COP26: India Ends Up as Fall Guy
November 17th, 2021 by M. K. Bhadrakumar
Notre site en Français: mondialisation.ca
Nuestro sitio en español: GlobalizacionNovember 17th, 2021 by M. K. Bhadrakumar
November 17th, 2021 by Tom Clifford
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The most powerful leader since Mao. In reality, President Xi Jinping has less control than Mao Zedong but is more powerful as China was not the global economic titan it is today when the Great Helmsman died in 1976.
But Xi feels less comfortable than his status implies he should as he bids to be president for life.
The mountains are high and the emperor is far away is a saying in China that hints at how difficult it is to run a country of 1.4 billion people across 23 provinces, five autonomous regions, four municipalities and two special administrative regions. Then there are 3,000 prefecture and county level regions, and at least 40,000 township divisions. Consequently, local governments have long turned a blind eye to some Beijing diktats, a dynamic captured by a saying in Sun Tzu’s The Art of War: “A general in the field is not bound by the orders from his sovereign.”
China is top heavy. Public dissent is verboten, and officials hide problems and silence whistle-blowers.
Simply put there is often nothing to be gained by trying to correct a wrong. When Covid-19 first appeared in Wuhan, police targeted eight doctors who tried to warn the public. The city’s mayor later said he had to wait for Beijing’s instructions before releasing information on the outbreak.
The cult of personality, once believed dead and buried, has been resurrected. No, we are not on the verge of a new cultural revolution but we are in a time of cultural resolution.
To confirm this, the Chinese Communist Party endorsed a “historical resolution” this month, putting Xi behind Mao but ahead of Deng Xiaoping the man who “made modern China”. It says that Xi is core leader and his beliefs are bedrock doctrine.
Without mentioning names, previous leaders are dammed.
Before Xi took office, the resolution says, China’s “capacity to safeguard its national security was lacking’’.
Xi has expanded China’s global influence, the resolution adds, with no hint of irony but it warns that the party needs to remain vigilant to tackle dangers ahead.
“Constant retreat will only bring bullying from those who grab a yard if you give an inch,” says the resolution ignoring that, officially, China is on the metric system. But it sounds better than grab a meter if you give a centimeter. “Making concessions to get our way will only draw us into more humiliating straits,” it claims.
This will give Xi the type of unquestioned authority necessary to push his agenda through. The endorsement is only the third of its kind since the founding of the party – the first was passed by Mao in 1945 and the second by Deng Xiaoping in 1981. The question is why was it necessary?
China was the future once, now it seems the past is looming ahead.
The light-touch relative liberalism of the Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao eras are a distant memory. Dissent during their presidencies was allowed online and universities could debate democracy and constitutional change, even if discreetly.
Under Xi they resemble almost halcyon days. The genuine pride felt in China’s rising global status seems to have kept the middle class broadly in line but this is not a blank check. An economic downturn could change the equation.
Already property values are falling and the true cost of Evergrande and other failed developers has still to be factored in. And there is a sense that an opportunity has been lost. The international atmosphere has changed and China realizes it should have capitalized more in the goodwill it enjoyed globally up to about say four years ago. And the Taiwan issue has yet to be settled, from Beijing’s point of view.
This is a pivotal 12 months with a major party congress in October next year, when Xi will seek confirmation of his third unlimited term.
Both Jiang and Hu were forced to step down after two five-year terms each. This was meant to prevent the life-term power grab that Mao had enjoyed. Xi, in contrast, has made it clear that he intends to go for a third term and beyond. There seems little chance of home-grown political opposition derailing his plans. Xi has the army and presidency.
Xi, China’s first ruler for life since Mao, came to office extolling the virtues of the Chinese Dream. It is little mentioned today.
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November 17th, 2021 by Peoples Dispatch
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Israeli human rights group B’Tselem in a report on Sunday, November 14, stated that it has documented 451 instances of settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since the beginning of 2020. It claimed that in most of the cases, Israeli security forces did not intervene to stop the violence or protect the Palestinians. According to the report, in 66% of such settler attacks, the Israeli forces did not even report to the scene. In 170 attacks, Israeli forces were present on the scene but either did not intervene, or actively participated in the attacks, resulting in the deaths of five Palestinians and the arrest of 22 others. In only 13 attacks did the Israeli forces take action to “prevent the settler violence.”
According to the report,
“the state fully supports and assists these acts of violence, and its agents sometimes participate in them directly. As such, settler violence is a form of government policy, aided and abetted by official state authorities with their active participation. Settler attacks against Palestinians are a strategy employed by the Israeli apartheid regime, which seeks to advance and complete its misappropriation of more and more Palestinian land. When the violence occurs with permission and assistance from the Israeli authorities and under its auspices, it is state violence. The settlers are not defying the state; they are doing its bidding.”
Such acts of violence aimed at intimidating Palestinians constitute one of the two main ways that Israel confiscates and annexes Palestinian land, the other being with the help of the judicial system to officially misappropriate and take over Palestinian property.
The report includes several instances of settler violence to show how the illegal Israeli settlers and the Israeli state work hand-in-hand to execute this systematic “massive takeover” of Palestinian land. One of the cases cited involved the Ma’on farm, an illegal outpost erected in the southern West Bank on about one square mile of land. As per the report, settlers here have regularly attacked and harassed Palestinians in the area who used to historically use the land for pasture. This ultimately resulted in the confiscation of the land by the Israeli state. The farm now illegally occupies about 264 hectares (652 acres) of land and also now has an additional sub-post.
According to B’Tselem, violent attacks by settlers against Palestinians have seen an uptick in recent months, especially during the olive harvesting season in the months of October and November. The livelihood of approximately 80,000-100,000 Palestinian families is dependent on olive harvesting. Moayyad Besharat, programs and project manager at the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, added that the olive harvest this season has been the toughest in recent memory.
Ghassan Daghlas, who monitors settler violence in the northern West Bank, said that these attacks are “planned and not spontaneous.” While such settler attacks have been documented in books, research reports and documentaries, little or no action has been taken by the Israeli authorities against the settlers, says the report. It states that “Israel’s inaction continues after settler attacks on Palestinians have taken place, with enforcement authorities doing their utmost to avoid responding to these incidents. Complaints are difficult to file, and in the very few cases in which investigations are in fact opened, the system quickly whitewashes them. Indictments are hardly ever filed against settlers who harm Palestinians and when they do, usually cite minor offenses, with token penalties to match in the rare instance of a conviction.”
The report emphasizes that settlers act as a proxy of the state and inaction by the authorities encourages such violence. B’Tselem said that “state violence – official and otherwise – is part and parcel of Israel’s apartheid regime, which aims to create a Jewish-only space between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.”
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Featured image: Israeli settlers have been accused of repeatedly setting fire to Burin’s olive groves, such as here in 2017. (Photo: MEE/Muna Asous)
November 17th, 2021 by Abayomi Azikiwe
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Another annual international conference on the climate crisis ended on November 13 in Glasgow, Scotland where a contentious debate over the final document revealed fundamental differences on key issues.
Officially labeled as the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26), the event was attended by representatives of approximately 200 countries and territories.
Undoubtedly, the broad character of the summit which included representatives from government delegations alongside Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO) and independent mass groupings, constrained the ability to pass sweeping resolutions in favor of radical programs for addressing the climate crisis. For example, references to the phasing out of coal production and usage was altered to eliminate any real commitment to shift to more environmentally safe energy sources.
A proposal for the payment of loss and damages to lesser developed countries was removed even from the draft document. The final resolutions made no mention of compensating the former colonial territories for the impact of centuries of mineral extraction, the dislocation of populations and the western demand for cheap labor and control over waterways.
The United States, which was represented by former U.S. Senator John Kerry, was involved in the negotiations over the final document. Although Kerry’s comments appeared to have expressed empathy for poor countries, the actual decisions made in Glasgow were devoid of basic concerns expressed by the peoples of Africa, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean.
Moreover, tens of thousands of youth staged demonstrations outside the conference hall over the two weeks duration of the summit. The main criticism levelled at the COP26 was that it was just another talking session which shied away from making the decisions necessary to mitigate and reverse the process of environmental degradation.
Developments over the last several years have been devastating for the peoples of the Global South and indeed throughout the world. Flooding, severe storms and drought have plagued people internationally. These environmental problems have been worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic making the distribution more difficult of medicines, including vaccines, to population groups which are not easily accessible by modern transportation.
There were 40,000 delegates to the COP26 gathering yet only a small number were actually allowed to enter the area where the serious discussions were held among participants representing their governments. Assessments of the outcome of the summit will be ongoing. However, there were divergent views on the impact and effectiveness of the gathering. (See this)
The Scientific American magazine wrote in an analysis of the event emphasizing that:
“The final 11-page document, called the Glasgow Climate Pact, says that greenhouse gas emissions must fall by 45% from 2010 levels by 2030 for global warming to be maintained at 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels. It notes that, under existing emissions reduction pledges, emissions will be nearly 14% higher than in 2010 by 2030. Countries acknowledged the need to reduce emissions faster, and also agreed to report on progress annually. For the first time in a COP text, nations agreed to begin reducing coal-fired power (without carbon capture) and to start to eliminate subsidies on other fossil fuels.”
China and U.S. Announce Agreement During Summit
During the course of the summit, it was announced that China and the U.S. had agreed to work together on the reduction of carbon and methane greenhouse emissions. The current worsening relationship between Beijing and Washington was reflected in the statements made by those representing the administration of President Joe Biden.
The Chinese reaffirmed that the developing countries could not make the transition to green energy sources and production in light of the economic costs involved. China supported the demands for the payments by the western capitalist states for loss and damages to the developing regions of the world.
According to China Daily newspaper: “Both countries have agreed to cooperate on the implementation of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement on the development of international markets for carbon offsetting. This could help the development of clear international standards to promote the effective functioning of carbon markets, including the voluntary purchase of offsets by companies, which could mobilize billions of dollars of investment in developing countries. The two major powers have also agreed to communicate new nationally determined contributions to the Paris Agreement in 2025 with targets for 2035. However, given the shortfall in planned emissions reductions in relation to the 1.5 C target, the world needs revised and more ambitious nationally determined contributions from all countries well before 2025.”
Who Is Responsible for Climate Change?
Critics of the COP26 summit denounced the event for being the most exclusionary in its history. This was due in part to the lack of vaccine availability and adequate economic resources to facilitate the travel by peoples from the Global South.
Middle East Eye (MEE) website noted that there are 20 corporations which are behind a third of all carbon emissions between 1965-2017. The news agency emphasized that the blaming of China and India for the deteriorating climate situation overlooks the role of fossil fuels and the demand for this energy resource.
An important liberation movement in North Africa, the Polisario Front, which has fought a decades-long struggle against Spain and now Morocco for its independence, complained that they were excluded from many of the critical deliberations at the summit. The Polisario Front is the major political force within the provisional government of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) that is represented at both the United Nations and the African Union (AU).
MEE describes the situation related to the Saharawi by noting:
“Sidi Breika, a representative for Polisario, the Western Sahara independence movement, told MEE the UN’s climate summit ‘endorses illegal occupation via climate injustice and people’s exclusion from adequate participation and subsequent funding in order to tackle climate change’. Breika, who was in Glasgow, believes the summit was representative of the fact that the international community favors Polisario’s enemy, Morocco. ‘Our exclusion from global climate governance and finance mechanisms means the Sahrawis are denied access to technical and financial support to address climate change, contrary to principles of equity and inclusion.’”
Another major aspect of the rising temperature of the planet is the role of the Pentagon as a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. Several studies have been published documenting that the U.S. military is the planet’s largest polluter. With the escalation of its military presence in the Asia-Pacific region in confrontation with China as well as the numerous military bases and direct occupations throughout Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Latin America, this situation is unlikely to change without a radical departure from the imperialist projects dominating Washington’s foreign policy.
Interestingly enough, the Pentagon was not represented in the U.S. delegation to the COP26 summit in Glasgow. Although there has been much rhetoric from the Defense Department equating the rapidly evolving crisis of climate change as being a threat on the level with the People’s Republic of China, military officials were not requested to attend the gathering. By keeping the Pentagon away from Scotland, the U.S. is attempting to obscure the role of its security apparatus which is endangering the planet. (See this)
Science Daily in 2019 reported on independent research conducted by two universities in the United Kingdom which evaluated the Pentagon’s massive polluting impact. The summary of the study says:
“The U.S. military’s carbon footprint is enormous and must be confronted in order to have a substantial effect on battling global warming, experts argue. Research by social scientists from Durham University and Lancaster University shows the U.S. military is one of the largest climate polluters in history, consuming more liquid fuels and emitting more CO2e (carbon-dioxide equivalent) than most countries…. In 2017 alone, the U.S. military purchased about 269,230 barrels of oil a day and emitted more than 25,000 kt- CO2e by burning those fuels. In 2017 alone, the Air Force purchased $4.9 billion worth of fuel and the Navy $2.8 billion, followed by the Army at $947 million and Marines at $36 million.”
Any serious program aimed at curtailing the most devastating effects of climate change will require a political confrontation with the Pentagon. This is where the struggle against imperialism, unjust wars and the existing international division of labor and economic power converge. The abolition of the ongoing threats of imperialist war combined with the reorganization of the extraction and distribution of energy resources will require a global movement whose mission will be to bring environmental justice and peace to the world.
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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of the Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Featured image: COP26 delegates in Glasgow (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)
November 17th, 2021 by Dr. Joseph Mercola
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Major health organizations across the world have changed several definitions of medical terms, including the definitions for “vaccine,” “herd immunity” and “pandemic,” which in turn have a significant impact on everyday life. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now considering changing the definition of “fully vaccinated”
Israel and Australia have already pushed back the goal post. Citizens must get a booster at six months after their second jab or lose all “passport freedoms.” Australian premier Daniel Andrews has actually stated that, going forward, life for the vaccinated will “be about the maintenance of your vaccination status”
Updating the definition of “fully vaccinated” will also have the side effect of skewing mortality statistics, giving government another round of ammunition for false claims. We’ve been repeatedly told that we’re now in a pandemic of the unvaccinated, and this lie will gain new traction once fully vaccinated people are dropped into the unvaccinated category, six months after their last dose
The National Basketball Association is urging players who got a single-dose Janssen shot as recently as two months ago to get a Pfizer or Moderna booster, or face game-day testing starting December 1, 2021. Players who completed a two-dose regimen are being told to get a booster at the six-month mark
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is already talking about expanding its COVID-19 vaccine rule, so that small businesses with fewer than 100 employees may also be required to force the jab on their employees or face stiff fines. The public comment period closes December 6, 2021
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In recent years, and especially after the start of the COVID pandemic in 2020, major health organizations across the world have changed several definitions of medical terms, which in turn have a significant impact on everyday life. In fact, were it not for the World Health Organization changing its definition of “pandemic” back in 2009, we wouldn’t even be in this mess.
Like the swine flu before it, SARS-CoV-2 would not have qualified as a pandemic were it not for the WHO erasing a few key words from the definition. Pre-2009, the official definition of a pandemic was:1,2
“… when a new influenza virus appears against which the human population has no immunity, resulting in several, simultaneous epidemics worldwide with enormous numbers of deaths and illness.”
Then, in 2009, the WHO removed the severity and high mortality criteria (“enormous numbers of deaths and illness”), leaving the definition of a pandemic as “a worldwide epidemic of a disease.”3
By removing the restrictive criteria of severe illness causing high morbidity and leaving geographically widespread infection as the only criteria for a pandemic, the WHO has the ability to declare a pandemic any time there’s more cases of a given disease than normal.
Having this ability is of crucial importance, seeing how the WHO has played a central role in the technocratic takeover we’re now facing. The WHO has emergency powers over its 194 member countries, so when the WHO declares an international public health incident, all member states are required to follow along “in lock step” with the WHO’s directives.
Were it not for the WHO, nations would respond to any given outbreak in any number of ways. Trying to influence them to respond in ways that benefit the technocracy would be like herding cats. Without lockstep coordination between all the world’s nations, using a biosafety narrative to control people and shift wealth distribution on a global scale simply would not be feasible.
But there’s also an even greater and more long-lasting implication for society. By redefining what certain words and terms mean, the rising biosecurity state is attempting to change your perception of what’s true and what is false. In the process, they’re perverting science into something ruled by faith, speculation and biased opinion. The dangers of that are incalculable.
What Is a ‘Vaccine’?
In September 2021, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shocked medical experts by changing the definition of a vaccine from “a product that produces immunity therefore protecting the body from the disease,”4 to “a preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases.”5
The key change is that a “vaccine” no longer produces immunity, so it no longer protects you against the disease. It only stimulates an immune response against a given disease. This definition was obviously contrived to describe the limited function of the COVID-19 gene therapy injections, which do not make you immune and can’t prevent you from getting or spreading the infection.
By any definition of a vaccine in use before 2021, the COVID shot is not a vaccine. At best, the shot will reduce your symptoms. This also means they cannot, ever, produce herd immunity. This despite the redefinition of herd immunity, from being something produced as a result of natural infection, to something resulting from mass-vaccination.
The WHO changed their definition of herd immunity in October 2020, likely in anticipation of the global mass vaccination campaign. To reiterate, in the past, herd immunity meant when enough people had acquired immunity to an infectious disease, such that the disease could no longer spread widely in the community.
Before science introduced vaccinations, herd immunity was achieved by exposure to and recovery from normal exposures to an infectious disease. Courtesy of the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, before October 2020, the WHO’s definition of herd immunity included both vaccine immunity and “immunity developed through previous infection.”6
However, in October 2020, the updated definition dropped natural immunity altogether. The current definition now reads as follows:7
“‘Herd immunity’, also known as ‘population immunity’, is a concept used for vaccination, in which a population can be protected from a certain virus if a threshold of vaccination is reached.”
Adding insult to injury, they also specify that “Herd immunity is achieved by protecting people from a virus, not by exposing them to it.” This totally ignores the billions of people throughout history who have been infected naturally with measles, mumps, chicken pox and other infectious diseases, and who now have lifelong immunity to those diseases thanks to their natural infection, as opposed to vaccines that wane and need regular boosters.
Definition of ‘Fully Vaccinated’ May Soon Be Rewritten
Speaking of boosters, the rollout of COVID jab boosters means the CDC will most likely rewrite the definition of “fully vaccinated” as well. As reported by Axios, October 22, 2021:8
“Currently, the CDC’s definition is the following: ‘Fully vaccinated persons are those who are ≥14 days post-completion of the primary series of an FDA-authorized COVID-19 vaccine’ … ‘We may need to update our definition of ‘fully vaccinated’ in the future,’ [CDC director Rochelle] Walensky said during a press briefing.”
It’s not complicated to understand what such a redefinition will mean. It means that anyone who has received the initial single- or double-dose of COVID “vaccine” will magically be considered unvaccinated again once a certain amount of time has elapsed. As noted by The Atlantic,9 the term “fully vaccinated,” if redefined, will lose its meaning.
Not surprisingly, the CDC director’s comments are a complete reversal of her position in late September 2021. According to The Epoch Times, at that time she said officials were not considering changing the definition of “fully vaccinated.”10
Just one month later, at the end of October 2021, The Epoch Times reported Walensky was now suggesting that the definition “may change as boosters become more commonplace.” Coincidentally, just five days after that, the CDC announced their recommendations for a booster shot for everyone, even suggesting a fourth dose for certain immunocompromised individuals.11
How Is Segregation Even Remotely Acceptable?
The redefinition of “fully vaccinated” will be a means to enforce never-ending booster shots, as your vaccine pass will expire at a certain time after each dose and, with it, all of your so-called “freedoms.” It’s quite clear that the whole idea behind vaccine passports is to create segregation.
We’re seeing this in Australia and a number of other countries, where unvaccinated individuals are being excluded from economic and social activities.12,13 Australian premier Daniel Andrews has actually stated that, going forward, life for the vaccinated will “be about the maintenance of your vaccination status.” Can you believe it? That’s what “life” has been reduced to now. Maintaining your vaccination status.
We’re seeing the same scenario play out in Israel too, where vaccine passports expire six months after the second COVID dose. If you refuse to get the next dose, you’re shunned from society like everyone who refused from the get-go.
In Australia, individuals are even facing arrest if they don’t take the booster shots when required. It’s mindboggling to consider that all of this is happening because of an illness that has killed just .012% of the population and 1% of those infected.14,15 And the reason it can happen at all is because certain word definitions have been unscientifically manipulated and altered to support their heinous actions.
New Definitions Will Skew Mortality Statistics Too
Updating the definition of “fully vaccinated” will also have the side effect of skewing mortality statistics, giving government another round of ammunition for false claims.
We’ve been repeatedly told that we’re now in a pandemic of the unvaccinated, and this lie will gain new traction once fully vaccinated people are dropped into the unvaccinated category, six months after their last dose.
We’re already seeing this narrative roll out in Israel. As reported by The Wall Street Journal,16“unvaccinated Israelis have made up the bulk of those severely ill” in recent days. However, it also states that officials attribute this to the fact that over 2 million people have gotten the third booster shot. This implies that far from being completely unvaccinated, some of those counted as “unvaccinated” may actually only be lacking the third booster:
“‘The most vulnerable group right now are those people who have been inoculated with two doses and not the third,’ Mr. Bennett said in a cabinet meeting last week, adding that they behaved as if they were fully protected, but weren’t.”
In the video below, Dr. Vladimir Zelenko testifies before the rabbinic court in Israel about the side effects being seen following the COVID-19 shot and the success he’s had in treating his patients with simple nutraceuticals and off-patent drugs. Despite his testimony and their own data, health officials in Israel are still pushing everyone to get a booster shot.
NBA Players Face New Booster Rules
In the U.S., the National Basketball Association (NBA) is now urging players who got a single-dose Janssen shot as recently as two months ago to get a Pfizer or Moderna booster, or face game-day testing starting December 1, 2021.17 Players who completed a two-dose regimen are being told to get a booster at the six-month mark.
It was obvious that this would happen, but I think many were naively thinking that if they just comply with the initial round of jabs, life would go back to normal. Just get fully vaccinated and you’re done. The fact that nothing is going back to normal should be a wakeup call that the initial understanding of the consequences of these regulations was wildly incorrect.
The shots are not about eliminating COVID-19. They’re part of a system for mass control. Ultimately, this system will enslave everyone in it, as opting out means forgoing any possibility of making a living, getting an education, buying anything or going anywhere. The truth of this will become painfully apparent once digital vaccine passports are tied to a new digital central bank currency.
Already, the government in Australia is confiscating people’s bank accounts and canceling their driver’s licenses to recover COVID fines. They’re also canceling unemployment benefits and shutting down bank accounts until people get the jab.18 Such actions can be automated once banking is tied to a digital health pass.
Perhaps now more people will start to realize that there will be no end to the number of times they’ll be required to acquiesce to medical experimentation. And let’s not forget, each time you get the jab, you face the potential of side effects that can disable you for life, or kill you outright. To force experiment on military personnel, athletes, pregnant women and children is truly incomprehensible. In response to the NBA’s new rule, sports commentator Clay Travis tweeted:19
“Wake up, sheep. The NBA is already mandating the vaccine booster now. This won’t ever end, we [are] going to make 100% healthy people get COVID shots every six months for the rest of their lives?”
Along the same vein, Inner Sports founder Garret Kramer tweeted, “On what planet do we continue to mandate drugs for people who are not sick? Say NO.” Golf champion Steve Flesch also chimed in, saying “This world and league is getting more asinine by the day.”20
We Must Unite Against Tyranny
DeSantis: “Those individuals who have gone through a normal vaccination series for COVID—you will be determined to be unvaccinated very soon…They’re gonna to tell you: ‘You have to get a booster, otherwise you could face loss of employment’…This is just the tip of the iceberg.” pic.twitter.com/hGe5t4YJ8O
— Michael P Senger (@MichaelPSenger) November 5, 2021
As noted by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis during a recent press conference, in which he spoke out against the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s requirement — imposed at the behest of the Biden administration — that businesses with 100 employees or more must require all staff to get the jab:
“To be clear about what OSHA is doing — they’re clearly not doing science, because they reject immunity through prior infection, they reject the Israel study … that shows people who have recovered from COVID have strong protection …
Make no mistake about it, those individuals who have gone through a normal vaccination series for COVID, you will be determined to be unvaccinated very soon. They will do that.
They’re going to tell you, ‘You’re unvaccinated and you have to get a booster, otherwise you could face loss of employment. That is going to happen … So, this is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s going to get more restrictive. There’s going to be more power brought to bear going forward if we don’t stand up now.”
As I predicted, OSHA is already talking about expanding the COVID-19 vaccine rule to small businesses of 100 employees or less as well. NTD reported, November 5, 2021:21
“The emergency temporary standard, issued by the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and scheduled to go into effect on Friday, is presented as only applying to firms that have 100 or more employees. But OSHA is seeking public comments on that aspect of the standard, and it may be ultimately expanded to include smaller businesses, the agency said in the 490-page document.22
OSHA said it is ‘soliciting stakeholder comment and additional information to determine whether to adjust the scope of the ETS,’ or emergency standard, ‘to address smaller employers in the future.’”
Forcing even small businesses, which would probably include the self-employed, would be an unmitigated disaster for the U.S. economy. But, of course, that is the goal, so there’s every reason to assume the rule will be expanded unless the pushback is deemed too overwhelming. The open comment period closes December 6, 2021. As of this writing, more than 3,100 comments have been submitted. You can submit your comment here.
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Featured image is from TrialSiteNews
November 17th, 2021 by Joel S. Hirschhorn
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CDC once was a federal agency that nearly everyone respected. That no longer is the case. Now there are many reasons why CDC should be widely disrespected. Its latest debacle is how it changed the definition of vaccine.
Just imagine this: The entire push for COVID “vaccines” was based on a lie – they did not meet the official CDC definition of a vaccine. By doing this the government could coerce the entire population to get the shot. Calling them “vaccines” was the biggest lie from Fauci and the key to drug companies making many billions of dollars.
Why would the government’s key public health agency change the definition of what a vaccine is in the midst of a pandemic? After millions of Americans have taken the shot? And millions more are being beaten into taking it for the first time and others to get booster shots.
Words matter
Here is the key point. It became widely recognized by medical experts and informed citizens that COVID vaccines clearly did not fit the official CDC vaccine definition. CDC thought the answer was not to fix what was deficient with the COVID vaccines or stop their use by most people as so many medical experts advised. Their response was to change the vaccine definition to fit the so-called vaccines.
This was done so that vaccine mandates could keep getting pushed by the government. Of course, the COVID “vaccines” should be referred to as gene therapy products, even better than calling them experimental vaccines.
To see how corrupt this action by CDC was, it is necessary to examine the details of the vaccine definition debacle.
Prior to September 1, 2021 here is how CDC defined vaccine:
A product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease. Vaccines are usually administered through needle injections, but can also be administered by mouth or sprayed into the nose.
This definition had been used for years and it makes sense. No expert or sensible citizen would find fault with it. But did it honestly apply to the COVID vaccines?
Then this is what CDC concocted:
A preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases. Vaccines are usually administered through needle injections, but some can be administered by mouth or sprayed into the nose.
Here is what CDC also said:
Immunity: Protection from an infectious disease. If you are immune to a disease, you can be exposed to it without becoming infected.
Think about that last sentence: You can be exposed to COVID without being infected; but we know that is not true for fully vaccinated people who still get infected.
This is the key language in the original definition:
“stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease.”
How rational to invoke the purpose of a vaccine to stimulate an immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease that protects the recipient from that disease. Exactly what everyone for years thought was the correct way to think about a vaccine. People want permanent protection from the COVID infection disease.
But now CDC has taken out the language referring to getting immunity for a specific disease and getting protection from that disease.
Now, COVID vaccines do not have to directly produce immunity. No, now they only have to stimulate the body’s immune system.
You don’t get immunity because COVID vaccines do not directly produce immunity. They do not directly kill the COVID virus. Vaccinated people can still have high viral loads and also transmit the virus to others. While some individuals may get some health benefits from COVID shots, they do not necessarily protect the entire population. This is why mandates to get everyone the shots really do not make sense from a public health perspective, that Alexander has well substantiated.
Apparently, the only logical way to understand what CDC has done is to accept the truth belatedly seen by CDC that COVID vaccines do not, in fact, produce effective immunity for COVID infection and do not provide effective protection, once vaccinated, from that infection.
Much of the public surely does not yet know what CDC has acknowledged for the COVID vaccines. Odds are that everyone who depends on mainstream media for good information about the pandemic has not been informed about what CDC has done and its implications.
The new vaccine definition, if publicly known, would reduce public confidence in current COVID vaccines. You don’t have to be a medical expert to see how the new definition has been created to accommodate COVID shots.
In fact, these definition changes reflect what is now known about the limitations of the COVID vaccines.
Fully vaccinated people can still get COVID disease, referred to as breakthrough infections that, contrary to what the government says, can be very serious, often requiring hospitalization and sometimes causing death, as was the case for Colin Powell.
Such serious effects have been well discussed by Kampf. Other times, breakthrough infections greatly disrupt lives, as recently described by Madrigal, a strong proponent of COVID shots.
Moreover, the COVID vaccines are now widely known from considerable clinical evidence to lose their effectiveness typically in about six months. And even worse, they do not provide hardly any protection against variants like the delta variant. Same disease but from a different virus in terms of its complex genetic makeup. So, befitting the new CDC definition the COVID shots really do not have long lasting effective immunity to the specific COVID infection caused by all variants.
Elsewhere on the CDC website is a glossary of many terms; here is what is especially relevant to the debate about COVID vaccines:
Attenuated vaccine: A vaccine in which a live microbe is weakened (attenuated) through chemical or physical processes in order to produce an immune response without causing the severe effects of the disease. Attenuated vaccines currently licensed in the United States include measles, mumps, rubella, varicella, rotavirus, yellow fever, smallpox, and some formulations of influenza, and typhoid vaccines.
Most people would read this and find that it fits with what they think of as vaccines that have been routinely taken by most people, especially children. Clearly, COVID vaccines do not fit this definition. But seeing this established view of vaccines helps explain why so many people resist and reject the COVID shots. They are so fundamentally different than long accepted and used vaccines.
Natural immunity
One of the biggest pandemic scandals is that the government refuses to give full credit to natural immunity that people get from once being infected by the COVID virus. It should be officially recognized as equivalent to “vaccine” immunity.
The following CDC glossary definition is especially relevant:
Active immunity: The production of antibodies against a specific disease by the immune system. Active immunity can be acquired in two ways, either by contracting the disease or through vaccination. Active immunity is usually permanent, meaning an individual is protected from the disease for the duration of their lives.
This CDC definition of active immunity recognizes that you can get it by contracting the disease versus through vaccination. In other words, it recognizes what today is commonly called natural immunity achieved by once being infected by the COVID virus. And that such immunity is likely permanent and better than vaccine immunity, as recent clinical studies substantiate. But it also infers that active immunity obtained through vaccination is also permanent, which clearly is not the case for COVID shots, as evidenced by breakthrough infections.
Also note that it has recently been revealed that CDC has not been able to provide any proof of at least one instance of an unvaccinated, naturally immune individual transmitting the COVID-19 virus to another individual.
And a new study found that almost 60 percent of the people with antibodies had no idea they had even had COVID at all. But they would have natural immunity. Quite consistent with the reality that most people suffer no significant health impacts from being infected with the COVID virus, regardless of all the fear mongering by Fauci and others.
Conclusions
To sum up, a close look at what CDC has done lately reinforces the thinking of millions of people who have reservations and concerns about getting COVID genetic therapy shots that pose myriad adverse impacts and sometimes death.
There is a rational, science basis for thinking that the limited benefits of those shots do not adequately offset their risks. This is true for the vast majority of healthy people, especially children, who have extremely low risk from COVID infection for serious illness, hospitalization or death.
Mandates that do not recognize natural immunity are merely a sham tactic to make money for drug companies.
How interesting it would be, in the context of informed consent, if people were shown the original and new CDC vaccine definitions as a means to stimulate productive discussion with medical providers of COVID shots.
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Dr. Joel S. Hirschhorn, author of Pandemic Blunder and many articles, podcasts and radio shows on the pandemic, worked on health issues for decades. As a full professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, he directed a medical research program between the colleges of engineering and medicine. As a senior official at the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the National Governors Association, he directed major studies on health-related subjects; he testified at over 50 US Senate and House hearings and authored hundreds of articles and op-ed articles in major newspapers. He has served as an executive volunteer at a major hospital for more than 10 years. He is a member of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, and America’s Frontline Doctors.
He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
November 17th, 2021 by Dr. Diane Perlman
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***
“… we’re never going to learn about how safe this vaccine is unless we start giving it.” – Professor Eric Rubin of Harvard University, actually testifying to the VRBPAC panel regarding the high incidences of myocarditis and deaths, mostly in younger males following mRNA injections
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At least 42% of American children already have acquired robust natural immunity which is far superior compared to vaccine immunity and that those with naturally-acquired immunity receive no benefit from the vaccines – only risks, some of which may be lethal.
An hour of informed consent is worth a lifetime of regret.
Children are not capable of giving informed consent. Parents are capable but many defer to the CDC or their healthcare giver as a trustworthy authority (which they often aren’t), despite evidence of incomplete and fraudulent data, exclusion of subjects from the study, whistleblower testimony and expert warnings in public comments.
As a parent or guardian you are responsible to do your own due diligence regarding the short and long-term safety of your child.
Before you allow your child to be injected with the mRNA with a still-experimental polyethylene glycol and other ingredients, some not disclosed, you are responsible for being fully informed. The best time to become informed is before injecting this onto your child’s body, not after.
Note below the famously never shown on mainstream media that show that Americana children with no chronic illnesses have an essentially ZERO chance of dying from Covid-19, even if they receive NO treatment!!
Any person who consents to a medical procedure for themselves or their dependents, must be informed of ALL the known or potential adverse effects of the treatment.
If they have not been FULLY INFORMED, those responsible for injecting the vaccine may be guilty of malpractice and liable to being sued for adverse events (which cannot legally be done to the conscienceless pharmaceutical giants).
___ I agree (or not) to allow my child to receive the Pfizer BioNTech mRNA injection knowing that it remains experimental and that safety testing is incomplete and inconclusive
___ I am informed (or not) that mRNA injections are technically not “vaccines,” and that they do not prevent infection and transmission.
____ I am informed (or not) that effectiveness of the Pfizer ‘”accines” wanes in a few months and my child may be required to take booster shots several times a year, indefinitely.
___ I am informed (or not) that there is no fully approved FDA covid vaccine that is available in the US
___ I am informed (or not) that the FDA and CDC are permitting administration of the Pfizer mRNA injections to 5 – 11-year-old based on an EUA, Emergency Use Authorization, even though there is no emergency for 5 – 11-year-olds.
___ I am informed (or not) that Covid-19 poses no risk to healthy children. The few children who died had serious illnesses like leukemia, cystic fibrosis and other serious diseases. They died with Covid, not from Covid.
___ I am informed (or not) that there exist protocols for effective early treatments for Covid that prevent hospitalizations and deaths, and that doctors who have been educating about these have been censored.
___ Most children who get Covid have mild symptoms, if any, and acquire superior, robust and enduring natural immunity shown to persist for many years or a lifetime and is effective against variants. T-cell tests demonstrate natural immunity whether or not there are also antibodies.
____ I am informed (or not) that at least 42% of American children already have acquired robust natural immunity which is far superior compared to vaccine immunity and that those with natural immunity have no benefit from the vaccines and no legitimate reason to incur the risk.
____ I am informed (or not) that those with natural immunity to Covid-19 have at least a 30% higher risk of adverse reactions to the shots, including death, and have been warned by experts like Dr. Hooman Noorchasm and many others of this unnecessary, high risk.
____ I am informed (or not) that we have no information now about long-term reactions that may show up in days, weeks, months, years or decades
____ I am informed (or not) that the Pfizer shots instruct the cells to manufacture toxic spike proteins which circulate the body and lodge in many organs, in high concentrations in the endothelial cells, ovaries and testes, spleen, heart, and cross the blood-brain barrier
___ I am informed (or not) that based on animal studies and “vaccine” data thus far that some scientists are concerned about vaccine-induced infertility and chronic diseases in the future
___ I am informed (or not) that those receiving the vaccines have a risk of myocarditis, especially high in young males, and that instead of the expected rate of 1 -4 cases in 12 – 17 year-olds there were 128.
___ I am informed (or not) that the CDC has not adequately investigated the 800 cases of myocarditis and has falsely claimed that there is more myocarditis from getting Covid than from the “vaccines.” Their “remedy” for this undeniable risk was increased surveillance.
___ I am informed (or not) that the CDC’s voluntary VAERS, the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System. It is estimated that only 1% – 10% of adverse events are reported. Doctors, injured, and their family members describe toxic spike proteins that penetrate ovaries, testes, brain, spinal cord, nervous system, heart, lungs, intestines, kidneys, and cross the placenta in pregnant women.
___ I am informed (or not) that the adverse effects from mRNA “vaccines” may include micro-clots in their cardiovascular system, anaphylactic shock, allergic reactions, blood clotting and bleeding disorders, thrombosis in the brain other thrombotic events, myocarditis, pericarditis, heart damage, stroke, tinnitus, vertigo, etc.
___ I am informed (or not) that if my child has symptoms of concern after the first shot, they should not get the second
___ I am informed (or not) that longer term events might include antibody dependent enhancement, (ADE) development of autoimmune diseases, neurodegenerative disorders, prion disease and an increase in chronic diseases and reproductive harms including infertility.
___ I am informed (or not) that the studies were conducted by Pfizer, with conflicts of interest, and not by any independent researcher, and that all the data was controlled by Pfizer, including elimination of subjects who had adverse reactions to the first or second dose.
___ I am informed (or not) that the studies were conducted on very few subjects, far, few fewer than other treatments before being administered to the public, too few to detect reactions that occur in 1/5000 of the population
___ I am informed (or not) that subjects were followed for a very short time, so no long-term effects beyond 2 months can be known
___ I am informed (or not) that the only adverse reactions to the shots recoded include arm soreness, fever chills, and fatigue and there was no way to record other adverse reactions.
___ I am informed (or not) that many subjects who had adverse reactions were eliminated from the study
___ I am informed (or not) that most with adverse reactions and severe adverse reactions were misdiagnosed, told it was psychological, denied and abandoned.
___ I am informed (or not) that studies were methodologically flawed in many ways
___ I am informed (or not) that studies extrapolating from those done on 12 – 17 year-olds, it is a statistical certainty that there will be adverse reactions, injuries, disabilities, trauma and deaths among 5 – 11 year-olds.
____ I am informed (or not) that the childhood Pfizer dose is 1/3 of the adult dose, but it is not less if one accounts for weight. The lower the weight, the more likely the adverse effects.
Each person has a unique risk/benefit ratio. It is not one size fits all.
Older people with co-morbidities have a higher risk from Covid and a lower risk from the “vaccines.” Younger people have almost no risk at all for Covid and increasingly higher risks from the “vaccines” with younger age.
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Our thanks to Dr. Gary G. Kohls for bringing this article of Dr. Perlman to our attention.
Diane Perlman, PhD, is US convener of Transcend International, guest editorialist of Transcend Media Service, visiting scholar at George Mason University, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Resolution.
Featured image is from NaturalNews.com
November 17th, 2021 by John W. Whitehead
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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***
“Man is born free but everywhere is in chains.”—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
We are moving fast down the road to fascism.
This COVID-19 pandemic has shifted us into high gear.
The heavy-handed collusion between the Techno-Corporate State and the U.S. government over vaccine mandates is merely the latest manifestation of the extent to which fascist forces are working to overthrow our constitutional republic and nullify the rights of the individual.
In early November 2021, the Biden Administration drew its line in the sand for more than 100 million American workers: get vaccinated against COVID-19 (by Nov. 22 for federal workers, and Jan. 4 for federal contractors and companies with more than 100 employees) or else.
Or else what?
For many individuals with sincere objections to the vaccine, either based on their religious beliefs or some other medical or philosophical concern, non-compliance with workplace vaccine mandates will mean losing their jobs and the possibility of no unemployment benefits.
One survey conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management estimated that 28% of employed Americans wouldn’t get a COVID vaccine even if it meant losing their jobs.
Although OSHA (the Occupational Safety and Health Administration) is requiring that employees be paid for the time it takes to get vaccinated and recover from any side effects, those who refuse to get vaccinated but keep their jobs will have to test negative for COVID weekly and could be made to shoulder the costs of those weekly tests. Healthcare workers are not being given an option for testing: it’s the vaccine or nothing.
To give the government’s arm-twisting some added strength, companies that violate the workplace mandate rules “can face fines of up to $13,653 per violation for serious violations and 10 times that for willful or repeated violations.”
In other words, as Katrina Trinko writes for USA Today, “the government is turning employers—who are not paid by, nor work for, the government—into an army of vaccine enforcers.”
You know who won’t suffer any harm as a result of these vaccine mandates? The Corporate State (manufacturers, distributors, and health care providers), which were given a blanket “get out of jail” card to insulate them from liability for any injuries or death caused by the vaccines.
While this vaccine mandate is being presented as a “targeted” mandate as opposed to a national mandate that impacts the entire population, it effectively leaves those with sincere objections to the COVID vaccine with very little options beyond total compliance or unemployment.
This has long since ceased to be a debate over how best to protect the populace at large against an unknown pandemic. Rather, it has become a massively intrusive, coercive and authoritarian assault on the right of individual sovereignty over one’s life, self and private property.
As such, these COVID-19 mandates have become the new battleground in the government’s tug-of-war over bodily autonomy and individual sovereignty.
Already, the legal challenges to these vaccine mandates are piling up before the courts. Before long, divided circuit court rulings will make their way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which will be asked to decide whether these mandates constitute government overreach or a natural extension of the government’s so-called emergency powers.
With every new court ruling that empowers corporations and the government to use heavy-handed tactics to bring about vaccine compliance, with every new workplace mandate that forces employees to choose between their right to bodily autonomy and economic livelihood, and with every new piece of legislation that insulates corporations and the government from being held accountability for vaccine injuries and deaths, our property interest in our bodies is diminished.
At a minimum, our right to individual sovereignty over our lives and our bodies is being usurped by power-hungry authoritarians; greedy, self-serving corporations; egotistical Nanny Staters who think they know what’s best for the rest of the populace; and a short-sighted but well-meaning populace which fails to understand the long-term ramifications of trading their essential freedoms for temporary promises of safety and security.
We are more vulnerable now than ever before.
This debate over bodily autonomy, which covers broad territory ranging from forced vaccinations, abortion and euthanasia to forced blood draws, biometric surveillance and basic healthcare, has far-reaching ramifications for who gets to decide what happens to our bodies during an encounter with government officials.
On a daily basis, Americans are already being made to relinquish the most intimate details of who we are—our biological makeup, our genetic blueprints, and our biometrics (facial characteristics and structure, fingerprints, iris scans, etc.)—in order to clear the nearly insurmountable hurdle that increasingly defines life in the United States: we are now guilty until proven innocent.
This merely pushes us one step further down that road towards a total control society in which the government in collusion with Corporate America gets to decide who is “worthy” of being allowed to take part in society.
Right now, COVID-19 vaccines are the magic ticket for gaining access to the “privileges” of communal life. Having already conditioned the population to the idea that being part of society is a privilege and not a right, such access could easily be predicated on social credit scores, the worthiness of one’s political views, or the extent to which one is willing to comply with the government’s dictates, no matter what they might be.
The government is litigating and legislating its way into a new framework where the dictates of petty bureaucrats carry greater weight than the inalienable rights of the citizenry.
When all that we own, all that we earn, all that we say and do—our very lives—depends on the benevolence of government agents and corporate shareholders for whom profit and power will always trump principle, we should all be leery and afraid.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, nothing good can come from totalitarian tactics—no matter how benevolent they appear—that are used to make us cower, fear and comply with the government’s dictates.
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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president The Rutherford Institute. His books Battlefield America: The War on the American People and A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State are available at www.amazon.com. He 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.
Featured image is from Mercola
November 17th, 2021 by The Global Research Team
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November 17th, 2021 by Global Research News
Frustration and Anger after Glasgow Climate Summit. Can We Still Win the Race Against Time?
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November 17th, 2021 by Whitney Webb
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).
Visit and follow us on Instagram at @crg_globalresearch.
***
A project of the multilateral development banking system, the Rockefeller Foundation and the New York Stock Exchange recently created a new asset class that will put, not just the natural world, but the processes underpinning all life, up for sale under the guise of promoting “sustainability.”
Last month, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) announced it had developed a new asset class and accompanying listing vehicle meant “to preserve and restore the natural assets that ultimately underpin the ability for there to be life on Earth.” Called a natural asset company, or NAC, the vehicle will allow for the formation of specialized corporations “that hold the rights to the ecosystem services produced on a given chunk of land, services like carbon sequestration or clean water.” These NACs will then maintain, manage and grow the natural assets they commodify, with the end of goal of maximizing the aspects of that natural asset that are deemed by the company to be profitable.
Source: Unlimited Hangout
Though described as acting like “any other entity” on the NYSE, it is alleged that NACs “will use the funds to help preserve a rain forest or undertake other conservation efforts, like changing a farm’s conventional agricultural production practices.” Yet, as explained towards the end of this article, even the creators of NACs admit that the ultimate goal is to extract near-infinite profits from the natural processes they seek to quantify and then monetize.
NYSE COO Michael Blaugrund alluded to this when he said the following regarding the launch of NACs: “Our hope is that owning a natural asset company is going to be a way that an increasingly broad range of investors have the ability to invest in something that’s intrinsically valuable, but, up to this point, was really excluded from the financial markets.”
Framed with the lofty talk of “sustainability” and “conservation”, media reports on the move in outlets like Fortune couldn’t avoid noting that NACs open the doors to “a new form of sustainable investment” which “has enthralled the likes of BlackRock CEO Larry Fink over the past several years even though there remain big, unanswered questions about it.” Fink, one of the world’s most powerful financial oligarchs, is and has long been a corporate raider, not an environmentalist, and his excitement about NACs should give even its most enthusiastic proponents pause if this endeavor was really about advancing conservation, as is being claimed.
How to Create a NAC
The creation and launch of NACs has been two years in the making and saw the NYSE team up with the Intrinsic Exchange Group (IEG), in which the NYSE itself holds a minority stake. IEG’s three investors are the Inter-American Development Bank, the Latin America-focused branch of the multilateral development banking system that imposes neoliberal and neo-colonalist agendas through debt entrapment; the Rockefeller Foundation, the foundation of the American oligarch dynasty whose activities have long been tightly enmeshed with Wall Street; and Aberdare Ventures, a venture capital firm chiefly focused on the digital healthcare space. Notably, the IADB and the Rockefeller Foundation are closely tied to the related pushes for Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) and biometric Digital IDs.
The IEG’s mission focuses on “pioneering a new asset class based on natural assets and the mechanism to convert them to financial capital.” “These assets,” IEG states, make “life on Earth possible and enjoyable…They include biological systems that provide clean air, water, foods, medicines, a stable climate, human health and societal potential.”
Put differently, NACs will not only allow ecosystems to become financial assets, but the rights to “ecosystem services”, or the benefits people receive from nature as well. These include food production, tourism, clean water, biodiversity, pollination, carbon sequestration and much more. IEG is currently partnering with Costa Rica’s government to pilot its NAC efforts within that country. Costa Rica’s Minister of Environment and Energy, Andrea Meza Murillo, has claimed that the pilot project with IEG “will deepen the economic analysis of giving nature its economic value, as well as to continue mobilizing financial flows to conservation.”
With NACs, the NYSE and IEG are now putting the totality of nature up for sale. While they assert that doing so will “transform our economy to one that is more equitable, resilient and sustainable”, it’s clear that the coming “owners” of nature and natural processes will be the only real beneficiaries.
Per the IEG, NACs first begin with the identification of a natural asset, such as a forest or lake, which is then quantified using specific protocols. Such protocols have already been developed by related groups like the Capitals Coalition, which is partnered with several of IEG’s partners as well as the World Economic Forum and various coalitions of multinational corporations. Then, a NAC is created and the structure of the company decides who has the rights to that natural asset’s productivity as well as the rights to decide how that natural asset is managed and governed. Lastly, a NAC is “converted” into financial capital by launching an initial public offering on a stock exchange, like the NYSE. This last stage “generates capital to manage the natural asset” and the fluctuation of its price on the stock exchange “signals the value of its natural capital.”
Source: IEG
However, the NAC and its employees, directors and owners are not necessarily the owners of the natural asset itself following this final step. Instead, as IEG notes, the NAC is merely the issuer while the potential buyers of the natural asset the NAC represents can include: institutional investors, private investors, individuals and institutions, corporations, sovereign wealth funds and multilateral development banks. Thus, asset management firms that essentially already own much of the world, like Blackrock, could thus become owners of soon-to-be monetized natural processes, natural resources and the very foundations of natural life itself.
Both the NYSE and IEG have marketed this new investment vehicle as being aimed at generating funds that will go back to conservation or sustainability efforts. However, on the IEG’s website, it notes that the goal is really endless profit from natural processes and ecosystems that were previously deemed to be part of “the commons”, i.e. the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable earth. Per the IEG, “as the natural asset prospers, providing a steady or increasing flow of ecosystem services, the company’s equity should appreciate accordingly providing investment returns. Shareholders and investors in the company through secondary offers, can take profit by selling shares. These sales can be gauged to reflect the increase in capital value of the stock, roughly in-line with its profitability, creating cashflow based on the health of the company and its assets.”
Researcher and journalist Cory Morningstar has strongly disagreed with the approach being taken by NYSE/IEG and views NACs as a system that will only exacerbate the corporate predation of nature, despite claims to the contrary. Morningstar has described NACs as “Rockefeller et al. letting the markets dictate what in nature has value – and what does not. Yet, it’s not for capitalist institutions and global finance to decide what life has value. Ecosystems are not ‘assets.’ Biological communities exist for their own purposes, not ours.”
A New Way to Loot
The ultimate goal of NACs is not sustainability or conservation – it is the financialization of nature, i.e. turning nature into a commodity that can be used to keep the current, corrupt Wall Street economy booming under the guise of protecting the environment and preventing its further degradation. Indeed, IEG makes this clear when they note that “the opportunity” of NACs lies not in their potential to improve environmental well-being or sustainability, but in the size of this new asset class, which they term “Nature’s Economy.”
Source: IEG
Indeed, while the asset classes of the current economy are value at approximately $512 trillion, the asset classes unlocked by NACs are significantly larger at $4,000 trillion (i.e. $4 quadrillion). Thus, NACs open up a new feeding ground for predatory Wall Street banks and financial institutions that will allow them to not just dominate the human economy, but the entire natural world. In the world currently being constructed by these and related entities, where even freedom is being re-framed not as a right but “a service,” the natural processes on which life depends are similarly being re-framed as assets, which will have owners. Those “owners” will ultimately have the right, in this system, to dictate who gets access to clean water, to clean air, to nature itself and at what cost.
According to Cory Morningstar, one of the other aims of creating “Nature’s Economy” and neatly packaging it for Wall Street via NACs is to drastically advance massive land grab efforts made by Wall Street and the oligarch class in recent years. This includes the recent land grabs made by Wall Street firms as well as billionaire “philanthropists” like Bill Gates during the COVID crisis. However, the land grabs facilitated through the development of NACs will largely target indigenous communities in the developing world.
As Morningstar notes:
“The public launch of NACs strategically preceded the fifteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, the biggest biodiversity conference in a decade. Under the pretext of turning 30% of the globe into “protected areas”, the largest global land grab in history is underway. Built on a foundation of white supremacy, this proposal will displace hundreds of millions, furthering the ongoing genocide of Indigenous peoples. The tragic irony is this: while Indigenous peoples represent less than 5% of the global population, they support approximately 80% of all biodiversity.“
IEG, in discussing NACs, tellingly notes that proceeds from a NAC’s IPO can be used for the acquisition of more land by its controlling entities or used to boost the budgets or funds of those who receive the capital from the IPO. This is a far cry from the NYSE/IEG sales pitch that NACs are “different” because their IPOs will be used to “preserve and protect” natural areas.
The climate change panic that is now rising to the take the place of COVID-19 panic will surely be used to savvily market NACs and similar tactics as necessary to save the planet, but – rest assured – NACs are not a move to save the planet, but a move to enable the same interests responsible for the current environmental crises to usher in a new era where their predatory exploitation reaches new heights that were previously unimaginable.
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Whitney Webb has been a professional writer, researcher and journalist since 2016. She has written for several websites and, from 2017 to 2020, was a staff writer and senior investigative reporter for Mint Press News. She currently writes for The Last American Vagabond.
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November 17th, 2021 by Marc Vandepitte
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The stakes of this summit were high. The meeting can be summed up as ‘one point five to keep the planet alive’. After fourteen days of negotiations, the anger among climate activists and countries from the South is great and rightly so. What’s next?
Key issues and (missing) results
1.5°C. The final text explicitly states that the aim must be to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5°C and not to 2°C. That is a good thing, but that is only an aspiration, a target. With the current national plans of all countries combined, we are heading for a catastrophic warming of 2.4°C.
Annual revision. Until now, there was a major climate summit every five years. From now on it will be held annually. Each country will then be required to review its climate plans against the targets and, if necessary, improve them and make them more ambitious. In itself this is a good thing. However, poor countries that are far less responsible for historical emissions and have far fewer resources at their disposal will now come under just as much pressure as the rich countries.
‘Fossil fuels’. It may sound unlikely, but since the signing of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, no summit has explicitly referred to the phase-out of fossil fuels. Now, for the first time, this summit did. There were pledges and alliances to phase out the use of fossil fuels. However, a look at the details shows that they will bring little or no change in the short term.
To avoid a climate crisis, oil and gas production should immediately and steadily decline by 3 percent per year from now on. Instead, production continues to increase year after year (it exceptionally did not in 2020, but that was the covid year).
Subsidies. It was agreed to phase out fossil fuel subsidies. Annually, the sector still receives as much as $5,900 billion in subsidies. This should not be ‘phased out’ but should be reduced immediately and dramatically. $5,900 billion is far more than what is needed to enable a rapid green energy transition.
Keeping it in the ground. For the temperature of the planet to stay below 1.5°C, according to the scientific journal Nature, 89 percent of proven coal reserves, 58 percent of oil reserves and 59 percent of gas reserves must remain underground. The lobbyists of the fossil fuel industry did everything they could to avoid being confronted with binding agreements made on this. They succeeded.
Coal. Coal is the big culprit, but many countries of the South are extremely dependent on it. India, for example, depends on coal for 70 percent of its energy, China for almost 60 percent. Under the influence of these countries, the final text was toned down: ‘phase-out’ of coal burning was replaced by ‘phase-down’.
The director of the International Energy Agency (IEA) hopes “that advanced economies take a leading role and become an example for the emerging world. If they don’t do it, they shouldn’t expect the emerging world to do it.”
Methane. More than 100 countries signed an agreement to reduce methane emissions by 30 percent between 2020 and 2030. That was the low-hanging fruit of the summit. It could reduce the global average temperature by about 0.1°C by 2050. We must remember that this is only as much as the warming we have experienced since COP21 in Paris in 2015.
Climate justice. According to the IAE, an annual investment of $4,000 billion will be needed until 2030 to achieve zero emissions. About 70 percent of that, or $2,800 billion, should go to the emerging and developing countries. This is necessary to realize the energy transition there, to compensate for the damage caused by warming, and to enable these countries to adapt to climate change.
The 100 billion dollars annual aid pledged in Copenhagen in 2009 is only a trifle of what is needed, and that meagre promise has not even once been kept. The summit went no further than a vague call ‘to mobilize climate finance from all sources to reach the level needed to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement, including significantly increasing support for developing country Parties, beyond $100 billion per year.’ Nowhere does it specify how that funding will happen or how big it should be.
Deforestation. More than 100 world leaders have pledged to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030. The problem with this nice-sounding promise is that it is neither enforceable nor transparent, and it lacks a financing plan. Moreover, logging is allowed to continue in the meantime.
The equation
As is typical of such summits, glowing promises and polite calls are easily brushed aside. What is usually missing – and this summit is no exception – is a long-term action plan and concrete commitment from the participants. There is no enforceability at all.
The good news is that a consensus has been reached and agreements have been made to meet every year. Also good news is that China and the US, the two biggest emitters, have agreed to work closely together despite the very tense atmosphere between them. This cooperation is an important precondition for tackling important dossiers in the future.
The big winner of this summit is the fossil sector. With more than 500 lobbyists, they formed the largest delegation of this climate summit. The sector can sleep soundly: despite the great promises and alliances, this sector still holds its grip on the global economy, at least in the short term.
The big losers are the countries of the South. They bear the least responsibility for global warming, but take the heaviest blows. Nor do they have the resources to realize the necessary energy transition. Yet climate justice was one of the main demands of the vast majority of the countries and of the many climate activists.
The countries of the North are unwilling to bear the cost of their historic climate debt. This makes them primarily responsible for the ongoing climate degradation. Without a serious transfer of resources – a multiplicity of what they are now promising – we are heading for a climate disaster.
Certainly, the result could have been worse. But we cannot ignore the fact that the heads of government ultimately failed. Lia Nicholson, chief negotiator for Antigua and Barbuda and chair of the 37-member Alliance of Small Island States, said: ‘We are extremely disappointed and we will express our grievance in due course.’
‘Our fight is far from over. We must recognize that this is a fight that we cannot afford to lose,’ said Selwin Hart, UN Assistant Secretary-General for Climate Change. UN Secretary-General Guterres, for his part, reiterates his urgent appeal: ‘Our fragile planet is hanging by a thread. (…) It is time to go into emergency mode – or our chance of reaching net zero emissions will itself be zero.’
Greta Thunberg fully agrees with that urgency. Together with a number of young climate activists from around the world, she petitioned Guterres to declare a ‘climate emergency’.
The real battle is not fought at such a summit, but outside of it. That battle has yet to begin. It is up to us to build a different balance of power and to force government leaders and the economic elite to take a different course. A course that does not safeguard the profits of the large capital groups, but that of the planet. A course that does not pass costs on to the common man or woman, or to the countries of the South.
We will all have to seek forms of struggle that ensure the survival of our planet and that this is achieved in a social way.
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November 17th, 2021 by Edward Curtin
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Since the annual U.S. Veterans Day holiday honoring military veterans was just observed on November 11, it seems more than appropriate to suggest the creation of a U.S. Victims Day, just as in a similar effort at truth in labeling, the Defense Department should be renamed the Offensive War Department.
For the victims of American terrorism far outnumber the American soldiers who have died in its wars, although I consider most U.S. veterans to be victims also, having been propagandized from birth to buy the glory of war, not the truth that it’s a racket that serves the interests of the ruling class.
Such wars, carried out with bombs, drones, mercenaries, and troops, or by economic embargoes and sanctions, are by their nature acts of terrorism. This is so whether we are talking about the mass fire bombings of Japanese and German cities during WW II, the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the carpet bombings and the agent orange dropped on Vietnam, the depleted uranium on Iraq, the use of terrorist surrogates everywhere, the economic sanctions on Cuba, Iran, Syria, etc. The list is endless and ongoing. All actions aimed at causing massive death and damage to civilians.
According to U.S. law (6 USCS § 101), terrorism is defined as an act that is dangerous to human life or potentially destructive of critical infrastructure or key resources; is a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State or other subdivision of the United States; and appears to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping.
By any reasonable interpretation of the law, the United Sates is a terrorist state.
Let me tell you about Bert Sacks. Perhaps you’ve heard of him. His experiences with the U.S. government regarding terrorism tell an illuminating story of conscience and hope. It is a story of how one person can awaken others to recognize and admit the truth that the U.S. is guilty of crimes against humanity, even when one is unable to stop the carnage. It is a tale of witness, and how such witness is contagious.
In November 1997 Sacks led a delegation to Iraq to deliver desperately needed medicines ($40,000 worth, all donated) that were denied into the country because of US/UN economic sanctions. For such an act of human solidarity, he was later fined $10,000 by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). Sacks had refused to ask for a license to travel to Iraq or to subsequently pay the fine for compelling reasons connected to his non-violent Gandhian philosophy, which teaches that non-cooperation with evil is as much an obligation as cooperation with good.
Source: iraqikids.org
For years previously, Sacks had been learning, as would have anyone who was following the news, that the American sanctions under George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton following the illegal and unjust Gulf War, had been aimed at crippling the Iraqi infrastructure upon which all civilian life depended. Iraq had been devastated by the U.S. war of aggression, and a great deal of its infrastructure, especially electricity and therefore water purification systems, had already been destroyed. Clinton kept up the sanctions and the bombing in support of Bush’s war intentions. So much for differences between Republicans and Democrats! Regular Iraqis were suffering terribly. All this was being done in the name of punishing Saddam Hussein in order to oust him from power, the same Hussein whom the U. S. had supported in Iraq’s war with Iran by assisting him with chemical and biological weapons.
As Sacks later (2011) wrote in his declaration to the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington when he sued OFAC:
Weeks after the end of the Gulf War, on March 22, 1991, I read a New York Times front- page story covering the UN report by Martti Ahtisaari on the devastating, ‘near- apocalyptic conditions’ in Iraq after the Gulf War. The report said, ‘famine and epidemic [were imminent] if massive life-supporting needs are not rapidly met. The long summer… is weeks away. Time is short.’ The same article explained U.S. policy this way: ‘[By] making life uncomfortable for the Iraqi people, [sanctions] will eventually encourage them to remove President Saddam Hussein from power.’ This sentence has stayed with me for twenty years. It says to me that my government – by inflicting suffering and death on Iraqi civilians – hoped to overthrow President Saddam Hussein, and that we would simply call it “making life uncomfortable.” [my emphasis]
The years to follow the first war against Iraq revealed what that Orwellian phrase really meant.
In 1994 Sacks read a survey on health conditions of Iraqi children in The New England Journal of Medicine that said: “These results provide strong evidence that the Gulf War and trade sanctions caused a threefold increase in mortality among Iraqi children under five years of age. We estimate that an excess of more than 46,900 children died between January and August 1991.”
And that was just the beginning. For the number of dead Iraqi children [and adults] kept piling up as a result of “making life uncomfortable.”
Anton Chekov’s story “Gooseberries” pops into my mind:
Everything is quiet and peaceful, and nothing protests but mute statistics: so many people gone out of their minds, so many gallons of vodka drunk,so man y children dead from malnutrition. . . . And this order of things is evidently necessary; evidently the happy man only feels at ease because the unhappy bear their burdens in silence, and without that silence happiness would be impossible. It’s a case of general hypnotism. There ought to be behind the door of every happy, contented man someone standing with a hammer continually reminding him with a tap that there are unhappy people; that however happy he may be, life will show him her laws sooner or later, trouble will come for him — disease, poverty, losses, and no one will see or hear, just as now he neither sees nor hears others.
Sacks has long been that man with a gentle hammer, far from happy, comfortable, or contented in what he was learning. In 1996 he watched the infamous CBS 60 Minutes interview of Madeleine Albright by Leslie Stahl who had recently returned from Iraq. Albright was then the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and soon to be the Secretary of State. Stahl, in reference to how the sanctions had already killed 500,000 Iraqi children, asked her, “Is the price worth it?” – Albright blithely answered, “The price is worth it.”
In April 1997, a New England Journal of Medicine editorial said that “”Iraq is an even more disastrous example of war against the public health . … The destruction of the country’s power plants had brought its entire system of water purification and distribution to a halt, leading to epidemics of cholera, typhoid fever, and gastroenteritis, particularly among children. Mortality rates doubled or tripled among children admitted to hospitals in Baghdad and Basra…” [my emphasis]
The evidence had accumulated since 1991 that the U.S. had purposely targeted Iraqi civilians and especially very young children and had therefore killed them as an act or war. This was clearly genocide. In its 1999 news release, UNICEF announced: “if the substantial reduction in child mortality throughout Iraq during the 1980s had continued through the 1990s, there would have been half a million fewer deaths of children under-five in the country as a whole during the eight year period 1991 to 1998.”
The British journalist Robert Fisk called this intentional destruction of Iraq’s infrastructure “biological warfare”: “The ultimate nature of the 1991 Gulf War for Iraqi civilians now became clear. Bomb now: die later.” In his declaration to the court, Sacks wrote that the Centers for Disease Control, in warning about potential terrorist biological attacks on the U.S., clearly lists attacks on water supplies as terrorism and biological warfare:
Water safety threats (such as Vibrio cholerae and Cryptosporidium parvum): Cholera is an acute bacterial disease characterized in its severe form by sudden onset, profuse painless watery stools, nausea and vomiting early in the course of illness, and, in untreated cases, rapid dehydration, acidosis, circulatory collapse, hypoglycemia in children, and renal failure. Transmission occurs through ingestion of food or water contaminated directly or indirectly with feces or vomitus of infected persons.
By January 1997, as a result of such statements and those of U.S. military and government officials and reports in medical journals and media, Sacks concluded that the United States government was guilty of the crime of international terrorism against the civilian population of Iraq. And being a man of conscience, he therefore proceeded to lead a delegation to Iraq to alleviate suffering, even while knowing it was a drop in the bucket.
It is important to emphasize that the U.S. government knew full well that its intentional destruction of Iraq’s infrastructure would result in massive death and suffering of civilians. Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney said of such destruction that “If I had to do it over again, I would do exactly the same thing.” All the deaths that followed were done as part of an effort at regime change – to force Hussein out of office, something finally accomplished by the George W. Bush administration with their lies about weapons of mass destruction and their 2003 war against Iraq that killed between 1-2 million more Iraqis. The recent accolades heaped on Colin Powell, who as Secretary of State consciously lied at the UN and who led the first war against Iraq – two major war crimes – should be a reminder of how unapologetic U.S. leaders are for their atrocities. I would go so far as to say they revel in their ability to commit them. Because he called them out on this by doing what all journalists and writers should do, they have pursued and caged Julian Assange as if he were a wild dog who walked into their celebratory dinner party.
In this 1991 U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency document, “Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities,” you can read how these people think. And read Thomas Merton’s poem “Chant to be Used in Processions around a Site With Furnaces,” and don’t skip its last three lines and you can grasp the bureaucratic mind at its finest. Euphemisms like “uncomfortable” and “collateral damage” are their specialties. Killing the innocent are always on their menu.
Bert Sacks and his delegation got some brief media publicity for their voyage of mercy. He believed that if the American people really knew what was happening to Iraqi children, they would demand that it be stopped. This did not happen. His tap with the hammer of conscience failed to awaken the hypnotized public who overwhelmingly had elected Clinton to a second term in 1996 six months after the 60 Minutes interview. Yes, “Everything is [was] quiet and peaceful, and nothing protests but mute statistics.”
Although the evidence was overwhelming that Iraqi children in the 1990s were dying at the rate of at least 5,000 per month as a direct result of the sanctions, very few major media publicized this. The 60 Minutes show, with its shocking statement by Albright, was an exception and was seen by millions of Americans. After that show aired, to claim you didn’t know was no longer believable. And although most mainstream media buried the truth, it was still available to those who cared. There were some conscience-stricken officials, however. In his declaration to the court, Sacks wrote:
The first two heads of the “Oil-for-Food” program – Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck – each resigned a position as UN Assistant Secretary General to protest the consequences of the U.S. imposed sanctions policy on Iraq. Mr. Halliday said, ‘We are in the process of destroying an entire society. It is as simple and terrifying as that.’ He called it genocide.
There were also, doctors, politicians, independent writers, and Nobel Peace Laureates who called the policy genocide and said, “Sanctions are the economic nuclear bomb.” Sacks told the court that “Finally, this list includes a 32-year career, retired U.S. diplomat – Deputy Director of the Reagan White House Cabinet Task Force on Terrorism – who says: ‘you can think of a number of countries that have been involved in [terrorist] activities. Ours is one of them.’”
Military planners, moreover, wrote in military publications that it was desirable to kill Iraqi civilians; that it was an essential part – if not the major part – of war strategy. They called it “dual-use targeting” and called themselves “operational artists.”
Sacks was able to reach a few officials and journalists who realized this was not art but massive war crimes. This showed that it is not impossible to change people, hard as it is. The judge in his court case, James L. Robart, while agreeing that OFAC had not exceeded its authority in fining him, acknowledged that the court had to accept as true that the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children as reported by UNICEF had come to constitute genocide, but [my emphasis] U.S. law prohibited the bringing of any consideration of genocide into a legal proceeding, which allows the U.S. government to commit this crime while barring any other party from raising the issue legally.
In other words, the U.S. government can accuse others of committing genocide, but no one can legally accuse it. It is above all laws.
Ten months before his 1997 trip to Iraq, Sacks met with Kate Pflaumer, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington. He says:
We met in her office and I asked her for the legal definition of terrorism pursuant to the laws of the United States. She asked what could she do for me. I said “Prosecute me for violating U.S. Iraq sanctions by bringing medicine there.” She said, “I won’t do that for you! Can I help in any other way?” I asked for the U.S. legal definition of terrorism. She pulled out a law book, had her secretary copy the page for me, and didn’t forget my request.When she left office, she wrote the op-ed on June 21, 2001…calling U.S. Iraq policy terrorism! The two main elements relevant to the issue here are: (1) it is an act dangerous to human life; and (2) done apparently to coerce or intimidate a civilian population or a government (see 18 U.S.C. § 2331).
On June 21, 2001, Ms. Pflaumer, then the former U.S. Attorney, wrote in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer the following:
The reality on the ground in Iraq is not contested. Thousands of innocent children and adult civilians die every month as a direct result of the 1991 bombing of civilian infrastructure: sewage treatment plants, electrical generating plants, water purification facilities. Allied bombing targets included eight multipurpose dams, repeatedly hit, which simultaneously wrecked flood control, municipal and industrial water storage, irrigation and hydroelectric power. [Four of seven major pumping stations were destroyed, as were 31 municipal water and sewerage facilities. Water purification plants were incapacitated throughout Iraq. We did this for “long term leverage.” These military decisions were sanctioned by then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney.]
In May 1996, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright reaffirmed that the “price” of 500,000 dead Iraqi children was “worth it. ”
Article 54 of the Geneva Convention states: “It is prohibited to attack, destroy or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population” and includes foodstuffs, livestock and “drinking water supplies and irrigation works.”
Tittle 18 U.S. Code Section 2331 defines international terrorism as acts dangerous to human life that would violate our criminal laws if done in the United States when those acts are intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion.
Thus did Kate Pflaumer, in an act of conscience and upholding her legal obligation as an attorney, call the U.S a terrorist state. This probably never would have happened without the non-violent hammer of Bert Sacks, who over the years has made nine trips to Iraq with other brave and determined souls who are a credit to humanity. Messengers of love, truth, and compassion.
Despite their witness, such U.S. terrorism continues as usual.
We cannot let “nothing protest but mute statistics.” The first lesson in U.S. Terrorism 101 is to become people with hammers, and hammer out truth and justice for the world to hear. Bert Sacks has done this. We must follow suit.
Therein lies our only hope.
For by any reasonable interpretation of the law, the United Sates is a terrorist state – beyond the law.
P.S. The case against Sacks was eventually dismissed because the U.S. government did not sue Sacks in a timely manner.
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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).
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He is the author of Seeking the Truth in a Country of Lies
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“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
November 17th, 2021 by Prof. Jae-Jung Suh
November 17th, 2021 by Kester Kenn Klomegah
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During his first official visit to Moscow under the military rule in Mali, Abdoulaye Diop, Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, held extensive discussions with his counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The discussions in November focused on increasing bilateral cooperation in economic sectors. But particularly significant was Russia’s military assistance to strengthen the position of the new government and to fight rising terrorism in the Sahel region.
Lavrov reaffirmed commitment to further develop the long-standing military-technical cooperation and military ties. Several agreements to this effect have been signed in recent years.
“We will fulfill them, including by supporting the Malian government’s efforts to ensure the country’s defence capabilities, which is especially relevant in the face of the persisting terrorist threat,” he said during the media conference.
“We do understand the need to reinforce Mali’s counter-terrorism potential. In this connection, the Russian state supplies the necessary equipment, weapons and ammunition. The risk of a power vacuum in the country’s north should not be allowed to materialise in the wake of the decision by our French colleagues to withdraw part of their troops from Mali and close three of the five military bases in regions with the most active terrorist groups,” he added.
Lavrov explained that terrorist groups have been increasingly active, especially in the north of the country, and therefore does not offer a favourable environment for launching an election campaign. This threat exists and could become more acute following the decision of the French government to considerably reduce its military presence in Mali (Operation Barkhane), especially in the north of the country where terrorists feel increasingly relaxed.
As for the nervous reaction of the French and some other Western representatives to Mali’s plans to work with a private military company from Russia in the past few months (something the Prime Minister of Mali spoke openly about at the UN General Assembly session), the decision is exclusively within the competence of the lawful Malian government.
On November 12, Russian top diplomat Sergey Lavrov and defence chief Sergey Shoigu held a meeting with their French counterparts in Paris. According to Vedomosti, local Russian business and financial newspaper, Paris has repeatedly expressed concern about Russia’s activities in the region that France considers to be its backyard.
In June, Paris announced plans to significantly reduce its participation in a counterterrorism operation in Mali and its neighboring countries, which had been launched in 2014. In August, news came that Mali’s authorities had launched talks with the Russian private military company Wagner Group that could replace the French military. Reuters reported that a possible contract could be worth $10.8 million a month.
In an interview, Grigory Lukyanov, a Senior Researcher at the Russia’s Institute of Oriental Studies, explained that the current goal is to boost business ties, particularly in the field of resource extraction and security services, where Russia has competitive advantages. In the future, Mali is capable of becoming a transport hub for commodities coming from the west and south to Africa’s north and then to the European Union, so apart from France, China and the United States are also interested in it. It’s vital for Paris to remain in its former colony and France is reluctant to let other players enter the country.
According to Lukyanov, France views the region as the former outskirts of its empire, while for Russia, Mali is a shady remote country and Moscow could trade activities there for a number of concessions related to other issues, crucial for its relations with France, the EU and the West in general. As far as Paris is concerned, it will most likely replace the current Malian government, which is sending pro-Russian signals, with another one that will better suit its goals.
As well-known facts, two military coups have taken place in Mali since August 2020. The first one, which occurred on August 18, 2020, ousted President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita. Interim President Bah Ndaw was removed from power by the military on May 26, 2021, while Deputy President Assimi Goita became Mali’s Transition President based on the Constitutional Court’s order.
There have been discussions at the United Nations Security Council, African Union, and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) about rivalry and competition for influence between France and Russia in Mali. The Economic Community of West African States, the regional bloc, has already suspended its membership and imposed a number of sanctions against Mali’s transitional leaders after they informed the organisation they would not be able to hold presidential and legislative elections next February.
It reiterates the need to adhere to the transition timetable in respect of the elections scheduled for February 27, 2022 and calls on the transition authorities to act accordingly to ensure expeditious return to constitutional order. Accordingly, it calls on the international community to take the necessary measures to ensure that the transition authorities respect their commitment to an expeditious return to constitutional order.
The African Union, Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and foreign organizations such as the European Union (EU) and the United Nations (UN) have requested a quick transition to a civilian government. They further urged that efforts are taken to resolve outstanding issues relating to sustainable development and observing strictly principles of democracy.
The Republic of Mali, home to nearly 20 million people, is a landlocked country located on rivers Senegal and Niger in West Africa. As a former French colony, it persistently faces serious development challenges primarily due to its landlocked position and it is the eighth-largest country in Africa. Over the years, reform policies have had little impact on the living standards, majority highly impoverished in the country. As a developing country, it ranks at the bottom of the United Nations Development Index (2020 report).
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Kester Kenn Klomegah, who worked previously with Inter Press Service (IPS), is now a frequent and passionate contributor to Global Research. As a versatile researcher, he believes that everyone deserves equal access to quality and trustworthy media reports.
Featured image is from the author
November 17th, 2021 by Rima Najjar
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Now that news about Masar Badil is beginning to surface, some Palestinians and their allies may be a bit confused. How does this movement differ from initiatives out there, such as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) and the One Democratic State Campaign (ODSC), that have already achieved some traction on the international scene?
Like BDS and ODSC, Masar Badil is a popular mass movement with supporters from diverse Palestinian viewpoints. But there is a fundamental (not simply rhetorical) difference to approaching the Palestinian struggle among these movements. BDS is a tactic without a political program (included in Masar and expanded to up “the economic costs to the Zionist entity… to isolate it in international diplomacy and ostracize its official and semi-official academics, athletes, artists and journalists.”) And although Masar is for a single, undivided Palestine from the river to the sea, it defines itself as struggling for the liberation of all of Palestine, which is not exactly the same demand as that made by “one democratic state,” which seeks to dismantle apartheid in Israel, rather than to liberate (decolonize Palestine) and then go on from there to grapple with humanitarian and practical issues vis-a-vis Israeli Jews.
In an excellent report on the conference titled “Masar Badil Founded in Madrid, Sao Paolo and Beirut,” Blake Alcottwrites:
The language used by Masar Badil is refreshing: All of Palestine is occupied, not just the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Jerusalem. In most contexts, the present colonialist state ruling Palestine is referred to as the Zionist entity rather than ‘Israel’. Most participants define Palestine as Arabic in linguistic, historical and cultural ways. There is no mincing of words in describing the Palestinian Authority as not only corrupt but, in terms of leading or speaking for Palestinians, illegitimate. Most participants would not limit the term settler to those in the West Bank — a view captured by a graffito of last May: “There is not a city in Israel that was not at one time Sheikh Jarrah.”
Because Masar Badil’s rhetoric derives from Marxist ideology and the revolutionary history of the PLO in its early years (See: The Palestinian National Charter: Resolutions of the Palestine National Council July 1–17, 1968), and because the movement correctly identifies the enemies of the Palestinian revolution as Zionism, Israel, imperialism and Arab reaction, some people associate it with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), but it is not, in fact, linked to any of the existing Palestinian political blocs.
At long last, more and more people are speaking out, albeit cautiously, against Zionism, not simply as a legalized apartheid regime that has been dehumanizing Palestinians since it violently manifested itself in Palestine as a Jewish state in 1948, but crucially as a settler-colonial regime. They reject the Zionist claim (aka Israel’s “narrative”) to the land of Palestine as a land belonging to Jews worldwide, rather than to its indigenous population, and ally the Palestinian struggle for liberation from Zionist colonization with that of other struggles worldwide, including the struggles of the Filipino, Turtle Island, Indian and South African peoples.
Those speaking out against Zionist ideology include Jews who hark back to when a Jewish anti-Zionist movement was alive and well as expressed, for example, in the 1931 lyrics: Oy Ir Narishe Tsienistn / Oh You Foolish Little Zionists / Глупые Сионисты:
You want to take us to Jerusalem
So we can die as a nation
We’d rather stay in the Diaspora
And fight for our liberation
It’s worth noting that among the many organizations and activists that participated in Masar Badil conference was the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network.
Masar Badil salutes “the whole struggle of our Palestinian people in all their places of residence, and all the resistance forces in Palestine.” It promotes an alternative path of revolutionary resistance meant to isolate the Zionist state.
Its rallying cries are bold, direct, straightforward and unapologetic:
Long live the struggle of our Palestinian people everywhere!
No voice is louder than the voice of the Palestinian people!
Glory to the martyrs, freedom to the prisoners!
We shall return and be victorious!
Although rooted in revolutionary political thought, Masar Badil has gone beyond generalities. In the conference that took place in Madrid, Spain; Beirut, Lebanon; and Sao Paulo, Brazil between 30 October and 2 November 2021, Masar Badil
… not only discussed the politics of Palestinian organizing and resistance but also developed a five-year plan and numerous policy proposals that lay out a distinct plan for upcoming activities. Committees focusing on organizing Palestinian students, protecting and implementing the Palestinian right to return and advancing the boycott of Israel were launched, while the conference planned to develop a network of Palestine centers in cities around the world, focusing on the needs of Palestinian refugees alongside political organizing and education.
Masar Badil has a very sacred task, namely, to protect the Palestinian revolution at this critical time in Palestine’s history, a 4,000-year long history, as historian Nur Masalha details it in his book with that title, from Late Bronze Age Egypt through the Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Islamic empires to the modern era.
Related:
Masar Badil: This movement is for you if you are sick of the “capitulation process” (Nov. 11, 2021)
Masar Badil and the elephant in the room (Nov. 1, 2021)
Masar Badil: How to make an alternative revolutionary path a reality (Oct. 30, 2021)
Masar Badil Means Standing Strong (Oct. 29, 2021)
Understanding that the only recourse for Palestinians is continued revolt
There is no escape for Israel from growing Palestinian power (Oct 22, 2021)
We are not afraid, but clearly they are
A Giant Leap for Palestine? Stay Tuned! (Oct 15, 2021)
Celebrating the path of resistance for the Palestinian people
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Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem and whose mother’s side of the family is from Ijzim, south of Haifa. She is an activist, researcher and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank.
She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Featured image: Masar Badi–Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement (Source: Rima Najjar)
November 17th, 2021 by Dr. Joseph Mercola
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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According to a September 2021 analysis, based on conservative, best-case scenarios, the COVID shots have killed five times more seniors (65+) than the infection
In younger people and children, the risk associated with the COVID shot, compared to the risk of COVID-19, is bound to be even more pronounced
Data show higher vaccination rates do not translate into lower COVID-19 case rates
The COVID shots are an epic failure. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports having more than 30,000 spontaneous reports of either hospitalizations and/or deaths among the fully vaccinated; data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services show 300,000 vaccinated CMS recipients have been hospitalized with breakthrough infections; 60% of seniors over age 65 hospitalized for COVID-19 have been vaccinated
50% of reported deaths after COVID-19 “vaccination” occur within 24 hours; 80% occur within the first week. According to one report, 86% of deaths have no other explanation aside from a vaccine adverse event. A Scandinavian study concluded about 40% of post-jab deaths among seniors in assisted living homes are directly due to the injection
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October 26, 2021, Global Research published an interview with Dr. Peter McCullough, in which he reviews and explains the findings of a September 2021 study published in the journal Toxicology Reports, which states:1
“A novel best-case scenario cost-benefit analysis showed very conservatively that there are five times the number of deaths attributable to each inoculation vs those attributable to COVID-19 in the most vulnerable 65+ demographic.
The risk of death from COVID-19 decreases drastically as age decreases, and the longer-term effects of the inoculations on lower age groups will increase their risk-benefit ratio, perhaps substantially.”
McCullough has impeccable academic credentials. He’s an internist, cardiologist, epidemiologist and a full professor of medicine at Texas A&M College of Medicine in Dallas. He also has a master’s degree in public health and is known for being one of the top five most-published medical researchers in the United States, in addition to being the editor of two medical journals.
Authors Defend Their Paper
Not surprisingly, the Toxicology Reports paper has received scathing critique from certain quarters. Still, corresponding author Ronald Kostoff told Retraction Watch that the criticism has actually been “an extremely small fraction” of the overall response, which by and large has been overwhelmingly positive and supportive. Kostoff went on to say:2
“Given the blatant censorship of the mainstream media and social media, only one side of the COVID-19 ‘vaccine’ narrative is reaching the public. Any questioning of the narrative is met with the harshest response …
I went into this with my eyes wide open, determined to identify the truth, irrespective of where it fell. I could not stand idly by while the least vulnerable to serious COVID-19 consequences were injected with substances of unknown mid and long-term safety.
We published a best-case scenario. The real-world situation is far worse than our best-case scenario, and could be the subject of a future paper.
What these results show is that we 1) instituted mass inoculations of an inadequately-tested toxic substance with 2) non-negligible attendant crippling and lethal results to 3) potentially prevent a relatively small number of true COVID-19 deaths. In other words, we used a howitzer where an accurate rifle would have sufficed!”
COVID Jab Campaign Has Had No Discernible Impact
Certainly, data very clearly show the mass “vaccination” campaign has not had a discernible impact on global death rates. On the contrary, in some cases the death toll shot up after the COVID shots became widely available. You can browse through covid19.healthdata.org3 to see this for yourself. Several examples are also included at the very beginning of the video.
This trend has also been confirmed in a September 2021 study4 published in the European Journal of Epidemiology. It found COVID-19 case rates are completely unrelated to vaccination rates.
Using data available as of September 3, 2021, from Our World in Data for cross-country analysis, and the White House COVID-19 Team data for U.S. counties, the researchers investigated the relationship between new COVID-19 cases and the percentage of the population that had been fully vaccinated.
Sixty-eight countries were included. Inclusion criteria included second dose vaccine data, COVID-19 case data and population data as of September 3, 2021. They then computed the COVID-19 cases per 1 million people for each country, and calculated the percentage of population that was fully vaccinated.
According to the authors, there was “no discernable relationship between percentage of population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases in the last seven days.” If anything, higher vaccination rates were associated with a slight increase in cases. According to the authors:5
“[T]he trend line suggests a marginally positive association such that countries with higher percentage of population fully vaccinated have higher COVID-19 cases per 1 million people.”
Getting back to the Toxicology Reports paper,6 which is being referring to as “the Kostoff analysis,” McCullough says the analysis is definitely making news in clinical medicine. The paper focuses on two factors: assumptions and determinism.
Determinism describes how likely something is. For example, if a person takes a COVID shot, it’s 100% certain they got the injection. It’s not 50% or 75%. It’s an absolute certainty. As a result, that person has a 100% chance of being exposed to whatever risk is associated with that shot.
On the other hand, if a person says no to the injection, it’s not 100% chance they’ll get COVID-19, let alone die from it. You have a less than 1% chance of being exposed to SARS-CoV-2 and getting sick. So, it’s 100% deterministic that taking the shot exposes you to the risks of the shot, and less than 1% deterministic that you’ll get COVID if you don’t take the shot.
The other part of the equation is the assumptions, which are based on calculations using available data, such as pre-COVID death statistics and death reports filed with the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reports System (VAERS).
Mortality Data
As noted by McCullough, two reports have detailed COVID jab death data, showing 50% of deaths occur within 24 hours and 80% occur within the first week. In one of these reports, 86% of deaths were found to have no other explanation aside from a vaccine adverse event. McCullough also cites a Scandinavian study that concluded about 40% of post-jab deaths among seniors in assisted living homes are directly due to the injection. He also cites other eye-opening figures:
COVID Shots Are ‘Failing Wholesale’
“When we put all these data together, we have clear-cut science that the vaccines are failing wholesale,” McCullough says. The shots are particularly useless in seniors.
Again, based on a best-case conservative scenario, seniors are five times more likely to die from the shot than they are from the natural infection. This scenario includes the assumption that the PCR test is accurate and reported COVID deaths were in fact due to COVID-19, which we know is not the case, and the assumption that the shots actually prevent death, which we have no proof of.
All things considered, you are FAR better off taking your chances with the natural infection, as McCullough says. The Kostoff analysis also does not take into account the fact that there are safe and effective treatments.
It bases its assumptions on the notion that there aren’t any. It also doesn’t factor in the fact that the COVID shots are utterly ineffective against the Delta and other variants. If you take into account vaccine failure against variants and alternative treatments, it skews the analysis even further toward natural infection being the safest alternative.
FDA and CDC Should Not Run Vaccine Programs
While the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the CDC claim not a single death following COVID inoculation was caused by the shot, they should not be the ones making that determination, as they are both sponsoring the vaccination campaign.
They have an inherent bias. When you conduct a trial, you would never allow the sponsor to tell you whether the product was the cause of death, because you know they’re biased.
What we need is an external group, a critical event committee, to analyze the deaths being reported, as well as a data safety monitoring board. These should have been in place from the start, but were not.
Had they been, the program would most likely have been halted in February, as by then the number of reported deaths, 186, already exceeded the tolerable threshold of about 150 (based on the number of injections given). Now, we’re well over 17,000.7 There’s no normal circumstance under which that would ever be allowed.
“The CDC and FDA are running the [vaccination] program. They are NOT the people who typically run vaccine programs,” McCullough says. “The drug companies run vaccine programs.
When Pfizer, Moderna, J&J ran their randomized trials, we didn’t have any problems. They had good safety oversight. They had data safety monitoring boards. The did OK. I mean I have to give the drug companies [credit].
But the drug companies are now just the suppliers of the vaccine. Our government agencies are now just running the program. There’s no external advisory committee. There’s no data safety monitoring board. There’s no human ethics committee. NO one is watching out for this!
And so, the CDC and FDA pretty clearly have their marching orders: ‘Execute this program; the vaccine is safe and effective.’ They’re giving no reports to Americans. No safety reports. We needed those once a month. They haven’t told doctors which is the best vaccine, which is the safest vaccine.
They haven’t told us what groups are to watch out for. How to mitigate risks. Maybe there are drug interactions. Maybe it’s people with prior blood clotting problems or diabetes. They’re not telling us anything!
They literally are blindsiding us, and with no transparency, and Americans now are scared to death. You can feel the tension in America. People are walking off the job. They don’t want to lose their jobs, but they don’t want to die of the vaccine! It’s very clear. They say, ‘Listen, I don’t want to die. That’s the reason I’m not taking the vaccine.’ It’s just that clear.”
Bradford Hill Criteria Are Met — COVID Jabs Cause Death
McCullough goes on to explain the Bradford Hill criterion for causation, which is one of the ways by which we can actually determine that, yes, the shots are indeed killing people. We’re not dealing with coincidence.
“The first question we’d ask is: ‘Does the vaccine have a mechanism of action, a biological mechanism of action, that can actually kill a human being?’ And the answer is yes! because the vaccines all use genetic mechanisms to trick the body into making the lethal spike protein of the virus.
It is very conceivable that some people take up too much messenger RNA; they produce a lethal spike protein in sensitive organs like the brain or the heart or elsewhere. The spike protein damages blood vessels, damages organs, causes blood clots. So, it’s well within the mechanism of action that the vaccine could be fatal.
Someone could have a fatal blood clot. They could have fatal myocarditis. The FDA has official warnings of myocarditis. They have warnings on blood clots. They have warnings on a fatal neurologic condition called Guillain-Barré syndrome. So, the FDA warnings, the mechanism of action, clearly say it’s possible.
The second criteria is: ‘Is it a large effect?’ And the answer is yes! This is not a subtle thing. It’s not 151 versus 149 deaths. This is 15,000 deaths. So, it’s a very large effect size, a large effect.
The third [criteria] is: ‘Is it internally consistent?’ Are you seeing other things that could potentially be fatal in VAERS? Yes! We’re seeing heart attacks. We’re seeing strokes. We’re seeing myocarditis. We’re seeing blood clots, and what have you. So, it’s internally consistent.
‘Is it externally consistent?’ That’s the next criteria. Well, if you look in the MHRA, the yellow card system in England, the exact same thing has been found. In the EudraVigilance system in [Europe] the exact same thing’s been found.
So, we have actually fulfilled all of the Bradford Hill criteria. I’ll tell you right now that COVID-19 vaccine is, from an epidemiological perspective, causing these deaths or a large fraction.”
Zero Tolerance for Elective Drugs Causing Death
There may be cases in which a high risk of death from a drug might be acceptable. If you have a terminal incurable disease, for example, you may be willing to experiment and take your chances. Under normal circumstances however, lethal drugs are not tolerated.
After five suspected deaths, a drug will receive a black box warning. At 50 deaths, it will be removed from the market. Considering COVID-19 has a less than 1% risk of death across age groups, the tolerance for a deadly remedy is infinitesimal. At over 17,000 reported deaths, which in real numbers may exceed 212,000,8 the COVID shots far surpass any reasonable risk to protect against symptomatic COVID-19. As noted by McCullough:
“There is zero tolerance for electively taking a drug or a new vaccine and then dying! There’s zero tolerance for that. People don’t weigh it out and say, ‘Oh well, I’ll take my chances and die.’ And I can tell you, the word got out about vaccines causing death in early April [2021], and by mid-April the vaccination rates in the United States plummeted …
We hadn’t gotten anywhere near our goals. Remember, President Biden set a goal [of 70% vaccination rate] by July 1. We never got there because Americans were frightened by their relatives, people in their churches and their schools dying after the vaccine.
They had heard about it, they saw it. There was an informal internet survey done several months ago, where 12% of Americans knew somebody who had died after the vaccine.
I’m a doctor. I’m an internist and cardiologist. I just came from the hospital … I had a woman die of the COVID-19 vaccine … She had shot No. 1. She had shot No. 2. After shot No. 2, she developed blood clots throughout her body. She required hospitalization. She required intravenous blood thinners. She was ravaged. She had neurologic damage.
After that hospitalization, she was in a walker. She came to my office. I checked for more blood clots. I found more blood clots. I put her back on blood thinners. I saw her about a month later. She seemed like she was a little better. Family was really concerned. The next month I got called by the Dallas Coroner office saying she’s found dead at home.
Most of us don’t have any problem with vaccines; 98% of Americans take all the vaccines … I think most people who are still susceptible would take a COVID vaccine if they knew they weren’t going to die of it or be injured. And because of these giant safety concerns, and the lack of transparency, we’re at an impasse.
We’ve got a very labor-constrained market. We’ve got people walking off the job. We’ve got planes that aren’t going to fly, and it’s all because our agencies are not being transparent and honest with America about vaccine safety.”
Early Treatment Is Crucial, Vaxxed or Not
As noted by McCullough, the vast majority of patients require hospitalization for COVID-19 is because they’ve not received any treatment and the infection has been allowed free reign for days on end.
“To this day, the patients who get hospitalized are largely those who receive no early care at home,” he says. “They’re either denied care or they don’t know about it, and they end up dying.
The vast majority of people who die, die in the hospital; they don’t die at home. And the reason why they end up in the hospital, it’s typically two weeks of lack of treatment. You can’t let a fatal illness brew for two weeks at home with no treatment, and then start treatment very late in the hospital. It’s not going to work.
There’s been a very good set of analyses, one in the Journal of Clinical Infectious Diseases … that showed, day by day, one loses the opportunity of reducing the hospitalization when monoclonal antibodies are delayed … No doctor should be considered a renegade when they order FDA [emergency use authorized] monoclonal antibody. The monoclonal antibodies are just as approved as the vaccines.
I just had a patient over the weekend, fully vaccinated, took the booster. A month after the booster she went on a trip to Dubai. She just came back, and she got COVID-19! … I got her a monoclonal antibody infusion that day. [The following day] she started the sequence of multidrug therapy for COVID-19. I am telling you, she is going to get through this illness in a few days …
Podcaster Joe Rogan just went through this. Governor Abbott was also a vaccine failure. He went through it. Former President Trump went through it. Americans should see the use of monoclonal antibodies in high risk patients, followed by drugs in an oral sequenced approach. This is standard of care!
It is supported by the Association of Physicians and Surgeons, the Truth for Health Foundation, the American Front Line Doctors, and the Front Line Critical Care Consortium. This is not renegade medicine. This is what patients should have. This is the correct thing! …
If we can’t get the monoclonal antibodies, we certainly use hydroxychloroquine, supported by over 250 studies, ivermectin, supported by over 60 studies, combined with azithromycin or doxycycline, inhaled budesonide … full-dose aspirin … nutraceuticals including zinc, vitamin D, vitamin C, quercetin, NAC … we do oral and nasal decontamination with povidone-iodine.
In acutely sick patients we do it every four hours, [and it] massively reduces the viral load … Fortunately, we have enough doctors now and enough patient awareness, patients who … understand that early treatment is viable, is necessary, and it should be executed.”
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Notes
1, 6 Toxicology Reports September 2021; 8: 1665-1684
2 Retraction Watch October 4, 2021
4, 5 European Journal of Epidemiology September 30, 2021
7 OpenVAERS Data as of October 15, 2021
8 SKirsch.io/vaccine-resources
Featured image is from TrialSiteNews
November 17th, 2021 by Philip Giraldi
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 recent unprecedented surprise two-day visit by the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) William Burns to Moscow for talks with his counterparts has triggered considerable discussion within retired spook circles in and around Washington. Even among active CIA employees the preparations for the trip were tightly held with few advisers briefed on the agenda that had been prepared for the meetings, which were clearly initiated at Langley’s request. Burns met with Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev as well as Russian Foreign Intelligence Service Director Sergei Naryshkin last Tuesday. President Vladimir Putin was briefed on the meetings on the following day. Concerning the discussions, a Kremlin spokesman said only that “Of course, dialogue at this level and dialogue on such sensitive issues is extremely important for bilateral relations and for the exchange of views on the problems that we have” elaborating only that various international issues were discussed. A US Embassy press release echoed the Russian comments.
There is a consensus that Burns, a former Ambassador to Russia and a Russian speaker, was on a mission ordered by the president to create a more stable and predictable relationship.
The move comes in spite of US issuance of a new wave of sanctions for past presumed Russian offenses in April. Leaks regarding the visit, if verifiable, indicate that Burns was in Moscow to discuss specifically alleged Russian ransomware hacking and even the widely discredited view that Moscow has been continuing its interference in US elections. If all of that is so, the visit would be pointless as the Kremlin has denied any such involvement and dismissed claims that the alleged Russian hackers are in any was associated with the government.
The most popular narrative currently making the rounds among some conspiracy theorists is that the Biden Administration has compiled what might be described as a dossier on the expansion of Chinese influence operations worldwide and is keen to make the case that they threaten everyone, including the Europeans and Russians. Presumably Burns would have been in Moscow to share that information in hopes that the burgeoning de facto alliance between Russia and China can be reversed. Whether Burns was successful in such a task remains to be seen, but it of course would not take into account that views in Beijing and Moscow have been shaped and hardened by confrontational activity that the United States has been engaged in both in the Baltic and South China Sea.
Joe Biden for his part has not helped any rapprochement by his assurances to defend Taiwan and his critical comments about Vladimir Putin at the recent climate change conference in Glasgow. So one must ask why is it that an Administration that is increasingly seen as disconnected and incapable at home been persisting in provocative policies that could plausibly lead to war against major powers like China and Russia? Particularly given the fact that recent war games and exercises have suggested that the in-disarray US armed forces might well be defeated? Is the trip of William Burns to Moscow something of a wake-up call to the fact that US foreign policy basically makes no sense?
Unfortunately, the Republicans are equally locked into an adversarial mode when it comes to Russia and China. Ex-UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, is now calling for economic war against Beijing. Some might conclude that everything in contemporary Washington comes down to a latter-day opera buffa in which an assortment of comic characters parade for a moment only to be replaced by the next bumbler sporting an equally ridiculous message.
Russia aside, witness the recent wave of China bashing, begun by Barack Obama with his pivot to Asia, continued under Donald Trump with his China virus rants, and endorsed by Joe Biden’s team which persists in labeling Beijing as enemy number one. No one steps back and considers even for a moment that the US is China’s largest market and that the US in turn relies on Chinese manufactured products to fill its Walmarts. If ever two nations had good reasons not to go to war, it would be China and the United States, yet the US desire to confront the “Red Menace” to include defending Taiwan continues to drive policy.
So, it remains to be seen what might come out of the William Burns delegation going to Moscow. But there have been other recent visits by senior American officials. If you really want to consider policy making that is brain dead, the prize would have to go to the recently concluded trip made by State Department Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland to Moscow. The mainstream media that reported the trip saw it, just like the Burns trip, as a gesture being made by the Biden White House to mend fences with the Vladimir Putin government. But if that were so, the selection of Nuland as the interlocutor was particularly inappropriate. She is a hard-core neoconservative who is married to Robert Kagan. She was in fact on a Russian sanctions list before her trip and had to be removed from it so she could carry out the official travel. Nuland is best known in the media for having said in an intercepted phone call “Fuck the EU” when a colleague suggested that the European Union might have a role to play in the future direction of Ukraine.
Nuland at State Department under Barack Obama was in fact the driving force behind demanding regime change in Ukraine to oust its pro-Russian government. She would drop in on Kiev’s Maidan Square with her buddy Senator John McCain to pass out cookies to demonstrators. After the government was changed to satisfy Washington, it was admitted that the US had spent something like $5 billion to bring about the “revolution.” Moscow and Putin, however, were not amused and promptly moved to take back Crimea and to stir up resistance in the largely ethnic Russian Donbass region.
Nuland met in Moscow with the Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov. What she chose to discuss belies suggestions that she was there to talk nice and mend fences. A major issue was a demand from Washington to greatly reduce the Russian diplomatic presence in the United States. The number that Nuland reportedly presented to Ryabkov was that 300 dips would have to go. The demand reportedly came from Congressional pressure to greatly reduce the number of accredited Russians based on the claim that Moscow had interfered in American elections. Nuland had with her two lists of names for removal, and suggested that the first fifty should be returned home by January.
The Russians responded that they were willing to lift all sanctions of US diplomats if Washington would reciprocate by lifting sanctions on Russian diplomatic missions in the US. Nuland said that was not acceptable. Ryabkov countered with his observation that many of the diplomats were accredited to the United Nations and were not accountable to the US approved diplomatic list. Ryabkov elaborated that “If you will insist, we are ready to close down all US missions in Russia, and to lock down our remaining offices at Washington. We can terminate all diplomatic interaction; if you want our relations be based on the number of our nuclear missiles, we are ready. But it’s your choice, not ours.” So the discussion obviously went nowhere.
In fact, the discussion went downhill from that point, including as it did US disapproval of Russian involvement in Mali and in Libya and a sounding out of possible Kremlin response if the Biden Administration pushes forward with plans to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. The Russians also confirmed that they would not permit hosting US intelligence personnel on military bases in former Central Asian Soviet countries “the ‘Stans” to monitor developments in Afghanistan. Crimea was apparently not mentioned.
Ryabkov concluded that “…he and Nuland made no progress on normalizing the work of their diplomatic missions, which has been hampered by multiple rounds of sanctions, adding that the situation could exacerbate even further. The Russian Foreign Ministry reiterated Moscow’s readiness to respond in kind to any unfriendly US action.” The only positive development was thin gruel, coming when Ryabkov floated a suggestion that Putin might be willing to meet with Joe Biden at some undesignated point in the future to discuss mutual concerns.
One has to wonder who exactly selected someone as toxic as Victoria Nuland to go to Russia, but worse was to come after her return to America. Any Putin-Biden summit meeting is now less likely than it was several weeks ago as right after Nuland’s departure for the United States, the bilateral relationship worsened.
The NATO headquarters in Brussels declared several Russian diplomats ‘personae non gratae’, and the Russian Foreign Ministry responded to the provocation by sending home all NATO representatives present at diplomatic missions in Russia. In response back in the United States, the media and some Congressmen and Biden Administration officials immediately began to press forward with their plans to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, a vital or even existential issue for Russia that guarantees to scuttle any attempts to actually improve relations. And the White House continues to make a bad situation worse by suggesting that it has an obligation to “defend Ukraine.”
So why was CIA Director William Burns in Moscow and what did he accomplish? God only knows!
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Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected].
He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Featured image is from The Unz Review
November 16th, 2021 by Joachim Hagopian
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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In lieu of Covid-19 killer vaccines, Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, MD, the acclaimed treating family physician for heads of state, has successfully cured over 6,000 Covid-19 patients with a combo of hydroxychloroquine, zinc, quercetin, Vitamin C and Vitamin D as an alternative treatment resulting in a 99% survival rate. While his notable accomplishments have garnered nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize and Presidential Medal of Freedom, speaking out publicly against the dangers of the so-called vaccines has caused him to endure daily death threats, character and career assassination attempts and widespread censorship. Because he is a courageous speaker of the truth, supplying an effective, inexpensive health remedy that openly opposes the cabal’s genocidal depopulation agenda, he is deemed a threat to the New World Order medical and political tyranny.
After being de-platformed off all the social media, on October 25, 2021 Dr. Zev Zelenko boldly exposes “the demons” behind this the eugenics depopulation agenda;
I am a conspiracy realist.
Vanguard and Black Rock [sic] are stakeholders in all industry, media, academia, and politics.
Vanguard and Black Rock invest in each other through something called circular ownership.
Thus, consider Vanguard and Black Rock as a monopoly that owns everything. With due diligence you will discover that the major stakeholders of this monopoly are:
They use the following foundations to ferment chaos around the world
These foundations are instrumental for geopolitical destabilization. Chaos is good for business and power acquisition. Only a divinely inspired force can overcome this Goliath. The world will be redeemed by acts of goodness and kindness. We need collective divine consciousness in order to merit divine intervention. The owners of the vanguard/black rock monopoly are a manifestation of the primordial serpent.
I am VERY optimistic about an upcoming redemptive event that will rebalance our dark world.
Fasten your seatbelts and enjoy the ride. –
Vladimir Zev Zelenko, MD
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Even a cursory examination amazingly done by Tim Gielen exposing today’s two biggest controlling stakeholders –Vanguard and BlackRock – shows that the same handful of monopolists succinctly pointed out by Dr. Zelenko, essentially own and control the entire world.
Their absolute power over humanity has permitted them to literally get away with murder while toxically destroying our planet.
For example, take the top worldwide food industry manufacturers as the largest name brand corporations – Coca Cola, PepsiCo, Unilever, Nestle and Mondelez International, all these giant makers of our chemically processed food are controlled by the same two biggest monopolizing shareholder investors Vanguard and BlackRock. The world’s third and fourth largest investment companies are Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway and State Street Corporation.
The Communications Technology Industry
Another example in this monopoly game is the largest companies in the technology industry. Facebook owns WhatsApp and Instagram, and Alphabet as the parent company of all Google businesses, owns YouTube, Gmail, and the largest sponsor of Android, the world’s largest mobile app platform, the near exclusive operating system of all smart phones, and Apple IOS, the other major operating system.
Thus, Bill Gates’ Microsoft Corporation, Facebook, Apple and Alphabet constitute the four largest Big Tech companies that virtually all the world’s computers, telex and smart phones run on.
The same two top investors – Vanguard and BlackRock, also own the most controlling shares of all these corporations in the Big Tech industry. In fact, all the companies that build computers, TVs, smart phones and household appliances – IBM, HP, Intel, Sony and Dell, including the biggest online marketplaces Amazon and E-Bay, the largest department and grocery store chains, all the payment methods, all are owned by the same giant investment firms Vanguard and BlackRock.
Every Single Industry on Earth is Owned or Controlled by the same Two Top Investors
All the agricultural products, seeds owned by Monsanto, tobacco, alcohol and Big Pharma corporations, now killing us with their so-called vaccines masquerading as bioweapons, all are owned by the same bloodlines.
The economic game is totally rigged, from all the top internet travel websites, all the top airlines, the top airplane manufacturers, the top hotel and restaurant chains, the top oil refineries that fuel all the planes, trains, boats, trucks and cars, the steel corporations and mining companies that supply all the raw materials used in all modes of transportation, construction, textile and clothing manufacturing, all have the same controlling owners, including the so called green industry making solar panel and wind turbines.
By 2028 Bloomberg confirms that these two owners of the world – Vanguard and BlackRock – will possess $20 trillion.
Black Rock is considered the fourth arm of the government with its intimate ties to the Rothschild central banks. Even BlackRock’s largest shareholder is Vanguard and vice versa, although Vanguard ensures complete anonymity of its individual owners. But too late, overwhelming evidence proves that it’s the same handful of “nobility families” that the good Dr. Zelenko outed.
A recap – everything on earth is literally owned and controlled by these same top investment companies along with the largest banks, mutual funds, insurance companies and even political nations, owned and controlled through bribery and blackmail, all of these domains are completely dominated by the same controlling bloodlines – the Rothschild, Rockefeller, Du Pont, Carnegie, Orsini, Bush and Windsor family dynasties, along with a few lesser known yet equally powerful clans covered by Fritz Springmeier’s tome Bloodlines of Illuminati.
To lock in their controlling stranglehold on humanity, even all the smaller investment firms in the Fortune 500 are owned by the same familiar larger ones in a hierarchically vertical pyramid power structure.
Like the late great comedian George Carlin astutely observed over a dozen years ago, it’s all one “big club [of psychopaths] and you ain’t in it,” running virtually every single aspect of our lives and every single enterprise on the planet, including both legal and illegal, bar none.
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Joachim Hagopian is a West Point graduate, former Army officer and author of “Don’t Let the Bastards Getcha Down,” exposing a faulty US military leadership system based on ticket punching up the seniority ladder, invariably weeding out the best and brightest, leaving mediocrity and order followers rising to the top as politician-bureaucrat generals designated to lose every modern US war by elite design. After the military, Joachim earned a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and worked as a licensed therapist in the mental health field with abused youth and adolescents for more than a quarter century. In Los Angeles he found himself battling the largest county child protective services in the nation within America’s thoroughly broken and corrupt child welfare system. The experience in both the military and child welfare system prepared him well as a researcher and independent journalist, exposing the evils of Big Pharma and how the Rockefeller controlled medical and psychiatric system inflict more harm than good, case in point the current diabolically lethal pandemic hoax and genocide. As an independent journalist for the last 8 years, Joachim has written hundreds of articles for many news sites, particularly Global Research and lewrockwell.com.
As a published author of a 5-book volume series entitled Pedophilia& Empire: Satan, Sodomy & the Deep State, Joachim’s books and chapters are Amazon bestsellers in child advocacy and human rights categories. His A-Z sourcebook series fully documents and exposes the global pedophilia scourge and remains available for free at Joachim’s blogsite at http://empireexposed.blogspot.com/ and https://pedoempire.org.
Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense
November 16th, 2021 by Steven Sahiounie
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***
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi will run for president of Libya in the country’s first direct presidential election set to be held starting on December 24. He is the son of Libya’s late leader Muammar al-Gaddafi who was murdered on October 20, 2011.
Gaddafi wore traditional garments as he addressed the camera and recited a verse from the Koran while announcing his bid to lead the country out of chaos and war. The UN-sponsored plan has called for both presidential and parliamentary elections to be held simultaneously.
Gaddafi was captured by a militia after his father’s murder and was held for six years, receiving a death sentence that was later overturned.
Also running for the top seat is the military commander Khalifa Hafter, who has led a secular army fighting the Radical Islamic terrorists who are in control of the western headquarters at Tripoli. The UN-backed government in Tripoli was stacked with members of the Muslim Brotherhood. Other candidates in the running are Prime Minister Abdulhamid al-Dbeibah and parliament speaker Aguila Saleh.
Gaddafi has gradually re-emerged onto the public stage despite being still wanted on war crimes charges by the International Criminal Court.
Since Muammar Gaddafi died, Libya has been a country in war and filled with terrorists, who disguise themselves sometimes in suits and ties and pretend to be leaders. Violent intervention in Libya was not chiefly about the security of the people: it was about the security of global banking, money, and oil.
Macron asks for foreign troops to leave during Paris meeting
On Friday French President Emmanuel Macron hosted a meeting in Paris which brought together the leaders of France, Libya, Germany, Italy, and Egypt, as well as the US vice president, Kamala Harris. Both Turkey and Russia sent lower-level representatives to the meeting which sought to unify support for the December election in Libya, as well as call for the departure of foreign fighters.
Leaders in Paris decided “that individuals or entities, inside or outside of Libya, who might attempt to obstruct, undermine, manipulate or falsify the electoral process and the political transition” could face sanctions.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in a video message to the meeting warned of outside influence.
Turkey has rebuffed Macron’s call on foreign powers to remove their forces from Libya, and responded with a statement, “We are there as a force of stability and help to the Libyan people. And our priority as far as security is concerned is to help the Libyans establish their united Libyan National Army.”
While Turkey is bolstering the Muslim Brotherhood power base in Tripoli, the Russians have supported Haftar’s secular forces in the east, and France has faced accusations of backing Haftar, but publically claims to be neutral.
The current political situation
Libya is currently led by an interim government but remains politically unstable, while the civil war has Libyan militias as well as foreign-backed militias fighting in the fourth largest country in Africa, with the largest city and capital, Tripoli, located in western Libya and contains over three million of Libya’s seven million people.
The US-NATO attack on Libya 2011
US and NATO claimed to intervene in Libya for humanitarian reasons, under “the responsibility to protect”.
In November 2001, General Wesley Clark, author of “Winning Modern Wars”, was at the Pentagon and was told, “There was a total of seven countries beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia, and Sudan.” A senior military officer explained the five-year plan then being discussed. The Project for a New American Century (PNAC) had a “hit list” of Arab nations. The common feature of all 7 nations on the US hit list is they had independent central banks, not part of the Bank cartel that is establishing “One World Money”. Nations whose governments own and operate their national currency system possess monetary defenses against financial warfare; therefore, the US is systematically destroying those defenses.
In 2000 Libya had achieved economic independence, with its water, food, oil, and state-owned bank. Libya had arisen under Gaddafi from one of the poorest of countries to the richest in Africa. Education and medical treatment were free, and having a home was considered a human right.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy reportedly went so far as to call Libya a “threat” to the financial security of the world. The huge threat of the 143 tons of gold held by Libya, and the economic threat poised if Libyan gold were to displace the French franc (CFA) as a prime African currency. This quantity of Libyan gold and Libyan silver as well is valued at more than $7 billion. The great fear was that Libya might lead North Africa into a high degree of economic independence with a new Pan-African currency.
In February 2011, the first protests broke out in Benghazi. From the outset, Western and foreign Special Forces were on the ground in Libya, with a massive supply of AK47 assault rifles and ammunition. What was reported by western mainstream media as a ‘popular uprising’, was a well-planned and orchestrated US-NATO attack on Libya for ‘regime change’, and stealing the countries resources. Al Qaeda terrorists were embedded with the US-backed opposition.
On March 19, 2011, at a meeting of the ‘rebel council,’ they announced the creation of a new oil company, the designation of the Central Bank of Benghazi as a monetary authority competent in monetary policies in Libya, and the appointment of a Governor to the Central Bank of Libya, with a temporary headquarters in Benghazi. The rebels in Libya announced they were creating a new bank, a central bank, replacing the previous state-owned Libyan bank. The rebels took a break from slaughtering unarmed civilians across Libya, to announce a new banking system, which was in line with western aims. The new Central Bank of Benghazi was established to stop any ideas of a gold currency for Africa. Economic analysts were astounded that Al Qaeda terrorists could also be astute banking specialists, capable of establishing a whole new banking authority for an oil-rich nation. The ‘revolution’ was just in the beginning stages, and yet a new bank was the first order of business. This made it obvious that it was the new bank that was of primary importance, not securing the humanitarian concerns of the residents of Libya.
On March 27, 2011, the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, was briefed on clear evidence of war crimes on the part of US-NATO-backed rebels.
The Gold
In 2008, while giving a speech at an Arab League Summit in Damascus, Syria, Qaddafi predicted that America will kill more Arab leaders, as they had done with Saddam Hussein of Iraq.
In 2009, while Qaddafi was acting head of the African Union, he planned to create a gold-backed African currency to compete with the dollar and euro. Oil and all resources in Africa would be traded in Gold.
Until the US-NATO invasion, the gold dinar was issued by the Central Bank of Libya (CBL). The Libyan bank was 100% state-owned and independent. Foreigners had to go through the CBL to do business with Libya. The Central Bank of Libya issued the dinar, using the country’s 143.8 tons of gold.
Qaddafi’s plan would have strengthened the whole continent of Africa in the eyes of economists backing sound money, but it would have been especially devastating for the US economy, the American dollar, and particularly the elite in charge of the system.
The plan was designed to establish an alternative to the French African franc (CFA) in the French-speaking African nations. Libya’s gold reached an all-time high of 143.82 Tons in the second quarter of 2000 and a record low of 116.64 Tons in the fourth quarter of 2011, as reported by the World Gold Council.
There was a huge amount of Libyan gold missing at the end of 2011 after Gaddafi was murdered, and when the US-NATO invasion forces were in control of the country.
The refugee boats to Europe
UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, has urged the Libyan government to immediately address the dire situation of asylum-seekers and refugees.
Vincent Cochetel, UNHCR’s Special Envoy for the Western and Central Mediterranean Situation, said “The Libyan authorities must come up with a proper plan that respects their rights and identifies durable solutions.”
About 3,000 people are currently sheltering outside the Community Day Centre (CDC) in Tripoli, where UNHCR and its partners have been providing medical assistance and other services, while the UNHCR continues to call on the authorities to respect the human rights and dignity of asylum-seekers and refugees, stop their arbitrary arrest and release them from detention.
Libyan migrants are risking their lives almost daily to cross the Mediterranean Sea to arrive on Europe’s shores. The election next month may bring security and peace to Libya and give residents a chance to rebuild their lives at home, instead of taking a boat ride to the depths of the sea.
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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.
Steven Sahiounie is an award-winning journalist. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Featured image is from Mideast Discourse
November 16th, 2021 by Brian Shilhavy
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***
The European Union database of suspected drug reaction reports is EudraVigilance, and they are now reporting 29,934 fatalities, and 2,804,900 injuries, following COVID-19 injections.
A Health Impact News subscriber from Europe reminded us that this database maintained at EudraVigilance is only for countries in Europe who are part of the European Union (EU), which comprises 27 countries.
The total number of countries in Europe is much higher, almost twice as many, numbering around 50. (There are some differences of opinion as to which countries are technically part of Europe.)
So as high as these numbers are, they do NOT reflect all of Europe. The actual number in Europe who are reported dead or injured following COVID-19 shots would be much higher than what we are reporting here.
The EudraVigilance database reports that through October 19, 2021 there are 29,934 deaths and 2,804,900 injuries reported following injections of four experimental COVID-19 shots:
From the total of injuries recorded, almost half of them (1,311,861) are serious injuries.
“Seriousness provides information on the suspected undesirable effect; it can be classified as ‘serious’ if it corresponds to a medical occurrence that results in death, is life-threatening, requires inpatient hospitalisation, results in another medically important condition, or prolongation of existing hospitalisation, results in persistent or significant disability or incapacity, or is a congenital anomaly/birth defect.”
A Health Impact News subscriber in Europe ran the reports for each of the four COVID-19 shots we are including here. It is a lot of work to tabulate each reaction with injuries and fatalities, since there is no place on the EudraVigilance system we have found that tabulates all the results.
Since we have started publishing this, others from Europe have also calculated the numbers and confirmed the totals.*
Here is the summary data through November 6, 2021.
Total reactions for the mRNA vaccine Tozinameran (code BNT162b2, Comirnaty) from BioNTech/ Pfizer: 14,002 deaths and 1,266,500 injuries to 06/11/2021
Total reactions for the mRNA vaccine mRNA-1273(CX-024414) from Moderna: 8,196 deaths and 375,242 injuriesto 06/11/2021
Total reactions for the vaccine AZD1222/VAXZEVRIA (CHADOX1 NCOV-19) from Oxford/ AstraZeneca: 5,973 deaths and 1,065,560 injuries to 06/11/2021
Total reactions for the COVID-19 vaccine JANSSEN (AD26.COV2.S) from Johnson & Johnson: 1,763 deaths and 97,598 injuries to 06/11/2021
*These totals are estimates based on reports submitted to EudraVigilance. Totals may be much higher based on percentage of adverse reactions that are reported. Some of these reports may also be reported to the individual country’s adverse reaction databases, such as the U.S. VAERS database and the UK Yellow Card system. The fatalities are grouped by symptoms, and some fatalities may have resulted from multiple symptoms.
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Third Australian Corporate Journalist Hospitalized With Pericarditis After Pfizer COVID-19 Shot
The COVID World is reporting that 3 corporate journalists have now been hospitalized with heart disease (pericarditis) after taking Pfizer shots.
DARWIN – A third Australian journalist has developed pericarditis (heart inflammation) after her first Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. Eleni Roussos, an ABC News journalist and anchor in the Darwin ABC newsroom, was hospitalized on November 5th and diagnosed with pericarditis according to her sister Koulla Roussos.
She was released after tests, but after seeing no improvement in her health, she was readmitted to the emergency room of Darwin Private Hospital. She was released two days ago on November 13th.
Her sister, Koulla Roussos, wrote on Facebook about the health scare on November 6th:
On November 13th, she gave more detail on Facebook, saying:
She [Eleni] had her three children in that hospital [Darwin Private Hospital] and the staff at the Jabiru ward were by her side at each birth. Now, years on, the staff at the Jacana ward were crucial in her recovery during this, the most difficult time of her life. Whilst she is still not over the line, she leaves this hospital today thanks to the care and attention of cardiologist Dr Marcus Ilton. Special thanks to nursing staff – Sasi, Jacinta, Molly, Mariana, Alex and Earl for their amazing work.
We also want to extend our gratitude to our immediate and extended families, friends, colleagues, strangers, archangels and saints, the community support and spirit was overwhelming. Your flowers, chocolates, emails, phone calls, constant text messages day and night and prayers touched us deeply. We have been humbled by the will of providence and chance to realise that love and science go hand in hand.
Read the full article at The COVID World.
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Georgia Clark: 27-Year-Old Journalist Hospitalized 10 Days After Receiving Second Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine, Diagnosed With Pericarditis
SYDNEY, NEW SOUTH WALES – Georgia Clark, a news reporter for the Daily Telegraph has developed pericarditis (heart inflammation) after her second Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. The journalist, experienced severe flu-like symptoms and chest pain a week after her injection and checked into the emergency room on Wednesday, August 4th. Research shows that the 27-year-old suffered from pericarditis as a result of her inoculations.
Georgia Clark received her first Pfizer shot on July 3rd.
She received her second shot on July 25th.
She posted a video message from her hospital bed on August 11th.
Georgia Clark spent two nights in Concord Hospital.
Read the full article at The COVID World.
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Denham Hitchcock: Journalist Rushed To Hospital 25 Days After Receiving Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine, Diagnosed With Pericarditis
SYDNEY, NEW SOUTH WALES – A 45-year-old journalist was rushed to hospital 25 days after receiving the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. Denham Hitchcock, a Channel 7 News reporter, got his shot on or around August 1st. He was then later hospitalized after suffering pins and needles in his arm, a racing heart and dizziness. He was diagnosed with pericarditis as a result of the vaccine.
The reporter spoke from his hospital bed after being diagnosed with inflammation of the pericardium — a sac-like structure with two thin layers of tissue that surround the heart to hold it in place and help it work. A small amount of fluid keeps the layers separate so there’s less friction between them as the heart beats.
A common symptom of pericarditis is chest pain, caused by the sac’s layers becoming inflamed and possibly rubbing against the heart. It may feel like pain from a heart attack.
Hitchcock made the decision to share his story because “as a journalist, it would be hypocritical not to.”
He took to social media and posted this on Instagram:
Read the full article at The COVID World.
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Featured image is from First Things
November 16th, 2021 by Free West Media
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Courageous people who oppose discrimination against the unvaccinated and division in society still exist. At the risk, or rather the certainty of being the target of defamation and exclusion, Felix Gottwald has spoken up.
When international German movie star Til Schweiger reminded his audiences that he daughter now suffers from narcolepsy because of an earlier mass vaccination experiment against swine flu with the untested drug Pandemrix, he was humiliated and defamed, including being called an “asshole” on German public broadcaster ARD.
Gottwald, Austria’s most successful Olympic athlete and until most recently head of Bundes-Sport GmbH, resigned from his lucrative job to protest against the Austrian government’s tyrannical Corona policy.
“With three gold, one silver and three bronze medals, the former Nordic combined athlete is Austria’s most successful Olympic athlete in history,” the heute.at portal described Gottwald. “In spring 2021 he was appointed chairman of the national sports committee in federal sports GmbH. But he has now walked out because he is not satisfied with the government’s Corona policy – especially with Vice Chancellor and Sports Minister Werner Kogler.”
In an open letter on Facebook the athlete from Salzburg noted:
“There may be a lot going on in our country, but certainly not about the health and well-being of the Austrians and the people living in Austria – and that in the midst of the greatest health crisis. Division, agitation, discrimination – these are the government imperatives of the hour.”
Gottwald clearly does not agree with the arbitrary Corona rules. In his letter he also writes:
“As a demonstrably healthy person who uses sensible and reasonable measures to contain the pandemic in a very responsible manner, I am now, like millions of others, excluded from social life and thus from life that is full of sport.”
Gottwald challenged Kogler:
“As Sports Minister, it is up to you to set levers in motion that promote and not prevent exercise and (popular) sport in what is probably the greatest health crisis of our time. How far are you ready to go? And: How far are you as a government ready to go?”
Gottwald declared that he has lost all confidence in politics. On social media, the most successful Austrian Olympic athlete is celebrated once again as a “hero”.
“I am deeply ashamed of our country and as an Austrian I am angry, sad and disconcerted at the same time. I’ve lost all confidence in politics and, with the best of intentions, I can’t think of any arguments why I should believe a syllable of it. The type of discourse within politics, the choice of words, the incongruence, the disregard that reaches me as a responsible citizen and taxpayer, irritate me deeply and would probably drive any company in the private sector into ruin immediately.”
In his hard-hitting open letter, he added:
“As Austria’s most successful Olympic athlete, I have often lost and only rarely won. As an athlete, I have learned to deal with defeat and failure, to learn from them, to develop myself further and to treat myself and others with respect and dignity. I currently miss these virtues entirely on the part of politicians.”
Gottwald said he had been convinced that Austria “had learned from history” but was now “shocked to find that we as a society have become more presumptuous, ruthless and discriminatory than I have ever seen before”.
Austrian Army Union joins mass protest
After FPÖ chief Herbert Kickl called for a mass protest on November 20 in Vienna, the Federal Army Union (FGÖ ) has now joined in a letter published on November 14. It wants to stand up for fundamental rights and freedoms. The union expressly pointed out that anyone and everyone can demonstrate – even during lockdown since the demonstration cannot be banned.
The federal army union expects that the police will be “cooperative” and that there will be no escalations. The chairman of the Social Democratic Union (FSG) group in the police union, Hermann Greylinger, left no doubt in an interview that the police are currently unable to carry out Corona controls.
The President of the Federal Armed Forces Union FGÖ, Manfred Haidinger stated on behalf of his union that they would take part in the demonstration for fundamental and civil rights on November 20 in Vienna and that no one should fear reprisals.
“We hereby make it clear that participation in meetings is a particularly protected legal asset and has also been taken into account in the current draft ordinance”. Participation and travel from all over Austria are permitted. “The ban on a gathering registered by citizens as well as the prohibition of a party rally has been ruled as illegal,” Haidinger explained. The reason for this are judgments by the Vienna Administrative Court. “There is no longer any possibility of appeal against the judgments. They are therefore trend-setting for the right of assembly as a whole.”
Doctors harshly enforce vaccine sales
Medical Association President Thomas Szekeres told the ORF press hour on November 14, that compulsory vaccination must be “forced on” the population:
“I mean, it’s a question of whether you tie someone down and then give them the injection.” During the press hour, he once again excelled as a model propagandist. He explicitly advocated “that unvaccinated people also have massive disadvantages in their job”.
His deputy, Harald Mayer, has also been aggressively stirring up panic with the “fourth wave” allegedly rolling in. Mayer sees compulsory vaccination as well as a lockdown for everyone happening before Christmas.
Austrian Health Minister Mückstein has meanwhile announced lockdowns. And the Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians in Baden-Württemberg in Germany recommended that its contracted doctors resort to non-treatment for the unvaccinated.
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Featured image: Felix Gottwald is a former Austrian Nordic combined athlete. With three gold, one silver and three bronze medals, he is the most successful athlete in Austrian Olympic history . In total, he won 18 medals at the Olympic Games and World Championships. Facebook
November 16th, 2021 by Steve Kirsch
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Just for the record…Just because the FDA, CDC and the Public Health Agency of Canada have found no issues with the vaccines, doesn’t mean they are safe. Here’s unassailable proof they aren’t.
We have to stop blindly trusting our trusted authorities that they are giving us good information. It isn’t warranted. We should always insist on hearing both sides of the story.
We should be extremely suspicious when not a single leading medical advocate of the vaccine is willing to debate a team of qualified scientists who disagree with the narrative.
For example, it is well known that Merck received approval from the FDA to give Vioxx to 2 year old children just 3 weeks before Merck pulled the drug for safety issues.
We’re doing it again now with our kids and this time the drug companies aren’t going to pull it even though there is compelling evidence is in plain sight of everyone.
Here are three pieces of unassailable proof that the COVID vaccines are the most dangerous in history and should be immediately pulled:
When I say unassailable, I mean that nobody can argue using evidence that these happened due to something other than the vaccine as the primary cause. The “using evidence” is key. People make hand-waving arguments all the time to dispute hypotheses. What matters is arguments with supporting evidence. That appears to be non-existent in all three cases.
Extra credit
And then I got this which matches what I’ve heard from others. It’s a bit hard to explain if the vaccines are safe. Check with your own neurologist if you don’t believe me.
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Featured image is from Steve Kirsch’s Newsletter
November 16th, 2021 by Rep. Ron Paul
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What do the Federal Reserve and neoconservatives have in common? They both refuse to admit that their policies — the neocons’ promotion of perpetual war and the Fed’s manipulation of the money supply — are complete failures, having produced the opposite of the promised results.
The latest example of the Federal Reserve engaging in Bill Kristol-like levels of denial is the Fed’s continued insistence that the return of 70s-style inflation is a “transitory” phenomenon resulting from the end of the lockdowns. The Fed has acknowledged the “transitory” inflation will last until at least 2022, yet it is still determined to keep interest rates at or near zero until the “jobs situation” improves.
To be fair, the Fed has finally announced plans to cut back on its money-pumping activities by reducing by 15 billion dollars a month its monthly purchase of 80 billion dollars of Treasury bonds and 40 billion dollars of mortgage-backed assets.
It is unlikely that the Fed will stick to its plans to “taper” its purchase of Treasury bonds. The Fed’s Treasury bond purchases enable the federal government to run up the debt without increasing taxes or paying punishingly high interest on the debt.
The Congressional Budget Office projects that by 2030 the federal debt interest cost will more than double to 829 billion dollars. That is more than the government spent on the military in 2020!
Despite the looming fiscal crisis, Congress is unlikely to cut spending anytime soon. Instead, Congress members are debating a 1.75 trillion dollars “social spending” plan, having just passed a 1.2 trillion dollars infrastructure bill. Contrary to the claims of President Biden and his allies, this new spending will not reduce inflation. What it will do is hasten and deepen the inevitable economic crisis caused by government overspending.
Of course, most Republicans will continue opposing big increases in spending and debt … as long as a Democrat sits in the Oval Office. A Republican who becomes president will likely believe, as Dick Cheney has said, that President Reagan taught us that deficits don’t matter. The difference between the parties is Republicans are less likely to raise taxes. So, no matter who controls Congress and the presidency, spending and debt can keep increasing.
The Fed may also take dramatic action to keep interest rates low if other purchasers of federal debt demand higher interest rates in anticipation of future inflation. Such a situation would be a sign of what Ludwig von Mises called a crack-up boom. A crack-up boom occurs when the public anticipates continuing devaluation of the currency, causing them to factor future price increases into their economic plans.
Crack-up booms are preceded or accompanied by economic crises that can lead to the rise of authoritarianism. However, this is not inevitable. Important steps can be taken including cutting spending on militarism and corporate welfare, phasing out the entitlement and welfare programs, and auditing and ending the Fed. Those of us who know the truth should seek to convince our fellow citizens of the importance of restoring a limited, constitutional government that does not try to run the economy, run the world, or run our lives.
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November 16th, 2021 by Fermin Koop
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UK citizens are being exposed to potentially harmful mixtures of pesticides that can currently be found in almost all grapes, oranges and herbs, according to a new report based on official government data. Researchers singled out the twelve fruit and vegetables most likely to contain a cocktail of pesticides, known as the dirty dozen.
Pesticides Action Network (PAN), a non-governmental network, found that between them, grapes, oranges, dried fruit, herbs, pears, peas, beans, okra, lettuce, beans, carrot, and mango all contained detectable levels from 122 different pesticides. The list includes 47 pesticides with links to cancer, 15 reproductive or developmental toxins that can affect sexual functions, and 17 cholinesterase inhibitors that can affect the respiratory system.
The pesticides are also related to environmental concerns, PAN said. Half of the top 12 pesticides found are groundwater contaminants, meaning that they persist in water bodies, potentially impacting aquatic biodiversity or drinking water quality. The list also includes acetamiprid, a neonicotinoid that represents a threat to bee health.
“These figures highlight the wide array of chemicals that we are exposed to daily through our diets. While safety limits continue to be set for just one pesticide at a time, the evidence is growing that chemicals can combine to be more toxic,” Nick Mole from PAN said in a statement. “We have limited understanding of the long-term impact to human health.”
The most polluted food
PAN looked at the UK Government’s annual report on pesticide residues in food for 2020 and analyzed the data. The government tested last year 2,460 samples of 33 different types of food and tested for up to 371 pesticides. Almost 40% of the samples had a residue at or below the maximum acceptable level, while 2.5% were over that level.
Samples of potatoes, pumpkin, peas, pears, oranges, okra, kiwi, herbs, grapes, cauliflower, and beans had pesticides above the accepted level, according to the government data. Every fruit and vegetable analyzed contained more than one pesticide, especially oranges (86% of the samples), grapes (87%), and herbs and dried fruit (81%).
However, the data also shows a drop in the overall percentage of fruit and vegetables containing more than one pesticide, going from 48% in 2019 to 30% in 2020. PAN questioned the UK’s decision to not analyze this year strawberries, lemons, and pre-packed salad, which ranked on top of the list last year on the use of pesticides.
The report also looked at starchy food and grains, specifically bread, rice, and rye. Almost 70% of the samples had pesticides but at or below the maximum acceptable level. Of the 162 samples of bread tested, 45 had more than one pesticide, glyphosate being the main one. More than half of the samples of rye also had more than one pesticide.
“The UK Government only tests around 3,000 samples of food for pesticides each year”, Mole said in a statement. “They justify this by arguing that it’s unnecessary to test more because they run a risk-based system which focusses in on food items which are most likely to pose a threat. But actually they have failed to test three-quarters of last year’s produce of concern.”
The full government report can be accessed here.
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Featured image is from Flickr / Marcos Zion
November 16th, 2021 by Robert Inlakesh
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An attempt on the life of Iraq’s Prime Minister, a disputed election, the gunning down of unarmed demonstrators, and a broken US withdrawal promise have all highlighted the chaos of Iraq today, but some are still pretending as if the US-Iraq war has ended.
In the early hours of Sunday morning, three drones were said to have been used as part of an assassination attempt against the current Iraqi Prime Minister, Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, injuring at least 7 people in the process. This came following large-scale protests across Iraq’s Capital, Baghdad, on Friday, in which Iraqi security forces had opened fire and injured at least 124 people, killing an unspecified number according to some sources.
The demonstrations came in rejection of last months elections results, which saw a resounding victory for the ‘Saeroun movement’ of popular Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Parties loyal to the Iraqi Popular Mobilisation Units (PMU/PMF), saw significant losses in their seats in parliament and claimed that voter fraud occurred, with some accusing the United Arab Emirates of interfering with the election results.
Although the Iraqi PM, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, did announced and launch an investigation into the shootings, he has largely been blamed for having been implicated, and many directly accuse the PM of orchestrating the attacks on unarmed demonstrators. The circumstances behind the assassination attempt have also sparked much debate as to who was truly behind the attack. This has primarily come out of suspicions surrounding the failure of US C-Ram air defense systems not being activated, nor their sirens until after the explosions were heard, as the PM’s residence is located inside the US Embassy’s Greenzone.
Immediately after the assassination attempt the PM said: “I was and still am a redemption project for Iraq and the people of Iraq. The missiles of treachery will not discourage the believers and will shake a hair of the stability and determination of our heroic security forces to preserve people’s security, achieve justice and set the law in place,” stressing the need for dialogue in Iraq.
Anti-Iranian media, including Saudi-State news outlet al-Arabiya, attempted to attach immediate blame to groups like Kataeb Hezbollah and other groups attached to the PMU. But all fingers seem to point not to Iranian aligned PMU militias or parties, but instead at the United States, according to the PMU affiliated Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba Party.
Not only have Iran, Syria, Lebanese Hezbollah, Palestinian Resistance Parties and Yemen’s Ansarallah, allies of the Iran-backed PMU, condemned the assassination attempt, but it seems that PMU parties are coming out very strongly in condemnation and accusing the US of being behind the attack.
The suspicions of the US government being involved in the assassination attempt have to be taken seriously, not only because of the US air defenses seemingly having faltered on all levels at the time, but because the framing of the attack would have worked to severely divide Iraq if the assassination attempt was successful. It may not have mattered who was truly responsible if the attack would have succeeded, chaos would have broken out and it may have immediately appeared to have been the PMU’s response to the gunning down of their demonstrators.
If the US government was responsible, in full or in part, it may explain why such basic drones were used to pull off the unsuccessful operation. By using these types of drones, it would make the attack seem like an attack carried out by a rogue militia and would fall in line with the types of strikes carried out, believed to be perpetrated by the PMU, on US forces earlier this year.
According to Iraq’s President, Barham Salih, who spoke to US President Joe Biden in September on deepening bilateral ties and cooperation, said “We cannot accept that Iraq will be dragged into chaos and a coup against its constitutional system,” addressing the attack in a tweet. Moqtada al-Sadr added that the attack was committed with the aim to “return Iraq to a state of chaos to be controlled by non-state forces”.
But the reality is that Iraq is controlled by non-State forces. In fact, there is nothing free or democratic about Iraq. Since the US invasion in 2003, which toppled the former Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein, the American regime forces have not left the country alone and continue to control its local, as well as national, institutions in an indirect manner. Through the power of its so-called NGO’s, described by former Secretary of State, Colin Powell, in 2001, as a “force multiplier”, the US government has effectively set up a system of chaos and societal control in Iraq.
After pillaging Iraq’s resources and selling them off to its corporations, the US decided to issue countless reconstruction contracts, worth roughly $60 Billion. These contracts were allocated for the sectors of water, electricity systems and of course oil, spanning through to everything from female empowerment workshops, to school uniforms, anti-corruption efforts, and civil society organizations. Naturally the abundance of funds were exploited by everyone from the corporate elites, down to local community leaders in Iraqi villages. This created an environment of outright corruption, which lingers until this day, not only that, but it provided the US government a means, through the likes of USAID, to essentially bankroll a US dominance on the civil society level and influence every aspect of Iraqi life.
On top of this, the US government not only fanned the flames of sectarian hatred, which was barely in existence before its invasion, but implemented a Confessionalist political system just as the French colonialists did in Lebanon. This system is built to designate a power sharing, across government, between religious sects, and is in accordance to their populations statistically. As was the case historically, the US placed additional focus on what is now known as Iraqi-Kurdistan, backing the ‘Kurdish Regional Government’, all as a means of fragmenting and weakening the country. The boundaries of Iraq were first decided by the UK and Prince Faisal, specifically with the aims of sectarian division in mind, the US has simply jumped in to work on what the United Kingdom started with their Arab puppets.
Now, the US Biden administration has admitted that they are not leaving Iraq, despite promising to withdraw from their combat mission inside the country. Not a surprise, but definitely alarming to say the least. Instead of the US government being held accountable for its actions, the Western media and the media of the Arab reactionary regimes, are attempting to place all the blame for Iraq’s current chaos on Iranian backed militias and corruption internally.
This approach is outright propaganda, not only against Iran and its allies, but also attempts to cover up the US role in making Iraq the corrupt and violent nation it is today. The terrorism of the US empire did not end in 2003, at the end of the official US occupation, with the so-called “nation building”, or when the US began limiting its troop numbers. The terrorism continues today, and the corruption infests every aspect of Iraq. Unless the US government is permanently driven from Iraqi soil, including its so-called NGO’s and businessmen, Iraq will never be free, peaceful, nor democratic — by design.
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Robert Inlakesh is a documentary filmmaker, journalist, writer, Middle-East analyst & news correspondent for The Last American Vagabond.
Featured image is from The Last American Vagabond
November 16th, 2021 by The Cradle
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US military officials have justified a 2019 airstrike in the eastern Syrian governorate of Dayr al-Zawr which killed dozens of women and children, claiming it was “necessary” in order to defeat armed ISIS fighters.
The statement comes on the heels of an in-depth report by The New York Times, which alleges that the US military covered up the apparent war crime committed near the town of Baghuz on 18 March, 2019.
According to the investigation, a US F-15E attack jet dropped a 500-pound bomb on a “large crowd of women and children huddled against a river bank.” This was followed by two 2,000-pound bombs which killed most of the survivors from the first strike.
The report goes on to say that officials at the US military’s Combined Air Operations Center at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar immediately questioned the reasons for the attack, with at least one message on a secure chat system reading “We just dropped on 50 women and children.”
This was allegedly followed by an extensive cover-up of the Baghuz strike “at nearly every step,” as the US military made moves to conceal the reality of the attack. According to the NYT: “The death toll was downplayed. Reports were delayed, sanitized and classified. United States-led coalition forces bulldozed the blast site. And top leaders were not notified.”
On top of this, a report by the Defense Department’s independent inspector general “was stalled and stripped of any mention of the strike.” The cover-up also included intentionally entered false strike log entries, as the military did not follow its own requirements to report and investigate the strike.
In response to the damning revelations, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) has maintained that at least 80 people were killed during the airstrikes, “including 16 Islamic State fighters and four civilians.” However, the number of civilians among the 60 fatalities “could not be determined because multiple armed women and at least one armed child were observed.”
Following up on this claim, CENTCOM spokesman Captain Bill Urban told reporters on 15 November that the probe could not “conclusively characterize the status of more than 60 other casualties,” adding that some women and children, “whether through indoctrination or choice, decided to take up arms in this battle and as such could not strictly be classified as civilians.”
Still, Urban went on to say that “it is also highly likely that there were additional civilians killed.”
The news comes just two months after the US military admitted to having killed at least 10 civilians in August this year – including seven children – in a botched airstrike during their chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.
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November 16th, 2021 by Hamid Dabashi
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The Trump-inspired attempted coup finally nailed the lie of the US being a global beacon of democracy. No wonder autocrats in Sudan, Tunisia and elsewhere are feeling emboldened
Over the last few months, there have been several coups and attempted coups in the Arab world. All of these coups – in Tunisia, Sudan and the attempted coup in Jordan – suggest a nasty turn in the dreams of the region after the Arab Spring protests of 2010 and 2011 had promised the “Holy Grail” of democracy.
The Tunisian coup was particularly disheartening, as much hope had been invested in the democratic process that had resulted in a relatively well-functioning power-sharing polity.
The chronology of these coups, happening as they did in the aftermath of the attempted US coup orchestrated by the former President Donald Trump on 6 January, bears some analysis.
In April, news emerged from Jordan that there had been an attempted coup by Prince Hamzah bin Hussein, the eldest son of the late King Hussein and his fourth wife, the US-born Queen Noor, in which allegedly the Saudis were also involved.
In July, in Tunisia, President Kais Saied declared that he would rule by decree and suspended the newly minted constitution. In October, in Sudan, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan staged a military coup against the civilian-military alliance, led by Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, that had governed since the 2019 ousting of dictator Omar al-Bashir.
Global consequences
These are all variations on the theme of General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s military coup of July 2013 in Egypt – when the democratically elected Mohamed Morsi was deposed – with the bloody Syrian military dictatorship as Sisi’s role model.
Supported by the regimes in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, old-fashioned Arab dictators are back in the saddle, makings sure their autocratic regimes crush any aspirations for democracy their restless populations might hold. Meanwhile, on 6 January, in the “land of the free and the home of the brave”, the world watched in horror at the attempted coup, with Trump exposing the hidden underbelly of the US’s imperial claim on democracy.
It is worth considering whether the attempted coup in Washington had any catalytic effect on the rest of the world in general and on these old-fashioned Arab coups in particular?
To be sure, the Syrian and Egyptian models long predated the American attempted coup, while those in Jordan, Tunisia and Sudan followed. But what can we make of this concurrence: mere coincidence or a more substantial connection, from the US to Jordan, to Tunisia, to Sudan?
The events of 6 January at the US Capitol were hardly the first time the world had witnessed an American-inspired coup. The US has long been organising coups around the world – as evidenced in Guatemala, Chile and Iran, to give just three examples. But still, the image of Americans going on the rampage in Washington DC has global consequences – Arab dictators do as America does, not as America says.
‘End of US hegemony’
Most decent Americans who still have a faint hope in a functioning democracy are deeply and rightly concerned that the entire Republican Party is now cast in the image of Trump. If Trump, as has been suggested, is poised to return in the 2024 presidential election with a vengeance, it will once and for all put an end to the US charade of claiming to be a global beacon of democracy.
There is a Republican plot against the poorest and most vulnerable Americans to deny them their rights to vote, very much on the model of the racist Jim Crow laws that sustained the rule of the white supremacists in the US for a century. The state of angst now palatable in the US daily news has global consequences.
Some have suggested the term “self-coup” for what Trump tried to do between the time he was declared to have lost the election early in November 2020 and late January 2021 when he was unceremoniously kicked out of the White House.
“Trump’s measures to overturn the elections since 3 November constitute a ‘coup’, as they involve illegal usurpation of state power, even when it may not involve the use of force,” wrote Charles T Call for Brookings, a Washington think tank. “Yet it is a ‘self’-coup because it is perpetrated by the head of government rather than military officers or others against that chief executive.” This might be a case of parsing words between a “coup” and a “self-coup”, but still, the fact of the proto-fascism at the root of Trump’s presidency has shaken the democratic claims of this country to its foundations.
In a piece for The Economist, Francis Fukuyama wrote about “the end of American hegemony”.
“The truth of the matter is that the end of the American era had come much earlier,” he wrote. “The long-term sources of American weakness and decline are more domestic than international. The country will remain a great power for many years, but just how influential it will be depends on its ability to fix its internal problems, rather than its foreign policy.”
Fukuyama is telling the world that the decline of the US imperial exercise is due to its domestic disorder – and that it is this disorder that is the source of chaos around the globe. No one is minding the shop, as it were. The corrupt cop on the beat has been caught red-handed plotting to overthrow its claim to democracy.
Democracy as an abstraction
The abstract ideal of democracy has long since lost any credibility. The US and the leading nations of Europe have an ugly colonial and imperial underbelly that belies their claims on being a legitimate model for democracy.
But the recent attempted coup in the US, and the possible return of Trump, has marked a critical point when the racially foregrounded, white-supremacist backbone of any US claim to democracy was globally exposed. The entire American experience is increasingly viewed as a model of hypocrisy, duplicity and delusional politics, with a consistent record of human misery.
The US has for most of its history posited itself as the leader of the free world. But can the US after four years of Trump, freely and enthusiastically elected by millions of Americans, sustain that delusion? Could a presidency that began like a reality TV show and ended with an attempted coup have any claim on such a lofty title?
Of course, in reality, the US has never been any such leader; its long history of genocide, slavery and xenophobia could scarcely lend itself to any such presumption.
The events of 6 January placed the US in the same ballpark as Egypt, Tunisia and Sudan, where the pretence of democracy in the former and the absence of democracy in the latter come together to map out a different topography of democratic prospects around the globe.
As I write, the entire machinery of the Republican Party is hard at work disenfranchising an entire segment of the electorate from voting in general elections. How is that different from the military thugs in Egypt or Sudan disregarding the democratic will of their people?
Democracy is the aggregate sum of all its practices around the globe and not a mystical power hanging on its ideals and aspirations. The coups and attempted coups in the Arab world are today integral to a global culture of illegitimate state power seeking to keep itself in control despite political desolation, social unrest, economic despondency, and environmental calamity.
Such states are the very source of that global menace – not a solution to it.
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Hamid Dabashi is Hagop Kevorkian professor of Iranian studies and comparative literature at Columbia University in the City of New York. His latest books include Reversing the Colonial Gaze: Persian Travellers Abroad (Cambridge University Press, 2020), and The Emperor is Naked: On the Inevitable Demise of the Nation-State (Zed, 2020). His forthcoming book, On Edward Said: Remembrance of Things Past, is scheduled to be released by Haymarket Books later this year.
November 16th, 2021 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark
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Refugee crises are often manufactured by governments. They can be done at the source: war, famine, rapacious institutions. They can also be manufactured by the refusal of governments to accept those seeking asylum, sanctuary and refuge.
The latter is very much in evidence in Europe: governments of the European Union are staring down desperate humans keen to travel into the EU; Belarus, engaging in its own form of mega-trafficking, has become a conduit for the movement of asylum seekers and migrants fleeing from Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan.
Despite being granted Belarussian visas at considerable cost, many being initially housed in government hotels, their stay is only intended as temporary. After brief respite, they are pushed towards the country’s border with Poland, Latvia and Lithuania. How they get there is not entirely clear. Some migrants are escorted by uniformed men; others pay additional fees to be transported. It has also been reported that Belarusian security forces have furnished instructions and tools – axes and wire cutters – to aid the crossing of the border. Attempts by Belarussian personnel to destroy border fences near Czeremcha, and disorientate Polish soldiers with stroboscopes and lasers, have also been noted.
Once at the border, the migrants are not allowed to approach any checkpoints to seek asylum. Nor are they allowed to return to Minsk, threatened by Belarusian border guards who insist on keeping them there.
Trapped in purgatorial fashion along the border, the migrants find themselves sleeping in rude conditions and left at the mercy of the elements. There have inadequate supplies, lack warm clothing and are starving. One estimate has put the death toll at nine.
All political sides are making hay from this suffering. Lukashenko can be accused of being an opportunistic trafficker of desperate folk and keen on jailing opponents in a desperate bit to stay in power, but Poland’s Law and Justice Party has happily stirred xenophobic hysteria. Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and President Adrzej Duda are part of an administration that does not shy away from demonising arrivals they associate with terrorists with kinky characteristics. Doing so supplies an appropriate distraction from accusations of corruption, galloping inflation and a troubling rise in COVID-19 numbers.
In September, the Minister of the Interior, Mariusz Kamiński, and the National Defence Minister, Mariusz Błaszczak, appeared at a press conference to show a picture of a man copulating with a cow. The content had been allegedly found on a phone belonging to an Afghan migrant lurking in the woods. Spokesman for the Ministry of the Interior, Stanisław Żaryn, suggested that this was an act “associated with sexual disorders”, signalling a government campaign to link refugees with zoophilia and paedophilia.
In a gesture of such refined generosity, TVP Info, the main propaganda outlet of the ruling party, ran a video with a suitably prurient title: “He raped a cow and wanted to enter Poland?” There were two problems with the footage: the material, recorded on a VHS videotape, was drawn from bestiality porn from the 1970s; and the animal in question was a mare, not a cow.
Earlier this month, Duda signed a bill into law to construct what was described as “a high-tech barrier on the border with Belarus to guard against an influx of irregular migrants.” The barrier, valued at some €350 million, was “needed due to increased migratory pressure from Belarus”. The right to asylum had all but entirely vanished.
Liz Throssell, spokesperson from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), is adamant that, “The human rights of migrants and refugees have to come first.” Unfortunately, she was far from informative on what solutions might be pursued on the Belarus-EU border. “It is really important they must be respected under international human rights refugee law, but as for the political dimension to this, I would leave that to others to address”.
Along the Belarus-Polish border, refugees and migrants have been instrumentalised, their rights assiduously ignored. Lukashenko has been accused of using a form of “hybrid” warfare by throwing migrants at the border like willing assailants of rabid intent. The President of the European Council, Charles Michel, makes the point. “It is a hybrid attack, a brutal attack, a violent attack and a shameful attack.” Such nasty terminology has turned those wishing to make their way to the EU into foot soldiers in a political cause they wish to play no part in. Wedged in between this vicious play of power, these unfortunates trapped on the border find themselves divested of their humanity, their desires, their wishes.
The EU is also playing its own vile game, falling back upon frontier states who have held themselves up to be saviours of European civilisation. “It is important that Lukashenko understands that [the regime’s] behaviour comes with a price,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen warned after talks with US President Joe Biden. Sanctions are being considered against the airlines that have been accused of facilitating human trafficking.
There is one final perversion in all this. In essentially condemning human trafficking, the EU and its counterparts are condemning the right to asylum, which such trafficking aids. With that sentiment, von der Leyen would regard Oskar Schindler and his more recent equivalent, Iraq’s Ali Al Jenabi, as traffickers worthy of punishment.
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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]
Featured image: Migrants on the Belarusian-Polish border. Leonid Shcheglov/BelTA/TASS
November 16th, 2021 by Mustafa Abu Sneineh
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Israel rushed to designate six Palestinian human rights groups as “terrorist organisations” after learning that investigators had discovered NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware on the phones of the group’s staff members, Ynet has reported.
Israeli officials were also caught off guard last week when the US blacklisted the NSO Group, saying its activities were contrary to US national security interests.
Warned one hour before the US blacklisting was made public, the Israeli officials were forced to hold several urgent situation meetings, with one official reportedly blurting out in a meeting: “What the fuck?!”
The three incidents – the discovery of spyware on the Palestinian NGOs’ phones, the designation of these NGOs as terrorist organisations, and the blacklisting of NSO Group – all happened within a three-week period and reflect brewing US-Israel tensions, according to the report by a Ynet senior military and political analyst.
“This is part of a campaign that has long been not just a conflict between the American internet industry and the cyber company from Herzliya, nor a conflict between the government and the NSO,” Ynet reports. “But a broad front that opened between the White House and the State Department and the Israeli government.”
‘Retroactive cover-up’
According to Ynet, Israel had started the process of banning the Palestinian groups earlier this year, but hastened its decision when it learned about an investigation led by the Dublin-based Front Line Defenders (FDL), which revealed on Monday that the phones of Palestinian activists working for the outlawed groups had been hacked.
The report comes as speculation mounts that Israeli security services were behind the hacking, which involved both Israeli and Palestinian telephone numbers.
Among those hacked are Ubai al-Aboudi, a US citizen who heads the Bisan Center for Research and Development, and French national Salah Hammouri, a field researcher at Addameer.
FDL, whose work was reviewed and verified by Amnesty and Citizen Lab, told Middle East Eye that they cannot say definitively who was behind the hacking of the NGOs. But Haaretz has reported that the export licence issued by the Israeli defence ministry to NSO Group only permits Israeli security services to monitor Israeli phone numbers.
Human rights advocates have said the discovery of the spyware on the phones, shortly before Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz designated the groups as terrorist organisations, is suspicious.
Others have drawn firm conclusions.
“The Israeli government sought to retroactively cover up and justify the use of the spyware on members of the six designated Palestinian organisations and others who communicated with them,” Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), said on Monday.
Israeli security sources denied that they used Pegasus to hack the Palestinian human rights activists, according to Ynet, which also revealed that Israeli officials had been unsuccessful in convincing their US counterparts that the groups had terrorist links.
NSO Group has said that “due to contractual and national security considerations” it cannot confirm or deny its government customers.
“As we stated in the past, NSO Group does not operate the products itself; the company licence approved government agencies to do so, and we are not privy to the details of individuals monitored,” a spokesperson told The Guardian.
The Israeli government will reportedly be increasing its lobbying efforts in the coming days to push the US to backtrack on its decision to blacklist the NSO Group.
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November 16th, 2021 by Ben Norton
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Millions of Nicaraguans went to the polls on November 7, 2021, re-electing the leftist Sandinista Front and President Daniel Ortega by a large margin.
The Joe Biden administration refused to recognize the results, however. The United States and its allies in the European Union and the Organization of American States (OAS) have instead launched what essentially amounts to a new coup attempt against Nicaragua’s Sandinista government.
On November 10, President Biden signed the RENACER Act, which will impose more crushing sanctions on Nicaragua. Washington’s escalating campaign of economic war was supplemented by the OAS’ claim that the election was “illegitimate.”
This campaign of hybrid warfare aimed at overthrowing Nicaragua’s Sandinista government has many parallels with the ongoing US coup attempts against Venezuela and Cuba, as well as the military putsch the OAS oversaw against Bolivia’s elected socialist President Evo Morales in 2019. Indeed, it involves many of the same tactics and players.
Nicaraguan voters in Chinandega on November 7, 2021
Following the line of Washington and Brussels, international corporate media outlets have spread an array of demonstrably false claims about Nicaragua’s 2021 elections, incorrectly reporting, for instance, that the government banned anti-Sandinista parties, that is imprisoned opposition candidates, or that voter turnout was negligible.
Unlike the foreign reporters spreading these falsehoods from Florida, Costa Rica, or Spain, The Grayzone was on the ground in Nicaragua to observe the electoral process.
This reporter, Ben Norton, visited 4 different polling stations in various parts of Chinandega, one of the largest cities in the country.
There, I spoke to more than a dozen average voters, to hear their experiences and get their perspectives on the election. Everyone I interviewed said the process was clean, fair, and transparent, and that they were able to vote without any difficulties.
I took these photos at different voting centers in Nicaragua on election day on November 7
As you can see, there were a lot of people voting, in a transparent, well organized election. The polls were full, but people were able to go in, vote, and go home in a quick, open process pic.twitter.com/LizeKgRCcN
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) November 9, 2021
Myth: the opposition was barred from participating in Nicaragua’s 2021 elections
Although its correspondent Natalie Kitroeff was reporting from Mexico, not Nicaragua, the New York Times leveled several baseless accusations against the Sandinista government in an attempt to discredit its electoral victory.
Among the most absurd of these claims is that Nicaragua prevented opposition parties from participating and closed voting stations.
This is simply false. There were a total of seven different alliances participating in Nicaragua’s 2021 elections: five national opposition parties (all of which were right-wing), another regional opposition party on the Caribbean Coast, and finally the leftist Sandinista Front-led alliance, which itself consists of nine parties.
The following parties competed in the November 7 elections:
National opposition parties
Regional opposition party on Caribbean Coast
FSLN alliance
These are the 7 options in Nicaragua's elections today:
-5 national opposition parties (all right-wing)
-1 regional party on the Caribbean Coast
-Sandinista Front-led allianceSo there are 6 options on the national ballot and 7 options on the coast (which has political autonomy) pic.twitter.com/hsWRoyXr1z
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) November 7, 2021
The Sandinistas created a system of political autonomy for Nicaragua’s eastern Caribbean Coast, responding to requests for self-determination by the large Indigenous and Afro-descendent communities there.
This meant that, in the two separate zones of the North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region (RACCN) and South Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region (RACCS), there were seven options on the ballot in the election for regional lawmakers.
Everywhere else in Nicaragua, there were six options on the ballot, five of which were anti-Sandinista opposition parties.
The ballots in Nicaragua’s November 7, 2021 elections. The right is the ballot on the Caribbean Coast, with 7 options. The left is the ballot everywhere else, with 6 options.
Myth: voter turnout was negligible
Another unfounded accusation spread by foreign corporate media outlets to attack the integrity of Nicaragua’s elections is that voter participation was supposedly very low.
According to official results from Nicaragua’s Supreme Electoral Council (CSE), the Sandinista Front won 75.87% of the total of 2,921,430 votes, with 65.26% turnout.
The main opposition party, the PLC, got 14.33%. The other four opposition parties each got 3% or less.
Western governments sought to discredit these electoral results by claiming the CSE is unreliable. But anyone even vaguely familiar with the history of recent Nicaraguan politics can see that this 2021 outcome is highly consistent with both polling and past results.
Nicaraguan voters in Chinandega on November 7, 2021
In Nicaragua’s 2016 elections, which were observed by the OAS, the FSLN got 72.44% of the vote, and the PLC garnered 15.03%, with 68.2% participation – figures very similar to those of 2021.
And in the 2011 elections, which were monitored by the Carter Center, European Union, and OAS, the Sandinista Front won 62.46% of the vote.
Moreover, the results in the 2021 election are unsurprising when one considers the months of opinion polling before the vote. The most respected, and really only credible, apolitical polling firm in Nicaragua is M&R Consultores. (CID-Gallup did an extremely inaccurate study on behalf of the right-wing opposition, which was plagued with problems and heavily criticized for its bad methodology.)
In the lead-up to the November 7 vote, M&R Consultores’ surveysconsistently found that 60 to 70% of Nicaraguans supported the Sandinista Front and the government of President Ortega.
61% of Nicaraguans say the country is better with a leftist Sandinista government.
Just 4% strongly sympathize with the right-wing opposition.
The US govt-backed opposition groups, which have millions of dollars in foreign funding, can't even get 1% support from the population. pic.twitter.com/QqYmWN5liF
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) May 26, 2021
When considering these polls in combination with past elections, the 2021 results appear utterly unsurprising. But the cold, hard data did not interrupt the wave of disinformation flowing from corporate media across the world.
Several major news outlets published the dubious claim that only 18.5% of Nicaraguans participated in the vote. In each case, the source was a shady, little-known organization called Urnas Abiertas, which appears to have fabricated the figure out of whole cloth.
Indeed, Urnas Abiertas has not published any raw data publicly, and scarcely exists as an organization.
Urnas Abiertas calls itself a “citizen observatory,” but has no technical credentials to speak of. Its official website and social media pages contain no concrete information about the group and do not even disclose the identities of its staff members.
The report it published after the election is totally anonymous and is just four pages long (in both Spanish and English). The document does not include any of the raw data it supposedly collected. It vaguely describes its methodology in two brief paragraphs, without identifying any of the people who purported to run a massive secret monitoring operation.
The organization’s previous reports are also anonymous, not naming any authors or researchers, and, once again, do not contain raw data or detailed information about methodology.
Moreover, the logos at the bottom of these past reports show that Urnas Abiertas collaborates with a series of right-wing opposition groups in Nicaragua that are funded by CIA cutouts.
Nicaraguan anti-Sandinista opposition NGOs that Urnas Abiertas lists as its allies, including numerous US government-funded groups
In fact, only two people have been publicly identified with this shadowy organization, and both are partisan right-wing activists who work in the Western government-funded nonprofit-industrial complex, without any technical background or experience in election monitoring.
The man most closely linked to Urnas Abiertas is Pedro Salvador Fonseca Herrera, an anti-Sandinista activist sponsored by the European Commission – a clear conflict of interest, given the EU’s refusal to recognize the election and its role in openly funding and supporting the extremist opposition in Nicaragua.
Fonseca Herrera previously worked in Washington, DC as a “consultant” for the Organization of American States (OAS) in 2017 and 2018, during the violent OAS-backed coup attempt in Nicaragua.
One of the only two people publicly associated with Urnas Abiertas
Before that, Herrera organized with the regime-change lobby group Techo, which also happens to be the former employer of the only other known person associated with Urnas Abiertas, Olga Valle López.
Valle López’s LinkedIn profile shows that she, too, has worked with Techo, which is funded by Latin American governments and major Western multinational corporations, and pushes their interests in Latin America by destabilizing left-wing states.
Fonseca Herrera and Valle López were identified as “researchers” with Urnas Abiertas in an event in October organized by the US government-funded Wilson Center and the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA), a Western state-backed lobby group.
The event, a panel discussion titled “Nicaragua 2021 elections: A painful plan to end with democracy,” did not even pretend to be impartial; it explicitly aimed to discredit the country’s vote weeks before it even took place. The host, from International IDEA, referred to the forthcoming vote as an “electoral farce.”
Fonseca Herrera and Valle López spoke alongside US government-funded right-wing Nicaraguan and Venezuelan opposition figures, and their inflammatory comments made it extremely clear that these two anti-Sandinista activists are political operatives, not impartial electoral observers. They had already established their conclusion that Nicaragua’s election was supposedly illegitimate weeks before it even took place.
The panel discussion was in fact the presentation of a report of the same name that Urnas Abiertas published in a joint effort sponsored by International IDEA and Venezuelan right-wing activists at the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello (UCAB).
Unlike the other reports published by Urnas Abiertas, this document named the authors: three foreigners from International IDEA, two Venezuelan anti-Chavista activists, and just two Nicaraguans: Olga Valle y Pedro Fonseca.
The foreign authors of Urnas Abiertas’ report trying to discredit Nicaragua’s 2021 elections before they even took place
In other words, this document that purported to inform people about the situation on the ground in Nicaragua was almost entirely written by non-Nicaraguans outside of the country. And it had the support of a Western government-funded lobby group and Venezuelan right-wing activists at UCAB, a key hub for the anti-Chavista opposition.
UCAB, one of the most elite private universities in Venezuela, is run by the Catholic Church, which has played a major role in coup attempts in both Venezuela and Nicaragua. At the beginning of the US-sponsored putsch in Venezuela in 2019, UCAB hosted coup leader Juan Guaidó. The university is directed by Francisco José Virtuoso, an ultra-conservative priest who openly supported the coup attempt and Guaidó.
A section of an October 2021 Urnas Abiertas report showing it was sponsored by International IDEA and the Venezuelan opposition-controlled UCAB
In short, Urnas Abiertas is a tiny fringe group run by two young anti-Sandinista activists with no expertise in election monitoring. It is not even clear if they are physically in Nicaragua or outside of the country – although they do have the support of Western governments and the right-wing Venezuelan opposition.
These clear conflicts of interest and Urnas Abiertas’ flagrant lack of credibility did not however stop the Los Angeles Times from publishing a puff piece praising Urnas Abiertas and claiming without a shred of evidence that it secretly mobilized 1,450 volunteers at 563 voting centers across Nicaragua to observe the election.
Considering Urnas Abiertas has fewer than 1,300 followers on Twitter, it seems extremely implausible that such a miniscule outfit could secretly mobilize 1,450 electoral observers, especially without attracting attention from the government. But this did not stop corporate media from printing the absurd claim.
US government-funded opposition media outlets in Nicaragua also amplified the shadowy group’s unsubstantiated allegations of 81.5% abstention in the 2021 election. But once again, they presented absolutely zero evidence to back up these claims.
All indications show Urnas Abiertas to be nothing more than an opposition front group posing as a monitoring organization – and with the stated intent of discrediting the Nicaraguan election results before the vote even took place.
Myth: Nicaragua arrested opposition presidential candidates
An even more common accusation made by Western capitals and corporate media outlets to discredit Nicaragua’s 2021 election is that the Sandinista government arrested seven “presidential hopefuls” from the right-wing opposition.
The figures who were detained have been variously described in the international media as “precandidates” or “possible challengers.” But in reality, not a single one was an actual registered candidate.
On the November 7 election, there were indeed six different presidential candidates to choose from. President Ortega was not even the first name or face on the ballot. (Number one was Walter Espinoza Fernández, the presidential candidate from the PLC.)
As for the opposition figures who were detained several months before the election, The Grayzone documented how they were arrested for conspiring with a foreign government (the United States), taking millions of dollars from Washington in a large money-laundering scheme to organize a violent coup attempt in 2018, in which hundreds of Nicaraguans were killed and the country was destabilized, and in which right-wing extremists hunted down, tortured, and murdered Sandinista activists and state security forces, even setting some on fire.
That the opposition leaders who were detained received millions of dollars from the US government to carry out these operations is an undeniable matter of public record, confirmed by documents from CIA cutouts such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
In any other country on Earth, these figures would have faced similar, if not more severe legal consequences. Accepting millions of dollars in funding from a foreign state as you attempt to violently overthrow your elected government is illegal everywhere on the planet.
But when Nicaragua enforces its laws – even when they are laws modeled after long-existing US legislation – Washington condemns the country as “repressive” or “authoritarian.”
The United States, European Union, and OAS habitually refer to violent criminals as “political prisoners” after they are arrested in Nicaragua. People arrested for murder and rape have ended up on US-sponsored “political prisoner” lists.
In one high-profile case that caused a national scandal in Nicaragua, a charged murderer who had been active in the violent tranque barricades in the 2018 coup attempt was arrested, but later dubbed a “political prisoner” and released under pressure by the US, EU, and OAS. It was not long before he returned to his violent ways, stabbing his pregnant girlfriend to death.
Another US-designated Nicaraguan “political prisoner” was let out of jail, only to be caught again with explosives and guns, planning a terrorist attack on a pro-Sandinista mayor’s office.
.@BenjaminNorton traveled to Jinotepe, Nicaragua to report the shocking story of how the US and OAS lobbied for the release of violent criminals behind a 2018 coup attempt
One man they called a "political prisoner" stabbed his pregnant girlfriend to deathhttps://t.co/6fA6TZOgmO
— The Grayzone (@TheGrayzoneNews) February 28, 2020
If an opposition figure is arrested for violating a law in Nicaragua, in an offense that would be punishable in any country, Washington often reflexively responds by dubbing that person a “political prisoner.” If they are wealthy and powerful, the US claims they were a “presidential hopeful,” even if they made no effort whatsoever to go through the legal process of officially registering as a candidate.
This is a way to try to maintain impunity for US-backed coup-plotters and money-launderers. It is the geopolitical equivalent of the strategy that Washington-sponsored insurgents in Hong Kong openly espoused in the New York Times: “use the most aggressive ‘nonviolent’ actions possible to push the police and the government to their limits,” and then frame that state’s self-defense against foreign aggression as a form of “repression” and “authoritarianism.”
One of the reasons the United States was particularly furious about Nicaragua arresting the coup leaders it had cultivated is because Washington clearly had made plans to repeat the putschist strategy that saw it appoint Juan Guaidó as so-called “interim president” of Venezuela.
US government officials and their right-wing Central American allies not-so-subtly hinted that they planned to recognize right-wing oligarch Cristiana Chamorro as the unelected “interim president” of a parallel Nicaraguan coup regime. When she was arrested for money laundering in June, it foiled their new destabilization plot.
Nicaragua has an election in November and concerns are growing the US may try to impose a fake "interim president" like Juan Guaidó
The US State Dep't special envoy and right-wing Central American leaders recently referred to opposition oligarch Cristiana Chamorro as "president" pic.twitter.com/MmGIquS2dC
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) March 24, 2021
Myth: there were no foreign electoral observers and journalists
Another myth spread by foreign media outlets is that there were no foreign observers and journalists in Nicaragua for its 2021 elections. This is yet another massive distortion.
The Nicaraguan government did prevent the Organization of American States (OAS) from sending observers, given the US-funded group’s well-documented role in orchestrating a right-wing military coup in Bolivia in 2019.
But there were hundreds of foreigners accredited to accompany the elections, from more than two dozen countries, including:
In total, there were 232 foreigners accredited from 27 countries, 165 to accompany the election and 67 as journalists.
They monitored voting centers in all 10 departments of Nicaragua (Managua, Masaya, Estelí, Chinandega, León, Granada, Matagalpa, Rivas, Chontales, and Carazo), as well as both Caribbean Coast autonomous regions (RACCN and RACCS).
The Nicaraguan government chose to use the term acompañante(meaning someone who accompanies) to refer to these international monitors, rather than “observer,” because of the history of so-called observers from the OAS and EU meddling in the country’s internal electoral process on behalf of the anti-Sandinista opposition.
225 people accredited to accompany Nicaragua's election have visited voting centers in 10 departments; Esteli, Chinandega, León, Rivas, Chontales, Matagalpa, Masaya, Granada, Carazo and Managua, and two Autonomous Regions; RACCN and RACCS. pic.twitter.com/YlGX04euG4
— Kawsachun News (@KawsachunNews) November 7, 2021
The final misleading charge spread by the New York Times and other corporate media outlets to delegitimize the 2021 elections is that Nicaragua barred parties from holding large public rallies. This is technically true, but not because of political reasons, but rather due to Covid-19 health restrictions.
In fact, the Sandinista Front itself has not held an official rally since March 2020, before any cases were discovered in the country. Many foreign nations have imposed much harsher restrictions, while banningprotests and attacking demonstrators with no outrage from the self-declared “international community.”
Latin American left warns of US-OAS coup attempt in Nicaragua
The United States has a long history of blood-soaked meddling in Nicaragua. The US military invaded and occupied the Central American country numerous times in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Then Washington helped install the right-wing dictatorship ruled by General Anastasio Somoza, which it subsequently propped up until the Sandinista Revolution of 1979.
In the 1980s, the CIA waged a terrorist war on Nicaragua, arming and training far-right Contra death squads that, as one of their former leaders admitted, “burn down schools, homes and health centers as fast as the Sandinistas build them.”
Since the violent coup attempt failed in 2018, the US government has been escalating its economic warfare on Nicaragua. Late that year, the Donald Trump administration implemented the NICA Act, which imposed aggressive sanctions on the small Central American nation.
Several more rounds of US sanctions on Nicaragua followed in the next two years. Then, on November 3, in a flagrant form of election meddling, just four days before the 2021 election, the House of Representatives voted 387-35 to pass the RENACER Act, which will hit Nicaragua with a new round of economically punishing sanctions.
The Grayzone reported on a September Congressional session hosted by neoconservative lawmakers, where participants made it clear that Washington had been preparing a brutal campaign of economic warfare against Nicaragua, while also planning to expel the country from the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and Organization of American States (OAS).
On November 9, the OAS officially announced that it had rejected the results of Nicaragua’s elections, branding them “illegitimate.”
This declaration was published almost exactly two years to the day after the OAS did the same in Bolivia, spreading false accusations of “fraud” in order to justify a military coup against the country’s democratically elected president, Evo Morales.
We reject the results of the illegitimate elections in #Nicaragua.
I urge countries of the OAS to respond to this clear violation of the Democratic Charter during its #OASassembly.
Report of the Secretariat for Strengthening of Democracy: @Almagro_OEA2015 https://t.co/8CBUz303Dp
— OAS (@OAS_official) November 9, 2021
In a clear reflection of its ulterior motives, the OAS held a neoliberal “Private Sector Forum” calling on foreign corporations to invest in Latin America on the same day it denounced Nicaragua’s elections.
The conference perfectly encapsulated the corporate priorities of the coup-sponsoring OAS. Among its most notorious participants was the far-right president of Colombia, Iván Duque, who only came to power thanks to the illegal vote-buying scheme of a drug lord named Ñeñe Hernández, at the orders of political kingpin and US asset Álvaro Uribe.
Palabras del Presidente de Colombia @IvanDuque en el XIII Foro del Sector Privado de las Américas en #AsambleaOEA
"Por una América renovada: el rol del sector privado en la recuperación económica y social"
📺 https://t.co/CenV5VdCJp
📡 https://t.co/YOgQAQjAOY pic.twitter.com/Bas8vZLdvj— OEA (@OEA_oficial) November 9, 2021
As a victim of US-OAS meddling, Evo Morales immediately recognized the warning signs in Nicaragua, and cautioned about the coming coup.
In statements on Twitter after the vote, Morales congratulated “the honorable people of Nicaragua, which in a demonstration of courage and democratic maturity chose brother Daniel Ortega as constitutional president, despite a campaign of lies, blackmail, and threats by the US.”
The former Bolivian president said the United States is attacking “the democratic will and sovereignty of Nicaragua,” and, “The victory of Ortega is the defeat of yankee interventionism.”
When US President Joe Biden demonized Nicaragua’s 2021 vote as an “electoral pantomime,” Morales retorted, “The only ‘pantomime’ is acted out each day in the White House, where so-called ‘presidents,’ instead of serving their people, follow the orders of transnational corporations, the weapons industry, and the CIA.”
Con insultos, #EEUU intenta desconocer la voluntad democrática y soberana de Nicaragua. La única "pantomima" se actúa cada día en la Casa Blanca donde los llamados "presidentes" en lugar de atender a su pueblo siguen órdenes de transnacionales, industrias armamentistas y la CIA.
— Evo Morales Ayma (@evoespueblo) November 8, 2021
While Cuba, Venezuela, and other leftist leaders in Latin America congratulated the Sandinista Front and Ortega for their victory, warning of US destabilization efforts, there is a new generation of young, NGO-cultivated, liberal reformist leaders in the region who are much softer on imperialism.
In Chile, Gabriel Boric – the face of the liberal nonprofit-industrial complex – condemned the Sandinistas and affirmed his “solidarity”with right-wing oligarch Cristiana Chamorro, a scion of the most powerful dynasty in Nicaragua, and the daughter of Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, the first neoliberal president to take power after the Sandinista Revolution thanks to a massive CIA meddling campaign.
Similarly, the foreign ministry of Peru issued a statement denouncing Nicaragua’s elections. It was the latest sign of the debilitation of the country’s newly inaugurated left-wing President Pedro Castillo, whose proudly anti-imperialist Foreign Minister Héctor Béjar was forced by the military to resign just weeks after entering office.
Béjar warned the forced resignation and the right-wing takeover of Castillo’s foreign ministry was “a soft coup, or the beginning of it.”
So while progressive forces enjoy a resurgence in parts of Latin America, the left is also divided between an older generation of revolutionary anti-imperialists and a newer generation of NGO-backed, media-friendly social democrats who acquiesce to US empire.
President Ortega vows resistance against US meddling
For his part, President Daniel Ortega has vowed to continue resisting US and European attempts to meddle in his country’s internal affairs.
The Nicaraguan leader delivered a fiery speech on November 8, the day after the elections, commemorating the 45th anniversary of the killing of Sandinista Front founder Carlos Fonseca Amador by the US-backed Somoza dictatorship.
“It is impossible for Nicaraguans – and I would say for Latin Americans and Caribbeans – it is impossible to stop talking about the interventionist policies, the expansionist, colonialist policies of the United States of America and the European countries,” Ortega said.
Sandinista Youth activists at President Ortega’s speech on November 8, 2021
“We are under the threat of the yankee empire, under the aggressions of the yankee empire, and under the threats of the European colonialists. And I’m not the one saying that; they’re saying it,” the Nicaraguan president added.
“They believe that we are their colony, and they want to tell us how to behave, and they want to decide what type of democracy we should practice,” Ortega continued. “They continue with their colonialist practices, to dominate these lands. But not for good, but rather to subjugate them and exploit them, and involve them in their expansionist and warmongering policies.”
Reflecting on his country’s long history of resistance, the Nicaraguan leader declared that its people would not give in to another foreign conquest.
“In the end, they could not defeat Sandino,” he declared. “Whichever [US] president came to power, whether Democrat or Republican, he came to try to oppress Nicaragua. But he always was met with resistance, with heroism, with the fighting spirit of the Nicaraguan people.”
President Ortega with musicians after his speech on November 8, 2021
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Ben Norton is a journalist, writer, and filmmaker. He is the assistant editor of The Grayzone, and the producer of the Moderate Rebels podcast, which he co-hosts with editor Max Blumenthal. His website is BenNorton.com and he tweets at @BenjaminNorton.
Featured image is from The Grayzone
November 16th, 2021 by Davis Winkie
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The new commander of the Oklahoma National Guard has declared the organization will not enforce the Defense Department’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate on its troops, according to local media outlets.
Army Brig. Gen. Thomas Mancino was announced as the state’s new adjutant general Wednesday, though he has not yet been confirmed by the state Senate, according to a press release from Gov. Kevin Stitt’s office.
On Nov. 2, Stitt formally requested that DoD not enforce the mandate on the state’s Army and Air National Guard members. In the letter, which his office posted online, he said that 10% of the state’s troops had refused the vaccine and that the mandate was “irresponsible.”
The Defense Department is aware of the Mancino memo and Stitt’s letter and “will respond to the governor appropriately,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said in a statement.
He did not elaborate.
“That said, Secretary Austin believes a vaccinated force is a more ready force,” said Kirby. “That is why he has ordered mandatory vaccines for the total force, and that includes our National Guard, who contribute significantly to national missions at home and abroad.”
The state’s former top general, Army Maj. Gen. Michael Thompson told local reporters Thursday that he learned who his replacement was via social media. He was previously scheduled to transfer command to Mancino on Jan. 15, 2022, according to the Oklahoman.
The day after taking the reins from Thompson, Mancino issued a policy memo declaring that the state would not enforce the mandate on its troops when they are under state control. The move is an apparent rejection of DoD’s orders to discipline and ultimately discharge servicemembers who reject the vaccine.
📝READ: One of first actions taken by new Oklahoma National Guard Adjutant Gen. Thomas Mancino: rescind the #COVID19 vaccine requirement for Guardsmen.
According to memo, however, if they are federally mobilized, members will have to be vaccinated. @OKCFOX pic.twitter.com/cHozZx7zqE
— Dan Snyder (@DanSnyderFOX25) November 12, 2021
“No Oklahoma Guardsman will be required to take the COVID-19 Vaccine,” Mancino says in the Thursday memo, which states that Stitt is the force’s “lawful Commander in Chief” when not mobilized by the federal government.
Although National Guard troops do belong to their governors when not mobilized by the Pentagon, federal requirements often supersede any state uses of the Guard, as senior leaders often emphasize. That’s because the vast majority of Guard funding, training and equipment comes from the federal government.
It’s not yet clear whether the order will jeopardize that funding.
Title 32, the section of the U.S. Code that pertains to the National Guard, includes a section specifying that states that do not comply with Title 32 regulations forfeit their federal funding for the Guard. It’s not clear, though, whether the vaccine mandate meets that legal threshold.
In an email to Army Times, Stitt’s top spokesperson, Charlie Hannema, argued that the “only way Oklahoma would ‘forfeit’ any federal funding for failing to comply with Title 32 would be to ignore the lawful order of the dually elected civilian authority, i.e. The Governor of Oklahoma.”
But Air Force Maj. Matthew Murphy, a National Guard Bureau spokesperson, told Stars & Stripes that the issue of the vaccine mandate was a “legal gray area that would have to be reviewed by our lawyers.”
“This is where the difference between Title 32 and Title 10 becomes a real becomes an issue,” Murphy told Stars & Stripes. “In most instances, the guardsmen are in their Title 32 capacity, which means they’re on state duty. In order to be federalized, they have to be on Title 10.”
In a statement to the Oklahoman, the state’s top spokesperson, Lt. Col. Geoff Legler, explained that the memo “does not provide any protection should they need to attend any military school or training activity run by an active duty component or the Department of Defense.”
When Army Times reached out to the Oklahoma Guard, an official indicated that they were not authorized to make any statement or share the memorandum. National Guard Bureau and DoD spokespeople were unable to immediately offer comment, either.
It is not clear whether Thompson was fired because he refused to rescind a policy memo requiring troops to get the COVID-19 vaccine — he referred questions on the matter to Stitt’s office.
Hannema did not address why Thompson’s departure was abruptly accelerated.
A previous vaccine policy memo from Thompson, which Mancino’s order rescinded, had indicated that there would be “consequences” for “uniformed members and Title 5 [federal] civilian employees” who declined the shot, according to the Oklahoman. The policy was in line with DoD guidance on the issue.
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Featured image: Army Brig. Gen. Thomas Mancino issued an order halting the Oklahoma Army and Air National Guard’s mandatory COVID-19 vaccine rollout on Nov. 11, 2021, less than 24 hours after his sudden appointment as the state’s top general. (Oklahoma National Guard)
November 16th, 2021 by Zero Hedge
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One wouldn’t know it by scanning the front pages of say WaPo, NYT or Bloomberg where it wasn’t even mentioned, but late on Friday a bad week, month and year for the scrambling Biden administration – which in addition to the recent disaster in Virginia where a public referendum on “wokeness” saw the public overwhelmingly vote down the Democrats’ attempt to subvert social norms, is also facing the worst inflationary inferno since Nixon ended the gold standard – after a U.S. appeals court upheld its decision to put on hold Joe Biden’s unconstitutional order for companies with 100 workers or more to demand COVID-19 vaccines, rejecting a challenge by his administration.
A three-member panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans affirmed its ruling despite the Biden administration’s position that halting implementation of the vaccine mandate could lead to dozens or even hundreds of deaths. No Nov 6, the Fifth Circuit granted a temporary stay on enforcement of the federal mandate, one day after the rule was announced. In its reaffirmation Friday, the court said the mandate “exposes [petitioners] to severe financial risk” and “threatens to decimate their workforces (and business prospects).”
“The mandate is staggeringly overbroad,” the opinion said adding that the vaccine mandate “raises serious constitutional concerns” and “likely exceeds the federal government’s authority.”
“The mandate is a one-size-fits-all sledgehammer that makes hardly any attempt to account for differences in workplaces (and workers),” Circuit Court Judge Kurt Engelhardt wrote for the panel.
— AG Jeff Landry (@AGJeffLandry) November 13, 2021
In its ruling, the Fifth Circuit judges agreed with opponents of vaccine mandates, which have become a deeply controversial topic in the United States (as if the country needed any more of those) – supporters say they are a must to put an end to the nearly two-year coronavirus pandemic, while opponents argue they violate the Constitution and curb individual liberty.
“The public interest is also served by maintaining our constitutional structure and maintaining the liberty of individuals to make intensely personal decisions according to their own convictions – even, or perhaps particularly, when those decisions frustrate government officials,” Engelhardt wrote.
At Biden’s orders, the OSHA issued a rule earlier this month requiring U.S. employers with 100 or more workers to ensure their workers are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 or undergoing weekly tests for the virus by Jan 4. Businesses that don’t comply face thousands of dollars in fines.
The rule prompted a slate of legal challenges from at least 27 states as well as business and religious groups who argue the mandate is unconstitutional. Biden and other federal officials argue the mandate is necessary to end the COVID-19 pandemic and fully reopen the economy.
White House officials had no immediate comment on the ruling, which was hailed as a victory by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Texas joined other U.S. states, as well as private employers and religious organizations, in legal challenges to the order.
“Citing Texas’s “compelling argument[s],” the 5th Circuit has delayed OSHA’s unconstitutional and illegal private-business vaccine mandate. WE WON! Litigation will continue, but this is a massive victory for Texas and for FREEDOM from Biden’s tyranny and lawlessness,” Paxton wrote.
🚨Citing Texas’s “compelling argument[s],” 5th Circuit has stayed OSHA’s unconstitutional & illegal private-business vaccine mandate. WE WON! Litigation will continue, but this is a massive victory for Texas & FREEDOM from Biden’s tyranny & lawlessness.https://t.co/w7MKyXs73L
— Attorney General Ken Paxton (@KenPaxtonTX) November 13, 2021
Biden imposed the requirement in September, telling Americans that “our patience is wearing thin” with those refusing to get inoculated.
But before libertarians rejoice, keep in mind that the admin will now escalate its appeal to the Supreme Court where surprises from so-called “conservative” Supremes are certainly not excluded.
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Featured image is from The Last Refuge
November 16th, 2021 by Pepe Escobar
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Marx. Lenin. Mao. Deng. Xi.
Late last week in Beijing, the sixth plenum of the Chinese Communist Party adopted a historic resolution – only the third in its 100-year history – detailing major accomplishments and laying out a vision for the future.
Essentially, the resolution poses three questions. How did we get here? How come we were so successful? And what have we learned to make these successes long-lasting?
The importance of this resolution should not be underestimated. It imprints a major geopolitical fact: China is back. Big time. And doing it their way. No amount of fear and loathing deployed by the declining hegemon will alter this path.
The resolution will inevitably prompt quite a few misunderstandings. So allow me a little deconstruction, from the point of view of a gwailo who has lived between East and West for the past 27 years.
If we compare China’s 31 provinces with the 214 sovereign states that compose the “international community”, every Chinese region has experienced the fastest economic growth rates in the world.
Across the West, the lineaments of China’s notorious growth equation – without any historical parallel – have usually assumed the mantle of an unsolvable mystery.
Little Helmsman Deng Xiaoping’s ’s famous “crossing the river while feeling the stones”, described as the path to build “socialism with Chinese characteristics” may be the overarching vision. But the devil has always been in the details: how the Chinese applied – with a mix of prudence and audaciousness – every possible device to facilitate the transition towards a modern economy.
The – hybrid – result has been defined by a delightful oxymoron: “communist market economy.” Actually, that’s the perfect practical translation of Deng’s legendary “it doesn’t matter the color of the cat, as long as it catches mice.” And it was this oxymoron, in fact, that the new resolution passed in Beijing celebrated last week.
Made in China 2025
Mao and Deng have been exhaustively analyzed over the years. Let’s focus here on Papa Xi’s brand new bag.
Right after he was elevated to the apex of the party, Xi defined his unambiguous master plan: to accomplish the “Chinese dream”, or China’s “renaissance.” In this case, in political economy terms, “renaissance” meant to realign China to its rightful place in a history spanning at least three millennia: right at the center. Middle Kingdom, indeed.
Already during his first term Xi managed to imprint a new ideological framework. The Party – as in centralized power – should lead the economy towards what was rebranded as “the new era.” A reductionist formulation would be The State Strikes Back. In fact, it was way more complicated.
This was not merely a rehash of state-run economy standards. Nothing to do with a Maoist structure capturing large swathes of the economy. Xi embarked in what we could sum up as a quite original form of authoritarian state capitalism – where the state is simultaneously an actor and the arbiter of economic life.
Team Xi did learn a lot of lessons from the West, using mechanisms of regulation and supervision to check, for instance, the shadow banking sphere. Macroeconomically, the expansion of public debt in China was contained, and the extension of credit better supervised. It took only a few years for Beijing to be convinced that major financial sphere risks were under control.
China’s new economic groove was de facto announced in 2015 via “Made in China 2025”, reflecting the centralized ambition of reinforcing the civilization-state’s economic and technological independence. That would imply a serious reform of somewhat inefficient public companies – as some had become states within the state.
In tandem, there was a redesign of the “decisive role of the market” – with the emphasis that new riches would have to be at the disposal of China’s renaissance as its strategic interests – defined, of course, by the party.
So the new arrangement amounted to imprinting a “culture of results” into the public sector while associating the private sector to the pursuit of an overarching national ambition. How to pull it off? By facilitating the party’s role as general director and encouraging public-private partnerships.
The Chinese state disposes of immense means and resources that fit its ambition. Beijing made sure that these resources would be available for those companies that perfectly understood they were on a mission: to contribute to the advent of a “new era.”
Manual for power projection
There’s no question that China under Xi, in eight short years, was deeply transformed. Whatever the liberal West makes of it – hysteria about neo-Maoism included – from a Chinese point of view that’s absolutely irrelevant, and won’t derail the process.
What must be understood, by both the Global North and South, is the conceptual framework of the “Chinese dream”: Xi’s unshakeable ambition is that the renaissance of China will finally smash the memories of the “century of humiliation” for good.
Party discipline – the Chinese way – is really something to behold. The CCP is the only communist party on the planet that thanks to Deng has discovered the secret of amassing wealth.
And that brings us to Xi’s role enshrined as a great transformer, on the same conceptual level as Mao and Deng. He fully grasped how the state and the party created wealth: the next step is to use the party and wealth as instruments to be put at the service of China’s renaissance.
Nothing, not even a nuclear war, will deviate Xi and the Beijing leadership from this path. They even devised a mechanism – and a slogan – for the new power projection: the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), originally One Belt, One Road (OBOR).
A mountain pass along the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. Image: Facebook
In 2017, BRI was incorporated into the party statutes. Even considering the “lost in translation” angle, there’s no Westernized, linear definition for BRI.
BRI is deployed on many superimposed levels. It started with a series of investments facilitating the supply of commodities to China.
Then came investments in transport and connectivity infrastructure, with all their nodes and hubs such as Khorgos, at the Chinese-Kazakh border. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), announced in 2013, symbolized the symbiosis of these two investment paths.
The next step was to transform logistical hubs into integrated economic zones – for instance as in HP based in Chongjing exporting its products via a BRI rail network to the Netherlands. Then came the Digital Silk Roads – from 5G to AI – and the Covid-linked Health Silk Roads.
What’s certain is that all these roads lead to Beijing. They work as much as economic corridors as soft power avenues, “selling” the Chinese way especially across the Global South.
Make Trade, Not War
Make Trade, Not War: that would be the motto of a Pax Sinica under Xi. The crucial aspect is that Beijing does not aim to replace Pax Americana, which always relied on the Pentagon’s variant of gunboat diplomacy.
The declaration subtly reinforced that Beijing is not interested in becoming a new hegemon. What matters above all is to remove any possible constraints that the outside world may impose over its own internal decisions, and especially over its unique political setup.
The West may embark on hysteria fits over anything – from Tibet and Hong Kong to Xinjiang and Taiwan. It won’t change a thing.
Concisely, this is how “socialism with Chinese characteristics” – a unique, always mutant economic system – arrived at the Covid-linked techno-feudalist era. But no one knows how long the system will last, and in which mutant form.
Corruption, debt – which tripled in ten years – political infighting – none of that has disappeared in China. To reach 5% annual growth, China would have to recover the growth in productivity comparable to those breakneck times in the 80s and 90s, but that will not happen because a decrease in growth is accompanied by a parallel decrease in productivity.
A final note on terminology. The CCP is always extremely precise. Xi’s two predecessors espoused “perspectives” or “visions.” Deng wrote “theory.” But only Mao was accredited with “thought.” The “new era” has now seen Xi, for all practical purposes, elevated to the status of “thought” – and part of the civilization-state’s constitution.
That’s why the party resolution last week in Beijing could be interpreted as the New Communist Manifesto. And its main author is, without a shadow of a doubt, Xi Jinping. Whether the manifesto will be the ideal road map for a wealthier, more educated and infinitely more complex society than in the times of Deng, all bets are off.
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This article was originally published on Asia Times.
Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil, is a correspondent and editor-at-large at Asia Times and columnist for Consortium News and Strategic Culture in Moscow. 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 frequent contributor to Global Research.
November 16th, 2021 by Peter Koenig
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In a lively rally under full autumn sun, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. addressed a crowd of about 10 to 20,000 people in Bern. He talked about the Covid lies in the US, as well as around the globe – he did not spare Europe, which allows kids being vaccinated from an age as low as 5 years – just like in the US, the Big Brother. He pointed out that the death rate in children from what they falsely call a vaccine was a multiple of the Covid fatality in children.
The manifestation in Bern was organized by the Swiss Public Eye, an Association created in 1968, with the objective of demanding fairer relations between Switzerland and the world’s poorest countries. Public Eye, with its currently 27,000 members, also stands for fairness in trade relations and defends human and civil rights in Switzerland and around the world.
Mr. Robert Kennedy Jr. came to Bern for a specific reason and what he said to the Swiss is that Switzerland was the Last Bastion of Democracy in the World. The upcoming Referendum on 28 November 2021, where the Swiss have the opportunity to vote for or against a Covid Law – a Martial Law in disguise – that had quietly been ratified in September 2020 by Parliament, but had to be put on ice, because a referendum was immediately launched against it. This referendum collected in record time a record number of signatures, never seen before in Switzerland.
Robert Kennedy Jr. referred to the totally undemocratic discrimination which already today takes place in most of Europe, including in Switzerland, where the “unvaxxed”, those who do not have a “vaxx-pass” are excluded from society. They cannot enter a restaurant, cannot go to a gym, or a club, or the movies, or a theatre, or any public event. They are locked out. They are discriminated.
Does Switzerland want a divided society with privileges for those who let themselves be injected with a gene-modifying poison for their convenience, whereas those who resist this illegal, unconstitutional government coercion and blackmail, will be punished and discriminated? This is a question all Swiss – vaxxed or unvaxxed – have to ask themselves. And that while we have the unique opportunity of a People’s Referendum, where we can decide what we want for our future and the future of our children and their children.
A case in point is Austria. As of midnight, of Sunday, 14 November, the Austrian Government has declared the world’s first lockdown for the unvaxxed – unheard of anywhere. Anybody who has not let themselves be injected with this mRNA-poison (or has been healed from “PCR-test proven” Covid) is under strict lockdown.
Never mind the falsehood of the PCR test. Even the WHO admitted earlier this year, the PCR test is not a reliable measure for establishing the presence of the Covid virus.
The world leaders ignore WHO and continue using the false PCR-test to identify Covid, regardless of how invalid it is. But its high false-positives (close to 100%) helps manipulating the statistics. Under this new Austrian lockdown, non-vaxxed people are barred from going to work or going to shops, of leaving their housing unit under threats of big punishment, and the employers who let them work get astronomical fines – see this RT report.
This may happen in Switzerland too, if the Covid law is approved. DEAR SWISS COMPARIOTS – BE AWARE AND BEWARE! Vote NO, on 28 November 2021. Everybody who loves freedom for themselves and for society and for the world, must go to vote NO, in masses.
We the people must and can overcome this tyranny.
Our battle cry is LIBERTÉ! – LIBERTÉ! – LIBERTÉ! Robert Kennedy and all the speakers were leading on the Rally with LIBERTÉ! – It was a truly powerful event. A magic energy flowed through the crowd.
What most Swiss do not know and are not told by their authorities and especially not by the highly paid – a better term would be “corrupted” – main stream media is that this “Health Martial Law” is valid until 31 December of 2031, until one year after the UN Agenda 2030 ends, under which this Covid crime is running (and, it is of course extendable if deemed necessary); that during this period the government can take any decision – and let me repeat ANY decision – without consulting the Parliament, let alone the people; that the Right to launch Referenda, a unique form of direct democracy will be suspended immediately. Unless, we the people, vote massively NO on 28 November 2021, to this criminal law, this may be the last referendum ever, we may have voted on.
As in most cases where an internal Coup d’État is instigated, and believe me, a yes vote would be equivalent to an internal Coup d’État, a drastic change of Constitution will be put in place. People’s Referenda won’t be part of a new Constitution. Most people do not realize this. They are never told the real story by their government, let alone the media.
Would you believe, dear readers, the Swiss government “subsidizes” – a better word would be “corrupts” – the mainstream media to the tune of 1.7 billion Swiss francs per year about equivalent to close to 2 billion US dollars. And that for a Swiss population of 8.4 million. You may figure out for yourself what the per-capita cost of tax payer’s money is to lie and misinform the Swiss people, day-in-day-out; the very people who finance this fraud unknowingly with their tax money.
If the Covid law would be accepted by a majority – GOD FORBID – Switzerland would no longer be a beacon of democracy in the word, or the last bastion of Democracy, in the words of Robert Kennedy Jr.
Instead, Switzerland would almost instantly turn into a “beacon” of total digitized banking. Every money transaction would be controlled by the Central Bank. Your bank account could be emptied at will: If you don’t behave, money is withdrawn; or you don’t follow orders, or rebel, they could prevent you from buying groceries. All through algorithms and Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robots. Full surveillance.
Have you ever wondered, how it was possible that basically on the same day in March 2020, around 11 March the entire world, all the 193 UN member countries, introduced exactly the same measures to fight a virus that is very similar – and not deadlier at all – to a simple annual flu virus? In fact, the fatality rate of the virus is about 0.07%. In a peer reviewed paper in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), “Covid-19 – Navigating the Uncharted”, the very Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Covid czar, said that the corona virus was comparable to a flu virus.
There must be enormous money powers behind this taking control of the world, at once, and nobody is able to object. Silicon Valley billionaires and social media are part of the game, as well as the Big Financial Sector, Like Black Rock and Vanguard – and other dark forces.
The entire UN system is being coerced into following these dictatorial orders, and the fact that literally all governments play along, must indicate that the order comes with a very, but very heavy – perhaps deadly – stick attached. And maybe a little carrot too, for those politicians, who obey in oppressing and tyrannizing their people. See below a video speech by Ernst Wolff, renowned German financial economist (in German). He demonstrates with clear comparisons, where the world’s power lies; more than power, as we know it, power over life and death; power over whether our civilization will survive – and if they allow it to survive – under what conditions.
Then there is Klaus Schwab’s infamous book, “Covid-19 – The Great Reset” which talks about the transformation from humans to “transhumans”, where the latter will be manipulable like robots through what he calls implanted chips – of course, he doesn’t mean in a bad way. All for the best of humanity. At the end “You will own nothing but you will be happy”. That’s the WEF’s chairman’s conclusion and view of the future. That’s commensurate with the conclusion of the 4th Industrial Revolution – robotization, digitization, and transfer of assets from the bottom and the middle to a few ultra-rich on the top.
That is the plan. But we can stop it.
Today, all we see, moves in this nefarious direction. Yet, We, the People, have the power to stop it. Without hatred, swinging on a higher frequency – and yes, all of us, vaxxed and non-vaxxed together, because in the end, we are in the same boat. That, my dear compatriots of the world, we have to understand. It’s no good – to say ten years from now, at the end of UN Agenda 2030, “yes, sorry, you were right”. It’s totally immaterial who is right. The point is we have to stop it together, in solidarity, vaxxed and unvaxxed together. No discrimination – LIBERTÉ!!! For All.
The poison injections they force upon the population – including children, imagine!!! – is turning humans into transhumans, meaning, our minds may eventually be manipulated through 5G and soon to come 6G ultra-microwaves.
That’s why you will need every year a “booster” shot. It has nothing to do with your health. None of the so-called “vaccinations” have anything to do with your health. It has all to do with preparing our body to become receptive to the 5G and eventually 6G ultra-microwaves. And the Swiss Federal Council, plus every leader in the world, who follows this evil narrative and dictate, knows it.
If you look around, you see already 5G antennas everywhere. In many countries, including in Switzerland, 5G is already selectively operational, despite the fact that the Swiss people had voted for and the Swiss authorities had agreed to put a moratorium on the introduction of 5G, until more information about security and possible health effects are known. Not even WHO – the co-masters of the Covid crime – have dared to express themselves about the potential health effects of these ultra-ultra-shortwaves.
A crucial question we all have to ask ourselves: Is Switzerland going to remain the Bastion of democracy and the shining beacon for the world, possibly influencing the people of the rest of the world – calling upon them to wake up and put peacefully through non-obedience a halt to tis biblical crime – which frankly risks to wipe out humanity?
That’s what Robert Kennedy Jr. – and other prominent figures, who spoke at the Bern Rally last Friday, were pledging for – a Grand NO-VOTE – for our Freedom – LIBERTÉ! – LIBERTÉ! – LIBERTÉ! – was the going battle cry at this very special Bern People’s Assembly.
Other prominent speakers included, Dr. Reiner Fuellmich, the German lawyer who is leading with a group of more than 1,000 medical and other professionals, lawsuits against the perpetrators around the world of our, the People’s – civil liberties and civil rights. He calls upon the Swiss not to tolerate the planned and already ongoing discrimination between the vaxxed and the unvaxxed. He calls for solidarity of the two groups, not division, as solidarity will in the end win back our freedom – and possibly be an influence on peoples of other nations, to do likewise – peacefully, but determined collective non-obedience.
This point on solidarity between the vaxxed and the unvaxxed, the need to hold hands in this coming referendum vote, was also made by Christoph Pfluger, the founder of the Swiss Friends of the Constitutions. He stressed an important point: Together we will win this vote for freedom and against covid tyranny. Togetherness is love for each other and beats discrimination. Togetherness and solidarity break the Covid narrative’s back.
The police and military, now largely under control and in the service of governments and the rich and powerful, those so well described in Ernst Wolff’s speech – see above – when these wardens of security and of people’s safety start realizing that they are in the same boat with the people, with the oppressed and ever more tyrannized people – they may take off their helmets and march with us.
Also present via video were Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, former Professor of microbiology and hygiene at the University of Mainz, Germany, and Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, a German physician and politician. He was a member of Parliament until 2009. They are both close collaborators of Dr. Fuellmich.
Both stressed the importance for people, especially young people to go to the polls on 28 November and vote NO against the Covid Law; against discrimination. It is the coming generations who will have to bear the brunt of a covid Coup d’État that would install itself in Switzerland – and throughout the western countries. They too highlighted that Switzerland could make a difference worldwide with a No-vote.
Also speaking at the rally was Catherine Austin-Fitts, a former US investment banker, who knows the ins and outs not only of banking and what banking has become, but also of the ever-increasing role of central banks. She said, if this Covid law was accepted, Switzerland, especially Switzerland – the world’s capital of banking and particularly of central banking with the Bank for International Settlement (BIS) – the Central Bank of all Central Banks, sitting in Basle, Switzerland may be the first country being fully digitized and financially enslaved.
She predicts that Switzerland would be digitized by warp speed – a point, confirmed to me by other Swiss private bankers, who may not agree with the system, but who are bound to it through a job that nourishes and supports their families. They reiterated that we would be controlled by every move; that access to our money, our assets, will be commensurate with our behavior and obedience to the system.
Further were speaking Dr. Thomas Binder, Swiss cardiologist and Dr. Astride Stuckelberger, an international health scientist, formerly with WHO. Both were reminding the audience of the “nonsensical” and criminal measures and dictates ordered against Human Rights, in Switzerland and simultaneously in all 193 UN member countries. They pointed to the harm these measures will do to the entire world population if not stopped. And especially to our children, because they are the next generation, leading into the future.
Dr. Thomas Binder made another important point. He called upon all medical and scientific professionals to remain faithful to their profession of healing to the best of their knowledge. He referred to the Hippocratic Oath, which all medical doctors have to sign. It was written by Hippocrates in the 5th Century B.C., and it is still held sacred by physicians: to treat the ill to the best of one’s ability, to preserve a patient’s privacy, to teach the secrets of medicine to the next generation, and so on.
Dr. Binder appealed to his medical colleagues in Switzerland and around the world, to be true to his oath and to step out from under government coercion, following their conscience. If this were to happen by the medical and scientific community worldwide – and despite the threats – the covid narrative and tyranny would fall apart.
Then there is a worldwide economic destruction, the result of a disease that, in fact, never existed in a pandemic form. According to Robert Kennedy Jr., the lie about it wiped out 3.8 trillion dollars worldwide, most of it in so-called developing countries, leaving misery, poverty and death behind, while transferring the values of the assets to the few super rich. – See also this . Professor Chossudovsky, author of this thoroughly researched article and Director and Editor of Global Research in Montreal, puts all the evidence together, showing that SARS-CoV-2, alias Covid-19 has never been identified and demonstrates how the case figures and death counts around the world have been manipulated, to instill fear – and to control and oppress the entire world population.
Compatriots – lets vote massively NO on 28 November 2021, so that Switzerland may indeed remain the beacon of democracy in the world – and for worldwide LIBERTÉ – LIBERTÉ – LIBERTÉ!
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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 has worked for over 30 years on water and environment 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)
He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
November 16th, 2021 by David Lorimer
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The following review of Edward Curtin’s book – Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies – appears in the current issue of The Paradigm Explorer and is written by the journal’s Scottish editor David Lorimer. Director of the Scientific and Medical Network from 1986-2000. He is now Programme Director and continues to edit Paradigm Explorer. He is author and editor of over a dozen books. He is a Fellow of the International Futures Forum, Founding chief executive of Character Scotland, and former President of Wrekin Trust and the Swedenborg Society. He was educated at Eton and the Universities of St Andrews and Cambridge.
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Edward Curtin (‘from a young age obsessed with truth, death and freedom’) is one of a number of courageous writers including Douglas Valentine, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, James Douglass and David Ray Griffin who systematically take the lid off the nefarious, ruthless and manipulative role played in US politics by the CIA.
He is also inspired by Albert Camus, who ‘tried to fight injustice while extolling life’s beauty and the human search for happiness.’ This deeply humane volume of over 40 essays and book reviews is beautifully and incisively written, ranging over a wide field, both existential and political. It makes especially significant reading in the run-up to the 20th anniversary of 9/11 in highlighting the lamentable shortcomings of tight-lipped mainstream investigative journalism that refuses to question the integrity of official reports for fear of being labelled conspiracy theorists. By 2004, Curtin was convinced (like David Ray Griffin) that the U.S. government’s claims (and The 9/11 Commission Report) were fictitious: ‘they seemed so blatantly false that I concluded the attacks were a deep-state intelligence operation whose purpose was to initiate a national state of emergency to justify wars of aggression, which came to be known euphemistically as “the war on terror.” The sophistication of the attacks, and the lack of any proffered evidence for the government’s claims, suggested that a great deal of planning had been involved.’ (p. 55) [and see his recent essay Second Stage Terror Wars here]
The key political events of the 1960s cascading down to our own time are the CIA-sponsored assassinations (for challenging the interests of the ‘military-industrial-financial-media intelligence complex that rules America to this day’) of JFK, RFK, MLK and Malcolm X, all of which are meticulously documented and exposed in a number of Curtin’s book reviews. He maintains that ‘we live in the era of massive fraud where the transnational wealthy elites, led by the American war and propaganda machine, continue to try to convince the gullible that they are saviours of humanity even as they lie and cheat and murder by the millions.’ This is a strong claim but it is extensively backed up in what follows. If we turn a blind eye to what Thomas Merton called ‘the unspeakable’ (Matthew Fox told me that he too was probably assassinated) then we become complicit – the only noble response is to exhibit a redemptive courage. In his 2005 Nobel Literature Acceptance Speech, Harold Pinter (quoted) caustically observed “It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good.
Jacques Ellul observed that propaganda deception and the public’s proclivity to believe it and obey are reciprocal. Curtin writes (p. 18) that ‘today’s propaganda is anchored in the events of the 1960s, specifically the infamous government assassinations of JFK, Malcolm X, MLK, and RFK, the truth of which the CIA has worked so hard to conceal. In the fifty or so years since, a vast amount of new information has made it explicitly clear that these murders were carried out by elements within the U.S. government, and were done to silence the voices of four charismatic leaders who were opposed to the American war machine and the continuation of the Cold War. To turn away from this truth and to ignore its implications can only be described as an act of bad faith and culpable ignorance, or worse.’ Official reports are accepted at face value while ‘the power of the oligarchic, permanent warfare state’ has only increased and anyone who questions this line is a conspiracy theorist (a weaponised term invented by the CIA in the 1960s). The political system works to prevent change, and every president has been complicit, including Obama, who told CIA Director Panetta that he would ‘get everything he wanted’ (p. 21): ‘since we know that every president since JFK has refused to confront the growth of the national security state and its call for violence, one can logically assume a message was sent and heeded.’
For the peace activist Daniel Berrigan, ‘a human being is a child of God, and as such is called to resist the rule of human death-dealing in the world, to resist violence with love and non-violence. A human being is a lover. This means that a human being is necessarily at odds with the powers-that-be, the governments and corporations that, in the name of peace, prepare for and wage war. It is a view of human being that is bound to be unpopular, more likely to be affirmed with pieties then contradicted by actions.’ (p. 37) People like him are frequently excoriated in their lifetimes and celebrated after death – the government that assassinated MLK created a special national holiday in his honour…
On a more lyrical note, Curtin writes about the importance of silence and poetry: ‘silence, like so much else in the present world, including human beings, is on the endangered species list’ in a society ‘suffering from socially induced attention-deficit disorder.’ He asks if we shut up long enough to listen to what the silence might reveal? And without poetry, he writes, we are dead: ‘Poetry is the search for truth. It marries outer to inner. It probes reality with words. It suggests, states, intimates, inviting the reader to raid what was previously unspeakable. This exploration is composed of ideas, images, and words arranged in ways that engender powerful emotions and thoughts. Like life, a poem swims in mystery…. true poetry startles. It inspires. It enlivens. It is a distillation of the human spirit, as essential as bread. It is composed of a few simple ingredients, as is bread. They are: the real, actually existing, outside world, and us; the outside world that we are in and that is in us, and our emotional thoughts about our condition. Flour, water, and yeast. The bread rises, the poem forms. (p. 83)
In the interests of space, I will highlight only one further significant theme: our embrace of instrumental logic and technical reason where ‘the theology of technological “progress” operates according to the law of can do, will do’, an ‘innately amoral’ position which ‘has caused many of the problems we seem unable to remedy. These include environmental catastrophe, high-tech wars, GM foods, drone killings, drug addiction, biological and nuclear weapons, to name but a few.’ (p. 111) Unlike Camus with his knowledge of Greek thought, we are culturally unaware of hubris and limits, always justifying the Promethean crossing of a new frontier. Now, however, we face potentially terminal existential challenges as a result. Curtin invites readers to think the unthinkable beyond consensus reality and linguistic mind-control as promoted by Edward Bernays in his classic book on propaganda: ‘It is impossible to overestimate the importance of engineering of consent. The engineering of consent is the very essence of the democratic process. It affects almost every aspect of our daily lives.’ Even the engineering metaphor is indicative and we are seeing its daily operation.
We need to wake up from this consensus trance of technical efficiency where, as Ellul put it, ‘for every problem caused by technology there is always a technological solution that creates further technological problems, ad infinitum.’ We are engaged in a battle for minds and even souls through technological perception management – Curtin’s courageous and outspoken voice invites us to think the unthinkable and reminds us of what makes us essentially human: it is a call to escape from the high-tech trap of permanent busyness and speed. Living faster is not living better, so take a moment to slow down – advice I need to heed myself. Here is Curtin’s last word: ‘Rhythm, melody, and movement: from these, life is born and sustained. They are also integral to art—music, writing, painting, sculpture, dance…they lie at the heart of spiritual experience, as breath is the inspiration that carries us along.’
I urge you to read this outstanding book.
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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
November 16th, 2021 by Dr. Daniel Nagase
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Dr. Daniel Nagase, persecuted for saving his patients’ lives with Ivermectin, explains that the experimental injections are particularly dangerous for children.
Notwithstanding the fact that the jabs do not work, and that natural immunity is superior, he explains that the introduction of an artificial spike protein into chidrens’ developing immune systems presents added risks of changing their DNA, impairing their immune “specificity”, and increasing their risks of cancer.
He concludes that jabs against just one protein are “stupid”, and that “variants” of influenza are never a problem with natural immunity.
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Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017. Visit the author’s website at https://www.marktaliano.net where this article was originally published.
Order Mark Taliano’s Book “Voices from Syria” directly from Global Research.
Mark Taliano combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes the mainstream media narratives on Syria.
ISBN: 978-0-9879389-1-6
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Year: 2017
Pages: 128 (Expanded edition: 1 new chapter)
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November 16th, 2021 by Germán Gorraiz López
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The phenomenon of economic globalization has ensured that all the rational elements of the economy are interrelated with each other due to the consolidation of oligopolies, technological convergence and tacit corporate agreements, so that the third wave of the economic recession that is coming will be global and binding and will have as a collateral effect the irreversible decline of the global economy. To reach that sunset. whose first sketches are already outlined and which will be finished in the next five years, the following elements have contributed:
The incessant bombardment of advertising, the irrational use of plastic cards, the granting of instant credits with bloody interest rates and the invasion of a flood of manufactured products of dubious quality and prices without competition from emerging countries would have favored the establishment of the compulsive consumerism in developed countries. To quench this consumer bulimia,
Stateless multinationals or transnational corporations intensified the policy of relocating companies to emerging countries in order to reduce production costs, which would have resulted in the desertification of countless productive sectors of the First World countries and which would have become evident after the irruption of the health pandemic.
On the other hand, the brutal increase in the consumption of raw materials and manufactured products by China and other emerging countries due to their spectacular growth in GDP, together with the intervention of speculative brokers, has led to a spiral of increases in the prices of raw materials that has resulted in runaway inflation that will force the Central Banks to raise interest rates and that will mean ruin for countries with runaway external debt.
Said Debt would be the result of the substitution of the economic doctrine of Budget Balance of the States by that of Endemic Deficit, (a practice that by mimicry adopted by domestic economies and companies and public and private organizations), and which have contributed to the disappearance of the culture of savings, chronic indebtedness and excessive dependence on Foreign Financing.
This, together with the stratospheric growth of oil and energy prices, will force these countries to adopt policies of decrease with the subsequent contraction of world trade and that will cause the end of economic globalization, having as collateral effects the end of mass tourism , the return of relocated companies and the enthronement of the circular economy and ECO label products that will end up shaping the return to watertight economic compartments on the horizon of the next five years.
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German Gorraiz Lopez is a financial analyst.
November 16th, 2021 by Rima Najjar
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“The history of the world is always weak people fighting strong people. Of weak people who have a correct case fighting strong people who use their strength to exploit the weak.” — Ghassan Kanafani
Masar Badil, Conference of the Alternative Palestinian Path: Towards a new revolutionary commitment, was held in Madrid on Oct. 30, 2021 across four days (and simultaneously in Beirut and Sao Paulo). To understand the political position the conference adopted, read the Madrid Declaration: Issued by the Conference on the Alternative Palestinian Revolutionary Path in Madrid, Spain.
If you believe in Palestinian liberation and return and the exercise of our people’s right to self-determination on their entire national soil on the path to building a democratic, participatory human society, and building the institutions of this democratic Palestine, as a society and as a state, then Masar Badil is the movement for you.
What does this burgeoning movement aim to achieve? Among other things, its objectives are to defend the rights of the Palestinian people, to build bridges of joint action between the homeland and the diaspora on the road to strengthening the unity of the Palestinian national movement as one unified liberation movement, and to build an Arab front against colonialism and Zionism and its local enablers:
… we call upon the Palestinian resistance forces, the various national and popular bodies, the youth, student and feminist movements, the boycott and anti-normalization committees and all the masses of our struggling people in the occupied homeland and throughout the Diaspora to unite nationally to establish a united Palestinian national front to resist racist Zionist settler colonialism in all of Palestine, to confront the Zionist movement and its allies in the world, and to work to break all the cycles of siege by developing the ability of our Palestinian people to restore and liberate their institutions, and to strengthen the position and role of the Palestinian liberation movement and its active presence in the Arab and international arenas.
Our conference considers the Palestine Liberation Organization to be a confiscated and hijacked institution, whose decision-making is dominated by a corrupt class sector, acting as agents of Zionist colonialism, and a weak leadership lacking revolutionary, popular or legal legitimacy. On this basis, we consider that the Organization and its leadership, in their current form, do not represent us and cannot represent the struggles and rights of our people.
The conference therefore calls on all popular forces, associations and organizations affiliated with the Alternative Palestinian Revolutionary Path Movement to escalate the pace of mass struggle inside and outside occupied Palestine and to confront the “self-rule administration” liquidation project on the road to isolating and overthrowing it.
Conference organizers recently released the final documents (in several languages) adopted by the Madrid conference and the conferences of the Masar in Beirut and Sao Paulo as well as the following short video, highlighting the launch of the Masar movement:
What’s notable about this movement is that it is driven by youth, a new generation for a new Palestinian dawn. It’s a movement for the thousands of highly qualified and creative Palestinian youths, wherever they are planted, who are poised to play a major role in forming the Palestinian revolution’s future, and, in the words of Geroge Habash (al-Hakim), “the future of our Palestinian masses, the future of Palestine, the region and the world.”
Image: Capture from the video “Masar Badil on the March in Madrid”. Arabic subtitles in the above are translations of the narrative voice of Ghassan Kanafani speaking in English (interview by Richard Carleton, Beirut, 1970) and saying: “The history of the world is always weak people fighting strong people. Of weak people who have a correct case fighting strong people who use their strength to exploit the weak.”
Related:
Masar Badil and the elephant in the room (Nov. 1, 2021)
Masar Badil: How to make an alternative revolutionary path a reality (Oct. 30, 2021)
Masar Badil Means Standing Strong (Oct. 29, 2021)
Understanding that the only recourse for Palestinians is continued revolt
There is no escape for Israel from growing Palestinian power (Oct 22, 2021)
We are not afraid, but clearly they are
A Giant Leap for Palestine? Stay Tuned! (Oct 15, 2021)
Celebrating the path of resistance for the Palestinian people
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Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem and whose mother’s side of the family is from Ijzim, south of Haifa. She is an activist, researcher and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank.
She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Featured image: Samidoun España activist Jaldia Abubakra — capture from video “Masar Badil on the March in Madrid”/from Rima Najjar
November 16th, 2021 by Jeremy Loffredo
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On the latest episode of “The Jimmy Dore Show,” comedian and political commentator Jimmy Dore discussed a report by The BMJ on a whistleblower’s revelations about Pfizer’s Phase 3 COVID vaccine trial.
On the latest episode of “The Jimmy Dore Show,” comedian and political commentator Jimmy Dore discussed the recent bombshell report in The BMJ on Pfizer’s Phase 3 COVID vaccine trial.
The BMJ’s report exposed faked data, blind trial failures, delayed follow-ups on serious adverse reactions and the silencing of researchers who were critical of the trials practices.
A researcher who worked on the trial described the studies to The BMJ as a “crazy mess.”
“Big Pharma are the biggest liars, scammers and criminals in the country — so you know they had to do some shady stuff with the COVID vaccine and sure enough — they did,” said Dore.
Brook Jackson played a central role in the explosive report. Jackson worked as a regional director at Ventavia Research Group, the outside contractor Pfizer hired to conduct the Phase 3 trial.
The BMJ report mentions how in autumn 2020, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla released an open letter to the billions of people around the world “who were investing their hopes in a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine to end the pandemic.”
Bourla wrote that the company was “operating at the speed of science.”
“Science says vaccines can’t end the pandemic because they don’t and were never designed to stop transmission,” Dore argued.
The BMJ reported:
“ … for researchers who were testing Pfizer’s vaccine at several sites in Texas during that autumn, speed may have come at the cost of data integrity and patient safety,” and that “staff who conducted quality control checks were overwhelmed by the volume of problems they were finding.”
Jackson told The BMJ during her two weeks of employment at Ventavia in September 2020, “she repeatedly informed her superiors of poor laboratory management, patient safety concerns and data integrity issues.”
Documents obtained by The BMJ also showed a Ventavia executive was aware of staff members who were “falsifying data.”
The BMJ reported that on Sept. 25, 2020, Jackson called the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to warn about unsound practices in Pfizer’s clinical trial. She then reported her concerns in an email to the agency.
Later that afternoon Ventavia fired Jackson. According to her separation letter, obtained by The BMJ, the Pfizer subcontractor deemed her “not a good fit.”
Jackson told The BMJ it was the first time she had been fired in her 20-year career in clinical research.
Dore said:
“That’s not how science works. You’re supposed to have people documenting adverse reactions so the vaccines can be made safer. If you want the vaccinated to shut up about their adverse reactions that makes you part of a cover-up.”
According to The BMJ, Jackson listed more than a dozen concerns with the trial, including participants not being monitored by clinical staff after injection, lack of timely follow-up of patients who experienced serious adverse events, protocol deviations not being reported, vaccines not being stored at proper temperatures, mislabelled laboratory specimens and the targeting of Ventavia staff for reporting trial issues.
The BMJ also spoke with two former Ventavia employees who agreed to speak with the medical journal anonymously for “fear of reprisal and loss of job prospects in the tightly knit research community.” Both former Ventavia employees confirmed Jackson’s complaint.
One former employee told the journal she had “worked on over four dozen clinical trials in her career, including many large trials” but had never experienced such a “helter-skelter” environment as with Pfizer’s Phase 3 trial.
The BMJ reported that since Ventavia collaborated with Pfizer for its initial Phase 3 trial, Pfizer hired Ventavia as a research subcontractor on other vaccine clinical trials, including the COVID vaccine for children and young adults, pregnant women and the trials looking at the safety of a booster dose.
“So Pfizer hired them again! Pfizer subcontracts out the risky work so they can have deniability,” Dore said.
John Campbell, Ph.D., discussed The BMJ report in a recent video, asking if the revelations will harm public trust in industry science.
“We should have perfect integrity and transparency all the way through [the scientific process] so the public can completely trust the clinical data … and this doesn’t help with that,” Campbell said.
Despite the bombshell revelations, the FDA granted Emergency Use Authorization to the Pfizer COVID vaccine for children ages 5 to11 years old, while the mainstream corporate press gave the BMJ report little to no coverage.
Children’s Health Defense asks those concerned about the FDA’s failure to investigate Jackson’s claims to contact their members of Congress.
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Jeremy Loffredo is a freelance reporter for The Defender. His investigative reporting has been featured in The Grayzone and Unlimited Hangout. Jeremy formerly produced news programs at RT America.
Featured image is from CHD
November 16th, 2021 by Andrew Korybko
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Belarus and Poland are “going rogue” vis-à-vis their Russian and American patrons in the sense of independently doing things that are aimed at provoking their “big brothers” into more actively taking their side for the purpose of catalyzing a larger crisis that they aim to subsequently exploit.
The Western Mainstream Media is lying when it claims that Belarusian President Lukashenko is his Russian counterpart’s “hybrid warfare” puppet. This information warfare narrative is being propagated for the purpose of implicating President Putin in Lukashenko’s unsavory policies by virtue of their political association through the “Union State”. The Russian leader explicitly clarified that he was caught off guard by Lukashenko’s recent threat to cut off gas supplies to Europe. In his words:
“To be honest, this is the first time I hear about it because I spoke with Mr Lukashenko twice recently and he never told me about that, not even a hint. But he can probably do that. Although there is nothing good about it and I will certainly talk to him about this issue, unless he just said it in the heat of the moment…Of course, theoretically, Lukashenko, as president of a transit country, can issue an order to cut off our deliveries to Europe even though it will violate our transit contract. I hope it will not come to that.”
This isn’t “5D chess” or some so-called “cunning plan”, but one of Putin’s typically candid remarks about sensitive issues. He’s genuinely concerned about what his counterpart said, especially since he wasn’t informed of it in advance despite having recently spoken with Lukashenko twice. Putin is implying that the Belarusian leader either said something that he didn’t mean due to his characteristic impulsiveness or might even be trying to pressure Russia into taking his side against Poland and the EU.
The Eastern European Migrant Crisis owes its origins to the US-led West’s wars against Muslim countries that created the conditions for millions of people to want to flee to the EU for economic reasons. The Polish-led anti-Belarusian sanctions over the past year worsened the situation in that targeted former Soviet Republic and made it politically impossible for its leadership to continue voluntarily expending the resources to protect the EU from illegal immigration like it earlier did.
This toxic combination prompted the latest Migrant Crisis, which the Polish government is also exploiting for self-interested political reasons related to provoking a larger East-West crisis in order to sabotage the incipient Russian-US rapprochement. Nevertheless, the Polish people are innocent and deserve to be protected from the threat posed by illegal immigrants invading their country. All of this makes the latest events very complicated.
Be that as it may, there should be no ambiguity about the relationship between Putin and Lukashenko. Although there’s asymmetry in their countries’ capabilities, they still endeavor to treat one another as equals in all respects in order to set a positive example throughout the rest of the post-Soviet space. Lukashenko is still very much his own independent man, which he’s proven on multiple occasions in the past through his sometimes virulent criticism of Russia, especially before last year’s regime change crisis.
Keenly understanding his country’s importance to Russia in the security sense of serving as a physical buffer with NATO, Lukashenko has since tried to trick Putin into supporting him in ways that risk bringing Belarus’ “big brother” into conflict with the West. His latest threat to cut off Russian gas supplies to the West can be interpreted in such a way. The Belarusian leader wanted Putin to feel pressured to support him for the sake of “saving face” and “keeping up appearances”.
The Russian leader, however, was having none of that. In fact, he clearly seems offended that Lukashenko would issue such a threat knowing fully well that the Western Mainstream Media’s information warfare narrative is to misportray their relationship as a patron-puppet one. In other words, Lukashenko purposely manipulated politically Russophobic propaganda in order to pressure Putin for self-interested and very geopolitically dangerous reasons. It’s no wonder that Putin is so upset.
This doesn’t mean that their personal relations, let alone their countries’ strategic ones, will be irreversibly worsened by Lukashenko’s provocation. It’s just that the Belarusian leader is back to his old tricks of trying to play the East off against the West in the hopes that he can exploit the situation to his benefit (and potentially also Poland’s from Warsaw’s perspective considering their similar infowar tricks during this crisis).
Belarus and Poland are “going rogue” vis-à-vis their Russian and American patrons in the sense of independently doing things that are aimed at provoking their “big brothers” into more actively taking their side for the purpose of catalyzing a larger crisis that they aim to subsequently exploit. Minsk wants Moscow to coerce the West into lifting its anti-Belarusian sanctions while Warsaw wants Washington to freeze – if not reverse – its incipient strategic dialogue with the Kremlin.
Neither Belarus nor Poland are “puppets” of Russia or the US in this particular context despite being their mutual defense allies. The Eastern European Migrant Crisis shows how regional countries can manipulate the course of events and narratives thereof for self-interested reasons that even occur at their own patrons’ expense. This is an extremely dangerous trend that must be curbed as soon as possible lest it spiral further out of control and provoke a larger conflict by miscalculation.
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This article was originally published on OneWorld.
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November 16th, 2021 by Abayomi Azikiwe
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A new “Sovereign Council” has been inaugurated in the Republic of Sudan without the endorsement of the leading forces within the ousted administration.
On October 25 the military leadership of General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Commander of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemetti), took complete control of the state and placed under house arrest interim Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok.
These actions were in line with a reemerging phenomenon of military coups on the African continent which began during the 1960s. In many cases, the undemocratic usurpation of authority were guided and marionetted by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the State Department as was the case in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in 1960 and the Republic of Ghana in 1966.
Sudan has been an independent nation since 1956, one of the first national independence movements which succeeded against British imperialism. The following year, 1957, the former Gold Coast became Ghana under the leadership of the Convention People’s Party (CPP) headed then by Dr. Kwame Nkrumah.
The Sudanese Professional Association (SPA), a founding organization within the broader Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC), has rejected an offer by the Transitional Military Council (TMC) of al-Burhan and Hemetti to become a part of the revised “Sovereign Council”. Undoubtedly, the current regime will continue to be dominated by the military.
People opposed the coup and the appointment of another interim body dominated by the military immediately reacted to al-Burhan’s moves by blocking roads with burning tires. Thousands of images of the unrest were widely circulated over social media.
On November 13, hundreds of thousands took to the streets in various cities around Sudan including Khartoum, where the capital is located. Despite the arrest of many political leaders and other repressive measures enacted by the military, the turnout to the protests were enormous. Obviously much of the mobilization efforts were conducted clandestinely since the military coup makers control the armaments, broadcasting services, internet connectivity and other critical organs of the state.
Since the eruption of social unrest in December 2018, untold numbers of people have lost their lives in resistance activities. In the aftermath of four months of marches, rebellions and general strikes, in early April 2019 the military overthrew the administration of the-then President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. However, the people leading the opposition forces wanted a civilian government to determine the future of this centrally located and resource-rich African nation.
An article in the Sudan Tribune said of the manifestations on November 13:
“According to medical reports, five protesters were killed in Khartoum state, four with bullets, and the fifth after inhaling tear gas, and there are many wounded in the various cities of Khartoum State. Besides Khartoum state, reports from other states say that thousands protested in Dongola and Kareema, in Northern State, Atbara of the Nile River State and Madani of Algazira State. In the Darfur region, demonstrators came out in El Fasher and Nyala, where 64 demonstrators were arrested. The pro-democracy protests also took place in Port Sudan of the Red Sea State and Kosti of the While Nile. The 13 November protests were organized by the Sudanese Professionals Associations and the Resistance Committees in support of the civilian state in Sudan.”
Sudan mass demonstrations continue against the coup (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)
Prime Minister Hamdok has dismissed any suggestion that he resume his duties as interim leader of the Sovereign Council and is demanding the reinstatement of the Constitutional Declaration which was negotiated with the involvement of the African Union (AU). Several other members of the cabinet which was removed in the October 25 putsch also continue to be detained.
Since the first recent military coup of April 2019, which effectively blocked any attempt at forming a national democratic government led by civilians from various political parties, trade unions, mass and professional groupings, the TMC has received support from the monarchies of Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt and the State of Israel. In defiance of its own constitutional law established in 1958, the Sovereign Council agreed to “normalize relations” with Tel Aviv. Since this measure was adopted at the aegis of the former U.S. President Donald Trump, there appears to have no exchange of diplomatic missions.
Nonetheless, there are several reports claiming that the TMC has deployed a delegation to Tel Aviv for private discussions. Later there were articles saying the Israelis have sent a team to Khartoum for talks. Despite the role of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Israel, the social conditions are dire in Sudan. The political unrest is clearly fueled by the declining living conditions inside the country.
International Impact of the Coup
Of course, the State Department is shuttling back and forth from Washington to Khartoum in an effort to appear concerned about the situation in Sudan. The tactics of the Trump administration, and the essentially unchanged policies of the current President Joe Biden, have been a destabilizing factor in the country.
The initial Sovereign Council which was chaired as well by al-Burhan although Hamdok was the civilian head, agreed to a number of commitments which will further render Sudan into indebtedness to the world capitalist system. International finance capital has agreed to lend Khartoum money under certain conditionalities which will not enhance its ability to become a genuinely independent and self-sustaining state.
Hamdok and al-Burhan signed obligations to pay hundreds of millions in U.S. dollars to survivors of victims of terrorist attacks which occurred long before the removal of President al-Bashir. The Sovereign Council was coercively manipulated into signing such agreements in exchange for the removal of Sudan from the list of “state sponsors of terrorism.”
If anything can be learned from the previous six or more decades of independent African countries is the role of funding institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in derailing the development strategies of post-colonial states. In light of the economic crisis largely precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the potential for a renewed round of borrowing and refinancing of loans among AU member-states is highly likely.
Whither Sudan?
The debt incurred by the Sudanese people compounded by the political discontent caused by the acquiescence to the so-called “Abraham Accords”, designed to undermine solidarity with the Palestinian struggle against the Israeli regime, unless revoked, will only further hamper the capacity of Khartoum to unify under a civilian administration. Within a broader international context, Washington and Tel Aviv along with their allies among the Gulf monarchies, can only offer further indebtedness and war to the people of Sudan and Africa as a whole.
The AU in a statement from the Commission Chairperson Moussa Faki Mahamat notes:
“On the 6th of November, the African Union Peace and Security (PSC) Council suspended Sudan’s membership in the regional organization after the 25th October military coup in violation of the African Union brokered constitutional declaration of 17 August 2019 governing the transitional period. The PSC said that the suspension would continue until the reestablishment of a civilian-led authority. However, coup leaders continue to detain Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok, his prominent advisers and cabinet members as well as political leaders.”
Nevertheless, until the resources allocated by imperialism and its allies internationally are halted, the continued subversion of the revolutionary democratic process by the TMC will further stall the total transformation of the country. The mass organizations are calling for additional marches and work stoppages. The fragility of the new “Sovereign Council” will be clearly illustrated since it cannot make any serious case for its existence beyond stifling a progressive path forward.
The new regime is composed of the military along with some leaders of the armed opposition groups which had negotiated a peace agreement in Juba, Republic of South Sudan. These maneuvers have been met with derision and civil disorder. At some point, sooner or later, the tenuous alliance engineered by al-Burhan and his international patrons will burst asunder due to the burgeoning domestic and global opposition to, yet another, neo-colonial construct manufactured in Washington, New York and Tel Aviv.
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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Featured image: Sudan demonstrators raise flag during anti-coup protest, Nov. 13, 2021 (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)
November 16th, 2021 by Barbara Nimri Aziz
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***
Have you noticed: moral issues are no longer the domain of clerics and philosophers? Not politicians either.
Our ethics, however capricious they’ve become, evolve largely from the mega entertainment industry. Authors and athletes, singers and poet-rappers, television hosts and comedians, even though they sometimes do so unwittingly, guide our choices, consequently our values as well. Today’s A-list stars —oh, how we adore them—they are who pronounce what’s good and right, bad and wrong. At least we endow them with that power. Even when they don’t intend their statements to be a moral judgement, even after they’ve moved beyond whatever they’re charged with.
Columnist Paul Street, addressing the weakening role of journalism, hints at the moral implications of that slide: “In the name of political neutrality”, he writes, “‘the news’ often produces moral (my emphasis) and intellectual paralysis in its consumers…”.
I agree that morality can be allied with reason; but not always.
So, what do we do in the vacuum created by this paralysis? Well, it’s readily at hand: we simply scroll down the website, click to alternate channels, slide to another app. Thereby we effortlessly find ourselves enveloped by dazzling graphics, stunning talent and, if we choose, fiery one-liner opinions. Though these may not stir us intellectually, they can make us feel woke or hip, soothed or aggrieved, offended or assuaged—somehow engaged.
Star power over our cultural values is imbibed effortlessly. It leaps to the forefront when a perceived transgression arouses someone’s anger. Take for example the attacks against authors J.K. Rowling and Germaine Greer by feminist and transgender activists. Or the assaults on comedian Kevin Hart when his early homophobic remarks came to light. Either they uttered something contemptible that conflicts with the moral standard of a newly potent interest group. Or their influence is so highly valued they’re obliged to endorse the new morality.
Colin Kaepernick’s taking-the-knee at a highly symbolic public event is of a somewhat different order. One wonders if the football star envisaged the fierce reaction to his simple but loaded gesture. Having chosen to make his statement about police brutality against African Americans during the U.S. national anthem in front of crowds and cameras, his action generated intense reactions —public condemnation, termination of a lucrative contract, banishment from the National Football League.
We have yet to see how J.K. Rowling will emerge from cultural assassination, even after a heartfelt defense of her opinion on gender identity. Germaine Greer, a leading feminist voice who starting in the 1960s helped define a new ethic for women, is disinvited from prestigious events and delisted for an honorary degree for her recalcitrance.
Perhaps bolstered by the power of the BLM movement, Nike’s choice of Kaepernick as the centerpiece of its “just do it” social justice campaign and the man’s personal mettle, his immoral kneeling led to a stunning turnaround. Embraced by sports figures nationwide, “taking-the-knee” became a symbol of solidarity in the struggle for justice, and a model marketing tool. Many citizens like me were unfamiliar with Kaepernick-the-quarterback. After witnessing his unjust treatment and his resolve, hearing him speak, we recognize him as a moral leader.
Kaepernick has moved to another stage in his mission. With filmmaker Ava Duvernay, he co-directs and narrates a new film series. “Colin in Black and White” focuses on Kaepernick’s childhood. Though dramatization of young Colin’s encounters with racism is only part of the film’s message. Regularly throughout the story Kaepernick enters the frame to speak directly to viewers about American racism, referencing case histories along with historical and sociological studies. The film series thus becomes a moral lesson on justice and the Black American experience.
Opprobrium of individuals in the public eye is often harsh. Judgements go beyond mere criticism. Beyond a warning. You’re fired, cancelled, banished, de-A-listed. J.K. Rowling’s refusal to join the ‘trend’ in support of transgender identities is unacceptable. Like Greer and others, because she’s a highly-regarded celebrity she deserves censure. And the label “TERF”, trans-exclusionary radical feminist. An “illiberal left” has also entered culture war terminology.
Support for some international causes is morally weighted, too. On the one hand, women’s moral rights were offered as justification for the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. By contrast, non-violent programs such as Boycott Divestment and Sanctions in support of Palestinian rights are attacked as immoral; teachers who dare to endorse Palestinian statehood are expelled. (Compare to the warm reception of George Clooney’s advocacy of South Sudan’s secession.)
Was it always so dangerous to be not only successful but a celebrity? Stardom brings huge influence. As such, spurning a new status quo may find you out in the cold.
But the temptation for glory and wealth is double-edged. Our A-listers often exploit their own luminary status to define values for their fans. Trendsetting in food and health, clothing and language is second tier; now it’s motherhood—e.g. Serena Williams on birthing and athletic prowess– sexual license, ostentation and, not unreasonably, political advocacy.
An example of explicit moral messages originating from the liberal left is the HBO show hosted by John Oliver. (Would Noam Chomsky include Oliver as one of his morally responsible intellectuals?) Oliver leaves little doubt about his ethical views on public issues. The format of “Last Week Tonight”, a plate of satire that combines convincing research, smart graphics and provocative narration rendered in his working-class British accent, has won him an enormous following. With disciples quoting Oliver adopting some of his moral indignation; understandable since Oliver himself is hugely pompous and absolutely, f*king unarguable. (Although one wonders if his lectures translate into real social action.)
Fox News’ Tucker Carlson is Oliver’s political nemesis. Although Carlson wins without satire, without intellectual airs, too. Isn’t he as much a moralist as Oliver, his statements imbibed as uncritically, repeated as righteously?
Celebrities surely realize they’re not simply entertaining, not only informing. They’re advocating.
Some, like the daringly brilliant Dave Chappelle, seem to welcome a role in this volatile moral game. From his early productions on Comedy Central, Chappelle’s routines flirted with the boundaries of our social code. His edginess and irreverence do more than make us laugh; they make us squirm. He has enjoyed a moral license on a par with fellow comic-writer-actor Larry David. Yet, Chappelle doesn’t rely on funniness alone; he strategically interrupts his hooting audience with a moral tale. Riding on a hilarious, shocking punchline, he slips in a gentle lecture or a sobering anecdote to remind us of the reality behind life’s funny stuff.
Chappelle returns to the stage with a Netflix series that finds him at the center of a moral storm:– that concerning transgender rights. Eager to engage his attackers, he points to their intolerance. It’s more than a free speech issue, Chappelle explains: “My problem has never been with transgender people. My problem has always been with the dialogue about transgender.
In a shrewd shift to satire, he emphasizes the moral position underlying his work: ‘’I feel these things should not be discussed in front of Blacks; it’s f*cking insulting about how these (transgender) people feel inside. Since when has America ever given a f*ck how any of us feels inside?”
Who can argue with that?
To his transgender critics, Chappelle confesses: “…you have to understand that as a policy, I never feel bad about anything I say up here…. I do understand that life is hard and those types of choices do not disqualify you from a life of dignity, happiness and safety.” Then comes his riposte: “Why is it easier for Caitlyn Jenner to change his sex than for Cassius Clay to change his name?” Which returns us to the overriding moral issue for Chappelle — injustice in the Black American experience.
Not everyone gets this. The Economist’s sympathetic review of transphobia charges against the comedian concludes a possible moral theme underlying Chappelle’s mission–that “everyone is flawed and everyone should be accepted”. Not quite.
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Barbara Nimri Aziz whose anthropological research has focused on the peoples of the Himalayas is the author of the newly published “Yogmaya and Durga Devi: Rebel Women of Nepal”, available on Amazon.
She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
All images in this article are from the author
By Barbara Nimri Aziz
A century ago Yogmaya and Durga Devi, two women champions of justice, emerged from a remote corner of rural Nepal to offer solutions to their nation’s social and political ills. Then they were forgotten.
Years after their demise, in 1980 veteran anthropologist Barbara Nimri Aziz first uncovered their suppressed histories in her comprehensive and accessible biographies. Revelations from her decade of research led to the resurrection of these women and their entry into contemporary Nepali consciousness.
This book captures the daring political campaigns of these rebel women; at the same time it asks us to acknowledge their impact on contemporary feminist thinking. Like many revolutionaries who were vilified in their lifetimes, we learn about the true nature of these leaders’ intelligence, sacrifices, and vision during an era of social and economic oppression in this part of Asia.
After Nepal moved from absolute monarchy to a fledgling democracy and history re-evaluated these pioneers, Dr. Aziz explores their legacies in this book.
Psychologically provocative and astonishingly moving, “Yogmaya and Durga Devi” is a seminal contribution to women’s history.
November 16th, 2021 by Alex Lantier
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***
Nearly three years ago, as US-led coalition forces trapped a remnant of the Islamic State (IS) in a small enclave near the Syrian town of Baghuz, the US military committed a horrific atrocity. As Air Force officers watched the scene via drone cameras in real time, US warplanes murdered at least 80 unarmed women and children with 500- and 2,000-pound bombs. The officers who saw the attack urged that a war crimes investigation begin immediately.
This act of mass murder is a war crime, the kind of offense for which Nazi officers were tried and convicted at Nuremberg. For three years, however, it was covered up by the US and its NATO allies until a devastating, 4,600-word article appeared on Saturday, based on US officers’ testimony, in the New York Times.
The atrocity in Syria inescapably recalls the “Collateral Murder ” video, revealed by whistleblower Chelsea Manning and WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, of US Apache helicopters slaughtering over a dozen unarmed Iraqi civilians in Baghdad in 2007. It also recalls the massacre of patients and hospital workers in Kunduz, Afghanistan, in October 2015 and the bombing of wedding parties that killed hundreds.
These murderous acts are not isolated events, however. They are the product of the criminal operations of American imperialism as it has sought to subjugate and conquer the Middle East and Central Asia in three decades of unending war.
The revelations of the act of mass murder in Syria come from Air Force officers at Al-Udeid airbase in Qatar, who were monitoring a high-resolution surveillance drone flying over Baghuz.
That day, the Times writes, the
“US military drone circled high overhead, hunting for military targets. But it saw only a large crowd of women and children huddled against a river bank. Without warning, an American F-15E attack jet streaked across the drone’s high-definition field of vision and dropped a 500-pound bomb on the crowd, swallowing it in a shuddering blast. As the smoke cleared, a few people stumbled away in search of cover. Then a jet tracking them dropped one 2,000-pound bomb, then another, killing most of the survivors.”
“We just dropped on 50 women and children,” said one officer monitoring the drone, though the US Central Command told the Times that 80 were killed, and the Times wrote that Air Force officers later saw a “shockingly high” death toll in another classified report.
The strike had been called in by a US Special Forces unit, Task Force 9. This unit, which bypasses the chain of command and was not coordinating with Air Force officers in Qatar, was advising the majority-Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) militia attacking Baghuz.
It is not credible to attribute this atrocity to error. Lightly armed IS fighters or civilians at Baghuz were defenseless before drones and fighters that could film and bomb them at will. The Times admits:
“Coalition drones had scoured the camp 24 hours a day for weeks and knew nearly every inch, officers said, including the daily movements of groups of women and children who gathered to eat, pray and sleep near a steep river bank that provided cover.”
US wars in the Middle East and Central Asia have been sold to the population as a “war on terror.” However, the murder in Baghuz is itself an act of terrorism, aimed at demonstrating that American imperialism will stop at nothing to subjugate the population.
A military lawyer, Lt. Colonel Dean Korsak, ordered drone operators and fighter aircrews to conserve footage of the atrocity for investigations. He then “reported the strike to his chain of command, saying it was a possible violation of the law of armed conflict—a war crime—and regulations required a thorough, independent investigation,” the Times reports. Korsak’s concerns were bolstered by reports from CIA officials “alarmed” about Task Force 9’s operations in Syria.
What they encountered, however, was a cover-up orchestrated at top levels of the state, under both the Republican Trump and the Democratic Biden administrations.
Coalition forces in Baghuz oversaw the hiding of the bodies. “Satellite images from four days later show the sheltered bank and area around it, which were in the control of the coalition, appeared to have been bulldozed,” the Times writes. It cites a former US Army Special Forces soldier, David Eubank, who arrived a week after the attack: “The place had been pulverized by airstrikes … There was a lot of freshly bulldozed earth and the stink of bodies underneath, a lot of bodies.”
The US Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations contemptuously ignored Korsak’s material. One of its officials bluntly wrote to Korsak that it would likely ignore his report, as it investigates civilian casualties only if there is “potential for high media attention, concern with outcry from local community/government, concern sensitive images may get out.”
Korsak then contacted the US Defense Department’s Independent Inspector General’s office. Gene Tate, a former Navy officer working as an evaluator at the Inspector General’s office, pressed for Korsak’s materials to be investigated. A team at Tate’s office even ruled that war crimes allegations were “extremely credible.” Ultimately, however, Tate was fired and thrown out of his office by security in October 2020.
After Korsak sent the US Senate Armed Services Committee his material, several months ago, the New York Times began investigating.
“I’m putting myself at great risk of military retaliation for sending this. … Senior ranking US military officials intentionally and systematically circumvented the deliberate strike process,” Korsak wrote in an email to the committee.
The bipartisan cover-up of the crimes of US imperialism in Syria is continuing, however. The Senate committee has not responded to either Korsak or Tate. The office of Senator Jack Reed, the committee’s Democratic chairman, refused to discuss the Baghuz atrocity with the Times.
As for the Times itself, after initially posting the article on the top of its site late Saturday evening, it had already begun to bury it by Sunday afternoon. The rest of the media has barely covered the revelations.
It is not hard to imagine what would happen if the US media could pin blame for this atrocity on the governments of Syria, Iran, Russia, China or another country in the Pentagon’s gunsights. There would be morally outraged calls for UN Security Council meetings, sanctions, war threats or US missile strikes in Damascus. When responsibility indisputably lies with the Pentagon, however, it is simply covered up by the US and Western European governments.
The atrocity in Syria again exposes the interests behind the jailing of Assange—who is detained in Britain and facing extradition and death in the United States—and of Manning. Over the 30 years since the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union gave them a military opening to wage war across the Middle East, Washington and its allies have laid waste to Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and beyond. Millions died in events that were covered up by the mass media but were witnessed by many people who can expose officials who carried out or are complicit in mass murder and war crimes.
The Baghuz atrocity points to a broad official falsification of death tolls in Syria. From 2014 to 2019, as the US, Britain, France and other countries destroyed the IS enclave in Syria and Iraq, they called down 35,000 airstrikes. “Nearly 1,000 strikes hit targets in Syria and Iraq in 2019, using 4,729 bombs and missiles,” the Times notes. However, “The official military tally of civilian dead for that entire year is only 22, and the strikes from March 18 are nowhere on the list.”
While Washington claimed it was killing only a handful of people in Syria, it was hiding reports on masses of people it had killed. The Pentagon was, the Times writes, “overwhelmed by the volume of civilian casualty claims reported by locals, humanitarian groups and the news media, and a backlog of civilian casualty assessment reports sat unexamined for months.”
The vindictive prosecution of Assange and Manning—and threats one can presume are now being made against Korsak and Tate—aim to ensure that war crimes committed as the product of the criminal wars supported by Democratic and Republican administrations alike will go unpunished.
The international working class must demand an end to the horrific persecution of Assange, who faces extradition to the US for revealing crimes such as those exposed by the Times article. Those responsible for the mass murder in Baghuz and its cover-up, along with the unending string of atrocities throughout the region, must be prosecuted.
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Mark Taliano combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes the mainstream media narratives on Syria.
ISBN: 978-0-9879389-1-6
Author: Mark Taliano
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Pages: 128 (Expanded edition: 1 new chapter)
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November 16th, 2021 by Global Research News
New Zealand Tells Schools to Phone the Police if Unvaccinated Staff Show Up
By
, November 16, 2021Any staff member who hasn’t had the COVID vaccine by November 15th who tries to enter school grounds will be subject to a fine as part of the country’s “no jab, no job” policy.
The Covid-19 Pandemic Does Not Exist
By
, November 15, 2021Immediately following the March 11, 2020 WHO announcement, the fear campaign went into high gear. Stock markets collapsed on the following day: Black Thursday. On March 18, 2020 a lockdown was launched in the US.
Lukashenko’s Threats to Cut Gas Supplies to Europe, Goes Also Against Russian Interests
By
, November 15, 2021Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko threatened on November 11 to suspend gas shipments to Europe which would have the potential to trigger a new gas war, Polish news portal Defense24 reported. According to the author of the article, Minsk cannot allow such a declaration without the approval of Moscow, the country “responsible” for the current energy crisis in Europe.
By
, November 15, 2021How many innocent people must be marred, maimed, and mortally wounded by these injections before the truth of the toxic effects of creating unnatural spike proteins in our bodies is finally acknowledged?
Climate Pollution from Plastics to Outpace Coal Emissions in US by 2030, Report Finds
By
, November 15, 2021With dozens of new plastics manufacturing and recycling facilities in the works, the U.S. plastics industry will release more greenhouse gas emissions than coal-fired power plants by 2030, say the authors of a new report.
The Cruel Joke of COP26: The Road to Zero Emissions Is Strewn with “Alternative Facts”
By
, November 15, 2021Once again, the hopes of billions have been raised, only to be dashed, this time by the cruel joke of COP26, the reality being that “By 2030, governments are planning to extract 110% more fossil fuels than their Paris Agreement pledge to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels would permit”.
The Real Anthony Fauci. RFK Jr. Discusses His Book
By
, November 15, 2021n a nutshell, Kennedy describes how Fauci turned the National Institutes of Health into an incubator for pharmaceutical products, and essentially sold the entire country to the drug industry. The book is an incredibly well-referenced record of his history of decimating human health, and exposes him as a self-serving charlatan.
Saving Capitalism or Saving the Planet?
By
, November 15, 2021The UK government’s Behavioural Insights Team helped to push the public towards accepting the COVID narrative, restrictions and lockdowns. It is now working on ‘nudging’ people towards further possible restrictions or at least big changes in their behaviour in the name of ‘climate emergency’.
COP26 and Pope Francis’ “Greening of Christianity”
By
, November 15, 2021Amidst the early days of the COP26 Summit in Glasgow, Pope Francis made several accolades to world leaders and the entire global Catholica community alike to take bold action in the face of anthropogenic climate change and drastically alter our entire system of values towards a new order.
By
, November 15, 2021The German-led invasion of the Soviet Union began at 3:15 am, on 22 June 1941, with an enormous artillery barrage along the Nazi-Soviet frontier. The USSR’s hierarchy had counted on it being too late in the year for German forces to attack, despite warnings to the contrary.
November 16th, 2021 by Paul Joseph Watson
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***
Authorities in New Zealand have told schools to phone the police if unvaccinated staff show up for work.
Yes, really.
“The advice, published in the Ministry’s gazette on Thursday, tells school leaders that if they, or any education staff, turn up to work on Monday unvaccinated against Covid, they will be committing an offence,” reports the Mail Australia.
Any staff member who hasn’t had the COVID vaccine by November 15th who tries to enter school grounds will be subject to a fine as part of the country’s “no jab, no job” policy.
“If staff do turn up on site after this date, we encourage school leaders to deal with this in the usual manner you would if other inappropriate people were to turn up on site,” states the advice from the Ministry of Education.
“If you feel your safety or the safety of akonga (pupils or students) or other staff is compromised, you could consider contacting the police.”
As we previously highlighted, New Zealand has imposed one of the most brutal lockdowns in the developed world, in some instances locking down entire areas of the country after just a single COVID case.
Earlier this summer, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern mimicked Australia’s top public health official by telling citizens, “Don’t talk to your neighbors.”
“Stay local and do not congregate, don’t talk to your neighbors, please keep to your bubbles,” said Ardern.
Meanwhile, people in New Zealand who die as a result of being shot to death are being counted as official COVID-19 fatalities.
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November 16th, 2021 by Margaret Kimberley
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Nicaragua has been a target of U.S. aggressions since the 1850s. The Biden administration’s attack on the newly elected government is the latest chapter in a long and sordid history. Eyewitness accounts of the electoral process reveal the manipulations and lies concocted by the U.S. and its corporate media partners in this latest regime change effort.
The United States has continuously carried out acts of aggression against Nicaragua and its people for more than 150 years. Joseph Biden’s effort to undermine that country’s sovereignty is part of a long history of invasions, coups, and support for U.S. puppets.
The Biden administration declared the recent election fraudulent before it had even taken place. The corporate media repeated lies about an “authoritarian dictatorship” that came straight from the State Department’s script. The United States congress voted overwhelmingly to pass the RENACER Act, a regime change plot featuring the imposition of sanctions meant to create misery for Nicaraguans. Sanctions are war by other means, the modern-day version of sending the marines.
The U.S. has done just that, occupying the country from 1912 to 1933. But that was not the first time that U.S. forces were sent to undermine Nicaraguan governments. In 1856 an American named William Walker invaded the country with a mercenary army and declared himself president. Walker was supported by the American slavocracy and sought to create new slave holding nations in the region. During his year long reign, he revoked Nicaragua’s abolition law and he was recognized as president by the Franklin Pierce administration.
The next bout of American aggressions began with an occupation by the U.S. marines in 1912 which lasted until 1933. Augusto Cèsar Sandino fought a guerrilla war against the occupation before being executed under orders of Anastasio Somoza. The Somoza family ruled until 1979 and always with the backing of the United States.
The Sandinista movement (which took its name after Sandino) emerged triumphant in 1980 against Somoza’s regime and quickly came under attack from the Ronald Reagan administration. The opposition groups known as “contras” were given millions of dollars and were assisted in fund raising through the sale of cocaine in the United States. The crack cocaine epidemic began as part of a U.S. imperialist plan. The war waged in Nicaragua was also carried out against communities of color in this country too.
President Daniel Ortega was re-elected on November 7, 2021 and Washington once again declared war on his nation. The RENACER Act passed by a vote of 387 to 35 in the House of Representatives, a huge majority indicative of bipartisan support for war by other means.
The Biden administration acted quickly in denouncing the election before it took place, and repeated their claims of a “pantomime election” on the day that Nicaraguans went to the polls. They followed up by orchestrating an Organization of American States (OAS) rejection of the Nicaraguan people’s electoral decision.
As a member of the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) delegation in Nicaragua, this columnist witnessed the determination of Nicaraguans to choose their own government without interference. More than 200 representatives from 27 nations, were designated as acompañantes, companions, to the electoral process.
The BAP delegation travelled to the Caribbean coast city of Blue Fields where African descended Garifunas and Creoles reside with Mestizos and the Miskito, Rama, and Olwas indigenous communities. Voters from all these groups came out to well managed polling places, where all presidential candidates were listed on the ballot. The process was transparent and orderly, unlike the voting process in the United States, where eligible voters can be stricken from the ballot or be forced to wait for hours to cast their votes.
Despite what the white house and the corporate media claimed, opposition parties were able to campaign freely. Their signage and literature were quite visible, and no one can truthfully say that the public were unaware of the variety of electoral choices.
The Frente Sandinista para Liberacion Nacional (FSLN) emerged triumphant because they endeavor to meet popular needs. The Afro-descended citizens of the Caribbean coast were recognized as a group with distinct needs that were enshrined in the FSLN constitution. That region was excluded and quite literally isolated from the rest of the country without access to transportation and lacking basic infrastructure such as electricity and clean water. BAP delegates heard the consistent message that support for the FSLN is a result of concrete improvements in people’s lives. Despite the determination of the U.S. to undermine them, the FSLN now provide free health care and increased educational opportunities throughout the nation.
The 19th century Monroe Doctrine is alive and well in the 21st century. Whoever is in power in Washington considers other nations in this hemisphere to be its “backyard.” Nicaragua’s population of 6.5 million is smaller than that of New York City. Yet those few people are not allowed to exercise their rights to self-determination without raising Uncle Sam’s ire. Nicaraguans are not the first to feel imperialist vengeance. Tiny Grenada was undermined and invaded when it sought to determine democracy for itself. Venezuela is also under the sanctions hammer and Haiti is allowed to do nothing that Washington doesn’t approve.
The corporate media may be under the dictates of the state, but the people have no reason to follow suit. The presence of companion delegations in Nicaragua was an important step in revealing how the hybrid warfare playbook is put into practice.
Nicaraguans are well aware of their history. The lies are intended for a different audience. The United States seeks to fool its own people and thereby gain support for whatever form of aggression that it may choose. The plan is a consistent one which starts with media amplifying narratives that will gain support for interference. Creating falsehoods of human rights abuses is a reliable ruse to keep Americans complacent about their government’s activities.
The collusion between government and media explains why “trolls” are active on social media, attacking anyone who questions what Washington says. Facebook continued its work on behalf of the state by removing accounts expressing any support for Nicaragua’s sovereignty. The marriage of big tech companies and the Democratic party showed itself once again, proving that claims of freedom and democracy in U.S. politics are indeed an elaborate “pantomime.”
It may seem odd that a small nation can be the focus of so much determination to destroy its independence. But it isn’t hard to understand that Nicaragua threatens the U.S. should it be allowed to determine its own fate. The people who think they live in a democracy do not. They do not have access to free health care and are told they cannot expect to ever have it. Nicaragua is an example of what people in the U.S. could have if they were as free as they like to believe.
The drive to subjugate is as old as the republic, with the United States acting as a hegemon around the world, creating conflict and great suffering. The evil commitment to destroy Nicaraguan democracy is not unexpected but it must be vociferously opposed. Doing so is a litmus test which determines who is really on the left and who is not. There can be no compromise on the anti-imperialist stance. The human rights of people around the world must be respected and any United States government effort to violate them must be met with equivalent resolve.
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Featured image is from BAR
November 16th, 2021 by Justin Catanoso
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***
In the waning hours of this endlessly scrutinized and lambasted United Nations climate summit, with hundreds of members of civil society walking out of the conference in protest to join angry demonstrators in the streets, COP26 President Alok Sharma gathered leaders from every country for a stunning public gripe session/pep rally Friday.
History may record that the cavernous Cairn Gorm plenary hall, packed with international delegates and journalists, as the room where it happened. Or didn’t, depending on the precise wording of whatever draft of these Glasgow accords are finally signed.
“This is our collective moment in history,” Sharma declared as he opened the session. “This is our chance to forge a cleaner, healthier, more equitable world. We must rise to the occasion. Today has now come. And I need your pragmatic and workable solutions so we can all complete our work successfully. We have come a long way over the last two weeks. Now we need that final injection of can-do spirit that is present in this COP so that we get this shared endeavor over the line.”
COP26 President Alok Sharma at the plenary, Friday, Nov. 12. Image by Justin Catanoso for Mongabay.
Sharma recognized one national delegation leader after another, asking not for more platitudes, but rather for specific recommendations that would move negotiations toward a conclusion. He appeared unmoved by outside critics who declared this COP a failure before it started, or in the words of Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, just more “blah, blah, blah.”
Frans Timmermans, the European Union leader at COP26, would later offer technical specifics. But that’s not what he was thinking about as he started to speak. He called up a photo of his grandson, Case, on his phone and shared it with the audience.
“An hour ago, my son Mark sent me a picture of my grandson, who is 1 year old,” Timmermans said. “I was thinking, Case will be 31 when we’re at 2050 [when most nations ideally will achieve their zero emissions goals]. And it’s quite a thought to understand that if we succeed, he will be living in a world that’s livable, and in an economy that is clean, air that is clean, at peace with his environment. If we fail — and I mean fail now — within the coming years, he will be fighting with other human beings for water and food. That’s the stark reality we face.
“So 1.5° [Celsius, the 2015 Paris Agreement target for limiting global temperature rise above pre-industrial times] is about avoiding a future for our children and grandchildren that is unlivable. I won’t reach 2050. But Case will be there, as a young man, and I want him to be able to live a peaceful, prosperous life, like I want it for everyone’s children and grandchildren in this room. This is personal. This isn’t about politics.”
Applause rippled through the plenary as Timmermans continued: “And I don’t live in Barbados or the Marshall Islands. But there it is far more personal because you are standing with your feet in the water. And this is what we need to address today. We need to make sure major emitters reduce their emissions so we can keep to 1.5; that needs to be at the heart of decisions today.”
The E.U.’s Frans Timmermans gazes at an image of his grandson. Photo by Justin Catanoso for Mongabay.
A matter of life or death
Wilbur Ottichilio of Kenya reminded the plenary that “we did not inherit the earth from our forefathers. We have borrowed it until we turn it over to our children. But because of our greed, we have messed it up. We should be ashamed. 1.5° C is not just a statement in Africa. It is a matter of life or death.”
Sharma asked for specifics. Ottichilio offered them:
“Two million Kenyans face starvation as we sit here because of climate-induced drought. We are disappointed that the money promised by the largest nations — the 20 nations who produce 80% of emissions — has not yet been delivered for adaptation, [a Paris Agreement financial mechanism to help countries like Kenya adapt to climate impacts]. Our trust has been shattered by this [failure]. Those who have done the damage must take responsibility.”
Regarding developing world financial adaptation assistance, wealthy nations pledged at COP20 in Lima, Peru in 2014 to raise $100 billion by 2020, with another $100 billion every year after. Now, the fulfillment of that pledge for the first $100 billion, still far short of the goal, has been pushed to 2023.
Canada’s Steven Guilbeault offered a candid assessment about his own country’s checkered history with climate action, and the reality of political will bending when the rules allow for it.
“As many of you would know, my country has not always been exemplary in these halls and negotiations,” he said. “But this has started changing a few years ago. Now in Canada we have one of the most ambitious carbon pricing systems in the world. But it’s not enough. We are investing record amounts of money in electric transportation. But it’s not enough.
“We have put in place new regulations to reduce methane emissions. But it’s not enough. We doubled our climate finance commitment. But it’s not enough. My country is the very incarnation of why we need strong language on all the pillars of the Paris Agreement.”
Guilbeault, too, was met with applause rolling across the plenary hall.
Anxious protestors on the streets of Glasgow. Image by Justin Catanoso for Mongabay.
Demands and warnings from vulnerable nations
To that end, Diann Black-Layne, representing Antigua and Barbuda, spoke directly to the political manipulation, sleight of hand, carbon emission accounting loophole creation, and outright cheating that some nations have been trying to write into the yet unfinished Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, which deals with carbon markets, carbon pricing and carbon offsets.
“I tell you all now, do not carry over junk [carbon] credits; they will not benefit the world,” she warned. That’s a practice Australia has tried to carry out as it has claimed emission-reduction credits that are well over a decade old. “We will not leave Glasgow without our concerns being addressed and met,” said Black-Layne.
Bhutan’s Sonam Wangdi gave voice to the ever-present anger and resentment of being a small country with virtually no carbon footprint that is suffering a water crisis because of massive glacier snowmelt:
“Forty-six most vulnerable nations came here with high hopes. And now we have doubts in these final hours. Our actions are leading us in the wrong direction. If emissions are not drastically reduced this decade, it will be the poorest countries that are punished the most.”
Climate demonstrators parade through Glasgow. Image by Justin Catanoso for Mongabay.
How it could all fall apart
And then there are those countries who, as at every climate summit going back to COP1 and even Kyoto, quietly but persistently turn a deaf ear to human suffering, whether at home or around the world. Leaders from Russia and Saudi Arabia, almost speaking in code, made it clear that they are behind efforts to water down any COP26 language referring specifically to eliminating subsidies for fossil fuels.
Saudi Arabia’s Ayman Shusly, whom news reports identify with fossil fuel interests, obliquely pushed back against any effort to sharpen emission reduction language in the draft text, saying that toughened wording at Glasgow “would rewrite some aspects of the Paris Agreement at the expense of others.”
To show how bizarre and influential the sabotaging language of the so-called Carbon Club of oil producing nations has been in the past: The breakthrough 2015 Paris Agreement — though its primary objective is reducing emissions from burning fossil fuels — actually makes no specific mention of them anywhere in the document.
The first draft of the Glasgow accord, released Wednesday, is different. It “Calls upon parties to accelerate the phasing out of coal* and subsidies for fossil fuels.”
When a new draft was released Friday morning, the text was altered to call for “accelerating the phaseout of unabated coal* power and of inefficient subsidies for fossil fuels.” Both qualifiers remove pressure from fossil fuel-rich countries like Saudi Arabia, Russia, Norway, and the United States, who have also refused to sign onto the ‘Beyond Oil‘ alliance which seeks to halt new oil and gas drilling.
Vulnerable nations could barely contain their disgust at the qualifying language and demanded the unambiguous forceful original.
Tina Stege, a COP26 summit negotiator from the Marshall Islands. Image by Justin Catanoso for Mongabay.
Wearing a wreath of live orchids, Tina Stege of the Marshall Islands, a country being swallowed by sea-level rise, said, “Fossil fuel subsidies are paying for our own destruction. We need clear language to eliminate all fossil fuel subsidies not only inefficient ones, and phase out coal, period.”
John Kerry, U.S. President Joe Biden’s climate envoy, appeared to want to have it both ways, perhaps looking to satisfy coal company baron and Democratic coal-state Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia — the decisive congressional vote on whether Biden’s expanded climate agenda gets funded.
Kerry stressed that the text on mitigation — referring to emission reductions — “cannot get weaker; it must get stronger. The science grows every single year.” But then he added: “The language of phasing out unabated coal and inefficient fossil fuel subsidies must stay. We’re not talking about burning coal as we always have, we’re talking about the capacity for carbon capture if you can do it.” Something science and economics shows the world cannot yet do.
He added that as the world’s largest oil and gas producer, the U.S. still subsidizes the industry with billions every year. He said Biden has called for legislation to end those subsidies, a request that is very likely to be dead on arrival in the U.S. Congress.
John Kerry, representing the U.S., enters the COP26 plenary. Image by Justin Catanoso for Mongabay.
Kerry noted with exasperation that the G-20 nations cannot come up with $100 billion to help countries devastated by climate change, but those countries, along with others, have managed to come up with $2.5 trillion since the Paris Agreement was signed subsidizing oil, gas and coal production.
“That’s a definition for insanity,” he said. But neither he nor President Biden currently have the legislative influence to do much about that inequity.
Thinking perhaps of the voices raised outside on the streets of Glasgow, Kerry, who on balance has returned the U.S. to a leadership role in climate action after a four-year absence under Donald Trump, said:
“We believe that this climate crisis is existential. The impacts are being felt today. We need to live up to the expectations of young people who don’t want this to just be a place of words. It has to be in the next few hours a place of action. We can’t just saywhat it is, we have to behave like it is.”
The clock is ticking and the word wars continue into overtime at COP26.
UPDATE: After many hours of COP26 overtime, summit negotiators pressured by China and India conceded to the two nations’ demands to further weaken the first ever mention of coal in a COP agreement, changing the approved final text from “phasing out” to merely “phasing down” coal. The U.S. regretted the change, but did nothing to stop the watering down of the language in the now completed accord. In a step forward, it was agreed that the world’s nations will be required to revise their national emissions pledges, known as NDCs, annually, rather than every five years as specified by the original Paris Agreement in 2015; it is hoped this will quicken the ratcheting down of national and global carbon emissions.
Various other agreements announced at the two-week Glasgow summit are considered steps forward, including one by the U.S. and China to work together to reduce carbon emissions; another by 100 nations to eliminate or reduce deforestation by 2030; and a third agreement by 105 countries to cut methane emissions 30% by 2030.
Importantly, the national emissions pledges made at COP26 fell well short of what’s needed to limit global temperature increases to 1.5° C (2.7° F), and to prevent climate catastrophe. Pacific island countries, who could see their nations disappear this century, and protestors in the streets outside COP26 were stunned by the last minute maneuvering by China and India to weaken the Glasgow accord, with Greta Thunberg calling COP26 “a failure.”
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Justin Catanoso, a regular contributor, is a professor of journalism at Wake Forest University in the United States. This is his seventh climate summit. Follow him on Twitter @jcatanoso
Featured image: A billboard outside COP26 in Glasgow says it all: The climate future of the world and its children is being determined Now.
November 15th, 2021 by Paul Antonopoulos
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Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko threatened on November 11 to suspend gas shipments to Europe which would have the potential to trigger a new gas war, Polish news portal Defense24 reported. According to the author of the article, Minsk cannot allow such a declaration without the approval of Moscow, the country “responsible” for the current energy crisis in Europe.
This suggests that Russian President Vladimir Putin somehow controls Lukashenko. This is often alluded in the West; however, it is a simplistic allegation that ignores the many times that the two leaders have clashed over many issues. It is recalled that before the 2020 Belarusian presidential election, Lukashenko was even somewhat pivoting towards Brussels at the expense of relations with Moscow.
According to the article, the current gas situation in Europe is in Russia’s hands, especially since the operability of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline was sped up. At the same time, according to the Polish outlet, Moscow convinced EU countries to continue signing long-term gas supply contracts. Meanwhile, in the journalist’s opinion, Minsk’s threat to suspend gas flows could be another argument used by the Kremlin to present evidence of “the unreliability of transit countries” and the necessity of Nord Stream 2.
“Russia has long demonstrated that it knows how to use its energy resources to achieve political goals. The most recent large-scale incident of its kind occurred in 2009. At that time, the Russians reduced gas supplies through Ukraine, forcing the Europeans to use this strategy of storing fuel,” the author emphasized, noting that the current crisis could lead to a repetition of what happened 12 years ago.
What the article ignores though is that Ukraine has proven beyond doubt that it is not a reliable transit country to deliver Russian gas to European markets, hence the urgency and necessity of Nord Stream 2 as an alternative.
The Nord Stream 2 pipeline project is nearing full operational level, hence the diminishing of Ukraine’s status as an important energy transit hub.
Kiev is desperately attempting to stop this reality from being reached as it will miss out on billions of dollars in transit fees that will further push the country into economic calamity. Kiev demonstrated beyond doubt that it is an unreliable partner to deliver Russian gas to European markets, and is now the ultimate loser as the EU is unwilling to offset all of its losses.
Earlier, Lukashenko advised the EU to think about transporting gas and goods through Belarus before imposing sanctions on Minsk. He reiterated that the export gas pipeline Yamal-Europe runs through Belarus and that the amount of gas transported from Russia to the West had increased significantly in recent times. Preliminary data from Gascade showed that Russian gas flows towards Germany via the Yamal-Europe pipeline rose over the weekend, with no signs of it being impacted by the political standoff between Belarus and the EU.
With gas flows increasing, Nord Stream 2 in operation and transit reliance on Ukraine reduced, the last thing Moscow wants is Belarus undermining the current gas situation. Putin made this much clear by saying on Saturday:
“I’ve recently spoken to [Lukashenko] twice and he didn’t mention this to me once, he didn’t even hint [it]. Of course, in theory, Lukashenko as president of a transit country could order our [gas] supplies to Europe to be cut. But this would mean a breach of our gas transit contract and I hope this will not happen.”
Although there is no guarantee that Moscow will be able to deter Minsk from cutting gas supplies to Europe, Putin can certainly coerce Lukashenko to reconsider taking such a drastic action that does not only affect Central and Western Europe, but also Russia. Understanding Lukashenko’s often abrasive rhetoric, Putin said “I will raise this question with him in case this wasn’t something said in the heat of the moment.”
It should not be Putin’s responsibility to tame or confirm Lukashenko’s actions, but the Belarussian leader is under increasing pressure from Brussels for unleashing a migrant crisis on the Polish and Lithuanian borders and could act more brazenly, thus affecting the EU’s and Russia’s energy interests. The EU’s already existing sanctions against Belarus cannot be discounted for Lukashenko’s actions, especially since Colour Revolution-styled efforts against his government often originate from Poland and Lithuania. However, Russia too does not need Belarus undermining Europe’s energy interests, especially when the Nord Stream 2 project is already lambasted and heavily criticized by pro-US factions in the EU. In this way, Moscow will be doing what it can within its power to tame Lukashenko and ensure that energy flows to Europe continues, one way or another.
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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.
Featured image is from commons.wikimedia.org/
November 15th, 2021 by Camilla Barungi
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***
Only three days into the COP26 climate summit, a major deal was already in the bag: over 100 world leaders signed an agreement promising to end deforestation by 2030.
Part of this pledge was a $1.5 billion fund backed by the UK and the European Union to protect the world’s second largest rainforest, the Congo Basin.
After the shock discovery that the Amazon rainforest is emitting more carbon than it absorbs, the Congo rainforest – which captures around 1.2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide annually – has become even more pivotal in the climate fight.
But it’s too soon to celebrate. Last month, a leaked document exposed how the anticipated funding initiative is likely to backfire if necessary steps to protect the forest are not taken. At worst, these funds could end up accelerating the destruction of the Congo Basin.
Around 60 per cent of the Congo rainforest is within the borders of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). In July, the DRC government announced its decision to lift the 20-year-old logging moratorium safeguarding the Congo Basin.
But this did not stand in the way of the COP26 funding pledge, distributed under the Central African Forest Initiative (CAFI).
Campaigners have raised concerns that the funds are not conditional on banning new logging concessions. Moreover, the leaked documents revealed how the Congolese government avoided taking any position on the country’s decision to lift the ban.
Rainforest Foundation UK criticized the move stating that it will trigger a mass sell-off of the Congo Basin, jeopardize local communities and exacerbate the climate crisis. echoed these concerns stating that lifting the moratorium would open up a new lucrative highway for foreign companies to wreck the rainforest.
Between 2012 and 2019, deforestation in the Congo Basin has more than doubled and researchers fear that without urgent action, there won’t be any primary forest left .
Considering the Congo rainforest is the world’s largest forest carbon sink, mitigating the impacts of climate change, this is rather concerning.
While the moratorium’s success in tackling the corruption in the logging industry has previously come under fire, lifting it could open up over half of the primary forest to logging, allowing the DRC government to grant new contracts to industrial companies.
In light of all this, one could be forgiven for assuming world leaders are more concerned about making a showy announcement during COP26 than possibly rushing through a half-done agreement.
Furthermore, many European companies are amongst the ones exploiting the Congo Basin. Illegal timber from the Congo rainforest is being transported to EU member states, the US and China, with foreign investors benefiting from Central Africa’s threatened rainforest.
Although the EU has imposed a ban on illegal timber imports, European countries have issued minimal sanctions for violations. As long as illegal timber can flow into China, there it will be turned into finished consumer goods, ready to re-enter the global market.
Central African governments have granted around one quarter of the Congo Basin to largely European and Chinese companies. Out of these 50 million hectares, just over 10 per cent is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). Short-sighted attempts to pour money into the world’s rainforests will fail without local governments’ willingness to establish a legal framework to prevent illegal logging.
In practice, Western countries are doing their dirty laundry in Africa through their business interests. They are transferring their carbon footprint onto African nations while acting as ‘white saviours’ with their lavish funds, making Africa the biggest victim of the double standards of COP26.
Africa does need these funds. Yet, finance like the COP26 deforestation pledge should not be diverting attention away from Western complicity in forest loss in Africa.
Instead, they should help Africans to avoid the worst impacts of climate change – largely created by others. OXFAM has revealed how the richest one per cent of people in the world are responsible for more than twice as much carbon pollution as the poorest half of humanity.
While there are no shortcuts to tackle deforestation, certain models have proven more successful than others. National certifications for forest risk commodities – if effectively enforced – could be a part of the solution.
In Malaysia, the government has set up a legally-binding certification scheme called Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil (MSPO), which has resulted in reduced deforestation levels for four years in a row. Notably, the Malaysian government issues sanctions for non-compliant producers.
Growing Western consumer demand should not result in displaced deforestation when it comes to forest risk commodities like timber or palm oil and supporting local certifications could facilitate this process.
In the past, only 11.5 per cent of international funds for nature protection and sustainable forest management in tropics have been allocated for the Congo rainforest.
‘The lungs of Africa’ are dying. Short-sighted attempts to pour money into the world’s rainforests will fail without local governments’ willingness to establish a legal framework to prevent illegal logging. Initiatives to protect the Congo rainforest are crucial – yet without genuine dialogue and evaluation of plausible side effects, they only serve the purpose of political point-scoring.
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Camilla Barungi is the Managing Director of Tooro Omutoma Project; Tooro Kingdom’s cultural industrial accelerator around the Barkcloth (Ficus natalensis) tree. She is a regular speaker at UN summits and the Editor-in-Chief of Jaro4ME.
Featured image: Credit: Pascal Maitre/Panos/ Between Lokutu & Lukumete, rainforest grows beside the River Congo, dwarving a pirogue sailing near the bank.
November 15th, 2021 by Dr. João Camargo
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COP is an organization of global capitalist plans for the intensification of exploitation. It needs to be dead to us, as our presence there legitimizes a process that is simultaneously against us and against the planet.
This COP was as disappointing as any of the previous one. The inclusion of the words “fossil fuels” into the final declaration seems to be the only “advancement” it represents compared to the past. It is meaningless. What is overwhelmingly meaningful is the announcement that the two next COPs will be in Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. This means only one thing for the climate justice movement: there is no possible fiction in which any of us can actually entertain the idea that the COP is a process in any way different from the World Trade Organisation and the G20. The COP is an organisation of global capitalist plans for the intensification of exploitation. It needs to be dead to us, as our presence there legitimises a process that is simultaneously against us and against the planet—that is why the Glasgow Agreement was created in 2020.
There are small notes of cruelty. The choice of Sharm-el-Sheik, a secluded tourist destination in Egypt, for COP-27, is the decisive spit in the grave of the revolutionaries that in 2011 took Tahrir Square, overthrew Hosni Mubarak and later were drowned in their own blood by the military dictatorship of General Sisi. The burial site of the Arab Spring, a revolutionary wave fuelled by climate change, by drought, crop failures, by increase in food prices brought on by scarcity and competition for biofuels, was thought of, proposed and then accepted as the venue for COP27. Almost all of us are ruled by reactionary governments that look at climate change in one of two prisms: how can I help private companies make money out of this and/or how can I make it so this isn’t a nuisance to private companies. There are governments not in these situations, but their power inside the halls is almost as little as that of activists and NGOs.
The announcement of the United Arab Emirates, a petro-state run by a cleptocratic royal family, as the next venue, is the final notification the climate justice movement received: there will be no more pretense of negotiation, influence or accountability. Even the symbolic protests raised inside the COPs and in the counter-summits are dispensable. The movement doesn’t need to be convinced that the tactics of influencing decision-makers and making strong institutional pushes is the way forward—if historical experience had not been enough, we have now been informed. Glasgow was the last COP.
Although the climate justice moment has the historical memory of COP as a gathering moment, that is over. There will be no gathering point in Sharm-el-Sheik, no protests, no civil society, except the likely stooges that the military might set up to compose the stage. In the UAE women will need to bow their heads before a socially medieval state built upon the very stuff that has created climate change, a state which intends on expanding fossil production. The social part of the COP is over. And that is a relief. The climate justice movement needs to stop talking about the capitalist agenda for climate change, to stop talking about the false solutions of all the COPs, all the way back to 1992. We don’t have time to keep on building opposing narratives to carbon markets, to carbon taxes, to net zero, to offsets—couldn’t we see for so long that these merely meant opening new frontiers of exploitation, new rounds of commodification and colonialism? All this has been happening at the very moment when the climate is collapsing and the only thing that works is the only thing they always refused: stopping all fossil fuels. Now, they have made that decision for us. The COP procedures were a black hole for the movement and it has been closed to us.
We should have learned this in Copenhagen, when someone fiddled that the movement was dead and we danced to their tune. We should definitely have learned it when last year the COP was postponed. We should have learned it this year, with the further practical delay, which is all the COP will ever deliver: delay, delay, delay and in the near future, regret. The process of delay was meant to and did create conformity. That is now all behind us. Their agenda and calendar can not and will not be ours anymore. We, the climate justice movement, need to create our own agenda and our own plans. We, as a movement, need to be discussing our power and our own program without fear, instead of discussing the official COP and governmental plans. We are now rid of the heavy anchor that prevented us from being the movement that will, in fact, uproot the capitalist system.
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João Camargo is a climate activist in grassroots movement Climáximo in Portugal and in the Climate Jobs campaign. He’s an environmental engineer and climate change researcher at the University of Lisbon, where he just finished his PhD about Climate Change as a new metanarrative for humanity. He authored two books in 2018: Climate Change Combat Manual (in Portugal and Spain) and Portugal in Flames – How to rescue the forests.
Featured image: Greta Thunberg leads protests in Italy ahead of COP26. Credit: Radio Habana Cuba
November 15th, 2021 by S. M. Smyth
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***
“It does not take an agronomist, far less a rocket scientist, to realize that carbon dioxide is necessary for plants to grow. For plants it is the breath of life; they breathe carbon dioxide as we breathe oxygen. We exhale the carbon dioxide they need, while they exhale the oxygen we need.” S. M. Smyth
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Remember, too, that at a time when people are very concerned with their health and its relationship to what they eat, we have handed over the responsibility for our nourishment to faceless corporations. ― Lynne Rossetto Kasper
GM has never been about feeding the world or tackling environmental problems. It is and has always been about control of the global food economy by a tiny handful of giant corporations. It’s not wicked to question that process. It is wicked not to. — Zac Goldsmith
To preserve the human race, it is now necessary to reorganize society. To this end, an Authority must be created with the power to control human population, to redistribute food, to purify air, water, soil, to re-pattern the cities. — Gore Vidal
Would food be considered an instrument of national power? . . . Is the U.S. prepared to accept food rationing to help people who can’t/won’t control their population growth? — Henry A. Kissinger
Along with control of our movements, associations and speech, we are now facing control of our food supply.
In the long history of the annals of war, unsurprisingly, conquerors discovered the use of food as a weapon with which to subdue a captured population. [1][2]
Made weak from the lack of adequate nourishment, or outright starving, a people can easily be managed; desperation will bring them to heel, famine will seal their fate.
Lenore Newman, author of Speaking in Cod Tongues: A Canadian Culinary Journey:
‘If we look at the history of colonization, the first settlers really relied on Indigenous foods, and collaborating with Indigenous people to stay fed . . . But when we get into the country-building period, we see food being used as a weapon.’
Newman cited examples of settlers taking control of salmon distribution on the West Coast, or the Canadian government’s move to wipe out the buffalo in hopes of starving First Nations across the prairies.
She also mentioned how Canada’s first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald infamously ‘bragged’ about using food as a weapon against Indigenous peoples. [3]
Ironically, perhaps, and certainly interestingly, Ms. Newman is a member of the B.C. Food Security Task Force, which in 2019 produced a report entitled The Future of B.C.’s Food System. [4 ]
A sample quote: ‘An agritech incubator-accelerator can play a pivotal role in fostering a culture of innovation in B.C. and building a supportive and collaborative ecosystem for the burgeoning agritech industry.’
See also Brian Bethune’s review of historian Lizzie Collingham’s book The Taste of War: World War Two and the Battle for Food. [ 5]
It does not take an agronomist, far less a rocket scientist, to realize that carbon dioxide is necessary for plants to grow. For plants it is the breath of life; they breathe carbon dioxide as we breathe oxygen. We exhale the carbon dioxide they need, while they exhale the oxygen we need.
Greenhouses, at considerable expense, have carbon dioxide dispensers, which fill the air with many times the normal level to achieve enhanced growth. The plants flourish under these conditions, more than justifying the initial financial outlay. [ 6]
Now ‘climate change’ has evolved into a plan for ‘zero carbon,’ which logically would result in zero plants and zero people, and your ‘carbon footprint’ has evolved into your ‘carbon foodprint.’ [ 7]
At the current COP 26 confab in Glasgow, the organizers have helpfully labelled food items in the cafeteria accordingly. Though I doubt that many at the top of the heap—who undoubtedly arrived in their private Lear jets which must spew nothing but water vapour—will have any such accounting thrust before them as they tuck into their venison, salmon or lobster swimming in butter. And, since they are in Scotland, let us not forget the haggis, prominently featured as a high carbon item in ’The Scottish Larder.’
Presumably operating under the influence of the saying that ‘the best way to rob a bank is to own one,’ the Codex Alimentarius was set up preemptively to regulate the worldwide production of food and food supplements by The World Heath Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in 1963. [8]
According to Wikipedia: [9 ]
The 2003 International Commission of the Future of Food and Agriculture. . . chaired by anti-globalization activist Vandana Shiva, issued several manifestos . . . [they] contended that “bureaucracies like the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Codex Alimentarius have codified policies designed to serve the interests of global agribusiness . . . while actively undermining the rights of farmers and consumers”. . . The Codex Alimentarius has been the subject of various unfounded conspiracy theories . . . [that] it is an agenda for population control, an anti-supplement Big Brother initiative, actually establishes eugenics, or a process for World Government establishment.
Dr. Rima Libow has written extensively on the Codex, which she summarizes in 7 points. [10]
In an open letter she states: ‘I am not an alarmist, nor do I wish to be the bearer of bad news, but I can do no less than give you my fair and frank diagnosis: this silent, but deadly monster is about to render your healthcare freedom extinct.’ [11]
David Klein, writing for Living Nutrition Magazine vol. 20, September, 2007, calls it a ‘Mononstrously Toxic Power Play for Control of the Global Food Supply & Natural Health Industry.’ [12 ]
Julian Rose, explains:
Using Codex Alimentarius clauses of the World Trade Organisation governments have already been influenced to pass laws severely restricting the use of native seeds and a wide variety of fruit and vegetables once on sale in traditional grocery stores.
The population as a whole is now confronted by the despotic Green New Deal programme forcing its fake ‘zero carbon’ policy on humanity and weaponising it to be the vector for the digitalisation and re-engineering of the food chain, as described earlier.
The largely synthetic diet that emerges out of this sterilisation programme will free-up the land for what is termed ‘re-wilding’, the leisure pursuits of the wealthy and large scale US style robotic factory farming units. [13]
It would seem that the masters of manipulation, at this stage of their bold experiment, not satisfied with poisoning us with toxins in the air, water and food—to say nothing of pills and injections—now want to choke off our rations.
Christian Westbrook, in his excellent video series, [14][15 ][16] has documented the unfolding of an agenda, already baked into the cake we will not be eating, to shut down the various elements of the food supply chain we have taken for granted all the days of our lives. At least for most of the, so far, lucky inhabitants of the so-called ‘First World.’
Researcher James Corbett has also extensively documented the subject. [17]
Europeans and North Americans have enjoyed the luxury of abundant food flown from the farthest reaches of the globe. It is hard for the average denizen of our great cities and comfortable suburbs to imagine, in spite of now visible shortages, that the day may come when the groaning supermarket shelves are well nigh empty, save for state-approved lab-grown delicacies. And perhaps not much, if any, of that unless purchased with an official ID—which has documented all vaccination, purchasing, and social media records.
So will the cupboard be bare for those who have been naughty and not nicely trotted along to the tune the mighty media plays by day and by night? The announcers, like latter-day Pied Pipers, sing their siren song, luring many to their doom with empty promises of a brighter future. The wiser rats, having fled the sinking narrative, swimming to a safer shore, are left to their own devices.
One wonders how the average urbanite will fare, when faced with the prospect of dwindling supplies of food, and perhaps even water, fuel and power. Do our devices include ways and means to cope with a reasonable facsimile of a failed state, similar in many ways to countries recently ‘bombed into the Stone Age’ as some have gleefully chanted?
Who would have thought that the director of the World Economic Forum, Herr Klaus Schwab, would brave the fierce competiton among a plethora of pundits in promoting the latest version of the diet to end all diets?
And yet here we are, shepherded willy nilly into not only experimental inoculations but hitherto unforeseen experiments in culinary adventure.
Not of course that this august personage will be trying out the schema outlined by the Rockefeller Foundation in the now infamous ‘Reset the Table: Transforming the U.S. Food System.’ [18] Oh no, the dainties dancing on the head of his sugar plums, a veritable smorgasbord of all his brave new world has to offer, will be nothing like the austere and sometimes downright disgusting fare offered to the vermin crawling hopefully over the crumbs from his high table.
No cricket croissants for Herr Swab, Bill Gates, Henry Kissinger, George Soros, and the rest of the merry band of brothers—and a few notable sisters—at the latest Davos do, as those permitted still to fly in the face of Greta’s groupies ‘dwindle down to a precious few.’
One can only guess at the kind of table set before such luminaries, and perhaps just as well, as it would not do for the underlings to envy their overlords too much, lest the restless natives think the unthinkable and rouse to attack the unspeakable.
One can only hope that, along with a few bears not yet ready for hibernation, the current popularity of picnicking along the streets, avenues and boulevards of our large cities and small hamlets will grow, and echoes resound to that great call to arms:‘Picnic on!’
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S.M. Smyth was a founding member of the 2006 World Peace Forum in Vancouver, and organized a debate about TILMA at the Maple Ridge City Council chambers between Ellen Gould and a representative of the Fraser Institute.
Notes
[1] Joseph Brewda, Kissinger’s 1974 Plan for Food Control Genocide, Executive Intelligence Review, December 8, 1995
[2] Food As A Weapon Of War, Encyclopedia.com
[3] CBC Radio · Posted: Oct 06, 2017
[4] https://engage.gov.bc.ca/app/uploads/sites/121/2020/01/FSTF-Report-2020-The-Future-of-Food.pdf
[5] Brian Bethune, A new book makes clear that food was central to the Second World War, Macleans, March 30, 2011
[6] Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs,Carbon Dioxide In Greenhouses
[7] Luke Mintz, Green cuisine: why it’s time you watched your ‘foodprint’, The Telegraph, 4 November 202
[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Alimentarius
[10] http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/aboutcodex/summary.shtml
[11] https://www.healthfreedomusa.org/resources/marketingmaterial/open-letter-on-codex-alimentarius.pdf
[12] https://newresearchfindingstwo.blogspot.com/2010/09/codex-alimentarius-monstrously-toxic.html
[13] Julian Rose, The “Great Reset”: Will There be Food on the Table?“Who Controls the Food Supply Controls the People”, Global Research, March 22, 2021
[14] https://www.iceagefarmer.com/2021/11/02/farmers-panic-cant-get-supplies-to-grow-food/
[16] https://www.bitchute.com/video/7uO5jg4J6XzH/
[17] https://www.minds.com/CorbettReport/blog/another-globalist-simulation-comes-true-1304283142890197012
Featured image is from New Eastern Outlook
November 15th, 2021 by Susan D’Agostino
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Scotland’s only working nuclear power plant at Torness shut down in an emergency procedure when jellyfish clogged the sea water-cooling intake pipes at the plant, according to the Scotland Herald this week. Without access to cool water, a nuclear power plant risks overheating. The intake pipes can also be damaged, which disrupts power generation. And ocean life that gets sucked into a power plant’s intake pipes risks death.
The threat these gelatinous, pulsating, umbrella-shaped marine animals pose to nuclear power plants is neither new nor unknown. (Indeed, the Bulletin reported on this threat in 2015.) Nuclear power plant closures—even temporary ones—are expensive. To protect marine life and avert power plant closures, scientists are exploring early warning system options. For example, researchers at Cranfield University in the United Kingdom launched a project earlier this year to determine whether drones may be used to provide estimates of jellyfish locations, amounts, and density.
“The successful operation of [beyond visual line of sight drones] will enable us to detect threats from marine ingress at an earlier state and prevent disruption to the power plant,” Monica Rivas Casado, a senior lecturer in environmental monitoring at Cranfield, said. In the United Kingdom, 20 percent of electricity is nuclear, a percentage roughly equaled in the United States, compared with approximately 10 percent globally.
Blooms of translucent jellyfish with their trailing, stinging tentacles are sometimes described as “invasions” because they often emerge en masse in way that appears sudden. Still, determined observers may find early clues of a jellyfish bloom. Spotting jellyfish swarms by way of drones requires balancing recognition accuracy with recognition speed—at least if the goal is to take preventative action to avoid nuclear power plant disruption. Scientists have been at work developing algorithms that foster this balance, including one study that delivered results within a desirable timeframe and over 90 percent accuracy.
In another early-detection effort, scientists have investigated the potential for acoustic characteristics of these sea creatures to detect their numbers, density, and threat level. The creatures’ underwater undulations create sounds—known as “echo energy” or “acoustic scatterings”—that give them away, as long as humans are willing to listen.
The clash between gelatinous jellyfish and hulking nuclear power plants has a long history. These spineless, brainless, bloodless creatures shut down the Torness nuclear power plant in 2011 at a cost of approximately $1.5 million per day, according to one estimate. Swarms of these invertebrates have also been responsible for nuclear power plant shutdowns in Israel, Japan, the United States, the Philippines, South Korea, and Sweden.
Humans have unwittingly nurtured the adversarial relationship between jellyfish and nuclear power plants. That is, human-induced climate change has raised ocean water temperatures, setting conditions for larger-than-usual jellyfish populations. Further, the relatively warm water near nuclear power plant discharge outlets may attract jellyfish swarms, according to one study. Also, pollution has lowered oxygen levels in sea water, which jellyfish tolerate more than other marine animals, leading to their proliferation.
Some look at jellyfish and see elegant ballerinas of the sea, while others view them as pests. Either way, they are nothing if not resilient. Jellyfish are 95 percent water, drift in topical waters and the Arctic Ocean, and thrive in the ocean’s bottom as well as on its surface. Nuclear power plant operators might take note: Older-than-dinosaur jellyfish are likely here to stay.
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Susan D’Agostino is an associate editor at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
November 15th, 2021 by David Skripac
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How many innocent people must be marred, maimed, and mortally wounded by these injections before the truth of the toxic effects of creating unnatural spike proteins in our bodies is finally acknowledged?
How many adults’ and children’s lives will be destroyed—physically, emotionally, economically—before it becomes obvious to the entire world that the COVID vaccination program is the most cruel, calculated scientific fraud and psychological operation in history?
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Around the world, governments, schools, and corporations are instituting mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policies for their employees, all in the name of “safety in the workplace.”
Countries are ramping up the pressure and taking ever-more-extreme measures to ensure compliance. In Canada, for instance, the government is mandating not only all federal employees but also all Canadian citizens be “fully vaccinated” in order to travel on a Canadian registered train, ship, or aircraft—a directive that violates sections 6 and 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
In a growing number of European nations, the crackdown is just as severe.
In September 2021, Italy became the first European country to announce the implementation of the mandatory COVID-19 “health pass,” dubbed the “Green Pass,” for all workers, both public and private.
Meanwhile, the French government, employing the fictitious pretext of a “fifth wave,” has rolled out the latest round of strict vaccine mandates by tying its existing vaccine passport to COVID booster shots for people aged 65 and older. If any person in this age group does not receive the booster shot by December 15, he will no longer be permitted to enter public spaces such as theaters, restaurants, gyms, and concert halls.
Even more extreme, the German state of Hesse allows businesses to deny customers who opt out of vaccination access to basic necessities—including food and other essentials for living.
Lithuania is perhaps one of the worst-case scenarios in Europe. Though you might think it was done with tyranny after breaking away from the Soviet Union and restoring its pre-WWII independence in 1990, that assumption would be wrong. For, even though the tiny country experienced no “pandemic” of any note in 2020 and its government initially went easy on the populace, Lithuania abruptly abandoned that approach after globalists manufactured a regime change this fall. You can track the rapid disappearance of freedom in that society by reading the posts written here and here.
The trillion-dollar question is: Are these vaccine mandates and passports really about public safety—or do they have an underlying agenda entirely unrelated to health?
Pretending to be concerned about preventing the spread of a supposedly contagious disease, vaccine manufacturers have been telling us for months that the gene-editing injections are safe and effective at reducing both the transmission of COVID-19 and the severity of its symptoms.
The data coming out of highly vaccinated countries, though, tells a far different story. Results in Israel, Gibraltar, Malta, Singapore, and Iceland suggest that the vaccinated are not immune to either contracting or transmitting COVID-19, nor are they being saved from hospitalization or from death caused by this disease. Study upon study bears out this finding.
Dr. Gérard Delépine, a French oncologist, orthopedic surgeon, and statistician, has presented overwhelming evidence suggesting that the vaccinated are exposed to a vastly increased risk of dying compared to the unvaccinated.
Another report citing concerns for the “vaccinated” is based on a recent study of “COVID-19 breakthrough cases” in California’s San Francisco Bay Area. It drew the following conclusion:
“. . . Fully vaccinated were more likely than unvaccinated persons to be infected by variants carrying mutations associated with decreased antibody neutralization (L452R, L452Q, E484K, and/or F490S) (78% versus 48%, p = 1.96e-08), but not by those associated with increased infectivity (L452R and/or N501Y) (85% versus 77%, p = 0.092). . . . These findings suggest that vaccine breakthrough cases are preferentially caused by circulating antibody-resistant SARS-CoV-2 variants, and that symptomatic breakthrough infections may potentially transmit COVID-19 as efficiently as unvaccinated infections, regardless of the infecting lineage.”
A third study of the vaccinated, done by researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, pinpointed people in the US who received the one-dose Johnson & Johnson (J&J) vaccine. It compared pre-“pandemic” data gathered from the general US population to data generated from VAERS reports of Americans who have experienced COVID vaccine side effects. The researchers found that someone who receives the J&J jab is 3.5 times more likely to develop rare blood clots in the brain—called Cerebral Venous Thrombosis (CVT)—than was the average American before the so-called pandemic.
In the UK, the vaccinated face equally dire consequences. A report published by TheExpose.UK in November 2021 shows that 85 percent of COVID-19 deaths are among the vaccinated and that child deaths have risen by 83 percent ever since the age group was offered the shot. The latest data from the UK Public Health Protection Agency—which now goes by the more menacing name of UK Health Security Agency—shows the “vaccines” have a negative effectiveness that in some cases is as low as minus 132 percent. In a probingreport published by Global Research, COVID-19 “truth” blogger John Goss shows that, between the January 2021 inception of the experimental COVID-19 injection rollout in the UK and October 20, 2021, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) registered 1,738 deaths and 1.2 million injuries endured by more than 378,000 people—an average of 3.3 injuries per person.
Worse, some two weeks later the MHRA confirmed, in response to a Freedom of Information request, that in those ten months the number of deaths due to COVID-19 vaccines was 330 percent higher than the number of deaths over the last 20 years caused by all other vaccines combined. Pause to absorb those numbers: In just ten months, a single substance has killed three-and-a-third times more people than all other similar substances killed in 20 years!
Meanwhile, in the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) disclosed that, through November 5, 2021, there had been 91,982 total hospitalizations and 18,461 reported deaths from the COVID vaccines since the nationwide vaccine rollout commenced on December 14, 2020.
Is the VAERS data accurate? Absolutely not. Its numbers grossly understate actual adverse events. Indeed, VAERS authorities admit that their statistics represent anywhere from 1 percent to 10 percent of substantiated-but-unreported adverse events, according to a well-known study done by Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Inc.
We can only assume the same degree of underreporting goes on at the MHRA and all other public health regulatory agencies around the globe. For example, though EudraVigilance has reported in excess of 24,000 deaths and 2.3 million injuries to citizens in the European Union as of mid-September 2021, it is safe to conclude that the actual total of fatalities and impairments is exponentially higher.
Officials in every governmental jurisdiction in the world have had easy access to the aforementioned inconvenient information. Yet most of them have buried their heads and proceeded to press on with their vaccination schedules, no matter how hideous the human cost. Indeed, they appear to have made it their mission to coerce as many innocent people as possible—including the parents of young children and, even more monstrously, the children themselves—into taking this experimental gene therapy. All the while, politicians and public health officials alike accept zero liability for any and all harm done in the euphemistic name of “protection.”
In succession and in perfect synchronicity, academic institutions and businesses (many of which have been financially decimated by the illogical, unnecessary shutdown of the global economy in 2020) in numerous nations have followed suit. Why the collegiate and corporate kowtowing to such oppressive, unconstitutional government mandates? The answer is simple: These compromised entities know full well that if they do not comply, future funds from their respective government legislatures and agencies may not be forthcoming. In other words, they dare not bite the hand that feeds them.
College and university students who decline to be subjected to this immoral, inhumane experimentation on their bodies are not permitted to come on campuses—or even attend online courses. Not only are they deprived of undergraduate and graduate degrees, but in some cases they are being threatened with a no-refund policy on their tuition.
Meanwhile, employees who are refusing to accept vaccination mandates are being terminated or suspended without pay from their jobs by the thousands.
Take airline industry employees, for example. On November 1, 2021, Air Canada suspended, without pay, more than 800 unvaccinated workers under its country’s new federal mandate. Other major North American carriers—United Airlines, American Airlines, Alaska Airlines, Southwest Airlines, and JetBlue—are also trying to place unvaccinated workers on unpaid leave.
Tens of thousands of healthcare workers, firefighters, police forces, and school teachers in many nations are facing the same grievous attack on their livelihoods because they will not submit to the COVID-19 injections. Those employees who are bravely pushing back against the illegal vaccination mandates and vaxxports are exercising their human rights, including their right to bodily autonomy; their right to travel freely; their right to an education; their right to attend social and sports events; their right to enter their place of employment; even their right to simply shop for food for their families. They recognize these dictates amount to nothing more than an unethical tactic designed to coerce them into an unwarranted medical treatment as a condition of employment—an outrageous and unprecedented form of control and enslavement.
One group I’m familiar with that is gaining momentum in their fight against medical tyranny is the airline employees. Specifically, I am acquainted with members of their Canada contingent. In April 2021, four Canadian pilots founded Free to Fly. F2F is dedicated to “unequivocally support[ing] our passengers’ and colleagues’ rights and freedoms, including their freedom to fly, without the need to disclose private personal medical information.” To date, F2F has enrolled 2,840 Canadian aviation professionals who are “on a mission to make their voices heard in every legislature, court, and board room across Canada.” Importantly, over 34,000 (and counting) passengers have joined F2F’s fight for freedom.
Asked what motivated him and his fellow pilots to form F2F, Captain Greg Hill explained their rationale in an email:
“We’ve lived with peace and security, really, since the end of WW2, and even then, losses of freedom were on distant shores. Perhaps this made us complacent. There seems to be a tendency to wait until things get worse, rooted in disbelief at where we’re at. But the time to have the fight is now. While we’re greatly troubled by the overt coercion surrounding the injections, we’re far more concerned about the broad attack on so many of our freedoms. Our stand and our message is for every Canadian, coast to coast. We don’t want our children to hear about freedoms they can only dream of, so we better all get vocal and get active.”
F2F has since partnered with other organizations—Liberty Coalition Canada, Canadian Frontline Nurses, Canadian Covid Care Alliance, Police on Guard, Freedom in Action, Freedom Travel Alliance, and US Freedom Flyers—all equally committed to the preservation of liberty, human rights, and medical freedom.
Like F2F, US Freedom Flyers is composed of airline employees who have come together “to fight US federal and state mandates which aim to strip citizens of their right to medical freedom.” Though there is no proof of a planned strike (which is illegal), at the very time airline staff across the US banded together to halt the tyranny from on high, thousands of flights had to be cancelled. From October 29 to October 31, 2021, for example, American Airlines cancelled more than 1,500 flights. In the same month, Southwest Airlines cancelled more than 1,800 flights—more than 27 percent of its scheduled departures.
Not surprisingly, mainstream media (MSM) companies, whose stocks are owned and controlled by the four biggest institutional investment firms in the world (Vanguard, BlackRock, State Street, Berkshire Hathaway, which also own large stakes in every major social media platform as well as in pharmaceutical giants Pfizer, Merck, GSK, Moderna, AstraZeneca, J&J, and BioNTech), have been blaming the flight cancellations on air traffic control issues, undefined “network issues,” and “weather problems.” Those excuses coming from the MSM are decoys designed to mislead the public, so it won’t catch on to the fact that so many employees in this trusted industry are rising up in rebellion. Attempting to expose those lies, Freedom Headlines pointed out:
“[T]he truth of the matter is that the [airlines] are losing people because of their enforcement of the mandates[,] and people are quitting, protesting, or being terminated. Because of all of this, they don’t have the staff to conduct many of these flights.”
Is this not the height of irony? On the one hand, the pro-COVID-vaccine crowd contends that the health of all citizens on the planet is paramount—and thus that the safety of the injections is a certainty. On the other hand, here we have pilots who, of all professionals on the planet, are acutely aware of, incredibly concerned about, and necessarily committed to being in perfect health in order to preserve the safety of their crew and passengers. Any incident that jeopardizes pilots’ mental acuity and physical ability to fly risks the lives of every passenger and crew member aboard their planes. Keep in mind that pilots work in an exceptionally dynamic setting that requires them to constantly gather information from multiple sources, weigh all of the options to determine the safest possible course of action, and then make split-second decisions.
It is natural, then, that the savviest pilots have examined, sifted through, and deliberated over all the information on the disease called COVID-19 and on the vaccines purportedly designed to minimize the effects of that disease. It is also natural that, based on the unbiased—though heavily censored—reports they have read, these savvy flyers have determined there is reason to be troubled by and suspicious of the singular lack of safety of these injections.
Some medical professionals involved in aviation—both in industry and in the military—have done their due diligence on the COVID vaccines. Like the aforementioned smart pilots whose health they monitor, these smart physicians have been keeping close tabs on the dangerous, even deadly, symptoms arising from the injections.
One doctor-to-the-pilots in particular stands out. I’m referring to a US Army Brigade Surgeon by the name of Lieutenant Colonel Theresa Long, who on November 2 testified before a US Senate panel hosted by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI). With pluck and honesty, Lt. Col. Long described how she had to ground three pilots for COVID-19 vaccine-related injuries:
“I saw five patients in clinic, two of which presented with chest pain days to weeks after vaccination and were subsequently diagnosed with pericarditis and worked up to rule out myocarditis.”
“The third pilot had been vaccinated and felt like he was drunk, chronically fatigued within 24 hours after vaccination.”
“After I reported to my command my concerns that in one morning I had to ground three out of three pilots due to vaccine injuries, the next day my patients were cancelled, my charts were pulled from review, and I was told I would not be seeing acute patients anymore, just healthy pilots there for their flight physical,” Long chronicled.
I admire Lt. Col. Long for daring to speak truth to power—sad as it is to admit that it’s come to that. If government agencies like the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Transport Canada (TC) were truly concerned about the safety of their colleagues, as this military doctor obviously is, they would immediately demand a ceasefire—and I use that term advisedly—from all further vaccinations of aviation employees until a proper scientific/medical assessment of the safety of these injections is made. That is, they would already be making this demand if the government-issued-and-enforced measures and mandates had ever been about “public health” and individual wellbeing.
This returns us to my opening question: Are these vaccine mandates and passports really about public safety—or do they have an underlying agenda entirely unrelated to health? Based on everything I mentioned above—and that’s just for starters—the only reasonable conclusion I can reach is: There’s a sinister underlying agenda afoot.
That agenda has all the makings of a world war. Truly, we are watching psychological warfare in full bloom. In this “head game,” the state employs all manner of sophisticated terror tactics. The state dictates what we are allowed to think and what we are allowed to say in public and in private. The state decides what medical procedures we must undergo in order to participate in civil society. The state replaces free and informed choice with extortion and intimidation, wherein layers of lies and deception—pure propaganda—are so insidious that the average Jane and Joe genuinely believe they are doing the “right thing” by surrendering their inalienable and inherent rights at the point of a needle. In this state plot, “vaccination” is the conditional pass that permits us to participate in all aspects of society and gives us the cachet of acceptance among our peers and even, pathetic as it sounds, in our families.
This war of wits and will is not confined to being for or against the “COVID-19 vaccine.” It is beyond medical mandates. At its core, the battle is about overcoming the greatest existential threat—and biggest band of criminals—humanity has ever faced.
Consider:
How many innocent people must be marred, maimed, and mortally wounded by these injections before the truth of the toxic effects of creating unnatural spike proteins in our bodies is finally acknowledged?
How many adults’ and children’s lives will be destroyed—physically, emotionally, economically—before it becomes obvious to the entire world that the COVID vaccination program is the most cruel, calculated scientific fraud and psychological operation in history?
How many doctors and nurses and scientists who have revealed the perilous nature and visible effects of these injected substances will be censored into silence and will lose their licenses and their livelihoods?
How many citizens who speak out against the all-seeing eye of the vaxxports and who defy the all-controlling thumb of the authoritarian technocrats will be locked out of their jobs, locked down in their homes, and one day literally locked—imprisoned behind bars—in COVID quarantine camps?
How many more unvaccinated family members will be prevented from ever visiting—and hugging and saying goodbye to—their loved ones in hospitals and hospices and nursing homes?
How much longer are we going to tolerate the false pretext of the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) policy, when we know full well that numerous alternative treatments exist and have readily cured the syndrome called COVID-19?
How much longer will we allow vaccine manufacturers to hide behind a shield of immunity from prosecution while raking in immense profits from what amounts to the planned murder of millions of human beings?
The time to act boldly is now. The time for peaceful noncompliance is now.
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David Skripac has a Bachelor of Technology degree in Aerospace Engineering. He served as a Captain in the Canadian Forces for nine years. During his two tours of duty in the Air Force he flew extensively in the former Yugoslavia as well as in Somalia, Rwanda, Ethiopia, and Djibouti.
Featured image is from Free West Media
November 15th, 2021 by Elizabeth Gribkoff
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With dozens of new plastics manufacturing and recycling facilities in the works, the U.S. plastics industry will release more greenhouse gas emissions than coal-fired power plants by 2030, say the authors of a new report.
Emissions from the plastics sector equaled that of 116 coal-fired power plants last year, according to the report out Thursday from Bennington College’s Beyond Plastics project. Meanwhile, 42 plastics manufacturing and recycling facilities have opened, or are in the process of being built or permitted, since 2019.
“As the world transitions away from fossil fuels for electricity generation and for transportation, the petrochemical industry has found a new market for fossil fuels: plastics,” Judith Enck, president of Beyond Plastics, told reporters on Thursday.
With the U.S. coal industry in decline, the report authors say policymakers at home and at the upcoming COP26 climate summit, a conference happening at the end of month where world leaders will hash out the details of climate pledges, need to factor the climate toll of plastics into emissions reductions efforts.
“Leaving out plastics is leaving out a giant piece of the problem,” Enck said. “We would like the national leaders that are gathering in Glasgow, Scotland, to take the plastics issue just as seriously as they are taking transportation and electricity generation.”
Climate costs of U.S. plastics
The report authors calculated emissions from 10 stages of plastics production, from hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, for the raw material—ethane in natural gas—all the way up to burning waste in incinerators.
Cracker plants, where natural gas is heated at such high temperatures that it fractures into plastic building blocks like ethylene, have the heaviest emissions toll, producing around 70 million tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent pollutants, which is equal to the emissions of 35 coal-fired power plants. Because the report looks at emissions from a range of greenhouse gases, the authors converted the warming potential of all the pollutants into an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas.
The authors say that emissions reports from the plastics industry are incomplete as they don’t adequately account for leaks of methane—a greenhouse gas that’s 84 times more climate-warming than carbon dioxide in the short-term—and other gases from the transport and production of plastics feedstocks.
They note that while so-called “chemical recycling,” which uses large amounts of energy to melt used plastics into building blocks for fuel and other products, is uncommon now, new plants could add up to 18 million tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent pollutants by 2025. Enck referred to chemical recycling as plastics’ “new deception” now that Americans are aware that less than 9% of plastics are recycled.
Shipping resins and other plastics building blocks overseas accounts for a significant amount of emissions as well, said Jim Vallette, president of Material Research, the firm that Beyond Plastics hired to do the report analysis. “Plastic is very much like the new coal because the coal industry also is counting on exports to stay alive,” he added.
Harmful plastics pollution
Plastics facilities don’t just create planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions. They also release benzene, formaldehyde, and the carcinogen ethylene oxide, among other harmful pollutants. The plastics industry has come under fire in recent years for building its polluting plants in poorer parts of the country: 90% of the climate pollution from U.S. plastics plants occurs in just 18 communities that are mostly in Texas and Louisiana, according to the report.
“The health impacts of the emissions are disproportionately borne by low-income communities and communities of color, making this a major environmental justice issue,” Enck said.
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November 15th, 2021 by Dr. Andrew Glikson
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Once again, the hopes of billions have been raised, only to be dashed, this time by the cruel joke of COP26, the reality being that “By 2030, governments are planning to extract 110% more fossil fuels than their Paris Agreement pledge to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels would permit”.
Misrepresentations abound:
The development of hydrocarbon reserves is proceeding unabated (Figures 1 and 2). Since the Paris agreement in 2015, the world’s 60 largest banks have poured $3.8 trillion into fossil fuel companies. In the US, auctioning has begun of drilling rights in Alaskan waters and the Gulf of Mexico. In the UK, whose PM is talking about one minute to midnight, 113 new licenses are offered to explore offshore reserves. Germany is developing new coal deposits. Australia, accounting for about 29% of traded coal globally in 2016, has become the world’s largest coal exporter and near-largest natural gas (LNG) exporter, currently representing around 3.6% of global emissions.
Huge LNG projects were planned in 2020 in Alaska ($43 billion), Mozambique ($33 billion), Kuwait ($16 billion), Nigeria ($11 billion), Australia ($11 billion), Russia ($10.8 billion, pipeline), Louisiana ($10.8 billion), Greece ($5.5 billion, pipeline) and elsewhere. According to NES FIRCROFT
“In terms of new projects, however, the outlook is wide open. According to sector research firm Rystad Energy, around 250 new Oil & Gas projects are likely to be sanctioned for development in 2020 – up from 160 in 2016. The number of floating production, storage and offloading vessels (FPSOs) is due to increase with as many as 28 currently on order or under construction, while around 4,000 km of subsea oil and gas flowlines are due for installation this year.”
In India forecasts for 2024-2025 include utilization of energy supplies of 50% coal, 25% oil, 20% gas, 3% nuclear and 2% hydro.
Figure 1. EIA projects nearly 50% increase in world energy use by 2050, with no decline in fossil fuel use
A 2014 analysis by Katherine Keil concluded that fossil fuels like they exist in the Arctic are expected to continue supplying much of the energy used worldwide.
Given that future emissions and temperatures may exceed what current policies would lead to (Figure 2. below), growth in the use of fossil fuels combined with the lack of effective methods of reducing the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere can only have catastrophic consequences. This means that unless civilization moves to a war-like footing, such as in pre-world war II, in an attempt to reduce carbon emissions from all sectors and to sequester greenhouse gas levels, large parts of the Earth may become uninhabitable.
So much for the term “security” repeated through corporate reports.
Figure 2. Climate Action Tracker Thermometer (Nov. 2021 update)
It is the children, led by an 18 years-old girl, who appear to have the perspective on what will determine the future of humanity and nature.
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Dr Andrew Glikson is an Earth and Paleo-climate scientist, Canberra, Australia. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Featured image is from Food & Water Watch
November 15th, 2021 by Dr. Joseph Mercola
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Fauci is the highest-paid federal employee in the U.S., and 68% of his $437,000 a year salary comes from bioweapons research
Instead of safeguarding public health, Dr. Anthony Fauci turned the National Institutes of Health into an incubator for pharmaceutical products, and essentially sold the entire country to the drug industry
Fauci has had a hand in creating the vaccine gold rush. In 2000, he met with Bill Gates, who asked to partner with the NIH in an agreement to vaccinate the world with a battery of new vaccines. In 2009, this agreement was rebranded as “The Decade of Vaccines,” the objective of which was to implement mandatory vaccinations for every adult and child on the planet by the year 2020
One of the darkest stains on Fauci’s career, aside from his role in the COVID pandemic, was his handling of the HIV epidemic. Suppressing the use of repurposed drugs, Fauci zeroed in on AZT, a toxic drug that has killed an estimated 300,000 AIDS patients
The similarities between the AZT scandal and what’s happening today with the COVID jab and remdesivir are striking. Again, Fauci has suppressed all treatments using inexpensive and nontoxic drugs. U.S. taxpayers have paid for research, while drug companies have raked in the profits, all while having zero liability for injuries and deaths
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In this interview, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental activist and attorney turned ultimate freedom fighter, discusses his latest book, “The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health,” which is a must-read if you want to know more about the behind-the-scenes of this giant fraud. We could talk for hours and not cover but a fraction of what’s in this book, which Kennedy calls a “devastating indictment of Tony Fauci.”
In a nutshell, Kennedy describes how Fauci turned the National Institutes of Health into an incubator for pharmaceutical products, and essentially sold the entire country to the drug industry. The book is an incredibly well-referenced record of his history of decimating human health, and exposes him as a self-serving charlatan.
I particularly enjoyed how Kennedy placed Fauci in the context of Rockefeller’s legacy with respect to Bill Gates, who developed an alliance with Fauci over 20 years ago. Rockefeller set us on a course of toxic, profit-driven medicines synthesized from the byproducts of the oil refinery process a century ago, and Gates picked up where he left off and then collaborated heavily with Fauci.
The Real Anthony Fauci
Fauci, in turn, has had a hand in creating the vaccine gold rush. In 2000, he met with Bill Gates, who asked to partner with the NIH in an agreement to vaccinate the entire population of the world with a battery of new vaccines. In 2009, this agreement was rebranded as “The Decade of Vaccines,” the objective of which was to implement mandatory vaccinations for every adult and child on the planet by the year 2020.
“I show how they use the pandemic simulations, working very closely with the intelligence agencies, with the big media companies and the major pharmaceutical companies to make that happen,” Kennedy says.
“Gates calls what he does philanthropy capitalism, [the idea that] you can use philanthropy to make money. He had a foundation where he has sheltered $50 billion in tax-free money. And, he continues to have absolute control over it. He uses that money to gain control of public health agencies in our country and the World Health Organization.
He’s created a lot of his own [organizations] with Dr. Fauci and a lot of these quasi-governmental agencies that people think are governmental. They’re actually front groups of the pharmaceutical industry like GAVI and SEPI …
He uses this battery and this control of the WHO to set pharmaceutical or medical policy, public health policy around the globe, in a way that maximizes the profits from his stakeholding in these big pharmaceutical companies.
I also show he’s simultaneously doing the same thing to control the global food supply … [He’s] really trying to change both public health and food policies in ways that benefit corporations that he’s invested in and that he’s partnered with.”
Gates didn’t lure Fauci to the dark side, however. Fauci had already spent decades playing with people’s lives and sacrificing public health for profit. One of the darkest stains on Fauci’s career, aside from his role in the COVID pandemic, was his handling of the HIV epidemic.
The first cases of AIDS surfaced in 1981. Initially, the AIDS program was run by the National Cancer Institute, a separate institute inside the Health and Human Services Department (HHS). The general belief was that AIDS had a chemical etiology caused by drug use. This all changed when the HIV virus was discovered.
Fauci started working for the NIH in 1968 as a clinical associate in the Laboratory of Clinical Investigation at National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). He became director of the NIAID in 1984, the year after the discovery of the HIV virus, and was appointed director of the Office of AIDS Research in 1988, when that office was established. As explained by Kennedy, Fauci essentially built the NIAID around an AIDS drug called AZT.
“AZT was a chemotherapy formulation that was so toxic it killed all the rats when they gave it to them. The inventor of AZT felt that it was unsafe for any human use, so he didn’t even patent it,” Kennedy says.
“Very early on, the National Cancer Institute had found that when you put AZT in a culture of HIV, that killed the HIV, not surprisingly. It killed anything it touched. And so, Fauci partnered with the manufacturer of AZT … He guided that formulation through the regulatory process and tried to fast track it. He cheated terribly on the clinical trials.
In the clinical trials, it was killing everybody. It literally kills everybody who takes it. But he was able to keep the people in the treatment group alive by giving them huge numbers of blood transfusions. It does keep them alive for the eight weeks, and based upon that eight-week trial, he got approval for AZT. It was unprecedented.
As Kary Mullis, who won the Nobel Prize for discovering the polymerase chain-reaction (PCR) technique, said, with any chemotherapy drug, you’re supposed to give it to somebody for two weeks. Chemotherapy is designed to kill every cell in the body, but hopefully it kills tumor cells first, and you can take the person off it. The tumor dies, if you time it right, and the person doesn’t die.
If you put somebody on that for life, like Tony Fauci was doing, every one of them is going to die. And that’s what happened. Meanwhile, there were a lot of drugs at that time that were being repurposed. Local, community-based doctors in San Francisco and New York who were treating the AIDS community were finding that these drugs treated the symptoms of AIDS, and they stopped people from dying.
Fauci made a deliberate crusade to sabotage those, to make sure they were not available to sick people, in order to make sure that AZT would be the only solution. And AZT was the most expensive drug in history. It was $10,000 for a one-year supply [while costing just $5 per dose to manufacture, plus U.S. taxpayers paid for all of the research and development of the drug] …
Tony Fauci basically created this template that he then used over the next 45 years, to develop toxic drug after toxic drug. He killed early treatment, and killed any protocol that competed with his pharmaceutical enterprise. A lot of people have died [as a result].”
Although a bonanza of money was made with AZT, it pales in comparison to Pfizer making out like a bandit with its COVID shot. The U.S. taxpayers paid $20 billion to fund the research, and another $10 billion to market the COVID jab. Pfizer created the best-selling drug in the world and will make $35 billion from it this year.1 Even better, unlike AZT, this is absolutely risk-free and they can never be sued for injuries.
Everything in Fauci’s Career Is Groundhog Day
An estimated 330,000 people have died from AZT alone. Overall, the similarities between the AZT scandal and what’s happening today with the COVID jab and remdesivir are striking. Again, Fauci has discouraged the use of any prevention for COVID-19, and any treatment using inexpensive and relatively nontoxic drugs such as hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin.
U.S. taxpayers funded the research while drug companies have made an estimated $100 billion in profits from the shots in a single year, all while having zero liability for injuries and deaths even as people are being coerced into taking them.
“Everything in Tony Fauci’s career is Groundhog Day,” Kennedy says. “Again, and again, and again, he is repeating the same behavior and it is paying off. And he has this way of talking where he never really says anything. And this habit of just lying, and lying, and lying …
I knew a lot about what happened during the HIV crisis because my uncle, Ted Kennedy, was chair of a health committee at that time. Teddy was the first presidential candidate to court the gay vote, and I was running his campaign at that time …
In the health committee, his primary concern for most of the time was AIDS. I talk about this in my book.
Finally, Fauci was called in front of Congress, and was just fileted. Henry Waxman and all of these well-known Democratic congressmen were saying, ‘What the hell are you doing? You’ve produced nothing. You’re totally incompetent.’ After that, his career was over, and he decided at that point, ‘OK, I’m going to work on getting these repurposed drugs on the market.’
He did that for a couple of years, and he had a project, which was a dual track project where they could, without going through the clinical trials and FDA randomized, placebo controlled trials, they could get approval for these drugs, so that people could get insurance for them and pay for them. So, I was deeply involved in this for many, many years, and I’ve known Tony Fauci for a long time.
I have insights on who he really is, that most liberal Democrats are utterly ignorant of. He is the opposite of everything they believe. He is the architect who turned our public health system over to the pharmaceutical industry. He does not do public health. And there is no metric at NIH, where they look and say, ‘We are improving public health.’
The only metric they have is, ‘How many vaccines have we given? How many pharmaceutical drugs have we sold? How much kickback money are we getting into the agency?’ As I explain in the book, this agency has become an incubator for the pharmaceutical industry.”
Gain-of-Function Research Under Fauci’s Watch
Fauci is responsible for an annual budget of about $6.1 billion. He gets another $1.6 billion from the military to do bioweapons research, which is where 68% of his $437,000 a year salary comes from. (Fauci is the highest-paid federal employee in the U.S. Second-highest is the president, at $400,000 a year.)
“That’s why he had to do that gain-of-function shenanigans in Wuhan,” Kennedy says. “He had to do it, because he had to hold on to his salary. And most of his salary comes from bioweapons research …
Gain-of-function research has never provided a single scientific or medical development that has assisted us in responding to pandemics. Not one. But Fauci continues to do it, because it is critical to his salary. And it’s critical to that funding stream.”
Now, the bulk of the NIAID’s funding was intended to be used to study American health and to improve it; to eliminate infectious allergic diseases and autoimmune diseases. Instead, under Fauci’s watch, the chronic disease epidemic has exploded.
This, despite the fact that between Fauci, Gates and the U.K. Wellcome Trust, they control 63% of the biomedical research on earth through their funding. Over his career, Fauci alone has distributed more than $930 billion in research grants through the NIAID. You could say they control all of it, really, because they also have the capacity to dry up funding to projects they don’t want done.
Ruthless Fauci
Case in point: Something happened in 1989, triggering a series of epidemics — autism, food allergies, Tourette’s Syndrome, narcolepsy, ADD/ADHD, speech delay, language delay, rheumatoid arthritis and autoimmune diseases like juvenile diabetes. All of them sprang up right around 1989. Why? What’s causing them? It’s Fauci’s job to find out, but he refuses to, and he blocks anyone else from digging too deep.
“Tony Fauci’s job is to say, why did that happen? It has to be an environmental toxin. Genes don’t cause epidemics. They provide the vulnerability, but they cannot cause an epidemic. You need an environmental toxin. All we have to do is figure out which one started in ’89, and became ubiquitous the same year. But if anybody tries to do that study, Fauci will ruin their career.”
Top suspects include vaccines, which dramatically increased in ’89, and virtually all of the chronic diseases that have skyrocketed are listed as potential side effects on the manufacturers’ inserts. The herbicide glyphosate also became ubiquitous around that time, and really exploded in 1993 when RoundUp Ready corn was invented. GMOs, other pesticides, ultrasound and PFOAs are other potential culprits.
“Our kids are swimming around in a toxic soup. And it could be all of those things, or it could be one or another, but it’s easy to find out. You just do the science. And that science is easy to do, but it will never be done as long as Tony Fauci’s in office, because he doesn’t want us to know — because those are the industries he has survived by protecting,”Kennedy says.
Fauci Works on Behalf of Big Pharma
Kennedy goes on to explain how Fauci works on behalf of Big Pharma, and why he’s become so important for the drug industry.
“Between 2009 and 2016, about 230 drugs were approved by the FDA, all of which came out of his shop. So, he is an incubator for Pharma.
And here’s what he does: At his lab, he has petri dishes filled with every virus [imaginable], and he has scientists that are messing around with different molecules and different poisons, and they’ll drop those poisons into a petri dish and see if it kills the culture. If it kills the culture, then he has a potential antiviral drug.
The next step is, they give it to rats, and see if it kills the rats. If most of the rats survive, now you have a potential antiviral that may work in humans. Then, he farms it out to a big university. Now the person it goes to at the university is usually a very powerful person. It’s the dean of the medical school, or the chair of one of the departments, and they run the clinical trials, which is extremely lucrative.
So, they will do the Phase 1 trial, and they’ll recruit maybe 100 people for the trial. Fauci gives that principal investigator maybe $20,000 per recruit. The university skims off 50% to 75% of that. So, now, that university is hooked into the system.
Then, if the drug works in Phase 1 and Phase 2, then they have to bring in big groups of people — 10,000 people — and you’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars. And they have to bring in a pharmaceutical company that now takes control of about half the patent.
Tony Fauci’s agency keeps a share of the patent. For example, they now collect royalties on the Moderna [COVID] vaccine. [The NIAID] gets half the royalties, billions of dollars. The university researcher keeps some of the patent, so he is now permanently attached to Tony Fauci and will do anything he says, and the university itself is getting some of that patent.
So, it’s hundreds of millions of dollars that are going to these universities every year, in addition to the grants that he’s giving, and he can cut all that off if somebody at the university does the wrong study.
Once the drug goes through Phase 3, it goes to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Fauci says, ‘Well those are independent scientists at FDA.’ The panel is called VRBPAC [Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee], and they’re NOT people who work for the FDA. They’re outside persons who are brought in.
Well, where are they brought in from? They’re Tony Fauci’s principal investigators from all the universities, who are working on his other projects, and they’re brought in to rubber stamp the drug …
They OK it and give it a license, because they know that, next year, their drug is going to be in front of that committee, and they are going to want the committee to rubber stamp them. So, that committee never says no. It always green lights everything, and it’s completely controlled by Fauci. He controls the whole process …
Every expert you see on CNN is on Tony Fauci’s payroll, and CNN will never tell you that. It will say, ‘This is an independent virologist, he’s an immunologist at Baylor University, or Stanford, or Harvard.’ They’re not telling you where that guy’s bread is being buttered, and that the person who’s buttering it is Tony Fauci, with your taxpayer dollars. The whole system is just fixed.”
Fauci’s Past and Rotten Character Are Catching Up on Him
As more and more of Fauci’s lies and his funding of sadistic experiments on animals and aborted fetuses are coming to light, Kenney predicts Fauci will be forced to resign, especially as the book comes out and people really start to understand what he’s been up to all these years.
“Nobody who was not a sadist in his soul would allow [the beagles being eaten by sandflies] experiment to happen,” Kennedy says. “Yet, Tony Fauci deemed that the best use for $450,000 of U.S. taxpayer money, with all of the screaming needs in public health.
But it’s not just $450,000. Millions and millions [of dollars] he has put into these sadistic experiments where they’re torturing animals to death. Like you’d see in a schoolyard with little boys, who don’t know any better and need to be told, ‘You don’t do that to another creature.’ Fauci doesn’t have that instinct, it’s lacking.
It explains what he has done during COVID — denying early treatment to millions of Americans and forcing them to suffer and die in their homes, or on ventilators and remdesevir, which is a deadly toxic drug, rather than get treated and be healthy.
And punishing, silencing, censoring, delicensing, discrediting any doctor who tries to say, ‘Wait a minute, I’ve been treating patients, and my patients aren’t dying, because I’m using hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin’ and an entire battery of repurposed drugs that we now know treat virtually all COVID cases.
Seventy to 90% of COVID deaths and hospitalizations could have been prevented, and there are hundreds of studies that support that. Yet, he forbids people from doing it. That is a sociopath …
And shutting down a million businesses, is that really going to save lives? There’s no study that indicated it would … We have 4.2% of the global population, and we had 14.5% of the deaths. Why is anybody listening to this guy? There’s no Health Minister in the world who has a worse track record than Tony Fauci.
There are many countries that had 1/100th of our death rate per million in population. And guess what? Those are mainly the African and Asian countries, that as a matter of course are giving ivermectin for river blindness and hydroxychloroquine for malaria control.”
In support of Kennedy’s assertion that Fauci will be forced to resign, you can view his recent grilling November 4, 2021, by Sen. Rand Paul in front of Congress. What is most impressive are the comments, which are virtually unanimously disparaging Fauci.
Fauci’s Lethal, Illegal Experiments on Children
In his book, Kennedy includes a chapter on some of the animal trials Fauci funded. He also tells a far grimmer story, where the guinea pigs were Black and Hispanic children. At least 85 of these children died, but the number could be as high as 1,000 or so. Fauci got these children by arranging for foster care programs in New York and six other states to assign children who had lost their parents to AIDS to participate in drug studies.
These children had no guardian, so they were illegal studies. To do a clinical trial on children, you need to have a guardian appointed who puts their interests first, ahead of the drug companies. Fauci didn’t want that, so he allowed these studies to go forward without a legal guardian for any of these kids. No one was watching out for them. The trials weren’t even done by licensed medical professionals.
“They were mainly Dominican immigrants, who were deeply compassionate, who discovered in the middle that they were actually being hired to treat these children as guinea pigs, and they were killing huge numbers of them. Many of the kids didn’t even have HIV, so they had no possible benefit from the drug, which is illegal.
Yet Fauci got away with all of it. I believe there was a Congressional investigation for a brief time, but like everything that gets near him, it kind of peters out. The BBC did a documentary on these kids back in 2004 called ‘Guinea Pig Kids.’
They interviewed these children, [one] who said, ‘I took the drugs. They made me feel sick. I was vomiting, I couldn’t eat, I was tired all the time, it was painful, and I refused to take it.’
And when they refused, they were sent to another of Tony Fauci’s principal investigators at Columbia Presbyterian who installed a feeding tube to force feed these children these toxic chemotherapy drugs that they refused to take … As bad as Beagle gate is, what he did to these Black and Hispanic children is even worse.”
COVID-19 — The Culmination of Fauci’s Criminal Enterprise
As for the COVID-19 pandemic, Kennedy equates it to the culmination of Fauci’s career. In the book, he recounts how Fauci has been a key figure in pandemic planning — not necessarily how to prevent one, but how to create it, as infectious disease mortality had dropped so dramatically that infectious diseases were becoming an increasingly low priority.
So far, every single pandemic that has been dramatized has turned out to be a complete fraud, and the same can be said for COVID. All the while, billions of dollars were spent on vaccines.
“They’ve taken all of these lessons they learned from all the other fake pandemics and rolled it into coronavirus,” Kennedy says. “Now, I want to make clear, I’m not saying that coronavirus is not a pandemic, or that it doesn’t kill a lot of people. It does. But we’ve all been manipulated by an exaggeration of cases, the exaggeration of deaths, the obscuring of data, all of the manipulations that they’ve done to us.
[In the book] I have a picture that somebody got from a Freedom of Information Act request. It’s a March Madness graph of all of the different pandemics — fake pandemics — [Fauci] has tried during his career, all converging with the grand winner being coronavirus. And [Fauci] signed it, somebody on his staff made it.
But it was Tony Fauci’s triumph, winning March Madness. It’s basically a picture of his career. Him trying every three or four years a new fake pandemic, and finally hitting on all eight cylinders with coronavirus. It’s like it’s a joke, and we are the punchline …
Here’s what I would say to people. We have to stop this. This is the hill that we all have to die on. If you are a parent, and you let them give this [COVID shot] to your child, you are not doing your job as a parent. If you are a doctor, you are committing malpractice to give this to a child. We all need to resist.
I would say that every American who sees what’s happening has to start engaging in civil disobedience every day. And that may mean going to a store and telling them, if they demand a vaccine passport, that you are not going to patronize that store anymore. It may mean resisting on the job. Do not quit! Make them fire you. Because then you have a lawsuit.
Right now, the best thing is to make them fire you for not taking an emergency use authorization vaccine, because there are no approved vaccines in this country available to any American. It was a myth, it was a hoax, it was a chicanery for them to say, ‘We approved this Comirnaty vaccine.’ If you go on Pfizer’s website, it will tell you, ‘We do not make Comirnaty available in the United States.’
Why are they trying to go after our kids? Here’s why. The vaccines can only get liability protection once they are approved. The only way they get liability protection is if they’re on the child’s vaccination schedule. And then, once the CDC votes them onto the child vaccination schedule, then they get liability protection, even for adults.
One lawsuit can bankrupt the company if they didn’t have liability protection. So that’s why they’re going after our kids. They need it to get that liability protection. And we need to stop them from the collateral damage they’re going to cause to an entire generation of children; 26 million children will get a vaccine that’s been tested on 1,300 kids, with catastrophic results.”
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Notes
1 Axios
Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense
November 15th, 2021 by Matthew Ehret-Kump
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Amidst the early days of the COP26 Summit in Glasgow, Pope Francis made several accolades to world leaders and the entire global Catholica community alike to take bold action in the face of anthropogenic climate change and drastically alter our entire system of values towards a new order. Referring to the COP21 Paris Accords, the Pope said:
“There is no alternative. We can achieve the goals set by the Paris Agreement only if we act in a coordinated and responsible way. Those goals are ambitious, and they can no longer be deferred. Today it is up to you to take the necessary decisions.”
Just in case anyone had the idea of reviving nationalist policies in opposition to the globalizing forces of the post-nation state age which we are supposedly entering, the pope said:
“We can confront these crises by retreating into isolationism, protectionism and exploitation. Or we can see in them a real chance for change, a genuine moment of conversion, and not simply in a spiritual sense.”
This call for conversion of society towards climate action echoed the earlier 2015 encyclical Laudato Si produced by the Pope to usher in COP21 and the greening of Christianity under a new ethos.
Within the 2015 Laudato Si, the Pope took aim directly at the “old and obsolete” notion of Christianity that had seen humanity as a divine creature born with a Promethean spark saying:
“An inadequate presentation of Christian anthropology gave rise to a wrong understanding of the relationship between human beings and the world. Often, what was handed on was a Promethean vision of mastery over the world.”
This new Christian ethos unveiled by Pope Francis saw humankind not as a species which could transcend the limits of nature, but rather as a species bound inexorably to the ecosystem within which he evolved. If the ecosystems of earth imposed limits on all species according to such variables as space, food and resource availability, then according to the secular priests of the new world order, humanity was expected to be no different. Nature was little more than a mother Gaia figure from ancient Babylonian times long past with the 2015 encyclical’s opening prayer reading:
“Praise be to you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us, and who produces various fruit with coloured flowers and herbs. This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her”
So I ask again, what sort of “conversion” was Pope Francis implying the Christian world engage in by supporting both the Paris Accords of 2015 and the COP26 goals today?
Was it the embrace of Christian values embodied in Christ’s message to love their neighbor and love god? Was it the embrace of Christ’s anti-imperial call to kick the money changers out of the temple or raise up the sick and poor?
Well, if one is to assess the purpose of COP26 and the World Economic Forum ideologues like Mark Carney who are stage managing this summit, the answer smells more like sulfur than love.
The Anti-Development Aims of COP26
Professing to reform humanity’s entire system of political, economic, security and cultural values around a new global green order, the COP26 initiatives call for making global carbon reduction targets legally binding and enforceable by new world governing mechanisms. Carney has called for $135 trillion to be rallied over the next 30 years to reduce CO2 emission 80% below 1991 levels by spreading windmills, solar panels, biofuel plants, and green grids over the face of the earth.
Broad swaths of nations- are expected to block off their land in defense of ecosystems (and thus banning actual hydro dams or real development from ever being built along regions like the Congo River basin).
Banking systems are being rewired by Carney’s Green Banker’s compact in order to channel funding towards expensive green energy systems while “dirty” companies that produce CO2 are expected to be destroyed. Carney has made it known that a linchpin for this new anti-carbon economy is founded upon new carbon indices which all companies are expected to showcase which will showcase their degree of green virtue based on a gradient of deep green to brown (and fifty shades in between). Depending where your company falls on this gradient will determine the levels of interest rates you will pay or whether you can or cannot access loans. Carney laid out this new system in 2019 saying:
“Climate disclosures must become comprehensive, climate risk management must be transformed and sustainable investing must go mainstream… the firms that anticipate these developments will be rewarded handsomely. Those that don’t will cease to exist”.
All this is being done of course with the supposed (and completely unscientific) belief that this will in turn keep temperatures within 1.5 degrees of pre-industrial levels.
Ignoring for the time being that CO2 has never been shown to play ANY causal role in temperature fluctuations, let us look at the sort of effect this global green new deal will have on human life.
The unreliable, and low-quality electricity derived from windmill and solar panel farms are magnitudes below the quality of energy derived from fossil fuel or nuclear power stations.
It is well known that these “green” energy sources may work to limited degrees within the residential sectors of an economy, but the transportation and industrial sectors which consume over 50% of industrial society’s electricity needs will not function on solar or wind power, since you can’t manufacture a windmill with windmill energy and you cannot process industrial steel with either wind or solar power.
And forget about ever powering a high speed or magnetic levitation rail grid. The heat densities of renewables are just too low, and any society dumb enough to shut down their “dirty” oil, natural gas and nuclear stations in favor of these renewables will irreparably incapacitate its industrial sector and if the country is among the undeveloped sectors of the world, it may find itself receiving piles of monopoly money as bribery to sign onto the COP26 green pacts as Boris Johnson has championed at COP26, but it would condemn itself to never build any heavy industry ever again.
Meanwhile, it is useful to hold in mind that windmills and solar panels only function at 26% capacity on a good day, but will occasionally fall to less than 1% capacity when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow resulting in the sorts of crises sweeping Europe as we speak.
Russian Security Council Secretary Nicolai Patrushev recently called out the absurdity of green energy grids saying
“Europe’s energy crisis has shown that the existing technologies don’t make it possible to meet economic demands only through renewable energy sources. Europe, an industrialized region turned out to be unable to replace coal, oil and gas with wind, solar and tidal power plants.”
The overarching effect of this anti-scientific policy is a vast reduction of humanity’s means of supporting its eight billion souls. It is the abolishment of sovereignty of nations and the abolishment of the means to carry out the mandate to uplift humanity out of squalor, poverty, and despair… all under the self-righteous guise of virtuously protecting the environment.
It is really worth asking: Is the COP26 mandate to create a global decarbonization scheme truly premised on honest intentions to preserve the environment, and protect the poor? Are Pope Francis’ efforts to re-wire the entire Catholic church around the green agenda truly driven by Christian love as the pope is so fond of saying? Or is something darker at play?
Club of Rome Founder Sir Alexander King let the cat out of the bag quite directly when he stated in 1991:
“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill….All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.”
The Anti-Malthusian Traditions of the Vatican
In better times many years past, a much healthier vision was advanced by leaders of the church who saw that the pathway towards resolving the Cold War was located in genuinely ending global poverty and war.
Much like devoted Catholic statesmen such as Enrico Mattei, John F. Kennedy, Konrad Adenauer or Charles De Gaulle who fought against an ideological Malthusian deep state within their nations, the Church as a whole was caught in a battle between opposing ideologies throughout the 20th century.
For those leading the humanist faction during these turbulent times (especially in the wake of the murders and coups conducted against the aforementioned leaders cited above), navigating through the Cold War did not mean simply “picking a side of communist or capitalist” as so many were expected to do within the rules of Game Theory. Their strategy took the form of a much more moral solution.
In Pope John Paul II’s 1981 Encyclical Laborem Exercens, the terms of the Manichean cold war dichotomy were laid bare with the pope taking aim at two opposing ideologies that suffered from inverse, though equally destructive poisons. On the one hand, the encyclical polemicized against those systems which value the liberties of the individual over the wellbeing of society (Smith’s hedonistic doctrine of Laissez Faire ‘each-against-all’ forms of capitalism for example). On the other hand, the Pope took aim at the destructive materialism of Marx’s ‘Dialectic Materialism’ which value only the whole but in total defiance of respect for the sacredness of the individual.
The Christian principle defended by the Pope within this seminal writing was found in the edict of Genesis 1:28 which called forth man to “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.”
If we are indeed to hold true to the belief that mankind was in fact made in the living image of the Creator, and if we thus understood the creator to be a living, creative being (and not an impotent tyrant who made the rules of the universe never to participate in its process of creation ever again), then certain truths followed.
Multiplying seemed straight forward enough, but being fruitful was the most important consideration. Multiplying meant something quantitative, but being fruitful meant something qualitative. In the encyclical, the Pope John Paul II wrote:
“THROUGH WORK man must earn his daily bread and contribute to the continual advance of science and technology and, above all, to elevating unceasingly the cultural and moral level of the society within which he lives in community with those who belong to the same family. And work means any activity by man, whether manual or intellectual, whatever its nature or circumstances; it means any human activity that can and must be recognized as work, in the midst of all the many activities of which man is capable and to which he is predisposed by his very nature, by virtue of humanity itself. Man is made to be in the visible universe an image and likeness of God himself, and he is placed in it in order to subdue the earth. From the beginning therefore he is called to work. Work is one of the characteristics that distinguish man from the rest of creatures, whose activity for sustaining their lives cannot be called work. Only man is capable of work, and only man works, at the same time by work occupying his existence on earth.”
As the encyclical demonstrated, “Fruitful” meant uplifting the standards of living, educational, and cultural standards of all people. It meant applying the fruits of scientific discoveries equitably in the form of technological progress for all human beings- since the absence of the application of this type of progress would condemn humanity to the fate of animals. Lack of scientific and technological progress would ensure that the carrying capacity and limits to growth of the species would be relatively fixed to whatever resources, minerals, agricultural land, techniques of production, etc that exist at a given moment in time.
Pope John Paul II recognized that the resolution to the dichotomy of the Cold War bipolarity was located in this higher understanding of the nature of work and human life saying:
“human work is a key, probably the essential key, to the whole social question, if we try to see that question really from the point of view of man’s good. And if the solution-or rather the gradual solution-of the social question, which keeps coming up and becomes ever more complex, must be sought in the direction of “making life more human”, then the key, namely human work, acquires fundamental and decisive importance.”
Describing the notion of “subdue the earth” and the interconnected infinite aspirations of humanity for self-improvement and the infinite bounty of new discoveries, the Pope had this to say:
“The expression “subdue the earth” has an immense range. It means all the resources that the earth (and indirectly the visible world) contains and which, through the conscious activity of man, can be discovered and used for his ends. And so these words, placed at the beginning of the Bible, never cease to be relevant. They embrace equally the past ages of civilization and economy, as also the whole of modern reality and future phases of development, which are perhaps already to some extent beginning to take shape, though for the most part they are still almost unknown to man and hidden from him.”
This banishment of creative discovery and the destruction of technology which could otherwise liberate countless poor slaves or serfs from the material shackles to a higher station in the cosmos as creatures of intelligence and dignity, has been a technique used by oligarchs since the days of ancient Babylon and Rome. It is the same technique that attempted to persuade the slaves of the confederate south that slavery was sanctioned by the bible with some born as chosen people destined to rule over the weak. It was applied by regressive regimes amidst the Church who sought to convince their parishioners that God willed humanity to be ignorant since eating from the tree of knowledge was the root of sin.
This perversion of Christianity unfortunately took hold of many thought leaders within the Catholic Church who had become won over to the Transhumanist agenda of such reformers as Jesuit modernist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and his countless minions within the Jesuit order. These same forces found themselves advancing a rotting liberalization throughout the years of Vatican II reforms of 1962-65, and took Chardin’s call to adapt Christianity to the rules of the age by picking sides in the bi-polar Cold War game of capitalism vs communism.
These same agencies increasingly worked to sever the Church from its own principles and render it a merely adaptive instrument susceptible to fluctuating tastes and standards of our age. If the style and norms of an age become polarised with modernism, liberalism, ecologism, and a war against global warming, then so too must the values of the liberalized Church thus adapt to said standards regardless of how detached from truth, morality, or the teachings of Christ they might be.
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Matthew Ehret is the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Patriot Review , and Senior Fellow at the American University in Moscow. He is author of the ‘Untold History of Canada’ book series and Clash of the Two Americas. In 2019 he co-founded the Montreal-based Rising Tide Foundation . Subscribe to his Substack here.
He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
November 15th, 2021 by Global Research News
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Words can provide sharp traps, fettering language and caging definitions. They can also speak to freedom of action and permissiveness. At COP26, that permissiveness was all the more present in the haggling ahead of what would become the Glasgow Climate Pact.
COP26, or the UN Climate Change Conference UK 2021, had a mission of “Uniting the world to tackle climate change.” The tackling, however, fell rather short, though countries, in the main, were trying to sell the final understanding as a grand compromise of mature tidiness. COP26 president Alok Sharma called the outcome “a fragile win”, the outcome of “hard work” and “great cooperation” from the parties.
The Pact is a flurry of words, acknowledging, for instance “the importance of the best available science for effective climate action and policymaking.” Alarm and utmost concern is expressed by the parties at the fact “that human activities have caused around 1.1 °C of global warming to date and that impacts are already being felt in every region”. There is a stress on “the urgency of enhancing ambition and acting in relation to mitigation adaptation and finance in this critical decade to address gaps between current efforts and pathways in pursuit of the ultimate objective of the Convention and its long-term global goal”.
The pact had gone through a few iterations, stirring interest, sparking hope, even inducing, at points, a giddy optimism. The first draft had called upon the Parties “to accelerate the phasing-out of coal and subsidies for fossil-fuels”. Its appearance was considered by The New Scientist to be “remarkable” for explicitly mentioning fossil fuels, while Ed King of the European Climate Foundation suggested that it was “the first time fossil fuels have been called out in a draft UN climate decision text”.
But in the final statement, an exit for countries still keen to keep the heart of coal alive was carved. The parties might well ensure that technologies and policies would be adopted “to transition towards low-emission energy systems”, scale up the “deployment of clean power generation and energy efficiency measures” but this would also entail “accelerating efforts towards the phasedown of unabated coal power and phase-out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies”. As this was undertaken, “targeted support” would be directed towards “the poorest and most vulnerable in line with national circumstances and recognizing the need for support towards a just transition”.
And there were those words slipped in with conspiratorial deftness: “phasing down”. Elastic, open, accommodating to the emitters and the vendors. A world left to the beholder. The change of language had been encouraged by India, with the support of other coal-dependent states. The Indian environment and climate minister, Bhupender Yadav, had been less than impressed with the singling out of coal, given the previous text’s deafening silence on natural gas and oil.
The reasons for such omissions were clear enough: countries such as the United States continue to nourish their interest in oil and gas investment. On November 17, the Biden administration will hold the largest offshore oil and gas lease sale in US history, covering 80 million acres off the Gulf of Mexico. Again, President Joe Biden shows that anything his predecessor, Donald Trump, did, he can do several times better.
After the conclusion of COP26, Yadav merrily declared the summit a success for India, as “we articulated and put across the concerns and ideas of the developing world quite succinctly and unequivocally.” His country had a lesson for the developed world, fattened by a certain lifestyle that required modification to cope with the climate crisis.
It was the hook upon which the Modi government could fasten a new, lecturing mantra: LIFE, or Lifestyle for Environment, one that valued “moderation over excess.” “Today,” stated Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the summit, “it’s needed that all of us come together and take forward LIFE as a movement.” Presumably a phasing down movement.
Indian voices in the climate action sector did not shy away from approving the dilution of the language on coal. Their targets were the misdeeds of the United States and the European Union, who had, according to Aarti Khosla of Climate Trends, failed “to deliver on the promised $100 billion in climate finance”. Kamal Narayan, CEO of the Integrated Health and Well Being Council, suggested that the use of “phasing down” coal instead of “phasing out” should not be a source of concern, given “the kind of commitment and leadership India has shown in building renewable energy infrastructure”.
While not quite music, the softening approach in the final text was melodious enough for former Australian resources minister Matt Canavan to claim that the coal industry had been victorious in Scotland. Proudly visible before him in an interview with the Today program was a screen with an unequivocal message: “Glasgow: A Huge Win for Coal.” An adventurous reading of the Glasgow text was in order. The agreement had provided “wiggle room” for countries. “Given the fact that the agreement did not say that coal needs to be phased down or taken out, it is a green light for us to build more coal mines.”
For a delightedly cynical Canavan, no country was really taking the agreement seriously, and the likes of India, China and those in South-East Asia were insatiably hungry for coal, with a “demand” that “almost has no limit”. On Twitter, he reiterated the theme with a call to rent the earth with urgent, patriotic enthusiasm. “Let’s get digging then and sell more of the best coal in the world to others, and bring millions more people out of poverty.”
Pacific Island states were resigned, disappointed and despairing. Fiji’s Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama could only entertain some frail optimism, praising the “heroic effort” of the Pacific negotiators at COP26. “The 1.5-degree target leaves Glasgow battered, bruised, but alive.”
Other states were angrily baffled by the subversion evident in the final text. Mexico’s envoy, Camila Isabel Zepeda Lizama, expressed anger at her country being “sidelined” in a “non-transparent and non-inclusive process”. “We all have remaining concerns but were told we could not reopen the text … while others can still ask to water down their promises.” A cabal of powers had done its trick.
For activists, there was no death knell to coal, as the UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, confidently claimed. “This is no longer a climate conference,” lamented climate change activist Greta Thunberg, the tenured voice of climate change catastrophism. “This is now a global greenwashing festival.” And with greenwashing shall come the vanishing, but not before a few more, gasbagging efforts.
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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]