One year has passed since the world was shocked by the images of the fires blazing across the Amazon in Brazil. But since then, the forest hasn’t stopped burning —and 2020 could be even more devastating for the rainforest and the Indigenous Peoples who call it home. Last week, Greenpeace Brazil flew over the state of Mato Grosso to capture images of the Amazon. Even though the government had ordered a ban on forest fires in the state starting at the beginning of July, the photos show smoke, flames, and just how ineffective the ban has been.

Last year, more than 1 million hectares of forest were burned, and the trend shows the destruction is far from over. Last June, more than two thousand fire hotspots were registered in the Amazon, the highest number in the last thirteen years. Since Brazil’s President Bolsonaro took office in January 2019, his government’s agenda has been very clear: dismantle environmental protection law and agencies, so that forest destroyers can burn the forest freely, clearing the land to turn it into pastures, without being held accountable.

The consequences of this destruction are dire. From Siberia to the Amazon, fires are raging across the world. Losing our forests means losing the fight against the climate crisis, putting biodiversity at risk of extinction, and threatening the lives of Indigenous Peoples who depend on the forest standing for their survival. Fighting to protect the forest and Indigenous lands from fires and deforestation become even more difficult—and crucial —during a pandemic.

In 2019, the images of the fires raging in the Amazon went viral and shocked the world. © Victor Moriyama / Greenpeace

With a mortality rate from COVID-19 150% higher than the Brazilian average, Indigenous Peoples are already more vulnerable during the pandemic. The smoke from the fires will put their respiratory system at even higher risk during a time when access to healthcare is limited in remote areas in the Amazon.

But things can be different. After the public’s outcry last year, there is increasing pressure on Brazil’s government. Investors, companies and governments have been signaling their concerns about the destruction of the forest and its impact on the environment, and their message is clear: they don’t want to do business with forest destroyers. Even though last week Bolsonaro announced a “fire moratorium” for 120 days, the images of Mato Grosso show how his measures have been performative and inefficient.

With 4,437 hotspots, the state of Mato Grosso has had the highest number of fires in the Brazilian Amazon this year. © Christian Braga / Greenpeace

To properly protect the forest and its Peoples, the Brazilian government must properly fund environmental agencies, reinforce environmental laws and protect the rights of Indigenous Peoples. The exploitation of nature and people is a major cause of the current health, climate and biodiversity crises.

We must demand governments and companies end business with forest destroyers and invest and support resilient economies that put nature and people first.

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Diego Gonzaga is a content editor for Greenpeace International based in San Francisco, US.

Featured image: Between 7-10 July, Greenpeace Brazil flew over the state of Mato Grosso to capture images of fires burning in the Amazon © Christian Braga / Greenpeace

U.S. foreign policy suffers from such tunnel vision that it is unable to change course even with the appearance of something as colossal as the COVID-19 pandemic. The American foreign policy response to the pandemic has ranged from the negative end of the spectrum where the pandemic is ignored and no change is made to the positive end of the spectrum where the pandemic is welcomed as a useful tool for foreign policy.

Yemen

The suffering in Yemen is incalculable and indescribable. Already nightmarish, it has been made more terrifying by the COVID-19 pandemic. The United Nations begged countries to pause hostilities and stop fighting each other to allow suffering countries to fight the pandemic instead. But while Saudi Arabia has at times expressed a willingness to respect that humanitarian call in Yemen, the United States, blinded by a misplaced anti-Iranian foreign policy in Yemen, has continued to provide weapons and support to Saudi Arabia as has its British, French and Canadian allies.

China

In Yemen, the appearance of the pandemic caused no change in American foreign policy. In China, it provided the positive opportunity to intensify a propaganda war. The first propaganda shots were fired by Trump’s rebranding the virus as the “Chinese virus” or the “Wuhan virus.”

The war escalated from name calling to bullying when Trump pulled the US out of the World Health Organization, accusing it of being “China-centric.” Since the US was the largest state donor to the WHO, contributing 14.67% of funding, it’s withdrawal, which dangerously leaves Bill Gates with the controlling share international health organization, hurts countries burdened with the pandemic when they most need help. Medical associations and allies, including the European Union, have criticized the move for the pain it will cause pandemic torn countries. So, the foreign policy moved from words to hurting countries struggling with the pandemic who needed help the most.

Iran

In Iran, policy moved from no change or wars of words to using the virus as a weapon. In America, obsession with Iran and the maximum pressure campaign out-muscled humanitarian concerns for innocent civilians dying from the virus. “Our policy of maximum pressure on the regime continues,” US Special Representative for Iranian Affairs Brian Hook said, as the State Department added more sanctions on Iran, one of the countries worst hit by the pandemic. Iran had pleaded for an easing of sanctions, since US sanctions are “severely hampering” Iran’s fight against the coronavirus. Intensifying the sanctions rather than easing them to allow Iran to fight the virus is a form of “medical terrorism,” according to Iran’s foreign minister Javad Zarif.

Venezuela

Venezuela’s struggle against the pandemic is also being fought with American sanctions tying its hands behind its back. In Venezuela, American pandemic policy moved from words, to bullying to extortion. The US attempted to add muscle to its foreign policy of completing a coup in Venezuela by making any hope for sanction relief contingent on democratically elected president Nicolás Maduro surrendering to regime change demands and abandoning his office, completing a decades-long attempt at a coup that dates all the way back to Hugo Chávez in 2002. The US is taking advantage of mass Venezuelan deaths during a pandemic to force Maduro and the party of Chávez out of office. Though disguised as a compromise transition, it is neither a compromise nor a transition, as Maduro would be forced from office and not allowed to run again. Meanwhile, the lives of Venezuelans are held hostage, while the pretender, Juan Guaidó, would be allowed to compete in the next election.

Bolivia

In Venezuela, the pandemic is exploited to advance a coup; in Bolivia, it is exploited to maintain a coup. In 2019, the democratically elected and popular president, Evo Morales, was forced from power in a US supported coup. His legitimate re-election underwent a deceptive American metamorphosis that gave it the illusory appearance of an illegitimate election. But the problem with coups that replace a government the people want with a government the people don’t want is that the people possess memories and consciousness and will eventually return their chosen government to power in a subsequent election. Unless you prevent the election.

In late July, 2020, Bolivia delayed elections, thrusting them into the unreliable future. They blamed the delay on the COVID-19 pandemic. Elections once scheduled for September 6 would now not be held until October 18, if then: this rescheduling is the third delay of the elections that would surely dethrone the coup government of Jeanine Anez. If you let the people vote, only 13.3% of them would vote for the coup government, while 41.9% say they would vote for the party of Evo Morales, according to recent polling by El Centro Estratégico Latinoamericano de Geopolítica.

In Bolivia, a US recognized and supported coup government is using the pandemic to keep the people from removing it from power and to keep itself in power (a foreign policy strategy that Trump has flirted with in his own domestic policy).

Israel

America’s closest allies have similarly cynically used the pandemic. While Israel acted heroically fast to set up testing for its Jewish population, “It took more than one month from the first confirmed coronavirus case in Israel for it to set up a testing facility in East Jerusalem” for its Palestinian population. Palestinians had to wait much longer still for additional testing centers.

But Israel did not just delay construction of COVID centers, they also deconstructed them. On July 21, as Palestinian COVID cases spiked and hospitals overflowed, the Israeli Civil Administration demolished a West Bank testing and quarantine center that it was hoped would help overwhelmed hospitals.

And it wasn’t just Palestinians in hospitals that would suffer: Palestinians in prison would too. Two days after the demolition, Israel’s top court ruled that Palestinian prisoners have no right to social distancing. The ruling specifically applied to a prison in Northern Israel that holds 450 Palestinian prisoners and in which several guards and prisoners have already tested positive.

So, the coronavirus may be novel, but there is nothing novel about the pursuit of policy goals by the US and its allies.

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Ted Snider has a graduate degree in philosophy and writes on analyzing patterns in US foreign policy and history.

The continued presence of tens of thousands of American military personnel in Europe seventy-five years after the end of the Second World War is rarely questioned either by politicians or the mainstream media. Currently there is little recollection of how, after the war ended, soldiers from Britain, France, the U.S. and the Soviet Union occupied Germany, each in a designated zone. Germany’s capital Berlin was divided into four sectors, each with a foreign military occupying force. I was a part of that occupation force from 1968 through 1971, serving in the U.S. Army’s Berlin Brigade as part of the 430^th Military Intelligence Detachment.

The initial intention to keep postwar Germany in check morphed into the Cold War with the Soviets. The Soviet sector of Berlin became the capital of communist East Germany while the U.S. led efforts to create a military union based in Western Europe that would resist further Russian expansion. That alliance became the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949, a structure that incorporated the newly minted Federal Republic of Germany, and the Soviets countered with the Warsaw Pact that included nearly all of Eastern Europe. Both the Organization and Pact were ostensibly defensive alliances and the U.S. active participation was intended to demonstrate American resolve to come to the aid of the Europeans. The Cold War between the two alliances continued until 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed. Germany was reunited, the Berlin wall was torn down, the foreign troops went home and the city again became the country’s capital.

During my time in Germany the Cold War was decidedly hot, having relatively recently witnessed the Russian denial of Berlin’s occupied city status shared among the four victorious nations by building a wall and confronting U.S. forces at the new border crossing points. My recollection is that in 1970 there were more than 10,000 GIs in Berlin alone and about 200,000 more stationed in West Germany.

Today there are approximately 36,000 American soldiers and airmen based in a reunited Germany but President Donald Trump decided in early June to withdraw 9,500 of them and to also cap the total U.S. military presence in that country at 24,000, which would involve 2,500 more cuts and might go even deeper depending on what is eventually included in the numbers. Preliminary planning suggests that about 5,600 will be repositioned to other NATO countries, including Italy, Belgium and Poland, while 6,400 will be returned to the U.S., from which point they might go on to the Pacific theater to confront “Chinese ambitions.” Unlike previous Trump pronouncements on reductions in force in Afghanistan and Syria, neither of which has actually been achieved, this latest move regarding Germany appears to be serious.

As some of the soldiers that are being re-positioned elsewhere in Europe will undoubtedly be closer to the border with Russia, there should be no doubt but that the Kremlin is still the designated enemy. Whether Russia is an actual threat is questionable and many observers privately believe that NATO is an anachronism, kept going by the many statesmen and military establishments of the various countries that have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.

In spite of the clearly diminished threat in Europe, NATO has expanded to 30 members, including most of the former communist states that made up the Warsaw Pact. The most recent acquisition was Montenegro in 2016, which contributed 2,400 soldiers to the NATO force. Since the demise of the Warsaw Pact, NATO has found work in bombing Serbia, destroying Libya and in helping in the unending task to train an Afghan army, tasks which were not envisioned when the treaty was signed in 1949.

Trump has also stated his intention to move the European Headquarters of U.S. forces from Stuttgart in Germany to Mons, near Brussels in Belgium. The move would seem to make some limited sense as NATO headquarters is also in Brussels, but there is also a political dimension to it. Trump has been sending the not unreasonable message that if the Europeans want more defense, they should pay for it themselves, though he has wrapped his proposal in his usual insulting and derogatory language. A wealthy Germany currently spends 1.1% of GDP on its military, far less than the 2% that NATO has declared to be a target to meet alliance commitments. That compares with the nearly 5% that the U.S. has been spending globally, inclusive of intelligence and national security costs.

Trump might actually have a reasonable U.S. perspective on the burden sharing issue, but the European concern is more focused on how Trump does what he does. For example, he announced the downsizing in June without informing any of America’s NATO partners. The Germans were surprised and pushed back immediately. German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas regretted the planned withdrawal, describing Berlin’s relationship with the Washington as “complicated.” Chancellor Angela Merkel was reportedly shocked. And Trump made matters worse last week when he tweeted

“Germany pays Russia billions of dollars a year for Energy, and we are supposed to protect Germany from Russia” before maladroitly observing that “The United States has been taken advantage of for 25 years, both on trade and on the military. We are protecting Germany. So we’re reducing the force because they’re not paying their bill. It’s very simple: They’re delinquent. Very simple.”

The timing of the decision has also been questioned, with many observers believing that Trump deliberately staged the announcement to punish Merkel for refusing to attend a planned G-7 Summit in the U.S. that the president had been trying to arrange. Merkel argued that dealing with the consequences of the coronavirus made it difficult for her to leave home and the G-7 planning never got off the ground, which angered Trump, who wanted to demonstrate his global leadership in an election year.

Predictably, the Democrats and also some Republicans are piling on Trump over the decision. Joe Biden sees a “profound problem” in the withdrawal while Senator Bob Menendez of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee quipped “Champagne must be flowing freely this evening at the Kremlin.” Republican Mitt Romney declared the move to be “grave error…a slap in the face at a friend and ally when we should instead be drawing closer in our mutual commitment to deter Russian and Chinese aggression. The move may temporarily play well in domestic politics, but its consequences will be lasting and harmful to American interests.”

The limited reduction in force actually makes no sense if one believes that NATO itself should instead be terminated due to its lacking any credible threat from Russia or from anyone else. A recent opinion poll suggests that keeping U.S. troops in Germany is not considered desirable by the Germans themselves, only 15% of whom support their remaining on national security grounds. And moving troops to Belgium and Italy is going in the wrong direction if one actually considers that there is an active threat from Moscow.

Nor does moving soldiers from one country that is behind on its 2% “dues” to NATO to other countries that are likewise in arrears make any practical sense but for a president who feels personally affronted by a foreign leader and is choosing to react petulantly as punishment. The disruption to U.S. military facilities that currently provide support to elements in Africa and the Middle East will be considerable, and the move will also not be cost-free. According to the New York Times, “Repositioning the troops will cost several billion dollars. The withdrawal and shifting of forces is likely to take months, if not years.”

And, of course, the real kicker is that if Joe Biden is elected president in a little less than three months the whole planned move will be scrapped by the victorious and persistently warlike Democrats. No wonder Americans’ trust in the rationality of their government is at an all time low.

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This article was originally published on American Herald Tribune.

Philip M. Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer who served nineteen years overseas in Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Spain. He was the CIA Chief of Base for the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 and was one of the first Americans to enter Afghanistan in December 2001. Phil is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a Washington-based advocacy group that seeks to encourage and promote a U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East that is consistent with American values and interests. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: President Donald J. Trump participates in a bilateral meeting with the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany Angela Merkel during the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) 70th anniversary meeting Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2019 in London. (Credit: Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

The Brazilian Amazon is hemorrhaging illegally traded wildlife according to a new report released Monday. Each year, thousands of silver-voiced saffron finches and other songbirds, along with rare macaws and parrots, are captured, trafficked and sold as pets. Some are auctioned as future contestants in songbird contests. Others are exported around the globe.

Fish bound for ornamental home aquariums also pour out of the Amazon, including the tiny, iridescent blue and red cardinal tetra. Arapaima fish — also known as pirarucù, one of the world’s largest freshwater fish — are caught illegally, “laundered” amidst captive-bred specimens and shipped to the U.S. in large numbers.

Other fish are headed for the dinner table, as are freshwater turtles and their eggs, while tapir, peccary and other mammals are sold in Brazil as bushmeat. Jaguar teeth, heads and skins are shipped to China.

Millions of animals are being illegally captured and traded live and in parts in a thriving Brazilian black market, according to the report, produced by TRAFFIC, a UK-based nonprofit that studies the trade.

“The pervasive and uncontrolled capture of wild animals and plants for the illegal trade is having grave consequences for Brazilian biodiversity, the national economy, the rule of law and good governance,” it says.

Lack of data hides trafficking

Deep-dive research by biodiversity consultant Sandra Charity — who wrote the 140-page study with Juliana Ferreira, executive director of the nonprofit conservation group Freeland Brasil —focused on Amazon rainforest species and closely investigated the domestic bird trade.

Importantly, the researchers found that an ever-increasing segment of the illegal trade launders poached animals via a sprawling, legal captive breeding industry — a network that specializes in birds, which have a huge domestic market in Brazil.

The authors also discovered that few government agencies have kept records or reported solid data that quantify the true scope of the problem. In many cases, records did not even identify the species or number of animals seized by authorities, while data coming from the Amazon was “notoriously scarce.”

“Significant seizures are made on a daily basis by Amazon state law enforcement, and we did not have access to their data,” Ferreria said, adding, “from what we saw, [the illegal trade] is even bigger than we imagined.”

Trends remain difficult to track, however, since seizure data alone represents a mere fraction of animals illegally pulled from the wild. But it is clear from existing data that there is an uptick in smuggling of some species, including jaguars: seizures increased by 200% from 2012 to 2018.

The lack of comprehensive data, the report notes, tends to play down the importance, as well as concealing the severity, of Brazilian trafficking — undermining enforcement efforts, legal attention and the funding needed to fight it.

But the study warns that the illegal trade is having serious consequences not only for the animals seized, but for entire species, ecosystems and people, not just in the Amazon but around the globe. The current COVID-19 epidemic, for example, caused by a coronavirus that jumped from wildlife to humans, has reminded the world that trafficking in wild animals is not merely a conservation issue, says Ferreira. It’s both a public health issue and a biosafety issue.

An overarching national strategy is needed now to deal effectively with the problem, said the research team.

Impact on the Amazon

Today’s vigorous, deadly commerce has helped speed the demise of 1,173 species that are either facing extinction or have already vanished in Brazil. Often the largest, strongest, most beautiful animals are lost, impacting the entire population. For example, the trade targets male birds with their showy plumage, while the few survivors of a species remaining in the wild can become inbred, weakening the gene pool and genetic resilience.

The scope of the plunder has also sparked concern over broader, cascading ecosystem impacts, says Ferreira, who explained that regularly taking animals from wild populations creates a domino effect, dismantling the biological and physical systems that sustain all life on Earth.

For example, without birds that act as pollinators and seed-dispersers, trees and plants that many creatures rely on for food disappear. Tropical forests also act as huge carbon vaults, mitigating climate change and extreme weather; they offer buffers from flooding and provide drinking water for millions of people. Losing millions of animals every year to trafficking could lead not only to empty forests, but eventually cause whole ecosystems to crash.

Trafficking as global organized crime

The wildlife trade is also gaining increasing attention because of its lawless perpetrators: transnational criminal trafficking networks span the globe, make huge profits and cultivating massive corruption. Their illicit supply chain extends from the Amazon to almost every continent.

The Global Environment Facility (GEF) describes the illegal wildlife trade as “one of the most lucrative illegal businesses in the world.” It’s ranked as the world’s fourth largest source of criminal earnings, generating up to US $23 billion annually. With so much money changing hands under the table, the trade has even become a global national security issue.

But even though environmental authorities may seize illegally traded animals and apprehend some smugglers, the study notes that law enforcement is not targeting the kingpins who mastermind the trade or its supply chains. As a result, this shadowy underworld industry thrives as it breeds widespread corruption, bribery, fraud, forgery, money laundering and smuggling.

Image on the right: Jaguar (Panthera onca), Pantanal, Mato Grosso state, Brazil. © Staffan Widstrand / WWF.

Unfortunately, “Existing legislation does not consider wildlife trafficking a ‘serious crime,’” and there are numerous loopholes and inconsistencies in laws, the report says. Since the illicit trade is such a lucrative business, mild penalties offer little deterrent. A six- to 12-month “detention” is common, which is just restriction of freedom — not jail time — or is negotiated down to a stint at community service.

In addition, the report documented extensive evidence of widespread fraud by both private and commercial breeders in Brazil who forged permits, mislabeled species declarations, and tampered with government-issued identification rings to sell illegally-acquired songbirds alongside those they legally breed. This particular market is largely domestic, feeding an entrenched Brazilian culture that keeps songbirds as pets. IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental agency, estimated that in 2015 alone, some three million passerine birds were fraudulently listed with the government — 75% of all that were registered.

Image below: Jaguars are threatened by the trafficking of parts in local and international markets. © Diego Pérez / WWF.

Curbing Amazon trafficking

While the goal of the new report was not to make a comprehensive assessment of the international trade, the authors found that foreign buyers are driving much of it. “It seems that some Asian countries are sourcing more species in Brazil, such as sea cucumber, sea horses, ornamental fish, jaguars and shark fin,” Ferreira said, adding that the U.S. is a top consumer of ornamental fish and leather made from pirarucu skin. Birds, amphibians and reptiles typically sell to European collectors, and the Middle East is a market for Amazon raptors.

Digital commerce — the Internet, social media and messaging groups — have become key “sales offices” for wild animals and the products made from them. The “merchandise” itself is moved in every way imaginable: via cars, buses, boats, planes and overnight courier services. Human “mules” have been arrested with birds or eggs taped to their bodies or concealed in clothing. A porous, 8,000-mile border between Brazil and eight Amazon neighbors creates an easy flow. The Peruvian and Colombian borders in the Northwestern Amazon form a “particularly relevant hub” for trafficking, the report noted.

Big-headed Amazon river turtle (Peltocephalus dumeriliana), Rio Negro, Amazonas state, Brazil. © Staffan Widstrand / WWF.

Combatting the trade requires that it be recognized and treated as a serious crime. More complete data is also needed that will allow for strategic planning and strengthened law enforcement, says lead author Sandra Charity. Stronger national laws that target professional traffickers would also allow for the implementation of the UN Convention on Organized Crime, she said.

Without a market, there is no commerce, so educating consumers is key, concludes Ferreira.

“Ultimately, it is a matter of choosing why we are buying that animal, or wildlife product, and if it is worth it…. Cultures are dynamic and need to evolve. We need to start to change the way we view wildlife as commodities,” she said, and “we also need to understand that loving an animal does equal imprisoning them.”

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Featured image: A squirrel monkey in the Cazumbá-Iracema Extractive Reserve in Acre state, Brazil. © Rubens Matsushita / ICMBio.

华盛顿的战略目标之一是将主要的海上通道军事化，从地中海到南亚和远东，经过苏伊士运河、红海、亚丁湾、阿拉伯海、孟加拉湾、马六甲-新加坡海峡到南中国海和东中国海。见下图）。

这条海路是东亚、非洲、中东和西欧之间进行商品贸易的中心。美国在也门和索马里（亚丁湾）的主导战争在这方面具有战略意义。

美国还从其迪戈加西亚军事基地在印度洋发挥其战略存在。

这些军事化的海上航线不言而喻的目标是破坏北京一带一路倡议下的中国海上丝绸之路。
目前，一场危险的游戏正在印度洋展开。美印联合海军行动设想在阿达曼海进行。印度时报》证实，美印战争游戏计划在尼科巴群岛附近举行。

这些战争游戏发生在政治对抗之际，特朗普总统持续不断地对中国发出威胁。

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The Militarization of Strategic Waterways: US- India War Games Contemplated. Aggressive “Signal to China”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, July 23, 2020

7月13日，一则国际新闻报道称，欧盟委员会将优先讨论欧盟应如何应对中国的香港国家安全法，这是北京为保护中国领土香港的公民免受西方煽动的骚乱和恐怖行为侵害而作出的主权决定。这显然是德国外长马斯(Heiko Maas)的心头好，他把这个问题作为欧委会的优先事项提出来讨论。

你能想象吗？欧委会甚至大胆地建议辩论欧洲应该对主权中国的完全内部事务做出什么反应？

如果中国要评论他们欧盟集体或个人的主权内部事务，欧洲、德国、法国或其他欧盟成员国会怎么说？- 不难看出，西方相对于东方，尤其是中国和俄罗斯的虚伪。

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China’s Vision in a Post-COVID World                                                                                                     

By Peter Koenig, July 28, 2020

This article first published on April 3, 2020 provides a detailed overview. 

In the last two months, numerous medical reports confirm that the Covid-19 “estimates” have been the object of manipulation with a view to sustaining the fear campaign. 

The public has been misinformed.  The figures are inflated.  The dangers of infection are vastly exaggerated.  Ironically, Anthony Fauci, Adviser to Donald Trump confirms in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) that COVID-19 is “akin to severe seasonal influenza or pandemic influenza.”

Michel Chossudovsky, August 2, 2020

Part I

Introduction

Do not let yourself be misled by the fear campaign, pointing to a Worldwide coronavirus calamity with repeated “predictions” that hundreds of thousands of people are going to die.

Screenshot The Hill 

According to the WHO and John Hopkins Medicine (see below),  the risks of dying from influenza (annual) compared to those of  COVID-19. (from January through early April)

Source; John Hopkins Medicine

Moreover, the media fails to acknowledge that there are simple and effective treatments for COVID-19. In fact, the reports on the treatment of COVID-19 are being suppressed. And the issue of “recovery” is barely mentioned. 

Persistent headlines and TV reports. Fear and panic. Neither the WHO nor our governments have taken the trouble to reassure us. 

According to the latest media hype, citing and often distorting scientific opinion (CNBC)

Statistical Models by Washington think tanks predict a scenario of devastation suggesting that “more than a million Americans could die if the nation does not take swift action to stop its spread as quickly as possible”.

One model from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggested that between 160 million and 210 million Americans could contract the disease over as long as a year. Based on mortality data and current hospital capacity, the number of deaths under the CDC’s scenarios ranged from 200,000 to as many as 1.7 million. (The Hill, March 13, 2020)

The Unspoken Truth:  Unprecedented Global Crisis

The unspoken truth is that the novel coronavirus provides a pretext to powerful financial interests and corrupt politicians to trigger the entire World into a spiral of  mass unemployment, bankruptcy, extreme poverty and despair.

This is the true picture of what is happening. “Planet Lockdown” is an encroachment on civil liberties and the “Right to Life”. Entire national economies are in jeopardy. In some countries martial law has been declared.

Small and medium sized capital are slated to be eliminated. Big capital prevails. A massive concentration of corporate wealth is ongoing.

Is a diabolical “New World Order” in the making as suggested by Henry Kissinger (WSJ Opinion, April 3, 2020):

“The Coronavirus Pandemic Will Forever Alter the World Order”.

Recall Kissinger’s historic 1974 statement: “Depopulation should be the highest priority of US foreign policy towards the Third World.” (1974 National Security Council Memorandum)

This crisis is unprecedented in World history. It is destabilizing and destroying people’s lives Worldwide. It’s a “War against Humanity”.

While it is presented to World public opinion as a WHO global health emergency, what is really at stake are the mechanisms of  “economic warfare” sustained by fear and intimidation, with devastating consequences.

The economic and social impacts far exceed those attributed to the coronavirus. Cited below are selected examples of  a global process:

• Massive job losses and layoffs in the US, with more than 10 million workers filing claims for unemployment benefits.
• In India,  a 21 days lockdown has triggered a wave of famine and despair affecting millions of homeless migrant workers all over the country. No lockdown for the homeless: “too poor to afford a meal”.
• The impoverishment in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa is beyond description. For large sectors of the urban population, household income has literally been wiped out.
• In Italy, the destabilization of the tourist industry has resulted in bankruptcies and rising unemployment.
• In many countries, citizens are the object of police violence. Five people involved in protests against the lockdown were killed by police in Kenya and South Africa.

The WHO’s global health emergency was declared on January 30th, when there were 150 confirmed cases outside China. From the outset it was based on a Big Lie.

Moreover, the timing of the WHO emergency coincided with America’s ongoing wars as well simmering financial instability on the World’s stock markets.

Is the global lockdown which engineers Worldwide economic destruction in any way related to America’s global military agenda?

“The coronavirus pandemic is magnifying the cruelty of US foreign policy”

This is an exceedingly complex process which we have examined in detail in the course of the last two months. Consult our archive on coronavirus. 

To reverse the tide, we must confront the lies.  And the lies are overwhelming. A counter propaganda initiative is required.

When the Lie becomes the Truth, there is No Moving Backwards.

Part II

In Part II we will focus on the following issues:

• the definition of COVID-19 and the assessment of the number of “confirmed cases”, 
• the risks to people’s health,
• how the alleged epidemic is measured and identified. 

The Spread of the COVID-19 Infection

In many countries including the US, there is no precise lab test which will identify COVID-19 as the cause of a positive infection. Meanwhile the media will not only quote unreliable statistics, it will forecast a doomsday scenario. 

Let us put the discussion on COVID-19 in context.

What is a Human Coronavirus.  “Coronaviruses are everywhere”. They are categorized as “the second leading cause of the common cold (after rhinoviruses)”. Since the 2003 outbreak of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus), several (new) corona viruses were identified. COVID-19 is categorized as a novel or new corona virus initially named SARS-CoV-2.

According to Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, pneumonia is “regularly caused or accompanied by corona viruses”. And that has been the case for many years prior to the identification of the COVID-19 in January 2020:

[It is a] well-known fact that in every “flu wave” 7-15% of acute respiratory illnesses (ARI) are coming along with coronaviruses” 

The COVID-19 belongs to the family of coronviruses which trigger colds and seasonal influenza. We will also address the lab tests required to estimate the data as well as the spread of the COVID-19.  The WHO defines the COVID-19 as follows:

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

The prestigious New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) in an article entitled Covid-19 — Navigating the Uncharted provides the following definition:

The overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.“

These assessments confirm that COVID-19 is akin to seasonal influenza and pneumonia, categorized as contagious respiratory infections.

If the above definitions had made the headlines, there would have been no fear and panic.

The COVID-19. Tests and Data Collection

The H1N1 Pandemic 2009. Déjà Vu

This is not the first time that a global health emergency has been called by the WHO in close liaison with Big Pharma.

H1N1 Fake Data 

In many regards, the H1N1 2009 pandemic reveals the problems of data collection and analysis which we are facing now in relation to COVID-19

Following the outbreak of the H1N1 swine flu in Mexico, the data collection was at the outset scanty and incomplete, as confirmed by official statements. The Atlanta based Center for Disease Control (CDC) acknowledged that what was being collected in the US were figures of  “confirmed and probable cases”. There was, however, no breakdown between “confirmed” and “probable”. In fact, only a small percentage of the reported cases were “confirmed” by a laboratory test.

There was no attempt to improve the process of data collection in terms of lab confirmation. In fact quite the opposite. Following the level 6 Pandemic announcement by Dr. Margaret Chan, both the WHO and the CDC decided that data collection of individual confirmed and probable cases was no longer necessary to ascertain the spread of swine flu. One month after the announcement of the level six pandemic, the WHO discontinued the collection of  “confirmed cases”. It did not require member countries to send in figures pertaining to confirmed or probable cases. WHO, Briefing note, 2009)

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

In 2010, Dr. Margaret Chan and the WHO were the object of an investigation by the European Parliament:

“Confirmed Cases”: The CDC Methodology

The CDC methodology in 2020 is broadly similar (with minor changes in terminology) to that applied to the H1N1 pandemic in 2009. “Probable cases” was replaced by “Presumptive cases”.

Presumptive vs. Confirmed Cases

According to the CDC the data presented for the United States include both “confirmed” and “presumptive” positive cases of COVID-19 reported to CDC or tested at CDC since January 21, 2020″.

The presumptive positive data does not confirm coronavirus infection: Presumptive testing involves “chemical analysis of a sample that establishes the possibility that a substance is present“ (emphasis added). But it does not confirm the presence of COVID-19. The presumptive test must then be sent for confirmation to an accredited government health lab. (For further details see: Michel Chossudovsky, Spinning Fear and Panic Across America. Analysis of COVID-19 Data, March 20, 2020)

How is the COVID-19 Data Tabulated?

The presumptive (PC) and confirmed cases (CC) are lumped together.  And the total number (PC + CC ) constitutes the basis for establishing the data for COVID-19 infection. It’s like adding apples and oranges. The total figure (PC+CC) categorized as “Total cases” is meaningless. It does not measure positive COVID-19 Infection. And among those “total cases” are “recovered cases”.

CDC Data for April 5, 2020

But there is another important consideration: the required CDC lab test pertaining to CC (confirmed cases) is intended to “confirm the infection”. But does it confirm that the infection was caused by COVID-19?

The COVID-19 is a coronavirus which is associated with the broad symptoms of  seasonal influenza and pneumonia. Are the lab exams pertaining to COVID-19 (confirmed cases) in a position to establish unequivocally the prevalence of COVID-19 positive infection?

Below are criteria and guidelines confirmed by the CDC pertaining to “The CDC 2019-Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel” (Read carefully):

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In few areas are Russia’s and Ukraine’s divergent fortunes as evident as in naval armaments. Whereas the Russian Navy has overcome the malaise of the 1990s and went on to introduce new classes of warships, including state-of-the-art missile frigates, attack submarines, and the mysterious “Poseidon-carriers”, Ukraine has gone in the opposite direction. In spite of having begun in roughly the same shape and in possession of the Nikolayev Shipyard, where all manner of ships up to and including aircraft carriers were built. The never-finished Slava-class guided missile cruiser Ukraina that is still slowly disintegrating at that shipyard has come to symbolize not only the fate of Ukraine’s navy but the country itself.

The fleet’s flagship Hetman Sahaydachny, a former Soviet maritime border guard frigate, has seen considerable time underway in better times, even participating in multinational anti-piracy missions off the Horn of Africa. After 2014, its condition rapidly declined even though it nominally participated in Sea Breeze exercises with NATO as late as 2018. While it is currently officially being refitted with new electronic equipment and is scheduled to return to active service in 2021, the ship’s future is still in doubt. While there was some discussion concerning the construction of a squadron of 2,000 missile corvettes fitted with both Western and Ukrainian weapons and electronics, for understandable reasons that project never progressed very far.

Ukraine and United States have reportedly held discussions on the acquisition of one or two Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates but, even if these elderly ships were to be transferred to Ukraine for free, the country would still face massive problems trying to crew and operate them, due to the systems and weapons not being compatible with anything else currently in use by Ukraine. Moreover, the Perries were designed as low-cost anti-submarine escorts for use in the Atlantic, and aren’t suitable for operations close to hostile coastlines where their weak anti-air and anti-surface weaponry becomes a liability.

Thus, the future of Ukraine’s navy as a blue-water force looks fairly bleak, with no modern vessels in service or projected for acquisition. That state of affairs appears to satisfy the official Kiev, under whose leadership the navy became more of a littoral, coastal force whose main areas of interest are offshore economic zones of the Black Sea and the efforts to control the Sea of Azov.

While the phrase “mosquito fleet” originated in Great Britain during World War 2 as a description of the Royal Navy’s vast force of motor torpedo- and gun-boats, Ukraine’s media has attached it on more than one occasion to the lackluster collection of small craft in use by Ukraine’s naval forces. Even though fast attack craft inherited from USSR have fared little better than the larger ships, here at least there are replacement ships being built and procured.

The best known of these “mosquitoes” are the Gyurza-M armored gunboats that, so far at least, proved to be less than impressive. Armed with two remote-control weapons stations with 30mm cannon and anti-tank guided missiles, their effectiveness is badly limited by low seaworthiness. Two of them were captured by Russia’s coast guard during an unsanctioned and unsafe attempt to cross under the Kerch Bridge and reach Mariupol. Twenty of these vessels were planned, but it doesn’t look as if that number will be reached. Instead, Ukraine’s attention has moved on to other, possibly more dangerous vessels.

The Centaur class is slightly smaller than the Gyurza-M, at 47 tons versus 54 tons, but it is significantly faster, with the claimed top speed of 50 knots being twice of that of the Gyurzas. And even though the armament of heavy machine guns and automatic grenade launchers, backed by 80mm rocket pods, seems less impressive, their “business end” is a platoon of 28 soldiers these boats can carry.

Combined with the Mark VI patrol boats that Ukraine is procuring from the United States, which are lightly armed but very fast boats also capable of carrying troops, Ukraine’s navy appears to be acquiring the ability to launch surprise amphibious raids of up to a battalion of light infantry in strength, once the fleet of these boats grows in size in the coming years. While certainly not a major force in absolute terms, it is just enough to exert pressure on the DPR’s southern flank that rests on the Sea of Azov coastline. Eight Centaurs are reported as being planned, and the first two boats are undergoing sea trials.

Complementing Ukraine’s naval strike and raiding ability is the Neptun anti-ship missile derived from Russia’s Kh-35 Uran, though with significant differences and also possibly collaboration with Turkey which is developing its own Harpoon-based anti-ship cruise missile at the same time, and/or with assistance from other NATO member states. The Neptun has passed a number of tests, including one live-fire one against a simulated naval target, and appears to be meeting its development goals without major problems. The missile’s size means it theoretically could arm the Ukrainian navy’s still-extant post-Soviet surface ships, but their age and lack of replacement means that it is more likely to see service as a coastal artillery weapon which could readily provide Ukraine with some serious firepower in the Sea of Azov.

The Neptun is described as being able to strike both naval and land targets, suggesting a combination of active radar guidance combined with GPS. If deployed in land-based form on the shores of the Sea of Azov, it could be used to shut down large swaths of the Sea of Azov under the guise of live-fire exercises. But arguably the worst-case scenario is the use of the missile against the Kerch Bridge, which is located within the 300km range of the Ukraine-controlled Azov coastline. One can readily imagine an MH17-style scenario in which a Ukrainian missile strikes and damages the bridge, with the attack then being attributed—with full NATO support—to a training accident or even a “Russian missile”. It would also not be an easy attack to respond to, as it would require Russian military strikes against targets on Ukraine’s territory that would elicit a highly predictable NATO reaction. It would also be a difficult attack to defend against, requiring the deployment of anti-missile weapons like the Pantsir-S and Tor which might not guarantee protection against a surprise attack by a highly subsonic, sea-skimming missile relying on GPS or even simply inertial guidance and not advertising its own presence by radar emissions.

Moreover, Neptun will give Ukraine the ability to launch relatively precise missile strikes against high-value targets in the DPR and LPR [Donbass]. In combination with the Vilkha rocket system and the Grom short-range ballistic missile, this weapon is part of Ukraine’s emerging deep-strike missile arsenal.

The abortive Gyurza-M raid into the Sea of Azov and NATO’s unwillingness to become directly embroiled in the Sea of Azov conflict do not mean we have seen the last of the provocations. Bolstered by US financial and material assistance, Ukraine is building up offensive capabilities for use in the littoral regions of that body of water. While its military capabilities are not in the same league as Russia’s, Ukraine’s growing ability to launch high-speed naval raids and long-range missile strikes represents a more difficult challenge to counter than its deteriorating land forces.

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The controversial face-mask wearing and social- distance problem in the US has celebrities getting into the political aspect of shaming people like actor Tom Hanks who recently said that:

“There’s really only three things we can do in order to get to tomorrow: Wear a mask, social distance, wash our hands,”

“Those things are so simple, so easy, if anybody cannot find it in themselves to practice those three very basic things – I just think shame on you. Don’t be a pussy, get on with it, do your part.” 

Then Hanks compares driving a car to wearing a facemask to protect you from Covid-19. “It’s very basic,” he continued. “If you’re driving a car, you don’t go too fast, you use your turn signal and you avoid hitting pedestrians. My Lord, it’s common sense.”

Morgan Freeman, is another actor in a video funded by New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo called the ‘Mask-Up America’ campaign with Morgan Freeman, Jamie Foxx, Rosie Perez and other celebrities from Hollywood who are clueless about politics or science are pushing the use of face-masks on public television commercials.

In Governor Coumo’s own words

“We can only beat this virus if we are united as one, not divided by ideology or politics. In that spirit we worked with the best and most creative team to deliver this vital message in multiple ways and in different voices – I wear a mask to protect you and you wear a mask to protect me. It is simple as that. Mask Up America.”

Screenshot of Mask Up America

Several studies conclude that face-masks offer little or almost no protection from a contagious virus such as Covid-19, so why do people listen to celebrities who read scripts for a living?

One celebrity who had enough of Hollywood celebrities who preach their version of politics to the public is Ricky Gervais who hosted the Oscars in late January. Gervais called out the Hollywood elite and laid down the truth about what they know about the real world, and that is absolutely nothing:

So if you do win an award tonight, don’t use it as a platform to make a political speech. You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg. So if you win, come up, accept your little award, thank your agent, and your God and fuck off, OK? It’s already three hours long

George Carlin, one of the greatest comedians of all times pulled no punches when criticizing the establishment has one particular video that relates to today’s Covid-19 “Plandemic.” George Carlin was a controversial figure who had an FBI file on him for criticizing the US government, in particular the FBI itself and it’s director at the time J. Edgar Hoover on ‘The Carol Burnett Show’ and ‘The Jackie Gleason Show’:

If George Carlin were alive today, what would he say about Covid-19?  I don’t know exactly, but I have an idea.  Here is George Carlin on germs and the immune system:

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Timothy Alexander Guzman writes on his blog, Silent Crow News, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from SCN

Further evidence the UK hides behind “human rights” rather than stands for them was demonstrated when London laced sanctions on Hong Kong after the passing of a security law aimed at combating overt foreign interference in the special administrative region of China.

British state media in an article titled, “UK suspends extradition treaty with Hong Kong,” would claim:

The UK government will suspend its extradition treaty with Hong Kong “immediately and indefinitely”.

The article also stated:

[British Foreign Secretary] Mr Raab also confirmed the government would extend its arms embargo – which has been in place with China since 1989 – to Hong Kong, stopping the UK exporting equipment, such as firearms, smoke grenades and shackles, to the region.

The article cited other members of the British government condemning China for alleged human rights abuses, violations of international law and a lack of democratic values. This comes after the UK caved to US pressure and banned Chinese telecom company Huawei from involvement in the UK’s 5G rollout.

Omitted from the BBC article was mention of the UK’s own and very real abuses.

British Human Rights Concerns are Projections of Own, Real Abuses  

At a time when the UK condemns China for its “actions in the South China Sea” the UK still finds itself involved in wars of aggression and military occupations around the globe, side-by-side with their US allies.

Worse still is that while the UK pledged to extend an arms embargo on Hong Kong over human rights concerns, the British government continues to arm nations like Saudi Arabia who is still currently waging war on neighbouring Yemen in a conflict the United Nations itself has called “the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.”

The New York Times in its article, “Britain Says It Will Resume Arms Sales to Saudi Arabia,” would admit:

Saudi Arabia is a big market for British arms manufacturers. Between April 2015 and March 2018, Britain’s government licensed the sale of at least 4.7 billion pounds (around $5.89 billion) of military equipment to the Saudis, and a further £860 million to its coalition partners.

Sales of arms were temporarily “suspended” over growing awareness of their use in Saudi atrocities in its ongoing war of aggression in neighbouring Yemen. After sufficient lip service was paid to “investigating” the issue, sales were resumed with claims abuses were “isolated.”  The US has likewise sidestepped concerns over arms sales to Saudi Arabia with a $478 million missile sale moving forward.

This staggering hypocrisy was noted even within the British government itself, the NYT would note:

Emily Thornberry, who speaks for the opposition Labour Party on international trade, described the resumption of arms licenses to Saudi Arabia as “morally indefensible.” The timing, she added, suggests “at the very least a case of mixed messages, undermining the government’s claim to be human rights defenders.”

Indeed, the British government’s claim to be human rights defenders is undermined if not entirely exposed as a façade behind which it advances various agendas. It cites “human rights” when smearing its opponents on the global stage such as China (often with fabricated claims), then eagerly, openly and unapologetically tramples human rights when convenient.

The common denominator between Britain’s otherwise contradictory stance regarding China and Saudi Arabia is its desire to advance its geopolitical agenda in undermining competitors and bolstering its own wealth and influence globally. Human rights is a mere prop to be used or abused.

Never were human rights an actual principle driving UK foreign policy, but merely a superficial enabler or inconvenient speed bump toward moving it forward.

Besides the UK’s stunning hypocrisy, the latest moves made against China regarding Hong Kong remind the world that the very sort of imperialist ideology that saw the British take the territory by force in 1842 is still very much alive and thriving in policy circles in London and across the Atlantic in Washington. While outright military occupation is impractical, the UK and its American partners still seek to influence and interfere in Hong Kong’s political and economic affairs.

The continued antagonising of China within its own borders, the use of warships to provoke China off its own shores and sanctions aimed at crippling the nation economically are all very deliberate acts undermining not only China’s peace, prosperity and stability, but that of the entire world who increasingly see China as a valuable economic and political partner.

The ultimate hypocrisy here is that as the UK claims it stands as a force for “good” in the world, it is in fact an enabler of waning Western interests desperately trying to plunge the world into chaos to spoil the success of its competitors and search for an opportunity to reassert themselves, reclaim their wealth and revive their demonstrably malign influence globally.

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Joseph Thomas is chief editor of Thailand-based geopolitical journal, The New Atlas and contributor to the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Featured image is from NEO

Abstract

More than 1.6 million Americans have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 and >10 times that number carry antibodies to it. High-risk patients presenting with progressing symptomatic disease have only hospitalization treatment with its high mortality. An outpatient treatment that prevents hospitalization is desperately needed. Two candidate medications have been widely discussed: remdesivir, and hydroxychloroquine+ azithromycin.

Remdesivir has shown mild effectiveness in hospitalized inpatients, but no trials have been registered in outpatients. Hydroxychloroquine +azithromycin has been widely misrepresented in both clinical reports and public media, and outpatient trials results are not expected until September.

Early outpatient illness is very different than later hospitalized florid disease and the treatments differ. Evidence about use of hydroxychloroquine alone, or of hydroxychloroquine+azithromycin in inpatients, is irrelevant concerning efficacy of the pair in early high-risk outpatient disease. Five studies, including two controlled clinical trials, have demonstrated significant major outpatient treatment efficacy. Hydroxychloroquine +azithromycin has been used as standard-of-care in more than 300,000 older adults with multicomorbidities, with estimated proportion diagnosed with cardiac arrhythmias attributable to the medications 47/100,000 users, of which estimated mortality is <20%, 9/100,000 users, compared to the 10,000 Americans now dying each week. These medications need to be widely available and promoted immediately for physicians to prescribe.

Read full report here.

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The Egyptian military has deployed about 150 troops on the frontline in the Syrian region of Greater Idlib to support forces of the Damascus government, Turkish sources claimed on July 30.

“The troops were later deployed in the Khan al-Asal area in the western countryside of Aleppo and around the city of Saraqib in the southern countryside of Idlib,” the Anadolu Agency quoted its source as saying.

The news agency claimed that the Egyptian service members had arrived via the Hama Air Base.

Later, Youssef al-Hamoud, a spokesman for the Syrian National Army, a coalition of Turkish proxy groups based in northern Aleppo, said that the number of Egyptian troops is in fact 148. They supposedly deployed in Syria in 3 groups via the Hama Air Base. According to him, 98 Egyptian personnel reportedly came from the city of Ismailia on July 26 and then were deployed in Khan al-Asal. 50 others arrived from Cairo Airport on July 27. They are supposedly deployed in Saraqib.

However, no flights from Egypt to the said base were recorded over the past few days. Furthermore, it is almost impossible to hide the deployment of foreign troops on the frontline in the conditions of the Syrian war, when almost every second fighter has a mobile phone and social media accounts and uses them to share pictures and videos from the battlefield.

Most likely, Turkish state media and proxy groups loyal to Ankara found a new original way to justify the illegal presence of their own forces in Syria. The accusation of other parties doing something that the Erdogan government does itself is something that Turkish media outlets regularly do.

In the earlier stages of the conflict, Turkey and its intelligence services openly allowed various terrorists aiming to join ISIS and al-Qaeda to use the territory of Turkey and camps on the Syrian-Turkish border as a transport hub on their route to Syria. At the same time, Turkey was actively involved in illegal oil trading with ISIS.

Later, when the Russian military operation, including mass bombings of ISIS oil infrastructure, convoys, and public revelation of the facts of Turkish cooperation with ISIS, put an end to this, Turkish official propaganda shifted its attention to accusations of all other parties involved in the conflict of cooperation with ISIS. It even claimed that its military operation against Kurdish militias in Afrin was aimed against ISIS.

Ankara sent almost 10,000 Syrian militants to Libya to support the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord. Nonetheless, Turkish outlets are crying foul about the small number of Russia-linked private military contractors hired by the UAE to support the Libyan National Army against Turkish-backed forces.

Over the past years, Turkey has occupied a notable part of northern Syria and deployed thousands of troops in Greater Idlib to protect al-Qaeda-linked terrorists there from the Syrian Army. Therefore, it would be logical for Ankara to find some ‘foreign force’ that it can accuse of deploying its own troops in the country.

At the same time, if the deployment of Egyptian troops to support the Syrian Army turns out to be true, this will be really bad news for Turkey. Ankara still seems to be unable to control its local al-Qaeda partners and the chances of a new round of escalations in the region are increasing.

The mighty Turkish Armed Forces have thus far failed to defeat the Syrian Army exhausted by years of conflict with terrorists. The outcome of the new escalation will be even more gloomy for Turkey if Egyptian forces will join the coalition supporting Damascus.

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In the following interview, Dr. Morris, a practicing physician in Florida, USA, explains how politics and fraud are root causes of the Fear campaign that is plaguing his state, and the country.

First, labs are faking COVID results. Some labs are reporting 100% positive tests, and this, he says, is statistically impossible. Two labs that were audited reported less than 10% positive COVID results. Morris attributes the fake reporting to politics and insurance fraud.

Second, media are reporting that there are not enough hospital beds. This too, he says, is false. A few months back, he explains, there were massive staff layoffs because scheduled hospital procedures were cancelled. Currently, hospitals are running at 50-60% staffing capacity, so there are plenty of beds, but not enough staff.

Finally, he explains that pharmacies and governing agencies are interfering with successful treatment protocols, namely Hydroxychloroquine, Zinc, and Zithromax. Local pharmacies, he explains, refuse to fill his prescriptions. Such interference, he says, is criminal.

Governing agencies and establishment media, including Youtube and Facebook, are censoring reports such as this. The costs of such censorship are high in terms of increased excess deaths globally, but also in terms of lost freedoms.

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Dr. Dareld Morris is a practicing physician based in Florida

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.

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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. 

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“We are coming to dismantle this deeply oppressive, racist, sexist, utterly bankrupt system of capitalism. We cannot and will not stop until it is dismantled, and we replace it with a socialist world, based on solidarity, genuine democracy, and equality.” Kshama Sawant, (“Red Sammie”, YouTube) Seattle City Council, District 3

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Here’s a question for you: When a young man dressed entirely in black, uses a racial justice protest to conceal himself so he can break windows, incinerate retail shops and cafes, pelt cops with bottles, rocks and fireworks, and spread mayhem across the city, what is the political message he is trying to send?

1– He is honoring the death of George Floyd
2– He is expressing his support for racial justice
3– He is attacking the system that protects ordinary people from criminal violence
4– He is a paid agitator funded by liberal organizations that seek to intensify social unrest for their own political objectives

If you chose 3 or 4, you’re probably right, there are undoubtedly paid agitators operating on behalf of wealthy outsiders, just as there are many “true believers” who see the riots as a springboard for a broader revolt that will topple the existing system. In other words, there are competing agendas at play in these violent outbursts. The least likely answer is Number 1, that “He is honoring the death of George Floyd.” The riots have nothing to do with George Floyd, he’s merely the fig leaf that hides the true motives of the perpetrators.

Isn’t it odd that –after 60 days of protests and riots– the media has never once asked what these activists want, what their actions mean or who they are?

This shouldn’t surprise us, after all, the media is in the ‘narrative-shaping’ business, their job is to tweak events so they jibe with their political agenda. And that’s what they’re doing. They see the protests as another stick to beat Trump in the upcoming elections, and that is precisely how they are using them. They don’t want people to figure out that these massive, nationwide protests were the largest and most destructive riots in US history. They want you to believe that they were “mostly peaceful”, a sobriquet that’s designed to dull perceptions and lull people back to sleep. Which is how propaganda usually works. Nothing to see here, move along. Check out this excerpt from an article by Michael Tracey who visited many of the cities that were decimated by the riots. See if you can spot the discrepancy between the media’s fabricated storyline and real events:

“In Minneapolis. First place I stop, most of the block is still boarded up. This grocery and tobacco store is owned by an Iranian, neighbor tells me. “They took everything.” Owner is deliberating whether to permanently close after the riots…

Just next door, a small Vietnamese music shop has been closed since the riots. Just down the street, a Malaysian restaurant is boarded up, but has resumed business. As has a Vietnamese sandwich shop, which just re-opened a few days ago. Nearby a Halal market is boarded up. Its next-door neighbor, a child care center, has signs in the windows asking to be spared …What remains of the Minneapolis Third Police Precinct building, looks like Bosnia …This is just one tiny block — and it just happened to be the first place I stopped…. Rioters even smashed the hipster record store!” (Many photos of the damage, “Threadreader”, Michael Tracey)

These scenes were repeated in over 400 cities across the country many of which are still either in ruins, boarded up, or in some phase of digging out. On a strictly financial basis, the losses are incalculable, much more than many small businesses will ever be able to manage. On a psychological level, however, the damage is much worse. Imagine watching everything you’ve worked for your entire life callously destroyed in a senseless orgy of mob violence that lasts maybe just a few hours. The trauma can’t be fixed by simply installing new windows or sweeping up the broken glass. It will last for as long as you live. Thousands of families have seen their futures go up in smoke while the perpetrators slipped away entirely unscathed. It’s shocking. And what’s more shocking is that minority-owned businesses suffered the greatest losses. Here’s Tracey again:

“Of the dozens and dozens of randomly-selected black Americans that I have so far spoken to across the United States, only two expressed what one might call a “positive” view of the riots, and they were both young men. Everyone else I have encountered is unabashedly scornful of rioting, and many even express apprehensions about the basic logic of a movement referred to as “Black Lives Matter” which incongruously appears to them to have caused increased suffering in their predominantly black neighborhoods.

Here’s … Tony in Milwaukee, who describes what it was like to escape from a riotous mob on his way home from work. “It’s crazy man. I really don’t understand it. Cuz they sayin’ Black Lives Matter and all this stuff,” he said. “But man, you’re hurting the black community.”…

…. an immigrant from Sierra Leone, said the following: “I grew up in a war zone, and I’ve never seen anything like it.”… the primary victims — meaning those who feared for their safety, suffered severe material losses, and whose lives were upended — are themselves minorities, and were targeted by activist whites.” (“Corporate Media Is Ignoring Broadest Riots In U.S. History, But Americans Hurt By These Riots Aren’t“, The Federalist)

Here’s more from an article at Fox News:

“The national media might have “moved on” from the riots in Minneapolis, but residents have nowhere to go. Much of the Twin Cities is still in ruins. Boarded-up storefronts still display makeshift notices that read “black owned” or “minority owned” to ward off further destruction. Many locals are reluctant to speak on the record, but some are eager to do so.

“It’s been agony,” says Mohamed Ali, a native of Somalia. “I respect the public anger, but I think we carried it too far, to burn our city.” At the height of the chaos, rioters set a large fire in front of his apartment, which sits atop several streetside shops. He spray-painted desperate appeals onto plywood affixed to the storefront windows: “Don’t burn please … Kids live upstairs.”

“All these businesses are still boarded, and it’s over a month later,” Mr. Ali said, gesturing in every direction of his Minneapolis neighborhood. ”This was a thriving area,” he said. “Now a lot of minority businesses are burned.” (“Michael Tracey: Minority businesses suffering in Minneapolis following rioting after George Floyd’s death”,FOX News)

The media could care less about the devastation and ruined lives. What they care about concocting a storyline that hurts Trump’s chances for reelection. That’s all that matters to them, not the colossal damage that has been done to our cities, our businesses or individual lives. Just the politics, because political messaging is the fast-track to power, and power is the prize that must be recaptured whatever the cost.

Of course, that doesn’t tell us who broke the windows, looted the stores and lit the fires. For that we turn again to Michael Tracey, the only journalist who went from city to city asking locals what they actually saw. As it happens, he got the same answer over and over again:

“According to multiple accounts relayed to me, those who instigated these most extreme acts of destruction appeared to be white left-wing activists who were not from the area. This then… created a vacuum that enabled a portion of the local, largely black and minority populations to engage in opportunistic looting.” (The Federalist)

Surprise, surprise. Who woulda’ known?

We saw the same phenom play out in Seattle although Seattle has a sizable compliment of its own homegrown radicals who undoubtedly played a large role in the destruction of the downtown area and Capitol Hill. Once again, we need to ask ourselves what political message these “activists” are trying to send when they attack Federal Buildings, courthouses, and police precincts?

It’s not hard to figure out, is it? They’re attacking the symbols of state power. They are challenging the legitimacy and authority of the government, the judiciary and the people that are employed to enforce the law. There’s nothing random or slapdash about their choice of targets. They are attacking the symbols that they despise because they represent the biggest obstacle to their frenzied power-grab. And the same rule applies to defunding the police which many people still fail to understand. “Defund the police” is not the impulsive demand of a petulant child. No. It is a sinister political tactic designed to undermine security in order to destabilize the state. A weaker state provides more opportunities for criminal mischief aimed at overthrowing the government which is the ultimate objective. See how it works?

This is not the benign, Bernie Sanders, work-within-the-system-type socialism. This is Bolshevism, there’s a big difference. The smoldering downtown corridor and the ruined lives of thousands of merchants attests to that difference. What we’re seeing is the resolute actions of a thoroughly-committed group of violent extremists who want to obliterate the system and impose their own vision of socialism. If you don’t believe me, then listen to what Seattle City Councilman Kshama Sawant (District 3) said just two weeks ago:

“We are coming to dismantle this deeply oppressive, racist, sexist, utterly bankrupt system of capitalism. We cannot and will not stop until it is dismantled, and we replace it with a socialist world, based on solidarity, genuine democracy, and equality.”

It doesn’t get much clearer than that, does it?

Alot of people will dismiss this hyperbolic rhetoric as attention-seeking blabber, but I disagree. I think Sawant should be taken seriously. We’ve already seen these groups take control of the streets, terrorize the city, and attack the organizations that provide for public safety, security and justice. Sawant even used her Councilman key to allow 400 protestors into City Hall where she used the venue as a platform for one of her trademark incendiary speeches. She also helped establish CHAZ, (Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone) the “police-free” Shangri-la that devolved into a homicidal hellhole just weeks after its founding. Here’s some background on CHAZ from Christopher Rufo at The City Journal:

“The CHAZ saga began on June 8, under the premise that capitalism, police brutality, and the “fascist regime” of Seattle mayor Jenny Durkan were upholding a social order that systemically oppressed African-Americans. Black Lives Matter and Antifa-affiliated activists hoped to create a new regime … based on a “reverse hierarchy of oppression,” implemented race-based segregation in public spaces, and maintained a “police-free zone” that they believed would protect “people of color” from the depredations of the state.

As it turns out, however, maintaining public order is a complex undertaking and can’t be replaced by academic symbolism… Ultimately, the problem of violence—and a dangerously naive understanding of policing—doomed the CHAZ. Over its 24-day history, the autonomous zone saw two gun homicides and four additional shooting victims. All the identified victims were black men—precisely the demographic for whom the CHAZ had claimed to offer protection. In the absence of a legitimate police force, armed criminal gangs and untrained anarchist paramilitaries filled the void.…

In the end, the homicide rate in the CHAZ turned out to be …—nearly 50 times greater than Chicago’s….

What are the ultimate lessons of the CHAZ? ….the true legacy of the CHAZ will be the memory of two black men who died under the false promise of utopia.” (“The End of CHAZ”, Christopher Rufo, City Journal)

And don’t think that CHAZ was just a “one off” experiment by leftist revolutionaries. It’s not. It’s a blueprint for the type of society that will unavoidably replace our own if we don’t stop this nonsense and restore order. The problem is that our liberal mayor (Durkan) and our liberal governor (Inslee) think they can play pattycake with these fanatics to help pave the way for a Biden victory in November. But this is a grave miscalculation. These are hard-boiled extremists with a penchant for violence. They are not to be trifled with. Here’s a snapshot of their activities from a local news station KIRO 7:

“Nearly four dozen people were arrested, and more than 55 officers were injured Saturday after protests turned violent with trailers set on fire, windows at businesses smashed, cars damaged, and explosive devices thrown at police….

During the march, Seattle police said about a dozen people went on a rampage of destruction as they marched past the King County Youth Detention Center at 12th Avenue and Alder Street, targeting the site. Some rioters carried sledgehammers and began shattering workers’ car windows in the parking lot. At the same time, a row of construction trailers next door on 12th Avenue were firebombed after some rioters scaled a fence.

Fire crews responded and reported that five construction trailers were on fire. They were all destroyed.

The destruction did not end there. Seattle police said some protesters spray-painted the East Precinct at 12th and Pine Street, tried to disable cameras and caused damage after someone breached a fence line. Moments after the breach, a device exploded, leaving an 8-inch hole in the side of the precinct, according to police.

A crowd threw rocks, bottles and mortars at officers during the protests, according to police. During the violent protests, 59 officers were injured on Capitol Hill, including one who suffered a leg injury caused by an explosive device, authorities said. Most were treated for their injuries and returned to work.” (“49 arrested, 59 injured in Seattle protests that turned violent”, Kiro 7 News)

These aren’t protests, this is political warfare the likes of which we haven’t seen since the 1960s. Peaceful protesters” do not attack police stations with crowbars and firebombs, they don’t vandalize Starbucks and retail shops, and they don’t lay siege to public land and declare their own sovereign state. These are fanatical ideologues who believe the system must be obliterated and replaced. They are today’s Bolsheviks and they mean business. Here’s a short recap of Russia’s grim experience with Bolshevism some 103 years ago. This an excerpt from an article in the Washington Post:

“At the beginning of 1917, on the eve of the Russian revolution, most of the men who later became known to the world as the Bolsheviks were conspirators and fantasists on the margins of society. By the end of the year, they ran Russia. Fringe figures and eccentric movements cannot be counted out. If a system becomes weak enough and the opposition divided enough, if the ruling order is corrupt enough and people are angry enough, extremists can suddenly step into the center, where no one expects them. And after that it can take decades to undo the damage. We have been shocked too many times. Our imaginations need to expand to include the possibilities of such monsters and monstrosities….

In October 1917, they began using that mass violence…. Many in Russia came to embrace the destruction. They argued that the “system” was so corrupt, so immune to reform or repair, that it had to be smashed. Some welcomed the bonfire of civilization with something bordering on ecstasy. The beauty of violence, the cleansing power of violence: these were themes that inspired Russian poetry and prose in 1918….

In the United States, the Marxist left has also consolidated on the fringes of the Democratic Party — and sometimes not even on the fringes — as well as on campuses, where it polices the speech of its members, fights to prevent students from hearing opposing viewpoints, and teaches a dark, negative version of American history, one calculated to create doubts about democracy and to cast shadows on all political debate…. As in Britain, they don’t remember the antecedents of their ideas and they don’t make a connection between their language and the words used by fanatics of a different era.” (“100 years later, Bolshevism is back. And we should be worried“, Anne Applebaum, Washington Post)

In Seattle, the threat of violence is quite real, the social order is beginning to collapse, and the Bolsheviks are greatly emboldened. They have battled the police and the politicians and they have prevailed. Now they will develop a strategy to further destabilize the system so they can seize more power, weaken their rivals and shape the political agenda. These are smart, motivated people who know what they want and have an almost-instinctive grasp of the times in which we live. They will not hesitate to impose the dramatic changes they seek if they are given even the slightest opportunity. Which is why they must be stopped. Here’s how Sheila Fitzpatrick summed it up in her book, The Russian Revolution 1917-1932:

“It may well be that the Bolsheviks’ greatest strength in 1917 was not strict party organization and discipline (which scarcely existed at this time) but rather the party’s stance of intransigent radicalism on the extreme left of the political spectrum. While other socialist and liberal groups jostled for position in the Provisional Government and Petrograd Soviet, the Bolsheviks refused to be co-opted and denounced the politics of coalition and compromise. While other formerly radical politicians called for restraint and responsible, statesmanlike leadership, the Bolsheviks stayed out on the streets with the irresponsible and belligerent revolutionary crowd. As the ‘dual power’ structure disintegrated, discrediting the coalition parties represented in the Provisional Government and Petrograd Soviet leadership, only the Bolsheviks were in a position to benefit. Among the socialist parties, only the Bolsheviks had overcome Marxist scruples, caught the mood of the crowd, and declared their willingness to seize power in the name of the proletarian revolution.” (Sheila Fitzpatrick, “The Russian Revolution 1917-1932”)

Time to wake up, America. Social disintegration is serious business.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Mike Whitney is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Shutterstock

With the participation of hundreds of professionals from all over the world, “Doctors for the Truth” stated that Covid-19 is a false pandemic created for political purposes. They urged doctors, the media and political authorities to stop the operation, by spreading the truth.

In a context of great excitement and worldwide expectation, the Doctors for Truth Association was presented at a press conference on Saturday, July 25 in Madrid.

The group, led by doctors Natalia Prego Cancelo and Angel Luis Valdepeñas, made a direct connection with the extra-parliamentary commission of doctors from Germany, the Epidemiologists group from Argentina, and doctors from the United States and Argentina.

The event began with the intervention of Heiko Schöning, representative of the German Extra-Parliamentary Commission for the Study of the Coronavirus. There were online interventions by professionals from Argentina and the United States. It concluded with a review of the 4 fundamental points of interpellation to the Government and Spanish authorities by the Association of Doctors for Truth.

The presentation, in an event room of the Madrid Press Palace, was attended by more than 400 people, including general and alternative media, doctors, and assistants. Data, figures, analysis and reflections were exposed that show the incoherent and harmful nature of the measures that are being applied worldwide pertaining to Covid-19.

“A world dictatorship with a sanitary excuse.”

“This is a world dictatorship with a sanitary excuse,” was stressed at the end of the meeting. Doctors agreed that:

• Coronavirus victims did not outnumber last year’s seasonal flu deaths.
• Figures were exaggerated by altering medical protocols.
• The confinement of the healthy and the forced use of masks have no scientific basis.
• The disease known as Covid-19 does not have a single infectious pattern, but a combination of them.

“There are crossed toxic patterns,” said Angel Luis Valdepeñas. “On the one hand, the electromagnetic contamination of fi5v-ghee, and on the other, the influence of influenza vaccination. There is an interaction and empowerment, which must be investigated”.

Angel Luis Valdepeñas underlined at the end of the meeting:

“We must tell our governments that they NEVER OCCUR to compel us to vaccinate, or even recommend it, for the slightest sense of prudence.”

Valdepeñas concluded his final intervention asking the press for “an effort of responsibility that we have not seen so far”, and criticized the “continuous bombardment of information on the pandemic, without weighing neither the quantity nor the quality of the information”. The doctor indicated that when the media talk about “new outbreaks”, they should clarify that these are only positive tests, but that 98 percent [of the population] are “healthy, asymptomatic people.”

At the end of the event, the panelists took to the streets followed by the numerous attendees to the cry of Freedom!

Together they walked to the Plaza de Callao, the usual meeting place for the 2020 Movement. There they chatted, for more than 2 hours, with attendees and people who had not been able to access the room.

However, this too may get the chop, when the ‘fact-checkers’ decide something here is not in line with Govt. policy.

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This was originally published by Contra información on July 26, 2020. Translated by Mark Taliano

Malaysia’s High Court Tuesday found former Prime Minister Najib Razak guilty of abuse of power, money laundering, and criminal violation of trust during the trial against him for a multi-million dollar defalcation.

The court ruled that the US$10 million transfer from the state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), was deposited in Razak’s with his consent.

“I do not give up,” Najib wrote on Facebook on Monday, one day before the verdict, as he swore on Allah’s behalf his innocence. “If the Court finds me guilty, I will not stand by,” he said.

During the trial that began in April 2019, defense lawyers assured that the former Prime Minister would appeal.

Najib was convicted of seven crimes. Of these, three are related to money laundering, three to abuse of trust, and one to abuse of power.

I very rarely commented on anything political nowadays.

But I did spend many years on the frontline dealing with 1MDB and SRC scandals as an MP.

I never expected much from those years, but I did feel that all the heartbreaks were well worth it today.

Well done Malaysia. pic.twitter.com/eopOVT7vXX

— Rafizi Ramli (@rafiziramli) July 28, 2020

The charges are associated with the diversion of about US$20 million. For them, Najib will have to serve 12 years in prison and pay a fine of US$50 million.

Najib claimed he was misled by Malaysian businessman Jho Low and other 1MDB advisers to believe that the millionaire funds received were a donation from the Saudi royal family.

The sentence will have drastic political consequences. Najib will not be able to run for elections, although he will keep his seat in Parliament while the appeal is being held.

Malaysia will no longer be a dumping ground for trash from the west. pic.twitter.com/oZ1Q9wzd4p

— teleSUR English (@telesurenglish) June 2, 2019

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Featured image: Former Prime Minister Najib Razak (C) leaves the High Court, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, July 28, 2020. | Photo: EFE

On Thursday, I emailed the  information below to a retired physician/health and fitness expert friend I’ve known since the 1940s, explaining the following:

Like earlier coronavirus outbreaks (SARS-Cov 2002-04, MERS 2012), SARS-Cov-2 hysteria will pass in time.

Of far greater concern is economic collapse that’s ripping apart the fabric of US society — what I call thirdworldizing of the country that’s been ongoing post-9/11, but began years earlier.

For 19 straight weeks, over a million Americans filed new claims for unemployment benefits.

Nothing remotely like this ever happened before here.

Tens of thousands of small, medium-sized, and some larger businesses closed down — many, maybe most, permanently.

Tens of millions of jobs were lost, many permanently.

A USA Today article said: “Almost half of all jobs lost (this year) may be gone permanently.”

Real US unemployment is around 32% based on how the number was calculated pre-1990. The official 11% figure is fake.

What’s going on is the stuff that economic nightmares are made of, things far worse now than during the Great Depression.

Then, FDR and Congress initiated an alphabet soup of jobs creation programs that put millions of unemployed Americans back to work.

No jobs creation programs were begun today, none planned.

The new Senate stimulus plan is woefully short of what’s needed.

It includes no aid to cash-strapped state and local governments, no provision to prevent mass evictions of families out of work with no income to pay rent or service mortgages.

The US economy collapsed with woefully inadequate safety net protections for many millions of households.

Data show about 25% of small businesses closed this year, well over 100,000.

If what’s going on happened when The Lendman group I was part of for over 30 years, we’d have been out of business permanently.

Before this year’s economic unravelling, US census data showed around half of US households were impoverished or bordering it — members needing 2 or more jobs to survive.

In more “normal” times, most available jobs are rotten low-pay, poor or no-benefit ones because most of industrial America was offshored to China and other low-wage nations.

The Wall Street-owned Federal Reserve and Congress threw trillions of dollars at corporate America and the Pentagon.

Ordinary Americans got crumbs.

Things will likely worsen ahead because the US ruling class is indifferent toward the health, safety and welfare of the vast majority of Americans.

This is the dismal state of the nation today that establishment media don’t explain.

The US I and others my age grew up in no longer exists.

On Thursday, another “2 million workers applied for unemployment insurance (UI) benefits,” the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) explained — not the Department of Labor (DOL) reported 1.4 million fake news.

EPI explained that “1.2 million applied for regular state unemployment insurance (not seasonally adjusted), and 830,000 applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA),” adding:

Since March, weekly UI claims have been more than double “the worst week of the (2008-09) Great Recession.”

Senate Republicans let UI benefits expire, wanting $600 weekly to qualified individuals replaced by $200, House Dems rejecting what’s unacceptable.

EPI explained that elimination of $400 in weekly UI will result in the equivalent of millions of lost jobs, less income and spending, and more dire economic conditions than already.

Reported Q II annualized GDP contraction of 32.9% far exceeded the severest quarterly economic collapse in US history.

It followed a Q I 5.0% contraction. EPI explained that given the severity of collapse, “it could take years of historically fast GDP growth just to return the (US) economy to the (pre-crisis) status quo.”

Q II data “mask (troubling) intra-quarter trends (in) July” that showed “stalled” economic activity.

When July employment numbers are released on August 7, they’ll likely show “flat or…negative…changes.”

Large-scale financial aid is needed for unemployed Americans, as well as for severely cash-strapped state and local governments to prevent conditions from being more catastrophic than already.

Equally important is for Congress to enact large-scale jobs-creation programs to put unemployed Americans back to work.

When private enterprises are laying off large numbers of workers because of declining revenues and profits, it’s the responsibility of the federal government to fill the void.

That’s what New Deal initiatives were all about, putting millions of jobless Americans back to work.

Similar programs are needed today at a time when US economic conditions are more dire than ever before in the nation’s history.

A Final Comment

On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported that “congressional leaders and White House officials failed to agree on” extending benefits to the nation’s unemployed and otherwise needy.

Talks will continue Friday, Republicans and Dems worlds apart on providing help to ordinary Americans in need, along with aid to state and local governments, as well as preventing mass evictions.

White House chief of staff Mark Meadow said both sides are “far apart.”

While compromise is likely ahead, whatever is agreed on will likely fall way short of what’s needed for tens of millions of jobless Americans.

Jobs creation programs most likely will go unaddressed in a bipartisan package, what’s essential to stimulate economic growth.

On Friday, the GOP-controlled Senate adjourned until Monday, leaving five days to resolve differences before a scheduled Senate recess begins after August 7.

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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.

On Thursday during testimony before Senate Foreign Relations Committee members, Pompeo continued his militantly hostile war of words on China. See below.

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Commenting on his Chinaphobic remarks last week, former US diplomat who accompanied Richard Nixon on his 1972 trip to Beijing, Charles Freeman, said the following:

Pompeo’s “speech…was full of factual distortions and willful misrepresentations of the past,” adding:

“It…lowered Mr. Pompeo’s already very low prestige abroad and added to skepticism about the veracity of American officialdom in general.”

“Whatever this is, it is not a foreign policy but an instance of domestic demagoguery.”

“Pompeo was not making a foreign policy speech or outlining a strategy for dealing with China.”

“He was speaking cathartically for all those who have bought into or might buy into the China-as-universal-scapegoat basis of Trump(’s) (troubled) reelection campaign.”

According to Real Clear Politics, presumptive Dem nominee Biden holds a significant lead in polls, some giving him a double-digit advantage.

Notably he’s ahead in key battleground states, including Florida and Ohio.

According to Freeman, Pompeo “made a perfunctory appeal for international support against China, knowing full well that almost no foreign nation or people would offer it.”

He has his own political aspirations in mind, aiming “to position himself to succeed Trump” in 2025.

Freeman stressed that his remarks only resonated “in the minds of bigots and bullies.”

“He represents no one other than the Trump cabal and its dupes and his own presumptions and ambitions.”

Earlier I described Pompeo as a neocon hardliner, a messianic extremist, an evangelical Christian fascist, a Zionist ideologue, an imperial war cheerleader, an Islamophobe, Russophobe, Iranophobe, Chinaphobe, and homophobe.

His Thursday Senate Foreign Relations Committee testimony featured a war of words on Iran, Russia, and as he put it: “most importantly on China.”

Once again, he defied reality, calling the country “the central threat of our times (sic).”

A litany of misinformation and disinformation followed — similar to remarks last week that Charles Freeman debunked.

Insisting that South China Sea disputes “must be settled on the basis of international law, including UNCLOS (the UN Convention for the Law of the Sea),” Pompeo omitted the following:

The US repeatedly and consistently flouts international, constitutional and its own statute laws.

The US never signed UNCLOS, giving it no legal say over its implementation, no legal right to challenge maritime claims of other nations.

US hostility toward China, Russia, Iran, and other nations it doesn’t control that challenge its pursuit of global dominance poses a major threat to world peace and stability.

Days earlier, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stressed that “not only do the tensions provoked by Washington in relations with Beijing do harm to the United States and China, but also they seriously complicate the international situation in general,” adding:

The Trump regime’s aim “to drag Moscow into the US campaign against China (is) another naive attempt to complicate the Russian-Chinese partnership and to drive a wedge in the friendly ties between” both countries.

“We will be strengthening cooperation with the People’s Republic of China, which we view as a crucial factor for stabilization in the world.”

Last Friday, Zakharova and her Chinese counterpart Hua Chunying discussed key issues affecting their countries by video call.

Both spokeswomen stressed the importance of “combatting fake news (with) accurate use of facts and compliance with legal and ethical standards” in pursuing world peace and stability, adding:

“China and Russia are major powers that pursue responsible policies and develop bilateral relations of a comprehensive partnership.”

“Both countries aim to cooperate with other nations to battle misinformation.”

On Thursday, China’s UK envoy Liu Xiaoming accused the Trump regime of pursuing a new Cold War with Beijing, DJT needing a scapegoat to boost his flagging reelection campaign, Liu stressed.

A new prepared for the Pentagon RAND Corporation (US-funded think tank) report titled “China’s Grand Strategy: Trends, Trajectories and Long-Term Competition” said the US must prepare for an “ascendant” nation in East Asia — calling its development and prominence “the most challenging (issue) for the US military (sic).”

Bilateral relations are more dismal than any time over the past half century.

RAND dismissed a possible “close partnership” ahead, stressing that what was always unlikely now “faded from even (a) remote possibility.”

The report called for increased US military involvement in the Indo/Pacific, saying:

“Because China probably will be able to contest all domains of conflict across the broad swathe of the region by the mid-2030s, the US army, as part of the joint force, will need to be able to respond immediately to crises or contingencies at various points of contention,” adding:

“The Pacific theater likely will remain for the foreseeable future primarily focused on contested maritime and air domains…”

“(T)he US army must prioritize capabilities development in keeping with larger joint force objectives.”

“Much of the army’s focus will necessarily be on the need for land-based competitive advantage in Europe, but the long-term prominence of the China challenge will require increased investment in a range of capabilities for the Indo-Pacific as well.”

“China intends to achieve military advantage from key technologies such as quantum computing and communications, artificial intelligence and biotechnology.”

“Success in these and related areas will, to a great extent, determine the nature of US-PRC, and global, military competition over the next 30 years.”

According to Pew Research, anti-China sentiment in the US is at a “historic high.”

Nearly three-fourths of Americans view China unfavorably — proving again that propaganda works, especially when repeatedly endlessly by establishment media.

Most Americans believe managed news misinformation and disinformation they’re fed regularly about other nations and issues.

They don’t understand that no foreign threats to the US existed since WW II ended in 1945 — 75 years ago.

Nor do they realize that US promoted threats are invented, not real — as a pretext for spending countless trillions of dollars on militarism and belligerence at the expense of vital homeland needs gone begging.

China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, and other nations on the US target list for regime change seek cooperative relations with other countries, threatening none.

Washington’s imperial agenda is polar opposite, waging forever wars by hot and other means on nonbelligerent sovereign states — spending more on militarism and belligerence than all other nations combined.

While US hot war with China or Russia is highly unlikely, its rage for unchallenged global dominance by whatever it takes to achieve its aims makes the unthinkable possible.

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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 High North News

What does it mean when journalists who spent the last two decades promoting wars of aggression in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen take a knee?

The Observer commented:

‘There is a dreadful familiarity about the killing of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, by white police officers in Minneapolis last Monday….

‘The fact that the US has been here before, countless times, does not lessen the horror of this crime nor mitigate brutal police actions.’

There was a dreadful familiarity about the West’s toppling of Gaddafi in 2011, but the Observer didn’t notice. Instead, the editors insisted that, ‘The west can’t let Gaddafi destroy his people’, ‘this particular tyranny will not be allowed to stand’.

Not ‘allowed to stand’, that is, by the destroyers of Iraq eight years earlier; by governments with zero credibility as moral agents. The fact that the US-UK alliance had been ‘here’ before, countless times, did not lessen the horror of the crime nor mitigate brutal military actions.

When the dirty deed was done and Libyan oil was safely back in Western hands, an Observer editorial applauded, ‘An honourable intervention. A hopeful future’, as the country fell apart and black people were ethnically cleansed from towns like Tawergha without any UK journalists taking a knee or giving a damn.

When a white policeman crushes a black man’s neck with his knee for eight minutes and 46 seconds, journalists see structural racism. When the West places its boot on the throats of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen for decades and centuries, journalists see ‘rogue states’, an ‘axis of evil’, a ‘clear and present threat’ to the West that can be averted only by force.

Journalists see racism in the disproportionate violence habitually visited on US black people by police, but find nothing racist in the ultra-violence habitually inflicted by the US-UK alliance blitzing famine-stricken Afghanistan in 2001, in sanctions that killed 500,000 children under five in Iraq, in war that killed one million people in Iraq, in war that destroyed Libya, Syria, Yemen, and many others.

The links between domestic and international racism are hard to miss. Theodore Roosevelt (US president 1901-1909), noted that ‘the most ultimately righteous of all wars is a war with savages,’ establishing the rule of ‘the dominant world races’. (Quoted, Noam Chomsky, ‘Year 501 – The Conquest Continues,’ Verso, 1993, p.23)

In 1919, Winston Churchill defended the use of poison gas against ‘uncivilised tribes’ as a means of spreading ‘a lively terror’. Churchill wrote of the ‘satisfied nations’ whose power places them ‘above the rest,’ the ‘rich men dwelling at peace within their habitations’ to whom ‘the government of the world must be entrusted’. (Ibid., p.33)

In 1932, at the World Disarmament Conference, David Lloyd George (British prime minister, 1916-1922), insisted that the British government would continue to inflict violence for ‘police purposes in outlying places’. He later recounted:

‘We insisted on reserving the right to bomb niggers.’

In 1947, renowned British Field Marshall, Bernard Montgomery, noted the ‘immense possibilities that exist in British Africa for development’ and ‘the use to which such development could be put to enable Great Britain to maintain her standard of living, and to survive’. ‘These lands contain everything we need’, said Montgomery, fresh from combatting the Nazi’s efforts to achieve ‘Lebensraum’. It was Britain’s task to ‘develop’ the continent since the African ‘is a complete savage and is quite incapable of the developing the country [sic] himself’.

In his book, ‘A Different Kind Of War – The UN Sanctions Regime In Iraq’, Hans von Sponeck, former UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, wrote that during ‘phase V’ of the Oil-For-Food programme, from November 1998 to May 1999, each Iraqi citizen received a food allocation worth $49, or 27 cents per day. Von Sponeck noted that, ‘the UN was more humane with its dogs than with the Iraqi people’: each UN dog was allocated $160 for food over the same period. (Hans von Sponeck, ‘A Different Kind of War’, Bergahn Books, 2006, p.38)

If the killing of George Floyd was racism, how shall we describe US- and UK-led UN policy that ‘was more humane with its dogs’? How to describe corporate media that rail against domestic racism while perennially cheerleading the infinitely more violent international version? Why are we not taking a knee for Iraqis and Libyans? Why are they not even mentioned in the context of institutionalised racism? Why is no-one toppling Orwellian monuments to a ‘free press’ supporting global oppression, like the statue of George Orwell outside BBC Broadcasting House?

The Guardian opined:

‘It is the United States’ great misfortune at such a time to be led by a president who sows division as a matter of political strategy. Bunkered down, now literally, in the White House, the president tweeted last week: “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.”’

In 2011, after the shooting had started, the Guardian quietly celebrated the work of an earlier president who also sowed division without the editors perceiving any great ‘misfortune’. A Guardian leader commented on Libya:

‘But it can now reasonably be said that in narrow military terms it worked, and that politically there was some retrospective justification for its advocates as the crowds poured into the streets of Tripoli to welcome the rebel convoys earlier this week.’

The same paper insists it did not support the 2003 Bush-Blair war on Iraq. The truth is that it promoted every last government ruse in pursuit of war: Saddam Hussein was a threat to the West, he was certainly hiding WMD, US-UK were focused on disarming him, were trying to find diplomatic solutions, were fighting for freedom (not oil, a possibility so far-fetched and insulting it was dismissed out of hand), and so on.

The Guardian has never seen the US-UK devastation of Libya, Iraq, Syria and Yemen as manifestations of the same structural racism it sees so plainly in US police violence:

‘Racism is structural, and state neglect can be as deadly as state abuse. It does not always take a knee on the neck to kill someone. Poverty, overcrowding, and unequal access to healthcare can be fatal.’

True enough. So can corporate greed for profits, for control of oil. Any rational person can join the dots: corporate power subordinates human welfare at home and abroad. Bombing, sanctions, invasion are symptoms of the same profit-driven brutality that forces people to suffer poverty, overcrowding and poor healthcare.

The Times wrote nobly:

‘The challenge is to harness this moment so that it leads to positive changes.’

And:

‘Of course not all of the legitimate aspirations of those protesting can be achieved overnight. But progress can be made with determined action.’

This from the newspaper that supports every war going, aided by Perpetual War propagandists like David Aaronovitch, who wrote an article for The Times entitled: ‘Go for a no-fly zone over Libya or regret it.’ (See our book, ‘Propaganda Blitz’, pp.129-131, for numerous other examples of Aaronovitch’s warmongering.)

If, as John Dewey said, ‘politics is the shadow cast on society by big business’, then liberal media discussions of morality are a grim part of that darkness, shedding no light.

The corporate system gives the impression that anti-semites, white supremacists, sexists and the like are victims of a primitive mind virus reducing them to the status of moral Neanderthals. With sufficient social distancing, track-and-trace, isolation, the remnants of this historic pandemic can finally be eradicated. The focus is always on establishment ‘cancel culture’: erasing, banning, firing, censorship and criminalisation.

The BBC, for example, prefers to erase the language of racism. A recent news report was titled:

‘A gravestone honouring the Dambusters’ dog – whose name is a racial slur – has been replaced.’

The report noted that the slur was one ‘which the BBC is not naming’. The dog’s name, ‘Nigger’, appears instantly, of course, to the mind of anyone who has seen the film, or to anyone who has access to Google. Curiously, although the ‘N-word’ appears nowhere in the report, the racial slur, ‘Redskin’, appears 12 times in a BBC report that appeared just three days earlier and that was actually titled:

‘Washington Redskins to drop controversial team name following review’

‘Nigger’ and ‘Redskin’ are both colour-related racial slurs with horrendous histories – both are used to imply racial inferiority. Why can one be mentioned and the other not? Censoring the Dambuster dog’s name achieved little and is not attempted by broadcasters showing films like ‘Reservoir Dogs’ and ‘Pulp Fiction’, in which the slur is repeated numerous times.

Like other media casting Dewey’s corporate ‘shadow’, the BBC cannot make sense of racism and other forms of prejudice because moral coherence would risk extending the debate to the structural prejudice of the deeply classist, racist, war-fighting, state-corporate establishment.

Racists and sexists start to look a little different when we make the following observation:

Racism and sexism are manifestations of the ego’s attempt to make itself ‘higher’ by making others ‘lower’.

Viewing brown- and black-skinned people as ‘inferior’ is obviously all about white and other racists asserting their ‘superiority’. This is literally, of course, a microscopically superficial basis for ‘superiority’. Differences establishing sexist ‘superiority’ at least involve whole organs rather than a layer of cells! But despite what the necessarily incoherent corporate shadow culture would have us believe, racists and sexists who view other people as ‘inferior’ are not exotic anomalies.

The human ego does not view others as equal; it places itself and its loved ones at the centre of the universe – ‘I’ matter more, ‘my’ happiness and the happiness of those ‘I’ love come first. The happiness of everyone else is very much a peripheral concern. The ego latches on to almost any excuse to reinforce this prejudice – viewing itself as ‘special’, ‘higher’, and others as ‘ordinary’, ‘lower’ – on the basis of almost any superficial differences, many of them even more trivial and transient than racial and gender differences. (See here for further discussion on the striving to be ‘special’.)

This tendency is massively promoted by our culture from the earliest age and manifests in numerous forms other than racism and sexism. We are taught to compete with our peers, to rise to the ‘upper stream’, to come first in exams, to be ‘top of the class’, to go to the ‘best’ schools, the ‘best’ colleges, to get the ‘best’ jobs. We are taught to define ourselves as more or less ‘bright’, ‘academic’, ‘gifted’ (selected for receipt of an actual ‘God-given talent’!). As children, we do not all display the arrogance of young Winston Churchill visible in this photograph, but we are all trained to be ‘winners’ over ‘losers’.

Racism and sexism have caused immense harm, of course, but so has the classism visible in young Winston’s face. Humans feel ‘above’ others, ‘special’, when they come from wealthy, aristocratic families; when they attend a celebrated school, an elite university; when they gain a first class degree (or any degree), or a Masters, or a PhD; when they buy a ‘top of the range’ car, or luxury property in a desirable postcode; when they work in high-prestige jobs; when they achieve fame and fortune; when Howard Jacobson writes in The Independent:

‘When Russell Brand uses the word “hegemony” something dies in my soul.’

It is agony for people like Jacobson – who was educated at Stand Grammar School and Downing College, Cambridge (before lecturing at the University of Sydney and Selwyn College, Cambridge) – to hear Brand – educated at Grays School Media Arts College, Essex, a coeducational secondary school – chatting to Ricky Gervais, both of working class origin, without cringing at the way they glottal stop the ‘t’ in words like ‘civili’y’, ‘carnali’y’, ‘universi’y’ and ‘beau’iful’.

The reaction of middle and upper class people to Brand preaching philosophy and ‘poli’ics’ is exactly that described by Samuel Johnson who made himself ‘higher’ by making women ‘lower’:

‘Sir, a woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.’

Because elite interests run the mass media, we have all been trained to perceive elite accents as cultured and authoritative, and working class accents as uncultured, uneducated. When we at Media Lens grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, BBC newsreaders and continuity announcers sounded like Etonian masters and Oxbridge dons. Even now, journalists like Fiona Bruce and Nicholas Witchell deliver the royal pronunciation of the word ‘years’ as ‘yers’.

The above may sound comical and absurd – it is! – but the fact is that, as Jacobson’s comment suggests, millions of people have been trained to perceive the accents of working class people appearing on political programmes like Question Time, Newsnight and The Marr Show as ‘lower’. When we react this way to skin colour, rather than to accent and class, we call it racism.

In an article titled, ‘Leather jackets, flat caps and tracksuits: how to dress if you’re a leftwing politician’, Hadley Freeman wrote in the Guardian in 2016:

‘Now, personally, some of us think that Corbyn could consider updating his ideas as much as his wardrobe… He must spend veritable hours cultivating that look, unless there’s a store on Holloway Road that I’ve missed called 1970s Polytechnic Lecturer 4 U. Honestly, where can you even buy tracksuits like the ones he sports?’

This wasn’t racism, but it was classism. Much of the focus on Corbyn being insufficiently ‘prime ministerial’ was establishment prejudice targeting a working class threat. Corbyn didn’t dress like the elite he was challenging – he wore ‘embarrassing’ sandals rather than ‘statesmanlike’ black leather shoes; an ’embarrassing’ jacket rather than the traditional long, black ‘presidential’ overcoat – just as Brand didn’t know the ‘correct’ way to say ‘hegemony’. Corbyn was second-rate, Polytechnic material; not first-class, Oxford material, like Freeman. The BBC’s Mark Mardell commented on Corbyn:

‘One cynic told me expectations are so low, if Corbyn turns up and doesn’t soil himself, it’s a success.’ (Mardell, BBC Radio 4, ‘The World This Weekend’, 21 May 2017)

If this was not gross, classist prejudice, can we conceive of Mardell repeating a comparable slur about establishment politicians like George Bush, Tony Blair, Theresa May and Sir Keir Starmer shitting themselves in public?

Racism and sexism have monstrous consequences, of course, but so does classism and speciesism, so does every kind of faux-elevation of the self.

Beyond Censorship

The banning and even criminalisation of words and opinions associated with ego inflation come at a cost. The problem is that powerful interests are constantly attempting to extend censorship to words and opinions they are keen to suppress. For example, the banning of Holocaust denial prompted establishment propagandists pushing their own version of ‘cancel culture’ to damn us at Media Lens for something called ‘Srebrenica denial’. As political analyst Theodore Sayeed noted of the smearing of Noam Chomsky:

‘In the art of controversy, slapping the label “denier” on someone is meant to evoke the Holocaust. Chomsky, the furtive charge proceeds, is a kind of Nazi.’

Although we had never written about Srebrenica, repeated attempts were made to link us to Holocaust denial in this way, so that we might also be branded as virtual Nazis that no self-respecting media outlet would ever quote or mention, much less interview or publish.

In both our case and Chomsky’s, this was not the work of well-intentioned individuals, but of organised groups promoting the interests of the war-fighting state. It was actually part of a much wider attempt by state-corporate interests to ‘cancel’ opponents of US-UK wars of aggression. Terms like ‘genocide denial’ and ‘apologist’ are increasingly thrown at leftist critics of Western crimes in Rwanda, Syria, Libya and Venezuela. For example, critics of Western policy in Syria are relentlessly accused of ‘Assadist genocide denial’, which is declared ‘identical’ to Srebrenica denial and Holocaust denial.

The ongoing campaign to associate criticism of Israel with anti-semitism is an effort to extend the ban on Holocaust denial to Labour Party politicians and other members promoting socialism and Palestinian rights. This establishment ‘cancel culture’ played a major role in the dismantling of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. Again, the goal is to anchor the need for censorship in a fixed ethical point on which everyone can agree. On the basis that Holocaust denial is prohibited, attempts are made to extend that prohibition to other subjects that powerful interests dislike. The goal is the elimination and even criminalisation of dissident free speech.

Promotions of violence, including state violence, aside, the focus of anyone who cares about freedom of speech and democracy should not be on banning words and opinions relating to racism and sexism. Both are functions of the ego’s wide-ranging efforts to elevate itself, and these efforts cannot simply be banned. Instead, we need to understand and dissolve the delusions of ego through self-awareness.

Noam Chomsky was absolutely right to sign a letter in Harper’s magazine opposing the growing momentum of ‘swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought’, even though many other signatories were hypocrites. As Chomsky has said:

‘If you’re in favour of freedom of speech, that means you’re in favour of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise. Otherwise you’re not in favour of freedom of speech.’

The 8^th Century mystic, Shantideva, asked:

‘Since I and other beings both, in wanting happiness, are equal and alike, what difference is there to distinguish us, that I should strive to have my bliss alone?’ (Shantideva, ‘The Way of the Bodhisattva’, Shambhala, 1997, p. 123)

Are ‘my’ suffering and happiness more important than ‘your’ suffering and happiness simply because they’re ‘mine’? Obviously not – the idea is baseless, irrational and cruel. This awareness certainly provides the rational, intellectual foundation for treating the happiness of others as ‘equal and alike’ to our own, but not the motivation.

However, Shantideva examined, with meticulous attention, his own reactions on occasions when he did and did not treat the happiness of others as ‘equal and alike’, and he reached this startling conclusion:

‘The intention, ocean of great good, that seeks to place all beings in the state of bliss, and every action for the benefit of all: such is my delight and all my joy.’ (Ibid., p. 49)

Shantideva’s point is that, if we pay close attention to our feelings, we will notice that caring for others – treating their suffering and happiness as equal to our own – is a source of tremendous and growing ‘delight’ and, in fact, ‘all my joy’. It is also an ‘ocean of great good’ for society. This is a subtle awareness that is blocked by the kind of overthinking that predominates in our culture (it requires meditation, an acute focus on feeling), but Jean-Jacques Rousseau saw the truth of the assertion with great clarity:

‘I could sometimes gladden another heart, and I owe it to my own honour to declare that whenever I could enjoy this pleasure, I found it sweeter than any other. This was a strong, pure and genuine instinct, and nothing in my heart of hearts has ever belied it.’ (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ‘Reveries of A Solitary Walker’, Penguin Classics, 1979, p. 94, our emphasis)

The fact that a loving, inclusive heart is the basis of individual and social happiness, and a hate-filled, prejudiced heart is the basis of individual and social unhappiness, is the most powerful rationale for dropping racism, sexism, classism and speciesism. It is a response rooted in the warm truth of being and lived experience, not in bloodless ideas of ‘moral obligation’ and ‘political correctness’, not in the violent suppression of free speech.

It is not our ‘duty’ or ‘moral obligation’ to be respectful and tolerant of people and animals different from us; it is in our own best interests to care for them.

Enlightened self-interest, not banning and censorship, has always been the most effective antidote to prejudice. In fact, anger, punishment, blame and guilt-making may lead us away from the truth that we are not being ‘selfish’ by denigrating others, we are harming ourselves.

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Tensions on the Israel-Lebanon border flared up in recent days due to a confusing July 27 incident near the Sheba’a Farms, a Syrian area occupied by Israel since the 1967 war but is also claimed by Lebanon. Tensions erupted when Israeli jets bombarded a target in the Syrian capital of Damascus, killing one Hezbollah fighter. The leader of the Shi’ite organization, Hassan Nasrallah, has consistently said that Hezbollah will always respond if its fighters are killed by Israel. Thus far, Hezbollah has always kept its promise.

For this reason, during the past week, the Israeli Army has reinforced its presence on the border with Lebanon and has threatened to respond to any attacks by Hezbollah. Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have consistently warned on a daily basis that their army will act forcefully in the face of any “provocations.”

But Hezbollah cannot sit idly by and let Israel kill its fighters in Lebanon or Syria since it would establish a precedence that Israel can act in impunity as does against Syrian and Iranian forces. The Israeli military attacks Syrian and Iranian targets with impudence and when it pleases. Syria and Iran never respond to Israeli attacks despite the constant warnings it gives. This encourages Israel to continue attacks knowing there will be no response. Nasrallah knows that if he does not respond, Israel will do the same as it does with Syria or Iran, and therefore, from Hezbollah’s perspective, Tel Aviv must be deterred from deciding to make continued attacks against them. The only way Hezbollah can do this is by attacking Israeli targets so that Israel knows that each of its attacks will have a response.

The July 27 incident was confusing. The first news that broke came from Israeli media with supposed leaks from the military. According to the initial version of events that came out shortly after 3pm, a cell of four Hezbollah fighters penetrated into the disputed Sheba’a Farms, fired on an Israeli military target, and the Israeli artillery responded, killing the four fighters. Throughout the afternoon, Israeli media gave four different version of events. In the end it turned out that there had been no deaths and the whole incident was untrue. The following day, the Yediot Ahronot newspaper spoke of a war of nerves between Israel and Hezbollah, implying that Israel had lost that war.

Although Hezbollah did not make any official statement about the alleged armed confrontation, the Al-Mayadeen television channel, a network close to the Shi’ite organization, assured that the incident had not occurred and that there had been no armed confrontation as Israeli media had claimed.

In any case, on July 28 the Israeli Army announced that it had dispatched more reinforcements to the border with Lebanon, and Israeli leaders, including Netanyahu, did not stop its threats against Hezbollah, constantly referring in detail to the alleged confrontation on July 27. Since then, tensions on the border has been extreme and nobody knows when Hezbollah will act to respond to the death of its militiaman in Damascus.

Despite the Israeli escalation, a Hezbollah leader assured that his organization does not foresee a military conflict in the coming months.

Deputy Secretary-General of Hezbollah, Naim Kasim, said “The conditions do not imply a war with Israel… Hezbollah and the Axis of Resistance in general for today are in defense, so I doubt that there will be a war in the coming months.” He added that to date no decision has been made on retaliatory measures. However, this is something that may escape the control of Hezbollah and even Israel depending on how events unfold in the coming days.

Lebanese and Israeli media indicated that Netanyahu sent a statement to Hezbollah saying he has no interest in a war with Hezbollah. However, the tension over the past week can be broken at any time. Israel knows that Hezbollah has built up a reputation of always seeking revenge attacks. The most famous instance was when a Hezbollah missile hit an Israeli ship during the 2006 Lebanon War, in what the Shi’ite group said was a revenge attack. Although Hezbollah believes a conflict will not break out, there are only two realistic outcomes – either Hezbollah does not seek revenge for the fighter killed in Damascus and tarnish its reputation, or Hezbollah retaliates knowing that Israel has already promised to respond.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

A nationwide coalition of organizations from the environmental-justice, outdoor and conservation communities filed a lawsuit today challenging the Trump administration’s attack on the National Environmental Policy Act.

Earlier this month the administration finalized rules that will eviscerate core components of the Act. Under new regulations put forth by the White House Council on Environmental Quality, polluting projects of all kinds will be exempt from basic environmental reviews, and the public will be cut out of one of its best tools to prevent dangerous, shortsighted projects.

“It has been more than 30 years since the passage of the National Environmental Policy Act and environmental justice communities continue to live with the impacts of decisions that precipitated its need,” said Kerene N. Tayloe, director of federal legislative affairs at WE ACT for Environmental Justice. “The changes made to this bedrock environmental law will further undermine basic protections, including the public’s right to participate in decision-making and the obligation of the government to fully and thoroughly study the cumulative impacts of health hazards on overburdened communities. They also reflect a disregard of Black, brown and poor communities and the unwillingness of this administration to execute laws in a way that benefits all Americans. WE ACT for Environmental Justice is committed to pursuing every option available to preserve and strengthen NEPA for the betterment of everyone.”

“NEPA matters,” said Tricia Cortez, executive director of the Rio Grande International Study Center. “Here on the border, we know what a world without NEPA looks like because of what we’ve experienced with the border wall. The U.S. government has waived NEPA and dozens of other federal laws to rush construction for a politically motivated and destructive wall project. We would not wish this on any other community in this country. The feeling is like having a train barreling at you with nothing to stop it. To protect our environment and our health, we the people must save NEPA.”

“We will not allow the Trump administration to compromise our rights to protect our communities and public health from the harms associated with unscrupulous and destructive industrial developments such as mining, oil and gas, and military operations,” said Pamela Miller, executive director of Alaska Community Action on Toxics. “This is a grave environmental injustice and we aim to prevent this attack on one of our most fundamental environmental laws.”

“The Trump administration picked the wrong fight,” said Kristen Boyles, an Earthjustice attorney serving as co-counsel on the case. “They want to make it easier to silence people’s voices and give polluters a free pass to bulldoze through our neighborhoods. That’s why we’re taking them to court.”

“We have consistently defeated this administration’s relentless, vicious dismantling of safeguards for people and the environment, and we will do so again for this critically important law,” said Susan Jane Brown, Western Environmental Law Center co-counsel. “A thriving economy is not at odds with worker protections and a healthy environment — it depends on both.”

“We won’t allow the Trump administration’s scorched-earth attack on this bedrock environmental law to stand,” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “NEPA was designed to protect the most vulnerable among us and give folks a voice in what happens in their communities. It was intended to ensure a healthy environment and safeguard wildlife for generations to come. It was never about making special interests richer, until now.”

Read what all 20-plus clients on the case have to say about the importance of defending NEPA.

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A recently concluded British Parliamentary inquiry has determined that Russia may have interfered in the 2016 Brexit referendum, which resulted in the departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union. But, ironically, it also concluded that Russia might not have interfered given the fact that the British government never bothered to try to find out if there had been any attempt made by the Kremlin to manipulate the voting.

The Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee is reportedly perplexed by the lack of official interest in what might have been a foreign intelligence operation that had major impact, all too plausible given that it is assumed that Moscow would have welcomed Brexit as a first step that will eventually put an end to European political and economic unity.

So, no one knows if Russia or anyone else interfered in Britain, which is perhaps just as well as inquiries into voting in the U.S. also in 2016 have likewise created nothing but confusion and no smoking pistol. And, of course there is a question of definitions of interference. Millions of pounds were spent on advertising by those pro- and con-Brexit, just as billions were spent in political adverts in the United States. Much of the “information” provided in that fashion was deliberately misleading, often fearmongering, both in the U.K. and the U.S., suggesting that the problem is much bigger than one country’s possible attempt to influence the vote, if that even took place.

There were similar claims about Russian generated fake news and “a massive hacking attack” in the French presidential election in 2017, while Germany’s Federal Election was notable for a lack of any identifiable Kremlin interference in spite of warnings from some observers that Berlin would be targeted.

So, while claims of Russian interference in elections are fairly common, they are difficult to prove in any serious way. And one should recognize that the “victimized” governments and political parties have strong motives to conjure up a foreign enemy to explain to the public why things are going wrong, be it for coronavirus fumbling or for general political ineptitude. To be sure, as the allure of blaming Russia has faded China is increasingly being targeted by American politicians as a scapegoat, indicating that there must always be a foreigner available to blame for one’s problems.

The most recent nugget to come out of the U.S. Congress on foreign interference in elections originates with Adam Schiff, the sly head of the House Intelligence Committee. In an interview with MSNBC, Schiff revealed that U.S. intelligence has obtained information suggesting multiple nations could be trying to meddle in the 2020 U.S. elections, to include feeding or “laundering” possible disinformation through Congress.

Schiff explained how various nations us different tactics to get “fake news” messages through to the American voters. Some governments openly support a particular candidate or policy, while others like the Chinese provide misinformation during their trade negotiations with Washington. He observed that

“The Russians may get involved in hacking and dumping operations or social media campaigns. The Iranians may have their own tactics and techniques like the North Koreans may have theirs.”

A letter signed by Schiff, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Senate Intelligence Committee ranking member Mark Warner, D-Va has asked for a counterintelligence briefing for Congress regarding foreign efforts to interfere in the upcoming election. It includes

“We are gravely concerned, in particular, that Congress appears to be the target of a concerted foreign interference campaign, which seeks to launder and amplify disinformation in order to influence congressional activity, public debate, and the presidential election in November.”

Democratic Party presidential candidate presumptive Joe Biden also has confirmed that he has received briefings about Russian alleged plans to interfere in November saying

“The Russians are still engaged in trying to delegitimize our electoral process. China and others are engaged as well in activities that are designed for us to lose confidence in the outcome.”

Of course, there are a number of things to say about the claims that other nations are possibly planning to meddle in the voting. First, the list of possible players being presented by Schiff and others is all too convenient, kind of like a Congressional dream list of bad boys. Russia pops up because of longstanding claims about it, but China is a new entry in the game because it all ties up into a neat package, including the “Wuhan virus” and its challenges both to American economic supremacy and to U.S. naval power in the South China Sea. And of course, there are Iran and also North Korea.

One should ask what exactly China, Iran and North Korea stand to gain by attempting to “interfere” in the election? What message could they possibly be sending and what would be the mechanisms they would use to get their points of view across to a skeptical American public? In a campaign that will undoubtedly cost hundreds of billions of dollars in advertising and other “messaging,” what exactly is the possible place of Iran and North Korea?

There is also a lack of “realism” in the Schiff comments. By far the country that interferes the most in U.S. politics is Israel. Israel and its domestic Lobby initiate legislation relating to the Middle East and Israeli diplomats, lobbyists and soldiers all have free access both to Capitol Hill and to the Pentagon. If a Congressman dares to speak up against the Jewish state’s crimes he or she is smeared in the media and eventually forced out of office by a well-funded pro-Israel opponent. No other country gets away with all that. As it is highly likely that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be pulling out all the stops to reelect Donald Trump in November, why isn’t the Jewish state included on Schiff’s list?

And then there is the tantalizing bit about concerns over disinformation being “laundered” through Congress. It is difficult to imagine what exactly Schiff is referring to as the corrupt gasbags in Congress already constitute one of the world’s biggest sources of false information, second only to the fully coopted U.S. mainstream media.

In any event, if some countries that are accustomed to being regularly targeted by the United States are taking advantage of an opportunity to somehow diminish America’s ability to meddle globally, no one should be surprised, but it is a politically driven fantasy to make the hysterical claim that the United States has now become the victim of some kind of vast multi-national conspiracy to interfere in its upcoming election.

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

Featured image: Adam Schiff (Source: Flickr)

It has frequently been observed that terror can rule absolutely only over people who are isolated against each other and that therefore one of the primary concerns of tyrannical government is to bring this isolation about. Isolation may be the beginning of terror; it certainly is its most fertile ground; it always is its result. This isolation is, as it were, pretotalitarian; its hallmark is impotence insofar as power always comes from people acting together, acting in concert; isolated people are powerless by definition.” – Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

Western civilization, led by the US government and media, has embarked upon a campaign of mass psychological terrorism designed to cover for the collapsing economy, set up a new pretext for Wall Street’s ongoing plunder expedition, radically escalate the police state, deeply traumatize people into submission to total social conformity, and radically aggravate the anti-social, anti-human atomization of the people.

The pretext for this abomination is an epidemic which objectively is comparable to the seasonal flu and is caused by the same kind of Coronavirus we’ve endured so long without totalitarian rampages and mass insanity.

The global evidence is converging on the facts: This flu is somewhat more contagious than the norm and is especially dangerous for those who are aged and already in poor health from pre-existing maladies. It is not especially dangerous for the rest of the population.

The whole concept of “lockdowns” is exactly upside down, exactly the wrong way any sane society would respond to this circumstance.

It’s the vulnerable who should be shielded while nature takes its course among the general population, who should go about life as usual. Dominionist-technocratic rigidity can’t prevent an epidemic from cycling through the population in spite of the delusions of that religion, especially since Western societies began their measures far too late anyway.

So it’s best to let herd immunity develop as fast as it naturally will, at which time the virus recedes from lack of hosts (and is likely to mutate in a milder direction along the way). This is the only way to bring a safer environment for all including the most vulnerable.

The fact that most societies have rejected the sane, scientific route in favor of doomed-to-fail attempts at a forcible violent segregation and sterilization is proof that governments aren’t concerned with the public health (as if we didn’t know that already from a thousand policies of poisoning the environment while gutting the health care system), but are very ardent to use this crisis they artificially generated in order radically to escalate their police state power toward totalitarian goals.

The whole concept of self-isolation and anti-social “distancing” is radically anti-human. We evolved over millions of years to be social creatures living in tight-knit groups. Although modern societies ideologically and socioeconomically work to massify and atomize people, nevertheless almost all of us still seek close human companionship in our lives.

(I suspect most of the internet police-state-mongers are not only fascists at heart but are confirmed misanthropic loners who couldn’t care less about human closeness.)

This terror campaign seeks to blast to pieces any remaining human closeness, which means any remaining humanity as such, the better to isolate individual atoms for subjection to total domination. Arendt wrote profoundly on this goal of totalitarian governments, though even she didn’t envision a state-driven cult of the literal physical repulsion of every atom from every other atom.

So far the people are submitting completely to a terror campaign dedicated to the total eradication of whatever community was left in the world, and especially whatever community was starting to be rebuilt.

Some dream of this terror campaign somehow bringing about a magical collective transformation. They don’t explain how that is supposed to happen when everyone’s so terrorized they’re desperate to detach physically from their own shadows, let alone physically come together with other people. But any kind of political or social action, any kind of movement-building, requires close person-to-person contact.

It seems that for most erstwhile self-alleged dissidents, the fact that social media is no substitute for face-to-face organizing and group action, a fact hitherto universally acknowledged by these dissidents, is another truth suddenly to be jettisoned replaced by its complete antithesis.

Thus the terror campaign is a virus causing those it infects to abdicate all activism and all prospect for all future activism, for as long as they remain insane with the fever of this propaganda terror.

Far more profoundly and evoking despair, the terror campaign is a virus causing those it infects to fear and loathe all human contact, all companionship, all closeness, all things which ever made us human in the first place. Prior totalitarian regimes sought this lack of contact and trust through networks of informers.

These networks are part of today’s terror campaign as well, encouraged from above and spontaneously arising from below as a result of the feeling of terror as well as the exercise of prior petty-evil intentions on the part of petty-evil individuals.

But today’s totalitarian potential is far worse than this. Now the regimes aspiring to total domination have terrorized and brainwashed the vast majority of people into an automatic physical distrust of all other people. One no longer fears that someone is an informer, but fears the very existence of another human being.

Any kind of human relations, from personal friendship and romance to friendly social gatherings and clubs to social and cultural movements become impossible under such circumstances. This threatens to be the end of the very concept of shared humanity, to be replaced by an anthill of slave atoms with no consciousness beyond fear and the most animal concern for food and shelter, which already is allowed or denied in the same way experimenters do with lab rats.

And the more people fear and loathe the literal physical existence of all other people, the more the situation becomes ripe for every epidemic of murder, from the spiking rate of domestic violence and killings to incipient lynch mobs to pogroms to Nazi-style extermination campaigns.

This is the system’s end goal. It’s the logical end where every trend of today leads. All of it is trumped up over an epidemic which objectively is a flu season somewhat rougher than average.

Why do the people want to surrender and throw away all reality and future prospect of shared humanity, happiness, freedom, well-being, over so little? Is this really a terminal totalitarian death cult, the globe as one massive Jonestown?

So far it seems this is what the majority wants. If they don’t really want this consummation of universal death in spirit, emotion and body, they’d better snap out of their terror-induced mental delirium fast, before it’s too late.

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Russ Bangs is a writer and organic food grower from New Jersey, United States. He blogs at Volatility and can be found on Facebook.

Featured image is from OffGuardian

The Parliament of Malaysia unanimously agreed today on submitting a notice for emergency motion to urge the government to work with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in demanding the expulsion of Israel from the United Nations.

Syed Ibrahim Syed Noh (PKR-Ledang) has brought members of Parliament’s attention to Israel’s failure to uphold its pledges as a UN member according to the 1945 Charter of the UN.

Syed Ibrahim said this could be noticed while Israel is planning to annex parts of the occupied West Bank.

He said a petition, signed by all members of parliament, could send a clear signal of protest on the annexation plan by Israel over the occupied Palestinian territories in the West Bank, including the strategic Jordan Valley.

Syed has proposed to submit this petition to the United States’ Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, UN and Asean Inter-parliamentary Assembly.

“I would like to propose that MPs sign a petition, through cooperation with the relevant NGOs, to express support and solidarity to the Palestinians in their fight for freedom and peace.”

“MPs should use their domestic, international and regional networks to mobilise assistance for Palestine and protest against the annexation plan,” said Syed Ibrahim, who submitted the notice for the emergency motion on July 14 to seek actions by the Malaysian government on Israeli’s annexation plan.

He also asked the government to acknowledge, support and assist any effort by NGOs in relation to protests against Israel.

He said the world has witnessed a lot of human rights violations committed by the Israeli regime against the Palestinian civilians.

“In the West Bank particularly, Israel’s colonisation of the Palestinian lands began dyring 1967 Middle Eastern War. For over half a century, Palestinians have suffered from persecution by the Israeli regime.”

“Women and children are considered constant targets for Israel’s atrocity and were killed in the most brutal manners. The inhumane acts by Israel must not be excused by civilised nations including Malaysia who seek peace and justice.”

Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, Prime Minister of Malaysia, called upon the international community during the 36th Asean Summit, to condemn Israel’s annexation plan.

He said that the international community must also ensure that such a plan should never be executed.

He expressed how Malaysia was deeply concerned over Palestinians’ fate amid the continued volatility in the Middle East.

The Israeli annexation plan was scheduled at first on July 1, but Israeli officials announced that the process would take place later this month in coordination with their American counterparts.

About 1,080 European MPs from 25 countries urged their leaders to take a step towards putting an end to this plan, according to AFP.

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Featured image is from Days of Palestine

Lithium and the Overthrow of Democracy in Bolivia

By Prof. Vijay Prashad and Alejandro Bejarano, July 31, 2020

On July 24, 2020, Tesla’s Elon Musk wrote on Twitter that a second US “government stimulus package is not in the best interests of the people.” Someone responded to Musk soon after, “You know what wasn’t in the best interest of people? The US government organizing a coup against Evo Morales in Bolivia so you could obtain the lithium there.” Musk then wrote: “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.”

A “Brazen Giveaway” GOP HEALS Act Is a $30 Billion Bonanza for the Pentagon

By Alan MacLeod, July 31, 2020

On Monday the Senate GOP released their outline for a new $1 trillion coronavirus stimulus package. A successor to March’s CARES Act, the 177-page document, named the HEALS Act, includes no funding for hazard pay, the Postal Service, state and local governments, nutrition assistance, or help for uninsured or underinsured Americans, but incorporates a $29.4 billion bonanza for the Pentagon.

Turkey’s Erdogan: From Haga Sophia to the Shores of Tripoli and Beyond

By F. William Engdahl, July 31, 2020

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has clearly decided to launch an offensive on multiple fronts, taking advantage of what he clearly perceives as a geopolitical vacuum. From his recent call to Islamic prayer at the Haga Sophia in Istanbul, to his breaking of the arms embargo to back the Tripoli regime against the advance of General Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army in the East, from continuing military presence inside Syria to refusal to stop drilling for oil and gas in waters off Cyprus, as well as actions in Africa, Erdogan is clearly in an aggressive mode. Is there a larger strategy behind all this, far more than as a diversion from domestic Turkish economic problems?

Journalism Under Attack in Assange Case

By Asad Ismi, July 31, 2020

In a letter to the New York Times in 1970, British historian Arnold Toynbee said the United States “has become the world’s nightmare.” It turned out they were just getting started. Through its many wars, covert operations and economic destabilizations, the U.S. government has immiserated and killed millions of people in the Global South. Washington’s aim in this carnage, under a thin cloak of liberal internationalism, has been to enrich itself and its Western client states including Canada, Britain and Australia.

Video: Covid-19 and the Censorship of Medical Doctors. LancetGate and the Suppression of Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ)

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, July 30, 2020

Medical doctors at an event in front of the US Supreme Court are accused of making false statements.

The video of their press conference was removed by Youtube and Facebook. They are accused by CNN of spreading “fake science”

The doctors put forth Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) as an effective Covid-19 cure.

Why were they smeared by CNN? Why were they the object of censorship?

COVID-19: Continuous Wearing of Mask Aggravates Risk of Infection. “Psychological Terrorism”?

By Dr. Pascal Sacré, July 30, 2020

Continuous wearing of masks aggravates the risk of infection.

This statement is based on scientific and medical analysis.

The air, once exhaled, is heated, humidified and charged with CO2. It becomes a perfect culture medium for infectious agents (bacteria, fungi, viruses).

Studies have shown that the porosity (microscopic holes) of the masks allows exhaled germs to accumulate on the external surface of the mask. Not only do we re-inhale our own CO2, but by touching our mask all the time (an inevitable gesture), we spread germs everywhere!

China and Iran to Sign Comprehensive Economic and Security Deal. Reviving Atoms for Peace

By Matthew Ehret-Kump, July 30, 2020

With the new revelations of an impending broad-sweeping economic and military pact soon to be signed between Iran and China, war hawks in Israel and Washington have entirely melted down. “Iran is reportedly in the final stages of agreeing to a $400 billion economic and security deal with China, which includes infrastructure investment, discounted Iranian oil and enhanced cooperation on both defense and intelligence.”

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Can you help us keep up the work we do? Namely, bring you the important news overlooked or censored by the mainstream media and fight the corporate and government propaganda, the purpose of which is, more than ever, to “fabricate consent” and advocate war for profit.

We thank all the readers who have contributed to our work by making donations or becoming members.

If you have the means to make a small or substantial donation to contribute to our fight for truth, peace and justice around the world, your gesture would be much appreciated.

“And as the flames climbed high into the night
To light the sacrificial rite
I saw Satan laughing with delight
The day the music died”

– Don McLean, “American Pie”

Important article written in January 2019 focussing on psychological warfare. Of relevance to the Covid-19 crisis and fear campaign.

The Nazis had a name for their propaganda and mind-control operations: Weltanschauungskrieg– “world view warfare.”  As good students, they had learned many tricks of the trade from their American teachers, including Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, who had honed his propagandistic skills for the United States during World War I and had subsequently started the public relations industry in New York City, an industry whose raison d’ȇtre from the start was to serve the interests of the elites in manipulating the public mind. 

In 1941, U.S. Intelligence translated Weltanschauungskrieg as “psychological warfare,” a phrase that fails to grasp the full dimensions of the growing power and penetration of U.S. propaganda, then and now.  Of course, the American propaganda apparatus was just then getting started on an enterprise that has become the epitome of successful world view warfare programs, a colossal beast whose tentacles have spread to every corner of the globe and whose fabrications have nestled deep within the psyches of many hundreds of millions of Americans and people around the world.  And true to form in this circle game of friends helping friends, this propaganda program was ably assisted after WW II by all the Nazis secreted into the U.S. (“Operation Paperclip”) by Allen Dulles and his henchmen in the OSS and then the CIA to make sure the U.S. had operatives to carry on the Nazi legacy (see David Talbot’s The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, The CIA, and The Rise of America’s Secret Government, an extraordinary book that will make your skin crawl with disgust).

This went along quite smoothly until some people started to question the Warren Commission’s JFK assassination story.  The CIA then went on the offensive in 1967 and put out the word to all its people in the agency and throughout the media and academia to use the phrase “conspiracy theory” to ridicule these skeptics, which they have done up until the present day. This secret document – CIA Dispatch 1035-960– was a propaganda success for many decades, marginalizing those researchers and writers who were uncovering the truth about not just President Kennedy’s murder by the national security state, but those of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy.  Today, the tide is turning on this score, as recently more and more Americans are fed up with the lies and are demanding that the truth be told. Even the Washington Post is noting this, and it is a wave of opposition that will only grow.

Screenshot WPost, January 2019

The CIA Exposed – Partially

But back in the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, some covert propaganda programs run by the CIA were “exposed.”  First, the Agency’s sponsorship of the Congress of Cultural Freedom, through which it used magazines, prominent writers, academics, et al. to spread propaganda during the Cold War, was uncovered.  This was an era when Americans read serious literary books, writers and intellectuals had a certain cachet, and popular culture had not yet stupefied Americans. The CIA therefore secretly worked to influence American and world opinion through the literary and intellectual elites.  Frances Stonor Saunders comprehensively covers this in her 1999 book, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA And The World Of Arts And Letters, and Joel Whitney followed this up in 2016 with Finks: How the CIA Tricked the World’s Best Writers, withparticular emphasis on the complicity of the CIA and the famous literary journal The Paris Review.

Then in 1975 the Church Committee hearings resulted in the exposure of abuses by the CIA, NSA, FBI, etc.  In 1977 Carl Bernstein wrote a long piece for Esquire – “The CIA and the Media” – naming names of journalists and publications (TheNew York Times, CBS, etc.) that worked with and for the CIA in propagandizing the American people and the rest of the world.

(Conveniently, this article can be read on the CIA’s website since presumably the agency has come clean, or, if you are the suspicious type, or maybe a conspiracy theorist, it is covering its deeper tracks with a “limited hangout,” defined by former CIA agent Victor Marchetti, who went rogue, as “spy jargon for a favorite and frequently used gimmick of the clandestine professionals. When their veil of secrecy is shredded and they can no longer rely on a phony cover story to misinform the public, they resort to admitting—sometimes even volunteering—some of the truth while still managing to withhold the key and damaging facts in the case. The public, however, is usually so intrigued by the new information that it never thinks to pursue the matter further.”)

Confess and Move On

By the late 1970s, it seemed as if the CIA had been caught in flagrante delicto and disgraced, had confessed its sins, done penance, and resolved to go and sin no more. Seeming, however, is the nature of the CIA’s game.  Organized criminals learn to adapt to the changing times, and that is exactly what the intelligence operatives did.  Since the major revelations of the late sixties and seventies – MKUltra, engineered coups all around the world, assassinations of foreign leaders, spying on Americans, etc. – no major program of propaganda has been exposed in the mainstream media. Revealing books about certain CIA programs have been written – e.g. Douglas Valentine’s important The Phoenix Program being one – and dissenting writers, journalists, researchers, and whistleblowers (Robert Parry, Gary Webb, Julian Assange, James W. Douglass, David Ray Griffin, Edward Snowden, et al.) have connected the U.S. intelligence services to dirty deeds and specific actions, such as the American engineered coup d’état in Ukraine in 2013-14, electronic spying, and the attacks of September 11, 2001.  But the propaganda has for the most part continued unabated at a powerful and esoteric cultural level, while illegal and criminal actions are carried out throughout the world in the most blatant manner imaginable, as if to say fuck you openly while insidiously infecting the general population through the mass electronic screen culture that has relegated intellectual and literary culture to a tiny minority.

Planning Ahead

Let me explain what I think has been happening.

Organizations like the CIA are obviously fallible and have made many mistakes and failed to anticipate world events.  But they are also very powerful, having great financial backing,  and do the bidding of their masters in banking, Wall St., finance, etc.  They are the action arm of these financial elites, and are, as Douglass Valentine has written, organized criminals.  They have their own military, are joined to all the armed forces, and are deeply involved in the drug trade. They control the politicians. They operate their own propaganda network in conjunction with the private mercenaries they hire for their operations.  The corporate mass media take their orders, orders that need not be direct, but sometimes are, because these media are structured to do the bidding of the same elites that formed the CIA and own the media.  And while their ostensible raison d’ȇtre is to provide intelligence to the nation’s civilian leaders, this is essentially a cover story for their real work that is propaganda, killing, and conducting coups d’états at home and abroad.

Because they have deep pockets, they can afford to buy all sorts of people, people who pimp for the elites. Some of these people do work that is usually done by honest academics and independent intellectuals, a dying breed, once called free-floating intellectuals. These pimps analyze political, economic, technological, and cultural trends.  They come from different fields: history, anthropology, psychology, sociology, political science, cultural studies, linguistics, etc. They populate the think tanks and universities.  They are often intelligent but live in bad faith, knowing they are working for those who are doing the devil’s work. But they collect their pay and go their way straight to the bank, the devil’s bank.  They often belong to the Council of Foreign Relations or the Heritage Foundation. They are esteemed and esteem themselves.  But they are pimps.

El Diablo: Good Guys and Bad Guys

Ah, the devil!  He’s their man. A man of many names, but always an impostor.  These pimps know his story and how he works his magic, and this is what their paymasters want from them: ways to use the old bastard’s bag of tricks to conjure confusion, and sow fear and paranoia.  And to do this slow and easy in ways no one will recognize until it is too late.

For like culture, propaganda relies on myths, symbols, and stories.  Some prefer to say narratives.  But nothing is more powerful.  Controlling the stories is the key to powerful propaganda. The pimps can spin many a tale.

Tell people endless tales of the good guys and the bad, of how the bad are out to get you and the good to save you. Think of the use of symbols in the telling of these stories.  They are crucial.  The word symbol comes from a Greek word to throw together.  Symbols that represent the in-group or the “good guys” are used to create social solidarity within the in-group.  Stories are told to accompany the symbols; stories, narratives, or myths tell of how the good guys are fighting to hold the group together and the bad guys are trying to rip the community apart.  The symbolic and its opposite – the diabolic (to throw apart) – the angels against the devils – el diablo.  Very simple, very old.  The aliens are out to get us.  And el diablo is always the ultimate other, the man in red, the reds, the commies, the Russians, the others, immigrants, the blacks who want to move next door, Muslims, gays  – take your pick.  Satanic rituals.  Black magic. Witchcraft.

Methods of Propaganda

Infecting minds with such symbols and stories must be done directly and indirectly, as well as short-term and long-term.  Long term propaganda is like a slowly leaking water pipe that you are vaguely aware of but that rots the metal from within until the pipe can no longer resist the pressure.  Drip drop, drip drop, drip drop – and the inattentive recipients of the propaganda gradually lose their mettle to resist and don’t know it, and then when an event bursts into the news – e.g. the attacks of September 11, 2001 or Russia-gate – they have been so softened that their assent is automatically given.  They know without hesitation who the devil is and that he must be fought.

The purpose of the long-term propaganda is to create certain predispositions and weaknesses that can be exploited when needed. Certain events can be the triggers to induce the victims to react to suggestions.  When the time is ripe, all that is needed is a slight suggestion, like a touch on the shoulder, and the hypnotized one acts in a trance.  The gun goes off, and the entranced one can’t remember why (see: Sirhan Sirhan, image left).  This is the goal of mass hypnotization through long-term propaganda: confusion, memory loss, and automatic reaction to suggestion.

Intelligence Pimps and Liquid Screen Culture

When the CIA’s dirty tricks were made public in the 1970s, it is not hard to imagine that the intellectual pimps who do their long-range thinking were asked to go back to the drawing board and paint a picture of the coming decades and how business as usual could be conducted without further embarrassment.  By that time it had become clear that intellectual or high culture was being swallowed by mass culture and the future belonged to electronic screen culture and images, not words.  What has come to be called “postmodernity” ensued, or what the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman calls “liquid modernity” and Guy Debord “the society of the spectacle.”  Such developments, rooted in what Frederic Jameson has termed “the cultural logic of late capitalism,” have resulted in the fragmentation of social and personal life into pointillistic moving pictures whose dots form incoherent images that sow mass confusion and do not cohere. From the mid-1970s until today, this generalized disorientation with its flowing and eternal present of appearing and dissolving images has resulted in what is surely a transformed world, and with it, transformed worldviews.  The foundations have collapsed. Meaning and coherence have become difficult to discern. Stable personality has been disassociated, memory downloaded, attention lost, the psyche materialized, sexual identity confused, the electronic mind-body interface established, and the electronic and pharmaceutical drugging of the population accomplished. Really?  Yes.

Did not the intelligence agencies foresee all this? Did not they see it and plan accordingly?  Did they not notice that about the time their old dirty deeds were being exposed, a movie burst onto the screen that introduced a theme familiar to them and their Nazi friends?  I mean the 1973 hit, The Exorcist,wherein Satan struts his stuff, four years after Mick Jagger strut his across the stage at Altamont, singing “Sympathy for the Devil,” while shortly after a killing took place down in front of him and the 1960s were laid to rest.  But during the 1970s The Exorcist and its theme of the devil’s hold on people came to life and was  taken up with a religious fervor by the entertainment industry and promoted by Oprah Winfrey, Geraldo Rivera, and other media luminaries, who went about promoting el diablo’s hold on so many helpless victims.  Occult, magic, and satanic themes became pop staples and would remain so up until the present day.  I would suggest that readers put aside their reservations at what may seem sensational and watch this video.  Then ask yourself: what is going on here?

The CIA as Prophetic

But maybe a better question than did the CIA foresee these developments, would be to ask if it has been involved in the occult and satanic world itself, before and after the social developments of “liquid modernity.”   The answer is yes.  Indeed, all the characteristics of the social and cultural developments I mentioned previously in reference to postmodernity have been a major part of its work before this new world emerged:

“the disassociation of stable personalities, memory erasure and the implanting of false memories, materializing the psyche, confusing sexual identity, establishing the electronic mind-body interface, and electronic, hallucinogenic (the CIA introduced and spread LSD in the 1960s), and pharmaceutical drugging,” [to name but a few].

In anticipating these developments the CIA was at the very least predictive.  Disinformation, acts of terrorism,  coup d’états, assassinations flow out of a marriage to the Nazis made in hell – Talbot’s “devil’s chessboard” – but they are linked to much more. Peter Levenda, in Sinister Forces: A Grimoireof American Political Witchcraft, a trilogy on sinister forces in American history, puts it this way:

The CIA, satanic cults, and UFOs, the mythology of the late twentieth century is surprisingly coherent even though the masks change from case to case, from victim to alleged victim.  The CIA, of course, does exist; their mind control programs from BLUEBIRD to ARTICHOKE to MK-ULTRA are a matter of public record.  Their history of political assassinations and the overthrow of various foreign governments is also a matter of record.  Satanic cults – or perhaps we should qualify that and say ‘occult secret societies’ – also exist and are a matter of public record; their attempts to contact alien forces by means of ceremonial magic and arcane ritual (including the use of some of the same drugs and other techniques as the CIA used in its mind control programs) are also well-known and documented. Some of these practitioners were – and are – well-known men and women who have not denied their involvement (such as rocket scientist Jack Parsons in the 1950s and Army Colonel and intelligence officer Michael Aquino in the 1990s).  The CIA also aggressively researched American cults and secret societies in an effort to discover the source of paranormal abilities and ancient mind control mechanisms. And while the jury is still out on the question of UFOs, there is no doubt that government agencies have attempted to track, to analyze them, and to explain them away.  Again this is a matter of public record, including FBI and CIA documents in addition to military records.

Skeptical readers may find this strange to consider. That would be a mistake.  The web of connections is there for anyone who cares to look.  For more than fifty years occult themes and rituals have been part of world view warfare. Drugs, shamanism, black magic, and the occult – staples of the CIA then and now.  It is well known that Hollywood, television, and the media in general have been working closely with the intelligence agencies for a long time. Especially since 2001, films and television programs have glorified the CIA, our “good” spies, and the military. The mystification of reality has found its best friend in the electronic and internet revolution as strange and “subversive” beliefs are dangled like candy for little children.  Good and evil move through the public consciousness like passing sun and shadows.  Weird conspiracy theories “pop up” to titillate and obsess, and to drive out the serious findings of dedicated and disciplined writers and researchers who have discovered the truth about real government conspiracies.  Sowing confusion is the name of this deadly game, and if you find yourself confused, you are in good company.

But many are catching on and realizing that what seems strange but innocent is part of a much larger effort to hypnotize the public to agree to their own destruction through the ingestion of what can only be called black magic.

The eloquent writer and brave American, Jim Garrison, the former District Attorney of New Orleans and the only person to bring a trial in the assassination of President Kennedy, put it this way in On The Trail of The Assassins, the story of his quest to solve the murder of JFK.

I knew by now that when a group of individuals gravitated toward one another for no apparent reason, or a group of individuals inexplicitly headed in the same directions as if drawn by a magnetic field, or coincidence piled upon coincidence too many times, as often as not the shadowy outlines of a covert intelligence operation were somehow becoming visible.

Rub Lucifer, the Prince of Darkness,  the right way and the CIA emerges into the light.  You can see its shadowy outline with your eyes wide shut.  As it says on CIA headquarters: “You shall know the Truth, and the Truth will set you free.”

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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/

UN officials have pointed to a study that reveals lockdowns and school closures are doing more harm to children than the coronavirus itself, with many more deaths expected to come from the reaction to the outbreak, rather than the pandemic itself.

In a presentation seeking extra funding for coronavirus efforts, UNICEF director Henrietta H Fore said Monday,

“The repercussions of the pandemic are causing more harm to children than the disease itself.”

UNICEF nutrition program chief Victor Aguayo noted that the most harm is being done “by having schools closed, by having primary health care services disrupted, by having nutritional programs dysfunctional.”

The officials pointed to a study published in The Lancet that notes “physical distancing, school closures, trade restrictions, and country lockdowns” are worsening global child malnutrition.

The study estimates that an extra 6.7 million children will be at risk, and that lockdowns and other coronavirus responses could lead to more than 10,000 additional child deaths every month.

The UNICEF officials noted that would mean 128,000 more deaths among children within the next year.

Study: Global Lockdowns Killing 10,000 Children Per Monthhttps://t.co/GG9DWHZpeY

— Dan Bongino (@dbongino) July 28, 2020

The study complies research from the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

It concludes that shut down strategies could lead to “life-long impacts on education, chronic disease risks, and overall human capital formation,” in addition to “intergenerational consequences for child growth and development.”

The estimates are said to “likely to be conservative, given that the duration of this crisis is unknown, and its full impacts on food, health, and social protection systems are yet to be realized.”

The study dovetails with other research that has concluded lockdowns will conservatively “destroy at least seven times more years of human life” than they save.

The German government has concluded that the impact of the country’s lockdown could end up killing more people than the coronavirus due to victims of other serious illnesses not receiving treatment.

As we have previously highlighted, in the UK there have already been up to 10,000 excess deaths as a result of seriously ill people avoiding hospitals due to COVID-19 or not having their hospital treatments cancelled.

A data analyst consortium in South Africa also found that the economic consequences of the country’s lockdown will lead to 29 times more people dying than the coronavirus itself.

Hundreds of doctors are also on record as opposing lockdown measures, warning that they will cause more death than the coronavirus itself.

While globalists have urged that lockdowns need to continue, medical and economic experts across the board in multiple countries are warning that the loss of life will be much greater than that caused directly by the virus itself, if lockdowns are not scrapped.

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On Monday the Senate GOP released their outline for a new $1 trillion coronavirus stimulus package. A successor to March’s CARES Act, the 177-page document, named the HEALS Act, includes no funding for hazard pay, the Postal Service, state and local governments, nutrition assistance, or help for uninsured or underinsured Americans, but incorporates a $29.4 billion bonanza for the Pentagon.

The package is presented as a necessary measure to help the country fight the COVID-19 pandemic, which has so far caused the deaths of nearly 153,000 Americans. But it appears that the GOP had a very different enemy in mind when writing some parts of it. “To prevent, prepare for, and respond to coronavirus, domestically and internationally,” the bill (pp. 35-38) allocates $686 million for the purchase of extra Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets, $650 million for A-10 Warthog fighter-bombers, $720 million for C-130J transport planes, $283 million for AH-64 Apache attack helicopters and $1.068 billion for P-8A Poseidon anti-submarine aircraft.

It is not just the Air Force that will benefit from the new bill; it also includes $41.4 million for Raytheon missiles, $260 million for a new Navy fast transport ship, $250 million for amphibious shipbuilding programs and $375 million for armored combat vehicles. Most of these military spending requests are ones that had previously been subject to cuts in February as the Trump administration moved Pentagon money around to fund construction of the border wall. The plan also allocates (p. 11) $1.75 billion to the FBI for the design and construction of a huge new facility in Washington, D.C.

“Amphibious ships don’t feed hungry children”

The new HEALS Act, which differs both in scope and its recipients from the $3 trillion Democrat-backed Heroes Act, which President Trump has promised will be “dead on arrival.” Unsurprisingly, Democrats have condemned the new plan. “The bill contains billions of dollars for programs unrelated to the coronavirus, including over $8 billion for what appears to be a wish-list from the Department of Defense for manufacturing of planes, ships, and other weapons systems,” said Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy. “The bill provides nothing to address the long lines at food banks and shortchanges education and childcare, but we can shore up the defense industry? I am at a loss for words.” “Amphibious ships don’t feed hungry children,” added House Appropriations Committee Chair Nita Lowey (D-NY).

Yet Democrats have supported other sections of the bill, particularly that to do with cutting unemployment benefits. While providing a second $1,200 check, the HEALS Act also reduces unemployment payments from $600 to $200 per week, although in the long term it would move to a system where the government would pay up to 70 percent of a worker’s pre-COVID wages, a setup that most of Europe opted for in the beginning. “Look, it’s not $600 or bust,” said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), claiming that a weekly $600 check serves as a disincentive to many to start working again.

The proposed act also ensures that businesses and other entities have near blanket immunity from coronavirus-related lawsuits coming from customers and employees. “Mitch McConnell’s new coronavirus ‘relief’ proposal is an utter disgrace. It somehow manages to make the pandemic and economic pain even worse,” wrote consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, labeling it a “brazen giveaway” to big business and the military.

A lack of popular support

Far from wishing to increase spending, a poll conducted earlier this month showed that the majority of Americans (including 69 percent of Democrats) supported Bernie Sanders’ proposal to cut the $740 billion Pentagon budget by ten percent, using the savings to fight the coronavirus and the impending housing crisis it is causing. Yet Democrats in both the House and Senate joined with the GOP to vote down the idea. The $74 billion in savings, the National Priorities Project calculated, would have been enough to end homelessness, pay for 2 billion COVID-19 tests, create one million green energy jobs, or hire 900,000 extra school teachers.

The U.S. military budget rivals that of the rest of the world combined, with the majority of federal discretionary spending already going on warfare. Earlier this month, Congress and the Senate passed Trump’s massive $740 billion military bill, an increase from previous years. Yet it seems too much can never be enough for defense contractors. While it is far from clear how attack helicopters and cruise missiles will help during a pandemic, it is not hard to see who will benefit from the new bill and whose interests are really being served.

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Alan MacLeod is a Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent. He has also contributed to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, Common Dreams the American Herald Tribune and The Canary.

Featured image: Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, speaks to a NATO Training Mission – Afghanistan advisor during a visit to meet Afghan National Army soldiers at Kabul Military Training Center Jan. 16, 2011. Ernesto Hernandez Fonte | DVIDS

China seeks the support of the European Union (EU) countries to counter the hegemonic behavior of the United States, which could generate a new cold war, an interruption of globalization, and situations of risk for all humanity.

The U.S. is “violating the most basic principles of international relations,” Chinese Foreign Affairs Minister Wang Yi said during a phone call with his French colleague Jean Yves Le Drian.

“Tolerating a bully will keep no one safe but will only make him behave more daringly and act worse,” said Wang, referring to the behavior of the United States during the administration of President Donald Trump, who has deteriorated bilateral relations with his country in its quest for re-election.

“All countries must act to resist any unilateral or hegemonic act and to safeguard world peace and development,” Wang stressed.

He also criticized the “conspiracy theories” that U.S. officials are promoting to encourage hostile attitudes toward the Chinese people and government.

TRUMP's Distorted Pandemic America
151 K Americans DEAD due to MisManagement
87 million under / un-insured
US Economy: ALL TIME LOW
US STK MKT: ALL TIME HIGH
50 mils Americans unemployed
Since Pandemic 1% got 1 Trillions rich, 2 Billionaires wealth >160 mil Americans COMBINED. pic.twitter.com/lUVapeYGhw

— Federal Reserve Ponzi Bank RedPilled (@stockmkt_aj) July 28, 2020

Wang stressed that confrontations so deliberately generated would affect not only relations between China and the U.S. but that “the entire world will face a crisis of division and the future of humanity will be in danger.”

The Chinese Foreign Affairs minister recalled that, compared to previous governments, the Trump administration has withdrawn from an unprecedented number of international treaties.

“What’s worse, at a critical moment when the international community needs international solidarity more than ever to fight COVID-19, Washington announced its withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO),” Wang commented.

“The U.S. has become the main responsible for destroying the current international order. It is a country that stands against historical trends and the international community,” Wang added.

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Featured image: Foreign Affairs Minister Wang Yi, July 17, 2020. | Photo: Xinhua

Sources told Al-Monitor the agreement to market oil in territory controlled by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces was signed “with the knowledge and encouragement of the White House.”

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The Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration of Northeast Syria has signed an agreement with an American oil company, well-placed sources with close knowledge of the deal told Al-Monitor. One of the sources said the agreement to market oil in territory controlled by the US-backed entity and to develop and modernize existing fields was inked last week “with the knowledge and encouragement of the White House.” The sources named the company as Delta Crescent Energy LLC, a corporation organized under the laws of the state of Delaware. The sources gave no further details about the company but would only say they had been in talks for “a long time” and that it had received an OFAC license to operate in Syria.

Sinam Mohamad, the Syrian Democratic Council representative to the United States, confirmed via Whatsapp that Delta Crescent had signed an agreement with the autonomous administration but said she had no further details.

Oil is the autonomous administration’s principal source of income.

The sources briefing Al-Monitor confirmed that Lindsay Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina who is close to President Donald Trump, had spoken to Mazloum Kobani, the commander in chief of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) yesterday and that Kobani had informed Graham of the deal and asked him to relay details of it to the US president.

Graham confirmed that he had heard about the oil agreement from Kobane to CBS reporter Christina Ruffini, who then relayed this in a tweet.

During his testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Graham he was “OK” with the deal.

“The deal took a little longer senator, than we had hoped, and now we’re in implementation,” he said.

The sources told Al-Monitor that the US government had also agreed to provide two modular refineries to the autonomous administration but that these would only meet 20% of its refining needs. Delivery of the refineries have been held up by logistical hitches related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the sources said.

The Kurdish-led entity controls most of Syria’s oil wealth, which is concentrated in and around the Rmelain fields close to the Turkish and Iraqi borders and in the Al-Omar fields further south. Before Syria’s civil conflict erupted in 2011, the country used to produce around 380,000 barrels of crude per day. Production is down to around 60,000 barrels per day, much of it refined in makeshift refineries and transported by leaky pipelines causing massive environmental pollution.

Oil is a politically radioactive topic, with the central government in Damascus accusing the United States of stealing its oil after Trump declared last year in the wake of Turkey’s October incursion against the SDF that he was keeping some 500 US Special Forces in the Kurdish governed space “for the oil.” Despite steadily tightening sanctions on the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, the United States has turned a blind eye to ongoing oil trade between the Kurds and Damascus. A fair amount of the oil is also sold at cut rate prices to the Kurdistan region of Iraq.

Ankara is every bit as sensitive about the oil as it’s seen as the vehicle for cementing the Syrian Kurds’ self-rule project. Turkey has since 2016 been launching military operations against the SDF to disrupt its perceived attempts to establish a contiguous zone of control from the Iraqi border all the way to Afrin to the west of the Euphrates river and beyond. Turkey claims the SDF and its affiliates are “terrorists” because of their links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, the rebel group that has been fighting for Kurdish self rule inside Turkey since 1984 and is on the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations.

The sources said US Special Envoy for Syria engagement reportedly had informed Turkey about the oil deal and that Ankara had not reacted negatively. Russia was also informed and had not expressed a view, though certain fields were kept outside the deal, so as to ensure that the Syrian people outside the Kurdish zone were “not deprived of their share of the oil,” one of the sources said.

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Boeing reported another dismal quarter, helping the company emerge as one of the companies most directly impacted by the global covid pandemic.

For the second quarter Boeing, which said that results are still significantly impacted by Covid-19, reported a 25% drop in revenue to $11.81, badly missing estimates of $12.99 and leading to a $2.4 billion net income loss which translated into a $4.79 loss per share, which while better than the $5.21 per share loss a year ago, was far worse than the $2.54 loss expected…

… as a result of a “slow, uneven” business environment recovery, with defense, government service operations providing stability, but not enough and forcing the company to raise (a lot) of additional debt to bolster liquidity.

As a reminder, Boeing’s best-selling plane, the 737 Max, has been grounded since March 2019 following two fatal crashes. Regulators aren’t expected to clear the planes to fly again before the fall. Separately, the pandemic has driven up financial losses at Boeing’s airline customers and hurt demand for new planes, though Boeing was in crisis even before coronavirus spread around the world.

The company confirmed plans to slow production of its main commercial aircraft as the coronavirus pandemic hurts demand for new planes and its best-selling 737 Max jets remain grounded. Boeing said it would further cut 787 production to just six per month in 2021, the production rate of the 777/777x will be gradually cut to 2 per month in 2021, while it gradually increases manufacturing of its 737 Max to 31 a month by the beginning of 2022, compared with plans to do so next year.

The company is aggressively cutting production as its orderbook has been contracting for the first time in history:

Source: @takis2910

Some more details from the quarter:

• 2Q total commercial planes deliveries 20, down a massive -78% y/y, and below the estimate of 24.40
• 2Q Commercial Airplanes revenue $1.63 billion, estimate $3 billion
• 2Q Defense, Space & Security revenue $6.59 billion, estimate $7.02 billion (need moar wars)
• 2Q Global Services revenue $3.49 billion, estimate $3.29 billion

Even the company’s backlog was hit, dropping 14% Y/Y to just $409BN, a number that continues to shrink by the day.

Some more headlines, which indicate that the company’s buyback – the source of so much joy in previous years and so much pain now – is finally over:

• Boeing Terminated Share Repurchasing Program
• Boeing: Est. Will Take 3 Yrs to Return to 2019 Passenger Levels
• Boeing Says Taking Actions Incl Reducing Employment Levels
• Boeing: We’ll Complete Production of the Iconic 747 in 2022
• Boeing Sees 737 Production Rate 31/Month by Beginning of 2022
• Boeing Global Services Saw $923M Charge on Covid-19 Impacts
• Boeing: Need to Evaluate Most Efficient Way to Produce the 787

Boeing’s CEO Dave Calhoun in April said air travel demand will likely take two or three years to recover. International demand has been particularly soft, hurting the outlook for Boeing’s widebody commercial planes, like the 787 Dreamliner. The International Air Transport Association, a trade group that represents most of the world’s airlines, on Tuesday said it expects passenger air travel demand globally to recover to 2019 levels in 2024, a year later than it previously forecast.

Boeing has more than 470 planes sitting on the ground that haven’t been delivered to customers, most of them 737 Max jets, according to consulting firm Ascend by Cirium. Meanwhile, more than a third of its active fleet is currently parked.

As CNBC notes, Boeing’s CEO Dave Calhoun in April said air travel demand will likely take two or three years to recover. International demand has been particularly soft, hurting the outlook for Boeing’s widebody commercial planes, like the 787 Dreamliner. The International Air Transport Association, a trade group that represents most of the world’s airlines, on Tuesday said it expects passenger air travel demand globally to recover to 2019 levels in 2024, a year later than it previously forecast.

While the income statement was ugly, the balance sheet was downright scary, with Boeing scrambling to load up on as much cash as it could, adding almost $17 billion in liquidity, this was done at the expense of a surge in debt.

To save costs, Boeing has been slashing overhead and said this spring it aims to cut 10% of its workforce of about 160,000 people. It has also shored up liquidity with a monster $25 billion debt sale in April, Boeing’s largest ever, to help weather the crisis. And while Boeing added $17BN in cash, its debt rose even more, surging by over $20BN in the past quarter! It is only a matter of time before Boeing is downgraded to junk.

While Boeing has a lot of cash on its balance sheet to weather the storm, it has yet to end the 16-month grounding of the 737 Max and the pandemic’s devastation of air travel means the planemaker’s recovery will take years.

Yet despite the dismal results, Boeing’s shares were trading higher on the results, up more than 1% in premarket trading as investors focused on one sliver of positive news: that cash burn wasn’t as bad as they feared. As context, the company burned more than $5 billion in the quarter!

Yet while shares were up 1.3% to $173.02, the stock is trading at roughly half its value from a year ago.

Boeing’s Q2 presentation can be found here.

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Toward the end of his life, Martin Luther King, Jr., after agonizing about the Vietnam War in private, began denouncing it in public. Liberal politicians and media, including The New York Times, castigated him, telling him to stick to civil rights. In a 1967 speech at New York City’s Riverside Church, King rejected this criticism and explained how he arrived at his antiwar stance.

He had realized, he said, that the U.S. “would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So, I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.”

King’s message could not be more relevant to this moment. Activists protesting police violence against African Americans have called for “defunding” law-enforcement agencies, which entails deep budget cuts, among other reforms.

“Cut the number of police in half and cut their budget in half,” criminal-justice activist Mariame Kaba urges in The New York Times. “We should redirect the billions that now go to police departments toward providing health care, housing, education and good jobs. If we did this, there would be less need for the police in the first place.”

Research bears out the need for change. An article in Nature noted growing evidence of racial bias in law enforcement, such as California data showing that police there “stopped and used force against Black people disproportionately, compared with other racial groups” in 2018. Police kill about 1,000 Americans a year, and Black men are 2.5 times more likely than white men to be killed and more than twice as likely as white men to be unarmed when killed. “We have enough evidence that tells us that action needs to be taken,” criminologist Justin Nix told Nature. Police reactions to protests provide still more evidence. See, for example, this horrifying New York Times video report on a recent demonstration in Philadelphia.

If King were alive today, he would surely call for defunding the U.S. military, too, because we are still funneling immense resources into our armed forces. In 2019 the U.S. spent $732 billion on “defense,” accounting for 38 percent of global military spending, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. If the U.S. cut its current defense budget in half, it would still exceed the combined budgets of China ($261 billion) and Russia ($65 billion).

The U.S. is also by far the biggest weapons dealer, selling arms to 96 countries over the past decade, and it relentlessly invents new means of destruction. The Pentagon spent $55.9 billion on research and development last year, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Compare that figure to spending on research on health ($38.9 billion), energy ($4.4 billion) and the environment ($2.8 billion). What do these numbers say about our priorities?

Here is an example of what military R&D has produced: a drone-launched missile that, instead of blowing up people, slices them to ribbons. First deployed during the Obama regime, the weapon was designed to kill fewer innocent bystanders than explosives. But as the New York Times points out, “even the use of smaller, more precise munitions has left hundreds, if not thousands, of civilians killed by American weapons during the six-year war against the Islamic State and the continuing air campaign in Afghanistan.”

Meanwhile, the U.S. is carrying out a massive program to rebuild its nuclear arsenal. Costs are expected to approach $500 billion by the end of this decade and $2 trillion within 30 years, according to the Arms Control Association, which warns that the nuclear “modernization” program could trigger an arms race with Russia. Yes, that’s what the world needs, thousands of new-and-improved nuclear weapons.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the insanity of our spending priorities.

“For the majority of the past two decades, the U.S. government has equated Americans’ national security with military supremacy,” political scientists Neta Crawford of Boston University and Catherine Lutz of Brown write in the Boston Globe. “Instead of investing in programs and supplies that would have saved thousands of lives, our leaders were investing trillions in new weapons and continuing old wars.”

Crawford and Lutz co-direct the Costs of War project , which tallies the economic and human consequences of U.S. military operations. Since 9/11, the U.S. has spent more than $6.4 trillion on its wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries. These conflicts have killed over 800,000 people, including more than 335,000 civilians, and have displaced 21 million people from their homes. Far from winding down its wars, the U.S. is now carrying out counterterror operations in 80 countries. These actions, which supposedly protect us, have led to “encroachments on basic social and political rights in the U.S. and the war zones,” Costs of War states.

Given what police do in the U.S. with cameras on them, imagine what American forces do in faraway places where they are rarely held accountable.

“While the U.S. war on the Black population at home is now exposed for all of America—and the world—to see, the victims of U.S. wars abroad continue to be hidden,” antiwar activists Medea Benjamin and Nicolas Davies point out in The Progressive. Americans “don’t see the dead and maimed bodies and rubble the bombs leave in their wake.”

In a podcast for The Intercept, political journalist Mehdi Hasan points out that U.S. wars often have a racist subtext.

“If you want to bomb or invade a foreign country … you have to first demonize those people, dehumanize them, suggest they’re backward people in need of saving or savage people in need of killing,” Hasan says. “If you support defunding the police, as I do, you should also support defunding the Pentagon.”

I’m not advocating the total abolition of armed forces. We will always need some police and soldiers to protect us against violent individuals and groups at home and abroad. But in their present form, our armed forces resemble a chemotherapy that kills more people than it saves. They must be radically reformed and reduced to minimize their adverse effects.

Bernie Sanders has called for trimming the Pentagon budget by 10 percent and diverting that money to “high-poverty areas,” according to The Intercept. Sanders’ proposal is far too modest. I prefer the plan of the Poor People’s Campaign, inspired by a movement led by Martin Luther King. The campaign advocates reducing the U.S. defense budget by $350 billion as part of a broader plan to counter the “systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation, militarism, and war economy plaguing our country today.”

Even many progressives will think this defunding plan is too ambitious, but why? Reduced by $350 billion, the U.S. military budget would still be by far the biggest in the world. The U.S. could shrink its military in coordination with other nations in ways that ensure mutual security, leading to a global demilitarization movement. The money now wasted on our bloated armed forces could be spent instead on programs that boost prosperity and reduce potential sources of crime and conflict. As the Poor Peoples’ Campaign notes, its plan “would make the nation and the world more secure.”

We are now in a period of rare moral clarity, in which many people can glimpse the truth of what King said more than 50 years ago. To end racial injustice and poverty, we must end war. Defunding the “demonic destructive suction tube” of the military isn’t a utopian pipe dream. It is a practical as well as moral necessity, which should be embraced by everyone, conservatives and liberals, people of faith and secularists. Defund the Pentagon now.

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John Horgan directs the Center for Science Writings at the Stevens Institute of Technology. His books include The End of Science, The End of War and Mind-Body Problems, available for free at mindbodyproblems.com. For many years, he wrote the immensely popular blog Cross Check for Scientific American.

St. Elijah Maronite Cathedral in Aleppo re-opened after years of disuse due to the severe destruction the 18^th century cathedral endured during battles in the period of 2012 to 2016. 

Aleppo had been Syria’s largest city and its commercial and industrial hub before the conflict which began in March 2011.  Syria is a secular nation, with the pre-war population ratio standing at about 80% Sunni Muslim, and the remaining divided between Christians, Jews, and other Muslim sects.

It is estimated that only 30,000 Christians remain in Aleppo, compared to a pre-war population of 180,000.  Aleppo is now the second largest city after the capital, Damascus.

At least three extensive missile attacks and numerous smaller attacks left the cathedral in ruins. It suffered its worst damage in when terrorists following Radical Islam, which is a political ideology, attacked the Christian areas in an attempt to eradicate all Christians and their churches.

The Syrian Arab Army liberated East Aleppo in December 2016, with at least 34,000 armed terrorists and their families removed under a negotiated settlement which the UN oversaw.

“This victory represents a strategic change and a turning point in the war against terrorism on the one hand and a crushing blow to the terrorists’ project and their supporters on the other hand,” the Syrian army statement said.

The cathedral celebrated Christmas 2016 despite the utter devastation parishioners observed. Monsignor Joseph Tobji, Maronite Archbishop of Aleppo, gave several recent interviews in which he detailed the restoration of the cathedral.  He recalled his first sight of the cathedral in its gravest condition, and marveled at how the cathedral had protected the neighborhood residents, and he said, “This house (the church) played a role in receiving the blows themselves in order to protect the surrounding civilians.”

Monsignor Joseph Tobji noted the obstacle to rebuilding churches, homes and lives in Syria is not confined to lack of funding only, but also to the US-EU sanctions which prevent any foreign company from selling any product to any Syrian company, including medical needs and the supplies  fight against COVID-19.

“It’s a sign of hope and rebirth, not only in a material sense but for the entire community, despite the fact that the numbers of Christians continue to dwindle, due to extreme poverty linked to the sanctions imposed on the defenseless population,” he said.

Recently, the UN Secretary General Antonio Gutierrez has publicly urged the US and EU to lift sanctions on Syria in order to fight COVID-19.

He recalled the Christmas 2016 mass, and the moment during the service when the child Jesus was placed in the manger, which had been constructed from parts of the collapsed roof. He was deeply touched emotionally at the scene, as were other attendees who were crying, laughing, clapping and cheering with joy.

The rebuilding of the cathedral’s roof, which was made of wood, required Italian architects, Italian lumber, and a roofing expert from abroad to complete.  The pontifical foundation, ‘Aid to the Church in Need’ (CAN), funded the laborious project.

Baroness Caroline Cox is a cross-bench member of the UK House of Lords and founder of Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust (HART). Baroness Cox,  a Christian peer and human rights campaigner, has been a visitor to Syria during the darkest days of the conflict, and is opposed to the British government’s foreign policy regarding Syria, which is one of ‘regime change’.

The UK Foreign Office urged her not to travel to Syria. In an interview she revealed,

“We get criticized for a lot of the things that we do, like Syria in particular, and yes it does hurt,” because “it detracts from the main issue of what you’re trying to do,” she carries on, “it detracts from the suffering of the people.”

Her Syrian trip, as part of a British delegation, was widely criticized by the UK media, which prefers to sell their own narrative on Syria.  She visited Damascus, Homs, Aleppo and the Christian town of Maaloula, and was invited by the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch, the Grand Mufti and other Church leaders.

Baroness Cox spoke with Syrian people, as well as the Church leaders, and realized the alternative to President Assad would be worse, and the Islamist terrorists were the real enemy of the people, regardless of the western media portrayal of them as ‘rebels’.

She recalled the Islamist terrorists had taken 4,000 hostages in East Ghouta, and they promised to release them as part of a negotiated settlement in which the terrorists and their families could leave safely. However, only 200 of the hostages were released, as the terrorists had massacred the remaining 3,800 persons.  With atrocities like this in mind, Baroness Cox felt the priority for the Syrian people is to get rid of ISIS and all the other related Islamist groups, and that should be a priority for the UK as well.

She feels the UK government is prolonging the Syrian conflict, and there has been evidence that the UK funded groups affiliated with the terrorists, which has prolonged the suffering of the Syrian people in a proxy war.

Baroness Cox assessed the Syrian people as deeply civilized, and capable of deciding their own political future.  She is opposed to the UK government’s continuing commitment to ‘regime change’, which is reminiscent of Iraq and Libya.

She is also deeply concerned about the harsh US-EU sanctions which prevent ordering medicines, medical machines and their parts, and even chemotherapy drugs.  The director of the UN World Health Organization in Damascus has stated repeatedly the sanctions on Syria affect the health of Syrian civilians, including children with cancer.

Baroness Cox witnessed that the Armenian Christian Church in Aleppo, which was horribly damaged in the conflict, has rebuilt six schools, with four of them in Aleppo. The sanctions make it almost impossible to order certain re-building supplies and technical parts from abroad.

A Chaldean Catholic priest thanked Baroness Cox, and the delegation and urged them to go and bear witness to the western world of what they have seen and learned in Syria. The priest said to them,

“Thank you for coming. You have put your hands into the wounds of our suffering, now you believe, go and tell.”

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is an award-winning journalist. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from MD

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has clearly decided to launch an offensive on multiple fronts, taking advantage of what he clearly perceives as a geopolitical vacuum. From his recent call to Islamic prayer at the Haga Sophia in Istanbul, to his breaking of the arms embargo to back the Tripoli regime against the advance of General Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army in the East, from continuing military presence inside Syria to refusal to stop drilling for oil and gas in waters off Cyprus, as well as actions in Africa, Erdogan is clearly in an aggressive mode. Is there a larger strategy behind all this, far more than as a diversion from domestic Turkish economic problems?

In recent weeks the Erdogan government has made aggressive moves on multiple fronts that have led many to question their overall aims. In Libya Turkey’s Erdogan has boldly made moves to give arms, soldiers and other support to the embattled Libyan Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli of Fayez Mustafa al-Sarraj.

In December 2019, Erdogan signed a military cooperation pact with the UN-recognized and highly unstable Tripoli government to counter the offensive mounted by Gen. Haftar’s Libyan National Army, based in the oil-rich east of Libya.

On June 7 the Cirkin, a Tanzanian-flagged cargo ship, sailed from Turkey to the Libyan port of Misrata. It was joined by three Turkish warships, leading France and others to believe it was smuggling arms to Tripoli to fight Haftar, a violation of the UN arms embargo. When a Greek (NATO) helicopter sought to board Cirkin to check if arms were being smuggled, the Turkish warships refused, leading a French (NATO) frigate, Courbet, part of a NATO maritime security operation, to approach the Cirkin. Turkish warship radar immediately light up the Courbet with its targeting radar forcing the Courbet to withdraw and the Cirkin landed in Libya. France has filed an official complaint with NATO about the Turkish (NATO) hostile actions. The details remain murky and chances are NATO will try to keep things quiet rather than force a rupture within the alliance.

Significant to note is that Haftar’s military move on Tripoli to end the division of the country is backed by Russia, UAE and Jordan. Since the US-initiated Arab Spring series of destabilizations from Egypt to Tunisia to Libya and, so-far unsuccessfully, in Syria, Libya has since been ravaged by tribal wars following the assassination of Muammar al-Qaddafi in October, 2011.

The most recent Turkish move in May enabled the GNA and Turkish-backed troops to destroy the LNA’s air defenses in Watiya air base, including a Russian Pantsir-1 battery ad with support of Turkish troops, to take control of the key base. When Russia reportedly transferred six warplanes from Syria to Libya in response, Erdogan threatened to bring Turkish Air Force warplanes over to bomb Haftar’s troops.

At the same time Erdogan has been in negotiations with Algeria to sign a defense pact with the Libyan Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli. GNA control of al-Watiya not only puts a stop to Haftar’s use of the facility to mount air raids on GNA forces in Tripoli. It also gives Turkey a strategic base for building up a military presence in Libya.

Algeria’s newly-elected president Abdelmadjid Tebboune, unlike his predecessor, is significantly dependent on unofficial backing from the Algerian Muslim Brotherhood. Mass demonstrations in 2019 forced the anti-Muslim Brotherhood president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, to resign.

Another key ally of Erdogan in the region is Qatar, which was sanctioned by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Sunni states over Qatar’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood. The Qatari al-Jazeera TV has been called a Muslim Brotherhood mouthpiece. On the weekend of July 18, Erdogan’s Defense Minister Hulusi Akar met Qatari Emir, Prince Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani. They reportedly discussed moving Somali Jihadist fighters, trained in bases in Qatar, into Libya to take part in a Turkish planned major assault on Sirte. A recent Pentagon report estimated that Turkey has already sent between 3,500 and 3,800 paid Jihadist fighters to Libya from Syria to strengthen the GNA’s army.

The Israeli Debka.com notes the significance of the Turkish military moves with Tripoli and Algeria:

“If Erdogan succeeds in harnessing Algeria to the Libyan GNA, which is already tied to the Turkish chariot, he will be able to shift the balance of power in a broad, volatile region. His military gains in Libya already bring him into position to impact the security of its North African neighbors – not least, Egypt – as well as Mediterranean navigation between that continent and southern Europe and the offshore oil projects in between.”

Erdogan and the Muslim Brotherhood

Much of the recent alliance strategy of the Erdogan regime since Turkey broke its peaceful relations with neighbor Syria in 2011 and began backing various Al Qaeda-linked terrorist groups to topple the Assad regime, makes more sense when the ties of Erdogan to the highly-secretive Muslim Brotherhood are understood.

In an interview with Russia -24 TV in March, Syrian President Bashar al Assad stated openly that Erdogan was Muslim Brotherhood, who put the global agenda of that terrorist organization above that of his own country. Assad stated,

“At a point in time, the United States decided that secular governments in the region were no longer able to implement the plans and roles designated to them…They decided to replace these regimes with Muslim Brotherhood regimes that use religion to lead the public…This process of “replacement” started with the so-called Arab Spring. Of course, at the time, the only Muslim Brotherhood-led country in the region was Turkey, through Erdogan himself and his Brotherhood affiliation.“

Erdogan had openly greeted the ascendency of Muslim Brotherhood Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, pledging five billions in aid. Then a Saudi-backed military coup ousted the Brotherhood and brought General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to power, much to the displeasure of the Obama Administration and Erdogan. Since then el-Sisi has imposed a severe ban on Muslim Brotherhood activism in Egypt, executing countless leaders and driving others into exile, many reportedly to Erdogan’s Turkey. Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Jordan and Bahrain have also banned the MB, accusing them of trying to topple their Monarchies. This creates a massive geopolitical fault line across the Arab world.

Similarly, until his recent ouster in April, 2019 after a 20-year rule, Sudanese strongman dictator, Omar al-Bashir, was said to also be a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.

With those two major allies, Egypt and Sudan lost, Erdogan is clearly trying new flanks to widen his and the Brotherhood’s influence globally. This explains his major effort to intervene into Libya on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood-backed Tripoli GNA. The Turkish President has already sent Turkish troops to Libya to bolster Sarraj, along with drones, military vehicles, and thousands of Syrian mercenaries from Faylak al-Sham (The Syrian Legion), a Muslim Brotherhood affiliate.

What is the MB?

The Muslim Brotherhood is a freemason-like secret society with a public “friendly” façade and a hidden military Jihadist inner side. The MB officially renounced violence in the 1970’s, but their decree had many loopholes.

The Muslim Brotherhood or al-ʾIkḫwān al-Muslimūn, was created in British-ruled Egypt, then legally part of the ottoman Caliphate, in 1928 in the wake of the upheaval of World War I and the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire. It was allegedly created by an obscure Sunni Muslim school teacher named Hassan Al-Banna. Much like the Jesuit Order of the Catholic Church, the Brotherhood of Al-Banna concentrated on a special education of youth, presenting the outside world with a façade of charity and good works while concealing a deadly and ruthless inner agenda of power by force.

From almost the outset, his secret society had the sole aim, no matter how difficult and long the task, to re-establish that Caliphate, to establish a new Islamic rule over not just Egypt but the entire Muslim world. Indoctrination included insistence on absolute obedience to the leadership; the accepting of Islam as a total system, as the final arbiter of life.

“Allah is our goal; The Prophet is our Leader; The Qur’an is our Constitution; Jihad is our Way; Death in the service of Allah is the loftiest of our wishes; Allah is Great; Allah is Great.” This was the Credo of the MB established by Al-Banna. Later Al-Banna wrote, “Victory can only come with the mastery of the ‘Art of Death.’ A martyr’s death fighting for establishment of the new Caliphate is the shortest and easiest step from this life to the life hereafter.”

Al-Banna’s Brotherhood took early contact with Nazi Germany in the 1930’s. The MB secret military arm, the Secret Apparatus (al-jihaz al-sirri), in effect, the “assassination bureau” was headed by Al-Banna’s brother, Abd Al-Rahman Al-Banna. Nazi agents came from Germany to Egypt to help train the Special Section cadres and provide money as well. Both the Nazis and Al-Banna shared a deep anti-Jewish hatred and the Brotherhood’s Jihad or Holy War was aimed in large part at Jews in Egypt and Palestine.

Hassan Al-Banna introduced the idea of a special kind of death cult within Islam. This aspect of the Brotherhood became the wellspring later in the 1990’s and after, for virtually all Sunni Islamic terrorist organizations, with the spread of Salafist Jihadism and the radical Islamic groups such as Al Qaeda or Hamas. In many respects, Al-Banna’s Sunni Islamic death cult was a revival of the murderous Assassins Cult or Islamic hashshāshīn during the Holy Crusades in the Twelfth Century.

Al-Banna termed it, “the Art of Death” (fann al-mawt) or ”Death is Art” (al-mawt fann). He preached to his followers that it was a kind of saintly martyrdom to be devoutly honored, that it was based on the Qur’an. During World War II leading figures from the Muslim Brotherhood lived in Berlin and worked directly with SS head Himmler to create terror brigades to execute Jews and other enemies of the Reich. In the 1950’s, after the war, the CIA “discovered” the effective anti-communist fervor of the Brotherhood and began a decades-long collaboration, initially supported by the Saudi Monarchy. Osama bin Laden was said to have initially been a devout Muslim Brotherhood member.

This is the organization behind Erdogan’s military agenda in Libya and far beyond. It bodes ill for any illusions of diplomatic agreements to end the wars either in Syria, Iraq or Libya and beyond.

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F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Featured image is from NEO

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Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

Author Name: F. William Engdahl

ISBN Number: 978-0-937147-2-2

Year: 2007

Pages: 341 pages with complete index

List Price: $25.95

Special Price: $18.00

 

This skilfully researched book focuses on how a small socio-political American elite seeks to establish control over the very basis of human survival: the provision of our daily bread. “Control the food and you control the people.”

This is no ordinary book about the perils of GMO. Engdahl takes the reader inside the corridors of power, into the backrooms of the science labs, behind closed doors in the corporate boardrooms.

The author cogently reveals a diabolical world of profit-driven political intrigue, government corruption and coercion, where genetic manipulation and the patenting of life forms are used to gain worldwide control over food production. If the book often reads as a crime story, that should come as no surprise. For that is what it is.

Having just read The War That Ended Peace the title How the West Stole Democracy From the Arabs appeared as an intriguing and fortuitous follow up.  Its subtitle describes its more narrow focus: The Syrian-Arab Congress of 1920 and the Destruction of Its Historical Liberal-Islamic Alliance.  Essentially it is the story of how the imperial powers of Britain and France overcame the U.S.’ Wilsonian ideals being used as a formulation for the League of Nations.  The colonialism of the prewar era resettled itself into the Middle East after the destruction of the Ottoman empire, wishing to retain imperial glory and control of the newly ‘free’ Arab sectors of the Ottoman empire and in this region, its relatively new found wealth of oil.

Within this narrow slice of history many events are involved.  The events of World War I and the many different promises made by different people to different entities, the most important ones made in secret (Sykes-Picot agreement) while others floated freely in public (the Balfour letter).  For the Arabs the big hopes, the large promises, were those of the British to have their own independent state but more importantly the ideals of Woodrow Wilson, in particular his calling for national populations to have their own voice in determining their governance.  It was not to be, as western imperial colonial desires managed to deter any independence for Arab countries.  Many factors were involved, but as indicated the largest was the imperial desires of the European colonialists, and for Syria in particular, France takes the largest responsibility.

After the war, after the eviction of Ottoman forces, various Arab representatives established their own commissions and in short order made a remarkable achievement – a declaration of independence and a constitution that could serve as a  guide even to contemporary western governments.  Other forces prevailed, mostly political, some military.

The British remained in occupation of the southern portion of Ottoman Syria, the lands of Palestine, and argued for a mandate ostensibly until the Palestinians could govern themselves, more realistically to allow for the promised Jewish homeland and to secure access to oil, Iran, and India.  The French had few forces in the region but quickly established their presence on the promise of the Sykes-Picot agreement.

One of the principal characters for the French was one Robert de Caix, a “powerful leader of the colonial lobby” who “considered Wilsonianism an epidemic.”  Using the traditional language of colonialism he would, “by mobilizing the colonialist networks that he had cultivated for twenty years…single handedly reverse French diplomacy in the Middle East….He undermined any basis for Arab liberal democracy to flourish again.”  His use of Article 22 of the new League of Nations came “as an imposition, by force, of direct French rule.”

That does not let anyone else off lightly, as many other players did not want an independent Arab government anywhere in the Middle East (or the whole of the former Ottoman empire).  The U.S. stepped aside, leaving behind broken ideals, ironically rejecting the Versailles Peace Treaty “because they feared it would enable colonial expansion.” The remaining Turkish rump state still had a large army and was able to secure for itself a much better outcome as it fought French forces to a standstill along its southern border and imposed its own ethnic cleansing on different groups within what was to become Turkey.

The Arab ideals centered on a secular state, “that would separate religion from state.They believed that Islam did not support unbridled kingship but rather required its leaders to consult the people and that legislatures exercising the authority of popular sovereignty could block corruptible monarchs from selling out their countries to Europeans, as the Iranian Shah and the Egyptian khedive had done,”  and further that “liberal constitutionalism was an authentic expression of Islamic values, not a Western corruption.”  Reading through Thompson’s work provides the justification that not only did they have the ideals, but contrary to colonial mythologies of Britain and France, they did have the ability to organize and establish such a government.

The western liberals lost out to their colonialist rivals and that makes up much of the story of this lost – stolen – Arab opportunity. The defeat was both military and political put also very slimly on the Arab leadership as it “had no time to gain the experience needed to combat the wily methods of Europe’s imperial diplomats,” nor it should be added, the overwhelming firepower of their military, for which it had no time to arm itself and indeed faced international embargoes on military supplies.

With its defeat the movement split and eventually disappeared.  “France’s repressive apparatus and patronage of anti-democratic elite raised new barriers to democratic politics….the seeds of dictatorship and antiliberal Islamism sprouted.”

The book is well written, well referenced, and includes the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution,but a broader historical background will help the reader understand the larger context of these events.  The broader context is well presented in The War That Ended Peace (above) or Paris 1919 – Six Months That Changed the World (Margaret MacMillan, Random House, 2003).  The latter enlarges on the Versailles Peace treaty discussions covering similar topics more narrowly  focussed on in Elizabeth Thompson’s excellent work.  Two other strong works on the era are by Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of August (Presidio Press, 2004) and The Proud Tower (Random House/Ballantine Books, 1996).

Elizabeth Thompson creates a readily accessible book detailing the many facets of this topic, facets of larger empires with larger goals.  It is in essence the foundational period for our contemporary problems in the region and thus our current situation cannot truly be understood without reading works such as How the West Stole Democracy From the Arabs.

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Jim Miles is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

On May, 3, U.S. mercenaries and the American-backed Venezuelan opposition launched a half-baked coup d’etat attempt to overthrow President Nicolás Maduro and the ruling Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV). Dubbed Operation Gideon, the “amphibious assault” was headed up by two U.S. former Special Forces members and 60 members of Venezuela’s opposition.

The plot was comically harebrained. The mercenaries were to storm the coastline just north of Caracas, defeat the Venezuelan military by inspiring an uprising, kidnap President Maduro, and transport him to the U.S. via a local airport. The “invasion” was set to begin with 300 men, yet the plan continued with only 62. The latest bungled attempt to upend the Bolivarian Revolution conjures up deja vu of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion and comes as the Trump administration has plotted coup attempts, executed vicious acts of economic warfare, and is now offering a $15 million bounty of U.S. taxpayer money on Maduro.

The mercenaries were sponsored by a Trump-linked and Florida-based private security contractor, SilverCorps U.S.A. The plot — set up by longtime Trump bodyguard and security consultant, Keith Schiller —  was originally hatched by Jordan Goudreau, an ex-Green Beret and head of SilverCorps, and the Venezuelan opposition led by Juan Guaidó. The Trump administration denied any involvement in the attempted coup, yet given the administration has ramped up displays of open hostilities towards Venezuela, this denial should be taken with a grain of salt.

Operation Gideon was unearthed by Venezuelan intelligence back in March, and before the two boats carrying the marauders could begin storming the beaches, they were intercepted by fishermen loyal to Maduro. Goudreau later acknowledged that the two captured former U.S. Special Forces members — Airan Berry and Luke Denman — were working with him. The ex-Green Beret previously ran security for Trump’s political events and at billionaire Richard Branson’s Live Aid event on the Venezuelan-Colombian border. According to a close friend of Goudreau’s, the plot to oust Maduro was likely a desperate bid to secure the U.S. State Department’s $15 million bounty.

After the maritime assault was foiled, a document obtained by the Washington Post showed that Operation Gideon was signed onto by Guaidó, with the goal of overthrowing Maduro, including an armed counter-insurgency. In an attempt to place a cushion between Guaidó and the would-be “invasion,” the agreement document’s validity was disputed by the Venezuelan opposition as a forgery. After the claim by the Venezuelan opposition, the documents were mysteriously retracted and replaced.

Bizarrely enough, Goudreau has sought out media attention to confirm Guaidó’s support for his failed raid releasing audio of the signing of the document and a general services agreement that he claims Guaidó was present for and signed. Goudreau is likely to remain in the headlines given that he is now under investigation by U.S. authorities. This most recent utterly baffling and seemingly implausible saga to topple a left-wing Latin American government by a dysfunctional cast of grifters amounts as a pandemic surges, having unprecedented impacts on health systems and economies.

While the U.S. is leading the world in COVID-19 cases and a skyrocketing death toll, murderous sanctions, and a knee-capping embargo are keeping medical necessities and aid away from the Venezuelan people. With the U.S. political and business class focusing instead on overthrowing and destabilizing governments rather than protecting working-class Americans from a pandemic and an economic meltdown, it’s time for the American people to condemn savage U.S. imperialism in Latin America, economic warfare against Venezuela, and stand up to their ruling class.

“Assuring an Adequate Supply of Petroleum for the U.S.”

Operation Gideon was not an outlying incident, the debacle occurred in accordance with decades, if not centuries, of U.S. foreign policy precedent in Latin America. Along with Bolivia’s lithium and other resource-rich Latin American nations, Venezuela’s plentiful oil deposits — the largest reserves in the world — have long been on the wish list for business interests and the U.S.’s political and financial elite.

In 1948, the American-backed right-wing dictator, Marcos Pérez Jiménez overthrew the democratically-elected government of Rómulo Gallegos. The regime developed tight ties with the U.S. oil industry, allowing companies like Exxon and Mobil to profit from the ample supply. Pérez Jiménez achieved U.S.-support through ruthless repression of his opposition, defaming anyone who opposed his regime and using his power to torture, imprison, and “disappear” dissidents.

Two years later, in 1950, official U.S. State Department objectives in Venezuela were stated as, “All policies toward Venezuela are affected in greater or less degree by the objective of assuring an adequate supply of petroleum for the U.S.” Washington also recognized the large iron deposits and encouraged development to supplement U.S. reserves.

In the decades following the U.S.-backed Pérez Jiménez regime, Venezuelan leaders mostly held a bipartisan neoliberal consensus that was marked by a further oil boom in the ’70s, a debt crisis in the ’80s, to widespread corruption and the failure of liberal institutions in the ’90s. The economy fluctuated regularly — yet a fundamental constant throughout this period was the Venezuelan government’s appeasement to the economic elite and U.S. business interests.

Three decades of allowing U.S. capital to profit from Venezuelan resources left little wealth contributed to the tax base, spurring millions into action, eager for change. In 1998, PSUV, led by Hugo Chávez created a movement that secured power through democratic elections. Initially, Chávez was met with little resistance as he obtained widespread popular support throughout the country. Yet, after promises to nationalize industry — including oil production — redistributing land to the poor, and reducing poverty with heavy investments in social programs, Chávez was quick to go on the defensive.

Delegitimizing and Toppling the Bolivarian Revolution

In 2002, the U.S.-backed opposition affirmed the policy of regime change when forces led by Pedro Carmona — a wealthy petrochemical tycoon — sought to oust Chávez in a coup d’etat. The coup ultimately failed and Chávez was restored to power only 48 hours after a massive uprising of PSUV supporters erupted, yet the attempted removal established U.S. precedent for regime change for years to come.

Just months after winning re-election, Hugo Chávez died at 58, leaving his mentee Nicolás Maduro as his successor. In 2013, new elections were called, in which PSUV and Maduro continued Chávez’s legacy, winning the Presidency and defeating centrist candidate Henrique Capriles by less than two percent of the vote. In the aftermath, Capriles called the election illegitimate —  although disproven by international observers — and demanded a recount. Venezuela’s electoral officials conducted an audit in which Maduro came out on top, while Capriles continuously rejected the outcome. A year prior, during which Chávistas retained power, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter even remarked, “As a matter of fact, of the 92 elections that we’ve monitored, I would say that the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world.”

In the controversial 2018 election, Maduro was seeking to renew his bid from the Presidency, in what the Venezuelan opposition, the U.S., and popular media outlets have called a “show election” due to voter turnout plummeting to 46 percent — only ten percent less than voter turnout in the 2016 U.S. election. In an effort to further delegitimize Venezuelan democracy, all major western countries and the Venezuelan opposition condemned the elections as fraudulent. The opposition party preemptively chose to boycott the elections to qualify their false claim of election fraud, knowing their party would likely lose to Maduro’s PSUV.

Unlike the American electoral system, the Venezuelan electoral system includes paper ballot backups that make election fraud nearly impossible. Furthermore, over one hundred impartial international observers — who were present during the 2018 election — condemned the West’s claim of fraudulent elections, stating, “[these are] fabrications of the most disgraceful kind, based on hearsay and not on evidence.”

The U.S. and its allies responded with a barrage of sanctions that targeted Venezuela’s top exports — including petroleum products, crude oil, and gold — which was accompanied by cutting off the pipeline of imported food products. This resulted in further hobbling of the Venezuelan economy creating massive inflation as the government’s failed monetary policy struggled to keep pace with an international economic onslaught.

In 2019, with the economy increasingly in shambles, the U.S. created further destabilization by sponsoring a sort of “soft coup.” The recognition of opposition leader Juan Guaidó — who has never won a democratic election for President — as the legitimate President of Venezuela resulted in the further destabilizing effects on the country. By August, the Trump administration announced an embargo that will undoubtedly create more misery for ordinary Venezuelans.

As 2020 rolls on, March, 30, was marked by the Maduro government calling onGuaidó to respond to questioning for allegedly sponsoring an attempted coup and assassination attempt. On April 1, Trump ordered navy ships and surveillance planes to the Venezuelan coast, in the largest U.S. military buildup in Latin America since the invasion of Panama in 1989.

As the pandemic broke out, Guaidó and fellow opposition lawmakers approved a $5,000 monthly stimulus for themselves under the guise of protecting health professionals during the COVID crisis, while Venezuelan doctors and nurses got a one-time payment of $100. The latest scheme to destabilize and hopefully depose the Maduro government manifested in Operation Gideon and upon the seizure of 31 tons gold by the Bank of England from Venezuela’s holdings last May.

U.S. Economic Warfare Isn’t About Protecting Human Rights

As the COVID calamity rages on, U.S. economic warfare is exacerbating death rates and suffering. While ordinary Americans are struggling to make ends meet due to unprecedented pandemic, police and white supremacists violence — and now the testing of Trump’s secret police in Portland “disappearing” people off the streets — are ruthlessly being carried out against American citizens supporting the Black Lives Matter movement. The callousness of U.S. empire is being brought home, and Americans are getting a brief taste in the tactics, austerity, and disdain for human rights the U.S. has historically promoted in Latin America and Venezuela.

The U.S. had the stated intent of placing economic restrictions on the Bolivarian Republic to curtail alleged human rights violations, yet the sanctions and embargo placed on the Venezuelan economy have worked against that goal. Before the COVID crisis claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands, a report released by the Center For Economic and Policy Research found that U.S. sanctions from 2017 to 2018 have directly contributed to the deaths of 40,000 Venezuelans.

Pandemic aside, the report also states that the sanctions and recognition of a parallel, unelected government have intensified the humanitarian crisis. To turn a crisis into a catastrophe, Venezuelan and American business interests are also withholding products from the market resulting in capital strikes, while Western banks and states seize Venezuelan assets.

Acts of economic warfare by the U.S. foreign policy apparatus and business class are meant to strangle economies therefore sowing discontent among the common people. In Venezuela’s case — by cutting off the global supply of goods and resources, essentially blockading exports, seizures of assets, and capital strikes — the U.S. has ensured the poorest are most exploited by the economic effects. Ultimately, economic warfare is a ploy to set the stage for U.S.-sponsored regime change, while heightening a humanitarian crisis that creates the conditions for a counterrevolution through the American-sponsored Juan Guaidó.

Given the storied history of American meddling in overthrowing democratically-elected leftist governments in Latin America, mainstream attitudes regarding the crisis in Venezuela by U.S. politicians  — housed by both liberals and conservatives — is disconcerting. While America’s ruling class must shoulder the blame, it is the ordinary American working-class citizens who must take responsibility for their government’s actions in depriving wealth and sovereignty to traditionally and continually exploited people, domestically and abroad.

U.S. acts of imperialism and economic warfare will not end until ordinary American citizens stand in solidarity with the people tortured by capital and the U.S. foreign policy apparatus. If the American people believe in human rights they must condemn their government and corporations’ brutal and tedious need for economic domination and call for a more equitable distribution of resources to the world’s working-class people, ceasing murderous acts of economic warfare, and recognizing the will of the people in sovereign nations.

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Jack Delaney is a former policy analyst, political communications specialist, federal lobbyist, and Congressional intern. Jack worked on issues relating to health care, disability, civil liberties, and labor policy, and is a member of the North Brooklyn chapter of Democratic Socialists of America and the National Writers Union. His work has appeared in Truthout and Jacobin and he can be found at www.jfdelaney.com, on Twitter @dadrespecter, and on Instagram @jfdelaney.

Featured image is from the Embassy Protection Collective

The joint Russian-Turkish patrol set to be held in southern Idlib on July 29 was delayed due to increased military tensions and the inability of Ankara to ensure the security of the patrol in its area of responsibility. And the situation does not seem to be improving.

According to pro-militant sources, on the evening of July 29^th and morning of July 30th, the Syrian Army launched over 500 shells at militants’ positions in the Zawiya Mount area, including Kansafra, al-Bara, Kafar Aweed, Fatterah and Erinah. In response, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its allies struck Syrian Army checkpoints at Kafr Nabl, As Safa, Hakoura and in nearby areas.

In the last few days, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and the Turkistan Islamic Party reinforced their positions on the contact line with the Syrian Army, south of the M4 highway. Their forces reportedly remain on high alert. Pro-government sources say that the inability of Ankara to secure another joint patrol in southern Idlib is a signal that the militants are preparing for offensive actions there.

Meanwhile, the Syrian Army uncovered a hideout that had been used by militants working as organ traders in the village of al-Ghadfah in southern Idlib. According to Syria’s state-run news agency SANA, government forces found human organs, including hearts, livers and heads in the hideout. The organs were preserved in jars with chloroform. The jars carried the names of the victims. Personal IDs of the victims, men and women, were also found in the hideout.

The hideout included a room designated for religious studies with radical ideological publications. This indicates that the site had belonged to one of the multiple militant groups that still operate in Greater Idlib thanks to the Turkish opposition to counter-terrorism operations there.

Al-Ghadfah is located in the vicinity of the city of Maarat al-Numan and for a long time it has been controlled by Turkey’s main partner in Idlib – Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. The town was liberated by the Syrian Army and its allies in January 2020.

Lt. Sharif al-Nazzal of the Syrian Military Intelligence Directorate (MID) was assassinated in the town of Sahem al-Golan in western Daraa on July 29. The lieutenant was with another intelligence officer known as “Abu Haider”, when they were attacked by unidentified gunmen. Both officers were shot dead on the spot.

Opposition sources claimed that al-Nazzal, a native of Sahem al-Golan, was close to Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iranian forces. The officer headed a detachment of the MID in the western Daraa countryside. No group has claimed responsibility for the assassination. Nonetheless, in previous stages of the conflict Israel was extensively supporting militant groups in southern Syria. It is possible that Tel Aviv may have access to cells of these groups for support with particular operations.

Two members of the US-backed Revolutionary Commando Army militant group based in al-Tanf were detained by the Syrian Army near the US-controlled zone. The detained persons were moving on a motorcycle and possessed assault rifles and night-vision goggles. They were reportedly involved in an information gathering operation about civilian and military facilities in the Homs desert.

In the past, Damascus has repeatedly claimed that the US was planning to use its proxies in al-Tanf for destabilizing operations in the government-controlled area.

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Michael Moore presents Planet of the Humans, a documentary that dares to say what no one else will — that we are losing the battle to stop climate change on planet earth because we are following leaders who have taken us down the wrong road — selling out the green movement to wealthy interests and corporate America.

This film is the wake-up call to the reality we are afraid to face: that in the midst of a human-caused extinction event, the environmental movement’s answer is to push for techno-fixes and band-aids. It’s too little, too late.

Watch the full documentary below.

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In a letter to the New York Times in 1970, British historian Arnold Toynbee said the United States “has become the world’s nightmare.” It turned out they were just getting started. Through its many wars, covert operations and economic destabilizations, the U.S. government has immiserated and killed millions of people in the Global South. Washington’s aim in this carnage, under a thin cloak of liberal internationalism, has been to enrich itself and its Western client states including Canada, Britain and Australia. 

Official documents that show the workings of this sordid enterprise are leaked once in a while by brave whistleblowers inside the U.S. empire. The most famous is surely Daniel Ellsberg, who in 1971, a year after Toynbee irritated the U.S. establishment with his judgment, released the Pentagon Papers containing the secret history of the Vietnam War, and became a hero for doing so.

Julian Assange continues this venerable tradition and is paying a high price for it. The WikiLeaks founder is currently being held at the high security Belmarsh prison in the U.K. while he awaits trial to determine if he will be extradited to the U.S. In a November letter to the British government, 60 doctors attested to Assange’s deteriorating physical and mental health and warned he could die in prison. The Trump administration has charged Assange with 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act, introduced in 1917 to criminalize socialist opposition to the First World War. If found guilty, Assange could face up to 175 years in jail.

In 2010, WikiLeaks published hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. military and State Department documents leaked by U.S. army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, herself jailed in 2013 until former president Obama commuted her 35-year sentence in January 2017. (Manning was jailed again last year for refusing to testify about WikiLeaks before a grand jury, but she has since been released.) The “document dumps that shook the world,” as the BBC described the WikiLeaks cache, showed massive U.S. war crimes in Washington’s Iraq and Afghanistan invasions, including the killing of tens of thousands of civilians by U.S. forces, and the use of death squads, torture and kidnappings in both wars.

“The video was the key document: it shook people up by showing how badly the U.S. forces had behaved in Iraq,” says Julian Burnside, a human rights lawyer based in Melbourne, Australia and a supporter of Assange, who is an Australian citizen. He is referring to the infamous, grainy video revealed by WikiLeaks that showed the crew of a U.S. Apache helicopter in Iraq gunning down 12 civilians including two Reuters reporters. “Ha ha, I hit ‘em,” exults the helicopter pilot.

Six years later, WikiLeaks released “The Yemen Files,” which exposed U.S. complicity in Saudi Arabia’s devastating war on Yemen and Washington’s spying on U.N. officials. But its vast cache of U.S. diplomatic cables would also embarrass the Obama administration on its Libya policy and trade objectives (deregulation) for the failed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with the European Union, among other files. If the government didn’t move then to prosecute Assange it was “because it risked criminalizing subsequent national security journalism,” according to USA Today in a recent article.

The Trump Administration, with its much lower opinion of the free press, had no such qualms. Its prosecution of Assange is “very dangerous” for journalism and human rights, emphasizes Burnside. Even the U.S. mainstream press, which had been attacking Assange for years before the 17 charges were brought against him, seems to agree.

According to Charlie Savage of the New York Times,

the Assange case “could open the door to criminalizing activities that are crucial to American investigative journalists who write about national security matters.” Much of what Assange does at WikiLeaks “is difficult to distinguish in a legally meaningful way from what traditional news organizations like The Times do: seek and publish information that officials want to be secret, including classified national security matters, and take steps to protect the confidentiality of sources,” he wrote in May.

The Washington Post’s media columnist Margaret Sullivan called Trump’s indictment against Assange “despicable” in a May 2019 article. She said it was alarming how the case might result in “the architects of secret, and possibly illegal or immoral, government programs [being] the same people who get to decide whether information about them is made public.”

Ben Norton, assistant editor of The Grayzone, a leftist independent media website in the U.S., has said

“the U.S. government’s campaign against Julian Assange is one of the gravest threats to press freedoms in modern history.” Norton pointed out that, “in its relentless assault on civil liberties, the Trump administration has the dubious distinction of breaking two records at once: indicting a journalist under the Espionage Act for the first time, and indicting a non-U.S. citizen.”

This last point shows that the Trump indictment is an attack not only on the U.S. press but on journalists all over the world.

Norton blames the mainstream media, including the New York Times, for encouraging Trump’s indictment against Assange by denigrating the whistleblower for years.

“This is the ultimate irony,” Norton explains. “The very same institutions and people that stand to lose the most from Assange being thrown in prison are those that helped put the noose around his neck

“As journalists in the U.S. and around the world now stare down the barrel of a gun, it must be said clearly: Everyone who demonized WikiLeaks and Julian Assange put the ammo in that weapon, paving the way for Trump’s historic attack on press freedoms.”

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Conn Hallinan, an analyst with Foreign Policy in Focus, agrees with Norton and speaks gravely about a major crisis in the media.

U.S. news outlets have “covered up the criminal nature of American foreign policy [and] downplayed the major threats to humanity, like climate change and nuclear war,” he says. “Those chickens are coming home to roost. Will it change? Not by itself. Most of the media is owned by people who want to keep the public in the dark.”

In December 2010, Assange was charged with rape in Sweden and released on bail, after which he fled to the U.K. The leftist Correa government in Ecuador granted Assange citizenship and a place to stay in the country’s London embassy so that he would avoid extradition to Sweden to face trial. But this citizenship was withdrawn in 2019 by Correa’s successor, Lenin Moreno, who forced Assange out of the embassy and into the arms of waiting U.K. police. Later in 2019, Swedish prosecutors dropped the rape charge (which Assange denied), stating that “the evidential situation has been weakened to such an extent that there is no longer any reason to continue the investigation.”

Guillaume Long, Correa’s foreign minister, tells me he

“believed that Assange’s life, integrity and human rights were at risk for having exposed war crimes,” and that his role “was to uphold and defend Ecuador’s respect for the institution of asylum, at the same time as trying to find a way out of the diplomatic impasse while abiding to Ecuador’s commitments to protect Assange and to international law.”

While Assange was there, the Ecuadorian embassy in London hired UC Global, a Spanish security firm led by David Morales, to provide security for him. Shortly afterwards, according to charges brought against Morales in Spain, the company allegedly started spying on Assange and on Ecuadorian embassy staff on behalf of U.S. intelligence. Ex-employees of UC Global exposed the alleged arrangement to Assange’s lawyers after his arrest, and then to Spanish authorities, who jailed Morales last August. He was released on bail in October and charged with violating both Assange’s privacy and attorney-client privileges, along with bribery and money laundering.

According to an article in The Grayzone, the documents submitted in court, which come from UC Global computers, “detail an elaborate and apparently illegal U.S. surveillance operation in which the security firm spied on Assange, his legal team, his American friends, U.S. journalists, and an American member of Congress who had been allegedly dispatched to the Ecuadorian embassy by President Donald Trump. Even the Ecuadorian diplomats whom UC Global was hired to protect were targeted by the spy ring.”

Morales’s actions appear to have gone beyond spying. According to witness statements seen by TheGrayzone, Morales allegedly proposed breaking into Assange’s lawyer’s office (it was burglarized several weeks later). Witnesses have also testified to there being an alleged proposal to kidnap or poison Assange. Police found two handguns with serial numbers removed and stacks of cash at Morales’s home.

The alleged U.S. spying on the Ecuadorian embassy in London would amount to “a very serious violation of international law and the rules that regulate international diplomacy, as well as a very serious breach of Ecuadorian sovereignty,” says Long. “The fact that the Ecuadorian government has not protested this, or taken any action in response to it, speaks volumes about the new relationship that the Moreno government has established with the Trump administration: one of total surrogacy.”

Since 9/11, the U.S. national security state has been steadily eroding human and civil rights under the pretext of fighting terrorism, to the point where journalism itself is now under threat. Britain and Canada have followed suit, attempting to build all-powerful surveillance states whose policies are increasingly secret and so difficult to question.

“The case of Julian Assange is…the turning point,” warned WikiLeaks editor Kristinn Hrafnsson late last year. “It is the biggest and the most serious attack on journalism and the free press in decades, if not 100 years. If this extradition goes ahead, journalists around the world will have lost so much that it will be very hard, if not impossible, to get back the rights that we had before.”

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This article was originally published on the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

Asad Ismi covers international affairs for the Monitor. 

Featured image is by duncan c, Flickr Creative Commons

Medical doctors at an event in front of the US Supreme Court are accused of making false statements.  

The video of their press conference was removed by Youtube and Facebook. They are accused by CNN of spreading “fake science”

The doctors put forth Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) as an effective Covid-19 cure.

Why were they smeared by CNN? Why were they the object of censorship?   

According to CNN, Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) is sponsored by “Fake Pharma companies”. What utter nonsense.  The unspoken truth is that the statement of the medical doctors goes against the interests of Big Pharma. 

In this video, Professor Michel Chossudovsky reveals how a peer reviewed report in The Lancet  was used “to kill” the legitimacy of HCQ as a cure of Covid-19.  It was later revealed that the Lancet HCQ study was based on fake data. The author of the peer reviewed report apologized.

“I’m truly sorry”…  And the report was retracted by The Lancet, which acknowledged that the data was fabricated. The media remained silent on what constitutes “Fake Science”. 

VIDEO

The Lancet article was retracted,

 

 

 

With the new revelations of an impending broad-sweeping economic and military pact soon to be signed between Iran and China, war hawks in Israel and Washington have entirely melted down. “Iran is reportedly in the final stages of agreeing to a $400 billion economic and security deal with China, which includes infrastructure investment, discounted Iranian oil and enhanced cooperation on both defense and intelligence.”

These hawks who have been promoting an unwinnable war plan with both China, Iran and Russia for years should have come to recognize that their radical lust for global dominance has led the world to the precipice of nuclear annihilation and economic collapse.

Sadly, such self-awareness is not accessible to your radical Zionist or neocon zombie and so in the face of the beautiful potential of a multipolar alliance shaped by the New Silk Road through the middle east, and long term projects of win-win cooperation ushering in the 21^stcentury and beyond, figures like Pompeo, Esper and Bibi are heard screaming for more sanctions.

Mossadegh and the Myth of the Islamic Bomb

War hawks in Israel and Washington have been quick to denounce Iran’s nuclear power ambitions for years with the repeated excuse that “Iran has so much oil that nuclear energy is irrelevant for them- unless they wanted to build an Islamic Bomb!”

Hogwash. As we shall come to see, not only has Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei created a 2003 fatwa declaring nuclear weapons forbidden under Islamic Law, but Iranian leaders were already calling for the need to transition to a new and superior form of energy in order to escape the geopolitical constraints of oil politics over 70 years ago… ironically through the help of the USA!

On December 8, 1953 a speech was delivered at the United Nations by President Dwight D. Eisenhower which has come to be known as his Atoms for Peace speech. As flawed as Eisenhower was as a political leader, this speech did provide a valuable gateway out of the unwinnable Cold War logic of Mutually Assured Destruction that had officially begun with the Soviet Union’s first detonation of their own atomic bomb in 1949. The U.S. had itself been reeling over an 8 year internal coup begun in 1945 over the Anglo-American deep state which had purged much of the U.S. intelligentzia of genuine patriots under the FBI-run red scare and 1947 creation of the CIA. Using a talented hive of sociopaths under the direction of the Dulles Brothers, the Deep State had perverted U.S. foreign policy by launching the Korean War in 1950, and worked as Britain’s dumb giant in the overthrow Iran’s nationalist leader Mohammed Mossadegh in August 1953 when the later attempted to nationalize Britain’s Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1951 (1).

Though a competent General, Eisenhower was admittedly naïve and only realized the full extent of what had gone on under his watch during his last days as President in 1961 as outlined in his Military Industrial Complex speech.

This part of history is vitally important to revive now, since Eisenhower’s efforts to undo the terrible injustice caused by America’s complicity in the Iranian regime change as well as broader threat of nuclear annihilation remains the only functional pathway to a durable peace in Iran or globally today. Unless Trump breaks from neo-con pressure in ways that Eisenhower failed to do throughout the 1950s, and returns to this spirit, the future looks bleak indeed.

Atoms for Peace and the Birth of Iranian Atomic Energy

In his 1953 speech, Eisenhower laid out the threats and opportunities which the peaceful use of the atom created:

“The United States knows that if the fearful trend of atomic military build-up can be reversed, this greatest of destructive forces can be developed into a great boon, for the benefit of all mankind. The United States knows that peaceful power from atomic energy is no dream of the future. The capability, already proved, is here today. Who can doubt that, if the entire body of the world’s scientists and engineers had adequate amounts of fissionable material with which to test and develop their ideas, this capability would rapidly be transformed into universal, efficient and economic usage?”

The president listed several domains where the peaceful application of the atom would be of value to humanity saying:

“Experts would be mobilized to apply atomic energy to the needs of agriculture, medicine and other peaceful activities. A special purpose would be to provide abundant electrical energy in the power-starved areas of the world.”

He ended by dropping the conceptual bombshell which shook the foundations of the newly emerging Deep State by calling for a joint U.S.-Russia alliance to cooperate on deploying this new technology around the world under a spirit of goodwill and mutually assured survival when he said this vision would “allow all peoples of all nations to see that, in this enlightened age, the great Powers of the earth, both of the East and of the West, are interested in human aspirations first rather than in building up the armaments of war.”

An earlier attempt to establish U.S.-Russia entente was made by Stalin who welcomed a meeting with the newly elected President in December 1952. Stalin’s death in March 1953 ended this potential.

Many of the world’s nations who have suffered the most under the hands of the “dumb giant” deep state America in recent decades actually found a close ally in this better America. One might be surprised to discover that Atoms for Peace established the creation of atomic energy programs for Argentina, Brazil, India, Pakistan and Iran (to name but a few), through providing training to thousands of students internationally, as well as providing nuclear technology transfers, and financing (most of which ended in the wake of JFK’s assassination).

In 1955 the first International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy took place in Geneva under the leadership of Dr. Homi Bhaba (father of Indian Atomic Energy), and in 1957 the USA and Iran signed the Cooperation Concerning Civil Uses of Atoms that set the foundation for the 1959 creation of the Tehran Nuclear Research Center. Over the coming year, the first generation of Iranian nuclear scientists were trained in MIT and in 1967, the USA supplied Iran with a 5 megawatt research reactor and enriched uranium fuel. By 1969, the pace of nuclear development both within America and abroad had dropped drastically due in large measure to the deep state takeover of western governments and the imposition of a new logic of empire and post-industrial consumerism. This mis-anthropic agenda took the form of the 1970s CFR/Trilateral Commission-led “Controlled Disintegration of the Economy”.

The Controlled Disintegration Agenda

An important recipe in this Controlled Disintegration agenda took the form of the 1973-74 oil shocks which saw oil prices skyrocket four-fold as tankers replete with oil were kept harbored off the coasts of America under direction of Henry Kissinger. This operation was laid out in full by historian William Engdahl in his 1992 Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order.

An unexpected effect was that the Shah of Iran announced that his nation would refocus its energy policies on aggressive nuclear power development, funded by its vast oil revenues. In 1974 the Shah created the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization (IAEO) saying “Petroleum is a noble material, much too valuable to burn… we envision producing, as soon as possible 23 000 mW of electricity using nuclear plants.”

In 1976, Iran’s nuclear energy budget was increased from $36 million to a whopping $1 billion and commitments to build 23 reactors were arranged with companies in Germany, France and the USA. Even President Ford, in a rare moment of sovereign thinking agreed to provide Iran with a reprocessing facility to complete the fuel cycle. Things were proceeding well as the two first 1190 mW reactors built by Germany were 80% and 50% completed when the Shah was suddenly overthrown by a regime change operation put into motion by none-other than the CFR’s Zbigniew Brzinzski, Cyrus Vance and Henry Kissinger in 1979. Within weeks ALL contracts were cancelled and the two reactors remained unbuilt for decades. A parallel derailing of a pro-nuclear orientation occurred with the execution of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who documented his fight with Kissinger over the latter’s denial of Pakistan’s right to access nuclear power (2).

Russia Revives Atoms for Peace

The anti-nuclear tides began to slowly turn in Iran’s favor in 1992 when China began supplying nuclear fuel to Iran and in 1995 Russia began to assist in the completion of the unfinished reactors. In 2011, the first 1000 mW reactor came online and a 2^nd reactor was begun anew in 2019 under the guidance of Rosatom with several more planned for the coming decade.

While the American neocons and their Zionist brethren have continued a policy of asymmetric war, cyber war, economic war, assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists (and now military officials), Russia has proven herself to be the true heir to the spirit of Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace.

Rosatom has taken up the torch of nuclear energy diplomacy with gusto in recent years by providing valuable nuclear power assistance to both Iran and Turkey while aggressively building nuclear power reactors at home. The fact that these three nations are the guarantors of the Astana Peace Process for Syria should also not be missed.

Russia has also demonstrated an enlightened interest in assisting African nations in their nuclear ambitions with agreements signed with South Africa, Egypt, Zambia, Ghana, Rwanda, Uganda, Sudan, Kenya, Ethiopia, Congo and Nigeria with scores of imperially-minded racists in London screaming of the “inappropriateness” of this advanced technology to the ‘dark continent’.

Under the guiding win-win framework of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, Iran has been given a master key to permanently throw off the threat of nuclear annihilation. Does President Trump have the moral and intellectual stamina to resist the neo-con pressure now and return America to its better traditions or will he permit himself to be used as a tool of the deep state by unleashing the nuclear dogs of war?

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Matthew Ehret is the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Patriot Review , a BRI Expert on Tactical talk, and has authored 3 volumes of ‘Untold History of Canada’ book series. In 2019 he co-founded the Montreal-based Rising Tide Foundation. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Notes

(1) The 2013 admission of primary guilt to the 1953 coup by the Obama/Brennan CIA is a major sleight of hand as both Obama and Brennan were (and are) tools of the British Fabian Society and 5 Eyes Intelligence Apparatus. More energy has been invested into maintaining the myth of the “American Empire” since WW2 than most readers can possibly imagine. Contrary to popular opinion, it isn’t Britain which serves America in the Anglo-American relationship but the reverse. Up until 1952, America had bilateral agreements in support of Mossadegh and it was always the British that ran Iranian oil politics and intrigue.

(2) Awaiting his execution in prison in 1979, Bhutto wrote of the sabotage of his fight for Pakistan energy sovereignty saying: “We were on the threshold of full nuclear capability, when I left the Government to come to this death cell. We know that Israel and South Africa have full nuclear capability. The Christian, Jewish, and Hindu civilizations have this capability. The Communist Powers also possess it. Only the Islamic civilization was without it but that position was about to change. Dr. Henry Kissinger, the Secretary of State for the United States, has a brilliant mind. He told me that I should not insult the intelligence of the United States by saying that Pakistan needed the Reprocessing Plant for her energy needs. In reply, I told him that I will not insult the intelligence of the United States by discussing the energy needs of Pakistan, but in the same token, he should not insult the sovereignty and self-respect of Pakistan by discussing the plant at all. The General [Zia] got the lemon-“limbo”-from the President of France. Pakistan got the ladu. The PNA got the halva. I got the Death Sentence.”

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“Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War” 

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102
Print Edition: $10.25 (+ shipping and handling)
PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
–John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
–Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

Turkey is looking for opportunities to shift the current balance of power in Libya after its proxies failed to break the Libyan National Army defenses and capture the port city of Sirte in northern Libya in an off-the-cuff advance.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu announced on Saturday 25 July that Turkey had signed a military cooperation agreement with Niger during his visit to the African nation, where he held meetings with a number of officials and discussed the effects of the Libyan situation on the region.

Niger’s President Mahamadou Issoufou also revealed Turkish interest in economic cooperation, especially in the areas of agriculture, mining, transport, construction and energy. As part of Turkey’s cooperation with Africa, the Anadolu Agency reported that the Turkish government has donated millions of dollars for infrastructure development on the continent and has sponsored hundreds of African students.

The deepening military and security cooperation with Niger gives Turkey a potential alternative bridgehead, logistical base and transport hub for its military operations in Libya. The Military Training Cooperation Agreement signed with Niger could also serve as a means to curb France’s influence and oppose the French military’s efforts in Africa’s Sahel region given that country’s vocal criticism of Turkey’s activities in and around the eastern Mediterranean and its shows of support for Greece and Egypt in recent times.

From the tactical point of view, Ankara seeks to undermine positions of the Libyan National Army and its supporters in southern Libya, near the border with Niger, and to force them to allocate resources to contain the Turkish influence there. This should limit the military capabilities of the allies in the countryside of Sirte.

At the same time, Turkey has continued deploying its own troops and members of Syrian militant groups to the Libyan combat zone. According to reports, just recently at least 5 transport aircraft with personnel and equipment arrived at the al-Watiya Air Base. The Turkish military also reactivated the Hawk medium-range air-defense systems deployed there. The firm position of Egypt, directly supported by the UAE, France and diplomatically by Russia, against a potential attack on Sirte prevented a Turkish military operation there because Ankara did not want to risk launching an open military confrontation with Cairo. Another factor is the reportedly growing presence of Russia-linked private military contractors in the country.

On July 24, the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) shared images claiming to show Russian forces and equipment in different parts of Libya. This included two Russian-made Pantsir-S1 air-defense systems, two Soviet-made Su-24 warplanes and a Russian L-76 military cargo plane in al-Khadim Air Base, and supposed positions of Russia-linked contractors near Sirte.

On July 26, two MiG-29 fighter jets were spotted flying at low-altitude over the coast near Sirte. These warplanes may have been some of the several jets of this type received by the Libyan National Army in May.

However, the Erdogan government has not abandoned its plans and is now looking for opportunities to turn the situation to its own advantage  and thus finally capture the strategic port city.

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Until this year, Trump hailed what he called “tremendous progress in our relationship” with China — boasting about an “outstanding” bond between him and President Xi Jinping.

He claimed that a “giant trade deal” in the making would enhance US relations with China.

Before dubious “Wuhan virus” claims replaced Xi’s “great discipline” in dealing with COVID-19 outbreaks, Trump congratulated China’s president for “lead(ing) a very successful operation” against the virus.

In recent months, things changed dramatically. “(M)y good friend” Xi Jinping became a reinvented “yellow peril,” China now considered US public enemy No. 1 — despite no threat posed by its leadership or military.

Last week, Pompeo accused China of “designs for hegemony over other nations (sic)” — how the US operates worldwide in sharp contrast to how China seeks cooperative relations with other countries.

Pompeo claims that China poses a “threat (to) our economy…our liberty…the future of free democracies around the world (sic),” adding:

Beijing’s “ultimate ambition…isn’t to trade with the United States. It is to raid the United States (sic).”

China is a “Frankenstein…aggress(or) in its hostility to freedom everywhere else (sic).”

While war between two thermonuclear powers is highly unlikely, escalating cold war, initiated by Trump regime hardliners, risks possibly turning things hot.

Weeks earlier, US war secretary Esper threatened China, saying the US is engaged in a new “era of ‘great power competition,’ and that means we need to focus more on high intensity warfare going forward.”

Indicating that greater numbers of US forces will be deployed to the Asia/Pacific, he said Washington’s “longterm challenges are China No. 1 and Russia No. 2,” adding:

“(W)hat we see happening out there is a China that continues to grow its military strength, its economic power, its commercial activity, and it’s doing so, in many ways, illicitly (sic) — or it’s using the international rules-based order against us to continue this growth, to acquire technology, and to do the things that really undermine our sovereignty (sic), that undermine the rule of law (sic), that really question (its) commitment to human rights (sic).”

Ramping up US military forces in the Asia/Pacific to “compete with China” is a euphemism for escalating cold war that could turn hot by accident or design ahead.

Knowing how US hegemonic aims threaten China, Xi last year ordered stepped up military training and exercises, saying China’s armed forces must “prepare for a comprehensive military struggle from a new starting point,” adding:

“Preparation for war and combat must be deepened to ensure an efficient response in times of emergency.”

In mid-July, former Italian diplomat Marco Carnelos said with “Trump facing an uphill (reelection) battle…(i)s an October surprise in the offing?”

He and hardliners surrounding him “point to (Beijing) as the main threat to US national security (sic)” — a dramatic turnaround from decades of growing economic ties.

Intense China bashing is part of the US political landscape, the same true about Trump regime hostility toward Iran.

Carnelos asked whether DJT “may authorize limited strikes against Iran” as part of his reelection strategy.

False flags are a longstanding US tradition since the mid-19th century.

Ahead of November elections, could Trump regime hardliners plan one against China in the South China Sea or Iran in the Persian Gulf as a pretext to retaliate militarily in hopes of boosting DJT’s reelection chances?

Post-9/11, the mother of all false flags, GW Bush’s approval rating rose almost overnight from 51 to 85%, boosted by a rally ‘round the flag effect.

Will a similar false flag be used against China or Iran to help Trump’s flagging campaign without pushing things too far toward war with nations able to hit back hard if attacked aggressively?

Geopolitically and for the most part domestically, it matters little whether Trump or Biden is elected in November.

When US elections are held, notably federal ones, dirty business as usual wins every time.

Both right wings of the US war party/money party operate the same way on major issues mattering most.

On Tuesday, China’s Global Times (GT) said Beijing “will definitely retaliate” to defend its national security against a US military provocation if occurs.

Geopolitical analyst Jin Canrong believes that along with Trump’s mishandled coronavirus response, “hostility against China among US elites and policymakers, which we didn’t expect, will also make the US more aggressive,” adding:

“Direct China-US military conflicts, or even the severance of diplomatic ties, which used to be unimaginable, are being discussed more frequently by the mainstream media outlets and scholars, so the danger of military conflicts exists and is growing.”

US Professor Emeritus Ezra Stone expressed a similar view, saying while “(n)obody wants” a Sino/US military confrontation, “and everybody would lose if a war erupts…look at what happened in (the run-up to) WW I.”

Small incidents mushroomed to more serious ones. Numerous countries on both sides became involved.

From the guns of August 1914 to the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918, an entire generation of youth was lost.

What happened twice before can happen again despite no one wanting belligerence if occurs to go this far — especially not in the nuclear age.

Minor incidents risk escalation to more serious ones — notably because of longstanding US hegemonic aims.

The presence of large numbers of US land, sea, and aerial forces in East Asia where they don’t belong risks unthinkable war that could go global if things are pushed too far.

Provocative US military exercises and regular reconnaissance flights near China’s territory risk possible confrontation.

If it happens by accident or design, all bets are off.

While war between the US and China is highly unlikely, provocatively pushing the envelope by the Trump regime could make the unthinkable possible.

A Final Comment

Sino/US geopolitical policies are worlds apart.

China seeks cooperative relations with other nations, confrontation with none.

The US drive for hegemony aims to achieve unchallenged global dominance by whatever it takes to achieve its objectives — endless wars by hot and other means its favored strategies.

China prioritizes world peace and stability. The US wages forever wars against one nation after another threatening no one.

If war erupts in East Asia or escalates in the Middle East, it’ll be made-in-the-USA.

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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 Pixabay

“It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of citizens, and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution. The freeman of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle.”—James Madison

We have become one nation under house arrest.

You think we’re any different from the Kentucky couple fitted out with ankle monitoring bracelets and forced to quarantine at home?

We’re not.

Consider what happened to Elizabeth and Isaiah Linscott.

Elizabeth took a precautionary diagnostic COVID-19 test before traveling to visit her parents and grandparents in Michigan. It came back positive: Elizabeth was asymptomatic for the novel coronavirus but had no symptoms. Her husband and infant daughter tested negative for the virus.

Now in a country where freedom actually means something, the Linscotts would have the right to determine for themselves how to proceed responsibly, but in the American Police State, we’ve only got as much freedom as the government allows.

That’s not saying much.

Indeed, it’s a dangerous time for anyone who still clings to the idea that freedom means the right to think for yourself and act responsibly according to your best judgment.

Image on the right: This Kentucky couple was placed under house arrest and put in ankle bracelets for declining to sign a self-quarantine order after Elizabeth Linscott, the wife, tested positive for the coronavirus. Image source: Facebook

In that regard, the Linscotts are a little old-school in their thinking. When Elizabeth was asked to sign a self-quarantine order agreeing to check in daily with the health department and not to travel anywhere without prior approval, she refused.

“I shouldn’t have to ask for consent because I’m an adult who can make that decision. And as a citizen of the United States of America, that is my right to make that decision without having to disclose that to somebody else,” said Elizabeth. “So, no, I wouldn’t wear a mask. I would do everything that I could to make sure that I wouldn’t come in contact with other people because of the fear that’s spreading with this. But no, I would have just stayed home, take care of my child.”

Instead of signing the blanket statement, Elizabeth submitted her own written declaration:

I will do my best to stay home, as I do every other time I get sick. But I cannot comply to having to call the public health department everytime that I need to go out and do something. It’s my right and freedoms to go where I please and not have to answer to anyone for it. There is no pandemic and with a survival rate of 99.9998% I’m fine. I will continue to avoid the elderly, just like PRIOR guidelines state, try to stay home, get rest, get medicine, and get better. I decline.

A few days after being informed that Elizabeth’s case was being escalated and referred to law enforcement, the Linscotts reportedly found their home surrounded by multiple government vehicles, government personnel and the county sheriff armed with a court order and ankle monitors.

“We didn’t rob a store,” Linscott said. “We didn’t steal something. We didn’t hit and run. We didn’t do anything wrong.”

That’s the point, of course.

In an age of overcriminalization—when the law is wielded like a hammer to force compliance to the government’s dictates whatever they might be—you don’t have to do anything wrong to be fined, arrested or subjected to raids and seizures and surveillance.

Watch and see: just as it did in China, this pandemic is about to afford the government the perfect excuse for expanding its surveillance and data collection powers at our expense.

On a daily basis, Americans are already relinquishing (in many cases, voluntarily) the most intimate details of who we are—their biological makeup, our genetic blueprints, and our biometrics (facial characteristics and structure, fingerprints, iris scans, etc.)—in order to navigate an increasingly technologically-enabled world.

COVID-19, however, takes the surveillance state to the next level.

There’s already been talk of mass testing for COVID-19 antibodies, screening checkpoints, contact tracing, immunity passports to allow those who have recovered from the virus to move around more freely, and snitch tip lines for reporting “rule breakers” to the authorities.

As Reuters reports:

As the United States begins reopening its economy, some state officials are weighing whether house arrest monitoring technology – including ankle bracelets or location-tracking apps – could be used to police quarantines imposed on coronavirus carriers. But while the tech has been used sporadically for U.S. quarantine enforcement over the past few weeks, large scale rollouts have so far been held back by a big legal question: Can officials impose electronic monitoring without an offense or a court order?

More to the point, as the head of one tech company asked, “Can you actually constitutionally monitor someone who’s innocent? It’s uncharted territory.”

Except this isn’t exactly uncharted territory, is it?

It follows much the same pattern as every other state of emergency in recent years—legitimate or manufactured—that has empowered the government to add to its arsenal of technologies and powers.

The war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on illegal immigration, asset forfeiture schemes, road safety schemes, school safety schemes, eminent domain: all of these programs started out as legitimate responses to pressing concerns and have since become weapons of compliance and control in the police state’s hands.

It doesn’t even matter what the nature of the crisis might be—civil unrest, the national emergencies, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters”—as long as it allows the government to justify all manner of government tyranny in the so-called name of national security.

It’s hard to know who to trust anymore.

Certainly, in this highly partisan age, when everything from the COVID-19 pandemic to police brutality to football is being recast in light of one’s political leanings, it can be incredibly difficult to separate what constitutes a genuine safety concern versus what is hyper-politicized propaganda.

Take the mask mandates, for example.

Currently, 19 states have not issued mask mandates in response to rising COVID-19 infection numbers. More than 30 states have enacted some form of mask requirement. A growing number of retailers, including Walmart, Target and CVS,  are also joining the mask mandate bandwagon. Georgia’s governor, in a challenge to mask requirements by local governing bodies, filed a lawsuit challenging Atlanta’s dictate that masks be worn within city limits.

In some states, such as Indiana, where masks are required but there are no penalties for non-compliance, government officials are urging people to protect themselves but not to get into confrontations over masks or turn into snitches.

In other states, such as Virginia, the Nanny State is using more strong-handed tactics to force compliance with mask mandates, including the threat of fines, jail time, surprise inspections of businesses, and complaint hotlines that encourage citizens to snitch on each other. Officials in Las Vegas deployed 100 “compliance ambassadors” to help educate and enhance enforcement of the state’s mask mandate. One couple in Knoxville, Tenn., took mask-shaming to new heights when they created a Facebook page to track compliance by businesses, employees and customers.

In Miami, “residents now risk a legal penalty if they venture into public without a face mask. The city has assigned at least 39 police officers to make sure that residents are following the city’s mandatory mask ordinance. Offenders will be warned but, if they refuse to comply, they will be fined. The first offense will cost $100 and the second another $100. With a third — God forbid — the offender will be arrested.”

These conflicting and, in some cases, heavy-handed approaches to a pandemic that has locked down the nation for close to six months is turning this health crisis into an unnecessarily politicized, bureaucratic tug-of-war with no clear-cut winners to be found.

Certainly, this is not the first crisis to pit security concerns against freedom principles.

In this post-9/11 world, we have been indoctrinated into fearing and mistrusting one another instead of fearing and mistrusting the government. As a result, we’ve been forced to travel this road many, many times with lamentably predictable results each time: without fail, when asked to choose between safety and liberty, Americans historically tend to choose safety.

Failing to read the fine print on such devil’s bargains, “we the people” find ourselves repeatedly on the losing end as the government uses each crisis as a means of expanding its powers at taxpayer expense.

Whatever these mask mandates might be—authoritarian strong-arm tactics or health necessities to prevent further spread of the virus—they have thus far proven to be uphill legal battles for those hoping to challenge them in the courts as unconstitutional restrictions on their right to liberty, bodily autonomy, privacy and health.

In fact, Florida courts have upheld the mask ordinances, ruling that they do not infringe on constitutional rights and that “there is no reasonable expectation of privacy as to whether one covers their nose and mouth in public places, which are the only places to which the mask ordinance applies.”

Declaring that there is no constitutional right to infect others, Circuit Court Judge John Kastrenakes concluded that “the right to be ‘free from governmental intrusion’ does not automatically or completely shield an individual’s conduct from regulation.” Moreover, wrote Kastrenakes, constitutional rights and the ideals of limited government “do not absolve a citizen from the real-world consequences of their individual choices, or otherwise allow them to wholly skirt their social obligation to their fellow Americans or to society as a whole. This is particularly true when one’s individual choices can result in drastic, costly, and sometimes deadly, consequences to others.”

Virginia courts have also upheld mask mandates.

These court decisions take their cue from a 1905 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Jacobson v. Massachusetts in which the Court upheld the authority of states to enforce compulsory vaccination laws.

In other words, the courts have concluded that the government has a compelling interest in requiring masks to fight COVID-19 infections that overrides individual freedoms.

Generally, the government has to show a so-called compelling state interest before it can override certain critical rights such as free speech, assembly, press, privacy, search and seizure, etc. Most of the time, the government lacks that compelling state interest, but it still manages to violate those rights, setting itself up for legal battles further down the road.

We can spend time debating the mask mandates. However, criticizing those who rightly fear these restrictions to be a slippery slope to further police state tactics will not restore the freedoms that have been willingly sacrificed on the altar of national security by Americans of all political stripes over the years.

As I’ve warned, this is a test to see how whether the Constitution—and our commitment to the principles enshrined in the Bill of Rights—can survive a national crisis and true state of emergency.

It must be remembered that James Madison, the “father” of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights and the fourth president of the United States, advised that we should “take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.

Whether or not you consider these COVID-19 restrictions to be cause for alarm, they are far from the first experiment on our liberties. Indeed, whether or not you concede that the pandemic itself is cause for alarm, we should all be alarmed by the government’s response to this pandemic.

By government, I’m not referring to one particular politician or administration but to the entire apparatus at every level that conspires to keep “we the people” fearful of one another and under virtual house arrest.

This is what we’ve all been reduced to: prisoners in our skin, prisoners in our homes, prisoners in our communities—forced to comply with the government’s shifting mandates about how to navigate this pandemic or else.

Right now, COVID-19 is the perfect excuse for the government to wreak havoc on our freedoms in the name of safety and security, but as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, don’t believe for a minute that our safety is the police state’s primary concern.

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

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

Despite evident nervousness about the possibility of economic retaliation from Beijing, Australia’s government this week scrambled to satisfy the demands of the Trump administration to fully commit to the escalating US military, diplomatic and economic confrontation with China.

The joint July 28 statement issued by the US and Australian foreign policy and military leaders from the Australia-US Ministerial Consultations (AUSMIN) in Washington DC read like a justification for war.

It broadcast all the Trump administration’s incendiary and unproven allegations against China—from “coercive and destabilizing actions across the Indo-Pacific” to “malicious interference” in other countries—and announced a classified military “Statement of Principles” to “advance force-posture cooperation” against China.

After the post-AUSMIN media conference, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo again lashed out at China, vowing to back and defend Australia from “intense continued coercive pressure from the Chinese Communist Party to bow to Beijing’s wishes.”

Without offering the slightest justification for his accusations, Pompeo declared:

“It is unacceptable for Beijing to use exports or student fees as a cudgel against Australia. We stand with our Australian friends.”

Like previous AUSMIN communiqués, the joint statement itself commenced by framing the relationship in terms of fighting wars together. It declared that the US-Australian alliance “remains unbreakable” more than a century “since we first fought side-by-side” in World War I.

The significance of these declarations was underscored by the fact that the Australian foreign affairs and defence ministers, Marise Payne and Linda Reynolds, travelled to Washington with an entourage that included their department heads and the Australian military chief, General Angus Campbell, despite the COVID-19 pandemic ravaging the US population.

They met face-to-face with Pompeo and US Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who thanked them ostentatiously for making the trip.

“And your entire delegation will be quarantining when you get back,” Pompeo said. “Not many partners will do that for us, and so thank you to each of you and your teams for being with us here in person.”

No explanation was provided as to the top-secret classification of the “force-posture cooperation” agreement, entitled “Statement of Principles on Alliance Defense Cooperation and Force Posture Priorities in the Indo-Pacific.” The AUSMIN joint statement referred only to the establishment of a “bilateral Force Posture Working Group” seeking to “deter coercive acts and the use of force.”

Nevertheless, this pact is another indication of war preparations. The four leaders also announced the construction of a US-funded, commercially-operated strategic military fuel reserve in the strategic northern Australian city of Darwin. US marines already have been stationed, on rotation, in Darwin since the previous Greens-backed Labor government of Julia Gillard agreed to that in 2011.

The AUSMIN meeting unveiled several other joint operations, including a high-level working group to “vigorously” monitor and respond to “harmful disinformation”—clearly directed against China. No information was offered about the alleged kinds of “disinformation,” or how such activities would be attacked.

The AUSMIN statement also “reaffirmed” the two countries’ commitment to furthering military alliances designed to encircle China: “Trilateral dialogues with Japan and Quad consultations with Japan and India.”

At the joint media conference, the four refused to specifically answer questions from reporters about further details of what had been agreed, such as whether Australia had acceded to the mounting US requests for its warships to join provocative “freedom of navigation operations” within the 12-mile territorial waters surrounding Chinese-occupied islets in the South China Sea.

Esper, however, praised Australia for already joining US naval operations in the region.

“Last week, five Australian warships joined the USS Ronald Reagan carrier strike group and a Japanese destroyer in conducting a trilateral naval exercise in the Philippine Sea ahead of the upcoming RIMPAC exercise in Hawaii,” he said. “These exercises not only bolster interoperability, but also send a clear signal to Beijing that we will fly, we will sail, and we will operate wherever international law allows and defend the rights of our allies and partners to do the same.”

Likewise, Esper did not directly answer a question about whether the US was continuing to explore the idea of deploying mid-range missiles in Australia, directed against China, but indicated that this was certainly being discussed.

“We had a very ranging discussion about the capabilities the US possesses and the capabilities Australia possesses and our desire to advance them—whether they are hypersonic or any other kind of capability,” he said.

These activities are just part of the gearing up for hi-tech warfare against a nuclear-armed country. Reynolds spoke about joint development of “hypersonics, electronic warfare and space-based capabilities,” to “ensure the alliance maintains its capability edge in a rapidly modernising environment,” without giving any details.

The assertion by the US and Australia that China is the source of the tensions and “malign behaviour” in the Indo-Pacific stands reality on its head. The Trump administration is increasingly resorting to anti-Chinese propaganda to blame a foreign “enemy” for the COVID-19 catastrophe in the US, while vying with the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden, to be the most strident in doing so.

At the same time, the White House is ramping up the US “pivot” or “rebalance” to Asia, which President Barack Obama formally initiated in the Australian parliament in 2011. It consists of continuous diplomatic, economic and military efforts to undermine Chinese influence and reassert American dominance over the region.

In the South China Sea, which is strategically vital to China, Washington has seized upon Beijing’s longstanding bilateral territorial disputes with other countries, the Philippines and Vietnam in particular, potentially creating the pretext for US-led military interventions to supposedly defend them against “Chinese bullying.”

US Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) journalist Nick Schifrin asked Payne to comment on Pompeo’s regime-change call in his speech last week in which he urged all “free nations” to rise as one against Chinese “tyranny,” regardless of the economic consequences. Schifrin asked Payne whether “the admonition to help the Chinese people change the Chinese government” was “possible and/or wise?”

Payne obfuscated, saying US policy was for itself to determine, while insisting that the Australian government had an “important” relationship with China, which Canberra had “no intention of injuring.”

The billion-dollar interests behind that nervousness, especially based on mining exports to China, received expression yesterday when a business-backed group, China Matters, warned that Australia could be “collateral damage” if US-China ties deteriorated further.

Regardless of these fears, however, the dominant sections of the Australian ruling class have concluded that they have no option but to back the US, on which they depend heavily for investment, as well as military and intelligence support.

While Payne claimed that the US-Australia relationship was “respectful,” she and Reynolds were at pains to recite the actions that the Australian government had taken in sync with the US. The list included banning the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei from Australia’s proposed 5G network, opposing China’s Belt and Road infrastructure program, introducing “foreign interference” laws, blocking Chinese investment in certain industries, and denouncing Chinese actions in Hong Kong and Xinjiang.

It also included declaring “illegal” China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea, collaborating on the mining and refining of “critical minerals” and allocating an extra $270 billion over the next decade to boosting Australia’s military capacity, especially for longer-range operations in China’s vicinity.

On every front, each Australian government over the past decade has increasingly integrated the country, militarily and strategically, into the drive by the US to block China from challenging the US domination of the region and the world, effectively placing the Australian population on the frontline of a potentially catastrophic war.

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Featured image: Reynolds and Payne with Pompeo (Credit: US Embassy in Canberra)

“When evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out ‘Stop!’ When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable, the cries are no longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summer.” — Bertolt Brecht

In war-torn Yemen, the crimes pile up. And children who bear no responsibility for governance or warfare endure the punishment.

In 2018, UNICEF said the war made Yemen a living hell for children. By the year’s end, Save the Children reported that 85,000 children under five had already died from starvation since the war escalated in 2015. By the end of 2020, it is expected that 23,500 Yemeni children with severe acute malnutrition will be at immediate risk of death.

Cataclysmic conditions afflict Yemen as people try to cope with rampant diseases, the spread of COVID-19, flooding, literal swarms of locusts, rising displacement, destroyed infrastructure, and a collapsed economy. Yet the war rages, bombs continue to fall, and desperation fuels more crimes.

The highest-paying jobs available to many Yemeni boys and men require a willingness to kill and maim one another, by joining militias or armed groups which seemingly never run out of weapons. Nor does the Saudi-Led Coalition, which kills and maims civilians; instead, it deters relief shipments, and destroys crucial relief infrastructure with weapons it imports from Western countries.

The aerial attacks displace traumatized survivors into swelling, often lethal refugee camps. Amid the wreckage of factories, fisheries, roads, sewage and sanitation facilities, schools, and hospitals, Yemenis search in vain for employment and, increasingly, for food and water. The Saudi-Led Coalition’s blockade, also enabled by Western training and weapons, makes it impossible for Yemenis to restore a functioning economy.

Even foreign aid can become punitive. In March 2020, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) decided to suspend most aid for Yemenis living in areas controlled by the Houthis.

Scott Paul, who leads Oxfam America’s humanitarian policy advocacy, strongly criticized this callous decision to compound the misery imposed on vulnerable people in Yemen.

“In future years,” he wrote, “scholars will study USAID’s suspension as a paradigmatic example of a donor’s exploitation and misuse of humanitarian principles.”

As the evil-doing in Yemen comes “like falling rain,” so do the cries of “Stop!” from millions of people all over the world. Here’s some of what’s been happening:

• U.S. legislators in both the House of Representatives and the Senate voted to block the sale of billions of dollars in weapons and maintenance to Saudi Arabia and its allies. But President Trump vetoed the bill in 2019.
• Canada’s legislators declared a moratorium on weapon sales to  Saudi Arabia. But the Canadian government has resumed selling weapons to the Saudis, claiming the moratorium only pertained to the creation of new contracts, not existing ones.
• The United Kingdom suspended military sales to Saudi Arabia because of human rights violations, but the U.K.’s international trade secretary has nevertheless resumed weapon sales, claiming that the 516 charges of Saudi human rights violations are all isolated incidents and don’t present a pattern of abuse.
• French NGOs and human rights advocates urged their government to scale back on weapon sales to the Saudi-Led Coalition, but reports on 2019 weapon sales revealed the French government sold 1.4 billion Euros worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia.
• British campaigners opposing weapon transfers to the Saudi-Led Coalition have exposed how the British Navy gave the Saudi Navy training in tactics essential to the devastating Yemen blockade.
• In Canada, Spain, France, and Italy, laborers opposed to the ongoing war have refused to load weapons onto ships sailing to Saudi Arabia. Rights groups track the passage of trains and ships carrying these weapons.

On top of all this, reports produced by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Oxfam, the Norwegian Refugee Council, and the International Commission of the Red Cross repeatedly expose the Saudi-Led Coalition’s human rights violations.

Yet this international outcry clamoring for an end to the war is still being drowned out by the voices of major military contractors with well-paid lobbyists plying powerful elites in Western governments. Their concern is simply for the profits to be reaped and the competitive sales to be scored.

Backpacks and placards carried during protest of the August 9, 2018 Saudi airstrike on a Yemeni school bus.

In 2019, Lockheed Martin’s total sales hit nearly $60 billion, the best year on record for the world’s largest “defense” contractor. Before stepping down as CEO, Marillyn Hewson predicted demand from the Pentagon and U.S. allies would generate an uptick between $6.2  and $6.4 billion in net earnings for the company in 2020 sales.

Hewson’s words, spoken calmly, drown out the cries of Yemeni children whose bodies are torn apart by Lockheed Martin’s bombs.

In August 2018, bombs manufactured by Raytheon, Boeing, General Dynamics, and Lockheed Martin fell on Yemen like summer rain. On August 9, 2018, a missile blasted a school bus in Yemen, killing forty children and injuring many others.

Photos showed badly injured children still carrying UNICEF blue backpacks, given to them that morning as gifts. Other photos showed  children helping to prepare graves for their schoolmates. One photo showed a piece of the bomb protruding from the wreckage with the number MK82 clearly stamped on it. That number on the shrapnel helped identify Lockheed Martin as the manufacturer.

The psychological damage being inflicted on these children is incalculable. “My son is really hurt from the inside,” said a parent whose child was badly injured by the bombing. “We try to talk to him to feel better and we can’t stop ourselves from crying.”

The cries against war in Yemen also fall like rain and whatever thunder accompanies it is distant, summer thunder. Yet if we cooperate with war-making elites, the most horrible storms will be unleashed. We must learn—and quickly—to make a torrent of our mingled cries and, as the prophet Amos demanded, “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

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Kathy Kelly ([email protected]) co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence.

Featured image: The blue backpacks stand for each one of the children killed in the Saudi bombing attack on a school bus. They used a 500 pound bomb manufactured by Lockheed-Martin.

As professor of epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health, I have authored over 300 peer-reviewed publications and currently hold senior positions on the editorial boards of several leading journals. I am usually accustomed to advocating for positions within the mainstream of medicine, so have been flummoxed to find that, in the midst of a crisis, I am fighting for a treatment that the data fully support but which, for reasons having nothing to do with a correct understanding of the science, has been pushed to the sidelines. As a result, tens of thousands of patients with COVID-19 are dying unnecessarily. Fortunately, the situation can be reversed easily and quickly.

I am referring, of course, to the medication hydroxychloroquine. When this inexpensive oral medication is given very early in the course of illness, before the virus has had time to multiply beyond control, it has shown to be highly effective, especially when given in combination with the antibiotics azithromycin or doxycycline and the nutritional supplement zinc.

On May 27, I published an article in the American Journal of Epidemiology (AJE) entitled, “Early Outpatient Treatment of Symptomatic, High-Risk COVID-19 Patients that Should be Ramped-Up Immediately as Key to the Pandemic Crisis.” That article, published in the world’s leading epidemiology journal, analyzed five studies, demonstrating clear-cut and significant benefits to treated patients, plus other very large studies that showed the medication safety.

Physicians who have been using these medications in the face of widespread skepticism have been truly heroic. They have done what the science shows is best for their patients, often at great personal risk. I myself know of two doctors who have saved the lives of hundreds of patients with these medications, but are now fighting state medical boards to save their licenses and reputations. The cases against them are completely without scientific merit.

Since publication of my May 27 article, seven more studies have demonstrated similar benefit. In a lengthy follow-up letter, also published by AJE, I discuss these seven studies and renew my call for the immediate early use of hydroxychloroquine in high-risk patients. These seven studies include: an additional 400 high-risk patients treated by Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, with zero deaths; four studies totaling almost 500 high-risk patients treated in nursing homes and clinics across the U.S., with no deaths; a controlled trial of more than 700 high-risk patients in Brazil, with significantly reduced risk of hospitalization and two deaths among 334 patients treated with hydroxychloroquine; and another study of 398 matched patients in France, also with significantly reduced hospitalization risk. Since my letter was published, even more doctors have reported to me their completely successful use.

My original article in the AJE is available free online, and I encourage readers—especially physicians, nurses, physician assistants and associates, and respiratory therapists—to search the title and read it. My follow-up letter is linked there to the original paper.

Beyond these studies of individual patients, we have seen what happens in large populations when these drugs are used. These have been “natural experiments.” In the northern Brazil state of Pará, COVID-19 deaths were increasing exponentially. On April 6, the public hospital network purchased 75,000 doses of azithromycin and 90,000 doses of hydroxychloroquine. Over the next few weeks, authorities began distributing these medications to infected individuals. Even though new cases continued to occur, on May 22 the death rate started to plummet and is now about one-eighth what it was at the peak.

A reverse natural experiment happened in Switzerland. On May 27, the Swiss national government banned outpatient use of hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19. Around June 10, COVID-19 deaths increased four-fold and remained elevated. On June 11, the Swiss government revoked the ban, and on June 23 the death rate reverted to what it had been beforehand. People who die from COVID-19 live about three to five weeks from the start of symptoms, which makes the evidence of a causal relation in these experiments strong. Both episodes suggest that a combination of hydroxychloroquine and its companion medications reduces mortality and should be immediately adopted as the new standard of care in high-risk patients.

Why has hydroxychloroquine been disregarded?

First, as all know, the medication has become highly politicized. For many, it is viewed as a marker of political identity, on both sides of the political spectrum. Nobody needs me to remind them that this is not how medicine should proceed. We must judge this medication strictly on the science. When doctors graduate from medical school, they formally promise to make the health and life of the patient their first consideration, without biases of race, religion, nationality, social standing—or political affiliation. Lives must come first.

Second, the drug has not been used properly in many studies. Hydroxychloroquine has shown major success when used early in high-risk people but, as one would expect for an antiviral, much less success when used late in the disease course. Even so, it has demonstrated significant benefit in large hospital studies in Michigan and New York City when started within the first 24 to 48 hours after admission.

In fact, as inexpensive, oral and widely available medications, and a nutritional supplement, the combination of hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin or doxycycline, and zinc are well-suited for early treatment in the outpatient setting. The combination should be prescribed in high-risk patients immediately upon clinical suspicion of COVID-19 disease, without waiting for results of testing. Delays in waiting before starting the medications can reduce their efficacy.

Third, concerns have been raised by the FDA and others about risks of cardiac arrhythmia, especially when hydroxychloroquine is given in combination with azithromycin. The FDA based its comments on data in its FDA Adverse Event Reporting System. This reporting system captured up to a thousand cases of arrhythmias attributed to hydroxychloroquine use. In fact, the number is likely higher than that, since the reporting system, which requires physicians or patients to initiate contact with the FDA, appreciably undercounts drug side effects.

But what the FDA did not announce is that these adverse events were generated from tens of millions of patient uses of hydroxychloroquine for long periods of time, often for the chronic treatment of lupus or rheumatoid arthritis. Even if the true rates of arrhythmia are ten-fold higher than those reported, the harms would be minuscule compared to the mortality occurring right now in inadequately treated high-risk COVID-19 patients. This fact is proven by an Oxford University study of more than 320,000 older patients taking both hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, who had arrhythmia excess death rates of less than 9/100,000 users, as I discuss in my May 27 paper cited above. A new paper in the American Journal of Medicine by established cardiologists around the world fully agrees with this.

In the future, I believe this misbegotten episode regarding hydroxychloroquine will be studied by sociologists of medicine as a classic example of how extra-scientific factors overrode clear-cut medical evidence. But for now, reality demands a clear, scientific eye on the evidence and where it points. For the sake of high-risk patients, for the sake of our parents and grandparents, for the sake of the unemployed, for our economy and for our polity, especially those disproportionally affected, we must start treating immediately.

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Harvey A. Risch, MD, PhD, is professor of epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health.

On July 17^th, 2020, the Russian Ministry of Health published recommendations to schools to ban the use of Wi-Fi and cell phones in elementary schools. The Medical Department of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Russian National Committee on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection, prepared the recommendations together with the Russian Ministry of Health.

The information was provided to Children’s Health Defense by Professor Oleg Grigoriev, Dr.Sc, PhD, the Chairman for the Russian National Committee on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection. Professor Grigoriev has been outspoken about the harms of wireless technology and has been leading the recent initiatives by the Russian government to protect children from harm. He also tweeted about the news.

Numerous studies show profound adverse effects from Wi-Fi. Professor Martin Pall’s 2018 meta-analysis paper “Wi-Fi is an important threat to human health” references studies showing Wi-Fi causes oxidative stress, sperm/testicular damage, neuropsychiatric effects including EEG changes, apoptosis (cell death), cellular DNA damage, endocrine changes, and calcium overload. Considering the evidence of harm, scientists and medical associations have called to ban the use of Wi-Fi in schools and use wired networks instead.

Russia is following other countries around the world that have taken action to reduce the use of Wi-Fi in schools and protect the health of children. In 2013, Israel became the first country in the world to adopt limitations on the use of Wi-Fi in schools. It banned Wi-Fi in kindergartens and limited the use of Wi-Fi in elementary schools. Wi-Fi is allowed for three hours per week in the first and second grade and six hours per week for the third grade. It must be turned off at all other times. In 2017, Cypress banned Wi-Fi in kindergartens and halted the deployment of Wi-Fi in elementary schools. In addition, The Cyprus National Committee on Environment and Child Health initiated a nationwide campaign to raise awareness about cell phone and wireless radiation exposures to children.

In the US, in 2016 the governor-appointed Maryland State Children’s Environmental Health and Protection Advisory Council (CEHPAC), issued a report advising the Department of Education to recommend that local school districts reduce exposure of schoolchildren to wireless devices and radiation, and to provide wired rather than wireless internet connections. No action was taken.

This action by the Russian Health Department follows another recent action by the ministry to encourage the reduction of children’s exposure to wireless devices.  In March 2020, following the outbreak of Covid, Russia’s Department of Health together with the Scientific Research Institute of Hygiene and the Russian National Committee on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection published Safety Recommendations for Children Who Use Digital Technologies to Study at Home. The recommendation encourages using the internet via a wired connection rather than Wi-Fi. (Children’s Health Defense also published a “step by step” guide on how to hardwire wireless devices for safe remote learning.)

In the US, the Federal Communication Commission, which regulates the safety of wireless technology, denies that wireless technology causes harm. The FCC health guidelines rely on the obsolete scientific assumption that the non-ionizing radiation emitted by microwave frequencies used for wireless technology can be harmful, only if they cause thermal change in tissue. That assumption has been proven false in thousands of studies, even before cell phones were commercialized in the 1980s. Contrary to the FCC’s position, in the 1970s, the Russians had already acknowledged that the radiation emitted from radio and microwave frequencies based technologies can be harmful at levels that are at least 1,000 times lower than the levels that create thermal effects.

Despite massive evidence of harm, in December 2019, the FCC published a decision that there is no evidence of harm from wireless technology and decided that a review of its health guidelines would not be required. As a result, in February 2020, Children’s Health Defense sued the FCC. The main brief in the case is due on July 29, 2020.

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Dafna Tachover is CHD’s Director of 5G & Wireless Harms Project.

Featured image is from CHD

While remembering their past has not prevented history from repeating itself, it is not possible for the descendants of the world’s first successful large-scale slave revolt to forget the trauma inflicted by their northern neighbours.

One hundred and five years ago today a brutal US occupation of Haiti began. To commemorate an intervention that continues to shape that country Solidarity Québec Haiti is organizing a sit in in front of the US Consulate in Montreal.

On July 28, 1915 the USS Washington, with 900-men and 20 canons, docked in Port-au-Prince. US troops withdrew in 1934 but Washington largely controlled the country’s finances until 1941 and the Banque de la République d’Haïti remained under US supervision until 1947.

The occupation wasn’t Washington’s first instance of interference in Haiti but rather consolidated its grip over the country. Six months beforehand US Marines marched on the treasury in Port-au-Prince and took the nation’s entire gold reserve.

At the height, 5000 US Marines were stationed in the country of less than 3 million. US-led forces brutally suppressed a largely peasant resistance movement, killing 15,000 Haitians.

In one of many instances of overt US racism, a top commander in the occupation, Colonel Littleton (Tony) Waller, descendent of a prominent family of slaveowners, said, “I know the nigger and how to handle him.”

To suppress the anti-occupation movement the US employed the nascent technique of aerial bombardment. Most of the fighting ended when rebel leader Charlemagne Peralte was killed, pinned to a door and left on a street to rot for days at the end of 1919. The US military described Peralte as the “supreme bandit of Haiti”.

In a famous mea culpa, an architect of the occupation confessed he was in fact the true “gangster”. Describing himself as a “high class muscle man for Big Business” and “gangster for capitalism”, Marine Corps General Smedley Butler wrote in an article years later, “I helped make Haiti … a decent place for the National City Bank Boys to collect revenues in.”

Opposition to the occupation was fed by conscription. US authorities captured civilians and compelled them to work on public roadway, buildings and other infrastructure. One reason the Marines wanted new roads was to help them bypass rugged terrain to suppress the resistance.

During the occupation the US established a new military. Created to crush resistance to the foreign presence, the National Guard “never fought anyone but Haitians.” For the next 70 years it would be used by Washington and the elite against Haiti’s poor. Haiti’s current government is seeking to revive that force.

In general, the occupation devastated the peasantry. Wealth extracted from the countryside was overwhelmingly channeled to infrastructure in the capital and foreign banks. The occupation spurred migration to Port-au-Prince and out of the country.

The US instigated other major changes to rural ways. In 1918 they rewrote the constitution to allow foreigners to purchase land, which had been outlawed since independence. A number of US corporations took advantage of the changes. The US controlled North Haytian Sugar Company and Haytian Pineapple Company both acquired hundreds of acres of land while the Haitian American Development Corporation, Haytian Corporation of America and Haytian Agricultural Corporation acquired tens of thousands of acres.

Toronto-based Sun Life Assurance Company initiated its operations in Haiti during this period. Canada’s largest bank also benefited from the US occupation. In 1919 the Royal Bank of Canada became the second bank in Haiti. RBC hired former finance minister Louis Borno as a legal advisor and officials of the Canadian firm subsequently financed his successful presidential bid during the US occupation.

Unfortunately, Solidarity Québec Haiti’s sit in is not only about drawing attention to a dark chapter in Haitian history. Washington retains significant influence over the country. In fact, the only reason the corrupt, repressive and illegitimate Jovenel Moïse is currently president of Haiti is due to US (and Canadian) support.

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Featured image: Rebel leader Charlemagne Peralte (Source: yvesengler.com)

“Fear is only reverse faith; it is faith in evil instead of good.” Florence Scovel Shinn

After several months of the COVID-19 crisis, relevant elements of analysis of this crisis are becoming clearer.

1. The enormous pressure to convince 7 billion people of the need to be vaccinated against a virus [1] whose mortality has been inflated [2] and which is said to be ubiquitous while it is disappearing or has even disappeared.

It reminds us of the 2009 operation, with the fake H1N1 pandemic [3]: same tactics, same complicity (media, political, government), same “experts”, same scenarios, same narratives with an emphasis on fear, guilt, haste and always the same stench of this omnipresent money in the form of huge profits on the horizon for the Big Pharma vaccine producing industry.

It is as if the H1N1 episode of 2009 has been used as a rehearsal.

This time, the COVID-19 episode of 2020 is poised to turn the trial into a success?

Monitoring Tests: Collect data on VIDOC-19. Source: sph.umich.edu

2.  People submitting to authority

Despite clear signs of corruption, incompetence, ignorance about eminent personalities in politics, science, medicine, many people continue to obey them.

Despite confused, contradictory, unexplained, unjustifiable recommendations, people accept the directive of higher authority.

For example, many people continue to obey them:

1) In the midst of the epidemic, the wearing of masks is not mandatory and even discouraged for healthy people.
2) As the epidemic dies out, masks become mandatory everywhere for everyone.

Many general practitioners from several countries and the IHU Méditerranée-Infection de Marseilles, one of the largest infectious disease centers in the world, the largest in France, have demonstrated that hydroxychloroquine is  an effective drug for treatment of SARS and COVID-19 [4].

In Belgium, “they” say that it is a dangerous and ineffective drug and “they” prevent general practitioners from prescribing it to their patients. In the US, a media campaign against HCQis ongoing.

Contradictions, lies, false truths…

Of course, fear and conformism may explain this fabricated obedience.

We know the experiences of Solomon Asch and Stanley Milgram [5].

This tendency to submission and obedience to coercive measures varies from one country to another.

Thus in Serbia :

“Broken, the relentless progression of coronaviral terror. The recalcitrant Serbs rebelled against their president when he ordered them to return to house arrest. After two days of street battles with dozens of hospitalized police officers, the robust demonstrators won; the authorities surrendered and abandoned their plans to seal off Belgrade. Shops, bistros and restaurants in Belgrade will have a curfew in the early evening; but this is much better than the complete closure they had planned. ” [6]

On the other hand, in Belgium:

“In an incomprehensible way, while the epidemic, except for small outbreaks (clusters), is gradually disappearing [7], coercive measures are once again being imposed, even extended [8] with compulsory wearing of masks everywhere, for everyone, obligation to give their details in restaurants and bars for tracking purposes [9] …”.

There is no justification for all this.

All this revives fear, terror, and leads to fears of a return to partial or total confinement (house arrest), whereas today we know that this measure is useless and harmful! [10-11]

It is as if the COVID-19 crisis is being used by the authorities as a full-scale test to assess the degree of submission of their people [12], and to see how far they can go before they encounter sufficient opposition.

I hope that the Belgian people, the bravest people of Gaul according to Julius Caesar [13], will have the courage and lucidity of the Serbian people and will finally wake up.

3. The use of experts by creating the impression of a consensus that does not exist

Governments form expert committees to justify their actions.

For the citizen, why question the measures in question?

However, within organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO), the European Medicines Agency (EMEA), the COVID-19 committee in France (CARE) or in Belgium (Sciensano-committee COVID-19), being an expert does not mean being independent, free of any conflict of interest, or even being competent from a standpoint [14-15].

Every time a government says: “there is a consensus of experts on this issue“, it is in fact a lie.

It only means that their experts have agreed, they have established a consensus without analysis and the conduct of scientific debate.

In COVID-19, you can find on all the subjects presented as a part of a consensus :

• Masks
• Hydroxychloroquine
• Containment
• Tests used
• Treatments
• Vaccination

… other experts equally valid in terms of academic credentials, reputation and professional activities, whose opinions go against official diktats, with honest arguments, solid demonstrations and multiple references.

How does the citizen weigh this up?

A good criterion is to check for a conflict of interest.

Many qualified authors and scientists with opinions opposed to those of their government counterparts are not linked to the pharmaceutical industry or to governments that ultimately want to push an ideology,  a political agenda and are increasingly accountable to Big Pharma.

These independent authors also have more to lose than to gain in this debate.

What else could drive them to take risks if not their honesty, their conscience?

It is neither fame, nor the hope of a contract in the private sector, nor money, in any case.

4. The fabrication of “fiction” may be inspired by a distorted understanding of real facts and for this, the use of a narrative that ends up being repeated over and over again, which then becomes a consensus which is no longer challenged.

COVID-19 is a fiction based on plausible facts: a virus, real deaths, a real disease, an epidemic of respiratory illnesses to which are added, little by little, distortions of truths or realities, or even outright lies (Cf. my series, COVID-19: as close to the truth as possible).

Coronaviruses are known. They exist. Two of them have already threatened humanity with deadly epidemics (SARS, MERS).

Regardless of the fact that the 2009 H1N1 pandemic was false and that experts had manipulated the figures, the H1N1 pandemic of 2009 set the stage for it is a threat and that only vaccination could save us.

Real sick people were hospitalized and some died. All of this made the “COVID-19” story plausible.

The COVID narrative was launched.

To perpetuate the fear campaign, a population-wide strategy of shock was put in place, tests presented as reliable were conducted, high mortality figures were released. not to mention indicators of contagiousness.

In this process, the role of the media in support of an official consensus was essential.

As always, they played their role well, announcing the number of deaths every day and attributing them to COVID-19 without supporting analysis.

Today,  the fear campaign is sustained by an alleged second wave, requiring a new lockdown. So-called “positive”| PCR tests are casually presented as new cases of COVID-19.

Sweden and other countries, as well as some states in the USA, have not played the game, or have followed their own agenda.

Stockholm during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Source: Quartz

They didn’t confine, they were less traumatized, they remained more human.

They is proof that the COVID-19 story in several countries (Belgium, France, Spain, Canada…) is indeed a fiction, based on manipulated data, plunging millions of people into a formidable “psychological trap”.

The COVID-19 story is a strategy of “shock therapy”. Strategies of this nature (implying social engineering) are never used for the good of the people.

The strategy of psychological shock is a reality, studied by several authors and researchers, including Naomi Klein [16], with her book published in 2007, “The Strategy of Shock: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism”.

The aim is to make a tabula rasa, a blank page, and on this blank page, to reconstruct what we want.

How can we do this?

“On the scale of an entire population, by destroying a country’s heritage, its social and economic structures in order to build a new society, a new order after the planned and controlled chaos.

Once the people are deprived of their points of reference, shocked and infantilized, they find themselves defenceless and easily manipulated.

This process can occur following a serious economic or political crisis, an environmental disaster, an attack, a war or a health crisis. ” [17]

The strategy of shock was applied by economic means to Greece in the wake of the 2008 crisis, dragging millions of people into misery with the complicity of their politicians. [18]

The strategy of shock was applied by means of terrorism in the USA in 2001 and in France in 2015 with the establishment of states of emergency and emergency laws that have never again been abolished [19].

[19] The strategy of shock is now being applied by means of health crises, COVID-19, to a part of the world, including my country, Belgium.

“The terror induced on a large scale in a society leads to a kind of state of daze, a situation where control can easily be obtained from an external authority.

It is necessary to develop an immature state of mind in the population in order to control it as best as possible.

Society must be infantilized.“

These ideas have been studied and disseminated by the Tavistock Institute in London, which originated from a psychiatric clinic founded in 1920, specializing in psychological control and organized social chaos [17].

It is much easier to run a society through mental control than through physical control, through infantilization, confusion, misinformation and fear.

Isn’t that what is at work today?

People are being infantilized…

They are told which sidewalk they can walk on, which way, when they can go into a store and where they have to blow their nose.

Fear is omnipresent.

Those who refuse the masks are penalized, looked at sideways, excluded, insulted, hated.

Thousands of people see their work threatened, their whole life compromised without the possibility of demonstrating, or opposing the Covid-19 consensus imposed by their government.

Old people are abandoned.

Young people are imprisoned in a masked and confined world.

Adults are in a precarious situation

People from the same family, separated.

Thinking and reflection, not to mention dialogue and debate are paralysed.

Protest is prohibited

If this thesis is correct, it is to be expected that our government, through “experts” and media interposed, will continue this strategy of shock and announce us more and more infected, dead and waves of COVID, irrespective of the underlying reality. The facts will be manipulated.

The examples of Sweden and Belgrade are beacons of hope in this dark perspective.

Dr. Pascal Sacré, physician specialized in critical care, author and renowned public health analyst, Charleroi, Belgium. Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

Translation from French by Maya, Global Research

Featured image: Surveillance company. source: opiniojuris.org

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Notes:

[1] Coronavirus: l’OMS tente de mobiliser politiques et acteurs économiques en vue d’ »un vaccin pour tous » sur la planète

[2] « Le chiffre de la mortalité due au coronavirus est un faux chiffre » selon le Dr. Lass

[3] Grippe H1N1, exemple de manipulation internationale, AIMSIB, 22 octobre 2018

[4] Bulletin d’information scientifique de l’IHU, Pr Philippe Parola, directeur de service de soins et d’unité de recherche à l’IHU Méditerranée Infection

[5] PSY-OP COVID-19 : assignés à résidence !, Dr Pascal Sacré, mondialisation.ca, 11 mai 2020

[6] Belgrade libérée, par Israel Shamir, maondialisation.ca, 13 juillet 2020

[7] La virulence du Covid-19 est-elle en train de diminuer ?, par Christophe De Brouwer, Contrepoints.org, 21 juillet 2020

[8] Les décisions du Conseil National de Sécurité. Les décisions ont été communiquées aux Belges à 13h30 lors d’une conférence de presse ce 24 juillet 2020

[9] Voici à quoi ressemble le formulaire-type pour l’enregistrement des clients horeca

[10] COVID-19 : au plus près de la vérité. Confinement, Dr Pascal Sacré, mondialisation.ca, 22 juillet 2020

[11] Confinement strict, surcharge hospitalière et surmortalité, PDF, mai 2020

[12] Opération COVID-19: Tester le degré de soumission des peuples, Dr Pascal Sacré, mondialisation.ca, 26 avril 2020

[13] Horum omnium fortissimi sunt Belgae, Wikipédia, “Of all the peoples of Gaul, the Belgians are the bravest”, often translated into French as “Of all the peoples of Gaul, the Belgians are the bravest.

[14] Politique et corruption à l’OMS, Dr Pascal Sacré, mondialisation.ca, 12 janvier 2010, réédité le 14 avril 2020

[15] Et les conflits d’intérêts, on en parle ?, 5 mai 2020.

[16] La Stratégie du choc : la montée d’un capitalisme du désastre (titre original : The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism) est un essai socio-politique altermondialiste publié en 2007 par la journaliste canadienne Naomi Klein. Wikipédia

[17] MK Abus rituels et Contrôle Mental, Alexandre Lebreton, éditions Omnia Veritas, 2016

[18] Stratégie du choc : comment le FMI et l’Union européenne bradent la Grèce aux plus offrants, Agnès Rousseaux, Bastamag, 20 juin 2013

[19] Quand la fin justifie les moyens : stratégie du choc et état d’urgence, 29 novembre 2016

We hope that by publishing diverse view points, submitted by journalists and experts dotted all over the world, the website can serve as a reminder that no matter what narrative we are presented with, things are rarely as cut and dry as they seem.

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Facebook, Google/YouTube, Twitter Censor Viral Video of Doctors’ Coronavirus Press Conference

By Allum Bokhari, July 29, 2020

The event, hosted by the organization America’s Frontline Doctors, a group founded by Dr. Simone Gold, a board-certified physician and attorney, and made up of medical doctors, came together to address what the group calls a “massive disinformation campaign” about the coronavirus. Norman also spoke at the event.

“If Americans continue to let so-called experts and media personalities make their decisions, the great American experiment of a Constitutional Republic with Representative Democracy, will cease,” reads the event’s information page.

American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) Sues the FDA to End Its Arbitrary Restrictions on Hydroxychloroquine

By Association of American Physicians and Surgeon, July 29, 2020

Two million doses of HCQ are being sent by the Trump Administration to Brazil to help medical workers there safeguard themselves against the spread of the virus. But at the same time the FDA continues to block Americans’ access to this medication.

HCQ has been approved as safe by the FDA for 65 years, and the CDC states on its website that “CDC has no limits on the use of hydroxychloroquine for the prevention of malaria.”

LancetGate: “Scientific Corona Lies” and Big Pharma Corruption. Hydroxychloroquine versus Gilead’s Remdesivir

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, July 28, 2020

There is an ongoing battle to suppress Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), a cheap and effective drug for the treatment of Covid-19. The campaign against HCQ is carried out through slanderous political statements, media smears, not to mention an authoritative peer reviewed “evaluation”  published on May 22nd by The Lancet, which was based on fake figures and test trials.

The study was allegedly based on data analysis of 96,032 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 between Dec 20, 2019, and April 14, 2020 from 671 hospitals Worldwide. The database had been fabricated. The objective was to kill the Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) cure on behalf of Big Pharma.

VIDEO: Covid-19 and “The Spiderweb of Fear”. American Medical Doctors and Health Experts are being Silenced…

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, July 28, 2020

Dr. Anthony Fauci, advisor to Donald Trump, portrayed as “America’s top infectious disease expert” has played a key role in smearing the HCQ cure which had been approved years earlier by the CDC. Dr. Fauci has been the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since the Reagan administration. He is known to act as a mouthpiece for Big Pharma.

In late June, Dr. Fauci launched Remdesivir a “corona wonder drug” developed by Gilead Sciences Inc. It’s a $1.6 billion dollar bonanza. It is $3200 treatment per patient. HCQ has been banned by Fauci. Medical doctors are threatened of loosing their licenses if they prescribe HCQ.

The Media Sabotage of Hydroxychloroquine Use for COVID-19: Doctors Worldwide Protest the Disaster

By Elizabeth Woodworth, June 30, 2020

Is the media interested in a cure for Covid-19? Or is it in lockstep with Big Pharma, which seems to have little interest in an existing treatment for the disease?

What better strategy than for these financial interests to manufacture a hydroxychloroquine controversy?

A June 17 article titled “Behind the French controversy over the medical treatment of Covid-19: The role of the drug industry,” reveals just how such a tactic has been brought to bear on the issue.

The Campaign Against Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) Sustained by Corrupt Medical Professionals with Ties to Big Pharma

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, May 28, 2020

A few years ago the British medical journal, The Lancet, published a paper touting the safety of HCQ.  But this was before HCQ with zinc was found effective if used earlier enough against Covid-19.  Covid-19 turned HCQ’s effectiveness into a big problem for Big Pharma’s big profits.  

The solution was another study by medical professionals some of whom have ties to Big Pharma and none of whom, apparently, are involved in the treatment of Covid patients.  The study lumps together people in different stages of the disease and undergoing different treatments. It touts its large sample, but many of the patients in the sample received treatment too late after the virus had reached their heart and other vital organs.  Most likely the people who died from heart failure died as a result of the virus, not from HCQ.  

Cover Up: Fauci Approved Chloroquine, Hydroxychloroquine 15 Years Ago to Cure Coronaviruses; “Nobody Needed to Die”

By True Pundit, May 21, 2020

Dr. Anthony Fauci, whose “expert” advice to President Trump has resulted in the complete shutdown of the greatest economic engine in world history, has known since 2005 that chloroquine is an effective inhibitor of coronaviruses.

How did he know this? Because of research done by the National Institutes of Health, of which he is the director. In connection with the SARS outbreak – caused by a coronavirus dubbed SARS- CoV – the NIH researched chloroquine and concluded that it was effective at stopping the SARS coronavirus in its tracks. The COVID-19 bug is likewise a coronavirus, labeled SARS-CoV-2. While not exactly the same virus as SARS-CoV-1, it is genetically related to it, and shares 79% of its genome, as the name SARS-CoV-2 implies. They both use the same host cell receptor, which is what viruses use to gain entry to the cell and infect the victim.

Iran is the leading Middle East proponent of peace, stability, and cooperative relations with other countries.

It hasn’t attacked another nation in centuries, threatening none now except in retaliation against aggression by a foreign power if occurs — the right of all countries.

Self-defense is a universal right, affirmed by the UN Charter’s Article 51, stating:

“Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.”

Since establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979 ended a generation of US installed fascist tyranny, Republicans and Dems have been at war on Iran by other means.

Their aim is all about seeking to regain control over the country, its vast hydrocarbon resources and population, along with wanting Israel’s main regional rival neutralized.

Iran’s ruling authorities understand the threat posed by US/Israeli hegemonic aims.

New millennium forever wars against invented enemies are their favored strategies, a new era of world peace and stability considered a threat to their national security, as well as to key NATO allies partnering in endless wars on humanity.

Commenting while large-scale military exercises are ongoing,  Iran’s IRGC commander General Hossein Salami said Tehran’s defensive strategy aims to develop advanced weapons as a deterrent against possible aggression, adding:

“Development of our equipment and arms are proportional to the threats and a real understanding of the enemy’s weak and strong points.”

Ongoing drills in the Persian Gulf are designed to mirror real war conditions to prepare and be ready to counter aggression by a foreign adversary if occurs.

Salami stressed that Iran “will never start an attack on any country, but our tactics and operations are totally offensive” to be ready to counter a possible strike on the nation’s territory.

IRGC military exercises include simulated countermeasures against a possible threat posed by a US aircraft carrier in or near the strategically important Strait of Hormuz.

The 90 nautical mile long/21 nautical mile wide waterway is one of the world’s most important chokepoints.

Around two-thirds of world oil pass through waters bordering Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman en route to world markets — millions of barrels daily through the Hormuz Strait.

IRGC naval and air forces participated in offensive and defensive drills against a mock US carrier, including use of long-range anti-ship ballistic missiles.

Unlawful Trump regime “maximum pressure” on Iran includes wanting its legitimate ballistic missiles eliminated to limit its defensive capabilities against the US and Israel if attacked by their forces.

Pompeo and other regime hardliners falsely claim Iran’s ballistic missiles and related technology are prohibited by  Security Council 2231 (July 2015) — unanimously adopting the JCPOA nuclear deal, the US abstaining.

Iran’s missile development, testing, and production comply fully with SC Res. 2231. Solely for defense, Iranian missiles are designed to carry conventional warheads exclusively.

No evidence suggests otherwise. No Iranian nuclear weapons program exists, what IAEA inspectors affirm time and again.

False claims to the contrary by Pompeo and other Trump regime hardliners are part of longstanding US aims to replace its sovereign government with US controlled puppet rule.

Last fall, Iranian Admiral Alireza Tangsiri said

“(n)ew (IRGC) weapons are assessed, tested and used in the war games, and new arms produced inside the country will be used in future drills,” adding:

“(T)he IRGC Navy is fully prepared and this readiness is increased day by day.”

The final phase of so-called Payambar-e A’zam (The Great Prophet) 14 military drills began Tuesday, IRGC spokesman General Abbas Nilforoushan, saying:

Exercises include “the interception of ballistic and cruise missiles,” along with testing of “long-range ballistic missiles capable of striking intruding vessels floating at a distance” away.

In response to Iran’s simulated attack on a mock up of a US aircraft carrier, a Pentagon Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet statement called the defensive exercise “irresponsible and reckless (sic).”

Ignored was how US military exercises operate in similar fashion to assess the destructive capability of its weapons. Other nations do the same thing.

Days earlier, Trump regime envoy for regime change in Iran Brian Hook pushed for a Security Council resolution to indefinitely extend an international conventional arms embargo on Iran that expires in mid-October, falsely claiming the following:

“Failure to extend this resolution will mean more dangers for all peoples of the region and its countries and for our friends in the Gulf and in the world (sic).”

“It would mean more arms exports from Iran to Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, and more Iranian weapons to Hezbollah, Hamas, and others (sic).”

“We reject this altogether and in detail, and we consider that it is in the interest of peoples of the region and its countries to support development efforts and improve the conditions of peoples and eliminate the deep causes of extremism and terrorism, including poverty, tyranny and the absence of a rational government (sic).”

Left unexplained by Hook was the Trump regime’s unlawful abandonment of the JCPOA in May 2018, abandoning as well any say over its implementation and enforcement.

Russia and China oppose the aim of its hardliners to impose a permanent ban on Iran’s legitimate right to buy conventional weapons from other countries.

Trump, Pompeo, Hook and others want the landmark JCPOA agreement eliminated, Iran isolated and weakened, its people immiserated, its government toppled.

For over 40 years, Iran withstood US war on the country by other means, overcoming everything tried by Washington to transform it into a vassal state.

Hostile Trump regime policies have been no more successful than its predecessors.

While US war on Iran is unlikely because of the IRGC’s military capabilities that could hit back hard against regional Pentagon bases and Israel if attacked, what’s unthinkable is possible because both wings of its war party seek control over all other nations, their resources and people.

That’s the stuff endless wars are made of. Two global conflicts taught belligerent USA nothing.

A third one in the nuclear age would be madness, yet possible because of diabolical US aims to rule the world even at the risk of destroying it.

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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.

On July 27, fighting broke out between Israeli forces and Hezbollah along the Israeli-Lebanese contact line. This became the heaviest open confrontation between the sides in about a year. The incident occurred in an area known as Chebaa Farms, which was occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.

Israeli shelling started at around 3:30 p.m. local time which lasted for about an hour and a half. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) claimed that they had repelled an infiltration attempt by a Hezbollah unit and there were no casualties among IDF forces. The exchange of fire came as the IDF was on heightened alert for a possible attack by Hezbollah, after an Israeli airstrike in Syria killed a Hezbollah member earlier in July.

In a televised address, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Hezbollah that it is “playing with fire,” and stated that “Hezbollah and Lebanon bear full responsibility for this incident and any attack from Lebanese territory against Israel.”

In its own turn, pro-Hezbollah sources claimed that Hezbollah targeted a vehicle and a battle tank of the IDF with anti-tank guided missiles.

Hezbollah itself described Israeli claims about the outcome of the clashes as fake and aimed to boost the morale of Israeli forces by fabricating fictitious victories. It also rejected reports about strikes on IDF targets.

“The answer to the martyrdom of [our] brother, Ali Kamel Mohsen, in the vicinity of Damascus airport has not been given yet. Zionist occupiers must still wait for that answer and their punishment at the hands of the resistance forces,” Hezbollah said.

A few hours after the incident on the Lebanese-Israeli contact line, rockets struck US-operated military bases in Iraq. The strike on Camp Speicher, located near Tikrit, caused a large explosion on the site. At the same time, at least three rockets targeted another US-operated military base – Camp Taji, located near Baghdad. According to local media, one rocket hit an Iraqi helicopter while another landed in an artillery weapon depot. The third rocket landed in the area of the 2nd Air Force Squadron but did not explode.

Local sources claim that the strikes came in response to a drone strike on the al-Saqer military camp, south of Baghdad, on July 26. This camp is operated by the Popular Mobilization Units. This branch of the Iraqi Armed Forces is often described by Washington and mainstream media as Iranian proxies and even terrorists.

Even if the incidents in Iraq and the Lebanese-Israeli border were not linked, they serve as strong evidence of the escalating tensions in the Middle East. Despite the defeat of ISIS and the relative de-escalation of the conflict in Syria, the region still remains in a permanent state of escalation. However, now, the source of these tensions is the developing conflict between the Israeli-US bloc and Iranian-led forces.

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President Donald Trump’s recent reelection campaign advertisement is straight out of the plot of a horror movie. Just days after he deployed federal officers to the streets of Portland, Oregon, his campaign released a 30-second television spot featuring an elderly white woman watching on her television the news of activists demanding a defunding of police. The woman shakes her head in disapproval as she notices a figure at her door trying to enter her house. She nervously calls 911, but apparently the activists she disapproves of have been so effective in their nefarious demands that the universal emergency hotline Americans rely on now goes unanswered. The vulnerable woman drops her remote control as the intruder enters her home, and we are only left to imagine the horror of what he does to her as the words “You won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America” appear on the screen. In this dystopian version of America, only Trump promises law and order.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, supports the defunding of American police. He does not, and in fact, in keeping with his historic support for police, Biden has demanded increased funding for law enforcement. But Trump has already proven that he will not let truth get in the way of his desires, and therefore a little more digging on the part of voters and a little more forthright reporting on the part of journalists is necessary to understand exactly who is breaking American laws.

The paramilitary units from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that Trump has deployed to Portland have engaged in disturbing violations of human rights. They have used munitions to injure people, and acted like “thugs and goons” in the words of a Navy Veteran who was beaten with batons and pepper-sprayed in the face. They have arrested and detained people without documentation. Trump has defended their tactics saying the targets “are anarchists. These are not protesters… These are people that hate our country.”

Violence Coming From White House

Acting Homeland Security Secretary Director Chad Wolf took Trump’s characterization of protesters as “anarchists” to comical extremes in his public record of how and why his officers engaged with protesters. Saying that he “Condemns The Rampant Long-Lasting Violence In Portland,” Wolf used the words “violent” 76 times to describe what protesters have done to justify arrests and repression. Wolf’s definition of violence seems to almost entirely encompass property damage such as vandalism and graffiti. The closest that Portland protesters came to actual violence, it seems, was when they apparently, “attempted to cause eye damage to officers with commercial grade lasers,” and in another instance, “proceeded to launch aerial fireworks at federal property.”

The DHS records used the term “violent anarchists” 70 times and the term “protesters” only once, without making any effort to explain how exactly they distinguished “violent anarchists” from protesters, journalists or passersby. Nowhere in the document was there any documented behavior by protesters that came close to an attack on vulnerable elderly white women like the fictitious one in Trump’s ad. In not a single instance reported in the DHS account did a protester – or in Wolf’s words, violent anarchist – actually commit intentional violence against a human being.

Trump’s policy violates an idea that Republicans have long supported – that states ought to have the right to set their own laws and rules and that the federal government ought to respect that right. It also goes against the warnings that pro-gun Republicans have echoed for years – that mass gun ownership is necessary so that vigilant citizens can counter federal government tyranny of the sort that Trump has unleashed. Now that the kind of federal government overreach they have warned against for years is actually unfolding, there is nary a peep from the “gun rights” crowd.

Orwellian Patriot Act

It isn’t just Republicans who have embraced the march toward authoritarianism. Eighteen years ago Congress passed the Homeland Security Act to create the DHS – an agency with an Orwellian name – with 88 Democrats joining more than 200 Republicans in voting yes. The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks prompted a reconfiguring of American society and government that reverberates today, unleashing excessive surveillance and harsh immigration enforcement, while doing little to address the factors that provoked the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in the first place.

Yet year after year, Democrats have voted to reauthorize the USA Patriot Act and other aspects of the post-9/11 authoritarian architecture. Now even as DHS officers are being deployed by a president they strongly criticize, Democratic lawmakers are trying to tie up funding for the DHS with that of the Department of Health and Human Services, which, according to the Intercept’s Ryan Grim, is “making it more difficult for progressive Democrats to oppose.”

But Trump has abused the infrastructure of the post-9/11 state repression to a far greater extent than either Presidents George W. Bush or President Barack Obama. The Washington Post reported that Tom Ridge, the notorious DHS secretary under Bush, denounced Trump’s move saying the agency was formed to counter “global terrorism,” and that, “It was not established to be the president’s personal militia.” A former Bush-era DHS official, Paul Rosenzweig, characterized the deployment as “lawful but awful,” while seeing the phenomenon as clearly unconstitutional. Michael Chertoff, another Bush-era DHS secretary, told a Washington Post columnist, “While it’s appropriate for DHS to protect federal property, that is not an excuse to range more widely in a city and to conduct police operations, particularly if local authorities have not requested federal assistance.” Chertoff added that Trump’s move is “very problematic,” and “very unsettling.” If those GOP officials who served under Bush – who were considered the political villains of their time – are disturbed, Trump has indeed crossed a line.

But another figure from the Bush years is rearing his head under Trump and encouraging his authoritarianism. John Yoo, the infamous lawyer who helped craft the “torture memos” during the Bush administration’s “war on terror” to justify the CIA’s use of torture during interrogations, is apparently advising the Trump administration on how best to use his executive power to skirt congressional authority, the Guardian reports. In June, Yoo wrote in an article in the National Review, “Even if Trump knew that his scheme lacked legal authority, he could get away with it for the length of his presidency.”

Trump has made clear that norms, ethics, laws, and even the US Constitution are merely suggestions that mildly constrain him and that can be tossed aside when needed. His modus operandi is to push the limits of what he can do and dare the nation to stop him. Will we?

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This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Watch the video here.

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Our thanks to Mark Taliano for bringing this to our attention.

The CEO of the U.S.-based Telsa car manufacturer has admitted to involvement in what President Morales has referred to as a “Lithium Coup.”

“We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.” was Elon Musk’s response to an accusation on twitter that the U.S. government organized a coup against President Evo Morales, so that Musk could obtain Bolivia’s lithium.

Foreign plunder of Bolivia’s lithium, in a country with the world’s largest known reserves, is widely believed to be among the main motives behind the November 10, 2019 coup.

Lithium, a critical component of the batteries used in Tesla vehicles, is set to become one of the world’s most important natural resources as manufacturers seek to obtain it for use in batteries for electric cars, computers, and industrial equipment.

The defacto administration of Jeanine Añez has already announced its plan to invite numerous multinationals into the Salar de Uyuni, the vast salt flats in Potosi, which holds the precious soft metal.

Right-wing Vice Presidential candidate and running mate to Añez, Samuel Doria Medina, proposed a Brazilian-Bolivian project which would use lithium from the town of Uyuni.

Meanwhile, letter from the coup regime’s Foreign Minister Karen Longaric to Elon Musk, dated march 31st, says “any corporation that you or your company can provide to our country will be gratefully welcomed.”

Authorities from Chayanta, Norte Potosi say Bolivia's lithium is being ransacked from the indigenous peoples. pic.twitter.com/S1NQJED1C0

— Kawsachun News (@KawsachunNews) May 24, 2020

Social movements have repeatedly warned that lithium and natural resources would be surrendered to foreign capital by coup authorities, in a reversal of plans by Evo Morales’ Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) administration to process the lithium within Bolivia rather than exporting the raw material to the global north.

The project represented a rejection of the neocolonial relationship Latin American countries have often had with the imperialist cores.

Bolivia’s former MAS government oversaw the production of batteries and its first electric car by the Yacimientos de Litio Bolivianos (YLB) state company, in partnership with German company ACISA. In the deal, the Bolivian state kept majority control.

With the agreement now scrapped along with countless other state projects, and with elections now thrice delayed by the illegitimate defacto authorities, the people of Uyuni and social movements around the country say they’ll continue to oppose the ongoing privatization and are organizing against the return of looting of Bolivia’s natural resources by ruthless and exploitative foreign capital.

Lithium is why the #UnitedStates-backed a coup in #Bolivia.#EvoMorales #DonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/1IGtk8rGue

— teleSUR English (@telesurenglish) December 26, 2019

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Featured image: Tesla CEO Elon Musk (L) Authorities of Chayanta (R), Norte Potosi, Bolivia. May 24, 2020 | Photo: Twitter/ @KawsachunCoca

The British government, regulators and global agrochemical corporations are colluding with each other and are thus engaging in criminal behaviour. That’s the message put forward in a new report written by environmentalist Dr Rosemary Mason and sent to the UK Environment Agency. It follows her January 2019 open letter to Werner Baumann, CEO of Bayer CropScience, where she made it clear to him that she considers Bayer CropScience and Monsanto criminal corporations.

Her letter to Baumann outlined a cocktail of corporate duplicity, cover-ups and criminality which the public and the environment are paying the price for, not least in terms of the effects of glyphosate. Later in 2019, Mason wrote to Bayer Crop Science shareholders, appealing to them to put human health and nature ahead of profit and to stop funding Bayer.

Mason outlined with supporting evidence how the gradual onset of the global extinction of many species is largely the result of chemical-intensive industrial agriculture. She argued that Monsanto’s (now Bayer) glyphosate-based Roundup herbicide and Bayer’s clothianidin are largely responsible for the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef and that the use of glyphosate and neonicotinoid insecticides are wiping out wildlife species across the globe.

In February 2020, Mason wrote the report ‘Bayer Crop Science rules Britain after Brexit – the public and the press are being poisoned by pesticides’. She noted that PM Boris Johnson plans to do a trade deal with the US that could see the gutting of food and environment standards. In a speech setting out his goals for trade after Brexit, Johnson talked up the prospect of an agreement with Washington and downplayed the need for one with Brussels – if the EU insists the UK must stick to its regulatory regime. In other words, he wants to ditch EU regulations.

Mason pondered just who could be pulling Johnson’s strings. A big clue came in February 2019 at a Brexit meeting on the UK chemicals sector where UK regulators and senior officials from government departments listened to the priorities of Bayer Crop Science. During the meeting (Westminster Energy, Environment & Transport Forum Keynote Seminar: Priorities for UK chemicals sector – challenges, opportunities and the future for regulation post-Brexit), Janet Williams, head of regulatory science at Bayer Crop Science Division, made the priorities for agricultural chemical manufacturers known.

Dave Bench was also a speaker. Bench is a senior scientist at the UK Chemicals, Health and Safety Executive and director of the agency’s EU exit plan and has previously stated that the regulatory system for pesticides is robust and balances the risks of pesticides against the benefits to society.

In an open letter to Bench, Mason responded:

“That statement is rubbish. It is for the benefit of the agrochemical industry. The industry (for it is the industry that does the testing, on behalf of regulators) only tests one pesticide at a time, whereas farmers spray a cocktail of pesticides, including over children and babies, without warning.”

It seems that post-Brexit the UK could authorise the continued use of glyphosate. Of course, with a US trade deal in the pipeline, there are major concerns about glyphosate-resistant GMOs and the lowering of food standards across the board. 

Mason says that glyphosate causes epigenetic changes in humans and animals: diseases skip a generation. Washington State University researchers found a variety of diseases and other health problems in the second- and third-generation offspring of rats exposed to glyphosate. In the first study of its kind, the researchers saw descendants of exposed rats developing prostate, kidney and ovarian diseases, obesity and birth abnormalities.

Glyphosate has been the subject of numerous studies about its health effects. Robert F Kennedy Jr, one of the attorney’s fighting Bayer (which has bought Monsanto) in the US courts, has explained that for four decades Monsanto manoeuvred to conceal Roundup’s carcinogenicity by capturing regulatory agencies, corrupting public officials, bribing scientists and engaging in scientific fraud to delay its day of reckoning. 

Kennedy says there is also cascading scientific evidence linking glyphosate to a constellation of other injuries that have become prevalent since its introduction, including obesity, depression, Alzheimer’s, ADHD, autism, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, kidney disease, inflammatory bowel disease, brain, breast and prostate cancer, miscarriage, birth defects and declining sperm counts.

In her new document sent to the UK Environment Agency, Mason argues there is criminal collusion between the Department for Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra), the Chemicals Regulation Division and Bayer over Brexit. She also claims the National Farmers Union has been lying about how much pesticides farmers use and have ignored the side effects of chlorpyrifos, chlorothalonil, glyphosate and neonicotinoids. The NFU says farmers couldn’t do without these inputs, even though they destroy human health and the environment. 

Of course, farmers can and do go without using these chemicals. And the shift away from chemical-intensive agriculture is perfectly feasible. In a recent article on the AgWeb site, for instance, US farmer Adam Chappell describes how he made the shift on his 8,000-acre farm. Chappell was not some dyed-in-the-wool organic evangelist. He made the shift for financial and practical reasons and is glad he did. The article states:

“He was on the brink of bankruptcy and facing a go broke or go green proposition. Drowning in a whirlpool of input costs, Chappell cut bait from conventional agriculture and dove headfirst into a bootstrap version of innovative farming. Roughly 10 years later, his operation is transformed, and the 41-year-old grower doesn’t mince words: It was all about the money.”

Surely there is a lesson there for UK farmers who in 2016 used glyphosate on 2,634,573 ha of cropland. It is not just their bottom line that could improve but the health of the nation. Mason says that five peer-reviewed animal studies from the US and Argentina released in July 2020 have focused minds on the infertility crisis being caused by glyphosate-based herbicides. Researchers at The National University of Litoral in Sante Fe, Argentina, have published three concerning peer-reviewed papers including two studies on ewes and rats and one review. In one study, researchers concluded that glyphosate and glyphosate-based herbicides are endocrine disruptors. They also stated that glyphosate-based herbicides alter reproductive outcomes in females.

But such is the British government’s willingness to protect pesticide companies that it is handing agrochemical giants BASF and Bayer enormous pay-outs of Covid-19 support cash. The announcement came just weeks after Bayer shareholders voted to pay £2.75 billion in dividends. The fact that Bayer then went on to receive £600 million from the government speaks volumes of where the government’s priorities lie.

According to Mason, the new Agriculture Bill provides a real opportunity for the UK to adopt a paradigm shift which embraces non-chemical farming policy. However, Defra has stated that after Brexit Roundup Ready GA21 glyphosate tolerant crops could be introduced.

It is also concerning that a post-Brexit funding gap could further undermine the impartiality of university research. Mason refers to Greenpeace, which notes that Bayer and Syngenta, both sell neonicotinoid insecticides linked to harmful effects on bees, gave a combined total of £16.1m to 70 British universities over five years to fund a range of research. Such private funding could create a conflict of interest for academics and after Brexit a potential shortage of public money for science could force universities to seek more finance from the private sector.

Neonicotinoids were once thought to have little or no negative effects on the environment because they are used in low doses and as a seed coating, rather than being sprayed. But evidence has been mounting that the chemicals harm bees – important pollinators of food crops. As a result, neonicotinoids have been banned by the EU, although they can still be used under license.

According to Bayer’s website, academics who reviewed 15 years of research found “no adverse effects to bee colonies were ever observed in field studies”. Between 2011 and 2016, the figures obtained from the 70 universities – about half the total in the UK – show Bayer gave £9m to fund research, including more than £345,000 on plant sciences. Syngenta spent nearly £7.1m, including just under £2.3m on plant sciences and stated that many years of independent monitoring prove that when used properly neonicotinoids do not damage the health of bee populations.

However, in 2016, Ben Stewart of Greenpeace UK’s Brexit response team said that the decline in bee populations is a major environmental and food security concern – it’s causes need to be properly investigated.

He added:

“But for this research to command public confidence, it needs to be independent and impartial, which is why public funding is so crucial. You wouldn’t want lung cancer studies to be heavily reliant on funds from tobacco firms, nor research on pesticides to be dependent on the companies making them.”

Stewart concluded:

“As Brexit threatens to cut off vital public funds for this scientific field, our universities need a cast-iron guarantee from our government that EU money will not be replaced by corporate cash.”

But Mason notes that the government long ago showed its true colours by refusing to legislate on the EU Directive (2009/128/EC) on the Sustainable Use of Pesticides. The government merely stated that current statutory and voluntary controls related to pesticides and the protection of water, if followed, afford a high degree of protection and it would primarily seek to work with the pesticides industry to enhance voluntary measures.

Mason first questioned the government on this in January 2011. In an open letter to the Chemical Regulation Directorate. The government claimed that no compelling evidence was provided to justify further extending existing regulations and voluntary controls.

Lord Henley, the Under-Secretary of State for Defra, expanded further:

“By making a small number of changes to our existing approach we can continue to help feed a growing global population with high-quality food that’s affordable – while minimising the risks of using pesticides.”

In her numerous reports and open letters to officials, Mason has shown that far from having ‘high-quality food’, there is an ongoing public health crisis due to the pesticides being used.

She responded to Henley by stating:

“… instead of strengthening the legislation, the responses of the UK government and the CRD have considerably weakened it. In the case of aerial spraying, you have opted for derogation.”

Mason says that, recently, the day that Monsanto lost its appeal against Dewayne Lee Johnson the sprayers came around the Marina in Cardiff breaking all the rules that the EU had set for Roundup. 

We can only wonder what could lie in store for the British public if a trade deal is done with the US. Despite the Conservative government pledging that it would not compromise on the UK’s food and environment standards, it now proposes that chlorine-washed chicken, beef treated with growth hormones, pork from animals treated with ractopamine and many other toxic foods produced in the US will be allowed into the UK. All for the bottom line of US agribusiness corporations. It is also worth mentioning at this point that there are around 2,000 untested chemicals in packaged foods in the US.

Ultimately, the situation comes down to a concentration of power played out within an interlocking directorate of state-corporate interests – in this case, global agrochemical conglomerates and the British government – and above the heads of ordinary people. It is clear that these institutions value the health of powerful corporations at the expense of the health of the population and the state of the environment.

Readers can access Mason’s new paper ‘Criminal collusion between Defra, the Chemicals Regulation Division and Bayer over Brexit Agenda’ via academia.edu website (which cites relevant sources), where all her other documents can also be found.

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

Nationwide in the U.S. on July 28th, the “Estimation of households experiencing rental shortfall and potentially facing eviction” is 43.12%, according to Stout Risius Ross, LLC, “Based on Household Pulse Survey data” (from the U.S. Census Bureau).

An infographic by Niall McCarthy of Forbes shows the state-by-state percentages, as of July 15th, and they were:

Click here to enlarge

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Charleston’s TheDigitel | CC BY 2.0

Belgrade and Pristina have resumed dialogue in Brussels, but the recent delivery of American-made armored vehicles to Kosovo could make the talks difficult and signifies Washington is once again attempting to destabilize the Balkans. Serbia and Kosovo returned to the negotiating table on July 16 after a long hiatus; however the hopes of Josep Borrell, head of European diplomacy, to allow a constructive dialogue could now be in jeopardy. Washington’s delivery of Humvee armored vehicles to Pristina is a clear message to Belgrade that the U.S. will continue recognizing Kosovo’s independence. Washington purposefully sent the armored vehicles knowing it will create tensions in negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina.

The U.S. is putting pressure on Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić to recognize Kosovo’s independence. However, this is in detriment to international law and UN Security Council resolution 1244, which is still valid and specifies that Kosovo is a Serbian province despite Washington’s recognition of its illegal independence. Although the delivery of Humvee armored vehicles makes little impact on the military capabilities of Kosovo, it is a symbolic gesture by the Americans to show they still have significant influence over Kosovo. Hashim Thaçi, the President of Kosovo and alleged war criminal, has always said that Washington should be an important player in negotiations between Serbia and Kosovo.

Kosovo is recognized as an independent state by the majority of Western countries, with the exception of five EU members who still refuse to recognize its independence: Spain, Romania, Greece, Cyprus and Slovakia. Russia and China, permanent members of the UN Security Council, have not recognized this either and are de facto preventing Kosovo from joining the United Nations.

There is clear proof that tensions are still high between Belgrade and Pristine, especially after Vučić attacked with virulence Kosovo’s Prime Minister, Avdullah Hoti, after the last round of negotiations:

“Is it nice to sit at the other end of the table facing Hoti and listen to his gibberish, saying that they are the only victims and that we are the only bad guys? No.”

The fact that Kosovo recently received a new shipment of armored vehicles from the U.S. will not help normalize relations between the two parties, but this is not surprising considering the Albanians are key to Washington’s policy in controlling the Balkans. Therefore, Belgrade likely recognizes that it cannot trust Washington to bring a resolution to the Kosovo issue, especially since Serbia maintains strong relations with Moscow that it is not willing to sacrifice.

The special relationship between Belgrade and Moscow is viewed negatively by both Brussels and NATO. They would rather bring Serbia under its influence. This is further complicated by the fact that Beijing has an ever-increasing strong presence in Serbia and is investing a lot in the country. Beijing always supports the preservation of Serbia’s territorial integrity, especially regarding Kosovo, which could mean that the Balkan country might be a future flash point between the growing rivalry between China and the U.S.

In 2012, Belgrade highlighted that officials during the presidency of Bill Clinton, who were in charge at the time of the brutal NATO bombing campaign against Serbia in 1999, returned to Kosovo to invest – particularly General Wesley Clark and former U.S. Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright. Today Kosovo is a hub for drug trafficking, human trafficking and organ harvesting, something that Brussels and Washington are happy to turn a blind eye to.

Albanians are trying to unite in a Greater Albania that would serve the interests of U.S. foreign policy. The arming of Kosovo could be a consequence of this vision, especially since American arms deliveries to Kosovo contradict international law and could trigger a new armed conflict. This may be the hidden goal of the U.S. It is possible that Germany is also pushing in this direction, especially since Berlin was a key player in the dismemberment of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The recognition of Kosovo’s independence opens the door to further destabilization, violence and potentially even a new Balkan war. With the U.S. delivering Humvee’s to Kosovo, it has signified that it has no interest in finding a lasting resolution between the rebel province and Serbia.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

Agribusiness is the center of the Brazilian economy, corresponding to more than 20% of the national GDP. In fact, Brazilian economy has suffered a heavy blow in recent years, with the country being subjected to an advanced process of deindustrialization. At that time, the agricultural sector is one of the few that still stands, further increasing its importance for the country. The pandemic strongly threatened Brazilian agribusiness and, at first, affected exports, but, contrary to initial expectations, the market overcame difficulties and emerged victorious from the crisis, mainly due to the heightened tensions in the US-China trade war.

In June, the data of Brazilian exports in agribusiness broke a record, with more than 10 billion dollars – about 25% more than the same period last year. There is a country that is of central importance in this overwhelming growth of Brazilian exports: China. With the growth of the trade and tariff war between Beijing and Washington, China has found in Brazil an excellent source of supply for its demand for agribusiness products.

Another factor that strengthened the ties between Brazil and China was the Chinese need for the Brazilian meat market, mainly due to the increase in cases of African swine fever and foot-and-mouth disease in Asia, which led Beijing to increase exports from Brazil – which broke a record and exceeded in more than 10% of the records in 2019. Still, China was the first country to overcome the crisis caused by the pandemic, which made it seek to fill its demands in this sector sooner. China currently buys about 40% of all Brazil exports. As Brazil competes with the USA in agribusiness, the Sino-Brazilian partnership, from a strategic point of view, only tends to be strengthened.

But relations between Brazil and China could be affected by the geopolitical dispute between Beijing and Washington. As it is known, the Bolsonaro government has maintained an automatic alignment relationship with the United States. Brazil did not cut relations with China, but, on several occasions, it was involved in diplomatic crises and diverse tensions that obstructed many possible economic cooperation. The biggest Chinese interest now is the technological sector, with concern about Huawei’s participation in the Brazilian auction of 5G technology. Bolsonaro at first had vetoed China but reversed his decision to apologize for the diplomatic crisis generated by his son – who offended China with conspiracy charges about the new coronavirus. Since then, a scenario of internal tensions has been created, where one part of the government insists on stopping Chinese participation, while another, more strategist, supports such participation.

The main problem is that it is not known precisely when the auction will take place – which has already been postponed several times due to the pandemic and, until it occurs, tensions will continue and Chinese participation will be uncertain. The main fear of representatives of Brazilian agribusiness is that, if China is vetoed, there will be economic retaliation applied precisely in this sector – which is to be expected, since it is the most important sector of the Brazilian economy. Currently, Brazilian agribusiness truly depends on China – not only due to the increased demand for meat and other products, but for years, China has been the largest buyer of Brazilian soybeans, being an indispensable partner in Brazil.

Still, there is a fundamental political factor. Although the ideological wing of the government is absolutely opposed to the cooperation relations between Brazil and China, Bolsonaro was elected with strong support from agribusiness representatives, who have a great parliamentary base. Without this support, the electorate of the current president would be insufficient to guarantee the election. Now, this same sector demands from Bolsonaro an attitude that confronts that demanded by the ideological wing. Without the support of agribusiness, Bolsonaro will not be able to re-elect himself in 2022 and even perhaps he will not even finish his term. So he has no alternative but to give space to China in 5G and maintain neutrality in the trade war, which, on the other hand, will remove support from the ideological sector. Thus the coalition that elected Bolsonaro is broken.

Currently, Brazil does not have a third choice: it either gives up participation to China or adheres to alignment with Washington in the trade war while its economy is ruined. The most strategically acceptable choice is visible, but there is no guarantee that this will be Bolsonaro’s decision. In short, China can at this moment save Brazilian agribusiness and consequently the national economy. But for that, the government should allow Huawei to participate in the 5G auction.

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

Featured image is from InfoBrics