2 in the blood (hypercapnia) include: headache, difficulty breathing, coughing, wheezing, dizziness, confusion, inability to concentrate, fatigue, panic, depression, rapid heartbeat, convulsions, hyperventilation, and death.

The WHO (World Health Organization) explicitly says not to exercise with a mask on. The CDC shamelessly tiptoes around the issue by saying that people may not be able to wear a mask while exercising if it causes difficulty breathing. But the CDC does explicitly say that anyone who has trouble breathing shouldn’t wear a mask. Also keep in mind that with a mask on you’re breathing back in bacteria and viruses that you have exhaled, some of your own CO2, any dyes and chemicals in the material the mask is made from, and if you smoke or vape your own tar and nicotine along with other toxins. Here is what the scientific literature has to say:

National Taiwan University Hospital, 2005 study from the U.S National Library of Medicine: “The Physiological impact of N95 Masks on Medical Staff.” Detailed Description: “Wearing N95 masks results in hypooxygenemia and hypercapnia which reduce working efficiency and the ability to make correct decision.” The study goes on to say: “Medical staff are at an increased risk of getting ‘severe acute respiratory syndrome’ (SARS), and wearing N95 masks is highly recommended worldwide. However, dizziness, headache, and short of breath are commonly experienced by the medical staff wearing N95 masks.” (SARS only killed 774 people worldwide)

A 2008 study on how surgical masks effect surgeons performing operations was published in Neurocirugia, the Journal of the Spanish Society of Neurosurgery (SENEC) entitled: “Preliminary report on surgical mask induced deoxygenation during major surgery.” The study was conducted on 53 surgeons 24-54 years old, non-smokers without any chronic lung disease. A pulse oximeter was used to evaluate whether their oxygen saturation of hemoglobin was affected by a surgical mask during major operations.

Introduction: “…Surgeons in the operating room frequently experience physical discomfort, fatigue, and possibly even deterioration of surgical judgment and performance…the surgeon beneath the surgical mask is often very inadequately conditioned despite the universal air conditioning standard of operating theaters. Thus they either wear masks improperly or refrain from using them altogether. As it is known that heat and moisture trapping occur beneath surgical masks, it seems reasonable that some of the exhaled CO2 may also be trapped beneath them, inducing a decrease in blood oxygenation.”

Results: “Oxygen saturation of hemoglobin decreased significantly after the operations in both age groups.” Meaning, surgeons under 35 and over 35.

Don’t confuse the Neurocirugia study with YouTube videos of surgeons and lay people sticking an oxygen meter tube under a mask they’re wearing and coming up with a reading. This is worthless for two reasons: it’s not a controlled environment and oxygen levels in the blood have to be measured at different intervals while wearing the mask. Usually, the lay people show lower oxygen levels while the doctors who are pro mask show no decrease in oxygen levels. But it doesn’t matter because devices like the ALTAIR 5X Multi Gas Detector that’s used in one of these videos weren’t designed to measure what’s going on inside a face mask.

Another problem with masks is that they are virtual breeding grounds for pathogenic microbes. A 2018 study in the Journal of Orthopaedic Translation: “Surgical masks as source of bacterial contamination during operative procedures” found:

Abstract: “This study aimed to investigate whether SMs” (surgical masks) “may be a potential source of bacterial shedding leading to an increased risk of surgical site infection.”

Methods: “We investigated the difference in bacterial counts between the SMs worn by surgeons and those placed unused in the operating room (OR), and the bacterial count variation with indicated wearing time.”

Results: “The bacterial count on the surface of the SMs increased with extended operating times…Moreover, the bacterial counts were significantly higher among the surgeons than the OR. Additionally, the bacterial count of the external surface of the second mask was significantly higher than that of the first one.”

Conclusions: “The source of bacterial contamination in SMs was the body surface of the surgeons rather than the OR environment. Moreover, we recommend that surgeons should change the mask after each operation, especially those beyond 2 hours.”

A 2019 study in BMC Infectious Diseases yielded similar results measuring viral contaminants.

A major factor in pathogenic microbes building up in masks is sweat. And what happens when people walk around wearing masks on hot humid days? They sweat. To make matters worse, just about everyone doesn’t properly wear or clean them. Instead of taking off their masks, people will be lazy and just wear them around their neck. The CDC explains this will contaminate them. Or they’ll stuff them in their pockets or purses, or they will drop them on the floor and put them back on their face. A lot of people will wear the mask below their nose, and who can blame them–they want to breathe. Go to the CDC website “How to Wear Masks” and see if you or anyone else is obsessive-compulsive enough to follow the guidelines listed there. And since most people won’t even bother to read the guidelines much less follow them, forcing people to wear masks will wind up spreading disease and poor health rather than preventing it. To quote the WHO: “Sweat can make the mask become wet more quickly which makes it difficult to breathe and promotes the growth of microorganisms.”

Bureaucrats like Anthony Fauci, Deborah Birx, CDC Director Robert Redfield, Surgeon General Jerome Adams, and the WHO know the aforementioned facts. This is why they originally advocated against wearing masks. Don’t be conned by Fauci’s baloney that he lied due to a shortage of N95 masks. He could have advised the public to wear cloth masks from the beginning. Why didn’t he? Why the 180?

In a May 27 CNN interview, Fauci said he wants masks to be “a symbol” of what we should be doing even though “it’s not 100% effective” because it shows “respect for another person.”

An April 1, 2020 article in the New England Journal of Medicine by three MDs and an RN was even more explicit: “We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any protection from infection…It is also clear that masks serve symbolic roles…masks are not only tools, they are also talismans that may help increase health care workers perceived sense of safety…”

In other words, masks are worthless. Lots of viral pathogens will always get around and go through any mask. The science proving this hasn’t changed. It is the political agenda that has changed.

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Michael J. Talmo has been a professional writer for over 40 years and is strongly committed to the protection of civil liberties. He can be reached at [email protected].

The facts about the alleged “crimes against humanity” being hurled against Venezuela and its government can be found in these three documents here, here and here. However, the Trudeau government obviously did not wait – or did not want – to read them before issuing a Twitter statement accusing the Maduro government of “crimes against humanity.” This haste is hardly surprising. The Trudeau government is, with the notorious right-wing human rights violator Colombia, the principal architect of the Lima Group responsible for the latest allegations against Venezuela. The Canadian government tweet begins with “Canada is deeply troubled…”

Which Canada is it talking about? The problem is that Trudeau’s foreign policy has no legitimacy in Canada or internationally. Despite having spent millions of dollars and multiple diplomatic efforts by phone and in person, Trudeau’s bid for a seat on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) suffered a humiliating defeat last June. It was the second such defeat in recent years. As a result, the Trudeau government is disqualified from speaking in the name of Canadians.

The UNSC Trudeau Defeat and Legitimacy

How did this come about? The Canadian Foreign Policy Institute (CFPI) published a petition signed by more than one hundred Canadian personalities and organizations and others, such as Noam Chomsky and Roger Waters (Pink Floyd). It was moreover endorsed by more than 3,500 Canadians and published in a mainstream corporate outlet. The Petition was entitled: “Canada does not deserve a seat on the UN Security Council.”

One of our petition planks asserts: “Echoing Trump’s foreign policy, Canada has backed reactionary forces in the Americas. The Trudeau government has led efforts to unseat Venezuela’s UN-recognized government, while propping up repressive, corrupt and illegitimate governments in Haiti and Honduras. Canada also lent its support to the economic elites and Christian extremists who recently overthrew the democratically-elected, Indigenous president of Bolivia.”

Other organizations joined in the movement, such as those in solidarity with Palestine. It just kept building and building. Social media including YouTube were used to reach out to all member states of the United Nations. The flow of grassroots support succeeded to a large degree in throwing off the shackles imposed by Trudeau apologists on Canadian foreign policy. This is no small achievement, given how Trudeau has been carefully groomed in Canada and internationally as the liberal poster boy. It was also very encouraging to see how the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry used its Twitter accounts to raise the issue of the Trudeau bid in the international arena.

When the result of the UNSC vote was announced, it was evaluated by commentators from across the political spectrum, both in Canada and elsewhere, as meaning that the main cause of his shameful defeat was Trudeau’s foreign policy being in lockstep with the Trump administration. Following this critical defeat, the Trudeau government has failed to acknowledge the significance of the vote. A close examination of the Trudeau government’s stand on international issues indicates that it is “business as usual.” Canada is still echoing the talking points of the Trump administration on all foreign policy matters.

Trudeau Foreign Policy: Fundamental Reassessment Needed

Nevertheless, encouraged by the success of our work and that of our many partners on the UNSC vote, the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute launched another petition: “Time to fundamentally reassess Canadian foreign policy.” It was immediately signed by many former and current members of Parliament, as well as key actors on the Canadian political scene. It states that “The world’s rejection of Canada’s bid for a seat on the Security Council is a unique opportunity for a review of Canadian foreign policy.”

Among the 10-point programme: “1. Should we have a foreign policy driven by Washington or an independent foreign policy? 2. Why is Canada involved in efforts to overthrow Venezuela’s UN-recognized government, a clear violation of the principle of non-intervention in other country’s internal affairs?”

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Arreaza “In Canada”: No Show by Trudeau Government

Encouraged by the movement, the Venezuelan Minister of People’s Power of Foreign Affairs, Jorge Arreaza was invited to participate in a Zoom conference organized from Canada. The theme: “Canada’s interference in the internal affairs of Venezuela.” Representatives of the Canadian government were also invited to take part in the August 20 event, but all declined. Tens of thousands of people were made aware of the event through social media in Canada, Venezuela and elsewhere. Hundreds viewed it live, and thousands are still viewing it.

We cannot pretend to speak in the name of “Canada” on foreign policy as Trudeau does. Nor can we even assert that our position reflects the views of the majority. This is to be expected, because the vast majority of mainstream media censors our views, leaving the wider public uninformed. However, when Canadians do have an opportunity to find out the facts, the balance falls in our favour.

Not in Our Name

When the Canadian government asserts that “Canada is deeply troubled…” about the Venezuelan situation, it is speaking in its own name and that of Trump. The Trudeau government lost any legitimacy it may have had to speak in the name of Canadians on foreign affairs, after the UNSC vote. In contrast, based on the work of the CFPI and others, we and other Canadians at the grassroots have more legitimacy than Trudeau. And our position is based on a commitment to non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign nations and respect for international law, according to the principles of the United Nations.

Venezuelans and the peoples of the world should know that Justin Trudeau does not represent Canada. At the CFPI, our many partners and the grassroots fully support the right of self-determination of the Venezuelan people and its elected government. We suggest that Trudeau, and the mainstream Canadian press, read the three documents linked in the first paragraph. It is not too late for “Canada” to distance itself from the Trump policy of bringing violence to Venezuela and the surrounding region, right in the middle of the pandemic, in order to bring Venezuela into the realm of US-led domination. The UNSC vote and its aftermath indicates the need for a fundamental reassessment of Canada’s foreign policy. We can start with Venezuela. We are on the verge of a possible US-led military intervention against the Maduro government. Let that sink in.

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This article was originally published on The Canada Files.

Arnold August is a Montreal-based author, journalist, speaker and Fellow at the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute. He has written 3 books on Cuba, Latin America and the US. His articles appear in English, Spanish and French in North America, Latin America, Europe and the Middle East. Current focus: geopolitics of the relations between U.S., Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia and the role of Canada.

Featured image is from TCF

23/09/2020. Continuano nel mar Mediterraneo orientale, a largo delle coste greche, cipriote e turche, le tensioni militari tra la Grecia e la Turchia, due paesi facenti parte della NATO. Nell’area, dove sono stati scoperti giacimenti di gas naturale, gli Stati Uniti hanno schierato il cacciatorpediniere Churchill, capace di lanciare quasi 100 missili da crociera anche a testata nucleare. A poca distanza, nel Mar Nero, e a ridosso delle acque territoriali russe, è presente l’unità Roosevelt della marina statunitense.

Il segretario di Stato USA, Mike Pompeo, il 20 marzo 2019, ha siglato un accordo con il premier israeliano Benjamin Netanyahu, con il presidente cipriota Nikos Anastasiadis e con l’allora premier greco Alexis Tsipras per controllare l’EastMed, un gasdotto progettato per portare in Europa il gas del Mediterraneo orientale.

Secondo il giornalista, esperto di geopolitica, Manlio Dinucci, la strategia degli Stati Uniti è chiara: “Ridurre e infine bloccare le esportazioni russe di gas in Europa, sostituendole con il gas fornito o comunque controllato dagli Usa. A tal fine Washington ha bloccato nel 2014 il SouthStream, il condotto che attraverso il Mar Nero avrebbe portato il gas russo in Italia e negli Stati dell’Unione Europea e tenta adesso di fare lo stesso con il TurkStream che, attraverso il Mar Nero, porta il gas russo nella piccola parte europea della Turchia, con l’obiettivo di farlo arrivare in Europa”. In questo scenario, secondo Dinucci, l’Italia ha assunto una posizione subalterna, mentre avrebbe bisogno di una seria politica energetica sovrana.

The US is ruthlessly waging an intense Hybrid War on Russian energy interests in Europe by targeting the Eurasian Great Power’s relevant projects in Germany, Belarus, and Bulgaria, banking on the fact that even the partial success of this strategy would greatly advance the scenario of an externally provoked “decoupling” between Moscow and Washington’s transatlantic allies.

The American writer Mark Twain once observed that there were three kinds of lies. Lies, damn lies and statistics. In the 21st century that list might usefully be added to and include lies of omission. The modern mainstream media do not so much write and broadcast actual lies, although it is not difficult to detect actual examples, as lie by omission.

There are multiple examples of this failing, but a few illustrations will suffice to make the point. The first is the charmed life that the State of Israel enjoys in the local media, in all its forms. There are multiple illustrations of this. In 1968 Israel fought a brief war with its neighbours, including Syria, in the course of which Israel seized Syrian territory in the Golan Heights.

They have been there ever since. This is in violation of multiple facets of international law, including the fundamental principle that foreign land seized in the course of conflict may not be retained when that conflict is concluded. In the case of the Syrian Golan Heights not only has that law been violated, but the United Nations has also passed multiple resolutions demanding that Israel return the occupied land to its rightful owners. The Israelis have simply ignored those resolutions.

The particular point of relevance to Australia, however, is that in the multiple United Nations General Assembly resolutions condemning various Israeli transgressions of international law, Australia is one of a literal handful of countries that voted against each and every such resolution. During the term of the last Labor government Australia abstained on those votes, but the return of the Liberal-National coalition saw a return to the small group of those voting “No”.

That is sufficient cause for concern. What compounds the issue, however, is that the Australian media is almost totally silent on this Australian isolation from the overwhelming majority of United Nations members. This silence extends to a similar almost complete absence of mainstream reports on the, again totally illegal, Israeli bombing of Syrian government targets.

The courtesy of silence is not confined to Israel in the Middle East. In January of this year the Iraqi government passed a resolution demanding the removal of all (unwanted) foreign troops. This was explicitly aimed at the United States and its allies, including Australia, who had occupied the country since the initial invasion in 2003. The Iraqi resolution was barely reported; the ignoring of it by the Australians even less reported.

It needs to be recalled that the original invasion was justified in terms of Iraq’s alleged “weapons of mass destruction,” which Saddam Hussein was going to unleash on the world, or more specifically, the United States’ allies in the region. The allegation was a complete lie. The invasion was also based on a further series of lies long since refuted, but the United States and Australia are still there.

The Americans are still stealing Iraqi oil (as they are in Syria). Australia as a willing accomplice of the Americans is just as guilty as they are of this illegal occupation and theft. But again, where is the political opposition? Where is the critical mainstream media? In both cases, missing in action. Silence in this case does not just imply consent. Australia is a willing accomplice in a major violation of international law and the mainstream media are almost completely missing in action.

I have written before about the multiple lies that accompanied the illegal invasion and continuing occupation of Afghanistan, now in its 20th year. The mainstream media have at least reported on that ongoing fiasco, although two elements of the invasion and occupation are totally absent from the mainstream discourse.

The first is that one of the principal reasons for the original invasion and continuing occupation is geography. Afghanistan shares borders with a number of countries, all of whom are of intensive geopolitical significance to the Americans. Those neighbours include Iran, long a foe of the Americans; Pakistan, closely aligned with China, not least through a major rail link that will provide China with an alternative outlet in the event of an American and Australian blockade of the Straits of Hormuz; and former members of the USSR are now the subject of fierce Russian-United States competition for influence; and China itself.

The inexorable rise to economic and political influence of China has led to an unprecedented campaign against that nation by the Americans, aided in all possible ways by Australia, despite the economic suicide that Australia will inevitably experience in its increasingly anti-China stance.

Again, one sees a willing complicity between pro-American ideologues in the ruling Australian coalition, from the Prime Minister downward, and their allies in the mainstream media such as Peter Hartcher, foreign editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, whose anti-China rhetoric scales ever more ridiculous heights. Were it not so pathetically tragic it would be almost funny to watch a nation commit suicide with such utter disregard for its true national interests.

The latest manifestation of the folly is the rather pathetic attempt to muster an alliance between Japan, India, Australia and the United States. This is also a manifestly anti-China alliance and is doomed to fail on multiple grounds.

India has an uneasy relationship with China and there have been several relatively small skirmishes over several decades, almost always involving territorial disputes. But India has had historically close ties to Russia and these continue to the present day with a major economic development between the two countries via Iran currently being developed.

Japan is still treated as an occupied country by the Americans, but it also has growing economic links with China. The forced retirement of Prime Minister Abe presents an opportunity for Japan to reassert its independence. Japan also faces major demographic challenges with its population projected to decline from its current 127 million to below 100 million in 2053 and 88 million in 2065.

Japan is not unique among developed nations in facing the demographic challenge, but its historical aversion to immigration puts it in a unique category. Confronting those demographic challenges will be a major government policy issue in the coming decades. The last thing that Japan wants or needs is a militarily hostile relationship with China, also facing demographic challenges, but from a vastly higher initial base.

Because of historically high migration input Australia does not have the same demographic challenges as many other developed nations. Its challenges are more geopolitical in nature. The most significant of those geopolitical challenges arise from its current status as effectively an American colony as evidenced by multiple government foreign policy decisions since the 1975 overthrow of the Whitlam government.

It is now caught in the relentless fight between the United States and China. The former nation is not responding well to the irresistible decline in its military and economic position respectively viz a viz Russia and China and is engaging in a vicious battle to halt its relative decline. The danger for Australia is that it will be collateral damage in that battle between the superpowers.

It is not too late for Australia to assert its independence and take a variety of steps to ensure both its political independence and its prosperity. The history of the past 40 years would, however, suggest that is a vain hope.

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James O’Neill is a retired Barrister at Law and geopolitical analyst. He can be contacted at [email protected].

In 1973, the world economy was brought almost to a halt by a supposed shortage of oil. The ostensible trigger for this alleged shortage was the so-called Yom Kippur War in which the armed forces of the Anglo-American Empire’s settler-colonial offshore enterprise in Palestine, also known as the State of Israel, repelled the forces of Egypt and Syria, which had moved to reoccupy the territory stolen from them by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War. One response to the Anglo-American Empire’s support of its client state against those states Israel wished to conquer was an oil embargo proclaimed by OPEC, with the largest producer– the autocratic Anglo-American protectorate Saudi Arabia at the lead.

Portrayed in the mainstream Western media as a sign of Arab economic strength– also as anti-Semitism in some quarters– the embargo led to massive economic disruption in all the countries that had to import oil, mainly Europe and its former colonies.

This embargo created the impression of a global oil shortage—which although there was none, could not be overcome without violating the power of the oil cartel. While the OPEC embargo formally restricted the sale of crude oil to Israel’s sponsors, there was no real oil shortage since oil supplies to Europe and the US have always been in the hands of the majors (now super-majors), then known as the “seven sisters”.[1] OPEC’s announcement of an embargo at the well had no impact on the enormous upstream reserves held by the mainly American majors. However it did provide the pretext for massive price increases at the pump– presented as shortage-induced.[2]

Unnoticed except in the aftermath and ignored generally in popular debate or historical literature was the far more insidious deal made secretly while everyone from Bonn to Boston and Lyon to Los Angeles was queuing for petrol or the dole. In 1971 Richard Nixon had announced that the US dollar would no longer be redeemable for gold– at any price. This decision had been largely induced by the enormous debt incurred funding the US war against Vietnam. In the course of this fateful decision, secret negotiations were undertaken with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which led to an agreement that Saudi Arabia and OPEC would not sell oil in any currency except US dollars. The oil crisis pushed the price of oil to such heights that many countries in Europe and especially the newly independent countries, soon exhausted their foreign exchange reserves and were compelled to borrow US dollars to pay for oil imports. The result was a boom for the US regime, e.g. oil and banking– not its ordinary citizens– as the demand for US currency led to an inflow of foreign exchange and an overall improvement in its current accounts. Meanwhile the US Treasury could literally print dollars to buy oil– when the time was right.

Even today this story is told in a way to cast aspersions on the Arab states– although all the major oil-producing Arab states involved were and are entirely dependent upon the Anglo-American Empire and its military force for their very survival. It is a false parable used to exaggerate the innocence or helplessness of the settler-colonial state “surrounded” by “ragheads” instead of “redskins” who have all the oil, while poor Israel only has atomic bombs and the biggest foreign aid subsidy per capita of any country the US funds.

Why do I take the trouble here to recount history, which is or ought to be well known– at least to the historically literate?

It is worth recalling here that the Seven Sisters, as they were then called, are actually fewer now due to mergers. The upstream oil industry is still dominated by the Standard Oil companies (yes, Rockefeller, i.e. ExxonMobil) and their allies as well as the Rothschild-Nobel companies.[3] Together they assure that oil prices and distribution are closely controlled– if not absolutely– and that the commerce in oil is billed in the leading currency of the Empire, the US dollar.

The Anglo-American Empire, amazingly similar in composition to the dream of Cecil Rhodes and his personal banker Lord Rothschild[4], relies not only on oil and the financial transactions connected with it. There are two other major businesses that support the value of lead currencies, like the USD, GBP or even the EUR. They are war– and hence both legal and illegal arms sales– and drugs, both licit and illicit. All three “markets” are entirely controlled by cartels and state regulation. Moreover they provide windfall profits because they are all addictive and toxic. That means the traders get money and the buyers get garbage.

Stemming from the 19th century Opium Wars, Great Britain became the biggest dope pusher in the world. The opium trade made the British East India Company shareholders and those who traded with and for it wealthy beyond compare.[5] While the US American schoolchild may learn about the Boston Tea Party, in which a few ruffians dumped British East India Tea into the harbour as a protest against taxation like the Townshend Acts[6], they won’t learn that proud New England families not only funded the Ivy League colleges with slave trading but with the income from opium business.

It is essential to recall that every crime is simply the unauthorised version of an activity otherwise deemed legal. The difference between marriage with dowry and prostitution is simply the statute book. The difference between war and murder is the sovereign authorisation. Seagram (Bronfman) produced whiskey in Canada that was legal and sold it more profitably in the US during Prohibition where it was illegal. The leading pharmaceutical companies are the brothers of the heroine, cocaine and synthetics pushers. And between all these folks who are all just merchants, there is the State– the armed bureaucracy that regulates these businesses in accordance with the most powerful to permit each side of these businesses to extract the maximum profit– yes, from us.

That said, as I have written in previous articles[7], the question of history arises not from the need to find the “true past” but to answer questions in the present. It is the most urgent present question with which I have been preoccupied for the past six months. Why in a global system dominated by the religious ideology of Business and the absolute priority of “the economy” have we seen the leading authorities, autocratic and bureaucratic, suspend the “economy” and disregard Business because of a new, improved version of the seasonal influenza? There are rational and irrational explanations. That is because power may be understood rationally but those who hold and exercise it are often– if not always clinically insane (it is just because they own the clinics and the doctors that no one can utter this diagnosis!).

Again I want to remind the impatient reader– who implicitly strains my patience by not reading or remembering anything longer than the last Facebook or Instagram post– that all meaningful organisational decisions are made in secret by those who have the most power in the organisation– whether it is the classroom in which you send your child to be bullied (or bully) or the workplace you freely attend to earn money to pay the bank for the privilege of living in whatever house they let you buy. If you work in a big enough company or institution your boss and the bank know what your credit future will be like before you do. But never mind this bit of mundane reality. The point is simply nothing of any importance is ever decided in public where you have anything to say about it.

Having gotten that embarrassing sentimentality out of the way, let us consider what has happened since March 2020.

The Pandemic

Following events in China, the OPEC of the pharmaceutical cartel, aka the World Health Organisation (in an earlier article I also wrote that “witch-hunting” is also part of their job), performed some international bureaucratic gymnastics– like several years ago with the so-called “swine flu”– to declare a high grade pandemic phase alert (see table).[8] This decision was presented as some kind of service to public health— this euphemism is deliberately conflated with concern for the wellbeing of ordinary humans, but is nothing of the sort. To make this quite clear: most genuine public health issues arise from poor nutrition, vile working conditions, polluted air, water and food, and poverty.[9] None of these “pathogens” is part of the WHO brief. The World Health Organisation was established solely to market Western medical products worldwide and at the most profitable rates possible. This means among other things by arranging that poor countries devote precious foreign exchange for the purchase of bulk pharmaceuticals of dubious value under the pretext of being able to treat their indigent populations for illnesses that are almost entirely due to poor nutrition, vile working conditions, polluted air, water and food and poverty. Long before the Bush-Clinton clique promoted “humanitarian interventionism”, the WHO was poisoning the poor for humanitarian purposes (also known as eugenics).

Click here to larger view.

N.B. anyone who has not grasped the consequences of the US regime’s ownership of the UN and its agencies should read the story of the UN in Korea and in the Congo for a start.[10]

But I am digressing if only slightly. OPEC has never included all the oil producing countries and it was only effective as a cartel because it had the deep if covert collaboration of the Anglo-American oil majors. Without the pumps– wholly controlled upstream by either Rockefeller or Rothschild/ Nobel– Saudi oil would have been worthless. While we all imagine that oil is what drives our cars and heats our homes that is in fact a relatively minor and expendable part of the oil economy. Upstream the truly lucrative oil flows into petrochemicals, e.g. plastics, fertilizers, and– guess what, pharmaceuticals! Indeed the oil business, which started with “snake oil”, has never left it. Petroleum, that stuff that sticks to duck feathers and suffocates fish is the same gooey slime that forms the basis of much of the medicine you take. Think about it a minute: Monsanto (now part of IG Farben legacy, Bayer AG[11]) started as a poison producer when the US Army panicked about a potential natural sugar shortage during the Great War and gave John Francis Queeny the inspiration to sell the US Government coal tar as a sweetener. Some readers may recall when saccharine was finally prohibited. However it had been identified as a carcinogen already in the 1920s!

Pharmaceuticals– until the dawn of genetic manipulation, a largely petrochemical or opiate driven product stream– is an integral part of the triad that drives modern capitalism: drugs, oil and guns. The oil industry is tightly held; mainly by two dynastic groups. And surprise, surprise the drug industry is too– the successors to the Anglo-American opium trade dominate the licit pharmaceuticals side and the illicit opium-based and cocaine drug trade.[12] Since these businesses cannot be regulated in boardrooms alone, more than occasional persuasion is needed. So guns are just as important. But the gun trade is a topic for another day.

So what happened in March, really? My previous observations and summaries have not yet been rebutted. Nonetheless I do believe that beyond the obvious manifestations of the West’s confrontation with China, aside from the hyper-policing regime that is being created, there is a useful analogy which is perhaps more powerful than the US regime’s destruction of the New York World Trade Center buildings. That act of armed propaganda by other government agencies was certainly powerful in expanding the police and military power of the degenerate US Empire. However, like the US war against Vietnam it has been extremely expensive. All the president’s accountants and all the president’s lawyers have not been able to put Humpty Dumpty (at least not his bank account) together again.

So like those who tried to command Richard Nixon– and finally deposed him– the ruling class of the Anglo-American Empire is determined to eliminate another “Nixon” outsider (although Nixon always thought he really “belonged”) and restore order. Nixon, like the reigning POTUS, enjoyed wide popular support. However he had lost the support of the Establishment (which has come to be called the “Deep State” so as to imply that there is no Establishment or to lend its overt members legitimacy while denying the means by which it actually exercises power). Nixon actually saved the Establishment but it did not want to be saved by an outsider. It did not want to anyone outside its own exclusive circle. So a pretext was found– and he was dismissed. He knew that the alternative was a “Kennedy solution”.

The present POTUS has been trying to save the US regime from the antagonism of those it has abused both domestically and foreign. He has tried to harness the latent populism– what too many people confuse with “Left”– and channel it back into that revival tent in a way no Oreo Obama could have done– despite his Kennedy plagiarism.

But that is all really a sideshow for the financial disaster that the Reagan-Bush-Clinton dynasty (and its obscene scions in Britain and Germany) left the dying Anglo-American Empire. Nixon presided over the clever back channel negotiations to open China, bring Pepsi to the Soviet Union and save the USD by linking it to oil. Everything indicates that Trump has no clue of any of this– and no one is going to tell him either.

But the USD domination is under attack from all sides, by the weak and the strong. The Empire has been losing its wars but paying its bankers trillions and trillions for that privilege– beyond the capacity of anything the Empire can produce. Without a reinforced US dollar no one in the Empire can imagine the future.

So hark, the sneeze heard around the world.

The WHO assumed the role OPEC played in 1973. It declared a global pandemic under the most spurious conditions with the full knowledge that this would not only permit a shutdown of the economy (for political and economic benefits I have detailed elsewhere) but to create something only logical– the Pharmadollar. To keep it poetic, we now have the three P’s of global monetary domination: pistol dollar, followed by the petrodollar and now the pharma-dollar.

An emerging and potentially infinite demand for pharmaceuticals– legal or illegal– safe or unsafe—will offer the Western pharmaceutical cartels untold and unlimited profits and because these are all countries working in the USD / EUR markets, together with the WHO will be guaranteed potentially unlimited profit streams. So from the first circle of hell we descend into the second circle. Can we get any closer to damnation?

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Notes

[1] Anthony Sampson, The Seven Sisters (1974)

[2] John M. Blair, The Control of Oil (1976)

[3] https://www.corbettreport.com/bigoil/

[4] To avoid confusion: Nathan Mayer Rothschild, 1st Baron Rothschild (1840-1915)

[5] See John Newsinger, The Blood Never Dried (2006) and Nick Robins, The Corporation that Changed the World(2006)

[6] For readers not schooled in US mythology, the Townshend Acts (1767) were consumption taxes imposed on British North American colonies intended inter alia to defray the costs of defending the colonies with British troops. Every US school pupil learns that these were great injustices—because the colonials were not represented in the British parliament. What they do not learn is that the colonies were all run as business ventures for private profit and the use of British troops to protect private investment could not be seen as a charitable exercise by those who ran the British Empire from London. See Gerald Horne, The Counter-Revolution of 1776 (2014)

[7] https://dissidentvoice.org/2020/04/the-first-circle/ and others posted there since.

[8] https://m.youtube.com/watch?t=598s&v=X7I5LzLgNSI

[9] A popular misconception lies in the belief that the aim of Public Health as a discipline is human health. In fact, schools of public health, e.g. the first one funded by the Rockefeller fortune at Johns Hopkins University, now sponsored by billionaire Michael Bloomberg, were created to teach professionals how to protect the rich from the diseases of the poor. This was defined as a management objective, implemented either using business or military models of organisation. Many of the people involved in terrorising the population as representatives of health departments or public health agencies are not physicians but professional managers of healthcare facilities and products. However since our society has been trained to believe economists and business executives like those of the Middle Ages believed priests, it is virtually impossible to break the power of the medical fetishes these managers hold. See E. Richard Brown, Rockefeller’s Medicine Men (1979).

[10] See Bruce Cumings extensive scholarship on the Korean War, esp. his two volume Origins of the Korean War (1981) but also his shorter derivative work and/ or watch the Thames TV documentary Korea: The Unknown War, https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3c_vwqKxPneoViQPywTVCp8RkKXuuKsi

For the treacherous role of the UN in the Congo: Ludo de Witte (2002).

[11] After Mr William “Bill” Gates III made substantial investments in the entity. IG Farben was the German international chemicals and pharmaceuticals cartel that was technically divested by order of the US Military Government in Germany for its participation in war crimes under the NSDAP regime. In a fashion not unlike the US divestment order dissolving the Standard Oil trust, IG Farben was “punished” as a holding entity (1952) but its constituent corporations were reconstituted with immunity because they had not existed separately under the National Socialist regime, Bayer, Hoechst, BASF, Agfa, Chemische Fabrik Griesheim-Elektron, and Chemische Fabrik vorm. Weiler Ter Meer.

[12] For a good overview of the US regime’s international drug market management system, see Douglas Valentine, The Strength of the Wolf (2004) and The Strength of the Pack (2009) and its integration into the national security (Phoenix) state, The CIA as Organised Crime (2016) A declassified OSS (Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to the CIA) report summarises the use of opium by the Japanese as a weapon of war. When the US entered Southeast Asia after Japanese withdrawal, they adopted the Japanese business model, Opium: A Japanese Technique of Occupation (1945) prepared by Mrs Katherine Lyman.

On August 20th, Russian opposition figure and self-styled “anti-corruption” activist Alexei Navalny fell seriously ill while in mid-flight from Tomsk, Siberia to the Russian capital. The Moscow-bound plane was abruptly re-routed to make an emergency landing in the Siberian city of Omsk where the anti-Kremlin politician was subsequently hospitalized for suspected poisoning and placed in a medically-induced coma. Two days later, Navalny was airlifted to Germany in an evacuation arranged by a Berlin-based “human rights” NGO at the request of Pussy Riot spokesman Pyotr Verzilov. His transport on a medically-equipped plane with German specialists was permitted by the Russian authorities who now stand accused of culpability in the alleged attack, all in the midst of the ongoing pandemic.

While the Russian doctors in Omsk (who saved Navalny’s life) maintain they did not find any evidence of chemical weapons substances in his system, upon examination the German government quickly announced that its military lab had discovered “unequivocal evidence” Navalny was poisoned by a Soviet-era Novichok nerve agent and demanded an explanation from the Kremlin — without providing any of said evidence to Moscow or the public, of course. Despite being the supposed victim of an extremely deadly military-grade nerve agent, three weeks later Navalny came out his comatose state and off ventilation, defiantly vowing a return to Russia. Was he ever tested for COVID-19? At this point it seems more likely than this propaganda stunt we are expected to believe.

It is unconvincing precisely because it follows a pattern of improbable events questionably attributed to the Kremlin. As many have noted, the incident strikingly resembles the alleged March 2018 poisoning in Salisbury, England of disgraced former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, visiting from Moscow which caused a similar diplomatic row. Skripal, who had been a double agent for MI6 and served ten years imprisonment for high treason, was exiled to the UK after his sentence in a spy-swap between Russia and Britain in 2010. While residing in southern England, Skripal was reportedly in close contact with a security consultant who worked for the author of the salacious but fabricated dossier on U.S. President Donald Trump’s alleged ties to Russia, former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele — and may have even been the source of its unverified contents.

Skripal and his daughter were discovered unconscious on a park bench, but were said to have been initially contaminated hours earlier by the extremely fast-acting substance applied to the door handle of his residence. Similarly, Alexei Navalny is said to have been contaminated by a water bottle in his hotel room, not in the tea he drank at the Tomsk Bogashevo airport cafe before boarding his flight as originally believed. How is the elapsed time in both of these cases possible? The toxin in Navalny’s case was also not discovered until examination in Germany, meaning a bottle laced with a chemical warfare agent was transported all the way to Berlin? None of those who came to Navalny’s aid or treated him suffered any noxious effects, unlike the Skripals where multiple police officers at least showed minor symptoms. Still, both Navalny and the Skripals fully recovered from their supposed exposure to an extremely lethal toxin considered even more deadly than sarin or VX gas. After their release from the hospital, the Skripals immediately went into hiding which has left the enormous questions surrounding the incident still unresolved two years later. However, the damage was already done as the UK government immediately blamed Moscow and more than 100 Russian diplomats were expelled by Britain and its Western allies.

Months later in June 2018, two British nationals were the victims of an accidental poisoning (one fatally) after they discovered a discarded but unopened perfume bottle containing the same poisonous agent. Then that September, Scotland Yard released CCTV footage of two Russian men alleged to be GRU military intelligence agents in Salisbury at the time of the attack. However, no verifiable evidence was ever provided by the British government showing that the two were responsible, though it was conveniently claimed that the would-be culprits clumsily left vestiges of the fatal chemical agent in their hotel room. So, not only is Russian intelligence incapable of carrying out successful assassinations, but carelessly unable to cover their tracks? The premise was already absurd enough but made even more fanciful by Britain’s refusal to comply with the Chemical Weapons Convention in providing Moscow with requested samples of the toxin which purportedly poisoned the treasonous ex-spook and his daughter. Thus far in the Navalny case, Germany is following the same script.

What a coincidence that the attack comes just as Nord Stream 2, the second line of the massive natural gas pipeline under construction from Russia to Germany opposed by the U.S. and several NATO allies, is near completion. Suddenly, the diplomatic fall-out has put the controversial project in limbo, with Chancellor Angela Merkel and the German government under pressure from Washington to withdraw from the project which would increase Russian influence on Europe’s energy infrastructure and rival the U.S.’s costlier exports. As pointed out by Die Linke’s Dietmar Bartsch, where were the calls to halt the purchase of Saudi oil imports after the grisly murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi? It is clear that the Anglo-Americans are simply desperate to halt the resurgence of Moscow on the international stage, threatening their German counterparts with sanctions as the final sections of the pipeline conveying Russian gas across the Baltic Sea is being constructed. The attack on Navalny could not occur at a more auspicious time for the Atlanticists and a worse time for Moscow.

The notion that Russian President Vladimir Putin would try to assassinate an opposition figure who holds a minuscule 2% support amongst the population, far behind other opponents nonexistent to Western media but the one who just so happens to be favored by Washington, is contrary to any reason or common sense. Not to mention, at the exact moment it would jeopardize a project essential to Russia’s economic growth and frugality, as the pipeline would link Moscow with Western Europe bypassing neighboring transit countries such as the Ukraine (also opposed to Nord Stream 2) which have costly transit fees. Is it really the Russian government who stands to massively benefit from this fiasco? The answer to “cui bono?” could not be more clear: U.S., Saudi and Emirati oil and gas interests, not the Kremlin. Russia was also recently the first nation to develop a COVID-19 vaccine candidate with its Sputnik V registered in August, an international competition that has been heavily politicized by Washington which is eager to cast aspersions on Moscow’s accomplishment. Meanwhile, Germany is also the one Western European country where Washington’s anti-Russian propaganda is falling flat, as recent polls consistently show that the vast majority of Germans don’t see Russia as a threat, likely a result of their high rate of media literacy.

Despite Navalny’s recovery, there are already calls to legislate a ‘Navalny Act’ as a follow-up to the Magnitsky Act, a bipartisan bill previously passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in 2012 under the Obama Administration which sanctioned Russian officials accused of being responsible for the 2009 death of Sergei Magnitsky, an unscrupulous Russian tax lawyer who helped dodgy international financiers like the US-born British tycoon William Browder commit massive tax evasion in Russia. Magnitsky died under mysterious circumstances while in custody awaiting trial for facilitating Browder’s skullduggery and suffering from poor health, with the Russian prison officials first accused of depriving him of medical treatment and then allegedly beating and torturing him to death. The fascinating 2016 documentary The Magnitsky Act: Behind the Scenes explores the case from the perspective of Westernized Putin critic and filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov, who through the course of his investigation unexpectedly discovers that the mainstream media narrative of Magnitsky’s death was a fiction concocted by Browder. Suddenly, Nekrasov’s entire perspective on Russia comes into question and the film takes on a metanarrative of the nature of propaganda itself.

What we are being told about Navalny is likely another fairy tale like the implausible story forged by Mr. Browder about the death of the auditor he hired to enrich himself exploiting Russia’s tax loopholes. Incredibly, the American-born investor is the grandson of Earl Browder, the leader of the Communist Party USA during its heyday until his expulsion at the end of World War II. When the wartime US-Soviet alliance fell apart and the Cold War began, the elder Browder proved more loyal to American imperialism than the communist movement and presided over the liquidation of the CPUSA until it was reestablished with his dismissal as General Secretary. Having grown up in a Russian-speaking family, decades later his grandson decided to cash in on the collapse of the former Soviet Union through various investment ventures as manager of the hedge fund Hermitage Capital Management. When Putin succeeded Boris Yeltsin and numerous oligarchs went into exile or landed themselves in prison, Bill Browder was forced to flee the country after defrauding the Russian government of millions with the help of the late Mr. Magnitsky.

One of those banished oligarchs, billionaire media tycoon Boris Berezovsky, also died under dubious circumstances in the UK when he was found hanging in his apartment bathroom in Berkshire, England in 2013. Like Magnitsky, Putin and the Russian government were suspected of involvement in Berezovsky’s death by the media without a shred of evidence, even though his suspicious purported “suicide” actually came shortly after expressing a written willingness to return to Russia and reconcile with Putin — which almost certainly would have been a stroke of good luck for Russian counter-intelligence and a threat to the West, not the Kremlin. Berezovsky had been close with a former agent of the Federal Security Service (FSB, the KGB’s successor), Alexander Litvinenko, a defector renowned for claiming he had been ordered by Putin to assassinate Berezovsky and subsequently lived in the UK as a consultant for British intelligence until his own polonium poisoning in 2006, the first of a series of episodes framing Moscow. Consistently, however, in every one of these cases it is never the Kremlin which stands to gain.

There is a reason Putin consistently polls over 70% in favorability with the Russian people and that is his directing the country away from Western domination under the ruinous neoliberal economic policies of his corrupt and inebriated predecessor Boris Yeltsin which auctioned off the former state-owned assets to foreign investors such as Browder and oligarchs like Berezovsky. Meanwhile, Navalny has a level of support well under 5%, with recent polls placing him behind the Communist Party’s Pavel Grudinin and the ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky. While Navalny’s own rhetoric has shifted over the years, he has controversially maintained his own cozy relationship with ethnic nationalists who make up a significant amount of his right-wing populist base, even co-organizing annual marches dominated by racist skinheads.

Navalny infamously coined the slogan “Stop Feeding the Caucasus!” advocated by xenophobic nationalists calling for the defunding and secession of the Muslim-majority North Caucasus from Russia, while making frequent Islamophobic statements and stoking anti-immigrant sentiments against Central Asians. You would never know this reading Western media who have completely sanitized Navalny’s politics (if they ever address them at all), while they remain obsessed with the perceived ingratiation between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin even though the former’s politics have far more in common with Navalny than the Russian President. Given the U.S. support for far right nationalists in the 2014 anti-Russian coup d’etat in Ukraine, Washington has no qualms about backing fascists to undermine Moscow.

In 1831, Russia’s most famous and revered poet, Alexander Pushkin, composed “To the Slanderers of Russia”, a patriotic ode in response to members of the French parliament who were advocating for a military intervention to assist the Polish uprising against the Russian Empire. Pushkin asserted that the Polish uprising was an inter-slavic “ancient, domestic dispute”, while the Poles considered it an issue of national independence which their European allies were eager to exploit against Moscow. For the great Russian writer, the Polish alliance with the tyrant and invader Napoleon was unforgivable. He also reportedly communicated to General Alexander von Benckendorff, the chief of the Tsarist secret police assigned to censor and surveil him, that the Europeans were still bitter over the failed French invasion of Russia in 1812 and had not yet attacked with weapons but were doing so with “daily mad slander.”

Fast forward nearly 200 years later and little has changed in Russia-West relations. The only thing that has arguably transformed is Russia’s standing on the world stage following the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917 and the Soviet Union almost 75 years later, the latter of which was masterminded by a Polish-born National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, whose Russophobic worldview was a product of the deep-seated “ancient, domestic dispute” Pushkin wrote of a century earlier. Contrary to the Western portrayal of the resurgence of Moscow in the new millennia under Vladimir Putin as neo-tsarist expansionism, post-Soviet Russia is actually a relatively weak capitalist state that has found itself a target of regime change by the West which seeks the colonization and balkanization of Eastern Europe.

The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 caused a spike in oil prices that generated huge profits for Chevron and ExxonMobil, but also had the unintended consequence of benefiting Russia’s state-run oil industry just as Putin was re-nationalizing its energy assets and banishing financial criminals like Browder and Berezovsky. While its strength and influence has certainly been restored, its foreign investments remain low even in the Ukraine where Moscow has been accused of territorial expansion with the so-called “annexation” of Crimea, where the mostly Russian-speaking eastern Ukrainian population actually voted to join its neighbor in a referendum. Russia may no longer be an empire (or communist), but yet it remains in the crosshairs of Western imperialism, whose political leaders and subservient corporate media are still conducting the “mad slander” that Pushkin opined.

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Max Parry is an independent journalist and geopolitical analyst. His writing has appeared widely in alternative media. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Max may be reached at [email protected]

Featured image is from the author

The senior Health Service Executive doctor who resigned from his post days after he criticised “draconian” anti-Covid-19 restrictions has insisted that we must “stop scaring the nation” and encourage personal choice.

Dr Martin Feeley, who was the clinical director of Dublin Midlands Hospital Group, which includes the State’s biggest hospitals, resigned with immediate effect in mid-September.

Writing in today’s Irish Times, Dr Feeley said the number of people who have so far died of Covid-19 in Europe, up to August 10th, stood at 182,639, “slightly above the number who died three years ago as a result of flu (152,000)”.

The number of patients who died in Europe from the 1917-1918 Spanish flu was about 2.64 million – proportionately, this would be equivalent to about 7.4 million deaths of today’s European population.

“It is not for want of good reason that deaths are now referred to as Covid-19-associated deaths,” he writes, adding that 88 per cent of a group of New York patients had “more than one underlying condition”.

The presence of a chronic illness in patients “is the all-important factor in determining the risk, even in the elderly”, he said, saying 83 per cent of the 6,000 nursing home residents who had tested positive for Covid-19 had recovered.

However, Dr Feeley was sharply critical of how the HSE was presenting data about the Covid-19 risks facing overweight people: “The best-kept secret regarding Covid-19 is the vulnerability of overweight individuals.”

The information is not published “for reasons unknown”, he said, while the lack of awareness among the population at large “is exacerbated, if not caused, by HSE-published data on risk factors.

At-risk category

Someone is obese, according to the HSE’s calculations, if they have body mass index of 40 “whereas most international literature uses a BMI of 30”. Using the lower number, a person 178cm (5ft 10in) in height is obese if they weigh more than 95kg (15st).

Under the BMI 40 rule used by the HSE, 3 per cent of the State’s adult population is considered at risk, but this number rises to 23 per cent if a BMI of 30 is applied: “The HSE data therefore grossly understates the obesity risk,” he complains.

Questioning the State’s strategy, Dr Feeley said the costs were being met by younger people, “not by over-65s who are guaranteed their pension”, or those with guaranteed salaries “who decide to impose these draconian measures”.

Saying that many people were facing “an existence, not living”, he went on: “You can’t postpone youth. In essence, those least at risk are paying the highest price both financially and in their quality of life.”

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Our thanks to the Irish Times and to Shane Quinn for brining this article to our attention

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Featured image is from Natural News

It’s important to explain the context of the island leadership’s provocative comments in order to better understand why everything isn’t as simple as they try to make it seem.

Video: Covid-Gate, The Political Virus                                                                                                                             

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, September 16, 2020

Renowned Canadian Constitutional lawyer Rocco Galati characterizes the COVID Operation as “the biggest example of misinformation and lies on a global scale that we’ve seen.”

“The Constitutional challenge that he has filed with the Ontario Superior Court seeks to pull back the shroud of secrecy imposed by the Trudeau and Ford governments which, he says, are currently and have been “ruling by decree” beneath the pretexts of “COVID Measures” and “Emergency Measures”.

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Dr. Sherri Tenpenny and guest Constitutional Lawyer Rocco Galati discussion and commentary on current world events.

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“Scientists are doing an awful lot of damage to the world in the name of helping it. I don’t mind attacking my own fraternity because I am ashamed of it.” –Kary Mullis, Inventor of Polymerase Chain Reaction

In the US, we have all but abandoned classical diagnostic medicine in favor of biotech, or lab result medicine.  This has been going on for a long time and is a dangerous turning.  The “Corona test” is named with characteristic tech-tedium: “CDC 2019-nCoV Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel.”  That means it is a needle in a DNA haystack test. A PCR test.

It finds fragments, nucleic acids. According to Nobel Laureate Dr. Kary Mullis inventor: “PCR detects a very small segment of the nucleic acid which is part of a virus itself. The specific fragment detected is determined by the somewhat arbitrary choice of DNA primers used which become the ends of the amplified fragment. “

Celia Farber ( quoted from complete article)

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What do we mean when we say somebody has ‘tested positive’ for the Corona Virus? The answer would astound you. But getting this “answer” is like getting to a very rare mushroom that only grows above 200 feet on a Sequoia tree in the forbidden forest.

I say that for dramatic effect, but also because I wound up, against all odds, finding it.

Every day I wake up and work at shedding one more layer of ignorance —by listening carefully. I got lucky with scientists many years ago; Epic, incredible scientists, happening to cross my path when nobody else wanted to talk to them. Now their names are emerging, their warnings and corrections crystallizing. True “science” (the nature of the natural world) is never bad news. Globalist science is nothing but bad news.

How many of us are “infected” with this novel Corona virus, and how scared should we be?

People die—yes. But people don’t die at the mercy of malicious, predatory pathogens, “lurking” on every surface, and especially other humans. That’s not “science.” That’s social engineering. Terrorism.

Let’s proceed.

What do we mean when we say a person “tests positive” for Covid-19?

We don’t actually mean they have been found to “have” it.

We’ve been hijacked by our technologies, but left illiterate about what they actually mean. In this regard, I spent time with, and interviewed the inventor of the method used in the presently available Covid-19 tests, which is called RT-PCR, (Polymerase Chain Reaction.). His name is Kary B. Mullis, (image left) he passed away in August of last year. He was one of the warmest, funniest, most eclectic-minded people I ever met, in addition to being a staunch critic of HIV “science,” and an unlikely Nobel Laureate, i.e. a “genius.”

One time, in 1994, when I called to talk to him about how PCR was being weaponized to “prove,” almost a decade after it was asserted, that HIV caused AIDS, he actually came to tears.

The people who have taken all your freedoms away in recent weeks, they’re social engineers, politicians, globalist thought leaders, bankers, foundations, HO fanatics, and the like. Their army is composed of “mainstream media,” which is now literally a round-the-clock perfect propaganda machine in support of the so-called “Pandemic”.

Kary Mullis was a scientist. He never spoke like a globalist, and said once, memorably, when accused of making statements about HIV that could endanger lives: “I’m a scientist. I’m not a lifeguard.”

That’s a very important line in the sand.  Somebody who goes around claiming they are “saving lives,” is a very dangerous animal, and you should run in the opposite direction when you encounter them.

Their weapon is fear, and their favorite word is “could.”

They entrap you with a form of bio-debt, creating simulations of every imaginable thing that “could” happen, yet hasn’t.

Bill Gates has been waiting a long time for a virus with this much, as he put it, “pandemic potential.” But Gates has a problem, and it’s called PCR.

Of Mullis’ invention, Polymerase Chain Reaction, the London Observer wrote:

“Not since James Watt walked across Glasgow Green in 1765 and realized that the secondary steam condenser would transform steam power, an inspiration that set loose the industrial revolution, has a single, momentous idea been so well recorded in time and place.”

What does HIV have to do with Covid-19?

PCR played a central role in the HIV war (a war you don’t know about, that lasted 22 years, between Globalist post-modern HIV scientists and classical scientists.) The latter lost the war. Unless you count being correct as winning. The relentless violence finally silenced the opposition, and it seemed nobody would ever learn who these scientists were, or why they fought this thing so adamantly and passionately.

And PCR, though its inventor died last year, and isn’t here to address it, plays a central role in Corona terrorism.

To read the complete article click here

Celia Farber is half Swedish, raised there, so she knows “socialism” from the inside. She has focused her writings on freedom and tyranny, with an early focus on the pharmaceutical industry and media abuses on human liberties. She has been under ferocious attack for her writings on HIV/AIDS, where she has worked to document the topic as a psychological operation, and rooted in fake science. She is a contributor to UncoverDC and The Epoch Times, and has in the past written for Harper’s, Esquire, Rolling Stone and more. Having been gravely injured in legacy media, she never wants to go back. She is the recipient of the Semmelweis International Society Clean Hands Award For Investigative Journalism, and was under such attack for her work, she briefly sought protection from the FBI and NYPD. She is the author of “Serious Adverse Events: An Uncensored History of AIDS,” and the editor of The Truth Barrier, an investigative and literary website. She co-hosts “The Whistleblower Newsroom” with Kristina Borjesson on PRN, Fridays at 10am.

This article was originally published on Asia Times.

It took one minute for President Trump to introduce a virus at the virtual 75^th UN General Assembly, blasting “the nation which unleashed this plague onto the world”.

And then it all went downhill.

Even as Trump was essentially delivering a campaign speech and could not care less about the multilateral UN, at least the picture was clear enough for all the socially distant “international community” to see.

Here is President Xi’s full statement. And here is President Putin’s full statement. And here’s the geopolitical chessboard, once again; it’s the “indispensable nation” versus the Russia-China strategic partnership.

As he stressed the importance of the UN, Xi could not be more explicit that no nation has the right to control the destiny of others: “Even less should one be allowed to do whatever it likes and be the hegemon, bully, or boss of the world .”

The US ruling class obviously won’t take this act of defiance lying down. The full spectrum of Hybrid War techniques will continue to be relentlessly turbo-charged against China, coupled with rampant Sinophobia, even as it dawns on many Dr. Strangelove quarters that the only way to really “deter” China would be Hot War.

Alas, the Pentagon is overstretched – Syria, Iran, Venezuela, South China Sea. And every analyst knows about China’s cyber warfare capabilities, integrated aerial defense systems, and carrier-killer Dongfeng missiles.

For perspective, it’s always very instructive to compare military expenditure. Last year, China spent $261 billion while the US spent $732 billion (38% of the global total).

Rhetoric, at least for the moment, prevails. The key talking point, incessantly hammered, is always about China as an existential threat to the “free world”, even as the myriad declinations of what was once Obama’s “pivot to Asia” not so subtly accrue the manufacture of consent for a future war.

This report by the Qiao Collective neatly identifies the process: “We call it Sinophobia, Inc. – an information industrial complex where Western state funding, billion dollar weapons manufacturers, and right-wing think tanks coalesce and operate in sync to flood the media with messages that China is public enemy number one. Armed with state funding and weapons industry sponsors, this handful of influential think tanks are setting the terms of the New Cold War on China. The same media ecosystem that greased the wheels of perpetual war towards disastrous intervention in the Middle East is now busy manufacturing consent for conflict with China.”

That “US military edge”

The demonization of China, infused with blatant racism and rabid anti-communism, is displayed across a full, multicolored palette: Hong Kong, Xinjiang (“concentration camps), Tibet (“forced labor”), Taiwan, “China virus”; the Belt and Road’s “debt trap”.

The trade war runs in parallel – glaring evidence of how “socialism with Chinese characteristics” is beating Western capitalism at its own high-tech game. Thus the sanctioning of over 150 companies that manufacture chips for Huawei and ZTE, or the attempt to ruin TikTok’s business in the US (“But you can’t rob it and turn it into a US baby”, as Global Times editor-in-chief Hu Xijin tweeted).

Still, SMIC (Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation), China’s top chip company, which recently profited from a $7.5 billion IPO in Shanghai, sooner or later may jump ahead of US chip manufacturers.

On the military front, “maximum pressure” on China’s eastern rim proceeds unabated – from the revival of the Quad to a scramble to boost the Indo-Pacific strategy.

Think Tankland is essential in coordinating the whole process, via for instance the Center for Strategic & International Studies, with “corporation and trade association donors” featuring usual suspects such as Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman.

So here we have what Ray McGovern brilliantly describes as MICIMATT – the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank complex – as the comptrollers of Sinophobia Inc.

Assuming there would be a Dem victory in November, nothing will change. The next Pentagon head will probably be Michele Flournoy, former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy (2009-2012) and co-founder of the Center for a New American Security, which is big on both the “China challenge” and the “North Korean threat”. Flournoy is all about boosting the “U.S. military’s edge” in Asia.

So what is China doing?

China’s top foreign policy principle is to advance a “community of shared future for mankind”. That is written in the constitution, and implies that Cold War 2.0 is an imposition from foreign actors.

China’s top three priorities post-Covid-19 are to finally eradicate poverty; solidify the vast domestic market; and be back in full force to trade/investment across the Global South.

China’s “existential threat” is also symbolized by the drive to implement a non-Western trade and investment system, including everything from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the Silk Road Fund to trade bypassing the US dollar.

A Harvard Kennedy School report at least tried to understand how Chinese “authoritarian resilience” appeals domestically. The report found out that the CCP actually benefitted from increased popular support from 2003 to 2016, reaching an astonishing 93%, essentially due to social welfare programs and the battle against corruption.

By contrast, when we have a MICCIMAT investing in Perpetual War – or “Long War” (Pentagon terminology since 2001) – instead of health, education and infrastructure upgrading, what’s left is a classic wag the dog. Sinophobia is perfect to blame the abysmal response to Covid-19, the extinction of small businesses and the looming New Great Depression on the Chinese “existential threat”.

The whole process has nothing to do with “moral defeat” and complaining that “we risk losing the competition and endangering the world”.

The world is not “endangered” because at least vast swathes of the Global South are fully aware that the much-ballyhooed “rules-based international order” is nothing but a quite appealing euphemism for Pax Americana – or Exceptionalism. What was designed by Washington for post-WWII, the Cold War and the “unilateral moment” does not apply anymore.

Bye, bye Mackinder

As President Putin has made it very clear over and over again, the US is no longer “agreement capable” . As for the “rules-based international order”, at best is a euphemism for privately controlled financial capitalism on a global scale.

The Russia-China strategic partnership has made it very clear, over and over again, that against NATO and Quad expansion their project hinges on Eurasia-wide trade, development and diplomatic integration.

Unlike the case from the 16^th century to the last decades of the 20^th century, now the initiative is not coming from the West, but from East Asia (that’s the beauty of “initiative” incorporated to the BRI acronym).

Enter continental corridors and axes of development traversing Southeast Asia, Central Asia, the Indian Ocean, Southwest Asia and Russia all the way to Europe, coupled with a Maritime Silk Road across the South Asian rimland.

For the very first time in its millenary history, China is able to match ultra-dynamic political and economic expansion both overland and across the seas. This reaches way beyond the short era of the Zheng He maritime expeditions during the Ming dynasty in the early 15^th century.

No wonder the West, and especially the Hegemon, simply cannot comprehend the geopolitical enormity of it all. And that’s why we have so much Sinophobia, so many Hybrid War techniques deployed to snuff out the “threat”.

Eurasia, in the recent past, was either a Western colony, or a Soviet domain. Now, it stands on the verge of finally getting rid of Mackinder, Mahan and Spykman scenarios, as the heartland and the rimland progressively and inexorably integrate, on their own terms, all the way to the middle of the 21^st century.

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Pepe Escobar, a veteran Brazilian journalist, is the correspondent-at-large for Hong Kong-based Asia Times. His latest book is “2030.” He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from TheAltWorld

The lion’s share of today’s Old Bailey proceedings in Julian Assange’s extradition trial was spent on battles over mental health and dire risk.  The prosecution continued its attempt to minimise the dangers facing Assange were he to be extradited to the United States for 17 charges under the US Espionage Act and one under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. While the defence has its case on Assange’s fragile mental health well plotted, the prosecution is hoping that witnesses such as Dr Nigel Blackwood, consultant psychiatrist with the National Health Service, will punch holes in the argument.  They will certainly hope for better efforts than those made by their own witnesses, Seena Fazel, a psychiatry professor who seemed too professionally tentative to land firm blows against Assange’s diagnosis for Asperger’s syndrome, or dismiss the health risks facing him in the US prisons system. 

Blackwood and managed risk 

Blackwood had conducted his own psychiatric evaluation of Assange’s condition via phone in July 2020.  What he gave the court was a show of qualified hypotheticals.  He found the publisher to be “moderately depressed”; there was undoubtedly “some risk of suicide attempt in the event of extradition”.  He did not feel this risk to be a “high” one.  It had been “carefully managed in Belmarsh and the risk factors are modifiable.”  Assange “engages with treatments to manage that risk.” 

Reliance was placed upon the capacity for self-control in the face of such risk.  If the person facing extradition could self-manage or be “capable of controlling” their own risk of suicide, the extradition should be made.  Blackwood was excruciatingly selective, finding Assange “resourceful” and “very resilient”.  He believed Assange “retains the capacity to resist suicide.” 

An unstinting faith in the prison authorities was shown by the witness. They would have sent Assange for outside treatment had he suffered from severe depression.  The release of a video of Assange in prison, made public in June 2019, prompted the authorities to send him to the medical ward.  Edward Fitzgerald QC for the defence was unimpressed by Blackwood’s reading of this incident: confining Assange to the medical ward had been for reasons of “reputational damage” to prison officials.  A prison document of that day’s incident noted that Assange had been sent to the ward for being at risk of self-harm.  Why had Blackwood failed to mention it in his report?  The prosecution witness was moved to admit that, while multiple factors were present in the decision to send Assange to the medical ward, Assange’s considerations of self-harm was one of them.  This was a fact Blackwood omitted. 

The defence turned on the issue of whether prison conditions Assange would face in the US would be broadly on par with those in the United Kingdom.  The point is significant as previous legal authority – notably the UK High Court decision in the Lauri Love case – found much to be worried about in the assurances made by the US Bureau of Prisons, notably on their poor provision of mental health facilities and safeguards against suicide.  Blackwood conceded that his assessment drew heavily upon US Assistant Attorney Gordon Kromberg’s affidavit, which claimed that there was no “solitary confinement” in the Alexandria Detention Center (ADC), where Assange will be initially held.  “I relied on Kromberg and the academic literature on what happens in US prisons.  There may be stuff that isn’t covered, but there is broad equivalence.” 

An all too confident assessment, given the revelations of Eric Lewis, board president of Reprieve, who had previously testified to the court about his own clients’ experiences of solitary confinement and Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) deployed at ADC.  They were not findings Blackwood had cared to consult. When Fitzgerald asked Lewis, in re-direct examination, whether Kromberg was “more qualified than you are on prison conditions”, the defence witness suggested that the assistant attorney would rarely have stepped into a prison. Lewis, in contrast, was well acquainted with a range of prison conditions ranging from Guantánamo to the United Kingdom. 

Blackwood was also taken to task by the defence for being green about the US prison system: he had never visited the ADC or any US federal facility.  His modest haul included visits to a state prison in Connecticut, and a Newport, Rhode Island jail.

The prosecution witness was duly attacked for his presumptuousness in a report marked by vital subtractions and unnecessary additions.  Having failed to note the presence of solitary confinement in the ADC, he had also concluded that it would not be unjust to extradite Assange, given his mental health condition.  The defence proved stormy on this point.  “It’s not your business to decide that, whether extradition is just or unjust, that is up to the judge.”  This was a point Blackwood was left to accept.

Crosby and very high risks 

Testimony for the defence was then provided by Dr Sondra Crosby of Boston University, an authority on the physical and psychological effects of torture.  Crosby’s expertise in the area is extensive: as of March 2019, she had evaluated a touch under 1,000 survivors of torture.  She runs a clinic specialising in the care of refugees and asylum seekers, “most of whom have experienced torture.”

She had visited Assange in the London Ecuadorean embassy in October 2017 after an American doctor (left unnamed) organised an “academic evaluation of the effects of living in the embassy”.  Assange then described “symptoms of depression, symptoms of post-traumatic disorder.”  While capable of conversation and not seemingly in a “horrible state”, his physical symptoms were “worrisome”. But mental decline was evident, marked by an inability to concentrate, depression, nightmares, disturbances to sleep. 

Thoughts of suicide were first described to Crosby in 2018.  The dramatic suicide of the convicted Bosnian Croatian general Slobodan Praljak by potassium cyanide, drunk before the judges of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, left a deep impression.

In her February 23, 2019 session with Assange, her notes evaluating his state were taken from her by embassy staff, thereby violating doctor-patient confidentiality.  She noted the presence of cameras.  A copy of her medical license was demanded.  Her credentials had to be verified by an embassy security guard.  The incident might have formed part of the defence testimony on showing the operation of a US-backed surveillance operation, but did not.

She was also alarmed during that visit by Assange’s marked deterioration, physically and psychologically.  “I was very concerned about a very advanced tooth infection that was causing him excruciating pain, requiring him to take narcotics.” 

Visits to Assange at Belmarsh in October 2019 and January 2020 were also made.  Crosby’s December 2019 report was even more unequivocal.  Assange had “met all the criteria for major depression”; he was “essentially dead”, “tearful”, pleading.  He had called the anonymous suicide hotline Samaritans.  She also found physical symptoms indicative of anxiety or cardiac arrest, and the possibility of chronic respiratory infection.   Assange, she concluded, was “at high risk of completing suicide if he were to be extradited.”

The risk was compounded by an incomplete picture on Assange’s intentions.  He had concealed the “full extent of his depression and suicide plans” in meetings with mental health specialists and prison doctors.  He feared being subjected to “more surveillance” or further isolation if he confessed to the full scope of his “suicidal ideations”.

In cross-examination, Lewis dished up some common, misguided fare.  Any assessment of Assange’s health would surely have to be qualified by the fact that he could leave the embassy at any time.  Such a question, replied Crosby, was “complex”; Assange found himself in a position similar to one “who is being chased with an axe or a gun and locks himself in a room for safety.”  What faced Assange, were he to leave the embassy environs, were the arms of the police and the prospects of extradition, made concrete by the current proceedings.

Lewis also returned to what is becoming a favourite animus of his: the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, whose widely publicised views of Assange’s treatment are known.  “You rely on your report [to the court] on Nils Melzer,” he coldly observed.  “I think you got him involved.”  He also posed a rhetorical question verging on the inane: “Are you aware that no one ever extradited to the US from the UK has committed suicide?”  A man of true venal faith.

Cryptome: published and unpunished

The last instalment of the day came with the reading out by the defence of a witness statement by John Young, host of cryptome.org.  The role of this testimony goes to corroborating other accounts on the chronology of publication.  Cryptome, which Young founded in 1996, published the entire set of unredacted US State Department cables on September 1, 2011.  WikiLeaks followed suit the next day. 

The publication, Young’s statement reads, “remains available at present.”  Since “publication on Cryptome.org of the unredacted diplomatic cables,  no US law enforcement authority has notified me that this publication of the cables is illegal, consists or contributes to a crime in any way, nor have they asked for them to be removed.”

Other sites, and their operators, have also been spared the stern and intrusive gaze of the US Justice Department.  Assange’s defence had at hand a statement from Christopher Butler of the Internet Archive.  Butler confirmed that, to this day, the Internet Archive still hosts records of WikiLeaks’ publications.  Both he and his data have been left undisturbed.  Yet another instance showing this prosecution effort to be political, singular and selective.

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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 Another Day in the Empire

With strict pressure from the African Union (AU) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the August coup leaders have installed an interim government that will run state affairs until next elections. Plucked from obscurity, the former Defense Minister Bah Ndaw became the transitional President, while Colonel Assimi Goita serves as Vice President. The transitional committee made up of representatives of political parties, civil and religious groups agreed on both positions.

According to their biographical reports, both had part of their professional military training in the Soviet Union and Russia respectively. The transitional civilian government, swearing-in ceremony and inauguration into office took place on Sept 25, completely closed the political chapter on the political administration of Ibrahim Boubacar Keita.

The military takeover, Mali’s fourth since gaining independence from France in 1960, came after months of protests, stoked by Keita’s failure to roll back a bloody jihadist insurgency and fix the country’s many economic woes.

Over the years, reform policies have had little impact on the living standards, majority highly impoverished in the country. As a developing country, it ranks at the bottom of the United Nations Development Index (2018 report). The country, however, is a home to approximately 20 million population. The primary task, right now, is to draw up “a comprehensive road map” for economic recovery.

Earlier before the Sept 25 ceremony, Assimi Goita had issued a public statement at a media-covered conference to the Malian population,

“We make a commitment before you to spare no effort in the implementation of all these resolutions in the exclusive interest of the Malian people. We request and hope for the understanding, support and accompaniment of the international community in this diligent and correct implementation of the Charter and the transition roadmap. The results you have achieved allow me to hope for the advent of a new, democratic, secular and prosperous Mali.”

While West African leaders would likely remove the economic sanctions imposed in the wake of last month’s coup, following the installation of a civilian interim president, a number of foreign countries including Russia have already recognized these new developments taken toward stability.

Russia, apparently, is exploring all possibilities to regain part of its Soviet-era influence as Mali begins to restructure and systematize its state administration. In an official statement to mark Mali’s 60th anniversary of its independence from France, Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) hoped that Mali would fix in place civilian form of government and, focus on holding free and democratic elections following a short transitional period with the assistance of the Economic Community of West African States and the African Union.

It is noteworthy to recall here that Russia and Mali are linked by friendship and cooperation. In 1960, Mali attained independence following a prolonged struggle and opted for a socialist orientation. There were major projects implemented with Soviet assistance. These includes a cement factory, the Kalana gold-mining company, a stadium in Bamako, the Gabriel Toure Hospital, an airfield in Gao and a number of national education facilities. Large-scale prospecting operations were conducted, and 9,000 hectares converted into rice paddies.

Thousands of Soviet educators, doctors and other specialists worked in Mali. Over 10,000 Mali citizens received higher education in Russia.

“We hope that the time-tested Russia-Mali ties will continue to develop steadily in the interests of both states. We would like to congratulate the friendly people of Mali on their national holiday and to wish them every success in achieving nationwide reconciliation, reviving their country as soon as possible, and we wish them peace, prosperity and well-being,” the statement particularly stressed.

As Russia pushes to strengthen its overall profile in the G5 Sahel region, Mali could become a gateway into the region. Russia has made military-technical cooperation as part of its diplomacy and keen on fighting growing terrorism in Africa.

Experts suspected that the regime change in Mali could see Russia-friendly new leaders taking over the country from the French-friendly Ibrahim Boubacar Keita and his government, thereby dealing a severe blow to French influence and interests not just in Mali but throughout the Sahel zone.

Research Professor Irina Filatova at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow explained recently in an emailed “Russia’s influence in the Sahel has been growing just as French influence and assistance has been dwindling, particularly in the military sphere. It is for the African countries to choose their friends and people who are now in power will be friendlier with Russia.”

That said, the transitional government could continue to leverage with Russia. Reports indicate that Russia has established cordial relations with transitional government. On August 21, Russian Ambassador to Mali and Niger Igor Gromyko met with representatives from the National Committee for the Salvation of the People (CNSP). The CNSP is an umbrella organization of military personnel involved in the coup, which wishes to oversee an 18-month transition before returning power to civilian authorities. Russia signed a military cooperation agreement with Mali in June 2019.

In November 2019, demonstrators in Bamako urged Moscow to repel Islamist attacks in Mali as it did in Syria. At the Independence Square demonstrations in Bamako that followed the coup, protesters were spotted waving Russian flags and holding posters praising Russia for its solidarity with Mali.

Samuel Ramani, DPhil candidate at the Department of Politics and International Relations at St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford, wrote in the Journal of the Foreign Policy Research Institute that “Since Russia possesses a diverse array of partnerships in Mali and Sahel countries are frustrated with the counterterrorism policies of Western powers. Moscow could leverage the Mali coup to secure economic deals and bolster its geopolitical standing in West Africa.”

According to the expert, Kremlin-aligned research institutes and media outlets have consistently framed France’s counterterrorism operations in Niger and Mali as a façade for the extraction of the Sahel’s uranium resources. Russian nuclear energy giant Rosatom, which directly competes with its French counterpart Avenda for contracts in the Sahel, could benefit from favorable relations with Mali’s new political authorities. Nordgold, a Russian gold company that has investments in Guinea and Burkina Faso, could also expand its extraction initiatives in Mali’s gold reserves.

As one of the largest on the continent, Mali is a landlocked country located in West Africa. For centuries, its northern city of Timbuktu was a key regional trading post and center of Islamic culture. Mali is renowned worldwide for having produced some of the stars of African music, most notably Salif Keita. But, this cultural prominence has long since faded.

After independence from France in 1960, Mali suffered droughts, rebellions, and 23 years of military dictatorship until democratic elections in 1992. Mali has struggled with mass protests over corruption, electoral probity, and a jihadist insurgency that has made much of the north and east ungovernable. President Ibrahim Keita, who took office in September 2013, proved unable to unify the country. With time and commitment to sustainable development and good governance, there is still hope for Mali.

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Kester Kenn Klomegah is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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What is Covid-19, SARS-2. How is it Tested? How is It Measured? The Fear Campaign Has No Scientific Basis

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, September 23, 2020

Closing down the Global Economy as a means to combating the Virus. That’s what they want us to believe. If the public had been informed that Covid-19 is “similar to Influenza”, the fear campaign would have fallen flat…

The Death of Andre Vltchek, a Passionate Warrior for Truth

By Edward Curtin, September 25, 2020

For decades, Andre Vltchek, an old-school journalist and artist (but a young man) who traveled the world in search of truth and who always stood up straight, tried to revolve the world and encourage people to revolt against injustice.

Covid-19: How Likely Is a Second Wave?

By Prof. Paul Kirkham, Dr. Mike Yeadon, and Barry Thomas, September 25, 2020

Evidence presented in this paper indicates that the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 pandemic as an event in the UK is essentially complete, with ongoing and anticipated challenges well within the capacity of a normalised NHS to cope.

How Lethal is Covid-19? Young and Healthy Majority Need to be Allowed to Live

By Dr. Martin Feeley, September 25, 2020

Up to August 10th, the number of Europeans who died from a Covid-19 illness (182,639) was slightly above the number who died three years ago as a result of “flu” (152,000). The number of patients who died in Europe from the 1917/18 Spanish flu was approximately 2.64 million – this would be equivalent to approximately 7.4 million deaths of today’s European population.

China Ramps Up U.S. Crude Oil Imports as Elections Near

By Irina Slav, September 25, 2020

China has been buying a lot of U.S. crude oil lately, perhaps in a belated attempt to fulfill some of the energy import quotas agreed with Washington last year or perhaps in a bid to take advantage of supercheap U.S. crude. But the buying spree is about to end.

Hack Reveals UK’s Propaganda Campaign to Drive Syrian Regime Change

By Johanna Ross, September 25, 2020

On 8th September the hacker group Anonymous published shocking revelations of how a concerted and organised campaign has been waged to support the anti-government rebels in Syria. One set of documents relates to the NGO ARK, which although brands itself as a humanitarian organisation, effectively functions as a vehicle for western-led regime change.

An Anonymous Nurse Speaks Out: The RT-PCR Test is Totally Unreliable, It Does not Detect the Virus.

By Unnamed Nurse, September 25, 2020

I work in the healthcare field. Here’s the problem, we are testing people for any strain of a Coronavirus. Not specifically for COVID-19. There are no reliable tests for a specific COVID-19 virus. There are no reliable agencies or media outlets for reporting numbers of actual COVID-19 virus cases.

Small Business Outwits Tyrannical Masking Bylaw (Without Breaking the Rules)

By John C. A. Manley, September 24, 2020

If you dare enter many stores with a friendly and smiling face you could easily be subject to public shaming because of a fashionable public health dictate that lacks any scientific evidence.

“If the world is upside down the way it is now, wouldn’t we have to turn it over to get it to stand up straight?” – Eduardo Galeano, Upside Down, 1998

For decades, Andre Vltchek, an old-school journalist and artist (but a young man) who traveled the world in search of truth and who always stood up straight, tried to revolve the world and encourage people to revolt against injustice. In this age of arm-chair reporters, he stood out for his boldness and indefatigable courage. He told it straight. This irritated certain people and some pseudo-left publications, who sensed in him a no bullshit fierceness and nose for hypocrisy that frightened them, so they stopped publishing his writing. He went where so many others  feared to tread, and he talked to people in places that were often the victims of Western imperialistic violence. He defended the defenseless and encouraged their defense.

Now he is dead.  He died in the back seat of a chauffeur driven rental car on an overnight drive to Istanbul, Turkey. He was sleeping, and when his wife attempted to wake him upon arrival at their hotel, she couldn’t.  He was 57-years-old.

Let him sleep in peace, but let his words ring out, his passionate cries for justice and peace in a world of violent predators.

Those who knew him and his work feel a great, great loss. His friend and colleague Peter Koenig wrote this touching goodbye.

As Koenig says, Vltchek was always defending those around the world who are considered disposable non-people, the Others, the non- whites, victims of Western wars, both military and economic, in places such as West Papua, Iraq, Syria, Africa, etc. He had a chip on his shoulder, a well justified chip, against the one-sided Western media and its elites that were always lecturing the rest of the world about their realities.

He was recently in the United States, and here is what he wrote:

But notice one thing: it is them, telling us, again, telling the world what it is and what it is not! You would never hear such statements in Africa, the Middle East, or Asia. There, people know perfectly well what it really is all about, whether it is about race or not!

I have just spent two weeks in the United States, analyzing the profound crises of U.S. society. I visited Washington, D.C., Minneapolis, New York, and Boston. I spoke to many people in all those places. What I witnessed was confusion and total ignorance about the rest of the world. The United States, a country which has been brutalizing our Planet for decades, is absolutely unable to see itself in the context of the entire world. People, including those from the media, are outrageously ignorant and provincial.

And they are selfish.

I asked many times: “Do black lives matter all over the world? Do they matter in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and do they matter in West Papua?” I swear, I received no coherent answer.

Somebody has to tell them… Somebody has to force them to open their eyes.

A few years ago, I was invited to Southern California to show my documentary work from Africa (my feature documentary film Rwanda Gambit, about West-triggered genocides in both Rwanda and later in the Democratic Republic of Congo), where millions of black people are dying, in order for the vast majority of the U.S. whites to live in piggish opulence.

But before I was allowed to present, I was warned: ‘Remember, people here are sensitive. Do not show too much of brutal reality, as it could disturb them.’

Hearing that, I almost left the event. Only my respect for the organizer made me stay.

Now I am convinced: it is time to force them to watch; to see rivers of blood, which their laziness, selfishness, and greed have triggered. It is time to force them to hear shouts of the agony of the others.

But as everyone knows, it is nearly impossible to force people to open their eyes and ears when they are dead set against doing so.  Andre tried so hard to do that, and his frustration grew apace with those efforts that seemed to fall on deaf ears.

He was a relentless fighter, but he was a lover, too.  His love for the people and cultures of the world was profound.  Like Albert Camus, he tried to serve both beauty and suffering, the noblest of vocations. A lover of literature and culture, the best art and beauty ever produced, he was appalled at the way so many in the West had fallen into the pit of ignorance, illiteracy, and the grip of propaganda so tight that “what is missing is life. Euphoria, warmth, poetry and yes – love – are all in extremely short supply there.”

He sensed, and said it, that nihilism rules in the United States beneath the compulsive consumerism and the denial of the violence that the U.S. inflicts on people across the world. It was selfishness run amok. Me me me. It was, he felt, soul death, the opposite of all the ostensible religiousness that is a cover story for despair. He wrote:

It has to be stopped. I say it because I do love this life, the life, which still exists outside the Western realm; I’m intoxicated with it, obsessed with it. I live it to the fullest, with great delight, enjoying every moment of it.

Poetry, music, great literature, these he loved as he fought on the barricades for peace.

I urge you to read his article, Love, Western Nihilism and Revolutionary Optimism.

He was a rare and courageous man.  Let us ring bells in his honor.

Here’s a Kenneth Rexroth poem for Andre, the fighter with the poet’s heart:

No Word

The trees hang silent

In the heat….

Undo your heart

Tell me your thoughts

What you were

And what you are….

Like the bells no one

Has ever rung

Browse through our archive of Andre Vltchek’s writings.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site.

Distinguished author and sociologist Edward Curtin is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He is the author of the new book: https://www.claritypress.com/product/seeking-truth-in-a-country-of-lies/

Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies

Author: Edward Curtin

ISBN: 9781949762266

Published: 2020

Options: EBOOK – Epub and Kindle, paper, PDF

Click here to order.

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Nothing remotely like what’s gone on since January ever happened before in the US.

For the 27th straight week, over one million working-age Americans filed claims for unemployment insurance (UI).

Numbers for the past week include 870,000 who applied for regular state UI, along with another 630,000 applying for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) — the federal program for workers not eligible for UI.

Providing up to 39 weeks of benefits, PUA expires at yearend.

Because most states provide 26 weeks of UI, many unemployed US workers exhausted their benefits.

They’re still eligible for 13 additional weeks of Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) — available only for individuals who got state UI.

Beginning next week, as UI claims fall, PEUC claims will rise proportionately — total claims remaining at Great Depression levels with no congressional or White House programs proposed to turn things around ahead of November 3 elections.

Because reports on PEUC claims are delayed, they won’t show up until October 8.

Economist John Williams calculates economic data based on how done pre-1990 — before formulas were changed to distort reality.

His data show annualized inflation in August at 9%, not the phony 1.3% Bureau of Labor Statistics year-over-year figure.

Americans who buy food, pay rent, service mortgages, cover medical expenses, heat and/or air condition homes, and manage other daily expenses know more about inflation than TV talking head economists and government ones involved in distorting official data.

US unemployment is 28% — greater than the peak Great Depression figure — not the phony 8.4% BLS figure.

Williams forecasts continued hard times, saying “economic and systemic…collapse…should intensify” ahead, adding:

“Systemic turmoil is just beginning, with the Fed and US government driving uncontrolled US dollar creation, with annual money supply growth soaring to successive record highs.”

He sees a “continuing, rapidly deepening…US economic collapse…a hardening, protracted L-shaped recovery.”

Mass layoffs continue, affecting public and private workers.

In early September, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said layoffs of city workers are needed because of a projected FY 2020 $1.25 billion budget shortfall.

Without further elaboration, she said action must be taken because vitally needed federal aid isn’t forthcoming.

Large tax increases are also coming to deal with the largest budget shortfall in city history, Lightfoot saying:

“We can’t ask individual taxpayers to give us more if we don’t prove to them that we are being good fiduciaries of their tax dollars and that includes making painful sacrifices.”

In mid-September, Illinois Governor Jay Pritzker said “(w)e’re literally talking about thousands of people who will get laid off” statewide.

Illinois is projected to have a $3.4 billion FY 2020 budget shortfall.

According to the Florida Legislature’s Office of Economic and Demographic Research coordinator Amy Baker on September 10, budget shortfalls of $3.4, $2.0, and $1.0 billion are expected in 2020 through 2022 respectively, layoffs required to deal with them.

Chicago, Illinois, and Florida aren’t alone.

US states, cities and local communities nationwide are hard-pressed financially because of dire economic conditions with little or no federal aid in prospect.

According to the National Association of State Budget Officers:

“(S)tate revenue forecasts for fiscal 2021 (and fiscal 2022 for those states that have released estimates) are projecting more significant losses, especially without additional federal aid.”

Moody’s Analytics estimates that US state budgets could experience a fiscal shock (worsened by increased Medicaid expenses) of nearly $500 billion through 2022.

If significant layoffs of public and private workers increase ahead, US unemployment could spike much higher.

A vicious circle exists. As layoffs rise, federal, state, and local tax revenues fall that could result in further job losses and greater economic decline without significant federal aid and job-creation programs like during the Great Depression to put people back to work.

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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.

In view of recent controversies caused by an article in The Irish Times on Saturday, September 12th, I think it is important to articulate my position on the present Covid crisis and its management, and to comment also on more recent developments.

How lethal is Covid-19?

Up to August 10th, the number of Europeans who died from a Covid-19 illness (182,639) was slightly above the number who died three years ago as a result of “flu” (152,000). The number of patients who died in Europe from the 1917/18 Spanish flu was approximately 2.64 million – this would be equivalent to approximately 7.4 million deaths of today’s European population.

It is not for want of good reason that deaths are now referred to as Covid-19-associated deaths. Of 5,700 patients admitted to New York hospitals, 88 per cent had more than one underlying condition (co-morbidity) and the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention reported that from January to May, 19.5 per cent of Covid-19 patients with co-morbidity died compared to 1.6 per cent with no other illness.

The Irish experience is very similar – up to mid-August 94 per cent of deaths were in patients with underlying medical conditions. A Stanford-led group analysed over 100,000 Covid-19-related deaths in Europe, including Ireland, and the US and concluded that “deaths for people under 65 without predisposing conditions were remarkably uncommon” .

Another important feature is the number of people who contract the virus and remain completely asymptomatic. In extremely well-defined scenarios such as the Diamond Princess cruise liner and the Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier almost 66 per cent of the positive tests were completely asymptomatic, while a report from China suggests 78 per cent of cases were asymptomatic.

To read complete article, Irish Times, click here

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Unlawful US sanctions on nations, entities and individuals are weapons of war by other means.

Since taking office in January 2017, Trump imposed sanctions on numerous countries extrajudicially, including Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba.

Despite having no legal validity, they’re piled on to immiserate their populations, aiming to suffocate nations into submission — a failed objective whenever tried.

On Wednesday, the State Department announced new sanctions on Cuba, including entities on a so-called Cuba Prohibited Accommodations (CPA) List.

It prohibits or limits “transactions related to lodging at…433 properties that are owned or controlled by the Cuban (government) or certain well-connected insiders.”

The State Department defied reality, falsely claiming profits from state-owned or connected properties come “at the expense of the Cuban people” — a bald-faced Big Lie like countless others by the US against nations it doesn’t control.

A follow-up Big Lie falsely claimed “the Cuban people…face repression at the hands of their government (sic)” — what’s true about the US, other Western regimes and apartheid Israel.

Newly imposed US sanctions also ban or restrict imports of Cuban alcohol and tobacco products.

They prohibit “attending or organizing certain professional meetings or conferences in Cuba…”

They ban “participating in and organizing certain public performances, clinics, workshops, competitions, and exhibitions in” the country.

Trump’s “support” for the Cuban people is all about wanting them immiserated.

Earlier imposed Trump regime toughness on Cuba and its people remain in place for another year.

Longstanding US policy calls for transforming all sovereign independent countries into pro-Western vassal states.

In January 1959, Fidel Castro transformed Cuba from a US-controlled brothel into a nation serving the health and welfare of all its people.

Obama’s “new course on Cuba” was imperialism by another name, same dirty business as usual, new tactics.

Embargo, limited travel by Americans and other restrictions remained in place.

So did longstanding hostility toward Cuban sovereign independence.

Normalized relations aren’t possible without ending a lawless embargo. Not as long as Trump and hardliners surrounding him run things.

His anti-Cuba agenda since taking office rolled back modest Obama regime loosing of US toughness on the island state.

He banned “people-to-people” travel to Cuba. Treasury authorized US tour company group visits alone are permitted.

Americans traveling to the country face a likely punishing Treasury Department audit on return, an attempt to discourage visits to the state.

Transactions with entities linked to Cuba’s military are banned, some affiliated with the country’s tourism industry.

Trump’s hostility toward the state flies in the face of what most Americans and Cubans favor — normalized relations with a good neighbor, waging peace, stability, and cooperative relations with other nations in the region and worldwide.

New Trump regime sanctions on Cuba come ahead of US November 3 presidential and congressional elections — aiming to win support from most Cuban nationals in Florida and their descendants.

The sunshine state and Ohio are key for US presidential aspirants.

No GOP presidential aspirant ever won without taking Ohio.

In 27 of 39 US presidential elections since 1860 (the year Lincoln won), winners carried Florida, including Trump in 2016.

Races for senator and governor in the state are important.

Winners indicate which wing of the US one-party state has more support, a potential sign of how things will go in the same-year or next presidential election.

The latest Real Clear Politics polls through September 23 show Biden ahead by an average of 7 points.

They show Biden narrowly ahead in Ohio by around 2 points, in Florida by one point.

Given the margin of error, races in both states are a virtual dead heat. They could go either way as things now stand.

A Final Comment

In response to new Trump regime sanctions, President of Cuba Educational Travel Collin Laverty said the following:

New Trump regime travel restrictions to the island state “remove general licenses…for the purpose of professional events and conferences as well as public performances, sporting competitions, workshops and the like,” adding:

“(T)here are still ways US citizens can legally travel to Cuba. However, these prohibitions will create more confusion and complications.”

They mean “less travel (and) more hardships for Cuban families.”

Americans visiting Cuba will have alcohol and/or cigars on their possession confiscated on returning home.

Laverty asked: “How long will US politicians kick around the Cuban people for political victories in Florida.”

“Six decades of talking tough and tightening the embargo to please Cuban Americans has achieved nothing” except hardships for its people US politicians pretend to support.

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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.

The sixth and newest branch of the U.S. Armed Forces now has an overseas base. A squadron of 20 soldiers has been sent to an air base in Al Udeid, which is in a desert in Qatar, where the first unit abroad of the American Space Force will be deployed. The Space Force is the first new military service since the creation of the Air Force in 1947 and the speed with which it managed to install its first base abroad is surprising. On Sunday (September 20), the U.S. Space Force posted a video on its Twitter account showing the military’s oath ceremony, which took place earlier this month. The number of troops in the region is provisional and is expected to increase soon.

The missions to be carried out in the military base are not yet fully elucidated, but we already know that the activities will revolve around a monitoring service of the Persian Gulf and the local nations, which, in other words, can be identified as an explicit spy service with use of space technology. Soldiers will have to operate satellites, track enemy maneuvers in space and capture data applying space technology.

“We’re starting to see other nations that are extremely aggressive in preparing to extend conflict into space (…) We have to be able to compete and defend and protect all of our national interests”, said Colonel Todd Benson, commander of U.S. Space Force troops in Qatar during an interview.

The most worrying about the internationalization of the American Space Force is the choice of the Persian Gulf for the installation of the base. Washington chose to install a base in the Gulf region amid a moment of particular tensions between the United States and Iran, which have been progressively rising. The Trump administration recently imposed sanctions on the Iranian space agency, accusing it of developing ballistic missiles under the cover of a civilian program to place satellites in orbit. Now, by chance or not, the United States is setting up a base for military space operations in a country neighboring Iran with an admitted intention of monitoring “aggressive nations”.

Allocating weapons of mass destruction in orbit is prohibited by the 1967 Space Treaty, but no limits are established for other space war activities, either in that treaty or in other legal documents relating to outer space. If Iran is actually using a civilian satellite system to hide a nuclear missile launch project, it is committing an illegal act under international space law. But there is nothing established about the rules of espionage and remote monitoring, which are the most widely used forms of space technology for military purposes.

As long as this legal gap remains, it will be allowed to spy and collect data from other countries using space technology. However, the most dangerous thing is that not only military programs are monitored by spy satellites, but also industrial, corporate, scientific and economic data. In other words, military space technology can be used to steal all types of information and dismantle any national project of such “aggressive nations”.

It is true that all the great global military powers have complex space systems and use such technology for security and defense purposes, but the precedent set by the creation of a military base in the vicinity of a country considered an enemy – and  with an almost explicit justification for monitoring it – is really dangerous. If practices like this become widespread, we will have a chaotic scenario of proliferation of explicit spy bases around the world.

Another terrible scenario would be an Iranian reaction, with the shooting of American spy satellites, causing widespread retaliation from both sides and prompting a complete militarization of outer space. In this sense, new arms race will be generated, seeking the constant modernization of space weapons, with increasingly complex and dangerous systems dispersed in military space bases installed on all continents.

However, the activities of the US Space Force are strongly condemned in the American political scenario itself. Many politicians, experts and the military consider the creation of a space force as a “Trump vanity” and tend to believe that the budget for the new armed force will decrease with a possible defeat of Trump in the elections. In any case, the result of the elections is uncertain, and the Space Force has already been created and is working, so, regardless of future financial plans, the problems will not disappear.

There is only one way to avoid this scenario: through international law. Space law prevented a drastic militarization of outer space during the Cold War in the context of a nuclear race, but these legal documents are no longer efficient for contemporary circumstances. We need a new international treaty that effectively prohibits space espionage with a legal international court that punishes nations that disrespect such norms and prevents the generalization of violence between military powers.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Lucas Leiroz is a research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

Nearly three-quarters of hotels will have to lay off more employees than they already have during the coronavirus pandemic if they don’t receive additional government funding, according to a new survey.

Seventy-four percent of respondents to an American Hotel & Lodging Association survey of its members said they would have to lay off additional employees as it awaits the passage of further COVID-19 recovery legislation from Congress.

Currently, 68% of hotels in the U.S. have half their pre-pandemic staff working full-time. Half of hotel owners said that due to the pandemic, they are in danger of foreclosure. What’s more: More than two-thirds of hotels said that at current projected revenue and occupancy levels, without more relief, they could only last six more months.

AHLA is urging lawmakers to pass relief measures in the final few weeks before they go on recess ahead of the November election.

Without a new stimulus deal, economists warn that the economy could slip into a double-digit recession and Goldman Sachs recently reckoned there’s just a slightly better than 50% chance lawmakers will approve new relief by the end of September.

It’s not just hotels. The days are quickly counting down for thousands of pilots, flight attendants, gate agents and other airline workers who face the prospect of being laid off at the end of the month if Congress doesn’t come through with a new stimulus agreement.

Earlier this month, the Senate failed to reach the 60-vote minimum needed to pass a slimmed-down, $300 billion GOP coronavirus relief package that didn’t allocate any aid for the airline industry.

Last week, both White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke with airline industry leaders. Meadows said they asked for another $25 billion. Pelosi told Bloomberg News that a Democrat-led House bill may include additional aid for the travel industry, though she did not specifically mention hotels.

“It’s clear that travel jobs, which were hit by far the hardest of any sector, won’t recover on their own,” said Tori Barnes, an executive vice president for the U.S. Travel Association, in a statement at the time.

Six months of carnage and counting:  Travel industry struggles to rebound from COVID-19

“It’s time for Congress to put politics aside and prioritize the many businesses and employees in the hardest-hit industries. Hotels are cornerstones of the communities they serve, building strong local economies and supporting millions of jobs,” Chip Rogers, president and CEO of the AHLA, said in a statement.

Rogers spoke to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows on Friday as well as to business and travel leaders on a conference call.

“These are real numbers, millions of jobs, and the livelihoods of people who have built their small business for decades, just withering away because Congress has done nothing,” Rogers said on the call. “We can’t afford to let thousands of small businesses die and all of the jobs associated with them be lost for many years.”

AHLA’s survey of hotel industry owners, operators, and employees had more than 1,000 respondents; the organization conducted it Sept. 14 to 16.

Four out of 10 hotel workers are still unemployed, according to a six-month look back report of the travel industry during the pandemic released earlier this summer. Hotel occupancy for the month of August stood at 48.6%, down 31.7 percentage points, according to STR data. For the week ending Sept. 12, it was 48.5%.

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China has been buying a lot of U.S. crude oil lately, perhaps in a belated attempt to fulfill some of the energy import quotas agreed with Washington last year or perhaps in a bid to take advantage of supercheap U.S. crude. But the buying spree is about to end.

This month alone, China could import between 867,000 bpd, according to Reuters’ Refinitiv data, and 900,000 bpd, according to oilfield services company Canary. And then the flow of U.S. oil into China will decline, and it will decline sharply, Reuters’ Clyde Russell wrote this week. The reason as simple as it is worrying. The U.S. crude that has been going into China since July—and reaching major records in terms of volume, with the July daily average alone up 139 percent on the year—was bought much earlier, in April, May, and June. This was oil bought when West Texas Intermediate was trading at multi-year lows. By June it had recovered to about $40, Russell notes, so purchases since then have been more modest.

But here is the worrying part: much of the oil price recovery we’ve seen since this spring was caused by rising Chinese imports, including from the United States. Rising imports are traditionally taken to mean improving demand, but this time this has not been the case entirely. Chinese refiners have been stocking up on crude more because of the historically low prices than to satisfy growing demand.

In all fairness, oil demand has been seen as recovering pretty faster after the end of the lockdowns there but since China is not an isolated economy, its refining industry needs a recovery elsewhere in Asia and globally, and this has been slow in coming. Now, none other than OPEC is warning that a second wave of Covid-19 infections—already visible in parts of Europe, for example—will further slow down demand recovery, which will unavoidably affect Chinese oil imports.

According to Canary CEO Dan Eberhart, however, China will continue buying a lot of U.S. oil ahead of the U.S. elections. Beijing, Eberhart wrote for Forbes, would want to stay on Trump’s good side as much as possible in case he wins a second term. Reuters’ Russell is of a different opinion: he cites preliminary import estimates that point to a sharp decline in October to 500,000 bpd of U.S. oil flowing into China and a further decline in November. For Russell, it’s all about the price. For Eberhart, it’s also about politics and the trade war.

“While importing U.S. crude often doesn’t make commercial sense for China’s refiners, Beijing has directed them to continue buying as the election approaches—a sign that China knows that the trade issue with Trump will only intensify if the president wins a second term,” Eberhart wrote.

Yet not everyone agrees that politics will trump the economy. In fact, data from Chinese market research firms suggests private refiners, if not the state giants, may sharply cut their intake of foreign oil this month and next. After all, storage space is finite and Chinese energy companies have been filling it up for months now while demand has been improving but is yet to return to growth mode, even in China with its rebounding economy.

It looks like the dominant opinion is for a decline in Chinese oil imports, from the U.S. and elsewhere, in the coming months, not least because of lower refinery run rates. Reuters reported earlier this week refinery runs are set to be cut by 5-10 percent beginning this month because of a crude oil glut and weak fuel export margins. This would mean more pressure on prices. And this is not all. Some analysts expect that China may start selling the oil it bought on the cheap in the spring. Now that would be really bad news for oil prices.

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Irina Slav is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing on the oil and gas industry.

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On Wednesday the trap sprang shut, as Judge Baraitser insisted the witnesses must finish next week, and that no time would be permitted for preparation of closing arguments, which must be heard the immediate following Monday. This brought the closest the defence have come to a protest, with the defence pointing out they have still not addressed the new superseding indictment, and that the judge refused their request for an adjournment before witness hearings started, to give them time to do so.

Edward Fitzgerald QC for the defence also pointed out that there had been numerous witnesses whose evidence had to be taken into account, and the written closing submissions had to be physically prepared with reference to the transcripts and other supporting evidence from the trial. Baraitser countered that the defence had given her 200 pages of opening argument and she did not see that much more could be needed. Fitzgerald, who is an old fashioned gentleman in the very nicest sense of those words, struggled to express his puzzlement that all of the evidence since opening arguments could be dismissed as unnecessary and of no effect.

I fear that all over London a very hard rain is now falling on those who for a lifetime have worked within institutions of liberal democracy that at least broadly and usually used to operate within the governance of their own professed principles. It has been clear to me from Day 1 that I am watching a charade unfold. It is not in the least a shock to me that Baraitser does not think anything beyond the written opening arguments has any effect. I have again and again reported to you that, where rulings have to be made, she has brought them into court pre-written, before hearing the arguments before her.

I strongly expect the final decision was made in this case even before opening arguments were received.

The plan of the US Government throughout has been to limit the information available to the public and limit the effective access to a wider public of what information is available. Thus we have seen the extreme restrictions on both physical and video access. A complicit mainstream media has ensured those of us who know what is happening are very few in the wider population.

Even my blog has never been so systematically subject to shadowbanning from Twitter and Facebook as now. Normally about 50% of my blog readers arrive from Twitter and 40% from Facebook. During the trial it has been 3% from Twitter and 9% from Facebook. That is a fall from 90% to 12%. In the February hearings Facebook and Twitter were between them sending me over 200,000 readers a day. Now they are between them sending me 3,000 readers a day. To be plain that is very much less than my normal daily traffic from them just in ordinary times. It is the insidious nature of this censorship that is especially sinister – people believe they have successfully shared my articles on Twitter and Facebook, while those corporations hide from them that in fact it went into nobody’s timeline. My own family have not been getting their notifications of my posts on either platform.

The US Government responded to Baraitser’s pronouncement enthusiastically with the suggestion that closing arguments did not ought to be heard AT ALL. They ought merely to be submitted in writing, perhaps a week after final witnesses. Baraitser appeared eager to agree with this. A ruling is expected today. Let me add that two days ago I noticed the defence really had missed an important moment to stand up to her, when the direction of her railroading became evident. It appears that because of the ground the defence already conceded at that stage, Noam Chomsky is one of the witnesses from whom we now will not hear.

I am afraid I am not going to give you a substantive account of Wednesday’s witnesses. I have decided that the intimate details of Julian’s medical history and condition ought not to be subject to further public curiosity. I know I cannot call back what others have published – and the court is going to consider press requests for the entire medical records before it. But I have to do what I believe is right.

I will say that for the defence, Dr Quinton Deeley appeared. Dr Deeley is Senior Lecturer in Social Behaviour and Neurodevelopment at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neuroscience (IOPPN), King’s College London and Consultant Neuropsychiatrist in the National Autism Unit. He is co-author of the Royal College Report on the Management of Autism.

Dr Deeley after overseeing the standard test and extensive consultation with Julian Assange and tracing of history, had made a clear diagnosis which encompassed Asperger’s. He described Julian as high-functioning autistic. There followed the usual disgraceful display by James Lewis QC, attempting to pick apart the diagnosis trait by trait, and employing such tactics as “well, you are not looking me in the eye, so does that make you autistic?”. He really did. I am not making this up.

I should say more about Lewis, who is a strange character. Privately very affable, he adopts a tasteless and impolite aggression in cross-examination that looks very unusual indeed. He adopts peculiar postures. After asking aggressive questions, he strikes poses of theatrical pugilism. For example he puts arms akimbo, thrusts out his chin, and bounces himself up on his feet to the extent that his heels actually leave the floor, while looking round at the courtroom in apparent triumph, his gaze pausing to fix that of the judge occasionally. These gestures almost always involve throwing back one or both front panels of his jacket.

I think this is some kind of unconscious alpha male signalling in progress, and all these psychiatrists around might link it to his lack of height. It is display behaviour but not really very successful. Lewis has grown a full set during lockdown and he appears strikingly like a chorus matelot in a small town production of HMS Pinafore.

There is a large part of me that wants to give details of the cross-examination because Deeley handled Lewis superbly, giving calm and reasoned replies and not conceding anything to Lewis’s clumsy attempts to dismantle his diagnosis. Lewis effectively argued Julian’s achievements would be impossible with autism while Deeley differed. But there is no way to retell it without going into the discussion of medical detail I do not wish to give. I will however tell you that Julian’s father John told me that Julian has long known he has Asperger’s and will cheerfully say so.

The second psychiatrist on Wednesday, Dr Seena Fazel, Professor of Forensic Psychiatry at the University of Oxford, was the first prosecution witness we have heard from. He struck me as an honest and conscientious man and made reasonable points, well. There was a great deal of common ground between Prof Fazel and the defence psychiatrists, and I think it is fair to say that his major point was that Julian’s future medical state would depend greatly on the conditions he was held in with regard to isolation, and on hope or despair dependent on his future prospects.

Here Lewis was keen to paint an Elysian picture. As ever, he fell back on the affidavit of US Assistant attorney Gordon Kromberg, who described the holiday camp that is the ADX maximum security prison in Florence, Colorado, where the prosecution say Julian will probably be incarcerated on conviction.

You will recall this is the jail that was described as a “living hell” and a “fate worse than death” by its own warden. Lewis invited Prof Fazel to agree this regime would not cause medical problems for Julian, and to his credit Prof Fazel, despite being a prosecution witness, declined to be used in this way, saying that it would be necessary to find out how many of Kromberg’s claims were true in practice, and what was the quality of this provision. Fazel was unwilling to buy in to lies about this notorious facility.

Lewis was disingenuous because he knows, and the prosecution have conceded, that if convicted Julian would most likely be kept in H block at the ADX under “Special Administrative Measures.” If he had read on a few paragraphs in Kromberg’s affidavit he would have come to the regime Julian would actually be held under:

So let us be clear about this. William Barr decides who is subjected to this regime and when it may be ameliorated. For at least the first twelve months you are in solitary confinement locked in your cell, and allowed out only three times a week just to shower. You are permitted no visits and two phone calls a month. After twelve months this can be ameliorated – and we will hear evidence this is rare – to allow three phone calls a month, and brief release from the cell five times a week to exercise, still in absolute isolation. We have heard evidence this exercise period is usually around 3am. After an indeterminate number of years you may, or may not, be allowed to meet another human being.

Behind Baraitser’s chilly disdain, behind Lewis’s theatrical postures, this hell on Earth is what these people are planning to do to Julian. They are calmly discussing how definitely it will kill him, in full knowledge that it is death in life in any event. I sit in the public gallery, perched eight feet above them all, watching the interaction of the characters in this masque, as the lawyers pile up their bundles of papers or stare into their laptops, as Lewis and Fitzgerald exchange pleasantries, as the friendly clerks try to make the IT systems work, and my mind swims in horrified disbelief. They are discussing a fate for my friend as horrible as that of the thousands who over 500 years were dragged from this very spot and strung up outside. They are all chatting and working away as though we were a normal part of civilised society.

Then I go back to my hotel room, type it all up and post it. The governments who are destroying Julian have through their agencies pushed the huge corporations who now control the major internet traffic gateways, to ensure my pained and grieving account is seen by very few. My screams of pain and horror are deadened by thick padded walls. We are all locked in.

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The World Wildlife Foundation, in collaboration with the Zoological Society of London, recently issued an eye-popping description of the forces of humanity versus life in nature, the Living Planet Report 2020, but the report should really be entitled the Dying Planet Report 2020 because that’s what’s happening in the real world. Not much remains alive.

The report, released September 10th, describes how the over-exploitation of ecological resources by humanity from 1970 to 2016 has contributed to a 68% plunge in wild vertebrate populations, inclusive of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish.

The report offers a fix-it: “Bending the Curve Initiative,” described in more detail to follow. The causes of collapse are found in human recklessness and/or neglect of ecosystems. It’s partially fixable (maybe) but don’t hold your breath.

What if stocks plunged 68%? What then? Why, of course, that is an all-hands-on-deck panic scenario with the Federal Reserve Bank repeatedly pressing “a white hot printing press button,” hopefully, avoiding destructive deflationary forces looming in the background. But, an astounding jaw-dropping 68% loss of vertebrates doesn’t seem to budge the panic needle nearly enough to count.

Of special note, according to the Report, tropical sub-regions were clobbered, hit hard with 94% loss of vertebrate life, which is essentially total extinction. For comparison purposes, the worst extinction event in history, the Permian-Triassic, aka: the Great Dying, of 252 million years ago took down 96% of marine life and has been classified as “global annihilation.”

According to the Report, on a worldwide basis, two-thirds (2/3rds) of wild vertebrate life has vanished in only 46 years or within one-half a human lifetime. That is mind-boggling, and it is indicative of misguided mindlessness, prompting a query of what the next 46 years will bring. What remains is an operative question?

According to the report:

“Until 1970, humanity’s Ecological Footprint was smaller than the Earth’s rate of regeneration. To feed and fuel our 21^st century, we are overusing the Earth’s biocapacity by at least 56%.” (Report, page 6) Meaning, we’ve gone from equilibrium to a huge deficit of 50% in less than 50 years. Putting it mildly, that’s terrifying!

As stated in the Report, we’re effectively using and abusing and trampling the equivalence of one and one-half planets. How long does that last? The experience of the past 46 years provides an answer, which is: Not much longer.

The denuding, destructing of natural biodiversity is almost beyond description, certainly beyond human comprehension, which may be a big part of the problem of recognition. Still, by and large, people read the World Wildlife Foundation report and continue on with business as usual. This lackadaisical behavior by the public has been ongoing for decades and not likely to end anytime soon. Therefore, an eureka moment of radical change in farming practices and ecosystem husbandry is almost too much to wish for after years, and years, of preaching by environmentalists about the ills associated with the anthropogenic growth machine.

In all, with ever-faster approaching finality, and worldwide failure to act to save the planet, the answer may be that people must learn to adapt to a deteriorating world.

More to the point, the Report is “an extermination report.” Consider the opening sentence:

“At a time when the world is reeling from the deepest global disruption and health crisis of a lifetime, this year’s Living Planet Report provides unequivocal and alarming evidence that nature is unraveling and that our planet is flashing red warning signs of vital natural systems failure.” (Report, page 4)

Accordingly, unequivocally “nature is unraveling.” And, the planet is “flashing red warning signs of vital natural systems failure.”

Why repeat that disheartening info? Simply put, it demands repeating over and over again. Yes, “nature is unraveling.” And, by all indications, time is short as “flashing red warning signs” are crying for help. But, will it happen? Or, does biz as usual rattle onwards towards total extinction of life way ahead of anybody’s best guess, which, based upon how rapidly the forces of the anthropocene are gobbling up the countryside, could be within current lifetimes. But, honestly, who knows when?

Still, with great hope but not enough fanfare, the Report proposes a new research initiative called “Bending the Curve Initiative” to reverse biodiversity loss via (1) unprecedented conservation measures and (2) a total remake of food production techniques.

One of the upshots of the breakdown in nature is the issue of “adequate food for humanity.” Accordingly:

“Where and how we produce food is one of the biggest human-caused threats to nature and to our ecosystems, making the transformation of our global food system more important than ever,” Ibid

Which implies the end of rainforests obliteration, the end of industrial farming, full stop, eliminating mono-crop farming, and “stopping dead in its tracks” the use of toxic, deadly insecticides, which kill crucial life-originating ecosystems by bucketloads, as for example, 75% loss of flying insects over 27 years in nature reserves in portions of Europe (Source: Krefeld Entomological Society, est. 1905).

What kills 75% of flying insects?

Additionally, the Report recognizes the necessity of “transformation of the prevailing economic system.” Meaning, a transformation away from the radical infinite growth hormones that are attached to the world’s lowest offshore wages and lowest offshore regulations as an outgrowth of neoliberalism, which is rapidly destroying the world. It’s a terminal illness that’s fully recognized around the world as “progress.” But, its unrelenting disregard for the health of ecosystems and for workers’ rights makes it a serial killer.

The wonderful world of nature is not part of the neoliberal capitalistic formula for success. In fact, nature with its life-sourcing ecosystems is treated like an adversary or like one more prop to use and abuse on the way to infinite progress. Really?

The Report alerts to the dangers of a “business as usual world,” an epithet that is also found throughout climate change literature. These warnings of impending loss of ecosystems, and by extension survival of Homo sapiens, depict a biosphere on a hot seat never before seen throughout human history. In fact, there is no time in recorded history that compares to the dangers immediately ahead. The most common watchword used by scientists is “unprecedented.” The change happens so rapidly, so powerfully. It’s unprecedented.

Meanwhile, people are shielded from the complexities, and heartaches, of collapsing ecosystems in today’s world by the artificiality of living a life of steel, glass, wood, cement, as the surrounding world collapses in a virtual sea of untested chemicals.

In the end, humans are the last vertebrates on the planet to directly feel and experience the impact of climate change and ecosystems collapsing. All of the other vertebrates are first in line. Maybe that’s for the best.

Still, how many more 68% plunges in wild vertebrate populations can civilized society handle and remain sane and well fed?

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Robert Hunziker, MA, economic history DePaul University, awarded membership in Pi Gamma Mu International Academic Honor Society in Social Sciences is a freelance writer and environmental journalist who has over 200 articles published, including several translated into foreign languages, appearing in over 50 journals, magazines, and sites worldwide. He has been interviewed on numerous FM radio programs, as well as television.

Featured image is from CC

Studies show that where fire is on the increase in Amazonia, biodiversity is altered, with unique rainforest flora and fauna — and vital ecological services — diminished.

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The number of fires burning in standing Amazon rainforest spiked dramatically in recent weeks, threatening the forest’s biodiversity — a richness of flora and fauna not adapted to withstand the flames.

Of all major fires detected in the Amazon this year, 43% were in standing forests, as of Sept 21,   (up from only 13% in August) according to the non-profit MAAP. The forest burned is estimated at roughly 4.6 million acres (1.8 million hectares) — an area about three-fifths the size of Belgium.

Major fires in Brazil in 2020

Fire data from MAAP’s Amazon Fire Monitoring App is updated in real time and will include data from after September 21, 2020. See it here.

Fires do not occur naturally in the Amazon rainforest. So, for fires to burn in a standing forest there, a few things must happen, namely a dry year along with lots of ignition sources on neighboring lands. These sources — almost exclusively human caused — can arise from runaway agricultural fires (routinely used to burn off croplands and pastures to remove pests, for example), or from blazes set intentionally to clear land following deforestation, much of it illegal.

“It’s difficult to know what ‘typical’ is when it comes to fire in the Amazon,” Jos Barlow, a professor of conservation science at Lancaster University, UK, told Mongabay. Barlow, who has been studying Amazon fires for over two decades, added: “Last year… we had lots of deforestation fires…. whereas, this year, it does seem to be that the fires are burning more areas of standing forest, which is a huge concern.”

The Amazon fires that drew international attention in 2019 largely followed a pattern of recent deforestation, driven by landgrabbers, emboldened by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s pro-agribusiness rhetoric. In February, more than 1,200 scientists signed a letter, stating that, “the administration of President Jair Bolsonaro is dismantling the country’s social–environmental policies.”

In comments to the United Nations this week, Bolsonaro said that the country has, “the best environmental legislation on the planet,” and that, “the fires practically occur in the same places… where peasants and Indians burn their fields in already deforested areas.” He provided no evidence for this claim.

Analysis by MAAP, NASA, INPE and others show a widespread pattern of fires throughout the Brazilian Amazon that includes significant illegal burning within conserved areas and Indigenous reserves — doing serious harm in the most biodiverse country in the world.

High-resolution satellite images show the before (left panel) on September 8, 2020, and after (right panel) on September 13, 2020, of a recent major fire in the Brazilian Amazon (Mato Grosso state). Image shows the surrounding matrix of forest fires, recently deforested area fires, and cropland fires. Photo courtesy of Planet/MAAP.

When it burns, what happens to life in the forest?

The rainforest burns slowly. A fire line could advance just 300 meters (984 feet) in 24 hours, Barlow says. Such slowly moving burns give large mobile animals plenty of time to flee. But where to? The choices are to burrow, head to water, or move into other areas. Most animals cannot simply shift into the territory of another without consequence: be that violence from a competitor, or simply a lack of resources like food and shelter. Unfortunately, the research on the impacts of such flight is limited.

“We don’t really know what happens to the larger animals that are forced to move into other territories,” Barlow said. “So, presumably, at some point, there’s a reduction in population size, because you can’t just have more animals in an area.”

Primates, for example, may get trapped in islands of unburned vegetation in the burnt forest, persisting on remaining food until they are forced to risk travel into foreign habitat. Fires in 2019 burned through the habitat of a recently discovered species, the Mura’s saddleback tamarin. But the effects on its population are unknown.

Image on the right: A brown howler monkey (Alouatta guariba) in Brazil. Larger animals can escape slow-moving fires but may be pushed into territories where they face competition for limited resources.  Image by Peter Schoen via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY SA 2.0)

“Who can survive the flames? We know arthropods nesting in the soil usually do very well,” Lucas N. Paolucci, a professor of biology at the Universidade Federal de Viçosa, Brazil, told Mongabay in an email. “But several others, like litter-dwelling invertebrates, some birds, small mammals and snakes frequently die directly due to flames.”

“You do see the small invertebrates trying to flee the flames and obviously they don’t survive,” Barlow said. “We’ve come across forest floor tortoises and [turtles] with burns scars on their shells. So, some animals do get affected and do burn.” But how many animals may die in this year’s extensive blazes, no one can say.

It is known that rainforest trees are especially vulnerable to fire. Because fire is a relatively new, and foreign element in the Amazon, the forest and the life within it have not evolved to withstand the flames. Tropical trees, for instance, lack the thick bark of a temperate fire adapted species such as sequoias or pines. A rainforest fire, burning the forest for the first time, kills most small trees and seedlings and can kill 50% of large trees. Seeds in the soil heated to high temperatures can lose their ability to germinate.

An Amazon rainforest tree in Peru. A healthy forest has a largely closed canopy. Photo by Rhett A. Butler

While bigger trees may not be immediately killed, fire damage to a trunk can cause a mortal wound, allowing pathogens to enter the trunk. These trees then take years to die. But as they succumb, they open the canopy, making surviving trees more susceptible to being knocked over in wind storms. When those large trees fall, the dark rainforest understory is compromised, with devastating consequences for the biota which has evolved in deep shade.

Barlow and his colleagues found that after Amazon forest fires, flora changes radically. Understory specialist birds, which feed in the leaf litter, “basically disappeared” with populations still not recovering ten years later. This finding is not surprising, he says, because a decade after fire, tropical forests look very different, with less biomass and an open canopy.

Image below: A royal flycatcher (Onychorhynchus coronatus) is an understory specialist in the Amazon understory. Photo by Philip Stouffer.

One study indicated that the abundance and types of dung beetle species were altered in burned Amazon forests. Dung beetles play a vital role in nutrient cycling and seed dispersal and a decline in their diversity has cascading effects on the ecosystem.

In a large experimental study, forest plots that were burned several times saw a decline in the abundance of specialist forest ant species. These species disperse seeds, play specific roles in the forest food chain, and work the soil via their burrowing. After fires, these specialist ant species were replaced by an influx of ant communities from more open-habitat areas such as savannas. The loss of these specialized forest species means the loss of the specialized work they do.

In the same experimental burn area, a different study found similar patterns of species loss for butterflies, with forest specialists decreasing in burnt areas. There is a growing body of evidence demonstrating that fire is a threat with long-term consequences to animals and plants that require the cool, moist, understory microclimate of the Amazon forest.

How do forests recover?

Because forest fires are a newer phenomenon in the Amazon, scientists are still not sure how long it takes forests there to fully recover, or even if they do. It is not surprising for researchers to examine a forest in the years after a fire and find a loss in biodiversity, but the fate of the animals on land and in the water, as well as the role of that biodiversity in supporting forest recovery, remain a mystery.

As researchers examine these landscapes, surprises emerge. For example, lowland tapirs (Tapirus terrestris), a large fruit-eating mammal that looks somewhat like a pig crossed with an elephant, may assist with the natural recovery of burned forests, Paolucci’s team found in a recent study. Tapirs travel and defecate more frequently in degraded forests, dispersing up to three times as many seeds in degraded forests.

However, these tapir experiments involve small experimental fires and occur close to unburned forests. “What happens in a fragmented landscape when a burnt area is not adjacent to an unburned patch?” Barlow asks. “Where are the seed sources going to come from then? And how does the forest recover when you don’t have forest connectivity or the ability for the large game and the birds to help disperse the seeds?”

In areas that have burned multiple times, or in areas with large amounts of deforestation and little connectivity, with little chance to recover, the forest changes from a closed canopy primary forest to, what Barlow describes as, “essentially open scrubby bamboo and vine dominated vegetation, which is very, very flammable.” This landscape, now devoid of game, food and medicines, is “of very low value to local people as well as most forest species.”

Aerial view of the Amazon rainforest canopy. Photo by Rhett A. Butler for Mongabay.

“The Amazon is like a bubble… if the trees are intact, it keeps moisture under the canopy in the forest,” Ernesto Alvarado, a professor of wildland fire sciences at the University of Washington said. Logging, roads, deforestation, and fires can pop this moisture bubble. “You open the canopy, right? It’s like a bunch of holes in the bubble, and now the moisture is better escaping and the forest becomes drier.”

Also, the Amazon dry season is getting longer and mega-droughts more common, primarily due to climate change and deforestation. Towards the end of the dry season, plants in more seasonal parts of Amazonia must rely not on rain but on water held in the soil to keep on transpiring and releasing moisture into the atmosphere. But when the dry season extends beyond that seen in past years, plants lack soil water, and some shut down their demand for moisture by dropping leaves. This dry leaf litter is ripe for burning when a fire set in a neighboring field blazes out of control.

“All these years when fires took over, plants were water-stressed,” Paulo Brando, a tropical ecologist at the University of California, Irvine, said, “and then, for animals… all sorts of problems, right? Because the resource availability in terms of fruits and energy decrease a lot if you have a combination of droughts and fire.”

The Amazon fires tomorrow

The future of the Amazon rainforest will depend on complex interactions between fire, deforestation, and deepening drought due to climate change, as well as other human causes.

Some scientists warn that the Amazon is nearing a tipping point, when precipitation diminishes until the rainforest transitions into a “derived-savannah.” However, unlike a natural savannah, which is a highly diverse and functioning system, a severely degraded Amazon may look more like, “a very impoverished [ecological] system, less diverse, providing less function,” Brando said.

Fire in the Jaci-Paraná Extractive Reserve, in Porto Velho, Rondônia state, Brazil. Taken 16 Aug, 2020. Photo by Christian Braga / Greenpeace.

The Brazilian Amazon’s southern portion is currently most vulnerable to this forest-to-savannah transformation, especially along the Arc of Deforestation where rainforest meets pasture and cropland, and where several elements, including worsening drought, a prolonged dry season, and someone ready to set the land ablaze, all come together.

One ray of hope: Because Amazon forest fires burn slowly, they are fairly easy to fight with the right resources in place, Barlow says. Brazil has the technology to both predict and monitor fires with accuracy. However, without the political will and investment to do so, the Amazon rainforest, which holds 10% of the planet’s biodiversity, will continue to burn.

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Liz Kimbrough is a staff writer for Mongabay. Find her on Twitter @lizkimbrough_

Featured image: Hotspot directly in the forest, next to a freshly deforested area in Alta Floresta, Mato Grosso state, Brazil. Photo by Christian Braga / Greenpeace.

When I reported on the leak of Integrity Initiative documents back in 2018/19 which exposed the extent of the UK’s propaganda war against Russia, I didn’t think it could get much more organised and coordinated than it was. Involving hundreds of journalists and academics across the globe to spin disinformation about Russia and paint the country in as negative a light as possible in the mainstream media, the UK government-funded campaign was as sophisticated as the information war gets. But here we are in 2020, still uncovering the true scope of western government influence on the narrative plugged by the mainstream media. And it doesn’t speak well for our ‘democracy’.

On 8th September the hacker group Anonymous published shocking revelations of how a concerted and organised campaign has been waged to support the anti-government rebels in Syria. One set of documents relates to the NGO ARK, which although brands itself as a humanitarian organisation, effectively functions as a vehicle for western-led regime change. In one of the papers it states:

‘ARK’s focus since 2012 has been delivering highly effective, politically- and conflict-sensitive Syria programming for the governments of the United Kingdom, United States, Denmark, Canada, Japan and the European Union.’

This is a somewhat different picture from the mission statement on their website:

‘ARK was created in order to assist the most vulnerable, particularly refugees, the displaced and those impacted by conflict and instability.’

Sounds lovely doesn’t it? But this organisation is far from charitable.  In the last few years it has received $66 million from western governments to drive regime change in Syria. It boasts of relationships with Syrian opposition members that have been built up ‘over the years’, and we know that they date as far back as 2011, if not before, as its  documents read ‘ARK staff are in regular contact with activists and civil society actors whom they initially met during the outbreak of protests in spring 2011’.

ARK also had a targeted propaganda campaign package for Syrian media. In the documents it is discussed how best to reach Syrian audiences to promote the regime change narrative, with success being achieved it is said, on digital media such as Facebook, but also through broadcast media. If there was ever any evidence that the mainstream media was bought, this is it:

‘To achieve a strong digital presence, ARK/Accadian will draw on its existing relationships with media organisations…Using its existing networks and connections, ARK/Accadian would target key Syrian satellite TV networks (Orient TV, Souria al-Shaab, Souria al-Ghad, Barada) and regional Arabic networks and primary international channels.’

What is extraordinary is the repeated use of the word ‘independent’ to describe the media outlets being promoted by ARK. The authors are clearly blissfully unaware that by interfering in the media of this sovereign state to promote the overthrow of the government, the media can hardly be termed ‘independent’ but instead an arm of the British state and its own particular political aims and objectives. The document reads:

‘Since ARK first began training citizen journalists in 2012, as part of HMG’s efforts to develop professional, 2 independent and self-sufficient local Syrian media organisations, it has trained more than 200 journalists and has been a key implementer of a multi-donor effort to develop media platforms inside Syria, maintaining close links with these organisations’.

It boasts having produced over 2000 news reports for various mainstream Arabic channels, including Orient, Al Arabiya, Al Jazeera and Sky Arabic which it says are ‘broadcast almost every day’.  Some of the statements are pure, straightforward admissions of propaganda:

‘ARK has also facilitated contact between the Syrian opposition and international media, seeking to address the perception of an uncoordinated opposition by fostering the image of a united front.’

It is extraordinary the sheer brassneck with which this author writes about manipulating the Syrian public through propaganda. It has the stated goal of creating the impression of a united Syrian opposition, which of course there never was.

These documents contrast with the UK government’s website on ‘what it is doing in Syria’. There we are told that British involvement is limited to humanitarian aid as it ‘suspended all services of the British Embassy in Damascus and withdrew all diplomatic personnel from Syria in 2012’. The Anonymous hack shows that this is far from the truth. There has clearly been considerable British involvement in fostering regime change in Syria. If it weren’t for these leaked documents, the UK taxpayer would remain completely ignorant as to what foreign meddling is being carried out in his or her name.

For more detailed analysis and context of the hacked documents, please see Ben Norton’s report on The GrayZone.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

An Anonymous Nurse SPEAKS OUT! Just a shame they can’t put their name to it out of fear of losing their job.

This is from a nurse.

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I work in the healthcare field. Here’s the problem, we are testing people for any strain of a Coronavirus. Not specifically for COVID-19. There are no reliable tests for a specific COVID-19 virus. There are no reliable agencies or media outlets for reporting numbers of actual COVID-19 virus cases. This needs to be addressed first and foremost. Every action and reaction to COVID-19 is based on totally flawed data and we simply cannot make accurate assessments.

This is why you’re hearing that most people with COVID-19 are showing nothing more than cold/flu like symptoms. That’s because most Coronavirus strains are nothing more than cold/flu like symptoms.

The few actual novel Coronavirus cases do have some worse respiratory responses, but still have a very promising recovery rate, especially for those without prior issues.

The ‘gold standard’ in testing for COVID-19 is laboratory isolated/purified coronavirus particles free from any contaminants and particles that look like viruses but are not, that have been proven to be the cause of the syndrome known as COVID-19 and obtained by using proper viral isolation methods and controls (not PCR that is currently being used or Serology /antibody tests which do not detect virus as such).

PCR basically takes a sample of your cells and amplifies any DNA to look for ‘viral sequences’, i.e. bits of non-human DNA that seem to match parts of a known viral genome.

The problem is the test is known not to work.

It uses ‘amplification’ which means taking a very very tiny amount of DNA and growing it exponentially until it can be analyzed. Obviously any minute contaminations in the sample will also be amplified leading to potentially gross errors of discovery.

Additionally, it’s only looking for partial viral sequences, not whole genomes, so identifying a single pathogen is next to impossible even if you ignore the other issues.

The Mickey Mouse test kits being sent out to hospitals, at best, tell analysts you have some viral DNA in your cells. Which most of us do, most of the time. It may tell you the viral sequence is related to a specific type of virus – say the huge family of coronavirus. But that’s all.

The idea these kits can isolate a specific virus like COVID-19 is nonsense.And that’s not even getting into the other issue – viral load.

If you remember the PCR works by amplifying minute amounts of DNA. It therefore is useless at telling you how much virus you may have.

And that’s the only question that really matters when it comes to diagnosing illness. Everyone will have a few virus kicking round in their system at any time, and most will not cause illness because their quantities are too small. For a virus to sicken you you need a lot of it, a massive amount of it. But PCR does not test viral load and therefore can’t determine if a osteogenesis is present in sufficient quantities to sicken you.

If you feel sick and get a PCR test any random virus DNA might be identified even if they aren’t at all involved in your sickness which leads to false diagnosis.

And coronavirus are incredibly common. A large percentage of the world human population will have covi DNA in them in small quantities even if they are perfectly well or sick with some other pathogen.

Do you see where this is going yet?

If you want to create a totally false panic about a totally false pandemic – pick a coronavirus.

They are incredibly common and there’s tons of them. A very high percentage of people who have become sick by other means (flu, bacterial pneumonia, anything) will have a positive PCR test for covi even if you’re doing them properly and ruling out contamination, simply because covis are so common.

There are hundreds of thousands of flu and pneumonia victims in hospitals throughout the world at any one time.

All you need to do is select the sickest of these in a single location – say Wuhan – administer PCR tests to them and claim anyone showing viral sequences similar to a coronavirus (which will inevitably be quite a few) is suffering from a ‘new’ disease.

Since you already selected the sickest flu cases a fairly high proportion of your sample will go on to die.

You can then say this ‘new’ virus has a CFR higher than the flu and use this to infuse more concern and do more tests which will of course produce more ‘cases’, which expands the testing, which produces yet more ‘cases’ and so on and so on.

Before long you have your ‘pandemic’, and all you have done is use a simple test kit trick to convert the worst flu and pneumonia cases into something new that doesn’t actually exist.

Now just run the same scam in other countries. Making sure to keep the fear message running high so that people will feel panicky and less able to think critically.

Your only problem is going to be that – due to the fact there is no actual new deadly pathogen but just regular sick people you are mislabelling – your case numbers, and especially your deaths, are going to be way too low for a real new deadly virus pandemic.

But you can stop people pointing this out in several ways.

1. You can claim this is just the beginning and more deaths are imminent. Use this as an excuse to quarantine everyone and then claim the quarantine prevented the expected millions of dead.

2. You can tell people that ‘minimizing’ the dangers is irresponsible and bully them into not talking about numbers.

3. You can talk crap about made up numbers hoping to blind people with pseudoscience.

4. You can start testing well people (who, of course, will also likely have shreds of coronavirus DNA in them) and thus inflate your ‘case figures’ with ‘asymptomatic carriers’ (you will of course have to spin that to sound deadly even though any virologist knows the more symptom-less cases you have the less deadly is your pathogen.

Take these simple steps and you can have your own entirely manufactured pandemic up and running in weeks.

They can not “confirm” something for which there is no accurate test.”

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Na madrugada desta última segunda-feira, dia 21 de setembro, um grande número de jovens do movimento da Greve pelo Clima na Suíça, ocupou a Praça Federal em Berna, situada em frente ao Palácio Federal – daí seu nome – sede do Governo e do Parlamento da Suíça. Os jovens montaram diversas barracas e estruturas onde podiam se realizar encontros e pequenos eventos. Esta ocupação foi extremamente bem organizada e respeitosa das condições atuais em que nos encontramos – praticamente TODOS os jovens e envolvidos na ocupação usavam máscaras devido à pandemia do COVID-19. O principal objetivo desta ação era atrair a atenção para a urgência da crise climática e exigir do Governo Suíço medidas concretas contra o aquecimento global. Como escrito no documento que apresenta as exigências  do movimento ( ver em inglês em: Rise Up for Change)

“ Já fazem muitos anos que milhões de pessoas têm se mobilizado contra a ameaça de catástrofe climática. No entanto, a urgência do problema não se reflete nos procedimentos políticos da Suíça. Consideramos que nós, que estamos preocupados com um futuro para todos em que valha a pena viver, estamos sendo deixados para trás. Áreas como a agricultura e o setor financeiro são completamente ignorados na política climática da Suíça, apesar de serem largamente responsáveis pela degradação ambiental e pela crise climática. Ao mesmo tempo, os líderes da economia  ainda estão apegados ao conto de fadas do crescimento eterno. Eles não estão interessados no nosso futuro e só querem aumentar a sua riqueza e influência.

O atual sistema político e econômico falhou completamente em dar uma resposta à crise climática. Temos de nos libertar dos sistemas sociais, econômicos e políticos que exploram o homem e a natureza com o único propósito de enriquecer alguns. É tempo de redefinir a nossa sociedade para que seja possível um futuro ecológico e social.” (Tradução do Autor)

Este pequeno texto coloca o problema com a clareza e a transparência necessárias. Em relação à Suíça, uma única frase deste documento, no capítulo sobre ‘Justiça Climática’, coloca a exigência central com a mesma clareza:

“A Suíça deve reconhecer a sua responsabilidade histórica e global pela crise climática e agir de acordo.”

Nada mais justo. Como era de se esperar, a ação dos jovens ativistas pelo clima, em frente à sede do Governo da Suíça, atraiu a atenção da imprensa, dos políticos e da sociedade em geral. Várias TVs da Suíça, nas principais línguas do país – alemão, francês e italiano – enviaram equipes ao local. 

No acampamento havia um clima de alegria e de paz, muitas cores por todos os lados. Em nenhuma momento a ocupação colocou qualquer impedimento ao funcioanamento do Governo Suíço, não havia bloqueio à entrada do Palácio Federal. Tampouco houve qualquer atividade violenta ou mesmo barulho que pudesse atrapalhar o funcioamento do Parlamento que estava – e ainda está – em sessão.

Porém uma antiga lei da cidade de Berna proíbe manifestações na Praça Federal quando o Parlamento se encontra em sessão. Uma outra lei também proíbe que se acampe na praça.

Os partidos políticos de direita e muitos cidadãos suíços, incomodados pela manifestação dos jovens, passaram a exercer uma agressividade comparável – se não em números, pois a Suíça tem uma população muito menor que a do Brasil, pelo menos em virulência– ao que assitimos com o Bolsonarismo no Brasil. A maioria da imprensa foi  hostil  em relação ao movimento – como no Brasil em relação ao PT… – e vários parlamentares, sob o pretexto das leis que mencionei acima, exigiram que a admistração da cidade de Berna, responsável pela segurança do Palácio Federal e do Parlamento, expulsasse imediatamente os manifestantes. O governo da cidade procurou em primeiro lugar um diálogo com os ativistas, propondo que eles se retirassem. Mas os ativistas anunciaram sua intenção de manter a ocupação até a próxima sexta-feria, com o objetivo de lembrar ao Parlamento em sessão a necessidade de confrontar-se com a realidade das mudanças climáticas. 

Na madrugada desta quarta-feira a força policial invadiu o acampamento e expulsou os manifestantes que resistiram apenas pela não-violência, mantendo-se sentados, cantando, até serem retirados.

A questão da ilegalidade da ocupação foi o tema principal das dicussões, não a questão climática! Alguns bravos parlamentares suíços, em defesa dos ativistas, apontaram para esta contradição, como a Parlamentar do Partido Social -Democrata Jacqueline Badran de Zurique que deu um depoimento ao vivo na TV da Suíça, face a jornalistas que insistiam em perguntar sobre a questão da legalidade da ocupação, ignorando propositadamente a causa do movimento.

É preciso dizer que há muitas coisas que são absolutamente legais mas não são éticas. O acaparamento de fontes de água pela empresa Suíça Nestlé em todo o mundo para o engarrafamento, prudizindo uma enorme quantida de lixo plástico pelo qual a empresa não tem nenhuma responsabilidade,  é absolutamente legal, mas não é ético. A produção e venda de venenos pela empresa Syngenta – que contamina os solos e a água em vários países, que provoca o envenenamento e a morte de inúmeros agricultores e camponeses – é absolutamente legal. E no caso da Syngenta é até mesmo legal que a empresa continue a produzir e exportar para os países do sul tipos de pesticidas declarados ilegais pela Suíça e pela União Européia!

O confronto em Berna entre os ativistas e a lei foi um conflito entre a ética e a legalidade. Há certamente uma ética acima mesmo das leis e os direitos da  natureza e a sobrevivência do planeta  devem ter precedência sobre qualquer outra questão, mesmo de ordem legal.

Por enquanto, nesta batalha na capital da Suíça, a pequenez e a mediocridade venceram a esperança , a alegria e a racionalidade. Não haveria nenhum problema em deixar os manifestantes permancerem pacificamente na Praça Federal e usar a manifestação como uma oportunidade – como vários parlamentares suíços tentaram – de diálogo mais amplo com a juventude e sobre a urgência do problema da mudança climática. Seria uma demonstração de responsabilidade, de preocupação real com o destino do planeta e de cuidado com as futuras gerações.

Mas a histeria capitalista alimentada por parte da imprensa e pela direita suíça, vocejando em todos os meios  e exigindo respeito à LEI e à ORDEM  foi mais forte. Muitos dos parlamentares suíços que defenderam o movimento dos jovens sofreram críticas e agressões inacreditáveis nas redes socias, exatamente como o Bolsonarismo mais exaltado se comporta no Brasil. Pois na base do Bolsonarismo há a mesma histeria capitalista presente em todos os movimentos da extrema direita no mundo, o pânico e a indignação diante de qualquer questionamento sobre a prioridade do capital, a raiva incontida e visceral por quem quer  que ouse defender outras prioridades – seja o meio ambiente, a dignidade do trabalho, os direitos humanos ou o próprio planeta. Pois o capital quer e precisa estar acima de tudo, acima da própria vida. Cabe à natureza se submeter aos ditames do capital, e, junto com a maioria dos seres humanos, curvar-se à exploração capitalista e ao domíno do lucro acima de tudo. Os jovens em Berna defendiam outras prioridades e com sua alegria, inteligência e determinação, apontavam outros caminhos, por isso tinham que ser expulsos. Mas esta foi apenas uma batalha, a luta continua. De um modo ou de outro uma brecha se abriu também na sociedade suíça, o debate vai continuar.

E do Brasil veio uma mensagem de solidariedade inesperada e fundamental para o movimento suíço: uma carta de apoio endereçada ao próprio Governo Suíço, enviada ao Embaixador da Suíça em Berna, assinada por lideranças de alguns dos principais movimentos sociais do Brasil como o MST e por 54 Parlamentares brasileiros. Esta carta já está em poder dos ativistas e de muitos parlamentares e personalidades suíças. (Sobre a carta ver artigo: brasildefato.com.br)

E deste modo nos unimos na luta contra o Bolsonarismo, contra o capitalismo desvairado e histérico, tanto no Brasil como na Suíça. Pelo futuro do Planeta, com generosidade, ternura , coragem e determinação.

Franklin Frederick

For China, a strategic alliance with the EU will further develop the Belt and Road Initiative across the vast expanse of Eurasia. For the EU, China can help “the Old Continent” once again become a major global political and economic center as it once was before the rise of the US in the “New World.” At the virtual summit held on September 14 between Chinese President Xi Jinping, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, European Council President Charles Michel and the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, the necessity to “accelerate negotiations on an investment agreement between China and the EU and close the deal this year” was emphasized. However, there are many problems they face – the trade war with the US, EU tensions with Turkey, and more importantly, the differences on economic, political and diplomatic issues.

The Global Europe Anticipation Bulletin think tank described the EU as “a ship adrift without navigation tools” because of its “total inability to forecast” events and the lack of “operational instruments” to solve its problems, internally and internationally. Indeed, the European Commission has enormous difficulties in defining a common policy for current challenges, as can be seen with the huge split between Mediterranean and Northern Europe in how to deal with Turkish aggression against EU members Greece and Cyprus.

Chinese state-owned Global Times, considered the international mouthpiece of Beijing, wrote after the summit that despite

“ideological differences between China and Europe […] the two sides continue to expand their cooperation and interactions. This is the general trend of China-Europe ties. The desire of both sides to keep strengthening the trend is real. It is a wish not only at the national levels, but also from their companies.”

Xi called on the EU to adhere to peaceful coexistence, multilateralism, dialogue and openness. However, the EU insists on demanding that barriers to European investments in China be eliminated and on having greater access to the Chinese market, especially in areas reserved only for Chinese companies. The European Commissioner stressed that “it is not a question of meeting halfway, it is a question of rebalancing the asymmetry and a question of openness of our respective markets. China has to convince us that it is worth having an investment agreement.”

Andrew Small, an EU-China expert with the US-based German Marshall Fund, said

“The language and tone from the European side is continuing its shift into the new era, in which competition and rivalry are coming to the fore, and the areas of partnership look limited and difficult.”

Although China is a vital commercial partner for Germany, they are also undoubtedly competitors, which could explain why the EU, led by Berlin, vocally condemns Beijing’s alleged human rights abuses against the Uighur minority in China’s western Xinjiang province and the crackdown on Hong Kong rioters. According to renowned Brazilian journalist Pepe Escobar, the EU’s focus on events in Xinjiang and Hong Kong is to pressure China to open its markets.

Global Times pondered on how the EU would react

“if China demands Europe to solve its issues of migration, offer solutions to countries like France, Spain and the UK in dealing with separatist movements, and demands that Europe cope with the COVID-19 epidemic in certain specific ways, because reducing infections and deaths is a crucial human rights issue for China, would Europe accept it? Would Europeans feel offended?”

Signing the investment agreement before the end of the year will not be easy since the differences between the EU and China is massive. Strong US pressure against Europe in its dispute with Huawei, as well as with Germany over the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline with Russia, have managed to weaken European interests. For Europe, its priorities in its relations with Beijing is market access to help alleviate the acute crisis experienced by entire industries because of the COVID-19 pandemic, in addition to being able to project itself as an independent power on the global stage and in its relations with China.

For China, the European market is vital due to the volume and quality of its consumption. Expanding the Belt and Road Initiative into Europe is one of the main pillars of China’s 21st century foreign policy.

Moscow will also benefit from strong relations between the EU and China since much of the Belt and Road Initiative will pass through Russian territory, serving as a connection between East Asia and Western Europe. An uninterrupted trade corridor across Eurasia will lessen European dependence on the US. This too would be in the minds of European leaders as they try and reassert their own independence in the Age of Multipolarity – but this cannot be achieved without China, meaning the major differences between Beijing and Brussels must be resolved in the swiftest manner.

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

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America’s Broken Syria Project

By Tony Cartalucci, September 24, 2020

The confrontation with Russia and the decision to boost America’s military presence in Syria is but a microcosm of America’s wider struggle to maintain its invasive primacy over the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

Failing Palestinian Self-determination

By Michael Jansen, September 24, 2020

Founded to ensure peace and security for all peoples,  the UN enabled the Israeli conquest of Palestine, beginning with the adoption in  November 1947 of resolution 181 to partition this Arab country, allocating  55 per cent to European Jewish colonists and 45 per cent to indigenous Palestinians.

The Perversion of Science to Clear the Way for the Imposition of Compulsory Vaccines

By Prof. Anthony J. Hall, September 24, 2020

Some of those plotting to advance the vaccine agenda sought to sideline the adoption of hydroxychloroquine as the main remedy for COVID-19. They resorted to a well-organized crime that seemed to fly the banner of science while actually defying its evidence-based  requirements.

Video: Iran Says Houthis Use Its Military Knowhow in Battle Against Saudi Arabia

By South Front, September 24, 2020

Iran has supplied Ansar Allah (also known as the Houthis) with technical expertise and know-how, a spokesman for the Iranian Armed Forces Brigadier General Abolfazl Shekarchi said on September 22.

Chief Science Officer for Pfizer Says “Second Wave” Faked on False-Positive COVID Tests, “Pandemic Is Over”

By Ralph Lopez, September 24, 2020

In a stunning development, a former Chief Science Officer for the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer says “there is no science to suggest a second wave should happen.” The “Big Pharma” insider asserts that false positive results from inherently unreliable COVID tests are being used to manufacture a “second wave” based on “new cases.”

The Program to Mask Society is a Grotesque Governmental Manipulation of a Frightened and Confused Public.

By Prof. Bill Willers, September 23, 2020

The dramatic reversal in official U.S. policy regarding facial masking is epitomized by, first, the May, 2020 report of the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in which facial masks are acknowledged to be ineffective in blocking viral transmission, this followed two months later by CDC’s inexplicable July, 2020 recommendation that the public be masked.

Public Health Lessons Learned from Biases in Coronavirus Mortality Overestimation

By Dr. Ronald B. Brown, September 23, 2020

In testimony before US Congress on March 11, 2020, members of the House Oversight and Reform Committee were informed that estimated mortality for the novel coronavirus was 10-times higher than for seasonal influenza. Additional evidence, however, suggests the validity of this estimation could benefit from vetting for biases and miscalculations.

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About a month ago, I sent a copy of the the “No mask? We won’t ask” poster to Wolfgang and Almut Wurzbacher, owners of Pfenning’s Organic & More. Their family-run, organic grocer offers home delivery to customers in the Kitchener-Waterloo region of Southwestern Ontario. The poster was designed for small businesses to post (where legal) in their front window beside the “wear a face diaper” propaganda the government forces them to show us.

In their district (like most of Canada) one can claim an exemption from mask wearing for physical or mental health reasons — or even religious reasons. Thus, the staff at Pfenning’s Organic is able to avoid being forced to collect and diffuse bacteria in front of their nose; likewise they don’t make such unhygienic requests of their customers.

Notwithstanding, they still had to put a government issued sign telling their customers to wear a mask. “Yes, we do need the official signs or we would be in big trouble,” says Almut. “We tape them to the bottom of the entrance door. They never said where on the door to post them.” At eye-level, instead, they have placed the “No mask? We won’t ask” sign.

Soon after posting it, Almut wrote me: “You and us created a commotion on Twitter… many people called us regarding seeing [the “No mask? We won’t ask” sign] in our window [in a Tweeted photo]. Must have been a customer posting it.”

Indeed, the following Tweet was made:

Almut added: “[We have] had calls from all over Ontario and new customers are coming in because of the sign.”

Can you imagine? Canadians seeking a place to buy food without being ridiculed. Canada is probably one of the most “inclusive” countries in the world. A non-binary transvestite, with blue skin and five fishing hooks piercing each lip, can walk into a store without being ridiculed in anyway. Yet if you dare enter many stores (not Pfennings!) with a friendly and smiling face you could easily be subject to public shaming because of a fashionable public health dictate that lacks any scientific evidence.

In addition to new customers, the sign also attracted the attention of the local by-law officer. “We had three complaints to the law by customers,” Almut told me. “Had the by-law officer here, standing and studying [the “No Mask? We won’t ask”] sign for a while. She did come in but could not fault us for anything.”

Whatever freedoms the laws of your land let you exercise, exercise them to the max. Let’s look to the courageous example of Pfenning’s Organic & More. They didn’t let snitching customers intimidate them into bowing down to tyrannical dictates (masquerading as protection) from their local government. Almut and Wolfgang stood their ground, have retained their liberty to operate their store with humanity and kindness; while attracting new, like-minded customers who can come (without a mask) to their store, or order online and have Wolfgang (without a mask) deliver to their door.

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John C. A. Manley has spent over a decade ghostwriting for medical doctors, as well as naturopaths, chiropractors and Ayurvedic physicians. He publishes the COVID-19(84) Red Pill Daily Briefs – an email-based newsletter dedicated to preventing the governments of the world from using an exaggerated pandemic as an excuse to violate our freedom, health, privacy, livelihood and humanity. He is also writing a novel, Brave New Normal: A Dystopian Love Story. Visit his website at: MuchAdoAboutCorona.ca. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: (From left to right) Owners Wolfgang and Almut Wurzbacher with staff Andrea and Kate of Pfenning’s Organic & More holding the “No mask? We won’t ask” sign they display in their shop window.

A recent altercation between Russian forces and US occupiers in northeastern Syria helped highlight the increasingly tenuous position Washington holds not only in Syria but across the entire Middle East.

After complaining that American troops were “injured” in the incident and condemning Russia for “unsafe and unprofessional actions,” the United States announced that it was deploying more troops and military equipment to bolster its illegal occupation of Syrian territory.

The US also claimed its continued presence in Syria officially seeks to confront and eliminate the self-proclaimed “Islamic State” (ISIS), but official accounts maintained by the US government and the US Department of Defense on an almost daily basis provide a wide and every-shifting number of excuses.

On September 20th “Inherent Resolve’s” Twitter account would announce:

Bradley Fighting Vehicles provide the rapid flexibility needed to protect critical petroleum resources.

The region the US occupies is also where the majority of Syria’s petroleum is extracted and America’s “protection” of these resources is part of a wider strategy – not to fight ISIS – but to deny the Syrian state which has eliminated ISIS from all territory it controls – both energy and revenue from its own natural resources.

In essence, the US is in Syria weakening the Syrian government who has led the fight against ISIS and provoking confrontations with Russia who has been key in aiding Damascus against ISIS, Al Nusra, and other affiliates of Al Qaeda.

The US had been in Syria a full year before Russia’s invitation by Damascus to aid in security operations against ISIS and Al Qaeda affiliates in 2015. The Russian military promptly began bombing supply lines feeding ISIS and other terrorist groups from across the Syrian border in Turkey. ISIS’ fighting capacity rapidly collapsed and remains isolated in pockets made inaccessible by America’s continued occupation of Syrian territory.

A Microcosm of America’s Wider MENA Failure

The confrontation with Russia and the decision to boost America’s military presence in Syria is but a microcosm of America’s wider struggle to maintain its invasive primacy over the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

Despite beginning the 21st century with an overwhelming military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq and expanding its involvement in the region in 2011 through the US-engineered “Arab Spring” – US power and influence has visibly waned. Its attempts to control virtually every aspect of Iraq’s internal politics has faltered in the face of Iraqis seeking alternative ties with neighboring Iran.

While Washington successfully toppled the government of Libya in 2011, it has failed to do likewise in Syria. Not only has it failed to oust the Syrian government, it has transformed the nation into a vector for alternative emerging global powers to contest and roll back US influence in the region. This most notably includes Russia but also Iran and China.

If at the turn of the century hundreds of thousands of US troops could not transform the region favorably for Washington, its provocative but small actions in eastern Syrian will unlikely make any difference now.

Against this backdrop is also Washington’s ongoing confrontation with Iran. It’s creation then predictable withdrawal from its “Iran Nuclear Deal” has exposed the US as a malign global player acting in bad faith. Its attempts to pressure and isolate Iran have increasingly transformed into a wider campaign to pressure and coerce a growing number of nations around the globle interested in trade and normal relations with Tehran.

The US has fewer and fewer cards to play in the region and more specifically in Syria. If Syria and its allies can find ways around crippling economic sanctions the US is using to ravage the Syrian public and undermine Damascus’ ability to ensure ISIS’ defeat endures – the US will be left with empty hands, overextended, and exposed in Syria’s eastern deserts.

The more confrontational Washington gets with Syria, Russia, and China the easier it will be for each of these nations to justify actions taken to preserve and protect their collective interests – as well as win over a larger percent of the global community to support them in these efforts. Stability is a central key to prosperity. America’s foreign policy has fully revealed itself to be a global engine of instability that is costing even its own supposed allies socioeconomic opportunities and stability.

US foreign policy is unsustainable. Those still aiding it including Turkey are preparing for direct confrontations Syria and its allies will actively avoid – and if successful – will simply surround, cut off, and let whither the presence of these uninvited foreign forces occupying Syrian territory. While it is too late for America’s “Syria project” to ever succeed in its original goal of regime change, it is not still too late for it to divest from its spiteful campaign to sink the region, its people, and their allies into a quagmire that will only further leave Washington and its allies isolated and impotent upon the global stage.

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Tony Cartalucci is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from NEO

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The UN is marking its 75th birthday with a virtual opening of the 75th session of the General Assembly. While UN agencies have carried out successful  humanitarian assistance  and research programmes, peacekeeping missions and efforts to protect the rights of peoples subjected to repression and abuse, the UN’s political organs, the General Assembly and Security  Council, have failed to keep the peace and deal with flagrant injustice. Palestine continues to be its most infamous catastrophe as the UN  has colluded in the dispossession of that  country’s indigenous population.  

Among the 49 original signatories of the UN Charter, which came into  effect in October 1945, were Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia  and Syria. Today the UN has 193 full members. Palestine, a non-member observer state, languishes while waiting to be admitted as the 194th full member.

Palestine is not recognised as a state by the US, Israel, Britain, Germany, Italy, France, Switzerland, Spain, Greece, Canada  and the usual supporters of Western positions.  Both Russia and China recognised the state of Palestine in 1988 following the declaration of Palestinian independence during a meeting of the Palestinian-parliament-in-exile in Algiers.  Of the 193 UN members, 138 have recognised Palestine as compared with 162 which have recognised Israel, although it occupies the whole of Palestine illegally.

Founded to ensure peace and security for all peoples,  the UN enabled the Israeli conquest of Palestine, beginning with the adoption in  November 1947 of resolution 181 to partition this Arab country, allocating  55 per cent to European Jewish colonists and 45 per cent to indigenous  Palestinians.  The partition resolution was adopted by the General Assembly only after the US exerted pressure on countries which had intended to vote against or abstain.  It is interesting to note that the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc countries voted in favour while Britain, which promoted Zionist colonisation of Palestine, abstained. Naturally, Arab UN members  and the US voted against along with India, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey, Greece and Cuba.

A “recommendation” rather than a mandatory measure, the partition  resolution provided dubious legitimacy for the Zionist take-over of  55 per cent of Palestine but not the seizure of 78 per cent of the country and the ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians in the months  that followed 181’s adoption. This can only be seen as a monumental failure of the international body founded to maintain global peace and security and preserve human rights. There was a feeble effort to make partial amends to the Palestinians in December  1948 with the adoption of resolution 194 which, in paragraph 11, called for the repatriation of Palestinian refugees and compensation for their losses.

This resolution has fallen by the wayside.  Although Israeli UN membership  was conditioned on its implementation of resolutions 181 and 194, this requirement was ignored by Israel and its mainly Western supporters.

In late 1949 the General Assembly created an independent humanitarian organisation, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) to provide shelter, food, medical care, education and welfare for homeless Palestinians.  The intention was that they would ultimately be absorbed by countries where they had taken refuge or elsewhere outside Palestine.  This did not happen because Palestinians remained, and insist on remaining, Palestinians and demand the right of self determination in Palestine and the “right of return” laid down in resolution 194 and under international law.

In June 1967, when Israel conquered East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, the remaining 22 per cent of Palestine, another 250,000 Palestinians fled their homeland.  Today five million Palestinians live under Israeli occupation, 1.6 million Palestinians are second or third class citizens of Israel, 5.6 million Palestinian refugees in this region depend on UNRWA, and millions more are scattered across the world.

In November 1967, the Security Council unanimously adopted resolution 242 affirming the principle of the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war” and calling on Israel to withdraw from territory it occupied during the June war. This resolution became the basis for Egyptian, Jordanian  and Palestinian peace deals with Israel under the land-for-peace formula and, the expectation that Palestinians would establish their state in East Jerusalem,  the West Bank and Gaza in accordance with the “two state solution”.

However, no pressure was ever exerted on Israel, as occupying power, to withdraw its forces and end its colonisation of Palestinian territory.  The UN, which has the authority to impose sanctions on countries which reject its directives, has done nothing but generate piles of paper by passing resolutions which Israel and its supporters have ignored.

Over seven decades, the international community abided by a consensus that UNRWA should be preserved as a means of ensuring a modicum of stability in countries hosting Palestinian refugees. Israel’s main financier and most powerful backer, the US, paid about one third of the UNRWA budget of $1.2 billion. Donald Trump not only violated the consensus by cutting funding for the agency but also halting aid to all Palestinian institutions.

He recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, severed contacts with the Palestinian Authority, and put forward a so-called “peace plan” which would give Israel another 30 per cent of the West Bank and provide for limited Palestinian governance in disconnected enclaves in the West Bank which would remain under Israeli control. The UN has done nothing to reaffirm the consensus, leaving the Palestinians poor and adrift.

The UN’s failure to deal decisively with Israel’s conquest of Palestine has emboldened other aggressors.  It served as a model for Turkey’s invasion, occupation and colonisation of northern Cyprus between 1974 and today.

All too clearly, the UN, the servant of powerful Western countries led by the US, operates on the basis of horrendous double standards. For example, the UN has imposed punitive sanctions on Iran for embarking on nuclear research without producing weaponry while Israel, which has scores of nuclear weapons, is not sanctioned for its flagrant expropriation and dispossession of the Palestinian people. This is a far greater offense against humanity than enriching uranium for power plants and medical isotopes under the watchful eyes of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency.

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The quest to claim the prestige of science is one of the major themes accompanying the rush of the rich and powerful to seize more wealth and political clout during the so-called “great reset” presently underway. Much controversy has surrounded the use of hydroxychloroquine as a cheap and readily available remedy for COVID-19. 

Hydroxychloroquine is a well-known medicine used to treat many ailments. When properly administered along with zinc, hydroxychloroquine represents a threat to the agendas being pushed forward by Bill Gates and Big Pharma. Many powerful interests have a significant stake in imposing a compulsory vaccine on humanity as the universalized remedy for the much-exaggerated incursions of COVID-19. 

Some of those plotting to advance the vaccine agenda sought to sideline the adoption of hydroxychloroquine as the main remedy for COVID-19. They resorted to a well-organized crime that seemed to fly the banner of science while actually defying its evidence-based  requirements.

This fraud involved the presentation of concocted evidence calculated to support a false conclusion about the alleged health dangers attending the use of hydroxychloroquine. The various elements of the fraud were put together by an organization known as Surgisphere. The operatives of this criminal outfit managed to get their dishonest study published in the prestigious peer-reviewed journals, Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine. 

The discovery of the fraud put into disrepute the peer-review process of two pillars of published scholarship. Attentive expert readers managed to see through the fabrication of data that was presented as if it was based on findings derived from scientific assessment of about 100,000 patients and over 600 hospitals. Before the fraudulent nature of Surgisphere’s study was exposed, however, its publication resulted in the sidelining of hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 remedy in many jurisdictions including Alberta.

The Surgisphere/hydroxycloroquine fraud was quickly recognized as one of the most monumental deceptions of scientific research ever conducted. This episode serves as one of the best examples that those pushing an agenda of compulsory vaccines as the best means of combating COVID-19 are the foes rather than the friends of the scientific method. 

Many aspects of this crisis are more manufactured than real. The Bill Gates funded and dominated World Health Organization engaged in politics rather than in the scientific conduct of public health when it declared in March that COVID-19 formed the basis of a global pandemic.  

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Iran has supplied Ansar Allah (also known as the Houthis) with technical expertise and know-how, a spokesman for the Iranian Armed Forces Brigadier General Abolfazl Shekarchi said on September 22. However, the general claimed that Yemeni forces “have learned how to produce missiles, drones and weapons in Yemen on their own” and Iran has no military presence in the region. Shekarchi described what Iran is doing across the region as “spiritual and advisory presence”.

“Countries of the resistance front have armies and forces themselves. We provide them with advisory help. In order to share our experience with the people of Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen, our skilled forces go there and assist them, but this is the people and armies of these countries who stand against the enemies in practice,” the general stated.

Apparently, it was Iranian “spiritual” power which helped the Houthis to regularly pound targets inside Saudi Arabia, including the Kingdom’s capital and key oil infrastructure objects, with missiles and drones, despite the years of Saudi-led air bombing campaigns against Houthi forces and the land and maritime blockade of the areas controlled by them.

Iran also denies reports of weapon and equipment supplies to the Houthis. This means missile components must have appeared in the Houthis’ hands and their missile and combat drone arsenal been expanded thanks to some unrevealed technological breakthrough behind the scenes.

Thus, the military cooperation deal officially signed between the Houthi government and Iran in 2019 was just a formality to highlight the sides’ unity on the frontline in the battle against ‘Zionist plots’ in the region, which became especially obvious in 2020 when the Houthi leadership, alongside with Iran, appeared to be among the most vocal critics of the UAE-Israel and Bahrain-Israel normalization deals. According to them, these developments are a part of the wider Zionist campaign against Middle Eastern nations.

Meanwhile in Syria, sources loyal to the Turkish-backed terrorist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda) claim that its members had killed a Russian special forces operator on the contact line near Kafra Nabl in southern Idlib.

According to militants and their supporters, they repelled an attack of pro-government forces there inflicting multiple casualties on the Syrian Army and its allies. Photos showing the equipment of the alleged Russian special forces operator were also released by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham media wing.

Pro-government sources did not report any notable clashes in the area last night or active operations involving Russian units there. According to them, the incident involving the Russian special forces operator may have happened several weeks (or even months) ago. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and their Turkish sponsors probably opted to use the obtained photos as propaganda to create a media victory in September to compensate for the losses and destruction caused by the Russian bombing campaign against the terrorist infrastructure in Idlib.

Details of the incident and the fate of the alleged Russian special forces operator involved in it remain unclear. In general, the Russian Defense Ministry reports all casualties among Russian service members deployed. Further, the militants did not show the body of the supposedly killed fighter. Therefore, if the incident really did take place, the Russian soldier most likely received injures and was then evacuated.

Meanwhile, the Russian Aerospace Forces continued bombing terrorist infrastructure in the Idlib region. Therefore, al-Qaeda and its Turkish sponsors are forced to console themselves with media victories.

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September 22, 2020

Mr. Secretary General,

Mr. President,

A global pandemic has changed everyday life drastically. From one day to the next, millions of people get infected and thousands die even when their life expectancy was longer thanks to development. Hospital systems with high-level services have collapsed and the health structures of poor countries are affected by their chronic lack of capacity. Drastic quarantines are turning the most populated cities into deserted areas. Social life is non-existent except in the digital networks. Theaters, discos, galleries and even schools are closed or being readjusted.

Our borders have been closed, our economies are shrinking and our reserves are dwindling. Life is experiencing a radical redesigning of age-old ways and uncertainty is replacing certainty. Even close friends cannot recognize each other due to the masks that protect us from the contagion. Everything is changing.

Like finding a solution to the pandemic, it is already urgent to democratize this indispensable Organization so that it effectively meets the needs and aspirations of all peoples.

The sought-after right of humanity to live in peace and security, with justice and freedom, the basis for unity among nations, is constantly under threat.

Over 1.9 trillion dollars are being squandered today in a senseless arms race promoted by the aggressive and war-mongering policies of imperialism, whose leader is the present government of the US, which accounts for 38 percent of the global military expenditure.

We are referring to a markedly aggressive and morally corrupt regime that despises and attacks multilateralism, uses financial blackmailing in its relations with UN system agencies and that, in a show of unprecedented overbearance, has withdrawn from the World Health Organization, UNESCO and the Human Rights Council.

Paradoxically, the country where the UN headquarters is located is also staying away from fundamental international treaties such as the Paris Agreement on climate change; it rejects the nuclear agreement with Iran reached by consensus; it promotes trade wars; it ends its commitment with international disarmament control instruments; it militarizes cyberspace; it expands coercion and unilateral sanctions against those who do not bend to its designs and sponsors the forcible overthrow of sovereign governments through non-conventional war methods.

Along such line of action, which ignores the old principles of peaceful co-existence and respect of the right of others´ to self-determination as the guarantee for peace, the Donald Trump administration it also manipulating, with subversive aims, cooperation in the sphere of democracy and human rights, while in its own territory there is an abundance of practically uncontrolled expressions of hatred, racism, police brutality and irregularities in the election system and as to the voting rights of citizens

It is urgent to reform the UN. This powerful organization, which emerged after the loss of millions of lives in two world wars and as a result of a world understanding of the importance of dialogue, negotiation, cooperation and international law, must not postpone any further its updating and democratization. Today´s world needs the UN just as the one where it came into being did.

Something that is very special and profound has failed, as evidenced by the daily and permanent violation of the UN Charter principles, and by the ever-increasing use or threat of use of force in international relations.

There is no way to sustain any longer, as if it were natural and unshakable, an unequal, unjust and anti-democratic International order where selfishness prevails over solidarity and the mean interests of a powerful minority over the legitimate aspirations of millions of people.

Notwithstanding the dissatisfactions and the demands for change that, together with other states and millions of citizens in the world, we are presenting to the UN, the Cuban Revolution shall always uphold the existence of the Organization, to which we owe the little but indispensable multilateralism that is surviving imperial overbearance.

More than once, at this very forum, Cuba has reiterated its willingness to cooperate with the democratization of the UN and the upholding of international cooperation, that can be saved only by it. As stated by the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba and Army General Raúl Castro Ruz, and I quote: “The international community shall always count on Cuba´s honest voice in the face of injustice, inequality, underdevelopment, discrimination and manipulation, and for the establishment of a more just and equitable international order which really centers on human beings, their dignity and wellbeing.” End of quote.

Mr. President,

Coming back to the seriousness of the present situation, which many blame only on the COVID-19 pandemic, I think it is essential to say that its impact is by far overflowing the health sphere.

Due to its nefarious sequels, impressive death toll and damages to the world economy and the deterioration of social development levels, the spreading of the pandemic in the last few months brings anguish and despair to leaders and citizens in practically all nations.

But the multidimensional crisis it has unleashed clearly shows the great mistake of the dehumanized policies fully imposed by the market dictatorship.

Today, we are witnessing with sadness the disaster the world has been led to by the irrational and unsustainable production and consumption system of capitalism, decades of an unjust international order and the implementation of ruthless and rampant neoliberalism, which has widened inequalities and sacrificed the right of peoples to development.

Unlike excluding neoliberalism, which puts aside and discards millions of human beings and condemns them to survive on the leftovers from the banquet of the richest one percent, the COVID-19 virus does not discriminate between them, but its devastating economic and social effects shall be lethal among the most vulnerable and those with lower incomes, whether they live in the underdeveloped world or in the pockets of poverty of big industrial cities.

According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) projections, the 690 million people who were going hungry in 2019 might be joined by a further 130 million as a result of the economic recession caused by the pandemic. Studies by the International Labor Organization (ILO) say that over 305 million jobs have been lost and that more than 1.6 billion workers are having their livelihoods at stake.

We cannot face COVID-19, hunger, unemployment and the growing economic and social inequalities between individuals and countries as unrelated phenomena. There is an urgency to implement integrated policies that prioritize human beings and not economic profits or political advantages.

It would a crime to postpone decisions that are for yesterday and for today. It is imperative to promote solidarity and international cooperation to lessen the impact.

Only the UN, with its world membership, has the required authority and reach to resume the just struggle to write off the uncollectable foreign debt which, aggravated by the social and economic effects of the pandemic, is threatening the survival of the peoples of the South.

Mr. President,

The SARS-CoV-2 outbreak and the early signs that it would bring a pandemic did not catch Cuba off guard.

With the decade-long experience of facing terrible epidemics, some of which were provoked deliberately as part of the permanent war against our political project, we immediately implemented a series of measures based on our main capabilities and strengths, namely, a well-structured socialist state that cares for the health of its citizens, a highly-skilled human capital and a society with much people´s involvement in its decision-making and problem solving processes.

The implementation of those measures, combined with the knowledge accrued for over 60 years of great efforts to create and expand a high-quality and universal health system, plus scientific research and development, has made it possible not only to preserve the right to health of all citizens, without exception, but also to be in a better position to face the pandemic.

We have been able to do it in spite of the harsh restrictions of the long economic, commercial and financial blockade being imposed by the US government, which has been brutally tightened in the last two years, even at these pandemic times, something that shows it is the essential component of the hostile US Cuba policy.

The aggressiveness of the blockade has reached a qualitatively higher level that further asserts its role as the real and determining impediment to the managing of the economy and the development of our country. The US government has intensified in particular its harassment of Cuban financial transactions and, beginning in 2019, it has been adopting measures that violate international law to deprive the Cuban people of the possibility to buy fuels they need for their everyday activities and for their development.

So as to damage and demonize the Cuban Revolution and others it defines as adversaries, the US has been publishing spurious lists having no legitimacy by which it abrogates itself the right to impose unilateral coercive measures and unfounded qualifications on the world.

Every week, that government issues statements against Cuba or imposes new restrictions. Paradoxically, however, it has refused to term as terrorist the attack that was carried out against the Cuban embassy in Washington on April 30, 2020, when an individual armed with an assault rifle fired over 30 rounds against the diplomatic mission and later admitted to his intent to kill.

We denounce the double standards of the US government in the fight against terror and demand a public condemnation of that brutal attack.

We demand a cease of the hostility and slanderous campaign against the altruistic work by Cuba´s international medical cooperation that, with much prestige and verifiable results, has contributed to saving hundreds of lives and lowering the impact of the disease in many countries. Prominent international figures and highly prestigious social organizations have acknowledged the humanistic work done by the “Henry Reeve” International Medical Brigade for Disaster Situations and Serious Epidemics and called for the Nobel Peace Prize to be given to them.

While the US government is ignoring the call to combine efforts to fight the pandemic and it withdraws from the WHO, Cuba, in response to requests made to it, and guided by the profound solidarity and humanistic vocation of its people, is expanding its cooperation by sending over 3 700 cooperation workers distributed in 46 medical brigades to 39 countries and territories hit by COVID-19.

In this sense, we condemn the gangster blackmailing by the US to pressure the Pan-American Health Organization so as to make that regional agency a tool for its morbid aggression against our country. As usual, the force of truth shall do away with lies, and facts and protagonists shall go down in history as they should. Cuba´s example shall prevail.

Our dedicated health workers, the pride of a nation brought up in José Marti’s idea that My Country Is Humanity, shall be awarded the prize their noble hearts deserve, or not; but it has been years since they won the recognition of the peoples blessed by their health work.

The US government is not hiding its intention to enforce new and harsher aggressive measures against Cuba in the next few months. We state once again before the international community that our people, who take pride in their history and are committed to the ideals and achievements of the Revolution, shall resist and overcome.

Mr. President,

The attempts at imposing neocolonial domination on Our America by publicly declaring the present value of the Monroe Doctrine contravene the Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace.

We wish to restate publicly in this virtual forum that the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela shall always have the solidarity of Cuba in the face of attempts at destabilizing and subverting constitutional order and the civic-military unity and at destroying the work started by Commander Hugo Chávez Frías and continued by President Nicolás Maduro Moros to benefit the Venezuelan people.

We also reject US actions aimed at destabilizing the Republic of Nicaragua and ratify our invariable solidarity with its people and government led by Commander Daniel Ortega.

We state our solidarity with the Caribbean nations, which are demanding just reparations for the horrors of slavery and the slave trade, in a world where racial discrimination and the repression against Afro-descendant communities have been on the rise.

We reaffirm our historical commitment with the self-determination and independence of the sisterly people of Puerto Rico.

We support the legitimate claim by Argentina to its sovereignty over the Malvinas, the South Sandwich and South Georgia islands.

We reiterate our commitment with peace in Colombia and the conviction that dialogue between the parties is the road to achieving stable and lasting peace in that country.

We support the search for a peaceful and negotiated solution to the situation imposed on Syria, with no foreign interference and in full respect of its sovereignty and territorial integrity.

We demand a just solution to the conflict in the Middle East, which must include the real exercise by the Palestinian people of the inalienable right to build their own State within the borders prior to 1967 and with East Jerusalem as its capital. We reject Israel´s attempts to annex more territories in the West Bank.

We state our solidarity with the Islamic Republic of Iran in the face of US aggressive escalation.

We reaffirm our invariable solidarity with the Sahrawi people.

We strongly condemn the unilateral and unjust sanctions against the Democratic People´s Republic of Korea.

We restate our rejection of the intention to expand NATO´s presence to the Russian borders and the imposition of unilateral and unjust sanctions against Russia.

We reject foreign interference into the internal affairs of the Republic of Belarus and reiterate our solidarity with the legitimate president of that country, Aleksandr Lukashenko, and the sisterly people of Belarus.

We condemn the interference into the internal affairs of the People´s Republic of China and oppose any attempt to harm its territorial integrity and its sovereignty.

Mr. President,

Today´s disturbing circumstances have led to the fact that, for the first time in the 75-year-long history of the United Nations, we have had to meet in a non- presential format.

Cuba´s scientific community, another source of pride for the nation that, since the triumph of the Revolution of the just, announced to the world its intention to be a country of men and women of science, is working non-stop on one of the first vaccines that are going through clinical trials in the world.

Its creators and other researchers and experts, in coordination with the health system, are writing protocols on healthcare for infected persons, recovered patients and the risk population that have allowed us to keep epidemic statistics of around 80% of infected persons saved and a mortality rate below the average in the Americas and the world.

“Doctors and not bombs.” That was announced one day by the historical leader of the Cuban Revolution and chief sponsor of scientific development in Cuba: Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro Ruz. That´s our motto. Saving lives and sharing what we are and have, no matter any sacrifice it takes; that is what we are offering to the world from the United Nations, to which we only request to be attuned with the gravity of the present time.

We are Cuba.

Let us strive together to promote peace, solidarity and development.

Thank you very much.

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Featured image: Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez (Photo: Estudios Revolución)

This article was originally published on The Lancet in 2015.

“A lot of what is published is incorrect.” I’m not allowed to say who made this remark because we were asked to observe Chatham House rules. We were also asked not to take photographs of slides. Those who worked for government agencies pleaded that their comments especially remain unquoted, since the forthcoming UK election meant they were living in “purdah”—a chilling state where severe restrictions on freedom of speech are placed on anyone on the government’s payroll. Why the paranoid concern for secrecy and non-attribution? Because this symposium—on the reproducibility and reliability of biomedical research, held at the Wellcome Trust in London last week—touched on one of the most sensitive issues in science today: the idea that something has gone fundamentally wrong with one of our greatest human creations.

Can bad scientific practices be fixed?

To read complete article on The Lancet, click here

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Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo are issuing calls for damages rendered during European imperialist occupation joining efforts already underway across the continent and the Diaspora

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During late August, the Central African state of Burundi appealed to the Belgian and German governments to pay reparations for the crimes committed during their colonial occupation of this country during the 19^th and 20^th centuries.

Burundi joins the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which had already spoken to the issue making similar claims on Belgium, the imperialist power which laid waste to the country from 1876 through the 1960s.

Prior to the recent efforts by Burundi and the DRC, people in the Republic of Namibia and the United Republic of Tanzania filed claims against the German government for their role in the genocide carried out during the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. In Namibia, formerly known as Southwest Africa, the Nama and Herero nations suffered immensely as a result of the mass extermination of their people.

In Tanzania, there were atrocities committed by the German colonial authorities which prompted the rebellion against injustice known as the Maji Maji Revolt of 1905-1907. A similar war of liberation was waged also in Namibia, although in both cases the imperialists were able, through the ruthless use of weaponry, overcome at that time, the resistance of African people.

These demands for reparations are not isolated. There are other countries within the African Diaspora which have also made the same demands.

The International Struggle for Reparations

Of course in the United States, various organizations going back decades have made the call for the payment of reparations for nearly 250 years of African enslavement. Some of these organizations include the Nation of Islam, Republic of New Africa, National Black Economic Development Conference, National Coalition for Black Reparations in America (NCOBRA), among others. Additional demands for reparations are being made for mass killings and displacement as occurred in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921, when an estimated 300 African Americans were killed by white mobs including law-enforcement agents.

Even in the Caribbean island-nation of Haiti, after the 12 year rebellion and revolutionary war for independence (1791-1803), the former colonial and slave-owning power of France in 1825 demanded the payment of indemnity for their supposed economic losses during the liberation of the country. Concurrently, successive U.S. administrations in the wake of the Haitian Revolution refused to recognize the African-Caribbean nation diplomatically until 1862, more than a year after the beginning of the Civil War.

Deposed Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide raised the demand for reparations from France based upon the post-colonial history of the country. Aristide was overthrown by a coalition of imperialist states including the U.S., France and Canada in 2004.

On a broader level, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), composed of various governments within the region, has established a Commission to pursue reparations from the imperialist states. The Caribbean Reparations Commission explains its mission on their website saying:

“The CARICOM Reparations Commission is a regional body created to Establish the moral, ethical and legal case for the payment of Reparations by the Governments of all the former colonial powers and the relevant institutions of those countries, to the nations and people of the Caribbean Community for the Crimes against Humanity of Native Genocide, the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and a racialized system of chattel Slavery.”

The U.S. had a vested interest in not recognizing Haiti because of its own role in the Atlantic Slave Trade.  It was the profits accrued from the involuntary servitude of African people which fueled the rise of industrial capitalism. The fact that the U.S. fought a protracted Civil War which killed nearly a million people in order to end legal enslavement is a clear illustration of the significance of the system to the growth and development of the country. (See this)

With specific reference to Burundi, a report on the actual political situation involving the government says:

“The country’s senate has put together a panel of experts to assess the damage done during colonialism and advise on the cost of damages, according to Radio France International. Burundi plans to send these recommendations to the German and Belgium governments. The country also intends to demand the European countries return stolen historical artifacts and archive material. From 1890, Germany colonized Burundi, which became part of German East Africa.” (See this)

Image on the right: Belgian King Leopold II slaughtered millions of Africans in Congo

As this issue relates to the neighboring DRC, the Belgian colonialists engaged in genocidal policies inside the country for decades. Millions of Congolese were forced to work for the Belgian monarchy and later the colonial government in Brussels. It has been estimated that 8-10 million Congolese people died during the initial colonial engagement from 1876-1908, when after this period, King Leopold II relinquished direct control of the vast and mineral wealthy country to the regime in Brussels.

The African Exponent news service wrote of the continuing colonial and neo-colonial control by imperialism in the DRC that:

“King Leopold later handed Congo to Belgium, and the country perpetuated the evil rule initiated by Leopold, till Congo obtained its independence in 1960. And even after independence, the West connived together to assassinate Patrice Lumumba who had been democratically elected as the first prime minister of the country. In his place the West ensured its proxy, Mobutu Sese Seko got in, and his rule was extremely disastrous to the country as it was characterized by ruthlessness and looting that sounded like fiction.”

A report issued by the United Nations Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent surmised that Belgium should pay reparations to the DRC for the human rights violations committed by the colonial authorities. The Working Group goes as far as to suggest that the problems which have arisen since the independence of the country in June 1960 are a direct result of the legacy of colonialism.

Image below: Kwame Nkrumah and Patrice Lumumba

Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba (1925-1961), who was the first leader of the independent former Belgian Congo, was overthrown by an alliance of U.S., Belgian and other imperialist powers. These interests deliberately targeted Lumumba and his Congolese National Movement (MNC) for destabilization and liquidation. Although much information has been uncovered about the coup and brutal assassination of Lumumba (1960-1961) and his comrades, no person or entity has ever been held accountable in a court of law.

This report from the Working Group on the historical role of colonialism as well as the racist policies of contemporary Belgian society, emphatically notes:

“[W]ith a view to closing the dark chapter in history and as a means of reconciliation and healing….to issue an apology for the atrocities committed during colonization. The root causes of present-day human rights violations lie in the lack of recognition of the true scope of the violence and injustice of colonization.  We are concerned about the human rights situation of people of African descent in Belgium who experience racism and racial discrimination. There is clear evidence that racial discrimination is endemic in institutions in Belgium.” (See this)

Responses by Imperialism to Demands for Reparations and the Way Forward

All of the colonial, neo-colonial and imperialist states charged with human rights violations, genocide and other crimes against the people have either rejected the claims made against them or have provided inadequate responses. The U.S. has never even apologized for the centuries of enslavement and national oppression of African people.

Germany was reported to have made a miniscule offer to Namibia for its colonial atrocities. The Namibian government of President Hage Geingob, the leader of the South-West African People’s Organization (SWAPO), the liberation movement which led the struggle for independence against the settler-colonial apartheid regime, has dismissed the German gestures as insulting.

A report published in an independent newspaper said of the talks between Germany and Namibia did not result in any real offer by Berlin to provide reparations for colonial crimes against humanity. The article emphasizes that:

“A German special envoy in the ongoing genocide negotiations has rejected claims that his country had offered to pay Namibia about €10 million, or N$180 million, as reparations. In June this year, President Hage Geingob said in his state of the nation address that Namibia rejected a €10 million offer by Germany as reparations for the genocide perpetrated by German settlers between 1904 and 1908. This offer was ‘an insult’, according to Geingob. Geingob in June also announced that the genocide talks were at an advance stage and that Germany was ready to apologize to the affected communities. However, Germany is now rejecting Geingob’s claims saying no offer was made for reparations.” (See this)

These developments in Africa, the Caribbean and among African Americans in the U.S. illustrate the convergence of these struggles to hold the racist systems of slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism responsible for their crimes historically and in recent decades. African Americans are still consistently targeted by law-enforcement and vigilantes for brutality and assassination.

The existence of these complimentary demands provides even broader openings for international solidarity and organization. Only when there is a worldwide movement aimed at reversing the legacy of imperialism, will there be the possibility of creating a new international system based on genuine equality, self-determination and social justice.

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

Featured image: Tanzania Maji Maji warriors as political prisoners of German colonialism; all images in this article are from the author

On issues related to the JCPOA nuclear deal and expiring UN arms embargo on Iran next month, the Trump regime is isolated on the world stage.

Commenting on its unlawful imposition of what it called “snapback” sanctions on Iran, its  Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh explained the following:

Nothing in the JCPOA or Security Council Res. 2231 affirming the landmark agreement refers to snapback or a trigger mechanism.

This terminology is a made-in-the USA “forgery…What is stated in the resolution and in the JCPOA is the ‘dispute resolution mechanism.’ ”

Trump regime “maximum pressure” and related actions have no legal standing.

Khatibzadeh stressed that Trump’s America first motto became “America only,” a self-defeatist policy over time.

Last weekend, Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif said once the UN arms embargo is lifted in October, “we will be able to satisfy our needs with the help of countries with which we have strategic relations, for example, Russia and China,” adding:

“We can provide for ourselves. We can even export weapons.”

“(W)hen necessary, we can buy from these countries. I doubt that secondary US sanctions will be an obstacle for them.”

On Tuesday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said the following:

“New opportunities will emerge in our cooperation with Iran after the special regime imposed by UN Security Council Resolution 2231 expires on October 18,” adding:

Russian relations with Iran will have “nothing to do with the unlawful and illegal actions of the US (regime), which is trying to intimidate the entire world.”

The previous day, Ryabkov said “(w)e are not afraid of US sanctions. We are used to them. It will not affect our policy in any way,” adding:

“Our cooperation with Iran is multifaceted. Defense cooperation will progress depending on the two countries’ needs and mutual willingness.”

“That said, another (US) executive order will not change our approach.”

Separately, Russian upper house Federation Council Foreign Affairs Committee First Deputy head Vladimir Dzhabarov said Moscow will continue cooperation with Iran.

“So let the (Trump regime) impose sanctions, one less, one more…(O)ur military-technical cooperation with Iran will be continued…”

Dzhabarov stressed that Security Council imposed sanctions are legally binding on all nations, not “sanctions of one state” on others.

“(T)he US thinks (it’s a) higher (power) than the UN Security Council,” a policy with no legal validity under the UN Charter and other international law.

Days earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the following:

“There is no such thing as an arms embargo against Iran.”

“The Security Council, when it was adopting the comprehensive Resolution 2231, which endorsed (the JCPOA) settled the nuclear issue for Iran, and this was adopted by consensus under the Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter,” adding:

“The Security Council in that resolution said that the supply of arms to Iran and from Iran would be subject to consideration by the Security Council and that on the 18th of October, 2020 this regime of sales to Iran would stop.”

“There is no embargo, and there would be no limitations whatsoever after the expiration of this timeframe established by the Security Council.”

In July, Lavrov called for “universal condemnation” of the US for its unlawful actions against Iran, including its attempt to undermine the landmark JCPOA nuclear deal.

Last month, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Beijing firmly opposes unlawful “long arm jurisdiction” imposed by the US on other countries.

Analyst Yang Xiyu said China won’t be intimidated by threatened US sanctions.

In January, the South China Morning Post said a Sino/Iran “relationship (is) built on trade, weapons and oil.”

China’s envoy to Iran Chang Hua said Beijing is committed to the bilateral partnership.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, China exported $269 million of weapons to Iran from 2008 to 2018 — some indirectly through third parties to help the country’s defense capabilities while the UN arms embargo was in place under SC Res. 2231 (2015).

In 2016, both countries agreed on cooperating militarily to combat terrorism, including by joint Persian Gulf naval exercises.

On Thursday, Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif arrived in Moscow for talks with Sergey Lavrov and other Russian officials.

According to Press TV, he’ll “discuss regional issues and matters of mutual interest, including Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal.”

On arrival, Zarif said issues relating to the JCPOA top the agenda for talks — most likely including sales of Russian weapons to Iran once the UN arms embargo expires next month.

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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 en.kremlin.ru

When Daniel Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers, the US Government burgled the office of his psychiatrist to look for medical evidence to discredit him. Julian Assange has been obliged to submit himself, while in a mentally and physically weakened state and in conditions of the harshest incarceration, to examination by psychiatrists appointed by the US government. He has found the experience intrusive and traumatising. It is a burglary of the mind.

Julian is profoundly worried that his medical history will be used to discredit him and all that he has worked for, to paint the achievements of Wikileaks in promoting open government and citizen knowledge as the fantasy of a deranged mind. I have no doubt this will be tried, but fortunately there has been a real change in public understanding and acknowledgement of mental illness. I do not think Julian’s periodic and infrequent episodes of very serious depression will be successfully portrayed in a bad light, despite the incredibly crass and insensitive attitude displayed today in court by the US Government, who have apparently been bypassed by the change in attitudes of the last few decades.

I discuss this before coming to Tuesday’s evidence because for once my account will be less detailed than others, because I have decided to censor much of what was said. I do this on the grounds that, when it comes to his medical history, Julian’s right to privacy ought not to be abolished by these proceedings. I have discussed this in some detail with Stella Morris. I have of course weighed this against my duty as a journalist to you the reader, and have decided the right to medical privacy is greater, irrespective of what others are publishing. I have therefore given as full an account as I can while omitting all mention of behaviours, of symptoms, and of more personal detail.

I also believe I would take that view irrespective of the identity of the defendant. I am not just being partial to a friend. In all my reporting of these proceedings, of course my friendship with Julian has been something of which I am mindful. But I have invented nothing, nor have I omitted anything maliciously.

I will state firmly and resolutely that my account has been truthful. I do not claim it has been impartial. Because in a case of extreme injustice, truth is not impartial.

The following account tries to give you a fair impression of today’s courtroom events, while omitting the substance and detail of much of the discussion. The single witness all day was the eminent psychiatrist Prof Michael Kopelman (image on the right), who will be familiar to readers of Murder in Samarkand. Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at Kings College London and formerly head of psychiatry at Guy’s and St Thomas’s, Prof Kopelman was appointed by the defence (he is not one of the psychiatrists of whom Julian complains, who will give evidence later) and had visited Julian Assange 19 times in Belmarsh Prison. His detailed report concluded that

“I reiterate again that I am as certain as a psychiatrist ever can be that, in the event of imminent extradition, Mr. Assange would indeed find a way to commit suicide,”

Kopelman’s evidence was that his report was based not just on his many consultations with Assange, but on detailed research of his medical records back to childhood, including direct contact with other doctors who had treated Assange including in Australia, and multiple interviews with family and long-term friends. His diagnosis of severe depression was backed by a medical history of such episodes and a startling family history of suicide, possibly indicating genetic disposition.

Prof Kopelman was firm in stating that he did not find Assange to be delusional. Assange’s concerns with being spied upon and plotted against were perfectly rational in the circumstances.

Kopelman had no doubt that Julian was liable to commit suicide if extradited.

“It is the disorder which brings the suicide risk. Extradition is the trigger.”

James Lewis QC cross-examined Professor Kopelman for four hours. As ever, he started by disparaging the witness’s qualifications; Prof Kopelman was a cognitive psychiatrist not a forensic psychiatrist and had not worked in prisons. Prof Kopelman pointed out that he had been practising forensic psychiatry and testifying in numerous courts for over thirty years. When Lewis persisted again and again in querying his credentials, Kopelman had enough and decided to burst out of the bubble of court etiquette:

“I have been doing this for over thirty years and on five or six occasions London solicitors have phoned me up and said that James Lewis QC is acting in an extradition case and is extremely keen to get your services for a report. So I think it is a bit rich for you to stand there now questioning my qualifications.”

This caused really loud laughter in court, which remarkably the judge made no attempt to silence.

The other trick which the prosecution played yet again was to give Prof Kopelman two huge bundles which had, they said, been sent to him that morning and which he said he had never seen – unsurprisingly as he started testifying at 10am. These included substantial items which Prof Kopelman had never seen before but on which he was to be questioned. The first of these was an academic article on malingering which Kopelman was in effect scorned by Lewis for not having read. He said he had read a great many articles on the subject but not this particular one.

Lewis then read several sentences from the article and invited Kopelman to agree with them. These included “clinical skills alone are not sufficient to diagnose malingering” and one to the effect that the clinical team are best placed to detect malingering. Prof Kopelman refused to sign up to either of these propositions without qualification, and several times over the four hours was obliged to refute claims by Lewis that he had done so.

This is another technique continually deployed by the prosecution, seizing upon a single article and trying to give it the status of holy writ, when JStor would doubtless bring out hundreds of contending articles. On the basis of this one article, Lewis was continually to assert and/or insinuate that it was only the prison medical staff who were in a position to judge Assange’s condition. Edward Fitzgerald QC for the defence was later to assert that the article, when it referred to “the clinical team”, was talking of psychiatric hospitals and not prisons. Kopelman declined to comment on the grounds he had not read the article.

Lewis now did another of his standard tricks; attempting to impugn Kopelman’s expertise by insisting he state, without looking it up, what the eight possible diagnostic symptoms of a certain WHO classification of severe depression were. Kopelman simply refused to do this. He said he made a clinical diagnosis of the patient’s condition and only then did he calibrate it against the WHO guidelines for court purposes; and pointed out that he was on some of the WHO committees that wrote these definitions. They were, he said, very political and some of their decisions were strange.

We then entered a very lengthy and detailed process of Lewis going through hundreds of pages of Assange’s prison medical notes and pointing out phrases omitted from Kopelman’s sixteen page synopsis which tended to the view Assange’s mental health was good, while the Professor countered repeatedly that he had included that opinion in shortened form, or that he had also omitted other material that said the opposite. Lewis claimed the synopsis was partial and biased and Kopelman said it was not.

Lewis also pointed out that some of Assange’s medical history from Australia lacked the original medical notes. Kopelman said that this was from the destruction policy of the state of Victoria. Lewis was only prepared to accept history backed by the original medical notes; Kopelman explained these notes themselves referred to earlier episodes, he had consulted Professor Mullen who had treated Julian, and while Lewis may wish to discount accounts of family and friends, to a medical professional that was standard Maudsley method for approaching mental illness history; there was furthermore an account in a book published in 1997.

After lunch Lewis asked Prof Kopelman why his first report had quoted Stella Morris but not mentioned that she was Julian’s partner. Why was he concealing this knowledge from the court? Kopelman replied that Stella and Julian had been very anxious for privacy in the circumstances because of stress on her and the children. Lewis said that Kopelman’s first duty was to the court and this overrode their right to privacy. Kopelman said he had made his decision. His second report mentioned it once it had become public. Lewis asked why he had not explicitly stated they had two children. Kopelman said he thought it best to leave the children out of it.

Lewis asked whether he was hiding this information because having a partner was a safeguard against suicide. Kopelman said that some studies showed suicide was more common in married people. Besides, what we were considering here was stress of separation from partner and children.

Lewis then addressed the reference in Prof Kopelman’s report to the work of Prof Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture. Without specifying Professor Melzer’s background or position or even making any mention of the United Nations at all, Lewis read out seven paragraphs of Prof Melzer’s letter to Jeremy Hunt, then UK foreign secretary. These paragraphs addressed the circumstances of Assange’s incarceration in the Embassy and of his continual persecution, including the decision of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. Lewis even managed to leave the words “United Nations” out of the name of the working group.

As he read each paragraph, Lewis characterised it as “nonsense”, “rubbish” or “absurd”, and invited Prof Kopelman to comment. Each time Prof Kopelman gave the same reply, that he had only used the work of the psychologist who had accompanied Prof Melzer and had no comment to make on the political parts, which had not appeared in his report. Baraitser – who is always so keen to rule out defence evidence as irrelevant and to save time – allowed this reading of irrelevant paragraphs to go on and on and on. The only purpose was to enter Prof Melzer’s work into the record with an unchallenged dismissive characterisation, and it was simply irrelevant to the witness in the stand. This was Baraitser’s double standard at play yet again.

Lewis then put to Prof Kopelman brief extracts of court transcript showing Julian interacting with the court, as evidence that he had no severe cognitive difficulty. Kopelman replied that a few brief exchanges really told nothing of significance, while his calling out from the dock when not allowed to might be seen as symptomatic of Asperger’s, on which other psychiatrists would testify.

Lewis again berated Kopelman for not having paid sufficient attention to malingering. Kopelman replied that not only had he used his experience and clinical judgement, but two normative tests had been applied, one of them the TOMM test. Lewis suggested those tests were not for malingering and only the Minnesota test was the standard. At this point Kopelman appeared properly annoyed. He said the Minnesota test was very little used outside the USA. The TOMM test was indeed for malingering. That was why it was called the Test of Memory Malingering. Again there was some laughter in court.

Lewis then suggested that Assange may only get a light sentence in the USA of as little as six years, and might not be held in solitary confinement. Would that change Kopelman’s prognosis? Kopelman said it would if realistic, but he had done too many extradition cases, and seen too many undertakings broken, to put much store by this. Besides, he understood no undertakings had been given.

Lewis queried Kopelman’s expertise on prison conditions in the USA and said Kopelman was biased because he had not taken into account the evidence of Kromberg and of another US witness on the subject who is to come. Kopelman replied that he had not been sent their evidence until substantially after he completed his reports. But he had read it now, and he had seen a great deal of other evidence that contradicted it, both in this case and others. Lewis suggested it was not for him to usurp the judgement of the court on this issue, and he should amend his opinion to reflect the effect of the US prison system on Assange if it were as Kromberg described it. Kopelman declined to do so, saying he doubted Kromberg’s expertise and preferred to rely on among others the Department of Justice’s own report of 2017, the Centre for Constitutional Rights report of 2017 and the Marshall report of 2018.

Lewis pressed Kopelman again, and asked that if prison conditions and healthcare in the USA were good, and if the sentence were short, would that cause an alteration to his clinical opinion. Kopelman replied that if those factors were true, then his opinion would change, but he doubted they were true.

Suddenly, Baraitser repeated out loud the part quote that if prison conditions in the US were good and the sentence were short, then Kopelman’s clinical opinion would change, and ostentatiously typed it onto her laptop, as though it were very significant indeed.

This was very ominous. As she inhabits a peculiar world where it is not proven that anybody was ever tortured in Guantanamo Bay, I understand that in Baraitser’s internal universe prison conditions in the Colorado ADX are perfectly humane and medical care is jolly good. I could note Baraitser seeing her way suddenly clear to how to cope with Professor Kopelman in her judgement. I could not help but consider Julian was the last person in this court who needed a psychiatrist.

Lewis now asked, in his best rhetorical and sarcastic style, whether mental illness had prevented Julian Assange from obtaining and publishing hundreds of thousands of classified documents that were the property of the United States? He asked how, if he suffered from severe depression, Julian Assange had been able to lead Wikileaks, to write books, make speeches and host a TV programme?

I confess that at this stage I became very angry indeed. Lewis’s failure to acknowledge the episodic nature of severe depressive illness, even after the Professor had explained it numerous times, was intellectually pathetic. It is also crass, insensitive and an old-fashioned view to suggest that having a severe depressive illness could stop you from writing a book or leading an organisation. It was plain stigmatising of those with mental health conditions. I confess I took this personally. As long-term readers know, I have struggled with depressive illness my entire life and have never hidden the fact that I have in the past been hospitalised for it, and on suicide watch. Yet I topped the civil service exams, became Britain’s youngest Ambassador, chaired a number of companies, have been Rector of a university, have written several books, and give speeches at the drop of a hat. Lewis’s characterisation of depressives as permanently incapable is not just crassly insensitive, it is a form of hate speech and should not be acceptable in court.

(I am a supporter of free speech, and if Lewis wants to make a fool of himself by exhibiting ignorance of mental illness in public I have no problem. But in court, no.)

Furthermore, Lewis was not representing his own views but speaking on the direct instructions of the government of the United States of America. Throughout a full four hours, Lewis on behalf of the government of the USA not only evinced no understanding whatsoever of mental illness, he never once, not for one second, showed one single sign that mental illness is a subject taken seriously or for which there is the tiniest element of human sympathy and concern. Not just for Julian, but for any sufferer. Mental illness is malingering or if real disqualifies you from any role in society; no other view was expressed. He made plain on behalf of the US Government, for example, that Julian’s past history of mental illness in Australia will not be taken into account because the medical records have been destroyed.

The only possible conclusion from yesterday’s testimony is that the performance of the representative of the United States Government was, in and of itself, full and sufficient evidence that there is no possibility that Julian Assange will receive fair consideration and treatment of his mental health issues within the United States system. The US government has just demonstrated that to us, in open court, to perfection.

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The Nicolas Maduro-backed Venezuelan central bank launched a landmark appeal in London on Tuesday over $1 billion (£785.21 billion) of gold reserves held in the Bank of England’s underground vaults.

The Banco Central de Venezuela (BCV) board controlled by the Maduro government is challenging a High Court ruling in July that the UK government “unequivocally” recognised opposition leader Juan Guaido as the interim president, therefore giving him control over the gold.

Lawyers representing the BCV say selling the gold, which amounts to around 15% of Venezuela’s foreign currency reserves, would fund the response to the coronavirus and bolster a health system gutted by six years of economic crisis.

Guaido’s lawyers say the bullion is his to control as the British government, along with around 60 others around the world, recognise him as leader after claims Maduro rigged Venezuela’s last presidential election two years ago.

The hearing is expected to last three days and will be the first time such a tug-of-war has been conducted in the London Court of Appeal.

BCV board solicitor Sarosh Zaiwalla said in a statement the case raises a number of issues of international law, which forbids the interference by any country in the internal affairs of another.

The outcome could also present “a further threat to the international perception of English institutions as being free from political interference, as well as the Bank of England’s reputation abroad as a safe repository for sovereign assets”.

Over the past two years, Maduro’s government has removed some 30 tonnes of gold from its local reserves in Venezuela to sell abroad for much-needed hard currency.

Britain in early 2019 joined dozens of nations in backing Guaido, head of Venezuela’s opposition-controlled congress, after he declared an interim presidency and denounced Maduro as an usurper.

Guaido, at the time, asked the Bank of England to prevent Maduro’s government from accessing the gold, which the opposition claims Maduro wants to use to pay off his foreign allies.

In May, BCV sued the Bank of England to recover control, saying it was depriving the BCV of funds needed to finance Venezuela’s coronavirus response.

The Bank of England then asked the court to determine who Britain recognized as Venezuela’s president.

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Featured image is from Zero Hedge

Never before has the need for independent, honest voices and sources of information been so dire. We are – as a society – inundated with a flood of unrelenting unreliable information. The mainstream media, concentrated in the hands of a few and owned by large multinational corporations, is filled with inherent bias and constant manipulation. That is why independent media is of critical importance now more than ever.

To say that the public has become disillusioned and wary of constant doomsday media reports and news coverage that adheres to corporate and political agendas is a gross understatement — people see their world changing and they want to understand what is happening, and why. They want to be informed and therefore be prepared. They want the freedom to make educated choices instead of being told what to do by the very individuals and institutions that have led them into chaos.

On GlobalResearch.ca, the view points we put forth are not selected in the interest of pushing a specific narrative, but rather in breaking down divisions and building a dialogue. We publish pieces by a wide variety of specialists dotted all over the globe including journalists and scholars, political analysts and historians, expert doctors and scientists, ex-military and intelligence personnel, to name but a few.

Our commitment is to make our articles and videos available to the broadest possible readership, on a non-commercial basis, without the need for a login for paid subscribers. You can help us in this project by making a financial contribution below, or by sharing our articles far and wide via social media, e-mail lists, blog sites, etc. To reverse the tide we need your help. We thank you for your essential support!

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After the US State Department claimed that Tehran did not meet the terms of the “nuclear deal,” Washington renewed its anti-Iranian sanctions on Monday. The UN and the EU found the claims made by Washington to be unconvincing and refused to join the renewed sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

US President Donald Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal two years ago, claiming that Tehran was ostensibly and secretly developing a nuclear weapons program, but did not provide any evidence and demanded renewed sanctions. Russia, China and the EU condemned Washington’s actions, stressing that the nuclear deal will continue to be valid without the US. Germany, France and Britain even passed a special law allowing companies to cooperate with Iran and avoid US pressure through a special financial mechanism, INSTEX.

None-the-less, Washington announced that it is not taking a step back from its sanctions against Iran, whilst simultaneously refusing the provide evidence how Tehran breached the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or more commonly known as the nuclear deal, created in 2015. The State Department declared:

“The UN arms embargo on Iran is now re-imposed indefinitely, and we will ensure that it remains in place until Iran changes its behaviour. The new executive order gives us the tools to hold accountable actors who seek to evade the embargo.”

Pompeo also said Trump issued an executive order

“that is a new and powerful tool to enforce the UN arms embargo, and to hold those who seek to evade those sanctions accountable,” while also adding that “Our actions today are a warning that should be heard worldwide. No matter who you are if you ignore UN sanctions, you risk sanctions.”

Since Trump withdrew the US from the nuclear deal on May 8, 2018 Tehran has taken a wait-and-see approach in the hope that the Europeans will succeed in convincing Washington to not drive away foreign investments from Iran.

Formally, the nuclear deal is still valid despite the US withdrawal, but confidence is beginning to diminish. The US fear that the UN-imposed arms embargo on Tehran will be lifted on October 18. Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Kuwait believe Iran will acquire air defense systems and modern fighter jets from Russia and China. This will militarily strengthen Iran but aggravate its neighbors.

France, Germany and Britain share the American concern, but did not support Washington’s August proposal to extend the arms embargo on Iran. Russia and China have made it clear that they will block all US efforts. For its part, Iran has stated that lifting the arms embargo will finally complete the nuclear deal.

Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies said to Foreign Policy magazine that the US does not need multilateral support to make a sanctions’ snapback work because of the global dominance of the US dollar and American power in international financial markets. However, Gérard Araud, former French Ambassador to Israel, the UN and the US, sarcastically but effectively highlighted on Twitter that Dubowitz’s claims “is a way of saying: ‘We are isolated, our allies are not supporting us, actually the whole UN Security Council opposes our move but we don’t care because might is right’.  A coherent vision of international relations….”

Although the US is attempting to portray its sanctions against Iran as being from a position of power, Araud perfectly highlighted that this debacle has exposed how isolated Washington is from the UN Security Council and from some of its closest allies like the British and the Germans.

However, sanctions could still scare foreign business from going to Iran, especially if the arms embargo is lifted in October which will undoubtedly lead to an increase in US pressure against the Islamic Republic. European legislation determines that an arms embargo will continue against Iran until 2023, meaning that if the UN arms embargo is lifted next month, the EU will not be able to sell weapons to the Islamic Republic for another few years. This will be to the advantage of Russia and China as they will be able to monopolize weapon sales to Iran.

What may at first appear curious, the Iranian authorities do not want to exacerbate the situation before the presidential election in the US for two reasons:

Tehran does not want to give Trump any major talking points in the lead up to the November presidential elections.

There is every opportunity that the US could return to the nuclear deal if Democrat President Candidate Joe Biden is successful in replacing Trump.

In addition, the EU, Russia, China and the UN are now on Iran’s side, further rendering an Iranian verbal blasting against Washington unnecessary. More importantly, Iran has seen that the US is completely isolated in their systemic aggression against them.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

I encourage you to download the poster below and make some print outs. If you have a small business, and it’s legal to do so in your district, please put it up in your shop window. If you don’t run a business, you can bring it to shops that you patronize, and ask them to put it up. (And if you live in Melbourne then just forget about it.)

Recently, Susanna Russo printed out many copies, headed to downtown Ajax, Ontario, and asked businesses to post it in their front window. She said most took the sign. After all, most businesses want more customers. Especially after three months of lockdown.

Business owners know they have three types of customers:

1. Those who want everybody wearing face diapers.
2. Those who are against forced masking.
3. Those who go along with the masks; but would be happier if they didn’t have to bother carrying around a germ collector.

For regions offering exemptions, the above poster lets you please all three types of customers, plus the local bylaw officer.

It’s no secret that forced masking in retail stores is driving people online. After all, the government isn’t requiring Amazon to force its customers to wear a mask.

The above poster lets people who prefer to just wear their face know that they have a “safe space.” Pretty strange that in a matter of months, breathing without a droplet guard can make you feel like an outcast. Doesn’t matter that every single randomized control trial (that I know of at least) shows that muzzling people doesn’t stop the spread of influenza-like illnesses. In fact, studies show it doesn’t even help in surgery.

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John C. A. Manley has spent over a decade ghostwriting for medical doctors, as well as naturopaths, chiropractors and Ayurvedic physicians. He publishes the COVID-19(84) Red Pill Daily Briefs – an email-based newsletter dedicated to preventing the governments of the world from using an exaggerated pandemic as an excuse to violate our freedom, health, privacy, livelihood and humanity. He is also writing a novel, Brave New Normal: A Dystopian Love Story. Visit his website at: MuchAdoAboutCorona.ca

Featured image is by Engin Akyurt from Pixabay

The following is an important article by Dr. Ronald B Brown’s focussing on coronavirus mortality overestimation.

This scientific contribution provides and understanding of the Covid crisis and the often misleading estimates provided by our health authorities.

Our thanks to Dr. Brown, Guelph U and Cambridge University Press  (emphasis added)

Selected quotes

Based on the data available at the time, Congress was informed that the estimated mortality rate for the coronavirus was 10-times higher than for seasonal influenza, which helped launch a campaign of social distancing, organizational and business lockdowns, and shelter-in-place orders.

Sampling bias in coronavirus mortality calculations led to a 10-fold increased mortality overestimation in March 11, 2020, US Congressional testimony. This bias most likely followed from information bias due to misclassifying a seasonal influenza IFR as a CFR, evident in a NEJM.org editorial.

Evidence from the WHO confirmed that the approximate CFR of the coronavirus is generally no higher than that of seasonal influenza. By early May 2020, mortality levels from COVID-19 were considerably below predicted overestimations, a result that the public attributed to successful mitigating measures to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus.

This article presented important public health lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic. Reliable safeguards are needed in epidemiological research to prevent seemingly minor miscalculations from developing into disasters.

Published online in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM.org), the editorial stated:

****

Abstract

The Republican Party of Texas executive committee has taken a heroic action that could serve as an example for Republican and Democratic parties across America. It has adopted, by a 54 to 4 vote, a resolution clearly and emphatically demanding that Texas Governor Greg Abbott immediately end all the liberty-repressing measures that, over the last six months while the state legislature has been in recess, Abbott has imposed unilaterally in the name of countering coronavirus.

The rebuke and demand of the resolution are particularly strong given that they come from Abbott’s own party.

The resolution repeatedly and strongly condemns state and local government measures taken in Texas purportedly to counter coronavirus. It states, for example, that “egregious government overreach has resulted in unthinkable depredations upon the people of Texas, including millions left unemployed, countless businesses bankrupt or on the verge of bankruptcy, nursing home residents dying alone and isolated, lives ruined and dreams destroyed.”

The resolution concludes with this strong and clear demand:

Therefore be it resolved, the Republican Party of Texas calls on Gov. Greg Abbott to immediately rescind all COVID-related mandates, closures, and restrictions and to open Texas NOW. A copy of this resolution shall be sent by the Republican Party of Texas to the Governor, Lt. Governor, Attorney General, Republican State Senators, and Republican State Representatives.

Read the complete resolution, along with some background information, in Brandon Waltens’ Monday Texas Scorecard article here.

Listen to prominent Texas libertarian Ron Paul and his co-host Daniel McAdams discuss this important resolution in the Tuesday episode of the Ron Paul Liberty Report here.

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Featured image is from TRPIPP

When completed and operational, Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline to Germany will double the amount of natural gas Gazprom will be able to supply the country and other European ones — at around a 30% lower cost than US LNG.

That’s why the project is invaluable to beneficiary Western European countries.

Washington wants the project blocked to benefit US LNG producers, harming Russia economically at the same time.

Section 7503(d) of the US FY 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is titled “Protecting Europe’s Energy Security Act (PEESA) of 2019 (sic).”

It calls for vessels involved in Nord Stream 2 to “immediately cease construction-related activity…wind(ing) down” their operations.

The US diktat applies to “involved parties that have knowingly sold, leased, or provided vessels that are engaged in pipe laying at depths of 100 feet or more below sea level for the construction of Nord Stream 2.”

Parties not complying with the US diktat face sanctions as explained in PEESA.

At the time, the US State Department defied reality, calling Nord Stream 2 “a tool Russia is using to support its continued aggression against Ukraine (sic).”

“Russia seeks to prevent it from integrating more closely with Europe and the United States (sic).”

“Nord Stream 2 would enable Russia to bypass Ukraine for gas transit to Europe, which would deprive Ukraine of substantial transit revenues and increase its vulnerability to Russian aggression (sic).”

“Nord Stream 2 would also help maintain Europe’s significant reliance on imports of Russian natural gas, which creates economic and political vulnerabilities for our European partners and allies (sic).”

“For these reasons, the United States Government and a plurality of European countries oppose Nord Stream 2 (sic).”

On December 31, 2019, Russia’s Gazprom and Ukraine’s Naftogaz signed a five-year deal for Russian gas to transit through Ukrainian territory.

At the time, international oil economist Mamdouh Salamezh said the deal “protects the mutual interests of both countries economically and geopolitically,” adding:

It could improve bilateral relations overall and shows Gazprom to be a “reliable (EU) partner.”

The deal assured no disruption of gas through Ukraine after Nord Stream 2 becomes operational.

At the time, Germany’s Angela Merkel said the following:

“I am glad that one and a half years of talks on Russian gas transit through Ukraine could be successfully concluded.”

“Continued gas transit…is a good and important signal that our European gas supply (from Russia) will be guaranteed.”

Analyst Thierry Bros noted that that Gazprom/Naftogaz deal secured the transit of Russian gas through Ukraine, along with showing that Moscow is a reliable supplier to other European countries.

Time and again, actions by Russia show that it’s a dependable good neighbor, a valued political, economic and trade partner that prioritizes cooperative relations with other nations — polar opposite how the US operates.

Its actions and above State Department remarks reflect its hegemonic agenda at the expense of other nations and their populations.

On Monday, Pompeo said the Trump regime is “working (on) build(ing) a coalition (of European countries) that prevents” Nord Stream 2’s completion.

Was the Navalny novichok poisoning hoax a made-in-the-USA plot to try undermining the project?

Clearly, Russia had nothing to do with his illness aboard a flight to Moscow.

Russian doctors in Omsk performed heroically to save his life, stabilizing him, and finding no toxins of any kind in his blood, urine, liver, or elsewhere in his system.

He’s alive, recuperating, and ambulatory in Berlin because of treatment they provided.

Merkel said Nord Stream 2 and the Navalny incident are separate issues. She favors completion of the project.

Separately, Russia’s envoy to Germany Sergey Nechaev said “(w)e absolutely cannot agree with the ultimatum statement that the Russian government has anything to do with” the Navalny incident, adding:

“We cannot accept ultimatums and threats with sanctions. I regret the anti-Russian hysteria artificially incited in this context.”

Nord Stream 2’s completion is vital for Germany and other European countries that will benefit greatly from low-cost, readily available, Russian natural gas.

If it becomes operational in the coming months, it’ll also be another blow to Washington’s hegemonic project.

Note: On Thursday and Friday at a summit of EU leaders, Nord Stream 2 is on their agenda to discuss.

The fate of the project may be decided at that time.

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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.

The long-standing plan to turn Russia against Kazakhstan, or vice versa, does not go out of the heads of security opponents in the Eurasian space. Current events in Belarus are also heating up this topic. After all, Kazakhstan, geographically, like Belarus, is not just any other country, but a huge geopolitical node that connects huge regions. Therefore, we should pay more attention right now to maintaining stability around Kazakhstan.

An organization calling itself Internet Law Reform Dialogue or “iLaw” has for over a month now been organizing a petition nationwide at literally every anti-government rally – big or small, at every opposition venue or office headquarters, and at every major university campus calling for the rewriting of Thailand’s constitution. 

This campaign included a well-funded online marketing campaign along with physical tents and booths with professionally printed banners, brochures, flags, and equipment set up across the entire nation.

Despite this massive month-plus long effort which also included a “mail-in” signature drive, iLaw failed to collect even 100,000 from Thailand’s nearly 70 million population by the time the opposition organized its anemic September 19th rally last weekend despite rewriting the constitution being one of the three core demands of so-called “pro-democracy” protesters.

The US Government Funds iLaw and its Efforts to Rewrite Thailand’s Constitution  

Recent news articles like Bangkok Post’s, “Law reform group pitches charter rewrite to public,” would claim:

The Internet Dialogue on Law Reform (iLaw) says it will formally present a people’s version of a bill to draft a new constitution to Parliament on Tuesday.

The article claims that the petition was signed by up to 90,000 people by the time of the September 19th rally.

The article also claims:

iLaw is considering holding a series of forums to show the public why the 2017 charter — drafted at the behest of the military junta and approved in a referendum where dissent was suppressed — must be rewritten, [iLaw representative] Mr Yingcheep said.

What Bangkok Post and others reporting on iLaw and its petition do not report is the fact that iLaw is funded by US-based corporate foundations and the US government via its notorious regime change arm, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

The US NED’s own official website lists iLaw as “Internet Law Reform Dialogue” and notes that it receives over 1.5 million Thai Baht a year, claiming:

To foster public understanding and dialogue on the impact of existing and new laws on civil and political rights and to promote freedom of expression. The organization will monitor and assess political and governance processes, as well as the various laws inherited from the military government, and provide the public with accessible analysis of their impact on citizens’ rights. It will also operate a documentation center to monitor and report on freedom of expression violations, and will collaborate with other civil society groups in advocating for democracy and human rights.

This US government-funded activity constitutes political interference and is an open violation of Thailand’s political independence as described and protected by the United Nations Charter. It is also political interference the United States itself would never tolerate from another nation.

iLaw itself admits on its own website that it is funded by the US government via the NED as well as by convicted financial criminal George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, stating (emphasis added):

Between 2009 and  2014 iLaw has received funding support from the Open Society Foundation, the Heinrich Böll Foundation and a one-time support grant from Google.

Between 2015 to present iLaw receives funding from funders as listed below

1. Open Society Foundation (OSF)
2. Heinrich Böll Stiftung (HBF)
3. National Endowment for Democracy (NED)
4. Fund for Global Human Rights (FGHR)
5. American Jewish World Servic (AJWS)
6. One-time support donation from Google and other independent donors

The fact that it is a US government-funded organization helping advance one of the core demands of so-called “pro-democracy” protesters in Thailand – demands echoed by Thailand’s corrupt billionaire-led opposition consisting of fugitive Thaksin Shinawatra’s Pheu Thai Party and Thanathorn Juangroongruengkit’s Move Forward Party – illustrates the foreign-funded nature of the opposition and current unrest it is organizing.

The fact that so few out of Thailand’s 70 million population supported the petition despite its central role in ongoing protests also illustrates how unpopular Thailand’s current opposition is.

Organizations like iLaw are able to operate specifically because of a Western media along with its local partners never mentioning the foreign-funded nature of their activities. When questions are raised, these same media organizations help iLaw and the US Embassy itself deny political interference.

For the US, its involvement in Thailand’s internal affairs stems from Thailand’s growing relationship with China and Washington’s desire to reverse this by placing into power political groups of its choosing.

China is now Thailand’s largest trading partner, investor, source of tourism, arms supplier, and a key partner for major infrastructure projects including a regional high-speed rail network.

What Should Thailand’s Response Be? 

Were another nation to target America’s internal political affairs in a similar manor – funding a group to organize a petition to rewrite the US Constitution and to do so specifically to make it easier for foreign-backed opposition figures to take power – the petition and the organizations promoting it would be fully removed politically and legally – with those involved likely facing jail.

It is difficult to predict how the Thai government will react to a US government-funded petition to rewrite Thailand’s own constitution.

Confronting iLaw’s US government funding would indirectly mean confronting the United States itself – a course of action Thailand would prefer to avoid in favor of practicing patience as American might wanes globally and Thailand’s legal structure carefully chips away at US-backed opposition groups locally.

Peacefully confronting iLaw organizers with a giant printed out image of its US NED funding alongside relevant Thai and international laws regarding political interference, treason, and sedition could work to place iLaw and the rest of the “pro-democracy” opposition’s foreign funding and meddling front and center in public debate if not in the middle of government decision-making owed to diplomatic concerns.

Such a move would also expose media organizations who have omitted or outright lied about iLaw’s funding consistently for months, rightfully undermining the public’s trust in these organizations forward into the future.

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This article was originally published on Land Destroyer Report.

Tony Cartalucci is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from LDR

Abdel Aziz Ibn Saud’s actions during WWI eventually led to the founding of Saudi Arabia. To document a historically accurate account of his role, we examined in Part I three official documents from WWI. In Part II, we will examine one more war time declaration and narrate what really took place during that period.

4. The Balfour Declaration 

One of the most important statements of British foreign policy of the twentieth century, the ‘Balfour Declaration’ was no more than a short, vague letter that had no legal status. The Parliamen didn’t debate it. Yet, it was one of the most significant events leading ultimately to the creation of the state of Israel. Not to mention the conflict between Jews and Arabs ever since.

In this letter of November 2nd 1917, British Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, wrote to Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild, as a figurehead of the Jewish community in Britain:

“His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

Britain later incorporated this letter within the terms of it’s Mandate for Palestine. And so it became a legal requirement upon Britain.

To better understand the origins of the declaration, we examine a thoroughly documented paper by The Balfour Project. It documents critical details on why Britain’s War Cabinet at the time were so fervently predisposed to support the establishment of a ‘Jewish National Home’ in Arab inhabited Palestine.

With exhaustive references to literally dozens of books, news reports and Cabinet memorandums from The National Archives of the UK, the report paints a vivid picture of an ingenious manipulation behind the scenes – shaping the drafting, deliberations and the eventual adoption of this declaration. The unusual convergence of so many powerful and influential figures in British politics – including a current and a former Prime Ministers – in support of the Zionist cause isn’t lost on the authors. Detailed evidence suggest the entire British Empire, in its actions regarding the future of Palestine, behaved as a Zionist entity. In its analysis of the events, the paper states,

“It was widely believed that some mysterious but well-organised Jewish conspiracy was bent on determining the outcome of the war; their influence and, above all, their money, could sway Russia, the United States or Germany, to Britain’s good or ill. To gain the international favour of the Jews was therefore in Britain’s vital interest; to offend could be fatal. Since Weizmann implied that Zionism spoke for the Jews of the world, it followed that the Zionists should be helped. It was, [Prime Minister] Lloyd George wrote later, a question of making ‘a contract with Jewry’.”

It’s important to note that the British Cabinet, while adopting the Balfour Declaration, acted under the impression that majority of Jewish people worldwide were Zionists who would applaud Britain’s actions. However, in reality, Zionists remained a very small minority among Jews for many years to come.

For instance, in his book A Peace to End All Peace: Creating the Modern Middle East, 1914-1922 (Penguin, London, 1991), David Fromkin calculates that in 1913, the last date for which there were figures, only about one percent of the world’s Jews had signified their adherence to Zionism (p. 294). In other words, even though the official narrative claims that the Balfour Declaration was adopted to favour Jewish people worldwide, the underlying truth suggests it was rather the Zionists within the British Empire (which was pretty much everybody who was anybody in British government at the time) who orchestrated this declaration; using the Jewish people’s plight as an excuse to justify this unjust enterprise.

It’s also remarkable that the debates and deliberations which preceded adoption of this declaration, did not include any Arab representation; nor did they think it necessary to do so. While Britain accepted that Palestine should be reconstituted as the national home of the Jewish people, implying no place for the existing majority Arab population, very few Arabs were even aware that such a proposal was in the offing. And the Arabs in Palestine itself could not be consulted (then PM Lloyd George later argued) as they were in enemy territory, and were therefore deemed to be fighting against Britain.

Now, as we can see from reviewing the above four historical documents, British Empire, throughout their WWI campaign in the Middle East, played a cunning game of deception with the Arab people; making false promises with no intention of keeping them. A game all too common in empire-building, and certainly more so within the history of British imperialism. Nevertheless, as it always is the case, an empire cannot succeed in its treachery without a complicit, local cohort; a traitor from among the victims. And in this particular case, this cohort presented itself in the form of Abdel Aziz Ibn Saud.

To investigate Ibn Saud’s role, we examine a 2016 essay by independent researcher Nu’man Abd al-Wahid. Al-Wahid corroborates primary sourced evidence from a revealing study by Dr. Askar H. al-Enazy, titled The Creation of Saudi Arabia: Ibn Saud and British Imperial Policy, 1914-1927 (London: Routledge, 2010) with other prominent works in history such as The Birth of Saudi Arabia (London: Frank Cass, 1976) by Gary Troeller and The Desert King: The Life of Ibn Saud (London: Quartet Books, 1980) by David Howarth etc., and presents a comprehensive account of the part Abdel Aziz Ibn Saud played between 1915 to 1926 as a battering ram for the British Empire. In essence, Ibn Saud’s muscleman role was what enabled the British to establish their imperial and Zionist goals. Goals borne out of the Sykes-Picot Treaty and the Balfour Declaration.

As Dr. al-Enazy documents in his 2010 study, the Sharif of Hijaz, as soon as the war ended, wanted to hold the British to their wartime promises as expressed in the McMahon-Hussain correspondence. The British, on the other hand, wanted the Sharif to accept the Empire’s actual vision for Arabia. A vision that divides the Arab world between them and the French, and implements the Balfour Declaration.

However, the Sharif declared he will never sell out Palestine to the Empire’s Balfour Declaration. Nor will he accept new random borders drawn across Arabia by British and French imperialists.

After the Cairo Conference in March 1921, the Empire dispatched T.E. Lawrence (i.e. of Arabia) to meet the Sharif. Lawrence offered him an annual payment of £100,000 (al-Enazy 2010, p.111) but the Sharif refused to compromise. When financial bribery failed to persuade the Sharif, Lawrence threatened him with an Ibn Saud takeover.

While negotiating with Hussain, Lawrence also visited other leaders in the Arabian peninsula. He warned them against entering into an alliance with the Sharif. He informed, if they did, the Empire will unleash Ibn Saud and his Wahhabis on them. After all, Saud and his Wahhabis were at Britain’s “beck and call” (al-Enazy, p.111).

Simultaneously, after the Conference, the then Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill travelled to Jerusalem. There he met with the Sharif’s son, Abdullah, who the British appointed the Emir of a new territory called Transjordan. Churchill asked him to persuade “his father to accept the Palestine mandate and sign a treaty to such effect,”; if not “the British would unleash Ibn Saud against Hijaz” (al-Enazy p.107).

Meanwhile, the British devised plans to take down ibn Rashid of Ha’il in the North. Ibn Rashid had rejected all propositions from the British Empire. Propositios made to him via Ibn Saud to become another one of Empire’s puppets (al-Enazy p.45-46, p.101-102). Instead, Rashid expanded his territories north to the newly mandated Palestinian border. He also widened his territories to the borders of Iraq in the summer of 1920. Acting under a concern that Ibn Rashid may seek an alliance with Sharif Hussain, Churchill agreed with imperial officer Sir Percy Cox at the Cairo Conference that “Ibn Saud should be given the opportunity to occupy Hail” (al-Enazy p.104).

By the end of 1920, the British were showering Ibn Saud with “a monthly ‘grant’ of £10,000 in gold; on top of his monthly subsidy. He also received abundant arms and supplies, totalling more than 10,000 rifles, in addition to the critical siege and four field guns” with British-Indian instructors (al-Enazy p.104). Finally, in September 1921, the British unleashed Ibn Saud on Ha’il which officially surrendered in November 1921. It was after this victory the British bestowed a new title on Ibn Saud. He was no longer the “Emir of Najd and Chief of its Tribes” but “Sultan of Najd and its Dependencies”. Ha’il had dissolved into a dependency of the Empire’s Sultan of Najd.

With Ibn Saud now on Sharif Hussain’s border, and armed to the teeth by the British, the Empire arranged a new round of talks with Sharif’s son Abdullah; and drafted a treaty accepting Zionism. When it was delivered to the Sharif with an accompanying letter from his son requesting that he “accept reality”, Sharif didn’t even bother to read the treaty and instead composed a draft treaty himself rejecting the new divisions of Arabia, as well as the Balfour Declaration, and sent it to London to be ratified (al-Enazy p.113).

After another three rounds of negotiations in Amman and London, the Empire realized Hussain will never relinquish Palestine to Great Britain’s Zionist project or accept the new divisions in Arab lands (al-Enazy p.112-125).

In March 1924, the British announced that they had terminated all discussions with Sharif Hussain (al-Enazy p.129). Within weeks, the forces of Ibn Saud and his Wahhabi followers began to administer what the British foreign secretary Lord Curzon called “the final kick” to Sharif Hussain and attacked Hijazi territory (al-Enazy p.106). By September 1924, Ibn Saud had overrun the summer capital of Sharif Hussain, Ta’if.

Ibn Saud captured the holiest place in Islam, Mecca, in mid-October 1924. Sharif Hussain abdicated and went on exile to the Hijazi port of Akaba. His son Ali replaced him as the monarch and made Jeddah his governmental base. Fearing that Sharif Hussain may use Akaba as a base to rally Arabs against the Empire’s own Ibn Saud, the British declared that Hussain must leave Akaba or Ibn Saud will attack the port. In response, Hussain countered that he had,

“never acknowledged the mandates on Arab countries and still protest against the British Government which has made Palestine a national home for the Jews.” (al-Enazy p.119)

He was subsequently forced out of Akaba, a port Hussain himself liberated from the Ottoman Empire during the ‘Arab Revolt’. On 18th June 1925, Hussain left Akaba on HMS Cornflower.

Ibn Saud began his siege of Jeddah in January 1925. The city finally surrendered in December 1925. This brought an end to over 1000 years of rule by the Prophet Muhammad’s descendants. The British officially recognized Ibn Saud as the new King of Hijaz in February 1926. Other European powers followed suit within weeks. The British Empire rebranded the new unified Wahhabi state in 1932 as the “Kingdom of Saudi Arabia” (KSA). A certain George Rendel, an officer working at the Middle East desk at the Foreign Office in London, claimed credit for the new name.

In conclusion, any prudent observer of British Imperialism hardly finds it surprising that the British Empire betrayed their promises made to the Arabs for an independent Arab state after WWI. However, when an Arab leader does the betraying and becomes an agent for the British Empire; when this agent massacres Arabs who dare oppose the Zionist deceit; and finally, when he gets appointed ‘King of Arabia’ as a reward for his treachery – by the same treacherous Empire who deceived the Arab people; when an Arab Emir does this, he becomes a traitor. And he remains a traitor for eternity; because no amount of wealth or propaganda can change the plain truth: that Abdel Aziz Ibn Saud became the King of Arabia – and his Al Saud family ‘Royals’ –  because he betrayed Arabs and became an agent of the British Empire; and henceforth executed the Empire’s Zionist plans for the Arabian peninsula.

Indeed, the bitter irony isn’t lost on Muslims in the know. That the two holiest sites in Islam are today governed by the Saudi clan and Wahhabi teachings because they helped the British Empire lay foundations for Zionism in Arabia during and after World War One.

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Part I

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Author Rez Karim is an Electrical Engineer and Chief Editor at VitalColumns.com.

Featured image is from the author

Since the beginning of the Regime Change war against Syria, Western -supported sectarian terrorists — al Qaeda, ISIS and affiliates — have actively sought to destroy and extinguish Christians and Christianity from Syria. President Assad and the Syrian people have been fighting against and destroying these terrorists.

President Assad and Syrians are fighting for humanity and civilization as the West, including Canada, seeks to destroy humanity and civilization in Syria.

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Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017. Visit the author’s website at https://www.marktaliano.net where this article was originally published.

Photos and video from Maaloula Syria, September, 2019.

Order Mark Taliano’s Book “Voices from Syria” directly from Global Research.

Mark Taliano combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes  the mainstream media narratives on Syria. 

Voices from Syria 

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-1-6

Author: Mark Taliano

Year: 2017

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This is a biased politically motivated report of a dubiously independent mission that contributes to an already dangerously escalating situation where the victim is Venezuela and the perpetrator is the U.S. foreign policy.

The original article in Chinese will be available on our Chine language page

Throughout human history, no matter in the east or in the west, there would be a chaotic situation taking place every few decades in human society. In ancient times when the material production was at low level with tools not yet developed, the cause of chaos could be easily understood by the Chinese sayings: “People die for wealth, while birds die for food.” and “Food is the heaven for people”.

In face of starvation and losing of homes, or extreme unfair treatment by governments in distribution of wealth and benefits, there were always people who would rebel or take a military or political coup, or started a war by neglecting the peace agreement. 

But in today’s world, where technology is highly developed and material productivity greatly exceeds the demand, why is there still constant social turbulence?

Whether in China or many western countries, we can see the stores displayed with all types of merchandises, stocked with goods unable to sell, and warehouses of factories overstocked with products unable to go to market.

It’s not because the overall purchasing power of the society is insufficient, but because of production and consumption level of the society has reached its excessive high point. Nowadays, merit boxes, which are public boxes for donations, are popular things everywhere. Still good and usable items can often be found discarded at the garbage room of the community. What does that mean? It demonstrates that the demand for living goods is not the primary concern of human society any longer. Thus many skilled people have been liberated from the production sector to engage in various social management work in our society, and division of work is becoming more and more precise. In this way, it seems that people on earth should have nothing to worry about? On the contrary, there are much more problems nowadays, and the society is in a chaotic situation that is almost unprecedented. 

Why is that?

Some people may attribute it to the social complexity brought about by the highly developed civilization, but I don’t think so. As we all know that no matter how advanced science and technology are, it is based on the laws of science discovered by our predecessors.

Because the scientific workers strictly follow some basic laws of science and the commonly accepted rules of logic, they have made the rapid development of science and technology in modern times, and created miracles one after another in human society, while produced some reliable scientific and technological products to serve mankind which have greatly helped improve their living standards. I haven’t heard that a certain type of sophisticated technology products had acted recklessly due to their high complexity level, or functions differently. Although I personally think that modern science and technology did have their share of burden of blame in jeopardizing the life of modern people, during the short period of their glorious history, the professionalism and the qualification of those scientific and technological workers are indeed worthy of admiration for people from other industries. At least they clearly know the concepts in their own domains. Otherwise, they won’t be able to produce anything good. 

One of the most important issues, as what the ancient people called “name”, might have been ignored by people of many industries. The ancients said, “if an appropriate name is not applied for the thing, then it is not a reasonable name and it would cause confusion about any work related to that thing, and lead to the failure of work.” That is to say, if the name is not properly placed, or the meaning is not correctly explained, it would be difficult to explain the principles and mechanism of such thing and thus unable to execute its purpose. Perhaps some people may feel that this is insignificant, why bother making a big fuss about it? I am afraid it is not quite so. Actually in the first chapter of Tao Te Ching (One of the bibles of Chinese people), it is clearly written: “The beginning of the universe is in the status of being nameless, while the creation of all things in universe is accomplished during the process of giving names.”

These words don’t conflict with the scientific postulate of the start of the universe at all, but are intended to interpret the different side of the nature of universe. Thus, we can see how important it is to name things. People create and give names to things according to their respective attributes and our understanding about them, and those names composed the structure of our civilization. They are like the codes of our civilization, and provide answers to our questions. Chinese people are the ones addressed the importance of names just like the westerns addressed the importance of atoms in natural science. So no matter if you believe it or not, it is there doing its work. At the same time, names give things eternal life. Without a name, when things are used up or destroyed, they are gone for ever. With names, things can regenerate and appear again. 

In field of culture or philosophy, this phenomenon of “name” problems may be most prominent, especially in today’s world, where the division of labor is fine, and the economic interdependence of each country upon others is so strong. The world can’t do without petroleum from the Middle East, just as it can’t without high-tech software from the United States, as well as all kinds of life necessities made in China, and so on. Economic interdependence will inevitably lead to the exchange of cultures and the confrontation of different ideologies. Whether the result of communication and confrontation is acceptance, expulsion or integration may largely depend on the common understanding of the concepts in those domains. 

While the civilization is evolving, along with it, there were many new fancy words coming out in all fields. There are good ones, also bad ones. Just as our forefathers have foreseen: strange words with ambiguous meanings, and improper names appeared to make people unable to distinguish right from wrong, even the government officials or the law enforcement officers are confused themselves. How would we expect them to make the right decision and enforce the law properly? Each country has their own languages and cultural origins, in addition to which, the inappropriate translation of words may also lead to misunderstanding of the same philosophical, political or legal terms from other cultures, or even the same culture by different people. Has anyone run into such embarrassing situation as if a scholar gentleman argued with a single-minded soldier off the battle, the result of which is hardly optimistic, because the two can never stand on the same ground. The logic on which the mode of Human’s thinking is based is very similar, just as mathematics has been accepted among all nationalities in basically the same way. So the fundamental problem that leads to difficult communication of different nations is caused by the different understanding of the same concepts, or the “names”. In other words, the varied depth of knowledge about things and the interpretation of the meaning of things from different aspects leads to many incomprehensible and unnecessary conflicts in the world. 

Probably some people will say that it would be naive to think it the way mentioned above, and that many conflicts in the world were actually caused by some governments fighting for the best interests of their own countries. If that is true, it would only explain another case of misunderstanding concept in politics, which is about the confusion on the concept of “national interest”. On the appearance, some countries may be able to gain certain material benefits because of their powerful military forces, but they will certainly lose the faith upon them, not only of the people of other countries, but also of their own people. What they lose is the capital of relationship, which is the true long-term benefit for all entities. Some people might say that some governments are fighting with other countries in order to promote their culture and advocate their belief and make other countries accept their cultural advantages so that they would gain the greatest recognition in the world. Then, they must make it clear first what is their cultural advantage and how it should be expressed through the right concepts. Humans mostly admire people with the attributes of bravery, industriousness, nobility, generosity, benevolence and humanity, wisdom, faith, and sense of responsibility, etc., but not stealing, slandering and framing, getting weaker into worse situation, and raping human nature to humiliate themselves. Different nationalities may be inclined to different human values. They may also have different understanding of those values.

However, those values are the bases of any belief they have clung onto. In the antique time, the Europeans advocated chivalry; the British advocated the culture of gentlemen; the Americans respected the cowboy spirit; while the ancient Chinese liked to use their favorable term “Junzi”, somewhat similar to gentleman, but not the same, to express their national spirit; and so on.

Unfortunately, I can’t cite all the examples here one by one, only I don’t know what kind of national spirit the modern countries are advocating. If they haven’t come out with a clear idea, maybe they should first consult with their ancestors, then surf the Internet, and then discuss with their neighbors in this global village, before they are going to do such great deeds for their nations. Otherwise, they probably wouldn’t even know what they are fighting for before they’ve blooded their face or gotten their skull broken into pieces. Perhaps after they have really come to understand what that idea is, they would suddenly realize that there is nothing to fight for at all. All humans are nurtured by the same root – that is mother earth. Why must they act so earnestly to eliminate one another? It’s OK to have some fun by playing games like in sports matches, but it should be a match of gentlemen. Like some ancient people said, if you have to compete with others, courtesy always goes first. After the contest, the opponents could still befriend each other by toasting together with greetings and cheers wholeheartedly.

What is the point to fight each other to death!

The adventure of humans has reached the top of all mountains and the bottom of all oceans, while seldom giving an second thought by taking away all that they can. There is not much left on earth but a few glasses of liquor and several pieces of peanuts made of metal?

It is definitely not worthy of powerful human force to fight for the pitiful leftover on earth. It would be so much better to use the human wisdom and power to engage in some meaningful work to make a positive transformation of human society and find new resources and new way out. In modern world, raw materials are playing much less important roles in people’s life and countries’ economy than before. Whether or not a country can succeed in the new era, largely depends on how they can effectively organize and deploy their social and economic forces, how they can efficiently utilize and recycle their resources, how they establish their rapport among their partners, and how they built their relationship with other countries. Fighting for the territories and raw materials are the games of wild animals and primitive people, which should be voided among highly civilized beings. 

There is still an important concept here I would like to mention. That is, the fights between the governments are not the same thing as the fight between the civilians. The government, acting on behalf of the state, seems to devote themselves to the people of the country. However, it is not exactly the same thing. Although the government is elected by the people, once it is formed, it becomes an instrument of the state as a separated entity with its own will. It is obviously indebted to the people, but its ultimate goal is to demonstrate the reasonableness and purpose of its existence, which is the nature of all individual entity and should not be blamed for. The people have given the government all kinds of supplies and privileges to do its job, and they are no longer obliged to bear other pressure and burdens for the government, unless they are employed by the government temporarily or part-time (full-time personnel, of course, have been included in the government), or in the extraordinary events of natural disasters or when the country is facing immediate takeover or extermination under the attack of their enemies.

Why? because each ordinary citizen has his/her own share of burden and responsibility in this human’s survival game. Therefore, it is not wise or practical for the government to frequently get civilians involved in their fights against their opponents, in order not to disturb or even ruin their normal life. Once the damage is done, it would come back on the government and jeopardize the base of their power.

The common people are the foundation of a country. Losing the common people means shaking the foundation of the country and the government. 

If people from all trades of the world can share a set of common terms and follow a set of well-accepted laws and rules from the beginning to the end of anything they are doing, then the unresolvable problems would be greatly reduced, because they can communicate freely with common understanding of things they are talking at any time with a designed work language constituting of clearly defined concepts. 

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1,000 fighters of the so-called Syrian National Army, a coalition of Turkish-funded militant groups, will be moved to Azerbaijan in September as a part of a 6-month long deployment, Syrian pro-militant media reported. According to reports, Turkish proxies will pass additional training and may even be deployed along the contact line with Armenian forces near the disputed Nagorno Karabakh region.

During the Azerbaijani-Armenian escalation in July, reports already surfaced that Turkey was deploying its Syrian proxies to support Azerbaijani forces in their standoff against Armenia. Then, Syrian sources also reported about a potential 6-month long contract for Turkish-funded militants. The monthly salary of one Turkish mercenary in the combat zone was reported to be 2,500 USD.

Local activists even claimed that Turkish intelligence was in talks with al-Qaeda-affiliated Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham to recruit a 300-man strong special forces unit that would be deployed in Azerbaijan carry out special operations on the border with Armenia.

Turkey is a long-term strategic ally of Azerbaijan and its leadership has repeatedly declared its readiness to support Baku by all kinds of measures, including military ones, in the event of a full-scale escalation in the region. Nonetheless, the July clashes ended without turning into a new regional war and Turkish and Azerbaijani authorities rushed to denounce reports about the potential usage of Syrian militants against Armenia as fake news.

Turkey has already been actively using its Syrian proxies, often linked with al-Qaeda, in Middle East conflicts. In particular, thousands Syrian militants were sent to Libya to support the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord. Therefore, the deployment of pro-Turkish militant groups in Azerbaijan is not so unlikely a scenario as Ankara and Baku prefer to claim.

In Greater Idlib, the Russian Aerospace Forces continue their airstrike diplomacy pounding Turkish-funded terrorists across the region. On September 20 and September 21, this diplomatic campaign was also supported by the Syrian Army that struck terrorist positions in northern Lattakia and south of the M4 highway in southern Idlib.

The US-led coalition and affiliated organizations have been increasing their business activities connected with the seized Syrian oil infrastructure. According to Syrian state media, just on September 20, at least 30 tanker trucks filled with oil from the US-controlled fields left Syria through the al-Walid area on the border with Iraq. The development of the seized oil reserves and export of the extracted oil is being conducted by the US company Delta Crescent Energy. The company operates in coordination with US-backed Kurdish armed groups, which are currently known under the brand of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

In public statements, the SDF leadership often uses loud words about patriotism and the need to serve to interests of the Syrian people. However, in practice, the patriotic intentions of the Kurdish leaders are limited to more practical things like the looting of Syrian oil resources in coordination with the Washington establishment.

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Julian Assange is not on trial simply for his liberty and his life. He is fighting for the right of every journalist to do hard-hitting investigative journalism without fear of arrest and extradition to the United States. Assange faces 175 years in a US super-max prison on the basis of claims by Donald Trump’s administration that his exposure of US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan amounts to “espionage”.

The charges against Assange rewrite the meaning of “espionage” in unmistakably dangerous ways. Publishing evidence of state crimes, as Assange’s Wikileaks organisation has done, is covered by both free speech and public interest defences. Publishing evidence furnished by whistleblowers is at the heart of any journalism that aspires to hold power to account and in check. Whistleblowers typically emerge in reaction to parts of the executive turning rogue, when the state itself starts breaking its own laws. That is why journalism is protected in the US by the First Amendment. Jettison that and one can no longer claim to live in a free society.

Aware that journalists might understand this threat and rally in solidarity with Assange, US officials initially pretended that they were not seeking to prosecute the Wikileaks founder for journalism – in fact, they denied he was a journalist. That was why they preferred to charge him under the arcane, highly repressive Espionage Act of 1917. The goal was to isolate Assange and persuade other journalists that they would not share his fate.

Assange explained this US strategy way back in 2011, in a fascinating interview he gave to Australian journalist Mark Davis. (The relevant section occurs from minute 24 to 43.) This was when the Obama administration first began seeking a way to distinguish Assange from liberal media organisations, such as the New York Times and Guardian that had been working with him, so that only he would be charged with espionage.

Assange warned then that the New York Times and its editor Bill Keller had already set a terrible precedent on legitimising the administration’s redefinition of espionage by assuring the Justice Department – falsely, as it happens – that they had been simply passive recipients of Wikileaks’ documents. Assange noted (40.00 mins):

“If I am a conspirator to commit espionage, then all these other media organisations and the principal journalists in them are also conspirators to commit espionage. What needs to be done is to have a united face in this.”

During the course of the current extradition hearings, US officials have found it much harder to make plausible this distinction principle than they may have assumed.

Journalism is an activity, and anyone who regularly engages in that activity qualifies as a journalist. It is not the same as being a doctor or a lawyer, where you need a specific professional qualification to practice. You are a journalist if you do journalism – and you are an investigative journalist if, like Assange, you publish information the powerful want concealed. Which is why in the current extradition hearings at the Old Bailey in London, the arguments made by lawyers for the US that Assange is not a journalist but rather someone engaged in espionage are coming unstuck.

Corporate journalists have barely bothered to cover Assange's trial. But while they doze, the US has changed its argument, as ex-ambassador Craig Murray reports. Now the US is threatening to lock up other journalists for espionage if they expose its crimes https://t.co/4dpYUQ0EAZ

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) September 16, 2020

My dictionary defines “espionage” as “the practice of spying or of using spies, typically by governments to obtain political and military information”. A spy is defined as someone who “secretly obtains information on an enemy or competitor”.

Very obviously the work of Wikileaks, a transparency organisation, is not secret. By publishing the Afghan and Iraq war diaries, Wikileaks exposed crimes the United States wished to keep secret. 

Assange did not help a rival state to gain an advantage, he helped all of us become better informed about the crimes our own states commit in our names. He is on trial not because he traded in secrets, but because he blew up the business of secrets – the very kind of secrets that have enabled the west to pursue permanent, resource-grabbing wars and are pushing our species to the verge of extinction.

In other words, Assange was doing exactly what journalists claim to do every day in a democracy: monitor power for the public good. Which is why ultimately the Obama administration abandoned the idea of issuing an indictment against Assange. There was simply no way to charge him without also putting journalists at the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Guardian on trial too. And doing that would have made explicit that the press is not free but works on licence from those in power.

Media indifference 

For that reason alone, one might have imagined that the entire media – from rightwing to liberal-left outlets – would be up in arms about Assange’s current predicament. After all, the practice of journalism as we have known it for at least 100 years is at stake.

But in fact, as Assange feared nine years ago, the media have chosen not to adopt a “united face” – or at least, not a united face with Wikileaks. They have remained all but silent. They have ignored – apart from occasionally to ridicule – Assange’s terrifying ordeal, even though he has been locked up for many months in Belmarsh high-security prison awaiting efforts to extradite him as a spy. Assange’s very visible and prolonged physical and mental abuse – both in Belmarsh and, before that, in the Ecuadorian embassy, where he was given political asylum – have already served part of their purpose: to deter young journalists from contemplating following in his footsteps.

Even more astounding is the fact that the media have taken no more than a cursory interest in the events of the extradition hearing itself. What reporting there has been has given no sense of the gravity of the proceedings or the threat they pose to the public’s right to know what crimes are being committed in their name. Instead, serious, detailed coverage has been restricted to a handful of independent outlets and bloggers.

Most troubling of all, the media have not reported the fact that during the hearing lawyers for the US have abandoned the implausible premise of their main argument that Assange’s work did not constitute journalism. Now they appear to accept that Assange did indeed do journalism, and that other journalists could suffer his fate. What was once implicit has become explicit, as Assange warned: any journalist who exposes serious state crimes now risks the threat of being locked away for the rest of their lives under the draconian Espionage Act.

The BBC's Kuenssberg and ITV's Peston haven't mentioned Assange for years, even as his extradition hearing – our generation's Dreyfus Trial – is under way.

It should be proof, if more were needed, that these people aren't journalists, they are courtiers of the British state https://t.co/2ybAEkoAhz

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) September 8, 2020

This glaring indifference to the case and its outcome is extremely revealing about what we usually refer to as the “mainstream” media. In truth, there is nothing mainstream or popular about this kind of media. It is in reality a media elite, a corporate media, owned by and answerable to billionaire owners – or in the case of the BBC, ultimately to the state – whose interests it really serves.

The corporate media’s indifference to Assange’s trial hints at the fact that it is actually doing very little of the sort of journalism that threatens corporate and state interests and that challenges real power. It won’t suffer Assange’s fate because, as we shall see, it doesn’t attempt to do the kind of journalism Assange and his Wikileaks organisation specialise in.

The indifference suggests rather starkly that the primary role of the corporate media – aside from its roles in selling us advertising and keeping us pacified through entertainment and consumerism – is to serve as an arena in which rival centres of power within the establishment fight for their narrow interests, settling scores with each other, reinforcing narratives that benefit them, and spreading disinformation against their competitors. On this battlefield, the public are mostly spectators, with our interests only marginally affected by the outcome.

A journalist due to testify at Julian Assange's extradition hearing makes a very pertinent point. This is the biggest attack on press freedom in our lifetimes. Why are UK editors not demanding to be heard at the Old Bailey? Where are they? Where is the Guardian? https://t.co/fFRFvGpYdi

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) September 8, 2020

Gauntlet thrown down 

The corporate media in the US and UK is no more diverse and pluralistic than the major corporate-funded political parties they identify with. This kind of media mirrors the same flaws as the Republican and Democratic parties in the US: they cheerlead consumption-based, globalised capitalism; they favour a policy of unsustainable, infinite growth on a finite planet; and they invariably support colonial, profit-driven, resource-grabbing wars, nowadays often dressed up as humanitarian intervention. The corporate media and the corporate political parties serve the interests of the same power establishment because they are equally embedded in that establishment.

(In this context, it was revealing that when Assange’s lawyers argued earlier this year that he could not be extradited to the US because extradition for political work is barred under its treaty with the UK, the US insisted that Assange be denied this defence. They argued that “political” referred narrowly to “party political” – that is, politics that served the interests of a recognised party.)

From the outset, the work of Assange and Wikileaks threatened to disrupt the cosy relationship between the media elite and the political elite. Assange threw down a gauntlet to journalists, especially those in the liberal parts of the media, who present themselves as fearless muckrakers and watchdogs on power.

Unlike the corporate media, Wikileaks doesn’t depend on access to those in power for its revelations, or on the subsidies of billionaires, or on income from corporate advertisers. Wikileaks receives secret documents direct from whistleblowers, giving the public an unvarnished, unmediated perspective on what the powerful are doing – and what they want us to think they are doing.

Wikileaks has allowed us to see raw, naked power before it puts on a suit and tie, slicks back its hair and conceals the knife.

But as much as this has been an empowering development for the general public, it is at best a very mixed blessing for the corporate media.

Today’s column is a salute to Julian Assange, selflessly raising the bar on nightmare houseguest stories https://t.co/bgqeEakGBj

— Hadley Freeman (@HadleyFreeman) April 20, 2019

In early 2010, the fledgling Wikileaks organisation received its first tranche of documents from US army whistleblower Chelsea Manning: hundreds of thousands of classified files exposing US crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Assange and “liberal” elements of the corporate media were briefly and uncomfortably thrown into each others’ arms.

On the one hand, Assange needed the manpower and expertise provided by big-hitting newspapers like the New York Times, the Guardian and Der Spiegel to help Wikileaks sift through vast trove to find important, hidden disclosures. He also needed the mass audiences those papers could secure for the revelations, as well as those outlets’ ability to set the news agenda in other media.

Liberal media, on the other hand, needed to court Assange and Wikileaks to avoid being left behind in the media war for big, Pulitzer Prize-winning stories, for audience share and for revenues. Each worried that, were it not to do a deal with Wikileaks, a rival would publish those world-shattering exclusives instead and erode its market share.

Gatekeeper role under threat 

For a brief while, this mutual dependency just about worked. But only for a short time. In truth, the liberal corporate media is far from committed to a model of unmediated, whole-truth journalism. The Wikileaks model undermined the corporate media’s relationship to the power establishment and threatened its access. It introduced a tension and division between the functions of the political elite and the media elite.

Those intimate and self-serving ties are illustrated in the most famous example of corporate media working with a “whistleblower”: the use of a source, known as Deep Throat, who exposed the crimes of President Richard Nixon to Washington Post reporters Woodward and Bernstein back in the early 1970s, in what became known as Watergate. That source, it emerged much later, was actually the associate director of the FBI, Mark Felt.

Far from being driven to bring down Nixon out of principle, Felt wished to settle a score with the administration after he was passed over for promotion. Later, and quite separately, Felt was convicted of authorising his own Watergate-style crimes on behalf of the FBI. In the period before it was known that Felt had been Deep Throat, President Ronald Reagan pardoned him for those crimes. It is perhaps not surprising that this less than glorious context is never mentioned in the self-congratulatory coverage of Watergate by the corporate media.

But worse than the potential rupture between the media elite and the political elite, the Wikileaks model implied an imminent redundancy for the corporate media. In publishing Wikileaks’ revelations, the corporate media feared it was being reduced to the role of a platform – one that could be discarded later – for the publication of truths sourced elsewhere.

The undeclared role of the corporate media, dependent on corporate owners and corporate advertising, is to serve as gatekeeper, deciding which truths should be revealed in the “public interest”, and which whistleblowers will be allowed to disseminate which secrets in their possession. The Wikileaks model threatened to expose that gatekeeping role, and make clearer that the criterion used by corporate media for publication was less “public interest” than “corporate interest”.

In other words, from the start the relationship between Assange and “liberal” elements of the corporate media was fraught with instability and antagonism.

The corporate media had two possible responses to the promised Wikileaks revolution.

One was to get behind it. But that was not straightforward. As we have noted, Wikileaks’ goal of transparency was fundamentally at odds both with the corporate media’s need for access to members of the power elite and with its embedded role, representing one side in the “competition” between rival power centres.

I bet Assange is stuffing himself full of flattened guinea pigs. He really is the most massive turd.

— suzanne moore (@suzanne_moore) June 19, 2012

The corporate media’s other possible response was to get behind the political elite’s efforts to destroy Wikileaks. Once Wikileaks and Assange were disabled, there could be a return to media business as usual. Outlets would once again chase tidbits of information from the corridors of power, getting “exclusives” from the power centres they were allied with.

Put in simple terms, Fox News would continue to get self-serving exclusives against the Democratic party, and MSNBC would get self-serving exclusives against Trump and the Republican Party. That way, everyone would get a slice of editorial action and advertising revenue – and nothing significant would change. The power elite in its two flavours, Democrat and Republican, would continue to run the show unchallenged, switching chairs occasionally as elections required.

From dependency to hostility

Typifying the media’s fraught, early relationship with Assange and Wikileaks – sliding rapidly from initial dependency to outright hostility – was the Guardian. It was a major beneficiary of the Afghan and Iraq war diaries, but very quickly turned its guns on Assange. (Notably, the Guardian would also lead the attack in the UK on the former leader of the Labour party, Jeremy Corbyn, who was seen as threatening a “populist” political insurgency in parallel to Assange’s “populist” media insurgency.)

Assange possibly even the biggest arsehole in Knightsbridge. And what a field that is

— Marina Hyde (@MarinaHyde) May 19, 2017

Despite being widely viewed as a bastion of liberal-left journalism, the Guardian has been actively complicit in rationalising Assange’s confinement and abuse over the past decade and in trivialising the threat posed to him and the future of real journalism by Washington’s long-term efforts to permanently lock him away.

There is not enough space on this page to highlight all the appalling examples of the Guardian’s ridiculing of Assange (a few illustrative tweets scattered through this post will have to suffice) and disparaging of renowned experts in international law who have tried to focus attention on his arbitrary detention and torture. But the compilation of headlines in the tweet below conveys an impression of the antipathy the Guardian has long harboured for Assange, most of it – such as James Ball’s article – now exposed as journalistic malpractice.

The Guardian: Fake news and hostility toward Assange in 44 headlines. #DumpTheGuardian https://t.co/jwl5ZbEOL7

— FiveFilters.org ⏳ (@fivefilters) April 19, 2019

The Guardian’s failings have extended too to the current extradition hearings, which have stripped away years of media noise and character assassination to make plain why Assange has been deprived of his liberty for the past 10 years: because the US wants revenge on him for publishing evidence of its crimes and seeks to deter others from following in his footsteps.

In its pages, the Guardian has barely bothered to cover the case, running superficial, repackaged agency copy. This week it belatedly ran a solitary opinion piece from Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s former leftwing president, to mark the fact that many dozens of former world leaders have called on the UK to halt the extradition proceedings. They appear to appreciate the gravity of the case much more clearly than the Guardian and most other corporate media outlets.

167 politicians, including past & present heads of state, back our appeal to UK government to bring an end to Julian Assange's extradition proceedings & grant him his long overdue freedom:https://t.co/dUsokJWmbX

We @Lawyers4Assange say the politico-legal show must not go on.

— Lawyers for Assange (@Lawyers4Assange) September 20, 2020

But among the Guardian’s own columnists, even its supposedly leftwing ones like Gorge Monbiot and Owen Jones, there has been blanket silence about the hearings. In familiar style, the only in-house commentary on the case so far is yet another snide hit-piece – this one in the fashion section written by Hadley Freeman. It simply ignores the terrifying developments for journalism taking place at the Old Bailey, close by the Guardian’s offices. Instead Freeman mocks the credible fears of Assange’s partner, Stella Moris, that, if Assange is extradited, his two young children may not be allowed contact with their father again.

Freeman’s goal, as has been typical of the Guardian’s modus operandi, is not to raise an issue of substance about what is happening to Assange but to score hollow points in a distracting culture war the paper has become so well-versed in monetising. In her piece, entitled “Ask Hadley: ‘Politicising’ and ‘weaponising’ are becoming rather convenient arguments”, Freeman exploits Assange and Moris’s suffering to advance her own convenient argument that the word “politicised” is much misused – especially, it seems, when criticising the Guardian for its treatment of Assange and Corbyn.

The paper could not make it any plainer. It dismisses the idea that it is a “political” act for the most militarised state on the planet to put on trial a journalist for publishing evidence of its systematic war crimes, with the aim of locking him up permanently.

Shameful but not surprising. This is the sum total of the @guardian's "coverage" during Julian Assange's extradition hearing. Including a hit piece. #DumpTheGuardian #FreeAssange pic.twitter.com/Vd9tpr2Iuo

— Bean🔥 (@SomersetBean) September 16, 2020

Password divulged 

The Guardian may be largely ignoring the hearings, but the Old Bailey is far from ignoring the Guardian. The paper’s name has been cited over and over again in court by lawyers for the US. They have regularly quoted from a 2011 book on Assange by two Guardian reporters, David Leigh and Luke Harding, to bolster the Trump administration’s increasingly frantic arguments for extraditing Assange.

When Leigh worked with Assange, back in 2010, he was the Guardian’s investigations editor and, it should be noted, the brother-in-law of the then-editor, Alan Rusbridger. Harding, meanwhile, is a long-time reporter whose main talent appears to be churning out Guardian books at high speed that closely track the main concerns of the UK and US security services. In the interests of full disclosure, I should note that I had underwhelming experiences dealing with both of them during my years working at the Guardian.

Normally a newspaper would not hesitate to put on its front page reports of the most momentous trial of recent times, and especially one on which the future of journalism depends. That imperative would be all the stronger were its own reporters’ testimony likely to be critical in determining the outcome of the trial. For the Guardian, detailed and prominent reporting of, and commentary on, the Assange extradition hearings should be a double priority.

So how to explain the Guardian’s silence?

The book by Leigh and Harding, WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy, made a lot of money for the Guardian and its authors by hurriedly cashing in on the early notoriety around Assange and Wikileaks. But the problem today is that the Guardian has precisely no interest in drawing attention to the book outside the confines of a repressive courtroom. Indeed, were the book to be subjected to any serious scrutiny, it might now look like an embarrassing, journalistic fraud.

The two authors used the book not only to vent their personal animosity towards Assange – in part because he refused to let them write his official biography – but also to divulge a complex password entrusted to Leigh by Assange that provided access to an online cache of encrypted documents. That egregious mistake by the Guardian opened the door for every security service in the world to break into the file, as well as other files once they could crack Assange’s sophisticated formula for devising passwords.

Much of the furore about Assange’s supposed failure to protect names in the leaked documents published by Assange – now at the heart of the extradition case – stems from Leigh’s much-obscured role in sabotaging Wikileaks’ work. Assange was forced into a damage limitation operation because of Leigh’s incompetence, forcing him to hurriedly publish files so that anyone worried they had been named in the documents could know before hostile security services identified them.

The Guardian has sought for nearly a decade to obscure David Leigh's deeply irresponsible antics in publishing that critically important Wikileaks password.

It's another reason why the Guardian has barely covered the Assange hearings. It goes way beyond 'conflict of interest'

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) September 22, 2020

This week at the Assange hearings, Professor Christian Grothoff, a computer expert at Bern University, noted that Leigh had recounted in his 2011 book how he pressured a reluctant Assange into giving him the password. In his testimony, Grothoff referred to Leigh as a “bad faith actor”.

‘Not a reliable source’ 

Nearly a decade ago Leigh and Harding could not have imagined what would be at stake all these years later – for Assange and for other journalists – because of an accusation in their book that the Wikileaks founder recklessly failed to redact names before publishing the Afghan and Iraq war diaries.

The basis of the accusation rests on Leigh’s highly contentious recollection of a discussion with three other journalists and Assange at a restaurant near the Guardian’s former offices in July 2010, shortly before publication of the Afghan revelations.

According to Leigh, during a conversation about the risks of publication to those who had worked with the US, Assange said: “They’re informants, they deserve to die.” Lawyers for the US have repeatedly cited this line as proof that Assange was indifferent to the fate of those identified in the documents and so did not expend care in redacting names. (Let us note, as an aside, that the US has failed to show that anyone was actually put in harm’s way from publication, and in the Manning trial a US official admitted that no one had been harmed.)

The problem is that Leigh’s recollection of the dinner has not been confirmed by anyone else, and is hotly disputed by another participant, John Goetz of Der Spiegel. He has sworn an affidavit saying Leigh is wrong. He gave testimony at the Old Bailey for the defence last week. Extraordinarily the judge, Vanessa Baraitser, refused to allow him to contest Leigh’s claim, even though lawyers for the US have repeatedly cited that claim.

Statement from journalist John Goetz of Der Spiegel attesting that Assange never made the "they deserve it" comment he was accused of saying by The Guardian's David Leigh. Goetz was at the dinner Assange is alleged to have said it. https://t.co/wexkKhwKg7 pic.twitter.com/FdFRAG4oNH

— Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) September 8, 2020

Further, Goetz, as well as Nicky Hager, an investigative journalist from New Zealand, and Professor John Sloboda, of Iraq Body Count, all of whom worked with Wikileaks to redact names at different times, have testified that Assange was meticulous about the redaction process. Goetz admitted that he had been personally exasperated by the delays imposed by Assange to carry out redactions:

“At that time, I remember being very, very irritated by the constant, unending reminders by Assange that we needed to be secure, that we needed to encrypt things, that we needed to use encrypted chats. … The amount of precautions around the safety of the material were enormous. I thought it was paranoid and crazy but it later became standard journalistic practice.”

Prof Sloboda noted that, as Goetz had implied in his testimony, the pressure to cut corners on redaction came not from Assange but from Wikileaks’ “media partners”, who were desperate to get on with publication. One of the most prominent of those partners, of course, was the Guardian. According to the account of proceedings at the Old Bailey by former UK ambassador Craig Murray:

“Goetz [of Der Spiegel] recalled an email from David Leigh of The Guardian stating that publication of some stories was delayed because of the amount of time WikiLeaks were devoting to the redaction process to get rid of the ‘bad stuff’.” 

When confronted by US counsel with Leigh’s claim in the book about the restaurant conversation, Hager observed witheringly: “I would not regard that [Leigh and Harding’s book] as a reliable source.” Under oath, he ascribed Leigh’s account of the events of that time to “animosity”.

Scoop exposed as fabrication 

Harding is hardly a dispassionate observer either. His most recent “scoop” on Assange, published in the Guardian two years ago, has been exposed as an entirely fabricated smear. It claimed that Assange secretly met a Trump aide, Paul Manafort, and unnamed “Russians” while he was confined to the Ecuadorian embassy in 2016.

Harding’s transparent aim in making this false claim was to revive a so-called “Russiagate” smear suggesting that, in the run-up to the 2016 US presidential election, Assange conspired with the Trump camp and Russian president Vladimir Putin to help get Trump elected. These allegations proved pivotal in alienating Democrats who might otherwise have rallied to Assange’s side, and have helped forge bipartisan support for Trump’s current efforts to extradite Assange and jail him. 

The now forgotten context for these claims was Wikileaks’ publication shortly before the election of a stash of internal Democratic party emails. They exposed corruption, including efforts by Democratic officials to sabotage the party’s primaries to undermine Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton’s rival for the party’s presidential nomination.

Those closest to the release of the emails have maintained that they were leaked by a Democratic party insider. But the Democratic leadership had a pressing need to deflect attention from what the emails revealed. Instead they actively sought to warm up a Cold War-style narrative that the emails had been hacked by Russia to foil the US democratic process and get Trump into power.

No evidence was ever produced for this allegation. Harding, however, was one of the leading proponents of the Russiagate narrative, producing another of his famously fast turnaround books on the subject, Collusion. The complete absence of any supporting evidence for Harding’s claims was exposed in dramatic fashion when he was questioned by journalist Aaron Mate.

Harding’s 2018 story about Manafort was meant to add another layer of confusing mischief to an already tawdry smear campaign. But problematically for Harding, the Ecuadorian embassy at the time of Manafort’s supposed visit was probably the most heavily surveilled building in London. The CIA, as we would later learn, had even illegally installed cameras inside Assange’s quarters to spy on him. There was no way that Manafort and various “Russians” could have visited Assange without leaving a trail of video evidence. And yet none exists. Rather than retract the story, the Guardian has gone to ground, simply refusing to engage with critics. 

Most likely, either Harding or a source were fed the story by a security service in a further bid to damage Assange. Harding made not even the most cursory checks to ensure that his “exclusive” was true.

Unwilling to speak in court 

Despite both Leigh and Harding’s dismal track record in their dealings with Assange, one might imagine that at this critical point – as Assange faces extradition and jail for doing journalism – the pair would want to have their voices heard directly in court rather than allow lawyers to speak for them or allow other journalists to suggest unchallenged that they are “unreliable” or “bad faith” actors.

Leigh could testify at the Old Bailey that he stands by his claims that Assange was indifferent to the dangers posed to informants; or he could concede that his recollection of events may have been mistaken; or clarify that, whatever Assange said at the infamous dinner, he did in fact work scrupulously to redact names – as other witnesses have testified.

Given the grave stakes, for Assange and for journalism, that would be the only honourable thing for Leigh to do: to give his testimony and submit to cross-examination. Instead he shelters behind the US counsel’s interpretation of his words and Judge Baraitser’s refusal to allow anyone else to challenge it, as though Leigh brought his claim down from the mountain top.

The Guardian too, given it central role in the Assange saga, might have been expected to insist on appearing in court, or at the very least to be publishing editorials furiously defending Assange from the concerted legal assault on his rights and journalism’s future. The Guardian’s “star” leftwing columnists, figures like George Monbiot and Owen Jones, might similarly be expected to be rallying readers’ concerns, both in the paper’s pages and on their own social media accounts. Instead they have barely raised their voices above a whisper, as though fearful for their jobs.

These failings are not about the behaviour of any single journalist. They reflect a culture at the Guardian, and by extension in the wider corporate media, that abhors the kind of journalism Assange promoted: a journalism that is open, genuinely truth-seeking, non-aligned and collaborative rather than competitive. The Guardian wants journalism as a closed club, one where journalists are once again treated as high priests by their flock of readers, who know only what the corporate media is willing to disclose to them.

Assange understood the problem back in 2011, as he explained in his interview with Mark Davis (38.00mins):

“There is a point I want to make about perceived moral institutions, such as the Guardian and New York Times. The Guardian has good people in it. It also has a coterie of people at the top who have other interests. … What drives a paper like the Guardian or New York Times is not their inner moral values. It is simply that they have a market. In the UK, there is a market called “educated liberals”. Educated liberals want to buy a newspaper like the Guardian and therefore an institution arises to fulfil that market. … What is in the newspaper is not a reflection of the values of the people in that institution, it is a reflection of the market demand.”

That market demand, in turn, is shaped not by moral values but by economic forces – forces that need a media elite, just as they do a political elite, to shore up an ideological worldview that keeps those elites in power. Assange threatened to bring that whole edifice crashing down. That is why the institutions of the Guardian and the New York Times will shed no more tears than Donald Trump and Joe Biden if Assange ends up spending the rest of his life behind bars.

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

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

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When I was sworn in to practice before the Supreme Court in 2007, I sat near the front of the gallery. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the five-foot-tall justice, was barely visible over the bench behind which she sat. On two occasions, Ginsburg visited the law school where I taught for many years. She graciously created the Thomas Jefferson School of Law Ruth Bader Ginsburg Lecture Series at our annual Women and the Law Conference, which featured leading feminist scholars.

In all three instances, I was struck by the stark contrast between her diminutive stature and her commanding presence. Now, in death, Ginsburg commands the national discourse. How, when and who will fill her vacant seat promises to have a powerful, even determinative, effect on the election and the future of the Supreme Court itself.

After Justice John Paul Stevens retired 10 years ago, Ginsburg assumed the role of leader of the liberal wing of the Supreme Court. During her tenure on the high court, Ginsburg wrote landmark decisions — many of them in dissent — upholding the rights of women, LGBTQ people, immigrants, people of color, criminal defendants, people with mental disabilities, workers, and the poor. Ginsburg “cast more liberal votes than any other justice in the court’s weightiest cases,” law professor and political scientist Lee Epstein from Washington University in St. Louis told The New York Times.

Before her confirmation to the Court in 1993, Ginsburg had already distinguished herself as a leader in the fight for gender equality. As a lawyer for the ACLU during the 1970s, Ginsburg handled six cases in the Supreme Court, winning five of them. In 1971, she scored her first victory in Reed v. Reed, a case in which the Court for the first time struck down a state law as violative of equal protection based on sex discrimination. Ginsburg filed an 88-page brief that detailed the ways in which the law perpetuated the oppression of women. Known as the “grandmother brief,” it provided a model for lawyers litigating gender rights cases. In the brief, Ginsburg argued laws that discriminate based on sex, like those that discriminate on account of race, should be judged with strict judicial scrutiny. Women, like people of color, she noted, have suffered a history of discrimination under the law.

In perhaps her most significant majority opinion as a Supreme Court justice, Ginsburg wrote in the 1996 case of U.S. v. Virginia that excluding women from admission to the Virginia Military Institute violated equal protection. She maintained that sex differences may not be used “for denigration of the members of either sex or for artificial constraints on an individual’s opportunity.” Differential treatment, Ginsburg wrote, cannot “create or perpetuate the legal, social, and economic inferiority of women.”

One of Ginsburg’s monumental dissents came in the 2007 case of Ledbetter v. Tire and Rubber Co., in which the majority upheld strict time limits for filing employment discrimination claims under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. She pointed out that pay discrimination is not always easy to identify, writing, “Comparative pay information, moreover, is often hidden from the employee’s view. Employers may keep under wraps the pay differentials maintained among supervisors, no less the reasons for those differentials.” Ginsburg challenged Congress to overturn the ruling by changing the law, writing, “the ball is in Congress’ court.” Congress complied by passing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009.

Another momentous Ginsburg dissent came in 2013 in the case of Shelby County v. Holder, in which the majority struck down Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, that had established a formula for preclearance of jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination. Ginsburg wrote, “Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.” Ginsburg’s critique has particular resonance as the GOP increases its voter suppression efforts in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election. When she read her dissent from the bench, Ginsburg departed slightly from its written version in quoting Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous statement, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” and adding, “if there is a steadfast commitment to see the task through to completion.”

One of Ginsburg’s most noteworthy dissents came in the 2000 case that anointed George W. Bush president of the United States. In Bush v. Gore, a 5-4 majority of the Court overruled the Florida Supreme Court’s order for a statewide manual recount in a very close election. Although conservatives usually champion states’ rights, they turned that proclivity on its head to hand the election to Bush. Ginsburg noted, “[T]he Court’s conclusion that a constitutionally adequate recount is impractical is a prophecy the Court’s own judgment will not allow to be tested. Such an untested prophecy should not decide the Presidency of the United States.”

Bush v. Gore is especially ironic in light of Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s unconscionable and hypocritical rush to confirm Ginsburg’s successor before Inauguration Day. It remains to be seen whether, with the election less than six weeks away, four Republican senators will vote with the Democrats to refrain from filling Ginsburg’s seat and leave the decision for the next president.

The Court now has eight members, three liberals and five conservatives. Chief Justice John Roberts, mindful of the legacy of the Roberts Court, ruled with the liberals to strike down an abortion restriction and uphold the Affordable Care Act. Until Ginsburg’s death, Roberts had been the swing vote on the Court. A Trump appointment would substitute a right-wing justice for Ginsburg, making a 6-3 conservative majority. There would be solid votes to overrule Roe v. Wade and strike down the Affordable Care Act.

During her 27 years on the Supreme Court, Ginsburg was a consistent protector of the poor and the disenfranchised. One must hope that the next justice who fills her seat will rule in the tradition of this legendary liberal justice.

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

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