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Appointed in the final days of Trump’s presidency to remove all US troops from Afghanistan, Douglas Macgregor tells The Grayzone how military leadership undermined the withdrawal and pressured Trump to capitulate.

In an exclusive interview with The Grayzone, Col. Douglas Macgregor, a former senior advisor to the acting secretary of defense, revealed that President Donald Trump shocked the US military only days after the election last November by signing a presidential order calling for the withdrawal of all remaining US troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year.

As Macgregor explained to The Grayzone, the order to withdraw was met with intense pressure from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), Gen. Mark M. Milley, which caused the president to capitulate. Trump agreed to withdraw only half of the 5,000 remaining troops in the country. Neither Trump’s order nor the pressure from the JCS chairman was reported by the national media at the time.

The president’s surrender represented the Pentagon’s latest victory in a year-long campaign to sabotage the US-Taliban peace agreement signed in February 2020. Military and DOD leaders thus extended the disastrous and unpopular 20-year US war in Afghanistan into the administration of President Joe Biden.

A peace agreement the Pentagon was determined to subvert

The subversion of the peace agreement with the Taliban initiated by the US military leadership in Washington and Afghanistan began almost as soon as Trump’s personal envoy Zalmay Khalilzad negotiated a tentative deal in November 2019. The campaign to undermine presidential authority was actively supported by then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper.

In February 2020, under heavy pressure to amend the agreement, Trump ordered Khalilzad to deliver the Taliban an ultimatum: agree to a full ceasefire as a prelude to a broader peace deal, including negotiations with the Afghan government, or the deal was off. The Taliban refused the immediate ceasefire with Kabul, however, offering instead a “reduction in violence” for seven days to establish a conducive atmosphere for implementing the peace agreement that had already been fleshed out in detail. It then gave the US its own ultimatum: if the US refused the offer, its negotiators would walk away from the table.

To salvage the deal, Khalilzad agreed to the Taliban proposal for a one-week “reduction of violence” by both sides. The adversaries reached further understandings on what such a “reduction in violence” would mean: the Taliban agreed there would be no attacks on population centers and Afghan stationary military targets, but reserved the right to attack government convoys if they exploited the reduction to seize control of new areas.

The US-Taliban peace agreement signed on February 29 called for a withdrawal of US troops from the country in two stages. First, the US agreed to reduce its troop levels to 8600 within 4.5 months and remove forces from five military bases ahead of a final withdrawal that would take place in May 2021. Second, the US and its allies pledged to “refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Afghanistan or intervening in its domestic affairs.”

The Taliban promised in turn that it would “not allow any of its members, other individuals or groups, including al-Qaeda, to use the soil of Afghanistan to threaten the security of the United States and its allies.”

Those two commitments obliged US and Taliban forces not to attack each other. The agreement also specified that the Taliban would enter into “intra-Afghan negotiations on March 10, 2020, after the two Afghan parties were to have exchanged prisoners.”

They also required the Taliban to keep al-Qaeda personnel out of Afghanistan – a pledge the Taliban military commission appeared to implement in February when it issued an order to all commanders forbidding them from “bringing foreign nationals into their ranks or giving them shelter.”

But the pact did not provide for the immediate ceasefire between Taliban and Afghan government forces which the U.S. military and Pentagon demanded. Instead “a permanent and comprehensive ceasefire” was to be negotiated between the two Afghan parties.

With startling swiftness and determination, Pentagon officials and military leadership exploited the open-ended terms of the ceasefire to derail the implementation of the agreement.

Secretary of Defense Esper claimed the peace deal allowed the US military to defend Afghan forces, blatantly contradicting the agreement’s text. He then pledged to come to the defense of the Afghan government if the Taliban began mounting attacks on its forces, setting the stage for American violations on the ground.

Esper’s promise of continued US military support, made public in Congressional testimony days later, gave the Afghan government a clear incentive to refuse any concessions to the Taliban. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani promptly refused to go ahead with a promised prisoner exchange until formal negotiations with the Taliban had begun.

The Taliban responded by initiating a series of attacks on government troops at checkpoints in contested areas. The US military command in Afghanistan responded with an airstrike against Taliban forces engaged in one of those operations in Helmand province. US officials said privately that the airstrike was “a message to the Taliban” to continue what they described as the “reduction in violence commitment they had agreed…”

The combination of Esper’s assurance to the Afghan government and the US airstrike showed the hand of the Pentagon and military leadership. It was clear they had no intention of passively accepting a deal to withdraw the remaining US personnel from Afghanistan, and would do whatever they could to unravel it.

Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, the head of Central Command, further highlighted the Pentagon’s opposition to the deal when he declared in congressional testimony that troop withdrawals would be determined by “conditions on the ground.” In other words, it was up to the judgment of military commanders, rather than the terms of the agreement, to determine when U.S. troops would be withdrawn.

Shaping a false narrative on the agreement

The military’s plan to sabotage the agreement hinged on creating the false impression that the Taliban had reneged on its commitments. This ruse was advanced mostly publicly by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Esper.

In an interview with CBS News, Pompeo mentioned “a detailed set of commitments that the Taliban have made about the levels of violence that can occur…” But that was a deliberate obfuscation. Though the Taliban had agreed to the seven-day “reduction in violence,” it did not apply to the peace agreement signed on February 29, 2020.

On March 2, Esper told reporters, “This is a conditions-based agreement…. We’re watching the Taliban’s actions closely to assess whether they are upholding their commitments.” That same day, US commander in Afghanistan Gen. Scott Miller stated through a spokesman on Twitter, “The United States has been very clear about our expectations — the violence must remain low.”

Once again, the Pentagon and the US command were dictating conditions to the Taliban outside the actual written terms of the peace agreement.

The Pentagon and military command’s ploy was advanced through a story leaked to the New York Times and published on March 8. Below the headline, “A Secret Accord With the Taliban: When and How the U.S. Would Leave Afghanistan,” the story referred to two “secret annexes” to deceptively suggest that the agreements reached with the Taliban were not fully reflected in the publicly available text.

The Times’ ploy recalled the national hysteria the paper triggered last summer when it legitimized an Afghan intelligence fraud by publishing a series of lengthy articles claiming Russia had paid Taliban fighters bounties for dead American service members. Indeed, the “secret annexes” story was simply the latest political deception deployed by the Pentagon to torpedo plans for a US withdrawal.

Despite the article’s assertion that the two documents “lay out the specific understandings between the United States and the Taliban,” the only specific reference in the story to any such understanding mentioned “commitments from the Taliban not to attack American forces during a withdrawal.” However, that explicit commitment was missing from the actual terms of the published accord.

As the Times acknowledged in its article, when Esper and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley appeared before the House Armed Services Committee just three days before the agreement was signed, both were asked about any “side deals with the Taliban.” Neither said they were aware of any unpublished agreements. Pompeo, who also denied the existence of any “side deals” with the Taliban, referred to them as “military implementation documents.”

The evidence clearly indicated that the so-called “secret annexes” were, in fact, internal US documents on US policy related to the agreement.

In April 2020, the Taliban accused the United States of flagrantly violating the deal, citing 50 attacks by US and Afghan forces between March 9 and April 10, including 33 drone attacks and eight night raids by Special Operations forces. By the summer, as the Taliban stepped up attacks on government checkpoints in areas bordering territory under their control, US forces in Afghanistan and the Defense Department informed the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) that the orders to Afghan government forces allowed them to preemptively strike Taliban positions.

The war thus returned to the situation that prevailed before the agreement was signed and the peace deal was effectively shattered.

Meanwhile, the US military continued to accuse the Taliban of failing to adhere to the agreement. In July, the US government-run Voice of America reported that McKenzie had “told VOA the Taliban has not kept up their commitments agreed to in the U.S.-Taliban peace deal, leading to one of the ‘most violent’ periods of the war in Afghanistan.”

Reversing a presidential order for withdrawal

Following Trump’s defeat in the November 2020 presidential election, and after fashioning the strategy to sabotage the Afghan peace agreement, Esper, McKenzie, and Miller agreed on a memorandum from the “chain of command” warning Trump against further withdrawal from Afghanistan until “conditions” had been met. These terms included a “reduction in violence” and “progress at the negotiating table.”

Trump reacted to the memo with outrage, swiftly firing Esper on November 9. He replaced him with Christopher Miller, the former head of the US counter-terrorism center who agreed with Trump on withdrawal from Afghanistan.

That same day, Trump asked Col. Douglas Macgregor to serve as Miller’s “senior adviser.” Macgregor was an outspoken advocate of withdrawal from Afghanistan and a harsh critic of other US wars in the Middle East, from Iraq to Syria. During a January 2020 interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News, Macgregor blasted Pentagon leadership for its failure to find a path out of Afghanistan.

Once inside the Pentagon, Macgregor immediately took on the task of enabling a rapid and complete withdrawal from Afghanistan. Just how close Trump came to withdrawing all US troops before leaving office had not been reported until now. Macgregor recounted the episode to The Grayzone.

According to Macgregor, he met Miller on November 10 and told him that a pullout from Afghanistan could only be accomplished by a formal presidential order. Later that day, Macgregor dictated the language of such an order to the White House by phone.

The draft order stated that all uniformed military personnel would be withdrawn from Afghanistan no later than December 31, 2020. Macgregor told the staffer to get a National Security Presidential Memorandum from the White House files to ensure that it was published in the correct format.

Macgregor’s White House contact informed him in the morning of November 11 that Trump had read the memorandum and immediately signed it. On November 12, however, he learned that Trump had met with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley, national security adviser Robert O’Brien, and Acting Secretary Miller. Trump was told that the orders he placed in the memorandum could not be executed, according to Macgregor’s White House contact.

Milley argued that a withdrawal would harm the chances of negotiating a final peace settlement and that continued US presence in Afghanistan had “bipartisan support,” Macgregor was informed. Later that night, Macgregor learned that Trump had agreed to withdraw only half of the total: 2500 troops. Trump had once again given in to military pressure, as he did repeatedly on Syria.

The maneuvering by the Pentagon to obstruct the Trump administration’s initiative to end an extremely unpopular war in Afghanistan was just one example in a long-established pattern of undermining presidential authority over matters of war and peace.

When he was vice president, Joe Biden witnessed first-hand the pressures the Pentagon brass imposed on Barack Obama to escalate the war in Afghanistan. With the peace agreement’s May 1 deadline for final US withdrawal just weeks away, Biden is certain to face another round of maximum pressure to keep US troops in the quagmire of Afghanistan, supposedly as “leverage” on the Taliban.

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Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist who has covered national security policy since 2005 and was the recipient of Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in 2012.  His most recent book is The CIA Insider’s Guide to the Iran Crisis co-authored with John Kiriakou, just published in February.

Featured image: Retired Colonel Douglas Macgregor (Photo credit: US Army / public domain)

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Policymakers insist that they cannot afford to provide relief to millions of Americans struggling during a pandemic, cannot afford to provide universal health care, and cannot find funds for education. Despite this, the massive National Defense Authorization Act passes each year in an allegedly bipartisan fashion.

As Democratic Representatives Barbara Lee of California, Mark Pocan of Wisconsin, and Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts state in a letter sent to President Biden,

“Our federal budget is a statement of our national values, and part of undoing the damage of the last four years is re-evaluating our spending priorities as a nation. That re-evaluation should begin with the Department of Defense.”

The budget for 2021 clocked in at more than $740 billion. Passed during the throes of the pandemic in mid-2020, Congress awarded $130 billion more than requested for the nuclear-armed Columbia class submarine program. While these same legislators whittled down the second round of stimulus payments to Americans to $600, they simultaneously lined defense contractor’s pockets.

These priorities, putting weapons before citizens, are clearly to the detriment of not just those living in the United States, but to those across the globe. The Pentagon intends to request more funding for nuclear weapons this year as part of a Trump Administration-mandated revival of sea-launched cruise missiles, a program that had been retired more than a decade ago under President Obama.

These weapons would eventually equip the Navy with twenty to thirty nuclear-armed submarines, doubling its current fleet size, while also increasing the risk of a mistake or miscalculation, and aggravating relations with China further.

In addition to sea-launched missiles, the Pentagon is also planning to modernize ground-based strategic defense systems despite compelling evidence that this is unnecessary. Located in states such as Nebraska and Colorado, this system replaces intercontinental ballistic missiles, though both are often referred to as the nuclear sponge, based on a strategy of drawing incoming domestic attacks away from major cities.

In essence, the United States has designated these states as sitting ducks, ready to soak up a nuclear attack. Representatives of these states claim the jobs are worth the risk, yet only 18 percent of Americans agree. Not only does the perpetuation of these weapons put these communities at risk, the contract benefits a single manufacturer: Northrop Grumman.

Small portion of the National Defense Authorization Act funds go toward mitigating the damage these nuclear weapons have already caused, by funding retrospective solutions such as cleanup, health care, and victim compensation. Communities impacted by nuclear weapons see little progress year after year, despite the evidence of ongoing harm.

In 2019, reports emerged that the Runit dome was cracking, allowing radioactive waste to seep into the surrounding Pacific ocean. The Runit dome was constructed in 1977 as a temporary measure to contain thousands of gallons of nuclear waste remaining from tests the United States conducted on atolls in the Pacific Ocean from the 1940s to the 1950s. Few improvements have been made since, and U.S. lawmakers have repeatedly denied responsibility.

Despite agreeing to pay $150 million in restitution in 1986, a 2010 hearing makes it clear only a fraction has so far been paid out, decades later.

As climate change causes the tides to rise, Runit will only deteriorate further, and other nuclear waste storage solutions, many near rising tides as well, are at similar risk. The United States has designated Yucca mountain, a space sacred to the Western Shoshone Nation, as a final resting place for U.S. nuclear waste, but protests at the local and legislative levels have stalled construction. This waste has been shuffled around the country while it waits for a final destination, often spending periods of time stored in lower-income areas where residents’ protests are dismissed.

The treatment of the Marshallese underscores a hard truth about U.S. nuclear policy: the abandonment of its long list of victims, spanning from veterans to Indigenous communities. Groups subjected to nuclear fallout from testing, called downwinders, have faced similar neglect from the government that exposed them.

Nearly every year, amendments are offered to the National Defense Authorization Act that would expand the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, another half-measure offered to victims of nuclear pollution, yet nearly all have failed.

This act, which is set to expire in 2022 unless it’s renewed, currently provides a one-time payment of $50,000 to $100,000 to a select group of victims that does not include New Mexican downwinders. These small payments are a drop in the bucket when one considers the lifetime of various cancers many victims experience. New Mexico, the birthplace of the nuclear age, has documented decades of proof that the nuclear fallout from the Trinity test caused a range of cancers, reproductive issues, and health concerns identical to those of other fallout victims in the included states: Utah, Nevada, and Arizona.

Even if this act is renewed before its expiration next year, it leaves hundreds of thousands of victims and their family members—who are often left to carry the financial burden—behind, including those on the Marshall Islands.

Nuclear weapons pose a grave threat to the climate; they would, if used, rapidly accelerate climate change and cause a nuclear winter. Their very existence and proliferation are a threat to the well-being of the planet. Countless people have already suffered due to the creation of our current arsenal, and expanding it, during a pandemic no less, is a cruel testament to the values of our lawmakers.

Standalone bills have been introduced to solve many of these issues, but they are often championed primarily by representatives from impacted states, or fiercely opposed when money is on the line. The Invest in Cures Before Missiles Act, introduced by Democratic Representatives Ro Khanna of California and Ed Markey of Massachusetts, shifts funding away from modernizing the ICBM systems and into COVID-19 response. Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Representative Joe Courtney of Connecticut have also introduced a bill to halt funding for Trump’s revival of sea-launched cruise missiles.

The National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2022 poses a unique opportunity to seize agency over the defense budget and lobby representatives to support amendments such as those that provide compensation for downwinders and move funds away from expensive, redundant weapons programs.

The Biden Administration, in its first defense request, would do well to heed Lee, Pocan, and Auchincloss’s call.

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Tristan Guyette is the National Field Manager for Beyond the Bomb, a people-powered movement to end the threat of nuclear war. Previously, they have worked on reproductive justice and voter rights issues.

Featured image: Protest against nuclear weapons (photo via Creative Commons)

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“It’s better to die on your feet than to live on your knees”, ascribed to Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, is quoted by many, but few seem willing to live it. In any case, the pharmaceutical industry and its operatives throughout government, media and the medical establishment have terrorized an already infantilized society and brought it to its collective knees. A compelling 6-minute video of a 9/11 Truth march in Brussels in 2007 quotes a marcher: 

“I’m coming back to Europe, because I saw what happened to the American people. They’ve been taken hostage for the last 20 years by a group of people who destroyed them physically, spiritually and intellectually, and now they’re trying to do the same thing in Europe.”

Applying an inferential form of thought — a connecting of dots, so to speak — to draw logical and highly probable conclusions, once valued as critical thinking, is now shunned as conspiracy theorizing.

Consider a NY Times opinion piece covering the judgments of “digital literacy” experts claiming that “overthinking” an issue, or to “use reasoning”, may be counterproductive. Instead, high school and college students are to be coached in a “SIFT” method allowing one to evaluate a report in mere seconds, like “fact checkers” do.

Really! Almost predictably, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., introduced without question as “… a prominent anti-vaccine activist, falsely alleging a link between the human papillomavirus vaccine and cancer…”, is used as an example of how SIFT can rapidly assess and reject an article. “Look how fast this is” says an expert as he uses Google to lead in 15 seconds to … Wikipedia!, both famously hostile to views opposing official narrative. Nevertheless, one is prompted to scroll quickly, check out the last sentence, and “move on”.

Such superficiality as social norm will be fatal, because never has there been greater need at mass level for clear thinking and an unflinching grasp that the vaccine industry has become a weaponized system for taking control of global society, with mandated masking as a social engineering strategy to prepare for mass vaccination by governmental edict. Those who have fathomed the direction of events know that the worst lies ahead. Italian Archbishop C.M. Vigano’, like many others, sees a point at which those refusing injection will be forced into detention centers. The U.S. has many already in place, and there’s plenty of room to spare. Avoiding forced injection would be impossible when imprisoned.

Well before Covid19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO), the vaccine industry had mobilized its forces at political levels from national to state to local, in media  —  both print and broadcast —  and in the schools of public health that now yield the “health experts” showcased by mainstream journalists. Trust in public health officials has plummeted and deservedly so. WHO has evolved into essentially THE vaccine industry, funded primarily by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance whose interests, according to a recent WHO director, drive WHO policy. A Swiss scientist and whistleblower with impeccable credentials, Dr. Astrid Stuckelberger, who worked for years within WHO, recently exposed the pervasive corruption by Gates and the Vaccine industry, their iron control of WHO and its Member States (i.e., the nations of the world), and the massive death that has resulted from their vaccination programs in India and Africa. Her interview by the Corona Investigative Committee is worth anyone’s 30 minutes. The Corona Investigative Committee itself maintains a bullet-point rundown of its findings.

193 member countries of the United Nations have made themselves “Contracting Parties” of WHO and have agreed to abide by its Constitution which obliges nations (“Members” in caps) to “take action” on rules adopted by the WHO’s Health Assembly. The Assembly has authority to create regulations concerning “quarantine requirements”, “diagnostic procedures” and “labelling of biological, pharmaceutical and other products”. Moreover, the Director-General and his/her representative may “by agreement with Members” gain direct access to national health organizations, both governmental and non-governmental (the latter including medical schools).

Articles 66 and 67 of the Constitution are particularly threatening as they grant that the WHO “shall enjoy in the territory of each Member such legal capacity [and] such privileges and immunities as may be necessary for the fulfillment of its objective and for the exercise of its functions.” 

The Constitution provides the WHO absolute immunity and carte blanche control, and the few world leaders who have rejected the WHO’s Covid19 Pandemic demands have placed themselves at grave risk. The “by agreement with Members” clause in the WHO Constitution is toothless, because the governmental and non-governmental entities of Member nations (e.g., CDC, NIH, schools of public health in the U.S.) are, like the WHO itself, awash in foundation/ pharmaceutical industry cash and are so corrupt that a group of CDC scientists complained (maintaining anonymity). Anthony Fauci’s NIAID (an agency of NIH) has been described as an “incubator for the Pharmaceutical Industry”.

The CDC exists as a complex public/private entity with 501(c)(3) status allowing for huge infusions of industrial and foundation money and control. Both CDC and NIAID own patents (here here here). In sum, there exists a grid of powerful interlocking elements that include the WHO, the pharmaceutical industry, national bureaus of health, media, medical schools and organizations, and powerful foundations, all dedicated to a future of routinely and heavily injected humanity.

The PCR test is famous for false positives, as even the World Health Organization now admits. The Nobel laureate creator of PCR stated that it should never be used as a diagnostic tool for infectious diseases. Nevertheless, the WHO says “test, test, test”, so stupidity prevails, PCR continues to be used, and “cha-ching!”, the money rolls in. Philosopher John Lord Griffin, with humorous intent, makes points with brief multiple choice questions to showcase the obvious, e.g.: If PCR tests come up with 97% false positives, identify inoperative fragments of virus, and artificially amplify a minute sample 2 to the 40th times to make it look more impressive, does it make sense to test?

a) Of course, it helps us see what otherwise wouldn’t be noticed

b) Yes, any test is better than no test

c) No

During the “Covid19 Pandemic”, flu drops unexpectedly to virtually nil (Here, here, here). A sampling of 685,243 yields not a single case of flu because of … masks? But wait!, both are viruses and should respond similarly. Epidemiologists willing to speak up state the obvious: Flu is being counted as Covid19. A graduate student at Johns Hopkins posts data showing the inverse relationship between Covid19 and flu, and the school removes it, but not before some good soul saves it. At the same time, the CDC inflates Covid mortality.

Studies by the dozens over decades revealed that masking the public does not prevent viral transmission to any statistically measurable degree. Only in Spring 2020 was the remarkable power of the mask to divide a populace newly appreciated and employed as a psychological weapon to be made a “new normal”, even as prolonged masking was declared by neurologists willing to risk their reputations as unhealthy, particularly in children. We’ve been so psychologically bullied that even when allowed to go maskless, many have come to feel naked and in need of their face covers, like children clutching security blankets.

The mRNA technology in Covid19 “jabs” is not “vaccine” according to standard definition but a form of gene therapy never before tried on humans. Repetitive media reference to “vaccines” is a lie to deceive. Both Moderna and Pfizer have admitted their injectables do not prevent infection or transmission, and that their synthetic mRNA is designed to cause recipients to produce an “S1 spike protein” which itself can produce dangerous side effects (aka “adverse events”). Late health impacts will be coming in years down the road. If in waves they will most certainly be charged to “spikes” or new, more deadly, “variant” forms.

There is no longer excuse for medical practitioners and researchers to be unaware of the massive corruption in the WHO, NIH, CDC, and in the Pharmaceutical/ Bloomberg/ Gates     Foundation “supported” schools of public health. Even a vaccine industry whistleblower – a Pfizer VP no less – sees the “whiff of evil” in mass vaccination of healthy people.

Although there are the Great Barrington Declaration, the Frontline Doctors, and other international medics (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and more) exposing deceit in the Covid19 Pandemic-Lockdown scenario, they are not enough. For doctors to be silent has become a betrayal of “First do no harm”. In connection with this, those who research pre-2020 medical studies find that it was fully understood that mass masking does not hinder viral transmission. Therefore, mask advocacy now by medical practitioners is based on post-Covid19 Pandemic propaganda. This reinforces the suspicion that ongoing relationships with pharmaceutical salespeople have become primary information sources for doctors. In essence, our medical system has been highjacked by the profit-driven pharmaceutical industry.

The current injection offensive is intended as only the first in a future filled with similar campaigns. Elon Musk may be providing insight into where this can lead with Neuralink. His artificial intelligence (AI) technology uses implanted chips for brain-machine interfacing and control.

But it should not be long before chip technology melds with injectables, as nanotechnology is expanding so rapidly that what is being written about it is outdated within months. Technology of control that can be downloaded into the human body appears to have no limits. A clear and critical view reveals that humanity is on a path leading to a world in which injectables going by the name of “vaccines” are to be mandatory for all, and on a continuing basis, essentially forever. That’s the harsh reality we’re facing.

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Featured image is from OffGuardian

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Yesterday Boris Johnson announced a 40% increase in Britain’s nuclear arsenal.

Today the arsenal stands at around 200 nuclear warheads. Each is about 8 times the power of the Hiroshima bomb which killed over 200,000 people. That’s a killing capacity of hundreds of millions. How can Johnson conceivably justify that arsenal, never mind increasing it?

A key question being asked across media and parliament is: Is it legal?

The answer is a resounding No. Increasing Britain’s nuclear arsenal contravenes our legal obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Britain ratified in 1970. The Treaty requires countries that have nuclear weapons to disarm, and those that don’t have them not to get them. There is no way in which increasing a nuclear arsenal is legitimate under the Treaty.

But it’s not just new warheads that are illegal, it’s the whole Trident replacement project as well. When Blair’s government was first pursuing Trident replacement in 2005, Matrix Chambers gave a legal opinion which found that the replacement of Trident would be a material breach of the Treaty because it requires ‘each of the parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament.’

So not only are additional warheads illegal, but Trident replacement is illegal, and the failure to disarm our existing nuclear weapons contravenes the Treaty.

Bizarrely, British governments always assert their unflinching commitment to the NPT, and the Integrated Review is no exception. It states: ‘We are strongly committed to full implementation of the NPT in all its aspects, including nuclear disarmament’.

Sadly, that’s just not true. Indeed our government – with all its Review’s talk of the ‘rules-based order’, the super soft power of the BBC, its leadership in diplomacy – completely ignores the Treaty, and its decision this week has fired a Trident missile through any pretence at fulfilling its legal obligations. It has racheted up global tensions, presumably to reinforce Johnson’s image of a ‘global Britain’, punching above its weight and being a force in the world.

Despite its non-compliance with the Treaty, the Review is quick to assert that ‘there is no credible alternative route to nuclear disarmament’ except the NPT. This is a thinly veiled reference to the government’s hostility to the UN’s new Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons which came into force in January. The government’s decision to increase its nuclear arsenal very clearly demonstrates why so many countries – largely from the global south – have given up hope in the NPT process which has been rendered meaningless by the actions of states such as ours.

Johnson’s decision to increase Britain’s nuclear arsenal is a serious problem. It’s not just that we would rather the money was spent on something more useful; or that this flagrant breach of the NPT may encourage others to pursue nuclear weapons; it’s a question of what kind of world we want to see, what role we want Britain to play and what it actually stands for. Rearming with weapons of mass destruction is not something that we can accept.

We must find it in ourselves to reject the dangerous humbug the government spouts about nuclear weapons, their claim that ‘the UK will continue to work internationally to reduce the risk of nuclear conflict and enhance mutual trust and security’. This is just nonsense and we know it. I urge everyone to join CND and get active: this is getting out of hand.

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“Vaccine Secrets,” an animated video created by parents of vaccine-injured children, fact checks the many statements used to convince parents that vaccines are safe and effective.

When it comes to vaccines, the prevailing narrative is that they are a modern miracle.

But what if that isn’t true? What if vaccines are potentially more dangerous to some people than the diseases they were designed to prevent?

“Vaccine Secrets,” an animated video, explores these questions and more. The video was created by parents who followed the rules. They vaccinated their children according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s schedule.

These parents thought they were doing the right thing, that they were protecting their children. Sadly, they learned they had done just the opposite.

As this video points out, some children can withstand the mercury, aluminum and other industrial chemicals that are in vaccines — but others can’t.

“Vaccine Secrets” fact checks the many statements used to convince parents that vaccines are safe and effective, and dispels many of the myths perpetuated about vaccines, including:

• Deaths from vaccine-preventable diseases were almost zero before the vaccines to prevent them were manufactured.
• Vaccines themselves have caused deaths and injuries in tens of thousands of previously healthy children.
• Vaccines can and do cause autism. The government admitted this when it compensated a family whose healthy child developed autism after vaccination.
• Vaccines earn the big pharmaceutical companies billions of dollars every year.
• When vaccines injure or kill a child, the drug company that produced the vaccine is completely free from liability.

Children’s Health Defense provides links to sources backing up all of the facts outlined in the video.

Watch the video here.

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„Angst essen Seele auf“ ist der Titel eines deutschen Melodrams der Regisseur-Ikone Rainer Werner Fassbinder aus dem Jahr 1974. Jeder ehemalige „Altachtundsechziger“ kennt diesen mehrfach ausgezeichneten Film. Er beeinflusste Filmemacher weltweit. In der gegenwärtigen Situation wird man klammen Herzens an ihn erinnert: Ruchlose Politiker und Mediziner schüren seit über einem Jahr mithilfe der Journaille irrationale Ängste der Bürger vor Krankheit und qualvollem Erstickungs-Tod, um sie zu disziplinieren und zu beherrschen. Ihr Ziel ist die Etablierung einer „Neuen Weltordnung“. Sie betreiben damit das Werk des Teufels und nicht das Werk Gottes.

Der 96jährige Arzt und hochdekorierte Wissenschaftler Professor Karl Hecht aus der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik (DDR) hat in einem bereits im Dezember 2020 aufgezeichneten Interview von „QS24.tv / Natur-Medizin“ darauf hingewiesen, dass bei „Corona“ die wahren Ursachen übersehen werden. Sie sei eine normale Infektionskrankheit, die durch ein gesundes inneres Milieu, wozu vor allem ein starkes Immunsystem gehöre, gut bewältigt werde.

Wir werden derzeit mit einem „Politikum“ und nicht mit einer Corona-Pandemie konfrontiert, so der weltweit anerkannte Professor für Neurophysiologie. Es handle sich um eine „Luftverschmutzungs- und Elektrosmog-Pandemie“, auf die Corona „aufgepfropft“ wurde. Mit der Verabreichung von Vitamin C (Askorbinsäure) bekäme man die gegenwärtige Infektionserkrankung – wie bereits zu DDR-Zeiten nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg – gut in den Griff. China hat es schon 2020 erfolgreich vorexerziert.

Auch die Angst, die jeden Tag neu geschürt würde, sei ein stark krankmachender Faktor, der zudem eine verzweifelte Hilflosigkeit auslöse. Man müsse sich immer an der Gesundheit orientieren, nicht an der Krankheit. Alle von Politikern auf höhere Anweisung hin ergriffenen Maßnahmen wie Freiheitsbeschränkung, Demonstrationsverbot und soziale Isolierung seien kontraproduktiv und weitere krankmachende Faktoren.

Das Video der „QantiSana.TV Fernseh-, Produktions- und Betriebs AG (QS24.tv) Schweizerisches Gesundheitsfernsehen“, Abteilung Naturmedizin, ist jedem Interessierten nur zu empfehlen. Es ist ausgesprochen aufklärerisch und wirkt beruhigend. Nach Auskunft von QS24.tv kann man auf YouTube jede gewünschte Sprache als Untertitel einstellen.

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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel ist Diplom-Psychologe und Erziehungswissenschaftler. 

Featured image is from CODEPINK

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***

“Angst essen Seele auf” (Fear Eats The Soul) is the title of a German melodrama by iconic director Rainer Werner Fassbinder from 1974. Every former “Altachtundsechziger” knows this multi-award-winning film. It influenced filmmakers worldwide. In the current situation, one is reminded of him with a sore heart: For over a year, nefarious politicians and doctors, with the help of the journaille, have been stirring up irrational fears of illness and agonising death by suffocation among the citizens in order to discipline and control them. Their goal is the establishment of a “New World Order”. They are thus doing the work of the devil and not the work of God.

The 96-year-old doctor and highly decorated scientist Professor Karl Hecht from the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) pointed out in an interview by “QS24.tv / Natur-Medizin” already recorded in December 2020 that the true causes are overlooked in “Corona”. It is a normal infectious disease, he said, which is well managed by a healthy internal environment, including above all a strong immune system.

We are currently confronted with a “political issue” and not a Corona pandemic, says the world-renowned professor of neurophysiology. It is an “air pollution and electrosmog pandemic” onto which Corona has been “grafted”. With the administration of vitamin C (ascorbic acid), the current infectious disease could be well controlled – as it was in GDR times after the Second World War. China has already successfully demonstrated this in 2020.

Fear, which is stoked anew every day, is also a strong sickening factor that also triggers a desperate helplessness. One must always orient oneself towards health, not illness. All measures taken by politicians on higher orders, such as restriction of freedom, banning of demonstrations and social isolation, were counterproductive and further pathogenic factors.

The video of the “QantiSana.TV Fernseh-, Produktions- und Betriebs AG (QS24.tv) Schweizerisches Gesundheitsfernsehen”, Department of Natural Medicine, can only be recommended to anyone interested. It is extremely informative and has a calming effect. According to information from QS24.tv, you can set any desired language as subtitles on YouTube, see this.

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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel is a qualified psychologist and educationalist. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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***

As has become customary in recent weeks, after the relative success of the Axis of Resistance on battlefields across the Middle East, Israel delivered a reminder of its interest in Syria.

On March 16^th, Damascus’ air defense repelled a missile barrage, which was heading towards targets surrounding the Syrian capital.

A statement by the Syrian Arab Army said that the missiles had been launched from the direction of the occupied Golan Heights and targeted undisclosed positions around Damascus. Most of the missiles were reportedly intercepted and no casualties were observed. There was minimal damage.

Strikes such as these are commonplace and happen somewhat regularly, especially now in 2021, when Tel Aviv considers its interests under even more threat than usual due to the Biden Administration’s relative passivity towards Iran.

The Israeli strike was not the only attack on Damascus in recent days. On March 15^th, Syrian security forces foiled a terrorist attack intended to target unspecified areas in Damascus. As a result, three terrorists were killed and three were arrested. All six were wearing explosive belts.

Separately, in what is likely a positive development for Damascus, Russian forces moved into an oil field and gas field in the northeast Raqqah governorate.

Russian military reinforcements alongside units from the Russian-backed Fifth Armored Division arrived at al-Thawra oil facility which produces around 2,000 bpd.

Earlier, on March 12^th, Russian forces entered the Toueinane gas field, also in the same area.

This is a small, but notable shift highlighting a change in the balance of power in northern Syria. Since Russia is allied with Damascus, prior to that most of Syria’s oil went to the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces or various Turkish proxies.  Most of the oil still goes out of Syria, but this is a movement in another direction.

In addition, Russia’s Defense Ministry said that Turkish forces are carry out military movements and acts in Raqqa countryside in violation of a Memorandum of Understanding that Ankara signed with Moscow.

According to a statement, the Russian side is extremely worried about transporting military equipment affiliated to the Turkish armed forces and establishing fortifications and support points in the suburbs of Ain Issa.

This is an attempt at a Turkish response to recent shelling by the Syrian Arab Army in the area surrounding Aleppo, and other positions where Turkish proxies operate. Ankara can’t afford to lose access to all of its cheap oil, and as such needs to provide some semblance of resistance before losing access to it.

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***

The Syrian first lady has been accused by a London based law firm of terrorism and war crimes, which stem from her support of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA), through her speeches, meeting with and comforting the mothers of slain soldiers, and meeting with the women’s branch of the SAR.

The crime she is accused of is patriotism, and support of the legitimate armed forces of the government of Syria, who have battled Radical Islamic terrorists, such as groups affiliated with Al Qaeda, and the Islamic State (ISIS).  The SAA has been fighting groups that are recognized by the UN, US, and EU as terrorist groups.  The UN charter states all members must fight terrorism wherever they find it.

The accusations

The British-born wife of Syria’s President, Bashar al-Assad, is facing possible terrorism charges and the loss of her British citizenship after the police opened a preliminary investigation into claims she has incited, aided, and encouraged war crimes by the Syrian government forces.

She is being investigated in response to legal complaints alleging her speeches and public appearances in support of the Syrian army implicate her in its crimes, including the use of chemical weapons.

The London Metropolitan Police war crimes unit began its inquiries into Asma al-Assad earlier this year and is determining if there is enough evidence to launch a full investigation.

The accuser

Legal filings against Asma al-Assad were submitted by Guernica 37 International Justice Chambers, a conflict-focused international justice law firm.

“The evidence compiled, in our view, legally speaking, far exceeds what may be considered reasonable comment or mere propaganda and amount to the incitement, encourage and/or aiding and abetting of war crimes and crimes against humanity,” said Toby Cadman, the joint head of chambers at Guernica 37.

“What she is suspected of doing is having incited acts that have resulted in death in Syria. Meeting with troops, making public statements, glorifying conduct of the army that has resulted in half a million deaths and the use of chemical and other forms of banned weapons. It is not just that she is the wife of the president, our allegations are she has actively campaigned and actively participated in those crimes and so she must face justice,” Cadman said.

The accused

Asma Akhras was born in 1975 in Acton, in west London, and educated in London before becoming Syria’s first lady in 2000.

She was employed by the investment bank JP Morgan and worked in Paris, New York, and London, where she specialized in mergers and acquisitions.  She had been working two years when she resigned to be married.

The Syrian Arab Army

The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) is the national military force.  The soldiers are drafted from all able-bodied Syrian males who are at least 18 years of age and not enrolled in University.  The fighting force is Syrian exclusively and foreigners or mercenaries are prohibited. Like any national army, they are fighting to defend their land and families. Service is mandatory, and those serving are from every community in Syria: Christians and Muslims.

The forces are protecting the borders from invasion, and civilians from terrorists or foreign occupations.  The civilians of every country on earth are depending on their national army for protection and defense.  A civilian might be able to defend their home and family with a rifle, but they would be defenseless facing a tank confiscated by a terrorist group, or a Turkish military helicopter, like what occurred in Kessab on March 21, 2014.

Kessab, a Christian village in northern Syria, was attacked, invaded, and occupied for three months by the US-sponsored Free Syrian Army (FSA), along with their allies, Al Qaeda foreign terrorists, who used Turkey as their transit point.

It was the SAA who fought the international terrorists for three months and liberated the village, where the terrorists had raped, maimed, kidnapped, and looted.

War crimes of the ‘rebels’

The US-sponsored and supported FSA have committed war crimes and atrocities, which were reported by western media sources as early as 2012. The US tried to portray the FSA as ‘freedom fighters’ and ‘moderate rebels’; however, they beheaded, ate the flesh of humans, and instituted Sharia law (Islamic law) in areas they controlled.  They were never secular, or moderate, as evidenced by their early banner “Christians to Beirut, Alawis to the grave.”

The FSA lacked the support of the majority of the Syrian people.  They had a loyal base, those following the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is based on the same Radical Islamic principles as ISIS. The FSA supporters were a minority in Syria, and this led to their defeat and demise. They were banking on the SAR breaking down and defecting to the FSA, but that never happened.  Once the FSA began to be defeated by the SAR, they called on their allies Al Qaeda, and international terrorists from the four corners of the earth began flooding into Syria from Turkey.

War crimes of terrorists

In 2014, the Islamic State (ISIS) took control of a large portion of Syria. The SAR fought ISIS but became weak due to fighting on several fronts, not only ISIS but the Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria, Jibhat al-Nusra.  In late 2015 the Russian military arrived to fight alongside the SAR to fight ISIS, as well as Jibhat al-Nusra, which is designated as a terrorist group by the UN, US, and EU.

Idlib is the last terrorist-occupied area in Syria, and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham holds about two million people as human shields.  The group had formerly been named Jibhat al-Nusra, but after the UN, US, and EU had designated them a terrorist group, they changed their name since the US had been supporting them as ‘rebels’ in Idlib. The name change was to re-brand them and allow the US and their Arab Gulf allies to continue supporting the terrorists.

Chemical accusations

In May 2013, Carla Del Ponte, a former Swiss attorney-general and prosecutor with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), said evidence points to the ‘rebels’ using sarin gas.  She was a leading member of a UN commission of inquiry.

In April 2018 veteran Middle East war correspondent Robert Fisk went in search of the chemical claims made in Douma.  Fisk had maintained an anti-Assad stance throughout the war, but he went to Douma with open eyes, looking for the truth. What he found there was the other side of the video shown around the world. After interviewing doctors, nurses and bystanders he found the gas video was patients overcome not by gas but by oxygen starvation in the tunnels and basements in which they lived, on a night of wind and heavy shelling that stirred up a dust storm.

The terrorists had everything to gain from using chemicals on civilians, to elicit a military response from the US against the SAR.  Though chemicals were proven to be used, there has never been any proof that it was the SAR who used them.

The war in Syria is over. Refugees and displaced persons have been returning. The battlefields are silent, but the final political negotiations have not been concluded.  Idlib and the northeast will be part of the final political solution.

The accusations against Asma al-Assad are about judging the legality of the SAR.  In any war, there are the innocent who are affected by being caught in the middle.  To judge the actions of the SAR in Syria, the people of Aleppo, Homs, and Damascus must be consulted. The question of who liberated their neighborhoods from armed terrorists will be answered by, “the SAR”.  If the SAR were believed to be gassing civilians, wouldn’t the civilians in Syria be in fear and loathing of the troops? Yet, most civilians remained in Syria, weathering the war, and sending their sons, brothers, and husbands to the SAR.  Some who left Syria were politically opposed to the Syrian government, but the majority left as economic migrants, seeking a safe place free of terrorism, and the opportunity of an income.

The accusations brought by Guernica 37 in London are part of the western pressure on the Syrian government, which began in March 2011 in Deraa.  Syria was never a civil war; it was a foreign-backed project for ‘regime change’ drafted in Washington, DC., Paris, and London.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is an award-winning journalist. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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***

At long last, there is a credible challenge from within to the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority (PA), an increasingly autocratic and unpopular body that has a limited administrative function over enclaves in the Israeli occupied territories.

This challenge constitutes a growing hope. As political analyst Mamdouh al-’Iker puts it,

“These [upcoming Palestinian] elections may hold an opportunity to create, even if a tiny crack, in the wall of our current reality, through which we would embark on a change towards… independence and our right to self-determination and return. Saving our national project requires change on more than one level.”

But Mahmoud Abbas seems determined to stamp out constructive, strategic change even within Fatah itself.

In mid-January 2021, Abbas’s office issued a decree that Palestinian legislative (parliamentary) elections will be held on 22 May and presidential elections on 31 July in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.

Abbas’s response to an alternative election slate proposed by Nasser al-Qidwa, nephew of Yasser Arafat and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Yasser Arafat Foundation, shows how far he is prepared to go to keep the horrific political status quo.

The slate includes a diverse list of names from inside and outside Fatah and is backed by Hani al-Masri, General Manager of Masarat Center. Al-Qidwa also endorsed imprisoned Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti for president, should the latter decide to run. Abbas responded with two memos on March 11, 2021, one stripping al-Qidwa from his Fatah membership and another, via the General Manager of the PLO Palestine National Fund, halting funding for the Yasser Arafat Foundation. (See What is the Fate of Fatah? [Arabic])

The 85-year-old Abbas is trying to nip in the bud this homegrown challenge to Fatah’s autocratic grip on the West Bank, once again demonstrating how averse the PA’s structure is to a true national liberation project.

Abbas’s announcement of the elections, the first in 15 years, was widely seen in the Western press as “an effort to heal long-standing internal divisions… to try and present a united front [among Palestinian factions] since Israel reached diplomatic agreements last year with four Arab countries” and to reset relations with Joe Biden after Trump had cut off all aid, proposing a Mideast plan that would have allowed Israel to annex parts of the occupied West Bank.

Alaa Tartir, fellow of Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network, tells us what the above means in plain language:

The decision to hold elections is largely due to external — both international and regional — pressure and conditionality… the Palestinian Authority (PA) — and implicitly the leadership of Hamas — wanted to send a clear message to the new US administration that they are “ready for business”, they are ready to return to the “old normal”, and they are ready to receive the US financial “aid” … happy to return to the “negotiation table” … under strong pressure from the donor community (especially the Europeans) to “renew their democratic mandate.”

In other words, as Tartir explains, the legislative and presidential elections announcement is not due to “home-grown, local, people-driven reasons.” Furthermore,

donors are only interested in “nominal democracy”, and they are interested in seeing “the Palestinians going to the ballot box”, as one senior European diplomat told me, adding “we understand this is not real democracy, but it is better than nothing, and we are here to support.”

Both the EU and the US are prepared to act against the will of the Palestinian people by holding back vital aid, as they did in 2006 after Hamas won the last parliamentary elections.

But what Abbas is doing now in the way he is responding to an internal Fatah party challenge does not even have that tenuous logic behind it. He appears to be responding to a power struggle within Fatah for the sake of holding on to a strategy that has long failed in achieving its goals.

Yara Hawari, another fellow of Al-Shabaka, states that

there is much reason to believe the Palestinian elections scheduled for later this year will neither be free nor fair… It is unlikely that any Israeli government would permit Palestinian elections in Jerusalem, as doing so would amount to acknowledging a legitimate Palestinian presence in the city, and therefore challenge the Israeli claim of sovereignty over the entire metropolis. Moreover, the Israeli regime may even try to prevent Palestinian Jerusalemites from taking part in the elections by threatening to revoke their residence permits if they do so.

That prediction is already playing out. Claiming that his activities in Jerusalem undermine its authority, Israel has issued Palestinian Governor of occupied Jerusalem Adnan Ghaith an order banning any communication with President Mahmoud Abbas for seven days, “while renewing the ban on him entering the occupied city for six months.”

The PA, with its corruption and insistence on fearful obedience from its subjects without accountability or oversight, stands shoulder to shoulder with the Israeli authorities in attempting to prevent a viable political alternative from emerging in the Palestinian political arena within the occupied territories.

On March 16, Hani al-Masri blogged about rumors regarding the postponement of the elections, because of the impediments the pandemic poses, because the PA does not have Israel’s approval and the lack of agreed-upon mechanism for holding elections in the city of Jerusalem, because Israel is sending signals regarding its displeasure with Hamas’s participation, because of the

lack of clarity of the American position on the elections, as the matter is still under examination, with concerns that Hamas, which the US classifies as a “terrorist” organization, will win again [as it did in the legislative elections of 2006]… and because of concerns and uncertainty about the new slates…[and] disagreements within the Fatah and Hamas movements, and widespread popular opposition to the Joint List that could be reflected in the ballot boxes, as they were not based on agreements, nor on ending the division [between the two movements]… The election process is nothing more than an attempt to engineer and ensure certain results in a way that achieves containment and reproduction of the status quo, putting individual interests over the national interest.

Al-Masri’s assessment regarding the election process was verified at the meeting (on March 16, 2021) in Cairo of Palestinian factions participating in the upcoming general elections to discuss “key issues linked to the elections.” [Al-Masri, who had been part of the delegations invited to the first meeting in Cairo, was not invited to this one.]

Image on the right: Mustafa Barghouti (March 16, 2021) at the Cairo meeting of Palestinian factions participating in the upcoming general elections

Upon emerging from the meeting in Cairo, Mustafa Barghouti, General Secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative (PNI), expressed his deep regret that no agreement had been reached to amend the election statute (specifically, lowering the age of candidacy, raising the percentage of representation in the Legislative Council elections for women, and reducing the fees for participation in the elections). Agreement was blocked, he explained, under the pretext that it is not permissible to introduce amendments after the issuance of a law, “even though, on previous occasions, the law had, in fact, been amended even while the electoral process was taking place.”

The parties did commit “not to exercise any form of pressure, intimidation, treason, blasphemy, violence, or any form of blackmail against any of the candidates or voters.”

Neither Fatah in the West Bank nor Hamas in Gaza has a popular mandate and both parties are maintaining their limited rule over these two occupied Palestinian territories through authoritarianism and corruption.

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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: Dr. Nasser al-Qidwa, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Yasser Arafat Foundation; Right: Hani Almasri, General Manager of Masarat Center — مركز مسارات

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***

A surprising Supreme Court decision that, while not definitive, restores Lula’s political rights has hit Brazil like a semiotic bomb and plunged the nation into a reality show being played in a wilderness of shattered mirrors.   

At first, it looked like three key variables would remain immutable. 

• The Brazilian military run the show – and that would not change. They maintain total veto power over whether Lula may run for president for a third term in 2022 – or be neutralized, again, via whatever juridical maneuver might be deemed necessary, at the time of their choosing.
• President Bolsonaro – whose popularity was hovering around 44% – would now have free rein to mobilize all strands of the right against Lula, fully supported by the Brazilian ruling class.
• Pinochetist Economics Minister Paulo Guedes would continue to have free rein to completely destroy the Brazilian state, industry and society on behalf of the 0.001%.

But then, 48 hours later, came the Lula tour de force: a speech and press conference combo lasting a Proustian three hours – starting with a long thank you list on which, significantly, the first two names were Argentina President Alberto Fernandez and Pope Francis, implying a future Brazil-Argentina strategic axis.

During those three hours, Lula operated a masterful pre-emptive strike. Fully aware he’s still not out of the legal woods, far from it, he could not possibly project himself as a revolutionary leader. In the complex Brazilian matrix, only the evolution of social movements will in the distant future create the political conditions for some possibility of radical revolution.

So Lula opted for the next-best play: he completely changed the narrative by drawing a sharp contrast to the dreadful wasteland presided over by Bolsonaro. He emphasized the welfare of Brazilian society; the necessary role of the state, as social provider and development organizer; and the imperative of creating jobs and raising people’s incomes.

“I want the Armed Forces taking care of the nation’s sovereignty,” he stressed. The political message to the Brazilian military – who hold all the cards in the current political charade – was unmistakable.

On the autonomy of the Brazilian Central Bank, he remarked that the only ones who profited from it comprised “the financial system.” And he made it quite clear the main circumstance in which “they should be afraid of me” will be if choice chunks of productive Brazil – as in national energy giant Petrobras – are sold for nothing. So he firmly positioned himself against the ongoing neoliberal privatization drive.

Obama-Biden

Even knowing that Obama-Biden were the (silent) overseers of the slow motion lawfare coup against President Dilma Rousseff from 2013 to 2016, Lula could not afford to be confrontational with Washington.

Refraining from throwing a fragmentation bomb he didn’t mention that then-Vice President Biden spent three days in Brazil in May 2013 and met Dilma – discussing, among other key issues, the fabulous pre-salt oil reserves. One week later, the first installment of a rolling Brazilian color revolution hit the streets.

Lula skirted another potential fragmentation bomb when he said,

“I had the intention to build a strong currency with China and Russia so not to be dependent on the U.S. dollar. Obama knew about it.”

That’s correct: but Lula could have stressed that this was arguably the fundamental motivation for the coup – and for the destruction of an emergent Brazil, then 6^th largest economy in the world and accumulating vast political capital across the Global South.

Lula is far from secure enough to take the risk of indicting the whole, elaborate Obama-Biden/FBI/Justice Department operation that created the conditions for the Car Wash investigation racket – now totally unmasked. The US deep state is watching. Watching everything. In real time. And they won’t let their tropical neo-colony slip away without a fight.

Still, the Lula Show was an incantatory, hypnotic invitation to tens of millions of people glued to their smartphones, a society terminally exhausted, appalled and infuriated by a multi-pronged tragedy presided over by Bolsonaro.

Hence the inevitable, subsequent vortex.

What is to be done?

If confirmed as the ultimate comeback kid, Lula faces a Sisyphean task. The unemployment rate is 21.6% nationally, over 30% in the poorer northeastern regions.

It reaches nearly 50% among 18-24-year-olds. The emergency government help in times of pandemic was initially set at a little over $100 – to loud opposition protests. Now that it’s been scaled down to a paltry $64, the opposition is clinging to the previous $100 it rejected.

For 60% of the Brazilian working class monthly wages are less than what was the minimum wage in 2018, at the time valued around $300.

In contrast to relentless impoverishment, a hefty chunk of Brazilian industrialists would like to see the Guedes hardcore neoliberal orchestra keep playing unencumbered. That implies serial super-exploitation of the work force and indiscriminate sell-off of state assets. A large proportion of the pre-salt deposits – in terms of reserves already discovered – is not Brazilian-owned anymore.

The military de facto handed over the nation’s economy to transnational finance. Brazil virtually depends on mercenary agro-business to pay its bills. As soon as China reaches food security, with Russia as a major supplier, this arrangement will vanish – and foreign reserves will dwindle.

To talk about “de-industrialization” in Brazil – as the liberal left does – makes no sense whatsoever, as rapacious industrialists themselves support neoliberalism and rentism.

Add to it a narco-trafficking boom as a direct consequence of the nation’s industrial collapse, coupled with what could be defined as the incremental US-style evangelicalization of social life expressing the predominant anomie, and we have the most graphic case of disaster capitalism ravaging a major Global South economy in the 21^st century.

So what is to be done?

No smoking gun

Of course there’s no smoking gun. But all the shadowplay points toward a deal. Now seemingly rallying around him are, with the exception of the military, the same actors who tried to destroy Lula – what is dubbed the “juristocracy,” powerful media interests, the goddess of the market.

After all, Bolsonaro – the incarnation of a military project rolled out since at least 2014 – is not only bad for business: his psychotic inconsequence is downright dangerous.

For instance, if Brasilia cuts off Huawei from 5G in Brazil, sooner rather than later agro-business mercenaries will be eating their own soya beans, as Chinese retaliation will be devastating. China is Brazil’s top trade partner.

Key plot twists remain unanswered. For instance, whether the Supreme Court decision – which may be reverted – was taken only to protect the Car Wash investigation, actually racket, and its crypto Elliott Ness-style superstar, now discredited provincial judge Sergio Moro.

Or whether a new judicial via crucis for Lula may be unleashed if their handlers so decide. After all, the Supreme Court is a cartel. Virtually every one of the 11 justices is compromised to one degree or another.

The paramount variable is what the imperial masters really want. No one inside the Beltway has a conclusive answer. The Pentagon wants a neo-colony – with minimum Russia-China influence, that is, a fractured BRICS. Wall Street wants maximum plunder. As it stands, both the Pentagon and Wall Street never had it so good.

Obama-Biden 3.0 want some continuity: the sophisticated early-to-mid 2010s project of shattering Brazil via Hybrid War developed under their patronage. But now that must proceed under “acceptable” management; for the Dem leadership Bolsonaro, on every level, is irredeemably linked to Trump.

So this is the crucial deal to watch in the long run: Lula/Obama-Biden 3.0.

Brasilia insiders close to the military are spinning that if the deep state/Wall Street consortium gets its new basket of goodies – China out of 5G, increased weapons sales, the privatization of Eletrobras, new Petrobras price policies – the military may discard Lula again anytime.

Always in negotiation mode, Lula had been in action even before the Supreme Court decision. In late 2020, Kirill Dmitriev, head of the Russian Development Investment Fund which financed the Sputnik V vaccine, took a meeting with Lula, after he identified the former president as one of the signatories of a petition by Nobel Economics prize Muhammad Yunus calling for Covid-19 vaccines to be a common good. The meeting was firmly encouraged by Russian President Putin.

This eventually led to tens of millions of doses of Sputnik V being available for a group of Brazilian northeastern states. Lula played a key part in the negotiation. The federal government, initially bowing to heavy American pressure to demonize Sputnik V, but then confronted with a vaccine disaster, was forced to jump on the bandwagon and now is even trying to take the credit for it.

As it stands, this enthralling telenovela political frenzy may be exhibiting all the hallmarks of a psyops crossover between MMA and WWE – starring a few good guys and an abundance of heels.

The (military) house would like to give the impression it is controlling all the bets. But Lula – as the consummate political practitioner of “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” – should never be underestimated.

As soon as the taming of Covid-19 allows it – to a great extent thanks to Sputnik V – Lula’s best bet will be to hit the road. Unleash the battered working masses in the streets, energize them, talk to them, listen to them. Internationalize the Brazilian drama while trying to bridge the gap between Washington and the BRICS.

And act like the true leader of the Global South he never ceased to be.

*

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This article was originally published on Asia Times.

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

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

All Global Research articles can be read in 27 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

***

According to an article in Database Italia, the complaint lodged last week in the Hague court accusing the Israeli government of violating the Nuremberg code has been confirmed. A decision is now awaited.

A complaint was filed in The Hague Tribunal by lawyers Ruth Makhacholovsky and Aryeh Suchowolski last weekend regarding violations of the Nuremberg Code by the Israeli government and other parties. We recall that the People of Truth organization has filed a complaint against the Israeli government, which is carrying out illegal experiments on Israeli citizens through the Pfizer vaccination.

”The organization includes lawyers, doctors, public activists and the general public, who have chosen to exercise their democratic right not to receive experimental medical treatment (Corona vaccine), and feel under great and serious pressure. illegal acts by the Israeli government, parliamentarians and ministers, senior representatives of the public, mayors, etc.”

Therefore, and taking into account the above, they ask:

1. L’immediate cessation of medical experience and administration of vaccines to the Israeli public.

2. Ask the government adopt all legislative procedures that do not violate the principle of informed consent of a person to receive the medical treatment described above, which denies legal status in Israel and in Israeli democracy, including avoiding the creation of a health passport, giving the names of unvaccinated people to local authorities or to any other competent legislator.

3. Take the most severe measures against any public, commercial or employment entity that violates state labor laws or other matters necessary to prevent coercion or solicitation of vaccines, as well as discrimination, against those who choose not to receive the vaccines. innovative medical care mentioned above.

4. Draw your attention to the fact that a copy of this document will also be sent to the media around the world for violating the Nuremberg Code. Relevant in all countries of the free world.

5. And as a final remark, it should be noted that it was only recently that a Council of Europe decision was taken on 27/1/21, in which all authorities are ordered not to exercise pressuring or soliciting people to take the Corona vaccine in any way. Therefore, whatever is good for advanced European countries is certainly also good for Israel – and the balance is obvious ”.

Lawyer Ruth Makhachovsky told Israel News:

“Pfizer’s experiment in the State of Israel was carried out in violation of the Nuremberg Code, which is part of international criminal law and is under the jurisdiction of the Hague tribunal. We are now awaiting a decision”.

Link to the cause.

Link to the observations of the European Council.

*

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***

Changes are taking place on the Brazilian political scene. Former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva recently returned with great political strength, reversing years of popular antipathy. After a controversial judicial decision that extinguished all the prosecutions against him, Lula demonstrated his capacity for political articulation and is making public some maneuvers he had been secretly carrying out until now, the results of which tend to have a great impact in Brazil about a year before of the upcoming presidential elections.

The most notable result of Lula’s articulations is the arrival of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine in Brazil. In the coming weeks, tens of millions of doses of the vaccine will be sent to Brazil, reversing the result of months of the federal government’s campaign against the Russian product. Lula’s role in the arrival of vaccines was fundamental. The ex-president held talks with some of his contacts abroad to try to get around the diplomatic crisis brought about by the Bolsonaro government with his pandemic denialism. Together with the former Health Minister and current deputy Alexandre Padilha, Lula was in contact with the Russian authorities in a parallel diplomacy work.

The work started last year, when Lula, still removed from public life, signed an international manifesto in favor of the classification of vaccines as “common good for humanity” in a campaign for a wide distribution of vaccines for poor countries. The former president was then contacted by the director of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, Kirill Dmitriev, at the request of President Vladimir Putin himself. Putin and Dmitriev’s intention was to show the Russian desire to cooperate with Brazil in medical diplomacy and expand the distribution of Sputnik V. Lula immediately accepted the proposals.

It is curious to note that when Lula started to negotiate with the Russians in November last year, according to information provided by Padilha himself, Brazil had only the Chinese vaccine, whose production center is the Butantan Institute, commanded by the Government of São Paulo. At the same time, the federal government had the ambition to bring the vaccine from Astrazeneca, but there was still no forecast for the arrival of the doses. Across the country, strong pressure was beginning to emerge for Brazil to purchase vaccines from other laboratories, as the death toll grew day by day. Although some local governments tried to negotiate the purchase of Sputnik V with Russian authorities, the federal government was strongly opposed to admitting such a vaccine in its national immunization plan, just as it had done with Coronavac. Lula emerged as a figure parallel to the small-scale negotiations by state governments and Bolsonaro’s anti-vaccine crusade and presented terms favorable to the acquisition of the product, which explains his success.

Lula’s strategy was to create alternatives to non-viable negotiations with the federal government by establishing an alliance between the Russians and a consortium of Brazilian governors allied to him, mainly in the Northeast region, where the former president shows greater political strength. After the meeting between Lula and Dmitriev by videoconference, governors of Lula’s party began to negotiate directly with RDIF. The governor of the State of Bahia, Rui Costa, who is a member of Lula’s party, led the negotiations. As a result, 39 million vaccines were purchased by Brazilians.

This case shows us how the Bolsonaro government’s incompetence in managing the health crisis is leading to the need for a stronger parallel diplomacy – and this will certainly harm the federal government itself. Bolsonaro has so far made two speeches in relation to the pandemic. At first, his posture tended to total denialism. Later, Bolsonaro gradually admitted the seriousness of the virus, but, in return, endorsed an anti-scientific discourse on vaccines and, for reasons of political alliance, started a crusade against Russian and Chinese vaccines – arguably the most efficient so far produced – in favor of the vaccines of Astrazeneca and Pfizer, which represented their international interests in political alliance with Americans and British. Bolsonaro did not consider popular interests and local governments, in addition to underestimating the strength of some of his greatest political opponents, such as Lula.

Lula’s return to political life is very controversial. The Court’s decision that annulled all legal prosecutions against him constitutes nothing more than a political maneuver against Bolsonaro. Lula is far from being a socialist or extreme left politician. He is a great conciliator and has always sought to simultaneously serve the interests of the economic elites and popular classes. Thus, it is likely that some sectors of Brazilian politics will see him as a more stable figure than Bolsonaro and will come to support him as an alternative for the 2022 elections. This is the position of the judiciary class, for example – which led it to cancel the processes. Lula can now run for election again or nominate a candidate and support him more emphatically. And certainly, the fact that he got millions of vaccines and immunized a large part of the population will be his main electoral speech.

However, for 2022, we cannot forget the figure of João Dória, governor of the State of São Paulo who commands the Brazilian production of Coronavac through the Butantan Institute. Dória started a great political polarization against Bolsonaro and, according to several sources, plans to run for president in 2022. Dória has the production of Coronavac – the most widespread vaccine in Brazil so far – as his main discourse and this creates a previous scenario of vaccine-based electoral dispute: Lula will support Sputnik V, Dória will support Coronavac and Bolsonaro will support Pfizer and Astrazeneca’s products. In this scenario, Bolsonaro is visibly the weakest part. Not only was he unable to produce such vaccines on a large scale in Brazil, but he probably will also not be able to because of technical and financial infeasibility. In addition to being the most expensive, the Pfizer vaccine, for example, requires refrigeration to -70 degrees Celsius to keep it conserved. Such a technology does not exist in Brazil, which makes an immunization plan based on this vaccine impossible.

Either Bolsonaro radically changes his stance on vaccines and stops basing his immunization plan on purely ideological issues, or his political future will be the electoral defeat in 2022.

*

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Lucas Leiroz is a research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

COVID – Bioethics, Eugenics and “Death Panels”: “A Warning”

By Peter Koenig, March 17 2021

Voices from Syria by Mark Taliano and The Dirty War on Syria by Tim Anderson: Purchase these two essential books on Syria for one low price.

*SPECIAL OFFER: Voices from Syria + The Dirty War on Syria

Author Name: Mark Taliano / Tim Anderson

ISBN Number: 978-0-9879389-1-6 / 978-0-9737147-8-4

Year: 2017 / 2016 – Pages: 128 / 240

List Price: $41.90

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Voices from Syria, by Mark Taliano

Mark Taliano talks and listens to the people of Syria. He reveals the courage and resilience of a Nation and its people in their day to day lives, after more that six years of US-NATO sponsored terrorism.

“Syria is an ancient land with a proud and forward-looking people, to which we sent mercenaries, hatred, bloodshed and destruction.

Syrians welcomed me to their country as one of their own. These are their stories; these are their voices.”

Reviews:

Mark Taliano exposes the barbarity of Washington’s latest regime change aspirations. The West’s political spin is laid bare in the words of the Syrian people.

–Felicity Arbuthnot, Veteran Middle East War Correspondent.

Canadian Mark Taliano has brought together an excellent mix of anecdotes and analysis to create a very accessible short book on the terrible Syrian conflict. It should serve as a primer for all those who feel curious, dissatisfied or cheated by the near monolithic war chorus of the western corporate media.

Mark is one of those few westerners who took the trouble to travel to Syria during this war, to talk to Syrians of all ranks and see for himself the human reality of this country which, in 2011, became the latest target of the Washington-led coalition.He deftly mixes stories from soldiers, doctors, politicians, clerics and ordinary citizens with his prior reading. That reading includes the invaluable insights of a new generation of investigative journalists, in particular Eva Bartlett and Vanessa Beeley. Start with Mark’s first chapter ‘In Their Own Voices’ and you won’t put it down. He humanises the Syrian people, their culture and their nation in a way that is normally not permitted at wartime.

–Tim Anderson, Distinguished Author and Senior Lecturer of Political Economy, University of Sydney, Australia

 

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Also available in PDF format delivered to your e-mail address:

**Voices from Syria**

Author: Mark Taliano

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-9-1

Year: 2017

Product Type: PDF File

List Price: $6.50

Special Offer: $5.00 

---

 

Mark Taliano speaks from Syria:

 

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The Dirty War on Syria: Washington, Regime Change and Resistance, by Tim Anderson

The Dirty War on Syria has relied on a level of mass disinformation not seen in living memory. In seeking ‘regime change’ the big powers sought to hide their hand, using proxy armies of ‘Islamists’, demonising the Syrian Government and constantly accusing it of atrocities. In this way Syrian President Bashar al Assad, a mild-mannered eye doctor, became the new evil in the world.

As western peoples we have been particularly deceived by this dirty war, reverting to our worst traditions of intervention, racial prejudice and poor reflection on our own histories. This book tries to tell its story while rescuing some of the better western traditions: the use of reason, ethical principle and the search for independent evidence.

Reviews: 

Tim Anderson  has written the best systematic critique of western fabrications justifying the war against the Assad government. No other text brings together all the major accusations and their effective refutation. This text is essential reading for all peace and justice activists.

-James Petras, Bartle Emeritus Professor, University of Binghampton, New York.

 

All Global Research articles can be read in 27 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

***

The Director of National Intelligence’s latest report about alleged Russian meddling in the US’ 2020 elections consists of a 15-page document which assesses with “high confidence” that President Putin “was aware of and probably directed Russia’s influence operations” aimed at shaping the outcome of America’s democratic process, including by relying on a proxy network of supposedly foreign intelligence-linked US contacts who “denigrat[ed] President Biden and the Democratic Party” in parallel with supporting former President Trump’s suspicions of mail-in ballots and social media censorship among other topics. This shockingly amounts to US spies unprecedentedly attempting to intimidate dissident Americans.

In The Words Of America’s “Intelligence Community”

What follows are pertinent excerpts from the report:

“We have high confidence in our assessment; Russian state and proxy actors who all serve the Kremlin’s interests worked to affect US public perceptions in a consistent manner…We assess that President Putin and other senior Russian officials were aware of and probably directed Russia’s influence operations against the 2020 US Presidential election…The primary effort the IC uncovered revolved around a narrative-that Russian actors began spreading as early as 2014-alleging corrupt ties between President Biden, his family, and other US officials and Ukraine. Russian intelligence services relied on Ukraine-linked proxies and these proxies’ networks-including their US contacts-to spread this narrative to give Moscow plausible deniability of their involvement.

…

Throughout the election, Russia’s online influence actors sought to amplify mistrust in the electoral process by denigrating mail-in ballots, highlighting alleged irregularities, and accusing the Democratic Party of voter fraud…Russian state media, trolls, and online proxies, including those directed by Russian intelligence, published disparaging content about President Biden, his family, and the Democratic Party, and heavily amplified related content circulating in US media, including stories centered on his son. These influence actors frequently sought out US contributors to increase their reach into US audiences. In addition to election-related content, these online influence actors also promoted conspiratorial narratives about the COVID-19 pandemic, made allegations of social media censorship, and highlighted US divisions surrounding protests about racial justice.

Russian online influence actors generally promoted former President Trump and his commentary, including repeating his political messaging on the election results; the presidential campaign; debates; the impeachment inquiry; and, as the election neared, US domestic crises…Moscow’s range of influence actors uniformly worked to denigrate President Biden after his entrance into the race. Throughout the primaries and general election campaign, Russian influence agents repeatedly spread unsubstantiated or misleading claims about President Biden and his family’s alleged wrongdoing related to Ukraine…Even after the election, Russian online influence actors continued to promote narratives questioning the election results and disparaging President Biden and the Democratic Party.”

21st-Century McCarthyism? 

As can be clearly concluded from the above excerpts, America’s own spies openly accused dissident Americans of being Russian intelligence assets – if not outright agents – actively participating in a foreign influence operation aimed at meddling in their country’s elections.

This determination was reached solely as a result of their public criticisms of Biden, the Democrat Party, mail-in ballots, the politicization of the COVID-19 pandemic (described by the author as World War C), objectively existing social media censorship policies (including the undeniable example of former President Trump’s deplatforming), Antifa and “Black Lives Matter’s” Hybrid War of Terror on America, and the self-professed regime change “conspiracy” by a “well-connected cabal of powerful people” that Time Magazine proudly bragged about the Democrats successfully executing against Trump.

In other words, dissident Americans’ peaceful and responsible exercise of their constitutionally enshrined freedom of speech – including by repeating what their own president at the time was saying – is being held against them as supposed proof that they were secretly meddling in their elections on behalf of Russia.

This can only be described as 21st-century McCarthyism since the spy faction of America’s permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”) is once again actively denigrating the country’s dissidents and therefore quite literally meddling in their own country’s democratic process despite ironically accusing Moscow of doing the exact same thing.

Not only is this meant to intimidate all those who dare to publicly voice their opposition to the ruling Democrat Party and its proxies (including the RINOs), but it’s also intended to revive the debunked conspiracy theory that Trump was actually a “Russian agent/asset”.

Concluding Thoughts

America is in for dark days ahead as Biden’s “Dark Winter” statement becomes a reality even quicker than some of the most critical voices such as the author himself could have predicted. The US’ spy agencies are sending the clearest signal yet that they’ll politically repress all those who dare to publicly oppose the ruling Democrat Party and its proxies.

This could predictably take the form of first harassing them with their taxes and then perhaps calling them into local FBI field offices to be interrogated, after which they might even have false espionage or other related charges filed against them in order to send a chilling message to all others. This unprecedented attack against American dissidents is arguably much worse than anything that the country ever experienced during the era of traditional McCarthyism, and it won’t improve anytime soon since the Democrats are solidly in control of the “deep state” and eager to snuff out all dissent whenever and wherever it arises.

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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.

Featured image is from OneWorld

Today March 17, 2021 marks the tenth anniversary of the US-NATO-Israel war against the people of Syria. Below is a review of Mark Taliano‘s book entitled “Voices from Syria”

Our thoughts are with the People of Syria.

***

Telling the truth about the events taking place in Syria before world public opinion is an uphill battle because the real agenda of the terrorism-backers  who are seeking to destroy the Middle East, must remain unspeakable.

This fact is clarified by Canadian author Mark Taliano, in his book entitled ‘Voices from Syria’ with a view to shedding light on the truth, refuting the lies, with a view to reaching global peace and destroying the cancer of terrorism.

“The ‘Global War on Terrorism’ also known as the ‘war on Terror’ is a fraud. It is literally a global war for terror. Empire creates and uses extremist terrorist proxies, including ISIS (also called by its Arabic acronym, Daesh), to advance its geopolitical goals,” Taliano says in his book, indicating that the neoconservative “West” and its allies want to destroy the Middle East so that they can control it.

Peace activist Janice Kortkamp wrote on her FB in November 2016:

FALSE: The Syrian war began when president Bashar al-Assad brutally put down peaceful protests.

TRUE: The Syrian war was planned in earnest by the US since 2005. The Syrian soldiers and police were not even allowed to carry weapons until the ‘peaceful protesters’ had slaughtered several hundreds of police and soldiers.

Scores of testimonies from Syrians, open-source western documents and historical memory are used by the Canadian author to prove that Syria, which refuses to be a vassal of US-led forces of predatory capitalism, is on the front line against the dictatorship of this globalizing economic ideology that favours the dominance of capital and markets over people and nation-state.

“Wahhabi Saudi Arabia, the Gulf monarchies, Israel, and NATO are trying to impose this hidden driver of imperialism, called ‘International Capital’ on Syria,” the author asserts, quoting Robin Mathews as saying

“ A characteristic of imperial globalization is criminal manipulation of people and events for the profit of a few. It includes massive ‘disinformation’ about equality, benefits, social development, law, improved standards of living etc. the disinformation is spread by ‘authoritative’ news sources. In the hands of gigantic, wealthy, private corporations, globalization is a process which works to erase sovereign democracies and replace them with ‘treaties’ sub-states, economic colonies ruled by faceless, offshore, often secret, unaccountable power.”

Taliano says in the preface of his book (composed of 6 chapters) that the secular government of Syria is led by the elected president Bashar al-Assad, who is progressive and forward-looking. President al-Assad has earned the support of most Syrians by providing for them and by protecting them. Healthcare and education, including higher education, are free in Syria. Before the externally orchestrated and perpetrated war on Syria started, Syria was one of the safest countries in the world to visit.

Testimonies

Testimonies from Syrians living in Syria affirm that what is happening in the country is neither revolution nor civil war. Everybody in Syria knows that Washington is the mastermind and the main planner of the war and it supports terrorists by all means.

Those terrorists [ ISIS, al-Qaeda/ al-Nusra Front, White Helmets, Hayet Tahrir al-Sham HTS] are western proxies, none of them are moderate. They perpetrated hundreds of heinous crimes against Syrian civilians and in Syria.

A witness to the massacre at Adra area in Damascus countryside described the scene in these words:

“The ‘rebels’ began to attack the government centers and attacked the police stations- where all the policemen were killed after only a brief clash because of the large number of attackers. They (the attackers) then headed to the checkpoint located on the edge of the city before moving to the clinic where they slaughtered one from the medical staff and put his head in the popular market. They then dragged his body in front of town’s people who gathered to see what is happening. Bakery workers who resisted their machinery being taken away were roasted in their own oven. Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS fighters went from house to house with a list of names and none of those taken away then has been seen since.”

This is just one story out of hundreds of stories narrated by Syrians and obfuscated by Mainstream Media that has created a state of mass political imbecilisation amongst western media consumers.

The western media serves as an agency for imperial war rather than as an agency for truth and justice, according to Taliano, who underlined that voices of truth, justice and peace are suppressed.

Tim Anderson, Australian political economist and author, posted these words in July 2016:

“In my country (Australia) we have seen five years of a near monolithic war narrative on Syria, and associated wartime censorship of dissenting views. Although I have probably written more than any other Australian academic on the conflict in Syria I have been effectively black-listed from the Australian corporate and state media, because what I say does not fit the official line.”

Feigned humanitarianism

Moreover, the Canadian author talked in his book about feigned humanitarianism as a cover for crimes of the highest order and western crimes against law and order. He referred to Canada’s contribution to the cause of the disease metastasizing overseas when it chooses to ally itself with the cancer rather than the cure.

“The cancer is NATO and its allies, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan. We are the countries funding the terrorists, and we are the cancer that wants to illegally impose regime change in Syria,” Taliano stresses, making comparison between Russia’s intervention to cure the terror disease in Syria and NATO countries’ intervention to enable and support terrorism in Syria.

Not only Syria, but also Libya, Iraq and Ukraine have been infested with terrorists to destroy these countries and subjugate the population. For example in Syria, the western terrorists attacked 67 of the country’s 94 national hospitals between 2011 and 2013.

The Canadian author mentioned a list of President al-Assad’ notable accomplishments since 2000. Among them we number: Construction and restoration of 10.000 mosques, 500 churches, 8000 schools, 2000 institutes, 40 universities besides development of tourism, public transportation.

He, in addition, elaborated strategies used by colonizers to achieve their goals in the region. These strategies are starvation, indiscriminate bombing of civilian populations, illegal sanctions, and ‘divide and conquer’.

Taliano underscored that genocidal corporate media presstitutes follow the all-too-familiar script of blaming the victim for the crimes perpetrated by aggressor nations as it creates war propaganda.

He called for the need to build a consensus for truth, justice and peace, instead of building a consensus for war and first-strike nuclear attacks.

“As a first step, we would do well to boycott toxic mainstream media messaging, which favours lies, injustice and war…Mainstream media often uses public-relations-engineered sources for its stories- the ‘White Helmets’ and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) are good examples.”

“Historical memory teaches us that the dirty war against Syria is consistent with previous illegal wars of aggression and western-sourced evidence demonstrates beyond a reasonable doubt that we are, yet again, the terrorists,” Taliano says.

He concluded by saying in his preface:

“As a visitor I felt shame, but Syrians welcomed me as one of them.”

All in all, “Voices from Syria” is a very interesting documentary book that includes clues about lies and crimes of western media against people in Syria, Libya, Ukraine, Iraq and beyond.

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Order Mark Taliano’s Book “Voices from Syria” directly from Global Research.

Mark Taliano combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes  the mainstream media narratives on Syria. 

Voices from Syria 

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-1-6

Author: Mark Taliano

Year: 2017

Pages: 128 (Expanded edition: 1 new chapter)

List Price: $17.95

Special Price: $9.95 

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Today March 17, 2021 marks the tenth anniversary of the US-NATO-Israel war against the people of Syria.

Our thoughts are with the People of Syria.

Ten Years Ago: The onset of the The War on Syria

This article was first published on March 14, 2017

***

They lied about Iraq, they lied about Libya, but at least you can learn about what is going on in Syria with the help of people like Mark Taliano.

Mark, a retired Ontario teacher, visited Syria as part of the Third Tour of Peace. Through the contacts he made, he was able to write a booklet about the perspectives of Syrians under siege by the NATO/GCC assault on their country.

He discusses his book, Voices from Syria, and also the news about a team of Swedish doctors refuting the White Helmets’ pretensions of being first responders.

Excerpt from Foreword to Voices from Syria by Michel Chossudovsky:

We bring to the attention of our readers Mark Taliano’s Book entitled Voices from Syria. In contrast to most geopolitical analysts of the Middle East, Mark Taliano focusses on what unites humanity with the people of Syria in their struggle against foreign aggression. Taliano talks and listens to the people of Syria. He reveals the courage and resilience of a Nation and its people in their day to day lives, after more than five years of US-NATO sponsored terrorism and more than two years of US “peacemaking” airstrikes which have largely targeted Syria’s civilian infrastructure.

Taliano refutes the mainstream media. The causes and consequences of the US-led war on Syria, not to mention the extensive war crimes and atrocities committed by the terrorists on behalf the Western military alliance are routinely obfuscated by the media. He is committed to reversing the tide of media disinformation, by reaching out to Western public opinion on behalf of the Syrian people. Voices from Syria provides a carefully documented overview of life in Syria, the day to day struggle of the Syrian people to protect and sustain their national sovereignty.

**New Book: Voices from Syria**

Author: Mark Taliano

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-9-1

Year: 2017

Product Type: PDF File

List Price: $6.50

Special Offer: $5.00 

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All Global Research articles can be read in 27 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

***

Whenever US intelligence community reports claim foreign interference in or threats to federal elections, no credible evidence supports allegations because none exists.

House, Senate, and Mueller probes into alleged Russian US 2016 election interference ended with a collective whimper, not a bang.

Mueller’s much ado about nothing politicized probe notably stood out as a witch hunt fiasco.

His 19-lawyer team, 40 FBI special agents, intelligence analysts, forensic accountants, and other professional staff spent around $25 million.

They issued 2,800 subpoenas, 500 search warrants, almost 50 orders authorizing use of pen registers, 13 requests to foreign governments for evidence, over 230 orders for communication records, interviewed about 500 individuals, and made 34 politicized indictments on dubious charges unconnected to his mandate.

The Mueller team discovered no evidence of Russian US election meddling, no collusion with Trump to triumph over Hillary, no  obstruction of justice.

Time, energy, and millions of dollars spent amounted to a colossal waste of the above.

Whenever claims or allegations surface about Russian or other foreign interference in US election, they fabricated.

Left unexplained is why would Russia or any other country interfere in America’s one-party rule political process with two right wings?

Whenever farcical US elections are held, dirty business as usual continuity always wins.

Ordinary Americans have no say over how they’re governed or by whom.

Powerful interests decide who holds high office.

The US war party runs things, notably throughout the post-WW II period.

Its ruling authorities serve Wall Street, the military, industrial, security, media complex, and other corporate interests, along with high-net worth individuals — at the expense of ordinary people everywhere.

Americans get the best “democracy” money can buy, a fantasy version, never the real thing.

Yet on Tuesday, an unclassified version of a so-called US intelligence community assessment (ICA) maintained the myth of “foreign threats” to Election 2020.

Despite no evidence suggesting it, the report claimed — with “high confidence” — that Vladimir Putin authorized efforts to undermine Biden’s presidential campaign, saying the following:

“We assess that…Putin authorized, and a range of Russian government organizations conducted, influence operations aimed at denigrating President Biden’s candidacy and the (Dem) Party, supporting former President Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process, and exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the US (sic).”

Whenever claims like the above aren’t corroborated by credible evidence, they’re groundless.

No evidence remotely suggests that Russia or any other nations ever interfered in the US electoral process — or threatened it in any way.

In response to the ICA, Russia’s Washington embassy sharply as follows, saying:

“The document prepared by the US intelligence community is yet another set of groundless accusations against our country of interfering in American internal political processes.”

“The conclusions of the report on the conduct by Russia of influence operations in America are confirmed solely by the confidence of the intelligence services in their correctness.”

“No facts or concrete evidence of such claims (are) provided.”

The March 10-dated ICA said “the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, and the Secretary of Homeland Security, will impose appropriate sanctions for activities determined to constitute foreign interference in a US election (sic).”

Yet the ICA also said that “(w)e have no indications that any foreign actor attempted to alter any technical aspect of the voting process in the 2020 US elections, including voter registration, casting ballots, vote tabulation, or reporting results,” adding:

“Some foreign actors, such as Iran and Russia, spread false or inflated claims about alleged compromises of voting systems to undermine public confidence in election processes and results (sic).”

The ICA also dubiously claimed that Venezuela and Cuba acted in unspecified ways to “influence” Election 2020 results (sic).

Notably missing from the ICA was credible evidence to corroborate claims made.

The conclusion is self-evident.

Like virtually always before, claims about foreign interference in US elections or threats to undermine them — by Russia or other nations — are politicized rubbish when made.

They’re part of longstanding US war by other means on nations free from its control.

It’s waged by both right wings of the US war party.

Instead of fostering peace, stability, cooperative relations with other countries, and adherence to the rule of law, the US consistently goes the other way.

In so doing, it’s furthering its own decline. History’s dustbin awaits its arrival — where all former empires reside.

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Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

VISIT MY WEBSITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].

My two Wall Street books are timely reading:

“How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion, and Class War”

https://www.claritypress.com/product/how-wall-street-fleeces-america/

“Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity”

https://www.claritypress.com/product/banker-occupation-waging-financial-war-on-humanity/

All Global Research articles can be read in 27 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

***

Geert Vanden Bossche PhD, is an internationally recognised vaccine developer having worked as the head of the Vaccine Development Office at the German Centre for Infection Research.

Coordinated Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation’s Ebola Vaccine Program and contributed to the implementation of an integrated vaccine work plan in collaboration with Global Health Partners (WHO, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, CDC, UNICEF), regulators (FDA) and vaccine manufacturers to enable timely deployment or stockpiling of Ebola vaccine candidates.

Highlighting the principle of using a prophylactic vaccine in the midst of a pandemic. Likely to create more more viral variants in the process.

Sharing his perspective on mass vaccination in COVID-19.

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***

“There is a plot in this country to enslave every man, woman and child. Before I leave this high and noble office, I intend to expose this plot.” – John F. Kennedy

On March 11, 2020, a year ago, the worldwide lockdown went into effect. 193 UN member countries, in unison and lockstep, closed their borders, economies and live-societies. It marked the beginning of the planet’s economic and societal destruction – all for an invisible enemy, a corona virus that could never have hit the entire globe at the same time.

So, what’s the plot?

In 1935, 86 years ago, Dr. Arthur Guett, Nazi Director of Public Health, said:

“The ill-conceived `love of thy neighbor’ has to disappear, especially in relation to inferior or asocial creatures. It is the supreme duty of a national state to grant life and livelihood only to the healthy and hereditarily sound portion of the people in order to secure the maintenance of a hereditarily sound and racially pure folk for all eternity….”

These words spoken almost a century ago by Dr. Guett, Adolf Hitler’s Director of Public Health, are sending shivers down the spine. Yet, they are ringing true and right down the alley of today’s Eugenists. Such thinking should be scary for the public at large – except, the public at large is being kept in the dark of what the Globalist Cabal’s real plan is behind the covid fraud.

It is three-fold – taking over total control of humanity, as in One World Order; shifting assets and resources from the middle and the bottom of society to the top few; and – drastically reducing world population.

The Video entitled Bioethics and the New Eugenics (39 min video – 8 March 2021, click below) produced by James Corbett illustrates best what the world’s eugenists have in mind, when they talk about Bioethics, Eugenics and – Death Panels.

Yes – Death Panels would decide who is to live and who is to die. The elderly, who do no longer contribute to civilization, but are rather a (cost) burden on society, should go first.

 

For the Corbett Report Transcript including sources and references click here 

The eugenics people are talking freely about forced “euthanasia” and after-birth abortions, nothing else but infanticide, meaning killing infants, whom doctors or the “Death Panel” decide their life has no future, is not worth living, will not be contributing to society, but is rather a burden for humanity.

The age of 75 is mentioned as a possible “deadline” for people having to die. Whether those who decided this “deadline” included themselves is not known.

To come to grips with the pandemic, better called Plandemic, a massive worldwide vaccination program has been set in motion. According to Bill Gates, the world will not return to “somewhat normal” before at least 7 billion people have been vaccinated. And we are not talking about a normal or traditional vaccination. The predominant inoculations that are being promoted in the west, are mRNA-type injections.

mRNA stands for messenger ribonucleic acid. They’re single-stranded molecules that carry genetic code from DNA in a cell’s nucleus to ribosomes, which make protein in the cells. These molecules are called messenger RNA because they carry instructions for producing proteins from one part of the cell to another. www.nature.com, Nov 19, 2020

These mRNA vaxxes are experimental.

“[mRNA vaccines] prospects have swung billions of dollars on the stock market, made and imperiled scientific careers, and fueled hopes that it could be a breakthrough that allows society to return to normalcy after months living in fear” (See this).

The mRNA vaxxes have numerous serious side effects and have caused premature death, at the rate of a multiple higher than the traditional vaccines. See here and here.

This is not taking into account the potential long-term negative effects, of which there is today no experience available, but disturbing scientific predictions abound. See here Dr. Lee Merritt and more below.

Let it be clear. The push for mRNA-type vaccines only comes from the West. Russia, China, India, Iran and others have distanced themselves from this type of vaccines, which officially are not even allowed to be called vaccines, but were admitted under a special “Emergency Law” on a trial or “experimental” basis only (see this), making humans into guinea pigs.

Russia and China have developed their own tradition-based vaccines, i. e. injection of a weakened virus that will produce antibodies and trigger the immune system when it gets in contact with the real virus. Science has decades of experience with this type of preventive inoculation, but zero experience with the mRNA-type jabs.

They tell us that people in nursing homes or in hospitals with co-morbidities are the most vulnerable ones to catch covid. Therefore, they are given priority to get the jab. Is it a coincidence that these people are also the most vulnerable ones to become victims of serious “side effects” – and disproportionately many die – from the mRNA injections?

The ongoing vaccination programs everywhere in the west focus on the elderly – and the immediate death rate among vaxxed nursing home inmates, is indeed high, as shown in England, Spain and elsewhere. See this and this. It so happens that people in nursing homes are also the least “productive” in term of contributing to societal well-being. They are a cost for society.  Hence, they typically enter the attention of the eugenists.

Doesn’t this look like it’s all planned? Administering so-called vaccines (a misnomer and outright lie used by western governments) that potentially kill in the short and long-run, and that have been observed as including sterilizing and infertility agents – vaxx-injections for which western governments, US, Europe, including Switzerland – literally refuse to offer their population non-RNA alternatives, like the Russian Sputnik V and the Chinese Sinovac and Sinopharm?

One of the most flagrant cases is Switzerland. At the beginning of the “vaccination” campaign, when Switzerland like many other countries claimed a “shortage” of vaccines, Russia offered them Sputnik V. Switzerland apparently did not even have the curtesy to reply. In a recent press conference, the Swiss Health Minister was asked why they would not import Sputnik V. In a slightly arrogant tone, he replied, “we never even considered it.” – One cannot, but wonder why.

By the way, “shortages” are artificially induced. What is in short supply is wanted by the people. In this case, a vaccine in short supply, incites people to want it. Its mind manipulation 101. A method to increase the relatively low willingness to vaccinate.

In Germany, where the public pressure is high, and as a consequence, in the EU Commission and Parliament, the debate about approving Sputnik V has started. This all the while Sputnik V has passed WHO’s litmus test and has been permitted and is currently being used in more than two dozen countries.

The plan, as we know, is to “Reset” the world – according to the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) founder and CEO, Klaus Schwab, “Covid-19 – The Great Reset”. The caveat is, resetting the world in line with the methods and objectives of a super-rich financial and Big-Tech platform’s objectives – which include a massive population reduction.

This has been a little-veiled dream of Bill Gates, Rockefeller and a whole bunch of UK and US-American eugenists, who are actively at work – and the instrument to fulfill their diabolical project is the massive covid-vaccination campaign, imposed to various degrees by every one of the 193 UN member countries and by the UN body itself. Those on top of the UN and at the head of these 193 UN member governments know exactly what they are doing and why they are doing it.

See this: “Shocking: Former FEMA/HDS Celeste Solum w/David Icke: #Covid Magnetic Tagging; Vaccines for Mass Depopulation & More.“

In the meantime, several medical doctors, virologist and immunologists have broken their silence, exited the matrix and are expressing their conscience to the people, the potential victims of this massive vaccination crime.

One of them is Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche, PhD. He is a vaccine research expert. He has a long list of companies and organizations he’s worked with on vaccine discovery and preclinical research, including GSK, Novartis, Solvay Biologicals, and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Dr Vanden Bossche also coordinated the Ebola vaccine program at GAVI (Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization) in Geneva, with office buildings just next to WHO. – A coincidence?

Dr. Vanden Bossche, gave a stunning interview on 6 March 2021 on the Benefits versus Risks of mRNA-type injections.

Dr. Geert Vandem Bossche essentially says that the individual adverse effects and even deaths from the vaccines, do not provide a clue of the far bigger impending Global Catastrophe.

He said that the mRNA-type vaccines are destroying people’s immune system, and they will be utterly unable to cope with the more virulent versions of the virus that will emerge due to the vaccines. The result could result in significant levels of mortality a few months to a few years down the road after vaccination. He also said he could morally no longer remain silent.

This plays exactly into the eugenists agenda.

On March 7, 2021, Dr. Vandem Bossche, also wrote an Open Letter to WHO, calling for an immediate stop of the worldwide vaccination campaign, here. He warns, “We’re Risking Creating a Global, “Uncontrollable Monster.”

In the meantime, western countries are jumping from one wave to the next, from one lockdown to the next. Many European countries have already announced that a third wave may be not far off. Italy just announced their third-wave lockdown, covering at least the period over Easter 2021. Germany and Switzerland also warned their people of a third wave, if restrictions, aka repression, is not obeyed.

What most people do not know is that a virus infection, as is covid, doesn’t come in waves. It starts slow, then peaks, and finally it ebbs off – and is over. Call it herd immunity. This is being witnessed currently in India, whose approach of dealing with covid was and is very different from the west. It is not based on coercion into vaccination, but on treatment of the virus by traditional, inexpensive medication that has a long history of positive results of dealing with viral infections, such as Ivermectin and hydrochloroquine, and others. China also mastered their covid epidemic by medication, not by vaccination.

This is the typical graph of covid-19 in India. It peaks and then declines – and the disease is over. This is also a typical flu curve.

Below is the covid curve in Spain and is representative for many other European countries, as well as for the United States.

It is clear that the figures in the west are very much manipulated with the purpose of coercing people into accepting the vaccine.

People have a hard time understanding and accepting to what extent our western governments are “evil”, deceiving their electorate, those who pay their salaries and benefits. Once people grasp what is going on and accept the treacherous, deceptive and corrupt character of those they believed to be their leaders, the awakening may happen, and, with it, massive civil disobedience may put an end to this diabolical plan.

What has been prepared decades ago and is being played out in full sight since the beginning of 2020, looks like the world’s largest blackmail, coercion, corruption, and outright threats campaign of all times in the history of mankind.

And so far, none of the 193 UN member countries’ so-called leaders (sic) have come forward, have had the courage to follow their conscience – if they have one – and divulge to the globe’s 7.8 billion population what is going on, what is being planned by the Eugenists who raise the issue of “who is destined to die and who may live” – and why. – And who is behind it all? – Why are these heads of state following “Higher Orders” that may lead to a worldwide genocide, unknown in recent history?

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Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he has worked for over 30 years on water and environment around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and  co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020).

He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

All Global Research articles can be read in 27 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

We bring to the attention of our readers this important report by James Corbett

***

At first glance, bioethics might seem like just another branch of ethical philosophy where academics endlessly debate other academics about how many angels dance on the head of a pin in far-out, science fiction like scenarios.

What many do not know, however, is that the seemingly benign academic study of bioethics has its roots in the dark history of eugenics. With that knowledge, the dangers inherent in entrusting some of the most important discussions about the life, death and health of humanity in the hands of a select few become even more apparent.

For the Corbett Report Transcript including sources and references click here 

***

Concluding Comments of the Corbett Report on Bioethics

From its inception, the field of bioethics has taken its moral cue from the card-carrying eugenicists who founded its core institutions. For these academicians of the eugenics philosophy, the key moral questions raised by modern medical advances are always utilitarian in nature: What is the value that forced vaccination or compulsory sterilization brings to a community? Will putting lithium in the water supply lead to a happier society? Does a family’s relief at killing their newborn baby outweigh that baby’s momentary discomfort as it is murdered?

Implicit in this line of thinking are all of the embedded assumptions about what defines “value” and “happiness” and “relief” and how these abstract ideas are measured and compared. The fundamental utilitarian assumption that the individual’s worth can or should be measured against some arbitrarily defined collective good, meanwhile, is rarely (if ever) considered.

The average person, however—largely unaware that these types of questions are even being asked (let alone answered) by bioethics professors in obscure academic journals—may literally perish for their lack of knowledge about these discussions.

All things being equal, these types of ideas would likely be treated as they always have been: as a meaningless parlor game played by ivory tower academics with no power to enforce their crazy ideas. All things, however, are not equal.

Perhaps taking a page from the notebook of his brother, Rahm, about the utility of crisis in effecting societal change, Ezekiel Emanuel declared in 2011 that “we will get health-care reform only when there is a war, a depression or some other major civil unrest.” He didn’t add “pandemic” to that list of excuses, but he didn’t have to. As the events of the past year have borne out, the public are more than willing to consider the previously unthinkable now that they have been told that there is a crisis taking place.

Forced vaccination. Immunity passports. The erection of a biosecurity state. For the first time, the eugenics-infused philosophers of bioethics are on the verge of gaining real power. And the public is still largely unaware of the discussions that these academics have been engaged in for decades.

At the very least, Bill Gates can relax now: We can finally have the discussion on death panels.

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Trading places. What took so long?

From east of Suez to up the Yangtze. Customers at the bars in Beijing were celebrating but it wasn’t Britain’s pivot to Asia that had them chatting loudly and back slapping.

St Patrick’s Day, March 17, was the reason for their unmasked jollity in the bars and pubs. More than 50 years after the then Labour defence secretary Denis Healey announced the United Kingdom’s cash-strapped retreat in 1968 from east of Suez, Britain is back. Well, talking about it. 

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his admirals are looking at a new horizon stretching through crowded seaways east from India to Japan and south from China to Australia. Britain, or in reality the Tory high command, believes the European Union stifled the imperial drive, robbing Britain of its true place, a dominating global role. Britain’s decline, some Tories believe, can be traced to the EU, the introduction of comprehensive education and spreadable butter.  Is a Covid-19-weakened but vaccine-rate –buoyed Johnson, in response, wrapping himself in the flag and embarking on an imperial fantasy?

Asia is the new economic center and the UK is lagging behind in its dealings with it. China is the only Asian country in Britain’s top 10 markets. The US, Germany and Ireland are the top 3, according to the Database of British Products & Verified British Exporters.

Clearly something is askew. Ireland, of course, has proximity but it also has a population of approx 5 million. That is about the size of my Beijing neighborhood. And here comes the contradiction. Britain is changing policy primarily not to boost trade with China but to counter it, politically, militarily and economically. Sure, London says, we’ll do business with Beijing if the right opportunity comes along. I wouldn’t count on it.

In a word, Britain wants to contain China. There are legitimate reasons to boost trade with Asia but containing China is ludicrous both in its reasoning and consequences. It is also impossible.

Britain has announced it will send its brand new aircraft carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth, to the South China Sea and give Beijing a shot across the bows in a “that’ll teach ‘em’’ show of weakness. It meant to do so earlier but delays and cost overruns put back the deployment. It dare not go into the South China Sea alone, real politik demands that Washington set the timeline and sends its ships to, um, well, protect it and make sure matters do not get out of hand. No point going up the Yangtze without a paddle. Of course it will be described as allies working together, to send a united message. In truth, China is not worried.

They know how to deal with former 20^th century concession holders of its territory.

In February 2019, the then UK defense secretary, Gavin Williamson, now an incredibly unpopular minister of education kept in his post as a lightning rod, announced HMS Elizabeth would travel to the South China Sea and be prepared to use lethal force to defend free and open waterways. China, after enjoying a fit of the giggles, responded by withdrawing its invitation to the chancellor, Phillip Hammond, to visit for trade talks. 

The Chinese are not anti-English. Far from it. Every school in China teaches English or wants to if teachers and resources are available. In England about 13 percent of state schools and 50 percent of independent schools teach Chinese. The fortunes of English soccer teams are passionately followed in China. Who do you support is a common question. Pre-pandemic, students wanted to go to Britain to study. Many did. London and Edinburgh were top destinations for Chinese tourists.

 China aside, Britain should not be under any illusion that its return to Asia will usher in a new age of the Raj.

The region is the powerhouse of the global economy. From the east bank of the Bosphorus to Tokyo Bay, it accounts for half of global economic output and more than half the world’s population. And this is growing. Within its geography it has the world’s two most populous nations, China and India and the second and third largest economies in the world, China and Japan as well as the world’s largest democracy, India. 

The Asia pivot is a tantalizing prospect. But how well has lockdown London thought this through? Asian countries want visas for their nationals to study and work in Britain. Will the UK be prepared to give India and the other Asian countries access to UK markets, as well as tens of thousands of visas?

Asians were victims of rampant saber-led globalization in the age of empire.

They want, and will get, a better deal this time.  

Anchors aweigh!  

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On Thursday, China’s Central Committee official/Foreign Affairs Director Yang Jiechi and Foreign Minister Wang Yi will meet with Biden regime’s top “diplomat” Tony Blinken and national security advisor Jake Sullivan in Anchorage, Alaska.

It comes at a time of no easing of US war on China by other means, Biden continuing Trump’s hostile agenda toward Beijing.

Ahead of Thursday’s meeting, Blinken and US war secretary Lloyd Austin are visiting Japan and South Korea through Wednesday for discussions focused on China and North Korea — nonbelligerent nations threatening no one.

Last Friday, Biden’s double participated in a virtual summit with leaders of India, Japan and Australia, so-called Quad nations, their meeting discussed in a Monday article.

Their alliance is all about countering China’s growing prominence regionally and worldwide.

The US seeks to undermine Beijing’s political, economic, technological, and military development — what failed so far and is highly unlikely to fare better ahead.

Regional instability, to the extent that it exists, is because of Washington’s imperial presence, its rejection of peace, stability, and cooperative relations with all nations regionally and worldwide.

Thursday’s Sino/US meeting will be the first between officials of both countries since Biden replaced Trump by election theft.

According to Blinken’s spokesman Price, talks will be “difficult.”

“We’ll be frank, and explain how Beijing’s actions and behavior challenge the security, the prosperity, the values of not only the United States, but also our partners and allies (sic).”

The above reinvention of reality is one of many examples of how the US falsely blames other nations for its own hostile actions.

US relations with China and other countries free from its control are more likely to worsen ahead than improve with undemocratic Dems running the White House and Congress.

US politicians and bureaucrats time and again falsely blame China and other independent countries of things they had nothing to do with.

It’s why normal relations between these nations and the US are virtually impossible to achieve — ruling regimes in Washington bearing full responsibility.

Biden’s press secretary Psaki said his geopolitical team will work with regional nations to “pressure” Beijing.

Talks in Anchorage are certain to be tense with no prospect for breakthroughs on issues where significant differences exist between the US and China.

Price noted that there’s “a long litany of (bilateral) disagreements,” adding:

“We will certainly not pull any punches” in discussing them.

“Any follow-up engagements with the Chinese officials after Anchorage have to be based on the proposition that we’re seeing tangible progress and tangible outcomes on the issues of concern.”

“We’re not looking to engage in talks for the sake of talks.”

“We are looking for Beijing, again, to demonstrate that seriousness of purpose (sic).”

According to China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, both “sides are still deliberating on the agenda items.”

“We hope we can have candid dialogues on issues of mutual concerns. The Chinese side will present our position.”

“Both sides should have an accurate understanding on each other’s policy intention, manage our differences and to bring Sino-US relations back on the right track.”

Chances of achieving this aim are virtually nil. According to Political Science Professor Xiaoyu Pu:

“The Biden (regime) is not eager to significantly improve the bilateral relationship.”

“From the US domestic perspective, it is neither possible nor desirable…”

Heightened tensions between both nations are unlikely to ease because of US hostility toward countries free from its control.

Looking ahead, that dismal state is highly unlikely to change.

A state of war by hot and/or other means exists between the US and nations unwilling to sell their soul to a higher power in Washington.

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Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

VISIT MY WEBSITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].

My two Wall Street books are timely reading:

“How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion, and Class War”

https://www.claritypress.com/product/how-wall-street-fleeces-america/

“Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity”

https://www.claritypress.com/product/banker-occupation-waging-financial-war-on-humanity/

All Global Research articles can be read in 27 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

***

Yemen’s Ansar Allah are unrelenting in their offensive, both on positions inside the country, and in attacks on Saudi Arabia’s infrastructure within the Kingdom.

The Houthis, as Ansar Allah are more widely known, released a video showing their recent raid on positions of Saudi-backed forces in the area Rashah Al-Gharbia in Najran province. It was purportedly successful, and one of many recent ones.

The battlefield is in flux, a constant back and forth. The Houthis push in one direction, and are pushed back in another. Heavy clashes continue in the Balaq mountain area, as well as on the Ghubari mountain in the Kadha region. These are two locations that are set very far apart, Balaq is near Marib and the battle for the city continues. Ghubari is to the very south, near Taiz. It is safe to say that the fighting is happening all along the contact line, and not at just at a single location.

In what has become a regular event, the Houthis carried out yet another drone strike within Saudi Arabia’s borders. On March 15th, they attacked attacked Abha Airport and King Khalid Airport in Khamis Mushait with 3 Qasef 2k drones. The Houthi spokesman claimed that the strike was successful and hit all of its targets.

Not all, however, is always successful and goes without a hitch, of course. A missile was reportedly launched by the Houthis from the Central Security Camp in the area of Shabban, near the Ibb city center. It malfunctioned and fell on the side of the al-Naqlin Mountian on the outskirts of Ibb city. A large explosion was heard. A similar missile was launched on the previous day, in the same direction. No impact was reported. Still, the Houthi’s successes has caused waves.

There are reports that Turkey, after sending militants to Azerbaijan and Libya, is now priming to send “Syrian mercenaries” to Yemen. They are to fight on behalf of the Saudi-led coalition against Ansar Allah.

In case of emergency, Iran is likely to provide the Houthis with some more support in the form of weapons and hardware, as it has done repeatedly in the past. On March 15th, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps revealed a brand-new advanced missile site, which is essentially an “underground city”.

Iranian state media dubbed it an advanced “missile city” containing cruise and ballistic missiles able to hit targets at “multiple ranges” and with a 360-degree firing radius. As such it can support its allies from the Axis of Resistance all around.

The fighting in Yemen is showing a promise of worsening in the coming weeks and months, and the Houthis will need all the help they can get, especially if Turkey indirectly joins the fray.

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China is upheld as an Enemy of America.

America’s perceptions regarding China are manipulated both by the media and official government statements

This article documents the role of gallup polls in manipulating American perceptions concerning China.

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Forty-five percent of Americans now say China is the greatest enemy of the U.S., more than double the percentage who said so in 2020. That year, Americans were equally as likely to say either China or Russia was the U.S.’s greatest enemy. The current shift coincided with a period when the global economy and human activity were severely impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, which originated in China.

The Feb. 3-18 poll also finds favorable views of China among U.S. adults falling for the second straight year, putting the figure at a historically low 20%.

The rise in perceptions of China as the United States’ greatest enemy is accompanied by a sharp decline since 2020 in those mentioning Iran (down 15 percentage points to 4%), as well as four-to-five-point declines in mentions of Iraq and North Korea and smaller declines in a handful of other countries.

Perceptions of Russia as the United States’ greatest enemy, now 26%, were essentially unchanged from a year ago when 23% named it. But it is down from 32% who did so in 2019 when it ranked first overall. The 9% of Americans who view North Korea as their country’s greatest enemy is a noticeable turn from previous years when rhetorical tensions, military escalations and missile testing were more elevated. In 2018, 51% named North Korea as the greatest enemy.

Americans’ Perceptions Over Time

Over the past several years, there have been noticeable fluctuations between the country perceived as the nation’s greatest adversary; China last ranked No. 1 in 2014, Russia topped the list in 2020, 2019 and 2014, and North Korea ranked highest in 2018 and 2016.

Prior to China, Russia and North Korea’s top rankings, Americans named Iran (2006-2008, 2011 and 2012) and Iraq (2001 and 2005) as the United States’ greatest enemy.

While North Korea continues to hold the overall record high of 51% as the U.S.’s greatest enemy, that focus has now shifted to its ally and primary benefactor, China.

There are noticeable partisan differences in perceptions of the greatest enemy of the U.S, with Republicans naming China as the top country and Democrats citing Russia. While 76% of Republicans name China as the greatest enemy, 43% of independents and 22% of Democrats do so. Conversely, close to half of Democrats name Russia (47%) compared with one in four independents (24%) and just 6% of Republicans.

Who Is the World’s Leading Economic Power?

While Americans perceive China as the country’s top enemy, half also believe that China is the world’s leading economic power. This perception has noticeably increased since 2020, likely because of the COVID-related decline in the U.S. economy in the past year. While China has made strong progress in its overall GDP growth, it remains the world’s second-largest economy to the United States.

Since 2000, Americans have alternated between choosing China or the United States as the leading economic power, often influenced by the current health of the U.S. economy. The 50% of Americans perceiving the U.S. as the top economic power a year ago was the highest in two decades, reflecting the nation’s strong economic performance just before the pandemic.

Far fewer Americans select the European Union (5%), Japan (4%), Russia (2%) or India (1%) for this distinction. Of these, only Japan has been chosen by 10% or more in Gallup’s trend since 2000, with those instances occurring more than a decade ago.

A separate question in the survey asks Americans which country they think will be the leading economic power in 20 years. The public’s views are more evenly split on this question, with 46% choosing China and 40% the United States. Again, this is a switch from last year when the majority (53%) predicted the U.S. would have this role, nearly matching the record high 55% selecting the U.S. in 2000.

No more than 4% foresee the European Union, Japan, India or Russia achieving this distinction in 20 years.

Record High See Chinese Economic Power as Critical U.S. Threat

A new high of 63% of Americans says the economic power of China is a critical threat to the vital interests of the U.S. in the next 10 years. An additional 30% describe it as an important, but not critical, threat.

The 63% who believe China’s economic power is a critical threat is up from 46% the last time the question was asked in 2019 and is more than 10 points above the prior highs of 52% in 2013 and 2014.

Views that China’s economic rise is a critical threat to the vital interests of the United States have climbed among all party groups. Today 81% of Republicans, 59% of independents and 56% of Democrats view China’s economic rise as such a threat. In 2019, fewer in all party groups held that view, including 54% of Republicans, 47% of independents and 37% of Democrats.

Bottom Line

Perceptions of China as the greatest enemy of the U.S. are at a high point in Gallup’s trend at the same time its favorable rating is at a low point. The specific concern some Americans have over China, namely its economic power, is identified as a threat to the vital interests of the U.S. by most Americans. In addition, half of Americans view China as the leading economic power in the world today. These developments make U.S. foreign policy toward China especially important, as the tension between the two nations has only grown over the past decade during both the Barack Obama and Donald Trump administrations.

View complete question responses and trends (PDF download).

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There is evidence of competition and confrontation between Big Pharma conglomerates.

This article focusses on acts of sabotage directed against Russia’s and Cuba’s vaccines.

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As Brazil’s death toll from the Covid-19 pandemic nears 275,000, documents reveal that Washington pressured the Brazilian government not to buy Russia’s “malign” Sputnik V vaccine – a decision which may have costed many thousands of lives.

Malign influences

The US Department of Health and Human Services recently published its Annual Report for 2020.

“2020 was one of the most challenging years in the history of our country and in the history of the Department of Health and Human Services”, former US Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar introduces the report.

“There is an end to the pandemic in sight”, he continues, “with the delivery of safe and effective vaccines through Operation Warp Speed”.

Tucked away on page 48, the report shockingly reveals how the US pressured Brazil to reject Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine.

Under the subheading “Combatting malign influences in the Americas”, the report announces:

OGA used diplomatic relations in the Americas region to mitigate efforts by states, including Cuba, Venezuela, and Russia, who are working to increase their influence in the region to the detriment of US safety and security. OGA coordinated with other U.S. government agencies to strengthen diplomatic ties and offer technical and humanitarian assistance to dissuade countries in the region from accepting aid from these ill intentioned states. Examples include using OGA’s Health Attaché office to persuade Brazil to reject the Russian COVID-19 vaccine, and offering CDC technical assistance in lieu of Panama accepting an offer of Cuban doctors. [emphasis added]

It is also striking that the US dissuaded Panama from accepting Cuban doctors, who have been on the global front line against the pandemic, working in over 40 countries.

As well as Brazil, the US has despatched Health Attachés to China, India, Mexico and South Africa, likely charged with carrying out similar activities.

The documents demonstrate how Washington views global health in strict power terms, willing to sacrifice countless lives in order to deny Official Enemies a soft power victory.

Catastrophic response

Brazil has suffered the world’s second-worst number of Covid-19 death rates, with Bolsonaro’s Covid-19 policy being described as “homicidally negligent”.

Throughout 2020, the Brazilian government consistently refused to pursue any vaccine but AstraZeneca’s, baffling medical experts.

A group of Brazilian mayors urged Health Minister Eduardo Pazuello to resign, writing:

“His leadership did not believe in vaccination as a way out of the crisis and did not carry out the necessary planning for the acquisition of vaccines”.

With deaths soaring, Bolsonaro eventually and belatedly opened discussions for the delivery of Sputnik V vaccines.

Secret documents published by Brasil Wire also revealed that the UK had lobbied Brazil on behalf of AstraZeneca as well as British mining firms, showing that the US is not the only country leveraging power on behalf of pharmaceutical multinationals in Latin America.

This is only the latest scandalous episode in Bolsonaro’s handling of the pandemic, and malign US interference in the region.

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More than 20 countries have either suspended or said they will delay Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccinations based on reports of deaths or injuries — in most cases related to blood clots — in healthy people who received the vaccine.

Prosecutors in Northern Italy announced Monday they had seized a batch of 393,600 shots of the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine following the death of a 57-year-old man hours after he was vaccinated, reported Reuters.

Meanwhile the World Health Organization (WHO) is standing firm in its support of the vaccine. In a press conference today, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, “This does not necessarily mean these events [deaths and injuries] are linked to the vaccine, but it’s routine practice to investigate them, and it shows that the surveillance system works and effective controls are in place.”

According to news reports, WHO’s vaccine safety experts were meeting today to discuss the vaccine. WHO had previously said that an ongoing analysis by its vaccines advisory committee has not established a causal link between the vaccine and blood clots and countries should keep using it, reported The Telegraph.

Regulators in Europe also defended the vaccine telling news outlets that the “benefits outweigh the risks.” Still, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) is investigating reports of blood clots in vaccine recipients and will release its findings Thursday, according to Nasdaq.com.

EMA Executive Director Emer Cooke said today during a news conference that there was no indication the incidents, which she called “very rare,” had been caused by the vaccine, but experts were assessing that possibility.

The AstraZeneca vaccine, not yet approved for emergency use in the U.S., is being distributed under WHO’s COVAX program, funded by Bill Gates. The company plans to file for Emergency Use Authorization with the U.S Food and Drug Administration in the upcoming weeks.

In Italy, Piedmont’s regional government suspended use of AstraZeneca’s batch ABV5811, which is different than the batch of AstraZeneca vaccine seized last week in Sicily after the sudden deaths of two men who had recently been vaccinated.

The Italian government had previously said there was no evidence of a connection between the deaths and the vaccine, and had allowed the AstraZeneca vaccine to continue to be administered even after other countries had suspended use of the vaccine.

In addition to Italy, France, Iceland, Denmark, Cyprus, Luxembourg, Latvia, Estonia and The Netherlands have suspended or delayed the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Other countries that have hit pause on AstraZeneca:

Norway, which is investigating reports of young healthy people who experienced brain hemorrhages and blood clots after being vaccinated. On March 12, the Norwegian Medicines Agency and Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH) reported an unexpected death from a brain haemorrhage after an AstraZeneca vaccine was administered. A day later the agencies received three more reports of severe cases of blood clots or brain haemorrhages in younger people who had been vaccinated and were receiving hospital treatment. All of the patients showed reduced numbers of blood platelets.

Dr. Pal Andre Holme is treating the three health workers at Olso University Hospital. He told Norway’s VG newspaper that it was “very unusual” to see such young patients with such “low levels of blood platelets.” Holme’s said, “These are healthy young people who have not had any kind of disease before, who then get severe blood clots. You have to ask questions whether there is a connection with the vaccine, which I do not consider unlikely.”

In its report, the NIPH called for anyone under the age of 50 who experienced “large or small bruises” after being vaccinated to visit a doctor.

Sweden announced today it was suspending the AstraZeneca vaccine following reports of abnormal blood clotting in recipients, according to NPR. The Swedish Public Health Agency said it would suspend use of the vaccine until the EMA reveals findings from its ongoing investigation.

Bulgaria paused the vaccine as a precautionary measure last week after a woman died of heart failure 15 hours after receiving the shot, reported Reuters.  “Until all doubts are dispelled … we are halting inoculations with this vaccine,” Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov said in a statement.

Ireland said on Sunday it was suspending the country’s rollout of the AstraZeneca’s vaccine, The Telegraph reported. Dr Karina Butler, head of the National Immunisation Advisory Committee, told Irish state broadcaster RTÉ that the committee had made the decision after Norway reported a “cluster of four serious, very rare, very serious clotting events” in young healthy people.

Germany suspended the vaccine as a precautionary measure this week after the country’s health minister, Jens Spahn, said seven cases of cerebral vein thrombosis had been reported. Spahn said Germany’s vaccine authority, the Paul Ehrlich Institute, “considers further investigation necessary after new reports of cerebral brain thrombosis in connection with vaccination in Germany and Europe.”

The Paul Ehrlich Institute said the EMA should decide “whether and how the new findings will affect the approval of the vaccine.”

Indonesia Monday suspended the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine saying it was waiting for a full report from the WHO before administering any more of the vaccines.

South Africa, as previously reported by The Defender, suspended plans to distribute the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine in February after a study showed only 10% efficacy at protecting against mild and moderate COVID-19 cases from the new South African variant.

Venezuela decided it will not authorize or license AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine at all due to complications in vaccinated recipients. The country had reserved 1.4 to 2.4 million doses through COVAX.

Some countries still on board:

Despite safety concerns, some countries are moving forward with the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Last week, Thailand became the first country outside Europe to temporarily suspend using the vaccine due to safety concerns, according to Associated Press. But Thailand’s health authorities reversed course and decided to move forward. The Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha and members of his cabinet received the first shots.

“There are people who have concerns,” Chan-ocha said after he received the first dose. “But we must believe doctors, believe in our medical professionals.”

In the Philippines, presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said his country would not suspend use of the vaccine because the benefits outweighed any risks.

“There is still no clear data that shows that the blood clotting was caused by AstraZeneca. If such data will come out, maybe we will also stop the use of AstraZeneca,” Roque said. “As of now, our experts are saying again that the benefits we get from using AstraZeneca are larger than the side effects of this vaccine.”

Australia’s Health Minister Greg Hunt said his country “absolutely, clearly and unequivocally” supports the rollout of AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine and would not suspend vaccinations, with plans to import and manufacture 70 million vaccine doses from the vaccine maker. Australia’s chief medical officer, Paul Kelly, said there was no evidence so far that the vaccine causes blood clots.

Canada’s Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, said Monday Health Canada regulators are “constantly analyzing all the available information about vaccines and have guaranteed those approved in Canada are safe for use.” The government’s National Advisory Committee on Immunization today approved the AstraZeneca vaccine for people 65 and older — it had previously limited the approval for people under age 65 due to “limited information on its efficacy,” MSN reported.

According to Reuters, AstraZeneca reviewed its own safety data and said on Sunday there was no evidence of increased risk of blood clots from its COVID vaccine. A monthly safety report will be made public on the EMA website next week, the company said.

WHO said global distribution of AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine remained undisrupted, though TGR reported investigations into AstraZeneca concerns have triggered far-reaching reactions with thousands of cancellations of AstraZeneca’s vaccine. In Veneto Italy alone, 50% of planned vaccination appointments with AstraZeneca were cancelled since Saturday, reported the president of the region, Luca Zaia.

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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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The Kremlin on Tuesday called out what’s it’s dubbed the “unprecedented” propaganda war against Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine. The words were issued by spokesman Dmitry Peskov in response to widespread allegations that the Untied States is actively trying to dissuade its allies from purchasing the Russian-produced vaccine. This despite the emerging scientific consensus that’s found it to be at least 91% effective while further preventing inoculated persons from becoming severely ill.

The Kremlin is responding to newly emerged proof that the US intervened with the largest country in South America, Brazil. The Washington Post details that “Buried deep in the dry, 72-page annual report of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services lay a startling admission: U.S. health officials under President Donald Trump worked to convince Brazil to reject Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine.”

US Dep. of Health publicly confirmed that it pressured Brazil against Sputnik V.
We believe countries should work together to save lives. Efforts to undermine the vaccines are unethical and are costing lives.
👇https://t.co/Ga5i4zvbCt P.48 pic.twitter.com/A6wyKOkc8t

— Sputnik V (@sputnikvaccine) March 15, 2021

Brazil has long stood as the second highest COVID-19 infected country in the world behind the US, with over 11.5 confirmed infections so far (with the US now approaching the 30 million mark).

Here’s the key controversial section from the 71-page document. The section is entitled “Combatting malignant influence in the Americas”…

“Examples include using OGA’s Health Attache office to persuade Brazil to reject the Russian COVID-19 vaccine,” the government report spelled out explicitly.

Brazil’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has since claimed it never received directives or “consultations” such as are described in the report from the US, with a statement saying, “the Embassy of Brazil in Washington has not received consultations or actions from United States authorities or companies regarding the possible purchase, by Brazil, of the Russian vaccine against Covid-19.”

Kremlin spokesman Peskov in his comments didn’t name the allegations specifically but only denounced generally that “In many countries the scale of pressure is quite unprecedented… such selfish attempts to force countries to abandon any vaccines have no prospects.”

“We believe that there should be as many doses of vaccines as possible so that all countries, including the poorest, have the opportunity to stop the pandemic,” Peskov added.

Thus far neither the US Embassy in Moscow nor the US Department of State have responded, according to Reuters.

However, the annual HHS report clearly constitutes a “smoking gun” admission which details that Washington does indeed have a covert policy of blocking the Sputnik V vaccine’s spread. This is ironic given one would think Washington would be more focused on combatting the spread of the pandemic itself, regardless of politics or geopolitical maneuvering.

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“It will be a bilateral agreement, which was already approved a couple of weeks ago,” government spokesperson Kyriakos Kousios told state radio.

“This issue is being handled by the minister of health and the relevant officials. Once we have the vaccine approved, we will proceed with the purchase,” Kousios said, explaining that more than 50,000 doses may be purchased, depending on the flows of the other vaccines.

Russia’s Sputnik has been in the EU drugs agency’s rolling review but no official application for authorisation has been made.

EU Commission spokesperson Stefan De Keersmaecker reiterated on Monday (15 March) that there were no official talks between the EU and Moscow.

However, the head of Russia’s Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), Kirill Dmitriev, said in a statement on Monday that his organisation had secured agreements with companies from Italy, Spain, France and Germany to produce Sputnik V, AFP reported.

Hungary has already purchased Sputnik while the Czech Republic and Slovakia have made orders. Critics suggest that approving Sputnik would be a “major political defeat” for Europe and respectively, a “major diplomatic victory” for Vladimir Putin.

The issue has so far divided EU member states as some of them remain sceptical about what they think could be Moscow’s hidden agenda.

Poland’s former prime minister Donald Tusk, the current chief of the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), recently called on Europeans not to be “naïve” when it comes to Russian and Chinese vaccines.

“I warn against such a naive approach to these very cynical players. I am talking about the Chinese and Russian authorities. And above all, I would warn the Polish authorities, and also other European countries, against buying and trying to vaccinate their citizens with a vaccine that has not been tested,” Tusk said.

The vast majority of Western Balkan countries have already started vaccinating their citizens with Sputnik while Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić has said the EU had “abandoned” the region when it comes to vaccines.

‘Possible’ to approve Sputnik 

EU sources have told EURACTIV that it is “possible” for the EMA to approve Russia’s Sputnik vaccine. “Negotiations could start if at least four member states ask so,” the sources added.

The same sources explained, though, that with the vaccines approved so far, the EU objective to vaccinate 70% of the EU population by September is “still possible”.

However, the delivery delays of approved vaccines and the new stalemate with AstraZeneca pave the way for reconsidering Sputnik.

“When it comes to public health, there is no room for political considerations. We fully rely on the scientific evaluation of EMA,” the sources added.

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Beatrice Fihn, Executive Director of ICAN, said about the decision:

“A decision by the United Kingdom to increase its stockpile of weapons of mass destruction in the middle of a pandemic is irresponsible, dangerous and violates international law. While the British people are struggling to cope with the pandemic, an economic crisis, violence against women, and racism, the government choses to increase insecurity and threats in the world. This is toxic masculinity on display.”

“While the majority of the world’s nations are leading the way to a safer future without nuclear weapons by joining the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, the United Kingdom is pushing for a dangerous new nuclear arms race.”

Current UK Nuclear Arsenal

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimates that as of January 2020, the United Kingdom possessed 215 nuclear warheads. UK nuclear warheads are launched from missiles on submarines. The UK has four submarines that can carry nuclear-warhead equipped missiles. When not on patrol, the submarines are docked off the coast of Scotland.

The UK is currently building new nuclear-capable submarines to replace its current fleet, which it states could cost up to £41 billion, although including all associated costs the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament puts the nuclear upgrade at £205 billion. ICAN research released May 2020 showed that the United Kingdom spent $8.9 billion to maintain and modernize its nuclear weapons in 2019 alone. The UK leases its nuclear-capable missiles from the United States and its nuclear warheads are very similar to the U.S. W-76 warheads placed on the same missile.

UK Public Opinion on Nuclear Weapons

More than 60 members of the House of Commons, along with dozens of members of the Scottish parliament and the Welsh assembly, have pledged to work for the United Kingdom’s signature and ratification of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Many cities across the country, including Manchester, Brighton, Oxford, and Edinburgh, have also called on the government to join the treaty. In July 2020, the first minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, wrote that “the Scottish government is firmly opposed to the possession, threat, and use of nuclear weapons” and “I have called on the UK government to sign and ratify the treaty”.

A public opinion poll conducted in January 2021 by Survation on behalf of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) found that 59 per cent of Britons believe that their country should join the treaty, with just 19 per cent opposed to joining.

Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

The 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty has 191 states-parties, and at its core, prohibits most of the world’s countries from acquiring nuclear weapons and commits five nuclear-armed states, including the United Kingdom, to pursue disarmament negotiations (Article VI).

Every five years, NPT states-parties meet to review progress on commitments and to adopt a consensus final document with additional commitments for treaty implementation. Past Review Conference documents in 2000 and 2010 have been sparsely implemented.

The 2020 NPT Review Conference has been postponed. At this conference, the five nuclear-armed states party to the treaty, including the United Kingdom, will answer to many non-nuclear-weapon states who argue they have not fully implemented the treaty, more than 75 years after its adoption.

Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons

The 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which currently has 86 signatories and 54 states parties, includes prohibitions of the use, testing, production and stockpiling of nuclear weapons, as well as positive obligations for states parties to provide assistance to victims of nuclear use and testing and environmental remediation for land contaminated by nuclear use and testing. It entered into force on 22 January 2021.

The treaty articulates two pathways for nuclear-armed states to join (Article 4). A nuclear-armed state may either join the treaty and the negotiate a time-bound plan for complete nuclear disarmament, or it may complete nuclear disarmament first and then join the treaty and cooperate with the designated international authorities to verify the “irreversible elimination of its nuclear-weapon programme.”

The United Kingdom has not yet joined the TPNW. States-parties to the treaty will meet late this year or early next year to advance the treaty’s implementation and universalization.

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Ten years ago, on March 19, 2011, US / NATO forces began the air-naval bombing of Libya. The war was directed by the United States, first through the Africa Command, then through NATO under US command. In seven months, the US / NATO air force carried out 30,000 missions, 10,000 were attack missions, with over 40,000 bombs and missiles. Italy – with Parliament multipartisan consent (Democratic Party in the front row) – participated in the war with seven air bases (Trapani, Pantelleria (Sicily), Gioia del Colle, Amendola (Puglia) Decimomannu (Sardenia), Aviano (Veneto), and with Tornado fighter-bombers, Eurofighters and others, as well as the Garibaldi aircraft carrier and other warships. Even before the air- naval offensive, tribal sectors, and Islamic groups hostile to the government had been financed and armed in Libya, and special forces, particularly Qatari, had infiltrated to ignite armed clashes inside the country.

In this way, the African State was demolished. As the World Bank documented in 2010, it maintained “high levels of economic growth” with an increase in GDP of 7.5% per year, and recorded “high indicators of human development” including universal access to primary and secondary education schools and, over 40%, to university education. Despite the disparities, the average standard of living in Libya was higher than in other African countries. About two million immigrants, mostly Africans, found work there. The Libyan State, which possessed the largest oil reserves in Africa plus other natural gas reserves, left limited profit margins to foreign companies. Thanks to energy exports, the Libyan trade balance was in surplus of 27 billion dollars a year. With these resources, the Libyan State had invested about 150 billion dollars abroad. Libyan investments in Africa were crucial to the African Union’s plan to create three financial organizations: the African Monetary Fund, based in Yaoundé (Cameroon); the African Central Bank, based in Abuja (Nigeria); the African Investment Bank, based in Tripoli. These bodies would serve to create a common market and a single currency for Africa.

It is no coincidence that NATO’s war for the demolition of the Libyan State began less than two months after the African Union Summit, on January 31, 2011, which started the creation of the African Monetary Fund to be realized within the year. This is proven by emails from the Obama administration’s Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, brought to light later by WikiLeaks: United States and France wanted to eliminate Gaddafi before he used Libya’s gold reserves to create a pan-African currency, alternative to the dollar and the CFA franc (currency imposed by France on its 14 former colonies). This is proven by the fact that, before the bombers went into action in 2011, the banks went into action: they seized the 150 billion dollars invested abroad by the Libyan State, most of which disappeared. In the great robbery, Goldman Sachs, the most powerful US investment bank of which Mario Draghi had been vice president, stood out.

Today, the revenues from energy exports in Libya are being captured by power groups and multinationals in a chaotic situation of armed clashes. The living standard of the majority of the population has collapsed. African immigrants, accused of being “Gaddafi’s mercenaries,” were even imprisoned in zoo cages, tortured, and murdered. Libya has become the main transit route of a chaotic migratory flow to Europe in the hands of human traffickers that has caused many more victims than the 2011 war. In Tawergha the Misrata Islamic militias supported by NATO (those who assassinated Gaddafi in October 2011) carried out a true ethnic cleansing, forcing almost 50,000 Libyan citizens to flee without being able to return. The Italian Parliament, who was also responsible for all this, on March 18, 2011, committed the Government to “take every initiative (ie Italy’s entry into the war against Libya) to ensure the protection of the populations in the region.”

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This article was originally published in Italian on Il Manifesto.

Manlio Dinucci is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Today, March 17, 2021, we are commemorating the tenth anniversary of the US-NATO sponsored war against Syria.

Several of the articles below were published at the very outset of the War on Syria, now in its tenth year.

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Ten Years Ago: The US-NATO-Israel Sponsored Al Qaeda Insurgency in Syria. Who Was Behind the 2011 “Protest Movement”?

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, March 16 2021

It was not a protest movement, it was an armed insurgency integrated by US-Israeli & allied supported “jihadist” death squads. From Day One, the Islamist “freedom fighters” were supported, trained & equipped by NATO & Turkey’s High Command.

Ten Years Since Beginning of Failed Regime-Change Operation Against Syria

By Paul Antonopoulos, March 16 2021

“The reasons for the police raid and arrest …  have not yet been officially revealed. However, there are rumors [unconfirmed reports] that Dr. Andreas Noack provided medical assistance to hundreds of protestors during lockdown protests against the German government.

Reports also indicate that Dr. Andreas Noack was under investigation by the authorities for being non-compliant with the COVID-19 lockdown laws enacted by the German government.  … The arrest was made after the German Parliament passed the “Infection Protection Law”.

In the live stream, policemen can be heard banging furiously on the door of the place, where Dr. Andreas Noack was broadcasting. “It’s the police,” a man can be heard saying off-camera in panic. The video then shows police barging into the building forcing Dr. Andreas Noack to the ground. The police then proceed to turn off his live stream.

People who were watching the live stream are currently questioning the reasons for his arrest. “I think the guy is guilty of expressing his opinions,” said one user.

Another report on Twitter said,

“This happened to doctor Andreas Noack in Germany. After the unconstitutional approval of the infection law, police broke into his house while he was having a live transmission on YouTube. Those who cried against fascism have created the most criminal dictatorship in history.”

The arrest was made on a live video stream.  The manner in which the arrest was made is extremely unethical, armed policemen just yell at Dr. Andreas Noack till he settles on the ground.

The police do not state their reasons for arresting him, nor do they show a valid arrest warrant. Arrests such as these are blatant violations of due process. Every citizen has the right to security against arbitrary arrests.

One user tweeted,

“German doctor Andreas Noack raided by armed police during youtube stream and arrested inside his home for breaking Covid laws. Really, he is just anti lockdown and expressing his views. FIGHT BACK PEOPLE. If u don’t now, it will b TOO LATE later!”.  (Source: Insider Paper) 

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Since seasonal flu was renamed covid early last year to kick off the greatest ever public health scam in modern memory, we’ve been lied to and mass deceived by duplicitous politicians, their public health handmaidens, and press agent media.

Virtually everything we’ve been told about covid, experimental drugs for mass-jabbing, lockdowns, quarantines, face masks, PCR tests, and social distancing is harmful to public health, well-being, and our fundamental rights.

Destructive policies instituted in the West and elsewhere flagrantly breached the Nuremberg Code, Hippocratic Oath, and in the US its Constitution.

Orwell explained that “(i)n a time of universal deceit, truth-telling is a revolutionary act.”

Truth-telling medical and scientific experts are explaining what dark forces in the US and West are going all-out to suppress.

Long before what’s going on now was instituted, Dr. Robert S. Mendelsohn (1926 – 1988) was called “The People’s Doctor.”

His 1979 bestseller, “Confessions of a Medical Heretic” called vaxxing “a medical time bomb,” adding:

The “greatest threat to childhood diseases lies in the dangerous and ineffectual efforts made to prevent them.”

He urged parents to reject vaxxing for their children. In many states, they’re mandatory.

He debunked deceptive marketing practices and called pediatricians objecting to their “bread and butter” the equivalent of a priest denying the infallibility of the Pope.

He administered them early in his practice, later stopping “because of the myriad hazards they present.”

Summarizing his concerns, he said the following:

• No evidence shows that vaccinations eliminate childhood diseases.
• The Salk and Sabin polio vaccines don’t work.
• Salk later admitting that mass inoculations for polio caused an epidemic of the disease after 1961.
• Smallpox vaccinations are “the only source of smallpox-related deaths for three decades after the disease had disappeared” on its own.
• Inoculation risks are real. Parents should avoid them when possible.
• Doctors are derelict for not explaining their hazards and for “defend(ing) them to the death.”
• Mass-inoculations dramatically increase autoimmune and neurological diseases, including leukemia, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, heart disease, and numerous others ranging from annoying to lethal.

Mendelsohn asked: “Have we traded mumps and measles for cancer and leukemia?”

He blamed mass-vaxxing for causing enormous harm to human health.

“The best way to protect children is make sure they’re not vaccinated,” he said.

Today in the US, children are mass-vaxxed with dozens of drugs that cause diseases they’re supposed to protect against, and are responsible for an explosion of others later in life for countless millions of people.

In 2002, autism specialist Dr. Kenneth Aitken said:

“When I was in training, one in 2,500 (children were autistic). Now it is one in 250.”

“At the moment, the only logical explanation for this is MMR” vaccinations.

Longtime emergency medicine Dr. Mark Trozzi said after hundreds of hours researching so-called covid and his personal experience on the job, he learned that we’re “being deceived and manipulated.”

He called the so-called “first wave” of the “pandemic the quietest time in my career.”

“I have worked very hard and been very busy over the past twenty-five years in ER.”

“However, both in my regular ER and (covid) designated ER, there were almost no patients, and almost no work.”

“I had multiple long ER shifts without a single patient.”

From contacts with doctors and others in the US and Canada, he discovered “empty hospitals, and propaganda saying that they were full of patients dying of covid.”

He learned the effectiveness of “zinc and hydroxychloroquine” in treating flu as well as covid.

He discovered other cold hard facts that showed we’re being lied to and mass deceived.

“I have never seen a patient sick with (covid),” he said.

“I have seen some positive PCR tests in asymptomatic people, and watched people be imprisoned in their own homes and isolated from family and friends.”

“My research into the PCR test has convinced me personally that it is misleading, manipulatable, and” a scam.

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration.

It expresses grave concerns about “about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing” covid related policies.

He and co-authors said what’s going on risks “greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden.”

Pre-covid normality should be restored.

Separately he debunked lockdowns, calling them the “biggest public health mistake we’ve ever made…The harm to people is catastrophic.”

They’re the “worst public health mistake in the last 100 years.”

They served no beneficial purpose and caused catastrophic harm to countless millions of people.

Over 13,000 medical, scientific, and public health experts endorse Bhattacharya’s views and others expressing similar ones.

According to founder of Doctors for Truth Dr. Elke De Klerk:

“(W)e do not have a medical pandemic or epidemic.”

“We…should not be on list A for any longer, because we now know that (so-called covid) is a normal flu virus.”

Thousands of other medical and scientific experts in the US and Europe debunked the state-sponsored/media proliferated mother of all public health scams — based on Big Lies and mass deception.

*

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Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

VISIT MY WEBSITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].

My two Wall Street books are timely reading:

“How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion, and Class War”

https://www.claritypress.com/product/how-wall-street-fleeces-america/

“Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity”

https://www.claritypress.com/product/banker-occupation-waging-financial-war-on-humanity/

Dieci anni fa, il 19 marzo 2011, le forze Usa/Nato iniziano il bombardamento aeronavale della Libia. La guerra viene diretta dagli Stati Uniti, prima tramite il Comando Africa, quindi tramite la Nato sotto comando Usa. In sette mesi, l’aviazione Usa/Nato effettua 30 mila missioni, di cui 10 mila di attacco, con oltre 40 mila bombe e missili. L’Italia – con il consenso multipartisan del Parlamento (Pd in prima fila) – partecipa alla guerra con 7 basi aeree (Trapani, Gioia del Colle, Sigonella, Decimomannu, Aviano, Amendola e Pantelleria); con cacciabombardieri Tornado, Eurofighter e altri, con la portaerei Garibaldi e altre navi da guerra. Già prima dell’offensiva aeronavale, erano stati finanziati e armati in Libia settori tribali e gruppi islamici ostili al governo, e infiltrate forze speciali in particolare qatariane, per far divampare gli scontri armati all’interno del Paese.

Viene demolito in tal modo quello Stato africano che, come documentava nel 2010 la Banca Mondiale, manteneva «alti livelli di crescita economica», con un aumento del pil del 7,5% annuo, e registrava «alti indicatori di sviluppo umano» tra cui l’accesso universale all’istruzione primaria e secondaria e, per oltre il 40%, a quella universitaria. Nonostante le disparità, il tenore medio di vita era in Libia più alto che negli altri paesi africani. Vi trovavano lavoro circa due milioni di immigrati, per lo più africani. Lo Stato libico, che possedeva le maggiori riserve petrolifere dell’Africa più altre di gas naturale, lasciava limitati margini di profitto alle compagnie straniere. Grazie all’export energetico, la bilancia commerciale libica era in attivo di 27 miliardi di dollari annui.

Con tali risorse lo Stato libico aveva investito all’estero circa 150 miliardi di dollari. Gli investimenti libici in Africa erano determinanti per il progetto dell’Unione Africana di creare tre organismi finanziari: il Fondo monetario africano, con sede a Yaoundé (Camerun); la Banca centrale africana, con sede ad Abuja (Nigeria); la Banca africana di investimento, con sede a Tripoli. Tali organismi sarebbero serviti a creare un mercato comune e una moneta unica dell’Africa.

Non è un caso che la guerra Nato per la demolizione dello Stato libico inizi nemmeno due mesi dopo il vertice dell’Unione Africana che, il 31 gennaio 2011, aveva dato il via alla creazione entro l’anno del Fondo monetario africano. Lo provano le email della segretaria di Stato dell’Amministrazione Obama, Hillary Clinton, portate alla luce successivamente da WikiLeaks: Stati uniti e Francia volevano eliminare Gheddafi prima che usasse le riserve auree della Libia per creare una moneta pan-africana alternativa al dollaro e al franco Cfa (moneta imposta dalla Francia a 14 ex colonie). Lo prova il fatto che, prima che nel 2011 entrino in azione i bombardieri, entrano in azione le banche: esse sequestrano i 150 miliardi di dollari investiti all’estero dallo Stato libico, di cui sparisce la maggior parte. Nella grande rapina si distingue la Goldman Sachs, la più potente banca d’affari statunitense, di cui Mario Draghi è stato vicepresidente.

Oggi in Libia gli introiti dell’export energetico vengono accaparrati da gruppi di potere e multinazionali, in una caotica situazione di scontri armati. Il tenore di vita della maggioranza della popolazione è crollato. Gli immigrati africani, accusati di essere «mercenari di Gheddafi», sono stati imprigionati perfino in gabbie di zoo, torturati e assassinati. La Libia è divenuta la principale via di transito, in mano a trafficanti di esseri umani, di un caotico flusso migratorio verso l’Europa che ha provocato molte più vittime della guerra del 2011. A Tawergha le milizie islamiche di Misurata sostenute dalla Nato (quelle che hanno assassinato Gheddafi nell’ottobre 2011) hanno compiuto una vera e propria pulizia etnica, costringendo quasi 50 mila cittadini libici a fuggire senza potervi fare ritorno. Di tutto questo è responsabile anche il Parlamento italiano che, il 18 marzo 2011, impegnava il Governo ad «adottare ogni iniziativa (ossia l’entrata in guerra dell’Italia contro la Libia) per assicurare la protezione delle popolazioni della regione».

Manlio Dinucci

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***

US forces are deployed in parts of the world not its own to wage forever wars by hot and/or other means against nonbelligerent nations threatening no one. That’s how its imperial scourge operates, an unparalleled threat to everyone everywhere.

For the third consecutive year, the Beijing-based South China Sea Strategic Situation Probing Initiative (SCSPI) published a report on unacceptable US military activities in the South China Sea.

In recent years, they’ve been increasing. The latest SDSPI report discusses US military operations in 2020.

Calling them “intense” last year, they included three carrier strike groups, two amphibious ready groups, strategic bombers, nuclear attack submarines, reconnaissance flights near Chinese territory, and military exercises for what the Pentagon calls “Dynamic Force Employment” to deter China.

According to SCSPI’s director Hu Bo, the high intensity scale, number and duration of US military exercises in South China Sea waters last year were extraordinarily high compared to previous years.

According to Hu, dual US carrier group/warplanes exercises were “combat-oriented.”

“For example, the USS Ronald Reagan carrier repeatedly moved into and out from the South China Sea fast, and coordinated flank attacks with other carrier strike groups.”

“Second, US carriers operated in a wider area.”

“(T)he USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group practiced operational application of expeditionary forces near the Zhongsha Islands for the first time.”

“Third, the dual carrier exercises were also pointed ones, as they were conducted at a sensitive time coinciding with exercises by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) near the Xisha Islands and the Han Kuang exercises by the military on the island of Taiwan.”

P-8A anti-submarine warplanes and EP-3E electronic reconnaissance aircraft were involved.

All of the above and more are unjustifiably justified by so-called Freedom of Navigation pretexts.

They’re all about rehearsing war on China, notably by operating near its Xisha and Nansha islands, Taiwan, and waters near China’s mainland — what the SCSPI’s report called “sensitive areas,” including near PLA military facilities.

Reconnaissance flights used “fake” IDs, disguising themselves as civilian aircraft, what the SCSPI report called “gray operations.”

According to Hu, they increase the risk of “misjudgment” between PLA and Pentagon forces.

In 2020, the Pentagon conducted provocative “high frequency” island or reef-trespassing operations in the South China Sea, including transits through the Taiwan Strait 13 times.

 

Hu called the moves “dangerous signals to Taiwan independence” elements that threaten regional peace and stability.

So-called gunboat diplomacy is a longtime US belligerent practice.

Looking ahead, Hu believes that Biden regime hardliners will maintain hostile political, economic, and saber-rattling actions against China — heightening regional tensions instead of easing them.

While continuing “maximum pressure” on China, “the US is gradually losing such military dominance in the Western Pacific despite its evident military superiority globally, as China has been delivering much more targeted and effective countermeasures,” the SCSPI stressed.

What US hardliners call Chinese “threats and challenges” are invented, not real.

Pushing Beijing politically, economically and militarily risks confrontation by accident or US design.

What’s unthinkable is possible because of US rage to rule the world unchallenged by whatever it takes to achieve its imperial aims.

A Final Comment

Neither China nor Russia — or any other countries on the US target list for regime change — hold provocative military exercises off its east or west coasts or in gulf waters near its southern coastline.

If done, both wings of the US war party would consider them a casus belli and likely respond belligerently.

Separately, Biden regime secretary of state Blinken and national security advisor Sullivan will meet with their Chinese counterparts Yang Jiechi and Wang Yi in Anchorage, Alaska on March 18.

According to Blinken’s spokesman Price on Friday, “(w)e will certainly not pull any punches in discussing our areas of disagreement” — describing bilateral relations as “competitive (and) adversarial.”

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

VISIT MY WEBSITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].

My two Wall Street books are timely reading:

“How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion, and Class War”

https://www.claritypress.com/product/how-wall-street-fleeces-america/

“Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity”

https://www.claritypress.com/product/banker-occupation-waging-financial-war-on-humanity/

All Global Research articles can be read in 27 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

***

After more than half a year of calmness, the situation in Donbass is heating up again – there are more ceasefire violations, Kiev is transporting new troops towards the Line of Contact, and there is increased activity by Turkish-assembled Bayraktar TB2 drones used by the Ukrainian military. Many experts believe there is a high probability of hostilities resuming between the Ukrainian military and the Luhansk and Donetsk militias in Eastern Ukraine, known as Donbass.

There is no doubt that Kiev believes that inciting a conflict can help unite the country as Ukrainians are frustrated and outraged since major internal problems remain unresolved. These issues include increased poverty, a rise in gas prices and a collapsed health system, among many others. But Kiev seems emboldened and believe they can recover Donbass from militia control. It seems that Azerbaijan’s success in assuming control over seven districts surrounding the former Soviet Union’s Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast from Armenian control, partly thanks to Bayraktar drones, has encouraged Ukraine to follow a similar path – this is despite the fact that the Ukrainian army, as in mid-2010, is doomed to military defeat.

Drones have not only been recorded flying near the Line of Contact in Donbass and close to Crimea, but some have already been destroyed by Donbass militias. This is in addition to videos emerging of the Ukrainian military transferring equipment closer to the Line of Contact. In fact, at least two Boeing C-17A Globemaster of the Qatari Air Force delivered cargo from Turkey to Ukraine on Sunday. Turkish media claims there were five transport aircraft of the Qatari Air Force that flew from Istanbul to Kiev.

Although Turkey has ambitious plans to establish a self-reliant arms industry, it has been a catastrophic failure. In fact, even the so-called “indigenous” Bayraktar drones rely on nine foreign companies for parts, with at least four of those companies withdrawing their contracts in protest against the Turkish-sponsored invasion of formerly Armenian-controlled territories. With the struggle for domestic production, Turkey is turning to Ukraine.

It was announced on Sunday that Turkey’s ATAK 2 helicopters will use Ukrainian-made engines. In fact, Ukraine today stands out as Turkey’s main partner in a number of critical military technologies. These include inter alia turbo prop and diesel engine, avionics, drone, anti-ship and cruise missiles, radar and surveillance systems, space and satellite technologies, robotic systems, active and passive shielding systems and rocket engines and guidance systems – there are about 50 joint defense projects between the two countries.

Only last month, whilst addressing a special event on Crimea at the UN Human Rights Council’s 46th session, Turkey’s Deputy Foreign Minister Yavuz Selim Kıran vehemently denounced the so-called “illegal annexation of Crimea” and alleged that Russia persecutes the Crimean Tartars. Although Russia and Turkey have a partnership that includes the sale of the S-400 missile defense system, the construction of Turkey’s first nuclear powerplant that experts believe is the first step towards a nuclear weapon, and coordinate in Syria, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said last October that “We have never considered Turkey as our strategic ally. Turkey is a close partner, that partnership has a strategic nature in many areas.”

Although Russia and Turkey coordinate on a variety of issues, Ankara enjoys a real alliance with Kiev, something it does not have with Moscow. According to recent research, 57% of Ukrainians want their country to join NATO. Erdoğan has also given his strong support for Ukraine to become a NATO member, despite knowing full well that the Atlantic Alliance is an obsolete organization existing only to pressure Moscow, and in more recent times Beijing.

Azerbaijan found success in last year’s war in Nagorno-Karabakh thanks to Turkish-assembled drones and wider support. It appears now that Ukraine has Turkish support, it is emboldened to renew the conflict in Donbass. However, it would be immensely naïve to compare the military capabilities of Armenia and Russia. Whereas Armenia allowed its military to become obsolete in the face of fifth generation warfare, Russia is a leading country in the production of military technology, which is why although the conflict in Donbass has not reached full-scale war yet, the militias are already downing drones.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said only last month that “We will never turn our backs on Donbass, no matter what.” Although the U.S., especially under President Joe Biden, would support Ukraine against the Donbass militias and attempts to invade Crimea, it appears that Turkey is serving as the main encouragement and instigator. The fact is that the international situation is favourable for Ukrainian ambitions as Moscow’s relations with the West are stagnant and many in Europe are actively and purposefully exploiting all opportunities to antagonize Russia.

Although experts believe the resumption of hostilities is imminent, Ukraine is currently experiencing rasputitsa – the melting of snow. That creates unfavourable muddy conditions to begin a war as it severely restricts supply lines and the movement of troops and equipment. None-the-less, with increased drone activity, the mobilization of troops and the transfer of equipment towards the Line of contact, it certainly appears that Ukraine, with Turkish support and encouragement, is gearing up for a resumption of hostilities against Donbass.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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***

For those of us who have no direct experience of drone warfare, popular culture is one of the major ways that we come to understand what is at stake in UAV operations. Movies, novels, TV and other cultural forms can inform our ideas about drone warfare just as much as, if not sometimes more than, traditional news media or academic/NGO reports.

Death TV is a new study that looks in depth at how popular culture informs public understanding of the ethics, politics, and morality of drone operations. It looks at a wide range of popular drone fictions, including Hollywood movies such as Eye in the Sky and Good Kill, prestige TV shows such as Homeland, 24: Live Another Day and Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, and novels by authors including Dan Fesperman, Dale Brown, Daniel Suarez, and Mike Maden. Death TV looks at these cultural products and gets inside the way they work. It identifies six main themes that can be found across many of them, and examines the ways that they inform and shape the drone debate.

In broad terms, Death TV argues that popular cultural representations often have the effect of normalizing and justifying drone warfare. Enjoyable narrative texts such as films, TV series, novels, and some forms of popular journalism play a role in the process by which drone warfare is made comprehensible to those of us without first-hand experience of it. Importantly, they also do so in a way which has, however critical any individual story may appear to be, the general effect of making drone warfare seem a legitimate, rational and moral use of both cutting edge technology and lethal military force. 

In the first episode of 24: Live Another Day (2014), fictional US President Heller bluntly responds to criticisms of the drone program by remarking that “I’m uncomfortable with the drones also. The ugly truth is, what we’re doing is working.” Statements like this, when repeated often enough with an appropriate dramatic gravity, can feel true.

Just In Time

First of all, like many forms of military fiction, drone fiction engages repeatedly with the ethics of killing in war. The opening chapter of my study, “Just in Time”, shows that very often, films like Eye in the Sky and novels like Richard A Clarke’s Sting of the Drone streamline the ethics of killing into clear yet problematically oversimplified stories that show killing by drone strike as a routinely legitimate way of exerting military force. These stories often take familiar forms, articulating ideas like ‘the ends justify the means’, or showing that drone strikes can ‘avert catastrophe in the nick of time’. Though it is sad, these dramas say, and though tragic choices need to be made, drone warfare is an effective way of achieving necessary and legitimate military goals. Drone fictions repeatedly show drones as an effective military technology that can do good in the world.

Collateral Damage 

Drone stories very often position civilian deaths as a tragic yet inevitable aspect of drone warfare. The second chapter of Death TV, “Collateral Damage”, explores how drone fictions address this important and sensitive issue. In short, drone fictions very often admit that civilian deaths are terrible, but insist that the good achieved by the drone program outweighs its negative impacts. There are many drone novels, for example, in which characters that we are encouraged to admire or agree with dismiss the deaths of innocent people in drone strikes as unfortunate but necessary, or worth it if they can stop the villains. Sometimes these dismissals are grimly glib and racist, demonstrating the way that people living under the gaze of the drone are dehumanized in order to facilitate military drone operations. If the targets of drone operations are not considered human, it is easier both for the pilots to pull the trigger and for us to consider it justified. This aspect of drone fiction is one of its most contentious.

Technophilia 

In chapter three, “Technophilia”, Death TV shows how drone stories emphasize the technical perfection of drone systems. Their surveillance capabilities are routinely exaggerated, and the accuracy of their weapons is routinely overplayed.

Drone feed imagery, which in reality is sometimes so unclear that pilots cannot distinguish between objects and people, is routinely shown in drone films as being unimpeachably unambiguous, as crystal-clear, as high-definition, and as broadcast around the world with no lag, latency, or loss.

Drone weapons, too, are shown as being unfailingly accurate – always hitting the bull’s eye without deviation – and even, in one extraordinary passage from the 2012 novel Collateral Damage, as feeling like “a rush of air. Then nothing. If you were within the fatal range of the explosion, the warhead would kill you before the sound got to you. That would be merciful, if you could consider any death merciful.” Drone weapons are such a technological miracle, in these fictions, that not even their victims suffer.

Hijack and Blowback

But there is, of course, a colossal contradiction between the arguments of chapters two and three. How can drones be perfect machines if collateral damage is also an inevitable aspect of their operations? How can a technology that is precise and intelligent continuously accidentally kill innocents? The fourth chapter of Death TV, “Hijack and Blowback”, reconciles this tension by exploring the ways in which drones are represented as vulnerable to hijack. The espionage genre, of which many drone fictions are a part, is known for convoluted conspiracist storytelling which explains geopolitical mysteries through reference to a shadowy world of infiltration, double agents, and intrigue. There is no collateral damage, there are no accidents: drone strikes which cause civilian casualties are explained as the results of manipulations or secret plots that ordinary people can never understand. This chapter examines how drone fictions – notably Dan Fesperman’s novel Unmannedand the fourth season of Homeland, in which attacks that seem at first glance to be tragic accidents are laboriously explained as the deliberate results of labyrinthine conspiracies – foreclose more substantive criticism of drones by incorporating critical narratives about hijack and blowback into their structure of meaning.

Humanisation

Chapter five of Death TV, “Humanisation”, shows how drone stories sympathetically portray drone operators. By emphasizing the psychological toll that remote warfare exacts upon its participants, drone fictions aim to dispel preconceptions that many people may hold about drone pilots as ‘desk warriors’ or the ‘chair force’ and to show that they are ‘real’ war-fighters with authentic military experience. Drone operators repeatedly suffer doubt, regret, and reluctance in drone fiction, as they struggle to reconcile the experience of warfighting at work and domestic life at home. This has the effect of foregrounding the inner experience of drone operators and allowing us to sympathetically identify with them, to understand that they are not just playing a video game but engaging in life-or-death decisions. This focus on drone pilots, though, further distances us from the lives and feelings of the people watched and targeted by the drone.

Gender and the Drone

Finally, chapter six, “Gender and the Drone”, explores how drone fictions address widespread anxieties about how drone warfare troubles conventional conceptions of gender. Many writers and filmmakers address the preconception that drone warfare makes soldiers less manly or less tough – and they show that this is not true, by emphasizing the battle-hardened masculinity of many drone operator characters who remain tough and manly despite their use of UAVs. Drone warfare is also shown as a newly egalitarian form of warfighting, a method of killing that enables women to be combatants on an equal footing to men. In this way, drone fiction reintegrates drones into the heteronormative system of gender norms.

In sum, these six ideas form a potent normalizing discourse, showing drones as ‘war as usual’ and, importantly, directing audiences away from and downplaying any criticism of the ethics or geopolitics of drone operations. There are, of course, plenty of artworks and pieces of writing that challenge the justification of drone warfare. Death TV draws a conceptual anatomy of the way that popular culture justifies military violence.

• Join us online at 7pm on Tuesday 30 March to discuss ‘Death TV’ and the presentation of drone warfare in popular culture with its author, Alex Adams and panellists JD Schnepf, Amy Gaeta, and Chris Cole (Chair).  See our Eventbrite page for more details and to register.

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The American presence in Afghanistan appears to be far from over. Although Trump initiated the process of withdrawing troops from Afghan soil, recent data reveals that the numbers are still alarming and that the actual number of Americans is considerably greater than the officially reported data. In the midst of this scenario, the new president, Joe Biden, still remains indecisive about the future of American policy towards Afghanistan, but his interventionist posture generates some expectations about this topic.

This week, The New York Times published an article affirming that the actual US military force in Afghanistan is greater than what is officially announced. According to the article, which cites American, European and Afghan officials, there are at least 1,000 Americans in Afghanistan more than the figures reported by Washington. The Pentagon claims that there are currently only 2,500 soldiers in that country, figures that do not include the 1,000 soldiers appointed by the media. So, there is a clash of speeches and most likely a desire by the Pentagon to omit the actual numbers for some reason yet unknown.

Certainly, the American soldiers omitted are those who are part of the special operations forces and, in this sense, the reason for the omission of the data would be for absolutely strategic reasons. According to an anonymous NYT source, these special units deployed on Afghan soil perform secret services that mutually assist the Pentagon and the CIA. This means that, despite official figures indicating a withdrawal process, American intelligence continues to act strongly on Afghan soil. It is clear that such services cannot be stopped suddenly, especially in a danger zone disputed by several militias linked to international terrorism. However, considering that the Americans have open negotiations with the Taliban which is the main terrorist group active in Afghanistan, it is difficult to speculate what activities the special forces would actually be carrying out on Afghan soil.

Still, the number of soldiers is only one factor in a major problem. Regardless of what data is real and the secret services carried out by Americans in Afghanistan, the deadline for the total withdrawal of troops is approaching – May 1, 2021 – and Biden does not have many options to consider about it. Trump initiated the withdrawal of troops against the Pentagon itself, which established a minimum number of 8,600 troops in the country to guarantee American interests. Biden, despite appearing much more interventionist than Trump, during his years as Obama’s vice president, defended the decrease of American troops in Afghanistan – an agenda that at that time did not develop. Now, as president, Biden can choose one of two paths: either follow his old desire, already initiated by Trump, or toughen up an interventionist policy (which he adopted as a speech during the election campaign) and try to manage the deal with the Taliban.

If Biden fails to comply with the agreement, the Taliban will attack with full force. If Biden tries to renegotiate the deadline, the Taliban will refuse to accept. Finally, if Biden complies with the treaty initiated by Trump and totally withdraws troops, the American government will deapen its diplomatic crises with the Afghan government and the Taliban increases its attacks in order to take the power. It is important to note that the Afghan government felt hurt by the direct negotiations between Washington and the Taliban, as it was excluded from the peace process in its own territory.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been trying to manage the diplomatic crisis since he took office. He recently organized a meeting between leaders of the Taliban and the Afghan government, which was protested by both of them. In short, the American desire has not changed with Biden: Washington continues to want to raise the Taliban’s status to that of a formal belligerent group, capable of negotiating with National States, ending the classification as a terrorist organization. But some data on the Taliban’s praxis complicates American plans.

Last week, the Taliban carried out an attack in the Afghan city of Herat that left seven dead and more than 50 injured. The group previously attacked and dominated the central district of Faryab province, forcing the local police to surrender and bringing terror to the population. As we can see, the Taliban has not abdicated from any of its practices. Terrorist activity remains central to the group and this puts Washington in a situation of instability in the face of the Afghan government. In fact, the day after the withdrawal of American troops, the Afghan government will be forced to seek alternative alliances to confront the Taliban. The current situation in Afghanistan, being forced to release prisoners from a terrorist group in order to comply with the terms of an agreement in which it did not even participate, is truly humiliating and this will certainly lead to the breaking of ties with the American government.

An alternative to this scenario would be to return to the US the soldiers whose presence on Afghan soil is officially reported and to keep special agents at the disposal of the Afghan government for cooperation in counterterrorism. But this does not seem to be the interest of Washington, which keeps its agents in the country and yet remains inert in the face of several Taliban attacks and insists on prioritizing this group in negotiations than the Afghan government itself. In the end, the worst-case scenario appears to be the most realistic: the US will not actually end its presence in Afghanistan but will not use it to collaborate with the local government against the Taliban.

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Lucas Leiroz is a research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

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***

Pharmaceutical and medical device giant Johnson & Johnson, Inc. (J&J) announced on February 28, 2021, plans to test its experimental Ad26.COV2.S vaccine for COVID-19 on infant children (including newborns), pregnant women and people with compromised immune systems.

J&J did not include infants, pregnant women or the immunocompromised in the U.S. population in clinical trials on the experimental COVID-19 vaccine last year.^1,2,3 A recent article in New York Magazine noted:⁴

“The initial clinical trials for COVID-19 vaccines didn’t include children, which is standard practice; now, trials for younger children are happening in descending order of age, calibrating the best dosage for each cohort.”

The announcement by J&J came the day after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted J&J subsidiary Janssen Biotech Inc. an emergency use authorization (EUA) to distribute the vaccine in the U.S. for use by individuals 18 years of age and older. Currently, the single-dose Ad26.COV2.S vaccine cannot be given to anyone in the U.S. under 18 years old.^5,6,7,8,9

According to a spokesperson for Janssen, which manufactures Ad26.COV2.S, the single-dose vaccine will first be tested on children between 12 and 18 years old. Afterward, J&J will proceed quickly to test the vaccine on infants, pregnant women and immunocompromised people.¹⁰

FDA Reviewed J&J Plans to Test COVID-19 Vaccine on Babies

J&J’s move to test its COVID-19 vaccine on very young children, as well as pregnant woman and immunocompromised people, was expected. The plans to perform these clinical trials were reportedly included in J&J’s application to the FDA for EUA and were discussed by members of the FDA advisory committee that reviewed J&J’s data on Ad26.COV2.S.^11,12

“They (J&J) did not get into a lot of detail about it but did make it clear they will be pursuing pediatric and maternal coronavirus immunization studies,” said FDA advisory committee member Dr. Ofer Levy, Ph.D., director of the Precision Vaccines Program at Harvard University’s Boston Children’s Hospital.¹³

Other Companies Testing COVID-19 Vaccines on Older Children

J&J’s planned COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials will be the first to include infants. AstraZeneca plc, which has produced the experimental AZD1222 vaccine for COVID-19 in partnership with Oxford University, has been conducting clinical trials on children as young as 6 years of age, while Moderna Inc. and Pfizer Inc. (in partnership with BioNTech SE) are currently testing their experimental mRNA-1273 and BNT162b2 COVID-19 vaccines on children as young as 12.^14,15

J&J began shipping out 4 million doses of Ad26.COV2.S on March 1, 2021. The company has pledged that it will have 20 million doses of the vaccine ready to distribute by the end of March and 100 million doses by this summer.¹⁶

*

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Notes

¹ Farmer B. Johnson & Johnson to test new one-shot Covid-19 vaccine on babies. The Daily Telegraph Mar. 1, 2021

^{2, 10, 11, 13} Kolata G. Johnson & Johnson has planned trials of its vaccine that will include infants. The New York Times Feb. 28, 2021

^3, 4, 16 Rosa-Aquino P. Johnson & Johnson Will Run COVID Vaccine Trials on Infants. New York Magazine Mar. 1, 2021

⁵ Lovelace B. FDA approves Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot Covid vaccine for emergency use. CNBC Feb. 28, 2021

⁶ Press release. Johnson & Johnson Feb. 27, 2021

⁷ U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine. Mar. 1, 2021

⁸ FDA authorizes Johnson & Johnson’s one-dose COVID-19 vaccine, doses expected to start rolling next week. USA Today Mar. 2, 2021

⁹ Coleman K. If You’re This Age, You Can’t Get the Johnson & Johnson Vaccine Yet. Yahoo! Finance Mar. 2, 2021

¹² Branswell H, Herper M. FDA advisory panel endorses Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine. STAT Feb. 26, 2021

¹⁴ Hein A. Oxford-AstraZeneca testing COVID-19 vaccine in children as young as 6. Fox News Feb. 15, 2021

¹⁵ Mandavilli A. Covid Vaccines for Kids Are Coming, but Not for Many Months. The New York Times Feb. 12, 2021

Featured image is from Mercola

All Global Research articles can be read in 27 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

***

As our nation continues to be occupied by the greedy, the exploitive and the arrogant  Super Rich, we need to call them out for what and WHO they are.

The Rolling Stones 1968 hit song “Sympathy for the Devil” still resonates some 53 years later. At the end of my column please read carefully Mick Jagger’s account of this evil.

As one studies the ‘True’ history of our nation, one can see how every single war we have either created or participated in, excepting to some extent WW2, none of them had anything to do with humanitarian causes.

It was always about control and power over other peoples. Internally, it has always been the great cause to further Capitalism within our boundaries and you have a ‘Devil of a horror’.

The Super Rich who still run things do not give a ‘Rat’s Ass’ for the health and welfare of our citizenry, excepting of course their own ‘Class’ of Super Rich. They own all the means of production, media and of course our government.

Observe all our presidents, and not one was free of their control and orchestration. The sole president who had his Epiphany not even after a year in office was conveniently taken out.

{Watch the powerful 1973 David Miller film Executive Action starring Burt Lancaster (screenplay by Dalton Trumbo) and the great 1974 Alan Pakula film The Parallax View starring Warren Beatty to get a handle on how these ‘eliminations’ are done}.

Progressive writers like Chris Hedges, Ed Curtin, Caitlin Johnstone and a myriad of others continually reveal how far off the radar our so called ‘Democracy’ has trekked. They show us how propaganda, bastard child of what Goebbels accomplished so well in Germany over 80 years ago, is our ‘New Normal’. Our country is simply a feudal outpost in a Super Rich Man’s world.

The Devils are the War Economy, the Landlord Class, the Media Giants and the Corporate World… always protected by mostly ‘Bought and Paid For’ Politicians who serve them so well, for so long. They divide us so shrewdly by color and most importantly by Class. They have the Upper Middle Class hating the Middle Class, the Middle Class hating the Lower Class, and of course whites fearing blacks and browns.. and even blacks and browns fearing each other. Like ‘Ants at a picnic’ they have us fighting for the crumbs from their table.

The Two Party/One Party charade they created generations ago continues to dish out this ‘Lesser of Two Evils’ logic, or should I say Illogic? Meanwhile, us, the suckers, see our hard earned tax dollars continue to be used to destroy the Safety Net we were promised would save us from falling too hard. The only Safety Net is for the ‘Less than 1%’ who own America.

Socialism is the only cure to not only stave off but ostracize those Devils among us. Wake up Trump Thumpers, Republican and Democratic Party supporters, and realize as Cassius put it so succinctly: “The fault dear Brutus is not in our stars but in ourselves.”

*

Sympathy for the Devil

The Rolling Stones

Please allow me to introduce myself
I’m a man of wealth and taste
I’ve been around for a long, long years
Stole million man’s soul an faith

And I was ’round when Jesus Christ
Had his moment of doubt and pain
Made damn sure that Pilate
Washed his hands and sealed his fate

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But what’s puzzling you
Is the nature of my game

Stuck around St. Petersburg
When I saw it was a time for a change
Killed Tsar and his ministers
Anastasia screamed in vain

I rode a tank
Held a general’s rank
When the blitzkrieg raged
And the bodies stank

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name, oh yeah
Ah, what’s puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, oh yeah

I watched with glee
While your kings and queens
Fought for ten decades
For the gods they made

I shouted out
Who killed the Kennedys?
When after all
It was you and me

Let me please introduce myself
I’m a man of wealth and taste
And I laid traps for troubadours
Who get killed before they reached Bombay

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, oh yeah
But what’s puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, oh yeah, get down, baby

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, oh yeah
But what’s confusing you
Is just the nature of my game

Just as every cop is a criminal
And all the sinners saints
As heads is tails
Just call me Lucifer
‘Cause I’m in need of some restraint

So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
Use all your well-learned politnesse
Or I’ll lay your soul to waste, mm yeah

*

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Philip A Farruggio is a contributing editor for The Greanville Post. He is also frequently posted on Global Research, Nation of Change, Countercurrents.org, and Off Guardian sites. He is the son and grandson of Brooklyn NYC longshoremen and a graduate of Brooklyn College, class of 1974. Since the 2000 election debacle Philip has written over 400 columns on the Military Industrial Empire and other facets of life in an upside down America. He is also host of the ‘It’s the Empire… Stupid‘ radio show, co produced by Chuck Gregory. Philip can be reached at [email protected].

All Global Research articles can be read in 27 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

***

As calls for mandatory COVID-19 vaccination grow around the world, it’s becoming ever more crucial to understand what these injections actually are. The mRNA “vaccines” created by Moderna and Pfizer are in fact gene therapies.

As I’ll explain below, there’s simply no way around this, and drug manufacturers and public health officials must be made to admit this fact. Why? Because it makes all the difference in the world. You cannot mandate a gene therapy against COVID-19 any more than you can force entire populations to undergo gene therapy for a cancer they do not have and may never be at risk for.

Interestingly enough, mainstream media, fact checkers and various industry front groups insist the gene therapy claim is bogus, even though every single detail about the vaccines shouts otherwise. Why are they spreading this disinformation? Why do they not want you to know what these injections actually are?

In short, they know labeling them as “gene therapies” would be like slapping a skull and crossbones label on them. Most people have enough common sense to realize that gene therapy is a different ballgame from a regular vaccination, and might be a bad idea, especially for children and younger individuals.

mRNA ‘Vaccines’ Fulfill None of the Criteria for a Vaccine

To start, let’s take a look at some basic definitions of words. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a vaccine is:¹

• “A product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease.”

Immunity, in turn, is defined as:

• “Protection from an infectious disease,” meaning that “If you are immune to a disease, you can be exposed to it without becoming infected.”

That’s the medical definition. The legal definition, in the few cases where it has been detailed, is equally unequivocal:

• Iowa code² — “Vaccine means a specially prepared antigen administered to a person for the purpose of providing immunity.”
• Washington state code^3,4 — “Vaccine means a preparation of a killed or attenuated living microorganism, or fraction thereof …” The statute also specifies that a vaccine “upon immunization stimulates immunity that protects us against disease …”

These definitions, both medical and legal, present problems for mRNA “vaccines,” since:

• mRNA injections do not impart immunity. Moderna and Pfizer both admit that their clinical trials aren’t even looking at immunity. As such they do not fulfill the medical and/or legal definition of a vaccine.
• They do not inhibit transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2 infection. As such they do not fulfill the medical and/or legal definition of a vaccine.

Dictionaries Attempt to Rewrite Medical Terms

We should not be fooled by attempts to condition the public to accept redefined terms. As of February 2019, Merriam-Webster defined⁵ “vaccine” as “a preparation of killed microorganisms, living attenuated organisms, or living fully virulent organisms that is administered to produce or artificially increase immunity to a particular disease.” By February 26, 2021, they had updated the definition of “vaccine” to:⁶

“A preparation that is administered (as by injection) to stimulate the body’s immune response against a specific infectious disease:

Let’s be clear. Merriam-Webster does not dictate medical terminology. It can be used, however, to confuse people. For now, all medical dictionaries still show the traditional definition of vaccine,⁷ as Merriam-Webster did up until this year. That said, I would not be surprised if changes are made there as well, eventually, if the misrepresentation of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines is allowed to stand.

mRNA Therapy Doesn’t Satisfy Public Health Measure Directive

There’s also the issue of whether a gene therapy can be mandated, and this may hinge on it being accepted as a vaccine. The 1905 Supreme Court ruling in Jacobson v. Massachusetts⁸ essentially established that collective benefit supersedes individual benefit.

Put another way, the ruling argues (although legal experts diverge on some of the finer details of its interpretation) that it’s acceptable for some individuals to be harmed by a public health directive as long as it benefits the collective. However, if vaccination is a public health measure meant to protect and benefit the collective, then it would need to accomplish two things:

1. Ensure that the vaccinated person is rendered immune from the disease.
2. Inhibit transmission of the disease from the vaccinated person to other individuals.

We’re now back to the original problem that mRNA therapies for COVID-19 do not accomplish either of these things. Since these gene therapies do not render the person immune, and do not inhibit transmission of the virus, they cannot qualify as a public health measure capable of providing collective benefit that supersedes individual risk.

On the contrary, the only one benefiting from an mRNA “vaccine” is the individual receiving the gene therapy, since all they are designed to do is lessen clinical symptoms associated with the S-1 spike protein.

In other words, they won’t keep you from getting sick with SARS-CoV-2; they are only supposed to lessen your infection symptoms if or when you do get infected. So, getting vaccinated protects no one but yourself. Since you’re the only one who will reap a benefit (less severe COVID-19 symptoms upon infection), the justification to accept the risks of the therapy “for the greater good” of your community is blatantly irrational.

Marketing mRNA Therapy as Vaccine Violates Federal Law

Since mRNA “vaccines” do not meet the medical and/or legal definition of a vaccine, referring to them as vaccines, and marketing them as such, is a deceptive practice that violates⁹ 15 U.S. Code Section 41 of the Federal Trade Commission Act,¹⁰ the law that governs advertising of medical practices.

The lack of completed human trials also puts these mRNA products at odds with 15 U.S. Code Section 41. Per this law,^11,12 it is unlawful to advertise “that a product or service can prevent, treat, or cure human disease unless you possess competent and reliable scientific evidence, including, when appropriate, well-controlled human clinical studies, substantiating that the claims are true at the time they are made.”

Here’s the problem: The primary end point in the COVID-19 “vaccine” trials is not an actual vaccine trial end point because, again, vaccine trial end points have to do with immunity and transmission reduction. Neither of those was measured.

What’s more, key secondary end points in Moderna’s trial include prevention of severe COVID-19 disease (defined as need for hospitalization) and prevention of infection by SARS-CoV-2, regardless of symptoms.^13,14 However, Moderna did not actually measure rate of infection, stating that it was too “impractical” to do so.

That means there’s no evidence of this gene therapy having an impact on infection, for better or worse. And, if you have no evidence, you cannot fulfill the U.S. Code requirement that states you must have “competent and reliable scientific evidence … substantiating that the claims are true.”

Making matters worse, both Pfizer and Moderna are now eliminating their control groups by offering the real vaccine to any and all placebo recipients who want it.¹⁵ The studies are supposed to go on for a full two years, but by eliminating the control group, determining effectiveness and risks is going to be near impossible.

What Makes COVID Vaccines Gene Therapy?

Alright. Let’s move on to the definition of “gene therapy.” As detailed on MedlinePlus.gov’s “What Is Gene Therapy” page:¹⁶

“Gene therapy is an experimental technique that uses genes to treat or prevent disease … Researchers are testing several approaches to gene therapy, including: … Introducing a new gene into the body to help fight a disease …

Although gene therapy is a promising treatment option for a number of diseases (including inherited disorders, some types of cancer, and certain viral infections), the technique remains risky and is still under study to make sure that it will be safe and effective. Gene therapy is currently being tested only for diseases that have no other cures.”

Here, it’s worth noting that there are many different treatments that have been shown to be very effective against COVID-19, so it certainly does not qualify as a disease that has no cure. It makes sense that gene therapy should be restricted to incurable diseases, as this is the only time that taking drastic risks might be warranted. That said, here’s how the U.S. Food and Drug Administration defines gene therapy:¹⁷

“Human gene therapy seeks to modify or manipulate the expression of a gene or to alter the biological properties of living cells for therapeutic use. Gene therapy is a technique that modifies a person’s genes to treat or cure disease. Gene therapies can work by several mechanisms:

November 17, 2020, the American Society of Gene + Cell Therapy (ASGCT) announced “COVID-19 Vaccine Candidates Show Gene Therapy Is a Viable Strategy,” noting that:¹⁸

“Two COVID-19 vaccine trials, both of which use messenger RNA (or mRNA) technology to teach the body to fight the virus, have reported efficacy over 90 percent.

These findings, announced by Moderna on Nov. 16 and by Pfizer and its partner BioNTech on Nov. 9 … demonstrate that gene therapy is a viable strategy for developing vaccines to combat COVID-19.

Both vaccine candidates use mRNA to program a person’s cells to produce many copies of a fragment of the virus. The fragment then stimulates the immune system to attack if the real virus tries to invade the body.”

mRNA Deliver New Genetic Instructions

As explained in the ASGCT’s video above, mRNA are molecules that contain genetic instructions for making various proteins. mRNA “vaccines” deliver a synthetic version of mRNA into your cells that carry the instruction to produce the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, the antigen, that then activates your immune system to produce antibodies. Then there’s Moderna’s trial website,¹⁹ where they describe their technology thus:

“Typical vaccines for viruses are made from a weakened or inactive virus, but mRNA-1273 is not made from the SARS-CoV-2 virus. It is made from messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA), a genetic code that tells cells how to make protein, which help the body’s immune system make antibodies to fight the virus.”

November 18, 2020, Wired magazine made a big deal about COVID-19 vaccines being “genetic vaccines,” noting:²⁰

“The active ingredient inside their shot is mRNA — mobile strings of genetic code that contain the blueprints for proteins. Cells use mRNA to get those specs out of hard DNA storage and into their protein-making factories. The mRNA inside Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine directs any cells it reaches to run a coronavirus spike-building program.”

Importantly, as reported by David Martin, Ph.D.,^21,22 “Moderna … describes its product not as a vaccine, but as ‘gene therapy technology’ in SEC filings. This is because neither Moderna nor Pfizer … make any claims about their products creating immunity or preventing transmission.” Additionally, Moderna’s SEC filings specifically state that “Currently, mRNA is considered a gene therapy product by the FDA,” as well.²³

Click here to watch the video.

mRNA Is ‘Proven Form of Gene Therapy’

In a February 2021 article, MIT Technology Review reviewed the history of mRNA technology in general, and Moderna’s in particular, stating:²⁴

“Vaccines were not their focus. At the company’s founding in 2010, its leaders imagined they might be able to use RNA to replace the injected proteins that make up most of the biotech pharmacopoeia, essentially producing drugs inside the patient’s own cells from an RNA blueprint. ‘We were asking, could we turn a human into a bioreactor?’ says Noubar Afeyan, the company’s cofounder …”

Bloomberg, in August 2020, reported²⁵ that the Moderna vaccine would seek to transform your body into “a vaccine-making machine.” The New York Times was more to the point. In May 2020, they reported²⁶ that “Researchers at two Harvard-affiliated hospitals are adapting a proven form of gene therapy to develop a coronavirus vaccine.” Read it again — A proven form of gene therapy.

So, to summarize: The definition of “genetic” is something relating to genes, and the definition of “therapy” is the medical treatment of a disease. The definition of “gene therapy” is the process of modifying or manipulating the expression of a gene, or altering the biological properties of living cells.

mRNA are snippets of genetic code that instructs cells to produce proteins. mRNA COVID-19 therapies “deliver genetic instructions into your cells,” thereby triggering your body to produce a fragment of the virus (the spike protein). So, mRNA vaccines ARE gene therapy. There’s simply no way around this. They fulfill all the definitions of gene therapy and none of the definitions for a vaccine.

Defining ‘COVID-19’

There’s yet one more potential problem with the “COVID-19 vaccine” narrative as a whole, which Martin unpacked in a January 25, 2021, interview on the Wise Traditions podcast (above).²⁷ In it, he explains:

“COVID-19 is not a disease. It is a series of clinical symptoms. It is a giant umbrella of things associated with what used to be associated with influenza and with other febrile diseases.

The problem that we have is that in February [2020], the World Health Organization was clear in stating that there should not be a conflation between [SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19]. One is a virus, in their definition, and one is a set of clinical symptoms. The illusion in February was that SARS-CoV-2 caused COVID-19.

The problem with that definition, and with the expectation, is that the majority of people who test positive using the RT-PCR method for testing, for fragments of what is associated with SARS-CoV-2, are not ill at all. The illusion that the virus causes a disease fell apart. That’s the reason why they invented the term asymptomatic carrier.”

In short, SARS-CoV-2 has yet to be definitively proven to be the actual cause of COVID-19. So, a gene therapy that instructs your body to produce a SARS-CoV-2 antigen — the viral spike protein — cannot even be touted as a preventative against COVID-19, as the two have not been shown to be causally linked.

“They have been willfully lying since the inception of this,” Martin says in the interview.“There is not a causal link between these things … It has never even been close to established.

We have a situation where the illusion of the problem is that people say, ‘I don’t want to get COVID-19.’ What they mean is they don’t want to get infected with a virus. The problem is those two things are not related to each other. A viral infection hasn’t been documented in the majority of what is called cases.

There is no basis for that conflation other than the manipulation of the public. That’s the first half of the problem. The second half of the problem is that what is being touted as a vaccination … is not a vaccine. This is gene therapy …

What is this doing? It’s sending a strand of synthetic RNA into the human being and is invoking within the human being, the creation of the S1 spike protein, which is a pathogen … A vaccine is supposed to trigger immunity. It’s not supposed to trigger you to make a toxin …

It’s not somewhat different. It’s not the same at all … It’s not a prohibiting infection. It’s not a prohibiting transmission device. It’s a means by which your body is conscripted to make the toxin that then, allegedly, your body somehow gets used to dealing with, but unlike a vaccine — which is to trigger the immune response — this is to trigger the creation of the toxin.”

As for why drug companies are misrepresenting this technology, Martin suspects “it’s done exclusively so that they can get themselves under the umbrella of public health laws that exploit vaccination.”

Experimental gene therapies do not have financial liability shielding from the government, but pandemic vaccines do, even in the experimental stage, as long as the emergency use authorization is in effect. This is indeed a major incentive to make sure this technology is perceived as a vaccine and nothing else.

So, by maintaining the illusion that COVID-19 is a state of emergency, when in reality it is not, government leaders are providing cover for these gene therapy companies so that they are insulated from any liability.

Experimental Gene Therapy Is a Bad Idea

I’ve written many articles detailing the potential and expected side effects of these gene therapy “vaccines.” If all of this is new to you, consider reviewing “How COVID-19 Vaccine Can Destroy Your Immune System,” “Seniors Dying After COVID Vaccine Labeled as Natural Causes” and “Side Effects and Data Gaps Raise Questions on COVID Vaccine.”

The take-home message here is that these injections are not vaccines. They do not prevent infection, they do not render you immune and they do not prevent transmission of the disease. Instead, they alter your genetic coding, turning you into a viral protein factory that has no off-switch. What’s happening here is a medical fraud of unprecedented magnitude, and it really needs to be stopped before it’s too late for a majority of people.

If you already got the vaccine and now regret it, you may be able to address your symptoms using the same strategies you’d use to treat actual SARS-CoV-2 infection. I review these strategies at the end of “Why COVID Vaccine Testing Is a Farce.”

Last but not least, if you got the vaccine and are having side effects, please help raise public awareness by reporting it. The Children’s Health Defense is calling on all who have suffered a side effect from a COVID-19 vaccine to do these three things:²⁸

1. If you live in the U.S., file a report on VAERS
2. Report the injury on VaxxTracker.com, which is a nongovernmental adverse event tracker (you can file anonymously if you like)
3. Report the injury on the CHD website

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 CDC.gov Immunizations: The Basics, Definition of Terms

² Rules.iowa.gov ARC 4096C

³ SOS.wa.gov Initiative No. 1300 October 29, 2020 (PDF)

⁴ SOS.wa.gov Initiative No. 1234 August 17, 2020 (PDF)

⁵ Merriam-Webster Definition of Vaccine Archived February 6, 2019

⁶ Merriam-Webster Definition of Vaccine Archived February 26, 2021

⁷ The Free Dictionary, Listing of medical dictionary definitions of vaccine

⁸ Justia Jacobson v. Massachusetts 1905

^9, 21 G. Edward Griffin’s Need To Know January 19, 2021

¹⁰ Cornell University 15 US Code Subchapter 1: Federal Trade Commission

¹¹ FTC.gov Warning Letter

¹² FTC Act, 15 U.S.C. § 41 e

¹³ Moderna Clinical Study Protocol (PDF)

¹⁴ CIDRAP July 27, 2020

¹⁵ NPR February 21, 2021

¹⁶ Medline Plus What Is Gene Therapy?

¹⁷ FDA.gov What Is Gene Therapy?

¹⁸ ASGCT.org November 17, 2020

¹⁹ Moderna COVE Study

²⁰ Wired November 18, 2020

²² David Martin Transcript (PDF)

²³ US SEC Moderna June 30, 2020

²⁴ MIT Technology Review February 5, 2021

²⁵ Bloomberg August 11, 2020

²⁶ New York Times May 4, 2020, updated May 7, 2020 (Archived)

²⁷ Weston Price January 25, 2021

²⁸ The Defender January 25, 2021

All Global Research articles can be read in 27 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

***

In an open letter to WHO and in a follow-up video interview, Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche, says that by vaccinating everyone with a vaccine that doesn’t prevent transmission, we are destroying people’s immune systems, and setting the stage for a global health disaster.

*

Geert Vanden Bossche, DMV, Ph.D., has nothing against vaccines. In fact, the independent virologist formerly worked for Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Bossche says the COVID vaccines approved so far have been developed by “just brilliant” people and he has no criticism of them  But, as he tells Dr. Phillip McMillan in an interview, “please use the right vaccine at the right place. And don’t use it in the heat of a pandemic on millions of millions of people.”

Bossche says that a mass vaccination campaign in the middle of a pandemic, with vaccines that don’t prevent transmission, is disastrous at an individual — and at a global — level:

“We are going to pay a huge price for this. And I’m becoming emotional because I’m thinking of my children, of the younger generation. I mean, it’s just impossible what we are doing. We don’t understand the pandemic.”

In an open letter to the World Health Organization (WHO), Bossche wrote that  “we are currently turning vaccinees into asymptomatic carriers shedding infectious variants.”

Bossche hasn’t heard back from WHO, which concerns him.

“It is about humanity … I mean, it’s about your children. It’s your family. It’s my family. It’s everyone. Right. And it’s simply for me, I put everything at stake because I’ve done my homework. And this is simply a moral obligation. A moral obligation.”

Watch the video:

Read the interview transcript:

McMillan: I think the first thing that we have to clarify is that we have to explain you are someone who is in the vaccine development business, so to speak. What has that background been like?

Bossche: Well, I have a background essentially in, as far as vaccines are concerned, in industry as well as in the non-for-profit sector. So I have been working with Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, GAVI [The Vaccine Alliance] especially concentrating on vaccines for global health.

And I’ve also been working with several different companies, vaccine companies developing of course essentially prophylactic vaccines and my main focus of interest has always been, in fact, the design of vaccines. So the concept, how can we educate the immune system in ways that are to some extent more efficient than we do right now with our conventional vaccines.

McMillan: Right. And so any effect, this is the area of work you’ve been in. You develop vaccines, you are as well working with the Ebola vaccine as well. One of the really, really dangerous viruses we have out there in the world. How does that work? Is it, is that easy to do?

Bossche: Well, I was not, let me be very clear. I was a coordinator of the Ebola program at GAVI. So we were interacting with several different vaccine companies that were developing Ebola vaccines, because it was important for GAVI to make the right choice, the right vaccine in order for this vaccine to be rolled out in the Western African countries that had this severe Ebola crisis back a number of years ago. So that was not a, let’s say operational practical work.

This was more a role of coordination, but of course was also a role of assessing what would be the impact of using some of these vaccines in larger populations and in an area where an epidemic really is going on because that’s a very particular and peculiar situation.

McMillan: Yes. And so in effect, we’ve had so much success over the past hundred years with some very big breakthroughs with vaccines, smallpox, you know, measles, mumps, rubella, polio. But we have struggled with other vaccines. Without going into the details, because this is very difficult to get across, but is there a difference with how viruses operate that make some easier to get a vaccine for?

Bossche: Well, I think we have a, Philip. Essentially, we need to distinguish, of course, between what we call acute self-limiting diseases. These are diseases that naturally come to an end in a sense that ultimately the individual will eliminate the pathogen. Of course, some people may die. Of course, let’s be very clear. Those who survive will ultimately eliminate the pathogen.

That is the vast majority of the vaccines we have been developing so far. The, you know, I don’t need to tell you that with other viruses where we clearly see that they spread in a completely different way. They spread, for example, from cell to cell, they tend to be more intracellular.

They tend to develop chronic infections where it’s not self-limiting, it’s not acute self-limiting, it’s chronic. It is much more difficult. And the reason primarily is that most of the vaccines we are developing are still antibody-based vaccines.

So we need these antibodies in the blood, or we need these antibodies to translate to the mucosa, for example, in order to capture the pathogen and to neutralize it. So some of the other work, I mean, they have a very insidious strategy in the sense that they hide in cells, that they can already at the mucosal barrier penetrate, you know, immediately into cells. And then the cells may migrate, for example, to the lymph nodes.

So they are shielded from the antibodies and that makes it very, very difficult because we know that we can catch them to some extent in the blood, but what they do all the time is that they insert mutation and they escape, they fully escape to our antibody responses.

So that makes it way more difficult. It’s also the reason why also against cancer, et cetera, we have not been extremely successful with vaccines as I would say, stand alone therapy.

McMillan: Yeah, absolutely. Yes. So it, it brings us into where we are with regards to COVID-19. Now, if we have 20/20 vision at the moment, when we look back at the pandemic and where we started from, and I’ve always said that at the time, when the pandemic started, when it got from China and Italy into Europe, into the UK. I thought that the only way that we could manage this is to lock down and to prevent the spread of this apparently, this very dangerous virus. We do have to stand back and to see whether or not those decisions were correct. But as we said, that hindsight is 20/20. What would you say now, as we look back at the decisions we made then, were we about on the right track? Did we make any mistakes?

Bossche: Well, frankly speaking, from the very beginning, and I mean, there are many people who can witness this or testify this. I always said that it was a bad idea to do lockdowns that would also affect the younger people.

That we would prevent younger people from having contact, from being exposed. Because remember, the big difference back then was, of course, that we had a viral strain, COVID strain, that was circulating, dominant strain, and that was not as highly infectious as those that we are seeing right now.

Of course, when a new virus gets into a population, it immediately gets to the folks that have, you know, weak immunity. And we know, we know these people, this is to a large majority, of course, elderly people, people that have underlying diseases or are otherwise immune suppressed, et cetera.

And of course, I mean, it was certainly the right thing to do, to protect these people, and for them also to isolate, but we have to distinguish, frankly speaking, and that is what we have not been doing, between those people that have strong innate immunity. I mean, it’s not a, you cannot see when you see a person, you don’t know this, but we know that young people have quite decent innate immune response and therefore they are naturally protected and even more, I mean, if they get in contact with coronavirus, it will boost their natural immunity.

So therefore from the very beginning, I disapproved, you know, the fact that schools got to close and universities and that youngsters were prevented even from having contact with each other. That situation is of course completely different.

If you look at vulnerable people, the virus, this comes to the population, there is no, you know, humoral immunity. There is no immunity at all. In fact, so nobody has been in contact.

So the youngsters, they can rely on good innate immunity. Elderly people, I mean, the innate immunity is waning. It gets increasingly replaced by antigen-specific, by specific immunity as people get older.

So these people very, very clearly needed to be protected, but it has taken a lot of time before we understood, in fact, how exactly the immune response and the virus were interacting.

So there’s been a lot of confusion. A lot of mistakes made. Mistakes, I mean, retrospectively. And that has also led to, you know, bad control right from the beginning. I would say.

McMillan: With that in mind and where we are now, as countries across the world have been drifting towards the Christmas period, there’s still a rise in cases. Countries had to try and lock down, mask mandates and so on, but we all had the hope that vaccines would come and break the cycle. This is where clearly now from your expertise, you seem to have a different thought about how we should have been thinking about vaccines then, and even now, what is your perspective?

Bossche: Well, my perspective was, and still is, that if you go to war, you better make sure that you have the right weapon and the weapon in itself can be an excellent weapon. And that is what I’m saying really about the current vaccines.

I mean, just brilliant people who have been making these vaccines in no time and with regulatory approval and everything. So the weapon in itself is excellent.

Question is, is this the right weapon for the kind of war that is going on right now? And there my answer is definitely no, because these are prophylactic vaccines and prophylactic vaccines should typically not be administered to people who are exposed to high infectious pressure.

So don’t forget we are administering these vaccines in the heat of a pandemic. So in other words while we are preparing our weapon, we are fully attacked by the virus. The virus is everywhere. So that is a very different scenario from using such vaccines in a setting where the vaccine is barely or not exposed to the virus.

And I’m saying this, because if you have a high infectious pressure, it’s so easy for the virus to jump from one person to the other.

So if your immune response, however, is just mounting, as we see right now with the number of people who get their first dose, they get the first dose, the antibodies are not fully mature, the titers are maybe not very high. So their immune response is suboptimal, but they are in the midst of this war while they are mounting an immune response, they’re fully attacked by the virus and every single time. I mean, this is textbook knowledge.

Every single time you have an immune response that is suboptimal in the presence of an infection, in the presence of a virus, that infected person, you are at risk for immune escape.

So that means that the virus can escape the immune response. And that is why I’m saying that these vaccines, I mean, in their own right, are, of course, excellent. But to use them in the midst of a pandemic and do mass vaccination, because then you provide within a very short period of time, the population with high antibody titers – so the virus comes under enormous pressure.

I mean, that wouldn’t matter if you can eradicate a virus, if you can prevent infection, but these vaccines don’t prevent infection.

They protect against disease because we are just, unfortunately, we look no further than the end of our nose in the sense that hospitalization, that’s all what counts, you know, getting people away from the hospital.

But in the meantime, we are not realizing that we give all the time during this pandemic, by our interventions, the opportunity to escape to the immune, to the immune system.

And that is of course, a very, very, very dangerous thing. Especially, if we realize that these guys, they only need 10 hours to replicate.

So if you think that by making new vaccines, a new vaccine against the new infectious strains, we going to catch up, it’s impossible to catch up. I mean, virus is not going to wait until we have those vaccines ready. I mean, this thing continues.

And as I was saying, the thing is, I mean, if you do this in the midst of a pandemic, that is an enormous problem.

These vaccines are excellent, but they are not made for administration to millions of people in the midst, in the heat of a pandemic. So that is my thoughts.

McMillan: Is this equivalent then, because you’ve mentioned this in your paper, is this equivalent to using either a partial dose of antibiotics in anti-microbial or in a bacterial infection where you then produce super bugs. Is this the kind of example that you’re alluding to?

Bossche: Well, that is a very good parallel. It’s also the parallel I’m using actually in the paper. We just post it on LinkedIn [bad choice, LinkedIn has been deplatforming and censoring scientists and doctors more than any other platform] which, you know, should be so open for everybody [wrong, they outsource to low paid “fact checkers” who aggressively censor according to left media news narratives].

I mean, it’s pure science because as you were pointing out, the thing is the rule is it’s very simple. I mean, same with antibiotics. Either the antibiotics do not match very well with the bug. That’s not good. That’s why we are making antibiograms, you know, to first identify which is the germ. And then we choose the antibiotics. We need to have a very good match. Otherwise there could be resistance.

So when I compare this to the current situation, do we have a good match with our antibodies? No, at this point in time, we don’t have a good match anymore because we have this kind of like almost heterologous variants.

So that differs from the original strain. So the match isn’t very good anymore. And hence we see people are still protected, but they are already shedding the virus. So that is one thing.

The other thing is the quantity, of course. You tell people, you know, you take your antibiotics according to the prescription, please don’t as soon as you feel well, that doesn’t mean that you can stop the antibiotics. Same here.

And I get just one example. If you give people just like one dose, I mean, they are in the process of mounting their antibodies. The antibodies still need to fully mature, et cetera. So this is a suboptimal situation. We are putting them in a suboptimal situation with regard to their immune protection. And on the other end, they are in the midst of the war. They are fully attacked by all, you know, by all these kinds of a highly infectious variants.

So, I mean, it’s very clear that this is driving immune escape and will ultimately drive resistance to the vaccines.

So my point is, yes, Philip, it’s very similar. There is one difference. The virus needs living cells. I mean, if you’re driving immune escape, but the guy has no chance to jump on somebody else, who cares?

This situation is now different because we are in the midst of a war, there is a high infectious pressure. So the likelihood that an immune escape immediately finds another living cell, that means another host is very, very high. It’s per definition. It’s the definition almost of a pandemic.

McMillan: So it raises a simple question that somebody has put in front of us here, which is, it’s perfectly common sense. What do we do?

Bossche: That question is very easy. I mean, we need to do a better job when we are confronted with situations that seem very dramatic. Like, you know, an epidemic. Our generation has not, you know, been living in times where there are epidemics or pandemics.

And so we immediately take action and jump on the beast with the tools we have instead of analyzing what is really going on. And one thing that I thought was extremely interesting was, and it’s something that was not really understood. We know that the number of people or asymptomatically infected, so they are infected, but they don’t develop severe symptoms. Of course they can have some mild symptoms of respiratory disease, whatever.

So the question is what exactly happens with those folks that they can eliminate the virus, they eliminate the virus, they don’t transmit it.

They will shed it for like a week or so. And then they eliminate this, or you could say, yeah, of course we know that antibodies eliminate … Oh, wait a minute. The antibodies come later, you have first the search of, you know, shedding of the virus.

And it’s only afterwards that you see, you know, a moderate and short-lived raise of antibodies. So the antibodies can not be responsible for elimination of the virus. So what is responsible for elimination of the virus? Luckily enough, we have a number of brilliant scientists, independent, brilliant scientists that have now increasingly been showing. And there is increasing evidence that what in fact is happening is that NK cells are taking care of virus.

So NK cells that the virus gets into, into these epithelial cells and starts to replicate, but NK cells get activated and they will kill, they will kill the cell, you know, in which the virus tries to replicate.

So I was saying that the virus needs to rely on a living cell. So you kill that cell. It’s gone, it’s all over. So we have the solution in the pathogenesis because some people eliminate it.

McMillan: Absolutely. I just wanted to clarify, because when you said NK cells, somebody may not quite know what you mean. So you mean non killer cells. So it’s a specific group of …

Bossche: Natural killer cells …

McMillan: Sorry. It’s natural killer cells, a special group of white blood cells that go and take out the viral infected cell. So, yes, you’re right. Because I have seen from a clinical perspective, very old patients who you would expect to be overwhelmed by the virus and they have a few symptoms and then they’re okay. So they, the body does manage to get rid of it in some cases.

And so it raises the point that I’ve always been saying is that we haven’t spent enough time understanding how the virus impacts the body and understanding how the pandemic then will impact the world. We’ve spent all of our time just going for solutions. Has that been a mistake?

Bossche: Of course, this has been the, you know, the most important mistake, I think. I’m not sure many people and I, I was part of them. So in all modesty, I was part of them. Not sure whether many people understand how a natural pandemic develops and why we have this first wave. We have the second wave. And we have this third wave.

And, I mean, these waves of disease and mortality and morbidity, they shift from one population to another. So I’m saying, for example, the second wave, this was typically also the case with influenza, World War I, when basically more soldiers, young people died in the trenches of influenza than from from injuries or whatever. So firstly, elderly, I mean, weak immune system, et cetera. Then it gets to the wave of morbidity and mortality to the younger people.

And then it gets back to people who have antibodies. So we have to understand this first, Oh, how does this come? Why all of a sudden does this wave of morbidity and mortality shift, for example, why are the three waves? How do we explain this? And also, how does it come that some people are naturally protected and others are not? What are these mechanisms, what are these molecular mechanisms?

Because if you make vaccines and all these things, at the end of the day, this is going to interact at the molecular level. And we have not been understanding this. I would just explain it. We don’t understand our weapon because we don’t understand that prophylactic vaccines should not be used in the midst of an epidemic. And we don’t understand exactly what the virus is, do we. So we go to a war and we don’t know our enemy. We don’t understand the strategy of our enemy. And we don’t know how our weapon works. I mean, how is that going to go? We have a fundamental problem to begin with.

McMillan: I understand, and I completely accept that, but at the same time, I am still thinking that if the governments don’t respond in some way, because they have to be seen to be doing something. They seem to be in a lose-lose situation. If they don’t do anything, they’re going to be criticized. And if they do do something, they’re going to be criticized. Is that a fair statement to make?

Bossche: I don’t think so. What was this, oath of, what’s the name of the guy? Hippocrates. You know the rule?

McMillan: The first. Do no harm.

Bossche: Okay. Well, I mean, it wouldn’t matter if you start vaccinating people and even if it doesn’t work. Problem is that we induce a long lived antibody response. And as a matter of fact, we know, I mean, that is not my knowledge. It’s all published.

Problem is that we fail to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Fact is that these long lived antibodies, which have high specificity, of course, for the virus. They out-compete our natural antibodies because they’re natural antibodies, they have a very broad spectrum, but they have low affinity. Right?

And so by doing this, even if your antibodies don’t work anymore, because there is resistance or, you know, that the strains are too different from the original strain, we still, these antibodies, specific antibodies will still continue to out-compete your natural antibodies. And that is a huge problem because I was saying just a few minutes ago, these natural antibodies, they provide you with broad protection.

This protection is, yes, it is variant nonspecific. Doesn’t matter what variant you get. It doesn’t even matter what type of coronavirus is coming in. They will protect you. Unless, of course, you suppress this level of innate immunity, or it is, for example, out-competed by long lived specific antibodies. And so it’s not like, okay, you know, you missed it. Okay, let’s try again. No, you did some harm. I mean, this is different from drugs.

Immunizing somebody is installing a new software on your computer. Don’t forget. I mean, these antibodies, they will be recalled every single time you’re encountering a coronavirus, right? I mean, you cannot just erase this. So this is very serious. This is very serious.

McMillan: So this is an important point because when I was looking at some of the research around the challenges that they faced with the initial SARS, called the first epidemic, and they tried to develop the vaccines. One of the things they found, certainly when they tested it on the ferrets, was that when they expose them to a coronavirus again, they got a very severe response to it. Is this what you’re saying? That we’re putting ourselves in a position where we can then have much more severe disease even to viruses that should normally be quite benign?

Bossche: Well, you know, you see all my passion and my conviction, but I mean, I’ve been the last to criticize the vaccines in terms of, would they, in some regard, could they, in some regard be unsafe because, you know, you would have even this exacerbation of disease due to antibodies that doesn’t match very well with the coronavirus they’re exposed to et cetera.

I know there is reports on this, and there is a lot of serious thoughts about this. But I think what we are talking about right now, the epidemic or the pandemic problem of having a population that is at no point during the pandemic and to large extent, due to our intervention, has not a strong immune response. I mean, this is already serious enough. This is more concerning than one or the other adverse events that could maybe elicited, I’m not downplaying it, but that could maybe be elicited because people have antibodies that do no longer match very well with the strain they were or with the strain they are exposed to.

And therefore, you know, they build a complex, they don’t neutralize the virus, they build a complex and this complex could maybe even enhance viral entry into susceptible cells and hence lead to exacerbation of disease.

I mean, this may be possible, but the problem I’m talking about is a global problem. It’s not an individual getting an adverse event. It’s a global problem of, you know, making this virus increasingly infectious because we live it all the time, a chance and opportunity to escape an immune system and to drive this.

So to wake this up, you know, up to a level where the virus is so infectious, that we can even no longer control it, because I mean, these highly infectious strains, some people think, Oh, the virus is going to calm down and it will insert a number of mutations, you know, just to be gentle and kind with us. That’s not going to happen. I mean, this highly infectious range remains.

It is not going to be spontaneous mutations that all of a sudden would become, would make this virus again harmless because such a virus would have a competitive disadvantage, could not be dominant anymore, so that’s not going to happen. So we’re talking about a very, very, very serious problem here.

McMillan: So I’ve seen the question many times and quite frankly, I get asked the questions. We’re coming to a point where people are going to have to take these vaccines. That looks as though it’s the reality. Either in the context of work or in the context of travel. Based on what you’re saying, they’re in a lose-lose situation. What does this mean?

Bossche: Well, what does this mean? It’s very clear. It’s very clear what this is going to mean.

So let’s consider the consequences of this both at a population level and at an individual level, because I would well understand if for the population is maybe not the best thing to do, but you know, on an individual level, it’s still okay. Yeah. Then it’s not an easy, that’s not an easy question.

But as a matter of fact, it’s exactly the opposite. Well, it’s not the opposite. It is detrimental both on a population level, as on an individual level. And I’m telling you why. I think the population level I explained to you, we are increasingly facing highly infectious strains that already right now, we cannot control because basically what we are doing is that we are turning — when we vaccinate somebody, we are turning this person in a potential asymptomatic carrier that is shedding the virus.

But at an individual level, I just told you that if you have these antibodies and at some point, and I’m sure this, people can challenge me on this, but, you know, reality will prove it.

Bossche: I think we are very close to vaccine resistance right now. And it’s not for nothing that already people start developing, you know, new vaccines against the strains, et cetera.

But what I was saying is that, okay, if you miss the shoot, okay, you could say nothing has happened. No. You are at the same time losing the most precious part of your immune system that you could ever imagine.

And that is your innate immune system, because the innate antibodies, the natural antibodies, the secretary IGMs will be out-competed by these antigen-specific antibodies for binding to the virus. And that will be long lived. That is a long lived suppression.

And you lose every protection against any viral variant or coronavirus variant, et cetera. So this means that you are left just with no single immune response with your, you know, it’s none, your immunity has become nil.

It’s all gone. The antibodies don’t work anymore. And your your innate immunity has been completely bypassed and this while highly infectious strains are circulating.

So, I mean, if that isn’t clear enough, I really don’t get it. And people please do read my, you know, what I posted because it’s science, it’s pure science, pure science. And as everybody knows, I’m a highly passionate vaccine guy, right?

And I’ve no criticism on the vaccines, but please use the right vaccine at the right place. And don’t use it in the heat of a pandemic on millions of millions of people.

We are going to pay a huge price for this. And I’m becoming emotional because I’m thinking of my children, of the younger generation. I mean, it’s just impossible what we are doing. We don’t understand the pandemic.

We have been turning it into an artificial pandemic.

Who can explain where all of a sudden, all these highly infectious strains come from? Nobody can explain this.

I can explain it. But we have not been seeing this during previous pandemics, during natural pandemics. We have not been seeing it. Because at every single time, the immunity was low enough so that the virus didn’t need to escape. So back at the end of the pandemic, when things calmed down and it was herd immunity, it was still the same virus circulating.

What we are now doing is that we are really chasing this virus and it becomes all, you know, increasingly infectious. And I mean, this is just a situation that is completely, completely completely out of control.

So it’s also, we are now getting plenty of asymptomatic shedders. People who shed the virus because if they are vaccinated or they have even antibodies from previous disease, they can no longer control these highly infectious variants.

So how does that come? Does anybody still understand the curves? I see all these top scientists looking at this curve, at its waves. Like somebody else is looking at the currency rates at the stock market.

All they can say is, Oh, it goes up, it’s stabilizing. It may go down, may go up, et cetera. I mean, that is not science. They don’t have any clue.

They don’t even know whether the curve is gonna go up exponentially or whether it’s gonna go down or whatever. They’re completely lost. And that is extremely scary. That has been the point where I said, okay, guy, you have to analyze. You have to, but you know, these people are not listening. That is the problem.

McMillan: So you are, in effect, putting your reputation on the line because you feel so passionately about this because I guarantee you that no government, no health system is going to want to hear what you are saying. You are, in effect, almost giving fuel to the fire for an anti-vaxxer who doesn’t want the vaccine.

Bossche: No, no, well, no. Because I’ve clearly also addressed some emails from anti-vaxxers. I mean, I’m not interested, but I’m clearly telling them that at this point, it’s so irrelevant, you know, whether you’re a pro vaxxer or an anti-vaxxer, et cetera, it is about the science. It’s about humanity, right?

I mean, let’s not lose our time now with criticizing people or, I mean, anti-vaxxer, okay. If you’re not an anti-vaxxer, you could be a stalker.

You could be, you know, we like to stigmatize because if you stigmatize people, you don’t need to bother about them anymore.

Oh, this guy’s an anti-vaxxer. Okay. I mean, he’s out of the scope. Oh, he’s a stalker. He’s out of the scope. I mean, that is a discussion that is completely irrelevant at this point.

It is about humanity. And of course I’m passionate. Of course, I mean, it’s about your children. It’s your family. It’s my family. It’s everyone. Right. And it’s simply for me, I put everything at stake because I’ve done my homework. And this is simply a moral obligation. A moral obligation.

McMillan: Wow. Wow. I mean, there’s very little one can say, as I said, when you position that you are in the business of developing vaccines and helping societies protect against infections through the use of vaccines, and in this circumstance, you are saying, hold it, we’re doing the wrong thing here. It’s very difficult to not listen to that. That’s the truth.

Bossche: Well, the answer is very easy. I mean, this is human behavior. If you’re, you know, having panic, we do something and we try to make ourselves believe that it is the right thing to do, until there is complete chaos and there is a complete disaster.

And then people say, well, you know, I mean, politicians will probably say, you know, we have been advised by the scientists and scientists, you know, will maybe point to somebody else, but this is now a situation.

I’m asking every single scientist to scrutinize, to look what I’m writing, to do the science and to study exactly the, I call these the immune pathogenesis of the disease. And because I like people to do their homework.

And if the science is wrong, you know, if I’m proven wrong, I will admit it, but I can tell you, I’m not putting my career, my reputation at stake.

I would not do this when I would not be 200% convinced. And it’s not about me, not about me at all. It’s about humanity. People don’t understand what is currently going on. And we have an obligation to explain this.

And I posted my paper on LinkedIn and I invite all independent scientists please to look at it because this can be easily understood by microbiologists, immunologists, geneticists, you know, plenty of biochemists, etc., etc., all the biologists, all these people who have elementary knowledge, it’s not rocket science, elementary knowledge of biology should be able to understand this.

And I mean, I can only appeal to these people, you know, to stand up as independent scientists and to voice their opinion.

McMillan: Yes, yes, yes. I mean, that was a long point that somebody put on about the innate immune response, the false overreacting of the innate immune response, leading to detrimental effects in other coronaviruses. So I think you’ve expressed this so well, Geert. I think that just hearing your explanation, the passion, the focus on the science, I think that that’s as much as you can do. I think that I don’t even want to say any more because I don’t want to lose that passion that you have just expressed.

How much you are doing in terms of trying to see if you can make a difference with regards to the impact that we are having in this pandemic. You know, we really, really appreciate that, Geert. We really, really appreciate that. I hope enough people share this, and listen to it, certainly because I’m connected with a lot of scientists. Please connect to Geert, take a look at his paper and see what you think. And as you said, let’s make decisions based on science. That’s the best that we can do at this point.

Wonderful. Just stay on the line there. We’re just going to close off now, Geert. So thank you again very, very much, Geert. And I hope maybe we can speak again in the near future to expand a little bit further on what you have said.

Bossche: Thanks, Philip, for having me on.

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Nestled in the heart of a seemingly innocuous business park in the hinterlands of Milton Earnest is a bleak, squat building contained within walls of taut barbed wire. This is Yarl’s Wood, the notorious detention centre where asylum seekers are detained indefinitely without trial, before being deported. People can get lost in its labyrinthine bowels for years, stuck on the punishing treadmill of our vast immigration bureaucracy. In recent years, reports of dehumanizing conditions within Yarl’s Wood have led to a gradual awareness amongst the public that the world inside its walls is a terrifying place, where a culture of impunity leads to gross abuses of power. What is to be done?

Certainly there is a powerful argument that the facility shouldn’t exist at all.

It has a nefarious reputation for a reason. Access to basic, vital rights to personal and social protection is denied to detainees, particularly harming those from vulnerable backgrounds. During a fire in 2007, officers complied with orders to lock detainees in the burning building, injuring five people and risking their lives. In another disturbing instance of heinous neglect, during a wildcat hunger strike by women at least 70 of them were locked in an airless corridor without water or toilet facilities by way of punishment for their dissent.

Moreover, there are numerous corroborated allegations that staff have sexually assaulted detainees, and in 2011 the High Court ruled that children were being kept in unlawful conditions. All of this raises questions about who is being entrusted with running this facility. If all they are good for is abusing inmates, it raises the question of whether Yarl’s Wood serves a public function at all. It is, in fact, very damaging, and embarrassing for a country with pretensions to being civilized.

Copyright the New Internationalist

A large part of the problem with Yarls Wood is the fact that it is privately owned and thus isn’t subject to measures of accountability, oversight and scrutiny which are the modus operandi for publically owned organisations. The reputation of the center has decreased noticeably during the period when Serco have been in charge. The corporation entrusted with running Yarl’s Wood has demonstrated severe deficiencies in their behaviour time and again, but they glide from scandal to scandal with near total impunity, rewarded for their ineptitude with eye-watering profits. Privatization of detention facilities has created a machine in which the relentless creation of profit triumphs over the duty of doing a good public service. Prisoners aren’t treated as people. In the eyes of the administrators the bottom line matters more than quality of life. That’s how prisoners end up sick, dead and abused.

Equally as disturbing as the frequency of abuse is the complicity of the government in letting Serco off the hook. The Home Office have refused Freedom of Information requests demanding statistics on the number of people sexually assaulted, on the grounds that it would jeopardise commercial interests. They have done everything in their power to shroud Yarl’s Wood in secrecy, rather than using their influence to force daylight on to the nefarious practices inside.

They are complacent in the face of abuse, and have made no efforts to stop it. At a time when even the conservative Australian government is agreeing to close a controversial detention center on the grounds that it is unconstitutional, it is perhaps surprising that Britain is not seriously considering the same future for Yarl’s Wood. Yet with the rise of xenophobia, politicians will choose to cynically scapegoat asylum seekers for the problems they created and try to turn us against each other, rather than against the real danger to our society: Yarl’s Wood itself.

In a climate where there is no political will to hold Serco to account, the bold and rancorous Movement For Justice By Any Means Necessary have called upon allies in the resistance against Yarl’s Wood to protest against the facility and its inhumane conditions once again. The movement campaigns against detention and deportation by the Home Office, working very closely with the detainees themselves in a grassroots campaign that has grown from strength to strength in recent years. Their tactics usually involve surrounding the building with a braying crowd of allies. It is firstly a way of reminding detainees they have noisy support on the outside. Secondly, it is supposed to remind the oppressors of the fragility of their perimeters. The gates and the guards and the barbed wire can easily be overwhelmed by enough people. The message proclaimed is that our society, with a positive regard for the lives of asylum seekers, is bigger than yours. People have the power.

It is a flaw in our thinking that we have a tendency to see problems as existing in the past, but never in the present. History remembers Ellis Island for violating its detainees. Similar experiences of oppression still burble under the face of our society, under the illusion of its progress, but politicians would sweep the truth under the rug in order to service the myth that we have become a more tolerant and open-minded society. The Movement For Justice By Any Means Necessary tries to break lethal inaction and silence with direct action, stirring up a cauldron of opposition which has shocked and frightened the detention services.

A fundamental and momentous question about public services and their purpose consists in the debate about the future of Yarl’s Wood: does it serve the needs of business, or the wider society? Do we even get a say? If there is no space for public consultation on its future, is democracy a ruse?

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The bloc thought that it could dispel suspicions of its motives by emphasizing that it came together for humanitarian reasons almost two decades ago but that narrative is nothing more than an attempt to deceive the rest of the world.

The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, popularly known as the Quad, held its first-ever leadership summit on Friday via virtual means. The leaders of the US, Australia, India, and Japan discussed a slew of issues that concern their mutual interests in the broad space that they describe as the Indo-Pacific. The bloc has long been suspected of tacitly harboring anti-Chinese intentions, but its leaders attempted to clarity that this isn’t the entirety of its purpose in their joint statement that was released after their video conference. In fact, they didn’t even directly address China at all, though they did imply that it was discussed during their meeting.

The only indirect reference to China was the joint statement’s claims that its members “will continue to prioritize the role of international law in the maritime domain, particularly as reflected in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), and facilitate collaboration, including in maritime security, to meet challenges to the rules-based maritime order in the East and South China Seas.” Nevertheless, this is still very significant since it directly affects China’s national security interests in those two bodies of water considering its territorial claims there that are contested by several other countries.

The Quad’s joint statement also pointed out that this bloc was supposedly created after the 2004 tsunami, though without mentioning the growing consensus in their countries over the past few years that it’s actually a platform for attempting to contain China. Their talk about shared interests in the spheres of trade, humanitarian aid, disaster relief, cybersecurity, COVID-19, investment, and other such topics actually seem to be a smokescreen for strengthening coordination between them on these fronts in order to more rigorously compete with China.

Of particular concern is the Quad’s references to a “free and open Indo-Pacific”, “democratic values”, and “territorial integrity”, which can be understood by the larger strategic context as being directed against China. That’s because those countries have repeatedly accused China of allegedly undermining all three of those interests around which the Quad is converging. At face value, the bloc’s claims of ASEAN’s centrality seem innocuous enough but take on a more sinister meaning if one suspects the Quad of trying to court those countries for the purpose of containing China in the South China Sea.

With this in mind, the Quad’s first-ever leadership summit did indeed clarify the bloc’s purpose through its indirect strategic references to containing China, which are patently obvious to those observers that are capable of reading between the lines in the current strategic context. The bloc thought that it could dispel suspicions of its motives by emphasizing that it came together for humanitarian reasons almost two decades ago but that narrative is nothing more than an attempt to deceive the rest of the world. The Quad has always had tacit anti-Chinese intentions, though these don’t need to remain its raison d’etat.

For example, instead of excluding China and aiming to contain it, the Quad could incorporate the People’s Republic into this transregional platform through non-military outreaches focused on trade, investment, infrastructure, COVID-19, climate change, and disaster relief. It’s impossible to contain China, let alone in its home region, which is why the Quad should focus on cooperating with it. The overarching purpose of such outreaches could be to lay the basis for expanding the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) which Quad-members Australia and Japan are already part of with China to include the US and India with time.

The Indo-Pacific isn’t “free and open” when China is excluded from the Quad’s emerging transregional integration platform, nor are “democratic values” embraced by refusing to cooperate with it. To the contrary, the Quad is attempting to make the Indo-Pacific increasingly captive and closed in an anti-democratic way which threatens China’s territorial integrity in the East and South China Seas. It’s for this reason why the Quad must radically reconsider its raison d’etat by moving away from its doomed-to-fail attempts to contain China and towards actively cooperating with it instead.

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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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Reuters in a new report has admitted the “unthinkable” now looks very possible: despite Europe’s fierce public criticism of Russia’s coronavirus vaccine, it found that “Behind the scenes, the bloc is turning to Moscow’s Sputnik V shot as it tries to get its stuttering efforts to vaccinate its 450 million people back on track, EU diplomatic and official sources told Reuters.”

At least four EU states are now said to be seeking procurement via the bloc and Brussels has greenlighted formal talks with Sputnik V’s developers at a moment anger and public pressure is mounting over a slow vaccine roll-out.

“Hungary and Slovakia have already bought the Russian shot, the Czech Republic is interested, and the EU official said Italy was considering using the country’s biggest vaccine-producing bioreactor at a ReiThera plant near Rome to make Sputnik V,” Reuters notes.

Somewhat absurdly, and as a reminder that actual science and public health more often takes a far backseat to political calculation and questions of ‘perception’, resistance to dealing with Russia in addition to the six Western vaccine makers the EU currently has agreements with has more to do with not allowing Moscow a “win”.

This is precisely what’s at issue, as Reuters also admits:

If Sputnik V were to join the EU’s vaccine arsenal, it would be a diplomatic triumph for Russia, whose trade with the bloc has been hamstrung for years by sanctions over its annexation of Crimea and its intervention in eastern Ukraine.

It would also risk dividing the bloc between those states dead set against giving Moscow any kind of win and those in favor of showing that Brussels can cooperate with the Kremlin.

As a prime example of this kind of fear-driven motivation fueling the controversy and debate, just last week Charles Michel, who chairs summits of EU leaders, reiterated a commonly echoed theme among diplomats and Western officials: “We should not let ourselves be misled by China and Russia, both regimes with less desirable values than ours, as they organize highly limited but widely publicised operations to supply vaccines to others,” he said.

Michel added, “Europe will not use vaccines for propaganda purposes.”

Thus the bloc’s mere willingness to even enter talks with Sputnik V developers shows Brussels is fast changing its tune amid vaccine roll-out delays, with the pragmatists on the issue appearing to now take the driver’s seat.

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On this exact day ten years ago, NATO, the Gulf Cooperation Council, Turkey and Israel began a coordinated campaign of regime change against President Bashar al-Assad and the destruction of Syria. This has led to the death of over 500,000 people, millions of refugees, destroyed infrastructure and an economy in crisis. Despite numerous political maneuvers, this alliance against Syria catastrophically failed and could not achieve regime change. Not only did Assad survive the onslaught, but the geopolitical situation dramatically changed as a result.

Each aggressor had its own ambitions in Syria but was united in the goal to achieve regime change. Thanks to the contributions made by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, the Syrian government survived the coordinated aggression. Whilst NATO and Turkey continue to insist on regime change, Arab states, most prominently Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, were forced to normalize their relations with Syria to counter the growing threat of Turkish expansionism and influence into the Arab World that they had not anticipated when they decided to destroy Syria ten years ago.

Although a U.S.-dominated unipolar system was consolidated with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia’s 2008 intervention to defend the de facto republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia against NATO-encouraged Georgian forces was the first sign of an emerging multipolar system. A multipolar system, where there is a more equal distribution of power compacted into spheres of influence, was strengthened whilst the US could only helplessly watch as Russia successfully defended South Ossetia and Abkhazia in a region that falls under Moscow’s sphere of influence.

It was Russia’s direct military intervention in Syria, which began on September 30, 2015 that truly consolidated 21st Century Multipolarity. As the US had Pentagon-funded jihadists battling CIA-funded jihadists, Moscow had clear goals and policies towards Syria – the survival of the state and government. Not only did Russia successfully defend the government, despite the fact that large areas of Syria remain occupied by US and Turkish-backed forces, it put its military footprint by assuming control of the Khmeimim Airbase and extended its lease over Tartous Port. In this way, Russia ensures that regime change is not possible in Syria, rendering the American and Turkish occupation of large areas of northern and eastern Syria as extremely cynical policies that prolong the suffering and economic catastrophe in the country.

Prior to the war, Damascus and Ankara had amicable relations, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan even once describing Assad as “my brother.” However, the so-called Arab Spring provided Erdoğan with the opportunity to pursue his neo-Ottoman policy. Not only has this resulted in large areas of northern Syria being illegally occupied by Turkey, but an intense Turkification process is underway with the Turkish school curriculum, currency and language being imposed on the local population.

What Turkey had not anticipated in Syria though was the re-emergence of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) under the guise of the People’s Protection Units (YPG). In fact, before the war, Syria, which once supported the PKK, expelled the group and ended its support for it to improve its relations with Turkey. By Ankara supporting the collapse of the Syrian state, it allowed the conditions for the PKK to return to Syria and once again find a new base of operations to continue its insurgency against Turkey. In addition, Turkey wrongly believed that regime change would be a quick endeavor, and the prolonged war saw millions of refugees flood into the country, not only putting a major strain on the economy, but also a rapid increase in terrorist attacks across the country.

Israel is the only aggressor country that has not suffered due to regime change attempts against Syria. Israel’s main interest is not necessarily the removal of Assad from power, but the complete destruction of the country. The continuation of the war serves Israel’s interests as Syria was the only Arab state that posed an existential threat to the Jewish State. The destruction of the economy and weakening of the military has ensured that Syria will not pose a threat to Israel for several decades as it will have a long path towards recovery.

Ten years on since the beginning of the Syrian War, U.S.-led NATO, Turkey and participating Arab States failed to achieve their goal of regime change to implant their own puppets in Damascus. The US failed to sever the Axis of Resistance (Iran-Syria-Hezbollah), the Arabs failed to install a Sunni president that would be against Iran and completely aligned with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and Turkey not only failed to install a neo-Ottomanist into power, but also reinvigorated the PKK that had not existed for years in Syria.

More importantly, the initial coalition against Syria has collapsed, with Turkey frustrated over the US’ sustained support for the YPG and the Arabs pivoting back to Syria as they now find greater concern over Turkey’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood and interference in Arab affairs. In fact, the US finds itself in a weaker position in the region as the Axis of Resistance is preserved and Russia now has greater military presence and influence in Syria that it did not have prior to the war. Russia’s success in preserving the Syrian state is the strongest indicator that the unipolar world system has collapsed and a new multipolar system has taken its place in the 21st century.

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Paul Antonopoulos is a research fellow at the Center for Syncretic Studies.

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Secretary of State Antony Blinken defended the Trump administration’s position on the International Criminal Court at a Wednesday congressional hearing and refused to say whether U.S. sanctions against war crimes investigators would be lifted.

Blinken told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that the Biden administration wants a “productive relationship” with the ICC, but echoed the Trump administration’s “concerns” about the Hague-based war crimes court attempting to investigate Israeli and U.S. troops.

“Are you saying there is legitimacy to the sanctions that were placed under Trump on the ICC?” Rep. Ilhan Omar (D–Minn.) asked.

“No, all I’m saying is that it’s something that is under review, and at the same time we have real concerns about some of the assertions of jurisdiction with which we disagree,” Blinken replied.

He declined to answer why the sanctions had not been lifted, or whether they would be lifted at all.

The Hague had angered the Trump administration last year by opening investigations into alleged war crimes by multiple sides — including U.S. and Israeli forces, as well as their opponents — in Afghanistan and the Palestinian territories. The investigation is also looking into the CIA’s alleged torture of prisoners captured in Afghanistan and rendered to third countries.

Then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo responded by freezing the assets of two ICC prosecutors, Fatou Bensouda and Phasiko Mochochoko, and banning their family members from entering the United States.

“The Trump administration’s perverse use of sanctions, devised for alleged terrorists and drug kingpins, against prosecutors seeking justice for grave international crimes, magnifies the failure of the U.S. to prosecute torture,” Richard Dicker, international justice director for Human Rights Watch, said in a statement at the time.

The Trump and Biden administrations have maintained that the ICC lacks the jurisdiction to investigate Americans or Israelis, as neither country had ratified the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the court.

Afghanistan, however, is a signatory to the Rome Statute. So is the semi-autonomous Palestinian Authority, which the ICC recognizes as a state but the United States and Israel do not.

Blinken reaffirmed in a statement last week that the United States does not recognize Palestinian Authority as an independent state.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has argued that the court’s ruling places Israel’s “heroic and moral” troops “under attack” and represents “the essence of antisemitism.” The Palestinian militant group Hamas, which is also under investigation for alleged war crimes, welcomed the ICC’s investigation.

The current standoff is not the first disagreement between a U.S. administration and the ICC.

The Clinton administration signed the Rome Statute in 2000, but the Bush administration reversed course soon after to the extent of threatening other countries that ratified the Statute with a cut-off in U.S. assistance. In 2002, then-President George W. Bush signed the American Servicemen Protection Act, also known as the “Hague Invasion Act,” which bans U.S. support to the ICC and authorizes the use of military force to free American citizens held by it.

The Obama administration took a middle path, adopting a policy of “positive engagement” with some ICC investigations while also attempting to exempt U.S. forces from prosecution.

The Biden administration seems to be framing its policy in similar terms.

“We of course share the goal — the broad goal — of international accountability for atrocity crimes. That’s not the issue,” Blinken said at Wednesday’s hearing. “We have the capacity ourselves to provide accountability.”

“We’ve spoken out, we’ve been clear, and we’ll see going forward how we can most effectively engage the ICC to avoid these assertions of jurisdiction when they’re not warranted,” he concluded.

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Featured image: Tony Blinken At His Confirmation Hearing, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Jan. 19, 2021. Screenshot.
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