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In a speech in the European Parliament earlier this month, German MP Christine Anderson described the coercion of people into taking COVID vaccines as the “biggest crime ever committed on humanity.”

“This vaccine campaign will go down as the biggest scandal in medical history,” Anderson declared, adding “moreover, it will be known as the biggest crime ever committed on humanity.”

Yup and I meant every word if it! https://t.co/Pk4QS7eM2V

— Christine Anderson (@AndersonAfDMdEP) July 25, 2022

The MEP was addressing mass flight cancellations and staff shortages in airports and on planes, asserting that while it is claimed the situation stems from companies not hiring back enough staff after the pandemic, the real reason is that pilots and other staff have refused to get vaccinated.

Anderson further warned that “unscrupulous globalist elites” have used the pandemic for their own ends, asking “What in God’s name have they done with this?”

Addressing “each and every elected representative of people in every western democracy,” Anderson asked “What have you done?”

“You didn’t do your job, and do not tell me you didn’t know,” Anderson further asserted, adding “it is your job to protect the people that you were elected by.”

She continued,

“There is so much coming to light, all of the adverse side effects, numerous studies now available, on foetal disfigurements… genetic defects of babies born to women who got vaccinated.”

“What in the hell is going on here?” Anderson urged, vowing “We will do all we can to make sure this is brought to light and ensure the rights of the people to be protected.”

Watch:

Watch the full 1hr 30min event here:

Anderson previously made headlines for slamming the “political elite” for imposing vaccines and vaccine passports using “extortion and manipulation”.

Anderson stated that

“In the entire history of mankind there has never been a political elite sincerely concerned about the wellbeing of regular people. What makes any of us think that it is different now?”

Must Watch Very Powerful.

“In the entire history of mankind there has never been a political elite sincerely concerned about the wellbeing of regular people. What makes any of us think that it is different now. – Christine Anderson European Parliament.” pic.twitter.com/oSVYzg81p5

— Sikh For Truth (@SikhForTruth) October 29, 2021

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“Nothing is more real than nothing.” –Samuel Beckett, Malone Dies

Those who are never lost are forever lost.  Only those who know they are lost and that life is a shipwreck have a chance to find their way to shore.

The world’s great religions, including Taoism and Existential philosophy, understand that at the heart of human existence is the presence of the not (death, emptiness, void), but this negative reality, this “nothingness” interpenetrates with the positive of being alive so that our knowledge coincides with our ignorance, our lives with our death, and our truth with untruth.  This is also common sense.

Everyone is a pilgrim on the way, and because there are no maps, we all get lost.  And it is only by getting lost in a deep sense that we can find ourselves and discover the truth about the world.

It is well known that Ernest Hemingway made famous the phrase “the lost generation” when he opened his novel The Sun Also Rises with the epigram “You are all a lost generation,” attributed to Gertrude Stein, who said she heard it from a garage owner who said it about a young auto mechanic in his employ.

It is less well known that Hemingway later wrote “that all generations were lost by something and always had been and always would be …But to hell with her lost-generation talk and all the dirty easy labels.”

He was thinking of how the madness of war with the calls to patriotism and God and country and the never-ending official lies about everything maimed people at very deep levels.  His words in A Farewell to Arms have lasted because they are so true in their dismissal of abstract obscenities and their embrace of the concrete:

I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice and the expression in vain …. And I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards of Chicago if nothing were done with the meat except to bury it …. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.

No doubt he was also thinking of the existential anxiety of being alive and the fear of death and nothingness that is conveyed in his powerful short story, “A Clean Well-Lighted Place” that appeared in the 1930 volume Winner Take Nothing.  He was well acquainted with nothing (the not, nada) and knew that social circumstances only add to it, particularly wars and the nihilistic death wishes of lying political leaders.

Some say nothing has changed for millennia and that every age is similar and people are the same, always complaining about the present and recalling the good old days.  There is some truth in this, but the issue of assessing today in all its uniqueness remains paramount.  For every age and every generation is different; therein lies its potential and dangers.  Each can only be understood within its place and time.  We live in the era of high technology that has never before existed.  It is unique.  And it is uniquely dangerous.

Today is a time of unprecedented official lies about everything, endless wars hot and cold, class wars of the rich against the poor, medical wars of international elites against everyone, etc. –  it is a daily electronic digital  barrage meant to pound people into the deepest despair.  Call it “The Lost World of the Information Superhighway.”  These lies have sown a vast sense of bewilderment, as intended.  Lostness for so many, including those who don’t know it and take those lies for truth. People who don’t know that there are still places, although they are shrinking, where truth can be found.  The problem is, of course, that even when they are told about media sites and writers that operate honestly and outside the propaganda mill, they usually refuse to go there.  They prefer to live inside what Jim Garrison, the former New Orleans District Attorney who brought the only trial in the assassination of President Kennedy, correctly termed “the Doll’s House.”

Picking through the bins at the lost and found on the Internet, which is dominated by intelligence services and their Silicon Valley big tech partners, many who feel lost find “things” they think they have lost but which are counterfeit.  They cling to them as to false gods, not realizing that they have been placed there by the elite mountebanks and their accomplices, a process similar to a document dump that contains fabricated records.  It is an old trick.  Often what is really lost is the sense that life makes sense and is meaningful, but this awareness is often replaced with shards of false reassurance meant to distract and far too much information for anyone to comprehend.

What’s up?  Check your cell phone and head down the primrose path to unreality.

Just as there are two senses to being lost, one based on the awareness that if we refuse to grasp at straws and proceed through life by faith, the unknown road will bear us up (Thoreau said, “How vigilant we are! determined not to live by faith if we can avoid it…”), and the other being the more socially induced one of incessant propaganda, so too there are two ways of thinking about nothing.  The existential sense as described by Hemingway in his famous story mentioned above, and the sense of trivia or superficial preoccupations that distract.  C.S. Lewis described the latter sense very well:

The Christians describe the enemy as one ‘without whom Nothing is strong’. And Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man’s best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like, or in the long dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is too weak and fuddled to shake off.

This is a perfect description of the passivity of scrolling the internet or social media.  Much ado about absolutely nothing but distractions.  Tranquilized by trivia.

Our current situation has been long in coming.  Back in the early 1960s, there was a  highly touted intellectual named Marshall McLuhan whose 1964 book, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, was gobbled up by the baby boomers raised on television, whose rebellious members protested the inhumanity of IBM computer technology of that time.  Ironically, it was members of this generation who later created the computer revolution and have promoted the digital revolution.  They carry cell phones as sidearms to defend themselves from reality.

Newsweek called McLuhan “the oracle of the New Communications.”  He was an obscurantic celebrator of the electronic media and retribalized man long before the Internet, cell phones, personal computers, and digital mania.  McLuhan’s paeans to technology sounded very profound and liberating  with their vaguely Gnostic and Jungian rhetoric, which also fit with the 1960s “vibes.”  He called the electronic media our gods whom we must serve, for they in turn would liberate us.  He gave life to things while taking it from persons.  He wrote:

Electromagnetic technology requires utter human docility and quiescence of meditation such as befits an organism that now wears its brain outside its skull and its nerves outside its hide. Man must serve his electronic technologywith the same servo-mechanistic fidelity with which he served his coracle, his canoe, his typography, and all other extensions of his physical organs. But there is this difference, that previous technologies were partial and fragmentary, and the electric is total and inclusive. An external consensus or conscience is now as necessary as private consciousness. [my emphases]

Clearly this was a message of a prescient religious crank: mystical, mythological, technological nonsense perfectly in tune with the dawning new age. Not any coming of the Age of Aquarius, however, but that of the Age of Digital Control and endless wars.

By turning the person inside out and giving life to things, McLuhan was certainly anticipating and promoting the developments of the past forty years.  His ideas gave legitimacy to the passivity of the person in the face of the burgeoning mass media consumer culture.  They supported the growing commodification of all aspects of life, especially people.  By externalizing the person, McLuhan was eliminating the idea of the autonomous self and opening the way for today’s era of consumers, blank screens for the reception of advertising, public relations, and propaganda on a vast scale.  In fact, what he wrote of television runs deeper for cell phones and computer screens.  “ … with TV,” he wrote, “the viewer is the screen.  He is bombarded with light impulses that James Joyce called the ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ that imbues his ‘soulskin with subconscious inklings.’ “

Inklings of abstract obscenities at war with the lost world of reality.

While many people sense this, they still embrace their killers, feeling that they would be lost without them. They have become appendages of their electronic appendages.  The current push to transform all person-to-person life into a digital one run by Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies with its mass surveillance powers is recognized by many but dismissed as a weird conspiracy.  This is so far from the truth.  A good indicator of this nonchalant attitude toward such developing trends is the vastly increased popularity of on-line shopping.  Its innocence conceals the future that is coming.

I recently won a very high-tech looking electric toothbrush at the dentist.  When I opened it, I discovered it contained a gadget with a suction cup that could hold a “smart phone” that you could attach to the mirror.  The phone could electronically be linked to the toothbrush and it would monitor your brushing as you watched yourself brush.  Poor me, I felt so stupid: a man without a smart phone!

While everybody knows that the boat is leaking and the captain lied, to paraphrase Leonard Cohen, such knowledge is abstract.  It is a sort-of knowledge, sensed but also denied.  Real but unreal.  Known but unknown.  And that’s how it goes.  It is very difficult for many conventional people to admit that the life they have known is disappearing while they dawdle in fantasy land, believing the propaganda of their rulers.  To live in the U.S.A. is to live in Neverland where no one ever has to be alone, never grow up, and always be “in touch” through the ether.  It is a country of lost children.

You can choose any issue of importance and its official explanation is certain to be untrue, obvious or subtle propaganda.  The lies about Ukraine and Russia; Covid-19, lockdowns, and vaccines; China and Taiwan; U.S. forces in Syria and U.S. support for Israeli aggression against Syria and the Palestinians; its support for Saudi Arabia’s ruthless policies and war against Yemen; the economy, central banking, and inflation; the increasing censorship of dissident voices; digital IDs, digital programmable currencies, and social credit systems; the persecution of Julian Assange; the Great Reset; a series of binaries meant to suggest false alternatives, etc.  The list is endless.  All official lies to support a sinking ship captained by psychopathic liars seemingly intent on a world war that will destroy the world.  Melville’s Captain Ahab writ large. Like those traveling on the Titanic, today’s passengers on the flailing American empire’s Good Ship Lollipop are in for a surprise, and it won’t be a sweet trip to a candy shop.

Hemingway was surely right that “Winner Take Nothing.”  Yet losers also exit empty-handed.  Everybody knows this but goes on surrounding themselves with stuff, lots of things.  Hoarders are a popular TV subject because they represent the extreme form of this madcap method of trying to secure oneself from loss.  It is a form of mental and spiritual despair that could only exist in advanced capitalist consumer society.  Too many possessions and too much information.  Cluttered minds, cluttered abodes.  There is a reason why the world’s poor are called the dispossessed.  One could say hoarders are the possessed, and it is a form of demonic possession.

Recently I was called upon to help a hospitalized elderly relative by checking on her house.  The house is filled from attic to basement, in every nook and cranny, with collected things that serve no life purpose but were kept to provide a security blanket that was really a strangulation cord.  I will spare you the details, except to say that this relative is an intelligent woman, as was her deceased husband, and yet they surrounded themselves with so much “stuff,” never threw things out, kept papers from 70 years ago, old keys and coins, empty jewelry boxes by the score, etc.  An overwhelming scene to behold.  And why did they do this?  Because they thought they were protecting themselves against loss, against nothing, nada.

As T. S. Eliot wrote in The Wasteland: “These fragments I have shored against my ruins.”  But there is nothing that will protect against the loss Eliot was referring to – the social, psychological, and spiritual fragmentation of Europe as a result of World War I.  A wasteland created by politicians. Like today.

We too are now living in a wasteland, and the only way to find our way forward is to acknowledge that we are lost and to jettison the false security of believing the vast tapestry of lies promulgated by the captains of the American-led Titanic.

I often think of the words of the poet Rilke as good advice, a step in the right direction where there is a lost and found worth visiting and insights await us. While primarily writing about the artist who time and again is that someone who emerges from the crowd and whose “winged heart everywhere beats against the walls of their time,” I think his words apply to every person, including journalists.  To plumb the depths of our sordid current world demands aesthetic, political, and spiritual resistance rooted in the open sociological imagination, a willingness to go wherever the facts and intuition leads us.  Rilke said:

Not any self-control or self-limitation for the sake of specific ends, but rather a carefree letting go of oneself; not caution, but rather a wise blindness; not working to acquire silent, slowly increasing possessions, but rather a continuous squandering of all perishable values. This way of being has something naïve and instinctive about it, and resembles that period of the unconscious best characterized by a joyous confidence, namely the period of childhood …. [the child] has no anxiety about losing things …. And whatever he has once been lit up in love remains as an image, never more to be lost, and the image is possession; that is why children are so rich.

For a country of lost children, this is a good place to start.

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

Edward Curtin is a prominent author, researcher and sociologist based in Western Massachusetts. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). 

Featured image: First edition of The Sun Also Rises, published in 1926 by Scribner’s, with dust jacket illustrated by Cleonike Damianakes. The Hellenistic jacket design “breathed sex yet also evoked classical Greece”. (Licensed under the public domain)

He is the author of Seeking the Truth in a Country of Lies

To order his book, click the cover page.

“Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies is a dazzling journey into the heart of many issues — political, philosophical, and personal — that should concern us all.  Ed Curtin has the touch of the poet and the eye of an eagle.” Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

“Edward Curtin puts our propaganda-stuffed heads in a guillotine, then in a flash takes us on a redemptive walk in the woods — from inferno to paradiso.  Walk with Ed and his friends — Daniel Berrigan, Albert Camus, George Orwell, and many others — through the darkest, most-firefly-filled woods on this earth.” James W. Douglass, author, JFK and the Unspeakable

“A powerful exposé of the CIA and our secret state… Curtin is a passionate long-time reform advocate; his stories will rouse your heart.” Oliver Stone, filmmaker, writer, and director

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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***

The fact that only 1% of Americans regard Russia as the US’ “most important problem” shows just how out of touch the Mainstream Media is with their targeted audience’s interests. That in turn adds credence to the speculation that they’re being ordered by their government to wage this unprecedented information warfare campaign against Russia despite it only being popular with a fringe minority.

The Mainstream Media (MSM) has been waging an unprecedented information warfare campaign against Russia for nearly half a year already, yet Gallup’s latest poll shows that literally only 1% of Americans consider it to be the US’ “most important problem” despite their government already sending Kiev tens of billions of dollars in their name as part of its proxy war against that Eurasian Great Power. This confirms that those Americans who obsess over Russia are a fringe minority.

Screenshot from Gallup

The polling company also noted in their report that the 1% of those who consider Russia to be their country’s “most important problem” is a steep drop from March when 9% of them shared that opinion. This suggests that Americans were most powerfully influenced at the onset of the MSM’s anti-Russian information warfare campaign but have since grown numb to it, with domestic issues like inflation, dysfunctional leadership, and abortion being regarded as much more important by them nowadays.

That’s bad news for the warmongers in Washington who wrongly assumed that their targeted audience could continue seeing Russia as their country’s “most important problem” well into the summer. What seems to have happened is that their MSM proxies overplayed their hand and have thus dealt irreparable damage to their information warfare operations after 99% of Americans no longer really care all that much about the Ukrainian Conflict.

Absent a major provocation aimed at artificially manufacturing another false narrative fearmongering about Russia, it might very well end up being the case that this trend is irreversible. Simply put, the MSM shared too many claims about Russia too fast to the point that most people started tuning out after realizing that everything they were being told about what a threat it supposedly was to their country never ended up panning out.

Russia never attacked NATO, World War III didn’t break out, and no fearmongered nuclear apocalypse ever happened unlike what the MSM warned was about to happen. The Ukrainian Conflict remains contained and Americans quickly realized that they have much more important things to worry about like inflation, which nobody seriously blames Russia for. “Putin’s price hike” that Biden never tires of talking about hasn’t caught on and is widely mocked as intellectually insulting propaganda.

There’s probably nothing that the US Government can do to make its people care anymore since most probably wouldn’t bite the bait even if their intelligence services engineered a major provocation like was earlier predicted. This suggests that the Democrats can’t realistically campaign on the Biden Administration’s support of Kiev since 99% of voters don’t think that it addressed their country’s “most important problem”. To the contrary, a growing number consider it to be a money laundering operation.

The fact that only 1% of Americans regard Russia as the US’ “most important problem” also shows just how out of touch the MSM is with their targeted audience’s interests. That in turn adds credence to the speculation that they’re being ordered by their government to wage this unprecedented information warfare campaign against Russia despite it only being popular with a fringe minority. Building upon this observation, it can be concluded that American media isn’t as “independent” as it claims to be.

With a view to the future, it’s unlikely that the MSM’s obsessive smears against Russia will end anytime soon even though 99% of Americans don’t consider it their country’s “most important problem”. That’s because the US Government wants to falsely signal to its transatlantic vassals that their own people supposedly haven’t lost interest in this proxy war in the hopes that this lie will convince their leaders not to waver in their support of Kiev like American officials worry is already in the process of happening.

Like the author noted last week, “The Zelenskys’ Vogue Photoshoot Exposed What A Charade The Ukrainian Conflict Has Become” while Gallup’s latest poll just confirmed that observation with statistical facts that nobody can deny since that company is regarded as the world’s most reputable in its field. This “politically inconvenient” development proves what a failure the MSM’s US Government-managed information warfare campaign against Russia has been.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Andrew Korybko’s Newsletter.

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

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the author

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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***

Ukraine fired missiles containing petal mines in Donetsk. They littered the streets, parks, everywhere — they’re small-sized, neutral in color, they’re easy to miss.

Careful, look down as you walk through the streets of Donetsk.

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Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years).

She is a regular contributor to Global Research. 

Featured image is a screenshot from the video

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

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Most of the fact-checking organizations Facebook has partnered with to monitor and regulate information about Ukraine are directly funded by the U.S. government, either through the U.S. Embassy or via the notorious National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

In light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, an information war as bitter as the ground fighting has erupted, and Meta (Facebook’s official name) announced it had partnered with nine organizations to help it sort fact from fiction for Ukrainian, Russian and other Eastern European users. These nine organizations are: StopFake, VoxCheck, Fact Check Georgia, Demagog, Myth Detector, Lead Stories, Patikrinta 15min, Re:Baltica and Delfi.

“To reduce the spread of misinformation and provide more reliable information to users, we partner with independent third-party fact-checkers globally,” the Silicon Valley giant wrote, adding, “Facebook’s independent third-party fact-checkers are all certified by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN). The IFCN, a subsidiary of the journalism research organization Poynter Institute, is dedicated to bringing together fact-checkers worldwide.”

The problem with this? At least five of the nine organizations are directly in the pay of the United States government, a major belligerent in the conflict. The Poynter Institute is also funded by the NED. Furthermore, many of the other fact-checking organizations also have deep connections with other NATO powers, including direct funding.

StopFake

Perhaps the most well-known and notorious of the nine groups is StopFake. Established in 2014, StopFake is funded by NATO’s Atlantic Council, by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the British Embassy in Ukraine and the Czech Foreign Ministry. It has also received money from the U.S. via the National Endowment for Democracy, although that fact is far from trumpeted by either party.

One potential reason for this was alluded to in a 2016 article reprinted by StopFake itself. As the article notes, “in the case of StopFake.org when opponents want to insult the project, they immediately invoke National Endowment for Democracy donor support as evidence of U.S. government and CIA involvement.”

In the wake of the Russian invasion, the NED pulled all public records of their Ukraine projects from the internet. Nevertheless, incomplete archived copies of those records confirm a financial relationship between the groups.

StopFake was explicitly set up as a partisan organization. As a glowing report on them from the International Journalists’ Network notes, the majority of StopFake’s fact-checks are on stories from Russian media, and the motivation for its creation was “Russia’s 2014 occupation of Crimea and a campaign to portray Ukraine as a fascist state where anti-Semitism, racism, homophobia and xenophobia thrived.”

While it is indeed incorrect to label Ukraine a fascist state, the country clearly has one of the strongest far-right movements anywhere in Europe. And unfortunately, StopFake itself is far from an apolitical bystander in that rise. Multiple established Western media outlets, including The New York Times, have reported on StopFake’s ties to white power or Nazi groups. When local journalist Ekaterina Sergatskova exposed these links, death threats from far-right figures forced her to flee her home.

Indeed, according to some, one of StopFake’s primary functions appears to be to promote the far-right. A long exposé by Lev Golinkin in The Nation cataloged what it called StopFake’s history of “aggressively whitewashing two Ukrainian neo-Nazi groups with a long track record of violence, including war crimes.”

Surely StopFake’s most famous former host is Nina Jankowicz. Jankowicz was briefly head of President Biden’s newly formed Disinformation Governance Board before public uproar caused her to resign. Dubbed the “Ministry of Truth”, both the board and Jankowicz generated strong opposition. Yet few mentioned the fact that, while at StopFake, Jankowicz herself had, on camera, enthusiastically extolled the virtues of multiple fascist paramilitaries.

In a 2017 TV segment about the Aidar, Dnipro-1 and Azov Battalions, Jankowicz presented the groups as heroic volunteers deafening Ukraine from “further Russian separatist encroachment.” As she stated,

The volunteer movement in Ukraine extends far beyond military service. Volunteer groups are active in supporting Ukraine’s military with food, clothing, medicine, and post-battle rehabilitation, as well as working actively with the nearly two million internal refugees displaced by the war in Ukraine.”

This framing jars with multiple reports from human rights groups such as Amnesty International, who claim that the Aidar Battalion is guilty of a litany of abuses, “including abductions, unlawful detention, ill-treatment, theft, extortion, and possible executions.” Amnesty also accuses Aidar and Dnipro-1 of “Using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare.”

Azov, meanwhile, is the most infamous organization of the lot. The group’s insignia is directly lifted from the 2nd Waffen-SS Panzer Division, a unit responsible for carrying out some of the worst crimes of Hitler’s holocaust. The Azov Battalion also dip their bullets in pig fat before battle as a calculated hate crime, attempting to block Jewish or Muslim enemies from a better afterlife. Andriy Biletsky, the group’s founder, said in 2010 that he believes Ukraine’s mission is to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade … against Semite-led Untermenschen” – the word Hitler used to describe Jews, Poles, Ukrainians and other peoples he designated for extermination.

In February, Facebook announced that it was changing its rules on hate speech to allow praise and promotion of the Azov Battalion. Was this on StopFake’s recommendation? MintPress asked Meta/Facebook for comment on their fact checking partner’s ties to far right groups and if StopFake had influenced their decision to allow pro-Nazi content on their platform, but did not receive a reply.

As Golinkin noted in his article for The Nation, StopFake has also defended C14, another fascist paramilitary, describing it merely as a “community organization”, citing C14’s own denial of its pogroms against Roma people as “evidence” of its innocence. This designation clashes even with the U.S. State Department, which classifies C14 as a “nationalist hate group.” The “14” in its name refers to the “14 words” white supremacist slogan.

Nazi fact-checking, brought to you by the National Endowment for Democracy https://t.co/RYbiRGHJxZ pic.twitter.com/9Lawg0yWN8

— Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) May 6, 2018

StopFake has made a number of controversial claims, including that the rise in anti-semitism in Ukraine is “fake” – even going so far as to brand well-established outlets like NBC News and Al-Jazeera as printing fake news about the Azov Battalion’s role in this. In an article entitled “Russia as Evil: False Historical Parallels. Some peculiarities of Russian Political Culture,” it also insisted that Hitler’s concentration camps were modeled on Russian ones set up by Vladimir Lenin. In reality, the German government pioneered the use of concentration camps during their genocide of the Herero and Namaqua peoples between 1904 and 1908 in Namibia. The British and Spanish were also early adopters.

In addition, StopFake has close links with The Kyiv Post, a Ukrainian outlet directly funded and trained by the National Endowment for Democracy. Since 2016, the Post has published 191 StopFake reports.

Who is the need?

Why receiving funding from the National Endowment for Democracy should immediately raise suspicions of any organization is because the NED was explicitly established by the Reagan administration as a front group for the Central Intelligence Agency.

Although it is funded by Washington and staffed by state officials, it is technically a private company and therefore not subject to the same legal regulations and public scrutiny as state institutions.

The CIA has used the NED to carry out many of its more controversial operations. In recent years, it has trained and funneled money to the leaders of the Hong Kong protesters to keep the insurrection alive, fomented a nationwide campaign of demonstrations in Cuba, and helped attempts to topple the government of Venezuela. Perhaps most importantly for this story, however, the NED was also involved in the 2014 coup that removed Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych from power. Regime change is, in short, one of its primary functions.

The NED does this by establishing, funding, supporting and training all manner of political, economic and social groups in target countries. According to its 2019 annual report, Ukraine is the NED’s “top priority”. The agency has (officially) spent over $22 million in Ukraine since 2014.

In their more candid moments, NED leaders are explicit about the organization’s role. “It would be terrible for democratic groups around the world to be seen as subsidized by the CIA,” Carl Gershman, NED president from 1984 to 2021 said, explaining why his organization was set up. NED co-founder Allen Weinstein agreed: “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA,” he told The Washington Post.

Vox

VoxCheck

VoxCheck receives substantial monetary assistance from the U.S. government through both the NED and the U.S. Embassy. It is also funded by the Dutch and German governments. Incomplete NED records show VoxCheck receives substantial yearly grants and has accepted around $250,000 in total.

That sort of money goes an extremely long way in Ukraine, which is by quite some way the poorest nation in Europe. The country’s GNI per capita of $3,500 per year is well below that of even Russia, which stands at $10,700. One $15,000 NED grant given to a Ukrainian media foundation, for instance, was enough to pay for over 100 articles to be written.

Despite its funding, Western media portray VoxCheck extremely positively. The Washington Post, for example, describes them as “a small group of independent fact-checkers.” In common parlance, the word “independent” is usually reserved for any media group not owned or funded by governments (as if that is the only type of dependence). But even at this extremely low bar, VoxCheck falls.

An NED document shows a 2020 grant given to VoxUkraine

In the article, the Washington Post describes VoxCheck’s fact-checking process, which largely consists of “sourcing credible news sources – such as a BBC article,” and then labeling Russian claims as false on this basis. In other words, the official state mouthpiece of the British government – one that was instrumental in promoting the lies which led to the invasions of Iraq and Libya – is considered sacrosanct.

What comes across in the Post’s glowing exposé is that VoxCheck staff have few pretensions about being neutral and see themselves as digital foot soldiers in a crusade against Russia. As one employee said, the mission is to “prevent someone from falling into Russian lies and manipulation.” Indeed, one of the staff quit his job to volunteer for the Ukrainian Army. Other VoxCheck employees revealed that they felt guilty for not doing so themselves and only contributing virtually to the fight.

Of course, Russia has lied constantly during this war; the entire invasion was based on a lie. Throughout the winter, Russian officials consistently repeated that they had no intention of invading Ukraine. Russian media, meanwhile, claimed that President Zelensky had fled the country in the wake of the invasion. But in war, all sides lie. And when a fact-checking operation constantly critiques only one side and stays largely quiet about the other, it has clearly taken a side in the conflict and is therefore acting in a partisan fashion. People interested in thinking critically should be scrutinizing claims made by all sides.

Fact Check Georgia

Fact Check Georgia describes itself as “an independent and non-partisan website which offers readers researched, verified and evidence-based information.” Yet it is bankrolled by a litany of dubious organizations, including the NED and the U.S. Embassy, the German Marshall Fund, the Dutch government and the European Endowment for Democracy, a European government-funded “private” organization explicitly modeled on the NED.

Fact Check Georgia’s “About Us” section reveals just how independent the fact checking organization really is

Fact Check Georgia’s independence is potentially undermined by the fact that at the bottom of every page of its website, it displays the crests of both the NED and the U.S. Embassy in Georgia. This is accompanied by the disclaimer, “The views and opinions expressed on this website belong to Factcheck.ge and are not the views and opinions of project support organizations” – a sentence that would not be necessary to attach if an organization was truly independent.

Furthermore, some of its staff have notable backgrounds. The first person listed on Fact Check Georgia’s “our team” section was formerly the Deputy Minister of Defense for Georgia – a country that fought a war against Russia in 2008.

Myth Detector

Another Georgia-based company, Myth Detector, was funded by the U.S. Embassy to the tune of €42,000 in financial year 2021. German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle contributed €41,000. Also donating €41,000 last year, according to Myth Detector’s financial report, is a group called “Zinc.” This is quite possibly the Zinc Network, a shadowy intelligence firm that conducts information warfare operations on behalf of the U.K. and U.S. governments.

Demagog

Not only is the U.S. Embassy in Poland funding Demagog, it is also carrying out training in how to think. Demagog’s website notes that the embassy established a “fact-checking academy” on “how to deal with false information.” “Thanks to the [embassy] cooperation,” it notes, “classes were conducted for students and teachers on fake news, reliable sources of information and fact-checking.”

Alongside the U.S. government, Demagog also receives money from Polish government, European Union and European Economic Area organizations.

Together, these five organizations’ operations are all directly bankrolled by Washington. However, many of the other fact-checking groups Facebook pays to serve as content police on their platform have similarly close connections to Western state power. Indeed, the only one of the nine that appears relatively free from direct government collaboration is self-funded outlet Lead Stories.

Patikrinta 15min

Lithuanian outlet Patikrinta 15min insist that they are an independent, non-partisan group. As their “About” section states: “Sponsors of Patikrinta 15min cannot be political parties, politicians, state organizations or companies or organizations related to politicians.” They do, however, accept funding from the Poynter Institute, the journalism group that owns U.S. fact-checking organization Politifact. Since 2016, the Poynter Institute has sought for and received at least seven grants from the National Endowment for Democracy, totaling well over half a million dollars.

Notably, some of these grants are clearly a way of funneling cash to Eastern European fact-checking groups. As one NED grant summary for $78,000 notes, the goal of the money is to “promote the use of fact-checking websites as an effective accountability tool in Central and Eastern Europe, and strengthen the global fact-checking community.” The NED goes on to note that Poynter will bring over 70 journalists to a training summit and afterward continue to “train” “mentor,” “support,” and help them and their organizations with “capacity building.”

One of several grants given to the ostensibly neutral Poynter Institute by the US State Dept’s NED

A cynic might conclude that the NED was simply trying to launder its money through Poynter. MintPress asked Patikrinta 15min to confirm or deny whether they were one of the Eastern European groups mentioned in the NED filings but has not received a response.

Like other groups, Patikrinta 15min’s non-partisan veneer frequently slips. This can be seen in headlines such as “Russian cynicism knows no bounds” and the fact that they frequently defend Nazi groups like the Azov Battalion.

Like StopFake, n 15min has argued that Azov’s use of the Waffen SS symbol is coincidental. It also presented Azov as an apolitical organization and has used quotes from Azov founder Andriy Biletsky – possibly the world’s most infamous living neo-Nazi – as “proof” that charges against it are Russian disinformation.

Re:Baltica

While there is no evidence that Re:Baltica has a financial relationship with the United States government, the lion’s share of its funding still comes from the West. As they note on their website, around two-thirds of their funding comes “from the institutions based in EU/NATO countries.” They also list “the Kingdom of the Netherlands” as one of their “friends” – i.e., donors.

Re:Baltica is generously funded by western govt’s and NGOs, including George Soro’s Open Society Foundation

Delfi

Delfi is a major web portal in Eastern Europe and the Baltic. The company does not disclose if it receives foreign funding. It does, undeniably, however, have a close relationship with the NED. In 2015, Delfi interviewed Christopher Walker, a senior NED manager about the best way they could counter Russian propaganda. Two years later, NED President Gershman addressed the Lithuanian parliament, revealing that his organization had,

[W]orked with Lithuania in countering Russian efforts to subvert and destroy democracy in Lithuania, in Europe, and in Russia itself. We have supported the work of the Lithuania-based Delfi and the East European Studies Center in monitoring, documenting, and combatting Russian disinformation in Lithuania and the Baltic states.”

Later that year, Delfi teamed up with the NED to hold the 1st Vilnius Young Leaders Meeting, whereby handpicked young activists were invited to rub shoulders with journalists and spooks from across Europe and the United States, in the hope of building up a Western-friendly force in civil society.

A chart showing the leadership structure of the EXPOSE network published as part of the Integrity Initiative Leak 7

Delfi, Re:Baltica and StopFake were all identified as proposed members of a “counter”-propaganda network hoping to be established by the EXPOSE Network. EXPOSE was allegedly a secret U.K.-government funded initiative that would have brought together journalists and state operatives in an alliance to shape public discourse in a manner more conducive to the priorities of Western governments.

As EXPOSE wrote, “An opportunity exists to upskill civil society organizations around Europe, enhancing their existing activities and unleashing their potential” to be the next generation of activists in the fight against Kremlin disinformation.”

“Coordinat[ing] their activities,” wrote EXPOSE, “represents a unique opportunity” for the British government in their fight against Russia. Unfortunately, they lamented, StopFake’s “monomaniacal fixation” on Russia had hurt its credibility.

Remarkably, EXPOSE also wrote that, “Another barrier to combating disinformation is the fact that certain Kremlin-backed narratives are factually true” – an admission that underlines that, to many governments and media outlets, “disinformation” is rapidly coming to simply mean “information we disagree with.”

The names of those individuals listed as potential employees of this network are a who’s who of state-linked operatives, including the Zinc Network, multiple individuals from NED-funded investigative journalism website Bellingcat and Ben Nimmo, a former NATO spokesperson who is now head of global intelligence for Facebook.

Facebook’s Cyber War

Nimmo is only one of a great many former state agents now working in the higher echelons of Facebook, however. Last month, MintPress published a study revealing that the Silicon Valley giant has hired dozens of ex-CIA personnel into influential positions within the company, especially in security, content moderation and trust and safety.

Given how influential Facebook is as a media and communications giant, this sort of relationship constitutes a national security issue to every other country in the world. And this is not a hypothetical threat either. In November, Nimmo led a team that effectively attempted to swing the Nicaraguan elections away from the ruling Sandinista party and towards the U.S.-backed candidate. In the days leading up to the election, Facebook deleted hundreds of accounts and pages of pro-Sandinista media.

This action underlines the fact that Facebook is not an international company existing only in the ether, but an American operation bound by American laws. And increasingly, it is moving closer to the U.S. government itself.

Who will guard the guardians?

Fake news abounds online, and we as a society are wholly unprepared to counter it. A study conducted by Stanford University found that the vast majority of people – even the digitally savvy youth – were unable to tell factual reporting from obvious falsehoods online. Many will fall for Russian propaganda. Russian media is indeed pumping out misleading information constantly. But so are NATO countries. And if the fact-checkers who have volunteered to sort truth from fiction for us relentlessly attack Russia but are quiet on their own side’s spin, many more will fall for Western propaganda.

The implicit outlook of many of these fact-checking groups is that “only Russia lies.” This is the position of a partisan organization, one that cares little about truth and more about imposing control over the means of communication. And this is all being done in the name of keeping us safe.

Who is fact-checking the fact-checkers? Unfortunately, it is up to small, independent media outlets to do so. However, MintPress has faced constant suppression for doing so, being blocked from communicating with our 400,000+ Facebook followers, suppressed algorithmically by the Silicon Valley giants, and being removed from financial transaction services like PayPal.

The solution is to teach and develop critical media literacy. All media outlets have biases and agendas. It is up to the individual to learn these and constantly scrutinize and evaluate everything they read. However, governments do not want their populations thinking critically; they want their message to be dominant, one reason why the NED has been quietly bankrolling so many fact-checking organizations to do its work for it.

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Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams.

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Guests are Robert Cibis (Founder and owner of OVALmedia), Nathalie Signorini (Managing director of OVALmedia Rome) and Bianca Laura Granato (Italian politician, “CAL”, Constitution/ Environment/Work).

This session talks about the coordinated and unannounced removal of all OVALmedia channels in different languages from Youtube and the media channel’s case in the Italian Senate, where OVALmedia was openly compared to Wikileaks.

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Dear Editor in Chief,

Once a fierce and proud Democrat, I see that Democrats have become more corrupt than Republicans ever were.

The sheer fact that the Biden administration and all of Biden’s followers are globalists — meaning, doing gradually away with sovereign rights in the US and in countries around the world towards a One World Order — shows that Democrats have abandoned their principles of social justice and sold their soul to the enemy (globalists are literally enemies of humanity).

And so did Senator Kyrsten Sinema. She held out against a fraudulent tax package – yes fraudulent, because the entire climate change narrative is a multi-multi-trillion dollar scam, has been brewing since the seventies, with the various “declarations” of the Club of Rome, and was finally set into an active forward drive at the first Climate Conference in Rio in 1992, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as the ‘Earth Summit’.

By today, the entire world is indoctrinated by a monster lie, except for a few scientists who have not abandoned their principles and resisted coercing – and a few World Bank insiders, who saw the fraud evolving from the very beginning.

Now another Democrat has fallen for money.

It’s a shame.

Where are we going?

Peter Koenig

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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 lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and 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 is a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.

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I feel for American basketball player Brittney Griner. Did she break the law? Yes, she did, and she pled guilty at trial. But a sentence of nine years — to be spent in what the New York Times calls a “penal colony” — for bringing hashish into Russia for self-treatment (assuming this is true) seems overly harsh. But the law can be an ass. If humans have sovereignty over their own bodies, then it is just plain wrong to be hassled for what one chooses to consume.

On the other hand, Griner should be accorded the same treatment from the Russian justice system as any Russian would be accorded. If this has been the case, then it can be argued that justice was meted out without favoritism in the Russian system.

Still, if it was a packing error, then Griner is paying a high price for a mistake that on its face would cause no harm to any other person.

US president Joe Biden called the sentence “unacceptable” and said he will do all he can to bring Griner back to the United States. When a country considers that one of its citizens is a victim of injustice abroad, then a country should agitate on behalf of its citizen.

A prisoner swap with Russia has already been broached by the US, so Griner may be back stateside before long.

Julian Assange: A Victim of Injustice

There is a current case, however, that speaks to notions of justice in western countries. Biden apparently considers the American legal pursuit of Assange — an Australian citizen whose acts (i.e., journalism) were committed outside the US — as acceptable. The US claim to extraterritoriality is well known to China and Meng Wanzhou.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been languishing in some form of incarceration for over 20 years, and he now faces potential imprisonment for the rest of his life if extradited and found guilty of espionage in the US. People who are clued in realize these charges are as phony as the sexual crimes alleged and dropped against him by Sweden. Assange’s actual “crime” is exposing the crimes of the US; especially revelatory was the Collateral Murder video where US troops in an Apache helicopter gleefully gunned down Iraqi citizens on a street in Baghdad. The murderers remain scot-free. For exposing war crimes, Assange and Bradley Manning have been punished.

Is Australia concerned about justice for its citizens? Assange has hardly received an iota of Australian government concern or assistance compared to that Griner has received from the US. Assange has also received scant support from the Australian monopoly media. In fact, Australian government leaders and media have usually criticized Assange or distanced themselves from him.

What if China were switched with the US and found itself faced with what Assange is accused of by the US? What would be the situation then?

Assange, who has not been overly kind to China, has, nonetheless, received support from China. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said,

“All eyes are on Assange’s human rights conditions and what may become of him. Let us hope and believe that at the end of the day, fairness and justice will prevail. Hegemony and abuse of might will certainly not last forever.”

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Kim Petersen is an independent writer and former co-editor of the Dissident Voice newsletter. He is a regular contributor to Global Research. He can be emailed at: kimohp at gmail.com. 

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As in a Greek tragedy whose protagonist brings about precisely the fate that he has sought to avoid, the US/NATO confrontation with Russia in Ukraine is achieving just the opposite of America’s aim of preventing China, Russia and their allies from acting independently of U.S. control over their trade and investment policy. Naming China as America’s main long-term adversary, the Biden Administration’s plan was to split Russia away from China and then cripple China’s own military and economic viability. But the effect of American diplomacy has been to drive Russia and China together, joining with Iran, India and other allies. For the first time since the Bandung Conference of Non-Aligned Nations in 1955, a critical mass is able to be mutually self-sufficient to start the process of achieving independence from Dollar Diplomacy.

Confronted with China’s industrial prosperity based on self-financed public investment in socialized markets, U.S. officials acknowledge that resolving this fight will take a number of decades to play out. Arming a proxy Ukrainian regime is merely an opening move in turning Cold War 2 (and potentially/or indeed World War III) into a fight to divide the world into allies and enemies with regard to whether governments or the financial sector will plan the world economy and society.

What is euphemized as U.S.-style democracy is a financial oligarchy privatizing basic infrastructure, health and education. The alternative is what President Biden calls autocracy, a hostile label for governments strong enough to block a global rent-seeking oligarchy from taking control. China is deemed autocratic for providing basic needs at subsidized prices instead of charging whatever the market can bear. Making its mixed economy lower-cost is called “market manipulation,” as if that is a bad thing that was not done by the United States, Germany and every other industrial nation during their economic takeoff in the 19th and early 20th century.

Clausewitz popularized the axiom that war is an extension of national interests – mainly economic. The United States views its economic interest to lie in seeking to spread its neoliberal ideology globally. The evangelistic aim is to financialize and privatize economies by shifting planning away from national governments to a cosmopolitan financial sector. There would be little need for politics in such a world. Economic planning would shift from political capitals to financial centers, from Washington to Wall Street, with satellites in the City of London, the Paris Bourse, Frankfurt and Tokyo. Board meetings for the new oligarchy would be held at Davos’s World Economic Forum. Hitherto public infrastructure services would be privatized and priced high enough to include profits (and indeed, monopoly rents), debt financing and management fees rather than being publicly subsidized. Debt service and rent would become the major overhead costs for families, industry and governments.

The U.S. drive to retain its unipolar power to impose “America First” financial, trade and military policies on the world involves an inherent hostility toward all countries seeking to follow their own national interests. Having less and less to offer in the form of mutual economic gains, U.S. policy makes threats of sanctions and covert meddling in foreign politics. The U.S. dream envisions a Chinese version of Boris Yeltsin replacing the nation’s Communist Party leadership and selling off its public domain to the highest bidder – presumably after a monetary crisis wipes out domestic purchasing power much as occurred in post-Soviet Russia, leaving the international financial community as buyers.

Russia and President Putin cannot be forgiven for having fought back against the Harvard Boys’ “reforms.” That is why U.S. officials planned how to create Russian economic disruption to (they hope) orchestrate a “color revolution” to recapture Russia for the world’s neoliberal camp. That is the character of the “democracy” and “free markets” being juxtaposed to the “autocracy” of state-subsidized growth. As Russian Foreign minister Sergey Lavrov explained in a press conference on July 20, 2022 regarding Ukraine’s violent coup in 2014, U.S. and other Western officials define military coups as democratic if they are sponsored by the United States in the hope of promoting neoliberal policies.

Do you remember how events developed after the coup? The putschists spat in the face of Germany, France and Poland that were the guarantors of the agreement with Viktor Yanukovych. It was trampled underfoot the next morning. These European countries didn’t make a peep – they reconciled themselves to this. A couple of years ago I asked the Germans and French what they thought about the coup. What was it all about if they didn’t demand that the putschists fulfil the agreements? They replied: “This is the cost of the democratic process.” I am not kidding. Amazing – these were adults holding the post of foreign ministers.

This Doublethink vocabulary reflects how far mainstream ideology has evolved from Rosa Luxemburg’s description a century ago of the civilizational choice being posed: barbarism or socialism.

The contradictory U.S. and European interests and burdens of the war in Ukraine

To return to Clausewitz’s view of war as an extension of national policy, U.S. national interests are diverging sharply from those of its NATO satellites. America’s military-industrial complex, oil and agriculture sectors are benefiting, while European industrial interests are suffering. That is especially the case in Germany and Italy as a result of their governments blocking North Stream 2 gas imports and other Russian raw materials.

The interruption of world energy, food and minerals supply chains and the resulting price inflation (providing an umbrella for monopoly rents by non-Russian suppliers) has imposed enormous economic strains on U.S. allies in Europe and the Global South. Yet the U.S. economy is benefiting from this, or at least specific sectors of the U.S. economy are benefiting. As Sergey Lavrov, pointed out in his above-cited press conference: “The European economy is impacted more than anything else. The stats show that 40 percent of the damage caused by sanctions is borne by the EU whereas the damage to the United States is less than 1 percent.” The dollar’s exchange rate has soared against the euro, which has plunged to parity with the dollar and looks set to fall further down toward the $0.80 that it was a generation ago. U.S. dominance over Europe is further strengthened by the trade sanctions against Russian oil and gas. The U.S. is an LNG exporter, U.S. companies control the world oil trade, and U.S. firms are the world’s major grain marketers and exporters now that Russia is excluded from many foreign markets.

A revival of European military spending – for offense, not defense

U.S. arms-makers are looking forward to making profits off arms sales to Western Europe, which has almost literally disarmed itself by sending its tanks and howitzers, ammunition and missiles to Ukraine. U.S. politicians support a bellicose foreign policy to promote arms factories that employ labor in their voting districts. And the neocons who dominate the State Department and CIA see the war as a means of asserting American dominance over the world economy, starting with its own NATO partners.
The problem with this view is that although America’s military-industrial, oil and agricultural monopolies are benefitting, the rest of the U.S. economy is being squeezed by the inflationary pressures resulting from boycotting Russian gas, grain and other raw-materials exports, and the enormous rise in the military budget will be used as an excuse to cut back social spending programs. That also is a problem for Eurozone members. They have promised NATO to raise their military spending to the stipulated 2 percent of their GDP, and the Americans are urging much higher levels to upgrade to the most recent array of weaponry. All but forgotten is the Peace Dividend that was promised in 1991 when the Soviet Union dissolved the Warsaw Pact alliance, expecting that NATO likewise would have little reason to exist.

Russia has no discernable economic interest in mounting a new occupation of Central Europe. That would offer no gain to Russia, as its leaders realized when they dissolved the old Soviet Union. In fact, no industrial country in today’s world can afford to field an infantry to occupy an enemy. All that NATO can do is bomb from a distance. It can destroy, but not occupy. The United States found that out in Serbia, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan. And just as the assassination Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo (now Bosnia-Herzegovina) triggered World War I in 1914, NATO’s bombing of adjoining Serbia may be viewed as throwing down the gauntlet to turn Cold War 2 into a veritable World War III. That marked the point at which NATO became an offensive alliance, not a defensive one.

How does this reflect European interests? Why should Europe re-arm, if the only effect is to make it a target of retaliation in the event of further attacks on Russia? What does Europe have to gain in becoming a larger customer for America’s military-industrial complex? Diverting spending to rebuild an offensive army – that can never be used without triggering an atomic response that would wipe out Europe – will limit the social spending needed to cope with today’s Covid problems and economic recession.

The only lasting leverage a nation can offer in today’s world is trade and technology transfer. Europe has more of this to offer than the United States. Yet the only opposition to renewed military spending is coming from right-wing parties and the German Linke party. Europe’s Social Democratic, Socialist and Labour parties share American neoliberal ideology.

Sanctions against Russian gas makes coal “the fuel of the future”

The carbon footprint of bombing, arms manufacturing and military bases is strikingly absent from today’s discussion about global warming and the need to cut back on carbon emissions. The German party that calls itself Green is leading the campaign for sanctions against importing Russian oil and gas, which electric utilities are replacing with Polish coal and even German lignite.

Coal is becoming the “fuel of the future.” Its price also is soaring in the United States, benefitting American coal companies.
In contrast to the Paris Club agreements to reduce carbon emissions, the United States has neither the political capability nor the intention to join the conservation effort. The Supreme Court recently ruled that the Executive Branch has no authority to issue nation-wide energy rules; only individual states can do that, unless Congress passes a national law to cut back on fossil fuels.

That seems unlikely in view of the fact that becoming head of a Democratic Senate and Congressional committee requires being a leader in raising campaign contributions for the party. Joe Manchin, a coal-company billionaire, leads all senators in campaign support from the oil and coal industries, enabling him to win his party’s auction for the Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee chairmanship and block any seriously restrictive environmental legislation.

Next to oil, agriculture is a major contributor to the U.S. balance of payments. Blocking Russian grain and fertilizer shipping threatens to create a Global South food crisis as well as a European crisis as gas is unavailable to make domestic fertilizer. Russia is the world’s largest exporter of grain and also of fertilizer, and its exports of these products have been exempted from NATO sanctions. But Russian shipping was blocked by Ukraine placing mines in the sea lanes through the Black Sea to close off access to Odessa’s harbor, hoping that the world would blame the world’s imminent grain and energy crisis on Russia instead of the US/NATO trade sanctions imposed on Russia. At his July 20, 2022 press conference Sergey Lavrov showed the hypocrisy of the public relations attempt to distort matters:

For many months, they told us that Russia was to blame for the food crisis because the sanctions don’t cover food and fertiliser. Therefore, Russia doesn’t need to find ways to avoid the sanctions and so it should trade because nobody stands in its way. It took us a lot of time to explain to them that, although food and fertiliser are not subject to sanctions, the first and second packages of Western restrictions affected freight costs, insurance premiums, permissions for Russian ships carrying these goods to dock at foreign ports and those for foreign ships taking on the same consignments at Russian harbours. They are openly lying to us that this is not true, and that it is up to Russia alone. This is foul play.

Black Sea grain transport has begun to resume, but NATO countries have blocked payments to Russia in dollars, euros or currencies of other countries in the U.S. orbit. Food-deficit countries that cannot afford to pay distress-level food prices face drastic shortages, which will be exacerbated when they are compelled to pay their foreign debts denominated in the appreciating U.S. dollar. The looming fuel and food crisis promises to drive a new wave of immigrants to Europe seeking survival. Europe already has been flooded with refugees from NATO’s bombing and backing of jihadist attacks on Libya and Near Eastern oil-producing countries. This year’s proxy war in Ukraine and imposition of anti-Russian sanctions is a perfect illustration of Henry Kissinger’s quip: “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”

Blowback from the US/NATO miscalculations

America’s international diplomacy aims to dictate financial, trade and military policies that will lock other countries into dollar debt and trade dependency by preventing them from developing alternatives. If this fails, America seeks to isolate the recalcitrants from the U.S.-centered Western sphere.

America’s foreign diplomacy no longer is based on offering mutual gain. Such could be claimed in the aftermath of World War II when the United States was in a position to offer loans, foreign-aid and military protection against occupation – as well as manufactures to rebuild war-torn economies – to governments in exchange for their accepting trade and monetary policies favorable to American exporters and investors. But today there is only the belligerent diplomacy of threatening to hurt nations whose socialist governments reject America’s neoliberal drive to privatize and sell off their natural resources and public infrastructure.

The first aim is to prevent Russia and China from helping each other. This is the old imperial divide-and-conquer strategy. Minimizing Russia’s ability to support China would pave the way for the United States and NATO Europe to impose new trade sanctions on China, and to send jihadists to its western Xinjiang Uighur region. The aim is to bleed Russia’s armaments inventory, kill enough of its soldiers, and create enough Russian shortages and suffering to not only weaken its ability to help China, but to spur its population to support a regime change, an American-sponsored “color revolution.” The dream is to promote a Yeltsin-like leader friendly to the neoliberal “therapy” that dismantled Russia’s economy in the 1990s.

Amazing as it may seem, U.S. strategists did not anticipate the obvious response by countries finding themselves together in the crosshairs of US/NATO military and economic threats. On July 19, 2022, the presidents of Russia and Iran met to announce their cooperation in the face of the sanctions war against them. That followed Russia’s earlier meeting with India’s Prime Minister Modi. In what has been characterized as “shooting itself in its own foot,” U.S. diplomacy is driving Russia, China, India and Iran together, and indeed to reach out to Argentina and other countries to join the BRICS-plus bank to protect themselves.

The U.S. itself is ending the Dollar Standard of international finance

The Trump Administration took a major step to drive countries out of the dollar orbit in November 2018, by confiscating nearly $2 billion of Venezuela’s official gold stock held in London. The Bank of England put these reserves at the disposal of Juan Guaidó, the marginal right-wing politician selected by the United States to replace Venezuela’s elected president as head of state. This was defined as being democratic, because the regime change promised to introduce the neoliberal “free market” that is deemed to be the essence of America’s definition of democracy for today’s world.

Image on the right: The Bank of England has refused to return 31 tonnes of Venezuelan gold. (BoE)

This gold theft actually was not the first such confiscation. On November 14, 1979, the Carter Administration paralyzed Iran’s bank deposits in New York after the Shah was overthrown. This act blocked Iran from paying its scheduled foreign debt service, forcing it into default. That was viewed as an exceptional one-time action as far as all other financial markets were concerned. But now that the United States is the self-proclaimed “exceptional nation,” such confiscations are becoming a new norm in U.S. diplomacy. Nobody yet knows what happened to Libya’s gold reserves that Muammar Gadafi had intended to be used to back an African alternative to the dollar. And Afghanistan’s gold and other reserves were simply taken by Washington as payment for the cost of “freeing” that country from Russian control by backing the Taliban. But when the Biden Administration and its NATO allies made a much larger asset grab of some $300 billion of Russia’s foreign bank reserves and currency holdings in March 2022, it made official a radical new epoch in Dollar Diplomacy. Any nation that follows policies not deemed to be in the interests of the U.S. Government runs the risk of U.S. authorities confiscating its holdings of foreign reserves in U.S. banks or securities.

This was a red flag leading countries to fear denominating their trade, savings and foreign debt in dollars, and to avoid using dollar or euro bank deposits and securities as a means of payment. By prompting other countries to think about how to free themselves from the U.S.-centered world trade and monetary system that was established in 1945 with the IMF, World Bank and subsequently the World Trade Organization, the U.S. confiscations have accelerated the end of the U.S. Treasury-bill standard that has governed world finance since the United States went off gold in 1971.

Since dollar convertibility into gold ended in August 1971, dollarization of the world’s trade and investment has created a need for other countries to hold most of their new international monetary reserves in U.S. Treasury securities and bank deposits. As already noted, that enables the United States to seize foreign bank deposits and bonds denominated in U.S. dollars.

Most important, the United States can create and spend dollar IOUs into the world economy at will, without limit. It doesn’t have to earn international spending power by running a trade surplus, as other countries have to do. The U.S. Treasury can simply print dollars electronically to finance its foreign military spending and purchases of foreign resources and companies. And being the “exceptional country,” it doesn’t have to pay these debts – which are recognized as being far too large to be paid. Foreign dollar holdings are free U.S. credit to the Unites States, not requiring repayment any more than the paper dollars in our wallets are expected to be paid off (by retiring them from circulation). What seems to be so self-destructive about America’s economic sanctions and confiscations of Russian and other foreign reserves is that they are accelerating the demise of this free ride.

Blowback resulting from US/NATO isolating their economic and monetary systems

It is hard to see how driving countries out of the U.S. economic orbit serves long-term U.S. national interests. Dividing the world into two monetary blocs will limit Dollar Diplomacy to its NATO allies and satellites.

The blowback now unfolding in the wake of U.S. diplomacy begins with its anti-Russia policy. Imposing trade and monetary sanctions was expected to block Russian consumers and businesses from buying the US/NATO imports to which they had become accustomed. Confiscating Russia’s foreign currency reserves was supposed to crash the ruble, “turning it into rubble,” as President Biden promised. Imposing sanctions against importing Russian oil and gas to Europe was supposed to deprive Russia of export earnings, causing the ruble to collapse and raising import prices (and hence, living costs) for the Russian public. Instead, blocking Russian exports has created a worldwide price inflation for oil and gas, sharply increasing Russian export earnings. It exported less gas but earned more – and with dollars and euros blocked, Russia demanded payment for its exports in rubles. Its exchange rate soared instead of collapsing, enabling Russia to reduce its interest rates.

Goading Russia to send its soldiers to eastern Ukraine to defend Russian speakers under attack in Luhansk and Donetsk, along with the expected impact of the ensuing Western sanctions, was supposed to make Russian voters press for regime change. But as almost always happens when a country or ethnicity is attacked, Russians were appalled at the Ukrainian hatred of Russian-language speakers and Russian culture, and at the Russophobia of the West. The effect of Western countries banning music by Russian composers and Russian novels from libraries – capped by England banning Russian tennis players from the Wimbledon tournament – was to make Russians feel under attack simply for being Russian. They rallied around President Putin.

NATO’s trade sanctions have catalyzed helped Russian agriculture and industry to become more self-sufficient by obliging Russia to invest in import substitution. One well-publicized farming success was to develop its own cheese production to replace that of Lithuania and other European suppliers. Its automotive and other industrial production is being forced to shift away from German and other European brands to its own and Chinese producers. The result is a loss of markets for Western exporters.

In the field of financial services, NATO’s exclusion of Russia from the SWIFT bank-clearing system failed to create the anticipated payments chaos. The threat had been so loudly for so long that Russia and China had plenty of time to develop their own payments system. This provided them with one of the preconditions for their plans to split their economies away from those of the US/NATO West.

As matters have turned out, the trade and monetary sanctions against Russia are imposing the heaviest costs on Western Europe, and are likely to spread to the Global South, driving them to think about whether their economic interests lie in joining U.S. confrontational Dollar Diplomacy. The disruption is being felt most seriously in Germany, causing many companies to close down as a result of gas and other raw-materials shortages. Germany’s refusal to authorize the North Stream 2 pipeline has pushed its energy crisis to a head. This has raised the question of how long Germany’s political parties can remain subordinate to NATO’s Cold War policies at the cost of German industry and households facing sharp rises in heating and electricity costs.

The longer it takes to restore trade with Russia, the more European economies will suffer, along with the citizenry at large, and the further the euro’s exchange rate will fall, spurring inflation throughout its member countries. European NATO countries are losing not only their export markets but their investment opportunities to gain from the much more rapid growth of Eurasian countries whose government planning and resistance to financialization has proved much more productive than the US/NATO neoliberal model.

It is difficult to see how any diplomatic strategy can do more than play for time. That involves living in the short run, not the long run. Time seems to be on the side of Russia, China and the trade and investment alliances that they are negotiating to replace the neoliberal Western economic order.

America’s ultimate problem is its neoliberal post-industrial economy

The failure and blowbacks of U.S. diplomacy are the result of problems that go beyond diplomacy itself. The underlying problem is the West’s commitment to neoliberalism, financialization and privatization. Instead of government subsidy of basic living costs needed by labor, all social life is being made part of “the market” – a uniquely Thatcherite deregulated “Chicago Boys” market in which industry, agriculture, housing and financing are deregulated and increasingly predatory, while heavily subsidizing the valuation of financial and rent-seeking assets – mainly the wealth of the richest One Percent. Income is obtained increasingly by financial and monopoly rent-seeking, and fortunes are made by debt-leveraged “capital” gains for stocks, bonds and real estate.

U.S. industrial companies have aimed more at “creating wealth” by increasing the price of their stocks by using over 90 percent of their profits for stock buybacks and dividend payouts instead of investing in new production facilities and hiring more labor. The result of slower capital investment is to dismantle and financially cannibalize corporate industry in order to produce financial gains. And to the extent that companies do employ labor and set up new production, it is done abroad where labor is cheaper.

Most Asian labor can afford to work for lower wages because it has much lower housing costs and does not have to pay education debt. Health care is a public right, not a financialized market transaction, and pensions are not paid for in advance by wage-earners and employers but are public. The aim in China in particular is to prevent the rentier Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) sector from becoming a burdensome overhead whose economic interests differ from those of a socialist government.

China treats money and banking as a public utility, to be created, spent and lent for purposes that help increase productivity and living standards (and increasingly to preserve the environment). It rejects the U.S.-sponsored neoliberal model imposed by the IMF, World Bank and World Trade Organization.

The global economic fracturing goes far beyond NATO’s conflict with Russia in Ukraine. By the time the Biden administration took office at the start of 2021, Russia and China already had been discussing the need to de-dollarize their foreign trade and investment, using their own currencies. That involves the quantum leap of organizing a new payments-clearing institution. Planning had not progressed beyond broad outlines of how such a system would work, but the U.S. confiscation of Russia’s foreign reserves made such planning urgent, starting with a BRICS-plus bank. A Eurasian alternative to the IMF will remove its ability to impose neoliberal austerity “conditionalities” to force countries to lower payments to labor and give priority to paying their foreign creditors above feeding themselves and developing their own economies. Instead of new international credit being extended mainly to pay dollar debts, it will be part of a process of new mutual investment in basic infrastructure designed to accelerate economic growth and living standards. Other institutions are being designed as China, Russia, Iran, India and their prospective allies represent a large enough critical mass to “go it alone,” based on their own mineral wealth and manufacturing power.

The basic U.S. policy has been to threaten to destabilize countries and perhaps bomb them until they agree to adopt neoliberal policies and privatize their public domain. But taking on Russia, China and Iran is a much higher order of magnitude. NATO has disarmed itself of the ability to wage conventional warfare by handing over its supply of weaponry – admittedly largely outdated – to be devoured in Ukraine. In any case, no democracy in today’s world can impose a military draft to wage a conventional land warfare against a significant/major adversary. The protests against the Vietnam War in the late 1960s ended the U.S. military draft, and the only way to really conquer a country is to occupy it in land warfare. This logic also implies that Russia is no more in a position to invade Western Europe than NATO countries are to send conscripts to fight Russia.

That leaves Western democracies with the ability to fight only one kind of war: atomic war – or at least, bombing at a distance, as was done in Afghanistan and the Near East, without requiring Western manpower. This is not diplomacy at all. It is merely acting the role of wrecker. But that is the only tactic that remains available to the United States and NATO Europe. It is strikingly like the dynamic of Greek tragedy, where power leads to hubris that is injurious to others and therefore ultimately anti-social – and self-destructive in the end.

How then can the United States maintain its world dominance? It has deindustrialized and run up foreign official debt far beyond any foreseeable way to be paid. Meanwhile, its banks and bondholders are demanding that the Global South and other countries pay foreign dollar bondholders in the face of their own trade crisis resulting from the soaring energy and food prices caused by America’s anti-Russian and anti-China belligerence. This double standard is a basic internal contradiction that goes to the core of today’s neoliberal Western worldview.

I have described the possible scenarios to resolve this conflict in my recent book The Destiny of Civilization: Finance Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism or Socialism. It has now also been issued in e-book form by Counterpunch Books.

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The visit of former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder to Moscow is connected with his desire to find a way out of the current crisis in which Germany finds itself in. Behind his visit were certain financial and economic circles who see that Germany is dying as a global economic powerhouse and believe that strengthening trade relations with Russia could be a salvation for the failing economy and energy crisis.

Schröder’s recent visit to Moscow caused a lot of media attention and mixed reactions in Germany. Many Germans supported his statements on relations with Russia and the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, the commissioning of which, in the opinion of the former chancellor, would be the simplest solution to solving the problem of gas deficit in Germany.

At the same time, he received a lot of criticism from the elite, who described him as “Putin’s lobbyist”. The current German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, distanced himself, stating that Schröder’s trip was not agreed upon with him.

Although Schröder has retired from politics, he still carries heavy political weight in Germany. Undoubtedly, the German business community, who are now going through difficult times, have their interests represented by him. It can be safely assumed that one of the main topics of discussion was the situation with Russia’s oil and gas complex around Nord Stream-1 and Nord Stream-2.

At the end of July, German media announced that Schröder was in Moscow and discussed with Russian officials the delivery of gas via the Nord Stream gas pipeline. Later, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that President Vladimir Putin had met with Schröder, stating that the former chancellor is very worried about the real state of affairs and the energy crisis that is flaring up in Europe.

Schröder asked Putin to explain the situation and Russia’s point of view, but he did not want to be a mediator in solving the situation in Ukraine or the current gas issue. On the other hand, Putin explained to Schröder that deliveries of Russian gas to Europe have been reduced multiple times due to European sanctions and Ukraine’s suspension of transit through one of the legs of the gas pipeline under a fabricated pretext. Deliveries via Nord Stream fell from 167 million cubic metres per day to about 30 million. The Russian president confirmed that the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline is technically ready for “immediate use” though.

The energy crisis that is shaking the EU and Germany is largely artificial and externally induced, and for this reason many German citizens support the former chancellor’s statements about the need to launch Nord Stream 2 and maintain dialogue with Russia. Many German citizens see Schröder as a political veteran who is trying to save the country from economic adversity.

Germans agree that there is little chance that Berlin will listen to the words of the former chancellor, and, according to some comments, Schröder’s willingness to build contacts with Putin seems more profitable than the actions of Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Even those who generally do not support Schröder believe that he remains one of the few who see the bigger picture.

Although Schröder is an experienced statesman, it is unlikely that German authorities will listen to him despite his efforts to solve the difficulties that Germany is facing in the economy and energy sector. The current German administration is not able to conduct an effective dialogue with the Kremlin as it wrestles between Western liberal ideology and the harsh reality of needing energy, especially as winter is slowly but surely approaching.

Figures like Schröder, who do not hold an anti-Russian position and prefer to resolve issues through discussions, become more important in shaping public opinion and understanding the reasons why there is an energy crisis and inflation to begin with.

According to European Commission data, which the DPA agency had access to and was reported by German media, Germany will have to save 10 billion cubic metres of gas from August 2022 to March 2023 in order to achieve the EU’s 15% savings goal. This is significantly more than the others and corresponds to approximately the annual consumption of five million four-person households.

In comparison, Italy will have to save a little more than eight billion cubic metres of gas in order to achieve the EU’s target; France and the Netherlands only need to save five billion cubic metres. In total, the EU wants to save around 45 billion cubic metres of gas.

German Economy Minister Robert Habeck announced earlier that his country is ready to comply with the EU’s goals. He even said that Germany is ready to save more than 15%. But this highly unlikely, which makes Schröder’s visit to Moscow all the more important if Berlin wants to save itself from a catastrophic economic and energy disaster before the winter arrives.

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Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

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Conservative former attorney general Yoon Suk-yeol, elected in May by the narrowest margin in the country’s history, claims he is on holiday to avoid meeting with the US congressional speaker and contain escalating tensions

All eyes are still on Nancy Pelosi. The US Speaker of the House of Representatives’ high-profile tour of Asia, whose agenda is at odds with the guidelines outlined by the White House, has led to an unprecedented escalation of tensions between Washington and Beijing, the protagonists of a bitter rivalry for global hegemony. The unannounced but clearly expected landing in Taipei, the heart of Taiwan, raised hackles within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which responded by summoning the US ambassador to Beijing and launching the largest military manoeuvres in its history around the island of Formosa. With live fire.

The combative congressional speaker left Taiwan on Wednesday, less than 24 hours after setting foot on the island. Earlier, Pelosi had met with Tsai Ing-wen, the twelfth president of the so-called Republic of China, with whom she had closed ranks in defence of the enclave’s “vibrant democracy” in the face of pressure from the Asian giant. But the official trip by the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, interpreted in regional terms as a pulse on China, did not end there. After visiting Singapore and Malaysia, beyond Taiwan, the next destination on the map was South Korea.

Pelosi, who had been meeting presidents and prime ministers at every stop on her route, had hoped to meet the tenant of the Blue House, South Korea’s presidential residence, Yoon Suk-yeol, on her arrival in Seoul. However, the conservative former prosecutor, a political novice elected to office in May by the narrowest margin in the country’s history, has declined the offer on the grounds that he was on holiday. Foreign Minister Park Jin, who is in Cambodia for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, was also unavailable for a reception. The only contact between the two was a phone call.

Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi in Seoul (PHOTO/@SpeakerPelosi)

Yoon’s rebuff to the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, denied by his entourage, has generated an avalanche of criticism internally and, above all, externally. The People’s Power Party leader has been interpreted as a move to avoid a warming of relations with China, and analysts have been dismayed to see in him a more aggressive profile with respect to Beijing’s postulates. The presence of South Korea at the NATO summit in Madrid suggested that Seoul would adopt a more determined stance in favour of the United States, but the strategic weight of China, the country’s main trading partner, hindered the plans.

In a turn of events, the Democratic Party of Korea (DPK), the platform of former president Moon Jae-in and leader of the opposition, praised Yoon’s non-appearance. “For the president] to meet with Pelosi in the midst of the escalating US-China conflicts is like jumping into a fire with a powder keg on his back,” said MP Kim Eui-gyeom. On her last official visit to Seoul in 2015 as minority leader in the lower house, Pelosi was able to meet with then-president Park Geun-hye and her Foreign Minister.

On this occasion, the octogenarian speaker was received by her counterpart, the President of the South Korean National Assembly, Kim Jin Pyo, and other high-ranking members of Parliament, with whom she held a meeting lasting about an hour. Pelosi then underlined the strong alliance built between the two countries out of the ashes of the Korean War (1950-1953), one of the first stages of the Cold War that ended with the partition of the peninsula. However, the joint communiqué, issued at the end of the meeting, does not even allude to his visit to Taiwan and China’s reactions in the last few hours.

Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, accompanied in Seoul by the US diplomatic legation in South Korea (PHOTO/@SpeakerPelosi)

For the problems in that part of the region go beyond that. In Seoul’s sights is North Korea’s nuclear programme, the main source of its national security concerns. Neighbouring Pyongyang has been conducting missile tests at a pace never seen before and observers believe Kim Jong-un’s regime is preparing its seventh nuclear test, the first since 2017, posing a direct existential threat to the lower 38th Parallel. Any pronouncement by Pelosi is susceptible to North Korea. Her mere visit prompted a reaction from the North Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs: “The current situation clearly shows the insolent interference of the United States in the internal affairs of other countries”.

In the joint statement issued by Pelosi and Kim Jin Pyo, the parties express concern “about the growing threat” from Pyongyang. “We agree to support the efforts of the two governments to achieve practical denuclearisation and peace through international cooperation and diplomatic dialogue, based on strong and extended deterrence against the North,” the note concludes. There is hardly any mention of China or Taiwan, a sign that Seoul is opting for a appeasement approach, continuing the line drawn by former president Moon Jae-in despite the promises with which Yoon Suk-yeol won by the narrowest of margins in May.

Pelosi intends to deliver another coup on her regional tour by reviewing the 28,500 US troops stationed at Panmunjom, the four-kilometre-wide, 238-kilometre-long demilitarised area on the border between the two Koreas. Known as “the most tense place in the world”, this site witnessed the signing of the armistice that ended the fratricidal war nearly seven decades ago. If it happens, the visit would be the first by a senior US official to the area since former President Trump visited in the company of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un in 2019.

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Featured image: Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi meets with South Korean National Assembly Speaker Kim Jin Pyo in Seoul (PHOTO/@SpeakerPelosi)

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The US and South Korea are planning new war games where they will simulate taking out North Korea’s military leadership, including the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, The Daily Beast reported on Wednesday.

The drills will simulate targeting Pyongyang’s missile and nuclear sites plus bases needed to supply them. Sources familiar told The Daily Beast that the war games will end with a “decapitation” exercise where they attack North Korea’s command structure and take out Kim.

According to the report, the US will not publicly acknowledge that they are practicing killing Kim in the war games. Washington and Seoul haven’t held such exercises since President Trump canceled them in 2018 after meeting with Kim.

The last time the war games were held was in 2017, and Kim responded by ordering an underground nuclear weapons test. The North hasn’t launched a nuclear test since, but the US is risking provoking one by simulating Kim’s assassination.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and his South Korean counterpart, Lee Jong-sup, agreed to restart the drills last weekend. When they were held last about 50,000 South Korean troops, and 20,000 US troops participated.

The renewed war games come after South Korea’s new President Yoon Suk-yeol said he would strengthen military ties with the US. His predecessor, Moon Jae-in, was a proponent of peaceful reunification with the North, and Yoon has said he will take a tougher stance on Pyongyang.

Yoon seeks the return of US nuclear bombers and submarines to South Korean territory. The US removed all of its nuclear weapons from the Korean peninsula in 1991.

The Biden administration has maintained that it’s open to talks with Pyongyang but hasn’t offered any incentives to bring them to the table, such as sanctions relief. The North restarted launching missile tests last year, and the US has been warning that they may be preparing for a nuclear test.

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Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.

Featured image is from VOA News

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Google denied permission to use its Google Surveys platform to publish a brief survey about people’s experiences with COVID-19 and myocarditis, according to Steve Kirsch, executive director of Vaccine Safety Research Foundation.

Google denied permission to use its Google Surveys platform to publish a brief survey about people’s experiences with COVID-19 and myocarditis, according to Steve Kirsch, executive director of Vaccine Safety Research Foundation.

Kirsch on Wednesday reported the rejection, telling readers of his Substack post:

“Clearly, they don’t want anyone to know the truth. The only truth they want you to know is what the government tells you.”

Kirsch said his team put together a two-question survey, and Google rejected both questions. Here’s what Kirsch and his team tried to ask:

1. Has anyone in your household (including yourself):

a. Had COVID

b. Is now unable to work because of a COVID infection

c. Died from COVID

2. Has anyone in your household (including yourself):

a. Had the COVID vaccine

b. Had a diagnosis of myocarditis after getting the COVID vaccine

c. Died from the COVID vaccine

“Apparently, Google won’t let you ask any questions related to … COVID or the vaccines. Wow. Just wow,” Kirsch said.

Kirsch, a tech entrepreneur, philanthropist and founder of the COVID-19 Early Treatment Fund, included a screenshot of Google Surveys’ explanation for why it wouldn’t allow their survey.

According to Google Surveys, the team’s survey questions were problematic because:

“Surveys that request information related to certain medical topics or vividly describing a certain medical topic issue are a non-starter.

“In this scenario we must reserve the right to allow or not allow surveys with these topics at our sole discretion.”

Google Surveys also said the questions must be removed because questions involving “offensive, obscene, gruesome, hocking or distasteful content” are unallowed on their platform.

Questions about COVID and myocarditis deemed ‘offensive’

Google does allow its own survey data about COVID-19 on its Google Health platform.

Google Health — whose stated mission of “helping everyone, everywhere be healthier through products and services that connect and bring meaning to health information” — touts a “COVID-19 Open Data Repository.”

According to Google Health’s website, their data repository is “one of the most comprehensive collections of up-to-date COVID-19-related information to help public health professionals, researchers, policymakers and others in analyzing, understanding, and managing the virus.”

Google says the data come “from authoritative sources, gathered automatically as well as from volunteers and contributors, and is updated daily or more frequently.”

According to the website:

“We aggregate data from hundreds of data sources to ensure global representation.

• Authoritative sources (governmental, health, universities)
• General sources (news media, publications)
• Crowdsourcing (volunteers, contributors)”

Google Health also states: “We welcome your contributions.”

According to Google, its Google Health initiative helps “researchers and scientists in advancing the science of public health” and provides “researchers with datasets and tools they can use to discover novel insights in support of public health.”

Kirsch suggested Google wouldn’t allow his team to run their survey because it questioned the official COVID-19 government narrative.

Kirsch said:

“We already know from other surveys we’ve run that the vaccines are not safe. Disallowing such surveys is a danger to society.”

“I can’t wait for the day when I hear a Google executive admit, ‘It was a mistake to censor this information and make it difficult for the public to learn the truth about how unsafe these vaccines are.’

“Will that day ever come? Probably not.”

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Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D., is an independent journalist and researcher based in Fairfield, Iowa.

Featured image is from CHD

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Twitter last week censored Shmuel Shapira, M.D., MPH, for suggesting a connection between the monkeypox outbreak and mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, according to a Kanekoa’s Newsletter Substack post published Wednesday.

Shapira, who said he was injured after receiving his third dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, said Twitter demanded he remove a tweet that said:

“Monkey pox cases were rare for years. During the last years a single case was documented in Israel. It is well established the mRNA vaccines affect the natural immune system. A monkey pox outbreak following massive covid vaccination: *Is not a coincidence.”

Shapira is a full professor of medical administration at Hebrew University and served as director of Israel’s Institute for Biological Research from 2013-2021.

According to the author of the Kanekoa Newsletter, Shapira might be “the most senior ranking medical-scientist in the world to openly criticize the COVID vaccines.”

Shapira also is the founder and head of the military medicine department at the Hebrew University and Israeli Defense Forces Medical Corps, and a senior research fellow at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism at Reichman University in Israel.

He has published more than 110 peer-reviewed scientific articles and is the editor of three academic journals.

As director of Israel’s Institute for Biological Research, Shapira initially was the “driving force behind the efforts to develop an Israeli COVID-19 vaccine” until he “unexpectedly” stepped down in May 2021, The Times of Israel reported.

According to Kanekoa, Shapira started his Twitter account in January 2022 and has grown increasingly vocal in his criticism of mRNA vaccines since he first denounced the Israeli Genesis Award for giving the award to Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla.

Kanekoa collected 11 Twitter posts by Shapira:

• On Jan. 18, 2022, Shapira said (translated from Hebrew by Google): “The Israeli Genesis Award was given to the CEO of Pfizer, so wretched. Instead of giving it to an Israeli scientist, and all this for a mediocre, short-acting vaccine that yielded Pfizer a profit of billions, a wretched and exiled one. Bourla will be appointed the King of Israel now. Let me remind you that vaccinated Israel is the fourth-leading in the number of corona patients in the world. There is a championship!”
• On Feb. 6, 2022, Shapira asked: “What grade would you give to a vaccine that people are vaccinated with three times and get sick twice (as of today)? Not to mention significant side effects …”
• On April 9, 2022, Shapira said: “The CEO of the company, millions of whose vaccines were used in Israel for vaccination, stated in an interview with NBC that Israel serves as the world’s laboratory. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first case in history where experimental guinea pigs paid an exorbitant rate for their participation.”
• On May 13, 2022, Shapira said: “I received 3 vaccinations, I was physically injured in a very significant way as many others were injured … And in addition, my trust in the nature of the decisions and in the processes of making them has been severely eroded. No one asked and checked. I will fight with all my might so that truthful answers regarding all decisions and not just regarding the vaccine are given …”
• On June 7, 2022, Shapira said: “We are talking about vaccine five in two and a half years. When the vaccine is planned for the sequence from January 2020 (the great-grandfather of the great-grandfather of the current variants). A vaccine that does not prevent infection does not prevent morbidity. And it is allegedly attributed to significant side effects to say the least. Why? What is the logic? Which authority approved? And don’t say that it prevents a serious illness, no one has proven it.”
• On June 8, 2022, Shapira said: “I will continue and ask why give an outdated fifth vaccine that does not prevent disease and apparently causes many significant common side effects.”
• On July 5, 2022, Shapira discussed the “son of a 36-year-old Australian friend” who developed “severe ventricular arrhythmias and went into heart failure” only “days after the second Pfizer vaccine.” “The compensation is automatic by the Australian government,” he said. “Despite the behavior of their government they admit to the connection and the phrase ‘no connection’ does not appear in the lexicon.”
• On July 15, 2022, Shapira shared a chart of New South Wales COVID-19 rates showing an increased risk of COVID-19 infection with every new dose of the mRNA vaccine on which hecommented: “According to official data from Australia the more you are injected the more likely you are to get sick as the fourth injection jumps the chance dramatically. According to this study it is supposedly an anti-vaccine at least according to what I have been taught.”
• On July 18, 2022, Shapira said: “I am not anti-vaccine, I am anti-stupidity, anti-fake science, and anti-incompetent management.”
• On July 28, 2022, Shapira said: “T [Twitter] warned me to remove the T connecting MP [monkeypox] to C [COVID-19]. Each day I understand better where we live and in which year.”
• On July 31, 2022, Shapira shared a link to the OpenVAERS COVID-19 Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System that showed a total of 1,357,937 reports including 170,151 hospitalizations and 29,790 deaths, above which he simply commented: “Safe & Efficient.”

“In a post-lockdown world,” Kanekoa said, “where governments increasingly coordinate with Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to censor criticism of COVID vaccines, even senior ranking medical-scientist are being silenced for speaking about the science that counters the pharmaceutical industry’s narrative.”

*

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Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D., is an independent journalist and researcher based in Fairfield, Iowa.

Featured image is from CHD

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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***

PolitiFact claims to be a fact-checking organization that exposes false information. But, in practice, PolitiFact can turn out to instead be the promoter of false information.

For example, consider this paragraph from a PolitiFact article from last week by Madison Czopek:

Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine, marketed as Comirnaty, in August 2021 became the first COVID-19 vaccine to achieve full approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Millions of people have received the two-dose Pfizer vaccine, which is a safe and effective way to prevent COVID-19.

This short, two-sentence paragraph from the self-proclaimed fact-checking organization is filled with falsehoods.

First, the coronavirus shots from Pfizer-BioNtech are not a “vaccine” under the normal meaning of the term. As Dr. Joseph Mercola explained early in 2021, soon after the rollout of the shots, the shots from both Pfizer-BioNtech and Moderna are better understood as “gene therapy.” Further, Mercola addressed in an article on the matter that even at that early stage supposed fact checkers were trying to suppress the different nature of these new shots.

Maybe it is OK to let this first problem slide. Even many people who challenge the shots’ worthiness often just call them “vaccines.” You might expect more from someplace saying it is doing fact checking, but it is within the normal range of how people talk about the coronavirus shots.

The next two problems, though, are inexcusable.

Second, contrary to what the PolitiFact article suggests, there has been no widespread use of Pfizer’s Comirnaty shot. What millions of people have received is a different shot — Pfizer-BioNtech’s emergency use authorization coronavirus shot. Megan Redshaw explains the situation regarding Comirnaty in a July 11 article at the Children’s Health Defense website:

According to Pfizer’s press release, Comirnaty was previously made available to the 12 to 15 age group in the U.S. under EUA [(Emergency Use Authorization)] and 9 million U.S. adolescents in this age group have completed a primary series.

‘The vaccine, sold under the brand name Comirnaty for adults, has been available under an emergency use authorization since May 2021 for the 12-15 age group,” Reuters reported. “It will now be sold under the same brand name for adolescents as well.’

Yet, Pfizer’s information hotline says it has no specific information on when Comirnaty will be available.

The FDA said Friday the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine ‘has been, and will continue to be, authorized for emergency use in this age group since May 2021.’

The CDC’s website states that Comirnaty is ‘not orderable.’

A branch of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services overseeing the Strategic National Stockpile indicated Comirnaty was not available because Pfizer did not have time to change the labels.

According to FDA documents, Comirnaty is not available in the U.S. and nobody has received a fully approved and licensed COVID-19 vaccine.

Third, the paragraph from the Politifact article repeats the favorite mantra of politician and big money media pushing the coronavirus shots: The shots are “safe and effective.” Regarding the shots supposed safety, I dealt with that matter in a previous article challenging PolitiFact’s pharmaceutical propaganda. You can read here my February 13 article “PolitiFact’s Crummy Fact-checking on Coronavirus Shots Safety.” As far as effectiveness, is PolitiFact joking? Even Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle P. Walensky finally admitted back in August of 2021 what had become common knowledge among observers of the coronavirus shots’ effects: The shots do not prevent transmission of coronavirus. Wake up, PolitiFact. It is a year later and you are still touting the shots as an “effective way to prevent COVID-19.” Oh boy. And across America and the world we have seen the continued failure of the shots to prevent coronavirus-related sickness and death for shot recipients as well. For a sample of the evidence indicating the shots’ are ineffective and even counterproductive in preventing sickness and death read here Daniel Horowitz’s analysis of data from Great Britain in a March 22 The Blaze article.

The coronavirus shots have proven to be a big failure in regard to their hyped health promotion purposes. Nonetheless — facts, schmacts — PolitiFact continues on in its role as the shots’ dogged promoter.

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***

The South African Health Products Regulatory Authority has confirmed that a person died of Guillain-Barré syndrome that was causally linked to receiving the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine.

A patient who had received the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine has died after developing Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) and a prolonged hospital stay.

To protect patient confidentiality, and because it is such a rare disease, Professor Hannelie Meyer from the National Immunisation Safety Committee said no patient details, not even the province where the death occurred, will be made public.

She has confirmed that they have positively linked the cause of death to the vaccine.

“It is a very rare event,” she said. “The person presented with the symptoms shortly after vaccination and this had led to prolonged hospitalisation, mechanical ventilation and further infections.”

GBS has been identified before as a possible side-effect of the vaccine. It has also been identified as a post-infection complication of Covid-19.

On 13 July, the American Food and Drug Administration revised its fact sheets for the J&J Covid-19 vaccine to include information pertaining to an observed increased risk of GBS following vaccination.

At the time there were about 100 preliminary reports of GBS in the US related to 12.5 million doses of the J&J vaccine. Of these, 95 were serious and required hospital admission. There was one reported death.

GBS is an immune system disorder where the body’s immune cells attack the nervous system and cause weakness and tingling in the arms and legs.

Professor Marc Blokman, who specialises in clinical pharmacology, said GBS was very rare and affected about 100,000 people worldwide every year.

“It can be mild but it can also lead to either rapid or progressive weakness and has the potential to affect the respiratory system,” he said. GBS could be caused by bacterial or viral infections and certain medicines or vaccines could predispose patients to develop the syndrome.

“We were acutely aware of it and it was part of the vigilance plan.”

He said the reported death due to the Covid-19 vaccine mirrors the situation in other countries.

“It is exceedingly rare. Very few cases are reported and even fewer are confirmed as being caused by the Covid-19 vaccine.

“We are convinced that the benefits of the vaccine still greatly outweigh adverse events.”

See the case ‘in proportion’

The chairperson of the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (Sahpra)board, Helen Rees, said the country would not have seen such a rare side-effect if the vaccine had not been rolled out to millions.

“We must be very careful to keep this event in proportion,” she said. “We must ask what is the risk of the disease itself?”

She said they were discussing the case with the World Health Organization and other regulators and can confirm that it was very, very rare.

Sahpra’s chief, Dr Boitumelo Semete-Makokotlela, said this was the first death confirmed to be linked to the Covid-19 vaccine.

“There is one death after nine million doses of the vaccine,” she said.

They had assessed the deaths of 160 people up to now for possibly being caused by the Covid-19 vaccine and this was the first that had not been coincidental.

She said the investigation was still ongoing in a number of other cases.

Dr Nicholas Crisp, the deputy director-general in the Health Department, said a compensation fund for people harmed by the Covid-19 vaccine has to date received 75 claims that were causally linked to the vaccine and more are under investigation.

Headaches, dizziness, fever and pain were among the most common side-effects reported, according to data gathered from Sahpra’s safety app.

Sahpra statistics show that between 17 May 2021 and 15 July 2022, 217 deaths were reported to them with claims that it was linked to the Covid-19 vaccine.

Of these, 33 were under investigation and investigation for 184 had been finalised. In 154 cases the deaths were found to be coincidental. In 88 cases the deceased had Covid-19 and in two cases they had died of complications after a breakthrough infection.

In 30 cases the deaths could not be investigated properly due to a lack of information.

Meyer said they received a number of reports for anaphylaxis, a potentially fatal allergic reaction, but on investigation it was just a “very bad reaction”.

Among the serious adverse events investigated, about 70% had been coincidental and many had been stress-related.

But for less-severe reactions patients most often reported severe headaches, with 870 having received the Pfizer jab, a two-dose vaccine, and 372 the J&J shot.

Fever as a side-effect was reported by 176 patients who received the J&J vaccine and 440 who had Pfizer’s. Pain was reported by 147 patients who received the J&J vaccine and 320 who had the Pfizer vaccine.

Close to 300 people who received the Pfizer vaccine reported nausea, as did 147 people who were jabbed with J&J’s vaccine.

A total of 360 people who received either of the Covid-19 vaccines also reported shortness of breath, while about 480 reported dizziness.

*

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***

Ukrainian forces have put civilians in harm’s way by establishing bases and operating weapons systems in populated residential areas, including in schools and hospitals, as they repelled the Russian invasion that began in February, Amnesty International said today. 

Such tactics violate international humanitarian law and endanger civilians, as they turn civilian objects into military targets. The ensuing Russian strikes in populated areas have killed civilians and destroyed civilian infrastructure.

“We have documented a pattern of Ukrainian forces putting civilians at risk and violating the laws of war when they operate in populated areas,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General.

“Being in a defensive position does not exempt the Ukrainian military from respecting international humanitarian law.”

Not every Russian attack documented by Amnesty International followed this pattern, however. In certain other locations in which Amnesty International concluded that Russia had committed war crimes, including in some areas of the city of Kharkiv, the organization did not find evidence of Ukrainian forces located in the civilian areas unlawfully targeted by the Russian military.

Between April and July, Amnesty International researchers spent several weeks investigating Russian strikes in the Kharkiv, Donbas and Mykolaiv regions. The organization inspected strike sites; interviewed survivors, witnesses and relatives of victims of attacks; and carried out remote-sensing and weapons analysis.

Throughout these investigations, researchers found evidence of Ukrainian forces launching strikes from within populated residential areas as well as basing themselves in civilian buildings in 19 towns and villages in the regions. The organization’s Crisis Evidence Lab has analyzed satellite imagery to further corroborate some of these incidents.

Most residential areas where soldiers located themselves were kilometres away from front lines. Viable alternatives were available that would not endanger civilians – such as military bases or densely wooded areas nearby, or other structures further away from residential areas. In the cases it documented, Amnesty International is not aware that the Ukrainian military who located themselves in civilian structures in residential areas asked or assisted civilians to evacuate nearby buildings – a failure to take all feasible precautions to protect civilians.

Launching strikes from populated civilian areas 

Survivors and witnesses of Russian strikes in the Donbas, Kharkiv and Mykolaiv regions told Amnesty International researchers that the Ukrainian military had been operating near their homes around the time of the strikes, exposing the areas to retaliatory fire from Russian forces. Amnesty International researchers witnessed such conduct in numerous locations.

International humanitarian law requires all parties to a conflict to avoid locating, to the maximum extent feasible, military objectives within or near densely populated areas. Other obligations to protect civilians from the effects of attacks include removing civilians from the vicinity of military objectives and giving effective warning of attacks that may affect the civilian population.

The mother of a 50-year-old man killed in a rocket attack on 10 June in a village south of Mykolaiv told Amnesty International:

“The military were staying in a house next to our home and my son often took food to the soldiers. I begged him several times to stay away from there because I was afraid for his safety. That afternoon, when the strike happened, my son was in the courtyard of our home and I was in the house. He was killed on the spot. His body was ripped to shreds. Our home was partially destroyed.”

Amnesty International researchers found military equipment and uniforms at the house next door.

Mykola, who lives in a tower block in a neighbourhood of Lysychansk (Donbas) that was repeatedly struck by Russian attacks which killed at least one older man, told Amnesty International: “I don’t understand why our military is firing from the cities and not from the field.” Another resident, a 50-year-old man, said: “There is definitely military activity in the neighbourhood. When there is outgoing fire, we hear incoming fire afterwards.” Amnesty International researchers witnessed soldiers using a residential building some 20 metres from the entrance of the underground shelter used by the residents where the older man was killed.

In one town in Donbas on 6 May, Russian forces used widely banned and inherently indiscriminate cluster munitions over a neighbourhood of mostly single or two-storey homes where Ukrainian forces were operating artillery. Shrapnel damaged the walls of the house where Anna, 70, lives with her son and 95-year-old mother.

Anna said: “Shrapnel flew through the doors. I was inside. The Ukrainian artillery was near my field… The soldiers were behind the field, behind the house… I saw them coming in and out… since the war started… My mother is… paralyzed, so I couldn’t flee.”

In early July, a farm worker was injured when Russian forces struck an agricultural warehouse in the Mykolaiv area. Hours after the strike, Amnesty International researchers witnessed the presence of Ukrainian military personnel and vehicles in the grain storage area, and witnesses confirmed that the military had been using the warehouse, located across the road from a farm where civilians are living and working.

While Amnesty International researchers were examining damage to residential and adjacent public buildings in Kharkiv and in villages in Donbas and east of Mykolaiv, they heard outgoing fire from Ukrainian military positions nearby.

In Bakhmut, several residents told Amnesty International that the Ukrainian military had been using a building barely 20 metres across the street from a residential high-rise building. On 18 May, a Russian missile struck the front of the building, partly destroying five apartments and damaging nearby buildings. Kateryna, a resident who survived the strike, said: “I didn’t understand what happened. [There were] broken windows and a lot of dust in my home… I stayed here because my mother didn’t want to leave. She has health problems.”

Three residents told Amnesty International that before the strike, Ukrainian forces had been using a building across the street from the bombed building, and that two military trucks were parked in front of another house that was damaged when the missile hit. Amnesty International researchers found signs of military presence in and outside the building, including sandbags and black plastic sheeting covering the windows, as well as new US-made trauma first aid equipment.

“We have no say in what the military does, but we pay the price,” a resident whose home was also damaged in the strike told Amnesty International.

Military bases in hospitals

Amnesty International researchers witnessed Ukrainian forces using hospitals as de facto military bases in five locations. In two towns, dozens of soldiers were resting, milling about, and eating meals in hospitals. In another town, soldiers were firing from near the hospital.

A Russian air strike on 28 April injured two employees at a medical laboratory in a suburb of Kharkiv after Ukrainian forces had set up a base in the compound.

Using hospitals for military purposes is a clear violation of international humanitarian law.

Military bases in schools

The Ukrainian military has routinely set up bases in schools in towns and villages in Donbas and in the Mykolaiv area. Schools have been temporarily closed to students since the conflict  began, but in most cases the buildings were located close to populated civilian neighbourhoods

At 22 out of 29 schools visited, Amnesty International researchers either found soldiers using the premises or found evidence of current or prior military activity – including the presence of military fatigues, discarded munitions, army ration packets and military vehicles.

Russian forces struck many of the schools used by Ukrainian forces. In at least three towns, after Russian bombardment of the schools, Ukrainian soldiers moved to other schools nearby, putting the surrounding neighbourhoods at risk of similar attacks.

In a town east of Odesa, Amnesty International witnessed a broad pattern of Ukrainian soldiers using civilian areas for lodging and as staging areas, including basing armoured vehicles under trees in purely residential neighbourhoods, and using two schools located in densely populated residential areas. Russian strikes near the schools killed and injured several civilians between April and late June – including a child and an older woman killed in a rocket attack on their home on 28 June.

In Bakhmut, Ukrainian forces were using a university building as a base when a Russian strike hit on 21 May, reportedly killing seven soldiers. The university is adjacent to a high-rise residential building which was damaged in the strike, alongside other civilian homes roughly 50 metres away. Amnesty International researchers found the remains of a military vehicle in the courtyard of the bombed university building.

International humanitarian law does not specifically ban parties to a conflict from basing themselves in schools that are not in session. However, militaries have an obligation to avoid using schools that are near houses or apartment buildings full of civilians, putting these lives at risk, unless there is a compelling military need. If they do so, they should warn civilians and, if necessary, help them evacuate. This did not appear to have happened in the cases examined by Amnesty International.

Armed conflicts seriously hamper children’s right to education, and military use of schools can result in destruction that further deprives children of this right once the war ends. Ukraine is one of 114 countries that have endorsed the Safe Schools Declaration, an agreement to protect education amid armed conflict, which allows parties to make use of abandoned or evacuated schools only where there is no viable alternative.

Indiscriminate attacks by Russian forces 

Many of the Russian strikes that Amnesty International documented in recent months were carried out with inherently indiscriminate weapons, including internationally banned cluster munitions, or with other explosive weapons with wide area effects. Others used guided weapons with varying levels of accuracy; in some cases, the weapons were precise enough to target specific objects.

The Ukrainian military’s practice of locating military objectives within populated areas does not in any way justify indiscriminate Russian attacks. All parties to a conflict must at all times distinguish between military objectives and civilian objects and take all feasible precautions, including in choice of weapons, to minimize civilian harm. Indiscriminate attacks which kill or injure civilians or damage civilian objects are war crimes.

“The Ukrainian government should immediately ensure that it locates its forces away from populated areas, or should evacuate civilians from areas where the military is operating. Militaries should never use hospitals to engage in warfare, and should only use schools or civilian homes as a last resort when there are no viable alternatives,” said Agnès Callamard.

Amnesty International contacted the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence with the findings of the research on 29 July 2022. At the time of publication, they had not yet responded.

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All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

Yesterday, Muqtada al-Sadr urged his supporters to continue protests at the Iraqi parliament in Baghdad.  The Muslim cleric has a large support base who demand the dissolution of parliament and a call for early elections.

Iraq has been suffering under a political stalemate that has prevented an elected government for almost 10 months.

Thousands of protesters entered and occupied the parliament which sits within the Green Zone last weekend.  The move was in response to attempts by a rival political faction to form a government with prime ministerial candidates unacceptable to Sadr and his followers.

The last election was held in October and Sadr won the largest bloc of seats in parliament, but was unable to form a government which would exclude his rivals. Sadr withdrew his members of parliament, and turned to the strategy of protests and the parliament occupation to achieve a change in the stalemate.

Sadr claims past dialogue has not achieved anything.  He said, “But we have already tried and experienced dialogue with them,” he added. “It has brought nothing to us and to the nation – only ruin and corruption.”

Outgoing Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi and President Barham Saleh have stressed the importance of “guaranteeing security and stability” in the country.

Why did they occupy the parliament?

Raed Jarrar is an Iraqi-American political advocate based in Washington, DC.  He was born in Baghdad and lived through the US invasion and total destruction of his country.  He told Al Jazeera TV recently, that the answer to Iraq’s current crisis is to end the sectarian quota system, end corrupt politicians, and end foreign meddling in Iraq.

Is Iraq a democracy?

After the US invasion of Iraq, the US government and their media outlets promoted the idea that the US was bring American style democracy to Iraq after removing a brutal dictator.  That never happened.  The Economist Intelligence Unit rated Iraq an “authoritarian regime” in 2019. The US officials in charge of inventing the Iraq government after the invasion, devised a very un-American governing system.  It has a multi-party system which keeps divisions and chaos center stage, while the Prime Minister, President, and the parliament all fight against each other vying for their own interests amid party and sectarian allegiances.  Under this un-American, but American-made system, it is almost impossible to get any worthwhile changes made.

Sectarian quotas   

Imagine in the US if congressional seats were divided by Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and Atheists.  Iraq is made up of numerous religious groups, and in the 2021 parliamentary election held in October, the political bloc led by Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr was confirmed the winner after having won a total of 73 out of the 329 seats in the parliament. The Taqadum, or Progress Party-led by Parliament Speaker Mohammed al-Halbousi, a Sunni – secured 37 seats. Former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s State of Law party got 33 seats in parliament. Al-Fatah alliance, whose main components are militia groups affiliated with the Iran-backed Popular Mobilisation Forces, sustained its crushing loss and snatched 17 seats. The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) received 31 seats, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) gained 18.

Corruption

Iraq’s is the most corrupt government in the Middle East, according to Transparency International, and is described as a “hybrid regime” between a “flawed democracy” and an “authoritarian regime”.

Brown University published the 2011 report “Costs of War”, in which concluded the US military presence in Iraq has not been able to prevent corruption, noting that as early as 2006, “there were clear signs that post-Saddam Iraq was not going to be the linchpin for a new democratic Middle East.”

Foreign meddling

Following the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, the main foreign players have been the US and Iran, though to a lesser extent Saudi Arabia and Israel have destabilized the country as well.

The use of Iraq as a proxy field for regional and international political conflict has resulted in a failed state. This has also formed fertile ground for extremist religious movements such as ISIS. Only by transforming Iraq into a successful state, can it eliminate terrorism.

Are US troops withdrawn from Iraq?

In January 2020, Iraq’s parliament voted to oust all US troops, and crowds chanted,”Baghdad is free, out with America.”  Finally, by December 9, 2021 US combat troops were withdrawn, but a contingent of 2,500 troops remain in an advisory and assistance role.

The effects of the US invasion on Iraq

“Iraq and Afghanistan and other places that the U.S. government have been interfering in have been destroyed because of U.S. intervention, but that wasn’t necessarily because of a series of mistakes or ignorance. In many cases that was the plan. …Many of the crimes that were committed were premeditated,” according to Raed Jarrar.

Michael Ledeen has said, “One can only hope that we turn the region into a cauldron, and faster, please. If ever there were a region that richly deserved being cauldronized, it is the Middle East today. If we wage the war effectively, we will bring down the terror regimes in Iraq, Iran, and Syria, and either bring down the Saudi monarchy or force it to abandon its global assembly line to indoctrinate young terrorists. That’s our mission in the war against terror.”

Ledeen was known as one of The Vulcans who also included John Bolton, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, and David Wurmser who signed an “An Open Letter to the President” to lobby Bill Clinton to remove Hussein from office. Clinton declined to act, but President George W. Bush was willing to destroy Iraq based on a lie.

Oil rich

Iraq is the second highest oil producer in OPEC, has one of the biggest oil reserves in the world, and will continue to be of utmost geostrategic significance for the global economy.

Has Iraq recovered from the US invasion on Iraq?

Iraq has never recovered from the US invasion, which destroyed water, electricity, medical, food and education infrastructures which were highly stable and productive prior to the US attack. The US invasion caused the growth of terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria which had never previously existed. Those terrorists created by the invasion have threatened the US, Europe and the world.

In 2008 the US began to gradually reduce the number of its troops in Iraq, completing its withdrawal in December 2011. However, the US re-entered Iraq at the request of the government to fight ISIS.  Eventually, ISIS was defeated in both Iraq and Syria.  The small number of US troops in Iraq might be accepted by Iraqis, but the Syrian people view the US occupiers as Thaieves by withholding the oil fields from Syrian use, which has Syrian households suffering with just one hour of electricity per day.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is a two-time award-winning journalist. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

Followed by the visit of the U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan, the emerging situation is quite tense. Despite advance warnings, she made her visit and offended the 1.4 billion Chinese people. The anger and anxiety, of the Chinese public, are well understood. All peace-loving nations and individuals stand with China and condemned her action.

Pakistan being the Iron Clad and closest friend of China, always stood with China at all odd times. At this moment, Pakistan reaffirms its strong commitment to the ‘One-China’ Policy and firmly supports China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. Pakistan is deeply concerned over the evolving situation in the Taiwan Strait, which has serious implications for regional peace and stability. The world is already reeling through a critical security situation due to the Ukraine conflict, with destabilizing implications for international food and energy security. The world cannot afford another crisis that has negative consequences for global peace, security, and the economy. Pakistan strongly believes that inter-state relations should be based on mutual respect, non-interference in internal affairs, and peaceful resolution of issues by upholding principles of the UN charter, international law, and bilateral agreements. The people of Pakistan share the Chinese feelings and sentiments and support Chinese sovereignty.

On August 3, 2022, local time, on the sidelines of the series of foreign ministers’ meetings on East Asia cooperation and his visit to Cambodia, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi gave an interview with reporters and elaborated on China’s solemn position on U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to China’s Taiwan region.

Wang Yi stressed that this is an out-and-out farce. The U.S. is playing dirty tricks to encroach upon China’s sovereignty under the guise of “democracy”, and separatist forces for “Taiwan independence” like Tsai Ing-wen are hanging on to the U.S. coattails, turning their back on the just cause of the Chinese nation. However, these perverse actions cannot in any way change the prevailing international consensus on the One China principle, nor can they change the irreversible historical trend of Taiwan’s return to the motherland. Those who play with fire will not come to a good end. Those who offend China will surely be punished. It is hoped that the US will understand Chinese feelings and public sentiments and avoid any further confrontation. The Chinese people are genetically peace-loving and have demonstrated restraint and patience during the last four decades and have not fought any war. China believes in peaceful resolutions of all disputes and differences through diplomatic and political means and has exercised the same in the past. China is a net contributor to global stability and security throughout history. It has never invaded nor imposed war on any other country. However, if war is imposed on it, China has the right to respond appropriately. China has attained a certain level of development in all dimensions and reached a stage where it cannot be coerced so easily. World opinion supports China and believes Pelosi’s action is unjustified.

The people of Pakistan understand the public sentiments in China and cannot ignore the voice of 1.4 billion Chinese friends. Both countries have a history of supporting each other in all critical moments. China always looked after Pakistan’s vital national interests and raised its voice on all platforms for Pakistan, including the UN. China is currently President of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).

It is believed that all peace-loving nations and individuals stand with China and support the Chinese stance. They will not allow spoiling the global peace and stability. The countries in the region should play a proactive role to defuse the tension and pave the way for peaceful and smooth development of the region and global economy.

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Prof. Engr. Zamir Ahmed Awan, Founding Chair GSRRA, Sinologist (ex-Diplomat), Editor, Analyst, Non-Resident Fellow of CCG (Center for China and Globalization). His e-mail is [email protected].

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***

Guest is Dr. Roman Braun, a doctor of psychology, master of educational sciences and NLP master trainer. He specializes research in propaganda and propaganda analysis. He is also best-selling author of the following books:

• The Power of Rhetoric
• NLP – An Introduction: Communication as leadership tool

In this session, Dr. Braun talks about his experience in the last 30 years and reveals the possibility to recognize propaganda  independent of the subject by its structure. The subject of propaganda is interchangeable, but the procedure is always the same.
Propaganda has been utilized in the corona crisis. However, he currently observes the dynamics in the propaganda content, away from the corona theme. From that point of view, he can infer the goal of manipulative communication.

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Featured image is a screenshot from the video

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***

U.S. provocations against China have moved into high gear. Even as the war in Ukraine, instigated by Washington, unfolds with disastrous consequences for European economies and vibrates through the world economy, a more ominous confrontation is planned.

The aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan, with its accompanying battle group of warships, a guided missile cruiser, destroyers and nuclear submarines, is headed to the coast of China near the Taiwan Strait. This aggressive show of force is intended as a threat to back up Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi’s announced plan to visit Taiwan.

China has stated strong objection to this open military escalation as a flagrant violation of the U.S.-agreed position that China is one country and incorporates Taiwan as a province.

President Xi Jinping warned U.S. President Joe Biden in a conference call July 28 that “Those who play with fire will perish by it.” Xi called on the U.S. to honor the One China principle to which they had agreed (see this).

“Don’t say we didn’t warn you” was a July 29 Global Times headline. It is the highest level of warning used in the past before China has taken military action.

“China’s responses will be systematic and not limited to a small scale, given the severity of Pelosi’s actions and the damage to political trust from Sino-U.S. relations,” said Yang Mingjie, head of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Institute of Taiwan Studies.

He said China’s response could include “military options and comprehensive countermeasures from the economy to diplomacy.”

Based on the strong warnings from China, it is uncertain whether Speaker of the House Pelosi’s six-person congressional visit to Taiwan goes ahead as part of her visit to Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea and Japan. The purpose of the trip is to reassert an aggressive intervention in Asia and openly challenge the One China agreement.

Pelosi, who ranks third in the line of succession to the presidency, would be the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit the island in 25 years. Pelosi is hardly on a personal trip. The visit is an arrogant challenge to China’s unity and will be backed up by a U.S. aircraft carrier battle group and military jets.

China’s consistent position

China has held a consistent, well-understood position on its sovereignty and territorial integrity. Washington is now openly violating a signed international agreement made 50 years ago, on Feb. 28, 1972, between Premier Zhou Enlai and U.S. President Richard Nixon, called the Shanghai Joint Communique. U.S. Secretary of State William P. Rogers and Special Advisor Henry Kissinger participated in drafting this document.

At that time the U.S. was isolated in Asia and all but defeated in Vietnam. This was the motivation to normalize relations — after two decades of failed efforts to overturn the Chinese Revolution through harsh sanctions and military disruptions. The U.S. was especially anxious to drive a wedge between China and the Soviet Union. This division between the two largest but still developing socialist countries was a historic setback for the working class internationally.

Now, 50 years later, U.S. imperialist power is waning. China, Russia, Iran and other countries of the region are increasingly united and able to assist each other when faced by U.S. imperialism’s military threats and new levels of economic sanctions.

The bottom line of the People’s Republic of China in 1972 for normalizing relations with the U.S. was a signed pledge of noninterference in its internal affairs and respect for its sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Of course, like all its agreements and treaties, the U.S. has violated this pledge numerous times through its interference in Hong Kong, Tibet, Xinjiang and Taiwan and its funding under U.S. AID programs to hostile and disruptive movements within China.

Of greatest importance was the inclusion of Taiwan in the Shanghai Joint Communique of 1972, which remains valid today. The United States acknowledged that

“all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China, and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States Government does not challenge that position. It reaffirms its interest in a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question by the Chinese themselves.”

What Wall Street wants to disrupt

China’s planned economy now surpasses the capitalist economy of the U.S. To the U.S. ruling class, efforts to disrupt China have become a priority.

With a population of only 23 million, Taiwan has become a pawn in the struggle to disrupt China. Several cities on the Chinese mainland have larger populations than the island province of Taiwan. Why is disrupting Taiwan so important to Washington’s strategy?

China is Taiwan largest trading partner. It is an important manufacturing center for semiconductor computer chips and other high-tech products that are critical in global supply chains. Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC) currently dominates the market in the production of the most advanced types of semiconductor chips. Its integrated circuits produce power appliances, cars, laptops and phones. It now makes 92% of the world’s most advanced semiconductors.

None of these advanced chips are currently made in the U.S. Meanwhile, China is putting enormous resources into quickly developing its own computer chips. Breaking this essential supply chain is intended to disrupt Chinese global production. Of course it will be even more disruptive to the U.S. and the European Union. Already, based on aggressive sanctions threats, the U.S. has forced Taiwanese semiconductor companies to stop doing business with major Chinese clients like Huawei.

One China policy

Taiwan island has remained officially a province of China since 1683 during the Qing Dynasty.

Following the Chinese Civil War in 1949, the corrupt U.S.-backed Kuomintang Nationalist forces withdrew to China’s island province of Taiwan with U.S. naval support. The victorious Chinese Communist Party then established the People’s Republic of China.

On Taiwan, the Kuomintang forces established what they called the Republic of China, claiming it was the government of all China, and they continue to do so today. But even Taiwan’s constitution claims that Taiwan is a province of all of China. The overwhelming majority of the world, along with the United Nations, officially agree that Taiwan is part of People’s China.

U.S. imperialism, however, has reversed course and is seeking through political and military measures to use Taiwan to destabilize China and provoke a military confrontation.

U.S. military ‘Pivot to Asia’

In 2011 President Barack Obama announced a “Pivot to Asia,” aimed at encircling and containing China. Under Donald Trump, the official position was that the military must prioritize planning for major power conflict with the People’s Republic of China. He took this military hostility to the next level with a trade war.

President Joe Biden has taken it even further, with more weapons sales and aggressive actions. Democrats and Republicans in Congress try to outdo each other in proposing anti-China measures.

The U.S. military presence in Taiwan doubled last December — although not included in counts are U.S. Green Berets training Taiwanese soldiers; other U.S. advisors and contractors involved in weapons placement, technical assistance and training; and a steady escalation of U.S. weapons sales to Taiwan.

The U.S. military and its weapons contractors have told Taiwan what to order, including drones, Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and Javelin anti-tank missiles, the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System and naval sea mines.

The Pentagon has provided similar weapons to Ukraine.

A $108-million U.S. arms sale May 25 was the fifth under the Biden administration and the fourth approved this year. It follows a $95-million air defense system in April and a $100-million upgrade for Patriot missiles in February. A $14.2-billion backlog of military equipment ordered since 2019 has not yet been delivered.

The goal is to make Taiwan a “porcupine” bristling with weapons. The island is being aggressively transformed into an offensive launch platform for war, even as U.S strategists seek to provoke China into military action.

Washington for years employed a similar strategy to build up military and fascist forces within Ukraine as a platform against Russia, with the aim of provoking the current disastrous war there.

These continuing weapons sales, along with Pelosi’s visit, are aimed at further undermining the One China policy.

Nikkei Asia reports that the U.S. has been in discussions to build a network of offensive missiles which would violate the INF treaty on Taiwan. On May 5 the State Department removed wording on its official website that had said “the United States does not support Taiwan independence” and that had acknowledged “the Chinese position that there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China.”

This year, for the first time, Australia, Japan, New Zealand and the Republic of Korea were invited to participate in a NATO Summit as “Indo-Pacific Partners.” This invitation was part of a new “NATO Strategic Concept” — a 10-year strategy plan that openly declares China a threat: “The close alliance between China and Russia threatens western values.”

Endless war, the quick fix

U.S. wars in Asia have cost millions of lives, poisoned generations of children and left environmental destruction that is still unrepaired. Who can forget the devastation caused by U.S. wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria? Millions of people were displaced. While each ended in failure for U.S. imperialism, they reaped trillions of dollars in profits for the military industries and the capitalist class.

The very real danger of a new war is rising. As a capitalist crisis deepens, U.S. imperialism will again choose war. Not because they win the wars, but the parasitic capitalist class desperately needs a huge infusion of military spending. Like an infusion of drugs, it’s a quick, temporary fix.

The U.S.-instigated war in Ukraine has not led to the predicted collapse of the Russian economy, but it has disrupted supply chains of energy and food globally. It is a major cause of the current recession.

A military confrontation with China would be far more disruptive. And it is even less likely to succeed.

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This article was originally published on Workers World.

Sara Flounders is Co-Director of the International Action Center. She is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: The USS Ronald Reagan carrier strike group is now in the South China Sea. (U.S. Navy Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Rawad Madanat)

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***

On Monday evening, President Biden announced that, under his direction, a US drone strike was launched on Saturday that killed “the emir of al Qaeda,” Ayman al-Zawahiri, in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Biden said that al-Zawahiri was the “number-two man” and Osama bin Laden’s deputy at the time of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. He also said the assassination of the 71-year-old Egyptian-born physician was necessary because he was “deeply involved in the planning of 9/11” and was a “mastermind” behind the bombings of the USS Cole in 2000 and the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

As has been the case in every CIA targeted drone strike, no details or proof of the allegations made by the president were presented. According to news reports, US intelligence tracked al-Zawahiri down and found him living in a safe house in a densely populated section of Kabul.

The reports said that Biden approved the attack a week ago and that the CIA fired two Hellfire missiles and killed al-Zawahiri on a balcony of the house. The press cited intelligence officials as saying no one else was killed, including members of al-Zawahiri’s family or any nearby civilians.

Speaking from the White House Blue Room balcony, the President justified the act of US imperialist military violence, saying,

“Now justice has been delivered, and this terrorist leader is no more.” He added, “People around the world no longer need to fear the vicious and determined killer.”

Biden also made it clear the assassination of al-Zawahiri was a warning to anyone deemed an enemy by the US government. He said:

“You know, we—we make it clear again tonight that no matter how long it takes, no matter where you hide, if you are a threat to our people, the United States will find you and take you out.”

Coming in the midst of the escalating US-led war against Russia in Ukraine, and on the eve of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s provocative visit to Taiwan, Biden’s thuggish words could only be taken as an implicit threat against Russian President Putin and Chinese leader Xi.

A statement from the Taliban, the Islamist political organization that took control of Afghanistan after the US withdrawal last summer, condemned the drone attack in somewhat muted language, declaring: “It is an act against the interests of Afghanistan and the region. Repeating such actions will damage the available opportunities.”

The New York Times reported,

“The CIA missiles hit a house in Kabul’s Sherpur area, a wealthy downtown enclave within what is considered the city’s diplomatic quarters, which once housed dozens of Western embassies and now is home to some high-ranking Taliban officials. The strike took place at 9:48 p.m. on Saturday East Coast time, or 6:18 a.m. on Sunday in Kabul time, officials said.”

Yahoo News reported,

“A senior administration official said that the president was first briefed on intelligence relating to al-Zawahiri’s whereabouts on July 1. The official described Biden as ‘immersed in intelligence,’ wanting to know about the layout of the safe house, the impact of a strike on other residents and on civilians living nearby.”

The Times also reported,

“Two top aides to Mr. Biden—Jonathan Finer, his deputy national security adviser, and Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, his homeland security adviser—were first briefed on the intelligence in April. Later other officials were brought in, including Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, who briefed the president.”

The weapon used to kill al-Zawahiri, the AGM-114R9X (air to ground missile), is a modified Hellfire missile. It does not employ explosives, and instead uses kinetic energy and six blades to eviscerate the target.

It is a highly secretive weapon that has been employed by the US Air Force and the CIA against “high value targets,” not all of whom have been identified. It has been used in at least five countries, including Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Syria and Afghanistan, to supposedly combat terrorism by dicing up enemies of US imperialism.

The Times called the grisly strike a “major victory” for Biden “at a time of domestic political trouble.”

Among the concerns of the Democratic administration is the likelihood that the party will lose its majority in one or both houses of Congress in the November midterm elections. It is significant that the strike took place on the eve of significant primary elections in Arizona, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri and Washington.

Biden said that the action was proof that the administration would “continue to conduct effective counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan” after the US military withdrawal from the country one year ago.

However, while the Republicans did not challenge the decision to assassinate al-Zawahiri, Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma said the strike on al-Zawahiri “reflects the total failure of the Biden administration’s policy towards that country.” Republican Representative Michael McCaul of Texas said the strike “serves as a reminder the American people were lied to by President Biden. Al Qaeda is not ‘gone’ from Afghanistan as Biden falsely claimed a year ago.”

Drone assassinations became standard military practice during the first term of the Obama administration and were continued by the Trump White House. As with his predecessors, Biden’s targeted assassination was carried out in violation of international law.

Assurances from the CIA that no one else was killed cannot be uncritically accepted. According to research by Airwars, over the last 20 years and after more the 91,000 strikes in seven war zones, “at least 22,679, and potentially as many as 48,308 civilians, have been likely killed by US strikes.”

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Featured image: Dr. Ayman al-Zawahri in an photograph taken by Hamid Mir, who took this picture during his third and last interview with Osama bin Laden during November 2001 in Kabul. Dr. al-Zawahri was present at the interview where he acted as translator for bin Laden. (Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)

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In this new and expanded edition of Michel Chossudovsky’s 2002 best seller, the author blows away the smokescreen put up by the mainstream media, that 9/11 was an attack on America by “Islamic terrorists”.  Through meticulous research, the author uncovers a military-intelligence ploy behind the September 11 attacks, and the cover-up and complicity of key members of the Bush Administration.

The expanded edition, which includes twelve new chapters focuses on the use of 9/11 as a pretext for the invasion and illegal occupation of Iraq, the militarisation of justice and law enforcement and the repeal of democracy.

According to Chossudovsky, the  “war on terrorism” is a complete fabrication based on the illusion that one man, Osama bin Laden, outwitted the $40 billion-a-year American intelligence apparatus. The “war on terrorism” is a war of conquest. Globalisation is the final march to the “New World Order”, dominated by Wall Street and the U.S. military-industrial complex.

September 11, 2001 provides a justification for waging a war without borders. Washington’s agenda consists in extending the frontiers of the American Empire to facilitate complete U.S. corporate control, while installing within America the institutions of the Homeland Security State.

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***

Washington’s hard power display of taking out Al-Qaeda’s Al-Zawahiri will not be reciprocated by Beijing over Pelosi’s provocative visit to Taiwan. It does however, definitively bury the decades-long era of cooperative US-Chinese relations.

This is the way the “Global War on Terror” (GWOT) ends, over and over again: not with a bang, but a whimper.

Two Hellfire R9-X missiles launched from a MQ9 Reaper drone on the balcony of a house in Kabul. The target was Ayman Al-Zawahiri with a $25 million bounty on his head. The once invisible leader of ‘historic’ Al-Qaeda since 2011, is finally terminated.

All of us who spent years of our lives, especially throughout the 2000s, writing about and tracking Al-Zawahiri know how US ‘intel’ played every trick in the book – and outside the book – to find him. Well, he never exposed himself on the balcony of a house, much less in Kabul.

Another disposable asset

Why now? Simple. Not useful anymore – and way past his expiration date. His fate was sealed as a tawdry foreign policy ‘victory’ – the remixed Obama ‘Osama bin Laden moment’ that won’t even register across most of the Global South. After all, a perception reigns that George W. Bush’s GWOT has long metastasized into the “rules-based,” actually “economic sanctions-based” international order.

Cue to 48 hours later, when hundreds of thousands across the west were glued to the screen of flighradar24.com (until the website was hacked), tracking “SPAR19” – the US Air Force jet carrying House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – as it slowly crossed Kalimantan from east to west, the Celebes Sea, went northward parallel to the eastern Philippines, and then made a sharp swing westwards towards Taiwan, in a spectacular waste of jet fuel to evade the South China Sea.

No “Pearl Harbor moment”

Now compare it with hundreds of millions of Chinese who are not on Twitter but on Weibo, and a leadership in Beijing that is impervious to western-manufactured pre-war, post-modern hysteria.

Anyone who understands Chinese culture knew there would never be a “missile on a Kabul balcony” moment over Taiwanese airspace. There would never be a replay of the perennial neocon wet dream: a “Pearl Harbor moment.” That’s simply not the Chinese way.

The day after, as the narcissist Speaker, so proud of accomplishing her stunt, was awarded the Order of Auspicious Clouds for her promotion of bilateral US-Taiwan relations, the Chinese Foreign Minister issued a sobering comment: the reunification of Taiwan with the mainland is a historical inevitability.

That’s how you focus, strategically, in the long game.

What happens next had already been telegraphed, somewhat hidden in a Global Times report. Here are the two key points:

Point 1: “China will see it as a provocative action permitted by the Biden administration rather than a personal decision made by Pelosi.”

That’s exactly what President Xi Jinping had personally told the teleprompt-reading White House tenant during a tense phone call last week. And that concerns the ultimate red line.

Xi is now reaching the exact same conclusion reached by Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this year: the United States is “non-agreement capable,” and there’s no point in expecting it to respect diplomacy and/or rule of law in international relations.

Point 2 concerns the consequences, reflecting a consensus among top Chinese analysts that mirrors the consensus at the Politburo: “The Russia-Ukraine crisis has just let the world see the consequence of pushing a major power into a corner… China will steadily speed up its process of reunification and declare the end of US domination of the world order.”

Chess, not checkers

The Sinophobic matrix predictably dismissed Xi’s reaction to the fact on the ground – and in the skies – in Taiwan, complete with rhetoric exposing the “provocation by American reactionaries” and the “uncivilized campaign of the imperialists.”

This may be seen as Xi playing Chairman Mao. He may have a point, but the rhetoric is pro forma. The crucial fact is that Xi was personally humiliated by Washington and so was the Communist Party of China (CPC), a major loss of face – something that in Chinese culture is unforgivable. And all that compounded with a US tactical victory.

So the response will be inevitable, and it will be classic Sun Tzu: calculated, precise, tough, long-term and strategic – not tactical. That takes time because Beijing is not ready yet in an array of mostly technological domains. Putin had to wait years for Russia to act decisively. China’s time will come.

For now, what’s clear is that as much as with Russia-US relations last February, the Rubicon has been crossed in the US-China sphere.

The price of collateral damage

The Central Bank of Afghanistan bagged a paltry $40 million in cash as ‘humanitarian aid’ soon after that missile on a balcony in Kabul.

So that was the price of the Al-Zawahiri operation, intermediated by the currently US-aligned Pakistani intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). So cheap.

The MQ-9 Reaper drone carrying the two Hellfire R9X that killed Al-Zawahiri had to fly over Pakistani airspace – taking off from a US base in the Persian Gulf, traversing the Arabian Sea, and flying over Balochistan to enter Afghanistan from the south. The Americans may have also got human intelligence as a bonus.

A 2003 deal, according to which Islamabad facilitates air corridors for US military flights, may have expired with the American withdrawal debacle last August, but could always be revived.

No one should expect a deep dive investigation on what exactly the ISI – historically very close to the Taliban – gave to Washington on a silver platter.

Dodgy dealings

Cue to an intriguing phone call last week between the all-powerful Chief of Staff of the Pakistani Army, Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa, and US deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman. Bajwa was lobbying for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to release a crucial loan at the soonest, otherwise Pakistan will default on its foreign debt.

Were deposed former Prime Minister Imran Khan still in power, he would never have allowed that phone call.

The plot thickens, as Al-Zawahiri’s Kabul digs in a posh neighborhood is owned by a close advisor to Sirajuddin Haqqani, head of the “terrorist” (US-defined) Haqqani network and currently Taliban Interior Minister. The Haqqani network, needless to add, was always very cozy with the ISI.

And then, three months ago, we had the head of ISI, Lieutenant General Nadeem Anjum, meeting with Biden’s National Security Advisor  Jake Sullivan in Washington – allegedly to get their former, joint, covert, counter-terrorism machinery back on track.

Once again, the only question revolves around the terms of the “offer you can’t refuse” – and that may be connected to IMF relief. Under these circumstances, Al-Zawahiri was just paltry collateral damage.

Sun Tzu deploys his six blades

Following Speaker Pelosi’s caper in Taiwan, collateral damage is bound to multiply like the blades of a R9-X missile.

The first stage is the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) already having engaged in live fire drills, with massive shelling in the direction of the Taiwan Strait out of Fujian province.

The first sanctions are on too, against two Taiwanese funds. Export of sable to Taiwan is forbidden; sable is an essential commodity for the electronics industry – so that will ratchet up the pain dial in high-tech sectors of the global economy.

Chinese CATL, the world’s largest fuel cell and lithium-ion battery maker, is indefinitely postponing the building of a massive $5 billion, 10,000-employee factory that would manufacture batteries for electric vehicles across North America, supplying Tesla and Ford among others.

So the Sun Tzu maneuvering ahead will essentially concentrate on a progressive economic blockade of Taiwan, the imposition of a partial no-fly zone, severe restrictions of maritime traffic, cyber warfare, and the Big Prize: inflicting pain on the US economy.

The War on Eurasia

For Beijing, playing the long game means the acceleration of the process involving an array of nations across Eurasia and beyond, trading in commodities and manufactured products in their own currencies. They will be progressively testing a new system that will see the advent of a BRICS+/SCO/Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) basket of currencies, and in the near future, a new reserve currency.

The Speaker’s escapade was concomitant to the definitive burial of the “war on terror” cycle and its metastasis into the “war on Eurasia” era.

It may have unwittingly provided the last missing cog to turbo-charge the complex machinery of the Russia-China strategic partnership. That’s all there is to know about the ‘strategic’ capability of the US political ruling class. And this time no missile on a balcony will be able to erase the new era.

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This article was originally published on The Cradle.

Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil, is a correspondent and editor-at-large at Asia Times and columnist for Consortium News and Strategic Culture. Since the mid-1980s he’s lived and worked as a foreign correspondent in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Singapore, Bangkok. He has extensively covered Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia to China, Iran, Iraq and the wider Middle East. Pepe is the author of Globalistan – How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War; Red Zone Blues: A Snapshot of Baghdad during the Surge. He was contributing editor to The Empire and The Crescent and Tutto in Vendita in Italy. His last two books are Empire of Chaos and 2030. Pepe is also associated with the Paris-based European Academy of Geopolitics. When not on the road he lives between Paris and Bangkok.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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Why don’t they get rid of the muzzle?

While the health law specifies that a generalized obligation is no longer conceivable without prior discussion by the deputies, the minister manages to continue to impose it on us while the epidemic is over, the early treatments recognized and the ineffectiveness of the mask on the population obvious![1][2] HIS OWN ROLE IS UNMASKED.

Constantly reactivated, the obligation to wear a mask causes a return of the trauma. This mask is not only a false protection, but a continuation of the destruction of our Humanity, towards transhumanism.

Even more serious than in the first analysis:

“The obligation of the generalized wearing of the mask is emblematic of the management of the “pandemic”. This constraint is not of a sanitary nature and testifies to a nonsense; it is a commandment presenting itself, at the same time, as a law and its destruction. It is the passage to the act of an exit from the Political.

The reasons for the obligation can be summarized in the fact that, without it, there would be no manifest sign of the supposed “extreme seriousness” of the covid. The centrality of wearing a mask lies in the fact that, by constantly reminding us of the “pandemic”, the constraint places us in the gaze of the power confiscating our intimacy“[3].

“Obligation then becomes a supreme law conditioning our “freedom” and instituting a negative relationship with oneself and with the other. It enjoins us to renounce our human life. The reality of death being no longer channeled by culture, it covers the totality of existence.

Thus, the corona mask is not the articulation of the symbolic and the real. It is therefore not a mask, because it is not veiling.”[4]

“Something of the Real is captured: the desire for relationship. From then on, the people who put on the mask do not carry the word, but the cry of the one who has become a person. They exhibit both the rejection of the other and what results from it, their own annihilation.

“The wearing of the corona mask produces a loss of “symbolic appetence”, of this desire of relation manifesting itself outside the satisfaction of the elementary needs of the survival. The “primordial meeting with the other” is an impulsive push, that of the drive of life, essential in the installation of a bond with the outside.”

This natural desire, this drive of life, is today attacked by the wearing of the mask and its perpetuation after the suppression of the emergency law and any danger of this small virus clearly testifies to its instrumentalization by the globalist, eugenicist and transhumanist power. The normal man must disappear in their eyes and they use their means.

“The wearing of the corona mask leads to an indifferentiation of the ego and the not-ego, of the subject and the object. (…). From this indifferentiation, results a fusion with the things themselves. The corona mask thus allows the installation of a schizophrenic structure, where the individual identifies himself with the objects of the speech. He becomes his mask”.

Thus the media power of the billionaires takes hold on the Human via the MASK tool.

THE MASK, A TOOL OF POWER THAT IS HARMFUL TO HEALTH[5]

The publication of decrees (of a questionable legality, jurists are looking into it) authorizing a pharmacist, doctor or health establishment to impose it, as soon as the French law abolishing the state of emergency was voted on July 26, 22, the same day, demonstrates the certain will as a TOOL of power to pursue the conditioning of the populations.

Let’s not doubt that pretexts such as pollution, ozone or the Lockness monster will be used by the leaders not to let go of its very efficient collaborator, the muzzle.

This would be only moderately serious, if this piece of fabric infected and infecting with various miasmas did not keep the global population in fear and thus in submission to the ruling bodies. In spite of the numerous worldwide proofs of the ineffectiveness of the mask against viruses and its danger of spreading bacteria and fungi (especially in frail, cancerous, immunocompromised people, primary or secondary to gene injections, etc.), the attraction of the cloth persists for reasons that psychiatrists will shed light on by helping us understand how it works.

“The world through a mask is not the same. It is uncomfortable, strange, and out of step with our normalcy.”[6]

It can be both amusing and terrible to read psychoanalysts’ reflections during covid19 about the mask:

“A strange game is played around the mask in the practices and we know that language is also non-verbal. This body speaks to us a lot with the mask object! There are those who wear it easily, those who forget it, those who will not come and who may take the option of the line as a space of freedom created, those who talk about it with anger to feel locked up, suffocated and objectified and those who twist it in all directions as if they wanted to tear it off their face as if this double skin disturbed them. Others who no longer see it.

There are also those who, “by chance” at the moment of opening the door of the office, have just broken their mask by putting it on. A nice missed act, isn’t it?

This was the case of this patient, who in life, could no longer bear the mask of the simulacrum. In front of the door, her mask had cracked. So it was a good thing and we talked about it.

And of this other one who realized in front of my door that she “left without”, letting go for the first time on so many superstitious prohibitions.

Bravo ! In front of the door of the office, yes, the masks fall as the missed acts have always multiplied. Masked and unmasked at the same time.”[7]

Fear is embedded after these months of manipulation and it is difficult to get out of it like the distressing spectacle of masked drivers alone in their cars, young people running on a beach, mask stuck by sweat and heat wave, and worse: Pelosi who faces Chinese planes to land in Taiwan and comes out masked on the airport tarmac. Was it fear or manipulation on her part? How sad!

BEWARE! DESPITE THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ANY SERIOUS COVID RISK, THE GLOBALISTS WOULD LIKE TO RE-IMPOSE THE MASK ON US

“In the whole choreography of the pandemic, the body does not speak. The mask is a gag. Fixed on the mouth, it forbids speech, the vehicle par excellence of the relation to others, speech being, of all the functions of the body, the most closely linked to the common existence”.

Let’s be vigilant and spread all the information that shows its inefficiency, its harmfulness and its toxicity. Let’s inform our neighbors and friends who are still afraid of the risk for themselves of this infecting and dehumanizing rag. Let us not take lightly its prolongation beyond the infections that antibiotics will overcome, the disorders induced towards schizophrenia and psychosis should not be underestimated. We already see the damage in some normal people who were previously covid and have become very “special” and deaf to all reasoning.

THE MASK PROMOTES COVID INFECTIONS[8][9]

“The disadvantages and risks include that a cloth mask becomes a culture medium for a wide variety of bacterial pathogens and a collector of viral pathogens; given the hot, humid environment and the constant source, where home fabrics are hydrophilic while medical masks are hydrophobic.”[10]

Global experience has confirmed this statement by Prof. Rancourt of December 2020.

Jacinda Ardern “baffled” by the spike in COVID infections in New Zealand, a country where masks are mandatory (anguillesousroche.com)

Non-masked countries are less infected

The UK government’s own investigation found that the evidence for the effectiveness of face masks in stopping the spread of COVID-19 in schools is “inconclusive.”[11]

The UK government’s SAGE advisor, Dr. Colin Axon, judged the masks as “comfort blankets” that do virtually nothing, recalling that the COVID-19 virus particle is up to 5,000 times smaller than the holes in the mask.

“The small sizes are not easy to understand, but an imperfect analogy would be to imagine marbles being shot at builders’ scaffolding, some might hit a pole and bounce off, but most would obviously pass through,” Axon said.

A prospective randomized study in Denmark with 6,000 participants[12] also found that:

“there was no statistically significant difference between those who wore masks and those who did not when it came to being infected with Covid-19,” the Spectator reported.

WHO BETRAYED SCIENCE

A “show and tell”

It is indeed within the framework of a “show and tell” that the WHO recommends to wear the mask, while at the same time, it recognizes that this device does not make it possible to stop the virus and to protect the person who wears it. The advantage that the organization sees in this incentive lies in the modification of the behavior of the populations, who are encouraged to make their own masks and thus take an active part in their destruction.”[1].

The WHO,[13] whose perverse and toxic role in this Covid crisis is well-documented, overturned on June 5, 2020 more than a decade of decisions by public health agencies around the world that did not recommend masks for the general population.

The WHO made its 2020 recommendation on the preventive medical intervention of face masks for the general population worldwide by acknowledging:

“At present, the widespread use of masks by healthy individuals in the community setting is not yet supported by high-quality direct scientific evidence and there are potential benefits and harms to consider.”

WHO and local public health officials are impeding scientific progress, promoting “observational studies” without controlled trials, rather than protecting public health. It should be of great concern to all that the WHO’s pretext of “a growing body of observational data on mask use by the general public in several countries” has morphed into the mantra of “a growing body of evidence,” which is on the lips of virtually every public health official and city mayor in the country.”

This mantra of “a growing body of evidence” is advanced as the false miracle justification for draconian masking laws, under real circumstances in which:

• There have been NO new randomized studies supporting masking
• All of the many past randomized studies do not support masking

None of the known harms of masking have been studied (application to the general population).

This is the opposite of science-based policy.

Politicians and public health officials are implementing the worst decision model that can be applied in a society that claims to be rational and democratic: forced preventive measures without scientific basis, while recklessly ignoring the consequences.

Denis Rancourt proves as early as 2020 that there is no scientific evidence to support forced masking on the general population, and that all medical studies of the last decade indicate the opposite: DO NOT recommend forced masking of the general population.

Recall in detailed summary in numerous articles that face mask requirements for the entire population cause:

– generalized discomfort,
– breathing difficulties,
– vision problems (e.g., glasses fogging up),
– impaired communication,
– psychological social distancing,
– skin irritation and infections,
– altered self-expression,
– prolonged exposure to bacterial cultures near the eyes, nose and mouth
– possible collection and administration of viral pathogens that would not otherwise be inhaled, and
– possible amplification of the particle size fraction of exhaled aerosol of infectious particles.

The mantra of “more and more evidence” is totally misleading[14]

Wearing a mask is particularly harmful for children at risk of learning disabilities. Let’s be vigilant in fear of bad ideas at the start of the school year[15][16][17]. Let’s protect them from the useless and toxic gene injection, but also from the wearing of the mask that the enfermistes might want to impose on us at the beginning of the school year in September 2022.

The compulsory wearing of masks for children is maltreatment ! FranceSoir reminds us of an article from August 2020. They knew! It is very illogical and extremely serious to demand masks for children, because they do not contaminate others. It is totally aberrant to demand masks for children in class when, contrary to the flu epidemics, the school is not a place of propagation of Covid19 (9) and in case of flu which is frequently transmitted by the children in school, they have never been subjected to such an obligation nor to the flu vaccines.

Of the more than 3700 articles on children and Covid listed on PubMed on 17/8/2020 and the 70 specifically dedicated to possible transmission by children, none of them provides evidence of transmission from a child to another child or to an adult in the real world.[18]

These articles all confirm, without exception, that Covid 19 is rare and almost always benign in children, that children under 19 are not infected by schoolmates but usually by parents at home, that they do not infect adults, and that confinement of children and cessation of school activities are responsible for frequent behavioral and social psychological disturbances, in addition to an obvious impact on their schooling. ALL THESE ARTICLES HAVE BEEN CONFIRMED BY WORLDWIDE EXPERIENCE.

Let us never forget: the mask is a technique of confinement

“The current treatment of our bodies immediately brings to mind the technique of confinement used in the prison of Guantanamo. This camp inaugurates a new exhibition, not of the body, as in the old regime or in the early capitalism, but of its image, more precisely a negation of the body image.

Not only were the prisoners’ eyes masked by opaque glasses, but their nose and mouth were covered by a surgical mask. The body of the prisoner is confiscated, not to subdue it, but to keep it locked within itself. Nothing must distract the prisoner’s mind from an imprisonment, which must be perceived as having no beginning and above all no end.

Compared to the reception, without explicit condemnation, of the images of Guantanamo, the enrolment in the “war against the coronavirus” is an additional stage in the renunciation of our humanity. (…)

In the “war against the coronavirus“, aptly named by President Macron in March 2020 and endorsed by the term “commando” that the new Minister of Health is expected to create, military language is omnipresent, and there is no longer any distinction between inside and outside. This psychotic fusion exists not only at the individual level, but also at the societal level.

The manufacture of psychosis has long been a concern of our leaders. The sensory deprivation techniques applied at Guantanamo Bay allowed for the manufacture of psychotic individuals in two days. These techniques were a direct application of research by behavioral psychologists, including Donald O. Hebb of McGill University in Quebec.

Unmasking the death drive

The principle of identity is essentially lodged in the face, the wearing of a mask is presented as an original fact, carrying an obsessive-compulsive disorder preventing any registration of the other.

If the face makes the social link possible, the corona mask is an unveiling that steals the features of its wearer. It “lifts the lock of the ego and gives free rein to the gush of the impulse“.

The wearing of the corona mask, as a support of the pulsional equipment, is in the heart of the “sanitary” device. It has for function the decomposition of the symbolic body, the annihilation of what makes us human beings.

The wearing of the mask prevents any rupture with the discourse of power and allows the eternal return of the trauma. It is a fetish replacing any symbolization.

But to symbolize is already to establish a distance with the super-moic injunction and to exist as a “we“, it is to refuse to be “taken one by one” in this war against the human race and thus to counter an “attack of the collective through the individuals” by Jean-Claude Paye, Tülay Umay whose article should be read in extenso.

In conclusion, the use of the mask, beyond the multiple physical, societal, educational, etc. disadvantages that we have quickly perceived as mistreatment of both children and adults, is much more than that.

It is the tool of the conscious perversity of the leaders who persecute us, want to dehumanize us and do it in full conscience.

The order authorizing its continuation in hospitals, published on the same day as the removal of the emergency covid law [France] on July 26, 2022 is a tragic demonstration of this.

They knew, they know and they should quickly understand that we also know, and that their regrets, even remorse, such as those of JF Delfraissy and A Fischer, will not be enough to absolve them of their grave decisions which have ruined too many lives and will continue to ruin more, as the deleterious effects of all their liberticidal decisions will be spread out over decades, as much by their psychological consequences as by the long term complications of gene injections

Dr. Nicole Delépine

This article was originally published by  nouveau-monde.ca and mondialisation.ca

Notes :

[1] L’APHP ose imposer le masque après le 1er août : est-ce légal ? — Nouveau Monde (nouveau-monde.ca)

[2] Les masques sont inutiles et dangereux : l’expérience désastreuse de la Nouvelle-Zélande — Nouveau Monde (nouveau-monde.ca)

[3] Coronavirus. Ceci n’est pas un masque ! | Mondialisation — Centre de Recherche sur la Mondialisation Par Jean-Claude Paye et Tülay Umay, 13 avril 202

[4] « La pulsion de mort est la structure même de la pandémie. Générique et universelle, elle se « fonde sur une détresse physiologique et sur la rage impuissante » de l’infans, de celui qui ne peut parler. Elle empêche tout libre arbitre et induit une acceptation généralisée du port du masque. Cette pulsion devient la revendication d’un idéal qui est d’échapper à la condition humaine et ainsi l’acceptation d’un passage vers le transhumanisme. » CQFD

[5] Les masques sont inutiles et dangereux ! Stop aux mensonges médiatiques ! | Mondialisation — Centre de Recherche sur la Mondialisation mise à jour de la bibliographie internationale fin juin 2022

[6] Le monde à travers un masque : l’impact psychologique — Nos Pensées (nospensees.fr)

[7] Masque et acte manqué — Psychologue.net

[8] France – L’AFNOR prouve que le masque « grand public » recommandé par le gouvernement est une véritable escroquerie. | Mondialisation — Centre de Recherche sur la Mondialisation

[9] Fögen Z. The Foegen effect: A mechanism by which facemasks contribute to the COVID-19 case fatality rate. Medicine (Baltimore). 2022 Feb 18
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35363218/
L’obligation de porter un masque a causé plus de décès COVID, conclut une étude (anguillesousroche.com)

[10] Face Masks, Lies, Damn Lies, and Public Health Officinals: “A Growing Body of Evidence” | PDF | Randomized Controlled Trial | Infection (scribd.com) Masques faciaux, mensonges, foutus mensonges et responsables de la santé publique : « Un nombre croissant de preuves »
Un nouveau mantra vil est sur les lèvres de tous les responsables de la santé publique et de tous les politiciens de la campagne mondiale pour imposer un masquage universel au grand public :
« il y a un nombre croissant de preuves ».
Cette phrase propagandiste est un vecteur conçu pour atteindre cinq objectifs principaux :
• Donner la fausse impression qu’un bilan des preuves prouve désormais que les masques réduisent la transmission du COVID-19 ;
• Assimiler à tort les commentaires faits dans des lieux scientifiques avec des « preuves » ;
• Masquer le fait qu’une décennie de preuves de niveau politique prouve le contraire : que les masques sont inefficaces contre les maladies respiratoires virales ;
• Masquer le fait qu’il existe désormais une preuve d’observation directe que les masques en tissu n’empêchent pas l’exhalation de nuages ​​de particules d’aérosol en suspension (dessus, dessous et à travers les masques) ;
• Détourner l’attention des méfaits et risques connus considérables dus aux masques faciaux, appliqués à des populations entières.

[11] https://www.bbc.com/news/health-59895934

[12] Henning Bundgaard Effectiveness of Adding a Mask Recommendation to Other Public Health Measures to Prevent SARS-CoV-2 Infection in Danish Mask WearersFREE A Randomized Controlled Trial Annals of Internal Medicine
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/full/10.7326/M20-6817?s=09&journalCode=aim
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32829745/

[13] Attention l’OMS veut manipuler à nouveau le monde via le moneypox (monkeypox) | Mondialisation — Centre de Recherche sur la Mondialisation

[14] revue de la littérature scientifique par Denis Rancourt concernant l’(in)efficacité mesurée des masques pour réduire le risque de transmission des maladies respiratoires virales, article publié le 11 avril 2020 chez ResearchGate, intitulé « Les masques ne fonctionnent pas : un examen de la science pertinente à la politique sociale de COVID-19 ». lu quelque 400 000 fois sur ResearchGate, publié dans plusieurs lieux et objet de nombreux articles de commentaires et d’interviews. Ils ne peuvent pas dire qu’ils ne savaient pas.

[15] Cavadini, T., Fort, M., Pascalis, O., & Gentaz, É. (2022). Quels sont les effets du port du masque sur la reconnaissance des visages et des émotions chez les enfants et les adultes ? Apports des recherches. A.N.A.E., 176, 113-125.

[16] Discussions autour des effets du port du masque — Psychologie du Développement Sensori-Moteur, Affectif et Social — UNIGE

[17] Impact of lip-reading on speech perception in French-speaking children at risk for reading failure assessed from age 5 to 7 | Cairn.info

[18] • Weiyong Liu .et al: Detection of Covid-19 in Children in Early January 2020 in Wuhan, China N Engl J Med. 2020 2 avril ; 382 (14) : 1370-1371
• Liu Y, Yan L-M, Wan L, et al. Viral dynamics in mild and severe cases of COVID-19. Lancet Infect Dis. 2020. https://doi.org/10.1016/ S1473 -3099(20)30232 -2
• Hong H, Wang Y, Chung H-T, Chen C-J, Clinical characteristics of novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in newborns, infants and children, Pediatrics and Neonatology, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pedneo.2020.03.001.
• Wu Z, McGoogan JM. Characteristics of and important lessons from the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak in China: summary of a report of 72 314 cases from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. • JAMA 2020; published online Feb 24. DOI:10.1001/jama.2020.2648
• Jonas F Ludvigsson macroanalysis of Covid 19 in children. Acta Paediatr. 2020 23 mars.
• Peter Brodin Why is COVID-19 so mild in children? Editorial Acta Paediatrica 24 March 2020
• Ji Young Park First Pediatric Case of Coronavirus Disease 2019 in Korea J Korean Med Sci. 2020 Mar 23;35(11)
• LiangSua the different clinical characteristics of corona virus disease cases between children and their families in China – the character of children with COVID-19 Emerging Microbes & Infections 2020, VOL. 9
• Qinxue Shen Novel Coronavirus Infection in Children Outside of Wuhan, China Pediatr Pulmonol. 2020 Apr 7. doi: 10.1002/ppul.24762. Online ahead of print
• Ya-Nan Han et al A Comparative-Descriptive Analysis of Clinical Characteristics in 2019-Coronavirus-infected Children and Adults Pediatrics April 2020
• Haiyan Qiu Clinical and epidemiological features of 36 children with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Zhejiang, China: an observational cohort study Lancet Infect Dis. 2020 25 mars; S1473-3099 (20) 30198-5.
• Zhonghua Er Ke Za Zhi pour la Société de pédiatrie et Association médicale chinoise : Recommandations pour le diagnostic, la prévention et le contrôle de la nouvelle infection à coronavirus 2019 chez les enfants (première édition intermédiaire). 2020 ; 58 : 169–74.]., Chinese Journal of Pediatrics
• Wen Yan Jiao et al Behavioral and Emotional Disorders in Children during the COVID-19 Epidemic THE JOURNAL OF PEDIATRICS 2020 www.jpeds.com

[19] in « Un taxi pour l’enfer », fim documentaire américain réalisé par Alex Gibney

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The nation’s first class action settlement involving a COVID shot mandate should be a wake-up call to every employer that did not accommodate or exempt employees who opposed the COVID shots for religious reasons. NorthShore University HealthSystem will pay more than $10.3 million for unlawfully discriminating against more than 500 current and former health care workers and for denying religious exemptions from the COVID shot mandate.

There is no pause button on the federal employment law under Title VII. Employees do not lose their right to reasonable accommodation for their religious beliefs simply because an employer or even the federal government pushes a vaccine mandate under the guise of a pandemic. It is past time for employment law attorneys to stop sitting on the sidelines. They need to help people obtain justice.

Liberty Counsel has been working with thousands of employees who face these abusive and unlawful mandates.

Liberty Counsel settled the nation’s first classwide lawsuit for health care workers over a COVID shot mandate and NorthShore will pay $10,337,500 to compensate these employees who were victims of religious discrimination, and who were punished for their religious beliefs against taking an injection associated with aborted fetal cells.

As part of the settlement agreement, NorthShore will also change its unlawful “no religious accommodations” policy to make it consistent with the law, and to provide religious accommodations in every position across its numerous facilities. No position in any NorthShore facility will be considered off limits to unvaccinated employees with approved religious exemptions. In addition, employees who were terminated because of their religious refusal of the COVID shots will be eligible for rehire if they apply within 90 days of final settlement approval by the court, and they will retain their previous seniority level.

This is a historic, first-of-its-kind class action settlement against a private employer who unlawfully denied hundreds of religious exemption requests to COVID-19 shots. The agreed upon settlement was filed in the federal Northern District Court of Illinois and must be approved by the court. Employees of NorthShore who were denied religious exemptions will receive notice of the settlement, and will have an opportunity to comment, object, request to opt out, or submit a claim form for payment out of the settlement fund, all in accordance with deadlines that will be set by the court.

The amount of individual payments from the settlement fund will depend on how many valid and timely claim forms are submitted during the claims process. If the settlement is approved by the court and all or nearly all of the affected employees file valid and timely claims, it is estimated that employees who were terminated or resigned because of their religious refusal of a COVID shot will receive approximately $25,000 each, and employees who were forced to accept a COVID shot against their religious beliefs to keep their jobs will receive approximately $3,000 each.

The 13 health care workers who are lead plaintiffs in the lawsuit will receive an additional approximate payment of $20,000 each for their important role in bringing this lawsuit and representing the class of NorthShore health care workers.

Liberty Counsel will receive 20 percent of the settlement sum, which equals $2,061,500, as payment for the significant attorney’s fees and costs it has required to undertake a lawsuit against NorthShore and hold it accountable for its actions. This amount is far less than the typical 33 percent usually requested by attorneys in class action litigation.

In October 2021, Liberty Counsel sent a demand letter to NorthShore on behalf of numerous health care workers who had sincere religious objections to NorthShore’s “Mandatory COVID-19 Vaccination Policy.” If NorthShore had agreed then to follow the law and grant religious exemptions, the matter would have been quickly resolved and it would have cost it nothing. But, when NorthShore refused to follow the law, and instead denied all religious exemption and accommodation requests for employees working in its facilities, Liberty Counsel filed a class action lawsuit, along with a motion for a temporary restraining order and injunction.

Liberty Counsel Vice President of Legal Affairs and Chief Litigation Counsel Horatio G. Mihet said, “The policy change and substantial monetary relief required by the settlement will bring a strong measure of justice to NorthShore’s employees who were callously forced to choose between their conscience and their jobs.”

Mat Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel said: “Let this case be a warning to employers that violated Title VII. It is especially significant and gratifying that this first classwide COVID settlement protects health care workers. Health care workers are heroes who daily give their lives to protect and treat their patients. They are needed now more than ever.”

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***

It has been several weeks since the police execution of Jayland Walker, 25, in Akron, Ohio on June 27.

After public outrage over the death of Walker, who was shot 46 times by a group of eight law-enforcement officers, Mayor Daniel Horrigan declared a state of emergency while numerous people have been arrested and charged with serious crimes for merely exercising their democratic rights.

Tensions remain extremely high in Akron due to the continuing anger and disgust of the shooting death of Walker. During the July 4 holiday weekend, people poured into the streets prompting police reactions which led to arrests and minor incidents of property destruction.

Nonetheless, over the last month there are lingering fears of further social unrest and violence in Akron. A National Night Out event which was scheduled in several districts of the city for August 4 had been cancelled in at least four areas.

The event scheduled to be held in Akron’s Goodyear Heights, Highland Square, Middlebury and Kenmore neighborhoods will not take place. Event planners and officials are claiming that safety concerns and potential demonstrations could occur resulting in the disruption of the celebrations.

Every municipal ward sponsors the annual gathering which is initiated by community leaders or a council member. Ostensibly the campaign is designed to facilitate police and community relations with an underlying theme of crime reduction.

In Ward 10, Councilwoman Sharon Conner made the decision to cancel the event. She indicated that everyone had a right to protest although she was concerned that many people living in the district were gun owners. Conner was concerned about a possible adverse reaction by some residents to demonstrations demanding justice for Jayland Walker.

Earlier on July 29, a car caravan designed to build support for the termination of employment and prosecution of the police involved in the brutal shooting, moved its way through several neighborhoods in Akron slowing down and blocking traffic in some instances. This action represented a form of civil disobedience which could not be ignored by the city administration and the general public.

There were dozens of vehicles which participated in the demonstration on July 29. Obviously, the protest was becoming quite effective prompting the police to use forceful tactics to put the action to an end.

An article published by the Akron Beacon Journal described the situation as follows:

“The caravan formed at about 7:30 p.m. near Inman Street and Archwood Avenue, according to police, who said the protesters blocked intersections as they moved through the city. The group traveled to a neighborhood in Kenmore, then to Lock 3 and around Main Street, according to police Lt. Michael Miller. ‘Members of the group reportedly began chanting and intentionally disturbing citizens who were downtown to enjoy the entertainment at various venues,’ Miller said in a news release.”

Therefore, according to this police version of events reported by the local media, the disruption of the entertainment areas could not be tolerated by the local authorities. Rather than risk a repeat of the police attack and arrests on July 29, the August 4 National Night Out events would pose a risk to the normal operations of the city.

This same report from the Beacon Journal continued by noting that:

“Protesters later demonstrated near the Akron Police Department on South High Street, moving south to the Polsky Building. A vehicle trying to leave the Polsky parking deck collided with a protester’s vehicle at the site, police said. Protesters said on social media that the driver of the exiting vehicle intentionally slammed into them; police say the person was attempting to get out of the parking deck.”

The names of the three people arrested had not been released by the police according to press reports. Despite these demonstrations, Mayor Horrigan and Police Chief Stephen Mylett have failed to make any public statements specifically related to the case. Eight of the officers involved in the firing of more than 90 shots have been placed on administrative paid leave pending the completion of an investigation.

City Administration and Police Have Refused to Issue an Apology to the Family of Walker

On July 15, a preliminary autopsy of Walker was released to the public by Summit County Medical Examiner Dr. Lisa Kohler. The report indicated that Walker had sustained numerous serious wounds which could have resulted in his death.

Kohler said that she could not determine the number of shots fired by the eight officers who discharged their weapons. She said that 46 bullets either struck or grazed Walker during the incident.

Walker was unarmed at the time of the police shooting. Officers claim that Walker had fired at them during a chase which lasted for several minutes. Walker exited the vehicle attempting to flee from the police when he was gunned down. Police then claimed that a handgun was found in the vehicle which Walker was driving.

Walker’s family has expressed extreme skepticism over this version of the killing articulated by the police. The family and its lawyer point to the fact that Walker was fleeing unarmed and consequently posed no threat to the police.

Moreover, the administration and the police have refused to publicly apologize to the Walker family for the circumstances surrounding the death of their loved one. Such a posture has created an atmosphere in Akron which has eroded even further the general attitude among African Americans towards the mayor and the police chief.

The lawyer representing the family of Walker, Atty. Bobby DiCello of the Dicello, Levitt, Gutzler firm, emphasized in the aftermath of the statement by the medical examiner that the city administration is doing more to protect the police rather than the family of the deceased. DiCello said:

“If [city leaders] were focused on protecting Jayland, they wouldn’t have to protect anyone right now. Because nothing was found in his system, it underscored the senselessness [of his killing]. He panicked and paid for it with his life. They could have released the autopsy and an apology, but they didn’t. The reason why is because they are afraid of the courtroom process. The subject needs to be: Where is the public apology? Enough of the quiet nice words. We are not interested in secret concern. We are interested in a public apology for taking a life that was not necessary. … At the end of the day, there shouldn’t have been a single bullet fired.”

United Nations to Investigate the Police Killing of Jayland Walker

A recently created United Nations Human Rights Council division has expressed an interest in investigating the police killing of Jayland Walker. This was revealed when the International Independent Expert Mechanism to Advance Racial Justice and Equality in Law Enforcement contacted the law firm representing the family of Walker.

This UN project was officially established during 2021. It represents an outcome of the mass demonstrations which swept the United States and the international community during mid-2020 in the aftermath of the brutal police and vigilante killings of Ahmaud Arbery in Brunswick, Georgia, Breonna Taylor in Louisville, George Floyd in Minneapolis.

The UN Human Rights Council convened a full session during the summer of 2020 on the racial profiling and murders of African Americans by law-enforcement in the U.S. The hearing took place at the UN offices in Geneva, Switzerland. One of the brothers of George Floyd, Philonise, addressed the hearing on June 17 asking for the assistance of the international community in bringing justice to African Americans subjected to racial discrimination.

Several African Union (AU) member-states, including Botswana, motivated the convening of the UN Human Rights Council hearing two years ago. The hearing was based upon a resolution passed at the aegis of Malcolm X (El Hajj Malik Shabazz) during the Organization of African Unity (OAU) Summit held in July 1964 in Cairo, Egypt. The OAU, founded in 1963 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, was transformed into the AU in 2002. At the time, Malcolm X was the leader of the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU), which was patterned to a significant degree on the OAU formed one year before.

On the UN Human Rights Council website there is language which describes the mandate for the International Independent Expert Mechanism to Advance Racial Justice and Equality in Law Enforcement. The document reads:

“The Expert Mechanism’s mandate is detailed in resolution 47/21. It is established ‘in order to further transformative change for racial justice and equality in the context of law enforcement globally, especially where relating to the legacies of colonialism and the Transatlantic slave trade in enslaved Africans, to investigate Governments’ responses to peaceful anti-racism protests and all violations of international human rights law and to contribute to accountability and redress for victims.”

This development represents the continuation of the legacy of Pan-Africanism and Internationalism within the African American struggle in the U.S. As Malcolm X emphasized during the last year of his life (1964-65), the plight of Black people in the U.S. must be brought before the UN and other global bodies in order to expose the human rights violations and crimes against humanity suffered by now more than 40 million people of African descent.

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

Featured image is from Abayomi Azikiwe

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***

Because of the science-based concerns explained in a series of three Open Letters to Parents and Pediatricians (see links below), we urgently ask pediatricians around the world to call for an immediate halt to the global campaign to vaccinate children against COVID.

The three Open Letters are intended to help parents, grandparents, and physicians to better understand and appreciate the following:

• The human immune system is ingeniously complex, beautifully collaborative, extraordinarily competent, and precious.
• The interplay between the immune system and viruses involves complex and delicate adjustments (ongoing counter-moves) on the part of both the virus and the immune system—at both the individual level and the population level.
• Compared to the complex, comprehensive, multidimensional, collaborative approach used by the natural immune system (to protect us from infection), the COVID vaccines use a simplistic, unidimensional, exclusionary approach that sidelines and disrupts important components and functions of the immune system.
• The mass COVID vaccination campaign profoundly disturbs the immune ecosystem, with extremely worrisome short-term and long-term consequences—at both the individual level and the population level.
• In fact, the COVID mass vaccination campaign is responsible for abnormally generating a prolonged series of dominating new variants that become increasingly infectious, increasingly vaccine-resistant (due to “immune escape”), and inevitably more virulent. This mass vaccination campaign has failed to appreciate the complexity and delicacy of the immune ecosystem and, thereby, has prolonged the COVID pandemic and made it much more dangerous.
• Children, in particular, must be protected from the harmful effects (at both the population level and the individual level) of the COVID mass vaccination campaign.
• When given to infants and toddlers, the COVID vaccines interfere with the foundational education of a child’s innate immune system. Our concern is that this interference will irreversibly render those children less able to handle not only SARS-CoV-2 but many other glycosylated viruses, and also predispose those children to autoimmune disease and malignancies.
• There is desperate need for a representative panel of international experts—comprised of exemplary virologists, immunologists, vaccinologists, evolutionary biologists, epidemiologists, and other relevant experts—to engage in respectful, healthy, inclusive, honest, objective, rigorously scientific, video-archived, public dialogue about the COVID mass vaccination campaign, particularly the mass vaccination of children.  So far, such dialogue has not occurred.
• Since the WHO, CDC, FDA, NIH, AAP (American Academy of Pediatrics), pharmaceutical companies, conventional media, and most physicians have chosen not to engage in the above-mentioned dialogue and have failed to stop the misguided COVID mass vaccination of children—the activism of concerned, respectful, informed parents, grandparents, and pediatricians represents our best hope to bring about an immediate halt to the COVID vaccination of children, until proper scientific dialogue and thorough re-evaluation of the COVID vaccination campaign occur.

We would much prefer that the issues raised in the three Open Letters be addressed via healthy scientific dialogue, by an above-mentioned panel of exemplary experts. Unfortunately, proponents of the mass vaccination campaign have shown no interest or willingness to engage in such dialogue, despite repeated pleas by scientists and physicians who have challenged the scientific merits of the prevailing COVID narrative and its mass vaccination campaign.

In the absence of such dialogue, we call for an immediate halt to the mass COVID vaccination of children, until proper scientific dialogue and thorough re-evaluation of the COVID vaccination campaign has occurred.  We urgently and strongly encourage pediatricians around the world to join us in that call for an immediate halt.  It is our hope that the three Open Letters will stimulate, facilitate, and focus dialogue on the most profoundly important aspects of the COVID situation.  We encourage proponents of the mass COVID vaccination campaign to review the information presented in the three Open Letters and respectfully challenge aspects with which they disagree. We welcome such challenge, for that is the purpose and the tradition of healthy scientific dialogue.

Please share this letter as widely as possible—with parents, friends, colleagues, and organizations.

An Open Letter to Parents and Pediatricians Regarding COVID Vaccination. This is the original Open Letter.  It provides 1078 references, click here.

Open Letter, Part II: A Review and Update, click here.

Open Letter to Parents Regarding COVID Vaccination—Part III: Questions to Ask Your Physician—One Pediatrician’s Responses, click here.

Other relevant links and video interviews:

• Intra-pandemic vaccination of toddlers with non-replicating antibody-based vaccines targeted at ASLVI[1]- or ASLVD[2]-enabling glycosylated viruses prevents education of innate immune effector cells (NK cells). (Dr. Vanden Bossche and Dr. Rennebohm), click here.
• Video-interview regarding the initial Open Letter to Parents and Pediatricians (Dr. Rennebohm and Dr. Philip McMillan), click here.
• The Immunologic Rationale Against C-19 Vaccination of Children (Dr. Vanden Bossche), click here.
• Predictions on the Evolution of the COVID 19 Pandemic (Dr. Vanden Bossche), click here.
• An Explanation of why the COVID mass vaccination campaign has prolonged the COVID pandemic, made it more dangerous, and is now paving the way for appearance of new pandemics—involving monkeypox, avian flu, RSV, and polio. (Dr. Vanden Bossche), click here. 
• Immuno-epidemiologic ramifications of the C-19 mass vaccination experiment: Individual and global health consequences. (Dr. Vanden Bossche), click here.
• A Call for an Independent International COVID Commission (Dr. Rennebohm), click here.

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Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche’s Website: www.voiceforscienceandsolidarity.org

Dr. Rennebohm’s Website: www.notesfromthesocialclinic.org

Featured image: The drawing at the beginning of this document is by Kathe Kollwitz (1867-1945), a compassionate German artist who was deeply concerned about children, mothers, human suffering, poverty, injustice, and war. If she were with us today, Kathe would undoubtedly be deeply concerned about the mass COVID vaccination of children.

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***

The Russian Defence Ministry announced yesterday that at around 9.20 a.m. Moscow time, Razoni, ship flying the flag of Sierra Leone, left Odessa port in Ukraine as part of the recent grain deal. Razoni is carrying a cargo of maize to Istanbul port. 

The MOD said the “control of the humanitarian operation for the departure of the first ship carrying agricultural products was planned with the active participation of Russian officers who are part of the Joint Coordination Centre in Istanbul.” 

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said yesterday, “this is a good and important first step” that the first ship with 26-, 27,000 tons of grain sailed out of Odessa.

Searching for the needle in a haystack is exciting, as there could be sudden surprises. There are growing signs that the diplomatic front on Ukraine conflict is livening up. 

On Monday, the US President Joe Biden offered talks with Russia. In his statement ahead of the tenth Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference, Biden reiterated the US’ “shared belief” with Russia that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought” and that “my administration has prioritised reducing the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy.”  

Biden continued: 

“I’ve worked on arms control from the earliest days of my career, and the health of the NPT has always rested on meaningful, reciprocal arms limits between the United States and Russian Federation. Even at the height of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union were able to work together to uphold our shared responsibility to ensure strategic stability. Today, my Administration is ready to expeditiously negotiate a new arms control framework to replace New START when it expires in 2026. But negotiation requires a willing partner operating in good faith. And Russia’s brutal and unprovoked aggression in Ukraine has shattered peace in Europe and constitutes an attack on fundamental tenets of international order. In this context, Russia should demonstrate that it is ready to resume work on nuclear arms control with the United States.” 

Simultaneously, Blinken also alluded to Russia’s key role for “making sure that countries with nuclear weapons, including the United States, pursue disarmament; making sure that countries that don’t have nuclear weapons do not acquire them by upholding and strengthening nonproliferation; and making sure that countries can engage in the peaceful use of nuclear energy, something that is even more vital as we deal with the challenges posed by climate change.” 

Blinken has had a makeover lately pushing back an avalanche of hawkish opinion represented by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, US Senate, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky and the Ukrainian Parliament who demand that Russia be formally designated a state sponsor of terrorism, a label reserved for North Korea, Syria, Cuba and Iran. 

Indeed, Blinken’s phone call to Russian FM Sergey Lavrov on prisoner exchange was a US-Russia re-engagement since February and therefore a subtle messaging in itself. (Biden’s offer of talks has come within the week.) 

These fresh tidings need to be seen alongside the trend of the “collective West” lately working to ease the anti-Russian sanctions. The following developments suggest a pattern: 

• Canada announced on July 9 — on Germany’s request and  Washington’s backing — while also ignoring Ukraine’s objections, a waiver of sanctions that allowed the return of equipment for Nord Stream 1 pipeline so as to support Europe’s access to “reliable and affordable energy”; 
• European Union issued a guideline on July 13 (in relation to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad) “that the transit of sanctioned goods by road with Russian operators is not allowed under the EU measures. No such similar prohibition exists for rail transport” (via Lithuania.)
• On August 1, the UK eased some restrictions to allow companies to provide insurance and reinsurance to Russian entities, which have implications for shipping and aviation industries. 
• The EU also allowed “exemption (for Russia) from the prohibition to engage in transactions with certain state-owned entities as regards transactions for agricultural products and the transport of oil to third countries.” 
• Bloomberg had reported on June 13 that “US government is quietly encouraging” agricultural and shipping companies to buy and carry more Russia’s fertilizer, whose exports are down 24% this year as “many shippers, banks and insurers have been staying away from the trade out of fear they could inadvertently fall afoul of the rules… and (Washington) is in the seemingly paradoxical position of looking for ways to boost them (Russian exports.)”

However, on the war front, Russia’s special military operations to grind the Ukrainian forces are continuing, albeit without significant changes on the battlefield. The current frontline in Donbass appears to be along the Bakhmut –Soledar-Seversk line where Ukrainian forces try to slow  down the Russian offensive on the cities of Slavyansk and Kramatorsk from the eastern direction.

Positional battles are also going on along the entire frontline in Eastern and Southern Ukraine. The western media, prompted by the Kiev regime, is hyping up an imminent Ukrainian “counteroffensive” in the southern region of Kherson, but that is a stretch. In fact, in the weekend, Ukraine’s 128th Mountain Assault Brigade in Zaporozhye direction reportedly suffered such heavy losses that demoralised troops began abandoning combat positions and desertion from the frontline. 

Although Razoni sailed out yesterday, Russian strikes also destroyed one launcher of  US-made anti-ship Harpoon missile system in Odessa Region while high-precision strike also destroyed two advanced US rocket launchers of HIMARS in Kharkov.

Against such a convoluted backdrop, an opinion is building up in the US that the Kiev regime is stringing the West, and needs to be firmly told that all good things must come to an end.

Reflecting this nascent thinking, the National Interest featured a piece last week by two influential American think tankers close to the Democratic Party circles who had served in the White House and  State Department under the Obama administration. Read it here. 

Conceivably, there is a convergence here with Russia’s grouse that but for Kiev’s intransigence, peace talks are possible. Putin has invited Turkish president Recep Erdogan to meet up at Sochi on Friday. (here , here.) Erdogan had said he hoped the recent grain deal would be a turning point for the resumption of political talks between Ukraine and Russia to end the armed conflict. (here)

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***

The collapse on Sunday afternoon of four of the sixteen northern towers of Beirut port’s ruined grain silos has revived Lebanese fears and trauma over the explosion two years ago today that devastated the area and deepened frustration over the failure of successive governments to deal with either the causes of the blast or its aftermath.

On August 4, 2020, 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate stored unsafely in a port warehouse detonated, causing a massive blast which killed 219 people, wounded 6,000 and damaged or destroyed the homes of 300,000 in three adjacent neighbourhoods.

The fall of the silos, the cloud of toxic dust this raised, and the threat posed by the rest of the gutted towers has provided the government with arguments to override popular objections to the demolition of the 50-year old, 48-meter-tall towers.

The collapse of the silos was caused by a fire which was ignited by hot weather in tonnes of fermenting grain which should not have remained after the explosion because of the risks it posed. The grain smouldered for two weeks at the base of the towers, caused them to lean, and filled the air with noxious fumes. Nearby householders were told to remain in-doors with windows and doors closed. The Lebanese Red Cross distributed KN95 face masks used against COVID to families in the area.

Firemen dispatched to deal with the situation found that water made the fire worse and foam did not smother it. Helicopters were barred from taking action as the rotors’ downdraft could bring down the silos which could fall at any time. Four did.

When the government headed by Najib Mikati decided in April that the silos had to be bulldozed and the area cleared, blast survivors, families of fatalities and Lebanese still shocked by the event rejected this plan. They argued that the silos should be shored up and preserved as a memorial to victims and as evidence to convict politicians of homicidal neglect of the volatile material stored in a warehouse with other combustible material.

Residents of West Beirut, in particular, argued that the silos should stand because their presence protected their sector of the city by absorbing most of the blast wave which remained powerful enough to shatter windows in buildings at the southern edge this part of the capital.

A Lebanese friend visiting Cyprus said he wanted the blackened and blasted silos to be saved as an historical site to be visited by coming generations of Lebanese and, after decades, studied by scholars. It is unlikely, however, that the silos will survive unless serious efforts are made to preserve them at a time Lebanon has no money to do this.

The silos have become an icon and a tourist destination.Visitors to Beirut are routinely taken to the fenced-off port to see the blackened husks of the grain towers which had survived the blast, the largest non-nuclear explosion since World War II.

The freighter carrying the highly volatile material entered Beirut port in November 2013 with the aim of loading heavy machinery bound for Aqaba before continuing to Mozambique to deliver the main cargo.  However, when the machinery was lifted onto the ship and placed on the hold coverit buckled, alerting port officials to the poor condition of the vessel, which was declared unseaworthy and detained. The Russian captain and three crew members were held on the ship as caretakers for a year until a court ruled they should go home. Before leaving, the captain warned that the ammonium nitrate was deteriorating and was a serious danger to the port. Bankruptcy prompted the operator to abandon the ship after it was seized for non-payment of $100,000 in fees.

The cargo was shifted to an ill maintained warehouse where it remained until it exploded. The ship sank in 2018. Ownership of both the ship and its cargo has been disputed since the blast. Nothing was done by the Lebanese authorities for more than six years.

In December 2019, Port officials warned President Michel Aoun and Prime Minister Hassan Diab about the severe danger posed by the material but nothing was done until the beginning of August 2020 when Syrian welders were told by port officials to make repairs on the warehouse doors.  It is suspected that sparks from their tools may have triggered the blast. They were killed along with firefighters who turned up to fight the fires ignited by the explosion.

Teams of Lebanese citizens responded to the blast by rescuing survivors from the ruins of their homes and offices and by clearing away debris.  Hospitals struggled to care for the wounded and reassure their relatives. Lebanese formed groups to help families repair homes and civil society organisations provided food and medicine for the homeless. The state was largely absent.

An Armenian survivor told this correspondent she appealed two young volunteers passing on a motor bike to bring her injured niece down from her flat on the fifth floor of a damaged building.  “Please, Ali, please Ali”, the woman said she cried. Ali and his friend braved the broken and debris littered stairs, saved the young woman and commandeered a car to take herto hospital. The Armenian lady guided us to the blasted building which has been beautifully restored. “All this was done by local groups with foreign money.” Nothing came from the government which was and remains paralysed to this very day by political deadlock and multiple economic and social crises.

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***

Israel is convinced that Moscow’s threat to close down the Jewish Agency in Russia is retaliation for the Zionist state’s positions on the war in Ukraine. In fact, Israel now fears that the crisis with Russia will escalate further, which has prompted officials in the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Justice, and the National Security Council, to hold urgent discussions to assess the situation.

The feeling is that Israel is running out of time to deal with the crisis with Russia, because the Russian Jews in the occupation state maintain close links with their homeland. Israeli diplomats are working to guarantee that the “vital” activities and services provided by the Jewish Agency continue.

By closing the offices of the agency, Russia has dealt a severe blow to Jewish migration from the country to Israel, hence the occupation state’s concern. There is now even more tension between Moscow and Tel Aviv.

Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Israel’s interim Prime Minister and former Foreign Minister Yair Lapid has taken a hard line against the Russians. He was the first to join the West in issuing strong condemnations of President Vladimir Putin and accusing Moscow of “war crimes”. He also led Israel’s decision to support the condemnation of Russia at the UN. He has not spoken to Putin since taking over as prime minister, nor did the Russian leader call to congratulate him on his new role. This suggests that Russia’s closure of the Jewish Agency is purely political, an act of revenge, although it is alleged that the agency has broken Russian law.

Jewish immigrants to Israel from Russia are increasing in number, with 19,168 people making the move since the beginning of the year. In the whole of 2021, only 7,824 Jews made “aliyah”. The figures show that so far this year 48 per cent of all Jews migrating to Israel are from Russia.

Israel’s position on the war in Ukraine is not the only reason for the crisis with Russia. Another reason being talked about in Israel is the occupation state’s ongoing aggression in Syria, especially the recent attack that led to the closure of Damascus International Airport, and the attack on the port of Tartus, where there is a Russian naval base.

A third reason is related to the Russian demand for ownership of Alexander’s Court in the Old City of occupied Jerusalem, which was blocked by an Israeli court. Putin sent a personal message to former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in this regard, but nothing happened, and things got to the point where Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke about the alleged “Jewish roots” of Adolf Hitler.

It is understandable to be astonished at Israel-Russia relations right now. They once enjoyed an era of mutual interests and harmony which led to great success for Jewish capitalists in Moscow, where some occupied influential positions in the Kremlin and others owned major media outlets. It also led to the largest migration of Russian Jews, close to one million people, to Israel between 1990 and 2006. That was the largest such migration since the upheaval of the occupation of Palestine in 1948.

Israel’s selective humanitarian façade: welcoming Ukrainians – Cartoon [Sabaaneh/Middle East Monitor]

Israeli leaders made routine official visits to Moscow. Of all world leaders, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the Kremlin more than any other between 2016 and 2020. Moreover, the strategic regional environment saw Israel boosting its desire to build bridges with Russia, as the Middle East became a very competitive arena.

Decision-making circles in Tel Aviv intensified their communication with their counterparts in Moscow, after realising the weakening of the US position in the region, especially since President Joe Biden took office and the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iraq. It slowly dawned on Israeli officials that Washington was leaving behind a huge vacuum.

None of this prevented Israel from following the West in its position on Ukraine, in line with the international stance and the return of a Cold War atmosphere. Israel has been trying to curry favour with both sides in the war, as it usually does, but it did not succeed this time. Hence, the deteriorating relations with Moscow. The longer the war continues, the higher the price that Israel will have to pay.

Israelis tend to agree that they do not want the current tension with Moscow to become irreversible to the point that Russia would ban Israel’s air force jets from using Syrian airspace; that would be a nightmare scenario for Tel Aviv. At the time of writing, Israel does not have a clear idea of what its reaction would be if things get to that stage, but it would push it into a corner and limit the options on its northern front.

Many Israelis believe that they will need a miracle to get Russia to reverse the decision to close the Jewish Agency. Moscow seems to be heading towards the end of Jewish migration from Russia, and orders from the highest levels have been issued in this regard. This is not a whim, but a serious initiative stemming from the Kremlin’s vision for global leadership.

Hence the Israeli worry that things will not stop at the closing down of the Jewish Agency. Other Jewish institutions that disseminate information about Israel and teach the Hebrew language may also face closure. Putin appears to have decided to escalate the crisis with Israel, and the occupation state’s efforts and achievements over the past thirty years may well be negated as a result.

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***

New Jersey police may have used blood samples taken from babies to investigate crimes, according to public defenders in the state.

According to a lawsuit filed by the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender (OPD), the practice came to light after a case in which New Jersey State Police successfully subpoenaed a testing lab for a blood sample drawn from a child. Police then performed DNA analysis on the blood sample that reportedly linked the child’s father to a crime committed more than 25 years ago.

The suspect then became a client of the OPD, which alerted the office to the techniques used to identify the man. The lawsuit, filed jointly by the OPD and the New Jersey Monitor, now seeks to compel the state of New Jersey to disclose information on the full extent of the practice.

All babies born in the state of New Jersey are required to have a blood sample drawn within 48 hours as part of a mandatory testing program that screens them for 60 different disorders. These samples are processed in a state-run lab, which shares data with the state health authority and communicates results to parents.

The blood samples are not directly shared with law enforcement agencies. But if police are able to reliably obtain the samples through subpoena, then effectively, the disease screening process is entering all babies born in the state into a DNA database with no ability to opt out.

According to the lawsuit, parents and the public at large are unaware that blood samples taken from their children could be used in this way.

“The New Jersey Monitor believe the public would be shocked by what has occurred in OPD’s client’s case and that law enforcement agencies are skirting warrant requirements in this way,” a section of the lawsuit reads. “It also believes that parents in particular would be shocked to learn that their children’s blood samples are being stored by the Department of Health for more than twenty years and are being accessed by law enforcement agencies without their knowledge or consent so that their DNA could be analyzed.”

Per reporting in the New Jersey Monitor, prior to the lawsuit, public records requests filed by the Monitor and the Public Defender’s Office seeking information on subpoenas served to the lab that conducts the disease screenings were denied by the state.

A spokesperson for the New Jersey State Police said the department could not comment on pending litigation.

Across the US, DNA collection laws differ widely from state to state. While states require that a person be charged with a crime before their DNA can be collected or that a determination be made by a judge to take a sample from a suspect, others allow it to happen any time an arrest is made. Laws around the length of time that samples can be held for also vary: some states require that they be expunged if criminal charges are not pressed within a certain length of time, but others — including New York — have been criticized for retaining the DNA of people who were never charged.

Read the case file here.

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***

The European Medicines Agency today recommended adding a warning for two types of heart inflammation to Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine, marketed under the brand names Nuvaxovid and Covovax, based on a small number of cases reported in those who received the vaccine.

According to a statement, the EMA’s Pharmacovigilance Risk Assessment Committee — responsible for assessing and monitoring the safety of human medicines — concluded that “myocarditis and pericarditis can occur following vaccination with Nuvaxovid.”

“The Committee is therefore recommending listing myocarditis and pericarditis as new side effects in the product information for Nuvaxovid, together with a warning to raise awareness among healthcare professionals and people receiving this vaccine,” the statement said.

The Pharmacovigilance Risk Assessment Committee also requested the “marketing authorization holder of Nuvaxovid provides additional data on risk of side effects occurring.”

According to Reuters, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) flagged a risk of heart inflammation from the Novavax vaccine in early June.

However, the agency on July 13 granted Novavax’s request for Emergency Use Authorization of the vaccine for adults 18 and over in the U.S.

Novavax hoped people who opted not to take Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines — both of which are associated with a risk of heart inflammation — would favor its shot because it “relies on technology used for decades,” Reuters reported.

The FDA’s “Fact Sheet for Healthcare Providers Administering Vaccine” now includes a warningthat “clinical trial data provide evidence for increased risks of myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle) and pericarditis (inflammation of tissue surrounding the heart) following administration of Novavax COVID-19 Vaccine, Adjuvanted.”

The FDA’s “Fact Sheet for Recipients and Caregivers” states that for most people who have had myocarditis or pericarditis after receiving the vaccine, symptoms began within 10 days following vaccination and that vaccine recipients should seek medical attention right away if they experience chest pain, shortness of breath, feelings of having a fast-beating, fluttering or pounding heart.

Myocarditis is inflammation of the heart muscle that can lead to cardiac arrhythmia and death. According to the National Organization for Rare Disorders, myocarditis can result from infections, but “more commonly the myocarditis is a result of the body’s immune reaction to the initial heart damage.”

Pericarditis is inflammation of the tissue surrounding the heart that can cause sharp chest pain and other symptoms.

Unlike the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines that use mRNA technology, and the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) vaccine that uses adenovirus vector technology, the Novavax vaccine uses a more traditional vaccine technology.

As The Defender reported in June, that may be one reason the committee recommended the vaccine — in the hope that “unvaccinated holdouts,” suspicious of the newer technologies or allergic to components of the mRNA vaccines, will be more likely to get the Novavax shot.

Despite a unanimous vote by the FDA’s vaccine advisory panel, members raised several concerns about the Novavax vaccine, including heart-related adverse events observed during the clinical trials.

FDA documents show multiple instances of myocarditis and pericarditis reported after the administration of the Novavax vaccine:

“Multiple events of myocarditis/pericarditis were reported in temporal relationship to NVX-CoV2373 [the Novavax vaccine used during the trials] administration, similar to myocarditis following mRNA COVID-19 vaccines and raising concern for a causal relationship to NVX-CoV2373.

“Events of lymphadenopathy were infrequent but reported by a higher proportion of participants in the NVX arm, with the highest rate observed after Dose 2 (0.2%).

“Review of the data also identified small imbalances in certain thromboembolic events, including cardiac and neurovascular events, hypersensitivity events, cholecystitis, uveitis, cardiac failure, and cardiomyopathy.

“Data from passive surveillance during post-authorization use in other countries also indicate a higher-than-expected rate of myocarditis and pericarditis (mainly pericarditis) associated with the vaccine.”

In a safety database encompassing data from 40,000 Novavax vaccine recipients, four young men, ages 16 through 28, reported myocarditis or pericarditis within 20 days of injection, though one of the four had a viral illness that may have caused the symptoms.

One trial participant reported myocarditis after being injected with a placebo.

According to the FDA, there were 26,000 people in the Novavax clinical trial. Yet, only 21,000 of the 26,000 people who received the vaccine during the trial were “followed for at least 2 months.”

It is unknown if any participants developed heart inflammation after the two-month follow-up period, why the other 5,000 clinical trial participants were not followed or whether those individuals experienced heart inflammation.

In briefing documents released June 3, the FDA wrote:

“These events raise the concern for a causal association with this vaccine, similar to the association documented with mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.”

The FDA asked Novavax to “flag” myocarditis and pericarditis as an “important identified risk” in its materials accompanying the vaccine. However, Novavax has not yet agreed to do so.

“Based on our interpretation of all the clinical data supporting NVX-CoV2373 … we believe there is insufficient evidence to establish a causal relationship,” the company said in a statement.

Novavax claimed that “natural background events” of myocarditis can be expected in any large database and the “totality of the clinical evidence” is “not enough to establish an overall causal relationship with the vaccine.”

Novavax on Monday asked the World Health Organization to expand emergency use listing of its vaccine for adolescents ages 12-17. Japan, Australia and the EU previously authorized the vaccine for that age group.

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Megan Redshaw is a staff attorney for Children’s Health Defense and a reporter for The Defender.

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***

A new Kaiser Family Foundation survey has found that very few Americans are getting their children “vaccinated” for the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19), despite aggressive prodding by Joe Biden, the current White House occupier, and Rochelle Walensky of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), among other plandemic shills.

Children under age five are by far the least jabbed demographic in America today, with more parents than not saying that they absolutely will not, under any circumstances, roll up their children’s sleeves for a DNA modification injection – this includes many parents who got jabbed themselves.

The New York Times hilariously claimed that resistance to jabbing children has to do with “lack of access” to the shots, this being a major concern expressed among Black and Hispanic parents.

“About 44 percent of Black parents worried about having to take time off from work,” the Times added.

Amazingly, just seven percent of parents with children under five say they have gotten their children jabbed for the Fauci Flu – this after more than a month of relentless propaganda from the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) via all their lapdog media outlets.

“Forty-three percent say they will never get their kid vaccinated against the virus under any circumstance,” reported the Daily Caller. “Another 13 percent said they would only do so if it were required for an activity such as school.”

Does anyone take the Biden regime seriously anymore?

It is not just Republicans, by the way, who are rejecting the shots for their children. Twenty-two percent of Democrats say they will not jab their under-five children, compared to just 15 percent who say they already have.

Among Democrat parents who are vaccinated themselves, 27 percent say they will not jab their under-five babies compared to 11 percent who already have.

“Parents listed a lack of research, concern about side effects and vaccine safety as the top reasons not to want the vaccine for their toddler,” the Daily Caller noted.

“Another factor is that many parents simply don’t think their kid needs a shot: 53 percent of parents of kids between six months and four years old said that the health risk associated with getting the COVID-19 vaccine is greater than the risk of getting the virus itself for kids.”

For the Biden regime, which is committed to getting multiple jabs in every arm, this is a disaster and a disappointment. Clearly, most of America is no longer listening to what Biden has to say, which just goes to show that the emperor has no clothes.

It turns out that the United States is one of the only countries in the world that “emergency authorized” Chinese Virus injections for children. Most other countries said no way to the jab, which makes the Biden regime a global anomaly on the matter.

“Any parent subjecting their infants or child of any age to the jab is guilty of child abuse,” wrote a commenter.

“The evidence is now clear: the jab doesn’t protect against COVID; ask Joe Biden. It destroys your own immune system. Kids are at virtually zero risk from what’s now a cold. AND, most importantly, you’re exposing your child to the very stark prospect of heart disease and death from the experimental gene therapy.”

Another stressed that there is zero chance any parent is refusing the shot due to “lack of access,” which is just another media crock excuse.

“The true reason is lack of trust,” this person added, thanking Tony “I am science” Fauci.

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***

Never before have so many athletes dropped dead than since early 2021 when Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) “vaccines” were first unleashed under Operation Warp Speed.

According to the data, athlete deaths are up 1,700 percent compared to the monthly averages recorded since 1966. And if things continue on their current trajectory, the 2022 data will show upwards of a 4,120 percent increase in athlete deaths.

In March of this year alone, three times as many athletes died compared to the previous annual average. That increase shows no signs of slowing as the full impact of Fauci Flu shots on public health is only just getting started. (Related: Check out our earlier coverage about some of the athletes who have died following the release of Chinese Virus injections.)

According to research out of Switzerland that was published back in 2006, between 1966 and 2004 – this is 39 years – there were 1,101 “sudden deaths” among otherwise healthy athletes under the age of 35. Comparatively, between January 2021 and April 2022 – this is just 16 months – there were at least 673 sudden deaths among athletes of the same demographic.

“This number could, however, be much higher,” notes Exposé News. “So that’s 428 less than the number to have died between 1966 and 2004. The difference here though is that the 1,101 deaths occurred over 39 years, whereas 673 recent deaths have occurred over 16 months.”

Before Fauci Flu shots, only about 28 athletes per YEAR died for no apparent reason – in 2021 there were at least 394 deaths!

To give you a better understanding of the increase in deaths being seen, consider the fact that from 1966 to 2004, the annual average of sudden athlete deaths was 28. In January 2022 alone, three times that number occurred in just one month. That same tripling of deaths was seen in March 2022 as well.

“The 2021 total equates to 394 deaths, 14x higher than the 1966 to 2004 annual average,” Exposé Newsexplains. “The Jan to April 2022 total, a period of 4 months, equates to 279 deaths, 9.96x higher than the annual average between 1966 and 2004.”

“However, if we divide the 66 to 04 annual average by 3 to make it equivalent to the 4 months’ worth of deaths so far in 2022, we get 9.3 deaths. So in effect, 2022 so far has seen deaths 10x higher than the expected rate.”

These are shocking statistics that prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that covid injections are killing people at an astounding rate. And these are athletic people who one would think have a greater resiliency than the average person consuming SAD (standard American diet) “food” and barely exercising.

Is there something to these shots that targets the healthy more than the unhealthy? Or is the time still coming for the unhealthy to succumb, en masse, to the same fate as these now-deceased athletes?

People all across the health spectrum are getting sick and dying from the shots even as you are reading this, so perhaps there is no discrimination happening. The shots are poison, and eventually that poison catches up to you.

A recent study published in the journal Circulation found that signs of cardiovascular damage, which is probably what took out many of the athletes, increase drastically following one’s second injection with the mRNA (messenger RNA) shot from either Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna.

“The risk of heart attacks or other severe coronary problems more than doubled months after the vaccines were administered, based on changes in markers of inflammation and cell damage,” Exposé News explains, offering further insight into the matter.

“Patients had a 1 in 4 risk for severe problems after the vaccines, compared to 1 in 9 before. Their 5-year heart attack risk went from 11% to 25% thanks to the vaccines (that is a 227% increase).”

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***

The U.S and South Korea are about to play war games again, and this time they’re going for the jugular.

For their first joint military exercises in five years, the Americans and South Koreans will polish up what military people here call the “kill chain” in which they target the North’s missile and nuclear sites plus bases needed to supply, refuel, and rearm them.

Sources familiar with the U.S.-South Korea military alliance say the games will climax in a “decapitation” exercise where they play at invading the heart of the North Korean command structure and taking out the leader, Kim Jong Un. Although it’s only a game, he’s sure to take it personally as he did in September 2017 when he ordered the North’s sixth, and most recent, nuclear test after that year’s war games.

The U.S. will not acknowledge—formally or officially—that decapitation is on the agenda. Unofficially, though, that’s the name of the game, as explained to The Daily Beast by those familiar with the upcoming exercise as well as the exercises of five years ago.

Analysts warned the mere mention of decapitation infuriates Kim, already intimidated by the concept of the “kill chain.” Fearful of assassination, wary of discontent among his own poverty-stricken people, he’s reportedly tightened security.

One of Kim’s greatest fears is being caught out in the open in a drone attack similar to those that killed al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri at his home in Kabul on Sunday and Iran’s most feared military commander, Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani. Aware that he could well be the primary target in any “preemptive strike,” Kim makes himself extremely hard to find, only moving about at night, in different vehicles, accompanied by dozens of bodyguards.

“Decapitation is a mission to capture or kill a high-value target, e.g., manhunting,” David Maxwell, a retired U.S. Army Special Forces colonel who joined in the annual games during his five tours in South Korea, told The Daily Beast. “If you get the head of the military forces (which is Kim Jong Un), theoretically you gut the head of the snake.”

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and South Korea’s defense minister, Lee Jong-sup, agreed last weekend on holding the exercises for the first time since Donald Trump canceled them right after his summit with Kim in Singapore in June 2018 during which he professed they “fell in love.” The exercises, to begin this month, are called Ulchi Freedom Shield, named for a seventh-century general who defeated Chinese invaders.

The decision of the Americans and South Koreans to tighten their bond by joining forces on land, air, and sea fulfills the promises of South Korea’s conservative President Yoon Suk-yeol to improve strained relations. His predecessor, the left-leaning Moon Jae-in, reluctantly tolerated exercises only on computers rather than real live war games, which are seen as essential for the alliance, because he wanted to pursue reconciliation with the North. Now U.S. and Korean forces will go beyond their theoretical command post exercises, known as CPX, to field training exercises (FTX), in a show which Ankit Panda of the Carnegie Endowment said “could involve significant mobilization.” About 50,000 South Korean and nearly 20,000 U.S. troops joined in the last such games five years go.

The “kill chain,” said Panda, is the first axis of South Korea’s “three-axis defense plan” focusing “on the intelligence and strike capabilities necessary to detect and preempt North Korean missile launches.” Second is “Korea Massive Punishment and Retaliation,” KMPR, climaxing in the decapitation in which special forces snuff the target—one Kim Jong Un—in an intricately choreographed shock strike. Third is air and missile defense.

“The ‘kill chain’ concept emerged about 10 or so years ago,” said Steve Tharpe, who’s made a career here first as an army officer, then as a civilian official with the U.S. command. “It involves detection and preemptive strike if an impending North Korean major attack is certain. Leadership decapitation would be part of the KMPR.”

U.S and South Korean troops will play the war games at a time of mounting tensions between the two Koreas. Kim has promised to “annihilate” South Korea in what he called “a grave warning to the conservative South Korean government and warmongers” in response to reports the South was seriously considering a “preemptive strike” against the North’s nuclear and missile facilities.

For the first time Kim mentioned Yoon by name, warning his government could be “wiped out” by the North’s “nuclear deterrent.” The U.S., by “holding large-scale joint exercises,” he said, is pushing relations “to a point that is irreversible.”

Analysts are convinced North Korea is ready for its seventh nuclear test—its first since 2017—as the Americans and South Koreans target Kim and his closest aides in another decapitation game.

“Decapitation resembles attacks on the North Korean nuclear forces in that you have to locate the target, refine that location and identify the possible munitions that could be used against it,” said Bruce Bennett, long-time Korea analyst at the RAND Corporation. “The first task could be done by a drone or reconnaissance aircraft,” he said, but Seoul also has decided “to create a brigade of special forces to help perform this function.”

This brigade, he said,

“would presumably be inserted into various locations in North Korea, presumably in North Korean uniforms, trying to find evidence of Kim’s presence or the presence of other regime leaders, refine that information, and then direct an attack on the target.” The attack “could be assisted by drones” or “simply involve shining a laser on the target, simulating the giving of guidance for a laser guided bomb.”

“I personally think that the preemptive strike option against North Korea is a bad idea,” Steve Tharpe told The Daily Beast, “It would immediately lead to a full-scale war—a resumption of full-scale warfare—Korean War: Part II.”

Another Korean War, he predicted, “would make the war in Ukraine pale in comparison, even if nuclear weapons weren’t used.” And “if nerve agents and nukes are used, we would probably see a greater number of deaths here than occurred during the fighting from 1950 to 1953—Korean War: Part I”

Tharpe is confident the North Korean leadership doesn’t want another all-out Korean War knowing “that will lead to their demise regardless of how many casualties they inflict.” The danger, he said, “is a misjudgment of the situation that leads to unnecessary war.”

Credit the military of South Korea, the Republic of Korea, with introducing the term “kill chain” in the first place. “It’s an ROK concept of how to defend South Korea,” a spokesman at the headquarters of U.S. Forces Korea and the United Nations Command told The Daily Beast. What it means, said a South Korean military spokesman, is: “When North Korea fires missiles, we will attack the North Korean missile system.”

Neither the American nor South Korean spokesmen, however, would talk about “decapitation,” an informal term for the grand finale to the “kill chain”—and a word seen as exacerbating tensions.

“I would caution against saying publicly that ‘decapitation’ of North Korea’s leadership might be the premise of any exercise,” said Evans Revere, a retired senior U.S. diplomat who’s been focusing on North Korea issues for years. “Suggesting that elimination of Kim Jong Un and his inner circle would be the goal of the alliance would deeply anger the North Korean regime and require the strongest possible response from Pyongyang.”

North Korea “understands what the United States and the Republic of Korea are capable of doing and what they might try to do in the event of a conflict,” said Revere. “There’s no need to rub Pyongyang’s face in this harsh reality.”

The notion of rehearsing the assassination of Kim Jong Un by beheading his regime inevitably raises questions among those who would love to get rid of the man but wonder if killing him would solve all that much. Undoubtedly there would be a power struggle, possibly including his younger sister Kim Yo Jong, waiting in the wings, but then what?

Colonel Maxwell compared possible decapitation to the killing of Osama Bin Laden. “Does it work in practice or only in theory,” he asked, suggesting decapitation of the head might not accomplish the goal of destroying the enemy.

Choi Jin-wook, president of the Center for Strategic and Cultural Studies in Seoul, saw decapitation as crucial to victory. “For a dictatorship like North Korea,” he told The Daily Beast, “it is the best strategy to get rid of the dictator to win the war.”

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Breaking: Taiwan — Nancy Pelosi Has Landed

By Peter Koenig, August 03, 2022

Ms. Pelosi is the highest ranking US official visiting Taiwan in 25 years. Her visiting Taiwan happened despite the 2-hour phone conversation just a few days ago, between US President Biden and China’s President Xi Jinping. President Xi warned Biden: “Who plays with fire, will be burnt by fire.” Apparently to no avail.

Video: The Current Hike in Interest Rates, Danger of Collapsing Supply Chains: Economist Ernst Wolf

By Ernst Wolff and Reiner Fuellmich, August 03, 2022

In this session, Wolff talks about the hike in interest rates by central banks and why they represent an attack on the middle class. He also talks about the danger of collapsing supply chains as well as the role of Russia (or Putin) and China (or Xi Jinping) in current world affairs and the threat of a third world war.

Food Shortages: WEF Globalists Promote Diet of Bugs — and Cannibalism

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, August 03, 2022

Time and again, the World Economic Forum (WEF) and its global collaborators have “predicted” the future with stunning accuracy, sometimes years in advance, and then when the predictions come true they pretend as though they had nothing to do with it.

The EU Has Begun Its Retreat. “First Steps in Unraveling Energy and Food Sanctions on Russia”

By Alastair Crooke, August 03, 2022

The EU has begun its retreat: It has taken the first steps in unraveling energy and food sanctions on Russia. Will other steps follow? Or will the pan-West, Russia-phobic axis strike back with further belligerence?  Nothing is settled yet, but were the retreat to continue, and the separate Ukraine grain export accord hold together, it will be generally good news for the Region.

Joe Biden’s “Arms Control Talks” Offer to Russia – Genuine Move or More Hot Air?

By Drago Bosnic, August 03, 2022

On Monday, August 1, US President Joe Biden said that the United States is ready to continue arms control negotiations with Russia. The apparent offer was to resume talks on a possible replacement for the New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty), otherwise known as SNV-3 in Russia.

Spain Admits Spraying Deadly Chemtrails as Part of Secret UN Program: One Month After March 2020 COVID-19 Lockdown

By Baxter Dmitry, August 03, 2022

The Spanish government ordered [April 16, 2020, a month after March 2020 lockdown] the military to quietly spray lethal chemtrails on its citizens with UN authorization under the cover of the “state of emergency for the management of the health crisis situation caused by Covid-19.“

Legacy of Shinzo Abe: Corruption and Hopeless Japanese Economy

By Prof. Joseph H. Chung, August 03, 2022

For the last ten years, the world was watching with curiosity, worries and admiration of Shinzo Abe’s imposing political performance in Japan and the world. Now, he is no more. His departure may make some people sad; his death may bring relief for some others; his absence may make some people worried. The reaction of the people in Japan, Korea, China and in the world may vary great deal depending on the impact of what he was and what he did to different countries and various people.

130 Coast Guard Members Sue Federal Government Over Vaccine Mandates

By Michael Nevradakis, August 03, 2022

The lawsuit, filed July 25 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas —  Galveston Division, also challenges the constitutionality of the mandate. The number of plaintiffs exceeds 130 and will likely end up surpassing 200, according to Dale Saran, one of the attorneys representing the service members.

Has China Been Bluffing?

By Kim Petersen, August 03, 2022

Across the Eurasian continent, China finds itself being provoked by the US’s oleaginous adherence to the One China policy to which it is a signatory. Beijing has in recent days warned of severe consequences to be borne by the US and separatists in Taiwan (there are vociferous protests in Taiwan against Pelosi’s visit) if US House speaker Nancy Pelosi were to land in Taiwan.

Mismanaging a Pandemic: Failures in the COVID-19 Narrative

By Richard Gale and Dr. Gary Null, August 03, 2022

A careful review of thousands of scientific studies and interviews with leading medical professionals and physicians allows us to construct a more honest perspective about our federal health agencies’ and the World Health Organization’s successes and failures in dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic.

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***

On August 13, 2021, the Canadian government announced that anyone who hadn’t been vaccinated against Covid would soon be barred from planes and trains. In many cases, The Backward could no longer travel between provinces or leave the country. If you lived in Winnipeg and wanted to visit your mother on her deathbed in London or Hong Kong or, perhaps, Quebec City, you’d better get jabbed—or resign yourself to never seeing your mother again. 

Jennifer Little, the director-general of COVID Recovery, the secretive government panel that crafted the mandate, called it “one of the strongest vaccination mandates for travelers in the world.”

It was draconian and sweeping, and it fit neatly with the public persona that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had cultivated—that of the sleek, progressive, forward-looking technocrat guided by fact and reason. The Canadian Medical Association Journal, in a June 2022 article, observed that “Canada had among the most sustained stringent policies regarding restrictions on internal movement.”

But recently released court documents—which capture the decision-making behind the travel mandate—indicate that, far from following the science, the prime minister and his Cabinet were focused on politics. (Canadians are hardly alone. As Common Sense recently reported, American public-health agencies have also been politicized.)

Two days after announcing the mandate, Trudeau called a snap election—presumably expecting that his Liberal Party, which was in the minority in the House of Commons, would benefit from the announcement and be catapulted into the majority. As it turned out, the Liberals failed to win a majority in the September 2021 election. In the meantime, roughly five million unvaccinated Canadians were barred from visiting loved ones, working or otherwise traveling. (Trudeau, for his part, stayed in power. Even though the Conservatives have won the popular vote in the past two elections, because of Canada’s parliamentary system, they have been denied the top job.)

The court documents are part of a lawsuit filed by two Canadian residents against the government. Until last month, they were under seal.

Both plaintiffs are business owners. Both have family in Britain. Both have refused the vaccine on the grounds of bodily autonomy. Both were reluctant to identify their businesses out of fear of losing customers.

One plaintiff is Karl Harrison. In his affidavit, Harrison, 58, said that he and his partner, Emma, had immigrated in 2009 from Britain to Canada. (He became a Canadian citizen in 2015.) They have two children, a 24-year-old son and a 14-year-old daughter, and they live in a tony neighborhood in Vancouver. He’d always been an entrepreneur.

“I was involved in establishing, owning and co-owning over 40 venues of one sort or the other—restaurants, bars, music venues and comedy clubs,” he told me. “One music venue is fairly well known, called The Bedford. Ed Sheeran got his start there.”

Since 2000, Harrison had been involved in the travel industry.

“We have a company in the U.K., Ireland, Spain, and we’re the largest retailer of packages for Disneyland Paris,” he said.

He also has an 88-year-old mother in Britain, and he was furious that, for months, he couldn’t visit her.

“When you’ve got oppressive government behavior,” he told me, “you’re only left with only three choices: accept it, fight it or leave. I can’t accept it. I moved my family here, and I would be letting them down if we moved away—so I’m in fight mode.”

The other plaintiff is Shaun Rickard, whose father, also in Britain, is suffering from late-stage Alzheimer’s. Rickard, 55, lives in the town of Pickering, outside Toronto, and he owns a small exterior-siding and eaves-contracting business. He portrayed himself as something of an activist.

“I guess I’m the Lone Ranger,” he told me. “When I see something wrong, evil, corrupt happen, I feel I have to speak up.”

He was surprised when Trudeau announced the travel mandate.

“I said to myself, ‘Holy fuck, how can this be happening here?’” He added that the only way to stop it would be “through revolution, which is never going to happen in Canada, or through the courts, and the latter is what we did.”

So, in the fall of 2021, Rickard launched a GoFundMe to do battle with his government. In November, Harrison, who had learned of Rickard on social media, reached out to him. In December, they jointly filed suit.

Rickard said that, so far, the lawsuit had cost the two plaintiffs about $186,000—of which, Rickard had raised $121,000 on GoFundMe. (In February of this year, when the Canadian government invoked the Emergencies Act in response to the truckers protesting a separate vaccine mandate in Ottawa, GoFundMe forced Rickard, like those raising money for the truckers, off the site.)

Rickard and Harrison’s attorney, Sam Presvelos, said that all government decisions related to public health demanded transparency. “Civil servants shouldn’t hide behind a shroud of secrecy,” Presvelos told me.

The whole point of the case was to lift that shroud and cast a spotlight on the unscientific basis of the mandate.

Among other things, the court documents indicate:

• No one in the COVID Recovery unit, including Jennifer Little, the director-general, had any formal education in epidemiology, medicine or public health.
• Little, who has an undergraduate degree in literature from the University of Toronto, testified that there were 20 people in the unit. When Presvelos asked her whether anyone in the unit had any professional experience in public health, she said there was one person, Monique St.-Laurent. According to St.-Laurent’s LinkedIn profile, she appears to be a civil servant who briefly worked for the Public Health Agency of Canada. St.-Laurent is not a doctor, Little said.

  (Reached on the phone, St.-Laurent confirmed that she was a member of COVID Recovery. She referred all other questions to a government spokesperson.)

• Little suggested that a senior official in the prime minister’s Cabinet or possibly the prime minister himself had ordered COVID Recovery to impose the travel mandate. (During cross-examination, Little told Presvelos repeatedly that “discussions” about the mandate had taken place at “senior” and “very senior” levels.) But she refused to say who had given her team the order to impose the travel mandate. “I’m not at liberty to disclose anything that is subject to cabinet confidence,” she said.
• The term “cabinet confidence” is noteworthy because it refers to the prime minister’s Cabinet. Meaning that Little could not talk about who had directed the COVID Recovery unit to impose the travel mandate because someone at the very highest levels of government was apparently behind it.
• In the days leading up to the implementation of the travel mandate, transportation officials were frantically looking for a rationale for it. They came up short.

That was made clear by an email exchange in the latter half of October 2021 between Aaron McCrorie and Dawn Lumley-Myllari. McCrorie is the associate assistant deputy minister for safety and security in Transport Canada, the department that houses COVID Recovery. Lumley-Myllari is an official in the Public Health Agency of Canada. In the email exchange, McCrorie seemed to be casting about for a credible rationale for the travel mandate. This was less than two weeks before the mandate was set to kick in.

“To the extent that updated data exist or that there is clearer evidence of the safety benefit of vaccination on the users or other stakeholders of the transportation system, it would be helpful to assist Transport Canada supporting its measures,” McCrorie wrote.

Four days later, on October 22, McCrorie emailed Lumley-Myllari again:

“Our requirements come in on October 30”—in just over a week—”so need something fairly soon.”

On October 28, Lumley-Myllari replied to McCrorie with a series of bullet points outlining the benefits, generally speaking, of the Covid vaccine. She did not address McCrorie’s question about the transportation system, noting that the Public Health Agency of Canada was updating its “Public health considerations” with regard to vaccine mandates.

Two days later, on October 30, the travel mandate took effect.

Then, eight-and-a-half months later, on June 14, 2022, government officials announced that they were suspending the mandate—although they made it clear that they could bring it back at any time.

Within days, government lawyers filed a motion seeking to shut down Harrison and Rickard’s suit on the grounds that it was now moot—and, Presvelos said, to make sure the public never saw the court documents. (Since the case was still open, and court documents are unavailable to the public while cases are open, shutting it down would have sharply reduced the likelihood of anyone seeing government officials’ testimony.)

So, on July 12, Presvelos filed an additional damages motion, arguing that his clients had suffered damages during the mandate. Neither Harrison nor Rickard said they wanted money. The point was to make sure the suit didn’t go away and the court documents were made public.

But even so, the inner workings of the COVID Recovery unit and, more generally, the Trudeau government’s thinking around the travel mandate remain opaque.

COVID Recovery has no website, and its name appears almost nowhere in government records. (There is a brief mention of the unit in the guidance document announcing that, effective June 20, the travel mandate would be suspended.)

“The Trudeau government has claimed to follow The Science on COVID, but that science is strangely different than it is everywhere else,” Bruce Pardy, a law professor at Queens University and a former board member at the conservative Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, said in an email. “Instead, its policies are based on spite, divisiveness, and pure politics. COVID now serves as an excuse to punish the government’s ideological enemies.”

Harrison and Rickard wanted to expose the truth behind the mandate: that it was driven by politics, not science. They believed they had a right to refuse a vaccine about which they had come to have doubts. They said they were doing this for all Canadians, even those who thought they were wrong.

“What I have personally struggled with and have found to be the most unconscionable and objectionable aspects of how this pandemic has been managed,” Rickard said in his affidavit, “is the unnecessary hateful, vindictive and divisive behavior that I have witnessed from neighbors, friends, family members, colleagues and our government. The words and action of our government, which has entrenched policies based on vaccination status, without reflecting the risk of those unvaccinated, is far from the warm, caring, and thoughtful Canada I remember living in.”

In September, a judge will decide whether to quash the lawsuit. So far, 16 government officials have testified. Even though this kind of case almost never goes anywhere—there have been several court challenges to the mandates, and all of them have been rejected—Harrison and Rickard, in a way, have already won: They have cast a spotlight on how the sausage gets made. It may not matter.

“I find the idea of helplessness prevalent in Canada,” Harrison told me. “The idea of protesting doesn’t come naturally here. There’s a tendency for people to keep their head down, which I don’t understand, and the government exploits that.”

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Rupa Subramanya is a freelance columnist for National Post and Nikkei Asia. She’s previously written for publications such as the Wall Street Journal and Foreign Policy. She lives in Ottawa, Canada.

Featured image is from collision.conf, licensed under CC BY 2.0.

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Guest is Ernst Wolf, an economist, financial expert and author. Some of his book are the following:

• Wolff of Wall Street: Ernst Wolff explains the global financial system. (2020)
• The international financial order as a criminal construct of the Deep State. In: Wernicke/Mies (Eds.): Facade Democracy and the Deep State. At On the Way to an Authoritarian Age

In this session, he talks about the hike in interest rates by central banks and why they represent an attack on the middle class.

He also talks about the danger of collapsing supply chains as well as the role of Russia (or Putin) and China (or Xi Jinping) in current world affairs and the threat of a third world war.

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Abstract

All-cause mortality by time is the most reliable data for detecting and epidemiologically characterizing events causing death, and for gauging the population-level impact of any surge or collapse in deaths from any cause.

Such data is not susceptible to reporting bias or to any bias in attributing causes of death. We compare USA all-cause mortality by time (month, week), by age group and by state to number of vaccinated individuals by time (week), by injection sequence, by age group and by state, using consolidated data up to week-5 of 2022 (week ending on February 5, 2022), in order to detect temporal associations, which would imply beneficial or deleterious effects from the vaccination campaign.

We also quantify total excess all-cause mortality (relative to historic trends) for the entire covid period (WHO 11 March 2020 announcement of a pandemic through week-5 of 2022, corresponding to a total of 100 weeks), for the covid period prior to the bulk of vaccine delivery (first 50 weeks of the defined 100-week covid period), and for the covid period when the bulk of vaccine delivery is accomplished (last 50 weeks of the defined 100-week covid period); by age group and by state.

We find that the COVID-19 vaccination campaign did not reduce all-cause mortality during the covid period.

No deaths, within the resolution of all cause mortality, can be said to have been averted due to vaccination in the USA.

The mass vaccination campaign was not justified in terms of reducing excess all-cause mortality.

The large excess mortality of the covid period, far above the historic trend, was maintained throughout the entire covid period irrespective of the unprecedented vaccination campaign, and is very strongly correlated (r = +0.86) to poverty, by state; in fact, proportional to poverty. It is also correlated to several other socio-economic and health factors, by state, but not correlated to population fractions (65+, 75+, 85+ years) of elderly state residents.

The excess all-cause mortality by age group (also expressed as percentage of pre-covid-period all-cause mortality for the age group) for the whole USA for the entire covid period through week-5 of 2022 is:

The corresponding fatality risk ratios are relatively uniform with age (non-exponential and non-near-exponential with age; and even skewed towards young adults), which holds essentially for all states, and for all examined periods within the covid period. This fundamental result implies that a dominant cause of excess mortality could not have been assigned COVID 19, which consistently has been measured to have a strong near-exponential infection fatality ratio with age. The implication is further corroborated by the absence of correlation between all-age-group-integrated excess mortality and age, by state. COVID-19 was not a dominant cause of excess mortality during the covid period in the USA.

All of our observations can be coherently understood if we interpret that the covid-period socio-economic, regulatory and institutional conditions induced chronic stress and social isolation among members of large vulnerable groups (individuals afflicted and co-afflicted by poverty, obesity, diabetes, high susceptibility to bacterial respiratory infection [inferred from pre-covid-period antibiotic prescription rates], old age, societal exclusion, unemployment, drug and substance abuse, and mental disability or serious mental illness), which in turn caused many of these individuals to be more and fatally immunocompromised, allowing them to succumb to bacterial pneumonia, at a time when a documented national pneumonia epidemic raged and antibiotic prescriptions were systemically reduced; in addition to possible comorbidity from COVID-19 vaccine challenge against individuals thus made immunocompromised, under broad and hastily implemented “vaccine equity” programs.

Click here to read the full report.

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The World Economic Forum envisions a food system that doesn’t include animal foods or require a large land footprint. In fact, for several years now, the WEF has promoted the idea that we should get used to eating bugs and drinking reclaimed sewage. Both are now being rolled out

In a July 2022 article, The New York Times took the WEF’s dystopian projections to a whole new level, announcing that the time to consider cannibalism is now upon us.

Interpretation: The WEF and its allies are manufacturing food shortages, which in some areas may progress into actual famine, and they want you to know that when that time comes, it’s OK for you to eat your neighbor

In addition to a recent rash of books and TV shows that glorify cannibalism, there’s lab-grown human steak “art,” and vegan meat designed to taste like human flesh. In 2019, a Swedish professor also argued for cannibalism as a more sustainable alternative to eating bugs.

Much of the supposed “inspiration” behind the promotion of unnatural diets is said to come from a desire to save the planet. While that’s admirable, it’s important to realize that the “green” agenda — as it is currently promoted — is nothing but a scare tactic to bring people to the point of accepting living conditions that would otherwise be unacceptable, such as eating a diet of bugs, drinking reclaimed sewage water and even, apparently, cannibalism

Screenshot, July 23, 2022

Time and again, the World Economic Forum (WEF) and its global collaborators have “predicted” the future with stunning accuracy, sometimes years in advance, and then when the predictions come true they pretend as though they had nothing to do with it.

It’s worth remembering, then, that WEF founder Klaus Schwab, during the May 2022 meeting in Davos, clearly stated that the future doesn’t just happen, it is “BUILT — by us,” referring to himself and the other attendees in the room. So, make no mistake, they truly believe they have the right to decide the fate of the world, and that you and I have no say in the matter.

That fate was in June 2020 formally announced under the banner of “The Great Reset,” by Schwab himself.¹ This “build back better” scheme involves the complete reorganization and restructuring of all parts of society, including finance, industry, education, “social contracts,” the energy sector and the food system.

As far as the food system is concerned, the WEF envisions a food system that doesn’t include animal foods or require a large land footprint. In fact, for several years now, the WEF has promoted the idea that we should get used to eating bugs^2,3,4 and drinking reclaimed sewage. As just one example, in mid-October 2018, the WEF posted on Twitter:⁵

“Good grub: why we might be eating insects soon.”

Bugs, Sewage and Cannibalism — The Cabal’s Plans for You

The WEF’s many predictions are now rapidly turning into reality, and its selfish agendas are, of course, hailed as brilliant and necessary by its media allies. For example, in February 2021, Time magazine⁶ insisted we really ought to eat more bugs to save the planet, and in May 2021, Bloomberg announced that “The Future of Water Is Recycled Sewage, and We’ll All Be Drinking It.”⁷

Indeed, California has already started its toilet-to-tap transition.⁸ July 23, 2022, The New York Times^9,10 then took the WEF’s dystopian projections to a whole new level, announcing that the time to consider cannibalism is now upon us:

“An image came to Chelsea G. Summers: a boyfriend, accidentally on purpose hit by a car, some quick work with a corkscrew and his liver served Tuscan style, on toast. That figment of her twisted imagination is what prompted Ms. Summers to write her novel, ‘A Certain Hunger,’ about a restaurant critic with a taste for (male) human flesh.

Turns out, cannibalism has a time and a place. In the pages of some recent stomach-churning books, and on television and film screens, Ms. Summers and others suggest that that time is now … Can you stomach it?”

The NYT writer, Alex Beggs — who also writes for the food magazine, Bon Appétit — goes on to list several recent TV shows and films featuring cannibalism in a romanticized light. Well, how else do you brainwash people — especially young people — into accepting the unacceptable if not by glamorizing it through the magic of tell-a-vision? And it’s working. A Reddit message board dedicated to the Showtime series “Yellowjackets” has 51,000 members.

“The show’s tension is in the knowledge that you know cannibalism is coming, but when? And why?” Beggs writes. The show, no doubt, mirrors a tension the elitists of the world actually want to emerge in real life.

“What in the world are you talking about?” you may ask. Let me put it bluntly and not beat around the bush: The WEF and its allies are manufacturing food shortages, which in some areas may progress into actual famine, and they want you to know that when that time comes, it’s OK for you to eat your neighbor.

You’ll be saving the planet, and yourself. Cannibalism is a “win” for the world, so don’t be squeamish. Heck, you might even enjoy it, and there’s no need to be riddled with useless guilt. You’re still a good person.

That’s the subliminal message being broadcast through these articles, books and TV shows that normalize cannibalism, and it’s not by accident. Need I remind you that the NYT deputy managing editor, Rebecca Blumenstein, is a WEF member?¹¹ She knows what’s coming.

And then, of course, there’s the fact checkers insisting The NYT “did not publish an article that normalizes cannibalism,”¹² which is basically proof that it did just that. Those of us who read it did not misunderstand its unstated purpose. The New York Times has also written glowing tributes to Marina Abramovic, whose “art” involves graphic references to cannibalism.¹³

Lab-Grown Human Steak

In addition to books and TV shows that glorify cannibalism, there’s lab-grown human steak, and vegan meat designed to taste like human meat. Starting with the former, in December 2020, steak grown from human cells was featured as “art” at the Design Museum in London, U.K.¹⁴

The creator of the “Ouroboros Steak” — a reference to the ancient alchemical symbol of the snake that devours its tail and is reborn from itself — claimed the installation was a critique against the meat industry, and arose from spending a year “imagining how climate change might impact the future of food consumption.”¹⁵

He was reportedly upset about the fact that “the focus quickly became centered on accusations that we were promoting cannibalism.” At the time, The New York Times reported:¹⁶

“‘Ouroboros Steak’ examines, but does not promote, auto-cannibalism as a satirical take on the increasing demand for meat products around the world, which scientists have warned will likely contribute to carbon emissions and reduced biodiversity.

The designers hoped that shocking audiences with the suggestion would trigger an examination of environmental responsibility and the clean-meat industry, which has promoted itself as producing ‘kill-free’ food, although most companies heavily rely on fetal bovine serum harvested during the slaughter of pregnant cows for cell cultivation.”

While the designers may have had pure intentions, the end result is still something that benefits the depraved agenda of the global elite. It’s also worth noting that livestock — raised in a regenerative fashion, and not in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) — actually have a very positive impact on the climate.

Are They Trying to Normalize Cannibalism? Absolutely

Taking the human steak idea a step further, a company called BiteLabs claims to be selling artisanal salami made from lab-grown celebrity flesh.¹⁷ According to their website, they intend to collect biopsy samples from celebrities, isolate the muscle cells, and then grow the celebrity meat using a proprietary bioreactor.

The lab-grown flesh is then cured, dried, aged and spiced according to Italian tradition. It’s unclear whether any celebrities have signed up to become salami, but the company does appear to be real. New York Grub Street wrote an article about the startup in 2014.¹⁸ IFL Science¹⁹ followed up in January 2022, noting that “It’s perfectly possible” to create salami from cloned celebrity meat.

Other examples of an ongoing effort to normalize cannibalism include a 2018 article discussing the benefits of teenage blood plasma,²⁰ said to have rejuvenating effects. A 2.5-liter order was said to cost about $8,000 at the time. In a bit of predictive programming, the film “Soylent Green” — in which the protagonist realizes the government food being handed out is made from humans — was set in the year 2022.²¹ And then, there’s Katy Perry (below).

Vegan Burger Made to Taste Like Human Flesh

Continuing the parade of cannibalism-normalizing trends, in June 2022, a vegan burger said to “taste like human meat” won a silver award at the annual Cannes Lions festival of Creativity.^22,23 The human meat burger, made from soy, mushrooms, wheat protein, plant-based fats and a secret spice mix, debuted during a 2021 Halloween festival in Stockholm, Sweden.

The video above was the ad for that event. While they state that “no humans were injured in the development of this product,” one obviously wonders how they came up with the taste profile for human meat in the first place.

Perhaps they invented it, and it actually doesn’t taste anything like human flesh. Who’d be able to tell the difference? Either way, this is yet another example where the idea of cannibalism is embraced and lauded.

‘Cannibals Against Climate Change’

Coincidentally, another Swede, professor Magnus Soderlund, made headlines in 2019 by suggesting “humans should become cannibals to fight climate change, because eating human flesh is more ‘sustainable’ than the meat industry.”²⁴ He even insisted cannibalism was a more sustainable option than a diet of insects. While his concept didn’t grow legs right then and there, it seems someone, somewhere, took note of his insane ideas.

While cannibalism has indeed featured on and off throughout human history, it was typically — although with some notable exceptions — a measure of last resort. People ate family members and neighbors to survive famine.²⁵

To suggest that the most advanced human civilization in known memory start eating each other “to save the environment” is unreasonable in the extreme. We have regenerative farming methods that would ease most of our environmental concerns. There’s absolutely no reason to jump from industrial farming all the way to cannibalism.

Green Agenda Seeks to Normalize Lowered Standard of Living

Much of the supposed “inspiration” behind the promotion of unnatural diets is said to come from a desire to save the planet. While that’s admirable, it’s important to realize that the entire “green” agenda — as it is currently promoted — is nothing but a ruse, a scare tactic, to bring people to the point of accepting living conditions that would otherwise be unacceptable, such as eating a diet of bugs, drinking reclaimed sewage water and even, apparently, cannibalism.

The green agenda is based on cherry-picked flawed ideas, such as the idea that nitrogen fertilizer is a pollutant that must be reined in by eliminating farming. Without farmers, what will we eat? The technocratic, transhumanist-loving cabal’s answer: Weeds, bugs and, possibly, each other.

It sounds wild and crazy, but they really do want to get rid of as many people as possible, and no strategy is ethically off-limits, be it the promotion of abortion, the elimination of fossil fuels without having a workable replacement, the mandating of experimental gene transfer injections, insect diets, reclaimed sewage water or cannibalism.

By the way, a number of U.S. states have also adopted alkaline hydrolysis²⁶ as an alternative to cremation, where dead bodies are dissolved and the water from the process is flushed down the sewer. What could possibly go wrong by combining the flushing of water used to dissolve human remains into the sewer and then repurposing that same water into drinking water? Even if mostly symbolic, this too is a form of cannibalism.

Why Are the Elitists’ ‘Answers’ so Gross?

If you’re like most, you’re probably wondering why everything the technocratic cabal presents as “the answer” to our global woes is so darn gross and dehumanizing. The simple answer is that we’re not human to them. We’re a commodity, like cattle, that exist for their benefit and exploitation. They’re “above” the rest of us. We may not have a caste system, officially, but there are two classes in this world.

Before farmers realized that mad cow was created by the feeding of bovine parts back to cattle, this practice was commonplace. And, frankly speaking, the technocratic elitists see us the same way. Why not feed useless eaters back to the ones that still have some worker-bee value? To them, that’s just plain rational.

It’s efficient, and technocracy is based in large part on the efficiency of any given system. Robots are more efficient than humans, hence robots are the better choice. Artificial intelligence is more efficient than the human intellect, and hence they want to merge with it. What to do with useless humans, is the question. And the answer is to get rid of them, in whatever way works, without raising the ire of too many peasants.

Celebrities Embrace Bug Diet

For now, the normalization of cannibalism is still in its infancy. But the fact that bugs are on the menu — now, today — is undeniable. Celebrities, of course, have a role to play in any successful social engineering project, and in the video above, the actress Nicole Kidman takes one for the team.

“Three million people in the world eat bugs, and I’m one of them,” she says, wolfing down a number of different insects, some live and others fried for a crispy crunch. You can bet your bottom dollar that the fried ones were fried in seed oils. My skepticism of her genuineness aside, research has concluded that celebrities can indeed “persuade people to eat insects.” As reported by PsychReg.org:²⁷

“Using celebrity endorsements in adverts for insect-based foods can increase people’s willingness to include insects in their diet, finds new research from BI Norwegian Business School (BI), Chuo University, Miyagi University, and Oxford University.

To combat and prevent a global food crisis, we need to explore alternative protein sources. The UN has urged people to consider the consumption of insects as they are nutritious, sustainable, and readily available worldwide. However, many struggles with the concept of eating insects …

The findings showed that celebrities’ perceived trustworthiness, knowledge about insect-based foods, and appropriateness are crucial factors in increasing people’s willingness to eat insects.

However, different genders responded differently: For men, ads featuring actors or athletes were most effective, while only actors effectively influenced women. In comparison, musicians did not appear to be as influential. Using musicians in ads made women less willing to consume insect-based foods …

‘Our findings demonstrate that celebrity endorsement can be a very effective strategy to increase consumer interest in eating more insects, as long as the right celebrity is targeted at the right gender.'”

Obviously, this research is not languishing in a hidden drawer. The technocratic Great Reset adherents are putting the findings to work. Examples of celebrities espousing the deliciousness and healthiness of bugs include Drew Barrymore, Robert Downey Jr., celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, Salma Hayek and Angelina Jolie, just to name a few.²⁸

Other Types of ‘Cannibalism’

While cannibalism is now being approached in a more head-on manner, humans have been ingesting and taking in other humans in other ways for many years. For example, human aborted fetal cells are frequently used in the development of vaccines.

And, while human cells are not present in the final product, DNA fragments and cell proteins can still be present. To learn more about this process, see this article. A short excerpt reads as follows:²⁹

“Apart from any moral conflict one might have over the use of aborted fetuses for vaccine production, we need to remember that DNA from the aborted fetuses actually ends up invaccines as a contaminant …

Independent research³⁰ has found that vaccines manufactured in human fetal cell lines contain ‘unacceptably high levels of fetal DNA fragment contaminants,’ These fragments, while in trace amounts, are still biologically active once injected into the body of another individual via vaccine.

Vaccines elicit systemic immune activation and inflammatory responses, which increases the likelihood of foreign DNA uptake into the host’s genome. And in fact, it has been found that fetal cell DNA can spontaneously integrate into the genome of the vaccinated person.”

Other products that use aborted fetus parts in their development include cosmetics, pharmaceutical drugs and flavor enhancers found in many foods and beverages.³¹ Is the use of aborted fetal cells in these kinds of products justifiable?

When Ends Justify the Means, Bad Things Happen

Surprisingly, according to Human Life International (HLI),³² a supposedly pro-life, Catholic organization, it is justifiable if it’s “in the service of humanity.” HLI believes vaccines are in the service of humanity, so therefore the use of aborted fetal cells in the development of vaccines is acceptable. Cosmetics, however, cannot save lives, so therefore, the “disgusting practice” of using fetuses in the creation of cosmetics should be opposed.

It seems to me that this is really splitting hairs. HLI is basically saying that the ends justify the means, even if otherwise deemed abhorrent and potentially unhealthy (as injecting another person’s DNA fragments can be). By that rationale, cannibalism could be justified in the name of environmental protection (as some people insist), and I really don’t think we ought to go there.

As mentioned earlier, we have good, solid solutions for our environmental concerns. Regenerative agriculture — which includes and indeed requires livestock — is the way to go if we really want to clean up the globe, reduce water consumption and normalize weather.

The notion that our only way out is a diet of insects and cannibalism is foolishly ignorant in the extreme, and needs to be opposed at every turn. Those are not foundational solutions in the least. They are tools to enslave, denigrate and dehumanize humanity, invented by people who see every steak on your plate as something that has been stolen from theirs.

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Notes

¹ WEforum June 3, 2020

² WEF July 12, 2021

³ Newswars March 22, 2021

⁴ Twitter WEF January 21, 2021

⁵ Twitter WEF October 14, 2018

⁶ Time February 26, 2021

⁷ Bloomberg May 19, 2021

⁸ LA Times July 22, 2022

⁹ The New York Times July 23, 2022 (Archived)

¹⁰ Twitter NYT July 23, 2022

¹¹ Real Clear Politics May 23, 2022

¹² Misbar Fact Check July 25, 2022

¹³ New York Times Novemer 18, 2011 (Archived)

^14, 15, 16 The New York Times December 7, 2020 (Archived)

¹⁷ Bitelabs.org

¹⁸ Grub Street February 27, 2014

¹⁹ IFL Science January 18, 2022

²⁰ The Times September 8, 2018

²¹ Maajid Nawaz Substack July 27, 2022

²² Washington Examiner June 28, 2022

²³ NY Post June 28, 2022

²⁴ Daily Mail September 9, 2019

²⁵ Vox July 22, 2015

²⁶ Cremation Association Alkaline Hydrolysis

²⁷ Psychreg.org February 1, 2022

²⁸ Buzzing Substack April 1, 2022

²⁹ Think Love Healthy July 6, 2017

³⁰ Issues Law Med 2015; 30(1): 47-70

³¹ J&J Ranch August 24, 2021

³² HLI January 7, 2022

Featured image is from Mercola

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The EU has begun its retreat: It has taken the first steps in unraveling energy and food sanctions on Russia. Will other steps follow? Or will the pan-West, Russia-phobic axis strike back with further belligerence?  Nothing is settled yet, but were the retreat to continue, and the separate Ukraine grain export accord hold together, it will be generally good news for the Region.

The bigger issue is of whether – even a more substantive EU retreat ensues – this will make a difference to the larger economic paradigm. Unfortunately, the answer is very probably not.

The EU’s seventh package of sanctions on Russia, whilst ostensibly posing as an increase in sanctions (which it is for certain gold imports into the EU that have no real impact on Russia) – and with a small extension of the list of controlled (mainly tech) items – the package represents, in reality, a concealed retreat.

For, as one digs deeper, the package substantially alleviates sanctions in key areas. Firstly, the package ‘clarifies’ aviation measures (Comment: Though opaquely worded, this passage seems to be quietly permitting the export of spare Airbus parts to Russian aviation fleets). The package says that to avoid any negative consequences for food and energy security around the world – and for clarity – the EU extends the exemption to transport of agricultural products, (food) and fertiliser exports and the transport of oil from Russia to third countries. Furthermore, it exempts third party purchases of pharmaceutical and medical products from Russia.

The EU likes to claim that their sanctions never included food and fertilisers, and that the suggestion that they did, is propaganda. Their argument, however, is disingenuous. The EU sanctions’ legalistic wording was so open, so opaque, that it was not clear whether they did, or didn’t. Trading companies understandably feared retroactive fines for breaking sanctions. They had the bitter experience of the US Treasury refusing to say explicitly what was allowed, and which not; and in the case of Iran, out of the blue, hitting European banks with monstrous fines.

The explicitness matters: Food, agricultural products and fertiliser transported to Third Countries are exempt from sanctions. States like Egypt can now import wheat from Ukraine, Russia – and effectively from Belarus too, (since it now forms a single market with Russia).

Equally, the third country transport of Russian oil to states such as China, India, Iran, and Saudi Arabia are now explicitly exempt.

Here is another disingenuity – if not hypocrisy – implicit within this exemption. The EU, all along, has been virtue signalling how they would ban Russian energy sales to the EU – and how that the resulting loss of revenue to Russia, would starve, and cripple Moscow’s war effort in Ukraine.

Well, first Russia insisted on payment for its gas in roubles. The EU said ‘no’, but then relented.  Then the EU targeted Russian oil, and the G7 touted a ‘cap’ on oil prices.  But states such as China and India said ‘no’.  And now, the EU has relented on the transport of Russian oil by Third Parties. (Greek and Cypriot tanker owners had already arm-twisted their governments into insisting on an earlier exemption, for them).

What is going on? The oil market has been volatile recently, as the US has tried to manipulate the ‘paper market’ (which is way larger than the physical market), in order to contrive a dip in prices in the Bent and WTI index. Again, the object has been to hurt Russia – and to facilitate Yellen’s ‘oil cap’ by getting prices closer to the $60 a barrel on which Yellen has set her capping hopes.

It hasn’t worked, and it seems the White House just wants oil prices down – full stop.  Even the hawk, Victoria Nuland, said Friday that the US and its allies need Russian oil supplies to enter world markets, otherwise the cost of this resource will start to rise again: “We need to see the presence of Russian oil on the world market, otherwise the shortage of oil will lead to a new rise in prices.”

Realism seeps in!  Putin achieves all his key demands in respect to the food crisis – and today, is even selling a slightly increased volume of oil.

The price of oil will indeed fluctuate. It will respond however, more to the effects arising from depth reached in the coming recession, than on market manipulation, and Yellen’s price capping efforts.  The western Establishment is still trying to get its head around the new reality that commodities are seen to have innate value, whereas fiat currencies such as the dollar don’t.  The new commodity era represents a psychological global shift towards intrinsic value, at time of rising inflation.

And where will that ‘now exempted’ Russian oil transit, be headed?  Why, to the EU (largely). This is where the disingenuity becomes evident: India buys Russian oil, runs it through its refineries, and sells ‘Indian refined products’ where?  To the EU.  Ditto for other cargos.  Ditto for Saudi Arabia. Those vessels’ bills of lading won’t mention Russia as they arrive at their EU destination.

In short, the EU is quietly facilitating the bypass of its own proclaimed ‘crushing’ sanctions regime.

Might this this small step of retreat however, tip the wind out from the swelling sail of economic crisis?  No. There are two major sources of inflation. There’s the supply side and the demand side. Either one of them can drive inflation, but they’re very, very different in terms of how they work.

The supply side, as the name implies, comes from input. The supply just isn’t there. Farm prices are going up because fertilizer prices are going up, partly because of the war in Ukraine. Oil prices are going up because there’s a global shortage, and there’s disruption in supply chains.

So what can the ECB do about that? Nothing. Does the ECB drill for oil? Does the ECB run a farm? Does the ECB drive a truck? Does the ECB pilot a cargo vessel across the Pacific or load freight at the Port of Los Angeles?

No, the Central Bankers do none of those things, and so they can’t fix that part of the problem. Raising interest rates has no impact on the supply side shortages we’re seeing. And that’s the direction from which inflation – that is driving European recession – is blowing.

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Alastair Crooke is Director of Conflicts Forum; Former Senior British Diplomat; Author.

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***

On Monday, August 1, US President Joe Biden said that the United States is ready to continue arms control negotiations with Russia. The apparent offer was to resume talks on a possible replacement for the New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty), otherwise known as SNV-3 in Russia. The treaty is the last remaining nuclear arms control agreement between Russia and the US. In a statement during the 10th conference on the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Biden said that his administration “is ready to negotiate a new arms control framework,” but then also added that the US would refuse negotiations with Russia while it was still engaged in Ukraine.

“I’ve worked on arms control from the earliest days of my career, and the health of the NPT has always rested on meaningful, reciprocal arms limits between the United States and Russian Federation. Even at the height of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union were able to work together to uphold our shared responsibility to ensure strategic stability. Today, my administration is ready to expeditiously negotiate a new arms control framework to replace New START when it expires in 2026. But negotiation requires a willing partner operating in good faith. And Russia’s brutal and unprovoked aggression in Ukraine has shattered peace in Europe and constitutes an attack on fundamental tenets of international order. In this context, Russia should demonstrate that it is ready to resume work on nuclear arms control with the United States. China also has a responsibility as an NPT nuclear weapons state and a member of the P5 to engage in talks that will reduce the risk of miscalculation and address destabilizing military dynamics. There is no benefit to any of our nations, or for the world, to resist substantive engagement on arms control and nuclear non-proliferation,” Biden stated.

If we ignore the regular myths and false talking points about “Russia’s unprovoked, brutal attack on the vibrant Ukrainian democracy”, the statement seems to be rather reasonable, which has become quite a seldom occurrence these days, especially coming from the US president or anyone in the US government. Biden also mentioned China, indicating that the belligerent thalassocracy sees Beijing as more than just a regional military rival in the Asia-Pacific area.

This approach is not new, as former president Trump was adamant that any new strategic arms control talks should include China. However, it’s the first time the Biden administration clearly and unambiguously hinted at China as one of the possible parties to any new strategic arms control treaties. With China fast-tracking the development of a number of systems aimed at cementing its position as a military superpower, the US is clearly aware that by 2026, when the New START is set to expire, Beijing will have even more strategic assets that Washington DC simply cannot ignore.

However, for its part, Russia doesn’t seem convinced that the US is genuine in its supposed “desire to maintain strategic security.” Former president of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, dismissed Biden’s statement, adding that it was “out of place in a changed world.” Medvedev, now serving as the Deputy Head of Russia’s Security Council, stated he had repeatedly warned Washington DC that major issues such as the framework to replace the New START could never be done without Russian involvement. Medvedev, writing on his Telegram channel, said Biden had reluctantly “spat out” the call for new talks.

“All this, of course, is good. But let me say it once again – the situation now is much worse than in the Cold War. A lot worse! And through no fault of our own. The main thing is… … do we really need this? The world is a different place,” Medvedev wrote.

Medvedev’s statements on the matter are not new. For months, especially since the start of Russia’s counteroffensive against NATO’s crawling aggression, Medvedev has been expressing deep frustration and anger over the open belligerence of the political West, particularly the US. And he’s certainly not alone in this. A Russian foreign ministry source had earlier expressed puzzlement about Biden’s proposal.

“Is this a serious statement or has the White House website been hacked?” a Russian foreign ministry source told Reuters. “If this is still a serious intention, with whom exactly do they intend to discuss it?”

On Wednesday morning, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov himself also weighed in and stated that the US made no formal appeal to resume talks on the matter.

“It has become their habit to announce things over the microphone and then forget about them,” Lavrov said. “There have been no approaches to us to restart the negotiation process.”

In 2011, the New START Treaty was signed by Medvedev and Obama, creating an international legal framework for the US and Russia to limit the deployment of nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) and strategic bombers/missile carriers. However, given the US track record with international treaties, especially those concerning military matters, it’s questionable how much Russia can rely on anything the US says.

In addition, Russia also enjoys a considerable advantage in a number of strategic weapon systems, be it the Eurasian giant’s second-to-none hypersonic weapons (which have already been used in battle and which the US still lacks entirely), doomsday underwater drones or advanced ICBMs. Thus, it’s unclear why the US would even suggest a new treaty and, more importantly, why Russia would accept it.

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

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Although it is unlikely that Beijing will conduct a military annexation of Taiwan in the coming years, Nancy Pelosi’s provocative visit to Taipei will undoubtedly push Beijing closer to Moscow, which could perhaps even extend as support for Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine. Confirmed responses against Taiwan include a blockade threat and targeted sanctions.

The speaker of the US House of Representatives landed at Taipei airport on August 2, the first high profile American visit since 1997. When warned by Chinese President Xi Jinping that “those who play with fire will eventually get burned,” Washington, in an attempt to downplay the trip, assured Beijing of its commitment to the “One China” policy and said the visit was Pelosi’s own personal decision.

The Chinese leadership has thus far not reacted to Pelosi’s provocation in a serious way, only announcing military exercises around the island and some sanctions. Another potential response by Beijing could be a strengthening of relations with Moscow, perhaps even over the Ukraine battlefield.

Beijing may have analyzed the balance of power in the region and came to the conclusion that in the near future it cannot solve the Taiwan issue by military means. At the same time, the unprovoked American action could force China to end attempts to stabilize relations with the US and instead supply Russia with significant economic and technical-military support.

To date, China has been mostly quiet about the situation in Ukraine, with some Chinese companies even leaving Russia due to fear of sanctions. It can be expected that China will now be more assertive in providing Russia with support, such as drones and other military equipment.

Although support for Russia is only conjecture at this point, what is certain is that with the large-scale exercises announced to take place from August 4-7 in the waters around Taiwan, Beijing is reminding Taipei how easily the island can be completely blockaded at sea and air, with the US able to do very little to prevent this.

China, under the guise of exercise drills, are effectively closing the entire sea space around Taiwan so that no vessels, even civilian ships, can enter the island’s ports without their approval. The Chinese military currently has the forces and means, including aircraft carriers, to blockade Taiwan without major issue. This is likely just a show of force though that will not lead to a military solution for unification.

Despite the fact that Beijing considers Taiwan to be a “rebel province” and always opposes any contact between Taiwanese representatives and foreign officials, especially high-ranking or military officials from countries that Beijing has diplomatic relations with, there is currently no danger that Pelosi’s visit will lead to a Chinese attack on the island as its military currently does not have enough power for such an operation.

That potential could be achieved within a decade though if China decides to quickly build the necessary ships and accumulate military power. Attacking Taiwan requires amphibious ships and although China does not have enough at the moment, they are building them. According to the assessment of US military experts, if Beijing quickly builds such ships, it would only take five to six years.

Meanwhile, it was announced on August 3 that Beijing decided to impose sanctions on two Taiwanese foundations for secessionist activities, thus prohibiting mainland companies from cooperating with businesses that donate to these two organisations.

“Under the guise of democracy and development cooperation, the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy and the Foundation for International Cooperation and Development, organisations related to ‘Taiwan’s independence’ and are actively participating in separatist activities to achieve independence for Taiwan in the international arena, do their best to approach anti-Chinese forces abroad, attack and smear mainland China, and use money to expand the so-called ‘international space’ for Taiwan,” said Ma Xiaoguang, director of the information bureau at the Taiwan Affairs Office in Beijing.

He pointed out that “Mainland China has decided to impose disciplinary measures on the aforementioned funds and prohibit them from cooperating with Mainland China organisations, enterprises and individuals.”

The statement emphasised that organisations, enterprises and individuals in mainland China are prohibited from cooperating and conducting any transactions with the companies Speedtech Energy, Hyweb Technology, Tianliang Medical (Skyla), SkyEyes GPS Technology and other businesses that donated to these funds. Leaders of the respective businesses were also barred from entering mainland China.

Although many speculated that China would militarily respond to Pelosi’s visit, especially following the strong rhetoric from Beijing, it would appear that this was another case of “China’s final warning”, a Russian proverb that originated in the former Soviet Union to refer to Beijing’s constant warnings but inaction over Taiwan provocations. It appears that for now the response is limited to targeted sanctions and reminding Taiwanese authority’s that the People’s Liberation Army Navy and Air Force can easily blockade the island, but for now provide no direct military action.

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Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

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***

President Biden on Monday sent mixed signals to Moscow in an apparent offer to negotiate a replacement to the New START, the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty between the US and Russia.

In a statement to the 10th conference on the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Biden said his administration “is ready to expeditiously negotiate a new arms control framework to replace New START when it expires in 2026,” but then suggested he wouldn’t negotiate with Russia while it was fighting in Ukraine.

“But negotiation requires a willing partner operating in good faith. And Russia’s brutal and unprovoked aggression in Ukraine has shattered peace in Europe and constitutes an attack on fundamental tenets of international order. In this context, Russia should demonstrate that it is ready to resume work on nuclear arms control with the United States,” Biden said.

Responding to Biden’s statement, a Russian Foreign Ministry source expressed puzzlement to Reuters.

“Is this a serious statement or has the White House website been hacked?” the source said. “If this is still a serious intention, with whom exactly do they intend to discuss it?”

The US cut off arms control talks with Russia after Moscow invaded Ukraine on February 24th. Russian officials have said they’re interested in resuming the dialogue, but besides Biden’s statement, the US hasn’t shown much interest. A US official told The New York Times back in June that “it’s almost impossible to imagine” the US and Russia negotiating a New START replacement before it expires in 2026.

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Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.

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***

Western observers used to regard Kenya as a regional leader but the truth is that this role is actually played by Ethiopia, which isn’t just a sincerely sovereign state unlike its neighbor, but also had the foresight to prioritize agricultural production years ago and is thus able to manage the global food crisis caused by the US-led West’s anti-Russian sanctions much better than anyone else in Africa.

The perfect storm is crashing into Kenya as its worst drought in 40 years combines with its de facto compliance with the US-led West’s anti-Russian sanctions to create a major crisis. CNN warned about the consequences earlier this week, which Sputnik followed up on by reminding everyone of the major role that Russia used to play in helping Kenya meet its people’s nutritional needs. Those two pieces were preceded in mid-July by a report alleging that “(Kenyan) Traders have shunned Russian supplies, fretful of repercussions following the sanctions”, which resulted in a decrease of 13.3 billion Kenyan shillings’ worth of imports from Russia (roughly equivalent to $111 million).

Even though Kenya hasn’t formally jumped on the US’ bandwagon by sanctioning Russia, its Ambassador to the UN sent a very strong signal to his country’s businessmen in early March that they shouldn’t trade with that country when he compared Russia’s special operation in Ukraine to Western colonialism. This East African country generally enjoys economic and political stability but is widely regarded as an Anglo-American proxy in the region. That explains its de facto compliance with their anti-Russian sanctions, which has proven disastrous since Russia used to supply the lion’s share of its wheat and a sizeable amount of its fertilizer too.

The impending crisis that this purely political decision has caused could be devastating for Kenya’s traditional stability, yet Russia still remains eager to resume its agricultural exports to that East African country if it has the interest in receiving them. This is because that Eurasian Great Power pursues a strictly non-ideological foreign policy and still respects that Kenya hasn’t formally sanctioned it even though it’s informally done so. The optics of Nairobi officially eschewing compliance with Washington’s sanctions play to Moscow’s advantage by showing that the entire Global South remains opposed to these unilateral economic restrictions that violate international law.

Kenya’s situation stands in stark contrast to neighboring Ethiopia’s, whose visionary leadership represented by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed wisely foresaw the need to prioritize agricultural production years ago. That forward-looking policy resulted in its Agriculture Minister reporting earlier this summer that its wheat output is expected to jump a whopping 70% this year. Furthermore, unlike Western-dominated Kenya, Ethiopia is fiercely sovereign and has literally fought for the past two and a half years to defend itself from the Western-backed TPLF-driven Hybrid War of Terror that was unleashed against it as punishment for this civilization-state’s principled neutrality in the New Cold War.

This explains why the Russian-Ethiopian Strategic Partnership is the centerpiece of Moscow’s renewed engagement with the wider region while Russian-Kenyan relations have been put on the backburner due to Nairobi’s decision to appease its Anglo-American partners. Western observers used to regard Kenya as a regional leader but the truth is that this role is actually played by Ethiopia, which isn’t just a sincerely sovereign state unlike its neighbor, but also had the foresight to prioritize agricultural production years ago and is thus able to manage the global food crisis caused by the US-led West’s anti-Russian sanctions much better than anyone else in Africa.

The lessons to be learned are several and each is equally important. First, some African countries like Kenya give off the pretense of sovereignty by not officially joining the West’s sanctions even though they’re informally complying with them. Second, this has proven to be disastrous for their food security, which leads to the third lesson of this amounting to the self-inflicted destabilization of their own societies. Fourth, all of this could have been avoided had their leadership had the wisdom to prioritize agricultural production, and the last takeaway is that Ethiopia avoided all of these strategic pitfalls and is thus the leader that all other African states should consider following.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Andrew Korybko’s Newsletter.

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

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

With Nancy Pelosi’s plane supposedly just an hour or so away from landing in Taiwan…

09-0540 #SPAR19 is over Indonesia, heading toward east and tracked by 300k users.

05-0730 #SPAR20 is on ground at SZB airport (Kuala Lumpur).https://t.co/bgOQx4RZYu pic.twitter.com/zWyVUkHJtF

— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) August 2, 2022

… below we have compiled all the latest rapidly moving news on the fluid situation, courtesy of Newsquawk

• Several Chinese warplanes flew close to the median line of the Taiwan Strait on Tuesday morning and several Chinese warships have stayed close to the median line of the Taiwan Strait since Monday, according to a source briefed on the matter cited by Reuters. It was also reported that Taiwan’s Defence Ministry reinforced its combat alertness level from Tuesday morning to Thursday noon, according to the official Central News Agency citing sources.
• Global Times’ Hu Xijin says “Based on what I know, in response to Pelosi’s possible visit to Taiwan, Beijing has formulated a series of countermeasures, including military actions.”
• China’s Foreign Ministry says their position on US House Speaker Pelosi’s potential Taiwan visit is clear, will take all necessary measures to preserve interests.
• The plane (SPAR19) likely carrying the delegation of US House Speaker Pelosi is in the air, having departed Kuala Lumpur. It is taking a route around the Philippines to Taiwan. Sources suggest this is designed to minimize the security risks, according to CNN’s Rogin. Follows FlightRadar24 showing the craft in-flight earlier, no confirmation that Pelosi is onboard or as to its destination/flight path.
• SET News expects US House Speaker Pelosi in Taipei at 21:30 local time (14:30BST/09:30EDT).
• “Both of aircraft carriers of the PLA Navy have reportedly moved out from their homeports respectively amid Pelosi’s possible visit to the island of Taiwan, which media reported could happen Tuesday evening.”, according to Global Times.
• Xiamen Air in East China’s Fujian Province announced on Tuesday the adjustment of some of its flights due to flow control, via Global Times. Geographically, the Fujian province is in close proximity to Taiwan
• PLA’s Eastern Theater Command conducts live-fire drills in East China Sea, practicing subjects such as air defense, anti-reconnaissance, missile defense, and long-range sea strikes, via CCTV.
• The PLA could send warplanes across the median line that divides the Taiwan Strait if US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visits the democratic island, and analysts say it could start happening more regularly, SCMP reports

Separately, Global Times’ outspoken former editor in chief, Hu Xijin tweeted on Tuesday

“Based on what I know: in response to Pelosi’s possible visit to Taiwan, Beijing has formulated a series of countermeasures, including military actions.”,

whilst several Chinese warplanes reportedly flew close to the median line of the Taiwan Strait (see figure below) on Tuesday morning and several Chinese warships have stayed close to the median line of the Taiwan Strait since Monday, according to a Reuters source briefed on the matter. Further reports also highlighted that the Chinese military will hold exercises in the South China Sea from August 2-6 and a warning was issued – with entry to an area in the sea prohibited due to military exercises from Tuesday to Saturday, according to Global Times.

SCMP highlights some potential military options the PLA can take:

• Sending warplanes to Taiwan Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ)
• Flying across the median line – a buffer zone the US established in 1954 which China denies (see figure below) – and/or flying over Taiwan.
• Deploying warships in waters near Taiwan.
• Conducting missile tests in waters near Taiwan.

Economic: SGH Macro Advisors, citing their sources, suggest that ‘Beijing has floated economic retaliation against the United States as well”, which if realised, would be an “unexpected and major wildcard for markets” as participants focus on military responses. The desk suggests export restrictions of “daily necessities” to the US could be targeted in a bid to directly influence supply and thus exacerbate inflation at a time of elevated prices and slowing growth.

Market Impact

• STOCKS: Chinese and Taiwanese stocks took a hit during Tuesday’s session, with downbeat sentiment observed across European cash and US futures. Economic retaliation from Beijing will likely keep stocks under pressure. It’s also worth being aware of the Chinese giants listed in the US – such as Alibaba, and Tencent, whilst Taiwanese contract chip manufacturer TSMC is also watched amid the Co’s over-50% market share in the chip production sector – any hindrances in operations could be bearish for chip supply.
• FX: Desks note of potential haven flows into the Buck amid Pelosi’s risky trip, with ING warning of potential shockwaves across FX markets: “The dollar, the yen (which may break below 130.00 already today) and CHF should be the main beneficiaries, while CNY and China-sensitive currencies (along with high-beta currencies in general) could come under pressure. Here, AUD and NZD appear mostly vulnerable in G10”, ING says.
• BONDS: Haven bids in the fixed income space have been clear, with the upside continuing in Europe’s Tuesday trade. It’s also worth noting that reports last week suggested that Mainland China has reduced its holding of US debt, with the total dropping under the USD 1tln mark for the first time in 12 years, with analysts in China suggesting US Treasuries themselves are risk assets.

Here are some market-related quotes:

• “The relationship between the US and China was just about to enter into a period of review, with a move from the US to reduce China tariffs” – Ikuo Mitsui, Aizawa Securities.
• “I do expect a negative feedback loop into China-related equities especially those related to the semiconductor and technology sectors as Pelosi’s potential visit to Taiwan is likely to harden the current frosty US-China tech war,” said Kelvin Wong, analyst at CMC Markets
• “There is no way people will want to put on risk right now with this potential boiling point. The potential ramifications of Pelosi’s planned visit are huge.” Neil Campling, Mirabaud Securities.

MAP: Military facilities and strategic security locations in Taiwan, and mainland China’s amphibious staging areas, via AFP.

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***

Introduction

For last ten years, the world was watching with curiosity, worries and admiration of Shinzo Abe’s imposing political performance in Japan and the world.

Now, he is no more. His departure may make some people sad; his death may bring relief for some others; his absence may make some people worried.

The reaction of the people in Japan, Korea, China and in the world may vary great deal depending on the impact of what he was and what he did to different countries and various people.

Therefore, the way the people single out and value the legacy of Shinzo Abe can vary.

As for me, Shinzo Abe left two legacies, Abenomics and remilitarization of Japan. Many ask if these two legacies will survive. My view is that both will survive to make the future of Japan uncertain.

In this paper, I will deal only with Abe’s economic legacy. His legacy of Japan’s remilitarization will be the object of another paper.

This paper will focus on these issues:

• Nature of the ailment of the Japanese economy
• Corruption of Leadership
• Asset Bubble and Corruption
• Structural Weakness of the Japanese Economy
• Conclusion

Nature of the Ailment of Japanese Economy

Before we tackle Abenomics, it seems important to discuss the nature of the Japanese economic problem. The post-war performance of the Japanese economy was the envy of the world. The annual rate of Japanese GDP was 20% in the 1950s, 9.2% in the 1960s, 4.5% in the 1970s and 5.0% in the 1980. Then, suddenly, in the 1990s, it had free fall to 1.72%. Since the 1990s, the annual rate GDP was about 1%. Often Japan experienced minus growth of its GDP.

The fall of GDP growth of 5.0% in the 1980s to 1.72% in the 1990s was just incredible. How can one explain this? In the 1980s, the Japanese GDP was as much as 40% of the American GDP. This even alarmed the Americans. The Japanese was the number two economy in the world.

There can be many factors responsible for this, but, as far as I am concerned, the basic factor is the corruption of the leadership. It is my argument that the mega-inflation of asset price in the 1980s, the 1989 explosion of asset bubble, the failure of coping with the structural problems of the Japanese economy can be the key factors. But, these factors are attributable, in the first place, to the corruption of the leadership.

Corruption of Japanese Leadership

The Japanese economic miracle was the product of the Meiji model of tripartite cooperation among politicians, large corporation and bureaucrats. This model was adopted in the 1950s by Kishi Nobusuke who became prime minister for the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in 1957. This model was known as the “Golden Triangle” model.

Image on the right: Kishi Nobusuke (Licensed under the public domain)

This model was adopted also by Gen Park Chung-hee in the 1970s for Korea and it was behind the Han River miracle.

The dynamic of this model evolves from cooperation to collusion and finally to the establishment of “corruption community”. In this community, the core group is the oligarchy composed of large corporations, key political leaders and influential bureaucrats. The roles within the oligarchy vary. The large corporation is to fund the activities of the community and exert influence on key national policies to their advantage. The role of the politicians is to pass laws, regulations and other measures to accommodate the corporations’ needs. And, the role of the bureaucrats is to implement these policies.

In the corruption community, we find periphery groups who are linked to the core group and who benefit from the community activities which are often illegal or immoral.

The survival of the corruption community depends on media and the judiciary system. The role of the media is to produce propaganda for the community and hide the illegal and immoral activities. The function of the judiciary system is to punish dissidents on the one hand, and, on the other, overlook the wrong doings of the corruption community members.

The corruption community is a threat to the society, because it works for the promotion of the community’s self-interests at the expense of those of the people. The oligarchs seem to think that what is good for them is good for all.

In Japan, the oligarchs are composed of the far-right conservatives led by the Kishi Nobusuke-Shinzo Abe line of political and economic forces which have ruled Japan every year, except for five years, since 1957, the year when Kishi Nobusuke became prime minster for the LDP.

Kishi Nobusuke was one of most cruel and racist rulers of Manchuria in the 1930s. He was maternal side grand-father of Shinzo Abe. He was the right hand man of Tojo Hideki during WWII. He was A-class war criminal.

We see below a list of events which indicate the corruption of LDP members.

1948: Takeo Kurusu, former cabinet minister under Prime Minister Hitoshi Ashida (Democratic), was arrested along with other influential politicians for the bribes received from Showa Electric Company.

1962: Fumio Abe, former cabinet minister (LDP) (not related to Shinzo Abe), was arrested for giving secret information concerning the future direction of high way construction to an Iron & Steel Company Abe was treated with a dinner worth USD 6,000. In addition, he received USD 480,000. Abe denied all these and he resigned from his position

1964: Eisaku Sato, former prime minister (LDP), brother of Kishi Nobusuke, was involved in so many scandals that he was called “Black Mist”. LDP led by Sato extorted the business for money. The speaker of the Lower House was involved in the scandal of fraudulent bank drafts.

1976: Kakui Tanaka, former prime minster (LDP) was implicated in the scandal surrounding the purchase of airplane built by the American firm, Lockheed

1989: the Recruit Scandal: the Recruit was a company of labour recruit brokerage, real estate and other businesses. The company sold its stocks before going public to large number of politicians at low price amounting to USD 1.2 million allowing the politicians to make fortune by selling stocks at a very high price. This was hidden bribes given to the politicians. Two former prime ministers (LDP) were involved, namely Yasuhiro Nakasone (1982-1987) and Noboru Takeshita (1987-1989).

1989: Tajao Fujinami, former chief cabinet Secretary (LDP) was convicted for receiving 40 million Yen and unlisted stocks from Recruit Co.

1992:  Shin Kanemaru, LDP king maker was forced to resign from his Diet seat for relationship with known organized crime organization

1993: Shin Kanemura, former director general of the Japanese Defence Agency was arrested for receiving bribes from a construction company

1998: Yoichi Otsuki, former Ministry Finance (LDP) official, hanged himself with his necktie in his apartment after his apartment was searched.

1998: Shokei Arai, former LDP politician hanged himself in a Tokyo hotel after learning his imminent arrest for receiving bribes from a brokerage house

1999: Muneo Suzuki, vice-minister of the cabinet of Keizo Obuchi (LDP) put pressure on the Foreign Ministry to fund the Japanese-Russian Friendship. In 2002, he was arrested for receiving bribery from two Hokkaido companies

2001: Yukio Koshimori, former mayor of Okushiri was arrested for bribery, sentenced foe two year jail terms but sentence was  suspended

2003-2006: Tadahiro Ando, Goveronor Miysaki Prefecture was convicted for bid-rigging

2017: As many as 63 current employees of the Ministry of Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (LDP) secretly negotiated with university to assure their post-retirement university jobs.

2018: Okayama University opened the Veterinary School against any justifiable reason. It was argued that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe allowed, because the head of the University, Kotaro Kake was a close friend of the Prime Minister.

2019: Tsunekazu Takeda, former president of the Tokyo Olympics Committee chairman, resigned for being involved in the scandal of brine of USD 2.3 million given to African IOC members.

2019 December: Tsukasa Akimoto, LDP Diet member, was appointed by Shinzo Abe to lead the promotion of integrated resorts. He was indicted for receiving bribes from a Chinese gambling house. He was fined USD 33,610.

2020 January: Takamori Yoshikawa, former minister of agriculture (LDP) was indicted for taking bribes from egg producer.

2020 March: Masako Akagi, widow of former official of Ministry of Finance (LDP), Toshio Akagi, sued the government claiming that her husband killed himself after the Ministry officials forced him to falsify public document on the land deal scandal involving the former Prime Minster Shinzo Abe and his wife, Akie.

2020 May: Hiromu Kurokawa, head of Tokyo high prosecutor, close friend of Shinzo Abe, tried to change the regulation to extend the retirement age so that he could say longer in his office. But he could not do it, he had to step down after the revealing of his illegal gambling.

2020 June: Katsuyuki Kawai, former Justice Minster (LDP) and his  wife Anri distributed USD 280,000 to 94 Hiroshima local politicians during Anri’s campaign for upper house election on January 2019. Katsuyuki Kawai was imprisoned for three years.

2020 August: Three corporate executives were arrested for bribing witnesses at the trial of the former Lawmaker Tsukosa Akimoto indicted for receiving bribe of 3 million yen from a Chinese gambling house.

2021 February: 11 officials of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication were reprimanded for accepting expensive dinner, taxi tickets from a media company

2021: Isshu Sugawara, former Trade Minister (LDP), was indicted for bribing USD 4,800 to 33 organizations and 29 individuals. In 2021, in six months, there were four lawmakers who had to resign for bribery charges.

What you have seen above are cases of corruption which have been reported. It is more than possible that these cases are a just a tip of an immense iceberg of corruption.

There are other indicators of the corruption of the LDP. For instance, the political dynasty and LDP’s monopoly of power are additional indicators of corruption.

In Japan, family succession of politics is an integral part of the national political world. Since WWII, only 10% of Japanese prime ministers had no political background. No less than 45% of prime ministers inherited their seats from their fathers.

Japan is supposed to be a liberal democratic country. One of the basic conditions for a liberal democracy is the change of government in function of the quality of the government performance. It is a known political fact that there is a positive correlation between the extent of corruption and the longevity of the government in power.

It is so because, if the party keeps power for long, it is inevitable that the members of the governments become tempted to promote laws and regulations favourable to their personal or group interests at the expense of those of the people.

As of 2020, out of 75 years since 1945, the LDP has ruled Japan for 70 years. Under such situation, corruption is inevitable. Even in Canada, one of most authentic liberal democracies in the world, when the Liberal Party stayed in power for ten years, one could detect signs of corruption in Ottawa.

Is there any global indicator of corruption of the leadership? I think that the longevity of premiership is such indicator. In Japan, the occupants of prime minister change so frequently that the office of Prime Minister is called “revolving-door Prime Minister Office”.

Since 1946 until 2022, Japan had 34 prime ministers. Shinzo Abe was prime minster twice, 2006-2007 and 2012-2020. Shigeru Yoshida was also prime minister twice (1946-1947 and 1948-1954).

Of 34 prime ministers, only 13 could keep the premier job more than two years.

In total, only six prime ministers kept their job for more than 3 years: Shigeru Yoshida (6 years:1948-1954), Kishi Nobusuke (3 years:1957-1960), Hayato Ikeda (4 years:1960-1964), Eisaku Sato (8 years:1964-1972) Junichiro Koizumi (5years:2001-2006) and Shinzo Abe (8 years: 2012-2020).

These six prime ministers ruled Japan for 34 years. Hence, 28 prime ministers ruled Japan for only 36 years, which implies that these 28 prime ministers governed only 1.28 years.

There was even a prime minister who had the shameful reputation of being prime minister for only 65 days. It was Tanzan Ishibashi (December 23, 1956-February 25, 1952). There was also a prime minster for 69 days; it was Sosuke Uno (January 3, 1989 to August 10, 1989).

The interesting question is why. There can be several reasons for the revolving-door prime ministers’ office. But, the main reason is the involvement in various scandals involving bribes, influence peddling, illegal diffusion of government information, sex scandal, all sorts of kick-backs, illegal job appointments and many other illegal or immoral activities of the LDP politicians.

Another key factor of the short longevity of prime ministers is the in-fight among the faction within LDP.

In the LDP, there are seven factions: Seiwa, Taro Aso, Heisei, Kochikai (Kishida), Atarashi Nami (New Wave), Shigeru Ishida and Bancho Policy Analyse Institute.

Of these seven factions, the Seiwa faction is the oldest, the largest and the most powerful. It has been dominated by the family of Shinzo Abe. This faction was recently run by Hiroyaki Hosoda nominated by Shinzo Abe. Moreover, the Seiwa faction is the most far-right faction. The New Wave faction is also far-right faction but it is a minor faction.

In a way, the lifespan of prime minister in Japan depends also on which faction the prime minister belongs and how well he or she serves and promotes the faction’s interests. The promotion of the wellbeing of the ordinary Japanese people seems far from the main concerns of the Japanese politicians.

Shinzo Abe has been able to stay long time as prime minster because he belonged to the Seiwa faction.

The assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has shed additional light on the corruption culture in Japan. The close relations between the LDP and the Church of Unification (CU) began between Kishi Nobusuke, former prime minister, (LDP) and the CU founder, Sun-myung Moon, in the 1950s.

These relations were inherited by Shintaro Abe, former foreign minister (LDP) and by Shinzo Abe (former prime minster (LDP)). Kishi Nobusuke was maternal side grandfather of Shinzo Abe, while Shintaro Abe was Shinzo Abe’s father.

The close LDP-CU relation soon degenerated into corrupted collusion and complicity. The CU has provided funding and logistic support to LDP political activities, while LDP protected the wrong doings of the CU. As a result, the CU was allowed to register as Christian Church, while it is regarded by authentic Christian Church as a “Cult organization.”

As a result, the CU could expand extensively its members and its activities. It is reported that Japanese account for 70% of members of the CU. It is also reported that 80% of the wealth of the CU comes from Japan.

The influence of CU on Japanese politics appears substantial. For instance, many politicians could be members of the CU. Many LDP politicians admit having received s political support from the CU. More than 100 CU members are advisors of Japanese lawmakers.

One thing sure is that the LDP-CU collusion is not designed to promote the interests of the ordinary Japanese people. The collusion’s objectives is the promotion of the interests of LDP’s political and personal interests on the one hand and, on the other, the pursuit of spiritual and monetary interests of the CU. In short, the LDP-CU collusion is an integral part of the corruption culture in Japan.

There is another reason for the perpetuation of the corruption culture in Japan. It is the incompetence of opposition parties to take power by winning elections.

It appears that the Japanese people are not keen in electing opposition parties. Robert Whiting explains why:

“Perhaps one reason such corruption continues is that most people do not see a connection between their lives and the ruling class and so do not feel personally aggrieved by the massive theft of their national resources. They pay their taxes and have no ideas where their earnings are going. Or, may be, they know but they don’t want to think about it. Politicians in Japan operate in their own self-contained world apart from normal law abiding people-much like organized crime.” (Robert Whiting, July 20, 2020, robertwhiting.substack.com)

Whiting also suggests that the culture of “wa” (harmony) discourages whistleblowers.

He adds:

“Political contributions-mostly illicit sort-are essential lubricants of cooperative interactions in Japanese fractious power struggle. Political corruption is endemic in a system run by an oligarchy operated in a gift culture.”

In fact, it has been reported that a Japanese lawmaker spends as much USD 2 million in two years to buy votes. So, the voters vote the rich party and the LDP is rich.

To sum up, the corruption culture is so deep, so wide and so persistent that Japan is facing and will be facing quasi impossible challenge of freeing from the sickness of corruption.

Asset Bubble and Corruption

The primary cause of the ailment of the Japanese economy was the asset bubble of the 1980s. After three decades of phenomenal growth of the Japanese economy, 1980s was the decade where the oligarchs could enjoy the fruits of Japan’s economic success. As we saw above, the Japanese GDP reached 40% of American GDP and even threatened the economic hegemony of the U.S.

In the 1980s, money was plenty due to the global integration of finance, low interest rate, the access to the huge postal savings and the money generated by exports of goods and services.

The easy access to money led the oligarchs to pour money into speculative stocks and real estate. There were undoubtedly illegal and immoral transactions of assets by the oligarchs, but due to the complicity of the corrupted judicial system, these illegal or immoral activities could have been ignored or overlooked. This would have surely expanded and intensified the asset speculative activities and inflated the asset bubbles.

The outcome of the asset speculation had produced asset bubble never seen in modern time. For example, the value of stocks which had accounted for 60% of GDP in 1985 increased to 152% of GDP in 1989. In the period between 1985 and 1989, the Nikkei Stock index rose from 13,000  to 39,000.

Large corporations made quick money through “Zaitech.” In fact, almost 40% to 50% of the income of large corporations came from Zaitech activities.

The land value of the Imperial Palace was large enough to buy the entire land of the State of California. Between 1980 and 1989, the value of commercial buildings rose six times, while that of residential properties rose by four times.

As for the value of real estate, the value of Japanese real estate was four times of that of the U.S. despite the fact that the Japanese territory was mere 3.7% of that of the U.S.

I am just scandalized to learn that such insane thing could happen.  How in the world Japan could have let this happen? The simple answer to this question is clear enough. It was the short-sighted egoistic greed of the ruling oligarchs led by the LDP.

There is another disturbing question. It was obvious that the asset bubble would sooner or later bring a catastrophe. Then, why did somebody not warn the coming danger?

Surely, there were competent economists in Japan; surely there were asset market experts in the country of the rising sun. Why in the world, they did not speak up and warn the clearly foreseeable tragic outcome?

There are two possible answers. Either they kept silence because they became rich through asset speculation or they had no access to media to publicize their view. What had to come has happened.

In short, the asset bubble was the result of the oligarchs’ corruption culture.

The bubble was too large to be held; it had to explode. It did explode with thunder in 1989. This was what happened. Given the danger of skyrocketing asset bubble, the Bank of Japan jacked up the interest rate from 2% to 6% in 1989.

Well, that was it. The panic hit the entire Japan. The price of stocks in the Tokyo stock market fell by 60%. The real estate price had free fall of 80%.

The national policy designed to fight the bubble explosion was also very problematic, if not a complete failure. The obvious results of the bubble explosion were economic recession. Countless companies went bankrupt; the value of dwelling went below the due amount of mortgage debt; banks had to cope with bad loans. The fall of asset price was just too deep to recover.

Thus, the recession and even deflation was imminent. The Bank of Japan should have cut down the interest rate immediately, but it cut down the interest from 6% to 0% only in 1994. God knows why the Bank of Japan waited so long before reacting to the recession. It was too little too late.

The Japanese economy just could not come out of the deepening economic slowdown. The fundamental ailment of the post-bubble Japanese economy was something no country had experienced before; it required something bold as policies. But, Japan applied the usual economic policies comprising the fiscal policy and the monetary policy.

But, they did not work. Japan had to wait for the saviour. The saviour came in 2012 on back of the white horse with three arrows raped in the bag of Abenomics.

In Abenomics, the first arrow was the monetary policy; the second arrow, the fiscal policy; and the third arrow, the structural adjustment.

But, Abenomics failed for the simple reason that the policy relied almost exclusively on the expansion of money supply through traditional fiscal policy and monetary policy.

In fact, the money provided by public debt was as much as 250% of GDP. The money coming from the policy of Quantity Easing (QE) represented as much as 88% of GDP as of 2019.

The fiscal arrow flew too far and missed the target. The monetary arrow went too far and went to the wrong direction. The structural adjustment arrow even failed to leave the quiver.

The deluge of money was not able to revive corporate investments, exports of goods and services and domestic demand. You ask why?

The answer was that the ailment of the Japanese economy was not a problem of the shortage of money. The root of the problem were the structural problems.

Abenomics did not handle the deep structural malaise of the Japanese economy. True, on paper, third policy of the Abenomics was the policy of structural adjustment, but this policy went nowhere largely due to the corruption culture of the oligarchs.

The Structural Weakness of the Japanese Economy

There were major structural problems of the Japanese economy:

• Losing global competitiveness of major corporations,
• Increasing inequality of income distribution, and
• Decreasing active population.

In the period between 2005 and 2011, the fall of global market share of major corporations was as follows: Toyota, from 51% to 41%; Honda, from 39% to 29%; DRAME memory from 39% to 9%.

Moreover in the period between 2001 and 2011, the rate of profit of major corporations fell as follows: Mazda, from 4.3% to 2.8%; Toyota, from 9.9% to 2.0%; Honda, from 8.5% to 2.9%.

The dramatic loss of global competitiveness and profit of these major corporations was not cyclical, it was structural. The feasible explanation is the Zaitech, which allowed Japanese corporations to neglect investments in costly technology development and make quick money through asset speculation, especially commercial real estate speculation.

What Abenomics should have done was the liquidation of insolvent firms instead of bailing out them with money generated by the fiscal policy and the monetary policy. These companies were the Zombie companies; that is, good for nothing companies. It is most likely that these zombie companies were the friends of the corrupt oligarchs. It is also possible that the part of the bailout-money went into the personal pockets of the members of the corruption community.

The successful structural adjustment was the policy applied by President Kim Dae-jung of Korea during the financial crisis of 1997-1998. President Kim undertook bold structural adjustment of Chaebols which were responsible for the crisis. He liquidated a great number of insolvent Chaebols; he forced the Chaebols to specialize themselves and improve global competitiveness; he forced the Chaebols to be more transparent in accounting; he forced the Chaebols to stop circular financing.

As a result of this policy, Korea could pay back its debt to the IMF before debt maturity.

The widening income gap for decades between the rich and the poor was another structural disease of the Japanese economy.

This is partly due to interrelated neo-liberalism and corruption culture. The two most central parts of economic neoliberalism are the decreasing power of the government and limitless competition. To be competitive, the firm must save labour cost and material cost. To save labour cost, wage should not increase meaning decreasing workers’ income. To save material cost, cheap intermediate goods were imported leading to the decline of domestic production of these goods and this invites decrease of workers’ income.

On the other hand, limitless competition means decreasing number of surviving winners. The combination of all these factors invites unequal income distribution in favour of the rich. The government can make the income distribution more equal through transfer income and other income assistance programs. But, in Japan, the corruption culture prevented the government from adopting such policy.

As a result, as time went by, the income distribution was getting worse. That is, the domestic consumer demand which accounts more than 60% of the domestic demand was bound to fall.

One of the reasons for the failure of Abenomics was, precisely, the weak domestic consumer demand due to unequal income distribution in favour of the rich. In fact, the average income of ordinary Japanese people has been frozen and has fallen for decades.

True, a small part of the fiscal policy money and monetary policy money went to the ordinary people. But, the consumer did not spend on the purchase of goods and services; they saved for the uncertain future.

Another structural problem of the Japanese economy is the increasing number of the aged who now represent almost 30% of the population. This means decreasing number of working population. Remember that GDP is the number of working population multiplied by the worker’s production of goods and services.

The Japanese population will decrease from 126 million in 2019 to 100 million in 2050. Now, the aged population of 65 + increased from 17.4% in 2000 to 28% in 2019, while the active population of the age group of 15-64 fell from 67.5% to 59.3% in 2019

This change in the demographic structure of the population is shared by most of the developed countries. In these countries, the solution has been immigration. In average, in OECD countries, immigrants account for 12% of the population as against 1.6% in Japan. The government of Japan had tried to boost immigration of people, but, it has failed mainly because of the racism which has been also responsible for Japan’s imperialism in the past and at present.

The tradition of people’s submission to authorities and the popular priority given to stability and fear of changes can be another structural problem. Since the 1960s, the world seldom saw massive political protest movement against the government in Japan.

Moreover, even if they do, the government just ignore them. We saw this in 2021 during the Tokyo Summer Olympics. Almost 90% of the population were against or the postponement of the Games. But, the Suga government just ignored it. What was more incredible was the fact that the Japanese people did not go any further. This explains why LDP has kept the power for so long despite, the corruption of the oligarchs.

Conclusion

To sum up, the decade-long stagnation of the Japanese economy can be attributable to the loss of corporative global competitiveness, worsening income distribution leading to weakening domestic demand, the falling number of working population and the absence of organized protests against the wrong doings of the oligarchs These are all structural problems and the possibility to overcome them is low due to the corruption culture dominated by the oligarchs.

The government of Fumio Kishida may try to revive the economy. He many envisage means to solve the decades-long ailment of the Japanese economy through remilitarization. It may provide temporary stimuli to the economy, but in the long run, it cannot assure the sustained growth of the economy. What is even worse is the possibility that it will lead to wars and destroy the foundation of the economy.

Fumio Kishida may try to tackle some of the structural problems of the Japanese economy. In fact, he said that more equal distribution of income is needed for its recovery. But, this requires that he will survive as prime minister. We saw how vulnerable and unstable the position of prime minister is in Japan.

Kishida was appointed by Shinzo Abe because Abe could exert his influence on Japanese politics through Kishida. In other words, the probability of Kishida’s survival as prime minster depends on how much he can carry on economic policy set up by Abe.

Shinzo Abe and his friends of the oligarchy have avoided the needed structural adjustment, which would harm the interest of the oligarchy. Therefore, as long as Kishida continues Abe’s policy, he may remain as prime minister for a while. On the other hand, if he pursues a different direction from Abe’s policy, it is likely that he will be promptly replaced.

Under these conditions, the decades-long stagnation of the Japanese economy will continue.

But it is my hope that Kishida succeeds with his own economic policy and revive the Japanese economy not only for Japan but the world.

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Dr. Joseph H. Chung is professor of economics and member of the Research Center on Integration and Globalization (CEIM) of Quebec University in Montreal (UQAM). He is Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Featured image is from Oriental Review

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Against all odds, this afternoon, Tuesday August 2, 2022, Ms. Pelosi, Speaker of the US House of Representatives arrived in Taipei, capital of Taiwan – which is part of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). See this as reported by the NYT as BREAKING NEWS.

Ms. Pelosi is the highest ranking US official visiting Taiwan in 25 years.

Her visiting Taiwan happened despite the 2-hour phone conversation just a few days ago, between US President Biden and China’s President Xi Jinping. President Xi warned Biden: “Who plays with fire, will be burnt by fire.” Apparently to no avail.

What will be the consequences?

What is amazing though is the fact that China did not intervene in Ms. Nancy Pelosi’s visit. China could have scrambled a couple of military aircraft to guide Pelosi’s aircraft to a forced landing and then proceeding to arrest her. She entered Chinese territory without permission.

Source: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Facebook

In the US, an illegal entry could end up with imprisonment.

Remember when in December 2018, Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of Huawei, was detained in Canada, at the request of the US. Ms. Meng Wanzhou was under house arrest by the Canadian authorities and freed by Canada after three years.

Why did China not apply similar standards for Ms. Pelosi?

It would have been a peaceful, yet extremely embarrassing situation for the United States.

China could have jailed her, or alternatively, in a gesture of good will, sent her straight back to Washington.

In a UN Resolution, passed on 25 October 1971, the United Nations recognized the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as “the only legitimate representative of China to the United Nations” and removed “the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek” from the United Nations. Thus, recognizing that Taiwan was an integral part of the PRC.

Washington followed suit, recognizing the PRC as the sole representative of China following the Joint Communiqué of the United States of America and the People’s Republic of China, also known as the Shanghai Communiqué (1972) signed by  President Richard Nixon and Chairman Mao Zedong

Were there some behind the curtain arrangements between China and the US?

Or is this the first step to a much more serious escalation of a conflict that has been simmering and even flaring up ever-so-often?

Time will tell.

China being a peace-loving nation, it will be interesting to observe how this conflict will pan out.

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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 lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and 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 is a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.

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More than 130 U.S. Coast Guard members filed a class action lawsuit alleging the religious exemptions they filed in response to the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for military service members were unlawfully denied.

The lawsuit, filed July 25 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas —  Galveston Division, also challenges the constitutionality of the mandate.

The number of plaintiffs exceeds 130 and will likely end up surpassing 200, according to Dale Saran, one of the attorneys representing the service members.

The suit names four defendants: Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS); Linda L. Fagan, commandant of the Coast Guard; Lloyd Austin, secretary of the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) and Dr. Janet Woodcock, acting commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Plaintiffs are either active-duty or reserve members of the Coast Guard, and all “have sincerely held religious beliefs that prohibit them from receiving the COVID-19 vaccine.”

According to the complaint, under the August 24, 2021, DOD vaccine mandate, the military theoretically offers “medical, administrative, and Religious Accommodation Requests (RARs) to the mandate,” while the Coast Guard’s vaccine mandate, issued two days later, “incorporates the provisions of the DOD mandate.”

The suit alleges:

“In practice, only servicemembers with medical or administrative reasons for an exemption from the mandate are accommodated, and even those sparingly, while RARs are universally denied unless the requester is eligible for administrative separation – i.e. imminently leaving the Service.”

This “conclusively demonstrates that the Armed Services have systematically and willfully violated service members’ free exercise rights under RFRA [Religious Freedom Restoration Act] and the First Amendment,” the lawsuit states.

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British professor Orlando Figes, who specializes in Russian history, wrote that the 2008 Russian intervention in Georgia on the side of the breakaway enclaves of Abkhazia and South Ossetia had exposed American timidity and scuppered NATO membership hopes for Georgia. (Figes, The Story of Russia, (Metropolitan Books, 2022): 285-286.) Was there a lesson learned by the West?

In 2021-2022, Ukraine joining NATO was identified as a red line by Russia. US, Ukraine, and NATO paid scant heed to Russian security concerns and the outcome is the current fighting in Ukraine.

Putin had issued a warning in April 2021: “But if someone mistakes our good intentions for indifference or weakness and intends to burn or even blow up these bridges, they must know that Russia’s response will be asymmetrical, swift and tough.”

💬Vladimir #Putin: We really do not want to burn bridges.

But if someone mistakes our good intentions for indifference or weakness and intends to burn or even blow up these bridges, they must know that Russia's response will be asymmetrical, swift and tough. pic.twitter.com/6W8vkpGL0P

— MFA Russia 🇷🇺 (@mfa_russia) April 21, 2021

Across the Eurasian continent, China finds itself being provoked by the US’s oleaginous adherence to the One China policy to which it is a signatory. Beijing has in recent days warned of severe consequences to be borne by the US and separatists in Taiwan (there are vociferous protests in Taiwan against Pelosi’s visit) if US House speaker Nancy Pelosi were to land in Taiwan.

Nonetheless, Pelosi is now in Taiwan, saying her visit “honors America’s unwavering commitment to supporting Taiwan’s vibrant democracy.” Even NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman said that Pelosi was being “utterly reckless, dangerous and irresponsible.”

If the government in China ever still had any doubts (of course, they didn’t) about malicious American intentions, they have all evaporated now.

Chinese media has described the trip to Taiwan as American hypocrisy at its best.

Despite the trip being “utterly reckless, dangerous and irresponsible,” one has to hand it to the US that it was gutsy. The US didn’t back down. Pelosi did show up. But it required keeping her date, time, and place of arrival under wraps, and she was emboldened by the presence of accompanying US aircraft carriers.

Hung Hsiu-chu, former chairwoman of the Taiwanese political opposition Kuomintang, sees some in the US tolerating Pelosi’s risky move to test Beijing’s red lines.

Among the speculated actions that China might undertake are sending fighter planes into what Taiwan contends is its airspace and sending naval ships into waters that Taiwan lays claim to; and that “the PLA [People’s Liberation Army] will strike Taiwan military targets … and the mainland could also consider speeding up legislation for a national reunification law and even publish a timetable for reunification which will impose real pressure on the US and Taiwan authorities.”

As to when Beijing will respond, the Global Times noted, “The Chinese mainland really knows the importance of ‘strategic patience.’”

Joint maritime and air exercises by the PLA were announced by senior colonel Shi Yi, a spokesperson at the PLA Eastern Theater Command, that will surround Taiwan in five directions.

It is well known that Putin does not bluff. Now the question is whether the administration of Xi Jinping bluffs. The world is about to find out what China means when it warns of “serious consequences.”

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Kim Petersen is an independent writer and former co-editor of the Dissident Voice newsletter. He can be emailed at: kimohp at gmail.com. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Facebook

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A careful review of thousands of scientific studies and interviews with leading medical professionals and physicians allows us to construct a more honest perspective about our federal health agencies’ and the World Health Organization’s successes and failures in dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic.

In less than a month after the mRNA experimental vaccines were rolled out, medical professionals and clinical physicians started to voice their deep concerns and issue dire warnings. After serious vaccine associated injuries and deaths were reported in Norway and Germany, a number of skeptical doctors became fearful that mass vaccination campaigns would worsen the pandemic. Norwegian officials warned against vaccinating older patients with pre-existing illnesses. Opinions in the Israel National News stated that Pfizer used the nation as an experimental staging ground to roll out its Covid-19 vaccine; Israel was the first country to launch a nation-wide vaccination campaign. Consequently Israel was responsible for the most aggressive Covid-19 vaccination campaign, and medical experts were quick to observe that the risk of vaccine injury would be higher in people previously infected.

In the US, following the first month of vaccinating Americans en masse with Moderna’s and Pfizer’s experimental mRNA vaccines, over 29,000 adverse events requiring special medical assistance or hospitalization were reported.  Many critics of vaccination eagerly pointed out that these Covid-1i9 vaccine injuries had only been recorded in the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS). However, for over fifteen years, VAERS has come under considerable scrutiny as a horribly inadequate and failed system to accurately monitor actual serious adverse vaccination events. The actual number of injuries and deaths is likely 900 percent higher.

The Covid Vaccines Do Not Prevent SARS-2 Infection

After Moderna’s and Pfizer’s first clinical trial reports were prematurely announced to the media, one of the most repeated talking points was that the vaccines were 95 percent effective. Since the length of the mRNA vaccine trials were interrupted long before their scheduled completion in order to rush them through the FDA and other nations’ regulatory agencies for emergency use approval, the length of vaccine-derived immunity was never properly evaluated. Nor was it possible to make any reliable determination about the injections long-term safety profile. The federal government’s intended message was to persuade Americans that vaccination would protect one from SARS-2 infection. However it did not take long before government health departments started to report a rise in breakthrough cases. The vaccines were far less effective than people were led to believe. In Israel, tens of thousands of Israelis had tested positive within two weeks after receiving the first vaccine dose, and cases increased for those who received a second dose. Six months into the vaccination period there was still no certainty for how long immunity would last. Vaccinated persons were still required to wear masks and social distance. Ergo, what good were these vaccines?

The British Medical Journal’s associate editor Peter Doshi challenged the trustworthiness of the 95 percent efficacy figure, which was based solely on confirmed PCR tests. The decision to rely upon PCR testing to diagnose positive Covid infections was dubious from the start. PCR was not developed either to confirm or diagnostically identify a live viral infection.  What was not reported in Pfizer’s original press releases were the “suspected” and “unconfirmed” Covid-19 cases in both the vaccinated and placebo groups. After these cases are included into the final calculation, the Pfizer vaccine’s effectiveness nosedived to approximately 19 percent, far below the 50 percent threshold to authorize its emergency use, according to Doshi.  Evidently, Pfizer seemingly ignored the 3,410 unconfirmed Covid-19 cases from its original press release. Another red flag in Pfizer’s initial report was the exclusion of 371 trial participants from their efficacy analysis.  Pfizer failed to explain the rationale for excluding these individuals.

Screenshot from The BMJ

As the scientific evidence mounted against mRNA vaccines’ efficacy, even Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla had to backtrack on his company’s earlier claims. Since breakthrough cases with the Delta and Omicron variants among the fully vaccinated were escalating at an unprecedented rate, it became impossible to keep the lie alive without jeopardizing Pfizer’s credibility. Speaking at a healthcare conference hosted by JP Morgan, Bourla admitted that “two doses of the vaccine offers very limited protection, if any. Three doses with a booster offer reasonable protection against hospitalizations and deaths.”  Speaking on Fox News on July 12, Anthony Fauci also admitted that the Covid-19 vaccines “don’t protect overly well against infection.”

The steady increase of studies indicates the vaccines do not provide any robust and long-term protection.  Now that the speed of the virus’ mutation rate has increased, giving rise to completely new SARS strains, government health ministries and independent researchers are observing that despite higher vaccination compliance, mortality rates continue to rise dramatically. Recently in the Netherlands, Dutch research Dr. Andre Redert found no mortality reduction from mass vaccination.

Depending upon the individual’s health status and the strengths and weaknesses of his or her immune system, vaccine immunity can begin to wane rapidly after 3 months or earlier following vaccination. At best, immunity seems to last no longer than 5-6 months for the average person.

Nor did boosters improve matters. Nobody in the federal health agencies and drug industry cautioned at what point do repeated boosters create irreparable damage to the body’s immune system. If we anticipate the emergence of new SARS-2 mutations in the future, when will constant booster shots for every new variant cease? Fourteen months into Israel’s vaccination campaign, and being compelled to approve a fourth shot, medical experts advising the Israeli health ministry raised an alarm. As reported in the New York Times, the Israeli scientists noted “that too many shots might actually harm the body’s ability to fight Covid… [and] might cause a sort of immune system fatigue.” According to the scientists there is no evidence that more boosters can prevent Omicron infections.

Natural Immunity is Superior to Vaccine-Induced Immunity

In her article published in Lancet’s October 2020 issue, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky wrote, “there is no evidence or lasting protective immunity to SRS-CoV-2 following natural infection.” In May 2021, Dr Marty Makary at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine harshly criticized the poorly regulated vaccination roll out. The health agencies dismissed the fact that over a half of Americans had already developed some degree of natural immunity against coronavirus. In Makary’s opinion, this constitutes “one of the biggest failures of our current medical leadership.”  “There is more data on natural immunity,” Dr. Makary argued, “than there is on vaccinated immunity because natural immunity has been around longer.”

The containment of the spread of new SARS-2 variants worsens when our government officials and medical experts stand by their erroneous statements in order to push a false narrative about sufficient vaccine-immunity. Dr. Paul Alexander, an epidemiologist and former Covid-19 pandemic advisor to the World Health Organization and the US Department of Health and Human Services, has collated over 150 studies showing that natural acquired immunity is more robust and superior to the Covid-19 injections.

Therefore, this is no longer a debatable argument between two opposing sides comparing their respective supporting evidence.  There is no credible study to even suggest that the vaccines provide strong immunity. A Cleveland clinic study followed over 52,000 individuals for five months and concluded that unvaccinated persons who had been infected with the SARS-2 virus would likely not benefit from the vaccines. In December 2020, there was evidence that Covid infection was 99.9 percent effective in producing antibodies that might protect people from later infections.  This was data Senator Rand Paul presented before Congressional hearing. Bloomberg, which otherwise walks in lockstep with the CDC, reported a study indicating that natural immunity was 13 times greater than vaccine-induced immunity. When the Delta variant was ravaging Israel, the Maccabi Healthcare Services database, which enrolls 2.5 million Israelis, found that those previously infected with SARS-2 were much less likely than those who were vaccinated and never infected to contract the Delta variant, develop symptoms and be hospitalized with serious complications. A Washington University School of Medicine study suggests that natural immunity might last throughout one’s life for a notable percent of the population. Persons with low levels of neutralizing antibodies may still be protected from SARS-2 if they have robust T-cell immunity. On the other hand, the vaccines at best seem to provide no more than 6 months immunity.

A very fascinating and interesting study, which was never reported by the mainstream media, came from Cardiff University and the University of London. The researchers discovered a new type of senescent killer immune cell that was self-renewing that may explain why natural immunity can last far beyond the timeframe previously thought. Vaccination is unable to stimulate these new types of senescent T-cells.  As tens of billions of dollars continue to be spent on research, one lesson the pandemic has taught us is that the immunological and vaccine sciences know less about the body’s immune system than previously believed. Discoveries such as the Cardiff/London research are challenging the entire vaccination paradigm. And now we are witnessing this directly as massive vaccination campaigns to vaccinate entire populations are proving to be far less promising to stop any pandemic. In retrospect, if all of the dollars spent to develop experimental and poorly tested vaccines had been spent to effectively treat SARS-2 infections, millions of lives would have been saved and we would not be faced with a global scourge of vaccine injuries and deaths

Myths of Contagion

Perhaps the biggest scandal during widespread PCR testing of populations was how it was interpreted and portrayed to the public through a compromised media. Putting aside the gross misuse of PCR testing, a myth was created that anyone exposed to a person suspected of infection posed a danger to others. This myth generated an irrational paranoia among those who blindly embraced the government’s narrative.  There was no public reporting about the growing evidence of viral transmission that distinguishes symptomatic from asymptomatic infections. In a December 2020 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, symptomatic people infected someone else in the house 18 percent of the time. We can compare that with asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic cases who only infected someone else 0.7 percent of the time. This supports a Chinese study that followed 455 individuals who were exposed to asymptomatic infected carriers. None of the 455 persons tested positive after five days.

There may be several reasons for this surprising anomaly. Perhaps the most likely explanation is that none of the assumed carriers were actually infected. This would conform with the growing consensus that PCR testing is completely unacceptable for diagnosing active viral infection.

Concealing the Risks of Covid-19 Vaccines

Source: Health Impact News

Worries over the short and long term risks of the Covid-19 vaccines continue to mount. The educational nonprofit organization Physicians for Informed Consent focuses on statistical analysis of the available scientific literature of medical interventions. In a report released in early 2022 noted there is a lack of proven benefits for priortizing mass Covid-19 vaccination. Nor was there any consensus that the vaccines lessened mortality. Before the FDA approved Pfizer’s mRNA gene therapy shots for children 6 months and older, the organization warned about serious safety risks.  Their warnings went unheeded. Even the New York Times charged the CDC with withholding reams of data pertaining to the vaccines’ safety.

There remains no rationale for vaccinating children under 18. After the CDC analyzed test results from sites across the United States, the agency determined that the vaccine was only 60 percent effective two to four weeks after 12-16 year olds received a second dose. By the second month, the vaccines were only 20 percent effective and hit bottom at zero effectiveness around the fifth month. As we stated above, the mRNA vaccines confer no benefit to those who were previously infected and have natural immunity. In the FDA’s 66-page briefing document of Pfizer’s data, according to the CDC, by February 2022, over 74 percent of children and adolescents had serologic evidence of previous infection.

In the wake of rising vaccine injuries and deaths, government health ministries are making efforts to conceal their policies’ carnage. In Israel, leaked documents reveal that the Israeli government concealed crucial safety data from the public in order to approve childhood booster shots. A commissioned study of adverse events from Pfizer’s vaccine found that children in the 5-11 age group had twice as many injurious events as children in the 12-17 age group.

Last year, the Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency (PHMPT) requested the FDA turn over all of the Pfizer documents submitted to the agency for emergency use approval of its mRNA vaccine. The FDA failed to comply and the PHMPT subsequently sued.  A court order forced the FDA to publish all confidential documents.  Among the tens of thousands of pages of Pfizer trial data and documents the FDA is required to hand over during the remainder of the year, attorneys discovered an appendix listing 1,291 vaccine adverse effects. These include many life-threatening conditions based upon Pfizer’s own clinical research. Consequently, the company was fully aware of their mRNA vaccine’s potential catastrophic consequences to public health.

As of July 16, 2022, the European Union’s EudraVigilance database of suspected adverse drug reactions recorded over 46,600 deaths and 4.6 million injuries associated with the Covid-19 vaccines. Among the five vaccines approved in the EU, Pfizer’s vaccine accounts for nearly half of all injuries and deaths (44.3 percent).  We mention the EudraVigilance monitoring system because it is far more robust and transparent compared to the CDC’s VAERS, which has been plagued for decades with a lack of independent oversight.

Gradually, a clearer picture of the mRNA Covid-19 vaccine risks and their causes is emerging.

A Chinese study published in the journal Cell noted that many vaccinated persons show symptoms that mimic SARS-2 infections. These include alterations in recipients’ hemoglobin, coagulation profiles, electrolyte imbalances and renal functions.

In the UK, the British Health Security Agency has become so worried about on the ground facts that it has refused to publish further data on Covid cases, hospitalizations and deaths based upon a person’s vaccination status. The Agency earlier reported that persons who were triple vaccinated developed Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome. The double vaccinated were suffering from Antibody Dependent Enhancement.

Official data from the Canadian government shows that on average, triple vaccinated Canadians were losing as much as 75 percent of their immune system capability compared to the natural immune system of the unvaccinated. Data reveals that the fully vaccinated account for 9 in every 10 covid-19 cases, and 7 in every 10 hospitalizations and deaths across Canada. Consequently, the vaccinated are unable to fight other viruses, bacteria, and cancer.

Similar to the Canadian statistics, the New Zealand government reported a 74 percent loss of immune strength among those triple vaccinated.

In the CDC’s VAERS reporting system, among the vaccinated we find a 68,000 percent increase in strokes, 44,000 percent increase in heart attacks, 5,000 percent increase in life threatening injuries and a 6,800 percent increase in deaths.

While men have been shown to be at a higher risk of heart complications, women are being ravished with a rise in irregular menstrual conditions. A recent peer-reviewed study in the International Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics shows alarmingly high rates of irregular bleeding and menstrual changes after receiving Pfizer’s COVID-19 mRNA injection. The study included fully vaccinated women aged 18-50 with no history of gynecological comorbidities and abnormal menstruation. Following vaccination, twenty-three percent experienced irregular bleeding. In Israel, Dr. Yaffa Shir-Raz at the University of Haifa discovered that 90 percent of vaccinated women reported that their interrupted menstrual cycles were long term and worried they may be permanent.

Last autumn in the US, among adults aged between 25 and 40 years, there was an 84 percent in excess mortality. In the March 25, 2022 issue of the journal Pediatrics, two-thirds of vaccinated adolescents diagnosed with myopericarditis had persistent heart abnormalities months later their initial diagnosis. Despite this deep concern, the CDC continues to claim that heart inflammation from the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are “mild.”

Finally it should be noted that reports of miscarriages and fetal deaths among vaccinated pregnant women are rising exponentially. According to America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLDS), there has been nearly 2,000 percent increase in fetal deaths. In one round of documents the FDA has had to turn over, data shows that mRNA from Pfizer’s injection accumulates in the ovaries over time. After analyzing Pfizer’s own data, it became clear that 82% to 97% of the documented pregnancy outcomes resulted in fetal death. (The 15-point variation was dependent on the final outcome of those in the “outcome pending” category). Earlier in 2021, official UK data revealed that cases of ovarian cancer were at an all time high. The UK Medicine Regulator received over 40,000 reports relating to reproductive and menstrual disorders suspected as adverse reactions to the Covid-19 injections in 2021 alone.

Conclusion

A common pattern the nation has witnessed throughout the Covi-19 pandemic during the past two years has the government’s recourse to emergency powers, executive orders and threats against those who criticize or refuse to be obedient. This is not only notable in the US, but among all the western nations most aligned to the US.  Such measures for tackling national crises, in the absence of civil discourse and professional scientific debate is characteristic of authoritarian governments. Strong-arm dictates and draconian rules to destroy a population’s speech and freedom has always been a devious ploy to conceal the wrongful intentions of leaders and their minions who execute their harsh policies.

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Richard Gale is the Executive Producer of the Progressive Radio Network and a former Senior Research Analyst in the biotechnology and genomic industries.

Dr. Gary Null is 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

They are regular contributors to Global Research.

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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***

“Every day in communities across the United States, children and adolescents spend the majority of their waking hours in schools that have increasingly come to resemble places of detention more than places of learning.”—Investigative journalist Annette Fuentes

This is what it means to go back-to-school in America today.

Instead of making the schools safer, government officials are making them more authoritarian.

Instead of raising up a generation of civic-minded citizens with critical thinking skills, government officials are churning out compliant drones who know little to nothing about their history or their freedoms.

And instead of being taught the three R’s of education (reading, writing and arithmetic), young people are being drilled in the three I’s of life in the American police state: indoctrination, intimidation and intolerance.

From the moment a child enters one of the nation’s 98,000 public schools to the moment he or she graduates, they will be exposed to a steady diet of:

• draconian zero tolerance policies that criminalize childish behavior,
• overreaching anti-bullying statutes that criminalize speech,
• school resource officers (police) tasked with disciplining and/or arresting so-called “disorderly” students,
• standardized testing that emphasizes rote answers over critical thinking,
• politically correct mindsets that teach young people to censor themselves and those around them,
• and extensive biometric and surveillance systems that, coupled with the rest, acclimate young people to a world in which they have no freedom of thought, speech or movement.

Roped into the government’s profit-driven campaign to keep the nation “safe” from drugs, disease, and weapons, the schools have transformed themselves into quasi-prisons, complete with surveillance cameras, metal detectors, police patrols, zero tolerance policies, lock downs, drug sniffing dogs, strip searches and active shooter drills.

Young people in America are now first in line to be searched, surveilled, spied on, threatened, tied up, locked down, treated like criminals for non-criminal behavior, tasered and in some cases shot.

Students are not only punished for minor transgressions such as playing cops and robbers on the playground, bringing LEGOs to school, or having a food fight, but the punishments have become far more severe, shifting from detention and visits to the principal’s office into misdemeanor tickets, juvenile court, handcuffs, tasers and even prison terms.

Students have been suspended under school zero tolerance policies for bringing to school “look alike substances” such as oregano, breath mints, birth control pills and powdered sugar.

Look-alike weapons (toy guns—even Lego-sized ones, hand-drawn pictures of guns, pencils twirled in a “threatening” manner, imaginary bows and arrows, fingers positioned like guns) can also land a student in hot water, in some cases getting them expelled from school or charged with a crime.

Not even good deeds go unpunished.

One 13-year-old was given detention for exposing the school to “liability” by sharing his lunch with a hungry friend. A third grader was suspended for shaving her head in sympathy for a friend who had lost her hair to chemotherapy. And then there was the high school senior who was suspended for saying “bless you” after a fellow classmate sneezed.

Having police in the schools only adds to the danger.

Thanks to a combination of media hype, political pandering and financial incentives, the use of armed police officers (a.k.a. school resource officers) to patrol school hallways has risen dramatically in the years since the Columbine school shooting.

Indeed, the growing presence of police in the nation’s schools is resulting in greater police “involvement in routine discipline matters that principals and parents used to address without involvement from law enforcement officers.”

Funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, these school resource officers have become de facto wardens in elementary, middle and high schools, doling out their own brand of justice to the so-called “criminals” in their midst with the help of tasers, pepper spray, batons and brute force.

In the absence of school-appropriate guidelines, police are more and more “stepping in to deal with minor rulebreaking: sagging pants, disrespectful comments, brief physical skirmishes. What previously might have resulted in a detention or a visit to the principal’s office was replaced with excruciating pain and temporary blindness, often followed by a trip to the courthouse.”

Not even the younger, elementary school-aged kids are being spared these “hardening” tactics.

On any given day when school is in session, kids who “act up” in class are pinned facedown on the floor, locked in dark closets, tied up with straps, bungee cords and duct tape, handcuffed, leg shackled, tasered or otherwise restrained, immobilized or placed in solitary confinement in order to bring them under “control.”

In almost every case, these undeniably harsh methods are used to punish kids—some as young as 4 and 5 years old—for simply failing to follow directions or throwing tantrums.

Very rarely do the kids pose any credible danger to themselves or others.

Unbelievably, these tactics are all legal, at least when employed by school officials or school resource officers in the nation’s public schools.

This is what happens when you introduce police and police tactics into the schools.

Paradoxically, by the time you add in the lockdowns and active shooter drills, instead of making the schools safer, school officials have succeeded in creating an environment in which children are so traumatized that they suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, nightmares, anxiety, mistrust of adults in authority, as well as feelings of anger, depression, humiliation, despair and delusion.

For example, a middle school in Washington State went on lockdown after a student brought a toy gun to class. A Boston high school went into lockdown for four hours after a bullet was discovered in a classroom. A North Carolina elementary school locked down and called in police after a fifth grader reported seeing an unfamiliar man in the school (it turned out to be a parent).

Police officers at a Florida middle school carried out an active shooter drill in an effort to educate students about how to respond in the event of an actual shooting crisis. Two armed officers, guns loaded and drawn, burst into classrooms, terrorizing the students and placing the school into lockdown mode.

These police state tactics have not made the schools any safer.

The fallout has been what you’d expect, with the nation’s young people treated like hardened criminals: handcuffed, arrested, tasered, tackled and taught the painful lesson that the Constitution (especially the Fourth Amendment) doesn’t mean much in the American police state.

So what’s the answer, not only for the here-and-now—the children growing up in these quasi-prisons—but for the future of this country?

How do you convince a child who has been routinely handcuffed, shackled, tied down, locked up, and immobilized by government officials—all before he reaches the age of adulthood—that he has any rights at all, let alone the right to challenge wrongdoing, resist oppression and defend himself against injustice?

Most of all, how do you persuade a fellow American that the government works for him when, for most of his young life, he has been incarcerated in an institution that teaches young people to be obedient and compliant citizens who don’t talk back, don’t question and don’t challenge authority?

As we’ve seen with other issues, any significant reforms will have to start locally and trickle upwards.

For starters, parents need to be vocal, visible and organized and demand that school officials 1) adopt a policy of positive reinforcement in dealing with behavior issues; 2) minimize the presence in the schools of police officers and cease involving them in student discipline; and 3) insist that all behavioral issues be addressed first and foremost with a child’s parents, before any other disciplinary tactics are attempted.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, if we want to raise up a generation of freedom fighters who will actually operate with justice, fairness, accountability and equality towards each other and their government, we must start by running the schools like freedom forums.

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected].

Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

They are regular contributors to Global Research.

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***

Dr. Anthony Fauci’s recent comments on menstrual irregularities met with serious rebuttal from gynecologists, who say COVID-19 vaccines should not have been injected into pregnant women without adequate safety testing.

“Well, the menstrual thing is something that seems to be quite transient and temporary, that’s one of the points,” Fauci said in an appearance on Fox News on July 25, upon being asked about the effect of vaccines on menstrual cycles.

“We need to study it more,” Fauci added.

Fauci is the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and has been a frontman for COVID vaccine information in the United States.

Dr. Christiane Northrup MD, a former fellow in the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, remarked to The Epoch Times on Fauci’s comments:

“Unfortunately the menstrual problems we are seeing are far from transient and temporary. Many women have been bleeding daily or having heavy, irregular, painful periods for an entire year. And some of these are well past menopause. Something is way off here. ”

Dr. James Thorp is an extensively published 69-year-old physician MD board-certified in obstetrics and gynecology, as well as maternal-fetal medicine, who has been practicing obstetrics for over 42 years.

“The significant and dramatic changes in menstrual patterns occurring after COVID-19 vaccines should not be marginalized. It is indicative of major adverse effects on women of reproductive age. The stakeholders claimed that the vaccine would remain at the injection site in the deltoid muscle. This was misinformation. The lipid nanoparticles (LNP’s) are now known be distributed throughout the entire body and to be concentrated in the ovaries according by at least two studies. Schadlich and colleagues demonstrated concentration of the LNP’s in ovaries of different mouse species and Wistar rats, in vivo, in vitro and by sophisticated microscopic imaging in 2012,” he told The Epoch Times.

A lipid nanoparticle is an extremely small particle, a fat-soluble membrane that is the cargo of the messenger RNA.

Pfizer’s Internal Documents

Pfizer’s internal documents, obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, show a 118-fold increase in the concentration of LNPs from the time of injection to 48 hours.

“The LNP’s are known to include toxic substances including polyethylene glycol and pseudo-uridinated mRNA. The limited number of ovum in the ovaries (about 1 million) are exposed to potentially toxic substances and could potentially have catastrophic effects on human reproduction,” Thorp said.  

“The stakeholders claimed that the pseudo-uridinated mRNA could not be reverse transcribed into the human DNA. This was misinformation,” he added, referring to a Swedish study published in February 2022 that concluded that Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine is able to enter human liver cells and is converted into DNA.

Thorp and former Pfizer VP Michael Yeadon believe that the medical industrial complex had unequivocal evidence on the vaccine’s danger in pregnant women.

“This is proven not only by VAERS but also by Pfizer’s own internal document ‘Pfizer 5.3.6 post-marketing experience’” Thorp said.

Within the first 90 days of trials, there were 1,223 deaths, multiple severe adverse effects, and a 45 percent complication rate in pregnancy cases (274) that occurred in vaccinated mothers (124).

The 2012 study, mentioned by Thorp earlier, says that after testing with different mouse species and Wistar rats, “a high local accumulation of nanoparticles, nanocapsules and nanoemulsions in specific locations of the ovaries was found in all animals.”

Yeadon believes that the pharmaceutical industry “definitely knew,” since 2012, that the lipid nanoparticles would accumulate in the ovaries of women that took the vaccines.

“No one in the industry or in leading media could claim ‘they didn’t know about these risks to successful pregnancy,’” Yeadon told The Epoch Times in April.

Sidestepping Responsibility

Northrup fears that there could be much more data related to reproductive damage that hasn’t been discovered yet.

“The phrase ‘this requires more study’ whilst downplaying the current evidence of harm is a common way to discount the experience of thousands of women. Unfortunately, academic doctors do this all the time as a way to sidestep responsibility for the untoward effects of their treatments,” Northrup said.

“The female menstrual cycle is considered a vital sign as important as blood pressure and body temperature when it comes to health assessment. Our initial findings of bleeding and decidual cast shedding in women who have been exposed to those who have had the experimental injection suggest that what we’ve seen so far is just the tip of the iceberg. The reproductive effects of this shot could be far worse than we’ve been led to believe,” Northrup previously told The Epoch Times.

Tiffany Parotto, lead researcher of MyCycleStory, a survey that found many problems in women after they took the COVID vaccines, told The Epoch Times in May that she was distressed about the censorship and deletion of a Facebook group of about 21,000 members where women were talking about their menstrual irregularities.

Fauci’s office did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

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Enrico Trigoso is an Epoch Times reporter focusing on the NYC area.

Featured image is from Ghion Journal

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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***

For several months the nation of Sri Lanka has been imperiled with the looming threat of complete economic collapse as fuel, food and other commodity prices skyrocketed.

Former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa became the central focus of the youth-led democracy movement as the GotaGoGama encampment was established demanding the immediate resignation of Rajapaksa as president and the removal of his cabinet.

At its height the camp’s activism attracted tens of thousands of people demanding an end to the former administration. Eventually the presidential compound was overrun by angry protesters necessitating the removal of Rajapaksa as president.

These events have sparked a debate within the democracy movement on a possible shift in tactics and strategy.  Some felt that the growth of the GotaGoGama camp served its purpose in the removal of the ousted regime during July. At the same time, there are others who take a different view of the current situation recognizing that nothing has changed fundamentally for the majority of the people in Sri Lanka with the ascendancy of a career politician to the position of president.

Image on the right: Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe (Source: Countercurrents)

After the fleeing into exile of Rajapaksa, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe was appointed president by a majority within the Sri Lankan parliament. Although Rajapaksa fled due to political unrest, Wickremesinghe immediately imposed a state of emergency as a first step in plans to remove democracy movement demonstrators away from the central areas of the capital and the presidential residence which had been stormed in mid-July.

Some of the demonstrators occupying the camp said that they were attacked by a paramilitary grouping which were accompanied by soldiers. One activist from the Frontline Socialist Party, Pubudu Jagoda, told Al Jazeera: “Some in the military told us a group in civilian clothes arrived in a bus and put military uniforms on inside the bus before launching the attack.” There were allegations that some members of the paramilitary grouping were intoxicated.

In a recent analysis published by Al Jazeera it observes that:

“Vimukthi Dushantha, a convener of the Black Cap movement, says his group decided to leave the village to launch their next phase of the struggle, which he said was titled ‘Aragalaya 4.0’ after the Sinhala word for ‘struggle’. ‘Our main slogan at GotaGoGama was for Gotabya to leave. Now he is gone,’ he told Al Jazeera. ‘We believe the role of GotaGoGama as the centre of the protest is now over. The next phase of the protest should focus on introducing political, social and economic reforms.’”

The IMF and 21st Century Imperialism

The current government in Colombo is involved in negotiations with the Washington-based International Monetary Fund (IMF) in efforts to restructure existing debts. Such discussions absent of public interventions by trade unions, opposition parties and other important sectors of the working class and minorities will fail to address the critical issues looming behind the existing catastrophe.

Bailout packages supervised and coordinated by the IMF often result in even deeper hardships for the majority of the population in affected states. There is the forced downsizing of the civil service, including education workers, the privatization of publicly owned enterprises and the consequent heightening of political repression needed to enforce the dictates of Washington and Wall Street.

Western press reports on the developing situation in Sri Lanka frames the entire narrative on issues of corruption and lack of democratic practice. The debt crisis in Sri Lanka is largely due to the western financial institutions contrary to initial articles claiming that loans taken from the People’s Republic of China were at the core of the economic meltdown.

However, a review of the actual Sri Lankan debt by Ben Norton in an article reprinted in Monthly Review Online says of the present situation:

“Sri Lanka has a history of struggling with Western debt burdens, having gone through 16 ‘economic stabilization programs’ with the Washington-dominated International Monetary Fund (IMF). These structural adjustment programs clearly have not worked, given Sri Lanka’s economy has been managed by the IMF for many of the decades since it achieved independence from British colonialism in 1948. As of 2021, a staggering 81% of Sri Lanka’s foreign debt was owned by U.S. and European financial institutions, as well as Western allies Japan and India. This pales in comparison to the mere 10% owed to Beijing.”

In order of amount owed the following financial institutions have been listed: BlackRock (U.S.), Ashmore Group (Britain), Allianz (Germany), UBS (Switzerland), HSBC (Britain), JPMorgan Chase (U.S.) and Prudential (U.S.). The Asian Development Bank debt owed by Sri Lankan represents the U.S. penetration of regional financial markets since this institution is dominated by Wall Street interests.

In recent years, Sri Lankan economic policy has been dominated by neo-liberal approaches to foreign investments. If there is agreement between the IMF and the Wickremesinghe administration, it will represent the 17th attempt conducted by the global financial institutions in relation to this South Asian island-nation.

Wickremesinghe announced in his first speech on July 30, just ten days after he was elected by the parliament to serve out the remainder of Rajapaksa’s term of office, that an agreement over financial assistance from the IMF had been postponed until September. The new president claimed that as prime minister he had wanted to conclude the talks with the IMF in late May.

Nonetheless, Wickremesinghe said that the advent of 100-days of mass demonstrations and the GotaGoGama encampment was responsible for the failure to reach an accord with the IMF. He made an appeal for the members of parliament to unite in order to save the country from an even worse economic disaster.

The Political Character of the Opposition

Sri Lanka has a decades-long history of a diverse political landscape extending from the independence struggles of the 1930s and 1940s through the acquisition of independence and the establishment of self-government after 1948. Between 1948-1953, the government followed a pro-western trajectory until the conclusion of the Korean war when there was a decline in rubber production and the rapid rise in prices for staple foods such as rice.

A general strike in 1953 and the subsequent turn towards non-alignment and socialist orientation was embarked upon by Prime Minister S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike who was elected in 1956. Efforts to build national unity in the country among the various ethnic groups led to his assassination in 1959. The slain leader’s wife, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, later became the leader of the Sri Lankan Freedom Party (SLFP) and won the elections of 1960 becoming the world’s first woman prime minister.

Today there are organized parties within the opposition operating from various ideological perspectives from the right to the left. Some left parties have in recent years formed alliances within larger groupings within parliament, and consequently, among some youth, they have lost credibility.

In addition, there has been historically a weaponization of ethnicity by the majority Sinhalese population. The civil war which lasted from 1983 to 2009, was fought over the discrimination and persecution suffered by the minority Tamil community based in the north of the country. Sinhalese people are largely Buddhist in regard to their religious affiliations. The Tamils are a majority Hindu with some Christian adherents.

Over the last two decades there has also been the targeting of the Muslim minority population which followed a similar course as what has taken place in the western countries. The recent demonstrations during 2022, have been centered in the south of the island which is dominated by the Sinhalese. Other groups did join in the mass demonstrations as the crisis worsened.

In an extensive interview published by the London-based International Socialist Journal (ISJ) in June with Ahilan Kadirgamar, a senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Jaffna in Sri Lanka, provides an overview of the recent events inside the country. Kadirgamar is the Vice President of the Federation of University Teachers Association.

Kadirgamar highlighted the youthful character of the demonstrations which have occurred over the last few months. However, the organized working class entered the struggle with 1,000 unions participating in May Day actions.

According to Kadirgamar:

“[P]olitical parties are mobilizing their social bases. Both the main opposition party, Samagi Jana Balawegaya (United People’s Power), and the far-left Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP; People’s Liberation Front) have been organizing large protests in recent months. They are both preparing for elections in the future. But there is no clear leadership for the street protest movement, partly because it represents the coming together of different forces. The left today is mainly concentrated in the trade unions, because the ‘left’ political parties have been discredited by their affiliation with the Rajapaksas. These include the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (Sri Lanka Equal Society Party) and the Communist Party of Sri Lanka. There is a strong left among students, particularly around the Frontline Socialist Party, which split from the JVP about a decade ago. The students have always been militant, which is one of the reasons why Sri Lanka still has free education, and they recently organized a very serious protest that surrounded the prime minister’s house. Nonetheless, they lack demands and a clear path forward and have also failed to put forward the kind of program needed to end the crisis.”

Taking these factors into consideration, the Sri Lankan people must work out a political program that can unite the disparate forces which characterize the opposition to the eminent neo-liberal policies advocated by the existing regime. The struggle in Sri Lanka is by no means an isolate one since it is reflective of the overall world crisis of capitalism and imperialism in the third decade of the 21st century.

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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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The EU and the UK have slowed efforts to have Russia shut off from the most important maritime insurance market amid concerns that a full insurance ban would limit global oil supply and push oil prices even higher, the Financial Times reports, citing UK and EU officials.

The UK was set to join an EU insurance ban after the UK and the European Union agreed in May to jointly shut off Russia’s access to oil cargo insurance. Under those plans, Russia would be effectively shut out of more than 90% of the global oil shipment insurance market.

The insurance ban was to be a much bigger deal than the actual EU embargo on Russian oil imports, as it would cripple Russia’s ability to export crude anywhere in the world, analysts said at the time.

However, the UK has yet to introduce such restrictions on maritime insurance, FT notes. The UK participation with the scheme is crucial because London and the UK are home to many of the world’s biggest maritime insurers.

“There is no current UK ban affecting global shipments of Russian oil,” Patrick Davison, underwriting director of the Lloyd’s Market Association, told the FT.

The EU has also eased some of the initial insurance restrictions after saying ten days ago that

“With a view to avoid any potential negative consequences for food and energy security around the world, the EU decided to extend the exemption from the prohibition to engage in transactions with certain state-owned entities as regards transactions for agricultural products and the transport of oil to third countries.”

Thus, the EU effectively still allows transactions with Russia’s state oil firms if the transportation of oil is for third countries, that is, such outside the EU.

Concerns about soaring energy prices have prompted the United States to look to convince major oil importers, including Russia’s key buyers these days, China and India, to endorse a plan to cap the price of Russian oil they are buying. The G7 group of leading industrialized nations, led by the United States, is considering waiving the ban on insurance and all services enabling transportation of Russian oil if that oil is bought at or below a certain price, yet to be decided.

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Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. 

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Under a new law, Germans will be able to change their gender and first name without having to undergo any surgery once a year, every year if required.

Yes, really.

The Self-Determination Act will allow transgender, intersex, and non-binary people to change their gender at will merely by visiting a registry office and signing a piece of paper.

The need to submit a medical report or obtain expert opinion in court proceedings has been eliminated by the new legislation, which is expected to pass parliament before Bundestag members go on vacation.

“For the disabled, the law is humiliating. We will finally replace it with a modern law of self-determination. The Self-Determination Act will improve the lives of transgender people and recognize gender diversity,” said Family Minister Lisa Paus.

“In many areas, society is further ahead of legislation. As a government, we have decided to create a legal framework for an open, diverse and modern society,” she added.

The law officially codifies gender dysphoria, a mental illness, into being a fundamental right, with the condition having previously been treated (correctly) as a sickness.

“A moderate majority of Germans, 46 percent, approve of the government’s plans, while 41 percent of respondents reject the law, according to a representative survey by the YouGov Institute,” reports Remix News.

The only strong opposition to the new law comes from feminist groups who fear women are being erased and the right-wing AfD party.

According to the AfD’s Stephan Brandner, the law “has nothing to do with freedom but is an expression of blatant denial of reality. In biology, laws cannot simply be ignored.”

The CDU party also warned that the new law could lead to “arbitrariness,” while the FDP says it would make it easier for criminals to hide from the authorities or creditors by changing their name.

However, the legislation is expected to pass anyway, representing another full frontal assault on sanity and once again debunking the myth that the LGBT community is “marginalized,” when in fact it enjoys full state backing.

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