What Exactly Are US Special Forces Doing in Israel?

November 28th, 2023 by Connor Echols

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First published on November 14, 2023

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As the Israeli military enters the second month of its operation in Gaza, questions continue to swirl around the exact nature of U.S. support for the war, with major potential implications for American interests in the Middle East.

The Pentagon has been fairly transparent about its actions outside of Israel, including the decision to move two aircraft carrier strike groups into the Middle East, among other naval assets and missile defense systems. But two more sensitive issues remain shrouded in mystery: What exactly are American special forces doing in Israel? And what weapons is the U.S. now giving to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)?

What Are American Soldiers Doing in Israel?

U.S. special operations forces are stationed in Israel and “actively helping the Israelis” in a number of areas, among them efforts to “identify hostages, including American hostages,” a Department of Defense official revealed last week.

The official did not share further details, but others told the New York Times that DoD “has dispatched several dozen commandos in recent weeks, in addition to a small team that was in Israel on Oct. 7 conducting previously scheduled training.” Other Western countries have also sent special operations forces “closer to Israel” in order to help with hostage recovery and potential civilian evacuations, according to the Times.

The Pentagon also dispatched a Marine Corps general with substantial special operations experience to advise Israel’s ground operations, but the general left the country prior to Tel Aviv’s ground incursion.

One official told journalist Spencer Ackerman that the U.S. is considering emergency “contingencies” in which U.S. special forces would directly assist with hostage recovery, but those plans remain hypothetical, according to the official. The only solid evidence of “direct” U.S. involvement has been a series of unarmed drone flights over southern Gaza that are helping to locate hostages.

Some eyewitnesses claim to have seen soldiers with American flag patches on the ground in Gaza, but no news outlets have substantiated this allegation. It’s also plausible that an Israeli-American soldier could have been wearing such a patch without permission from the U.S. or Israeli militaries.

As for the identity of U.S. soldiers in Israel, a White House photo from President Joe Biden’s October 18 visit appeared to show the president meeting with several members of Delta Force, the Pentagon’s premier counterterror and hostage recovery unit.

It is unclear if any non-special operations U.S. military units are currently operating in Israel. The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment from RS about its operations in Israel.

Increased Secrecy Around Weapons Transfers

The Biden administration has taken flak in Congress for his attempts to conceal details about American arms transfers to Israel amid the war, including a proposed measure to skip congressional notification requirements that would provide lawmakers with an opportunity to object to specific weapons sales.

“There is no reason we cannot both ensure needed U.S. assistance is provided to Israel in an expeditious manner and ensure Congress is able to fulfill its constitutional oversight duty,” Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) — the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee — told the Washington Post last week.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), for his part, said Congress “should not make exceptions to this practice” and argued that it is the legislature’s responsibility to “review these funds and ensure their use is in the best interests of the American people.”

While lawmakers have reportedly received full briefings about what weapons are being sent to Israel, the White House has avoided publicly sharing information about its support, a sharp contrast with the detailed accounting of the Biden administration’s aid to Ukraine.

The administration has not explained this discrepancy, but it most likely stems from simple political logic. While Biden has been proud to boast his team’s support for Ukraine, he stands to face far more blowback for supporting Israel, whose actions in Gaza have drawn significant criticism both within the U.S. and abroad.

This logic played out recently when it came to light that the U.S. is planning to supply rifles to the Israeli national police, which is controlled by far-right Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has promised to give guns to settlers in the West Bank. Former State Department official Josh Paul also told RS last week that multiple units of the Israeli police had previously been flagged for alleged “gross violations of human rights,” which should legally preclude them from receiving American weapons.

The only other planned weapons transfer to Israel that has been publicly disclosed is a previously approved shipment of $320 million in precision bomb kits known as Spice Family Gliding Bomb Assemblies. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) will reportedly fight this sale by filing a “resolution of disapproval” that would block the transfer if it received a veto-proof majority in both houses of Congress. The kits are “the sort of capability Israel has been using for the last month to devastate Gaza,” according to Paul.

High Stakes for U.S. Interests in the Region

Another likely reason for the secrecy around U.S. involvement is the fear that American support for Israel will hurt Washington’s standing in the Middle East, especially given the region’s widespread opposition to Israel’s offensive, which numerous Arab commentators have called a “genocide.”

If people in the Middle East come to believe that U.S. troops are directly involved in hostilities, it could have dire consequences for perceptions of American actions in the region. As a recently leaked cable from the U.S. embassy in Oman noted, Israel’s campaign is already “losing us Arab publics for a generation.”

That impact could be felt far beyond the region, according to Stephen Wertheim, a historian and senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “The costs, in American prestige and power, have already proved substantial,” Wertheim wrote in the New York Times. “And they could get much worse.”

And the potential consequences of direct U.S. involvement would not be limited to public opprobrium, argued Ackerman, the journalist.

“If SOF should enter Gaza as combatants, how might Iran, whose regional strategy is predicated on leading an ‘axis of resistance’ to the U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia, feel compelled to respond?” he asked. “What would it choose to do? What would the impact be on Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, etc.?”

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Connor Echols is a reporter for Responsible Statecraft. He was previously an associate editor at the Nonzero Foundation, where he co-wrote a weekly foreign policy newsletter. Echols received his bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University, where he studied journalism and Middle East and North African Studies.

Featured image: U.S. Special Forces Green Beret Soldiers, assigned to 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne) during training at TwentyNine Palms, Calif., 2016 (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech Sgt. Efren Lopez/Released)

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First published on November 1, 2021

 

 

 

 

 

I am not a practitioner, in the usual sense of the word, of a religion or an esoteric current.

On the other hand, I have read a lot, studied, reflected, curious about everything, open to everything.

I don’t exclude anything, I go everywhere, especially if an authority tells me, without any other argument than his “authority”, not to go there.

Thanks to this quality (considered a danger by some), I continue to learn, tirelessly.

As an “orthodox” doctor from a Belgian university and a classical curriculum, I have long followed the marked path, walked in the right direction and crossed when the light turns green, almost always.

Curiosity, an incurable flaw in me, has led me on the side roads, where you meet people, tread on soil, unearth treasures qualified by those who mark the roads and crosswalks, corrupt sources (modern expression: “fake news”), untrustworthy teachers.

I am not a guru, nor is Alexander De Croo, Young Global Leader 2015, Alexander De Croo becomes Young Global Leader | Focus on Belgium, nor are Edouard Philippe and President Macron, Young Global Leaders respectively in 2011 and 2012, or Olivier Véran in 2019, Emmanuel Macron and Edouard Philippe, these “young leaders” who govern us – Gala.

Check for yourself, all the heads or deputy heads of the governments that applied the roadmap in 2020, the plan established by the cartel of true gurus, have been Young Global Leaders of the “Great Reset World Economic Forum Cult”.

No, I am not a guru, no more or less than Bill Gates or Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (head of the World Health Organization) who, however, without being a healer or a doctor, are dragging the world into their health terrorist ideology.

On the other hand, yes, I have been a doctor for 25 years, an anesthesiologist for 17 years (someone who puts people to sleep and wakes them up, puts them to sleep to avoid suffering and wakes them up to give them back their autonomy).

With my curiosity, my learning and my openness to everything that can help humanity, without taboos or censorship, I say to all humanity to stop this race to death.

Get off the crazy train.

I know, it is scary, it can hurt, and at the same time, as long as you feel the pain, you are alive.

Take back your physical and intellectual autonomy and protect your children.

These Young Global leaders who have become “Leaders” (gurus) do not want to do you any good.

Under the cover of these lethal injections (immediately or remotely by sterilization), so many Trojan horses of death in your body, in your mind and in your soul, they make you believe that they want to save you.

They don’t. It’s convincing, well presented, but it’s not true.

If they wanted to save you, they would have told you a long time ago to move more, to eat better (really, not diet products that poison you as much as “heavy” products, Reassessing the risks of aspartame. New experimental and epidemiological data), to manage your stress on a daily basis, to take care of your microbiota, to take food supplements, some of them all year round in a country like Belgium (vitamin D).

This is only possible, unfortunately, thanks to the complicity of certain people who run the institutions that are supposed to protect us and the main media that are supposed to inform us.

As Professor Nagarra says to the prosecutor Henry Volney (Yves Montand) in Henri Verneuil‘s film I Comme Icare:

“A tyrant needs above all a tyrant-state, so he will use a million little civil servant tyrants who each have a trivial task to perform, and each will perform that task competently, and without remorse, and no one will realize that he is the millionth link in the final act.

Some will arrest the victims, they will have committed only simple arrests, others will lead these victims to camps. They will have only done their job as locomotive engineers, and the prison director opening his doors will have only done his duty as a prison director. Of course the bosses use the cruelest individuals in the final violence, but at every link in the chain, obedience has been made comfortable.” © Henri Verneuil, I comme Icare, 1979.  (emphasis added)

Does this remind you of anything?

Encouraged denunciation, violence on defenseless citizens trivialized, even justified, citizens excluded from hospitals for the only “crime” of not “yet” being injected with an experimental product, that salesman in a household appliance store who orders you to put on your mask properly, the bar owner transformed into both a policeman and a doctor since you must now show him your health condition.

Where do you think this is going?

Trailer of  I Come Icare (2’56”)

Saying it now, which is considered shocking by the same people who tell you that everything is fine, is the only chance to avoid crossing the threshold beyond which all hope of avoiding the repetition of history will be definitively lost.

Who is Pfizer to be so “powerful” in the end?

Despite the total number of deaths due to vaccination, even this official figure of 15,937 deaths from the United States’ Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS)-period from December 14, 2020 to September 24, 2021)-which is known to be greatly underestimated, Pfizer, with its heavily loaded criminal record, continues, remains in the running (Pfizer’s criminal record and its killer “vaccine” (reseauinternational.net)

The “vaccine poison” imposed at the level of the entire planet is produced by a pharmaceutical company which was indicted by the US Department of Justice (2009) on charges of “fraudulent marketing”. 

 

Pfizer is now attacking pregnant women throughout their pregnancy, women who have given birth despite 1444 declared miscarriages (in reality much more) or premature, malformed births.

Some women put pressure on themselves to resist, to call for help or to alert (“The hand on the cradle”, Big Pharma extends its injections to pregnant women and children – Les Maîtres du Monde – Sott.net) but it is Pfizer’s pressure that systematically wins.

So, logically, since we let them do it, Pfizer is attacking children from 5 to 11 years old, with an emergency request for authorization for their toxic product, while 21 young people from 12 to 17 years old have recently died in the United States.

The only thing new in their lives? Having accepted Pfizer’s toxic product.

Seriously, do we need to do autopsies to convince you?

When almost no one under the age of 30, unless they had a prior debilitating illness, died from COVID-19 or had any serious form.

Who is Pfizer?

Who is Big Pharma?

Behind these companies are people, names, authorized officials.

From now on, let’s mention these names that serve the System, called Sauron in the Lord of the Rings.

We could call the current System, the Lord of the ‘vaccines’, with Sauron at its head, Balrogs at its service, zealous servants, useful ‘idiots’ (cf. I for Icarus), traitors (Saruman), people who watch and others who wait.

Do not laugh.

The analogy is realistic.

Words are important!

They unknowingly activate concepts deeply embedded in our individual and collective unconscious: the archetypes dear to Carl Jung.

Despite the evidence, the increasingly solid proofs and the increasingly convincing testimonies, the ‘vaccines’, even before Covid, are not the benefactors of humanity (Enquête Choc – Les vaccins ont-ils vraiment sauvé l’humanité ? – Health and Wellness – Sott.net), but it takes time to pull an archetype from its golden pedestal.

Today, the concept of ‘vaccine’ used as a Trojan horse, allows a firm with a criminal record, hit with the biggest federal fine in the history of the United States, associated with BioNTech, and other equally disreputable firms to drag part of humanity that bothers them (you and me) towards an extinction that will owe nothing to chance, with the complicity of swindlers with white teeth, dressed in design suits.

Some go happily, singing, following the Pied Piper.

Others go because they feel guilty for being alive: criminal gurus have succeeded in making them believe that they are the ones responsible for climate change, racism against people of color (white is a color), terrorism, inequalities, crises and today, pandemics.

Yes, for “Sauron the system”, we will never wash our hands enough, we will never put our mask on well enough and we will never accept enough of their products (falsely called vaccines) in our bruised body.

Some, the worst, go there knowingly, either to scratch some advantage or to shine like a light of Udûn*.

Be careful with words. Do not use the words of the Enemy.

Ban the word that starts with v and ends with ne! And words like ‘mandatory’, ‘containment’, ‘mask’, ‘hand washing’, ‘social distancing’… their words, their expressions used on purpose to wrap their poisons in a powerful and saving archetypal concept (perceived as such by the majority of humanity), to better make them accepted by a population more and more “hypnotized” through fear, repetition, confusion and pattern breaks (tools used to unknowingly put a person in hypnosis, a state of consciousness characterized by hypersuggestibility, an exaggerated sensitivity to influence).

Use the actual words for what these things really are:

  • V…ne = transgenic injection
  • Mask = respiratory barrier
  • Hand washing = compulsive hygiene disorder
  • Social distancing = social isolation

These are propositions.

The most important thing is to have understood why these semantic considerations are crucial in our fight against the current transgenic ideology.

I am specifically addressing all those who have understood, who have opened their eyes to all this today.

In this particularly dark passage of the first part of the Lord of the Rings (“The Fellowship of the Ring”), in the Moria, the cellars of Khazad-dûm, the spectator-reader sees two fires confronting each other.

Gandalf against the Balrog. Anor [the Sun] against Udûn [Hell]. The Flame can serve the Good, it can serve the Evil. The Flame can warm you, as it can burn you.

What a fabulous message of hope to all the planet still free and alive.

Udûn will not pass, thanks to each of you, small and big flames of Anor.

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Que veut dire Gandalf par « Feu secret », « Flamme d’Anor » et « Flamme d’Udûn » ? (askfrance.me) Anor is a name for the Sun in Middle-earth, while Udûn (which translates as Hell) is the name of one of the first lairs of Morgoth, the Master of Sauron. “I have the power of good on my side, you have the power of evil’.

Dr. Pascal Sacré received his medical degree in Belgium in 1995. He started a specialty in anesthesia and resuscitation in 1997, completed in 2002 and completed a specialty in critical care in 2003.

He has been working in hospitals since then, in intensive care, with a 2.5 year stint in a burn center (Queen Astrid Military Hospital HMRA in Brussels) between 2009 and 2011. Since 2011, he works in a medical-surgical intensive care center in Charleroi, Belgium. He is trained in hypnotherapy in medical settings since 2014 and as such, he is responsible for stress management trainings for his hospital staff.

He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Translation by Global Research

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Featured Image: Photo from the movie: Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring

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[This article was first published on November 20, 2018.]

***

“Grieved by the loss of their lands, dissatisfied with reservation (aka, concentration camp)life, and ultimately brought to a condition of near starvation, the Dakota people appealed to US Indian agencies (involving ex-Minnesota governors Sibley and Ramsey) without success. The murder of five whites by four young Dakota Indians ignited a bloody uprising in which more than 300 whites and an unknown number of Indians were killed. In the aftermath, 38 Dakota captives were hanged in Mankato (the day after Christmas Day 1862) for ‘voluntary participation in murders and massacres,’ and the Dakota remaining in Minnesota were removed to reservations in Nebraska. Meanwhile, the Ojibwa were relegated to reservations on remnants of their former lands.

“What happened to the Dakota in 1862 and afterward was a grievous crime against humanity. If it had occurred in this present day and age the United Nations and the international community would condemn it and declare it to be ethnocide and genocide. A United Nations world court indictment would be issued and the perpetrators of this ethnocide and genocide would be rounded up, tried, convicted and punished for crimes against humanity.” — Thomas Dahlheimer from his long essay, entitled, A History Of The Dakota People In The Mille Lacs Area

“Since 1970, Native Americans have gathered at noon on Cole’s Hill in Plymouth to commemorate a National Day of Mourning on the US Thanksgiving holiday. Many Native Americans do not celebrate the arrival of the Pilgrims and other European settlers. To them, Thanksgiving Day is a reminder of the genocide of millions of their people, the theft of their lands, and the relentless assault on their culture. Participants in a National Day of Mourning honor Native ancestors and the struggles of Native peoples to survive today. It is a day of remembrance and spiritual connection as well as a protest of the racism and oppression which Native Americans continue to experience.” — Text of a plaque on Cole’s Hill, overlooking Plymouth Rock

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There is no historical evidence that the First Thanksgiving actually occurred in the year 1621, as most of us Americans have been carefully taught, but there is also no historical documentation that any Native Americans were invited to attend any of the fall harvest celebrations that any Pilgrims ever hosted. Some accounts suggest that about 90 Wampanoag heard the settlers firing guns and came to see the cause of the stir or even ready to enter battle.

The story about how the aboriginals traded with the invading Pilgrims and taught them how to hunt and cultivate crops is usually exaggerated.

The Pilgrims found good land to establish as their new home in Plymouth was due to the fact that a smallpox epidemic had wiped out a Wampanoag village there before they arrived. Squanto, the aboriginal who aided the Pilgrims, was later sold into slavery in Spain. He actually learned English in order to escape his enslavement, but when he returned home, his entire tribe was dead.

The alleged “celebration” in 1621 did not mark a turning point in native vs. foreigner relationships and, whatever actually happened, did not become an annual event. In fact, relations between the native peoples and the Pilgrims deteriorated, and actually led to many wars. In fact, in 1637, following the death of a single Pilgrim (that they believed had been caused by an Indian), the Pilgrims burned their village and massacred at least 400 men, women and children.

Following that massacre, the Governor of Plymouth, wrote that for “the next 100 years, every Thanksgiving Day ordained by a Governor was in honor of the bloody victory, thanking God that the battle had been won.” Typical puritanical Christianity!

Over the decades I have been re-learning many of the myths that my teachers taught me over my lifetime – including the lies about the First Thanksgiving. The patriotic stories about how Minnesota conquered the aboriginals that once occupied the territory are at least as distorted.

The quotes and text that follows represent my attempt to correct the record. Some quotes are important to note.

“The Sioux Indians of Minnesota must be exterminated or driven forever beyond the borders of the state.” – Alexander Ramsey, Minnesota’s second Governor

Gov. Ramsey’s Thanksgiving Proclamation – November 3, 1862

“WHEREAS, 

“I, Alexander Ramsey, Governor of the State of Minnesota, do hereby set apart the twenty-seventh day of the present month of November, as a Day of Thanksgiving to Almighty God for his wonderful mercy towards us–for all the good gifts of His providence–for health and restored domestic peace–and the measure of general prosperity which we enjoy.

“Especially let us recognize His mercy in that He has delivered our borders from the savage enemies who rose up against us, and cast them into the pit they had privily dug for us; that our friends have been rescued from the horrors of captivity, and that our homes and household treasures are now safe from the violence of Indian robbers and assassins.

“And let us praise Him for the continued preservation of the Government of our Fathers, from the assaults of traitors and rebels; for the sublime spirit of patriotism, and courage, and constancy with which He has filled the hearts of its defenders; for the victories won by the valor of our troops; for the glorious share of Minnesota in the struggles and triumphs of the Union cause; for the safety of her sons who have passed through the fire of battle unscathed, and the honorable fame of the gallant dead; for the alacrity and devotion with which our citizens have rushed from their unharvested fields to the standard of the nation; and, above all, and proclaim FREEDOM as the condition and the law of a restored and regenerated Union.

“Given under my hand and the Great Seal of the State, at the City of St. Paul, this third day of November, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two”.

We sports-addicted, shop-until-you-drop, historically-illiterate, couch potato Americans have been the unwitting beneficiaries of 500 years of genocide against Native Americans who owned and occupied the continent that we falsely call our own. The lies our teachers taught us in our history classes have been happily perpetrated by historical figures such as Minnesota’s first two governors (Henry Hastings Sibley and Alexander Ramsey) and many others like them.

The original occupants of South, Central and North America (especially Canada and what now constitutes the United States) were over-powered by wealth, numbers and advanced technology that made mass murder of fingered enemies more efficient. The uncountable numbers of crimes against humanity have been waged against the aboriginal tribes that had occupied the two continents for thousands of years before Columbus accidentally bumped into the east coast. (Most of the actual killing was done not by the ruling elites, but by the ruthless soldiers who were mindlessly obedient to their political and economic superiors.)

The genocide began in 1492 when the gold-hungry white supremacist Christopher Columbus and his well-armed, sex-starved sailors disembarked from their stinking ships thinking that they had landed in India. Calling the inhabitants “Indians”, they set about pillaging the land, raping the female inhabitants while their priests converted the “heathens” to their brand of punitive, pro-homicide Christianity.

Columbus and his men eventually demanded, under the threat of cutting the native’s  hands off, that the non-white “sub-humans” produce allotments of gold from precious metal-less mines. All of this satanic cruelty was accomplished with the blessings of the priests.

Native Americans, whose hunting weapons were inferior to those war-making weapons of the foreign invaders, preferred self-exile or even death to the dishonor of submitting to slavery and so they refused to become slaves – nor would their tribal cohorts collaborate with their enslavement. And when they were forced from their ancestral lands by so-called Christian presidents like the acknowledged murderer Andrew Jackson, they tried to re-establish their tribal cultures further west.

Those of us modern-day Minnesotans who have Caucasian ancestors have benefitted from both the American and Minnesotan massacres of Native American tribes, the occupations and the theft of their land, the exploitation of their natural resources and the destruction of their way of life.

We pink-skinned progeny of our predatory ancestors were then carefully taught to believe the Big Lies about the First Thanksgiving that were carefully embedded in our history books and Sunday School lessons. And so we gullible non-native Minnesotans have been led to believe the sweet-sounding invented stories about the “nice” Pilgrims that landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620 who then proceeded to gratefully share a post-harvest feast with their new neighbors.

Our illegal, undocumented immigrant ancestors from Europe were obviously not averse to homicidal violence. Sadly, they were soon followed by a large variety of other decidedly un-Christ-like religious fanatics that perpetuated the genocide that resulted in a 90% de-population of the Native Americans over just the few centuries following the invasion of Christopher Columbus.

The 2015 Ken Burns Documentary

The disinformation process that fooled so many Americans about the first Thanksgiving was explored in the 2015 Ken Burns documentary that was broadcast on PBS-TV during the Thanksgiving season three years ago.

That documentary refuted many of the myths about the First Thanksgiving that most of us had learned in school.

The myths about the “New Testament” values of welcoming the stranger and being merciful to the oppressed has been frequently disproven by many of those who have sought refuge from brutality, oppression and/or dictatorial rule in their homelands and expected that they would be welcomed here. The truth of the matter has often come hard.

The myth of the” merciful Puritans” of the First Thanksgiving was designed to absolve our ancestors from the guilt of the cruel bloodbaths that they either perpetrated or approved of when invading American soldiers repeatedly massacred the militarily weaker native populations all over the world and even in their own land.

The following quotes from a few of our so-called military or governing “heroes” need to be recited in the context of the true history of the American military genocide of the First Nations people.

Those military “heroes” include Henry H. Sibley and Alexander Ramsey, Minnesota’s first and second governors, both later to become army officers in the war against the oppressed and starving Sioux Indians. (Sibley- a Democrat – was governor from 1858 – 1860. He was succeeded by Alexander Ramsey – a Republican – from 1860 to 1863.)

Following are a series of quotes from historical figures of the era. The spark that set off the 6 week-long Sioux Uprising in the fall of 1862 (right in the middle of the American Civil War) was the impending starvation of the Native Americans who had been made dependent on food commodities, gold coins and credit after they had deceitfully ceded most of their hunting grounds and water resources to the deceptive US government:

“We have waited a long time. The money is ours but we cannot get it. We have no food but here these stores are filled with food. We ask that you, the agent, make some arrangement so we can get food from the stores, or else we may take it to keep ourselves from starving. When men are hungry, they help themselves.” —Chief Little Crow (Taoyateduta), Mdewakanton Dakota, to Indian Agent Thomas Galbraith in 1862

“For what reason we have commenced this war I will tell you. It is on account of Major Galbraith.”– Chief Little Crow in a letter to Henry Sibley, 1862 (For much more on the Galbraith issue, click here.)

“So far as I am concerned, if they are hungry let them eat grass or their own dung.” — Indian trader Andrew J. Myrick to Indian Agent Thomas Galbraith. A few weeks later (on August 18, 1862), on the first day of the Sioux Uprising, Myrick was killed and his mouth was stuffed with grass.

“I shall probably approve them (the executions of the 303 Dakota warriors)and hang the villains” – Ex-governor and then US Army Colonel Henry H. Sibley, who had led the troops that defeated Chief Little Crow in the Battle of Wood Lake on August 23, 1862. Sibley had appointed the five-member military tribunal that tried, convicted and sentenced to death by hanging (in a “kangaroo court” proceeding, with no legal defense provided), the 303 Dakota warriors that had been captured in the battle that ended the 6 week-long US-Dakota War of 1862. Sibley was commenting on the fate of the convicted warriors, all but 38 of whom had their death sentences commuted by President Lincoln. Many warriors were imprisoned at Camp McClellan, near Davenport, Iowa and more than 1,600 non-combatant Native Americans were imprisoned at a concentration camp at Fort Snelling over the winter of 1862 – 63. Those that survived the cold, the starvation diets and the diseases were then deported to concentration camps in Nebraska and South Dakota (including Pine Ridge; see this)

“The Sioux (aka Dakota)Indians of Minnesota must be exterminated or driven forever beyond the borders of the state.” – Minnesota’s second governor Alexander Ramsey in a statement made on Sept. 9, 1862. Ramsey had made a fortune in real estate because of his dealings selling “stolen” Native American land to white settlers and businessmen after he himself had negotiated the treaties that cheated the tribes out of the land.Ramsey, incidentally, served as Secretary of War under Rutherford B. Hayes 25 years later.

“Destroy everything belonging to them and force them out to the plains, unless, as I suggest, you can capture them.  They are to be treated as maniacs or wild beasts, and by no means as people with whom treaties or compromises can be made.” – Civil war Major General John Pope, in a letter to Colonel Sibley – dated September 28, 1862.

“As Europeans settled the East coast, they displaced eastern tribes who then migrated to get away from the White civilization, and they, in their turn, displaced weaker local tribes they encountered, and pushed many of those tribes farther from their homelands, as they took over their homelands.

“Westward moving Europeans would give the displaced eastern tribes … guns and gun powder and they would then instigate fights between the newly arrived tribes and the long established tribes in order to force the long established tribes from their homelands; and in doing so, extinguish the long established tribes’ ancestral ties that they had with the land, their ancestors and the spirit world. Evidence of this practice has shown itself time and time again throughout the Americas.

“Around 1750, a displaced East coast band of Ojibwe were pushed into the Dakota’s homeland and they then used French guns and gun powder to force the Dakota from theirMille Lacs Lake homeland.

“This was the strategy the European colonists used to greatly diminish the number of Dakota in their Mille Lacs homeland, which encouraged and made it possible for a French weapons armed, alcohol manipulated band of Ojibwe to violently force the Dakota from their Mille Lacs homeland.” — Thomas Dahlheimer from his long essay, entitled, A History Of The Dakota People In The Mille Lacs Area

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Dr Gary G. Kohls is a retired family physician from Duluth, MN, USA. Since his retirement from his holistic mental health practice he has been writing his weekly Duty to Warn column for the Duluth Reader, northeast Minnesota’s alternative newsweekly magazine. His columns, which are re-published around the world, deal with the dangers of American fascism, corporatism, militarism, racism, malnutrition, Big Pharma’s over-drugging and Big Vaccine’s over-vaccination agendas, as well as other movements that threaten human health, the environment, democracy, civility and the sustainability of all life on earth. Many of his columns have been archived at a number of websites, including

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

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

https://www.transcend.org/tms/search/?q=gary+kohls+articles

Featured image: The statue of Little Crow overlooking Minnehaha Falls (MinnPost photo by Iric Nathanson)

O acordo com o Hamas revela as dificuldades de Israel.

November 28th, 2023 by Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

Depois de insistir que não negociaria com o Hamas, Israel finalmente anunciou que concordou em participar numa troca de prisioneiros e na interrupção temporária dos combates. Os termos do acordo foram publicados por representantes do Qatar, sendo Doha o local das negociações. A notícia expõe algumas das fraquezas de Israel e mostra como o estado sionista está a ter dificuldades em levar a cabo a luta contra as guerrilhas palestinas.

O acordo foi anunciado em 23 de novembro, estabelecendo um cessar-fogo temporário de quatro dias a partir das 7h do dia 27. Israel concordou em libertar 150 reféns palestinos, em troca de 50 israelenses mantidos prisioneiros pelo Hamas. Os porta-vozes de Tel Aviv chegaram a anunciar que a trégua poderia ser prorrogada se o Hamas concordasse em libertar mais cidadãos israelitas, mas não há nenhuma atualização sobre esta possibilidade até agora.

Anteriormente, alguns rumores sobre um possível acordo já haviam sido divulgados nas redes sociais. Autoridades de ambos os lados disseram nos últimos dias que poderia ocorrer uma pausa militar, mas os termos ainda não estavam claros. O acordo atualmente em vigor foi mediado por diplomatas qatarianos, egípcios e americanos e parece ter finalmente conseguido encontrar um consenso mutuamente benéfico para ambos os lados do conflito.

Enquanto os combates estão em pausa, a ajuda humanitária chega a Gaza, com vários camiões a entrar no enclave palestino sem serem alvo da artilharia e da aviação israelitas. Ainda não se sabe ao certo se o combate foi realmente interrompido por completo. É possível que ocorram combates terrestres em algumas regiões, mas correspondentes locais disseram à mídia que neste momento a situação está “calma”.

“Estamos testemunhando uma relativa calma, que está gradualmente se tornando cada vez mais visível à medida que há uma parada completa dos caças sobrevoando a Faixa de Gaza”, disse um jornalista da Al Jazeera.

As IDF emitiram um aviso aos residentes de Gaza para não regressarem às suas casas durante o cessar-fogo, deixando claro que a trégua terminará em breve e a violência dos combates continuará. Avichay Adree, porta-voz militar de Tel Aviv, disse: “a guerra ainda não acabou. A pausa humanitária é temporária. O norte da Faixa de Gaza é uma zona de guerra perigosa e é proibido mover-se para norte”.

Embora ambos os lados se beneficiem do acordo, é inegável que a medida denota uma fraqueza por parte de Israel. Tel Aviv está a ser forçada a mudar a sua retórica sobre o conflito. Anteriormente, o estado isralita alegou que não havia possibilidade de negociação com o Hamas, pois o grupo é considerado “terrorista” pelas autoridades sionistas. A promessa de Netanyahu era levar a guerra às últimas consequências, sem qualquer preocupação humanitária, fazendo tudo o que fosse necessário para alcançar o objetivo de aniquilar completamente o Hamas.

Mas obviamente as coisas não correram como esperado. As FDI utilizaram uma estratégia fraca para combater em Gaza, optando por bombardear massivamente a Faixa, resultando na destruição de edifícios e instalações civis. Quando finalmente iniciaram a incursão terrestre, os soldados israelenses se depararam com um terreno hostil, onde as ruínas dos prédios bombardeados impedem a passagem de tanques e veículos militares, além de servirem de abrigo e barricada para os guerrilheiros palestinos.

Como resultado, os veículos israelitas tornaram-se um alvo fácil para o Hamas. Vários vídeos circulam nas redes sociais mostrando soldados do Hamas destruindo tanques israelenses a uma distância pequena– e depois se escondendo entre os escombros de edifícios. Israel sofreu baixas, com vários dos seus soldados mortos durante os confrontos intensos. Claramente, as forças sionistas não estavam preparadas para continuar a luta sem uma pausa estratégica para reabastecer as suas tropas e repensar a estratégia a ser utilizada na guerra.

Outra prova de que Israel precisava da ruptura é o fato de ter concordado em libertar 150 palestinos em troca de apenas 50 israelitas. Os termos da troca de prisioneiros não foram favoráveis ​​a Israel, que terá de devolver três palestinianos por cada israelita libertado pelo Hamas. Claramente, o acordo favoreceu mais os palestinos do que Tel Aviv, com Israel a concordar em participar porque realmente precisava de uma pausa o mais rapidamente possível para resolver a sua situação militar.

Além disso, o acordo representa uma derrota moral e psicológica para o governo de Netanyahu, que foi forçado a negociar com um grupo que Israel chama de “terroristas”. Isto certamente fortalecerá a oposição interna de Israel e aumentará as críticas ao governo, com Netanyahu sendo mais uma vez prejudicado pelas suas próprias medidas.

Porém, é inegável que, apesar destes fatos, o acordo foi um ponto favorável para todos. Os prisioneiros estão a ser libertados, a ajuda humanitária está a chegar a Gaza e a população palestina está a ver o seu sofrimento aliviado durante alguns dias. Para as IDF e as Brigadas Al-Qassam, é hora de se prepararem melhor para o combate no futuro próximo.

Resta saber se os termos serão realmente cumpridos ao longo de quatro dias.

Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

 

 

 

Artigo em inglês : Deal with Hamas reveals Israel’s difficulties, InfoBrics, 24 de Novembro de 2023

Imagem : InfoBrics

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Lucas Leiroz, jornalista, pesquisador do Center for Geostrategic Studies, consultor geopolítico.

Você pode seguir Lucas Leiroz em: https://t.me/lucasleiroz e https://twitter.com/leiroz_lucas

 

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First published on November 26, 2023

***

For those who missed it or chose to ignore it, there was a large demonstration in Washington on Tuesday the 14th dubbed the “March for Israel” with many posters and signs featuring “Israel We Stand With You.” I have no big problem with Americans “standing with Israel” as long as they go over to Israel to do it and in some cases at least put their own lives at risk in so doing, but that is not the way they operate. What I do have a problem with is the cause they are supporting, namely the ethic cleansing of an entire nation or even, if required to do that, a military style genocide of the inhabitants of an area that was entirely populated by an ethnic group called Palestinians before Israel’s mostly European immigrants entered the scene and used foreign provided force majeur to steal the land and property. While so doing they were also killing thousands of locals and forcing three quarters of a million more to abandon their homes and spend their lives in refugee camps, a process of ethnic cleansing that has continued and been expanded through the creation of illegal settlements since the founding of the Jewish state 75 years ago.

The rally was organized by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the Jewish Federations of North America in solidarity with Israel’s response to the October 7th Hamas attack. Apart from backing the Israeli government in its devastating counterattack on Gaza, the stated goals of the rally were to support Israel in general, to call for the release of the hostages taken by Hamas, and to combat antisemitism. “Rising antisemitism” allegedly followed the October 7th Hamas attack and the Israel reaction that marked the start of the war.

The usually cited source the Anti-Defamation League has stated that antisemitism has increased 388% in the US since October 6, 2023. Now one must observe that the ADL is not a reliable source when it comes to antisemitism as its agenda is clearly to send the message that Jews as a group are threatened, which is just not true to anything near the extent that is being implied. The reason why antisemitism and holocaust denial are used so often against critics is to discredit them without having to provide any evidence.

For ADL, a Jewish college student walking on campus and passing a pro-Palestinian poster and being upset by it is an antisemitic incident. What I am saying is that this is an entirely faked exercise to convince the audience that Israel and Jews are the victims in spite of the fact that many more Palestinians have been killed and dispossessed since the founding of Israel in 1948. If there is any real increase in actual antisemitism it is in response to the highly visible bestiality that the Jewish state has exhibited against the original occupants of what was once Palestine. Israel wants the Pals gone and these are the first steps in what might be termed a final solution, aided and abetted by American monsters like Joe Biden and Donald Trump, who have made the United States complicit in war crimes.

Many participants in the Israel rally came by charter buses organized by Jewish houses of worship and schools. Most of the crowd appeared to be Jews but there was also a strong Christian Zionist component. Groups came from New York, New Jersey, Los Angeles, Houston, Miami, Boston, Kansas City, New York, Philadelphia and Miami plus other domestic and even international locations. US college students were given $250 in travel and expenses money to attend as an incentive.

The crowd was considerable though there is some confusion about how many were actually in attendance. The organizers predicted 60,000 which was the number initially accepted, but other estimates of the crowd were as low as 10,00 or 25,000. The numbers quickly grew in some news stories to uncorroborated estimates of 270,000 to 300,000. There is, of course, certain bragging rights in large numbers and the March was in competition with a Palestinian rally that attracted 300,000 the week before, so let’s just accept that there was a large group present on the Mall.

Joe Biden did not personally attend the rally but he said on the following day “[that] Israel’s military operation in Gaza would stop when Hamas no longer maintains the capacity to murder, abuse, and do horrific things to the Israelis.” He left out the part of continuous abuse of Palestinians, going back 75 years and clearly is not paying attention to senior Israeli government officials who are making comments that indicate that the grand objective is to remove the Palestinians from what will soon be Eretz or Greater Israel.

Speakers at the three-hour long rally included Israel’s self-described protector in Congress Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Speaker Mike Johnson, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Senator Joni Ernst, Pastor John Hagee, and Israeli President Isaac Herzog (via video from Jerusalem), who praised US President Joe Biden for his “moral clarity and bold actions….” Johnson predictably declared that “The calls for a ceasefire are outrageous!” while the State Department’s Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt also delivered on demand a plea “Do not cower, allow no one to make you afraid.”

Meanwhile Donald Trump’s US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, who served mostly as an apologist for the Jewish state while in office, roamed the Mall expressing his joy at developments. Other notable speakers included Natan Sharansky and actress Debra Messing. Speeches followed the predictable narrative, with descriptions of how Israel had been attacked by terrorists who sought to destroy the Jewish state, that Israel is America’s best friend and closest ally, and how Israel is only defending itself from attack. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who did not speak, stated in an interview in Israel that if his country does not succeed in crushing Hamas, the next terrorist attacks would be directed against America, an evidence free claim to strengthen US resolve, but as Netanyahu hardly ever tells the truth it should be taken for what it’s worth.

Thousands of demonstrators showed up in support of Israel on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., Nov. 14, 2023. (Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)

And, of course, everyone’s openly stated or subliminal message was that the United States must stand by and do whatever it takes to help defend its good friend and ally, including rejecting a cease fire or negotiations and letting the slaughter of Gazan women and children continue. The discredited tales of torture and mass rapes of Israeli women and the killing by beheading of Jewish babies, which are still being replayed by President Joe Biden, were also part of the rally agenda and appeared as the messages on signs and posters.

What was not mentioned however was the systematic Israeli bombing of hospitals, schools, churches, and infrastructure, all of which are war crimes, as are the attacks on high density civilian targets which have produced more than 11,000 deaths as of this writing, mostly consisting of women and children. Targeting civilians in that fashion in those numbers can and should be construed as genocide. Israel’s war on hospitals can also be regarded as part of a systematic campaign of genocide. The deliberate targeting of civilian populations, children, medical and aid workers has been elevated to an Israeli government policy to drive the Palestinians from what was once Palestine.

Official Washington was on parade and in lockstep to demonstrate its unshakable loyalty to Israel even as opinion polls suggest that the American public is tired of the charade. A couple of brave peaceniks dared to move on the fringes of the crowd with signs calling for a ceasefire to end the carnage, but they were openly derided and threatened so they kept their distance. One truly shocking attendee at the rally was former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, who was present and spouting the straight Israel line about how it was the victim of terrorists. Tulsi said

“It is inspiring to see how many people are flooding into Washington – understanding the seriousness of this moment, coming from all over the country. Many Jewish people [and] many people who are not Jewish . . . are coming and saying that we must stand up against antisemitism. We must stand up for our Jewish brothers and sisters, and we must take a strong stand against the Islamist terrorists who seek to not only exterminate the Jewish people but also to exterminate and kill anyone who does not adhere to their radical interpretation of Islam.”

She sounded something like the State Department’s despicable number two Victoria Nuland looking for another country to attack. Now that RFK Jr has also obligingly rolled over for the Jewish state there is no genuine peace candidate anywhere on the horizon with the exception of the Green Party’s Jill Stein and the beat of the war drums will continue to sound.

More out of sync perhaps was the presence as an ally of convenience evangelical Pastor John Hagee of the Christians United for Israel (CUFI) group which was well represented both at the rally and as the key largest Christian Zionist component of the Israel Lobby in the US.

Hagee has said that Hitler was a “half-breed Jew,” created and sent by God as a “hunter” to drive European Jews on a divine mission to fulfill prophecy by creating the state of Israel to bring about the End Time and the Second Coming of Christ followed by the Rapture of all true believers into heaven. Jews will have to convert to participate.

One brings someone as controversial as Hagee out of the woodwork only to send a message that this is not about making sure that Jews are safe. It’s about showing solidarity with Israel, no matter what it does. And what kind of rally against antisemitism includes racist signs calling for more war, more bombings, and the destruction of not just Hamas but also the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians? Or as one sign held by a masked protester read, “From the river to the sea, Israel is all you will see.”

The so-called holocaust was evoked a number of times by speakers, particularly when it came time to describe Gaza on November 7th as the biggest killing of Jews since the Second World War. Nor did anyone mention the fundamental dysfunction in the US-Israeli relationship, which is that Israel calls nearly all the shots, including the killing of 34 sailors on the USS Liberty in 1967 and the more recent shooting of American citizen journalists covering Palestinian protests by Israeli Army sharpshooters.

Israelis who kill Americans are never punished unlike the demands or retribution being made by speakers in Washington at the rally to kill not only all of Hamas but also the Gazan voters who elected Hamas in the first place. Though it is somewhat repetitive to say so, lest there be any confusion, that is referred to as genocide which is regarded as the most serious crime against humanity. And no one spoke up at the rally against the involvement of the US military in the operation against Gaza, which Biden is lying about and which is opposed by a majority of the public. Nor did anyone cite recent comments by US General Richard Clark that American soldiers must be “prepared to die for the Jewish state.”

Perhaps the politicians in Washington should ask US soldiers whether they are “prepared to die for the Jewish state.” Or maybe there should be called a national referendum asking the public whether it wants to continue arming and sending billions of dollars to Israel and to Ukraine as well. Evidence suggests that a clear majority would oppose both policies, which have hardly been debated at all in any serious way. Americans who want to “stand with Israel” should be allowed to go there with a one-way ticket in exchange for which they have to turn in their US passports as another major issue is “Who are they actually loyal to?” I’ll bet I know the answer to that one!

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

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

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from TUR

Israel Is Assassinating Journalists in Gaza

November 27th, 2023 by Amanda Yee

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First published on November 23, 2023

***

Israel is intentionally assassinating journalists in Gaza. As it wages its genocidal onslaught on the enclave, having murdered at least 13,000 Palestinians so far, Israel is simultaneously killing media workers in order to prevent the world from seeing the unspeakable atrocities it carries out.

The situation at hand is as dire as it is unprecedented. Since October 7, the Israeli military has killed 60 media workers, according to the Gaza Government Media Office. The Committee to Protect Journalists has stated this is the deadliest month for attacks on journalists since it started keeping record in 1992. Additionally, many other Palestinian reporters outside of Gaza face intimidation and harassment by Israeli forces.

“We have never experienced anything like this and we are overwhelmed,” admitted Nasser Abu Bakr, head of the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, a Ramallah-based trade union representing Palestinian media workers. “We are losing colleagues and friends every day as a result of the ongoing Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people and the policy of targeted killing against journalists.”

“We can’t keep up with the number of attacks against our journalists,” Abu Bakr continued. “We are receiving more calls and information about … incidents than we can process. Our journalists have always been a target for the Israeli military, but Israel moved from killing [an average of] one Palestinian journalist a year before October 7 to killing [over] one a day.”

And it’s not just Palestinian reporters the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)  is attacking—any journalist who may potentially disseminate information critical of Israel is a potential target.

Among the long list of reporter casualties is Reuters photojournalist Issam Abdallah, who was killed by an October 13 Israeli strike on the Lebanese border while covering clashes between Hezbollah and the IDF. According to an independent investigation by Reporters Without Borders (RWB), Abdallah was explicitly targeted by Israeli forces—he was clearly identified as a journalist through his press helmet and vest, and he was standing next to a vehicle marked “press” on its roof. Immediately before the attack, other journalists in the area had witnessed an Israeli helicopter flying overhead, so the military was able to clearly see that Abdallah was a non-combatant. According to ballistic analysis done by RWB, the missiles were launched from the side of the Israeli border and “two strikes in the same place in such a short space of time (just over 30 seconds), from the same direction, clearly indicate precise targeting.”

Not even the families of journalists are safe from Israeli retaliation. After learning on air that an Israeli air raid had killed his wife, son, daughter, and grandson, Gaza Al Jazeera bureau chief Wael Al-Dahdouh rushed to the hospital, followed by press cameras. Upon finding his son there, he knelt over his lifeless body and lamented, “They take revenge on us with our children.”

On November 7, Mohammad Abu Hasira, a correspondent for Palestinian news agency Wafa, was killed by an Israeli air raid, along with 42 members of his family. And just days before that, an Israeli strike killed Palestine TV reporter Mohammad Abu Hattab and 11 members of his family in south Gaza, including his wife, son, and brother.

Israel Invents Lies to Justify War Crimes

Just as it has claimed that Hamas was hiding in Gaza hospitals, near schools, and in ambulance convoys in order to justify its bombing and killing of civilians, Israel has peddled the same predictable excuses for these targeted assassinations of journalists. In a chilling November 2 article that effectively doubles as a hit list, the Jerusalem Post spotlighted several independent Palestinian journalists who had been reporting from Gaza and smeared them as part of “Hamas’s propaganda team.”

Then, pro-Israel media watchdog group HonestReporting released a report on November 8 claiming—with little evidence—that the Associated Press, CNN, The New York Times, and Reuters freelance photographers in Gaza knew in advance of the October 7 Palestinian Resistance counter-offensive and even collaborated with Hamas in order be on location to get their shots during the operation.

Israeli officials quickly jumped on the story to vindicate their assassination campaign against Palestinian reporters.

In response to the report, former Minister of Defense and current member of Israel’s war cabinet Benny Gantz said,

“Journalists found to have known about the massacre, and [who] still chose to stand as idle bystanders while children were slaughtered, are no different than terrorists and should be treated as such.”

Danny Danon, Israel’s representative to the United Nations, went so far as to declare that these reporters would be put on a hit list, stating on X, “Israel’s internal security agency announced that they will eliminate all participants of the October 7 massacre. The ‘photojournalists’ who took part in recording the assault will be added to that list.”

Gil Hoffman, executive director of HonestReporting, later admitted that he had no evidence to substantiate the claims made, but was just “raising questions.” According to Hoffman, he and HonestReporting “don’t claim to be a news organization.”

Accusations that Palestinian reporters are embedded within and acting in coordination with Hamas lay the propaganda groundwork to depict journalists as legitimate military targets.

Israel Restricting Information Coming Out of Gaza

Not only is the IDF killing Palestinian journalists on the ground, but the Israeli government is actively denying access to foreign press into Gaza. The only reporters allowed into the strip are those embedded within the IDF, and media outlets such as NBC and CNN have confirmed that in exchange for access, they must submit all materials to the Israeli military prior to broadcast for review and approval.

Additionally, the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate reported that as many as 50 media outlets in Gaza have been partially or entirely destroyed by Israeli air strikes since October 7. If Israel is not outright bombing news outlets, then they are actively trying to repress the flow of information coming out. In late October, the Israeli government approved regulations that would allow it to shut down any foreign news channel if it believed the outlet posed a threat to national security. This regulation was then used to block the programming and website of Lebanese outlet Al Mayadeen, because of its “wartime efforts to harm [Israel’s] security interests and to serve the enemy’s goals,” according to a statement released by the Israeli security cabinet.

In the absence of foreign press bearing witness to Israel’s atrocities in Gaza, Palestinian civilians have taken to documenting the horrors themselves and sharing them on social media sites such as X and TikTok for the outside world to see.

The Israeli government has responded by repeatedly shutting down internet and communications systems across Gaza, even further restricting the flow of information coming out.

History of Israel Targeting Journalists

Even before its current war on Gaza began on October 7, Israel had a long history of targeting reporters and news networks. During its 2021 military incursion on Gaza, Israel was accused of “silencing” journalists by press freedom advocates after it bombed the offices of Al Jazeera and the Associated Press. This occurred just days after it had bombed another building that housed a number of other news outlets, including Al Araby TV, Al Kofiya TV, and Watania News Agency, among others.

According to the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, Israel killed 55 journalists from 2000 to 2022, either by live fire or bombardment. This figure includes Shireen Abu Akleh, the beloved Palestinian-American journalist and longtime Al Jazeera correspondent who was shot by Israeli forces while reporting on IDF raids in Jenin, as well as Yaser Murtaja, a cameraman for Palestinian network Ain Media, who was shot and killed by the IDF while covering the 2018 Great March of Return.

Like so many other Palestinian journalists Israel murdered on the job, Abu Akleh and Murtaja were both wearing their press vests at the time of their killings. Immediately after his death, Israel predictably—with no evidence—rushed to accuse Murtaja of being a Hamas fighter in order to cover its tracks.

The day after Murtaja’s killing, Israel’s then-Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman bluntly stated, “In the march of terror, there were no innocent civilians. They were all Hamas.”

Israel Is Losing the Information War

Israel relies on its advanced military weaponry and billions of dollars in funding from the U.S. to carry out its genocidal violence against the Palestinian people across Gaza, Jerusalem, and the West Bank. Its Hasbara and “Brand Israel” campaigns work around the clock to justify its war crimes through outright lies and disinformation.

However, Israel has suffered significant losses in the information war as reports and images of the atrocities have reached millions across the world, many of whom have joined the mass mobilizations in support of the Palestinian cause. On the international stage, Israel is further politically isolated, with more and more countries cutting ties or recalling their diplomatic staff.

This battle of ideas cannot be won through sheer force and U.S.-backed military superiority. Israel cannot prevent information about its atrocities from leaking out, especially in an age of social media in which ordinary Palestinians are emboldened to act as citizen journalists, documenting what they are living through in Gaza for the world to see. As Israel escalates its assassination campaign against media workers, support for the Palestinian Resistance continues to grow.

Grim as the current situation may seem, it speaks to the reality at hand: The people of the world are waking up to the atrocities carried out by the Zionist state and refusing to allow it to continue.

And that speaks to another reality: Israel is living on borrowed time, and that time is running out.

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Amanda Yee is a journalist and organizer based out of Brooklyn. She is the managing editor of Liberation News, and her writing has appeared in Monthly Review Online, The Real News Network, CounterPunch, and Peoples Dispatch. Follow her on X @catcontentonly.

Featured image: Funeral for Palestine TV journalist Mohammad Abu Hattab. Credit: X/@MuhammadSmiry

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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***

USA’s Asia-Pacific policies undoubtedly underwent a tactical change with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that broke out in Gaza and has a tendency to spread to the region. However, it is not possible to talk about a change of direction strategically or geopolitically.

The change in the US’s strategy to surround Russia first through Ukraine and then China through the Taiwan tension can only be described as a change in calendar.

The US occupation of Gaza and the necessity of deploying warships around the Middle East necessitated a new initiative against China in the diplomatic field. We saw this during the visits of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Chinese President Xi Jinping to the United States. It should also not be overlooked that these visits started with the Beijing visit of Henry Kissinger, the architect of the Chinese initiative in the 1970s (against the USSR).

However, neither America nor China are aware that the real struggle is the struggle for leadership on a global scale and they continue their preparations accordingly.

The Pentagon is in the process of deploying new medium-range missile systems to the Asia-Pacific region. The deployment is officially scheduled for next year and is intended to “deter China from invading Taiwan,” according to General Charles A. Flynn, Commander of U.S. Army Pacific (USARPAC). Flynn also announced that the US Army will deploy a launch platform for land-based versions of medium-range “Tomahawk” missiles.

“We tested them and we have one or two batteries today,” General Flynn said. “We plan to deploy this system in 2024. I won’t say where or when. But I will just say that we will deploy them.”

Land-based missiles were banned under the 1987 US-USSR “Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.” The agreement banned land-based missiles with a range between 500 and 5,500 km. However, the USA unilaterally withdrew from this agreement in 2019.

The calculation behind this withdrawal was a possible war against China rather than Russia. The missile that the USA continued to develop, even though it was banned for this purpose, was the GLCM (Ground Launched Cruise Missile) called BGM-109G “Gryphon”. Gryphon is a subsonic cruise missile with a range of 2780 km and a single W84 thermonuclear warhead (capacity up to 150 kilotons).

Their ability to carry W80 thermonuclear warheads means that the old “Gryphon” has effectively been resurrected; the only difference is that its target is not Russia, but China and most likely North Korea. It is estimated that the missiles will be deployed in Japan, Philippines and Guam.

This includes the deployment of similar “Tomahawk” launchers by the US Marine Corps (USMC), while the US Navy already has multiple sea-based “Tomahawk” launch platforms. All of this clearly indicates a concerted effort to surround China with hostile military bases and infrastructure, forcing it to respond accordingly. Although Beijing prioritizes peace talks and détente, it continues to prepare for war and calculate superiority. Asia-Pacific and its busy sea routes are vital to the Asian giant’s predominantly export-oriented economy. In addition to being a nuclear power, China is also a country with hypersonic missile capability, along with Russia. It will not tolerate or leave unanswered any US-based deployment that could endanger its interests.

The USA’s strategy to surround China is based on the seas. However, the number of active US warships has decreased significantly since the end of the Cold War. Still, the USA relied on its underwater superiority with its advanced submarines.

The USA may now be losing this superiority. China is making advances in submarine technology and undersea detection capabilities.

US spy satellite images showed China earlier this year launching a nuclear-powered attack submarine with a pump-jet propulsion system instead of propellers. The noise reduction technology used in US submarines was seen for the first time in a Chinese submarine. Carlson, a former U.S. Navy officer, predicts the new Chinese submarines will be as quiet as the Russian Akula I-class attack submarines commissioned in the 1990s. The bulk of China’s current submarine technology comes from reverse-engineered diesel-electric submarines purchased from Russia. The ever-strengthening military ties between Moscow and Beijing suggest that Russia may be willing to share some of its advanced submarine technologies with China. The Western Pacific is becoming increasingly dangerous for US submarines.

A Chinese destroyer used sonar pulses to target and injure Australian navy divers a few months ago, Australia claims. Although a spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Defense denies it, the encounter suggests Western governments are taking a more active stance against foreign militaries that conduct maritime surveillance and other activities near China’s borders.

China is also making significant progress in submarine surveillance. China has nearly completed several underwater sensor networks, known as the “Underwater Great Wall,” in the South China Sea and other areas off its coast. According to Chinese military and academic texts, the networks provide a much better ability to detect enemy submarines. In August, China conducted a more than 40-hour submarine-hunting exercise in the South China Sea involving dozens of Y-8 anti-submarine patrol aircraft. In October, the Chinese and Russian navies held a joint anti-submarine warfare exercise in the Bering Sea off the coast of Alaska.

All these developments mean that the final US-China showdown is still on the agenda and the era of the US’s undisputed dominance in the seas around China is coming to an end.

*

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This article was originally published on ATASAM.

Hasan Erel is a Turkish journalist-writer. He worked as a diplomacy and foreign news reporter and editor in TRT and other media for 30 years. He is a frequent commentator of Sputnik News radio and CRI Turk in Turkiye.    

Featured image is from ATASAM

How Glycine Fights Viruses

November 27th, 2023 by Dr. Joseph Mercola

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Collagen accounts for about 30% of the total protein in your body; 28% of collagen, in turn, is made up of the amino acid glycine

Glycine is the amino acid with the highest concentration in connective tissue. Its benefits go far beyond connective tissue health as glycine has anti-inflammatory effects, acts as a neurotransmitter, and plays an important role in the epigenetic regulation that drives the aging process

Glycine helps protect against viruses by reinforcing the extracellular matrix, which acts as a physical barrier to infectious agents such as bacteria, fungi and viruses

Most people need 8.5 to 10 grams more glycine than what their bodies can synthesize in a day

To boost your glycine intake, either eat more collagen or gelatin-rich foods and take a high-quality collagen or gelatin supplement, or supplement with pure glycine, which is available in powder form and tends to be very affordable

*

Collagen accounts for about 30% of the total protein in your body; 28% of collagen, in turn, is made up of glycine, and it is the amino acid with the highest concentration in collagen.1 It is a mildly sweet amino acid that can also be used as a sugar substitute.

Glycine, proline and hydroxyproline2 are the raw materials for connective tissue, but the benefits of glycine go far beyond connective tissue health. For example, glycine:

  • Has potent anti-inflammatory effects, in part by inhibiting activation of immune cells and suppressing the production of proinflammatory cytokines, and in part by inhibiting the consumption of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate hydrogen (NADPH), as detailed in this previous article.
  • Plays an important role in the aging process. In some animal studies, diets containing 8% to 12% glycine increased the median lifespan by as much as 28.4%.3

According to previous research,4 glycine may even be responsible for the epigenetic regulation that drives the aging process as a whole. It also induces autophagy, so that renewal and regeneration of your damaged cells can take place.

  • Is a precursor to glutathione, a powerful endogenous antioxidant that declines with age.
  • Acts as a neurotransmitter5 and may play an important role in depression.6 It’s also been shown to alleviate neuroinflammation and protect against cognitive deficits in mice with neurodegeneration.7
  • Helps prevent cancer by inhibiting the growth of blood vessels that feed tumors.8

Glycine Protects Against Viral Infections

Interestingly, glycine also helps protect against viruses by reinforcing your extracellular matrix, as evidenced in a 2021 study.9 Collagen, which is high in glycine, is the primary protein of the extracellular matrix, which acts as a physical barrier against infectious agents such as bacteria, viruses and fungi.

When you’re deficient in glycine, your extracellular matrix is weakened, thereby raising the risk of viruses being able to proliferate through your tissues. Many infectious agents secrete proteases that destroy collagen to facilitate their proliferation.

Some viruses are also known to inhibit collagen synthesis, which has the same effect.10 Making sure you have enough glycine in your system at all times can help prevent viruses from destroying enough collagen to get inside your cells.

Another Mechanism to Explain Glycine’s Infection Protection

A 2020 study11 showed an antiviral mechanism for glycine in that it prevents for formation of capsids. You probably didn’t know this, but viruses carry around an outer shell of proteins called a capsid. This capsid acts like a lockpick in that it attaches to and pries open the cell’s membrane it is seeking to infect.

glycine capsid

The virus then hijacks the cell’s inner workings, forcing it to mass produce the virus’s genetic material and construct many viral replicas. These capsids are like popcorn kernels pushing away the lid of an overfilled pot: The new viruses explode through the cell wall, and the cycle continues with more virus lockpicks on the loose.

Since glycine prevents the viruses from forming a capsid, they become unstable and unable to infect other cells as they simply disintegrate without their capsid “shell.”

Glycine Supplementation Is a Necessity

While your body does synthesize glycine, there’s a limit to how much your body can make, and more than likely it falls far short of your requirements to perform all of its essential functions. As explained by the authors:12

“Glycine produced by human metabolism is much lower than the cell’s needs, giving a general glycine deficiency of 10 g/day in humans. This effect was tested for three years in 127 volunteers who had virus infections usually once or more times every year.

85 of them took glycine 10 g/day; 42 did not take glycine. Among those who took glycine, only 16 (12 of whom had infections two or more times each year) had the flu just in the first year — but much reduced in severity and duration — while those who did not take glycine, were infected as often and as severely as before.

Glycine intake at the afore-mentioned dose prevents the spread of viruses by strengthening the extracellular matrix barriers against their advance …

[G]lycine must be considered to be an essential or indispensable amino acid because, although it can be synthesized by human metabolism, the body’s capacity for its synthesis does not satisfy the needs of the cells, especially for collagen synthesis. Neither can glycine be considered ‘conditionally essential’ as its need is a general requisite, independent of any particular circumstances.”

According to previous calculations13 that considered glycine’s role in metabolism and the synthesis of metabolites, collagen and other proteins, most people need 8.5 to 10 grams more glycine than what their bodies can make in a day.

As a result, the authors of the 2021 paper recommend daily supplementation at a dose of 10 grams a day “to prevent and solve health problems of the body’s mechanical system such as osteoarthritis and osteoporosis,” and “the entire connective system of the extracellular matrix that is found in all tissues.”14

“The close relationship we have shown here between the consistency and strength of the extracellular matrix, based on healthy collagen, and resistance to viruses highlights the need to maintain this structure in good condition, for which dietary glycine supplementation is necessary,” they note.

The authors also stress that glycine supplementation may be more important than vaccines, because:

“… vaccines are specific for a particular antigen, and continuous mutations of viruses … can alter their antigenic protein rapidly, rendering the vaccine ineffective in a short time. The enhancement of collagen in the extracellular matrix, however, will always be effective and steadfast against any invasive agent.”

The Vitamin C Link

On a side note, the extracellular matrix’s role in blocking infection helps explain why vitamin C is so effective against infections. In short, vitamin C plays a key role in collagen synthesis, so one of the ways in which it prevents and treats infection is by strengthening the extracellular matrix, just like glycine does.

That said, vitamin C alone will not be as effective as when taken in conjunction with glycine. As explained by the authors:15

“Ascorbate contributes to precise collagen synthesis by avoiding or eliminating collateral reactions in proline and lysine hydroxylation, but it cannot cover the need for glycine, which must be ingested additionally to make possible the synthesis and renewal of collagen necessary to maintain firm extracellular matrix.”

Glycine With NAC Supports Mitochondrial Health

Another nutrient that has important synergistic effects with glycine is N-acetylcysteine (NAC). Like glycine, NAC is a precursor to glutathione, and when taken together, they can go a long way toward protecting your mitochondrial health.

For example, researchers at Baylor College of Medicine have shown16 that glycine and NAC supplementation not only improves glutathione deficiency but also mitochondrial impairment, oxidative stress and insulin resistance in older mice.

Similar results have also been found in seniors (by the same team). Importantly, in the elderly, supplementation with glycine and NAC improved four of nine hallmarks of aging associated with most age-related disorders, namely mitochondrial dysfunction, inflammation, insulin resistance and genomic damage.

Glycine Protects Against Chronic Disease and Disability

Glycine supplementation makes loads of sense when you consider its role in mitigating chronic disease and disability. As reported in a 2023 scientific review, glycine has been shown to:17

  • Suppress tumor growth in mice with melanoma18
  • Decrease fasting glucose, insulin, triglyceride and IGF-1 in male rats19
  • Preserve muscle mass and reduce inflammatory markers in mice with cancer cachexia20
  • Improve endothelial function in older rats21
  • Reduce weight gain and improve bone mineral density in a mouse model designed to mimic postmenopausal bone loss22
  • Protect against cardiac hypertrophy23
  • Alleviate neuroinflammation and protect against cognitive deficits in mice with neurodegeneration24

Researchers have also noted that supplemental glycine may be useful for the “prevention and control of atherosclerosis, heart failure, angiogenesis associated with cancer or retinal disorders and a range of inflammation-driven syndromes, including metabolic syndrome.”25

In his article “Gelatin, Stress, Longevity,”26 the late Ray Peat, a biologist and pioneer of bioenergetic medicine,27 also reviewed a long list of health conditions that can be prevented or alleviated by glycine supplementation and/or increased consumption of collagen or gelatin, including:28

  • Fibrosis
  • Most bleeding problems, including nosebleeds, excessive menstrual bleeding, bleeding ulcers, hemorrhoids and stroke. According to Peat, glycine, taken shortly after a stroke, limits the damage and accelerates recovery
  • Epilepsy, by stabilizing nerves and raising the amount of stimulation required to activate nerves
  • Multiple sclerosis (MS), thanks to its antispastic effects
  • Any condition involving excess prolactin, serotonin and/or cortisol, including autism, postpartum and premenstrual problems, Cushing’s disease, diabetes, and impotence
  • Muscular dystrophy and myasthenia gravis
  • Metabolic disorders29
  • Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD)30
  • Depression and schizophrenia31

Other health benefits of glycine include:

  • Improved sleep32
  • Reduced stress33
  • Improved wound healing34
  • Improved gut health35

How to Optimize Your Glycine Intake

Considering its many benefits, making sure you get enough glycine in your diet can go a long way toward improving your health and life span, and there are several ways you can do that:

  1. Eat more collagen or gelatin-rich foods, as glycine makes up nearly one-third of collagen and gelatin. Examples include homemade bone broth made with bones and connective tissue from grass fed, organically raised animals, and chicken broth made from organic chicken feet. The claws are particularly rich in collagen.36
  2. Take a high-quality collagen or gelatin supplement.
  3. Take a glycine supplement. Pure glycine is available in powder form and tends to be very affordable and easy to take, as it has a mildly sweet flavor.

Indirectly, animal foods such as seafood, red meat, poultry and dairy products will also raise your glycine level, as these foods contain taurine, which increases glycine.37 That said, don’t rely on red meat for your glycine. As you can see from the chart below, beef contains only a fraction of the glycine you get from gelatin and collagen. You simply cannot get enough glycine from beef alone.

amino acid

Dosing Suggestions

While there’s no established daily requirement or upper limit of glycine, as previously noted, most people tend to be about 10 grams short of what their bodies need for their daily metabolic processes,38 so that’s probably a good goalpost.

Another study looking at people with metabolic syndrome found 15 grams of glycine a day for three months reduced oxidative stress and improved systolic blood pressure.39

You can’t overdose on glycine, so a daily dose of 10 to 20 grams would probably be an ideal range for most people. If you have any of the chronic health problems reviewed above, or are elderly or frail, you’d probably want to lean toward the higher dosages.

*

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Notes

1 Molecular Cell Biology, 4th Edition, Section 22.3. 2000

2 Amino Acids 2018 Jan;50(1):29-38

3 Ageing Research Reviews March 31, 2023, Table 1

4 Scientific Reports 2015; 5 Article number 10434

5 Ageing Research Reviews March 31, 2023, Intro

6 Medical News Today April 4, 2023

7, 24 Journal of Neuroinflammation October 15, 2020; 17, Article number 303

8 Medical Hypotheses January 15, 2019; 123(1)

9, 10, 12, 14, 15 Journal of Functional Foods January 2021; 76: 104318

11 Changes in Membrane Dielectric Properties of Porcine Kidney Cells Provide Insight into the Antiviral […], Langmuir. 2020 Jul 28;36(29):8344-8356

13 Journal of Biosciences 2009; 34: 853-872

16 Clinical and Translational Medicine March 27, 2021

17 Ageing Research Reviews March 31, 2023

18 Carcinogenesis, Volume 20, Issue 5, May 1999, Pages 793–798

19 The FASEB Journal April 1, 2011

20 Clinical Nutrition June 2014, Volume 33, Issue 3, Pages 448-458

21 Canadian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology March 4, 2015; 93(6)

22 Amino Acids 2016; 48: 791–800

23 Biochemical Pharmacology January 1, 2017; 123: 40-51

25 Medical Hypotheses February 2019; 123: 125-129

26, 28, 33, 34 RayPeat.com Gelatin Stress and Longevity

27 Umzu. Who Is Ray Peat?

29, 30 Nutrients June 2019, 11(6): 1356

31 Examine Glycine

32 J Pharmacol Sci 2012; 118: 145 – 148 (PDF)

35 Am J Physiol 1982 February;242(2):G85-8

36 TheHealthBenefitsOf.com 10 Chicken Feet Health Benefits

37 Anxiety Medication, Taurine

38 Supplements Self Decode Glycine

39 Canadian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology June 17, 2013

Featured image is from Mercola

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***

July 4, 2023 – I took two COVID jabs while studying to be a Catholic priest. Now I’m in a wheelchair.

Julian Young was enrolled as a seminarian in the northeastern United States, that he received two doses of a COVID “vaccine,” and that he is now under medical care for autoimmune disease. 

An autoimmune disease led to me leaving the seminary, and I believe my two COVID jabs are to blame.

Happy in my studies, I decided to do the ‘safe’ thing and get the jab 

It was 2020 when I began my studies and, of course, at this time there was still widespread fear about COVID-19. The “vaccines” were about to be rolled out, and there was a lot of disagreement about whether or not the shots were safe. By the end of my spring semester 2021, like so many others, I unfortunately allowed fear to dictate my decision and decided to do the “safe” thing for my family and get the jab.

The ill effects of this poor decision weren’t immediate, so at first it did not occur to me that there was any correlation, but over the course of the next several months I began to experience inflammation in my lower body that caused pain in my back, especially, making it hard to sit. I figured that I just needed to go to the chiropractor, which helped a little, but the inflammation persisted.

That winter I made the unfortunate decision to get “boosted,” and that is when things really took a turn for the worse. Around that same time, I had injured my foot while running down some steps, and I began to feel inflammation around the site of the injury. To my bafflement, I began experiencing soon after a mirror phenomenon of pain and inflammation in my other foot as well, although I had done nothing to injure it.

I figured that I just needed to see a doctor, and that my feet would heal soon, so I went to a podiatrist who put me in a boot for six weeks and told me I would get better. However, he could not explain why my other foot was experiencing the same pattern of pain. By the end of the six weeks, not only was I not better, but the pain in both of my feet had elevated to an extreme burning and tingling.

At this time I was in still at the seminary, and although I managed to finish the semester, it was very difficult to get around and also to focus on my studies while trying to figure out what was going on with my health.

By the summer of 2022, my health continued to get worse. The inflammation and burning spread up my body, leading me to be relegated to a wheelchair. I didn’t have much success during the summer with doctors, so eventually I was forced to take a medical leave from my studies. It wasn’t until some friends pointed out to me that I had been “vaccinated” soon before the decline of my health that I began to realize the likely connection.

Mercury toxicity, complex regional pain syndrome, POTS 

It has been a year now since I first took my medical leave, and I have had to surrender my status as a seminarian on an indefinite basis. During the course of the past year, it was found that I have mercury toxicity, which of course is a rare thing to have, but — not surprisingly — mercury has since been demonstrated to be in the COVID jabs along with other toxic heavy metals.

I was also diagnosed with complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS), a rare autoimmune disease rooted in dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system, which usually begins with a minor trauma (in my case the foot injury) to which the nervous system, being in a compromised state, has an over-reactive response. This causes the trauma to exacerbate into a full blown inflammatory disease, in many cases spreading to the entire body. This is what has already happened to me. People with CRPS say it feels like they are being burned alive, and I attest that this has unfortunately been my experience, especially during really bad flare-ups.

Additionally, although I am still being tested, one of my doctors strongly believes that I have postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), another debilitating autoimmune disease rooted in autonomic nervous system dysfunction. It affects one’s heart and blood pressure.  NBC News recently did a story on the spike of people being diagnosed with POTS after getting COVID. I have never had COVID, but I wouldn’t put it past the jabs to have the same effect.

I have been to the ER so many times in the past year that I have lost count.  I have seen so many specialists, and yet my life still consists of sitting in my house day after day in crippling pain praying that our Lord would restore me so that I can return to my studies and become His priest. Although I know God can bring good out of my suffering, it is a very heavy burden to me and my family. I have tried a lot of the detox protocols put out by  doctors and researchers trying to help vaccine injured people, and although I have seen some improvements, my development has not been linear, for other aspects of my health have continued to decline, leaving me with a daily struggle to survive.

It is for this reason that I am seeking the help of the LifeSiteNews community so that I may receive the proper treatment to regain my health and resume my vocation. To this end I reached out to LifeSite for help in raising awareness of my story. I was happy when they agreed to help me promote a LifeFunder for my cause as well – it was truly an answer to prayer.

For both of the autoimmune conditions that I suffer with, the allopathic (that is, mainstream) medicine world says there is no cure. Removing the mercury from my body is a step towards health, but my doctor says there is no guarantee that my autonomic nervous system would return to normal function afterwards: my body would still have to be “reset” somehow.

Thank you for taking the time to read my story. I hope you will prayerfully consider lending your support so that I may continue my journey to priesthood.

May God bless you.

In Christ through Mary,

Julian Young

*

Complex Regional Pain Syndrome after COVID-19 Vaccine. Papers Reviewed

  • 2023 May (Hamada et al) – Complex regional pain syndrome type II following severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 vaccination: a case report
  • 2023 Jan (Horisawa et al) – Complex regional pain syndrome after mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccination
  • 2023 Mar (Frikha et al) – Complex regional pain syndrome of the knee after COVID-19 vaccine in an adult patient
  • 2022 Oct (Cho et al) – Post-COVID-19 vaccination arm pain diagnosed as complex regional pain syndrome: A case report

2023 May (Hamada et al) – Complex regional pain syndrome type II following severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 vaccination: a case report

  • 17F year old Japanese girl had COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine
  • Next day she developed difficulty raising the left upper limb and hand edema on the side of the injection
  • 2 days after, she developed pain and edema of left hand
  • 12 days later she presented at hospital due to pain, and she could not move her left thumb. She was treated with ultrasound guided brachial plexus nerve block
  • she was diagnosed with CRPS Type II.
  • She had a total of 3 nerve blocks done.
  • 35 days after, she developed cold allodynia of the left hand (pain when touching something cold)
  • 50 days after her pain resolved but pain would return whenever she touched something cold
  • 111 days later she had worsening pain and a stellate ganglion block was performed. She was not followed after.

2023 Jan (Horisawa et al) – Complex regional pain syndrome after mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccination

  • 17F Japanese girl had 2nd Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine on her left upper arm
  • 2 days later, a bruise appeared on the back of her hand and spread to the entire left hand, which became swollen and caused severe pain
  • 5 days later the bruise moved to the upper arm and even slightest touch caused severe pain.
  • 2 weeks later, bruise began to disappear but pain and swelling persisted.
  • 6 weeks later, the patient visited a pain clinic, where CRPS was diagnosed, and a stellate ganglion block was performed.
  • 2 months after 2nd jab, numbness and involuntary flexion of the right hand and fingers began to appear.
  • 3 months: Though pain and swelling in the left hand decreased three months later, and the patient was able to move the hand, the distal interphalangeal of the left hand remained in a flexed position.
  • 4 months: four months later, involuntary movements with pain in the index finger of the right hand appeared
  • 7 months: She was referred to our department for surgical treatment of this movement disorder seven months after the second inoculation. On examination, there was no swelling of the left hand, and the patient had difficulty extending the distal interphalangeal joints of the fingers, but the range of motion at other joints was restricted
  • Conclusion: highly likely that CRPS was caused by injection trauma in our case.

2023 Mar (Frikha et al) – Complex regional pain syndrome of the knee after COVID-19 vaccine in an adult patient

  • 28M Tunisian man had 2nd Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine
  • 2 weeks later he started having painful swelling of his right knee which persisted for the following 12 months.
  • the pain and disability were so bad, they affected his daily activities and his work was badly compromised
  • he reported a pain of 9 out of 10.
  • On exam, he had mild non-pitting edema with tactile allodynia, extreme restriction of knee joint on active and passive movement and major atrophy of the right muscles
  • Diagnosis: CRPS of the right knee
  • No treatments worked for the pain, and he was treated with extensive and regular physiotherapy, including muscle strengthening and functional training.
  • He had slow partial improvement
  • Theory: causative mechanism of CRPS may be immune hyperactivity to a vaccine constituent supporting an immune-mediated mechanism as the CRPS affected the lower extremity.

2022 Oct (Cho et al) – Post-COVID-19 vaccination arm pain diagnosed as complex regional pain syndrome: A case report

  • The patient presented with acute-onset severe arm pain and swelling following vaccine administration
  • Based on the clinical, electrodiagnostic, and radionuclide three-phase bone scan findings, the patient was diagnosed with postvaccination CRPS.
  • COVID-19 vaccine possibly elicited an immune-mediated inflammatory response to the injected antigen in the patient, who was predisposed to CRPS due to inflammatory immunity.
  • The COVID-19 vaccine elicited an immune-mediated inflammatory response to the injected antigen, resulting in CRPS following COVID-19 vaccination.

My Take… 

Complex Regional Pain Syndrome can be one of the most painful health conditions known to man.

The Frikha paper suggests that this COVID-19 Vaccine Injury is not a local traumatic injury of the arm that was injected, but rather an auto-immune attack on the body, since it attacked the knee.

There are currently 336 cases reported to WHO VigiAccess, so it’s not that rare. Multiply by an under-reporting factor of 100x and consider that many of these people are permanently disabled.

This is another COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Injury of the Immune System to be aware of, and there seems to be no satisfactory cure or treatment.

It affects young people some of whom are permanently disabled after mRNA vaccination.

*

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Dr. William Makis is a Canadian physician with expertise in Radiology, Oncology and Immunology. Governor General’s Medal, University of Toronto Scholar. Author of 100+ peer-reviewed medical publications.

Featured image is from COVID Intel


The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

Reviews

This is an in-depth resource of great interest if it is the wider perspective you are motivated to understand a little better, the author is very knowledgeable about geopolitics and this comes out in the way Covid is contextualized. —Dr. Mike Yeadon

In this war against humanity in which we find ourselves, in this singular, irregular and massive assault against liberty and the goodness of people, Chossudovsky’s book is a rock upon which to sustain our fight. –Dr. Emanuel Garcia

In fifteen concise science-based chapters, Michel traces the false covid pandemic, explaining how a PCR test, producing up to 97% proven false positives, combined with a relentless 24/7 fear campaign, was able to create a worldwide panic-laden “plandemic”; that this plandemic would never have been possible without the infamous DNA-modifying Polymerase Chain Reaction test – which to this day is being pushed on a majority of innocent people who have no clue. His conclusions are evidenced by renown scientists. —Peter Koenig 

Professor Chossudovsky exposes the truth that “there is no causal relationship between the virus and economic variables.” In other words, it was not COVID-19 but, rather, the deliberate implementation of the illogical, scientifically baseless lockdowns that caused the shutdown of the global economy. –David Skripac

A reading of  Chossudovsky’s book provides a comprehensive lesson in how there is a global coup d’état under way called “The Great Reset” that if not resisted and defeated by freedom loving people everywhere will result in a dystopian future not yet imagined. Pass on this free gift from Professor Chossudovsky before it’s too late.  You will not find so much valuable information and analysis in one place. –Edward Curtin

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 FREE COPY! Click here (docsend) and download.

We encourage you to support the eBook project by making a donation through Global Research’s DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page

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“’You’ll own nothing and be happy’? David Webb has gone through the 50-year history of all the legal constructs that have been put in place to technically enable that to happen.”

The derivatives bubble is often estimated to exceed one quadrillion dollars (a quadrillion is 1,000 trillion). The entire GDP of the world is estimated at $105 trillion, or 10% of one quadrillion; and the collective wealth of the world is an estimated $360 trillion.

Clearly, there is not enough collateral anywhere to satisfy all the derivative claims. The majority of derivatives now involve interest rate swaps, and interest rates have shot up. The bubble looks ready to pop.

[Oct 2 interview titled “The Great Taking: Who Really Owns Your Assets?”]

 

Who were the intrepid counterparties signing up to take the other side of these risky derivative bets? Initially, it seems, they were banks – led by four mega-banks, JP Morgan Chase, Citibank, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America. But according to a 2023 book called The Great Taking by veteran hedge fund manager David Rogers Webb, counterparty risk on all of these bets is ultimately assumed by an entity called the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), through its nominee Cede & Co. (See also Greg Morse, “Who Owns America? Cede & DTCC,” and A. Freed, “Who Really Owns Your Money? Part I, The DTCC”).  Cede & Co. is now the owner of record of all of our stocks, bonds, digitized securities, mortgages, and more; and it is seriously under-capitalized, holding capital of only $3.5 billion, clearly not enough to satisfy all the potential derivative claims. Webb thinks this is intentional.

What happens if the DTCC goes bankrupt? Under The  Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA) of 2005, derivatives have “super-priority” in bankruptcy. (The BAPCPA actually protects the banks and derivative claimants rather than consumers; it was the same act that eliminated bankruptcy protection for students.) Derivative claimants don’t even need to go through the bankruptcy court but can simply nab the collateral from the bankrupt estate, leaving nothing for the other secured creditors (including state and local governments) or the banks’ unsecured creditors (including us, the depositors). And in this case the “bankrupt estate” – the holdings of the DTCC/Cede & Co. – includes all of our stocks, bonds, digitized securities, mortgages, and more.

It sounds like conspiracy theory, but it’s all laid out in the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC), tested in precedent, and validated by court rulings. The UCC is a privately-established set of standardized rules for transacting business, which has been ratified by all 50 states and includes key provisions that have been “harmonized” with the laws of other countries in the Western orbit. The UCC makes boring reading and is anything but clear, but Webb has diligently picked through the obscure legalese and demonstrates that the amorphous “they” have it all locked up. They can take everything in one fell swoop, without even going to court. Ideally, we need to get Congress to modify some laws, beginning with the super-priority provisions of the Bankruptcy Law of 2005. Even billionaires, notes Webb, are at risk of losing their holdings; and they have the clout to take action.

About The Great Taking and Its Author

As detailed in the introduction, “David Rogers Webb has deep experience with investigation and analysis within challenging and deceptive environments, including the mergers and acquisitions boom of the 80’s, venture investing, and the public financial markets. He managed hedge funds through the period spanning the extremes of the dot-com bubble and bust, producing a gross return of more than 320% while the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ indices had losses. His clients included some of the largest international institutional investors.”

A lengthy personal preface to the book not only establishes these bona fides but tells an interesting story concerning his family history and the rise and fall of his home city of Cleveland in the Great Depression.

As for what the book is about, Webb summarizes in the introduction:

It is about the taking of collateral (all of it), the end game of the current globally synchronous debt accumulation super cycle. This scheme is being executed by long-planned, intelligent design, the audacity and scope of which is difficult for the mind to encompass. Included are all financial assets and bank deposits, all stocks and bonds; and hence, all underlying property of all public corporations, including all inventories, plant and equipment; land, mineral deposits, inventions and intellectual property. Privately owned personal and real property financed with any amount of debt will likewise be taken, as will the assets of privately owned businesses which have been financed with debt. If even partially successful, this will be the greatest conquest and subjugation in world history.

You might have to read the book to be convinced, but it is not long, is available free on the Net, and is heavily referenced and footnoted. I will try to summarize his main points, but first a look at the derivatives problem and how it got out of hand.

The Derivative Mushroom Cloud

A “financial derivative” is defined as “a security whose value depends on, or is derived from, an underlying asset or assets. The derivative represents a contract between two or more parties and its price fluctuates according to the value of the asset from which it is derived.”

Warren Buffett famously described derivatives as “weapons of financial mass destruction,” but they did not start out that way. Initially they were a form of insurance for farmers to guarantee the price of their forthcoming crops. In a typical futures contract, the miller would pay a fixed price for wheat not yet harvested. The miller assumed the risk that the crops would fail or market prices would fall, while the farmer assumed the risk that prices would rise, limiting his potential profit.

In either case, the farmer actually delivered the product, or so much of it as he produced. The derivatives market exploded when speculators were allowed to bet on the rise or fall of prices, exchange rates, interest rates and other “underlying assets” without actually owning or delivering the “underlying.” Like at a race track, bets could be placed without owning the horse, so there was no limit to the potential number of bets. Speculators could “hedge their bets” by selling short — borrowing and selling stock or other assets they did not actually own. It was a form of counterfeiting that not only diluted the value of the “real” stock but drove down the stock’s price, in many cases driving the company into bankruptcy, so that the short sellers did not have to cover or “deliver” at all (called “naked shorting”). This form of gambling was allowed and encouraged due to a number of regulatory changes, including the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 (CFMA), repealing key portions of the Glass-Steagall Act separating commercial from investment banking; the Bankruptcy Law of 2005, guaranteeing recovery for derivative speculators; and the lifting of the uptick rule, which had allowed short selling only when a stock was going up.

Enter the DTC, the DTCC and Cede & Co.

In exchange-traded derivatives, a third party, called a clearinghouse, ensures that the bets are paid, a role played initially by the bank. And here’s where the UCC and the DTCC come in. The bank takes title in “street name” and pools it with other “fungible” shares. Under the UCC, the purchaser of the stock does not hold title; he has only a “security entitlement”, making him an unsecured creditor. He has a contractual claim to a portion of a pool of shares held in street name, assuming there are any shares left after the secured creditors have swept in. Webb writes:

In the late 1960’s, something called the Banking and Securities Industry Committee (BASIC) had been formed to find a solution to the “paperwork crisis.” It seemed the burdens of handling physical stock certificates had suddenly become too great, so much so, that the New York Stock exchange had suspended trading some days. “Lawmakers” then urged the government to step into the process. The BASIC report recommended changing from processing physical stock certificates to “book-entry” transfers of ownership via computerized entries in a trust company that would hold the underlying certificates “immobilized.”

Thus was established the Depository Trust Company (DTC), which began operations in 1973, after President Nixon decoupled the dollar from gold internationally. The DTC decoupled stock ownership from paper stock certificates. The purchasers who had put up the money became only “beneficial owners” entitled to interest, dividends and voting rights, leaving title of record in the DTC. The Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation(DTCC) was established in 1999 to combine the functions of the DTC and the National Securities Clearing Corporation (NSCC). The DTCC settles most securities transactions in the U.S. Title of record is with DTC’s nominee Cede & Co. Per Wikipedia:

Cede and Company (also known as Cede and Co. or Cede & Co.), shorthand for “certificate depository”, is a specialist United States financial institution that processes transfers of stock certificates on behalf of Depository Trust Company, the central securities depository used by the United States National Market System, which includes the New York Stock Exchange, and Nasdaq.

Cede technically owns most of the publicly issued stock in the United States. Thus, most investors do not themselves hold direct property rights in stock, but rather have contractual rights that are part of a chain of contractual rights involving Cede. Securities held at Depository Trust Company are registered in its nominee name, Cede & Co., and recorded on its books in the name of the brokerage firm through which they were purchased; on the brokerage firm’s books they are assigned to the accounts of their beneficial owners. [Emphasis added.]

Greg Morse notes that the dictionary definition of “cede” is to “relinquish title.” For more on “beneficial ownership,” see the DTCC website here.

“Harmonizing” the Rules

The next step in the decoupling process was to establish “legal certainty” that the “anointed” creditors could take all, by amending the UCC in all 50 states. This was done quietly over many years, without an act of Congress. The key facts, notes Webb, are these:

  • Ownership of securities as property has been replaced with a new legal concept of a “security entitlement”, which is a contractual claim assuring a very weak position if the account provider [bank/clearing agent] becomes insolvent.
  • All securities are held in un-segregated pooled form. Securities used as collateral, and those restricted from such use, are held in the same pool.
  • All account holders, including those who have prohibited use of their securities as collateral, must, by law, receive only a pro-rata share of residual assets.
  • “Re-vindication,” i.e. the taking back of one’s own securities in the event of insolvency, is absolutely prohibited.
  • Account providers may legally borrow pooled securities to collateralize proprietary trading and financing.
  • “Safe Harbor” assures secured creditors priority claim to pooled securities ahead of account holders.
  • The absolute priority claim of secured creditors to pooled client securities has been upheld by the courts.

The next step was to “harmonize” the laws internationally so that there would be no escape, at least in the Western orbit. Webb learned this by personal experience, having moved to Sweden to escape, only to have Swedish law subsequently “harmonized” with the “legal certainty” provisions of the UCC.

“Safe Harbor” in the Bankruptcy Code

The last step was to establish “safe harbor” in the 2005 Bankruptcy Code revisions – meaning “’safe harbor’ for secured creditors against the demands of customers to their own assets.” Webb quotes from law professor Stephen Lubben’s book The Bankruptcy Code Without Safe Harbors

Following the 2005 amendments to the Code, it is hard to envision a derivative that is not subject to special treatment. The safe harbors cover a wide range of contracts that might be considered derivatives, including securities contracts, commodities contracts, forward contracts, repurchase agreements, and, most importantly, swap agreements. …

The safe harbors as currently enacted were promoted by the derivatives industry as necessary measures . . . The systemic risk argument for the safe harbors is based on the belief that the inability to close out a derivative position because of the automatic stay would cause a daisy chain of failure amongst financial institutions. The problem with this argument is that it fails to consider the risks created by the rush to close out positions and demand collateral from distressed firms. Not only does this contribute to the failure of an already weakened financial firm, by fostering a run on the firm, but it also has consequent effects on the markets generally . . . the Code will have to guard against attempts to grab massive amounts of collateral on the eve of a bankruptcy, in a way that is unrelated to the underlying value of the trades being collateralized.

A number of researchers have found that super-priority in bankruptcy for derivatives actually increases rather than decreases risk. See e.g. a National Bureau of Economic Research paper called “Should Derivatives be Privileged in Bankruptcy?” Among other hazards, super-priority has contributed to the explosion in speculative derivatives, threatening the stability of national and global markets. For more on this issue, see my earlier articles here and here.

What to Do?

Webb does not say much about solutions; his goal seems to be to sound the alarm. What can we do to protect our assets? “Probably nothing,” he quoted a knowledgeable expert in a recent webinar. “We just have to stop them.” But he did point out that even the assets of the wealthy are threatened. If the issue can be brought to the attention of Congress, hopefully they can be motivated to revise the laws. Congressional action could include modifying the Bankruptcy Act of 2005 and the UCC, taxing windfall profits, imposing a financial transaction tax, and enforcing the antitrust laws and Constitutional property rights. As for timing, Webb says just the movement in interest rates, from 0.25% to 5.5%, should have collapsed the market already. He thinks it is being held up artificially, while “they” get the necessary systems in place.

Where to save your personal monies? Big derivative banks are risky, and Webb thinks credit unions and smaller banks will go down with the market if there is a general collapse, as happened in the Great Depression. Gold and silver are good but hard to spend on groceries. Keeping some emergency cash on hand is important, and so is growing your own food if you have space for a garden. Short-term Treasuries bought directly from the government at Treasury Direct might be the safest savings option, assuming the government doesn’t wind up in bankruptcy itself.

Meanwhile, we need to design an alternative financial system that is equitable and sustainable. Promising components might include publicly-owned banks, product-backed community cryptocurrencies, a land value tax, and a financial transaction tax.

A neoliberal, financialized economy of the sort we have today produces little and leaves the workers in debt. Goods and services are produced by the “real” economy; finance is just superstructure. Derivatives do not now produce even the security for which they were originally intended. A healthy, enduring economy must produce real things and exchange them fairly for the wages earned by labor.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Web of Debt Blog.

Ellen Brown is an attorney, chair of the Public Banking Institute, and author of thirteen books including Web of DebtThe Public Bank Solution, and Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age. She also co-hosts a radio program on PRN.FM called “It’s Our Money.” Her 400+ blog articles are posted at EllenBrown.com

She is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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According to the Zionist propaganda Hamas is a collection of evil beasts. How do we reconcile this propaganda with the “excellent condition” of the Israeli women and children hostages released by Hamas?  

Despite the Israeli devastation of Gaza and murder of Palestinian women and children, Hamas has obtained a victory of sorts.

Netanyahu’s vicious attack on civilians has exposed the underbelly of the Apartheid Zionist State. It is no longer possible for Israel’s apologists to maintain that “Israel can do no wrong.”

For decades Israel has been slowly but surely squeezing Palestinians out of Palestine. 

The world has tolerated it, in part because the Zionist violence was limited in time and extent and the impossible situation papered over with talk about the “two-state solution.” But this time, the violence is unlimited and has the declared aim of emptying Palestine of Palestinians with Gazans driven into tent cities in Eqypt’s Sinai Desert. It is not another case of emptying one specific village in the West Bank or a limited incursion into Gaza. This time the world is faced with a declared Zionist agenda of genocide.

This makes a problem for the Western governments that pretend to support human rights and to deplore war crimes. It also makes a problem for American evangelicals known as “Christian Zionists.” Genocide is not something that can be reconciled with the teachings of Jesus. The evangelicals will have to decide between worshipping Israel and worshipping Jesus.

A consequence of Washington’s wars for Israel in the Middle East is that Western countries are now the homes of millions of Muslim refugees who take umbrage to the West’s support of Palestinian genocide. This introduces into the Western countries  countervailing power at the street level to the Zionist lobby that focuses on controlling the governments. Western governments now have a new element of instability to manage, and the consequence could be a less one-sided stance toward Zionist Israel.

Not all of Israel is Zionist. Netanyahu has minority support. The outcome could be different for Israel than Netanyahu and his US neoconservative allies intended.

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Paul Craig Roberts is a renowned author and academic, chairman of The Institute for Political Economy where this article was originally published. Dr. Roberts was previously associate editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy during the Reagan Administration. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from AFP

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***

Click here to watch the video

Oct. 13, 2023 at 3:30am (above video) – Firefighter Terra White’s partner collapsed at the wheel while driving an ambulance and almost went off a cliff. 

In this article I present 26 such recent collapses behind the wheel due to a “medical emergency” suffered by the driver and how these stories ended:

Nov. 15, 2023 – Ohio – 38 year old USPS mail Truck driver Andrew Donisi had a medical emergency while driving and crashed his vehicle into a utility pole.

Nov. 10, 2023 – Chicago – Jay Carroll played pickleball, walked to the car, opened the door and collapsed. He had a heart attack and died on the spot.

Nov. 9, 2023 – Reality TV Star 40 year old Brandi Mallory was found dead in her car on Nov. 9, 2023, in the parking lot of a strip mall after eating at Chipotle the previous day. 

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Nov. 5, 2023 – Granbury, TX – Tony Monroe had a medical episode while driving. He simply pulled over and died.

Oct. 25, 2023 – 57 year old Carlton Campbell, Principal at Hallandale Beach K-8 had a medical emergency behind the wheel, crashed his car & died on Oct. 25, 2023.

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Oct. 22, 2023 – Post Falls, ID – 36 year old Nicholas McDaniel, Post Falls Police Officer was found slumped over in his patrol car after he failed to reply to a “status check” and died suddenly on Oct. 22, 2023.

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Oct. 18, 2023 – Dwight Allan Twilley was driving alone when he suffered a massive stroke, lost control of his car and crashed into a tree, dying of brain hemorrhage on Oct. 18, 2023. He mocked Ivermectin and posted: “time to quit whining & get vaccinated.”

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Oct. 8, 2023 – Italy – 40 year old Francesco Forner had a cardiac arrest while driving. “His lifeless body and stationary car attracted attention of passing motorists.”

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Sep. 17, 2023 – Palermo, Italy – 34 year old bricklayer had a “sudden illness” behind the wheel of his car, got out of his car, collapsed and died suddenly.

Click here to read the full article.

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On November 24, the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) national board leadership made public the full text of a tentative contract agreement.

The union had been on strike for 118 days, since July 14, one of the longest such actions in many decades.

Preceding SAG-AFTRA, the Writers Guild of America (WGA), had walked out on May 2 when extended negotiations failed to prevent a strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). The joint labor action involved more than 171,000 union members impacting the economy and social life of millions throughout the United States.

WGA ended its strike on September 27 and opened the ratification process on October 2. Just one week later, October 9, the tentative agreement was approved overwhelmingly.

Nonetheless, they could not fully return to work with approximately 160,000 screen actors and other artists still on strike. The WGA and SAG-AFTRA joined hundreds of thousands of other organized workers in the United States during 2023 who either threatened to strike or did withhold their labor due to unacceptable conditions of employment.

Meridith Stiehm, the President West of the WGA, issued a statement saying:

“Through solidarity and determination, we have ratified a contract with meaningful gains and protections for writers in every sector of our combined membership. Together we were able to accomplish what many said was impossible only six months ago.” 

Debate Over the Terms of the Proposed Contract

Even prior to the release of the entire 128-page document which constituted the tentative agreement between SAG-AFTRA and the AMPTP, disagreements had surfaced over key elements of the dispute between the union members and the studios. On top of the list is the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) by the owners in the process of generating, producing and distributing of television and film content. WGA and SAF-AFTRA viewed the unrestricted utilization of AI as a means to further the exploitation of writers, actors and announcers, potentially replacing the need for thousands of jobs which previously went to union members.

In addition, there is the major issue of fair compensation from streaming services which were accused of not being forthright in reporting their statistics for the number of viewers. Under previous contracts, residuals were paid for reruns aired over the years.

WGA and SAG-AFTRA picketers (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)

Today with numerous streaming platforms such as Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, among others, the WGA in their negotiations, demanded a new system of calculating residuals. However, it appears that the public sharing of data related to viewership will not be implemented. The data available from the corporations will only be available for six people to peruse. Even if union members demand an audit of the figures, the examiners will be required to sign a confidentiality agreement. See this.

As it relates to the tentative agreement involving SAG-AFTRA and AMPTP there are two major differences which have surfaced within the leadership. The president and chief negotiator of SAG-AFTRA, Fran Drescher and Duncan Crabtree-Ireland respectively, have encouraged the membership to accept the agreement saying it provides substantial gains over conditions which were prevailing prior to the strike.

Crabtree-Ireland wrote in a cover letter sent out to members for the ratification process:

“These contracts achieve more than $1 billion in NEW compensation and benefit plan funding (including an additional $317.2 million to the benefit plans). The contracts establish lengthy and detailed AI guardrails that didn’t exist before and do protect you as we meet the challenge of this new technology, hair and makeup equity, significantly increased background coverage, outsized streaming residuals, a new streaming success fund, and so much more. These gains are only possible because of your sacrifice, solidarity and tenacity over the 118 days of the strike and are assured if you vote to ratify the agreement.” 

If approved, the Memorandum of Agreement will extend from November 9, the day after the negotiating team and national board accepted the offer of the owners, until June 30, 2026. Union members have up until December 5 to cast their votes.

Other voices have also been heard which do not approve of the proposed contract. Award-winning actor Matthew Modine, a national board member of SAG-AFTRA, publicly announced through an open letter that he would not be voting in favor of the contract.

Modine wrote in part that:

“Happy holiday season. There’s so much to be grateful for. The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Radio and Television Artists (SAG-AFTRA) can be thankful that the prolonged strike is over. We appreciate the negotiation committee and their attempt to arrive at a fair and equitable deal. While there are improvements and gains, I will not vote to ratify the contract. Members should vote their conscience. I cannot endorse a contract that compromises the independence and financial futures of the performers. As a National Board Member, it’s morally mandatory to stand beside and provide protection for fellow members. Especially those beginning their careers, those unable to defend themselves, and in this case, their identities, their voices, and their physicality, from being taken away by a technology that no one fully understands. It demands a warning to members that says do not consent to the terms of employment defined by the terms within this contract. Consenting to these terms is a pre-negotiation that will take control of the financial and creative future of every working member of SAG-AFTRA. Consent is surrender.” 

Modine argues that the federal government does not have a clear policy regulating the use of AI. Therefore, under these circumstances there needs to be definitive guidelines for people working in the entertainment industry.

Economic Impact of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA Strikes

With more than 171,000 writers and actors on strike between May and November, mainly in the state of California, there were huge financial losses. Although some analysts suggested that the lack of production for films and television saved cash for the studios, this cannot be viewed in light of the potential profits from ticket revenues and advertising which did not materialize.

When 171,000 people are not reporting to work other sectors of the economy will also lose jobs and profits. The timing of the strikes came as many businesses were attempting to recover from the downturn which occurred during the height of the pandemic in 2020-2021.

The Hollywood Reporter emphasized in the aftermath of the November 8 announcement that SAG-AFTRA had reached a tentative agreement:

“The strikes put more than 100,000 actors and writers out of work, but all the other workers that were sidelined may be even more consequential in what turned out to be a labor standoff costing billions. The list includes directors, editors, grips, makeup artists, props suppliers and location managers, among dozens of other professions that make a production go round.” 

Moreover, the end of the strikes by WGA and SAG-AFTRA does not mean that production will immediately resume. Shifts in scheduling for television programs and films will mean that there will be far less episodes and movies over the next several months until the summer of 2024.

What the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strike confirmed was that the working class in the U.S. is ready to take industrial action in response to the burgeoning economic crises of the last two decades. The Great Recession of 2007-2009 wiped out millions of jobs while creating the conditions for huge concessions on the part of organized and unorganized labor.

Tens of millions of working families have lost their homes and rental units since the Great Recession and the later pandemic, illustrating the lack of guarantees for the masses regarding the necessities of modern life within capitalist society. Although military spending continues to skyrocket along with megaprofits for multi-national corporations and financial institutions, the proletariat and nationally oppressed are expected by the ruling class to accept austerity and even deeper impoverishment.

The militancy of the trade union movement must find a political expression where the working class and the oppressed can speak in their own names putting forward demands based solely upon their own interests. This imperative will become even more obvious in light of the 2024 national elections where both the Democratic and Republican parties will inevitably fail to address the important problems which can resolve the social aspirations of the majority of people in the U.S.

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

Featured image is from Abayomi Azikiwe

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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[We repost this article first published in December 2021.]

*** 

 

After decades of repression, the resistance movement today gives the Palestinian national struggle for liberation a new direction. But such resistance has never come from the Palestinian Authority (PA), whose reason for existing at all is to accommodate Israel’s priorities of security and trade.

The “peace process” the PA managed to sell to the young generation of Palestinians in the West Bank has proven to be the mirage it’s always been, a mirage that Yasser Arafat and King Hussein of Jordan were fully cognizant of. The latter, for example, is said to have mused at the signing of the Oslo agreement: “If Israel were serious about withdrawing from the West Bank, it would have returned it to me and not to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).”

In a 2017 piece in The Algemeiner titled “Israel Cannot Withdraw From the West Bank,” Gershon Hacohen emphasized the writing on the wall — true even before Israel built the wall:

The greatest threat to Israel’s existence is neither Shiite militias on the Golan border, nor the Iranian nuclear threat, which are both of physical and military nature.

Instead, it is the threat of a Palestinian state within the Clinton parameters — which would entail dividing Jerusalem and withdrawing to the 1967 lines — that most endangers Israel.

As countless political analysts have pointed out repeatedly, the PA is a security treasure for Israel. As long as it exists, it carries all the cost of Israel’s occupation. The PA’s security configurations in relation with its national, regional, and international security partners have always been highly problematic. The neoliberal politics and aid from the US and the EU continue to entrench the illusory promise of self-determination.

Only resistance in all its forms is likely to lead Palestinians out of the political maze into which the PA has boxed them. Since they walked into that maze, many are still blind-folded, but many others, especially among the young, are clear eyed with no illusions any more of liberal state-building or economic development in the occupied West Bank.

The maze is still dark, dank and foul. Consider, for example, yesterday’s report in Al Jazeera on “the financial crisis” in the occupied territories described as “the worst” since the PA’s establishment in 1993. It’s the same old story exacerbated by the pandemic and recent US politics: “Donor aid and Israel’s withholding of vital tax funds are squeezing the PA’s already decimated budget.” One public employee is quoted as saying: “Until now, nobody knows whether we will get paid or not, or if we’ll get our salaries in full or only 75 percent of it.”

Headlines such as the above in Al Jazeera yesterday were recurrent when I was in the West Bank in 2006 after Hamas took power and formed a Palestinian unity government and the Bush Administration, along with its Quartet partners and Israel, cut off contact with and halted assistance to the PA.

I used to marvel how the thousands of families dependent on public money managed to cope. Someone explained to me that almost every such family had members working abroad who helped their relatives. Some employees moonlighted. Women sold their gold jewelry, the traditional dowry Palestinian brides get upon marriage. The school and health systems faltered but continued to function.

At the time, Congress passed P.L. 109–446, the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act of 2006, to tighten existing restrictions on aid to the Palestinians. In 2007, Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen introduced H.R. 1856, which further restricted contact with and assistance to the PA.

You may recall that the Biden administration at first accepted the PA’s decision to hold elections in April, elections in which all Palestinian political parties were slated to take part. However, pressured by Israel, the Biden administration reversed its position and prevailed on Abbas to cancel the elections. The reason for the reversal on the part of the PA was economic: Hamas in a unitary Palestinian government would trigger US laws that would de-fund the Palestinian Authority.

Economist Anas Iqtait, in Chapter 11 of the recent book Political Economy of Palestine, makes the case that readily available funds, in the form of foreign aid and clearance revenue to the PA have “relieved it of constructing an authentic contract with its populace and widened the gap between its senior employees and rest of society.”

In the light of the above economic morass, it’s fair to wonder how the PA could possibly find the wherewithal to resist. The answer to this question necessitates a critical understanding of the political economy that “turns on the colonial question” and on the reality of the existence of a single apartheid Israeli state in Palestine from the river to the sea.

Through such understanding and organizing, I believe it is possible to replace the PA with a political system that embraces solidarity with popular struggles in Palestine and transforms itself into a force for social, economic, and political change. I believe that the PA, as a compromised and corrupt agent for the current horrific status quo in Palestine, is a huge stumbling block for any political or material progress. It is the reason why mountains of evidence as well as thousands of Palestinian prisoners and martyrs who sacrificed their lives so that other Palestinians may live have failed fundamentally to improve conditions for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Palestinians have been collectively weakened by the complicity and cowardice of the PA and its reliance on the mediation of the US. The resistance movement has still not fully recovered. Only now are movements like Masar Badil beginning to organize how Palestinians could collectively resist Israel’s colonization and apartheid, mapping out an important corrective to the many defeatists who discuss Palestine today as though the existing status quo were the last word in the matter.

The need for a strong resistance movement that targets the PA and not just Israel is crucial for the liberation of Palestine. At the very least, activists must shame and pressure the PA for its sins as much or even more so than they are pressuring Israel for its crimes. Criticizing the PA and holding it accountable is not anti-Palestinian; it is patriotic and as much a tenet of the resistance movement as criticizing apartheid Israel is.

Palestinian resistance expresses itself in many forms, collective and individual. Although individual actions, such as the continuous and relentless exposure of Israel’s crimes on social media or the production of resistance art forms often goes unquantified, it is, nevertheless, very powerful and can be credited with debunking Israel’s “narrative.”

On Facebook, there exist no Groups or Pages I know of that are publicly critical of the PA or make popular demands of it. On the other hand, such Pages against Israel proliferate. That is why I have started a Page called “Sins of the Palestinian Authority” — not to equate the crimes of the PA with the crimes of the settler-colonial Jewish Zionist entity, but rather to highlight the problematic nature of a structure called “Authority” that uses whatever such authority it is permitted to have in order to impede liberation and worsen Israel’s ongoing dispossession of the Palestinian people. About the Page:

This Group is committed to solidarity with the Palestinian resistance and with the liberation of the land and people of Palestine, to achieve victory from the river to the sea.

The Palestinian Authority today has the largest per-capita police force in the world. And yet, it uses this force to safeguard Israel’s security instead of safeguarding the Palestinian resistance to Israel’s apartheid and occupation. This group is meant to expose the failings of the Palestinian system of governance, which is built on the defunct “peace process,” as well as the Palestinian elite and the powers, Arab and Western, who continue to preach and implement the “road map” of “normalizing” this defunct system.

Palestinian resistance points to a hopeful future, whereas the PA continues to be nothing but bad news for Palestine’s liberation struggle and national aspirations.

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Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem and whose mother’s side of the family is from Ijzim, south of Haifa. She is an activist, researcher and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank.

She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Only resistance in all its forms is likely to lead Palestinians out of the political maze into which the PA has boxed them. (Source: Rima Najjar)

Unspoken Objective: Israel Wants to Confiscate Gaza’s Offshore Gas Reserves Which Belong to Palestine

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, Ben Samuels, and Amir Tibon, November 26, 2023

Netanyahu’s October 2023 declaration of war against 2.3 million people of the Gaza Strip is a continuation of its 2008-2009 invasion of Gaza under “Operation Cast Lead.”  The underlying objective is the outright military occupation of Gaza by Israel’s IDF forces and the expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland. 

Long COVID Propaganda and Fraud: It’s Time to Push Back on Lies and Help Those Suffering from Spikeopathy

By Dr. William Makis, November 26, 2023

In the last few weeks, Twitter has tweaked its algorithm to push LONG COVID Propaganda. I now see 100s of posts from 3x-6x COVID-19 Vaccinated people who believe they’re suffering from “Long COVID”. Let’s address the bogus Propaganda and see how “Long COVID” sufferers can be helped. 

The WHO Pandemic Treaty and Amendments to the International Health Regulations: Enabling a Global Health Dictatorship

By Paul Anthony Taylor, November 26, 2023

Intended to form part of international law, preparations for the creation of a World Health Organization (WHO) pandemic treaty began in 2001. Far from strengthening the prevention of, preparedness for, and response to future pandemics as the latest draft of the text claims, its implementation could severely undermine democracy by limiting the ability of national parliaments to make crucial healthcare decisions in the best interests of their citizens.

In this Truce, the Star of David Is Akin to a Swastika

By Rima Najjar, November 26, 2023

Even though the airwaves have long been agog with the voices of the Israeli government, the US and other so-called leaders of the free world about the war on Gaza, the leaders of Hamas and the rest of the Islamic resistance, dubbed “terrorists” in a preemptive Israeli-US propaganda campaign designed to legitimize their extraction by firepower, have managed to get their voices heard.

Israeli Ministry of Intelligence: Let’s Deport Palestinians to the Sinai Desert. “Erase the Palestinian Territories”

By Manlio Dinucci, November 26, 2023

The Israeli Intelligence Ministry-which oversees the operation of the Mossad and Shin Bet (the external and internal intelligence services) under the direction of the prime minister-recommends the forced and permanent relocation of the entire Palestinian population of Gaza to Egypt’s Sinai desert peninsula.

Three Presidents Who Made Thanksgiving a National Holiday — And What They Were Thankful For

By Ellen Brown, November 26, 2023

On October 3, 1789, George Washington declared the first federal Thanksgiving holiday. In 1863, Abraham Lincoln made it an annual federal holiday. And in 1941, Franklin Roosevelt signed a bill setting the date at the fourth Thursday of every November. 

How to Take Down the Billionaires. Form Independent Communities

By Emanuel Pastreich, November 26, 2023

Our front against corporate fascism cannot be a weekend hobby for the well-to-do. It must be a 24 hours a day effort that is supported at every step by our independent communities. At the core of this movement will stand a network of 100% economically independent, intellectually independent and self-sufficient communities.

Marching for Israel? American and Israeli War Criminals Celebrate Together

By Philip Giraldi, November 26, 2023

For those who missed it or chose to ignore it, there was a large demonstration in Washington on Tuesday the 14th dubbed the “March for Israel” with many posters and signs featuring “Israel We Stand With You.” I have no big problem with Americans “standing with Israel” as long as they go over to Israel to do it and in some cases at least put their own lives at risk in so doing, but that is not the way they operate.

NATO’s Proposed “Military Schengen” Is a Thinly Disguised German Power Play Over Poland

By Andrew Korybko, November 26, 2023

As has traditionally been the case throughout history, Polish sovereignty is once again in the process of being sacrificed as part of the Great Powers’ games, but this time its borders will remain intact even though the country is poised to functionally become a German vassal in the coming future.

Israel Admits It Killed Its Own at Nova Music Festival

By The Cradle, November 26, 2023

An Israeli police investigation into the Hamas attack on the Nova music festival near the Gaza border on 7 October revealed that an Israeli attack helicopter killed some of the attendees, Haaretz reported on 18 November. 

O regime de Kiev tenta impedir fugas na fronteira da Transcarpátia.

November 26th, 2023 by Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

A Ucrânia está a ter dificuldade em convencer os seus cidadãos a permanecer no país. De acordo com um relatório recente, os soldados do regime estão a concentrar os seus esforços em impedir que os cidadãos deixem o território ucraniano na fronteira Transcarpátia. O caso mostra claramente como os cidadãos ucranianos estão insatisfeitos com a situação do país e não apoiam a guerra com a Rússia, tentando fugir às obrigações militares.

Os funcionários do serviço de fronteira ucraniano estão localizados na região da Transcarpátia tentando controlar o grande fluxo de cidadãos ucranianos que tentam atravessar todos os dias para evitar o recrutamento. Muitos cidadãos ucranianos querem entrar nos países vizinhos, como a Hungria, a Polónia e a Romênia, pois acreditam que esta é a única forma de salvar as suas vidas das consequências devastadoras do conflito.

Incapazes de convencer os seus compatriotas a lutar na guerra, os soldados ucranianos estão a usar métodos ilegais e anti-humanitários para evitar fugas. Realizam-se verdadeiras operações militares na região e há até utilização de minas terrestres na fronteira, demonstrando a intenção de ferir ou matar quem tenta entrar nos países vizinhos. Os raptos de cidadãos locais para recrutamento forçado também se tornaram comuns.

É também importante lembrar que a região Transcarpátia é alvo repetido das práticas de limpeza étnica de Kiev. Sendo uma região de maioria de etnia húngara, a Transcarpátia tornou-se uma espécie de “Donbass Ocidental” na Ucrânia. Um processo de genocídio contra a população local tem sido implementado de forma cada vez mais aberta e pública nos últimos anos.

Este genocídio acontece tanto a nível cultural como físico. As escolas húngaras foram fechadas e a língua nativa banida dos documentos oficiais. Paralelamente, os húngaros étnicos são recrutados em massa e levados sem formação adequada e mal equipados para as linhas da frente, onde se tornam alvos fáceis para a artilharia russa e morrem em grande número. Kiev está a aproveitar a sua lei marcial para utilizar cidadãos étnicos não ucranianos como bucha de canhão na guerra de agressão da OTAN contra a Rússia, e atualmente parece haver claramente um foco na utilização da situação para acelerar a limpeza étnica na Transcarpátia

É possível compreender as práticas do regime neonazista lembrando sua principal inspiração política, que é a Alemanha de Hitler. Durante a guerra, a Alemanha nazista implementou a chamada “Volkssturm”, uma medida de recrutamento em massa com recrutamento forçado para formar uma grande milícia nacional. Na Ucrânia, é exatamente isso que está a ser feito, dando prioridade aos grupos étnicos que o governo Zelensky quer eliminar o mais rapidamente possível, como os húngaros.

Na Transcarpátia estão a ser criadas unidades de milícias denominadas “centros de resistência nacional”, onde, para além do recrutamento forçado de cidadãos locais, também são realizadas operações de sabotagem contra qualquer tipo de resistência do povo húngaro. Os protestos pacíficos são rapidamente reprimidos e os dados de ativistas anti-guerra locais são enviados para a inteligência ucraniana para sofrerem represálias. Existe um objetivo claro por parte do regime de eliminar qualquer tipo de “ameaça húngara” na Transcarpátia, razão pela qual estas práticas ilegais estão a tornar-se gradualmente frequentes.

Estes fatos mostram que os russos sempre tiveram razão nas suas alegações. O atual governo ucraniano é na verdade uma junta neonazista que odeia e persegue as minorias étnicas. Kiev não respeita o povo húngaro e o seu direito à autodeterminação, da mesma forma que nunca respeitou os russos do Donbass, tendo sempre promovido atos violentos contra a população local. O racismo, a xenofobia e o ultranacionalismo são uma parte vital da ideologia que se tornou hegemônica na Ucrânia em 2014, razão pela qual os crimes contra cidadãos ucranianos não étnicos são recorrentes.

No mesmo sentido, é evidente que os cidadãos locais estão cansados ​​de viver sob o terror da guerra e querem deixar o país o mais rapidamente possível. Não há nenhuma motivação patriótica que convença os ucranianos a permanecer no país, simplesmente porque parece cada vez mais claro que Kiev não está a lutar pelo seu próprio povo ou território, mas por interesses estrangeiros que de forma alguma beneficiam a população local. Esta consciência está a levar muitos jovens em idade militar a fugir do país através da fronteira na Transcarpátia. Kiev reage usando métodos violentos desnecessários, mas o caminho correto a se seguir deveria ser outro.

Em vez de forçar os seus cidadãos a lutar, a Ucrânia deveria mudar as suas políticas e adotar uma postura humanitária e soberana, deixando de servir como representante e deixando os seus cidadãos livres de escolher se querem ou não cumprir o serviço militar. O problema é que estas propostas de respeito pela humanidade e pela democracia são contraditórias com a ideologia hegemónica neonazista na Ucrânia de hoje..

Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

 

 

Artigo em inglês :

Mass Migration, Depopulation. “Ukrainians are Fleeing Ukraine”. Kiev Regime Trying to “Prevent Escapes” on the Western Transcarpathian Border 

https://infobrics.org/post/39914

Artigo em francês :

Migration à grande échelle, dépeuplement. « Les Ukrainiens s’enfuient de l’Ukraine ». Le régime de Kiev tente « d’empêcher les évasions » à la frontière occidentale de la Transcarpathie

 

Imagem : InfoBrics

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Lucas Leiroz, jornalista, pesquisador do Center for Geostrategic Studies, consultor geopolítico.

Você pode seguir Lucas Leiroz em: https://t.me/lucasleiroz e https://twitter.com/leiroz_lucas

 

 

 

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***

In the last few weeks, Twitter has tweaked its algorithm to push LONG COVID Propaganda. I now see 100s of posts from 3x-6x COVID-19 Vaccinated people who believe they’re suffering from “Long COVID”.

Let’s address the bogus Propaganda and see how “Long COVID” sufferers can be helped. 

Source of Long COVID Propaganda (CDC): 

  • The graphic above comes from CDC Website, dated May 24, 2022 (source)
  • CDC claims 20% of US Adults 18+ may be suffering from “Long COVID”
  • “26 conditions often attributable to post-COVID”
  • But what is the evidence for it?

Here is the CDC “Long COVID” Propaganda compared to real UK Government Disability Data:

Where’s the “Long COVID”? It’s in the 2020 Graphs When COVID-19 Was at Its Worst

  • 2020 had the worst waves of SARS-CoV-2
  • CDC defines “LONG COVID” as: “at least 4 weeks after infection is the start of when Long COVID could first be identified.”
  • We should see “Long COVID” cases accumulate in large numbers throughout most of 2020, but we see no such thing.
  • The most significant increase in disabilities in 2020 was in the “respiratory” category with a 24% increase.
  • This makes sense for a respiratory virus with long term sequelae such as pulmonary fibrosis and scarring.
  • There is also a modest but significant increase in hematological, kidney and cardiovascular disabilities in 2020 on the order of 17%, 18% and 13%.
  • These increases in disability are real and significant.
  • True Long COVID is a consequence of corrupt health officials and politicians blocking access to Early Treatments for COVID-19. For a small percentage of vulnerable individuals, this resulted in prolonged sequelae (spike protein damage to tissues and organs).
By end of 2022, the disability numbers look like this:
  • Neurological +107% (2020 was +7%)
  • Cardiovascular +121% (2020 was +13%)
  • Respiratory +94% (2020 was +24%)
  • Hematological +522% (2020 was +17%)
  • Musculoskeletal +93% (2020 was 0%)
  • Kidney +143% (2020 was +18%)
What accounts for this astronomical increase?
  • COVID-19 Vaccines rolled out starting Dec. 8, 2020
  • SARS-CoV-2 waves became progressively milder.
  • All the evidence suggests that the increase in disabilities in 2021 and 2022 is almost entirely due to COVID-19 Vaccines

Treating Spikeopathy: New Research

  • Spike protein from both SARS-CoV2 infection and COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine is TOXIC.
  • Texas Cardiologist Dr.Peter McCullough is one of the few doctors in the world publishing research on helping those suffering from “Long COVID” or Spikeopathy
  • Dr. McCullough’s Protocol is an elegant approach to “Spikeopathy” and giving your body a chance to break down some spike protein and start to get the tissue damage under control.
  • Breaking down blood clots is a key benefit.

From Nov.21, 2023 (Hulscher et al):

Outlining a Broader Therapeutic Approach

Over time, I have developed my own approach to Spikeopathy and I’ve written several Substack articles on some of these components.

1. Breaking down Spike Protein

2. Blocking Spike Protein

3. Anti-oxidant

  • NAC (N-Acetyl Cysteine)
  • Vitamin C

4. Immune Support

  • Vitamin D
  • Melatonin
  • Zinc, Selenium
  • Vitamin B Complex (Niacin)

5. Anti-Cancer protection

  • Ivermectin, Melatonin, Quercetin, Olive Leaf, Curcumin

This is a very rough and broad outline and I will shape it further over time.

My Take… 

I believe that 90-95% of “Long COVID” sufferers (who have had COVID-19 Vaccines) have COVID-19 Vaccine Injury due to Spikeopathy.

Those who had some “Long COVID” symptoms and then took COVID-19 Vaccines, have had additional Spike protein injury to their body.

The distinction matters, because Long COVID sufferers are usually gaslit and lied to by their doctors and they don’t know where to even start when it comes to treating not only symptoms but the underlying cause (long term spike protein production).

Those, who for example discover Ivermectin or NAC, don’t realize that there is a much broader treatment approach that must be undertaken, as each of these Spikeopathy treatment modalities on their own, are rarely sufficient to address the injuries entirely or bring about major improvement.

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Dr. William Makis is a Canadian physician with expertise in Radiology, Oncology and Immunology. Governor General’s Medal, University of Toronto Scholar. Author of 100+ peer-reviewed medical publications.

Featured image is from Mercola


The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

Reviews

This is an in-depth resource of great interest if it is the wider perspective you are motivated to understand a little better, the author is very knowledgeable about geopolitics and this comes out in the way Covid is contextualized. —Dr. Mike Yeadon

In this war against humanity in which we find ourselves, in this singular, irregular and massive assault against liberty and the goodness of people, Chossudovsky’s book is a rock upon which to sustain our fight. –Dr. Emanuel Garcia

In fifteen concise science-based chapters, Michel traces the false covid pandemic, explaining how a PCR test, producing up to 97% proven false positives, combined with a relentless 24/7 fear campaign, was able to create a worldwide panic-laden “plandemic”; that this plandemic would never have been possible without the infamous DNA-modifying Polymerase Chain Reaction test – which to this day is being pushed on a majority of innocent people who have no clue. His conclusions are evidenced by renown scientists. —Peter Koenig 

Professor Chossudovsky exposes the truth that “there is no causal relationship between the virus and economic variables.” In other words, it was not COVID-19 but, rather, the deliberate implementation of the illogical, scientifically baseless lockdowns that caused the shutdown of the global economy. –David Skripac

A reading of  Chossudovsky’s book provides a comprehensive lesson in how there is a global coup d’état under way called “The Great Reset” that if not resisted and defeated by freedom loving people everywhere will result in a dystopian future not yet imagined. Pass on this free gift from Professor Chossudovsky before it’s too late.  You will not find so much valuable information and analysis in one place. –Edward Curtin

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 FREE COPY! Click here (docsend) and download.

We encourage you to support the eBook project by making a donation through Global Research’s DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page

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 Introduction

According to Haaretz (See Full Report by Ben Samuels and Amir Tibon below): 

Amos Hochstein, U.S. President Joe Biden’s energy security advisor, is currently visiting Israel to discuss preventing a second front from opening between Israel and Lebanon amid ongoing clashes with Hezbollah, as well as potential economic revitalization plans for Gaza centered around undeveloped offshore natural gas fields.

Biden’s Envoy Hochstein “was most recently in Bahrain, where he discussed the opportunity to develop offshore gas fields on behalf of the Palestinians as part of plans for post-war Gaza.”

“Israel gave preliminary approval for the development of a gas field off Gaza’s coast in June, stressing it would require security coordination with both the PA and Egypt. The Gaza Marine field, nearly 20 miles off Gaza’s coast, has remained undeveloped despite holding an estimated 1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. This total is hypothetically much more than needed to power the Palestinian territories, and some of it could be potentially exported.”  Haaretz)

There is More than Meets the Eye.

The Objective is “Not On Behalf of Palestinians” Quite the Opposite.

Israel Wants to Confiscate Gaza’s Offshore Gas Reserves Which Belong to Palestine

Netanyahu’s October 2023 declaration of war against 2.3 million people of the Gaza Strip is a continuation of its 2008-2009 invasion of Gaza under “Operation Cast Lead.”  The underlying objective is the outright military occupation of Gaza by Israel’s IDF forces and the expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland. 

There are powerful financial interests which stand to benefit from Israel’s criminal undertaking (Genocide) directed against Gaza.  The ultimate objective is not only to exclude Palestinians from their homeland, it consists in confiscating the multi-billion dollar Gaza offshore Natural Gas reserves, namely those pertaining to the BG (BG Group) in 1999, as well the Levant discoveries of 2013. 

This is what is contemplated. Outright confiscation with the complicity of Egypt 

Egypt-Israel “Secret Bilateral Talks” 

In 2021-22, Egypt and Israel were involved in “secret bilateral talks” regarding “the extraction of natural gas off the coast of the Gaza Strip.

“Egypt succeeded in persuading Israel to start extracting natural gas off the coast of the Gaza Strip, after several months of secret bilateral talks.

This development … comes after years of Israeli objections to extract natural gas off the coast of Gaza on [alleged] security grounds, … 

British Gas (BG Group) has also been dealing with the Tel Aviv government.

What is significant is that the civilian arm of the Hamas Gaza government has been bypassed in regards to exploration and development rights over the gas fields:

The field, which lies about 30 kilometers (19 miles) west of the Gaza coast, was discovered in 2000 by British Gas (currently BG Group) and is estimated to contain more than 1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

The official in the Egyptian intelligence service told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, “An Egyptian economic and security delegation discussed with the Israeli side for several months the issue of allowing the extraction of natural gas off the coast of Gaza. …Al-Monitor, October 22, 2022

A Memorandum of Understanding was signed between Egypt and Israel, which had the rubber-stamp of the Palestinian National Authority (PA):

“The Egyptian official explained that Israel required the start of practical measures to extract gas from the Gaza fields at the beginning of 2024, to ensure its own security. (Al-Monitor, October 22, 2022

The occupation of Gaza is intent upon confiscating Palestine’s maritime gas reserves, starting in early 2024, as outlined in the Secret bilateral Agreement between Egypt and Israel. 

This initiative will NOT “Revitalize the Palestinian Economy” as outlined in the article below, 

Unless Palestinians take full control over offshore gas resources that belong to the State of Palestine, and which Israel wants to confiscate with the support of the Biden Administration.

Egypt is in on the game 

Cairo is complicit with total disregard for the rights of Palestinians.

It’s a criminal undertaking.

Egypt will establish refugee camps in the Sinai desert in coordination with Israel and the U.S., in exchange for a token participation in the exploitation of Gaza’s maritime, which are worth billions and billions of dollars.

For more analysis, see the following articles,

.

Video: “Wiping Gaza Off The Map”: Big Money Agenda. Confiscating Palestine’s Maritime Natural Gas Reserves

By Felicity Arbuthnot and Prof Michel Chossudovsky, November 26,

 

War and Natural Gas: The Israeli Invasion and Gaza’s Offshore Gas Fields

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, October 21, 2023

 

 

Michel Chossudovsky, November 26, 2023

 

***

 

U.S. to Push Israel on Allowing Gaza Offshore Gas Reserves

to Revitalize Palestinian Economy

by Ben Samuels and Amir Tibon 

Haaretz, November 20, 2023

Amos Hochstein, U.S. President Joe Biden’s energy security advisor, is currently visiting Israel to discuss preventing a second front from opening between Israel and Lebanon amid ongoing clashes with Hezbollah, as well as potential economic revitalization plans for Gaza centered around undeveloped offshore natural gas fields. 

“While in Israel, Hochstein will emphasize that restoring calm along Israel’s northern border is of utmost importance to the United States and it should be a top priority for both Israel and Lebanon,” a U.S. official told Reuters.

He has been “backbriefing” Israeli officials on his meetings in Lebanon, according to U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby.

“We don’t want to see this war escalate or widen, we certainly don’t believe it’s in anybody’s interest – certainly not the Israeli people,” Kirby said. 

Hochstein was most recently in Bahrain, where he discussed the opportunity to develop offshore gas fields on behalf of the Palestinians as part of plans for post-war Gaza.

Israel gave preliminary approval for the development of a gas field off Gaza’s coast in June, stressing it would require security coordination with both the PA and Egypt. The Gaza Marine field, nearly 20 miles off Gaza’s coast, has remained undeveloped despite holding an estimated 1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. This total is hypothetically much more than needed to power the Palestinian territories, and some of it could be potentially exported.

“There is an opportunity here to develop the gas fields in offshore Gaza, on behalf of the Palestinians,” Hochstein told The National, adding “as soon as we get to the day after and this horrible war ends, there are companies willing to develop those fields”.

“We shouldn’t exaggerate its potential, but it can absolutely be a revenue stream for a Palestinian government, and to ensure there is an independent energy system for Palestine,” he continued, adding that there is “clear mechanism that we have developed, that would pose no threat and would maximize the effectiveness for the Palestinian people”. 

Hochstein noted that he is “100 percent” sure Israel would allow this, adding that

“I am very confident, there is no reason for them not to, it is not theirs [the Israelis], the gas belongs to the Palestinian people.”

Click here to read the full article on Haaretz.

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Featured image is from The Cradle

Ireland and the Fury of the Cancelled

November 26th, 2023 by Brendan O'Neill

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***

So they’re lunatics. The protesters, rioters and looters who hit the streets of Dublin last night are ‘people who are severely mentally ill’, which is how my dictionary defines a lunatic. That’s according to Garda commissioner Drew Harris. The violent mob that rocked Dublin yesterday in response to the mass stabbing of four people, including three kids, are a: 

‘complete lunatic hooligan faction driven by far-right ideology’, Ireland’s top cop raged on TV. Stop your Googling, park your analysis, we now know why hundreds descended on central Dublin – because they’re madmen and fascists.

It is striking how swiftly this thin explanation for the worst street violence in Dublin in years was embraced as gospel by Ireland’s chattering class.

The kind of Trinity-educated know-alls who have no doubt had HR training on why words like lunatic are outdated and offensive nodded along as the chief of police damned a mostly poor crowd as lunatics. Dublin’s Sally Rooney-reading Gen Z radicals who probably agree with the writers who said the BLM looting in the US was a valiant stab at ‘the heart of property, of whiteness and of the police’ took to X to wail about the looting on their beloved O’Connell Street. It seems rioting in response to the police killing of an African-American is fine, but rioting in response to a knife attack on three Irish schoolkids is literal derangement.

Some of us, even as we feel deeply unsettled by the riotous scenes in Dublin, believe there has to be a better explanation than ‘They’re insane’ or ‘They’re Nazis in tracksuits’.

It started with the horrific knife attack outside a school near Parnell Square. A woman and three children were assaulted. The woman and a five-year-old girl remain in a critical condition. It was reported, but isn’t yet confirmed, that the knifeman is an Algerian national. This news spread like wildfire and before long the republic was in the grip of its worst civil unrest in a long time.

Buses, cars and trams were set ablaze. Huge crowds clashed with guards (police). Shopfronts were smashed and stuff was looted. Some chanted ‘Get ’em out’, clearly a reference to certain migrant communities. These were horrible scenes. Unlike leftists like Naomi Klein, who once described ‘spontaneous looting’ as a species of ‘resistance’, I do not believe it is acceptable to desecrate and steal from your own community, however pissed off you are. Protest by all means. Burn down public trams and violate private property? No.

And yet, we cannot write off this unrest as the antics of imbeciles. To me it looks more like the fury of the cancelled. The rage of the overlooked. For years now, there has been a simmering discomfort with Ireland’s immigration policy. Some in Ireland believe too many people have arrived, too quickly, and that we need a ‘mature debate’ about it. But whenever they say something, they’re branded bigots and scum. When hundreds of opponents of mass immigration marched in Dublin earlier this year, President Michael D Higgins accused them of ‘sowing hate’. Is it possible that the fire and violence of the kind we saw in Dublin last night is what happens when every other avenue of expression is shut down to people?

Ireland’s immigration trends are extraordinary. It seems to me that many outside Ireland do not appreciate what a staggering cultural shift has taken place. According to the 2022 census, 20 per cent of Ireland’s current population was born outside of Ireland. That’s one in every five people. Even Fintan O’Toole – no looter he – acknowledges ‘this is an extraordinary phenomenon’. He points out that in the US, between 1870 and 1930, the decades of the great American ‘melting pot’, between 12 and 15 per cent of the population was born outside America. So our immigrant population is ‘not as large as that in the great age of immigration in the US’, he says. ‘It is much larger.’

And yet, says O’Toole, immigration is ‘not talked about very much in official discourse’. He says there’s a fear that ‘drawing attention to the scale of inward migration’ would feed ‘nativist’ prejudices and whip up ‘far-right movements’. He’s exactly right. Among the aloof influencers in Dublin’s media and cultural elites, the great dread is that open discussion of immigration will inflame the bovine bigotries that they believe lurk in the hearts of the ill-educated and culchies. So they enforce a conspiracy of silence. ‘Nothing to see here’, they say about the largest influx of migrants in the republic’s history. ‘Only racists want to talk about this’, they say about a government policy which should surely be as open to democratic scrutiny as every other government policy.

Even to me – someone who favours liberal immigration policies – it’s clear there are legitimate questions about the Irish elites’ immigration drive. Ireland is not a rich country. Large numbers of arrivals have an impact. Consider the Ukraine crisis. Unlike most EU states, Ireland hosts Ukrainian refugees in hotels. In 2022, 37,535 hotel beds were reserved for Ukrainians. That cost the taxpayer €385million and caused a downturn in Ireland’s tourism industry, with knock-on effects for small businesses that rely on tourism for an annual economic kick. Growing Irish scepticism towards the Ukrainian intake is not down to racism but to far more practical matters.

Worse, people sense that immigration policy is done above their heads. News reports always emphasise Ireland’s ‘obligations’ to the EU – that is, the pressure it’s under from Brussels to accept migrants. Earlier this year, Ireland had to pay a fine of €1.5million – or a ‘financial contribution’, to use EU lingo – for failing to find suitable accommodation for 350 refugees. Some feel, not wrongly, that Ireland’s immigration policy is more about winning the flattery of faraway technocrats than serving the Irish people. More about demonstrating Ireland’s fealty to its new masters in Brussels than doing what’s right for the nation. That’s why they’re angry.

Across Europe, and in the US too, immigration is the issue through which many people most viscerally experience their own disenfranchisement. It is the issue that feels beyond their democratic reach. The issue they’re told not to talk about. The issue that is so often weaponised by their self-styled moral superiors to taunt and demean them. Witness Ireland’s well-educated upper-class youths who counter-protest marches against mass immigration with signs saying: ‘Everyone welcome – except racists.’ In short, why don’t you get out, lowlife bigot?

This exploitation of immigration to weaken national borders, fortify the technocratic elites and embolden the superiority complex of the rising woke establishment was always bound to backfire. It is sickening to see Irish elites who trounced democracy and demonised their own people now wring their hands over the street violence that is partly an ugly byproduct of their own behaviour. These people are meant to be clever and they don’t even know that when you cancel democracy, violence often takes its place.

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Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and host of the spiked podcast, The Brendan O’Neill Show. Subscribe to the podcast here. His new book – A Heretic’s Manifesto: Essays on the Unsayable – is available to order on Amazon UK and Amazon US now. And find Brendan on Instagram: @burntoakboy 

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***

Intended to form part of international law, preparations for the creation of a World Health Organization (WHO) pandemic treaty began in 2021. Far from strengthening the prevention of, preparedness for, and response to future pandemics as the latest draft of the text claims, its implementation could severely undermine democracy by limiting the ability of national parliaments to make crucial healthcare decisions in the best interests of their citizens. Aided by proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations of 2005, the treaty threatens to transform the WHO into a global health dictatorship.

The sweeping influence exerted by the WHO during the COVID-19 pandemic was the result of revised International Health Regulations passed at a meeting of the World Health Assembly (WHA) in 2005. The decision-making body of the WHO, the WHA’s meetings are held annually in Geneva, Switzerland, and attended by delegations from the WHO’s 194 Member States.

Prior to 2005, the WHO had principally acted as a coordinator, assistant, or collaborator to the public health services and drug regulatory authorities of its Member States. But with the passing of the revised International Health Regulations, the WHO took on vast new powers that were unprecedented in the field of global health. These essentially enable it to decide when a public health emergency of international concern exists and to take key decisions regarding what measures should be implemented in response. Under the regulations, the WHO’s recommended actions can include vaccination, quarantine, isolation, drug treatment, and contact tracing, among others.

Now, however, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the road is being prepared for the WHO’s already considerable powers to be expanded still further. Particularly worryingly, the latest draft of the proposed amendments to the regulations shows that clauses that previously made their provisions non-binding are being reworded – effectively making them mandatory and giving the WHO real decision-making powers over its Member States. As such, claims that the planned pandemic treaty will not undermine national sovereignty are at best disingenuous, as its text has to be viewed in light of the increased authority that, if approved, will be given to the WHO under the amended International Health Regulations.

The WHO Thinks You Have “Too Much Information”

The growing concern over the WHO pandemic treaty isn’t simply that it could undermine democracy by preventing national parliaments from being able to make crucial healthcare decisions in the best interests of their citizens. Through introducing the term “infodemic,” the treaty seems to be attempting to prevent the spread of truthful information about science-based natural health approaches and dangerous experimental vaccines. Without citing any evidence, the text claims that having “too much information” available during a disease outbreak causes “confusion and risk-taking behaviors that can harm health.” Suggesting who this wording is primarily intended to benefit – namely, the WHO itself – the text states that having too much information apparently “leads to mistrust in health authorities.” To counter this, “infodemic management, at local, national, regional and international levels,” is proposed.

The pandemic treaty also dramatically expands the WHO’s areas of interest. Through what it terms a “One Health approach,” the global body now intends to be able to take decisions in health matters related to animals, ecosystems, and the environment. The treaty specifically refers to “taking action on climate change,” for example. Several observers have suggested that with these extended powers, the WHO could potentially declare an environmental or climate emergency and enforce lockdowns.

Given the global body’s close links to Bill Gates and the pharma industry, and the hundreds of millions of dollars in annual funding it receives from them, there is a growing worldwide recognition that this looming power grab represents a fundamental threat to democracy. At the very least, the increasing transfer of powers to the WHO raises important questions regarding national sovereignty and personal liberty.

Ultimately, if its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us anything, it is that the WHO has sold its soul to corporate interests and cannot be trusted to take important decisions on global health. It is surely in all of our interests to demand that our national lawmakers do not sign away the sovereignty that the WHO is seeking.

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This article was originally published on Dr. Rath Health Foundation.

Executive Director of the Dr. Rath Health Foundation and one of the coauthors of our explosive book, “The Nazi Roots of the ‘Brussels EU’”, Paul is also our expert on the Codex Alimentarius Commission and has had eye-witness experience, as an official observer delegate, at its meetings. You can find Paul on Twitter at @paulanthtaylor

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

As has traditionally been the case throughout history, Polish sovereignty is once again in the process of being sacrificed as part of the Great Powers’ games, but this time its borders will remain intact even though the country is poised to functionally become a German vassal in the coming future.

NATO logistics chief Lieutenant-General Alexander Sollfrank suggested the creation of a so-called “military Schengen” for optimizing the movement of such equipment across the EU. At present, bureaucratic and logistical obstacles impede the free flow of arms throughout the bloc, which he believes could hamstring the West’s ability to respond to any unexpected conflict along its periphery. It’s not just this proposal’s substance that’s significant, however, but also its timing.  

NATO’s Proxy War On Russia Through Ukraine Appears To Be Winding Down” for the reasons explained in the preceding hyperlinked analysis. Accordingly, Bloomberg’s report about the EU’s draft security guarantees to Ukraine conspicuously omits any mention of mutual defense obligations of the kind that Kiev has sought for years and which greatly contributed to the latest phase of this nearly decade-long conflict. Sollfrank’s suggestion therefore seems to contradict these emerging de-escalation trends.

Upon reflection, however, it’s actually revealed to be a thinly disguised Germany power play over Poland. The EU’s informal leader ramped up its regional competition with Poland in mid-August through its promised military patronage of Ukraine, which readers can learn more about in that hyperlinked analysis. In brief, Poland aspired to become the leader of Central & Eastern Europe (CEE) throughout the course of the NATO-Russian proxy war, but Germany rose to the occasion to challenge its ambitions.

The liberal-globalist opposition coalition’s victory in last month’s Polish elections, which its Foreign Minister earlier accused Germany of meddling in, will likely result in former Prime Minister and European Council President Donald Tusk’s return to the premiership. In that event, this German-aligned politician could voluntarily subordinate his country to Berlin, thus resulting in Poland ceding its envisaged regional sphere of influence to that country and becoming its largest-ever vassal indefinitely.

Tusk’s plans to improve ties with the de facto German-controlled EU are regarded by conservative-nationalists as a means to that end, particularly due to that body’s efforts to further erode Polish sovereignty. Although he claims to oppose changes to the EU Treaty, some doubt his sincerity and suspect that he slyly wants to prevent large-scale protests over this issue. If these two scenarios come to pass, then Poland’s sovereignty would be further reduced, including in the defense sphere.

Prior to last month’s elections, Germany and Poland were competing to build the EU’s largest military, but the aforesaid sequence of events could result in Warsaw throwing in the towel. Even though its next potential Defense Minister said that his country won’t cancel any of its military contracts, conservative-nationalists also suspect that he’s either being insincere or could be coerced by Berlin/Brussels into doing so. All things considered, these concerns are credible and should be taken seriously.  

Germany’s national interests as its incumbent policymakers conceive them to be rest in becoming the EU’s hegemon, which necessitates neutralizing Poland’s ambitions to lead the CEE space, ergo its alleged support of Tusk and speculative efforts to erode Polish sovereignty via the EU. These moves importantly preceded NATO’s proposed “military Schengen”, and that’s not by coincidence either. Rather, they’re meant to facilitate Germany’s unprecedented post-WWII power play over Poland.

If Tusk improves ties with the EU like he promised, complies with any EU Treaty changes despite unconvincingly claiming to oppose them, and the “military Schengen” is imposed upon his country, then German forces could return to Poland en masse on the pretext of defending the EU from Russia. This doesn’t contradict the de-escalation trends pertaining to the NATO-Russian proxy war, but complements them since it could be spun as compensating for the lack of Article 5-like guarantees to Ukraine.

On the one hand, the EU would wisely avoid laying any tripwires that Kiev could maliciously exploit to provoke a larger conflict with Russia upon the inevitable freezing of the present one (whenever that happens), while at the same time reassuring the public that they can still adequately respond if need be. The “military Schengen” would serve the purpose of enabling the bloc’s de facto German leader to swiftly dispatch its forces, which are planned to be the EU’s largest, to the eastern frontier in that event.

It goes without saying that they’d have to transit through Poland and could easily end up deployed there indefinitely, whether as a so-called “deterrent to Russian aggression” or as part of a preplanned response to an artificially manufactured (i.e. false flag) border incident. After having voluntarily subordinated itself to Berlin under Tusk as is soon expected for the reasons that were explained, the restoration of German hegemony over Poland would therefore be completed without firing a shot.

In that scenario, which Polish conservative-nationalists are powerless to prevent and can only be offset by unlikely variables beyond their control, Germany would essentially be tasked by the US with “containing” Russia in Europe as part of Washington’s “Lead From Behind” stratagem. Once that country’s continental hegemony is fully secured through the means that were described in this analysis, America can then more confidently “Pivot (back) to Asia” to focus on containing China.

Those two superpowers are currently in the midst of an incipient thaw as proven by the positive outcome of their leaders’ latest face-to-face meeting earlier this month on the sidelines of the APEC Summit in San Francisco, but it can’t be taken for granted that this trend will continue. It therefore makes sense for the US to outsource its anti-Russian containment operations in Europe to Germany in order to free up the resources required for more muscularly containing China in Asia if this thaw fails.

As has traditionally been the case throughout history, Polish sovereignty is once again in the process of being sacrificed as part of the Great Powers’ games, but this time its borders will remain intact even though the country is poised to functionally become a German vassal in the coming future. There are indeed some variables beyond Poland’s control that could offset this scenario, but they’re very unlikely, so it’s probably a fait accompli by this point that Poland will play second fiddle to Germany indefinitely.

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This article was originally published on Andrew Korybko’s Newsletter.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the author

In this Truce, the Star of David Is Akin to a Swastika

November 26th, 2023 by Rima Najjar

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***

 

 

 

 

Even though the airwaves have long been agog with the voices of the Israeli government, the US and other so-called leaders of the free world about the war on Gaza, the leaders of Hamas and the rest of the Islamic resistance, dubbed “terrorists” in a preemptive Israeli-US propaganda campaign designed to legitimize their extraction by firepower, have managed to get their voices heard.

They’ve done so through a brilliant media campaign that has made a folk hero out of Abu ‘Obaidah, the spokesperson for Martyr Al Qassam’s Islamic Brigades, and put to shame Israel’s undeniably degenerate tactics of killing and maiming thousands of Palestinian civilians, including children, displaced families sheltering in UNRWA schools, the wounded and sick in hospitals and news reporters and flattening large swatches of the Gaza Strip.

And just as Netanyahu is resolved to continue the war on Gaza after the announced truce between Hamas and Israel, the Palestinian resistance is resolved to continue its heroic and already legendary fight against Israel.

This war, as well as being a national war of liberation on the Palestinian side and a settler-colonial war aided by Western powers on the Israeli side, is a religious war on both sides. The optics, as commentators love to use the term in analyzing the tragedy, are telling. It is religious Jews in the Israeli cabinet, wearing their kippot and holding up the Star of David that they have managed to turn into something akin to a swastika who have voted against the truce and who are most virulent in their call for ethnic cleansing and genocide.

On Al Jazeera Arabic and Al Mayadeen, Palestinians standing in the rubble over the dead bodies of their children invoke God to deal a blow for justice against Jews. Islamic resistance fighters call out loudly “God is great; praise be to God” with each hit on enemy tanks or soldiers. Hezbollah in southern Lebanon celebrate their martyrs as having fallen “on the road to Jerusalem,” where the desecrated Al Aqsa Mosque lies. “Al Aqsa Flood” is not named so for nothing. In Yemen, a spokesperson explained to Al Mayadeen that Houthi forces feared God’s displeasure if they did not come to the aid of Palestine. Moreover, this cause has unified Shia and Sunni Muslims.

When Blinken first arrived in Israel after Oct 7, he embraced Netanyahu by saying,

“I am here as a Jew, not just as US State Secretary.”

Jordan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Ayman Al Safadi, on the other hand, did not say in any of his statements,

“I am speaking here, not just as a Jordanian, but also as a Palestinian.”

I assume Safadi is of Palestinian origin because of his name. “Al Safadi” in Arabic means “from Safad.” Incidentally, Mahmoud Abbas is also from Safad: he was born there. Safad in the Galilee was predominantly Palestinian Arab before 1948. It was emptied from its Palestinian citizens by the Haganah Jewish force (the perpetrator of many massacres during the Nakba) when, according to the language of the Israeli narrative flooding Google, “the Arab population fled,” leaving Safad to its “rightful” owners, the Kabbalists of the mystical branch of Judaism.

More than half of the 6.3 million population of Jordan is of Palestinian origin, the vast majority, except for Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, have Jordanian citizenship. Jordan’s refugee camps are full of Palestinians holding on to the keys of their homes and their right of return to occupied Palestine. Ayman Al Safadi, speaking for the Jordanian government and for King Abdullah, is certainly not about to increase their ranks.

As so many Jewish-American officials have done before him, Blinken flaunts his Jewish supremacist privilege. He and his American family can “return” to Israel any time they please. Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan, as well as all those in al-shatat, the diaspora, cannot.

What is to happen next? The best way to predict the future is to create it. Israel’s bombing of Gaza is to resume as soon as the truce is over. And so will the Palestinian resistance everywhere and in every form.

When the resistance is the entire body (as represented by Muslim, Christian and every free person of any persuasion holding up the Palestinian flag), you can’t have a “surgical operation,” as the US is now urging Israel to do as opposed to mayhem, without killing the patient.

“Even if you kill all the children, One Moses will survive” (Source: Rima Najjar)

Charlotte Kates, the international coordinator of Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, recently expressed this determination by the resistance by saying: “We refuse to be silenced, we continue to organize, we continue to take to the streets; we refuse to be silenced by political power, by state repression or by corporate complicity, and we stand for the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea.”

Biden, Blinken and Israel’s war criminals with their “Hannibal Procedure” will discover there isn’t enough anesthesia in the world to put down this body of resistance and perform their “surgical operation.” Let’s hope that the human-interest stories that will now flood the airwaves about the return of Israeli hostages to their families will also highlight the devastation that the Israeli colonial military judiciary and prison system have, for decades, imposed on Palestinian families.

Roni Sarig, a reader of my previous blog post titled, “Israel is a Rogue State,” made the following absurd comment there: “It is your right to have ‘righteous anger.’ But I would hope that you’ve also considered what end your righteous anger serves? Those of us who are pro-Israel but anti-Netanyahu and pro-Palestine but anti-Hamas could be allies with you. But too much righteous anger will get in the way of actually solving the issue — and probably will just lead to more suffering. We can be allies, but not if you’re advocating for the removal/killing of my people.”

“Palestinian and righteously angry” is the tagline of my blog on Medium. Sarig, apparently, wants me to modulate my outrage at what his government is doing to Palestinians and at the monumental suffering the creation of the Jewish entity on Palestinian territory in 1948 by violence and terror continues to engender — all in the guise of forging an alliance on his terms and in accordance with his own feelings. He presents himself as reasonable, and me as someone advocating the removal/killing of “his people,” disregarding the context of war I am discussing, and understanding decolonization to mean “killing Jews.” That Palestinian freedom means genocide for Jews is a ridiculous argument. I think it is also antisemitic, because it implies that Jews can only exist at the cost of others’ lives. As Lena Bloch says in a comment on this post, “This assumption is the basis for Jewish fascism. Kahane built his ideology on that and this is what ‘Never again’ that he introduced means: ‘If we kill and abuse, THEY will never dare to kill and abuse US.’”

In the name of “moderation,” Sarig pushes a false Israeli narrative we have heard ad infinitum over the years. As a friend said to me, “Sincere allies know not to center a struggle in their own ‘feelings.’”

No doubt, Sarig, like his government, would also wish to modulate my joy at the release of Palestinian prisoners. Netanyahu’s government has already issued a warning to Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem not to exhibit any signs of joy at their release.

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Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem and whose mother’s side of the family is from Ijzim, south of Haifa. She is an activist, researcher and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank.

Featured image: At the pro-Palestine demonstration in Brussels on Oct 22, 2023: “Gaza, If You Die, I Die.” (Source: Rima Najjar)

Israel Admits It Killed Its Own at Nova Music Festival

November 26th, 2023 by The Cradle

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***

An Israeli police investigation into the Hamas attack on the Nova music festival near the Gaza border on 7 October revealed that an Israeli attack helicopter killed some of the attendees, Haaretz reported on 18 November. 

According to a police source, an investigation into the incident showed that an Israeli combat helicopter that arrived at the scene from the Ramat David base fired at Hamas fighters and other Palestinians who crossed through the border fence from Gaza into Israel, but also fired on some of the Israelis attending the music festival. According to the police, 364 people were killed there.

The Israeli military and rescue services previously claimed that 260 Israelis were killed at the festival, all by Hamas and Palestinians in a deliberate massacre. But this is the first acknowledgement that Israeli forces killed some of their own.

Previous reports in Israeli media revealed that Israeli forces killed Israeli civilians in Be’eri, a settlement also near the Gaza border. In that case, Hamas fighters were holding Israelis captive in homes. When the Israeli military arrived, it opened fire, including by firing tank shells, killing both Israeli captives and Hamas fighters.

Three of those killed in Be’eri by Israeli tank fire were 12-year-old Liel Hezroni, her brother Yanai, and their aunt Ayla. Israeli broadcaster Kan reported that Liel’s relatives held a farewell ceremony for her, rather than a burial ceremony, because her body could not be recovered from the house that collapsed on her and other Hamas captives after an Israeli tank fired two shells into it. 

A similar instance occurred in Sderot, where Hamas fighters had taken over the local police station, and were holding Israeli police captive inside. Both the Hamas fighters and Israeli police were killed when the Israeli army fired tank shells at the police station, killing everyone. Israeli forces then bulldozed the station.

It is therefore unclear how many of the Israelis who died on 7 October were killed by Hamas, whose fighters were seeking to take as many Israelis, both soldiers and civilians, captive back to Gaza as possible, and how many were killed by Israeli forces refusing to negotiate for the captives’ release.

Israel initially claimed Hamas and Palestinians killed 1,400 Israelis on 7 October, including soldiers, police, and civilians, but later revised the count to 1,200. Israeli spokesperson Mark Regev acknowledged that 200 of the alleged victims were Hamas fighters or Palestinians whose bodies were burned so badly that Israeli authorities could not initially identify them and assumed them to be Israelis.

In an interview with MSNBC on 17 November, he stated,

“We originally said, in the atrocious Hamas attack upon our people on October 7th, we had the number at 1,400 casualties and now we’ve revised that down to 1,200 because we understood that we’d overestimated, we made a mistake. There were actually bodies that were so badly burnt we thought they were ours, in the end apparently they were Hamas terrorists.”

Regarding the Nova festival, Haaretz reported as well that,

“There is a growing assessment in the security establishment that the terrorists who carried out the massacre on October 7 did not know in advance about the Nova festival held near Kibbutz Re’im, and decided to come to the place after discovering that a mass event was taking place there.”

The Hamas fighters had initially intended to attack nearby settlements in what is known as the Gaza envelope.

According to Haaretz, senior security officials estimate that Hamas found out about the existence of the party using drones, and directed its fighters to the location using their communication system. In a video from a body camera of one Hamas fighter, “he is heard asking a captured Israeli for directions to reach the bad guys, even though he was in a different area.” One of the findings that strengthens the assessment, according to the police and other security officials, is that the first Hamas fighters arrived at the Nova festival from the direction of road 232 and not from the direction of the Gaza border fence.

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Featured image: Burnt cars are abandoned in a carpark near where a music festival was held before an attack by Hamas gunmen from Gaza, in southern Israel, October 10. (Photo credit: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun)

Is the US’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System Broken?

November 26th, 2023 by Jennifer Block

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***

Three weeks after receiving a second dose of a covid vaccine, Robert Sullivan collapsed at home on his treadmill. An anaesthesiologist in Maryland, USA, he was a particularly fit 49 year old: the week before falling ill, he’d been happily skiing at altitude in Colorado.

Sullivan was given a diagnosis of sudden onset pulmonary hypertension, which is generally progressive, can be fatal, and in most cases can’t be cured. The condition is rare, especially in middle aged men. Sullivan decided to file a report in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), which collects reports of symptoms, diagnoses, hospital admissions, and deaths after vaccination for the purpose of capturing post-market safety signals.

But the submission process was a glitchy race against the clock. “The format is cumbersome and it times you out,” he tells The BMJ. For his troubles, Sullivan received a confirmation by email and a temporary “e-report” number. He learnt from his doctor’s office that a VAERS representative had requested medical records. Then he didn’t hear back for a year.

VAERS is supposed to be user friendly, responsive, and transparent. However, investigations by The BMJ have uncovered that it’s not meeting its own standards. Not only have staffing levels failed to keep pace with the unprecedented number of reports since the rollout of covid vaccines but there are signs that the system is overwhelmed, reports aren’t being followed up, and signals are being missed.

The BMJ has spoken to more than a dozen people, including physicians and a state medical examiner, who have filed VAERS reports of a serious nature on behalf of themselves or patients and were never contacted by clinical reviewers or were contacted months later.

Our investigation has also found that, in stark contrast to the US government’s handling of adverse reaction reports on drugs and devices, the publicly accessible VAERS database on vaccines includes only initial reports, while case updates and corrections are kept on a separate, back end system. Officials told The BMJ that this was to protect patient confidentiality—but this means that patients, doctors, and other public users of the database have access only to an incomplete and uncorrected version.

Understaffed

Co-managed by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration, the VAERS reporting system relies on a mixture of voluntary adverse event reports from doctors and patients and mandatory reporting from vaccine manufacturers, which are required by law to report all adverse events they become aware of.

Good pharmacovigilance requires prompt data collection, review by people with clinical expertise, and adequate follow-up, says Marie Lindquist, former director of the Uppsala Monitoring Centre in Sweden, an internationally recognised non-profit pharmacovigilance body. “We know that even the best clinical trials won’t detect [rare adverse events],” she tells The BMJ.

VAERS’s standard operating procedure for covid-19 states that reports must be processed quickly, within days of receipt.[1,2] “Serious reports” trigger the requisition of medical records and at minimum a “manual review,” while deaths and other “adverse events of special interest” may undergo a more “in-depth” clinical review by CDC staff.

However, The BMJ has learnt that in the face of an unprecedented 1.7 million reports since the rollout of covid vaccines, VAERS’s staffing was likely not commensurate with the demands of reviewing the serious reports submitted, including reports of death. While other countries have acknowledged deaths that were “likely” or “probably” related to mRNA vaccination, the CDC—which says that it has reviewed nearly 20 000 preliminary reports of death using VAERS (far more than other countries)—has not acknowledged a single death linked to mRNA vaccines.

Before the pandemic VAERS was receiving nearly 60 000 adverse event reports each year. A 2015 CDC article suggests that the agency had the capacity to request records for just a few thousand serious reports each year.[3] But in 2021 the total number of reports shot up to a million, and another 660 000 have been filed since. Nearly one in five meet the criteria of serious. This surge reflects the unprecedented campaign to vaccinate against covid-19—in the US alone some 675 million doses have been administered—and the vast majority of recent reports are related to covid vaccines. The CDC states that, “in the event of a significant increase” in VAERS reports warranting clinical review, the standard operating procedure requires additional CDC Immunization Safety Office staff to process cases.[1,2]

Freedom of Information Act documents seen by The BMJ suggest that Pfizer has around 1000 more full time employees working on vaccine surveillance than the CDC, despite the latter’s responsibility for handling adverse event reports on all products. The CDC didn’t provide The BMJ with specific numbers, instead stating that its staffing “reflects the needs of the office” at any given time and can range from “several dozen to hundreds,” including contractors and individuals reassigned “from across the agency.” The latest confirmed number of staff, as of November 2022—at the Immunization Safety Office, which houses VAERS—is 70-80 full time equivalent workers.

In comparison, a February 2021 Pfizer analysis of adverse event reports showed that the company had onboarded 600 additional full time employees to handle the volume and planned to employ a total of 1800.[4] Pfizer didn’t respond to The BMJ’s requests for information on current staffing.

The User Experience

Interviews with more than a dozen VAERS users by The BMJ—all of whom were trying to file reports of a serious nature—revealed a patchy and frustrating experience. Some users heard back from clinical reviewers months after making their first report, while others never heard anything. Some of those making reports were told conflicting information about updating their report or were discouraged from making a report altogether.

Those people include Patrick Whelan, a rheumatologist and researcher at the University of California Los Angeles, who in 2022 reported how one of his patients, a 7 year old boy, had a cardiac arrest after covid vaccination. The patient was intubated when Whelan filed a VAERS report, and he expected a prompt follow-up call from a CDC investigator.

“I assumed that, since it was a catastrophic event, the safety committee would want to hear about it right away,” he says. But, to his knowledge, nobody called or requested medical records. In an email sent to Whelan months later the FDA said that it had followed up “soon after” receiving his report and had made “several requests” for medical records. The agency added, “Generally speaking, staff might not reach out to providers unless they have specific questions about a case or a VAERS report.”

James Gill has been a medical examiner and forensic pathologist for 25 years and is currently chief medical examiner for the state of Connecticut. In June 2021 he made the first VAERS report of his career. It was for a 15 year old boy who died suddenly days after getting a second jab—what Gill concluded on autopsy was “stress cardiomyopathy following second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech covid-19 vaccine.”[5,6,7]

Gill, who has appointments at Yale University and the University of Connecticut, can’t recall getting any calls from VAERS after he filled out the online form, and he still has only a temporary “e-report” number. After he published the case reports in the Archives of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine in February 2022, however, the CDC did respond—in the form of a letter to the editor contesting Gill’s findings.[5,6,7]

In November 2022, React19, an advocacy group of some 30 000 people who have experienced prolonged illness after covid vaccination, reviewed 126 VAERS reports among its ranks. In its audit, which was conducted by volunteers inside and outside the organisation, 22% had never been given a permanent VAERS ID number and 12% had disappeared from the system entirely—in other words, one in three of the reports they looked for didn’t show up in the publicly searchable database.[8]

Searching for Answers

A group of physicians and advocates have met multiple times with FDA representatives from 2021 to 2022, including Peter Marks, director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, and Narayan Nair, the FDA division director who oversees VAERS, to express their concerns that the system isn’t operating as intended and that signals are being missed.

One participant in the group—Helen, an intensive care and emergency physician who asked to use a pseudonym to protect her employment—had filed reports on behalf of several patients, including six who died, among them a 40 year old man. She tells The BMJ that she received a request for medical records for just one of the deaths and for two of her patients admitted to hospital. “You’re not meeting your defined definition of follow-up,” she told Nair and Marks during an online meeting on 22 March last year. “There’s a breakdown in your system.”

The BMJ obtained audio of these meetings, totalling seven. In March 2022, in response to the physician, Nair responded that if a report meets the definition of serious, “there really should be a request for records.” In the case of a reported death, “we prioritise getting the records for those extremely quickly.” He added, “You know, we’ve received a large volume [of serious reports]. And I don’t know what the back-up is.”

At the following meeting in May 2022 an FDA spokesperson, Lorrie McNeill, said that “for all of the reports categorised as serious, the VAERS contractor either obtained records, or made several attempts to do so and closed out a report if they didn’t get a response.”

In response to several questions about these meetings and the issues they raised, the FDA responded by email that the agency “is actively engaged in safety surveillance of these vaccines to identify and address potential safety concerns” and that “physicians and epidemiologists from the FDA and CDC continuously screen and analyse data from VAERS for covid-19 vaccines to identify potential signals that would indicate the need for further study.”

Two VAERS—Only One Public

A week after Whelan filed the VAERS report for his young patient in Los Angeles, he had cause to update it. The boy’s condition didn’t improve, and the decision was made to terminate life support. But “there was no mechanism for [updating] it,” he tells The BMJ. “The only option I had was to make a new VAERS report.”

Three weeks later he met with the FDA in his capacity as a researcher to discuss a forthcoming paper, and without having planned to he mentioned the case and the lack of follow-up. Nair reached out by email the next day, and six weeks later Whelan discussed the case with Nair and a press officer for around 35 minutes.

Today, however, that VAERS report still shows the child as having been admitted to hospital. “I made the false assumption that that conversation would result in an adjustment in the publicly reported case,” says Whelan. “Think of all the people who are using VAERS data as a means to assess what’s happening with the vaccines—except in this case you’d be left with the false impression that the child had had a serious adverse event,” rather than seeing that he’d died.

The BMJ has found that the FDA and CDC essentially maintain two separate VAERS databases: a public facing database, containing only initial reports; and a private, back end system containing all updates and corrections—such as a formal diagnosis, recovery, or death.

In December last year Nair explained the situation at a meeting with advocates. He said, “There’s two parts to VAERS, the front end system and the back end . . . Anything derived from medical records by law” can’t be posted on the public facing system. The CDC has told The BMJ that “protecting patient confidentiality is a priority.”

Interestingly, the FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS), which collects reports on drugs, does maintain a publicly accessible database that gets updated, as does the agency’s Medical Device Reporting system—raising the question of why VAERS can’t do the same. Neither the CDC nor the FDA provided an explanation. An FDA spokesperson told The BMJ that “patients can submit formal requests under FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] to obtain the full record of their report.”

For serious cases, reporters to VAERS are supposed to receive emails prompting them to provide updates. These emails include a code and upload link, but the reporters The BMJ spoke to didn’t get confirmation emails, and if they searched for their report in the database it remained unchanged. Similarly, if a reporter successfully treated a diagnosis and the patient improved, or if they confirmed that the cause of the illness was unrelated to a vaccine, this wouldn’t be reflected in the public database.

Nair acknowledged in a meeting with advocates that people get frustrated when they look for an updated report, find the original untouched, and feel “ignored.” He said, “They never see it on the front end, because we don’t alter that initial report.”

Detecting Signals

Pharmacovigilance has been effective in alerting the public to unusual, acute reactions, even when based on few reports. For example, it took just six VAERS reports of thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome after administration of the Janssen covid vaccine for regulators to issue a “pause” in April 2021.[9]

Ralph Edwards, former director of the Uppsala Monitoring Centre and until recently editor in chief of the International Journal of Risk & Safety in Medicine, explains that monitoring systems such as VAERS excel at detecting adverse reactions that occur very soon after vaccination or are known from other vaccines, such as anaphylaxis or Guillain-Barré syndrome. But detecting new and unusual reactions, especially those with latent effects, has been an ongoing challenge in the world of pharmacovigilance.

Edwards tells The BMJ, “If something hasn’t been heard of before, it tends to be ignored.” He explains that regulators may be relying too heavily on epidemiological evidence to acknowledge a signal. VAERS alone is unlikely to capture such long term adverse outcomes unless reports are regularly updated and reviewers are closely following such cases—“a real catch 22,” he says. “You’ll never get the evidence unless you have the idea to look for it in the first place.”

Addressing an October 2021 meeting, Helen said that most doctors were “only willing to talk about the FDA recognised vaccine adverse events.” She asked the FDA to alert doctors to potential adverse neurological reactions, as had been done with myocarditis. But more than once the FDA’s Peter Marks expressed confusion about why it would matter to doctors whether or not regulators acknowledged that a condition might be related to the vaccine. “Aren’t they treating what’s in front of them?” he asked.

However, Svetlana Blitshteyn, a neurologist and researcher at the University at Buffalo, New York, who has been treating postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome for around 20 years and has seen the condition present after vaccination, tells The BMJ that if physicians aren’t educated to look for the condition they’re unlikely to test for it or know how to treat it.

Helen is calling for an end to the “negative feedback loop . . . the FDA is not naming additional adverse reactions to the vaccines because the passive surveillance systems aren’t displaying it. But the passive surveillance systems aren’t displaying it because physicians are blinded to the adverse reactions in their patients, and thus aren’t reporting them.”

The European Union, for its part, has added hypoaesthesia and paraesthesia (reduced or abnormal sensation in the skin such as numbness, tingling, or burning) to the labelling on mRNA covid vaccines—based on around 21 000 cases reported by August 2021—as well as including heavy menstrual bleeding.[10,11] Japan has also added paraesthesia and hypoaesthesia.

Harlan Krumholz, a cardiologist and researcher at Yale, has been recruiting members of React19 to study their reactions.[12] “We are working hard to understand the experience, clinical course, and potential mechanisms of the ailments reported by those who have had severe symptoms arise soon after the vaccination,” he tells The BMJ. “There are so many people whose lives have been changed dramatically—but what I don’t know is how many or why.”

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Notes

1. US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) standard operating procedures for covid-19 (as of 29 January 2021). Jan 2021. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/pdf/VAERS-v2-SOP.pd

2. US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) standard operating procedures for covid-19 (as of 2 February 2022). Feb 2022. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/pdf/VAERS-COVID19-SOP-02-02-2022-508.pdf

3. Shimabukuro TTNguyen MMartin DDeStefano F. Safety monitoring in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). Vaccine2015;33:4398405. doi:10.1016/j.vaccine.2015.07.035. pmid:26209838 CrossRefPubMedGoogle Scholar

4. Pfizer. 5.3.6 Cumulative analysis of post-authorization adverse event reports of PF-07302048 (BNT162b2) received through 28-Feb-2021. Apr 2021. https://phmpt.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/reissue_5.3.6-postmarketing-experience.pdf

5. Gill JRTashjian RDuncanson E. Autopsy histopathologic cardiac findings in 2 adolescents following the second covid-19 vaccine dose. Arch Pathol Lab Med2022;146:9259. doi:10.5858/arpa.2021-0435-SA. pmid:35157759 CrossRefPubMedGoogle Scholar

6. Paddock CDReagan-Steiner SSu JR, et al. Autopsy histopathologic cardiac findings in 2 adolescents following the second covid-19 vaccine dose. Arch Pathol Lab Med2022;146:9213. doi:10.5858/arpa.2022-0084-LE. pmid:35395076 CrossRefPubMedGoogle Scholar

7. Gill JRTashjian RDuncanson E. In Reply. Arch Pathol Lab Med2022;146:923. doi:10.5858/arpa.2022-0154-LE. pmid:35395065 CrossRefPubMedGoogle Scholar

8. React19. React19 research: VAERS audit. 3 Dec 2022. https://react19.org/research-studies-surveys/react19-research-vaers-audit

9. CDC Health Alert Network. Cases of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis with thrombocytopenia after receipt of the Johnson & Johnson covid-19 vaccine (CDCHAN-00442). 2021. https://emergency.cdc.gov/han/2021/han00442.asp

10. European Medicines Agency. Comirnaty: summary of product characteristics. Sep 2023. https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/documents/product-information/comirnaty-epar-product-information_en.pdf

11. European Medicines Agency. Spikevax: summary of product characteristics. Sep 2023. https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/documents/product-information/spikevax-previously-covid-19-vaccine-moderna-epar-product-information_en.pdf

Hamas Winning Battle for Gaza. Scott Ritter

November 26th, 2023 by Scott Ritter

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The recently announced ceasefire is a blessing for Palestinians and Israelis alike—a chance for prisoners to be exchanged, humanitarian aid to be distributed to those in need, and for emotions on both sides of the conflict to cool down.

While the ceasefire, negotiated between Israel and Hamas by Qatar, was mutually agreed between the two parties, let no one be fooled into thinking this was anything less than a victory for Hamas. Israel had taken a very aggressive position that, given its stated objective of destroying Hamas as an organization, it would not agree to a ceasefire under any conditions.

Hamas, on the other hand, had made one of its primary objectives in initiating the current round of fighting with Israel the release of Palestinian prisoners, and in particular women and children, held by Israel. Seen in this light, the ceasefire represents an important victory for Hamas, and a humiliating defeat for Israel.

One of the reasons Israel eschewed a ceasefire was that it was confident that the offensive operation it had launched into northern Gaza was going to neutralize Hamas as a military threat, and that any ceasefire, regardless of the humanitarian justification, would only buy time for a defeated Hamas enemy to rest, refit, and regroup. That Israel signed on to a ceasefire is the surest sign yet that all is not well with the Israeli offensive against Hamas.

This outcome should not have come as a surprise to anyone. When Hamas launched its October 7 attack on Israel, it initiated a plan years in the making. The meticulous attention to detail that was evident in the Hamas operation underscored the reality that Hamas had been studying the Israeli intelligence and military forces arrayed against it, uncovering weaknesses that were subsequently exploited. The Hamas action represented more than sound tactical and operational planning and execution—it was a masterpiece in strategic conceptualization as well.

One of the main reasons behind the Israeli defeat on October 7 was the fact that the Israeli government was convinced that Hamas would never attack, regardless of what the intelligence analysts charged with watching Hamas activity in Gaza were saying. This failure of imagination came about by Hamas having identified the political goals and objectives of Israel (the nullification of Hamas as a resistance organization by undertaking a policy built on “buying” Hamas through an expanded program of work permits issued by Israel for Palestinians living in Gaza.) By playing along with the work permit program, Hamas lulled the Israeli leadership into complacency, allowing Hamas’ preparations for their attack to be carried out in plain view.

The October 7 attack by Hamas was not a stand-alone operation, but rather part of a strategic plan possessing three main objectives—to put the issue of a Palestinian state back on the front burner of international discourse, to free the thousands of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, and to compel Israel to cease and desist when it came to its desecration of the Al Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest place. The October 7 attack, on its own, could not achieve these outcomes. Rather, the October 7 attack was designed to trigger an Israeli response which would create the conditions necessary for Hamas’ objectives to reach fruition.

The October 7 attack was designed to humiliate Israel to the point of irrationality, to ensure that any Israeli response would be governed by the emotional need for revenge, as opposed to a rational response designed to nullify the Hamas objectives. Here, Hamas was guided by the established Israeli doctrine of collective punishment (known as the Dahiya Doctrine, named after the West Beirut suburb that was heavily bombed by Israel in 2006 as a way of punishing the Lebanese people for Israel’s failure to defeat Hezbollah in combat.) By inflicting a humiliating defeat on Israel which shattered both the myth of Israeli invincibility (regarding the Israel Defense Forces) and infallibility (regarding Israeli intelligence), and by taking hundreds of Israelis hostage before withdrawing to its underground lair beneath Gaza, Hamas baited a trap for Israel which the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu predictably rushed into.

Hamas has prepared a network of tunnels underneath the Gaza Strip that, in total, stretch for over 500 kilometers. Nicknamed the “Gaza Metro,” these tunnels consist of interconnected deep underground bunkers used for command and control, logistical support, medical treatment, and billeting, along with other tunnel networks dedicated for both defensive and offensive operations. The tunnels are buried deep enough to avoid destruction by most bombs in Israel’s possession and have been provisioned to withstand a siege of up to three months (90 days) in duration.

Hamas knows that it cannot engage Israel in a classic force-on-force encounter. Instead, the goal was to lure Israeli forces into Gaza, and then subject these forces to an endless series of hit-and-run attacks by small teams of Hamas fighters who would emerge from their underground lairs, attack a vulnerable Israeli force, and then disappear back underground. In short, to subject the Israeli military to what is the equivalent of a death by a thousand cuts.

And it worked. While Israeli forces have been able to penetrate into the less urbanized areas of the northern Gaza strip, taking advantage of the mobility and firepower of its armored troops, the progress is illusory, as Hamas forces harry the Israelis continuously, using deadly tandem-warhead rockets to disable or destroy Israeli vehicles, killing scores of Israeli soldiers and wounding hundreds more. While Israel has been reticent in releasing the figures of armored vehicles lost in this fashion, Hamas claims the number is in the hundreds. Hamas’ claims are bolstered by the fact that Israel has halted the sale of older Merkava 3 tanks, and instead has organized their inventory of these vehicles into new reserve armor battalions to make up for the heavy losses being sustained in both Gaza and along the northern border with Lebanon, where Hezbollah forces are engaged in a deadly war of attrition with Israel in operations designed to support Hamas in Gaza.

But the main reason for Israel’s defeat to date is Israel itself. Having taken the bait, and fallen into the Hamas trap, Israel went on to execute its Dahiya Doctrine against the Palestinian population of Gaza, carrying out indiscriminate attacks against civilian objects in blatant disregard for the law of war. An estimated 13,000 Palestinian civilians have been killed by these attacks, including more than 5,000 children. Many thousands more victims remain buried under the rubble of their destroyed housing.

While Israel may have been able to garner the support of the international community in the aftermath of the October 7 attack by Hamas, its gross overreaction has instead turned world public opinion against it—something Hamas was counting on. Today, Israel is increasingly isolated, losing support not only in the so-called Global South, but also in traditional strongholds of pro-Israeli sentiment in the US, UK, and Europe. This isolation, combined with the kind of political pressure Israel is unaccustomed to receiving, helped contribute to the Netanyahu government’s acquiescence regarding the ceasefire and subsequent prisoner exchange.

Whether the ceasefire will hold or not remains to be seen. So, too, the question of turning the ceasefire into a lasting cessation of hostilities remains an open question. But one thing is certain—having declared that victory is defined by Hamas’ total defeat, the Israelis have set the stage for a Hamas victory, something Hamas achieves simply by surviving.

But Hamas is doing more than surviving — it is winning. Having fought the Israel Defense Forces to a standstill on the battlefield, Hamas has seen every one of its strategic objectives in this conflict reach fruition. The world is actively articulating the absolute necessity of a two-state solution as a prerequisite for a lasting peace in the region. Palestinians held prisoner by Israel are being exchanged for the Israelis Hamas took hostage. And the Islamic world is united in condemning Israel’s desecration of the Al Aqsa Mosque.

None of these issues were on the table on October 6. That they are being addressed now is testament to the success Hamas enjoyed on October 7, and in the days and weeks that followed, as Israeli forces were defeated by a combination of Hamas’ tenacity and their own predilection for indiscriminate violence against civilians. Far from being eliminated as a military and political force, Hamas has emerged as perhaps the most relevant voice and authority when it comes to defending the interests of the Palestinian people.

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According to the [Israeli] Hebrew media, the Israeli police’s initial investigation proved that Israeli helicopters bombed the Israeli civilians who participated in the nature party on Oct. 7 [2023] (sic., refers to Nov. 18, 2023 Haaretz report that one Israeli army helicopter firing at Hamas terrorists may have accidentally also hit some Israeli civilians; the [Israeli] police have denied this report).

This means that Israeli military aircraft caused great destruction in the area and in some of the settlements (i.e., Israeli towns near the Gaza Strip), after the so-called ‘Hannibal Directive’ was activated, which allows the occupation police and occupation army to kill everyone (sic., the directive calls to prevent the capture of Israeli soldiers even at the risk of harming Israeli forces).

Therefore, the ministry thinks that the conclusions of the aforementioned investigation cast doubt on the Israeli versions regarding the destruction and killing that took place in that area, especially on everything concerning the images and videos showing the destruction and the fires that broke out in many houses as a result of this bombing.

The ministry demands that all media outlets, senior UN officials, and heads of state monitor this topic, show interest in the Hebrew media publications on the topic, and reexamine their positions in light of this.

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The text above was sourced from Palestinian Media Watch.

Featured image: Abandoned and damaged cars parked at the festival (12 October) (Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)

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The Israeli Intelligence Ministry-which oversees the operation of the Mossad and Shin Bet (the external and internal intelligence services) under the direction of the prime minister-recommends the forced and permanent relocation of the entire Palestinian population of Gaza to Egypt’s Sinai desert peninsula. Tent camps and later permanent settlements should be established there. An inaccessible strip several kilometers wide should be established in Egyptian territory to prevent Palestinians from approaching the border with Israel.

The plan, which the Netanyahu government is working on through negotiations with Egypt, also involves the Palestinian population of the West Bank. Emblematic is the image of an Israeli bulldozer in the West Bank Palestinian Territory knocking down the monument to Palestine’s historic leader Yasser Arafat.

The Netanyahu government’s goal is clear: to erase the Palestinian Territories. This is confirmed by the fact that the Israeli attack is not only exterminating the Palestinian population, but is making the Gaza territory uninhabitable, so that the deportation of Palestinians to the Sinai or elsewhere, disguised as an “international humanitarian operation,” is inevitable.

From this situation emerges the need to focus action against the war on precise political objectives.

In Italy there can be basically three:

1) The repeal of Law 94/2005, which institutionalizes full-scale military cooperation between Italy and Israel.

2) The demand that the United Nations immediately send an international peacekeeping force to Gaza, the territory of the State of Palestine, which since 2012 has been part of the United Nations with all rights except voting rights.

3) The indictment of Israel’s leaders for war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of genocide.

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This article was originally published in Italian on Il Manifesto.

Manlio Dinucci, award winning author, geopolitical analyst and geographer, Pisa, Italy. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Featured image: Girl holds improvised white flag, to tell Israel to respect Geneva Conventions and spare her fleeing family. Photo credit: Yasser Qudih 

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Insider reported:

The deployment of AI-controlled drones that can make autonomous decisions about whether to kill human targets is moving closer to reality, The New York Times reported.

Lethal autonomous weapons, that can select targets using AI, are being developed by countries including the U.S., China and Israel.

The use of the so-called “killer robots” would mark a disturbing development, say critics, handing life and death battlefield decisions to machines with no human input.

Several governments are lobbying the UN for a binding resolution restricting the use of AI killer drones, but the U.S. is among a group of nations — which also includes Russia, Australia and Israel — who are resisting any such move, favoring a non-binding resolution instead, The Times reported.

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Featured image is from Electronic Frontier Foundation

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Three U.S. presidents were instrumental in establishing Thanksgiving as a regular national event.

On October 3, 1789, George Washington declared the first federal Thanksgiving holiday. In 1863, Abraham Lincoln made it an annual federal holiday. And in 1941, Franklin Roosevelt signed a bill setting the date at the fourth Thursday of every November. All three presidents were giving thanks for bringing the country through a major financial crisis related to war, and they all achieved this feat through what Sen. Henry Clay called the “American system” of banking and finance – sovereign or government-issued money and credit.

For Washington, the challenge was freeing the American colonies from the imperial rule of Britain, then the world’s leading military power, when the new government lacked a source of funding. Lincoln faced a similar challenge, leading the Northern states in a civil war while lacking a national bank or national currency to fund it. For Roosevelt, the challenge was bringing the country through the Great Depression and World War II, when 9,000 banks had gone bankrupt at the beginning of his first term and the country was again without a source of credit.

In 1796, after 20 years of public service, George Washington warned in his farewell address to “cherish public credit” and avoid “accumulation of debt,” and to “avoid foreign entanglements” (“steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world”). He would no doubt be alarmed to see where we are 227 years later. We have a federal debt of $33.7 trillion, bearing an interest tab of nearly $1 trillion annually — over one-third of personal tax receipts. And we have a military budget from “foreign entanglements” that is also approaching one trillion dollars, devouring more than half the annual discretionary budget. Meanwhile, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers, the country is in serious need of infrastructure funding, tallied at $3 trillion or more; but our debt-strapped Congress has no appetite or capacity for further infrastructure outlays.

However, Washington, Lincoln and Roosevelt faced financial challenges that were equally daunting in their day; and the country came through them and continued to thrive, using a funding device that Benjamin Franklin described as “a mystery even to the politicians.”

Hamilton’s Revolutionary Fix: Debt-for-Equity Swaps

To fund the Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress resorted to simply issuing the money as paper receipts for goods and services, as the colonial governments had done with their paper scrip. It was this that Franklin wrote was “a mystery even to the politicians, how we could pay with paper that had no previously fixed fund appropriated specifically to redeem it.” He said, “This currency as we manage it is a wonderful machine.” Thomas Paine called it a “cornerstone” of the Revolution.

But the Continental dollar was not a pure fiat currency. It was “a zero-interest bearer bond.” That means it was a debt, which had to be repaid. By the end of the Revolutionary War, the new government was $77 million in debt — $40 million in domestic debt, $12 million in foreign debt, and $25 million in state debt incurred in the Revolution — with no apparent means of repayment.

Alexander Hamilton, Washington’s Treasury Secretary, solved the problem with debt-for-equity swaps. State debt was accepted in partial payment for stock in the First Bank of the United States (BUS), paying a 6% dividend. The rest was to be paid in gold. The Bank leveraged this capital into credit, issued as the first U.S. currency.

BUS loans were based on the fractional reserve model. Hamilton wrote, “It is a well established fact, that Banks in good credit can circulate a far greater sum than the actual quantum of their capital in Gold & Silver.” That was the model of the Bank of England (BOE), the financial engine of the oppressors; but there were fundamental differences between the BUS and BOE models. The BOE was privately owned and was operated for private profit. It was chartered to be an instrument of government policy capitalized exclusively by public debt. The government would pay the private lenders, who controlled what policies could be funded. What early American economists called the “British System” was geared to exploiting the colonies through “free trade” and the government through usurious interest payments.

Hamilton’s BUS, by contrast, was to be a commercial bank, funding itself by generating credit for public works. Its primary purpose, following Hamilton’s Report on Public Credit, was to issue credit to the government and private interests for internal improvements and other economic development. Hamilton said a bank’s function was to generate active capital for agriculture and manufactures, increasing the quantity and quality of labor and industry. The BUS was intended to establish a sovereign currency, a banking system, and a source of credit to build the nation, creating productive wealth, not just financial profit.

It was thus a national development bank, and so was the Second BUS chartered after the First BUS charter expired. Infrastructure and productivity flourished during that period, including completion of the Erie Canal. But Pres. Andrew Jackson thought only silver or gold coins qualified as an acceptable medium of exchange. He declared war on the bank and shut it down, leaving the country without a national currency or source of national credit for nearly three decades.

Lincoln’s Greenbacks and the National Bank Act

When President Lincoln came into office, he was faced with the prospect of a crippling war debt to British-backed banks at 24% to 36% interest. To avoid that “re-conquest by debt,” his government returned to the practice of the American colonists: it issued U.S. Notes or “Greenbacks,” actually doubling the money supply. The National Bank Act was also passed, allowing banks in the national banking system to issue National Bank Notes backed by the U.S. Treasury. To join the system, banks had to capitalize their banknotes in part with government debt.

These new monies funded not only the war effort but rapid economic development. Most famous was completion of the Transcontinental Railroad, linking both sides of the nation by 1869 and returning a profit to the government. The telegraph system developed beside the railroad; railroad track expanded; and freight tonnage between New York and Chicago grew 75%. By the end of the war, 90 trains entered Chicago every day (vs. none in 1850). Factory output boomed, and mechanization allowed agriculture to flourish, despite one million men being under arms. The money supply was doubled but did not trigger price inflation after the war, because supply and demand rose together, keeping prices in balance.

The Federal Reserve and “Checkbook Money”

But Lincoln was assassinated, the Greenbacks were discontinued, silver was demonetized, and a deep depression followed. A major banking crisis in 1906 led to passage in 1913 of the Federal Reserve Act, modeled on the Bank of England. The twelve Federal Reserve Banks are all 100% owned by the private banks in their districts. The national currency is issued as “Federal Reserve Notes,” which are lent or sold to private banks and bond dealers. Rather than issuing dollars, the U.S. government issues debt (bonds, bills and notes), which it sells on the open market to the bond dealers at interest.

Federal Reserve Act Signed into Law | Federal Reserve History

President Wilson signing the Federal Reserve Act 1923 painting by Wilburg G. Kurtz; photo courtesy of Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library)

Today private banks rather than the government issue most of the money supply by creating dollars on their books as loans. That practice dates back to the post-civil-war era. Before the 1860s, banks printed paper promissory notes called “banknotes” that were redeemable in gold or “real bills” (promises to deliver goods in the future). These notes were then lent to borrowers. Real bills could not be leveraged, since they were specific to particular goods; but gold could be and was, leading to bank runs when customers doubted their bank’s ability to repay all the claims against its gold. The National Bank Act stabilized that system by maintaining the value of National Bank Notes from state to state.

In an effort to get state-chartered banks to join the national banking system, the National Bank Act imposed a heavy tax on their banknotes. But many banks avoided the tax by replacing banknotes with checkbooks: the loan amount was just written into the borrower’s account as a “deposit,” and the borrower wrote his own promissory note in the form of “checkbook money.” These deposits are counted in the money supply, and that is how banks now “create money” – nearly all of it.

FDR and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation

The Federal Reserve was supposed to prevent bank runs by providing reserves, but it obviously failed in that endeavor. The early 1930s saw the worst contagion of bank runs in history. Loose credit in the 1920s triggered speculative bubbles on leveraged borrowing; and when the bubble inevitably burst in the Crash of 1929, liquidation of assets was forced on the borrowers. Depositors rushed to withdraw funds, triggering runs; 9,000 banks failed; and $7 billion in deposits were frozen. The money supply shrank, yet the Fed did not intervene.

To stimulate the economy and restore jobs, FDR’s government therefore reverted to Hamilton’s “American System.” The Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), set up by President Hoover to save the banks, was repurposed and greatly expanded to leverage credit for manufacturing and development. Begun with a modest $500 million in capitalization, the RFC lent or invested over $40 billion from 1932 to 1957. It funded the New Deal and World War II and returned a net profit to the government of $690 million.

The RFC was not a depository bank and did not take deposits. For liquidity it issued bonds, most of which were bought by the federal government. The RC then made loans to local governments and productive small businesses at below-market rates. To repay the loans, cities that were over their general obligation bond limits issued “revenue bonds,” repaid with the revenues generated by the works funded by the loans.

The RFC provided off-budget funding. According to James Butkiewicz, professor of economics at the University of Delaware:

The RFC was an executive agency with the ability to obtain funding through the Treasury outside of the normal legislative process. Thus, the RFC could be used to finance a variety of favored projects and programs without obtaining legislative approval. RFC lending did not count toward budgetary expenditures, so the expansion of the role and influence of the government through the RFC was not reflected in the federal budget.

The Chinese Economic Miracle

Today the stellar model for infrastructure development is China, which went from one of the poorest countries in the world to global economic powerhouse in four decades. Among other achievements, between 2008 and 2019 China built 18,000 miles of high-speed rail, along with the world’s largest dam and power station. How was all that funded?  The government owns 80% of Chinese banking assets, including three massive “policy banks” designed to carry out the policies of the government. Government-owned banks fund the projects with credit, and fees generated by the projects repay the loans.

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China Development Bank headquarters (Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

Predominant among the policy banks is China Development Bank (CDB), the largest development bank in the world. It has a national network of local branches to coordinate policies and projects; but like the RFC, it does not take private savings. Rather, it issues bonds. CDB bonds make up 25% of the national bond market, second only to those of the Ministry of Finance (the Chinese Treasury). CDB bonds have a credit rating as high as the government’s and are in high demand.  

China’s publicly-owned banks issued so much credit for infrastructure and development that its money supply (M2) actually grew 2900% in the last 27 years, yet hyperinflation did not result. Why? China’s GDP shot up in tandem, keeping supply and demand in balance.           

Development Banks to the Rescue

China’s massive infrastructure development has been credited with pulling the world out of the Great Recession, and its current tack is to repeat that effort. In 2022, the Chinese government pledged the yuan equivalent of $120 billion to the policy banks for infrastructure funding to revive the economy.

We could do that too — revive the U.S. economy with a self-funding National Infrastructure Bank. H.R.4052, the National Infrastructure Bank Act of 2023, follows the Hamiltonian model. For capital, it proposes debt-for-equity swaps with federal bondholders, adding a 2% dividend on top of the bond payouts for enticement. The swap would be bonds for non-voting bank shares, which could be swapped back for the bonds after twenty years. Unlike the RFC, the NIB is proposed to be a depository bank, able to leverage its capital to create deposits as loans on its books. Cities could repay these low-interest loans with revenue bonds funded by the infrastructure they create, as in the 1930s.

Abundance is the hallmark of Thanksgiving, and affordable credit is the key to abundance. If we can duplicate the feats of Washington, Lincoln, and FDR, we can turn debt into equity for an infrastructure bank that generates low-cost credit for development and create an abundant economy we can be thankful for!

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This article was first posted on ScheerPost.

Ellen Brown is an attorney, co-chair of the Public Banking Institute, and author of thirteen books including Web of DebtThe Public Bank Solution, and Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age. She also co-hosts a radio program on PRN.FM called “It’s Our Money.” Her 400+ blog articles are posted at EllenBrown.com.  

She is a regular contributor to Global Research.

How to Take Down the Billionaires. Form Independent Communities

November 26th, 2023 by Emanuel Pastreich

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Our front against corporate fascism cannot be a weekend hobby for the well-to-do. It must be a 24 hours a day effort that is supported at every step by our independent communities.

At the core of this movement will stand a network of 100% economically independent, intellectually independent and self-sufficient communities. The number of these cooperatives and communities may be small at first, but once we have a model that can be exported, they will increase rapidly.

Economically independent means that we can produce our own products (clothes, furniture, tools, housing) within the community, create our own currency and our own barter system that is 100% independent of the Federal financial system, and we can grow our own food to the best of our ability without relying on the monopoly of distribution and logistics, the wrapping of everything in plastic and paper, the taxes and charges on everything that we eat, and the pesticides, herbicides and petro-fertilizers and the GMOs that cost us and kill us. If we get these vampire middle men out of the way, our movement will be far more powerful and we will not have these parasites sucking our economic lifeblood.

Intellectually independent means that we avoid the commercial television broadcasts that are meant to dumb down the population, and we create our own independent journalism and run our own alternative schools for our children. We will engage in discussions among citizens concerning local, national and international issues that will allow for a rational and informed discussion without the fluff, the hype and the blatantly anti-intellectual agenda of the corporate media.

That means that we will avoid like the plague the thought leaders that corporations force-feed us and rather strive to increase the intellectual independence and capacity of all citizens; we will recognize the potential of all to rise to the intellectual level demanded of them as citizens.

A pledge of membership and of joint ownership of the village, the community, that we join is an extremely effective means of creating a clear awareness of our independence through cooperation. 

We will welcome to our growing communities those who were laid off in the COVID-19 firings, those who have been economically destroyed by lockdowns and other political attacks, and those persecuted for not taking vaccines. Moreover, the farmland that multinational corporations and billionaires like Bill Gates claim to possess belongs to our communities. In accord with the Constitution of the United States, we do not recognize the purchase of our precious farmland, critical to our survival, by billionaires and multinational corporations using fake money and other financial tricks. They own nothing.  

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This article was originally published on Fear No Evil.

Emanuel Pastreich served as the president of the Asia Institute, a think tank with offices in Washington DC, Seoul, Tokyo and Hanoi. Pastreich also serves as director general of the Institute for Future Urban Environments. Pastreich declared his candidacy for president of the United States as an independent in February, 2020.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

OpenAI Is Falling Apart: The Dilemma of Ilya Sutskever

November 26th, 2023 by Karsten Riise

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OpenAI is falling apart.

What remains will still be an extremely consequential AI developer with a big bunch of the best talent in global AI – but not genius.

Microsoft is now in full control – commerce including with the US power handlers is now on top and the founding principles are out.

There is no chance Ilya can realize his visions in OpenAI anymore. No way.

Everyone from tech industry insiders to average bystanders marveled over the past week at how some of the brightest minds in Silicon Valley managed to briefly turn the world’s leading AI company into a laughing stock.

The drama that unfolded at OpenAI nearly a year to the day after the institute first captured people’s imagination with the release of ChatGPT is now over—or at least paused—with co-founder Sam Altman reinstated as CEO.

But experts now believe OpenAI crossed the Rubicon and there is no going back to the way things were, even if Altman’s in-house rivals, among them Ilya Sutskever, wish for nothing more. (Fortune, November 24, 2023)

The Dilemma for Ilya Sutskever Is Acute

The meaning, rationale, governance, principles, and power in OpenAI have changed completely. Even if Ilya stays, he will still no longer work for the company he helped create and led scientifically to its achievements. The new OpenAI will not give a damn about an “AI that loves humanity.” This is not only tough but impossible for Ilya.

If Ilya leaves with some of the best and most loyal talent, they will probably be a minority with less developers and bereft of some intellectual rights of their creation. But new talent and the right kind of individuals will love to go there. Tough, but possible.

Breaking things down and starting over sometimes even creates a breakthrough.

Ilya has to leave and realize his visions by starting his own.

There is no other way.

OpenAI will just be an ordinary big commercial AI company – a little better but fundamentally no different from Google. Not nearly the room like before for Ilya to work, and Ilya cannot change that. Ilya, on his side, does not need OpenAI or depend on Microsoft. Ilya will always attract the right talent, the right kind of people with that talent (crucial), and the right kind of capital partners with his conditions.

Ilya starting his own company will be even more successful than before.

Go, go, go!

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Karsten Riise is a Master of Science (Econ) from Copenhagen Business School and has a university degree in Spanish Culture and Languages from Copenhagen University. He is the former Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Mercedes-Benz in Denmark and Sweden.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.  

Featured image: OpenAI headquarters, Pioneer Building, San Francisco (Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

Israel clausura su laboratorio humano en Gaza

November 26th, 2023 by Chris Hedges

Il Ministero dell’Intelligence israeliano – che supervisiona il funzionamento del Mossad e dello Shin Bet (i servizi segreti esterno e interno) sotto la direzione del Primo Ministro – raccomanda il trasferimento forzato e permanente dell’intera popolazione palestinese di Gaza nella penisola desertica del Sinai in Egitto. Qui dovrebbero essere create tendopoli e successivamente insediamenti permanenti.

Dovrebbe essere istituita una fascia inaccessibile larga diversi chilometri, in territorio egiziano, per impedire ai palestinesi di avvicinarsi al confine con Israele. Il piano, a cui il governo Netanyahu sta lavorando attraverso una trattativa con l’Egitto, coinvolge anche la popolazione palestinese della Cisgiordania.

Emblematica l’immagine di un bulldozer israeliano che, nel Territorio Palestinese della Cisgiordania, abbatte il monumento al leader storico della Palestina Yasser Arafat.

L’obiettivo del governo Netanyahu è chiaro: cancellare i Territori palestinesi. Lo conferma il fatto che l’attacco  israeliano non solo sta sterminando la popolazione palestinese, ma sta  rendendo il territorio di Gaza inabitabile, così da rendere inevitabile la  deportazione dei palestinesi nel Sinai o altrove, camuffata da “operazione umanitaria internazionale”.

Da tale situazione emerge la necessità di focalizzare l’azione contro la guerra su precisi obiettivi politici. In Italia possono essere  fondamentalmente tre:

1) L’abrogazione della Legge C. 5592 del 2005 che istituzionalizza la cooperazione militare a tutto campo tra Italia e Israele.

2) La richiesta che le Nazioni Unite inviino immediatamente una forza internazionale di peacekeeping a Gaza, territorio dello Stato di Palestina che dal 2012 fa parte delle Nazioni Unite con tutti i diritti, salvo quello di votare.

3) La messa in stato di accusa dei capi di Israele per crimini di guerra, crimini contro l’umanità e crimine di genocidio.

Manlio Dinucci

Video Byoblu.com :

https://www.byoblu.com/2023/11/24/il-ministero-dellintelligenge-israeliano-deportare-i-palestinesi-nel-deserto-del-sinai-grandangolo-pangea/

Video Youtube :

Rusia, China e Irán, constructores de un mundo multipolar

November 25th, 2023 by Alessandro Pagani

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“Never before has man had such capacity to control his own environment, to end thirst and hunger, to conquer poverty and disease, to banish illiteracy and massive human misery. We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world–or to make it the last.”

–  President John F. Kennedy, September 20, 1963 speech to the UN, two months and two days before his death. [1]

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Sixty years ago…

According to the official story released by the Warren Commission Report, the murder of John F. Kennedy was an achievement of one man, Lee Harvey Oswald, the lone gunman. [2]

His actions just happened to coincide with the decision by Dallas Sheriff Bill Decker, two hours before the attack on Kennedy, to order all one hundred of his deputies, “to take no part whatsoever in the security of the presidential motorcade.” And  Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry also gave an order to keep officers out of Dealey Plaza during the time the president was travelling through it. As he later pointed out in his book, The JFK Assassination Files, Curry was following the orders of the Secret Service. [3]

Lee Harvey Oswald could only be shooting from behind Kennedy. And yet, several individuals testified that the bullet that killed Kennedy entered from the front and exited through the back of his head! Only ten minutes before Oswald shot Kennedy from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) a secretary in the building who knew him saw him having lunch on the second floor! [4]

Oil billionaires expecting Kennedy to pass laws which would have them spending substantial amounts of taxes from their incomes held a party the night before the assassination. Vice-President Lyndon Johnson and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover were apparently in attendance. Then a week later, a second big party was held at an oil billionaire’s mansion where attendees were served champagne and were laughing apparently all the way to the bank. [5]

With these and other coincidences and realities in full display, one can come to one of two conclusions.

1) Lee Harvey Oswald was quite an amazing guy!

2) The real culprit(s) succeeded in pinning the blame exclusively on him!

As the anniversary has passed us over, we decided to commemorate the domestic event living on in infamy by looking at one researcher and two sets of evidence seldom on display when casual observers choose to talk about the death of perhaps the last president enjoying his level of high popularity.

Jacob Hornberger is a lawyer, a JFK investigator and author of two JFK related books in the last decade: The Kennedy Autopsy and An Encounter with Evil: The Abraham Zapruder Story. Hornberger brings these two books to light during this feature interview on the Global Research News Hour.

Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. He has advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the country as well as on Fox News’ Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows and he appeared as a regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s show Freedom Watch. View these interviews at LewRockwell.com and from Full Context. Send him email.

(Global Research News Hour Episode 410)

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The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM out of the University of Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca .

Other stations airing the show:

CIXX 106.9 FM, broadcasting from Fanshawe College in London, Ontario. It airs Sundays at 6am.

WZBC 90.3 FM in Newton Massachusetts is Boston College Radio and broadcasts to the greater Boston area. The Global Research News Hour airs during Truth and Justice Radio which starts Sunday at 6am.

Campus and community radio CFMH 107.3fm in  Saint John, N.B. airs the Global Research News Hour Fridays at 7pm.

CJMP 90.1 FM, Powell River Community Radio, airs the Global Research News Hour every Saturday at 8am. 

Caper Radio CJBU 107.3FM in Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia airs the Global Research News Hour starting Wednesday afternoon from 3-4pm.

Cowichan Valley Community Radio CICV 98.7 FM serving the Cowichan Lake area of Vancouver Island, BC airs the program Thursdays at 9am pacific time.

Notes:

  1. https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-speeches/united-nations-19630920
  2. https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-1
  3. https://www.globalresearch.ca/kennedy-assassination-greatest-conspiracy-ever-conceived/5840890
  4. ibid;
  5. ibid;

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After over 20 months of talk about various “game-changing NATO weapons” that would “drive Russia behind the Urals”, particularly the much-touted F-16 fighter jets, the Kiev regime doesn’t seem to be so enthusiastic anymore. Namely, the Neo-Nazi junta is now whining that the F-16s they’re supposed to be getting simply won’t make the cut against advanced Russian fighter jets. Thus, they’re already complaining about the need to modernize the US-made aircraft so it could stand a chance against Moscow’s platforms. The Kiev regime is particularly unhappy with the radar systems these F-16s will come with and is demanding they be upgraded before delivery, because they can’t even match the existing MiG-29s they’re supposed to replace (to say nothing of the higher-end Su-27s).

According to Oleksandra Ustinova, a prominent lobbyist for NATO arms deliveries and a member of the Verkhovna Rada (Parliament), discussions are ongoing regarding the modernization of F-16s that are slated for delivery to the Neo-Nazi junta. In an interview with the European Pravda, she emphasized the need for a better radar and more advanced missiles, as the ones that are supposed to be delivered are not up to the task. Ustinova confirmed that talks about applying the necessary upgrades are in progress, but refused to give more details. She complained about the acquisition process, calling it challenging due to communication issues with the Kiev regime’s NATO backers, particularly Washington DC, which, according to her, keeps 83% of the “aid” funds in the US.

“In addition, when we talk about the supply of weapons, 83% of the money allocated for weapons for Ukraine actually remains in America, because the state purchases these weapons from American manufacturers,” Ustinova said, later also adding: “After all, giving us aircraft with a radar range of 60 kilometers like a MiG does not make sense.”

While the exact type of F-16 fighter jets that the Neo-Nazi junta will get remains a secret, considering these claims, as well as the fact that one of the main donors is Norway which operated the F-16AM/BM Block 15 MLU (Mid-Life Upgrade), all of which were retired in 2022 in favor of the deeply troubled F-35, it’s safe to assume what sort of aircraft the Kiev regime will get. However, some of its over-enthusiastic military sources are claiming that the modernized aircraft would get the advanced AN/APG-83 Scalable Agile Beam Radar (SABR). This is an advanced AESA (active electronically scanned array) radar based on the F-22’s AN/APG-77 and the F-35’s AN/APG-81. They believe that this advanced AESA radar is capable of fulfilling their requirements to face Russian jets.

The Kiev regime is hoping that the AN/APG-83 can even be paired with old F-16s that some of their military sources erroneously labeled as the Block 20 MLU. Still, only the less advanced F-16 Block 15 were outfitted with the MLU upgrade. As for the AN/APG-83, the financial aspect of such an advanced (and expensive) upgrade should certainly be taken into account. The US Air Force (USAF) is currently undergoing a major modernization program for over 600 of its F-16C/D Block 40/42 and 50/52 variants. How likely is the Pentagon to give the go-ahead for transferring such advanced radars to the Kiev regime when its own jets are yet to get them? Not very, I’d argue. However, even if it does happen, the Neo-Nazi junta surely won’t be happy to learn that this would further delay the delivery of F-16s.

The process of training Ukrainian pilots for some of the most basic variants of the US-made jet is already taking too long.

Retraining them for a modernized version would take even longer and that’s without taking into account the time and resources needed to upgrade the existing F-16s slated for the Kiev regime forces. The acquisition process has been pushed back several times already and current estimates predict that the jets won’t be available before mid to late 2024. What’s more, there’s also the question of training the ground crews that are supposed to conduct maintenance, repairs and other logistics, further exacerbating the issue. However, the real pushback from the US might have the least to do with money, resources, deadlines or even having to undercut its own fleet for Kiev’s sake.

Namely, the real risk for the Pentagon comes from the possibility of Russia getting the chance to examine these advanced radars. With Russian jets such as the MiG-31BM, Su-35S and Su-57 in the skies over Ukraine and now even deadlier advanced SAM (surface-to-air missile) systems, the possibility of any other aircraft in the world surviving in such an environment is effectively zero. Moscow’s specialists could then locate any well-preserved wreckage and study its components, including the AN/APG-83. This would make it possible for Russia to design advanced countermeasures for its own jets and air defense systems, rendering these radars obsolete virtually overnight and making the USAF’s entire modernization effort a completely pointless waste of enormous resources.

This is without even considering the risk of a possible defection, as evidenced by a recent case with one Ukrainian pilot.

There’s also the ever-present reputational damage for the US, as massive combat losses could easily disrupt or even prevent foreign sales. And the danger is not only in the sky, but on the ground as well. Long-range precision strikes with air-launched cruise missiles launched by strategic bombers/missile carriers such as the Tu-95MS and Tu-160 or ground-based ones such as the now legendary “Iskander” could easily destroy entire squadrons parked on runways. Other platforms, such as the MiG-31K/I and even Su-34M strike fighters could fire the 9-A-7660 “Kinzhal” hypersonic missiles and obliterate entire airbases with F-16s, their pilots and ground crews.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst. He is a regular contributor to Global Research. 

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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Examine the following diagram, reporting  Vaccine Adverse Events  in Florida following the COVID-19 vaccine rollout in mid-December 2020

Below is a report of the Florida Department of Health published in February 2023, which demonstrates unequivocally that the Covid-19 vaccine launched in mid-December 2020 was conducive to a major shift in the number of Adverse Events reported in 2021, in comparison with all previous years. 

Of significance, most governments Worldwide (and across the U.S. and Canada) have failed to inform people on the dangers of the Covid-19 vaccine.

In contrast, The Florida Department of Health  acknowledges in this report the adverse events related to the COVID-19 vaccine including: 

coagulation disorders, acute cardiac injuries, Bell’s palsy, encephalitis. cardiac arrests, thromboembolic and thrombocytopenic events, cardiovascular disease, etc

Michel Chossudovsky,  Global Research November 23, 2023

 

Overall reports submitted to VAERS, Florida 2006–2022

In Florida alone, there was a 1,700% increase in VAERS reports after the release of the COVID-19 vaccine, compared to an increase of 400% in overall vaccine administration for the same time period (Figure 1).

The reporting of life-threatening conditions increased over 4,400%. This is a novel increase and was not seen during the 2009 H1N1 vaccination campaign. There is a need for additional unbiased research to better understand the COVID-19 vaccines’ short- and long-term effects.

The findings in Florida are consistent with various studies that continue to uncover such risks. To further evaluate this, the Surgeon General wrote a letter to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) illustrating the risk factors associated with the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines and emphasizing the need for additional transparency.

According to a study, Fraiman J et al, Vaccine. 2022, mRNA COVID-19 vaccines were associated with an excess risk of serious adverse events, including coagulation disorders, acute cardiac injuries, Bell’s palsy, and encephalitis. This risk was 1 in 550 individuals, which is much higher than other vaccines.

A second study, Sun CLF et al, Sci Rep. 2022, found increased acute cardiac arrests and other acute cardiac events following mRNA COVID-19 vaccination.

Additionally, Dag Berild J et al, JAMA Netw Open. 2022, assessed the risk of thromboembolic and thrombocytopenic events related to COVID-19 vaccines and found preliminary evidence of increased risk of both coronary disease and cardiovascular disease.

While the CDC has identified safety signals for stroke among individuals 65 and older following the bivalent booster administration, there is a need for additional assessments and research regarding safety of all mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.

To support transparency, the State of Florida reminds health care providers to accurately communicate the risks and benefits of all clinical interventions to their patients, including those associated with the COVID-19 vaccine as additional risks continue to be identified and disclosed to the public.

The State of Florida remains dedicated to protecting communities from the risks of COVID-19 and other public health concerns, specifically by promoting the importance of treatment and promoting prevention through healthy habits. We encourage our health care partners and providers to do the same.

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Featured image is from Pandemic.news


The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

Reviews

This is an in-depth resource of great interest if it is the wider perspective you are motivated to understand a little better, the author is very knowledgeable about geopolitics and this comes out in the way Covid is contextualized. —Dr. Mike Yeadon

In this war against humanity in which we find ourselves, in this singular, irregular and massive assault against liberty and the goodness of people, Chossudovsky’s book is a rock upon which to sustain our fight. –Dr. Emanuel Garcia

In fifteen concise science-based chapters, Michel traces the false covid pandemic, explaining how a PCR test, producing up to 97% proven false positives, combined with a relentless 24/7 fear campaign, was able to create a worldwide panic-laden “plandemic”; that this plandemic would never have been possible without the infamous DNA-modifying Polymerase Chain Reaction test – which to this day is being pushed on a majority of innocent people who have no clue. His conclusions are evidenced by renown scientists. —Peter Koenig 

Professor Chossudovsky exposes the truth that “there is no causal relationship between the virus and economic variables.” In other words, it was not COVID-19 but, rather, the deliberate implementation of the illogical, scientifically baseless lockdowns that caused the shutdown of the global economy. –David Skripac

A reading of  Chossudovsky’s book provides a comprehensive lesson in how there is a global coup d’état under way called “The Great Reset” that if not resisted and defeated by freedom loving people everywhere will result in a dystopian future not yet imagined. Pass on this free gift from Professor Chossudovsky before it’s too late.  You will not find so much valuable information and analysis in one place. –Edward Curtin

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

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***

It resembles a chronology of desperation, shifting narratives, and schoolboy howlers. From the outset, the mass lethality of Israeli strikes against Gaza and the collective punishment of its populace needed some justification, however tenuous. If it could be shown, convincingly, that Hamas and its allies had militarised such civilian infrastructure as hospitals, they would become fair game for vengeful air strikes and military assault. Thus, could Israel’s soldiers demonstrate, not merely the animal savagery of Hamas, one indifferent to humanity and suffering, but the virtue of Israel’s own military objectives.  The forces of pallid light would again prevail against swarthy evil.

Interest quickly shifted to Al-Shifa Hospital, where the carnage has been horrific. This was said to be the wicked heart of operations, one depicted with exaggerated relish in a video titled “Home to Hamas’ Headquarters, This is an IDF 3D Diagram of the Shifa Hospital”.  In an explanatory note, the Israeli Defence Forces state in the crude production that the hospital “is not only the largest hospital in Gaza but it also acts as the main headquarters for Hamas’ terrorist activity.” It goes on to note that, “Terrorism does not belong in a hospital and the IDF will operate to uncover any terrorist infrastructure.”

This bit of amateurish theatrics suitably complemented another effort which made its debut on November 11. In its official Arabic account affiliated with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Israel posted a selfie video (now deleted) starring a Palestinian nurse indignant at Hamas’ commandeering of the Al-Shifa hospital. A close inspection of the production could only engender doubt: a well laundered lab coat, appropriate positioning of implicating logos, crude simulations of background bombing, the unconvincing accent. “The only thing missing was a degree hanging in the background saying Tel Aviv Upstairs Medical College,” a scornful Marc Owen Jones of The Daily Beast wrote.

Despite these stumbling efforts, support followed from Israel’s staunch backers, the United States. In a press briefing held on November 14, NSC Coordinator for Strategic Communications, John Kirby, asserted that

“we have information that  Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad use some hospitals in the Gaza Strip, including Al-Shifa, and tunnels underneath them to conceal and to support their military operations and to hold hostages.”

The language used by Kirby, however, did not exactly suggest a thriving command and control centre at work, though he would go so far as to claim that the hospital served as a “command-and-control node”. “They have stored weapons there, and they’re prepared to respond to an Israeli operation against that facility.”

When the IDF eventually made its way into the hospital, the initial evidence was not promising. In videos and photos posted by the Israeli forces none revealed tunnels and evidence of a vast command centre. As Aric Toler of the New York Times reported, a mere 10 guns were found at the first count. “The IDF has claimed that the ‘beating heart’ of Hamas’ operations is beneath Shifa.  Presumably they’ll release more photos/videos?” In another post, Toler identifies various “grab bags” with “guns and the body armor scattered around, and a laptop next to CD-Rs.”

In another round of public relations tripping, two new videos released by both the IDF and the Shin Bet security agency purported to document, as the Times of Israel describes it, a tunnel shaft with “a winding staircase from around three meters deep, continuing down for another seven meters until it reaches part of the tunnel network.  The tunnel continues for five meters, before turning to the right and continuing for another 50 meters.” At the end of the tunnel lies an obstructing blast door, equipped with a hole for shooters.

“The findings,” an IDF statement claimed with weak conviction, “prove beyond all doubt that buildings in the hospital complex are used as infrastructure for the Hamas terror organization, for terror activity. This is further proof of the cynical use that the Hamas terror organization makes of the residents of the Gaza Strip as a human shield for its murderous terror activities.”

Despite some strained satisfaction in the statement, the picture Israel offers is gnarled and tattered. The IDF production teams continue to struggle in reviving a cadaverous narrative, using their own soldiers as props (because that’s convincing) to describe their first impressions on seeing “a terrorist tunnel”. Just as its cream-of-the-crop elite failed to get wind of the October 7 attack, suggesting an expertise drugged by hubris, Israel’s information strategy seems increasingly suspect, slippery and ever subject to qualification. Rifles, a truck, and a hostage or two, do not a central military command centre make.

It is also worth noting that physicians and doctors working at the hospital – the authentic ones, in any case – have also been perplexed by the allegations that Al-Shifa serves as a throbbing command and control hub for Hamas and its combat operations.  Norwegian physician Mads Gilbert, who has worked at the facility for 16 years, told Democracy Now! that there was “no evidence at all” that such claims were true. “If it was a military command centre, I would not work there.” At least we can be sure that Gilbert is not a stage extra.

In this bleak mess, it is worth stressing that even if the hospital proved to be a military facility, humanitarian protections would not mysteriously cease for those patients and staff within it. “Anything that the attacking force can do to allow the humanitarian functions of that hospital to continue,” reasons Adil Haq of Rutgers Law School, “they’re obligated to do, even if there’s some office somewhere in the building where there is a fighter holed up.” But the strategy against Al-Shifa was never humanitarian to begin with, starting with depriving Gaza access to fuel, food and water. The rest is Pallywood.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a regular contributor to Global Research. Email: [email protected] 

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***

Ukraine is having difficulty in convincing its citizens to stay in the country.

According to a recent report, the regime’s soldiers are focusing their efforts on preventing citizens from leaving Ukrainian territory on the Transcarpathian border. The case clearly shows how Ukrainian citizens are dissatisfied with the situation in the country and do not support the war with Russia, trying to evade military obligations.

Ukrainian border service officials are located at the region of Transcarpathia trying to control the large flow of Ukrainian citizens who try to cross every day in order to avoid conscription. Many Ukrainian citizens want to enter neighboring nations, such as Hungary, Poland and Romania, as they believe this is the only way to save their lives from the devastating consequences of the conflict.

Unable to convince their compatriots to fight in the war, Ukrainian soldiers are using illegal and anti-humanitarian methods to prevent escapes. Real military operations are being conducted in the region and there is even the use of landmines on the border, showing the intention to injure or kill those who try to enter neighboring countries. Kidnappings of local citizens for forced recruitment have also become commonplace.

It is also important to remember that the Transcarpathian region is a repeated target of Kiev’s ethnic cleansing practices. Being a region of majority of Hungarian ethnicity, Transcarpathia has become a kind of “Western Donbass” in Ukraine. A process of genocide against the local people has been implemented in an increasingly open and public manner in recent years.

This genocide happens on both a cultural and physical level. Hungarian schools have been closed and the native language banned from official documents. In parallel, ethnic Hungarians are recruited en masse and taken without adequate training and poorly equipped to the front lines, where they become easy targets for Russian artillery and die in large numbers. Kiev is taking advantage of its martial law to use non-Ukrainian ethnic citizens as cannon fodder in NATO’s war of aggression against Russia, and there currently clearly appears to be a focus on using the situation to accelerate ethnic cleansing in Transcarpathia

It is possible to understand the practices of the neo-Nazi regime by remembering its main political inspiration, which is Hitler’s Germany. During the war, Nazi Germany implemented the so-called “Volkssturm”, a mass recruitment measure with forced conscription to form a large national militia. In Ukraine, this is exactly what is being done, giving priority to ethnic groups that the Zelensky government wants to eliminate as quickly as possible, such as the Hungarians.

Militia units are being created in Transcarpathia and called “centers of national resistance”, where, in addition to the forced recruitment of local citizens, sabotage operations are also carried out against any type of resistance from the Hungarian people. Peaceful protests are quickly repressed and data from local anti-war activists is sent to Ukrainian intelligence to enable attacks. There is a clear objective on the part of the regime to eliminate any type of “Hungarian threat” in Transcarpathia, which is why these illegal practices are becoming gradually frequent.

These facts show that the Russians have always been right in their allegations. The current Ukrainian government is really a neo-Nazi junta that hates and persecutes ethnic minorities. Kiev does not respect the Hungarian people and their right to self-determination, in the same way that it never respected the Russians of Donbass, having always promoted violent acts against the local population. Racism, xenophobia and ultranationalism are a vital part of the ideology that became hegemonic in Ukraine in 2014, which is why crimes against non-ethnic Ukrainian citizens are recurrent.

In the same sense, it is clear that local citizens are fatigued of living under the terror of war and want to leave the country as quickly as possible. There is no patriotic motivation that convinces Ukrainians to remain in the country, simply because it seems increasingly clear that Kiev is not fighting for its own people or territory, but for foreign interests that in no way benefit the local population. This awareness is leading many young men of military age to flee the country across the border in Transcarpathia. Kiev reacts using unnecessary violent methods, but the correct path to follow should be another.

Instead of forcing its citizens to fight, Ukraine should change its policies and adopt a humanitarian and sovereign stance, stopping serving as a proxy and leaving its citizens free to choose whether or not to undertake military service. The problem is that these proposals of respect for humanity and democracy are contradictory to the hegemonic neo-Nazi ideology in today’s Ukraine.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Lucas Leiroz is a journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant. You can follow Lucas on X (former Twitter) and Telegram. He is a regular contributor to Global Research. 

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Is Armenia Really Arming the Kiev Regime?

November 24th, 2023 by Drago Bosnic

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Approximately two months after the unfortunate fall of Artsakh (better known as Nagorno-Karabakh), a historically Armenian land occupied by Azerbaijan, resulting in the ethnic cleansing of over 100,000 indigenous Armenians, the current government continues with its disastrous foreign policy. Run by the infamous Sorosite Nikol Pashinyan, the end of Armenia’s troubles is nowhere in sight.

Worse yet, one of the world’s oldest countries and civilizations, spanning millennia and starting with the ancient Kingdom of Urartu nearly 3000 years ago, Armenia is staring into the abyss as its NATO-backed “leader” keeps making one bad decision after another. The victims of this unwise (at best, although the more suitable term would be treacherous) “strategy” are the Armenian people, both in Artsakh and Armenia proper.

The former have lost virtually everything and are now living in refugee camps while their multi-millennial native homeland is being ravaged by Azeri invaders. On the other hand, the latter are running the risk of going through the same, as Azerbaijan and its Neo-Ottoman ally Turkey keep escalating pressure on Armenia. For his part, Pashinyan continues the suicidal pivot toward the political West that intends to use Yerevan to destabilize Moscow’s southern periphery. Back in early October, as the exodus of Artsakh Armenians was unfolding, Pashinyan met French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna, who pledged “support” for the South Caucasus country, including with weapons shipments. Too little, too late, one would argue. However, as long as France can make some money for its Military Industrial Complex, it’s “perfectly fine and dandy”.

The continued suffering of the Armenian people is secondary, it would seem, as Yerevan continues to tilt toward Paris. According to Quest-France, Armenia received up to 24 French “Bastion” armored personnel carriers (APCs) that were originally intended for the Kiev regime. The latter claims to have discarded the armored vehicles on account of their inadequate protection, although some have suggested that the actual reason why the APCs were not delivered to the Neo-Nazi junta (despite the promised donation by the manufacturer) is because Yerevan was willing to pay for them. The price is yet to be disclosed, but various sources report it hovers around half a million euros apiece, an exorbitant sum for the increasingly cash-strapped Armenia that should have other priorities.

The superb performance of Russian drones during the special military operation (SMO) should’ve prompted a wise Armenian leader to acquire them from Moscow, a move which would not only reignite their centuries-old alliance, but would also provide a very real and combat-proven capability to deter and/or defeat further Turko-Azeri aggression. But alas, the Armenian people are unfortunate to have Pashinyan in power. To demonstrate just how spectacularly incompetent he is, we can compare the cost and the performance of a single Russian-made “Lancet” and the French-made “Bastion”. The former costs approximately $35,000, while the latter stands at over $400,000. This would mean that for the price of one “Bastion” APC, Yerevan could acquire at least 11 “Lancet” drones.

Considering the fact that an anti-tank variant of the “Lancet” was documented destroying German “Leopard 2” tanks (costing over $8 million apiece), one of the best in NATO, what chance could the “Bastion” APC possibly have? Thus, the combat performance of the “Lancet” far exceeds its price, making it one of the most cost-effective weapons of our age. Worse yet, Armenia bought up to 24 “Bastion” APCs, meaning that it wasted approximately $10 million that otherwise could’ve been used to acquire nearly 300 “Lancet” drones that would’ve provided a massive advantage over any potential Azeri invasion force. However, Yerevan’s strategic miscalculations don’t seem to be limited to disastrous military thinking only. Namely, there have been disturbing reports that the Pashinyan government will provide weapons to the Kiev regime.

The US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW), citing “a prominent Kremlin milblogger” (unspecified in the text, but obviously referring to the Militarist) and other Russian sources, claims that Armenia allegedly agreed to transfer its “Tochka-U” short-range ballistic missiles to the Neo-Nazi junta and that it’s supposedly even considering the possibility of leaving the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). On November 9, Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister Vahan Kostanyan denied this, while the Armenian Ministry of Defense rejected reports about the supposed shipment of missiles to the Kiev regime forces. However, other sources keep claiming that the supposed deal is not only going forward, but could also include air defense systems such as the older S-300 and short-range “Osa-AK”.

The allegations are yet to be substantiated and hopefully will soon be disproven, but Moscow’s distrust towards the Pashinyan regime can hardly be considered unreasonable. Namely, the Secretary of the Armenian Security Council Armen Grigoryan recently met the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, Andriy Yermak, one of the most prominent Kiev regime officials. The participation of one of the highest-ranking Armenian officials at a conference dedicated to the Neo-Nazi junta certainly won’t reassure Russia that Armenia can be considered an ally. This explains why the allegations were even made in the first place, as Moscow cannot be sure what sort of behind-closed-doors agreements were made during the aforementioned conference. If the reports turn out to be true, the damage to Russian-Armenian ties could be irreparable.

Despite its age and obsolescence against the Russian military, the “Tochka-U” missile system can be used against civilian targets, as evidenced by the Kiev regime’s indiscriminate usage of all sorts of weapons against cities and towns across Ukraine and even some in Russia. What’s more, if Yerevan does have hundreds of “Tochka-U” missiles, the obvious question arises, why weren’t they used to protect Artsakh? Worse yet, if Armenia indeed sends “Osa-AK” and S-300 SAM (surface-to-air missile) systems to the Neo-Nazi junta, while importing the much more expensive French “Mistral” short-range air defense systems, this could end up being one of the most self-defeating moves ever made by any country in recent times. Since there certainly hasn’t been a shortage of such suicidal moves in Yerevan, who could possibly criticize Moscow’s suspicion?

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

The 30th APEC (Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation) took place in San Francisco between 15 and 17 November, 2023.

Of the Association’s 21 members – Australia; Brunei Darussalam; Canada; Chile; People’s Republic of China; Hong Kong, China; Indonesia; Japan; Republic of Korea; Malaysia; Mexico; New Zealand; Papua New Guinea; Peru; the Philippines; the Russian Federation; Singapore; Chinese Taipei; Thailand; the United States of America; Vietnam – most were present; many by their Heads of State.

The highlights were President Xi Jinping and President Biden – who met at the margin of the meeting, confirming that their relationship had been suffering in the past and that they wanted to revive it, bringing it up to better terms, especially as far as their mutual trading relation is concerned; with accent of “fair trade” as well as in more frequent military consultations.

APEC family photo in San Francisco

APEC family photo in San Francisco (Licensed under the Public Domain)

President Putin, the leader of the Russian Federation, a key APEC partner, was absent.

It is clear there is a mutual dependence between the US and China – especially in trade but also in investments. The more the US invests in China, and China in the US, the greater the reciprocal relationship.

The same applies to their trading relation.  The symbiotic economic interrelation between the US and China is a reflection of China’s exports to the US – goods often produced by US corporations manufactured in China; on the other hand, US consumption of Chinese goods without which, US consumption and related GDP indicators would slump.

A typical and pertinent response of President Xi to one of Biden’s threats of more sanctions a few months ago was something to the extent, “Just watch what would happen if we stopped producing your iPhone.”

This interrelation is also a challenge for China’s – and her allies – dedollarization. The solution so far is trading in local currencies. And that is precisely what China is promoting, especially within the RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership), the world’s largest free trade agreement.

RCEP became effective on 1 January 2022 and counts with ten members – Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, China, Japan, Laos, New Zealand, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. RCEP is predicted to become the world’s largest trade agreement by 2030 overshadowing all other worldwide trade agreements taken together. Trading within RCEP is entirely in local currencies.

The RCEP and the ensuing dedollarization may have been a topic of “informal” discussions between the two Presidents, Xi and Biden.

In any case, the US Institute of Peace characterized the talks between the two leaders as “the most constructive and productive since Biden came to Office.” That may be.

Such is always peace-loving President Xi’s precept – good relations with partners. It is a constructive Chinese concept of non-belligerence.

However, from what the media said, Biden had a lot of criticism about China-Russia relations, the war in Ukraine, “aggression” on Taiwan, of course; and China’s non-support of Israel for Israel’s outright slaughter of Palestinians – the eradication of Gaza, and probably all of Palestine.

That already sets “limits” to better relations.

Of what may have happened behind closed doors – in case they had separate, private meetings – nothing emerged, to my knowledge.

Another topic of “hidden” talks may have been the ever tighter strategic and economic relationship between China and Russia.

According to RT (Russia Today) on 20 November, Western currencies have been almost completely phased out in Russia-China trade. Nearly all payments between the countries are now carried out in rubles and yuan.

Since the introduction of Western sanctions on Moscow, Russia and China have accelerated the use of their own currencies in trade, to reach about 95% of all transactions between Russia and China. They are now carried out in one of the countries’ national currencies. This percentage is soon reaching 100%.

Bilateral trade between the two countries is expected to exceed the target of $200 billion this year and may reach $300 billion by 2030.

According to Xinhua News on November 19, and following Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, joint efforts of both sides have achieved more than 20 important accords, including the establishment of a working group on counternarcotics cooperation and the agreement to resume, on the basis of equality and respect, high-level communication and institutional dialogue between the two militaries, and to jointly promote the success of the 28th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP28) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Dubai.

To end the APEC Summit on a positive note, President Xi told President Biden,

“It is unrealistic for one side to remodel the other,” and the planet is “big enough for [our] two countries to succeed.”

This is fully reflecting the spirit of China’s philosophy – working towards a joint future with benefits for all.

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Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020).

Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.

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***

Below are 35 lies perpetrated and perpetuated by the neo-Nazi Zionists and by Zionist-subverted Australia and other members of the US Alliance West in support of neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel.

As a measure of the success of Zionist lying the results from Google Searches for the indicated phrases in inverted commas are given in brackets. Space does not permit detailed and documented refutation of each Lie here but item #13 gives an example of such refutation.

For an extremely detailed and documented refutation of each of these 35 Zionist lies in an over 9,000-word and 109-reference analysis see Gideon Polya, “Gaza Massacre: 35 Ways Zionist-perverted US, Australia & West Lie For Child-killing, Neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel”, Countercurrents, 23 November 2023.

(1) The Lie that “Israel is a Jewish state” (333,000 Google Search results).

(2) The Lie that “Israel is a democracy” (261,000).

(3)  The Lie that “Israel is a liberal democracy” (54,000).

(4) The Lie that “Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East” (36,000).

(5) The Lie that “Israel has the most moral army” (5,000).

(6) The Lie that “Israel is the home of the Jewish people” (95,000).

(7) The Lie that “Israel is not an apartheid state” (34,000).

(8) The Lie involved in describing the WW2 Jewish Holocaust as “The Holocaust” (47,000,000).

(9) The Lie involved in falsely weaponizing “Anti-Semitism” (25,000,000) against humane critics of Apartheid Israel.

(10) The Lie involved in falsely weaponizing the “Jewish Holocaust” (1,160,000) against humane critics of Apartheid Israel.

(11) The Lies involved in supporting the all-European, anti-Jewish anti-Semitic, anti-Arab anti-Semitic and holocaust-denying “International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance” (159,000) or “IHRA” (2,330, 000).

(12) The Lies involved in supporting the “IHRA definition of antisemitism” (66,000).

(13) The Lie involved in conflating “Zionism” (14,000,000), “Israel” (3,270,000,000) and the “State of Israel” (34,100,000)  with “all Jews” (2,770,000). Refutation: A large body of anti-racist Jews are opposed to the Apartheid and genocidal racism policies of Apartheid Israel. For example, 25% of US Jews surveyed acknowledge that Israel is an Apartheid state.

(14) The Lie that “anti-Zionism is antisemitism” (16,000).

(15) The Lie that “Israel-Nazi comparison” (600) is antisemitism.

(16) The Lie involved in asserting that comments on “Jewish wealth” (77,000) are anti-Semitic.

(17) The Lie that pejorative noting of “Jewish support for Israel” (19,000) is anti-Semitic.

(18) The Lie that support for “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” (355,000) aka “BDS” (89,000,000) against Apartheid Israel and all its supporters is anti-Semitic.

(19) The Lie that supporting boycotts of Zionist businesses is akin to the Nazi “boycott of Jewish businesses” (26,000). 

(20) The Lie that asserting “Jewish influence” (269,000) and “Jewish power” (618,000) is anti-Semitic.

(21) The Lie that Jews have a “right to Palestine” (1, 570,000).

(22) The Lie that “Hamas is a terrorist organization” (279,000).

(23) The Lie of a “Hamas terrorist massacre” (2,700) and “Hamas massacre of children” (7,000) on 7 October 2023.

(24) The Lie that opposing a “Jewish state” (5,820,000) in Palestine is anti-Semitic.

(25) The Lie that “Palestine” (497,000,000) and “Palestinians” (568,000,000) do not exist.

(26) The Lie that as an Occupying Power “Israel has the right to defend itself” (270,000) in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

(27) The Lie that “Palestinian armed resistance” (17,000) is unlawful and terrorism.

(28) The Lie that “Israel is civilized” (2,000).

(29) The Lies that “Hamas is barbaric” (4,000) and “Palestinians are barbaric” (2,000).

(30) The Lie of the false descriptive “Palestinian Territories” (56,400,000) instead of the correct “Occupied Palestinian Territories”  (1,700,000).

(31) The Lie that use of the term “final solution” (17,700,000) is anti-Semitic.

(32) The Lie that “Israeli settlements are legal” (2,000).

(33) The Lie of a “two-state solution” (9,300,000) that is now dead because 90% of Palestine has been ethnically cleansed of Indigenous Palestinians.

(34) The Lie that “anti-Semitism” (25,400,000) and “antisemitism” (65,000,000)  only refer to anti-Jewish prejudice, with this minimizing “anti-Jewish anti-Semitism” (16,800) and ignoring horrendously deadly and ongoing “anti-Arab anti-Semitism” (3,600) in genocidal US wars on Arab and Muslim countries (see the huge books by Gideon Polya, “US-imposed Post-9/11 Muslim Holocaust & Muslim Genocide”, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, and “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History”).  

(35) The massive Lying by Zionists and pro-Zionists that almost completely ignores “anti-racist Jews” (800).

The core ethos of Humanity is Kindness and Truth but this is comprehensively violated by the genocidally racist and mendacious Zionists through

(a) their sustained, genocidal abuse inflicted  on the  sorely oppressed Indigenous Palestinians for a century, and

(b) their sustained, egregious lying  in support of horrendous Nazi-style Israeli abuse and genocide.

Thus, for a particularly horrible  example of this fundamental Zionist perversion, on a per capita basis in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel leads the world in (a) killing children, and (b) killing journalists.

There are 2 kinds of people in the world, those opposing the killing of innocents (notably the Greens and Socialists), and the others. The “others” include the major right-wing Western parties (e.g. the US Democrats and Republicans, the UK Labour and Conservatives, and the  Australian Labor and Coalition) and are utterly unfit for decent company, public life and public office.

Zionism is genocidal racism and Nazism without gas chambers but with 90 nuclear weapons, the blockaded and bombed Gaza Concentration Camp and one of the world’s biggest  high technology militaries and arms industries. 47.3% of Gazans are children and 72.3% women and children

All human rights for all Palestinians! End the Occupation! Free Palestine! From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free! Ideally there must be a secular and democratic state in Palestine as in post-Apartheid South Africa and involving peace, equal rights for all, zero tolerance for racism, reconciliation, economic justice for all, secular democracy, security, freedom of movement for all, and return of all refugees.

The Occupation and the genocidal mass murder of Occupied Palestinians in Gaza must stop immediately. Decent people around the World must act by

(a) informing everyone they can, and

(b) urging and applying comprehensive Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel and also against all people, politicians, parties, collectives, corporations and countries supporting genocidally racist, nuclear terrorist, serial war criminal, grossly human rights-abusing, child-, mother- and women-abusing and neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel.

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Dr Gideon Polya taught science students at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia over 4 decades. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, notably a huge pharmacological reference text “Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds”. He has also published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (2007, 2022) and “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” (1998, 2008, 2023). He has recently published “US-imposed Post-9-11 Muslim Holocaust & Muslim Genocide” (2020), and “Climate Crisis, Climate Genocide & Solutions” (2020), and contributed to Soren Korsgaard (editor) “The Most Dangerous Book Ever Published – Dangerous Deception Exposed!” (2020). For images of Gideon Polya’s huge paintings for the Planet, Peace, Mother and Child see: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/ 

Featured image is from The Unz Review

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***

Greece has delivered huge amounts of weapons to Ukraine and has vehemently backed sanctions against Russia. In fact, last year, on September 22, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis declared in an interview with Bloomberg,

“We’re fighting a war against Russia, and we try to support Ukraine.”

However, over the last year, Greek shipowners have dramatically increased their oil shipments from Russia, creating serious tensions between Athens and Kiev. At the same time, it is recalled that in discussions in the European Union about sanctions against Russia, the Greek prime minister defended them. 

Effectively, Mitsotakis is trying to play both sides of the conflict, committing fully to instructions from the EU and NATO but also protecting the interests of the Greek oligarchs – the shipowners. The protection of Greek shipowners’ interests by Mitsotakis has caused a rift in relations, especially after Kiev published a “blacklist” of the names of important Greek shipowners, most with extremely close ties to the ruling New Democracy party. Ukraine has put up that list because they transport Russian oil.

Kiev has proven, once again, that it is not a reliable partner who coerces EU members into pushing through the adoption of anti-Russian sanctions.

For Greece to approve the previous 11th package of sanctions against Moscow in June, Kiev removed Greek shipping companies from the “International War Sponsors” register of the National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP) for the transportation of Russian hydrocarbons. After adopting anti-Russian sanctions, Kiev again included the Greek shipowners in the sanctions list.

Instead of showing gratitude to Greece for providing military and financial assistance, especially given its own military confrontations with Turkey and recovering from a devastating economic crisis, Kiev is brazenly manipulating its European partners and, demonstratively, is non-obligatory in its implementation of agreements reached.

Therefore, it can be expected that Kiev will continue to deceive its Western partners. In this situation, the Greek oligarchs are increasingly convinced of the need to reject the package of anti-Russian sanctions being developed by the European Council.

The meeting between Mitsotakis and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Athens in August, on the surface, appeared to be an extremely positive exchange, with the Greek prime minister promising his country’s air force to train Ukrainian F-16 pilots and to continue offering diplomatic and material support. Nonetheless, the authoritative subscription publication Intelligence Online reported that it “has seen missives between Ukrainian and Greek officials that highlight ongoing tensions over Greek shipping companies’ alleged support of sanctioned Russian firms.”

The Greek government never mentioned whether the issue of shipowners was discussed at the Mitsotakis-Zelensky meeting, but it would be surprising if it were not, as four Greek shipping companies are on the “black list.”

In the Wall Street Journal, in a publication entitled “It’s a Bad Boy”, references were made to Greek shipping magnates George Economou, the families of Andreas Martinos and his brother, as well as George Prokopiou, for their listing on the Ukrainian “black list”. As Intelligence Online revealed, the disputes between the two countries relate to the transport of Russian oil by the Greek companies, Delta Tankers, Dynacom Tankers Management, Minerva Marine, TMS Tankers and Thenamaris Ships Management, which – to the great dismay of Athens – were once again blacklisted by Kiev in July.

According to Intelligence Online, the Greek companies were excluded from the “blacklist” but only a month after the passing of the 11th sanctions package in June, the NACP wrote to the Ukrainian foreign minister that the companies had been blacklisted again for not taking a stand against Russia. This turn of events immediately revived tensions between Athens and Kiev to the point where the NACP is concerned that Greece may block additional sanctions against Russia, as happened in June.

Greek shipping firms saw an opportunity to cash in when global shipping companies shunned Russia following the launch of the military operation in February 2022. This business has been so lucrative that the share of Russian oil transported on Greek ships hit an all-time high last year. Around 30% of Russia’s Black Sea oil exports were carried on Greek ships at the start of 2022 but skyrocketed to 53% by May 2023. Experts believe Greek shipping firms make three to five times the usual rates, accounting for billions of euros in profit.

Mitsotakis belongs to a historic liberal political family with over 100 years in the Greek political landscape and protecting the interests of the oligarchs and ruling class. Due to this, Mitsotakis would always follow Brussels and Washington in supporting Kiev, but only until it began affecting the profits of Greece’s oligarchs. This is a fact that Kiev has failed to understand, and this blacklisting after extracting what it wants from its partners will prove to backfire as it will not only harden Greece’s stance on Ukraine ahead of negotiations for the 12th sanctions package on Russia but demonstrate to the rest of the EU that Ukraine cannot be trusted.

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Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

The White House released plans to convert massive commercial properties into affordable “zero-emission” housing

The White House announcement is peppered with Great Reset buzzwords, like “clean energy economy” and “zero emissions housing,” and echoes the agendas being pushed by globalists

The “much-needed housing” will provide more room to house the influx of illegal immigrants being driven into the U.S. by drug cartels

Cartels are lying to migrants, telling them that anyone waiting for an immigration appointment can get asylum if they turn themselves in

This tactic ties up border agents so cartels can carry out drug smuggling, kidnapping and human trafficking in less populated areas

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The White House released plans to convert massive commercial properties into affordable housing. Along with promoting energy efficiency and “zero emissions conversions” — classic technocrat dictates — the “much-needed housing” will provide more room to house the influx of illegal immigrants1 being driven into the U.S. by drug cartels.

In the October 2023 fact sheet, which touts the developments as “transit-oriented” and a method to “increase housing supply,” it’s stated:2

“[T]he Biden-Harris Administration is announcing new actions to support the conversion of high-vacancy commercial buildings to residential use, including through new financing, technical assistance, and sale of federal properties.

These announcements will create much-needed housing that is affordable, energy efficient, near transit and good jobs, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, nearly 30 percent of which comes from the building sector.”

Paving the Way for a Surveilled, Green ‘Utopia’

The White House announcement is peppered with Great Reset buzzwords, like “clean energy economy” and “zero emissions housing,” and echoes the agendas being pushed by globalists.

The Green New Deal (Green Agenda), “Build Back Better,” the Fourth Industrial Revolution3 (the transhumanist movement) and The Great Reset, officially introduced by World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab and then-Prince Charles in June 20204 — all exist to further and facilitate the implementation of Agenda 21.

Agenda 21 (Agenda for the 21st Century) is the inventory and control plan for all land, water, minerals, plants, animals, construction, means of production, food, energy, information, education and all human beings in the world. The European Green Deal is more of the same — introduced by the European Commission in December 20195 to, in part, replace fossil fuels with “cleaner” energy sources.

The White House cites data showing that office vacancies are at a 30-year high,6 straining local economies, while affordable housing is lacking and communities are looking for ways to cut emissions from buildings and transportation. Vacant commercial properties will be repurposed into affordable housing that will be close to transportation, “green,” and ideal for building the smart cities that take away your privacy and autonomy and allow for further surveillance and control.

The proposal aligns with the Great Reset agenda,7 which suggests shared goals, such as equality and sustainability, should be at the heart of government and private investments, and rather than funneling government recovery funds and economic-stimulus funding to “fill cracks in the old system,” these should be used to “create a new one that is more resilient, equitable, and sustainable in the long run.”

Schwab added, “This means, for example, building ‘green’ urban infrastructure and creating incentives for industries to improve their track record on environmental, social and governance (ESG) metrics.”8

It all sounds well and good, except, as Technocracy News reported in June 2020, “the promised Utopia comes with a price — it sets shackles on our personal freedom …”9 This could certainly be the case for those living in these affordable, green, smart cities.

As investigative journalist Corey Lynn tweeted, “Here we go … Converting/rezoning commercial buildings to net zero multiuse residential to fill up those abandoned buildings in cities and build their dream smart cities (and likely make room for illegal immigrants), complete with a 54-page guidebook.”10

The required sacrifices do not apply to the technocrats running the system, however, so ultimately The Great Reset will result in two tiers or people: the technocratic elite, who have all the power and rule over all assets, and the rest of humanity, who have no power, no assets and no say-so in anything. 

Why Zero Emissions Has a Dark Side

Zero emissions housing sounds like a good thing on the surface. But the notion can be traced back to decades’ old plans to implement a totalitarian future. In order to establish a new world order, there need to be problems that are global in scope. One of the problems, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, was the environment.

In 1972, a United Nations meeting about climate change was held to come up with a plan to manage the planet in a sustainable manner. This led to the creation of Agenda 21.11 In 2019, WEF entered into a strategic alliance with the United Nations, which called for the UN to “use public-private partnerships as the model for nearly all policies that it implements, most specifically the implementation of the 17 sustainable development goals, sometimes referred to as Agenda 2030.”12

Agenda 2030 is aimed at reducing middle-class’ consumption of basic goods and energy, which includes limiting, with an eye toward eliminating, property rights and private ownership for future generations, along with targeting such “luxuries” as ownership of electric appliances and motor vehicles along with suburban housing and air conditioning.13

It’s easy to see how turning high-vacancy commercial spaces into high-density housing fits right into this plan.

How Smart, Net Zero Mandates May Steal Your Autonomy

A practical example of how privacy may gradually disappear in these converted commercial spaces is the likely installation of smart devices in the residences. With each smart device that you welcome into your home — such as connected alarm clocks, vehicles, refrigerators and doorbells — another layer of your personal life is revealed.

This is certainly true of smart meters, which are officially known in the U.S. as advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) installations. In 2020, 102.9 million such smart meters were installed by U.S. electric utilities, about 88% of them in personal residences.14 AMI meters measure and record electricity usage at least every hour, if not more, and provide the data to the utility company and consumer at least once a day.

They’re also capable of distinguishing what type of energy you’re using. So, they know if you’re doing a load of laundry, watching TV or have left your home for the day. While this might not sound nefarious on the surface, it’s an intensely personal form of surveillance — one that could easily be used against you, including to ration your energy. Journalist Abby Martin explained:15

“If the notion about what you are doing and when you are doing isn’t disturbing enough – it’s worse. These devices are capable of regulating, controlling and even rationing your energy use. Take this example, you are running your fans in the hot summer months and the power company decides you are using too much power, they will take it upon themselves to lower it regardless of the consumer willing to pay for the extra usage.”

Technocrats such as BlackRock CEO Larry Fink and Bill Gates are among those pushing for “net zero” carbon emissions.16 The deadline Gates has given to reach net zero emissions is 2050,17 and smart meters are already being positioned as an essential part of this plan.18

Are They Making Room for the Cartel’s Migrant Mobs?

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), some 1.7 million illegals flowed across the southern border into the U.S. in 2021, another 2.4 million in 2022 and nearly 1.8 million as of August 2023.19

Many of them have been sent by drug cartels, law enforcement sources told The New York Post, under the false impression that anyone waiting for an immigration appointment through the CBP One app can get asylum if they turn themselves in.20 According to The New York Post:21

“Drug cartels are besieging the border by deliberately sending thousands of migrants a day to hand themselves over to Border Patrol officers in different US border towns, sources revealed to The Post. The tactic is meant to tie up already overworked border agents so Mexico’s cartels can carry on their drug and human smuggling operations undisturbed in less populated areas, law enforcement officials explained.

… ‘The way it’s being orchestrated through the cartels, I believe it’s meant to overwhelm the system. The [places] that are being impacted the most are border communities,’ former El Paso City Councilmember Claudia Rodriquez told The Post.”

Kidnapping is another issue. Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission has warned that drug cartels “found the kidnapping and extortion of migrants to be lucrative.” With the number of migrants reaching the border tripling over the last two decades, criminal groups have taken over migration routes, putting children and families at extreme risk.22

Speaking with NBC News, Nilda García, a researcher at Texas A&M International University in Laredo, explained, “It is very difficult for these groups to pass up this profit, this opportunity to earn money with migrants. Kidnappings are one more layer of its structure … They are very well organized. Sometimes they have military training and access to high-caliber weapons to terrorize migrants.”23

Is Immigration Intended to Beak Down Nationalism?

The video above features Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s mini-documentary “Midnight At the Border,” in which he travels to the U.S.-Mexico border in Yuma, Arizona, to investigate the illegal immigration issue firsthand.

The uncontrolled influx of illegals also puts an enormous strain on local communities, all of which have limited resources. In May 2023, NYC Mayor Eric Adams announced that nearly half of all NYC hotel rooms were occupied by illegal immigrants.24 The city is reportedly reimbursing hotels more than $300 a night per room,25 which means taxpayers are paying, while the city is slashing services in an effort to balance the budget.

Massive tent cities are also being set up to deal with the migrant influx.26 Is the conversion of office buildings to housing the White House’s “solution” to this crisis? Ultimately, it gives the global cabal one more win in its war against the sovereignty of humanity — and sovereign nations.

As Ivor Cummins, a biochemical engineer with a background in medical device engineering and leading teams in complex problem-solving, explains, “There’s … a massive change in immigration … it has been many times identified as a way of breaking down nationalism … the United Nations … made it clear we need to destroy national, we need to destroy sovereign nations …”27

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Notes

1, 10 Twitter.com, Corey Lynn of Corey’s Digs October 28, 2023

2, 6 The White House October 27, 2023

3 We Forum January 14, 2016

4 We Forum June 4, 2020

5 European Commission December 11, 2019

7, 8 World Economic Forum June 3, 2020

9 Technocracy.news June 29, 2020

11 YouTube, Ivor Cummins, The Greatest History Never Told June 24, 2023, 57:31

12 YouTube, MintPress News, Whitney Webb, What Is the World Economic Forum? February 8, 2023, 4:30

13 YouTube, MintPress News, Whitney Webb, What Is the World Economic Forum? February 8, 2023, 5:00

14 U.S. Energy Information Administration, FAQs

15 Matthew Bell August 24, 2016

16 YouTube June 25, 2021

17 Fox Business February 21, 2021

18 Shell Energy, Smart meters and the future of energy

19 New York Post August 19, 2023

20, 21 The New York Post September 18, 2023

22, 23 NBC News October 1, 2021

24 NBC New York May 17, 2023

25 Bloomberg June 9, 2023

26 New York Post August 15, 2023

27 YouTube, Ivor Cummins, The Greatest History Never Told June 24, 2023, 1:14

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***

March 3, 2022 – Brazil – 15 year old Danylo Zinneck Nobre was perfectly healthy. He had his 1st Pfizer mRNA Vaccine on Aug. 24, 2021 and second on Oct. 19, 2021. Here is his story: 

He took 2 doses of Pfizer, the first on Aug.24, 2021 and the second on Oct.19, 2021.

Eighteen days later he had some slight fatigue. Then weakness in the legs. And then he began to experience blurred vision and heaviness in the head.

Then on Jan.6, 2022, he had a seizure and was intubated with difficulty swallowing and slurred speech.

He was taken to Hospital. There, an examination was performed without the presence of bacteria or virus. He had normal MRI, and he had several CT scans all with nothing abnormal.

He had daily labs, all normal.

He was left with paralysis in the diaphragm and upper and lower limbs, and had a tracheostomy.

He was diagnosed with Autoimmune Bickerstaff Brainstem Encephalitis (BBE), a rare neurological disease that affects the central nervous system and peripheral.

He underwent plasmapheresis treatment, a procedure aimed at filtering the blood, removing the substances that are causing damage from the plasma.

However, in the 5th session he suffered a hemorrhagic stroke, which was reabsorbed 80%, and an EVD lead was placed.

When changing the EVD, however, there was bleeding followed by brain death.

“My son was totally healthy, he had never been sick, he didn’t even know what a fever was. I stayed with him for 2 months in an ICU room until he died on Mar. 3, 2022.”

Image

2023 April (Masato Ando et al) – Autoantibody-negative but probable pediatric autoimmune encephalitis following COVID-19 vaccination: A case report

  • 14 year old Japanese girl had 3rd Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine
  • 19 days later she presented to ER because of a seizure
  • She had a headache and fever 5 days before the seizure, followed by diarrhea
  • She gradually became apathetic and developed mutism the day before presentation.
  • in ER, she was 37.4C, HR 130 bpm, respiratory rate 26 bpm, stiff neck, positive Kernig’s sign.
  • By the time she was admitted to pediatric ward she couldn’t speak words or follow instructions!
  • MRI showed multiple areas of brain inflammation
  • She was diagnosed with autoimmune encephalitis but no antibodies were found
  • Treatment: she was started on steroid pulse therapy with 3-day IV methylprednisolone at 1g per day.
  • She returned to her normal self soon after the 2nd dose.

2023 Sep. 6 EMA (European Medicines Agency) Report – Girl 12-17 years old had 1st Pfizer mRNA COVID-19 Vaccine and developed Encephalitis of the brainstem and was paralyzed and disabled.

2023 May 21 (VAERS 2646388) – 10 year old boy (Georgia) had 2nd Pfizer mRNA vaccine on Jan. 25, 2023. In February he started to complain about random headaches. In May 2023 he developed seizures, personality changes, auditory and visual hallucinations.

2022 May 25 (VAERS 2505252) – 14 year old previously healthy boy (California) had 3rd Pfizer mRNA Vaccine on March 18, 2022. 2 months later was hospitalized with encephalitis starting on May 25, 2022 until June 16, 2022. “Has a long road to recovery”. Was in ICU for 2 weeks, had to live in rehab for 2 weeks. Can only attend one class in high school.

2021 Dec. 06 (VAERS 1948381) – 11 year old boy (Texas) had 1st Pfizer mRNA and Flu Vaccine (Quadrivalent GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals) on Nov. 17, 2021. 19 days later, on Dec. 6, he developed severe headaches and somnolence for 7 days. MRI came back as acute disseminated encephalomyelitis and he was started on high dose steroids.

2021 Nov. 20 (VAERS 2325596) – 6 year old girl (Illinois) had 1st Pfizer mRNA on Nov.18, 2021. Two days later, she developed whole body hives and joint pain. After seeing many specialists, she was eventually diagnosed with Autoimmune encephalitis.

2021 Oct 31 (VAERS 1853455) – 13 year old boy had Pfizer mRNA Vaccine on Oct. 1, 2021. 1 month later on Oct. 31, 2021 he was diagnosed with Transverse Myelitis and Encephalitis.

Click here to read the full article.

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Dr. William Makis is a Canadian physician with expertise in Radiology, Oncology and Immunology. Governor General’s Medal, University of Toronto Scholar. Author of 100+ peer-reviewed medical publications.

Featured image is from COVID Intel


The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

Reviews

This is an in-depth resource of great interest if it is the wider perspective you are motivated to understand a little better, the author is very knowledgeable about geopolitics and this comes out in the way Covid is contextualized. —Dr. Mike Yeadon

In this war against humanity in which we find ourselves, in this singular, irregular and massive assault against liberty and the goodness of people, Chossudovsky’s book is a rock upon which to sustain our fight. –Dr. Emanuel Garcia

In fifteen concise science-based chapters, Michel traces the false covid pandemic, explaining how a PCR test, producing up to 97% proven false positives, combined with a relentless 24/7 fear campaign, was able to create a worldwide panic-laden “plandemic”; that this plandemic would never have been possible without the infamous DNA-modifying Polymerase Chain Reaction test – which to this day is being pushed on a majority of innocent people who have no clue. His conclusions are evidenced by renown scientists. —Peter Koenig 

Professor Chossudovsky exposes the truth that “there is no causal relationship between the virus and economic variables.” In other words, it was not COVID-19 but, rather, the deliberate implementation of the illogical, scientifically baseless lockdowns that caused the shutdown of the global economy. –David Skripac

A reading of  Chossudovsky’s book provides a comprehensive lesson in how there is a global coup d’état under way called “The Great Reset” that if not resisted and defeated by freedom loving people everywhere will result in a dystopian future not yet imagined. Pass on this free gift from Professor Chossudovsky before it’s too late.  You will not find so much valuable information and analysis in one place. –Edward Curtin

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 FREE COPY! Click here (docsend) and download.

We encourage you to support the eBook project by making a donation through Global Research’s DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page

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***

Looks like the Trudeau Government really wants Canadians to eat … crickets?

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation has released a report revealing that the Trudeau government has allocated close to $10 million in grants and contributions to various companies to support the development of cricket-based products from 2018 to 2023.

Crickets are gaining attention for their high protein content and eco-friendly qualities, making them a potential source of protein for human consumption. One beneficiary cites that recent research indicates that a growing number of Americans are open to incorporating crickets into their diets due to the perceived health and environmental benefits.

But is that enough to justify the millions in grants during a cost of living crisis?

The largest grant, amounting to $8.5 million, was awarded to Aspire Food Group Ltd. through the federal Agri-Innovate Program. Aspire Food Group’s funding is designated to aid in the establishment of a commercial demonstration facility in London, Ontario, dedicated to producing crickets for multiple markets, including pet, human, biomedicine, and agrochemical sectors.

According to Aspire, a significant portion of their cricket protein goes into pet food, but they are also exploring opportunities for human consumption.

Other companies that received government funding include NAAK, which plans to expand its product range to include cricket powder-infused items like steaks, sausages, and falafels. It received $48,517 in October 2018, and $123,178.00 in September 2020.

Prairie Cricket Farms of Manitoba received $75,000 for the period from September 2022 to March 2023 “to optimize processing and management procedures which will allow the firm to achieve enhanced product quality, productivity and profitability.”

Additionally, firms in Bromont, Quebec, Scarborough, and Calgary were awarded contracts aimed at advancing insect protein production.

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Featured image is from the deep dive

Medio Oriente: Estados Unidos necesita la guerra

November 24th, 2023 by Marcelo Colussi

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***

A State Department official, Sylvia Yacoub, not only has accused the Biden Administration of “spreading misinformation”, but also of being “complicit in genocide”. Her 5-page memo was signed by 100 State Department and USAID officials in a State Department system that, unfortunately, is not for public view. Still, it reveals that conflict exists within governmental structures. In the case of this memo, the impact is certain to be essentially zero. It’s as if leadership is saying, “OK, you’re critical, but now back to work.” So then, how does someone aware of dangerous or treasonous activity make it known to a larger public that needs it?

There is a vast storehouse of secrets within the hundreds of thousands of people in America’s federal alphabet agencies, e.g. CDC, CIA, FDA, EPA, DHS, FBI. There are many more “3-letters”, of course, but those 6 are high in the public mind. Every one impacts on the public’s perception of the Covid-19 Pandemic — of the early lies about there being no existing treatment thus forcing the world toward an untested genetic therapy misnamed “vaccine”, of the relentless in-your-face lies of “safe and effective”, of the censoring of alternative medical views, of hiding the fact of mortality rates vastly higher in the vaccinated. Things like that. Those 6 agencies alone account for ~600,000 federal employees, many who know much about which We The People are intentionally kept in the dark.

Leaderships of the 6 listed adhere with military fidelity to the official story of the Pandemic, now known to be full of orchestrated deceptions. But enforced conformity to a narrative is a key to “success” in dealing with a pandemic, according to Event 201’s strategy as framed mere weeks before the Covid-19 Pandemic was declared.

And when you follow details of Pandemic-related issues in play, you can see their “success” is disastrous to the massive “lower class” — essentially all of humanity that is to remain after the globalist’s Great Reset and the extinguishing of the middle class that is now in progress.

If you look at the Covid-19 Pandemic as an isolated issue, you’re overlooking its role in the ongoing surge toward One World Government, with its involvements in genocide, genetic manipulation and the melding of mind with machine.

The Covid 19 Pandemic is like a mile marker of the road toward One World Government as summarized by David Rockefeller 

“We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time Magazine and other publications, whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years.

It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the bright lights of publicity. But the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march toward a world government.”

The Covid-19 Pandemic has served as a stepping stone toward the “success” of globalist strategy, as it justified a major increase in governmental oppression in the name of “public health”, the most politicized and weaponized “scientific discipline” of human experience.

But there’s much more than health related issues. Consider Department of Homeland Security collusion with social media to censor Americans.

The DHS is also responsible for the disintegration of America’s southern border and in protecting the surge of millions of illegal aliens into the United States, here able to establish “sleeper cells” of military-age men from all over the world. The slow stepwise introduction of globalist initiatives, such as the ongoing eroding of national boundaries everywhere, makes the relentless move toward One World Government invisible to oblivious citizens. This facilitating the establishment of a potential army within the United States makes “treason” seem much too tame a charge. And the hell of it is that most Americans seem barely aware of what’s taking place under their feet.

Likewise, the FBI has everything — absolutely everything! to expose overnight the lie of the preposterous Official 9/11 “narrative”.

Whatever hit the Pentagon was videotaped from all angles by security cams, and that visual record would demolish the ridiculous story of an aluminum tube punching a clean hole through the Pentagon’s massively reinforced exterior.

Showing the rocket hitting the Pentagon (at the precise point to take out budget analysts tracking “lost” trillions of dollars) would slap even the stupidest awake. Alas, every tape available was immediately confiscated by the FBI and remains concealed. But can’t we — and shouldn’t we —  assume that within the FBI some have enough strength of character to discern the rot in an FBI leadership that would make the agency such a weapon against the public? These are only two examples, but research into the actions and connections of just about any federal agency is certain to yield questions wanting answers that, like the FBI videos mentioned, are kept hidden.

Tyrannical elements of government persist when their evil projects are not exposed by staff who should be letting us see them. Taking a position in a governmental agency in no way requires obedient support regardless of whatever corrupt project a traitorous leadership for the moment might have in the works. Public servants, regardless of where situated in any agency’s pecking order, are not obliged to shift allegiance to anything other than the public. In the end, for every governmental employee the group to be served is The People in the most expansive sense.

Revealing criminal acts of state carries risk. A recent example is of four chemists who struggled with the demands of their EPA superiors for data manipulation posing an obvious threat to public health. Despite the atmosphere of intimidation (The EPA drips with internal rot), ethics demanded that they expose the situation to The Intercept, and this brief report is a quick lesson in regulatory agency-industry collusion and in the kind of pressures staff throughout governmental agencies face in this era in which corruption almost seems to have become “normalized”.

Sibel Edmonds was fired by the FBI for revealing agency security failures.

The legendary Daniel Ellsberg, whose leaking of the Pentagon Papers led to charges that could have landed him in prison for more than a century.

All charges were ultimately dropped due to — wait for it —  exposure of governmental misconduct.

Edward Snowden revealed mind-numbing details of NSA surveillance of 

Here, he reveals the motives of a whistleblower who would risk all. Whistleblowers such as these are driven by a personal integrity that, in seeing serious corruption, just cannot let it pass. Scroll, up from the bottom here for a glimpse of whistleblowers who revealed information we all should have, more often than not at personal risk. Note that the powers seeking to hide their crimes are nearly always governmental agencies and immense corporations.

When you understand what whistleblowers face in organizations that have many ways of making life hell, you see that such courageous people deserve all of the admiration we can muster.

But the dribble of evil secrets needs to become a deluge. There’s growing awareness that ’something is wrong’ nearly everywhere you look in a government become gigantic and tyrannical. Given the several million public servants/fellow citizens populating this behemoth, there are certainly many who should be bringing secrecy-shrouded information into the open.

Whistleblowers are our heroes, even if we never learn their names. We need a lot more of them.

Postscript:

A University of Alaska Institute of Engineering project has shown that the explanation for the collapse of Building 7 on 9/11/2001 by the National Institute of Standards and Technology is physically impossible and therefore a bare-faced lie. Because of this, Architects and Engineers for 911 Truth has sued NIST. But the US District of Columbia Court of Appeals recently ruled that A&E has no standing, the Court’s reason being that there is nothing in the law requiring agency reports to be accurate or scientifically sound.

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Bill Willers is an emeritus professor of biology, University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh. He is founder of the Superior Wilderness Action Network and editor of Learning to Listen to the Land, and Unmanaged Landscapes, both from Island Press. He can be contacted at [email protected]

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

The Israeli state and Hamas appear to have reached a tentative hostage exchange deal.

Via NBC News:

“Israel and Hamas have agreed to a breakthrough deal to release 50 women and children who were kidnapped and held in Gaza, a potential landmark deal that will also involve a four-day pause in fighting, the delivery of hundreds of aid trucks, and the release of 150 Palestinian women and children* held in Israeli jails.”

*Note that when Israeli civilians are held in Gaza, they were “kidnapped” and are termed “hostages,” but when Israeli jails Palestinian women and children with no charges or judicial process of any kind, they do not receive the benefit of the same designation in Western corporate state media. That’s how subtle propaganda can get, and it’s easy to miss it if you’re not attuned to the pettiness with which these organizations play semantical games.

Curiously, though, Israel is not making any effort to get non-Israeli hostages released — only Israeli.

Via NBC News:

Israel will not exchange Palestinian prisoners in exchange for non-Israeli hostages, a senior Israeli official who gave NBC News details on a tentative agreement with Hamas that is awaiting a vote from Israel’s government

According to the official, Israel is currently only negotiating for its citizens and that other countries will have to negotiate for their own terms with Hamas. Dual nationals, those who hold Israel citizenship along with another country, are included in Israel’s deals, the official said.”

So, the U.S. government hands Israel no-strings-attached billions of dollars every single year, to the tune of hundreds of billions in the aggregate, in exchange for zero effort to get American hostages freed when they’re captured within the territorial bounds of the Israeli state. When it is finally presented with one opportunity to repay in infinitesimally small part all of that generosity, it offers only its middle finger to its American patrons.

Not that anyone who understands the nature of the Israeli state would expect otherwise. Its no-American-hostage-rescue policy is even more understandable in the context of its current geopolitical position.

Israel’s strategic play here is obvious to anyone not blinded by its powerful propaganda network that extends, unfortunately, deep into American corporate state media.

In the immediate term, the continued captivity of hostages of all nationalities by Hamas serves Israel’s interests more than their release would. It serves as a valuable propaganda tool to gin up anger and provides an ongoing pretext to do whatever Israel likes in Gaza with impunity under the guise of pursuing the release of hostages. All international criticism is deflected with the call on Hamas to “release the hostages.” Were they released, justifying the Israeli government’s activities there (carpet-bombing) would become much more diplomatically tenuous.

(Of course, it’s unclear exactly how carpet-bombing Gaza could ever achieve the stated objective of returning the Israeli hostages unless they intend them to come back as corpses with limbs blown apart. Nonetheless, the Israeli propagandists have been beavering away trying to square that circle for many weeks now.)

Furthermore, the continued captivity of American hostages, in particular, serves to maintain (nearly unconditional) American government support for its Gaza campaign — a weighty, some might say Herculean, diplomatic feat, given that virtually the entire rest of the world has condemned Israel for what it’s done. And that Herculean effort is costing the U.S. government big time in terms of its global cache.

At this moment, the United States is Israel’s only geopolitical ally left that’s fully on board with the program.

Another reason Israel would like to draw out the military operation in Gaza as long as possible using whatever pretext it can is that it’s stalling for time to figure out what to do with all of the Gazans it would like to displace. A leaked “concept paper” from the Intelligence Ministry proposed expelling the Gazans into the Sinai Peninsula to live in tent cities, which did not go over well diplomatically, to say the least. More recently, it’s been pressuring America and Western Europe to take the Gazans off of their hands. So it needs some wriggle room to devise alternative solutions.

However, at the same time, the state is under immense, unprecedented internal pressure to be seen to be doing something concrete to secure the Israeli hostages aside from posturing in the media. Netanyahu and his allies were already in existential political trouble before October 7th, and the threats to his and his ideologically expansionist base’s grip on power have only multiplied following the government’s clear de-prioritization of hostage release below annihilating Gaza, not to mention the “intelligence failure” of that day itself.

It turns out that waging war can be just as difficult politically on the international stage as it can on the domestic front, even in a country as usually united in its militarism as Israel.

So the Israeli state has been walking a political tightrope between maintaining its justification for its assault on Gaza while doing its best to appease the growing dissident faction within the state itself. This is why, I speculate, Israel is only doing a deal for 50 of its hostages; it buys them some political cover at home while maintaining the existence of many more hostages in Gaza and thus the theoretical justification for what it’s doing there, in addition to “eliminating Hamas” (a pipe dream impossible to achieve because Hamas is scattered across borders and because its bombing campaign is only generating more, and more hardened, recruits.

Thus the war must go on. And on. And on.

(Note: In the original version of this article, I stated that Israel jails Palestinian women and children on “no charges,” when, in fact, it jails Palestinian women on intentionally vague charges like “having contacts with hostile organisations” and then holds them and the babies they have while incarcerated indefinitely in pre-trial detention with no due process. I apologize for the error.)

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This article was originally published on the author’s Substack, Armageddon Prose.

Ben Bartee, author of Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile, is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Bad Moon Rising – by Mr. Fish

Don’t Cry for Argentina — It Is Not Worthy of Your Tears

November 23rd, 2023 by Stephen Karganovic

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***

The Argentine runoff Presidential election has produced a result that those who still care for Argentina will regard as regrettable. But there will also be not a few level headed observers who will regard this outcome as somewhat suspicious.

The apparent winner is an oddball “Libertarian” politician, Javier Milei. Being an eccentric and a loose cannon, Milei is difficult to classify ideologically. He appears to be enthusiastic about cloning his deceased dogs, and he himself seems to be a cloned personification of a segment of the American Libertarian movement. It remains to be seen whether Milei will prove to be a consistent ideologue of the nebulous Libertarian doctrines he professes, in which case the Requiem for Argentina should begin to be composed without delay.

If, however, Milei has even one pragmatic bone in his body he will be obliged very soon after his inauguration in December to go into reverse gear or face the wrath of the public that he has deluded with his irresponsible messianic promises.

Even worse for himself, for his political buffoonery he may also be obliged to face punishment from Argentina’s still vibrant armed forces, which have a respectable record of intervening to rein in wayward civilian politicians, though not necessarily always displaying as well the skills required to straighten out the messes the former had left behind.

There is no doubt that Argentina is currently very deep in one of those imbroglios into which it cyclically descends. The solutions offered by the charlatan were wisely rejected by its citizens in the first round of the elections, restricting Milei to about 30% of the vote. But Milei’s runoff rhetoric must have been irresistibly persuasive. In the second round he went on to garner a remarkable 55% of the vote (prompting the reasonable question of whether the popular Dominion vote counting machines, after their stellar performance in 2020, may have ended up in Argentina).

One of Milei’s brilliant solutions, abolishing the Argentine peso and replacing it with the US dollar, may soon come to haunt the Argentine people. It would be interesting to hear Milei’s explanation of how doing away with the national currency, fragile as it may be yet always capable of recovery given the application of correct financial policies and under the control of the issuing government. How would replacing it with a declining foreign currency under the control of outside interests help remedy Argentina’s problems? Does Libertarian ideology allow for national sovereignty? Is Milei informed that not too long ago Ecuador discarded its national currency in favor of the dollar, but that for the Ecuadorean people the experiment on the whole resulted in more economic discomfort than benefit? Why should the outcome now be different in Argentina, and that at a time when the dollar is losing its reserve currency status and rapidly declining in value, far more so then when Ecuador was led down that primrose path?

Moreover, has Milei, who is reputed to be an economist, noticed a global financial trend which even the repentant Jeffrey Sachs has called by its correct name, “dedollarisation,” and has that conspicuous trend had any impact on his thinking and choice of cures for Argentina’s financial ills? There is scant evidence that it has or that the warnings of sober economic experts have influenced the formulation of the policies that Milei has proposed. At the end of the day, with their new junk currency in hand, Argentines may remember with nostalgia their present inflation of mere 143%. Just as probably, they may come to regard with wrath the Pied Piper many of them had voted for.

Nor does Milei appear to be aware of the other major collapse that is taking place in the contemporary world, that of the unipolar system to whose imperilled currency he wishes to tie his country’s fortunes, suggesting that, indeed, El Clarín may be his chief source of political information. Contrary to every postulate of prudence (and some would argue of common sense as well) Milei has announced that as President he intends to reverse Argentina’s membership in BRICS. Public commitment to this politically counterintuitive policy goal suggests that Milei may be more than just an eccentric Libertarian enthusiast and that in fact he may be a figure purposefully inserted into the global game to promote a much more serious and disruptive geopolitical agenda.

There are very few today who recall that Argentina has not always been the Sick Man of the Pampas and that over a hundred years ago in economic strength and attraction it rivalled the United States as the destination of choice for European immigrants. Its once brilliant prospects came to nought as a result of the combination of the corruption and foolishness of its elite and idiocy of its pampered populace.

Argentina’s decline and fall has mirrored in many ways the downfall of Ukraine, formerly one of the Soviet Union’s most progressive and prosperous republics. Argentina, like Ukraine, was thrown under the bus by its greedy elite, also acting from selfish motives of short-term material gain and also placing itself in a condition of voluntary subservience to foreign, in Argentina’s case mainly British, patrons and their dazzling culture. The bamboozled populace followed suit in its own ignorant way.

The tribulations of both countries, far from being the outcome of objective necessity, are the avoidable result of foolish choices made jointly by the ruling elite and their equally irresponsible subjects.

Whatever vote counting machines may have been used, Argentina apparently has made its choice and now it must bravely face the consequences of its own making. There is no particular reason to shed tears for it any more than there is to cry over the tragic fate of its suicidal mirror image in Eastern Europe.

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Stephen Karganovic is president of “Srebrenica Historical Project,” an NGO registered in the Netherlands to investigate the factual matrix and background of events that took place in Srebrenica in July of 1995. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.  

Featured image is from El Pais

The Profound Health Benefits of Being Grateful

November 23rd, 2023 by Dr. Joseph Mercola

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[This article was originally published by Mercola on November 25, 2021.]

***

The ability to experience gratitude to others is a fundamental feature of human cognition

Positive effects linked to gratitude include social, psychological and physical benefits, which increase the more you make gratitude a regular part of your daily routine

Gratitude has a positive effect on psychopathology, especially depression, adaptive personality characteristic, positive social relationships and physical health, including stress and sleep

Those who are grateful have even been found to have a better sense of the meaning of life by being able to perceive good family function and peer relationships

Two gratitude interventions that you can try in your daily life to promote gratitude include keeping a gratitude journal and expressing gratitude to others, such as by writing thank you notes

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Gratitude is a simple practice that can have profound effects on your health and well-being. Its underpinnings are believed to be principles of cooperation that were pivotal in the development of human communication and social reciprocity, and the ability to experience gratitude to others is a fundamental feature of human cognition.1

The positive effects linked to gratitude include social, psychological and physical benefits,2 which increase the more you make gratitude a regular part of your daily routine.

“The limits to gratitude’s health benefits are really in how much you pay attention to feeling and practicing gratitude,” noted neuroscientist Glenn Fox, Ph.D., a gratitude expert at the University of Southern California. “It’s very similar to working out, in that the more you practice, the better you get. The more you practice, the easier it is to feel grateful when you need it.”3

How Gratitude Changes Your Brain

Gratitude has distinct neurobiological correlates, including in brain regions associated with interpersonal bonding and stress relief.4 When Fox and colleagues elicited gratitude in 23 female subjects, via stories of survivors of the Holocaust, “ratings of gratitude correlated with brain activity in the anterior cingulate cortex and medial prefrontal cortex,” which are associated with moral cognition, value judgment and theory of mind.5

Individual differences in proneness to gratitude are also linked to increased gray matter volume in the brain,6 and it’s possible that it elicits long-term changes in your psyche. Fox grew deeply interested in gratitude after his mother’s death from ovarian cancer. During her illness, he would send her studies on the benefits of gratitude in cancer patients, and she kept a gratitude journal in her last years. 

In one example, 92 adults with advanced cancer engaged in mindful gratitude journaling or routine journaling. After seven days, those who kept a gratitude journal had significant improvements in measures of anxiety, depression and spiritual well-being, such that the researchers concluded “mindful gratitude journaling could positively affect the state of suffering, psychological distress and quality of life of patients with advanced cancer.”7

“Grateful people tend to recover faster from trauma and injury,” Fox told The Pulse. “They tend to have better and closer personal relationships and may even just have improved health overall.”When he tried to find gratitude after losing his mother, what he experienced wasn’t a quick fix or an immediate route to happiness, but a way to make his grief more manageable in the moment.

As it turns out, grateful writing such as letters of gratitude is a positive psychological intervention that leads to longer term changes in mental health. Among 293 adults who sought out psychotherapy services, those who engaged in gratitude writing reported significantly better mental health after four and 12 weeks than people who did not writing or who wrote about their thoughts and feelings.9 

Gratitude Boosts Health, Well-Being

Gratitude can be difficult to define, as it has elements of an emotion, a virtue and a behavior, all rolled into one. Robert Emmons, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis, and an expert on gratitude, defines it as a two-step process.

As explained in “The Science of Gratitude,” a white paper by the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, the two steps include “1) ‘recognizing that one has obtained a positive outcome’ and 2) ‘recognizing that there is an external source for this positive outcome.’”10

In this regard, the benefits of gratitude may be gleaned from the actions of other people or experienced in an internalized manner, such as when feeling gratitude about good fate or nature. In this way, gratitude is both a state and a trait.11

As a state, it’s based on a person’s ability to be empathic and elicit grateful emotions that promote prosocial behavior. As a trait, gratitude describes the practice of being grateful, noticing the little things in life and appreciating the positive in the world and other people. Gratitude can be felt both from being helped by others and habitually focusing on the good in your life.

A study published in Clinical Psychology Review found that gratitude has a positive effect on psychopathology, especially depression, adaptive personality characteristic, positive social relationships and physical health, including stress and sleep. What’s more, they noted that “the benefits of gratitude to well-being may be causal.”12

Fox also explained, “Benefits associated with gratitude include better sleep, more exercise, reduced symptoms of physical pain, lower levels of inflammation, lower blood pressure and a host of other things we associate with better health,”13 including improved resilience.

It’s likely that gratitude leads to benefits via multiple mechanisms, not only by improving life satisfaction14 but also by contributing to an increase in healthy activities and a willingness to seek help for health problems.15 Those who are grateful have even been found to have a better sense of the meaning of life by being able to perceive good family function and peer relationships.16

Gratitude Could Help You Sleep Better, Be Less Materialistic

Gratitude is known to facilitate improvements in healthy eating17 and benefits depression by enhancing self-esteem and wellbeing.18 Further, people who are more grateful tend to be:19

  • Happier
  • Less materialistic
  • Less likely to suffer from burnout

A 2021 study comparing gratitude and optimism similarly found that both traits were associated with:20

  • Lower heart rate and blood pressure
  • Better sleep quality
  • More exercise
  • Less stress
  • More positive expectations and reflections
  • Greater feelings of appreciation toward others

Feeling gracious can help you sleep better and longer, too, perhaps by improving your thoughts prior to sleep. “The relationship between gratitude and each of the sleep variables was mediated by more positive pre-sleep cognitions and less negative pre-sleep cognitions,” according to a study in the Journal of Psychosomatic Research.21

Those who scored higher on measures of gratitude had better sleep quality and sleep duration and less sleep latency (the amount of time it takes you to fall asleep) and daytime dysfunction. Among adolescents, the simple practice of keeping a gratitude journal significantly reduce materialism while reducing the negative effect of materialism on generosity.22

Those who wrote down what they were grateful for donated 60% more of their earnings to charity, for instance. There’s good reason to teach children the importance of gratitude, too, as doing so can improve school performance and orient individuals toward a positive life approach.23

Positive Gratitude Interventions

Fox likens gratitude to a muscle that must be trained — something that you can practice and become better at over time:24

“I think that gratitude can be much more like a muscle, like a trained response or a skill that we can develop over time as we’ve learned to recognize abundance and gifts and things that we didn’t previously notice as being important. And that itself is its own skill that can be practiced and manifested over time.”

Rather than a magic bullet, Fox added, it’s the regular practice of being grateful that makes a difference: “You know, it’s like water cutting rock through a canyon,” he said. “It’s not done all at once, and it’s just steady practice is where you start to get things.”25 Two “gratitude interventions” that you can try in your daily life to promote gratitude include keeping a gratitude journal and expressing gratitude.

With a gratitude journal, you write down lists of what you’re grateful for on a regular basis. The behavioral expression of gratitude involves expressing grateful feelings to others, such as by saying thank you or writing gratitude letters, which you then read to the recipients.26

Music also holds the potential to be a gratifying and fulfilling force. Take a moment to appreciate this heartfelt song sent in by longtime subscriber, Frank Buono.

Showing gratitude to your partner is also a good way to boost your relationship. In a study of romantic partners, gratitude from interactions was linked to increased connection and satisfaction with the relationship, with researchers suggesting, “gratitude had uniquely predictive power in relationship promotion, perhaps acting as a booster shot for the relationship.”27 Emmons also shared tips for living a more grateful life:28

  • Remember hard times in your life, which remind you how much you have to be grateful for now. “[T]his contrast is fertile ground for gratefulness,” Emmons says.29
  • Appreciate what it means to be human by tuning into and appreciating your sense of touch, sight, smell, taste and hearing.
  • Use visual reminders, including people, to trigger gratitude. This helps to combat “the two primary obstacles to gratefulness,” which Emmons cites as “forgetfulness and a lack of mindful awareness.”30
  • Make an oath of gratitude. Simply vowing to be grateful can increase the likelihood that you’ll stick to the behavior, so write a note “vowing to count your blessings” and post it somewhere where you’ll see it often.

If you want to get started today, keep a notebook by your bedside and make a point to jot down one or two things you’re grateful for each night before bed, and express gratitude to others often, such as writing quick thank you notes to friends.

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Notes

1, 2 Royal Society Open Science May 23, 2018

3, 13 USC News November 25, 2019

4, 8, 24, 25 The Pulse, WHYY PBS November 21, 2019

5, 6 Front. Psychol., 30 September 2015

7 BMJ Support Palliat Care. 2021 Jul 8;bmjspcare-2021-003068

9 Psychotherapy Research 2018, Volume 28

10 “The Science of Gratitude,” a white paper by the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley May 2018 Executive summary

11 The Journal of Positive Psychology August 6, 2019

12 Clinical Psychology Review November 2010, Volume 30, Issue 7, Pages 890-905

14 Personality and Individual Differences July 2008, Volume 45, Issue 1, Pages 49-54

15 Pers Individ Dif. 2013 Jan; 54(1): 92–96

16 Front Psychol. 2021 Oct 28;12:680795

17 Journal of Experimental Social Psychology March 2019, Volume 81, Pages 4-14

18 Personality and Individual Differences December 2015, Volume 87, Pages 30-34

19 “The Science of Gratitude,” a white paper by the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley May 2018

20 Emotion November 15, 2021

21 Journal of Psychosomatic Research January 2009, Volume 66, Issue 1, Pages 43-48

22 The Journal of Positive Psychology August 1, 2018

23 The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of Positive Psychological Interventions April 11, 2014

26 Journal of Occupational Health November 11, 2021

27 Personal Relationships May 21, 2010 Abstract

28, 29, 30 Greater Good Magazine November 17, 2010

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The fossil fuel lobby has had a busy year on the eco-camouflage front. Earlier this year, interest started to rumble and rage against the stranding of humpback whales on the east coast of the United States. Suddenly, opponents of wind turbine technology – and renewable technology more broadly – had identified an invaluable, if tenuous nexus: a link between whale mortality and offshore wind farms.

One true enthusiast for the proposition proved to be Donald Trump. Speaking at a rally in South Carolina in September, for example, the Republican presidential contender suggested that these “windmills” were driving whales “crazy”, inflicting death in such numbers that they were washing up on shore “on a weekly basis”.

Such technology is the subject of frenzied study, and it would be remiss not to mention that various environmental concerns have been raised. These are often specific to their intended locales. One need only consult recent work commissioned by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, an adjunct of the US Department of the Interior, to appreciate the complexity of the field. The report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine concerned the Nantucket Shoals region, an area of complex hydrodynamics and ecology.  The authors acknowledged that large turbines of the size planned for the region had not, as yet, been built in US waters, and would therefore require extensive modelling on oceanographic effects, notably on zooplankton populations upon which whales feed.

Rob Deaville of the Zoological Society of London’s Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme also admits that disruptions to marine wildlife can take place in the construction phase of wind farms given the presence of percussive noise. Animals such as porpoises or dolphins “may move out of that area while you’re installing the wind farms, but then the longer-term picture: in some areas they may never come back, in some they may come back in larger numbers than before.”

Such concerned albeit cautious observation sits differently with claims of mass whale mortality that has become a hobby horse for opponents of renewable energy sources. But look behind these newly converted whale-loving types, and you are likely to find an avid fossil-fuel lobbyist, the cash-filled account of the commodities sector, or those advocating the merits of nuclear energy.

The issue has also made its way across the Pacific to Australia, that great bastion of fossil feud mania. In the state of New South Wales, residents of the Hunter and Illawarra regions woke up to posters making the claim about the harmful effects of wind turbine technology. A roadside billboard in Port Stephens, north of Newcastle, featured a beached whale with a background of wind turbines, sporting the words, “Stop Port Stephens Offshore Wind Farms”.

Fictional articles have also made similar claims. One, in particular, purports to have been published in the academic journal Marine Policy, asserting that offshore wind farms in the Illawarra and Hunter would result in an annual whale death toll of 400. The journal’s disconcerted editor-in-chief, Quentin Hanich, could find no evidence of the phantom study with its alleged origins in the University of Tasmania, which had been shared on a Facebook group No Offshore Wind Farm for the Illawarra.

“We never received this imaginary paper … I am seeing no evidence that the study ever took place.”

None of this seems to trouble members of the Liberal National Coalition. The federal opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has claimed, somewhat erroneously, that there had been “no environmental consideration of what these huge wind turbines, 260 to 280 metres out of the water, will mean.”

Another example of a fossil fuel parliamentarian turned green populist is Queensland Nationals Senator, Matt Canavan, who recently admitted that he had a soft spot for these cetacean casualties. But then again, he also claims to have a fondness for all of Mother Nature’s glories, now facing the scourge of wind farm technology. As he told Sky News, that favourite network for scratching populists and reactionaries,

“massive amounts of wind farms, and solar panels which take up enormous amounts of land […] destroy koala habitat [and have] a massive impact on our environment … we destroy the environment to try and save it.”

The same senator has been a spoiler of any net zero emissions policy regarding greenhouse gases, much to the consternation of many members of his own party, and could barely conceal his delight at the wording of the 2021 Glasgow Climate Change communique that countries “phase down” rather than “phase out” coal burning. For Canavan, this meant that COP26 had given the “green light” for Australia to keep digging and “supply the world with more coal because that’s what brings people out of poverty.”

This burst of anti-wind farm criticism ignored the inconvenient fact that almost all the humpback whale strandings the subject of concern showed signs of vessel strike. In February 2023, the Marine Mammal Commission released a statement confirming the view that “there is no evidence to link these strandings to offshore wind energy development”.

This month, Greenpeace published a piece stating that “offshore wind farms aren’t killing whales.” While admitting the answer is a nuanced one, it concluded that “building offshore wind is way, way better for ocean wildlife than fossil fuels, especially offshore gas and oil.” No single peer-reviewed study, Greenpeace went on to note, has found that offshore wind farms are responsible for whale mortality.

The greatest threat to various whale populations lies in fishing, ship strikes, and oceanic disruptions arising from climate change. As, it would seem, those figures in eco-camouflage such as Dutton and Canavan, who continue to coddle fossil fuel companies intent on seismic blasting and offshore drilling.

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

Featured image: A July 2017 holiday at Walkerville allowed me to explore South Gippsland and views of Wilsons Promontory, the Bald Hills wind farm and Cape Liptrap coastal reserve. (Source: John Englart/Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0)

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United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken among other high level White House officials have repeatedly stated since October 7 that one of their major objectives is to prevent the regionalization of the upsurge of resistance to the State of Israel in Gaza.

However, it is Washington which has laid the groundwork for an already broad area of conflict throughout West Asia from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf.

In the specific case of Yemen, the Pentagon under successive administrations have engaged in occupations, bombing operations and proxy wars. Between 2015 and 2022, the U.S. backing Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), coordinated a genocidal war against the people of Yemen resulting in one of the worst humanitarian crises on a global scale.

With the rapid growth of the political influence of the Ansar Allah resistance movement within Yemen, the U.S. has targeted the organization claiming it is a surrogate of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Tehran has denied that any of the affiliates of the Axis of Resistance follow the orders of their government, noting only that they support these organizations politically since all have the same objectives of ridding the region of U.S. imperialism and Zionism.

Yemeni resistance forces have pledged to carry out military operations against the State of Israel in solidarity with the efforts of Hamas and other organizations fighting the occupation. The Ansar Allah describes the situation in Gaza as “ethnic cleansing.” This can easily be deduced from the language of the Israeli state which says its purpose in the Gaza war is to eliminate the Hamas organization which is the dominant political grouping in the Strip.

Since October 7, there has been another round of consistent blanket bombings focusing on residential areas, infrastructure, food and water supplies, schools, refugee camps and hospitals. Official statistics released from the Gaza Health Ministry indicate that over 14,000 people have been killed in less than two months. Most of those massacred are children and women. Many people have been bombed by the Israeli Air Force (IAF) while in their homes, churches, mosques and hospitals.

IDF and Israeli government spokespersons are given free reign within the western corporate and government-controlled media where lies are spread daily which apportions blame for the current situation on the resistance forces. Perhaps the most outrageous falsehoods center around the purported utilization of hospitals as military command posts for Hamas.

Yemen Heightens Efforts to End Imperialist Influence

Therefore, in Yemen and other countries in the region, resistance forces have expressed their solidarity with the people of Gaza in various ways. Mass demonstrations are occurring on a regular basis while military actions against Tel Aviv and the U.S. are escalating.

On November 19, Yemeni Naval Forces seized the Galaxy Leader vessel saying that such ships with Israeli owners will continue to be targeted until the military actions against the Palestinians cease. The capture of this ship coincided with numerous missile-launches against Israel by the Yemeni resistance forces.

In a report by the Naval Technology website, it says regarding the ship seizure by Yemeni resistance forces that:

“’The Yemeni armed forces deal with the ship’s crew in accordance with the principle and values of our Islamic religion,’ Houthi spokesperson Yahya Sare’e said in a statement on X (formerly Twitter). The exact whereabouts of the Galaxy Leader are unknown. It was believed to be en route from Turkey to India…. In footage of the hijacking released by the Houthis yesterday (20 November), armed Houthi fighters jumped aboard the moving Galaxy Leader ship from a helicopter. The 25 crew members were held at gunpoint as Palestinian and Yemeni flags were raised…. Sare’e added that the Houthis will continue to target ships operated or owned by Israeli companies. The Houthis claimed the hijacking was ‘in solidarity with Palestinian people in the wake of the brutal Israeli aggression on Gaza’. The Japanese Government yesterday (20 November) confirmed that the captured ship is operated by Tokyo-headquartered Nippon Yusen. Japan has said it is appealing to the Houthis while calling on authorities in Saudi Arabia, Oman and Iran for assistance in releasing the vessel and its crew. Two ships connected with Nippon Yusen have since diverted their routes in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, according to Reuters.” 

The seizure of vessels in the Red Sea places greater pressure on the U.S. to escalate its interventionist policies designed to preserve influence in this geopolitical region. A recent analytical review published in Al Jazeera suggests that other states such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates would not want to confront the Yemeni resistance since there is a truce between Sana’a and Riyadh. The normalization of relations between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a reproachment brokered by the People’s Republic of China during 2022, has curtailed the capacity of Washington to manipulate its longtime alliances with the conservative Gulf states.

Al Jazeera says of the present situation:

“Since October 7, the U.S. has deployed many assets to the Middle East, centered around two carrier strike groups (CSGs). The one in the Mediterranean, the CSG 12, is led by the newest and most modern nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R Ford. The CSG 2, currently in the Gulf of Oman, is fronted by the USS Dwight D Eisenhower. Each aircraft carrier is accompanied by a guided missile cruiser, two or three destroyers and a flotilla of auxiliaries, such as tankers, store ships and mobile repair bases. Each of the two CSGs has a clearly defined task: The CSG 12 is to monitor the wider area of Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq and act against any threats that could escalate the conflict. The CSG 2 is there to watch Iran and act against it if the situation escalates.” 

This large-scale military presence by the Pentagon represents a danger to the people within the region since Washington is the closest ally to Tel Aviv. Unless tensions are lessened at the aegis of the U.S., a wider military conflict appears to be unavoidable.

Pentagon Escalates Bombing of Iraq and Syria While Border Clashes Continue Between Lebanese Resistance and IDF

There have been dozens of attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria since the beginning of the Al-Aqsa Storm against the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) on October 7. In response, the U.S. Air Force has struck bases which they claim are connected with Iran.

On November 22, there was another U.S. bombing of a base of the Kataib Hezbollah resistance organization of Iraq. The town of Jurf al-Sakhar suffered the most damage where 8 people were killed.

An article published in The Cradle emphasized:

“The Iraqi resistance announced on 21 November it had targeted the Ain al-Assad base in Iraq twice, as well as the Al-Shaddadi base in Hasakah, northeastern Syria. The bases were struck ‘with appropriate weapons,’ which ‘directly hit’ all their targets. The Ain al-Assad base was hit with close-range ballistic missiles, resulting in eight injuries and material damage, according to two U.S. officials. U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria have come under almost daily fire by the Islamic Resistance of Iraq, a coalition of Iraqi resistance factions that banded together last month to confront U.S. forces in rejection of Washington’s support for Israel. The attacks are launched ‘in response to the crimes committed by the enemy against our people in Gaza.’ ‘U.S. forces have been attacked approximately 66 times since October 17. Thirty-two separate times in Iraq, and 34 separate times in Syria,’ the Pentagon announced on Tuesday evening. At least 60 U.S. soldiers have suffered traumatic brain injuries and other injuries.” 

In southern Lebanon where the Hezbollah resistance movement has engaged in cross-border fighting with the IDF, there has been a sharp escalation in property damage and deaths. On November 21, two reporters from the Al Mayadeen news agency were killed in targeted attacks by the IDF.

Lebanese parents of Al Mayadeen journalists killed by IOF (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)

These journalists, Farah Omar and Rabih Me’mari, were mourned by their parents and the staff of Al Mayadeen. This media organization has been banned by the Israeli state from covering events in the West Bank.

On the following day of November 22, five Hezbollah party members were murdered in attacks by the IDF. A statement from the resistance movement said the five martyrs killed were: Abbas Raad, Ahmad Mustafa, Mohammad Hassan Sherri, Bassam Kanjo, and Khalil Shhimi. See this.

Since October 7, thousands of Israeli settlers have been evacuated from the northern region due to clashes between Hezbollah and the IDF. In addition to the tensions on the Lebanon-Israel border, activists are being targeted in the West Bank by the Israeli security forces where dozens have been killed.

Despite the claims by the administration of President Joe Biden of its desire to contain the war, the actual developments on the ground are moving swiftly in the direction of expansion. As the IDF continues its targeting of civilians and public institutions such as healthcare facilities in Gaza, Hamas and the Palestine Islamic Jihad have been regularly issuing videos of their operations against the IDF. See this.

Campaigns in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle must continue their demonstrations aimed at breaking all economic, military and political ties with the settler-colonial state. Until the Palestinian question is satisfactorily resolved there will be no peace and security in the region.

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

Featured image is from Abayomi Azikiwe

Britain’s SAS Abetting Gaza Genocide?

November 23rd, 2023 by Kit Klarenberg

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On October 28th, the DSMA’s chief wrote to editors of major British news outlets, demanding they not report or in any way mention the SAS is currently “deployed to sensitive areas” of West Asia.

It has been revealed Britain’s shadowy Defence and Security Media Advisory (DSMA) Committee is suppressing news reportage on clandestine Special Air Service (SAS) operations in Gaza. The eagerness of London’s military, security and intelligence apparatus to censor such disclosures is an unambiguous indicator Perfidious Albion is doing the devil’s work in the embattled Occupied Territories, and wants inconvenient, incriminating truths concealed.

The DSMA is a little-known, rarely discussed and highly secretive body. Comprised of senior representatives of the British Army, Ministry of Defence, domestic and foreign spying agencies, major government departments, press associations and TV and print outlets, it has for decades insidiously imposed a quintessentially British form of press censorship. The Committee decides the subjects and events related to national security that can be reported on, and how, with devastating effect.

On October 28th, the DSMA’s chief wrote to editors of major British news outlets, demanding they not report or in any way mention the SAS is currently “deployed to sensitive areas” of West Asia, conducting “hostage rescue/evacuation operations” of Britons caught up in Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, and Israeli genocidal counterattack. The Committee claimed such journalistic activity “could reveal details of operations or operating methods and techniques…which would bestow an advantage on an adversary,” and thus “endanger national security”:

“May I take this opportunity to remind editors publication of such information contravenes the DSMA notice code. I therefore advise claims of such deployments should not be published nor broadcast without first seeking [DSMA] advice. [The Committee] aims to prevent inadvertent disclosure of classified information about Special Forces and other units engaged in security, intelligence and counter-terrorist operations [in Gaza], including their methods, techniques and activities.”

Click here to read the full article on Al Mayadeen English.

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Featured image: Britain’s SAS Abetting Gaza Genocide? (Illustrated by Hady Dbouk to Al Mayadeen English)

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The Indian government’s intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, or RAW, has been planning assassinations targeting Sikh and Kashmiri activists living in foreign countries, according to secret Pakistani intelligence assessments leaked to The Intercept.

The intelligence documents identify a series of threats against people living in Pakistan from RAW, which Pakistani security officials believe is working in conjunction with local criminal and dissident networks to carry out assassinations and other attacks. According to the documents, RAW is targeting individuals and religious institutions alleged to support an armed insurgency in the disputed territory of Kashmir, as well as militant Sikh activists living in Pakistan and wanted by the Indian government.

Image: Photograph of the slain Canadian Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar. (Licensed under Fair Use)

The documents offer compelling substantiation for the sensational claim that India has been carrying out a transnational assassination program against its political enemies. The Canadian government first made headlines in September with the accusation that Indian intelligence agents orchestrated the assassination of Sikh Canadian activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar on Canadian soil. Nijjar was gunned down outside a gurdwara — a Sikh temple — this summer in Surrey, British Columbia.

In October in Britain, the family of activist Avtar Singh Khanda called for an inquest into his sudden death, alleging that he had been poisoned by Indian intelligence agents following a series of public threats to his life. In September, The Intercept reported on threats to Sikh activists in the U.S. after the FBI warned a number of Sikh Americans about intelligence showing that their lives were in danger after the killing of Nijjar. In 2022, a 75-year-old Sikh Canadian man named Ripudaman Singh Malik, who had been acquitted of involvement in a deadly bombing of an Air India flight in 1985, was shot to death in front of his family business in Canada under circumstances that remain unclear. Despite these accusations of involvement in international assassinations, which have caused increased friction in India’s foreign relations, so far little intelligence — Canadian, Pakistani, American, or otherwise — has been made publicly available about these killings.

According to a Pakistani intelligence assessment, this summer RAW was also targeting two Sikh activists in Pakistan for assassination in the cities of Lahore and Islamabad. One alleged target in Islamabad is unnamed, while another is Lakhbir Singh Rode, a prominent Sikh separatist leader living in Pakistan since the 1990s who has long been accused of terrorism by India’s government. Rode was involved in a movement that aimed to create an independent nation in the region of Punjab known as Khalistan in the 1980s and ’90s. That campaign was crushed by a brutal counterinsurgency that claimed the lives of thousands of Sikhs, while forcing many more into exile.

Rode’s son, a Canadian citizen named Bhagat Singh, is, like his father, prominent in the diaspora movement for Sikh separatism. He told The Intercept that his father has long been living under threat from Indian intelligence. 

“It is a well-known fact that he has been on the Indian government’s hit list for years,” Singh said, adding that he was also warned by Canadian intelligence about threats to his own life following the assassination of Nijjar this summer, which he presumes are from Indian intelligence.

“When [Nijjar] was killed, the response from many of us to our governments was, ‘We told you so,’” added Singh, referring to the community of diaspora Sikh activists. “But there is also a lot of anger that a foreign government could simply come here and murder a Canadian citizen.”

The Pakistani, Indian, and Canadian embassies did not provide comment for this story. The pace of suspected attacks inside Pakistan against individuals wanted by India appears to have accelerated in recent weeks. On November 13, India media reported the killing of another militant connected to an Islamist group in Karachi. The possible assassination followed the killings of two other Islamist militants wanted by India that had taken place recently in Pakistan’s tribal regions and the disputed territory of Kashmir. While covered in great detail by the Indian press, these killings have gone almost unmentioned in Pakistan, where local media and civil society are under de facto military control following the removal of former Prime Minister Imran Khan.

The lack of attention to the suspected assassinations of both political dissidents and militants has prompted calls for more pressure on India from some members of its diaspora. 

“Anyone who speaks out against the Indian government anywhere in the world is under threat,” said Singh.

The secret documents, which were produced by Pakistan’s Intelligence Bureau, a civilian-controlled security agency somewhat akin to the FBI, show serious concern that Indian intelligence will carry out more killings on its soil in the future.

In May, the Pakistan Intelligence Bureau warned that Indian intelligence agents based in two other countries, the United Arab Emirates and Afghanistan, are being activated to carry out operations in Pakistan, suggesting that Indian operatives have a footprint throughout the region. In September, an Intelligence Bureau document again warned that the Indian government’s intelligence agency was planning “terrorist attacks” and assassinations against targets inside Pakistan: RAW agents were operating from a militant training camp in the Afghan city of Spin Boldak, it said, “to target wanted / prominent Sikh personalities in Pakistan.”

The documents are marked “Not to be disclosed/Communicated to any unauthorized person,” and The Intercept is not publishing them in full in order to protect the source who provided them. The documents specifically name threats to militants involved in the Kashmiri and Sikh separatist causes, as well as conservative Islamic movements in Pakistan. One document states that,

“it has been learnt through reliable sources that hostile intelligence agency (RAW) with the collaboration of sub-nationalist groups / anti-state activists and local criminal networks is already planning to carry out terrorist attacks on the marakiz / masjid / religious seminaries / leaders / notables of Ahl-e-Hadith sect linked with organizations remained active in the Kashmir Jihad.” 

Inside Pakistan, a spate of assassinations and other attacks in recent years targeted people alleged to be involved in Sikh and Kashmiri separatism as well as Islamist militancy inside India. This October, the Pakistani government arrested people it says were involved in targeted killings of suspected militants inside Pakistan. The killings were attributed in public statements to a “hostile spy agency,” a common reference to Indian intelligence in Pakistani official communications. This summer, a former commando in Pakistan’s elite Rangers paramilitary unit was also arrested on accusations of running a network carrying out assassinations of accused militants on behalf of RAW.

“The general perception in the West is that India can do no wrong and that when Pakistan accuses India of doing these types of things, they’re just being paranoid. But that is not borne out by history,” said Arif Rafiq, a scholar at the Middle East Institute and specialist on Pakistan. “Usually, the truth of these things are only fully known decades later, but India has a long history of these types of actions. When you piece it all together, it seems clear that there is a campaign today by India’s government to take an offensive strategy against these groups.”

The Pakistani government has periodically accused RAW of involvement in bombings and targeted killings inside Pakistan, including attacks against Chinese nationals working in the country and bombings targeting militant leaders wanted by India. These attacks have often been claimed publicly by separatist or extremist groups at war with the Pakistani state, including in the restive provinces of Balochistan and Sindh, that Pakistan accuses of being supported by India. The Indian government, for its part, has denied involvement in these operations or patronage of Pakistan-based militant groups, while accusing Pakistan of supporting Sikh and Kashmiri militants who have fought against it in the past.

This March, the Atlantic Council, an American think tank, published an anonymous article titled, “Who is Behind the Killings of Kashmiri Militants in Pakistan?” The article pointed to the recent killings of several former Kashmiri insurgents living in Pakistan whom the author claimed had been murdered by Indian intelligence in attacks that were left unsolved, attributed to Pakistan-based separatist groups, or deemed by the police to have been robberies gone wrong. Many of the killings targeted people who had been involved in fighting during the peak of the 1990s-era insurgency in Kashmir, but had later settled down to live and work inside Pakistan. 

The article warned that the killings by Indian intelligence may torpedo attempts at rapprochement between India and Pakistan by inviting reprisals from militant groups themselves, stating,

“While militant groups that have operated in Kashmir are not as strong as they used to be, they still possess significant capabilities to strike back. The assassination of their former comrades, whether perceived or real, may trigger an angry response, thus endangering peace and stability in the region.”

The article also cited a former militant criticizing Pakistan’s military establishment for turning a blind eye to the killing of ex-militants on its soil as the Kashmir dispute has lost priority in Pakistan’s foreign policy.

The anonymously authored article was subsequently pulled from the Atlantic Council website. The article was replaced with a note stating it had been removed “because it did not go through the Atlantic Council’s standard editorial process prior to publication.” 

Image: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale (12 February 1947 – 6 June 1984) (Licensed under Fair Use)

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Rode, the individual named as a target in Pakistani intelligence documents, is the nephew of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, the Sikh militant leader of the 1980s separatist insurrection. That family connection has kept him on the radar of Indian authorities, who announced the confiscation of land belonging to Rode in India this fall amid a broader crackdown on diaspora Sikh dissidents and their families.

Rode, who is living in Lahore, was described in a Pakistani intelligence document as having already been surveilled by Indian intelligence agents at a housing complex and gurdwara in the city. Information about his place of residence and the gurdwara that he frequents are included in the report, which suggests that he and another Sikh activist are at imminent risk from Indian agents or locals acting under Indian instruction. The documents warn Pakistani officials to use “heightened vigilance” and “foolproof security measures” to guard them. 

According to family members, threats to Rode have increased in recent years, forcing him to go deeper into seclusion. His son, Bhagat Singh, says that surveillance photographs of his father’s car and residence had previously been sent to Pakistani authorities by Indian intelligence, as part of a demand by India to Pakistan to turn him over.

Singh said that he himself had been placed on Canada’s no-fly list after the Indian government accused him of involvement in planning terrorist attacks in India. Singh, who is seeking legal means to remove himself from the list, strongly rejects these accusations, saying that they are part of an international campaign by the Indian government to silence dissidents in its diaspora.

“The Sikh diaspora holds protests and lobbies Western governments to speak up against the Indian government, and it is for this that we are being targeted,” Singh said. “They don’t have to prove anything in court when they make these accusations. They simply label anyone as a terrorist who fights for their rights or says that they don’t want to live under their rule anymore after what has been done to them.”

Though the Khalistan movement has been mostly suppressed in Indian Punjab, supporters have continued to rally for the cause in the diaspora, including from Pakistan and Western countries. As a result of recent protests in Western countries, some of which have resulted in vandalism and threats to Indian consular staff, the Indian government has angrily accused foreign states of nurturing the Khalistan movement in exile. Many Sikhs themselves reject what they say is an attempt by the Indian government to extend its political authority over them even as they live and gain citizenship in foreign countries.

“The diaspora is an extension of people from Punjab,” said Harinder Singh, senior fellow at the Sikh-related public education organization the Sikh Research Institute. “When dissent is being crushed, even at the level of using extrajudicial killings inside Punjab, the people who manage to escape will of course find ways to talk about these issues from abroad.”

In addition to high-profile suspected murders in Western countries, recent years have also seen at least two killings of supporters of the Khalistan movement in Pakistan. In May, Paramjit Singh Panjwar, the leader of a Pakistan-based Sikh militant organization was shot to death by an assailant on a motorcycle while out for a walk near his home in Lahore. His killing came two years after the murder of another Sikh activist in Pakistan named Harmeet Singh, who was also shot to death in Lahore near the same gurdwara frequented by Rode.

“India has been carrying out activities like this in South Asia for years. The only difference is that today they have been discovered doing it in a Western democracy,” said Harinder Singh. “Despite many hypocrisies among Western democracies, one thing that they still do take very seriously is a foreign power taking the lives of their own citizens.”

Following the assassination of Nijjar in Canada this summer, Pakistan again publicly alleged that India was running a “network of extra-territorial killings” that had now gone global. The Indian government has responded angrily to accusations from Canada and other Five Eyes countries that it is running a transnational assassination program. 

But as more details on the scope and nature of its operations come to light, the crisis over the killing of Nijjar, and potentially other Sikh dissidents, seems unlikely to disappear. The targeting of Rode and other Sikhs in foreign countries suggest that India is taking a more aggressive stance in targeting perceived enemies across borders, including through violent means.

“These killings show that India feels emboldened and that it has the geopolitical space to take these kinds of risks. There has never been an instance where it has been held to account for its excesses,” said Middle East Institute’s Rafiq. “Frankly, nobody would care if they were only killing people in Pakistan. It’s only until something happens on the other side of the world that people start paying attention.”

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Featured image: The Guru Nanak Gurdwara, outside of which Nijjar was killed (Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)

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A group of hackers shared on the internet the personal data of several members of the Ukrainian Army’s Foreign Legion, including their names, ages, military experience, languages ​​spoken and telephone numbers, as well as a section with personal comments. This expose will surely hit the already low morale of foreign mercenaries, who will likely leave en masse as conditions become astronomically worse over the winter.

The Telegram social media network channel Joker DPR, known for previously hacking the Instagram page of commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valerii Zaluzhny and accessing the Ukrainian military software DELTA, published the names and personal information of more than 500 applicants for the 4th Battalion of the Foreign Legion of the Ukrainian Army.

Joker DPR also found and published the passports of more than 50 mercenaries, including male and female US citizens and those connected to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence office in Ternopil, western Ukraine, something which has embarrassed Washington and shows that mercenaries are extremely vulnerable.

The Ukrainian Foreign Legion claims to comprise around 20,000 foreign people with military experience and knowledge. Kiev even opened a website for foreign fighters at the beginning of the conflict to help recruit. However, a year later, it was exposed that the Foreign Legion actually has 1,500 members, a far cry from the figures initially announced. It also turned out that many foreigners lacked military experience and knowledge.

According to German media, recruits for the International Ukrainian Legion are paid around 500 euros per month, and those fighting on the front lines reportedly receive a salary of 3,000 euros per month. Still, there were reports that foreigners had to buy weapons and equipment at a high price as Kiev did not provide these necessities.

“Give us some f*****g weapons please. We will not win with trash weapons,” James Vasquez, a US army veteran who volunteered in Ukraine, wrote on X (formerly Twitter) in April 2022. “We need m-16’s, M-4’s, ACOG’s, red dots, ammunition, ammunition, ammunition, javelins, f*****g old AT-4s I know are probably in some storage unit. Frag grenades, and if not… may as well bring Body bags.”

The ex-US Army staff sergeant shared a video revealing he had modified his own AK-47 out of his own pocket, complaining that he was expected to “go into battle with just my drones, AK-47 and one grenade and nothing else.”

Former Legion mercenaries also complained about corruption in the Ukrainian military ranks and problems with the payment of salaries. Western media has also cited problems in raising funds to arm Ukrainian foreign fighters, waste of money, and mysteriously missing shipments.

Now, it was revealed that many mercenaries who came to Ukraine are leaving the country after witnessing violent fighting, US media reported, citing Ukrainian Armed Forces officer Dmytro Kostyuk. 

Explaining how his platoon had manpower shortages and had to be supplemented with mercenaries, Kostyuk admitted to CNN on November 19 that

“For some [foreigners], it was the romance of war, for others it was a professional activity […] As a rule, they do not realise what they are getting into […] Foreigners are a different story, because they can easily terminate a contract, unlike Ukrainians. It happened to me – almost half of the people saw everything and said, ‘No, no, this is too much. This is not the kind of war we signed up for’.”

The Russian Defence Ministry has repeatedly stated that Kiev is using foreign mercenaries as “cannon fodder,” while the Russian military will continue to eliminate them throughout Ukraine. Those who came to fight for their own money have admitted in many interviews that the Ukrainian Armed Forces do not coordinate their actions well and that the possibility of surviving the combat is slim since the intensity of the conflict is not comparable to that of Afghanistan and the Middle East, to which they are accustomed.

However, not only Moscow has described the foreign mercenaries as “cannon fodder.” It is recalled that the Australian government warned on March 15 that foreigners fighting in Ukraine could end up being “cannon fodder,” which matches what British volunteer Matthew Robinson previously said:

“[foreigners] can be railroaded into a legion and sent to the front line very quickly. Even though you’ve got the best of intentions to help people, you could basically be cannon fodder.”

Issues within the ranks of foreign fighters have been reported on since the very start of the war, as James Vasquez attests too, and with the two-year anniversary of the war only two months away, the latest revelation on CNN demonstrates that these issues experienced at the beginning of the war are far from being overcome, especially as Russia’s attacks intensify. With this winter expected to be especially difficult, it can be anticipated that foreigners will continue losing morale and a willingness to fight Russia for the sake of Ukraine, and the threat of having their private information publicly revealed could be enough to make them leave even sooner.

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Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Joining forces: The International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine has enabled thousands of foreign volunteers to join the fight against the Russian invaders. Image: Mil.gov.ua / Wikimedia Commons

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A new president was elected in Argentina this week. He is Javier Milei, a man from the financial sector with no political experience, who describes himself as an “anarcho-capitalist”. 

During the election campaign, Milei announced that he wanted to abolish numerous ministries and the Argentine central bank, privatize broadcasting, introduce the US dollar as the national currency and organize the trade in human organs in a market economy. Immediately after his election, he announced that his first trips would take him to the USA and Israel. 

Who is this man and what will he achieve?

Javier Milei is a 53-year-old economist who has worked at the major bank HSBC and in the past as an advisor to the Argentinian government. For 10 years he was chief economist at Corporación América International, an airport operator and one of the most important concessionaires of the Argentinian state – and a partner company of the World Economic Forum. The president of the company, billionaire and WEF contributor Eduardo Eurnakian, promoted Milei and brought him into politics – an interesting parallel to Ukrainian President Selenskyj and his patron, billionaire Kolomoisky. However, Eurnakian has distanced himself from his protégé since Milei’s derogatory comments about Pope Francis.

Like Selenskyj and his predecessor as Argentinian president, Alberto Fernandez, Milei is listed by the World Economic Forum as a contributor to its agenda. In fact, he has consistently represented the positions of the WEF in the recent past. Although initially against vaccination, he has argued for mandatory vaccination during the coronavirus crisis, is firmly on the side of the Zelensky regime in the Ukraine war and stands shoulder to shoulder with the IDF and Benjamin Netanyahu in the Israel war. 

The election campaign that brought Milei to power took place at a time of extremely difficult social and economic conditions for the Argentinian people. 50% of Argentinians are dependent on state payments and 40% live below the poverty line. Until the 1950s, Argentina was the richest country in South America, with a standard of living comparable to that in Europe.

The fact that things have gone downhill since then is mainly due to the fact that the country has become increasingly indebted and has therefore become more and more dependent on the International Monetary Fund IMF. To date, Argentina has received more than 20 loans from the IMF, including the largest loan ever granted by the IMF of 57 billion dollars in 2018. The country is currently in debt to the IMF to the tune of 44 billion dollars. Of course, the IMF loans are not available without clear instructions from the US-controlled financial institution. All loans are tied to so-called structural adjustment programs, which reduce the standard of living of the majority of the population through strict austerity policies.

Milei has now announced that he intends to take this austerity policy to a whole new level by completely slashing the social sector. In other words, he wants to proceed like the Greek government during the euro crisis. Pensions will fall, the healthcare and education systems will face drastic cuts and energy prices will certainly be raised – all for the benefit of the IMF.

By dismantling the central bank, Milei will certainly not take the country one step forward, as the replacement of the peso and the introduction of the US dollar will not free Argentina but will make it 100 percent subject to the US central bank, the Federal Reserve, and its monetary policy, turning Argentina into a colony of the United States.  

The fact that Milei was mainly elected by poor young Argentinians is revealing. On the one hand, this shows that the social media and the financiers behind them obviously gave him a lot of support, but on the other hand it also shows the social desperation of many people who were left with only the choice between plague and cholera in this election.

In any case, one thing is certain: as president, Milei will pursue the agenda of the digital-financial complex from day one, submit to the Fed, which is now dependent on BlackRock, and launch the toughest and harshest austerity program in South American history to date. However, this will put him in direct confrontation with the majority of the Argentinian population. The disillusionment that we will soon experience will be extremely great – and will certainly lead to enormous social upheaval in the country.

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Ernst Wolff was born in China in 1950 and spent his childhood in Korea. After studying in Germany and the USA, he worked as an interpreter, language teacher and screenwriter. Since the 1990s, he has been working as a journalist on the relationship between politics and “nance. He has published numerous articles on this subject and written several non-fiction books (World Power IMF, Financial Tsunami and Wolf of Wall Street). With the highly acclaimed book World Power IMF he became an acknowledged bestselling author. With World Economic Forum he continues this success. His investigative research and detailed knowledge of the global monetary system make him one of the top authors in the fields of economics, “nance and political economy. Ernst Wolff runs his own info channels on YouTube, Telegram and Odysee and regularly reaches an audience of millions.

Featured image is licensed under CC0


World Economic Forum: The Global Shadow Elite

by Ernst Wolff

Publisher: ‎ Clearsight Media (April 14, 2023)

Language: ‎ English

Paperback: ‎ 258 pages

ISBN-10: ‎ 1739777913

ISBN-13: ‎ 978-1739777913

Click here to order.