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Abstract

The phenomenon of facilitation of viral infections by antibodies (ADE antibody dependent enhancement) as well as the resistance of agammaglobulinemia patients to certain viruses are in contradiction with the protective role of antibodies affirmed by classical immunology. This must be compared to the opsonizing antibodies that promote the specific phagocytosis of extra-cellular bacteria. However, questions about the role of antibodies have been raised since the beginning of the history of immunology.

More recently, Pierre Sonigo has shed light on the contradictions between the finalist interpretation of the role of lymphocytes and the theory of evolution: how can it be explained that cells are selected to protect the organism they constitute? The role of anti-viral and antiintracellular bacteria antibodies could be to allow phagocytosis by the cells: either directly by the Fc fragment of immunoglobulins, or via the complement for many cell types. This makes it easy to understand the selection of antibodysecreting cells. Natural selection favors the cells that produce the most affine Ig and thus guides the maturation of the proB cell to the plasma cell.

A review of recent publications in theoretical immunology is consistent with this hypothesis. The theory of evolution should be integrated at every level of research and teaching in immunology, as it is for biology as a whole.

Introduction

The phenomenon of antibody facilitation of viral infections has recently been re-discussed in relation to the clinical aspect of Covid-19 (Yushun et al., 2020 and Banoun, 2020) and vaccines against this infection (Roper and Rehm, 2009). Antibody dependent enhancement is the accepted mechanism to explain severe reinfections due to dengue virus—among others—(Taylor et al., 2015) as well as the higher occurrence of severe dengue in vaccinated (compared to unvaccinated, Feinberg and Ahmed, 2017).

This effect of antibodies appears to contradict immunological theory, which states that the “role” of antibodies is to protect organisms against pathogens, including viruses.

However, contradictory observations have long been noted.

Already in 1956, a review was published (Good and Zak, 1956) which referred to “the clinical paradox posed by the apparently satisfactory resistance of patients with agammaglobulinemia to certain viral infections and the failure of their response to the virus antigen…. ”. As noted by Burnet (1968), measles immunity is independent of antibodies, but depends solely on cellular immunity. The same demonstration has recently been made for immunity to VSV (vesicular stomatitis virus, Moseman et al., 2012).

These observations have been reviewed by Sanna and Burton (2000). They are criticized because all patients diagnosed wuth aγglobulinemia would have received IM immunoglobulin as early as the early 1950s, and thus the complete null phenotype has been little studied. The authors suggest that the treatment given to these patients indicates that antibodies may play a role in viral infections. Some viral infections that these patients developed before treatment virtually disappeared after the initiation of treatment. However, it cannot be denied that the aγglobulinemia patients were discovered by the bacterial infections they developed and not by the viral infections.

It appears that humoral immunity plays a role in HSV (Herpes simplex virus, neurologically disseminated enterovirus) infections for viruses with nervous tropism and for persistent viral infections.

Moreover, it is difficult to attribute the discovery of an infection in an antibody deficient patient to a particular virus: the serological diagnosis is inoperative; it was necessary to wait for the culture of the viruses and especially the PCR to affirm a viral infection.

Therefore, this last publication does not call into question the first observations on aγglobulinemia patients: patients are very sensitive to bacterial infections and for the majority of viral infections, their sensitivity is comparable to that of the general population.

Much more recently, the pandemic at Covid-19 has mobilized thousands of researchers and allowed significant advances in immunology and virology. One study compared serologies and cell type immunity in Covid-19 index patients and their contacts: only index patients became seropositive, but both groups showed robust and specific cell type reactivity to SARS-CoV-2 (the virus responsible for Covid-19) (Gallais et al., 2020).

Similarly Sekine et al. (2020) showed that most individuals with asymptomatic or moderate Covid-19 generated highly functional durable memory T-cell responses in the absence of a corresponding humoral response.

The role of antibodies in bacterial infections is well established in the defense against extracellular bacterial infections (as opposed to intracellular infections) (Berche, 1988). The frequency of infections in patients with genetic abnormalities of phagocytes is indicative of the importance of phagocytosis.

Bacteria, once phagocytized, are degraded and then exocytosed, making the antigens accessible to the cells of adaptive immunity. The antibodies then act by promoting phagocytosis, which is the natural process of fighting pathogenic bacteria: they are opsonizing antibodies, another term for facilitators. Could the neutralization and agglutination of bacteria observed in vitro not occur in vivo?

Complement (a group of serum proteins) plays an important role in phagocytosis. These proteins act on the one hand by binding to specific antibodies, but complement is also activated by the alternating pathway induced directly by surface bacterial antigens: lipopolysaccarides, capsule polyosides, lipotechoic acids, and this in the absence of antibodies.

However, as with viral infections, the first line of defense is innate immunity: during a primary infection it takes 7 to 10 days to mount a specific humoral reaction, and it is non-specific phagocytosis that operates first. A good example is pneumococcal pneumonia. Pneumococcus is a commensal upper airway bacterium that becomes pathogenic when it acquires a phagocytosis-resistant capsule. In young adults the evolution is typical: after incubation of 1 to 3 days, a sudden onset, high fever, cough, the evolution is favorable in 8-10 days with a sudden improvement. This improvement corresponds to the appearance of specific antibodies. The inflammatory (polynuclear) reaction aided by the opsonizing specific antibodies will destroy the pneumococci and lead to healing.

How can this opsonizing role of antibacterial antibodies be related to the phenomenon of the facilitation of viral infections by the antibodies?

Pierre Sonigo, one of the discoverers of the AIDS virus in the 1980s, reflected on the theory of immunology and the problems it poses in relation to the theory of evolution (Kupiec and Sonigo, 2003).

Before giving a brief summary of his theses, a historical overview of this science can account for the theoretical gaps that accompanied its birth.

Read the full peer-reviewed article here.

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National Interest editor Jacob Heilbrunn interviews Ambassador of the Russian Federation to the United States of America H. E. Anatoly Antonov.

Jacob Heilbrunn: President Vladimir Putin has recently published a new essay on Ukraine stating that Ukrainians and Russians are the same people. He also indicated that there are red lines that neither Ukraine nor NATO would be allowed to cross. Some say Putin is laying the groundwork for tougher action on Ukraine. Have you communicated anything like that to the Biden administration?

H. E. Anatoly Antonov: The article of the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin had a huge resonance in Washington. For many here, it was a new look into relations between Russians and Ukrainians, an opportunity to learn the roots of the people. Unfortunately, there are ill-wishers who deny the good, especially when it comes to Russia. They try to pervert the picture—to present the article as if it were an ultimatum against the independent nation. We have to acknowledge that there are many representatives of the administration who share this view. They ignore the main thesis of the Russian leader that a true, real and strong sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership and good relations with Russia.

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Introduction

“Humanitarian” lies serve to brainwash the population into supporting imperialist wars. Fed by far-right propaganda, and funded by the CIA, the mainstream “news” outlets describe the Soviet labour camps – also known as the “the Gulags” – as Stalin’s means to repress pro-democracy dissidents and to enslave the Soviet masses. However, the same CIA that, through Operation Mockingbird, gave the US military almost-total control over the mainstream press in order to foster anti-Soviet disinformation (Tracy 2018), has recently released declassified documents that invalidate the slanders surrounding the Gulags.

The CIA which conducted various anti-Soviet operations for almost five decades, and whose staff strived to obtain accurate intelligence about the USSR, cannot be said to have any bias in favor of the USSR. Therefore, the following declassified CIA files that surprisingly “confess” in favor of the Soviet Union are particularly valuable.

While acknowledging the harsh conditions that existed in the Gulags – as with any prison system in the world – the goal of this article is to shed light on the following facts:

(1) the harshness of the prisons has been exaggerated by the Western press, with numerous lies being made up,

(2) the statistics in regards to the Gulag population have been exaggerated,

(3) there was a genuine effort at improving the prison conditions when given the chance, and

(4) the prison standards were much higher than those of many capitalist countries.

The Conditions of the Prisons

A 1957 CIA document titled “Forced Labor Camps in the USSR: Transfer of Prisoners between Camps” reveals the following information about the Soviet Gulag in pages two to six:

1. Until 1952, the prisoners were given a guaranteed amount food, plus extra food for over-fulfillment of quotas

2. From 1952 onward, the Gulag system operated upon “economic accountability” such that the more the prisoners worked, the more they were paid.

3. For over-fulfilling the norms by 105%, one day of sentence was counted as two, thus reducing the time spent in the Gulag by one day.

4. Furthermore, because of the socialist reconstruction post-war, the Soviet government had more funds and so they increased prisoners’ food supplies.

5. Until 1954, the prisoners worked 10 hours per day, whereas the free workers worked 8 hours per day. From 1954 onward, both prisoners and free workers worked 8 hours per day.

6. A CIA study of a sample camp showed that 95% of the prisoners were the mainstream criminals.

7. In 1953, amnesty was given to 70% of the “ordinary criminals” of a sample camp studied by the CIA. Within the next 3 months, most of them were re-arrested for committing new crimes.

The following are excerpts of the CIA document, underlined and put together for the reader:

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Am Rande einer Demonstration gegen die Einführung des Grünen Passes in Italien beschrieb eine Demonstrantin, was uns Bürger in naher Zukunft erwarten wird – wenn wir es geschehen lassen:

„Wir werden bald sehen, wie die Geimpften uns angreifen werden. Die Menschen werden gegeneinander ausgespielt. Letztes Jahr waren es diejenigen, die einen Arbeitsplatz hatten, und diejenigen, die ihn verloren hatten. In diesem Jahr wird die Gesellschaft zwischen denen, die geimpft sind, und denen, die nicht geimpft sind, gespalten.“ (1)

Friedliche Bürger werden auf diese Weise gegeneinander in Stellung gebracht und sollen so die Eugenik-Agenda der herrschenden „Elite“ voranbringen. Dabei werden diejenigen, die diesen teuflischen Plan zu verantworten haben, ihre Hände in Unschuld waschen und für den zu erwartenden Hexensabbat – wie in jedem Krieg – den angeblich angeborenen Aggressionstrieb des Menschen verantwortlich machen. Doch dieser ist ein Mythos, der für Tyrannen aller Couleur schon immer als willkommene Legitimation für einen Bruder- oder Völkermord dient. In Wahrheit ist der Mensch ist von Natur aus gut und nicht böse.

„Der Mythos vom Aggressionstrieb“ 

Die Lehre vom ererbten Aggressionstrieb oder -instinkt gehört zu den umstrittensten Formeln, mit deren Hilfe Psychoanalytiker und Tierverhaltensforscher Probleme der politischen und sozialen Situation, ja der Geschichte des menschlichen Zusammenlebens schlechthin zu erklären suchen. Doch die Selbstverständlichkeit, mit der im Anschluss an Konrad Lorenz (1903-1983) von einem angeborenen Aggressionstrieb gesprochen wird, ist keinesfalls berechtigt. Das zeigen Vertreter verschiedener Wissenschaften im Sammelband „Der Mythos vom Aggressionstrieb“ auf (2). Lorenz war ein österreichischer Vertreter der „Tierpsychologie“. Nach den Erkenntnissen der Humanwissenschaften Anthropologie, Soziologie und Psychologie ist der Mensch von Natur aus gut und nicht böse.

Der Mensch hat eine Tötungshemmung, eine ursprüngliche Aversion zu töten. Damit er den Mitmenschen aber trotzdem angreift, muss diese Hemmung durch entsprechende Erklärungen ausgeschaltet werden. Der deutsche Philosoph Arno Plack nennt sie in dem oben erwähnten Sammelband aus den 70er-Jahren:

„Dass ein vitales Gewissen sich sträubt, Mordbefehle auszuführen, damit hatten und haben allemal militante Führer zu rechnen. Und sie trugen dem Rechnung durch eine über die Jahrhunderte hinweg gleichgebliebene Erklärung, dass es sich bei dem jeweils befehdeten Volk oder der verfolgten Gruppe eigentlich gar nicht um richtige Menschen handle, sondern um ‚höhere Tiere‘ (so Papst Paul III. über die Indianer) oder um ‚Bestien‘, ‚Heiden‘, ‚Hexen‘, ‚Untermenschen‘, ‚Ungeziefer‘ gar, das man vertilgen müsse. So greift Manipulation des Bewußtseins von seiten mordlüsterner Machthaber ein, um die Menschen, die noch anders empfinden, auf Vordermann zu bringen.“ (3)

Diese Auffassung Placks wird durch neuere Fachliteratur bestätigt. Für den renommierten amerikanischen Sozialpsychologen und Gewaltforscher Philip Zimbardo ist es die Macht der Umstände, die den Menschen zum Gewalttäter und Mörder machen. In seinem Buch „Der Luzifer-Effekt“ schreibt er:

 „Nicht die Veranlagung bringt gute Menschen dazu, Böses zu tun, sondern die Situation, in der sie sich befinden oder in die man sie versetzt.“ (4)

Voraussetzung für die Taten sei, dass die Opfer zu einer Bedrohung erklärt und gleichzeitig entmenschlicht würden. In Ruanda verkündete die Hutu-Regierung, Tutsis seien nichts weiter als „Katerlaken“ und hätten deshalb den Tod verdient. Deutsche Nazis stellten Juden als gefährliches „Ungeziefer“ dar.

Heute wird die große Gruppe der nicht geimpfte Mitbürger von den Adlaten der herrschenden „Elite“ zur lebensbedrohlichen Gefahr für die Gesundheit der Bevölkerungsgruppe der bereits Geimpften erklärt, die dringend bekämpft oder gar aus der menschlichen Gemeinschaft ausgeschlossen werden solle. Selbstständig Denkende werden seit langem als verwirrte „Querdenker“, als unverbesserliche „Verschwörungstheoretiker“ und damit als Bedrohung für die Regierenden diskriminiert – und zum Abschuss durch die Massenmedien freigegeben. Wohin wird das führen, wenn sich immer mehr autoritätshörige, regierungstreue Mitbürger dieser menschenfeindlichen und gefährlichen Sichtweise anschließen – und die Opfer dieser staatlichen Diskriminierungskampagne sich das nicht gefallen lassen werden? Die weltweiten Demonstrationen und der offensichtliche Einsatz unverhältnismäßiger Gewalt von beauftragten Polizeikräften lässt nichts Gutes erahnen.

Holocaust-Überlebende Vera Sharav: „Die Geschichte wiederholt sich“ 

Die Vorgeschichten vergangener Bürger-, Regional- und Weltkriege bieten genug Anschauungsmaterial, um hellhörig und doch noch einsichtig zu werden. Hierzu zählt auch die seit Jahren andauernde Verunglimpfung des russischen Präsidenten und russischer Bürger als eine Methode der Psychologischen Kriegsführung.

In einem Artikel des österreichischen „Wochenblick“ vom 3. Juli wird die Holocaust-Überlebende, Frau Vera Sharav, mit den Worten zitiert: „Die Geschichte wiederholt sich“ (5). Es ist wert, längere Passagen aus diesem Artikel wörtlich zu zitieren:

„Vera Sharav überlebte als Kind den Holocaust. Sie schildert: ‚Als ich nach New York kam, fragte ich mich: Wo waren alle?  Wo waren alle, als ich in der Hölle war?‘ Gerechtigkeit und das Nicht-Wegschauen wenn Unrecht geschieht, ist Sharav deswegen ein großes Anliegen. Sucharit Bhakdi wurde unlängst vorgeworfen, er sei Antisemit, weil er Israel als die ‚Hölle auf Erden’ bezeichnete. Doch die Holocaust-Überlebende Vera Sharav stimmt ihm zu: ‚Ich wünschte, es wäre nicht so.‘ Die Geschichte wiederhole sich. Sie fordern Nürnberger Prozesse für die Verursacher des Covid-‚Menschheitsverbrechens‘.

Sharav erklärt: Die Nazi-Verbrechen geschahen ohne Widerspruch zum Internationalen Recht. Doch es entstanden die Nürnberger Prozesse, die für Gerechtigkeit sorgten und das Konzept der Verbrechen gegen die Menschlichkeit einführten. Damit so etwas wie in Nazi-Deutschland nicht mehr passieren kann. Der Nürnberger-Kodex wurde im Zuge der Ärzteprozesse (1946) nach dem 2. Weltkrieg eingeführt und sollte den ethischen Umgang der Medien mit Menschen sicherstellen. Doch trotzdem wiederhole sich die Geschichte nun. (…)

Es sei schrecklich für Sharav, nun den Niedergang der Demokratie mitzuerleben. Die verfassungsmäßig sichergestellten Freiheitsrechte wurden außer Kraft gesetzt, wie in Nazideutschland, analysiert die Holocaust-Überlebende. Das sei ein großer Vertrauensbetrug, den die Regierungen gegenüber ihrer Bevölkerung begingen. Sharav kritisiert die israelische Regierung stark. Sie ist schockiert darüber, wie Nichtgeimpfte dämonisiert werden. ‚Unter den Nazis wurden die Juden als Verbreiter von Krankheit stigmatisiert und in Lager gesperrt.‘ Jetzt würde wieder eine Zweiklassengesellschaft geschaffen. Die Gesellschaft werde in Privilegierte und Unterprivilegierte gespalten.“ (6)

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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel ist Diplom-Psychologe und Erziehungswissenschaftler.

Fussnoten

1. https://de.rt.com/kurzclips/121646-tausende-gegen-gruenen-pass-rom/
2. Plack, Arno (Hrsg.). (1973). Der Mythos vom Aggressionstrieb. München
3. a. O., S. 33
4. Zimbardo, Philip (2008). Der Luzifer-Effekt. Heidelberg
5. https://www.wochenblick.at/holocaust-ueberlebende-springt-bhakdi-bei-die-geschichte-wiederholt-sich/
6. a. O. 

Featured image is from Mises Wire

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The legend has it that Switzerland was celebrating on 1 August 2021 her 730th Anniversary. That’s the legend about the creation of an independent, neutral and sovereign nation. It’s a legend that has taken hold in every Swiss citizen’s heart and mind. It’s a legend that has made Switzerland around the world what it still is in reputation and – sometimes – even in appearance: a neutral, ethical country in the heart of Europe.

When we look closer, this legend was largely born from the pen of a German author who had never set foot in Switzerland. When Friedrich Schiller wrote the play “Willhelm Tell” in 1804, the basis for the heroic, unique and neutral Switzerland, he had never visited Switzerland. However, the legend has become reality, even though it was born 513 years after the alleged event took place.

This little detail is unimportant. What counts is the background to the story, namely that the territory that gradually became Switzerland, was originally inhabited by the Helvetians, or Helvetic Celts. As was much of Europe, they were largely dominated by the Habsburg Dynasty until the early 19^th Century.

However, the Helvetians rebelled on or around the late 13^th Century, when according to the Friedrich Schiller legend, called “Wilhelm Tell” – name of one of the legend’s principal liberating hero’s – the Governors of the three original cantons, Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden, got together on a mountain called Rütli, facing the Lake of Lucerne.

With an oath, a promise to God, the three governors united their lands in an act to defend themselves sovereignly against any aggressor, meant were in particular the rulers of the Habsburg Empire. According to the legend this happened on 1 August 1291 – 730 years ago. Thus, was the Confederatio Helvetica (Swiss Confederation) born.

This is what the Oath said, roughly translated:

“We want to be a single People of brethren,
Never to part in danger nor distress.
We want to be free, as our fathers were,
And rather die than live in slavery.
We want to trust in the one highest God
And never be afraid of human power.”

From that date forward the alliance of cantons against the Habsburg dynasty grew, though only in 1848, when a new Constitution was adopted, was the present federal republic formed. Today the Swiss Confederation, or the modern Switzerland, consists of 26 fairly autonomous cantons.

Having been oppressed for centuries as Helvetians, the new Switzerland pledged to become a neutral Confederation. This noble principle of neutrality was also enshrined in the Swiss Constitution. Thus, the Friedrich Schiller legend on which much of the origins of the 730 years of Swiss history is based, as well as the believe and pride for the heroic liberation from oppression, is still part of the Swiss characteristic.

By and large, the Friedrich Schiller “Wilhelm Tell” legend – and the noble believe of rebellion for freedom and of a sovereign but federal nation, benefitted many countries with ideas of their own constitutional and geopolitical structure.

Only few, though, have achieved a true federalism, where regions, provinces or districts remained largely autonomous in budget as well as decision- and law-making. Much of the staunch Swiss federalism may be outdated in modern times, as it seems ludicrous that a small nation of only 8.4 million people has 26 different education schemes, and 27 different tax systems, the 27^th being the National Federal Tax. Education is in the process of being harmonized; taxes not yet. This is small fry, as compared to geopolitics, practiced then and what it has become today.

Although, de facto Switzerland has always taken the side of the West, her constitutional neutrality has and still benefits Switzerland greatly. A truly neutral country would have been free from taking positions for or against Russia, China, Cuba, Venezuela – and the list could go on.

A truly neutral country would have been free from taking positions for or against the colonial powers of the past centuries. However, while never a colonial power, Switzerland has often participated, even with soldiers, in colonial wars in favor of European colonialists – and has royally benefitted from colonialism.

According to SwissInfo (14 August 2020),

“Throughout their modern history the Swiss usually took the side of the colonizers rather than the colonized. It is true that Switzerland as a nation-state did not engage in imperialism, and conquered no colonial territories. Attempts to found great economic empires like the East India Company failed.

But it was part and parcel of colonialism to believe that the peoples in colonized lands were inferior to white Europeans. And in 19^th-century Switzerland this was definitely part of the prevailing framework of assumptions about the world.

Generations of Swiss grew up with tales of “half-witted negroes”, travelers’ accounts of naïve, child-like savages, and advertising where the colonized were at best a decorative backdrop for colonial products. This thinking affects the country even today.”

SwissInfo continues revealing Swiss soldiers fighting in the colonies,

“The problem of Switzerland’s historical involvement in colonialism goes beyond controversies about derogatory names or statues. At times the Swiss were actually fighting as soldiers in the colonies. 

In 1800, when black slaves in present-day Haiti on the island of Hispaniola, rose in revolt against their French colonial masters, Napoleon sent 600 Swiss troops to fight them. France was able to draw on these mercenaries thanks to an agreement with the Helvetic Republic. This was by no means an exception; even after the modern federal republic was founded in 1848, Swiss defied the law to fight for colonial powers as mercenaries. They could look forward to considerable earnings as long as they didn’t die of tropical diseases.”

And on slavery,

“However, the big money from the colonies did not go to the mercenaries, who mostly came from impoverished families and saw it as a great adventure to enlist in Dutch or French service. Instead, trade was the moneymaker, be it in goods or human beings from the colonies.

One of the worst kinds of Swiss involvement with colonialism was that of the slave trade. Swiss individuals and companies made money out of slavery as investors and traders, organizing slave-hunting expeditions, buying and selling people as slaves, and, as slave owners, running great plantations which, they often proudly called “colonies”.

As a result, quite a few famous Swiss names have started to look bad in recent years. The family of Alfred Escher, a major figure in the development of modern Switzerland, came under a cloud when it became known that it had a plantation run with slave labor. In Sacramento, California, demonstrators pulled down a statue of General John Sutter. The Swiss native son, who hailed from the Basel area, at one time ranked as a hero of the Wild West until historians revealed that he had dealt in child slavery.”

Enough. That’s the past. But, fast forward, is the present so much different?

Take the covid plandemic the entire world, all 193 UN member countries, have been subjugated to this higher order of – let’s call it – a satanic cult. Its aims are multiple. The key and all overarching goal consists of a massive population reduction, a mass-genocide – eugenics at its worst. Another objective is digitization of everything including the human brain, transforming humans into “transhumans”.

Klaus Schwab, founder and CEO for life of the World Economic Forum – WEF, in a 2016 interview with Swiss-French Radio/TV – SRG, divulges the plan to make from surviving humans “transhumans” – see this 2-min. video interview.

Transhumans will react and obey to 5G / 6G -powered electromagnetic-directed Artificial Intelligence (AI); and finally, the last but not least of the three key objectives is transferring the assets of which the lower- and middle-class owners and industries were destroyed by the covid plandemic – to an “upper-class”, insanely rich small elite. This is already happening – and, of course, hardly reported in the mainstream media. While poverty has increased exponentially in the Global South, the dozen richest individuals have added hundreds of billions to their fortunes.

The fact that Switzerland hosts not only annually the WEF Davos Forum, a club of corporate and banking billionaires that has gradually taken over the reins of the world, doesn’t bode well with Swiss neutrality, Swiss modesty and the Swiss heroic image of defender of sovereign human rights and justice – the substance of the legendary oath of the Ruetli in 1291. The WEF itself is registered as an NGO in a small, lush suburb of Geneva.

Today this NGO is more powerful than the United Nations. It dictates the rules of the game to the UN. Of course, in many subtle ways, for example, by carefully choosing the people who run the UN and its sub-organization like WHO and others – and by letting money flow and talk, where need be. Money is never an issue for the rulers of the universe. And if money fails, there are other, less subtle ways.

Switzerland remains proud host of the WEF, despite worldwide protests against the WEF and the WEF’s machinations and plans for a One World Order (OWO). The WEF’s ideology is closer to the Swiss heart – if there is such a thing as a Swiss heart – than pledged Swiss neutrality, as anchored in the Constitution.

Aside from the WEF – which is a clear sign in which direction neutral Switzerland is leaning – Switzerland is also host to the corporate pharma-directed World Health Organization (WHO), as well as GAVI – the Bill Gates created Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations, or short, the Vaccine Alliance. GAVI is physically housed just next door to WHO.

As we know, WHO is calling the controversial and most often contradictory shots on the measures to be imposed by governments with regard to the covid plandemic – and we also know who calls the shots on WHO.

We also know that the WHO recommended mRNA-experimental genetic therapy injections, not vaccines, are causing more deaths than covid does. Here is an insider assessment of WHO and it’s harmful measures imposed on the world. Dr. Astrid Stueckelberger speaks from the United Nations Plaza in Geneva.

Neutral Switzerland is aligned with pharma-corrupted WHO and GAVI, following the UN-agency’s deadly guidance and dictate. – Why?

On yet another score that goes in the direction of global control and population reduction through long-term misery and famine – weaponized man-made weather – what we are experiencing for the last few months almost everywhere on Mother Earth’s “hot spots”, Switzerland appears to be a lead initiator of applied HAARP technologies, as this 5 min video and pertaining text of 4 March 2019 show. See this.

HAARP stands for High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program. It was initiated as an ionospheric research program jointly funded by the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Navy, the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a semi-secret Pentagon thinktank.

The pretext and official reason, as usual, for weather manipulation is to stem against climate change and fight for greenhouse gas reduction. When the agenda is a different one, as we live through this northern summer, with never-seen-before floods and droughts, with Siberian heat in the plus 40-degrees C, torrential floods in Saudi Arabia, and around the Three Gorges Dam in China; and with the western US and Canada, all the way up to Alaska extremely hot and burning.

Why would neutral Switzerland be a key instigator of geoengineered weather that destroys vital infrastructure, harvests – and lives?

As if this was not enough, Switzerland subsidizes her mainstream media by – listen to this! – the equivalent of about US$ 1.9 billion per year. That is about US$ 226 million per capita of the 8.4 million Swiss population.

This must be worldwide the highest media subsidy. It assures that the lies and fears the government wants to instill in the population stick, that the media do not transgress and deviate from their role.

Unfortunately, there is little left of legendary heroic, neutral, sovereign human rights defending Confederatio Helvetica of 730 years ago, of the Gruetli Oath – a noble Oath to God to respect life and to fight for equality and liberty.

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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)

Peter Koenig is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

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***

Two weeks after being brutally assassinated, Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was buried on July 23 in Cap-Haïtien. Seriously injured during the attack, his wife Martine had her arm in a sling and questioned at the funeral: “What crime have you committed to deserve such punishment?” Among the U.S. diplomats at the funeral was Daniel Foote, new American envoy for Haiti, and Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. ambassador to the UN. Returning to the U.S., the latter said: “The people of Haiti deserve peace, security, and a better future.”

Several countries are cited in the case investigating the July 7 assassination of the Haitian President, including the U.S., Colombia and even the partially recognized Taiwan. In fact, some have hypothesised that the murder of Moïse could have been in response to Haiti’s desire for rapprochement with China, which of course would have greatly displeased American authorities since Haiti is in the heart of the Caribbean.

Haiti’s shift in foreign policy would have also irritated Washington because it is Taiwan’s main ally and arms supplier. One of the few countries to still maintain diplomatic relations with Taiwan, which China considers its territory and a rebel province, Haiti was the only state in the Western Hemisphere without a vaccination program until the month of Moïse’s assassination. With COVID-19 ripping through Haiti, Moïse saw neighboring Dominican Republic, which had recently recognized China and severed its diplomatic relations with Taiwan, receive assistance from Beijing. The Dominican Republic has also attracted significant Chinese investments.

During a hearing before the House of Representatives committee on June 17, Linda Thomas-Greenfield confirmed Washington’s frustration at China’s growing influence in the Caribbean. The ambassador to the United Nations criticized Beijing’s vaccine diplomacy as it put “tremendous pressure” on Haiti to no longer recognize Taiwan.

Pressing demands by Beijing, which maintains a “One China” policy, convinced some Latin American countries to sever their relations with Taiwan, such as Panama in 2017, and El Salvador and the Dominican Republic in 2018. In the past twenty years alone, China has become the first, second, or third commercial and technological partner of almost all of Latin America despite the region supposedly being the “U.S.’ backyard.” Chinese influence, which is continually challenging U.S. dominance in Latin America, was beginning to penetrate Haiti, a country with a GDP of only $697 per person in 2021 and the 15th poorest country in the world.

It is recalled that some of the suspects were hiding in the Taiwanese Embassy in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince. In a press release, the Taiwanese Embassy confirmed that they held suspects but indicated it authorized Haitian police to arrest them.

More than twenty people who actively participated in the operation (including 18 Colombians and three Haitians, two of them also having American nationality) have already been arrested by the local police. Colombian mercenaries claim to have been recruited to capture Moïse. Their mission was to hand him over to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).

The Pentagon confirmed that some of the mercenaries had benefited from training sessions offered by the U.S. military during their time serving in the Colombian Army. Former Colombian soldiers are often recruited by mercenary companies for their experience in fighting guerrillas and drug traffickers, and are deployed in Yemen and Afghanistan, and also monitor pipelines in the Middle East.

However, local complicity must also be explored, especially since there was a very obvious absence of resistance from the presidential guard against the assassination. However, it is worth noting that Moïse was not simply assassinated, but was tortured: His legs were broken, his eyes wrested, and he experienced other forms of horrific abuse.

Revelations from the investigation, whose neutrality raises questions, have not answered some of the most pressing questions, such as to what extent was Taiwan’s role in the assassination, and was the assassination in response to Haiti’s growing ties with China?

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

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***

For more than four years, Western media outlets have exhaustively claimed that President Vladimir Putin of Russia waged a sweeping influence campaign to install Donald Trump in the White House and undermine U.S. democracy.

According to The Guardian, the long elusive smoking-gun evidence has been found. On July 15, the British newspaper published an article by one of the leading media promoters of the Trump-Russia narrative, Luke Harding, and two colleagues. Harding and company report that they have obtained secret “Kremlin papers” – bearing Putin’s signature – that authorized the malicious Russian plot. The documents call for using “all possible force” to support Russia’s preferred candidate, and thus trigger “the destabilization of the U.S.’s sociopolitical system.”

Yet remarkably, this supposed earth-shattering scoop has been greeted with resounding silence from The Guardian’s U.S. media counterparts. Two weeks later, the New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC and CBS have ignored it. The lone exception was Washington Post columnist Philip Bump who, rather than parrot Harding’s story, laid out multiple reasons why it is “hard not to be skeptical” of it.

For Harding, the media shutout stands in sharp contrast to the warm embrace of his 2017 book “Collusion,” which rode the once-towering Trump-Russia conspiracy wave to become a No. 1 New York Times bestseller. Times columnist Michelle Goldberg called it “essential” and wished that “everyone who is skeptical that Russia has leverage over Trump would read it.”

The release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report in April 2019 undermined Harding’s collusion narrative, and discredited his primary source, ex-British spy Christopher Steele. It also included nothing to support Harding’s evidence-free November 2018 report in the Guardian, which claimed that one-time Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and Julian Assange held three secret meetings in Ecuador’s London embassy – one of the most surveilled locations on the planet.

The cold reception to Harding’s latest “bombshell” suggests that he may have worn out his welcome with fellow collusion chasers across the pond. But if this story is a bridge too far, what does that say about the others that preceded it?

Content-wise, Harding’s article is not much different than the sloppy coverage that, for example, won a 2018 Pulitzer Prize for the New York Times and Washington Post. Just like Harding, these prominent outlets also used anonymous sources, evidence-free claims and hedged language to advance the narrative that Trump’s presidency was all one dastardly Russian operation.

What appears to have changed is not a newfound embrace of journalism standards, but instead a shifting of narrative priorities. With Joe Biden now in office, the Russiagate fixation no longer suits a political and media establishment that relied on it as a means to undermine his predecessor.

In response to emailed queries from RealClearInvestigations, a Guardian spokesperson said, “We stand by our story and our reporting.”

‘Apparently’ a Bombshell

According to Harding and his co-authors, Julian Borger and Dan Sabbagh, leaked Kremlin papers show that Putin convened a meeting in January 2016 where he “personally authorised a secret spy agency operation to support” Trump in that year’s U.S. presidential election. Trump’s Russian backers viewed him as “mentally unstable” and accordingly saw his candidacy as a vehicle for creating “social turmoil” in their U.S. adversary. The papers even provide “apparent confirmation that the Kremlin possesses kompromat, or potentially compromising material, on the future president.”

Although it published the story, the Guardian hedged its bets regarding the authenticity of the article’s explosive claims with an abundance of qualified language long characteristic of Russiagate coverage, starting with the headline: “Kremlin papers appear to show Putin’s plot to put Trump in White House” (emphasis added).

Along with the qualifiers, Harding and company deploy the passive voice to try to disingenuously lend their “Kremlin papers” the appearance of credibility. They “are assessed to be leaked Kremlin documents,” Harding and company write – although details such as which person or persons actually “assessed” the material, how they did it, and why we should trust them, are left unstated. The documents contain “a decree appearing to bear Putin’s signature” – in the same way that forged autographs can often appear to bear Michael Jordan’s signature too (although, in fairness, at least fake memorabilia can be seen; The Guardian conspicuously fails to show us this “apparent” Putin “signature”). The papers “seem to represent a serious and highly unusual leak from within the Kremlin” — just as The Guardian seems to represent Luke Harding as a serious journalist.

Suggesting an explosive conclusion while tacitly acknowledging the absence of verified evidence to support it was also a hallmark of the Mueller and the Senate Intelligence Committee reports on Russiagate, which used long-winded innuendo and words like “appear,” “likely” and “suggest” to insinuate damning conclusions without having to substantiate them.

Fittingly, even Harding’s own attempt to promote the documents’ authenticity has to be qualified: “The Guardian has shown the documents to independent experts who say they appear to be genuine.” Other observers have cast doubt on multiple strands of the story.

Harding can’t even muster a stamp of approval from his usual sources in the U.K. spy services and their cutouts:  “Western intelligence agencies are understood to have been aware of the documents for some months and to have carefully examined them.” How exactly it’s “understood” that Western spies are “aware of the documents” and “carefully examined them,” Harding does not say. Nor, conspicuously, does he say what they concluded from their purportedly “careful” “examinations.”

A Convenient ‘Route Map’ for Russiagate Propaganda

Harding’s story follows the Russiagate playbook in another important sense: comporting with the propaganda aims of the anonymous intelligence officials and political operatives behind it.

With the “collusion” conspiracy theory now shattered, Harding’s story amounts to a renewed effort to preserve the credibility of the leftovers. If the qualified language for every outlandish assertion isn’t enough of a tell, Harding and his co-authors even make their propaganda aim explicit: “The papers appear to set out a route map for what actually happened in 2016,” they write.

How convenient. After years of writing a largely evidence-free, explosive narrative – in his case, a Russian campaign to destroy Western democracy via their Oval Office asset, conspirator, or dupe – Harding says he has come into possession of a set of “documents” that just happen to confirm the dastardly plot in writing, right down to the signature of the alleged Kremlin mastermind.

In yet another convenient development, Harding reports that the papers “appear” to confirm the long-speculated, Steele-originating claim “that the Kremlin possesses kompromat” on Trump. The damning “details,” his article reports with impressive specificity, are apparently included in “appendix five, at paragraph five.” There’s just one snag: The Guardian can’t show it to us. “It is unclear what the appendix contains,” Harding writes.

According to Harding’s “experts,” the “overall tone and thrust” of the documents “is said to be consistent with Kremlin security thinking.” Their thinking echoes the former national security officials who declared right before the November 2020 election that Hunter Biden’s laptop “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” Just as with that attempt to censor the Biden story, the overall tone and thrust of Harding’s article and the “leaks” it’s supposedly based on is entirely consistent with those who have used fearmongering around Russia and a credulous Western media to advance a political agenda.

In reality, the notion that Russia waged a sweeping interference campaign to install Trump is unsupported by all of the available evidence. The social media memes that supposedly brainwashed millions of Americans into rejecting Hillary Clinton were juvenile in nature, minor in reach, and mostly devoid of any mention of the election. The allegation that Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee and then gave the stolen emails to WikiLeaks remains full of glaring holes.

Meanwhile, as Democratic leaders and media allies denounced him as a Kremlin puppet, Trump in fact presided over a far more hawkish posture toward Russia than his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, whom Biden served as vice president. “The dirty little secret about the Trump administration,” CNN host Fareed Zakaria admitted in the last weeks of Trump’s presidency, “was that while Donald Trump clearly had a kind of soft spot for Putin, the Trump administration was pretty tough on the Russians. They armed Ukraine. They armed the Poles. They extended NATO operations and exercises in ways that even the Obama administration had not done. They maintained the sanctions.” If Putin’s plan was to install a puppet in the White House, it clearly backfired.

The Other Hardings

Given the predominance of the Russiagate narrative for four years, it might seem surprising that Harding’s story did not trigger the same kind of frenzied “bombshell”-based news cycle of years past. If taken at face value – as were countless Russiagate-serving stories before it – then Harding’s “scoop” that Putin ordered a pro-Trump influence campaign in January 2016 would instantaneously justify so much of the breathless innuendo that has flooded U.S. media since.

As Bump of the Washington Post noted, a major reason to doubt the story is the fact that it is authored by Harding, whose last Guardian “bombshell” is just as dubious. In November 2018, he wrote an article claiming that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort held three secret meetings with WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange at London’s Ecuadorian embassy. Both WikiLeaks and Manafort vehemently denied the story, and no evidence has emerged to substantiate it. The story was so patently ridiculous that one anonymous CIA officer resorted to a pseudonym to speculate in Politico that the Russian government “planted” the Manafort-Assange claim in an effort to discredit Harding’s reporting.

The fact that U.S. media outlets have widely shunned Harding’s story does not mean that they are prepared for a long overdue Russiagate reckoning. Quite the contrary. Months before giving Harding the cold shoulder, a similarly evidence-free bombshell assertion was given a warm embrace. In April, the Treasury Department declared that former Paul Manafort aide Konstanin Kilimnik is a Russian spy who shared Trump polling data with Russian intelligence. Despite the absence of any evidence – and ample countervailing facts — political and media voices immediately portrayed the Treasury press release as a significant vindication.

Aaron Maté’s 2017 interview with Luke Harding. 

“That one sentence,” Bump wrote of the Treasury statement, “appears to finally complete the long-speculated line from Trump’s campaign to Russian intelligence.”

In the New York Times, reporters Mark Mazzetti and Michael S. Schmidt described the Treasury’s evidence-free claims as “the strongest evidence to date that Russian spies had penetrated the inner workings of the Trump campaign.” Mazzetti and Schmidt were so confident in the “Treasury document” that they even declared that it, coupled with the Senate Intelligence report of last year, now “confirm[s]” the Times’s own highly contested report from February 2017 that “there had been numerous interactions between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence during the year before the election.” FBI Director James Comey publicly denied the story, calling it “not true,” and the Mueller report provided no evidence to support it. (In attempting to portray the Treasury press release as vindication, Mazzetti and Schmidt also mischaracterized their original claim, which was that Trump campaign aides “had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials” (emphasis added).

Re-inserting the Russiagate ‘Media Virus’

The rush to promote unsupported allegations and ignore countervailing facts shows that U.S. officials and their media allies have obsessively accused Russia of what they have in fact carried out themselves: a massive, divisive disinformation campaign aimed squarely at the Western public. Accordingly, every piece of content that advances the Russiagate narrative is an iteration of the “propaganda” and “disinformation” that it purports to document or challenge. Harding’s article is certainly no exception. He writes:

There are paragraphs on how Russia might insert “media viruses” into American public life, which could become self-sustaining and self-replicating. These would alter mass consciousness, especially in certain groups, it says.

There is no “media virus” inserted into American public life that has done more to alter the consciousness of certain groups than Russiagate, which has enlisted millions of malleable liberals into a fantasy that the Kremlin is brainwashing their country with social media ads and that Donald Trump was a Manchurian president.

Accordingly, if Harding’s story is evidence of anything, it is of the absurdity of a Russiagate narrative that was once treated as gospel when establishment media deemed it politically and financially expedient. The fact that it has now been shunned by the same outlets that would have previously treated it as a “bombshell” suggests that it may have finally outlived its utility.

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***

By now, George W Bush should have completed volumes one and two of his prison letters.

But, as we know, the world is not a just place. So, like all the other American presidents who have avoided the dock despite the crimes they have committed at home and abroad, the former US president remains a free, and, indeed, carefree, man.

I suspect that Bush is happy, too, biding his time during his “golden years” painting what can charitably be described as globby, deformed “portraits” and tending to the tangled bush on his Texas estate.

It is inconceivable to me, though, that a once immensely powerful man who is almost singularly responsible for two calamitous wars-of-choice which have caused such immeasurable harm and suffering to so many innocents, in so many places, could ever experience a genuine moment of stillness, let alone happiness.

I wonder, as well, if Bush ever pauses from his painting and gardening to consider the appalling measure of his guilt or shudders at the unfolding and halting scope of the profound, disfiguring consequences of his many and manifest crimes against decency and humanity.

That may well be a largely rhetorical question since one of the principal qualifications of becoming president is the necessity to kill, maim, and traumatise other human beings in the murderous pursuit of the ever malleable US “national interest”.

So, Bush likely finds considerable solace in the slimy evasion that being president is often a thankless, dirty job that requires, on occasion, the occupant to order “hits” – big and small – against America’s “enemies” just like a mafia don, but with a much larger, more well-equipped army, of course.

I have pondered these questions lately about this banal, unrepentant killer and torture-approving thug with a presidential library because, rather than finally doing the world a smidgen of service by permanently shutting up in lieu of being charged, Bush continues to believe, incredibly, that his musings on war and diplomacy have serious merit and should be heeded.

Earlier this month, Bush was interviewed at his palatial summer home in Kennebunkport, Maine, by a German broadcaster with apparently nothing better to do with its time and resources.

The agreeable tête-à-tête was billed as a “rare” departure of form for Bush, who reportedly avoids sit-down interviews with journalists.

Gee, I wonder why?

Apart from briefly prying Bush away from his juvenile tinkering with paint on a canvas and taming his unruly hedges, an interview conducted by an intrepid reporter might cause the stammering, reclusive ex-president a little discomfort and serve as a mild, belated comeuppance of sorts.

Bush could, for once, have been challenged to account finally for the litany of lies he concocted and told to start wars that he and his posse of criminal “advisers” in slick suits and designer outfits convinced themselves would be cheap, easy and quick.

Two decades later, the cruel, lethal folly of Bush’s cocky, catastrophic delusions and fabrications is plain: millions dead and scarred in body, mind and spirit, countless other lives ruined or left adrift in refugee camps where disease, want and hopelessness are rampant, countries engulfed by endless uncertainty, violence and sectarianism and a patient, resurgent Taliban poised to reimpose its malignant dominion over Afghanistan.

Bush could also have been pressed about his role in engineering an international abduction racket – known as “renditions” – that permitted America’s state-sanctioned hoodlums to kidnap mostly Muslim men and dump them into secret dungeons in Iraq and beyond where they were bound, interrogated, humiliated, electrocuted, attacked by dogs, sexually assaulted, water-boarded and, ultimately, murdered.

None of that appears to have happened. Instead, Bush was given unfettered licence to object to the withdrawal of the remaining US and NATO troops from Afghanistan.

“The consequences are going to be unbelievably bad,” Bush said, without, I imagine, even a hint of irony.

That this callous cretin would suggest anywhere, at any time, for any reason, that the “consequences” of another president’s actions “are going to be unbelievably bad” for Afghanistan is blatant proof of Bush’s genetically programmed stupidity and obscene, near nauseating hubris.

Then, Bush proceeded to demonstrate that he is damaged in ways that only a psychologist could possibly decipher and is incapable of introspection or remorse for the horror he has wrought on so many people, in so many places because of his orders as commander-in-chief.

First, he told his German guests that the Afghan withdrawal was a mistake.

Given his atrocious geopolitical record, Bush should be banned from ever uttering, under any circumstances and in any context, the word: “mistake”.

Still, to define how Bush and equally culpable company went about methodically defacing Iraq and Afghanistan as “mistakes” would, itself, be a mistake.

The injuries and atrocities Iraqis and Afghans have endured in the long, bitter aftermath of Bush’s decision to invade cannot be diminished or dismissed simply as errors.

They were and remain the inhumane corollaries of the sinister, calculated choices made by an inept president who was convinced that it was his and America’s destiny to “liberate” two distant lands for the same evangelical reasons.

Second, remarkably, Bush took implicit credit – amid all the death and destruction the American-led invasion has visited on Afghans – for brutally refashioning Afghan society as a recuperative antidote to the Taliban’s brutality.

“It’s unbelievable how that society changed from the brutality of the Taliban,” Bush said.

No, what is unbelievable, is Bush’s lunatic idea that the US military occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan had any redeeming or salutary impact on the fates of both nations.

Finally, and so cynically, Bush attempted to rewrite his incriminating history by implying that he unleashed American forces and drones on Afghanistan not to rout the Taliban or punish it for harbouring al-Qaeda, but to emancipate women and girls.

“All of a sudden – sadly – I’m afraid Afghan women and girls are going to suffer unspeakable harm,” Bush said from the comfort of his picture-postcard oasis.

The name George W Bush is synonymous with the suffering and unspeakable harm girls, boys, women and men in Iraq and Afghanistan have braved for decades.

With the eager help of grovelling, amnesiac television hosts, Bush has mounted a muted, yet determined campaign to rehabilitate his foul reputation. In its place, a new, gracious, if slightly awkward and endearing caricature of Bush has emerged.

It is a sick mirage.

Bush is an unindicted mass murderer. He ought to be sharing a bunk bed with Ratko Mladic at The Hague. Failing that, he should keep monastically quiet and go away.

As penance, it is the least this intolerable piece of crud could do.

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Andrew Mitrovica is an Al Jazeera columnist based in Toronto.

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***

On Tuesday, Ebrahim Raisi will be formally confirmed as Iran’s next president by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Two days later, he will be sworn in as president in the country’s parliament. Yet another orderly transfer of power is under way in Iran.

This transition is of momentous importance for the future trajectory of Iran, regional politics and international security. That is because a rare confluence of circumstances has appeared over the Iran nuclear issue and a new mainstream is taking shape in Tehran. 

Contrary to expectations, the negotiations since April in Vienna over the 2015 Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA) are in a state of suspended animation. Things could go either way. 

On the one hand, Raisi is widely regarded as an arch conservative (‘hardliner’) which means that the United States is getting a much tougher interlocutor in Tehran, although Iran’s compass remains well set under the watchful eyes of the Supreme Leader. 

On the other hand, the Biden presidency is coming under pressure with the early signs that the much-vaunted strong economic recovery from the deep recession in 2020 may be hitting a snag. The massive stimulus and the buoyant Wall Street haven’t fired up the economic acceleration but will inevitably drive up the inflationary pressure. The resurgence of the Delta variant of coronavirus from America’s south to north also bring in uncertainties. 

Simply put, President Biden cannot afford to be seen as a ‘weak’ negotiator at Vienna. Conversely, Tehran would sense that Biden may not even have the political capital to get Congressional approval for a new nuclear deal, which means that history may repeat. 

In fact, the US officials are already arguing that no American president can guarantee that an agreement with a foreign country will not be undone by a future president or Congress. 

Given the tortuous history of the US-Iran relations and the trust deficit, Tehran once again faces the dilemma of negotiating a deal with an uncertain shelf life whose expiry date may lapse even before the incumbent American president retires. 

Meanwhile, the US negotiators drove a hard bargain in Vienna. They underestimated Iran’s grit to secure its core interests. They assumed that given Iran’s economic difficulties, it would bend over backward to get the sanctions lifted. And they began dictating terms and conditions. 

Thus, from available details, Biden’s team insists that the US’ return to the JCPOA depends on potential future talks on regional issues; that the US cannot agree to the lifting of arms embargo as provided under the JCPOA; the present administration will not lift the sanctions imposed by Trump; the US is not obliged to compensate Iran for the huge damage caused to its economy by pulling out of the JCPOA unilaterally; Iran must agree to newer restrictions on its nuclear agreements far beyond those stipulated by JCPOA. 

The US remains ambivalent on Iran’s demand that any lifting of sanctions should be open to verification. And it believes that Iran will give up its longstanding position that the nuclear deal should not be made conditional on its missile programme or regional policies. read more 

Broadly, Biden team hopes to realise the key objectives that the Trump administration pursued — and failed to achieve — through its ‘maximum pressure’ strategy, namely, an updated version of the 2015 agreement that would, amongst other things, almost permanently prohibit Tehran from exercising its prerogative to conduct a peaceful nuclear programme as a non-nuclear weapon state under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is entitled to, such as Japan. (In Brazil, another non-nuclear-weapons state, the military actually leases uranium enrichment technology to the civilian nuclear programme and the navy drives technological advances in the nuclear field, even developing a nuclear-powered submarine.) 

Evidently, serious differences remain between Iran and the US over the revitalisation of the JCPOA. The latest remarks by the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken — “The ball remains in Iran’s court and we will see if they’re prepared to make the decisions necessary to come back into compliance” — blithely sidestepped this reality. So indeed, his veiled threat that “this (Vienna) process cannot go on indefinitely.” 

Khamenei, who has the last word on Iran’s state matters, declared last Wednesday that Tehran would not accept Washington’s “stubborn” demands in nuclear talks and again flatly rejected the insertion of any other issues to the deal. Khamenei’s remarks spell out the parameters within which Raisi will approach the negotiations in Vienna as and when they resume. read more 

In the coming weeks, Raisi will need to assemble his cabinet and thereupon get the Majlis’ approval for his nominees, especially the new foreign minister. That means, serious negotiations cannot resume in Vienna, if at all, before the fall. 

This is where Biden’s team probably goofed up by making such excessive demands on Iran that were way beyond the previous government’s mandate to discuss — predicated apparently on the naïveté that for President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif this was a legacy issue more than anything else. (Khamenei implicitly censured Rouhani and Zarif for their manifest eagerness to strike a deal with the Biden Administration.) 

Meanwhile, pressure is going to build on the Biden Administration, since Iran’s nuclear research and production are speeding up and the ‘breakout time’ for making a bomb may be shrinking dramatically. 

The New York Times noted, “Far more worrying, (US) officials said, is the scientific knowledge that Iran is steadily gaining by building more advanced centrifuges and experimenting with enriching uranium to 60 percent, just shy of what is needed for a weapon.”

The point is, the IAEA inspectors are increasingly clueless since June when the agreement with Tehran to keep cameras and sensors running lapsed, as regards what is happening in the underground Natanz plant where the advanced centrifuges are spinning,. 

Above all, it is all but certain that Raisi’s team will be much tougher at the negotiating table and may even make new demands. Thus, there is the ‘X’ factor: Does the restoration of the JCPOA matter anymore? read more 

Having weathered the brunt of Trump’s ‘maximum pressure’, Tehran is in a better situation today. The international situation works in its favour too. Iran has gained strategic depth in the deepening partnership with Russia and China. It is neither possible now to ‘isolate’ Iran nor prudent to exercise the military option against it. 

Make no mistake, Raisi, who has welcomed the negotiations at Vienna, will insist on stricter verification and US implementation of its part of a revived agreement. That seems an irreducible minimum demand. 

Can Biden deliver on that? The Biden administration is showing signs of weakening. On the contrary, Raisi’s ascendance underscores great cohesion at the leadership level, something which has been lacking through successive presidencies since the 1990s. 

In such unequal situations, optics matter unduly in statecraft. For sure, the unresolved Iran question still lurks below the surface as the Biden presidency’s most dangerous foreign-policy challenge. 

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The Biden Administration’s effort to withdraw nearly all US troops from Afghanistan and Iraq before the end of the year is commendable and it is hoped that a departure from Syria will follow soon thereafter, but one must nevertheless be concerned that the overseas moves are being made to concentrate government resources on the domestic war that has already begun. I am, of course, referring to the ongoing efforts being made to extirpate “extremists” among American citizens who have been further identified as largely consisting of “white supremacists.”

As part of the new war, ideas or even demonstrable facts that are considered to be undesirable are being targeted by the government working together with internet resources, most particularly the social media, to attack critics. It is being argued that the alleged provision of “misinformation” is doing actual harm to the country and the American people. Recently, much of the focus has been on the COVID virus, in support of the government’s intention to have all Americans vaccinated and, increasingly, again compelled to be masked when inside buildings that are accessible to the public. These efforts are being supported by media including Facebook, which features pop-ups directing the reader to a “safe” site whenever a piece appears that challenges the government orthodoxy on the spread of the virus.

One might reasonably argue that there is a national public health crisis that is part of a global problem which requires coordinated government intervention, but the actual statistics that reveal the existing low levels of infection and death in most states would not support that contention. And one might also observe that the growing problem involving the regulation of speech and even ideas by government working in cooperation with large corporations is potentially more serious than COVID or any other virus.

If the United States government and its corporate partners were in an honest way trying to protect the American people one might at least be sympathetic regarding the efforts being made, but both government and businesses have proven to be serial liars and purveyors of egregious untruths to serve their own agendas. Recently, the White House spokesman Jen Psaki suggested that those spreading false information about COVID vaccinations might well be banned from spreading such lies on social media. The implication was that the government could compile lists of such “extremists” and use its regulatory authority to compel companies on the internet to censor individuals and groups in compliance with orders coming from the White House. The justification would be that government in this case gets a pass on limiting free speech and association due to a national health crisis.

Psaki has undoubtedly discovered a certain benevolence in big government which few Americans have noted before. Foreigners, however, being on the receiving end of wars resulting from the stream of lies emanating from Washington might well have a different viewpoint. President Bill Clinton relied on a false narrative to go to war in the Balkans and then used unprovoked attacks on Sudan and Afghanistan to draw attention away from an affair he was having with an intern. George W. Bush and his pack of neocon scoundrels, most of whom are still holding prestigious positions, used what was known to be fake information to justify destroying Afghanistan and Iraq. Barack Obama lied to overthrow the governments in Libya and Ukraine while also attempting to do the same in Syria.

All lies, all the time, and now we Americans are supposed to believe that the Biden Administration is seeking to benefit us? Online one wag quipped that “The party that believes that men can get pregnant now wants to control ‘misinformation’ on the internet?” Never forget that policies that compel all Americans to behave in certain ways, no matter how innocent in appearance, can also be used and expanded upon to mandate something more sinister.

And what about the social media companies? Facebook has long had a censorship group headed by a former Israeli government official. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has admitted to Congress that Facebook suppresses nearly all so-called “hate speech”automatically using computer algorithms that rely on word associations to determine what is allowed on the site. Pieces that are considered borderline are allowed only limited exposure, having their distribution among contacts automatically restricted and disabling sharing. Google search uses similar algorithms to make sure that sites and individuals that it does not approve of do not appear among search results. It also uses software to actually “re-direct” users away from sites that it does not approve.

And now PayPal, owned by online auction service eBay and an essential tool for small public interest groups’ support, has now announced that it will henceforth be working with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to “fight hate” by cutting off financing of extremist groups. But its definition of “hate,” criticized as highly subjective and inclined to condemn groups disliked by ADL for political reasons, has prompted legitimate concerns about where this all is going. ADL has often been criticized for finding hate virtually everywhere, particularly among conservative white groups. RT cites a recent example of such fervor “in response to an article published in Canada’s National Post, which was denounced by the ADL because its author mentioned that one of the 32 US lawmakers supporting a tax reform belonged to a Jewish fraternity.” In short, any discussion of Israel or of the behavior of Jewish individuals and groups in anything but a positive context will be considered “hate” by ADL and PayPal.

Indeed, PayPal and ADL issued a self-serving statement last week which said “PayPal and ADL will focus on further uncovering and disrupting the financial pipelines that support extremist and hate movements,” adding that they would also go after “actors and networks spreading and profiting from all forms of hate and bigotry against any community.”

The joint venture will also include the “launch[ing] of a research effort” to determine how “extremist and hate movements throughout the US are attempting to leverage financial platforms to fund criminal activity.” The negative information collected will be shared with police, financial services, and the government, presumably to create an environment where such groups will be marginalized and shut out of the public space completely, to include possibly having their supporters arrested, charged and convicted.

The growing collusion between big government and large public-accessible online information and opinion services is not a good thing. It permits those well-funded and politically connected organizations to work together to limit what the public is allowed to know. Its zeal to eliminate “misinformation” is misplaced, replacing dissident voices that have limited access to a wider audience with massive agenda driven public-private organizations that will essentially determine what is acceptable and what is not. If allowed to continue, it will be the death of free speech in this country as everything that disagrees with the approved narrative will be labeled “hateful” or “extremist,” eventually to include criminal penalties for those who disagree. It is not too much to suggest that we are witnessing the first steps in the creation of a totalitarian de factoone-party state. Perhaps that is the intention.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

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

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from The Unz Review

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First published on July 22, 2021

***

Over the past decades world ocean trade has expanded almost exponentially as major manufacturing outsourcing from USA and European corporations has blossomed under the advent of economic globalization. The result has been that Asia, most especially China, has become the essential manufacturing source for everything from iPhones to antibiotics and everything in-between. The creation of the World Trade Organization to impose new rules on the trade has been a key driver. It has also made global supply chains for delivering goods more fragile than ever in history. The rise in cost of ocean container shipping indicates the growing crisis. Compounding the growing crisis are enormous labor shortages owing to global COVID measures.

Origins of the Crisis

According to German-based Statista Research Department, some 80 percent of all goods globally are carried by sea including oil, coal, grains. Of that total, in terms of value, global maritime container trade accounts for some 60 percent of all seaborne trade, valued at around 14 trillion US dollars in 2019. This ocean shipping has become the arteries of the world economy for better or worse.

This is a direct consequence of the 1990’s creation of the WTO with new rules favoring out-sourcing of manufacture to countries where production was far cheaper, that is as long as ocean transport was cheap. After China became a WTO member in 2001, they became the greatest beneficiary of the new rules and within a decade China was called the “workshop of the world.” Entire industries such as electronics, pharmaceuticals, textiles, chemicals as well as plastics were transferred to China with then the world’s lowest wages, for factory assembly. It worked because the cost of shipping to Western markets was comparatively low.

As the economic output of China grew, China became a world shipping giant, shipping their goods cheaply to places such as Long Beach or Los Angeles, California in the US or Rotterdam in Europe. The Walmart retail giant was destination for a huge share of the China goods with as much as 80% of its products of China origin. This is not small beer as they say in Texas. Walmart is the world’s largest company by revenue, with annual sales of $549 billion. Today as a result of this globalization China has 8 of the world’s 17 largest ports in terms of shipping volumes to handle its exports.

The China shipping expansion combined with that from Japan and South Korea to make up the major ocean container shipping traffic worldwide. That vital economic flow is now under unprecedented stress, which could soon have catastrophic global economic consequences for the world goods supply chains.

When what was termed by WHO as a novel coronavirus, first appearing in Wuhan, was declared by the WHO as a global pandemic in March 2020, the impact on world trade was immediate and huge as countries locked down their economies, something unprecedented in peacetime. Orders for products from China and other Asian producers were frozen by Western buyers. Container ships were cancelled everywhere in 2020. Then as US and EU governments released trillions of dollars in unprecedented stimulus, demand for containers from Asia to the West in relative terms exploded, compared with supply, as people began using stimulus, especially in the US to buy online, most of which was “made in China.”

That has had a serious disruptive impact on what was once a minor cost—ocean container shipping. Modern container ports, especially those in China, are state-of-the-art, computer automated operations loading thousands of containers daily via automated cranes. At destination ports such as Long Beach or Hamburg the containers are then off-loaded to trucks or train and brought to their destination cities before being returned to the port for return shipping. It is this intricate supply chain that is now in crisis.

In 2019 before the pandemic crisis, the cost of shipping a 40-foot-long container from China to Europe by sea cost between USD 800-2,500. For the bulk of products such as textiles, pharmaceuticals or smart phones, ocean containers were clearly the best low-cost option for Asia-Europe trade despite rail possibilities. For Asia-North America trade it was almost the only option, as air was a costly alternative. Today with a corona-linked 50% reduction in air travel, container ships are virtually the only long-distance option.

Now port-to-port spot rates, for example from Shanghai, China’s largest container port, to Los Angeles, have exploded from around $1,500 per 40-foot container just before the WHO Pandemic in early 2020, to $4,000 in September 2020, and to $9,631 in the week ended July 8, 2021, according to Drewry Supply Chain Advisors. This is an increase of over 600% from early 2020, pre-pandemic. And this is just one source of the global inflation we now see erupting.

This is not the worst. According to Drewry, “We have heard reports of $15,000 from China to the West Coast and are aware that carriers are charging additional premiums on top to prioritize the loading of a late booking ahead of normal FAK [Freight All Kinds] rate cargoes.” From $1,500 to $15,000 in two years is a rise of tenfold. And rates from Shanghai to Rotterdam have also skyrocketed from below $2,000 in early 2020, to over $12,000 in July, or 600%.

To cite one product that experienced panic buying at the start of the Pandemic, China is the world leader in exports of toilet paper with 11% of global supply. A 600% rise in ocean freight cost makes it inevitable that the price of something as ordinary as toilet paper is slated to rise significantly or become in short supply in key places globally. When such pressures are coming all across the product line, ocean container rates become a significant driver of general inflation.

Bottleneck of Containers

In early 2020 as nations around the world went into unprecedented panic lockdowns over coronavirus fears, global shipping froze. Factories everywhere were closed. Later in 2020 the flows slowly resumed as China opened up. As it became clear in later 2020 that the various huge government economic stimulus money would spark a recovery in demand for Asian goods, especially demand via e-commerce platforms like Amazon, a dramatic shortage in available containers developed. In the USA alone a combined $9 trillion in total fiscal and monetary stimulus has been released since early 2020. That is world historic.

World trade flows can be compared with the human body’s blood circulation system. When bottlenecks develop with port congestion, or say Suez Canal blockage, it is similar to blood clots to the human circulation system. The March 2021 blockage in the Suez Canal of the giant container ship, Ever Given, from Taiwan’s Evergreen Co. stopped ship traffic for almost a week in one of the world’s major waterways between China and Europe, causing bottlenecks to container deliveries not yet completely resolved. Then in China new testings for corona in the large container port of Yantian – part of the world’s 4th largest container port Shenzhen– caused added major disruptions of shipping, further aggravating rate rises. Those disruptions are likely to continue.

When lockdowns had spread globally by April 2020, suddenly millions of containers were stranded in various ports unable to return to China. Empty boxes were left in places where they were not needed, and repositioning was not planned. Massive workforce disruptions from the pandemic lockdowns across the US in 2020 and into 2021 affected not only ports, but container cargo depots all across the country as well as inland transport lines. There was no way to get the containers back to China when China began to restart industry. Moreover, as carriers introduced “blank sailings,” or skipped port calls, the mismatch between supply and demand for empty containers was exacerbated, as empty boxes were left behind and failed to be repositioned to China ports. Global “transport clots” appeared.

Danish consultancy Sea-Intelligence estimates that as much as 60% of the container imbalance in Asia today is due to North America, most due to lack of investment in California and other West Coast ports which have the worst port congestion problems.

One Japanese consultancy estimated that terminal productivity in North America lags Asian counterparts by up to 50% in part due to less working hours and union opposition to further automation that would take union jobs. A statement that the US regulator, the Federal Maritime Commission, is “looking into” the issue of equipment availability as part of a wide ranging investigation into the supply chain chaos that has hit the nation’s ports, retailers and exporters over the past eight months, is hardly reassuring. The bottleneck problems in US container ports have been chronic and serious since at least 2015. The job of the maritime commission is to monitor just such bottlenecks before they become problematic. They don’t, obviously.

As demand for products from China recovered in late 2020, this all had an impact on container rates. Compounding the container shortages were the lockdowns globally which froze huge volumes of world trade. Construction of needed new containers is also being sharply restricted owing to shortages of steel and lumber as well as manpower, owing to the pandemic measures.

The overwhelming world dependence on shipped goods from China in recent years has become a glaring Achilles Heel in the world economy amid the lockdowns. Such global interdependency was not a factor in the 1930s global depression, contrary to the economic myth about the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act as a prime cause. Then it was the international debt structures centered on New York banks.

Sea Manpower Crisis

Aggravating the crisis in container availability and port logjams in key world ports, there is a growing crisis of seafaring manpower. Most non-officer seaman labor for container shipping is recruited from Asia. According to the International Chamber of Shipping, The Philippines is the biggest supplier of Ratings (skilled seafarers), followed by China, Indonesia, the Russian Federation and Ukraine. The global corona lockdowns and most recently the alarm over the so-called Indian or “Delta” corona variant, despite lack of data on its lethality, have created a growing catastrophe in the situation of ship labor. Before the corona pandemic declaration in 2020, ship labor supply was already very tight. This manpower problem is impacting ship cargo rates as well.

In July an estimated 9% or 100,000 seamen on container and other ships were stranded on ships past their legally contracted time, as countries from China to the US prohibit them to come ashore owing to corona contagion restrictions. That means crew changes are not taking place and the sea-stranded crews are under growing psychological and physical stress, even leading to suicides. Then, an additional estimated 100,000 or more seamen or Ratings are stranded ashore in various countries due to pandemic lockdowns, unable to work. The maximum allowed contract length is 11 months, as stipulated by a UN seafaring convention. Normally there is a rotation of some 50,000 seafarers monthly on and off ship. Now it is a fraction of that. According to the International Transport Federation union, as many as 25% fewer seafarers are joining vessels than pre-pandemic. The union General Secretary stated, “We have warned that global brands need to be ready for the moment some of these tired and fatigued people finally snap.”

Onshore as the pandemic lockdowns in especially California kept thousands of workers from the major US-Asia ports in Los Angeles and Long Beach, it was not possible to clear the very large backlog of containers before more started arriving, a bit like the plague of the Sorcerer’s apprentice. North America currently faces a 60% imbalance; which means that for every 100 containers that arrive only 40 are exported. Sixty out of every 100 containers continue to accumulate.

Drewry estimates that these negative factors will also lead to a decade-high shortfall of officers to crew in the world merchant fleet in the next several years. All this underlines how extremely fragile and brittle the delivery system of the globalized world supply chains are today. The global COVID lockdowns are having far more serious long-term impacts than most are aware. The world economy is a dynamic, highly complex interconnected web that is not able to turn off and on like a flick of a light switch.

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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

ISBN Number: 978-0-937147-2-2

Year: 2007

Pages: 341 pages with complete index

List Price: $25.95

Special Price: $18.00

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.

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

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @crg_globalresearch.

***

The European Union database of suspected drug reaction reports is EudraVigilance, and they are now reporting 20,595 fatalities, and 1,960,607 injuries, following COVID-19 injections.

A Health Impact News subscriber from Europe reminded us that this database maintained at EudraVigilance is only for countries in Europe who are part of the European Union (EU), which comprises 27 countries.

The total number of countries in Europe is much higher, almost twice as many, numbering around 50. (There are some differences of opinion as to which countries are technically part of Europe.)

So as high as these numbers are, they do NOT reflect all of Europe. The actual number in Europe who are reported dead or injured due to COVID-19 shots would be much higher than what we are reporting here.

The EudraVigilance database reports that through July 31, 2021 there are 20,595 deaths and 1,960,607 injuries reported following injections of four experimental COVID-19 shots:

• COVID-19 MRNA VACCINE MODERNA (CX-024414)
• COVID-19 MRNA VACCINE PFIZER-BIONTECH
• COVID-19 VACCINE ASTRAZENECA (CHADOX1 NCOV-19)
• COVID-19 VACCINE JANSSEN (AD26.COV2.S)

From the total of injuries recorded, half of them (968,870) are serious injuries.

“Seriousness provides information on the suspected undesirable effect; it can be classified as ‘serious’ if it corresponds to a medical occurrence that results in death, is life-threatening, requires inpatient hospitalisation, results in another medically important condition, or prolongation of existing hospitalisation, results in persistent or significant disability or incapacity, or is a congenital anomaly/birth defect.”

A Health Impact News subscriber in Europe ran the reports for each of the four COVID-19 shots we are including here. This subscriber has volunteered to do this, and it is a lot of work to tabulate each reaction with injuries and fatalities, since there is no place on the EudraVigilance system we have found that tabulates all the results.

Since we have started publishing this, others from Europe have also calculated the numbers and confirmed the totals.*

Here is the summary data through July 31, 2021.

Total reactions for the experimental mRNA vaccineTozinameran (code BNT162b2,Comirnaty) from BioNTech/ Pfizer: 9,868 deaths and 767,225 injuries to 31/07/2021

• 21,004   Blood and lymphatic system disorders incl. 126 deaths
• 19,717   Cardiac disorders incl. 1,489 deaths
• 177        Congenital, familial and genetic disorders incl. 14 deaths
• 9,913     Ear and labyrinth disorders incl. 8 deaths
• 471        Endocrine disorders incl. 3 deaths
• 11,693   Eye disorders incl. 21 deaths
• 69,612   Gastrointestinal disorders incl. 431 deaths
• 205,214 General disorders and administration site conditions incl. 2,832 deaths
• 779        Hepatobiliary disorders incl. 46 deaths
• 8,405     Immune system disorders incl. 53 deaths
• 24,114   Infections and infestations incl. 941 deaths
• 9,314     Injury, poisoning and procedural complications incl. 146 deaths
• 19,170   Investigations incl. 323 deaths
• 5,675     Metabolism and nutrition disorders incl. 178 deaths
• 104,915 Musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders incl. 122 deaths
• 528        Neoplasms benign, malignant and unspecified (incl cysts and polyps) incl. 43 deaths
• 137,631 Nervous system disorders incl. 1,081 deaths
• 719        Pregnancy, puerperium and perinatal conditions incl. 24 deaths
• 140        Product issues incl. 1 death
• 13,659   Psychiatric disorders incl. 130 deaths
• 2,481     Renal and urinary disorders incl. 157 deaths
• 8,028     Reproductive system and breast disorders incl. 2 deaths
• 33,642   Respiratory, thoracic and mediastinal disorders incl. 1,168 deaths
• 36,970   Skin and subcutaneous tissue disorders incl. 87 deaths
• 1,289     Social circumstances incl. 13 deaths
• 564        Surgical and medical procedures incl. 25 deaths
• 21,401   Vascular disorders incl. 404 deaths

Total reactions for the experimental mRNA vaccine mRNA-1273(CX-024414) from Moderna: 5,460 deaths and 212,474 injuries to 31/07/2021

• 3,901     Blood and lymphatic system disorders incl. 49 deaths
• 6,139     Cardiac disorders incl. 599 deaths
• 86           Congenital, familial and genetic disorders incl. 3 deaths
• 2,699     Ear and labyrinth disorders
• 165        Endocrine disorders incl. 1 death
• 3,330     Eye disorders incl. 13 deaths
• 18,562   Gastrointestinal disorders incl. 200 deaths
• 57,313   General disorders and administration site conditions incl. 2,188 deaths
• 345        Hepatobiliary disorders incl. 20 deaths
• 1,803     Immune system disorders incl. 9 deaths
• 6,151     Infections and infestations incl. 332 deaths
• 4,652     Injury, poisoning and procedural complications incl. 102 deaths
• 4,289     Investigations incl. 103 deaths
• 2,105     Metabolism and nutrition disorders incl. 125 deaths
• 26,743   Musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders incl. 107 deaths
• 252        Neoplasms benign, malignant and unspecified (incl cysts and polyps) incl. 27 deaths
• 38,118   Nervous system disorders incl. 552 deaths
• 432        Pregnancy, puerperium and perinatal conditions incl. 5 deaths
• 46           Product issues
• 4,224     Psychiatric disorders incl. 90 deaths
• 1,306     Renal and urinary disorders incl. 85 deaths
• 1,526     Reproductive system and breast disorders incl. 2 deaths
• 9,377     Respiratory, thoracic and mediastinal disorders incl. 521 deaths
• 11,300   Skin and subcutaneous tissue disorders incl. 45 deaths
• 925        Social circumstances incl. 20 deaths
• 700        Surgical and medical procedures incl. 55 deaths
• 5,985     Vascular disorders incl. 207 deaths

Total reactions for the experimental vaccine AZD1222/VAXZEVRIA (CHADOX1 NCOV-19) from Oxford/ AstraZeneca: 4,534 deaths and 923,749 injuries to 31/07/2021

• 10,912   Blood and lymphatic system disorders incl. 184 deaths
• 15,131   Cardiac disorders incl. 523 deaths
• 132        Congenital familial and genetic disorders incl. 3 deaths
• 10,643   Ear and labyrinth disorders
• 415        Endocrine disorders incl. 3 deaths
• 16,108   Eye disorders incl. 18 deaths
• 91,912   Gastrointestinal disorders incl. 229 deaths
• 244,487 General disorders and administration site conditions incl. 1,128 deaths
• 729        Hepatobiliary disorders incl. 41 deaths
• 3,663     Immune system disorders incl. 18 deaths
• 22,077   Infections and infestations incl. 284 deaths
• 10,114   Injury poisoning and procedural complications incl. 119 deaths
• 20,068   Investigations incl. 105 deaths
• 11,087   Metabolism and nutrition disorders incl. 62 deaths
• 140,986 Musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders incl. 63 deaths
• 446        Neoplasms benign malignant and unspecified (incl cysts and polyps) incl. 13 deaths
• 194,032 Nervous system disorders incl. 727 deaths
• 363        Pregnancy puerperium and perinatal conditions incl. 8 deaths
• 135        Product issues incl. 1 death
• 17,296   Psychiatric disorders incl. 39 deaths
• 3,324     Renal and urinary disorders incl. 40 deaths
• 11,369   Reproductive system and breast disorders
• 31,980   Respiratory thoracic and mediastinal disorders incl. 534 deaths
• 42,437   Skin and subcutaneous tissue disorders incl. 30 deaths
• 1,093     Social circumstances incl. 7 deaths
• 971        Surgical and medical procedures incl. 19 deaths
• 21,839   Vascular disorders incl. 336 deaths

Total reactions for the experimental COVID-19 vaccine JANSSEN (AD26.COV2.S) from Johnson & Johnson: 733 deaths and 57,159 injuries to 31/07/2021

• 531        Blood and lymphatic system disorders incl. 23 deaths
• 867        Cardiac disorders incl. 92 deaths
• 21           Congenital, familial and genetic disorders
• 346        Ear and labyrinth disorders
• 24           Endocrine disorders incl. 1 death
• 705        Eye disorders incl. 3 deaths
• 5,449     Gastrointestinal disorders incl. 27 deaths
• 15,097   General disorders and administration site conditions incl. 177 deaths
• 78           Hepatobiliary disorders incl. 7 deaths
• 231        Immune system disorders incl. 5 deaths
• 915        Infections and infestations incl. 21 deaths
• 529        Injury, poisoning and procedural complications incl. 11 deaths
• 2,936     Investigations incl. 51 deaths
• 305        Metabolism and nutrition disorders incl. 12 deaths
• 9,614     Musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders incl. 18 deaths
• 24           Neoplasms benign, malignant and unspecified (incl cysts and polyps) incl. 2 deaths
• 12,240   Nervous system disorders incl. 90 deaths
• 17           Pregnancy, puerperium and perinatal conditions incl. 1 death
• 17           Product issues
• 659        Psychiatric disorders incl. 8 deaths
• 207        Renal and urinary disorders incl. 9 deaths
• 354        Reproductive system and breast disorders incl. 2 deaths
• 1,878     Respiratory, thoracic and mediastinal disorders incl. 57 deaths
• 1,602     Skin and subcutaneous tissue disorders incl. 2 deaths
• 143        Social circumstances incl. 3 deaths
• 468        Surgical and medical procedures incl. 30 deaths
• 1,902     Vascular disorders incl. 81 deaths

*These totals are estimates based on reports submitted to EudraVigilance. Totals may be much higher based on percentage of adverse reactions that are reported. Some of these reports may also be reported to the individual country’s adverse reaction databases, such as the U.S. VAERS database and the UK Yellow Card system. The fatalities are grouped by symptoms, and some fatalities may have resulted from multiple symptoms.

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***

A newly uncovered confidential U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report found “suggestive evidence” linking glyphosate to Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a determination that goes against the agency’s long-held public regulatory stance that glyphosate is not a carcinogen.

Why would the agency charged with protecting public health and the environment go against its own science and allow a probable carcinogen like glyphosate to remain in use? According to Intercept journalist Sharon Lerner, agrichemical industry giants like Monsanto (acquired by Bayer AG in 2018) have successfully “hoodwinked, bullied, and persuaded” the EPA to base chemical regulations on inaccurate science that favors industry at the expense of public health.

Lerner reports that industry influence over the science that EPA relies on to set the safe exposure levels to chemicals like glyphosate is one of many tools Monsanto and other agribusinesses use to “increase and maintain the use of products even when they damage health and the environment.”

Lerner’s article includes a 2016 internal EPA report that vindicates what plaintiffs’ attorneys suing Monsanto on behalf of Roundup cancer victims have been saying for years about Monsanto’s scientific manipulation and the EPA being a captured agency.

In March of 2015 the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) published a review on glyphosate, listing it as a probable human carcinogen. The IARC report led to thousands of people throughout the U.S. filing lawsuits against Monsanto alleging exposure to Roundup caused them to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

As part of the litigation, a number of U.S. law firms were able to obtain internal company reports, emails, text messages, and other memoranda, that include communications with or about EPA officials. The documents, now known throughout the world as the Monsanto Papers, allowed the public to see firsthand how EPA staff bragged about killing an Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) review of glyphosate; that the agency has based its regulatory decisions for Roundup almost exclusively on Monsanto’s own science; and that the agency mysteriously changed glyphosate’s cancer classification in 1991 from having “suggestive evidence” of carcinogenic potential to having “no evidence” of carcinogenic potential, a designation that persists even to this day.

Attorneys for Monsanto have argued since the start of the litigation that EPA has repeatedly approved the use of glyphosate, each time concluding that it is not likely to be carcinogenic to humans. But the internal EPA report cited in Lerner’s reporting provides stark evidence that the agency has been covering up science showing the cancer-causing potential of glyphosate.

What Does the EPA Internal Report on Glyphosate Say?

In the summer of 2016, the EPA’s Office of Research and Development (ORD) analyzed seven epidemiological studies on the association between glyphosate and Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The internal “confidential” report concluded that four of the highest-quality studies “all reported elevated risks of NHL associated with exposure to glyphosate even after controlling for other pesticide exposures.” The report further concluded that the reviewed studies “provide suggestive evidence of carcinogenic potential between glyphosate exposure and increased risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.”

The internal report never saw the light of day. Instead, Lerner notes:

“[EPA] released reports in 2016 and 2017 that clearly drew on the earlier document — several sections have identical wording — but reached the opposite conclusion: that glyphosate is ‘not a probable carcinogen.’”

In 2019, just days before a California jury was to decide a case involving a husband and wife who developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma after spraying Roundup around their properties for years, an EPA preliminary report on glyphosate again declared that glyphosate is not a probable carcinogen. The timing of the preliminary report was something that plaintiffs’ attorneys took notice of: why did the preliminary report come out just days before the end of the trial?

In his closing statement in the case of Pilliod et al. v. Monsanto Co., Monsanto attorney Tarek Ismail, made light of the plaintiffs’ allegation that EPA is an agency captured by industry:

“Today you heard Mr. Wisner (co-lead counsel for the Pilliods) ask you to disregard completely the findings of the EPA. He told you that they engaged in — what did he call it? Regulatory capture? 40 years of EPA review by the career scientists at the agency, he wants you to throw aside.”

Ismail had good reason to play down the regulatory capture allegation to the jury. In her report, Lerner interviewed more than a dozen former EPA Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP) employees who described the agency as “unable to stand up to the intense pressures from powerful agrochemical companies, which spend tens of millions of dollars on lobbying each year and employ many former EPA scientists once they leave the agency.”

The jury must have, at the very least, questioned whether the EPA was a captured agency. After only a few short days, the jury returned a $2.055 billion verdict in favor of Mr. and Mrs. Pilliod, one of three verdicts against Monsanto between 2018 and 2019. The jury verdicts worth a combined $2.424 billion paved the way for a $10.9 billion settlement with several leading law firms in the Roundup litigation.

Despite its own scientists finding a link between glyphosate and cancer in studies of human populations in the internal 2016 report (and the IARC report a year earlier), the EPA re-registered glyphosate in 2020 for another 15 years. Per Lerner, the EPA allows glyphosate use because there is “insufficient evidence to conclude that glyphosate plays a role in any human diseases” and that “there are no risks of concern to human health when glyphosate is used in accordance with its current label.”

But consumer advocates like Genna Reed, senior analyst at the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, believe the 2016 internal report shows a pattern of EPA favoring industry over safety. “They only used the pieces of the meta-analysis that fit the conclusion they wanted to support,” Reed told Lerner of the EPA report. Reed added that the agency’s suppression of the internal report’s conclusion shows that there “is clearly a need for more firewalls to prevent political interference with the science.”

2016 Internal Report Could Impact Glyphosate Prop 65 Appeal

The internal EPA report could have an impact in the case of National Association of Wheat Growers, et al. v. Becerra, which will decide whether a Proposition 65 warning can be added to glyphosate products.

California’s Proposition 65 (Prop 65), also known as the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986, prohibits businesses from exposing people to chemicals on the state’s Prop 65 List without providing “clear and reasonable” warnings. Chemicals are added to the Prop 65 List based on the state’s evaluation of current scientific information and in situations where, EPA and IARC determine a substance is a human carcinogen. While IARC classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic” to humans, EPA concluded that there is no evidence that glyphosate causes cancer.

In 2018, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California decided that the state could not require Prop 65 cancer warnings for glyphosate. Per the Court, such warnings would violate the First Amendment because the EPA found that there is insufficient evidence to conclude that glyphosate causes cancer.

Last year, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra filed an appeal to challenge the decision. Now, with the new internal report contradicting EPA’s public findings—which the Court used as the basis to not require a Prop 65 warning for glyphosate—the appeal can pull the rug out from under the assertion that there is no evidence glyphosate is a carcinogen.

Industry Influence Has Weakened Pesticide Regulation

Lerner says that industry influence over EPA has “weakened and, in some cases, shut down the meaningful regulation of pesticides in the U.S. and left the country’s residents exposed to levels of dangerous chemicals not tolerated in many other nations.”

Charles Benbrook, an agricultural economist who served as an expert witness during the Monsanto Roundup litigation, agrees with Lerner:

“The regulatory affairs departments of these companies actually compete against each other and sometimes brag that they were able to keep one of their high-risk pesticides on the market longer than some other company that threw in the towel prematurely.”

If anything, Lerner’s article and the issues she raises reinforce the power that litigation has to raise public awareness and spark real and lasting change. “We always felt that the evidence supporting everything we were saying from day one—that Monsanto manipulated science, that they captured agencies, that they bullied scientists that dared to question Roundup’s safety—would only continue to grow,” said Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman attorney, R. Brent Wisner, who served as co-lead trial counsel in two of the three Roundup trials. “It’s bittersweet that it’s taken all these years for these truths to come out, but any progress made in the name of protecting people’s health—however incremental—is something we will always fight for.”

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***

The Taliban’s gains have reached critical mass and they are now attempting to capture key cities in Afghanistan.

Airports in the second and fourth largest cities in the country, Kandahar and Herat, were struck by rockets in the last days of July and on August 1st.

Flights at airports in both cities had to be suspended, and the airport in Kandahar suffered a partially damaged runway.

Most recently, on August 1st, at least three rockets were launched towards the Ahmad Shah Baba International Airport in Kandahar.

Two of the projectiles hit the runway.

Officials in Kandahar claimed that there was a serious risk of the Taliban taking control over the city, adding that the group wanted to turn Kandahar into their temporary capital.

It is of symbolic importance since the Taliban movement was first created in Kandahar province.

In Herat, the Taliban claimed that its fighters had breached the main defense line of the northwestern Afghan city of Herat.

The Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid shared a video showing fighters on the outskirts of the city.

He then claimed that the Taliban were inside the city itself breaching its defenses.

The Afghan government sent large reinforcements of security forces to Herat in order to repel the Taliban’s attack.

The clashes have been on-going since July 28th.

The government forces are preparing to launch a large-scale operation to push Taliban fighters away from Herat city.

At least 20 people were killed, including 16 security force members, and 90 people were wounded in the past four days of fighting in Herat.

Meanwhile, the city most vulnerable to Taliban capture is reportedly Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province.

It is famous as a fighting point where many US and British soldiers have lost their lives in the past.

Pro-Taliban social media accounts have uploaded videos of Taliban fighters in the heart of the city.

Afghan special forces are being sent in to help push them back.

It is unknown whether that will work out, as the Taliban’s advance seems to be quite effective.

On July 31st, Taliban fighters were only a few hundred meters from the governor’s office in Lashkar Gah, but were subsequently pushed back.

Afghan and US air strikes have reportedly targeted Taliban positions and government forces say they have killed dozens of militants.

The fighting is evidently ramping up, as the Taliban now seek to capture the most significant cities in the country and prepare to put even more districts and provinces under their control.

Currently, the Taliban control at least 150 of the 407 districts in Afghanistan.

The Kabul government holds all 34 provincial centers, but that could quickly change.

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***

May 3, 2021 (SENT VIA EMAIL AND FEDEX)

To: President Vincent E. Price
Duke University 207 Allen Building
Box 90001 Durham, NC 27708-0001

c/o Cici Stevens, Staff Assistant [email protected]

Re: Duke University’s COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate (1662 words)

Dear President Price:

Numerous students attending Duke University (“Duke”) have reached out regarding Duke’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. We understand that Duke’s students were advised on April 9, 2021 that

“we plan to require all new and returning Duke students to present proof of vaccination to Student Health before they can enroll for the Fall 2021 semester.”

As I am sure you are aware, the COVID-19 vaccines are presently authorized under emergency use authorization (“EUA”).

It is a violation of federal law to mandate receipt of a product that is only available pursuant to an EUA. Duke cannot lawfully require students to receive a COVID-19 vaccine that is being distributed under an EUA.

Emergency Use Authorization of COVID-19 Vaccines

In December 2020, the FDA granted EUA for two COVID-19 vaccines, one sold by Moderna and the other by Pfizer. Both are based on an RNA technology never before used in a licensed vaccine. In February 2021, the FDA granted EUA for a third COVID-19 vaccine sold by Janssen.

This is a novel viral vector vaccine platform. The clinical trials that the FDA will rely upon to decide whether to license these vaccines are underway, but they are far from complete.

The EUA applications for these experimental vaccines were based on data which supports that these products may reduce certain symptoms of COVID-19 for some individuals, but the FDA’s EUA authorizations made clear that there is no evidence the COVID-19 vaccines can prevent recipients from becoming infected with and transmitting the virus.1

As the FDA explains, at the time of the EUA approval, the data was “not available to make a determination about how long the vaccine will provide protection, nor is there evidence that the vaccine prevents transmission of SARS-CoV-2 [i.e., the virus that causes COVID-19] from person to person.”2 In fact, the FDA Briefing Documents for the COVID-19 vaccines supporting the grant of an EUA list the following as still unknown:

• “[e]ffectiveness in certain populations at high-risk of severe COVID-19,”
• “[e]ffectiveness in individuals previously infected with SARS-CoV-2,”
• “effectiveness against asymptomatic infection,”
• “effectiveness against long-term effect of COVID-19 disease,”
• “effectiveness against mortality,” and
• “effectiveness against transmission of SARS-CoV-2.”3

The FDA Briefing Documents also make clear much is unknown about the safety of these products, including,

• “[a]dverse reactions that are very uncommon,”
• adverse reactions “that require longer follow-up to be detected,” and
• whether the vaccines will cause “[v]accine-enhanced disease.”4

As a result, the authorization letters for both COVID-19 vaccines expressly provide that the vaccines are each “an investigational vaccine not licensed for any indication” and require that “[a]ll promotional material relating to the COVID-19 Vaccine clearly and conspicuously … state that this product has not been approved or licensed by the FDA, but has been authorized for emergency use by FDA.”5

Reflecting that these vaccines have not yet been demonstrated to be safe and effective, use of one of them was recently paused by the CDC and FDA due to serious reactions that have proven fatal in some cases.6

This exemplifies why the authorization letters for the COVID-19 vaccines, in accordance with federal law, expressly provide that these vaccines cannot be required and must remain optional.

Federal Law Prohibits Mandating Products Granted EUA

The same section that authorizes the FDA to grant an EUA [Section 564 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (the “Act”), codified at 21 U.S.C. 360bbb-3], requires that the public have “the option to accept or refuse administration of the product.” 21 U.S.C. 360bbb-3(e).

It even provides that the Secretary of HHS is to “ensure that individuals to whom the product is administered are informed” of “the option to accept or refuse administration of the product.” (Id.)

The FDA and CDC’s guidance and regulations reflect the statutory prohibition from mandating that an individual receive a product that has only been granted EUA.

For example, the FDA guidance entitled Emergency Use Authorization of Medical Products and Related Authorities provides that: For an unapproved product [such as the COVID-19 vaccines], the statute [21 U.S.C. 360bbb-3] requires that FDA ensure that recipients are informed … [t]hat they have the option to accept or refuse the EUA product…7

Similarly, when responding to an inquiry regarding whether the COVID-19 vaccines can be required, the Executive Secretary of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (“ACIP”), Dr. Amada Cohn, publicly stated that “under an EUA, vaccines are not allowed to be mandatory.“

Therefore, early in the vaccination phase individuals will have to be consented and cannot be mandated to be vaccinated.”8

Dr. Cohn then reaffirmed to the FDA’s Vaccine and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee that no organization, public or private, can mandate the COVID-19 vaccines:

Organizations, such as hospitals, with licensed products do have capability of asking their workers to get the vaccine. But in the setting of an EUA, patients and individuals will have the right to refuse the vaccine.9

The EUAs for the COVID-19 Vaccines Repeats this Prohibition

The EUA letters for Pfizer, Moderna, and Janssen provide that each COVID-19 Vaccine is authorized for emergency use with the following product specific information required to be made available to the vaccination providers and recipients, respectively (referred to as ‘authorized labeling’):

• Fact Sheet for Health Care Providers Administering Vaccine … [and]
• Fact Sheet for Recipients and Caregivers.10 These fact sheets each provide that the receipt of the vaccine must be optional.

The Fact Sheets for Healthcare Providers for the three COVID-19 vaccines state that: “The recipient or their caregiver has the option to accept or refuse [the] COVID-19 Vaccine.”11

Similarly, the Fact Sheets for Recipients and Caregivers for each COVID-19 vaccine state on the first page: “It is your choice to receive the [] COVID-19 Vaccine.”12

The Fact Sheet for Recipients and Caregivers for each of the COVID-19 vaccines also set forth in sequence the information required to be provided to recipients of the vaccine pursuant to section 564 of the Act, including “the option to accept or refuse administration of the product” and “the consequences, if any, of refusing administration of the product.” 21 U.S.C. § 360bbb-3(e)(1)(A)(ii).

All of the COVID-19 vaccine fact sheets provide the required information in sequence, including telling potential recipients: “It is your choice to receive or not receive the [] COVID-19 Vaccine,” and that if “you decide to not receive it, it will not change your standard of medical care.”13

Duke’s Vaccine Mandate Violates the Act, the EUA, Public Policy and the Nuremberg Code

By implementing its vaccine mandate, Duke is deliberately taking away each student’s statutorily guaranteed right to decide whether to accept or refuse administration of the COVID-19 vaccines.

The university is doing so openly, without any regard for the personal and autonomous right of each student to choose whether they want to receive an unapproved and unlicensed medical product.

Duke is effectively forcing each student to choose between facing expulsion from Duke or receiving an experimental medical treatment to which they do not consent.

The right to informed medical consent is considered a fundamental, overriding principle of medical ethics and international law, first laid down by United States government jurists in the Nuremberg Code.

See e.g., The Nuremberg Code (1947), 313 BMJ 1448 (1996) (“The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. This means that the person…[is] able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of…coercion.”);14 see also UNESCO Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights, Article 6(1).15

Public policy further demands that uncoerced consent is required.

Congress made this plain in the Act by assuring that individuals can make their own medical decisions when it comes to EUA products, even during times of emergency.

The only exception Congress granted for allowing an EUA to be mandated is a Presidential order requiring members of the armed forces to receive the product.16

The clear policy choice made at the highest levels of government to protect the individual’s right to choose is further supported by the fact that whether COVID-19 vaccines are actually safe and effective is not yet known and will not be known until, at the earliest, the Phase III clinical trials are completed.

The FDA-approved study protocols for the COVID-19 vaccines’ timelines for collecting safety and efficacy data from trial participants is approximately two years.

(Moderna’s calls for 759 days of data collection, Pfizer’s 742 days, and Janssen’s 24 months.) When these companies submitted applications for an EUA, they had only accumulated data from study participants for a median of 6 to 8 weeks, i.e., less than 10% of the full study period.

Additional Considerations

As explained above, these vaccines have not been proven to prevent infection or transmission. Therefore, requiring that students receive these vaccines to prevent infection is unscientific.

It is also nonsensical to not require faculty and staff, some of whom may have a risk of severe COVID-19, while requiring healthy, young students to receive this experimental product.

To the extent the university’s policy permits faculty, staff, and other individuals on campus to choose or refuse vaccination, but does not allow that same choice for students, this may raise equal protection issues.

Additionally, Duke is failing to take into consideration that a significant portion of its student population is likely to have had SARS-CoV-2 and fully recovered. Putting aside the immunity conferred by having been previously infected, there have been concerns raised by medical professionals that vaccinating those recently infected can lead to serious injury or death by causing antigen specific tissue inflammation in any tissues harboring viral antigens.17

The university should consider whether it might be liable for any damages, poor health outcomes, and loss of life due to mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policies forced upon its students.

While manufacturers and vaccine administrators are protected by the PREP Act, Duke is not.

For all of the foregoing reasons, we respectfully request that Duke give serious consideration to the issues raised herein and withdraw its COVID-19 vaccine mandate forthwith since requiring an unlicensed and unapproved product violates federal law, international laws, civil and individual rights, and public policy.

Very truly yours,

Aaron Siri, Esq.
Elizabeth A. Brehm, Esq.
Jessica Wallace, Esq.

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***

Victorious Olympic athletes are awarded medals, their national flags arise behind them, and the national anthem of the gold medalist plays. The athletes thus represent not just themselves but collective national pride before the world.  But what if that pride is incongruous with national behavior in matters far more important than sports?

Such was the world’s judgment of apartheid South Africa, which was prohibited from Olympic participation from 1964 through 1988.

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***

Last month’s revelation by a representative of the Russian Armed Forces that the Syrian-manned anti-air systems that his country dispatched to the Arab Republic successfully downed most “Israeli” missiles during a recent strike suggest that the Eurasian Great Power might be recalibrating its de facto alliance with the self-professed “Jewish State”.

Russia and “Israel” have been de facto allies in Syria for over the past half-decade as I argued at length over the years, especially in my top four analyses on the subject here, here (which lists 15 other pertinent ones), here, and here.

To summarize, Russia sought to actively “balance” Iranian influence in Syria which it regards as regionally destabilizing due to its reported role in organizing attacks against the self-professed “Jewish State” from the Arab Republic’s territory. Moscow was motivated by the desire to comprehensively expand its ties with Tel Aviv, which it also expected would improve its geostrategic positioning vis-a-vis Washington by gradually becoming “Israel’s” most significant regional security partner.

It advanced this aim by “passively facilitating” literally hundreds of “Israeli” strikes against the IRGC and Hezbollah there, which importantly were never thwarted by Syria’s Russian-supplied S-300s from a few years back due to what some believe is the Kremlin’s continued refusal to transfer full operational control over these systems to Damascus. The thinking goes that if Syria succeeded in downing any more “Israeli” jets in self-defense, then Tel Aviv would be triggered into launching a disproportionate response against its neighbor that could completely cripple its military and therefore inadvertently reverse Russia’s recent anti-terrorist gains in the country. The Kremlin calculated that it’s better to give “Israel” freedom of the skies than risk that scenario.

This strategy seems to be changing though as evidenced by a Russian Armed Forces representative revealing late last month that the Syrian-manned anti-air systems that his country dispatched to the Arab Republic successfully downed most “Israeli” missiles during a recent strike. This suggests that the Eurasian Great Power might be recalibrating its de facto alliance with the self-professed “Jewish State”. It’s unclear exactly what Moscow’s motivations may be, but some educated hypotheses might suffice for pointing sincere observers in the right direction. These are the recent removal of President Putin’s close friend Netanyahu from power; the ongoing efforts to clinch a “New Detente” with the US; and restoring regional geostrategic balance.

In the order that they were mentioned, the first development might have resulted in the coming to power of influential forces that don’t share Netanyahu’s vision of a de facto Russian-”Israeli” alliance. Those individuals can speculatively be described as more pro-American than pro-”Israeli” in the sense that they’d prefer to put their traditional patron’s interests before their own polity’s. To explain, regardless of however one feels about Netanyahu’s legacy, he was nevertheless very successful in comprehensively improving relations with Russia, which in turn made “Israel” less dependent on the US’ regional security services for defending his polity’s interests. His successor and that man’s team might feel more comfortable returning under the US umbrella.

The second point is pertinent insofar as it’s increasingly clear that the US and Russia are attempting to negotiate a series of “mutual compromises” across a wide array of spheres following June’s Biden-Putin Summit in Geneva. Russia wants to relieve American pressure along its western flank in order to focus more on its “Ummah Pivot” for reducing potentially disproportionate dependence on China in the future while the US wants to refocus the bulk of its strategic efforts on more aggressively “containing” China in the “Indo-Pacific”. “Israel”, which is important to both of their interests, might have come to be treated as little more than a piece to be traded by Russia on this “Great Power Chessboard” in exchange for US “compromises” elsewhere.

Finally, this might simply be due to Russia realizing that “Israel” is now far too strong and must therefore be “gently” balanced through increased military (and specifically anti-air) assistance to Syria. After all, one of the primary reasons why Russia de facto allied with “Israel” in the first place is because Iran was becoming too strong in the region and thus had to be balanced according to the Kremlin’s geostrategic calculations. It would therefore be natural for Russia to temporarily recalibrate its balancing strategy in light of succeeding so well with its earlier motivation. This suggests that Russia might eventually oscillate back towards “Israel” if/once Iran regains its momentum, and so on and so forth in accordance with the Kremlin’s Eurasian balancing strategy.

While a lot still remains unclear at the moment, all that can be known for sure is that Russia wanted the world to know that it credibly bolstered Syria’s air defense capabilities, which certainly hints that it’s actively recalibrating its balancing act and in particular the “Israeli” dimension thereof. It’s unknown exactly how far it’ll go and whether it’ll ever cross the Rubicon that many Non-Russian Pro-Russians (NRPRs) have been practically begging for with respect to letting Syria finally use the S-300s to shoot down attacking “Israeli” jets, but it’s obvious that something has changed even though the reasons for this perceptible shift are debatable and could even potentially be a combination of each of the three earlier described hypotheses.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

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

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***

It is déjà vu all over again.

Recently the Core Group (US, Canada, France, Spain, Germany, Brazil, UN and OAS) published a note saying Ariel Henry was the prime minister of Haiti. Within 48 hours the other individual claiming the position fell into line behind Henry, who was a member of the US/France/Canada created ‘Council of the Wise’ that appointed the prime minister after President Jean Bertrand Aristide was ousted in 2004.

The Core Group’s bid to unify the PHTK (right wing ‘Bald-Headed’ Party) regime was designed to undercut an effort by a broad group of Haitian political actors to form a consensus government. The Commission pour la recherche d’une solution à la crise is seeking to form a government that would remain in place for a year or two in a bid to stabilize the country and revitalize moribund state institutions. Then it would oversee elections.

But the Core Group wants the PHTK regime to oversee quick elections, which will be easy to manipulate. Something that has happened numerous times in the recent past.

As a result, many Haitian civil society and political actors have criticized the Core Group’s ‘selection of Haiti’s leader by statement’. To understand their concerns, imagine the Jamaican, Congolese, Guatemalan and Filipino ambassadors releasing a collective statement on who should be prime minister of Canada.

The assassination of President Jovenel Moïse reflects the disintegration of Haitian politics after a decade of foreign intervention that empowered the neo-Duvalierist PHTK since an earthquake devastated Port-au-Prince and surrounding regions in January 2010. Instead of dispatching Heavy Urban Search and Rescue Teams to help with relief and medical support after the quake, Ottawa sent 2,000 troops to join over 10,000 US troops deployed to Haiti. As internal Canadian government documents show, they were deployed out of concern over a “popular uprising” amidst the political vacuum and the return of Haiti’s most popular politician, Aristide, from forced exile.

While their massive capacities offered certain logistical benefits, the foreign troops trampled on Haitian sovereignty by seizing control of the airport and port. Simultaneously, the government was sidelined from international reconstruction. In the months after the quake the US and Canada demanded the Haitian parliament pass an 18-month state of emergency law that effectively gave up government control over the reconstruction.

Not viewing then-President Renée Préval as sufficiently compliant, the US and Canada pushed for elections to take place only months after the horrific earthquake. With rubble throughout Port au Prince and hundreds of thousands living in camps, Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon demanded Préval hold elections by the end of the year. In May 2010 Cannon said, “the international community wants to see a commitment, a solid, serious commitment to have an election by the end of this year.” (With far fewer logistical hurdles, it took two years to hold elections after the 2004 US/France/Canada coup.)

As a result of various obstacles tied to the earthquake and a devastating cholera outbreak introduced to the country by negligent UN troops in October 2010, hundreds of thousands were unable to vote during the first round of the November 28, 2010, election. Another factor dampening turnout was the exclusion of Aristide’s Fanmi Lavalas from participating.

Following the first round of voting the US and Canada forced the candidate whom Haiti’s electoral council had in second place, Jude Celestin, out of the runoff. Rather than the candidate of Préval’s social democratic INITE party, US and Canadian officials claimed the extreme right-wing Michel Martelly deserved to be in the second round. A US and Canada dominated OAS electoral mission concluded Martelly was in second place despite, explains the Centre for Economic Policy Research, no “legal, statistical, or other logical basis for its conclusions.” Nevertheless, Ottawa and Washington pushed the Haitian government to accept the OAS’s recommendations. Cannon said he “strongly urges the Provisional Electoral Council to accept and implement the [OAS] report’s recommendations and to proceed with the next steps of the electoral process accordingly.” In an interview Canada’s foreign minister warned that “time is running out”, adding that “our ambassador has raised this with the president [Préval] himself.” As part of their full-court press, Haitian officials had their US visas revoked, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton traveled to Port-au-Prince and there were threats that aid would be cut off if Martelly’s vote total was not increased as per the OAS recommendation.

The pressure worked. But only about 20% of voters participated in the second round of elections, which Martelly ‘won’.

Washington and Ottawa backed Martelly as he failed to hold constitutionally mandated elections and became ever more violent. As president, Martelly surrounded himself with former Duvalierists and death squad leaders who’d been arrested for rape, murder, kidnapping and drug trafficking. When brutal dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier returned to Haiti after 25 years, Martelly told the New York Times no one wanted him prosecuted except for “certain institutions and governments” abroad.

During repeated visits Canadian foreign minister John Baird praised Martelly for “going in the right direction” and operating “a really functioning government.” In 2013 Baird and minister for the Americas Diane Ablonczy met Martelly and his Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe in Port-au-Prince saying, “we share with Haitian leaders the goal of seeing a self-sustaining economy with opportunity for all Haitians and a greater role for private-sector actors, including Canadian companies.” Ottawa backed Martelly until protests forced him to leave office at the end of his five-year mandate.

They also helped Martelly make the little-known Jovenel Moïse his successor. The US and Canada pushed to move forward with the second round of voting after mass protests broke out over election irregularities. When the second round was finally canceled Global Affairs put out a statement headlined “Ministers Dion and Bibeau concerned by postponement of Haiti’s presidential elections.” A subsequent audit of the election results found that 92% of polling place tally sheets had significant irregularities and a stunning 900,000 of the 1.5 million votes cast were from ‘accredited poll observers’ who could vote at any voting station.

In a new election a year later barely one in five eligible voters participated. According to official figures, Moïse received less than 600,000 votes — just 9.6 percent of registered voters. Voter suppression was widespread.

Beyond direct efforts to dampen turnout, elections had largely lost their legitimacy. Many Haitians believed then and believe today that no matter who receives the most votes the tallies will be ‘arranged’ to suit the ruling candidate. And if a pro-poor candidate wins, their agenda will be stifled or they will be overthrown.

This belief is based upon experience. In the most credible election in Haitian history, Aristide’s Fanmi Lavalas won more than 70% of the votes for 7,000 positions. In the May 2000 legislative and municipal elections they took an unprecedented 89 of 115 mayoral positions, 72 of 83 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 18 of 19 Senate seats.

Knowing they had no chance of gaining power via the ballot box in the foreseeable future, the foreign backed opposition parties cried foul. After initially describing the elections as “a great success for the Haitian population”, the OAS subsequently criticized the counting method in a handful of Senate seats (as has been done in previous selections, the electoral council determined the 50 percent plus one vote required for a first-round victory by calculating the percentages of the top four candidates.) The opposition boycotted the subsequent presidential election, which they had no chance of winning. A USAID poll of 1,002 Haitians conducted on the eve of the November 2000 presidential election showed that Aristide was far and away the most popular politician and Fanmi Lavalas was the preferred party by an incredible 13 to one.

In one of the most impressive feats of 21^st-century imperial propaganda, supposed ‘irregularities’ in the May legislative and municipal election became the justification for destabilizing and ultimately overthrowing Aristide. In other words, the 2004 coup against President Aristide began with an effort to discredit elections he neither participated in nor oversaw.

The US- and Canada-sponsored destabilization campaign included an aid embargo, funding for opposition groups, diplomatic isolation and paramilitary attacks. It culminated with US, French and Canadian troops invading the country to physically remove the president.

Incredibly this was all planned, in broad outline, in advance, in Canada.

In 2003 Jean Chrétien’s Liberal government organized the “Ottawa Initiative on Haiti” where high-level US, French and OAS officials discussed ousting Haiti’s elected president, re-creating the dreaded army and putting the country under UN trusteeship. Thirteen months after the meeting Aristide was forced out and Haiti was under UN occupation. The military was subsequently re-created.

The current Core Group traces its roots to the 2003 Ottawa Initiative on Haiti meeting. Some have labeled it a “fourth branch” of the Haitian government. But the Core Group’s success at rallying the PHTK behind Ariel Henry demonstrates its influence may be greater than that.

The vast majority of Haitians are right to be angry at foreign interference in their country. Look at where it has led.

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***

“The things we were worried would happen are happening.” — Angus Johnston, professor at the City University of New York

Imagine it: a national classification system that not only categorizes you according to your health status but also allows the government to sort you in a hundred other ways: by gender, orientation, wealth, medical condition, religious beliefs, political viewpoint, legal status, etc.

This is the slippery slope upon which we are embarking, one that begins with vaccine passports and ends with a national system of segregation.

It has already begun.

With every passing day, more and more private businesses and government agencies on both the state and federal level are requiring proof of a COVID-19 vaccination in order for individuals to work, travel, shop, attend school, and generally participate in the life of the country.

No matter what one’s views may be regarding the government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, this is an unnerving proposition for a country that claims to prize the rights of the individual and whose Bill of Rights was written in such a way as to favor the rights of the minority.

By allowing government agents to establish a litmus test for individuals to be able to engage in commerce, movement and any other right that corresponds to life in a supposedly free society, it lays the groundwork for a “show me your papers” society in which you are required to identify yourself at any time to any government worker who demands it for any reason.

Such tactics can quickly escalate into a power-grab that empowers government agents to force anyone and everyone to prove they are in compliance with every statute and regulation on the books. Mind you, there are thousands of statutes and regulations on the books. Indeed, in this era of overcriminalization, it is estimated that the average American unknowingly breaks at least three laws a day.

This is also how the right to move about freely has been undermined, overtaken and rewritten into a privilege granted by the government to those citizens who are prepared to toe the line.

It used to be that “we the people” had the right to come and go as we please without the fear of being stopped, questioned by police or forced to identify ourselves. In other words, unless police had a reasonable suspicion that a person was guilty of wrongdoing, they had no legal authority to stop the person and require identification.

Unfortunately, in this age of COVID-19, that unrestricted right to move about freely is being pitted against the government’s power to lock down communities at a moment’s notice. And in this tug-of-war between individual freedoms and government power, “we the people” have been on the losing end of the deal.

Now vaccine passports, vaccine admission requirements, and travel restrictions may seem like small, necessary steps in winning the war against the COVID-19 virus, but that’s just so much propaganda. They’re only necessary to the police state in its efforts to further brainwash the populace into believing that the government legitimately has the power to enforce such blatant acts of authoritarianism.

This is how you imprison a populace and lock down a nation.

It makes no difference if such police state tactics are carried out in the name of national security or protecting America’s borders or making America healthy again: the philosophy remains the same, and it is a mindset that is not friendly to freedom.

You can’t have it both ways.

You can’t live in a constitutional republic if you allow the government to act like a police state.

You can’t claim to value freedom if you allow the government to operate like a dictatorship.

You can’t expect to have your rights respected if you allow the government to treat whomever it pleases with disrespect and an utter disregard for the rule of law.

If you’re tempted to justify these draconian measures for whatever reason—for the sake of health concerns, the economy, or national security—beware: there’s always a boomerang effect.

Whatever dangerous practices you allow the government to carry out now, rest assured, these same practices can and will be used against you when the government decides to set its sights on you.

The war on drugs turned out to be a war on the American people, waged with SWAT teams and militarized police. The war on terror turned out to be a war on the American people, waged with warrantless surveillance and indefinite detention for those who dare to disagree.

The war on immigration turned out to be a war on the American people, waged with roving government agents demanding “papers, please.”

This war on COVID-19 is turning out to be yet another war on the American people, waged with all of the surveillance weaponry and tracking mechanisms at the government’s disposal. You see, when you talk about empowering government agents to screen the populace in order to control and prevent spread of this virus, what you’re really talking about is creating a society in which ID cards, round ups, checkpoints and detention centers become routine weapons used by the government to control and suppress the populace, no matter the threat.

No one is safe.

No one is immune.

And as I illustrate in my new novel, The Erik Blair Diaries, no one gets spared the anguish, fear and heartache of living in a police state.

That’s the message being broadcast 24/7 with every new piece of government propaganda, every new law that criminalizes otherwise lawful activity, every new policeman on the beat, every new surveillance camera casting a watchful eye, every sensationalist news story that titillates and distracts, every new prison or detention center built to house troublemakers and other undesirables, every new court ruling that gives government agents a green light to strip and steal and rape and ravage the citizenry, every school that opts to indoctrinate rather than educate, and every new justification for why Americans should comply with the government’s attempts to trample the Constitution underfoot.

Yes, COVID-19 has taken a significant toll on the nation emotionally, physically, and economically, but there are still greater dangers on the horizon.

As long as “we the people” continue to allow the government to trample our rights in the so-called name of national security, things will get worse, not better.

It’s already worse.

We’ve been having this same debate about the perils of government overreach for the past 50-plus years, and still we don’t seem to learn, or if we learn, we learn too late.

Curiously enough, these COVID-19 mandates, restrictions and vaccine card requirements dovetail conveniently with a national timeline for states to comply with the Real ID Act, which imposes federal standards on identity documents such as state drivers’ licenses, a prelude to a national identification system.

Talk about a perfect storm for bringing about a national ID card, the ultimate human tracking device.

In the absence of a national ID card, which would make the police state’s task of monitoring, tracking and singling out individual suspects far simpler, “we the people” are already being  tracked in a myriad of ways: through our state driver’s licenses, Social Security numbers, bank accounts, purchases and electronic transactions; biometrics; by way of our correspondence and communication devices (email, phone calls and mobile phones); through chips implanted in our vehicles, identification documents, even our clothing.

Add to this the fact that businesses, schools and other facilities are relying more and more on fingerprints and facial recognition to identify us. All the while, data companies such as Acxiom are capturing vast caches of personal information to help airports, retailers, police and other government authorities instantly determine whether someone is the person he or she claims to be.

This informational glut—used to great advantage by both the government and corporate sectors—has converged into a mandate for “an internal passport,” a.k.a., a national ID card that would store information as basic as a person’s name, birth date and place of birth, as well as private information, including a Social Security number, fingerprint, retinal scan and personal, criminal and financial records.

A federalized, computerized, cross-referenced, databased system of identification policed by government agents would be the final nail in the coffin for privacy (not to mention a logistical security nightmare that would leave Americans even more vulnerable to every hacker in the cybersphere).

Americans have always resisted adopting a national ID card for good reason: National ID card systems have been used before, by other oppressive governments, in the name of national security, invariably with horrifying results. After all, such a system gives the government and its agents the ultimate power to target, track and terrorize the populace according to the government’s own nefarious purposes.

For instance, in Germany, the Nazis required all Jews to carry special stamped ID cards for travel within the country. A prelude to the yellow Star of David badges, these stamped cards were instrumental in identifying Jews for deportation to death camps in Poland.

Author Raul Hilberg summarizes the impact that such a system had on the Jews:

The whole identification system, with its personal documents, specially assigned names, and conspicuous tagging in public, was a powerful weapon in the hands of the police. First, the system was an auxiliary device that facilitated the enforcement of residence and movement restrictions. Second, it was an independent control measure in that it enabled the police to pick up any Jew, anywhere, anytime. Third, and perhaps most important, identification had a paralyzing effect on its victims.

In South Africa during apartheid, pass books were used to regulate the movement of black citizens and segregate the population. The Pass Laws Act of 1952 stipulated where, when and for how long a black African could remain in certain areas. Any government employee could strike out entries, which cancelled the permission to remain in an area. A pass book that did not have a valid entry resulted in the arrest and imprisonment of the bearer.

Identity cards played a crucial role in the genocide of the Tutsis in the central African country of Rwanda. The assault, carried out by extremist Hutu militia groups, lasted around 100 days and resulted in close to a million deaths. While the ID cards were not a precondition to the genocide, they were a facilitating factor. Once the genocide began, the production of an identity card with the designation “Tutsi” spelled a death sentence at any roadblock.

Identity cards have also helped oppressive regimes carry out eliminationist policies such as mass expulsion, forced relocation and group denationalization. Through the use of identity cards, Ethiopian authorities were able to identify people with Eritrean affiliation during the mass expulsion of 1998. The Vietnamese government was able to locate ethnic Chinese more easily during their 1978-79 expulsion. The USSR used identity cards to force the relocation of ethnic Koreans (1937), Volga Germans (1941), Kamyks and Karachai (1943), Crimean Tartars, Meshkhetian Turks, Chechens, Ingush and Balkars (1944) and ethnic Greeks (1949). And ethnic Vietnamese were identified for group denationalization through identity cards in Cambodia in 1993, as were the Kurds in Syria in 1962.

And in the United States, post-9/11, more than 750 Muslim men were rounded up on the basis of their religion and ethnicity and detained for up to eight months. Their experiences echo those of 120,000 Japanese-Americans who were similarly detained 75 years ago following the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Despite a belated apology and monetary issuance by the U.S. government, the U.S. Supreme Court has yet to declare such a practice illegal. Moreover, laws such as the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) empower the government to arrest and detain indefinitely anyone they “suspect” of being an enemy of the state.

So you see, you may be innocent of wrongdoing now, but when the standard for innocence is set by the government, no one is safe.

Everyone is a suspect.

And anyone can be a criminal when it’s the government determining what is a crime.

It’s no longer a matter of if, but when.

Remember, the police state does not discriminate.

At some point, it will not matter whether your skin is black or yellow or brown or white. It will not matter whether you’re an immigrant or a citizen. It will not matter whether you’re rich or poor. It won’t even matter whether you’ve been properly medicated, vaccinated or indoctrinated.

Government jails will hold you just as easily whether you’ve obeyed every law or broken a dozen. Government bullets will kill you just as easily whether you’re complying with a police officer’s order or questioning his tactics. And whether or not you’ve done anything wrong, government agents will treat you like a suspect simply because they have been trained to view and treat everyone like potential criminals.

Eventually, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, when the police state has turned that final screw and slammed that final door, all that will matter is whether some government agent chooses to single you out for special treatment.

*

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president The Rutherford Institute. His books Battlefield America: The War on the American People and A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State are available at www.amazon.com. He can be contacted at [email protected].

Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

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

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***

In mid-July, 100 Afghan families from Bamiyan, a rural province of central Afghanistan mainly populated by the Hazara ethnic minority, fled to Kabul. They feared Taliban militants would attack them in Bamiyan.

Over the past decade, I have gotten to know a grandmother who recalls fleeing Talib fighters in the 1990s, just after learning that her husband had been killed.

Then, she was a young widow with five children, and for several agonizing months two of her sons were missing.

I can only imagine the traumatized memories that spurred her to again flee her village today. She is part of the Hazara ethnic minority and hopes to protect her grandchildren.

Girls and mothers, waiting for donations of heavy blankets, Kabul, 2018. [Source: Dr. Hakim]

When it comes to inflicting miseries on innocent Afghan people, there is plenty of blame to be shared.

The Taliban have demonstrated a pattern of anticipating people who might form opposition to their eventual rule and waging “pre-emptive” attacks against journalists, human rights activists, judicial officials, advocates for women’s rights, and minority groups such as the Hazara.

In places where the Taliban have successfully taken over districts, they may be ruling over increasingly resentful populaces; people who have lost harvests, homes, and livestock are already coping with a third wave of Covid-19 and severe drought.

An injured man receives treatment at the Ibn-e-Sina Hospital in Mazar-e Sharif following a bomb attack in Balkh province on June 6, 2021. [Source: Afghanistan-analysts.org]

In many northern provinces, the re-emergence of the Taliban can be traced to the Afghan government’s incompetence, and also to criminal and abusive behaviors of the local military commanders, including land grabs, extortion, and rape.

President Ashraf Ghani, showing little empathy for people trying to flee Afghanistan, referred to those who leave as people looking to “have fun.”

Responding to his April 18 speech when he made this comment, a young woman whose sister, a journalist, was recently killed, tweeted about her father who had stayed in Afghanistan for 74 years, encouraged his children to stay, and now felt that his daughter might be alive had she left. The surviving daughter said the Afghan government could not protect its people, and that is why they tried to leave

President Ghani’s government has encouraged the formation of “Uprising” militias to help protect the country. Immediately, people began questioning how the Afghan government could support new militias when it already lacks ammunition and protection for thousands of Afghan National Defense Forces and local police who have fled their posts.

The main backer of the Uprising forces, it seems, is the formidable National Directorate of Security, whose main sponsor is the CIA.

Some militia groups have raised money through imposing “taxes” or outright extortion. Others turn to other countries in the region, all of which reinforces cycles of violence and despair.

The staggering loss of landmine removal experts working for the nonprofit HALO Trust should add to our sense of grief and mourning.

About 2,600 Afghans working with the demining group had helped make more than 80% of Afghanistan’s land safe from unexploded ordnance strewn over the country after 40 years of war.

Tragically, militants attacked the group, killing ten workers.

Human Rights Watch says the Afghan government has not adequately investigated the attack nor has it investigated the killings of journalists, human rights activists, clerics, and judicial workers that began escalating after the Afghan government began peace talks with the Taliban in April.

Yet, unquestionably, the warring party in Afghanistan with the most sophisticated weapons and seemingly endless access to funds has been the United States. Funds were spent not to lift Afghans to a place of security from which they might have worked to moderate Taliban rule, but to further frustrate them, beating down their hopes of future participatory governance with 20 years of war and brutal impoverishment.

Disabled people from the war are a common sight across Afghanistan. [Source: progressive.org-photo taken by Dr. Hakim]

The war has been a prelude to the United States’s inevitable retreat and the return of a possibly more enraged and dysfunctional Taliban to rule over a shattered population.

The troop withdrawal negotiated by President Joe Biden and U.S. military officials is not a peace agreement. Rather, it signals the end of an occupation resulting from an unlawful invasion and, while troops are leaving, the Biden administration is already laying plans for “over the horizon” drone surveillance, drone strikes, and “manned” aircraft strikes which could exacerbate and prolong the war.

U.S. citizens ought to consider not only financial recompense for destruction caused by 20 years of war but also a commitment to dismantle the warfare systems that brought such havoc, chaos, bereavement, and displacement to Afghanistan.

We should be sorry that, during 2013, when the United States spent an average of $2 million per soldier stationed in Afghanistan, the number of Afghan children suffering malnutrition rose by 50%. At that same time, the cost of adding iodized salt to an Afghan child’s diet to help reduce the risk of brain damage caused by hunger would have been 5 cents per child per year.

We should deeply regret that while the United States constructed sprawling military bases in Kabul, populations in refugee camps soared.

U.S. military base outside of Kabul. [Source: wired.com]

During harsh winter months, people desperate for warmth in a Kabul refugee camp would burn—and then have to breathe—plastic.

Refugee camps provide a stark contract to U.S. military bases. [Source: unhcr.org]

Trucks laden with food, fuel, water, and supplies constantly entered the U.S. military base immediately across the road from this camp.

We should acknowledge, with shame, that U.S. contractors signed deals to build hospitals and schools which were later determined to be ghost hospitals and ghost schools, places that never even existed.

On October 3, 2015, when only one hospital served vast numbers of people in the Kunduz province, the U.S. Air Force bombed the hospital at 15-minute intervals for one-and-a-half hours, killing 42 people including 13 staff, three of whom were doctors. This attack helped greenlight the war crime of bombing hospitals all around the world.

More recently, in 2019, migrant workers in Nangarhar were attacked when a drone fired missiles into their overnight camp. The owner of a pine nut forest had hired the laborers, including children, to harvest the pine nuts, and he notified officials ahead of time, hoping to avoid any confusion. While the workers were resting after an exhausting day of work, 30 were killed and another 40 were badly wounded.

U.S. repentance for a regime of attacks by weaponized drones, conducted in Afghanistan and worldwide, along with sorrow for the countless civilians killed, should lead to deep appreciation for Daniel Hale, a drone whistleblower who exposed the widespread and indiscriminate murder of civilians.

Drone whistleblower Daniel Hale spoke out against the atrocities of the drone war and was sent to jail, while the criminals who ordered the murderous attacks live in luxury. [Source: progressive.org]

Between January 2012 and February 2013, according to an article in The Intercept, these air strikes “killed more than 200 people. Of those, only thirty-five were the intended targets. During one five-month period of the operation, according to the documents, nearly 90 percent of the people killed in airstrikes were not the intended targets.”

On July 27, Hale was sentenced to four years in prison under the archaic Espionage Act.

In a statement to the court, Hale said that he was standing before the judge on that day because he “refused to take something that was never mine to take—precious human life. For that I was compensated and given a medal. I couldn’t keep living in a world in which people pretended that things weren’t happening that were. Please your honor forgive me for taking papers instead of human lives.”

We should be sorry for night raids that terrified civilians, assassinated innocent people, and were later acknowledged to have been based on faulty information.

We must reckon with how little attention our elected officials ever paid to the quadrennial “Special Inspector General on Afghan Reconstruction” reports which detailed many years’ worth of fraud, corruption, human rights violations and failure to achieve stated goals related to countering narcotics or confronting corrupt structures.

We should say we are sorry, we are so very sorry, for pretending to stay in Afghanistan for humanitarian reasons when, honestly, we understood next to nothing about humanitarian concerns of women and children in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan’s civilian population has repeatedly demanded peace.

When I think of the generations in Afghanistan who have suffered through war, occupation and the vagaries of warlords, including NATO troops, I wish we could hear the sorrow of the grandmother who now wonders how she might help feed, shelter and protect her family.

Her sorrow should lead to atonement on the part of countries that invaded her land. Every one of those countries could arrange visas and support for each Afghan person who now wants to flee.

A reckoning with the massive wreckage this grandmother and her loved ones face should yield equally massive readiness to abolish all wars, forever.

*

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A version of this article first appeared on The Progressive Magazine.

Kathy Kelly is a peace activist and author whose efforts to end military and economic wars have sometimes led her to live in war zones and U.S. federal prisons. She can be reached at [email protected].

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]

by Michel Chossudovsky

ISBN Number: 9780973714715

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

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

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

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

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

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @crg_globalresearch.

***

Every very seldom often a book comes along that greatly exceeds expectations.  Lawrence in Arabia is one of those books.  Scott Anderson’s writing is highly entertaining and highly informative at the same time.  It reads in a way that gives the impression more that it is a spy novel rather than an historical study.  It is more than just about Thomas Edward Lawrence, although he is the character who all the others orbit around in this perspective.  It includes a cast of characters that are wonderfully fallible and incompetent – liars, deceivers, manipulators – at their imperial best.

Cast of Characters

The cast of characters is broadly known for most people who have read histories of World War I, its precedents and aftermaths.  Scott Anderson made a wonderful effort in researching the main characters who travelled through  the Middle East, sometimes encountering each other, always on the move, always looking for their advantage.

Going in alphabetical order, Aaron Aaronsohn comes first.  He is described as an optimist, arrogant, and intelligent, and agronomist who set up many research projects in Palestine mostly to further interest in a Jewish state in the region.  He worked both sides, initially serving the Ottoman Empire (of which he was citizen) and later setting up a spy network that proved very effective, but was generally ignored by the British until very late in the war.

The French had their local spy with Colonel Édouard Brémond who handled French policy in the region.  As he “juggled two largely contradictory agendas” he came across to Mark Sykes (see below) as having a “deliberately perverse attitude and policy.”

Ahmed Djemal Pasha served as the Governor of Syria – Syria at that time incorporating most of the modern states of the Middle East.  His managerial style was “mercurial” as he “Forever oscillated between raging severity and gentle magnanimity, often within the same conversation, he often kept everyone around him permanently off balance.”

Germany had its representative in the Ottoman Empire, Curt Prüfer, the German Oriental Secretary.  As head of German intelligence for the region, he was also their master spy, described as being a “consummate charmer” and a “notorious seducer.”

Another one keeping people off balance, Mark Sykes, a British politician and diplomatic advisor on the Middle East, played a strong role in this nest of manipulators.  He had a “breezy arrogance”, “was an aristocratic gadfly…and also a liar.”  While he had a “fecund mind” he was “forever contradicting positions or policies he had advocated earlier – often mere days earlier.”

And what would the war be without an American State Department “special agent”?  William Yale, of the family establishing Yale University, served two other roles:  that of military attaché to the Egyptian Expeditionary Force (British), as well as continuing his ‘normal’ line of work as a more or less regular employee of Standard Oil.

‘Other’ Characters

There are of course many other characters, but the above listed assortment carry the main narrative.  The most important ‘other’ (as they are mostly considered by western narratives) were the Arab contacts that Lawrence and his coterie interacted with in many different capacities, but always trying to manipulate them to their own advantage.

Faisal Ibn Hussein, Emir of the Hejaz,  had to deal with all the double dealings of people like Sykes.  At the same time he had many separate Arab tribes and villages he had to work with, ibn Saud being his chief rival.  His son Abdullah ibn Huissein played a significant role in the area Lawrence operated in.  After the war his dreams and plans for an Arab state were quickly demolished by British and French interests in the region.

As for the British cast of characters, Lawrence thought very little of them.  The military is viewed as  having “impregnable walls of military idiocy,” – how little things have changed!  For the diplomats and politicians they are seen as self-serving, without imagination, essentially a rather dull minded set of people.

Once upon a time in Palestine…

As with most good mystery/spy novels, the cast of characters come together at the end of the story and the various deceits and lies are worked out.  All these characters presented themselves at Versailles, where the “war to end all wars” essentially established the setup for WW II and our current situation in the Middle East.

While this is a story of Lawrence in Arabia, it serves amazingly well as an historical review of Palestinian history in that era and how the various factors came together to create the British Palestinian Mandate with vague authorization to settle Jewish immigrants in Palestine.

Mark Sykes played a significant role in this, while he conceded “Arab, Christian and Moslems alike would fight in the matter to the last man against Jewish Dominion in Palestine,”  he wanted to use “Zionism as a pro-British vehicle in Palestine”, and held meetings with leading British Zionists without the knowledge of either the Foreign Office or the War Department.  The Sykes-Picot agreement, negotiated in relative secrecy, and in contradiction to the McMahon-Hussein Agreement, played a pivotal role in the final Versailles settlements.

Aaronsohn played a significant role, and while he did not advocate fighting per se, he did support force,  “The ultimate future of Palestine…was not a British protectorate in which a Jewish minority would be protected, but a de facto Jewish nation.  This would be achieved both politically and economically, with Zionists simply buying up all the land between Gaza and Haifa and forcing the fellaheen from the land.”

William Yale wrote of Lawrence’s concerns that “the Arabs have no faith in the word of England and of France, and that they believe only such territory they are able to secure by [their own] force of arms will belong to them.”  Lawrence later reflected that in one of his “most prescient comments..that ‘if a Jewish state is to be created in Palestine, it will have to be done by force of arms and maintained by force of arms amid an overwhelmingly hostile population.’”

Well beyond the story of one person, “Lawrence in Arabia”  is a finely crafted work providing interesting details and lively characters in these highly significant years for the development of our modern geopolitical world.  As an historical spy ‘novel’ it would be a great addition to history classes relating to any of the dimensions discussed above (and more).  It can stand alone as a reference and as such creates a level of intrigue and interest leading to the reader wanting and needing to make further inquiries into that history.  Alternatively, it is an excellent and necessary perspective on the normally drab histories covering this period of time.  It makes history interesting, bringing it down to the very human level of personalities with all their abilities and all their faults – and all the repercussions still active today.

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Jim Miles is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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***

Devastating fires on legally protected land in the Amazon rainforest have surged under Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, according to a new report by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

Satellite mapping of blazes and data on illegal deforestation show the number of major fires on embargoed rural land increased from 77 in 2018, immediately before Bolsonaro took office, to 124 in 2020.

The Bureau’s investigation also found that beef from farmers accused of illegal deforestation — and subsequently sanctioned with embargoes — was still making its way into global supply chains, including those serving at least two of the world’s biggest meat companies, JBS and Marfrig.

Embargoes imposed by Brazil’s environment agency, known by its acronym IBAMA, are intended to penalize landowners and allow illegally cleared forest areas to recover. JBS and other major Brazilian meat producers have made commitments not to buy cattle from protected land.

But in one case involving a farmer doing business with the companies, multiple fires were recorded on land that had been embargoed after earlier deforestation.

The Bureau tracked cattle supplied by the farmer implicated in this deforestation to abattoirs run by JBS and Marfrig. The Marfrig abattoir has exported beef to the United Kingdom. The findings raise serious questions about the effectiveness and enforcement of the embargo system and undermine the “deforestation-free” claims of multinational meat companies and their international customers.

The burning of the Amazon has become a global political issue, with Brazil pledging to strengthen environmental enforcement under pressure from the U.S. government. In the U.K., the environment bill going through parliament will require companies to ensure their supply chains are free of links to deforestation.

Bolsonaro, who took office in 2019, has backed commercial exploitation of the world’s largest rainforest.

Under his administration, IBAMA has issued fewer embargoes, sanctioning just 385 areas in the Amazon in 2020, compared with more than 2,500 in 2018. The area of land under embargo has remained roughly the same.

The number of fines issued for illegal burning and deforestation in the Amazon has plummeted, dropping from an average of 4,600 a year between 2012 and 2018 to 2,600 a year in 2019 and 2020.

Area next to the borders of the Kaxarari Indigenous territory, in Labrea, Amazonas state. Taken 17 Aug, 2020. Image by Christian Braga / Greenpeace.

Even before Bolsonaro came to power, fires on embargoed land were a problem. There were 243 major blazes in embargoed areas of the Amazon in 2015 — the worst recent year.

The number of such fires subsequently declined, but the destruction has now ramped up again. Experts say this year’s dry weather could increase the risk of severe blazes when the fire season peaks in August and September.

The Bureau has established that Brazilian meat giants sourced hundreds of cattle from Vilymar Bissoni, a farmer linked to repeated cases of deforestation resulting in multiple embargoes in Mato Grosso state, a major center for beef and soy production.

Records seen by the Bureau and Repórter Brasil show that, between them, JBS and Marfrig bought nearly 1,000 head of cattle from Bissoni over 15 months in 2018 and 2019. Bissoni owns a company with a shareholding in the agribusiness group Bissoni Agropecuária.

Bissoni Agropecuária and related companies run a sprawling network of farms in the municipality of Gaúcha do Norte, with more than 350 square kilometers (135 square miles) of land producing soy and other crops and a beef enterprise with at least 7,000 head of cattle.

Bissoni and other family members connected with the business have been the subject of five environmental embargoes issued between 2009 and 2017, according to public records. At least three, spanning more than 26 km2 (10 mi2), were linked to illegal deforestation.

Unlawful clearing linked to the family business has also resulted in fines totaling more than $1 million.

The Bureau has established that at least three fires — in 2015, 2018 and 2020 — burned within the perimeters of two of these embargoed areas, after the sanctions were imposed.

When approached by the Bureau, the company denied the fires were deliberately set.

Recent satellite images reveal how 6 km2 (2.3 mi2) of forest was destroyed in the vicinity of another farm, Fazenda Vó Jovita, linked to Bissoni Agropecuária, in September 2020. Fires were recorded at this property, which is not currently under embargo, in the same month.

Satellite images show fires on Fazenda Vó Jovita. Image courtesy of Planet Labs Inc

The company told the Bureau: “There was a fire in the indigenous land and in neighbouring areas. We were successful in fighting the fire before it entered our property.”

Records seen by the Bureau reveal that cattle were repeatedly transported from Fazenda Vó Jovita to abattoirs supplying Marfrig and JBS between 2018 and 2019. The Marfrig meat plant that slaughtered the Bissoni cattle had exported to the U.K., highlighting how British consumption of Brazilian beef could inadvertently be helping to drive rainforest destruction thousands of miles away.

JBS and Marfrig’s U.K. customers include Sainsbury’s, Asda, Lidl and other major supermarket chains, as well as wholesalers, some of which supply the country’s National Health Service (NHS).

JBS did not deny doing business with Vilymar Bissoni but said Fazenda Vó Jovita did not correspond with any farm listed on its supplier system. The company said: “JBS does not tolerate any illegal deforestation in the Amazon or other biomes.”

Marfrig confirmed that Bissoni had been a supplier to one of its slaughterhouses, but said the farmer was no longer on its supplier list. The company said the farmer was “fully compliant” with its rules for suppliers at the time of the transactions.

The company said it was committed to zero deforestation in the Amazon biome by 2025 and had introduced a system for monitoring cattle suppliers to reduce the possibility of transferring cattle from “irregular” areas to areas that are complying.

In response to information provided about these supply chain links, an Asda representative said it would stop stocking JBS Brazilian beef in its ‘newly sourced’ canned goods. “We have worked with our supplier to ensure that any newly sourced canned products do not contain any Brazilian beef from JBS by the end of 2021,” an Asda spokesperson said, adding the business is committed to stopping food production linked to deforestation.

A Sainsbury’s spokesperson said, “Sainsbury’s is committed to sourcing sustainably and working together with Global Witness and the wider industry to tackle deforestation and preserve the essential ecosystems in the Amazon and Cerrado.”

Lidl referred to a retail industry statement, which said: “Our members take every effort to ensure the products they sell have no links to deforestation.”

The NHS said its food buying followed government standards for environmental protection, and that since last year it has asked for sustainability strategies from all suppliers for its procurements.

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This new publication is a masterpiece of research and analysis, and a great contribution to rectifying the false narrative perpetrated by western propaganda which demonizes the DPRK. “Immovable Object” repudiates the massive brainwashing campaign which for more than 70 years has perpetuated a despicable fabrication of the cause of the Korean War from 1950-1953, promulgating Orwellian distortions and lies with almost impenetrable consistency.

This work should be required reading at all educational institutions, globally,  as it successfully refutes the too many appalling misconceptions and dangerous and defamatory disinformation which corrupts the thinking about the DPRK by too many people in the West and elsewhere.

The book begins with a phenomenally powerful and convincing documentation of the historic context of the Korean War from 1950-1953, and the author, A.B. Abrams presents irrefutable evidence that the DPRK did not initiate that war and had no motivation to do so.

Further, Dr. Abrams presents compelling evidence that both the United States and the corrupt and fascistic government of Syngman Rhee in the South, were powerfully motivated to provoke and initiate that horrific war because the United States saw it as a springboard to gain control of Northeast Asia, in particular Taiwan, and ultimately to force regime change in the communist People’s Republic of China, replacing Mao Tse Tung with the Chiang Kai-shek.  To its infinite shame, the United Nations “coalition” under U.S. military command attacked the DPRK and later China, using overwhelming weapons of mass destruction, including chemical weapons (dropping thousands of tons of napalm on defenseless Korean civilians, especially women and children), biological weapons (many inspired by the Japanese war criminal, General Ishii, head of Unit 731 in Japan) and had authorized and planned the use of nuclear weapons against the DPRK and China.

Image on the right: Kim Il Sung

The author emphasized that the DPRK received no aid from the USSR or China at the beginning of the war, or prior to the war, because the USSR and China did not want to risk a confrontation with the United States: this refutes any suggestion that the DPRK was acting at the behest of Beijing or Moscow, or that they might have initiated aggression in anticipation of aid from the USSR or China.

However, the author suggests that the initial failure to aid the DPRK was a mistaken strategy by the USSR and China, because if they had provided aid to the DPRK at the beginning, the war could have been ended within three months of its onset, as the Republic of Korea was suffering under the gross venality and repression of the Syngman Rhee regime and the tacit US occupation, and would, in large numbers have welcomed liberation by the DPRK.

The heroism of the DPRK was astounding, and the fact that they were compelled to defend their country without any assistance from the USSR or China at the beginning underscores the wisdom of their policy of “Juche” (self-reliance). On page 28 the author presents the 20 point program (essentially the constitution, it would seem) of the DPRK, issued by Kim Il Sung, Chairman of the Communist Party of Korea in 1946, and the implementation of this program provided a very high level of development for the DPRK, and a very high standard of living for its people, in glaring contrast to the extremely degraded standard of living of South Korea under Syngman Rhee and the US occupation.

The opening five chapters of this book are a masterpiece of accuracy, with multiple pages of quotes from U.S. sources, including the leaders of the U.S. military, confirming the essentially genocidal character of the war. It is difficult and painful to read some detailed passages, as the criminal injustice of the war is both obvious and intolerable.

Chapters 6 and 7 describe, in graphic detail, the barbaric and generally sadistic character of the U.S. military aggressors, and the pathological racism that probably underlies it. However, motivating their cruelty was most probably also arrogant vengeance for their injured pride when they discovered that the North Korean fighters were so skilled that they initially succeeded in defeating the invasion by the excessively armed U.S. military, and such humiliating defeats were unexpected by the U.S, which responded with unspeakable sadism.

The author understates the ideological differences between the two opposing forces during that war. However, the fact that both North Korea and the People’s Republic of  China were socialist, and extremely successful examples of the superiority of the socialist development model was undoubtedly one of the primary motives of the U.S. invasion of the DPRK and China.  The capitalist determination to “roll-back” socialism by any  means seems to be and to have been one of the most powerful and primary bases for US policy since the 1947 “Truman Doctrine of National Security.”

Much of the author’s cited information was publicly available in the United States, even while that war was raging. However, following the victory of the Chinese Communists over both the Japanese and Chiang-Kai-shek in 1949, the panic in the U.S. government over “who lost China” led to the period of McCarthyism in the United States, with the terrorization of Americans by the U.S. government itself, crippling most Americans with the fear of speaking out, lest their work, their homes, their families, their very lives be destroyed by Senator McCarthy and his “House Un-American Activities Committee.”

School teachers were tasked with indoctrinating American children with hatred of communism, hatred of North Koreans and Asians in general. The appalling, stultifying legacy of this fear continues to cripple the capacity for critical thinking, and, indeed, creative thinking among many Americans, and, indeed in many areas of the world. There were a few courageous and notable exceptions, including the great musical play, “South Pacific,” by Rogers and Hammerstein, which attacked the culture of racism, and did reach the hearts of many Americans. The words of the song “You’ve Got To Be Taught To Hate and Fear” are immortal, even today.

Chapter 8 of this book, entitled “Ending the War: Maximum Pressure and a Hard Lesson on American Power”, is, perhaps one of the most damning indictments of Western, particularly U.S. military barbarism in history.  When it became clear that a stalemate existed, and that U.S. plans for hegemony over all of Northeast Asia were conspicuously failing, with President Truman refusing General McArthur’s  call for  the reckless nuclear bombing of North Korea and China, “peace negotiations” for an armistice began.  With the U.S. holding enormous air power of unimaginable ferocity, of course, the dragging out of peace negotiations for two years while the saturation bombing of the DPRK and China continued throughout the two years of “negotiation” is an example of cynical cruelty possibly unmatched in human history.

While it is difficult to conceive of atrocity beyond what has preceded, yet the west’s demand for a “policy” of “voluntary repatriation” surpasses everything:

P.216: ”The prisoner of war issue became so heated in light of the wholly unexpected and illegal new Western demands that the signing of the ceasefire was effectively delayed for eighteen months—with Western warplanes, artillery and warships all the while continuing to bombard northern Korea.” “The importance of engineering prisoner defections went beyond the need for a propaganda victory for the West however – and would come to form the basis of the American claim to be a benevolent as opposed to an imperial power. Western rhetoric increasingly placed a new emphasis on moral universalism to frame the rationale of its interventionism abroad in a new light.  A world order based on the dominance of Western military might ever-present across the globe would remain as it had in the colonial era—but the pretext for this order and for Western interventionism would change. The West’s wars were now ‘humanity’s wars’ fought on behalf of mankind, and those such as the Chinese and North Koreans who resisted the West were thus portrayed to be acting not only against Western interests—but against the interests of humanity, the ‘international community’ and even their own people. The will of the ‘free world’ and the ‘international community’ and the designs of the West were to be indistinguishable. The first use of this rhetoric, and new justification for Western dominated order and the quashing of independent anti-imperial forces by Western might came in Korea.”

”Hugh Deane, American reporter and former Coordinator of Information and naval intelligence officer on General MacArthur’s staff, reported on the U.S. strategy which necessitated a high number of defections from the armies of the East Asian allied powers:…”President Truman and an increasing number of others in the leadership had come to envisage a substitute for the victory the U.S. had failed to win on the battlefield—a propaganda triumph in line with the rollback doctrine that was prevailing over mere containment. An impressive number of prisoners were to refuse adamantly and publicly to go home to the communist evils awaiting them. To do the brunt of the dirty work in selected compounds (there were 32 of them on Koje, all overcrowded) the U.S. secured some 75 persuaders from Taiwan, mostly from Chiang Kai-shek’s equivalent of the Gestapo, and a larger number of members of terrorist youth groups sent in by the Syngman Rhee government. Some wore neat American uniforms, others were posing as prisoners…Their continuing task was to locate prisoners who wished repatriation and to do whatever was necessary to dissuade them. Control of the food supplies was a powerful means, and that, threats, beatings, slashings and the killing of the  most stubborn led to a gratifying number who muttered ‘Taiwan, Taiwan, Taiwan’ when asked the key question…Thus many Chinese who didn’t want to go to Taiwan found themselves there.  Of the Chinese prisoners, 6,670 were repatriated to China, 14, 235 were sent to Taiwan.”

John Nuccio, U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Korea (South Korea), himself alleged that the Taiwanese representatives involved in repatriation were “members of Chiang Kai-shek’s Gestapo.” “He passed on reports that Chinese prisoners were being forced to sign petitions in blood and undergo tattooing to prove that they were anti-communists and wanted to go to Taiwan. One report stated: ‘In early 1952 the brigade leader, Li Da’an wanted to tattoo every prisoner in Compound 72 with an anti-Communist slogan…He ordered the prison guards to beat those who refused the tattoo in front of the five thousand prisoners.  Some of those who couldn’t stand the beatings gave up and agreed to the tattoo. One prisoner, however, Lin Xuepu, continued to refuse the tattoo. Li Da’an finally dragged Lin up to the stage and in a loud voice asked Lin: ‘Do you want it or not?’ Bleeding and barely able to stand up, Lin, a nineteen year old college freshman, replied with a loud ‘No!’ Li Da’an responded by cutting off one of Lin’s arms with his big dagger. Lin screamed but still shook his head when Li repeated the question. Humiliated and angry, Li followed by stabbing Lin with his dagger… Li yelled to all the prisoners in the field: ‘whoever dares to refuse the tattoo will be like him.’” Muccio would later refer to news on the treatment and coercion of Chinese and Korean prisoners as ‘very disturbing reports of horrors being perpetuated in the prisoners camps,’ for which he said the United States was responsible.”

Asymmetry in possession and control of nuclear weapons, with the West able to dangle the nuclear sword of Damocles over the Chinese and North Korean participants in “negotiations” for the “armistice,” ultimately resulted in an armistice with conditions vastly favorable to the West, and the East Asians essentially forced to relinquish their own interests to a vast degree. This lesson was not lost on either the Chinese or the DPRK, with a spokesman for the Chinese stating: “only when we ourselves have the atomic weapon, and are fully prepared, is it possible for the frenzied warmongers to listen to our just and reasonable proposals for ending the war.” The DPRK has learned the deadly lessons of history, repeated throughout the Korean war of the 1950’s and up to the terrifying example of Libya’s renunciation of their nuclear program. Anyone who fails to respect the DPRK’s need for the only adequate defense against its own destruction must be considered either ignorant or dangerous.

Image below: Comfort women (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

“Immovable Object” continues, in following chapters, to describe the  degradation of a majority of South Korean women, forced to prostitution by economic destitution throughout the U.S. military occupation following the war, becoming the equivalent of the “comfort women” they previously were, sexual slaves of the Japanese, and now virtually sexual slaves for the U.S. military occupiers. The self-hatred and total loss of pride in their cultural identity has turned South Korea into the capital of plastic surgery, as South Korean women physically alter their appearance in an effort to emulate the “superior” Western facial features of their conqueror.

One of the book’s most important contributions is its accurate description of the DPRK’s period of almost insurmountable hardship throughout “The 1990’s: An Arduous March and a New World Order,” Chapter 12 of Part Three: “State Survival in the Unipolar Era.”

As the DPRK had been an integrated part of the Soviet economic system, the collapse of the Soviet Union left the DPRK on the verge of economic collapse, with all its economic partners sharing that disastrous economic and social catastrophe.  With its people lacking often barest necessities, hitherto provided in economic exchanges with the former Soviet Union, and climate catastrophies in the form of flooding, drowning crops, drowning entire villages and all methods of agricultural production,  millions died.

There is a politically sinister Western narrative that accuses the government of the DPRK of intentionally killing millions of its citizens. Only willful ignorance, based on crudest prejudice can make such venal allegations.   The large numbers of deaths of victims of a now demolished economic system that had previously sustained the DPRK, exacerbated by climate disasters of staggering proportions, can only be considered an overwhelming national tragedy.

368: “The DPRK’s energy-intensive food production was seriously threatened by the Soviet collapse and the resulting closure of fuel and fertilizer imports from the USSR. Blacklisted as a ‘rogue state’ by the Western Bloc and placed under harsh economic sanctions, the DPRK struggled to import necessary inputs for its agriculture sector from other sources. International organizations such as the World Food Programme responsible for preventing famine remained widely inactive at this time, allowing the crisis to worsen. Although the DPRK was not facing famine, its agriculture was struggling due to the unforeseen political events of the early 1990s. Food shortages in North Korea only reached critical levels when the situation was exacerbated by natural disaster, with independent observers reporting floods of ‘biblical proportions’ and devastated crops, arable land and economic infrastructure. The United Nations Department of Humanitarian Affairs reported: ‘between July 30 and 18 August 1995 torrential rains caused devastating floods in the DPRK. In one area, in Pyongsan county in North Hwanghae province, 877 mm of rain were recorded to have fallen in just seven hours, an intensity of precipitation unheard of in this area…water flow in the engorged Amnoc River which runs along the Korea/China border was estimated at 4.8 billion tons over a 72 hour period.  Flooding of this magnitude had not been recorded in at least 70 years.” “A number of reports indicate that the United States and its allies took more direct measures, alongside their economic sanctions policy to exacerbate crisis in the DPRK during the Arduous March.” “During the Arduous March when food reserves were empty and farming was impossible, the U.S. blocked oil from coming in so 70% of our factories were shut down. We couldn’t produce anything. The state needed produce to distribute to the people but we had nothing. All of a sudden (from 1995) our collective food source was devastated. We simply had no choice but to starve.”

Exploiting this tragic devastation of North Korea, the CIA connived a savagely ugly strategy to destroy even the simplest agricultural efforts  of the people of the DPRK to produce food to survive, preying upon the innocence of DPRK citizens.

Previously quoted U.S. reporter Hugh Deane, former Coordinator of Information and naval intelligence officer on General MacArthur’s staff, wrote regarding the causes of the Korean agricultural crisis:

“In 1995 the Yalu River, along the northern border, flooded south as torrential rains fell, causing mountain avalanches and rock slides as well as inundated villages. The Korean People’s Army evacuated many people in peril, dropping down in helicopters when necessary. The 1996 flood came when the earlier flood had not entirely receded and the damage was even more extensive.  Close to a million acres of paddy and dry field were covered with mud or otherwise taken out of cultivation. A million tons of stored grain were washed away. Railroads, roads, bridges, dams and irrigation systems suffered, coal mines were flooded, some to such an extent that they have been abandoned. More industries were lost, some soon torn down for scrap. Then this year the usual rainy season was rainless. Nearly all the maize crop, normally a million tons, was lost. The rice crop was reduced, both because of the drought and because there was no fertilizer to apply to it. Such are the circumstances that brought hunger and starvation to a great many.” (Page 369)

Nevertheless, “against the near unanimous expectations of U.S. intelligence, the DPRK did not collapse and would begin a slow recovery from crisis in the late 1990’s.”

During his visits throughout socialist countries, Cuba’s Minister of Industries, Ernesto Che Guevara stated that the DPRK was the most advanced of all countries he saw. This, too, was my own impression when I visited the DPRK in 2017. It is a testament to the almost superhuman strength, intelligence, and resilience of the people and government of the DPRK that they have not only survived, but have created one of the most intellectually sophisticated and humanitarian economic and social systems in history.

Perhaps a clue to the extraordinary success in surviving catastrophic wars, economic and environmental disasters, and egregiously cruel sanctions may be found in the symbol of the DPRK created by Kim Il Sung, a symbol which is unique among socialist countries or any other country throughout the world. Although the symbol of most socialist countries is the sickle and the hammer, representing the agricultural and industrial worker, the symbol of the socialist DPRK has a brush standing in the center of the symbol, emblematic not only of the agricultural and industrial workers, but including the artists and the intellectuals of their society, according them the same prestige as the other two groups in the symbol. This was an act of genius by Kim Il Sung, because by granting such prestige to the artistic and intellectual members of society, their talents were developed and available to help devise methods of withstanding the horrors and almost inconceivable disasters which the DPRK has endured. That unique symbol expresses the attitude of a nation which embraces all that is greatest in humanity, and provides a model and blazes a trail toward a more humane and civilized world order.

Chapters 14, “Introducing Mutual Vulnerability:  Implications of North Korea Attaining a Nuclear-Tipped ICBM” through Chapter 19:  “Information War:  The Final Frontier” describes the multiple methods the west, in particular the U.S. is using to undermine, demoralize, and weaken, by attrition, the economic, social, and cultural strength indispensable for the survival of the DPRK.  The violation of the sanctity of the values of the entire DPRK is incessant, as the west continues to devise and concoct more and more devious and covert methods of aggression.

Among the most barbaric and criminal methods of attack against the people of the DPRK are the United Nations Security Council sanctions, which have been attempting to strangle the country, especially those sanctions passed since 2017, which altogether must be described as genocidal.  The so-called “humanitarian exemptions” have failed, almost completely, and this disgraceful United Nations policy must change.  The famous neurosurgeon, Dr. Kee Park, Director of The Korea Health Policy Project at Harvard Medical School has described, in graphic detail, how his surgery on patients in the DPRK has become impossible, as surgical instruments required for complex neurosurgery operations are prohibited, by the sanctions, from entering the DPRK.  Humanitarian medical assistance for the crucial treatment of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis patients has become impossible as the result of the sanctions.  The government of the DPRK has welcomed these humanitarian workers so desperately needed by their people.  The United Nations Security Council sanctions are obstructing these highly skilled humanitarian workers, especially medical workers, from assisting the people of the DPRK.  These Security Council sanctions constitute violation of International Humanitarian Law, and ultimately constitute crimes against humanity.

The author also points out another fact of vital importance: the cost of the nuclear program of the DPRK is vastly less than the cost of maintaining a conventional army, an army which would be needed, overwhelmingly, in the event of another military attack by the U.S. and/or its allies. This often overlooked fact completely undercuts the allegation that the DPRK nuclear program is depriving its people of needed social services. In fact, this nuclear program is freeing up money crucial for these social services.  In view of the fact that the overt and covert aggression against the DPRK is unlikely to diminish anytime soon, the DPRK has no alternative other than to protect itself with the only deterrent capacity that would most likely shield them from a repetition of prior military devastation.

“Immovable Object,” interestingly, describes the extreme disinformation regarding the leadership of the DPRK, adding the words of  former U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright, who is quoted saying:

“After meeting Kim Jong Il she expressed her surprise that the way he had been portrayed to her had been completely wrong. ‘He was actually quite charming…He was very, very well prepared, responded without notes, was not only respectful but also interested in what I had to say.’ To her complete surprise the talks were a success” “In an interview nineteen years later, the former State Secretary’s impression remained unchanged, stating: ‘I do think that what is interesting is how smart and informed Kim Jong Il was…he technically knew an awful lot of things. We were actually talking about missile limits at the time. He did not consult his experts. He really was able to talk about various aspects of the programs. And he spent a lot of time on it. It was very interesting. He also could be very gracious. I mean, it was all kinds of dinners and all kinds of things. But I think that he was determined to make some progress…I was surprise by how technically adept and smart he was.’ According to Albright, the success of future negotiations would rely heavily on whether or not American leaders would recognize how adept and capable the North Korean leadership was—in sharp contrast to what briefings based on U.S. intelligence had led her to believe.”

“Immovable Object” describes the people and government of an extraordinarily advanced nation, the DPRK, with objectivity, and even more importantly, with massive, fully credible documentation refuting all bigoted efforts to demonize and destroy this remarkable people by all means.  As such, it is a desperately needed contribution to the accurate understanding of North Korea.

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Carla Stea is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and Global Research’s Correspondent at UN headquarters, New York. 

Dr. Robert Malone, Inventor of mRNA Technology, Signals the Worst-Case Scenario About COVID-19 Vaccines

By Teodrose Fikremariam, August 02, 2021

Dr. Malone did not just take Fauci at his words, he did something that mainstream media refuses to do. He deconstructed Fauci’s talking points in ways the average person can easily understand; what he deduced are the very issues I have been writing about for months.

Video: CDC Admits Vaccinated Can Transmit Delta & Dr McCullough Sued by BSW Health over Media and Meeting Appearances

By Dr. Peter McCullough and Laura Ingraham, August 02, 2021

Peter McCullough, MD, MPH speaks with Laura Ingraham about the CDC admitting that vaccinated individuals can transmit Delta and about how Dr McCullough is being sued by BSW Health over media and meeting appearances.

COVID-19 Injection Campaign Violates Bioethics Laws. Dr. Robert Malone

By Dr. Joseph Mercola and Dr. Robert Malone, August 02, 2021

As the inventor of the messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine platform, Dr. Robert Malone is one of the most qualified individuals to opine on the benefits and potential risks of this technology.

President Lopez Obrador Reclaims Mexican Independence. Stands against US Interference, in Solidarity with Cuba

By Carla Stea, August 02, 2021

Mexican Foreign Minister Ebrard, reclaiming Mexico’s sovereignty, further declared Mexico’s determination to re-open full diplomatic and economic relations with North Korea.

Moderna Rep: Everyone Taking COVID-19 Vaccine Is “Pretty Much” Part of a Clinical Trial

By Mary Villareal, August 02, 2021

The leaked audio of a phone call between a Moderna representative and a woman who developed Guillain-Barre syndrome after receiving the company’s experimental drug has confirmed something many of us already knew: We are witnessing the biggest clinical trial in vaccine history.

Videos: Fauci, CNN, White House, Newsom and Cuomo All Ratchet Up Attacks on Unvaccinated Americans

By Steve Watson, August 02, 2021

Unvaccinated Americans were the talking point of the day on Monday with a slew of figures slamming those who have chosen not to take the coronavirus jabs, assigning blame to them for America ‘going backwards’, likening them to murderers, and suggesting that they are to blame for more deadly variants of the virus emerging.

The Falling of Democracy Worldwide

By Prof. Joseph H. Chung, August 02, 2021

For decades, in great many countries, the American democracy has been the role model of political regime. In fact, the popularity of the American democracy is such that the basic principles of democracy are integrated even in the constitutions of non-democratic countries.

Video: “Next Crisis Bigger than COVID”: Power Supply, Transportation, Finance. The WEF’s “Cyber Polygon” Pandemic Table Top Scenario

By Ice Age Farmer, August 02, 2021

What threat could possibly be more impactful? Christian breaks down the WEF’s “Cyber Polygon” tabletop exercise, its participants, and predictive programming around a looming large scale cyberattack on critical infrastructure that would unleash a Dark Winter and help to usher in the Great Reset.

Pilots May Hold Key to Mobilizing Against Military COVID Vaccine Mandate

By Pam Long, August 02, 2021

When the military mandated the anthrax vaccine and military pilots showed they were willing to throw away careers and pensions in order to avoid the vaccine, it got the military’s attention — maybe they can do the same with COVID vaccine mandates?

Syrian Insurgents Guilty of ‘Red Line’ 2013 Sarin Chemical Attack, Study Finds

By Aaron Mate, August 02, 2021

A new open-source study concludes that Syrian insurgents carried out the Ghouta sarin chemical attack in August 2013. The explosive findings add to a growing body of public evidence that undermines US-led efforts to blame the Syrian government, which almost led to US military intervention.

CDC Says Vaccinated May be as Likely to Spread COVID as Unvaxxed, as Reports of Serious Injuries after Vaccines Surge

By Megan Redshaw, August 02, 2021

The CDC now says even those people fully vaccinated for COVID are able to get, and spread, the virus. According to internal documents obtained by The Washington Post, the CDC said it’s time to “Acknowledge the war has changed.”

US State Department Lectures Cuba About Human Rights and Living Conditions

By Bill Hackwell and Alicia Jrapko, August 02, 2021

Today with the height of imperial arrogance and hubris, the US State Department issued a joint statement to further its plans to destroy Cuba and all the gains it has made in health, education and welfare.

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This morning, Dr. Robert Malone—inventor of the mRNA technology that is used in Covid-19 “vaccines”—confirmed that my worst fears about these experimental boosters might very well be upon us. He deconstructed the cagey announcement that Dr. Anthony Fauci made where he stated that the nasal titers in “vaccinated” people are the same as the unvaccinated population. That dissembling assertion on its own is a bombshell, Dr. Fauci affirmed that folks who got jabbed have no better levels of protection than people who are either hesitant or hostile to getting shot up with experimental gene therapy nostrums.

Dr. Malone did not just take Fauci at his words, he did something that mainstream media refuses to do. He deconstructed Fauci’s talking points in ways the average person can easily understand; what he deduced are the very issues I have been writing about for months. Dr. Malone noted that nasal titers are poor indicators when it comes to determining the concentration of antibodies and that blood-based titers are a better way of assessing whether or not vaccines are actually working as advertised. Dr. Malone then referred to an NBC report passed on by USA Today—which was subsequently deleted—that quoted a high-level government official who attested that “vaccinated individuals could have higher levels of virus and infect others amid the surge of cases driven by the delta variant of the coronavirus”.

This is only shocking to people who have not done their research about mRNA “vaccines” and are in the dark about their checkered history. Past studies on ferrets and cats should have been enough to subject these yet unproven and unsafe boosters to the full 10-15 year timeframe required to develop safe and effective vaccines. Even though the initial results were promising, once the lab animals were challenged with SARS pathogens, they were wiped out as they developed a deadly condition called Antibody-Dependent Enhancement or ADE. Leveraging a virus that was almost certainly man-made, biotech corporations went all in to validate a treatment that works in theory as they gamble with the lives of billions of people in the hopes that everything works out.

Not only are authority figures treating humans like test subjects, they are flat out peddling medical misinformation only to turn around and malign those of us who call out their fabrications. Their latest distortion is that people who are “unvaccinated” are the sources of the mutations when the reality is the complete opposite as Fauci confirmed this week. Last year, Oxford and AstraZeneca teamed up to develop their booster and then deployed them in the UK, South Africa, Brazil and India. Those four countries are the sources of the variants. This is where “vaccine” propagandists will spout the ever disingenuous “correlation is not causation” trope.

Close to 11,405 deaths and more than 62,000 severe injuries attributed to mRNA and adenovirus “vaccines” in the United States alone yet politicians, pundits, medical professionals and the establishment writ large insanely keep conditioning people to get jabbed. Back in April, I wrote an article in which I warned that humanity could very well be facing a global holocaust if ADE emerges among the billions of people who have been “vaccinated” thus far. What Dr. Malone did was authenticate, with qualification, my worst fears. I don’t write this to gloat or to somehow say “I told you so”; I have family members who were “vaccinated” so being proven right about my concerns will come at a cost that I cannot bear to think of.

NIH knew about the risks of Antibody-Dependent Enhancement (ADE) vis-a-vis Covid-19 “vaccines” all along, this is from NIH’s website published Dec 4th, 2020! [click pic to view original source]

Read the full article here.

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Teodrose Fikremariam is the co-founder and editor of the Ghion Journal. Prior to launching the Ghion Journal, he was a political organizer who once wrote a speech idea in 2008 that was incorporated into Barack Obama’s South Carolina primary victory speech. He is originally from Ethiopia and a direct descendent, seven generations removed, of one of Ethiopia’s greatest Emperors Tewodros II.

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Peter McCullough, MD, MPH speaks with Laura Ingraham about the CDC admitting that vaccinated individuals can transmit Delta and about how Dr McCullough is being sued by BSW Health over media and meeting appearances.

Video

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Safety data analysis and reporting in clinical trials of the COVID jabs appear to have been manipulated in at least some cases. One method for manipulating randomized clinical trial safety data is to only analyze the “per protocol” treatment group (those who completed all doses and were fully compliant with the study design) as opposed to “intent to treat” which would include all patients that have signed informed consent

For example, if a participant only accepted one dose and trial protocol called for two, under a “per protocol” analysis, adverse events they experienced would be dismissed and not included in the safety analysis. This is a classic way to manipulate safety data in clinical research, and it’s usually forbidden

Since the COVID shots only have emergency use authorization, they are experimental products and, as such, they are not authorized for marketing

Bioethics are written into federal law. As an experimental trial participant, you have the right to receive full disclosure of any adverse event risks. Full disclosure of risks is not being done, and in fact is being suppressed

Adverse event risks must also be communicated in a way that you can comprehend what the risks are, and the acceptance of an experimental product must be fully voluntary and uncoerced. Enticement is strictly forbidden

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Watch the video here.

As the inventor of the messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine platform, Dr. Robert Malone is one of the most qualified individuals to opine on the benefits and potential risks of this technology.

His background includes a medical degree from Northwestern University, a master’s degree from Salk Institute, a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from UC Davis, a Giannini fellowship in pathology and a post-graduate fellowship in global clinical research at Harvard.

He taught pathology to medical students for about a decade at the University of Maryland and the University of California Davis, and then became an associate professor of surgery at Uniformed Services, University of the Health Sciences, where he launched a major research institute focused on breast cancer and high-throughput screening in genomics for breast cancer.

After that, he helped found a company called Inovio, which has brought forth a number of gene therapy discoveries, including vaccines, and the use of pulsed electrical fields as a delivery method. After 9/11, a colleague at the University of Maryland’s department of business and economic development connected him with Dynport Vaccine Company, a startup that had received a DoD contract to manage its biodefense products.

“That’s when I transitioned from being more of an academic to the advanced development world of clinical research, regulatory affairs, project management, compliance, quality assurance — all of that stuff that goes into actually making a product,” Malone explains.

“It was a huge epiphany that the world really didn’t need more academic thought leaders and [that] I was wasting my time focusing on that. What the world really needed was that people understood the underlying technology and the discovery research world, but also understood advanced development, which is that drug development is a highly-regulated world. And there aren’t very many of those.

I’ve captured a couple of billion dollars in grants and contracts for companies that I’ve worked with, and clients from the government, from BARDA [Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority], from the Department of Defense and others.”

COVID-19 ‘Vaccines’ Are Gene Therapy

I’ve been accused of falsely stating that these COVID shots are not vaccines but gene modifying interventions. However, even Malone agrees with this statement, and as the inventor of the technology, he should know. He points out that in Germany, by law you cannot refer to this technology as a genetic vaccine or gene therapy vaccine. “The German government has specifically outlawed the use of gene therapy-based vaccine as a term,” he says.

With his background, and having received the COVID shot himself, he can hardly be called an “anti-vaxxer” and/or someone who doesn’t believe in gene therapies. Yet, he recently went public with concerns about the safety of rolling out this kind of technology on a mass scale, and the unethical ways in which they’re being promoted.

As has become the trend, he was immediately censored. Wikileaks even went so far as to erase him from the historical section of the mRNA vaccine page and his own personal Wikipedia page was removed. All references to Malone inventing the mRNA technology were removed and attributed to a variety of institutions instead.

Malone’s public involvement with the COVID jab issue began with a short essay¹ reflecting on the bioethics of the current campaign to get a needle in every arm. This essay grew out of a conversation he’d had with a Canadian physician. Malone’s essay catalyzed an interview with Bret Weinstein in June 2021 on the DarkHorse Podcast.

This isn’t the first time Malone has spoken out against unethical behavior in science. He was also a whistleblower in the Jesse Gelsinger death case,² back in 1999. Gelsinger was a young man who had a rare metabolic disorder called ornithine transcarbamylase deficiency syndrome (OTCD), where dangerous amounts of ammonia build up in your blood.

He’d been diagnosed at the age of 2, and was managing his condition with a regimen of nearly 50 drugs a day. At 17, Gelsinger signed up for an investigational gene therapy. Like the COVID shots, the therapy involved injecting a gene attached to an adenovirus, which would be integrated into his DNA to permanently produce an enzyme that prevents ammonia buildup.

Gelsinger was the 18th person to receive the gene therapy, and while the others had only experienced mild side effects, Gelsinger had a severe response after scientists at the University of Pennsylvania administered adenoviruses doses that were far above what had been approved by the corresponding safety committee.

Gelsinger became disoriented and developed jaundice and acute inflammation, followed by a rare blood clotting disorder and multi-organ failure. He was dead within days. Even a decade later, Gelsinger’s death is still considered the biggest setback for gene therapy.³

“When the Jesse Gelsinger events happened, I also had long been a deep insider in the gene therapy space, so I had specific knowledge of what had happened at Penn — the ethical transgressions, shall we say, that occurred — and had awareness, again, just like now, of the technology,” Malone says. “So, I was able to make sense of things that otherwise were obscure for journalists and even other scientists.”

After speaking out about the ethical transgressions that contributed to Gelsinger’s death (dosing which exceeded approved levels), Malone became a “persona non-grata” in the gene therapy community. In other words, he was blacklisted by his peers and prevented from participating in gene therapy research.

“That’s part of why I went in a different direction with my career and focused on government work and biodefense, supporting the Department of Defense,” Malone says. “The lesson learned for me is that I’m able to be resilient, together with my wife’s support.

Another key lesson was that your friends will support you through times of crisis if you behave with integrity and maintain your friendships and treat people with respect. I also had a lot of support for having spoken out and taken an ethical high road on that and not compromised myself …

It’s part of why I’m comfortable [speaking out now]. People tell me that I come across as balanced and calm. But yes, this is a little bit frightening and once again, [I’m] putting my career on the line. But once again many of my colleagues in the government are grateful that I’m speaking this way. They are not able to have a voice because of their jobs and government policies about speaking out.”

Public Responses to Censorship Make a Difference

As explained by Malone, he’s been heavily censored since his three-hour interview with Brett Weinstein. LinkedIn even deleted his account. However, LinkedIn users all around the world canceled their accounts in protest and wrote the company, explaining their cancellations were in protest of Malone being censored.

The social media uproar culminated in a major news article in a mainstream Italian paper, which appears to have pushed LinkedIn over the edge. LinkedIn eventually reinstated Malone’s account and even sent him a letter of apology.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a company writing a letter of apology after delisting and deleting somebody,” he says. “My sins were ‘profound,'” he says sarcastically, “They were that I outed the chairman of the board of directors of Reuters who is also sitting on the board of Pfizer, for cross-posting the Wall Street Journal article on vaccine toxicity risks, and well, basically for complaining about censorship.

So, they sent me my list of sins with six different posts that were to pretty much anybody’s eye innocuous, which I then took and cross-posted onto Twitter. So, that revealed the absurdity of that … The note [of apology] that I received basically said, ‘Look, we don’t have the expertise to censor you, but if you cross the line, we have the right to summarily delete you again and so mind your manners.'”

The Repurposing of Drugs to Combat Pandemics

In recent years, Malone has been involved in yet another startup company (Atheric Pharmaceuticals), in collaboration with the DoD, that focused on repurposing drugs to combat Zika infection. That company went bankrupt for lack of investor interest in repurposing drugs for treating infectious diseases.

When the COVID-19 outbreak began, he got a call from a colleague who works in the intelligence community in Wuhan, China, who urged him to put together a team to investigate the possibility of repurposing old drugs against COVID.

His team is currently about to enter clinical trials for a number of licensed off-patent drugs. That said, his biggest contribution so far is probably his commentary on the bioethics of what is going on.

“Both my wife and I are deeply ethical people,” he says. “We’re high school sweethearts. We try really hard to live ethical lives and to help our fellow man as well as the animals in our lives. So that’s just the place we come from. It’s bedrock. We’re not rich people.

I recall a long telephone call with the Canadian physician that poured his heart out about the situation in Canada that he’s encountering, both with vaccine administration in primary practice, and also in administering alternative therapies to outpatients, which generally have no therapies available.

I mean, the position is a bit shocking — in the emergency rooms all across the world. Basically, you go to the ER and if your O2 sets are down, pushing towards 80, they say, ‘Well, go [home] and come back when your lips are blue.’ And that’s the essence of it. They don’t really offer anything.

So many physicians, including this gentleman in Canada, have been seeking alternative strategies and they’ve tested and administered these various agents. We’ve heard of fluvoxamine, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine. There are many, many others now, including those that we’re working with (famotidine and celecoxib) that seem to have therapeutic benefit when administered early to shut down this hyperinflammatory response.

So, he shared this and the stories of multiple reports of vaccine adverse events that in his clinical judgment were clearly vaccine related, some of them quite serious, and that the Canadian government would summarily dispose of those as non-related even though in his clinical judgment, they clearly were related.

He spoke about the enticement of children in Canada with ice cream and the willingness of the Canadian government to administer vaccine to children without their parents or guardians consent after enticing them with ice cream cones, and some of the other things that I just found shocking …

It mirrors what we’re seeing across the world, where governments are taking liberties with people’s health and their rights without real legislative authorization to do so in most cases.”

Core Bioethical Principles Are Being Violated

Malone and his wife Jill are both trained in bioethics, so after listening to this Canadian colleague, he decided he could help by writing a lay press opinion piece about the bioethics of experimental vaccines under emergency use authorization.

“I have intimate knowledge of not only the emergency use authorization legislation, the FDA policies behind it, I even know the people that wrote it,” Malone says.

“So, we dove in, refreshed our memories on the whole history of the modern bioethics construct that briefly runs from Nuremberg Trials to the Nuremberg Code, to Helsinki Accord, to the Belmont Report in the United States, and to the common rule that exists in the code of federal regulations.”

In summary, since the COVID shots only have emergency use authorization status, they are experimental products, and as such, they are not authorized for marketing. The core bioethical principles that apply therefore involve three key components:

As you probably know, I am on that “disinformation dozen” list. The irony of this situation is that government officials are really the ones contributing to the deaths by not adhering to bioethical principles that are enshrined in law. It’s a classic case of 1984 Orwellian doublespeak.

As I mention in the interview, the “misinformation dozen” list is the creation of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a shady organization funded by dark money that sprung up less than two years ago.

“Yeah, you don’t even have to go to dark money. It’s out in the open. There’s this Trusted News Initiative led by the BBC. They announced … last fall that they have integrated Big Tech, Big Media and new media, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, et cetera, into an organization that was intended to control false narratives relating to elections, but they decided to turn it on what they perceived as false narratives for vaccines,” Malone says.

“As if that wasn’t enough, the Wellcome Trust and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have announced initiatives where they’re making block grants to Facebook, which is then funding these new pop-up fact-checker organizations … [that] are employing methods to smear people and to ban information …

What happens is these fact-checker organizations will make their pseudo fact check, like what I experienced with Reuters — which was transparently false, their fact check — and then the media will recycle the fact check. So that moves up in the Google ranking and they’re citing themselves. That’s what’s going on. And it’s sponsored by the likes of Wellcome Trust and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and they’re quite proud of it.”

Why Target Children and Pregnant Women?

Considering the unknown risks involved, why are governments and vaccine makers pushing so hard for children and pregnant women to participate in this experiment? Both have an extremely low risk for complications from COVID-19, which makes adverse effects of the vaccine all the more unacceptable, if not all together intolerable.

Making matters worse, there’s no process in place to capture all side effects. Somehow, this was left out, and there’s evidence to suggest this was done intentionally.

“I think it’s important for the listenership to recognize that what we have is still an emerging understanding of what the adverse events are,” Malone says. “I could tell you the story of how the cardiotoxicity adverse event was recognized, and it was not through official channels. There is [also] the appearance that the CDC is deliberately under-reporting adverse events to the public.

And there’s the appearance that there was manipulation of safety data analysis and reporting in the Phase 1, 2, 3 clinical trials for some of these products by focusing on patients who had completed the study per protocol, as opposed to those that entered the study as intended to treat.

That’s a subtle distinction, but what it means is that if you’ve only accepted one dose of vaccine under those clinical trial protocols and you have an adverse event, and you decide to drop it out, or they gently suggest that you shouldn’t take the second dose, that information about the adverse events that you received — which would have made you at even higher risk for the second dose — is lost. It’s not included in the safety analysis.

This is a classic way to manipulate safety data in clinical research, and it’s strictly forbidden. So, the FDA is onto that trick. Normally, if I was to do that, I would get slapped down immediately. Why they allow these large drug companies to do this (if, in fact they did) — and you can’t claim that Pfizer didn’t know what they were doing — is beyond me.

Now that we know about the adverse events associated with the cardiotoxicity in adolescents and the damage to the heart and the deaths associated with that, people can start to do calculations based on official CDC data, [but] those data are flawed.

They probably under-report the true adverse event rate by about a 100-fold if you’re relying on the various historic analysis information. But you can look at those data. And if you’re a data scientist, you can do the calculations that the CDC is not doing and not disclosing to us about risk benefit.

The ones that I’ve seen done by well-trained and highly experienced specialists, people that work for the insurance industry that do this for a living … come out literally upside down.”

If the clinical trials did not include patients dropped after Dose 1 in the safety analysis, this would indicate a “per protocol” safety analysis was performed, and therefore that the safety data analyses leading to the emergency use authorizations were not based on rigorous safety assessments.

Multiple patients claiming to have been included in COVID-19 clinical trials have also reported on social media that their reports were excluded from final safety analyses, although this cannot be verified.

Risks Significantly Outweigh Benefits

A study⁷ posted July 7, 2021, which looked at deaths occurring in children in the U.K. during the first 12 months of the pandemic, found 99.995% of children diagnosed with COVID-19 survived.

By July 19, 2021, in the United States, a total of 335 children under 18 had died with a COVID-19 diagnosis on their death certificate.⁸ An analysis by Marty Makary and colleagues at Johns Hopkins, together with FAIR Health, showed none of the children under 18 who died and were diagnosed with COVID-19 between April and August 2020 were free of preexisting medical conditions such as cancer.⁹

Now, while the average healthy child has a minuscule chance of dying from COVID-19, and their risk of developing heart inflammation from the COVID jab is also quite low, the risk associated with the injection is still significantly greater than any risk associated with the natural infection. As explained by Malone:

“That ratio comes out suggesting that there will be more lives lost to receipt of the ‘vaccine’ in a universal vaccine campaign than there would be if all those kids were infected by SARS-CoV-2. This upside-down ratio appears to extend or very close to equivalent at least up to the age of 30.

So, we’re in a position where the data that we have are admittedly flawed. Is that by intent or what? From my standpoint, the data are the data, so I can’t smoke out what somebody within health and human services intended to do, but I can look at the data, and others can.

And the data absolutely do not support a positive risk-benefit ratio for vaccination of infants through young adults, based on any normal criteria. So then why are they doing this crazy stuff? It seems to all be wrapped around the axle of the need to justify universal vaccination.

I argue that this is actually a mid-century policy that goes back to the ’50s and the ’60s polio vaccine campaign, when the government and world health authorities established a position that it was OK to lie, to withhold information about risk for vaccines, because to have the full spectrum of information about the risks of vaccines would cause people to not accept the vaccine.

So, ‘Shut up, we know it’s best for you and don’t question us’ is a firmly authoritarian position. It is intrinsically authoritarian and paternalistic. It’s exactly the kind of stuff that George Orwell wrote about in his book ‘1984.’ It was a warning … of how governments and authoritarian structures will behave and do behave.”

Denial of Vaccine Dangers Has Been Federal Policy Since 1984

Ironically, Malone points out that in the 1984 Federal Register,¹⁰ it’s stated that posting information into the federal register about vaccine risks that jeopardizes vaccine I uptake shall be suppressed.

“So, it’s a clear federal policy going back to 1984,” Malone says. “This is the way they’re going to handle things. And they’re going to handle it with the noble lie of saying, ‘No, there are no risks and what we’re doing is fully justified’ …

I don’t think we have to go to imagining some grand conspiracy at Davos between certain individuals. I think this is an emergent phenomena of the intersection of old-school thinking about information management and new-school capabilities and technologies.

I think the CDC, HHS, WHO, and Wellcome Trust or Bill & Melinda Gates foundation, etcetera, have just grossly misread the population, certainly in the United States. And so now we’re in a position where before, according to Del Bigtree, there was about 1% to 2% of people that self-identified as anti-vaxxers, and we’re now [above] 40%. Clearly, about 40 to 50% of the population are just dug in. They’re not going to accept these vaccines.

The White House now finds it necessary to have a special group to identify and target 12 American citizens for what they believe to be vaccine disinformation, and to make a big public press announcement about it. Don’t they have anything else to do? It seems like the world has got bigger problems than Dr. Mercola, but what do I know?

The whole thing is mind-bending. And a lot of people, including many Europeans, are really lit up over this. They remember. European intellectuals are very aware of the dynamics that happened in Germany in the 1930s … I think this could be a turning point in a lot of things.”

The Powers That Be Have Been Given Free Reign

While Malone is not interested in speculating about the intentions behind all this malfeasance, he’s intimately familiar with the power of Big Pharma to manipulate governments. As detailed in other articles, several of the COVID injection makers have a rich history of illegal activity and unethical behavior, and now they have been given free reign to do as they please.

They’re been completely absolved from liability if and when something goes wrong with these injections, and governments are enticing and bullying citizens to participate in Big Pharma’s experiment.

“If you give that kind of liberty and power to a global multinational and absolve them of any accountability, they will serve their stockholders,” Malone says. “They are not geared to serving the rest of us, whatever they may say in their press releases.

That’s just how big pharma behaves, and we’ve chosen this model. Messaging having to do with alternative treatments and the importance of wellness, those are not consistent with the ‘Take this pill, pay your price and shut up’ kind of business model.

Personally, I think that Mr. Gates and his foundation have done enormous irreparable harm to world health community through his actions and his own personal biases. He has really distorted global public health. At some point, there will be books written about this, and I’m sure an enormous number of Ph.D. theses will be granted. But meanwhile, we all have to live with it.”

The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) recently posted more than 50 video presentations from the pay-for-view Fifth International Public Conference on Vaccination held online October 16 to 18, 2020, and made them available to everyone for free.

The conference’s theme was “Protecting Health and Autonomy in the 21st Century” and it featured physicians, scientists and other health professionals, human rights activists, faith community leaders, constitutional and civil rights attorneys, authors and parents of vaccine injured children talking about vaccine science, policy, law and ethics and infectious diseases, including coronavirus and COVID-19 vaccines.

In December 2020, a U.K. company published false and misleading information about NVIC and its conference, which prompted NVIC to open up the whole conference for free viewing. The conference has everything you need to educate yourself and protect your personal freedoms and liberties with respect to your health.

Don’t miss out on this incredible opportunity. I was a speaker at this empowering conference and urge you to watch these video presentations before they’re censored and taken away by the technocratic elite.

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Notes

¹ Trial Site News May 30, 2021

² sciencehistory.org June 4, 2019

³ Indian Journal of Pharmaceutical Science Sep-Oct 2009; 71(5): 488-498

⁴ Research Square July 7, 2021 DOI: 10.21203/rs.3.rs-689684/v1

^5, 6 Wall Street Journal July 19, 2021

⁷ FDA Emergency Use Authorization for Vaccines Explained November 20, 2020

⁸ FDA Licensed Vaccines July 16, 2021

⁹ FDA COVID-19 Vaccines July 20, 2021

¹⁰ Federal Register Vol. 49, No. 107 June 1, 1984 pp 23006-007 (PDF)

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According to the most recent stats released by the CDC this past Friday, their Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) now has recorded twice as many deaths following the non-FDA approved experimental COVID-19 shots during the past 8 months, than deaths recorded following ALL FDA approved vaccines for the past 30 years.

In spite of these U.S. Government CDC-verified facts regarding the experimental COVID-19 shots, not only are they continuing to administer them, but the big push now is to MANDATE them as a requirement for employment in both government and private sector jobs.

And so far, at least, it seems that the majority of the U.S. public is willing to comply and participate in what can only be labeled mass genocide.

As we reported last week, Israel is now planning to roll out a third injection of the Pfizer shots to those who have already been injected twice and survived, targeting seniors first, and we can certainly expect the same rollout soon here in the U.S. as well.

The July 30th data dump into VAERS, which everyone acknowledges is not the full data of deaths and injuries following COVID-19 shots, reveals 11,940 deaths and 618,648 injuries among 518,770 cases, including 12,808 permanent disabilities, 65,272 emergency room visits, 40,873 hospitalizations, and 11,198 life threatening injuries.

Source.

There are also 1,175 premature deaths of unborn children following COVID-19 injections of pregnant women. (Source.)

This has to be the most censored information in the U.S. right now, even though it is based on the government’s own data and own reporting system.

When confronted with these statistics, the CDC’s response is that these reports do not prove causation. They would have everyone believe that all of these deaths and injuries following the COVID-19 injections are just “coincidences.”

Reports of adverse events to VAERS following vaccination, including deaths, do not necessarily mean that a vaccine caused a health problem. A review of available clinical information, including death certificates, autopsy, and medical records, has not established a causal link to COVID-19 vaccines. (Source.)

However, if you search for deaths following all FDA-approved vaccines for the 30 years prior to the emergency use authorizations of the COVID-19 shots, you will see that there are now about twice as many deaths following the COVID-19 shots compared to deaths following ALL vaccines for the PAST 30 YEARS.

Source.

Do the math people. Fact check the CDC’s claims.

The COVID-19 injections were first given emergency use authorization in early December, of 2020. So the recorded deaths following these shots as of July 23, 2021 is 11,940, in less than 8 months.

But let’s round it off to 8 months, which would equate to an average of 1,492 deaths per month.

From 1/1/1991 through 11/10/2020, there were 6,068 deaths in 359 months, which equates to an average of 17 deaths per month following FDA-approved vaccines.

That’s a 8676% increase of recorded deaths following the COVID-19 shots, compared to deaths following all previous FDA-approved vaccines.

What are the statistical odds that these are all “coincidences”?

Pretty much ZERO. The CDC is lying to you. They serve the pharmaceutical companies, not the American people, and the sooner you figure that out, the better, because your life is at stake, and your life is meaningless to them.

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Glen Ford’s Legacy will live forever.

Our thoughts today at Global Research are with Glen Ford, his family and friends at Black Agenda Report

Consult Glen Ford’s Archive on Global Research

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Glen Ford, a veteran broadcast, print and digital journalist who hosted the first nationally syndicated Black news interview program on TV before going on to found the Black Agenda Report website, has died, according to reports. He was 71 years old.

Ford’s cause of death was not immediately reported. Several sources announced his death late Wednesday morning, including Margaret Kimberley, an editor and columnist at Black Agenda Report, the weekly news magazine that offers commentary and analysis from a Black perspective which Ford launched and served as its executive editor.

I am sorry to inform you that Glen Ford, founder of Black Agenda Report, and my friend, comrade, and mentor has passed away. We will share more information as we receive it.

May he rest in power.@GlenFordBAR @blkagendareport

— Margaret Kimberley (@freedomrideblog) July 28, 2021

Condolences began pouring in on social media once news of Ford’s death broke.

My dear brother Glen Ford has passed! He kept alive the highest standards of truth-telling and justice-seeking of the Black radical tradition. He was a giant in revolutionary vision, analysis and praxis! We should never forget him! @blkagendareport

— Cornel West (@CornelWest) July 28, 2021

To call Ford a career journalist is a vast understatement. According to his bio on the Black Agenda Report website, Ford was reporting the news live on the radio as early as 11-years-old and went on to enjoy a career in journalism for more than 40 years that included working as a Washington bureau chief as well as a correspondent covering the White House, Capitol Hill and State Department.

After getting his start in news radio in Augusta, Georgia, Ford honed his skills at other local news stations and eventually created the “Black World Report,” a syndicated half-hour weekly news magazine that paved the way for the Black Agenda Report to be founded. Years later, in 1977, Ford helped launch, produce and host “America’s Black Forum,” the first nationally syndicated Black news interview program on commercial television.

Glen Ford, co-founder of @blkagendareport, was a fearless, incisive thinker and a kind soul. the news of his passing is heartbreaking. lal salaam.

— 𝕯𝖍𝖆𝖗𝖓𝖆 𝕹𝖔𝖔𝖗 (@dharnanoor) July 28, 2021

That led to the creation of “Black Agenda Reports” two years later in a successful effort to focus his syndicated content in the areas of Black women, business, entertainment, history and sports.

The Black Alliance for Peace mourns the passing of Glen Ford (November 5, 1949-July 28, 2021) from an elder to an ancestor. pic.twitter.com/8tLfBQcmSw

— Black Alliance for Peace (@Blacks4Peace) July 28, 2021

About a decade later, Ford branched out into the then-burgeoning popularity of hip-hop culture with “Rap It Up,” the first syndicated hip-hop music show in American history.

After co-founding BlackCommentator.com in 2002, he and the rest of the website’s staff left to launch Black Agenda Report, which remains a popular source of information, news and analysis from a Black perspective.

Rest in Power Glen Ford. We want to send our condolences to his family, and the @blkagendareport family for this tremendous loss. But what a substantial and inspirational life he led in terms of liberatory media work. https://t.co/vo2AIWeg9T

— Millennials Are Killing Capitalism (@MAKCapitalism) July 28, 2021

In one of his final dispatches before his death, Ford, along with Kimberley, on July 21 addressed the jailing of former South Africa President Jacob Zuma, questioning on Black Agenda Report whether the resulting uprising there should be characterized as “riots” or an “insurrection.”

Born Glen Rutherford in Georgia in 1949, Ford famously has his surname shortened by James Brown, who owned the radio station where Ford got his start in Augusta, Georgia.

#GlenFord Presente!
Mobilization4Mumia sends condolences to his family and the staff at Black Agenda Report. His perceptive analyses will be missed. pic.twitter.com/ULrxJeK8hj

— Mobilization4Mumia (@Mobilize4Mumia) July 28, 2021

In an example of how Ford made a point to hold elected officials accountable, he once discussed during an interview in 2009 about the “ethical dilemma” he faced by questioning then-Sen. Barack Obama about his presidential agenda and his membership to the Democratic Leadership Council, which Ford — then working with BlackCommentator.com — referred to as “the right wing corporate mechanism of the Democratic Party.” Obama, Ford recalled, responded with a “fuzzy mish-mash of non-answers.” But because Ford “did not want to be seen as the proverbial crabs in a barrel” and affect Obama’s political ascent, he allowed Obama to pass what he called the “bright line test.”

I will forever be grateful to Glen Ford for giving this concept: “the black misleadership class.” Rest In Peace Glen Ford.

— Deborah E. McDowell (@dem8z) July 28, 2021

Ford said that was a mistake that he would never make again and suggested that it was a lesson well learned.

“I’ve never regretted a political decision as much as having passed Barack Obama when he should have failed the test; and we never made that mistake again,” Ford said in the interview.

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Featured image: Glen Ford. | Source: Glen Ford / LinkedIn

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The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) released their investigative findings of a recent outbreak of COVID-19 in Massachusetts. [Press Release Here] According to their study, 74% of those infected during the regional outbreak were previously vaccinated.

According to the study, 469 cases were tracked from the Provincetown, MA, outbreak July 3rd through 17th.  Of the 469 COVID cases identified, the CDC is claiming 346 (74%) occurred in previously vaccinated people.  Specimens from 133 of the patients showed 90% of those cases were the “Delta variant”.

Five people were hospitalized, no-one died during the outbreak.  [Read Study Here]

(WaPo) […] the study found that vaccinated individuals carried as much virus in their noses as unvaccinated individuals, strongly suggesting that vaccinated people could spread the virus to each other. (link)

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SIMON BOLIVAR:  “The United States seems destined by providence to plague Latin America with misery in the name of liberty.”

In a courageous and desperately needed acknowledgement of  truth, Mexico’s Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, at a United Nations Security Council press stake-out July 16th  denounced the destructive impact of the brutal embargo declared against Cuba, a denunciation supported by 184 member states of the United Nations, and in his Security Council speech Ebrard denounced the cruel impact and violation of international humanitarian law caused by “the impact of the sanctions applied in some countries where serious humanitarian crises or situations of great human suffering are created.”

Mexican Foreign Minister Ebrard, reclaiming Mexico’s sovereignty, further declared Mexico’s determination to re-open full diplomatic and economic relations with North Korea.  This statement re-asserts Mexico’s independence from control by the Colossus to the North, and restores Mexico’s prestige, which had been shattered by former Mexican President Pena Nieto, who, along with Brazil, Peru and Chile shamefully capitulated to pressure from the United States, and declared the Ambassador of the DPRK Persona-Non-Grata in 2017.

It is significant that this press stake-out by the Mexican Foreign Minister was reported together with his declaration of intent to re-establish full diplomatic and commercial relations with the DPRK, and was published immediately by such mainstream western media as  Newsweek and the Bloomberg press. Although the US Mission was officially reported to remain “Mum” in reaction to Mexico’s statement, one can only wonder at the “unofficial” reaction of the US delegation when the Mexican Foreign Minister re-entered the Security Council chamber following his press stake-out.

Mexico is currently a member of the United Nations Security Council, unanimously voted to membership by the Latin American states. Outside the high-level meeting on ‘Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict: Preserving Humanitarian Space,” convened during the July French presidency of the Security Council, Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard stated Mexico’s concerns that:

“We have also said what we believe should be done in the coming months and years in terms of how to address the origins of the conflicts.  I would also like to point out that in the meetings we have had this morning we have said that although it is true that the humanitarian space has to do with conflicts… It is also true that humanitarian concerns have to do with inequity in access to vaccines against COVID-19, but they also have to do with the impact of the sanctions applied in some countries where serious humanitarian crises or situations of great human suffering are created.  We have said it now in the Council and this must change.  Mexico is in favor, then, of all countries committing to protect those who are working for humanitarian causes and is also in favor of all countries acting in accordance with international humanitarian law, which is essential to the work of the United Nations throughout the world.”

Although the press had been advised that the Mexican Foreign Minister would be making the brief statement just quoted, and would not be answering questions, Ebrard graciously accepted and answered several questions from the press, following his statement, and expressed the declaration by President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador that the current disturbances and demonstrations in Cuba are the result of the decades long embargo imposed by the United States, which has destabilized Cuba’s economy, fomenting current unrest.

President Lopez Obrador stated: “Cuba is going through a difficult situation basically attributable to the United States’ blockade.” Indeed, Russia and numerous other countries have accused the US of attempting to incite a “color revolution,” tantamount to regime change in Cuba.

In reply to my own question, referring to Foreign Minister Ebrard’s concern with the “impact of the sanctions applied in some countries where serious humanitarian crises or situations of great human suffering are created,” I mentioned the large numbers of people starving and dying in the DPRK as the result of UN Security Council sanctions, and the abysmal failure of the so-called “humanitarian exemptions” to protect the people of North Korea from the disastrous effect of UN Security Council sanctions;  I asked when President Lopez Obrador will be reestablishing full diplomatic and commercial relations with the DPRK.  Foreign Minister Ebrard replied:

“We have a position of non-intervention all over the world, we respect all governments, and we want to reopen the relationship with North Korea as well, like any other country.”

On July 23, a full page paid advertisement in the New York Times in a letter to President Biden stated: “Let Cuba Live!”  The letter stated:

“We find it unconscionable, especially during a pandemic, to intentionally block remittances and Cuba’s use of global financial institutions, given that access to dollars is necessary for the importation of food and medicine…..” and the letter was signed by such world-famous names as Daniel Ellsberg, Noam Chomsky, Jane Fonda, Dr. Cornel West, Dr. Pablo Gonzalez Casanova, Chico Buarque, Lula Da Silva, Former President of Brazil, Chris Hedges, Yanis Varoufakis, and a vast number of other notables throughout the world.

It is to be hoped that Mexico’s membership in the Security Council will help to restore some balance and credibility to the Security Council, for too long hijacked by Western nuclear powers.

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Carla Stea is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and Global Research’s Correspondent at UN headquarters, New York. 

Featured image is from Gobierno de Mexico via Frontreras

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The leaked audio of a phone call between a Moderna representative and a woman who developed Guillain-Barre syndrome after receiving the company’s experimental drug has confirmed something many of us already knew: We are witnessing the biggest clinical trial in vaccine history.

During the course of conversation, the Moderna representative admitted that all coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine recipients are “pretty much” part of a drug trial. The audio was released in June by reporter Stew Peters.

Whether the mainstream media admit it or not, COVID-19 vaccines are experimental. No less than the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said so. Natural Health 365 reported that in a “Guidance for Industry” dated May 25, 2021, the FDA and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) specifically referred to COVID-19 vaccines as “investigational.”

Investigational vs. experimental drugs, according to FDA

Those who wonder how different “investigational” is from “experimental,” the FDA explained in their web page that “An investigational drug can also be called an experimental drug.”

It also said: “Before you can be given an investigational drug either through a clinical trial or through expanded access, your healthcare provider must give you additional information about the potential risks and potential benefits of the drug.”

Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson are not liable for any loss or damages caused by these experimental drugs as stated in the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP Act).

The secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is authorized to issue a PREP Act declaration. The declaration provides immunity from liability (except for willful misconduct) for claims of loss caused, arising out of, relating to or resulting from administration or use of countermeasures to diseases, threats and conditions; for claims determined by the secretary to constitute a present or credible risk of a future public health emergency; and for claims to entities and individuals involved in the development, manufacture, testing, distribution, administration and use of such countermeasures.

This means that if a person gets ill, injured or killed from a COVID-19 vaccine, the pharmaceutical companies will not be held liable. (Related: Oxford-AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine experiment is tied to eugenics-linked institutions.)

Pharmaceutical companies to expand size of trial for younger children

The Rockdale Newton Citizen recently reported that Moderna will expand the size of its vaccine trial in younger children but will not seek emergency use authorization for the age group until later in 2021 or early 2022.

“We are actively discussing a proposal with the FDA. The objective is to enroll a larger safety database which increases the likelihood of detecting rarer events,” Ray Johnson, a spokesperson for Moderna, said in a statement.

The original size of the trial included almost 7,000 children ages 6 months to 12 years. However, the company did not say how many additional cases the trial will now include.

Jordan also said that Moderna would likely seek authorization for the vaccine in “winter 2021” or early 2022.

Pfizer will expand its vaccine trials for younger children, as well. A Pfizer representative said it has no updates regarding its previous timelines or details about its pediatric trial. However, the company noted that it began testing its vaccine in children ages five to 11 on June 8, and on children younger than 5 beginning June 21. The trial now included up to 4,500 participants in the United States, Finland, Poland and Spain.

Pfizer also said it expects initial results of the second phase of the trials in September for children ages 5 to 11, and the younger ones shortly thereafter.

President Joe Biden said that children under 12 could be eligible to receive their COVID-19 vaccine “soon.” Parents have been eager to vaccinate their younger children as schools prepare to open face-to-face learning in the fall. The Pfizer vaccine is currently available for children as young as 12, but no vaccine is available for younger children yet.

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The growth of neo-colonial tendencies, the current geopolitical developments and the scramble for its resources by external countries in Africa: these are some of the issues researcher and business analyst Lipton Matthews recently discussed with Kester Kenn Klomegah for InDepthNews (IDN). Matthews is associated with Merion West, The Federalist, American Thinker, Intellectual Takeout, Mises Institute, and Imaginative Conservative.

In particular, Matthews gives in-depth views on China’s valuable contribution to various economic sectors especially infrastructure development spanning three decades and on the possible implications of Russia-China collaboration in Africa.

Matthews talks also on the positive prospects and significance of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and advises both African leaders and corporate business leaders to collaborate in strengthening trade networks within the continent, take up the emerging challenges and seize the opportunity to build a better Africa. Here are the interview excerpts.

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Kester Kenn Klomegah: What do you think of China’s and Russia’s engagement with Africa in general? What would you say comparatively about these two foreign players in Africa?

Lipton Matthews: African experts like Peter Kagwanja and Rahamtalla Mohamed Osman have rubbished the claim that China is colonizing Africa. In general, African leaders perceive China to be the driving force behind modernization in the region. For example, during 2001-2002, China’s Foreign Direct Investment in Sub-Saharan Africa increased by 53% yearly, dwarfing American investment that grew by a mere 14%. Moreover, neither were African countries among those at the UN rebuking China for its treatment of the primarily Muslim Uyghur population in 2020.

Nevertheless, reports deriding China’s influence in Africa are pervasive in the West, but in reality, Africans are appreciative of China’s role in the region. Since the days of the Cold War, developing countries have viewed China as an ally. Therefore, the ascent of China is perceived favourably by African policymakers because it represents the aspirations of the developing world.

Meanwhile, China has greater legitimacy in Africa considering that it did not possess a colonial empire in the region. Likewise, Russia had an empire in Europe, but not in Africa, so the Russians are positioned to portray themselves as liberators. Furthermore, Russians were never a part of the political West and during the Cold War, they collaborated with Africans against Western hegemony. So, consequently, Africans are likely to embrace Russia as an ally and not construe her interference in the region as an act of imperialism.

Though Russia’s investment in Africa is not on the scale of China, it appears that Russian players have identified the region as a source of raw materials and are exploiting the opportunities offered by the continent. Western pundits fail to recognize that Russia and China are harnessing their distinctiveness from the West to acquire political mileage in Africa. The West is losing the battle for dominance in Africa due to ideological reasons. For instance, Westerners preach classical liberalism, whereas Russia and China champion a statist approach to development. Because the doctrines of these powers are consonant with the left-leaning philosophy of Africa, their actions are less likely to invite contempt.

KKK: Do you also think there is an emerging rivalry in geopolitics, consistent confrontation against the United States and Europe (especially France) in Africa and what if China and Russia team up together?

LM: There is always rivalry in geopolitics, but the tactics of Russia and China have been misunderstood. Both countries are playing a spoiler role in Western politics. They intend to foment chaos in Western democracies to accelerate tensions, and in the era of social media, they have been able to do so on a grand scale. Unlike the West, Russia and China are led by brilliant strategists. The Russians and Chinese duped Western strategists into thinking that they want to challenge Western hegemony.

However, they only aim to create spheres of influence that are divorced from Western interference. Russia wants to contain America’s presence in Eastern Europe and China envisions creating a Sino-Centric Order in Asia. For Americans and the broader Western community to deter the rise of China and Russia, they must leverage soft power to obtain the favour of developing countries. Developing countries value the non-interference stance of Russia and China, so if Western countries were to affirm a less moralistic foreign policy they could shift the balance of power in their favour.

Compared to America, China and Russia are technological laggards and paper tigers, but they understand the primacy of ideas. Westerners think that they are fighting a geopolitical war, when they are actually competing for ideological supremacy. For example, Russia is popular in Mali, unlike France, because the former can deploy propaganda to present herself as a victim of Western imperialism, even though Russia was an imperial power and today exerts its clout in Eastern Europe.

Another issue is that, in this case, the colonial power was France and not Russia, so the latter can always project legitimacy. Conversely, Russia and China acknowledge that war is not required to undermine the West, because Western countries no longer believe in themselves. Throughout the West, white people are assaulting Western history and since demoralized people are not motivated to fight wars, China and Russia have already won the battle.

Lastly, China and Russia are unwilling to team up in order to defeat the West, since this is not a necessity. It is obvious that the West is the architect of its demise. Similarly, Russia and China are competing for influence, so it is more feasible for either partner to associate with the West to constrain the potential of her rival. To forestall the rise of her adversaries, West leaders need to employ foreign policy strategists who actually understand ideas and history.

KKK: Is it appropriate when we use the term “neo-colonialism” referring to a number of foreign players in Africa? What countries are the neo-colonizers, in your view?

LM: First, we need to acknowledge that colonialism is not a new phenomenon and neither is it unique to Europeans. History also documents examples of Europeans colonizing predominantly white territories in Europe. For example, Sweden once had an empire in Europe. However, colonization is an expensive endeavour and the association between economic growth and empire is actually negative, according to the late Paul Bairoch.

In fact, many countries have recorded astounding growth without possessing empires. On the other hand, we must disabuse ourselves of the notion that colonialism is inherently exploitative. Most people would prefer sovereignty to colonial rule, but the truth is that colonial status does not impede economic growth and some colonies in Africa experienced faster growth during the colonial era. We should give greater priority to good governance than national sovereignty. It is better to be under the rule of benevolent colonizers than to be the subject of a dictator.

Additionally, in relation to the issue of neo-colonialism concerns are misplaced. China is in the business of maximizing the potential of Africa’s resources, not empire-building. The problem is that governance structures in Africa are weak, so it is easy for China to evade regulations. The perception that China is colonizing Africa is a consequence of Africa’s history of defective governance. In actuality, China through its infrastructural projects is presiding over the modernization of Africa, similar to what Europeans and Americans did in the developing world years ago.

However, the difference is that the Chinese are not imposing their standards on Africans. Yet this could be a disadvantage because linking investment to the implementation of higher standards could result in ameliorating governance structures in Africa thereby increasing the region’s propensity to attract investment. But African leaders appreciate that Chinese investments are not wedded to reforms. Though overall, China’s influence in Africa has been positive.

According to scholars based at John Hopkins University and Boston University, during 2000-2015, China lent $95.5 billion to Africa and 40 per cent of the loans financed power generation and transmission, and the remaining 30 per cent modernized Africa’s dilapidated infrastructure.

Further, despite the narrative that Chinese investments are allotted to extractive sectors, they account for one-third of the total Chinese investment in Africa, according to Dollar et al (2015).The study also notes that China’s share of foreign investment is higher in weak governance states, and as a result, Africa is a prime target since governance is less effective in the region. Therefore, Africa is susceptible to exploitation by China, since several countries failed to improve governance.

KKK: Do you think, with the adoption of African Continental Free Trade (AfCFTA), offers a window of hope for attaining economic independence for Africa? What role Russia can play in this or of what significance is it for potential Russian investors?

LM: First. The relationship between trade openness and economic growth in Africa is positive. Further, the World Bank estimates that by 2035, this project will rescue 68 million people from poverty and increase gross domestic product by $450 billion.

By removing barriers to trade in the region, the agreement will create new entrepreneurial activities and spur innovations in technology. The free trade agreement will even be more beneficial if Africa’s policymakers ensure that intellectual property is not over-regulated. Innovations can occur without intellectual property laws and society is more likely to benefit when ideas are freely released into the public domain.

In order to aid Africa, Russia should assist Africa in transitioning to a knowledge-based economy by promoting technology transfer agreements. Russians must also invest in more R&D collaborations with their African partners. This agreement will revolutionize. Africa’s economy and a richer Africa is a positive for Russian investors. If African is properly managed, then the continent should succeed. [….]

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Kester Kenn Klomegah, who worked previously with Inter Press Service (IPS), is  a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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***

After the revelation that half a million vegans in the UK could be prevented from having to take mandatory workplace vaccinations due to their beliefs being protected by employment law, actor Laurence Fox publicly announced that he now identifies as “trans vegan.”

“So-called ethical veganism was ruled to be a protected characteristic at a tribunal last year, meaning employers would risk legal action if they order staff to be vaccinated,” reports the Daily Telegraph.

Workers with other religious beliefs could also cite their status as a protected category in order to avoid employers forcing compulsory jabs.

“Some ethical vegans may disagree with vaccinations on the basis that they will inevitably have been tested on animals. Ethical veganism has previously been found by an [employment tribunal] to amount to a belief, capable of being protected,” said a spokesman for the Lewis Silkin law firm.

Although COVID-19 vaccines don’t contain anything derived from animals, they were tested on animals.

Jeanette Rowley, a rights advocate at the Vegan Society, said she had received around 100 messages from concerned vegans who say “they’re very affected, psychologically, to have to confront this dilemma.”

Actor and anti-lockdown campaigner Laurence Fox responded to the news by proclaiming a new identity that is sure to be shared by countless others.

From this day forward I self identify as a trans vegan.

I will only eat plant based food and medium rare sirloin steaks. And chicken, pork scratchings and salami.

— Laurence Fox ✌🏼🇬🇧✌🏼 (@LozzaFox) July 30, 2021

“From this day forward I self identify as a trans vegan,” he tweeted.

“I will only eat plant based food and medium rare sirloin steaks. And chicken, pork scratchings and salami,” added Fox.

Fox subsequently reaffirmed his commitment to his new identity by tweeting, “#TransVeganRightsAreHumanRights.”

For millions of Brits, particularly younger people who are more likely to die from vaccine side-effects than the virus itself, their refusal to be intimidated into taking the jab as a condition of work can be boiled down to one statement of defiance.

“We’re all trans vegan now.”

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***

Unvaccinated Americans were the talking point of the day on Monday with a slew of figures slamming those who have chosen not to take the coronavirus jabs, assigning blame to them for America ‘going backwards’, likening them to murderers, and suggesting that they are to blame for more deadly variants of the virus emerging.

First up, the White House with Press Secretary Jen Psaki claiming that America is in reverse because “there are still a large population of people in this country who are unvaccinated – and we have the most transmissible variant that we’ve seen since the beginning of the pandemic that more people are getting sick with Covid.”

Fox News' Peter Doocy: "On COVID, Dr. Fauci says we’re going in the wrong direction. Whose fault is that?"@PressSec: “Well, I would say first what he was referring to is the fact that because there are still a large population of people in this country who were unvaccinated…” pic.twitter.com/GzOULaVL54

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) July 26, 2021

Psaki announced that travel restrictions will not be lifted because of the Delta variant:

#BREAKING: White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki announces the U.S. will maintain all travel restrictions and NOT be lifting any of them anytime soon because of the Delta variant.

The Biden administration is continuing its policy of family separations #LoveIsNotTourism pic.twitter.com/cuOy6ZRsRR

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) July 26, 2021

She also declared that a return of the mask mandate is under consideration:

Jen Psaki: There is an “active discussion” to reinstate mask mandate on fully vaccinated Americans pic.twitter.com/CdpzEWAwYq

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) July 26, 2021

Finally, Psaki did not rule out applying restrictions only to unvaccinated people:

CNN's Kaitlan Collins asks Jen Psaki if unvaccinated Americans should face penalties and be singled out as not able to live the same lives as the vaccinated: "Does the President favor restrictions for unvaccinated people when it comes to restaurants, museums, concerts?" pic.twitter.com/ubgMedQV2Z

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) July 26, 2021

Next up was Fauci, who appeared on his favourite softball network MSNBC to announce that unvaccinated Americans will be to blame for the next deadly variant:

CNN’s Lemon Don declared that the unvaccinated should be prevented from having normal lives.

“Don’t get the vaccine. You can’t go to the supermarket. Don’t have the vaccine, can’t go to the ball game. Don’t have a vaccine, can’t go to work. You don’t have a vaccine, can’t come here. No shirt, no shoes, no service. I think that’s where we should be because we can’t to waste our breath on people that are just not going to change,” Lemon decreed, with Chris Cuomo (imagine my shock) wholeheartedly agreeing:

Watch the video here.

Meanwhile in New York, Cuomo’s brother proclaimed “we have to get in those communities, and we have to knock on those doors, and we have to convince people, and put them in a car and drive them and get that vaccine in their arm. That is the mission.”

NEW – NY Gov. Cuomo: “We have to knock on those doors, and we have to convince people, put them in cars & drive them and get that vaccine in their arm. That is the mission.”pic.twitter.com/nSIVsBuoPo

— Disclose.tv 🚨 (@disclosetv) July 26, 2021

Finally, on the other side of the country, California governor Gavin Newsom likened unvaccinated Americans to murderous drunk drivers:

California Gov. Gavin Newsom compares unvaccinated Americans to drunk drivers. pic.twitter.com/hEaHIN1E5T

— The First (@TheFirstonTV) July 26, 2021

Newsom’s comments come after he announced that California will require proof of vaccination or weekly testing for all state workers and health care employees.

GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene hit back at Newsom, resulting in the following spat:

Disgraceful? Here's a word — murderous.

Your anti-vaccine lies are literally killing Americans. Your own supporters are following you off a cliff and into the ICU.

Come clean about vaccines — they save lives. https://t.co/pJjlzJ3TVJ

— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) July 26, 2021

You’re one to talk, Gavin.

Your murderous ACTIONS as Governor of California literally killed people.

Paying $1,000/day to nursing homes to house #COVID19 patients with the most vulnerable people.

Killing people’s parents and grandparents.

You’re a monster! https://t.co/8k9z4YpQf5

— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) July 26, 2021

The message is clear, ‘we’re all in this together’… except for the unvaccinated.

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Bad weather is wreaking havoc in parts of the world. The cynical climate alarmist community hopes it will help get Joe Biden’s multi-trillion-dollar climate agenda through Congress.

“Amid summer of fire and floods, a moment of truth for climate action,” editorialized the Washington Post. So let’s look at the “summer of fires and floods.”

Yes, it has been very hot in the Pacific Northwest.  Is this global warming, as alarmists want you to believe, or just weather?

The temperature reality is that there is no trend from 1911-2020 in very hot (i.e., 99F+) days in the Pacific Northwest. That’s according to Cliff Mass, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington and no one’s idea of a “climate denier.”

It’s out-of-control wildfire season again, which is being fueled by ongoing drought.  Climate alarmists, of course, expect the public to believe that the drought is caused by global warming. But the natural history of the West over the past 1,100 years shows that megadroughts lasting as long as 200 years are the norm rather than the exception.

And since the federal and state governments kicked out the loggers and stopped managing public lands 40 years ago, these wildfires may come back every year until there is nothing left in the West to burn. This is not global warming; it’s a combination of Mother Nature and bad government.

Then there is the catastrophic flooding from torrential rains that have hit Germany, China and India. In none of these places is such rain and flooding novel.

The region of Germany that flooded has a history of flooding that goes back to 1348, long before SUVs were invented. German towns often record this history on buildings.

China is also no stranger to flooding. The torrential rain that recently is no worse than the torrential rain that struck the mainland in August 1975, according to the regional weather bureau. If the flooding has been worse, it’s because land use and poor storm water management have made it so.

And there is no trend in monsoon rains in India, per the most up-to-date recordkeeping from 1871 to 2017.

Despite these inconvenient truths, could these calamities still be due to global warming? Well, there isn’t even much of that right now.  According to the most recent NASA satellite data, the average global temperature for June 2021 was slightly below the 30-average.

But don’t expect climate and weather reality to dampen the alarm repeated over and over every day in the media.

President Biden and Democrats plan to pass a $3.5 trillion “stimulus” bill in the fall. About $2 trillion of the spending is earmarked for climate.

Although no one has seen the bill, it reportedly will include a “clean energy standard” that will set mandatory goals for wind and solar power with an aim to eliminating fossil fuels from the electricity grid by 2035.  It’s extreme spending and policy that will affect every American and not for the better. Think frozen Texas windmills and California blackouts.

Even if you believe the Democrat and media line on climate, you should realize that global emissions are going up with no end in sight according to a new report the International Energy Agency. Part of the reason that emissions will continue to rise is that new electricity demand can only be met by more fossil fuel generation, according to another new IEA report.

Both Joe Biden and John Kerry have openly admitted that unilateral US action on climate will achieve nothing. China has no plans to cut emissions and the G-20 just failed to agree on quitting coal and climate targets.

Yet Democrats nevertheless insist on massive climate spending and changes to our energy system even though there is no conceivable way they will accomplish their supposed underlying goal of controlling the weather.

We are not living through unprecedented bad weather so much as we are living through unprecedented exploitation of it for bad ends.

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Steve Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and is the author of “Scare Pollution: Why and How to Fix the EPA.”

Featured image is from EcoWatch

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***

Back in 1633 there was a guy named Galileo Galilei who was deemed a nut job by the Catholic Church because of his heretical belief the Earth revolved around the sun. Galileo was sentenced to house arrest and ordered never again to teach his heresy. Centuries later the Church apologized, and Albert Einstein declared Galileo, “the father of modern science.”

In 1846 a Hungarian doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis was fired and declared a nut job for his preposterous advocation that hand washing was one of the most important tools in public health, particularly for surgeons. Semmelweis took so much abuse from the medical establishment that he wound up in an asylum.

In the early 40s a cardiologist named Bernard Lown was expelled from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine because he protested medical segregation by altering blood-bottle labels that denoted donors’ race. Decades later Lown invented the defibrillator, which has saved countless lives. In 1973, he founded The Lown Institute, a think tank focused on ground-breaking research to improve the quality of U.S. healthcare.

Some of the greatest minds since the world was flat were scientists and doctors persecuted and shunned because they saw or interpreted things differently. That’s why they are heralded as visionaries. Widely held beliefs often are proven wrong, and on Wall Street the rare few with 20/20 vision profit handsomely. The CEO of Enron graced the covers of business magazines and was heralded by the folks at McKinsey as a business genius until a trader who specialized betting against conventional wisdom studied the company’s regulatory filings and determined it was a fraud. Harry Markopolos, a financial analyst repeatedly warned the SEC that famed investor Bernie Madoff was running a Ponzi scheme, but he too was deemed a nut job.

Jeff Bezos at the turn of the century was uniformly doubted by analysts and the media who said Amazon could never be profitable. Investors who ignored the naysayers likely aren’t reading this commentary.

Dr. Peter McCullough, a cardiologist who prior to Covid was among the most respected in his field, is a modern-day doctor who the medical establishment, the government, and the media want silenced. His views are very controversial, and I don’t have the scientific or medical expertise to evaluate them. But I know quite a bit about one of the hospitals where McCullough trained and one of the cardiologists who trained him.

His name is Joel Kahn, and he was a public champion of my critical reporting about Michigan’s Beaumont Health when it wasn’t yet widely known how extensive cost-cutting had irreparably harmed the company’s flagship hospital. McCullough did his fellowship under Kahn when they both worked at Beaumont. Kahn, who has a considerable national following promoting the merits of a plant-based diet and other heart-healthy lifestyle measures, has supported and advocated McCullough’s views. LinkedIn has censored several of Kahn’s posts highlighting what he says are alarmingly high deaths and other serious complications from COVID vaccines. Kahn admirably doesn’t delete highly critical comments on posts that escape LinkedIn’s censors, including personal attacks calling him a “quack” and advocating the hashtag #canceljoelkahn.

McCullough and Kahn have put themselves at great financial and professional risk. McCullough’s previous employer, a hospital whose foundation established a scholarship in his name, last week sued him for more than $1 million, alleging that McCullough has repeatedly misrepresented to the media he still works there and that it has been harmed by the association. McCullough’s lawyer issued a statement saying the lawsuit was a “politically motivated attempt to silence Dr. McCullough.” The Federation of State Licensing Boards last week issued a warning that physicians who post COVID misinformation on social media could lose their medical licenses, so more punishment could be in the offing.

It’s understandable why McCullough’s former employer, which filed its lawsuit on the same day it announced it was requiring all its employees to be vaccinated, no longer wants anything to do with him. McCullough maintains the COVID vaccine doesn’t protect against the Delta variant and isn’t necessary for people under age 50. He’s also very critical of health authorities for focusing on how best to stop the spread of COVID rather than how best to treat it. A rebuttal to some of McCullough’s positions can be found here.

The corporate media, which is so sycophantic to the Biden Administration that CNN anchor Brian Stelter shamelessly asked press secretary Jen Psaki how reporters could do a better job covering the president, has its own agenda wanting McCullough destroyed. The corporate media is fueling the narrative that the unvaccinated are moronic Trump supporters who watch FOX news, when in fact a significant percentage are Blacks and Hispanics. McCullough has made regular appearances on FOX, including on Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, so discrediting McCullough serves the double purpose of also discrediting FOX, which attracts a considerably bigger audience than the other cable networks.

On paper at least, it’s hard to dismiss McCullough as a quack. According to a bio posted on the US Cardiology Review, he is recognized internationally as a leading authority on chronic kidney disease as a cardiovascular risk state, having published more than 1,000 papers and garnered more than 500 citations in the National Library of Medicine. He also is a founder of the Cardio Renal Society of America, an alliance of cardiologists and nephrologists focused on cardiorenal syndromes. He was previously co-editor of Reviews in Cardiovascular Medicine and served as Chair of the National Kidney Foundations’ Kidney Early Evaluation Program, among the largest screening efforts for chronic diseases. Notably, McCullough was a significant philanthropic donor to his former employer. (I wonder whether the hospital will return those funds.)

Kahn has previously sounded alarms that proved prescient. In 2019, he posted a commentary on Medium predicting that interventional cardiologists wouldn’t curtail their lucrative stent procedures despite a massive study documenting they weren’t beneficial for patients who were stable. The influential Journal of the American Medicine two weeks ago published a paper confirming Kahn’s prediction was spot on. Inserting stents are among the most profitable hospital procedures.

My familiarity with Kahn began a year ago last April when I began writing a series of very critical stories for Deadline Detroit about Beaumont and its management, particularly CEO John Fox. Underscoring the degree Beaumont doctors feared Fox, most were afraid to sign a petition protesting his leadership. However, when given the opportunity to respond to an anonymous survey, it was revealed that a majority of doctors had little confidence in Fox and his deputies, particularly those working at the company’s once nationally respected flagship hospital.

Kahn showed courage. Despite having an affiliation with Beaumont, he tweeted my articles and linked to them on social media, giving them a certain validity. Deadline Detroit, an independent online publication, wasn’t known for healthcare reporting and many local residents were suspicious of my reporting because other local outlets ignored it. Kahn’s support allowed my articles to gain traction and without it I’m not sure they would have achieved impact or recognition. I ultimately garnered an award for my coverage.

Courage possibly is in the DNA of Beaumont’s once nationally respected cardiology department. One Harvard-trained cardiologist sent multiple letters to Beaumont’s directors and trustees calling for Fox’s firing and pretty much called him a liar. The co-heads of the cardiology department wrote a letter to the chair of the hospital network warning him they had “serious concerns” about the company Beaumont was outsourcing its anesthesia services to. The warnings weren’t heeded and within three weeks of the outsourcing company taking over, a patient undergoing a routine colonoscopy died from intubation complications and another landed in the ICU because of a pain medication overdose. The outsourcing company, NorthStar Anesthesia, is owned by a holding company whose previous CEO was Jeffrey Zients, who is overseeing the president’s pandemic response.

McCullough, Kahn, and other physicians who are increasingly sticking their necks out and daring to challenge the CDC’s COVID and vaccination data, may all be badly mistaken. However, what history abundantly teaches is that censorship, however noble the original motivation, is never isolated to the original cause. Some governments have already used their “fake news” laws to combat vaccine misinformation for other political purposes.

The U.S. healthcare system is compromised and corrupt, and most doctors today are employees of healthcare networks or companies controlled by private equity. There are some physicians willing to speak out about how the corporatization of healthcare is harming patient safety while driving up prices. Rest assured, if McCullough and Kahn are silenced, so will others whose views the government and medical establishment doesn’t like. The corporate media can be counted on to abet the efforts or turn a blind eye to them, much like they did with my Beaumont reporting.

I, too, have experienced personal and unfounded attacks from powerful healthcare executives.  Beaumont’s CEO called me a “psycho,” a “mudslinging machine,” and alleged that I had secret Russian connections. (My response can be found here.) Fox, who has made more than $20 million since being named CEO in 2016 and stands to make tens of millions more if he can successfully merge Beaumont into Spectrum Health, is representative of many MBA suits running U.S. hospitals.

The Biden Administration, the CDC, and Dr. Fauci don’t have the pandemic under control. The real issue isn’t contrarian doctors like McCollough and Kahn, but America’s very poor leadership and the corporate media’s failure to hold the president accountable. Biden promised to end COVID and for those with short memories, here was his plan.

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Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi and President Biden announced this week that Washington will end its combat mission in Iraq by the end of the year. However, these long-serving U.S. soldiers are not coming home: many of the 2,500 American service members are expected to remain in the country for “training and advisory” purposes.

The United States and Iraq had issued a joint statement in April that the U.S. combat mission would be ending, but the timeline remained unclear. The timing of the recent announcement appears intended to boost Kadhimi’s prospects in October’s parliamentary elections — he faces domestic demands to oust U.S. forces, yet remains dependent on American support to maintain some semblance of control.

Many of the militia groups he now struggles to control initially assembled to fight the so-called Islamic State, or Daesh, starting in 2014. The Popular Mobilization Forces, or al-Ḥashd ash-Shaʿbī, many of whose fighters are Iraqi Shi’a, were supported by both the U.S. and Iran to defeat the  Islamic State. The mobilization of these militias would not have been necessary if Paul Bremer and the Pentagon had not made the foolish decision to disband Iraq’s military following the U.S. invasion in 2003, as Iraq would still have possessed a functional army.

Washington clearly bears significant responsibility for the ongoing instability and dysfunction in Iraq, a fact that the announcement of $155 million in additional humanitarian aid for Iraq seems implicitly to acknowledge. Yet the U.S. military has consistently botched its missions in Iraq — keeping them in the country is in the interests of neither Americans nor Iraqis.

Renaming the stated goal of U.S. troops in Iraq will have little effect on their vulnerability to attack. Iraqi militia groups determined to evict U.S. troops from their country are increasingly acting without or against orders from Tehran. Ironically, Iran’s control of Iraqi militia groups unraveled following the assassination of Quds Force Commander Gen. Qassem Soleimani. Attacks on American forces have increased at a time when Tehran and Washington are attempting to negotiate a mutual return to the 2015 nuclear deal.

Announcing a troop withdrawal when no troops are in fact to be withdrawn reinforces a broader alarming trend in the forever wars — finding ways to keep American soldiers perpetually deployed, despite the public’s desire for the United States to prioritize investment at home over violence abroad.

Even more concerning are the expanding budget and scope of Pentagon’s “127e” programs, created after 9/11 to provide “support to foreign forces, irregular forces, groups, or individuals engaged in supporting or facilitating authorized ongoing military operations by United States special operations forces to combat terrorism.”

These “exceptional” and highly secretive counterterror deployments operate with very little public, congressional or DOD oversight.

The budget of 127e programs has quadrupled since 2005, from $25 million to $100 million annually. These funds are exempt from U.S. human rights conditions, like the “Leahy laws,” which bar the United States from backing foreign units credibly accused of gross abuses.

As became evident with the death of four U.S. soldiers in Niger in October 2017, these unauthorized 127e advisory operations pose a serious risk that combat-equipped U.S. forces will become involved in firefights.

The takeaway should be that, although a U.S. “advisory” mission in Iraq may sound harmless, it maintains the strong likelihood that U.S. forces will be shot at and will shoot back.

When Prime Minister al-Kadhimi came to power in May, he was seen as representing the rejection of overt Iranian influence over Iraq, a sentiment also expressed in widespread protests throughout Iraq starting in October 2019 that demanded an end to both Iranian and American intervention, as well as rampant government corruption. He faces a nearly impossible task, which is made more difficult by the ongoing attacks that are likely to continue as long as U.S. forces remain in his country’s territory — relabeled, or not.

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One of the global challenges of the 21st century is the falling liberal democracy. Indeed, the state of democracy is so alarming that some are talking about the crisis of democracy. 

Is the decline of democracy a temporary phenomenon? Is it a more fundamentally structural problem?  Can it restore its power and glory of the past?

The slump of democracy is terribly important problem, because it is based on Judeo-Christian way of thinking and the corner stone of the Western civilization.

It is a serious challenging for the West, because the Asian civilization represented by the Chinese political system is becoming more visible and more popular.

Some opinion leaders in the West may fear the possibility that the Chinese authoritarian regime be considered as a possible alternative to the West’s liberal democracy.

In this paper, I will first examine how serious the fall of democracy is. Then I will discuss the factors responsible for the decline of democracy. Finally I will examine if the Chinese political regime is responsible for the decline of democracy…

How serious is the Fall of Democracy?

For decades, in great many countries, the American democracy has been the role model of political regime. In fact, the popularity of the American democracy is such that the basic principles of democracy are integrated even in the constitutions of non-democratic countries.

There are many data showing the retreat of democracy. For instance, the Freedom House has produced alarming data.

In the period, 2005-2020, the number of countries where democracy improved has fallen from 83 to 28, whereas, that of countries where democracy deteriorated rose from 52 to 73. (See this)

The demographic distribution of political regime in 2019 was as follow: pure democracy (4.5%), defective democracy (43.6%), hybrid regimes (16.7%) and authoritarian regimes (35.6%).

According to a survey made for the world as a whole, in 1995, 48% of respondents in 154 countries were dissatisfied with democracy. Now the percentage increased to 58%.

According to a report of Cambridge University, democracy fell in all developed countries, especially in the U.S. Before the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, only 25% of Americans were dissatisfied with democracy, but after 2008, 45% were dissatisfied. (See this) (2020.01.29)

In all well established democracies like the Unites States, democratic governance will continue its inexorable decline and eventually fall. (See this) (2019.09.08)

Many countries in Latin America, Africa, Asia, especially in Europe, people are dissatisfied with democracy and chose authoritarian regime.

The Guardian presents the results of a large scale poll with 50,000 persons in 53 countries carried out by the Alliance of Democracies Foundation in 2021. (See this)

The dissatisfaction with democracy rose further after the pandemic. Before the pandemic in all democratic countries included in the sample, 70% of respondents was satisfies with democracies. But in 2021, the percentage of satisfaction with democracy was 65 % for developing countries, 51% for developed countries, 45% in Europe and 76% in Asia.

One of the messages coming out of the Global Poll is that despite the trend of falling democracy, the love of democracy remains high. In fact, 81% of respondents say that democracy is important for their country, but only 63% say that their country is democratic.

One intriguing outcome of the poll is that, in China, 71% of the respondents say that they have a right amount of democracy.

What are the factors responsible for the Decline of Democracy? 

There can be many reasons for the decline of democracy. For some, it is the fault of China. The authors of the Freedom House Report (2021) make this statement without elaboration.

“Beyond the pandemic, Beijing’s exports of anti-democratic tactics, financial coercion, and physical intimidation have led to an erosion of democratic institutions and human right protection in numerous countries.”

But, there is another perception of Chinese influence on the decline of democracy,

“By demonstrating that advanced modernization can be combined with authoritarian rule, the Chinese regime has given hope to authoritarian rules everywhere.” (See this)

On the other hand, only 38% of the respondents of the Global Poll expressed their fear of Chinese influence on democracy. As for the Russia’s influence on democracy, only 28% confirmed such influence.

Then, what are the main determinants of the retreat of democracy? The Global Poll identifies the following three determinants.

First, the US appears to be the most responsible for the retreat of democracy. No less than 44% says that it is the U.S. which is a threat to democracy.

“Since 2020, the perception of the US influence as a threat to democracy around the world has increased significantly, from a net of +6 to a net opinion of +14. This increase is particularly high in Germany (+20) and China (+16)” (theguardian.com)

Second, the high tech companies are significant threat to democracy.

According to the poll, 50% say that high tech companies are a threat to democracy; it is particularly so in the U.S.(62%).

Third, the inequality of income is the threat to democracy. No less than 64 % say that inequality is the threat to democracy.

It goes without saying that the American influence, the domination of large high tech companies and inequality of income distribution are closely interrelated.

The poll makes it clear that the decline of democracy is attributable to the poor management of democracy of leading developed countries implying that the future of democracy depends on the leadership of these countries.

And, the respondents of the poll are very pessimistic about the leadership of the U.S. and European countries.

“With the United States, the biggest promoter of democracy and human right in retreat and the European Union experiencing existential battle, it is uncertain how liberal order can check the rising of the Chinese authoritarian model.” (theguardian.com)

The poll shows ” neither the US nor G7 can simply assure the mantle of defender of democracy.”  (theguardian.com)

“In fact, democracy is in decline, because its most prominent examples are not doing enough to protect it”. (The Freedom House Report, 2021)

These quotations are saying that the government of the US and developed democratic country have to find their redemption by doing better job for the protection of democracy.

Here, I must ask why the U.S. has failed in protecting democracy, let alone promoting it. I think that Washington has failed on two fronts. On the one hand, it has failed to make America a true democratic country and on the other, it has failed in propagating democracy in the world.

The most important yardstick of measuring the performance of a democratic government should be its capacity to provide such public goods as foods, clothing, housing, public health, education, people’s security to the people.

The U.S is the richest country in the world. Yet, Washington’s capacity of providing these public goods is dismal. The homeless people are filling streets of cities; 20% of the population has no affordable medical care; more than 25% of school children are starving without school meals: Americans are afraid of going out, because every day, 1.4 cases of armed street violence kill people. In the eyes many democratic countries, the American democracy is no longer their model.

The failure of Washington in protecting democracy and the rise of authoritarianism among democratic countries may make non-democratic countries to feel more satisfied with their authoritarianism.

As we saw above, the major threat to democracy is the combination of large high tech companies and the inequality of income and wealth. This is the unavoidable outcome of neo-liberal economic system of which the U.S. is the champion.

Remember how neo-liberal economic system works

First, the government’ role is minimized, or rather, it is paralyzed.

Second, to make profit, the production is automated and labour cost is minimized through the freezing of wage and abolition of effective labour unions.

Third, competition is limitless. Only the fittest survive, but as the free competition continues the number of fittest shrinks.

The combination of profit making and the limitless competition produces a situation where the income and wealth is bound to be in the hand of a few winners.

Moreover, the decreasing power of the government leads to a serious situation in which the big corporations dictate national economic policies, in which the oligarchy of politicians-bureaucrats-businessmen establishes the culture of corruption and aggravates unequal income distribution.

The inequality of income distribution is measured by the Gini coefficient which varies between zero and 100; the higher the Gini coefficient, the wider becomes the income distribution in favour of the rich.

The Gini coefficient which represents acceptable income distribution is about 35.

But, most of the developed democratic countries have a Gini coefficient varying between 45 and 50. The Gini coefficient for the U.S. is 50. Under such situation, only the transfer of income from the rich to the poor through taxes can provide reasonable amount of welfare to the poor; Washington has failed to do so.

Washington’s approach to the evangelization of democracy is another determinant factor of the decline of democracy. The core of Washington’s propagation of democracy has been the strategy of regime change through coercion and military intervention.

The amazing thing is that the U.S. has coercively intervened 60 times since 1950 in 48 countries, but succeeded only in handful cases in changing regimes. This leads us to question if the attempts were really regime change or something else, for example, the access to raw materials.

There is no doubt that Washington’s regime change operations have been one of factors of the decline of democracy.

Is China responsible for the Decline of Democracy? 

In order that China is responsible for the decline of democracy, the Chinese ideology-Confucian socialism- should be global enough to be competitive with American ideology represented by democracy.

Allison summarized well the basic structure of the two sets of values.

Graham Allison, wrote a book: “Destines for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides Trap? Houghton Miffin Harcourt, 2017”

Allison is saying that Western value (democracy) is so different from Chinese values (Confucian socialism) that the Chinese values cannot influence the Western values.

Here is Allison’s view of Western values.

“The United States is a missionary nation derived from the belief that the non-western nations should submit to the western values of democracy, free market, limited government, human right, individualism, the rules of law, and should embody these values in their institutions.” (Allison.14)

Here is Allison’s perception of Chinese values.

“The value of authority, the subordination of individual rights and interests, the importance of consensus, and avoidance of confrontation, saving face, and, in general, the supremacy of the state over society and individuals” (Allison p.138)

In addition, Allison provides a table which shows the difference between the American values and the Chinese values.

In this table, we see how wide the difference between the two sets of values is. The difference is so deep and so wide that it looks impossible to integrate them into one set of values, let alone find reconciliation.

Another point is that the American values are missionary, while the Chinese values are inimitable. In other words, the Chinese political regime cannot be a threat to democracy.

In conclusion, it can be said that the Chinese socialism cannot be responsible for the decline of democracy. The phenomenon of the fall of democracy and rising authoritarianism takes place in democratic countries not non-democratic countries.

Hence, it can be said that the only way to restore democracy does not consists in blaming China but in putting pressure on the government of democratic countries to adopt policies conducive to more equal income distribution and to assure the needed public goods.

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Dr. Joseph H. Chung is professor of economics at Quebec University  in Montreal (UQAM). He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Featured image is from TheAltWorld

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This article was originally published in November 2020.

The World Economic Forum warns of a new crisis of “even more significant economic and social implications than COVID19.”

What threat could possibly be more impactful? Christian breaks down the WEF’s “Cyber Polygon” tabletop exercise, its participants, and predictive programming around a looming large scale cyberattack on critical infrastructure that would unleash a Dark Winter and help to usher in the Great Reset.

Jeremy Jurgens, WEF Managing Director:

“I believe that there will be another crisis. It will be more significant. It will be faster than what we’ve seen with COVID. The impact will be greater, and as a result the economic and social implications will be even more significant.”

Klaus Schwab:

“We all know, but still pay insufficient attention, to the frightening scenario of a comprehensive cyber attack could bring a complete halt to the power supply, transportation, hospital services, our society as a whole. The COVID-19 crisis would be seen in this respect as a small disturbance in comparison to a major cyberattack.

To use the COVID19 crisis as a timely opportunity to reflect on the lessons the cybersecurity community can draw and improve our unpreparedness for a potential cyber-pandemic.”

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Featured image: BI.ZONE CEO Dmitry Samartsev presents at the first Cyber Polygon session at the World Economic Forum annual meeting, January 2020. Source: BI.ZONE

The Specter of Vaccine Fundamentalism: Bowing Down and Serving the “God of Vaccines”

By Dr. Pascal Sacré, August 01, 2021

The issue, for me, is not to demonize vaccination the way fundamentalists demonize any alternative to their God, usually by attacking people who dare to talk about it. The issue, for me, is to tell people the truth: There are safer, more effective and less dangerous alternatives to finding the way out of this crisis.

The US War on Cuba: From Economic Embargoes, Biological Warfare to US-Backed Terrorism

By Timothy Alexander Guzman, August 01, 2021

Former US President Donald Trump imposed his “maximum pressure” strategy against Cuba by slapping on more than 240 plus new sanctions and to make matters worse, he added Cuba to the list of “state sponsors of terrorism” again to keep his voter base in the Cuban-American community intact.

The “Great Reset” Elite Coup: Taking Control by Destroying Cash. Reshaping the Human “Individual”

By Robert J. Burrowes, August 01, 2021

For many people desperate to see a return to a life that is more familiar, it is still easy to believe that the upheavals we have experienced since March 2020 and the changes that have been wrought in their train are ‘temporary’, even if they are starting to ‘drag on’ somewhat longer than hoped.

Video: India Human Rights Security Council Files COVID Genocide Complaint Against Gates Foundation and Big Pharma

By Dipali Ojha and Kristina Borjesson, August 01, 2021

Lawyer Dipali Ojha details the complaint’s long list of charges detailing “offences against entire humanity which are genocide (Mass Murders) of the citizens” related to the covid pandemic and committed by the “Vaccine Syndicate Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation” as well as “bio terrorists,” “Pharma Syndicates,” “Tech Syndicates,” “Tech Bullies” and others.

China’s Post-Pandemic Economic Growth: Reaching Out and Developing Internal Markets and Well-being

By Peter Koenig, August 01, 2021

By the end of 2020 China’s economy was practically working at full speed – and achieving, according to IMF’s – very conservative account – a 2.6% growth for the year. Chinese own and perhaps more realistic projections were closer to 3.5%.

The Suppression of Invermectin: ‘There’s Good Reason Pfizer Fought to Hide the Details of These Contracts’

By Mordechai Sones, August 01, 2021

Unredacted contracts for the experimental biological agent known as the “COVID-19 vaccine” between the Pfizer corporation and various governments continue to be revealed.

Return to Lifta for Palestinians Is Not a Wish; It’s a Promise, Israel!

By Rima Najjar, August 01, 2021

Lifta for Palestinians, according to this vision, is now a monument, a symbol of the Nakba to feel nostalgic about. At best, it is useful in educating Israeli Jews and the world at large about Israel’s, not Palestine’s, history.

Act of Censorship Directed against Prominent Physician Dr. Peter A. McCullough

By Global Research News, August 01, 2021

One of America’s leading physicians on the early treatment of COVID-19, his protocols and scientific works are relied upon to help millions around the globe.  Along with half of Americans, Dr. McCullough has appropriate concerns over COVID-19 vaccine safety and efficacy.

Video: The 2021 Worldwide Corona Crisis. “The Worst Crisis in Modern History”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky and Ariel Noyola Rodriguez, July 31, 2021

We are at the crossroads of one of the most serious crises in World history. We are living history, yet our understanding of the sequence of events since January 2020 has been blurred.

Criminalization of Free Speech: Craig Murray’s Jailing is the Latest Move to Snuff out Independent journalism

By Jonathan Cook, July 31, 2021

Craig Murray, a former ambassador to Uzbekistan, the father of a newborn child, a man in very poor health and one who has no prior convictions, will have to hand himself over to the Scottish police on Sunday morning.

The Assassination of Malcolm X

By Michael Welch and James DiEugenio, July 31, 2021

Of all the figures risen to the level of legends in the United States that faced an assassination in that five year stretch in the 1960s, Malcolm X would definitely qualify as the most controversial.

And We Should Trust ‘The Science’ of the Pharma Industry?

By F. William Engdahl, July 31, 2021

The forever-head of the US NIAID, Tony Fauci, has repeatedly demanded that the public “trust the science” as he shifts his own science opinion from one positon to another.

Video: Similarities Of Medical Abuse In 1930’s Germany With Todays Covid19 Policies

By Vera Sharav and Reiner Fuellmich, July 31, 2021

We bring to the attention of Global Research readers this important interview with Vera Sharav.

COVID-19 Vaccines are Killing “Huge Numbers” of People: Government Scrubs Stats on Vaccine-Related Deaths

By Dr. Joseph Mercola and Dr. Peter McCullough, August 01, 2021

According to Dr. Peter McCullough, vice chief of internal medicine at Baylor University Medical Center and known for being one of the top five most-published medical researchers in the United States, COVID-19 vaccines are killing “huge numbers” of people and the government is simply ignoring it.

Nature’s Own Fuel Could Save Us from the Greenhouse Effect and Electric Grid Failure

By Ellen Brown, August 01, 2021

Hemp fuel and other biofuels could reduce carbon emissions while saving the electric grid, but they’re often overlooked for more expensive, high-tech climate solutions.

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

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VAERS data released today by the CDC showed a total of 518,770 reports of adverse events from all age groups following COVID vaccines, including 11,940 deaths and 63,102 serious injuries between Dec. 14, 2020 and July 23, 2021.

Data released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed total reports of serious injuries following COVID vaccination, across all age groups, spiked by 14,717 — to 63,000 — compared with the previous week.

The data comes 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.

Data released today show that between Dec. 14, 2020 and July 23, 2021, a total of 518,770 total adverse events were reported to VAERS, including 11,940 deaths — an increase of 535 over the previous week. There were 63,102 serious injuries reported during the same time period — up 14,717 compared with the previous week.

Excluding “foreign reports” filed in VAERS, 435,007 adverse events, including 5,612 deaths and 34,890 serious injuries, were reported in the U.S.

In the U.S., 340.4 million COVID vaccine doses had been administered as of July 23. This includes: 137 million doses of Moderna’s vaccine, 189 million doses of Pfizer and 13 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) COVID vaccine.

Of the 5,612 U.S. deaths reported as of July 23, 14% occurred within 24 hours of vaccination, 20% occurred within 48 hours of vaccination and 34% occurred in people who experienced an onset of symptoms within 48 hours of being vaccinated.

This week’s U.S. data for 12- to 17-year-olds show:

• 15,086 total adverse events, including 909 rated as serious and 16 reported deaths — one lessthan what VAERS showed last week. Two of the nine deaths were suicides.
• The most recent reported deaths include a 13-year-old boy (VAERS I.D. 1463061) who died after receiving a Moderna vaccine, a 16-year-old boy (VAERS I.D. ​​1466009) who died after receiving his second dose of Pfizer and a 16-year-old boy (VAERS I.D. 1475434) who died with an enlarged heart six days after receiving his first Pfizer dose.

Other reports include two 13-year-old boys (VAERS I.D. 1406840  and 1431289) who died two days after receiving a Pfizer vaccine, three 15-year-olds (VAERS I.D. 1187918, 1382906 and 1242573), three 16-year-olds (VAERS I.D. 1420630, 1225942 and 1386841) and three 17-year-olds (VAERS I.D. 1199455, 1388042 and 1420762).

• 2,223 reports of anaphylaxis among 12- to 17-year-olds with 99% of cases
  attributed to Pfizer’s vaccine.
• 394 reports of myocarditis and pericarditis (heart inflammation) with 390 cases attributed to Pfizer’s vaccine.
• 72 reports of blood clotting disorders, with all cases attributed to Pfizer.

This week’s total U.S. VAERS data, from Dec. 14, 2020 to July 23, 2021, for all age groups combined, show:

• 21% of deaths were related to cardiac disorders.
• 54% of those who died were male, 43% were female and the remaining death reports did not include gender of the deceased.
• The average age of death was 73.4.
• As of July 23, 2,572 pregnant women reported adverse events related to COVID vaccines, including 885 reports of miscarriage or premature birth.
• Of the 2,483 cases of Bell’s Palsy reported, 50% were attributed to Pfizer vaccinations, 43% to Moderna and 6% to J&J.
• 467 reports of Guillain-Barré Syndrome, with 39% of cases attributed to Pfizer, 36% to Moderna and 24% to J&J.
• 119,539 reports of anaphylaxis with 44% of cases attributed to Pfizer’s vaccine, 48% to Moderna and 8% to J&J.
• 7,864 reports of blood clotting disorders. Of those, 3,336 reports were attributed to Pfizer, 2,846 reports to Moderna and 1,637 reports to J&J.
• 1,944 cases of myocarditis and pericarditis with 1,819 cases attributed to Pfizer, 639 cases to Moderna and 68 cases to J&J’s COVID vaccine.

Internal CDC document reveals vaccinated, even if not sick, can spread virus

The CDC now says even those people fully vaccinated for COVID are able to get, and spread, the virus.

According to internal documents obtained by The Washington Post, the CDC said it’s time to “Acknowledge the war has changed.”

The document outlined unpublished data showing fully vaccinated people might spread the Delta variant at the same rate as unvaccinated people, CNN reported.

It concludes the delta variant is “highly contagious, likely to be more severe” and that “breakthrough infections may be as transmissible as unvaccinated cases.”

The Washington Post reported:

“‘I think the central issue is that vaccinated people are probably involved to a substantial extent in the transmission of delta,’ Jeffrey Shaman, a Columbia University epidemiologist, wrote in an email after reviewing the CDC slides.

“‘In some sense, vaccination is now about personal protection — protecting oneself against severe disease. Herd immunity is not relevant as we are seeing plenty of evidence of repeat and breakthrough infections.’”

Since January, people who got infected after vaccination make up an increasing portion of hospitalizations and in-hospital deaths among COVID patients, according to the CDC documents. That trend coincides with the spread of the Delta variant.

The Post also reported today on a CDC study revealing three-fourths of people infected in a Massachusetts COVID outbreak were vaccinated. The report bolsters the hypothesis that vaccinated people can spread the more transmissible variant, and may be a factor in the summer surge of infections.

The data, detailed in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, provided key evidence that convinced agency scientists to reverse recommendations on mask-wearing and advise that vaccinated individuals wear masks in indoor public settings in some circumstances, The Post reported.

Thus far, researchers have focused on viral load — a term for how much of the virus is present in infected peoples’ bodies — which can affect transmissibility and severity. Infections with the Delta variant lead to higher levels of virus in the body, even in breakthrough cases in fully vaccinated individuals, the document said.

If vaccinated people get infected anyway, they have as much virus in their bodies as unvaccinated people — that means they’re as likely to infect someone else as unvaccinated people who get infected, CNN reported.

“The bottom line was that, in contrast to the other variants, vaccinated people, even if they didn’t get sick, got infected and shed virus at similar levels as unvaccinated people who got infected,” Dr. Walter Orenstein, who heads the Emory Vaccine Center and who viewed the documents, told CNN.

The CDC is scheduled to publish more data today.

Biden says federal workers must get vaccinated or submit to regular testing — postal union, others push back

President Biden on Thursday announced all civilian federal employees will be required to show proof of vaccination against COVID or be forced to submit to regular COVID testing, wear masks and socially distance.

Biden also called on state and local governments to use COVID relief funds to give $100 to residents who get vaccinated. In a statement released by the White House, the administration said the new rules were issued because of the Delta COVID variant, and because unvaccinated people present a problem to themselves, their families and co-workers.

“Every federal government employee will be asked to attest to their vaccination status.  Anyone who does not attest or is not vaccinated will be required to mask no matter where they work; test one or two times a week to see if they have a — they have acquired COVID, socially distance and generally will not be allowed to travel for work,” Biden said.

Biden directed his administration to apply similar standards to all federal contractors. “If you want to do business with the federal government, get your workers vaccinated,” he said.

In one early sign the policy may not go as smoothly as planned, the American Postal Workers Union (APWU) said it opposes the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate as a condition for employment, arguing it isn’t the role of the federal government to mandate vaccines or other testing measures.

“Maintaining the health and safety of our members is of paramount importance,” the APWU said in a statement issued Wednesday. “While the APWU leadership continues to encourage postal workers to voluntarily get vaccinated, it is not the role of the federal government to mandate vaccinations for the employees we represent.”

In advance of Biden’s official announcement, Children’s Health Defense on Thursday issued a statement disagreeing with the new policy.

The statement quoted CHD Chairman Robert F. Kennedy, Jr:

“Coerced medical interventions have been abhorrent to advocates of liberty and human dignity in every age. The fact that these vaccines are shoddily tested, experimental, unapproved and so risky their manufacturers can neither obtain insurance coverage nor indemnify users against grave injuries or death should magnify our ethical revulsion.”

FDA urges Moderna, Pfizer to include thousands more children in clinical trials

Pfizer and Moderna will expand their COVID vaccine clinical trial to include thousands more children prior to seeking EUA, after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) told the vaccine makers the size and scope of their pediatric studies, as initially envisioned, were inadequate to detect rare side effects.

Citing concerns about the risk of heart inflammation associated with the vaccines, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration asked Pfizer and Moderna to expand the number of children in their clinical trials.https://t.co/p05zkNddjZ

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) July 28, 2021

The rare side effects cited by the FDA included myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle, and pericarditis, inflammation of the lining around the heart, multiple people familiar with the trials told The New York Times.

Expanding the pediatric trials means thousands more children as young as 6 months old may soon be recruited and enrolled in COVID vaccine trials. According to the Times, the FDA asked the companies to include 3,000 children in the 5- to 11-year-old group, the group for whom results were expected first.

Moderna’s shot is authorized for emergency use in people 18 and up, and Pfizer’s vaccine is authorized for children as young as 12. No COVID vaccines have yet received EUA approval for children younger than 12.

America’s Frontline Doctors sue UC over vaccine mandates

With supporting declarations from top medical experts and students, America’s Frontline Doctors(AFLDS) filed a civil rights lawsuit in Federal Court against the University of California (UC), targeting the university system’s plan to mandate COVID vaccination for all students regardless of natural immunity.

As The Defender reported July 28, AFLDS, students and even the UC’s own top doctors, are criticizing the rushed mandate as arbitrary, unscientific and medically unnecessary.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs in this civil rights case cite the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution’s protection of bodily integrity, as well as two California civil rights statutes (Cal. Civ. Code sec. 51, Cal. Gov. Code sec. 11135) that prohibit discrimination on the basis of medical or genetic status.

Accordingly, AFLDS is requesting an injunction to restrain the UC from utilizing coercion and segregation of naturally-immune and unvaccinated people in violation of Federal and State law.

The primary target of the lawsuit is the UC’s unscientific one-size-fits-all vaccine mandate where the UC rejects scientifically accepted prescreening for natural immunity.

The CDC, NIH pull in millions from licensing deals, including COVID-related technologies

Aggregated data for fiscal year 2020 show the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and CDC collected a combined $63.4 million in royalty revenues under a business model that allows the NIH to grant technology licenses to the private sector.

As The Defender reported earlier this week, with 27 different institutes and centers housed under the NIH umbrella — including the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) — NIH is the largest biomedical research agency in the world with an annual budget of nearly $42 billion.

Aggregated data for fiscal year 2020 show the NIH and CDC collected a combined $63.4 million in royalty revenues under a business model that allows the NIH to grant technology licenses to the private sector.https://t.co/wPWEuUYnNx

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) July 28, 2021

Within NIH, the Office of Technology Transfer plays a “strategic role” in supporting patenting and licensing for inventions that emerge from laboratories at the NIH and CDC. In a win-win business model, the NIH routinely grants technology licenses to the private sector for use or commercialization of its inventions, with those licenses then driving billions of dollars in royalties back to the NIH.

In fiscal year 2020 alone — October 2019 through September 2020 — aggregated data for NIH and CDC show the agencies collected $63.4 million in royalty revenues.

Where public health agencies are concerned, COVID appears to be very good for business, with a flurry of unprecedented funding — conveniently mobilized by the pandemic — ushering in profound and likely permanent changes in a public health infrastructure once lamented as weak and fragmented.

As The Defender reported this week, Pfizer now projects $33 billion in COVID vaccine revenues, a sharp increase over earlier projections. The vaccine maker anticipates booster shots, a vaccine designed for the Delta variant and pending authorization of COVID vaccines for children will drive sales even higher next year.

144 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 several 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 144 days since we sent our first email to the CDC requesting information.

Children’s Health Defense asks anyone who has experienced an adverse reaction, to any vaccine, to file a report following these three steps.

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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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When the military mandated the anthrax vaccine and military pilots showed they were willing to throw away careers and pensions in order to avoid the vaccine, it got the military’s attention — maybe they can do the same with COVID vaccine mandates?

With the U.S. military announcing plans to mandate the COVID vaccine for all personnel, possibly by Sept. 1, many service members already enduring coercive restrictions for failing to take the “voluntary” vaccine, are concerned about their careers.

To date, 23% to 42% of military members, depending on the branch of service, have not taken the vaccine.

The clinical trials for the three COVID vaccines being administered in the U.S. — Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson — are not scheduled to be completed until 2022 or 2023, when they would then be eligible for review and full licensing by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

However, President Biden could issue an executive order to impose a military mandate and waive FDA approval in the event of a health emergency.

Experimental anthrax vaccine precedent

The U.S. military has now, in an unprecedented move, decided to administer an experimental drug to the entire force. Even with the experimental anthrax vaccine scandal, there was never a completed mandate for the entire force.

The Anthrax Vaccine Immunization Program (AVIP) was disrupted by numerous legal challenges in Doe vs. Rumsfeld (2003, 2004, 2006, 2007) for an illegally mandated drug, without full FDA approval and licensure, which was never proven to be effective to protect against inhalation anthrax as required under the FDA’s Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) guidelines.

During this legal battle, which lasted years, service members who declined the anthrax vaccine were reduced in rank and pay, and disciplined under the Uniform Code of Military Justice which brought criminal charges resulting in jail and dishonorable discharges for declining a vaccine with serious long-term side effects. Others were forced into early retirement, and lost veteran benefits.

The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) denied a readiness problem or a vaccine safety problem, but Congressional oversight revealed the experimental anthrax vaccine mandate in 2001 provoked a pilot retention crisis.

This, and the anthrax vaccine side effects experienced by military personnel, was summarized in a report issued by the Government Accounting Office (GAO).

As The Defender previously reported, in addition to the legal challenges, the GAO report found the military had a serious retention crisis due to the anthrax vaccine. The most experienced pilots left or planned to leave the military to avoid the anthrax vaccine — they were even willing to walk away from retirement benefits.

According to the GAO report:

“According to our survey, between September 1998 and September 2000, when AVIP was mandatory, about 16 percent of the guard and reserve pilots and aircrew members had transferred to another unit (primarily to non-flying positions), moved to inactive status, or left the military altogether. In addition, 18 percent of those still participating in units indicated their intention to transfer, move, or leave in the near future. About one-fifth of those who had already left did so knowingly before qualifying for military retirement.’”

The pending loss of pilots was undeniable. According to the report, 69% of those pilots who changed their status ranked the anthrax vaccine as the main factor, and 72% of those pilots who planned to leave the military ranked the anthrax vaccine as the main factor.

More than half of the losses and potential future losses of aircrew members in the guard and reserve were pilots. These personnel losses included more experienced positions of flight evaluator, flight instructor and aircraft commander, in whom the military had invested years of training.

In retrospect, there were very few commanders willing to protect the service members from side effects of blindness, vertigo, tremors and blackouts. Col. Felix M. Grieder, commander of the 436th Airlift Wing at Dover Air Force Base, was an exception.

According to Stars and Stripes:

“In 1999, dozens of C-5 pilots from the base reported side effects after taking the shot. One senior officer resigned and 40 percent of the pilots in the Reserve wing left rather than take a shot.

“Concerns by the pilots prompted Col. Felix M. Grieder, commander of the 436th Airlift Wing at Dover, to suspend the inoculation program, making it the first base to do so.”

Not incidentally, all vaccine manufacturers continue to be indemnified for their products leaving the public to assume all the risk of personal injury with little to no meaningful redress.

In 1999, these Anthrax vaccine side effects were correlated with the ingredient of non-FDA-approved squalene in certain lots of vaccines and linked to Gulf War Syndrome.

It took years for DOD, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR), and the FDA to verify that independent lab testing at Tulane University confirmed the presence of squalene, and then blame contamination and not intentional use of the vaccine adjuvant used in animal research.

The GAO pilot survey in 2000 indicated 86% of respondents had experienced a local or systemic reaction to the anthrax vaccine.

Tom Heemstra, a squadron commander forced into retirement for refusing the anthrax vaccine, testified to Congress that the Pentagon acted in abuse of power similar to what is being reported currently with SARS-CoV2 vaccines: “They coerced, intimidated, threatened and punished in order to enforce this program,” Heemstra said.

There was a double standard with anthrax punishments policy which said Reserve and the National Guard personnel could not be court-martialed like active-duty personnel.

Those in the Reserve and Guard units who declined the anthrax vaccine tended to be officers and pilots who flew the majority of refueling and cargo aircraft in the Air Force, and nearly all of these pilots also flew for commercial airlines in their civilian careers.

There are many takeaways from the anthrax program. The DOD’s inability to monitor vaccine reactions in an active surveillance system and reverse an unsound mandate policy in a timely response demonstrated a vulnerability that has not yet been corrected.

Likely, the DOD financial contract commitments for the vaccine in the planning phase outweighed changing course of action with surveillance in the operational phase.

The DOD implemented a policy that harmed health and retention, and the department has even continued a limited anthrax program years after overwhelming evidence of harm and lack of benefit.

Wargaming: Likely Scenarios, Worst-Case Scenarios, & Red Team Assessment 

The use of wargaming as a tool to prepare for numerous scenarios is critical for the DOD. Traditional pandemic planning exercises must move beyond strictly how to synchronize response efforts against a pandemic to considering a catastrophic loss to the Armed Forces.

The DOD must expand its thinking on force readiness to include pharmaceutical reaction risks, losses of key skilled personnel and potential wide-scale catastrophic harms from experimental medical countermeasures.

Agency heads, including the Assistant Secretary for Health Affairs, the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command (USAMRMC), the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), and the Assistant Secretary for Defense for Manpower and Reserve Affairs, plus outside independent scientists and researchers must be brought to this effort.

Wargaming scenarios for the implementation of a potential COVID vaccine mandate should include the likely scenario that the drug does not confer individual immunity or herd immunity, per the clinical trial endpoints that indicated symptom reduction was the primary measured outcome.

Evidence of vaccine failure is already demonstrated by high numbers of breakthrough cases before influenza season begins in October 2021.

The development of this scenario must include data showing that young, healthy people in the military have a 99.9% survival rate. It should also include data on how a failure to meet the recently changed definition of herd immunity would not be met.

Incorporate that AR40-562 allows military personnel to show proof of immunity in lieu of vaccination, and include estimates of naturally acquired immunity. A drug that does not confer immunity for a disease with a high survival rate in the military population does not demand a mandate that could result in a retention crisis.

This scenario should also include therapeutics as alternatives to the vaccine, as a protective measure against detrimental groupthink that exclusively perpetuates a single strategy to accomplish the mission of health for a diverse population.

The DOD, when conducting its wargame exercise, must also include the worst-case scenario of acute and chronic adverse reactions disrupting the health of the entire force in service members who have been vaccinated for COVID.

Antibody Dependent Enhancement (ADE) is well documented in the published mRNA research literature. ADE could become epidemic in the winter of 2021, with the pathogenic priming effect established in previous animal studies of mRNA vaccines.

In the established likelihood of a zero-exemption policy under a vaccine mandate for active duty personnel, a policy that would reinforce readiness would allow those who decline the option to transfer to a reserve unit, without UCMJ punishment. If the entire vaccinated force is now susceptible to ADE, then the unvaccinated members in the reserves could backfill critical readiness missions.

Every wargame exercise should always consider the enemy or red team. Coronavirus is not the enemy, despite a media campaign trying to promote it as such. Coronaviruses are endemic, and have been known to affect humans for a long time.

Part of the red team assessment should include the history of the manufactured crisis of anthrax (the vaccine developer was blamed for mailing Anthrax letters and creating the threat to secure a $29 million no-bid vaccine contract with DOD), and the subsequent knee-jerk reaction of DOD to mandate an experimental drug for the entire force.

Policymakers should assess if this is a copycat operation. Both the alleged threat of a virus with a 99.9% survival rate, and the alleged cure of a fast-tracked vaccine using new mRNA technology demand a focused red team assessment.

This should include a scenario whereby a country such as China could co-opt a small number of influential scientists, pharmaceutical companies and news media outlets to ensure that U.S. Government advisors prevent and limit critical reporting on likely injuries across the DOD workforce.

Simulate degradation of the available pilot strength across critical combatant commands where airpower is a key military strength, attrite the numbers and assess the outcomes. This red team assessment should include the possibility that a biowarfare product or synthetically altered viruscould decimate airpower.

VAERS-derived data should be used as a key indicator of potential deaths and injuries that would ground pilots and crews.

The defense manpower assessment should include a detailed identification of the shortfalls and gaps that currently exist in order to prepare and defend against any of these possible scenarios.

Legal response strategy for service members

A legal challenge by individuals or class action suit should include the precedent of Doe v. Rumsfeld.

The COVID vaccine has not been approved by the FDA, which means at this time, a mandate is a direct violation of federal statute and service members have the right to decline.

The vaccine has not demonstrated, in clinical trials or in the real world, the ability to prevent infection or transmission, thus a mandate is a discrimination policy with preference for vaccinated with infection and rejection of unvaccinated with infection. New territory in a legal challenge would include the lack of evidence of a health emergency, a prerequisite for the military to mandate an EUA drug.

America’s Frontline Doctors v. Secretary of US HHS, filed on July 19, provides the language and legal basis for all these challenges and more.

How to protect your rights and engage with stakeholders

First, service members should be aware of their vaccine exemption rights in AR40-562 (a joint regulation applying to all branches of the military).

Exemptions include proof of immunity, medical contraindication, administrative exceptions by the commander, and by religious accommodation approval.

Second, if pilots can obtain a Congressional oversight hearing with data on adverse reactions, degradation of readiness status,and retention losses, they can be influential in shaping a more sensible response to the COVID-19 medical countermeasure vaccine for all service members.

With the anthrax vaccine, 16% declination from pilots was the trigger to limit the vaccine mandate to “at risk” units.

Third, commanders have power under AR40-562 to halt the vaccine program in their units if they assess a risk to mission readiness. This requires service members to educate commanders who are currently in lockstep with a climate of coercion, where unvaccinated service members are already reporting alarming work segregation and public access restrictions during the voluntary phase of an EUA drug.

Fourth, the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs (ASDHA) comprises the chief medical adviser to the U.S. Secretary of Defense. She is assisted by a principal deputy assistant, and three deputy assistant secretaries. It is prudent for citizens to demand evidence from these unelected civilians at the office of ASDHA that they have conducted critical wargames and red team assessment for all aforementioned scenarios regarding the COVID vaccine.

The public should demand this information via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and expect U.S. Congress members to expedite these actions.

Last, service members can contact members of the U.S. House Committee on Armed Forces and ask them to support HR3860, a bill to prohibit any requirement that a member of the U.S. Armed Forces take a COVID vaccine.

The stakes could be too high, the risks too grave, and with the inability to defend our nation during a time of multi-faceted global crisis, incalculable.

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Pam Long is graduate of USMA at West Point and is an Army Veteran of the Medical Service Corps.

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Just yesterday, we discussed the censoring of a commentator by Twitter for merely expressing an opinion over the need for a “pause” on any federal mandates on Covid-19 as new research is studied. Now, a former New York Times science reporter, Alex Berenson, has been suspended for simply citing the results from a clinical trial by Pfizer and raising questions over any vaccine mandate. In the meantime, the White House accused both the Washington Post and New York Times of irresponsible reporting on Covid, but surprisingly Twitter has not suspended those accounts.  It is the license of the censor.  Twitter is unwilling to let people read or discuss viewpoints that it disagrees with as a corporation. Many on the left, however, have embraced the concept of corporate speech and censorship. It turns out that the problem with censorship for many was the failure to censor views that they opposed. With the “right” censors at work, the free speech concerns have been set aside.

I have little ability to judge the science on such questions. Moreover, I was eager to be vaccinated as was my entire family. I would get the vaccination today with equal enthusiasm. However, I welcome the debate for data. Yet, rather than answer such critics and refute their arguments, many people focus on silencing anyone with dissenting viewpoints like Berenson.

Berenson has been effectively confined to Substack by Big Tech due to his discussing dissenting views on the science surrounding Covid-19. His latest offense against Big Tech came when he posted the results published by Pfizer of its own clinical data. He claimed that the research showed little difference in mortality between those in the trial with a vaccine and those given a placebo.

In the meantime, the White House sent out an all caps condemnation for “completely irresponsible” reporting on the infliction of vaccinated people according to another study.

Ben Wakana, deputy director of strategic communications and engagement for the White House, blasted the Washington Post over its headline about a study of a COVID-19 outbreak in Provincetown, Massachusetts on July 4th. The Post tweet read “Vaccinated people made up three-quarters of those infected in a massive Massachusetts covid-19 outbreak, pivotal CDC study finds.” Wakana responded “Completely irresponsible, 3 days ago the CDC made clear that vaccinated individuals represent a VERY SMALL amount of transmission occurring around the country. Virtually all hospitalizations and deaths continue to be among the unvaccinated. Unreal to not put that in context.”

Completely irresponsible.

3 days ago the CDC made clear that vaccinated individuals represent a VERY SMALL amount of transmission occurring around the country.

Virtually all hospitalizations and deaths continue to be among the unvaccinated.

Unreal to not put that in context. https://t.co/BbmSNvQlrb

— Ben Wakana (@benwakana46) July 30, 2021

Wakana addressed the same issue with  a New York Times tweet stating “Breaking News: The Delta variant is as contagious as chickenpox and may be spread by vaccinated people as easily as the unvaccinated, an internal C.D.C. report said.” That sent Wakana into all caps: “VACCINATED PEOPLE DO NOT TRANSMIT THE VIRUS AT THE SAME RATE AS UNVACCINATED PEOPLE AND IF YOU FAIL TO INCLUDE THAT CONTEXT YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG.”

VACCINATED PEOPLE DO NOT TRANSMIT THE VIRUS AT THE SAME RATE AS UNVACCINATED PEOPLE AND IF YOU FAIL TO INCLUDE THAT CONTEXT YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG. https://t.co/gBkDbJ21xX

— Ben Wakana (@benwakana46) July 30, 2021

Now all three posters (Berenson, The Post, and The Times) were citing studies and accused of not putting them into context. However, only Berenson was suspended.

Obviously, none of these posters should be suspended and Twitter should not be enforcing one of the largest censorship programs in history. However, the silence of free speech supports, academics, and journalists to this hypocrisy is deafening.

The rise of corporate censors has combined with a heavily pro-Biden media to create the fear of a de facto state media that controls information due to a shared ideology rather than state coercion.  That concern has been magnified by demands from Democratic leaders for increased censorship, including censoring political speech, and now word that the Biden Administration has routinely been flagging material to be censored by Facebook.

This is why I have described myself as an Internet Originalist:

The alternative is “internet originalism” — no censorship. If social media companies returned to their original roles, there would be no slippery slope of political bias or opportunism; they would assume the same status as telephone companies. We do not need companies to protect us from harmful or “misleading” thoughts. The solution to bad speech is more speech, not approved speech.

If Pelosi demanded that Verizon or Sprint interrupt calls to stop people saying false or misleading things, the public would be outraged. Twitter serves the same communicative function between consenting parties; it simply allows thousands of people to participate in such digital exchanges. Those people do not sign up to exchange thoughts only to have Dorsey or some other internet overlord monitor their conversations and “protect” them from errant or harmful thoughts.

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I’m still trying to wrap my brain around the astonishing shift from the CDC on Tuesday, July 27, 2021. It is not just that the CDC is re-recommending masks for people indoors in many parts of the country, which could include your neighborhood or not, and this could change tomorrow. (Hint: right now, it disportionately affects red states.) 

Whether and to what extent you “protect” yourself from disease with a paper strapped to your mouth and nose is now wholly contingent on data reporting and interpretation. It might feel like science but it has a better name: arbitrary power. Out with the Constitution. Out of traditions of law. Out with legislatures and the will of the people.

What’s even stranger was the rationale that the CDC cited to claim that the Delta variant renders the vaccines – the ones that have been hyped with unrelenting propaganda for many months, including stigmatization and demonization of those who refuse – substantially less effective for stopping infection than President Biden was touting just last week.

Our thinking on the subject is supposed to mutate at the same pace as the virus itself. It’s exhausting and triggers anyone’s BS detector. How in the world does the CDC expect anyone to believe anything it says in the future?

To be sure, the claim that breakthrough infections (PCR positives in vaccinated individuals) might be more common than thought could in fact be true. Indeed, I tend to think it is. It is a general principle of immunology that for viruses that mutate quickly, inoculation cannot always keep up as an infection preventive.

This is one reason that these fields have for the better part of 100 years observed that natural immunity is to be preferred if that is an option. It is safer and more globally effective for pathogens that are mild for most people, which is exactly what the science is (pointlessly) showing yet again now. Vaccines are glorious for stable viruses (measles, smallpox), but less comprehensively effective for flus and  coronaviruses – which is saying nothing controversial. I should add.

For example, a study from a Houston, Texas, hospital shows that the Delta variant is more transmissible than the wild type or other mutations. “Delta variants caused a significantly higher rate of vaccine breakthrough cases (19.7% compared to 5.8% for all other variants)” and yet there are fewer hospitalizations and deaths – which is another point for traditional virus theory: as a rule of thumb, variants of these pathogens are more prevalent but less severe. We’ve long known that – or did until 2020 when we decided to scrap a century’s worth of public health wisdom.

There is a rumor out there – that’s all it is – that the CDC is relying on some other study out of India that demonstrates that the Delta variant outwits the vaccine, but the study in question pertains to a vaccine not available in the US, has not been peer-reviewed, and was even withdrawn from preprint status so there is no way to check the findings or the data behind them. There are by now more than 100,000 pieces of science out there related to Covid, and they are public. But the one on which the CDC is rumored to follow is not available.

Where it gets interesting is that when a CDC spokesman was asked for the science behind the mandate – we aren’t talking about masking here, but the basic claim that the Delta tends to make an end-run around vaccines – the person said it wasn’t published, as if that were completely normal. What does this mean? Only Anthony Fauci, Rochelle Walensky, and some other big shots at the government agency have access? The millions of other scientists in the world cannot even have access to check out to make sure that the science is sound? And from the interpretation of a small cabal inside some bureaucracy comes the law of the land?

A critical principle of science is peer review, and that at least requires sharing study results that you claim to be definitive. If you don’t do that, people have every reason to dismiss your claims. In the decades since the internet, we’ve seen an ever more intense push to get those journals from behind paywalls and make them publicly available for greater accountability and a better scientific process.

In fact, open science works. A perfect example has been shown this past year when members of the public – including this writer – have enjoyed access to all the science pouring out daily, and happened to take notice of how completely screwed up policy has been in light of the actual evidence. There is zero evidence of a relationship between lockdowns and disease mitigation, zero credible evidence that masks cause a change in the virus trajectory, zero evidence that any of this wreckage of our liberties and rights has been worth it in any case, among many other revelations thanks to open science.

But now we have the CDC making a massive change in the lives of Americans – mandating a piece of clothing around our faces – but flat-out refusing to cite the science behind the claim; either about the variant, its effects, much less the sketchy claims that masks make any difference at all either way. They could have cited the Houston study but did not. Nope. The studies “have not been published yet,” the CDC spokesperson told the Epoch Times.

And we are just supposed to sit by, take our instructions, believe what they say about the science we’ve never seen and they will not share with other scientists, and not complain about it. To be sure, it could be correct that the vaccines are less effective than we have been told all these months, and that’s fine. Just give it to us straight. And yet even the Houston study showing this admits that Delta itself is less deadly.

Isn’t the whole point of this whole Covid kabuki dance to minimize severe outcomes – not cases, not infections, not exposure but hospitalization and death? One would suppose so. But the data games have enabled the disease planners for the better part of a year and a half to keep the shell game going, manipulating data, trends, and various other factors to remix the numbers in ways that fit whatever story they want to tell at the moment. So long as it generates a headline and a policy, we are good to go.

These days, the game is out in the open, brazen, completely undisguised. The science has been reduced to the status of pure diktat. They speak, you obey. If you question it, or even if you are correct too soon, you are toast. The fact-checkers will nail you and you will be body bagged as a subversive and an enemy of the people.

The unscientific nature of this game is summed up in the following realization. The Biden administration is toying with tactics and strategies for disease control that have utterly and completely failed for the 16 months they have been tried. Everwhere in the world! The science as we know it conclusively demonstrates the failure of every bit of the lockdown agenda. And yet here we are, threatened by another round on all sides.

I was curious how our home assistants have handled this newest turn of events that is going to land the nation’s kids in masks again this fall. I asked her. I got in return a tedious rendering of the same bland messaging from 5 different news sources, each nonchalantly telling us the new instructions from some unelected bureaucracy led by people with no experience or skin in the game.

I had the sudden sense that I was playing a bit part – the powerless man in a chair – in some dystopian science fiction movie. The point of the movie is to warn us against a future that we should all work to prevent – to know that such a nightmare would be possible and to therefore guard against any trend in that direction. Such movies exist to remind us how fragile freedom really is.

Sadly, the nightmare is here. It is everywhere. There is no more need for warnings. Now we have to deal with the reality of what we’ve become thanks to the people who once imagined that they could use the power of the state to outwit an enemy that neither we nor they could see or understand. Refusing to admit complete failure, they only double and triple down in a theater of the tragically absurd.

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Jeffrey A. Tucker is founder and president of the Brownstone Institute and the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press and ten books in 5 languages, most recently Liberty or Lockdown. He is also the editor of The Best of Mises. He speaks widely on topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture. [email protected]

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***

Following the World Health Organization’s formal declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic, governments around the world quickly mandated the use of face masks in public spaces.

This led to a massive demand shock, prompting factories to begin producing disposable masks at full capacity. The majority of these masks were produced in China, and in April 2020, the country reported a staggering daily production figure of 450 million masks.

Plastic Pollution: A Lesser Known Side Effect 

In Ocean Asia’s 2020 report, Masks on the Beach, researchers developed a formula to provide reasonable estimates for the number of disposable masks entering the environment.

Given an annual production figure of 52 billion disposable masks and a loss rate of 3% (the percentage of masks that escape water management systems), Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu notes that the team concluded that nearly 1.6 billion face masks wound up in our oceans in 2020. This amounts to approximately 5,500 tons of plastic pollution.

These masks are commonly made of polypropylene, which easily breaks up into microplastics. While the effects of microplastics on human health are not yet determined, these fragments are incredibly common in our water supply – for example, 94% of U.S. tap water is deemed to be contaminated.

Disposable Doesn’t Mean They’re Gone

Despite their single-use nature, disposable masks are expected to take more than four centuries to decompose while in the ocean. Here’s how this compares to other items we use on a day-to-day basis.

The pandemic has extended well into 2021, and the number of disposable masks polluting our oceans is likely to continue growing.

With this in mind, various companies and organizations are beginning to search for a solution. One noteworthy example is Plaxtil, which is developing a method for recycling surgical masks so that the raw materials can be used for other products.

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A new open-source study concludes that Syrian insurgents carried out the Ghouta sarin chemical attack in August 2013. The explosive findings add to a growing body of public evidence that undermines US-led efforts to blame the Syrian government, which almost led to US military intervention.

Hundreds of people were killed and thousands were wounded when sarin rockets hit multiple sites in the Syria area of Ghouta on August 21, 2013. The US and its allies publicly accused the Syrian government of responsibility, and President Obama threatened to bomb Syria in purported retaliation. But Obama ultimately pulled back after reaching an agreement with Russia to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal.

Since then, a growing body of public information has raised questions about US-led claims of Syrian government guilt. The new open-source study, published by Rootclaim, adds to this evidence.

Based on their trajectories, the study traces all seven missile impact locations back to the most likely launch spot where they all intersected: a small area within insurgent-controlled territory. This location is about 2 km from any impact site — the agreed range calculated by experts for the Volcano rockets used in the Ghouta attack.

Video footage has previously surfaced of insurgents wearing gas masks, firing Volcano rockets, and identifying themselves as members of the insurgent group Liwa Al Islam. The video matches several features of a small field that is located within that insurgent-controlled area where, the study found, the rockets were launched from. That same area, matching the field, was also the source of a little-reported sarin attack by insurgents on Syrian government forces just days after the Ghouta attack.

Guests:

• Michael Kobs and Adam Larson. Co-authors of a new study on the 2013 chemical attack in Ghouta.
• Saar Wilf. Founder of Rootclaim, which published the Ghouta study.

Links:

• Read the Ghouta study here.
• Read Rootclaim’s summary of the findings here.

The study builds on previous revelations that have cast doubt on US-led claims of Syrian government guilt, and pointed instead to Syrian insurgents.

A now widely accepted study from MIT Professor Ted Postol and ex-UN weapons inspector Richard Lloyd found that the range of the Ghouta rockets was outside of Syrian government-controlled territory – making a launch from that area impossible.

Reporting in the London Review of Books, Seymour Hersh revealed that US intelligence collected evidence pointing to Syrian insurgent responsibility for Ghouta attack. The Defense Intelligence Agency reported that al-Nusra in Syria maintained a sarin production cell, “the most advanced sarin plot since al-Qaida’s pre-9/11 effort.” Tests by the British military laboratory Porton Down had found that the sarin used in Ghouta did not match the kind known to exist in the Syrian government arsenal. And US intelligence officials raised the possibility that al-Nusra in Syria had acquired sarin from Turkey in a bid to frame the Syrian government and trigger US government military intervention.

In May 2013, more than ten al-Nusra members were arrested in Turkey, reportedly carrying at least two kilograms of sarin. Two Turkish lawmakers later revealed that a probe into the government’s role in providing sarin to insurgents was compromised.

In 2016, President Obama confirmed that his Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, (along with other U.S. officials) had warned him that allegations of Syrian government responsibility in Ghouta were not a “slam dunk” – a deliberate reference to the phony intelligence that led to the Iraq war.

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Aaron Maté is a journalist and producer. He hosts Pushback with Aaron Maté on The Grayzone. In 2019, Maté was awarded the Izzy Award (named after I.F. Stone) for outstanding achievement in independent media for his coverage of Russiagate in The Nation magazine. Previously, he was a host/producer for The Real News and Democracy Now!.

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***

In what’s becoming one of the longest running legal dramas in the global gold market, the saga of Venezuela’s ‘frozen’ gold in London continues to roll on, most recently reaching the UK Supreme Court in a 4 day court hearing between 19 – 22 July.

At the core of the legal drama is the question of who has the authority to withdraw Venezuela’s gold reserves which are stored in custody at the Bank of England. Is it the Banco Central de Venezuela (BCV) under the direction of de facto president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, or is it a team directed by self-styled interim president of Venezuela Juan Guaidó, who is backed by the US and UK governments.

Given the multiple developments in this saga over the last few years and the complexity of the matter, a recap is in order.

50 tonnes at the Bank of England

From 1980 until 2011, the BCV had 99.2 tonnes of gold stored at the Bank of England. For details, see the BullionStar article from May 2015 titled “Venezuela’s Gold Reserves – Part 1: El Oro, El BCV, y Los Bancos de Lingotes”.

Between late 2011 and early 2012, the BCV conducted a famous gold repatriation operation, flying 160 tonnes of gold bars that were held abroad, back to Caracas in Venezuela to be stored in the vaults of Venezuela’s central bank. Following the completion of that gold repatriation in January 2012, this still left 4,089 of BCV’s Good Delivery gold bars stored in the Bank of England’s vaults (about 50.8 tonnes).

For details of the above, see the BullionStar article from May 2015, titled “Venezuela’s Gold Reserves – Part 2: From Repatriation to Reactivation”.

Sometime after 2012 and until 2018, the BCV then began entering various gold swap transactions, including those with Deutsche Bank and Citibank as counterparts, and also with the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) as a counterpart. To do this, the BCV used most of the gold that it held in the Bank of England vaults in London as collateral for the gold swaps.

Deutsche and Citibank Gold Swaps

One such transaction was a $1.7 billion gold swap with Deutsche Bank, which the BCV let lapse in 2017, thus allowing Deutsche Bank to keep the gold that had been put up as collateral. This was somewhere between 30-40 tonnes of gold.

Another was a gold swap transaction with Citibank, again with the BCV putting up gold as collateral. In April 2018, the BCV paid Citibank $172 million to recover some of that gold from Citi which had been put up as collateral. That then left the BCV, as of April 2018, with a net total of 14 tonnes of gold held at the Bank of England (about 1125 Good Delivery gold bars).

After the Citi gold swap was wound up in April 2018, the BCV then began asking for its gold back from the Bank of England. This is where it gets very interesting.

In November 2018, it became public knowledge that the Bank of England was stalling on the BCV’s request to withdraw 14 tonnes of Venezuela’s gold from London, with the Bank of England using bogus excuses such as transportation insurance costs and anti-money laundering concerns to not fulfill its withdrawal obligation on BCV’s gold custody contract.

For details, see BullionStar article from 14 November 2018 titled “Bank of England refuses to return 14 tonnes of gold to Venezuela”.

However, the real reason for stalling the BCV’s gold withdrawal request was political – in the form of US State Department and US Treasury pressure that was put on the British Foreign office and HM Treasury to block Venezeula’s gold withdrawal and repatriation plan. This stalling was designed to allow time to roll out US sanctions against Venezuela in November 2018 and critically, to move the goalposts and change the rules of the game by allowing time for the Guaidó team (backed by the US and UK) to enter the arena so as to try to win control of the remaining 14 tonnes of BCV gold at the Bank of England.

Blocking tactics included the following. On 30 November 2018, two high profile politicians from the Venezuelan political opposition, Julio Borges and Carlos Vecchio, wrote a letter to the then Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, asking the Bank of England to refuse the gold withdrawal request by the BCV.

At the same time, UK Government officials fronted by the “Venezuela All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG)” attempted to block a meeting between the Bank of England and a Venezuelan team comprising BCV president Calixto Ortega Sánchez and Venezuelan finance minister Simón Zerpa Delgado, who had flown over from Caracas to London in early December.

Although that meeting went ahead, the Bank of England again refused the gold withdrawal request of Ortega Sánchez and Delgado. For more details, see BullionStar article dated 18 December 2018 and titled “Venezuela’s gold in limbo amid tug-of-war at the Bank of England”.

BCV Ups the Ante – 31 Tonnes in Play

December 2018 also saw Venezuela’s central bank up the stakes when it closed out another gold swap transaction with Deutsche Bank, with the BCV paying cash back to Deutsche in return for 17 tonnes of gold which the BCV had put up as loan collateral in 2015. This gold swap closeout thereby boosted the total gold holdings of the BCV at the Bank of England from 14 tonnes to 31 tonnes, more than doubling the amount of gold which the BCV now laid claim to in the Bank of England London vaults.

Gold bar storage at the Bank of England – Each group of bars marked in yellow is approximately 1 tonne (80 bars). 

Note, it appears that the BCV added to its 50 tonnes of gold held at the Bank of England some time between 2012 and 2015 since the amount of gold connected to gold swaps with Deutsche Bank and Citibank appears to have at times exceeded 50 tonnes. It therefore looks like the BCV at some point flew some of the gold bars back from Venezuela to London that had been repatriated to Caracas in 2011-2012.

The stalling by the Bank of England also bought time before Maduro’s new presidential term began on 10 January 2019, after which the US political rhetoric was upped against Maduro and little-known Juan Guaidó (the then national assembly leader in Venezuela’s parliament), was claimed to be interim Venezuelan president by a US-UK led group of countries.

By January 2019, it also became clear who in the US Government had been lobbying the UK government when Bloomberg published an article which revealed that “The Bank of England’s decision to deny Maduro officials’ withdrawal request comes after top U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Michael Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton, lobbied their U.K. counterparts to help cut off the regime from its overseas assets”.

Once Guaidó entered the picture, he too began writing letters to the then British prime minister Theresa May and the then Bank of England governor Mark Carney. In his letters, Guaidó claimed that Venezuela’s Maduro aimed to sell the BCV gold. – “I am writing to ask you to stop this illegitimate transaction” said the Guaidó letters, according to Reuters.

Remarkably, Guaido’s letter to Thersea May was his first letter ever to a foreign head of government, which shows the desperation of the US-UK states in attempting to block access to the 31 tonnes of BCV gold in London.

The UK Strategy – Recognition of Guaidó

As part of undermining Maduro and the BCV, the UK Government (Her Majesty’s Government) through it’s Foreign Office, then released a statement on 4 February 2019 saying that it recognised Juan Guaidó as interim President of Venezuela. This then gave the Bank of England the excuse to refuse the BCV’s gold withdrawal request saying that the BCV had not provided sufficient evidence of the authority of the BCV to issue instructions to the Bank of England, and also that the representatives of Guaidó (as claimed interim President of Venezuela and recognised by the UK Government) had also given gold withdrawal instructions.

By late January 2019, Bloomberg reported that communications between the BCV and the Bank of England had broken down:

“talks were unsuccessful, and communications between the two sides have broken down since. Central bank officials in Caracas have been ordered to no longer try contacting the Bank of England. These central bankers have been told that Bank of England staffers will not respond to them, citing compliance reasons, said a Venezuelan official…”

For details of the above, see the BullionStar article from 30 January 2019 titled “Bank of England tears up its Gold Custody contract with Venezuela’s central bank”.

BCV’s High Court action

Fast forward to May 2020, and on 14 May 2020 in the High Court of England and Wales, lawyers for the Banco Central de Venezuela (BCV), as claimant, filed a claim against the Governor And Company Of The Bank Of England as defendant, to secure the release of its gold, or alternatively to be paid the sum of Euro 930 million (about US$ 1 billion).

In it’s claim, the BCV stated that by refusing the gold withdrawal request of the BCV, the Bank of England had breached its contractual obligations and that the refusal was a breach of a bailment contract by the Bank of England.

BCV gold accounts at the Bank of England – Accounts 217 & 571. Source

The claim also revealed that since 12 August 2008, the Bank of England had maintained a “gold set-aside account” in BCV’s name, and that as of 14 May 2020, the BCV had two gold accounts with the Bank of England, “namely (i) account 217 Banco Central de Venezuela and (ii) account 571 Banco Central de Venezuela number 2 (together, the “Accounts”).”

When this High Court case was heard over 22 – 25 June 2020, the hearing hinged on deciding who had authority to give instructions to the Bank of England to withdraw the Venezuelan gold, a) the Board of the BCV which had been appointed by Maduro (the Maduro Board), or b) a competing Ad Hoc Administrative Board of the BCV which had been appointed by Guaidó (the Guaidó Board). The case also included a sum of $120 million which Deutsche Bank was required to pay to the BCV on one of the gold swaps, and which was held by Receivers, with Deutsche also claiming that it did not know which ‘Board’ of the BCV to take instruction from.

On 2 July 2020 in his judgement, the judge in the High Court case, Sir Nigel Teare, said that the UK Government had, through it’s 4 February 2019 statement, legally recognised Guaidó as constitutional interim president of Venezuela. This would then have allowed the Guaidó Board to initiate a gold withdrawal request from the Bank of England.

After the judgement was provided in draft form to the lawyers of the two sides, the Maduro Board lawyers asked the Court (judge) to state “explicitly” whether the recognition by Her Majesty’s Government (HMG) of Guaidó was ‘de jure’ (legally recognised regardless of whether it exists in reality) or ‘de facto’ (describing a situation which exists in reality), or both.

Teare replied that while HMG had recognised Guaidó as constitutional interim President of Venezuela, which was consistent with a de jure recognition, that irrespective of the basis for the recognition, HMG had “unequivocally recognised Guaidó as President of Venezuela”, meaning that HM Government no longer recognised Maduro as President of Venezuela.

However, lawyers for the BCV Maduro Board immediately then said that they were going to appeal the judgement in the Court of Appeal, which they promptly did.

From the High Court to the Court of Appeal

In August 2020, the Court of Appeal granted the Maduro Board permission to appeal on the recognition issue (i.e, who is recognised to have authority to give the Bank of England and Deutsche Bank instructions), and in September 2020, the appeal hearing took place in the Court of Appeal between 22 and 24 September 2020 in front of three law lords, namely, Lord Justice Lewison, Lord Justice Males and Lord Justice Phillips.

The Court of Appeal then published its judgement on 5 October 2020. In it’s judgement, the Court of Appeal overturned the judgment of the High Court which had “unequivocally recognised Guaidó as President of Venezuela”, with Lord Justice Males of the Appeal Court saying that the UK’s recognition of Guaidó “is to my mind ambiguous, or at any rate less than unequivocal“.
This Appeal Court ruling then sent the Maduro vs Guaidó case back to the High Court.

However, the Guaidó Board then went to the Supreme Court asking for permission to appeal the Court of Appeal judgement.

Court 1 of the Supreme Court, London

From the Court of Appeal to the Supreme Court

In early January 2021, the European Union (EU) announced that it did would not continue to recognise Guaidó as Venezuela’s president because Guaidó had lost his position as head of the Venezuelan National Assembly during December 2020 elections, when Maduro regained control of the Venezuelan Parliament.

Five Lords A-Leaping

The Supreme Court appeal hearing began in London on 19 July 2021 and ran for 3 days until 21 July (with 22 July held in reserve if needed), the appelant being the “Guaidó Board” of the Central Bank of Venezuela”, and the respondent being the “Maduro Board” of the Central Bank of Venezuela.

There were no less than five justices (judges) overseeing the hearing, namely, Lord Reed, Lord Hodge, Lord Lloyd-Jones, Lord Hamblen, and Lord Leggatt. The hearing heard the appeal from Guaidó’s side, as well as a cross-appeal from the BCV’s Board.

Like clockwork, the UK Government continued its intervention, coming out with a statement on 19 July through its UK Foreign Office, reiterating that the UK Government (HM Government) recognises Guaidó as president of Venezuela. In fact, a UK Foreign Office representative also made submissions to the Court during the Supreme Court hearing.

The basic goal of the Supreme Court hearing was to examine the nature, scope and effect of the UK Government having recognised Guaidó as interim president, and to determine was it justifiable based on the reality on the ground in Venezuela (with Maduro still in power), and whether there any valid challenge in legal terms that could be made about the recognition of Guaidó by the HM Government.

Anyone interested in viewing the proceedings which took place in the Supreme Court hearing between 19 July and 21 July can actually do so, as there are six videos of the proceedings at this link, i.e. a video of each of the morning and afternoon sessions over 19 – 21 July.

This Supreme Court hearing is now awaiting judgment. As soon as the judgment is handed down by the judges, it will appear on the future judgements page of the Supreme Court website here. It will also appear on the BAILII legal judgements database here. While Supreme Court judgments in the UK can come out anywhere between 3 and 9 months after an appeal hearing, the high profile nature of the BCV – Bank of England – Maduro – Guaidó case means that the judgement is sure to be handed down sooner rather than later and maybe as soon as September or October.

21st Century Piracy?

On 21 July, Maduro commented on the Venezuelan gold in London, saying that the situation of the BCV gold being blocked by the Bank of England amounts to a case of “piracy of the 21st century because that money is from Venezuela.” He continued:

“They are stealing Venezuela’s gold reserves, which belong to the Central Bank of Venezuela, they do not belong to the Government, they belong to an autonomous institute [the BCV] … more than US$ 2 billion in gold, the gold bars deposited in the Bank of England”

On the US / UK claims backing Guaidó, Maduro said that:

“they invent a government of Narnia, a government of fantasy, to steal companies, money, accounts and to steal gold from Venezuela.“

Conclusion

While the Supreme Court judgment will determine who has the authority to withdraw and use 31 tonnes of BCV gold stored under custody at the Bank of England, this case will also have far reaching international implications for all sovereign assets held in the United Kingdom, and particularly monetary gold.

A ruling in favour of Guaidó will mean that the UK Government can at will seize control over state assets of foreign governments held at the Bank of England and elsewhere, and such a ruling would send shockwaves internationally about the notion of sovereign property rights, and how they are treated in the City of London, and wider England and the UK.

A ruling in favour of Guaidó also creates a worrying situation where a government executive (HM Government) can intervene and interfere into the judiciary using claims which have no basis in reality – i.e. Guaidó has no control over the Venezuelan central bank, nor it’s employees, nor is he even recognised by the EU as president of Venezuela, nor is he recognised as president by a vast list of countries including China and Russia, nor is he even leader of the Venezuelan national assembly anymore.

Over 70 sovereign nations hold gold in storage at the Bank of England including many nations in South and Central America and across the Middle East and Asia. If the Supreme Court rules against the BCV and in favour of Guaidó, and creates this precedent that sovereign gold reserves are not safe in London, expect the sound of many phones ringing at the Bank of England from central banks around the world trying to line up their gold withdrawal and repatriation requests. That in itself would be a sight to behold.

While you might think that the five lords a-leaping in the Supreme Court in their judgement will take these critical sovereign property right concerns into account, don’t underestimate the connections between the various strands of the British Establishment across politics, judiciary and the City of London, where the ‘fraternities’ and undisclosed connections between the ‘brothers’ will nearly always be more important than what how an outsider would view the situation.

It would therefore not be surprising if the law lords of the Supreme Court side with the Foreign Office, the Bank of England, and the US State Department, who are all working on the same side to prevent the BCV getting its hands on 31 tonnes of the BCV’s gold bars (worth approximately US $ 1.8 billion at current spot price).

Moral of the story for central banks – Don’t hold gold at the Bank of England if you actually ever want to withdraw it.

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Featured image: Headquarters of the Venezuelan central bank (BCV) in Caracas, Venezuela (Source: Bullion Star)

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Today with the height of imperial arrogance and hubris, the US State Department issued a joint statement to further its plans to destroy Cuba and all the gains it has made in health, education and welfare. Lining up 20 spineless, neo liberal countries beholden to them and led by right wing governments including; Austria, Brazil, Colombia, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, Guatemala, Greece, Honduras, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Republic of Korea, and Ukraine to sign on to the statement that read in part, “we condemn the mass arrests and detentions of protestors in Cuba and call on the government to respect the universal rights and freedoms of the Cuban people, including the free flow of information to all Cubans….. On July 11, tens of thousands of Cuban citizens participated in peaceful demonstrations across the country to protest deteriorating living conditions and to demand change.  They exercised universal freedoms of expression and assembly, rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights…”

That is rich coming from the country that holds the biggest responsibility for the shortages and hardships in Cuba with its draconian economic blockade on a people that never threatened or attacked them for over 60 years. Exaggeration of the number of people protesting against the Cuban government on July 11 seems to grow by the day in social media along with nonexistent deaths with zero proof like providing names. If you wondered where those millions of dollars in grants that USAID and NED gives out with the sole purpose of undermining the Cuban government went to, well here is a good example; bombarding social media to sew confusion and creating twitter accounts of people that don’t exist, all to fan discontent around the difficult austerity that Cuba has been forced to endure through little fault of their own.

The US is in no position to preach to any country about human rights or deteriorating living conditions. All you have to do is go to just any US city and look in the streets and under the highways where there are millions living in their cars or in tents or in nothing at all, epidemic here nonexistent in Cuba and as the federal moratorium on evictions comes to an end at the US this month there will be tens of thousands more thrown out  scrambling to find some help in the few, underfunded, disconnected patchwork of social programs. Millions in the US have no medical coverage while in Cuba health care is free for everyone no matter how costly the procedure.

Violations of human rights? Consider the violence that peaceful protestors regularly meet in the streets of the US facing the latest military grade weapons, police attacks with tear gas, rubber bullets and much more. The protestors in Cuba faced nothing even close to that on June 11. What about the human rights abuses in US war prisons from Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo?  And aren’t the drone bombings of thousands of civilian deaths in countries in the Middle East and Africa, accelerated by Obama, don’t they constitute supreme human rights violations?

Every country has laws and Cuba does too and they have every right to apply their laws to people who break them as they see fit. According to Cuban media many of those arrested on July 11 have been released and others will stand trial. Who is the US to talk about incarceration when they have more people locked up (disproportionately people of color) per capita than any country in the world? This is the kind of thing that the US excels at. Being a member in good standing in the community of nations, helping each other out, it is not.

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Bill Hackwell and Alicia Jrapko are members of the US chapter of the Network in Defense of Humanity.

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Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota is set to introduce legislation on Friday that would establish a guaranteed income program and postal banking services to provide most U.S. adults, including undocumented taxpayers, with a $1,200 monthly check.

The SUPPORT Act is co-sponsored by Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) as well as Reps. Cori Bush (D-Mo.), Dwight Evans (D-Pa.), and Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), all members of the CPC.

HuffPost, which first reported the details of Omar’s new bill, noted that the SUPPORT Act “would first create a $2.5 billion grant program to fund local pilots in guaranteed income. These would run in hundreds of communities across the country from 2023 to 2027 and provide findings for a national program.”

According to the news outlet:

The national guaranteed income program would start in 2028, sending $1,200 per month to adults making up to $75,000 per year, or heads of household making up to $112,500 per year, as well as providing $600 monthly per child. The payments would phase out for higher incomes.

Importantly, undocumented people who file taxes with an ITIN number would be eligible. The legislation would also establish a banking system through the postal service for “unbanked, underbanked, and individuals experiencing housing instability” to receive payments.

A 2018 report from the Federal Reserve Board showed that nearly 40% of U.S. adults could not cover a $400 emergency expense.

Because the U.S. has more than enough resources to abolish poverty, Omar argued, allowing it to continue is a “choice” that legislators make.

The lawmaker’s guaranteed income bill comes just days after a new Urban Institute report projected that federal economic relief programs enacted throughout the course of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic—including enhanced unemployment insurance, three rounds of one-time direct stimulus payments, the expanded child tax credit, boosts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and other benefits—will result in a roughly 45% decline in poverty in 2021.

In response to the new findings on the substantial anti-poverty impacts of pandemic-related aid, historian Rutger Bregman said that “this is what basic income advocates have been saying for years: simply giving people money works.”

Whoa check out these graphs. This is what basic income advocates have been saying for years: simply giving people money works. Eradicating poverty is not a utopian fantasy, it's a policy option.https://t.co/lKvWVNl51Q pic.twitter.com/ZEsrVkp1VC

— Rutger Bregman (@rcbregman) July 29, 2021

Although 20 million fewer people are expected to be living in poverty at the end of this year compared with 2018 thanks to the increased provision of financial assistance amid the coronavirus crisis, the Urban Institute warned that progress will be reversed if Congress fails to make permanent the initiatives that led to a reduction in economic hardship.

Omar’s bill represents one effort to transform the federal government’s emergency allocation of direct cash support into a long-term policy.

“For too long we have prioritized endless growth while millions are homeless, hungry, or without healthcare,” the lawmaker said in a statement. “We as a nation have the ability to make sure everyone has their basic needs like food, housing, and healthcare met.”

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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Before the rise of Cuba’s Communist party, there was a US-backed fascist government under the leadership of Fulgencio Batista who ruled Cuba with an iron fist.  Batista was elected in 1940 serving a 4-year term.  Then Batista’s reign of terror effectively began when he decided to run for re-election in 1952, but when his political party found itself practically in last place during the election with Roberto Agramonte of the Orthodox Party who was in the lead followed by Carlos Hevia of the Authentic Party, he decided to lead a military coup and cancel the elections.  The current president at the time, President Carlos Prio Socarras went into exile as a result.  So what did Washington do?  They immediately recognized Batista’s government and gave him financial and military support among other benefits. 

In the meantime, Batista suspended the 1940 Constitution that he originally supported and then made a radical move by cancelling whatever civil liberties the Cuban people had left.  Batista had total control over the Cuban economy that was once on equal grounds with Italy in terms of economic growth.  One of Batista’s first moves as a typical dictator in Latin America when he gave his full-support to wealthy landowners who owned basically almost all of the sugar plantations on the island. 

Image on the right: Fulgencio Batista (Public Domain)

Under Batista, the divide between rich and poor grew although wages rose to keep the Cuban people somewhat temporarily satisfied at least for the time-being.  However, government corruption was out of control while the American mafia (both Italian and Jewish) were in control of drugs, gambling and prostitution allowing these criminal enterprises to become profitable industries in Cuba.

Cuba’s situation became so dire that the people began to get angry.  So Batista made the decision to take over the media by way of censorship and he even created an anti-communist  secret police force that was authorized to use torture and was even given permission to conduct public executions to install fear among the Cuban people.

It is estimated that there were between 10,000 to 20,000 Cubans who were actually murdered with Washington’s full-knowledge of the situation, but hey, to the US establishment that was American-style democracy in action.

Then the birth of The July 26 Movement led by Fidel Castro took place against the US-backed dictatorship with an attack on the Moncada army barracks in Santiago, but was defeated by Batista’s military. As university students and anti-Batista activists continued protests against Batista’s social policies, the secret police forces increased repressive tactics to crush the protests.

It was just a matter of time before the people rose up against the Batista’s tyrannical regime as his actions paved the way for the Cuban revolution of 1959 and that was the consequences of the US government interfering in the politics and economy of a foreign country.  It was inevitable.

However, relations between the new Castro government and Dwight D. Eisenhower administration were at first a bit friendly, but when Cuba’s new Agricultural Reform law confiscated lands that were owned and operated by US businesses while sponsoring anti-US revolutionary movements in the Caribbean, the relationship quickly turned sour.  An arms embargo was imposed on Cuba on March 14, 1958 which was towards the end of an armed struggle between the fascists led by Fulgencio Batista and the rebels led by Fidel Castro which was the start of a series of embargos that eventual led to today’s protests erupting in Cuba.

The US government has been trying to overthrow Cuba’s communist system since Fidel Castro seized power in 1959, so the Eisenhower administration made a move against Cuba a year later.

So in the summer of 1960, the US started an economic war so they imported less brown sugar from Cuba under the Sugar Act of 1948 allowing Cuba to rely on the Soviet Union who agreed to purchase the sugar.

During that same time period, the US refused to export oil to Cuba making it reliant on crude oil from the Soviet Union, it was a move that prompted US companies to refuse refining Cuba’s oil.  Cuba responded to the actions imposed by the US by nationalizing three US-owned refineries that became the Union Cuba-Petroleo.  The Eisenhower administration imposed Cuba’s first trade embargo that restricted selling Cuba various products with the exception of food and medicine.

Then in the month of October, tensions rose between Washington and Havana when Castro decided to nationalize all US businesses without compensation.  US diplomats were also expelled from Cuba that prompted Eisenhower to cut all diplomatic channels with Cuba on January 1961 allowing the US trade embargo to continue under the Trading with the Enemy Act 1917.  Then in April of 1961, President John F. Kennedy gave the green light for the CIA-backed Bay of Pigs Invasion which failed when Cuban forces quickly defeated a covert plan involving Cuban exiles that began under the Eisenhower administration.   What was the consequence of those actions by the US government?  It led the Cuban government to declare itself socialist aligning itself with the USSR.

The US Congress then passed the Foreign Assistance Act on September 4, 1961 that was part of the Cold War Act that strictly prohibited any form of aid to Cuba and allowed the US President to impose a trade embargo against Cuba.  Then on January 21, 1962 fourteen members of the Organization of American States (OAS) voted against Cuba while six member states abstained. Sanctions were followed-up by the OAS on July 26, 1964 but a decade later the sanctions were “rescinded.”  Over the years, OAS and Cuban relations eased on the tensions that was inspired by Washington and the suspension of membership for Cuba was finally lifted on June 2009.

Kennedy went as far as to extend extreme measures by executive order by imposing trade restrictions that expanded the embargo to include all imports of Cuban-made products even if the products were made or assembled outside of Cuba.  The newly amended Foreign Assistance Act of August 1962 strictly prohibited any country to provide Cuba with humanitarian assistance.

On September 7, 1962 the Cuban embargo was tightened so that all trade with Cuba was restricted except food and medicine.  In October 1962, after the scare of the Cuban missile crisis, travel was restricted between the US and Cuba with the Cuban Assets Control Regulations under the Trading with the Enemy Act as a response to the Cuban government hosting Soviet nuclear weapons as Cuban assets in the U.S. were frozen.  Since then, Cuba has been struggling to get basic products and other desperately needed necessities.

An article from October 2020 in the Business Standard ‘US trade embargo causes $144 billion losses for Cuban economy’:

The US trade embargo against Cuba has caused more than $144 billion in losses for the island nation’s economy in the past six decades, Foreign Affairs Minister Bruno Rodriguez said.

The burden of mounting financial, economic and trade sanctions, “for a small economy like Cuba’s, is an overwhelming burden” Xinhua news agency quoted Rodriguez as saying at a press conference while presenting the government’s latest tally of the losses

Former US President Donald Trump imposed his “maximum pressure” strategy against Cuba by slapping on more than 240 plus new sanctions and to make matters worse, he added Cuba to the list of “state sponsors of terrorism” again to keep his voter base in the Cuban-American community intact.  Trump also imposed a travel ban for American tourists which hurt Cuba’s tourism industry.  Trump also banned Cuba from buying important medicines and imposed sanctions on oil imports to Cuba from Venezuela.

As much as I did not like Barack Obama, he did loosen some restrictions on US citizens who wanted to visit Cuba.  Obama also removed Cuba from the list of “state sponsors of terrorism” although it was the US government who committed acts of terrorism against Cuba.  In fact, anti-Castro terrorist groups such as Alpha-66 was responsible for several hotel bombings in Cuba in the mid-90’s that even killed an Italian tourist and injuring many others.

There were and still are other Anti-Castro terrorist groups operating mostly in South Florida such as Brothers to the Rescue (BTTR), Cuban American National Foundation(CANF) and several others involved in assassination attempts against Fidel Castro and advocated for regime change of the Cuban government.

If you remember one famous terrorist who lived in Miami by the name of Luis Posada Carriles (who actually died a free man in 2018) was apprehended in 2005 as reported by  SFGATE.com (formally the San Francisco Chronicle) ‘Arrest of Cuban ex-CIA figure puts Bush in tough political spot’ said that “Cuban exile Luis Posada Carriles, a former CIA operative who is wanted in Venezuela for the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people, was seized by U.S. authorities in Miami on Tuesday.” The report laid out the facts on Posada’s crimes against Cuba:

A strident anti-communist, Posada long has been regarded as a terrorist by Cuba, Venezuela and other nations. But he is a hero to many in Florida’s politically powerful anti-Castro Cuban community, who tend to support Republicans.  “He is a fighter, a true believer who has fought for the freedom of his country,” said Jose Hernandez, president of the Cuban American National Foundation in Miami, responding to news of Posada’s arrest. 

Posada is accused of masterminding the bombing of a Cubana jetliner over Barbados that killed many members of Cuba’s Pan American Games team on Oct. 6, 1976. Venezuelan authorities arrested Posada after tracing the bomb to two Venezuelans who had worked for Posada’s private security agency in Venezuela 

In an interview conducted by the Miami Herald “Posada denied any role in the bombing.” Peter Kornbluh, the director of the Cuba Documentation Project at the National Security Archive at the time claimed that declassified documents from the CIA and FBI link Posada to prior meetings and had planned to place a bomb on the Cubana jetliner, “Posada was involved in an unprecedented crime at the time for the Western Hemisphere,” Kornbluh continued, “President Bush should implement the principles of the war against terror that he espouses — that no nation should harbor terrorists.”  The article clearly explained what Posada was involved in:

Posada has had a long history of planning assassinations and planting bombs in Cuban government offices since the early 1960s, when he was trained in demolition and guerrilla warfare by the CIA. The declassified information said the CIA paid him $300 a month in the 1960s and that he worked for the CIA at least from 1965 until June 1976.  Over the years, FBI reports associated him with plans to blow up Soviet and Cuban freighters in Mexico, a plot to overthrow the Guatemalan government, and involvement in anti-Castro activities in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. In the 1980s, he worked with the CIA in El Salvador to ferry weapons to the U.S.-backed Contra Army in its fight against Nicaragua’s Sandinista government.

In 1997, Posada allegedly orchestrated a dozen bombings in Cuba intended to deter the growing tourism trade. An Italian businessman was killed and 11 people wounded as a result. In a taped interview with the New York Times, he said: “It is sad that someone is dead, but we can’t stop”

After Posada was found not guilty and was acquitted in 2011 on charges of lying to immigration officials on how he entered the US and his involvement of terrorism against Cuba in 1997.  Cuba called the verdict a “farce” while Venezuela accused the US of harboring a well-known terrorist.

One other episode of US imperialism’s thirst for war against Cuba occurred in 1962 called ‘Operation Northwoods’  which was a false-flag operation proposed by the US Department of Defense (DOD) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff that called for the CIA and other clandestine organizations within the US government to carry-out acts of terrorism against the military and civilian targets on US soil to justify a war against Cuba.

The idea was to blame Cuba for the terrorist attacks that also included hijacking planes so that they will be shot down or blowing up a US ship or even orchestrating random terrorist attacks within U.S. cities.  They also detailed the possibility of assassinating or sinking boats filled with Cuban refugees, but the plan was flatly rejected by President John F. Kennedy.  In 1981, Washington’s endless war on Cuba led to biological warfare with help from the CIA and the US military who had launched an operation by unleashing ‘Dengue Fever’ which is also known as ‘Hemorrhagic fever’ on Cuba effecting more than 273,000 people killing 158 including men, women and children.

On September 6, 1981, The New York Times reported what Fidel Castro had said regarding the US government’s role in biological warfare against Cuba:

”we urge the United States Government to define its policy in this field, to say whether the C.I.A. will or will not be authorized again- or has already been authorized – to organize attacks against leaders of the revolution and to use plagues against our plants, our animals and our people.”

US President Ronald Reagan and his State Department’s response was the following, “Mr. Castro’s charges of possible United States involvement in the epidemic were ”totally without foundation.” The State department blamed Castro’s revolution as the cause of the outbreak

“The Cuban Government has always tried to blame the United States for its failures and its internal problems” continued ”The Cuban revolution is a failure, and it is obviously easier to blame external forces like the United States than to admit those failures.”

Then an all-out assault on the Cuban economy took place years later as the US congress passed the Helms–Burton Act or The Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (Libertad) Act of 1996 that strengthened the embargo against Cuba.  The law meant to expand the embargo’s jurisdiction where it can apply its “territorial application” that basically penalized foreign companies who do any sort of business with Cuba.  US president Bill Clinton finalized the Helms-Burton Act by signing it into law on March 12th, 1996.  The passage of the Helms-Burton Act was a response to an incident that occurred on February 24, 1996 when Cuba’s territorial claims had been compromised.  Cuba dispatched two fighter jets who shot down two private planes operated by ‘Brothers to the Rescue’ which they describe as a “Miami-based humanitarian international Search and Rescue support group” (codename for terrorists!) which was supposedly on a search mission on international waters.

One important fact on the effects of the US embargo was that it did allow Cuba to resist any US interference in its domestic affairs as the support of the Cuban people grew stronger over time.  In other words, if the US would have kept its hands out of Cuba, who knows what kind of government it would have developed without foreign interference, but the world will never know what Cuba could have turned into on its own.  Washington’s political establishment, the Military-Industrial Complex, multi-national bankers and corporations and the mainstream media along with Cuban-American community in Miami, New Jersey and elsewhere are continuing to criticize Cuba, some are even calling for a US intervention.  Whatever actions Biden takes against Cuba, it will be along the lines of whatever past administrations have done and that is to tighten the screws on Cuba until the people scream uncle, for Uncle Sam that is.

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Timothy Alexander Guzman is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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Hemp fuel and other biofuels could reduce carbon emissions while saving the electric grid, but they’re often overlooked for more expensive, high-tech climate solutions.

On July 14, the European Union unveiled sweeping climate change and emissions targets that would, according to Gulf News, mean “the end of the internal combustion engine”:

The commission’s draft would reduce permitted emissions from new passenger cars and light commercial vehicles to zero from 2035 – effectively obliging the industry to move on to battery-electric models.

While biofuels are a less high-tech, cheaper and in many ways more effective solution to our dependence on petroleum, the United States and other countries are discussing similar plans to the EU’s and California is already on board. But in a recent article in the Los Angeles Times and related video, Evan Halper argues that we may be trading one environmental crisis for another:

The sprint to supply automakers with heavy-duty lithium batteries is propelled by climate-conscious countries like the United States that aspire to abandon gas-powered cars and SUVs. They are racing to secure the materials needed to go electric, and the Biden administration is under pressure to fast-track mammoth extraction projects that threaten to unleash their own environmental fallout.

Extraction proposals include vacuuming the ocean floor, disturbing marine ecosystems; and mining Native American ancestral sites and pristine federal lands. Proponents of these proposals argue that China controls most of the market for the raw material refining needed for the batteries, posing economic and security threats. But opponents say the negative environmental impact will be worse than the oil fracking that electric vehicles are projected to replace.

Not just the batteries but the electricity needed to run electric vehicles (EVs) poses environmental concerns. Currently, generating electric fuel depends heavily on non-renewable sources. And  according to a March 2021 report from the Government Accountability Office, electric vehicles are making the electrical grid more vulnerable to cyber attacks, threatening the portions of the grid that deliver electricity to homes and businesses. If that is true at current use levels, the grid could clearly not sustain the load if all the cars on the road were EVs.

Not just tribal land residents but poor households everywhere will bear the cost if the proposed emissions targets and EV mandates are implemented. According to one European think tank, “average expenses of the poorest households could increase by 44 percent for transport and by 50 percent for residential heating.” As noted in Agence France-Presse, “The recent ‘yellow vest’ protests in France demonstrated the kind of populist fury that environmental controls on motoring can provoke.”

People who can barely make ends meet cannot afford new electric vehicles (EVs), and buying a used EV is risky. If the lithium battery fails, replacing it could cost as much as the car itself; and repairs must be done by pricey dealers. No more doing it yourself with instructions off the Internet, and even your friendly auto repair shop probably won’t have the tools. Except for the high-end Tesla, auto manufacturers themselves are largely losing money on EVs, due to the high cost of the batteries and low consumer demand.

Off the Electric Grid with Clean Biofuel

Whether carbon dioxide emissions are the cause of climate change is still debated, but gasoline-fueled vehicles do pose environmental hazards. There is an alternative to gasoline that does not require sending all our combustion engine vehicles to the junkyard. This is alcohol fuel (bioethanol). Not only are greenhouse gas emissions from ethanol substantially lower than from gasoline, but as detailed in a biofuel “explainer” on the website of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology:

As we search for fuels that won’t contribute to the greenhouse effect and climate change, biofuels are a promising option because the carbon dioxide (CO2) they emit is recycled through the atmosphere. When the plants used to make biofuels grow, they absorb CO2 from the air, and it’s that same CO2 that goes back into the atmosphere when the fuels are burned. In theory, biofuels can be a “carbon neutral” or even “carbon negative” way to power cars, trucks and planes, meaning they take at least as much CO2 out of the atmosphere as they put back in.

A major promise of biofuels is that they can lower overall CO2 emissions without changing a lot of our infrastructure. They can work with existing vehicles, and they can be mass-produced from biomass in the same way as other biotechnology products, like chemicals and pharmaceuticals, which are already made on a large scale.… Most gasoline sold in the U.S. is mixed with 10% ethanol.

Biofuels can be created from any sort of organic commercial waste that is high in carbohydrates, which can be fermented into alcohol locally. Unlike the waste fryer oil and grease used to generate biodiesel, carbohydrates are supplied by plants in abundance. Methanol, the simplest form of alcohol, can be made from any biomass – anything that is or once was a plant (wood chips, agricultural waste of all kinds, animal waste, etc.). In the US, 160 million tons of trash ends up in landfills annually. Estimates are that this landfill waste could be converted to 15-16 million gallons of methanol.

In the third in a series of national assessments calculating the potential supply of biomass in the United States, the US Energy Department concluded in 2016 that the country has the future potential to produce at least one billion dry tons of biomass resources annually without adversely affecting the environment. This amount of biomass could be used to produce enough biofuel, biopower, and will bioproducts to displace approximately 30% of 2005 U.S. petroleum consumption, said the report, without negatively affecting the production of food or other agricultural products.

Energy Independence

A documentary film called Pump tells the tale of the monopolization of the auto fuel industry by the petroleum cartel, and how that monopoly can be ended with a choice of biofuels at the pump.

Henry Ford’s first car, built in 1896, ran 100% on alcohol fuel, produced by farmers using using beets, apples, corn and other starchy crops in their own stills. He envisioned the family piling into the car and driving through the countryside, fueling up along the road at independent farms. But alcohol was burdened with a liquor tax, and John D. Rockefeller saw a use for the gasoline fuel that was being discarded as a toxic waste product of the kerosene market he had cornered. In 1908, Ford accommodated Rockefeller’s gasoline fuel by building America’s first “flex-fuel” car, the Model T or “Tin Lizzie.” It could be made to run on either gasoline or ethanol by adjusting the ignition timing and air fuel mixture. Rockefeller then blocked competition from Ford’s ethanol fuel by using his power and influence to help pass Prohibition, a Constitutional amendment banning the sale and transport of alcohol.

The petroleum monopoly was first broken in Brazil, where most cars are adapted to run on bioethanol made from sugar cane. Existing combustion engines can be converted to use this “flex fuel” with simple, inexpensive kits. The Brazilian biofuel market dates back to the oil crisis of the 1970s, when gas had to be imported and was quite expensive. With the conversion to biofuels, Pres. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva achieved national energy independence, giving a major boost to the struggling Brazilian economy.

The U.S. push for biofuels was begun in California in the 1980s, when Ford Motor Company was enlisted to design a flex fuel car to help reduce the state’s smog problem. But again the oil industry lobbied against it. They argued that bioethanol, which in the U.S. is chiefly made from corn, was competing for corn as a foodstuff at a time when food shortages were a major concern.

David Blume  counters that it is not a question of “food or fuel” but “food and fuel.” Most U.S. corn is grown as livestock feed, and the “distillers grains” left after the alcohol is removed are more easily digested by cows than unprocessed grain. Distillers grains have another advantage over hay as a livestock feed: its easier digestion reduces the noxious cow emissions said to be a significant source of greenhouse gases.

Fuel from a Weed: The Wide-ranging Virtues of Hemp

Opponents, however, continue to raise the “food versus fuel” objection, and they claim that biofuels from corn are not “carbon neutral” when the steps used to create them are factored in. Even the fertilizers needed to grow them may emit CO2 and other greenhouse gases.  But corn is not the only biofuel option. There are plants that can grow like weeds on poor soil without fertilizers.

Industrial hemp – the non-intoxicating form of cannabis grown for fiber, cloth, oil, and many other purposes – is a prime candidate not just for fuel but to help save the environment. Hemp has been proven to absorb more CO2 per hectare than any forest or commercial crop, making it the ideal carbon sink. It can be grown on a wide scale on nutrient poor soils; it grows remarkably fast with almost no fertilizer or irrigation; and it returns around 70% of the nutrients used in the growth cycle back to the soil. Biofuels usually require substantially more water than fossil fuels, but hemp needs roughly half the amount needed for corn. Hemp can also be used for “bioremediation” – the restoration of soil from toxic pollution. It helps remove toxins and has been used by farmers to “cure” their fields, even from radioactive agents, metals, pesticides, crude oil, and toxins in landfills.

An analysis published in the journal Science in 2019 concluded that a worldwide tree planting program could remove two-thirds of all the CO2 emissions that have been pumped into the atmosphere by human activities. As reported in The Guardian in 2019, one trillion trees could be restored for as little as $300 billion – “by far the cheapest solution that has ever been proposed.” The chief drawback to that solution is that trees grow slowly, requiring 50 to 100 years to reach their full carbon sequestering potential. Hemp, on the other hand, is one of the fastest CO2-to-biomass conversion tools available, growing to 13 feet in 100 days. It also requires much less space per plant than trees, and it can be grown on nearly any type of soil without fertilizers.

In a 2015 book titled “Cannabis Vs. Climate Change,” Paul von Hartmann notes that hemp is also one of the richest available sources of aromatic terpenes, which are known to slow climate change. When emitted by pine forests, terpenes help to cool the planet by bouncing energy from the sun back into space. In a mature hemp field, the temperature on a hot day can be 20 degrees cooler than in surrounding areas.

Reviving an American Staple

Hemp has many uses besides fuel. Long an American staple, its cultivation was mandated in colonial America. It has been used for centuries in pharmaceuticals, clothing and textiles; it is an excellent construction material; its fiber can be used to make paper, saving the forests; and hemp seeds are , providing protein equivalent by weight to beef or lamb.

The value of industrial hemp has long been known by the U.S. government, which produced an informational film in 1942 called “Hemp for Victory” to encourage farmers to grow it for the war effort. Besides its many industrial uses, including for cloth and cordage, the film detailed the history of the plant’s use and best growing practices.

Henry Ford used hemp as a construction material for his Model T, and Porsche is now using hemp-based material in the body of its 718 Cayman GT4 Clubsport track car to reduce its weight while maintaining rigidity and safety. “Hempcrete” (concrete made from hemp mixed with lime) is a “green” building material used for construction and insulation, including for building “tiny homes.”

Hemp can replace so many environmentally damaging industries that an April 2019 article in Forbes claimed that “Industrial Hemp Is the Answer to Petrochemical Dependency.” The authors wrote:

[O]ur dependency on petrochemicals has proven hard to overcome, largely because these materials are as versatile as they are volatile. From fuel to plastics to textiles to paper to packaging to construction materials to cleaning supplies, petroleum-based products are critical to our industrial infrastructure and way of life.

… Interestingly, however, there is a naturally-occurring and increasingly-popular material that can be used to manufacture many of the same products we now make from petroleum-derived materials …. That material is hemp.

… The crop can be used to make everything from biodegradable plastic to construction materials like flooring, siding, drywall and insulation to paper to clothing to soap to biofuels made from hemp seeds and stalks.

The authors note that while hemp was widely grown until a century ago, the knowledge, facilities and equipment required to produce it efficiently are no longer commonly available, since hemp farming was banned for decades due to its association with the psychoactive version of the plant.

Fueling a Rural Renaissance

In an effort to fill that vacuum, a recent initiative in California is exploring different hemp varieties and growing techniques, in the first extensive growing trials for hemp fiber and grain in the state since the 1990s. The project is a joint effort among the World Cannabis Foundation, hemp wholesaler Hemp Traders, and Oklahoma-based processor Western Fiber. The Pennsylvania-based Rodale Institute, a nonprofit that supports research into organic farming, has also partnered on a USDA-supported research project on the use of hemp in the development of biochar (charcoal produced by firing biomass in the absence of oxygen). On July 31, the World Cannabis Foundation will host a field day and factory tour in Riverdale, California, where an old cotton gin has been converted to hemp textile manufacture. The event will also feature presentations by a panel of hemp experts.

How to decarbonize 51 billion tons of greenhouse gases annually with hemp technology and regenerative farming will also be the focus of a COP26 “fringe festival” called “Beyond the Green,” to be held in Glasgow, Scotland, in November along with COP26, the 2021 UN Climate Change Conference.

A 2018 article summarizing research from the University of Connecticut concluded that hemp farming could “set a great example of a self-sustainable mini ‘ecosystem’ with minimal environmental footprint.” Henry Ford’s vision was to decentralize industry, with “small [factory] plants … on every stream,” a rural renaissance fueled not with oil but with alcohol. Hemp fuel and other forms of bioethanol are renewable energy sources that can be produced anywhere, contributing to energy independence not just for families but for local communities and even for the country. And it doesn’t place the burden of addressing climate change on the middle or working classes.

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This article was first posted on ScheerPost.

Ellen Brown is an attorney, chair of the Public Banking Institute, and author of thirteen books including Web of Debt, The Public Bank Solution, and Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age.  She also co-hosts a radio program on PRN.FM called “It’s Our Money.” Her 300+ blog articles are posted at EllenBrown.com. 

She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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Lawyer Dipali Ojha details the complaint’s long list of charges detailing “offences against entire humanity which are genocide (Mass Murders) of the citizens” related to the covid pandemic and committed by the “Vaccine Syndicate Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation” as well as “bio terrorists,” “Pharma Syndicates,” “Tech Syndicates,” “Tech Bullies” and others.

Video

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“Post-Pandemic” for many countries, especially western countries, is a dream. The west will have to wake up fast, if it doesn’t want to fall prey to a destructive plan of chaos, unemployment, bankruptcies, and, yes, famine – shifting of capital from the bottom and the middle to the top – and leaving misery at the bottom.

Not so for China. For China, the post-pandemic era is well under way.

When SARS-CoV-2 hit Wuhan in January 2020, China was prepared. Chinese authorities proceeded with warp-speed to prevent the spread of this new corona disease, by a radical lockdown of Wuhan and extending it to Hubei Province. Later, other areas of risk were locked down, including about 80% of China’s production and manufacturing apparatus. The result was astounding. Within a few months, by about mid-2020, China was in control of Covid, and gradually started opening up crucial areas, including the production process. All the while maintaining strict protection measures.

By the end of 2020 China’s economy was practically working at full speed – and achieving, according to IMF’s – very conservative account – a 2.6% growth for the year. Chinese own and perhaps more realistic projections were closer to 3.5%. IMF growth projections for China in in 2021 stand at 8.4%. China’s economic expansion in 2022 is projected at 5.6%. This is way above any other country in the world.

Compare this with 2020 economic declines way into the red for the US and Europe, of 25% to 35%, and 10% to 15%, respectively. These are real figures. Not necessarily the published ones.

Future expansion in China takes into account that much of the projected growth over the coming years will be internal “horizontal” growth – helping China’s interior and western provinces catching up with infrastructure, research and development, as well as education facilities – increasing the overall level of well-being to reduce the gap with the highly-developed eastern areas.

China’s economic recovery and her industrial apparatus working at full speed, is good for China and good for the world, because China had become in the past four decades or so, the western principal supply chain, mainly the US and Europe. We are talking crucial supplies, such as medical equipment, medication and ingredients for medication – about 80% – 90% used in the west comes from China.

China’s rapid economic growth may be mostly attributed to two main factors: large-scale investments – financed by predominantly domestic savings and foreign capital – and rapid productivity growth. These two features appear to have gone hand in hand.

China remains attractive for investors. In addition to medical equipment, China supplies the west and the world with electronic equipment and is meant to become one of the key developers and exporter of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to accelerate and facilitate research and manufacturing processes, while minimizing negative environmental impacts.

China’s outlook for the future is bright. However, a number of anormal factors have to be considered, like

(i) The unresolved covid issues in the west, which may be reducing demand naturally or by force – possibly import restrictions for goods from China as a way of constant pressure on China;

(ii) Continuation of a direct and indirect trade and currency war on China. To the detriment of the US-dollar, China’s currency, the yuan – and soon the digital yuan as an international payment currency, independent from western controlled monetary transfer modes, is gaining rapidly in status as an international reserve money. According to some estimates, in five years the yuan may account for up to 30% of all world reserves. As a parenthesis, the US-dollar in the early 1990s amounted to more than 90% of worldwide reserve denominations; today that proportion has shrunk to less than 60%; and

(iii) The west, led by Washington, is intent to harm China in whatever way they can. It will not succeed. Washington knows it. But it is a typical characteristic of a dying beast to lash around itself to destroy as much as possible in its surroundings, before it collapses.

Just as an example which the world at large is probably unaware of, China is presently surrounded by about 1,400 US military bases, or bases of other countries which host US military equipment and personnel. About 60% of the US navy fleet is currently stationed in the South China Sea.

Just imagine what would happen, if China or any other super-power, would be surrounding the US with military bases and an aggressive Navy fleet!

China is constantly harassed, sanctioned and slandered with outright lies. One of the prevalent examples of defamations, is her alleged inhuman treatment of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang province. Total population of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in Northwestern China is about 26 million, of which some 12 million are Uyghurs, mostly of Muslim belief.

Uyghur Muslims are regularly recruited by US secret services from across the border with Afghanistan, sent to fight the Jihad in the Middle East, and when some of them return, China makes an effort to re-school and re-integrate them into society.

Could the real reason for this western aggression be, that Xinjiang province, the largest and western-most province of China, is also a principal hub for the two or more main routes of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – trans-Asia Routes, by rail through Pakistan to the Gwadar Port in the Persian Gulf, and possibly by road through the newly to become autonomous Afghanistan, connecting China with Iran?

China is perceived as a threat to western hegemonic thinking – to western-style globalization, which is the concept of a One World Order over a borderless western corporate and banking-controlled world – and because China is well positioned to become the world’s number one economy in absolute terms within a few years.

These are challenges to be kept in mind – in planning China’s future economic development.

In fact, already today China is number one in PPP-terms (purchasing power parity), which is the only indicator that counts, namely how much of goods and services may be acquired with a unit of currency.

Taking these challenges into account, and following her non-aggressive and non-expansive moving-forward style, China may be embarking on a three-pronged development approach. Overarching this tactic may include China’s 2025 Plan and 2035 / 2050 vision: A strong emphasis on economic and defense autonomy.

(i) Outreach and connecting with the rest of the world through President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative, also called One Belt One Road (OBOR) which is patterned according to the ancient Silk Road, more than 2,100 years ago, a peaceful trade route connecting Eastern China, through Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

On a global scale, embraces currently more than 130 countries and over 30 international organizations, including 18 countries of the European Union. OBOR offers their partners participation – no coercion. The attraction and philosophy behind OBOR, is shared benefits – the concept of win-win. OBOR may be the road to socioeconomic recovery from covid consequences and cross-border cooperation for participating countries.

OBOR is also aiming at a multi-polar world – where partner countries would equally benefit through infrastructure, industrial joint ventures, cultural exchange – exploration of new renewable sources of energy – research and education projects – working towards a joint future with prosperity for all.

Here is the distinction between the western and Chinese meaning of “globalization”. In the west, it means a unipolar world controlled by one hegemon, the US of A, with one army called NATO which forcibly holds the west, mainly Europe, together. NATO, with its 2.5 billion-dollars official budget – unofficially a multiple of this amount, reaching into the trillions – spreads already with its tentacles into South America, Colombia.

Together the west, or Global North, is a conglomerate of NATO-vassal-countries with little autonomy, as compared to Chinese globalization – meaning a multi-polar connection of countries, all the while OBOR-linked countries maintain their sovereignty. This is “globalization” with Chinese characteristics.

(ii) In a precautionary detachment from western dependence, China is focusing trade development and cooperation with her ASEAN partners. In November 2020, after 8 years of negotiations, China signed a free trade agreement with the ten ASEAN nations, plus Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, altogether 15 countries, including China.

The so-called Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, or RCEP, covers some 2.2 billion people, commanding about 30% of the world’s GDP. This is a never before reached agreement in size, value and tenor.

China and Russia have a longstanding strategic partnership, containing bilateral agreements that also enter into this new trade fold. The countries of the Central Asia Economic Union (CAEU), consisting mostly of former Soviet Republics, as well as members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), are likewise integrated into the eastern trade block.

The RCEP’s trade deals will be carried out in local currencies and in yuan – no US dollars. The RCEP is, therefore, also an instrument for dedollarizing, primarily in the Asia-Pacific Region, and gradually moving across the globe; and

(iii) China will focus much of her future development on her internal and western regions – increase the standard of wellbeing of populations, infrastructure, research and development – industrial development, joint ventures, including with foreign capital. To achieve a better equilibrium between eastern and western China is crucial for socioeconomic sustainability.

This dual development approach, on the one hand, external trade with close ASEAN associates, as well as with OBOR partners; and on the other, achieving internal equilibrium and wellbeing, is a circular development, feeding on each other, minimizing risks and impacts of western adversary aggressions.

China’s achievements in her 71 years of revolution speak for themselves. They are unmatched by any nation in recent history. From a country largely ruined by western-influenced colonization and conflicts, China rose from the ashes, by not only lifting 800 million people out of poverty, but also by becoming food, health and education self-sufficient.

Coinciding with the 4 March 2021, opening of the Chinese People’s political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), Robert F. Kennedy Jr., late President John F. Kennedy’s nephew, asked the pertinent question, “Can We Forge a New Era of Humanity Before It’s Too Late?” – His answer is simple but lucid: “Unless we move from a civilization based on wealth accumulation to a life-affirming, ecological civilization, we will continue accelerating towards global catastrophe.”

This understanding is also at the forefront of China’s vision for the next 15 to 20 years – and beyond. A China-internal objective is an equitable development to well-being for all; and on a world-scale, a community with shared benefits for all.

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Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO). 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 non-resident Sr. Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing and a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization, Canada.

Featured image: China’s Belt and Road Initiative will be given new momentum with new RCEP trade pact. Photo: iStock

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“If you were wondering why Ivermectin was suppressed, it is because the agreement that countries had with Pfizer does not allow them to escape their contract, which states that even if a drug will be found to treat COVID-19, the contract cannot be voided.”

Unredacted contracts for the experimental biological agent known as the “COVID-19 vaccine” between the Pfizer corporation and various governments continue to be revealed.

Information security expert Ehden Biber told America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLDS) Frontline News that the first document to recently emerge was discovered by Albanian newspaper Gogo.al.  Biber then was able to locate the digitally-signed Brazilian contract, and at least two others, one with the European Commission, and the other with the Dominican Republic.

AFLDS Chief Science Officer Dr. Michael Yeadon responded to the revelations after perusing the Albania contract, saying it “looks genuine.” He continued: “I know the basic anatomy of these agreements and nothing is missing that I’d expect to be present, and I’ve seen no clues that suggests it’s fake.”

Yeadon noted what he found “the most stunning revelation,” citing the clause that stipulates “if there are any laws or regulations in your country under which Pfizer could be prosecuted, you agree to CHANGE THE LAW OR REGULATION to close that off.” (emphasis his)

In a Twitter thread that has since been removed except the first tweet in the thread, Biber explained the significance of the revealed agreements: “Because the cost of developing contracts is very high and time consuming (legal review cycles), Pfizer, like all corporations, develop a standardized agreement template and use these agreements with relatively minor adjustments in different countries.

“These agreements are confidential, but luckily one country did not protect the contract document well enough, so I managed to get a hold of a copy.

“As you are about to see, there is a good reason why Pfizer was fighting to hide the details of these contracts.”

“First,” Biber continues, “let’s talk about the product: The agreement not only covers manufacturing of vaccines for COVID-19 and its mutations, but also for ‘any device, technology, or product used in the administration of or to enhance the use or effect of, such vaccine.’

“If you were wondering why Ivermectin was suppressed, it is because the agreement that countries had with Pfizer does not allow them to escape their contract, which states that even if a drug will be found to treat COVID-19, the contract cannot be voided”

“Supplying the product: ‘Pfizer shall have no liability for any failure to deliver doses in accordance with any estimated delivery dates… nor shall any such failure give Purchaser any right to cancel orders for any quantities of Product.’

“‘Pfizer shall decide on necessary adjustments to the number of Contracted Doses and Delivery Schedule due to the Purchaser … based on principles to be determined by Pfizer … Purchaser shall be deemed to agree to any revision.’

“Just to make it clear: ‘Purchaser hereby waives all rights and remedies that it may have at Law, in equity or otherwise, arising from or relating to:.. any failure by Pfizer to deliver the Contracted Doses in accordance with the Delivery Schedule.

“Once again: ‘Under no circumstances will Pfizer be subject to or liable for any late delivery penalties.’

“You can’t return the product, no matter what: ‘Pfizer will not, in any circumstances, accept any returns of Product (or any dose)…no Product returns may take place under any circumstances.’

“Now for the BIG SECRET: $12 per dosage for about 250K units. Funny that this is the price for a small amount of dosages when Pfizer was charging the U.S. $19.50 per dose.

“U.S. taxpayers got screwed by Pfizer, probably also Israel.

“About payment, the country has no right ‘to withhold, offset, recoup or debit any amounts owed to Pfizer, whether under this Agreement or otherwise, against any other amount owed (or to become due and owing) to it by Pfizer or a Pfizer Affiliate.’

“Damaged goods: THE ONLY WAY to get a recall is if you can prove cGMP fault.

“‘For clarity, Purchaser shall not be entitled to reject any Product based on service complaints unless a Product does not materially conform to Specifications or cGMP.’

“This agreement is above any local law of the state.

“Long-term effects and efficacy: ‘Purchaser acknowledges…the long-term effects and efficacy of the Vaccine are not currently known and that there may be adverse effects of the Vaccine that are not currently known.’

“Termination for cause: There are clauses about termination possibility, but in fact, as you saw so far, the buyer has almost nothing that can be considered a material breach, while Pfizer can easily do so if they don’t get their money or if they deem so.

“You must pay Pfizer for the dosages you ordered, no matter how much you consumed, regardless if Pfizer got it approved (it was a pre-EU approval) or if they delivered the Contracted Doses in accordance with any estimated delivery dates set forth herein.

“‘Purchaser hereby agrees to indemnify, DEFEND AND HOLD HARMLESS Pfizer, BioNTech (and) their Affiliates…from and against any and all suits, claims, actions, demands, losses, damages, liabilities, settlements, penalties, fines, costs and expenses…’

“The state must defend Pfizer: ‘(Pfizer) shall notify Purchaser of Losses for which it is seeking indemnification… Upon such notification, Purchaser shall promptly assume conduct and control of the defense of such Indemnified Claims on behalf of (Pfizer)’:

“However, ‘Pfizer shall have the right to assume control of such defense… and Purchaser shall pay all Losses, including, without limitation, the reasonable attorneys’ fees and other expenses incurred.’

“Pfizer is making sure the country will pay for everything: ‘Costs and expenses, including… fees and disbursements of counsel, incurred by the Indemnitee(s) in connection with any Indemnified Claim shall be reimbursed on a quarterly basis by Purchaser’:

“Liability: ‘This shall not include, nor constitute, product liability insurance to cover any third party/patients claims and such general liability insurance shall be without prejudice to Purchaser’s indemnification obligation as set out in this Agreement.’

“There is no limit to the liability of the country in case of ‘the indemnity given by it under Section 8 (Indemnification)’ or if the Purchaser failed to pay Pfizer:

“The Purchaser waives any right for immunity, it give up any law that might cap the obligation to pay damages to Pfizer. Comment: The court in New York has the capacity to hold international assets of a country if the country failed the contract.

“Condition to supply: Purchaser must provide Pfizer protection from liability for claims and all Losses, must implement it via statutory or regulatory requirements, and the sufficiency of such efforts shall be in Pfizer’s sole discretion.

“Confidentiality, part 1: ‘Each Recipient shall safeguard the confidential and proprietary nature of the Disclosing Party’s Confidential Information with at least the same degree of care as it holds its own confidential or proprietary information of like kind’:

“Confidentiality, part 2: ‘Recipient shall disclose Confidential Information only to such of its Representatives who have a need to know such Confidential Information to fulfill its obligations under this Agreement’:

“Confidentiality, part 3: The contract must be kept confidential for 10 years. Why 30 years in Israel?

“‘The provisions of this Section 10 (Confidential Information) shall survive the termination or expiration of the this Agreement for a period of ten (10) years’:

“Arbitration and governing laws: Arbitration must be done in New York, in according to Rules of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce, governed by the laws of the State of New York, USA:

“If a specific ministry was assigned to safeguard the contract, they must continue to so: ‘…attempted assignment of rights or delegation or subcontracting of duties without the required prior written consent of the other Parties shall be void and ineffective.’

“I first stumbled upon a document, called KONTRATEN-E-PLOTE which translates to ‘read the full contract’.

“Only later I discovered it was Albanian website that has published it on January 2021. They deserve ALL the credit for the leakage of the document, and journalists around the world deserves the shame for not discovering and reporting it.

“Countries might claim they negotiated a better deal, but based on the evidence we have received from South America it seems this contract is real, and that it’s similar to what was used worldwide.

“‘One Health Ministry official, Yaron Niv, said in a separate Kan interview that each dose cost Israel $62.’ Netanyahu is indeed a magician – he got Israel to pay 5 times more than Albania and made people worship him for this BAD deal.

“This contract is actually worse than it seems.

“Current Good Manufacturing Practice (CGMP) is regulated by the FDA. cGMP will tell you NOTHING about mRNA, because we never had cGMP of mRNA vaccine, so you cannot prove cGMP malpractice.

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥MUST READ.

Explains IVM and more.
Ha! And the only way to get out of the contract is to prove breaches in GMPs….but we don’t have predetermined standards for these (at least in Jan 2021….still looking for updates) https://t.co/iVRYEhIMow

— gutwat (@gutwat1) July 26, 2021

“Addendum: Former president of Pfizer in Brazil and CEO for Latin America testified to the Brazilian committee that Pfizer demanded the same condition for vaccine purchase from all countries:

“Former president of Pfizer in Brazil and CEO for Latin America Carlos Murillo today said in testimony to the COVID CPI that the clauses proposed by the pharmaceutical company for the offer of vaccines to Brazil are not ‘preeminent’, as stated by the former minister of Eduardo Pazuello Health.

“According to Murillo, Pfizer demanded from all countries the same conditions for the purchase of vaccines against COVID-19. In addition, he said that claims that the drug maker would have demanded state assets such as embassies and military bases as collateral are not correct. ‘It’s distorted information,’ he declared.”

Biber concluded: “To those [who] think it is a fake: My university law professor said laws are like computer code. They use legal functions, and variables, and processes. I worked in Big Pharma, I reviewed many contracts in my career, and this document seems to me as real as can be.

“I wrote this on the 13th of July: ‘Israel has turned into a pharmaceutical Banana Republic, where the priorities of a multinational supersedes the priorities of its citizens. It is no longer the Jewish motherland, it is Pfizerland.”

Israel has turned into a pharmaceutical #BananaRepublic, where the priorities of a multinational supercedes the priorities of its citizens. It is no longer the Jewish motherland, it is #Pfizerland.

Israel's national anthem should include the words:

"Pfizer Pfizer Uber Alles!"

— Ehden (@eh_den) July 13, 2021

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On June 28, a 22-hour recount was completed due to a legal procedure in an election invalidity lawsuit in YeonSu-Gu, Incheon, South Korea. It has been 14 months since the general elections ended on April 15, 2021. In South Korea, a total of 139 lawsuits have been filed in connection with the last April general elections, starting on April 17, 2020. Many Korean national assembly candidates and civic groups have consensus with the fact 2020 April general election was rigged. Solid evidence was submitted to the court one after another, unfortunately, the Supreme Court has delayed the date of hearing on such proceedings.

Article 225 of Korea’s ‘Public Official Election Act’ stipulates that election lawsuits should be promptly tried, and that the court should handle them within 180 days (six months) from the date when the lawsuit was filed. However, the Supreme Court justices have abandoned the execution of their duties because they did not hold a court hearing on their respective claims, let alone a recount, despite 126 pending cases in the Court. It’s been criticized.

Before re-count on June 28^th ‘CCAN: Clean election Citizens’ Action Network’, a civic group monitoring the political election, claimed that four conditions (1) physical ballot checks, (2) QR code checks, (3) voting paper imaging files, and (4) voting paper print status checks, are required. Many media, who have not even appeared on the recount court, are paying attention to the Moon Jae-in administration and are reporting irresponsibly with titles such as “There was no pre-voting fraudulent” and “There was no pre-manipulation…”, but the reality is quite different from that.

Only two of the above conditions were verified incompletely on the 28th and 29^th June, and QR codes were simply calculated without precision analysis. It is also unconvincing with common sense that the National Election Commission does not submit the original voting imaging file on the day of the recount.

A serious problem discovered by observers is the printing of ballots. The CCAN analyzed the print status of the recounting observers, including a printing expert, through a image of the ballot. Based on this, it is hard to say that the ballots taken at the recount on the June 28th were printed using the Epson TM-C3400 printer used in the pre-voting on April 10^th-11^th, 2020. In addition, the ballot paper printed by overlapping the proportional representation ballot on the advance ballot paper secured by the Supreme Court as evidence symbolically shows the fact that the ballot paper is forged. In South Korea, people vote as if they were stamping a ballot by hand, but civic groups claim that the photos taken at the recount booth look as if they were printed through a large printing machine at a printing house.

Many South Korean civic groups, such as “CCAN” on the interim results of the June 28 recount, claim as follows. First, Korea mass media should stop reporting predicting the outcome of the recount and focus now on the salient printing issue. Second, it is necessary to conduct an appraisal of the print status of the ballot papers, which appeared during the recount process on the 28th, causing a lot of suspicion. Third, in particular, the Supreme Court should disclose to the media the paper printed by overlapping the proportional representation ballot on the advance ballot secured by <Evidence No. 5> and undergo objective verification. Fourth, it is necessary to investigate the imaging file collation within a short time with a validated algorithm.

In conclusion, the Supreme Court has not issued a final ruling on the lawsuit. However, as the first recount has been delayed for as long as eight months, it is expected that a conclusion will not be made easily. If the reality of the rigged election is concealed and the credibility of the election collapses, South Korea could return to the authoritarian society before 1987. As there are no general elections in Red China, this could be the first step in the chinesization of the Korean Peninsula.

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Byoung Ho Kang is a Professor at Pai-Chai University.

Featured image is from Xinhua

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Much as I welcome the proliferation of articles on saving the ruins of Lifta from the Israeli development industry, I would much rather read articles that focus on saving these ruins for the purpose of reconstruction by their rightful owners, many of whom are just waiting for such an opportunity, armed with deeds and architectural plans, only a stone’s throw away.

The articles one reads now advocating against Israel’s plans to hand over the site to developers seem to stress the idea that saving the ruins of Lifta from demolition will serve to enrich Israel’s cultural and historical “heritage.” Lifta was added to the 2018 World Monuments Watch list of endangered heritage sites.

Lifta for Palestinians, according to this vision, is now a monument, a symbol of the Nakba to feel nostalgic about. At best, it is useful in educating Israeli Jews and the world at large about Israel’s, not Palestine’s, history. After all, doesn’t Facebook locate where I am from as “From Lifta, Yerushalayim, Israel”?

Israeli Jews in Lifta hold a middle finger to a group of Palestinian children visiting the site. [Blekh | MintPress News]

Even Palestinians being interviewed for these articles do not veer in their narration from a vision of loss seemingly impossible to redeem: “Lifta is a witness of what happened during the Nakba,” says a Palestinian in an article titled “The Fight to Save Lifta, the Last Remaining Palestinian Village.” Another explains:

In December 1947, the Haganah killed a Palestinian business owner in Lifta. Later that month, one of Lifta’s two coffeehouses was ambushed with gunfire and grenades. The attack killed six and wounded seven. Two months into 1948, the Jewish Agency chairman and future first prime minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, boasted of the ethnic cleansing’s success, telling his political party members: “From your entry into Jerusalem through Lifta — Romema, through Mahane Yehuda, King George Street and Mea She’arim — there are no strangers. One hundred percent Jews.

But a recent article in The Guardian on saving Lifta from Israel’s land authority’s plans to “redevelop” the “abandoned” Palestinian village ends with a sentence that finally strikes the right note:

“… many of Lifta’s houses have a small Palestinian flag painted inside their doorframes and a single statement, or wish, inscribed below in Arabic: ‘We will return.’”

Within this article several images are displayed (the usual artistic views of Lifta’s ruins in various seasons and lighting conditions). None show pictures of the Palestinian families of Lifta who live just a few kilometers away in Jerusalem rallying on the grounds of Lifta for their return.

The reader of these articles doesn’t learn about Dr. Salman Abu Sitta’s reconstruction project and the practicality of his plans for return. Perhaps that’s because so many still disbelieve, like the Israeli writer Amos Oz, that Palestinians can or should go back in both “time” and “space.” Oz called Palestinian longing for return an “illness” of “reconstritis,” shoutingat a Palestinian exile from Lifta at a lecture just before Oz died:

If you miss Lifta so much, write a book. Make a film. Write a play. Write up a research. Seek what you have lost in time, not in space… You miss your childhood? That’s OK, but if you start behaving like a 5-year old child [Oz is literally shouting here] because of your childhood longings, you need to be hospitalized!

Well, one such “ill” Palestinian, Dr. Salman Abu Sitta has, in fact, written a book (Mapping My Return: A Palestinian Memoir), but he has also dug up every piece of information and documented the location of hundreds of Palestinian homes and villages before Zionist Jewish forces wiped their existence off the map. What’s more, he is able to demonstrate, with irrefutable facts and figures, that Palestinian return is far from an “ill” fantasy. It is not only possible, but necessary:

In “The feasibility of the right of return,” Abu Sitta writes:

The argument which gains currency, especially among people who believe that the Right of Return is legal and just, is the assumption that Israel is fully populated and that any returnees would displace existing Jewish residents. It will be shown that this fear is unfounded and that the return of the refugees is possible with no appreciable dislocation to the Jewish residents.

… But even in the most congested case, only 154,000 Jews may choose to relocate elsewhere in Israel to allow 4,476,000 refugees to return to their homes and end half a century of destitution and suffering. This is a very cheap price Israel should pay for what it has inflicted upon the Palestinians and still cheaper price to pay for a secure future for both peoples.

Abu Sitta’s huge database is being used as the source of inspiration for students of architecture who are rebuilding Palestinian history — reconstructing that which Zionist aggression has destroyed. To see one such reconstruction of Lifta, watch this:

It is this powerful, paradigm-shifting vision I wish upcoming articles on Lifta would develop, because it promises the feasibility of our return.

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

She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Left: Palestinians rallying in Lifta, northwest of Jerusalem (Apr 21, 2017). Right: from The Guardian article titled “‘We will return’: the battle to save an ancient Palestinian village from demolition”

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

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @crg_globalresearch.

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One of America’s leading physicians on the early treatment of COVID-19, his protocols and scientific works are relied upon to help millions around the globe.  Along with half of Americans, Dr. McCullough has appropriate concerns over COVID-19 vaccine safety and efficacy.

• Dr. McCullough is a prominent graduate of Baylor University with an endowed scholarship in his name; he is commonly associated as a point of pride for Baylor.
• The Baylor Scott and White Health System Foundation has been appreciative of Dr. McCullough’s generosity over the years as a major philanthropic donor to the system.
• As a current active member of medical staff for both Baylor University Medical Center and Baylor Heart and Vascular Hospital with his office on campus, Dr. McCullough is associated on public internet platforms and groups with countless links and mentions to Baylor Scott and White Health System.
• As the national crisis has drawn on the world, Dr. McCullough has been heavily relied upon in the media for his scientific interpretation of the data and his accurate assessment of situation.  Dr. McCullough has not falsely represented himself as a spokesperson for Baylor Scott and White nor has he publicly claimed past senior leadership roles at any prior institution.  Dr. McCullough’s views have been represented as his own and not those of any organization.
• Many fellow physicians, nursing staff, and most importantly patients are outraged over Baylor Scott and White’s attempt to damage Dr. McCullough’s reputation and censor his important views to America and the world during a time of crisis.  Free speech and scientific discourse are the bedrock of progress in medicine and Baylor Scott and White’s ill-advised lawsuit is an attack on civil liberties with serious implications on public health and policy far beyond a lawsuit

Dr. Rodger Hodkinson

Click here to access Dr. McCullough’s writings and interviews

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