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U.S. Customs and Border Patrol announced its officers at a port in Alaska recently seized thousands of fake COVID-19 vaccination cards that came from China.
The seizure opens the door for government to go forward with the technological tracking of U.S. citizens. How so?
It strengthens the arguments of pro-vaccine passport types who say Americans must be vaccinated, or else risk infecting the innocent; that Americans must prove vaccination as conditions of associating freely in public and interacting with others; that vaccine passports are obviously the easiest means by which proof of vaccination can be displayed; but that paper vaccine passports are vulnerable to counterfeit. A smartphone app that carries a scannable electronic code tied directly to the carrier’s medical records — connected directly to the clinic or doctor’s office that administered the shot — is the viable alternative. So will go the line of logic. See, see? — they’ll say: Paper passports are prone to fakery. We need something more secure. We need something technologically advanced.
In fact, this is the alternative that’s already being tested in select spots, by select tech companies.
“Smartphone developers are gearing up for a world where users can store their Covid vaccination proof in their phones’ digital wallets, making it easy to simply tap their phones when they enter new buildings,” Yahoo! News wrote. “Google, Apple and Samsung have all recently announced plans to offer a feature that readily calls up a QR code that can be scanned to quickly verify a user’s vaccination status.”
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These 1,731 gold bars (if they even still exist) were deposited with the Fed by the Afghan central bank in 1939, and are old US Assay Office gold bars that have cracks, fissures, holes and other imperfections. See details below.
While the US Treasury has not yet released an official statement on blocking the Afghan central bank assets, the Washington Post on Tuesday 17 August broke the story that a few days previously on Sunday 15 August, the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the Treasury department under the direction of Janet Yellen had made the decision to execute the freeze.
Among central banks of the world, the DAB has always been one of the more transparent when it comes to divulging information about it’s gold reserve holdings, and looking at the DAB’s annual financial statements, you can see why.
In the latest annual financial statements of the DAB for the year ended 30 Qaws of solar year 1399 (which is 20 December 2020), note 7.1 to the financial statements states that the DAB holds:
“703,004.944 fine troy ounces of gold in bar from held at the Federal Reserve Bank (FRB), New York as the Bank’s international reserve.”
This 703,004.944 ozs is approximately 21.87 tonnes of gold.
Cracks, Fissures and Holes
However, note 7.1 of the 2020 accounts goes on to say that even though the Afghan central bank’s gold bars have a minimum gold purity of at least 99.5%, they are not London Good Delivery bars because the dimensions of the bars do not comply with Good Delivery gold bar dimensions, and critically, some of the bars contain cracks, fissures, holds and other imperfections.
In short, the Afghan central bank’s gold at the New York Fed looks to be a pile of old US Assay Office gold bars. Specifically, note 7.1 says that:
“As per FRB, these bars met the minimum London Bullion market Association(LBMA) London Good Delivery (LGD) standards for quality but no not comply with the requirements for dimension.
In addition, some of these bars present imperfections such as surface roughness, cracks, fissures and holes which are considered unacceptable by the LBMA.”
“Irregularities such as surface cavities, cracks, holes or blisters (debris and water can accumulate in such irregularities which can affect the weight of the Bar and accumulated water can cause an explosion when the Bars are melted)”
Its pretty obvious that the gold bars held in the FRB New York for the Afghan’s are old brick shape US Assay Office gold bars. For a full description of these type of old gold bars, see the “Gold Bars Worldwide” document about US Mint gold bars (in archive here).
Old US Assay Office ‘brick’ gold bars, part of a ‘Melt’. Source
Note 7.1 then informs us that since the Afghani gold bars in the New York Fed vault are not acceptable in international markets (or anywhere else) as Good Delivery gold bars, then the market valuation of these bars has to be discounted.
When in Doubt, Call the BIS
Having already cited the New York Fed and the LBMA, Note 7.1, then takes on the appearance of a crime scene caper finale where all the usual suspects turn up at the same time, as it wheels out the boss of them all, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).
This is because the DAB has asked the BIS in Switzerland (an authority on gold bar trading?) what type of discount to apply to the DAB’s gold bars given their undesired dimensions, cracks fissures and holes. The BIS thinks a US$ 2.25 discount per bar will do the trick.
Specifically, note 7.1 says that:
“Accordingly, the Bank [DAB] has obtained an advice for the estimate of discount to the LBMA rate of 1,879.75 per troy ounce from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), Switzerland, which has suggested a discount of USD 2.25 per troy ounce t the LBMA rate.”
Afghan central bank annual financial statements, year-end 20 Dec 2020. Source
This valuation adjustment to the Afghan gold at the New York Fed is not a new adjustment and was first mentioned in the Afghan central bank’s annual financial statements for the year to 20 March 2009 (year end to 30 Hoot 1387 in the Afghani calendar). i.e. the discount adjustment was first applied to the Afghan gold from 2008 onwards.
The DAB annual financial statements for year to 20 March 2009 are in an archive of the old DAB website here.
Afghan central bank annual financial statements, year-end 20 March 2009. Source
Back then in 2008, the DAB still held 703,004.944 troy ounces of gold at the New York Fed vault in Manhattan, i.e. the exact same gold bars as no gold was bought or sold by DAB between 2008 and 2021.
Exactly 1,731 old gold bars
Going back one year previously to 2007, and the Afghan central bank was even more transparent, with Note 4 of the DAB’s annual financial statements for the year to 20 March 2007 (29 hoot 1385 in the Afghan calendar) showing that the Afghan central bank holds 1,731 gold bars at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
This was exactly, as per every other year, equal to 703,004.944 fine troy ounces. So now we know that the 703,004.944 ozs of gold that the DAB holds in the New York fed vault is in the form of 1,731 gold bars.
See screenshot below for the 1,731 gold bars reference:
Afghan central bank annual financial statements, year-end 20 March 2007. Source
It is these 1,731 gold bars belonging to the Afghan central bank that have (in August 2021) now been ‘frozen’ by the US Treasury through the FRB New York.
Note 4 of the 2004 accounts, titled “Gold in Federal Reserve”, states that:
“DAB’s gold reserves are on non-interest bearing deposit with New York Federal Reserve Bank”.
See screenshot below:
Afghan central bank annual financial accounts to year-end 19 March 2004. Source
This ‘non-interest bearing deposit’ is a troubling phrase as it suggests that the Afghan central bank gold is not held under bailment via a custodian agreement where the DAB would be bailor and the FRB New York bailee, but rather as a deposit where the depositor does not retain full title and ownership.
FRBNY staff inspecting the “Wall of Gold” in the Auxiliary vault of the NY Fed, 1970s
At the current time, this is the least of the problems of the Afghan central bank, but the question must be asked, does the gold storage agreement between the DAB and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York provide full legal title and unencumbered ownership of the 1,731 gold bars to the DAB, or is the gold merely a deposit which the FRB can do whatever it wants with, such as lend, lease swap it with a commercial bank such as JP Morgan. located across the road from 33 Liberty street in the 1 Chase Plaza vault, where a tunnel connects the two vaults.
Pre-WWII: As Old as the Hills
How long has the Afghan central bank held an unchanging amount of 703,004.944 ozs of gold at the NY Fed in the form of 1,731 old US Assay Office gold bars?
Startlingly, this question is also answered by looking at the DAB’s 2004 financial statements, also in Note 4, which reveals that the Afghan central bank gold was deposited with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in 1939, which is 82 year ago!
Specifically, Note 4 of the 2004 DAB accounts states that:
“The annual incremental difference between the year-end gold valuation rate and the valuation rate of $35 per Troy ounce in 1939 when the gold was deposited, is recognized in income as an unrealized valuation gain or loss.”
This is not a typo. You have read this correctly. The Afghan central bank gold at the NY Fed was deposited there in 1939, which coincides with the start of World War II.
The unrealized valuation adjustment for the DAB gold above the $35 per oz acquisition price is also confirmed in the accounting policies of the DAB financial statements which states that:
“(c) Gold reserves: Monetary gold held, as part of DAB’s foreign exchange reserves, in the vaults of the Federal Reserve Bank in New York is regarded as a monetary instrument.
It is measured at quoted market prices as of the balance sheet date. The difference between the quoted market price at the balance sheet date and the original market rate of USD 35 per ounce at the date of acquisition is recognized in income as an unrealized revaluation gain or loss.”
Also in the 2004 accounts, under “Capital and Reserves”, you can see the massive adjustment attributed to “Accumulated net unrealized revaluation gains on gold reserves” which is the difference between market price and the acquisition price of $35 per oz in 1939.
These very old US Assay Office gold bars were always produced in Melts. Melts are batches of gold bars, usually between 18 and 22 bars, that when produced, were stamped with a melt number and a fineness, but were weight-listed as one unit. The US Assay Office produced both 0.995 fine gold bars and coin bars as Melts. The gold bars in a Melt are usually stored together unless that melt has been ‘broken’.
Here’s the Federal Reserve Board says about 0.995 fine Melts:
“US Assay Office bars, like bars in other countries, are produced in melts or a series of bars, numbered in succession. For instance, melt No. I contains 20 bars. Hence, the bars are stamped 1-1, 1-2, etc… , 1-20.”
“US Assay Office bars are gold bars that are originally issued by the US Assay Office and that have not been mutilated and which, if originally issued in the form of a melt, are re-deposited as a complete melt. These bars are not melted and assayed. They weigh approximately 400 troy ounces, the fineness of their gold content is .995 (99.5% purity or better), and they come in complete melts.
“When an US Assay Office bar is removed from a melt, it is referred to as a mutilated US Assay Office bar.”
Source: “Final report of the gold team”, draft June 30th, 2000. Page 13 here.
Tag Team USA: Freeze – Unblock – Freeze
At the start of this article, it was mentioned that this is not the first time that the Afghan central bank gold holdings in the vault of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York have been frozen by the US Treasury.
This is because the same DAB gold holdings were also frozen by the US Treasury back in July 1991 and then unfrozen in January 2001. The fact that it’s the same 703,004.944 ozs of DAB gold which was frozen in 1999 can be seen from the US Treasury statement of 24 January 2001, when the US Treasury decided to unfreeze the gold and referred to ‘unblocking approximately $193 million in gold”.
At a gold price of $274.5 on 23 January 2001, this $193 million represented 703,000 ozs of gold. The US Treasury press release of 24 January 2001, titled “Treasury signs license unblocking frozen Afghan assets”, can be seen below:
“Late yesterday the Treasury Department signed a license authorizing the Federal Reserve to unblock Afghan government assets frozen in 1999 under Executive Order 13129.
The license, signed by Richard Newcomb, Director of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, gives control of the assets to the new Afghan Interim Authority (AIA).
The license will unblock approximately $193 million in gold and $24 million in other assets of the Afghan Central Bank held atthe Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
The assets had been blocked under the 1999 Executive Order that froze all assets associated with the Taliban regime.”
It was under Executive Order 13129 of 4 July 1999 signed by then US president Bill Clinton that the DAB gold at the FRB in New York was frozen/blocked by the US Treasury in 1999. The US Treasury Secretary at that time was Larry Summers, who was sworn in on 2 July 1999. The Afghan gold was unblocked on 24 January 2001, just a few days after George W. Bush took office.
These old Afghan gold bars (if they even still exist at all down the back of the Fed vault cages) have therefore seen a lot of US tag team action over the years, being blocked and frozen by Clinton and Summers in 1999, unblocked again by George Bush Jnr in 2001, and now blocked again by Biden and Yellen in 2021. History is repeating itself.
holds 1,731 very old gold bars at the FRB New York vault
that this gold was deposited by the Afghan central bank in 1939
that the Afghan gold bars at the NY Fed are not Good Delivery gold bars
that the dimensions of the bars imply they are old US Assay office gold bars
that the bars have imperfections such as cracks, fissures and holes
Well, now you know!
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Mr Paul Givan, First Minister for Northern Ireland
Mr Sajid Javid, Health Secretary
Dr Chris Whitty, Chief Medical Officer
Dr Patrick Vallance, Chief Scientific Officer
22 August 2021
Dear Sirs and Madam,
Our grave concerns about the handling of the COVID pandemic by Governments of the Nations of the UK.
We write as concerned doctors, nurses, and other allied healthcare professionals with no vested interest in doing so. To the contrary, we face personal risk in relation to our employment for doing so and / or the risk of being personally “smeared” by those who inevitably will not like us speaking out.
We are taking the step of writing this public letter because it has become apparent to us that:
The Government (by which we mean the UK government and three devolved governments/administrations and associated government advisors and agencies such as the CMOs, CSA, SAGE, MHRA, JCVI, Public Health services, Ofcom etc, hereinafter “you” or the “Government”) have based the handling of the COVID pandemic on flawed assumptions.
These have been pointed out to you by numerous individuals and organisations.
You have failed to engage in dialogue and show no signs of doing so. You have removed from people fundamental rights and altered the fabric of society with little debate in Parliament. No minister responsible for policy has ever appeared in a proper debate with anyone with opposing views on any mainstream media channel.
Despite being aware of alternative medical and scientific viewpoints you have failed to ensure an open and full discussion of the pros and cons of alternative ways of managing the pandemic.
The pandemic response policies implemented have caused massive, permanent and unnecessary harm to our nation, and must never be repeated.
Only by revealing the complete lack of widespread approval among healthcare professionals of your policies will a wider debate be demanded by the public.
In relation to the above, we wish to draw attention to the following points. Supporting references can be provided upon request.
No attempt to measure the harms of lockdown policies
The evidence of disastrous effects of lockdowns on the physical and mental health of the population is there for all to see. The harms are massive, widespread, and long lasting. In particular, the psychological impact on a generation of developing children could be lifelong.
It is for this reason that lockdown policies were never part of any pandemic preparedness plans prior to 2020. In fact, they were expressly not recommended in WHO documents, even for severe respiratory viral pathogens and for that matter neither were border closures, face coverings, and testing of asymptomatic individuals. There has been such an inexplicable absence of consideration of the harms caused by lockdown policy it is difficult to avoid the suspicion that this is willful avoidance.
The introduction of such policies was never accompanied by any sort of risk/benefit analysis. As bad as that is, it is even worse that after the event when plenty of data became available by which the harms could be measured, only perfunctory attention to this aspect of pandemic planning has been afforded. Eminent professionals have repeatedly called for discourse on these health impacts in press-conferences but have been universally ignored.
What is so odd, is that the policies being pursued before mid-March 2020 (self-isolation of the ill and protection of the vulnerable, while otherwise society continued close to normality) were balanced, sensible and reflected the approach established by consensus prior to 2020. No cogent reason was given then for the abrupt change of direction from mid-March 2020 and strikingly none has been put forward at any time since.
Institutional nature of COVID
It was actually clear early on from Italian data that COVID (the disease – as opposed to SARS-Cov-2 infection or exposure) was largely a disease of institutions. Care home residents comprised around half of all deaths, despite making up less than 1% of the population. Hospital infections are the major driver of transmission rates as was the case for both SARS1 and MERS. Transmission was associated with hospital contact in up to 40% of cases in the first wave in Spring 2020 and in 64% in winter 2020/2021.
Severe illness among healthy people below 70 years old did occur (as seen with flu pandemics) but was extremely rare.
Despite this, no early, aggressive and targeted measures were taken to protect care homes; to the contrary, patients were discharged without testing to homes where staff had inadequate PPE, training and information. Many unnecessary deaths were caused as a result.
Preparations for this coming winter, including ensuring sufficient capacity and preventative measures such as ventilation solutions, have not been prioritised.
The exaggerated nature of the threat
Policy appears to have been directed at systematic exaggeration of the number of deaths which can be attributed to COVID. Testing was designed to find every possible ‘case’ rather than focusing on clinically diagnosed infections and the resulting exaggerated case numbers fed through to the death data with large numbers of people dying ‘with COVID’ and not ‘of COVID’ where the disease was the underlying cause of death.
The policy of publishing a daily death figure meant the figure was based entirely on the PCR test result with no input from treating clinicians. By including all deaths within a time period after a positive test, incidental deaths, with but not due to COVID, were not excluded thereby exaggerating the nature of the threat.
Moreover, in headlines reporting the number of deaths, a categorisation by age was not included. The average age of a COVID-labelled death is 81 for men and 84 for women, higher than the average life expectancy when these people were born. This is a highly relevant fact in assessing the societal impact of the pandemic. Death in old age is a natural phenomenon. It cannot be said that a disease primarily affecting the elderly is the same as one which affects all ages, and yet the government’s messaging appears designed to make the public think that everyone is at equal risk.
Doctors were asked to complete death certificates in the knowledge that the deceased’s death had already been recorded as a COVID death by the Government. Since it would be virtually impossible to find evidence categorically ruling out COVID as a contributory factor to death, once recorded as a “COVID death” by the government, it was inevitable that it would be included as a cause on the death certificate. Diagnosing the cause of death is always difficult and the reduction in post mortems will have inevitably resulted in increased inaccuracy. The fact that deaths due to non-COVID causes actually moved into a substantial deficit (compared to average) as COVID-labelled deaths rose (and this was reversed as COVID-labelled deaths fell) is striking evidence of over-attribution of deaths to COVID.
The overall all-cause mortality rate from 2015-2019 was unusually low and yet these figures have been used to compare to 2020 and 2021 mortality figures which has made the increased mortality appear unprecedented. Comparisons with data from earlier years would have demonstrated that the 2020 mortality rate was exceeded in every year prior to 2003 and is unexceptional as a result.
Even now COVID cases and deaths continue to be added to the existing total without proper rigour such that overall totals grow ever larger and exaggerate the threat. No effort has been made to count totals in each winter season separately which is standard practice for every other disease.
You have continued to adopt high-frequency advertising through publishing and broadcast media outlets to add to the impact of “fear messaging”. The cost of this has not been widely published, but government procurement websites reveal it to be immense – hundreds of millions of pounds.
The media and government rhetoric is now moving onto the idea that “Long Covid” is going to cause major morbidity in all age groups including children, without having a discussion of the normality of postviral fatigue which lasts upwards of 6 months. This adds to the public fear of the disease, encouraging vaccination amongst those who are highly unlikely to suffer any adverse effects from COVID.
Active suppression of discussion of early treatment using protocols being successfully deployed elsewhere.
The harm caused by COVID and our response to it should have meant that advances in prophylaxis and therapeutics for COVID were embraced. However, evidence on successful treatments has been ignored or even actively suppressed. For example, a study in Oxford published in February 2021 demonstrated that inhaled Budesonide could reduce hospitalisations by 90% in low risk patients and a publication in April 2021 showed that recovery was faster for high risk patients too. However, this important intervention has not been promoted.
Dr. Tess Lawrie, of the Evidence Based Medical Consultancy in Bath, presented a thorough analysis of the prophylactic and therapeutic benefits of Ivermectin to the government in January 2021. More than 24 randomised trials with 3,400 people have demonstrated a 79-91% reduction in infections and a 27-81% reduction in deaths with Ivermectin.
Many doctors are understandably cautious about possible over-interpretation of the available data for the drugs mentioned above and other treatments, although it is to be noted that no such caution seems to have been applied in relation to the treatment of data around the government’s interventions (eg the effectiveness of lockdowns or masks) when used in support of the government’s agenda.
Whatever one’s view on the merits of these repurposed drugs, it is totally unacceptable that doctors who have attempted to merely open discussion about the potential benefits of early treatments for COVID have been heavily and inexplicably censored. Knowing that early treatments which could reduce the risk of requiring hospitalisation might be available would alter the entire view held by many professionals and lay people alike about the threat posed by COVID, and therefore the risk / benefit ratio for vaccination, especially in younger groups.
Inappropriate and unethical use of behavioural science to generate unwarranted fear.
Propagation of a deliberate fear narrative (confirmed through publicly accessible government documentation) has been disproportionate, harmful and counterproductive. We request that it should cease forthwith.
To give just one example, the government’s face covering policies seem to have been driven by behavioural psychology advice in relation to generating a level of fear necessary for compliance with other policies. Those policies do not appear to have been driven by reason of infection control, because there is no robust evidence showing that wearing a face covering (particularly cloth or standard surgical masks) is effective against transmission of airborne respiratory pathogens such as SARS-Cov-2. Several high profile institutions and individuals are aware of this and have advocated against face coverings during this pandemic only inexplicably to reverse their advice on the basis of no scientific justification of which we are aware. On the other hand there is plenty of evidence suggesting that mask wearing can cause multiple harms, both physical and mental. This has been particularly distressing for the nation’s school children who have been encouraged by government policy and their schools to wear masks for long periods at school.
Finally, the use of face coverings is highly symbolic and thus counterproductive in making people feel safe. Prolonged wearing risks becoming an ingrained safety behaviour, actually preventing people from getting back to normal because they erroneously attribute their safety to the act of mask wearing rather than to the remote risk, for the vast majority of healthy people under 70 years old, of catching the virus and becoming seriously unwell with COVID.
Misunderstanding of the ubiquitous nature of mutations of newly emergent viruses.
The mutation of any novel virus into newer strains – especially when under selection pressure from abnormal restrictions on mixing and vaccination – is normal, unavoidable and not something to be concerned about. Hundreds of thousands of mutations of the original Wuhan strain have already been identified. Chasing down every new emergent variant is counterproductive, harmful and totally unnecessary and there is no convincing evidence that any newly identified variant is any more deadly than the original strain.
Mutant strains appear simultaneously in different countries (by way of ‘convergent evolution’) and the closing of national borders in attempts to prevent variants travelling from one country to another serves no significant infection control purpose and should be abandoned.
Misunderstanding of asymptomatic spread and its use to promote public compliance with restrictions.
It is well-established that asymptomatic spread has never been a major driver of a respiratory disease pandemic and we object to your constant messaging implying this, which should cease forthwith. Never before have we perverted the centuries-old practice of isolating the ill by instead isolating the healthy. Repeated mandates to healthy, asymptomatic people to self-isolate, especially school children, serves no useful purpose and has only contributed to the widespread harms of such policies. In the vast majority of cases healthy people are healthy and cannot transmit the virus and only sick people with symptoms should be isolated.
The government’s claim that one in three people could have the virus has been shown to be mutually inconsistent with the ONS data on prevalence of disease in society, and the sole effect of this messaging appears to have been to generate fear and promote compliance with government restrictions. The government’s messaging to ‘act as if you have the virus’ has also been unnecessarily fear-inducing given that healthy people are extremely unlikely to transmit the virus to others.
The PCR test, widely used to determine the existence of ‘cases’, is now indisputably acknowledged to be unable reliably to detect infectiousness. The test cannot discriminate between those in whom the presence of fragments of genetic material partially matching the virus is either incidental (perhaps because of past infection), or is representative of active infection, or is indicative of infectiousness. Yet, it has been used almost universally without qualification or clinical diagnosis to justify lockdown policies and to quarantine millions of people needlessly at enormous cost to health and well-being and to the country’s economy.
Countries that have removed community restrictions have seen no negative consequences which can be attributed to the easing. Empirical data from many countries demonstrates that the rise and fall in infections is seasonal and not due to restrictions or face coverings. The reason for reduced impact of each successive wave is that: (1) most people have some level of immunity either through prior immunity or immunity acquired through exposure; (2) as is usual with emergent new viruses, mutation of the virus towards strains causing milder disease appears to have occurred. Vaccination may also contribute to this although its durability and level of protection against variants is unclear.
The government appears to be talking of “learning to live with COVID” while apparently practicing by stealth a “zero COVID” strategy which is futile and ultimately net-harmful.
Mass testing of healthy children
Repeated testing of children to find asymptomatic cases who are unlikely to spread virus, and treating them like some sort of biohazard is harmful, serves no public health purpose and must stop.
During Easter term, an amount equivalent to the cost of building one District General Hospital was spent weekly on testing schoolchildren to find a few thousand positive ‘cases’, none of which was serious as far as we are aware.
Lockdowns are in fact a far greater contributor to child health problems, with record levels of mental illness and soaring levels of non-COVID infections being seen, which some experts consider to be a result of distancing resulting in deconditioning of the immune system.
Vaccination of the entire adult population should never have been a prerequisite for ending restrictions.
Based merely on early “promising” vaccine data, it is clear that the Government decided in summer 2020 to pursue a policy of viral suppression within the entire population until vaccination was available (which was initially stated to be for the vulnerable only, then later changed – without proper debate or rigorous analysis – to the entire adult population).
This decision was taken despite massive harms consequent to continued lockdowns which were either known to you or ought to have been ascertained so as to be considered in the decision making process.
Moreover, a number of principles of good medical practice and previously unimpeachable ethical standards have been breached in relation to the vaccination campaign, meaning that in most cases, whether the consent obtained can be truly regarded as “fully informed” must be in serious doubt:
The use of coercion supported by an unprecedented media campaign to persuade the public to be vaccinated, including threats of discrimination, either supported by the law or encouraged socially, for example in co-operation with social media platforms and dating apps.
The omission of information permitting individuals to make a fully informed choice, especially in relation to the experimental nature of the vaccine agents, extremely low background COVID risk for most people, known occurrence of short-term side-effects and unknown long-term effects.
Finally, we note that the Government is seriously considering the possibility that these vaccines – which have no associated long-term safety data – could be administered to children on the basis that this might provide some degree of protection to adults. We find that notion an appalling and unethical inversion of the long-accepted duty falling on adults to protect children.
Over-reliance on modeling while ignoring real-world data
Throughout the pandemic, decisions seem to have been taken utilising unvalidated models produced by groups who have what can only be described as a woeful track record, massively overestimating the impact of several previous pandemics.
The decision-making teams appear to have very little clinical input and, as far as is ascertainable, no clinical immunology expertise.
Moreover, the assumptions underlying the modeling have never been adjusted to take into account real-world observations in the UK and other countries.
It is an astonishing admission that, when asked whether collateral harms had been considered by SAGE, the answer given was that it was not in their remit – they were simply asked to minimise COVID impact. That might be forgivable if some other advisory group was constantly studying the harms side of the ledger, yet this seems not to have been the case.
Conclusions
The UK’s approach to COVID has palpably failed. In the apparent desire to protect one vulnerable group – the elderly – the implemented policies have caused widespread collateral and disproportionate harm to many other vulnerable groups, especially children. Moreover your policies have failed in any event to prevent the UK from notching up one of the highest reported death rates from COVID in the world.
Now, despite very high vaccination rates and the currently very low COVID death and hospitalisation rates, policy continues to be aimed at maintaining a population handicapped by extreme fear with restrictions on everyday life prolonging and deepening the policy-derived harms. To give just one example, NHS waiting lists now stand at 5.1m officially, with – according to the previous Health Secretary – a likely further 7m who will require treatment not yet presented. This is unacceptable and must be addressed urgently.
In short, there needs to be a sea change within the Government which must now pay proper attention to those esteemed experts outside its inner circle who are sounding these alarms. As those involved with healthcare, we are committed to our oath to “first do no harm”, and we can no longer stand by in silence observing policies which have imposed a series of supposed “cures” which are in fact far worse than the disease they are supposed to address.
The signatories of this letter call on you, in Government, without further delay to widen the debate over policy, consult openly with groups of scientists, doctors, psychologists and others who share crucial, scientifically-valid and evidence-based alternative views and to do everything in your power to return the country as rapidly as possible to normality with the minimum of further damage to society.
Yours sincerely,
Dr Jonathan Engler, MB ChB LLB (Hons) DipPharmMed
Professor John A Fairclough, BM BS B Med Sci FRCS FFSEM, Consultant Surgeon, ran vaccination program for a Polio Outbreak, Past President BOSTA, for Orthopaedic Surgeons, Faculty member FFSEM
Mr Tony Hinton, MB ChB, FRCS, FRCS(Oto), Consultant Surgeon
Dr Renee Hoenderkamp, BSc (Hons) MBBS MRCGP, General Practitioner
Dr Ros Jones, MBBS, MD, FRCPCH, retired consultant paediatrician
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Featured image: Prime Minister Boris Johnson during a press conference on 16 March, with Chief Medical Officer Prof Chris Witty and Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Patrick Vallance. Picture by Andrew Parsons
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Truth for Health Foundation – Stop the Shot Continuation – Press Conference outlining Fertility Problems resulting from the COVID-19 Vaccines.
The conference featured leading physicians and scientists presenting to the public the potentially catastrophic threats to fertility (male and female) and pregnancy with the experimental COVID shots. Specialists included Dr. Peter McCullough, Dr. Mike Yeadon, Dr. Roger Hodkinson (Pathologist), Dr. Raphael Stricker (Reproductive Immunology), and Dr. Richard Blumrick (Maternal Fetal Medicine).
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The FDA can only grant emergency use authorization for a pandemic drug or vaccine if there’s no safe and effective preexisting treatment or alternative. Since there are several such alternatives, the FDA is legally required to revoke the emergency authorization for these shots
While the COVID injections have been characterized as being somewhere around 95% effective against SARS-CoV-2 infection, this is the relative risk reduction, which tells you very little about its usefulness. The absolute risk reduction is only around 1% for all currently available COVID shots
Antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) refers to a condition where the vaccination augments your risk of serious infection. We are now starting to see evidence that ADE is occurring in the vaccinated population
One of the most common side effects of the COVID shots is abnormal blood clotting, which can result in strokes and heart attacks
Even microclots that don’t completely block the blood vessel can have serious ramifications. You can check for presence of microclots by performing a D-dimer blood test. If your D-dimer is elevated, you have clotting somewhere in your body
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In this interview, German microbiologist Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi sifts through the facts and fictions of the coronavirus pandemic. Together with Karina Reiss, Ph.D., he’s written two books on this subject, starting with “Corona False Alarm? Facts and Figures,” published in October 2020, followed by “Corona Unmasked: New Facts and Figures.”
Bhakdi graduated from medical school in Germany in 1970. After a year of clinical work, he joined the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology, where he remained for four years as a post-doc.
There, he also began researching immunology. Eventually, he ended up chairing the department of medical, microbiology and hygiene at the University of Mainz, where he worked for 22 years until his retirement nine years ago. During that time, Bhakdi also worked on vaccine development, and says he’s “certainly pro-vax with regards to the vaccinations that work and that are meaningful.”
Much of his research focused on what’s called the complement system. When activated, the complement system ends up working in such a way that it destroys rather than aids your cells. Interestingly enough, SARS-CoV-2 uses this very system to its advantage, turning your immune system toward a path of self-destruction.
The same self-destructive path also appears to be activated by the COVID shots, which is part of why Bhakdi believes they are the greatest threat humanity has ever faced. “It is our duty to aggressively inform people about the dangers that they are subjecting themselves and their loved ones to by this ‘vaccination,’” he says.
How Effective Are the COVID Shots?
While the COVID injections have been characterized as being somewhere around 95% effective against SARS-CoV-2 infection, this claim is the product of statistical obfuscation. In short, they’ve conflated relative risk reduction and absolute risk reduction. The absolute risk reduction is actually right around 1% for all currently available COVID shots.1
In “Outcome Reporting Bias in COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Clinical Trials”2 Ron Brown, Ph.D. calculates the absolute risk reduction for Pfizer’s and Moderna’s injections, based on their own clinical trial data, so that they can be compared to the relative risk reduction reported by these companies. Here’s a summary of his findings:
In a July 1, 2021, commentary in The Lancet Microbe,3 Piero Olliaro, Els Torreele and Michel Vaillant also argue for the use of absolute risk reduction when discussing vaccine efficacy with the public. They too went through the calculations, coming up with the following:
What Kind of Protection Do the COVID Shots Provide?
Aside from providing insignificant protection in terms of your absolute risk reduction, it’s important to realize that they do not provide immunity. All they can do is reduce the severity of the symptoms of infection. According to Bhakdi, they fail even at this.
“They showed absolutely zero [benefit in the clinical trials],” he says. “This is the ridiculousness. People don’t understand that they’re being fooled and have been fooled all along. Let’s take the one of these Pfizer trials: 20,000 healthy people were vaccinated and another 20,000 people were not vaccinated.
And then they observed, over a period of 12 weeks or so, how many cases they found in the vaccinated group and how many cases they found the non-vaccinated. What they found was that less than 1% of the vaccinated group got COVID-19 and less than 1% in the non-vaccinated group also got COVID-19.
The difference was 0.8 to 0.1%, which is nothing, considering the fact that they were not even looking at severe cases. They were looking at people with a positive PCR test — which as we all now know is worthless — plus one symptom, which could be cough or fever.
That is not a severe case of COVID-19. Any vaccination that is going to get authorized must be shown to protect against severe illness and death, and this has definitely not been shown. So, forget authorization. It can’t be authorized, not by any normal means.
Now [the COVID injections do not have] full authorization, it’s an emergency authorization, which again is absolute bullshit, since we know the infection fatality rate of this disease or virus is not greater than that of seasonal flu. John Ioannidis has published these numbers, which have never been contested by anyone in the world and cannot be contested.
If you are under 70 years of age and have no severe preexisting illness, you can hardly die [from SARS-CoV-2 infection]. So, there is no fatality rate that can be reduced.
And for people who are elderly and have preexisting illness, as we know from Dr. Peter McCullough and his colleagues’ work, there are very good means and medicines to treat this virus so that the fatality rates go down another 70 to 80%, which means there is no ground for emergency use whatsoever.
This means the FDA should be able to be forced to retract this emergency use authorization — unless they are in league with whoever wants to do this.”
I neglected to follow-up on his comment about 40,000 people being equally divided between the injection and no injection groups in the COVID injection trials. A few months ago, they actually abandoned the non-injection arm of the trial, so no there is no control group anymore.
The justification was that the injection was too important to deny it to the control group. It’s just another sneaky way to skirt around reporting all the adverse effects occurring in the injection group.
That said, it’s worth repeating that the FDA can only grant emergency use authorization for a pandemic drug or vaccine if there’s no safe and effective preexisting treatment or alternative. Since there are several such alternatives, the FDA is legally required to revoke the emergency authorization for these shots.
Evidence of Increased Infection Risk After Injection
Presently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention claims some 95% of SARS-CoV-2 infections resulting in hospitalization are occurring among the unvaccinated. This too is a statistical fiction, as they’re using data from January through June 2021, when most of the American public were unvaccinated.
Looking at more recent data, we’re finding that the majority of severe cases and hospitalizations are actually occurring among those that received the COVID jab. Unfortunately, as noted by Bhakdi:
“It’s all manipulated. And, if someone wants to manipulate something and are in a position to then propagate it, you have no chance of analyzing it and telling people because we have no voice in this affair. When we stand up and tell people this, they just turn around and say that’s not the truth.”
Disturbingly, we’re now starting to see the first indications of antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE), which many scientists were concerned about from the very beginning. India, for example, where 10% of the population has been “vaccinated,” is now seeing very severe cases of COVID-19. Bhakdi says:
“What we’re witnessing in India and probably also in Israel is the immune dependent enhancement of disease … It’s bound to happen. So, the people who are getting vaccinated now have to be fearful of the next wave of genuine infections, whether it’s [SARS-CoV-2 variants] or any other coronaviruses, because they’re all related and they will all be subject to immune dependent enhancement, obviously.”
Antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE), or paradoxical immune enhancement (PIE) refers to a condition where the vaccination results in the complete opposite of what you’re looking for. Rather than protect against the infection, the vaccine augments and worsens the infection.
ADE can occur through more than one mechanism, and Bhakdi is of the opinion that the enhancement is primarily due to over-reactive killer lymphocytes and secondary complement activation, both of which cause severe damage.
Antibodies Versus Lymphocytes
Bhakdi explains:
“There are two major arms of defense against viral infection. One is the antibodies that, if they are present, may prevent the virus from entering your cells. These are so-called neutralizing antibodies, which the vaccination is supposed to [produce].
But the antibodies are not at the place that they are needed, which is on the surface of the airway epithelium. They are in the blood, but not at the surface of the epithelium where the virus arrives. The second arm of immune defense then comes into play, and these are the lymphocytes.
There are different types of lymphocytes and I will simplify matters by saying the important lymphocytes are the so-called killer lymphocytes that sense whenever a virus product is being produced in the cell. They will then destroy the cells that harbor the virus and thus the factory is closed and you get well again.
That is the mechanism for how we can survive viral infections of the lung, and this happens all the time. So, the lymphocytes, in contrast to the antibodies, recognize many, many, many parts of the proteins. So, if a virus changes a little bit, it doesn’t matter, because the waste products that are recognized by the killer lymphocytes remain very similar.
That is why all of us, and this is now known, all of us have memory lymphocytes in our lymph nodes and lymphoid organs that are trained to recognize these coronaviruses. And whether or not a mutant is there, it doesn’t really matter, because they will recognize a mutant or variant.”
According to Bhakdi, coronaviruses can only undergo point mutations, meaning only one nucleotide at a time can be changed. The influenza virus, meanwhile, can undergo more radical mutations. For example, a flu virus can completely change its spike protein by swapping spike proteins with another virus that is simultaneously present.
This sort of shift is not possible with coronaviruses. Therefore, you will never have leaps in antigenic changes either for antibodies or for T-cell killer lymphocytes. That’s why the background immunity that evolves during the lifetime of a human being is very broad and solid.
Natural Immunity Is Far Superior to Vaccine-Induced Immunity
One of the most egregious nullifications of medical scientific truth is the claim that COVID “vaccination” confers superior protection compared than the natural immunity you get after you’ve been exposed to the virus and recover. The reality is that natural immunity is infinitely more superior to the vaccine-induced protection you get from these shots, which is both narrow and temporary.
The COVID shot produces antibodies against just one of the viral proteins, the spike protein, whereas natural immunity produces antibodies against all parts of the virus, plus memory T cells. As noted by Bhakdi:
“The very fact that the World Health Organization has changed the definition of herd immunity … is such a scandal. I’m at a loss of words to describe how ridiculous I find this all, that this is being accepted by our colleagues. How can the physicians and scientists of the world bear to listen to all this nonsense?”
How the COVID Shot Causes Damage
As explained by Bhakdi, when you get a COVID shot, genetic instructions are being injected into your deltoid muscle. Muscle drains into your lymph nodes, which in turn can enter your bloodstream. There may also be direct translocation from the muscle into smaller blood vessels.
Animal data submitted by Pfizer to Japanese authorities show the mRNA appeared within the blood within one or two hours of injection. The rapidity of it suggests the nano particles are translocated from the muscle directly into the blood, bypassing the lymph nodes.
Once inside your bloodstream, the genetic instructions are delivered to the cells available, namely your endothelial cells. These are the cells that line your blood vessels. These cells then start producing spike protein, as per the mRNA instructions. As the name implies, the spike protein looks like a sharp spike protruding from the cell wall, into the bloodstream.
Since they are not supposed to be there, your killer lymphocytes rush to the area, thinking the cells are infected. The killer lymphocytes attack the cells, which causes damage to the cell wall. This damage, in turn, provokes clot formation. We’re now seeing evidence that COVID shots are causing all manner of clotting issues, from microsized clots to massive clots stretching a foot or more in length.
Of course, when a large enough clot occurs in the heart, you end up with a heart attack. In the brain, you end up with stroke. But even microclots that don’t completely block the blood vessel can have serious ramifications. You can check for presence of microclots by performing a D-dimer blood test. If your D-dimer is elevated, you have clotting somewhere in your body.
How Vaccine-Induced Antibodies Can Cause Harm
But that’s not all. The anti-spike protein antibodies can also be harmful. Bhakdi explains:
“The other thing that has now emerged is just as frightening [as the clotting problem]. One to two weeks after the first jab, you start making antibodies in large amounts.
Now, when the second jab is done, and the spike proteins starts to project from the walls of your vessels into your bloodstream, it is not only met by the killer lymphocytes, but now the antibodies are also there and the antibodies activate [the] complement [system].
That was my first field of research. The first cascade system is the clotting system. Turn it on and the blood will clot. If you turn on the complement system with the antibodies that bind to your vessel wall, then this complement system will start creating holes in the vessel wall.
And you see these patients who have bleeding in the skin. Ask, where does that come from? Well, if you go around riddling your vessels with holes, you [get bleeding]. If the holes riddle vessels of the liver, or the pancreas or the brain, then the blood will seep through the vessels into the tissues …
[The COVID injections] are in your bloodstream for at least a week, and they will seep into any organ. And when those [organ] cells then start to make the spike protein themselves, then the killer lymphocytes will also seek and destroy them [in that organ, creating more damage and subsequent clotting].
What we are witnessing is one of the most fascinating experiments that could lead to massive autoimmune disease. When this will happen, God knows. And what this will lead to, God knows.”
COVID Jab May Trigger Latent Viruses and Cancer
The COVID jabs can also decimate your lymph nodes, as your lymph nodes are full of lymphocytes and other immune cells. Some of the lymphocytes will die immediately upon contact, causing inflammation.
Cells that don’t die and take up the mRNA and start producing spike protein will be recognized as virus producers and get attacked by the complement system. It essentially creates a war between some immune cells against other immune cells. As a result of this attack, your lymph nodes swell and become painful.
This is a serious problem, as the lymphocytes in your lymph nodes are lifelong sentinels that keep latent infection such as shingles under control. When they malfunction or are destroyed, these latent viruses can activate. This is why we’re seeing reports of shingles, lupus, herpes, Epstein-Barr, tuberculosis and other infections emerge as a side effect of the shots. Of course, certain cancers can also be affected.
“As we all know, tumors are forming every day in our bodies, but those tumor cells are recognized by our lymphocytes and then they’re snuffed out,” Bhakdi says. “So, I am worried sick that the world is being goaded into taking something into the body that is going to change the whole face of medicine.”
Informed Consent Is Virtually Impossible
After giving this issue a great deal of thought, Bhakdi is convinced that the COVID injection campaign must be stopped.
“Gene-based vaccines are an absolute danger to mankind and their use at present violates the Nuremberg codex, such that everyone who is propagating their use should be put before tribunal,” Bhakdi says.
“Especially the vaccination of children is something that is so criminal that I have no words to express my horror … We are horribly worried that there’s going to be an impact on fertility. And this will be seen in years or decades from now. And this is potentially one of the greatest crimes, simply one of the greatest crimes imaginable …
As we all know, it is laid down by the Nuremberg codex that in case experiments are to be conducted in humans, this can only be performed with informed consent.
Informed consent means that the person to be vaccinated has to be informed about all the risks, the risk benefit ratios, the potential dangers and what is known about side effects. This cannot be done with children, because children are not in the position to understand it.
Therefore, they cannot give informed consent. Therefore, they cannot be vaccinated. If anyone does that, he should be set before a tribunal. If grownups have been informed and want to get the shot, that’s all right. But don’t force anyone to get the shot. It has to be by informed consent only.”
Of course, informed consent is also virtually impossible even for adults, as they’re only given one side of the story. All side effects and risks are censored virtually everywhere and discussions about them are banned. The U.S. government is even pushing to criminalize discussion about COVID injection risks.
Where Do We Go From Here?
If you’ve already gotten one or two shots, there’s nothing you can do about that. Certainly, do not get a booster, as each booster is undoubtedly going to magnify the damage.
“In the end, I predict that we’re going to see mass illnesses and deaths among people who normally would have wonderful lives ahead of them,” Bhakdi says. The question on people’s minds is, can anything be done to reverse the damage from these shots? As yet, we do not know.
However, if you have received one or more shots and develop symptoms of an infection, Bhakdi recommends treatment with hydroxychloroquine and/or ivermectin, such as the Zelenko protocol,4and the MATH+ protocols,5 which have proven their effectiveness. It’s important to realize you may actually be more prone to serious infection, not less.
Nebulized hydrogen peroxide can also be used for prevention and treatment of COVID-19, as detailed in Dr. David Brownstein’s case paper6 and Dr. Thomas Levy’s free e-book, “Rapid Virus Recovery.” Whichever treatment protocol you use, make sure you begin treatment as soon as possible, ideally at first onset of symptoms.
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The firm, BlackRock Inc., the world’s largest asset manager, invests a staggering $9 trillion in client funds worldwide, a sum more than double the annual GDP of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Let us be under no illusions, it’s not only “experimental”, it’s a Big Pharma “killer vaccine” which modifies the human genome. The evidence of mortality and morbidity resulting from vaccine inoculation both present (official data) and future (e.g. undetected microscopic blood clots) is overwhelming.
The pathogenic or even deadly composition of this vaccine, which will also contain Nano-chips to control humanity, has certainly already been mixed in the world’s secret laboratories.
Now those who are fully vaccinated are being told they will likely need a booster shot a few months down the road. Because if two shots didn’t work, the third one will? And so on and so forth.
Scientists opposed to offering booster shots to all Americans said data provided by federal health officials wasn’t compelling enough to support the recommendation — some argued boosters could lead to more vaccine-resistant variants.
In February 2021, a World Health Organization (WHO) 4-week mission to China to study the covid plandemic’s origins, came to the conclusion that it was unlikely the virus had escaped from the Wuhan viral research laboratory, or from any other Chinese laboratory, for that matter.
Potential routes exist along the Wakhan Corridor and via Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, but it is Pakistani access to Kabul that looks the better option – as long as the Taliban can provide stability, develop Afghan society, and refrain from regional aggression.
CNN talking heads and NY Times op-ed writers have not adopted this talking point by accident; through a carefully engineered rhetorical sleight of hand, they have subtly introduced the concept that the actual unvaccinated people – and not the virus itself – are the source of ongoing suffering.
One of the key players in the anti-Soviet, U.S.-led regime change project against Afghanistan was Osama bin Laden, a Saudi-born millionaire who came from a wealthy, powerful family that owns a Saudi construction company and has had close ties to the Saudi royal family.
For apocalyptic disaster films, they don’t get much more up close and personal (and apocalyptic) than the film Greenland (2020). Set in contemporary times, the story revolves around the news that an interstellar comet named Clarke is heading for Earth, and that it was made up of fragments of rock and ice big enough to wipe out modern civilization.
This historic interview with President Carter’s National Security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski confirms that the so-called “Soviet-Afghan war” was triggered and initiated not by the Soviet Union but by the United States.
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).
In a report on COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness released yesterday, Dr. Geoff MitchellMD, JD determined the shots “neither safe nor effective,” and concluded “the best data tells us that the COVID-19 vaccines are failing.”
According to that data, says Dr. Mitchell,
“Countries with active vaccination programs have more COVID deaths than those who do not.” Moreover, “Countries with a higher percentage of their population vaccinated have more COVID deaths,” and “COVID deaths have increased with vaccination after vaccination programs were implemented.”
“The culmination of sixteen months of Africa study is that HCQ and IVM are both about 70% effective in reducing death,” he noted, “but Artemisinin and atovaquone-proguanil are (inadvertently) 95% effective in reducing COVID death. Artemisinin is reportedly intentionally used in four countries to treat COVID. The most well-known of artemisinin-treating country is Madagascar which has a 954 COVID deaths, a rate of 35 dpm. This is 2% of the U.S. rate.”
Dr. Mitchell wrote:
“Among the 104 countries which offer no demonstrable COVID vaccination programs, on 08/16/21, their COVID fatality rates averaged an unexpectedly lower 690 deaths per million.”
However, “Among the 82 countries which offer vaccination programs, on 08/16/21, their COVID fatality rates averaged 828 deaths per million which is counterintuitively higher than the COVID fatality rate for unvaccinated countries.
“In the 82 countries which offer vaccination programs, not only was the average COVID fatality rate greater than in unvaccinated countries, but the number of deaths increased as the number or percentage of residents vaccinated increased.”
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In the mirror-world which is the Julian Assange case, justice is neither transparent nor impartial. And it is certainly not swift.
Assange is now in his third year of detention in Belmarsh High Security prison. He has not been convicted of anything. His case has not yet staggered from the Magistrate’s Court, the lowest court in the land, to the Appeal Court. It has never and will never appear before a jury.
Last week two High Court judges, in a hearing about what will be allowed to be appealed by the United States government when the full appeal is heard on October 27-28 , decided that the previous High Court judge and the magistrate in the Magistrate’s Court were wrong to rule that the US could not raise, once again, questions about Assange’s mental condition and assurances that the US prison system is really a health spa in which Assange will be under no risk of suicide.
No doubt if they are denied a success at appeal the US will find more ways to keep Assange under lock and key in what is now amounting to punishment by process. Indeed, some years ago the right-wing US think tank Stratfor recommended exactly this tactic to the government in the Assange case.
This is an effective denial of Habeas Corpus, the legal principle that citizens cannot be imprisoned without trial for long periods. It is a process which is an abuse of the law.
If Assange were ever to be extradited, far worse than this would follow: lengthy pre-trial detention in a system designated as “oppressive” by the judge at Westminster Magistrate’s Court whose ruling against extradition is being appealed on October 27-28. And then a possible 175-year sentence if he is found guilty.
And for what? Telling the truth about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. So there is a deep irony that this prosecution is taking place across the same time period that the US lost control of Afghanistan and was forced to withdraw in the face of revitalised Taliban.
If only the justice system in London could hear the Assange case with the same speed that the Taliban took Kabul.
But for now all eyes must be focused on the appeal at the High Court at the end of October. Public pressure is the only thing that can end the deliberate, punitive incarceration of Assange. The entire labour movement and progressive left must rise to the occasion. This is, when all is said and done, the most important press freedom case of the 21st century.
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John Rees is a national officer of the Stop the War Coalition, an academic and writer — Twitter @JohnWRees.
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The official reason provided by the Pentagon was that the Somali National Army needed air support in its operations to counter al-Shabaab. But the actual reason was that Somalia is geo-strategically important to US empire.
Successive US administrations have cycled through a myriad of excuses to either bomb the country or to arm its dictators: Cold War politics, “humanitarian intervention,” anti-piracy, and more recently counterterrorism.
As we shall see, in the mid-2000s, a fragile coalition of soft and hard Islamists – explicitly not allied to al-Qaeda at the time – brought some measure of peace to the areas of Somalia it controlled. With help from Britain and neighboring Ethiopia, the US smashed the coalition and pushed more right-wing elements like al-Shabaab over the edge into militancy.
And of course, the global superpower bombing one of the poorest countries on Earth in the name of national security is not terrorism.
Let’s take a look at the broader context and specific chronology.
A US imperial bulwark is born in Africa
The Pentagon has divided the world into self-appointed Areas of Responsibility (AORs). The Southern Command deems itself “responsible” for operations in Central and South America, regardless of what the people of the region think.
The Central Command (CENTCOM) covers much of the Middle East and Central Asia: the key intersections of energy fields and pipelines that enable the US to influence the global economy at the expense of competitors, notably Russia and China.
The Africa Command (AFRICOM) was founded in 2007 by the George W. Bush administration and is based in Stuttgart, Germany. President Barack Obama vastly expanded its operations.
AFRICOM’s current AOR covers 53 of the continent’s 54 states, with Egypt in the northeast already under the AOR of CENTCOM due to its strategic value (more below).
AFRICOM recently bragged about how it helped coordinate with Somali “partners,” meaning elements of the regime imposed on the country by the West, to organize the Biden-led bombing of al-Shabaab.
AFRICOM says: “The command’s initial assessment is that no civilians were injured or killed given the remote nature of where this engagement occurred.” But who knows?
US commanders operating in the African theater have tended to dismiss the notion that civilian deaths should be tallied at all. In 1995, for example, the US wound down its “assistance” to the UN mission in Somalia, but ended up in a shooting war in which several Somalis died.
The US commander, Lt. Gen. Anthony Zinni, said at the time, “I’m not counting bodies… I’m not interested.”
Somalia’s geopolitical importance to US empire
In the Africa-Middle East regions, three seas are of strategic importance to the big powers: the Mediterranean, the Red Sea (connected by Egypt’s Suez Canal), and the Gulf of Aden, which is shared by Somalia in Africa and Yemen in the Middle East.
Through these seas and routes travel the shipping containers of the world, carrying oil, gas, and consumer products. They are essential for the strategic deployment of troops and naval destroyers.
Somalia was occupied by Britain and Italy during the “Scramble for Africa,” the continent-wide resource-grab by Western colonial powers that began in the late-19. Ethiopia continues to occupy Somalia’s Ogaden region.
A 1950s’ British Colonial Office report described the Gulf of Aden as “an important base from which naval, military and air forces can protect British interests in the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula.” “British” interests, like “US” interests today, means elite interests.
A George W. Bush-era report by the US Army War College notes that, “Even before the Suez Canal came into being, the [Red] Sea had been of importance as an international waterway. It served as a bridge between the richest areas of Europe and the Far East.” The report emphasizes that the “geopolitical position of the Red Sea is of a special importance.”
AFRICOM was founded with a grand imperial ambition: to make the four of the five countries on Africa’s Red Sea coast – Djibouti, Eritrea, Somalia, and Sudan – comply with US elite interests, and to keep the Sea, Gulf of Aden, and Suez Canal open for business and strategic deployment.
As noted before, CENTCOM covers Egypt. During the Arab Spring a decade ago, US strategists feared, like their British predecessors, that losing the Suez Canal to a democratic government in Egypt “would damage U.S. capabilities to mobilize forces to contain Iran and would weaken the overall U.S. defense strategy in the Middle East,” home of much of the world’s accessible oil.
International interference drives Somalia’s civil conflict
Somalia declared independence in 1960. Its British and Italian areas merged into a single nation led by President Aden Abdullah Osman and Prime Minister Abdirashid Ali Shermarke, who later became president. Most political parties merged with the Somali Youth League to create a de facto single-party state.
Backed by the West, Ethiopia blocked Somalia’s diplomatic efforts to reclaim the Ogaden region. As president, Abdirashid took millions of dollars in Soviet military assistance and was subsequently assassinated by one “Said Orfano,” a young police-trained man posing as a cop and erroneously referred to in contemporary sources as a “bodyguard.”
Major General Siad Barre took over in 1969 and ruled until his overthrow in 1991. An early-1970s CIA intelligence memo refers to Russian-Somali relations as “largely a liaison of convenience,” marred by “mutual” “distrust.”
After Barre’s failed war with Ethiopia over Ogaden and his explicit rejection of Soviet money and ideology, the US saw him as a client. In 1977, senior US policymakers highlighted Somalia’s “break with the Soviets.” From then until 1989, the US gave nearly $600 million in military aid to Barre’s regime to nudge it further from the Soviet sphere of influence.
The Barre regime used the newly augmented military – from 3,000 to 120,000 personnel – to crush the rival Somali National Movement, killing tens of thousands of civilians and driving a million people from their homes.
But the coalition that deposed Barre in 1991 fell apart and the rival factions fought a civil war that triggered famine and killed an additional 300,000 people within the first couple of years.
The United Nations intervened to deliver food to civilians. The US saw the move as an opportunity to test the new doctrine of “humanitarian intervention” in the form of Operation Restore Hope. President George H.W. Bush said that the objective was to “save thousands of innocents from death.”
But a master’s thesis by Major Vance J. Nannini of the US Army’s Fort Leavenworth provides a version of events much closer to the truth: “Throughout our involvement with Somalia, our overriding strategic objective was simply to acquire and maintain the capability to respond to any military contingency that could threaten U.S. interests in the Middle East, Northeast Africa and the Red Sea area.”
Restore Hope ended in a fiasco for the US, exemplified by the famous Black Hawk Down incident, and thousands of Somali deaths – “I’m not counting bodies,” as Commander Zinni said of a later mission.
A convenient target in the “war on terror”
In Djibouti in 1999, a Transitional National Government (TNG) was formed in exile and came to power in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, in 2001.
At the same time, a broad umbrella of Sufis and Salafists – the “left” and “right” of Islam – known as the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) was gaining political and territorial ground.
The TNG collapsed in 2004 and was replaced with a Transitional Federal Government founded in Kenya and backed by the Ethiopian proxy Abdullahi Yusuf, a man harbored by Britain and even given a liver transplant in the UK. (The liver allegedly came from an Irish Republican Army member. “Now I am a real killer,” joked Abdullahi.)
Abdullahi was found liable for damages in a UK court over the killing of a British citizen in Somalia in 2002 by his bodyguards.
Under the post-9/11 rubric of fighting a “war on terror,” the CIA added to the chaos throughout the period by covertly funding non-Islamist “warlords,” including those the US previously fought in the 1990s. The aim was to kill and capture ICU members and other Islamists.
In addition, the Pentagon’s secretive Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) engaged in covert operations. Estimates of the number of JSOC personnel on the ground in Somalia range from three to 100.
US Special Forces set up a network of operations and surveillance in the country, supposedly to counter al-Qaeda.
In 2003, for instance, US agents kidnapped an innocent man, Suleiman Abdullah Salim, from a Mogadishu hospital. Claiming that he was an “al-Qaeda” operative, the US had Suleiman tortured at a number of “rendition” sites before releasing him. (The operatives who grabbed him were tipped off by the “warlord” Mohammed Dheere, who was paid by the CIA.)
But one of the Arabic meanings of “al-Qaeda” is “the database,” referring to the computer file with information on the tens of thousands of mujahideen and their acolytes trained, armed, organized, and funded by the US and Britain throughout the 1980s to fight the Soviets (Operation Cyclone).
There are more direct links between the US and al-Shabaab. In his younger days, ICU secretary and later al-Shabaab leader Ahmed Abdi Godane joined the only major terrorist group in Somalia in the 1990s, Al-Itihaad al-Islamiya (AIAI, “Islamic Union”). The AIAI fighters trained with “al-Qaeda” in Afghanistan in the 1980s, when the US and Britain were training “al-Qaeda.” (See citation no. 7.)
Killing Somalia’s hope
By the mid-2000s, with the rise of the ICU, the hope of stability came to Somalia – but it was not to last. In 2003, the US Combined Joint Tasks Force Horn of Africa initiated training of Ethiopia’s military in tactics, logistics, and maintenance. The US backing later came in handy fighting the ICU.
The ICU was rapidly and widely painted as an extremist organization. However, a Congressional Research Service (CRS) report notes that it was “well received by the people in the areas the Courts controlled,” particularly as it provided social services.
Western propaganda spun the ICU’s shutting down of cinemas as proof of its Islamo-fascism. But the CRS report says that such measures were undertaken at the request of parents because children were skipping school, “not because of the Courts’ alleged jihadist and extremist ideology… There is no evidence to support the allegation that women were prohibited from working.”
As Western vessels continue to deplete starving Somalia’s fish stocks to sell to comparatively privileged consumers, propaganda denounces Somali “piracy” against Euro-American ships. However, a report by the Royal Institute for International Affairs (the British think tank also known as Chatham House), says: “The only period during which piracy virtually vanished around Somalia was during the six months of rule by the Islamic Courts Union in the second half of 2006.”
A World Bank report from 2006 notes that the ICU “brought a measure of law and order to the large areas of South-Central Somalia” it controlled. The US State Department, meanwhile, was hosting an international conference in a bid to remove the ICU and bolster the Transitional Federal Government (TFG).
With US and British training, including logistical support, Ethiopia invaded Somalia in late-2006 to install Abdullahi as President of the TFG.
The US and Britain worked hard to set up a new regime in a war so brutal that over 1 million people fled their homes. In addition, tens of thousands crossed the Gulf of Aden to Yemen in hazardous small boats sailed by traffickers. Hundreds of thousands ended up in dire refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya, where women and girls were raped.
A US- and UK-backed regime terrorizes Somalia’s people
The Transitional Federal Government terrorized the Somali population. One of the few British journalists to report on this at the time, the Kenya-born Aidan Hartley, wrote: “several Somali leaders who have been linked to allegations of war crimes against countless civilians are living double lives in Britain.”
General Mohamed Darwish, head of the TFG’s National Security Agency, was “given British citizenship, state benefits and a subsidised home.”
The taxpayer-funded privatization unit the Department for International Development (DFID, now part of the Foreign Office) paid TFG politicians’ salaries, as well as buying police radios and vehicles.
Human Rights Watch says that the Commissioner of the Somali Police Force, Brig. Gen. Abdi Hasan Awale Qaybdib, was “a former warlord who has been implicated in serious human rights abuses that predate his tenure as commissioner.”
A House of Commons Library report confirms that the UN Development Program (UNDP) and the World Food Program (WFP) were used as unwitting conduits: “DFID has pledged over £20 million in new commitments for Somalia, including £12 million to the WFP. No money goes directly to the TFG. It is channelled through the UNDP.”
By 2011, this included training 3,000 police in Somaliland and hiring mercenaries formerly of the UK Special Boat Service, who were promised up to £1,500 a day.
The consequences for Somali civilians were devastating. In addition to the refugees noted above, the instability caused by the war triggered another famine by jeopardizing aid and driving people from areas near food distribution centers.
The US has survived shocks like 9/11 because it is a robust nation. Fragile countries like Somalia cannot withstand major political disruptions.
Transforming Somalia into an extremist haven
President George W. Bush bombed “al-Qaeda” targets in Somalia in January 2007. Al-Shabaab, then led by the hard-line Godane, survived the collapse of the ICU in the same year.
The UN Security Council then authorized the African Union (AU) to occupy Somalia with “peacekeepers,” with AMISON being the US support mission.
The British-backed TFG President Abdullahi resigned in 2008 and was replaced by the former ICU leader, the more moderate Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed. Sharif met with Obama’s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2009, who pledged US support to the TFG in its fight against its former armed wing, al-Shabaab.
A West Point study notes that, using sharia, al-Shabaab had by 2009 “succeeded in bringing about a period of relative stability in much of the territory it controlled,” just like the ICU before it. Shabaab was also comparatively moderate: the “leadership pursued a pragmatic approach toward clan politics and drew its leadership and rank-and-file from a relatively diverse array of clans and sub-clans, unlike many of Somalia’s other armed factions.”
But the group made tactical errors, such as the Ramadan Offensives (2009-1010) against the TFG and AMISON forces in Mogadishu. With Shabaab weakened, Godane merged the group with “al-Qaeda” in 2011.
British-backed terrorists poured into Somalia to join Godane. By the time it allied with al-Qaeda, a quarter of Shabaab’s fighters hailed from the UK. Many had been radicalized by Abu Qatada, a man once described as Bin Laden’s “right-hand man in Europe” and a protected asset of Britain’s internal MI5 Security Service.
The Nigeria-born Michael Adebolajo, who was charged in the UK with murder, had previously attempted to recruit for Shabaab in Kenya. He maintains that MI5 attempted to recruit him.
A time-tested recipe for destabilization and disaster
Since merging with “al-Qaeda,” al-Shabaab has extended its reach, reportedly sending suicide bombers into neighboring countries, including Kenya.
One could say that the Biden administration has learned no lessons after decades of interference in Somalia. But this would be inaccurate. Successive US administrations understand perfectly that stirring the pot of extremism and relying on propaganda to report the result, not the process, gives them endless excuses to occupy other countries.
The Pentagon is committed to global domination, Somalia is a strategic chokepoint, and the Department of Defense needs reasons to maintain its presence in the country.
The US created al-Shabaab in several ways. First, it escalated Islamist vs. non-Islamist tensions by backing secular “warlords” as a proxy against the ICU in the mid-2000s. This alienated the moderate factions of the ICU and empowered the right-wing Islamists.
Second, and most importantly, Washington backed Ethiopia’s invasion in late 2006, triggering a catastrophe for the civilian population, many of whom welcomed hard-line Muslims because they imposed a degree of law and order.
Third, by painting the nomadic and Sufi Islamist nation of Somalia as a hub of right-wing Salafi extremism, Western policymakers and media propagandists created a self-fulfilling prophesy in which Muslim fundamentalists eventually joined the terror groups they were already accused of being part of.
Fourth, for a country supposedly concerned with international terrorism, the US has done nothing to rein in one its closest allies, the UK, whose successive governments have sheltered a number of Islamic extremists that recruited for Somalia.
Even if we look at Somalia’s crisis through a liberal lens that ignores titanic imperial crimes, such as triggering famines, and focus on the lesser but still serious crimes of suicide bombings, it is hard not to conclude that Somalia’s pot of extremism was stirred by Western interference.
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In 2011 the Great East Japan Earthquake and ensuing tsunami devastated northeast Japan, taking the lives of more than 18,000 people and triggering one of the worst industrial accidents in history: the crippling breakdown of the Fukushima Dai’ichi nuclear power plant. Three of the plant’s six reactors suffered perilous nuclear core meltdowns and hydrogen gas explosions, releasing radionuclides into the air, water and soil. More than 160,000 people were evacuated–nuclear power refugees, many of whom have lost trust in their government’s pronouncements about “safe to return.”
Five Years Later
Considered the most complex industrial cleanup, not even robots were able to enter the main radioactive fuel-debris areas by 2016. The regional farming and the fishing industries suffered collapse and financial ruin. Permissible levels of radiation for children were raised in a callous move to keep schools open. Debates over canceling the 2020 Tokyo Olympics ensued because of the geographic spread of radioactive pollution–an issue all but forgotten as more recent debates rose over canceling the subsequent 2021 Olympics because of Covid-19 and Japan’s low vaccination rate.
Three hundred tons per day of groundwater containing large amounts of radioactive material, including cesium, strontium, iodine, and other substances, poured into the Pacific Ocean from 2010 until the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the plant’s owner, decreased it to one-tenth that volume by 2015. On site over 1,000 mammoth storage tanks hold wastewater treated by a filter process TEPCO devised to remove more than 60 radioactive chemicals to so-called safe internationally regulated levels. Only the treatment has left 70% of the filtered wastewater still contaminated above regulatory levels. Nor can it remove tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen.
In September 2015, ocean surges from Typhoon Etau overwhelmed the site’s drainage pumps; hundreds of tons of radioactive water leaked from the reactors site and ultimately into the ocean. What, then, of more severe typhoons, undersea earthquakes, and the reality of sea level rise for the oceanside plant? How will an onsite drainage system survive natural disasters worsened by climate change if they failed in 2015?
Now
On April 13, 2021, the Japanese government announced that TEPCO has the government’s permission to release 1.38 million US tons of its filtered radioactive wastewater into the Pacific Ocean, beginning in 2023. The company states that its storage capacity will run out in two years, a claim that critics dispute. Critics also deem the treatment filtration system that TEPCO invented, the Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS), subpar and not capable of thorough removal of radioactive waste.
Ultimately, the discharge will rely on dilution with ocean water as the solution to radioactive pollution–in denial of the food chain phenomenon in which plankton absorb the released radioactive elements in sea water, fish eat the plankton, bigger fish eat smaller fish, and humans and marine animals eat both big and small fish.
One week after Japan’s announcement on April 13 of this year, fish caught off Fukushima waters were found to contain high levels of radioactive cesium many times above permissible levels. Referring to the announcement, Takeshi Komatsu, an oyster farmer in Miyagi prefecture, north of Tokyo responded despondently about the permission for TEPCO to discharge radioactive wastewater in two years: “The (Japanese) government’s decision is outrageous, I feel more helpless than angry when I think that all the efforts I’ve made to rebuild my life over the past decade have come to nothing,” as reported by the China Daily Global.
Nearby countries that share the seas and ocean with Japan are irate and extremely critical of Japan’s decision, with some planning international legal action. Professor Choi SK Kunsan of South Korea National University warned, “Through the sea’s currents, it can affect fishes near the Korean Peninsula, East Asia, and even the entire world…” Japan retorts that they plan to re-filter and dilute the water before releasing it, until the contaminated water is “safe to drink.” If that is the case, “Then please drink it,” countered Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhoa Lijian at a news briefing. “The ocean is not Japan’s trash can.”
An observer of this verbal chess match pointed out, with some irony, that Japan has about 100,000 dams for flood control, water supply, crop irrigation and hydroelectric power with more than enough capacity to dilute TEPCO’s oversupply of radioactive wastewater to drinking water acceptability by Japan’s standard. Re-filter the contaminated wastewater using ALPS and dilute it in the mammoth dams until it is “safe enough” to drink, he proposes. Then use it for the country’s drinking water supply and crop irrigation. Problem solved. No angry neighbors.
With the back and forth about “permissible” levels of exposure in drinking water, the ocean and so on, let us keep this fact in mind. Decades of research have shown that there is no safe level of radiation, according to the National Academy of Sciences. Any exposure to radiation increases an individual’s risk of developing cancer.
The two major supporters for Japan’s decision to contaminate the Pacific Ocean with its oversupply of radioactive wastewater are the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the United States. The IAEA’s mission is “to promote the safe, secure and peaceful use of nuclear technologies,” in other words, to sustain the illusion–despite Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima and concern about Iran–that nuclear power can be safe and secure and its waste never at risk of being processed for nuclear weapons. The United States, the largest owner of nuclear power plants, promotes nuclear power as “safe and clean energy,” a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
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H. Patricia Hynes is a retired Professor of Environmental Health from Boston University School of Public Health and current Chair of the Board of the Traprock Center for Peace and Justice. She has written and edited seven books, among them “The Recurring Silent Spring.” She writes and speaks on issues of war and militarism with an emphasis on women, the environment, and public health.
Featured image: Yuji Onuma had come up with the slogan for the gate that orginally hung above the entrance to his home village of Futaba, north of the reactors at Fukushima. It said, “Atomic Power: Energy for a bright future.” After the disaster, he went back, with a new, handwritten correction in red, “Atomic Power: Energy for a DESTRUCTIVE future.” Image courtesy of Yuji Onuma
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The situation in Afghanistan has dramatically changed over the past week. After the recent impetuous attacks, militants of the Taliban captured the entire territory of Afghanistan with the exception of Panjshir province, where the main pro-government forces were concentrated under the leadership of the self-proclaimed head of state Amrullah Saleh.
According to regional and international media reports, clashes between the Taliban and resistance forces in the Panjshir province have increased in the Islamic Republic. The fighting is accompanied by a large number of civilian casualties, which, in turn, caused an exodus of the population to the northern borders of the country.
Members of the former Afghan government and the Taliban leaders recently held negotiations through the intermediary of China, Pakistan, Russia and the US in Qatar related to the aggravation of the situation. During the meeting, the Chairman of the Supreme Council for National Reconciliation of Afghanistan, Abdullah Abdullah, proposed a roadmap to form an inclusive government, involving representatives of all political forces and ethnic groups of the country. In addition, the participants discussed the prospects for a peaceful resolution of the Afghan crisis.
However, despite the efforts made by Afghan politicians and the international community, the lives of civilians are under threat. In particular, according to the leader of the Democratic Party of Tajikistan Saidjafar Usmonzoda, actions of the Taliban’s militants against the non-Pushtun peoples of Afghanistan, especially Tajiks, are considered as “genocide”. At the same time, Usmonzoda added that he and his party fully support the resistance to the Taliban regime.
It should be noted that the issue of maintaining the security of the non-Pashtun population of Afghanistan was one of the topics discussed at the recent negotiations in Doha city. In considering this issue, Abdullah Abdullah made clear the readiness of Amrullah Saleh to call on foreign leaders to support national minorities living in Afghanistan. According to the source close to the former Afghan government, Saleh, an ethnic Tajik, plans to seek help from Tajik President Emomali Rahmon to save Tajiks living in Afghanistan.
It is becoming clear that clashes between the resistance forces and the Taliban will intensify in the near future. The international community can witness another ethnic cleansing in the newly burning Islamic Republic in the absence of support from Afghanistan’s neighbouring countries.
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Wasef Khalili is an Afghan freelance journalist covering the recent developments in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Iran.
Featured image: An Afghan man and children, suffering hardships from America’s longest war, pose for a portrait in Kabul, Afghanistan, on March 19, 2021. [Source: theintercept.com]
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Former US Marine and geopolitical analyst Brian Berletic discusses how he was awakened to the true nature of US foreign policy and Military-Industrial-Complex.
He gives his global macro geopolitical view on the New Cold War struggle between the East (e.g. Russia, China) and West (e.g. US, EU).
He sees China as surpassing the US and the end of generations of Western hegemony. He breaks down how the US uses Color Revolutions or “democracy promotion” as outright regime change and looks at what’s happening in Myanmar as an example.
He believes the West is attempting to recreate the Arab Spring in Asia (e.g. Thailand, Malaysia).
Finally, he looks at China’s Belt & Road going forward and the move toward multipolarity.
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Instead of fighting terror, the War on Terror has only fueled terrorism. It’s a smokescreen for the US to maintain world domination and keep China in check, as well as a great excuse for the military industrial complex to keep making fortunes.
Taste of their own medicine
The War on Terror started twenty years ago after the September 11 attacks. The Pentagon went to war against Al Qaeda and their patrons, the Taliban. An odd turn of events, really, since Al Qaeda was of their own making. None other than Hillary Clinton, then U.S. Secretary of State, admitted that they were fighting terrorists they had first created and financed themselves.
Afghanistan turned out to be just a beginning. The West’s foreign interventions in Iraq and Syria spawned terror groups like IS and Jabhaat al-Nusra. The war against Libya led to chaos throughout the region and gave wings to numerous jihadi groups. They plundered Libya’s arsenals of weapons, launching their holy wars in numerous neighboring countries. Today, fundamentalist terrorist groups are active in ten African countries.
In 2009, US President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. A few years later, he was bombing seven countries simultaneously. So much warfare inevitably returns like a boomerang in one’s own face. Starting in 2015, Western countries were hit by a wave of terror attacks. Or, as jihadists put it, “The West slaughters a sheep, but it doesn’t want to get blood on its clothes.”
Who benefits from this?
The ignominious defeat in Afghanistan may not be the end of the War on Terror. Instead of fighting terror, this “endless war” has only fueled terrorism. The pyromaniacs are the firemen. Today, the Pentagon conducts counter-terror activities in 85 countries. This keeps the war industry running at full speed while the barons of the military industry reap huge profits.
The cost in resources and human lives is staggering. As a result of the post-9/11 violence of war, more than 800,000 people have been killed, almost half of them civilians. The number of war refugees and displaced persons as a result of the War on Terror is at 37 million so far.
Meanwhile, the price tag of the US wars after 9/11 has already reached the astounding amount of $6.4tn. That’s $320 billion a year or 8 times more than what the UN estimates is needed for all the world’s humanitarian aid.
Oil and other minerals
There were two main reasons why the US invaded Afghanistan. A first reason was oil and more specifically the future construction of a major pipeline from the Caspian Sea through the country to Pakistan. Both the first Afghan president and the new U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan after 2001 had previously worked for Unocal, a major American petroleum company that had long had plans for a pipeline through Afghanistan. The first foreign contract the new Afghan president signed was about building a pipeline from Turkmenistan to a port city in Pakistan, through Afghanistan…
In 2010, the U.S. military and geologists discovered that the Afghan underground contains precious minerals worth $1,000 billion. These include iron, copper, and gold. But even more important are the rare earth metals. Possibly one of the largest reserves of lithium in the world is located in Afghanistan. Lithium is an essential but scarce component of rechargeable batteries and other technologies vital to addressing the climate crisis. We now know that lithium reserves in Bolivia were one of the main reasons for the coup against Evo Morales in 2019.
Pivot to China
A second important reason is the rise of China. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dismantling of the Soviet Union, the U.S. established itself as the undisputed leader of world politics. “Our first objective,” the Pentagon said in 1992, is “to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival. We must maintain the mechanism for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.” [italics added] Thirty years later, China has become the main “rival” to be reined in.
Afghanistan is a part of this story. The country is near the New Silk Road and borders the western province of Xinjiang where the Uyghurs live.
In a candid speech in 2018, Lawrence Wilkerson, former Colin Powell[i] chief of staff, revealed the true reasons for their presence in Afghanistan:
“We’re in Afghanistan as we were in Germany post WWII. (…) It has nothing to do with Kabul and state building, nothing to do with fighting Taliban (…) and nothing to do with fighting any terrorist group. It’s everything to do with three primary strategic objectives.”
Besides keeping Pakistan in check “with the potentially most unstable nuclear stockpile on the face of the earth,” the retired colonel mentions two reasons directly related to China.
“It [the US army in Afghanistan] is the only hard power the United States has that sits proximate to the central Belt and Road initiative of China that runs across Central Asia. If we had to impact that military power, we are in position to do so in Afghanistan.”
“The third reason we’re there is because there are 20 million[ii] Uygurs. If the Cia has to mount on operation using those Uygurs as Erdogan has done in Turkey against Assad (…) well, [if] the CIA would want to destabilize China, that would be the best way to do it to form an unrest and join with those Uygurs in pushing the Han Chinese in Beijing from internal places rather than external.”
No Cold War
All this makes it clear that the War on Terror is nothing more than a pretext. It’s a smokescreen for the U.S. to maintain world domination and a great excuse for the military-industrial complex to keep making fortunes.
The War on Terror is a complete fiasco and an abomination. Unfortunately, Washington won’t give up, quite the opposite. Today there is even a threat of an important new front: a new Cold War against China.
This new Cold War could have even more pernicious consequences than the War on Terror. A Statement of the No Cold War initiative puts it very sharply: “The increasingly aggressive statements and actions being taken by the US government in regard to China (…) constitute a threat to world peace and are an obstacle to humanity successfully dealing with extremely serious common issues which confront it such as climate change, control of pandemics, racist discrimination and economic development.”
The Peace movement has a lot of work to do.
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Notes
[i] Colin Powell was Secretary of State under President Bush Jr. from 2001 to 2005. That was during the period of the invasion of Iraq.
[ii] In reality, there are about 10 million Uyghurs.
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Potential routes exist along the Wakhan Corridor and via Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, but it is Pakistani access to Kabul that looks the better option – as long as the Taliban can provide stability, develop Afghan society, and refrain from regional aggression.
International media has focused on Afghanistan these past few days and rightly so as the appalling situation left behind continues its descent into utter chaos. Little mentioned however has been the possibility of restructuring Afghanistan’s supply and trade chains after twenty years of war.
While the Russians will largely provide security in the region, China will provide the financing and help build the infrastructure and encourage industrialization and trade in return for peace and security. People tend not to fight when they are in the process of transforming their lives for the better, and Beijing understands this, although much of the social problems are the Taliban’s responsibility to solve.
There are several options for China to instigate trade routes with Afghanistan. In this article I discuss the Wakhan Corridor, the finger of Afghanistan that reaches east to the Chinese border, existing trade routes via Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and the potential to further develop the Karakorum Highway route through the Khunjerab Pass and ultimately via Peshawar to Kabul.
The Wakhan Corridor, the narrow stretch of Afghanistan that reaches to the Chinese border with Xinjiang has often been cited as a solution with an assumption it can be opened to trade. I have been to this region. It was also the route used by Marco Polo to enter China. In this article I will discuss its history, routes used across it, infrastructure plans, the current situation and, should Afghanistan be stabilized after the Western nations ignominious retreat, the potential for the Wakhan Corridor as part of the Belt & Road Initiative, in addition to the mountainous western Pamir routes through Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan as well as the southern, Pakistan option.
Wakhan Corridor – History
The Wakhan Corridor is a narrow strip of land in Afghanistan, extending east to China’s Xinjiang Province and separating Tajikistan from Pakistan. It runs between the Pamir Mountains to the north and the Karakoram Mountain range to the south. The Wakhan Corridor itself is about 350 km long and 13–65 kilometers wide as a natural valley between the two mountain ranges.
From this mountain valley the Panj and Pamir rivers develop and combine to form the Oxus River, which ultimately flows into the Aral Sea. A trade route through the Wakhan Valley has been used by travelers to and from East, South and Central Asia for thousands of years. Marco Polo is said to have used this route and to have stayed at Taxkorgan Fort, which is now ruined but can be seen at the Chinese village of Taxkorgan, on the Chinese border with Pakistan on the Karakoram Highway. Immediately to the east lies the Taklimakan Desert.
The Wakhan corridor was formed by an 1893 agreement between the then British Empire (British India) and Afghanistan, creating the Durand Line, acting as a buffer zone between the British and Russian Empires (now Pakistan and Tajikistan). Its eastern end bordered China’s Xinjiang, then ruled by the Chinese Qing Dynasty. The border with China stretches 92 kilometers and is characterized by unstable, slate rock with constant slippages. The entire border is marked by a barbed wire fence, with a Chinese border guard outpost at Keketuluke just 20 kilometers east of the pass. There are border crossings (discussed later) but much of the border area is impassable, prone to landslides and dangerous. Temperatures during the winter can reach -20 and include deep snow drifts.
To maintain diplomatic connections, both the British and the Russian maintained consulates in the nearby Chinese city of Kashgar until the 1930’s.
Politically, today the corridor is in the Wakhan District of Afghanistan’s Badakhshan Province. It is administered from the Provincial capital of Fayzabad, a city of 50,000 recently taken over by the Taliban. As of 2020, the Wakhan Corridor had 13,500 inhabitants. The northern part of the Wakhan, populated by the Wakhi and Pamiri tribes, is also referred to as the Pamir.
The China-Afghanistan Border Crossings
There are three main border crossings between Afghanistan and China, although the entire region is crisscrossed with difficult, single donkey tracks. These routes are all generally inaccessible during the winter months. None of the three main crossings are developed, except to provide border security access, although they do permit the summer cross-border passage of locals. We discuss these as follows:
The Chalachigu Valley
The Chalachigu Valley runs east of the Wakhjir Pass on the Chinese side and connects with Taghdumbash Pamir and the Wakhan Corridor. The Chalachigu Valley is about 100 km in length and is the source of the Taxkorgan River, which runs into China and is a significant water source, ranging from 1 km to 5 km wide. The entire valley on the Chinese side is closed to visitors; however, residents, and herders from the area are permitted access. Often these locals can be seen acting as traders at the Kashgar livestock market, which has been operational for thousands of years and is the largest in Central Asia.
The Wakhjir Pass
The Wakhjir Pass is at the eastern end of the Wakhan Corridor and is the only navigable pass between Afghanistan and China at this current time. It links connects Wakhan with China’s Taxkorgan Tajik Autonomous County in Xinjiang and has an altitude of 4,923 meters (16,152 ft). It is not an official border crossing point. China refers to the pass as the South Wakhjir Pass as there is a North Wakhjir Pass (the Tegermansu Pass) on the Chinese side.
There is no road along the Wakhjir Pass, it is purely a cut dirt track. On the Chinese side, the immediate region is only accessible to military personnel. An access road has been built for use by border guards, leading to the Karakoram Highway 80 kilometers to the east. On the Afghan side, the nearest road is a rough road to Sarhad-e-Wakhan about 100 kilometers west from the Wakhjir Pass accessible by other connecting paths. Crossing is only really possible by pack animals or heavy-duty SUV and is generally only accessible for seven months of the year (April to October). There are very few records of successful crossings by foreigners. although the British-Hungarian explorer Ariel Stein has written an account of it. Historically, the pass was a trading route between Badakhshan (Afghanistan) and Yarkand (Xinjiang) used by merchants from Bajaor (Pakistan).
The North Wakhjir (Tegermansu) Pass
The North Wakhjir, or Tegermansu Pass is a closed mountain pass on the border between Afghanistan and China in the Pamir mountain ranges. It traverses the Tegermansu Valley on the Eastern end of the Little Pamir mountains and the Chalachigu Valley in Xinjiang. Historically, it was one of the three routes between China and Wakhan. On Chinese side, there is a Chinese border post in the valley below. There have been proposals and plans by the Kashgar Regional Government to open this pass as an inland port, however this has yet to be approved. It is at an elevation of 4,827 meters.
The Current Situation At China’s Border With Afghanistan
Security and surveillance all along the Chinese border has been stepped up with initial plans to do so going back months. Part of the current situation with certain Uyghur factions being detained in China is to do with the possibility of unrest, although the radicalization of Uyghurs is more likely to come from Pakistan to the south, where the connectivity infrastructure, via both the Karakorum Highway and direct air connections to Islamabad are far better than connectivity between Afghanistan and China. There is little chance of any Taliban or other encroachment into China from the Afghanistan border as activity can easily be spotted and the terrain is extremely difficult.
Usually, at the Kashgar market, and especially the livestock market, traders do business having crossed the mountain passes under strict supervision from the Chinese border guards and the local PLA. They will typically bring Afghanistan products in addition to local herbs, plants and so on that can fetch a high price in China. Pack animals such as Donkeys, Yak and occasionally Camels are all traded here as are Fat-Tailed Sheep and rarer creatures such as Snow Leopard skins. Often these are resold onto Chinese traders, some bartering takes place with electronic and other products being taken back across and into Afghanistan. Security at present remains extremely tight.
British Armchair media has reported that “For the Taliban, the opening up of the border with China at the end of the Wakhan Corridor…” yet clearly, they are reporting on areas they have never been do and even less understand. Such is the journalistic dross one now has to contend with. Where are the impartial War Reporters? Where is Afghanistan’s Hemingway, Michael David Herr, or Martin Fletcher?
Chinese Belt & Road Infrastructure Access To Afghanistan
The three current passes, especially the Chalagigu Valley and the South Wakhijir Pass present extreme engineering and construction challenges to make viable for either road or rail. The Pamir mountain range is unstable and prone to landslips – the Karakoram Highway to Pakistan is regularly disrupted due to rockfalls. In addition, the winter months – from October to March – render these inoperable due to the extreme conditions. There is no economic justification for developing either of these two routes.
It would be possible to develop the North Wakhijir (Tegermansu) Pass and the Chinese military already have built an access road from the Karakoram Highway along an 80km route to within 6km of the border, where it becomes passable by smaller vehicles only. A small supporting garrison village sits at the border crossing inhabited by military personnel. It would be feasible to further extend that pass into Afghanistan and to the Badakhshan Provincial capital of Fayzabad, a distance of about 450km. This would open and develop Afghan-China trade, however the extent of this being economically viable is very much up in the air at present.
Alternative China-Afghanistan Belt And Road Connectivity
In fact, there are existing connections – but not with Afghanistan directly. Road connectivity runs from China’s border with Tajikistan at the border crossing at the Karasu Inland Port of Entry over the Kulma Pass, at an elevation of 4.36km above sea level. From here, the rugged AH66 route leads from connections from China’s Karakoram Highway (Kashgar and Urumqi) and over the Pamir mountains eventually to the Tajik capital, Dushanbe. It is only open for two weeks each month (16th to the 30th) from May to November as constant landslides require continual maintenance and the route requires constant repair and clearance.
However, these connect through to Tajikistan’s four border crossings with Afghanistan’s Badakhshan Province and onto Fayzabad, and are the most used China-Afghanistan haulage routes. The Afghanistan-Tajikistan border is almost entirely marked by the dividing Panj, Pamir and Oxus Rivers; with the only practical border crossing into Afghanistan via bridges.
The first bridge crossing the Tajik-Afghan border was opened in November 2002 and connects Tem in Tajikistan to Demogan in Afghanistan. A second bridge was opened in July 2004, known as the Tajikistan–Afghanistan Friendship Bridge, which connects the two banks of the Darvaz Region across the Panj River (which further downstream flows into the Oxus) at the town of Qal’ai Khumb in Tajikistan. Qal’ai Khumb is an important overnight rest stop in Tajikistan and Afghanistan and is 368 km from the Tajik capital, Dushanbe. On the Afghan border Kalai-Khumb has one of the three bridges over the Panj river. In the past a Sunday market used to take place here to trade goods with Afghanistan.
Image on the right: The Panj River bridge between Afghanistan & Tajikistan
A third bridge, spanning the Panj river, connects Panji Poyon in Tajikistan to Sherkhan Bandar in Afghanistan’s Kunduz Province to the West of Badakhshan and was opened in August 2007. The fourth river crossing between Afghanistan and Tajikistan is again across the Panj river, at Vanj in Tajikistan’s Gorno Badakhshan to the Afghan Province of Badakhshan and onto Fayzabad.
All these border crossings are currently closed and are controlled by the Taliban. It is understood that Tajik, Russian, and Chinese security forces are currently present in these areas.
It would be possible to expand and develop infrastructure build, especially the existing roads and bridges connecting China, Tajikistan, and Afghanistan. This would undoubtedly increase bilateral and trilateral trade between Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and China. However, with the Afghani economy currently ruined and the country in a state of significant instability, such builds will not take place or be financed until the situation calms down.
However, this does not necessarily mean that China and Tajikistan will not build and develop BRI infrastructure that could later also be deployed to service future potential Afghan trade.
The Kyrgyzstan Connectivity Route
There have been discussions about connecting Tajikistan with China via rail, although a direct route over the Pamir is almost impossible to build. Instead, a route into Tajikistan via the countries northern border with Kyrgyzstan is being considered. China’s national railway network extends as far as Kashgar (with additional talk of extending that south to Gilgit in Pakistan) with plans to link that line through to Kyrgyzstan.
A 2012 plan was devised to build almost 50 tunnels and close to 100 bridges, with a total length of 500 km. The line would traverse mountainous terrain, some sections over 3,000 meters above sea-level, with new construction of approximately 280km of track in Kyrgyzstan and about 180 km in China. The proposed line would run to Osh, a major trading city in Kyrgyzstan, and west into Uzbekistan. From Osh a spur would head south across the Kyrgyz-Tajik border to Dushanbe.
Tajikistan does have a small rail network, terminating in Dushanbe, with links to Uzbekistan and ultimately to Moscow. There has also been talk of a Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Tajikistan (TAT) railway that would link through west to Iran and the International North South Transportation Corridor. These plans may one day come to fruition, if not for the huge expense, but in following both China and Russia’s desire to bring regional peace to this entire region through the promotion of trade.
The Pakistan Connectivity Route
It is the southern Afghanistan connectivity that is likely to be developed first due to the northern routes via Wakhan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan being difficult and expensive, although that’s not to say they may not eventually happen. A more likely scenario for China to access Afghanistan is to expand and develop the existing road network through from Taxkorgan in Southern Xinjiang across the border to Pakistan and Gilgit. This route, the Karakorum Highway, already exists and has been in use for decades, although it too is subject to weather extremes, the terrain is rather easier to engineer. This route, known as Highway 314 in China and the N35 in Pakistan, extends through from China as far as Islamabad, the Pakistan capital. A route from Islamabad, the N5, connects through to Peshawar.
There has been significant discussions to extending the existing Chinese railway, which runs through to Kashgar and Yarkand, through the same Khunjerab Pass to Gilgit, on the Pakistan side, which has national rail connectivity to the rest of Pakistan. In 2014, China commissioned a “preliminary research study” to build an international rail link to Pakistan. In 2016 this 682 km proposed railway link was reported to be part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and was to commence construction during the second phase of CPEC between 2018-2022. However, the construction of this railway line was not mentioned in the CPEC Long Term Plan from 2017-2030 released jointly by China and Pakistan in 2017. China’s involvement in several rail projects in Pakistan is motivated primarily by commercial considerations, but it also sees distinct advantages for its improved transportation and access to Central Asia and the Persian Gulf, as Pakistan’s national rail network connects through to Pakistan’s Seaports at Karachi and Gwadar. Significant new investment has taken place at Gwadar to cater for Afghani trade, while China has also been developing Special Economic Zones in the Punjab region near Afghanistan.
The Peshawar-Kabul Connection
The Peshawar connection is also highly valuable. This is already operational as it is part of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline that bisects Afghanistan running West to East. That is supported by an existing road network providing maintenance and some trade between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Pakistan’s N5 highway runs from Islamabad to Peshawar and onto the Afghan border at Landi Kotal on the Khyber Pass to Afghanistan. From there it is now known as the AH76 which connects directly to Kabul – a five and a half hour drive.
The Afghanistan-CPEC Corridor
It is for these reasons that an extension of CPEC into Afghanistan and directly to Kabul looks the most likely option, while China’s Belt and Road connectivity with Afghanistan from its direct borders looks a longer-term play. The Wakham Corridor itself is only sparsely populated and at present offers minimal opportunities – unless any viable mineral extractions are within the region.
Accordingly, while China’s Pamir infrastructure build with Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan can be expected to include the potential for future Afghan routes, a simpler, and less expensive solution for China to access Afghanistan is via the Khunjerab Pass from Kashgar into Pakistan and improving the existing Friendship Highway with links through to Islamabad and Peshawar. That can be expected to be augmented with a reappearance of the proposed Kashgar-Gilgit railway with improvements also to be made to the Pakistan national rail network from Gilgit to Peshawar as part of this. Connectivity from Peshawar to Kabul then makes sense.
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These days there is no shortage of hype surrounding the “Green New Deal” (GND). The “Green New Deal” has become a major buzz-phrase that has ensnared many along the way.
Like so many top-down schemes, the GND is being promoted by many world leaders in unison. This alone should be worrisome. History shows that this is usually a red flag. Few pro-social things come out of movements that are not real grass-roots movements. These world leaders are the main representatives of the international financial oligarchy—a tiny ruling elite obsessed with maximizing private profit no matter the damage to society and the environment. These are the same forces responsible for tragedies such as high levels of inequality, poverty, unemployment, under-employment, inflation, debt, homelessness, hunger, racism, war, occupation, pollution, de-forestation, anxiety, despair, alienation, depression, and suicide worldwide.
The GND is being presented by the rich and their political and media representatives as something great for society and humanity; everyone is under pressure to “just embrace it.”
The GND uses the “New Deal” language of the 1930s and ostensibly addresses climate change, inequality, energy efficiency, job creation, labor rights, racial injustice, and other social aims. This includes a GND for public schools, healthcare, and housing as well.
The GND is supposed to improve conditions for humanity and help us all “build back better”—a major slogan of the World Economic Forum (WEF), which is dominated by millionaires and billionaires. Alongside this disinformation, the WEF is also promoting disinformation about “reinventing capitalism” to fool the gullible. The GND is supposedly rooted in the principles of economic justice, puts the planet ahead of profits, and provides a “blueprint for change.” It is said that Green Projects will cost hundreds of billions of dollars annually.
Europe has its own version of the GND. “Variations of the [“Green New Deal”] proposal have been around for years,” says the New York Times. The so-called Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions was introduced more than 20 years ago, for example. In 2007, the imperialist journalist, Thomas Friedman, wrote the following in the New York Times:
If you have put a windmill in your yard or some solar panels on your roof, bless your heart. But we will only green the world when we change the very nature of the electricity grid – moving it away from dirty coal or oil to clean coal and renewables. And that is a huge industrial project – much bigger than anyone has told you. Finally, like the New Deal, if we undertake the green version, it has the potential to create a whole new clean power industry to spur our economy into the 21st century. (See this)
Pollution, inequality, and 50 other problems have worsened since this observation was made 14 years ago. The quote rejects economic science and fails to help workers, youth, students, women, and others make sense of the economy in a way that favors their interests.
GND Means More PPPs and Tragedies
“Green New Deal” goals are to be attained through “joint” public sector and private sector “investments.” The disinformation from the rich is that the public can’t achieve the lofty goals of the GND on its own and that “investors” from the so-called “efficient,” “entrepreneurial,” “innovative,” and “smart” private sector are needed to achieve these big goals. It is by working “together” that “we” will supposedly achieve what the GND sets out to do. “New Deals” are purportedly too big for either sector to pull off alone and thus some sort of “partnership” or “alliance” is “needed.”
In reality, private competing owners of capital are unwilling and often unable to pay for major infrastructure projects and want the government to guarantee them big investments and returns using the public purse. PPPs essentially guarantee risk-free profits for various monopolies and further diminish control of the economy by workers and the public. PPPs enable major owners of capital to seize more of the added-value produced by workers through “infrastructure projects” guaranteed by the state at public expense. This further enriches a handful of people, intensifies inequality, and leaves workers and the public with less wealth and less control over the economy.
This is not how “partners” work. This is how an unequal relationship works.
Terms such as “alliance” or “partnership” are designed to fool the gullible and hide the enormous financial gain made by a handful of billionaires through PPPs that purport to advance the goals of the GND. In this, way the door is nonchalantly and pragmatically opened to imposing private alien claims on the wealth produced collectively by workers. The rich are given greater access to public funds and resources that belong to the public, all in the name of “partnership.” We are to believe that without a “Public-Private-Partnership” the GND will not become reality, meaning that the GND is possible only if the ultra-rich pocket more public wealth and resources. This is cynically called a “win-win.”
“Public-Private-Partnerships” promote the illusion that the public sector and the private sector can harmonize their philosophies, interests, aims, operations, activities, and results when in fact PPPs are antisocial, antiworker, and undercut a modern nation-building project.
The public and private sectors cannot be partners; they rest on different foundations, goals, world outlooks, operations, and legal frameworks; they are different categories and phenomena with different properties and characteristics. These differences are not trivial and cannot be reconciled or harmonized. Don’t believe neoliberals and privatizers whey they self-servingly claim that the two distinct spheres can “work together.”
Public and private are antonyms; they mean the opposite of each other; they are not synonymous. Public refers to everyone, non-competition, transparency, the common good, and society as whole (e.g., public parks, beaches, and roads). The public is pro-social and human-centered. It approaches life and relations with a big modern vision. Private refers to exclusivity, for a few, not for everyone, and usually involves rivalry and hierarchy. Private is also often associated with secrecy, not transparency, especially in business. The private sector pertains to relations between private citizens, whereas the public sector has to do with relations between individuals and the state. This distinction is critical. These spheres represent two profoundly different domains. The rights belonging to each sector are different.
Blurring the critical distinction between public and private should be avoided at all costs. It is irresponsible and self-serving to treat the public and private as being synonymous and easy to harmonize without big disadvantages for the public. The public does not benefit from blurring this distinction. The public suffers when the dissimilarity between public and private is obscured and not grasped in its depth.
PPPs conceal harsh irreconcilable class differences and interests in society. They reinforce a “no-class” outlook of society and, in doing so, distort reality at the ideological level, leaving many disoriented, unclear, and confused about their interests, which makes them vulnerable to disinformation from the rich and their media. In the world of PPPs, everyone is merely a “stakeholder.” There are no workers or owners of capital. There are no antagonistic irreconcilable social class interests. There are no classes and class struggle. There are no millionaires and billionaires on one side and workers on the other side who produce all the wealth of society.
Not surprisingly, PPPs form a big part of the antisocial “Great Reset” agenda of the world’s billionaires, which has been publicly articulated by the main leaders of the World Economic Forum such as Klaus Schwab. Many prime ministers, presidents, and prominent state leaders around the world continue to parrot the same tired slogans of the “Great Reset” agenda.
In practice, PPPs use the neoliberal state to funnel more public funds than ever to the private sector under the banner of “partnerships” and “making the world better for everyone.”
This funneling of more public funds to narrow private interests will not only solve no problems, it will intensify many problems that are already serious. The existing all-sided crisis will keep deepening under such a set-up.
As a main form of privatization, the “Green New Deal” will significantly intensify inequality, increase costs for everyone, reduce efficiency and quality, lessen accountability and transparency, increase corruption, and diminish the voice and wealth of workers and the public. It will not enhance democracy or improve the environment in any way because it will further concentrate greater economic and political power in even fewer hands, if that is even possible at this point in history. Funneling more public funds, assets, and authority to competing private interests in a highly monopolized economy is a disaster for the social and natural environment. It is the claims of workers, the public, and society that must be expanded and affirmed, not the narrow claims of competing owners of capital obsessed with maximizing their own profits at the expense of everyone and everything else.
The “Green New Deal” will not challenge the entrenched class privilege of the rich. It will not increase the power of workers or give them greater control of the wealth they produce. It will not make the economy more pro-social, balanced, diverse, and self-reliant. Pollution and de-forestation will still persist under the GND. Experience has repeatedly borne out that capital-centered environmental plans and activities ensure that things keep going from bad to worse.
A 2016 United Nations report highlights many ways that PPPs undermine the public interest and produce more problems. Global PolicyForum states that:
PPPs are used to conceal public borrowing, while providing long-term state guarantees for profits to private companies. Private sector corporations must maximize profits if they are to survive. This is fundamentally incompatible with protecting the environment and ensuring universal access to quality public services. (See this)
Public and private simply do not go together. The organization In The Public Interest offers many reports, articles, and documents that expose how PPPs harm the public interest and benefit major owners of capital at the public expense. Numerous other organizations around the world have also described and explained how PPPs make things worse for the public while enriching a handful of people.
In the context of a continually failing economy, competing owners of capital have no choice but to cloak their egocentric drive to maximize private profit by seizing public funds from the state as a “win-win” for everyone, as something great for the natural and social environment. The neoliberal state is increasingly being used to divert public funds and assets to major owners of capital as they compete with each other for domination of the economy in an increasingly unstable and dangerous environment. The old ways of profit-taking are no longer as lucrative as before, so the rich have to use PPPs to seize public funds for private financial gain under the banner of “working together” to “build back better.”
As always, the rich will not brook any opposition to their narrow private interests. They will not support anything that places a greater portion of the social wealth in the hands of those who actually produce the wealth of society: workers. They will continue to act like they have a natural right to the wealth produced collectively by workers.
Major owners of capital have no human-centered interest in improving the environment or social conditions. They pragmatically strive for what will best serve their narrow private interests and class privilege without any consideration for the well-being of all sectors of the economy as a whole. Modern nation-building cannot take place in such a context. The human-centered resolution of social, economic, and environmental problems requires confronting powerful private interests and their outdated economic system if humanity is to have a bright future.
To fix the economy and to reverse social and environmental problems requires a public authority worthy of the name. There is no reason why a real public authority cannot use the wealth and resources produced by workers to improve the social and natural environment for the nation. Planned public investment for the public and for modern nation-building is not possible under the direction and influence of competing owners of capital obsessed with maximizing private profit. Such forces are only looking out for their narrow interests, not the needs of a balanced self-reliant crisis-free economy that consistently and responsibly raises the material and cultural well-being of all.
There is no need to involve powerful private interests in social programs, social investments, or green projects. The rich are not only the cause of many problems the GND ostensibly seeks to remedy, they also have no valid and legitimate claim to any public funds, resources, and assets. The rich mainly seize and control the wealth produced by workers; they themselves do not produce the wealth of society.
The rich are an historically superfluous and exhausted force blocking social progress. Without the rich, their entourage, and their outdated political and economic system, the social product could be wielded by people themselves for the benefit of the natural and social environment. The impact of this shift and change on time and space would be monumental.
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Shawgi Tell, PhD, is author of the book “Charter School Report Card.” His main research interests include charter schools, neoliberal education policy, privatization and political economy. He can be reached at [email protected].
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America’s corporate media are ringing with recriminations over the humiliating U.S. military defeat in Afghanistan. But very little of the criticism goes to the root of the problem, which was the original decision to militarily invade and occupy Afghanistan in the first place.
That decision set in motion a cycle of violence and chaos that no subsequent U.S. policy or military strategy could resolve over the next 20 years, in Afghanistan, Iraq or any of the other countries swept up in America’s post-9/11 wars.
While Americans were reeling in shock at the images of airliners crashing into buildings on September 11, 2001, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld held a meeting in an intact part of the Pentagon. Undersecretary Cambone’s notes from that meeting spell out how quickly and blindly U.S. officials prepared to plunge our nation into graveyards of empire in Afghanistan, Iraq and beyond.
Cambone wrote that Rumsfeld wanted, ”…best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H. (Saddam Hussein) at same time – not only UBL (Usama Bin Laden)… Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not.”
So within hours of these horrific crimes in the United States, the central question senior U.S. officials were asking was not how to investigate them and hold the perpetrators accountable, but how to use this “Pearl Harbor” moment to justify wars, regime changes and militarism on a global scale.
Three days later, Congress passed a bill authorizing the president to use military force “…against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons…”
In 2016, the Congressional Research Service reported that this Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) had been cited to justify 37 distinct military operations in 14 different countries and at sea. The vast majority of the people killed, maimed or displaced in these operations had nothing to do with the crimes of September 11. Successive administrations have repeatedly ignored the actual wording of the authorization, which only authorized the use of force against those involved in some way in the 9/11 attacks.
The only member of Congress who had the wisdom and courage to vote against the 2001 AUMF was Barbara Lee of Oakland. Lee compared it to the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin resolution and warned her colleagues that it would inevitably be used in the same expansive and illegitimate way. The final words of her floor speech echo presciently through the 20-year-long spiral of violence, chaos and war crimes it unleashed, “As we act, let us not become the evil we deplore.”
In a meeting at Camp David that weekend, Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz argued forcefully for an attack on Iraq, even before Afghanistan. Bush insisted Afghanistan must come first, but privately promised Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle that Iraq would be their next target.
In the days after September 11, the U.S. corporate media followed the Bush administration’s lead, and the public heard only rare, isolated voices questioning whether war was the correct response to the crimes committed.
But former Nuremberg war crimes prosecutor Ben Ferencz spoke to NPR (National Public Radio) a week after 9/11, and he explained that attacking Afghanistan was not only unwise and dangerous, but was not a legitimate response to these crimes. NPR’s Katy Clark struggled to understand what he was saying:
Clark: …do you think that the talk of retaliation is not a legitimate response to the death of 5,000 (sic) people?
Ferencz: It is never a legitimate response to punish people who are not responsible for the wrong done.
Clark: No one is saying we’re going to punish those who are not responsible.
Ferencz: We must make a distinction between punishing the guilty and punishing others. If you simply retaliate en masse by bombing Afghanistan, let us say, or the Taliban, you will kill many people who don’t believe in what has happened, who don’t approve of what has happened.
Clark: So you are saying that you see no appropriate role for the military in this.
Ferencz: I wouldn’t say there is no appropriate role, but the role should be consistent with our ideals. We shouldn’t let them kill our principles at the same time they kill our people. And our principles are respect for the rule of law. Not charging in blindly and killing people because we are blinded by our tears and our rage.
The drumbeat of war pervaded the airwaves, twisting 9/11 into a powerful propaganda narrative to whip up the fear of terrorism and justify the march to war. But many Americans shared the reservations of Rep. Barbara Lee and Ben Ferencz, understanding enough of their country’s history to recognize that the 9/11 tragedy was being hijacked by the same military-industrial complex that produced the debacle in Vietnam and keeps reinventing itself generation after generation to support and profit from American wars, coups and militarism.
On September 28, 2001, the Socialist Worker website published statements by 15 writers and activists under the heading, “Why we say no to war and hate.” They included Noam Chomsky, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan and me (Medea). Our statements took aim at the Bush administration’s attacks on civil liberties at home and abroad, as well as its plans for war on Afghanistan.
The late academic and author Chalmers Johnson wrote that 9/11 was not an attack on the United States but “an attack on U.S. foreign policy.” Edward Herman predicted “massive civilian casualties.” Matt Rothschild, the editor of The Progressive magazine, wrote that, “For every innocent person Bush kills in this war, five or ten terrorists will arise.” I (Medea) wrote that ”a military response will only create more of the hatred against the U.S. that created this terrorism in the first place.”
Our analysis was correct and our predictions were prescient. We humbly submit that the media and politicians should start listening to the voices of peace and sanity instead of to lying, delusional warmongers.
What leads to catastrophes like the U.S. war in Afghanistan is not the absence of convincing anti-war voices but that our political and media systems routinely marginalize and ignore voices like those of Barbara Lee, Ben Ferencz and ourselves.
That is not because we are wrong and the belligerent voices they listen to are right. They marginalize us precisely because we are right and they are wrong, and because serious, rational debates over war, peace and military spending would jeopardize some of the most powerful and corrupt vested interests that dominate and control U.S. politics on a bipartisan basis.
In every foreign policy crisis, the very existence of our military’s enormous destructive capacity and the myths our leaders promote to justify it converge in an orgy of self-serving interests and political pressures to stoke our fears and pretend that there are military “solutions” for them.
Losing the Vietnam War was a serious reality check on the limits of U.S. military power. As the junior officers who fought in Vietnam rose through the ranks to become America’s military leaders, they acted more cautiously and realistically for the next 20 years. But the end of the Cold War opened the door to an ambitious new generation of warmongers who were determined to capitalize on the U.S. post-Cold War “power dividend.”
Madeleine Albright spoke for this emerging new breed of war-hawks when she confronted General Colin Powell in 1992 with her question, “What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?”
As Secretary of State in Clinton’s second term, Albright engineered the first of a series of illegal U.S. invasions to carve out an independent Kosovo from the splintered remains of Yugoslavia. When U.K. Foreign Secretary Robin Cook told her his government was “having trouble with our lawyers” over the illegality of the NATO war plan, Albright said they should just “get new lawyers.”
In the 1990s, the neocons and liberal interventionists dismissed and marginalized the idea that non-military, non-coercive approaches can more effectively resolve foreign policy problems without the horrors of war or deadly sanctions. This bipartisan war lobby then exploited the 9/11 attacks to consolidate and expand their control of U.S. foreign policy.
But after spending trillions of dollars and killing millions of people, the abysmal record of U.S. war-making since World War II remains a tragic litany of failure and defeat, even on its own terms. The only wars the United States has won since 1945 have been limited wars to recover small neocolonial outposts in Grenada, Panama and Kuwait.
Every time the United States has expanded its military ambitions to attack or invade larger or more independent countries, the results have been universally catastrophic. So our country’s absurd investment of 66% of discretionary federal spending in destructive weapons, and recruiting and training young Americans to use them, does not make us safer but only encourages our leaders to unleash pointless violence and chaos on our neighbors around the world.
Most of our neighbors have grasped by now that these forces and the dysfunctional U.S. political system that keeps them at its disposal pose a serious threat to peace and to their own aspirations for democracy. Few people in other countries want any part of America’s wars, or its revived Cold War against China and Russia, and these trends are most pronounced among America’s long-time allies in Europe and in its traditional “backyard” in Canada and Latin America.
On October 19, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld addressed B-2 bomber crews at Whiteman AFB in Missouri as they prepared to take off across the world to inflict misdirected vengeance on the long-suffering people of Afghanistan. He told them, “We have two choices. Either we change the way we live, or we must change the way they live. We choose the latter. And you are the ones who will help achieve that goal.”
Now that dropping over 80,000 bombs and missiles on the people of Afghanistan for 20 years has failed to change the way they live, apart from killing hundreds of thousands of them and destroying their homes, we must instead, as Rumsfeld said, change the way we live.
We should start by finally listening to Barbara Lee. First, we should pass her bill to repeal the two post-9/11 AUMFs that launched our 20-year fiasco in Afghanistan and other wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia and Yemen.
Then we should pass her bill to redirect $350 billion per year from the U.S. military budget (roughly a 50% cut) to “increase our diplomatic capacity and for domestic programs that will keep our Nation and our people safer.”
Finally reining in America’s out-of-control militarism would be a wise and appropriate response to its epic defeat in Afghanistan, before the same corrupt interests drag us into even more dangerous wars against more formidable enemies than the Taliban.
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Featured image: An April 8, 2013 memorial service for Anne Smedinghoff at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. Anne was killed in an insurgent attack on Saturday April, 6. 2013 while traveling to donate books to a school in Qalat, Zabul province. (Photo by Musadeq Sadeq/U.S. State Department)
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In our second summer of COVID-19, it’s fair to ask when it all ends.
Or if it all ends.
Because nothing has worked out during the pandemic the way we were told it would.
You can’t blame the experts, we’re told. COVID-19 was a new virus. There was a lot to learn. Nobody saw it coming.
So we’ll give Dr. Anthony Fauci and the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention the benefit of the doubt.
It’s a big benefit of the doubt given the stakes and the track record, but so be it.
As coronavirus hit New York hard in March of 2020, we were told to lock ourselves down. So we stayed in our houses and apartments for months on end. We had our groceries, takeout food and booze delivered to our homes.
Offices went dark. Schools were shuttered. Workers lost their jobs. Businesses failed. Children lost valuable months of education.
We were told to wear masks, both indoors and outdoors. So we did that too, donning facial coverings in church, at the supermarket, on mass transit and when entering bars and restaurants.
Even though, yes, there was debate over how much protection masks truly provided, and whether they were really needed outdoors.
We were told that we could not gather in large groups. So families were separated.
We couldn’t hold weddings or funerals or graduations or religious ceremonies.
We were told to get vaccinated.
We were told by our leaders that this was the final battle in the war against COVID-19, that the end was in sight. That it was going to be a summer of freedom from the virus.
Of course, many people had to wait for weeks on end because vaccine supply initially couldn’t keep up with demand. Or because cities and states didn’t have enough vaccine infrastructure in place.
We’ve done all that.
And now we’re told it hasn’t done the trick. And might never do the trick, thanks to the Delta variant and other virus mutations.
We’re being told to mask up again.
We’re being told that kids in school may need to be masked even though schools have proven to be a low-risk environments for spreading the virus.
And now we have to be vaccinated in order to go to a ballgame or a restaurant or a concert.
Those who question the mandate in any way are told that they are putting lives at risk.
There can be no informed debate when merely raising an intellectual argument, having a thought, is considered deadly on its face.
So everyone should just get jabbed, even if you’re concerned about having your children vaccinated.
Even if you’re immunocompromised or have a chronic medical condition and are worried about how the vaccine could impact you.
Even though some workers are being given an option to be tested instead of having to get the shot.
Even when so many health-care professionals refuse to be vaccinated.
Even if you scratch your head at the fact that some fully vaccinated people have fallen ill, sometimes seriously, and have even died.
It’s all for the common good, we’re told.
Questioning the mandate automatically makes you an anti-vaxxer and practically a murderer.
If you’re comfortable in that world, bravo.
I hope there’s no mandate coming down the pike that you might find onerous. Because if you’re in for a penny, you’re in for a pound.
And, true to the slippery slope of all this, it doesn’t end there.
Now those who are fully vaccinated are being told they will likely need a booster shot a few months down the road.
Because if two shots didn’t work, the third one will?
And so on and so forth.
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Featured image is from Tom Wrobleski/Staten Island Advance
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A critically important show for physicians as well as potential and actual covid patients, Dr. Richard Urso goes into great detail about the prophylactic and early treatment protocols he uses that allow the natural immune system to handle the virus for superior, long-lasting protection, explains how prophylaxis could end the pandemic, and talks about what he’d do if he had Fauci’s job.
Link to Journal of American Medicine study showing Remdesivir lengthens hospital stays here.
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August 22nd, 2021 by Hassan Diab Support Committee
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The unjust decision on January 27, 2021, by the French Court of Appeal to send Dr. Hassan Diab to trial prolongs Hassan’s Kafkaesque nightmare. This was a shocking turn of events, not least because the Court of Appeal’s ruling was riddled with egregious misrepresentations, logical inconsistencies, and wild fabrications. Worse still, on May 19, 2021, France’s Supreme Court (Cour de cassation) upheld the Court of Appeal’s baseless ruling.
This flagrant miscarriage of justice is clearly political. We are appealing to the Canadian government to end Hassan’s persecution, ensure that Hassan will never face a second extradition, and suspend the Canada/France extradition treaty.
Please help us exert pressure on the Canadian government to end Hassan’s Kafkaesque nightmare and prevent his wrongful conviction!
Campaign of Outreach to Canadian Parliamentarians
The federal election taking place on 20 September, 2021, provides us with an excellent opportunity to increase political and public support for Dr. Hassan Diab. We also anticipate some or all of the following:
Announcement in France that a date has been set for Hassan to face trial
French demands for Hassan’s presence in France, including his extradition
Public discussion of Canada’s Extradition Act
We are launching a major campaign of outreach to Canadian parliamentarians. This election period opens new opportunities for meetings with MPs, Senators, and candidates. We are asking you to look for such opportunities over the coming weeks, making use of the following:
We are asking parliamentarians to commit to the following:
Agree to help in whatever ways possible to end Hassan’s persecution;
Work to ensure that Hassan will never face a second extradition; and
Support the suspension of the Canada/France extradition treaty in light of the failure of the French justice system to protect Hassan’s fundamental rights.
Please continue to emphasise the failure of both Canada and France to protect Hassan from the very beginning, resulting in a horrendous miscarriage of justice and the scapegoating of an innocent man.
Let us know if you would be interested in having a member of the Hassan Diab Support Committee accompany you (virtually or otherwise) to any meeting you are successful in arranging. We would be happy to assist in any way we can.
Feel free to contact Roger Clark ([email protected]) if you have any questions or need specific support. Let us know of any meetings that you are able to arrange, and remember to send us a brief summary of the outcome.
Thank you as always for all that you are doing to support Hassan. Let us know if you have any questions. In the meantime, we wish you a good summer and plenty of relaxation.
Postcards supporting Dr. Hassan Diab and addressed to Prime Minister Trudeau are now available at Octopus Books in Ottawa.
Be sure to sign a postcard the next time you’re at Octopus Books. No postage is necessary to mail the postcard from Canada.
If you are not in Ottawa, you can order up to 5 postcards by sending an email to [email protected] with your postal mailing address, and we will gladly mail postcards to you.
You can see a photo of the postcard (front and back): here.
Send “Act Now Sir!” Video to PM Justin Trudeau
Michelle Weinroth has written and produced a deeply moving and powerful poem/video about Hassan’s case, asking PM Justin Trudeau to intervene and put an end to Hassan’s ordeal.
Please write to PM Trudeau ([email protected]) and send him the following link to the poem/video:
“Act Now Sir!”
Excerpt from poem by Michelle Weinroth, addressed to PM Trudeau:
Will you stand up
For a man so cheated?
So vilified and mistreated?
Repair this injustice, Sir!
There is time yet…
Though not much.
Use not excuses as your crutch.
We are at the eleventh hour.
Your moment is here and now
To act and use your power.
Let not indecision mock your name.
Lest history link you
to a scandal of the law.
For such an outrage
will stain your fame
Will dim your glow
and deal your reputation
a stinging blow.
Flex then your moral muscle
Not your forearm.
Show your French peers
the mettle that behooves
a country’s leader
To settle and redress
a matter so unjust
as that of Hassan Diab
A man so viciously
and so vilely wronged
So grievously betrayed
Act now, Sir, not tomorrow.
And put an end to this tale of sorrow.
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Scientists opposed to offering booster shots to all Americans said data provided by federal health officials wasn’t compelling enough to support the recommendation — some argued boosters could lead to more vaccine-resistant variants.
Scientists criticized the Biden administration’s push to distribute COVID vaccine booster shots in the U.S. next month, saying data provided by federal health officials this week wasn’t compelling enough to recommend a third dose for most Americans.
According to Kaiser Health News, some scientists say the announcement is “rash and based on weak evidence” — and they worry it could undercut confidence in vaccines, with no clear benefit of controlling the pandemic.
Meanwhile, more information is needed on potential side effects or adverse effects from a booster shot, experts said.
The Biden administration Tuesday announced Americans should get a COVID vaccine booster dose eight months after they received their second shot, despite consensus among U.S. health experts last month there wasn’t enough data to recommend boosters for the general population.
Yep! Pharmaceutical companies + their CEOs have made billions from COVID vaccines, massive compensation packages + questionable stock sales while reassuring investors that plans were underway for boosters and annual shots.https://t.co/ydmME541qp
Officials announced Wednesday U.S. health leaders were preparing to offer booster shots to all eligible Americans in a plan outlined by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) acting Commissioner Dr. Janet Woodcock andDr. Anthony Fauci, White House chief medical advisor.
The plan is still subject to approval from the FDA and the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee, but officials say they are prepared to begin the rollout of booster shots starting the week of Sept. 20.
However, the CDC has pushed back by one week a meeting by a group of outside advisers who were set to review COVID booster shots as debate heats up over the need for a third dose, according to Bloomberg.
The CDC’s Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, was scheduled to meet and possibly make a recommendation about the need for boosters on Aug. 24, but is now set to convene over two days starting Aug. 30.
Officials cited data from Israel, a Mayo study not yet peer-reviewed and three new studies released by the CDC showing the vaccines’ protection against COVID diminished over several months, and was less effective against the Delta variant.
But scientists and health experts said the data cited wasn’t compelling — characterizing the administration’s push for boosters as premature, CNBC reported.
Dr. Anna Durbin, a vaccine researcher at Johns Hopkins University, said people are still highly protected against severe disease, and vaccines are doing what they’re supposed to do.
“If we start seeing significant upticks of more severe disease and hospitalizations in vaccinated people, that would be a signal to consider boosters,” Durbin said. “While the presence of antibodies induced by the vaccine may decline, resulting in a rise in breakthrough infections, the body has other mechanisms, like T cells, that may protect someone from getting seriously sick,” she added.
There are some groups in the U.S. who would benefit from a third dose right now, according to Dr. Archana Chatterjee, member of the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee.
Chatterjee said data do support the need for booster doses primarily among those who are moderately to severely immunocompromised. But “breakthrough infections in the general public tend to be asymptomatic or mild,” she said.
Dr. Priya Sampathkumar, an epidemiologist at the Mayo Clinic, said a booster could be needed for the general public in the future, but “there isn’t enough data to support a third booster for all at this point.”
Dr. Hooman Noorchasm, cardiothoracic surgeon and patient safety advocate — who has been outspoken on the potential harms that may ensue from vaccinating people who have natural immunity to the infection, said:
“The FDA and CDC have been ignoring the reality that indiscriminate vaccination of recently or asymptomatically COVID-19 infected persons has caused totally avoidable harm to a non-negligible number of Americans.
“Now, CDC has announced a policy of blanket ‘booster shots’ in a subset of vaccine-compliant Americans. Using this inadequately calibrated, ‘one-size-fit-all’ approach again, CDC is almost certain to magnify harm to a subset of Americans in whom booster vaccination may be unnecessary or dangerous.”
Jennifer Nuzzo, epidemiologist and associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said, “It would be nice to understand what side effects people have after their third dose.”
Lawrence Gostin, director of the World Health Organization’s Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law, said federal health officials should put their focus elsewhere: on the unvaccinated, both in the U.S. and around the world.
The announcement about pending booster shots fueled deeper confusion about what Americans need to do to protect themselves from COVID.
“I think we’ve scared people,” said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and adviser to the National Institutes of Health and the FDA.
“We sent a terrible message,” Offit said. “We just sent a message out there that people who consider themselves fully vaccinated were not fully vaccinated. And that’s the wrong message, because you are protected against serious illness.”
Walensky said staying ahead of the virus was the biggest driver of the eight-month booster recommendation. And vaccines have proved to be their best tool.
Vaccines can create endless variants that evade protection
According to an article in the BMJ, there have been eight notable variants of SARS-CoV-2 identified since September 2020, including Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Eta, Iota, Kappa and Lambda.
A new study — yet to be peer-reviewed — published on the preprint server bioRxiv, showed the Lambda variant has acquired immune evasion capabilities above the wildtype that involves shortening of the epitopes on the viral spike protein, as well as acquiring additional sites that can be N-glycosylated.
The authors of another recent preprint study arrived at a similar conclusion. Researchers observed a seven-residue deletion at the N-terminal domain of the Lambda variant, which they said could make the Lambda variant resistant to antiviral immunity.
Researchers noted in the second bioRxiv study that the “vaccination rate in Chile is relatively high; the percentage of the people who received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine was [about] 60%.”
But, the authors warned, “nevertheless, a big COVID-19 surge has occurred in Chile in Spring 2021, suggesting that the Lambda variant is proficient in escaping from the antiviral immunity elicited by vaccination.”
Hooker said the more the variant deviates from the original sequence used for the vaccine, the less effective the vaccine will be on that variant. This could explain why fully vaccinated people are getting infected with the Delta variant, Hooker said. But this isn’t the case for natural immunity, he explained.
Hooker said:
“The vaccine focuses on the spike protein, whereas natural immunity focuses on the entire virus. Natural immunity — with a more diverse array of antibodies and T-cell receptors — will provide better protection overall as it has more targets in which to attack the virus, whereas vaccine-derived immunity only focuses on one portion of the virus, in this case, the spike protein. Once that portion of the virus has mutated sufficiently, the vaccine no longer is effective.”
According to research published July 30 in Scientific Reports, vaccinated people may play a key role in helping SARS-CoV-2 variants evolve into those that evade existing COVID vaccines.
The researchers who analyzed risk factors that favor emergence and establishment of a vaccine-resistant strain found the highest risk for establishing a resistant strain occurred when a large fraction of the population had already been vaccinated, but the transmission was not controlled.
The team of scientists who published the data in Scientific Reports said their findings follow what’s known as selective pressure — the force that drives any organism to evolve.
“Generally, the more people are infected, the more the chances for vaccine resistance to emerge,” said Fyodor Kondrashov of the Institute of Science and Technt mutant actually gains a selective advantage.”
As The Defender reported March 26, a combination of lockdowns and extreme selection pressure on the virus induced by the intense global mass vaccination program might diminish the number of cases, hospitalizations and deaths in the short-term, but ultimately, would induce the creation of more mutants of concern.
This is the result of what vaccinologist Geert Vanden Bossche calls “immune escape” (i.e., incomplete sterilization of the virus by the human immune system, even following vaccine administration).
This will trigger vaccine companies to further refine vaccines that will add to — not reduce — the selection pressure, producing ever more transmissible and potentially deadly variants.
Selection pressure causes greater convergence in mutations that affect the critical spike protein of the virus responsible for breaking through the mucosal surfaces of our airways — the route used by the virus to enter the human body, Vanden Bossche argued.
The virus will effectively outsmart the highly specific antigen-based vaccines that are being used and tweaked, depending on the circulating variants and this could lead to a hockey stick-like increase in serious and potentially lethal cases — in effect, an out-of-control pandemic.
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Megan Redshaw is a freelance reporter for The Defender. She has a background in political science, a law degree and extensive training in natural health.
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VAERS data released Friday by the CDC showed a total of 595,622 reports of adverse events from all age groups following COVID vaccines, including 13,068 deaths and 81,050 serious injuries between Dec. 14, 2020 and Aug. 13, 2021.
Data released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed that between Dec. 14, 2020 and Aug. 13, 2021, a total of 595,622 total adverse events were reported to VAERS, including 13,068 deaths — an increase of 702 over the previous week.
There were 81,050 reports of serious injuries, including deaths, during the same time period — up 10,945 compared with the previous week.
In the U.S., 354.5 million COVID vaccine doses had been administered as of Aug. 13. This includes: 141 million doses of Moderna’s vaccine, 199 million doses of Pfizer and 14 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) COVID vaccine.
The data come directly from reports submitted to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), the primary government-funded system for reporting adverse vaccine reactions in the U.S.
Every Friday, VAERS makes public all vaccine injury reports received as of a specified date, usually about a week prior to the release date. Reports submitted to VAERS require further investigation before a causal relationship can be confirmed.
This week’s U.S. data for 12- to 17-year-olds show:
The most recent reported deaths include a 15-year-old boy (VAERS I.D. 1498080) who previously had COVID, was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy in May 2021 and died four days after receiving his second dose of Pfizer’s vaccine on June 18, when he collapsed on the soccer field and went into ventricular tachycardia; and a 13-year-old girl (VAERS I.D. 1505250) who died after suffering a heart condition after receiving her first dose of Pfizer.
Booster shots coming for most Americans 8 months after second dose
The Biden administration decided most Americans should get a COVID vaccine booster dose eight months after they received their second shot, despite consensus among U.S. health experts last month there wasn’t enough data to recommend boosters for the general population.
“Based on our latest assessment, the current protection against severe disease, hospitalization and death could diminish in the months ahead,” the officials, led by Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, and Dr. Janet Woodcock, acting commissioner for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, said Wednesday.
The plan is still subject to approval from the FDA and the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee, but officials say they are prepared to begin the rollout of booster shots starting the week of Sept. 20.
However, the CDC has pushed back by one week a meeting by a group of outside advisers who were set to review COVID booster shots as debate heats up over the need for a third dose, according to Bloomberg.
The CDC’s Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, was scheduled to meet and possibly make a recommendation about the need for boosters on Aug. 24, but is now set to convene over two days starting Aug. 30.
The first boosters are likely to go to nursing home residents, healthcare workers and emergency workers, followed by older people who were near the front of the line when vaccinations began late last year and then the general population.
Federal health officials are waiting for more data before offering guidance for J&J vaccine recipients. However, officials expect a booster will also be needed.
CDC studies show vaccine protection wanes over time
Three studies released Wednesday by the CDC confirm COVID vaccine effectiveness against infection has decreased over time, and is less effective in combating the Delta variant.
One study assessed Pfizer and Moderna’s effectiveness over time against infections among nursing home residents, and found it dropped from 75% pre-Delta to 53% when Delta became dominant. The study didn’t differentiate between asymptomatic, symptomatic and severe infections.
Another study used data from 21 hospitals to estimate the effectiveness of Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines against hospitalization over time. Among 1,129 patients who received two doses of a mRNA vaccine, vaccine effectiveness was 86% 2 to12 weeks after vaccination and 84% at 13 to 24 weeks.
The third study, using New York state data, found all three vaccines’ effectiveness against infection dropped from 92% in early May to 80% at the end of July, but the effectiveness against hospitalization remained relatively stable.
Data from the three reports in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, helped convince the Biden administration to recommend booster shots to people eight months after receiving their second dose, despite no completed late-stage clinical trials assessing the safety, efficacy and immunogenicity of a third dose.
Oxford study shows vaccinated just as contagious as unvaxxed
As The Defender reported Thursday, a British public health study released Aug. 16, indicates vaccinated people with “breakthrough” infections could pose a significant infection risk to those who have not been vaccinated.
A study by University of Oxford scientists found people who contract the Delta variant after being fully vaccinated carry a similar amount of the virus as those who catch the disease and have not been vaccinated.
The study also found protection was greatest in those vaccinated who already had natural immunity through previous infection.
Based on more than 3 million nose and throat swabs, Oxford University researchers found that 90 days after a second shot of the Pfizer or Astrazeneca vaccine, efficacy in preventing infections had slipped to 75% and 61% respectively.
Those results were down from 85% and 68%, respectively, seen two weeks after a second dose, with the decline in efficacy more pronounced among those 35 years and older.
The study also showed that after two doses of the Pfizer vaccine, effectiveness was at least as great as protection afforded by natural infection — with greater initial effectiveness against new PCR-positives but faster declines in protection against high viral burden and symptomatic infection.
Researchers said there was no evidence effectiveness varied by dosing interval, but protection was higher among those vaccinated who already had natural immunity.
The survey, which has yet to be peer-reviewed before publication in a scientific journal, underscores concerns by scientists that the Delta variant can infect fully vaccinated people at a greater rate than previous variants, and that the vaccinated could more easily transmit it.
CHD sues Rutgers over COVID vaccine mandate
Children’s Health Defense (CHD) along with 18 students on Monday filed a lawsuit in federal court against Rutgers University, its board of governors, Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway and others over the university’s decision to mandate COVID vaccines for students attending school in the fall.
The lawsuit states that in a free society, “all people have the right to decide their own medical treatment — especially to decide what to inject into their bodies. And every person has the right to make that decision voluntarily, free from coercion by anyone, and to be fully informed of the benefits and especially the risks of that decision.”
The lawsuit alleges Rutgers’ policy is a violation of the right to informed consent and the right to refuse unwanted medical treatments.
The complaint also alleges the policy is a breach of contract because in January 2021, the university assured students COVID vaccines would not be required in order to attend school. Just two months later, Rutgers flip-flopped and issued new requirements for taking the shot prior to attending classes.
According to the plaintiffs, Rutgers is working with all three manufacturers — Pfizer, Moderna and J&J — to study and develop their vaccines in on-going clinical trials, and will benefit financially if more people are required to take the shots which, until fully licensed by the FDA, are defined by the FDA as experimental.
The Rutgers requirement also constitutes a denial of equal protection, as administration, faculty and staff are not required to take the vaccine. It also conflicts with federal and state law, as neither has enacted legislation requiring COVID vaccines for citizens.
165 days and counting, CDC ignores The Defender’s inquiries
According to the CDC website, “the CDC follows up on any report of death to request additional information and learn more about what occurred and to determine whether the death was a result of the vaccine or unrelated.”
On March 8, The Defender contacted the CDC with a written list of questions about reported deaths and injuries related to COVID vaccines. We have made repeated attempts, by phone and email, to obtain a response to our questions.
Despite multiple phone and email communications with many people at the CDC, and despite being told that our request was in the system and that someone would respond, we have not yet received answers to any of the questions we submitted. It has been 165 days since we sent our first email to the CDC requesting information.
Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, @crg_globalresearch. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Megan Redshaw is a freelance reporter for The Defender. She has a background in political science, a law degree and extensive training in natural health.
Below is the second half and conclusion of “Afghanistan, the Forgotten Proxy War”. While the previous sections examined the economic roots of imperialism, as well as the historical context of the Cold War within which to situate the Mujahideen, the following explores the anatomy of proxy warfare and media disinformation campaigns which were at the heart of destabilizing Afghanistan. These were also a large part of why there was little to no opposition to the Mujahideen from the Western ‘left’, whose continued dysfunctionality cannot be talked about without discussing Zbigniew Brzezinski. We also take a look at what led to the Soviet Union’s demise and how that significantly affected the former Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and many other parts of the world. The United States has been at war in Afghanistan for four decades now, and it will reach its 40th year on July 3, 2019.
The original “moderate rebel”
One of the key players in the anti-Soviet, U.S.-led regime change project against Afghanistan was Osama bin Laden, a Saudi-born millionaire who came from a wealthy, powerful family that owns a Saudi construction company and has had close ties to the Saudi royal family.
Before becoming known as America’s “boogeyman”, Osama bin Laden was put in charge of fundraising for the Mujahideen insurgents, creating numerous charities and foundations in the process and working in coordination with Saudi intelligence (who acted as liaisons between the fighters and the CIA). Journalist Robert Fisk even gave bin Laden a glowing review, calling him a “peace warrior” and a philanthropist in a 1993 report for the Independent.
Bin Laden also provided recruitment for the Mujahideen and is believed to have also received security training from the CIA. And in 1989, the same year that Soviet troops withdrew, he founded the terrorist organization Al Qaeda with a number of fighters he had recruited to the Mujahideen. Although the PDPA had already been overthrown, and the Soviet Union was dissolved, he still maintained his relationship with the CIA and NATO, working with them from the mid-to-late 1990s to provide support for the secessionist Bosnian paramilitaries and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in the destruction and dismantling of Yugoslavia.
The United States would eventually turn Bin Laden into a scapegoat after the 2001 terrorist attacks, while still maintaining ties to his family and providing arms, training, and funding to Al Qaeda and its affiliates (rebranded as “moderate rebels” by the Western media) in its more recent regime change project against Syria, which started in 2011. The Mujahideen not only gave birth to Al Qaeda, but it would set a precedent for the United States’ regime-change operations in later years against the anti-imperialist governments of Libya and Syria.
Reagan entertains Mujahideen fighters in the White House.
With the end to the cycle of World Wars (for the time being, at least), it has become increasingly common for the United States to use local paramilitaries, terrorist groups, and/or the armed forces of comprador regimes to fight against nations targeted by U.S. capital interests. Why the use of proxy forces? They are, as Whitney Webb describes, “a politically safe tool for projecting the U.S.’ geopolitical will abroad.”
Using proxy warfare as a kind of power projection tool is, first and foremost, cost-effective, since paid local mercenaries or terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda will bear the burden of combat and casualties rather than American troops in places like Libya and Syria. For example, it costs much less to pay local paramilitaries, gangs, crime syndicates, terrorist groups, and other reactionary forces to perform the same military operations as U.S. troops. Additionally, with the advent of nuclear weapons it became much more perilous for global superpowers to come into direct combat with one another — if the Soviet Union and the United States had done so, there existed the threat of “mutually assured destruction”, the strong possibility of instantaneous and catastrophic damage to the populations and the economic and living standards of both sides, something neither side was willing to risk, even if it was U.S. imperialism’s ultimate goal to destroy the Soviet Union.
And so, the U.S. was willing to use any other means necessary to weaken the Soviet Union and safeguard its profits, which included eliminating the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan even if it had neither the intent nor the means of launching a military offensive on American soil. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union had the means of producing a considerably large supply of modern weapons, including nuclear deterrents, to counter the credible threat posed by the United States. To strike the Soviet Union with nuclear missiles would have been a great challenge for the United States, since it would have resulted in overwhelming retaliation by the Soviet Union. To maneuver this problem, to assure the destruction of the Soviet Union while protecting the U.S. from similar destruction, the CIA relied on more unconventional methods not previously thought of as being part of traditional warfare, such as funding proxy forces while wielding economic and cultural influence over the American domestic sphere and the international scene.
Furthermore, proxy warfare enables control of public opinion, thus allowing the U.S. government to escape public scrutiny and questions about legal authorization for war. With opposition from the general public essentially under control, consent for U.S.-led wars does not need to be obtained, especially when the U.S. military is running them from “behind the scenes” and its involvement looks less obvious. Indeed, the protests against the war on Vietnam in the United States and other Western countries saw mass turnouts.
And while the U.S.-led aggression in Vietnam did involve proxy warfare to a lesser degree, it was still mostly fought with American “boots-on-the-ground”, much like the 2001 renewed U.S.-led aggression against Afghanistan and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In contrast, the U.S. assault on Afghanistan that began in 1979 saw little to no protest. The Mujahideen even garnered support from large portions of the Western left who joined the chorus of voices in the Western mainstream media in demonizing the PDPA — a relentless imperialist propaganda campaign that would be repeated in later years during the U.S. wars on Libya and Syria, with the difference being that social media had not yet gained prominence at the time of the initial assault on Afghanistan. This leads to the next question: why recruit some of the most reactionary social forces abroad, many of whom represent complete backwardness?
In Afghanistan, such forces proved useful in the mission to topple the modernizing government of the PDPA, especially when their anti-modernity aspirations intersected with U.S. foreign policy; these ultra-conservative forces continue to be deployed by the United States today. In fact, the long war on Afghanistan shares many striking similarities with the long war on Syria, with the common theme of U.S. imperialism collaborating with violent Sunni extremists to topple the secular, nationalist and anti-imperialist governments of these two former ‘Soviet bloc’ countries. And much like the PDPA, the current and long-time government of the Ba’ath Arab Socialist Party in Syria has made many strides towards achieving national liberation and economic development, which have included: taking land from aristocratic families (a majority of whom were Sunni Muslims while Shia Muslims, but especially Alawites, traditionally belonged to the lower classes and were treated as second class citizens in pre-Ba’athist Syria) and redistributing and nationalizing it, making use of Syria’s oil and gas reserves to modernize the country and benefit its population, and upholding women’s rights as an important part of the Ba’athist pillars.
Some of these aristocratic landlords, just like their Afghan counterparts, would react violently and join the Muslim Brotherhood who, with CIA-backing, carried out acts of terrorism and other atrocities in Hama as they made a failed attempt to topple the government of Hafez al Assad in 1982.
The connection between the two is further solidified by the fact that it was the Mujahideen from which Al Qaeda emerged; both are inspired by Wahhabist ideology, and one of their chief financiers is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (as well as Israel, a regional imperial power and a key ally of the United States). In either case, these Wahhabi-inspired forces were vehemently opposed to modernization and development, and would much rather keep large sections of the population impoverished, as they sought to replace the PDPA and the Ba’athists with Sunni fundamentalist, anti-Shia, theological autocracies — Saudi-style regimes, in other words.
These reactionary forces are useful tools in the CIA’s anti-communist projects and destabilization campaigns against independent nationalist governments, considering that the groups’ anti-modernity stance is a motivating factor in their efforts to sabotage economic development, which is conducive to ensuring a favourable climate for U.S. capital interests. It also helps that these groups already saw the nationalist governments of the PDPA and the Syrian Ba’ath party as their ‘archenemy’, and would thus fight them to the death and resort to acts of terrorism against the respective civilian populations.
Zbigniew Brzezinski stated in a 1998 interview with Le Nouvel Observateur in response to the following question:
Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?
[Brzezinski]: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
Once again, he makes it clear that the religious extremism of the Mujahideen fighters was not an issue for Washington because the real political value lay in eliminating the PDPA and putting an end to Soviet influence in the Greater Middle East, which would give the U.S. the opportunity to easily access and steal the country’s wealth. And in order to justify the U.S. imperialist intervention in Afghanistan, as well as to obscure the true nature of the Mujahideen fighters, the intervention needed to be accompanied by a rigorous mass media campaign. The Reagan administration — knowing full well that American mainstream media has international influence — continued the war that the Carter administration started and saw it as an opportunity to “step up” its domestic propaganda war, considering that the American general public was still largely critical of the Vietnam War at the time.
As part of the aggressive imperialist propaganda campaign, anyone who dared to publicly criticize the Mujahideen was subjected to character assassination and was pejoratively labelled a “Stalinist” or a “Soviet apologist”, which are akin to labels such as “Russian agent” or “Assadist” being used as insults today against those who speak out against the U.S.-backed terrorism in Syria. There were also careful rebranding strategies made specifically for Osama bin Laden and the Mujahideen mercenaries, who were hailed as “revolutionary freedom fighters” and given a romantic, exoticized “holy warrior” makeover in Western media; hence the title of this section. The Mujahideen mercenaries were even given a dedication title card at the end of the Hollywood movie Rambo III which read, “This film is dedicated to the brave Mujahideen fighters of Afghanistan”; the film itself added to the constructed romantic image as it portrayed the Mujahideen fighters as heroes, while the Soviet Union and the PDPA were portrayed as the cartoonish villains. The Rambo film franchise is well known for its depiction of the Vietnamese as “savages” and as the aggressors in the U.S. war on Vietnam, which is a blatant reversal of the truth.
The Hollywood blockbuster franchise would be used to make the Mujahideen more palatable to Western audiences, as this unabashed, blatantly anti-Soviet propaganda for U.S. imperialism attracted millions of viewers with one of the largest movie marketing campaigns of the time. Although formulaic, the films are easily consumable because they appeal to emotion and, as Michael Parenti states in Dirty Truths, “The entertainment industry does not merely give the people what they want: it is busy shaping those wants,” (p. 111). Rambo III may not have been critically acclaimed, but it was still the second most commercially successful film in the Rambo series, grossing a total of $189,015,611 at the box office. Producing war propaganda films is nothing new and has been a long staple of the Hollywood industry, which serves capitalist and imperialist interests. But, since the blockbuster movie is one of the most widely available and distributed forms of media, repackaging the Mujahideen into a popular film franchise was easily one of the best ways (albeit cynical) to justify the war, maintaining the American constructed narrative and reinforcing the demonization campaign against Soviet Russia and the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. Now, outside of the cinema, CBS News went as far as to air fake battle footage meant to help perpetuate the myth that the Mujahideen mercenaries were “freedom fighters”; American journalists Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, although decidedly biased against the Soviet Union and its allies, documented this ruse in which the news channel participated. In terms of proxy warfare, these were just some of the ways used to distract from the fact that it was a U.S.-led war.
The dedication title card as it originally appeared at the end of the film Rambo III.
In Afghanistan, proxy forces provided a convenient cover because they drew attention away from the fact that U.S. imperialism was the root cause of the conflict. The insurgents also helped to demonize the targets of U.S. foreign policy, the PDPA and the Soviet Union, all the while doing the majority of the physical combat in place of the American military. In general, drawing attention away from the fact that it has been the United States “pulling the strings” all along, using proxy forces helps Washington to maintain plausible deniability in regard to its relationship with such groups. If any one of these insurgents becomes a liability, as what had happened with the Taliban, they can just as easily be disposed of and replaced by more competent patsies, while U.S. foreign policy goes unquestioned. Criminal gangs and paramilitary forces are thus ideal and convenient tools for U.S. foreign policy. With the rule of warlords and the instability (namely damage to infrastructure, de-industrialization, and societal collapse) that followed after the toppling of the PDPA, Afghanistan’s standard of living dropped rapidly, leading to forced mass migrations and making the country all the more vulnerable to a more direct U.S. military intervention — which eventually did happen in 2001.
Zbigniew Brzezinski: godfather of colour revolutions and proxy wars, architect of the Mujahideen
The late Brzezinski was a key figure in U.S. foreign policy and a highly influential figure in the Council on Foreign Relations. Although the Polish-American diplomat and political scientist was no longer the National Security Advisor under Ronald Reagan’s presidency, he still continued to play a prominent role in enforcing U.S. foreign policy goals in upholding Washington’s global monopoly. The liberal Cold War ideologue’s signature strategy consisted of using the CIA to destabilize and force regime-change onto countries whose governments actively resisted against Washington. Such is the legacy of Brzezinski, whose strategy of funding the most reactionary anti-government forces to foment chaos and instability while promoting them as “freedom fighters” is now a longstanding staple of U.S. imperialism.
How were the aggressive propaganda campaigns which promoted the Mujahideen mercenaries as “freedom fighters” able to garner support for the aggression against the former Democratic Republic of Afghanistan from so many on the Western left who had previously opposed the war on Vietnam? It was the through the CIA’s use of ‘soft-power’ schemes, because leftist opinion also needed to be controlled and manipulated in the process of carrying out U.S. foreign and public policy. Brzezinski mastered the art of targeting intelligentsia and impressionable young people in order to make them supportive of U.S. foreign policy, misleading a significant number of people into supporting U.S.-led wars.
The CIA invested money into programs that used university campus, anti-Soviet “radical leftist activists” and academics (as well as artists and writers) to help spread imperialist propaganda dressed up in vaguely “leftist”-sounding language and given a more “hip”, “humanitarian”, “social justice”, “free thinker” appeal. Western, but especially American, academia has since continued to teach the post-modernist “oppression theory” or “privilege theory” to students, which is anti-Marxist and anti-scientific at its core. More importantly, this post-modernist infiltration was meant to distract from class struggle, to help divert any form of solidarity away from anti-imperialist struggles, and to foster virulent animosity towards the Soviet Union among students and anyone with ‘leftist’ leanings. Hence the phenomenon of identity politics that continues to plague the Western left today, whose strength was effectively neutered by the 1970s. Not only that, but as Gowans mentions in his book, Patriots, Traitors and Empires: The Story of Korea’s Struggle for Freedom:
“U.S. universities recruit talented individuals from abroad, instill in them the U.S. imperialist ideology and values, and equip them with academic credentials which conduce to their landing important political positions at home. In this way, U.S. imperial goals indirectly structure the political decision-making of other countries.” (pp. 52-53)
And so we have agencies and think-tanks such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) which has scholarly appeal and actively interferes in elections abroad — namely, in countries that are targets of U.S. foreign policy. Founded in 1983 by Reagan and directed by the CIA, the agency also assists in mobilizing coups and paid “dissidents” in U.S.-led regime change projects, such as the 2002 failed attempt against Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, as well as helping to create aggressive media campaigns that demonize targeted nations. Another instance of this “soft power” tactic of mobilizing U.S.-backed “dissidents” in targeted nations are the number of Sunni Islamic fundamentalist madrassas (schools) sponsored by the CIA and set up by Wahhabi missionaries from Saudi Arabia in Afghanistan — which started to appear in increasing numbers during the 1980s, reaching over 39,000 during the decade. Afghanistan’s public education institutions were largely secular prior to the fall of Kabul in 1992; these madrassas were the direct, ideological and intellectual antitheses to the existing institutions of education. The madrassas acted as centres for cult-like brainwashing and were essentially CIA covert psychological operations (psy-ops) intended to inspire divisiveness and demobilize younger generations of Afghans in the face of imperial onslaught so that they would not unite with the wider PDPA-led nationalist resistance to imperialism.
The NED’s founding members were comprised of Cold War ideologues which included Brzezinski himself, as well as Trotskyists who provided an endless supply of slurs against the Soviet Union. It was chiefly under this agency, and with direction provided by Brzezinski, that America produced artists, “activists”, academics, and writers who presented themselves as “radical leftists” and slandered the Soviet Union and countries that were aligned with it — which was all part of the process of toppling them and subjugating them to U.S. free market fundamentalism. With Brzezinski having mastered the art of encouraging postmodernism and identity politics among the Western left in order to weaken it, the United States not only had military and economic might on its side but also highly sophisticated ideological instruments to help give it the upper hand in propaganda wars.
These “soft power” schemes are highly effective in masking the brutality of U.S. imperialism, as well as concealing the exploitation of impoverished nations. Marketing the Mujahideen mercenaries as “peace warriors” while demonizing the PDPA and referring to the Soviet assistance as an “invasion” or “aggression” marked the beginning of the regular use of “humanitarian” pretexts for imperialist interventions. The Cold War era onslaught against Afghanistan can thus be seen as the template for the NATO-led regime change projects against Yugoslavia, Libya, and Syria, which not only involved the use of U.S.-backed proxy forces but also “humanitarian” pretexts being presented in the aggressive propaganda campaigns against the targeted countries. It was not until 2002, however, that then-American UN representative Samantha Powers, as well as several U.S.-allied representatives, would push the United Nations to officially adopt the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) doctrine into the Charter — which was in direct contradiction to the law that recognizes the violation of a nation’s sovereignty as a crime. The R2P doctrine was born out of the illegal 78-day NATO air-bombing of Yugoslavia from March 24 to June 10, 1999. And although plans to dismantle Yugoslavia go as far back as 1984, it was not until much of the 1990s that NATO would begin openly intervening — with more naked aggression — starting with the funding and support for secessionist paramilitary forces in Bosnia between 1994-1995. It then sealed the 1999 destruction of Yugoslavia with with the balkanization of the Serbian province of Kosovo. In addition to the use of terrorist and paramilitary groups as proxy forces which received CIA-training and funding, another key feature of this “humanitarian” intervention was the ongoing demonization campaigns against the Serbs, who were at the centre of a vicious Western media propaganda war. Some of the most egregious parts of these demonization campaigns — which were tantamount to slander and libel — were the claims that the Serbs were “committing genocide” against ethnic Albanians. The NATO bombing campaign was illegal since it was given no UN Security Council approval or support.
Once again, Brzezinski was not the National Security Advisor during the U.S.-led campaign against Yugoslavia. However, he still continued to wield influence as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a private organization and Wall Street think tank. The Council on Foreign Relations is intertwined with highly influential NGOs who are essentially propaganda mouthpieces for U.S. foreign policy, such as Human Rights Watch, which has fabricated stories of atrocities allegedly committed by countries targeted by U.S. imperialism. Clearly, unmitigated U.S. imperial aggression did not end with the destruction of the former Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, nor with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The post-Cold War years were a continuation of U.S. imperialism’s scramble for more spheres of influence and global domination; it was also a scramble for what was left of the former ‘Soviet bloc’ and Warsaw Pact. The dismantling of Yugoslavia was, figuratively speaking, the ‘final nail in the coffin’ of whatever ‘Soviet influence’ was left in Eastern Europe.
The demise of the Soviet Union and the “Afghan trap” question
Image on the right: Left to right: former Afghan President Babrak Karmal, and former Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. Karmal took office at around the same time (December 1979) the PDPA requested that Moscow intervene to assist the besieged Afghanistan.
The sabotage and subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union meant that only one global hegemon remained, and that was the United States. Up until 1989, the Soviet Union had been the barrier that was keeping the United States from launching a more robust military intervention in Afghanistan, as well as in Central and West Asia. While pulling out did not immediately cause the defeat of Kabul as the PDPA government forces continued to struggle for another three years, Mikhail Gorbachev’s decision to withdraw Soviet troops arguably had a detrimental impact on Afghanistan for many years to come. Although there was no Soviet military assistance in the last three years of Najibullah’s presidency, Afghanistan continued to receive aid from the USSR, and some Soviet military advisers (however limited in their capacity) still remained; despite the extreme difficulties, and combined with the nation’s still-relatively high morale, this did at least help to keep the government from being overthrown immediately. This defied U.S. expectations as the CIA and the George H.W. Bush administration had believed that the government of Najibullah would fall as soon as Soviet troops were withdrawn. But what really hurt the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan’s army was when the Soviet Union was dismantled in 1991; almost as soon as the dissolution happened and Boris Yeltsin (with U.S. backing) took over as Russia’s president, the aid stopped coming and the government forces became unable to hold out for much longer. The U.S. aggression was left unchecked, and to this day Afghanistan has not seen geopolitical stability and has since been a largely impoverished ‘failed state’, serving as a training ground for terrorist groups such as ISIS and Al Qaeda. It continues to be an anarchic battleground between rival warlords which include the ousted Taliban and the U.S. puppet government that replaced them.
But, as was already mentioned above, the “Afghan trap” did not, in and of itself, cause the dismantling of the Soviet Union. In that same interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, Brzezinski had this to say in response to the question about setting the “trap”:
Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?
[Brzezinski]: It isn’t quite that. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.
Likewise with Cuba and Syria, the USSR had a well-established alliance with the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, one of mutual aid and partnership. Answering Kabul’s explicit request for assistance was a deliberate and conscious choice made by Moscow, and it just so happened that the majority of Afghans welcomed it. For any errors that Leonid Brezhnev, the General Secretary at the time, may have made (which do deserve a fair amount of criticism, but are not the focus of this article), the 1979 decision to intervene on behalf of Afghanistan against U.S. imperialism was not one of them. It is true that both the Soviet and the U.S. interventions were military interventions, but the key difference is that the U.S. was backing reactionary forces for the purposes of establishing colonial domination and was in clear violation of Afghan sovereignty. Consider, too, that Afghanistan had only deposed of its king in 1973, just six years before the conflict began. The country may have moved quickly to industrialize and modernize, but it wasn’t much time to fully develop its military defenses by 1979.
Image below: Mikhail Gorbachev accepts the Nobel Peace Prize from George H.W. Bush on October 15, 1990. Many Russians saw this gesture as a betrayal, while the West celebrated it, because he was being awarded for his capitulation to U.S. imperialism in foreign and economic policy.
Other than that, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the Soviet Union imploded due to an accumulating number of factors: namely, the gradual steps that U.S. foreign policy had taken over the years to cripple the Soviet economy, especially after the deaths of Brezhnev and Yuri Andropov. How Gorbachev responded during the U.S.-led onslaught against Afghanistan certainly helped to exacerbate the conditions that led to the dissolution. After the deaths of Brezhnev and Andropov, the Soviet Union’s economy became disorganized and was being liberalized during much of the 1980s. Not only that, but the Reagan administration escalated the arms race, which intensified after they had scrapped the ‘detente’ that was previously made in the mid-1970s. Even prior to Reagan’s hardline, bombastic rhetoric and escalation against the USSR, the Soviet Union was already beginning to show signs of strain from the arms race during the late-1970s. However, in spite of the economic strains, during the height of the war the organized joint operations between the Soviet army and the Afghan army saw a significant amount of success in pushing back against the Mujahideen with many of the jihadist leaders either being killed or fleeing to Pakistan. Therefore, it is erroneous to say that intervening in Afghanistan on behalf of the Afghan people “did the Soviet Union in.”
In a misguided and ultimately failed attempt to spur economic growth rates, Gorbachev moved to end the Cold War by withdrawing military support from allies and pledging cooperation with the United States who promised “peace”. When he embraced Neoliberalism and allowed for the USSR to be opened to the U.S.-dominated world capitalist economy, the Soviet economy imploded and the effects were felt by its allies. It was a capitulation to U.S. imperialism, in other words; and it led to disastrous results not only in Afghanistan, but in several other countries as well. These include: the destruction of Yugoslavia, both wars on Iraq, and the 2011 NATO invasion of Libya. Also, Warsaw Pact members in Eastern Europe were no longer able to effectively fight back against U.S.-backed colour revolutions; some of them would eventually be absorbed as NATO members, such as Czechoslovakia which was dissolved and divided into two states: the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Without Soviet Russia to keep it in check, the United States was able to launch an unrestrained series of aggressions for nearly two decades. Because of his decision to withdraw from the arms race altogether, in a vain attempt to transform the Soviet Union into a social democracy akin to those of the Nordic countries, Gorbachev had deprived the Russian army of combat effectiveness by making significant cuts to its defense budget, which is partly why they were forced to evacuate. Not only that, but these diplomatic and military concessions with the United States gave them no benefit in return, hence the economic crisis in Russia during the Yeltsin years. Suffice to say, the Gorbachev-Yeltsin years are not remembered fondly in Russia and many regard Gorbachev as a traitor and Western agent who helped to bring the Soviet Union to its collapse. In more recent years, efforts are being made to assess the actions taken by Gorbachev with regards to Afghanistan; this includes going against and revising the resolution put forth by him which suggested that the USSR intervention was “shameful”.
In short, Afghanistan did not cause the Soviet Union’s demise even if it required large military spending. More accurately: it was Gorbachev’s impulsive decision to quickly discard the planned economy in favour of a market economy in order to appease the United States, who made the false promise that NATO would not expand eastward. If there was a real “trap”, it was this and Gorbachev played right into the hands of U.S. imperialism; and so, the Soviet Union received its devastating blow from the United States in the end — not from a small, minor nation such as Afghanistan which continues to suffer the most from the effects of these past events. For many years, but especially since the end of WWII, the United States made ceaseless efforts to undermine the USSR, adding stress upon stress onto its economy, in addition to the psychological warfare waged through the anti-Soviet propaganda and military threats against it and its allies. Despite any advances made in the past, the Soviet Union’s economy was still not as large as that of the United States. And so, in order to keep pace with NATO, the Soviet Union did not have much of a choice but to spend a large percentage of its GDP on its military and on helping to defend its allies, which included national liberation movements in the Third World, because of the very real and significant threat that U.S. imperialism posed. If it had not spent any money militarily, its demise would most likely have happened much sooner. But eventually, these mounting efforts by U.S. imperialism created a circumstance where its leadership under Gorbachev made a lapse in judgment, reacting impulsively and carelessly rather than acting with resilience in spite of the onslaught.
It should also be taken into account that WWII had a profound impact on Soviet leadership — from Joseph Stalin to Gorbachev — because even though the Red Army was victorious in defeating the Nazis, the widespread destruction had still placed the Soviet economy under an incredible amount of stress and it needed time to recover. Meanwhile, the convenient geographical location of the United States kept it from suffering the same casualties and infrastructural damage seen across Europe and Asia as a result of the Second World War, which enabled its economy to recover much faster and gave it enough time to eventually develop the U.S. Dollar as the international currency and assert dominance over the world economy. Plus, the U.S. had accumulated two-thirds of the world’s gold reserves by 1944 to help back the Dollar; and even if it lost a large amount of the gold, it would still be able to maintain Dollar supremacy by developing the fiat system to back the currency. Because of the destruction seen during WWII, it is understandable that the Soviet Union wanted to avoid another world war, which is why it also made several attempts at achieving some kind of diplomacy with the United States (before Gorbachev outright capitulated). At the same time, it also understood that maintaining its military defenses was important because of the threat of a nuclear war from the United States, which would be much more catastrophic than the Nazis’ military assaults against the Soviet Union since Hitler did not have a nuclear arsenal. This was part of a feat that U.S. imperialism was able to accomplish that ultimately overshadowed British, French, German, and Japanese imperialism, which Brzezinski reveals in his book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives: an unparalleled military establishment that, by far, had the most effective global reach which allowed the U.S. to “project forces over long distances”, helping it to assert its global domination and impose its “political will”. And what makes the American Empire distinct from the Japanese Empire, British Empire, and other European empires is that one of the bases for its ideology is the socially constructed international hierarchy of nations, and not races as was the case with the other aforementioned empires. This constructed international hierarchy of nations is more effective because it means not only greater expansionism, but also the greater ability to exercise global primacy and supremacy. More specific to Central Asia and the Middle East, the Wahhabist and Salafist groups propped up by the CIA were always intended to nurture sectarianism and discord in order to counter a mass, broad-based united front of nations against imperialism — an example of divide-and-conquer, which is an age-old tradition of empire, except this time with Neoliberal characteristics.
Therefore, the Mujahideen against Afghanistan should not be thought of simply as “the Afghan trap”, but rather as the U.S. subjugation and plundering of West and Central Asia and an important milestone (albeit a cynical one) in shaping its foreign policy with regards to the region for many years to come. If one thing has remained a constant in U.S. foreign policy towards West and Central Asia, it is its strategic partnership with the oil autocracy of Saudi Arabia, which acts as the United States’ steward in safeguarding the profits of American petroleum corporations and actively assists Western powers in crushing secular Arab and Central Asian nationalist resistance against imperialism. The Saudi monarchy would again be called on by the U.S. government in 2011 in Syria to assist in the repeated formula of funding and arming so-called “moderate rebels” in the efforts to destabilize the country. Once again, the ultimate goal in this more recent imperial venture is to contain Russia.
Cold War 2.0? American Supremacy marches on
The present-day anti-Russia hysteria is reminiscent of the anti-Soviet propaganda of the Cold War era; while anti-communism is not the central theme today, one thing remains the same: the fact that the U.S. Empire is (once again) facing a formidable challenge to its position in the world. After the Yeltsin years were over, and under Vladimir Putin, Russia’s economy eventually recovered and moved towards a more dirigiste economy; and on top of that, it moved away from the NATO fold, which triggered the old antagonistic relationship with the United States. Russia has also decided to follow the global trend of taking the step towards reducing reliance on the U.S. dollar, which is no doubt a source of annoyance to the U.S. capitalist class. It seems that a third world war in the near future is becoming more likely as the U.S. inches closer to a direct military confrontation against Russia and, more recently, China. History does appear to be repeating itself. When the government of Bashar al Assad called on Moscow for assistance in fighting against the NATO-backed terrorists, it certainly was reminiscent of when the PDPA had done the same many years before. Thus far, the Syrian Arab Republic has continued to withstand the destabilization efforts carried out by the Al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist groups and Kurdish militias at the behest of the United States, and has not collapsed as Libya, Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan did.
But what often gets overlooked is the repeated Brzezinskist formula of funding highly reactionary forces and promoting them as “revolutionaries” to Western audiences in order to fight governments that defy the global dictatorship of the United States and refuse to allow the West to exploit their natural resources and labour power. As Karl Marx once said, “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.” Such a phenomenon is no accident or a mere mistake. The geopolitical instability that followed after the overthrow of the PDPA ensures that no sound, united, and formidable opposition against U.S. imperialism will emerge for an indefinite number of years; and it seems that Libya, where the Brzezinskist-style of regime change also saw success and which is now a hotbed for the slave trade, is on the same path as Afghanistan. This is all a part of what Lenin calls moribund capitalism when he discussed the economic essence of imperialism; and by that, he meant that imperialism carries the contradictions of capitalism to the extreme limit. American global monopoly had grown out of U.S. foreign policy, and it should go without saying that the American Empire cannot tolerate losing its Dollar Supremacy, especially when the global rate of profit is falling. And if too many nations reject U.S. efforts to infiltrate their markets and force foreign finance capital exports onto their economies in order to gain a monopoly over the resources, as well as to exploit the labour of their working people, it would surely spell a sharp decline in American Dollar hegemony. The fact that the United States was willing to go as far as to back mercenaries to attack the former Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and fight the Soviet Union, as well as to spend billions of dollars on a highly elaborate but effective propaganda campaign, shows a sign of desperation of the American Empire in maintaining its global hegemony.
Since the end of World War II the United States has been, and is by and large still, the overwhelming world-dominating power. It is true that the American Empire is in decline, in light of increasing trends towards “de-Dollarization,” as well as the rise of China and Russia which pose as challenges to U.S. interests. Naturally, Washington will desperately try to cling on to its number one position in the world by accelerating the growth of its global monopolies — whether it is through placing wholly unnecessary tariffs against competitors such as China, or threatening to completely cut Venezuelan and Iranian oil out of the global market — even if it means an increasing drive towards World War III. The current global economic order which Washington elites have been instrumental in shaping over the past several decades reflects the interests of the global capitalist class to such an extent that the working class is threatened with yet another world war despite the unimaginable carnage witnessed during the first two.
When we look back at these historical events to help make sense of the present, we see how powerful mass media can be and how it is used as a tool of U.S. foreign policy to manipulate and control public opinion. Foreign policy is about the economic relationships between countries. Key to understanding how U.S. imperialism functions is in its foreign policy and how it carries it out — which adds up to plundering from relatively small or poorer nations more than a share of wealth and resources that can be normally produced in common commercial exchanges, forcing them to be indebted; and if any of them resist, then they will almost certainly be subjected to military threats.
With the great wealth that allowed it to build a military that can “project forces over long distances,” the United States is in a unique position in history, to say the least. However, as we have seen above, the now four decade-long war on Afghanistan was not only fought on a military front considering the psy-ops and the propaganda involved. If anything, the Soviet Union lost on the propaganda front in the end.
From Afghanistan we learn not only of the origins of Al Qaeda, to which the boom in the opioid-addiction epidemic has ties, or why today we have the phenomenon of an anti-Russia Western “left” that parrots imperialist propaganda and seems very eager to see that piece of Cold War history repeat itself in Syria. We also learn that we cannot de-link the events of the 2001 direct U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan and what followed from those of 1979; Afghanistan’s colonial-feudal past, its break from that with the 1978 Saur Revolution, and the U.S.-led Mujahideen are all as much of a part of its history (and the Greater Middle East, by extension) as the events of 2001. It cannot be stressed enough that it is those historical conditions, particularly as they relate to U.S. foreign policy, that helped to shape the ongoing conflict today.
Obviously, we cannot undo the past. It is not in the interests of the working class anywhere, in the Global South or in the Global North, to see a third world war happen, as such a war would have catastrophic consequences for everyone — in fact, it could potentially destroy all of humanity. Building a new and revitalized anti-war movement in the imperialist nations is a given, but it also requires a more sophisticated understanding of U.S. foreign policy. Without historical context, Western mass media will continue to go unchallenged, weaning audiences on a steady diet of “moderate rebels” propaganda and effectively silencing the victims of imperialism. It is necessary to unite workers across the whole world according to their shared interests in order to effectively fight and defeat imperialism and to establish a just, egalitarian, and sustainable world under socialism. Teaching the working class everywhere the real history of such conflicts as the one in Afghanistan is an important part of developing the revolutionary consciousness necessary to build a strong global revolutionary movement against imperialism.
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Originally published by LLCO.org on March 30, 2019. For the full-length article and bibliography, click here.
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This text was among the first articles published by Global Research.
It was published on October 15, 2001, in the week following the US-NATO led invasion of Afghanistan on October 7, 2001.
This historic interview with President Carter’s National Security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski confirms that the so-called “Soviet-Afghan war” was triggered and initiated not by the Soviet Union but by the United States.
America has been at war with Afghanistan for more than forty Years. It started in July 1979. It is still ongoing.
America’s War against the people of Afghanistan started on July 3, 1979, when President Carter, on the advice of his National Security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski “signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul”.
Confirmed by this 1998 interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, the CIA’s intervention in Afghanistan preceded the entry of Soviet forces into Afghanistan in the context of a military cooperation agreement with the Kabul government similar in form to that reached between Damascus and Moscow in the context of the ongoing war in Syria. That agreement between Moscow and Kabul was signed on December 24, 1979.
Confirmed by Zbigniew Brzezinski, Soviet forces (in a cooperation agreement with a secular Afghan government) were fighting the Al Qaeda mercenaries who had been recruited by the CIA.
Amply documented, the recruitment, training and indoctrination of the Mujahideen was financed by the drug trade which was supported covertly by the CIA.
The terrorists were recruited starting in July 1979. They were used to undermine and destroy Afghanistan’s secular social structure. The decision of the Carter Administration in early July 1979 to intervene and destabilize Afghanistan’s secular government was conducive to Afghanistan’s destruction as a nation-state.
These are the realities of history.
The official justification for the US-NATO War on Afghanistan which started on October 7, 2001 was that an unnamed foreign power attacked America on September 11, 2001, and that consequently “the laws of war” apply, allowing the nation under attack, to strike back in the name of “self-defense”.
NATO’s North Atlantic Council meeting in Brussels on September 12, 2001, adopted the following resolution:
“if it is determined that the [September 11, 2001] attack against the United States was directed from abroad [Afghanistan] against “The North Atlantic area“, it shall be regarded as an action covered by Article 5 of the Washington Treaty”. (emphasis added)
The bombing and invasion of Afghanistan which commenced on October 7, 2001 was described as a “campaign” against “Islamic terrorists”, rather than a war.
And those same Al Qaeda affiliated Islamic terrorists had been recruited by the US starting in July 1979. They were supported and financed by the US.
What was initiated in 1979 is best described as “America’s War With Terrorists” whereby Al Qaeda recruits are used to destroy secular sovereign nations in a diabolical covert operation which has now extended its thrust from the Middle East to South East Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Beyond.
Michel Chossudovsky, August 22, 2021
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This is the Muslim country that America deliberately Destroyed
Scroll down for Brzezinski interview followed by more photos of what Afghanistan looked like prior to US sponsored terrorism.
Kabul University 1980s
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Interview with National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski
Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs [“From the Shadows”], that American intelligence services began their aid to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?
Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahideen began during the 1980s, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 December 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise.
Indeed, it was on July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.
Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?
B: It isn’t quite that. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.
Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn’t believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don’t regret anything today?
B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?
B: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?
Q: Some stirred-up Muslims? But it has been said and repeated Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.
B:Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn’t a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries.
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emphasis added
Translated from French by WilliamBlum
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As of the early 1980s, the US was actively involved in destroying Afghanistan a prosperous and progressive Muslim country with a secular government.
“Some stirred up Muslims” to use the words of Zbigniew Brzezinski.
Al Qaeda terrorists were recruited by the U.S to destroy and impoverish a country of 38 billion people.
“Biology class, Kabul University.”
“Phonograph record store.”
“Hundreds of Afghan youngsters take active part in Scout programs.”
In this new and expanded edition of Michel Chossudovsky’s 2002 best seller, the author blows away the smokescreen put up by the mainstream media, that 9/11 was an attack on America by “Islamic terrorists”. Through meticulous research, the author uncovers a military-intelligence ploy behind the September 11 attacks, and the cover-up and complicity of key members of the Bush Administration.
The expanded edition, which includes twelve new chapters focuses on the use of 9/11 as a pretext for the invasion and illegal occupation of Iraq, the militarisation of justice and law enforcement and the repeal of democracy.
According to Chossudovsky, the “war on terrorism” is a complete fabrication based on the illusion that one man, Osama bin Laden, outwitted the $40 billion-a-year American intelligence apparatus. The “war on terrorism” is a war of conquest. Globalisation is the final march to the “New World Order”, dominated by Wall Street and the U.S. military-industrial complex.
September 11, 2001 provides a justification for waging a war without borders. Washington’s agenda consists in extending the frontiers of the American Empire to facilitate complete U.S. corporate control, while installing within America the institutions of the Homeland Security State.
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).
Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Vietnam are all examples of American attack, destruction and occupation. In each case, the countries were left in devastation, and only Vietnam has survived to rebuild and be restored.
The Taliban have won the war, and the US has lost. Arm-chair quarterbacks are blaming everyone, including the American people for not wanting to continue an endless war. President George W. Bush made the decision to invade, with an alleged two-pronged mission: to degrade the capability of Al Qaeda, and to bring western style democracy to a central eastern nation with no experience with democracy, or western values.
The Taliban have said they will form a government based on Islam, but with some democratic aspects, like inclusion of non-Taliban members. Time will tell if their promises are fulfilled. The US is a close ally with Saudi Arabia, who has an Islamic government, and absolutely no democratic aspects.
Qatar continues to be a major sponsor of the Taliban, and the oil-rich Persian Gulf emirate is one of the main defenders of the Muslim Brotherhood, along with Turkey. The US-NATO attack on Syria, beginning in 2011, was supported by Qatar, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and utilized the Muslim Brotherhood militia “Free Syrian Army”, which was finally cut off of US support by Trump in 2017.
Al Qaeda continues to be present in Afghanistan, and they are located all over the world in pockets. The province of Idlib in Syria is occupied by Al Qaeda, and the US had formerly supported the group until Jibhat al-Nusra was designated a terrorist group. International aid agencies, including the UN, are keeping the terrorists, their families, and several million civilian hostages fed while a stalemate is enduring because Turkey has taken the side of Al Qaeda in Idlib, and has kept them weaponized. When the Taliban entered Kabul, the terrorists in Idlib rejoiced and passed around sweets, symbolizing their celebration of their brothers-in-arms victory.
“The events we see now are sadly proof that no amount of military force would ever deliver a stable, united, secure Afghanistan,” Biden said in a speech Monday defending his actions. When the US finally leaves Syria, Biden will likely say that no amount of US military force could ever overthrow an elected President in Syria.
Former President Trump had ordered the US withdrawal from Syria, but the military stood in his way, and he bent to their pressure. Trump had campaigned on bringing the troops home, and ending the endless wars. The military insisted that the US must stand by their local ally in the fight against ISIS, the Kurds. While the SDF did fight against ISIS alongside the US, they also have consolidated their occupied territory through blood-thirsty ethnic cleansing. The Kurds have laid claim to a large swath of north eastern Syria, even though they were never the majority of the population there, as were the Syrian Arabs and Syrian Christians.
President Ashraf Ghani ran away, reportedly with bags stuffed with money, so much so he had to leave some behind because the helicopter wouldn’t hold it all. Experts had been warning for years about the systemic corruption of the Afghan government, which stemmed from ill-supervised US reconstruction money. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) has been producing reports showing total failure of every goal they set. The New York Times wrote in 2018 that the US government were lying to the American public about Afghanistan. When the Taliban got near Kabul, the soldiers and officials fled without firing a shot.
Bush, Obama, and Trump all made the same mistakes: to keep a winless war going. But, to Trump’s credit, he negotiated with the Taliban, and signed a withdrawal agreement which provided the timeline for Biden to follow, though Biden did delay it. Washington should have worked harder, and faster to process legitimate claims to be rescued from Afghanistan. The desperate scenes at the Kabul airport could have been avoided in part if Washington had done their job efficiently.
Lessons need to be learned, and not repeated. Will the US taxpayer’s dollars be spent in the future on another military adventure? General Dwight D. Eisenhower cautioned us many years ago about the military complex. Are we capable of preventing the US government from taking us down the same rabbit hole again?
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Ukraine’s gas transmission system operator hopes that the European Union will support them in their dispute with Russian state energy company Gazprom. According to Kiev, Gazprom is emptying its gas storage facilities in Europe in order to decrease transit through Ukraine, especially now that the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline connecting Russia and Germany via the Baltic Sea is nearing completion. Because of this, Kiev argues that the EU’s antitrust body should intervene in the dispute as Ukraine will lose out on transit fees and Europe on gas that they have already paid for.
“In order to compensate Europeans for the amount of gas they do not receive, and not to increase additional transit through Ukraine, Gazprom is emptying its underground gas storage facilities (UGS) in Europe,” said Sergiy Makogon, the General Director of LLC Gas TSO of Ukraine.
Makogon also explained that data proves small stocks in Europe remain in Gazprom-controlled UGS and that Astora (owned by Gazprom) has less than 13% of gas, while other operators have an average of 63%. Astora and GSA (also Gazprom) in Austria has 14%, while other operators in the country have 48%. Makogon believes that the gas shortage in European UGS is largely artificial and not the root cause of recent price increases.
However, are his claims justified?
In the first seven months of 2021, Gazprom increased gas supplies abroad by 23% (compared to last year). That data also includes several deliveries to Turkey though. Deliveries to the EU also increased by around 20%. Therefore, Gazprom is not to blame for the decline in supply. In fact, other major gas suppliers have reduced exports to the EU, including those from Norway, Algeria and Qatar.
It is recalled that Gazprom and Ukrainian state energy company Naftogaz signed a 40 billion cubic meter transit agreement, with a “pump-or-pay” formula. In the first half of this year, Gazprom supplied 21.7 billion cubic meters of gas in transit through Ukraine instead of the agreed upon 20 billion, thus directly contradicting Makogon’s claims. In the first half of 2021, transit through Ukraine averaged 3.62 billion cubic meters per month, but in July, the period for which Ukraine makes the allegation, the volume of transit was even higher: 3.85 billion cubic meters. In order to implement deliveries above the minimum amount specified in the contract, Gazprom is actually forced to purchase additional capacity, even at a price up to 20% higher.
Kiev also auctions additional capacity of 64 million cubic meters per day on a monthly basis. The biggest difference is that when reserving additional capacity, Ukraine transits according to its capabilities, even without strict guarantees of immediate transfer. In Europe, such capacity is auctioned at a discount, but Kiev stubbornly isolates them for the same price. Gazprom, on the other hand, is not as stubborn at auctions and is much more flexible.
It is recalled that in the 2020/21 autumn and winter seasons, a record 60.6 billion cubic meters were pumped out of the UGS in Russia. In addition, Gazprom started the winter with stocks of 72.3 billion cubic meters. This year, Gazprom plans to start the new heating season with reserves of 72.6 billion cubic meters, demonstrating that the Russian UGS group is being prioritized before the UGS in Europe. This does not mean that Russia plans to keep Europe cold during the winter though, as much as Ukrainian hysteria alludes to this scenario.
At first, Naftogaz’s claims that Gazprom had not supplied the full amount of gas under the 2009 transit contract because it did not provide for a “pump-or-pay” formula were unfounded. Eventually, after arbitration in Stockholm, a political decision supported the validity of Kiev’s claims. At the end of 2019, Gazprom transferred $2.9 billion to Naftogaz, which went almost entirely to the Ukrainian state budget. Gazprom is likely unsure whether attempts to repeat this trick with EU antitrust bodies will follow.
However, Ukraine’s pressure campaign to ensure that it remains the main transit country of Russian gas reaching Europe has ended in naught. The Nord Stream 2 pipeline project is nearing a 100% completion, hence diminishing Ukraine’s status as an important energy hub. For this reason, Kiev is desperately attempting to stop this reality from going to fruition as missing out on transit fees will further push the country into economic calamity.
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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.
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Corporate Media Adopts ‘Pandemic of the Unvaccinated’ to Dehumanize Skeptics
The corporate media has deluged readers and viewers to its newest “pandemic of the unvaccinated” talking points:
“As the highly contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus fuels outbreaks in the United States, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned on Friday that ‘this is becoming a pandemic of the unvaccinated.’”
CNN talking heads and NY Times op-ed writers have not adopted this talking point by accident; through a carefully engineered rhetorical sleight of hand, they have subtly introduced the concept that the actual unvaccinated people – and not the virus itself – are the source of ongoing suffering.
The heavy implication: what does one do with a harmful pathogen? Eliminate it from society.
“The Homeland continues to face a diverse and challenging threat environment… Such threats are also exacerbated by impacts of the ongoing global pandemic, including grievances over public health safety measures and perceived government restrictions.”
Notice the gaslighting phrase “perceived” government restrictions – not “actual and obvious” ones, which they are.
MSNBC: Unvaccinated NFL Players to Be Treated as ‘Second-Class Citizens’
At the 1:52 mark of this MSNBC clip, NBC sports columnist Peter King declares NFL players who refuse the shot “will be treated as second-class citizens.”
CNN medical analyst Leana Wen, in a similar vein, said last month that “it needs to be hard for people to remain unvaccinated.”
The Atlantic Op-Ed: Time For No-Fly Lists for Unvaccinated
“While flying, vaccinated people should no longer carry the burden for unvaccinated people… a no-fly list for unvaccinated adults is an obvious step that the federal government should take.”
UK Government: Unvaxxed British Citizens No Longer Allowed to Leave the Country
“A [UK government] Minister told the Mail on Sunday the ‘logical’ move will be to make the booster shots a requirement for travel, adding that the most up-to-date Covid certification for travel will become as normal as the need to have a yellow fever jab to enter certain countries.”
Debunking the Illusion of Vaccine ‘Choice’
“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.” -Benito Mussolini
The federal government has insisted in its rhetoric throughout the pandemic – despite its obvious coercive measures to the contrary — that the decision to get vaxxed, like all medical decisions, is a choice left to the individual and his/her doctor.
Historical Western common law has recognized this obvious, inherent right to self-determination of medical treatment as canonical – if one has no control over what medications are injected into his or her bloodstream, one cannot be said to be free in any fundamental sense whatsoever.
When the Nazis violated this precept, their leaders got routed militarily, captured, prosecuted, and hanged at Nuremberg.
The COVID shots are “voluntary,” the government insists, but if you don’t get them you may soon no longer be allowed to:
“Get vaxxed or don’t eat” is not any kind of choice; it’s an ultimatum, a gun to the head.
The elites pass this hideous ultimatum to get jabbed or die isolated in a hole off as “choice” as if threats to sever access to vital resources and the means to participate in the economy are not coercive by definition.
Influential Professor Calls For Hate Crime Legislation to Combat ‘Anti-Science Aggression’
“We should look at expanded protection mechanisms for scientists currently targeted by far-right extremism in the United States. Rep. Paul Tonko (D-NY) has introduced a bill known as the Scientific Integrity Act of 2021 (H.R. 849) to protect US Government scientists from political interference… Still another possibility is to extend federal hate-crime protections.”
Hotez, or some intern in his employ, even put together a pseudoscientific flow chart to lend more credibility to his extremist anti-free speech proposition:
The above suggested remedy for normal people with a healthy skepticism of lying bureaucrats and profit-hungry pharmaceutical firms is so profoundly unethical that even countering it seems absurd, but here is a shot:
Delivering public testimony, Anthony Fauci has repeatedly, both explicitly and implicitly, told Dr. Rand Paul, a credentialed medical doctor, that he “does not know what he’s talking about” in Senate hearings.
All of which begs the question: Did Fauci science-hate-crime Dr. Rand Paul?Will Fauci be the first one brought up on charges under the Hotez rule?
Medium ‘Trust and Safety’ Team Deletes My Account Over COVID-19 ‘Misinformation’
As I anticipated would eventually occur, in early July, Medium dropped the hammer: a faceless technocrat permanently suspended my account.
I received this email from the Big Brother-style “Trust and Safety Team”:
They linked to their ultra-generic “COVID-19 Content Policy” but never bothered to cite any specific claim I had made that violated it.
Back in 2018, when every big tech social media platform banned Alex Jones overnight, only a fool would have believed such a censorship campaign would be a one-off. That was the appetizer, to set the mass censorship wheel in motion as precedent for later, wider-sweeping crackdowns.
Infowars and Milo Yiannopoulos were merely the lowest-hanging fruit due to their highly-publicized “extremist” reputations, but we’re all hanging on the same tree.
Sooner or later, unless as a society we reinstate freedom of speech into practice, the agents of corporate state are going to come for everyone – for Armageddon Prose, for The Daily Bell, for ZeroHedge.
On a long enough timeline, we’re all going to get the Alex Jones treatment.
This is information warfare.
Ben Bartee is a Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs. Follow his stuff via his blog, Armageddon Prose, Substack, or Patreon.
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In February 2021, a World Health Organization (WHO) 4-week mission to China to study the covid plandemic’s origins, came to the conclusion that it was unlikely the virus had escaped from the Wuhan viral research laboratory, or from any other Chinese laboratory, for that matter. Now, under pressure from western governments – foremost the US – WHO wants to send another mission to China to further investigate the origins of the virus. The Chinese authorities refused, saying the findings WHO and Chinese scientists arrived last February at were conclusive, and no further investigation was necessary.
It would appear that WHO receives its orders from a diabolical wealthy cult emanating from Wall Street and Washington which still pretends to reign above all 193 UN member nations and above the entire UN system.
China is absolutely right to refuse. It is clear that the West keeps harping on China’s fault in this matter since China had to be encircled not only by US / NATO military bases, but also steadily demonized by the west, for anything they can find, since China is the up-and-coming economic power, overshadowing western greed-driven neoliberal exploitation capitalism.
To enhance WHO’s position against China and to tarnish China’s image in the world arena, the WHO lead scientist dispatched to Wuhan in February 2021, Peter Ben Embarek, told a Danish television documentary, transmitted on August 12, 2021 that the Chinese scientists refused to even discuss the lab leak scenario, unless the final report dismissed any need for further investigation.
Mr. Ben Embarek added, his Chinese counterpart eventually agreed to discuss the lab leak theory in the report “on the condition we didn’t recommend any specific studies to further that hypothesis.”
It is amazing that such a strong accusation goes unquestioned and that the Danish TV broadcasting unit doesn’t even question the statement and worse, doesn’t invite the Chinese opinion to juxtapose Embarek’s demeaning statement. Instead, they are just accepting point blank the western position, no questions asked, no equal voice to China in this western-driven WHO vs. China debate. The WHO’s spokesperson’s statement is highly biased, and, based on all reports emerging from the WHO February 2021, outright incorrect. See this.
This topic has been debated many times since the beginning of the “covid outbreak” — and it was clear from the beginning that the West was looking to demonize China by blaming China either for the bat story or for a Chinese lab-escaped virus.
Other theories affirm that the man-made virus escaped from a US P4 (highest security bio-war) lab, or was released on purpose.
After all, this outbreak was planned, and simulated already on October 18, 2019 by Event 201, sponsored by the Gates Foundation, Johns Hopkins Center for Health and the World Economic Forum (WEF) – a simulation in NYC, with a number of prominent participants, World Bank, IMF, FED, most of the UN system’s specialized agencies, the UN political body and so on.
WHO being fully under control of western powers and – not to forget – the western pharma-industry, WHO’s firm position against China looks like a maneuver to pave over the evidence of Event 201.
China is to blame for a “virus” that in a 2002 / 2003 outbreak victimized China, as the SARS virus was tailor-made to attack the Chinese genome.
A couple of years before the SARS outbreak, in 1999 / 2000 a group of Harvard students / scientists were quietly collecting in China DNA samples until they were discovered by Chinese authorities and then kicked out of the country. But too late. They had already collected enough Chinese DNA to design a corona virus that would especially target the Chinese genome.
This was exactly what happened in the first “trial run”, the SARS outbreak 2002 / 2003 – affecting only people of Chinese origin. Even those few that were discovered outside of China, could be traced back to Chinese origins.
In early 2020 the same happened again in Wuhan. This time it was “the end game”, so to speak. It happened worldwide, involving all of the 193 UN member countries at once. All at the same time. It is absolutely impossible for a virus to strike the entire world simultaneously. But nobody of the mainstream and the matrix-establishment seems to pay attention to such a minute detail of gigantic proportions.
However, Chinese health authorities suspected a new virus specifically made to attack the Chinese genome. That’s why they reacted so fast. This first attack, again with a SARS virus and again in China, should have been enough reason to get Chinese authorities up in arms and reject the fraudulent claim that the virus emerged from Wuhan – first from a bat in a Wet Market, then from a Wuhan lab. – What is it now? – None of the above.
Shortly after Wuhan, the so-called “novel corona virus” entitled 2019-nCoV (which had the same name as that envisaged in the Event 201 Scenario) was renamed SARS-CoV-2 by WHO which was said to cause the disease called Covid-19.
Miraculously, in no time, SARS-CoV-2 allegedly stroke the entire planet simultaneously. And that in different strands of the virus. No longer just the Chinese “variant”.
Yet if one examines the spread of the alleged pandemic, the fake numbers of positive cases recorded by the flawed RT-PCR test were ridiculously low:
83 cases for a population of 6.4 billion outside of China were used to justify the WHO calling for a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHIC) on January 30, 2020.
44,279 cases (outside of China) on March 11, 2020 to justify the global lockdown and the closing down of the national economies of 193 member states of the United Nations.
The October 2019 Military Olympics in Wuhan
We also know that there are many ways for the virus to “migrate” from a (P4) US bio-war lab to Wuhan, not least through the Military Olympics in October 2019 that took place – you got it – coincidentally also in Wuhan, to which the US sent at least 300 participants.
Different “variants” could also be released by drones and dropped on specific population groups, for example, in northern Italy, in Spain, in Iran. All these strains were very likely different. And since they occurred roughly at the same time (in exceedingly low numbers), they could hardly be mutations.
One of the US labs that is suspected of having been working with the corona / SARS virus is Fort Detrick in Maryland. Nobody seems to be interested in pursuing this route. It’s so much easier just to blame and keep blaming again and again China. Following Goebbels’s edict, “If a lie is repeated often enough it becomes the truth.” That’s what we are experiencing today.
And China knows it, that’s why they are rejecting yet another investigating team by an agency – WHO – that is known to be entirely bought up by powerful Western financial interests, namely Big Pharma, the Rockefellers and Bill Gates.
If WHO was indeed a UN agency interested in the health of the world population, it would strictly forbid vaccinating children against a virus that – if it existed at all – was about equivalent to the flu virus, with an average mortality rate of 0.03 % to 0.07%, according the Dr. Fauci’s own admission in a peer reviewed paper, Navigating the Uncharted, of 28 February 2020.
And, if WHO were seriously interested in the health of people Worldwide, it would investigate the so-called vaccines, which in fact are not vaccines, but at best “experimental gene therapies”, authorized as such by CDC.
These vaccines have so far maimed and killed way more people than covid.
The latest figures reported by the 1990 established U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), between 14 December 2020, when “vaccination” began, and 30 July 2021, were 545,338 adverse events from all age groups following COVID vaccines, including 12,366 deaths and 70,105 serious injuries. However, these numbers are estimated to be widely underreported. Real figures may more likely be between 45,000 and 100,000 deaths in the US, and about double that amount in Europe.
Even these figures are most likely way under-reported, as long before covid emerged, VAERS has a reputation of understating, to the point where real numbers could be between 50 and 100 times higher than reported.
Why is WHO silent in the face of such catastrophe – health disasters never known in recent human history? To protect Big Pharma and the dark diabolical cult behind this well-planned and orchestrated “outbreak” – those who pursue clearly a eugenist agenda?
Why does WHO turn a blind eye to such breaking discoveries like the horrific findings of blood malformations, leading to blood clots, embolism and death, revealed by German physicians in vaxxed people? – See this shocking 10 min video by Dr. Jane Ruby of 18 August 2021:
Why is WHO silent to the question of covid spike proteins being released onto cities? – Silent on the question “Transmissible Vaccines”, meaning that the spike protein injected by the “vaccine” can be passed on to other people through proximity?
Why is it an Italian medical doctor, instead of WHO, divulging the truth about the deadly vaccine and the purpose behind this mass coercion into jabbing everybody, even children? (See video here)
Why is WHO silent to the question of covid spike proteins being released onto cities? – Silent on the question “Transmissible Vaccines”? – See Mike Adams interview of Dr. Lee Merritt of 15 August 2021 here.
Why is WHO not immediately halting ALL “vaccines” worldwide and investigate the criminality behind these fluids being injected into people – into the entire world population – and that under coercion, to say the least?
Why isn’t there a worldwide criminal investigation launched immediately against all “vaxx” producing pharmas and their owners and sponsors?
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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. He is also a non-resident Sr. Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.
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).
For apocalyptic disaster films, they don’t get much more up close and personal (and apocalyptic) than the film Greenland (2020). Set in contemporary times, the story revolves around the news that an interstellar comet named Clarke is heading for Earth, and that it was made up of fragments of rock and ice big enough to wipe out modern civilization.
John Garrity, a structural engineer, receives a message from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) notifying him that he and his family have been selected to go to emergency bunkers. While he is at home a massive fragment lands on Tampa, Florida and wipes it out live on TV. Garrity receives another message with instructions to head to Robins Air Force Base for an evacuation flight. They are to be taken to large bunkers in Thule, Greenland, as the largest fragment is expected to cause an extinction level event.
However, as panic sets in among his neighbours there is mutual shock as they realise that they have not been selected, and Garrity is unsure why he was. Gradually he realises that his skills as a structural engineer would be required in the rebuilding of the post-apocalyptic world, hence the reason for his inclusion.
As others realise the value of the wristbands the family have been given for the flight to Thule, Garrity and his family become targets for different kinds of attacks and schemes to wrest the wristbands from them throughout the narrative of the film.
Overall, Greenland is a well crafted film and focuses on the family’s desperate attempts to make it to Thule before the main fragment of Clarke strikes Europe (!) and destroys civilization.
The most interesting aspect of the film is the drama around the conflicts between the ‘chosen few’ and the rest of the population. While Garrity may be an all-American citizen, he does not reject the elitism of his new status but embraces it wholeheartedly. He may be a member of a democracy, and hold democratic values but when push comes to shove, all that is very quickly forgotten about in the panic. It’s every man for himself and he accepts the changes in state ideology from citizen to elect in a heartbeat.
The ‘chosen few’
The idea of the ‘chosen few’ is not new. According to the bible, Jesus initiated a New Covenant on the night before his death during the last supper. Those who had heavenly hope would be selected by God to rule with Christ as kings with him for 1,000 years. The Bible also gives the number of those anointed:
“Revelation 14:3–4, ‘And they are singing what seems to be a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and the elders, and no one was able to master that song except the 144,000, who have been bought from the earth.'”
The Ladder of Divine Ascent is an important icon kept and exhibited at Saint Catherine’s Monastery, located at the base of Mount Sinai in Egypt. The gold background is typical of icons such as this, which was manufactured in the 12th century after a manuscript written by the 6th century monk John Climacus who based it on the biblical description of Jacob’s ladder. It depicts the ascent to Heaven by monks, some of whom fall and are dragged away by black demons. (The recent scenes of chaos at Kabul airport with people crowding up stairs to passenger jets and falling off military jets are unfortunately brought to mind)
Elites have always tried to keep a section of their loyal, unwavering followers on board with their ideology by doling out good jobs, high status symbolism (e.g. knighthoods), or good pay (for mercenaries). While they espouse democratic ideologies which imply that everyone is important, they are also very aware that their actions lead to mass resentment (e.g. massive national debts, unemployment, inflation, declining national health systems, etc.), and the potential for mass uprising. For this reason, for example, middle-class political police can be more important to the state than working-class national armies.
The mass media play an important role in reducing resentment by playing up the activities of politicians, ideologically controlling the news and history, and popularising the use of specific language.
Everytime an idea critical of the ruling ideology becomes popular it is relabeled or branded with terms such as ‘political correctness’ (covering up or trivialising legitimate concerns about “language or behavior that can be seen as excluding, marginalizing, or insulting to groups of people disadvantaged or discriminated against”), ‘cultural Marxism’ (covering up or trivialising legitimate concerns of, for example, feminism, multiculturalism, gay rights, etc), ‘conspiracy theory’ (covering up or trivialising legitimate concerns regarding anomalies in high profile events), ‘The Good Guys’/’The Bad Guys’ (covering up or trivialising legitimate concerns regarding who the state defines as progressive or reactionary), ‘wokism’ (covering up or trivialising legitimate concerns regarding racial prejudice, discrimination and social inequality, etc.), thereby sterilising it and fitting it into ‘acceptable’, non-threatening language.
Every new deviation from the capitalist norm is diverted and instantly bubble-wrapped so that it does not impinge on the growing mass consciousness/suspicion that something is wrong. Whistleblowers are hounded (Assange, Snowden) and workers are kept quiet or ignored (Boeing).
Originally printed in New York World, October 30, 1884. Reprinted: Belshazzar Blaine and the Money Kings. HarpWeek. HarpWeek, LLC. A political cartoon parodying James G. Blaine. Wealthy and influential figures dine on dishes labeled “Lobby pudding”, “Monopoly soup”, “Navy contract”, etc. while a poor family begs.
Furthermore, Monolithism denies radical difference in ethnic groups (the most reactionary become the spokespersons of the group), while on a philosophical level Modernism, Postmodernism and Metamodernism deny reason and radical opposition. All with the promise that if you are good, if you behave yourself, you will be put on Santa’s nice list and become one of the chosen few when the financial/political/social catastrophe or cataclysm begins.
During the crisis, the rhetoric of universal protection collapses (neighbours shocked and disappointed), leading to struggle for survival in elite terms (bunkers, planes, boltholes).
The struggle for survival
It is then that the masses realise that they have been duped, misled, or even deluded. Because Greenland could be said to represent the ideology of the elites, then one sees the choices offered by the elites are: to be chosen or damnation, and no other possibilities. Similarly, when the elites represent the masses they are in negative terms of fear, for example, the symbolism of the masses of zombies in the film World War Z (2013). (See also my article here)
Historically, mass uprisings result in a fundamental change in society, not a temporary blip in the ruling ideology, therefore elites have a good reason to be afraid. For example, the Great Fear in France in 1789 ultimately resulted in the end of its feudal system:
“The members of the feudal aristocracy were forced to leave or fled on their own initiative; some aristocrats were captured and among them, there were reports of mistreatment such as beatings and humiliation, but there are only three confirmed cases of a landlord actually having been killed during the uprising. Although the Great Fear is usually associated with the peasantry, all the uprisings tended to involve all sectors of the local community, including some elite participants, such as artisans or well-to-do farmers. Often the bourgeoisie had as much to gain from the destruction of the feudal regime as did the poorer peasantry. Although the main phase of the Great Fear died out by August, peasant uprisings continued well into 1790, leaving few areas of France (primarily Alsace, Lorraine and Brittany) untouched. As a result of the “Great Fear”, the National Assembly, in an effort to appease the peasants and forestall further rural disorders, on 4 August 1789, formally abolished the “feudal regime”, including seigneurial rights.”
“You should hope that this game will be over soon.” Caricature of the Third Estate carrying the First Estate (clergy) and the Second Estate (nobility) on its back.
Current elite ideology of the future tends towards ideas of bringing about global governance, or post-apocalyptic colonies on earth, the Moon or Mars. Like lemmings going over a cliff (or the aristocracy of the eighteenth century), they can only imagine a future with themselves in total control, or total destruction.
Thule in Greenland, where there is an American military base, is symbolically appropriate as “in classical and medieval literature, ultima Thule (Latin “farthermost Thule”) acquired a metaphorical meaning of any distant place located beyond the “borders of the known world”.
Unlike the destruction wrought by comet Clarke in Greenland, we are not doomed to be destroyed or hiding in bunkers because of an errant comet, but only condemned to have our future dictated to us forever – unless we take our destiny into our own hands.
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Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin is an Irish artist, lecturer and writer. His artwork consists of paintings based on contemporary geopolitical themes as well as Irish history and cityscapes of Dublin. His blog of critical writing based on cinema, art and politics along with research on a database of Realist and Social Realist art from around the world can be viewed country by country here.
He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
Nel discorso del 16 agosto alla Casa Bianca, il presidente Biden ha fatto una lapidaria dichiarazione: «La nostra missione in Afghanistan non ha mai avuto come scopo la costruzione di una nazione, non ha mai avuto come scopo la creazione di una democrazia unificata e centralizzata».
UNA PIETRA TOMBALE, messa dallo stesso presidente degli Stati uniti, sulla narrazione ufficiale che ha accompagnato per vent’anni la «missione in Afghanistan», in cui anche l’Italia ha speso vite umane e denaro pubblico per miliardi di euro. «Il nostro unico interesse nazionale vitale in Afghanistan rimane oggi quello che è sempre stato: prevenire un attacco terroristico alla patria americana», spiega Biden. Ma sulle sue parole getta ombra il Washington Post che, volendo svuotare il proprio armadio dagli scheletri delle fake news diffuse per vent’anni, titola: «I presidenti degli Stati Uniti e i leader militari hanno deliberatamente fuorviato il pubblico sulla più lunga guerra americana, condotta in Afghanistan per due decenni».
Il pubblico è stato «deliberatamente fuorviato» da quando, nell’ottobre 2001, gli Stati uniti, affiancati dalla Gran Bretagna, attaccavano e invadevano l’Afghanistan con la motivazione di dare la caccia a Osama bin Laden, perseguito come mandante dell’attacco terroristico dell’11 settembre (la cui versione ufficiale faceva acqua da tutte le parti).
Reale scopo della guerra era l’occupazione di questo territorio di primaria importanza geostrategica, confinante con le tre repubbliche centrasiatiche ex sovietiche (Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan e Tagikistan), l’Iran, il Pakistan e la Cina (la regione autonoma Xinjiang Uygur). Vi erano già in questo periodo forti segnali di un riavvicinamento tra Cina e Russia: il 17 luglio 2001, i presidenti Jang Zemin e Vladimir Putin avevano firmato il «Trattato di buon vicinato e amichevole cooperazione», definito una «pietra miliare» nelle relazioni tra i due paesi.
WASHINGTON CONSIDERAVA la nascente alleanza tra Cina e Russia una minaccia agli interessi statunitensi in Asia, nel momento critico in cui gli Stati uniti cercavano di occupare, prima di altri, il vuoto che la disgregazione dell’Unione sovietica aveva lasciato in Asia Centrale. «Esiste la possibilità che emerga in Asia un rivale militare con una formidabile base di risorse», avvertiva allora il Pentagono in un rapporto del 30 settembre 2001.
Quale fosse la reale posta in gioco lo dimostrava il fatto che, nell’agosto 2003, la Nato sotto comando Usa assumeva con un colpo di mano «il ruolo di leadership dell’Isaf», la «Forza internazionale di assistenza alla sicurezza» creata dalle Nazioni Unite nel dicembre 2001, senza che in quel momento avesse alcuna autorizzazione a farlo. Da quel momento oltre 50 paesi, membri e partner della Nato, partecipavano sotto comando Usa alla guerra in Afghanistan.
IL BILANCIO POLITICO-MILITARE di questa guerra, che ha versato fiumi di sangue e bruciato enormi risorse, è catastrofico: centinaia di migliaia di morti tra i civili, provocati dalle operazioni belliche, più un numero inquantificabile di «morti indirette» per povertà e malattie causate dalla guerra.
Solo gli Stati uniti – documenta il New York Times – vi hanno speso oltre 2.500 miliardi di dollari. Per addestrare e armare 300 mila soldati governativi, sbandatisi in pochi giorni di fronte all’avanzata talebana, sono stati spesi dagli Usa circa 90 miliardi. Circa 55 miliardi per la «ricostruzione» sono stati in gran parte sprecati a causa della corruzione e inefficienza, Oltre 10 miliardi di dollari, investiti in operazioni anti-droga, hanno avuto come risultato che la superficie coltivata ad oppio è quadruplicata, tanto che l’Afghanistan fornisce oggi l’80% dell’oppio prodotto illegalmente nel mondo.
Emblematica è la storia di Ashraf Ghani, il presidente fuggito in un esilio dorato. Formatosi all’Università Americana a Beirut, faceva carriera alle università Columbia, Berkeley, Harvard e Johns Hopkins negli Usa e alla Banca Mondiale a Washington. Nel 2004, in veste di ministro delle finanze, otteneva dai paesi «donatori», tra cui l’Italia, un «pacchetto di assistenza» di 27,5 miliardi di dollari.
NEL 2014, IN UN PAESE in guerra sotto occupazione Usa/Nato, veniva nominato presidente ufficialmente col 55% dei voti. Nel 2015 il presidente Mattarella lo riceveva con tutti gli onori al Quirinale, insieme alla ministra della Difesa Pinotti che lo aveva incontrato un anno prima a Kabul.
Questa catastrofica esperienza si aggiunge a quelle che l’Italia ha già vissuto per aver partecipato, violando la propria Costituzione, alle guerre Nato dai Balcani al Medioriente e al Nordafrica. Nessuna lezione ne viene però tratta dalle forze politiche che siedono in parlamento. Mentre a Washington lo stesso Presidente demolisce il castello di menzogne sugli «alti scopi umanitari», con cui è stata motivata la partecipazione italiana alla guerra in Afghanistan, a Roma, come nel romanzo 1984 di Orwell, si cancella la storia.
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“Vietnam is a unique case – culturally, historically and politically. I hope that the United States will not repeat its Vietnam blunders elsewhere.”
One of the great gurus of matters related to colonialism, hegemony and resistance – the late Pakistani intellectual, Eqbal Ahmad, offered some sober advice to Washington planners nearly half a century ago. Sadly, not only was it not heeded, but it no longer makes sense to categorize the compiling and cascading imperial mistakes as merely “blunders.”
It is obviously the case that every nation has its unique objective and subjective specificities. These are what ultimately define and situate the country – geo-strategically – in the world system. The Vietnamese were, objectively, just another nation in the Third World. However, the formidable organized resistance mounted against unquestioned planetary American supremacy is Vietnam’s striking subjective, particular characteristic at that time.
Despite the enormous human toll on Vietnam, the over-a-decade-long brutal American air and ground war could not defeat the resistance. At least it could not militarily.
However, politically speaking – Washington’s message was sent, loud and clear. If a nation of the Third World, or the Global South, did not submit to America’s grand design for the world, it would pay a heavy price. Vietnam was utterly destroyed by massive carpet bombing sustained year after year. What type of independence and sovereignty was there to be had when there was barely a dent made to unhinged American hegemony?
U.S. global domination would continue to manifest itself in the coups and proxy wars that America continued to indulge in – successfully in terms of its imperial ambitions – for the decades to come. The “Vietnam Syndrome” did not mean less global interventionism by the United States. It was simply expansionism via other – indirect – means. And that “syndrome” was short-lived. It was overcome by the time of the heavy American military deployment in the Gulf War of 1990-91.
The scenarios of Saigon in 1975 and Kabul in 2021 are remarkably similar, despite the considerable ideological differences of the indigenous political forces involved. The utter humiliation of the U.S. in both cases is all too palpable. Nevertheless, there is a crucial difference: the two events take place in vastly different global contexts. And that has defined the way the Taliban have retaken Afghanistan now.
By 1996, it had taken the nascent Taliban two years to defeat a bunch of warlords before establishing its reign over the country from Kabul. The new movement of “students,” or Taliban, were openly and fully backed, in all ways, including militarily, by Pakistan. Not only have the Taliban not been supported anything remotely like that this time by Islamabad or elsewhere, they have also had to confront what on paper is a much more daunting enemy: heavily trained and armed Afghan security and military personnel numbering well over 300,000. And, of course, American airstrikes.
We have seen in front of our eyes how astonishingly quickly this ethnic Pashtun insurgency took over Afghanistan once the officially announced beginning-of-the-end of the Western occupation began. The American puppet government in Saigon lasted a good three years after the U.S. withdrawal there in 1972. Indeed, even the Soviet puppet regime in Kabul lasted a good three years after the Soviets withdrew in 1989. The Ashraf Ghani government, on the other hand, collapsed even before the American deadline for withdrawal.
To emphasize this fact again: the Taliban today, unlike that of the 1990s, have accomplished what they have done in Afghanistan more or less on their own. It becomes remarkable when comparing their achievement with the lack thereof, for example, of the “moderate rebels” in Syria. Funded to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars and armed to the teeth by an array of both regional actors as well as Western ones (principally the United States), this not-so-moderate proxy opposition could not bring down the Assad regime.
However critical Russian and Iranian/Hezbollah support was for the Syrian government, it in no way approximates the scale of the two decades of Western occupation of Afghanistan. The country has witnessed 20 years of U.S./NATO airstrikes, ground operations by up to 150,000 foreign forces, an equal if not larger number of mercenaries and private contractors, and the arming and training of the Afghan National Army (ANA) and security personnel – with a tally of around $2 trillion for this entire venture, only to see, in the end, the propped-up puppet fiefdom in Kabul lost power so quickly and so embarrassingly when having to confront any resistance on its own.
The larger political meaning of what has happened now in Afghanistan is what distinguishes it from the fall of Saigon in 1975. The war and military defeat in Vietnam, as Eqbal Ahmad noted, was a colossal American blunder. Beyond its geopolitical significance, the Vietnam War took a tragic human toll of epic proportions.
But the United States could easily survive that military defeat – again, politically speaking. The U.S. maintained its global hegemonic status of the superpower that “calls all the shots.” A country dreaming of independence and sovereignty may put up a valiant resistance to the American imperium. But even if such a resistance “wins,” as the Viet Cong did, its country would have been flattened to a moonscape. Ultimately, such a Third World nation would be politically and economically compelled to return to its subservient status in the American-run global order.
And that is what differentiates the Saigon defeat in 1975 from the Kabul one in 2021. Over the past few decades, the U.S. has gone from a steady decline as the hegemonic power – to a precipitous one. The disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have further validated such an assessment.
Thus, what has now occurred in Afghanistan is not just another imperial “blunder.” It is a naked manifestation, with its startling sequence of events and spectacular optics, of the terminal crisis of empire. The past two weeks, culminating in the Taliban’s capture of Kabul, represent nothing less than the final stage of the post-war American imperium.
Rather than simply examining the two events in and of themselves, Saigon in 1975 and Kabul in 2021, respectively, we must evaluate the objective structural global position of the United Sates both before and after each military intervention. And therein lies the crux of the matter. The U.S. was utterly dominant both before and after the “blunder” in Vietnam. Even after that “blunder,” the world was still divided between the winning West and the remaining rest.
That is no longer the case. The fall of Kabul was symptomatic and a product of the decades-long process of the severe weakening of American power, authority and legitimacy – in short, its hegemony. The world has become definitively multipolar, especially with the phenomenal rise of China. There has been a profound de-centering of the West in the world system that it has attempted to dominate for more than 500 years now.
The retreating American forces in Kabul, therefore, may not only be the symbolic death knell of American exceptionalism and expansionism – narratives and processes that define the nation since its birth, it may also be one of the last pages of the chapter of Eurocentric history.
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Featured image: Taliban fighters stand on a military vehicle in Kabul, capital of Afghanistan, August 16, 2021. /Xinhua
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This article was originally published in September 2020 in a Letter sent to the Editor of the British Medical Journal (BMJ)
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Dear Editor
We are told that the virus is everywhere – in the air, in our breath, on fomites, trapped in masks – yet public health authorities seem not to be in possession of any cultivable clinical samples of the offending pathogen.
In March 2020, the World Health Organisation instructed authorities not to look for a virus but to rely instead on a genome test, the RT-PCR, which is not specific for SARS-CoV-2 (1) (2).
A Freedom of Information request to Public Health England about cultivable clinical samples or direct evidence of viral isolation has no information and refers to the proxy RT-PCR test, quoting Eurosurveillance (3).
Eurosurveillance states:
“Virus detection by reverse transcription-PCR (RT-PCR) from respiratory samples is widely used to diagnose and monitor SARS-CoV-2 infection and, increasingly, to infer infectivity of an individual. However, RT-PCR does not distinguish between infectious and non-infectious virus. Propagating virus from clinical samples confirms the presence of infectious virus but is not widely available (and) requires biosafety level 3 facilities” (4).
The CDC admits that, “no quantified virus isolates of the 2019-nCoV are currently available”, and used a genetically modified human lung alveolar adenocarcinoma cell culture to, “mimic clinical specimen”(5).
It appears, therefore, that we have public health bodies without clinical samples, a test which is non-specific and does not distinguish between infectivity and non-infectivity, a requirement for biosafety level 3 facilities to even look for a virus, yet we are led to believe that it is up all our noses.
So, where is the virus?
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Why have US corporations involved themselves in public health policy?Why have they taken a position that is totally contradicted by all facts and all known evidence? See this.
It is not only democratic governments that have turned totalitarian but also private corporations who are asserting authority to override the Nuremberg Laws and mandate that employees be vaccinated with the Covid Vaccine.
A vaccination is a medical procedure and requires informed consent.
It is very strange to find corporations recruited to serve a coerced marketing campaign.We hear about the “pandemic of the unvaccinated.”But there is no such pandemic.All evidence shows that the majority of new cases are among the double inoculated.
Public officials and the presstitutes are implying that it is those who refuse the vaccine who are responsible for the new outbreak when to the contrary it is the vaccinated people who are the cause of the variants and new illnesses.As Dr. Malone, the inventor of the mRNA technology used to create the vaccine, has patiently explained, the vaccine trains the virus to produce variants that escape vaccines. See this.
Considering the enormous number of deaths and injuries associated with the vaccine, we are faced with the conclusion that the vaccine gives those vaccinated Covid illnesses. Some have severe symptoms, some die, others don’t know they have it. It is the same as with the virus itself. See this.
The medical establishment has avoided autopsies of vaccine-related deaths. The narrative doesn’t want to acknowledge them. People ruined by the vaccine can get no help from the medical establishment. Finally an autopsy was done, and the first autopsy of a vaccine-caused death supports these conclusions:
“This post-mortem study only confirms our worst fears that the Covid-injections cause more harm than good, and may actually even speed up the spread of the virus.
“According to the report, researchers found that the patient’s entire body had become overrun with high viral RNA loads, also known as vaccine-induced spike proteins. This has been reported by many investigators and even further research on what really is in the vaccine. [Read Covid vaccines not as effective as you think to learn more].
“This indicates two things.
“1. The mRNA from the vaccine is not localized to the injection site where it’s supposed to be but spread on other organs. [Read New evidence explains how mRNA vaccines cause organ damage to see the evidence.]
“2. We know the decedent was exposed to Covid-19. The virus was in every organ in his body. Based on what we know about coronavirus vaccines in the past, this could be seen as a signal of antibody-dependent enhancement [Read What is pathogenic priming? And Briefing document on Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine shows evidence of pathogenic priming among older adults]
“This means that the vaccine cannot stop the virus from spreading [in Pfizer’s briefing document to the Food and Drug Administration, they already intimated about this, see FDA knew there would be many COVID cases among the fully vaccinated and Leaked Pfizer contracts show they knew of adverse effects and lack of long-term efficacy of vaccines.]
“We have been programmed to believe that we can only go back to normal through the vaccines. Our governments didn’t tell us that these vaccines are ineffective and do not offer protection. [In the article COVID vaccines not as effective as you think, we learn that the real reduction rate for these vaccines, what scientists call absolute risk reduction or the difference in protection rates between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, is lower than 1% for some vaccines.] Expect massive propaganda of lies and panic especially with the advent of variants.”
No evidence exists that supports the claim of CDC director Rochelle Walensky that the delta variant is a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.”
No evidence exists that the vaccine protects against Covid.Indeed, the vaccine seems to spread the virus.
We have learned that there is no such thing as “fully vaccinated.”The new program is endless booster shots every few months, the result of which will be an explosion in adverse effects from the vaccine.
The Covid policy is so counterfactual and so contradicted by all evidence that conspiracy theorists who see a darker agenda at work are gaining credibility.When a vaccine has proven itself not to protect but to cause unprecedented deaths and illnesses, how can any intelligent person arrive at the conclusion that more vaccine is the solution?
How is it possible that the president of the United States is so poorly advised that he said on Wednesday August 18:
“Earlier today, our medical experts announced a plan for booster shots for every fully vaccinated adult American. This will boost your immune response, it will increase your protection from Covid-19. It’s the best way to protect ourselves from new variants that could arise.” The American president’s statement is total ignorance and blatant nonsense.
Why the desperate rush to force the unvaccinated to accept the vaccine?
Fear was the instrument for the original vaccine push.Shame and guilt are the instruments for the second push. Is the game plan to get the world vaccinated before the deaths and illnesses from the vaccine can no longer be ignored?
It should disturb everyone and raise very serious questions why the leading experts and doctors are censored by the media and their warnings ignored by politicians and public health officials.When leading scientists and medical experts are ignored by authorities, how can we trust what politicians and bureaucrats tell us about Covid and the vaccine?
The Covid Narrative is a controlled one.Scientists are censored and public debate by scientists and doctors is prevented.
Why?Is there a secret agenda to which health and lives are being sacrificed?
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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts writes on his blog site, PCR Institute for Political Economy, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
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In liberal theory, news journalism is a check and balance on the ruling class, but in practice institutions and presses that once held power to account have become part of unaccountable power, and only tough reform and a revolution in the political economy of news can reverse the damage.
We entertain the illusion of bipartisanship in the media when both left and right media, both broadsheet and tabloid, are subsumed under the management of cartel conglomerates that dictate op-ed policy and therein modulate the national psyche.
The media is a convenient tool of repetition for state-endorsed lies. Research has shown that the sheer, simple force of repetition is enough to induce belief in what’s stated regardless of if there exist strong reasons to discard it.
The effect of television on people is to render them passive, induce a state where they are less likely to be paying attention, the foundation of successful brainwashing. Research has also shown that the activity of watching television induces changes in brainwaves in a manner that manipulates the processing of information.
One prominent example of media brainwashing consists in the saga of Julian Assange. Despite having never been charged for rape, repeated exposure to claims that he is a sexual predator have led the public to believe he is being pursued by the criminal justice system for being a rapist, rather than the truth that he is being punished for standard journalism that embarrassed the powerful.
Another trick of the media is to put cranks and quacks on an equal platform with experts, legitimising, giving credence to pseudo-science. This is most dangerous in the case of reporting on climate change, where deniers’ opinions are given the same respect as scientists’ facts and evidence.
The media is meant to articulate the truth in a deceit ridden politics, but that cliche is precisely that , a cliche, and one that has spawned critical complacency on the part of the public and self-appraisal on the part of the press. The contagious lie of Russiagate proved that the deceit lay within the media, who increasingly act as stenographers of power.
A lot of classified research undertaken by US intelligence agencies, like MKUltra, consists of how to induce hypnotic states of consciousness, making the media a central part of the abuse of human psychology to serve empire’s needs.
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Dr. Charles Hoffe, a family physician from Lytton, British Columbia, told health officials that his patients were suffering adverse effects from the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines
Hoffe was quickly accused of causing “vaccine hesitancy” and local health authorities threatened to report him to the licensing body
The spike protein in the vaccine can lead to the development of multiple, tiny blood clots because it becomes part of the cell wall of your vascular endothelium; these cells are supposed to be smooth so that your blood flows smoothly, but the spike protein means there are “spiky bits sticking out”
Hoffe has been conducting the D-dimer test on his patients to detect the potential presence of blood clots within four to seven days of receiving a COVID-19 vaccine; 62% have evidence of clotting
The long-term outlook is very grim, Hoffe said, because with each successive shot, it will add more damage as you’re getting more damaged capillaries
Dr. Charles Hoffe, a family physician from Lytton, British Columbia, wrote to Dr. Bonnie Henry, B.C. provincial health officer, in April 2021 with serious concerns about COVID-19 vaccines. One of his patients died after the shot, and six others had adverse effects. While their small town had no cases of COVID-19, Hoffe said the vaccine was causing serious damage and he believed “this vaccine is quite clearly more dangerous than COVID-19.”1
Hoffe was quickly accused of causing “vaccine hesitancy” and local health authorities threatened to report him to the licensing body, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia. He was also told by government health authorities that he could not say anything negative about the COVID-19 vaccine,2 but the issues Hoffe was seeing compelled him to speak out anyway.
Blood Clot Formation With mRNA Vaccines ‘Inevitable’
Hoffe created the video above to explain how mRNA COVID-19 vaccines can affect your body at the cellular level.3 In each dose of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine are 40 trillion mRNA — or messenger RNA — molecules.
Each mRNA “package” is designed to be absorbed into your cell, but only 25% stay in your arm at the site of the injection. The other 75%, Hoffe says, are collected by your lymphatic system and fed into your circulation. The cells where mRNA is absorbed are those around your blood vessels — the capillary network, which are the tiniest blood vessels in your body.
When the mRNA is absorbed into your vascular endothelium — the inner lining of your capillaries — the “packages” open and genes are released. Each gene can produce many COVID-19 spike proteins, and your body gets to work manufacturing these spike proteins, numbering in the trillions.
Your body recognizes the spike protein as foreign, so it begins to manufacture antibodies to protect you against COVID-19, or so the theory goes. But there’s a problem. In a coronavirus, the spike protein becomes part of the viral capsule, Hoffe says, but when you get the vaccine, “it’s not in a virus, it’s in your cells.” The spike protein, in turn, can lead to the development of blood clots:4
“So it therefore becomes part of the cell wall of your vascular endothelium, which means that these cells, which line your blood vessels, which are supposed to be smooth so that your blood flows smoothly, now have these little spiky bits sticking out.
So it is absolutely inevitable that blood clots will form, because your blood platelets circulate around in your vessels and the purpose of blood platelets is to detect a damaged vessel and block that damage when it starts bleeding. So when a platelet comes through a capillary and suddenly hits all these covid spikes that are jutting into the inside vessel … blood clots will form to block that vessel. That’s how platelets work.”
62% of Recently Vaccinated Patients Have Evidence of Clotting
Hoffe spoke with Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, a retired professor, microbiologist and infectious disease and immunology specialist who, along with several other doctors and scientists, formed Doctors for COVID Ethics. Bhakdi has also warned that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein binds to the ACE2 receptor on platelets.5
The subsequent activation of the platelets can lead to disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC), i.e., a pathological overstimulation of your coagulation system that can result in abnormal, and life threatening, blood clotting, as well as thrombocytopenia (low platelet count) and hemorrhaging.
While some of the blood clots you may have heard about associated with the COVID-19 vaccines are the large variety that show up on MRIs and CT scans, Hoffe states that the variety he’s referring to are microscopic and scattered throughout the capillary network, so they won’t show up on any scan.
The only way to find out if this predictable mechanism of clotting is happening is with a test called D-dimer. D-dimer is a protein fragment produced by the body when a blood clot dissolves. It’s typically undetectable or present only at very low levels, buts its level may significantly rise when the body is forming and breaking down blood clots.6
According to Bhakdi, “Now a number of German doctors have been measuring the D-dimers in the blood of patients before vaccination and days after vaccinations and with respect to the symptoms they have just found out that triggering of clot formation is a very common event with all vaccines.”7
Hoffe has been conducting the D-dimer test on his patients within four to seven days of them receiving a COVID-19 vaccine and found that 62% have evidence of clotting.8 While he’s still trying to accumulate more information, he said:9
“It means that these blood clots are not rare. The majority of people are getting blood clots and they have no idea that they even have them. The most alarming thing about this is that there are some parts of your body, like your heart and your brain and your spinal cord and your lungs, which cannot regenerate. When those tissues are damaged by blocked vessels, they are permanently damaged.”
‘The Worst Is Yet to Come’
As Bhakdi explained, post-vaccination it’s possible to end up with so many blood clots throughout your vascular system that your coagulation system is exhausted, resulting in bleeding (hemorrhaging).10 Hoffe now has patients who get out of breath much more easily than they used to because “they’ve clogged up thousands of tiny capillaries in their lungs.” This is only the first problem, as it can lead to more significant, permanent damage. Hoffe noted:11
“The terrifying thing about this is not just that these people are short of breath and can’t do what they used to be able to do. Once you block off a significant number of blood vessels to your lungs, your heart is now pumping against a much greater resistance to try to get the blood through your lungs.”
The end result can be pulmonary artery hypertension, which is basically high blood pressure in your lungs, because the blood can’t get through due to the many vessels that are blocked. “People with this usually die of right-sided heart failure within three years,” Hoffe said. “So the huge concern about this mechanism of injury is that these shots are causing permanent damage and the worst is yet to come.”12
As he noted, while some tissues, like your liver and kidneys, can regenerate, others, like your heart, cannot. An increased risk of myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle, has already been seen among young males who receive an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine.13 “They have permanently damaged hearts,” Hoffe explained, adding:14
“It doesn’t matter how mild it is, they will not be able to do what they used to do because heart muscle doesn’t regenerate. The long-term outlook is very grim, and with each successive shot, it will add more damage. The damage is cumulative because you’re progressively getting more damaged capillaries.”
Because of the risk of the formation of blood clots in your vessels, Bhakdi went so far as to say that giving the COVID-19 vaccine to children is a crime: “Do not give it to children because they have absolutely no possibility to defend themselves; if you give it to your child you are committing a crime.”15
Spike Protein Damages Human Cells
The key causative agent causing damage from COVID-19 vaccines appears to be the spike protein. Scientists from the University of California San Diego created a pseudo virus, or cell surrounded by the spike proteins that did not contain a virus.16
Using an animal model, the researchers administered the pseudo virus into the lungs and found the virus was not necessary to create damage. Instead, the spike protein was enough to cause inflammation, damage to vascular endothelial cells and inhibited mitochondrial function.
Dr. Robert Malone, the inventor of the mRNA and DNA vaccine core platform technology,17 has also spoken out about the dangers of the spike protein used in COVID-19 vaccines.
In its native form in SARS-CoV-2, the spike protein is responsible for the pathologies of the viral infection, and in its wild form it’s known to open the blood-brain barrier, cause cell damage (cytotoxicity) and, Malone said, “is active in manipulating the biology of the cells that coat the inside of your blood vessels — vascular endothelial cells, in part through its interaction with ACE2, which controls contraction in the blood vessels, blood pressure and other things.”18 Bhakdi also described this as “a disastrous situation” paving the way for clotting:19
“This is a disastrous situation, because the spike protein itself is now sitting on the surface of the cells, facing the bloodstream. It is known that these spike proteins, the moment they touch platelets, they active them [the platelets], and that sets the whole clotting system going.
The second thing that should happen, according to theory, is that the waste products of this protein that are produced in the cell, are put in front of the ‘door’ of the cell … and is presented to the immune system.
The immune system, especially the lymphocytes, recognize these and will attack the cells, because they don’t want them to make viruses or viral parts. And the viral parts are now being made in locations where viral parts would never, ever reach [naturally], like the vessel wall in your brain …
If that ‘tapestry’ of the wall [i.e., the lining of the blood vessel] is then destroyed, then that is the signal for the clotting system to [activate], and create a blood clot. And this happens with all of these vaccines because the gene [the instruction to make spike protein] is being introduced to the vessel wall.”20
Physicians Forbidden From Countering Narrative
Equally as disturbing as the potential harm caused by experimental mRNA vaccines is the censorship going along with it, such that the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO), which regulates the practice of medicine in Ontario, issued a statement21 prohibiting physicians from making comments or providing advice that goes against the official narrative — basically anything “anti-vaccine, anti-masking, anti-distancing and anti-lockdown.”22
The statement was released, according to CPSO, because physicians, in isolated incidents, have been spreading blatant misinformation via social media, which is undermining “public health measures meant to protect all of us.” But if a physician is unable to speak freely, the independent relationship between doctor and patient ceases to exist, and so does the doctor’s ability to act in the best interest of the patient.
Hoffe certainly experienced this but is still speaking out, putting his patients first and trying to get the word out that, he believes the COVID-19 vaccination program should be stopped until the causes of the many injuries and deaths are understood.23 The tragic question is, how many others with similar concerns have been intimidated into remaining silent?
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Important study by the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM)
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Abstract
Background
Many pregnant persons in the United States are receiving messenger RNA (mRNA) coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) vaccines, but data are limited on their safety in pregnancy.
Methods
From December 14, 2020, to February 28, 2021, we used data from the “v-safe after vaccination health checker” surveillance system, the v-safe pregnancy registry, and the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) to characterize the initial safety of mRNA Covid-19 vaccines in pregnant persons.
Results
A total of 35,691 v-safe participants 16 to 54 years of age identified as pregnant. Injection-site pain was reported more frequently among pregnant persons than among nonpregnant women, whereas headache, myalgia, chills, and fever were reported less frequently.
Among 3958 participants enrolled in the v-safe pregnancy registry, 827 had a completed pregnancy, of which 115 (13.9%) resulted in a pregnancy loss and 712 (86.1%) resulted in a live birth (mostly among participants with vaccination in the third trimester).
Adverse neonatal outcomes included preterm birth (in 9.4%) and small size for gestational age (in 3.2%); no neonatal deaths were reported.
Although not directly comparable, calculated proportions of adverse pregnancy and neonatal outcomes in persons vaccinated against Covid-19 who had a completed pregnancy were similar to incidences reported in studies involving pregnant women that were conducted before the Covid-19 pandemic.
Among 221 pregnancy-related adverse events reported to the VAERS, the most frequently reported event was spontaneous abortion (46 cases).
Conclusions
Preliminary findings did not show obvious safety signals among pregnant persons who received mRNA Covid-19 vaccines. However, more longitudinal follow-up, including follow-up of large numbers of women vaccinated earlier in pregnancy, is necessary to inform maternal, pregnancy, and infant outcomes.
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A researcher has warned that the Covid vaccine spike protein could destroy natural immunity. Immune failure may be due to a buildup of vaccine-induced spike proteins inside the body, said Walter Chesnut of WMCResearch.org.
Chesnut warned that the “robust immune response” triggered by the jabs “may come at a lethal cost,” even at a later stage. In reviewing a peer-reviewed scientific study, he noted that the vaccine recipient’s telomeres become inactivated.
The vaccine “turns off transcription of/depletes AUF1 and WRN deleting telomeres,” Chesnut tweeted. “It is a catastrophe. This is what you are now seeing just the beginning of.”
Telomerase is an enzyme in human DNA that regulates aging. The telomeres that encapsulate DNA, shorten over time as humans age. The study in question was published in the Journal of Bacteriology & Parasitology, showing that the vaccine spike proteins have “deleterious effects on telomerase, impairing its synthesis,” Chesnut underscored.
“With this activity inhibited, it takes time for the inevitable immune cell exhaustion to appear. This may be the signature Trojan Horse ‘gift’ of the spike. Whatever short-lived immune response is fool’s gold replacing the ability of the immune system to replenish itself.”
Spike proteins “may be chronically present” in the injected and “continually suppressing telomerase”.
According to Chesnut, “we are basically seeing the effects of chemotherapy with the spike protein. But in a very unique way. Quickly replicating cells are being exhausted. We can now explain the all too common reports of hair loss, for example.”
Vaccine-induced destruction of telomeres, which is associated with Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s, ferroptosis, hypothalamus and autophagy, is happening, Chesnut also tweeted. He said it was possible to delete telomeres with “cells lacking WRN”. It is “a form of cell death you may not know of: Synthetic Lethality,” Chesnut added.
Without telomerase, “key cells in the body are unable to replenish themselves and ‘run out’ well before they should in the course of a normal lifespan,” explained researcher Elizabeth Blackburn.
In the same vein, World Health Organization European Advisory Group of Experts in Immunization former Vice President Professor Christian Perronne believes that all vaccinated people pose a greater risk than the unvaccinated. Alluding to the deteriorating situation in Israel and the UK, the infectious disease expert stated: “Vaccinated people should be put in quarantine, and should be isolated from society.”
Perronne specializes in tropical pathologies and emerging infectious diseases. He was chairman of the specialized committee on Communicable diseases of the French High Council of Public Health.
He went on to say: “Unvaccinated people are not dangerous; vaccinated people are dangerous for others. It’s proven in Israel now – I’m in contact with many physicians in Israel – they’re having big problems, severe cases in the hospitals are among vaccinated people, and in the UK also, you have the larger vaccination program and also there are problems.”
The current working group on the Covid-19 pandemic in France is reported to be “utterly panicked” about this development.
President Donald Trump, an early promoter of jabs, has meanwhile shifted his position on vaccine booster shots. Trump criticized the new phase of vaccine marketing as a money-making scheme by Pfizer during an interview with Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo. The former US president pointed out that the promises made by the company were empty.
“You wouldn’t think you would need a booster. You know when these first came out they were good for life. Then they were good for a year or two. And I could see the writing on the wall, I could see the dollar signs in their eyes, of that guy that runs Pfizer. You know the guy that announced the day after the election that he had the vaccine.”
Pfizer has repeatedly called the shots “safe and effective” but the pharmaceutical giant will reportedly not be mandating them for its own employees. Images leaked from a “confidential” Pfizer booklet written by Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer Payal Betcher revealed that Pfizer will not be following the recommendations of US President Biden to mandate injections for all employees.
Hey, guess which drugmaker does NOT make employees get a Covid vaccine?
And has up to 20 percent of US employees NOT vaccinated?
And is tightening rules but STILL won’t mandate shots?
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A Health Impact News reader from Brazil has alerted us to official media reports stating that during a 5-month period, over 32,000 people in Brazil have died following a COVID-19 injection. [GR Editor’s Note. Yet to be confirmed]
Currently in Brazil, the following vaccines are authorized for use: AstraZeneca/Oxford, Pfizer/BioNTech, Coronavac (also called Sinovac), J&J/Janssen, and Butanvac.
The report was published on uol.com.br, which reportedly has about the same number of pageviews as CNN.com, according to data from SimilarWeb. It is so big, that ICANN has given its own domain: .uol.
Despite these high amounts of deaths following vaccination, the report states:
“Vaccination is still the best way to control the disease.”
But even these cases of deaths following COVID-19 injections might be under-reported, as the country’s state news agency reported in July that in the small state of Distrito Federal, at least 711 died after taking the first experimental vaccine, while another 263 people died after taking two doses of the experimental vaccines. (Source.)
Brazil’s state news agency reports:
Vaccination does not prevent re-infection or the evolution to more serious conditions, including death. Therefore, the Health Secretary stressed the importance of keeping the prevention measures against the new coronavirus.
“We are always alerting people to wear masks, wash their hands, use alcohol gel, and avoid crowds. Even if we are vaccinated, we can acquire the virus and have complications”, he declared. (Source.)
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Last month we reported on how the CDC’s proclamation that the U.S. is now facing a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” was a lie, with no stats to back up this assertion.
They claimed that “99%” of those being hospitalized with COVID were “unvaccinated,” even though reports and other stats proved just the opposite.
As regular readers of Health Impact News know, the U.S. Government has a tracking system to track reported injuries following vaccines, called “VAERS,” the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System.
Here is what they say about the Government vaccine reporting system, which is on the hhs.gov website:
The CDC and FDA typically add new cases of injuries and deaths following COVID-19 vaccines every week, and you can read about the latest data dump into VAERS from this past weekend here.
As the U.S. Government admits above in the “About Us” section of VAERS, it is a “passive reporting system,” and “relies on individuals to send in reports of their experiences to CDC and FDA.”
So the big question has always been, just what percentage of actual vaccine injuries and deaths are represented in VAERS?
But what about total injuries reported following these shots? They are listed as “symptoms” in the VAERS database, and I had never done a search on total symptoms reported following COVID-19 shots.
So I did one today, and the search result returned 2,604,121 reported symptoms from 571,831 cases. You can see the results of the search here.
There are over 10,500 kinds of symptoms reported, and I copied that table into an Excel spreadsheet and sorted them from most reported symptoms to least, and the results are below.
To be fair, not all of the symptoms are injuries. They list some benign things such as lab tests, for example. But they are mostly injuries, because this is the purpose of the VAERS system, as the government admits. The purpose is to track injuries and deaths to see if there are any concerns.
The CDC says there are no concerns. The few concerns they do admit, they brush aside as “rare.” They claim blood clots, for example, are rare. (Source.)
They come up with very low numbers for a serious adverse event by narrowly defining the symptom, and ignore all others.
For example, if you search the table below for “thrombosis,” the most common “symptom” for blood clots, you will find 80 different kinds of thrombosis, with around 10,000 reports, in a passive system that may only represent 1% of the population of COVID-19 vaccinated.
Does that sound “rare”?
When all these COVID-19 vaccinated people start suffering from blood clots, where do you think they go?
To the hospitals.
And yet the CDC, FDA, and politicians want us to believe that there is a “pandemic of unvaccinated” and that “99% of hospitalizations” right now are unvaccinated?
Their own stats prove they are all LIARS!
I don’t know if this article, or another one that reports something similar to this will go viral enough to attract the attention of the corporate media or Big Tech “fact checkers” who will come in and try to cherry pick something in the stats that they will claim “proves” this is false, but there is one thing that nobody can refute:
From these 571,831 cases and 2,604,121 reported symptoms, NOT A SINGLE ONE IS FROM SOMEONE WHO IS UNVACCINATED WITH COVID-19.
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Reports have surfaced that British and American forces are unhappy with each other at Kabul airport, as UK Military commanders are overseeing rescue missions into the city itself, while US commanders are sitting tight, leaving US nationals to fend for themselves.
Thousands of Americans trapped in the city were again advised by the US embassy that it cannot protect them if they attempt to get to the airport, and even if they make it, they might not be able to get on a plane out of there:
"THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT CANNOT ENSURE SAFE PASSAGE TO THE HAMID KARZAI INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT,” the US Embassy in Kabul told American citizens in a security alert today, per @kylieatwood, adding space on evac flights will now be available on “first come, first serve basis.”
The British government, however has sent in 900 elite para troopers to rescue some 4000 nationals in Kabul, and told the soldiers to expect face to face combat with the Taliban.
Sources have indicated that the U.S. command is unhappy with the British forces going into the heart of Kabul, claiming that it is putting the withdrawal agreement at risk (isn’t a bit late for that?).
The British troops are also said to be livid at the way America is treating Afghans who are desperate to flee the Taliban.
Yet American troops are also said to be pissed off with their higher ups not letting them run rescue missions alongside the Brits.
Former Congressional staffer turned reporter Matthew Russell detailed what is unfolding according to sources in Kabul:
Others noted that some British troops have been tasked with observing US forces in case they suddenly decide to leave, because without the 6000 US troops in place, the British forces could easily be overwhelmed:
Fresh video has also emerged showing the scene outside the airport, which looks like hell on earth: see this.
This is what it looks like outside the north gate at the airport in Kabul. I won't mention why this location is important. I will say that the @CENTCOM commander, who agreed to allow this airport to be the primary/only evacuation point, should be dismissed/replaced immediately. pic.twitter.com/yfvWRJaJ7n
How are American nationals supposed to get to the airport through this?
Laughably, the State Department has accused the Taliban of reneging on the deal to allow Americans to get to the airport.
Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said
“We have seen reports that the Taliban, contrary to their public statements and their commitments to our government, are blocking Afghans who wish to leave the country from reaching the airport.”
Ya think Wendy?
.@DeputySecState Wendy Sherman: "We have seen reports that the Taliban, contrary to their public statements and their commitments to our government, are blocking Afghans who wish to leave the country from reaching the airport."
“Our military partners are engaging directly with the Taliban to make clear that we expect them to allow all American citizens, all 3rd country nationals and all Afghans who wish to leave to do so safely and without harassment,” she added.
Right, so while they are killing anyone they find who may have worked with the British or American governments, you’re asking the Taliban nicely to not block the way are you?
The Daily Mail reports on the scenes at the airport, describing “stampeding crowds and Islamist fanatics using rifle butts and sticks to beat protesters.”
Further horrific reports have emerged of women tossing their own babies into razor wire fences toward British soldiers in an attempt to get them out of the country.
This chaos could have been avoided, but the Biden administration scrapped existing withdrawal plans and then seemingly failed to come up with any replacement contingencies but still went ahead with the withdrawal anyway:
Interesting. Embarrassing timing to say the least. "The #Biden State Department moved in June to cancel a program overseeing the protection and evacuation of American citizens stationed overseas in the case of an emergency, just as the #Taliban was taking over #Afghanistan." https://t.co/FvV9TrPgVT
— Alberto Miguel Fernandez (@AlbertoMiguelF5) August 18, 2021
The Washington Free Beacon reports “The Biden State Department moved to dissolve the Trump-era crisis response program, according to an internal State Department memo and sources familiar with the matter.”
The report adds “That memo, which was marked sensitive but unclassified and was signed by Deputy Secretary Brian McKeon, approved the “discontinuation of the establishment, and termination of, the Contingency and Crisis Response Bureau (CCR),” a new State Department entity created during the Trump administration to coordinate emergency response services overseas.”
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Russophobia and Far Right nationalism have defined and dominated Ukrainian politics, especially since the 2014 Coup in Kiev, or more popularly known as the Maidan Revolution. Following the Maidan Revolution and the resulting removal of President Viktor Yanukovych from office, Petro Poroshenko ascended to the presidency. Poroshenko’s time in office would not last though as he would be defeated in the 2019 election by comedian and actor Volodymyr Zelensky.
Although Poroshenko and his supporters claimed that Zelensky’s victory would benefit Russia, since coming to power he has actually used an anti-Russia platform in the hope of maintaining his popularity. Undeniably, under his administration, Ukraine has desperately tried to be further integrated into NATO by joining every U.S.-led pressure campaign against Russia and by cutting all cordial ties with Moscow. However, despite his hostile Russophobia since becoming president, it appears that Zelensky wants Ukrainians to “do what I say and not as I do,” as the famous saying goes – such as the fact that he has immensely profited and enriched himself through his business in Russia whilst today spearheading efforts to ensure that no political rapprochement with Moscow is achieved.
To become president, Zelensky vowed to get rid of all his businesses to avoid comparisons with the billionaire Poroshenko, an action that proved popular with Ukrainians. According to Ukrainian media, he transferred to partners and associates his shares in ten companies, including Kvartal-95 Studio. He still receives dividends though.
In fact, most of Zelensky’s businesses were transferred to his long-time friends, the Sergey and Boris Shefir brothers.
Against this background, no one doubts that Zelensky’s businesses will return to him after his presidency ends. Moreover, the former producer of Kvartal 95 and first assistant to the president, Sergey Shefir, recently announced that in five years Zelensky will return to show business. Effectively, Zelensky does not see his future in politics but rather returning to celebrity life and pursuing business ventures.
A 2019 investigation by “Schemes” found that Zelensky still had a film business in Russia despite insisting that he closed it back in 2014. The investigators found that Cypriot company Green Family owned three Russian companies that produce film, video and television programs: Weisberg Pictures, Platinumfilm and Green Films. The same Cypriot company is also a co-founder of Kvartal 95.
Schemes journalists analyzed the financial statements of these Russian companies and found that they were all continuing their business activities. From 2014 to 2017, receipts to the accounts of this Zelensky film company and its partners in Russia amounted to about $13,000,000, or more than 350,000,000 Ukrainian hryvnia at the current exchange rate.
According to the register of distribution certificates for films in Russia, Green Films continued to produce films in Russia even after the outbreak of Ukraine’s military aggression against Donbass in 2014. Schemes journalists managed to ask Zelensky about the activities of his film business in Russia directly, to which he replied: “Well, I don’t work with them. I wish you success.”
Subsequently, his press service, in a written statement to Schemes, noted: “For many years, Vladimir Zelensky has been building an international business in the production of audio-visual content, therefore there are companies, there is real estate, and other assets.” The statement also stressed that they have companies and/or assets in places like Italy and the UK, but today they do not produce any films in Russia.
Schemes also discovered that Green Films, which Zelensky owns through a Cypriot company, had won a tender for partial financing of the film’s production from the Russian state, i.e. Russian taxpayers.
In this way, at the height of Russo-Ukrainian tensions during the 2014 Donbass War and the subsequent years afterwards, Zelensky had no issues cashing in $13 million for his company and Russian partners, as mentioned earlier. In fact, it is more than likely that Zelensky will continue his business relations in Russia once his presidency ends as Ukrainian-produced films and television series have a very limited audience range – realistically, the range is within the Russophone world, in which there are only 258 million speakers: at least 144 million of them call Russia home.
Despite the reality that a lot of his riches have come through Russia, it has not stopped Zelensky from denigrating the country and encouraging Ukrainians to cut ties. It is recalled that earlier this year there were weeks of tensions after the Ukrainian military started preparations for an assault against Donbass, something that only de-escalated after Russia mobilized over 100,000 troops in a demonstration that it was willing to intervene to defend civilians and citizens.
Ultimately, tensions de-escalated, marking another failure of Zelensky’s presidency. His term failed to bring economic stability, resolve territorial issues, improve ties with Russia or bring Ukraine closer to NATO and EU membership. With this in mind, Zelensky probably has his eyes on completing his presidency and then returning to celebrity life after reacquiring all of his businesses.
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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.
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Much of the world is shocked by the apparent incompetence of the Biden Administration in the human and geopolitical catastrophe that is unfolding in Afghanistan. While Biden speaks out of both sides of his pre-scripted mouth, stating that everyone else is to blame than his decisions, then stating “the buck stops here,” only adds to the impression that the once sole-superpower is in terminal collapse. Could it be that this is all part of a long-term strategy to end the nation state in preparation for the global totalitarian model sometimes called the Great Reset by the Davos cabal? The 40 year history of the Afghan US war and the Afghani Pashtun who shaped the policy until today is revealing.
The airwaves of mainstream media across the globe are filled with questions of military incompetence or intelligence failure or both. It is worthwhile to examine the role of the Biden Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation at the State Department, Afghan-born Zalmay Khalilzad. For the one figure who has shaped strategic US foreign policy since 1984 in the Administration of Bush Sr., and has been US Ambassador to both Afghanistan and to Iraq at key times during the US wars there, as well as the key figure in the present debacle, astonishingly little media attention has been given the 70-year old Afghan-born operative.
Zalmay Khalilzad
Khalilzad, an ethnic Pashtun born and raised in Afghanistan until High School, is arguably the key actor in the unfolding Afghan drama, beginning with the time he was the architect of the radical transformation under Bush Jr of US strategic doctrine to “preventive wars.” He was involved in every step of the US policy in Afghanistan from CIA training Taliban Mujihideen Islamists (organization banned in Russia) in the 1980’s to the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 to the Doha deal with the Taliban and the current disastrous collapse.
The May 8 1992 New York Times reported on a leaked Pentagon draft, later called the Wolfowitz Doctrine after the Pentagon official under then Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. Paul Wolfowitz had been charged by Cheney with drafting a new US global military posture following the collapse of the Soviet Union. According to the Times leak, the document argued that, “the US must become the world’s single superpower and must take aggressive action to prevent competing nations—even allies such as Germany and Japan—from challenging US economic and military supremacy.” It further stated, “We must maintain the mechanism for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.” It was de facto a declaration of unilateral imperialism.
At the time Zalmay Khalilzad worked under Wolfowitz as Assistant Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Planning, where he was tasked with drafting the new doctrine, working with Wolfowitz and outside consultants, including Khalilzad’s doctorate professor at the University of Chicago, RAND neo-conservative “godfather”, Alfred Wohlstetter. Wolfowitz had also studied at Chicago under Wohlstetter. This group became the core of the so-called neo-conservative warhawks. Khalilzad once said Cheney personally credited the young Afghani for the strategy document, allegedly telling Khalilzad, “You’ve discovered a new rationale for our role in the world.” That “discovery” was to transform America’s role in the world in a disastrous way.
Khalilzad’s highly controversial policy proposal, while it was later deleted from the published document by the Bush White House, reappeared a decade later as the Bush Doctrine under Bush Jr., also known as “preventive wars” and was used to justify the US invasions of Afghanistan and later Iraq.
Bush jr., whose Vice President was Dick Cheney, initiated the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, urged on by his Afghan adviser, Zalmay Khalilzad, using the excuse that Osama bin Laden, the alleged architect of the 911 attacks, was hiding under protection of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, so the Taliban must be punished. In May, 2001, some four months before 911, Bush National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice had named Khalilzad as “Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Gulf, Southwest Asia and Other Regional Issues.” The “other regional issues” was to become huge.
Khalilzad had headed the Bush-Cheney Transition team for the Department of Defense. His influence twenty years ago was enormous and largely hidden from public view. Former Khalilzad boss Wolfowitz was Number Two at the Bush Jr. Pentagon and former Khalilzad consulting client, Don Rumsfeld was Defense Secretary.
Bush declared war against the Taliban regime for refusing to extradite the Saudi Jihadist Bin Laden. There was no UN role, no debate in Congress. It was the new US doctrine from Khalilzad and Wolfowitz and their neo-con cabal, that might makes right. Here began the 20-year US debacle in Afghanistan that never should have begun in any sane world of rule by law.
Taliban Origins
The origins of the Taliban come out of the CIA project, initiated by Carter Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski in 1979, of recruiting and arming radical Islamists from Pakistan, Afghanistan and even Saudi Arabia, to wage irregular warfare against the Soviet Red Army then in Afghanistan. The CIA code-named it Operation Cyclone and it lasted ten years until the Red Army withdrew in 1989. A Saudi-CIA asset, Osama bin Laden, had been brought into Pakistan to work with the Pakistani ISI intelligence to draw money and Jihadists from the Arab states into the war. A significant number of radicalized Afghan Pashtun students called Taliban or “seekers” were recruited from radical madrasses, some in Pakistan where the ISI protected them. That CIA war became the longest and most costly CIA operation in its history. By 1984 Khalilzad was in the middle of it all, as US State Department Afghan specialist.
During the latter part of the 1980’s CIA war in Afghanistan, working with radical Islamist Mujahideen and Taliban mercenaries, Khalilzad emerged as the most influential US policy figure on Afghanistan. By 1988 Khalilzad had become the State Department’s “special advisor” on Afghanistan under former CIA head, George Bush Sr. In that post he was the one who dealt directly with the Mujahideen, including the Taliban.
By then he had become close to Jimmy Carter’s Afghan war strategist, Zbigniew Brzezinski. Joining the US State Department in 1984 after teaching at Brzezinski’s Columbia University, Khalilzad became Executive Director of the influential Friends of Afghanistan lobby where Brzezinski and Kissinger associate, Lawrence Eagleburger were members. The Friends of Afghanistan, with USAID money, lobbied Congress for major US support to the Mujahideen. Khalilzad also successfully lobbied to give advanced US Stinger missiles to the Mujahideen. During this period Khalilzad had dealings with the Mujahideen, Taliban, Osama bin Laden and what came to become Al Qaeda (a terrorist organization banned in Russia).
In the George W. Bush Administration, Khalilzad was named Special Presidential Envoy to Afghanistan in early 2002, and was directly responsible for installing CIA asset Hamid Karzai as Afghan president in 2002. Hamid’s brother, warlord of the country’s largest opium province, Kandahar, was paid by the CIA at least since 2001. Khalilzad was clearly aware.
Khalilzad himself had reportedly been “selected” by CIA recruiter, Thomas E. Gouttierre, when Zalmay was an AFS exchange High School student in Ceres, California in the 1960s. Goutttierre headed the CIA-financed Center for Afghanistan Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. That would explain his later career rise to extraordinary influence in US Afghan policy and beyond.
Notably, the disgraced current Afghan “President in flight,” Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, the American-appointed “co-president” of Afghanistan, was a classmate of Khalilzad in the early 1970s as an undergraduate at the American University of Beirut, as were both of their future wives. Small world.
By 1996 following several years of civil war among the rival factions of the CIA-backed Mujahideen the Taliban, backed by Pakistan’s ISI, took control of Kabul. The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan by 1996 was a direct consequence of Khalilzad’s arming and backing of the Mujahideen in the 1980s, including of Osama bin Laden. It was no accident or miscalculation. The CIA was in the business of weaponizing political Islam and Khalilzad was and is a key player in that. Khalilzad served as board member of the Afghanistan Foundation during the Clinton years, which advocated that the Taliban join forces with the anti-Taliban Mujahideen resistance groups.
During the end of the Clinton Presidency Khalilzad played a key role in shaping the military agenda of the next President with his role in the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), together with Cheney, Wolfowitz, Don Rumsfeld, Jeb Bush and others who played key policy roles in the George W. Bush presidency. After the 911 attacks in 2001 Khalilzad orchestrated the Bush war against Taliban in Afghanistan and became Bush Envoy to Afghanistan. By November 2003 Khalilzad was US Ambassador to Afghanistan where his hand-picked President, Karzai, was installed. In February 2004 Ambassador Khalilzad welcomed US Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and a Brigadier General Lloyd Austin in Kabul. Austin knows Khalilzad.
By December 2002 Bush had appointed Khalilzad to be Ambassador at Large for Free Iraqis to coordinate “preparations for a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq.” Khalilzad and his PNAC neocon cronies had advocated a war to topple Iraq’s Saddam Hussein since the late 1990s, well before 911. Two years later after the US war against Iraq began, Khalilzad was made Ambassador to Iraq. No one person has been more responsible for the rise of radical Islam terror groups from Taliban to Al Qaeda in those two countries than Zalmay Khalilzad.
No “Intelligence Failure”
In 2018 Khalilzad was recommended by US Secretary of State and former CIA head Mike Pompeo, to be US “Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation” for the Trump Administration. There was no hint of reconciliation from Khalilzad or Taliban. Here the wily Khalilzad entered into exclusive US-Taliban talks with their exiled envoys in Doha Qatar, the pro-Taliban Gulf state that houses leading Muslim Brotherhoods figures as well as Taliban. Qatar is reportedly a major money source for the Taliban.
Khalilzad successfully pressed Pakistan to release the co-founder of Taliban, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the key strategist of the Taliban victory in 1996, so that Baradar could lead the talks with Khalilzad in Doha. Then-President Trump reportedly approved that Khalilzad would negotiate in Doha solely with the Taliban, without the Kabul regime present. Baradar signed the February 2020 “deal” negotiated by Khalilzad and Taliban, the so-called Doha Agreement, in which the US and NATO agreed to a total withdrawal, but without any Taliban power-sharing agreement with the Kabul Ghani government, as Taliban refused to recognize them. Khalilzad told the New York Times of his deal that Taliban had committed to “do what is necessary that would prevent Afghanistan from ever becoming a platform for international terrorist groups or individuals.”
This was highly dubious and Khalilzad knew it, as Taliban and Al Qaeda have been intimately linked since the 1980s arrival of Osama bin Laden in Afghanstan.The current leader of Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is reportedly alive and in Taliban safe haven inside Afghanistan. In short, this is the “deal” Khalilzad struck with the Taliban for then-President Trump, a deal which was accepted by the Biden Administration with only a minor change stating initially that September 11, 2021 be the date of final US pullout. Talk about symbolism.
The fall of Afghanistan was not the result of an “intelligence failure” by the CIA or a military mis-calculation by Secretary Austin and the Pentagon. Both knew, as did Khalilzad, what they were doing. When Austin approved the secret dark-of-night abandonment of the strategic Bagram Airbase, largest US military base in Afghanistan, on July 4, without notifying the Kabul government, it made clear to the US-trained Afghan army that the US would give them no more air cover. The US even stopped paying them months ago, collapsing morale further. This was no accident. It was all deliberate and Zalmay Khalilzad was central to all. In the 1980s his role helped create the 1996 Taliban takeover, in 2001 the Taliban destruction, and now in 2021 the Taliban restoration.
The real gainer in this insanity is the globalist agenda of so-called Davos “Great Reset” cabal who are using it to destroy the global influence of the United States, as Biden domestically destroys the economy from within. No nation, not Taiwan, not Japan, not the Philippines, not India or even Australia, nor any other nation hoping for US protection in the future will be able to trust Washington to hold its promises. The fall of Kabul is the end of the American Century. Little wonder the China media is filled with schadenfreude and jubilation as they discuss Silk Road deals with the Taliban.
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F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published.
He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
Featured image is from NEO
Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation
Author Name: F. William Engdahl
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Year: 2007
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This skilfully researched book focuses on how a small socio-political American elite seeks to establish control over the very basis of human survival: the provision of our daily bread. “Control the food and you control the people.”
This is no ordinary book about the perils of GMO. Engdahl takes the reader inside the corridors of power, into the backrooms of the science labs, behind closed doors in the corporate boardrooms.
The author cogently reveals a diabolical world of profit-driven political intrigue, government corruption and coercion, where genetic manipulation and the patenting of life forms are used to gain worldwide control over food production. If the book often reads as a crime story, that should come as no surprise. For that is what it is.
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The Brazilian Cerrado savanna, a global biodiversity hotspot that has already lost half of its area to crops and cattle, is at risk of no longer being monitored for deforestation as of the end of the year.
The prospect of an end to the 20-year satellite monitoring program, blamed on a funding shortage at the National Institute of Space Research (INPE), has prompted an outcry not only from the scientific community and civil society groups, but also from the soy industry, which depends on the data to prove the environmental compliance of the commodity.
Cláudio Almeida, coordinator of INPE’s program for monitoring the Amazon and other biomes, confirmed the risk of the suspension of the Cerrado monitoring system. “Today, we only have resources to keep the monitoring team until the end of the year,” he told Mongabay in a video call. The Brazilian website ((o))eco was the first news outlet to report on the issue, back in June.
Companies in the soy industry rely on data from the Cerrado monitoring program run by the National Institute of Space Research (INPE) to prove that the commodity is deforestation-free. Abiove, the business association representing the largest soy traders, says INPE’s data is indispensable for Brazilian agribusiness. Image courtesy of Victor Moriyama/Greenpeace.
Almeida said the Cerrado program is at stake because the budget from the federal government is only sufficient to cover the cost of monitoring the Amazon Rainforest. Funding for the Cerrado tracking system comes from the World Bank, but that funding agreement is over and INPE is now living on borrowed time, Almeida said.
“This resource was supposed to have ended last year, but there was some money left and we managed to extend it for one more year. But this source is now dry,” he said, adding that INPE is trying to find new sources of financing inside the government and with international and national partners.
As in the Amazonia, the monitoring program for the Cerrado comprises one system that provides the annual deforestation rate (PRODES, in place since 2001), another that gives updates about forest loss every five days (DETER, since 2018), and one that shows the location of fires. The cost of keeping these databases running, employing the team that analyses the satellite images, and maintaining the information online in INPE’s public and free database is 2.5 million reais per year ($461,000).
This amounts to just 1.4% of the 175 million reais ($32.2 million) that the Ministry of Defense spent at the end of 2020 to buy a new satellite from a Finnish company. Experts say the equipment is not appropriate to observe the Amazon, according to the Brazilian columnist Rubens Valente.
“There are signs that it is purposeful to leave INPE without resources,” Tasso Azevedo, one of Brazil’s top deforestation experts, told Mongabay by phone. “At the same time that you spend millions buying unnecessary satellite images you leave a program like Cerrado, which is relatively cheap, with no budget.”
Azevedo is the coordinator of MapBiomas, a platform that tracks the changes in land use in Brazil and that uses INPE’s data to produce its own reports. As a last resort, he said, the MapBiomas team can step in to do INPE job. “If anyone hopes to make the Cerrado monitoring unviable, I am sorry, but it will not happen,” he said. “If necessary, we can go after financers or provide support from MapBiomas or other partners to keep its alert system working. But without the alerts, we can’t stay.”
Brazil’s Cerrado savanna has already lost half of its area to agribusiness, and may collapse within 30 years if deforestation continues at the current rate, scientists warn. According to experts, forest loss may increase without deforestation monitoring. Image courtesy of Marizilda Cruppe/Greenpeace.
Brazil is the world’s biggest soy producer, with most of the crop grown in the Cerrado. A report by Chain Reaction Research, which looks at commodity-driven deforestation, shows that almost 30% of deforestation in the Cerrado is linked to soy expansion. This increasingly prominent association between soy production and deforestation has put the industry under growing pressure from consumers and financial institutions.
Soy growers and traders seeking to shake off this reputation have come to rely on INPE’s Cerrado monitoring services to establish their deforestation-free cred. These “are indispensable tools in the collection of relevant data for Brazilian agribusiness … especially to ensure the traceability of those who operate with the environmental laws in force,” the Brazilian vegetable oil industries association (Abiove), whose members include top soy traders like ADM, Bunge and Cargill, said in a statement sent to Mongabay.
In December last year, 160 groups (including Tesco, McDonald’s, Unilever and Lidl) signed the Cerrado Manifesto demanding an end to the trade in soy grown on areas cleared after 2020. Civil society organizations, like Greenpeace and Rede Cerrado, are also in the group, which is now warning against allowing the Cerrado monitoring program to end. In an open letter, they said that “stopping to monitor the deforestation of the Cerrado is an incalculable loss to the country.”
INPE falls under the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovations. In a statement emailed to Mongabay, the ministry said INPE’s services “will not be interrupted in any way and will continue to be provided with efficiency and transparency” and that “it works permanently with the Ministry of Economy and the National Congress for the recomposition of its budget.” However, the ministry did not say where the money to keep the program running will come from.
INPE did not respond to Mongabay’s request for comment. Now operating on the smallest budget in its history, the space agency is also struggling to keep its supercomputer Tupã running, according to according to the Brazilian news portal G1. At 11 years old and suffering from frequent blackouts, the machine is responsible for generating weather forecasts for most of Brazil and for issuing warnings for the risk of natural disasters such as storms, droughts and cold waves.
The prospect of an end to the program monitoring Brazil’s Cerrado savanna, blamed on lack of funding, has drawn an outcry from scientists, civil society groups and the soy industry. The National Institute of Space Research (INPE) says it only has enough funding to keep the program running until the end of the year. Image courtesy of Luiz Flamarion Barbosa de Oliveira/Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS).
Ceasing monitoring, more deforestation
Brazil’s tropical savanna is an immense biome covering 2 million square kilometers (772,000 square miles), an area the size of Mexico that covers all or parts of 10 Brazilian states. Monitoring an area that big is not an easy task, made harder by the fact that most of its vegetation is composed of grasslands dotted by dry forest patches, experts say.
That’s why INPE’s database is the most-used resource for monitoring deforestation in the Cerrado — not just in scientific research, but also in commercial agreements (where Brazilian companies have to prove their products are deforestation-free), and in international programs like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and REDD+. “INPE’s Cerrado monitoring is a benchmark, the accuracy level is very high,” Azevedo said.
Another major role of INPE’s monitoring is to provide intelligence for both civil society and federal and local governments to implement measures to curb deforestation.
The Cerrado is considered Brazil’s headwater, the source of eight of the country’s 12 river basins (including the Amazon), and an important carbon sink, storing the equivalent of 13.7 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide. But it has already lost half of its area to cattle pasture and farmland for soy, corn, sugarcane and cotton. Deforestation in the Cerrado increased by 13% from 2019 to 2020, according to INPE data, amounting to 7,340 km2 (2,834 mi2) — an area five times the size of London. If deforestation continues at the current rate, scientists warn the biome may collapse within 30 years.
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Featured image: A satellite monitoring program run by the National Institute of Space Research (INPE) that provides quick alerts of fires and deforestation in the Cerrado, the Brazilian savanna, may be shuttered at the end of the year due to lack of funds. Experts say the program is crucial to allow a rapid response to environmental crimes. Image courtesy of Marizilda Cruppe/Greenpeace.
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The practice of forced eviction constitutes a gross violation of human rights, in particular the right to adequate housing. —Commission on Human Rights, Resolution 1993/77
Canada has made international commitments to human rights and in particular to the right to adequate housing. Despite these commitments, it has failed to condemn the State of Israel for the forced evictions it is currently carrying out in the occupied Palestinian territories, and continues to be a supportive ally to Israel.
Forced evictions are a gross violation of the right to housing according to the International Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), an international human rights treaty which both Canada and Israel have signed onto. If Canada is serious about its obligations to realize human rights including the right to housing, it must take a stand against the violations happening in Israel.
In May, forced evictions in Sheikh Jarrah captured the world’s attention. Sheikh Jarrah is one of the neighbourhoods in occupied East Jerusalem in which Israel is implementing its decades-long policy of “demographic balance”—a form of ethnic cleansing. This policy has been executed through settler-colonial tactics like land confiscation, displacement, and forced evictions based on discriminatory laws that subjugate Palestinians within the occupied territories.
In Sheikh Jarrah, Palestinian families are fighting in Israeli courts against being evicted from their homes to make way for Israeli settlers. On August 2, 2021, Israel’s Supreme Court yet again delayed their decision regarding an appeal from these families.
As their only alternative to the forced eviction, the Israeli Supreme Court offered these Palestinian families the option to stay in their homes and lands—which they have owned for decades—as “protected tenants” who would be forced to relinquish their ownership to Israel and pay an annual rent to Israeli settlers. The Palestinian families rejected this offer and continue to resist the actions of the Israeli state.
Of course, Palestinians across the occupied territories have little recourse or access to justice in Israeli courts, which serve to promote Israel’s colonial agenda. Thus, after decades of Israeli occupation and clear human rights violations, Palestinians continue to face discrimination, violence, and threats of forced displacement thanks to apathy and even active support for Israel from various states including Canada.
Yet even in the face of irrefutable evidence, Canada has failed to condemn Israel’s forced evictions and other human rights abuses. In fact, it continues to be a supportive and vocal ally to the Israeli government, which recently expressed its commitment to expand Israeli settlements even further across occupied Palestinian land.
A recent report from Human Rights Watch noted that numerous housing policies are used by the State of Israel to oppress the Palestinian population and violate their right to adequate housing. Beyond forced evictions, these include making it impossible for Palestinians to obtain building permits in the parts of the West Bank that are under Israeli control (which amounts to 60 percent of the West Bank); Israeli forces demolishing Palestinian owned homes and structures for lacking a building permit; and the steady construction and expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank in violation of international law.
Moreover, in recent Israeli air strikes targeting the Gaza Strip, at least 2,000 housing units were destroyed and at least 15,000 housing units were partially destroyed. This has left approximately 80,000 Gazans either homeless or living in precarious housing.
Canadian complicity in Israel’s human rights violations
With the support of states like Canada and others, Israel can continue to violate Palestinian human rights with impunity. For example, Israel receives billions of dollars from the United States annually to fund its military and, indirectly, the expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories.
Likewise, successive Canadian governments have treated Israel as a close friend and ally. The Trudeau government backs Israel in a variety of ways including through arms sales, a free trade agreement, and other economic, diplomatic, and security partnerships. In 2019, for example, Canada sent $13.7 million in military goods and technologies to Israel.
Canada has also stifled methods of peaceful protest against the Israeli government. For example, parliament passed a motion in 2016 formally condemning the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement—a Palestinian-led initiative designed to weaken the occupation and isolate it from international investment and trade.
BDS has been described as a “non-violent campaign that supports proven methods of conscientious objection to encourage Israel to respect international law,” yet the motion passed by parliament calls on the Canadian government to “condemn any and all attempts by Canadian organizations, groups or individuals to promote the BDS movement, both here at home and abroad.” By continuing to take this position on Israel, Canada is condoning and supporting a settler-colonial regime that continues to violate numerous human rights including the Palestinian right to housing.
Canada’s official position on BDS is particularly hypocritical given its supposed commitment to addressing its own colonization of Indigenous peoples through avenues like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. We must ask ourselves if these commitments to reconciliation mean anything at all as Canada simultaneously supports another settler-colonial regime abroad.
Time to take a stand
Canada claims to support equity, peace, and human rights, including the right to housing. Yet in failing to take a firm stance against violations of the right to housing in Israel, it remains complicit in criminal acts of dispossession.
We in Canada rely on the same international human rights laws as Israel or any other state party to the ICESCR. We cannot hope to realize the human right to housing in Canada if we continue to actively support Israel as it violates that very same human right.
It is beyond time for the Canadian government to show clear and meaningful support for, and solidarity with, our Palestinian counterparts in East Jerusalem. In doing so, we can finally move beyond paying lip service to reconciliation and human rights and pave the way for humane politics both at home and abroad.
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Seema Kawar is a human rights lawyer based in Toronto, with Jordanian and Palestinian roots.
Sahar Raza is the Communications and Research Coordinator for the National Right to Housing Network and a social justice advocate committed to promoting human rights and equity in her community.
Featured image: An aerial view of the Israeli settlement of Tekoa in the occupied West Bank. Photo from Shutterstock.
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Despite all attempts to re-brand Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the group is celebrating the Taliban’s victory in Afghanistan as if it were their own.
The al-Qaeda-affiliated HTS, the de-facto ruler of Greater Idlib, issued a statement congratulating the Taliban and saying that it hoped the international community would support “the will of the Syrian people”.
HTS and the Taliban have good relations, as Imam Bukhari Jamaat, a Taliban-affiliated Uzbek terrorist group, has been fighting in Greater Idlib for years.
Additionally, the Taliban condemned the killing of the group’s spokesman Abu Khalid al-Shami. The spokesman was killed in Russian and Syrian strikes that targeted Greater Idlib on June 10.
Meanwhile, HTS and the groups that fight along with it are frequently breaching the ceasefire agreement in Greater Idlib and are punished for it by the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and the Russia’s Aerospace Forces.
Not too far from Greater Idlib, in northeastern Syria, the Turkish Armed Forces are locked in their eternal fight with the Kurdish groups in the region.
On August 18, a rocket attack targeted the Turkish-occupied Syrian city of Afrin in the northern countryside of Aleppo.
The rockets, which were reportedly fired from Kurdish-held areas to the south of Afrin, landed in the city’s residential neighborhoods causing some serious damage. Reportedly, 3 civilians were killed and 4 other were injured.
The Turkish military and its proxies have reportedly responded to the new attack by shelling Kurdish-held areas to the south of Afrin.
On August 18th, Ankara’s forces shelled a number of villages in the Aleppo countryside, damaging civilian buildings and infrastructure. On the previous day, Turkey and the factions it backs shelled largely the same area.
Incidents such as these are commonplace, as Ankara and the Kurdish groups are locked in a constant back-and-forth. Deaths as a result of these exchanges are somewhat rare, but moderate material damage is an inevitable result.
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The species known asHomo sapiensis the only one on this planet that is actively seeking to eradicate itself and its habitat. All of the earth’s life support systems—soil, water, and air—are in decline as a direct result of our current economic activity, which is geared to extract as much from the sacred earth as possible without any regard for the consequences that ensue.
By embracing such an intolerable economic paradigm, we fail to respect ecological and ethical limits. Our consumption-driven economic model, which we have designed and are now enslaved by, causes perpetual deficiencies—resource depletion, biodiversity loss, and contamination by toxic substances, all of which wreak perpetual havoc on the entire ecosystem and its surrounding environment. Megacorporations continue to propagate the ideology of endless economic growth, which they intend to squeeze out of a planet with finite resources and from which they alone will benefit financially. Their self-centered aims clash with the generous motives of the masses, who favor the concept of equal opportunity, including the equal right of all humans to live in a healthy environment. The billionaire set’s relentless quest for profits at the expense of everyone’s social well-being is fueling worldwide competition for resources and causing an eco-holocaust. In short, what we are witnessing is a new form of colonialism that is being imposed by the predator class on all of humanity as we enter what is commonly referred to as the sixth mass extinction.
Consider what we are doing to our fresh water. A full 80 percent of our planet’s surface is composed of water, of which 97 percent is salt water. The remaining 3 percent of our available supplies of drinking water have been treated so recklessly that they are highly polluted and rapidly depleting. Of that 3 percent fresh water, at least 29 percent is siphoned off by the water-intensivemeat and dairy industries. The United Nations estimates that over the next decade 2 billion people will suffer extreme water scarcity and that by the end of this century half of the world’s population will experience some kind of water scarcity.
The mining and oil industries are no friends of the environment either. In the US, mining companies have removed over 500 mountains in the Appalachians, causing immense ground pollution and surface water pollution. In other parts of the country, drilling for shale oil and gas, called hydraulic fracturing but better known as fracking, pumps carcinogens and toxins into the air, water, and soil, further exacerbating the pollution problem. Though touted as a solution to America’s dependency on foreign oil, fracking is in fact the final act of stupidity by a petrostate.
The aforementioned meat and dairy industries do more harm than just hogging water. Animal agriculture—encompassing huge factory farms and small family farms—is also the leading cause ofgreenhouse gases, deforestation, species extinction, and ocean “dead zones.” The industrial intensive farming of animals and their feed crops is largely to blame for the highest rate of species mass extinction in 65 million years.
Moreover, no other industry on the planet needs as much acreage as animal agriculture: It hoards 45 percent of all ice-free land on the planet. According to theWorld Animal Foundation, 70 percent of the Amazon rainforest is being destroyed for the sole purpose of growing GMO soybean or corn crops that feed livestock in South America and Europe. Between 1970 and 2019, a total of 718,927 square kilometers of theBrazilian portionof the Amazon rainforest was deforested.
A few more facts to consider:
Fully half of the world’s grain supply is destined for food animals at the same time that one billion people face starvation.
In the US, 54 percent of all fresh water is diverted by animal agriculture at a time when 99.8 percent of the geographic area of California is in a critical drought.
Worldwide,the animal agriculture industry, which kills at least72 billionland animals every year (200 million every day), contributes 51 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions, far exceeding the 13 percent contributed by all modes of transportation combined.
The most surprising “fact” about the devastation wrought by animal agriculture, though, is that almost all of the purported environmental nonprofits are silent on this issue.
The environmental calamity is even more dire in the world’s oceans. The commercial fishing industry is destroying ocean life, including ocean floors, at a pace never seen in recorded history. No other industry kills more animals than this trade. Areportby Matthew Zampa for Sentient Media observes that between 37 billion and 120 billion fish are killed in manmade commercial fish farms each year and at least another trillion aquatic animals living in natural water bodies are killed for food each year. Research presented on theOceanawebsite contends that this staggering total does not include the 100 million sharks and 650,000 whales, dolphins, and seals that are killed every year as bycatch. (Bycatch is the total number of sea animals who fishermen unintentionally catch in their nets and kill, either by discarding at sea or bringing back to port.)
As a result of all this extraction and extermination, global populations of numerous species of aquatic life are plummeting to near-extinction levels. A scientific study presented inThe New York Timespredicts that if commercial fishing around the world continues at its present pace, by 2048 the oceans will be practically empty.
Equally worrisome, the oceans are used as a dumping ground for manufacturing and mining enterprises around the world. It should come as no surprise that researchers at UC San Diego’sScripps Institution of Oceanographyhave found that fish populations in the oceans are contaminated with heavy metals like mercury, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), organochlorine pesticides (DDTs and CHLs), polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), plastic compounds, and hexachlorobenzene.
The makers of synthetic chemicals, pesticides, insecticides, herbicides, and fertilizers are among Earth’s worst enemies. The newest threat to our environment comes from genetically modified industrial crops, known as genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. With the introduction of these new crops we have accelerated our ability to manipulate nature at a rate unimaginable in any earlier era. Unfortunately, as a consequence of our meddling, we are seeing an explosion of chronic disease.
How does our aforementioned discussion of microbiomes, viromes, and immunity fit into this picture of environmental desolation?
For one thing, ever since the introduction of chemical farming and the use of GMOs on a global scale in 1996, we have altered our natural surroundings to such an extent that we are decimating our innate immune system. (Remember that date: 1996.) As a result, autoimmune and other chronic diseases that at one time affected only a minute percentage of the general population are now exploding in prevalence. The timing of this surge is not lost on us: These diseases began afflicting humans in a big way beginning in, yes, 1996. It is not farfetched, then, to conclude that the profligate use of GMOs is related to the marked decline in human health over the past two-and-a-half decades.
I’ll cite a few examples:
1 in 4 people worldwide now suffer from allergies; 1 in 3 in North America are obese; 1 in 2 women and 1 in 3 men in the US willdevelop cancerin their lifetime.
In addition, the developmental disability termedautism spectrum disorderhas risen from 1 in 5,000 children in 1975 to 1 in 36 in 2016. If the current trend continues, we can expect to see 1 in 3 children plagued by autism by 2035. Meanwhile, in the same time period, we have seen a dramatic rise in other immune system disorders, such as Crohn’s, celiac disease, Parkinson’s (in men), Alzheimer’s (in women), dementia, and type 1 diabetes.
GMO crops are sprayed with herbicides, such as Bayer’s Roundup, which contains the active ingredient glyphosate and which is the most ubiquitouscancer-causingherbicide/antibiotic on the planet. In 2014, over 747 million kg of glyphosate was usedworldwide. Now, a mere seven years later, that figure has more than doubled, to 2 billion kg. Being a water-soluble compound, glyphosate contaminates ground water everywhere, from China to North America. As if that weren’t bad enough, glyphosate is also contaminating the air we breathe. A study from theUS Geological Surveyconducted in 2007 reveals that Roundup (aka glyphosate) and its toxic by-product aminomethylphosphonic acid (AMPA) were found in over 75 percent of the air samples and rain samples tested in Mississippi in 2007.
Meanwhile, the longest river in the United States, the mighty Mississippi, and its hundreds of tributaries collect more than 80 percent of the Roundup sprayed on crops in the entire USA. The Mississippi River is also the recipient of thousands of other chemical pollutants that are dumped into it by petrochemical companies. It’s no surprise that the people residing along the last 140 km stretch of the river, which runs throughLouisiana—specifically in the Baton Rouge and New Orleans area—have some of the highest rates of cancer in the entire world.
With the Roundup patent once owned by Monsanto (now Bayer) having expired in 2000, China has become the leading user and exporter of glyphosate in the world. In 2017, China exported over 300,000 tons of glyphosate globally. It turns out that Hubei Province, where the infamous Wuhan sits, is one of the leading users of glyphosate in China. The combined toxic effects of pork production, heavy manufacturing, and chemical farming in Hubei have made this region one of the most polluted places on earth. The once-diverse and clean ecosystem in Wuhan has been utterly ravaged by manmade pollutants and the massive use of glyphosate in industrial farming.
There is an indisputable link between the current high rate of cancer and the extensive use of glyphosates. Within a single generation, the rate of cancer diagnosed in men has doubled. Paralleling that rise, in the 25 years (roughly a generation) between 1990 and 2015, the toxicity of the environment also doubled.
Statistical data compiled by Nancy L. Swanson et al. in theJournal of Organic Systemsprovides overwhelming evidence of a precise correlation, from 1975 to 2010, between glyphosate usage and the incidence of many different types of cancer, including urinary/bladder cancer, liver cancer, thyroid cancer, and myeloid leukemia. The graphs presented in the Swanson study show that the increased prevalence of cancer perfectly overlaps the increased use of glyphosate.
Anotherlinkthat cannot be ignored is the decline in male sperm counts in Western countries. Shanna Swan, an epidemiologist at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York and a leading scholar of reproductive health, projects that sperm counts of the median man are set to hit zero by 2045. With the introduction of endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), male sperm counts have dropped 50% to 60%—an average of 1% to 2% per year—between 1973 and 2011. Granted, endocrine-disruptor microplastics in our drinking water pose a problem, but that problem pales in comparison with the damaging effects of chemical farming and the use of glyphosate, contends internal medicine, endocrinology, and metabolism specialist Zach Bush, MD, on hisGlobal Health Educationwebsite.
“glyphosate functions as a potent chelation agent, locking up the nutrients within soil, plant, and water systems such that we can now find ourselves in the equivalent biologic state of starvation in the midst of the most extreme caloric excess that humanity has ever produced.”
Worldwide warnings from other scientists, doctors, and environmentalists abound. For instance, Dr. Vandana Shiva, an environmental and food sovereignty activist and ecofeminist based in Delhi, India, has been continually cautioning, in books and articles she pens and in speeches and interviews she gives around the world, that GMOs have ruined soil and plant life by inhibiting their ability to maintain microorganisms and minerals, such as zinc, iron, and magnesium, which are vital for immune response in animals and humans. In her2012 opinion piecetitled “Myths About Industrial Agriculture,” Dr. Shiva cited a 1995 study that found industrial agriculture (which began in 1965) to be responsible for 75 percent of the earth’s biodiversity erosion, 75 percent of its water destruction, and 40 percent of its greenhouse gases, while producing only 30 percent of humans’ food supply.
Ever since the mid-1990s, industrial/chemical farming has decimated the microbiome in the soil on a global scale. Consider: In 2014, a senior United Nations official, Maria-Helena Semendo of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), explained to aforumthat unless new approaches to farming were developed, the global amount of arable and productive land per person in 2050 will be only one-quarter of the 1960 level. Also consider: In astudyconducted by Lancaster University in September 2020, researchers found that 90 percent of the earth’s conventionally farmed soils were thinning, and 16 percent of them had a lifespan of less than a century.
In short, the aforementioned reduction in male sperm counts, combined with soil degradation around the globe, are the two key factors that are driving humanity toward extinction.
Every time we spray Roundup or any of the other even-more-toxic herbicides that are now being widely used—such as 2,4-D (2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic is a primary ingredient in the chemical warfare herbicide widely known as Agent Orange) or dicamba (an herbicide 200 times more toxic than the glyphosate in Roundup)—we are destroying the microbiome in the soil, in weeds and plants, in animals, and in our own microbiome. And, to hammer home a previously made point, Roundup disperses not only in the soil but also in the air. So do its rival products.
Lamentably, herbicides are not the only toxic substance found in the air we breathe. Many other pollutants—mercury, arsenic, sulfur, and cyanide, to name but four—likewise circulate in the atmosphere. These toxins, which are produced by the transportation and energy sectors, are adept at binding with carbon particulate matter. Fine carbon particulate, referred to as PM2.5 (that is, particulate matter that is less than 2.5 micrograms per cubic meter, or 100 times thinner than a human hair), is a by-product of burning fuel and chemical reactions. It is of particular concern to human health when levels of PM2.5 in the air are high, as these two 2017 studies from theNIHNational Library of Medicine and theThe New England Journal of Medicinedemonstrate.
It turns out that not only toxins bind to PM2.5; so do viruses. Before the Industrial Revolution, viruses dispersed themselves equally throughout the atmosphere. However, now that carbon particulate matter is ubiquitous in the air, viruses are abnormally concentrating themselves around this substance. The greater the concentration of PM2.5, the greater the concentration of viral material.
Every single year, beginning in the last week of September and ending by late June, nature goes into its sleep cycle in the Northern Hemisphere. During this period, concentrations of carbon particulate and CO2 emissions and other pollutants that would normally be absorbed by trees, plants, oceans, and soil are unable to be absorbed. The result is very high concentrations of pollutants traveling in an easterly direction with the wind currents. (Along for the ride: clumps of spiked viruses that have hooked themselves onto the carbon particulates.) Compounding the problem—and reminiscent of the damaging effects of chemical farming—are increased concentrations of PM2.5 in areas where the soil has been degraded to the point that its living, breathing microbiome has lost the ability to absorb carbon at any time of year, regardless of the season.
ThroughNASA satellite imagery, we can see, starting in mid-October every year, a huge plume of carbon material floating from the heavy-industry hubs in China and other industrial regions of the world and dispersing in an easterly flow pattern across the Northern Hemisphere. By the month of May, this toxic haze blankets the Northern Hemisphere. You can check outIQAirfor real-time data analysis of PM2.5 toxicity around the world.
Strangely, what we call “the seasonal flu” perfectly coincides with the time period when nature goes into its sleep cycle in the Northern Hemisphere. During the months we refer to as “flu season,” our bodies are more apt to experience an inflammatory event—fever, congestion, coughs, and a loss of appetite. This phenomenon takes place as our bodies adapt and come into balance with the industrial toxins in the environment. When summer arrives in late June, nature resumes its regenerative cycle: The plumes of PM2.5 slowly dissipate and finally disappear, reducing our risk of respiratory illness. That is why we seldom, if ever, experience influenza during the summer months in the Northern Hemisphere. Hence, by following the carbon particulate flows, we can actually map out and predict exactly where the hot spots of respiratory infections, of “pandemics,” and of seasonal influenza will occur.
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David Skripachas a Bachelor of Technology degree in aerospace engineering. During his two tours of duty as a captain in the Canadian Air Force, he flew extensively in the former Yugoslavia, Somalia, Rwanda, Ethiopia, and Djibouti. Using an inquisitive mind, a keen eye for detail, and problem-solving skills honed during his university years and throughout his career, David devoted over one hundred hours to researching the latest scientific findings in the fields of virology and microbiology to bring this article to fruition.
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No one need look further to explain US and allied foreign policy failures of recent years than the endless corresponding reporting failures of their governments and their media. They deliberately omit fundamental facts, systematically exclude inconvenient witness testimony, never give adequate context and seldom seriously question official data. The result is a kind of malevolent fantasy fiction projecting as if it were normal the demented world view of psychotic US and allied policy makers who are completely out of touch with reality. A good example of this is The Guardian’s recent typically false article on Nicaragua by Tom Phillips, which might just as well have been written by some CIA or MI6 operative. Perhaps it was.
The staple of his report and practically all similar reports on Nicaragua is to misrepresent human rights concerns so as to upend Nicaragua’s reality, making the opposition look like blameless victims when they are the very opposite. Clearly, neither Tom Phillips nor his editors could care less about human rights in Nicaragua since they have never reported the systematic massive human rights violations committed by Nicaragua’s opposition in 2018. Honest reporters like Max Blumenthal, Dick Emanuelsson, Dan Kovalik, Steve Sweeney, John Perry, Ben Norton, and myself, among others, have published numerous reports, many including indisputable testimony of the savage murderous crimes which unscrupulous misreporters like Phillips and USAID collaborators like Carlos Fernando Chamorro or his accomplice Wilfredo Miranda, another Guardian contributor, have dishonestly suppressed.
In this they follow the deeply fraudulent misreporting of the US government dominated Inter American Commission for Human Rights and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, currently led by stalwart US government ally, former president of Chile, Michelle Bachelet. This time around, Tom Phillips tries milking his readers’ sympathy by reporting an interview with former Nicaraguan Foreign Minister Francisco Aguirre’s daughter, who lives in the US, who dutifully portrays her father as a harmless old man posing no threat to anyone. Phillips places that portrait among a gallery of alleged injustice supposedly perpetrated by President Ortega.
He reports “Police have arrested at least 32 people since late May, including important opposition figures who were challenging the revolutionary hero-turned-autocrat as he seeks a fourth consecutive term.” Even more so than usual, Philips’ report leaves out basic facts and contrary testimony but also hugely important national and regional context, about all of which he cannot fail to be well aware. The fundamental basic fact Philips omits is that in August last year a quite detailed USAID plan to destabilize Nicaragua came to light explaining how the US government hopes to bring about the illegitimate regime change in Nicaragua it failed to achieve in 2018.
The plan is called Responsive Assistance in Nicaragua (RAIN) and lays out a series of unconstitutional options to secure a “government of transition”, a phrase the document uses over 100 times. The text explains how the US will help any new right wing “government of transition” authorities to purge the police, the army, the courts, the electoral system and public life in general of Sandinistas and to suppress the Sandinista Front for National Liberation as a legal political party for good. Given that around half of Nicaragua’s six and a half million people identify as Sandinistas, naturally enough, over the last couple of months, the Nicaraguan authorities have acted within the law to disarm that blatant US government menace to disrupt this year’s elections and provoke another violent coup attempt.
Thus, most of the people currently under investigation by the Nicaraguan authorities are longstanding collaborators with USAID and other US government associated organizations like the National Endowment for Democracy. Another group are individuals who, like Francisco Aguirre himself, have publicly called for or welcomed US and European Union measures against their own country, including economic and diplomatic and other unilateral coercive measures. All of these behaviors are illegal in Nicaragua, as they are in the US itself and in practically all European Union countries too.
Over 60% of Nicaraguans support President Ortega and the Sandinista Front
So it is completely false of Tom Phillips to suggest the recent arrests, including Aguirre’s, are an arbitrary measure related in some way to party political electoral concerns. In that regard, it is ridiculous to claim that any of the figures arrested are “important opposition figures” in an electoral sense. Practically none of them are members of a Nicaraguan political party and none of them had been selected as a potential presidential candidate. Even if they had been so selected, opinion surveys consistently show that none of the opposition political parties have been, or are now, anywhere even close to challenging the electoral support for President Ortega which has been consistently at or over 60% all year long. Another basic fact Phillips omits.
At a regional level, Philips studiedly omits the current repressive assault by El Salvador’s president Najib Bukele against the former governing left wing FMLN political party. Bukele is imposing in El Salvador exactly the kind of repressive political extermination campaign against the FMLN which the USAID RAIN document sketched out as its objective in Nicaragua against the FSLN. In Nicaragua, those being investigated are not leaders of political parties, but individuals with a well established record of having abused supposedly non profit funding from foreign sources for domestic political activities or else of having colluded with foreign intervention to damage and destabilize Nicaragua’s economy or intimidate, calumniate and harrass Nicaraguan citizens and government officials.
On the other hand in El Salvador, the authorities are using unfounded accusations of corruption to destroy the FMLN leadership and party supporters exactly in line with US government policy for that country. Earlier this year, even Michelle Bachelet felt obliged to express concern about president Bukele’s takeover of the courts and the public prosecutor’s office. However Tom Phillips has nothing to say about that neighboring assault on political freedom in El Salvador despite its extreme relevance as an example of what Nicaragua’s right wing and its US owners plan to do in Nicaragua if they get the chance.
Over 90% of Nicaraguans consistently reject opposition destabilization
Phillips applies a similar double standard to the human rights concerns he links to the recent arrests in Nicaragua. He quotes Juan Vivanco of Human Rights Watch who also falsely claims that president Daniel Ortega is targeting potential electoral opponents. It certainly makes sense that Juan Vivanco and Human Rights Watch want to cover up money laundering, fraudulent abuse of non profit status and multi-faceted treasonous collusion by US destabilization proxies in Nicaragua. Juan Vivanco and Human Rights Watch supported the fascist coup in 2002 against Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez and have consistently supported US government aggression and destabilization against any government and its people resisting Western efforts to effectively recolonize Latin America and the Caribbean.
More importantly, in the current electoral context in Nicaragua, it is absolutely clear that the authorities are responding to very real public concern about any possible repeat of the murderous opposition violence of 2018. The highly respected M&R company opinion surveys have repeatedly demonstrated that well over 90% of Nicaraguans reject any renewed attempt at violent destabilization. That fact on its own also demonstrates the absolute falsity of the US and EU big propaganda lie that the opposition’s failed coup attempt in 2018 was remotely peaceful. Combined with overwhelming electoral support for president Daniel Ortega, it also means that the great majority of Nicaraguans diametrically contradict Tom Phillips’ brand of bad faith fantasy reporting on their country.
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Last year I warned pregnant women of dangers from the flu vaccine. This warning is likely to amount to little when compared with dangers from the spiked Covid-shots masquerading as vaccines.
The ex-Soviet states of the Caucasus and Central Asia have, following the early 1990s, been “all about America’s energy security” according to Bill Richardson, the Clinton era diplomat and former American ambassador to the United Nations.
The point of this article is that the media now is largely ignoring the thousands dying from the experimental COVID vaccines. My exhaustive analysis of medical studies and data reveal that Americans are dying in two different ways because they got jabbed.
To understand how an entire society can be driven to madness, you must first understand what drives any given individual to insanity. Barring drug or alcohol abuse, or a brain injury, psychosis is typically triggered by psychogenic factors, i.e., influences that originate in the mind.
The first Taliban press conference after this weekend’s Saigon moment geopolitical earthquake, conducted by spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, was in itself a game-changer.
Castillo, a member of the Free Peru Party, a socialist organization which grew out of the popular struggles of workers and farmers largely based in the rural areas of this South American state, won the national presidential elections during July.
I feel it in the subtle and not-so-subtle hints of politicians attempting to discern which way the winds of change are blowing and beginning to conclude privately that the direction of those winds is toward another sheepish American acceptance of repressive governmental measures in the name of public health.
There are serious issues with the current Scottish government’s relationship with freedom of speech. First we had the case of Craig Murray, the former diplomat and activist who has tirelessly campaigned in aid of Julian Assange.
Western heads of state, UN officials and military spokespersons will invariably praise the humanitarian dimension of the October 2001 US-NATO led invasion of Afghanistan, which allegedly was to fight religious fundamentalists, help little girls go to school, liberate women subjected to the yoke of the Taliban.
Christine Massey, M.Sc conducted an extensive report over a period of more than a year. The central question raised in her study is the following: “Is there reliable evidence that SARS-CoV-2 has been isolated from an “unadulterated sample taken from a diseased patient”?
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Freedom is a very Scottish concept. Famously yelled by Mel Gibson in the film ‘Braveheart’ playing the role of Scottish freedom-fighter William Wallace, it has always been a value at the heart of the independence movement. It was even mentioned in one of Scotland’s greatest historical documents – the Declaration of Arbroath of 1320 – in which Scottish nobles sought the Pope’s recognition of the country as an independent state. It read ‘‘We do not fight for honour, riches, or glory, but solely for freedom which no true man gives up but with his life.’
Powerful words. Yet, of late, one could be forgiven for thinking Scotland has forgotten what freedom means in practice. Ironically, for a government whose stated purpose is to free itself from the clutches of the Union, it has a strange way of interpreting the concept of liberty.
There are serious issues with the current Scottish government’s relationship with freedom of speech. First we had the case of Craig Murray, the former diplomat and activist who has tirelessly campaigned in aid of Julian Assange. He is currently sitting in an Edinburgh jail, having been prosecuted for blogging on the Alex Salmond trial. In his defense he argued that he hadn’t published any information that wasn’t already in the public domain. But in what has been widely viewed as an unprecedented and politically motivated act, he was sentenced to 8 months in prison.
Then there is the example of Marion Millar, the feminist, accountant and mother who tweeted against transgenderism and was charged under the Malicious Communications Act. She was particularly concerned with the influence of the Transgender movement, which she has described as a ‘predatory cult’, on children. For a few tweets in which she expresses her feelings on the matter, she was arrested, and faces trial later this month. Her supporters, many of whom are part of the ‘For Women Scotland’ group on Twitter, view her as something as a martyr for the cause of women’s rights in Scotland, and began tweeting under the hashtag #womenwontwheesht (‘wheesht’ being the Scots word to ‘be quiet’).
There is genuine concern in Scotland about the extent to which the Transgender and LGBT+ lobby has infiltrated government policy. Last week headlines were made when new guidance was published by the Education Secretary which allows children as young as four to change their gender at school, and become known by a different name if they so wish, without parents’ consent. The guidelines also suggest that play options for primary children by ‘gender neutral’; that books and resources contain transgender people and that school children participate in transgender commemorative days (it specifies LGBT history month and Transgender Day of Visibility).
Aside from the obvious problems that children are being manipulated and being forced to address issues they are not psychologically ready to think about, and that the state is taking away basic parental rights, there is also the question of how this ‘advice’ was obtained by the Scottish government. A recent infographic on the subject created by the Scottish government was recently debunked, as it was pointed out by one Twitter user that the interpretation of the data was flawed. But for these ideologically-driven, liberal-warriors, facts don’t seem to matter.
Neither does public opinion. For in a poll taken by TalkRadio, asking if people agreed with the new Scottish law on primary age children changing their gender, out of 24,600 people, 98% of respondents said they were against it. If we live in a democracy, how can it be that such legislation is being adopted when the vast majority of citizens do not consent to it? And how can it be that anyone who challenges the government’s pandering to the transgender lobby is chastised or, at the very worst, arrested?
Take Ruth Wishart, for example, the veteran Scottish journalist who dared to broach the issue in a recent article. Bravely, she wrote: ‘We need to talk about hijacks. Hijacking of government policy by noisy activist groups. Hijacking of basic science. Hijacking of the English language. Hijacking of parental rights.’ She asked why it was that a transgender community which represents around 1% of the population advances its causes in detriment to all the other minority groups out there, and to the rights of the female population which make up at least 50% of the population. Wishart gave an illustration of this – the decision by the Scottish government to install ‘gender neutral’ toilets in its buildings in recent years. This actually involved removing down a number of toilets for women only, as space was limited.
Ruth Wishart, though branded as ‘transphobic’ for expressing her opinion (not just by commentators, but politicians) is absolutely right and sensible to make all these points. In this way she is giving a voice to a large number of Scots afraid to state their views openly, for fear of persecution. At the end of her article, Wishart quotes biologist Chris Wright who says that if biological sex is ‘denied en masse, then we become hostages to chaos. We simply cannot afford to lose our collective tether to reality’.
Chaos, is not what concerns me however. Rather the opposite – we seem to be experiencing a type of highly organised, authoritarian liberalism which is invading the private lives of every Scottish citizen. Now, like in the Third Reich, children will have a closer relationship to the state than to their parents. Indeed, according to the Hate Speech act brought out earlier this year, even what is said at the kitchen table can be reported to the authorities if it is deemed ‘discriminatory’. Many sectors of the community, including the Catholic Church, have pointed out that such moves harm free speech, but unfortunately their calls have fallen to deaf ears.
The SNP-Green party coalition government appears to be on a mission to make Scotland a beacon of liberalism, and will likely continue to push the trans and LGBT agenda at any cost. It is, of course, politically motivated. By distancing itself from the Conservative Westminster government it can demonstrate to voters that Scotland’s values are drastically different to those of England’s and make itself attractive to a more liberal youth which it hopes will translate itself into more SNP votes at the ballot box. (It’s no accident that the Scottish government lowered the voting age to 16 in Scotland in order to gain more pro-Independence support.)
The flip side of this however, is that freedom of speech suffers. Advocates of traditional family values become transphobes. People stating their opinion get arrested, and even locked up. This isn’t the freedom Scottish independence activists have dreamt about for centuries. The authoritarian rule that Scottish nationalists wish to rid themselves of may be closer to home than they realise…
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Johanna Ross is a journalist based in Edinburgh, Scotland.
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The New Civil Liberties Alliance is pleased to announce today that George Mason University (GMU) has granted a medical exemption from its mandatory Covid-19 vaccination policy to NCLA client Todd Zywicki, George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at Antonin Scalia Law School. NCLA is delighted with Prof. Zywicki’s victory for freedom. His brave determination to fight the university’s misguided and scientifically unsound vaccination mandate has garnered nationwide attention. GMU and other universities must stop ignoring science and cease forcing mandatory vaccines on even those with naturally acquired immunity (especially if only approved under a federal Emergency Use Authorization statute).
Strangely, despite solid scientific evidence, GMU continues to refuse to recognize that Covid-19 vaccination is medically unnecessary for ALL students, faculty, and staff with naturally acquired immunity demonstrated with antibody testing. At times GMU officials have appeared to deny that such a thing as naturally acquired immunity exists. This refusal is particularly odd, as the efficacy of the very vaccines GMU wishes to mandate are measured against levels of natural immunity acquired by those who have recovered from Covid-19. For this reason, NCLA continues to explore litigation against GMU. We also welcome hearing from others on public-university campuses in Virginia—particularly tenured faculty—who have naturally acquired immunity backed by antibody testing and whose schools are similarly disregarding the scientific facts surrounding naturally acquired immunity.
NCLA filed Professor Zywicki’s complaint in the Eastern District of Virginia on August 3, 2021, challenging GMU’s “reopening policy.” The policy, announced June 28, requires all faculty and staff members, including those who can demonstrate natural immunity through recovery from a prior Covid-19 infection, to disclose their vaccination status as “a prerequisite for eligibility for any merit pay increases,” unless they obtain a religious or medical exemption. On July 22, GMU emailed the policy to students and employees and threatened disciplinary action—including termination of employment—against any who do not comply with the vaccine mandate. The university’s website describing its vaccination policy reiterated this threat.
Prof. Zywicki has already contracted and fully recovered from Covid-19. As a result, he has acquired robust natural immunity, confirmed unequivocally by multiple positive SARS-CoV-2 antibody tests conducted over the past year. In fact, Prof. Zywicki’s immunologist, Dr. Hooman Noorchashm, has advised him that, based on his personal health and immunity status, it is medically unnecessary to get a Covid-19 vaccine—and that it violates medical ethics to order unnecessary procedures.
As a result of the exemption it granted, GMU is permitting Prof. Zywicki to remain unvaccinated for medical reasons. GMU has assured Prof. Zywicki that he will not be subject to disciplinary action, and that he will be allowed to hold office hours and attend in-person events provided he maintains six feet of distance. He must get tested for Covid-19 once per week on campus at no cost to himself. This favorable result should encourage others to fight irrational vaccine mandates elsewhere on the same bases laid out in the Zywicki complaint against GMU.
NCLA, a nonpartisan, nonprofit civil rights group, argued in the lawsuit that under GMU’s flawed reopening policy, unvaccinated professors cannot carry out their responsibilities as effectively as their vaccinated counterparts, jeopardizing teaching evaluations, future student enrollment, opportunities for academic collaboration, reputational standing, pay raises, and other professional opportunities. Because these requirements would have diminished Prof. Zywicki’s efficacy in performing his professional responsibilities, the policy would have coerced him into receiving the vaccine.
NCLA released the following statements:
“NCLA is pleased that GMU granted Professor Zywicki’s medical exemption, which we believe it only did because he filed this lawsuit. According to GMU, with the medical exemption, Prof. Zywicki may continue serving the GMU community, as he has for more than two decades, without receiving a medically unnecessary vaccine and without undue burden. Nevertheless, NCLA remains dismayed by GMU’s refusal—along with many other public and private universities and other employers—to recognize that the science establishes beyond any doubt that natural immunity is as robust or more so than vaccine immunity.” — Jenin Younes, NCLA Litigation Counsel and lead counsel in Zywicki v. Washington, et al.
“I am gratified that George Mason has given me a medical exemption to allow me to fulfill my duties this fall semester in light of unprecedented circumstances. Thanks to NCLA, we have increased public awareness that vaccinating the naturally immune is medically unnecessary and presents an elevated risk of harm to Covid-19 survivors. I speak for tens of millions of Americans in the same circumstances I am in, and I call on leaders across the country to develop humane and science-based approaches as opposed to one-size-fits-all policies.” — Todd Zywicki, George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School
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“When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty.” — Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
As the world watches the disastrous ending of America’s nearly 20-year occupation of Afghanistan, we cannot lose sight of what is happening here, just below the media radar.
I hope I am wrong, yet I see a time of great suffering coming soon for those of us who cherish, articulate and defend personal liberty in a free society.
I hear it coming in the media drumbeat over the spread of the delta variant of COVID-19 and the demonization of those who exercise their inalienable right to dominion over their own bodies by declining to receive a novel and largely experimental vaccine.
I feel it in the subtle and not-so-subtle hints of politicians attempting to discern which way the winds of change are blowing and beginning to conclude privately that the direction of those winds is toward another sheepish American acceptance of repressive governmental measures in the name of public health.
And I sense it in the outcomes and judicial rationales of the early stages of litigations in which numerous state judges and state supreme court justices in the past week have purported to find constitutional, and thus recognized, the decisions of officials in the executive branch of government — the branch that exists to enforce the laws that the legislative branch has written — to write their own laws, call them “mandates,” and use force to compel businesses to close and healthy folks to wear masks on public and private property.
The coming violations of basic freedoms — the freedom of total dominion over one’s own body including the face, the freedom to exercise personal liberty and to own and use private property without a government permission slip, and the right to a government that complies with its own laws, particularly the restraints imposed upon it by the Constitution — will sorely challenge and, if unchecked, will severely weaken the values underlying our American republic.
Add to this the near certainty that the federal government will borrow trillions of dollars in the next three years, thus raising the price of everything and thrusting the obligation to repay those loans onto generations of taxpayers as yet unborn; and add to that the political pressures now being imposed on President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to reestablish U.S. military dominance near Afghanistan, a dominance that under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama was lethal, fruitless, catastrophic, and cost 1 trillion borrowed American dollars and tens of thousands of innocent lives, and which President Donald J. Trump wisely argued should never have happened and ought to be terminated, and you can see my fears.
We have seen all this before.
The principal values underlying our republic are that our rights are natural gifts from God and can only be taken away after due process, which requires that the government proves fault at a fair jury trial; that the government’s existence is moral only when it derives from the consent of the governed; that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land; and that when governments abandon these principles and assault our liberties, it is the right and the duty of the governed to alter or abolish or secede from the government.
These are not the musings of a frustrated libertarian.
Rather, they are bedrock American law embedded in and integral to the Declaration of Independence — in which Thomas Jefferson and all other signatories characterized our rights as natural and inalienable and insisted that no government is lawful without the consent of the governed — and the Ninth Amendment to the Constitution — in which James Madison and the Congress and the ratifiers recognized that our freedoms are too numerous to enumerate and thus the amendment commands that government shall not disparage any rights, even unenumerated rights, without due process.
Today, all persons in government take a solemn oath to uphold these documents, which include the Jeffersonian and Madisonian values underlying them. But you would never know that by observing their official behavior.
It seems that no matter which major political party controls the government, the government claims it can right any wrongs, tax any objects, regulate any events, suppress any liberties, kill any foreign foes (real or imagined) and help any of its patrons — the Declaration and the Constitution and their values be damned.
Do you know anyone who has consented to a government that can by executive decree take away the very freedoms that the founding documents guarantee and the authors of the decrees have sworn to uphold? Do you know anyone who has consented to a government that can take away personal freedoms by legislation? Do you know anyone who has consented to the government, period?
Our only recourse is massive, peaceful, loud public resistance that meaningfully threatens peaceful secession from the government — the same secession Jefferson and his fellow revolutionaries and signatories argued for in the Declaration of Independence.
Resistance even by a persistent and passionate minority can topple the mandates. But it must be resistance so ubiquitous and so loud and so serious that the government fears the people.
If you want to wear a mask, wear it. If you want the vaccines, get them. But keep the government off the backs of those don’t.
Then our freedoms will be secure.
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The U.S. has not been thrown out of Afghanistan. Quite the opposite.
Washington is involved in managing the strategic transition towards the formation of a Taliban Islamic Emirate.
Earlier reports suggested that a so-called interim Afghan administration was to be headed by Prof. Ali Ahmad Jalali, who just so happens to be a US citizen.
“Regime Change” in Afghanistan?
Troop withdrawals coupled with a US sponsored color revolution?
The transition timeline had been agreed upon. On August 09, 2021, US special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad arrived in Doha with a US team of negotiators for 3 days of top level discussions with representatives of both the Taliban and the defunct government of Ashraf Ghani.
In the wake of the Doha meeting on August 13,the “Green Light” was given to Taliban Forces to capture Kabul as well as most of the provincial capitals. (See Southfront, August 18)
The evacuation of the US embassy described by the media was a smokescreen. The entry of the Taliban into Kabul which prompted the US to evacuate its embassy, had been carefully planned and agreed upon. The presidential palace was taken without a fight.
While the US is involved in astutely managing the transition towards the formation of a pro-US Taliban government, the appointment of Professor Ali Ahmad Jalali who lives in Maryland is unconfirmed. According to a Reuters Report (August 16):
“Former Afghan Interior Minister Ali Jalali on Monday said he was never under consideration to become transitional president for Afghanistan and that he would never have accepted the position.
“The bottom line is that I’ve never been contacted. I’ve never been considered. I never thought about it, and I’m not interested,” Jalali, who served as Afghanistan’s first interior minister after a 2001 U.S.-led invasion, told Reuters.
Jalali, who is a professor at the U.S. National Defense University in Washington, spoke by telephone from Washington.
He was responding to a Reuters report that quoted three diplomatic sources on Sunday as saying he would likely be named to head a transitional administration in Kabul as the Taliban took over the capital.”
According to SouthFront, (unconfirmed): “Taliban’s co-founder and second-in-command, Abdul Ghani Baradar is expected to become Afghanistan’s President…” .
Flashback to 9/11: Why was Afghanistan Invaded on October 7, 2001?
Almost 20 years later, both the media and the Biden administration, in chorus, continue to point to the 9/11 attacks and the role of Al Qaeda, allegedly supported by Afghanistan, when in fact (amply documented) Al Qaeda was an intelligence asset created by the CIA.
Lest we forget, Osama bin Laden had been recruited by National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski in the 1980s during the so-called Soviet-Afghan war.
The legal argument used by Washington and NATO to invade Afghanistan was that the September 11, 2001 attacks constituted an undeclared “armed attack” “from abroad” by an unnamed foreign power, and that consequently “the laws of war” apply, allowing the nation under attack, to strike back in the name of “self-defense”.
NATO’s North Atlantic Council meeting in Brussels on September 12, 2001, adopted the following resolution:
“if it is determined that the [September 11, 2001] attack against the United States was directed from abroad [Afghanistan] against “The North Atlantic area“, it shall be regarded as an action covered by Article 5 of the Washington Treaty”. (emphasis added)
The bombing and invasion of Afghanistan which commenced on October 7, 2001 was described as a “campaign” against “Islamic terrorists”, rather than a war.
To this date, however, there is no proof that Al Qaeda was behind the 9/11 attacks.
Even if one accepts the official 9/11 narrative, there is no evidence that Afghanistan as a nation-state was behind or in any way complicit in the 9/11 attacks. There were no Afghan jet fighters in the skies of New York on September 11, 2001.
The Afghan government in the weeks following 9/11, offered on two occasions through diplomatic channels to deliver Osama bin Laden to US Justice, if there were preliminary evidence of his involvement in the 9/11 attacks. These offers were casually refused by Washington. In the words of George W. Bush, it’s “non-negotiable”.
The Smoking Gun. Narcotics and the Afghan Opium Trade
One of the key strategic objectives of the October 2001 invasion of Afghanistan was to restore the opium trade following the Taliban government’s successful 2000-2001 drug eradication program which led to a 94% collapse in opium production (down to 8000 hectares in 2001, see graph below).
At the October 2001 session of the UN General Assembly (which took place barely a few days after the beginning of the 2001 bombing raids), the Taliban Government was congratulated by the United Nations: “No other UNODC member country was able to implement a comparable program”.
What is the Future of the Narcotics Economy?
How will this multibillion trade (which until recently was protected by US forces) be affected by the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan? Private mercenary companies are currently involved in protecting the opium trade.
There is a geopolitical power play with Russia, China, Iran and Turkey. Afghanistan is integrated into China’s Belt and Road. How this will evolve is yet to be determined.
Strategic control over the Afghan opium trade will play a key role.
Taliban Out, Taliban In:
The US initiated a war on October 7, 2001 against the Taliban government which had unduly sabotaged the opium economy in 2000-2001. That war lasted more than nineteen years.
And now the Biden Administration is involved in pushing for the formation of a renewed Taliban proxy regime which will unconditionally endorse the lucrative multibillion dollar trade in narcotics.
A followup article on the role of China is envisaged.
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Featured image: Former Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali. Credit: Twitter/@ajalali
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The Taliban held their first press conference, following their victory in the two-decade war.
Taliban’s co-founder and second-in-command, Abdul Ghani Baradar, reportedly came to Afghanistan from Doha. He is expected to become Afghanistan’s President in the near future.
This new leadership may face resistance from the Afghan Vice President Amrullah Saleh, who said that, under the constitution, he should be in charge after former President Ashraf Ghani left the country.
Saleh is attempting to mount some form of resistance, with forces under his command wrestling the Charikar district in Parwan province, north of Kabul.
The VP and those allied to him are gathering field commanders who do not agree with the rule of the Taliban.
Meanwhile, the Taliban are attempting to remove people’s ability to effectively fight back if they wished to do so.
One of the Taliban’s first acts in power was to confiscate firearms owned by civilians. In Kabul, fighters claimed the collecting of weapons because “people no longer need them for personal protection.”
The same day, the group warned that U.S. troops have to leave Afghanistan by Sept. 11, the 20-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks in the U.S. that led to the war on terrorism.
For the first time ever, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid revealed his face at the Taliban’s press conference. He said that the group won’t allow Afghan territory ‘to be used against anybody or any country’.
Mujahid assured the group’s commitment to protect the rights of media workers and that there will be no discrimination against women.
This is a significant change from the previous iteration of Taliban rule in Afghanistan. The spokesman said that the group had evolved over the years, and the past’s mistakes would not be repeated. The same day, they declared a general amnesty in the country.
Still, the United States, after spending trillions of dollars over 20 years, and 4 different Presidents, and, as a result, replaced Taliban rule with Taliban rule.
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The ex-Soviet states of the Caucasus and Central Asia have, following the early 1990s, been “all about America’s energy security” according to Bill Richardson, the Clinton era diplomat and former American ambassador to the United Nations.
For seven decades, the Soviet Union’s existence blocked the way to the vast fossil fuel sources of the Caucasus, Central Asia and also the Caspian Sea. This reality had been of ongoing frustration to Western strategic planners, but the Soviet collapse 30 years ago provoked jubilant scenes in Washington and London.
An oil rush ensued for mastery over Eurasia. Among those competing for its riches were America and its junior partner Britain, along with France, Germany and China. The US, as still comfortably the earth’s most powerful country, led the charge. Political scientist Zbigniew Brzezinski, an influential former US National Security Advisor, wrote how “Ever since the continents started interacting politically, some 500 years ago, Eurasia has been the center of world power”. (1)
Brzezinski, whose advice was sought by consecutive US presidents, defined Eurasia as the entirety of the landmass east of Germany and Poland, spanning the thousands of miles of Russian and Chinese terrain to the Pacific Ocean; including the coveted Middle East and south Asia (2). Brzezinski revealed that after the USSR’s disintegration the US looted around $300 billion in Russian assets, severely undermining the rouble, while ensuring the Kremlin would be reliant on the West economically and politically.
The Americans are often concerned with simply having control over oil and gas reserves, rather than extracting it; and so denying the raw materials to their principal rivals, Russia and China, while increasing their own power. On other occasions it is apt to build the necessary infrastructure, such as pipelines and refineries, which are used to dispatch the mineral resources westwards and that are guarded by US and NATO troops.
The Caspian Sea, which is larger in size than Germany, has long been desired by colonial planners and oil men (3). In the late 19th century for example Tsarist Russia, which claimed the Caspian Sea for its own, fought efforts to buy it up from the US Standard Oil Company, owned by John D. Rockefeller, America’s richest man.
Undeniably, the Caspian Sea is a magnificent body of water, stretching across the horizon for hundreds of miles. It is home to endangered animals such as the Caspian seal, and rare sturgeon species like the beluga; this is the largest freshwater fish in the world, reaching a maximum of over 23 feet in length, and the beluga sturgeon may just surpass the great white shark in size, though not in weight. Impressive mammals can occasionally be seen roaming along the Caspian Sea’s shorelines, like the Eurasian lynx, Caspian wolf, wild boar and Caspian red deer. (4)
The Caspian Sea contains the planet’s second largest oil and gas reserves, after the Persian Gulf (5). These raw materials would have a pivotal part in fulfilling humanity’s future energy demands including, most of all, that of the US. Per capita, America is currently the biggest consumer of fossil fuels on earth by far and also historically, an indication of its unrivalled industrial power. In 1960, there were 61 million vehicles in the US for a population of 181 million, equating to 1 car for every 3 Americans; whereas in Britain in 1960, there were under 5 million vehicles for a population of 52 million, amounting to less than 1 car for every 10 Britons (6) (7).
The Caspian Sea was important to America for other reasons. President George W. Bush, and his successor Barack Obama, made extensive efforts to shift the east European state of the Ukraine under NATO’s umbrella; in part, so the Ukraine would act as a spring board to assist America in penetrating much of Eurasia, enabling them to reach the Caspian Sea. Obama’s government had a central role in instituting a pro-Western regime in Kiev, during February 2014. Obama made further steps to expand US influence across eastern Europe, under the pretexts of the Ukraine crisis and humanitarian concerns.
Russia’s incorporation of the Crimean peninsula in March 2014, which was a response to the putsch in Kiev, was a blow to Western power. The Crimea acts as an oil and gas corridor, in which the Caspian Sea natural resources are sent through, thereafter criss-crossing Ukrainian land.
For the Americans, to safeguard their control over crucial areas while protecting the oil and gas pipelines, they started to militarise their transport routes – from the eastern Mediterranean to the edge of China’s western borders. Along these regions, about 100,000 US soldiers were stationed in order “to deter aggression and secure our own interests”. (8)
As planned, it would allow America to win the great game in the heart of Eurasia’s landmass, and consequently to secure their global hegemony. Washington stated that they wanted, “A stable and prosperous Caucasus and Central Asia” which would “facilitate rapid development and transport to international markets of large Caspian oil and gas resources, with substantial US commercial participations”.
Afghanistan in south-central Asia became highly significant to US ambitions. There have been three potential routes that the pipelines can be laid through: across Russian, Iranian or Afghan territory (9). Reliance on Russia is out of the question, while the White House has spent decades trying to isolate and overthrow the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Afghanistan, therefore, ranks as a core pipeline hub. The US-NATO invasion of Afghanistan sanctioned on 7 October 2001, and clearly planned months before the 9/11 attacks, was concerned supposedly with capturing Al Qaeda boss Osama bin Laden, defeating the Taliban, and defending human rights. These were smokescreens to obscure their real goals, like securing the pipeline routes. Two months after the invasion began, a small group of US special forces conducted a half-hearted search for Bin Laden in the Tora Bora caves and mountains of eastern Afghanistan. It was a spectacle put on for the cameras.
By early December 2001, Bin Laden was not in Afghanistan at all but was present in north-western Pakistan. American General Tommy Franks, commanding US military operations in Afghanistan, had already confirmed on 8 November 2001, “We have not said that Osama bin Laden is a target of this effort”. (10)
Regarding the now much lamented Taliban, in the mid-1990s they were welcomed and supported by the US government and sections of the media. One of the largest circulating American newspapers, the Wall Street Journal, announced in May 1997,
“The Taliban are the players most capable of achieving peace. Moreover, they are crucial to secure the country as a prime trans-shipment route for the export of Central Asia’s vast oil, gas, and other natural resources”. (11)
No concern was voiced about the Taliban’s extremism and human rights violations, while they were courted too by the US oil industry. In December 1997, the Taliban leadership was flown over to America and the oil state of Texas, whose governor was the future president Bush (12). Senior Taliban members were invited to the city of Houston, and there they were entertained by top executives of the energy multinational UNOCAL (Union Oil Company of California).
UNOCAL offered to pay the Taliban 15 cents for every 1,000 cubic feet of gas they allowed to be pumped across Afghan land (13). In agreement with the Taliban, UNOCAL signed a “memorandum of understanding” to construct a pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan via Afghanistan. This was in conjunction with other Western fossil fuel corporations like ExxonMobil, Chevron, British Petroleum (BP), Enron and Amoco; the latter firm was formerly the Standard Oil Company of Indiana, established by Rockefeller.
The importance of Afghanistan to Washington and its NATO allies has related to further large-scale initiatives, as the American historian Noam Chomsky writes,
“the projected $7.6 billion TAPI pipeline that would deliver natural gas from Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India, running through Afghanistan’s Kandahar province, where Canadian troops are deployed”. (14)
Enron, mentioned above, was an American energy company founded by disgraced US businessman Kenneth Lay in 1985. Lay had been an old friend of the Bush family, and he was among the largest financial donors to Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign (15). As Enron’s boss, Lay was in the late 1990s one of America’s highest paid chief executives. Enron filed for bankruptcy in December 2001, and in July 2004 Lay was indicted by a Grand Jury in Texas on criminal charges. In May 2006 he was found guilty on 6 counts of conspiracy and fraud, facing up to 45 years in jail. He died of a heart attack in July 2006.
Meanwhile, UNOCAL’s vice-president John J. Maresca had said in February 1998 “we have made it clear that construction of the pipeline we have proposed across Afghanistan could not begin until a recognised government is in place, that has the confidence of governments, leaders and our company [UNOCAL]”. Maresca later became the first US Special Ambassador to Afghanistan. Central in pushing the pipeline deals were prominent US politicians like Dick Cheney, James Baker and Brent Scowcroft. They had all served in the cabinet of president George H. W. Bush (Bush Senior); Cheney and Baker have long-held ties to the oil business.
Bush Senior was a paid consultant to the wealthy Bin Laden family through the Carlyle Group, a Washington-based private equity multinational. It is involved in the fossil fuel and weapons industries. A number of Bin Laden family members invested millions in the Carlyle Group. (16)
Bush Senior was a key adviser to the Carlyle Group, and he met the Bin Laden family on two occasions (17). According to journalist Cindy Rodriguez in the Denver Post, on the very day of the 9/11 attacks “members of the Carlyle Group – including Bush Senior and his former Secretary of State, James Baker – were meeting at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Washington, D.C., along with Shafiq bin Laden, another one of Osama bin Laden’s brothers” (18). This conference was hosted by the Carlyle Group.
Bush Senior quit his role with Carlyle in October 2003, after five and a half years advising them. The former president resigned from his position at Carlyle because he was “under pressure due to the company’s massive Iraqi war profits”, the American author Deanna Spingola writes, referring to the March 2003 US-led invasion of that country launched by Bush Junior.
The relationship between Carlyle and Bush Senior did not end there, however. Spingola wrote that after the elder Bush’s resignation, “He retained his Carlyle stock, and gave speeches in Carlyle’s behalf, for a $500,000 fee. Carlyle is notorious for buying defense companies and ‘doubling or tripling their value’ due to abundant, frequently no-bid, defense contracts”. (19)
Associated too with the Carlyle Group was Baker, the Secretary of State under Bush Senior from 1989 to 1992. Baker was an adviser to Carlyle for 12 years until 2005, and he had a staff member role in Bush Junior’s administration. John Major, the former Conservative Party leader and British prime minister for over 6 years, was also employed by Carlyle. Major was paid hefty sums by that US investment firm.
Major previously labelled bloated incomes as “distasteful”, and yet he accepted hundreds of thousands of pounds from Carlyle (20). It provides another insight into the world of political elites. Bush Junior had founded an oil company in Texas during the late 1970s, called Arbusto Energy. Bin Laden’s eldest brother, Salem bin Laden, was an investor in the company. (21)
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Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree. He is interested in writing primarily on foreign affairs, having been inspired by authors like Noam Chomsky. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Notes
1 John Pilger, The New Rulers Of The World (Verso Books, 20 February 2003) p. 116
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid., p. 110
4 Caspian Environment Programme, “Biodiversity, Animals of the Caspian Sea”, 9 September 2010
5 Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira, The World Disorder: US Hegemony, Proxy Wars, Terrorism and Humanitarian Catastrophes (Springer; 1st ed. 2019 edition, 4 Feb. 2019) p. 316
6 Mary Gormandy White, “Car Ownership Statistics”, Lovetoknow
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The lawsuit alleges, among other things, that Rutgers is working with Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson to study and develop their vaccines in on-going clinical trials, and will benefit financially if more people are required to take the shots.
Children’s Health Defense (CHD) along with 18 students on Monday filed a lawsuit in federal court against Rutgers University, its board of governors, Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway and others over the university’s decision to mandate COVID vaccines for students attending school in the fall.
According to the complaint, the Rutgers vaccine requirement “is an affront to human dignity and personal freedom because it violates our basic right to control our bodies.”
The lawsuit states that in a free society, “all people have the right to decide their own medical treatment — especially to decide what to inject into their bodies. And every person has the right to make that decision voluntarily, free from coercion by anyone, and to be fully informed of the benefits and especially the risks of that decision.”
The lawsuit alleges Rutgers’ policy is a violation of the right to informed consent and the right to refuse unwanted medical treatments.
The complaint also alleges the policy is a breach of contract because in January 2021, the university assured students COVID vaccines would not be required in order to attend school. Just two months later, Rutgers flip-flopped and issued new requirements for taking the shot prior to attending classes.
According to the plaintiffs, Rutgers is working with all three manufacturers — Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson — to study and develop their vaccines in on-going clinical trials, and will benefit financially if more people are required to take the shots which, until fully licensed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), are defined by the FDA as experimental.
The Rutgers requirement also constitutes a denial of equal protection, as administration, faculty and staff are not required to take the vaccine. It also conflicts with federal and state law, as neither has enacted legislation requiring COVID vaccines for citizens.
“This mandate undermines our Constitution and Bill of Rights by denying students the freedom to make their own medical decisions,” said CHD President and General Counsel Mary Holland.
“No one should be forced or coerced into accepting any medical procedure against her wishes,” Holland said. “When the low risk to young adults from COVID and the known and unknown risks from the vaccines are taken into account, Rutgers’ actions recklessly endanger its students.”
As confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, young people are at minimal risk of long-term effects or death from COVID and have a 99.985% survival rate if infected with the virus.
In comparison, after approximately 50 total deaths following swine flu vaccination in 1976, that vaccine campaign was immediately aborted.
“The Rutgers mandate stems from the financial relationship the university has with the vaccine makers which is clearly a conflict of interest,” said New Jersey Attorney Julio Gomez, who represents the students.
“Unjustified fear and insatiable greed drive the vaccine industry, especially now, during the pandemic,” Gomez said. “This has created an opportunity for manufacturers to bring to market expensive, novel and patentable drugs, vaccines, biologics, treatments and medical devices that will reap huge profits.”
Rutgers student Peter Cordi, a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said it is “ incredibly unnerving” that his own school would play Russian Roulette with the lives of the students it claims to protect, “with greed and ties to Big Pharma being prioritized over our safety and free will.”
In addition to Gomez, plaintiffs are represented by New Jersey Attorney Susan Judge of Scotch Plains, with support from attorneys Mary Holland and Ray Flores, special counsel to CHD.
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Switch mental gears and stop thinking about the pandemic. Think about the endless news stories you have seen and heard on all mainstream media that headline stories with a large number of deaths. The deaths may result from large scale criminal acts like mass shootings or all kinds of natural disasters. Big media makes big news when a dozen or more people get killed, or when hundreds die in floods or hurricanes. Rarely are thousands dead, but when that happens, usually in other countries, that is really big news. And it happened for the 9/11 attack when about 3,000 people died in the US.
The point of this article is that the media now is largely ignoring the thousands dying from the experimental COVID vaccines. My exhaustive analysis of medical studies and data reveal that Americans are dying in two different ways because they got jabbed.
Two types of vaccine deaths
A few thousand people have died from breakthrough infections because the vaccines are not effective in preventing a new infection. What is now crystal clear is that the experimental vaccines lose their effectiveness over some months. The number of breakthrough infections are accelerating for two reasons. As more people get the shot a larger pool of vaccinated people drive more breakthrough infections. And now with declining vaccine effectiveness, possibly related to new variants, the odds of getting a breakthrough infection go up. While many breakthrough infections do not cause major medical problems, in a fraction of cases victims need hospitalization and some die.
The other cause of vaccine deaths are complex blood problems, namely different kinds of blood clots, the loss of blood platelets and resulting bleed events that are lethal. Think in terms of brain bleeds, strokes and heart attacks. Vaccine induced blood problems have been discussed here.
Number of vaccine deaths
My data analysis indicates that now we have probably lost close to 5,000 American lives from the two vaccine related deaths and most likely this will increase to perhaps 10,000 deaths by the end of this year.
The vaccine related deaths of many hundreds and certainly thousands of people should be a big news story. It is not. Why not? Because all of the corrupt and dishonest powers mismanaging the pandemic want to keep pushing and coercing everyone to get the shot. So, they stifle the truth about vaccine dangers.
They keep justifying this by saying that only a small statistical fraction of the vaccinated die and compare this to the over 600,000 COVID deaths that the experimental vaccines supposedly could have prevented. Here is the truth. Vaccine induced deaths cannot be prevented. They result from the deficiencies of the vaccines.
On the other hand, COVID deaths have always been highly preventable, say 85 percent or more, because since March 2020 we have known that several cheap, safe and FDA approved generics cure COVID and also can be used to prevent the infection. Plus, many of those official COVID deaths were probably for people dying from other causes; they died with COVID, not from it.
Here is what people need to keep in mind. Can you imagine anything worse than getting a shot of an experimental COVID vaccine and then sometime later dying from the infection or a blood problem? I can’t. How could the government let such vaccines be widely used? Follow the money. All the way to big drug companies making vaccines.
Breakthrough infection data
It is hard to get good, reliable data on the post-vaccination breakthrough infection death rate. The likely answer is that the government wants to keep that data as hidden as possible. Why? Because the more that Americans know about breakthrough deaths, the more they will question the medical wisdom of getting either the first shot or a booster jab.
So, what does the breakthrough death data look like? That depends where you look for the data. Can you expect to see the same numbers everywhere? No. Can you expect to see such data in your daily newspaper or on you evening network news? No.
One seemingly good source is an August New York Times compilation of breakthrough deaths from 40 states and the District of Columbia. That list yields 1,527 deaths. But when extrapolated to the whole nation, that adds up to possibly 1,899 deaths. Expectedly, all the pro-vaccine people in government, public health and the medical establishment think that kind of number is just fine.
Their argument is simple. With so many millions of people vaccinated a few thousand breakthrough deaths is acceptable. Except for those who die and their family and friends. Something akin to putting a bandage on a cut after putting some antiseptic on it and then sometime later losing a limb or your life from a terrible infection. Just one of those statistical ugly and unlikely realities.
I checked out some other places for similar data. Here is what I found.
“In all, 160 fully vaccinated people with a breakthrough infection died during the study period. That’s 2% of those with breakthrough infections, and 0.0001% of U.S. residents who were fully vaccinated by April 30. All 160 people were between the ages of 71 and 89.”
Just 160, sounds pretty good, especially compared to close to 2,000. And the statistics make it seem oh so unlikely that you will die from COVID after vaccination. That figure of 160 came from a CDC report. And there now are breakthrough deaths in much younger people.
An article from Heritage in August cited a figure of 1,507 fatal cases of breakthrough infection in line with the New York Times data. This too was cited; “164 million Americans were fully vaccinated against COVID-19, with 191 million people having acquired partial immunity through at least one dose.” Seems like you just have to bet on being statistically safe.
“NBC News has found that at least 125,000 fully vaccinated Americans have tested positive for Covid and 1,400 of those have died. Still, the 125,682 “breakthrough” cases in 38 states found by NBC News represented less than 0.08% of the 164.2 million-plus people (and counting) who have been fully vaccinated since the start of the year, or about one in every 1,300.”
Here is the headline of story in New York Magazine from this month: “Don’t Panic, But Breakthrough Cases May Be a Bigger Problem Than You’ve Been Told – Current public-health messaging may understate the scale and risk.”
This was a wise observation:
“a closer look at the data reveals that some of the public-health communication may be overstating the vaccine effect on transmission and understating the scale and risk of breakthrough infections, which, while far from predominant, do appear prevalent enough to be helping shape the course of the disease.”
“The message that breakthrough cases are exceedingly rare and that you don’t have to worry about them if you’re vaccinated — that this is only an epidemic of the unvaccinated — that message is falling flat,” Harvard epidemiologist Michael Mina said.
Also noted was a large pre-print study published by the Mayo clinic that suggested the efficacy against infection had fallen as far to 42 percent, far below numbers in the 90s you have been hearing about since the experimental vaccines received emergency authorization. This helps explain escalating breakthrough cases.
The article also pointed these facts out: “In Utah, 8 percent of new cases were breakthroughs in early June, but by late July, as Delta grew, the share grew, too, to 20 percent (even while the total number of cases almost doubled). According to leaked CDC documents, there were, as of late last month, 35,000 symptomatic breakthrough cases being recorded each week — about 10 percent of the country’s total.
Presumably many more breakthrough cases were asymptomatic, which would drive the share up further.” But as of late May CDC started to only count breakthrough cases resulting in hospitalization or death. Their objective was to not count more minor breakthrough cases that would reveal reduced vaccine effectiveness.
“The breakthrough problem is much more concerning than what our public officials have transmitted,” Dr. Eric Topol said. “We have no good tracking. But every indicator I have suggests that there’s a lot more under the radar than is being told to the public so far, which is unfortunate.” The result, he said, was a widening gap between the messaging from public-health authorities and the meaning of the data emerging in real time.
“I think the problem we have is people — whether it’s the CDC or the people that are doing the briefings — their big concern is, they just want to get vaccinations up. And they don’t want to punch any holes in the story about vaccines. But we can handle the truth. And that’s what we should be getting.”
Blood problem deaths
The US government is not providing good data on vaccine induced blood problem deaths. There are some websites that provide large numbers of videos about those who have died from brain bleeds, strokes and other conditions related to blood clots, loss of blood platelets and lethal bleeding. Health Impact News and 1000 Covid Stories are terrific.
Here is some data from a recent UK research study that addressed blood clots in “veins of the legs and in lung arteries.” The researchers offered rather high rates of the main blood clot/low platelet condition from the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine: 1,000 per 100 million for people 50 and over and 2,000 per 100 million for younger people. These suggest a potential for thousands of vaccine induced blood deaths in the US. Keep in mind that many people may be dying from blood problems but no test done to verify it is caused by a vaccine.
Additionally, a Canadian doctor found evidence of microscopic blood clots in 62 percent of his patients that had received the Moderna vaccine. He predicted dire long term health impacts from these clots in capillaries. He said this:
“The blood clots we hear about which the media claim are very rare are the big blood clots which are the ones that cause strokes and show up on CT scans, MRI, etc. The clots I’m talking about are microscopic and too small to find on any scan. They can thus only be detected using the D-dimer test…The most alarming part of this is that there are some parts of the body like the brain, spinal cord, heart and lungs which cannot re-generate. When those tissues are damaged by blood clots they are permanently damaged.”
Future medical problems and deaths from the microscopic blood clots at this point are speculative.
Conclusions
Here is my logical bottom line. Getting a shot these days is gambling that you will not be that statistical fluke, dying from a lack of protection against COVID from any of the experimental vaccines. Keep in mind that with so many millions of people being vaccinated breakthrough infections are likely to keep rolling up.
And think of your gamble as related to the possibility that you might die from vaccine induced blood clots or bleeding, especially in the brain. And then add these two pieces of true science facts.
If you have natural immunity from being infected at some point your have better immunity than that conferred by the experimental vaccines. Getting a shot might cause serious medical problems if you have natural immunity.
And finally, never forget that since March 2020 we have absolute scientific truth that several cheap, safe and fully FDA approved generic medicines not only can cure COVID but also can be used as a prophylactic to prevent infection. Detailed data on these are in Pandemic Blunder. They are alternatives to the experimental vaccines, and some doctors are prescribing these generics despite actions by NIH, FDA and CDC to block wide use of them.
The main thing to fear now are increasing vaccine mandates that so many people will comply with out of sheer survival needs. Vaccine related deaths will keep being ignored by government and big media in order to safeguard the revenues of big drug companies making the vaccines.
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Dr. Joel S. Hirschhorn, author of Pandemic Blunder and many articles 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.
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).
Mass psychosis is defined as an epidemic of madness that occurs when a large portion of society loses touch with reality and descends into delusions
The witch hunts that occurred in the Americas and Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries, when tens of thousands of people, mostly women, were burned at the stake is a classic example of mass psychosis. The rise of totalitarianism in the 20th century is another
When a society descends into madness, the results are always devastating. Individuals who make up the affected society become morally and spiritually inferior, unreasonable, irresponsible, emotional, erratic and unreliable. Worst of all, a psychotic mob will engage in atrocities that any solitary individual within the group would normally never consider
The psychogenic steps that lead to madness includes a panic phase, where the individual is frightened and confused by events they cannot explain, and a phase of psychotic insight, where the individual explains their abnormal experience of the world by inventing an illogical but magical way of seeing reality that eases the panic and gives meaning to the experience
Menticide is a term that means “killing of the mind.” It’s a way of controlling the masses by systematically killing the human spirit and free thought. It’s a system through which the ruling elite imprints their own delusional worldview onto society. A society is primed for menticide by the intentional sowing of fear and social isolation
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The 20-minute video above, “Mass Psychosis — How an Entire Population Becomes Mentally Ill,” created by After Skool and Academy of Ideas,1 is a fascinating illustration of how mass psychosis can be induced.
Mass psychosis is defined as “an epidemic of madness” that occurs when a “large portion of society loses touch with reality and descends into delusions.”
One classic historical example of mass psychosis is the witch hunts that occurred in the Americas and Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries, when tens of thousands of people, mostly women, were tortured, drowned and burned alive at the stake. The rise of totalitarianism in the 20th century is a more recent example of mass psychosis.
Man’s Worst Enemy
As noted in the video:
“The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.”
That’s a quote attributed to Gustave Le Bon, a French social psychologist renowned for his study of crowds. His book, “The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind,”2 takes a deep dive into the characteristics of human crowds and how, when gathered in groups, people tend to relinquish conscious deliberation in favor of unconscious crowd action. Similarly, psychologist Carl Jung once stated that:
“It is not famine, not earthquakes, not microbes, not cancer, but man himself who is man’s greatest danger to man, for the simple reason that there is no adequate protection against psychic epidemics, which are infinitely more devastating than the worst of natural catastrophes.”
When a society descends into madness, the results are always devastating. Jung, who studied mass psychoses, wrote that the individuals who make up the affected society “become morally and spiritually inferior.” They become “unreasonable, irresponsible, emotional, erratic and unreliable.”
Worst of all, a psychotic mob will engage in atrocities that any solitary individual within the group would normally never consider. Yet through it all, those affected remain unaware of their condition and cannot recognize the error in their ways.
What Causes Mass Psychosis?
To understand how an entire society can be driven to madness, you must first understand what drives any given individual to insanity. Barring drug or alcohol abuse, or a brain injury, psychosis is typically triggered by psychogenic factors, i.e., influences that originate in the mind.
One of the most common psychogenic factors that can trigger psychosis is a flood of negative emotions such as fear or anxiety that drives the person into a state of panic. When in a panic, the natural inclination is to seek relief. A psychologically resilient individual may adapt by facing their fear and ultimately defeating it.
Another coping mechanism is a psychotic break. As explained in the video, a psychotic break is not the descent into chaos, but rather a reordering of one’s experiential world in a way that blends fact and fiction, reality and illusions, in such a way that a sense of control is restored and panic ends. The psychogenic steps that lead to madness can be summarized as follows:
Phase of panic — Here, the individual begins to perceive the world around him or her in a different way and is frightened on account of it. There’s a perceived threat, whether it be real, fabricated or imagined. Confusion grows as they can’t find a way to rationally explain the strange occurrences taking place around them.
Phase of psychotic insight — Here, the individual manages to explain his abnormal experience of the world by inventing an illogical but magical way of seeing reality. The term “insight” is used, because the magical thinking allows the individual to escape from the panic and find meaning again. However, the insight is psychotic, because it’s based on delusions.
Just as a psychologically weak and vulnerable individual can be driven to madness, so can large groups of weak and vulnerable people descend into madness and magical thinking.
Totalitarianism Is a Society Built on Delusions
In the 20th century, we’ve seen a rise in totalitarianism, defined by professor and religious studies scholar Arthur Versluis as:
“The modern phenomenn of total centralized state power coupled with the obliteration of individual human rights: In the totalized state, there are those in power and there are the objectified masses, the victims.”
In a totalitarian society, there are two classes: the rulers and the ruled, and both groups undergo a pathological transformation. Rulers are raised to a god-like status where they can do no wrong — a view that easily leads to corruption and unethical behavior — while the ruled are transformed into dependent subjects, which leads to psychological regression.
Joost Meerloo, author of “Rape of the Mind,” compares the reactions of citizens living in totalitarian states to that of schizophrenics. Both rulers and the ruled are ill. Both live in a delusional fog, as the entire society and its rules are sustained by delusional thinking.
As noted in the video, only deluded people regress to a child-like state of total submissiveness, and only a deluded ruling class will believe they possess the knowledge and wisdom to control society in a top-down manner. And, only a deluded person will believe that a power-hungry elite ruling a mentally regressed society will result in anything but mass suffering and financial ruin.
The mass psychosis that is totalitarianism begins within the ruling class, as the individuals within this class are easily enamored with delusions that augment their power. And no delusion is greater than the delusion that they can, and should — indeed are destined to — control and dominate all others.
Whether the totalitarian mindset takes the form of communism, fascism or technocracy, a ruling elite that has succumbed to their own delusions of grandeur then sets about to indoctrinate the masses into their own twisted worldview. All that’s needed to accomplish that reorganization of society is the manipulation of collective feelings.
Killing of the Mind
Menticide is a term that means “killing of the mind,” and it’s an ancient way of controlling the masses by systematically killing the human spirit and free thought. It’s a system through which the ruling elite imprints their own delusional worldview onto society.
A society is primed for menticide by the intentional sowing of fear. A particularly effective way to induce fear and panic that results in psychosis is the unleashing of waves of terror, and it doesn’t matter if the “terror” in question is real or fictitious. The waves of terror technique can be graphed out as an escalating wave pattern where each round of fear is followed by a round of calm.
After a short period of calm, the threat level is elevated again, with each round of fearmongering being more intense than the one before. Propaganda — fake and misleading news — are used to break down the minds of the masses, and over time, it becomes easier and easier to control everyone as confusion and anxiety give way to the magical thinking and psychotic insight presented as solutions through the media.
Contradictory reports, nonsensical recommendations and blatant lies are deployed intentionally, as it heightens confusion. The more confused a population is, the greater the state of anxiety, which reduces society’s ability to cope with the crisis. As the ability to cope withers, the greater the chances a mass psychosis will develop.
As noted in the video, “Confusion heightens the susceptibility of a descent into the delusions of totalitarianism.” Or, as Meerloo noted in his book:
“Logic can be met with logic, while illogic cannot. It confuses those who think straight. The big lie and monotonously repeated nonsense have more of an emotional appeal … than logic and reason. While the people are still searching for a reasonable counterargument to the first lie, the totalitarians can assault them with another.”
The Rise of Technocracy
What sets modern-day totalitarianism apart from previous totalitarian states is technology. The means to incite fear and manipulate people’s thinking has never been more efficient or effective. TV, internet, smartphones and social media are all sources of information these days, and it’s easier than ever to control the flow of that information.
Algorithms automatically filter out the voices of reason and rational thinking, supplanting them with fear narratives instead. Modern technologies also have addictive qualities, so many voluntarily expose themselves to the brainwashing. Commenting on man’s reliance on technology, Meerloo notes:
“No rest, no meditation, no reflection, no conversation. The senses are continually overloaded with stimuli. Man doesn’t learn to question his world anymore. The screen offers him answers already made.”
Isolation — A Mass Psychosis-Inducing Tool
Aside from the onslaught of fearmongering and false propaganda, the ultimate tool to induce psychosis is isolation. When you are deprived of regular social interactions and discussions, you become more susceptible to delusions for a number of reasons:
1. You lose contact with corrective forces of positive examples, role models of rational thinking and behavior. Not everyone is tricked by the brainwashing attempts of the ruling elite, and these people can help free others from their delusions. When you’re in isolation, the power of these individuals greatly diminishes.
2. Like animals, human behavior is significantly easier to manipulate when the individual is kept in isolation. As animal research has discovered, conditioned reflexes are most easily developed in a quiet, secluded laboratory with a minimum of stimuli to detract from the indoctrination.
When you want to tame a wild animal, you must isolate the animal and patiently repeat a particular stimulus until the desired response is obtained. Humans can be conditioned in the same manner. Alone, confused, and battered by waves of terror, a society kept in isolation from each other descends into madness as rational thought is obliterated and replaced with magical thinking.
Once a society is firmly in the grip of mass psychosis, totalitarians are free to take the last, decisive step: They can offer a way out; a return to order. The price is your freedom. You must cede control of all aspects of your life to the rulers, because unless they are granted total control, they won’t be able to create the order everyone craves.
This order, however, is a pathological one, devoid of all humanity. It eliminates the spontaneity that brings joy and creativity to one’s life by demanding strict conformity and blind obedience.
And despite the promise of safety, a totalitarian society is inherently fearful. It was built on fear, and is maintained by it too. So, giving up your freedom for safety and a sense of order will only lead to more of the same fear and anxiety that allowed the totalitarians to gain control in the first place.
How Can Mass Psychosis Be Reversed?
Can totalitarianism be prevented? And can the effects of mass psychosis be reversed? Yes, but just as the menticidal approach is multipronged, so must the solution be. To help return sanity to an insane world, first you need to center yourself and live in such a way as to provide inspiration for others to follow. As noted by Jung:
“It is not for nothing that our age cries out for the redeemer personality, for the one who can emancipate himself from the grip of the collective psychosis and save at least his own soul, who lights a beacon of hope for others, proclaiming that here is at least one man who has succeeded in extricating himself from the fatal identity with the group psyche.”
Next, you need to share and spread the truth — the counternarrative to the propaganda — as far and wide as possible. Because truth is always more potent than lies, the success of propaganda relies on the censoring of truth. Another tactic is to use humor and ridicule to delegitimize the ruling elite.
A strategy proposed by Vaclav Havel, a political dissident who became the president of Czechoslovakia, is called “parallel structures.” A parallel structure is any kind of business, organization, technology, movement or creative pursuit that fits within a totalitarian society while being morally outside of it.
Once enough parallel structures are created, a parallel culture is born that functions as a sanctuary of sanity within the totalitarian world. Havel explains this strategy in his book, “The Power of the Powerless.”
Last but not least, to prevent the descent into totalitarian madness, sane and rational action must be taken by as many people as possible. The totalitarian elite do not sit around twiddling their thumbs, hoping and wishing to increase their power and control. No. They are actively taking steps to augment their position. To defend against them, the would-be-ruled must be just as active and resolute in their counter-push toward freedom.
All of this can be extremely challenging as people around you succumb to collective psychosis. But as Thomas Paine once said:
“Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered, yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”
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Question: Why do the governments of Britain, France and Germany continue to carry out bilateral trade with a nuclear-armed, non-NATO country that is in contempt of the UN Security Council, of which Britain and France are two of its five permanent members who voted for UNSCR 2334 which was adopted on 23 December 2016 by a 14-0 vote? That vote unanimously demanded the removal of all illegal settlers on Palestinian land.
Israel is an undeclared nuclear weaponised state – over one million of whose citizens are immigrant ethnic Russians. It poses a potential threat to the national security of British and European western democracies in addition to that of other members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, by its illegal annexation of, and settlement agenda in, the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Any unilateral attack by Israel using WMD against Gaza, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Pakistan, Syria, Lebanon, Poland or any other European or Arab country, could immediately escalate into a nuclear conflict that could envelop not only the Middle East and the Gulf but also huge swathes of southern and Central Europe, affecting tens of millions – if not more.
To allow a warring state of just 9m people to hold military dominance over the entire Middle East, the Mediterranean and parts of southern Europe, with its massive, undeclared arsenal of nuclear and chemical WMD, is political madness that could end in a catastrophic conflict that will make Afghanistan look merely like a country-contained but violent, ideological quarrel.
Those massive, underground, nuclear silos at Dimona, 19 miles south from Beersheba, in the Negev Desert, are not just a fantasy – they contain some of the most powerful instruments of mass murder existing in the world today.
And for over 10 years that toxic/ lethal arsenal of WMD been under the control of disgraced former Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, now on public trial for corruption.
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Appendix
Resolution 2334 (2016) Adopted by the Security Council at its 7853rd meeting, on 23 December 2016 The Security Council, Reaffirming its relevant resolutions, including resolutions 242 (1967), 338 (1973), 446 (1979), 452 (1979), 465 (1980), 476 (1980), 478 (1980), 1397 (2002), 1515 (2003), and 1850 (2008),
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Guided by the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, and reaffirming, inter alia, the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force,
Reaffirming the obligation of Israel, the occupying Power, to abide scrupulously by its legal obligations and responsibilities under the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, of 12 August 1949, and recalling the advisory opinion rendered on 9 July 2004 by the International Court of Justice, Condemning all measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, including, inter alia, the construction and expansion of settlements, transfer of Israeli settlers, confiscation of land, demolition of homes and displacement of Palestinian civilians, in violation of international humanitarian law and relevant resolutions,
Expressing grave concern that continuing Israeli settlement activities are dangerously imperilling the viability of the two-State solution based on the 1967 lines, Recalling the obligation under the Quartet Roadmap, endorsed by its resolution 1515 (2003), for a freeze by Israel of all settlement activity, including “natural growth”, and the dismantlement of all settlement outposts erected since March 2001, Recalling also the obligation under the Quartet roadmap for the Palestinian Authority Security Forces to maintain effective operations aimed at confronting all those engaged in terror and dismantling terrorist capabilities, including the confiscation of illegal weapons.
Condemning all acts of violence against civilians, including acts of terror, as well as all acts of provocation, incitement and destruction, Reiterating its vision of a region where two democratic States, Israel and Palestine, live side by side in peace within secure and recognized borders, Stressing that the status quo is not sustainable and that significant steps, consistent with the transition contemplated by prior agreements, are urgently needed in order to (i) stabilize the situation and to reverse negative trends on the ground, which are steadily eroding the two-State solution and entrenching a one-State reality, and (ii) to create the conditions for successful final status negotiations and for advancing the two-State solution through those negotiations and on the ground,
1. Reaffirms that the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-State solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace;
2. Reiterates its demand that Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, and that it fully respect all of its legal obligations in this regard;
3. Underlines that it will not recognize any changes to the 4 June 1967 lines, including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties through negotiations;
4. Stresses that the cessation of all Israeli settlement activities is essential for salvaging the two-State solution, and calls for affirmative steps to be taken immediately to reverse the negative trends on the ground that are imperilling the two-State solution;
5. Calls upon all States, bearing in mind paragraph 1 of this resolution, to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967;
6. Calls for immediate steps to prevent all acts of violence against civilians, including acts of terror, as well as all acts of provocation and destruction, calls for accountability in this regard, and calls for compliance with obligations under international law for the strengthening of ongoing efforts to combat terrorism, including through existing security coordination, and to clearly condemn all acts of terrorism; 7. Calls upon both parties to act on the basis of international law, including international humanitarian law, and their previous agreements and obligations, to observe calm and restraint, and to refrain from provocative actions, incitement and inflammatory rhetoric, with the aim, inter alia, of de-escalating the situation on the ground, rebuilding trust and confidence, demonstrating through policies and actions a genuine commitment to the two-State solution, and creating the conditions necessary for promoting peace;
8. Calls upon all parties to continue, in the interest of the promotion of peace and security, to exert collective efforts to launch credible negotiations on all final status issues in the Middle East peace process and within the time frame specified by the Quartet in its statement of 21 September 2010;
9. Urges in this regard the intensification and acceleration of international and regional diplomatic efforts and support aimed at achieving, without delay a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East on the basis of the relevant United Nations resolutions, the Madrid terms of reference, including the principle of land for peace, the Arab Peace Initiative and the Quartet Roadmap and an end to the Israeli occupation that began in 1967; and underscores in this regard the importance of the ongoing efforts to advance the Arab Peace Initiative, the initiative of France for the convening of an international peace conference, the recent efforts of the Quartet, as well as the efforts of Egypt and the Russian Federation;
10. Confirms its determination to support the parties throughout the negotiations and in the implementation of an agreement;
11. Reaffirms its determination to examine practical ways and means to secure the full implementation of its relevant resolutions; 12. Requests the Secretary General to report to the Council every three months on the implementation of the provisions of the present resolution; 13. Decides to remain seized of the matter.
Featured image: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a speech on Iran’s nuclear programme at the defence ministry in Tel Aviv on 30 April 2018 (Source: MEE)
ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102 Print Edition: $10.25 (+ shipping and handling) PDF Edition: $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)
Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.
Reviews
“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.” –John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University
“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.” -Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations
Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction. –Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute
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).
Afghanistan has “fallen”, that’s the line. The Taliban forces have taken the opportunity of US/NATO withdrawal and swept across the entire country, taking every major city within a week and with barely a shot fired.
Joe Biden is being blamed for his “lack of plan”, even as Democrats try and shift the blame to Trump who first decided to pull the US out of Afghanistan over 18 months ago.
Meanwhile, the press are reporting dozens of stories about the humanitarian crises, refugees fleeing the new regime, the fate of women under the Taliban, and “shocking videos” of desperate people.
That’s the official story. But what’s really going on?
1. DID THE TALIBAN REALLY JUST WIN?
Firstly, let’s be clear, the US has not “pulled out” of Afghanistan, not in the true sense of the phrase. They still reserve the right to bomb the place. There are still private contractors in the country. And the Pentagon are already booking their return tickets.
Secondly, the Taliban didn’t “win”, they were unopposed. More than unopposed, they were directly aided. When the US abandoned Bagram airbase they left hundreds of armored vehicles, weapons and over 5000 alleged Taliban prisoners…all of which “accidentally” fell into the hands of the advancing Taliban forces.
The Afghan army, under command of US puppet President Ashraf Ghani, essentially folded without a shot being fired. Tens of thousands of US-trained and armed troops did nothing to stop the advance of the enemy.
The Washington Post’s Max Boot, writing for the Council on Foreign Relations, ties himself in mental knots trying to explain how the Afghan army, with superior numbers AND firepower, “collapsed under pressure”.
The Independent reports that the billions the Pentagon spent on training Afghan security forces has “accidentally” benefited the Taliban, who have now seized vehicles, missiles and aircraft.
The press clearly sees it for what it is – a hole in their story they really need to plug.
All things being equal, the simplest explanation is often the most likely. And the simplest explanation here is that the Afghan security forces were ordered to stand down as part of a deal with the Taliban. There are reports and rumours on social media of deals being done:
The Secret Deal b/w US, Taliban & Afghan Govt (A thread):
It is said that the trio agreed to peacefully handover #Afganistan to #Taliban. Which is why the 350K Forces including 10K AirForce collapsed like dominos in the span of a week only and without a single bullet fired. 1/7 pic.twitter.com/0az3qVymhK
And, of course, the exact terms of the peace agreement, signed by Trump and Taliban last year, are not known. But it’s interesting to note that this agreement actually called for a handover of exactly 5000 Taliban prisoners. The same number “accidentally” left unguarded at Bagram Airbase.
One interpretation is that the withdrawal has gone exactly as planned in the deal signed by Trump. And that the melodrama and “chaos” of the pull-out was either a part of the deal, or a later addition to either cause a distraction or save some face.
2. IS THE CHAOS REAL?
The media have been generating memes to sell the “chaos” of the Taliban’s advance. The go-to comparison has been the fall of Saigon, because the (completely unintentional) “near-identical images” (completely unintentionally) “went viral”.
We’re treated to a lot of viral video footage. Ranging from the questionable:
Does this video not ring true to anyone else? If these are all desperate refugees, where are the women & children? Why are most of them jogging nonchalantly & making no effort to get on the plane? Why are people stopping, smiling & waving to the camera? #AfghanistanAirporthttps://t.co/SnBuJ384FU
The “end” of the Afghan war is being used to re-brand its beginnings. The Taliban are propped up as villains, again, and associated with Al Qaeda, as if they were ever anything but a Western tool in the first place.
Marketing Afghanistan as a “defeat” for the US camouflages the truth of it – the war was a VERY profitable business venture.
And, of course, it all serves to reinforce the frail official story of 9/11, a vital keystone in the construction of our geo-political “reality”.
3. WHAT ABOUT THE HEROIN?
The press has a long history of, not just lying about Afghan heroin, but totally inverting the truth. In 2019 for example, during the farcical “leak” of the Afghanistan Papers, the press lamented the US’ “failure to curb” the opium trade.
Afghanistan currently produces around 90% of global heroin. When the US invaded in 2001, that number was much closer to zero. The Taliban outlawed the growing of opium poppies in early 2001, and by the end of the year the business was almost extinct.
The US invaded in October 2001, and opium production has increased almost every year since then. We don’t need to go into the CIA’s links to the drug trade here, or how much money people have made from this heroin production. That’s not relevant, what we need to ask is, what now?
Will the newly-reinstated Taliban put an end to this trade again? Or will production continue?
According the press, the heroin will continue to flow. In fact the Taliban will increase production because the “illegal drug trade helps fuel” them.
Reuters reports that the US plan to halt heroin production “failed”, and that the opoium trade is a “boon” for the Taliban.
But the idea that heroin benefits the Taliban, and the US wants to put an end to it is a myth. Afghan heroin is, and always has been, a US/Deep State/corporate enterprise to the bone.
And, If the Taliban do allow the US to continue to use their land to mass-produce heroin, that is yet another piece of evidence supporting a deal between the Taliban and the West.
4. WILL THERE BE ANY POLITICAL FALLOUT?
So what are the next steps? Where is this going?
Well, in the US, President Joe Biden is experiencing some pretty heavy FLAK. Even his usually-stalwart supporters at CNN ran the headline “Joe Biden is facing a crisis of competence”. Which could mean they’re in the early stages of prepping us for President Kamala Harris.
Geo-politically, the talk is of Russia and China – the only two counties to officially recognise the Taliban government – “stepping into the void”. This is being played as a victory for America’s enemies (and another stick with which to beat Biden), but does that really mean anything?
The Covid “pandemic” has been an eye-opener in terms of conflict between nations. They’ve shown us that, when they really need to, they work together to the same end. They tell the same lies, sell the same stories, and want the same thing. The wall at the back of the theatre has been revealed, in that regard.
The truth is, no matter which nations notionally hold sway in Afghanistan, the profits from the war, the lithium and the heroin will all end up going to the same few pockets. Corporations rule, not countries. Nation-states are no longer the players of the Great Game, they are the pieces. Toys for corporate megaliths. Their owners can make them fight each other, or bump them together and make kissy noises. Each is equally meaningless.
5. IS THERE ANOTHER “REFUGEE CRISIS” ON THE WAY?
The Afghanistan narrative will fuel other big narratives going forward.
The “worst since world war II”, according to Tobias Elwood MP (who can always be relied upon to promote Deep State talking points), which is weird because I’m sure that’s what they said about the refugee crisis in 2016, too. Oh, and in 2019.
Will these refugees be forced to stay in “quarantine hotels” at their own expense? Have they all been “double jabbed”? We don’t know. Nobody’s thinking about that, that’s from the other narrative. We’re talking about refugees today, Covid can wait.
Anybody opposing asylum seekers entering the country because of Covid will be branded a racist, and medical professionals will claim that “racism is a public health issue more dangerous than covid”, just like they did when the Covid narrative collided with the Black Lives Matter narrative last summer.
That importing asylum seekers, undocumented, from a near-failed state could be suggested at all during an allegedly “deadly pandemic” is a sign of just how contrived both narratives are.
It’s not said much – but corporations love refugees. Just like illegal immigrants, undocumented refugees can be used as cheap labour, with none of the legal protections of full citizens. They can then be blamed for deteriorating living standards, unemployment and wage stagnation. They act as a heat-sink for public anger.
Further, “refugees” with no passports are a great way to get your trained mercenaries, agitators, saboteurs, and/or special forces across national borders without leaving a trail.
The resulting army of undocumented men of fighting age can then serve as a pool of potential “terrorists” who can be “radicalised” at a moments notice and deployed to spread panic at home or abroad.
Which leads us neatly onto…
6. WILL WE SEE A MAJOR TERRORIST ATTACK?
It’s only been a few days since the “fall” of Kabul, but already the “renewed terrorism threat” is making waves in the press.
The Sun, in its usual understated style, headlines:
RED ALERT Britain faces ‘direct threat of terrorism’ from Taliban’s Afghan takeover in new wave of terror against West
A rather more sedate report in from AP says: “Concerns over US terror threats rising as Taliban hold grows.”
The New York Times goes almost fully schizophrenic, reporting “A decade ago, a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq opened the door for the Islamic State. Will the withdrawal from Afghanistan do the same for the Taliban? and warning of other terror attacks in the future…
…without ever acknowledging that the US never “withdrew” from Iraq at all. Or that they armed, and trained, ISIS.
Bloomberg warns that “The Taliban are already inspiring terror beyond Afghanistan”. The Times is worried about the “terrorist elite” the Taliban freed from Bagram prison.
Project Syndicate reports that “The world should not ignore the risk that Afghanistan under the Taliban could become a breeding ground for international terrorism.”
Politicians from France, the US and UK been eager to talk it up, too:
Immediate priority for UK govt: secure safe passage for British citizens & Afghans who have supported us.
But the long term threat is that terrorists will use Afghanistan as a base to attack the UK.
PM must set out a strategy for strengthening our counter-terrorism capability. pic.twitter.com/tOMEkyy80M
Does this mean we will see a major terrorist attack?
Maybe, maybe not. We are past due for one, certainly. Major international terrorism, much like the flu, took some time off during the “pandemic.” But, in many ways, the threat is just as effective as the attack itself.
The Covid fear fog is thinning, people are starting to wake up a little, and the people running things need everyone to be afraid.
Conclusion
To sum up the official narrative on US withdrawal from Afghanistan in bullet points:
Trump signed a deal with the Taliban, over a year ago, to withdraw from the country and hand over 5000 prisoners.
Despite having over a year to plan, the US “withdrawal” was chaotic and messy.
The US accidentally left behind weapons, helicopters, ammunition and armoured vehicles, which the Taliban took.
The US accidentally left behind 5000 prisoners, whom the Taliban freed.
Without US support, the Afghan army, which outnumbers and outguns the Taliban, folded without firing a shot and the Taliban took control of the entire country in less than week.
Despite shutting down the heroin trade prior to the US invasion, the Taliban now intend to keep it going, and even increase production.
Do you believe this story? Is it at all believable?
Ignore the sound and fury from the media. The press are like a street magician, if you want to understand what they’re up to you have to look past the hand he’s waving in your face, and look at the one behind his back.
It seems fairly obvious, to me anyway, that US gave weapons and vehicles to the Taliban in exchange for a promise to keep the heroin production going (and maybe access to mineral mines, no word on that yet).
Meanwhile, the “fall out” of the totally manufactured “chaos” is being used to fan the flames of fear-porn. Promoting division over asylum seekers and spreading panic about terrorism.
In short, the Afghanistan story, as related by the mainstream press, is a twisted illogical ball of confusion, intended to provide fuel for future narratives of control.
…which is pretty much true of everything in the news, these days.
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124 consumer, health and environmental groups sent letters today calling on Lowe’s(NYSE: LOW) and Home Depot(NASDQ: HD) to immediately end the sale of Roundup following Bayer’s recent decision to remove cancer-causing glyphosate from weedkiller Roundup by 2023 for the U.S. consumer market. Urging that the health of people and pollinators can’t wait, the groups contend that unless major home and garden retailers act now, consumers will continue to use and be exposed to glyphosate via Roundup for the next two years.
Friends of the Earth and allies have been campaigning for Home Depot and Lowe’s to end sales of Roundup and other glyphosate-based weedkillers based on science linking the chemical to cancer and other serious health concerns, as well as threats to pollinators and endangered species.
The groups are also pushing Lowe’s and Home Depot to not supply Bayer’s reformulated Roundup products once they are available in 2023 unless they are truly safe for people and pollinators. A recent analysis showed that half of all herbicides offered by these retail giants contain highly hazardous ingredients, highlighting the need for truly safe alternatives. In a process known as “regrettable substitution,” the replacements for high-profile chemicals of concern like glyphosate are often as toxic as the original chemicals.
Bayer’s decision is a response to years-long court battles the company inherited after acquiring Roundup manufacturer Monsanto in 2018. In a series of high-profile court cases, glyphosate exposure has been linked to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in farmers, groundskeepers, and homeowners using the herbicide for lawn care.
However, Bayer’s decision only applies to consumer markets – the company will continue selling glyphosate-based formulas for agricultural and professional use.
“Despite Bayer’s decision, the battle against glyphosate is far from over — massive amounts of this toxic chemical will continue to be bought and sprayed in our yards, communities and farms. Retailers and regulators must act now to protect people and the planet from this cancer-linked weedkiller,” said Paolo Mutia, food and agriculture campaigner for Friends of the Earth.
“It is great news that after years of public outcry, Bayer is finally going to stop selling cancer-linked glyphosate products in U.S. home and garden stores. But we need to get these dangerous products off of shelves now, not in two years,” said Lacey Kohlmoos, U.S. campaign manager for SumOfUs. “Lowe’s and Home Depot need to show that they care about their customers’ health by ending all sales of Roundup and other glyphosate products immediately.”
According to Akayla Bracey, science and regulatory manager for Beyond Pesticides, “People generally aren’t aware that the pesticides widely available in garden retailers like Home Depot and Lowe’s are a threat to health and the environment, and that there are safer products that are available and used in organic land management.”
“Home Depot and Lowe’s need to take action for human and environmental health and immediately end the sale of Roundup and all other pesticides and herbicides with toxic chemicals,” said Todd Larsen, executive co-director for Green America. “When people go to big box stores looking for weedkiller, they don’t realize the chemicals they are purchasing are harming them and pollinators. It’s up to retailers to sell only products that are safe to use, and as the largest Do It Yourself stores in the U.S., Home Depot and Lowe’s need to be leaders in selling only the safest products.”
“In light of Bayer’s announcement, Home Depot and Lowe’s have no reason to wait until 2023 to end the sales of Roundup and other toxic glyphosate-based herbicides,” said Rebecca Spector, west coast director for the Center for Food Safety. “It’s time for these major retailers to demonstrate bold leadership that prioritizes environmental stewardship and human health over short-term profits resulting from continued sales of these harmful products. Our pollinators cannot wait two more years, and as consumers, we deserve better, now.”
“We will not accept the continued sale of glyphosate; it wreaks havoc on both environmental and human health,” said Rose Williamson president for Herbicide Free Campus Loyola Marymount University. “It should no longer be sold on Lowe’s and Home Depot shelves starting today, rather than waiting until 2023.”
“This is a win against the toxic chemical market; we the people hold the power and, with this news, we are more motivated than ever to continue working with our campuses to eliminate synthetic herbicide use,” said Christie Jones, a student activist with Herbicide-Free Campus at Emory University.
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