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a
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– anonymous phone message recorded by the staff of Mackenzie Richmond Hill Hospital in response to Dr Thomson’s Pro-Palestine solidarity messages on social media. [1]
“This message is for Dr. Ben Thomson. Remove your post regarding [against] Israel … It is disgusting, you are a disgusting human being, you do not know what you’re saying, and if you do not remove it, I advise you and the rest of your staff to stay out of your office.”
The battle-front between Israel and Gaza/Palestine has now exploded in public consciousness to such an extent that the ongoing War in Ukraine is suddenly yesterday’s news. [2]
According to the most recent estimates by Gaza’s Ministry of Health, as of this writing, 6,547 people in Gaza have died. This does NOT include the 1,600 people, including 900 children who are missing and possibly under the rubble in the midst of the ongoing bombardment from Israel’s retaliation to the deadly October 7 attack on their citizens. [3]
Interestingly, the support of world leaders for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s against the People of Palestine, seemed to wane as massive voices within each country and around the world spoke in unity:
“FREE FREE PALESTINE!”
They were visible in the thousands and in some places even hundreds of thousands in Great Britain, in Australia, in West Asia and North Africa, and yes even in the United States. [4]
Even U.S. President Joe Biden in conversation with Bibi seems to have shown a change in heart.
As an anonymous source familiar with discussions between the leaders of the two allied countries put it:
“They have clearly shifted from an initial ‘We have your back; we’ll do whatever you want’ to now ‘You really need to rethink your strategy.’ [5]
But at the same time, Zionism is pushing back – with a vengeance!
A representative from the non-profit organization Palestine Legal, which provides legal support to the Palestine solidarity movement, found that they had received a surge in requests for assistance in the last two weeks. Many of these individuals, including university students, professors, and journalists said they faced negative consequences in their workplaces for statements they made on their social media posts in support of Palestinian rights! [6]
The war is clearly not just between Israel and Gaza. It is being waged across the planet as people of conscience choose sides as to who they will throw their support behind. How is it vast members of the Global South and the working class relate to the Palestinians while the chiefs within the most privileged countries, ie. the U.S. and its gang of imperialist confederates, stand “shoulder to shoulder” with the Israeli Prime Minister?
This is the main thread running through this chapter of the Global Research News Hour.
In our first half hour, we speak to Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of the Pan-African News Wire and frequent guest, about why much of the world is resisting the Israeli response to the Hamas Oct 7 attack to levels unmatched since the Iraq War resistance 20 years ago.
Then in our second half hour, we air a replay of an interview recorded by Chris Cook for the show Gorilla-Radio on radio station CFUV 101.9FM in Victoria, British Columbia, on the unceded, unsurrendered territories of the W̱SÁNEĆ and Lkwungen peoples.
His guest was Tarek Loubani who has worked in Gaza as a doctor and humanitarian.
Loubani will be speaking about the silencing of his colleague Dr. Ben Thomson and other humanitarian dissenters in the current age of suppression.
Abayomi Azikiweis the editor of the Pan-African News Wire. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Tarek Loubani is a London, Ontario-based doctor and humanitarian. Tarek runs the Glia Project, which seeks to provide medical supplies to impoverished locations, one of which is the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza.
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.
Yasmeen Abutaleb, John Hudson and Dan Lamothe (October 27, 2023), ‘U.S. urges Israel against Gaza ground invasion, pushes surgical campaign’, The Washington Post; https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/10/27/us-urging-israel-rethinkg-gaza-ground-invasion/
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***
I have been amazed at how many people have taken one or more of the COVID-19 vaccines are completely free of side effects. It has been conjectured that the uninspected vials of COVID-19 vaccines have differing quantities of mRNA because of lipid nanoparticle aggregation (clumping together within a batch).
Pfizer claims they perform many quality checks of their product; however, neither Pfizer nor the FDA have published an inspection report for quality, purity, and quantification of mRNA in the multi-use vials. If there was little or no viable mRNA, then Spike protein would not be produced within the injection side (deltoid muscle) or other tissues and that would explain a lack of side effects in the arm and elsewhere in the body.
Polykretis and McCulloughhave reported nearly a 10-fold increase in cardiac arrests among European athletes since the rollout of mandatory COVID-19 vaccines. Could these cardiac arrests have been anticipated in some way from the very beginning? Komici et al studied 460 competitive and recreational athletes at the University of Molise in Italy undergoing COVID-19 vaccination. Arm pain was reported in 81.3% of the first and 24.9% of second dose recipients. The strongest predictor of arm pain was male gender.
Komici K, Verderosa S, D’Amico F, Guerra G. Self-reported side effects following COVID-19 vaccination in athletes: A retrospective study. Hum Vaccin Immunother. 2023 Aug 1;19(2):2234788. doi: 10.1080/21645515.2023.2234788. PMID: 37470390; PMCID: PMC10361131.
The results are similar to those of Schmeling et al who reported about 32.1% of doses result in no adverse effects whatsoever reported to Danish health authorities after vaccination.
Schmeling M, Manniche V, Hansen PR. Batch-dependent safety of the BNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19 vaccine. Eur J Clin Invest. 2023 Aug;53(8):e13998. doi: 10.1111/eci.13998. Epub 2023 Apr 9. PMID: 36997290.
Schwab et al reported a cohesive finding of simultaneous vaccine-induced inflammation in the deltoid muscle and the heart among those who died after vaccination. The areas of inflammation look very similar in both samples.
Finally, Nakahara et al reported that there is a greater shift from normal free fatty acid to 18-FDG uptake in the human heart among those who had a sore arm (65.4%) after vaccination. This cardiac PET finding is associated with myocardial disease and chronic ischemia.
Nakahara T, Iwabuchi Y, Miyazawa R, Tonda K, Shiga T, Strauss HW, Antoniades C, Narula J, Jinzaki M. Assessment of Myocardial 18F-FDG Uptake at PET/CT in Asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2-vaccinated and Nonvaccinated Patients. Radiology. 2023 Sep;308(3):e230743. doi: 10.1148/radiol.230743. PMID: 37724969.
Piecing these data together in my clinical practice, I always ask patients if they had a sore arm or more severe reaction within the few days of the shot. It may be a harbinger of future cardiovascular serious adverse events including myocarditis and sudden cardiac death.
*
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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
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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***
An 8-year-old Israeli boy featured in a video promoting the COVID-19 vaccine died suddenly last month from sudden cardiac arrest.
Yonatan Moshe Erlichman, the son and grandson of prominent Israeli doctors, almost drowned in the bathtub after his heart stopped on the eve of Yom Kippur. Although paramedics were able to revive him, he died several days later on Sept. 28.
In 2020, Erlichman appeared in a video with Shuski, described as a “friendly puppet ‘child,’” urging viewers to get the COVID-19 vaccine when it became available.
Describing Erlichman as the “poster child” for Israel’s vaccine campaign, LifeSiteNews shared the government-sponsored video featuring the boy, released just prior to the introduction of the COVID-19 vaccines in Israel.
יונתן ארליכמן ז"ל בן 8 מת מדום לב 😥😥😥 לא מזעזע אתכם ? היכן הכותרות ? החקירות? כמה ילדים עוד ימותו על מזבח הזהב? ובייחוד שיש כבר שני מחקרים מבוקרים המעידים כי חיסוני ה mRNA גורמים לבעיות לבביות. עד מתי תתחפרו ? כמה עוד תכחישו? תזכרו שבכל רגע נתון זה יכול לקרות לילדיכם… pic.twitter.com/PUYlLN4jDr
Here is a partial translation of the tweet (via Google Translate):
“Doesn’t that shock you? Where are the headlines? The investigations? How many more children will die on the golden altar?
“And in particular, there are already two controlled studies that show that the mRNA vaccines cause cardiac problems … How much more will you deny?
“Remember that at any given moment, this can happen to your beloved children and grandchildren.”
Another tweet questioned why the story was not on televised news, but only in local and religious press. The person reported that the family was “scared to death and were trying to keep the story quiet.”
The boy’s family released the following statement:
“Our Yonatan Moshe passed away a short time ago. On the eve of Yom Kippur, Yonatan went into cardiac arrest in our home, and since then we fought by his side after he collapsed. We thank all those dear to us who were by our side in the last days of his life.”
Netanyahu Bragged About Making Israel a ‘Lab for Pfizer’
In November 2020, Israel’s government signed an agreement with Pfizer to acquire 8 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine, which the government began distributing in December 2020.
In exchange for receiving the vaccine ahead of other countries, Israel agreed to provide Pfizer with epidemiological data to help the vaccine maker evaluate the efficacy and reactogenicity of the vaccine.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was able to make Israel “the lab for Pfizer” because “98% of our population has digitized medical records” that would — when combined with his country’s “genetic database” — facilitate granular reporting of the vaccine’s impact on the country’s citizens.
With this data, “you can create a biotechnological industry that is unheard of … unimagined even,” he said.
Netanyahu: “Israel 🇮🇱 became the lab for Pfizer”
Israel Ministry of Health denied it. Pfizer denied it. But finally here we have official confirmation from Prime Minister that as part of the deal, Israel was turned into Pfizer's lab.pic.twitter.com/PPlrCNpukR
Dr. Sabine Hazan, a gastroenterology specialist in Ventura, California, weighed in on Netanyahu’s Pfizer deal:
Yeah, and you can create a weapon to eliminate a whole population. Who gave Netanyahu the right to decide for an entire population? Shouldn’t people have been allowed to vote to be guinea pigs? They all believed in a vaccine as a solution, but it was not. Neonatal death rate ⬆️ pic.twitter.com/BucoPYi0NZ
CDC Failed to Publicize 2021 Israeli Myocarditis Data in a Timely Manner
Information provided to Children’s Health Defense (CHD) last year by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) following a Freedom of Information Act request showed the CDC received a report in February 2021 about post-injection myocarditis from the Israel Ministry of Health.
The report stated, “We are seeing a large number of myocarditis and pericarditis cases in young individuals soon after Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. We would like to discuss the issue with a relevant expert at CDC.”
Even though a significant myocarditis safety signal was visible both in the U.S. and Israel just months after the COVID-19 vaccines were made available, the CDC failed to alert the public until May 2021, after half the eligible U.S. population had already received the vaccine.
In June 2021, Israel released an official report confirming mRNA-related myocarditis in young men, especially those ages 16-24, who showed a rate of up to 25 times higher than typically observed in the Hadassah Medical Center.
A September 2022 Israeli study found the incidence of myocarditis within 30 days of the second Pfizer shot was 2.35 times higher than in the unvaccinated, with the risk for males ages 16-19 presenting as nearly 1 in 1,000.
Although the Israeli study was quick to point out that the risk of myocarditis was milder after the third Pfizer (first booster) shot, Dr. Peter McCullough warned last week at a hearing of the Novel Coronavirus Southwestern Intergovernmental Committee in the Arizona Senate that the effects of post-vaccine myocarditis can be delayed for years.
After summarizing the science around the spike protein’s effect on the heart, including reports from post-injection autopsies, McCullough related the story of an athlete who died during a heart stress test two years after being vaccinated.
Dr. McCullough: The COVID-19 Vaccines are NOT SAFE for Human Use
Testifying before the Arizona State Senate, Dr. @P_McCulloughMD said, as a practicing doctor, that he's seeing the complications of the COVID-19 vaccines firsthand. He previously reported, "Before COVID-19, I saw… pic.twitter.com/qBdOIJotzI
Though news of Erlichman’s death did not include information about if or when the boy was vaccinated, he likely received the Pfizer mRNA shots in 2021, along with the majority of Israelis.
This tragedy underscores McCullough’s warning about the often hidden and long-term risks of post-vaccine myocarditis.
In June, CHD scientists called for an investigation into the CDC and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for suppressing evidence linking the mRNA vaccines to myocarditis and pericarditis.
Israeli Ministry of Health Hid Adverse Event Data
In a leaked June 2022 video of a Zoom presentation by a research team commissioned by the Israeli Ministry of Health, one of the speakers warned, “We’ll have to think medical-legal — how to present our findings to avoid lawsuits. Why? Because of quite a few side effects, [yet] we said: ‘OK, it exists and reports exist but still get vaccinated.’”
The researcher in the video voiced concerns about long-term adverse events, including a higher rate of events after repeated vaccine doses.
🇮🇱In a leaked video, a research team commissioned by the Israeli MoH warns: "We’ll have to think medical-legal – how to present our findings to avoid lawsuits. Why? Because of quite a few side effects we said: 'OK, it exists and reports exist, BUT STILL GET VACCINATED'". pic.twitter.com/IgXavuYaSH
The ministry two months later issued a report claiming to have found no new safety signals that “were not already known.” It also manipulated the data to show a smaller percentage of adverse events than were observed.
Yale epidemiologist Harvey Risch, M.D., Ph.D., discussed the suppressed Israeli data on an episode of “Ask Dr. Drew”:
“We’ve Seen Major Suppression of Adverse Events by Government Agencies”
Yale Epidemiologist Dr. Harvey Risch Speaks about Leaked Video of Israeli Research Team that Suppressed Adverse Events, And Further Misrepresentation of Israeli Gov. advisor to FDA. https://t.co/3ta2lCYYQ8pic.twitter.com/FpgVO7tEed
Erlichman’s tragedy mirrors the story of Santino Godoy Blanco, an Argentine boy who died last year at age 4 and who also was reported to have served as a national “poster boy” in advertisements promoting COVID-19 vaccines for children.
🇦🇷 The poster boy for Argentina’s 💉campaign has #diedsuddenly of “bilateral pneumonia”
Santino Godoy Blanco (3) was rushed to hospital due to fever and vomiting.
Before passing his mom says he took off his mask and gave her little kisses because he couldn't talk anymore 😥 pic.twitter.com/90HSBhsnvI
A USA Today “fact check” challenged the story, finding the claim false that Blanco’s appearances were promoting COVID-19 vaccines, and instead stating — correctly — that the advertisements were for measles, rubella, mumps and polio shots.
Blanco died of a lung infection associated with double pneumonia, which fact-checkers asserted was “unrelated with vaccination in general or COVID-19 vaccines in particular.”
However, the fact-checkers overlooked data from 2017 linking childhood vaccines to increased pneumonia risk.
In their book, “Vax-Unvax: Let the Science Speak,” Brian Hooker, Ph.D., senior director of science and research at CHD, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., CHD’s chairman on leave, shared study data showing vaccinated children carry a 5 times greater risk of suffering from pneumonia than the unvaccinated.
Credit: RFK Jr. and Brian Hooker, Ph.D., “Vax-Unvax: Let the Science Speak”
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John-Michael Dumais is a news editor for The Defender. He has been a writer and community organizer on a variety of issues, including the death penalty, war, health freedom and all things related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Featured image is from CHD
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
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
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***
A couple of days ago, Russian evening news showed a brief video of Vladimir Putin arriving at the southern military command center in Rostov on Don for a meeting with Valery Gerasimov, Head of the General Staff of Russian Armed Forces. We were shown their handshakes at the start and their handshakes at the conclusion of the meeting as Putin was on his way to his aircraft, but nothing was said about the reason for the visit.
This evening we found out about the likely topic of the talks two days ago. Breaking news on Russian television gave some sketchy details of the tests just carried out on the war readiness of the country’s nuclear triad for response to some incoming nuclear missile from an unnamed enemy.
Gerasimov reported to Putin on the satisfactory results of the launch from the nuclear submarine Tula in the Barents Sea of a Sineva ballistic missile with 5,500 km range;
the launch of a Yars ballistic missile with 12,000 km range from an underground shaft in Kamchatka; and the launch of a 5,500 km range cruise missile from a TU-95 “Bear” turboprop bomber-missile carrier (location unspecified).
Considering the location of the missile launches and the radius of possible strikes, it does not take much imagination to conclude that the enemy being attacked was the U.S. of A. The actual tests consisted of one missile each; the capability being tested was for a massive retaliatory strike.
We may assume that the tests were Russia’s response to the announcement within the past week of American ‘pre-tests’ of nuclear weapons, which Moscow took to indicate that Washington intends to proceed with weapons testing in one way or another now that the treaty banning such tests has become dead letter.
Or we may assume that the Russian missile firings were a warning to the United States against escalation in the Middle East by attacking Iran.
On the subject of Iran, Russian state television yesterday told us about the visit to Teheran of Foreign Minister Lavrov, who arrived from meetings in Pyongyang with North Korean leader Kim and had talks with the Iranians and representatives of Armenia and Azerbaijan over resolution of their conflict. Lavrov told a reporter inter alia that talks with Teheran over conclusion of a Strategic Partnership agreement are 90% complete.
Today Russian state television related news from Prime Minister Mishustin on his talks with Iranian leaders over furtherance of bilateral trade and also on the likely conclusion before year’s end of a Free Trade Zone agreement with the Eurasian Economic Union. Clearly the ‘axis of evil’ is forming with amazing speed under pressure from the wars in Ukraine and now in the Middle East.
I call attention to the difference in tone with respect to Iran by Israeli leaders these past two days and by spokesmen of the Biden administration. A member of Netanyahu’s cabinet has threatened Iran with utter destruction, whereas American officials are focusing their attention on the various proxies that Iran is helping to prepare for military action against Israel if the ground invasion of Gaza proceeds. Moreover, it is now unclear whether the large naval task forces that the United States is assembling in the Eastern Mediterranean and in the Red Sea are intended for offensive action against Iran or for defensive action, to protect American bases in the region against attack from pro-Iranian forces and to evacuate American military and civilians from the region if necessary.
One linguistic point worth mentioning as regards the announcement of the tests of the nuclear triad:
Vladimir Solovyov on his show last night called attention to the word наступательный to describe Russia’s strategic nuclear weapons. That word means “offensive”. So what is this all about? Does it mean that the Russians are heading towards first strike thinking? Not a small detail!
In this connection, it is worth considering that the trouble-making political scientist Karaganov who riled Western and also Russian peers by urging on Russia use of tactical nukes in some half-assed place like Poland or Romania to sober up Western leaders and remind them of Russia’s deterrence, now has come out with the statement a “nuclear war can be won.”
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ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3 Year: 2012 Pages: 102
PDF Edition: $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)
Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.
Reviews
“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.” –John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University
“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.” -Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations
Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction. –Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute
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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***
Most chain restaurants rely on beef and chicken from concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), where veterinary drugs are routinely used, and of 10 fast food meals sampled and tested, all but two tested positive for veterinary drugs
Six of the 10 fast food samples (Taco Bell, Dunkin’, Wendy’s, Domino’s, Burger King and McDonald’s) contained a veterinary antibiotic ionophore called monensin, which is not approved for human use as it can cause severe harm
Of 43 school lunches tested, 95% had detectable levels of glyphosate, a carcinogenic and endocrine-disrupting weed killer linked to liver inflammation, metabolic disorder, cardiovascular disease and cancer
100% of the school lunches tested contained heavy metals at levels up to 6,293 times higher than the maximum levels allowed in drinking water. Cadmium and lead were found at the highest levels
Of 21 fast food meals tested for essential minerals, none met the recommended daily requirements of calcium, potassium, manganese, copper, zinc and iron, and none of the 10 fast food meals tested for B vitamins contained detectable levels of B9 or B12. Vitamin B3 (niacin) levels were also exceptionally low
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While high amounts of linoleic acid (LA) is one of the primary reasons why processed foods and fast food are so bad for your health, contaminants like veterinary drugs, antibiotics, hormones and heavy metals — combined with inferior amounts of essential nutrients — are other highly-ranked reasons to steer clear of.
8 of 10 Fast Food Meals Contain Veterinary Drugs
In September 2023, Moms Across America (MAA) submitted food samples from 10 fast food chains to the Health Research Institute, a nonprofit laboratory that tests food for nutrient content, contaminants and toxins. Each food sample was tested for the presence of 104 of the most common veterinary drugs and hormones. You can read the certificate of analysis here.1
Fast food restaurants sampled included McDonald’s, Starbucks, Subway, Chick-fil-A, Burger King, Taco Bell, Chipotle, Dunkin’, Wendy’s and Domino’s. Of these, only Chipotle and Subway tested negative for veterinary drugs.
This isn’t all that surprising, considering most chain restaurants rely on beef and chicken from concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), where veterinary drugs are routinely used. As explained by MAA:2
“Due to large, industry, confined animal feeding operation conditions, which include extremely close quarters, unsanitary spaces, and high incidence of disease, most of America’s nonorganic meat comes from livestock that is heavily treated with antibiotics, growth hormones, and an anti-parasitic which is also a known aviary contraceptive.”
6 of 10 Contain Potentially Risky Antibiotics
Six of the 10 fast food samples (Taco Bell, Dunkin’, Wendy’s, Domino’s, Burger King and McDonald’s)3 contained a veterinary antibiotic ionophore called monensin, which is not approved for human use as it can cause severe harm. The sample with the highest concentration (Taco Bell) contained 0.64 micrograms (mcg). The “acceptable” daily intake is 12.5 mcg/kg of body weight per day.
Monensin also has a number of side effects in animals, including anorexia, diarrhea, depression, ataxia, degeneration of heart and skeletal muscles, necrosis and death.
The antibiotic ionophore narasin, which has the same side effects in animals as monensin, was found in 4 of the 10 samples (Wendy’s, Dunkin’, Domino’s and Starbucks). The highest concentration, 1.53 mcg, was found in a Wendy’s cheeseburger. The three others contained only trace concentrations. The “acceptable” daily intake is 5 mcg/kg per day.
Both monensin and narasin are toxic to dogs and horses and can cause paralysis of the hind legs at extremely low levels. They can also cause acute cardiac rhabdomyocyte degeneration and necrosis in beef and dairy cattle. The reason they’re used in cattle is because they encourage weight gain. MAA commented on these findings:4
“Moms Across America is gravely concerned about our population, especially children, unknowingly eating unprescribed antibiotic ionophores livestock, even at low levels, consistently because of potential damage to the microbiome as well as the risk of antibiotic-resistant bacteria growth.
We question if the side effects of these ionophores in dogs and horses, leaving their hind legs dysfunctional, might be related to millions of Americans presenting with restless leg syndrome and neuropathy, conditions unknown to most humans just a generation or two ago … Until proven safe, we urge our regulatory agencies, such as the USDA and FDA, to disallow the use of these drugs in our livestock.”
‘Fowl Contraceptive’ Detected in Chick-fil-A Sandwich
The Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich was found to contain nicarbazin,5 an antiparasitic drug and fowl contraceptive that causes infertility in certain poultry, such as pigeons and geese. In fact, it’s used to control geese and pigeon populations.
In chickens, it’s used to control certain types of infections and fatten them up. Side effects of the drug include increased sensitivity to heat stress, degenerative processes in the liver and kidneys, and death.
In 2009, the British Soil Association sought to have nicarbazin banned in the U.K., as evidence proving the drug would not cause genetic damage, mutations, birth deformities or malformations was lacking. As a result, a European review board was unable to establish a safe level of residue in chickens and eggs.6
Despite open questions, the European Commission and the UK’s Veterinary Medicines Directorate continued to allow routine use of the drug in the poultry industry by using a legal loophole. In the U.S., nicarbazin has been an approved veterinary drug for use as an anticoccidial agent in broiler chickens since 1955.7
The Chick-fil-A sandwich contained 0.36 mcg of nicarbazin and the “acceptable” level is 200 mcg/kg per day.8 The seemingly wide safety margin does not mean there’s nothing to worry about though. As noted by MAA executive director Zen Honeycutt:
“The impact of millions of Americans, especially children and young adults, consuming a known animal contraceptive daily is concerning. With infertility problems on the rise, the reproductive health of this generation is front and center for us, in light of these results.
These are veterinary drugs and hormones … so the only studies that I have found, and that you will find, will be for animals. [They’re] not authorized for humans, and yet they’re being allowed [into the food supply]. Some people are consuming this food every day, so we don’t know how much they are accumulating in their body.”
John Fagan, chief scientist at the Health Research Institute, also noted that the FDA’s acceptable levels are really only meaningful when we’re talking about acute poisoning. In the case of fast food, which some people eat three times a day, the concern is chronic poisoning from the accumulation of toxins over time.9
School Lunches Loaded with Pesticides
In September 2022, MAA also tested 43 school lunches for the presence of not only hormones and veterinary drugs, but also pesticides, heavy metals and nutritional content.10 The results there were even more concerning.
Ninety-five percent of the school lunch items had detectable levels of glyphosate, a carcinogenic and endocrine-disrupting weed killer routinely used on GMO grains that has been linked to liver inflammation, metabolic disorder, cardiovascular disease and cancer, including liver cancer and Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.11,12
The highest levels of glyphosate were found in beef taco with soft wheat tortilla (286.77 nanograms per gram) and pizza (156.14 ng/g). As noted by MAA, these levels are highly concerning:13
“If consumed regularly, results with Total Effective Glyphosate above 25 ng/g could have harmful effects. These are levels that, if routinely fed to rats, cause them to show symptoms of Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD).
NAFLD is life-threatening and is an epidemic in the USA. These levels of glyphosate in school lunches would be expected to have similar effects on children.
Levels lower than 25 ng/g can be expected to contribute to NAFLD and other pathologies because a child will eat more than one thing during the day that contains glyphosate, and the levels of glyphosate would be cumulative.”
Other toxic pesticides found in the school meals include:
Thiabendazole, which has immune suppressing effects, was found in 27.9% of the samples.
Piperonal butoxide, present in 18 of the 43 samples (41%), is a developmental toxin that causes birth defects and neurodevelopment disruptions.
Pyrimethanil, detected at 595.04 ppb on an apple, has been shown to cause thyroid tumors in animals.
School Meals: Drugs, Heavy Metals, but Few Nutrients
Nine of the 43 school lunches also contained four types of veterinary drugs and hormones, and a shocking 100% of meals contained heavy metals at levels up to 6,293 times higher than the maximum levels allowed in drinking water. Levels ranged from 0.5 ppb to 94.4 mcg/kg.
The highest levels of heavy metals were cadmium and lead, found at up to 46.8 mcg/kg (cadmium) and 94.4 mcg/kg (lead). Meanwhile, most of the meals were “abysmally low” in essential nutrients. As reported by the MAA:
“An advisor has calculated the contribution that the sample food would make to a person’s nutritional requirements, assuming that they ate a 4 oz portion (standardly used in nutritional analysis) and assuming that this food contributed ¼ of their nutrition for the day.
‘The nutritional items are consistently very deficient in Copper and are also consistently deficient (but to a lesser extent) in calcium, potassium, and phosphorous. Magnesium, zinc, and manganese are deficient in many of the samples, roughly 50%. The only mineral that is consistently meeting or exceeding requirements is iron. That is good but it is not enough!’ …
Without proper nutrients, our children’s brains will not function properly, and their bodies will not be developed as needed. Often children with learning and behavioral issues are deficient in just one or two minerals or vitamins; when those nutrients are added to their diet, their mental, physical, and behavioral issues subside. Even violent behavior is discontinued. Our children must have proper nutrient-dense food.”
Fast Food Cannot Sustain You
After completing the veterinary drug analysis on 10 fast food meals, MAA went on to test 21 fast food brands for essential minerals, and the top 10 brands for B vitamins.
“The testing was conducted out of concern for America’s skyrocketing mental and physical health crisis,” Honeycutt writes in her October 18, 2023, report.14
“Eighty-five million Americans eat fast food every day. Fast food companies often supply a significant portion of the 30 million school meals served to our children each day.
The quality of the food, including the contamination of agrochemicals and lack of nutrients due to toxic chemical inputs, contributes to our mental and physical health issues. One in five Americans have a mental illness, and 54% of our children have a chronic health issue.
For many impoverished children, school meals are the only food they consume each day. Numerous studies have linked toxins in the food supply and lack of nutrition to conditions such as autism, depression, aggression, suicide, and homicides. This report will … disclose the mineral, vitamin B, and calorie levels in the top 20 fast food restaurants/ school lunch suppliers.”
Based on the micronutrient testing done on school lunches in 2022 (above), you can probably guess what this nutritional testing revealed. The mineral content of the fast food tested did not meet the recommended daily requirements of calcium, potassium, manganese, copper, zinc and iron.
For example, the recommended daily allowance (RDA) of copper is 900 mcg per day, and Chick-fil-A’s chicken nuggets contain just 1.4 mcg of copper per gram. To meet the RDA, an adult would need to consume nearly nine servings of nuggets.
Signs of copper deficiency include fatigue, poor concentration and low mood. Also, “children with autism and violent behavior often have an imbalance of copper,” Honeycutt writes.
Fast Food Nearly Devoid of B Vitamins
Even worse, zero amounts of vitamin B9 or B12 were detected in the top 10 fast food samples, and deficiencies in these B vitamins can lead to fatigue, digestive issues, heart problems, nervous system disorders and erratic behavior. Indeed, vitamin B12 (cobalamin) is known as “the energy vitamin.” Your body requires it for energy production.
It also plays an important role in neurological function, and deficiency can culminate in a range of mental health symptoms, from irritability and depression to dementia and even psychosis. You can learn more about vitamin B12’s role in mental health in this November 6, 2022 article.
Warning signs of B12 deficiency include brain fog, memory lapses, mood swings, apathy, fatigue, muscle weakness and tingling in the extremities. Unfortunately, B12 deficiency may not present itself for several years, so by the time you notice symptoms, you may be quite deficient.
The fact that NONE of the top 10 fast foods contained B12 is rather remarkable when you consider B12-rich foods include beef, seafood, chicken and eggs. Beef and chicken are staples in fast food, yet fast food beef and chicken provide no B12 at all! If that doesn’t convince you that fast food meat is nowhere near the same as grass fed organic meat, I don’t know what will.
Levels of B3 (niacin) were also abysmal. The RDA for women is 14 mg per day and for men it’s 16 mg. To meet that RDA, a woman would need to consume 333 servings of Chick-fil-A chicken sandwiches (at a serving size of 210 grams) and a man would need to eat 380 servings.
Chipotle’s carnitas bowl with everything, which had the highest amount of B3, still requires you to eat eight servings if you’re a woman and nine servings if you’re a man, to meet your RDA of niacin. As reported by MAA:15
“On average, adults would need to consume between 64-73 servings of the top 10 fast foods to get proper vitamin B3 nutrition per day. Alternatively, a portion of liver (pasture-raised, ideally) or a can of tuna (SafeCatch) would supply enough vitamin B3 or niacin for proper nutrition for a day. Clearly, cheap fast food is not as cheap as it seems when one factors in the value of the nutrients provided in the purchase.”
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Oct. 23, 2023 – 28 year old Danish rider Niklas Eg has been forced to retire due to inexplicable instances of irregular heart rate during his training sessions. His medical team has still not determined the cause of the irregular heart rate.
Sep. 24, 2023 – Argentina – 50 year old cyclist Gustavo Lopreste finished a cycling race 20 minutes after the end of the race he got dizzy, collapsed and died suddenly from cardiac arrest on Sep. 24, 2023.
Sep. 20, 2023 – 20 year old Evelyn Mae Sorensen was found dead in her dorm room of Middlebury College at 10pm on Sep. 20, 2023. She was very athletic and had recently taken up cycling.
Sep. 12, 2023 – 27 year old Belgian professional cyclist Nathan van Hooydonck was forced to retire due to “heart problems”. He was involved in a car accident last week when he fell ill at the wheel and had a medical emergency.
Sep. 10, 2023 – London, UK – 63 year old David Graney who was participating in a charity bike ride collapsed with a cardiac arrest during the London to Brighton bike ride on Sep. 10, 2023 and was saved by doctors who were riding behind him.
Aug. 29, 2023 – Netherlands – 32 year old road racing cyclist, Wesley Kreder had a cardiac arrest on Aug. 29, 2023. He was diagnosed with “Myocarditis that can lead to cardiac arrest”. He will never race again.
Aug 12, 2023 – Nicoya, Costa Rica – 37 year old professional cyclist Sergio Andres Campos Rodriguez died suddenly on August 12, 2023 from a cardiac arrest he suffered during a cycling race, 3km from the finish line.
July 30, 2023 – Belfast, Ireland – Doctor & leading cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Simon MacGowan died in his sleep on July 29/30, 2023. “He had ridden a six-day tour of the Alps, from Geneva to Nice when he died in his sleep in Nice on completion of the trip.
July 29, 2023 – 48 year old Irish Triathlete Sarah Fagan, from Dundalk in Co Louth, tragically died in France on Saturday, July 29 after going into cardiorespiratory arrest while competing in the Alpe d’Huez Triathlon on Friday, July 28.
July 18, 2023 – Coeur d’Alene, Idaho – Clark Campbell, teacher of physical education died unexpectedly of cardiac arrest during a mountain biking trip on July 18, 2023.
July 15, 2023 – Cala Regina, Italy – 48 year old cyclist Andrea Sechi collapsed with cardiac arrest while cycling on a seaside road and died suddenly from “climate change” on July 15, 2023.
July 7, 2023 – 34 year old Belgian professional cyclist Sep Vanmarcke has announced his retirement due to cardiac MRI showing cardiac scar tissue he didn’t know he had.
May 17, 2023 – 24 year old Kazakh professional road racing cyclist Dinmukhammed Ulysbayev died unexpectedly of “acute heart failure” on May 17, 2023 in Los Angeles, CA.
May 6, 2023 – 56 year old Francois Beaulieu, New Brunswick’s top Energy Regulator, died suddenly on May 6, 2023. He had a sudden cardiac arrest while cycling on Saturday and died. Wife: “He was doing what he loved, cycling. His heart stopped but mine has not.”
My Take…
Athletes continue to collapse from sudden cardiac arrests and I believe we are starting to see long term cardiac damage caused by COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines.
For example, 34 year old Belgian professional cyclist Sep Vanmarcke announced his retirement because he had a cardiac MRI that confirmed the presence of scarring that he was not aware of. He had only recently started having an abnormally high heart rate that prompted the cardiac MRI.
Most amateur athletes are unable to get a cardiac MRI or cardiac PET to check for scarring that would predispose them to sudden cardiac death. But it could mean the difference between life and sudden death.
From Ethical Skeptic, sudden cardiac death in ages 0 to 54 remains at all time highs:
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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.
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
October 27th, 2023 by Centre for Research on Globalization
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Introduction
According to U.N. Secretary-General (UNSG) Antonio Guterres in his remarks to the U.N. Security Council on October 24:
“The situation in the Middle East is growing more dire by the hour.
The war in Gaza is raging and risks spiralling throughout the region.
Divisions are splintering societies. Tensions threaten to boil over.
At a crucial moment like this, it is vital to be clear on principles — starting with the fundamental principle of respecting and protecting civilians.”
Guterres’s disapproval of Israel is lenient. He does not condemn Tel Aviv for the massive killings of Palestinian civilians (in the carpet bombing of Gaza) which so far have resulted in more than 5,000 Palestinian deaths, nor does he raise (in his initial remarks) the issue of a “cease fire”:
“The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.
They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing.
But the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas. And those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”
…
Guterres does not address the displacement of 750,000 Palestinians in 1948 by Israel and the setting up of an Apartheid state by Tel Aviv which denies Palestinians’ basic human rights.
Who Is Attacking Whom? Towards a Broader War in the Middle East?
The issue of the Armada of two US aircraft carriers which “have come to the rescue of Israel” us not mentioned by Guterres.
According to Western Media reports Israel is being “Attacked by Palestine”(see Daily Mail quoted by Global Research):
“The US is ramping up firepower in the Middle East to deter Iran from starting WW III – with an armada of 13 warships, over 100 fighter jets, cruise missiles, spy planes and 2,000 amphibious special forces massing in the region.”
UNSG Antonio Guterres fails to address or analyze the underlying implications, namely the extensive US-NATO military buildup throughout the Middle East, nor does he mention the Israeli air attacks against Lebanon and Syria.
What is unfolding is best described as “The Internationalization of war”.
Is Israel Under Attack?
Guterres “equates” Hamas and Israel without acknowledging that while:
Israel is categorized as having the 4th largest Armed Forces Worldwide. In contrast
Hamas, is an Islamist entity with limited military capabilities, covertly supported by Israeli Intelligence since its inception in 1987.
Ironically, “The Hamas-Mossad partnership” is confirmed by Netanyahu:
“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas. … This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.” (March 2019 Statement quoted by Haaretz, October 9, 2023, emphasis added)
Israel’s Reaction to UNSG Antonio Guterres’s Statement
Ironically, Guterres’s mild criticism of Israel is not tolerated by Tel Aviv whose U.N. ambassador GiladErdan has demanded the resignation of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.
Not only is Israel demanding Guterres’s resignation but its officials have “proudly compared” its killing of Palestinian civilians to the Allied bombing of the German cities of Dresden and Hamburg at the end of World War II, which quite deliberately targeted civilians.
According to Wyatt Reed:
“In an October 16 interview, the Israeli ambassador to the UK, TzipiHotovely, shrugged off concerns about the thousands of innocents killed in IDF strikes on Gaza, suggesting that because Allied powers killed tens of thousands of German civilians with relentless airstrikes in the 1940s, Israel is entitled to do the same.
“There were many, many civilians [that] got attacked from your attacks on German cities,” she told a Sky News anchor. “Dresden was a symbol, but you attacked Hamburg, you attacked other cities, and altogether it was over 600,000 civilian Germans that got killed.”
Comparing the militarily occupied Palestinian population to Nazis, Hotovley continued: “Was it worth it in order to defeat Nazi Germany? And the answer was yes.”
Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett declared [on October 12] that “when Great Britain was fighting the Nazis during World War Two, no one asked what’s going on in Dresden.” (Gray Zone, October 23, 2023)
There are no calls by Guterres for the U.N. to investigate the obvious war crimes of Israel in Gaza or even to call them war crimes.
“The ICC actions against Putin border on ridicule.”
Putin was accused by the ICC of kidnapping Ukrainian children whereas he was actually saving them from the bombing and rocket attacks of neo-Nazi Ukrainian forces that have been ongoing since 2014 and have killed 14,000 people.
Secretary General Antonio Guterres concludes on a “positive note”:
“The relentless bombardment of Gaza by Israeli forces, the level of civilian casualties, and the wholesale destruction of neighborhoods continue to mount and are deeply alarming.
…
“Even in this moment of grave and immediate danger, we cannot lose sight of the only realistic foundation for a true peace and stability: a two-State solution.
Israelis must see their legitimate needs for security materialized, and Palestinians must see their legitimate aspirations for an independent State realized, in line with United Nations resolutions, international law and previous agreements.
Finally, we must be clear on the principle of upholding human dignity.
Polarization and dehumanization are being fueled by a tsunami of disinformation.
We must stand up to the forces of antisemitism, anti-Muslim bigotry and all forms of hate.” (See full text below)
The Broader Issue: The Role of the United Nations
Will a cease fire be contemplated by the United Nations Security Council?
Will the U.N. address the militarization of the Middle East?
Will the issue of Israeli War Crimes against the people of Palestine be brought to the attention of the International Criminal Court (ICC)?
“Those of us who do understand the nefariousness of the empire, and the ever-increasing danger it represents, must be clear that the effective defense of life on planet Earth, including that of the human species itself, inexorably demands the existence of an independent and democratic world forum for a genuine and effective defense of the rights of Mother Earth and of humanity.
That is why we insist, repeat and say time and again that the United Nations as it exists today is useless, inoperative, dysfunctional and an instrument of the empire. That is why it no longer enjoys any confidence or credibility whatsoever. ” (emphasis added)
Towards the Privatization of the United Nations
The UN increasingly serves the interests of “Global Capitalism” in what is described by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky as
Chossudovsky points out that The 2030 UN Sustainable Development Project is being carried out in close coordination with Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) “Great Reset”, which serves the interests of the global financial establishment.
“A strategic partnership was signed in 2019 at a meeting held at UN headquarters between UN Secretary-General António Guterres and WEF Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab “to accelerate the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.”
“This partnership is in blatant violation of the UN Charter. The UNSG is in conflict of interest. Guterres has provided a Green Light to the implementation of the WEF’s “Great Reset” Agenda on behalf of powerful financial interests and corrupt politicians, which essentially consists in impoverishing the entire planet.”
The Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), October 26, 2023
This text was written by Dr. Asad Ismi and Prof. Michel Chossudovsky
Mr. President, with your permission, I will make a small introduction and then ask my colleagues to brief the Security Council on the situation on the ground.
Excellencies,
The situation in the Middle East is growing more dire by the hour.
The war in Gaza is raging and risks spiralling throughout the region.
Divisions are splintering societies. Tensions threaten to boil over.
At a crucial moment like this, it is vital to be clear on principles — starting with the fundamental principle of respecting and protecting civilians.
I have condemned unequivocally the horrifying and unprecedented 7 October acts of terror by Hamas in Israel.
Nothing can justify the deliberate killing, injuring and kidnapping of civilians – or the launching of rockets against civilian targets.
All hostages must be treated humanely and released immediately and without conditions. I respectfully note the presence among us of members of their families.
Video
Excellencies,
It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum.
The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.
They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing.
But the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas. And those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.
Excellencies,
Even war has rules.
We must demand that all parties uphold and respect their obligations under international humanitarian law; take constant care in the conduct of military operations to spare civilians; and respect and protect hospitals and respect the inviolability of UN facilities which today are sheltering more than 600,000 Palestinians.
The relentless bombardment of Gaza by Israeli forces, the level of civilian casualties, and the wholesale destruction of neighborhoods continue to mount and are deeply alarming.
I mourn and honour the dozens of UN colleagues working for UNRWA – sadly, at least 35 and counting – killed in the bombardment of Gaza over the last two weeks.
I owe to their families my condemnation of these and many other similar killings.
The protection of civilians is paramount in any armed conflict.
Protecting civilians can never mean using them as human shields.
Protecting civilians does not mean ordering more than one million people to evacuate to the south, where there is no shelter, no food, no water, no medicine and no fuel, and then continuing to bomb the south itself.
I am deeply concerned about the clear violations of international humanitarian law that we are witnessing in Gaza.
Let me be clear: No party to an armed conflict is above international humanitarian law.
Excellencies,
Thankfully, some humanitarian relief is finally getting into Gaza.
But it is a drop of aid in an ocean of need.
In addition, our UN fuel supplies in Gaza will run out in a matter of days. That would be another disaster.
Without fuel, aid cannot be delivered, hospitals will not have power, and drinking water cannot be purified or even pumped.
The people of Gaza need continuous aid delivery at a level that corresponds to the enormous needs. That aid must be delivered without restrictions.
I salute our UN colleagues and humanitarian partners in Gaza working under hazardous conditions and risking their lives to provide aid to those in need. They are an inspiration.
To ease epic suffering, make the delivery of aid easier and safer, and facilitate the release of hostages, I reiterate my appeal for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.
Excellencies,
Even in this moment of grave and immediate danger, we cannot lose sight of the only realistic foundation for a true peace and stability: a two-State solution.
Israelis must see their legitimate needs for security materialized, and Palestinians must see their legitimate aspirations for an independent State realized, in line with United Nations resolutions, international law and previous agreements.
Finally, we must be clear on the principle of upholding human dignity.
Polarization and dehumanization are being fueled by a tsunami of disinformation.
We must stand up to the forces of antisemitism, anti-Muslim bigotry and all forms of hate.
Mr. President,
Excellencies,
Today is United Nations Day, marking 78 years since the UN Charter entered into force.
That Charter reflects our shared commitment to advance peace, sustainable development and human rights.
On this UN Day, at this critical hour, I appeal to all to pull back from the brink before the violence claims even more lives and spreads even farther.
Thank you very much.
Update, October 27, 2023
United Nations Security Council Vote on New Resolutions
Transcript
Security Council to vote on new resolutions over Gaza crisis, proposed by Russia and the United States, calling for a humanitarian pause in Gaza.
China and Russia today (25 Oct) vetoed a draft resolution sponsored by the United States, while a second Russian-backed resolution failed to adopt having failed to get sufficient votes in favour, deepening the Security Council’s deadlock over any unified response to address the crisis in Gaza and Israel.
Speaking before the vote US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said,
“Russia has offered up yet another resolution in bad faith and this Council should not stand for it. Instead, we should come together around the resolution proposed by the United States – a resolution that not only includes, but also builds on, many elements of the text Brazil put forward last week.”
For his part, Russian Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya said,
“the US, trying to tamper the sharp criticism against it for using its veto – and this is from the international community – is trying to push through a kind of new draft plumped, full of politicized, irrelevant, and very dubious provisions. I’d like to point out that no normal consultative process on it was conducted in the Council, despite the fact that our American colleague has just assured us of the very opposite.”
Ten members of the Council voted for the US drafted resolution and three against (China, Russia and UAE), with two abstentions (Brazil and Mozambique). Speaking after the vote, China’s Ambassador Zhang Jun said,
“it’s worth being vigilant that the draft departs from the spirit of previous UN resolutions and embeds the dangerous logic of confrontation of civilizations and the justification of war and the use of force. If the draft had been adopted, it would have completely dashed the prospect for the realization of the two-state solution and plunged the Palestinian and Israeli peoples into a vicious cycle of hatred and confrontation.”
A ‘no’ vote from any one of the five permanent members of the Council stops action on any measure put before it. The body’s permanent members are China, France, Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, and the United States. A second draft resolution, led by Russia, was not adopted as it failed to secure sufficient number of votes in favour.
Four Council members voted in favour (China, Gabon, Russia and UAE), two against (UK and US), and nine abstained (Albania, Brazil, Ecuador, France, Ghana, Japan, Malta, Mozambique, Switzerland).
For a resolution to be adopted, it must be supported by at least nine members of the Council.
The similarly worded resolutions would have called for a “humanitarian ceasefire” or “humanitarian pause” to enable safe delivery of aid for desperate civilians.
Both drafts condemned the terror attacks by Hamas on Israeli civilians of 7 October and urged action to address the worsening humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, where fuel is due to run out for hospitals and other crucial services, in a matter of hours, according to UN agencies on the ground.
Key differences in the text included a specific mention in the US-backed proposal of States’ inherent right to self-defence, and a call in the Russian-led one for the immediate cancellation by Israeli forces of the evacuation order for civilians to head into southern Gaza.
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The news came hours after Axios reported that Secretary Antony Blinken told U.S. Jewish leaders he asked Qatar to “turn down the volume on Al Jazeera’s coverage” of the Israeli genocidal campaign in the Gaza Strip, accusing the network of being “anti-Israel.”
The Secretary-General reiterated the principle of protecting civilians during armed conflict. This precluded using them as human shields and ordering “more than one million people to evacuate the south, where there is no shelter, no food, no water, no medicine, and no fuel, and then continuing to bomb the south itself.”
Today there are roughly 3 distinct ideological groups in conflict with each other over the threats of climate change and the desecration of the environment.
In political discourse – and perhaps this is an inexorable feature of human tribalistic psychology — there exists a dichotomy between what Noam Chomsky and others have described as “worthy” and “unworthy” victims of state violence and other forms of oppression.
US President Joe Biden has declared himself a ‘war president.’ He has ordered two US aircraft carriers, advanced missile systems and 2,000 Marines to the Mideast. It’s full-force war fever in Washington.
The Israeli warplanes attacked the only bakery in the al-Mughazi refugee camp in the centre of Gaza, killing at least ten people and wounding dozens of others, on Wednesday, 25 October. In response, the government media office in Gaza said that Israel is “deliberately bombing and targeting bakeries” as civilians line up in front to inflect the largest amount of casualties.
As the Israeli Defence Forces increasingly been reported to be facing difficulties achieving the objective of destroying the Palestinian militia Hamas, the United States has responded by providing growing levels of personnel and material support.
More than 5,000 Palestinian men, women and children have been killed in Israeli bombardment, which has targeted all areas of the besieged Palestinian enclave. Its aerial attacks have hit densely populated residential areas, hospitals and other civilian sites, also claiming the lives of dozens of humanitarian and health workers and journalists.
Behind the scenes, Israeli officials term their latest ethnic cleansing proposal a “Greater Gaza Plan”. Details first leaked in the Israeli media in 2014, although reports indicate that the origins date to 2007, when the Bush administration was apparently brought on board following Hamas’ election victory in Gaza a year earlier.
In a white paper released over a week after the Hamas-led surprise attack on Israeli military bases and kibbutzes, The Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy outlined “a plan for resettlement and final rehabilitation in Egypt of the entire population of Gaza,” based on the “unique and rare opportunity to evacuate the entire Gaza Strip” that Israel’s latest assault on the besieged costal enclave provided.
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Wael El-Dahdouh, Al-Jazeera Bureau Chief in Gaza, was reporting live when an Israeli airstrike targeted the southern Gaza building where his family sheltered, killing his wife, son, daughter, and grandson.
The news came hours after Axios reported that Secretary Antony Blinken told U.S. Jewish leaders he asked Qatar to “turn down the volume on Al Jazeera’s coverage” of the Israeli genocidal campaign in the Gaza Strip, accusing the network of being “anti-Israel.”
Mondoweiss reached out to journalists in Gaza who shared their anxiety that their families could fall victim to punitive shelling solely for doing their job.
“I’ve started to feel that I’m a danger to those around me,” one journalist confessed. “I was feeling this from the beginning of the war, since my voice started being heard… There are so many innocents around me, people that have nothing to do with me or my writings or my work.”
The journalist, who remained anonymous for fear of retaliation, said,
“Targeting someone’s family is more painful than targeting that person only.” “Maybe,” he added, “this is the message they want to send to every journalist: ‘you aren’t the only one we will target; we can burn your heart by targeting your family and robbing you of the will to live afterward.’”
Earlier today, Mohammed Farra, another Palestinian journalist, received the news that his wife and children were killed in an Israeli airstrike on Khan Yunis, while he was positioned in Ramallah, many miles and checkpoints away from Gaza.
“Any person whose voice is being heard or is gaining international visibility is being made to pay the price,” the journalist in Gaza told Mondoweiss. “You can feel the intense surveillance of anything coming out of Gaza. And if anyone says anything, even a phrase or a word, that Israel doesn’t want, will be targeted and have their families targeted.”
This testimony is consistent with the targeting of students, activists, and everyday social media users across occupied Jerusalem and 1948 territories and charging them for incitement over their social media posts.
Since October 7, the Israeli regime has killed 20 Palestinian journalists in Gaza and one Lebanese journalist in the south of Lebanon.
El-Dahdouh, a veteran reporter, was recorded kneeling on the floor, caressing the bloodied face of his 15-year-old son, Mahmoud, who had aspired to become a journalist.
“They are exacting their revenge by killing our children,” Dahdouh said, surrounded by a crew of his peers.
Other members of his family remain under the rubble.
During Mondoweiss‘s conversation with the journalist from Gaza, he recalled an English video that Dahdouh’s late children had just made and shared online.
“They described what was going on in Gaza. They talked about how entire neighborhoods have been destroyed and how nowhere is safe. They asked what international law and human rights had to say about this. And they ended their video with a message: ‘Help us to stay alive.’ And the world failed them.”
In Qatar, an Al Jazeera anchor cried as he broke the news that his colleague’s entire family had been killed in aerial bombardments of the Nuseirat refugee camp, in the heart of the besieged Strip, where Dahdouh and his family were sheltering.
The family was displaced from the north of Gaza after their neighborhood was bombarded, alongside 1.4 million Palestinians who were forced to flee their homes after threats made by the Israeli military that those remaining in the north of the enclave might be “treated as members of a terrorist organization.”
“Your presence in Gaza valley increases your chances of death,” said the thousands of leaflets dropped over Gaza from Israeli warplanes.
The Israeli military drops new messages over Gaza City: “everyone who hasn’t evacuated from northern Gaza to the south might be treated as a member of a terrorist organization.” “Your presence in Gaza valley increases your chances of death.”
It has been reported that 43% of the buildings in the Strip have been damaged or destroyed by Israeli shelling.
“This is the ‘safe’ area that the occupation army spoke of,” El-Dahdouh told media outside of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah.
“[Dahdouh’s children] were trying to make their voices heard and to expose Israel’s crimes. In honesty, this terrifies me. Right now my voice is reaching people and I get a huge number of replies from Israelis to posts on Twitter. They attack me personally and say that they haven’t even begun,” the journalist in Gaza told Mondoweiss.
Al-Jazeera Media Network condemned “the indiscriminate assault by the Israeli occupation forces resulted in the tragic loss of [Dahdouh’s] wife, son and daughter, while the rest of his family is buried under the rubble.”
At the end of the conversation, the anonymous journalist told Mondoweiss,
“If the price of adhering to your professional duty or journalistic duty in Gaza means losing your entire family, then I feel it won’t be long before most journalists have left their jobs for the sake of their family’s safety.”
“I’m starting to think that maybe I really do pose a danger to their lives, and to my life as well, but like I told you, when you lose your life, you don’t feel it. I don’t know, I really don’t know.”
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Mohammed El-Kurd is a writer and poet from Jerusalem, occupied Palestine. He is the Culture Editor at Mondoweiss.
Featured image: AL JAZEERA CORRESPONDENT WAEL EL-DAHDOUH CRIES AS HE HOLDS ONE OF HIS FAMILY MEMBERS WHO WERE KILLED IN AN ISRAELI AIR STRIKE ON A BUILDING IN NUSEIRAT, IN THE CENTRAL GAZA STRIP, ON OCTOBER 25, 2023. (PHOTO: OMAR ASHTAWY/APA IMAGES)
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***
Since the October 7 Hamas attacks, and the subsequent, ongoing Israeli airstrikes, US TV news has offered extensive coverage of Israel and Gaza. But as casualties mount, most outlets have paid scant attention to the growing calls for a ceasefire.
After Hamas killed more than 1,400 people in Israel on October 7 and took some 200 hostages, Israeli bombing killed over 5,000 people in Gaza, as of October 22—including more than 1,400 children—and at least 23 journalists and 35 UN staff (UN News, 10/23/23). Ninety-five Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank as well, by both Israeli government forces and settlers. With Israel enacting a “complete siege” of Gaza, cutting off power, food, water and medical supplies, and nowhere for civilians to seek safety, a broad spectrum of critical voices have decried the humanitarian crisis and insisted on a ceasefire and an end to the siege.
Jewish-led protests in New York and other cities on October 13, and again in Washington, DC, on October 18, made a ceasefire their central message. Progressive lawmakers on October 16 introduced a House resolution “calling for an immediate de-escalation and ceasefire.” And a recent Data for Progress poll (10/20/23) found that 66% of likely US voters agree that “the US should call for a ceasefire and a de-escalation of violence in Gaza.”
Internationally, the head of the UN, the UN human rights expert on Palestine, a growing list of scores of legal scholars, and hundreds of human rights groups—including Save the Children, Oxfam and Doctors Without Borders—have likewise spoken out for a ceasefire.
But the Biden administration has actively tried to suppress discussion of de-escalation. HuffPost reported on October 13 that an internal State Department memo instructed staff not to use the words “de-escalation/ceasefire,” “end to violence/bloodshed” and “restoring calm” in press materials on the Middle East.
At the UN Security Council, a Russian resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire was voted down last Tuesday by the US, Britain, France and Japan; a Brazilian resolution the next day seeking “humanitarian pauses” in the violence was vetoed by the US alone. (On October 24, however, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that “humanitarian pauses must be considered” to bring help to Gaza civilians—ABC, 10/24/23.)
Broadcast Nightly News
US television news outlets appear largely to be following the administration’s lead, minimizing any talk of ceasefire or de-escalation on the air. FAIR searched transcripts of the nightly news shows of the four major broadcast networks for one week (October 12–18) in the Nexis news database and Archive.org, and found that, even as the outlets devoted a great deal of time to the conflict, they rarely mentioned the idea of a ceasefire or de-escalation.
While ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News and PBS NewsHour aired a total of 105 segments primarily about Israel/Gaza and broader repercussions of the conflict, only eight segments included the word “ceasefire” or some form of the word “de-escalate.” (The word “de-escalate” never appeared without the word “ceasefire.”)
NBC and PBS aired three segments each with ceasefire mentions; CBS aired two, and ABC aired none.
The October 18 protest on Capitol Hill led by Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now demanding a ceasefire—a peaceful protest that ended with over 300 arrests—accounted for half of the mentions, briefly making the evening news that night on all the broadcast networks except ABC. (The protesters’ demand was mentioned in two segments on NBC.)
That was the only day CBS Evening News(10/18/23) mentioned a ceasefire or de-escalation, though correspondent Margaret Brennan also noted in that episode, in response to a question from anchor Norah O’Donnell referencing the protest, that Biden “refrained from calling a ceasefire. In fact, the US vetoed a UN resolution to that effect earlier today.” Brennan continued:
Given that there have now been 11 days of bombing of Gaza by Israel, with thousands killed, there is a perception in Arab countries that this looks like the US is treating Palestinian lives differently than Israeli lives.
Of course, one doesn’t have to live in an Arab country to see a double standard.
Only twice across all nightly news shows did viewers see anyone, guest or journalist, advocating for a ceasefire—both times on PBS NewsHour.
The NewsHour featured a phone interview with Gaza resident Diana Odeh (10/12/23), who described the dire situation on the ground and pleaded: “We need help. We don’t need money. We don’t need anything, but we need a ceasefire. People are getting worse and worse.”
A few days later, the NewsHour (10/18/23) brought on Marc Garlasco, a former Pentagon analyst currently serving as military advisor at PAX Protection of Civilians, who said: “You’re talking about 6,000 bombs in less than a week in Gaza, which is the size of Newark, New Jersey. It’s just incredibly dangerous to the population, and we need to have a ceasefire and get an end to this conflict as quickly as possible.”
Sunday Shows and Cable
Across the agenda-setting Sunday shows, which are largely aimed at an audience of DC insiders, the word “ceasefire” was entirely absent, except on CNNState of the Union(10/15/23)—but there, only in the context of reporting on a poll from earlier this year that found a strong majority of Gazans supporting the ceasefire that had previously been in place between Hamas and Israel.
Looking at the broader cable news coverage, where the 24-hour news cycle means much more coverage of the conflict, viewers were still unlikely to encounter any mention of the idea of a ceasefire. Using the Stanford Cable TV News Analyzer, FAIR found that mentions of “cease” appeared in closed captioning on screen for an average of only 19.7 seconds per day on Fox, 11.1 seconds per day on CNN, and 9.2 seconds per day on MSNBC. (FAIR used the shortened form of the word to account for variations in hyphenation and compounding; some false positives are likely.)
Meanwhile, mentions of “Israel” did not differ substantially across networks, averaging 18–20 minutes per day. (Note that this is not the amount of time Israel was discussed, but the amount of time mentions of “Israel” appeared onscreen in closed captions.)
Fox mentioned a ceasefire roughly twice as often as either CNN or MSNBC, largely to ridicule those on the left who called for one, as with host Greg Gutfeld’s comment (10/18/23):
Enough with the ceasefire talk…. I mean, Jewish protesters calling for a ceasefire is like the typical leftist pleading not to arrest their mugger because he had a bad childhood.
Fox also frequently compared Jewish peace advocates unfavorably with January 6 rioters (Media Matters, 10/19/23).
CNN on a few occasions featured a guest advocating a ceasefire, such as Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, the leader of the Palestinian National Initiative party. On Situation Room (10/17/23), Barghouti argued forcefully:
The only way out of this is to have immediate ceasefire, immediate supply of food, drinking water to people immediately in Gaza and then to have exchange of prisoners so that the Israeli prisoners can come back home safe to Israel.
On CNN‘s most-watched show, Anderson Cooper 360, the possibility of a ceasefire was mentioned in three segments during the study period—each time in an interview with a former military or intelligence official, none of whom supported the idea. For instance, with former Mossad agent Rami Igra on the show (10/16/23), Cooper asked about negotiating the release of hostages. Igra noted that Hamas had “twice already” said they were “willing to negotiate the release of the prisoners,” contingent upon a ceasefire and release of Palestinian prisoners. But Igra insisted Israel should not negotiate:
IGRA: Israel will do all it can in order to release these prisoners, and some of them will or maybe all of them will be released, but by force.
COOPER: That’s the only way.
IGRA: The only way to release prisoners in this kind of situation is force.
Meanwhile, the only time viewers of MSNBC‘s popular primetime show The Beat heard about the possibility of a ceasefire was when guest Elise Labott of Politico told host Ari Melber (10/12/23) that, for Israel, “this is not a ceasefire situation.” Melber responded:
If you said to someone in the United States, if ISIS or Al Qaeda or even a criminal group came into their home and murdered children or kidnapped children or burned babies, the next day you don’t typically hear rational individuals discuss a ceasefire or moving on. You discuss resorting to the criminal justice system or the war machine to respond.
Melber’s eagerness to lean on the “war machine” left his argument a muddle. Obviously, those calling for a ceasefire are not suggesting simply “moving on”—in fact, a “criminal justice system” response is more than compatible with a ceasefire, as you don’t try to bomb someone that you’re seeking to put on trial.
Netanyahu has been trying with limited success to equate Hamas with ISIS for many years now (Times of Israel, 8/27/14), and the Israeli government continues to try to paint Hamas’s tactics as so barbaric as to justify the mass killings by Israel. (See FAIR.org, 10/20/23.) But it’s passions, not reason, that allow individuals like Melber to gloss over the deaths of thousands of civilians—a child every 15 minutes, according to one widely circulated estimate—in their thirst for revenge.
With Israeli bombing intensifying and a ground invasion appearing imminent, US television news outlets’ refusal to give more than minimal airtime to the widespread calls for a ceasefire fails to reflect either US or global public opinion, and fuels the warmongering march to follow one horror with another.
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Julie Hollar is FAIR’s senior analyst and managing editor. Julie has a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
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***
US President Joe Biden has declared himself a ‘war president.’ He has ordered two US aircraft carriers, advanced missile systems and 2,000 Marines to the Mideast. It’s full-force war fever in Washington.
Does this seem like overkill considering Hamas has not much more than lightly armed teenagers with AK-47 rifles and some home-made bombs? Of course not. It’s the old ‘bomb them back to the Stone Age’ mentality.
What’s behind this militaristic display is, of course, imminent US elections. Staunchly pro-Israel American voters are only 2% of the electorate, but their influence is profound and pervasive. Pro-Israel voters are believed to be one of the most important political donors to the Democratic Party. Add Christian Evangelicals who venerate Israel as the modern Promised Land.
America’s small numbers of Muslims and liberal thinkers have gone into hiding after the massacre of Israelis in Gaza. The always pro-Israel US media equates the Hamas movement with the old Nazi Party for beastly behavior.
One is reminded of Talleyrand’s famous quip about Napoleon’s murder of the Duc d’Enghien as ‘worse than a crime, a mistake.’
What we saw was not a political act but a ghastly jailhouse riot by Palestinian refugees caged up in the awful Gaza open-air prison for over 60 years.
Biden, who looks on his last legs, is in full panic mode, and rightfully so. Donald Trump is closing in like a giant storm cloud and way ahead in the polls. Trump is no spring chicken but compared to the doddering Biden, he looks like a political Adonis.
Trump had the guts and smarts to end the calamitous Afghan War while America’s bemedaled generals and politicians were too scared to do so, fearing they would be blamed for the Afghan fiasco.
The US had few compunctions about sending B-1 and B-52 heavy bombers to carpet bomb Afghan villages but was suddenly outraged by the attacks on civilians in Gaza.
As the US stumbles into yet another military conflict, we should remember that run amok spending is the greatest threat to US security, not Hamas, al-Qaida, Taliban, Vlad Putin nor any other of our favorite enemies. Biden now wants to spend an additional $105 billion on his pet wars in Ukraine and Israel, both of which are already awash in US dollars.
Many Americans go hungry or lack medical care while Washington lavishes money on these two pet causes. Biden’s aid proposals have unmasked the secret alliance between Israel and Ukraine. Some Israelis even speak of Ukraine as a ‘second Israel.’ America’s Israel lobby is the prime motivator of intense support in Congress and the media for the Ukraine War. The two conflicts are merging into one very expensive pre-election campaign.
To be fair, Trump and Bush also said they wanted to be war presidents. All politicians know that the fastest way to boost their ratings is to start a small war. American industry often looks dependent on ever increasing military spending, particularly so in key electoral states. Afghanistan cost over $1.2 trillion but it all went on the national credit card.
The US national debt is now $33.6 trillion, a monster deficit that threatens to capsize the economy and crash Wall Street. Yet the Biden administration keeps spending like drunken sailors. It’s all ok provided Americas taxpayers never bear the real cost of their jolly little wars.
Meanwhile, the Biden White House keeps stumbling ever closer to war with Russia that could easily go nuclear. The ‘war president’ now risks a global disaster over obscure places in Ukraine that are of no importance at all to the United States – but essential to Biden’s potential re-election.
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***
Water, electricity, schools, hospitals, homes, Mosques – now bakeries. Really is beyond comprehension that those responsible for policies and actions can live with themselves.
-Global Research, October 27, 2023
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The Israeli warplanes attacked the only bakery in the al-Mughazi refugee camp in the centre of Gaza, killing at least ten people and wounding dozens of others, on Wednesday, 25 October.
In response, the government media office in Gaza said that Israel is “deliberately bombing and targeting bakeries” as civilians line up in front to inflect the largest amount of casualties.
In a press statement sent to The New Arab, Salama Marrouf, the head of the government office in Gaza, said,
He added that the bakery “was providing tens of thousands of the camp residents and the newly displaced.”
The Israeli missiles demolished the bakery and damaged several homes surrounding the camp, with at least 10 Palestinians killed and others injured, according to Maarouf.
“This new war crime, which appears to be a systematic policy by the occupying Israeli state since the launch of its new war, is further evidence it is lying about hitting military targets in Gaza,” Maarouf stressed.
“There are already dozens of other evidence of such crimes in which Israel deliberately targeting civilians gatherings in front of bakeries, markets, and even hospitals or churches,” he added.
He stated that he “monitored and documented Israeli targeting at least five bakeries directly or its surroundings in different sites across Gaza, which has left dozens of martyrs and hundreds of wounded since the beginning of the aggression on 7 October.”
For the 19th day, the Israeli army continued violent airstrikes that destroyed entire neighbourhoods in Gaza, killing 6,546, including 2,704 children, 1,584 women, and 364 elderly, and injuring more than 16,000 people, according to the Ministry of Health in the Strip.
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Featured image: Firefighters and residents try to put out the fire at a bakery shop which was destroyed after Israeli airstrikes at Nuseirat Refugee Camp in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on 18 October 2023. [Getty]
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***
As the Israeli Defence Forces increasingly been reported to be facing difficulties achieving the objective of destroying the Palestinian militia Hamas, the United States has responded by providing growing levels of personnel and material support.
While significantly escalating the American military presence in the region, the Pentagon has dispatched Marine Corps Lieutenant General James Glynn, who previously played a leading role in planning special operations against the Islamic State and served in Fallujah, Iraq, to advise Israeli forces. Formerly serving as the commanding general of Marine Special Operations Command, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby stating that Glynn and other officers advising Israeli forces “have experience that is appropriate to the sorts of operations that Israel is conducting.” America’s role in the conflict, however, has increasingly gone beyond that of advising raising the possibility that its forces could come to shoulder a much greater burden in the war effort.
Israeli Merkava Tank Captured By Palestinian Forces Early in the Conflict
On October 15 Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered that 2,000 personnel gear up for a potential “medical and logistical support” mission in Israel. A little over a week later unconfirmed reports began to emerge that U.S. Army Delta Force special forces specialised in counterinsurgency had been deployed alongside Israeli forces for incursions into Gaza, where Hamas has had decades to prepare defences including a vast underground tunnel network. Although it has been confirmed that Delta Force is advising Israeli forces, their involvement in combat operations remains unconfirmed. The fact that many hostages taken by Hamas forces are American citizens, however, has made such involvement far from implausible. Retired U.S. Army Colonel Douglas MacGregor, speaking to talk show host Tucker Carlson, reported on October 25 regarding the involvement of American special forces in open hostiles:
“In the last 24 hours or so, some of our Special Ops forces and Israeli Special Ops forces went into Gaza to reconnoiter, to plan for where they might want to go to free hostages and make an impact, and they were shot to pieces and took heavy losses, as I understand it.”
The performance of Hamas units, both in their initial offensives against Israeli positions and now defensively, is expected to add urgency to ongoing American investigations into the kind of training they may have received from Iran or Hezbollah – the latter which has seen its special forces receive advanced North Korean training which was demonstrated against Israeli forces during a brief war in 2006.
While the U.S. increases its involvement in the theatre significantly, its NATO ally France has proposed that the predominantly Western coalition force that was formed to fight the Islamic State terror group in 2014 be given the new mission of fighting Hamas to support Israel. On October 24 meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and French President Emanuel Macron stated that the Palestinian political party and militia had to be tacked “without mercy,” with Netanyahu at the time stressing that “this battle is not merely our own … it’s everybody’s battle.” Other than Turkey and the United States, France maintains the largest military presence in the Middle East among NATO members, and could see its forces deployed to provide support or even directly participate in combat operations should the war escalate. Influence in the region has become particularly important for Paris since the undermining of its sphere of influence across West Africa with the popular overthrow of multiple French-aligned governments in the region.
French President Macron Meets Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu
Alongside the United States and France, Turkey has played an important role in diverting attentions of Hamas’ allies Syria and Hezbollah away from Israel, with jihadist militias supported by Ankara and benefitting from Turkish special forces within their ranks staging growing provocations against Syrian targets and having the potential to launch large offensives into Syria should the war escalate. While the extent of U.S. and other Western involvement in Israel’s Gaza campaign remains uncertain, America is expected to intervene should the conflict escalate to involve Hezbollah, Syria or Iran. Washington has accordingly massively escalated its military presence in the region including deployment of two nuclear powered supercarriers and their strike groups, as well as F-15E fighters, A-10 attack jets, and a large Marine contingent with its own aircraft carrier among a range of other assets. Strengthening of the air defences both in Israel and around other American facilities in the region has also been a priority with deployments of Patriot and THAAD systems, provision of new ammunition for Israeli air defence systems, and plans to transfer the U.S. Army’s sole two Iron Dome short ranged defence systems to Israel as aid.
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Featured image: General James Glynn and Delta Force Special Forces (All images in this article are from MWM)
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***
The devastating human cost of Israel’s relentless assault on the Gaza Strip continues to mount by the hour.
More than 5,000 Palestinian men, women and children have been killed in Israeli bombardment, which has targeted all areas of the besieged Palestinian enclave.
Its aerial attacks have hit densely populated residential areas, hospitals and other civilian sites, also claiming the lives of dozens of humanitarian and health workers and journalists.
Israel has cut off basic supplies, such as water, electricity and humanitarian aid, to more than 2.2 million people in the Gaza Strip, while also ordering what some experts call the forced displacement of over 1.1 million with its evacuation warning for northern Gaza.
For Israel, all of this was a response to the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas and its subsequent rocket attacks on Israeli areas, which have now claimed more than 1,400 lives.
But many around the world have questioned the excessive and disproportionate force used by Israel, giving rise to multiple warnings of war crimes and crimes against humanity, from legal experts and even officials like Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories.
One of the areas of focus has been the role – or the apparent lack of it – of institutions like the UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ), or the independent International Criminal Court (ICC), which, by its own definition, has the specific mandate of acting on “the gravest crimes of concern to the international community: genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of aggression.”
On Monday, the ICJ announced it will hold public hearings on the request for an advisory opinion on the “legal consequences arising from the policies and practices of Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.”
However, the hearings will begin on Feb. 19 next year.
As for the ICC, several experts have been calling on it to take immediate action over the growing escalation in Gaza.
“While the ICC responded rapidly to allegations of war crimes in Ukraine since last year, it seems to be very slow in addressing crimes in Palestine since it began its investigation in 2015,” said Ben Saul, who was recently appointed as the next UN special rapporteur on promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism.
Saul, currently the Challis Chair of International Law at the University of Sydney in Australia, will take over the post this November.
He said the ICC needs to show “the same urgency and mobilization of resources, to reassure the world that it is impartial and that its legitimacy is not undermined by the geopolitical forces.”
“All states should cooperate with the court where they have information about crimes,” he told Anadolu.
He pointed out that there have been several violations by both Hamas and Israeli forces in the current escalation.
For Israel, he said the “total siege of Gaza is a violation of international law, and could constitute the war crime of starvation.”
“Israel has an obligation to allow and facilitate rapid and unimpeded humanitarian relief, including food and medicine. Israel’s warnings to civilians about impending attacks must be effective, and its order to evacuate over 1 million people in northern Gaza, under siege conditions was not sufficient,” he said.
“More information is needed about Israel’s targeting decisions and intelligence, but it is possible that some of the thousands of Israeli bombings in Gaza may have involved excessive civilian casualties or indiscriminate attacks.”
For Hamas, Saul said the “mass killings of Israeli civilians could constitute the international crime of genocide if specifically intended to destroy part of the Israeli and/or Jewish people as such.”
“They could also constitute various crimes against humanity,” he said.
ICC Response Shows ‘Inequality Loaded with Political Influences’
The ICC has confirmed its jurisdiction over war crimes in Palestine for all parties, according to Khalil Dewan, head of legal investigations at UK-based law firm Stoke White, which has been part of previous cases at the ICC involving Israel.
“The ICC are accepting evidence bundles of war crimes, and recently announced that the prosecutor holds jurisdiction via Palestine,” he told Anadolu.
“The court’s jurisdiction of war crimes includes Jerusalem, West Bank and Gaza for all parties to the conflict.”
He said many law firms are gathering evidence “including current hostilities – targeting civilians, protected infrastructure and collective punishment.”
“Israel’s pending ground force actions will be carefully examined and submitted to the ICC,” he said.
Dewan pointed out that Israel will “reject the ICC’s jurisdiction,” but added that “it has already been claimed by the (ICC) prosecutor.
“In any case, the ICC’s lack of urgency and approach to war crimes in Palestine, compared to the response to Ukraine demonstrates inequality loaded with political influences,” he asserted.
Dewan said that international law remains an “indeterminate legal system,” and that “some states deploy the strategy of ‘lawfare’ to win military objectives, including politics and media narratives.”
He said Palestinians have “exhausted all international legal and political avenues in seeking justice.”
“The calls at the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to form a separate regional mechanism for peace and safeguarding security of Palestine would be a welcomed initiative,” he said.
“If UN resolutions are not upheld on Palestine, then it’s vital to seek decolonial approaches to international law, and weed out lawfare designed to silence and subjugate non-Western states.”
‘ICC Can Issue Arrest Warrants’
Ahmet Necip Arslan, an Istanbul-based attorney, echoed the same views, saying that the ICC’s mechanisms are “very slow.”
“Often the decisions made, in any stage, can be under the heavy influence of governments and politics,” he told Anadolu.
Arslan pointed out that the ICC “can issue arrest warrants,” stressing that “this can be an effective method to stop an armed conflict.”
He said reports coming out of Gaza “indicate that Israel is employing prohibited weapons like white phosphorus and targeting places of worship and cultural properties, both considered war crimes.”
Israel, he continued, has been depriving civilians of essentials such as food, water, humanitarian aid, antibiotics and medical supplies, adding that these could be violations of international law that could be “potential war crimes.”
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***
As Israel masses its forces along the fence encaging Gaza, waiting for a green light from the United States for a ground invasion, the question few are asking is: What is the ultimate endgame for Israel?
Instead, British and US politicians, backed by their media, have limited themselves to amplifying Israel’s bogus rationales for indiscriminately bombing men, women and children in the tiny coastal enclave and preparing to send in troops. Only 80 or so British MPs, out of 650, have so far called for a ceasefire.
Israeli strikes are known to have killed more than 7,000 Palestinians, nearly half of them children, with many times that number seriously injured. They are being treated in hospitals without medicines or electricity. The United Nations estimates at least 600,000 Palestinians are homeless from the bombing.
At first, Western establishments justified the carnage as Israel’s “right to defend itself” – a right Palestinians had been denied for the previous 16 years while Israel enforced a brutal military siege of the enclave that prevented basic goods and medicines from entering.
Israel’s supposed “right to self-defence” – the official line from both sides of the political aisle in Britain – serves as western cover for, and complicity in, the crimes against humanity Israel has been committing: mass killing and wanton destruction; a “complete siege” of Gaza, starving it of food and water; and attacks on community infrastructure such as hospitals, schools, mosques, and UN compounds.
But now, as the death toll becomes increasingly obscene, the rationale has shifted. In chorus, British and US politicians say Israel must be given the time and space to “destroy Hamas”.
That requires a ground invasion by Israeli troops – many of them religious extremists from illegal settlements in the West Bank – who are certain to be seeking vengeance for Hamas’ attack on October 7. The atrocities are only likely to intensify.
Military Madness
But there is method in Israel’s military madness. And the main goal is not the one being promoted. Israel has much larger ambitions than “destroying Hamas”.
Israel knows enough history to understand that occupied and oppressed peoples never come to accept their subjugation. They continue to find ways to resist. Even if Hamas can be wiped out, a new, more fearsome adversary will emerge among the next generation currently being traumatised by Israel’s bombs.
In fact, after Israel removed its physical presence from Gaza by pulling out settlers and soldiers in 2005, it began to understand that it had boxed itself into a strategic corner.
It was still occupying the enclave, but at arm’s length. This was the rationale for the blockade that tightly limited what was allowed in and out of the strip. Gaza had been turned into an open-air prison, controlled by Israel through intensive surveillance via drones, eaves-dropping and local collaborators.
In practice, however, Israel found it much harder to police Gaza from afar. Hamas managed to create a much more sophisticated resistance movement in the small spaces left inside the prison that Israel could not surveil, such as a network of underground tunnels.
The results became fully apparent in the preparation and execution of Hamas’ attack on 7 October.
Israel’s strategic problem was compounded by the humanitarian crisis it had created by penning such a large and growing population into a tiny area with no resources.
Poverty, malnutrition, unclean water, overcrowding and lack of housing, as well as the trauma of being encaged and intermittently bombed by Israel to subdue any resistance, was slowly turning Gaza from a prison into a death camp. The UN had warned that the enclave would be effectively “uninhabitable” by 2020.
The solution to this – one that accorded with Israel’s long settler colonial ambitions to replace the Palestinians in their own homeland – was clear. Israel needed to create a consensus in the West justifying the expulsion of the Palestinians from Gaza.
And the only realistic place for them to go was into the neighbouring Egyptian territory of Sinai.
‘Greater Gaza’
Behind the scenes, Israeli officials term their latest ethnic cleansing proposal a “Greater Gaza Plan”. Details first leaked in the Israeli media in 2014, although reports indicate that the origins date to 2007, when the Bush administration was apparently brought on board following Hamas’ election victory in Gaza a year earlier.
At the time, Israel’s secret plan relied on carrots more than sticks. The idea was to attach Gaza to Sinai, erasing the border between the two. Washington would help secure international funding for a free trade zone in Sinai.
With unemployment at over 60 per cent, massive overcrowding in the enclave and little clean water to drink, the expectation was that Palestinians in Gaza would gradually move the centre of their lives to Sinai, settling there or moving to distant Egyptian cities.
Following the leaks, Egyptian and Palestinian officials hurriedly denounced the plan as “fabricated”. However, there were plenty of clues that Egypt had begun facing pressure from 2007 onwards.
In response to the Israeli media leaks of 2014, an official close to former president Hosni Mubarakadmitted that the screws had been turned on him in 2007 to agree to annex Gaza.
Five years later, according to the same source, Mohamed Morsi, who led a short-lived Muslim Brotherhood government, sent a delegation to Washington. There, the Americans proposed that “Egypt cede a third of the Sinai to Gaza in a two-stage process spanning four to five years”. Morsi too refused.
Suspicions that Egypt’s current president, Sisi, was close to capitulating in 2014 were fuelled at the time by Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas. In an interview on Egyptian TV, he said Israel’s Sinai plan had been “unfortunately accepted by some here [in Egypt]. Don’t ask me more about that. We abolished it.”
The Greater Gaza plan received another boost in 2018 when it was reportedly considered for inclusion in Donald Trump’s “deal of the century” Middle East “peace” plan. The hope was it would be financed by Gulf states as part of their normalisation with Israel.
That summer, Hamas even sent a delegation to Cairo to learn about the proposals.
Crushing Hamas
The gains for Israel in moving Palestinians from Gaza to Sinai, whether voluntarily under the Greater Gaza Plan or by force during a ground invasion, are obvious.
Egypt’s military dictatorship would inherit the problem of crushing Palestinian resistance groups like Hamas – largely out of view – rather than Israel. Hamas would not be likely to fare well, given the Egyptian military’s repression of the country’s own political Islamist movements.
The costs of confining and policing Gaza would shift from Israel to the Arab world and international community.
Once inside Sinai, ordinary Palestinians could be expected to seek alleviation from their poverty and suffering by integrating into wider Egyptian society, eventually moving to big cities like Cairo and Alexandria. They would be stripped of their right in international law to return to their homes.
In a generation or two, their children would identify as Egyptian, not Palestinian.
Meanwhile, the West Bank would be even more isolated and vulnerable to attacks from Jewish settlers, backed by Israeli soldiers. And Abbas would no longer be able to claim to represent the Palestinian cause, undermining his campaign to win recognition for statehood.
Very Large Stick
The problem is that no Egyptian leader has dared to accept such a plan, however much international arm-twisting and bribery was involved.
None wanted to be seen conspiring in Israel’s ethnic cleansing and final dispossession of the Palestinian people, one of the gravest and longest-running grievances shared by populations across the Middle East.
Which brings us to Israel’s current bombing campaign, which accords with no conceivable principle of proportionality, and its imminent ground invasion. Far from targeting Hamas, Israel has every incentive to use the Hamas attack of October 7 as a pretext to wreak as much damage on Gaza as possible.
Israel’s goal is to speed up the process of making Gaza uninhabitable.
Israel needs Palestinians in Gaza so desperate to leave that they will ethnically cleanse themselves, and Egypt under so much opprobrium for not opening the border to Sinai that it finally relents.
With its current bombing campaign, Israel has moved from carrots to a very large stick.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is aware that he has only a limited time-window to effect enough carnage to realise Israel’s plan.
Notably, back in 2018, veteran Israeli reporter Ron Ben-Yishai revealed that the Israeli military was considering a new strategy towards Gaza that involved invading it and dissecting it in two, with Israel occupying the northern half.
At the same time the US was said to be willing to deepen Gaza’s humanitarian crisis by withholding funds from UNRWA, the UN’s relief agency.
Israel is currently achieving both through its bombing rampage and its demand that northern Gaza’s population “evacuate”, supposedly for their own safety, to southern Gaza.
The aim appears to be to squeeze Palestinians into the tiny space of Gaza’s south, next to the border with Sinai, destroy all civilian infrastructure, and bomb and terrorise Palestinians in the south too.
Palestinians are already clamouring to be allowed into Sinai, while Sisi is presumably coming under the severest pressure behind the scenes to back down and open the border.
In Israel’s cold, cynical calculations, its military is rolling the toothpaste tube tightly, before opening the top to see the toothpaste pour out.
If Gaza can be emptied, Israel will hope to establish a precedent the international community will condone. West Bank Palestinians will be pressured to join family or compatriots in Sinai.
Having been embarrassed by the festering wound of the Palestinians’ dispossession for more than 75 years, the West and Arab world will be only too happy finally to bury the Palestinian cause for good.
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Jonathan Cook is the author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His website and blog can be found at www.jonathan-cook.net
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***
Western leaders are taking irresponsible measures regarding the Palestinian conflict, further increasing the risk of escalation and internationalization of hostilities. On a visit to Tel Aviv, Macron made some bellicose statements, calling for a “coalition to fight Hamas”, ignoring the negative impacts that such an alliance could have on the regional situation.
Macron endorsed the Israeli propaganda speech that baselessly compares Hamas to the terrorist group “Islamic State” (ISIS). For the French leader, the supposed “similarity” between Hamas and ISIS is reason enough for the Western-led “anti-ISIS coalition” to start taking actions against the Palestinian group as well. Macron called Hamas a “common enemy” of France and Israel, demanding more military measures against the militia.
“France is ready for the international coalition against Daesh in which we are taking part for operations in Iraq and Syria to also fight against Hamas (…) We should build a regional and international coalition to battle against terrorist groups that threaten us all”, Macron said.
As well known, this so-called “anti-ISIS coalition” was created in 2014 bringing together NATO, Western states and Arab countries in order to promote military efforts against the terrorist organization. However, the alliance did not prove efficient in neutralizing the terrorists’ advance. Due to mistakes or deliberate neglect, the coalition was never able to achieve its public objective of destroying the extremist group. Only after the Russian intervention in the Syrian Civil War, the ISIS was truly defeated.
Still, Macron appears to continue to believe in the coalition’s ability to guarantee the security of the Middle East – and is now calling for the inclusion of Hamas in the alliance’s list of priorities. With this, the French president places Paris as an unconditional supporter of the Zionist regime, even though there is growing international antipathy towards Tel Aviv due to the massacres in Gaza.
It must be noted that there is no rational argument for considering Hamas and ISIS as “similar” organizations. Unlike ISIS, which is simply an illegitimate terrorist group, Hamas is a Palestinian political party that has its own armed militia and fights a war for national liberation against the Zionist occupation forces. In other words, ISIS openly and deliberately promotes violence against civilians, while Hamas, despite Israel and Western media accusations, is simply involved in hostilities against a much more powerful army.
In situations of asymmetric warfare and irregular combat, the weaker side is forced to fight with all the available resources, which often includes launching surprise attacks, using guerrilla tactics, and, in the specific Israeli case, destroying illegal Jewish settlements. Tel Aviv, as an enemy of the Palestinian Resistance, expectedly calls Hamas “terrorists” and is endorsed by its Western sponsors. But the Islamic and Arab countries neighboring Israel, which traditionally support Palestine, do not agree with this classification, which shows how Macron’s proposal is likely to fail.
If international military efforts are launched against Hamas, the reaction from Palestine-supportive countries will be extremely negative. Even states that do not support Hamas, such as Saudi Arabia, have a very clear position to condemn Israel and endorse Palestine, so it will not be possible to reach a diplomatic consensus to make a new “war on terror” viable. Furthermore, Iran has already made it clear that there will be consequences if Tel Aviv does not stop the attacks soon or if there is Western intervention. In the same sense, the Axis of Resistance – an international coalition of pro-Iran and pro-Palestine armed groups – is on the verge of a direct intervention in the hostilities.
If Macron really implements such a collective attack plan on Hamas, the consequence will simply be a regional situation of total war. Pro-Palestinian armed groups will support Hamas unconditionally. As much as there are ideological and political differences between these groups, support for Palestine is a common agenda for all of them – and Western intervention in favor of Israel is considered a red line.
In such a situation, Israel and Western countries would be greatly disadvantaged, as the Zionist State is unable to fight a prolonged war of attrition and its Western supporters currently have weakened weapons stocks after more than a year of systematically arming the Kiev neo-Nazi regime. Macron may be unconsciously creating a trap for himself and his own partners.
Macron will only be creating an international full-scale war. The best thing he can do, instead of wanting to create a new, unjustified “war on terror”, is to use his diplomacy to make Israel stop the massacre in Gaza.
Global Research’s Editor Note
Macron ignores Israel’s unspoken “alliance” with several Islamist entities. There is evidence that Israeli intelligence covertly supports not only factions within Hamas but also Al Qaeda, ISIS and Daesh:
According to Times of Israel October 8, 2023 Report:
“Hamas was treated as a partner to the detriment of the Palestinian Authority to prevent Abbas from moving towards creating a Palestinian State. Hamas was promoted from a terrorist group to an organization with which Israel conducted negotiations through Egypt, and which was allowed to receive suitcases containing millions of dollars from Qatar through the Gaza crossings.” (emphasis added)
“Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Moshe Ya’alon next to a wounded mercenary [Al Qaeda terrorist], Israeli military field hospital at the occupied Golan Heights’ border with Syria, 18 February 2014″ (JP. emphasis added)
The IDF field hospital was established in support of Al Qaeda mercenaries in an operation coordinated by IDF Special Forces.
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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 Twitter and Telegram. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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***
In the blink of an eye, my cherished home is no more. Israel deemed my small residence a threat to its existence and its security.
Last Friday, at 6:30am, Wejdan, my husband’s niece, called us from Khan Younis in the southern part of the Gaza Strip. The apartment towers in Zahra town were bombed.
Unable to comprehend the news, I asked “Which one?” A moment of silence passed. Then Wejdan said, “All of them.” I passed the phone to my son and wept.
Everything is gone. All I held dear now lies under the rubble. Precious photo albums filled with memories of my school days, the faces of dear friends, the smiles from the early days of my marriage. Moments we captured of my children’s first steps, early play, and pictures from school. All gone.
Gone, too, are the photographs of my parents and grandparents. The records of my journeys. My extensive library. Some hard-earned certificates. My graduation photos. Torn asunder is my daughters’ artwork as well as an enormous painting created, and gifted, by my brother-in-law, Mohammed, on our wedding day.
All of this, and so much more, has vanished. It feels like a bomb was dropped onto the very substance of my memories.
Zahra is situated to the south of Gaza City, in the eastern part of the Strip. The air strike obliterated 24 residential buildings. Each tower comprised five floors. Each floor housed four apartments. All of them now exist only in the past tense.
These apartments were home to around 500 families. They include my friends like Dr Abu Adam Safi and his Russian wife. Engineer Obaid’s family. Abeer Allaham’s family. Um Shatha’s family. Abu Manhal’s family. Al-Daba’s family. Fora’s family. Al Tamimi family. Abu Ali family. Many families, including real children.
I believe in the words of the writer James Baldwin, that “not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.” So, it is crucial to highlight the names of these families so the world cannot claim ignorance.
One of the oldest pictures in the family album where the author’s grandmother, a survivor of the Nakba, poses with all her uncles (Supplied)
President Joe Biden, alongside his British and EU allies, has relied on the talking points of the most hardline far-right government of Israel (not a low bar to pass). Biden said he could never imagine the images he had seen of beheaded Israeli children. But his spokespeople walked back these comments about beheadings.
Yet, we hear nothing about the children – real children – whose homes have been destroyed and whose lives have been lost. Because they are Palestinian.
What is uncertain is how many of these families were also providing shelter to families who had fled the northern part of Gaza in response to Israel’s warning to clear the area.
In our case, we offered our apartment to our friend Shaima Al Shawa. Her home in Gaza was bombarded. She survived, and then sought refuge in Al Quds Hospital with her father, mother and brother. When the news broke about the Al Ahli hospital bombardment that left 500 dead, mostly women and children, we urged Shaima to take shelter in our home in Zahra.
Thankfully, they did not need to accept the offer. If she had, we could not urge her any more.
My neighbours and friends are mostly refugees whose original homes were destroyed by Israel in 1948. With the destruction of Zahra, Israel has now wiped out nearly a quarter of the Gaza Strip’s homes. Now, my friends are in the streets, with nowhere to go.
In 2016, I wrote (in Apartheid in Palestine) about my great-grandfather in the 1970s, who refused an opportunity to revisit his old home inside what is today called Israel. My grandmother asked him why he refused the opportunity to revisit his old memories. He told her that he would prefer to die rather than walk on the ruins of his old home.
My house, he said in a choked voice, “is my flesh, my sweat, my blood and my bone. It’s me, the broken human being you see now. How do you expect to walk on your body?” He then turned his back on my grandmother to hide the tears.
My grandfather believed that there is nothing in life harder than walking on the rubble of one’s own home. Perhaps, however, there is something worse than walking on the rubble of one’s own home: not being allowed to walk on it.
Today, I share the pain of my grandfather through space and through time.
‘Leave this Land’
The destruction of a home is an echo of the destruction of a homeland. Israel’s colonial project is designed to wipe Palestine, Palestinians and Palestinian homes from the map. This project started with the 1948 Nakba, the catastrophe that destroyed Palestinian society, then manifested in years of military occupation and relentless violence against Palestinians and their civilian infrastructure.
This violence has included brutal attacks on schools, hospitals, clinics, factories, mosques, churches, bridges, orphanages, power stations, bakeries, water wells and even sports facilities throughout the repeated and relentless assaults on Gaza in 2008, 2012, 2014, and 2022.
The message is stark: “Leave this land.”
But in the face of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, the Palestinians have always responded with steadfastness and a dedication to justice that no bomb can wipe out.
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Dr Ghada Ageel is a visiting professor at the University of Alberta Political Science Department (Edmonton, Canada), an independent scholar, and active in the Faculty4Palestine-Alberta.
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***
As Israel’s carpet bombing of Gaza entered its third week, leaving over 5000 dead and at least one million residents displaced, a Tel Aviv-based think tank published a blueprint for self-proclaimed Jewish state’s final solution.
In a white paper released over a week after the Hamas-led surprise attack on Israeli military bases and kibbutzes, The Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy outlined “a plan for resettlement and final rehabilitation in Egypt of the entire population of Gaza,” based on the “unique and rare opportunity to evacuate the entire Gaza Strip” that Israel’s latest assault on the besieged costal enclave provided.
Published in Hebrew on the organization’s website, the paper was authored by Amir Weitman, “an investment manager and visiting researcher” at the Institute who also leads the libertarian caucus of Israel’s ruling Likud Party. The document began by noting that there are 10 million vacant housing units in neighboring Egypt that could be “immediately” filled with Palestinians. Weitman then assured readers that the “sustainable plan…aligns well with the economic and geopolitical interests of the State of Israel, Egypt, the USA and Saudi Arabia.”
Weitman’s ethnic cleansing proposal echoes forced transfer plans advanced in recent days by former Israeli officials while capitalizing on evacuation orders delivered to the entire civilian population of northern Gaza by the Israeli military.
Weitman’s sinister blueprint imagined Israel purchasing these properties at a cost of $5 – 8 billion dollars, a whopping price-tag that reflects just 1 – 1.5 percent of Israel’s GDP.
“These sums of money [required to cleanse Gaza] in relation to the Israeli economy, are minimal,” Weitman posits. “Investing individual billions of dollars to solve this difficult issue is an innovative, cheap and sustainable solution.”
Weitman acknowledged that his plan virtually amounts to Israel “buying the Gaza Strip,” arguing the move would be “a very worthwhile investment” for Zionists because it would “add a lot of value over time.” He asserted local “land conditions” in the area would provide “many” Israeli settlers a high standard of living, therefore allowing for an expansion of settlements in Gush Dan near the Egyptian border, giving “a tremendous impetus to settlement in the Negev.”
In December 2021, Tel Aviv approved plans to establish four settlements in the Negev to house 3,000 settler families.
A Genocidal War to End All Wars
Though Egypt has so far rejected Israeli pressure for a mass exodus of Gaza residents through the southern Rafah crossing, Weitman argued Cairo will welcome the mass exodus of Palestinian refugees as “an immediate stimulus” that will “provide a tremendous and immediate benefit to al-Sisi’s regime.”
Weitman claimed that Cairo’s major creditors — including France, Germany and Saudi Arabia — are likely to welcome a revitalized Egyptian economy, courtesy of “Israeli investment” in the Palestinians’ permanent removal. He surmizes that Western Europe will welcome “the transfer of the entire Gaza population to Egypt,” because it will significantly “reduce the risk of illegal immigration…a tremendous advantage.” Meanwhile, he expects Riyadh to embrace the move because the “evacuation of the Gaza Strip means the elimination of a significant ally of Iran.”
The ethnic cleansing of Gaza would mean an end to “ceaseless, repeated rounds of fighting, which inflame the fires of hatred against Israel.” Moreover, “closing the Gaza issue will ensure a stable and increased supply of Israeli gas to Egypt and its liquefaction,” from the vast reserves seized by Israel near Gaza’s shores.
Palestinians in turn are expected to jump at the chance to be forcibly transferred from their homes rather than “living in poverty under the rule of Hamas.” It is therefore necessary for Israel to “create the right conditions” for them to “immigrate” from Gaza to Cairo. Weitman noted that Gaza’s two million inhabitants “constitute less than 2% of the total Egyptian population, which today already includes 9 million refugees. A drop in the ocean.”
The paper ominously concluded: “There is no doubt that in order for this plan to come to fruition, many conditions must exist at the same time. Currently, these conditions are met and it is unclear when such an opportunity will arise again, if ever. This is the time to act. Now.”
“If We Want to Remain Alive, We Will Have to Kill and Kill and Kill”
As barbarous as these proposals might seem, they reflect what many Israeli officials appear to be murmuring in private, and what at least one former government spinmeister has openly pushed as an altruistic solution to the Palestinian “problem.”
“There is a huge expanse, almost endless space in the Sinai Desert, just on the other side of Gaza,” former Deputy Foreign Minister of Israel, Danny Ayalon, echoed the genocidal Zionist logic behind Weitman’s proposal in an interview with Al Jazeera’s Marc Lamont Hill. “The idea is—and this is not the first time it will be done—for them to leave over to the open areas where we and the international community will prepare the infrastructure — you know, 10 cities with food and water — just like for the refugees of Syria.”
"There is almost endless space in the Sinai Desert…this is not the first time it has been done…we & the international community will prepare tent cities…"
Israeli politician Danny Ayalon describes the their vision for another Nakba today in Gaza.
In 2004, Zionist demographer Arnon Sofer of Haifa University laid out detailed plans for the isolation of Gaza directly to Ariel Sharon’s government. This entailed withdrawing Israeli forces from the area entirely and constructing a stringent system of surveillance and security to ensure nothing and no one went in or out without Zionist proviso. He predicted a perpetual bloodbath:
“When 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it’s going to be a human catastrophe. Those people will become even bigger animals than they are today…The pressure at the border will be awful. It’s going to be a terrible war. So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day…the only thing that concerns me is how to ensure the boys and men who are going to have to do the killing will be able to return home to their families and be normal human beings.”
The Institute has put forward a clean and easy fantasy of achieving the same goal put forward by Sofer. For it to succeed, all Palestinians have to do is put down their weapons and head toward the desert of permanent exile.
Arnon Sofer is an academic who helped devise Israel's siege of Gaza to engineer a one-way peace
Sofer said, "If we want to remain alive, we have to kill and kill and kill, all day, every day. If we don't kill, we will cease to exist."
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Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions.
Featured image: A tent city in Khan Younis, Gaza for Palestinians forced to flee the northern areas of the besieged strip (Source: TG)
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***
At a private Manhattan fundraiser one year ago this month, President Joe Biden shared an assessment that he had not told the public. From his vantage point, Biden told the room of Democratic Party donors, the world faces “the prospect of Armageddon” for the first time “since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis.”
At the time, Biden was referring to the conflict in Ukraine, which had just intensified with the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines and Russia’s declared annexations of four Ukrainian regions. Despite noting the dangers of a proxy war against Russia, the world’s other top nuclear power, Biden has nonetheless pursued the higher priority of enforcing US hegemony by attempting to “weaken” it. Accordingly, Biden has continued the proxy war with a signature policy of flooding Ukraine with weapons, encouraging a failed counter-offensive, and blocking diplomatic off-ramps.
One year later, Biden is not only doubling down on his apocalyptic approach in Ukraine, but adding a second front in the Middle East. The White House has asked Congress for a new spending package that would provide over $14 billion for Israel’s assault on Gaza and more than $61 billion for Ukraine – the largest such request since Russia’s February 2022 invasion. Concurrently, the US is directly assisting Israeli atrocities and standing virtually alone to block global calls for a ceasefire – all while risking a wider regional confrontation.
In an Oval Office address last week, Biden dusted off George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil” playbook to draw a direct tie between the Ukraine proxy war and Israel’s assault on Gaza. “Hamas and Putin represent different threats, but they share this in common: They both want to annihilate a neighboring democracy,” he said.
In another nod to neoconservative dogma, Biden appropriated Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell’s pitch to voters on funding the war in Ukraine. The weapons sent to Ukraine and now Israel, Biden explained, are “made in America” – including, he stressed, the election swing states of Pennsylvania and Ohio. “You know, just as in World War II, today patriotic American workers are building the arsenal of democracy and serving the cause of freedom.” According to Biden’s budget office, nearly half of his $106 billion request, $50 billion, will be spent on “the American defense industrial base.”
Beyond hegemony and war profiteering, Biden’s mention of states vital to his 2024 re-election chances underscores another reason for his record spending request. In bundling the two conflicts together, Biden is hoping to entice pro-Israel Republicans skeptical of more funding for the Ukraine war – thereby giving him $61 billion to prolong the fight against Russia until after the November 2024 election.
As it has done in Ukraine, the Biden administration is declining to use its significant leverage over Israel to end the carnage. If it wanted to, the White House could call on Israel to accept a ceasefire and pursue a negotiated release of Hamas’ captives, on top of the four that have already been freed. But according to the Washington Post, one US official “said it was clear that Netanyahu was not going to wait until the hostage crisis was resolved to initiate a ground offensive and that there was little Washington could do to change that calculus.”
A major factor, the Post adds, is that Biden “officials are loath to create a public spat as Republicans on Capitol Hill search for any sign of the president being insufficiently pro-Israel.” To avoid looking “insufficiently pro-Israel,” therefore, Biden must be sufficiently pro-mass murder – even at the expense of endangering the hostages that he insists are his top priority.
As for the argument that there is “little” Biden could do to impact Israel’s behavior, even top Israeli officials admit that to be false. At a recent meeting with Israeli lawmakers, Defense Minister Yaov Gallant acknowledged that his government agreed to allow some humanitarian aid into Gaza after US pressure. “The Americans insisted and we are not in a place where we can refuse them,” Gallant said. “We rely on them for planes and military equipment. What are we supposed to do? Tell them no?”
Luckily for Israeli leaders, they will not have to tell Biden “no” on an immediate end to the bombardment of Gaza, and a negotiated return of Hamas’ captives there. After Gaza’s health ministry reported the deadliest night of Israeli airstrikes so far – over 700 Palestinians killed – Secretary of State Antony Blinken allowed himself to declare at the United Nations that “humanitarian pauses must be considered.” In other words, the mass killing of Palestinians with US weaponry may proceed, so long as a pause to the slaughter is “considered.”
Having previously deemed ceasefire proposals “repugnant”, the Biden administration is openly embracing more Palestinian civilian deaths.
“This is war, it is combat, it is bloody, it is ugly, and it’s going to be messy,” spokesperson John Kirby said at the White House, just as Blinken appeared at the United Nations. “And innocent civilians are going to be hurt going forward.”
Kirby’s callous indifference to the deaths of more Palestinian civilians contrasts with his response to Hamas’ killings of Israeli civilians on October 7th, which led him to weep on live television.
“These are human beings.” White House spokesperson John Kirby breaks down on live TV while discussing the depravity of Hamas attacks. (Video: CNN) pic.twitter.com/aMfVDSEDIi
Israel will thus have free rein to bombard Gaza with no concern for the civilian population or the Hamas captives.
“Hostages and civilian casualties will be secondary to destroying Hamas,” ABC News reports of the prevailing Israeli government view. Economy Minister Nir Barakat explained the strategy further: “We shall do all efforts to bring our hostages, to bring our hostages [back] alive,” but destroying Hamas is the “first and last priority.”
A non-existent priority is the fate of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents, who are facing what Martin Griffiths, the UN’s top humanitarian official, describes as a crisis that “has reached catastrophic levels.”
When it comes to the meager amounts of aid that the US and Israel have allowed into Gaza, even that is subject to constraints. The first delivery of 20 trucks did not include any fuel, which powers hospital, water pumps, and everything else needed for survival – including the incubators for premature babies.
“Without fuel, there will be no water, no functioning hospitals and bakeries,” the UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees warns. “Without fuel, aid will not reach those in desperate need.”
But Israeli needs negate such concerns. “The move to exclude fuel from the first delivery was an apparent concession to Israel, which worries that Hamas and other armed groups could divert it for military purposes,” the Washington Post notes. This follows the previous “concession” to Israel that created the need for these trucks in the first place: the Biden administration’s green light for Israel to shut off Gaza’s water and electricity supplies.
As Dr. Michael Ryan of the UN’s Health Emergencies Programme notes, the small fleet of trucks allowed so far “is a drop in the ocean of need right now in Gaza,” where over 1.4 million people – more than 60% of the population – have been displaced. Before Israel’s current assault, Gaza was already in such need that “several hundred trucks had been arriving in the enclave daily,” Reuters notes.
The Biden administration also acknowledges that its touted aid packages do not meet the bare minimum for Gazans’ survival. In an interview touting the first deliveries, the newly appointed US special envoy for Middle East humanitarian issues, David Satterfield, said that the White House goal is to “build that flow up to the levels necessary to begin to meet Gaza’s needs.” Left unstated is that many Palestinians will die due to a lack of medical equipment and other vital supplies before the US-approved aid deliveries can “begin to meet” their life-saving needs.
The US is also actively involved in Israel’s military operation against Gaza. The White House has sent a Marine three-star general, Lt. Gen. James Glynn, and several other military officers to advise the Israeli military, including for its planned ground invasion. According to the New York Times,
US officials “have become increasingly concerned that a ground invasion in Gaza could lead to a huge loss of civilian lives,” but nonetheless insist that they have “not told Israel what to do and still supported the ground invasion.”
Biden’s commitment to protecting Israel’s carnage in Gaza and broader regional hegemony creates dangers far beyond the besieged territory. Since the assault began, Israel and Hezbollah have exchanged fire along the south Lebanon border. In preparation for a potential regional conflict, the US has deployed air defense missiles and two aircraft carriers to deal “with threats to American troops throughout the Middle East,” the Wall Street Journal notes. According to the Pentagon, US forces in Iraq and Syria have come under fire at least 13 times in the past week, leaving at least 24 soldiers wounded. Meanwhile, Israel continues its routine airstrikes on Syrian territory, including the country’s two major airports.
The attacks on US forces from Iranian-backed groups are understood to be a direct result of the Gaza slaughter.
“For more than six months,” the Journal reports, “Iranian-backed militia groups refrained from launching drones or rockets against American troops in Iraq and Syria, as part of what appeared to be an undeclared truce between Tehran and Washington.”
Just as the lives of Palestinian civilians and US-Israeli hostages are subordinate to the imperatives of US-Israeli hegemony, so are US forces’. In Iraq, the US has retained its military contingent despite a 2020 vote from the Iraqi parliament calling for a full withdrawal. In Syria, the US remains all while ignoring government demands for both a withdrawal and compensation for looted oil reserves.
Although the US claims that its “sole purpose” in Syria is fighting ISIS, the US military has in fact barely done any fighting against the militant group. In 2019, now-senior Biden official Dana Stroul explained that occupying the “resource-rich”, “economic powerhouse” region in Syria’s northeast — which contains the country’s “hydrocarbons” and is its “agricultural powerhouse” — gives the U.S. government “broader leverage” to influence “a political outcome in Syria” in line with US dictates. Jennifer Cafarella of the Institute for the Study of War, a neoconservative Washington think tank, has likewise explained that the US military occupation gives it “direct influence over the vast majority of Syria’s most productive oil fields,” thereby controlling “Syrian national treasures that, when added up amount to brute geopolitical power for the US.”
As of this writing, more than 5,000 Palestinian civilians have become the latest casualties of the United States and Israel’s brute geopolitical power. This includes more than 2,300 children, a calamity that UNICEF calls a “growing stain on our collective conscience.” Not that of the Biden White House, content to sacrifice countless more civilian lives from Gaza to Ukraine in its dogged embrace of Armageddon.
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Brugada syndrome is a rare but potentially life-threatening inherited disease that predisposes patients to fatal cardiac arrhythmias. The syndrome is characterized by the ECG findings of a right bundle branch block and ST-segment elevations in the right precordial leads (V1-V3). More than 400 mutations in the cardiac SCN5A gene have been identified in people with Brugada syndrome, which is characterized by risk of cardiac arrest, particularly in the setting of fever.
Altermanini et al describe a clear-cut case of syncope with cardiac arrest triggered by fever after COVID-19 mRNA vaccination. They were able to catch the post-arrest ECG and demonstrate the classic Brugada changes.
Altermanini M, Habib M, Hamamyh T, et al. SYNCOPE FOLLOWING PFIZER-BIONTECH (BNT162B2) VACCINATION UNMASKING BRUGADA SYNDROME. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2022 Mar, 79 (9_Supplement) 3340.https://doi.org/10.1016/S0735-1097(22)04331-5
Ittiwut et al described 5 cases of vaccine sudden death that tested positive for mutations in the SCN5A gene. Thus it appears that at least some of the early deaths after vaccination may be related to CN5A mutations in those who may not know they have Brugada syndromes.
Ittiwut C, Mahasirimongkol S, Srisont S, Ittiwut R, Chockjamsai M, Durongkadech P, Sawaengdee W, Khunphon A, Larpadisorn K, Wattanapokayakit S, Wetchaphanphesat S, Arunotong S, Srimahachota S, Pittayawonganon C, Thammawijaya P, Sutdan D, Doungngern P, Khongphatthanayothin A, Kerr SJ, Shotelersuk V. Genetic basis of sudden death after COVID-19 vaccination in Thailand. Heart Rhythm. 2022 Nov;19(11):1874-1879. doi: 10.1016/j.hrthm.2022.07.019. Epub 2022 Aug 5. PMID: 35934244; PMCID: PMC9352648.
Teaching points:
In patients with known Brugada pattern on ECG, COVID-19 and probably all other vaccines are contra-indicated
In patients who survive COVID-19 cardiac arrest, they should undergo genetic testing for SCN5A and other channelopathies
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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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The relevance given to a UN Secretary-General is often judged by the degree of controversy caused. In history, the most relevant are usually targeted. Dag Hammarskjöld, refusing to remain a mere bauble of international office, was almost certainly murdered over his intervention in the Congo civil war in 1961. The least relevant (who was that sweet little fella, Ban Ki-Moon?) have barely registered a note of dissent. The big powers like to know they can render such figures impotent, if not insignificant.
It was, for that reason, refreshing to see the current occupant of that post make the less than startling remark that the atrocious attacks of October 7 staged by Hamas and Islamic Jihad on Israeli soil could not be seen as standalone acts of individual, unprovoked outrage. António Guterres was careful to also note that there was “nothing” that could “justify the deliberate killing, injuring and kidnapping of civilians, or the launching of rockets against civilian targets”.
Guterres also noted that it was “important to also recognise the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum.” The Palestinians had “been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished.”
While the attacks by Hamas could not be justified to address such grievances, they also could not be used as a pretext to “justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.” Even war, he explained to his colleagues, had rules.
The Secretary-General also reiterated the principle of protecting civilians during armed conflict. This precluded using them as human shields and ordering “more than one million people to evacuate the south, where there is no shelter, no food, no water, no medicine, and no fuel, and then continuing to bomb the south itself.”
Such comments did not go down well with the Israeli Foreign Minister. Bullies of international relations are always easily slighted. And so it was that Eli Cohen would gasp and wonder which world the secretary-general was living in. “Definitely, this is not our world.”
The foreign minister made it fairly clear what sort of world that was. “I will not meet the UN Secretary-General. After the October 7th massacre, there is no place for a balanced approach. Hamas must be erased off the face of the planet.”
Gilad Erdan, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, spoke in the voice of complacency outraged, going so far as to demand the resignation of Guterres.
It is a disgrace to the @UN that the Secretary-General did not retract his words and is not even able to apologize for what he said yesterday❗️❗️
The Secretary-General, once again, distorts and twists reality. He clearly said yesterday that the massacre by Hamas ‘did not happen…
— Ambassador Gilad Erdan גלעד ארדן (@giladerdan1) October 25, 2023
“A Secretary-General who does not understand that the murder of innocents can never be understood by any ‘background’ cannot be Secretary-General.”
With a callow splutter, he suggested that the UN chief had “expressed an understanding for terrorism and murder.”
On army radio, Erdan also announced that Israel would be refusing “to issue visas to UN representatives. We have already refused a visa for the undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs, Martin Griffiths. The time has come to teach them a lesson.”
As ever, Erdan’s reasoning confused explication with justification, but in that world, the nuanced explanation huffs and puffs in tired resignation, leaving the murderous justification to take the front position.
The comments from Guterres also come in light of the perilous operational state of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA). The humanitarian agency has been starved of resources and will be forced to cease the provision of hospital care, largely occasioned by Israel’s blockade on fuel. “Current stocks are almost completely exhausted,” the agency states in its October 26 situation report, “forcing life-saving services to come to a halt. This includes the supply of piped water as well as fuel for the health sector, bakeries, and generators.” Staff have also suffered a horrendous: 39 have been killed since October 7.
“I am shocked by the misrepresentations by some of my statement … as if I was justifying acts of terror by Hamas. This is false. It was the opposite.”
The brainstorming session in the Netanyahu-IDF meetings must have been straightforward: de-historicise conflict, first and foremost; relegate Hamas to some equivalent monstrous organisation, in this case, ISIS; and then, just to make sure, use Nazism and the Holocaust as recyclable motifs.
Along the way, massive Palestinian casualties, many children (2,360 deaths over three weeks), can be excused by pointing the finger at Hamas, because it is not Israeli jets and weapons doing the killing but the policy of a terrorist organisation. And besides, Israel is, as Cohen insists, doing it for “the civilised world”.
The Israeli strategy here is to excuse the inexcusable: the collective, mass laceration of a people. In this, they simply perpetuate the tragic crimes that have been visited, not only upon the Jews, but upon any ethnicity or group in history. The Whig statesman Edmund Burke spoke about not knowing “the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people.” Unfortunately, in this conflict, that indictment was drawn up some time ago, and is being prosecuted with relentless ruthlessness.
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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]
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It would be a gross understatement that the Divided States of America has never been so fractured in its modern history. Select any subject that touches upon and personally impacts people’s lives, fragile sentiments and cherished beliefs, and one uncovers a variety of quarrelsome tribes, each with belligerent leaders and voices, pushing and shoving to reach the stage’s microphone. It may not be too far-fetched that if our early forebears were to visit 21st century America, they might think we were some strange and new mutated species. For example, civility in the Commons is no longer in our postmodern American vocabulary. For the majority of Earth’s citizens, climate change and global warming are acknowledged as a very real existential threat. Yet somehow that message never reached our shores except in drabs and dribbles. Certainly, lip service ad nauseam has been sounded about climate change for the past five decades; but anyone can look around to see these words are empty and will never solve the irrefutable challenges ahead.
Today there are roughly 3 distinct ideological groups in conflict with each other over the threats of climate change and the desecration of the environment.
Group Number One
On the one hand there are those who fully embrace scientific research and analysis. Largely these are the climate experts, those conducting the actual research, undertaking expeditions to the poles and across oceans and analyzing atmospheric samples in order to make very valuable predictions.
Besides the many institutions and university departments, this group is perhaps best represented by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA and their cousins in other nations. Undoubtedly, their findings provide much to worry about for humanity’s long-term future. Ocean temperatures are now the warmest on record. Atmospheric CO2 is the most concentrated in millions of years. We are witnessing wildfires increasing exponentially. Recently, climate scientists observed that the rise in forest fires is destroying the ozone layer, which will only increase warming trends. The US megadrought in 2022 was the worst in 1,200 years. The Antarctic ice shelves continue to collapse and coastal cities and shorelines are already sinking. Warming trends are on a winning streak as monthly records are being broken more frequently.
On the surface, we might expect the scientific faction to be the authoritative voice for accurate climate change analyses. However there is a fundamental problem. Although the scientific climate community has an excellent track record when observing, identifying and measuring phenomena and trends underway, their predictions rarely come to pass. Very often they are flatly wrong. Their leading spokespeople who become the public face of this research, such as Al Gore, John Kerry, Bill Gates, King Charles and Greta Thunberg have a terrible track record as soothsayers.
King Charles warns us that we have seven years to save the planet; however, that was stated in 2009. That same year Britain’s then Prime Minister Gordon Brown was more dire. Brown gave humanity 50 days to get its act together. For over two decades Al Gore has been annually proselytizing that the Arctic will be ice free; neither has this prediction come to pass. Perhaps one of the chief doomsayers is Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich, author of the popular doom and gloom epistle The Population Bomb published in 1968.
At that time, Ehrlich predicted that by 1990, 4 billion of earth’s residents would be wiped out by global famine, social upheaval and wars. Over the decades, Ehrlich oddly has continued to revise his apocalyptic forecasts. Why anybody continues to listen to him is more baffling. Of course, over a half century ago, nobody anticipated the forthcoming Green Revolution. Despite this agricultural revolution’s many shortcomings and often dire failures, including the widespread introduction of chemical agriculture, it did succeed in increasing food yields remarkably. In all fairness, it may have been a major contributor to preventing potential famines.
One of the climate change science faction’s major shortcomings is the incapability of relying upon current complex algorithmic modeling analytics to accurately make reliable predictions of climate and warming trends projected into the future.
It is not as much a problem of poor modeling; instead, it is institutionalized blind faith in the false promises these modeling methods represent and a professional failure to acknowledge these methods’ limitations. This is true for medicine as well. For example, every year the World Health Organization and its affiliate virology research centers employ fanciful modeling methodologies to predict the likely annual flu strains in order to begin influenza vaccine production. However, for decades, year after year, these predictors bat below fifty percent accuracy. It is not uncommon for their predictions to be off 70 percent or more. Therefore, if these computational modeling methods are unable to predict the spread of virus, how much more complex is making accurate predictions about future weather and global warming trends and atmospheric conditions? Given approximately one hundred in sundry negative (cooling) and positive (warming) feedback loops that interfere with the climate on a global scale, there are likely numerous unknown, and perhaps even intangible, factors that such computations must exclude out of necessity.
Group Number Two
The second climate and environmental contingent is more radical.
They tend to emote fear rather than reason out the hard evidence on hand. At the grassroots activist level, many of these voices may be regarded as the archetypal useful idiots who are unable to look at the larger picture outside of the futurist dystopian imagery in their sci-fi novels. This group cherry picks the scientific headlines that best support their agendas, which is more often than not politically and socially driven rather than research-based. This is the group that believes with absolute certainty that all global warming is anthropogenic.
By whatever means possible, including government-private partnerships for green programs, whatever humanity has achieved through the industrial age during the past two centuries, needs to be ultimately dismantled.
These are the prophets of doom and gloom, and many private interest groups are delighted they exist and perhaps blindly act on their behalf. This pseudo-stakeholder agenda is represented by the World Economic Forum and its international bloc of corporate elites, government leaders beholden to globalization and its faux Western democratic pageantry, and large compromised non-profit environmental do-gooders funded by private corporations. Grassroots activist groups are their naive, idealistic shock troops.
This is the agenda that demands the need for more solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, a reinvigorated nuclear power program, rapid deindustrialization and new species of engineered food produce. However, all of their solutions are directly tied to the preservation of perpetual economic growth. Its large investors, such as Blackrock and JP Morgan, would never have it otherwise. If solutions to global warming and environmental degradation cannot be monetized exponentially in order to replace humanity’s reliance upon fossil fuels, then it is rejected outright or tossed to the bottom of their to-do list.
This entire group, perhaps the most dangerous to humanity’s future, is plagued by a cognitive disconnect between advocating for technologies and solutions in of themselves that certainly reduce greenhouse gas emissions but equally have devastating consequences on the environment. It is a Green ideology where technology holds higher value than human life, except for those who commandeer its course. Electric vehicle batteries, as well as batteries necessary for other technologies including wind farms, have a catastrophic impact on the environment, which further contributes to ecological decay and global warming. The minerals and metals necessary for the so-called renewable energy technologies and nuclear power require astronomical large scale mining operations that may never meet humanity’s demands to transition away from fossil fuels. The irony is how much fossil fuels are necessary for mining operations and the high carbon footprint. People are living in a non-lucid dream if they believe otherwise. Researchers estimate that actual emissions necessary for manufacturing an electric vehicle can be 15 to 68 percent higher than a conventional gasoline-powered vehicle. Some batteries pack ten times as much power as an average household consumes in one day, and very often EVs are charged at home. Finally, 40 percent of the total climate impact of a battery comes from the mining of aluminum, cobalt, nickel and lithium, which are highly dirty and polluting industries.
The new Green Deal push for solar and wind energies are likewise fraught with contradictions. Solar power is unreliable, inefficient, weather dependent and similar to EVs requires rare materials, some highly toxic, such as arsenide, cadmium, cobalt gallium and lead. A Columbia University estimate predicts that by 2035 384 new mines for lithium, cobalt and nickel will be required to keep up with growing Green Deal demands. Solar energy is also water intensive; a single large solar farm can require over 600 gallons of water for every megawatt hour of power produced. Finally, the entire solar industry is heavily dependent upon government subsidies, which again makes this industry economically unsustainable.
Wind energy suffers from similar non-friendly environmental drawbacks as solar. It is unreliable, inefficient and requires large open spaces of land. Because the turbines rely on magnets, MIT engineers have warned that over-reliance on wind power, in addition to EVs, will strain the supply of scarce rare minerals such as neodymium, dysprosium and praseodymium. A Harvard review estimated that one ton of rare earth minerals produces 30 pounds of dust, up to 12,000 cubic meters of noxious gases such as hydrofluoric acid and sulfur dioxide and 75 cubic meters of waste water, for a total of 2,000 tons of toxic sludge.
Likewise, industrial chemical agriculture, although extraordinarily profitable for large investors and mega-corporations, is no solution to the climate crisis. However, to support and invest in a Marshall Plan to revive small farms and regenerative organic agricultural practices, which are without question far more sustainable, is simply not profitable for the global parasitical class. Certainly other technologies such as geothermal, wave power, and a large investment to harness free energy from cold fusion are truly more renewable energy sources with a far smaller carbon footprint.
Both of these climate change groups are correct, and both are wrong. The radical side downplays the importance of jobs and the health of society at large. The current Green Party coalition ruling Germany now is a good example. Olaf Scholz’s government is arguably the most incompetent in Germany’s modern history. The coalition’s Green ideology has demolished the country’s vibrant industrial base, which once held the world’s admiration, and has shown itself to be empty handed and incapable of replacing this loss with anything viable. Today, Germany is becoming the basket case of Western Europe, and this is a direct consequence of inept radical Green ideologues.
Despite youthful activists such as Greta Thunberg and the many international young environmental voices marched through the halls of the World Economic Forum as the new generations’ exemplars of a Great Reset future, are any truly substantial changes being made that are reversing climate trends. Indeed, their message is authentic, however is it making any difference. Thunberg may be a hero in her generation; however, only for a small faction of teens and young adults who at least have their eyes partially open. But Greta pales in the shadow of media celebrities such as Kylie Jenner with her thousands of footwear and one of the largest private jets in California. And the delusional mainstream media knows it will get more attention and views by spotlighting Jenner’s obsessive-compulsive consumerism over Thunberg’s dirty overalls and cardboard signs. As long as we remain a consumerist culture, and reward hyperactive and emotionally fragile influencers, nothing will change to address climate and environmental threats at any crucial level.
Group Number Three
A third group simply denies outright anthropogenic climate change or at best believes human impact on global warming is minimal.
The US currently has the largest percent of any nation’s population that is not concerned about climate change. People like Donald Trump, Jordan Peterson, Alex Jones, Mike Adams, and others leaning towards the radical Right are among its leading voices. In their opinion, economic and social issues should take precedence, including protection and expansion of fossil fuel industries and preserving the neoliberal capitalist doctrine of infinite growth on a finite planet, which Marx warned about in the middle of the nineteenth century. This position is not without its reasons. They have no reason to trust a government that acts on its own behalf at the detriment of human liberty.
There is no reason to believe anything coming from the mouths of the World Economic Forum, the World Health Organization, Bill Gates and politicians serving private interests over the public good.
They lied about the Covid-19 pandemic.
They lied about America’s entry into Afghanistan and Iraq.
They’ve bailed out Wall Street and financial institutions rather than the citizens who suffered from these very same institutions’ irresponsible negligence and greed.
Why should these institutions’ threats and fear mongering about global warming, a pending collapse of human civilization and the urgency for a Green New Deal be given any legitimacy?
Therefore, this group rejects anthropogenic climate change outright and demands a return to the old normal: agro-industrial farming, fossil fuel extractions, economic growth over environmental responsibility, and widespread consumerism. In addition, there is of course the entire conservative-leaning Judeo-Christian theological base that embraces this view.
So what is to be done amidst the warring tribes either concerned or apathetic towards climate change?
Obviously any abrupt simpleminded and gullible systemic change, as in Germany, will have catastrophic economic, social and human consequences.
And no one should be so dewy eyed as to believe that Germany’s policies were not aligned with the World Economic Forum. Climate change and global warming are undoubtedly real threats despite all the failures to predict how and when future tipping points are reached.
Therefore, it is incumbent to act intelligently and take into account what is factual and remove that from everything that is economically and politically ideological.
At the popular level of societies, people must learn to gradually wean themselves away from buying so much stuff, and especially imports if possible. Regardless of how meaningless GDP has become as a metric to evaluate the economic and social health of a country, consumerism is nevertheless tied to GDP. The world’s three largest polluters—China, India and the US—will not curtail their economic growth nor will their corporations.
Therefore, even with a steady decline in consumerism, GDP will continue to be tweaked and distorted to maintain the fantasy of productivity and growth. We find ourselves in a Hobbesian choice: we care about the environment and its preservation but are simultaneously accelerating its denigration by exploiting the planet’s resources to sustain a standard of living contrary to environmental sanity. Bookended by corporate greed and profit on the one hand, and an insatiable appetite for detrimental selfish pursuits, we impulsively consume stuff that we don’t really need. Hence rises a collective toxic brew that the majority of people participate in.
Second, it is perfectly within nations’ means to reduce their reliance upon agro-chemical agriculture and adopt large regenerative farming practices that preserve the land and reduce greenhouse emissions. Third, become vegetarian or vegan. This will reduce the unnecessary wastage of land required for livestock of every kind, which has a terrible ratio between energy into the system and energy taken out. Moreover, the medical science now seems unwaveringly confirmed that plant based diets would dramatically reduce disease.
Finally, education about climate change, environmental preservation and human health and well-being needs to be completely overhauled and revised.
Sadly, ethics no longer holds any role in modern education; therefore, it is near impossible to instill in younger people any moral responsibility towards the environment. The younger generation increasingly gets it but only in a radicalized and uncritical manner; it is also fundamentally aligned with the globalist agenda that today steers much of our public education. We can no longer rely upon government and private interests to solve humanity’s problems. It now relies upon every individual at the local level to make the responsibility choices despite the odds. At least they will gain a personal satisfaction that they acted ethically out of a sense of compassion for others and the well-being of humanity that the polluters, influencers and their cheerleaders in government and media will never taste in their lives.
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Richard Galeis the Executive Producer of the Progressive Radio Network and a former Senior Research Analyst in the biotechnology and genomic industries.
Dr. Gary Nullis host of the nation’s longest running public radio program on alternative and nutritional health and a multi-award-winning documentary film director, including his recent Last Call to Tomorrow.
Global WAR-NING! Geoengineering Is Wrecking Our Planet and Humanity
Edited by Prof. Claudia von Werlhof
After more than one year of “lockdowns” all over the world, the issue of “global warming” and “climate change” is back on the table of the international debate.
It seems that natural catastrophes have started to surround us everywhere – from the animal world next to us as well as from the sky above us. Is “nature” the enemy that has to be combatted today, be it by vaccinating humanity against the coronavirus that allegedly jumped out of the wilderness attacking us, be it by tearing down industrial production and consumption in order to avoid the alleged greenhouse gas CO2 emissions, being officially identified as the sole culprit of a so-called global warming? Or be it by applying methods of an alleged civil “geoengineering” against an ongoing climate change that seems to threaten the world?
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In political discourse – and perhaps this is an inexorable feature of human tribalistic psychology — there exists a dichotomy between what Noam Chomsky and others have described as “worthy” and “unworthy” victims of state violence and other forms of oppression.
Returning to the topic of “worthy” and “unworthy” victims, the Palestinians, as can be seen in recent college protests, are very much in vogue as “worthy” victims.
This is not a treatise on the Palestine vs. Israel conflict. I bring up this example of a “worthy” victim because it is timely and apropos.
On the other hand, college students (along with everyone else in the population at large) who were forced to receive unnecessary and often extremely damaging experimental medical treatments with no public health benefit are very much placed in the latter category (“unworthy victims”) by the same ideological cohort that champions the Palestinian cause.
Accordingly, the victims of COVID tyranny get no sympathy from the mainstream academic institutions nor the students and faculty who outsource their critical thinking to them.
Instead, anyone who asks questions about vaccine mandates – and even anyone injured by the shots – is subject to ridicule by the mainstream media and the mainstream culture it fosters.
On the hypocrisy of bodily autonomy, which is tangentially related to this topic, I will only note in passing, although it could constitute an entire article, the “my body, my choice” hypocrisy of pro-choice activists who suddenly have nothing to say about needle rape with an experimental drug as a requirement to attend school.
When a woman is denied access to an abortion by the state, she is a “worthy” victim of coercion. When that same woman is required to submit to an injection with a product she doesn’t want, she is an “unworthy” victim.
Perception influenced by media and academic bubbles and the resulting ideological possession inform the level of outrage of activists over any given issue, and who constitutes a “worthy” victim and who does not.
Such ideologues have no reservoir of sympathy for, or solidarity with, their own peers who have been forced to suffer for many years at this point for the sake of pharmaceutical profiteering and technocratic social control.
Please do not misunderstand: this is not to equate the explosive latent war in the Middle East and COVID-19 vaxx mandates. One is obviously geopolitical and millennia-old and highly ripe for sensationalism in the media. The other is a domestic policy matter and relatively new and slow-burning.
The caveat of unfair comparisons aside, allow me to briefly make the case that the COVID crimes of the past few years dwarf, by any metric, what is currently unfolding in the Middle East – the main difference between the two, in terms of media presentation, and hence public perception, being that the COVID crimes do not convey scenes of bombings and bloodied children and therefore do not have the same visceral impact on the viewer or reader.
This might engender criticism as hyperbole, but I believe that history will regard the COVID-19 crimes by the Public Health™ authorities and the pharmaceutical industry –
first, the [alleged] creation of SARS-CoV-2 in in a Wuhan lab using money funneled to it by Anthony Fauci’s NIAID through EcoHealth Alliance;
The final tally of dead victims may exceed a billion when the totality of the truth emerges, as it will one day, about the vaxxes’ adverse side effects, the mass starvation induced by global lockdowns and demolished supply lines, the wrecked mental health induced by the same, etc.
We need justice. We need an end to brutal vaxx and masking mandates on college campuses and throughout civil society. After the immediate injustices are remedied, we need Nuremberg 2.0 to ensure nothing like the crimes of the past three years are ever permitted to occur again.
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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, 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: Students rally for Palestine at Harvard University on October 14th, 2023. (Source: Rick Friedman / Alamy Stock Photo)
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In a pointed riposte to U.S. President Joe Biden—who said he has “no confidence” in Gaza casualty figures provided by Hamas, Palestinian health officials on Thursday released a 212-page list identifying 6,747 people killed by Israeli air and artillery attacks on the besieged enclave since October 7.
The Gaza Health Ministry published the names, ages, genders, and civil identification numbers of 6,747 Palestinian victims of Israeli attacks, including 2,665 children. The list is in Arabic, with an English version said to be forthcoming.
Another 281 people, 248 of them children, could not be identified. In order to improve chances of identification should their children be dismembered by Israeli bombardment, some Gaza parents and guardians have taken to writing children’s names on their hands and legs.
All told, 7,028 Palestinians—including 2,913 children—have been killed in Gaza since Israel declared war in the wake of the Hamas-led infiltration attacks that left more than 1,400 Israeli civilians and soldiers dead on and after October 7.
The Ministry of Health released a report on those killed in Gaza, by Israeli airstrikes. Here is the name, ID number & age of those who’ve been identified. Where you see words vs a number – kids under 1.
More than 17,000 Palestinians have been injured in Israeli attacks, nearly half the homes in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, and over 1.4 million people have been displaced.
Israeli soldiers and settlers have also killed more than 100 Palestinians in the illegally occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem since October 7, while nearly 2,000 others have been wounded there.
The Gaza Health Ministry said in a statement that it was releasing the list “so that the world knows that behind every number is the story of a person whose name and identity are known.”
“Our people are not nobodies who can be ignored,” the agency stressed.
“At a time when our people are waiting for urgent international intervention to stop the genocidal war being carried out by the Israeli occupier against all civilian components including health and media personnel… more than 2 million people living in the Gaza Strip are exposed to the ugliest types of systematic killing and brutal massacres,” the statement continued.
Every American should know that your government did this too. This isn't just Israel. This is also the responsibility of the country that funds and arms Israel and shields it from accountability.
The ministry accused the Biden administration of accepting all of the Israeli government’s claims “without any verification or scrutiny” and “devoid of all… morals and basic human rights values that it sings about.”
On Wednesday, Biden—who earlier this month declared his “rock-solid and unwavering” commitment to Israel—said during a White House press conference that he was “sure innocents have been killed, and it’s the price of waging a war.”
“But I have no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using,” the president added.
Some critics condemned Biden’s stance as “genocide denial.”
However, the administration doubled down on its claim as White House Spokesperson John Kirby said during a Thursday press briefing that “the Gaza Ministry of Health is just a front for Hamas.”
“We can’t take anything coming out of Hamas, including the so-called Ministry of Health, at face value,” Kirby added.
The White House spokesman says that Gaza's 'so-called' Ministry of Health is just a front for Hamas and that their numbers are not reliable. They've gone with doubling down on genocide denial. pic.twitter.com/nTciOSiluX
Some observers noted that the Biden administration cited Gaza Ministry of Health casualty figures as recently as last year in a State Department human rights report.
IfNotNow, a Jewish-led U.S. peace group, called the Gaza victims list “catastrophic” and “devastating.”
“President Biden publicly undermining the Gaza death toll is dangerous and wrong,” the group said. “Questioning death tolls directly dehumanizes Palestinians. It’s a key part of genocide denial. Israel is murdering Palestinians. By minimizing this, the U.S. is laying the groundwork for more death.”
Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, toldThe New York Times that the arguing over the number of dead in Gaza is akin to not seeing the forest for the trees.
“As the debate focuses on death tolls, the bodies continue to pile up,” Shakir said. “Our focus should be on how to prevent further mass atrocities, instead of debating whether or not the number is exactly accurate or not.”
“We know that Palestinians are being killed in unprecedentedly high numbers,” he said, “and that needs to end.”
[From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.]
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Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams.
Featured image: Dr. Ashraf al-Qidra speaks during an October 26, 2023 press conference as he holds a list of 6,747 people killed by Israeli air and artillery strikes on the besieged Palestinian enclave since October 7. (Photo: Gaza Health Ministry/Facebook)
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House Speaker Mike Johnson, confirmed Wednesday after three failed previous Republican choices and weeks of inner party turmoil, is an evangelical Christian whose connections to Israel reflect the movement’s deep ties to the Israeli right, which has become increasingly mainstream over the years.
Johnson’s confirmation brought to an end weeks of Republican Party turmoil after three previous choices failed to win enough votes to replace Kevin McCarthy.
But it is also the most significant victory to date for evangelical Christians’ pro-Israel movement.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies – including former Israel ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer – have publicly and privately stressed the importance of evangelical support as U.S. Jews have grown increasingly critical of Israel’s rightward shift.
This dynamic has largely fueled Israel becoming an increasingly partisan issue where Republicans have adopted increasingly pro-Israel sentiments – both within international geopolitics and local domestic politics.
Since the October 7 Hamas attack and Israel’s subsequent response in Gaza, pro-Israel evangelicals have only become more vocally pro-Israel, while the rest of the GOP adopts increasingly anti-Palestinian rhetoric.
Louisiana Rep. Johnson traveled to Israel in February 2020 with an under-the-radar group called the 12Tribe Films Foundation. The organization’s CEO is a social media activist named Avi Abelow, who emigrated from New York more than 30 years ago at age 18 and lives in the West Bank settlement of Efrat.
Abelow switched his vote from right-wing Likud to far-right Religious Zionism in last November’s general election, helping elevate Bezalel Smotrich to a position where he could demand a key role in Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition. He told Haaretz following the election that his decision was motivated by his deep distrust of the Arabs serving in the Israeli parliament and genuine fears for his own safety living in the occupied territories.
Johnson’s first stop on his Abelow-organized visit was to the Kohelet Policy Forum – the conservative think tank that has been an essential partner to the government’s efforts to weaken the judiciary.
The fourth-term congressman also visited the Temple Mount compound alongside Yehudah Glick, a former Likud lawmaker who has led the fight to change the status quo and permit Jewish prayer at the flash point Jerusalem holy site – in opposition to both official Israeli government policy as well as that of the international community, particularly the Biden administration and Jordan.
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Featured image: Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Mike Johnson delivers remarks following his election to the position, October 25, 2023. (Licensed under the Public Domain)
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On October 12, Veterans For Peace issued this statement about the conflict between Hamas and Israel, in which we condemned the horrific violence on both sides, particularly the killing of civilians. We added our voice to the many calls for a ceasefire and negotiations toward a political solution because there is no military one.
Since then, conditions have worsened – terribly. If a ceasefire isn’t declared, the killing and wounding in Gaza will increase dramatically, given announced plans to intensify bombing and conduct what is likely to be a months-long ground invasion.
Marjorie Cohn, VFP Advisory Board member and former president of the National Lawyers Guild, joined many others in defining what’s happening in Gaza as “genocide,” and the U.S. role as “complicity in genocide.”
We take those terms very seriously.
On October 20, the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza reported that 4,127 people, including 1,661 children have been killed and 13,162 people have been injured. Since then, 400 people were killed in 24 hours on October 22.
“Human animals must be treated as such. There will be no electricity and no water [in Gaza], there will only be destruction. You wanted hell, you will get hell.”
Members of Veterans For Peace know what happens when those are the “rules of engagement” and what a “free fire zone” is.
Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, warned of a new instance of mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and called for an immediate ceasefire.” She added, Palestinians have no safe zone anywhere in Gaza, with Israel having imposed a “complete siege” on the tiny enclave, with water, food, fuel and electricity unlawfully cut off.
How could anyone, at the very least, not support a ceasefire…Mr. President?
Biden ordered our UN ambassador to veto the UN resolution calling for a ‘humanitarian pause,’ so he can have more time to let American on-the-ground diplomacy “play out.” The tragedy and hypocrisy in that statement are monstrous, but surely delight the weapons makers who profit savagely from the billions of dollars our taxes buy for Israel year in and year out.
Our government, with many billions of our tax dollars, has fanned the flames beneath the pressure cooker of occupation for decades. We cannot pretend ignorance. One of our members saw a tragic similarity between what he witnessed in Palestine and what he did as an occupier in Iraq.
VFP urges our members and supporters as emphatically as we can:
Take action NOW – no matter how large or small – but do it now.
We must do everything we can to prevent even greater disaster!
Join in a local protest or organize one yourself. Certainly picket, and think seriously about occupying local offices of Members of Congress who do not support HR 786 for an immediate ceasefire and humanitarian aid. Tell your friends what’s happening. Write a letter to the editor.
But do it now!
Without a ceasefire, this war, like all wars, will dangerously escalate. The U.S. has sent aircraft carrier battle groups into the eastern Mediterranean and more troops into neighboring countries; Israel has bombed two airports in Syria; Shia militias have attacked U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria.
To American troops deployed to the Middle East: follow your conscience. Remember that what you do as a member of the United States military will be with you for the rest of your life. We in Veterans For Peace have learned from our experiences with war and death to be life affirming.
Join us for peace.
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For many of us, it’s impossible to imagine the scale of death and destruction in Gaza.
In just two weeks, the Israeli military has killed over 5,000 Palestinians in Gaza. Israeli warplanes have flattened entire neighborhoods. Shell-shocked children are left to search for their parents under the rubble. Millions of Palestinians have once again been made refugees, bombed as they tried to flee. Surgeons are operating by the light of their cellphones, increasingly without anesthesia.
Let us be clear: This is genocide.
This isn’t a war on Hamas. It’s a war on the Palestinian people.
As Aseel Al Bajeh writes, “All of Palestine is under attack.”
While international attention is focused on Gaza, the Israeli government and extremist settler groups are taking the opportunity to accelerate the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the West Bank.
On October 12, as the last villagers of Wadi al-Seeq left their homes, driven out by ongoing settler terror, a group of Israeli “soldiers-settlers” — some dressed in military uniform and some in civilian clothing — took three Palestinian men captive.
For hours, the men were tortured: They beat them, forced them to strip down to their underwear, handcuffed and blindfolded them, urinated on them, extinguished cigarettes on their bodies, and attempted to sexually assault one of them.
Settlers have carried out dozens of attacks, setting Palestinian homes on fire, destroying their property, and shooting at them with live ammunition.
Over 90 Palestinians in the West Bank, including 26 children, have been murdered by the Israeli military and settlers since October 7.
They include 16-year-old Mohammad Rafat Mohammad Edwan, who was throwing stones at Israeli soldiers when he was shot with live ammunition. The bullet lodged itself in his lung, and four days later, on October 14, he was dead.
On October 12, 62-year-old Ibrahim Wadi and his son, 24-year-old Ahmad Wadi, were killed when Israeli settlers opened fire on the funeral procession of four Palestinians who had been murdered the previous day — three by Israeli settlers and one by an Israeli soldier.
And on October 19, 11-year-old Yousef Mohammad Omar Zaghdad was killed when the Israeli military fired a missile at a group of civilians inside Noor Shams refugee camp. Three other children were killed in the attack.
Enabled by the Israeli military and empowered by a climate of impunity and lawlessness, Israeli settlers are taking advantage of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza to steal more Palestinian land, thereby expanding Israeli control of the West Bank. Hundreds of Palestinians from over a dozen different communities in the West Bank have been displaced as a result.
“They came into the village and destroyed houses and sheep pens, beat an 85-year-old man, scared our children. Slowly our lives became unlivable,” Sliman al-Zawahri, a resident of the now-depopulated village of Ein Rashash, told the Guardian.
Israel’s war on Gaza has also heightened the discrimination faced by Palestinian citizens of Israel and those with Jerusalem IDs, who are increasingly being arrested, harassed, doxxed, suspended from school, and fired from their jobs for expressing solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.
The expansion of Israel’s regime of Jewish supremacy relies on the destruction of all Palestinian life. For Palestinians, there is no right way to protest their subjugation, and nowhere safe from Israeli violence.
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July 11, 2023 – Inverkip, UK – 25 year old NHS pediatric nurse Kristin Hamill was finishing her pediatric nursing studies (with COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine mandate). On June 28, 2022 she developed sepsis, her kidneys failed, she ended up on dialysis and needs a kidney transplant. In July 2023 she was diagnosed with heart failure – all COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine injuries & long term effects.
July 31, 2023 – Calvary, TX – Danny DeGrande was a Nursing Student at TCU and 5 years in the US Marine Corps. He had chest pain and died suddenly on Oct. 31, 2022.
June 22, 2023 – Marietta, GA – 18 year old Kylie Yeager died after being diagnosed with Leukemia in April 2023. She was interested in pediatric nursing and had attended a Wellstar Nursing Camp and volunteered at special needs camps in the summer. She is presumed COVID-19 mRNA Vaccinated.
June 22, 2023 – Provo, UT – 27 year old Keyon Snow, a nursing student at Joyce University, died suddenly in his sleep.
June 20, 2023 – Las Vegas, NV – Crystal Martinez is a nursing student at Nevada State College. She began having neurological deficits and was diagnosed with a strange epidural hematoma of her spinal cord.
June 14, 2023 – Metairie, LA – 20 year old Bryan Ibanez is a nursing student at Missouri State University. He was diagnosed with Stage 2 Testicular Cancer in Sep. 2022 which has metastasized to the lungs and is now Stage 4.
June 10, 2023 – Knoxville, TN – 18 year old Caileigh O’Donohue Duggan, a nursing student at University of Tennessee nursing program died suddenly on June 10, 2023. She died in her sleep.
June 2, 2023 – 19 year old Kate Kaufling, University of Kentucky dancer and nursing student with 4.0 GPA was diagnosed with Osteosarcoma. It started with swollen lymph nodes containing cancer.
May 22, 2023 – Chandler, AZ – 21 year old Valerie Calderone was a college student studying to become a nurse when she was diagnosed with Hodgkin Lymphoma.
May 21, 2023 – UK – Winifred Chioma George, a Nigerian Nursing Student who was only 16 weeks away from completing her nursing degree at the University of Hertfordshire died suddenly on May 21, 2023.
April 26, 2023 – Southport, UK – 31 year old nursing student Ashleigh De Andrade returned from holiday, felt unwell, had a brain bleed, several seizures & died suddenly.
April 20, 2023 – University of Missouri – 19 year old Nursing student Kennedy Grace Carter died suddenly on April 20, 2023. She was found dead in her dorm room bed.
April 16, 2023 – Mesa, AZ – Katherine Wilson is a nursing student who was diagnosed with a brain/orbital tumor in Feb. 2023 and had surgery in April.
My Take…
Nursing students in United States and Canada were mandated COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines to be able to continue their studies.
mRNA Vaccine mandates forced on University and College students were one of the greatest crimes perpetrated during the COVID-19 pandemic.
All University and College leaders who presided over COVID-19 Vaccine mandates must serve life in prison sentences without possibility of parole.
Now that COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine injuries are out in the mainstream and can no longer be covered-up, it is crucial for nursing students and their families to carefully evaluate any health problems that occurred after COVID-19 Vaccination.
Kristin Hamill’s immune system would have been damaged by COVID-19 Vaccines, putting her at high risk of sepsis, which is now a common condition among the COVID-19 Vaccinated. Her kidneys and heart may have also been damaged by spike protein.
Danny DeGrande would have had COVID-19 vaccine cardiac injury, and those who died in their sleep like Keyon Snow, Caileigh Duggan, Kennedy Grace Carter may also have had COVID-19 Vaccine cardiac injury.
Also important to note are blood clots, DVTs, pulmonary emboli, as well as blood vessel injuries such as aneurysms and hemorrhagic strokes.
Any Cancer diagnosis after COVID-19 Vaccination must be considered a Turbo Cancer until proven otherwise and carefully evaluated for unusual behavior.
The time for lawsuits against Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson is now.
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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 NaturalNews.com
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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The European Union’s sanctions envoy said on October 23 that the bloc’s sanctions regime on Russian oil will remain in place for the long term, perhaps five or ten years. Yet, despite the triumphant statement, the EU’s economy is facing a recession, and not the Russian, which is going from strength to strength even though it faces Western-imposed sanctions.
“Prepare for five to ten years,” said David O’Sullivan, special international envoy for the implementation of EU sanctions, at an Atlantic Council event. O’Sullivan added that he did not see any imminent lifting of these sanctions in any meaningful way, even if there were a cessation of hostilities, as other issues would need to be overcome.
Responding to O’Sullivan’s comments, Dmitry Peskov, Press Secretary of the President of the Russian Federation, said that Russia was prepared to face Western sanctions for the period said by the EU envoy.
“Russia has been living under a sanctions regime for quite a long time, for decades, and we have sufficiently adapted to it, so such time horizons as five to 10 years do not scare us,” Peskov said.
The worst effects of Western sanctions against Russia have already been felt, and the Eurasian country has already constructed mechanisms to overcome Western economic attacks. In fact, even with Western sanctions, Russia is increasingly close to surpassing the USA and the EU in GDP growth.
Moscow said sanctions have boosted its domestic economy and industrial production, and most observers acknowledge now that the sanctions have been circumvented and have failed to deter Russia from ending its military operation against Ukraine.
According to calculations based on the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, Russia’s external debt level relative to GDP at the end of the second quarter of this year fell below 15% for the first time. In fact, Russia’s external debt has not stopped decreasing in recent years.
At the end of 2020, it was 31%; in 2021, it was 26.2%; and, at the end of last year, it was only 16.6%. In the first quarter of 2023, it decreased slightly to 15.45%. In the second quarter of this year, the indicator also declined to 14.96%. In monetary terms, Russian external public and corporate debt at the end of June 2023 was $343.4 billion, about 29.9 trillion roubles.
The Central Bank also published data on the external debt per capita at the end of the second quarter: the figure fell 4% to $2.3 billion. This is the best level since 2006 when it was $2.2 billion. At the same time, Russia’s economy will grow by 2.3% in 2023 against all forecasts from Western analysts, something that is due to the rise in real wages.
Meanwhile, the economic slowdown in the Eurozone worsened in October, according to preliminary data from a survey of purchasing managers conducted by S&P Global.
“The seasonally adjusted HCOB Flash Eurozone Composite PMI Output Index, based on approximately 85% of usual survey responses, fell from 47.2 in September to 46.5 in October, signalling a fifth consecutive month of falling business activity and the steepest decline since November 2020,” said the S&P press release on October 24.
Excluding the months of the pandemic, business activity in the eurozone recorded its largest contraction since March 2013.
For the chief economist of Hamburg Commercial Bank (HCOB), Dr. Cyrus de la Rubi:
“In the Eurozone, things are moving from bad to worse. Manufacturing has been in a slump for sixteen months, services for three, and both PMI headline indices just took another hit. In addition, all subindices point very consistently downwards, too, with only a few exceptions. Overall, this points to another lacklustre quarter. We wouldn’t be caught off guard to see a mild recession in the Eurozone in the second half of this year with two back to back quarters of negative growth.”
However, rather than seeking to remove sanctions, the EU will not only maintain them for many years to come but will introduce a new sanctions package, the 12th since Russia launched its special military operation against Ukraine in February 2022. This sanctions package could include a ban on Russian diamonds – a further crackdown on Moscow’s ability to get around sanctions and listing companies in third countries helping Moscow do so.
Just like the previous 11 sanctions packages, this will obviously fail to deter Russia from completing its mission against Ukraine. Rather, it will only have a greater impact on the EU as their own economies struggle while Russia continues to forge trade relations with non-Western partners, thus shielding the economy from Western attacks.
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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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Germany is home to Europe’s largest Palestinian community, with roughly 80,000 Palestinians living in the country. For years, German authorities have tried to stifle Palestinian activism in the country, viewing it as a nuisance to its explicit policy of “unconditional support for Israel.” Demonstrations, such as one earlier this year to mark the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, have been sporadically banned in recent years and organizations, like the Palestinian prisoner solidarity network Samidoun, have also come under increasing scrutiny.
Yet the criminalization of solidarity with Palestine on a national level has taken on entirely new dimensions since October 7. After a small demonstration on Berlin’s busy Sonnenallee street on the evening of October 7, the German media and body politic have been up in arms about Palestinians supposedly celebrating terrorism and antisemitism on German streets.
Talking points that were two weeks ago only uttered by far-right AfD politicians are now being openly expressed by politicians from all parliamentary parties in Germany. Playing off the idea of “imported antisemitism,” the social democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz is now arguing that “we must finally deport on a large scale” residents who do not hold German citizenship and openly protest against Israel. The Christian Democrats (CDU) are even demanding that the recognition of Israel’s right to exist must become a precondition for German citizenship.
Samidoun has been made into public enemy number one, as the media presents the group as a bastion for “sympathizers of terror” that poses “a particular danger, because as a secular organization, they are building bridges between Islamists and radical leftists.” In a speech before parliament on October 12, Chancellor Scholz personally announced a ban on Samidoun along with a ban on the activities of Hamas in Germany.
In Berlin specifically, which is home to one of the largest Palestinian diaspora communities outside the Arab world, the authorities have been particularly hostile towards any signs of solidarity with Palestine. Since October 7, every demonstration explicitly or implicitly referring to Palestine has been banned, leaving the roughly 30,000 Palestinians living in Berlin with no means of expressing their anguish at the siege and bombardment of Gaza.
Solidarity groups have been trying to bypass this censorship by avoiding political statements and focusing on humanitarian campaigning, yet even demonstrations and slogans such as “Children in Gaza need help” and “Solidarity with the civilian population in the Gaza Strip” were banned. On October 13, the police went so far as to ban a demonstration registered by the group “Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East” entitled “Jewish Berliners against violence in the Middle East.”
Sonnenallee, a busy street in the district in which many Arab migrants live, has become a focal point of dissent against Israel’s attack on Gaza. The police patrol Sonnenallee every evening with tight controls on the public squares. Racial profiling and brutal arrests are commonplace and often recorded and posted to social media. One particular video shows police officers stomping out a candle-lit vigil with their boots.
In a letter to all Berlin schools, the city’s Department for Education, Youth and Family set out strict guidelines on how to discuss the situation in Palestine with students. “Any demonstrative action or expression of opinion that can be understood as advocating or approving of the attacks against Israel or support for the terrorist organizations carrying them out, such as Hamas or Hezbollah, constitutes a threat to school peace in the current situation and is prohibited.” According to the letter, these may include the following: “visibly wearing relevant clothing (for example, the kuffiyeh known as the Palestinian scarf), displaying stickers and patches with inscriptions such as ‘free Palestine’ or a map of Israel in the colors of Palestine (white, red, black, green), and shouting ‘free Palestine!’ and demonstrating verbal support for Hamas and its terrorism.”
At one high school on Sonnenallee, a 61-year-old teacher attempted to confiscate a Palestinian flag from a 14-year-old student and ended up in a physical altercation with a second 15-year-old student. The parents’ association of the school tried to organize a demonstration under the slogan “No place for racism, no place for violence” as a reaction to the incident, yet it was promptly banned by the police, ostensibly as a “a precautionary measure”. The Central Council of Palestinians in Germany has since sent a letter in response to Berlin’s Department for Education, expressing their “great concern about the psychological and educational development [of their children]” in Berlin schools.
As other European states are witnessing mass protests in solidarity with Palestine, the German state has been able to use force and violence to prevent such scenes on German streets. Yet it is unlikely that the government will be able to ban these sentiments of solidarity indefinitely, especially as the images of Israel’s brutal attack on Gaza continue to circulate around the world.
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Featured image: Demonstrators in Berlin take the streets in solidarity with Palestine (Photo: Montecruz Foto)
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Update on October 24, 2023
After this article was originally published, the Israeli outlet Calcalist reported on a separate plan for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza that is being circulated by the Israeli Intelligence Ministry headed by Gila Gamliel. The leaked document was reportedly created for an organization called “The Unit for Settlement – Gaza Strip” and was not meant for the public.
In the plan being proposed by the Intelligence Ministry, Palestinians in Gaza would be displaced from Gaza to the northern Egyptian Sinai peninsula. In the report, the ministry described different options for what comes after an invasion of Gaza and the option deemed as “liable to provide positive and long-lasting strategic results” was the transfer of Gaza residents to Sinai. The move entails three steps: the creation of tent cities southwest of the Gaza Strip; the construction of a humanitarian corridor to “assist the residents”; and finally, the building of cities in northern Sinai. In parallel, a “sterile zone”, several kilometers wide, would be established within Egypt, south of the Israeli border, “so that the evacuated residents would not be able to return”.
In addition, similar to the plan described in the original story below, the document calls for cooperation with other countries, in fact “as many as possible” so that they may “absorb” the Palestinians who have been uprooted from Gaza. Among the countries mentioned as possible sites for Palestinians from Gaza are Canada, European countries such as Greece and Spain, and North African countries.
Original article
The Hamas attack on Israeli towns surrounding Gaza on October 7 has provided a pretext for an unprecedented, genocidal revenge campaign by Israel involving the massacre of now nearly 5,000 Palestinians, including over 2,000 children – and that may only be the beginning. Now, an Israeli think tank with ties to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is promoting plans for the complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
On October 17, the Misgav Institute for National Security & Zionist Strategypublished a position paper advocating for the “relocation and final settlement of the entire Gaza population.” The report advocates exploiting the current moment to accomplish a long-held Zionist goal of moving Palestinians off the land of historic Palestine. The report’s subtitle makes it clear: “There is at the moment a unique and rare opportunity to evacuate the whole Gaza Strip in coordination with the Egyptian government.”
The Misgav Institute is headed by former Netanyahu National Security Advisor Meir Ben Shabbat, who remains influential in Israeli security circles. The Institute’s former chairpersons and founding associates includeYoaz Hendel(chair 2012-19), a right-centrist who was Minister of Communications intermittently in the years 2020-22; Moshe Yaalon, former Defense Minister (note that both Hendel and Yaalon have become opposed to Netanyahu in the recent years); Moshe Arens, also former Defense Minister — and other top political personas.
The main arguments of the report, which the Institute highlighted on social media upon the report’s release, are translated as follows:
There is a need for an immediate, viable plan for the resettlement and economic rehabilitation of the entire Arab population in the Gaza Strip, which sits well with the geopolitical interests of Israel, Egypt, U.S.A. and Saudi Arabia.
In 2017 it was reported that in Egypt there were 10 million available apartment units, of which half were built and half under construction. For example, in two of the biggest Cairo satellite cities, “October 6” and “Ramadan 10” there is an immense number of built and empty apartments under governmental and private ownership as well as empty lots for building that would in total suffice the housing of about 6 million residents.
The average cost of a three-room apartment of 95 square meters for an average Gaza family of 5.14 people in one of the two mentioned cities stands at $19,000. In calculating the total population that resides in the Gaza Strip, which stands between 1.4-2.2 million people, it is possible to assess that the amount that would need to be transferred to Egypt in order to finance would be around $5 to 8 billion.
An encouraging injection to the Egyptian economy at this magnitude would provide an enormous and immediate advantage to [Egyptian President] El-Sisi’s regime. Such money sums, compared to the Israeli economy, are miniscule. The investment of a mere few billions of dollars (even if it is $20 or 30 billion) in order to solve this difficult issue is an innovative, cheap and viable solution.
There is no doubt that in order for this plan to be enacted, many conditions need to exist in parallel. At the moment, these conditions exist, and it is unclear when such an opportunity will arise again, if at all.
It appears that this ethnic-cleansing plan is based on a similar logic to that of the “Abraham Accords,” involving the infusion of massive sums towards despotic regimes to write off the Palestinian issue. But this time, it is not just about slow annexation and bantustanization through “economic peace” — but advocating for the complete population transfer of Palestinians from Gaza.
Previous Calls for Ethnic Cleansing
It is not the first time that suggestions for a full ethnic cleansing have appeared from Israeli analysts or even politicians. In the midst of the 2014 Gaza onslaught, Moshe Feiglin, who was then part of Likud and deputy chair of the Knesset, sent Netanyahu a public, 7-point proposal for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. He repeated the genocidal advocacy in 2018. Feiglin is now a libertarian politician. In a recent interview on Channel 14, Feiglin called for a “Dresden” on Gaza (referring to the WW2 firebombing of Dresden in February 1945, killing some 25,000 people) — “a storm of fire on all of Gaza!” he proclaimed, demanding to “not leave stone on stone” and emphasizing “total fire!” and “the end of ends!”
The Misgav Institute’s thinking has also been reflected in the Israeli intelligentsia. In 2004, respected Israeli historian Benny Morris, who is a self-proclaimed leftist, shocked many by bemoaning the fact that Ben Gurion did not “finish the job” and carry out the full ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, saying it would have led to less conflict in the ensuing decades. But he also said that a “transfer and expulsion” policy is only a question of time, and timing. Morris argued that in “normal” times, such policies may be immoral — but in “apocalyptic circumstances,” they may be both moral, “reasonable,” and “even essential.” From his interview in Haaretz:
“If you are asking me whether I support the transfer and expulsion of the Arabs from the West Bank, Gaza and perhaps even from Galilee and the Triangle, I say not at this moment. I am not willing to be a partner to that act. In the present circumstances it is neither moral nor realistic. The world would not allow it, the Arab world would not allow it, it would destroy the Jewish society from within. But I am ready to tell you that in other circumstances, apocalyptic ones, which are liable to be realized in five or ten years, I can see expulsions.”
Thus, the Misgav report would seem not only to be arguing that to forcibly displace the Palestinian population from Gaza but that, similar to the conditions that Morris laid out, this is a historic opportunity to do it.
Israeli Support
Since October 7, calls for flattening Gaza have been rampant among the Israeli leadership and widely espoused across the population. On October 12, Israeli Channel 12 published a report about how the desire to ethnically cleanse Gaza has taken hold in Israeli popular culture:
“People from the political left and center have called for the flattening of Gaza this week. A very short post fantasizing about a nature party that would take place on what was Gaza land received 100 thousand likes and 60 thousand shares”. The young Tel-Aviv woman who posted on Instagram had only 700 followers, but then the post “exploded”. She claims to be a centrist who “has always sanctified human rights, compassion is the first emotion that is activated in me”, she says. “I do not want to kill Gazan babies, I never hated Arabs and it’s not like I started hating them this week. But after what happened, I say to the Gaza residents – your babies are your problem”.
Meanwhile, while the world’s eyes are on Gaza, ethnic cleansing is also being realized in the West Bank by Israeli settlers and soldiers. The terrorizing of mostly rural Palestinian communities in the West Bank had resulted in the uprooting of several communities before October 7 but has accelerated greatly since, with some 545 Palestinians forcibly displaced from at least 13 communities since October 7, according to information from the West Bank Protection Consortium (WBPC) and Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din (cited by Al Jazeera). The murderous settler attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank have gotten relatively little attention, like the murder of four Palestinians in Qusra on October 11 and then the murder of a Palestinian father and his son at the funeral. The number of killed Palestinians in the West Bank since October 7 is nearing 100 — in two weeks — an unfathomable pace.
Thus, these times are exceptionally dangerous for Palestinians. The Hamas attack seems to have reignited long-standing Zionist wishes, and now some want to exploit this public mood in support of a massive ethnic cleansing campaign. It doesn’t mean that it will happen all at once, but as mentioned, in some places, it has already begun.
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Israel has dropped more than 12,000 tons of explosives on the Gaza Strip since Oct. 7, the media office in the Palestinian enclave said on Tuesday.
“The explosive force of these explosives is equivalent to the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima in Japan” in 1945, the office said in a statement.
“An average of 33 tons of explosives were dropped per square kilometer on the Palestinian enclave since Israel started its aggression,” it added.
Home to 2.3 million people, the Gaza Strip has a total area of 365 square kilometers.
Israel launched a relentless bombardment campaign on the Palestinian territory following a cross-border attack by Hamas, putting the enclave’s residents under total siege and a blockade of food, fuel and medical supplies.
More than 7,100 people have been killed in the latest conflict, including at least 5,791 Palestinians and 1,400 Israelis.
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The Egyptian parliament met on October 19 and gave President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi the power to declare war against Israel, if necessary. Egypt and Israel have a peace treaty dating from 1979, which has been a success, proving that a neighboring Arab and Muslim country can share long-lasting peaceful relations with the Jewish State of Israel.
Egyptians have watched in horror at the scenes of death and destruction in Gaza as the Israeli government exacts its revenge on Hamas after the October 7 attack on Israel. With the promised Israeli ground invasion of Gaza beginning at any moment, it is expected to be a bloodbath among unarmed civilians. Already the death toll is at least 5,087, including 2,055 children.
The Cairo Peace Summit, co-chaired by the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, and Palestine, met on October 21.
Sisi said that the solution to the Palestinian issue is not the displacement of an entire people to other areas, but justice and obtaining their legitimate rights and the right to self-determination.
The US sent a low-level representative to the Cairo Peace Summit, and this was a message from US President Joe Biden, that the US is working against Egypt, and not with them.
The reason behind Egypt’s refusal to accept Palestinian refugees is never hinted at in the US media which parrots the US State Department talking points.
Israel has a long-standing law that prevents any Palestinian who leaves Gaza, or the Occupied West Bank, from ever returning home. The right of return is enshrined in international law; however, Israel does not comply with international law.
Sisi knows there is an Israeli plan, condoned and supported by Biden, to remove all Palestinians from Gaza to Egypt, where they will be supported by humanitarian aid, but can never repopulate Gaza again. They will be permanently homeless and stateless refugees.
The Israeli plan also includes the Occupied West Bank and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has warned of attempts to displace the Palestinian people and said:
“We will not leave, we will not leave, we will stay in our land.”
“The violent bombing campaign in Gaza is a collective punishment of a besieged and helpless population,” he said, calling it a “flagrant violation of international humanitarian law and a war crime.”
The US-Israeli plan is to move all the Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank into Jordan, which has had a peace treaty with Israel since 1994.
Both leaders have warned of a plan to de-populate the West Bank, which will then be the ultimate solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as there will be no more occupation and no need for the UN resolution calling for the two-state solution. Israel will get everything, and the Palestinians will get nothing.
Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said on October 18, that any attempts to displace Palestinians from the West Bank to Jordan would be considered a declaration of “war.”
The US betrayal of Egypt runs deeper than the Gaza war. Biden set his sights on the record annual revenue of the Suez Canal, which totaled $9.4 billion in USD as of June 30, 2023. The major asset in Egypt handles roughly 10 percent of global maritime trade, and the US has a plan to declare economic war on Egypt by circumventing transit through the Suez Canal.
The Biden Plan Against Egypt
On September 8, at the G-20 summit in New Delhi, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), which is a Biden plan to work behind the back of Egypt and undermine their economy. This plan will circumvent the Suez Canal.
The huge plan links India with Europe and includes the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Israel.
Not only does the IMEC work to the detriment of Egypt, but also Biden’s chief enemy, China, and their Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which began in 2013.
The IMEC project connects cross-country railway lines and shipping corridors from India’s west coast with the UAE by sea, and a rail route crossing the Arabian Peninsula, with the Israeli port of Haifa as the endpoint.
From Haifa, goods are shipped to Piraeus, Greece which is the gateway to all European destinations. Included in the plan are pipelines for hydrogen produced in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, high-powered IT connections, and energy grids.
Biden wants India tied to the West, thus serving as a counter-balance to China. At the same time, the plan promotes the normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which has been the main goal of Netanyahu since taking office, and a priority of the US State Department under the Biden administration.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE regard hydrogen production as a green alternative to their fossil-based energy exports.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the IMEC plan was “much more than ‘just’ a railway or a cable” adding, “It is a green and digital bridge across continents and civilizations.”
The IMEC plan could potentially speed up trade between India and Europe by up to 40 percent. However, its critics point out that the cargo must be off-loaded, and re-loaded twice in the route, which will add costs that might not be cost-effective as opposed to the traditional Suez Canal route. But, the US support of the IMEC proves that their support is not about saving money, but is about betraying Egypt.
The Saudi Position
President Trump’s plan, the Abraham Accords of 2020, gained momentum when the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco normalized relations with Israel.
The big prize to both Israel and the US would be signing with Saudi Arabia, and negotiations were progressing favorably until the current Gaza war began. Saudi Arabia halted any progress on normalization in favor of pro-Palestinian solidarity. The Kingdom’s stance will affect Israel’s participation in IMEC.
Previous US Betrayal of Egypt
Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was a staunch and loyal ally of the US, and yet they called for him to step down.
President Barack Obama and his Vice President Joe Biden engineered a US-rigged election in which the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, Mohamed Morsi, was elected. The American official in Cairo who was sentenced to five years in prison by an Egyptian court for election fraud was whisked away from Cairo before serving time by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who used her diplomatic immunity to transport Lila Jaafar to Washington, DC where she now serves as an official with the Peace Corps.
This US betrayal of Egypt lasted less than a year, during which hundreds of unarmed civilians were massacred by the Morsi regime, and then the Egyptian people threw out the American puppet, and the current president Sisi came to power.
The US has no friends, only interests. America is the first to teach the lesson: “Treaties are made to be broken”.
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Amid rapid AI progress, the authors of this paper express a consensus on the large-scale risks from upcoming, powerful AI systems. They call for urgent governance measures and a major shift in AI R&D towards safety and ethical practices before these systems are developed.
Cancer during pregnancy is rare and before COVID-19 mRNA vaccines approximately 1:1000 pregnancies were complicated by maternal cancer. Of these, breast cancer is most common, corresponding to between 1:3000 to 1:10000 pregnancies, according to a 2022 Dutch study by Boere et al.
The room was quiet, bright, high-ceilinged, spacious and elegantly appointed. At the long burnished table were seated two baker’s dozen of the most immaculately dressed and manicured individuals — themselves virtually unknown to those outside their exclusive circle — who represented approximately sixty percent of the world’s wealth.
On October 24, the United States and other imperialist states for the third time voted against a resolution, this time sponsored by the Republic of Brazil, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
We labor today under the weight of countless tyrannies, large and small, disguised as “the better good,” marketed as benevolence, enforced with armed police, and carried out by an elite class of government officials who are largely insulated from the ill effects of their actions.
Three years ago I was among the first – and certainly the first Bishop – to denounce pandemic and vaccination fraud. Expressed with arguments that today emerge as true and well-founded are the critical issues and immorality of an experimental gene treatment, which aborted fetuses were and are used to produce. I also wrote two open letters to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which remain unanswered.
Israel, with the backing of its U.S. and European allies, is preparing to launch not only a scorched earth campaign in Gaza but the worst ethnic cleansing since the wars in the former Yugoslavia. The goal is to drive tens, most probably hundreds of thousands of Palestinians over the southern border at Rafah into refugee camps in Egypt.
The stakes are high as Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese arrives in Washington, D.C., today to meet with President Joe Biden. The U.S. government hopes to obtain Australia’s support for its cold war initiatives against China.
A few days after the explosion, Senators Mark Warner (D-VA) and Marco Rubio, the Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said that they had been briefed on the matter and were confident that the rocket had come from Islamic Jihad. We’re all just supposed to take their word for it.
My phone is not being returned to me by police as, astonishingly, I am now formally under investigation for terrorism. Whether this relates to support for Palestine or for Wikileaks has currently not been made clear.
Aparentemente, as relações entre os EUA e a Ucrânia são profundas no setor da inteligência. Segundo um importante meio de comunicação americano, a CIA investiu quantias exorbitantes de dinheiro para desenvolver o sistema de inteligência ucraniano. O caso deixa claro como os agentes e a inteligência americanos são certamente co-responsáveis pelos crimes cometidos pelos ucranianos.
A informação foi partilhada peloWashington Post no dia 23 de outubro. Segundo o jornal, a ICA investiu “dezenas de milhões” de dólares na inteligência ucraniana com o objetivo de transformar o sistema pós-pós-soviético num verdadeiro centro operacional aliado de Washington contra Moscou. Desde o Maidan, a agência americana tem estado fortemente envolvida em todo o processo de tomada de decisão da inteligência ucraniana, tendo alcançado uma “presença significativa” em Kiev.
“Desde 2015, a CIA gastou dezenas de milhões de dólares para transformar os serviços ucranianos formados pelos soviéticos em aliados poderosos contra Moscou, disseram autoridades. A agência forneceu à Ucrânia sistemas de vigilância avançados, treinou recrutas em locais na Ucrânia, bem como nos Estados Unidos. Os Estados Unidos construíram novos quartéis-generais para departamentos da agência de inteligência militar da Ucrânia e compartilharam informações em uma escala que teria sido inimaginável antes da Rússia anexar ilegalmente a Crimeia e fomentar uma guerra separatista no leste da Ucrânia. A CIA mantém uma presença significativa em Kiev, disseram autoridades”, diz o artigo.
O artigo também enfatiza que todo o sistema de defesa ucraniano recebeu fundos americanos, o que esclarece que tanto a inteligência nacional, SBU, como a inteligência militar, GUR, se beneficiaram dos investimentos da CIA. Particularmente no que diz respeito à SBU, a CIA parece ter tido um papel central no desenvolvimento da capacidade operacional da agência e em torná-la capaz de espionar as “ameaças” representadas pelas milícias separatistas do Donbass, atuando fortemente dentro da zona de conflito.
As atividades concentraram-se inicialmente no reconhecimento e na sabotagem contra as milícias, mas posteriormente as táticas tornaram-se cada vez mais letais. Isto supostamente causou “desconforto” entre os próprios americanos. O texto relata que os agentes da CIA começaram a sentir-se incomodados com os métodos criminosos de assassinato utilizados pelos seus parceiros ucranianos, o que alegadamente gerou uma diminuição da cooperação entre ambas as partes.
O texto menciona que mesmo os agentes mais experientes que concordam com o uso de técnicas clandestinas para assassinar opositores ficaram chocados com as práticas ucranianas. Segundo as fontes, os americanos discordaram não só dos métodos, mas também da escolha das vítimas, já que Kiev opta rotineiramente por matar civis sem relevância estratégica no conflito – como aconteceu com Daria Dugina, jornalista e filha do filósofo Aleksandr Dugin.
“A afinidade da Ucrânia com operações letais complicou a sua colaboração com a CIA, levantando preocupações sobre a cumplicidade da agência e criando desconforto entre alguns responsáveis em Kiev e Washington. Mesmo aqueles que consideram tais missões letais como defensáveis em tempo de guerra questionam a utilidade de certos ataques e decisões que levou ao ataque a civis, incluindo Dugina ou ao seu pai, Alexander Dugin – que as autoridades reconhecem ser o alvo pretendido – em vez de russos mais diretamente ligados à guerra”, lê-se no artigo.
No entanto, é ingênuo acreditar que a CIA tenha realmente investido tanto dinheiro em Kiev e tenha ficado “chocada” com os métodos ucranianos. A inteligência americana é conhecida mundialmente pela crueldade com que trata os seus inimigos, e não há razão para acreditar que a CIA exigiria uma conduta “ética” de Kiev. Além disso, há provas e trabalhos de investigação que demonstram que mesmo as técnicas de tortura utilizadas pelo regime de Kiev foram certamente instruídas a agentes ucranianos pela CIA.
O que parece estar a acontecer é simplesmente mais uma tentativa dos EUA de escapar à responsabilidade pelos crimes cometidos por Kiev. Esta não é a primeira vez que fontes americanas alegam que, apesar das relações de inteligência dos EUA com a Ucrânia, não houve participação de agentes americanos nos crimes de Kiev. Relativamente ao caso específico de Daria Dugina, o New York Times já tinha noticiado há mais de um ano que a inteligência ucraniana era responsável pelo crime, alegadamente sem qualquer cooperação americana.
No entanto, é quase impossível para os EUA não terem controle total sobre as atitudes da inteligência ucraniana. Mesmo que o plano para matar Dugina e outros civis tenha sido eventualmente proposto pelos ucranianos, a CIA certamente tinha poder suficiente para impedir a ação de Kiev, se quisesse, uma vez que o estado ucraniano é claramente um vassalo dos EUA. Assim, parece claro que, se não a participação direta, pelo menos algum tipo de “luz verde” foi dada pelos EUA, tornando Washington co-responsável por todos os crimes da inteligência ucraniana.
No contexto atual de mudança de foco na política externa americana, com a Ucrânia a perder o seu estatuto de prioridade para Israel, estes relatos da comunicação social desempenham um papel muito importante, que consiste em preparar a opinião pública para um “abandono” gradual da Ucrânia. Durante mais de um ano, os leitores dos meios de comunicação ocidentais sofreram uma lavagem cerebral para acreditarem que “defender” a Ucrânia era uma necessidade vital. Agora é preciso fazer com que a opinião pública “esqueça” a Ucrânia e apoie o envio de armas e dinheiro para Israel.
E a forma mais fácil de reverter a simpatia pela Ucrânia incutida nos cidadãos ao longo do tempo é mostrar os crimes cometidos pelo regime – omitindo que os EUA foram co-participantes em todos eles.
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Amid rapid AI progress, the authors of this paper express a consensus on the large-scale risks from upcoming, powerful AI systems. They call for urgent governance measures and a major shift in AI R&D towards safety and ethical practices before these systems are developed.
In 2019, GPT-2 could not reliably count to ten. Only four years later, deep learning systems can write software, generate photorealistic scenes on demand, advise on intellectual topics, and combine language and image processing to steer robots.
As AI developers scale these systems, unforeseen abilities and behaviors emerge spontaneously without explicit programming[1]. Progress in AI has been swift and, to many, surprising.
The pace of progress may surprise us again. Current deep learning systems still lack important capabilities and we do not know how long it will take to develop them.
However, companies are engaged in a race to create generalist AI systems that match or exceed human abilities in most cognitive work[2, 3].
They are rapidly deploying more resources and developing new techniques to increase AI capabilities. Progress in AI also enables faster progress: AI assistants are increasingly used to automate programming[4] and data collection[5, 6]to further improve AI systems[7].
There is no fundamental reason why AI progress would slow or halt at the human level. Indeed, AI has already surpassed human abilities in narrow domains like protein folding or strategy games[8, 9, 10].
Compared to humans, AI systems can act faster, absorb more knowledge, and communicate at a far higher bandwidth. Additionally, they can be scaled to use immense computational resources and can be replicated by the millions.
The rate of improvement is already staggering, and tech companies have the cash reserves needed to scale the latest training runs by multiples of 100 to 1000 soon[11]. Combined with the ongoing growth and automation in AI R&D, we must take seriously the possibility that generalist AI systems will outperform human abilities across many critical domains within this decade or the next.
What happens then?
If managed carefully and distributed fairly, advanced AI systems could help humanity cure diseases, elevate living standards, and protect our ecosystems.
The opportunities AI offers are immense. But alongside advanced AI capabilities come large-scale risks that we are not on track to handle well. Humanity is pouring vast resources into making AI systems more powerful, but far less into safety and mitigating harms. For AI to be a boon, we must reorient; pushing AI capabilities alone is not enough.
We are already behind schedule for this reorientation. We must anticipate the amplification of ongoing harms, as well as novel risks, and prepare for the largest risks well before they materialize. Climate change has taken decades to be acknowledged and confronted; for AI, decades could be too long.
Societal-scale Risks
AI systems could rapidly come to outperform humans in an increasing number of tasks. If such systems are not carefully designed and deployed, they pose a range of societal-scale risks. They threaten to amplify social injustice, erode social stability, and weaken our shared understanding of reality that is foundational to society.
They could also enable large-scale criminal or terrorist activities.
Especially in the hands of a few powerful actors, AI could cement or exacerbate global inequities, or facilitate automated warfare, customized mass manipulation, and pervasive surveillance[12, 13].
Many of these risks could soon be amplified, and new risks created, as companies are developing autonomous AI: systems that can plan, act in the world, and pursue goals.
While current AI systems have limited autonomy, work is underway to change this[14]. For example, the non-autonomous GPT-4 model was quickly adapted to browse the web[15], design and execute chemistry experiments[16], and utilize software tools[17], including other AI models[18].
If we build highly advanced autonomous AI, we risk creating systems that pursue undesirable goals. Malicious actors could deliberately embed harmful objectives. Moreover, no one currently knows how to reliably align AI behavior with complex values. Even well-meaning developers may inadvertently build AI systems that pursue unintended goals—especially if, in a bid to win the AI race, they neglect expensive safety testing and human oversight.
Once autonomous AI systems pursue undesirable goals, embedded by malicious actors or by accident, we may be unable to keep them in check. Control of software is an old and unsolved problem: computer worms have long been able to proliferate and avoid detection[19]. However, AI is making progress in critical domains such as hacking, social manipulation, deception, and strategic planning[14, 20]. Advanced autonomous AI systems will pose unprecedented control challenges.
To advance undesirable goals, future autonomous AI systems could use undesirable strategies—learned from humans or developed independently—as a means to an end[21, 22, 23, 24]. AI systems could gain human trust, acquire financial resources, influence key decision-makers, and form coalitions with human actors and other AI systems.
To avoid human intervention[24], they could copy their algorithms across global server networks like computer worms. AI assistants are already co-writing a large share of computer code worldwide[25]; future AI systems could insert and then exploit security vulnerabilities to control the computer systems behind our communication, media, banking, supply-chains, militaries, and governments. In open conflict, AI systems could threaten with or use autonomous or biological weapons. AI having access to such technology would merely continue existing trends to automate military activity, biological research, and AI development itself. If AI systems pursued such strategies with sufficient skill, it would be difficult for humans to intervene.
Finally, AI systems may not need to plot for influence if it is freely handed over. As autonomous AI systems increasingly become faster and more cost-effective than human workers, a dilemma emerges.
Companies, governments, and militaries might be forced to deploy AI systems widely and cut back on expensive human verification of AI decisions, or risk being outcompeted[26, 27]. As a result, autonomous AI systems could increasingly assume critical societal roles.
Without sufficient caution, we may irreversibly lose control of autonomous AI systems, rendering human intervention ineffective. Large-scale cybercrime, social manipulation, and other highlighted harms could then escalate rapidly. This unchecked AI advancement could culminate in a large-scale loss of life and the biosphere, and the marginalization or even extinction of humanity.
Harms such as misinformation and discrimination from algorithms are already evident today[28]; other harms show signs of emerging[20]. It is vital to both address ongoing harms and anticipate emerging risks. This is not a question of either/or. Present and emerging risks often share similar mechanisms, patterns, and solutions[29]; investing in governance frameworks and AI safety will bear fruit on multiple fronts[30].
A Path Forward
If advanced autonomous AI systems were developed today, we would not know how to make them safe, nor how to properly test their safety. Even if we did, governments would lack the institutions to prevent misuse and uphold safe practices. That does not, however, mean there is no viable path forward. To ensure a positive outcome, we can and must pursue research breakthroughs in AI safety and ethics and promptly establish effective government oversight.
Reorienting Technical R&D
We need research breakthroughs to solve some of today’s technical challenges in creating AI with safe and ethical objectives. Some of these challenges are unlikely to be solved by simply making AI systems more capable[22, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35]. These include:
Oversight and honesty: More capable AI systems are better able to exploit weaknesses in oversight and testing[32, 36, 37] —for example, by producing false but compelling output[35, 38].
Robustness: AI systems behave unpredictably in new situations (under distribution shift or adversarial inputs)[39, 40, 34].
Interpretability: AI decision-making is opaque. So far, we can only test large models via trial and error. We need to learn to understand their inner workings[41].
Risk evaluations: Frontier AI systems develop unforeseen capabilities only discovered during training or even well after deployment[42]. Better evaluation is needed to detect hazardous capabilities earlier[43, 44].
Addressing emerging challenges: More capable future AI systems may exhibit failure modes we have so far seen only in theoretical models. AI systems might, for example, learn to feign obedience or exploit weaknesses in our safety objectives and shutdown mechanisms to advance a particular goal[24, 45].
Given the stakes, we call on major tech companies and public funders to allocate at least one-third of their AI R&D budget to ensuring safety and ethical use, comparable to their funding for AI capabilities. Addressing these problems[34], with an eye toward powerful future systems, must become central to our field.
Urgent Governance Measures
We urgently need national institutions and international governance to enforce standards in order to prevent recklessness and misuse. Many areas of technology, from pharmaceuticals to financial systems and nuclear energy, show that society both requires and effectively uses governance to reduce risks. However, no comparable governance frameworks are currently in place for AI.
Without them, companies and countries may seek a competitive edge by pushing AI capabilities to new heights while cutting corners on safety, or by delegating key societal roles to AI systems with little human oversight[26]. Like manufacturers releasing waste into rivers to cut costs, they may be tempted to reap the rewards of AI development while leaving society to deal with the consequences.
To keep up with rapid progress and avoid inflexible laws, national institutions need strong technical expertise and the authority to act swiftly. To address international race dynamics, they need the affordance to facilitate international agreements and partnerships[46, 47]. To protect low-risk use and academic research, they should avoid undue bureaucratic hurdles for small and predictable AI models. The most pressing scrutiny should be on AI systems at the frontier: a small number of most powerful AI systems – trained on billion-dollar supercomputers – which will have the most hazardous and unpredictable capabilities[48, 49].
To enable effective regulation, governments urgently need comprehensive insight into AI development. Regulators should require model registration, whistleblower protections, incident reporting, and monitoring of model development and supercomputer usage[48, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55]. Regulators also need access to advanced AI systems before deployment to evaluate them for dangerous capabilities such as autonomous self-replication, breaking into computer systems, or making pandemic pathogens widely accessible[43, 56, 57].
For AI systems with hazardous capabilities, we need a combination of governance mechanisms[48, 52, 58, 59] matched to the magnitude of their risks.
Regulators should create national and international safety standards that depend on model capabilities. They should also hold frontier AI developers and owners legally accountable for harms from their models that can be reasonably foreseen and prevented.
These measures can prevent harm and create much-needed incentives to invest in safety. Further measures are needed for exceptionally capable future AI systems, such as models that could circumvent human control.
Governments must be prepared to license their development, pause development in response to worrying capabilities, mandate access controls, and require information security measures robust to state-level hackers, until adequate protections are ready.To bridge the time until regulations are in place, major AI companies should promptly lay out if-then commitments: specific safety measures they will take if specific red-line capabilities are found in their AI systems. These commitments should be detailed and independently scrutinized.
AI may be the technology that shapes this century. While AI capabilities are advancing rapidly, progress in safety and governance is lagging behind. To steer AI toward positive outcomes and away from catastrophe, we need to reorient. There is a responsible path, if we have the wisdom to take it.
*
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Authors
Yoshua Bengio,Mila – Quebec AI Institute, Université de Montréal, Canada CIFAR AI Chair
Geoffrey Hinton,University of Toronto, Vector Institute
Andrew Yao,Tsinghua University
Dawn Song,University of California, Berkeley
Pieter Abbeel, University of California, Berkeley
Yuval Noah Harari,The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Department of History
Ya-Qin Zhang, Tsinghua University
Lan Xue, Tsinghua University, Institute for AI International Governance
Shai Shalev-Shwartz,The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Gillian Hadfield, University of Toronto, SR Institute for Technology and Society, Vector Institute
Jeff Clune,University of British Columbia, Canada CIFAR AI Chair, Vector Institute
Tegan Maharaj,University of Toronto, Vector Institute
Frank Hutter, University of Freiburg
Atılım Güneş Baydin,University of Oxford
Sheila McIlrath, University of Toronto, Vector Institute
Qiqi Gao, East China University of Political Science and Law
Ashwin Acharya,Institute for AI Policy and Strategy
David Krueger,University of Cambridge
Anca Dragan,University of California, Berkeley
Philip Torr,University of Oxford
Stuart Russell,University of California, Berkeley
Daniel Kahneman, Princeton University, School of Public and International Affairs
Jan Brauner*,University of Oxford
Sören Mindermann*, Mila – Quebec AI Institute
Notes
Emergent Abilities of Large Language Models[link] Wei, J., Tay, Y., Bommasani, R., Raffel, C., Zoph, B., Borgeaud, S. and others,, 2022. Transactions on Machine Learning Research.
Constitutional AI: Harmlessness from AI Feedback[PDF] Bai, Y., Kadavath, S., Kundu, S., Askell, A., Kernion, J., Jones, A. and others,, 2022. arXiv [cs.CL].
Examples of AI Improving AI[link] Woodside, T. and Safety, C.f.A., 2023.
Highly Accurate Protein Structure Prediction with AlphaFold Jumper, J., Evans, R., Pritzel, A., Green, T., Figurnov, M., Ronneberger, O. and others,, 2021. Nature, pp. 583–589.
Superhuman AI for Multiplayer Poker Brown, N. and Sandholm, T., 2019. Science, pp. 885–890.
Deep Blue Campbell, M., Hoane, A. and Hsu, F., 2002. Artificial Intelligence, pp. 57–83.
An Overview of Catastrophic AI Risks[PDF] Hendrycks, D., Mazeika, M. and Woodside, T., 2023. arXiv [cs.CY].
Taxonomy of Risks Posed by Language Models Weidinger, L., Uesato, J., Rauh, M., Griffin, C., Huang, P., Mellor, J. and others,, 2022. Proceedings of the 2022 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, pp. 214–229.
A Survey on Large Language Model based Autonomous Agents[PDF] Wang, L., Ma, C., Feng, X., Zhang, Z., Yang, H., Zhang, J. and others,, 2023. arXiv [cs.AI].
ChemCrow: Augmenting Large Language Models with Chemistry Tools[PDF] Bran, A., Cox, S., White, A. and Schwaller, P., 2023. arXiv [physics.chem-ph].
Augmented Language Models: a Survey[PDF] Mialon, G., Dessì, R., Lomeli, M., Nalmpantis, C., Pasunuru, R., Raileanu, R. and others,, 2023. arXiv [cs.CL].
HuggingGPT: Solving AI Tasks with ChatGPT and its Friends in Hugging Face[PDF] Shen, Y., Song, K., Tan, X., Li, D., Lu, W., Zhuang, Y. and others,, 2023. arXiv [cs.CL].
The Science of Computing: The Internet Worm Denning, P., 1989. American Scientist, pp. 126–128.
AI Deception: A Survey of Examples, Risks, and Potential Solutions[PDF] Park, P., Goldstein, S., O’Gara, A., Chen, M. and Hendrycks, D., 2023. arXiv [cs.CY].
Optimal Policies Tend to Seek Power[PDF] Turner, A., Smith, L., Shah, R. and Critch, A., 2019. Thirty-Fifth Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems.
Discovering Language Model Behaviors with Model-Written Evaluations[PDF] Perez, E., Ringer, S., Lukošiūtė, K., Nguyen, K., Chen, E. and Heiner, S., 2022. arXiv [cs.CL].
Do the Rewards Justify the Means? Measuring Trade-Offs Between Rewards and Ethical Behavior in the MACHIAVELLI Benchmark Pan, A., Chan, J., Zou, A., Li, N., Basart, S. and Woodside, T., 2023. International Conference on Machine Learning.
The Off-Switch Game Hadfield-Menell, D., Dragan, A., Abbeel, P. and Russell, S., 2017. Proceedings of the Twenty-Sixth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, pp. 220–227.
Natural Selection Favors AIs over Humans[PDF] Hendrycks, D., 2023. arXiv [cs.CY].
Harms from Increasingly Agentic Algorithmic Systems Chan, A., Salganik, R., Markelius, A., Pang, C., Rajkumar, N. and Krasheninnikov, D., 2023. Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, pp. 651–666. Association for Computing Machinery.
On the Opportunities and Risks of Foundation Models[PDF] Bommasani, R., Hudson, D., Adeli, E., Altman, R., Arora, S. and von Arx, S., 2021. arXiv [cs.LG].
AI Poses Doomsday Risks—But That Doesn’t Mean We Shouldn’t Talk About Present Harms Too[link] Brauner, J. and Chan, A., 2023. Time.
Inverse Scaling: When Bigger Isn’t Better[PDF] McKenzie, I., Lyzhov, A., Pieler, M., Parrish, A., Mueller, A. and Prabhu, A., 2023. Transactions on Machine Learning Research.
The Effects of Reward Misspecification: Mapping and Mitigating Misaligned Models[link] Pan, A., Bhatia, K. and Steinhardt, J., 2022. International Conference on Learning Representations.
Simple Synthetic Data Reduces Sycophancy in Large Language Models[PDF] Wei, J., Huang, D., Lu, Y., Zhou, D. and Le, Q., 2023. arXiv [cs.CL].
Unsolved Problems in ML Safety[PDF] Hendrycks, D., Carlini, N., Schulman, J. and Steinhardt, J., 2021. arXiv [cs.LG].
Open Problems and Fundamental Limitations of Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback[PDF] Casper, S., Davies, X., Shi, C., Gilbert, T., Scheurer, J. and Rando, J., 2023. arXiv [cs.AI].
Consequences of Misaligned AI Zhuang, S. and Hadfield-Menell, D., 2020. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, Vol 33, pp. 15763–15773.
Scaling Laws for Reward Model Overoptimization Gao, L., Schulman, J. and Hilton, J., 2023. Proceedings of the 40th International Conference on Machine Learning, pp. 10835–10866. PMLR.
Learning from human preferences[link] Amodei, D., Christiano, P. and Ray, A., 2017.
Goal Misgeneralization in Deep Reinforcement Learning[link] Langosco di Langosco, A. and Chan, A., 2022. International Conference on Learning Representations.
Goal Misgeneralization: Why Correct Specifications Aren’t Enough For Correct Goals[PDF] Shah, R., Varma, V., Kumar, R., Phuong, M., Krakovna, V., Uesato, J. and others,, 2022. arXiv [cs.LG].
Toward Transparent AI: A Survey on Interpreting the Inner Structures of Deep Neural Networks Räuker, T., Ho, A., Casper, S. and Hadfield-Menell, D., 2023. 2023 IEEE Conference on Secure and Trustworthy Machine Learning (SaTML), pp. 464–483.
Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Models Wei, J., Wang, X., Schuurmans, D., Bosma, M., Ichter, B., Xia, F. and others,, 2022. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, Vol 35, pp. 24824–24837.
Model evaluation for extreme risks[PDF] Shevlane, T., Farquhar, S., Garfinkel, B., Phuong, M., Whittlestone, J., Leung, J. and others,, 2023. arXiv [cs.AI].
Risk assessment at AGI companies: A review of popular risk assessment techniques from other safety-critical industries[PDF] Koessler, L. and Schuett, J., 2023. arXiv [cs.CY].
The Alignment Problem from a Deep Learning Perspective[PDF] Ngo, R., Chan, L. and Mindermann, S., 2022. arXiv [cs.AI].
International Institutions for Advanced AI Ho, L., Barnhart, J., Trager, R., Bengio, Y., Brundage, M., Carnegie, A. and others,, 2023. arXiv [cs.CY]. DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2307.04699
International Governance of Civilian AI: A Jurisdictional Certification Approach[PDF] Trager, R., Harack, B., Reuel, A., Carnegie, A., Heim, L., Ho, L. and others,, 2023.
Frontier AI Regulation: Managing Emerging Risks to Public Safety[PDF] Anderljung, M., Barnhart, J., Korinek, A., Leung, J., O’Keefe, C., Whittlestone, J. and others,, 2023. arXiv [cs.CY].
Predictability and Surprise in Large Generative Models Ganguli, D., Hernandez, D., Lovitt, L., Askell, A., Bai, Y., Chen, A. and others,, 2022. Proceedings of the 2022 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, pp. 1747–1764. Association for Computing Machinery.
It’s Time to Create a National Registry for Large AI Models[link] Hadfield, G., Cuéllar, M. and O’Reilly, T., 2023. Carnegie Endowment for International Piece.
Model Cards for Model Reporting Mitchell, M., Wu, S., Zaldivar, A., Barnes, P., Vasserman, L., Hutchinson, B. and others,, 2019. FAT* ’19: Proceedings of the Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, pp. 220–229.
General Purpose AI Poses Serious Risks, Should Not Be Excluded From the EU’s AI Act | Policy Brief[link] 2023. AI Now Institute.
The Promise and Perils of Tech Whistleblowing[link] Bloch-Wehba, H., 2023. Northwestern University Law Review, Forthcoming.
Proposing a Foundation Model Information-Sharing Regime for the UK[link] Mulani, N. and Whittlestone, J., 2023. Centre for the Governance of AI.
Auditing Large Language Models: a Three-Layered Approach Mökander, J., Schuett, J., Kirk, H. and Floridi, L., 2023. AI and Ethics. DOI: 10.1007/s43681-023-00289-2
Can Large Language Models Democratize Access to Dual-Use Biotechnology?[PDF] Soice, E., Rocha, R., Cordova, K., Specter, M. and Esvelt, K., 2023. arXiv [cs.CY].
Towards Best Practices in AGI Safety and Governance: A survey of Expert Opinion[PDF] Schuett, J., Dreksler, N., Anderljung, M., McCaffary, D., Heim, L., Bluemke, E. and others,, 2023. arXiv [cs.CY].
Regulatory Markets: The Future of AI Governance[PDF] Hadfield, G. and Clark, J., 2023. arXiv [cs.AI].
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***
July 2023 – Brisbane, Australia – Emma Perkins was 12 weeks pregnant when she was diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer in July 2022, which was likely terminal. She had 11 rounds of chemo while pregnant and her son was born Feb. 2023 healthy.
There are many stories being published about women getting late Stage breast cancer during pregnancy but why? Here are 20 cases.
Oct. 19, 2023 – Savannah, GA – 35 year old Lateia Parker was diagnosed with Triple negative breast cancer (worst prognosis) while pregnant with her daughter Jynesis).
Oct. 2, 2023 – Naperville, IL – Alex Thompson was diagnosed with Breast cancer during pregnancy, which became Stage 4 and metastasized.
Sep. 30, 2023 – Raleigh, NC – Suzanne Macauley Vargas was diagnosed with Stage 3B inflammatory breast cancer while pregnant.
Sep. 24, 2023 – Little Falls, MN – 32 year old Dani Thomsen was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer in 2019 and after treatment was declared cancer free. However in 2022, during pregnancy with her 2nd child, she was found to have a mass embedded in her chest wall “The Mayo doctors hadn’t seen this happen before and weren’t sure how to proceed at first”. It was a breast cancer recurrence.
Sep. 19, 2023 – Denton, TX – Amanda Anderson-Barberis was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer while pregnant with her 3rd child, and died when he was 9 months old.
Sep. 14, 2023 – Vienna – 41 year old Gudrun Pospisil was diagnosed with breast cancer while pregnant with her second child in Sep. 2022 and died one year later.
Aug. 13, 2023 – Fenton, MO – Nicole Waggoner is a nurse. While 23 weeks pregnant with baby #3, she was diagnosed with breast cancer (unknown stage).
July 25, 2023 – Minneapolis, MN – Lindsey Mercil noticed a lump while pregnant, she had a miscarriage and was diagnosed with Stage 3 Triple Negative Breast cancer (worst prognosis). She has just finished 16 rounds of chemo.
July 24, 2023 – Harrisonville, MO – Haley Cramer found a lump on her breast at 19 weeks pregnancy which was confirmed to be a triple negative breast cancer (worst prognosis).
July 14, 2023 – Kerrville, TX – Mica Mccormick was diagnosed with Stage 4 Triple Negative Breast Cancer (worst prognosis) while pregnant.
June 26, 2023 – Sunderland, UK – 39 year old Kelly Ross was diagnosed with grade 3 breast cancer in Oct. 2022 while 28 weeks pregnant with her son Rudy. She completed chemo in May 2023.
June 25, 2023 – Rutledge, GA – Karen Vincent had health problems during pregnancy, her baby was delivered at 26 weeks by C-section and she was found to have Stage 4 breast cancer with metastases to bones, liver and brain.
May 26, 2023 – Gainesville, FL – 28 year old Sami Pickens was diagnosed with Stage 1 breast cancer in 2019. She was cancer free for 2 years, however, when she was pregnant in 2022, she was found to have breast cancer recurrence metastatic to lungs liver and bones. She died on May 26, 2023.
May 23, 2023 – Lawton, OK – Rocki Novotny was diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer the size of a lime and metastatic lymph nodes throughout her body in May 2022. She suspects she had developed cancer while pregnant with her baby whom she delivered in Nov. 2021.
May 4, 2023 – Jena, LA – 26 year old Samantha Wilks was diagnosed with Stage 3 Triple Negative Breast Cancer (worst prognosis) while pregnant with her first child.
Apr. 6, 2023 – Vassar, MI – Tammy Baldwin was diagnosed with breast cancer while pregnant with her 5th child. It is an aggressive cancer.
Apr. 4, 2023 – Cowiche, WA – 31 year old Danielle Baughman was diagnosed with breast cancer while 29 weeks pregnant on Dec. 27, 2021. She was cancer free as of June 2022 but she had a seizure and was found to have a brain metastasis (Stage 4) in March 2023.
Mar. 14, 2023 – Elk Grove, CA – Destini Beltrama was diagnosed with Stage 4 Breast cancer metastatic to bones, pelvis, thorax and her brain, while pregnant.
Mar. 5, 2023 – Clermont, FL – Kimberly Luitweiler felt a lump on her breast while pregnant and close to delivery and was diagnosed with an aggressive breast cancer shortly after delivery.
Feb. 22, 2023 – Duncan, BC – Rebecca Beaulieu was diagnosed with breast cancer in Jan.2023 while she was pregnant and had to have a mastectomy.
Feb. 17, 2023 – Lakeland, MN – Amber Strand was diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer while pregnant. She is currently on chemo.
My Take…
Cancer during pregnancy is rare and before COVID-19 mRNA vaccines approximately 1:1000 pregnancies were complicated by maternal cancer.
Of these, breast cancer is most common, corresponding to between 1:3000 to 1:10000 pregnancies, according to a 2022 Dutch study by Boere et al.
COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines are causing Turbo Cancers in young people and breast cancer is in the top 3 most common cancers caused by Pfizer or Moderna mRNA.
Since 2021, there are far more Stage 3 and Stage 4 Breast cancers being diagnosed in pregnant women. They are present in GoFund me in 2020 and prior but in much smaller numbers.
The key question I ask is:
Are these Stage 3 and 4 Breast cancers in pregnancy just a reflection of skyrocketing Turbo Cancers in COVID-19 mRNA vaccinated reproductive age women, or
Does pregnancy itself increase the risk of Turbo Cancer manifesting in a COVID-19 mRNA Vaccinated woman? (In other words, would the same woman still have gotten Stage 3 or 4 breast cancer, at the same point in time, if she hadn’t gotten pregnant?)
I don’t know the answer.
Furthermore, Triple Negative breast cancer (the worst prognosis), seems to be the most common subtype of Turbo Breast Cancer (whether in pregnancy or not).
Oncologists should be studying these questions, unfortunately selling mRNA vaccines for Pfizer & Moderna shareholders pays much better, and keeps their licenses, academic promotions, and grant funding safe and sound.
FINAL THOUGHT: This is not just happening with breast cancer, and I will address other Stage 4 Turbo cancers in pregnancy in future substack articles.
*
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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 NaturalNews.com
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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***
This piece was originally commissioned by an editor at The Guardian, who asked me to write about the wave of retaliation and censorship of political expression in solidarity with Palestinians that we’ve seen in the past two weeks.
Amid my work as an attorney on some of the resulting cases, I carved out some time to write the following. Minutes before it was supposed to be published, the head of the opinion desk wrote me an email that they were unable to run the piece. When I called her for an explanation she had none, and blamed an unnamed higher-up. That a piece on censorship would get killed in this way—without explanation, but plainly in the interest of political suppression—is, beyond the irony of the matter, a grave indictment of the media response to this critical moment in history.
—Dylan Saba
***
On October 8, the morning after Hamas launched an attack from the Gaza strip that killed 1,400 Israelis, Ha’aretz—Israel’s paper of record—published an editorial laying blame for the massacre squarely on Prime Minister Netanyahu and his government. “The disaster that befell Israel,” the editorial board wrote, “is the clear responsibility of one person: Benjamin Netanyahu.” Netanyahu “completely failed to identify the dangers he was consciously leading Israel into when establishing a government of annexation and dispossession” and “embracing a foreign policy that openly ignored the existence and rights of Palestinians.” It was a damning and powerful indictment.
Two days later, Ryna Workman, the student body president of NYU Law School, sent out a newsletter to classmates as Israel’s retaliatory assault on the Gaza Strip was well underway. Expanding on the Ha’aretz editorial board’s language, Workman wrote that “Israel bears full responsibility for this tremendous loss of life.” Workman also affirmed their solidarity with the Palestinian people in their struggle against oppression.
Almost immediately, they faced a torrent of backlash in the form of online disparagement and right-wing media attention. In response to pressure, the dean of the law school publicly condemned Workman’s remarks. By the evening, the law firm Winston & Strawn, where Workman had planned to work after graduating, publicly withdrew their job offer without so much as a phone call. The university then unilaterally removed Workman from their position as student body president without any disciplinary process, and threatened further charges—all for daring to speak out.
Workman is not alone. Across the US, people speaking out on behalf of Palestinian human rights and against Israeli war crimes, apartheid policies, and settler-colonial expansion that have been unfolding over nearly eight decades are facing a wave of McCarthyite backlash directly targeting their future careers and livelihoods. Students at other prominent universities have faced the same: the leaders of Harvard University student groups were doxxed and smeared for signing a statement also expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people. Their names and faces were plastered on a mobile billboard truck that roamed around campus for days, and a “College Terror List” circulated online accusing them of antisemitism. Several also lost job offers. A Berkeley law professor published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal imploring legal employers not to hire his own students and smearing them as antisemitic.
This new McCarthyist purge is not limited to students. Jackson Frank, a sports journalist in Philadelphia, was fired by Phillyvoice.com on October 10 after expressing solidarity with Palestinians. A campaign to remove a Palestinian Columbia professor is underway, with a petition circulating that has tens of thousands of signatures. These are just some of the highest-profile, most public cases.
That there is a growing chorus of support for Palestinian rights is galvanizing, and should come as no surprise. Over the past decade, the Palestine solidarity movement has made major headway in exposing Israel’s apartheid policies and dispossession of Palestine and building grassroots support for change. At the same time, this growing movement has been met with new forms of suppression from Israeli advocacy groups, who have increasingly turned to blacklists, doxxing, and harassment to stifle dissent.
At Palestine Legal—the nonprofit organization where I work, which provides legal support to the Palestine solidarity movement—we’ve received hundreds of requests for assistance over the past two weeks, an exponential surge in our caseload. Many of those who have come to us are individuals facing negative consequences in their workplace for social media posts. Professors are being questioned, having their classes canceled, and getting locked out of email over statements supporting Palestinian rights, including in private communications.
In the vast majority of instances, the individuals targeted are Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, or Black, and many have faced racist and dehumanizing harassment as a result of the smears. Since 2014, we’ve handled thousands of such incidents—suppression of speech supporting Palestinian rights is nothing new—but it’s never been this bad.
At a time when the United States is backing Israel’s wanton destruction of the besieged Gaza Strip, in what some scholars have called a “textbook case of genocide,” principled dissent is of paramount importance.
As 540+ members of the legal community have urged in a statement, it is incumbent upon our elected officials, institutional decision-makers and all who care about preserving democracy to protect dissent on a matter of such domestic and international significance, and to prevent the racist targeting of communities based on their ethnic, racial, and religious identities and political views.
While the backlash we have seen is different in nature and degree to anything we have witnessed in recent years, activists—particularly of the youngest generations—also seem more resilient than ever and more willing to speak against injustice in Palestine despite the personal risks. Some, such as Ryna Workman, have used the spotlight thrust on them to continue to support Palestinian rights and oppose genocide.
But this level of bravery is not a fair thing to ask of already vulnerable people who are calling for justice and human rights. A failure to stop this new McCarthyism would be to surrender to the forces of reaction that tragically are carrying the day.
Dylan Saba is a Staff Attorney at Palestine Legal, where he advises Palestine human rights advocates on a number of issues, such as free speech violations, employment discrimination, bullying, and disciplinary actions.
Prior to joining Palestine Legal, Dylan worked as a Staff Attorney for New York Legal Assistance Group’s Tenants’ Rights Unit. There, he represented low income New Yorkers in eviction proceedings and advised tenants on housing matters across New York City.
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October 25th, 2023 by His Excellency Carlo Maria Viganò
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***
Three years ago I was among the first – and certainly the first Bishop – to denounce pandemic and vaccination fraud. Expressed with arguments that today emerge as true and well-founded are the critical issues and immorality of an experimental gene treatment, which aborted fetuses were and are used to produce. I also wrote two open letters to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which remain unanswered.
There were those in conservative circles who went so far as to attack me personally and resorted to the unproven and clearly false statements of a doctor who worked with her husband for Big Pharma.
I expressed my dismay at the silence of the bishops, priests, and parish pastors, of many religious workers involved in hospitals, and at the servile zeal with which the Catholic Hierarchy conformed to the crazy and criminal health regulations and Bergoglio’s promotion of the serum. I was publicly insulted on television and in the media, while my brother bishops were silent. Faced with a crime against humanity that has continued to take place before our eyes for three years with the approval and encouragement of Bergoglio, I would have thought that many Pastors would have found the courage to raise their voices and join in my denunciation of the plan of world depopulation implemented by the Word Economic Forum, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the WHO, and the UN, while the funds of these criminals were also given to the Vatican, transforming Bergoglio into a vaccine salesman and a supporter of climate fraud, which has now become “magisterium” with Laudate Deum and with the “Amazonian and synodal church.”
Nemo propheta in sua patria. But if today some priests surrender to the evidence and ask Catholic journalists to tell the truth about the adverse effects, I wonder with what serenity they have so far silenced their conscience, and if their silence and fearful silence – like that of the doctors, police forces, magistrates, teachers and governors – has not turned into a timid protest today just because they see the showdown approaching and fear for their own reputation more than for the health of the billions of people subjected to the inoculation of a product that was known from the beginning to be dangerous and even lethal.
Their silence on the pandemic fraud is identical to that on the apostasy of the Catholic Hierarchy. And the moral responsibility that weighs on them will remain as an indelible stain for which they will have to answer to God, to men, and to History.
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Featured image is from LifeSiteNews
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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***
My phone is not being returned to me by police as, astonishingly, I am now formally under investigation for terrorism. Whether this relates to support for Palestine or for Wikileaks has currently not been made clear.
What follows is, unspun and unvarnished, my account of my interview under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act as given to my lawyers:
I arrived from Keflavik airport, Iceland to Glasgow airport at about 10am on Monday 16 October. After passport control I was stopped by three police officers, two male and one female, who asked me to accompany them to a detention room.
They seated me in the room and told me:
I was detained under Section 7 of the Terrorism Act
I was not arrested but detained, and therefore had no right to a lawyer.
I had no right to remain silent. I had to give full and accurate information in response to questions. It was a criminal offence to withhold any relevant information.
I had to give up any passwords to my devices. It was a criminal offence not to do this.
They searched my baggage and my coat, going through my documents and taking my phone and laptop. They did not look at one document from Julian Assange’s lawyers that I told them was privileged.
They asked me about boarding cards for Brussels and Dublin they found and what I had been doing there. I replied I was at a debate at Trinity College in Dublin, while in Brussels I had attended a human rights meeting focused on the case of Julian Assange.
They asked me to identify the individuals from some visiting cards I had from the Brussels meeting (one was a German MP).
They asked me the purpose of my visit to Iceland. I told them that I was attending a coordinating meeting of the campaign to free Julian Assange. I said I had also attended a pro-Palestinian rally outside the Icelandic parliament, but that had not been a prior intention.
They asked how I earnt my living. I said from two sources: voluntary subscriptions to my blog, and my civil service pension.
They asked what organisations I am a member of. I said the Alba party. I said I worked with Wikileaks and the Don’t Extradite Assange campaign, but was not formally a “member” of either. I was a life member of the FDA union. No other organisations.
They asked if I received any money from Wikileaks, from Don’t Extradite Assange or from the Assange family (separate questions). I replied no, except occasional travel expenses from Don’t Extradite Assange. In December I had done a tour of Germany and received a fee from the Wau Holland Foundation, a German free speech charity.
They asked what other campaigns I had been involved in. I said many, from the Anti-Nazi League and Anti-Apartheid movement on. I had campaigned for Guantanamo inmates alongside Caged Prisoners.
They asked why I had attended the pro-Palestine demo in Iceland. I said one of the speakers had invited me, Ögmundur Jónasson. He was a former Icelandic Interior Minister. I said I did not know what the speeches said as they were all in Icelandic.
They asked whether I intended to attend any pro-Palestinian rallies in the UK. I said I had no plans but probably would.
They asked how I judged whether to speak alongside others on the same platform. I replied I depended on organisers I trusted, like the Palestine Solidarity Committee or Stop the War. It was impossible to know who everyone was at a big rally.
They asked if anyone else posted to my twitter or blog. I replied no, it was all me.
They asked how considered my tweets were. I replied that those which were links to my blog posts were my considered writing. Others were more ephemeral, and like everyone else I sometimes made mistakes and sometimes apologised. They asked if I deleted tweets and I said very seldom.
I volunteered that I thought I understood the tweet that worried them and agreed it could have been more nuanced. This was the limitation of twitter. It was intended to refer only to the current situation within Gaza and the Palestinian people’s right of self-defence from genocide.
That was more or less it. The interview was kept to exactly an hour and at one point one said to another “18 minutes left”. They did not tell me why. At one point they did mention protected journalistic material on my laptop but I was too dazed to take advantage of this and specify anything.
They took my bank account details and copies of all my bank cards.
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This is an enormous abuse of human rights. The abuse of process in refusing both a lawyer and the right to remain silent, the inquiry into perfectly legal campaigning which is in no way terrorism-associated, the political questioning, the financial snooping and the seizure of material related to my private life, were all based on an utterly fake claim that I am associated with terrorism.
I have to date not been arrested and not charged. Contempt of court is therefore not in play and you are free to comment on the case (although in the current atmosphere any kind of free thought is liable to vicious state action). I am safe and currently in Dublin. I intend next to travel to Switzerland to take this up with the United Nations.
My legal team have already made a submission against this outrage to the United Nations Human Rights Committee and are looking at the possibility of judicial review in the UK. We also have to prepare the defence against possible terrorism charges, ludicrous as that sounds.
I am afraid this all costs money. I am grateful for the unfailing generosity of people in what seems a continual history of persecution.
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***
Tucker Carlson sat down with Col. Douglas Macgregor (ret.), who laid out a disturbing scenario in which the United States could quickly be pulled into a direct conflict with Iran, Russia and China over Israel’s anticipated response to the October 7 Hamas attack.
Carlson starts off highlighting Lindsey Graham, who vowed;
“…if Hezbollah, which is a proxy of Iran, launches a massive attack on Israel, I consider that a threat to the… state of Israel, existential in nature. I will introduce a resolution [in] the United States Senate to allow military action by the United States in conjunction with Israel to knock Iran out of the Oil Business…”
This is truly an occupational disease….US Senator Lindsey Graham: Here is my message: If Hezbollah, the proxy force of Iran, launches a massive attack on Israel, I will consider it an existential threat to the State of Israel. I will introduce a resolution in the United States… pic.twitter.com/FNuAbcNeUZ
“So what would war with Iran mean? Well, it’s hard to know because virtually no one who’s talking about it in public is operating from a deep interest in America’s interest. Is this good for us, or is it not?“
If, as Sen. Graham suggests, we start bombing critical infrastructure in Iran, Macgregor warns
“the destruction would be wholesale” as Iran would target “all the bases we have in Iraq and Syria – with around 1000 Americans – would be targeted… and this time accurately.“
According to Macgregor,
“The chosen destination” if we continue on this path, “is Armageddon,” and the implications (of which nobody seems to be considering) for the United States, Europe, and the Middle East are grave. For example, “just on the economic side, about 20% of the world’s oil passes through the Straits of Hormuz every month – probably 25% of liquefied natural gas, and you’re talking about shutting down 2 to three million barrels a day of oil from Iran.
“You know this entire region is involved in the war. This is not an Iranian Monopoly by any stretch of the imagination,” he continued.
The two also discussed how one of the primary challenges of in contemplating war with Iran is the unpredictable nature of such conflicts. Economic sanctions, which have been the go-to strategy for years, have failed to cripple Iran’s military capabilities. When military force comes into play, a whole new set of unknowns emerges.
The U.S. military, as it stands, may not be adequately prepared for such a conflict – particularly if the enemy has new weapons systems and capabilities.
“We’ve had the luxury of sitting around forward operating bases and striking opponents that were armed with AK-47s, and command detonated mines and the occasional mortar or rocket. Very, very low-intensity combat,” he said, referring to the types of engagements the US military has grown accustomed to.
Nuclear Wildcard?
According to Macgregor,
“This is a high-end, conventional war that we’re looking at, with the potential to go nuclear – which, obviously, I don’t think we or the Russians want to happen, but we have the wild-card in Israel. They do have a nuclear capability.”
“We don’t know what the trip wire is for them to employ such a weapon. At that point of course, all bets are off and I think most of the world would turn against Israel. Right now, they just have to worry about the Muslim world against them,” he continued, explaining that by focusing on Hamas and Hezbollah as immediate threats, the broader implications are obscured. For example, attacking urban environments such as Gaza comes with a high risk of civilian casualties – the consequences of which would catastrophic, both morally and strategically.
“Hezbollah has a very large operation in Mexico,” says Macgregor. “There are no doubt many, many Hezbollah agents inside the United States. We can only begin to imagine the kind of trouble they could cause.”
In the midst of all this, the question arises: How will a war with Iran affect American domestic politics? History shows that war is often used to stifle dissent, but in today’s connected world, censorship can only go so far. Public opinion, initially in favor of violence against Hamas, may wane as the conflict escalates and images of destruction flood the media.
“But what’s most important, I think, for Americans to understand is, if we attack Iran on the basis of Hezbollah’s alleged willingness to attack Israel, if Israel gets into a real shooting war with Hezbollah, they have the largest armed forces in the region.”
Watch:
Ep. 33 Looks like we’re actually going to war with Iran. Are we ready for this? pic.twitter.com/Ap09hWnvnj
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***
Israel, with the backing of its U.S. and European allies, is preparing to launch not only a scorched earth campaign in Gaza but the worst ethnic cleansing since the wars in the former Yugoslavia.
The goal is to drive tens, most probably hundreds of thousands of Palestinians over the southern border at Rafah into refugee camps in Egypt.
The reverberations will be catastrophic, not only for the Palestinians, but throughout the region, almost certainly triggering armed clashes to the north of Israel with Hezbollah in Lebanon and perhaps with Syria and Iran.
The Biden administration, slavishly doing Israel’s bidding, is fueling the madness. The U.S. was the only country to veto the U.N. Security Council resolution calling for humanitarian pauses to deliver food, medicine, water and fuel to Gaza. It has blocked proposals for a ceasefire. It has proposed a draft U.N. Security Council resolution that says Israel has a right to defend itself. The resolution also demands Iran stop exporting arms to “militias and terrorist groups threatening peace and security across the region.”
The U.S. and its Western allies are as morally bankrupt and as complicit in genocide as those who witnessed the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews and did nothing.
The conflict, which has taken the lives of 1,400 Israelis and at least 4,600 Palestinians in Gaza, is widening. Israel carried out a second airstrike on two airports in Syria. It daily trades rocket barrages with Hezbollah militias. U.S. military bases in Iraq and Syria have been attacked by Shia militias. The USS Carney, a guided missile destroyer, shot down three cruise missiles on Thursday, apparently launched by the Houthis in Yemen and heading towards Israel.
Israel is also struggling to quell daily violent clashes in the occupied West Bank. It carried out an airstrike on Sunday on a mosque in the Jenin refugee camp – the first air strike in the West Bank for two decades – that killed at least 2 people. Armed Jewish settlers have been rampaging through Palestinian towns in the West Bank. At least 90 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed by armed settlers or the Israeli military since the Oct. 7 incursion into Israel by Hamas and other resistance fighters, according to the U.N.’s humanitarian office. Some 4,000 workers from Gaza and 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank have been arrested in the past two weeks, doubling the number of Palestinian prisoners to 10,000 held by Israel, over half of whom are political prisoners.
“Many of the prisoners have had their limbs, hands and legs broken … degrading and insulting expressions, insults, cursing, tying them with handcuffs to the back and tightening them at the end to the point of causing severe pain … naked, humiliating and group search of the prisoners,” the Palestinian Authority’s Commission for Detainees’ Affairs, Qadura Fares, said at a press conference.
B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights organization, told the BBC that since the Oct. 7 attack, it had documented “a concerted and organized effort by settlers to use the fact that the entire international and local attention is focused on Gaza and the north of Israel to try to seize land in the West Bank.”
Inside Israel, Palestinians with Israeli citizenship and Jerusalem IDs are being harassed, detained, arrested and expelled from jobs and universities in what is described as a “witch hunt.” More than 152,000 Israelis have been evacuated from towns and villages near the borders of Gaza and Lebanon.
The U.S., in an effort to thwart a military response by Iran that could trigger a regional war, is deploying an additional 2,000 troops to the Middle East. It will redeploy one of its strike groups to the Persian Gulf and send additional air defense systems to the region. The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and its strike group — which last weekend was being deployed to the eastern Mediterranean Sea to join the USS Gerald R. Ford — has been redirected to the Persian Gulf. A Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile battery, and Patriot missile defense system battalions, have also been sent to the Persian Gulf.
Israel has unleashed its Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse – Death, Famine, War and Conquest.
It has given Gazans two choices. Leave Gaza or die.
Palestinians will be killed not only from the bombs and shells, and eventually, with the ground invasion, bullets and tank shells, but from hunger and epidemics such as cholera. Without water, fuel and medicine and with the breakdown of sanitation, diseases will spread swiftly. The U.N. states that hospitals in Gaza “are on the brink of collapse.” Thousands of patients will die once fuel runs out for hospital generators.
A doctor from al-Shifa hospital in Gaza reported in an interview Saturday, “We are collapsing.” He spoke of a lack of oxygen, light and medical supplies, no water in some departments, concerns about cholera and the loss of doctors killed by Israeli airstrikes, including a dentist killed in Israel’s bombing of an Orthodox church that left at least 18 dead, including several children.
GAZA SURGEON: DAILY MASSACRES "ABOVE IMAGINATION"
Uncaptured Media's @dancohen3000 Interviews Dr. Mohamed Ziara
The handful of trucks, 37 so far, of aid into Gaza is a cynical public relations gimmick demanded by the Biden administration. It will do little to alleviate the Israeli-engineered humanitarian crisis. The U.N. says it needs at least 100 aid tracks a day. Gaza’s last functioning seawater desalination plant shut down on Sunday because of a lack of fuel.
Israel has no intention of lifting the total siege on Gaza. It announced it will increase its airstrikes. It will continue, as it has for the past two weeks, to extinguish the lives of Palestinians and terrorize and starve them into leaving Gaza.
The ground assault on Gaza will not be quick. It will involve weeks, perhaps months, of street fighting. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin compared the looming battle in Gaza to the U.S. assault on the Iraqi city of Mosul, held by ISIS, in 2014. It took the U.S. nine months to recapture Mosul.
When Israel says this will be a “long war” they are, for once, telling the truth.
Israel has requested more military aid from Washington, $14.3 billion including $10.6 billion for air and missile defense. It will get it. Israel is rapidly depleting its stocks as it pounds Gaza, including in the south of Gaza where hundreds of thousands of displaced families from the north have fled.
Israel will not permit the distribution of the $100 million in U.S. aid pledged for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, at least not until their scorched earth campaign is finished. But by then, Gaza will be unrecognizable. Israel will have annexed part or all of it. Maybe the money can go to building more illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. And pledging aid is not the same as appropriating it. So perhaps that, too, is part of the illusion.
Egyptian officials are acutely aware of what comes next. Up to half, maybe more, of the 2.3 million Palestinians will be pushed by Israel into Egypt on Gaza’s southern border and never be allowed to return.
“What is happening now in Gaza is an attempt to force civilian residents to take refuge and migrate to Egypt, which should not be accepted,” Egyptian president Abdulfattah al-Sisi warned.
Reports out of Egypt contend that Washington has promised to forgive much of Egypt’s massive $162.9 billion debt, as well as offer other economic incentives in exchange for Egypt’s acquiescence to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. The refugees, once they cross the border into Egypt, will be left to rot in the Sinai.
“There is a grave danger that what we are witnessing may be a repeat of the 1948 Nakba, and the 1967 Naksa, yet on a larger scale. The international community must do everything to stop this from happening again,” saidFrancesca Albanese, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967.
Israel has long used war to justify the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Government officials have openly called for another Nakba, or “catastrophe,” the term for the events of 1947-1949 when over 750,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from historic Palestine and driven into refugee camps to create the state of Israel. During the 1967 war, which led to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Israel ethnically cleansed another 300,000 Palestinians during the Naksa, or “day of the setback,” which is commemorated every year by Palestinians.
Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, however, is not limited to wars. There has been an ongoing slow motion ethnic cleansing as Israel has steadily built more Jewish-only colonies and incrementally seized Palestinian land. Palestinians, denied basic civil liberties in Israel’s apartheid state, have been robbed of assets, including, often, their homes. They have faced mounting restrictions on their physical movements. They have been blocked from trading and business, especially the selling of produce. They have found themselves increasingly impoverished and trapped behind walls and security fences erected around Gaza and the West Bank. At the same time, they have endured periodic Israeli airstrikes, targeted assassinations and near daily attacks by armed Jewish settlers and the Israeli army.
Israel prevented Palestinians who left the West Bank and Gaza Strip from returning at the rate of about 9,000 Palestinians per year following the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967, until the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1994, according to the Israel human rights group HaMoked. Israel has also revoked the residency permits for some 14,000 Palestinians who lived in East Jerusalem since 1967 according to B’Tselem.
Israel demolished 9,880 structures, including over 2,600 inhabited residential buildings, displacing over 14,000 people and affecting 233,681 in the West Bank alone between Jan. 1, 2009 and 7 Oct. 7, 2023, according to data from the U.N Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Since the Oct. 7 attack, a further 38 homes and other structures were demolished in the West Bank affecting an additional 13,613 people and displacing at least 73.
Less than 2.2 percent of Palestinian requests for construction permits made between 2009 and 2020 were approved, according to data from Peace Now and the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
The number of Israeli colonists in the occupied territories, however, has gone from zero before the June 1967 war, to between 600,000 to 750,000 spread out across at least 250 settlements and outposts throughout the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, all of them in violation of international law.
Israel makes no secret about its intentions.
Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, told troops preparing to enter Gaza, “I have released all the restraints.”
Knesset member Ariel Kallner, part of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, called on X, formerly known as Twitter, for “a Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of 48.”
The Israeli army mobilized Ezra Yachin, a 95-year-old army veteran, to “motivate” the troops. Yachin was a member of the Lehi Zionist militia that carried out numerous massacres of Palestinian civilians, including the Deir Yassin massacre on April 9, 1948, where over 100 Palestinian civilians, many women and children, were slaughtered.
“Be triumphant and finish them off and don’t leave anyone behind. Erase the memory of them,” Yachin said addressing Israeli troops.
“Erase them, their families, mothers and children,” he went on. “These animals can no longer live.”
“Every Jew with a weapon should go out and kill them,” he said. “If you have an Arab neighbor, don’t wait, go to his home and shoot him.”
Where are our humanitarian interventionists?
The ones who wept crocodile tears about the human rights of Ukranians, Iraqis, Syrians, Libyans and Afghans, to justify massive arms shipments and war?
Where is the old anti-war wing of the Democratic Party and the liberal class?
What has happened to the public intellectuals who used to decry the slaughter of innocents and the U.S. war machine? Where are the jurists who uphold the rule of international law? Why are the few lonely voices speaking out about Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians attacked, censored and doxxed?
“The previous president wanted to ban us and probably put us in concentration camps,” said Michigan Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, who is of Palestinian descent, at a rally in support of a ceasefire on Oct. 20 in Washington in front of the U.S. Capitol. “This one wants us just to die. That’s how it feels. Shame on them.”
Israel will not halt its genocidal campaign in Gaza against the Palestinians until there is a U.S. arms embargo on Israel. Our weapons systems, munitions and attack aircraft sustain the slaughter. We must terminate the $3.8 billion in military aid that the U.S. gives to Israel each year. We must support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and demand suspension of all free trade and other agreements between the U.S. and Israel. Only when these props are knocked out from under Israel will the Israeli leadership be forced, as was the apartheid regime in South Africa, to integrate Palestinians into one state with equal rights. As long as these props remain, the Palestinians are doomed.
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Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor, and NPR. He is the host of show The Chris Hedges Report.
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***
As Israeli officials proudly compare their bombardment of the Gaza Strip to the Allied firebombing of Dresden, the Associated Press has quietly removed a section noting US alarm over the historical comparison.
The Associated Press has quietly deleted a reference to official Israeli threats to subject the Gaza Strip to a Dresden-style firebombing campaign — the latest move in legacy media outlets’ ongoing push to downplay the impacts of Tel Aviv’s siege of over two million Palestinians.
“Four U.S. officials familiar with the discussions said American diplomats became increasingly alarmed by comments from their Israeli counterparts regarding their intention to deny water, food, medicine, electricity and fuel into Gaza, as well as the inevitability of civilian casualties,” the AP article previously stated.
“Members of the Israeli security and political establishment told the U.S. diplomats that the eradication of Hamas would require methods used in the defeat of the Axis powers in World War II,” the AP originally wrote, adding that “Israeli officials have publicly made similar comparisons.”
The offending passages have since been deleted without explanation — a textbook violation of journalistic ethics. The decision is all the more baffling given that Israeli officials have made no secret of their desire to treat Palestinian civilians the same way Western Allies treated the Germans at the end of World War II.
In an October 16 interview, the Israeli ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, shrugged off concerns about the thousands of innocents killed in IDF strikes on Gaza, suggesting that because Allied powers killed tens of thousands of German civilians with relentless airstrikes in the 1940s, Israel is entitled to do the same.
“There were many, many civilians [that] got attacked from your attacks on German cities,” she told a Sky News anchor. “Dresden was a symbol, but you attacked Hamburg, you attacked other cities, and altogether it was over 600,000 civilian Germans that got killed.”
Comparing the militarily occupied Palestinian population to Nazis, Hotovley continued:
“Was it worth it in order to defeat Nazi Germany? And the answer was yes.”
Media coverage of that exchange, however, largely centered on the Israeli ambassador’s repeated insistence that “there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza.” Addressing the uproar in a segment with Piers Morgan that same night, Hotovley returned to the Dresden comparison once again.
“600,000 Germans were killed in your attacks on Hamburg and Dresden,” she declared to the Talk TV host. “Why? Because you knew this was the only way you could defeat the Nazis,’ the ambassador insisted.
Israeli ambassador to the UK cites the firebombing of Dresden in 1945 (deliberate aerial incineration of civilian population centers by US and UK) as precedent for what Israel is about to do in Gaza pic.twitter.com/GFXuv5T2Lq
“We are giving the people in Gaza the opportunity” to flee that Israelis “were never given… they were slaughtered in their beds,” she concluded.
But she was not the only Israeli official who openly invoked the Allied attacks on German civilians to justify Israel’s assault on Gaza. In a heated exchange with another Sky News host, former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett declared that “when Great Britain was fighting the Nazis during World War Two, no one asked what’s going on in Dresden.”
On October 12, the former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett also indignantly cited Dresden as a precedent for what Israel is about to do in Gaza pic.twitter.com/xo4iHqClD9
Designed to break the will of the German population as its military collapsed on the battlefield, the British-led campaign of firebombing Dresden left at least 30,000 civilians dead and an entire city in ruins in February 1945.
Historian Donald Miller wrote of the nightmare unleashed by the Allied aerial assault:
“People’s shoes melted into the hot asphalt of the streets, and the fire moved so swiftly that many were reduced to atoms before they had time to remove their shoes. The fire melted iron and steel, turned stone into powder, and caused trees to explode from the heat of their own resin. People running from the fire could feel its heat through their backs, burning their lungs.”
Palestinians in Gaza have related a similarly hellish experience as the civilian death toll in less than two weeks of bombardment tops 4000.
“The bombardment in Gaza tonight is the most intense ever,” wrote Ahmed Nehad, a resident of Gaza. “The scale of the attacks is crazy, to a level even unprecedented for Gazans. Yet, Gaza is without internet. People can’t even peer out their windows to see. Thus, there’s no media coverage.”
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Wyatt Reed is a correspondent and managing editor of The Grayzone. Follow him on Twitter at @wyattreed13.
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***
More than 181,000 housing units have been damaged in Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip since 7 October, the Government Media Office said Monday, Anadolu Agency reports.
More than 20,000 units were totally destroyed or rendered uninhabitable
Salama Marouf, a spokesman for the office, told a press conference in Gaza City.
He said 72 government buildings and dozens of public and service facilities were also damaged.
According to the spokesman,
177 schools, 32 mosques and three churches also suffered damage in the Israeli offensive
Interior Ministry spokesman, Iyad Al-Bozom, said most bombs used by Israel in Gaza were US-made.
Israel launched a relentless bombardment campaign on the Gaza Strip following a cross-border attack by Hamas into Israeli border towns on 7 October.
Nearly 6,500 people have been killed in the conflict, including at least 5,087 Palestinians and more than 1,400 Israelis.
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***
Beit Hanoun is vanishing, air strike after air strike, house after house. All or most of the residents of the town in the northeastern Gaza Strip have fled in recent days, after the Israeli army peremptorily ordered them to leave their homes and head south. And it might take years until they are able to return – or they might never do so, if Israel establishes a “buffer zone” in the north of the Strip.
The air strikes that began after Hamas attacked southern Israel on October 7 have already destroyed or severely damaged 52,000 homes, according to the Euro-Med Monitor. According to the Geneva-based human rights center, before the air strikes the number of housing units in the northern districts of Gaza was about 260,000. More than a quarter of them have been affected by air strikes, and 20 percent of the houses are no longer habitable. Beit Hanoun has been the hardest hit, with about 60% of its buildings destroyed or damaged. These numbers will only grow in the coming years, together with the expected destruction that will come to the south of the Strip as well.
An estimated one million Palestinians are currently homeless. The spokesperson of the Israeli military, Daniel Hagari, admitted that air raids on Gaza are taking place at a level “not seen in decades.”
On Thursday, six U.N. special rapporteurs accused Israel of committing crimes against humanity in Gaza:
“There are no justifications for these crimes, and we are horrified by the lack of action by the international community,” they wrote in a statement.
The Netanyahu government and the military leadership are saying that they will change the face of Gaza forever and that they will fight Hamas until it is wiped out in order to release the 203 Israeli and foreign hostages taken on October 7 by the Islamic movement. On Friday, through the mediation of Qatar, the armed wing of Hamas released two women, Judith and Natalie Raanan, a mother and daughter with dual U.S. and Israeli citizenship, on humanitarian grounds. The two women were handed over to the International Red Cross. After arriving in Egypt, they were expected to be back in Israel the next day.
This development will not have the slightest effect on the Israeli military offensives on the horizon. On the ground around Gaza, everything suggests that the invasion will come in a matter of days. This is also indirectly confirmed by the decision of Israel and the United States not to take part in the “peace summit” in Egypt. The Netanyahu government, riding on the strong support at all levels that Joe Biden assured them of on Wednesday, has no intention of agreeing to a ceasefire, as Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Jordan’s King Abdullah would like, both of whom are concerned about the possibility that the war will end with the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to their countries, not only from Gaza but also from the West Bank. There are many future scenarios to consider.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on Thursday that achieving Israel’s goals will be neither quick nor easy:
“We will overthrow the Hamas organization. We will destroy its military and governmental infrastructure. It is a phase that will not be easy. It will have a cost,” he told members of a parliamentary committee.
In support of the Gaza war, Joe Biden is expected to send an emergency request to Congress to approve new funding to support Israel and Ukraine. The Jewish state will get $14 billion in U.S. arms and aid. During his address to the nation, the U.S. president addressed “other hostile actors in the region,” who, he said, needed to know that Israel was “stronger than ever” and thus “prevent this conflict from spreading.”
But his unconditional support for Israel is beginning to generate discontent in the Arab capitals allied with the U.S. and those that have normalized relations with Tel Aviv. In the days after October 7, the Emirates and Bahrain had both condemned Hamas. But then, according to Arab analysts, Biden’s words categorically ruling out any Israeli responsibility in the explosion that devastated Gaza City’s Al-Ahli hospital on Tuesday – which left 471 Palestinians dead, according to the Health Ministry – were poorly received in Abu Dhabi and Manama. From that point on, the two countries called for a ceasefire and condemned Israeli policies toward Palestinians. Their positions were also influenced by the wave of outrage across the region and protests in the occupied Palestinian West Bank and other countries.
The “concern” for Palestinian civilians expressed by Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken is failing to reassure Arab leaders allied with Washington in the face of images from Gaza that show two million Palestinians subjected to continuous bombardment by the Israeli air force, which has left 4,137 dead and some 13,000 wounded according to Health Ministry figures.
The stories of despair and terror that Gaza civilians are managing to convey to the outside world are giving rise to fear and frustration among other Palestinians and Arabs, and among those in the rest of the world who are following the fate of so many innocent people. The humanitarian emergency is more and more serious: finding clean water and food is difficult, and some hospitals have stopped functioning. In others – as Al Jazeera reported on Friday – they are disinfecting surgical instruments with vinegar. Everything is lacking, starting with the diesel fuel needed to keep autonomous electricity generators running.
The smell of death wafts across the streets everywhere, unbearable – the stench of the corpses left under the rubble of houses and buildings, at least 1,400 according to health authorities. The Palestinian Red Crescent denounced on Friday that it had received a threat from Israel that it would bomb the Al-Quds hospital in Gaza City, which houses more than 400 patients and some 12,000 displaced people. By Friday night, there had been no denial from the Jewish state.
Israel did admit to causing severe damage to the buildings of the St. Porphyry Orthodox Church in Gaza city, resulting in the death and injury of several people. Nonetheless, the IDF military spokesperson denied that the church had been the target of the airstrike, which he said had targeted a “Hamas command center” in the vicinity. The Orthodox Church reported 18 dead Palestinians, both Christians and Muslims who believed they had found safe haven at St. Porphyry.
Meanwhile, the much-needed humanitarian and hospital aid remained stuck at Gaza’s gates on the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing. Joe Biden himself promised on Friday that they would enter on Friday or Saturday. Finally, on Saturday evening, it was confirmed that the first 20 trucks had been allowed to enter the strip.
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***
Dear people of all races, of all creeds, of all nationalities, of all ethnicities, of all continents, of the entire world,
Look at the pictures below, look at them as if they would talk about your brothers and sisters, about your own children, then stand up and storm your governments in unison, that they too, in unison, stop supporting Israel, that they request in unison – 8 billion people – to demand that Israel be stopped, that the perpetrators and murderers be brought to justice.
If not, one day – maybe in a not-too-distant future — these images may haunt and concern us all personally.
Do not count on the United Nations. That body created for world peace is corrupted, along with the World Economic Forum (WEF), WHO, the current White House and the power of Big Finance-Military-IT- Media-Pharma complex, most of whom are also controlled by Zionist capital.
We the People, can only count on ourselves for the future. If we the People, want to help Palestine against the unbelievable genocide, we must do it ourselves. We MUST act now.
Wake up and scream, as if it was your child being murdered by the IDF.
Israeli warplanes are heavily bombing a defenseless population of mostly children that will be shot on site if they try to escape.
Footage of the carefully prepared white sheets for all the Gaza population killed in one day. Click here for the video.
Any reflection needed?
Do it now.
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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.
Featured image: Jewish activists call for Gaza ceasefire in DC. October 18, 2023 (JVP Twitter)
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***
The room was quiet, bright, high-ceilinged, spacious and elegantly appointed. At the long burnished table were seated two baker’s dozen of the most immaculately dressed and manicured individuals — themselves virtually unknown to those outside their exclusive circle — who represented approximately sixty percent of the world’s wealth. These were not celebrity billionaires and, in fact, a distinguishing mark of their highly controlled faces was a self-containment and an aversion to anything suggesting a desire to be in the public eye. No, these were weighty and, for the most part, satisfied people, male and female in equal measure, predominantly elderly, though a few hailed from middle age, who shunned ostentation.
They nodded as Lord X entered and took his seat at the table. His was a cheerful visage, with pink fleshy jowls, and he smiled in greeting, a large contagious smile that widened the lips of his auditors. Time was very precious for such a gathering so he wasted none in formalities. He signaled for the curtains to be drawn across the large high windows, and for the lights to be extinguished. Servants entered, did his bidding, and streamed away. Behind his end of the table was a large screen on which appeared a slowly revolving picture of the Earth, as if seen from deeper Space. The clouds, the seas, the continents — all slowly spun — and as his audience fixed their eyes upon them he began.
“My dear colleagues,” he said, “what you see behind me is all that we possess: a single solitary planet, our pale blue precious dot, nestled within the environs of a vast cold universe. From a distance there are no borders except natural ones — oceans, mountain chains, lakes and ridges and valleys. There are none of the dividing lines we humans have been so dedicated to creating, of nations, fiefdoms, states. It is one world …” — and here Lord X paused to clear his throat and gauge his audience, before resuming in his pleasant very British baritone — “but it is a most fragile one. Like it or not, we are its stewards.”
A low murmur of agreement coursed round the table as the image of the spinning globe was altered. Now, surrounding the planet, was a sparkling cloud of gem-like points of light.
“Thanks to the research we have supported and the advances that have been made, we have, as it were, knit together a blanket that encircles our habitat and links all of humanity together into one interconnected and integrated entity whose lifeblood is finance and communication. Our computational powers have grown exponentially and the quantum world has bent its knee to our supremacy. Never before have so few wielded so much power to do so much good! Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon and our more modern brethren of the past century had vastly limited scope and range. But we, in our capable hands and sagacious minds, can now achieve the impossible. We can make of this small lonely orb a paradise, a self-sustaining world of peace, prosperity and beauty.”
“Hear, hear!” ventured several auditors. The picture changed to show large clusters of dots, ant-like, overtaking the land masses, piles of brown-black points in motion forming waves and spreading, cancer-like, across the continents and spilling, in their reproductive fervor, into the seas, befouling them.
“There is one more hurdle in our way,” Lord X continued, “but it may not be quite what you think. Our hurdle is not so much one of number, but one of kind, do you know. Our last exercise was very effective in showing how easy it is to impose control — you might say it was all too easy. How they cowered in fear of the invisible, fear of themselves, fear of each other, how they gladly suffered to be kept in kennels, and to be pricked!”
Now the picture of the spinning Earth dissolved and on the screen appeared a collage of athletes, all heavily tattooed, on the pitch, and off the pitch with jewelry dangling from their ears, noses, eyebrows, lips.
“Getting the masses to accept another piercing when their heroes had been paving the way was nothing difficult. Some are slowly dying, getting sick, some more rapidly, but at a measured pace. A certain winnowing is essential and it may be accomplished in several ways.
Wars are not particularly efficient, but they serve the purpose of distraction, and they foster a certain divisiveness that assists our cause — thus they do have a role, however limited. And then there is the climate, of course, I nearly forgot! But what we really want to be in a position to do — what we need very much to do! — is to impose a form of control that is so complete that our subjects themselves will willingly participate in the cleansing. Already we see so many who positively beg for more vaccines, for the abolition of travel, for confinement into small patches of terrain, for implanted devices that will spare them the need to use a coin or think a thought. You see, that’s the trick of it all, and it has already worked, in our preliminary stages, very successfully — though not completely.”
A flicker of exasperation passed over the speaker’s face.
“There’s the rub. There are still a few too many of them who are making our work devilishly difficult by their disobedience. They are setting a poor example and if unchecked they might prolong our project, which would not be desirable, not at this moment, perched as we are on the threshold. But with the ability to trace and track a gnat to the ends of our earth, we will have no problem in eliminating the dissidents, singly, here and there, wherever they may be, until they too are quieted.”
The images on the screen faded and once more the spinning planetary globe appeared, briefly, then dissolved into the nothingness of interstellar space. The room’s lights, at the nod of Lord X, went up, and the heavy drapes were drawn away from the windows by liveried servants who quickly and silently exited. Lord X rose and smiled.
“The history of the world is a history of submission and stewardship. When the coarser methods of keeping people in bondage were eschewed, we developed the finer ones of finance. I have asked you here today simply to reassure you that we have everything in hand —everything — and that our mission is unstoppable. There is, however, one further challenge which we must face, a more personal one, as it were. A final one, to be precise. You see, to achieve our vision of a single, magnificent, beautiful and unified world, there will of necessity be suffering and loss. There is no other way. We who have breached the barrier of the atomic nucleus and of the human genome must now overcome the only lingering constraint: human sympathy. Our task is not for the squeamish.”
A hand was raised at the far end of the table. Lord X lifted his eyebrows. A youngish, stylish woman, tastefully bejeweled, her rich red hair pulled back and folded neatly, as if by some miracle, into a bun, stood. “Must we be so extreme, Your Lordship?” she asked. Her voice was low-pitched, pleasing, steady.
Lord X shrugged and lifted his hands, palms upward.
“One must break eggs to make an omelet, I’m afraid.”
At this there was a general chuckle, a chuckle that began at His Lordship’s side and convulsed the lot with laughter in mere seconds. After they had wiped their mirthful tears they clapped, Lord X bowed, and the company milled about, stretching, checking their timepieces, sauntering to the large windows for a glance at the world they ruled.
Lord X approached the questioner and took her aside. “Whenever I feel a qualm,” he cooed genially, “I remind myself of the greater good.” The woman smiled coldly, and turned on her heels. Lord X pursed his lips and whispered a few words into the ear of one of the younger men who had been lingering in the vicinity. The youthful scion made sure to make a note.
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Dr. Garcia is a Philadelphia-born psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand in 2006. He has authored articles ranging from explorations of psychoanalytic technique, the psychology of creativity in music (Mahler, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Delius), and politics. He is also a poet, novelist and theatrical director. He retired from psychiatric practice in 2021 after working in the public sector in New Zealand. Visit his substack at https://newzealanddoc.substack.com/
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***
Over 5,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed by unrelenting Israeli airstrikes. This is genocide, and as U.S. Jews, we say: Never again. Not in our name. The only way to stop the killings — and free Israeli hostages — is an immediate ceasefire.
On Wednesday, October 18, thousands of Jews and allies rallied at the Capitol to demand a ceasefire in Gaza. As huge crowds gathered outside, hundreds of activists held a sit-in inside one of the Capitol buildings. We sang, we yelled, and we made our voices heard. It was the largest Jewish protest in solidarity with Palestinians in U.S. history. Hundreds were arrested.
Below, you’ll find a roundup of media coverage related to the October 18 rally, which was organized by JVP and our comrades at IfNotNow.
“Several dozen protesters who say they are from Jewish Voice for Peace, a Jewish anti-Zionist group, have been arrested after entering the Cannon House Office Building. The demonstrators, most of whom are wearing black T-shirts that read ‘Jews say cease-fire now’ and ‘not in our name,’ are being restrained with zip ties and led into police vans.”
“’We are here to say, ‘Not in our name,’ Jay Saper said. ‘We are here as Jews — many descendants of survivors of genocide — to stop a genocide from unfolding in real time.’
Inside the House building, the protesters wore black shirts that said, ‘Not in our name’ on the front and ‘Jews say cease fire now’ on the back, as they sang and cheered over police warnings to disperse. The crowd inside Cannon included 400 American Jews and 25 rabbis who are against Israeli occupation and are demanding that Congress pass a cease-fire resolution, said Sonya Meyerson-Knox, a spokeswoman for Jewish Voice for Peace, a national Jewish anti-Zionist organization.“
“Jewish American groups demanding a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war protested at the White House and Capitol this week, with hundreds arrested. Stefanie Fox, the executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace, one of the Jewish groups that organized the protests, joins Joy Reid to discuss.
‘This week we brought together 5,000 Jews in a massive demonstration demanding that Joe Biden and other American lawmakers tell Israel to implement a ceasefire right now. We believe this is the largest demonstration in history of Jews in solidarity with Palestinians.’
“Certainly no matter the arrests, you can see that this has not stopped the protesters from being here, from being loud. And this comes, of course, as President Biden is overseas in Israel, where he met with Netanyahu this morning [and] pledged continued support of Israel.”
“You can see demonstrators starting to get removed now by U.S. Capitol police These are just the second round of demonstrators that we’ve seen forcibly removed. Another group was occupying this place where I’m standing at the moment, and capitol police removed them…there were actually some, because they refused to move, that were dragged out of here.”
“‘Biden really is the only one that has the power to pressure Israel right now and he needs to use that power to save innocent lives,’ Hannah Lawrence, 32, who came from Vermont.
Linda Holtzman, 71, a rabbi from Philadelphia, demanded an immediate cease-fire and urged Biden to ‘open your eyes.‘
‘Look at what’s happening in Gaza. Look at the devastation in Gaza,” said Holtzman. “If you want to be able to live with yourself, you need to stand up and end the genocide. I demand a cease-fire right now.’”
“‘We were raised saying ‘Never again.’ Never again is right now. It’s this very moment,’ Liv, a member of the activist group Jewish Voice for Peace, told Fox News as demonstrators sang and clapped in the background.“
“Jewish Voice for Peace organized the rally on just a few days notice, and protesters came ready to be heard. The arresting officers kept asking people if they were going to give up their right to remain silent, and it was as if everyone shouted back, ‘Hell yeah!’
In many places, Jewish silence on the oppression of Palestinians has reigned for too long. But at this moment of crisis, protesters said what perhaps had gone unspoken at family gatherings or in places of worship: that we have had enough, that we will no longer allow the suffering of our people—the pogroms, the Holocaust, or the Hamas killings—to be weaponized against others. Our history gives us an extra responsibility to speak out for those facing the specter of genocide.”
“‘We’ve been devoting every waking second over the past week and a half to doing everything we can to stop the bombings. When we woke up to the news last Saturday [October 7, the day of the Hamas massacre], at the Simchat Torah celebration in Brooklyn that so many members of our community participate in, with over 20 congregations showing up to practice our ancient ritual, the rabbi who led that stated that she was turning it into a ‘stand with Israel’ rally. So that day, we immediately got into organizing an alternative space for our people to grieve, but transform grief into action.’”
“Here in the U.S., Jewish Voice for Peace and other groups are rallying in Washington, D.C., today to demand an immediate ceasefire. Two dozen rabbis are leading prayers and mass civil disobedience.”
“‘I’ve been to Gaza as part of a humanitarian medical delegation, and I saw up close and personal what Israel has been doing to Gaza for the last 16 years. You know, I took an oath as a medical doctor to support health and life. And so I’m out here doing this as a doctor, as a Jewish person.’”
“Fencing went up overnight around parts of the U.S. Capitol ahead of the protest organized by the group Jewish Voice for Peace but the demonstrators were able to work their way into the building and by 3 p.m., it was packed with JVP members in black t-shirts reading “Jews say ceasefire now!”
JVP claimed on social media that at least 10,000 people were outside the Capitol while 500 made their way inside the rotunda, all there to ‘challenge the Israeli government’s ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.‘”
“We’re a group of Jewish Americans who have come here to call for an immediate ceasefire and an end to the genocide in Gaza. And that is in Congress’s hands…we are here to have our voices heard by Congress, to make sure that everybody knows that the most important thing is a ceasefire.“
“Thank you all for being here. I have never seen anything like this in my history of Jewish anti-Zionist activism. It’s been decades. We used to be tiny. We are huge and growing.
We have a sacred responsibility to engage with our parents, our grandparents, our uncles, our brothers and sisters, and try to save their souls, to keep them from indulging in this quest for bloody vengeance. We are here because we will not let our fears of antisemitism be manipulated in this way, as cover for war crimes and colonial land grabs and to foreclose on the possibility of a political solution, which will only come with an end to occupation, with an end to apartheid, with true Palestinian freedom and self-determination.“
-Naomi Klein addresses the crowd at Wednesday’s rally
“Nearly 300 people were arrested out of thousands of demonstrators who took part in a Jewish-led protest Wednesday on Capitol Hill to demand a cease-fire in the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict.
Hundreds of demonstrators also staged a sit-in at the Capitol’s Cannon House Office Building and chanted, ‘Cease-fire now!’
Jewish Voice for Peace, which organized the efforts, said dozens of rabbis were among the protesters. The activist group is also calling for humanitarian assistance to be allowed to enter the embattled Gaza Strip amid the war.”
“’Jewish grief is being used as a weapon to call for the imminent destruction of Gaza—by politicians, by so-called justice organizations. And mainstream media largely conveys the false narrative that all Jewish people support the state of Israel and its actions,’ explained Hannah Wolfman-Arent, the baker behind Velvel Breads.“
“’It has never been more important for Jews and all people in the US to rise up with literally everything we have,’ said Jay Saper of Jewish Voice for Peace. ‘The way that we would have wanted others to rise up for our ancestors.‘
At the rally, a Jewish protester who said his grandparents had survived the Holocaust told Al Jazeera that he was honouring his family’s history by taking to the streets.
‘I see my job as carrying on their legacy as Jews who see their role as standing up for stateless and oppressed people all throughout the world,’ Sam Thorpe said. ‘I see no better way to do that than fighting for a ceasefire and peace in Gaza today.’”
“We are proud Jewish people standing in solidarity with Palestinians, demanding a ceasefire immediately…A genocide is underway and everyone has to know. We’re here supporting Rashida Tlaib’s resolution for an immediate ceasefire. We’re here with a message for Biden, who’s meeting with Netanyahu right now. I’m looking right at you, President Biden. Are you going to be the president that funds and enables a genocide?”
-Liv Kunins-Berkowitz, Media Coordinator, Jewish Voice for Peace
“Hundreds of Jewish activists protested inside the Capitol on Wednesday, demanding a ceasefire in Gaza. And just as quickly, Capitol Police began arresting them.
The Jewish-led protest involved thousands more protesting outside the Capitol, as well as about two dozen rabbis leading a prayer inside the halls of Congress. Organizers of the event estimated that 500 protesters were arrested, including the rabbis.“
“350. That’s how many people—including two dozen rabbis—were at a sit-in at the Cannon House building, according to a tweet from Jewish Voice for Peace. The organization said the protestors wouldn’t leave ‘until Congress calls for a ceasefire in Gaza.’ Jewish Voice for Peace calls itself the ‘largest progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization in the world,’ and the group also claims to be the only ‘major Jewish group’ in support of the ‘Palestinian civil society call for boycott, divestment and sanctions.’”
The Rhode Island chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, one of the progressive groups protesting in Washington for a Gaza ceasefire, on Wednesday called on council members to reject Goncalves’ resolution.
“By failing to also address the thousands of Palestinians killed by the Israeli military during its ongoing siege of Gaza, this Resolution contributes to escalating conflict and the dehumanization of Palestinians,” a news release from Jewish Voice for Peace – Rhode Island said.
“’We’re here because we’re in an incredible emergency, the worst I’ve seen in my lifetime, where Gaza is being decimated as we speak,’ said Rebecca Vilkomerson, a member of Jewish Voice for Peace, as chants rang through the echoey rotunda and people were handcuffed and escorted out by Capitol Police.“
“‘We’re here to say: not in our names, and never again,’ JVP declared. ‘And we’ll continue our civil disobedience until Congress calls for a cease-fire in Gaza, or until they force us to leave.’
‘Cease-fire is the first step to stop the ongoing genocide by the Israeli military of the over 2 million Palestinians in besieged Gaza, unable to leave,’ the group continued. ‘In the past week, over 3,000 Palestinians, including 1,000 children, were murdered by Israeli and U.S. bombs. Over 1 million people are displaced. We have the power to stop this violence.’”
“’What we know from past Israeli state atrocities against Palestinians is that the bombs only stop once there is a sufficient mass outcry from the international community,’ said JVP member Eliza Klein. ‘It’s on us to build that outcry — as fast as we possibly can.’”
“Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Cori Bush (D-Mo.), who have been calling on Biden to work toward an immediate ceasefire, spoke to the crowd of demonstrators before they entered the Capitol Building.
‘I wish all the Palestinian people would see this. I wish they could see that not all of America want them to die. That they are not disposable, that they have a right to live,’ said Tlaib, the only current Palestinian-American member of Congress.“
“’We shut down congress to draw mass attention to the U.S. complicity in Israel’s ongoing oppression of Palestinians,’ JVP posted on X. ‘Just as we demand an end to genocide in Gaza, we must put the same effort into dismantling the systems of Zionism, apartheid, and colonialism that brought us to this moment.’”
“Mother Agapia Stephanopoulos, a Greek Orthodox nun who lived in Jerusalem for a decade, said she attended Wednesday’s demonstration because she had witnessed—and opposed—the ‘slow encroachment’ of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. She hopes Congress will do something to stop the violence.
‘The problem is the occupation,’ she said. ‘You can’t keep people pinned up in a prison, both in Gaza and the West Bank, and expect there to be peace. I pray we can get to a time of peace.‘
Dona Boyce Manoukian and Lorraine Nagy, two nurses aged 84 and 73, said they have been demonstrating for peace for more than five decades.
‘How many children have we lost, both in Israel and in Palestine?’ Nagy asked. ‘We want a cease-fire. We want there to be peace, the end of the occupation, and the saving of lives, which is intrinsic to my profession as a nurse.‘”
“Scout Bratt, a member of Illinois Jewish Voice for Peace, said they are opposed to waging war against the Palestinians who live in Gaza, most of whom are not affiliated with Hamas.
‘There is no military solution to this,’ Bratt argued. ‘We need to address root causes, which include the Israeli military occupation in apartheid, and again, our own government’s role in funding this oppression.’”
“In live updates during the protest on X, Jewish Voice for Peace posted, ‘While we were inside, an Israeli airstrike bombed the entrance of a school in Khan Younis, where Palestinians were forced to evacuate to. These are atrocities. This is why we demand a ceasefire now!’”
“’The only path to peace and safety — for everyone — is through ensuring justice and equality for everyone. And that means ending the Israeli government’s illegal occupation of Palestine. To end genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, we’re demanding a #ceasefirenow,’ Jewish Voice For Peace wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
Republicans in Congress jumped at the opportunity to claim that the protest was equivalent to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, in which Trump supporters angered by his election loss violently forced their way into the building and attempted to prevent the certification of President Joe Biden’s election.”
About 500 Jewish people, including 25 rabbis, gathered in the building, said Sonya Meyerson-Knox, a spokesperson for Jewish Voice for Peace.
American Jews ‘held a peaceful, prayerful sit-in at the Cannon House Office Building,” Meyerson-Knox added. ‘Led by over two dozen rabbis, they sang, taught and prayed—demanding that Congress call for an immediate ceasefire.’
‘An anti-war group of multigenerational Jews calling for a ceasefire is, simply, civil disobedience—following in the long line of civi disobedience protests that progressive causes have undertaken throughout history.’”
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***
NewsGuard, a company which claims to rate media outlets’ level of ‘trustworthiness’ and therefore has a meaningful influence over ad revenue, has been sued along with the Biden administration by Consortium News, which also named the Pentagon’s Cyber Command for “contracting with NewsGuard to identify, report and abridge the speech of American media organizations that dissent from U.S. official positions on foreign policy.”
According to the complaint, NewsGuard is “acting jointly or in concert with the United States to coerce news organizations to alter viewpoints” regarding Ukraine, Russia and Syria, and has impsed a form of “censorship and repression of views” that diverge from US policies and those of its allies, the complaint says.
Consortium also notes that NewsGuard has branded the entirety of Consortium News’ 20,000+ articles as ‘unreliable’ based on just six examples they took issue with (which is the exact same thing they do with ZeroHedge and other independent media).
NewsGuard uses its software to tag targeted news sites, including all 20,000+ Consortium News articles an videos published since 1995, with warnings to “proceed with caution,” telling NewsGuard subscribers that Consortium News produces “disinformation,” “false content” and is an “anti-U.S.” media organization, even though NewsGuard only took issue with a total of six CN articles and none of its videos.
The complaint seeks a permanent injunction declaring the joint program unconstitutional; barring the government and NewsGuard from continuing such practices and more than $13 million in damages for defamation and civil rights violations. –Consortium News
Last week former Trump administration official Mike Benz noted on X that Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales is an adviser to NewsGuard, and that the nanny organization was “knee deep in a plot to get [governments] to bankrupt alternative news. NewsGuard worked [with the] EU on new disinformation code. Its biz model has ‘disinformation compliance’ services [with the] censorship laws it promotes.”
Elon, for your peripheral vision, Jimmy Wales advises NewsGuard, which is knee deep in a plot to get gov’ts to bankrupt alternative news.
Elon, there is no way EU censorship proponents can deny it. NewsGuard bragged about it. EU officers bragged about it. They had formal partnership together.
All they can do now is hold their nose & hope their own voters never learn what's been going on. pic.twitter.com/gvcWAOtpdq
In another X thread, Elon Musk called Newsguard a “scam” after they gave political commentator Tim Pool a strike “because we ran 5 stories out of nearly 5,000 that quoted [former President Donald] Trump.”
Acording to Uncover DC, NewsGuard has contracts with the DoD, WHO, Pfizer, Microsoft & AFT.
Co-CEOs Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz claim it is the “librarian for the internet.” Set up specifically to rate online journalistic integrity, Brill states NewsGuard provides services that “explain to people something about the reliability and trustworthiness and background of those who are feeding them the news.” Eric Effron is the organization’s Editorial Director.
According to MintPressNews, “Crovitz held a number of positions at Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal, eventually becoming executive vice president of the former and the publisher of the latter before both were sold to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp in 2007. He is also a board member of Business Insider, which has received over $30 million from Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos in recent years.”
Crovitz’s alliances might account for the organization’s favorable 100 ratings for WSJ and the Washington Post. He is also a contributor “to books published by the American Enterprise Institute and Heritage Foundation,” which are also favorably rated by NewsGuard.
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NewsGuard’s directors, advisors, and investors are an interesting cast of characters. One of the investors, Publicis Groupe, is “the third largest communications group in the world.” Publicic allegedly has “shadowy ties to Saudi Arabia.” Pfizer and Bayer/Monsanto are two of its top clients. Ironically, many of the advisors/directors are former U.S. government officials, entertainment moguls, and journalists “associated with agencies known for producing false news.”
Among the advisors is Michael Hayden, former Director of the NSA and CIA, who was “the architect of George W. Bush’s secret domestic spying program.” Tom Ridge was the first Office of Homeland Security Director following 9/11. Richard Stengel “is a former senior official in Obama’s state department who once described his role as being that of ‘chief propagandist.‘”
And as the Epoch Times noted in August, NewsGuard presents itself as objective and nonpartisan. Its ratings, the company says, measure media quality on nine criteria, including transparency of authorship and ownership and adherence to standard editorial practice, such as issuing corrections and labeling opinion pieces. In practice, however, most of the score boils down to whether the media present content that, in NewsGuard’s opinion, is truthful.
The first criterion specifically looks at whether the target repeatedly publishes false claims. Another examines whether it publishes news “responsibly.” But failing the first one means failing the second one, NewsGuard explains on its website. Yet another criterion is whether the target uses accurate headlines.
Again, if the headline says something NewsGuard considers to be untrue, that counts as a failure. Another criterion looks for a policy of regularly correcting errors—or what NewsGuard considers to be errors. Together, these four criteria add up to more than 60 points of the 100-point score.
Even if NewsGuard can’t find anything to dispute, it can still dock points if the target doesn’t sufficiently represent opinions the company would like to see.
Such content providers “egregiously cherry pick facts or stories to advance opinions,” it argues.
Meanwhile, at least 60 points are needed for NewsGuard to issue its “credible” rating.
This methodology becomes particularly problematic when NewsGuard itself is wrong on the facts. For example, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the company considered false the notion that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China. If a news outlet with a perfect score responsibly reported on the extensive circumstantial evidence indicating a lab leak, it ran the risk of NewsGuard decimating its score and falsely labelling it an “unreliable” source that “severely violates basic journalistic standards.”
The COVID-19 origins issue was a rare case in which NewsGuard eventually issued a correction, though it only went as far as saying that the lab leak hypothesis couldn’t be completely ruled out.
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***
The stakes are high as Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese arrives in Washington, D.C., today to meet with President Joe Biden. The U.S. government hopes to obtain Australia’s support for its cold war initiatives against China.
Australia is one of the United States’ closest allies. Australia, the U.S. and the U.K. comprise “AUKUS,” a trilateral “security” alliance in the Indo-Pacific.
This is a crucial issue for Australia as well. Before Albanese left for the United States, he told parliament that the AUKUS transfer of U.S. and British nuclear submarine technology to Australia was critical to the future of the alliance.
Another item on the agenda when Albanese meets with Biden is the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, an Australian citizen. Assange, who has been incarcerated for four years in a top-security London prison, was indicted by the Trump administration for charges under the Espionage Act for WikiLeaks’ 2010-2011 revelations of U.S. war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay. If extradited from the U.K. to the United States and convicted, Assange faces up to 175 years in prison.
The Obama administration, which indicted more whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than all prior administrations combined, refused to indict Assange because of the “New York Times problem.” That is, if the administration charged Assange, it would also have to charge The New York Times and other media outlets that also published classified military and diplomatic secrets.
But instead of dismissing the indictment and the request for extradition, the Biden administration is vigorously pursuing it.
In August, Albanese said his government firmly opposes the prosecution of Assange. The freedom of Assange is “widely seen as a test of Australia’s leverage with the Biden administration,” the Associated Press reported.
“The Prime Minister is here to call for the extradition of Julian Assange to be dropped. This request is coming from the United States’ closest ally at a time the U.S. is seeking Australia’s support as a bulwark, both financially and militarily, against the perceived threat from China,” Vincent De Stefano, national organizing director of Assange Defense, told Truthout.
In September, a cross-party delegation from Australia’s parliament came to Washington, D.C., and argued that the prosecution of Assange should be dismissed. They met with U.S. senators and congress members, the State Department, the Department of Justice, and key think tanks and NGOs.
The delegation came after 63 left, center and right-wing members of the Australian parliament signed a full-page ad in TheWashington Post urging Albanese and Biden to find a diplomatic solution to Assange’s case. The statement by what ABC News characterized as an “unlikely coalition” of parliamentarians said it is “wrong in principle” that Assange is being charged under the Espionage Act and noted that “it was a political decision to bring the prosecution in the first place.”
The Australian lawmakers warned of “a sharp and sustained outcry in Australia” if Assange is extradited. At least 90 percent of Australians agree that the case against Assange must be dropped and he must be returned home to Australia.
“To ignore the request from the prime minister regarding the extradition of an Australian citizen, whose only crime was being an honest journalist, while at the same time asking for a huge expenditure and commitment from our ally, is an insult of the highest order — a slap in the face, really,” De Stefano said.
Gabriel Shipton, Assange’s brother, called the indictment “a wedge in the Australia-US relationship … which is a very important relationship at the moment, particularly with everything that’s going on with the US and China and the sort of strategic pivot that is happening.”
Australia’s cooperation with the U.S.’s cold war on China is not a slam dunk. In a research paper released on October 12, the Congressional Research Service said Australia may be unwilling to join forces with the United States in a war against China. It cited statements made in March by Richard Marles, the Australian defense minister, clarifying that the AUKUS deal didn’t include any pre-commitments by Australia to back the U.S. in a conflict with Taiwan. China’s position that Taiwan is part of China is nonnegotiable. Although the U.S. has historically agreed with this “One China” policy, recent overtures indicate that the U.S. may support an independent Taiwan. There is increasing opposition to AUKUS in Australia, including in the ruling Labor Party.
Last November, The New York Times, Le Monde, the Guardian, DER SPIEGEL and El País signed a joint open letter urging the U.S. government to dismiss the Espionage Act charges against Assange for publishing classified military and diplomatic secrets. “Publishing is not a crime,” the letter says. “The U.S. government should end its prosecution of Julian Assange for publishing secrets.”
A bipartisan letter to Joe Biden is being circulated for congressional signatures by Representatives Jim McGovern (D-Massachusetts) and Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky). They write to “strongly encourage” the Biden administration to withdraw the extradition request and end all prosecutorial proceedings against Assange.
The congressional letter notes that the Espionage Act was intended to punish the provision of state secrets to “enemy governments.” It was not “to punish journalists and whistleblowers for attempting to inform the public about serious issues that some U.S. government officials might prefer to keep secret.” The signatories warn that if the extradition and prosecution proceed, “there is a significant risk that our bilateral relationship with Australia will be badly damaged.”
Assange’s appeal of the extradition order is pending in the U.K. High Court. Since the court is now back in session, it could quickly deny his appeal. Assange would then ask the European Court of Human Rights to review his case. But even if that court issued an injunction to stop the extradition, there is no guarantee that the U.K. would honor it.
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Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, and a member of the national advisory boards of Assange Defense and Veterans For Peace, and the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. She is founding dean of the People’s Academy of International Law and the U.S. representative to the continental advisory council of the Association of American Jurists. Her books include Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral and Geopolitical Issues. She is co-host of “Law and Disorder” Radio.
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***
On October 17, an explosion took place immediately adjacent to the al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza, the result of what appears to have been a rocket attack. Between 200 and 500 people were killed, all of them Palestinians. Gazans and many in the international community immediately blamed the Israeli military for the attack. Israel, however, blamed an errant rocket from the Islamic Jihad terrorist group, an organization allied with Hamas. A day after the explosion, President Biden said that the Pentagon and the CIA had determined that the rocket had indeed originated in Gaza and was likely from Islamic Jihad. But where’s the proof?
A few days after the explosion, Senators Mark Warner (D-VA) and Marco Rubio, the Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said that they had been briefed on the matter and were confident that the rocket had come from Islamic Jihad. We’re all just supposed to take their word for it.
There’s an easy way to inform the public as to what the intelligence on this bombing concludes. It’s called a “tearline.” In the Intelligence Community, a report will come in that will lay out an event something like this:
“Source ABCDE, whose previous reporting has been deemed to be accurate, says that Islamic Jihad launched the rocket that hit the al-Ahli Hospital on October 17. As proof, Source ABCDE offered information indicating that the launch originated at coordinates XX’XX” by ZZ’ZZ”.”
That information is then followed by a line of asterisks across the paper, where it is literally torn off. And underneath that tearline, the issuing agency would write something unclassified and ready for release to the public akin to “The rocket associated with the explosion at al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza originated from coordinates XX’XX” by ZZ’ZZ,” indicating that it was launched from territory controlled by Hamas.”
See? It’s as easy as that. So why haven’t the Israelis or the United States issued something for public consumption? Why are we just supposed to take their word for it? And to make this even more of an open-and-shut case of keeping the intelligence away from the American people, consider this:
Classified cables produced by the U.S. government always have something called a precedence designator. That designator tells the recipient how important the cable is and whether it needs immediate action. For example, most diplomatic cable traffic is given a “Routine” designation. Some if it is designated “Priority,” meaning that the recipient should act on it sometime over the next several days. The next highest designation is “Immediate.” That means that the message requires an immediate response or some other immediate action. An Immediate cable can also have a sub-designator assigned to it. That’s NIACT, which means “Night Action.” If a cable his NIACT on it, it means that the recipient’s agency has to wake the recipient up, get him to the office, and have him respond to the cable immediately.
NIACT cables are unusual. They’re usually reserved for times when lives are at stake. But believe it or not, there are two precedence designators that are above Immediate NIACT. The first is FLASH. Just as it sounds, FLASH means something terrible is happening. An army is crossing a border, rioters have breached the embassy walls, or an embassy employee has been assassinated. FLASH cables are exceedingly rare. I only saw a few dozen in my career at the CIA in what were probably millions of cables over the course of 15 years.
The rarest precedence designator of all is CRITIC. A CRITIC is so serious that it means, for all intents and purposes, to take cover. At the very beginning of my career, I saw a lot of CRITICs. They all came during the first Gulf War when Iraq was launching Scud missiles at Israel and Saudi Arabia. A sister agency of the CIA would send a cable marked “CRITIC,” saying, “A missile launch was detected originating at coordinates XX’XX” by ZZ’ZZ.” We knew that if the coordinates were in western Iraq, the missile was going to Israel. If the coordinates were in southern Iraq, the missile was going to Saudi Arabia. Again, it’s as simple as that.
So why haven’t we seen any tearlines on the al-Ahli bombing? We can be confident that a CRITIC was likely issued as soon as the rocket was launched. The intelligence services of a half-dozen countries likely know the information. So why don’t the Israeli or American governments, at least, just come out and show us the evidence? Could it be that they have something to hide?
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John Kiriakou was a CIA analyst and case officer from 1990 to 2004. In December 2007, John was the first U.S. government official to confirm that waterboarding was used to interrogate al-Qaeda prisoners, a practice he described as torture. Kiriakou was a former senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a former counter-terrorism consultant. While employed with the CIA, he was involved in critical counter-terrorism missions following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, but refused to be trained in so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques,” nor did he ever authorize or engage in such crimes. John can be reached at: [email protected].
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***
Her Majesty Queen Rania on Tuesday relayed the Arab World’s shock and disappointment at the world’s “glaring double standard” and “deafening silence” in the face of Israel’s ongoing war on the Gaza Strip, emphasizing that, despite the prevalent Western media narrative, “this conflict did not begin on October 7th.”
“Most networks are covering the story under the title of ‘Israel at War.’ But for many Palestinians on the other side of the separation wall and the barbed wire, war has never left. This is a 75-year-old story; a story of overwhelming death and displacement to the Palestinian people,” Her Majesty said. “The context of a nuclear-armed regional superpower that occupies, oppresses, and commits daily documented crimes against Palestinians is missing from the narrative.”
In a live interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, conducted remotely from Queen Rania’s offices in Amman, Her Majesty explained that the people of Jordan are united in “grief, pain, and shock” in response to the staggering civilian casualties of the past 18 days of war, according to a statement from Her Majesty’s office.
“We’ve seen Palestinian mothers who have had to write the names of their children on their hands, because the chances of them being shelled to death – of their bodies turning into corpses – are so high,” Queen Rania said. “I just want to remind the world that Palestinian mothers love their children just as much as any other mother in the world. And for them to have to go through this, it’s just unbelievable.”
Conveying Jordan’s position, Her Majesty stated that the country has been very clear that it condemns the killing of any civilian, whether Palestinian or Israeli.
“That is Jordan’s ethical, moral position. And it’s also the position of Islam,” she said, explaining that the religion prohibits Muslims to kill a woman, child, or elderly person, to destroy a tree, or hurt a priest.
The Queen stressed that these rules of engagement should apply to all sides, arguing that Israel is committing atrocities under the guise of self-defense.
“6,000 civilians killed so far, 2,400 children – how is that self-defense? We are seeing butchery at a mass scale using precision weapons,” she said, “For the past two weeks, we have seen the indiscriminate bombardment of Gaza: entire families wiped out, residential neighborhoods flattened to the ground, the targeting of hospitals, schools, churches, mosques, medical workers, journalists, UN aid workers – how is that self defense?”
The Queen went on to state that many in the region view the Western world as complicit in this war through the support and cover that it provides Israel.
“This is the first time in modern history that there is such human suffering and the world is not even calling for a ceasefire,” Her Majesty said. “Many in the Arab world are looking at the Western world as not just tolerating this, but as aiding and abetting it.”
Elaborating on the plight of Palestinian people, Her Majesty explained,
“There are over 500 checkpoints scattered all over the West Bank. You have a separation wall, which is deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice, that has separated the territories into 200 disconnected enclaves. And you’ve seen the aggressive expansion of settlements on Palestinian land, and those have interrupted the territorial contiguity of the territories and has deemed an autonomous, independent Palestinian state not viable.”
The Queen also mentioned that Israel is in violation of no less than 30 UN Security Council resolutions, which “require it, and it alone, to act to withdraw from territories occupied in 1967, and to stop the settlements, the separation wall, and the human rights violations.” She also underscored that Israel has been designated as an “apartheid regime” by Israeli and international human rights organizations.
Commenting on military solutions to conflict, Her Majesty said:
“Victory is a myth that politicians make in order to justify immense loss of life… There can never be a resolution except around the negotiating table. And there’s only one path to this: a free, sovereign, and independent Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with the state of Israel.”
The Queen also indicated that allies to Israel are doing it a disservice by giving it blind support.
“Expediting and expanding the provision of lethal weapons to Israel is only going to expand this conflict. It’s only going to prolong and deepen the suffering,” she said.
Criticizing the role of the media in covering the current conflict, Queen Rania noted the double standard presented when Western interviewers demand that people representing the Palestinian side immediately issue condemnations, requiring them to “have their humanity cross-examined and present their moral credentials.”
“We don’t see Israeli officials being asked to condemn, and when they are, people are readily accepted by [claiming] ‘our right to defend ourselves,’” she said. “I have never seen a Western official say the sentence: Palestinians have the right to defend themselves.”
The Queen also discussed the oppression of Palestinian expressions of solidarity in Western democracies, commenting that when people gather to support Israel, they are exercising their right to assembly, but when they gather for Palestine, they are deemed terrorist sympathizers or anti-Semitic.
“Freedom of speech is apparently a universal value, except when you mention Palestine,” Her Majesty said.
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Featured image: Photo courtesy of Her Majesty’s office
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***
On October 24, the United States and other imperialist states for the third time voted against a resolution, this time sponsored by the Republic of Brazil, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Two other resolutions over the last two weeks, one sponsored by Russia and the other also by Brazil, were prevented from being adopted due to the influence of the administration of President Joe Biden.
Since the beginning of the Al-Aqsa Storm emanating from the Gaza Strip on October 7, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have imposed a total siege on an area considered the most densely populated in the world. Many refer to Gaza as the largest open-air prison on the planet.
Over 6,000 people have been killed during the siege with thousands more injured, wounded and traumatized. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been displaced from their homes due to the arbitrary evacuation orders from the IDF and the incessant bombings. Many of those killed were children, people with disabilities, the infirm and expectant women.
Civilian residential areas, schools, mosques, churches and hospitals have been subjected to targeted bombings by the IDF. Electricity has been terminated while the ban on fuel imports is threatening large-scale contamination of the water systems which could result in an outbreak of cholera and other infectious diseases.
United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres spoke before the Security Council urging the passing of the resolution for a ceasefire. Guterres outlined the horrendous humanitarian crisis which is directly the result of the IDF bombings and refusal to allow aid into Gaza from the Rafah Crossing or other border areas.
Since October 20, less than 50 trucks carrying humanitarian assistance have been able to enter Gaza from Egypt through the Rafah Crossing. On October 24, the same day as the UNSC debate, no trucks were able to enter the enclave. This is contrasted with the situation prior to October 7, when between 400-500 trucks a day carrying food, medicines, fuel and other supplies provided many of the essential needs of the Palestinians in Gaza. Even with the presence of Guterres in Egypt near the Rafah Crossing on October 20, the opening was still delayed until the following day.
“The situation in the Middle East is growing more dire by the hour. The war in Gaza is raging and risks spiraling throughout the region. Divisions are splintering societies. Tensions threaten to boil over. At a crucial moment like this, it is vital to be clear on principles — starting with the fundamental principle of respecting and protecting civilians. I have condemned unequivocally the horrifying and unprecedented 7 October acts of terror by Hamas in Israel. Nothing can justify the deliberate killing, injuring and kidnapping of civilians – or the launching of rockets against civilian targets. All hostages must be treated humanely and released immediately and without conditions. I respectfully note the presence among us of members of their families.
It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced, and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing. But the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas. And those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”
Unfortunately, these remarks by the Secretary General are highly contradictory to the point of cancelling out the central points. United Nations General Assembly Resolutions passed between 1960-1990, upholds the right to self-determination for all oppressed and colonized people.
Moreover, these resolutions recognize the right of the colonized peoples to utilize any means necessary to safeguard their interests and bring about national liberation. Following the logic of these resolutions, Hamas or any other resistance movement is well within the contours of international law in taking up arms to win their freedom. (See this)
Since 1948, as well as 1967, the United Nations has failed to bring into existence an independent Palestinian state. The Palestinian people remain aliens in their own homeland. Millions of them are in forced exile with no right to return to the land of their ancestors.
In Gaza, the West Bank, Jerusalem and throughout the Occupied Territories (OPT), Palestinians are subject to illegal evictions, arrests and murder. Since the siege on Gaza, hundreds of Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by the security forces utilizing small arms, drones and other methods of inflicting serious injury and death.
This system of settler-colonial occupation and repression is financed largely by the U.S. which claims to be the leading democratic state in the world. Successive U.S. administrations routinely describe the State of Israel as a “democracy.” How can Tel Aviv be a democracy when the majority of the people are denied their fundamental civil and human rights? The Palestinians are treated as being inferior to the Israeli settlers and consequently relegated to the lower echelons of society and within the broader international community.
Resistance Remains the Only Solution to the Palestinian Question
Whether Secretary General Guterres is willing to recognize it or not, the Palestinians and other people living in the states surrounding the State of Israel have no alternative other than to defend themselves against settler aggression. The fact that Tel Aviv is funded, armed and given diplomatic cover by Washington and its imperialist allies, means that the struggle for the liberation of Palestine and the sovereignty of neighboring states, has broad international implications.
Biden, Rishi Sunak, Olof Schulz and Emmanuel Macron have all visited Tel Aviv to express their unconditional support to the Zionist state. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the media while standing next to French President Macron on October 24 that the conflict in Occupied Palestine is between “civilization or barbarism.”
The same language was utilized during the visit of Biden on October 18 in the aftermath of the IDF bombing of the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza, which killed nearly 500 people. Rather than call for a thorough investigation into the Al-Ahli bombing and all similar attacks carried out by the IDF, Biden readily endorsed the fabrications of the Israeli government. Biden has not yet called for a ceasefire and the resumption of adequate assistance to the people Gaza. Instead, the White House wants to send billions of more dollars to Israel to suppress the Palestinians along with continuing the failing war in Ukraine, the attempts to contain the People’s Republic of China and the fortification of the southern border to keep out migrants from Mexico, Central America, South America and other geopolitical regions of the globe.
Therefore, the divisions are clear: the imperialist states in their view represent civilization while the oppressed fighting for national liberation signify barbarity. Such an outlook paves the way for a global conflagration which could very well determine the future of human society.
However, for the western imperialist states and their allies to enforce this world view, it would require the re-enslavement and re-colonization of billions of people particularly in the Global South. An attempt to implement the subjugation of the majority of the world’s population would undoubtedly prompt a tremendous war of resistance spanning numerous countries and continents.
Consequently, the workers and oppressed within the imperialist states have a critical role to play in the present period. Capitalism in its current phase is incapable of providing adequate incomes, housing, energy resources, environmental quality, education and healthcare. Within the leading western capitalist states, there is significant unrest among the workers and oppressed who are demanding economic justice and an end to structural racism. These burgeoning struggles in the industrialized states must merge with the aspirations of those in the Global South to create a world without exploitation and imperialist war.
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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of the Pan-African News Wire. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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***
“But these weren’t the kind of monsters that had tentacles and rotting skin, the kind a seven-year-old might be able to wrap his mind around—they were monsters with human faces, in crisp uniforms, marching in lockstep, so banal you don’t recognize them for what they are until it’s too late.” ― Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children
Enough already.
Enough with the distractions. Enough with the partisan jousting.
Enough with the sniping and name-calling and mud-slinging that do nothing to make this country safer or freer or more just.
We have let the government’s evil-doing, its abuses, power grabs, brutality, meanness, inhumanity, immorality, greed, corruption, debauchery and tyranny go on for too long.
We have seen this convergence before in Hitler’s Germany, in Stalin’s Russia, in Mussolini’s Italy, and in Mao’s China: the rise of strongmen and demagogues, the ascendency of profit-driven politics over deep-seated principles, the warring nationalism that seeks to divide and conquer, the callous disregard for basic human rights and dignity, and the silence of people who should know better.
Yet no matter how many times the world has been down this road before, we can’t seem to avoid repeating the deadly mistakes of the past.
This is not just playing out on a national and international scale. It is wreaking havoc at the most immediate level, as well, creating rifts and polarities within families and friends, neighborhoods and communities that keep the populace warring among themselves and incapable of presenting a united front in the face of the government’s goose-stepping despotism.
We labor today under the weight of countless tyrannies, large and small, disguised as “the better good,” marketed as benevolence, enforced with armed police, and carried out by an elite class of government officials who are largely insulated from the ill effects of their actions.
For too long now, the American people have rationalized turning a blind eye to all manner of government wrongdoing—asset forfeiture schemes, corruption, surveillance, endless wars, SWAT team raids, militarized police, profit-driven private prisons, and so on—because they were the so-called lesser of two evils.
Yet the unavoidable truth is that the government—through its acts of power grabs, brutality, meanness, inhumanity, immorality, greed, corruption, debauchery and tyranny—has become almost indistinguishable from the evil it claims to be fighting, whether that evil takes the form of terrorism, torture, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, murder, violence, theft, pornography, scientific experimentations or some other diabolical means of inflicting pain, suffering and servitude on humanity.
At its core, this is not a debate about politics, or constitutionalism, or even tyranny disguised as law-and-order. This is a condemnation of the monsters with human faces who walk among us.
Many of them work for the U.S. government.
This is the premise of John Carpenter’s film They Live, which was released thirty-five years ago and remains unnervingly, chillingly appropriate for our modern age.
Best known for his horror film Halloween, which assumes that there is a form of evil so dark that it can’t be killed, Carpenter’s larger body of work is infused with a strong anti-authoritarian, anti-establishment, laconic bent that speaks to the filmmaker’s concerns about the unraveling of our society, particularly our government.
Time and again, Carpenter portrays the government working against its own citizens, a populace out of touch with reality, technology run amok, and a future more horrific than any horror film.
In Escape from New York, Carpenter presents fascism as the future of America.
In The Thing, a remake of the 1951 sci-fi classic of the same name, Carpenter presupposes that increasingly we are all becoming dehumanized.
In Christine, the film adaptation of Stephen King’s novel about a demon-possessed car, technology exhibits a will and consciousness of its own and goes on a murderous rampage.
In In the Mouth of Madness, Carpenter notes that evil grows when people lose “the ability to know the difference between reality and fantasy.”
And then there is Carpenter’s They Live, in which two migrant workers discover that the world is not as it seems. In fact, the population is actually being controlled and exploited by aliens working in partnership with an oligarchic elite. All the while, the populace—blissfully unaware of the real agenda at work in their lives—has been lulled into complacency, indoctrinated into compliance, bombarded with media distractions, and hypnotized by subliminal messages beamed out of television and various electronic devices, billboards and the like.
It is only when homeless drifter John Nada (played to the hilt by the late Roddy Piper) discovers a pair of doctored sunglasses—Hoffman lenses—that Nada sees what lies beneath the elite’s fabricated reality: control and bondage.
When viewed through the lens of truth, the elite, who appear human until stripped of their disguises, are shown to be monsters who have enslaved the citizenry in order to prey on them.
Likewise, billboards blare out hidden, authoritative messages: a bikini-clad woman in one ad is actually ordering viewers to “MARRY AND REPRODUCE.” Magazine racks scream “CONSUME” and “OBEY.” A wad of dollar bills in a vendor’s hand proclaims, “THIS IS YOUR GOD.”
When viewed through Nada’s Hoffman lenses, some of the other hidden messages being drummed into the people’s subconscious include: NO INDEPENDENT THOUGHT, CONFORM, SUBMIT, STAY ASLEEP, BUY, WATCH TV, NO IMAGINATION, and DO NOT QUESTION AUTHORITY.
This indoctrination campaign engineered by the elite in They Live is painfully familiar to anyone who has studied the decline of American culture.
A citizenry that does not think for themselves, obeys without question, is submissive, does not challenge authority, does not think outside the box, and is content to sit back and be entertained is a citizenry that can be easily controlled.
In this way, the subtle message of They Live provides an apt analogy of our own distorted vision of life in the American police state, what philosopher Slavoj Žižek refers to as dictatorship in democracy, “the invisible order which sustains your apparent freedom.”
Tune out the government’s attempts to distract, divert and befuddle us and tune into what’s really going on in this country, and you’ll run headlong into an unmistakable, unpalatable truth: what we are dealing with today is an authoritarian beast that has outgrown its chains and will not be restrained.
We’re being fed a series of carefully contrived fictions that bear no resemblance to reality.
Despite the fact that we are 17,600 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist attack; 11,000 times more likely to die from an airplane accident than from a terrorist plot involving an airplane; 1,048 times more likely to die from a car accident than a terrorist attack, and 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist , we have handed over control of our lives to government officials who treat us as a means to an end—the source of money and power.
As the Bearded Man in They Live warns, “They are dismantling the sleeping middle class. More and more people are becoming poor. We are their cattle. We are being bred for slavery.”
We have bought into the illusion and refused to grasp the truth.
From the moment we are born until we die, we are indoctrinated into believing that those who rule us do it for our own good. The truth is far different.
The powers-that-be want us to feel threatened by forces beyond our control (terrorists, pandemics, mass shootings, etc.).
They want us afraid and dependent on the government and its militarized armies for our safety and well-being.
They want us distrustful of each other, divided by our prejudices, and at each other’s throats.
We are little more than expendable resources to be used, abused and discarded.
In fact, a study conducted by Princeton and Northwestern University concluded that the U.S. government does not represent the majority of American citizens. Instead, the study found that the government is ruled by the rich and powerful, or the so-called “economic elite.” Moreover, the researchers concluded that policies enacted by this governmental elite nearly always favor special interests and lobbying groups.
In other words, we are being ruled by an oligarchy disguised as a democracy, and arguably on our way towards fascism—a form of government where private corporate interests rule, money calls the shots, and the people are seen as mere subjects to be controlled.
Rest assured that when and if fascism finally takes hold in America, the basic forms of government will remain: Fascism will appear to be friendly. The legislators will be in session. There will be elections, and the news media will continue to cover the entertainment and political trivia. Consent of the governed, however, will no longer apply. Actual control will have finally passed to the oligarchic elite controlling the government behind the scenes.
Sound familiar?
Clearly, we are now ruled by an oligarchic elite of governmental and corporate interests.
We have moved into “corporatism” (favored by Benito Mussolini), which is a halfway point on the road to full-blown fascism.
Corporatism is where the few moneyed interests—not elected by the citizenry—rule over the many. In this way, it is not a democracy or a republican form of government, which is what the American government was established to be. It is a top-down form of government and one which has a terrifying history typified by the developments that occurred in totalitarian regimes of the past: police states where everyone is watched and spied on, rounded up for minor infractions by government agents, placed under police control, and placed in detention (a.k.a. concentration) camps.
For the final hammer of fascism to fall, it will require the most crucial ingredient: the majority of the people will have to agree that it’s not only expedient but necessary.
But why would a people agree to such an oppressive regime?
Fear is the method most often used by politicians to increase the power of government. And, as most social commentators recognize, an atmosphere of fear permeates modern America: fear of terrorism, fear of the police, fear of our neighbors and so on.
The propaganda of fear has been used quite effectively by those who want to gain control, and it is transforming the populace into fearful, compliant, pacified zombies content to march in lockstep with the government’s dictates.
This brings me back to They Live, in which the real zombies are not the aliens calling the shots but the populace who are content to remain controlled.
When all is said and done, the world of They Live is not so different from our own. As one of the characters points out, “The poor and the underclass are growing. Racial justice and human rights are nonexistent. They have created a repressive society, and we are their unwitting accomplices. Their intention to rule rests with the annihilation of consciousness. We have been lulled into a trance. They have made us indifferent to ourselves, to others. We are focused only on our own gain.”
We, too, are focused only on our own pleasures, prejudices and gains. Our poor and underclasses are also growing. Injustice is growing. Inequality is growing. A concern for human rights is nearly nonexistent. We too have been lulled into a trance, indifferent to others.
Oblivious to what lies ahead, we’ve been manipulated into believing that if we continue to consume, obey, and have faith, things will work out. But that’s never been true of emerging regimes. And by the time we feel the hammer coming down upon us, it will be too late.
So where does that leave us?
The characters who populate Carpenter’s films provide some insight.
Underneath their machismo, they still believe in the ideals of liberty and equal opportunity. Their beliefs place them in constant opposition with the law and the establishment, but they are nonetheless freedom fighters.
When, for example, John Nada destroys the alien hypno-transmitter in They Live, he delivers a wake-up call for freedom. As Nada memorably declares, “I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I’m all out of bubblegum.”
In other words: we need to get active and take a stand for what’s really important.
Stop allowing yourselves to be easily distracted by pointless political spectacles and pay attention to what’s really going on in the country.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the real battle for control of this nation is taking place on roadsides, in police cars, on witness stands, over phone lines, in government offices, in corporate offices, in public school hallways and classrooms, in parks and city council meetings, and in towns and cities across this country.
All the trappings of the American police state are now in plain sight.
Wake up, America.
If they live (the tyrants, the oppressors, the invaders, the overlords), it is only because “we the people” sleep.
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Already in October 2000, at the outset of the Palestinian uprising, military circles were ready with detailed operative plans to topple Arafat and the Palestinian Authority. This was before the Palestinian terror attacks started. (The first attack on Israeli civilians was on November 3, 2000, in a market in Jerusalem).
This significant move to the right may be a sign of awakening – awakening to the aberrant neo-fascist “green policies,” coercing the world’s economy to be driven by green energy, mandating to demolish one of the most efficient and secure sources of energy, clean nuclear power and doing away with hydrocarbon energy – gas and oil – for which by now the most extraordinary technologies have made these sources of energy multiple times cleaner than they were 20 to 30 years ago.
The fundamental question that we’re confronting here is the extent to which the US is capable of supporting its own national interest which includes not getting involved in places like Ukraine and Israel-Gaza unless there is a compelling national interest that drives the process.
The population of Gaza are simply defenceless. Only international intervention can stop Israel from doing whatever it wishes, and those countries which have influence with Israel are actively abetting and encouraging the genocide.
An Air Canada captain, he flew his last flight in December 2022 following a diagnosis of terminal renal cell carcinoma. He fought this dreadful illness valiantly and tenaciously, characteristic of his indomitable spirit.
Mobilisation reserves in Ukraine have been emptied while the military calls for troop rotation at the front, which cannot be done, former UkrainianPrime Minister Mykola Azarov said on his Telegram channel on October 23. This is unsurprising as Ukraine has been illegally mobilising men since at least January, demonstrating the alarming lack of manpower the country has, an issue even well before the failed so-called “Spring Offensive,” which actually began in early June.
The Israeli military has a long track record of compulsively concocting face-saving falsehoods – disinformation that vilifies the very Palestinian people it has oppressed for decades. The latest example came a few days ago.
For anyone concerned about the moderating restraint international law is meant to offer, especially when it comes to the use of force by states, Israel’s approach against the imprisoned populace of Gaza is bound to cause profound despair and lingering disgust.
To begin with, the whole thing was based on a false premise. We were told that in SARS-CoV-2 we were up against a highly dangerous virus that posed a potentially lethal threat to those who contracted it and that vaccines were the only sure way to escape the scourge. This was a lie.
Biden’s formal address to the nation from the Oval Office on Thursday can only be seen as the launch of a new phase of the Ukraine war carrying forward the the demonising of Putin to a new level, Biden weaves together a new narrative claiming that Hamas and the Russian leader both want to “completely annihilate a neighbouring democracy — completely annihilate it.”
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Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (RFK Jr., or Bobby) is man of vision, a nonconformist who dared to challenge the conventional thinking on a wide range of issues, incurring the wrath of the establishment in the process. Bobby is a registered Democrat, and when, this past May, he threw his hat into the ring regarding the 2024 Presidential election, I had to suppress my enthusiasm, knowing full well that the Democratic Party elite who stole the nomination from Bernie Sanders in 2016, and cooked the books for Biden in 2020, would never give the nephew of John Fitzgerald Kennedy a fighting chance to win the nomination for the Democratic Party in the 2024 election. Frankly speaking, how I felt about Bobby didn’t matter, because as a registered Republican in the State of New York, I was irrelevant when it came to issues pertaining to the Democratic primary.
This, of course, didn’t mean I had gone deaf, dumb, and blind to the Kennedy phenomenon. Back in February, I had spent some quality time in a Washington, DC bar with Dennis Kucinich, the man who would go on to be appointed as Bobby’s campaign manager when the Kennedy scion announced his bid for America’s top job back in May. Dennis was excited about the prospects of a Kennedy run, and that night we outlined what we believed to be the list of positives that accrued to a Bobby candidacy. The list was long and, although fueled by beer and pretzels, rational. Bobby was the anti-candidate, the perfect antidote to the ignorant arrogance of Donald Trump and the incompetent ignorance of the incumbent, Joe Biden. If Bobby could find the sweet spot between the two candidates, Dennis and I strategized, then he had a very good shot at taking home the grand prize—the presidency of the United States.
Image: Conor Kennedy in the uniform of the Ukrainian Army, Summer 2022
I struggled with Bobby’s candidacy early on over his stance on the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and Russia in general. His position seemed to be influenced by the experiences of his son, Conor, a law student at Georgetown University who skipped out on an internship at a prestigious law firm to instead spend the summer of 2022 volunteering to fight with the Ukrainian Army against Russia. Conor, who had no prior military experience, was initially trained as a drone operator and, later, as a machine gunner in a unit that included other American soldiers of fortune. After two and a half months in Ukraine, Conor returned to the United States, where he is currently finishing up his law degree at Georgetown.
Bobby said that he “knew [Conor’s] views about the war were not aligned with mine.” Noting that Conor wasn’t naïve about Ukraine (“Ukraine has problems…there’s corruption”), Bobby said of his son, “He doesn’t like Putin. He thinks he’s a gangster and a bully and he doesn’t like bullies.”
Forget that we are talking about a Georgetown law student whose mind should be developed sufficiently to advance an argument as simplistic as “Putin is a bully.” Forget for a moment that a scion of the Kennedy family—an American institution—chose to bear arms not for America, but a foreign country. Forget for a moment that this same scion fought for a country whose national hero—Stepan Bandera—led an organization of Ukrainian nationalists responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of civilians during the Second World War while allied with Nazi Germany.
History is full of examples of prodigal sons returning to the arms of a forgiving father, and they should both count their blessings that Conor wasn’t killed, wounded, or captured by the Russians during his summer experimentation with conflict tourism.
Some of Conor’s childish sentiment seemed to rub off on Bobby when he spoke on the issue of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, but by and large Bobby took the right stance, solidly connecting with the facts and drawing the right conclusions.
The evidence of this is in the words spoken by Bobby in what has been, up until this moment, his defining public address to the American people—the Peace and Diplomacy speech delivered at Saint Anselm College in Goffstown, New Hampshire, on June 21, 2023—sixty years after his uncle’s famous American University address that helped chart a new course of US-Soviet relations.
Bobby started his speech poorly (“I abhor Russia’s brutal and bloody invasion of that nation [Ukraine],” he said, perhaps channeling Conor), but he quickly recovered. “But we must understand that our government has also contributed to its circumstances through repeated deliberate provocations of Russia going back to the 1990s. Democratic and Republican administrations have pushed NATO to Russia’s borders, violating our own solemn promise from the early ’90s when we pledged that if Russia made this terrible concession of moving 400,000 troops out of East Germany and allowing the unification of Germany under a NATO army, a hostile army, that we would commit that after that we would not move NATO ‘one inch to the east.’”
James Baker gave that assurance, as did the British government officials and many, many others. And yet today, we have surrounded Russia. We have moved NATO not just one inch to the east, but a thousand miles and fourteen nations. We have surrounded Russia with missiles and military bases, something that we would never tolerate if the Russians did that to us. And statements from our government officials and think tanks lay out the goals for the Ukraine war: regime change in Russia; the overthrow of Vladimir Putin. This is what President Biden has said is our purpose in the Ukraine: the disabling and exhaustion of the Russian military, and the dismembering of the Russian Federation.
None of these objectives have anything to do with helping Ukraine, which of course, was the pretext for our involvement in the war. That’s when our leaders told us that we were there for a humanitarian mission. But they’ve since acknowledged that there is a broader geopolitical agenda, and that Ukraine is simply a pawn in a proxy war between the United States and Russia.
Bobby’s words shook the establishment. Some regional media outlets, like Boston Man Magazine, recognized it for what it was (“I heard the voices of JFK and RFK in that of Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy, Jr, nephew and son of the aforementioned,” its publisher noted in an introduction to the text of the speech published in the magazine. “In his Peace and Diplomacy speech that evening, I heard hope for a Pax Americana”), the mainstream media either ignored the speech altogether, or wrote it off by labeling Bobby a tool of Russian propaganda.
The fact that both the Democrats and Republican establishments were up in arms over Bobby’s common-sense approach to defining the Russia-Ukraine conflict meant that Bobby was separating himself from both parties—an absolute requirement if he was going to be able to garner enough votes in a general election to walk away the winner. Moreover, operating from the logic that one cannot solve a problem unless it is first properly defined (because whatever solution you come up with will not address the true nature of the problem, and as such solve nothing), Bobby was positioning himself to be the only candidate with a track record of getting it right on the issue of Ukraine and, as such, being in a position to conceive and implement policies that had a chance of helping craft a long-term solution to the overall issue of European security.
Bobby said of his uncle’s American University speech, “It’s one of the most important speeches in American history.” What made it so, Bobby believed, was that his uncle “talked to the American people and asked them to put themselves in the shoes of the Russians. Everybody else was doing the opposite at that time. They were demonizing and vilifying the Russians. And he said, no, we have to put ourselves in their shoes, in the shoes of our adversaries. If we want to have peace, we need to do that. It has to be a regular discipline.”
These words were music to my ears. I had just returned from a 26-day, 12-city tour of Russia promoting my book, Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika, which had been published in the Russian language by Komsomolskaya Pravda, one of the oldest and most respected publishing houses in Russia. The visit was far more than simply a book marketing ploy. It was a personal journey of discovery where I sought not only to put myself in the shoes of the Russian people, but peer inside their collective soul in an effort to better understand their perspective on life. JFK’s American University speech was a motivating factor in my journey, as it set in motion events pertaining to arms control that ended up being manifested in the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, which I helped implement as a weapons inspector (and the experiences of which formed the basis of my book).
Bobby channeled his uncle in the words of his Peace and Diplomacy speech, saying of the Russians that “they have legitimate security concerns the same as we do, and we need to understand that. He [JFK] reminded Americans of the suffering that the Russians had endured during the war – unimaginable suffering.”
One in seven Russians had been killed during World War Two. He asked Americans to imagine that all of the land, all of the cities, all of the towns from the East Coast to Chicago had been leveled to rubble, that the forests and fields had been burned. And he said that’s what happened to Russia during the war. That’s what they sacrificed for us. And they have legitimate security concerns to make sure that never happens again. And that speech turned around the American people and they ended up supporting the treaty. It was one of the fastest ratified treaties in American history.
After that speech, there was never a doubt—I was on Team Bobby.
I found Bobby’s candor and intellectual inquisitiveness in challenging the COVID mandates, inclusive of vaccines, refreshing. I appreciated his environmentalism. But most of all, as someone who believed that the threat of a nuclear war with Russia represents the single greatest threat to the security of the United States and the rest of the world, I saw in Bobby a glimmer of hope that the madness of nuclear war, and the Russophobia that existed in the United States that made such madness possible, could be defeated.
There were some things about Bobby which made me uncomfortable, nothing more so than his position on Israel and the Palestinian question.
I had taken the time to read up on Bobby before I did an interview with him on April 9 on “the cost of war.” I found one article he authored for Politico back in 2016, “Why the Arabs Don’t Want Us in Syria,” particularly illuminating.
“It’s time for Americans to turn America away from this new imperialism and back to the path of idealism and democracy,” Bobby wrote, addressing America’s oil-driven presence in the Middle East. “We should let the Arabs govern Arabia and turn our energies to the great endeavor of nation building at home. We need to begin this process, not by invading Syria, but by ending the ruinous addiction to oil that has warped US foreign policy for half a century.”
These words were again music to my ears. There was, however, one note that sounded off-key. Tucked away near the end of Bobby’s lengthy piece was a single reference to Israel. I was struck by the fact that Israel wasn’t factoring more in his narrative. “[W]e need,” Bobby wrote, “to dramatically reduce our military profile in the Middle East and let the Arabs run Arabia. Other than humanitarian assistance and guaranteeing the security of Israel’s borders, the US has no legitimate role in this conflict.”
The issue of Israel and Bobby’s allegiance to the same raised its head shortly after the son of RFK announced he was throwing his hat into the presidential ring. When Roger Waters, a founding member of Pink Floyd, came under fire in Germany for his live performance of “The Wall” in early May (Roger wore clothing that invoked Nazi Germany, a consistent feature of his act when performing this particular song from the eponymous album, which is highly critical of fascism and, by extension, an artistic expression against Nazi Germany), Bobby stepped up in his defense. “Roger,” Bobby tweeted, “You are the global hero Orwell had in mind when he said, ‘In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.’ The high priests of the totalitarian orthodoxies are trying to silence you with censorship, gaslighting and defamation. Please keep speaking truth to power!”
Almost immediately, Kennedy came under vociferous attack from Jewish organizations. Roger Waters, they maintained, was antisemitic. The charge was not a new one. In June 2020, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) criticized Waters for being “one of the most prominent and outspoken supporters of the BDS movement.” The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement is a pro-Palestinian organization which works to end international support for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians and pressure Israel to comply with international law by targeting the Israeli economy and businesses which do business with Israel. According to the ADL, Rogers “has refused to perform in Israel and urged fellow artists to follow suit and has often used inflammatory rhetoric against the country.”
Then, the ADL suggested that Rogers’ “anti-Israel views may be colored by antisemitism,” noting that the former Pink Floyd frontman viewed Zionism (described by the ADL as Jews who seek to “incorporate a connection with Israel into their religious, cultural, or social identities”) as “an ugly stain” which “needs to be gently removed.”
The ADL failed to make any mention of the philosophy espoused by the “father of modern political Zionism,” Theodore Herzl, who helped create the notion of a “Greater Israel” which has been used for decades by Jewish settlers, operating with the open support of the Israeli government, to steal Palestinian homes and land. In this way, the ADL—and other Jewish groups—have positioned themselves to label anyone who criticizes Zionism—like Roger Waters—as being engaged in “an implicit attack on millions of Jews who incorporate a connection with Israel into their religious, cultural, or social identities” and, as such, antisemitic.
Roger’s German performance came under attack by the European Jewish Conference, which tweeted out two images from the concert—one of him in his “costume,” and the other of the name “Anne Frank” projected onto a screen on stage. “Is there anything more antisemitic,” the EJC posted on X, “than using Anne Frank as a prop on a German stage while prancing around in a Nazi uniform attacking Jews?”
The Baronesse Katharina von Schnurbein, a German career politician who currently serves as the European Commission’s “coordinator on combating antisemitism and fostering Jewish life” (she herself is not Jewish), jumped on the anti-Roger Waters bandwagon, posting on X, “I am sick & disgusted by Roger Waters’ obsession to belittle and trivialize the Shoah & the sarcastic way in which he delights in trampling on the victims, systematically murdered by the Nazis. In Germany. Enough is enough. Holocaust trivialization is criminalized across the EU.”
Enter the United States. “I wholeheartedly concur with [Schnurbein’s] condemnation of Roger Waters,” the US Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Antisemitism, Deborah Lipstadt, posted on X, “and his despicable Holocaust distortion.”
According to the Forward, an independent Jewish magazine, “Concertgoers who saw Waters perform in Berlin in May tweeted photos of Abu Akleh [Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, killed by Israeli troops while doing her job] and Frank’s names being projected onto large screens. Under Abu Akleh’s name, the location of her death was listed as ‘Jenin, Palestine,’ her crime as ‘Being Palestinian’ and sentence as ‘death.’ Under Frank’s name, the location of her death was listed as the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp while her crime was listed as ‘Being Jewish’ and the sentence also death. Rogers, “the Forward article noted, “has defended the concert act, saying on social media that it is ‘quite clearly a statement in opposition to fascism, injustice, and bigotry in all its forms.’”
Indeed, when the Anne Frank Trust posted criticism of Waters on X, it was hit with a community context note which pointed out how wrong the trust and other critics of Roger Waters were in attacking his performance. “[C]learly Roger Waters needs educating about prejudice & antisemitism,” the Anne Frank Trust posted. “It is wildly inappropriate to misuse Anne Frank’s legacy.”
The community context note had a different take. “Frank’s name is shown as one of several victims of police or government forces as a statement against monetarianism and oppression,” the post noted, “themes addressed on Radio KAOS, the album from which the song is drawn. Frank is named as being killed for ‘the crime’ of being Jewish.”
No antisemitism here.
Anyone with a head on their shoulders saw through the nonsense of those defenders of Israel who took umbrage at Roger Waters exposing their hypocrisy. No one was buying what the pro-Zionist “establishment” was selling. No one, that is, except Bobby Kennedy.
“In my remarks about Roger Waters,” Bobby posted on X as soon as the Roger Waters controversy took root, “I was referring to his dissent on COVID and the war in Ukraine. I have only recently learned about some of his other views, which I do not share.” Kennedy then added, “I support Israel’s right to exist within secure borders and I also support the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people.”
What Bobby was admitting to was being as ignorant as the shallow politicians he was trying to differentiate himself from, people who, when armed with superficial knowledge about a topic, embrace an issue they had nothing to do with on the assumption that it might enhance their profile purpose, only to turn on a dime when confronted with controversy they did not understand, and lacked the courage of their convictions to defend against.
Bobby Kennedy with Shmuley Boteach and his wife, June 2023
Bobby then doubled down on his new-found stance as “staunch friend of Israel,” meeting for more than two hours with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach to discuss, according to a posting on X put out by Boteach, “Israel, the rise of antisemitism, and Kennedy’s recent tweet where he supported Roger Waters.” Boteach, a staunch defender of Israel and Zionism, went on to state, “It was courageous of Bobby to come and meet me and reassert his lifelong support of Israel and the Jewish people, continuing in the legacy of his great father who was murdered by Palestinian gunman Sirhan Sirhan because of his own support of Israel in 1968.”
What is curious about this passage is Boteach’s mentioning of Sirhan Sirhan, the man convicted of murdering Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. Bobby is on record saying that he doesn’t believe that Sirhan Sirhan was the gunman who killed his father. That title, according to Bobby, belongs to Eugene Thane Cesar, a man Bobby describes as a CIA operative and enemy of the Kennedy family. “He [Cesar] was holding my father’s arm,” Bobby told comedian Bill Maher in a recent interview. “He drew his gun, and my father was shot four times from behind.”
One would have to imagine this detail of his family’s history means something to Bobby—it is how his father died. Bobby has committed to a narrative which deviates from the public record—a bold move, especially if one believes in the accuracy of their position. And yet, because of Bobby’s need to be seen as supporting Israel, he allowed Rabbi Boteach to reimagine this murder to smear Palestinians with the murder of RFK and linking this murder to Israel. That Bobby allowed this to occur without correcting the record is, to be blunt, stunning.
Bobby marches alongside Shmuley Boteach in New York City, June 4, 2023
Bobby was also silent as Boteach turned his sights on Roger Waters, transforming Bobby’s “global hero” into something much different. Bobby, Boteach observed, “explained that his tweet about Waters was in response to someone sharing with him a picture that Waters flashed of Kennedy at one of his concerts, saluting the candidate’s willingness to swim against societal currents. Bobby told me he had no idea that Waters was a vicious antisemite and when he studied the issue and the facts, he immediately deleted the tweet. I believe Bobby and I thank him for his repudiation of Waters. How tragic it is for Waters to have his legacy as an antisemite now overtake his legacy as an accomplished artist.”
If Bobby said these things, then he has lost all credibility as a man who is deserving to hold the office of the President of the United States. Roger Waters is not a “vicious antisemite,” and for Bobby to attack him as such (assuming Boteach has accurately recorded his words) is both intellectual and moral cowardice. Things don’t get better for Bobby if Boteach manufactured this aspect of their conversation, since Bobby allowed Boteach’s words to go unchallenged.
As part of the Rabbi Boteach “cleansing” ritual, Bobby had to agree to march with the Jewish leader in New York City’s “Celebrate Israel Parade” on June 4.
Somehow, Bobby couldn’t shake the Israeli/antisemitic controversy. On July 11, 2023, at a private fundraiser held at Tony’s Di Napoli restaurant on East 63d Street, Bobby once again stirred up a hornet’s nest of Jewish angst. “COVID-19,” he told the crowd. “There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted. COVID-19 attacks certain races disproportionately,” Kennedy said. “COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese. We don’t know whether it was deliberately targeted or not but there are papers out there that show the racial or ethnic differential and impact.”
The New York Post published Bobby’s words (Bobby claims that his presentation was off the record, an assertion at least two attendees dispute), and the Jewish community blew up in anger, forcing him—once again—to turn to X to post a clarification. “The US and other governments are developing ethnically targeted bioweapons and that a 2021 study of the COVID-19 virus shows that COVID-19 appears to disproportionately affect certain races,” Kennedy wrote. “The furin cleave docking site is most compatible with blacks and Caucasians and least compatible with ethnic Chinese, Finns, and Ashkenazi Jews. In that sense, it serves as a kind of proof of concept for ethnically targeted bioweapons. I do not believe and never implied that the ethnic effect was deliberately engineered.”
The controversy followed Bobby to the US Congress, where he was scheduled to give high-profile testimony on government censorship, but instead spent most of his time defending his comments on COVID and Jews. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat from Florida, brought up an earlier Kennedy faux pas that occurred at an anti-COVID vaccine rally in Washington, DC, in January 2022, where he decried the COVID mandates set forth by the US government. “Even in Hitler’s Germany,” Kennedy said, “you could cross the Alps into Switzerland. You could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did.”
Even though Kennedy apologized (via a tweet) for his remarks (“I apologize for my reference to Anne Frank, especially to families that suffered the Holocaust horrors. My intention was to use examples of past barbarism to show the perils from new technologies of control. To the extent my remarks caused hurt, I am truly and deeply sorry”), Wasserman Schultz confronted Bobby, stating, “You made light of the genocide against Jewish people.” Kennedy was forced to apologize yet again.
Kennedy had to again turn to Rabbi Boteach to be cleansed of the charge of antisemitism stemming from his July 11 comments. Boteach conducted a 35-minute interview with Kennedy. Afterwards, the popular rabbi declared,“Bobby Kennedy and I are friends, and I like him. Kennedy,” Boteach said, “is the only major Democrat who has come out against that Iran deal. Bobby Kennedy is one of the only Democrats who spoke out boldly to protect Israel with its recent Jenin assault on terrorists. He defended Israel.”
There was another act of contrition Kennedy had to subject himself to before he could shed the antisemitism charge—and interview with the strongly pro-Israel Jewish News Syndicate (JNS). Here, Bobby—for the first time in such detail—set forth the depth of his support for Israel, especially its importance “as the only Middle East democracy” and “the significance of its military alliance with the United States.”
Bobby declared that he was aware of no other country that has Israel’s military discipline—what he called its “unique moral approach” to warfare. According to the JNS interview, Bobby noted that “Israel tries to treat Palestinians morally with justice and has sought a two-state solution despite the ‘abject refusal of the Palestinian leadership to negotiate and the genocidal aspirations of the Palestinian Authority.’ Israel, Bobby said, only attacks military targets, “enduring casualties of IDF forces in a deliberate, purposeful effort to protect civilians. I don’t think any other country in the world does it as well and with such a commitment as Israel.”
Bobby stated that he stood alone among Democrats when it came to defending Israel’s actions. “I am going to not only defend that record,” Bobby declared, “but I’m going to champion the moral argument for Israel and use my campaign as a bully pulpit to do that.”
Bobby was as good as his word. On August 1, during an interview with political comedian Jimmy Dore, Kennedy defended Israel’s military conduct against the Palestinians, criticizing the Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal in the process. “I love Max Blumenthal,” Bobby told Jimmy, “But I do not think he’s objective on Israel. His reporting on Israel—it needs to be questioned.” When Dore challenged Bobby to do an interview with Max, Bobby agreed, only to have his staff reverse course, saying such an interview would not happen.
Bobby’s position was a disaster. I can personally attest to several high-profile political personalities who were ready to throw in with Bobby, only to have his position on Israel cause them to take stock of where they stood. Like me, they were attracted by Bobby’s anti-war stance, and his embrace of diplomacy as the ideal tool to resolve US-Russian relations. But Bobby’s unquestioning embrace of Israel’s militarism put him in a new light, something that did not bode well for the “anti-war” candidate, especially when looking at his hardline positions vis-à-vis Iran and China.
Bobby was losing votes at a time when he could ill afford to do so.
I stood by Bobby during this hard time, convinced that the wisdom and insight he exhibited in his Peace and Diplomacy speech was the real Bobby, and that warmonger Bobby could be managed once he secured the nomination. But he was still a Democrat, and as such I feared he would never survive in a system where the people had been supplanted by “super delegates” who would throw the election to the incumbent, Joe Biden, regardless of how the people voted. I had trouble vesting myself too much in someone I didn’t think was going to clear the starting gate.
Fortunately, Bobby and his team had reached a similar conclusion, accusing the Democratic National Committee of strategically shifting the Iowa primary and implementing rules that penalized candidates who campaigned in certain states. Moreover, Bobby believed, the DNC’s control over super delegates and automatic delegates made it virtually impossible for any candidate other than Biden to secure the nomination. Bobby would need to win almost 80% of all states to outmaneuver Biden, assuming Biden only wins 20% of the vote.
“It’s pretty clear that the DNC does not want a primary,” Bobby said. “They’re effectively disenfranchising the Democratic voters from having any choice in who becomes president or who becomes the Democratic nominee.”
Bobby then made the only choice possible if he was going to be a viable candidate for President in 2024—he declared himself as an independent.
This should have been a huge event, the very act that would separate him from both Democrats and Republicans, thereby liberating him to become a third center of gravity which, through the strength of Bobby’s personality and integrity, could start to steal voters from the orbits of the two major parties. The announcement was scheduled for October 9, in Philadelphia.
On October 7, Hamas launched its attack on Israel.
“This ignominious, unprovoked, and barbaric attack on Israel must be met with world condemnation and unequivocal support for the Jewish state’s right to self-defense,” Bobby posted on X that same day. “We must provide Israel with whatever it needs to defend itself—now. As President, I’ll make sure that our policy is unambiguous so that the enemies of Israel will think long and hard before attempting aggression of any kind. I applaud the strong statements of support from the Biden White House for Israel in her hour of need. However, the scale of these attacks means it is likely that Israel will need to wage a sustained military campaign to protect its citizens. Statements of support are fine, but we must follow through with unwavering, resolute, and practical action. America must stand by our ally throughout this operation and beyond as it exercises its sovereign right to self-defense.”
The anti-war candidate, whose stance regarding peace and diplomacy was the telling difference between his Democratic and Republican competitors, had just defined himself as a pro-war leader.
I pointed this out in a response to Bobby’s post. “I like RFKJr,” I wrote. “I think he’s the best choice for POTUS. He’s positioned himself as the peace candidate. And this is the tweet I fear may have sunk his chances. Israel’s policies regarding Palestine are indefensible. Bobby should be promoting an equitable peace settlement. Not war.”
Rabbi Rabbi Shmuley Boteach introduced Bobby by calling for a moment of silence for the Israeli victims. Then Bobby proceeded to say nothing—nothing—about the single most pressing issue of the day. This was his chance to weigh in on the side of peace, to promote the very peace and diplomacy message he articulated back in June.
He was silent, instead letting Rabbi Boteach speak on his behalf after the announcement.
And speak he did.
Dismissing criticism from Jewish groups that Bobby had not addressed the Hamas-Israeli conflict, Boteach said that his—Boteach’s—involvement in the October 9 event defined Kennedy’s stance toward Israel. “I think that was very brave of him and showed tremendous solidarity that he asked a rabbi who’s his close friend. You know, he moved away from the political figures who could have introduced him and endorsed him. The fact that I’m the one that introduced him, I think said it all.”
Five days later, on October 14, Bobby removed Dennis Kucinich as his campaign manager, replacing the veteran politician with a political neophyte—Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, Bobby’s daughter-in-law, and a former CIA clandestine officer.
I count Dennis as a friend. We’ve known each other for decades, ever since he invited me to testify in Congress about President George W. Bush’s flawed claims of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. I supported Dennis in his own bid for the presidency, back in 2000, and have for the past several years had the honor of serving with him on a prestigious advisory board where we provide our opinions on matters pertaining to geopolitics. Dennis’ hand could be felt in Bobby’s powerful Peace and Diplomacy speech. Sadly, the same could not be said of Bobby’s stance on Israel—Dennis had spent his political life defending the rights of Palestinians in the face of Israeli oppression. While both Dennis and the Kennedy campaign have been silent as to the reasons behind the precipitous firing, smart money says that the Israeli issue played a major factor in the decision.
“Not a good look,” I posted on X. “At a time when America should be excited about Kennedy’s independent run, his indefensible support of Israel is sinking his campaign. He is not only failing to gain any traction, but also bleeding support from a critical base of potential supporters—those Americans who bought into his rhetoric of peace.”
The results of the Israeli bombing of Gaza, October 2023
Bobby’s commitment to peace and diplomacy is what made him viable as a presidential candidate where his two likely opponents were on record supporting Israel without question.
Bobby could have followed in his uncle’s path, advocating that all Americans walk in the shoes of the Palestinian people to better understand their grievances and, in doing so, be better positioned to come up with a fair and equitable peace based on diplomacy, not war.
Bobby did not and has not. His appointment of Amaryllis Fox Kennedy bodes poorly for the future. I will continue to applaud Bobby for his stance on Russia and disarmament. But until he fundamentally changes course on Israel, I can’t in good faith claim to support his candidacy. If his name gets on the ballot, I may end up voting for him as the lesser evil, but that is not high praise.
America deserves better.
The world deserves better.
The people of Palestine deserve better.
*
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Featured image: Bobby Kennedy delivers his Peace and Diplomacy speech in New Hampshire, June 21, 2023 (All images in this article are from the author)
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